Here are the top trending news from the world of technology. News that we feel every tech enthusiast should keep a tab on.
1)
Twitter launches new $5000 API plan for Startups
Twitter on Thursday announced the launch of a new API plan called Twitter API Pro that is supposedly focus on helping startups. Billed at $5,000 per month, this new pro plan will allow developers to fetch 1 million tweets per month and post 3 Mn tweets each month. The plan also offers a complete archive search of historical tweets. However, it is certainly unclear whether or not most startups that usually work on tight budgets will be willing to spend $60,000 per year merely on APIs. Twitter’s APIs have become a talking point in the media after Musk ended its free access and later launching a paid plan in March.
2)
Chinese Hackers are targeting U.S. Military Base & Infrastructure, Microsoft claims
China’s state sponsored hackers are using a special type of malware to target American military installation in the Guam island. This has been claimed by Microsoft report that has been prepared in collaboration with intelligence agency ‘Five Eyes Alliance.’ The report claims that this is the largest ever cyber espionage campaign against the U.S. The report further adds that this cyber attack has been masterminded by Chinese state sponsored firm called ‘Volt Typhoon.’ Meanwhile, Beijing has called Microsoft report as completely malicious and baseless.
3)
Elon Musk’s Neuralink secures FDI Approval for Human Implant Study
Elon Musk’s neurotechnology startup Neuralink announced on Thursday that it has secured an approval from America’s regulatory body FDI to conduct human clinical study. Apparently, this will be Neuralink’s first in-human clinical study, which seeks to help patients diagnosed with severe degenerative diseases to communicate with people with help of external technologies that work on neural signal. Neuralink belongs to the new age BCI industry, which stands for Brain-Computer-Industry interface. Although BCI technology has been prevalent since several decades, no company from this industry has secured much in medical science field.
4)
YouTube is ending YouTube Stories from June 26th
YouTube’s creators will have to say RIP to ‘Stories’ as the streaming platform is getting rid of the feature. First launched in 2017, Stories was available to creators with more than 10,000 subscribers. Stories allowed YouTube creators to post latest updates or behind-the-scene to market their channels. However, Stories never took off and never enjoyed much popularity among YouTube creators. YouTube doesn’t need ‘Stories’ either especially after the success of ‘YouTube Shorts.’ Interestingly, YouTube Stories was earlier known as ‘Reels,’ a name that was later adopted by Instagram for its short videos.
5)
TikTok is testing an AI Chatbot called ‘Tako’
If everything goes well then TikTok users may soon get to use a ChatGPT style chatbot. According to TechCrunch, TikTok is currently testing an AI powered chatbot in Philippines. This chatbot has been named ‘Tako’ and will be primarily aimed at content discovery, recommending videos and resolving queries about the kind or types of videos that users would like to watch. Unlike Snapchat’s ‘My AI,’ TikTok’s AI chatbot will respond to queries only related to content discovery. Media reports further claim that the Chinese video sharing app is also experimenting with AI generated avtars.
