Hashtag Trending Dec. 31 – Privacy search engine boom; Apple increases pay to retain talent; James Webb telescope takes off

DuckDuckGo sees a major increase in search queries, Apple hands out bonuses to its engineers and NASA makes history on Christmas day.

Hashtag Trending on Amazon Alexa Google Podcasts badge - 200 px wide

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Friday, December 31, and I’m your host, Tom Li.

Internet search engine DuckDuckGo’s daily search queries have surpassed 100 million. It has grown nearly 47 per cent this year. While Google remains the dominant search engine, many people are experimenting with DuckDuckGo due to its privacy features. According to a report from Spread Privacy, Google tracks users when they use its search engine while DuckDuckGo doesn’t. In addition, DuckDuckGo’s Android ecosystem includes “App Tracking” protection, which prevents third-party trackers from being used.

In an effort to retain talent and ward off competition, Apple Inc. has issued unusual and significant stock bonuses to some engineers. The surprise bonuses have ranged from about $50,000 to as much as $180,000. According to Bloomberg, several of the engineers received amounts of about $80,000, $100,000 or $120,000 in shares. Recently, Meta and Apple have been in a talent war as Meta hired about 100 engineers from Apple in the last few months. However, Apple has also picked up some former Meta employees. This competition is most likely due to the fact that both companies are planning on rolling out augmented-and virtual-reality headsets as well as smartwatches in the coming year.

And lastly, on Christmas morning history was made with the James Webb telescope launched into space. The Webb telescope will be able to peer into the deeper abyss of our universe. It also has the ability to prove whether we’ve correctly documented the events that took place immediately after the Big Bang. Most importantly, the Webb telescope features a Near-infrared camera or NIRCam, a primary imager that can detect the earliest stars and galaxies formed. In addition, according to a CNET article, the smooth launch of the telescope that occurred on December 25th could help it remain in orbit for more than a decade.

And now for something a little different. After finding out how much it would cost to repair his Tesla vehicle, one Tesla owner decided the next thing to do is blow up the car out of spite. Tuomas Katainen blew up his 2013 Tesla Model S after learning he would have to pay $22,600 for a full battery replacement. His car started showing errors after just 1000 miles. A repair shop held on to the Tesla for a month only to tell him that the only solution would involve replacing the entire battery. So, Katainen decides to blow up the car and turn it into an explosion video for YouTube. Plenty of cameras was installed to capture the explosions in detail as well as slow-motion features.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. If you have a suggestion or tip, please drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thanks for listening, I’m Tom Li.

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada
Tom Li
Tom Li
Telecommunication and consumer hardware are Tom's main beats at IT World Canada. He loves to talk about Canada's network infrastructure, semiconductor products, and of course, anything hot and new in the consumer technology space. You'll also occasionally see his name appended to articles on cloud, security, and SaaS-related news. If you're ever up for a lengthy discussion about the nuances of each of the above sectors or have an upcoming product that people will love, feel free to drop him a line at tli@itwc.ca.

ITWC podcast network

Subscribe to ITWC podcasts and never fall behind on the conversation in technology again. Our daily podcasts are perfect to add to your smart speaker’s daily briefing or to your favourite podcast app on your smartphone. 

Cyber Security Today Podcast

#Hashtag Trending Podcast