List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

Indonesia is planning to restrict sales of imported goods on digital marketplaces to tighten oversight on companies including

Applied Materials Inc., a leading producer of chipmaking equipment, is expanding in India because it believes the country’s

It’s lonely at the top – just ask Elon Musk’s former colleagues. The Twitter owner tells the same jokes and anecdotes “over and over” and “seems quite alone,” according to a former senior executive at the company. Esther Crawford, who went viral last year after being pictured sleeping on the floor of Twitter’s office while trying to meet a tough deadline set by Musk, shared her thoughts in a post on the platform which was recently renamed X. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Crawford joined Twitter when it bought her startup in 2020, well before the billionaire took over the social media platform in a $44bn deal last year. The former head of product development, who was sacked in February as part of a round of 200 layoffs, said: “Elon is oddly charming and he's genuinely funny. He also has personality quirks like telling the same stories and jokes over and over. “The challenge is his personality and demeanour can turn on a dime going from excited to angry. “Since it was hard to read what mood he might be in and what his reaction would be to any given thing, people quickly became afraid of being called into meetings or having to share negative news with him.” She said Twitter employees feared being called into meetings with him or having to deliver bad news. “At times it felt like the inner circle was too zealous and fanatical in their unwavering support of everything he said.” “Product and business decisions were nearly always the result of him following his gut instinct, and he didn't seem compelled to seek out or rely on a lot of data or expertise to inform it. “I saw a person who seemed quite alone because his time and energy was so purely devoted to work.” Meanwhile, Musk appeared to put more faith in random feedback and Twitter polls than in his employees who were working to troubleshoot problems. She said: “His boldness, passion and storytelling is inspiring, but his lack of process and empathy is painful.” However, she didn’t pull any punches about the previous management either, calling it “bloated” and “soft and entitled” where “teams could spend months building a feature and then some last-minute kerfuffle meant it'd get killed for being too risky.” Musk recently killed off the iconic bluebird Twitter logo, replacing it with a white X. He has said he wants to create a super-app inspired by China’s WeChat which would offer messaging and payments as well as social media. That vision may be difficult to make a reality, after the collapse of the platform’s advertising business as marketers soured on Musk’s decision to fire thousands of employees and dial down its content moderation efforts. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Twitter owner Elon Musk says the platform, which is currently in transition to what he calls an “everything app” X, would soon only have “Dark Mode” as its theme, bidding adieu to its iconic white and blue colours. Responding to a Twitter user’s post asking what the colour of the verification checkmark on X should be, Mr Musk said the platform will soon only feature the “dark mode” theme. “This platform will soon only have ‘dark mode’. It is better in every way,” the Tesla and SpaceX chief tweeted. Mr Musk’s comment suggests ‘X’ or Twitter could soon only have the dark mode available and turned on by default with no options likely to change it. This expected change comes as the multibillionaire’s plan to build Twitter into an “everything app” X is underway. The company’s new chief Linda Yaccarino, who took charge last month, shared more details about what the new X app will be, tweeting on Sunday that this rebranding was aimed at transforming “the global town square” beyond a social network. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centred in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine,” Mr Yaccarino tweeted. “For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfil our great potential. X will do that and more. We’ve already started to see X take shape over the past 8 months through our rapid feature launches, but we’re just getting started,” she said. The recent changes, including the replacement of the company’s iconic blue bird logo with ‘X’, indicate that the platform is heading in a different direction aimded at a different set of users might alienate its once fiercely loyal user base, according to social media experts. Following this change, Mr Musk said he wanted to change polled his followers whether they would favour changing the site’s colour scheme from blue to black, posting a picture of a stylised ‘X’ against a an outer space-themed black background. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he tweeted. Read More Elon Musk forces firms to pay X $1,000 to keep gold ticks Elon Musk takes control of @X account from user who had held it for 16 years Elon Musk’s SpaceX may have ‘punched hole’ in edge of space with rocket launch

HSINCHU, Taiwan Chip giant TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said on Friday the Taiwanese company remains rooted to the

Intel Corp. shares gained after the chipmaker gave a bullish revenue forecast for the current period, indicating that

DoorDash Inc., the US food-delivery service that competes with Uber Technologies Inc. and GrubHub, is looking to speed

By David Shepardson and Diane Bartz WASHINGTON The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation on Thursday to bar

Researchers observed conservatives engaging more with false news stories on Facebook than liberals during the US 2020 presidential

In a scathing letter sent to key federal agencies, Senator Ron Wyden called for multiple investigations of Microsoft

