Those unlockable Telegram features that showed up with the app's beta version in May will soon be available for paying users. Telegram founder Pavel Durov has confirmed that the app is launching a subscription plan called Telegram Premium sometime this month. While Durov didn't discuss the specific benefits that come with the plan, he said it will give paying users extra features, speed and resources, as well as first access to the app's latest offerings. 

Durov explained that a lot of people have been asking the service to raise the limits on its chats, media and file uploads. However, doing so for everyone would lead to massive traffic and server costs beyond what it could afford. Telegram apparently came to the conclusion that the only way it could give its "most demanding fans" more while keeping its existing features free is to offer those raised limits as a paid option. 

The service's founder has also assured users in his announcement that Telegram will still be releasing new free features despite having a paid tier. Further, even free users will be able to enjoy some of the Premium option's new futures, including being able to view larger-than-usual documents, media and stickers sent by paying members. A previous report by tech publication Beebom says Premium subscribers will have the capability to upload files up to 4GB in size and will enjoy up to twice a non-paying users' limits when it comes to the number of channels they can join, among other things. Beebom also says a Premium subscription will cost $5 a month, though we won't know for sure until the option launches.

Durov ended his announcement with:

"While our experiments with privacy-focused ads in public one-to-many channels have been more successful than we expected, I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority."

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has concluded that Google and Apple "hold all the cards" when it comes to mobile phones a year after taking a closer look at their "duopoly." It's now consulting on the launch of a market investigation into the tech giants' market power in mobile browsers, as well as into Apple's cloud gaming restrictions. In addition, the CMA has launched a separate investigation into Google's Play Store rules — the one that requires certain app developers to use the tech giant's payment system for in-app purchases, in particular. 

The CMA has concluded after its year-long study that the tech giants do indeed exhibit an "effective duopoly" on mobile ecosystems. A total of 97 percent of all mobile web browsing in the UK is powered by Apple's and Google's browser engines. iPhones and Android devices typically come with Safari and Chrome pre-installed, which means their browsers have the advantage from the start. Further, Apple requires developers to make sure their iOS and iPadOS apps are using its WebKit engine to browse the web. That limits the incentives Apple may have to invest in Safari, the CMA said.

The agency also pointed out that Apple enforces policies that prevent cloud gaming apps from being available to download from its App Store. Under its rules, cloud gaming services would have to individually submit each playable game for review and approval if they want to be listed. The company eventually carved out an exception, but only to make services like Xbox Cloud Gaming available on iOS devices through a browser.

In its announcement, the CMA explained that the lack of intervention would allow the tech giants to maintain and even strengthen their hold not just over mobile browsers, but also over mobile operating systems and app stores. Their duopoly could stifle competition and limit incentives for individuals and other companies to innovate and develop new products and technologies for those markets. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has deepened (PDF) its investigation into a series of Tesla crashes involving first responders to an engineering analysis. As The Washington Post explains, that's the last stage of an investigation, and the agency typically decides within a year if a vehicle should be recalled or if the probe should be closed. In addition to upgrading the probe's status, the investigation now covers 830,000 units, or almost all the Tesla Model Y, Model X, Model S and Model 3 vehicles the company has sold since 2014.

This development expands upon the investigation the NHTSA initiated back in 2021 following 11 collisions of Tesla vehicles with parked emergency responders and trucks. Since then, the agency has identified and added six more incidents that occurred over the past couple of years. In most of those crashes, Autopilot gave up vehicle control less than one second before impact, though Automatic Emergency Braking intervened in at least half of them. 

The NHTSA also found that the first responders on the road would've been visible to the drivers at an average of eight seconds before impact. Plus, forensic data showed no driver took evasive action between 2 to 5 seconds prior to impact even though they all had their hands on the wheel. Apparently, nine of the 11 vehicles originally involved in the investigation exhibited no driver engagement visual or chime alerts until the last minute before the collision. Four of them didn't exhibit any engagement visual or chime alert at all. 

The NHTSA also looked into 191 crashes not limited to incidents involving first responders. In 53 of those collisions, the agency found that the driver was "insufficiently responsive" as evidenced by them not intervening when needed. All these suggest that while drivers are complying with Tesla's instructions to make sure they have their hands on the wheel at all times, they're not necessarily paying attention to their environment. 

That said, the NHTSA noted in its report that "a driver's use or misuse of vehicle components, or operation of a vehicle in an unintended manner does not necessarily preclude a system defect." As University of South Carolina law professor Bryant Walker Smith told The Post, monitoring the position of a driver's hands isn't effective enough, because it doesn't ensure a driver's capability to respond to what they encounter on the road. 

In addition, the NHTSA noted that the ways a driver may interact with the system is an important design consideration for Level 2 autonomous driving technologies. These systems still aren't full autonomous and still mostly depend on the human driver, after all. "As such, ensuring the system facilitates the driver's effective performance of this supervisory driving task presents an important safety consideration," the agency wrote.

