Business, Financial & Legal - Page 42

Jeff Bezos, the founder of the world's largest online retailer, Amazon, has said where his massive fortune will go.

During a recent interview with his current girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, Bezos revealed that he plans on taking the majority of his fortune and donating it to charity, which charities weren't specified, but Bezos's net worth is estimated to be approximately $124 billion. More specifically, Bezos said that he wants to use his money to fight the climate crisis, but one of the biggest challenges of even giving the money away is "how to do it in a levered way".

Notably, this is the very first time Bezos has pledged to give away his fortune, with some people in the past having criticized Bezos for not giving his wealth away where he could. CNN reports that Bezos' conservative strategy of finding the right team to maximize the return on giving away his money speaks volumes to how his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, deals with philanthropy, as Bezos' former partner recently gave away nearly $4 billion to 465 organizations over the course of one year.

Steve Jobs undoubtedly changed the technology industry forever by co-founding Apple, but would you pay a couple of hundred thousand dollars to acquire the Birkenstocks he wore when he did it?

Steve Jobs was known for his plain and simple attire, while also being described as somewhat of a minimalist, according to BusinessInsider, that spoke to Mark Sheff, Jobs' estate manager, in 2016 when some items belonging to Jobs were being auctioned off. During that time, a Seiko watch along with a black leather jacket, both owned by Jobs, sold for $42,000 and $22,400, respectively. Additionally, Jobs' Birkenstocks were sold for just $2,000.

These Birkenstocks have since floated around to several exhibitions, and with each new owner, the price has seemingly skyrocketed as they were recently sold on November 12 at Icons and Idols: Rock N Roll auction, held by private auction house Julien's Auctions for a staggering $218,750. Reports indicate that organizers of the auction were only expecting the Birkenstocks to reach a price of about $60,000. Unlike most items that have experienced wear and tear, Jobs' sandals increased in value as that seemed to be what made them so attractive.

Elon Musk has decided Twitter's current state is so dire that it requires he doesn't leave the San Francisco office.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has taken to Twitter to reply to several comments, one being from a discussion between a former Twitter employee and Musk regarding the amount Twitter allocated in food services to Twitter employees. Eric Frohnhoefer claimed that Musk's apology for Twitter "being super slow" in many countries and that the app was doing ">100 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!" was wrong, which sparked a reply from Musk asking what the correct number would be.

Musk went on to say Twitter was "super slow" on Android while agreeing that Twitter provides its employees with "great" food. The Twitter owner said he was reading through a list of 1,200 "microservices" that are called on when someone uses the Twitter app, and that "is not great". Additionally, Musk added that he was planning on working and sleeping at Twitter Headquarters in San Francisco "until org is fixed".

Leaked messages from Twitter's internal messaging system reveal a manager that was responsible for firing/rehiring Twitter staff complaining about the quality of work being conducted by rehired employees.

A Twitter employee posted a screenshot of the chat messages showing the senior director of engineering saying that it will be a "challenge" because the "engineers I am bringing back are weak, lazy, unmotivated, and they may even be against an Elon Twitter." The messages continued with the manager saying that these individuals were "cut for a reason" and that "we need to think of these people as just needing to be around until the knowledge transition is completed."

A staff member at Twitter contacted BusinessInsider and gave the manager the publications information, which has reached out for comment. So far, the manager has remained undisclosed. However, the comments have spread among Twitter employees, with reports indicating that they've caused a large amount of internal debate on Slack, per an anonymous source.

Hackers have infiltrated Australian health insurance provider Medibank and stolen sensitive information on 10 million customers.

Australia's largest private health insurer was breached by hackers that are believed to be based in Russia. The first news of the hack came out in October but was quickly thrown back into the mainstream news after the ransom the hackers demanded wasn't paid for by Medibank, which resulted in the hackers releasing a portion of its stolen customer data that includes health records, mental health treatments, and more sensitive insurance-related information.

The latest release occurred on November 13 when the hackers released a folder labeled "psychos" onto a blog found on the dark web, which contained hundreds of claims relating to mental health treatment from Medibank customers. Along with the folder holding sensitive information was the caption, "We never lies [sic] - it doesn't make sense, if we lie to somebody - nobody will treat us as a serious business side [sic]." Recent reports indicate that the hackers will temporarily stop releasing customers' information in hopes that something will come out of Medibank's annual general meeting that is expected to be held on Wednesday.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to publicly apologize for Twitter, while also announcing that the platform is feeling "increasingly alive".

