Every day we wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and get ready for work. Following are a handful of stories from around the tech world condensed to fit into one single cup of coffee. These are the things you need to know before you step foot out of your door (or in front of a webcam) and into the real world this morning.
So sit back, grab a cup, and start your morning off right with a few “Quick Bytes” from Innovation & Tech Today.
Fake Account Questions are the Main Factor in Twitter Purchase Hold Up
The question of what percentage of Twitter’s accounts are bots could be the key to understanding why Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy the platform is in a holding pattern.
Musk challenged Twitter’s calculations that spam and fake accounts represent less than 5% of total traffic. Twitter’s recent regulatory filing states the 5% figure is based on sampling and that “the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated.”
Musk has begun his own investigation of fake accounts and asked Twitter users to do the same. The move could be a play to lower Twitter’s market value.
When asked on Twitter whether he had thought about the issue before making his $44 billion purchase commitment, Musk said: “I relied upon the accuracy of Twitter’s public filings.”
Congress to Hold Historic UFO Hearing
Congress will hold a historic public hearing Tuesday in an effort to determine the origin of UFO phenomena. U.S. intelligence officials will be grilled by Congressman Andre Carson and other House members on the potential threat of UFOs to national security.
The hearing will be the first of its kind in over half a century.
The pentagon has been running a secret UFO unit since 2017, and intelligence officials, as well as the government at large is taking sightings and reports on UFOs seriously. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said the intelligence community is trying to be as transparent as possible with the American people regarding the phenomenon.
Last year, Avril Haines, the US director of national intelligence, released a report on UFOs that looked into 144 instances of “unidentified aerial phenomena” since 2004, only one of which could be explained by US military pilots.
MacBook Air M1 Discount Could Signal New Model
The MacBook Air M1, Apple’s base MacBook Air, is now available for $850 on Amazon – a $100 discount on its fixed price in recent months. The laptop is a popular choice for regular travelers due to its long battery life and silent, fanless design. The solid-state drive also makes it a prudent choice for students and anyone who is in the habit of transporting their laptops on a regular basis.
A year and a half after its debut, the Macbook Air has continued to hold up as one of the best options on the market, but the recent discount may signal a forthcoming announcement of a new model. Now may be the best time to capitalize on the discounted MacBook Air, but potential buyers may also benefit from a little more patience and a more substantial drop in price after the rollout of a new iteration of one of Apple’s staple hardware offerings.
Stablecoin Tether Wins Fight for Survival after Crypto Crisis
Stablecoin Tether has redeemed $7.6 billion since the beginning of the crypto crisis. The company has now paid out a sum almost twice its total cash holdings to spooked depositors.
Tether, the third biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, experienced a short-lived crisis on Thursday when its value dropped from $1 to 95 cents as savers feared it would follow its fellow stablecoin Terra and collapse. However, the token, which is controlled by a private company with close links to the crypto exchange Bitfinex, has since largely restored its dollar peg by honoring a promise to allow savers to always withdraw $1 for every tether they give back to the company, according to The Guardian.
