Elon Musk has now become the owner of Twitter by purchasing the social media platform for a whopping $44 million and after engaging in a year-long courtroom battle with Twitter after he went back on his claim to purchase, prompting Twitter investors to file a case against him to reconsider.
The Tesla CEO has become completely involved with Twitter by bringing up drastic changes in the company’s working policies and firing nearly 90% of Indian employees.
He had further claimed that the Twitter app was running slow in many countries, especially India and Indonesia, for which he has asked the leftover employees to manage things out quickly.
However, it seems that Musk’s dedication to Twitter has put Tesla investors in a state of agitation as they feel that their CEO is concentrating more on his newly acquired platform and neglecting Tesla completely.
This is why Musk has decided to find someone new to lead Twitter as he wants to reduce his time here and focus on Tesla for some time, which is why he wants the organizational restructuring of the company to be completed in the earliest possible time.
It was only after Tesla shares plunged by 3% did the investors became alarmed and asked Musk to shift his focus back on the company, thereby prompting Musk to oblige given the serious situation.
Musk further clarified that Tesla engineers have also assisted in evaluating Twitter’s team of engineers, although he added that it was on a ‘voluntary basis’ and ‘after hours’.
It has been barely two weeks since Elon Musk took over Twitter, which has been a period of change and chaos, where he lost no time in firing the previous chief executive of the company, along with many senior leaders, whilst laying off nearly half of the staff in October 2022.
Conclusion
Musk has issued an ultimatum to Twitter employees to clarify whether they want to continue in the company to work for 40 hours a week with high intensity or take a massive severance package of three months of pay, which they will reply to very soon.
The Twitter-Elon Musk war has been going on for nearly a year now ever since the Tesla CEO proposed to purchase the social media giant for a jaw dropping $44 million, only to back out of the deal later, leaving Twitter with no choice but to go the legal route.
Now things seem to have eased up after Musk reconsidered his decision and purchased Twitter, following which he and the leftover employees are burning midnight oil to give the best possible experience to their users.
In the midst of it all, Musk has fired nearly 90% of Indian Twitter employees as he believes that the Twitter app has become slow in many countries, including India and Indonesia, for which he has profusely apologized and promised to work diligently to sort the matter out so as to avoid giving users a chance to complain.
It appears that Elon Musk has even bigger updates in the pipeline for Twitter in the coming days for which he has asked all the employees to return to office and work 40 hours a week, which is what he did for Tesla as well, and ended Twitter’s work from home policy, with a few exceptions like a family emergency.
Twitter Users Can Get Blue Checkmark from November 29
Elon Musk is the newly anointed owner of Twitter and being the CEO, it is now his duty to cater to the needs of his users after taking over from Jack Dorsey. He had fired nearly 90% of Indian Twitter employees soon after taking over, which was met with outrage.
After taking over as the new Twitter CEO, Musk immediately sprang into action by resolving to make the social media platform a much better place by reducing toxic and hateful elements and giving people of all ideologies a fair and equal chance to speak.
Musk has just announced that the Twitter Blue subscription will be relaunched from November 29, 2022, where users will have to pay $7.99 per month to get the blue tick/checkmark apart from other additional features so as to make it, in his words, ‘rock solid’.
After engaging in a long courtroom battle with Twitter, Musk, owner of Tesla, immediately unleashed a series of drastic changes on the structure and policy of Twitter after acquiring it, one of which was the Twitter Blue subscription that will make the blue checkmark available for all subscribers.
The subscription service has been available for a long time with the blue checkmark being the latest addition after Musk took over, given the fact that there were many verified accounts that were fake but still had a blue checkmark, which is why he came up with this feature.
Department of Telecom (DoT) Issues New SMS Rule to Tackle Fraud
Even though the era of SMS is long gone, it doesn’t meant that people don’t rely on this old school way of sending messages where even today, you can find many people continue to use Short Message Service (SMS) for nostalgic reasons.
