Hi there!

This is your daily dose of ☕️ Techpresso, where you get the latest tech news of the day effortlessly.


Here's the latest tech news from the last 24 hours:

🚪 Elon Musk's brother laid off most of his staff via Zoom
👁️ Sam Altman's iris-scanning crypto just launched
💥 Elon Musk's former lieutenant says he's destroying his own product
💰 'Jack Dorsey's first tweet' NFT went from $2.9M to $1,871
⚖️ Google's $338.7M fine in Chromecast patent case

🚪 Elon Musk's brother laid off most of his staff via ZoomLINK

Kimbal Musk's hydroponic "smart farm" startup, Square Roots, is closing most of its locations and has laid off a majority of its employees unexpectedly via a Zoom call.

The company, which previously had locations in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Kentucky, and Brooklyn, is shifting its business model to "farming as a service," pausing commercial production to reconfigure its facilities.

While the closures and layoffs were presented as a temporary move, former employees express doubts about the likelihood of their jobs being reinstated, describing the layoffs as "devastating."

👁️ Sam Altman's iris-scanning crypto just launchedLINK

OpenAI founder Sam Altman has launched Worldcoin, a project offering free cryptocurrency shares in exchange for users' biometric data, specifically iris scans.

The startup has attracted more than 1.5 million people who signed up before the official launch, each receiving a share of Worldcoin tokens, currently valued at around $2.59.

Despite privacy concerns, Worldcoin defends its technology by asserting that the collected biometric data is used solely to verify each individual's uniqueness, not to identify them personally.

💥 Elon Musk's former lieutenant says he's destroying his own productLINK

Esther Crawford, a former manager at Twitter and close associate of Elon Musk, seemed to mock Musk's decision to rename Twitter as "X," comparing the move to "corporate seppuku," a reference to ritualistic suicide in Japanese culture.

She indicated that new management's pursuit of cost-savings can lead to a lack of understanding of the core business or disregard for customer experience, possibly hinting at Musk's mass layoffs at Twitter.

Crawford's comments come amid Twitter's declining value and advertiser withdrawal since Musk's takeover, as well as her own layoff from the company earlier this year.

💰 'Jack Dorsey's first tweet' NFT went from $2.9M to $1,871LINK

The NFT of the first-ever tweet, purchased by Sina Estavi, CEO of Bridge Oracle, for $2.9 million in 2021, is currently being auctioned off, with the highest bid at $1,895.

Estavi has previously tried to sell the NFT for $48 million, but the highest offer was significantly lower, demonstrating the declining value of NFTs in the market.

The NFT market crash, triggered by the collapse of TerraUSD and Luna, along with other market setbacks, has led many companies, including Ubisoft and Sega, to abandon their NFT plans.

⚖️ Google's $338.7M fine in Chromecast patent caseLINK

Google has been ordered by a Texas federal jury to pay $338.7 million in damages for infringing patents owned by Touchstream Technologies with its remote-streaming technology.

Touchstream alleges that Google's Chromecast and other devices copied its technology, invented in 2010, which allows videos to be moved from smaller devices to larger ones like televisions.

Google plans to appeal the verdict, maintaining that the company develops technology independently and that Touchstream's patents are invalid.

Other news you might like

TikTok introduces a feature for creating text-based posts, enabling users to share written content and interact with it as dynamically as with video and photo posts. LINK

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's lawyers have rejected witness tampering claims but accepted a gag order in the ongoing criminal fraud case. LINK

SoftBank's GreenBox Systems, in partnership with Symbotic, offers a Warehouse-as-a-Service solution to counter Amazon's fast delivery advantage, investing around $7.5 billion in warehouse automation technology.LINK

Want to get the latest news differently? Find us on:

See you tomorrow for a new dose of ☕️ Techpresso!