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Light Start: Memphis banned by Twitter bot, Falcon 9 takes off hot, Tesla’s EV truck gets off to a trot and Clubhouse update adds a lot.

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Twitter suspended people for tweeting ‘the M-word’

Twitter

In a bizarre series of events, Twitter has started banning users who tweet the word Memphis. Now, we don’t know what folks over tin the United States have been up to in the second-largest city in Tennessee, but Twitter’s moderators aren’t having any of it.

Users on the bird-branded social platform are sharing screenshots of their 12-hour bans following them mentioning the dreaded ‘M-word’. The same happened to a Gizmodo journalist, Alyse Stanley this weekend. Interestingly, this limited companies and celebrities that feature Memphis in their names in what content they could actually tweet for a short duration. “Many discovered the bug after sharing a picture of Dutch professional soccer player Memphis Depay,” and “The Tennessee-based basketball team the Memphis Grizzlies also appeared to shout out the bug in a tweet referencing ‘the m word’ on Sunday,” according to Gizmodo. Lucky for everyone who supports Mr Memphis or lives in Elvis’ home town, the bug has been squashed, and Twitter’s apologised for the strange inconvenience.

Source: Gizmodo[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

The Falcon 9 makes history with its 9th launch

Elon Musk is committed to filing low-Earth orbit with small internet-beaming satellites as part of the Starlink project. It’ll mean more internet accessibility around the world, and possibly a few obstructions when stargazing. To get there, however, they need to get an enormous amount of satellites into space.

This weekend, SpaceX sent another 60 Starlink satellites into space using the Falcon 9 booster. It was a special occasion too, as the rocket did its 9th consecutive successful flight and landing, which set a record in its own right. It took off and returned to Earth successfully, landing on its Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This particular booster was previously part of five additional Starlink launches and the DM-1 mission for its Crew Dragon capsule. It’s exciting to see space travel become more and more sustainable, in return making it even cheaper for possible commercial flights in the future. Because that’s all we’re waiting for, really.

Source: The Verge[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Check out footage of Tesla’s electric semi-truck in action

If you’ve happened to see electric vehicles in person, then you might have an idea of the general design. They’re usually slick and lean, more like race cars than heavy-duty machines. Knowing this, Tesla is looking at shaking things up with a fully electric semi-truck which it recently showed off in a video posted on Twitter. While it certainly looks like a truck, it also features that futuristic design that’s become common in nearly all of Tesla’s vehicles.

The video isn’t anything special, more just a demonstration that the EV trucks works as expected. We do know that the latest prototype shown off includes 4680 cells, which is a lot of power indeed. The Tesla semi-truck was initially meant to launch in 2019 but was delayed to 2020, with the soft sell of “low-volume production” being used to taper expectations. That didn’t happen either but according to an email that circulated Tesla (and was obtained by Electrek) last year, Elon Musk told employees that it was, “time to bring the Tesla Semi to volume production”. Perhaps we’ll finally see a proper release this year.

Source: Electrek[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Clubhouse is dealing with privacy issues in its drop-in audio chat feature

Clubhouse is still in the process of growing in popularity and you know what that means: privacy hiccups. Folks who have made use of the new social media platform have been required to share their phone contacts with Clubhouse in order to invite someone to the platform, which never feels great. Users didn’t like the fact that they were sharing all that information with the app while Clubhouse went and set up accounts for folks who aren’t actually using the platform. Following an update, users can simply invite friends to the app by using their individual phone number rather than sharing every contact. While it’s not perfect, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Other features are being added to the platform that should make it a much more enjoyable experience overall. Link sharing to both profiles and clubs is being added, as well as language filters and an improved reporting system to hopefully deal with toxicity a little better. All worthy additions to the app and very necessary as Clubhouse continues to grow in popularity.

Source: Engadget[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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