Netflix Ads By Year’s End; TikTok New ‘Friends’ Tab; Trading Halted Then Started for Crypto Tokens; Testing Car With No Brake Pads

Netflix is apparently wasting no time. That ad-supported, cheaper subscription is apparently going to drop by 4th quarter of this year. The New York Times reports that word of it came out in a note to employees. Also in the note_ Netflix intends to start cracking down on password sharing. That had also been rumored, and it’s apparently true. The platform is making the changes due to losing some 200,000 subscribers the first quarter of this year. Right now, the most popular subscription plan is $15.49 a month. 

TikTok is replacing the ‘Discover’ tab with a ‘Friends’ tab in the menu at the bottom of the app. According to TechCrunch.com, the platform hasn’t said how soon the rolling change will be pushed out to everyone. The change was announced in a Tweet: “As we continue to celebrate community and creativity, we’re bringing a Friends Tab to more people over the coming weeks, which will allow you to easily find and enjoy content from people you’re connected with, so you can choose even more ways to be entertained on TikTok.” 

As cryptocurrencies continue to take a dive or ‘correct,’ in the trading euphemism, Binance had to suspend withdrawals of LUNA and UST after both crashed Tuesday morning. CoinDesk says trading was resumed after a brief stoppage, which Binance claimed was necessary doe to ‘network slowness and congestion.’ UST was at 70 cents at that time…it recovered later to 90 cents. LUNA’s reserves dipped down by 85% from the prior day, while UST was down 41%. These investments aren’t US Treasury Bonds, folks….just put in what money you could literally burn. 

With all the attention on EVs and batteries, a French carmaker is testing out brakes without pads. It doesn’t get the headlines, but dust from brake pads produces over 20% of freeway pollution. According to thenextweb.com, the concept car is made by DS Automobiles, the luxury arm of Citroen. The braking system utilizes only electric regenerative brakes. The car uses two electric motors to stop the car with up to 600kW of power. If everything tests out, we could see cars move to this, and eliminate that 20% of pollution on freeways from brake pad dust.

Tesla Investor Concern re Musk Buying Twitter; Instagram Testing NFTs; BMW’s Shipping Without CarPlay or Android Auto; EU May Start New Big Tech Regulation Spring 2023 

As Elon Musk plows ahead in his deal to buy Twitter, Tesla shareholders continue to fret and worry about his distraction from his primary business…and the one which actually makes money. The New York Times notes that Tesla stock is down 24% since the announcement of the Twitter buy. The Times goes on to report “Even if he’s able to finance it, it just is not a sensible deal from a financial perspective,” said Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Mr. Musk has demonstrated that he can build two large, successful companies at once: After some stumbles, Tesla sells far more electric vehicles than any competitor, and SpaceX is a leading rocket company. And he may be able to make Twitter more popular and profitable. The Twitter deal does directly involve the EV company, as Musk is borrowing $6.25 billion against his Tesla stock. 

Investors have pointed out that it is hard to find another deal where someone has gotten such a big margin loan to help buy another company. The margin loan to buy Twitter could become a destabilizing force if Tesla’s stock value were to plunge. A steep decline might prompt the banks to sell their stock collateral to recoup the money they lent Mr. Musk, which could in turn set off even more selling across the market. The terms of Mr. Musk’s margin loan stated that he must pay off the entire debt if Tesla stock falls more than 40 percent from its price on the day of the loan. With much more competition now in the EV market, Tesla has to face not being nearly the only game in town selling electric vehicles.

NFTs seem to be like a zombie…something that just won’t die. Even with sales of the digital ‘collectables’ down 92% since last September, more companies and platforms seem determined to keep rolling them out. According to TechCrunch.com, this time its Instagram. The Meta-owned platform is testing NFTs from select creators, starting this week. At launch, the supported blockchains for showcasing NFTs on Instagram are Ethereum and Polygon, with support for Flow and Solana coming soon. The third-party wallets compatible for use will include Rainbow, Trust Wallet and MetaMask.Buyers will be able to share their NFTs in their main Feed, Stories, or in messages. I can barely contain my excitement! 

