Tech

Tesla laid off over 10 percent of its workforce this month, but Musk says the cuts were needed for the company’s “next phase of growth:”

A company is kind of like a creature growing, and if you don’t reorganize it for different phases of growth, it will fail. You can’t have the same organizational structure.

Apparently, that next stage of growth also involves a $56 billion pay package for Musk.

That’s what Elon Musk said during Tesla’s earnings call on Tuesday, adding that Tesla will likely be able to sell the humanoid bot “externally by the end of next year.” But don’t get your hopes up just yet — Musk says these timelines “are just guesses.”

Meta is apparently giving raffle tactics a go to get creators posting more on Threads, according to The Information:

Creators have to post at least once a day on Threads for 10 straight days to be eligible, and Instagram encouraged them to use the hashtag #GoodVibesonThreads to make it easier for staff to “find and share” their posts. Then, creators are entered into a drawing for 10 prizes, which are worth up to $500 each.

Some Westworld props are being auctioned off over at Heritage Auctions, beginning tomorrow, April 24th. Props from the canceled show include a self-driving car — complete with “manual gas throttle” and a “hidden compartment to operate vehicle.” (See the image gallery below.)

Also available are a table, some e-bikes, and assorted sous-vide bags of Dolores’ skin.

Ever struggle to get a table at buzzy New York restaurants? Blame the scalpers.

Reservation resellers scour platforms like Resy and OpenTable and resell their spots to the rich and the desperate. It’s apparently a booming industry: a sophomore at Brown says he made $70,000 last year selling reservations.

If you owned a Ring camera when the FTC alleges unauthorized users may have had access to your videos, check your email. You may be getting a slice of the $5.6 million Ring paid out to settle the FTC’s complaint that its practices pre-2019 “led to egregious violations of users’ privacy.” The company settled but denied violating the law.

Android expert Mishaal Rahman spotted an “even dimmer” option in Android 15 that allows the display “to go dimmer than normal.” There’s already an “extra dim” option you can manually toggle on, but Rahman suspects this new setting will automatically kick in when you’re in a dark area.

Announced in January, Mophie’s $99 battery cases for the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max (but not the iPhone 15 Plus) are now available.

Ziporah Kaufer of a PR firm representing Mophie told The Verge via email that the 3,000mAh Juice Packs supply 5 watts of power on their own or 27 watts via pass-through when on a phone and plugged in.

The best free Game Boy Advance emulator for Android is back now its developer is less scared. Pizza Boy’s Davide Berra:

After a few weeks of consideration and after discussing with several people (both in the field and not), I’ve realized that I can’t set aside a passion and effort of so many years. Experimentally, I am trying to revisit the apps to make them available again on the Google Play Store with some renewals. Let’s start with Pizza Boy A Basic and hopefully continue with the others.

The pro version let me turn my Samsung Z Flip into a GBA SP.

Webster already wrote about this, but I’m seriously wowed at how easy it was to turn an iPhone into a retro console for my TV. Once you add a gamepad, everything but joystick-sensitive games (sorry, GoldenEye fans) feels playable!

Delta dev Riley Testut tells me he’s “definitely open” to adding joystick sensitivity adjustment. For now, it uses Apple’s default calibrations.

After trying out a paid membership several years back, Newegg has announced a replacement: Newegg Plus. You can opt into the program for free, giving you access to benefits like free shipping, member-only deals, faster returns, warranty discounts, and a dedicated customer service line.

Our pals at Rest of World have a deep dive into the TSMC chip fab in Arizona, one of the major plants funded by the Chips and Science Act. It was meant to come online this year, but it’s fallen well behind schedule, and culture shock is a major reason why:

Several American former employees said they felt relief after quitting. In group chats, engineers celebrated the departure of their friends. “TSMC was the worst possible place to work on Earth,” one American ex-TSMC engineer told Rest of World. Another, who recently left the company, described TSMC as having “a purely authoritarian work structure.”

Shades of Foxconn in Wisconsin, but at least this time there’s an actual factory.