Good morning. Let’s get into the tech news.
1. LMAO
Elon Musk has announced that Twitter, now X, will begin to charge users a fee to post and like tweets, er, posts. “Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots,” Elon Musk said, having failed for almost two years now to stop bots from flooding the site with spam. “This is only for new users. They will be able to do write actions for free after 3 months,” the CEO later added in a follow-up post. It follows the trial of paid unverified users of $1 per year in New Zealand and the Philippines. If I ever need to pay to use Twitter, I will jump to Bluesky and Threads so quick.
2. Infinite growth company suddenly not so infinite
It’s a trouble-in-Musktown kind of day, with Elon Musk’s Tesla laying off more than 10 per cent of its workforce, as reported by The Verge. more than 14,000 employees at the electric vehicle company worldwide will lose their jobs, though it’s not clear which teams will be impacted. Top Tesla brass will also be leaving the company – senior vice president Drew Bagliano is headed out, along with head of Policy Rohan Patel. It comes shortly after reports that Tesla had dumped its cheap EV plan.
3. Threads shut down in Turkey
Complying with government orders, Meta is shutting down Instagram Threads in Turkey in two weeks, per Bloomberg. Cross-platform data sharing between Instagram and the Twitter clone could violate the country’s laws, though Meta has called its takedown of Threads a “temporary suspension”.
4. Samsung back on top
Samsung is back in front of Apple as the leader of global smartphone shipments, with the latest data from the International Data Corporation’s Mobile Phone Tracker suggesting the company had shipped 60.1 million units in 2024’s first quarter (via Engadget). Meanwhile, Apple shipped 50.1 million units, with the companies taking 20.8 per cent and 17.3 per cent market share respectively. It’s a decrease for both companies compared to 2023’s first quarter, though while Samsung saw a drop of 0.7 per cent, Apple saw a 9.6 per cent drop.
5. Adobe crams AI into Premiere Pro
Adobe has made a bunch of AI announcements, including new AI video tools coming for Premiere Pro powered by its model Firefly. The software company is exploring bringing third-party models from OpenAI, Pika Labs, and Runway into the video editing application, with AI-powered audio workflows now available to users. “By bringing generative AI innovations deep into core Premiere Pro workflows, we are solving real pain points that video editors experience every day, while giving them more space to focus on their craft,” Adobe senior vice president of Adobe’s creative product group Ashley Still said.
BONUS ITEM/RANT: Let me peel back the curtain a little bit; if a product was really this bad and it came from any company that wasn’t a venture capital-fuelled AI darling, then there’s no way any tech journalist would even be allowed in a room with the product (unless it was strictly supervised and marked as an early model). What has happened with the Humane Pin just seems like gross mismanagement from a company high on its own supply, and Marques Brownlee’s review seems to give it the best run possible. In other news, the guy in charge of Humane’s influencer marketing says he was fired shortly after Brownlee’s video went up.
NEW Video – Humane Pin Review: A Victim of its Future Ambition
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) April 14, 2024
Full video: https://t.co/nLf9LCSqjN
This clip is 99% of my experiences with the pin – doing something you could already do on your phone, but slower, more annoying, or less reliable/accurate. Turns out smartphones… pic.twitter.com/QPxztCuBls
Have a lovely day.
Image: Tesla