New year, new price for the Quest 2 headset

Happy New Year my dear Daily Crunchers! I’m back from a long, much-needed vacation and ready to deliver today’s big stories. Big thanks to Kyle and Cody for taking the reins in my absence.

Ivan had two of the top stories for today. First, it might be too late to ask Santa for the Quest 2 headset, however, Meta is giving you a present by lowering the cost. Especially for those of you not ready to shell out $500 for the Quest 3. Read more.

In the second one, Fidelity made further cuts to its valuation of X Holdings, the parent company of social media site X, to close out 2023. X’s valuation is now almost a third of the investment price. Read more.

And Aria got a scoop that Countdown Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in hard tech, is shutting down. Read about what that could mean for future industry investments.

More top reads

New year, new rebates: If you’re looking into finally switching to an electric vehicle, we show you the five EVs that qualify for the full federal tax credit in 2024. Read more.

Delivery woes: On news that Rivian deliveries slipped 10% in the fourth quarter, so did its share price, raising demand questions. Read more.

Would you swallow this?: MIT scientists are working on a vibrating obesity pill that will send signals to the brain that you are full. Read more. 

Click if you agree: See how OpenAI moves to shrink regulatory risk in the European Union around data privacy. Natasha also lays out how this all came about.

Accelerating sales: Whereas Rivian had some delivery difficulties, Tesla shipped a record number of electric vehicles in the fourth quarter. See which model got it there.

Mickey Mouse becomes a meme: The public domain just got one of cartoon’s biggest superstars. And people have wasted no time in making fun.

New update alert: Telegram’s latest update brings a redesigned call interface that uses less of your phone’s battery. And bots, oh the bots.

Mythbusters: Becca spoke with some founders who debunk the myth that crowdfunding is only good for cash. Read more. (TC+)

Intro: Now that The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, Alex wonders if we, meaning those who have had materials gobbled up by ChatGPT for learning purposes, have to become digital copyright experts. You be the judge. (TC+)

Weekend warriors you may have missed:

Try these apps to reach your New Year’s resolutions in 2024.

Climate tech might be the hot job market in 2024. (TC+)

What a long, strange year it’s been in enterprise tech news. (TC+)

On the pods

Equity is back with a look at the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. We’re talking through The New York Times’ suit against OpenAI, how X’s value continues to fall, climate tech’s job growth and more. Listen here.

This week Found is going down under. New Zealand-based TechCrunch reporter Rebecca Bellan talked with Alex Zaccaria, the co-founder and CEO of Linktree, about how they’ve scaled the freemium model to grow the social media reference landing page startup. Alex also talked about the challenges and benefits of fundraising internationally, the upside to raising in a more difficult climate, and how they see Linktree changing the way creators curate content for their audiences. Listen here.

• IT Technology Analyst II at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States)
• IT Project Lead at Valley Water (San Jose, CA, USA)
• Founding Team - Senior Full Stack Developer at Mindworks (San Francisco, CA, USA)
• Senior Software Engineer at Zulu Airline Systems, Inc. (Atlanta, GA, USA)
• Systems Administrator I or II at City of Newport (Newport, OR, USA)

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