The issue…and story…that just won’t die. That would be the chip shortage. Now, engadget.com says BMW is temporarily shipping cars without the support for Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. Due to the shortage, they have moved the cars out with a chip that doesn’t fully support those platforms. BMW says they hope to be able to give the cars the ability to use CarPlay and Android Auto via an over the air update by ‘the end of June at the latest.’ BMW is not remotely the only maker to grapple with shortages. Tesla delivered some cars without USB ports, and Ford had to send some out without rear Climate Control. BMW’s solution is at least better than what Mercedes did with a similar shortage…they sent cars out without chips at all…so owners had to come into the dealerships to have them installed later. 

The EU looks to start enforcing the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the Spring of 2023. Theverge.com reports that this antitrust legislation brings a new set of rules to check the power of Big Tech. The European Union warns that they will be prepared to act against any violations made by “gatekeepers” — a classification that includes Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon — as soon as the laws come into force. The DMA actually needs final approval from the Council and Parliament. The Act will affect any company that owns a social platform or app and has a market cap of $82 million or more. What will it mean for big tech companies? When passed, the DMA will likely disrupt the business models used by the world’s tech behemoths. For one, it could require Apple to start allowing users to download apps from outside the App Store. It could also require WhatsApp and iMessage to become interoperable with smaller platforms, a policy that may make it harder for WhatsApp to maintain end-to-end encryption.

Apple, Google, & Microsoft Going Passwordless; Musk Picks Up Twitter Investors and $$; Google Buys MicroLED Firm; Microsoft & VW Working on HoloLens for Cars

You’d think Cinco de Mayo was a big enough deal, May 5th is apparently also World Password Day. According to theverge.com, the ubiquitous and annoying little fake words we all make up (and I HOPE you are, and aren’t using Password1), may become a thing of the past at long last. In a joint effort, Apple, Google, and Microsoft announced that they have committed to building support for passwordless sign-in across all of the mobile, desktop, and browser platforms that they control in the coming year, based on the FIDO standard. Look for passwordless authentication to come to all major device platforms in the not too distant future: Android and iOS mobile operating systems; Chrome, Edge, and Safari browsers; and the Windows and macOS desktop environments. 

The system relies on use of one device…the default is your phone. You will still need to use the biometric like your fingerprint or FaceID or the code to access your phone, but then all apps and websites will authenticate from it. The big tech firms believe this will help eliminate phishing, and other hacks. Should you lose your phone, you will be able to download your info to the new phone and set up authentication on that device…or whatever device you choose. If you have a Microsoft Outlook work account, you may already be using Microsoft Authenticator on your phone…this will all work very similar to that. I won’t be sorry to see World Password Day become a relic of the past!

Elon Musk has raised $7.14 billion of funding for his $44 billion buyout of Twitter, from investors including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, crypto exchange Binance and asset management firms Fidelity, Brookfield and Sequoia Capital. Arstechnica.com reports that with the new financing commitments, Musk will cut the margin loan he has taken with a group of lenders by half to $6.25 billion and increase the equity portion to $27.25 billion. The remainder of the purchase price will be paid with debt raised from global banks. Ellison is kicking in the biggest chunk at a cool billion. He currently sits on Elon’s Tesla board. Musk will also become the temporary CEO of Twitter when the deal closes. 

Google has acquired Raxium, an innovator in single panel MicroLED display technologies, according to a blog post from the company. The post says “The team at Raxium has spent five years creating miniaturized, cost-effective and energy efficient high-resolution displays that have laid the foundation for future display technologies.” A deal with Raxium was rumored last March in a report from The Information. Unlike Meta and other rivals, Google hasn’t said much about its augmented reality plans, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t working on it. Last year, news of Google’s Augmented Reality OS leaked out late last year through job listings and the company reportedly plans to release an AR headset by 2024. 

