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MENA

Twitter back online after global outage hits thousands

Twitter Inc experienced a major outage on Wednesday, preventing tens of thousands of users worldwide from accessing or using the popular social media platform’s key features for several hours before services appeared to be restored.

The incident is Twitter’s first visible widespread service disruption since billionaire Elon Musk took over as CEO in late October. At the peak of the disruption, Downdetector, a website that tracks outages using a variety of sources including user reports, reported more than 10,000 affected users from the United States, about 2,500 from Japan, and about 2,500 from the United Kingdom. Musk tweeted later on Wednesday that “Significant backend server architecture changes” had been rolled out and that “Twitter should feel faster”, but his post did not make any reference to the downtime reported by users.

by Team SNFYI

Abu Dhabi has ranked as the fastest-growing emerging ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, marking a 28 per cent growth in ecosystem value in the 2024 Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER) by Startup Genome and the Global Entrepreneurship Network, launched during London Tech Week. GSER, which uses the world’s most quality-controlled dataset on startup ecosystems, analyses data from more than 4.5m companies across more than 300 entrepreneurial innovation ecosystems. It provides compelling new insights and deep knowledge about startup trends around the world and ranks the Top 40 global ecosystems, emerging ecosystems, and an expanded regional ranking. Abu Dhabi startups As part of Startup Genome’s analysis of the UAE’s capital city, including the growing startup activity at Hub71, Abu Dhabi’s global technology ecosystem, GSER 2024 found that Abu Dhabi continues to be the fastest-growing emerging ecosystem in the MENA region. The ecosystem created $4.2bn in Ecosystem Value from July 1, 2021 to December 31, 2023, representing 28 per cent compound annual growth compared to July 1, 2019 to December 31, 2021 period. Ecosystem Value is a measure of economic impact, calculated as the value of exits and startup valuations. Abu Dhabi’s ranking jumped 15 spots compared to the previous year, landing in the 61-70 group and Total Early-Stage Funding between July 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023 is $284m and total VC Funding for 2019-2023 is $1.06bn. In addition, Abu Dhabi was ranked: Other ranks attained by the emirate include posting within the Top 10 MENA Ecosystem in Knowledge, which measures innovation through research and patent activity, within the Top 15 MENA Ecosystem in Bang for Buck, which measures the amount of runway tech startups acquire, on average, from a VC round, within the Top 15 MENA Ecosystem in Affordable Talent, which measures the ability to hire tech talent. It was also highlighted in the FinTech, AgTech and New Food, and ClimateTech sectors for their density of talent, support resources, and startup activity. Also spotlighted were the Golden Visa and Abu Dhabi’s strategic location, which were cited as reasons a startup should move to the ecosystem. Ahmad Ali Alwan, CEO of Hub71, said: “Abu Dhabi’s rise as a leading startup ecosystem in the region is a testament to the opportunities it offers entrepreneurs worldwide. “Its favorable environment creates the funding and commercial prospects and establishes the foundation for startups to scale. This is exemplified through Hub71 which has seen its startup community grow over the past five years as more startups identify Abu Dhabi as a launchpad for their global expansion. “As the Startup Genome report shows, Hub71 is fulfilling the vision of our leadership to maximize the potential of disruptive ventures that are transforming society with impact.” The report highlights Abu Dhabi’s key ecosystem players including Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), Mubadala Investment Company, ADQ, the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), startAD, and Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED), which are contributing to a favourable operating and regulatory environment and offering unique incentives, such as 100 per …

