Mere days after cutting its workforce in half, Twitter is asking some employees to return, according to Bloomberg. Citing two sources within the company, the outlet reports management at Twitter has come to the realization it either let some workers off by accident or without realizing their experience was essential to building the features Elon Musk wants to bring to the platform.

Twitter did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. Platformer’s Casey Newton was the first to report on the company’s plan, sharing messages from one of its internal Slack channels. One post suggests the company is in need of Android and iOS developers.

A decision to bring back some employees would cap off a chaotic weekend at Twitter. The company began Friday by laying off approximately 3,800 employees, a move that gutted teams across the company, including those responsible for developing new accessibility features. On Saturday, the company began briefly rolling out its new paid verification system. One day later, the company reportedly made the decision to delay the release of that feature until after the US midterm elections.

Facebook parent company Meta could announce large-scale layoffs as early as next week, according to The Wall Street Journal. The outlet reports the company is planning to cut “many thousands” of employees, with an announcement coming as soon as Wednesday. Meta currently employs more than 87,000 individuals. The cuts could be the largest workforce reduction conducted by a tech company this year, surpassing the layoffs made by Twitter on Friday. The cuts would also represent the first broad restructuring in Meta’s history.

Meta declined to comment. A spokesperson pointed Engadget to a statement CEO Mark Zuckerberg made during the company’s recent Q3 earnings call. “In 2023, we're going to focus our investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year,” he said. “In aggregate, we expect to end 2023 as either roughly the same size, or even a slightly smaller organization than we are today.”

As The Journal points out, Meta grew significantly during the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, adding more than 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021. The company’s hiring spree continued through the first nine months of 2022, a period during which it brought on an additional 15,344 employees. While the company was a major beneficiary of the pandemic, its fortunes have changed in recent months. In July, the company reported its first-ever revenue drop. The company has blamed its recent hardships on tough competition from TikTok and the release of Apple’s contentious App Tracking Transparency feature.

At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg’s bid on the Metaverse has so far failed to create new revenue opportunities for the company while costing it dearly. Since the start of 2021, Meta has spent $15 billion to make virtual and augmented reality mainstream with little success. The company expects to lose even more money on the project in 2023.

Twitter has delayed the rollout of paid account verification until after the end of the US midterm elections, according to The New York Times. The company reportedly made the decision on Saturday after it briefly began rolling out its $8 per month Twitter Blue service. In the hours after the company released an iOS app update that gave people a preview of its new verification system, both employees and users raised concerns that paid badges could lead to confusion ahead of a pivotal election.

According to The Times, one Twitter employee, writing in an internal company Slack channel, asked management why the social network was “making such a risky change” with the “potential of causing election interference.” A day later, a manager on the project said “we’ve made the decision to move the launch of this release to November 9th, after the election.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. The majority of the company’s public relations team was let go on Friday. Before Elon Musk announced Twitter’s revamped subscription service on Tuesday, the company had reserved blue badges for the accounts of notable politicians, celebrities, journalists and other prominent figures. While the system the company used for handling verification requests was often a mess, it was at least designed to limit impersonation. It’s unclear how the company plans to prevent that kind of behavior moving forward.

The November 9th release date is likely to come with a sigh of relief for the engineers working on paid verifications. Before Sunday, Elon Musk had reportedly told employees they had until November 7th to ship the feature or else they would be fired.

If you’ve been waiting for Apple’s second-generation AirPods Pro to go on sale, now is your chance to pick them up. Amazon has discounted the earbuds for a limited time. After a six percent price cut, the 2022 AirPods Pro are $234, down from $249. The $15 discount marks the best reduction we’ve seen on Apple’s latest earbuds since they went on sale back in September.

While they don’t look dramatically different from their predecessor, the second-generation AirPods Pro feature some meaningful upgrades. With the inclusion of its new H2 chip, Apple claims the 2022 model is better at canceling out ambient noise and comes with improved battery life. The company also found a way to add touch controls to the new model. Engadget Senior Editor Billy Steele gave the earbuds a score of 88, praising the 2022 AirPods Pro for their improved audio quality and deep integration with the broader Apple ecosystem. In regards to the new touch controls, he said they take some practice to master. He also found battery life could be better. Despite those issues, the 2022 AirPods Pro are among the best wireless earbuds you can buy right now, especially if you use an iPhone as your daily driver.

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For the second time this year, the uncontrolled remnants of a Chinese Long March 5B came crashing to Earth. On Friday morning, US Space Command confirmed pieces of the rocket that carried the third and final piece of China's Tiangong space station to orbit had re-entered the planet’s atmosphere over the south-central Pacific Ocean, reports The New York Times. The debris eventually plunged into the body of water, leaving no one harmed.

The episode marked the fourth uncontrolled re-entry for China’s most powerful heavy-lift rocket following its debut in 2020. Unlike many of its modern counterparts, including the SpaceX Falcon 9, the Long March 5B can’t reignite its engine to complete a predictable descent back to Earth. The rocket has yet to harm anyone (and probably won’t in the future). Still, each time China has sent a Long March 5B into space, astronomers and onlookers have anxiously followed its path back to the surface, worrying it might land somewhere people live. On Friday, Spain briefly closed parts of its airspace over risks posed by the debris from Monday’s mission, leading to hundreds of flight delays.

As he did earlier this year following China’s Wentian mission, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticized the country for not taking the appropriate precautions to prevent an out-of-control re-entry. “It is critical that all spacefaring nations are responsible and transparent in their space activities, and follow established best practices, especially, for the uncontrolled re-entry of a large rocket body debris — debris that could very well result in major damage or loss of life,” he said.

