Starlink announces 1TB monthly cap, users who go over will get slower speeds

Microsoft describes Create as "the ultimate creator launchpad" for making creative videos, graphic design documents, presentations, and so much more. Microsoft believes that its professionally designed templates and content creation apps will help everyone create something "inspiring," and for that, no experience in design is required.

To get started, you can now visit the Microsoft Create website and show your creativity by making presentations, social video posts, printed birthday cards, and more. All templates are fully customizable and are organized by social media platform (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and more) and by topic (birthday, budgets, or flyers, for example).

Since the website is in early preview, do not expect it to be perfect. As noted by Microsoft, there are currently some limitations: the website is available only in English, and to customize some templates, you will need to sign up for early access to Microsoft Designer.

Microsoft has provided no information on when the Microsoft Create website will come out of preview.

Source: Microsoft

Microsoft launches early preview of Create website

Elon Musk has a lot going on right now. In the week since he bought Twitter for $44 billion, he fired its upper management and laid off thousands of employees, declared himself CEO and sole director, and used tweets and memes to publicly thrash out a dubious business plan that involves charging users $8 a month for benefits that include a blue check mark.

All that is just Musk’s new side gig. The world’s richest man is perhaps now its busiest, revamping Twitter while also serving as CEO of electric-auto maker Tesla; rocket maker SpaceX; the Boring Company, which digs tunnels for transit; and Neuralink, which is testing brain implants meant to eventually connect humans with computers.

How does Musk manage and lead all those complex projects at the same time? His performance is probably patchy—and at risk of getting more so. “It's not possible for a CEO to run four or five companies equally effectively,” says David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School who has studied Musk and his businesses. “That's not the expectation we should have.” Taking on a new CEO role at a company in an unfamiliar industry at a time when Musk’s other ventures face complex challenges will only make juggling them all more difficult.

It’s not a good time for Musk to be distracted from Tesla, his most valuable company. Under his management it has made strides in battery technology, production, and automated driving, and has rapidly ramped up sales. The company delivered an impressive 343,000 vehicles worldwide in the third quarter of 2022, an increase of more than a third over the same period a year earlier. But Tesla faces pressure from other automakers producing competitive electric vehicles of their own, and it has a deepening and potentially difficult dependency on China.

More than a dozen new EVs from various brands will debut in the US alone in the next couple of years. A Bank of America Merrill Lynch report published in June estimated that Tesla’s share of the EV market could decline from over 70 percent in 2021 to the low teens by 2025. The company is also facing several lawsuits over accidents involving Tesla’s Autopilot automated driving system and, according to a recent report from Reuters, a criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice into Tesla’s “full self-driving” software package that cannot fully self-drive.

Tesla’s dependence on China brings competitive and political risks. The company sources crucial raw materials from Chinese mines, and almost half its manufacturing capacity is now in a vast factory in Shanghai. But China’s automakers are rapidly electrifying, and its government has shown willingness to pressure Musk politically. In October, Musk told the Financial Times that China had told him it disapproved of the rollout of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine. The entrepreneur went on to parrot Chinese policy on Taiwan, saying that the country should become a “special administrative zone” of China.

Operating in China could get more difficult for Musk if the country’s leaders dislike how he operates Twitter. Government news sources there have complained that the platform labels its staff on the platform as “China state-affiliated media,” and Twitter recently disrupted China-based operations said to be using the site to influence the US midterm elections.

Tesla’s stock has fallen significantly in the months since Musk announced his plan to acquire Twitter. Yoffie says that may be a sign investors worry he is stretched too thin. In 2018, when Tesla suffered a production crunch, Musk rallied his workers and slept some nights at the factory.

He may be less able to pitch in on future crises. “Fundamentally, Elon is a micro-manager,” Yoffie says. “If he had bought Twitter during that period of time, he wouldn't have been able to give Tesla any attention whatsoever.”

SpaceX, where Musk is both CEO and lead designer, also has a busy schedule and some complex management challenges. An official with NASA, which has signed a $3 billion contract to use the company’s heavy-lift rocket Starship, said last week that the craft could make its maiden voyage as soon as this December. But the US Federal Aviation Administration announced in June that SpaceX is required to make 75 changes to Starship to mitigate environmental impacts, and the agency has not yet approved the rocket for launch.

Like Tesla, SpaceX has also entangled Musk in geopolitics. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the company—with some US government support—donated 20,000 Starlink satellite internet terminals to help keep Ukrainian military and civilians online. This October, Musk said SpaceX could no longer afford to provide that service, citing $100 million in costs by year’s end. A week later, after bad press about that move, he reversed himself, saying SpaceX would keep funding Starlink service to Ukraine. Amid the recent drama, Musk found time to tweet out a controversial peace plan for Russia’s invasion, involving Ukraine ceding territory to its attacker. Musk later denied claims he had discussed the war in Ukraine with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, but said they had spoken about space.

The Boring Company and Neuralink, Musk’s other main interests, are younger than Tesla and SpaceX and have so far been less successful. The former, founded in 2016, completed prototype tunnels in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but plans to build underground links connecting New York and Washington, DC; Chicago’s downtown with an airport; and downtown Los Angeles with Dodger Stadium have stalled. In a TED interview in 2017, Musk said the Boring Company accounted for about 2 to 3 percent of his time. Musk originally proposed a hyperloop—a pressurized tube through which things can travel at high speed using magnetic levitation—as a more efficient form of transportation, but his company has more recently backed away from the idea. SpaceX this year disassembled one of its Los Angeles test tunnels, turning the site into a parking lot.

Neuralink, which works on brain implants for controlling a computer, was also founded in 2016. Musk has previously said he planned to have regulatory approval for the brain chips by 2020, and would begin human trials in 2022, but the company is behind schedule. Neuralink has held more than just business interest for Musk. This July, Business Insider revealed that Musk had twins with one of the company’s executives, Shivon Zilis, in November 2021.

Is there method to this Muskness? Andy Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard, argues that Musk’s businesses share a pattern of tackling complex problems that require mastering large scale through huge capital investment, daring bets, and persuading employees and investors to believe in the bigger mission.

The Twitter acquisition doesn’t yet fit that pattern. Wu has been impressed by how quickly the new CEO has sought to reorganize the company, but he has yet to see clear communication about the mission. Musk’s takeover of Twitter doesn’t provide a clear and inspiring engineering goal like Tesla and SpaceX—the company’s business problems are mostly people problems. And his apparent focus on free speech appears somewhat at odds with the challenge of running a social media company safely and profitably. Musk in recent days appeared to backtrack on earlier suggestions he would strip away Twitter’s content moderation policies, to the dismay of some supporters of his project.

Wu says it is important to separate distaste or ardor for Musk’s politics or personal life from any assessment of his business skills. He points out that juggling more than one CEO job is not unprecedented, and that many investors take an active hand in multiple ventures. “The closest analogy is after Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, he was affiliated with both Pixar and Next Computing—and did pretty innovative things at both companies,” Wu says. He adds, however, that Tesla and SpaceX are probably a lot more complex and challenging to manage.

One of Musk’s talents cuts across his ventures without conflict. Yoffie says that Tesla and its stock price has benefited hugely from the entrepreneur’s antics on Twitter, which include interacting with customers, hyping up investors, and taking aim at critics. Taking control of the platform that has helped him burnish his personal brand has so far only made his voice—and its reverberations around the business world—that much louder. “He gets an amazing amount of free PR,” Yoffie says.

Source

Today, the DirectStorage version 1.1, which brings GPU decompression, is now available. The announcement blog post also highlights the changes in version 1.1, it says:

The DirectStorage team is pleased to share that GPU decompression with DirectStorage 1.1 is available now. This new version of DirectStorage contains everything a developer needs to get started with GPU decompression.

What’s New:

• GPU decompression and GDeflate now available.

• Added EnqueueSetEvent to use Win32 event objects for completion notification.

• Performance improvements and bug fixes.

DirectStorage 1.1-supported drivers have also been available for a week or so. AMD has not confirmed, though, which driver exactly comes with the feature support. Intel and Nvidia however have confirmed the driver versions. In the case of Team Blue, it is beta driver version 31.0.101.3793. For Team Green, it is GeForce Game ready driver 526.47.

Microsoft DirectStorage 1.1 now out, promises up to 3x faster loads with GPU decompression

Providing comment for the company, SungHoi Hur, Executive Vice President of Flash Product & Technology at Samsung Electronics, said:

“As market demand for denser, greater-capacity storage pushes for higher V-NAND layer counts, Samsung has adopted its advanced 3D scaling technology to reduce surface area and height, while avoiding the cell-to-cell interference that normally occurs with scaling down. Our eighth-generation V-NAND will help meet rapidly growing market demand and better position us to deliver more differentiated products and solutions, which will be at the very foundation of future storage innovations.”

With the latest generation of V-NAND memory from Samsung, customers can expect an input and output speed of up to 2.4 gigabits per second (Gbps), up from 2 Gbps in the seventh generation. Samsung says that this speed boost will help to meet the performance requirements of PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0.

Aside from being used in enterprise servers to expand the available storage, Samsung says that 8th gen V-NAND will also be used in the automotive market and provide the required reliability.

Samsung starts mass production of its 8th gen V-NAND memory

The two RX 7900 series GPUs have been priced to compete against the Nvidia RTX 4080 16GB model. While the former are coming out next month, the latter is set to be available in about a week's time on November 16th. And as expected before a launch, multiple benchmarks for the 4080 16GB have leaked today. These include scores in Blender, Geekbench as well in 3DMark.

First up, we have Blender 3.3 where the 4080 has scored 9478.64 points which is around 22.5% behind the RTX 4090. Though, it is nearly twice as fast as the RTX 3080's 5022.78. Interestingly, there is also an unidentified "Nvidia Graphics Device" which has put up 12906.07 points making it the fastest GPU on the charts as it is 6.6% faster than even the RTX 4090. The device might be an early engineering sample of the RTX 4090 Ti but it could also be a heavily overclocked RTX 4090 aftermarket variant.

