Business, Financial & Legal - Page 45

Elon Musk is currently wrapping up his deal to purchase the world's second-largest social media company, Twitter.

According to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post, Elon Musk has big plans for Twitter once the acquisition is finalized and he officially owns the company, with one of the first moves being to remove at least 75% of Twitter's staff at the company which equates to a staggering 7,500 employees.

The Post reports that even if Musk doesn't fulfill the purchase of Twitter for whatever reason, at least a quarter of Twitter's employees would still be getting the sack as current management plans to reduce the company's payroll by approximately $800 million by 2023.

The world's second-richest individual has decided to sell his private jet after he found out it was being tracked by people on Twitter.

Reports indicate that Bernard Arnault, the CEO of the world's largest luxury goods company LVMH, or more commonly known as Louis Vuitton, has sold the private jet linked to his company after Twitter climate activists began tracking its location and tallying up its carbon emissions. Arnault spoke to France's Radio Classique and said that the group that owned the plane, which was associated with his company, has now sold, which has resulted in no one being able to "see where I go".

The Twitter accounts that were tracking private jet flights and measuring carbon emissions have been doing so for six months, with both accounts generating more than 100,000 followers each. Two Twitter accounts, @i_fly_Bernard, and @laviondebernard tracked the billionaire's flights, with the bio of the I Fly Bernard account stating that "63 French billionaires emit as much CO2 as 50 percent of the population".

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is acquiring the free speech platform Parler.... and this is huge news, given how strongly Ye feels about free speech, civil rights, free speech, and everything in between.

In a recent interview with Chris Cuomo, who was fired from CNN last year where 2021 was a troubling year for the Cuomo family (as well as drama with his brother in New York), we have Ye explain the last couple of years of his life, his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, and Cuomo trying to pin him for being "anti-semitic" as Ye calls out the Jewish media. Check out that video below.

The billionaire, inventor, and soon-to-be Parler owner talk about a bunch of topics during his "interview" with Chris Cuomo, but the biggest news is that he has acquired Parler. Ye wants to stand up and defend free speech, and stop the censorship of Big Tech on huge platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.

The saga of Elon Musk purchasing the world's second-largest social media platform continues with a new court filing revealing that Musk is now under federal investigation.

In a new court filing that was made public on Thursday, Elon Musk, who is currently moving forward with purchasing Twitter for $44 billion, now is now being looked into by federal authorities. Notably, the filing didn't specify what Musk was under investigation for exactly. Twitter moved to sue Musk back in July in an attempt to force the Tesla CEO to close the $44 billion acquisition, with Twitter's lawyers saying that Musk's legal team claimed "investigative privilege" when it was asked for specific documents.

Musk's legal team eventually provided Twitter with a "privilege log" that identified documents that would be withheld. Twitter said that Musk's privilege log referenced an email that was sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) along with a slide presentation that was sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In a turn of events, one of Musk's lawyers, Alex Spiro, spoke to Reuters and said that Twitter's recent filing was a "misdirection... It is Twitter's executives that are under federal investigation."

Alex Jones, the host of InfoWars, has been ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in damages over his comments on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that happened on December 14, 2012.

A Texas jury ordered Jones on Friday to pay $965 million to the victims' families and an FBI over causing years-long trauma by publicly claiming that the entire school shooting was a hoax. Jones claimed that the entire event was faked by the US government in an attempt to take guns away from Americans, a claim that has been proved to be false by the court, resulting in Jones becoming liable for damages, etc.

Jones claimed on multiple occasions over the years that the event never happened and that the individuals involved were hired crisis actors involved in a plot to remove guns from Americans. Jones wasn't present in court to hear the verdict but reacted to the reading on his InfoWars show, describing the entire court process as a "show trial" and saying that it's "all made up".

The creator of one of the most popular trading card games in the world, Yu-Gi-Oh!, has sadly passed away, but reports indicate his final moments were extremely heroic.

