Business, Financial & Legal - Page 50

Sources close to Elon Musk's deal to purchase the world's second-largest social media company, Twitter, have said that the $44 billion deal is in peril.

According to a report from The Washington Post, who spoke to people familiar with the inner working of the deal, and decided to discuss it under the provision of remaining anonymous, Musk's team is struggling with analyzing Twitter's "fire hose" of data for spam accounts - in hopes of finding out that more than 5% of Twitter's total users are bots.

These individuals that are close to the deal told WAPO that because Musk's camp has doubts regarding the data that was given to them, they will soon say they don't have enough information to correctly evaluate Twitter as a business, which will result in Musk's team switching gears to a different approach that is expected to be "drastic". It should be noted that if Musk doesn't follow through with the acquisition of Twitter, he will have to pay a $1 billion breakup fee.

A report has found that Google, Amazon, and Apple are hiring employees that have left Elon Musk's Tesla, per LinkedIn data.

A new report from Punks & Pinstripes has revealed that many major technology companies are scooping up Elon Musk's Tesla talent after hundreds of employees departed the electric car manufacturer. The report uses LinkedIn data that indicated 450 Tesla employees left the company between June 30, 2021, and June 30, 2022, or the last 90 days.

Of those 450 employees, 51 went to Apple, another 51 went to Amazon, 28 went to Google, 25 to Meta, 23 to Microsoft, and a selection of below 10 individuals joined competing car manufacturers such as General Motors and Ford. Over the last 90 days, Rivian has hired the most departing Tesla talent with 56. The hiring of Tesla's talent is no surprise as most tech giants have been attempting to buy Tesla talent for some time, as it was only last year that Apple poached Tesla's now-former Autopilot software director Christopher Moore.

Russia has cracked down on independent media sources inside its borders following its invasion of its neighbor Ukraine.

A campaign backed by the United States government and led by the Open Technology Fund (OTF) non-profit organization is financially supporting American virtual private network (VPN) providers that offer their services to Russians for free. VPNs allow the Russian people to bypass censorship in their country to access blocked websites while protecting their data from outside observers. Their usage has skyrocketed since the invasion of Ukraine began.

The OTF estimates that tech firms like Psiphon and nthLink have provided about four million Russian VPN users. Psiphon received a huge increase in Russian users, starting at around 48,000 per day before the invasion to over a million users per day less than a month later, and now almost reaching 1.5 million.

An HR office worker has received a paycheck 330 times his normal pay, and he has now seemingly quit the company and disappeared.

The worker has yet to be named, but the company that he worked for is called Cial, a large-scale Chilean frozen foods company that has been around for more than 50 years. According to reports, the HR worker accidentally received a whopping 165 million pesos on May 30, which is the equivalent of $176,000 USD. The employee contacted his manager regarding the unexpected transaction, and the manager informed him to go to the bank the following day to get the matter resolved.

The HR employee expected to receive his typical paycheck of 500,000 pesos, or about $500 USD. According to Cial, the worker never went to the bank the day after talking to the manager, which has resulted in the company suing the now-former employee for the stolen funds. The HR worker contacted Cial the day he was meant to go to the bank and said that he had slept in, and that he would visit the bank later. Cial had no contact with the HR worker until June 2, when he submitted a letter of resignation through a lawyer.

Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of holding a sword while speaking to employees about their duties and completion timelines.

The news comes from former Facebook coder Noah Kagan, who was the 30th employee to be hired at Facebook and is currently the CEO of AppSumo. Kagan has taken to TikTok to reveal some interesting pieces of information about the early days of Facebook, and the activities of some of the company's most prominent members.

In the above video, Kagan states that he played poker with now-billionaire Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Facebook's first outside investor. Kagan says that Thiel requested his money back after losing the poker game. Additionally, Kagan says that Zuckerberg paid for all of the employees' parking tickets, which was at the time a very appreciated perk at the company. Notably, Kagan says that Zuckerberg was "bringing around a katana sword because he didn't like the code" - referring to Facebook's current code.

Samsung has announced that it has kicked off the initial production of its next-gen 3nm process node, using Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor architecture.

This is the first time Samsung's new Multi-Bridge-Channel FET (MBCFET), their new GAA technology, "defies the performance limitations of FinFET". It defies those performance limitations of FinFET by improving power efficiency by reducing the supply voltage level, while boosting performance through increasing drive current capability.

Dr. Siyoung Choi, President and Head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics explains: "Samsung has grown rapidly as we continue to demonstrate leadership in applying next-generation technologies to manufacturing, such as foundry industry's first High-K Metal Gate, FinFET, as well as EUV. We seek to continue this leadership with the world's first 3nm process with the MBCFET™. We will continue active innovation in competitive technology development and build processes that help expedite achieving maturity of technology".

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has issued a new public service announcement about deepfakes.

The IC3 has received an increased number of complaints alleging the use of stolen personally identifiable information (PII) and deepfakes to help individuals apply for positions that allow them to work remotely, typically from home. Incident reports covered positions associated with "information technology and computer programming, database, and software related job functions," and notably some with access to very sensitive data.