Now, on Geekbench 5, we have OpenCL, CUDA, and Vulkan numbers for the RTX 4080. The scores are summarised below against the RTX 4090 and the RTX 3080:

As you can see, the performance gains in compute APIs like OpenCL and CUDA are quite big for the RTX 4080 when compared to the RTX 3080. However, in Vulkan, the uplift isn't as large, though these are pre-launch figures and it's possible that a driver further optimized could increase the gap in favor of the upcoming 4080.

The leaked 3DMark Time Spy DirectX 12 benchmark numbers seem to suggest there is a hefty uplift over the current 3080 10GB and 12GB models. The leaked Time Spy scores are summarised below where they have been compared against the RTX 4090, 3080 as well as AMD's RX 6950 XT and 6900 XT:

We also have no idea about how these scores compare to AMD's RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT since AMD didn't provide such data.

Source: Blender, Geekbench, Futuremark via Benchleaks (1) , (2) , (3) , APISAK, MEGAsizeGPU

Very early Nvidia RTX 4090 Ti benchmark might just have leaked, alongside RTX 4080 numbers

The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names — not their account names — and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk’ in reaction to the billionaire’s decision to offer verified accounts to all comers for $8 month as he simultaneously laid off a big chunk of the workforce.

“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended,” Musk wrote.

While Twitter previously issued warnings before suspensions, now that it is rolling out “widespread verification, there will be no warning.”

In fact, “any name change at all” would compel the temporary loss of a verified checkmark, the world’s richest man said.

Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday after she switched her screen name to Musk. She told a Bloomberg reporter that she had also used his profile photo.

“I guess not ALL the content moderators were let go? Lol,” Griffin joked afterward on Mastodon, an alternative social media platform where she set up an account last week.

Actor Valerie Bertinelli had similarly appropriated Musk’s screen name — posting a series of tweets in support of Democratic candidates on Saturday before switching back to her true name. “Okey-dokey. I’ve had fun and I think I made my point,” she tweeted afterwards.

Before the stunt, Bertinelli noted the original purpose of the blue verification checkmark. It was granted free of charge to people whose identity Twitter employees had confirmed; with journalists accounting for a big portion of recipients. “It simply meant your identity was verified.

Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you,” Bertinelli noted.

“That no longer applies. Good luck out there!” she added.

The $8 verified accounts are Musk’s way of democratizing the service, he claims. On Saturday, a Twitter update for iOS devices listed on Apple’s app store said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can get the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.”

It said the service would first be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. However, it was not available Sunday and there was no indication when it would go live. A Twitter employ, Esther Crawford, told The Associated Press it is coming “soon but it hasn’t launched yet.”

Twitter did not respond on Sunday to an email seeking comment on the verified accounts issue and Griffin’s suspension.

Musk later tweeted, “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission.”

If the company were to strip current verified users of blue checks — something that hasn’t happened — that could exacerbate disinformation on the platform during Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Like Griffin, some Twitter users have already begun migrating from the platform — Counter Social is another popular alternative — following layoffs that began Friday that reportedly affected about half of Twitter’s 7,500-employee workforce. They fear a breakdown of moderation and verification could create a disinformation free-for-all on what has been the internet’s main conduit for reliable communications from public agencies and other institutions.

Many companies have paused advertising on the platform out of concern it could become more unruly under Musk.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, sought to assuage such concerns in a tweet Friday. He said the company’s front-line content moderation staff was the group least affected by the job cuts.

Musk tweeted late Friday that there was no choice but to cut jobs “when the company is losing over $4M/day.” He did not provide details on the daily losses at Twitter and said employees who lost their jobs were offered three months’ pay as severance.

Source

“Twitter employees were selling verification for upwards of $15,000. For certain accounts, mine included, they would refuse to verify you through the standard application and then privately offer to verify you for $$ behind the scenes. Investigation needed,” WSBChairman—a user with 900,000 followers—claimed on the platform on Nov. 5. Musk confirmed that user’s claim, responding: “Yup.”

Neither WSBChairman nor Musk provided further details or evidence. Meanwhile, no prominent former Twitter executives have publicly commented on the matter.

“Far too many legacy ‘verified’ checkmarks were handed out, often arbitrarily, so in reality they are *not* verified,” Musk wrote. “You can buy as many as you want right now with a Google search. Piggybacking off payment system plus Apple/Android is a much better way to ensure verification.”

The Tesla CEO last week unveiled a plan to get verified users to pay $8 per month to keep their blue checkmark, which has become something of a status symbol on the social media platform. Verification badges were proposed as a system to show that an account is authentic, but Musk said that it created a “lord-and-peasant” system on the platform.

Musk also confirmed he carried out layoffs in recent days because the firm was losing more than $4 million per day. Reports have indicated that he terminated the employment of thousands of Twitter workers.

“Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50 percent more than legally required,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, some Democrat lawmakers have already set their sights on Twitter and Musk. A letter from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requested an investigation into the acquisition because members of the Saudi royal family are prominent investors in the company. However, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal had bought a stake in the company many years before Musk acquired it last month.

“I write to draw your attention to potential national security concerns arising from the recently completed takeover of Twitter, Inc. by Elon Musk and a number of private investors,” Murphy wrote, according to reports. “Setting aside the vast stores of data that Twitter has collected on American citizens, any potential that Twitter’s foreign ownership will result in increased censorship, misinformation, or political violence is a grave national security concern.”

Musk last week announced that the newly acquired firm has suffered significant revenue losses after prominent advertisers pulled out. The tech billionaire accused activist groups of leading the charge against him and said that “they’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Source

Meta’s reportedly planning to lay off ‘thousands’ of workers this week

• Twitter starts its revamp on Saturday

• Twitter updated its app in the Apple App Store on Saturday

• Some in favor of the revamp are worried about impersonators

Twitter CEO and tech billionaire Elon Musk already announced a major revamp in Twitter where verified users would pay an $8 monthly fee.

However, with malicious actors just waiting for the perfect opportunity, users are worried that despite having their accounts verified on Twitter, hackers could impersonate them and steal their identity on the micro-blogging site. Musk, in a recent tweet, revealed the punishment waiting for these impersonators.

In what seems like a major move after tech billionaire Elon Musk acquired the social media platform Twitter and assumed the post of the CEO, the social media platform updated its app in the Apple App Store to start charging $8 for the blue checkmark guaranteeing that the profile is genuine. In the update Twitter said those who "sign up now" for only $7.99 a month will receive the blue checkmark next to their profile names, "just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow."

While many Twitter users are against this new Twitter policy, some who are in favor, are still worried about impersonators. A Twitter user asked the tech billionaire what happens to these malicious actors. "I just want an answer, only one, what if someone impersonates the previously 'verified profiles' with a new profile having a paid blue tick?'

To this Musk answered, "Great question. Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money! So if scammers want to do this a million times, that's just a whole bunch of free money." Unlike before, the blue checkmark is essentially meaningless now and does not represent the holder's identity.

    Great question. Twitter will suspend the account attempting impersonation and keep the money!

    So if scammers want to do this a million times, that’s just a whole bunch of free money. pic.twitter.com/QUrxqb59I0

    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022

According to Musk, the $8 monthly fee will grant users extra perks like "priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scams, the ability to post long videos & audio and half as many ads." The Twitter CEO also noted that the pricing will be adjusted "by country proportionate to purchasing power parity."

Before Musk, a blue checkmark on the person's profile name meant that Twitter confirmed that the account indeed belongs to the person or entity claiming it. So far, it is not yet clear how Twitter plans to verify the identity of the users but Musk said "There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians."

There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians

 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022

Source

"Probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April," the world's richest man tweeted about COVID-19 in March 2020, just as the pandemic was ramping up.

It's one of many tweets that offer a glimpse into the mind of Twitter's new owner and moderator in chief. Playful, aggressive and sometimes reckless, Musk's past tweets show how he has used social media to tout his businesses, punch back at critics and burnish his brand as a brash billionaire who is unafraid to speak his mind.

Musk joined Twitter in 2009 and now has more than 112 million followers—the third most of any account after former president Barack Obama and Canadian singer Justin Bieber. He had long mused about purchasing the platform before the $ 44 billion deal was finalized last week.

Musk hasn't detailed the changes he intends to make at Twitter, though he wasted no time in making widespread layoffs. But he has said he wants to make Twitter a haven for free speech. He's said he disagrees with the platform's decision to ban ex-President Donald Trump for inciting violence ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

"I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means," Musk tweeted earlier this year when he announced his intention to buy the platform.

As the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk uses his Twitter account to make business announcements and promote his enterprises. He muses about technology and trade, but has also posted jokes about women's breasts and once compared Canada's prime minister to Hitler. He regularly weighs in on global events, as he did in March 2020 when he tweeted that "The coronavirus pandemic is dumb."

That same month, he tweeted that children were largely immune from the virus and predicted that cases would soon disappear.

Baron Capital Group Chairman and CEO Ron Baron interviews Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the 29th Annual Baron Investment Conference in New York City on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022. Credit: Baron Capital via AP

Musk has also used his Twitter account to weigh in other big news events—with mixed results.

This fall, Musk infuriated leaders in Ukraine when he went on Twitter to float a potential peace deal. Under Musk's plan, Russia would get to keep Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine would have to drop its plans to join NATO.

Musk also suggested that people living in other areas illegally annexed by Russia should vote on whether Russia or Ukraine should get control over the territories—a move that Ukraine supporters said would reward Russia for its illegal aggression.

"The danger here is that in the name of 'free speech,' Musk will turn back the clock and make Twitter into a more potent engine of hatred, divisiveness, and misinformation," said Paul Barrett, a disinformation researcher and the deputy director of New York University's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

Stern singled out Musk's comments about Ukraine as particularly concerning. "This is not going to be pretty," he said.

Just days after purchasing Twitter Musk waded into yet another firestorm when he posted a link to an article advancing a bizarre conspiracy theory about the attack on the husband of U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The article suggested that Paul Pelosi and his assailant were lovers, even though authorities said the suspect confessed to targeting the speaker and did not know her husband.

Musk later deleted the tweet without explanation.

