Meta lays off 11,000 workers; Zuckerberg says his investments didn’t pay off

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg. (credit: Getty Images | Drew Angerer )

Meta is laying off 11,000 employees, about 13 percent of its workforce, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a message to staff today. Zuckerberg said his previous decision to increase spending didn't pay off as he thought it would and that Meta's "revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the beginning of this year."

Meta had 87,314 employees as of September 30, 2022, an increase of 28 percent over the previous 12 months.

"At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended," Zuckerberg wrote. "I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected. Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I'd expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that."

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Starlink to cap users at 1TB of high-speed data unless they pay extra

Enlarge / The new version of Dishy McFlatface. (credit: Starlink)

Starlink is imposing new data-usage limits on its Internet customers, slowing speeds after a customer uses 1TB in any given month unless they pay extra. While the new data limits are in some ways more forgiving than Comcast's data cap, the change may be concerning to Starlink users who have already seen slower speeds in recent months.

"To ensure our customer base is not negatively impacted by a small number of users consuming unusually high amounts of data, the Starlink team is implementing a Fair Use policy for Residential customers in the US and Canada and all Business/Maritime customers beginning December 2022," a FAQ says.

Under Starlink's fair use policy, residential customers will get 1TB of "priority access data" each month. After using 1TB, customers can keep accessing the Internet at slower speeds or pay $0.25 per gigabyte for "additional priority access." Starlink sent emails to customers notifying them of the new policy late last week. The residential service's base price is $110 per month.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ars has exclusive behind-the-scenes video from The Callisto Protocol

Directed by Sean Dacanay. Produced by Justin Wolfson. Edited by Jeremy Smolnik, with Billy Ward. Click here for transcript. (video link)

The War Stories video we ran a few years ago featuring Dead Space's battle with the drag tentacle is one of the most popular in the series, and ever since it came out we've been aching for another opportunity to collaborate with game designer Glen Schofield. That opportunity arrived a few months ago, when Glen's Striking Distance Studios reached out to us and asked if we wanted to visit the office for an inside look at Glen's upcoming sci-fi horror game, The Callisto Protocol.

We said yes, of course. In addition to the exclusive access, we also were excited at the opportunity to hang out with Glen again—an enormous friendly bear of a man, whose gifted and artistic mind churns out an endless array of many-limbed horrors.

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Porsche unveils smaller, lighter, faster Formula E race car, the 99X

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Porsche provided a flight from DC to Milan and back, plus two nights in a hotel so we could see its new Formula E car, as well as get briefed on VW Group's next EV platform, which you'll be able to read about next week. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

FRANCIACORTA, ITALY—Last night, Porsche unveiled its latest racing car at its Italian Porsche Experience Center, midway between Milan and Verona. The 99X is the marque's new Formula E car, as Porsche becomes the first of that series' competitors to show off its Gen3 machinery before the start of season nine. That gets underway in Mexico City in mid-January, and good news: Fanboost is definitely a thing of the past.

As the "Gen3" name suggests, it's the third race car design to compete in Formula E, and we've come a long way from the original Spark SRT_01E, which only had enough battery capacity to complete half a race. The new car isn't quite as light as we thought, but at 1,874 lbs (850 kg) it's still a chunk lighter than the Gen2 car, and 220 lbs (100 kg) of that was from the battery.

The new car can regeneratively brake its front wheels now, but only the rear electric motor can deploy power as well as recuperate it. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

"Overall, the new car is smaller, is shorter, shorter track width, more agile, it's lighter, more powerful. Compared to Gen2 where we had recuperation of maximum 250 kW (335 hp), we now have 600 kW (805 hp), which is more than double," said Florian Modlinger, head of Porsche's Formula E program.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Chinese chip designers slow down processors to dodge US sanctions

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Alibaba and start-up Biren Technology are tweaking their most advanced chip designs to reduce processing speeds and avoid US-imposed sanctions aimed at suppressing Chinese computing power.

Alibaba, Biren, and other Chinese design houses have spent years and millions of dollars creating the blueprints for advanced processors to power the country’s next generation of supercomputers, artificial intelligence algorithms and data centers. These are produced offshore by the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

But sanctions announced by Washington last month that cap the processing power of any semiconductor shipped into China without a license have thrown a wrench into their ambitions.

Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Musk-led Twitter laid off some employees by mistake, asks them to come back

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Peter Dazeley)

After layoffs targeting half the company, the Elon Musk-led Twitter is reportedly asking dozens of employees to come back.

"Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, according to two people familiar with the moves. Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information," Bloomberg wrote.

On Friday, barely a week after Musk bought Twitter, the company moved ahead with a plan to lay off about 50 percent of its workforce. About 3,700 people were reportedly laid off. "Many employees learned they lost their job after their access to company-wide systems, like email and Slack, were suddenly suspended. The requests for employees to return demonstrate how rushed and chaotic the process was," Bloomberg wrote.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Megalodon, extinct giant shark, started life in nurseries

Enlarge / A great white shark. (credit: wildestanimal / Getty Images)

Gigantic extinct sharks have something to tell us from millions of years ago, and paleontologists are only just beginning to unravel that message. In a series of firsts, paleontologists have identified a growing number of paleo-nurseries, ancient sanctuaries where young sharks may have been born and where they grew until they were big enough to survive on their own in the larger sea. It’s a strategy some sharks continue to employ today, meaning it has been a successful evolutionary tactic for at least 23 million years.

The most abundant remnants we have of these apex predators are the teeth they shed over their lifetime. Cartilage, the major component of internal shark structure, doesn’t tend to survive fossilization. Given the considerable dearth of fossils, how can paleontologists ascertain the types and ages of extinct sharks? And how are paleontologists able to determine the site of a paleo-nursery from tens of millions of years ago in areas that are no longer underwater?

Answers with teeth

The answers lie with fossil teeth, from which paleontologists can determine species and estimate sizes—and, remarkably, the temperature and salinity of the water where the sharks lived. Although scientists aren’t yet able to establish the precise age of a shark from a fossil tooth, they can narrow it down to whether the shark was a neonate, juvenile, or adult, according to Matthew Gibson, the natural history curator at The Charleston Museum.

Read 27 remaining paragraphs | Comments