by The Verge

Everyone dies eventually, and famed linguist Noam Chomsky will be no different — but at the time of this writing, he is alive. And, sadly, his wife is explaining to people that reports of his death are “false,” according to The Associated Press. Chomsky, 95, has been hospitalized in Brazil as he recovers from a stroke he had last year, the AP reported earlier this month. He’s having difficulty speaking, and “the right side of his body is affected.” He is being tended to by various specialists. This is not in dispute. Two publications, Jacobin and The New Statesman, published what appeared to be obituaries. (The New Statesman took its post down; Jacobin changed its headline from “We Remember Noam Chomsky” to “Let’s Celebrate Noam Chomsky,” and edited its promotional tweet, though — notably — “obituary” is one of the key words in the article’s URL.) Both The New Statesman and Jacobin appeared, at first glance, to be reliable sources. Chomsky has written for the former and often given interviews to the latter. But neither appears to have asked anyone who’d know whether Chomsky was alive. Some of the confusion around Chomsky’s state is preserved on a Wikipedia Talk page, as editors try to confirm reports of his death. Meanwhile, on social media, users posted old videos and other tributes in honor of Chomsky’s supposed death. Some of the reports of Chomsky’s death were retweeted thousands of times. “Insofar as working people accepted the line fed to them by the media, he [Chomsky] never took it to be because of their docility or their credulousness, but because of the great effort it took to find alternative avenues of information,” wrote Vivek Chibber in Jacobin, which is, amusingly, an approving recap of Chomsky’s media criticism. Certainly the media is not above critique, but it is unusual for a piece of media criticism to so thoroughly violate a very basic standard: making sure the subject of an obituary is actually dead before its publication. Publications often prewrite obituaries of notable people. (For instance, one of the writers of Henry Kissinger’s obituary in The New York Times died before Kissinger himself did.) Occasionally, those obituaries are accidentally published, as with a Bloomberg obituary of Steve Jobs in 2008. Typically, these mistakes are retracted, as The New Statesman article was. Reached for comment, Chibber told me via email, “I only wrote the piece. I have no role in its production or publication.” Jacobin has not responded to a request for comment. Source link

by The Verge

During an internal all-hands meeting led by X CEO Linda Yaccarino on Wednesday, concerned employees tuned in to hear if she would address the pressing issue on their minds: performance reviews. Sources inside the company confirm that a promotions process was recently delayed without explanation and that X’s sales team doesn’t expect to meet its revenue targets for the quarter. Given how the company formerly called Twitter has continued to struggle under Elon Musk’s ownership, employees have been bracing for more layoffs. One of Musk’s key lieutenants, The Boring Company CEO Steve Davis, has been reviewing finances at X’s headquarters in San Francisco over the past several weeks, according to multiple employees who requested anonymity to speak without the company’s permission. As one of them described Davis: “He’s the grim reaper who only shows up for bad things.” A source at X told The Verge that there have been a handful of people laid off in recent days. Many noticed the sudden departure of Yaccarino’s right-hand man, Joe Benarroch. So, when a rare all-hands meeting with her landed on employee calendars last week, X’s roughly 1,500 remaining staffers anxiously waited to find out more. The meeting began with a montage of viral tweets, including one by infamous GameStop trader Keith Gill, followed by Yaccarino joining from an X conference room named “eXtraordinary.” She tried to drum up excitement about live events on the platform, such as the Super Bowl and March Madness, and urged employees to discuss Musk’s x.AI chatbot Grok with advertisers. She also emphasized that X’s focus on video has “definitely driving advertising” without elaborating. As the meeting continued, X’s head of HR, Walter Gilbert, told staff that X is planning to implement a broader and more robust promotion process that will include “doing lighter-weight check-ins throughout the year.” One source who watched the meeting quipped that a bulk of the submitted employee questions were “definitely about HR, promotions, raises/equity” and not addressed. Musk was noticeably absent despite him being in San Francisco along with Yaccarino. Instead, several other directors joined: Monique Pintarelli, head of advertising for the Americas, Nick Pickles, who leads policy, Kylie McRoberts, the company’s latest head of trust and safety, and Haofei Wang, director of engineering. While Yaccarino was light on specific data about the performance of the advertising business, Pintarelli told staff that X now has over “50% of our revenue attributed to performance objectives,” which she described “as a pretty big shift from where the business was over the last few years.” While this all-hands may not have given X employees many answers, Yaccarino did emphasize that the company will be conducting them once a quarter, adding that the team will “also be hearing quite soon from both Elon and I.” Alex Heath contributed reporting. Source link