For any person with a mobile phone, it is the mobile number that acts as a significant identity tool for customers so that they can avail the variety of services provided to them, which specifically includes banking and financing.
To make financial transactions, you need to One Time Password (OTP), Security passcode, data like transaction messages, NetSecure Code, etc. are all linked to the mobile number for which these codes are needed to make transactions, track bank transactions, and use mobile SMS as a two-factor authentication mode for transactional services.
Frauds and scammers always try a way to swindle money from unsuspecting victims where, in this case, they just need to access their potential victims’ OTP number, for which they get a duplicate SIM card on the same mobile number.
For this, they contact mobile operators on the pretext of lost SIM card and take a new one with the same number, following which it is activated, and they take control of the victim’s mobile number to gain access to their confidential info.
To tackle this issue, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has issued a new SMS rule under which telecom companies like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, and others have been ordered to stop SIM facility (incoming and outgoing) during SMS exchange/upgrade, due to which services will be halted for 24 hours after the new SIM card is activated.
Global Innovative Index Sees India Jump to 40th Rank; Asserts PM Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a virtual meeting at the Bengaluru Tech Summit, claimed that India had jumped to 40th Rank in the Global Innovative Index, after languishing at the 81st spot in 2015, which was, he furthered, due to India’s talent pool.
This meeting was for inaugurating the 25th edition of Asia’s largest technology event, for which the 3-day summit was organized, while the theme of the silver jubilee function was ‘Tech4NexGen’, which attracted more than 575 exhibitors, while 9 MOUs were signed and 20 products were launched.
Modi called Bengaluru as the tech hub of India and one of the most inclusive cities in the country, where he claimed that the mobile and data revolution had empowered the youth, while also noticing that rural areas experienced a faster growth than urban ones.
He also claimed that technology is a force of quality and empowerment in India, as it has played a vital role in helping small time businesses to recover in the post-Covid era, while also reviving many bigger ones, also citing Ayushman Bharat Yojana as one of the biggest policies of the central government that is going on a digital platform.
Modi also asserted that poor children were able to study more easily due to low data tariffs as many free courses were accessible to them and were free of cost on the internet without any issue.
With a compact design, some extraordinary Dolby Atmos sound and an affordable price tag, Bose Smart Soundbar 600 has everything going in its favour to position itself as the perfect choice in the soundbar lineup. The Bose Smart Soundbar 600 price in India currently starts at Rs 39,999, which makes it one of the most affordable products in the market segment. Read on for a more detailed Bose Smart Soundbar 600 review while we try to dissect what really makes this the best choice and what are its shortcomings if there are any. But before the in-depth review, let’s take a glance at some of the immediately noticeable pros and cons.
Pros
It has a compact and attractive design
The Dolby Atmos along with two upward-firing speakers delivered great sound quality
It provides extensive streaming options
It is easy to use and has a perfect app-based setup
This soundbar supports voice assistant access (Google and Alexa)
It comes with TrueSpace upscales 5.1-channel and stereo content
It is easily expandable via additional speakers
Cons
It comes with a single HDMI port, which could be an issue for some
The limited bass in sound might not be appreciated by many users
The design has a very basic front-panel display
It does not have DTS:X support
The quality of sound is highly dependent on the listening position of the user, which can hamper the listening experience in some cases
Wallmount brackets need to be purchased separately
Bose, a well-known American audio equipment manufacturing company, has designed and developed this single-unit setup soundbar clearly to take on some of the competing products in the soundbar lineup. The aggressive pricing, unexpected premium features and perfectly alluring device design tell the story of manufacturers’ will to disrupt the market a bit.
Soundbar 600 has two upward-firing speakers and these are exactly what distinguishes this product from all its contemporaries competing at the same price point. The design of these soundbars targets the sound to bounce down from the ceiling before reaching back to you. This makes the sound truly feel as if it is coming from overhead. This is where Dolby Atmos works convincingly. Other products that are priced more aggressively than this usually compromise on the technical front and rely completely on virtualisation in order to simulate height factors.
