Archives 2023

Nothing Phone 2a is expected to be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2024. Over the past few weeks, details of a new smartphone from Nothing have surfaced online. The UK-based OEM is said to be working on the Nothing Phone 2a, which is likely to launch with trimmed specifications as compared to the company’s last handset, the Nothing Phone 2. Design renders alongside several key features of the purported phone have been tipped previously. Now, a tipster has suggested the price, colour options, and RAM and storage configurations of the Nothing Phone 2a.

Tipster Roland Quandt (@rquandt) shared in a post on X that the Nothing Phone 2a is likely to launch in Black and White colour options. He also claimed that the base variant of the smartphone with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage could be priced below EUR 400 (roughly Rs. 36,800). The tipster added that the handset could also be available in a 12GB + 256GB variant but did not hint at a price range for this option. 

An earlier leak suggested that the Nothing Phone 2a will be listed at $400 (roughly Rs. 33,200). This leak also showed a PVT unit of the phone that featured a horizontal camera module placed centrally towards the top of the back panel, while the front panel was seen with a centred hole-punch slot for the front camera. It was also seen with a redesigned Glyph Interface.

Meanwhile, a recent report had claimed that the Nothing Phone 2a could include a 1/1.5-inch 50-megapixel Samsung S5KNG9 primary sensor alongside a 1/2.76-inch 50-megapixel Samsung S5KJN1 sensor with an ultrawide lens at the back. It may also get a 32-megapixel Sony IMX615 front camera sensor.

The Nothing Phone 2a has been tipped to come with a MediaTek Dimenisty 7200 SoC and a 6.7-inch  120Hz AMOLED panel with a resolution of 1,084 x 2,412 pixels. It is likely to ship with Android 14-based Nothing OS 2.5. The phone is expected to launch at the ‘Nothing to See’ MWC event in Barcelona on February 27.

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Open a conversation:

Tap the “+” icon:

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Choose your message lifespan:

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Watch it vanish:

Additional tips:

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act requires Apple and Google to enable developers to publish their iOS apps outside of the App Store and Google Play Store, respectively. A similar set of new regulations that will require both the companies to allow app downloading from outside their official app stores is reportedly being drafted in Japan as well.
As per a report by Nikkei Asia, the Japanese government is preparing laws that will require companies that have app stores to allow users to download apps outside their official app stores and provide alternative payment methods.
The report said that the move is “a bid to curb abuse of their dominant position in the Japanese market.”
Legislation slated for next year
The legislation is expected to be sent to parliament next year, the report said, adding that it will “restrict moves by platform operators.”
“Legislation slated to be sent to the parliament in 2024 would restrict moves by platform operators to keep users in the operators’ own ecosystems and shut out rivals, focusing mainly on four areas: app stores and payments, search, browsers, and operating systems,” the report added.
The regulations will allow the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) to impose fines on companies for not adhering to the rules. The fines may be up to 6% of the revenue generated from illegal activities.
The legislation will allow developers to choose their own payment systems so that they won’t have to pay a cut to Apple and Google.
Apple is reportedly working on allowing users in Europe to sideload apps on iPhones in a bid to comply with the EU’s DMA. The iPhone maker’s recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed the company expects to make policy changes related to applications running on iOS and iPadOS.

Over the past year, edtech startup Byju’s has been riddled with multiple problems. Now, the company faces a fresh setback. US-based non-profit organisation and educational website Code.org has sued Byju’s subsidiary WhiteHat Jr. The litigation against the company’s coding-for-kids business was filed in a California district court over payment dues. The court’s website claims that the lawsuit was filed by Code.org on December 1.
What is Code.org
Code.org is an education-related nonprofit organisation. This platform provides K-12 computer science curriculum in school districts in the US. According to the company’s website, its donors include Microsoft, Amazon and Google, among others.
Why the non-profit is suing Whitehat Jr
In April 2022, Code.org and Byju’s Whitehat Jr entered into an agreement. As per this collaboration, the former agreed to licence the latter certain limited rights to use its platform and lesson content for WhiteHat’s online tutoring service.
For this contract, WhiteHat Jr agreed to pay Code.org licensing fees totaling $4 million to a four-year schedule. According to a report by TechCrunch, the US platform claims that WhiteHat Jr did not honour the payment schedule and continued to leverage its coding courseware.

