The Tech Weekender | Top news from the world of technology this week

Elon Musk recently told Twitter employees that bankruptcy was a possibility if it doesn’t start generating more cash. The warning came amid a tumultuous start to Musk’s reign at the social media company -- a two-week period in which he has fired half of Twitter’s staff, ushered out most of the top executives and ordered the remaining employees to stop working from home. The world’s richest man said Twitter would make money from content creators and delve deeper into video, business segments that TikTok has mastered.

Apple added $190.9 billion in market value overnight on November 10, the most ever by a US-listed company. The Cupertino giant's market capitalization now stands at $2.34 trillion. On the other hand, the market cap of the other three tech giants, Google parent company Alphabet, Facebook parent company Meta, and Amazon, added up to $2.306 trillion.

Twitter’s revamped subscription model, called Twitter Blue, which gives the site's famed blue checkmark, is likely to cost Rs. 719 in India, according to reports which say some users in India have started sharing images that say they have received the prompt for Twitter Blue subscription. Elon Musk has started rolling out Twitter Blue to users in the US for a fee of $7.99 a month. The reported India fee for Rs. 719 (approximately $8.9), thus, is higher than what it would cost in the US.

Nearly one-fourth of the Indian gamer base in the financial year 2022 (FY22) were paying users, a report has revealed, indicating the sector's rising maturity in the world's second-largest internet market. India had 120 million paying users in FY22, with two million new paid users added every month, according to a report by gaming and interactive media venture fund Lumikai. The overall gamer base crossed a key milestone of half-a-billion people, touching 507 million gamers in FY22, up from 450 million in FY21.

Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard might still not have gone through but that hasn't stopped the momentum of the mainline Call of Duty series. After shattering franchise records by surpassing $800 million in just three days since launch, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has now become the fastest game in the franchise to cross $1 billion in sales. In other news, The European Union (EU) commission has said it will open an "in-depth investigation" to assess the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. The commission said it was concerned about the risk to competition and feared that it may reduce it in markets for distribution of consoles and PCs.

MediaTek has announced its latest flagship System on Chip for smartphones - The Dimensity 9200. The new chip is built on TSMC's 4nm process and is based on the ARMv9 Gen 2 architecture. This is the first System on Chip (SoC) to make use of ARM's Cortex-X3 prime core, which is clocked at 3.05GHz. Joining it in the enclosure are three Cortex-A715 cores clocked at 2.85GHz, and four Cortex-A510 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. The SoC is fabricated on TSMC's second generation 4nm process. Another first is the utilisation of the new ARM Immortalis-G715 GPU which has a hardware raytracing engine.

Microsoft is adding support for Apple's iCloud Photos in the Windows 11 Photos app. The update is already being pushed out and will be available to all users by the end of the month. Windows 11 users will need to update the Photos app from the Microsoft Store, and then download and install the iCloud for Windows app.

Google is releasing an app for its Google One virtual private network (VPN) service on Mac and Windows. The VPN was previously locked to mobile and available only on iOS and Android. The rollout is expected to take a few days, slowly providing access to all Google One cloud storage users. You must also at minimum have the 2TB storage plan from Google One (Rs 650 a month) to get access to the search giant's VPN service.

Instagram has announced that it is rolling out post-scheduling tools across all creator accounts. The in-app tools will allow professionals and creators to schedule posts, pictures, Reels, or carousel up to 75 days in advance. The Meta-owned social network began testing said tools late last month with a select group of users. Besides the tool, the company said that it is also launching "Achievements" for Reels, which will, "celebrate the effort creators are putting into their Reels".

Apple is looking to shorten its "Hey Siri" wake word for its virtual voice assistant to just "Siri", according to a report. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that this is "a technical challenge that requires a significant amount of AI training and underlying engineering work". The company has been hard at work making this change and is currently testing the new wake word with employees while collecting the necessary data. The Cupertino technology giant is also making other improvements to Siri, including third-party integrations with other apps and services.

The Lava Blaze 5G was first showcased at India’s Mobile Congress 2022 last month. At the time of its unveiling, the Blaze 5G was touted to be an affordable 5G smartphone that would debut in India’s sub-10K segment. Now, Lava has provided all the information surrounding the Blaze 5G’s pricing in India. The Lava Blaze 5G price in India is set at Rs 9,999 for the sole 4GB/128GB model.