Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Xbox hit hard with layoffs: from canceled games to a shuttered studio

On July 2nd, Microsoft announced sweeping layoffs affecting as many as 9,000 employees, and they had a big impact on the company’s Xbox studios. Microsoft canceled Perfect Dark from The Initiative and closed the studio. Rare’s Everwild, announced in 2019, was canceled, too. And Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 Studios will lose more than 70 […]

Microsoft cuts hundreds of Xbox jobs across studios, sources say including Halo Studios and King, and cancels games like Perfect Dark and Everwild (Eddie Makuch/GameSpot)

Eddie Makuch / GameSpot:
Microsoft cuts hundreds of Xbox jobs across studios, sources say including Halo Studios and King, and cancels games like Perfect Dark and Everwild  —  Microsoft announced mass layoffs on July 2 impacting many areas of the company's sprawling business, including Xbox.

Cloudflare Creates AI Crawler Tollbooth

Matthew Prince (Hacker News, Slashdot): The problem is whether you create content to sell ads, sell subscriptions, or just to know that people value what you’ve created, an AI-driven web doesn’t reward content creators the way that the old search-driven web did. And that means the deal that Google made to take content in exchange […]

Figma Files for IPO

Thomas Claburn (Figma, Hacker News): The company prospectus mentions AI more than 150 times, characterizing it both as a creative accelerant and a potential threat.[…]Back to Figma, whose prospectus says that as of the first three months of 2025 it has 13 million monthly active users.For the year that ended on December 31, 2024, Figma […]

Fakespot Shuts Down

Bryson Thill (via Hacker News): Fakespot’s technology revealed some eye-opening statistics. About 43% of the best-selling Amazon products had reviews that were unreliable or fabricated, according to a study by app company Circuit. The problem was even worse in certain categories. Clothing and jewelry led the pack with a staggering 88% of reviews deemed unreliable.[…]As […]