Since Elon Musk officially bought Twitter on October 27, the platform has already gone through a roller coaster of changes, with many of these changes causing division among users. However, there is one thing everyone can agree on, it certainly hasn't been boring since Musk has taken over.

Within the three weeks, Musk has owned Twitter, he's revised the Twitter Blue subscription, taken Twitter's verification badge and made it a purchasable cosmetic, created a second verification badge for "official" accounts, faced waves of people impersonating his account, fired half of Twitter's staff, asked some of those fired staff to return back to the company, and much more. On November 14, Musk took to his account to post, "Twitter feels increasingly alive".

US Senator Ed Markey has sent a letter to Twitter owner Elon Musk demanding answers for the process of giving a blue verification check mark.

The letter was written after Markey discovered that a reporter for The Washington Post created a new Twitter account impersonating Markey and then purchased Twitter Blue, giving the unauthentic account the once-verified blue check mark. The US Senator demands that Musk explains in detail the verification process and that the company must provide a comparison between the previous process and the one that's currently being used.

Markey further asked Musk to explain how Twitter was going to prevent fake accounts from being created and then becoming "verified" by simply purchasing Twitter Blue. The senator went on to accuse Musk of implementing a series of "haphazard" changes that impact the quality of safeguards on disinformation being present across the platform, with Markey describing Musk's changes as turning Twitter into the "Wild West of social media".

Elon Musk has jumped into the meltdown of FTX, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, after it was revealed FTX's founder wanted to give Musk money to help him buy Twitter.

In the space of a week, the cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX, created by former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, collapsed after experiencing the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run. Here's what happened. It was revealed that FTX held the majority of its cash reserves in its own native token, FTT, which sparked concern that if a large portion of people tried to withdraw their assets, the platform wouldn't have sufficient capital. Competing platform Binance revealed its position in FTT and said it would be selling its position over the coming months to reduce the impact on FTX.

However, Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao announced on Sunday night that Binance would be liquidating all of its remaining FTT, dumping more than $500 million worth of FTT onto the open market, causing the overall price of FTT to plummet. The massive reduction in FTT's price caused FTX investors to panic about their holdings in the exchange, which resulted in users rushing to the exchange to withdraw holdings. FTX was forced to pause withdrawals, which only further amplified the panic. FTX has since filed for bankruptcy.

A new report from The New York Times claims Elon Musk demanded Twitter audit its payroll to make sure everyone that was on it was a real person.

Within the two weeks that Musk has been the owner of Twitter, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has created a rollercoaster of emotion at the company and on the online platform. The New York Times reported on Friday that throughout the process of Musk laying off approximately half of Twitter staff (3,600 employees), the Tesla CEO demanded a payroll audit be conducted to determine if Twitter employees were "real humans" before giving them their regularly scheduled bonuses.

The report goes on to claim that Musk wanted to lay off employees before they received their regular bonuses, with the Twitter owner even going as far as to delay them being sent out after he discovered the overall price tag. The Times reports that Musk was concerned that Twitter's books contained "ghost employees" that would receive money when he decided to lay off swaths of staff. Three individuals close to the matter informed the Times that when Musk took over on October 27, he immediately indicated to Twitter's HR department that he wanted to let go large portions of hired staff.

Twitter rolled out its Twitter Blue subscription service on November 9, and temporarily users noticed two check verification check marks scattered across the platform.

Before Musk changed everything to do with verification check marks, accounts would receive the typical blue verification check mark after providing Twitter with accurate information on the identity of the owner of the account. Typically, accounts given the blue verified checkmark pre-Musk's takeover also had to have a considerable amount of followers, or met other criteria. Now, check marks can be purchased with Twitter Blue, leading to thousands of parody accounts being created of companies, public figures, and celebrities.

Now, Twitter has rolled out another check mark that was briefly seen when Twitter Blue launched, gray checks. The "official" gray checks are seemingly coming back, but to only a few big-name accounts such as Amazon, Nike, Coca-Cola, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Twitter's own account, and more.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sent out his first company-wide email where he outlined the current state of Twitter and what the company has ahead of it.