Microsoft and Volkswagen are working together to advance the existing Moving Platform mode for Windows Holographic, the OS inside Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented-reality headset. Zdnet.com says the goal is to enable the use of mixed-reality headsets inside vehicles for tasks like training drivers to handle challenging road conditions or creating new experiences for autonomous vehicles. Microsoft officials believe this capability could be applied to other industries in the future. Volkswagen has been experimenting for several years on how augmented reality could be used in cars. The company added an augmented reality head-up display to its ID. family of electric cars in 2020 that project navigation arrows, lane markings, and other relevant information onto the area in front of cars. Before that, it had done experiments on how augmented reality could help teach driving on a race course.

NFT Sales Plummeting; Musk Will Do Twitter IPO Next 3 Years, Charge Co’s & Gvts; Group 14’s NextGen Battery Tech Gets Cash Infusion; Apple iPad Keyboard Triggers macOS UI

Sales of NFTs, those infamous non-fungible tokens, dropped to a daily average of around 19,000 this week, a sharp dive of 92%. The Wall Street Journal notes that the peak was about 225,000 back in September. In terms of money, Forbes says sales are down from $160 million in January to $26 million last Thursday. The average selling price is now down to $2000. You might as well hold ‘em, ‘cause if you sell now, you are not just getting a haircut, but a full body defoliation!

He doesn’t own it yet…and still may not, but Elon Musk is planning things for Twitter. According to PCMag.com, Musk wants to charge companies and governments to use the platform, although he claims it will always be free for ‘casual users.’ Musk also wants to charge users who embed or quote Tweets from verified individuals or groups on the platform. On top of that, he has said he would probably do an IPO and take Twitter back public again within 3 years. Twitter itself is warning investors the company could face tumultuous changes once Musk takes over. On Monday, the company published an SEC filing that said Twitter could experience an exodus of employees and lose advertisers due to the merger. 

We have reported on Group 14 Technologies before. TheWashington state based company has plans to mass produce their batteries, which use a silicon-carbon composite material that can replace the graphite anodes in lithium-ion batteries….improving performance by 50% and giving users faster recharging. Now, geekwire.com says Group 14 has picked up $400 million in new capital that will help them ‘supercharge’ commercialization of their battery tech. One of the investors is Porsche AG, which plans to use them to power some of their EVs. Group 14 says they have some 40 different customers, so it appears they will have huge demand once they are ramped up. 

It is always best to not that Apple patents lots of stuff that never sees the light of day, but here’s one that is pretty interesting. 9to5mac.com says there is a patent that describes an iPad accessory keyboard that triggers an macOS-like UI when it is connected. The male heir, who works in IT, has been predicting a blurring of Apple OS devices ever since the iPad came out, and if this keyboard actually is produced, it will take things to the next level. You can already use some iOS apps on Macs, and now a Mac-like interface on iPads? Yep, things are really merging if that happens. In the patent drawings, Apple shows the familiar bar at the top, and tiled windows. Again, it may not happen, but if it does, the higher line iPads may flat replace the entry level MacBooks.

Facebook Dumping Podcasts, Amazon Adding Thousands More SoCal Employees; Rivian Gets Incentives for New EV Plant in GA; Android Firefox Now Auto Switches Sites to HTTPS

After just about a year, Facebook is killing off their podcast business. They will pull the plug after June 3rd, according to bloomberg.com. The social net will also end their short-form audio feature, SoundBites. Facebook has been really pushing its reels feature, feeling the heat from TikTok, which is exploding and remains the top downloaded social app in the world. In addition to the short videos, Facebook plans to push online shopping and metaverse events. Note that while the company’s killing off podcasts and Soundbites, it’ll integrate Live Audio Rooms (for hosting Clubhouse-like chats) into Facebook Live, allowing users to decide whether to go live with just audio or streaming video, too. 

