Twitter is trialling a new feature allowing users to share “notes” as long as 2,500 words.
The social media platform normally limits posts to 280 characters.
Twitter said the move was a response to seeing people use the platform to post pictures of longer announcements and steer followers to outside newsletters.
The test will run for two months and involve a small group of writers in Canada, Ghana, the UK and US.
Apple has just rolled out the second developer beta for iOS 16, and the first thing that’s caught our eye is revamped message filtering. With this update, the company has signaled that it’s getting serious about streamlining your SMS-based messages.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s being included in the new update:
The new update allows developers of filter extensions — like the one built by Truecaller, or Apple’s own SMS filter available in India and Brazil — to classify non-personal messages into 12 sub-categories within “Transactions” and “Promotions.” The Transactions category includes Finance, Reminders, Orders, Health, Public Services, Weather, Carrier, Rewards, and Others; the Promotions category includes Offers, Coupons, and Others.
AFTER YEARS OF decline and a final wind-down over the past 13 months, on Wednesday Microsoft confirmed the retirement of Internet Explorer, the company’s long-lived and increasingly notorious web browser. Launched in 1995, IE came preinstalled on Windows computers for almost two decades, and like Windows XP, Internet Explorer became a mainstay—to the point that when it was time for users to upgrade and move on, they often didn’t. And while last week’s milestone will push even more users off the historic browser, security researchers emphasize that IE and its many security vulnerabilities are far from gone.
The impressive feat — most flights are spaced out at least a full day apart, with many averaging between five and seven days — made it the fastest three-flight series for orbital rockets in the history of space exploration.
The company’s Falcon 9 rocket is also breaking records, as it was used for the 13th time this weekend, making it SpaceX’s most launched spaceship.
SpaceX launched 53 Starlink satellites from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida Friday, followed by a launch out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Saturday for the German military. The final mission was back in Florida Sunday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying a satellite to orbit for communications company Globalstar.
There is a shift happening in the housing market.
After more than a year of soaring demand, exploding home prices and increasing real estate sales, the market finally seems to be cooling off.
“The housing market isn’t crashing, but it is experiencing a hangover as it comes down from an unsustainable high,” said Taylor Marr, Redfin deputy chief economist.
Mortgage rates have increased more than two and a half percentage points this year. And the higher costs of financing a home have changed the calculations for many would-be homebuyers. As a result, year-over-year home sales have been dropping in recent months.
In a Fannie Mae survey on homebuyer sentiment, a record 79% of respondents said it’s a bad time to buy a home.
The slew of bills includes legislation to extend the statute of limitations on small business pandemic fraud cases, enhance workforce development offerings, and improve the procurement process for small businesses. Among the bills passed two would establish a ten-year statute of limitations for prosecutions related to fraud related to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL).
“These seven bills will help make key SBA programs more secure, accessible, and focused on the most pressing challenges for small firms”, said Chairwoman Nydia M. Velázquez of New York.
What are the resolutions?
The bills are designed to promote policies that encourage small business development, hold small business pandemic fraudsters accountable, develop the small business workforce, and support small contractors doing business with the federal government.
T-Mobile is setting out to prove that carriers don’t need to deploy extremely high-frequency mmWave technology to get blazing fast speeds. Thanks to Carrier Aggregation technology, the “Un-carrier” has demonstrated performance of 3Gbps download speeds on good old-fashioned low-band and mid-band 5G channels.
In a press release today, T-Mobile revealed that it has reached these unprecedented speeds for the first time ever on a commercial device; in this case, a Samsung Galaxy S22 powered by a Snapdragon X65 modem. “This test demonstrates the incredible power of mid-band spectrum and represents another huge step forward for stand-alone 5G,” said Neville Ray, President of Technology at T-Mobile.
Per Layoffs.fyi, a layoff tracker, over 16,000 tech workers lost their jobs in May, and June is off to a similarly brutal start. TechCrunch’s senior reporter Amanda Silberling and I have accidentally, and unfortunately, started working on a weekly column about the tech layoffs; what first started as a tip-over moment at Thrasio has soon expanded to startups regardless of sector, financing stage or if they had obvious growth tensions or not.
Kohl’s may soon have a new owner.
Kohl’s (KSS) said late Monday that it had entered into a three-week exclusive negotiation period for a potential sale with Franchise Group (FRG), a holding company which owns The Vitamin Shoppe and other retail brands.
Franchise Group has proposed to buy Kohl’s for $60 a share. Kohl’s stock closed at $42.12 on Monday and rose 10% during early trading Tuesday on the news. The deal would value Kohl’s at around $8 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported, about 5 times more than it was worth last week.
This week, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft will travel to the International Space Station (ISS), carrying supplies and scientific research equipment to the astronauts there. NASA will livestream the launch, and we’ve got the details on how you can watch the event from home.
On Friday, June 10 at 10:22 a.m. ET (7:22 a.m. PT), a SpaceX Dragon will lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will carry 4,500 pounds of cargo to the space station, which it is scheduled to arrive at on Sunday, June 12 at 6:20 a.m. ET (3:20 a.m. PT). When it arrives at the Harmony module of the space station, NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Bob Hines will oversee its docking with the station.
Dispatches From The Front 