Friday’s tech news live: All eyes on Twitter (again)

It’s November 18th, 2022 and at least Mei’s back in Overwatch 2

By Verge Staff

12 updates since Nov 16, 2022, 9:57 AM UTC

Elon Musk stands, frowning, in front of flame emoji

It’s usually not a good sign when everyone on Twitter is talking about the same thing, least of all when that thing is Twitter itself. Today the story on everyone’s lips tweets is that a lot of Twitter’s remaining employees have left the company after Elon Musk’s Thursday night ultimatum expired, which demanded that employees work “long hours at high intensity” or GTFO.

Well GTFO is exactly what hundreds of Twitter’s remaining employees are doing. Now the question is exactly how small the company’s workforce can get before it’s fundamentally unable to keep the service operational.

And pull on your mittens everyone, because everyone’s favorite ice queen is heading back to Overwatch 2. Mei was removed from the game late last month thanks to a glitch with her trademark ice wall ability that was allowing players to access “unintended locations.”

Stay tuned, as we continue to update this list with the most important news of today: Friday, November 18th, 2022.

Carvana to layoff 8 percent of its workforce.

That translates to around 1,500 workers, which is not totally surprising, considering the used car dealer has lost almost 98 percent of its value in recent weeks. Carvana’s rapid growth during the pandemic appears to have run into the same economic headwinds many tech companies are now facing. Not unrelated, you can get a 2012 Honda Fit for about $14,000 delivered on Tuesday.

Carvana to lay off 1,500 employees amid economic uncertainty

[CNBC]
We updated our redesign a little.

A lot of readers told us they wanted a list of big stories right at the top, so we moved the “Must Reads” box to the top of the page and renamed it “Top Stories” to be clearer. The Storystream feed is now all in one place just below — and we’ll be adding comments to posts like this very soon, which is exciting. More to come!
Today on the Vergecast we talked Taylor Swift, Twitter, and the disaster of Meta’s latest headset.

Okay, those weren’t the only topics!

But Adi did join us to talk about her Meta Quest Pro review and just how bad this product and some of the software surrounding it is. Then Nilay relayed his adventures in buying Taylor Swift tickets, Twitter news broke live on the podcast, and we all agreed knobs are good.
Elon Musk’s long-term plan to make Twitter less dependent on advertising.

For This Week in Elon, Liz Lopatto investigates what Elon Musk might actually envision for Twitter 2.0.

If Musk can figure out a way to make inroads into the creator economy, that could maybe bring people to the platform in a way that’s cheaper than the $10 sign-up bonus he’s proposed.

If there’s a way to keep the most fun, prolific Twitter users on the platform — either by paying them directly or by letting their fans pay them — I can imagine a world in which that creates a revenue stream that makes Twitter less dependent on advertising.
Pokémon meets open-world.

The first truly open-world Pokémon games are here with the release of Violet and Scarlet on the Switch today.

They’re great games, offering more freedom than any Pokémon adventure before — but that comes at a cost, with some frustrating technical issues that hamper the experience. At least the new grass cat starter is plenty adorable.
Call it a hunch.

Twitter 2.0 is here and operating with a skeleton staff, so now would be a good time to grab an archive before the site suffers a cascading or sudden failure.
Nov 17, 2022, 11:53 PM UTCAlex Heath and Mia Sato

Musk gave Twitter staff a deadline to say if they are staying for his cultural reset of the company. And right on deadline, the farewell emojis started pouring into Twitter’s Slack.
Nov 16, 2022, 9:57 AM UTCTom Warren

Twitter employees can leave with three months of severance or commit to ‘long hours at high intensity.’ Twitter 2.0 begins at 5pm ET on Thursday.

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