Business, Financial & Legal - Page 36

The numbers have been released regarding the United States national debt, and as of June 15, the total US debt has reached $32.03 trillion.

According to the FiscalData that was recently released, there was a $571 billion increase in debt from June 1, when the total was at $31.46 trillion, to June 15, its current total of $32.03 trillion.

DailyHodl points out that the total US debt now exceeds the combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the measurement used to determine the total value of the goods and services provided by a country, of China, United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany. Another way to look at it is every American household has a debt of approximately $244,000.

Elon Musk has challenged Meta and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to a cage fight, Zuckerberg has accepted, and a location has been mentioned.

The saga began when Musk said that he was "up for a cage fight" with Zuckerberg on a post that was discussing rumors that Meta is preparing to launch a Twitter-killer called "Threads". The rumors suggested that this new app was Meta's "response to Twitter" and would allow Instagram users to automatically migrate all their followers/user information, making the transition seamless.

Musk wrote, "I'm sure Earth can't wait to be exclusively under Zuck's thumb with no other options. At least it will be "sane". Was worried there for a moment 😅". Followed by, "I'm up for a cage match if he is lol", which sparked a response from Zuckerberg, who posted on his Instagram Story, the below image that says "Send me location". Musk promptly responded by writing, "Vegas Octagon" and explained that he has a special move called "the walrus" where he lays on top of his victim and "do nothing".

Spotify is expected to be launching a new premium subscription tier that will finally bring high-fidelity audio to the platform.

Bloomberg has published a new report revealing that Spotify is preparing to launch a new subscription tier that will be it's most expensive yet. The predominate music streaming service has been looking to expand its content offerings for quite some time, flexing into podcasts with the signing on of Joe Rogan, and now audiobooks. Spotify already offers a range of audiobooks, but according to sources close to the matter, the platform is planning on pairing audiobooks with its coming premium subscription tier.

These sources informed Bloomberg that Spotify would offer high-fidelity audio and some kind of benefit with audiobooks, perhaps a free credit every month like Amazon's Audible. According to reports, Spotify was planning on rolling out HiFi audio quality for quite some time, but before the company launched, Apple and Amazon both rolled out their own versions of the feature at no extra cost to paying subscribers.

Apple is attempting to secure the exclusive rights of depictions of apples in a long-standing effort from the company to be given the exclusive rights of owning all apple imagery.

A new report from Wired UK states that Apple has been attempting to acquire a trademark for an apple in Switzerland since 2017 while simultaneously making the same application in other countries such as Japan, Turkey, Israel, and Armenia. Reports indicate that Apple submitted an application to the Swiss Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) for the exclusive rights to a black-and-white depiction of a Granny Smith apple.

The application was partially awarded by the IPI in 2022, with the regulatory body citing the legal principle of generic images of common goods, such as fruits, or in this case, apples, which are considered to be public domain.

The tumultuous debacle between Redditors and Reddit just got a whole lot more interesting as a ransomware group has claimed they have 80GB of confidential company files it's prepared to release if demands aren't reached.

Reddit has certainly kicked up a storm after the company announced changes to its Application Programming Interface (API), and these changes would essentially make it impossible for third-party developers to continually support third-party apps and tools used by millions of Redditors. Many of these apps improved the general Reddit experience, and many third-party tools were used by volunteer moderators to speed up their moderation process.

Apollo, the most popular third-party Reddit app, said it would no longer be able to keep running as it would be unable to pay the $20 million a year that Reddit's new pricing now states is a requirement. In response to these changes, thousands of subreddits decided to go offline in an almost platform-wide blackout. This digital protest prompted a response from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, who said in a recent interview that the API changes are here to stay and that subreddits going dark will eventually pass.

The Biden-Harris administration has announced $930 million will be thrown into expanding and strengthening America's high-speed internet access.

The US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced $930,021,354.34 to expand high-speed Internet infrastructure across 35 states. According to the Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, internet access is "no longer a luxury," and through the Middle Mile program, nearly a billion dollars will be invested in providing the infrastructure needed to "connect communities, military bases, and Tribal lands to the Internet, lower the cost of access, and increase bandwidth."

