Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 1

Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk reportedly attempted to takeover OpenAI in 2018 but ended up cutting ties with the company after his plan was rejected.

The news comes from Semafor, which recently published an article that claims Musk, a founder and board member at the time, said to Sam Altman, current OpenAI CEO, and other fellow board members that OpenAI was losing to Google. Musk then followed up by offering to lead OpenAI himself, which was rejected by Altman and the other board members. According to the article Musk then stepped down from the board and pulled out his planned donation to the company.

At the time of Musk's departure, the Tesla CEO cited a conflict of interest between Tesla and OpenAI as the reason for his leaving. Musk said that Tesla was creating its own artificial intelligence system and would be competing for talent with OpenAI. However, according to the eight people familiar with the inside story that spoke to Semafor, a power struggle and rivalry started between Musk and Altman following Musk's rejection, which resulted in Musk stepping down from the board of directors and immediately stopping payments of his promised $1 billion donation that would have been rolled out over many years.

Not many people would pay a lot of money for someone else's signature. But that's probably exactly what is going to happen when this Steve Jobs autograph goes up for sale.

Jobs was famously one of the two Apple co-founders who brought us the company responsible for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and much more. But Jobs was also famously awkward when it came to getting his autograph. In fact, it just didn't happen. Except when it did. And this is one of those times.

The signature is part of a plaque that was given to an Apple employee back in 2000. In fact, that employee was former Apple marketing exec Suzanne Lindbergh and the plaque comes with a letter and a handwritten signature.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has entered into a heated exchange with a Twitter employee over his role at the company and the amount of value he has/was providing.

The storm of tweets began yesterday when Twitter user "Halli" asked about their employment status at Twitter after not hearing a response from the company for over 9 days. Halli publicly tagged Elon Musk in a series of tweets that explained that access to his computer was cut off, along with approximately 200 other Twitter employees, and that Twitter's HR department wasn't able to confirm if they were an employee or not. After thousands of retweets on that post, Musk replied by asking what "work" Halli had been doing at Twitter.

The thread continued, and Musk approved of Halli's request to break confidentiality on explaining what they were doing at the company, which resulted in Musk firing back with rebuttal questions asking specifically about the work and the value it provided Twitter. Additionally, Musk wrote that Halli "did no actual work", and claimed that "his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm." Musk then added, "Can't say I have a lot of respect for that," while posting a link to the video found below.

Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to shine a light on a recent article penned in the BBC about Twitter purportedly failing to protect its users from "trolls".

The article titled "Twitter can't protect you from trolls anymore, insiders say" was written by Marianna Spring and claims that Twitter is no longer able to protect its users from "trolling, state-coordinated disinformation, and child sexual exploitation". The article cites Twitter insiders that spoke to the BBC as well as "exclusive academic data" as the source of the new information.

These Twitter insiders also told the publication that these purported shortcomings of Twitter only became an issue after Elon Musk took over the company in late October, laid off thousands of employees, and rolled out changes to Twitter's content policy.

One of the most famous investors has warned of "terrible consequences for America" if President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan comes to fruition.

Michael Burry, known for one of the most ambitious trades in finance history (betting against the housing market ahead of the 2008 collapse), has taken to Twitter to share his thoughts on the rumblings of Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. The famed investor posted a series of tweets where he warned that if student loans are forgiven, it will lead to higher college tuition, a compounding debt crisis, and overall "terrible consequences".

Burry continued and wrote that a government bailout of student loan debt would only compound the overall issue. For those wondering, under Biden's proposed student loan forgiveness plan, student loan borrowers could get $20,000 wiped away from their overall debt. Currently, the Supreme Court is revising Biden's plan and will determine when federal student loan payments will resume following a nearly three-year COVID-19-related pause.

Guinness World Records has awarded Jeff Reitz for ridiculous 2,995 consecutive visits to Disneyland between 2021 and 2020.