Meta will no longer release any more Portal devices for consumers, according to The Information and Variety. The company is reportedly repositioning the smart display and home video line as a business product and discontinuing current consumer versions. Variety says Meta will sell all the remaining inventory of previously released models and will continue providing support for existing customers, but it will focus on business applications for future releases. Portal never quite sold as well as Amazon's and Google smart display devices, but it enjoyed an uptick in sales after pandemic lockdowns forced companies to let their employees work from home. 

According to the IDC research firm, Meta sold 600,000 Portal devices in 2020 and 800,000 in 2021, as businesses looked for solutions to make communicating with remote workers easier. Perhaps it was the knowledge that it was business customers that gave the devices' sales a boost these past two years that compelled Meta to change the product line's focus. We'll just have to wait and see how Portals for businesses differ from their consumer counterparts. Meta released several versions of Portal in the past, including the Portal TV, which turns televisions into big smart displays, and the Portal Go that can be taken out of its charging dock and moved around. 

In addition to killing off consumer Portals, Meta has also reportedly shelved plans for its long-rumored dual-camera smartwatch. Previous reports suggested that it was going to be an Apple competitor, but Meta has apparently decided to focus on developing other wearables for now.

Crossword puzzles aren't always easy to solve even for the most avid human fans, and they also remain one of the most challenging areas in artificial intelligence. Now, the University of Siena in Italy and expert.ai have a launched an AI software called WebCrow 2.0 that can solve crossword puzzles not just in English, but also in Italian. WebCrow 2.0 uses natural language processing technology to understand a puzzle's clues like a human player would. 

That's trickier than it sounds, seeing as the same word could mean totally different things based on context, and crossword puzzle clues could contain a play on words. The answer for the clue "liquid that does not stick," for instance, is "scotch," which alludes to Scotch tape. Expert.ai's knowledge graph also gives it the reasoning power to find the correct meaning of words. Plus, the AI derives information from previously solved puzzles and its self-updating web knowledge to find the correct answer.

Last year, an AI called Dr. Fill outscored most of the best human competitors at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. While it's performance wasn't flawless — it did make three mistakes and was thwarted by a phonetically themed puzzle in one instance — Dr. Fill could solve puzzles faster than any human competitor. From July 18th through the 23rd, the creators of WebCrow 2.0 are also pitting their AI against human players. It will be a multilingual competition featuring previously unpublished crosswords in English and Italian and will demonstrate how good the AI actually is.

Marco Gori, a professor for University of Siena's Department of Information Engineering and Mathematical Sciences said: 

"Can machines solve these as well as humans? How do they compare definitions and answer clues with niche or abstract references? Can they pick up on plays on words, linguistic nuances and even humor? We're ready to demonstrate how leveraging context can enable humans and software to work together and take AI-based cognitive abilities to new levels"

Astronomers everywhere have high hopes for NASA's James Webb telescope. It's supposed to give us an insight into the first stars and galaxies that ever formed and into the atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets. That is why NASA and its partners had engineered it to be able to withstand harsh situations, such as being bombarded by micrometeroids flying at extremely high velocities. Between May 23rd and May 25th, a micrometeoroid that's larger than expected hit one of the telescope's primary mirror segments. The event was significant enough for NASA to pick up a "marginally detectable effect in the data," but not enough to affect the telescope's performance. 

In NASA's announcement, it said that the James Webb team performed an initial analysis and found that it still performs at a level that "exceeds all mission requirements." The space agency explained that its engineers relied on simulations and did actual test impacts on mirror samples when it was building the telescope to make sure it was adequately fortified. For instance, the telescope's flight teams can perform maneuvers to turn its optics away from known meteor showers. The recent impact it sustained was classified as an unavoidable chance event, though, and the micrometeoroid was larger than what engineers could have tested on the ground. 

The good news is that James Webb has the capability to adjust mirror positions in order to correct and minimize the results of impacts like this. Its engineers have already made the first of several adjustments to make up for the damage on the affected segment. The agency has also formed a team of engineers to look into ways to mitigate effects of hits this scale in the future. Seeing as James Webb is meant to be Hubble's replacement and is expected to provide us invaluable data over the next 10 years — or 20, if everything goes well — NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency will most likely do the best they can to protect the space telescope. 

Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA Goddard, said:

"With Webb’s mirrors exposed to space, we expected that occasional micrometeoroid impacts would gracefully degrade telescope performance over time. Since launch, we have had four smaller measurable micrometeoroid strikes that were consistent with expectations and this one more recently that is larger than our degradation predictions assumed. We will use this flight data to update our analysis of performance over time and also develop operational approaches to assure we maximize the imaging performance of Webb to the best extent possible for many years to come."

Microsoft has announced a handful of significant changes for employee contracts and agreements that would scrap some of the most controversial workplace policies in tech. To start with, the tech giant will no longer add non-compete clauses in its contracts for employees in the US and will not enforce it for most of its current staff. Only employees in senior leadership roles, such as partners and executives, will have to sign and comply with non-compete agreements. That means most employees in the US will be free to look for jobs with other companies considered as Microsoft competitors, such as Google.

"While our existing employee agreements have noncompete obligations, we do not endorse the use of such provisions as a retention tool. We have heard concerns that the noncompetition clauses in some U.S. employee agreements, even when rarely and reasonably enforced, feel at odds with our talent principles," Microsoft explained in its announcement.