Musk has long used the megaphone of his Twitter account to punch back at critics or people he opposes, such as when he attacked a diver working to rescue boys trapped in a cave in Thailand by calling him a "pedo," short for pedophile. The diver had previously mocked Musk's proposal to use a sub to rescue the boys. Musk, who won a defamation suit filed by the diver, later said he never intended "pedo" to be interpreted as "pedophile."

Twitter signage is seen outside Twitter headquarters on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022, in San Francisco. Twitter began widespread layoffs Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the company, raising concerns about chaos enveloping the social media platform and its ability to fight disinformation just days ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.   Credit: Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

Three days before Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, the world's richest man tweeted a photo of Bill Gates and used a crude sexual term while making a joke about his belly.

Earlier this year he criticized the Twitter executive in charge of the platform's legal, policy and trust divisions. In response to his tweets about the executive, many of Musk's followers piled on with misogynistic and racist attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to fire her when his purchase of Twitter was approved.

Musk fired the executive on day one.

Musk's use of Twitter has at times led to problems for his own companies. In one August 2018 tweet, for instance, Musk asserted that he had the funding to take Tesla private for $420 a share, although a court has ruled that it wasn't true. That led to an SEC investigation that Musk is still fighting.

Last year another federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board, ordered Musk to delete a tweet that officials said illegally threatened to cut stock options for Tesla employees who joined the United Auto Workers union.

Those tweets helped cement Musk's reputation as a brash outsider. But that doesn't mean he is equipped to run a social media platform with more than 200 million users, said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor who studies social media. Grygiel has assigned Musk's tweets as reading material for students.

"Look at the feed: It's all over the place. It's erratic. At times it's pretty extreme," Grygiel said. "It paints him as some sort of rebel leader who will take control of the public square to save it. That is a myth he has constructed."

© 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Source

In the chaos that has enveloped Twitter the platform—and Twitter the company—since Elon Musk took over, it has become clear this isn't changing anytime soon. In fact, it's likely to get much worse before it gets better—if it gets better at all.

Musk, with his band of tech industry loyalists, arrived at Twitter just over a week ago ready to tear down the blue bird's nest and rebuild it in his vision with breakneck speed. He quickly fired top executives and the board of directors, installed himself as the company's sole director (for now) and declared himself "Chief Twit," then "Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator" on his bio.

On Friday, he began mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, letting go about half of of its workers via email to return it to staffing levels not seen since 2014.

All the while, he's continued to tweet a mix of crude memes, half-jokes, SpaceX rocket launches and maybe-maybe not plans for Twitter that he seems to be workshopping on the site in real time. After floating the idea of charging users $20 a month for the "blue check" and some extra features, for instance, he appeared to quickly scale it back in a Twitter exchange with author Stephen King, who posted, "If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron."

"We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?" Musk replied. On Saturday, the company announced a subscription service for $7.99 monthly that allows anyone on Twitter to pay a fee for the check mark "just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow" as well as some premium features—not yet available—like getting their tweets boosted above those coming from accounts without the blue check.

The billionaire Tesla CEO also has repeatedly engaged with right-wing figures appealing for looser restrictions on hate and misinformation, received congratulations from Dimitry Medvedev, Russian President Vladimir Putin's top associate and tweeted—then deleted—a baseless conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, who was attacked in his home.

More than three dozen advocacy organizations wrote an open letter to Twitter's top 20 advertisers, calling on them to commit to halting advertising on the platform if Twitter under Musk undermines "brand safety" and guts content moderation.

The Twitter logo is seen on a cell phone, Friday, Oct. 14, 2022, in Boston. While amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings, Elon Musk’s murky plans for Twitter — especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies — are raising alarms about where one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems is headed.

Credit: AP Photo/Michael Dwyer

"Not only are extremists celebrating Musk's takeover of Twitter, they are seeing it as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing, and racist language and imagery. This includes clear threats of violence against people with whom they disagree," the letter said.

One of Musk's first moves was to fire the woman in charge of trust and safety at the platform, Vijaya Gadde. But he has kept on Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of safety and integrity, and has taken steps to reassure users and advertisers that the site won't turn into a "free-for-all hellscape" that some fear it might.

On Friday, he tweeted that "Twitter's strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged. In fact, we have actually seen hateful speech at times this week decline (asterisk)below(asterisk) our prior norms, contrary to what you may read in the press." A growing number of advertisers are nevertheless pausing spending on Twitter while they reassess how Musk's changes might increase objectionable material on the platform.

Musk also met with some civil rights leaders "about how Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies," according to a tweet he sent Nov. 1.

But representatives of the LGBTQ community were notably absent from the meeting, even though its members are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than those outside of such communities. Twitter did not respond to a message for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with LGBTQ groups.

The mercurial billionaire has said he won't make major decisions about content or restoring banned accounts—such as that of former President Donald Trump—before setting up a "content moderation council" with diverse viewpoints. The council, he later added, will include "the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence." But experts have pointed out that Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory council to address moderation questions.

"Truly I can't imagine how it would differ," said Danielle Citron, a University of Virginia law professor who sits on the council and has been working with Twitter since its infancy in 2009 to tackle online harms, such as threats and stalking. "Our council has the full spectrum of views on free speech."

Some amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings. But Musk's murky plans for Twitter—especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies—are raising alarms about where one of the world's most high-profile information ecosystems is headed. All that seems certain is that for now, at least, as Elon Musk goes, so goes Twitter.

The Twitter page of Elon Musk is seen on the screen of a computer in Sausalito, Calif., on Monday, April 25, 2022. While amount of chaos is expected after a corporate takeover, as are layoffs and firings, Elon Musk’s murky plans for Twitter — especially its content moderation, misinformation and hate speech policies — are raising alarms about where one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems is headed.

Credit: AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File

"I hope that responsibility and maturity will win the day," said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter civic integrity team leader who left the company before Musk took over. "It's one thing to be a billionaire troll on Twitter and to try to get laughs with memes and to yuk it up. You are now the owner of Twitter and there's a new level of responsibility."

For now, though, the memes appear to be winning. This concerns experts like Perez, who worry Musk is moving too fast without listening to people who have been working to improve civility on the platform and instead using his own insular experience as one of the platform's most popular users with millions of fawning fans who hail his every move.

"You have a single billionaire that is controlling something as influential as a social media platform like Twitter. And you have entire nation states (whose) political goals are inimical to our own, and they are trying to create chaos and they are directly courting favor" with Musk, Perez said.

"There's just no world in which all of that is normal," he added. "That should absolutely concern us."

Twitter didn't start out as a cesspool. And even now there are pockets of funny, weird, nerdy subgroups on the platform that remain somewhat insulated from the messy and confrontational place it can appear to be if one follows too many hotheaded agitators. But as with Facebook, Twitter's rise also coincided with growing polarization and a measurable decline in online civility in the United States and beyond.

"The big understanding that occurred between 2008 and 2012 is that the way to get traction, the way to get attention on any social media, Twitter included, was to use incendiary language—to challenge the basic humanity of the opposition," said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

Things continued to devolve as the 2016 U.S. presidential election approached and passed, and the new president cemented his reputation as one of Twitter's most incendiary users. After it was revealed that Russia used social media platforms to try to influence elections in the U.S. and other countries, the platforms found themselves became central figures in the political debate.

"Do they have too much power? Do their content moderation policies privilege one side or another?" Rainie said. "The companies themselves found themselves in the thick of the most intense arguments in the culture. And so that's the environment that Elon Musk is entering now."

And beyond the bluster and the outsized personality, Musk's own description of his new job—"Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator"—may turn out to be his biggest challenge yet.

© 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Source

Not an actual UX (...yet)

As spotted by WinBuzzer, Microsoft has posted a job listing for a Principal Software Engineer Manager recently. In its initial version, it explicitly stated that the company is working on a model that allows the building of "low-cost PCs powered through advertising and subscriptions".

Although the specific wording has now been removed, the listing still clearly emphasizes on exploring cloud- and web-first solutions. It also talks about the "mission to drive cloud first experiences into Windows". The current job description is as follows:

Are you passionate about shaping the future of personal computing? Do you have the passion and experience to build and lead a new engineering team to explore Web and cloud experiences on Windows?

The Windows Incubation team is chartered to explore new concepts for Windows in a cloud- and web-first world.

Our team is looking for an exceptional Engineering Manager to build and lead a talented team of passionate engineers. You will work on innovative Web and platform technologies to prototype and explore new experiences. You and your team will partner with Product Management and Design to ideate and build new experiences aligned with the mission to drive cloud first experiences into Windows, create prototypes to validate early thinking, and use on-going customer data and research to validate our ideas. You will be responsible for defining architectures, engineering plans and processes in your team that drive quality and agility and move the team from ideation to shipping. You will play a key leadership role in defining and promoting an inclusive team culture with the best engineering practices to deliver experiences with quality and customer love. If you are that person, contact us!

Given Microsoft's trajectory when it comes to Microsoft 365 and its role in the overall landscape of Windows, it's not entirely surprising that the company is going down this route. Both Windows 10 and Windows 11 were free upgrades, and the firm typically recoups development costs by engaging people in the Microsoft ecosystem through its subscriptions and other cloud services, with customers paying regular fees to use certain software.

That said, the move is likely to be controversial should it ever materialize. Advertisements in services that you already pay for is bound to rub some people the wrong way and Microsoft will really have to think about how it markets the effort. Some may also draw parallels to Amazon's Fire Phone which was based on the same idea, but ended up being a major commercial failure.

That said, the endeavor should also result in lower cost Windows PCs, which should result in more people being driven to Windows, provided they are fine with ads and subscription plans.

Would you buy a Windows PC at a lower cost if it showed you ads for Microsoft's services or required you to subscribe to Microsoft 365? Let us know in the comments section below!

Source: WinBuzzer

Microsoft working on affordable Windows 11 PCs dominated by ads and subscriptions

Windows 11 performance... and some other issues

We will start Microsoft Weekly with news related to Windows 11's performance and some more issues that have cropped up. It turns out that Microsoft's recent tip for disabling certain security features in Windows 11 in order to boost gaming performance is benefiting a lot of Intel systems with some users reporting manifold improvements in benchmarks.