During online interviews, applicants reportedly used voice spoofing, potentially via deepfakes, and the video feed showed interviewees exhibiting lip movements and actions not aligning with the audio. The speech was noticeably out of sync, and in some cases, auditory actions like coughing and sneezing gave away the applicant when the video feed did not reflect the given action.

The Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley club has released the third installment of its interview with Elon Musk.

Recorded on May 30th, Musk, the CEO of Tesla, sat down with the heads of the club and others, talking about Gigafactories, the development of Full Self-Driving (FSD), and more over four hours of recording. Describing the Gigafactory located in Austin, Texas, Musk remarked it the "factory is losing insane money right now, we should be outputting a lot more cars from this factory versus a puny amount of cars."

Musk cited a few issues for the subpar production numbers, such as lacking the specific tooling necessary to create the 2170 battery cells used in Tesla's vehicles. Supply chain issues meant the tools were stuck in China, creating a bottleneck in production which has compounded with other factors to put the Gigafactory in a situation where reaching the desired production levels will take more effort than building the factory initially.

Russia test launched its RS-28 Sarmat missile, known as the Satan II, in late April 2022.

The Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was designed to replace the nation's Voyevoda ICBMs, known by NATO as the SS-18 Satan. The Satan II can carry up to 15 MIRV (Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles) nuclear warheads while traveling at hypersonic speeds exceeding five times the speed of sound. At Mach 5, a roughly 7,800 mile (12553 kilometers) flight from Moscow to the White House in the United States would take about two hours.

Aleksy Zhuravlyov, the deputy chairman of Russia's defense committee, claimed that the Sarmat could strike the United Kingdom in only 200 seconds if launched from Kaliningrad and noted they could strike Finland from Siberia. He also claimed that "there is no existing air defence for the Sarmat missile systems, and it will probably not exist in the coming decades."

The new feature was unveiled during the Re:Mars conference held by Amazon in Las Vegas on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022.

Amazon is currently developing the ability of Alexa to emulate a person's voice while needing less than a minute of recorded audio to do so. This will supposedly imbue Alexa with more "human attributes of empathy and affect," improving interactions with the virtual assistant. The main hurdle to developing the feature arises from having to learn how to create a "high-quality voice" with only snippets of audio, presumably collected by Alexa itself, instead of hours of studio recordings.

Played at the event was a video featuring a young child, in which they ask, "Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz?" Alexa grants the child's request by assuming the voice of the child's grandmother to continue reading the book in her voice. However, while Amazon pushes to develop the feature for Alexa, Microsoft is proceeding more cautiously regarding the voice emulation technology.

The company behind the adult website Pornhub is facing scrutiny after allegations surfaced regarding the number of staff the company has laid off.

Reports surfaced on Tuesday when Reuters wrote that MindGeek, the owner of Pornhub, said that two top executives who ran the adult for more than 10 years had resigned but will remain shareholders. In 2021 MindGeek was hit with a lawsuit that claimed the company had broken federal sex trafficking and child pornography laws, which resulted in several payment companies such as Mastercard and Visa temporarily halting payment methods.

The recent allegations of layoffs come from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a non-profit that focuses on exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation, who said that its "no surprise" that two top Pornhub executives have "fled" the company after it's facing several lawsuits filed on behalf of sex trafficking survivors "whose abuse has been shown on Pornhub."

Elon Musk sat down for an interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley to discuss gigafactory production, Full-Self Driving (FSD), and more.

The interview spans over an hour, but at the beginning, Musk is asked if anyone at Tesla is working on Car Sharing, which will allow Tesla owners to rent out their car, much like Uber. Musk replies by saying that no one at Tesla is working on that feature, and that the company is simply trying not to go bankrupt. The Tesla CEO explains that the company is focused on its making sure Tesla Gigafactory's are producing vehicles that will keep Tesla's revenue above its high cost.

Musk explains in the interview conducted on May 31, that at the moment, the Austin gigafactory and the new gigafactory in Berlin are "gigantic money furnaces", since both of the factories have only been able to manufacture a small number of vehicles due to a myriad of supply chain issues. Notably, a COVID-19 outbreak caused Shanghai to enter into a full lockdown that shut down Tesla's factory. Now Musk says the company is working hard to get all its factories up and running smoothly, so he can increase production to meet the overwhelming demand.

Recent reports indicate that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is preparing to shut down e-cigarette sales from Juul across the United States.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the FDA is preparing to order Juul Labs to remove its e-cigarette products from the US following a two-year investigation by the regulator of the benefits of Juul's e-cigarettes and if they are effective at getting smokers to quit. The investigation also took into account health impacts, and explored if Juul's e-cigarette products provide benefits that outweigh the health damage.

According to people close to the coming decision by the FDA, the regulator is expected to announce a decision as early as next week. Following the report by the WSJ, Altria Group, a tobacco giant that owns 35% of Juul Labs, saw its stock fall by 8.5%. Notably, the FDA declined to comment on the report from the WSJ, and Juul, along with Altria, didn't respond to any questions for comment.

