Sandhya Gupta

Supporting Free Speech, Binance CEO invests $500 mn in Twitter

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao recently stated that his company had made an investment of $500 million in Twitter because he is “extremely supportive” of free speech.

Changpeng stated that there were “very strong reasons” for investing in Twitter. With over 7 million follower count, Zhao is active on the social networking platform.

Zhao, aka CZ, revealed to a crowd at the Web Summit in Lisbon, “When we invest in a deal, we’re very comfortable if the deal goes through. We’re very comfortable if the deal doesn’t go through. We always want to get to a point where we’re in that position. Number one is that we want to be extremely supportive of free speech. Twitter is an important free speech platform.”

“I am a heavy Twitter user. I want to invest in products that are important for our industry”, said Zhao, adding that Binance intended to be a long-term investment in the company.

After months of twists and turns within and outside the courtroom, the deal to acquire Twitter was finally finalized on Thursday. After acquisition. Elon Musk fired the platform’s top executives. Zhao said that because Musk is “a pretty hard guy for me to predict,” he was “honestly” a “little bit surprised” when the deal finally closed.

Since Musk completely controls the board and decision-making in the now-private Twitter, it is unknown how actively involved minority investors like Binance might be. In the $44 billion acquisition, the majority of his co-investors include funds like Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management, Andreessen Horowitz, and Brookfield.

In an effort to monetize the service and reduce Twitter’s reliance on advertisements, Musk announced on Tuesday that the social media network would charge $8 for its Blue service, which includes the highly desired “verified” badge. Zhao stated he agreed with the approach.

Musk appeared to have second thoughts about his dedication to cryptocurrencies as he put the Twitter deal together. The largest digital asset exchange in the world, Binance Holdings Ltd., contributed $500 million to Musk’s financing for the transaction in May and is reportedly putting together a team to investigate how cryptocurrency might benefit the social media giant.

In a string of text conversations made public as part of the dispute around the Twitter transaction, Musk initially suggested utilizing blockchain to support free expression and decrease spam on social media, only to respond later that “blockchain Twitter isn’t possible.”

Musk has a lot of issues with Twitter bots and spam, which led to a protracted court spat that placed his plans to buy the company at risk. The problem is especially crucial in the cryptocurrency industry, where spam accounts impersonate well-known individuals like Musk to spread the word about frauds involving bogus cryptocurrency giveaways.

However, some proponents of digital assets think that Twitter bots might be decreased by adopting blockchain. Musk’s desire to “authenticate all real humans” on Twitter may be promoted through an NFT passport or a blockchain-based identity verification tool.

When it comes to daily cryptocurrency trading volume, Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world. It was established in 2017 by d developer Changpeng Zhao, who had previously built high-frequency trading software. After the Chinese government began to regulate cryptocurrencies more strictly, Binance eventually transferred its headquarters outside China.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

The Oregon Trail is soon coming to PC and Nintendo Switch

As per a recent announcement from Gameloft, The Oregon Trail will be made available for PC and Nintendo Switch.

The Oregon Trail, a beloved classic game, will be coming to PC and Nintendo Switch in November. The Oregon Trail is expanding to additional platforms, and Gameloft is excited to announce that it will soon be available on Windows, Steam, and Nintendo Switch.

The Oregon Trail was the most downloaded game on Apple Arcade in 2021 when it was first released in April. On November 14th, 2022, gamers will be able to play Gameloft Brisbane’s updated version of the original game on PC and Nintendo Switch.

David MacMinn, Game Manager, noted, “We’re incredibly excited for even more players to experience The Oregon Trail. We’re pleased to see our game expand to multiple new platforms, and we hope PC and Nintendo players will enjoy their time on the trail as much as we did making it.”

Caroline Fraser, Head of HarperCollins Productions, noted, “The gameplay in our new version of The Oregon Trail has proven to be as exciting and sticky as it was in the ‘90s. The stunning graphics will grab players as they journey west and confront new dangers, meet a wide cast of historical figures, and overcome challenging obstacles on their way to Oregon.”