Space debris landing on Earth isn’t a problem unique to China. In August, for instance, a farmer in rural Australia found a piece of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that landed on his farm. However, many experts stress that those incidents differ from the one that occured on Friday. “The thing I want to point out about this is that we, the world, don’t deliberately launch things this big intending them to fall wherever,” Ted Muelhaupt, an Aerospace Corporation consultant, told The Times. “We haven’t done that for 50 years.” China will launch another Long March 5B rocket next year when it attempts to put its Xuntian space telescope into orbit.

Apple is working to simplify how users interact with Siri, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The company has reportedly spent the past few months training the digital assistant to respond to “Siri” instead of “Hey Siri.” On the surface, that’s a simple change, but one that Gurman says involves a “significant amount of AI training and underlying engineering work.” The reason for that is that a two-word trigger phrase like “Hey Siri” increases the likelihood of the software responding to a request.

The change would make it easier to string together multiple commands one after another. Critically, it would help Apple catch up with Amazon and Google, which offer digital assistants with more robust capabilities. Alexa, for instance, is already capable of responding to just its name instead of “Hey Alexa.” Google Assistant, meanwhile, still requires you to say “Hey Google” or “Ok Google,” but can register back-to-back commands without the need for you to repeat a wake word every time.

According to Gurman, Apple is also working to integrate Siri more deeply with third-party apps and services. All those changes could take some time to roll out, with Gurman noting the tweak to Siri’s wake phrase likely to come either next year or in 2024.

Twitter will soon include a feature allowing users to append long-form text to their tweets, company owner and CEO Elon Musk announced on Saturday. Musk didn't say when the functionality would arrive, but promised it would end the "absurdity of notepad screenshots." He added that the company also plans to work on additional tools for creator monetization and enhancements to the platform's search functionality. "Search within Twitter reminds me of Infoseek in '98! That will also get a lot better pronto," he wrote.        

The announcement comes on the same day that the company began putting in place some of the features needed to support its revamped Twitter Blue subscription. The service will allow users to pay $8 per month to verify their account and gain access to a handful of other features, including the ability to post longer videos and see fewer ads.     

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Jack Dorsey says he can “understand” if current and former Twitter employees blame him for the state of the company under Elon Musk. The co-founder and former CEO of Twitter took to the platform on Saturday to say he was to blame for the situation. “Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient. They will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment,” Dorsey said on Saturday. “I realize many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that.”

Dorsey went on to add he was grateful to everyone who had ever worked at Twitter. “I don’t expect that to be mutual in this moment… or ever… and I understand,” he wrote. Dorsey posted the apology after The New York Post published a story earlier in the day claiming he is now “hated at Twitter.” Many employees reportedly “blame” him for Musk’s takeover and the company-wide layoffs that will see about 50 percent of Twitter’s workforce cut.

The thread marks Dorsey’s first public comment on Twitter since Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy the company on October 27th. When the SpaceX founder first announced the takeover, Dorsey put his support behind it. “Elon is the singular solution I trust,” he said at the time. “This is the right path… I believe it with all my heart.” Dorsey was quiet after Musk attempted to renege on the acquisition, but in texts that became public in September, it became clear that he had wanted Musk to take a more active role at Twitter for some time.

Twitter has begun rolling out support for the new, more expensive version of its Blue subscription. As of Saturday, the company’s iOS app now reflects the fact users can pay $8 per month to obtain a verified account. The changelog notes people who sign up for Twitter Blue will receive a checkmark, “just like the celebrities, companies, and politicians you already follow.”

However, it looks like Twitter is still rolling out the necessary backend changes to support the change more broadly. There are reports of users not seeing a blue checkmark on their account even after signing up for the new subscription. Additionally, Twitter has yet to update its Android app, and the other perks Elon Musk promised would be part of the revamped Twitter Blue, such as the ability to post longer videos, are listed as “coming soon.” What the updated iOS app does include is a tweaked notification tab that features a column dedicated to displaying tweets solely from verified users.

It’s unclear when all the elements Musk promised will be in place, but he reportedly gave employees working on making verification a paid feature until November 7th to complete the work or else lose their jobs. On Friday, the company began laying off about 50 percent of its workforce, leaving entire teams gutted.

As recently as October 24th, Ukraine’s military suffered a partial internet outage after 1,300 Starlink terminals went offline due to a funding shortage, reports CNN. The blackout occurred amid ongoing talks between SpaceX and the Department of Defense that continue despite Elon Musk having said his company would continue to foot the bill for the country’s Starlink usage.

“Negotiations are very much underway. Everyone in our building knows we’re going to pay them,” a senior Pentagon official told the network, adding that the Defense Department wants to get something in writing “because we worry he’ll change his mind.”

In September, SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon, asking the Defense Department to take over paying expenses related to Ukraine’s usage of its Starlink internet service. On October 15th, following public outcry, Musk appeared to backtrack on the decision to ask the US government for assistance. “To hell with it… we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free,” Musk tweeted, later telling The Financial Times the company would do so “indefinitely.”

According to CNN, last month’s outage was a “huge problem” for Ukraine’s military. In March, the country purchased the 1,300 terminals from a British company. SpaceX reportedly charged Ukraine $2,500 per month to keep each unit operational. The country eventually couldn’t afford to pay the $3.25 million monthly bill anymore and asked for financial aid from the British Ministry of Defence. After some discussion, the two agreed to prioritize other military expenses.

“We support a number of terminals that have a direct tactical utility for Ukraine’s military in repelling Russia’s invasion,” a British official told CNN. “We consider and prioritize all new requests in terms of the impact contributions would have in supporting Ukraine to defend its people against Putin’s deplorable invasion.”

Should SpaceX and the US Department of Defense eventually sign an agreement, it’s unclear if the Pentagon will have greater control over Starlink service in Ukraine. The company currently decides where Ukrainian troops can use the terminals.