| | | Good Morning! Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk certainly has had his to-do lists overflowing over the past few weeks. Getting things in place (quite rapidly, mind you) for the Starlink satellite broadband to work in Ukraine. Challenging Vladimir Putin to a fight (a bear was involved too, read more here). Tesla delivering a record number of cars in the first three months of the year. Opening the new Gigafactory in Berlin. And now, sorting out social media. Read: Elon Musk is a 'passive' 9.2% shareholder in Twitter. What this means Twitter it is. Elon Musk now has a 'passive stake' in the social media platform. Now he surely cannot be ignored (not to say he was, at any point earlier). Musk now owns a small (but significant) part of Twitter. It is 9.2% to be precise, valued around $2.89 billion. And knowing Musk, he'll most definitely not passively sit on the sidelines and watch the world go past. We are already seeing movement. On March 25, in a poll (on Twitter, of course), Musk had asked followers, quite directly, if they feel Twitter believes in free speech. But this is where things become a bit more curious. "The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully," Musk had said, alongside the poll. Small detail – 70% respondents replied in the negative. Did Musk buy Twitter to do a cleanup? I suspect this isn't the end of it. Read: Elon Musk to build new social media platform after Twitter poll? says 'giving serious thought to...' All said and done, probably it was quicker and simpler to buy stake in Twitter, than start a new social media platform (has someone checked on Donald Trump?). Fast forward to April 5. Musk posted a tweet which asked, "Do you want an edit button?" That was retweeted by Parag Agrawal, the man who took over as the Twitter big boss after Jack Dorsey. Agrawal in his retweet wrote (and you guessed it right), "The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully." What really is going on at Twitter? Read: On Elon Musk's edit button poll, Twitter CEO cautions users about 'consequences' Musk has, over time, being a vocal critic of some of Twitter's content policies. "Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles…" (this tweet may be setting the tone for the direction Twitter may take, now that Elon Musk is in the building). Safe to say, the annual meeting of the social media company (that's scheduled for May 25), has all the makings of an absolute humdinger. Read: Tesla boss Elon Musk to join Twitter's board of directors | | | | BUTTONS But is Twitter working on an edit button? A question that's been asked for quite a while now. Any confirmation or denial hasn't exactly been forthcoming. Compounding the matter are April 1 tweets, that don't do anything to further the cause of clarifying the matter. And neither does, "We cannot confirm or deny but we may edit our statement later" as a response! Subsequently, we have some clarity. (You may want to see the tweet here). Testing starts in the coming months as part of the Twitter Blue Labs. Twitter takes pains to say they didn't get the idea from "a poll". Seems suspiciously like "a poll" has woken them up. Read: Working on an edit button, says Twitter. Why Twitterati doesn't believe it If you've been looking for a specific answer about when you'll be able to edit tweets, I'm afraid, we still don't really have anything concrete to warm your heart – it's still essentially coming soon. It was only recently that Twitter announced the test phase for an option that allow you to un-tag yourself from conversation threads which you have no interest being part of, and NFTs for profile pictures. There's still hope. | | | | SPLURGE Are you comfortable with shopping splurges (fine distinction, it isn't strictly necessary spending) and dividing the due amounts into EMIs to be paid over the next few months? I am not, to be honest. There is the very real risk of overstretching one's spending capability very quicky, and things can go pear-shaped rather quickly. Buy Now Pay Later is a new tool that's taken over a lot of real estate on shopping sites and social media feeds (that's how they lure you to get these BNPL cards). Amazon and Flipkart have their own products. The rest plug into many third-party services. And the likes of Slice, LazyPay and Uni want you to get these credit card alternatives. Read (Premium): Buy now, pay later? Behind boom, cause for caution The thing is, you'll be fine if you use these services occasionally with the sole purpose of making it easier to make a big purchase you had to do, within your financial boundaries and pay off on time. Human nature doesn't always ensure that. Ease of payments does induce the urge to splurge. That leads to two potential problems. One, the splurge will get out of control, and you'll likely end up with delayed or defaulted payments. Second, BNPL credit utilized lists as loan in credit reports – too many open loans, or any sort of delayed payments, will hurt your score and chances of car or home loans in the future. Estimates peg the BNPL market (that includes credit card replacements as well as services that offer pay later features) is presently worth around $3.5 billion but will be as large as around $50 billion by the year 2026. Those are big numbers. A lot of people may not exactly know the risks behind this convenience. | | WAR Tech continues to remain on the virtual frontlines of the invasion. Russia continues to pummel Ukrainian cities with heavy artillery (with reports of gruesome war crimes plastered all over social media over the weekend), as we enter the 40s in terms of days since the invasion started (with nothing achieved or to be achieved it seems, except as much destruction as possible). Read: Why posts on Ukraine mass killings were briefly blocked on social media Sometimes artificial intelligence and machine learning systems cannot do it. That was exhibited over the last couple of days, as horror images from the Ukrainian city of Bucha emerged on social media. Automated systems for social networks flagged these images and the relevant hashtags and blocked them. Human moderators at Facebook, Instagram and Twitter had to step in. "This happened automatically because of the graphic content people posted using these hashtags. When we were made aware of the issue yesterday, we acted quickly to unblock the hashtags," said Meta's Andy Stone, in response to a tweet by a user. This shows how important the human element is, to guide AI from time to time. Microsoft and Epic Games have completed a campaign to support ongoing relief efforts in Ukraine, raising what is most certainly an impressive $144 million. These funds will go to the Direct Relief, UNICEF, UN World Food Program, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and World Central Kitchen. The two brands did it quite smartly – coinciding with the latest Fortnite game season release, and it meant gamers were spending lot of money on in-game purchases. Epic and Xbox donated their share of revenue from each sale of in-game items, Battle Passes, subscriptions, and redeemed gift cards. | | INFLUENCE Our regular readers would remember that we had reserved judgement on the heating issues exhibited by the most expensive Android flagship phone there is right now, Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. The indications of the cause were there, but that was the first instance we had encountered. The suspicions have since been confirmed. The OnePlus 10 Ultra which has since followed (this is another fairly expensive Android phone) also has shown similar heating problems. The common denominator in both cases is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip. An unpleasant reminder of the past, that includes the Snapdragon 801 and the Snapdragon 810 chips. Incidentally, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is made on Samsung Foundry's 4 nanometer (nm) semiconductor process. There is the expectation Qualcomm will take corrective action with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ later in the summer, and TSMC has instead been chosen as the manufacturer for the 4nm chip. It is clear TSMC has an advantage in the 4nm process race, something MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chips have indicated. Qualcomm's missteps with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 have a larger impact – this hurts an entire generation of Android flagship phones. First, users will either be left with a compromised experience (performance, battery life or both). Secondly, phone makers will have to roll out updates to clock down these chips to compensate (to a certain extent). Lastly, expect a rush to release the next flagship phones – much ahead of time, and throwing development cycles haywire. Phones really are more complex than they seem otherwise. | Please share you feedback with us What do you think about this newsletter? | | | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? 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