Tech Digest daily roundup: Bill Gates on feud with Elon Musk
In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s Today programme, Bill Gates says conspiracy theories about him are “crazy” and that being shouted at in public is “awful”. He also told the BBC’s Mishal Husain that meeting Jeffrey Epstein was a “mistake” and talks about Elon Musk’s recent public criticism of him. Bill Gates used to be the world’s richest person. That title is now held by Elon Musk. The two men, however, don’t get on. Last week Mr Musk accused Mr Gates of “shorting” Tesla stock – a way of making money by betting that a company will lose value. Mr Musk has also tweeted puerile insults towards Mr Gates on Twitter. BBC
People and businesses need to “drop passwords altogether” and move to other technology to protect personal information from hackers, a cybersecurity expert has said. Grahame Williams, identity and access management director at defence firm Thales, said passwords were “becoming increasingly insecure” and “easily hacked”. He called on the industry to move to other forms of log-in such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) – where users must provide an additional layer of identification to log in – or biometrics such as face or fingerprint scans to improve the general safety of personal data. Mr Williams said a key issue was the widespread use of simple and easy-to-guess passwords. Sky News
Explosions from test launches of SpaceX rockets have been linked to the decline of a species of endangered birds, potentially threatening Elon Musk’s expansion plans at his Texas spaceport. An environmental impact report for the US government reveals trials of SpaceX’s Super Heavy rocket may halve the amount of habitat available for the piping plover, an endangered species of coastal bird. The draft report by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, released under Freedom of Information laws to CNBC, also warns expanding SpaceX’s Starbase site will have an “impact” on the red knot bird and two breeds of wild cat, ocelots and jaguarundis. Telegraph
YouTube Go is probably not an app that many of our US readers are familiar with, given its singular focus on the developing world, but it scored more than 500 million downloads in its six years of existence. It’s also dead. YouTube recently announced the app will be shutting down this August. YouTube Go was the herald for Google’s “next billion users” plan in 2016. When you’re as big as Google and count “most Internet users” as your customer base, the best way to chase growth is to get more people on the Internet. The result was several “Go”-branded products, which targeted low-end devices with limited Internet access. One of the biggest developing markets was India. Ars Technica
Samsung has introduced the latest iteration of its Universal Flash Storage product, which it says is much, much faster than its predecessor. The UFS specification was already developed to enable SSD speeds for cameras, phones and other devices, but this version — called UFS 4.0 — has a speed that reaches 23.2Gbps per lane. That’s double the speed of UFS 3.1, the standard used by Samsung’s S22 flagship phones. The tech giant says its huge bandwidth makes it perfect for 5G smartphones that typically require huge amounts of data processing. Engadget