According to the release on the US Department of Commerce website, there are more than 260 applications that total $7.47 billion in funding requests. Additionally, the projects are expected to result in an additional 12,000 miles of new fiber cable being laid across the country. Notably, these new miles of fiber cable will be laid in the rural areas of Alaska, Texas, and dozens of other places where large gaps in connectivity exist.

Twitter is attempting to make a calculated shift into adopting video content, and the platform has recently shown this by enabling long-form content to be posted.

Twitter owner Elon Musk has previously discussed Twitter's push into video content while he was CEO of the company, and the general goal was echoed again during an investor presentation by Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who outlined the company's strategy to prioritize video content, along with more creator collaborations, and commerce partnerships. These strategies are designed to increase Twitter's overall revenue, which took a massive hit when Musk took over the company in October 2022.

Musk recently revealed in an interview that advertiser demands are costing Twitter about $2 Billion in ad revenue a year, with the Twitter owner quipping, "Freedom of speech is pretty expensive".

It was only a few days ago that Kick.com announced it signed Félix Lengyel (xQc), the world's most-watched streamer, in a new non-exclusive contract worth $100 million.

Kick.com launched in 2022 and has been making waves in the streaming space by slowly picking up massive creators and pulling them away from Twitch with lucrative non-exclusive contracts. xQc announced that the recent deal with Kick.com promises as much as $100 million, including incentives, and according to xQc's agent Ryan Morrison, who spoke to The New York Times, this deal is bigger than most contracts signed by pro athletes.

Morrison is right, as xQc's deal means he's getting paid more than the likes of NBA superstars Lebron James and Steph Curry, who receive salaries of $44.47 and $48.07 million, according to ESPN. So, how can Kick.com afford to shell out $100 million to xQc? Kick.com is run by part-owner of Stake.com, Ed Craven, who has pushed Stake, the online casino, to a global gross revenue of $2.6 billion (2022). Kick.com is seemingly funded through the popularity of Kick.com, a correlation that is actually openly discussed by Craven in his Medium column.

Microsoft has confirmed that an outage to its cloud servers was a result of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack and that the attack can be traced back to a malicious hacking group called Anonymous Sudan.

Microsoft's servers experienced an outage earlier this month that knocked out key Microsoft services such as Outlook and OneDrive, while also affecting other areas of Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform. While the servers were rocked, Microsoft kept quiet about the situation until it spoke out over the weekend, confirming the attack was a DDoS attack and that it appears Anonymous Sudan's claim of being responsible is true.

Microsoft has yet to say how many customers were affected by the outage, but with services such as Outlook and OneDrive offline, you can expect it to be at least in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Microsoft explained that it tracked the activity of what it identified as "Storm-1359" and found that the perpetrator appeared to be "focused on disruption and publicity".

During a conference in Paris, Tesla CEO Elon Musk joked about purchasing Twitter for the staggering figure of $44 billion.

Musk explained on stage during a conference on Friday his mentality behind carrying out the purchase of Twitter, something he has done since the acquisition was finalized and the rollercoaster of a takeover began to settle. Musk said that he was "concerned" that Twitter was going in a direction that would have a "negative" or a "corrosive" impact on society, and that while the social media platform was admittedly "expensive," he wanted to make sure it would be a "positive force for civilization".

Looking from the outside in it may be hard to wholeheartedly determine that Twitter is in a better place than it was, but if you were to ask Musk, he would say that the platform is in a much healthier state post-October 2022. Musk said he thinks that any regular Twitter user would say their "experience has improved" as there has been a mass reduction in the number of bots and scams on the platform. Additionally, Musk points out that Twitter has removed "95% of child exploitation material on Twitter, which was a shock to see ... some of what was going on for 10 years."

As a large number of subreddits continue to say offline in protest to Reddit's new API changes, Reddit's CEO has conducted an interview that has no doubt thrown more fuel on the already enraged Reddit community fire.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman sat down with The Verge for a quick 30-minute interview where he gave more context on the reasoning behind Reddit's API changes. For those that don't know, Reddit recently announced that it will be starting to charge third-party developers to use the platform's API. This change came after Reddit discovered that its API was being used to train potentially extremely lucrative AI tools.