The soundbar also has two side-firing apart from the upward-firing speakers, racetrack-shaped transducers, and also a centre speaker. It further has a five-transducer system (3.0.2 channels). For connectivity purposes, Bose Smart Soundbar 600 further comes with a TV via HDMI eARC or optical input. It also has a USB port, wired subwoofer output and also an optional wired IR blaster connection.
Those who wish to expand this soundbar can do so by pairing it with any other speakers such as Bose Surround Speakers, the Bose Bass Module 500, Bose Surround Speakers 700, or the Bose Bass Module 700 subwoofers. In case users do not have the money or space to purchase new speakers to explore the expandability feature, they can simply use the Bose Music app on their Android or iOS devices. Through the Bose SimpleSync feature in the Bose Music app, you can easily connect the Bose Smart Soundbar 600 with your own wireless headphones and speakers.
The world is thriving to be better with rapid technological development, and Qualcomm is living by the fact of ‘survival of the fittest. Hence, frequently coming up with different semiconductors, software, and services that can prove to be the best addition to various electronic devices and technologies. Currently, Qualcomm has introduced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. People are already talking and speculating about its ability and how credible the functioning will be under the new processor. The answer that we are getting from the right, left, and center is all positive. Qualcomm was trying and testing to develop a long due new Snapdragon chip for the upcoming flagship segment. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is here to do great advancements on all fronts. Moreover, it is here to deal as a replacement for the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor and somewhat makes up for the abundance of annoyance created by Samsung with the vanilla. As mentioned before, the new chipset is a major set-up as the company has made some major improvements in almost all aspects and brings cutting-edge ARMv9 architecture. In line with this, Qualcomm tried to take that extra one mile of innovation by introducing Wi-Fi 7.0 and ray-tracing to the market.
The brilliant design and development of the flagship processor have just made it all possible with efficiency. Before analyzing and reviewing the addition to the new chipset, we need to recall the compromises that came with the former flagship called Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 lacked energy efficiency and had major thermal issues that led to the frailed performance of the processor. The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 tried to solve the power efficiency issue and succeeded at some level. However, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is claiming better efficiency than the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and we are here to see that magic happening. The new chip will have a new 3 x Kryo CPU that will boost the performance by 35% and will provide 40% power efficiency. Additionally, it can be noticed that the new chip has kept the clock speeds of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 with the changed and rectified configuration. Besides this, the new chip ensures support for newer memory technologies.
Ray-tracing and Wi-Fi 7
The introduction of ray tracing and the Wi-fi 7.0 version is just the cherry on top. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is arriving with major improvements in the Wi-fi front, by bringing an upgraded Wi-fi version. The Wi-Fi 7 is fast approaching and the Qualcomm’s flagship processor is just ready for it. It will top out at 5.8 Gbps and also have lower latency.
The mobile game developers are stoked with the new chip as it can support ray tracing to give the graphics a more realistic look. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will provide the power required to develop improved graphics for mobile games.
Conclusion
In the big picture, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is a great innovation and soon many tech giants will also develop smartphones supporting the processor. It can conquer the market owing to its manifold efficiency and accuracy in performance.
UPI Autopay will help people make recurring payments using any UPI application that supports the feature.
This feature is introduced under UPI 2.0 by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
The UPI payment option was introduced on Google Play Store back in 2019
Brief Summary
There was a time when we were entirely dependent on cash and credit/debit cards for making payments. But with PM Modi’s ‘Digital India’ vision, everything has gone online, including payment methods.
It is the Modi government that encouraged digital payments via Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is why you can may payments through UPI platforms like Google Pay, BHIM App, Phone Pe, PayTM, etc.
