Zuckerberg’s personal wealth falls by $7 billion in a few hours as Facebook stock plunges
The personal wealth of Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has fallen by nearly $7 billion in a few hours, following a selloff that sent the social-media giant’s stock plummeting about 5 percent on Monday.
Zuckerberg’s worth is down to $120.9 billion, dropping him below Bill Gates to No. 5 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
According to a Bloomberg report, he’s lost nearly $19 billion since September 13, when he was worth nearly $140 billion.
Facebook’s share started falling after Wall Street Journal began publishing a series of stories based on a cache of internal documents on September 13.
Also Read: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp back online; FB says outage was due to faulty configuration change
The reports revealed that Facebook knew about a wide range of problems with its products — such as Instagram’s harm to teenage girls’ mental health and misinformation about the January 6 Capitol riots — while downplaying the issues in public, according to a Bloomberg report.
The Wall Street Journal reports have drawn the attention of government officials, and on Monday, the whistleblower revealed herself.
In response to the Wall Street journal report, the social media giant has said that the issues concerning its products, including political polarisation, are complex and not caused by technology alone.
The outage of the three popular social media platforms comes a day before one of its whistleblowers was all set to testify before a Congressional committee.
On Monday, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms went down for a couple of hours. However, the services of these companies were restored on Tuesday.
YouTube lets you ‘continue watching’ unfinished videos on your smartphone
YouTube is working on a new feature that seems to be slowly making its way for all users, as per a report by 9TO5Google.
The company is introducing the "continue watching" feature for both Android and iOS mobile devices to further enhance video watching continuity on YouTube across multiple devices. A similar feature is already available on the web version of YouTube which enables users to continue watching a video from where they last left off. Now YouTube is working on expanding the capabilities which will allow users to continue watching a video from where they left off, across multiple devices. What this will means is that when you are watching a YouTube video on your laptop and want to switch to a smartphone to continue watching the same video, you will be able to simply open the YouTube app to achieve the same. In the YouTube app, you will see the mini-player at the bottom, allowing you to open up the last YouTube video you never finished. Must Read |Global outage shuts down FB, Instagram, WhatsApp It is important to note that in order for your smartphone's YouTube app to be able to sync your watched videos between devices, you will need to make sure you are logged into the same Google account on your computer, tablet, and smartphone. YouTube is one of the most popular social media apps in the world, which is home to a plethora of content across topics and genres. Once YouTube launches the "continue watching" feature, it will allow users to have a streamlined viewing experience while watching videos across different devices. Although the company has not yet confirmed when the feature will be available for all users, it should roll out soon as the continue watching" feature for YouTube on mobile is no longer in the beta phase.
India’s crypto market grew 641% over past year, Chainalysis says
NEW DELHI: India, Vietnam and Pakistan are helping to lead the expansion of cryptocurrency markets in
central and southern Asia, according to Chainalysis.
Market grew 641% over the past year and Pakistan’s 711%, a report from Chainalysis showed, using a
metric that estimates the total cryptocurrency received by a country.
India has a 59% share of activity taking place on decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, with Pakistan
at 33%, the report said, adding there’s been a significant increase in cryptocurrency-related
entrepreneurship and venture capital investment in the region.
“Large institutional-sized transfers above $10 million worth of cryptocurrency represent 42% of
transactions sent from India-based addresses, versus 28% for Pakistan and 29% for Vietnam,” the report
said.
“Those numbers suggest that India’s cryptocurrency investors are part of larger, more sophisticated
organizations.”
The past year has seen a number of twists and turns for India's crypto market, including on the
regulatory front, with some reports that the country might try to ban or otherwise restrict crypto.
However, Chainalysis noted, more recently it looks as though the government may simply favor taxation.
Byju’s valued at $18bn in $300 million fund-raise
BENGALURU: Byju’s has raised yet another big funding, $300 million, that values the firm at $18 billion.
In the last round of funding earlier this year, the edtech company was valued at $16.5 billion.
Data from business intelligence platform Tofler showed that Oxshott Capital Partners led the latest
round, while existing investors Edelweiss, Verition Master Fund, IIFL, and Time Capital Advisors also
participated.
Byju’s did not comment on the latest fund-raise. The Bengaluru-based company is already the most valued
privately-held company in India. Paytm follows at $16 billion.
The Indian edtech space has turned red hot, especially since the pandemic, as children were forced to
learn remotely. The country now has five unicorns (those valued at $1 billion or more), three of them
emerging just this year - Eruditus, Vedantu, and Ugrad.
86777204
Online executive education startup Eruditus raised $650 million in August that valued the company at
$3.2 billion, four times its Series D valuation of $780 million last year. Vedantu recently raised $100
million in a Series E round that valued it at over $1 billion.
Byju’s investors also include Tiger Global, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation Chan
Zuckerberg Initiative, Chinese conglomerate Tencent, Canadian pension firm CPPIB, Amsterdam-listed
Prosus Ventures, sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority and PE major General Atlantic.
Byju’s has been spending its funds primarily on acquisitions and international expansion. Earlier this
year it bought Akash Educational Services for $1 billion to expand its offerings in competitive exam
training.
More recently, it bought Great Learning, a company that offers online higher education and upskilling
courses, for $600 million.
Byju’s plans to invest $1 billion in North America. Byju’s Future School, an online one-on-one live
learning platform for math and coding was launched last month.
The initiative uses 11,000 women teachers. The company has 100 million students on its free platform and
7 million paid subscribers.
Byju's has made a slew of acquisitions in recent years. The most recent was that of hte US-based K-12
creative coding platform Tynker for $200 million (Rs 1,500 crore), part of an effort to consolidate its
presence in the US.