In The Oregon Trail game, players are put in the middle of all the difficulties encountered on the westward voyage. They must make difficult decisions in perilous and unexpected circumstances in order to fill their wagon, select their traveling group, and ensure that they all arrive in Oregon safely. In a first for the franchise, players will also learn about the real history of the path, such as the Native American experience.

The Oregon Trail, which will be released in November, was developed with assistance from Gameloft Lviv and will be an exact replica of the Apple Arcade edition. The most recent new features provide further accessibility settings, activities, and visual filters to view the game in a completely new way, and it includes all five prior content upgrades.

The Oregon Trail offers “a modern twist on the trials and tribulations of the road to Oregon.” According to the publisher, the game’s 15 playable trips and seven missions will “immerse players in exhilarating journeys ranging from the historically accurate to the totally extreme.”

In the game, there will be a new fishing minigame including over 80 species, as well as the traditional perils like damaged limbs, river fording, moving gunpowder through the wilderness, blizzards, snakebites, famine, tiredness, and dysentery.

The Oregon Trail is a series of various instructional video games. Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger created the initial game in 1971, and the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) produced it in 1974. The original game’s purpose was to educate 8th-grade students about the reality of living as a pioneer on the Oregon Trail during the 19th century. In 1848, the player takes on the role of a wagon leader who is transporting a group of settlers by covered wagon from Missouri to Oregon.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Huawei Mate Xs 2 Foldable Smartphone to Support Satellite Communication

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

Huawei Mate Xs 2 foldable smartphone will support Beidou satellite communication. It will be unveiled on November 5, 2022, during the Huawei Developer Conference 2022.

On October 31, Huawei revealed that the Mate Xs 2 folding smartphone, which debuted in April, will feature Beidou satellite communications. Huawei Mate Xs 2 is an amazing smartphone with a huge folding display screen and an outwards folding mechanism.

Given that Apple introduced a similar technology with its iPhone 14 devices, this technology has received widespread praise as an industry innovation. The Beidou Navigation Satellite System offers complete global coverage for time and navigation. Short message transmission is its most notable feature.

It is a distinctive innovation of China’s Beidou satellite navigation system and will provide a significant advantage to Huawei. Using satellite communication one can send an SMS to a recipient without the need for a mobile network. Such a technology, nevertheless, is still developing and needs time to expand.

According to a previous report, Huawei is trying to add further features including two-way communication so that users can also receive SMSes and even make brief voice calls in an emergency.

Professional satellite phones, however, are frequently large, heavy, and expensive. The recently released Huawei Mate 50 series was the first smartphone supporting Beidou satellite connectivity. It’s noteworthy that the Meta Xs 2 will be the first foldable smartphone to support satellite communication.

The Huawei Mate 50 series can send text messages, provide location updates, stay in contact with the outside world, and assist in generating trajectory maps even when the user is in a desert or other emergency situations without network signal coverage.

Huawei has revealed that the Xs 2 would only be able to link to satellites run by the dominant provider of AI and data services, Beidou. Despite being offered in certain other areas, like the UK, the new feature might only function on foldable smartphone models sold in China.

Mate Xs 2 foldable smartphone is Huawei’s most recent foldable phone. It also introduced the use of tri-band Wi-Fi. Due to its tri-band WiFi connectivity, the phone can easily handle even the most demanding network tasks. The phone comes with a Qualcomm SM8350 Snapdragon 888 4G Octa-core processor.

It boasts a 7.8-inch foldable display that can be folded into a 6.5-inch screen. The smartphone has an OLED panel with a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz, high-frequency PWM dimming at 1440 Hz, and touch sampling at up to 240 Hz. The phone is available in two storage options: 8GB + 256GB or 12GB + 512GB.

The phone has three cutting-edge design features thanks to hardware innovation: ultra-fat, ultra-reliable, and ultra-thin. Roughly weighing 250g the smartphone is even lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro. The device’s strengthened screen and double-rotor hinge technology produce an almost unnoticeable crease and increase resistance.