The company is also ending another controversial practice: Having workers sign agreements with non-disclosure clauses when resolving disputes and providing separation benefits. Historically, NDAs have prevented workers from talking about instances of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation in the workplace. By preventing them from talking, it keeps them from connecting with other employees who may have the same experiences and from banding together to demand real change from the company. 

As GeekWire notes, Microsoft may have no choice but to implement this change anyway. A new law that makes it illegal for companies to ban workers from talking about "acts of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wage and hour violations, and sexual assault" is set to take effect in the Washington state, where Microsoft is based, this week.

Microsoft is also increasing pay transparency by publicly disclosing salary ranges in all of its job postings across the US starting in January 2023. Finally, it will go through a civil rights audit that would examine its workplace policies and practices as conducted by a third party. It has committed to complete the audit by fiscal year 2023 and to publish a report of its results. 

Bird, the rental service for electric scooters, is one of the latest companies in the tech industry to lay off quite a big percentage of its workforce. According to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks layoffs across the tech space, the company plans to let 23 percent of its staff go. As TechCrunch notes, Bird has 600 employees, which means around 138 people are losing their jobs if they haven't yet. Based on LinkedIn posts seen by the publication, layoffs have already started, and people are already on the lookout for new opportunities. 

Bird has confirmed its decision to TechCrunch and said that the move will affect staff across divisions and regions — even people in senior managerial positions aren't safe. A spokesperson explained:

"While the need for and access to micro-electric vehicle transportation has never been greater, macro economic trends impacting everyone have resulted in an acceleration of our path to profitability. This path required us to reduce our cost structure in a way that allows us to responsibly and sustainably expand our service beyond the more than 400 cities we operate in today as climate action has never been more paramount. In addition to eliminating all non-critical third party spend, we also unfortunately had to depart with a number of team members who passionately helped create a new industry and paved the way for more eco-friendly transportation."

The company first dropped hints that layoffs are on the horizon when it reported its first quarter earnings in May. Back then, it said it plans to "streamline and consolidate its resourcing against its core business." A source told TechCrunch that Bird went on a hiring spree as recently as this March and April, and they think that those offers would be reversed. All laid off employees that the publication talked to thus far were given a minimum severance of three weeks with three weeks of healthcare — and they get to keep their laptops.

A previous report by TechCrunch based on data from Layoffs.fyi puts the number of tech workers that had lost their jobs last month at 15,000. Some of the companies that laid off employees in May are Bose, Cameo and Carvana, which did so via Zoom. Even PayPal isn't immune to the global economic downturn and has been letting personnel go after its growth showed signs of slowing down. 

Lyft drivers don't have to worry about being fully replaced by the company's autonomous vehicles just yet. Company president John Zimmer told CNBC that Lyft intends to operate a hybrid network at first, with a fleet that's largely comprised of non-autonomous cars. "[J]ust like what happened with phones, you didn't have 3G go to 4G go to 5G on separate networks," Zimmer explained."You still needed to be able to make a 3G call when 4G wasn't available." And similar to when LTE was new and mobile users mostly had to connect to the internet via 3G, Lyft passengers will also largely have to rely on rideshare drivers.

Zimmer envisions a network wherein autonomous vehicles will only be taking five percent of all trips at first, with rideshare drivers taking the lion's share of the rides booked through the platform. Lyft plans to scale up its autonomous rides with its partners, though, so those percentages will keep shifting in the future. The company has been testing self-driving rides in Las Vegas since at least 2018 with its partner Motional, which is a joint venture between Aptiv and Hyundai. In 2020, Lyft announced that it intends to bring fully driverless cars to multiple US cities by 2023.

Lyft also has an existing partnership with Ford, and they're currently testing the latter's Argo-AI powered cars — with no human safety driver behind the wheel — on Miami and Austin roads. In addition, the company teamed up with Waymo to pick up customers in the metro Phoenix area back in 2019.

In a month's time, we'll finally get to meet Nothing's first handset. The company has announced that its unveiling its second device, the Nothing phone (1), at an event on July 12th at 4PM BST/11AM EST. "It's our first smartphone, and our most important product," Nothing said in its announcement. "The real start of Nothing's journey. To make tech fun again. And an invitation to unlearn everything the industry has taught us." 

Nothing was formed by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei who departed his original company before it merged with Oppo. Given Pei's background, it doesn't exactly come as a surprise for Nothing to release a phone. However, it wasn't until reports came out that Pei was showing off a smartphone to industry executives at Mobile World Congress this year that the idea of Nothing launching its own phone became something real and not just something we'd expect the company to do in the future. 

Nothing eventually confirmed that it's unveiling its own handset this summer and that it will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. It will run on Nothing OS, a modified version of Android that the company says "captures the best features" of the OS and distills it "to just the essentials." The platform's interface will feature "bespoke" fonts, colors, design elements and sounds, as well. 

Nothing will introduce Phone (1) to the public at a live event in London, which will be livestreamed on its website. You can RSVP for the online stream right here.