Twitter delays API changes again

Photo: Edgar/Unsplash

Twitter is delaying the rollout of its paid API, with the company saying it needs more time to work on the redesign. It's not an indefinite delay, though, as Twitter mentioned "a few more days" delay. It was initially supposed to cut access to the free API on February 9. But that got pushed back to February 13 without warning. Twitter CEO Elon Musk hasn't said much about how the paid access to Twitter's API will work, but he suggested a charge of US$100 per month and an additional "ID verification" to limit bot abuse. The company later said it would allow "good bots" to tweet up to 1,500 times per month.

As Engadget pointed out, automated accounts and third-party clients aren't the only users affected by these changes. Researchers use the platform for different purposes. The recent one was around the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria. Members of the Turkish diaspora used tweets to create heatmaps of where survivors could be located to share their findings with aid organizations and rescue crews. Musk's cost-cutting measures will affect use cases like this. When the API changes take effect, it will likely further slow down the work of data scientists and those involved in rescue efforts.

iOS 16.3.1 update appears to break Google Photos

The latest iOS update seems to be causing trouble with Google Photos. So, if you rely heavily on Google Photos, you might want to hold back. However, the issue with that this update fixes a vulnerability being actively exploited in the wild. Maybe now might not be the time to use Google Photos on the platform. 

It's being reported that the photo service crashes instantly for iPhone and iPad users attempting to open it after the upgrade. Hopefully, Apple or Google comes up with a fix for this as soon as possible.

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ChromeOS might introduce customizable keyboard shortcuts

Screenshot: Ars Technica

It looks like Google is testing a way for Chromebook users to set custom keyboard shortcuts. About Chromebooks' Kevin Tofel found a currently non-functional keyboard shortcut editor in the ChromeOS 111 beta that is accessible by enabling flags with names like "enable-shortcut-customization-app" and "improved-keyboard-shortcuts."

The screen looks like it's accessible through the Settings app. And it shows a list of shortcuts you can use across the operating system and the default keybindings for them. This experimental version allows you to add alternative shortcuts. But it doesn't seem to work for now. Another hint that this option is coming is that you can reset the defaults for a specific shortcut or all shortcuts. There have been hints about this feature before but it looks like this beta version is the best iteration. Hopefully, it rolls out widely soon.

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Some Google employees criticized 'rushed' Bard announcement

Photo: Google

Some Googlers aren't happy with the company's recent announcement of its ChatGPT rival, Bard. Posts in the company's internal message boards called the launch of the AI chatbot "rushed" and "botched," with many targeting CEO Sundar Pichai. Google announced Bard earlier this week to try and get ahead of Microsoft's ChatGPT-powered Big redesign.

But when the company tweeted out a demo, several users pointed out that it contained a factual error. And then during Wednesday's launch, a presenter forgot the phone they were going to use to show off one of Bar'ds features. And there were reports that some employees weren't even aware of the event. Google's stock to a big blow after the news about Bard's error started making its rounds, losing nearly US$100 billion of its market value in a day.

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