From asteroids hurtling towards Earth to office spaces turning into ghost towns, and even the billionaire tech moguls engaging in a fiery feud. Join us as we discuss the latest headlines making waves in the world of science, technology, and business. Strap in for an exciting ride as we explore NASA's DART mission, Google CEO's desk-sharing policy, and Elon Musk's latest showdown with Twitter and Amazon. This is TechReview 54.

00:00 - Intro
01:22 - 1: NASA mission DART proves we can protect Earth from asteroids
12:05 - 2: Google CEO defends desk-sharing policy, says some offices are like a ‘ghost town’
24:02 - 3: Musk Delayed Paying Twitter’s Amazon Cloud Bill, Sparking Ad Threat

Summary

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which involved crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid, has been confirmed as a success by an investigation team led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. The mission demonstrated that the "kinetic impactor" technique of deflecting asteroids could be effective in protecting the planet. The mission altered the orbit of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos by 33 minutes, demonstrating that asteroids with a diameter of around half a mile can be deflected by this method. However, earthlings will need sufficient warning time to mitigate any potential threat. Currently, there are no known asteroids posing a threat to Earth for at least the next century.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai defended the company's new desk-sharing policy for cloud employees, calling it an effort to save money and make better use of resources. The downsizing effort, called Cloud Office Evolution (CLOE), will ask employees and partners to share desks at Google's five largest locations. Pichai emphasized the need for financial responsibility, especially with expensive real estate, and reminded employees that some offices were practically empty. The cloud division makes up roughly a quarter of the company's overall workforce, and Pichai stated that the policy is just for cloud employees at the moment. The policy has been met with criticism from some employees who have complained about the communication surrounding the rollout.

Elon Musk is facing a challenge in his persistent pursuit of reducing expenses at Twitter: some of the vendors that Twitter is pressuring to cut costs are also its advertising customers. According to two sources familiar with the matter, Twitter's sales and marketing team were informed by their colleagues in the past month that Amazon had warned of withholding payment for its advertisements on Twitter as the social media platform had been delaying payment of its Amazon Web Services bills for cloud computing services for several months.

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