In somewhat related news, the same cannot be said about AMD Ryzen 7000 customers who have been complaining about performance drops with Windows 11 version 22H2. For its part, AMD has denied all such reports and said that results across both Windows 10 and Windows 11 are roughly the same and within the margins of error, in terms of differences. Despite this denial, reports keep cropping up showing evidence of noticeable performance deterioration after updating to Windows 11 version 22H2.

Since we are talking about issues, it's also apt to mention that Microsoft has put an upgrade block in place for the Windows 11 2022 Update (version 22H2) due to some audio sync issues. If you previously used the capture feature in Xbox Game Bar, the feature update will not be available until Microsoft provides a permanent fix. That said, a patch is expected soon.

Image credits: Kevin Ku (Pexels)

In the same vein, Firefox 106.0.3 is now out with some fixes for crashes and hangs on Windows 11 version 22H2. And OBS now supports Nvidia hardware fully for AV1, with a fix for a Windows 11 capture issue now rolled out too.

Finally, Microsoft is facing a class-action lawsuit for its AI-powered GitHub Copilot pair-programming utility. The lawsuit alleges that Microsoft has violated GitHub's own policies, as well as attribution and other copyright laws by training the software on the billions of lines of code written by millions of programmers without their consent, and then making a profit off of it.

Windows 11 growth

The latest data from StatCounter indicates that Windows 11 is being used by 15.44% of users globally. While this may sound low at first, it kind of does make sense considering the OS' strict hardware requirements, controversial feature changes, and frequent bugs. This is also supported by the fact that roughly 71% of people are still on Windows 10, according to data from the same firm.

Valve's data also shows Windows 11's adoption slowing down a bit with the OS' share dropping from 25% in September to 23.37% in October. That said, it is important to understand that Valve's figures are based on its user surveys, which are random and optional, so they might not paint the actual picture. However, Windows 10 has the lion's share of 69% in this report as well.

Another entity that seemingly can't let go of older operating systems is Mozilla, which has said that it is considering extending support for Firefox on Windows 7 and 8.1 past Microsoft's own support deadlines, bonkers.

That said, Microsoft may be looking to remedy some of these problems, in a bit of a controversial fashion. A recent job listing indicates that the company is working on a model that will allow the construction of low-cost Windows 11 PCs through which the firm will upsell its services via ads and subscription plans. It's unclear if these plans will ever materialize but if they do, they are bound to rub many people the wrong way.

New features

Windows 11 customers discovered quite a few hidden features in Windows 11 Dev Channel build 25231 this week.

It appears that there is a whole Energy Recommendations hidden in the Settings app. It is a page where Windows 11 shows how to lower your carbon footprint and make a PC more energy efficient by letting it turn off the screen and go to sleep faster, setting the power mode for best efficiency, disabling a screen saver, and turning on dark mode. There is also a sort of green score that increases as you go through the "checklist." You can find out how to enable it here.

There is also a hidden Task Manager search functionality currently in development. You can enable it via a third-party tool (at your own risk) and it should make searching for specific processes considerably easier.

We did get a new Dev Channel build this week too, though. Build 25236 - also available for Windows Server VNext - brings a tooltip for Task Manager and a slight revamp for the Microsoft Store UX, among lots of other fixes. There was a servicing update rolled out for this build recently too.

In some more exciting news, Google's solution to play Google Play Android games directly on your Windows 10 and Windows 11 PC is now available in more countries, including the U.S. This implementation is completely different from Microsoft's Windows 11-exclusive Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA).

For our more tech-savvy audiences, you'll be happy to know that PowerToys 0.64.0 is now out with two new utilities: File Locksmith and Hosts File Editor, along with settings backup functionality. And if that doesn't interest you, perhaps this will catch your eye: You may soon be able to run multiple nested Windows inside Linux.

Lastly, it's worth highlighting some Microsoft 365 improvements too. Microsoft has detailed all the new features it added to Teams in October 2022 and you should also keep an eye out for an upcoming capability in Outlook that will allow you to work without interruptions.

Git gud

On the gaming front, Microsoft's Phil Spencer hinted that if the acquisition of Activision Blizzard is completed, Microsoft would support Call of Duty on PlayStation forever. It's unclear if this statement is enough to allay the fears of both Sony and the UK CMA, but this was a big talking point when both entities argued why the deal should not go through.

Meanwhile, Sea of Thieves' Return of the Damned Adventure kicked off too. It has pirates choosing to ally with the forces of Pendragon or Captain Flameheart, with the two groups clashing over Sea Forts. The event concludes on November 17, and Rare is planning to host a special livestream soon after to let players know which side took the win, and also reveal what will be the consequences of their actions.

Coming over to subscriptions side of things, Praetorians - HD Remaster is now free via Xbox Games with Gold. And Xbox Game Pass is getting some The Walking Dead games, Pentiment, Return to Monkey Island, Football Manager 2023, and more in this month.

Microsoft is also running another Xbox Free Play Days promotion offering Control, Serial Cleaner, and NHRA Championship Drag Racing: Speed for All at up to 90% off. But if that doesn't tickle your fancy, take a gander at this Weekend's PC Game Deals, curated by Neowin's News Editor Pulasthi Ariyasinghe.

Dev Channel

• Microsoft has released a fix for Adobe Fresco compatibility issues on Surface Book 3

• Microsoft will provide free tech support for Ukraine throughout 2023

• Auto Dark Mode has received new features and reliability improvements in latest update

• Microsoft has released free Windows 11 version 22H2 virtual machines

   

Under the spotlight

We published a few guides this week. The first one is from News Reporter Hemant Saxena who had a very handy write-up on how you can disable Microsoft Teams from launching at startup. If this is something that bothers you, do give the guide a read.

Hemant also wrote another guide providing instructions on how you can remove the downloads menu from Microsoft Edge if you don't find it particularly useful.

Meanwhile, forum member Adam Bottjen penned his latest Tech Tip Tuesday column, explaining how you can toggle dark mode across Windows, Android, and iOS. Check it out here.

Logging off

Our most intriguing news stream this week relates to all the chaos happening at Twitter, with Elon Musk officially taking over just a few days ago and immediately firing the company's CEO, CFO, and head of legal policy. This was followed by reports that the social media platform would soon charge $20/month for Twitter Blue, with the verification badge being locked behind this subscription too. However, this was talked down to $8/month after intense negotiations with novelist Stephen King.

In line with initial reporting, Musk began to lay off half of Twitter's workforce to reduce costs but was soon sued for not giving employees enough notice under federal law, along with facing criticism from political leaders. The "Chief Twit" then complained on Twitter about how revenues on the platform has massively dropped due to advertisers pulling out.

Yeah, it's been a crazy week, and I haven't even talked about the abandonment of the Chirp developer conference, former CEO's Jack Dorsey's new relationship with Twitter, Vine possibly returning to life, and editable tweets potentially being available to everyone, free of cost. Phew!

Microsoft Weekly: Windows 11 performance, adoption, and new features

When he purchased Twitter a week ago, Elon Musk turned a hobby into a career.

Musk has always been extremely engaged online, responding to Twitter users with followings big and small. But the billionaire is now in charge, and he’s listening.

The new Twitter owner has not slowed down tweeting since taking over the company last Thursday — the past week was his third-most active in the past six months, according to a Washington Post analysis. The analysis stretches from last Wednesday when he entered the company headquarters carrying a sink — a stunt encouraging employees to let his takeover “sink in” — to this Thursday, a day before he enacted massive layoffs.

Experts say his tweets now send important signals: Who he is listening to, who and what is acceptable on his platform, and how he intends to run the company. His tweets and decisions have the ability to foster healthy debates online or give sanctuary to hate speech and misinformation, they say.

“When he says something on Twitter now, it’s much bigger news because it is seen as a bellwether of where he’s taking the entire platform, rather than just Elon Musk being outrageous or being responsive,” said Karen North, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Who and what has Musk been tweeting

The self-described “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” spent his first week on the job fielding complaints about individual account restrictions and responding to suggestions from users.

Roughly one-third of his tweets since he bought the company engaged with users about their suggestions on changes to the platform, per The Post analysis. He signaled support for ideas by responding with emoji and memes. They ranged from his plan to charge users $8 per month for a blue “verified” check mark and removing character limits on tweets to integrating a dogecoin payment system on Twitter.

In promoting his $8 verification plan, he tweeted a meme that compared the monthly charge to the cost of a single Starbucks drink and ridiculed critics’ willingness to pay for the latter, but not the former. The tweet had garnered 1.7 million likes as of Thursday evening.

Musk has also liked more than 130 tweets during the week. The topics of those tweets vary from free speech to calls to bring back the short-form video platform Vine and pay content creators.

“It’s almost comedic in how he is live tweeting, stumbling through his ideas and how he’s going to make this platform work,” said Brandie Nonnecke, founding director of the CITRIS Policy Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, which studies technology policy.

But some experts say that transparency will score him big points with users, especially if he’s seen as shaking up the norm of how Twitter is run.

Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of information science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, compared it to someone replacing the rigorous scientific process of user-experience testing and instead walking into a crowded bar and saying: “Hey, what do you think?”

Tweeting at the boss

Getting the attention of Twitter’s owner used to involve tagging Jack Dorsey, a man who celebrated one birthday by staying silent for 10 days and being eaten up by mosquitoes in a cave.

Musk is a different kind of owner, who is likely discovering that his typical Twitter banter now has more consequences, evidenced by the backlash to his now-deleted tweet promoting a conspiracy theory about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

In addition to engaging with users around changes, about one-fifth of Musk’s tweets since he bought the company have promoted or defended Twitter, including its policies around policing misinformation. Another 10 percent of Musk’s tweets trolled his ideological adversaries or responded positively to other users who did so.

“There's two sides to Musk — there’s the businessman side and then there's this free speech evangelist side,” Nonnecke said. “Perhaps he's trying to facilitate some of that by engaging with individuals on the platform directly.”