As per the legal complaint, WhiteHat Jr paid its 2022 licensing fee. However, earlier this year, the company informed the nonprofit that it would be unable to make the remaining scheduled payments under the four-year deal.
Code.org’s lawyers have argued that the original contract clearly states that even in the event of termination, WhiteHat Jr would not be relieved of its obligation to pay all future licensing payments that are still owed. In this case, the amount is $3 million.
In 2020, Byju’s acquired WhiteHat Jr in an all-cash deal worth $300 million. This marked the edtech startup’s entry into the computer code learning segment with a focus on high school and college students. However Byju’s has been winding down the coding platform since 2022.

The billionaire co-founder of Thursday, declaring ambitions to become a top global carmaker in 15 to 20 years and compete against Tesla Inc. and Porsche AG. The SU7, which stands for Speed Ultra, rolled onto a stage at the China National Convention Center in Beijing with no drivers visible, ending a presentation by CEO and co-founder Lei Jun in front of thousands of people. 

Lei spent hours detailing the car’s features, which include a range of up to 800 kilometers (500 miles) on a single charge, adjustable spoilers, unique colors and a top speed of 265 kilometers an hour. 

The five-seat sedan will be powered by batteries from Chinese market leaders Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. and BYD Co., depending on whether it has a single or dual motor configuration.

Xiaomi’s EV foray is a $10 billion wager by Lei that his company can shake up the transport sector much as it did smartphones a decade ago. Lei, also a prolific venture investor, has called it his final entrepreneurial bet. 

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“Xiaomi’s goal is to make a dream car that is as good as Porsche and Tesla,” Lei said Thursday at the launch event.

But in the time since first announcing his EV plans in 2021, the regulatory landscape and competition in China — the world’s biggest car market — have changed significantly. 

Beijing has been limiting manufacturing permits to new market entrants, which means Xiaomi has to partner with state-owned Beijing Automotive Group Co. to produce its EVs. State subsidies that reimbursed consumers with as much as 60,000 yuan ($8,440) for an EV purchase ended in 2022. The SU7 is also vying for attention in a market that has hundreds of models from dozens of brands.

Lei has previously said Xiaomi intends the SU7 to rival Porsche’s Taycan Turbo in terms of performance and Tesla’s Model S in technology features. The Model S starts at 698,900 yuan and the Taycan at 898,000 yuan, which is much higher than the medium price bracket of 200,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan that many expect the SU7 to fall into. 

Xiaomi hasn’t yet said how much the SU7 will cost. Lei hinted that it wouldn’t be 99,000 yuan as some on social media had joked. Cars with the same specs often go for 400,000 yuan or more, he said. 

Tesla has sold fewer than 200 Model S cars in China since revamping it this year, while Porsche has delivered about 3,600 Taycan family EVs in the country in 2023, according to the China Automotive Technology and Research Center.

The SU7 is due to go on sale next year and can go from 0 to 100 kph in 2.78 seconds, Lei said. It will come with a motor that has 21,000 revolutions a minute, which he said is higher than the Model S and Taycan Turbo. Xiaomi’s factory uses gigacasting manufacturing pioneered by Tesla, developing a 9,100 ton system that it calls hypercasting.

Xiaomi, once known as a producer of cheap smartphones, has been fighting to sustain growth in an increasingly saturated and plateauing global market. Before the September quarter, the company had posted a sales decline in every three-month period since 2021. Now, it is seeking to challenge not just other EV makers but also newer entrants like Huawei Technologies Co. in an arena where it has demonstrated little unique expertise. 

Lei said he had driven 150 different cars since committing to making the SU7. 

Xiaomi’s shares gave up earlier gains to fall 0.3% Thursday afternoon. They rose 4.1% Wednesday. 

Lei, who has dubbed the SU7 a “performance beast” on X, has signaled Xiaomi won’t resort to undercutting competitors to get his vehicle off the ground. The car is aimed at people who has a penchant for technology, performance and taste, he said.

He has also paid tribute to competitors on social media, including BYD, XPeng Inc., Li Auto Inc. and Huawei, calling them pioneers of China’s new energy vehicle industry. In a Wednesday post on social media platform Weibo, XPeng’s CEO He Xiaopeng said he welcomed Xiaomi joining the automaking family and wished the company great sales for 2024.       

Social media companies collectively made over $11 billion in U.S. advertising revenue from minors last year, according to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published on Wednesday. The researchers say the findings show a need for government regulation of social media since the companies that stand to make money from children who use their platforms have failed to meaningfully self-regulate. They note such regulations, as well as greater transparency from tech companies, could help alleviate harms to youth mental health and curtail potentially harmful advertising practices that target children and adolescents.

