Business, Financial & Legal - Page 47

Elon Musk's legal battle with Twitter over his backing out of the deal to purchase the world's second-largest social media platform just became harder.

Feathers were ruffled after a whistleblower complaint from Twitter's former head of security made headlines, as the complaint from the former Twitter official named Pieter "Mudge" Zatko may be added to the ongoing case. On Tuesday, a hearing was called where lawyers from both sides gave statements on if the complaint should be included, with Twitter's lawyers painting Zatko as a "disgruntled" employee that had a "huge ax to grind" with the company.

The social media platforms' lawyers denied that Zatko was in charge of spam at Twitter and even went as far as to accuse the former employee of structuring his complaint around Musk's legal case in order to "benefit" the SpaceX and Tesla CEO. On the other side of the fence, Musk's lawyers portrayed Zatko as put together employee that was "decorated" and was qualified for his position, even to the point of once being offered a position as a US government official.

SpaceX has scored another NASA contract for being the transportation service between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA has officially awarded SpaceX five additional crew transportation missions to the ISS via its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) program, which is a program that is designed to give private companies partnerships to develop Crew Transportation System (CTS).

NASA outlines in its filing that due to Boeing's technical/scheduling challenges and SpaceX already proving its Dragon capsule capable with four post-NASA certification launches under its belt, Elon Musk's company has been selected to receive the award to ensure continuous scientific activity on the ISS by the US and its partners.

Free-speech champion Andrew Tate that was recently declared excommunicado by most social media platforms, has filed a cease and desist against H3H3 Productions YouTuber Ethan Klein.

Andrew Tate was recently removed from all major social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, with the internet superstar being removed for violations of various community guidelines and standards. Many of the social media platforms found Tate's content and reuploaded Tate-centered content in violation of hate speech, citing misogynistic views.

In response to this banning, Tate created a "final message" video that was posted to his website. The 1-hour+ video delved deep into the topic of his banning and why Tate believes it's unjustified, and how he will continue in the future. Tate goes in his childhood, his relationship with women, the "false internet image" that has been created of him, his true intentions behind his content, how this is a violation of freedom of speech, and more.

Plex has millions of users around the world, with the company explaining in an email sent out to users that they discovered suspicious activity in one of their databases.

The company started an investigation into the incident, where they discovered that someone had access to a portion of their data. Plex said that this data includes users' emails, usernames, and their encrypted passwords and even though the account passwords could've been accessed, Plex says that they "were hashed and secured in accordance with best practices, out of an abundance of caution we are requiring all Plex accounts to have their password reset".

Plex says that users should rest assured that their credit card and other payment details aren't stored on their servers, and were "not vulnerable in this incident". The company is now requiring that all of its users reset their passwords immediately, and to address the issue at hand -- how the hacker got access to Plex's systems -- they're working through all of their security systems and further hardening them to prevent further incidents.

Social media superstar Andrew Tate has been removed from all main social media platforms and is now given his "final message" via his website.

TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook have all unanimously decided that there is no place for Andrew Tate on their platforms, as all of the main social media cite violations against their Community Guidelines. Tate has been removed from all of the aforementioned social platforms, with the kickboxer turned internet superstar growing now posting an hour-long "final message" to his fans on his website.

Tate's content largely gained internet fame from its inherit controversial nature sourced from his opinions on sensitive topics such as gender roles and the fact that Tate ran an affiliate marketing scheme that incentivized members of Hustler's University, a money-marking educational group that cost $49.99 a month, to recruit new members via social platforms through repurposed Tate-centered content. With Hustler's University even going as far as to recommend members use controversial content for "better results".

The world of John McAfee continues to expand, even after his purported 'suicide' with McAfee's ex-girlfriend stating in a new Netflix documentary about the infamous anti-virus creator... he's not dead.

John McAfee reportedly committed suicide in a Spanish jail in 2021, mentioning Jeffrey Epstein before his suicide -- Epstein, "suicided" himself in jail supposedly, but CCTV cameras outside of Epstein's cell "malfunctioned" you see -- McAfee dying in a Spanish prison is much easier to fake. In the new Netflix documentary Running With the Devil: The Wild World of John McAfee, McAfee's ex-girlfriend Samantha Herrera, said she received a call from John a few weeks ago.

John McAfee said: "It's me, John. I paid off people to pretend that I am dead, but I am not dead".

Andrew Tate has been banned from all main social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and now YouTube.

The social media phenomenon gained internet fame through posting what has been considered as controversial content encouraging masculinity which was predominately aimed at young men. Tate promoted his online money-making course Hustler's University, which ran an affiliate program that encouraged members who paid $49.99 a month to receive money-making tips, the most effective being to create controversial content of Tate and re-post it onto social platforms.

Hustler's University members were paid a cut of the membership fee to recruit new members through their social content, essentially making it a multi-level marketing scheme. Tate's methodology to pay Hustler's University members to create new content of him was extremely effective, making him one of the most searched people on the internet.