Amazon has announced that they are adding 2,500 corporate and tech jobs in several of its Southern California locations. Geekwire.com reports that 1,000 of the jobs will be at their new office space in Santa Monica. Those hires will be brought on next year. There are going to be 800 more positions in Irvine, and another 700 in San Diego. Roles include software development, engineering, game design, user experience and more across such Amazon teams as retail, games, operations and Amazon Web Services.

EV maker Rivian, which is building EVs in their Illinois factory, has secured about a billion and a half worth of incentives for its planned second EV plant in Georgia. Electrek.co says the new plant is expected to cost about $5 billion. It will be a massive plant, running some 20 million square feet in the buildings, and they will also build a test track and adventure trail. Since Rivian had planned to start construction in summer of 2022 and to be building cars by 2024, things are right on track to meet that goal. 

For the 100th version of Firefox, Mozilla has added HTTPS-only connections for all websites you hit, provided they have HTTPS. According to androidcentral.com, the new release will also add an option to organize your browsing history on Android and iOS. The new Android mobile browser also has also picked up new wallpapers. BTW, the wallpapers will also be available on iOS late this week. On desktops, Firefox is adding subtitles and captions to picture-in-picture mode. This comes in handy, particularly for users with hearing impairments. The feature will initially work with Youtube, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and other websites that support WebVTT format.

Meta Planning 4 AR/VR Headsets; More Pixel Watch; Apple Watch Getting Body Temp Sensor; Former TikTok Exec Launches Dating App

Meta apparently has four…count ‘em….four AR/VR headsets in the works, and is shooting to release all of them by 2024. The Information reports that the one Meta has teased as Project Cambria is being described as a ‘Chromebook for the face.’ Apparently it will have “high-resolution image quality for reading text, with the idea that people can use it to send emails or code.” Its mixed reality nature also means that the external cameras can be activated to view your surroundings (“full color pass-through”) with similar resolution. The price target is $799. Meta sees this device as eventually replacing your laptop or work setup. A second iteration of the Cambria dubbed Funston is planned for 2024. The company is also working on a less pricey Quest headset, which is code named Stinson and Cardiff. Those rigs are planned for next year and 2024. Google is expected to release its first mixed reality headset (Project Iris) in 2024, and who knows when Apple will roll theirs out…so the next couple years could see a bumper crop of mixed reality headsets hitting the market. 

While a lot has already leaked out about the upcoming Pixel Watch, here are a couple more leaked details. According to 9to5google.com, the watch will have a 300 mAh battery and will also have cellular connectivity. The latter may not be on all three models, that’s unclear. For comparison, Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 has a 247 mAh battery. That watch touts a 40 hour run time, so the Pixel should have no trouble making it through the day on a charge. The big detail still unknown….how much will the Pixel Watches sell for. We will probably know more later this month as Google holds I/O.

It may not get the golden fleece blood sugar measurement or even blood pressure, but it looks like the Apple Watch Series 8 may get body temperature sensing if the algorithm pans out. Appleinsider.com notes that getting a core body temp reading is more tricky than you would think…that’s why most doctor offices or hospitals still use under the tongue or ear instruments. Your skin temperature can vary quickly depending on outside elements. Apple had wanted to announce the feature in the Watch 7, but didn’t think it was good enough. Samsung is reported to be working on a temperature sensing feature too, and grappling with the same issues.

Alex Hoffmann, former president of musical.ly (now TikTok) has dropped a dating app. Techcrunch.com says that Hoffmann had just intended to be an investor after ByteDance Bought musical.ly 4 years ago, but couldn’t resist getting back to making apps. He notes that most apps and platforms have multiple products (think Meta with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), so founded a company called 9count. So far, they have made Everland, Helpline, and a friend making app called Wink, which has attracted several million users. Now, its a dating app called Spark. Unlike a lot of dating apps, there’s no swiping left or right…you see a grid of people who have some proximity to you…rather like Grindr. With Spark, though, you can only get messages from someone if you have both ‘sparked’ (or liked) each other. Messages on Spark go ‘poof’ and disappear after 24 hours. Its subscription based…$19.99 a month, with a small discount for either 3 or 12 months in advance. Hoffmann uses AI moderation tool Hive to try to keep NSFW stuff from profiles. They also field a 24/7 trust and safety team.