Tynker enables students of all ages to learn to code at home, school, or on the go. Prior to that it
acquired US digital reading platform Epic, focused on kids 12 and under, for $500 million. It acquired
US-based Osmo, a maker of educational games, for $120 million two years ago.
Founder Byju Raveendran saw his wealth rise by 19% this year to Rs 24,300 crore, as per the latest IIFL
Wealth Hurun India Rich List 2021.
The pupper appears to be in the seat of a car, like Musk was taking it along for a drive. While Floki is going somewhere, so were cryptocurrency prices soon after Musk’s tweet. Following Musk’s tweet at 7:11 AM IST (GMT +5:30), Dogecoin recorded a minor jump in value staring 7:13 AM before dipping again fifteen minutes later, shows Coindesk data. The current value of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin is $0.21 at the time of writing this at 10:02 AM.
While Dogecoin’s spike was minor, the cryptocurrency named specifically after Floki, Floki, jumped drastically following Musk’s tweet.
Floki Inu describes itself as ‘the new community-owned meme coin.’ The description of the coin reads, ‘Floki Inu is one brave puppy. A new crypto coin birthed by fans & members of the Shiba Inu community. Floki Inu is Elon Musk’s very own shiba inu and he’s hungry for outer-space treats! He’s hyper-deflationary and built to reward you, so more Floki Inu coins are added to your wallet with each transaction. This lil puppy is a space explorer – simply love, pet, and watch your Floki Inu fly to Mars!’
The website for Floki Inu also says currently, there are ‘40,000+’ holders of the cryptocurrency token: something the site also says is rewarded. “FLOKI has been designed to be a deflationary token which rewards you simply for holding!” explains the official website for the cryptocurrency. The statistics also claims that “Floki Inu has a total circulating supply of 9.21T $FLOKI across the ETH & BSC chain combined and has a total circulating market cap of $314.81M across the ETH and BSC chains.” The icon for the token is the face of a Shiba Inu wearing a small viking helmet.
The Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft is set to dock at 1212 GMT at the station, which orbits Earth at an altitude
of around 220 miles (354 km).
Russian state media provided blanket and patriotic coverage in the run-up, with a countdown clock
running on Channel One and news anchors framing the development as a significant breakthrough by Russia
that the rest of the world is watching closely.
The fanfare contrasted with the mixed fortunes of Russia's own space industry which has in recent years
been dogged by delays, accidents and corruption scandals as U.S.-based private firms backed by rich
businessmen have developed new spaceships.
The 12-day Russian mission follows the launch of the first all-civilian crew aboard a rocket and capsule
developed by SpaceX, which was founded by businessman Elon Musk.
© Provided by India Today
The crew was be launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the steppes of Kazakhstan. (Photo: Roscosmos)
The Russian mission is designed to get in first before a Hollywood project announced earlier this year
by actor Tom Cruise together with NASA and SpaceX.
Russia, first as the Soviet Union, and the United States have competed fiercely to reach various space
exploration milestones: Russia launched the first satellite and put the first man and woman in space,
but NASA beat it to the Moon landing.
The Russian movie titled "The challenge" focuses on a story of a doctor, portrayed by actress Yulia
Peresild, who is asked to travel to the space station to save a cosmonaut's life. Cosmonaut crew members
are also set to appear in the film.
Director Klim Shipenko, whose height of 1.9 metres (6 feet 2 inches) makes the flight in a small capsule
especially challenging, has already said he was looking forward to a Mars-based sequel.
Reflecting the Soviet roots of Russia's space industry, the crew will be launched from the Baikonur
cosmodrome in the steppes of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. Russia leases the
cosmodrome.
Russia's own, newer Vostochny cosmodrome is years away from serving manned aircraft, officials say.
"We're pumped to be launching Windows 11; the entire user experience brings you closer to what you love,
empowers you to produce and inspires you to create. Windows 11 provides a sense of calm and openness. It
gives you a place that feels like home. It's secure and everything is designed to be centered around
you," said Panos Panay, chief product officer for Windows and Devices at Microsoft.
Microsoft said only existing PCs will be eligible for a free Windows 11 upgrade, but, according to the
system requirements for the new software, only the new hardware will be eligible. This rules out
hundreds of PCs that run Windows 10 just fine, but because they have an outdated processor, Windows 11
will not support them. Panay is optimistic all Windows 10 devices with a compatible CPU will "be offered
the upgrade to Windows 11 by mid-2022."
If you are unsure about whether your PC meets the system requirements for Windows 11, you can download
the PC Health Check app from the Microsoft website. The tool -- which was re-released recently because
the first time it was released it was found misguiding its users -- will tell you in detail why your PC
is or is not supported by Windows 11.
The most important requirement for Windows 11 compatibility is TPM 2.0, which is a security standard
that Microsoft needs to be enabled on your CPU. Some old CPUs support this but it is usually disabled by
default. Brands such as Asus and Acer began rolling out BIOS updates to enable TPM 2.0 on eligible CPUs
recently, so it is possible that your PC will support Windows 11 if the CPU is not too old.
Windows 11 is free to upgrade for genuine Windows 10 users. But if you are using, say, Windows 7 or
previous versions, you may need to buy Windows 11. However, there are several workarounds on the
internet on how to get Windows 10 for free, which means Windows 11 will also be free once you get
Windows 10. Those buying new PCs from brands such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, and Samsung will get
Windows 11 pre-loaded.
The recently launched Xiaomi and Realme laptops, such as Mi NoteBook Ultra, Mi NoteBook Pro, and Realme
Book Slim, are all eligible for Windows 11 upgrade. So, if you bought one of these recently, you can
download Windows 11 right away. Make sure you backup your data safely before you start the update
process. Also, a strong internet connection is required for it.