Roughly 12 percent of his Twitter activity as owner of Twitter has promoted his other companies, according to The Post analysis. Musk’s Twitter celebrity amounts to free advertising for his car company, Tesla, which has a long-standing policy against paying for advertising, said Michelle Amazeen, the director of the Communication Research Center at Boston University.

The hotline operator bit “is either really good or really bad for Tesla stockholders,” said David Karpf, an associate professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

Power users and conservatives

Musk’s tweets have attracted the attention of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), novelist Stephen King — but also right-wing influencers and others now looking to speak to the Twitter boss.

    Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8

    — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2022

Conservative politicians and influencers have been gleeful that Musk has taken over the platform because they feel silenced as punishment.

The mood on Twitter now—giddy, hopeful, incredulous—is what freedom does to people’s who have been suppressed. It helps us understand in a small way what Eastern Europeans felt when the Berlin Wall came down. It also helps us understand who our modern-day oppressors are @elonmusk

    — Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) October 28, 2022

A group of right-wing YouTubers cracked open a bottle of Louis XIII cognac (which sells for several thousands of dollars) and toasted — “To Free Speech!” — in celebration of Musk purchasing Twitter.

One of the biggest open questions is whether Musk will reinstate accounts that were suspended for spreading misinformation. Musk tweeted on Oct. 28 that he would form a moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints” before taking any action on suspended accounts.

When word broke Monday that the account of Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for Arizona secretary of state, had been suspended, Musk tweeted that he was “looking into it.”

Amazeen noted that the message sends signals to conservatives who have complained about being censored on the platform, without “committing to anything.”

“He’s been very deliberate in implying that he will bring people back, but he’s also been very deliberate in making sure that people know that there will be rules," North said.

Holding the keys to the kingdom

Margaret O’Mara, a University of Washington historian who writes about the tech industry, said Musk has long practiced the Silicon Valley method of disrupting old-school bureaucratic structures for the sake of innovation. But that is usually a facade, she said.

“Underneath that swagger, there are people who have management expertise who run the company with things they teach you in business school,” she said, later adding: “You do have to have the bean-counters or the solid unflashy engineers.”

It appears Musk may actually want to walk the walk of tech owner swooping in to save the day all on his own, considering he dissolved Twitter’s board of directors and installed himself as chief executive, she said.

There is a long history of rich people buying modes of information dissemination, said Matthew Pressman, an associate professor of journalism at Seton Hall University.

He said those with deep pockets have purchased newspapers over the years for one of two reasons: either to exert more political influence or to portray their purchase as benevolence saving democracy.

Musk falls into the second category, Pressman said adding that while Musk’s trial balloons haven’t all gone over well so far, “the results have historically been better when it’s someone who believes in the business.”

(Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, stated the latter reason for buying The Washington Post.)

For Nonnecke, all of Musk’s Twitter activity since the purchase “reinforces his position as the sole owner and overseer of the platform."

“He wants to be the ruler of that kingdom," she said. “And I think by engaging with people on there, he’s trying to reinforce that he’s the one in charge.”

In the ultimate show of being in charge, Elon Musk began mass layoffs at the 7,500-employee company on Friday.

After months of legal disputes, Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter and exerted control of the social media company, firing key executives on Oct. 27. (Video: Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)

Source

On Friday, AMD announced its newest generation of graphics cards. The RDNA 3 based AMD Radeon 7000 series cards were announced via its live-streaming conference.

RDNA 3

In it, AMD first talked about it’s Ryzen 7000 CPUs. It also talked about the ecosystem AMD has created with all the other products like gaming consoles using AMD processors. After a lot of self-praise, AMD finally revealed the RDNA 3 graphics cards architecture.

AMD said that power and efficiency is its priority when designing the RDNA 3. With an aim of being a leader in performance-per-watt. With RDNA 3 AMD claims it wants to bring CPUs, GPUs and softwares to come together.

Chiplet Design For Graphics Cards

AMD announced that the RDNA 3 will be based on a chiplet design and will be the world’s first chiplet based gaming GPU. With it, AMD claimed that it allows them to use a modular approach and optimize the performance efficiency.

They said that, just like on the Ryzen CPUs, chiplet design allows them to mix and match the technology for each function.

In it, AMD has divided the GPU into two main parts. The GCD, which is the main processor based on the 5nm technology in a 306mm2 size and 96 compute units in the GPU. This includes the shaders, the display engine and a newly made media engine too.

The second part is the MCD, which is for the cache and is based on the 6nm technology. It’s for the memory sub-system, featuring GDDR6 controllers and up-to 96 MB of Infinity Cache. Basically, the MCD will be 37.5mm2 in size and will come with 6 chiplets in the flagship graphics card.

RDNA 3 Performance

All this, AMD claims, gives them a powerful graphics capability. With 61 TFLOPS of compute, compared to 23 TFLOPS in RDNA 2. World’s fastest chiplet interconnect with 5.3 TB/s of peak bandwidth. Allowing full potential of 24 GB of GDDR6 memory. When all put together, AMD said it gives a total of 58 billion transistors in this design. Giving what AMD claims an incredible amount of gaming performance.

AMD said that it is going to use two different clocks in the RDNA 3 architecture for better optimized performance. The shader clock will run at 2.3 GHz, allowing 25% power savings. The powerful gaming clock will run at 2.5 GHz at 15% higher frequency than RDNA 2 at launch.

AMD claims that RDNA 3 has 54% improvement over the RDNA 2 architecture in performance-per-watt.

AMD also claims that the new MCD cache, with it’s 5.3 TB/s of peak bandwidth, is 2.7x faster than the RDNA 2 architecture. It’s based on the 2nd gen Infinity Cache. It also claims that each of the 6 chiplets are connected to the 64-bits of GDDR6 memory, which combined makes up to 384-bit memory width.

New RDNA 3 Unified Compute Unit

AMD also detailed the new RDNA 3 based gaming oriented Unified Compute Units. With an insistence on the word unified. It’s an integrated unit with shared resources. It has highly efficient stream processing, additional AI acceleration capabilities and enhanced ray-tracing acceleration.

Thanks to the 5nm tech, AMD claims to be able to pack 54% more transistors in a less area, increasing the transistor density by 165%.

AMD also detailed the new Stream Processors. It uses a new dual issue wave 32 units. Allowing two different instructions in the 32 lane or use them in parallel like in RDNA 2. Allowing two different operations or mixing and matching workloads. All resulting in faster frame render times for higher FPS and better utilization of all the functions in the compute unit. Allowing it to handle 2x the instructions per clock.

Then AMD talked about the new RDNA AI acceleration. With the AI accelerators being 2 per compute unit, allowing up-to 2.7x performance.

AMD also showed its 2nd gen ray-tracing accelerator, built on new instructions in the shader and with a support for many features. All of it combined, AMD claims that it has 50% more performance per compute unit in ray-tracing.

New Display Engine

AMD announced a new Radiance Display Engine. It features the industry’s first DisplayPort 2.1 support for a high performance gaming graphics card. DisplayPort 2.1 supports 480Hz of refresh rates at 4K resolution and up to 165Hz at 8K.

This new display engine supports 12 bit-per-channel color, allowing up to a massive amount of 68 billion colors.

The display link bandwidth is increased up to 64 Gbps which is a double than that of RDNA 2 and gives higher refresh rates at higher resolutions.

It’s important to mention that Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 does not come with the DisplayPort 2.1 or even 2.0 support.

New Dual Media Engine

AMD has also announced a new Dual Media Engine. The new media engine supports 2 simultaneous encode and decode together up to 8K60 for AVC (H.264) and HEVC (H.265).

It also supports the latest gen hardware AV1 encoding and decoding. The new media engine also comes with an enhance AI support for video encoding.

The new media engine comes with a 1.8x improvement in the performance when compared to RDNA2.

RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT Announced

After all the details about the RDNA 3 architecture, AMD finally revealed the details of the graphics cards in the RX 7000 series.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX with 24GB of GDDR6 and the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT with 20GB of memory.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

AMD claims that the RX 7900 XTX is up to 1.7x faster than AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT graphics card at native 4K. It also claims that it has 1.6x more performance in ray-tracing in the same.

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX features 96 RDNA 3 based Unified Compute Units and runs at 2.3 GHz game clock. It comes with 24 GB of GDDR6 with 384-bit support. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX comes with AV1 encode and decode for streaming and video export. It also has the latest DisplayPort 2.1 technology for up to 4K 480 FPS or 8K 165 FPS.

The total board power, AMD claims, is just 355W. A reminder, Nvidia claims that it’s latest-gen flagship GeForce RTX 4090 requires 450W. So AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX requiring just 355W is very much welcome.

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT

AMD also announced Radeon RX 7900 XT which it claims comes with a massive leap in performance over the previous generation.

It features 84 Unified Compute Units running at a game clock of 2 GHz. The RX 7900 XT comes with 20 GB of GDDR6 memory at 320-bit. It also comes with the same type of support for AV1 and DisplayPort 2.1.

The RX 7900 XT requires just 300W of total board power.

Two 8-pin PCIe Power Connectors And Nvidia

To rub it in into Nvidia, AMD announced that these new cards do not require one to rebuilt their PCs. Nor there is any need for any new power adapter.

It’s because these cards will not be using the new 16-pin power adapter, which Nvidia is using in its RTX 4090 cards. To those who are unaware, the internet is filled with reports of these new 16-pin power adapters melting and potentially even damaging the RTX 4090 cards.

Instead, RX 7900 XTX will require 2 8-pin PCIe GPU power cables, which is a standard now. Custom graphics card manufacturers might add one more 8-pin requirement though, to allow for more overclocking.

In addition to above, AMD detailed how their new graphics cards come with DisplayPort 2.1 and the latest generation of graphics cards from their rival (Nvidia) come with just DisplayPort 1.4 support. AMD says that a lot of display manufacturers, including Dell, Samsung, ASUS, LG and Acer are going to launch displays with DisplayPort 2.1 support starting next year.

AMD also announced new FSR 2.2 which is an improvement over FSR 2.

