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Elon Musk rehires Ligma and Johnson, two pranksters who never worked at Twitter

If you were around the internet when Twitter announced mass layoffs then I am sure you are aware of the pranksters Ligma and Johnson. Two pranksters fooled the mainstream media by simply walking out of the Twitter headquarters with cardboard boxes in their hands posing as Twitter employees who were brutally laid off. Without realizing it’s a prank, various media portals in the states reported that ‘Ligma’ and ‘Johnson’ were laid off from Twitter without realizing it was just a ‘Ligma Balls’ joke. It’s not like mainstream media journalists are aware of the ever-evolving meme lore on the internet and these pranksters took the opportunity where they could find it. Now, it looks like Elon Musk has welcomed Rahul Ligma and Johnson back to the Twitter headquarters and rehired them.

Ligma and Johnson rehired

Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk recently rehired two popular pranksters – Daniel Johnson and Rahul Ligma while facing massive backlash amid mass layoffs in the company. While sharing the update on Twitter, Musk wrote ‘Welcoming back Ligma & Johnson!’ The billionaire also added that its ‘Important to admit when I’m wrong & firing them was truly one of my biggest mistakes’. Check out the tweet below –

Back then, the duo was successful in making fools out of the majority of the US media circle at a time when news about Elon Musk axing the Twitter workforce was a trending topic. Musk was quick to react to the whole prank by tweeting ‘Ligma johnson has it coming’. He later also regarded the whole prank as ‘One of the best trolls ever’. Whereas, Rahul Ligma has continued his streak of pranks as he recently said that he worked for Web 2.0 and FTX – the two tech companies have also laid off thousands of staff in recent times. However, according to recent reports, Ligma has not worked in any of those companies.

it looks like Musk is resorting to humor in order to hit back at the criticism of his laying off employees from the company. The Twitter boss is facing a lot of backlash online for firing employees who publically criticize him. Some of the Twitter employees have come forward revealing that they were fired from the company via an email that said their ‘behavior has violated company policy’. With massive layoffs and dipping revenue, it will be interesting to see how Elon Musk steers the Twitter ship!

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 announced on 4nm Process

Only a few months after introducing the Gen 1 processors for its 7 and 4 series, Qualcomm has now announced the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 which will power the world’s top Android phones and tablets next year. The company has added a number of AI features to its latest system-on-a-chip to enhance the mobile experience for its best-to-date performance. The flagship features include Snapdragon Smart which can boost the chip’s AI performance. Snapdragon Sight for enhanced object recognition, Snapdragon Connect for AI-supported connectivity, Snapdragon Elite Gaming, which boosts up the gaming experience with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and Snapdragon Sound for lossless and spatial audio support. Check out all the exciting features of the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset below –

The power of AI

Qualcomm is banking hard on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s AI capabilities with its next-gen Qualcomm AI Engine. The 8 Gen 2 implements AI all across its major technology blocks with Cognitive Image Signal Processor (Cognitive ISP), Qualcomm Sensing Hub’s dual AI processors, and Qualcomm’s most advanced Hexagon processor ever. Qualcomm has also introduced the world’s first and only 5G AI processor in a modem-RF system. Qualcomm has promised that the new chipset increases its AI-based tasks up to 4.35x in speed. The newer processing unit allows 60% more AI-based tasks to be performed concurrently per watt. Qualcomm has managed to scale down the 32-bit processor to 4-bit without hampering the quality of the data sets being processed, this ultimately leads to a 64x power reduction.

Richer Entertainment

With a new flagship chip, one can expect a seamless entertainment experience and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 surely delivers! Qualcomm states that the 8 Gen 2 will bring a new and rich entertainment experience to mobile devices. The GPU now is 25% faster and supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This will boost the gaming experience by a mile with realistic lighting and shadow effects in the game. The GPU also comes with HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, 10-bit color, and hardware-accelerated H.265 and V9 decoding. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also comes with an enhanced audio experience thanks to the latest version of the Snapdragon Sound. The latest audio setting allows 48KHz lossless audio for music streaming. It also comes with spatial audio features with dynamic head tracking.

Faster Connection

Qualcomm claims that its new Snapdragon Connect platform is the world’s most advanced 5G platform. Snapdragon Connect pairs with the Snapdragon X70 5G modem and RF system that implements AI to manage 5G download and upload speeds with regard to coverage, power efficiency, and latency. It’s the first-ever mobile chip to support dual 5G SIMs, it can run two 5G connections for a device at the same time. Snapdragon claims that the top download speeds over 5G can reach 10GBps whereas uploads top at 3.5GBps.

