Welcome back to another edition of 10 Things in Tech. My colleague Diamond Naga is still out, leaving me, Asia Martin, to fill in this week.
If there's one thing I enjoy sharing with people, it's my fondness for hiking and the great outdoors. We're now in the full swing of Spring where temperatures are typically comfortable and plants are blossoming for the first time this year. (Sorry to you allergy sufferers.)
I think it's a good day to remind you about all the good hiking spots worth checking out, like Overlook Mountain in the Catskills or Watkins Glen State Park in Finger Lakes, New York. If you see me on the trails, feel free to say 'hey!'
Before I dive deep into packing for my own hiking trips, let's get started with what's going on in tech.
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1. Elon Musk's $1 million bounty. Twitter CEO Elon Musk has some kind of bounty out for whomever is behind the botnets that he says target certain users and suppresses the reach of their tweets. The bots mass block, unfollow, and report accounts causing users' reputational scores to go down, reports Ryan Hogg.
- Elon Musk tweeted "Who is behind these botnets? Million dollar bounty if convicted" in response to a Twitter user who claimed that botnets "silence" certain accounts.
- Musk and the user were referring to a thread where another user analyzed Twitter's recently open-sourced algorithm.
- The user discovered that the algorithm is prone to negative-feedback loops that could affect any user's reputational score.
Read more about Twitter's algorithm issues here.
In other news:
2. Twitter employees don't generate a ton of revenue. Since the industry's most important motto this year is "revenue per employee," Insider's Hasan Chowdury went through Twitter's SEC filings. Could the low revenue per employee be why Elon Musk axed so many employees? Read about it here.
3. Twitch's CEO was caught off guard by the Amazon layoffs announcement. In a leaked memo, CEO Dan Clancy wrote that he planned to tell impacted employees first before announcing the layoffs to the rest of Twitch's staff.
4. Tim Cook tells parents and schools to put hard limits around tech usage. The Apple CEO told GQ that he didn't like seeing his nephew use social media, and that Apple is not aiming to be anyone's addiction.
5. Sam Altman compared OpenAI to the first nuclear bomb project. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a Times reporter that OpenAI is on the same scale as the Manhattan Project, which was the nuclear weapons program responsible for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
6. The father of cellphones has a message for phone users. Martin Cooper, who invented the first cellphone in 1973, says he is devastated to see people crossing the street while on their smartphones. Jokingly, he said a few potential accidents may stop that habit.
7. Peace, love, and Hitler: How Lex Fridman's podcast became a safe space for the anti-woke tech elite. Senior correspondent Julia Black examines the evolution of MIT professor Lex Fridman's self-titled podcast and his relationship with some of tech's elite.
8. Is Twitter censoring gender identity and sexual orientation? Twitter users called attention to the difficulty in seeing direct messages that mention "gay", "queer", and "trans." Insider senior reporter Samantha Delouya performed a test to verify the claims.
Odds and ends:
9. The best iPhone 14 Pro cases: The priciest iPhone may be tougher than its ancestors but that doesn't make it damage proof. My colleague William Antonelli recommends a number of phone cases that offer protection, good looks, and MagSafe compatibility. Read more here.
10. Nike hopes for real-life Space Jam by 2073. In No Finish Line, a 192-page book, Nike looks at what the company aims to do over the next 50 years. It envisions outer-space Olympics and footballs made of stardust.
What we're watching today:
- ICYMI: NASA announced the four members of the Artemis II crew mission to the moon; Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen.
Curated by Asia Martin. (Feedback or tips? Email amartin@insider.com). Edited by Matt Weinberger (tweet @gamoid) in San Francisco and Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.
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