Performance

AMD claims that with RX 7900 XTX, one will be able to game at 1440P at high refresh rates. With the likes of Apex Legends reaching 300 FPS, Overwatch 2 reaching 600 FPS and Valorant reaching 833 FPS.

In 4K gaming, these new cards do even better. AMD claims that at max settings with FSR up-scaling enabled, many AAA games reach 350 FPS. With some multiplayer games even reaching 700 FPS.

AMD also showcased a game running at 96 FPS at 8K resolution with FSR enabled.

It also claimed that in Ray-Tracing at 4K, many games are able to run above 60 FPS with FSR enabled.

AMD then announced its partnership with many game developers, including Ubisoft and Epic and claimed optimized performance for the Radeon graphics cards in their gaming engines and upcoming games.

FSR 3 Announced

AMD in its announcement also announced a new version of it’s up-scaling tech FSR. Namely, FSR 3. It seems to be directly rivaling Nvidia’s DLSS 3. Those unaware, DLSS 3 is accused of inserting fake frames into the games to make it look smooth but in real the outcome is not so smooth performance increase.

FSR 3, AMD claims, uses new fluid motion technology. Coming in 2023, AMD claims it will provide 2x more FPS over FSR 2.

Software, Streaming and Solutions

AMD dedicated the third part of it’s conference to three different things. Software, Streaming and Solutions.

They detailed the AMD Adrenalin Software for AMD graphics cards which offers state-of-the-art features and next level gaming experiences, streaming and creation. To put the point forward, AMD showed how AMD Adrenalin Software offers so many features in one unified UI, without any registration or log-ins required and it does not track the users either. This is a direct targeting of Nvidia GeForce Experience, which does have these problems.

In new features, AMD announced a new Hypr-RX mode in the AMD Adrenalin Software. Hypr-RX combines all the performance boosting technologies of the Adrenalin all at the same time to boost the gaming performance in a one-click experience to improve the frame rate and latency.

It showed how a game, with Hypr-RX, saw the FPS increase from 90 FPS to 166 FPS and latency decrease from 30 ms to 11 ms. The new Hypr-RX tech is going to come out early next year.

Streaming

AMD claims it has worked with a famous video streaming software to improve video streaming quality across all bit-rates on Radeon RX 6000 and RX 7000 series. It also detailed how AV1 support is going to improve streaming a lot.

Encoding

AMD says that the new RDNA 3 Media Engine will be very useful for video encoding too. With the dedicated hardware AV1 processor, video encoding (converting) is 7x times than software encoding, even at 8K. With a support for a range of software.

SmartAccess Video

AMD showed something which it calls SmartAccess Video for video creators. It combines the power of Ryzen 7000 processors with Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards to distribute the encoding and decoding workloads between the CPU and GPU across 4K and 8K editing to give faster performance.

In transcoding, AMD claims SmartAccess Video reduces the encoding time by one third. With support across various software.

AMD Advantage Gaming Desktops

AMD announced new AMD Advantage Gaming Desktops. It partnered with various computer makers to make these desktops. It combines all the hardware mentioned in this conference and brings them together in one desktop.

The AMD Advantage Gaming Desktops feature AMD Ryzen 9 7950X processor combined with AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card and various technologies like smart access memory and SmartAccess video. All that, in addition to the software support of AMD Adrenalin Software.

AMD claims that AMD Advantage Gaming Desktops also go a step further by combining all the components, from the motherboard, to the NVMe drives, to memory, to power supply and are made to work seamlessly together and they are turned to provide maximum performance with every design and quality.

They claim that they are designed and tested for the highest performance and refresh rates possible.

RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT Prices And Release Date

After such a long keynote. AMD finally revealed the prices of AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT graphics cards.

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX will cost $999 and the Radeon RX 7900 XT will cost $899. Which is far, far cheaper than Nvidia’s current flagship offering.

The RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT will release on December 13 this year.

Conclusion

There are many important points we would like to make. Besides all the marketing taglines, AMD seems to have done quite a good work. Especially when it comes to pricing and power usage. This card is most likely going to rival Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics cards, not RTX 4090.

Some Twitter users like @harukaze5719 even made a graph showing how it might perform compared to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 and results look promising.

Another famous Twitter user @Kepler_L2 is disappointed by its Ray-Tracing performance though. Honestly, many of us don’t care about the Ray-Tracing performance as long as the main performance is good enough.

The chiplet design is quite an interesting move by AMD. We will have to see how much improvement or a problem it can be. Simply put, chiplets are easy to manufacture when compared to massive single processors. However, they have various problems associated with them, like performance issues between chiplets and latency between them. However, going forward we might see all processor manufacturers, whether it’s CPU or GPU, to adapt this technology.

Meanwhile, TechPowerUp is reporting that ASUS has already announced its own RX 7900 series cards with 3 8-ping power plugs.

Coming back to performance. It’s never wise to believe what the company says. They might say anything they want. A lot of the performance stats mentioned in the conference are with the FSR enabled, which does not show true performance numbers.

It’s only when the reviews and benchmark arrive that we might understand how things stand, whether AMD can take on Nvidia properly. Till then, we will remain quite excited about it.

RX 7900 XTX, 7900 XT GPUs & Everything Else Announced By AMD

Google Play Games for PC is now available in 8 more Countries

In August 2022, the Silicon Valley giant soft-launched the Beta for the service to users in Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. Today, Google Play Games for PC is available for users in the following regions: Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, and the U.S.

How to sign up for Google Play Games for PC (beta)

You can sign up to access the open beta for Google Play Games on PC at the official website. If you're in one of the Countries where the service is available, you will get an email with a link to download the desktop client. Install it on your PC, and you will be able to download and play the Android games on your Windows computer. The current catalog has over 40 games including Asphalt 9: Legends, Cookie Run, Horizon Chase to name a few. A user has posted a full list of the available games here.

Google has lowered the system requirements for its emulator. Here is what you will need to run it on your PC.

Google Play Games for PC System Requirements

• Operating System: Windows 10 v2004
• Storage: Solid state drive (SSD) with 10 GB of space
• Memory: 8GB of RAM
• Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 630 GPU or a Gaming-class GPU like Nvidia GeForce MX450
• Processor: 4 CPU physical cores
• Other requirements : Windows admin account, Hardware virtualization must be turned on

That's not too bad considering that when the platform launched earlier this year, it required a much more powerful computer with a Gaming Glass GPU, 20GB of storage space on an SSD, and an octa-core processor. The new system requirements are more sensible given that these are mobile games.

Google Play Games for PC runs on an emulator, I'm yet to test it, so I can't comment on the performance. Windows 11 supports WSA, which means you can install Android apps and games on your PC and play them. Why other with Google Play Games? There are a few factors that you should consider.  According to Google, the graphics are optimized for bigger screens. Unlike mobile games that you can sideload via WSA or the Amazon Appstore, the games on Google Play Games have been designed to support mouse and keyboard input, which should theoretically be easier to use than a version intended to run on touchscreen devices. While WSA requires Windows 11, Google's app supports Windows 10.

The games sync across your devices, through your Google Account. So, you could play a game on your PC, and pick it up where you left off on your phone (or Chrome OS), or vice versa. You can earn Google Play Points when you buy something with Google Play Games, including in-app items and subscriptions. These points can be redeemed via PC or your phone. The desktop client downloads the games, and installs them on your PC, so it doesn't stream them. Interestingly, per the documentation on Google's Dev portal, the games won't have ads on PCs.

Early user reviews aren't very impressive, people say that games have lags, and some games run in a mobile-screen sized window instead of full screen mode. I have also come across reports that say it doesn't work on AMD computers. The app is not available for Linux and macOS yet.

Let's hope Google Play Games on PC fares better than the ill-fated Stadia.

Have you tried Google Play Games on your PC?

Google Play Games for PC is now available in the U.S, Canada and 6 more Countries

Cherry, the original mechanical switch maker, is continuing to tap the mechanical keyboard community for new product ideas. Its new mechanical switch, the Cherry MX Black Clear-Top, is a nod to enthusiasts who would love to turn in their modern-day clacker for an old-school terminal keyboard with extra-smooth typing.

’80s roots

Before Cherry's Thursday announcement of plans to release the MX Black Clear-Top, the switch was known to hobbyists as the Nixie switch. Cherry made the switch in the 1980s for German office machine-maker Nixdorf Computer AG. The German switch maker was tasked with creating a version of its linear MX Black switch with "milky" upper housing, a 63.5 g actuation force rather than 60 g, and "the relatively rare solution at the time of having a diode integrated into the switch for n-key rollover," Cherry's announcement explained.

 

The linear switch ended up being used primarily in Nixdorf's CT06-CT07/2 M Softkeys keyboards targeted at terminals, servers, and minicomputers.

 

Siemens' acquisition of Nixdorf in 1990, however, essentially meant the end of production of the keyboards and the black-and-white switches that lived within them.

Rare to find

That has made the Nixie switch quite the rarity for keyboard DIYers, as you need to get your hands on one of those old terminal keyboards in order to find them. Sightings of keyboards with the switches have garnered wide interest since they became so hard to find (just look at this forum post on mechanical keyboard enthusiast site Geekhack with more than 5,200 reads).

 

As such, resellers tend to charge a pretty penny. Redditors pointed to Nixie switches going for $3 to $5 each, and in 2018, we even saw someone attempt to sell them for 7.6 euro each. For comparison, you can buy a Cherry MX Black switch for $0.69 each right now.

 

What’s so special about this switch?

But what's so great about typing with this switch? The switch formerly known as Nixie is like an MX Black switch but with a heavier actuation force requirement and a more striking appearance. The linear switches each have 4 mm of travel and 2 mm of pre-travel; however, the MX Black Clear-Top switches require more force to start depressing (40 g versus 30 g for MX Black switches).

 

Cherry MX Black Clear-Top force curve.

 

Cherry MX Black force curve.

 

Like with many mechanical switches, obsession is based on reportedly admirable smooth travel and what Cherry described as "decent acoustics."

 

Switch reviewer ThereminGoat, described the Nixie switch as "absolutely" smoother than "most" Cherry switches.