Qualcomm has also announced that a number of hardware partners have already signed up to adopt the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Makers like Redmagic, Honor, Mi, Meizu, Vivo, Sony, Redmi, OPPO, Moto, OnePlus, Sharp, ASUS, and many more are included in this list. However, Samsung was nowhere to be seen in the list showcased by Qualcomm. Tech enthusiasts will be excited to know that a large number of 8 Gen 2 devices will be launching in the first quarter of 2023 and so on.

Tech This Week – November 12, 2022

This was one of the most interesting weeks in the tech world with major headlines breaking almost every day! And of course, we’re here to bring them to you in a nice little package in the form of ‘Tech This Week’ From layoffs to new launches, we’ve got you covered!

Major layoffs in the tech industry

This week saw major tech industries laying off their employees. While Twitter laid off half of its workforce, which included 90% of its Indian workforce, Facebook-parent Meta let off 11,000 of its employees. This was one of the largest layoffs ever witnessed in the tech industry. Whereas, major tech players like Microsoft and Amazon are also reported to fire a chunk of their workforce.

MediaTek Dimensity 9200 launched

After a month of rumours, MediaTek has finally launched a new chipset for flagship smartphones – the Dimensity 9200. The latest flagship chipset is based on the TSMC N4P node and is the first SoC with ARM’s Gen 2 architecture with new cores. The newly launched chipset promised to offer better performance as compared to its predecessor, Dimensity 9000.

Realme Dizo launched

Another affordable smartwatch is on its way, this time from Realme’s TechLife brand Dizo. The company officially launched the Dizo Watch D Plus in India, which will be available on the e-commerce platform Flipkart from November 15th. The new wearable from the house of Chinese electronics maker Realme comes with a big immersive display, an aluminium frame and offers the most reliable tracking of health and fitness.

RTX 4080 rebrand

Nvidia recently paused the launch of the 12GB RTX 4080 graphics card last month as it received a lot of backlash from fans over the naming and pricing. It is now being reported that the 4080 will be making its return to the market as the RTX 4070 Ti in Jan 2023. It will be interesting to see how fans react to this relaunch as they were vocal about their disappointment over the RTX 4080.

Volvo EX90 unveiled

Volvo recently unveiled the EX90 SUV that will go on sale globally in 2024. Volvo says it is the safest car ever produced and is banking on the car’s safety features to be its USP. This will mark Volvo’s third electric model promising a range of 600KMS. It supports bi-directional charging. It is also 5G-capable for over-the-air updates. One of the key features of the car is that its interior sensors can gauge eye concentration to warn about driving while being distracted or drowsy.

iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max shipments to take a hit

It was back in October when news about a COVID-19 outbreak in the world’s largest iPhone manufacturing plant hit the internet. A surge in COVID-19 cases at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou, China site lead to a complete lockdown at the factory as a measure to curb the spread. As a result, several factory workers were seen fleeing the facility citing poor working conditions and a lack of basic resources. News outlets around the world also focussed on individual stories where workers from the factory shared their experience of being under the strict lockdown and finally making their way to the world. Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant employs about 200,000 people and produces the maximum number of iPhones for Apple across the world. Thus it was expected that the production of iPhones will take a hit due to this outbreak. Apple this week confirmed that delays in the shipment of iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max will indeed take a hit!

Oculus founder builds VR headset that kills you if you die in-game!

Palmer Luckey, one of the founders of Oculus has designed a new VR headset that can literally take your life if you die in-game! Technology and dystopia go hand-in-hand and with this new development, humanity has gotten a little bit if not too close to the sci-fi show ‘Black Mirror’ The VR headset draws inspiration from the Sword Academy Online Anime! However, it is not a product that will be making its way to the market anytime.

Crypto market’s big fall

The crypto market recently witnessed a big drop with the entire market’s cap now sitting below $1 trillion, at $914 billion. Binance’s proposed purchase of FTX is likely the reason behind this volatile market move. As of now, Ethereum witnessed a 17% drop and Bitcoin is fairing a little better with a 10% fall.

