Tech Digest daily roundup: Elon Musk to sell 10% of Tesla shares
Voters in a Twitter poll have urged Elon Musk to sell 10% of his stake in Tesla in order to pay tax. More than 3.5 million Twitter users voted in the poll, launched by Mr Musk on Saturday, with nearly 58% voting in favour of the share sale. The vote could see him dispose of nearly $21bn (£16bn) of stock in the electric carmaker. He has promised to abide by the result, in response to a “billionaires tax” proposed by US Democrats. But Mr Musk, one of the world’s richest men, has yet to comment publicly on the verdict, or how and when he would sell his stake. Should he go ahead with the sale, it could leave him with a huge tax bill. BBC
Let’s be honest here, Google’s Pixel phones are sort of infamous for experiencing issues. It’s actually become a bit of a meme within the industry and a self-fulfilling prophecy in recent years, though definitely for good reasons. The shiny new Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are no exception either. It didn’t take long after their launch for the first reports of green screen tint, flickering and punch hole weirdness to start pouring in. Now in a fairly new and still very much developing situation some users have been reporting that their Pixel phones are randomly placing calls to people in the contacts list. You can read some of the first-hand recounts in this Reddit thread. GSM Arena
Facebook has allowed more than half a million child abuse images to go undetected since switching off scanning software, the NSPCC has estimated. The tech company turned off its software in the EU that blocks known indecent child material being uploaded to its apps last year in response to new European privacy laws. However, Facebook is yet to resume scanning even though the bloc has since clarified it is not banned under the new regulations. The NSPCC warned that this means around 1,600 abuse images are not being found every day in an estimate drawn from the numbers Facebook was reporting before it halted scanning. Telegraph
Now that Netflix is offering mobile games on Android, there’s a lingering question: how will iOS players join in when Apple’s policies bar all-in-one gaming services? The hard way, apparently. In his “Power On” newsletter, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman (with help from developer Steve Moser) claimed to have seen code indicating Netflix would release all its games “individually” on iOS, through the App Store. They won’t all be downloadable and playable within the app, Gurman added. The main Netflix app would still offer access to the game catalog, but you’d merely be launching a separate app when you tap a game. Engadget
Combining two of Italy’s delights — coffee and sunshine — a couple of engineers in Rome have created an environmentally friendly way to roast coffee beans without electricity or gas. Antonio Durbe and Daniele Tummei have spent almost six years building and perfecting their sunlight coffee roaster. The result is a system that needs a piece of land about the size of half a tennis court and sunny weather to roast up to 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of coffee an hour. The plant is run entirely by energy from the sun. Sunrays are concentrated by a set of mirrors on a coffee roaster and even the few electrical parts are powered by a small solar panel. Sensors controlled by a computer allow the mirrors to follow the sun throughout the day and focus its light on a rotating steel basket that contains the fresh coffee beans. AP News
