Here is today’s top tech new from the world of technology. News that every tech enthusiast should keep a tab on.
1)
Matt Mullenweg suspended WordPress contributor accounts for allegedly planning WorPress Frok
Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress, has deactivated several accounts of contributors within the WordPress.org community who were reportedly planning to create a new fork of the open-source project. Among those whose accounts were deactivated are Joost de Valk, creator of the Yoast SEO plugin, and Karim Marucchi, CEO of Crowd Favorite. In addition to de Valk and Marucchi, three other contributors—Sé Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen—had their accounts suspended with little explanation. Expectedly, Mullenweg’s actions have sparked significant discussion and controversy in the WordPress community.
2)
X rolls out Grok’s IOS app in the United States
Elon Musk’s xAI has started testing Grok’s IOS app in the United States. The app is available for free download from the App Store. This marks a significant expansion for Grok, which until now was accessible through the X platform. Right now, there are no confirmed plans for an Android version of the app at this time. xAI is also planning to launch a dedicated website for Grok, which is expected to provide additional functionalities. Grok was initially available only to premium subscribers when it was launched last year. However, it was later made free for all users, making it a serious competitor to popular AI chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT.
3)
Mark Zuckerberg takes a dig at Apple in interview with Joe Rogan
In his latest interview with popular podcaster Joe Rogan, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, launched some scathing criticism against tech giant Apple. Zuckerberg argued that Apple has not introduced any significant innovations since the launch of the iPhone over two decades ago. He also took potshots at Apple’s App Store policies, particularly the 30% commission fee, often referred to as the “Apple tax.” Zuckerberg claimed this fee limits competition and stifles innovation among developers. He stated, “They’re just squeezing everyone.” This fee has been a longstanding issue for Meta, affecting its advertising revenue and overall business strategy.
4)
Phi-4, Microsoft’s small language model, is now available for free to all users
Microsoft has officially open-sourced its Phi-4 small language model, making it freely available for developers and researchers. Developers can download Phi-4 for free from the Hugging Face. This move marks a major step in the democratization of AI technology. Phi-4 is a state-of-the-art model featuring 14 billion parameters, designed to perform complex reasoning tasks effectively. It has been shown to outperform larger models like Llama 3.3 and GPT-4o Mini in benchmarks such as MATH and GPQA. The model is based on a decoder-only variant of the Transformer architecture, which streamlines processing by emphasizing only on preceding text, thus lowering inference costs.