Google Play Store has now jumped onto the bandwagon by adding a UPI Autopay option for payment in a bid to encourage subscription based purchases in India, which has already been announced to the users.
For those who’re unaware, the UPI Payment option was introduced on Google Play in 2019, where users could make a transaction via UPI but with UPI Autopay, users will get the liberty to set their settings for UPI Autopay to make subscription-based purchases easier.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) has introduced UPI Autopay under UPI 2.0 that will encourage users to make recurring payments via any UPI app of their choice, as long as it supports this feature.
Google hopes to help more and more people get accessed to subscription based services that will prove to be helpful for them, while local developers can grow their business through a subscription-based format on Google Play.
Conclusion
It was the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that announced the recurring payment guidelines in 2021 that disrupted the subscription based payments for online services for which UPI Autopay will be an excellent alternative.
Jimmy Donaldson alias MrBeast congratulated for achievement
In Brief
YouTube was one of the first social media platforms that came out during its revolution, along with Facebook and Twitter, where all three quickly became extremely popular among users all over the world.
Even now, so many years later in 2022, they continue to hold fort, despite the presence of many other platforms that came after them. Initially, YouTube was thought of as a mere entertainment portal for surfing and watching videos.
But it soon graduated to being a source of income for many talented youngsters who utilized their talent in creating videos with unique content, which led to others to follow suit as well.
Today, YouTube has turned into a lucrative profession for people of all age groups. It is the platform that gave rise to the likes of Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, better known to the world as PewDiePie, who went on to become the most subscribed YouTuber in the world with a whopping 111 million subscribers.
He maintained the position for a long time but it appears that the record has been broken by a new entrant who goes by the name of Jimmy Donaldson, who has his YouTube channel called ‘MrBeast’, who reached 100 million subscribers in July 2022.
According to YouTube’s policy, a subscriber requires 4000 minutes a view each month, along with 1000 subscribers so as to become qualified for monetizing his/her videos.
It all depends on the number of subscribers as to how much you’re earning through YouTube because the more there are, the more money you make, which is why it is the ultimate goal for any YouTubers to gain maximum subscribers on his/her YouTube channel, which has been accomplished by the likes of PewDiePie and MrBeast.
There are countless channels that are struggling for years to get enough subscribers while there are many others, including the aforementioned two that have their YouTube channel simply overflowing with them.
It is to PewDiePie’s credit that he managed to sustain the tag of the YouTuber with the most subscribers in the world for such a long period of time but MrBeast has now broken the record and emerged as the new kid on the block.
People like PewDiePie and MrBeast make YouTubing look ridiculously easy where the former has proved that making records is easy, while the latter’s achievement proves that records are made to be broken, which will also inspire other YouTubers to work harder on their content.
A foldable iPhone would be a dream come true in every way possible. Apple has been long rumoured to be working on foldable devices, however, it has also been made clear that the sight of a foldable iPad or iPhone is still at least a couple of years away. Or so most of us thought because out of nowhere a mysterious foldable iPhone has recently appeared on the tech news and caught the attention of tech enthusiasts around the world. So, is Apple ready to launch the foldable iPhone? As much as we want to answer in the affirmative, this mystery phone unfortunately has nothing to do with Apple.
To everyone’s surprise, it appears some talented engineers in another part of the world have already created what most of us have been waiting for. No, it is not a foldable iPhone announcement by Apple. It is a result of a DIY project by a team of engineers at Tech Aesthetics.
To show us how a foldable iPhone would look and work, a team of engineers at Tech Aesthetics have created a perfectly working foldable iPhone using the internal hardware of iPhone X and the chassis of Motorola Razr 2019 as a part of a DIY project. Developing the device took almost 12 months of hard work and a lot of engineering, reverse engineering efforts. The team at Tech Aesthetics went through multiple tests, trials and errors in order to complete the project that they have now presented to the world through their project video on YouTube.