The Disneyland fanatic was given a Guinness World Record for his daily trips to the theme park that began as a method of distracting himself from job-hunting. The LA Times reports that Reitz, a 50-year-old man from Huntington Beach, California went to Disneyland in Anaheim nearly 3,000 days in a row, leading him to become somewhat of a park celebrity, with Reitz saying to the publication that he began having guests in the park stop him to ask for photos.

Reitz made a 20 mile trip to Disneyland in Anaheim every day for 8 years, 3 months and 13 days. The visits to the happiest place on Earth began when he was unemployed, with Reitz saying that he was gifted an annual pass to Disneyland and used the theme park as a source of free entertainment. The celebrity side of Reitz's trips to the theme park began shortly after his 60th consecutive visit when the park-goer was interviewed by a news reporter.

A new report claims that Twitter has laid off at least fifty workers over the weekend, with some discovering their firing by being locked out of their email accounts.

The report comes from The Information, which recently published claims that Twitter fired "dozens" of employees on Saturday, with some of those affected employees being engineers that were responsible for keeping Twitter's underlying systems up and running. Other employees affected by the layoffs were those responsible for advertising technology, the main app of Twitter, and technical infrastructure.

These job cuts are now the eighth round of layoffs since Elon Musk took over the company in October and are a response to Twitter's overall dip in revenue caused by advertisers pulling out ad expenditure on the platform. Advertisers began slowing down or halting advertising on Twitter shortly after Elon Musk took over the company and revised the platform's content moderation policy. Many brands were hesitant about Musk's new vision for Twitter and, as a result, thought it would be safer to reduce spending or stop altogether.

With revenues falling and the big tech companies cutting thousands of jobs to tighten their fiscal belts, today comes a surprising announcement from Google. It looks like the Google Cloud division will be asking its employees (referred to internally as Googlers) to share desks, with the measure described as a way for Google to continue to invest in the Cloud. Sounds like there's not much of a need for physical desk space up in the cloud.

Fewer Googler desks, here's hoping the Googler slides remain safe.

This is, of course, surprising because we often think of tech giants like Google offering modern cutting-edge workspaces where employees do all of their coding and device business amid a tech playground of food, drinks, comfy office spaces, and rooms dedicated for those that want to take a mid-afternoon nap. CNBC's Jennifer Elias acquired an internal memo about the new Cloud Office Evolution desk-share policy which states, "most Googlers will now share a desk with one other Googler."

The document adds that employees will head to work on alternate days so that they won't be using the same desk simultaneously. "Through the matching process, they will agree on a basic desk setup and establish norms with their desk partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment," the document says.

An Apple iPhone from 2007 was put up for auction over the weekend and has been sold for more than $60,000.

The first-generation iPhone was listed for auction with LCG Auctions, which started bidding for the untouched relic of the technology industry at just $2,500. Notably, the 2007 iPhone retailed for $599, meaning it sold for more than 100 times its original value at Sunday's auction. According to reports, the previous owner didn't open the iPhone box after purchasing it in 2007, leaving the first-generation iPhone completely sealed in its original packaging.

This isn't the first time an original iPhone has sold for a ridiculous amount of money at an auction, as it was only last October that LCG Auctions listed a completely sealed first-generation 8GB iPhone that was described as "completely flawless". Bidding started at $2,500 for that iPhone and got up to $39,339, just over 65 times its original 2007 retail price. The most recent 2007 iPhone sale sold for $63,356.40.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken to his personal social media channels to announce a new paid subscription plan for Facebook and Instagram users.

Zuckerberg took to his Instagram and Facebook accounts to introduce users to 'Meta Verified', Meta's new paid subscription service that will give buyers more features on both platforms as well as protection. Zuckerberg explains that Meta Verified will allow users to verify their account with a government ID, and once the verification process is complete, that now-verified account will be given a blue badge.

The Meta CEO also claims that accounts with Meta Verified will get "extra impersonation protection" against any account that is attempting to impersonate your own account and direct access to customer support. Zuckerberg continued by writing that Meta Verified is designed to bring more authenticity and security across Facebook and Instagram, with prices for the new paid subscription beginning at $11.99 / month on the web or $14.99 / month on iOS.