Alphabet Misses Q1 Earnings, Fitbit Gets Irregular Heart Rhythm Notifications; Fidelity Will Allow Bitcoin in 401(k)s; Leak-Facebook Has Little Insight re How User Data Handled

Alphabet whiffed as far as first quarter earnings, as noted in their earnings call yesterday. According to androidcentral.com, They hauled in $68.01 billion in revenue, which is under the $68.11 they were projected to hit. They were also down from the $75 billion the previous quarter (the holiday quarter though). That said, Q1 2022 is up 25% year over year. Also noted during the call, CEO Pichai noted how YouTube Shorts, the company’s TikTok competitor, accumulates 30 million daily views while viewers consume more than 700 million hours of YouTube content every day. Although They don’t release Pixel sales, Pichai said the Pixel 6 is the ‘fastest selling Pixel ever’ and he teased hardware announcements coming up in Google I/O next month. One is no doubt the Pixel Watch, a prototype of which was left in a restaurant…as we covered earlier this week.

After getting clearance from the FDA, Fitbit is rolling out irregular heart rhythm notifications on some of its devices. 9to5google.com reports that 9 Fitbit products, including the Sense and Charge 5 will passively send notifications when signs of Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) are detected. The technology that powers these notifications on Fitbit is similar to what is used for electrocardiogram (ECG) readings but doesn’t require quite as much hardware. Rather, they rely on Fitbit’s PPG (photoplethysmography) algorithm, which the company claims is 98% effective at detecting these conditions compared to a traditional ECG machine.

By Summer, Fidelity is going to start allowing what they are calling legible individuals to invest up to 20% of their 401(k) in Bitcoin. According to theverge.com, employees will only be able to do this if their employer signs off on the option. Apparently, this is just a start of a dive into crypto. Fidelity head of workplace retirement offerings and platforms Dave Gray told the Wall St Journal they would add support for other cryptocurrencies at some point. Meanwhile, the Department of Labor has warned fiduciaries about offering options to invest in crypto, pointing out that this kind of investment presents “significant risks and challenges to participants’ retirement accounts, including significant risks of fraud, theft, and loss.”

Facebook is reportedly unable to account for much of the personal user data under its ownership, including what it is being used for and where it’s located, according to an internal report leaked to Motherboard. engadget.com says the report was put together by engineers on Facebook’s privacy engineers on its Ad and Business Product team last year.  Facebook’s main obstacle to tracking down user data appears to be the company’s lack of “closed-form” systems, the report states. In other words, the company’s data systems have “open borders” that mix together first-party user data, third-party user data and sensitive data. A former Facebook employee who spoke anonymously to Motherboard said the question of where data goes inside the company is “broadly speaking, a complete shitshow.” A Facebook spokesperson denied to Motherboard that the company is not currently complying with privacy regulations.

TikTok Most Downloaded; $2.5 Million NFTs Stolen; Hawaiian Will Offer Free In-Flight Starlink; Internet Reaches 63% of Humans

The winnah is….TikTok. The app was the #1 most downloaded app in the 1st quarter of this year. According to techcrunch.com, Sensor Tower has released its ‘Store Intelligence Data Digest’ report showing TikTok hitting 175 million downloads the first 3 months of 2022. TikTok has now passed 10 million downloads, over the past 9 quarters. For comparison, YouTube has passed 10 million downloads over the last 8 quarters. No app has had more downloads than TikTok since 2018, when WhatsApp racked up 250 million world downloads. 