However, the API pricing change will also wipe out the most popular third-party Reddit app Apollo, along with some popular third-party tools used by subreddit moderators. The Reddit community has decided to protest these changes by conducting an almost platform-wide blackout, with some of the largest subreddits going offline. Huffman doubled down on the decision to change Reddit's API pricing, saying in the interview:

Nearly 10,000 subreddits have joined the digital picket line by protesting the recent changes Reddit has made to its API pricing for third-party developers.

More than 8,000 subreddits that contain more than 40 million members have decided to go dark, or offline, in protest to Reddit's changes to its API pricing that are expected to be implemented as early as next month. Reddit communities have expressed their distain for company's changes to its API as third-party developers that are behind some extremely popular third-party Reddit tools will now need to pay exorbitant fees to keep their apps up and running.

Notably, these changes to Reddit's API pricing came after the company realized a large portion of the platform's data was being used to train potentially lucrative AI-powered tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. In an effort to charge AI developers for Reddits plethora of data the company has increased its price, which has led to Reddit moderators feeling the pinch. Many moderators of subreddits use third-party tools to speed up their moderating process, which they do voluntarily.

YouTube has announced that it will now be much easier for creators to start earning money from their videos as the eligible requirements for the YouTube Partner Program have been reduced.

World's hub for video content has announced that it has reduced the requirements to earn money from normal YouTube videos as well as YouTube Shorts, with the blog post stating that effective immediately monetization in 2023 will require 500 subscribers, 3 valid public uploads within 90 days and 3,000 watch hours within the past year. As for Shorts, creators will need to get 3 million valid public views in 90 days.

To understand how much of a reduction YouTube has made to its requirements, you need to know that the platform previously required creators to have 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 watch public watch hours and/or 10 million Shorts views to enter into the Partner Program. The newly updated policy will certainly make it easier for creators to start getting paid for their videos, and since the YouTube Partner Program is easier to get into creators are able to utilize other monetization features such as Memberships, Super Chats, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks.

South Korean lawmakers have indicted a former Samsung executive after accusing them of stealing company secrets and attempting to use that information to create a new company that would directly compete with Samsung.

The former Samsung executive is a 65-year-old that has remained unnamed, and according to reports, was taken in custody last month and charged with the theft of trade secrets. Notably, the Suwon District Prosecutor's Office has officially indicted the former Samsung executive, per an announcement made on Monday. According to reports, the former Samsung executive worked at Samsung for 18 years, while also working at another massive chip manufacturer SK Hynix.

The former Samsung executive started a new chip manufacturing company in China and Singapore, hiring two-hundred Samsung and SK Hynix employees. According to prosecutors, the former Samsung executive stole Samsung's confidential information, such as blueprints, basic engineering data, room designs, and more, between August 2018 and 2019. According to prosecutors, the ex-Samsung executive attempted to "duplicate an entire factory to manufacture and mass-produce semiconductors in China."

More than two dozen subreddits that contain more than 10 million members have started striking after Reddit's announcement that it will begin charging hefty fees to third-party apps that want to access the platform's data.

Reddit announced that as early as next month, the platform will begin charging third-party applications and their developers a hefty fee to access the platform's data. These changes came after Reddit learned that much of the platform's data was being used to train potentially lucrative AI-powered tools such as chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Once Reddit learned this, it decided it would charge developers a fee to access its data, which resulted in Redditors joining a digital picket line as the changes to Reddit's API doesn't just influence developers looking to train AI models, but moderators and developers of third-party apps that have been using Reddit's API freely for years. Reddit moderators commonly use third-party applications to make their volunteer work much easier and less time-consuming.

Last week Apple unveiled what could be viewed as the company's most anticipated product in the last ten years, the Vision Pro mixed reality headset.