The email was picked up by several publications, and according to reports, it was sent out to Twitter employees at 2:39 am ET on Wednesday. The billionaire first apologized for this email being the first one he's sent out since he acquired the company on October 27, but then went on to explain the overall situation at Twitter is dire. Musk explained that the "economic picture ahead is dire" and that Twitter is overly dependent on advertising, with 70% of its advertising being "brand rather than performance".

Musk explains that since Twitter is so advertiser reliant, he has been directing his attention toward the launch of Twitter Blue Verified Subscriptions as he believes the company needs a consistent revenue stream. Musk writes that without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance that Twitter "will not survive the upcoming economic downturn". Musk added that Twitter needs approximately half of its total revenue to be from Twitter Blue subscriptions.

Since Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, top executives at the company have departed, with two more top executives recently leaving and describing their experience at the social media company as "Game of Thrones"- like.

A new report from NBC News has revealed that top Twitter executives such as Twitter's Chief Information Security Officer, Lea Kissner, along with Twitter's Chief Compliance Officer, Marianne Fogarty, officially resigned Wednesday night, following the rollout of Twitter Blue and the slew of account impersonations that have and still are taking place.

The publication reports that the top executives left the company only hours before SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sent out his very first email to Twitter employees, which was titled "difficult times ahead". The email implemented a mandatory return-to-work policy. Fogarty recently took to Twitter and wrote, "I don't watch Game of Thrones. I certainly don't want to play it at work." The roller coaster at Twitter has attracted the attention of the Federal Trade Commission, as a spokesperson for the government agency recently wrote that the agency is "tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern".

Impersonation has become a point of contention on Twitter following Elon Musk's newly revised and rolled out Twitter Blue subscription service that allows paying customers to gain the iconic verification checkmark badge.

The new Twitter Blue service became available on November 9, and since then, numerous accounts across various industries have decided to pay the $7.99 fee to receive their blue verified check mark and a range of other features. Leading up to the release of Twitter Blue, there was a wave of already-verified accounts impersonating Elon Musk, with celebrities and public figures such as H3 Podcast host Ethan Klein and comic Kathy Griffin changing their display names to "Elon Musk" and then posting several tweets in an attempt to impersonate his account.

Now that Twitter Blue is available, we are seeing this account impersonation spread beyond just targeting Elon Musk, with companies such as Nintendo, Twitch, Valve, and many more becoming victims of impersonation. Most notably, Twitter's own Twitter account was impersonated by a random user that created a new Twitter account, paid for Twitter Blue to receive the verification badge, and then proceeded to post a tweet that claimed Twitter Blue was now free for crypto/NFT holders who "authenticated" their digital wallet assets by clicking a link.

TSMC has been busy making 7nm wafers for a bunch of different companies over the years, and while you might not know it, you're probably using at least one product in your house that uses a chip based on the 7nm process node at TSMC.

AMD is building the semi-custom SoCs inside of the Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox Series X/S consoles, as well as its range of Zen CPUs (up until its latest Zen 4 CPU which switched over to TSMC's new 5nm process node) and its Radeon RX 5000 and Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs (while its new Radeon RX 7000 series are also based on TSMC's new 5nm process node).

Intel has been tapping TSMC's 7nm process node for a while now, Qualcomm as well, and also MediaTek... oh and we can't forget Apple. You can see TSMC has been busy with making 7nm chips for everyone, but with hundreds of millions of 7nm-based products shipped... the 7nm party is winding down and coming to an end.

Twitter made its revised Twitter Blue subscription service available on iOS in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zeal, and the UK on November 9, ushering in large swaths of companies having their accounts impersonated.

Twitter has rolled out the new Twitter Blue subscription service that allows users to pay $8 for a "verified" checkmark on their account, as Twitter owner Elon Musk believes pigging backing off payment systems such as Apple Pay authenticates the holder of that Twitter account, flushing out scammers, bot and spam accounts. Paying for Twitter Blue also gives the account prioritization in replies, messaging, search, and other customization features.

The rollout hasn't been without its hiccups, as companies are seeing their likely already-verified account being impersonated by random Twitter users that have purchased the verified check mark via Twitter Blue. An example of this is the above tweet from an account posing as Nintendo of America. Valve was also impersonated when a user falsely announced Ricochet: Neon Prime, which was described as the "next competitive platform". Twitch also fell victim to an account impersonating it and creating a viral post that falsely announced a new sub-split that would go into effect next month.