The new iPhone 15 is widely rumoured to have a mysterious button on its side – and we might finally know what it does. Apple rumours have long suggested that the new iPhone 15 could swap the current mute switch on the side of the phone for a single button. But it was unclear what the button would actually do. The Apple Watch Ultra has a very similar feature, named the action button, which can be programmed for a variety of features. It can be used to open a workout or turn on the torch, for instance. The iPhone 15’s button appears to be designed to do the same, according to the latest leak, but with features that are more aimed at how people use their phone. That is according to Macrumors, which reported that it had found new code in the latest iOS 17 beta that included a list of names that seem to indicate what the button could be used for. The features are: accessibility, shortcuts, silent mode, camera, flashlight, focus, magnifier, translate and voice memos, Macrumors reported. Many of them appear to refer to individual apps that would presumably be opened with a press of the button. The camera and voice memos already have their own apps, and flashlight and magnifier are features that can be opened from other parts of the iPhone already. Accessibility would presumably open shortcuts that are currently available to allow people to adjust the iPhone to their needs. That would most likely allow people to switch on tools such as VoiceOver, which narrates what is happening on the screen, for instance. Silent mode would seem to replicate the mute switch that is currently in the place of the action button. And shortcuts and focus would presumably allow for users to open the quick programmable shortcuts and focus modes that currently allow users to streamline the software experience on the iPhone. Apple is rumoured to be preparing four new iPhones for release in September, though recent reports have suggested that the release of at least some of them could be pushed into October. The company is once again planning two sizes of both the Pro and normal models of the iPhone 15, but only the Pro version is expected to have the new button. Read More iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted Rumours are growing about some bad iPhone news Apple ‘secretly working on its own AI chatbot’

Mark Zuckerberg’s big bet on the metaverse has now lost $40 billion – and the company intends to lose even more. The huge figures were revealed as part of Meta’s latest results, which generally showed a strong rise in advertising revenue. But they also showed an increase in expenses at the company, with the development not only of the metaverse but also artificial intelligence and legal fees. Meta has been dramatically cutting costs and laying off staff. But at the same time it has been spending heavily on some projects, such as the metaverse, in the face of criticism from those who suggest that the bet is unlikely to pay off. That work on the metaverse is done by the company’s Reality Labs unit, which is responsible for developing technology like augmented reality glasses. It reported sales of $276 million, down from $452 million in the same quarter last year. The unit lost $3.7 billion in the second quarter, putting it on track to have far higher costs than the $5 billion annual target set out in a widely circulated investor note in the fall. The unit has lost more than $40 billion since 2021, including $13.7 billion last year. Meta said it expected Reality Labs operating losses to “increase meaningfully” in 2024 as the company continued to invest in augmented and virtual reality and “scale our ecosystem.” Zuckerberg had previously said Meta would “pace” investments in the division after 2023. He told investors he understood why many of them would feel discomfort over such a long-term bet. But the positive results across the company pushed Meta shares up 7.5 per cent. “We continue to see strong engagement across our apps and we have the most exciting roadmap I’ve seen in a while with Llama 2, Threads, Reels, new AI products in the pipeline, and the launch of Quest 3 this fall,” Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said. Meta’s second-quarter revenue grew 11% to $32 billion in the quarter ended June 30, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $31.12 billion. Ad revenue rose 12% in the quarter, faster than growth at Google, where ad revenue rose 3%. Adjusted earnings per share of $2.98 topped Wall Street targets of $2.91, according to data from Refinitiv. The social media giant has been climbing back from a bruising 2022, buoyed by hype around emerging AI technology and an austerity drive in which it has shed around 21,000 employees since last fall. The company’s shares have more than doubled in value this year as a result. Advertisers are reinforcing those gains by pumping money into digital ads again after months of muted spending, heartened by signs that the economy may overcome a bout of high inflation without suffering a major meltdown. Brands are hedging their bets, however, and sticking with tried and true platforms. That helps Meta and Alphabet while punishing smaller players like Snap, which reported disappointing sales on Tuesday. Meta’s revenue forecast did not specify whether the figure includes any sales that might come from the recently launched Threads app, which does not yet have ads. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Elon Musk’s ‘X’ is already trademarked by Mark Zuckerberg How Mark Zuckerberg’s new ChatGPT rival could lead to ‘obscene’ AI Meta unveils its ChatGPT rival Llama Here’s how to claim your share of $725m settlement in Facebook’s privacy lawsuit Elon Musk forces firms to pay X $1,000 to keep gold ticks Slack has stopped working