Friday’s tech news live: All eyes on Twitter (again)

Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 135 months, or just over 11 years, in prison, according to journalist John Carreyrou. She will have to report to prison on April 27th, 2023, and will have an additional three years of supervised release once she’s out, according to Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Keenan.

Judge Edward Davila, who has overseen the case, declared that the charges she had been found guilty of made her responsible for defrauding 10 victims out of $121 million, according to The New York Times’ Erin Griffith. Davila said that Holmes’ refusal to accept responsibility for the fraud counted against her in his sentencing decision, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Elon Musk has begun reinstating Twitter accounts that were previously subject to lifetime bans, taking the first steps toward his promise of lighter moderation on the platform. Announced Friday, the first affected accounts belong to author Jordan Peterson, comedian Kathy Griffin, and conservative parody outlet The Babylon Bee.

Notably, two of the three accounts were banned because of tweets misgendering trans people. Peterson was banned in July for tweets misgendering trans actor Elliot Page, which he said he would “rather die” than delete. The Babylon Bee was banned in March for similar tweets misgendering Rachel Levine, a trans woman currently serving as US assistant secretary of health.

After three years in space, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission burned up in the atmosphere on Thursday, November 17th. During its mission, the crowdfunded spacecraft made 18,000 orbits of the planet using its giant reflective sail and demonstrated that controlled solar sailing is possible.

LightSail may now be over, but it has opened the door to the use of solar sailing in space exploration. “It doesn’t fit every situation, but now it gives another arrow in the quiver of options for types of propulsion you can use,” said Bruce Betts, Chief Scientist and LightSail program manager. 

The line between hearing aids and hearables has blurred ever since over-the-counter hearing aids hit shelves last month. Case in point: a new iScience study that claims a $249 pair of AirPods Pro can sometimes perform as well as prescription hearing aids that often cost thousands more. But while AirPods may seem like an affordable hearing aid alternative, it’s not quite that simple.

Researchers recruited 21 participants in the study to test how well second-gen AirPods and AirPods Pro performed compared to a premium hearing aid costing $10,000 and a basic aid costing $1,500. The participants were asked to repeat verbatim short sentences that were read to them while wearing each device. The AirPods Pro were found to be comparable to basic hearing aids in quiet environments and only slightly worse than the premium hearing aids. The second-gen AirPods performed the worst of the four devices but were better than nothing.

It’s true that you usually get what you pay for. But every so often, you come across a device that offers way more bang for your buck. The $199 Amazfit GTR 4 is not going to compete with the Apple Watch Series 8 or the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 on features. It’s not as stylish as the Pixel Watch. But it offers several features you’d expect to see on more expensive watches, such as multiband GPS, a vibrant OLED display, and turn-by-turn route navigation. After spending some time with the GTR 4, I wholeheartedly recommend this over the new Fitbit Versa 4 or Sense 2.

The GTR 4 probably won’t win any design awards, but it looks pretty good for a budget watch (especially when compared to previous iterations). The 1.4-inch always-on OLED display is housed in a 46mm aluminum case. It looks fine, if a bit nondescript. But the fluoroelastomer strap on my review unit feels chintzy. Although it’s the same type of material as Apple’s Sport Band, it doesn’t look like it. After about two weeks of wear, one of the keepers is already showing some damage. Thankfully, you can use any standard 22mm strap with the GTR 4 to elevate the look.

Hundreds of Twitter employees have resigned ahead of Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” cultural reset of the company, according to internal messages seen by The Verge and employee tweets.

The fresh purge of Twitter’s ranks comes after Musk recently fired dozens of employees who criticized or mocked him in tweets and internal messages. Musk then set a deadline of 5PM ET on Thursday for all employees to respond “yes” on a Google form if they want to stay for what he is calling “Twitter 2.0;” otherwise, today would be their final day of work and they would receive a severance package.

Amazon will be cutting jobs again at some point in early 2023, CEO Andy Jassy informed employees in a memo on Thursday. The company publicly confirmed some layoffs on Wednesday, and Jassy says that as Amazon’s annual planning process extends into the new year, “there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments.”

Jassy says the company hasn’t determined exactly how many additional roles will be cut but did state that there will be “reductions in our Stores and [People, Experience, and Technology] organizations.” Amazon will inform who will be impacted by the future cuts early next year.

Roku has announced that it’s laying off 200 US employees, or around 7 percent of its workforce, according to Variety. According to the company’s statement, the cuts are meant to reduce its “headcount expenses” by around 5 percent as it tries to spend less on operations in the face of “current economic conditions” in the advertising and streaming industry.

In some ways, the move isn’t necessarily surprising — several of Roku’s peers, such as Disney, Netflix, and Meta, have also announced layoffs in recent weeks and months.

Everybody mark your calendars: instead of the Christmas holiday season, it’s gonna be Mei. After a brief hiatus to fix a glitch that allowed Mei’s ice wall to boost players to places they shouldn’t be, today’s Overwatch 2 update added her back to the game alongside a host of other hero tweaks and bug fixes.

In addition to releasing feral Mei mains back onto the general, unsuspecting public, several heroes, including two current meta-defining characters — Genji and Zarya — are also getting hit with the nerf bat.