We are often overblown away with our schedule and slip out to focus on what is happening with the tech world. Here we rewind the selected tech news for the previous month you just missed. Read with ease as we compile the trending tech news for April 2022.
Elon Musk Has officially Bought Twitter for $44 billion
Elon Musk had announced his acquisition of Twitter on April 14 as he called it his ‘best and final offer’. This by far is one of the world’s biggest deals in the tech world where Musk takes over a giant social network platform for $44 billion with shares valued at $54.20.
In one of his press statements on Twitter, Musk said, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,”
The Tesla Founder added regarding critics, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
Also Read : Top Tech News For March 2022
Twitter Bans Ads That are ‘misleading’ on Climate Change
Twitter introduced a ban on “misleading” advertisements “that contradict the scientific consensus on climate change.”
The company while levying the ban said, ‘We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,’ A legit content regarding the climate change in Twitter will be looked after by “authoritative sources,” including the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it said.
“Misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” Twitter announced on Earth Day. There will be more details soon as to how Twitter is planning to ‘add reliable, authoritative context’ about climate change on its platform.
The company shared that the talk about “sustainability” on the platform has been getting louder over the past few years including discussion on getting rid of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from burning fossil fuels.
Following this respect, other companies like Google and Facebook have made similar commitments with different success.
Lapsus$ hackers breached T-Mobile’s systems and stole its source code
The Lapsus$ made a headline on 30th March by stealing T-Mobile’s source code in a series of breaches, as first made known by Kreb on security. T-Mobile bore out the attack saying the “systems accessed contained no customer or government information or other similarly sensitive information.” As per Kreb’s finding in copies of private messages, the Lapsus$ hacking group talked over targeting T-Mobile. The discussion was obtained in the week prior to the arrest of seven of its teenage members.
After acquiring employees’ credentials online, the hackers could take control of internal tools such as Atlas, T-Mobile’s customer management system in order to perform SIM swap of the company. This kind of attack gives an opening to acquire mobile phone details and transfer to hackers’ devices. They can obtain texts or calls received by that person’s phone number, including any messages sent for multi-factor authentication.
The hacking members also attempted to crack into the FBI and Department of Defence T-Mobile Accounts. However backout as additional verification measures were required. T-Mobile has admitted that it has been a victim of several hackers attacks over the years and this time it did not affect customers’ data.
AppliedVR is using an artificial patient group to test its chronic pain treatment
AppliedVR initiated a new trial for its chronic pain treatment. This innovative approach of this virtual reality company will draw data from the existing database of chronic back pain patients as a comparison group, instead of finding a group of people with the pain to sign up for the trial without getting treatment. The approach gives a potential strategy to make clinical trials more efficient.
Earlier, the Food and Drug Administration approved AppliedVR for its virtual reality system that treats chronic back pain. It is now collecting more information about how treatment works in the real world with different groups. AppliedVR is partnering with Komodo Health, a healthcare data company on the trial. The partnership allows AppliedVR to track the chronic lower back patients’ experience in general and compare their experience with the experience of people actively enrolled in the trial.
In the course of sharing the news, Web Sun, the president and co-founder of Komodo Health said, “So now, as they move forward, they’ll be able to much more clearly understand and demonstrate the value of their technology and what it delivers compared to traditional chronic pain treatments,”.
Reality Labs Division of Meta Losses $2.9 Billion in Q1 2022
Despite the loss of $2.9 billion in Q1 of 2022 in its virtual and augmented reality division, Reality Labs, Facebook owner Meta stood optimistic. According to the report, Reality Labs attained a revenue of $695 million over the first quarter of the year exceeding Wall Street expectations of &683 millions. However it represents a minuscule percentage of the $27.2 billion in revenue generated by Meta’s other apps namely Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the Reality Labs may not yet be profitable by a long shot, but it is laying the groundwork for an exciting 2030s. He added, “I recognise it’s expensive to build this, it’s something that’s never been built before. And it’s a new paradigm for computing and social connection,” and continued, “So, over the next several years our goal from a financial perspective is to generate sufficient operating income growth from Family of Apps to fund the growth of investment in Reality Labs, while still growing our overall profitability.”
Zuckerberg’s Meta concern now is to focus on building out better hardware and Horizon Worlds, the company’s latest social VR product, to help creators make money.
Google CEO Cited A Hint about Pixel 6a Announcement at Google IO
The tech giant company Google’s Pixel 6 series has sold immensely well and have great hope for 6a to launch soon. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that the Pixel 6 is the fastest-selling Pixel ever among the Alphabet earnings call a transcript of which can be read at Motley Fool. The CEO also said that he is excited about the products the company has coming and looking forward to sharing more at Google I/O.
Google is likely to unpack two big things. While the first did not name-drop the Pixel 6a even once, it is likely to come. If the Pixel 6 has sold like gangbusters, it seems likely that an affordable spin-off would come along too.
The second is that in mid-May during the annual tech showcase Google IO, the company has hardware that is likely to show off during the event. Apart from this, Android 13 is expected to be shown during the event although the world has even witnessed hardware and the Pixel 3a and Pixel Bud A-Series debuted in the past years.
WhatsApp Testing Ability to Show Status Updates in Chats List
The WhatsApp beta tracker WABetaInfo is currently testing the ability to show Status updates to users directly from their WhatsApp Chat list or while searching for any contacts within the app. This will enable the users to see status updates when they tap the profile picture of their contact. This works slightly similarly with that of Meta’s Instagram Stories posted by the accounts you follow. WhatsApp, a Meta’s owned platform is likely to give a boost with its new addition to the Status feature as users will be able to instantly look at their contact statuses.
Also the instant messaging app is seen working on a feature to let users create group polls on the desktop. The feature will allow users or group members to vote for certain options and look at the total number of votes received. The App is also working on adding a footnote to its Chats list to highlight messages on the app that are end-to-end encrypted.
Also Read: App Development Trends That Will Dominate In 2022
Beijing Receive Baidu And Pony.ai, The First Robotaxi Services To Operate Without Safety Drivers
Baidu and Pony.ai become the first robotaxi services and are officially given permission to operate their autonomous vehicles without safety drivers in Beijing, China. Both companies however will allot a supervisor somewhere in the vehicle, although the taxi no longer needs a staff member in the driver’s seat.
Baidu and Pony.ai will take some time to operate throughout the city and are limited to a 60 sq km area in Yizhuang, Beijing where it has about 300,000 habitants. CNBC had said that Pony.ai can only operate four cars, meanwhile Baidu can deploy ten autonomous vehicles around the area. How long but both the companies are planning to expand the number of vehicles on the road and Baidu plans to bring 30 recently. According to TechCrunch, customers can either book the robotaxis for Baidu through Apollo Go app from 10AM to 4PM or with Pony.ai plus app from 9AM to 5PM.