Tech Aesthetics have named the foldable iPhone – iPhone V and has tried to give the device every iPhone aesthetic to make it look real. How did the foldable iPhone V come into existence and every trouble the engineers went through to live this project to fruition is a story in itself.
To turn this project into reality, the team has to rehash the screen of the phone which was done by removing the glass and the touch layers from the screen, keeping only the flexible OLED to work with for further engineering. Removing glass and touch layers in order to only keep the OLED needed advanced machinery and extra delicate manoeuvring. As per one report circulating in the media, more than 36 iPhone X screens were wasted to finally be able to achieve this one step of removing glass and touch layers. The project obviously was an expensive endeavour.
Moreover, a pair of Motorola RAZR 2019 was used in the project to get the chassis for the foldable phone. A custom motherboard was built using 3D-printed components. The battery used in foldable iPhone, however, is too smaller in capacity than what an iPhone would require to properly function. Since there was space restriction in the body of the phone, the team had to settle for a 1,000 mAh battery capacity only. On this front too, while appreciating the effort of the engineers, many tech bloggers and enthusiasts were quick to point out that Apple as a brand is also not really known for providing excellent battery support for their products. It has never been their USP, so this minor issue is absolutely understandable.
As for the operating system, the team had to make some changes in the foldable iPhone V iOS with jailbreak. The split screen applications were bought in using some software modifications and it is safe to say that the final outcome of the project is worth every effort.
Billionaires are quite eccentric and peculiar in their actions sometimes, so much so that it is difficult to tell if what they’re saying is serious or a joke. It is impossible to gauge as to how a rich person’s mind works.
There is a reason why they have reached a stature that everyone looks up to them as idols for emulation or at least aspire to be like them. While there are many billionaires that are misers, you can always find some that are extremely big-hearted.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc., is the latest addition to the list as he has now pledged to donate a majority of his $124 billion worth wealth, which proclaimed on many news channels.
Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021 and holds 10% of the e-commerce giant, although he refused to divulge the details except that he was building the capacity to be able to donate his wealth, along with Lauren Sanchez, his partner-turned-philanthropist.
Mr.Bezos has already pledged $10 billion for protecting nature and fighting climate change via the Bezos Earth Fund where he is the executive. He wants to do things in a levered way, which is why he wants to carefully plan everything out so that everything happens in a systematic manner.
Bezos had already declared in 2021 that he planned to go ahead with his Earth Fund as a long-term project for his philanthropy, along with Sanchez, while both of them donated $100 million to renowned American singer-actor, Dolly Parton, along with the Courage and Civility Award.
Also last year, Jeff Bezos donated $100 million to Jose Andres, chef and disaster relief, and Van Jones, CNN Commentator cum activist, which left both of them touched by the gesture.
Conclusion
It will be interesting to see as to how Jeff Bezos will plan on this massive donation drive for which he will need significant time to ponder and accordingly plan things out so that it is managed smoothly.
