Elon Musk announces premium tiers for X, Tesla Cybertruck due in November
Elon Musk has said his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, will launch two new tiers of premium subscriptions. “One is lower cost with all features, but no reduction in ads, and the other is more expensive, but has no ads,” the billionaire said in a post on X. It comes as the firm started charging new users $1 in New Zealand and the Philippines for accessing the platform. Mr Musk did not provide more details on the plans. New users who opt out of subscribing will only be able to take “read only” actions, such as reading posts, watching videos, and following accounts BBC
Meta has apologised after inserting the word “terrorist” into the profile bios of some Palestinian Instagram users, in what the company says was a bug in auto-translation. The issue, which was first reported by 404media, affected users with the word “Palestinian” written in English on their profile, the Palestinian flag emoji and the word “alhamdulillah” written in Arabic. When auto-translated to English the phrase read: “Praise be to god, Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom.” The Guardian
Imagine this: You’re Ethan Hunt. You’ve just paraglided onto a busy New York City street. Your phone beeps. You pull it out of your pocket and fire up WhatsApp – you’ve got one voice note. You hit play and it says, “This message will self-destruct in five seconds.” OK, we may have taken this a bit far, but something of the sort will soon be possible on WhatsApp. According to WaBetaInfo, the company is currently rolling out a “view once” mode for voice notes. Mashable
During yesterday’s Q3 2023 earnings call, Elon Musk revealed that some of the 1 million or so customers that have placed a reservation deposit for the upcoming Cybertruck will start to receive vehicles in November. The all-electric Cybertruck, which represents Tesla’s first foray into the pick-up truck market, has been marred by delays as the firm works out how to reliably mass produce the futuristic machine. “I just want to temper expectations for Cybertruck,” Musk told reporters and shareholders at the event. Tech Radar
People could be diagnosed with diabetes using little more than a short voice recording from their phone, according to a new study. Using an audio sample of just six to 10 seconds, along with basic health data, scientists created an AI model that can determine whether someone is diabetic with almost 90% accuracy. Those taking part recorded a phrase on their phone six times a day for two weeks, with the team using AI to analyse more than 18,000 samples for acoustic differences between the diabetics and non-diabetics. These included changes in pitch caused by type two diabetes that cannot be perceived by the human ear. Sky News
Nokia will slash up to 14,000 jobs after waning demand for 5G mobile networks sparked a drop-off in sales. The Finnish telecoms giant announced the cuts, which amount to as much as one in six staff, as part of a plan to drastically reduce costs. Pekka Lundmark, the company’s chief executive, said mobile networks had been “disappointed” with 5G. However, the take-up of the technology, which promised higher speeds, had been slower than expected. Telegraph