A hacker has snagged $2.5 million worth of Board Ape Yacht Club NFT’s. Cnet.com reports that the thief got into the NFT brand’s Instagram account and put up a link to a phony air drop, which would give existing Bored Ape holders a free allotment of land in the upcoming Otherside metaverse. But the link included in the post was a phising scam. People who opened it and connected their crypto wallet had their Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs stolen. OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace, has put a “suspicious activity” label on the stolen goods, but no one can actually stop the NFTs from being sold. The hacker has already offloaded several on LooksRare, another NFT marketplace. It sucks for the owners, but you have to kind of laugh at the thought of a virtual pawn shop or virtual fence taking stolen virtual property!

You may be one of the folks who can’t stand to not be either working or online surfing while flying. With most airlines charging fees to connect, I have chosen to do without. Now, zdnet.com says Hawaiian Airlines will offer free in-flight connectivity using Starlink. Starlink is a division of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company. Hawaiian says installation in the aircraft will start next year. They say the service will be ‘seamless,’ and will not have registration or payment pages to access. 

According to DataReportal’s new Digital 2022 April Global Aftershot report (in conjunction with We Are Social and Hootsuite), there are now more than 5 billion people on earth using the internet. That is 63% of all humanity online! Smartphones account for about 4 out of 5 of the mobile handsets in use now. As for social media, 4.65 billion is the user tally, which is 58.7% of the world population. If you leave out 13 years old and under (which is the age most social nets have for a lower limit), roughly 3/4 of the population uses social media. THAT is some kind of reach!

Musk-ization of Twitter; Owning in Metaverse; Pixel Watch Coming; iPhone AND Apple Watch May Get Emergency Sat Connectivity

Things could still fall apart, but on the other hand, by the time you read this, Elon Musk’s deal could be set to buy Twitter for $43 billion. Reuters.com reports that the board started working with him on the deal Sunday morning, and apparently they worked through the night. The board may already have recommended the $54.20 per share deal to shareholders…again, by the time you read this. Although the deal doesn’t contain a ‘go-shop’ allowing Twitter to fish for a better deal, if one came along, they could take it and pay Musk a break-up fee. Twitter was up 5.4% as these words are written. Musk, a prolific Twitter user, has said it needs to be taken private to grow and become a genuine platform for free speech. Critics believe he is more concerned with HIS free speech than that of any other users.

UPDATE (Well, that didn’t take long): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/elon-musk-clinches-deal-to-take-twitter-private-for-44-billion?sref=HQB7G2wY&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_medium=social&utm_content=business

In an interesting piece from thenextweb.com, some thoughts for those purchasing items in the ‘metaverse.’ The article notes that you have to agree to the end user license agreement of the platform you are purchasing through. (Like anyone reads those purposefully impenetrable documents!) Unlike the blockchain itself, the terms of service for each metaverse platform are centralized and are under the complete control of a single company. This is extremely problematic for legal ownership. 

The problem for buyers is that under the terms of service, the NFTs purchased and the digital goods received are almost never one and the same. NFTs exist on the blockchain. The land, goods and characters in the metaverse, on the other hand, exist on private servers running proprietary code with secured, inaccessible databases. Here’s an example from thenextweb article: ‘…one day you might own a $200,000 digital painting for your apartment in the metaverse, and the next day you may find yourself banned from the metaverse platform, and your painting, which was originally stored in its proprietary databases, deleted. 

Strictly speaking, you would still own the NFT on the blockchain with its original identification code, but it is now functionally useless and financially worthless.’ In other words, caveat emptor….buyer beware!

Not just a leak…someone left what is apparently a prototype Pixel Watch in a restaurant in the US (the location of which is being withheld for now. Androidcentral.com says the watch has a minimalist design, with just a crown and one hidden button. It also sported proprietary Google bands. No charger was found, but it appears it may have Qi wireless charging. Rumors have Google announcing a watch at Google I/O next month. The watch didn’t fully boot up, but did get to a ‘G’ logo screen. The Pixel Watch will reportedly use and Exynos chipset when it drops. 