Apple's Vision Pro augmented and virtual reality headset has certainly made waves across the technology industry, with many tech-focussed YouTubers that were lucky enough to use the product for a limited amount of time taking to their channels to discuss their unique experiences. Marquess Brownlee, MKBHD, reported being very impressed with the eye-tracking, or the user's ability to navigate the user interface powered by Apple's brand new operating system, VisionOS.

If you have managed to catch any news on the Vision Pro, you have probably heard about the headset's exorbitant price tag. Apple will be slapping a $3,499 price tag on its Vision Pro, and according to reports, the company's preliminary sales expectations were at 1 million units. However, that number has reportedly been revised. According to Gizmochina, Apple has revised its initial sales expectations of 1 million to 150,000 units, or a figure that can be described as 'something much more appropriate.'

During an interview with The Babylon Bee at Twitter headquarters, Elon Musk has discussed censorship by private companies such as Google and if new laws should be introduced that protect users from private companies censoring their users.

The Babylon Bee asked the SpaceX and Tesla CEO if he believes there needs to be new laws introduced to protect users from private companies looking to censor their freedom of speech. These laws would be similar to how the first amendment protects citizens from the government censoring speech. Musk began by explaining that a lot of censorship takes place that many people aren't aware of and that most of this censorship is happening at Facebook and Google.

Musk replied to the question by saying that he believes that it would be "good" if all social media companies were forced to open source their algorithms, as that would reveal to the public what the company is/isn't suppressing and would prevent companies from secretly suppressing pieces of content.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sat down for an interview with Babylon Bee at Twitter headquarters to discuss Musk's rollercoaster takeover of the company and what the future looks like with the world's second-largest social media platform.

Before Musk acquired Twitter back in October 2022, the tech billionaire had discussed throughout multiple interviews the importance of having a social media platform committed to free speech, and he has continued expressing the same sentiment after he completed the takeover of Twitter. Musk still stands by this concept of Twitter being a place users can freely express themselves within the parameters of the law, and throughout his interview with the Babylon Bee, the Twitter owner said this value will remain paramount.

The Babylon Bee recounted a previous Musk interview where Musk said that "I want to speak my mind, even if it costs me something," which refers to Musk's belief that the right to freedom of speech should always be available, even if it costs the user, or ultimately Twitter through the loss of advertising revenue. Musk responded by recounting a recent loss of $40 million, which he says can be attributed to the new Community Notes feature, which enables Twitter users to add informed context to potentially misleading tweets collaboratively.

Twitter users are reporting a bizarre issue as deleted tweets, and retweets are reappearing on their timelines, causing users to fear the platform's handling of user information.

A significant bug on Twitter is causing deleted tweets to reappear, leaving users frustrated and raising concerns about data privacy. Security expert Richard Morrell reported that Twitter restored 34,000 of his deleted tweets, with over a million restored tweets estimated within the entire network. The issue seems to affect deleted retweets as well.

The bug primarily impacts users who deleted their tweets using third-party services like Redact or TweetDelete, although it is not exclusive to them. Users have noticed deleted tweets from November 2022 and earlier resurfacing. The cause of the bug remains unclear, but speculation suggests it may be related to server relocation and improper adjustments in the network's topology. Essentially, when Twitter moved data from one server to another, it didn't perform the transition correctly, resulting in these deleted tweets somehow resurfacing on Twitter.

Tesla investors are expressing their joy over company CEO Elon Musk's decision to start advertising its vehicles.

Until now, Tesla doesn't advertise its vehicles and has relied entirely on tweets, interviews, and announcements from the company's CEO, Elon Musk. However, that is about to change as Musk said during Tesla's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday that the company has a plan to introduce advertising, which is said to focus on parts of the vehicles Tesla feels are undervalued.

Notably, Musk said in an interview with CNBC that the decision to start Tesla's advertising was made entirely in the moment and was actually in response to an investor's question about the topic. Admittedly, Musk said he was surprised at the reception from Tesla investors about the introduction of advertising, and while there hasn't been enough time to develop or announce any formal advertising plans, he can say that they'll emphasize information on Tesla's pricing and safety features.