 

They also said the switch makes a "solid, muted, and deep bottoming out noise; whereas, the topping out noise is ever so slightly thinner and shifted toward a higher pitched sound." Curious ears can check out Chyrosran22's review of the Nixdorf CT06-CT07/2 M Softkeys on YouTube (among others) to hear more.

 

With a nearly mythical reputation like that, you might wonder why Cherry decided to rebrand the Nixie to a name with much less imagination.

 

Cherry said it renamed the Nixie switch to reflect "enhancements" it made. The switch looks like it used to, but Cherry will sell it with Krytox GLP 205 Grade 0 Grease inside for "lower-friction actuation with optimized acoustics without negatively affecting the typing feel" or durability claims. This a popular lubricant, especially for linear switches like the MX Black Clear-Top.

 

The MX Black Clear-Top has gold crosspoint contacts and a stainless-steel spring, like Cherry's other switches.

Cherry

 

This may be a wise investment, as ThereminGoat said the Nixies were "not free from scratch," and not as impressively smooth compared to some of today's switches, which, of course, include much more than Cherry brand options.

 

For those who prefer a different type of lubrication or to do it themselves, Cherry is also releasing a lube-free version of the MX Black Clear-Top.

 

Additionally, some (although not Cherry) might say the switch's descriptive name falls more in line with how Cherry's other switches are named (MX Black, MX Red, MX Brown, et cetera).

 

The new name also hints at the switch's connection to the MX Black.

 

Overall, Cherry claims the switch improves on the '80s design because it's made with modern manufacturing techniques, enabling a 50 million actuation warranty. It goes without saying that switches harvested from a decades-old keyboard you found at a thrift store or on eBay do not have comparable durability claims.

 

Cherry said MX Black Clear-Top mechanical switches will be available from "all official distributors worldwide" at the start of 2023.

 

The switch is the second release from Cherry that was recently inspired by community interests. Last month, it announced the Cherry MX Ergo Clear, based on a so-called Frankenswitch (a mechanical switch that combines parts from different switches) design shared by an enthusiast in a forum post in 2011.

 

Cherry’s new mechanical switch hails from ’80s terminal keyboards

According to the new Twitter head, no changes have been made to content moderation, so this shouldn’t affect advertisers. He also claimed he did everything possible to “appease the activists” – before accusing them of “trying to destroy free speech in America.”

While the aforementioned companies have pulled their ads from the platform, it is by no means a permanent move. They claim that they just want to see how things evolve at Twitter now that the platform has a new leadership. If the platform gets a reputation as being toxic, then companies could worry about their brands appearing in ads there.

Most recently, Twitter has started laying off almost half of its staff, and those affected are hitting back by suing the company due to a lack of notice being given before they were fired. Some of those affected by the decision have moved over to the Fediverse – a federation of interoperable social networks. The decision to lay off so many employees is likely to only polarize people further.

Source: Elon Musk (Twitter) via CNBC

Twitter CEO Elon Musk says ad revenue has dropped massively

On November 1, China’s mouthpiece Global Times trumpeted that the Mengtian lab module, the third and final part of its Tiangong space station, docked with the core Tianhe module 13 hours after being launched. Next, the Tianhe and Mengtian modules will dock with the Wentian lab module, completing Tiangong’s T-shaped basic structure.

Chinese state outlet Xinhua describes the 17.88-meter-long, 23-ton Mengtian module as the heaviest operational single-cabin active spacecraft in orbit. Mengtian consists of a work cabin, a cargo airlock cabin, a payload cabin and a resource cabin, Xinhua said. In addition, it has eight scientific experiment cabinets and 37 extravehicular installation options, enabling more in-cabin and out-cabin experiments in a microgravity environment.

Mengtian also carries the world’s first space atomic clock system, consisting of a hydrogen clock, a rubidium clock and an optical clock. Xinhua notes that it is the world’s most accurate time and frequency system, built to support fundamental physics research such as measuring gravitational redshift and verifying the constant speed of light.

It also carries specialized payloads, such as a rack capable of producing ultra-cold quantum gas close to absolute zero, a cabinet that, for the first time, allows filming material changes in high temperatures with X-rays and a cutting-edge space-based fluids physics lab.

These payloads, Xinhua notes, create experimental conditions not achievable on Earth, serving as incubators for futuristic technologies such as new alloys, crystals and semiconductors. Mengtian also has a dexterous robotic arm and augmented reality glass to assist the crew with maintenance.

The Tiangong program has been partly driven by a US ban on cooperating with China in space projects, forcing Beijing to become self-reliant in space. The 2011 Wolf Amendment prohibits NASA from any form of bilateral space cooperation with China without special approval from the US Congress, effectively banning China from the ISS.

However, Tiangong may have been instrumental for the Biden administration to extend the ISS lifespan until 2030, up from its planned initial decommissioning date in 2024. NASA notes should the ISS be decommissioned and replaced by privately-operated space stations, the Tiangong will remain the only operational state-operated space station.

In contrast to the US’ exclusionary approach, China has adopted an open-door policy.

China’s 2021 White Paper on its space program states that one of its objectives is to “to facilitate global consensus on our shared responsibility in utilizing outer space for peaceful purposes and safeguarding its security for the benefit of all humanity.”

The paper also emphasizes that China “always combines independence and self-reliance with opening to the outside world,” and “has actively promoted global governance of outer space, and carried out international cooperation in space science, technology and application through bilateral and multilateral mechanisms.”

One of the more ambitious aims of China’s space program is to position the country as a leading provider of space-based international public goods and services, such as planetary defense. Last month, Asia Times reported about China’s plans to conduct its first asteroid deflection test in 2025 or 2026, which copies NASA’s successful DART program in September NASA used a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid off-course, in the first successful mission of its type.

China has also taken pioneering steps in Mars exploration. In July, Asia Times reported on the completion of China’s Tianwen-1 Mars mission, which has provided medium and high-resolution photos of the planet’s surface. China has also stated that it is willing to share scientific data from its Tianwen-1 mission at an appropriate time and that scientists are welcome to apply for research over the data.

Moreover, China has also announced plans to send men to the moon, paving the potential way for its future settlement and economic use. This September, Asia Times reported on China’s plans to send its taikonauts to the moon by 2030 using an indigenously-upgraded Long 05 March rocket.

In  January, Asia Times reported on China and Russia’s joint plans to establish a permanent moon base by 2027. The proposed permanent moon base, the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), is envisioned as an experimental complex designed for multiple scientific activities, such as moon exploration, moon-based observation, research experiments and observation.

However, China’s space program also has military purposes, reflecting the dual-use nature of space technologies.

This August, Asia Times reported that China’s homegrown Beidou satellite navigation system started to allow mobile phone users to send and receive short messages through the system, expanding its use in diverse civilian applications. However, Beidou could also be used for military tactical communications and to guide long-range strikes.

In 2018, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) tested a Beidou smartwatch which tracks soldiers’ health and location and allows them to call for help and report live situations. In addition, Beidou could also be used to guide China’s Thunder Stone (LS-6) glide bomb, which is analogous to the US JDAM precision-guided munition, and the DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

In addition to tactical military communications and weapons guidance, China may use its commercial satellites as ad-hoc military spy satellites.

This April, Asia Times reported on China’s artificial intelligence (AI) upgrade to its Jilin-1 commercial imaging satellite, which enabled it to achieve a 95% success rate in identifying small objects such as cars and planes on the street, marking a sevenfold increase from previous technology.

China’s Tiangong space station, along with its other space projects, aims to fulfill larger strategic goals. A 2021 study by the French Institute of International Relations notes that China’s space doctrine is based on three pillars: national development, military empowerment and great power competition, with the first two pillars providing the initial impetus and the last pillar intensifying over the past few decades against a backdrop of Sino-US rivalry.

China may also seek to use the Tiangong to persuade other nations to its side to legitimize its standing as an established space power.  

This April, Global Times declared that the Tiangong is open to all UN member states, with nine projects involving 17 countries including Kenya, Russia, Mexico, Japan, and Peru, alongside 23 entities selected among the first batch of scientific experiments to be carried onboard the station.

Chan De Guzman notes in an October article for Time Magazine that since 2004 the European Space Agency (ESA) and China have exchanged satellite data to advance Earth science research. Reflecting China’s open-door space policy, De Guzman also notes that the Tiangong is designed to be “inclusive” and adaptable for foreign astronauts.

Source

Twitter owner, sole director and – according to his Twitter profile, now also "Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator" – has reportedly informed company staff that layoffs begin tomorrow.

Accounts of an internal email detailing the layoffs have reached The New York Times and The Washington Post, both of which report that as of Thursday night US time Twitter has closed its offices and made it impossible for staff to access them with key cards.

The internal email reportedly advises staff that by 9AM Pacific Time on Friday all staff will receive a message with the subject line "Your Role at Twitter."

Those who still have a role will get that email to their Twitter email account.

Those who are being let go will get it at their personal account. The personal touch.

Musk wrote the layoffs are necessary "In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path" and that the company's global workforce will be impacted.

"We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company's success moving forward," the email states.

The mail from Musk also includes the following text:

We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted. Thank you for continuing to adhere to Twitter policies that prohibit you from discussing confidential company information on social media, with the press or elsewhere.

Yeah, sorry, Elon: looks like not everyone is observing those policies right now.

Reports viewed by The Register offer little insight into the magnitude of the layoffs. The Twitter page on sacking-tracking site The Layoff includes posts claiming 800 staff will be let go in a first round, with another 500 to follow. The Washington Post suggests that as much as 50 percent of Twitter's 7500-strong global workforce might be shown the door.

The terms on which Musk acquired Twitter mean it carries around $13 billion of debt, so has enormous interest bills to pay – bills that are likely to increase over the next few months as central banks use interest rate hikes to (hopefully) curb inflation.

Twitter was largely unprofitable during its nine years as a public company and in its most recently reported quarter revealed a net loss of $270 million on revenue of $1.18 billion.