The bimonthly magazine owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has reported that Twitter has lost 1 million users since Elon Musk has taken over the company.

MIT Technology Review recently reported that Twitter has lost more than 1 million users since Elon Musk has taken the reins of the company, according to Bot Sentinel, which analyzed 3.1 million accounts on Twitter and that out of those accounts 877,000 accounts were deactivated with an additional 497,000 being suspended between the dates of October 27, a day after Elon Musk took over, to November 1. Notably, these numbers represent more than double the typical number.

Bot Sentinel's analysis on its dataset revealed that there was an increase of 208% lost account on Twitter during the aforementioned timeframe when compared to the week before Elon Musk took control of the platform. Christopher Bouzy, founder of Bot Sentinel said that analysts believe there was a sharp increase in suspended accounts from Twitter users testing Twitter's rules which Musk said he would be updating to allow for a wider variety of content on the platform.

Kanye West, now officially known as Ye, may have to prepare himself for Adidas selling his iconic Yeezy shoes in front of him but with new branding.

The rapper, who was partnered with Adidas since 2013, recently had his relationship dissolved by the company, which decided to separate itself from Ye after he began posting antisemitic comments on social media platforms. West's public comments against Jewish people broke terms of service on various social media platforms and resulted in massive public discussion on the severity of West's comments and their impact on Jewish people.

Throughout the mass public debate, West saw prominent brands such as Balenciaga, Adidas, Gap, and more sever ties with him. Perhaps the largest hit to West's bank accounts was the Adidas deal which was expected to be worth anywhere between $150 - $200 million, with Adidas backing that rough estimation up during its recent quarterly earnings call where it said the deal with Ye is expected to cost the company $247 million throughout 2022, causing its expected annual revenue to be reduced by about $502 million.

Only a few days before the rollout of Twitter Blue's updated subscription service and only a few weeks after Elon Musk tweeted, "comedy is now legal on Twitter", previously verified accounts are being banned across the platform for an impersonation prank.

A few days before Twitter Blue went live, several prominent Twitter accounts, such as Kathy Griffin and host of the H3 podcast, Ethan Klein, changed their display name and profile picture to "Elon Musk" and began posting several tweets in an attempt to impersonate his account. A move that was done by both the individuals, and many others, as a way to prove that verified accounts will still be able to impersonate other accounts.

Klein and Griffin both already had verified blue check marks. "Yes, I could have ended world hunger instead of buying Twitter. But people don't understand the importance of having a free and open forum. If somebody dies of starvation in Sudan, it won't affect the world. But being able to say the N-word on Twitter is a right we all deserve," wrote Klein.

Elon Musk has posted an image of a shirt that pokes fun directly at people who believe the $8 fee for Twitter Blue is unreasonable.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO took to his personal Twitter account on November 8, a day before the rollout of Twitter Blue, to post an image of a t-shirt that featured the following text, "Your feedback is appreciated. Now pay $8". The t-shirt also featured the blue verification check mark that has become a matter of controversial opinion, with some people agreeing with Musk on the impact of the new Twitter Blue service being a net positive for the platform, and another group believing the opposite.

When asked if Musk would be paying for Twitter Blue himself, he replied with the "100" emoji, indicating that he would be paying for it. The $8 paywall for Twitter's verification also comes with a slew of new features such as access to uploading longer video and audio content, the ability of monetization on the platform, priority in search and replies, as well as half the amount of advertisements.

Its been around two weeks since Elon Musk went through with the acquisition to purchase Twitter, and now the SpaceX CEO is already announcing that the social media platform has reached a new milestone.

Musk took to his own Twitter account on November 8 to announce that "Twitter usage" has reached an all-time high. The Tesla CEO didn't specify what metric he was specifically referring to, but it can be assumed it would be real-time users on Twitter around the time he made the tweet.

This seeming increase in Twitter's users is part of Musk's plan to make Twitter the most attractive social media platform for users, with the billionaire even stating in his leaked pitch deck that he aims to create the "everything app" which will increase the users on the platform from 217 million to 600 million by 2025.