Tuesday’s top tech news: Twitter rebuilds – The Verge

Vivo’s X90 Pro Plus is the first phone with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset

2022-11-22T15:38:45-05:00

The X stands for extreme, indeed. | Image: Vivo

Vivo announced a trio of new flagship phones today, and sitting at the top is the X90 Pro Plus, complete with the brand-new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset announced just last week. The 8 Gen 2 is expected to appear in plenty of Android flagships over the next year, including Samsung's S23 series, but the X90 Pro Plus has the honor of being the very first to market. It also includes some serious camera hardware, putting it up there with the most ambitious smartphone cameras to date. Unfortunately for us, it's only launching in the Chinese market for now.

Vivo doesn't outright name the X90 Pro Plus' chipset as the 8 Gen 2, likely because of its p …

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California’s last operating nuclear plant just got a $1.1 billion lifeline

2022-11-22T13:00:18-05:00

Aerial view of Diablo Canyon, the only operational nuclear plant left in California. | Photo by George Rose / Getty Images

The Department of Energy extended a $1.1 billion lifeline to California's embattled Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Diablo Canyon has become a major flashpoint over what kinds of energy are considered "clean" and what risks policymakers are willing to take to reach their climate goals.

The $1.1 billion in funding, announced yesterday, comes from a $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit program made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Congress passed last year. Diablo Canyon is the first power plant to be awarded credits from the program, which aims to extend the lives of reactors in danger of closing down.

Diablo Canyon is the first p …

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NASA’s Orion spacecraft makes close flyby of the Moon and heads on to orbit

2022-11-22T12:46:16-05:00

NASA’s Orion capsule snaps a selfie, with the far side of the Moon in the background. | Image: NASA

NASA's Orion spacecraft has made it past the Moon as part of the uncrewed Artemis I mission, firing its engines to pass within 81 miles of the lunar surface, and is operating with high accuracy.

The spacecraft performed an outbound powered flyby burn yesterday, Monday, November 21st, completing its closest flyby. The engines "all worked perfectly," said Judd Frieling, a flight director at NASA's Johnson Space Center, in a press conference. With three trajectory correction burns performed, the spacecraft has now fired all three of its thruster types: its large orbital maneuvering system engine, small reaction control system thrusters, and m …

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The only constant at Elon Musk’s Twitter is chaos

2022-11-22T09:00:00-05:00

After another manic weekend at Twitter, questions continue to mount about Elon Musk's business strategy, his approach to content moderation, and whether his remaining team can keep the servers up and running during a period of increased demand.

Let's talk about what we've learned over the past few days.

I. Trump is back (sort of)

In the end it came down to, of all things, a Twitter poll. After 15 million votes on a poll that Elon Musk posted Friday afternoon, and 51.8 percent voting in favor, the Twitter account of Donald Trump was restored into existence.

"The people have spoken," Musk tweeted the following day. "Trump will be reinstated. …

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Instagram should have rejected police pressure to ban rap song, says Oversight Board

2022-11-22T08:00:00-05:00

The Meta Oversight Board says the company shouldn't have accepted police demands to remove drill music - a rap genre some politicians and officials have blamed for gang violence - from its platform. The board says Instagram erred in banning a UK drill song after a request from London's Metropolitan Police.

Additionally, the board is pushing Meta to offer more transparency about its relationship with law enforcement in the future, as well as stronger consideration of a work's artistic context. Meta must reverse the ban and respond to policy recommendations within 60 days.

The board's decision, published today, covers a January incident over …

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Lyft is recycling its e-bike and scooter batteries with Redwood Materials

2022-11-22T08:00:00-05:00

Lyft is partnering with Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company founded by a former Tesla executive, to ensure its fleet of shared e-bikes and scooters have a second life.

It's a noteworthy deal considering Lyft's status as the largest electric bike-share operator in North America thanks to its bike-share business, including the extremely popular Citi Bike in New York City. The company claims that Citi Bike was the "25th most-ridden transit network in the United States."

Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by Jeffrey "JB" Straubel, a co-founder and former chief technology officer of Tesla. In addition to breaking down scrap from T …

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Musk antagonist George Hotz hired to fix Twitter search — he’s got 12 weeks

2022-11-22T05:13:04-05:00

Hotz demonstrating his former company’s advanced driver assistance technology. | Photo by Michael Zelenko / The Verge

George Hotz, the noted iPhone hacker who was reported to have once turned down a job at Tesla working on its driver-assistance technology, has embarked upon a 12-week "internship" at Twitter under Elon Musk's leadership. Hotz said his priority at the social media company is to fix its search feature, as well as to remove the prompt that prevents you from browsing the service on the web without logging in.

The internship came about after Hotz expressed support for Musk's "extremely hardcore" ultimatum to Twitter's employees, which demanded that they work "long hours at high intensity" or else depart the company. Hotz said that "this is the a …

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Elon Musk says Twitter is done with layoffs and ready to hire again

2022-11-21T17:50:03-05:00

After purging nearly two-thirds of Twitter's 7,500-person workforce in three weeks, Elon Musk is hiring again.

During an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees today, Musk said that the company is done with layoffs and actively recruiting for roles in engineering and sales and that employees are encouraged to make referrals, according to two people who attended and a partial recording obtained by The Verge. His comments were made the same day that an unspecified wave of cuts hit Twitter's sales department, which has lost almost all of its senior leadership since Musk took over.

Musk didn't specify the kinds of engineering or sales roles …

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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s third wave of new tracks hits in December

2022-11-21T10:15:56-05:00

The next wave of downloadable tracks for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is almost here. Nintendo announced that Wave 3 of its "Booster Course Pass DLC" will be available on December 7th, bringing eight new tracks to the racer.

The tracks are split into two cups, and each one is an updated version previously found in a past Mario Kart game. The Rock Cup includes Tour London Loop (Mario Kart Tour on mobile), Boo Lake (GBA), Rock Rock Mountain (3DS), and Maple Treeway (Wii). Meanwhile, the Moon Cup includes Tour Berlin Byways (Mario Kart Tour), Peach Gardens (DS), Merry Mountain (Mario Kart Tour), and the 3DS iteration of the iconic Rainbow Road.

The up …

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