Huawei is a Chinese global technology company with its headquarters in Shenzhen, China. It creates, develops, manufactures, and markets consumer electronics, telecommunications equipment, and diverse smart devices.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Google Rolls Out Chrome OS 107 Update With ‘Save Desk for Later’ Feature

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

In an effort to enhance user experience, technology giant Google has unveiled the Chrome OS 107 update with a “Save Desk for Later” feature.

In the past few months, Google has vowed to continuously update its ChromeOS operating system. The search engine giant has just released an upgrade called ChromeOS 107 that includes a number of new features.

Users now have the option to save their Desks for afterward in addition to merging them. When a user saves a desk, all of the open tabs on that Desk are also saved so that one can return to them later.

As per 9to5Google, the new release brings two enhancements to Desks. The first enhancement will allow a user to quickly “Save desk for later” from the overview screen by clicking the button located above the leftmost window. When a user clicks the button the “Saved for later” screen, which can be found to the right side of “New desk,” appears.

Users may give it a name, view the creation date, and quickly see the icons. It is now simpler to close open desks from the Overview menu, and if you accidentally close a desk and wish to undo it, a brief “Undo” prompt appears.

A merge feature that enables a user to consolidate opened Desks into a single one is apparently also being tested by Google. One of the most widely used productivity tools to appear in ChromeOS in recent times is Virtual Desks, which has gained popularity swiftly. The max number of virtual desktops is now eight, but Google is working to extend it to sixteen.

With so many areas to manage, Google has included a helpful function that allows users to merge one desk with the desk adjacent to it with just one click. In ChromeOS 107, users will see an icon to the left of the “X” used to close a desk when viewing a desk in overview mode. Users can delete that desk from their lineup and relocate its content to the desk just to the left by using this merge icon.

A new “Documents” filter has been added to the “Recent” view in the Files app, and the list underneath has been arranged by time to make it simpler to navigate. Users can now access “accent letters” by simply long tapping on the virtual keyboard. U By, users of Chrome OS 107 update will be able to perform the same action by pressing down on physical keys. Users might need to manually enable it if that fails.

Chrome OS 107 update also introduces auto-framing to the platform, enhancing the productivity toolkit of the platform. When auto framing is activated while using the camera on a device that supports it, the camera will intelligently zoom on the user’s face to keep one in front and center in the frame.

ChromeOS is a Linux-based operating system developed by Google. Its primary user interface is the Google Chrome internet browser, and it is adapted to the open-source ChromiumOS operating system.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Jack Dorsey to take on Elon Musk’s Twitter with new app Bluesky

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, is apparently testing another social networking application Bluesky to compete with Twitter.

Just as Elon Musk wraps up his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, a small tech company created by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has revealed the creation of a new social media app. Earlier this month, Bluesky announced that it would soon release a beta version of its Bluesky Social app.

Dorsey’s latest social media platform aims to be “a competitor to any company trying to own the underlying fundamentals for social media or the data of the people using it.” According to the press release, the new app will make use of the federated social network known as the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (AT Protocol), which is hosted by numerous sites instead of just one.

Bluesky announced, “The next step is to start testing the protocol. Distributed protocol development is a tricky process. It requires coordination from many parties once a network is deployed, so we’re going to start in private beta to iron out issues. As we beta test, we’ll continue to iterate on the protocol specs and share details about how it works. When it’s ready, we’ll move to the open beta.”

The company stated in its press release, “The word ‘Bluesky’ evokes a wide-open space of possibility. It was the original name for this project before it took shape, and continues to be the name of our company. We’re calling the application we’re building Bluesky because it will be a portal to the world of possibility on top of the AT Protocol.”

Jack Dorsey originally introduced Bluesky in December 2019, as Silicon Valley was bracing for a global “techlash” and a wave of disinformation and election meddling around the 2020 US election. Twitter, like all other big social networks, was battling a conundrum on how to control the voice of millions of users without running the danger of overreaching.

