What's latest at Musk's Twitter: It seems that Elon Musk, Twitter's new owner, has bigger aspirations than just charging $8 for a verification badge. The tech billionaire is apparently considering placing Twitter behind a paywall in another bid to monetise the platform. Here’s a look at the latest from Musk's Twitter:

• Musk and his venture capitalist adviser David Sacks have discussed charging most or all users a monthly fee, Platformer reported
  
  
• One of these plans might let a user access Twitter only for a short period of time each month, after which they would need to pay up to keep scrolling. (If you want to 'quietly quit' Twitter, Wired has you covered)
  
  
• Meanwhile, Twitter said user growth is "accelerating" and achieved "all-time highs" during the first full week of Elon Musk owning the platform. This comes after a growing number of advertisers paused their spending on the platform. Musk also tweeted out the app’s metrics to show its growth
  
  
• A software engineer fired by Twitter last week said he was illegally targeted for helping coworkers save business email messages

In today’s newsletter: 

• India's SpaceX moment
• Employees abandon the crypto dream
• IT services jobs touch a record low

Also, what happens when dystopian ideas come to reality? No, we are not talking about the Musk-Twitter saga this time. Scroll below for more deets!

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The day has been frenetic for India's space startup ecosystem, with two significant developments that could shape the future of the country's space industry.

First, in what has been termed "India's SpaceX moment," Hyderabad-based startup Skyroot Aerospace announced plans to launch India's first privately developed rocket from Sriharikota next week.

To put things into perspective, unlike the United States, which has several private companies exploring space, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has had this task for decades.

Skyroot Aerospace will launch its rocket Vikram-S from Sriharikota between November 12 and 16, depending on weather conditions.

• The mission has been named Prarambh, which means "beginning," and the mission director will be the startup's co-founder and CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana.
  
  
• Three customer payloads will be carried by the rocket, which is a single-stage suborbital launch vehicle.

The second significant development concerns Agnikul Cosmos, a Chennai-based space-tech startup that successfully test-fired its 3D-printed rocket engine called Agnilet from the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram.

• Agnilet is made all at once, unlike most other rocket engines, which have thousands of parts that need to be put together.
  
  
• Earlier, the IIT Madras-incubated startup announced that it had secured a patent for the engine. 

Agnikul, like Skyroot, is a rocket maker. They are currently developing a small satellite rocket capable of carrying up to 100 kg of payload to low-Earth orbits.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. 

This isn’t true in all cases. Many young professionals in India who entered the crypto business during its bull run are now looking for alternative opportunities.

We spoke with at least a half-dozen people who had been laid off or had left crypto startups. With the ongoing crypto winter, which has resulted in the failure of even the most well-known crypto startups, employees are anxious about the future of working in this volatile sector.

Aside from these worries, the number of crypto jobs has been falling in recent months. About 1,100 job opportunities in Indian crypto startups have now been reduced to 200. Startups in this space now account for less than 2 percent of all jobs.

• Over the past three months, the number of jobs in Web3, blockchain, and crypto has gone down by 27 percent.

Meanwhile, the spat between Changpeng Zhao (CZ) and Sam Bankman-Fried, the founders of two of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges is only making things worse.

A recent announcement by Binance CEO CZ said that the exchange would be selling its whole portfolio of FTT tokens as a post-exit risk management strategy.

• The FTT token has plummeted as a result of this public feud on Twitter. On November 8th, it fell by around 20%. Furthermore, FTT is trading 19% down at $17.93.

The industry is concerned that this may result in a liquidity problem for FTX and a replay of the Luna-style collapse, with a cascade effect on the global crypto ecosystem.

Go deeper.

For several quarters, IT services companies were in the news for their hiring figures, as they hired in record numbers to capitalise on pandemic-induced demand. From that record hiring spree as well as elevated attrition numbers, companies have slowed down hiring as they look to utilise the employees they have hired. 

According to Xpheno data, job openings in the IT sector in October were 50 percent lower than in October 2021.

• In October, the IT services sector had 60,000 active job openings, the lowest in 22 months
  
  
• Active job openings in the sector fell 14 percent from September

Data showed that active job openings in tech services and product companies, as well as tech startups all declined in October.

• Tech sector’s hiring volume and velocity continue to be impacted due to concerns surrounding inflation in local as well as key client markets, according to Xpheno.

The hiring decline was evident when the IT majors reported their Q2 results last month. Comparing the second quarter to the first, net employee additions fell by 45 percent.

• Non-tech sectors, on the other hand, are making up for the fall in job openings at tech companies.

During the dream run of jobs during the pandemic, when the ball was in the candidate's court, crazy high salaries for tech talent had become the norm.

This trend is already waning, but what opportunities are available to early-career candidates and how much can they expect to earn? Read the analysis here.

• Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of Binance, is not interested in selling FTX tokens to Alameda in an over-the-counter deal. “I think we will stay in the free market,” he said on Twitter. To mitigate the market impact of the liquidation, Alameda CEO Caroline Elison publicly offered to buy all of the FTT Binance planned to sell for $22 a piece.

• Sequoia-backed DeFi startup Flint has "moved out" its funds from crypto exchange FTX, which has been under scrutiny after a cold war started between CZ and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

• Anthony Di Iorio, who co-founded Ethereum, Decentral, and Jaxx Liberty, revealed a project he says he has been thinking about, planning, and working on for over a decade. The Andiami project combines game theory with cutting-edge hardware to make blockchain computers more accessible to more people.

Dozens of works of fiction over the past few decades have explored the possibility that dying in a computer game or simulation could actually lead to your death in real life. Although previously only an idea, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey has now brought it to reality.

Crazy, right?

Luckey claims to have created a virtual reality headgear equipped with "explosive charge modules" that detonate when the user's in-game character is killed. Now, who would want to own such a headset is a different story altogether!

P.S. It’s also worrying that so many of the “Black Mirror” episodes are turning into a reality (and sometimes even surpassing it!)

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