Tech companies cut jobs as revenues plummet

Many employees working in tech companies will have to face a cold winter as the industry is cutting down jobs left and right. Job layoffs in the tech industry are piling up as more and more companies adjust to the new reality of plummeting revenues. While Meta and Twitter’s layoffs led to a number of headlines around the internet, there are many other tech players who have downsized their workforce. Broadly, the tech industry has experienced a string of layoffs in 2022 due to volatile economic conditions. Here is a look at the tech giants who ordered mass layoffs in 2022 –

Coinbase

Back in June, Coinbase announced that it will cut down 18% of its employee strength translating to a reduction of 1100 people. As the crypto market takes a nose dive, Coinbase too has lost over 80% of its value in 2022 itself. Those laid off received a minimum of 14 weeks of severance pay. The company’s announcement also revealed that it provided four months of mental health support to laid-off employees globally.

Microsoft

It was only back in October when Microsoft confirmed that they have let go less than 1% of its employees. The layoffs affected less than 1,000 employees according to reports going around on the web. The announcement by Microsoft came after the company witnessed its slowest revenue growth in more than half a decade in the third quarter of 2022.

Netflix

Netflix announced two rounds of layoffs in 2022. Back in May, the streaming giant eliminated 150 jobs after it witnessed the first subscriber loss in a decade. Then in June 2022, Netflix announced another layoff of 300 employees. Netflix’s stock has dropped below 50% in 2022.

Twitter

Shortly after Twitter was brought by billionaire Elon Musk, he cut around 3700 employees from the company. Musk stated that the company did not have any choice but to lay off a considerable chunk of employees as Twitter is losing over $4 million per day. Twitter has offered three months of severance pay to its laid-off employees.

YouTube Shorts rolling out on Smart TVs

It looks like there is no escape from the vertical form of content. Yes, even on your Smart TVs! YouTube has announced that it will be expanding its Shorts on TV for global users. This means next time you decide to take a break from scrolling through vertical videos on your phone, you will be able to do the same on your television.

YouTube Shorts on TV

Alphabet-owned YouTube is launching Shorts on the big screen with a design that is created to adapt to the TV screen’s form factor. The vertical content will be displayed on the TV screen at the center with white borders surrounding it. The background of the Shorts theme will be based on the main color theme of the YouTube shorts clip. Besides the adaptive background, details of the Shorts like audio details, creator name, like/dislike, and the overflow menu will appear on the side. The company recently shared a blog post where it revealed this new addition to the YouTube Smart TV app.

Much more like the YouTube mobile app, Shorts will not autoplay after one ends and users will have to manually go to the next Shorts by using the remote. The company also revealed that it tested out a number of designs for the Shorts TV layout. One of the designs included multiple Shorts populating the screen at the same time. However, this design was later ruled out as it did not resemble the vibe of Shorts as a whole which features one video at a time. The rejected layout of Shorts was named ‘Jukebox’ style by YouTube.

In conclusion, YouTube wrote – “As YouTube continues to make it easier to interact on TV, the richness of the Shorts experience will only grow. Bringing Shorts to TV is a great bridge to bring two of our most important experiences together to benefit both creators and viewers. Over the coming weeks, this experience will be rolling out on TV models (2019 and later) and on newer game consoles. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!”

Facebook-parent Meta planning mass layoffs

It looks like the tech industry cannot seem to catch a break. It was only a few days back when reports about Twitter laying a big chunk of its global employees after Elon Musk took command of the platform. The layoffs have also affected Twitter employees based in India. Now, it looks like Facebook-parent Meta is also gearing up to scale down on its workforce. As per reports doing the rounds on the internet, Meta is planning to begin large-scale layoffs as early as this week!

Meta mass layoffs

Wall Street Journal was one of the first portals to report on this shocking development. As of September 2022, Meta reported a total of over 87,000 employees worldwide across multiple platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and messaging platform WhatsApp. This number will witness a considerable nosedive after the mass layoffs start happening. As per reports, company officials have already notified employees to cancel any nonessential travel from the start of this week.

This planned layoff would mark the first-ever downscale by Meta in the company’s 18-year history. The layoffs in percentage are considerably smaller than the job cuts at Twitter inc. which Thanos snapped almost half of its workforce. However, this could be the largest layoff to date in a major tech corporation. WSJ reached out to Meta for a comment but a spokesperson declined to do so.

