Heya, friends, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the latest days in tech.
Google’s annual enterprise development conference, Google Cloud Next, made headlines – and we got lots of coverage of the event. But that wasn’t the only thing going on (see: the spectacular eclipse).
Laurent wrote on how hackers stole more than 340,000 Social Security numbers from government consulting firm Greylock McKinnon Associates (GMA). It took GMA nine months to determine the extent of the violation and notify victims; for the moment, we don’t know why.
Elsewhere, Sarah told the story on Spotify. custom AI playlistswhich allows users to create a playlist based on written prompts.
And Connie reported the death of entrepreneur Mahbod Moghadam, who rose to fame as co-founder of Genius, the online music encyclopedia. Moghadam died at the age of 41 from a recurrent brain tumor.
Many other things happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR — but first, a reminder to register to receive the WiR newsletter in your mailbox every Saturday.
News
Tesla price drop: Tesla has lowered prices on unsold Model Y SUVs in the United States by several thousand dollars in an effort to clear an unprecedented inventory backlog.
Snapchat turns off its solar system: Snapchat has adjusted a feature in its app that visualizes how “close” you are to your friends after a report found it added to teens’ anxiety.
Non-invasive treatment for anxiety: Neurovalens, a startup developing technology to provide non-invasive electrical stimulation of the brain and nervous system, won FDA clearance thanks to a 2019 agency rule change aimed at encouraging innovations targeting insomnia and anxiety.
Llama 3: At an event in London, Meta confirmed that it expects an initial release of Llama 3 – the next generation of its AI model used to power chatbots and other applications – within the month.
Emulators in the store: Apple has updated its App Store rules to generally allow retro console game emulators an option to download titles.
AT&T Breach: AT&T has begun notifying U.S. state authorities and regulators of a security incident after confirming that millions of customer records posted online last month were authentic.
Funding
Web3 and beauty: Kiki World, a beauty brand that uses Web3 for co-creation and customer ownership, has closed a $7 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Analysis
Magnets in keyboards: Frédéric writes about an intriguing development in mechanical keyboard design: magnetic switches, which can quickly change the actuation point – the point during the key press where the switch registers a downward travel.
The WFH, here to stay: Working from home isn’t going away, even if some CEOs want it to. Ron writes that most workers crave flexibility and work-life balance – who knew?
Podcasts
On Equity On Wednesday’s startup-focused show, the team delved into Multiverse’s acquisition of Searchlight, the latest Guesty round, the Monad Labs deal and a new venture capital fund targeting growth rounds in Africa.
In the meantime, Find Featured Ben Christensen, founder and CEO of Cambium, a startup that is reinventing the wood supply chain and repurposing previously wasted materials for use in new construction projects.
Bonus round
Microsoft passwords exposed: Security researchers discovered an open, public database hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service that stored internal information relating to Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Microsoft claims to have fixed the problem.
