A Meta VP told staff to "buckle down" and "build great products" for the metaverse, per The Verge. Only one in 10 users reportedly come back to its Horizon metaverse platform after a month. Meta vice president Mark Rabkin reportedly told employees this week that they need to focus on making the best metaverse products possible — and the mission is a little bit personal. "Let's buckle down. Let's be more efficient. Let's build great products," Rabkin said during an internal roadmap prese ...read more

Uber has rolled out updates to its Shop and Pay feature that address three of the most commonly raised courier issues: out of stock items, digital payments and order clarity before accepting a trip. The ride-hail and delivery giant quietly launched Shop and Pay last year, a feature that lets delivery workers opt into receiving trips to do grocery or other retail shopping for customers before dropping off orders to the customer’s door. Basically, it’s Uber’s attempt to follow the Instacart ...read more

Indian at-home salon platform Yes Madam exposed the sensitive data of its customers and gig workers due to a server-side misconfiguration. Noida-based Yes Madam operates in more than 30 cities in the country, according to the firm’s website. The platform offers salon services at home, including therapies, massage, spa and male grooming. Yes Madam’s mobile apps also attracted over a million downloads. But the startup left a database containing full names, mobile numbers, mailing addres ...read more

Zoom has fired its president, Greg Tomb, just 10 months after he joined. The company said in a SEC filing that Tomb's "termination without cause" was effective Friday. Zoom has sacked its president, Greg Tomb, a former Google employee who only began working at the company around 10 months ago. Zoom said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Tomb's termination was effective as of Friday. He will receive severance benefits in line with his employment arrangements, whic ...read more

Metaverse hype was hanging like a multicolored fog over the Mobile World Congress (MWC) connectivity trade show in Barcelona this week. Conference organizer, the GSMA’s, program pitched attendees into a smorgasbord of metaverse-themed discussions — most of which seemed designed to generate maximum FOMO, as a parade of tech evangelists took to the stage in Spain, armed with a new generation of acronyms and luridly colored slide-decks, urging the audience not to sweat the detail of whatever ...read more

TechSpot is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. In context: Meta launched the Quest 2 in late 2020 at a starting price of $299 before inexplicably deciding to hike its price by $100 last year. The Quest Pro was priced at a staggering $1,500 from day 1, making it unaffordable for most people. Meta has seemingly acknowledged that they were overpriced, announcing price cuts for both units. Meta announced significant price cuts on its ...read more

Meta's chief technology officer reportedly told employees it's not making a second Quest Pro headset. The $1,499 Quest Pro headset has received poor reviews and sales, and was costly for Meta to make. Meta's chief technology officer reportedly told employees the company is not planning to make a second Quest Pro headset. Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth announced Meta's decision to not continue with its planned second-generation Quest Pro virtual-reality headset at the company's road map presentation ...read more

TechSpot is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Something to look forward to: The company that operates the DuckDuckGo privacy-centered search engine has offered a web browser for the same purpose on mobile devices for a while. Over the last year, it has worked to bring its browser to desktops, and a limited number of Windows users can now begin testing it. DuckDuckGo started a closed beta for the Windows version of its privacy-ori ...read more

TechSpot is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Why it matters: State-sponsored cyberattacks and corporate espionage are becoming a bigger concern with each passing year, often resulting in millions of dollars in damages. Attackers are making off with critical data as governments, businesses, and cybersecurity experts struggle to protect citizens and customers. As of now, individuals and small businesses are on their own when attack ...read more

OpenAI is the startup behind the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, but the company has other AI products. DALL-E, OpenAI's AI art generator, creates images based on detailed text descriptions from a person. ChatGPT quickly went viral after it was released in November. But the startup behind it, OpenAI, has other AI products too. Just months earlier, OpenAI removed the waitlist for its generative AI art generator, DALL-E, which grew to over 1.5 million daily users. The tool sparked controversy amon ...read more