In order to build “an open and decentralized standard for social media,” Dorsey claimed Twitter would sponsor a “small independent team” of five software developers, with the eventual objective of transforming Twitter itself to this standard. Importantly, Twitter does not hold a majority stake in BlueSky. It has reportedly gotten $13 m in financing from Twitter as of April of this year, with the sole stipulation that its research is continued.

In a Q&A at the time, Dorsey stated that the primary and long-term objective is to create a sustainable and open framework for public conversation. Without any involvement from Twitter, Bluesky is controlled by its team itself. Bluesky aims to create a decentralized social network protocol so that various social media networks, each with its own systems of moderation and curation, can communicate with one another using an open standard.

Bluesky has been in the research stage since 2021, with 40–50 members of the decentralized technology community working to evaluate choices and putting together protocol ideas.

In 2006, Dorsey co-founded Twitter. He served as CEO of Twitter for a number of years after which he resigned. He was replaced by Parag Agrawal, the company’s CTO at the time. Recently, Agrawal was fired from the company along with the chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, CFO Ned Segal, and the general counsel Sean Edgett shortly after Musk took over Twitter.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Now users can connect to Android Phones via hotspot on Windows 11

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

Tech giant Microsoft has launched a Windows 11 preview build with an update for “Phone Link” that will allow users to directly link their computer to their Android phone through a mobile hotspot.

The “Phone Link” feature of Windows 11 will soon allow laptops and desktop computers to instantly connect to your smartphone. The new feature only works with a restricted range of Android phones. Phone Link, which was made public as a component of the Windows 11 25231 preview build for Windows Insiders, will now enable the hotspot on your smartphone right from your desktop.

Microsoft noted in a blog post, “We’re excited to announce that you can now instantly access your mobile phone’s hotspot on your PC via the Phone Link app. The instant hotspot feature lets you securely start and connect to your phone’s Wi-Fi network without touching your phone.

When your phone is within range it will appear in the Wi-Fi network list on your PC where a single click turns on the phone’s hotspot and connects to it. No more remembering and typing passwords or searching for hotspot settings on the phone. This provides an easier and faster way to repeatedly connect to your hotspot when you are on the go.”

According to Android Authority, Windows Central has reported that Microsoft is now releasing a Windows 11 preview release that is exclusively available to the company’s Insiders on its Dev Channel.

This preview’s build version offers a few improvements and fixes. With this upgrade, users will now be able to use the Windows Wi-Fi bar to instantly link Windows 11 to the mobile hotspot on their phone.

The feature is comparable to Apple’s macOS and iPhones, which enables seamless hotspot connection without requiring passwords between the two devices. When both Apple devices are linked to the same Apple ID, users can link their Macbook to their iPhone hotspot.

Since Windows and Android belong to distinct ecosystems, the same has not yet been possible on those platforms. However, now Windows PCs and Android devices can sync via the Phone Link app. The app was first released in 2018 under the name “Your Phone,” which allowed users to get texts and other alerts from their smartphones on their PCs.

The Phone Link feature, however, is presently restricted to Samsung smartphones with Android 12 and above. Users must have a laptop or PC running Windows 11 (22H2 Build 22621), Wifi, Bluetooth, and the Phone Link app((v1.22082.111.0) in order to use this new feature.

A Samsung Galaxy device with One UI 4.1.1 (or higher) like Galaxy Z Fold 4, Galaxy Z Flip 4, Galaxy S21, or Galaxy S22 is also required. Reports suggest that Microsoft might eventually decide to support additional devices like the Surface Duo.

To modernize the experience, the Preview Build also contains changes to the System Tray and tablet-optimized taskbar. The UWP app icons’ appearance has been fixed, and the font in the Wi-Fi portion of Quick Settings has been made uniform. Another bug that caused applications like Windows Terminal and Paint to crash whenever users attempted to display a tooltip was also patched by Microsoft.

Over the past few years, Samsung has intensified its partnerships with Google and Microsoft. For over a year, Samsung was the only company to provide the Wear OS 3 OS, and now the Samsung Galaxy phones are the first to receive the new Microsoft Phone Link feature.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

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