Prominent influencer Andrew Tate has decided to close his money-making affiliate marking scheme Hustlers University only a day after being banned from his main social media platforms.

The kickboxer turned internet superstar has been making content on the internet for quite some time, but recently went viral on TikTok and Instagram following a massive content push into Hustler's University. Tate's content, primarily directed at young men, was seen as controversial, with many of his ideas and beliefs being interpreted as misogynistic or offensive. Despite the controversy, Hustler's University, a Tate-run program that teaches members how to make money, gained more than 100,000 members paying $49.99 a month.

Tate's step into major fame came through Hustler's University as members were encouraged to make content of Tate to post onto social media new social media channels, with each member getting a referral cut for signing up new people to Hustler's University. Members reported that this was one of the best ways to make money inside of Hustler's University and was the main reason Tate quickly became a superstar without even having his own TikTok account.

A former employee of SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk has spoken out about his experience working for the world's richest individual.

Carl Medlock sat down for an episode of "The Iced Coffee Hour" podcast, where he explained he was a former Tesla territory manager who currently runs his own repair shop in Seattle, Washington. Medlock described his experience while working at Tesla, mentioning the commonality of Musk sleeping on his desk at the factory, and his decision-making when addressing executives about the direction of the company.

Medlock says Musk isn't afraid to let employees go if they are "back-talking", especially if the employee's opinion counters what he believes the correct vision is for the company. Notably, the former Tesla employee said that if an employee was becoming micromanaged by Musk, it was likely that employee was on their way out of the company as Musk relies on workers' competence.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is currently engaged in a legal battle over his decision to pull out from the $44 billion Twitter acquisition.

Musk's legal team tried to back out of the $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter on April 25, and since then, Twitter has been trying to legally get Musk to follow through with the initial deal to purchase the platform. In its initial filings, Twitter urged the court to expedite the trial, citing the deal being in limbo impacts the company negatively given its nature. The court agreed to an expedited trial with a date set for October 2022.

New court filings on Monday revealed that Twitter wants Musk's text messages that were sent and received during "the relevant period" for "material" related to the lawsuit. The filings didn't reveal what this "relevant period" is, with many of the documents still falling under confidentially. Speculation points to this period of time being between Musk first indicating that he was interested in purchasing Twitter and April 25 when he officially tried backing out of the acquisition, citing, to at least some degree, an unknown number of spam/bot accounts.

Elon Musk is the world's richest man, swinging his BD energy around tweeting that he's now going to buy Manchester United, which has sent the football world into an absolute frenzy.

In a new tweet, the SpaceX and Tesla founder and CEO said: "to be clear, I support the left half of the Republican Party and the right half of the Democratic Party!" He followed the tweet up, adding: "Also, I'm buying Manchester United ur welcome".

Manchester United is owned by the American Glazer family, who also own NFL franchise the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Glazers have refused multiple offers to sell Manchester United, but after the club being in serious trouble right now after finishing 6th in the last season of the Premier League era -- Musk could scoop them up if Musk chucked a couple of billion dollars at their feet.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to congratulate his employees on hitting a new milestone in terms of manufactured vehicles.

Elon Musk took to his personal Twitter account to congratulate his staff on manufacturing three million Tesla vehicles and his Shanghai factory for reaching its one-millionth car. Musk's congratulatory announcement follows the CEO discussing the difficulties of running a vehicle manufacturer and the logistical nightmare it is to keep the production line moving. In July, Tesla reported delivering 254,695 vehicles to vehicles to customers, an increase of 26.5% year-over-year.

To put into perspective how many three million cars made is, Toyota delivered more than 10 million vehicles throughout 2021. Musk recently described the Tesla Berlin and Austin factories as being "money furnaces" that were losing "billions of dollars" due to supply chain issues that tied up materials in different locations, causing the vehicle production line to come to a grinding halt. However, Tesla has said that it plans on increasing its vehicle deliveries by 50% every year forward.

Meta has released a beta version of its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, and individuals have asked it what it thinks about the company's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Many publications have already asked the chatbot what it "thinks" about Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and overall the responses have been mixed, with some of the replies stating that Zuckerberg is a "bad person" and that "he's a good guy". Notably, BlenderBot 3 is just a "conversational prototype" that is designed to converse like a human on nearly any topic that it's prompted with.

As for its thoughts on Zuckerberg, the BBC asked the chatbot, and it replied by saying, "Our country is divided, and he didn't help with that at all. His company exploits people for money, and he doesn't care. It needs to stop!"

AMD will be attending Gamescom 2022 in Cologne, Germany this year... in-person after a two-year hiatus driven by the pandemic. The last time a GPU was launched there was in 2018 when NVIDIA unleashed its Turing-based GeForce RTX 20 series graphcis cards.