To come up with the revenue figure, the researchers estimated the number of users under 18 on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube in 2022 based on population data from the U.S. Census and survey data from Common Sense Media and Pew Research. They then used data from research firm eMarketer, now called Insider Intelligence, and Qustodio, a parental control app, to estimate each platform’s U.S. ad revenue in 2022 and the time children spent per day on each platform. After that, the researchers said they built a simulation model using the data to estimate how much ad revenue the platforms earned from minors in the U.S.

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Researchers and lawmakers have long focused on the negative effects stemming from social media platforms, whose personally-tailored algorithms can drive children towards excessive use. This year, lawmakers in states like New York and Utah introduced or passed legislation that would curb social media use among kids, citing harms to youth mental health and other concerns.

Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, is also being sued by dozens of states for allegedly contributing to the mental health crisis.

“Although social media platforms may claim that they can self-regulate their practices to reduce the harms to young people, they have yet to do so, and our study suggests they have overwhelming financial incentives to continue to delay taking meaningful steps to protect children,” said Bryn Austin, a professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard and a senior author on the study.

The platforms themselves don’t make public how much money they earn from minors.

Social media platforms are not the first to advertise to children, and parents and experts have long expressed concerns about marketing to kids online, on television and even in schools. But online ads can be especially insidious because they can be targeted to children and because the line between ads and the content kids seek out is often blurry.

In a 2020 policy paper, the American Academy of Pediatrics said children are “uniquely vulnerable to the persuasive effects of advertising because of immature critical thinking skills and impulse inhibition.”

“School-aged children and teenagers may be able to recognize advertising but often are not able to resist it when it is embedded within trusted social networks, encouraged by celebrity influencers, or delivered next to personalized content,” the paper noted.

As concerns about social media and children’s mental health grow, the Federal Trade Commission earlier this month proposed sweeping changes to a decades-old law that regulates how online companies can track and advertise to children. The proposed changes include turning off targeted ads to kids under 13 by default and limiting push notifications.

According to the Harvard study, YouTube derived the greatest ad revenue from users 12 and under ($959.1 million), followed by Instagram ($801.1 million) and Facebook ($137.2 million).

Instagram, meanwhile, derived the greatest ad revenue from users aged 13-17 ($4 billion), followed by TikTok ($2 billion) and YouTube ($1.2 billion).

The researchers also estimate that Snapchat derived the greatest share of its overall 2022 ad revenue from users under 18 (41%), followed by TikTok (35%), YouTube (27%), and Instagram (16%).

Employees and employers geared up to adopt artificial intelligence at the workplace, with 59 per cent of employees are very confident in their ability to adapt and utilise AI tools, says a survey.

According to an Indeed survey, going ahead, diversity and inclusion will take centre stage, as 47 per cent of employers indicate a forthcoming surge in policy adoption.

The survey that covered a total of 6,531 individuals, consisting of 1,223 employers and 5,308 employees, noted that the focus will be on adopting AI and meeting the expectations of Gen Z employees.

As per the survey, 59 per cent of employees are very confident in their ability to adapt and utilise AI tools. Meanwhile, only 19 per cent of surveyed employers have already implemented or are in the process of implementing next-generation technologies such as Generative AI at the workplace during the coming year.

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“From the rise in generative AI skills to the enduring importance of programming languages and the growing demand for expertise in cybersecurity, it’s clear that adaptability and upskilling remain pivotal for success in the tech industry,” Sashi Kumar, Head of Sales – Indeed India, said.

As per the survey, employees were predominantly focused on skills such as Generative AI skills (27 per cent) and programming languages (22 per cent) while employers were looking to hire for skills such as cybersecurity (37 per cent) and data science and analytics (29 per cent).

Employers are keen on building workplace strategies focused on Gen Z like flexible work arrangements, purpose-driven work, and technology-driven environments.

Diversity and inclusion will also take centre stage next year as employers have showcased strong intentions to embrace diversity and inclusion policies, with 47 per cent indicating a forthcoming surge in robust policy adoption, the survey said.

The top three strategies that employers plan to implement include open communication channels (40 per cent), diverse leadership representation (20 per cent), and anti-discrimination reporting (17 per cent).

