X — formerly known as Twitter — is removing the giant lit X logo it recently mounted on top of its San Francisco headquarters, following complaints from local residents. Officials say it is under investigation by the city for lacking proper permits. The Verge reports that Twitter denied access to inspectors seeking access to the roof, calling the X logo a “temporary lighted sign for an event.” Owner Elon Musk announced the rebrand recently “to turn the platform into what he has called an ‘everything app,’” said CNBC.

• X’s name also remains Twitter on the App Store as Apple doesn’t allow apps to have one character as a name.

By Tiffany Moustakas, Editor at LinkedIn News

Even without that giant ‘X’, there’s still a lot of light pollution

Billboard and brands are overtaking the night sky with flashy lights.

Imagine you’re chilling in your apartment at night, trying to watch a movie, when the fire of a thousand suns comes streaming through your window.

That’s apparently what happened to one San Francisco man when X — formerly Twitter — put a strobing “X” sign on its HQ last week. (TBF, the man said he didn’t know how to describe the brightness, so we went with the sun thing on his behalf.)

A city inspector, who was denied access to the building, was told it was a temporary sign “for an event,” per NPR. By Monday — and 24 complaints later — it had been taken down. A city official said the property owner would be assessed for fees for permitting and inspection costs.

Light pollution

… is defined as the the excessive or inappropriate brightening of the night sky and includes:

• Glare (brightness that causes discomfort)
• Skyglow (brightening over uninhabited areas)
• Light trespass (light where it isn’t needed)
• Clutter (confusing groupings of light)

It disrupts human sleep patterns and confuses animals, causing sea turtle hatchlings to wander into cities instead of the sea or birds to migrate at the wrong time.

It’s also gotten worse over the years…

… thanks to controversial digital billboards and other modern tech.

Astronomers — who hate light pollution because it makes seeing constellations difficult — voiced concerns (and doubted the necessity) of a 500-drone light show in NYC celebrating “Candy Crush.”

BTW: Space billboards are apparently a potential thing. They’d appear as pixelated images in the sky, potentially earning companies up to ~$5m annually per billboard, per Insider. And guess who wants to launch space ad satellites? The same dude who put that “X” up in San Francisco.

Source: The Hustle

“Blaze your glory!”—Twitter’s “X” becomes first one-letter iPhone app

Apple has granted a rare exception to its strict App Store rules, allowing Twitter to rebrand as X and become the first one-character iPhone app.

Two days ago, Bleeping Computer reported that Apple had rejected Twitter’s attempt to update its app name to simply X due to minimum character requirements. As a result, the app was temporarily listed in its App Store as Twitter—alongside the X logo and the X tagline “Blaze your glory.” This potentially further confused users over what to call the app during Elon Musk’s sloppy rollout of Twitter’s new branding.

It stayed that way for days until about 2:30 this morning, when Apple updated the listing in its mobile App Store, Bleeping Computer reported—allowing the App Store’s first single-character name. A product designer and data scientist who founded a growth consulting agency called Next, Nick Sheriff, posted a screenshot confirming that historically the App Store only accepted app names with a minimum of two characters.

Apple could not immediately be reached for comment on whether the exception was made exclusively for X or if a policy change might be coming that could benefit other apps with single-character names. On the desktop App Store, Twitter’s old branding still appears as of this writing.

Sheriff told Ars that thousands of apps could be impacted by an update to the App Store policy, which he warned could “lead to a fragmentation of the App Store in unprecedented ways, unlike anything we’ve witnessed in over a decade.”

In his X post, Sheriff pointed out that “many brands outside the US, particularly in Asia,” consist of “just one character” and “don’t receive such special treatment.” He said it’s possible that Apple had to make technical changes to allow the Twitter rebrand to go through, and those changes could have both positive and negative impacts on the App Store.

“The question then was why Apple would do something for Twitter, but not for others in the past 10 years,” Sheriff wrote.

It’s possible that Apple was open to making an exception for X due to Apple’s relationship with X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino from her heyday at NBCUniversal. When Yaccarino first took over the job of helming Twitter from Musk, it was reported that she had forged a significant brand partnership with Apple and NBCUniversal. At that point, some speculated that Yaccarino’s relationship would help repair any damage caused by Musk’s tirade against Apple last year (which was due to a different “misunderstanding” with the App Store).

Twitter does not respond to requests for comment.

Source: ArsTechnica