The majority of the population across India will concur with the trustworthiness and effective rendering of services provided by Bharti Airtel Limited, popularly known as Airtel. This multinational telecommunication company with its headquarters in Delhi, India. Its services are available in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, giving it a vast market to explore and inculcate new strategies to be relevant to its consumers in the long run. Talking about only India, Airtel had already successfully provided 4G and 4G+ services to all the regions of the nation and now focusing on providing 5G services by starting to create the web from the urban cities. Recently, The company officially announced the launch of Airtel 5G and Airtel 5G plus plans while registering the news indicating the 89% up in profit in Quarter 2 where the CEO of the company elaborately talked about the soon launch of Airtel 5G plus services, by stating “All of urban India to be covered in 2023 making this one of the fastest roll-outs,”. In 2022, after rolling out Airtel 5G services in August, Airtel took some steps ahead to initialize the services of 5G plus plans across 8 cities and states by October, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Nagpur, and Varanasi
Since it’s been in the news for the past few weeks assuring the installation of Airtel 5G plus towers across Gurgaon for providing the services to the population of Delhi. Provided listicle is the names of the cities in Delhi that will get benefited from the installation of the services with compatible handsets and other consumer electronic devices:
DLF Cyber Hub
MG Road
Rajiv Chowk
DLF Phase 2
Iffco Chowk
Atlas Chowk
Udyog Vihar
Nirvana Country
Civil Lines
Gurugram railway station
Gurugram National Highway
Huda City Centre
A huge chunk of Gurugram, Delhi NCR will be enjoying uber-fast internet speed. The enormous desire to attain mental peace is still the second on the list of people since bestowing with the great internet speed tops the former concern. To affirm the trust of the users in the upcoming services Randeep Sekhon, CTO of Bharti Airtel addressed the concern “Our network is being built every day even as all 5G devices are now capable of working on the Airtel 5G Plus network barring a few exceptions which should also be done in the coming weeks. We will continue to advance our network with a vision to connect the entire country,”. However, there are still a limited number of devices which are eligible and compatible to support 5G and 5G plus services, which includes a recent set of series of Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, Realme, etc. Iphones and Ipads do not support 5G services yet.
Conclusion
With monumental development in technologies and subsequently the service providers, the Airtel 5G and Airtel 5G plus plans were the timely move by the company to provide its users with ultra-fast internet speed (even 20-30 times faster than the 4G network), offer vivid voice experience, and generate less cruelty towards the environment. For further reviews on the 5G plans, stay tuned!
Apple products are some of the most reliable and trustworthy ones that you can think of at the top of your mind. People don’t think twice before purchasing a newly launched Apple device or gadget in the market.
When it comes to devices, smartphones are the ones that hog the most limelight and the same goes for Apple smartphones as well, especially as there are billions of users in the world for whom Apple handsets are the first preference, while others simply don blinkers and can’t see beyond Apple.
Apple has just launched its iPhone 14 series smartphones in September 2022 that were quite well received, even though the response was not as phenomenal as it was for iPhone 13 models but there is something new that Apple has for its upcoming smartphone models.
Although earlier there were only speculations, it has now been confirmed that iPhones will now come with the USB Type-C Port, which is something that will be difficult to believe for certain users who would’ve never though that the day would come in their lifetime.
The news has left many users excited at the prospect of getting a portable cable as they opine that it will decide the future of the iPhone which is, according to them, very bright due to the USB Cable.
Those wondering that it is Apple that made the decision of adding the type-c port need to know that it was the European Union (EU) that mandated it as the common charging point on all electronic devices by 2024.
There was a strong buzz in the rumour mills that the upcoming iPhone model i.e. iPhone 15 will ditch the lightning port in favour of USB Type-C Port but the 2024 deadline comes as a relief for Apple, which means that USB-C will come from iPhone 16.
It appears that Lightning port won’t last for long once the USB-C comes out but it there’s no denying that it plays a vital role in the Apple ecosystem, which is why it can be confirmed that it will not be going anywhere even after USB-C becomes available.
Lightning Port
The Lightning port connector was introduced by Apple way back in 2012 during the launch of iPhone 5, iPod Touch, and iPod Nano, where it soon found its way through other Apple devices.
Those were times when users could charge all devices with one cable but since the majority of the people in India, at that time, used Android phones, it was difficult to find a lightning port connector for iPhones, even though, while small, there was still a significant population that did use iPhones.
Come 2018, Apple got rid of the lightning port on iPads and launched the new iPad Pro Models with USB-C because the iPad was being pitched as a portable computer, which was also Apple’s most powerful tablet and it would have created a bad impression on the company if it continued to use the lightning port, which had a limited charging access.
Conclusion
Now the coast is clear for Apple to start using USB-C for future iPhone models lined up for launch in the coming years that will allow the tech giant to harmonize the experience for all future iPhone and iPad owners, along with accessories also switching full time to USB Type-C port.