Revenue is unlikely to increase in the short term, as some advertisers put their wallets away during tough economic times and others stop spending with Twitter for fear of Musk making changes that could lead to a negative association for their brands.

Musk has floated the idea of making Twitter's ~400,000 verified account holders pay $8/month to retain that status as a revenue-raising measure to supplement advertising revenue.

The idea has also earned criticism as a misunderstanding of why verified accounts matter – as tokens of trustworthiness, not status – with the thread below from actor Rob Kazinsky one example of such thinking.

Years ago, before verified accounts were a thing, back when I was on Eastenders, I was contacted multiple times by parents of children who had been “conversing” with me online. 11-15 year old children that had been talking with a fake me.I was informed one of these children-
    — Rob Kazinsky (@RobertKazinsky) November 2, 2022

If Musk does charge for verified accounts, the move would raise perhaps $40 million a year – even if all current verified Twitter users decide to pay. It's far from certain that all will do so.

That leaves cutting costs as a seeming inevitability. And at 9AM Pacific time on November 4, we'll have a better idea of the extent to which Twitter staff will contribute to that effort. ®

Updated at 04:30 UTC to add

Twitter staff appear to have deduced they've been let go after trying to log on to corporate applications ... and not being able to do so.

Looks like I’m unemployed y’all. Just got remotely logged out of my work laptop and removed from Slack. #OneTeam forever. Loved you all so much.

So sad it had to end this way 💔

    — Simon Balmain  (@SBkcrn) November 4, 2022

The hashtag #OneTeam - internal Twitter-speak denoting the company's workplace culture - is also beginning to trend at the time of writing as staff show solidarity for discarded colleagues.

I just can't stop crying 😢 I'll never forget the bond we had as a team, our ability to laugh and come together when work got tough. There was never a day where I didn't leave my computer grateful for what we had.this was such a good run #OneTeam forever 🫡

— Amy Sligh (@ajamyjones) November 4, 2022

Has it already started? Happy layoff eve! pic.twitter.com/0AcaQjGJvm

— Rumman Chowdhury (@ruchowdh) November 4, 2022

Source

SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk will begin laying off Twitter employees on Friday, according to a companywide email, culling the social media service’s 7,500-person work force a little over a week after completing his blockbuster buyout.

Twitter employees were notified in the email that the layoffs were set to begin, according to a copy of the message seen by The New York Times.

Workers were instructed to go home and not go to the offices on Friday as the cuts proceeded. The message, which came from a generic address and was signed “Twitter,” did not detail the total number of layoffs.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force,” the email said. “We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

About half of Twitter’s workers appeared set to lose their jobs, according to previous internal messages and an investor, though the final count may take time to become clear. As the email landed in employee inboxes on Thursday evening, workers posted salute emojis and heart emojis in Slack, the messaging service. Later in the evening, some employees said they had lost access to the company’s systems, a possible prelude to being laid off.

Early Friday morning, the company began to notify some employees that they had been laid off. The emails, some of which were seen by The Times, varied by an employee’s region or country. One New York-based worker received an email saying their job had been “impacted” but that they would remain employed through a separation date in early February.

“During this time, you will be on a Non-Working Notice period and your access to Twitter systems will be deactivated,” read the email, which was also signed “Twitter.” Employees would receive details on severance “within a week.”

In Dublin, home to Twitter’s European headquarters, some employees on Friday morning were cut off from the internal computer system and received an email about the job cuts. “These decisions never come easy,” it said, “and it is with regret that we write to inform you that your role at Twitter has been identified as potentially impacted or at risk of redundancy.” Decisions were being made, the note said, depending on the country where a person lives and that more information would be shared “as soon as possible.”

Mr. Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on Oct. 27 and immediately fired its chief executive and other top managers. More executives have since resigned or were let go, while managers were asked to draw up lists of high- and low-performing employees, likely with an eye toward job cuts. Mr. Musk also brought in more than 50 engineers and employees from his other companies, including the electric carmaker Tesla, to review the layoff lists of Twitter workers and the social platform’s technology.

The world’s richest man faces pressure to make Twitter work financially. The deal was the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company in history. The billionaire also loaded about $13 billion in debt on Twitter for the acquisition and is on the hook to pay about $1 billion a year in interest payments. But Twitter has often lost money, and its cash flow is not robust. Mr. Musk may benefit from cutting costs so the company is less expensive to operate.

Mr. Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Twitter’s layoffs are unlikely to be the largest in the tech industry by total number. The computer manufacturer HP cut 24,600 of its employees, about 7.5 percent, in 2008. It later cut tens of thousands more, reaching about 30 percent of its work force.

More recently, other tech companies have slashed jobs. On Thursday, Lyft said it would lay off 13 percent, or about 650, of its 5,000 employees. Stripe, a payment processing platform, said it would cut 14 percent of its jobs, or roughly 1,100.

Jesse Lehrich, a founder of Accountable Tech, an industry advocacy organization, said the layoffs amounted to an arbitrary purge just days before the midterm elections on Tuesday.

“There is nothing visionary or innovative about summarily firing” workers by email, he said, especially people who have “specialized expertise and deep institutional knowledge” and before Mr. Musk “even seems to have a basic grasp of the business.”

While federal and California laws require companies to provide advance notice of mass layoffs, it was not clear whether Mr. Musk had done so. A spokesman for California’s Employment Development Department said on Thursday evening that it had received no such notices from Twitter, which is based in San Francisco and is expected to report mass layoffs to the agency.

Under the terms of his deal to acquire Twitter, Mr. Musk agreed to keep employee compensation and benefits the same for one year. Twitter workers are typically paid at least two months’ salary and the cash value of equity they were scheduled to receive within three months of a layoff date, according to an internal benefits summary seen by The Times.

Rumors of impending layoffs had been swirling at the company. On Wednesday, employees took note of a Slack message that suggested 3,738 people could be laid off. The message noted that changes could still be made to the list, according to a copy seen by The Times.

On Wednesday evening, some employees circulated a “Layoff Guide” with tips on corporate surveillance and employment rights. One worker created software to help colleagues download important emails and documents. He was later fired, he said.

On Thursday, workers got other signals that their workplace was changing. Twitter’s “Days of Rest,” which are monthly days off so employees can rest and recharge, were removed from their calendars, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Some workers also noticed that the employee directory had been taken offline, according to internal chats seen by The Times.

“Has the red wedding started?” one employee wrote on Slack, a reference to a massacre scene in “Game of Thrones.” Nine minutes later, the company sent the email informing workers of the layoffs. Employees who will keep their jobs would receive a message saying so on their corporate accounts, the message said, while employees being laid off would be notified on their personal accounts.

At Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco late Thursday, some employees milled about in one of the building lobbies, still wearing their corporate badges that grant them access to the premises. Some had drinks in hand from a bar attached to Twitter’s office and refreshed their phones for news about cuts.

Parker Lyons, a Twitter employee, tweeted a photo of a woman in a fetal position after the email hit. “8:59am notification,” he tweeted, referring to the latest time that layoff notifications were set to arrive on Friday.

By keeping workers out of Twitter’s offices on Friday, those who are laid off will be blocked  from taking any items from the company. “To help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data, our offices will be temporarily closed and all badge access will be suspended,” the email said.

This also means that many Twitter employees are likely to find out about their job status from their homes.

“We acknowledge this is an incredibly challenging experience to go through, whether or not you are impacted,” the email continued. “We are grateful for your contributions to Twitter and for your patience as we move through this process.”

Some other Twitter employees learned via email that they had not been laid off. That email  said that the company’s offices would reopen Monday, and that there would be more information to share next week.

Mr. Musk “is looking forward to communicating with everyone about his vision for the company soon,” it read.

Source

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AMD is launching the RX 7000 series graphics cards today based on the RDNA 3 architecture (codenamed Navi 3x). As of today, AMD has only announced its Navi 31-based RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT. The full specs of the two cards are detailed below.

RX 7900 XTX

The flagship RX 7900 XTX is packing 48 WGP (Work Group Processor) or 96 Compute Units (CU) for a total of 6,144 Stream Processors (SP). The Game Clock, which is the typical average clock speed of the GPU, is 2.3GHz. It has 24GB of 20Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 384-bit wide memory bus for a bandwidth of 960GB/s.The power consumption of the 7900 XTX is rated for 355W. With all this power, AMD claims the 7900 XTX is up tp 70% faster than the RX 6950 XT at 4K. The card is priced at $999.

RX 7900 XT

Meanwhile, the slightly cut-down RX 7900 XT features 42WGP or 84CU for a total of 5,376 SP. The 7900 XT has a game clock 2GHz. The memory subsystem is also slashed down to 20GB across a 320-bit bus. The bandwidth is 800GB/s (for 20Gbps). The infinity cache will also be decreased from 96MB down to 80MB. The power draw of the card is 300W. The card is priced at $899.

Both the RX 7900 XTX and the RX 7900 XT will be available right before Christmas on December 13.

AMD's new RDNA 3 RX 7900 XTX, 7900 XT look like true Nvidia RTX 4090, 4080 killers

It looks like the "Chief Twit" is not yet done revamping Twitter's workforce, as the popular microblogging site will reportedly start laying off its employees on Friday. According to a report by The Washington Post, about half of Twitter’s workers appeared set to lose their jobs, consistent with previous reports.

In an email which came from a generic address and was signed “Twitter,” employees were instructed to go home and not go to the offices on Friday as the cuts proceeded. "In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global work force," the email stated. "We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward."

Those who get to keep their jobs will receive an email with the subject line "Your Role at Twitter" through their work emails. Those who will be laid off, on the other hand, will be contacted by Twitter through their personal emails to discuss the next steps to take.

The layoffs are part of Musk's moves to make Twitter more profitable. The business magnate took on $13 billion in debt on Twitter for the acquisition and is on the hook to pay about $1 billion a year in interest payments. And because Musk said that Twitter cannot rely completely on advertisers and they need to "pay the bills somehow," he gave users the ability to wear a blue tick on their profile for $8 a month.

Source: The Washington Post (paywall)

This is how Twitter will lay off half of its employees

A realistic roundup of what today’s Matter launch means for your smart home