Kazuki Takahashi created the immensely popular trading card game Yu-Gi-Oh! in 1996 via manga releases in the Japanese magazine Shonen Jump. Using the manga releases as the foundation, Takahashi went on to create the worldwide, culturally popular trading card game that spawned TV shows and movies in the following years. Twenty-two years later, the world learned the tragic news that the creator behind the trading card game had passed away in July, with officials reporting that Takahashi drowned.

However, new details are emerging from a US military newspaper and a story on Stars & Stripes, the Department of Defence's news service, which states that a US Army Officer was present at Takahashi's drowning as the officer was the one that saved three individuals from a riptide at a dive spot in Okinawa, Japan. The US military officer, 49-year-old Major Robert Bourgeau, explained that he saw three swimmers, one being an 11-year-old girl, and a US soldier struggling in the riptide while six-foot waves crashed around them.

Elon Musk has jumped into the fragrance industry with a new product called "Burnt Hair," and it has already sold more than 10,000 units.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO took to his personal Twitter account to announce the availability of the new fragrance on The Boring Company website, where it's being sold for $100 US. Musk wrote on his Twitter account that buyers have the option of paying for the humorous fragrance with Dogecoin and that with a name like his (Musk), it was only a matter of time before he made the jump into the industry. Notably, Musk said the product is "omnigender" and that it "doesn't get more lit than this!".

Musk described the new product as the "finest fragrance on Earth", and provided updates on the sales as they were stacking up. Only four hours after posting that 5,000 bottles of Burnt Hair have already been sold, Musk announced 10,000 units had been sold, equating to $1 million of Burnt Hair being sold. It will be interesting to see how many of these Burnt Hair bottles are sold over the course of the next few weeks and how many Musk has decided to produce in total.

Intel's new Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards have been reviewed by those who received their samples, with the Arc A770 and Arc A750 graphics cards releasing in the next few hours on October 12... but now, there's a new report suggesting Intel is about to slice and dice THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of jobs.

Intel has continuously struggled over the years, where for all their strength, might, and money... Big Blue is still suffering. CPUs have been met with much stronger (than ever before, really) competition from AMD, while their GPU side of things doesn't even count at this point but still billions and billions of dollars (and thousands and thousands of staff) have been thrown at it with no fruit from that labor at all. No market share in the GPU market, nothing.

Well, now Bloomberg is reporting that Intel is "planning a major reduction in headcount, likely numbering in the thousands, to cut costs and cope with a sputtering personal-computer market". Bloomberg reports that Intel's huge layoffs will be announced as early as this month, and with over 113,700+ employees, it's going to be a big shave from Big Blue's headcount.

Kanye West has had his Instagram and Twitter accounts locked following a post that has been deemed antisemitic.

The restrictions came after Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, posted an alleged screenshot of a text chain between him and Sean "Diddy" Combs with the caption "Jesus is Jew". The text chain claimed that Combs was being controlled by Jewish people, which is a reference to the conspiracy theory that Jewish people are controlling the world, along with celebrities and silicon valley companies, in particular, social media platforms.

A Meta spokesperson commented on Ye's account suspension, saying that the Instagram page was restricted for violating the platform's rules and guidelines. In a now-deleted tweet, Ye published a message that he would go "death 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE", while also, in the same message, defended himself against the antisemitic allegations saying that he can't be antisemitic because "black people are actually Jew". In response to the account locking, a Twitter spokesperson told Engadget, "The account in question has been locked due to a violation of Twitter's policies."

Elon Musk announced last week that he was going to follow through with purchasing the world's second-largest social media platform - Twitter.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO reversed on his three-month-long fight to try to back out of the $44 billion acquisition where he cited that Twitter didn't reveal the "true" number of bot accounts on its platform - an important factor that would drastically impact the total valuation of the company. Back peddling on his push to be released from the acquisition without paying the $1 billion exit fee, Musk is now moving forward with the deal and has said that he will follow through on his original offer of purchasing every share at $54.20 ($44 billion total).

