Tech Digest daily roundup: Twitter to provide Musk with raw daily tweet data

Twitter plans to offer Elon Musk access to its “firehose” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets to push his proposed takeover forward, according to reports. Mr Musk struck a legally-binding agreement to buy the tech giant for $44bn (£35bn) in April. But the Tesla and SpaceX boss has threatened to pull out unless Twitter provides more information about how many fake accounts are on the social media platform. The world’s richest man has argued, without showing evidence, that Twitter has significantly underestimated the number of “spam bots” – automated accounts that typically promote scams and misinformation – on its service. Sky News 

Maritime engineers have launched a “world first” commercially viable workboat that “flies” above the water using electric-powered hydrofoils. The eco-friendly vessels deploy the same foiling technology used by America’s Cup racing yachts, with hydrofoil wings attached to the hull with vertical struts. Much like a plane taking off on a runway, the underwater wings drive the workboat up and out of the water as it picks up speed. That enables the craft to travel almost silently with its hull raised above the waves – thus reducing drag, and operating costs, dramatically. The company behind the new zero emissions vessel, Artemis Technologies, is based in Belfast and headed by Olympic sailing champion Iain Percy. Yahoo!

Britain will refuse to fall in line with new EU rules on having a single charger that works across all mobile phones. The Government said it was not “currently considering” matching EU legislation for a common phone charger for devices such as smartphones, tablets, portable speakers and, eventually, laptops. That stance means that Apple iPhone chargers will be banned in Northern Ireland but not in the rest of the UK, because of the Brexit treaty that created the Irish Sea border. The Northern Ireland Protocol means the province continues to follow some Single Market rules, including the Radio Equipment Directive, to prevent the need for a hard Irish border. Telegraph 

The European Parliament on Wednesday threw its weight behind a proposed ban on selling new cars with combustion engines in 2035, seeking to step up the fight against climate change through the faster development of electric vehicles. The European Union assembly voted in Strasbourg, France, to require automakers to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 100% by the middle of the next decade. The mandate would amount to a prohibition on the sale in the 27-nation bloc of new cars powered by gasoline or diesel. EU lawmakers also endorsed a 55% reduction in CO2 from automobiles in 2030 compared with 2021. AP News 

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has acquired the government’s first quantum computer. Quantum computers can make very complex calculations extremely quickly and their creators say they can solve the problems regular computers cannot. The MoD will work with British company Orca Computing to explore applications for quantum technology in defence. Stephen Till, of the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), called it a “milestone moment”. The computers found in most of our homes and workplaces process data in bits, which have a binary value of either zero or one. Quantum computers instead use a two-state unit for data processing called a qubit. BBC