🍪 Zuck’s on the struggle bus
Up and at ‘em, friends. This is Bite Sized Beta. We’re your Hot Cheetos of tech. Spicy, satisfying, and always gone too fast.
Let’s get to the good stuff.
In the oven this week:
☠️ Zuck’s tough week
🗳️ Weekly poll: choose your big tech CEO
🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines
🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds
😂 Snickerdoodles: memes for the weekend
FRESHLY BAKED
ZUCK’S TOUGH WEEK
Lately, it feels like we’re just rotating through big tech CEOs with their hair on fire. Who’s on deck today?
Zuck.
That’s right Sundar, you get today off!
Zuck’s been strapped into the struggle bus this week.
Let’s just say in normie terms, it was a bird-pooped-on-your-head, car-vandalized, crypto-wallet-stolen kinda week.
The three big dumpster fires:
Meta is pretty much the Disneyland for layoffs now. They went in with a third round this week, affecting mostly business folks. The graveyard is now 21K people deep, counting the previous 2 cuts. Zuck don’t stutter, it really is the Year of Efficiency…
Live view of Zuck at work
They got slapped with a record $1.3 billion fine for violating E.U. data privacy rules. Ireland's Data Protection Commission says that the European FB user data Meta transfers to the US isn't protected from American spy agencies. They're now ordering Meta to stop transferring user data from Europe to the US, which could affect their ads business.
Remember Giphy? The thing Meta acquired for $400M back in 2020? Zuck musta caught regulators on the wrong side of the bed this week, ‘cause they forced Meta to sell Giphy due to antitrust concerns. Who swooped in on the rebound? Shutterstock, who bought Giphy for peanuts: $53M. Next time you’re at the roulette table in Vegas, just think about that loss.
Better luck next week, Zuck.
POLL OF THE WEEK
CHOOSE YOUR PLAYER: BIG TECH CEO EDITION
It’s hard to sympathize with rich dudes running companies, but we gotta know, if you had to choose your favorite child, who are you picking?
Sound off 👇🏽 |
COOKIE CRUMBS
BITE SIZED HEADLINES
ChatGPT officially has its own iOS app. It’s also now connected to the internet, like Bard. *Adds to home screen*
Last week, Montana banned TikTok. This week? TikTok is suing Montana for banning it. TikTok creators are also suing Montana for first amendment violations. The clapback is here.
Your Thursday afternoon gossip: Jeff Bezos is engaged to his girlfriend Lauren Sánchez. Apparently his yacht also has a giant sculpture of her attached to it, LOL. Cringe or romantic, ladies?
Speaking of Jeffs, Jeff Jordan is leaving a16z after an epic 12 year run. He led investments in eBay, Airbnb, and Instacart - one of the OG venture GOATs.
If you’ve had peanut allergies, you might be able to start having peanut butter in your lifetime. That's right, we’re curing allergies out here! A new clinical trial tested 362 toddlers with a skin patch containing peanut protein to be absorbed into the skin, and found that 67% of toddlers could then safely ingest peanuts.
FROM THE COOKIE JAR
TWEET OF THE WEEK
Sometimes all you need for exceptional results is average effort repeated for an above-average amount of time.
— James Clear (@JamesClear)
May 11, 2023
Reminder: sometimes all you gotta do is keep showin’ up as your damn average self.
CHOCOLATE CHIPS
OUR FAVORITE FINDS
Apparently, there are only 4 cities where it's currently cheaper to buy a house vs renting. In the Bay Area, it’s twice as expensive to buy than to rent. RIP.
Random life things that you gotta know: which AA batteries last the longest. For the next time you have to change the batteries in that dang smoke alarm!
SNICKERDOODLES
THURSDAY MEMES
😂
That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!
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Zuck’s on the struggle bus