Tech Digest daily roundup: Twitter source code leaked online
Parts of the source code which underpins multi-billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform have been leaked online, Twitter says. It says the code was posted on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned service where software developers share code. It has now been taken down after Twitter requested its removal. “GitHub does not generally comment on decisions to remove content. However, in the interest of transparency, we share every DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] takedown request publicly,” a GitHub spokesperson told the BBC.
Twitter’s value has more than halved since Elon Musk’s $44bn (£36bn) takeover in November, according to a leaked internal memo. In a memo to Twitter staff, the billionaire suggested that the social media company is now worth around $20bn based on stock awards granted to employees. The decision to write off around 55pc of its price tag, first reported by The Information, comes after technology valuations collapsed last year and tech companies, including Twitter, sacked thousands of staff as growth stalled. Telegraph
Google was at the centre of a row over political bias last night after tests of its new artificial intelligence ‘chatbot’ produced results with a pronounced Left-wing slant. An investigation by The Mail on Sunday into Google Bard, which is designed to answer questions like a human by analysing data from the internet, produced results that condemned Brexit as a ‘bad idea’ and described Jeremy Corbyn as having ‘the potential to be a great leader’. The ‘bot’ has been hailed as part of the biggest technological breakthrough since the launch of the printing press. But early results have caused alarm among senior Conservatives. Daily Mail
Tractors are commonly sold to farmers at agricultural fairs and announced in the trade press. But machinery makers are falling over themselves to get a slice of a much more unlikely advertising vehicle: the Farming Simulator video game. The developers, Giants Software, now receive hundreds of queries a year from manufacturers of equipment – from tractors and combine harvesters to trailers, balers and seed drills – about how they can feature in the game, where players create their own virtual farm. The Guardian
Apple recently held a demo presentation of its alleged Reality Pro headset for the company’s top 100 executives, ahead of the expected official announcement at WWDC in June. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, at least, who notes in their latest Power On newsletter that the company event – held just last week in the Steve Jobs Theater – was designed to rally support around the upcoming platform. Some senior Apple executives have seemingly been given a preview of the headset every year since 2018, though this latest peek was apparently much more “polished, glitzy and exciting”. Wareable
As simple as it can be to charge an electric vehicle at a known location like home or work, it could always be easier. WiTricity is working on wireless EV charging and has been for a decade. In 2015, Tesla showed a video of a metal “snake” that could plug a charging cable into an EV automatically. Ram is working on an inductive charging robot for its upcoming electric truck. This month in Seoul, Hyundai and Kia will display the latest of these automated charging technologies, this one called ACR.
The Automatic Charging Robot is somewhat similar to Tesla’s metal snake, but it is more advanced. The snake had a proprietary Tesla connector built in, while the Hyundai Motor Group’s ACR instead has a hand that can hold different plugs. Yahoo!