According to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, the rumor that iPhone may be getting emergency satellite connectivity may be true, and could be in the phones this fall. Not only that, but the Apple WATCH might also get it…either this fall or in 2023. We have reported on this before, and need to stress that is isn’t making either into a satellite phone. The feature is for reporting emergencies or sending a short emergency text to emergency contacts when you are out of cellular range. It looks like the deal will be with Satellite operator Globalstar. In February, Globalstar said it reached an agreement to buy 17 new satellites to help power “continuous satellite services” for a “potential”—and unnamed—customer that had paid it hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that customer Apple? We’re probably less than six months from finding out. 

Netflix Stock Takes Hit; More Musk & Twitter; Whole Foods Austin Getting Palm Scanning Tech; Google Shows Air Quality Now in US, India, & Victoria

At last check Netflix was down 37%, a big hit. Bloomberg reports that the drop is largely due to a loss in subscribers, the first drop in over 10 years. The platform has lost some 600,000 subscribers in the latest quarter. A couple reasons have been given for this. One, and most obvious, is that Netflix raised prices. Another reason, which has a number of subscribers hopping mad, is that Netflix is looking to introduce a lower price tier that includes ads. The lack of ads has been one thing that set Netflix apart from others like Hulu, Disney, and HBO. Netflix seems to be taking an ‘everybody’s doing it’ attitude. Analysts have noted lately that even Disney has seen big growth then loss of subscribers, and that subscriber ‘churn’ may just be becoming a fact of life of these entertainment platforms. 

A number of articles are out, pundits are ‘punditing,’ and everyone is speculating on Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter…which after the board adapted a ‘poison pill,’ is widely expected to be turned down. Yahoo.com talked to Georgetown University Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Urska Velikonja. She pointed out that “It’s not actually a firm commitment to buy all shares of Twitter. It’s just, sort of, a notice that ‘I’m interested in buying all of Twitter.'” 

The professor notes that one way Musk could make a deal and buy would involve partnering with financing sources like Apollo Global or Morgan Stanley…but that would delete his own power in running Twitter. He might not be willing to go for that. Another option involves a tender offer, where shareholders would be able to directly sell their stock to Musk at the price he offered. Again, there is a down side. First, Musk is limited by Tesla (as well as probably the SEC) in how much of that stock he could sell to get cash to buy the Twitter shares. Secondly, he could borrow against his Tesla stock, but again pledging stock would dilute his power over Tesla plus put him under the thumb to some degree to the lenders, Then, of course, the poison pill can push the cost up substantially. 

In a comment that won’t thrill Musk, the professor said  “This is, perhaps, a pastime for Elon Musk. It’s fun. He’s got nothing else to do. He loves Twitter, clearly, and he wishes Twitter were doing something else. So this is perhaps his way of doing so.”

Amazon’s One-Palm scanning tech is coming to Whole Foods Markets in Austin, Texas. Note, that this is NOT the full ‘just walk out’ tech. Cnet.com says it is adding one store now, and will add 6 more in the region in the near future. While it’s not just walk out, you can simply wave your hand over the palm reader, and won’t need to pull out a credit card, debit card, or cash to pay. Amazon One is already available in Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go locations in California, Colorado, New York, Texas and Washington, DC. The rollout in Austin will make it the second region where every store has the option of Amazon One, after the Seattle area.

Google has started showing AQI…air quality index info to Nest Hub and other Smart Display users. Now, you can search ‘air quality’ and check your current or other locations, in the US, India, and Victoria, Australia. According to 9to5google.com, Each entry can be expanded for a text description of what healthy conditions are and to see when it was last updated, as well as the specific provider. Apple’s weather app on the iPhone has shown AQI in the US for a while now, so expect Google to add the feature to its app on Android, and its widgets.