The layoff news comes just two weeks after Meta reported that its profits halved to $4.4 billion in the third quarter of 2022. This is a significant drop from $9.2 billion a year earlier. Meta has also revealed that its revenue slipped to US 27.7 billion from USD 29 billion a year earlier. Meta shares at USD 105 now cost less than a third of what they did at the start of the year. The tech corporation is undoubtedly in a difficult position right now facing issues like stagnating user numbers and cuts in advertising budgets. It will be interesting to see whether Meta’s comeback is stronger than its setback!

iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max shipments to take a hit due to Covid restrictions in China

It was back in October when news about a COVID-19 outbreak in the world’s largest iPhone manufacturing plant hit the internet. A surge in COVID-19 cases at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou, China site lead to a complete lockdown at the factory as a measure to curb the spread. As a result, several factory workers were seen fleeing the facility citing poor working conditions and a lack of basic resources. News outlets around the world also focussed on individual stories where workers from the factory shared their experience of being under the strict lockdown and finally making their way to the world. Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant employs about 200,000 people and produces the maximum number of iPhones for Apple across the world. Thus it was expected that the production of iPhones will take a hit due to this outbreak. Now, California-based Apple has shared an official press release stating that people can expect a delay in the supply of the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. Check out Apple’s press release below –

Apple’s press release for iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max supply delay

COVID-19 restrictions have temporarily impacted the primary iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max assembly facility located in Zhengzhou, China. The facility is currently operating at significantly reduced capacity. As we have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we are prioritizing the health and safety of the workers in our supply chain.

We continue to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models. However, we now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated and customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.

We are working closely with our supplier to return to normal production levels while ensuring the health and safety of every worker.

On the other hand, Foxconn recently said that it was working to resume full production of the plant as quickly as possible. It is currently in the process to implement new measures in order to curb the COVID-19 spread.

Impersonators on Twitter will be banned permanently, says Musk

If you haven’t been under the rocks for the past few weeks then I am sure you know Elon Musk is now the new Twitter boss. After an expensive acquisition, Elon Musk bought the micro-blogging app and is bringing upon several changes to the platform. One of his most controversial changes to Twitter (besides mass layoffs) has been the $8 Twitter Blue fee which allows users to get a verified check. Many on the platform have argued that allowing people to pay a certain monthly payment for a verified status on Twitter could lead to an epitome of impersonators of famous celebrities and politicians on the platform. Musk himself is not safe as a slew of Elon impersonators were seen popping up like mushrooms on Twitter. It looks like the Twitter boss finally has a crackdown on this menace.

Impersonators to be banned from Twitter

Elon recently Tweeted – ‘Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended’ This news comes just a few days after Twitter suspended several users who had changed their usernames to Elon Musk to impersonate the billionaire. Some high-profile celebrities also hopped on the trend and face consequences including comedian Kath Griffin whose account has now been suspended.

Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2022

Musk also shared that previously a warning was issued before account suspension on the platform. However, the new rules do not give users such a luxury as their accounts will be discarded swiftly. Accepting that users won’t impersonate any known face is also a condition they would have to agree to while signing up on Twitter Blue. Musk wrote – ‘Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning. This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.’

This won’t be all as any changes to a Twitter Blue username will temporarily lose the verified checkmark! This decision by Elon has yet again sparked the debate of whether the billionaire is actually the champion of free speech that he has vocally advertised himself and Twitter to be.

Instagram has no plans to build an iPad app

Being an iPad user and operating Instagram has always been a frustrating experience. Once you’ve bought the iPad you expect it to be compatible with all the applications present in the iPhone with an even better experience. While that is indeed true for most applications out there, the same cannot be said for Instagram. Being an iPad user myself, it gets frustrating to operate Instagram on a small vertical screen without proper integration of the iPad’s widescreen. Well, it looks like the pains of iPad users are not going to be fixed by Instagram, but there’s a silver lining to this cloud!

iPad Instagram web interface gets better

Our friendly neighborhood tech enthusiasts at The Verge were one of the first people to notice the changes in the web interface of Instagram on the iPad. While there is no specific app design for Instagram on the iPad, a slightly redesigned version of Instagram on the web can be seen. This new design includes a navigation sidebar with links to options like search, explore, notifications, and messages. These options were previously placed unlabelled at the top of the screen.

The Verge received a statement from Meta spokesperson Christine Pai where it was revealed that the company is working on improving the instagram.com web experience for users. The recent changes have been described as updates to ‘modernize’ Instagram web with the inclusion of improved navigation, optimization of video experience, and the introduction of a more ‘immersive’ way to DM.

This surely does not fill the shoes of having a dedicated application designed for the tablet experience but it’s a step in the right direction nonetheless. It was only back in February when Adam Mosseri, the Head of Instagram had written that creating an iPad-specific Instagram app was not on their priority list. It looks like nothing has changed since then!