NewsBytes Briefing: Apple puts Facebook, Google on notice, and more
In January everyone had dismissed Apple CEO Tim Cook's privacy campaign as a PR stunt. We had called it back then that it was no ordinary PR stunt, and Cook was setting up a booby trap to gut rivals Facebook and Google. Sure enough, Apple is using iOS 14.5 as the payload delivery mechanism for the nuke that's disguised as App Tracking Transparency framework.
In the cutthroat corporate space, there are bound to be winners and losers. Jeff Bezos's space company Blue Origin is turning out to be a sore loser. Bezos, whose space endeavor hasn't achieved a single orbital launch, has called SpaceX winning the Artemis lander contract "fundamentally unfair". Well, if Bezos considers that unfair, just wait till he reads Elon Musk's Twitter response.
Speaking of SpaceX, the company's second manned mission to the ISS suffered a near miss with space debris. Just hours after the launch of the capsule, it almost got hit by a stray piece of space junk that can pack the power of a cannonball given the tremendous orbital velocities. Thankfully, the Crew Dragon capsule missed the projectile and the crew reached ISS safely.
However, Elon Musk's other vehicle wasn't as lucky. The recent Tesla electric vehicle crash that killed two men has a new development. It was already clear that the victims had apparently misused the Autopilot system, but Tesla now claims that someone indeed was in the driver's seat during the crash. Musk is essentially saying that Autopilot wasn't in use during the fatal accident.
Meanwhile in India, Twitter is doing its part to help with the pandemic by incorporating new UI features into Twitter timelines. Now, users in India will see a conspicuous COVID-19 vaccine fact box in their timelines. This move is expected to spread vaccine awareness and provide location-based tips and information about vaccines to Twitter users across the country.