2023 in Review: Another year, another endless news cycle driven by the world’s top corporate executives, with moments ranging from cringe-worthy to downright bizarre. While some CEOs seemed to relish the spotlight, Elon Musk chief among them, others were inadvertently thrust into social media’s harsh glare. Elon Musk, Sam Altman to Marc Benioff, here are some of the most high-profile management misadventures:

The Muskiest moment

Of all the jaw-dropping Musk moments this year, the pinnacle came on stage at the New York Times DealBook Summit when he told advertisers that have stopped spending on X to go “f—” themselves. “Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience” he added, calling out Bob Iger, the CEO of Walt Disney Co. — one company among many that distanced itself after Musk endorsed an antisemitic post in November.

Still, if advertisers leave X, the platform’s failure will be their fault, not his, Musk said, calling their retreat a form of blackmail. He said he won’t “tap dance” to prove he’s trustworthy.

Billionaire cage match bluff

In June, Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg to what perhaps passes for a duel in 2023, posting on X: “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.” The peculiar invitation came shortly after news surfaced that Meta Platforms Inc. was set to release Threads as a competitor to X.

Zuckerberg, who practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, readily agreed. Musk advertised a showdown in Vegas in August, and then started a rumor it might actually be staged in the Colosseum in Rome, which Italy’s culture minister promptly debunked. But Musk began making excuses as the summer weeks slid by, saying he might need surgery for his  neck/back/shoulder. Zuckerberg eventually called his bluff, saying it was “time to move on.” 

OpenAI’s about-face

The abrupt firing and rehiring of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman by the board played out over the course of a long weekend. The whole thing was pretty bizarre, with some of the drama unfolding on social media. Between angry  investors and employees, virtually all of whom threatened to quit, the board beat a hasty retreat. 

As rumors swirled that he might return, Altman posted a photo of himself at the San Francisco office wearing a guest badge: “first and last time i ever wear one of these.” In an especially strange twist, one of the ouster’s leaders, OpenAI co-founder and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, later recanted and pledged to “do everything” he could to reunite the company. Altman replied with three red hearts.

Leave “pity city” behind

A short video of office furniture maker MillerKnoll Inc. CEO Andi Owen chastising staff for fixating on end-of-year bonuses ricocheted around the internet in April. “Spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million we need, and not thinking about what are you going to do if you don’t get a bonus,” Owen said in the video, referring to an internal metric. “I had an old boss who said to me one time, ‘You can visit pity city, but you can’t live there.’ So people, leave pity city.”

Owen sent an email to staff and met with leaders across the company after the backlash, according to a person familiar with the situation. “Andi fiercely believes in this team and all we can accomplish together, and will not be dissuaded by a 90-second clip taken out of context and posted on social media,” MillerKnoll spokesperson Kris Marubio said in an emailed statement.

Management’s massage time

In October, Tony Fernandes, co-founder of AirAsia and a top executive there, went to LinkedIn to post a picture of himself, shirtless, getting a massage while sitting at a conference room table. “Got to love Indonesia and AirAsia culture that I can have a massage and do a management meeting,” he wrote. Online followers quickly spoke out, with some commentators calling it inappropriate for an executive to indulge in bare-chested personal care while also purportedly running the company. One person said she didn’t think women at his company “would be comfortable or safe in this context, and given you’re the boss, they likely won’t challenge you or say anything.” 

Fernandes said he’d just endured an 18-hour flight and was in pain, and that the massage was a spontaneous suggestion by somebody in the Indonesia operation. He deleted the post while apologizing: “I didn’t mean to offend 

The HBO troll

Casey Bloys, CEO of HBO and Max content, apologized for using fake X accounts to troll TV critics who gave bad reviews to the network’s shows, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. According to the Times, Bloys said his passion for his company’s programming — and too much time on social media during the Covid-19 pandemic — led him to do it and he concluded it was “a very, very dumb idea.”

The posts, first reported in Rolling Stone, were surfaced in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former HBO employee. Bloys apologized to the journalists named in the article and said he now sends direct messages to those he disagrees with.

Pre-pink slip digital detox 

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says he took a 10-day trip to French Polynesia for a so-called digital detox ahead of the company’s mass layoff of about 8,000 staff. A digital detox is when someone forgoes phones or computers for a period of time to feel more present and less dependent on technology and social media.

In a letter to employees at the time, Benioff said the company hired too many workers during the pandemic, which he took responsibility for. But Benioff also appeared tone-deaf, arriving late to a meeting the day after the layoff, joking, “did I miss something?” Some pointed out the irony of the sudden job cuts next to Benioff’s frequent characterization of the company as an Ohana, a Hawaiian term for family.  

It’s time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off. 

Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I’m still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it’s fun, but also difficult.