Samsung is expected to announce mass production of its next-gen 3nm semiconductors next week, meaning it would beat the industry dominator (not just leader) in TSMC.

The next-gen 3nm chips will see Samsung building them on Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology, which allows a 45% area reduction while driving 30% more performance, and lowering power composition by 50% when compared to the existing FinFET process.

Samsung showed off its new 3nm chips to US president Joe Biden last month when the Biden administration visited Samsung's Pyeongtaek complex -- which, by the way, is the world's largest semiconductor facility -- located 43 miles (70km) away from the capital of South Korea: Seoul.

Twitter wants to secure its $44 billion acquisition offer from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and the company's board is now pushing shareholders to back the deal.

The news comes from a recent regulatory filing by Twitter's board with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and asks Twitter shareholders to vote in agreement with the merger agreement between Twitter's board and Musk. Notably, Twitter's board unanimously gave its recommendation to Twitter shareholders to grant the approval for "the compensation that will or may become payable by Twitter to its named executive officers in connection with the merger".

Notably, Twitter's share price is currently sitting at around $38 a share, which is much lower than Elon Musk's initial offer of $54.20 per share. According to the filing, if the merger is completed, shareholders will receive $54.20, which is a premium of approximately 38% to Twitter's closing price of common stock on April 2022 - the last full trading day before Musk revealed his 9% stake in the company. Essentially, Twitter's board is pointing out to its shareholders that if they vote for the merger to go ahead, they will sell their stock for 38% more than they would if they sold it at current prices.

Google has been accused by US lawmakers of its search engine giving misleading results to pregnant women seeking an abortion.

A letter signed by fourteen Senators and seven members of the House of Representatives, was sent to Google last week and cited a study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) that found 11% of search results from searches using the terms "abortion clinic near me" or "abortion pill" resulted in referrals to centers that oppose abortion rights "crisis pregnancy centers".

The lawmakers wrote in the letter that Google "should not be displaying anti-abortion fake clinics or crisis pregnancy centers", adding that if Google wishes to continue listing these types of results, they should, "at the very least, be appropriately labeled". Google didn't comment on the letter directed to Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai, but stated the following found below.

Drake recently released his surprise album Honestly, Nevermind, and one of the songs on the album is titled "Texts Go Green".

Google tried to use the release of Drake's seventh album to explain the references Drake used in the song "Texts Go Green". Android took to its Twitter account, where it shared a video explaining that when a text is sent from any device that isn't an iOS device and received on iMessage, it's subjected to the "ugly" green color, or when an iPhone user has blocked the sender.

The Android team then pointed to the problem being entirely solvable by Apple, as the company just has to "adopt RCS (Rich Communication Services protocol)," which will, according to Android, "make texting more secure, too". Android then called upon one "super-talented engineer" to carry out its request, but as you may have expected, Apple hasn't replied.

Tesla has expanded its EV manufacturing to Germany, and now that construction on its new production facility has completed, it's rolling out new cars.

The Tesla Germany factory, or to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Giga Berlin is capable of producing 500,000 vehicles each year, as well as 50 GWh of batteries. The new factory opened in March this year, and as of reports at the end of May, approximately 3,500 employees are working there, with there being an employment capacity of 12,000. Notably, the factory is about 300 hectares and is pushing to expand its domain by an additional 100 hectares per a recent application.

Now, Elon Musk has taken to his Twitter account to praise the efforts being made at Giga Berlin as the factory produced 1,000 Model Y vehicles in the span of a week. A Tesla and Elon Musk enthusiast replied to the Twitter post by Tesla with a graph he made that is tracking the weekly Model Y deliveries in Norway. The graph shows that on the week of June 06, Tesla made about 180 Model Y's, and the following week it delivered about 420.

Elon Musk described himself on Twitter on March 5 as a "free speech absolutist", and has now reportedly fired several employees for being involved in an internal letter that criticized him.

The New York Times has reported that an internal letter was circling SpaceX that criticized the company's CEO and founder and said that SpaceX needs to separate itself from Musk's personal brand. The letter was seen by Reuters and headed "an open letter to the Executives of SpaceX" and demanded that "hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone" and "define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior".

SpaceX executives discovered the letter and have fired at least five employees involved with it, according to The New York Times, which states it communicated with three of the fired employees. Notably, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell wrote via email that the company recently investigated its creation and "terminated a number of employees involved".

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has just unveiled its updated process technology roadmaps, some new information on the next-gen N3 process nodes, and more at its 2022 TSMC Technology Symposium.

TSMC unveiled its new FinFlex technology for N3, which allows chip designers -- like Apple, AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and others -- to choose the best options for the key functional blocks on the same die, using the same design tool set.

Godfrey Cheng, Head of Global Marketing, TSMC, explained on the official TSMC website that TSMC's new FinFlex technology: "extends the product performance, power efficiency and density envelope of the 3nm family of semiconductor technologies by allowing chip designers to choose the best option for each of the key functional blocks on the same die using the same design toolset. These options include a 3-2 FIN, 2-2 FIN and 2-1 FIN configuration with the following characteristics".