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Sonos is continuing to clean house as the company recovers from the hits it took following a disastrous mobile app redesign last year. Just a day after CEO Patrick Spence departed the company, chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin is also leaving. He will act as an advisor to interim CEO Tom Conrad during the leadership transition before fully exiting Sonos.

Conrad informed Sonos employees about the latest leadership change in a company-wide email today. The CPO role is being made redundant, with Sonos’ product team reporting directly to Conrad for the time being.

Sonos has been in a tailspin since releasing a mobile app update in May that contained many bugs and was missing key features. The company’s financial results took a dive, and it laid off about 100 employees in August. Sonos has made several efforts to keep customers aware of its plans to recover from the app launch, and the decision to replace top leadership seems like the latest move to win back public trust in the business.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/sonos-chief-product-officer-is-also-leaving-the-company-223256031.html?src=rss 

Pixelfed is now available as a mobile apps for both iOS and Android. The open source, decentralized platform offers image sharing similar to Instagram. However, Pixelfed has no advertisements and does not share user data with third parties. The platform launched in 2018, but was only available on the web or through third-party app clients. The Android app debuted on January 9 and the iOS app released today.

Creator Daniel Supernault posted on Mastodon Monday evening that the platform had 11,000 users join over the preceding 24 hours and that more than 78,000 posts have been shared to Pixelfed to date. The platform runs on ActivityPub, the same protocol that powers several other decentralized social networks in the fediverse, such as Mastodon and Flipboard.

Many Instagram users have been seeking out alternatives to the Meta-owned platform after the company said it would eliminate third-party fact checking and revised its “Hateful Content” policy to allow denigrating comments against women and trans people, among other changes. Meta also blocked some links to Pixelfed on Facebook, treating them as spam and deleting those posts. A representative from the company said this was an error and that the posts would be reinstated.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/pixelfed-instagrams-decentralized-competitor-is-now-on-ios-and-android-205059236.html?src=rss 

We’ve been hearing about the latest animated movie based on The Witcher franchise for a while now, but we’ve only ever gotten a short teaser and an equally short clip. Now, finally, there’s a legit full-fledged trailer. This is opportune timing, as The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep hits Netflix on February 11.

The big hook here? Geralt is voiced by Doug Cockle, reprising his role from the video games. Anya Chalotra and Joey Batey (Yennefer of Vengerberg and Jaskier in the live action show) are also reprising their roles. It’s set in the universe of the TV show, surrounding events that occurred during the first season, but is based on a short story by franchise creator Andrzej Sapkowski.

The original story, called “A Little Sacrifice,” involves Geralt investigating a series of attacks in a seaside village, leading to a conflict between humans and merpeople. It’s generally considered one of the better short stories in the canon. There’s an underwater city, which is always a good time.

The movie is directed by Kang Hei Chul. He was a storyboard artist for The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, which was a prequel that followed Geralt’s mentor Vesemir. Studio Mir is on animation duties, the same South Korean studio that worked on Nightmare of the Wolf.

This company has an absolutely amazing pedigree. It animated the hit cartoon X-Men ‘97, but also stuff like The Legend of Korra, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, My Adventures with Superman and Voltron: Legendary Defender, among many others. The studio is currently finishing up the upcoming Devil May Cry anime, also for Netflix.

A fourth game in The Witcher franchise is coming, but this one stars Ciri instead of Geralt. The fifth and final season of The Witcher TV show is expected to premiere on Netflix in 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/the-new-witcher-animated-film-finally-has-a-legit-trailer-195457579.html?src=rss 

The Department of Justice and the FBI shared today that they have completed a project to remove malware used by Chinese hackers from computers in the US. The effort was essentially a court-approved counter-hack that remotely deleted malware known as PlugX from more than 4,200 computers. The agencies will notify the US owners of those impacted machines about the operation through their internet service providers.

According to the DOJ press release, hacker groups known as Mustang Panda and Twill Typhoon received backing from the Chinese government to use PlugX to infect, control and gather information from computers outside China. The action to delete the PlugX malware from US computers began in August 2024. It was conducted in cooperation with French law enforcement and with Sekoia.io, a France-based private cybersecurity company. Sekoia.io has found PlugX malware in more than 170 countries.

The Mustang Panda group has been conducting infiltration efforts around the world since at least 2014. For instance, cybersecurity firm ESET found that Mustang Panda gained access to cargo shipping companies’ computers in Norway, Greece and the Netherlands in March. And the group was one of several China-linked hacking organizations identified as compromising telecommunications systems across the Asia-Pacific region in reports last summer.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/doj-remotely-cleaned-thousands-of-computers-infected-with-chinese-malware-191837967.html?src=rss 

Meta is preparing for even more layoffs, according to reporting by Bloomberg. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a company memo that he plans on cutting about five percent of its “low-performers.”

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg said in the memo. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

All told, this could result in 10 percent fewer staff at Meta, once attrition is accounted for. Bloomberg suggested that the forthcoming pink slips will focus on people “who have been with the company long enough to receive a performance rating.”

Between increased layoffs and attrition, nearly 7,000 Meta staff might be leaving the company in the near future. This follows a firing spree that began in late 2022, eventually impacting over 20,000 workers. The company also laid off 60 technical program managers earlier this month.

“A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster. People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling,” Zuckerberg said in 2024. Nothing says “fun and fulfilling” like living in constant fear of being fired.

Meta has had an unusual year so far. We are only halfway through January and the Zuck has already ended third-party fact checking across Meta platforms, appointed UFC CEO Dana White to Meta’s board and took a trip to Mar-a-lago to bend the knee. The company also changed its “Hateful Content” policy to make it safer for homophobes and it came out that Instagram had been shadowbanning common LGBTQ hashtags. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/mark-zuckerberg-plans-to-lay-off-an-additional-five-percent-of-metas-workforce-182651886.html?src=rss