Hi Guys! Friday is here again. And as usual, the week was packed with lots of news and surprises. From Jeff’s plan to step down as CEO of Amazon to Elon’s huge advancement with his Neuralink technology, the whole tech community was abuzz.
Here is a quick roundup of some of the major stories around the globe you might have missed.
Elon Must Claims Neuralink’s Monkey can Play Video Games with its Mind
Elon Musk’s Neuralink has reached a new milestone in its quest to design brain-computer linkups. The company has successfully tested its wireless brain linkup prototype in a monkey.
According to Elon, a monkey with the device implanted in its brain can play video games via the linkup — without touching a controller or screen.
“We’ve already got a monkey with a wireless implant in their skull, and the tiny wires, who can play video games using his mind,”
Musk said in an interview on the “Good Time Show” on Clubhouse.
He added that the next step was to get the monkeys to play mind ‘Pong’ with each other.
Robinhood raises $1B in Funds
American stock investment app, Robinhood raised $1 billion in new funding from existing investors.
According to reports, the company needed the money in order to meet regulatory minimums and other requirements associated with users’ trading activity.
Before now, Robinhood has experienced an unprecedented high volume of trading as Reddit-reading retail traders attempted a takeover of certain highly shorted stocks.
The company had earlier taken $500 million through credit lines to ensure it had the capital required to keep allowing its clients to trade stocks like GameStop and AMC Entertainment.
It has now raised about $1 billion to shore up its balance sheet.
TikTok Moves to Reduce Misinformation
Popular video-sharing platform, TikTok has announced that it would try to reduce misinformation by removing videos flagged by fact-checkers to be spreading false information.
The company revealed that it will partner with fact-checkers at PolitiFact, Lead Stories, and SciVerify to help assess the accuracy of the content. If the fact check confirms a content to be false, it will be removed from the platform.
It also announced that it will go a step further by flagging videos where the fact-checkers’ findings are inconclusive. It explained that in such case the video will become ineligible for recommendation into anyone’s For You feed to limit the spread of potentially misleading information.
This feature is launching in the United States and Canada but will become available globally in “coming weeks.”
SpaceX to Launch first ‘all-civilian’ mission to space this year
SpaceX is planning to send its first “all-civilian” crew to space at the end of 2021. The launch is a charity-focused mission commanded by tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman.
The mission, named Inspiration4, will launch from SpaceX’s 39A launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.
The company has announced that it will pick three people to ride alongside Isaacman to orbit aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.
Isaacman, a trained pilot and the chief executive of Shift4 Payments, said he donated $100 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and wants to help raise $200 million more by inviting people to donate at least $10 to St. Jude for a chance to get picked.
According to SpaceX, the full crew “will be announced in the coming weeks.
Instagram bans hundreds of accounts for Buying and Selling Social Media Accounts
Instagram has banned hundreds of accounts tied to a forum (OGUsers), where members buy and sell stolen social media accounts.
The company revealed that it has disabled about 400 accounts, which were behind a number of handles that are considered valuable by people who trade in social media accounts.
An example of the disabled account is @trusted, which was used by an OGUsers member who acted as middleman.
The latest takedown is part of Instagram‘s efforts to reduce the influence of forums like OGUsers that often bought and sold user accounts for thousands of dollars.
The company is also going after some of the forum’s highest-profile members and threatening legal action if they continue to break its rules.
You can check out other news that happened during the week here. Have a nice weekend!!
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