Additionally, the billionaire canceled negotiations to reduce the price of Twitter by $10 billion from the initially agreed upon $44 billion price tag, and his legal team, in a letter sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), says that Musk will complete the purchase of the platform if the Delaware Chancery Court will "adjourn the trial and all other proceedings related" to the ongoing lawsuit, which was scheduled to take place on October 17. Twitter hasn't dropped its lawsuit against Musk in a move to force the Tesla CEO to complete the deal.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has decided to follow through with his deal to purchase the world's second-largest social media company, Twitter.

In what seems like a strange turn of events, Musk has decided to go ahead with the acquisition of Twitter after attempting to pull out of the deal, citing Twitter's undisclosed number of bot accounts on the platform. The SpaceX CEO initially agreed to purchase Twitter for $54.20 a share back in April, which caused the company's share price to spike to above $50 a share.

However, Musk began pushing back on Twitter over the aforementioned bot accounts on the platform, which then resulted in the Tesla CEO attempting to pull out of the deal completely, sending the company's stock price back down to the mid-$30s. Since Musk announced that he is now reversed his decision and will follow through with buying Twitter, the company's stock price has jumped by 22% in a single day to $52.

If you thought you were seeing advertisements everywhere already, they might soon start polluting the skies, according to a new paper released by researchers.

The new paper published in the journal Aerospace explored the cost and strategies that would need to be put into place to get massive advertisements from brands up in the sky over cities. The researchers from the Moscow-based technical institute Skoltech along with the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, found that a group of satellites of no more than fifty would need to be sent into orbit to create the ad, and that conducting such a mission would only cost approximately $65 million.

The team of researchers explored the technicals of this new form of advertising, called "space advertising", and according to the paper, each of the satellites would need to be considerably large to be able to reflect enough light to produce an image that's visible from Earth. The researchers estimated that a CubeSat satellite would need to sport a solar sail that's approximately 350 square foot and that the satellites wouldn't just showcase one ad from a brand but many different ads - rotating through a timer.

Facebook founder and now Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a decision to move head first into creating the Metaverse, a decision that has cost him billions of dollars.

Zuckerberg's decision to pivot his entire company toward developing the Metaverse has undoubtedly come with severe impacts, as the Meta CEO has reportedly lost more than $71 billion in 2022, and there is now talk of mass layoffs coming to Meta. Zuckerberg's net worth dropping $71 billion throughout the year left the Meta CEO with (only) $55.6 billion, which resulted in him dropping to the 20th richest person in the world - his lowest position on Bloomberg's world's richest individuals ladder since 2014.

While there are many factors as to why Zuckerberg's net worth has dropped significantly, the push into the Metaverse is one big reason, as the company recently released a public beta for Meta Quest that was met with heavy criticism from users that turned Zuckerberg's creation into a memed laughing stock. Since Zuckerberg holds the majority of his wealth in hundreds of millions of Meta shares, and the public beta release didn't go as planned, Meta's stock value plummeted, with investors losing faith in the project.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk may soon be the owner of the world's second-largest social media platform - Twitter.

In a seemingly flip-flopping turn of events, Elon Musk has decided he once again wants to acquire Twitter after going through a grueling back and forth with the company over Musk's claims that Twitter didn't accurately reveal the true number of bot accounts on the platform.

In a new letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk's legal team indicated that they will go forward with the acquisition at the originally agreed-upon price of $54.20 a share, or $44 billion - if the Delaware Chancery Court will "adjourn the trial and all other proceedings related" to the ongoing lawsuit. Twitter responded to the recent turn of events, writing that the intention of the Company is to close the transaction at the initially agreed-upon price.

In a seemingly U-turn of events, Twitter has agreed to another offer from Elon Musk to purchase the entire company.

In a letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Tesla and SpaceX CEO outlined that he intends to carry out the acquisition of Twitter at the originally agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share, making the acquisition total $44 billion. The strange turn of events comes after lawsuits were filed following Musk's attempt at pulling out of the original deal where he cited the company didn't accurately reveal the number of bot accounts on the platform, which impacts its total value.

Musk's attempt to withdraw from the deal was met with lawsuits from Twitter that pushed for him to carry out the acquisition. Countersuits were filed against Twitter, and both sides' legal teams began to gather evidence to support their case, with the trial date being set for later this month in the Delaware Chancery Court. However, all of that seems to have been completely thrown out the window as Musk has confirmed he now wants to purchase Twitter at the price he initially offered back in April this year - $44 billion.

