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Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Monday, March 16, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today is Meta about to do the mother of all layoffs New AirPods Max 2 why OpenAI delayed its sexy time chat the calls were coming from inside the house. What does it mean if the San Francisco real estate market is ripping again? And what if it ends up Apple has played a blinder by sitting out the AI capex spending spree. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Rumors were swirling over the weekend that Meta plans sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company amid mounting AI infrastructure costs. Meta had around 79,000 employees as of Dec. 31, quoting Reuters. Top executives have recently signaled the plans to other senior leaders at Meta and told them to begin planning how to pare back. Two of the people said the sources spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to disclose the cuts. This is speculative reporting about theoretical approaches, meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in response to questions about the plan. If Meta settles on the 20% figure, the layoffs will be the company's most significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023 that it dubbed the year of efficiency. It employed nearly 79,000 people as of Dec. 31, according to its latest filing. The company laid off 11,000 staffers in November 2022, or around 13% of its workforce. Time around four months later, it announced it was cutting another 10,000 jobs. Over the last year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to compete more forcefully in generative AI. The company has offered huge pay packages, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four years, to court top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team. The company has said it plans to invest $600 billion to build data centers by 2028. Earlier this week, it acquired Multbooks, a social networking platform built for AI agents. Meta is also spending at least $2 billion to buy Chinese AI startup Manus, Reuters previously reported. CEO Zuckerberg has alluded to efficiency gains from the investments, saying in January he was starting to see, quote, projects that used to require big teams now being accomplished by a single, very talented person. Meta's plans reflect a broader pattern among major US Companies, particularly in tech. This year, executives have pointed to recent improvements in AI systems as one reason for the changes. In January, Amazon confirmed it would cut some 16,000 jobs, amounting to nearly 10% of its workforce. Last month, the fintech company blockchopped nearly half of its staff, with CEO Jack Dorsey explicitly pointing to AI tools and their growing capability to help companies do more with smaller teams. End quote Quoting Sign null on X the ZIRP era created a weird implicit social contract which was that if the company is healthy then jobs were safe. That contract is now gone. The replacement is closer to the old industrial logic which is that labor is a cost to be minimized at every point in the cycle. And now End quote and quoting Vishvanand Submaranean on threads Crazy part about this article is they're directly saying they'll convert the savings from reduced payroll to dump into capex for chips. Wild times. End quote. Wait, are we getting another week of soft Apple product refreshes this week? Quoting TechCrunch in a surprise launch on Monday, Apple unveiled the AirPods Max 2, the long awaited successor to its premium headphones that launched in 2020. The Max 2 costs $549 and feature Active Noise Cancellation, Apple's audio specific H2 chip support for live translation, better sound quality and more. The headphones will be available for Pre order start 25th in midnight, starlight, orange, purple and blue colors and will be available early next month. Apple says the new headphones Active noise cancellation is up to one and a half times more effective than their predecessor and the Adaptive Audio feature lets the headphones automatically adjust the levels of ANC and transparency based on the user's surroundings to optimize the listening experience. The company says transparency mode is now more natural thanks to a new digital signal processing algorithm designed for the H2 chip and the AirPods Max microphone array so users can stay aware of their surroundings and the people around them. The headphones come with Live Translation, which helps users communicate across languages in person. They also feature Voice Isolation, which uses advanced computational audio to prioritize your voice during calls and block out ambient noise. Apple says the AirPods Max 2 has a new high dynamic range amplifier for cleaner audio, and spatial audio is said to be better with improved localization of instruments, better bass response and natural mids and highs. The headphones also support Camera Remote, a feature that lets you trigger the iPhone or iPad's camera shutter from a distance. On the max 2, you press the digital crown to take a photo or start and stop video recording in the camera app or compatible third party camera apps on iPhone or iPad. Additionally, Apple says the headphones loud sound reduction feature helps protect users from loud environmental noise while preserving the sound signature of what they're listening to. Apple says the headphones mic allows interviewers, podcasters, singers and other creators to capture content, content with higher quality audio and more natural vocal texture. End quote. Wait, I just assumed that this had happened a long time ago. Encyclopedia Britannica and its Merriam Webster subsidiary are suing OpenAI for allegedly misusing their reference materials to train its AI models. Quoting Reuters, Britannica said in the complaint on Friday that Microsoft backed OpenAI used its online articles and encyclopedia and dictionary entries to teach its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, to respond to human prompts, and cannibalized Britannica's web traffic with AI generated summaries of its content. Our models empower innovation and are trained on publicly available data and grounded in fair use, an OpenAI spokesperson said on Monday in response to the lawsuit. Britannica's lawsuit said that OpenAI unlawfully copied nearly 100,000 of its articles to train GPT large language models. The complaint said that ChatGPT produces, quote, near verbatim copies of Britannica's encyclopedia entries, dictionary definitions and other content, diverting users who would otherwise visit its websites. Britannica also accused OpenAI of infringing its trademarks by implying that it has permission to reproduce its materials and wrongfully citing Britannica and false AI hallucinations. Britannica requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order blocking the alleged infringement. End quote Foreign. Sources tell the journal that OpenAI faced intense backlash from its advisory council over a planned chatgpt so called Adult Mode, which was delayed earlier this month due to technical and other issues. Quote In January, OpenAI's handpicked Council of Advisors on well being and AI met with the company's representatives for an update about a controversial new feature called Adult Mode. Citing the need to treat adult users like adults, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman had last year floated the idea of enabling erotic conversations in its ChatGPT chatbot and dropping its ban on such X rated content. The plan sparked vigorous debate internally over the potential risks. Council members with backgrounds in fields like psychology and cognitive neuroscience had also expressed strong reservations. Then OpenAI dropped a bombshell. Despite the concerns, it was forging ahead with its erotica plans when they assembled for the January meeting. Council members were unanimous and furious. They warned that AI powered erotica could foster unhealthy emotional dependence on ChatGPT for users and that minors could find ways to access sex chats, according to people familiar with the matter. The people said that one council member, citing cases where ChatGPT users have taken their own lives after developing intense bonds with the bot, claimed that OpenAI risked creating a, quote, sexy suicide coach the debate is the latest flashpoint in the continuing conversation about how to anticipate the potential positive and negative impacts of AI on the economy, society and individuals. In proposing to allow sexually explicit conversations with its popular chatbot, OpenAI exposed fractures over how to balance rapid user growth and digital freedom with safety and child protection, issues that many believe were belatedly confronted when social media made its debut a generation ago. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced it would delay the launch of Adult Mode, previously slated for the first quarter, saying it was prioritizing other products. The change was also due in part to internal concerns and technical challenges, the people said, but the company made clear it does plan to release it eventually. One issue the company is tackling its New Age prediction system aimed at keeping minors from having adult themed chats, was at one point misclassifying minors as adults about 12% of the time, people familiar with the matter said. That error rate could allow millions of the company's approximately 100 million under 18 users each week into erotic chats. The company has also wrestled with how to lift ChatGPT's restrictions on erotica while still blocking scenarios that the company wants to keep off limits, like those featuring non consensual behavior or child sexual abuse, the people added. When the adult mode launches, OpenAI plans to allow text conversations but restrict ChatGPT's ability to generate erotic images, voice or video. Even within those limits, OpenAI staffers have identified several risks, including the potential for compulsive use, emotional over reliance on the chatbot, a drive toward more extreme or taboo content, and crowding out offline social and romantic relationships, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. End quote. Bad news for small teams. You're still a target for cybercriminals who know lean teams often lack the resources to prevent or respond to a breach. The good news is your team, regardless of size, can foil cybercrime with 1Password. 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