Hello tech followers! It’s been a busy day in tech news, with plenty of news coming out of the big companies. Let’s dive right in and take a look at what’s happening.

Google announced a round of layoffs affecting thousands of its employees – around 12,000 jobs are expected to be cut globally, or over 6 percent of the company’s headcount. Google’s sister company Verily announced a smaller round of layoffs earlier this month.

Netflix also announced big news during its latest earnings release. Co-founder Reed Hastings is stepping down from his position as co-CEO after 25 years of running the company, but he’ll stay on as executive chairman. The company also plans to move forwards with its restrictions on password-sharing, which will see users charged extra if they want to stream outside of the primary household.

On the lighter side, Evanescence has partnered with HipDot to create a Fallen CD eyeshadow palette to celebrate its 20th anniversary this year! The palette is vegan, free of harmful ingredients, cruelty-free, and curated to embrace all skin tones.

Britain’s prime minister was fined because of an Instagram video that showed him riding in a car without a seatbelt on. The New York Times reports that violation can result in a fine of up to  £500 (about $620 US), and said Sunak’s office confirmed he would pay without specifying an amount.

A security researcher says they found part of the US’ no fly list on an unsecured server. According to The Daily Dot, the airline has confirmed that “NoFly.csv” was indeed genuine, and from 2019.

If you’ve been wondering about Gemini, Genesis, and the Grayscale Trust, then check out this deep dive from the podcast Odd Lots. It covers how Three Arrows Capital and BlockFi were both borrowing from Genesis in order to get involved with a Grayscale arbitrage trade… and now Genesis is bankrupt. Of course, this is also why CoinDesk is up for sale, since Genesis, Grayscale, and CoinDesk share a parent company.

Elon Musk briefly took the stand on the third day of his securities fraud trial to testify about his Twitter habits and why he ignored the advice of his closest associates to just stop doing it.

TikTok confirms that its own employees can decide what goes viral – that the company promotes certain videos, sometimes to enhance relationships with creators and businesses, is no longer just an open secret.

The Humble Bundle Winter Sale kicked off today – save up to 90 percent off a number of excellent titles until February 7th.

The Vergecast discussed Elon Musk’s status update at Twitter, Apple’s eventless hardware announcement, HomePod and all. They also dove into the revelations about CNET’s AI-written stories and discussed the recent spate of Big Tech layoffs.

Nintendo is reportedly increasing Switch production for the next fiscal year after overcoming component shortages that had recently caused it to cut forecasts.

CNET has paused publishing AI-written stories after disclosure controversy – in a staff call on Friday, CNET leadership told staff it was pausing all AI-generated content for now.

Invincible season 2 is still a work in progress coming later this year – from the looks and sounds of a new teaser dropped today, fans can look forward to seeing more Invincible sometime late this year.

Twitter is testing yet another form of verification for journalists – the latest trial adds a small publication logo to the right of display names. It looks pretty messy to me!

Your phone may have a built-in feature that makes it easy to share your Wi-Fi password on Android and iOS.

T-Mobile announced another data breach impacting 37 million accounts – the attacker obtained customer names, billing addresses, emails, phone numbers, and birth dates through an internal API.

The Polar Ignite 3 looks like a sleek modern smartwatch but acts like a tracker from five years ago.

The New York Times reports Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have discussed its response to ChatGPT, with plans to launch over 20 AI products this year.

Windows 11 now secretly includes an audio feature that’s very similar to EarTrumpet, a popular third-party tool.