YouTube seems to be moving toward forcing its users to pay for YouTube Premium to watch videos in 4K quality.

Reports from Mac Rumors and Engadget reveal screenshots taken by users and posted to social media platforms such as Reddit and Twitter. These screenshots showcase YouTube's user interface asking viewers to upgrade their account to YouTube Premium to watch videos in 3840x2160 (4K) quality. It should be noted that as of reporting, there has been no official word from YouTube on this change or what region/s this change will be rolled out to if it ever comes to fruition.

Additionally, YouTube hasn't said if this is just a test, or if the new paywall will be rolled out across its entire platform. If the change is rolled out across the entire platform, users will be required to pay $12 per month, or $120 per year, to view videos in 4K quality.

North Korea reportedly fired a missile over Japan a few hours ago, and now Russia's flagship nuclear-powered submarine with its "doomsday weapon" have "gone missing". An entire submarine, in 2022, is missing.

NATO has reportedly warned members that the nuclear-powered submarine isn't in its White Sea base, where it has been sitting active since July. Officials are now warning (fear-mongering, blame-shifting) that Russia will use its Belgorod nuclear-powered submarine and its doomsday weapon "Poseidon".

Poseiden is a next-gen weapon system that has a drone carrying a nuclear bomb, with Italian media reporting that a 1600-foot "radioactive tsunami" would be the result of the doomsday weapon being used. The drone would drop the bomb at a depth of 1 kilometer near a coastal city, where a gigantic 1600-foot wave would smash the coast, irradiating it, and the environment, and killing untold amounts of people in the process.

North Korea has reportedly fired a ballistic missile directly over Japan, with the country stepping up its weapons testing that AP reports are "designed to strike key targets in regional US allies amid stalled nuclear diplomacy". They sure know so much about North Korea, without, uh, visiting or interviewing anyone.

The country reportedly fired at least one missile according to the Japanese Prime Minister's office, with the missile flying into the Pacific Ocean. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) have confirmed the North Korean missile launched from North Korea's Mupyong-ri area in Jagang Province at around 7.23 am local time, saying that the missile flew eastwards over neighboring Japan.

The middle flew over the northeastern prefecture of Aomori, landing outside of Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone at around 7:46 am local time (6:46 pm ET).

The nonprofit organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine began a lawsuit against the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in February 2022 after it refused to release 371 images from Neuralink experiments.

The committee requests that UC Davis release images that, as of September 7th, UC Davis acknowledges amount to 185 photographs. According to the university's veterinary records, the experiments in question involve Neuralink experiments where experimenters cut holes into monkeys' skulls to implant electrodes for the company's in-development "brain-machine interface." Neuralink paid UC Davis $1.4 million between 2017 and 2020 for access to its facilities and animals, but the company now conducts experiments out of its own facilities.

UC Davis also acknowledged it possesses an additional 186 photographs captured by Neuralink employees throughout the monkey experiments. Though the university is publicly funded and public employees engaged with the experiments, UC Davis maintains the images should be not be made public as they are "proprietary" and that the public would misunderstand them.

A man known as "Kem" on Twitter has gone online to detail his recent exploits with 3D printed weapons.

Kem used a $200 3D printer he got for Christmas to create "a bunch of lower receivers and frames for different kinds of firearms," intending to sell them to the state of New York through one of its gun buyback programs. A buyback event was held at the Utica Police Department in August by the New York State Attorney General's Office, so Kem set to work and then drove six hours to reach Utica and begin haggling over costs with staff from the Attorney General's Office.

Kem stated that the interaction "ended with the guy and a lady from the budget office finally coming around with the 42 gift cards and counting them in front of me," amounting to $21,000 in the form of $500 gift cards. While the Attorney General's Office maintains the Utica gun buyback event was a success, Kem was less convinced, saying, "I'm sure handing over $21,000 in gift cards to some punk kid after getting a bunch of plastic junk was a rousing success."