The news is coming directly from Milosz Bialas, the Senior Developer Relations at AMD who has tweeted that AMD is attending Gamescom 2022, and he is going as well. There's nothing official in terms of what to expect from AMD, given that they're driving into the launches of their next-gen Ryzen 7000 series "Zen 4" processors, and Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards powered by the next-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture.

As for Gamescom, it runs between August 24 and August 29 in Cologne, Germany. During the event, we have hardware announcements, game unveilings and so much more. I was there in-person for Gamescom 2018 thanks to NVIDIA, and it was one of the best events I've attended. It was truly an awesome experience, but now that AMD is going... right as they're leading into new hardware announcements... I don't think we could be more excited.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to post a meme poking fun at the number of new agents the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is hiring.

Musk took to his personal Twitter account last night to share a meme that pokes fun at the purportedly debunked claims that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will be hiring 87,000 new tax agents with its new $80 billion in funding received through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Many outlets such as BusinessInsider have written that these claims were debunked, but it has been proven that the IRS will be hiring a substantial number of new employees to improve taxpayer services as well as assist law enforcement with tax evasion from wealthy individuals and large companies. According to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, who wrote a letter to the Senate in August, the IRS has fewer front-line experienced examiners in the field than at any time since World War II, while also having fewer employees than at any time since the 1970s.

Google went down earlier this week for a brief period, with Google claiming it was due to a software update.

Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Images were all affected when Google's search engine went down, with thousands of people across over 40 countries reporting outages. According to a Google spokesperson, "a software update issue" led to the "briefly affected availability of Google search and Maps," but they "worked to quickly address the issue and our services are now back online."

Notably, an accident had occurred only hours prior at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in which an "electrical incident" seriously injured three electricians working onsite. They were all transported to a local hospital with burns but are now in stable condition. According to Google, the incident is unrelated to its outage later that day and into the next.

The US has been dependent on making chips with other countries for a very long time: Apple, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and many others may be US companies, but they fab their chips overseas... mostly with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).

But when President Donald Trump was in the White House, he wanted to bring manufacturing, jobs, and fab plants back to US soil. Today, the fruits of that labor have now been inked: a $280 billion package that includes $52 billion to inject US domestic semiconductor manufacturing with the CHIPS and Science Act signed into law.

Biden tweeted: "Today, I sign into law the CHIPS and Science Act. It's a once-in-a-generation law that invests in America by supercharging our efforts to make semiconductors here at home. Today represents a more secure economy, jobs, and a stronger future for our nation. America is delivering".

A former Twitter employee is facing up to 20 years in prison after being found guilty of spying on behalf of the Saudi government.

According to a recent report from Bloomberg, former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo worked with another Twitter employee Ali Alazabarah to collect personal information on Twitter users based on their interests in 2015. The Saudi government offered both of the then-Twitter employee's cash and luxury goods for providing them with any of their requested data, with Alzabarah eventually fleeing to Saudi Arabia to avoid any trial.

Abouammo wasn't so lucky. During the trial, the prosecution argued that Abouammo was recruited by a high-ranking member of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's regime to spy on any enemies of the state, and during his recruitment, Abouammo gathered and sent back personal information such as birthdates, email addresses phones numbers and more. As for Abouammo's defense, they argued that the former Twitter employee only accessed that information when he was performing his regular work duties.

It has recently been revealed in Tesla regulatory filings that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold 7.92 million Tesla shares that is worth multiple billions.

The 7.92 shares that have now been sold are worth around $6.88 billion, with the weighted average share price being $869.09 and the sales occurring on August 5, August 8, and August 9. Musk was asked if he was "done selling" on Twitter, and he replied that he was finished selling and needed the money in case Twitter forced the deal between Musk and the second largest social media platform to "close." Musk prefaced the preparation tactic by writing that it's "hopefully unlikely" that Twitter will force the deal to close.

Notably, the possibility of Twitter forcing a closure of the deal isn't the only reason Musk sold his Tesla stock, as there is always the possibility of "some equity partners" not being able to "come through" with their promised amount of funding. Furthermore, Musk explains that it's better for him to sell his stock now "to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock". A Twitter user asked Musk if the Twitter deal doesn't close, will he be repurchasing Tesla stock - Musk answered by writing "yes".

NVIDIA has posted its preliminary Q2 2022 financial results, showing us that GeForce GPU revenues "declined significantly".

The numbers are so bad that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang himself said that NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics card sales "declined significantly". Jensen continued: "Our gaming product sell-through projections declined significantly as the quarter progressed, As we expect the macroeconomic conditions affecting sell-through to continue, we took actions with our Gaming partners to adjust channel prices and inventory".

Gaming revenues were at $2.04 billion, down 44% quarter-over-quarter and down 33% year-over-year... seeing the data center revenue taking the top spot once again with $3.81 billion in revenue, up 1% quarter-over-quarter, but NVIDIA has been doing well there with the data center revenues up 61% year-over-year.