Business, Financial & Legal - Page 52

We all know we're spied on by the powers that be, with the most prolific people in the world spied on every second, of every day -- whether they know it or not -- including SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk.

In a new tweet, Musk shared a meme that takes a poke at a Facebook-like social media post that asks "does anyone else feel like their being watched", the reply is from the CIA (or the Central Intelligence Agency) which simply corrects the post with "*they're".

Mega founder and the kinda New Zealand equivalent of Musk, Kim Dotcom, replied saying: "You are. 24/7 on all your devices and online services, including your own Starlink. In your case it's not just mass surveillance. You are a priority target. Welcome to the club". Musk quickly replied back, saying: "I would be shocked if I'm *not* being spied on haha. My only ask is that anyone spying on me please not affect call quality too much or I can't hear what's being said!"

The collective net worth of the three billionaires has dropped significantly since the start of the year.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the year-to-date (YTD) change in Elon Musk's net worth is a $46.4 billion drop, Jeff Bezos' net worth has dropped by $53.2 billion in the same period, and Bill Gates' has dropped by $15.1 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, another Big Tech billionaire, has lost $53.4 billion so far this year, almost half of his net worth.

As of May 31st, Musk's net worth sits at $224 billion, Jeff Bezos' at $139 billion, and Bill Gates' at $123 billion, ranking them at first, second, and fourth on the list of the world's richest people. Slotting in at third place is Bernard Arnault, with a net worth of $133 billion, the only person in the top six of the list to not come from the United States, instead hailing from France. Arnault's net worth has also dropped significantly, by $44.7 billion.

ASUS has just announced its new ASUS Infinity campaign, slashing prices in a big way on PC components including graphics cards, motherboards, monitors, and more. You can get your PC discount on right here.

The new ASUS Infinity campaign runs from now, through to the end of June and will cover special promoits through Memorial Day and Father's Day. We're looking at ASUS ROG Strix and TUF Gaming GPUs, ROG Strix, TUF Gaming, and PRIME motherboards, as well as a slew of "Infinity" monitor deals.

ASUS is working with a bunch of partners, including Amazon, Newegg, Walmart, Best Buy, GameStop and more... so don't worry, you won't miss out on these deals. There are some rather good deals here, with the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3080 Ti OC down $300 from $1550 down to $1250... while there's the ROG Strix RTX 3080 Ti with $250 off from $1650 to $1400.

A new exclusive multi-year agreement between ABEC and GOOD Meat has just been struck, paving the way for a new bioreactor.

An architectural rendering of the facility.

The new deal between GOOD Meat and ABEC will bring ten 250,000-liter bioreactors to GOOD Meat's large meat facility that, when construction is completed, is expected to produce 15,000 tons of meat per year without killing a single animal. The new facility will be designed to produce chicken and beef while also having the capabilities of distributing its products to millions of Americans across the country.

A new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has revealed that Elon Musk has switched up his plan to purchase Twitter.

While the deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion seems to be still going ahead despite Musk's claims that it was put on hold until Twitter proved that spam bots account for less than 5% of the platform's total users. According to a financial filing made public on Wednesday, May 25, Musk has switched his personal funding for the purchase from $27.3 billion to $33.5 billion while also locking down an additional $6.25 billion in equity financing, which has, in turn, reduced Musk's total amount of debt he would take on after completing the purchase.

Notably, Musk originally took out a $12.5 billion margin loan against his Tesla shares, which has now been reduced to the previously mentioned $6.25 billion after Musk found more funding. Furthermore, Musk is still in talks with potential investors, with publications reporting the Tesla CEO is talking to former Twitter CEO and founder Jack Dorsey.

Yet another cryptocurrency scam has surfaced, this time utilizing deep-fakes and Elon Musk's likeness to do the trick.

The deep faked video shows Elon Musk on the set of a TED talk originally from April 15, 2022 where he discusses Twitter, Tesla, and more. The video, titled "I Have Made $8K in 1 month via a new Trading Bot | BitVex Release", has Musk supposedly announcing a new cryptocurrency trading platform named BitVex, promising 30% returns.

Newly created YouTube channels and hacked existing ones have recently uploaded deep-faked videos of other notable people in the cryptocurrency space apparently endorsing BitVex. These include the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Ark Invest, Cathie Wood, and others.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken a step outside of the $200 billion net worth range, according to recent reports.

Bloomberg's Billionaire's Index indicates that Musk saw his net worth plummet by approximately 5.4% on Tuesday, following an almost 7% in Tesla's share trading price. Notably, after Tuesday, Musk's net worth is expected to be the lowest its been since August 26 at approximately $192.7 billion. Coming in second place on Bloomberg's Billionaire's Index is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who is estimated to have about $127.8 billion.

Furthermore, the last time that Musk's net worth dropped below the $200 billion mark was in March this year, but that drop quickly recovered, with Musk seeing his net worth skyrocket to a staggering $288 billion on April 4, which also happened to be the same day the Tesla CEO revealed he owned a 9% stake in Twitter and only days before he began initiating his strategy to purchase the platform.

A new exclusive report has detailed the money trail left behind by many of the organizations that have threatened to boycott Twitter over Elon Musk's coming decisions to change the platform's policies.

Breitbart News has learned through research and analysis conducted by the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) that traced the funding of many of the organizations that signed the open letter, which threatened to pull advertising from Twitter if Musk rolled back established Twitter policies and implemented his version of "free speech" on the platform.

The FFO found that out of the 26 organizations that signed the open letter opposing Musk's new vision for the platform, 11 of them were funded by a Gates-backed entity that received large contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For instance, in 2020, the New Venture Fund received the largest one-year donation the Gates Foundation has given out in the last ten years. Notably, New Venture funds four of the signatories on the open letter.

Swedish "buy now, pay later" company Klarna is laying off 10% of its workforce, but did it in a rather robotic way: with a prerecorded video message.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski informed its near-7000 employees that 10% of them would be out of a job, leaving around 700 people unemployed. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in the prerecorded video message: "When we set our business plans for 2022 in the autumn of last year, it was a very different world than the one we are in today".

Siemiatkowski continued: "Since then, we have seen a tragic and unnecessary war in Ukraine unfold, a shift in consumer sentiment, a steep increase in inflation, a highly volatile stock market and a likely recession. All of which have marked the beginning of a very tumultuous year". He did note that workers based in Europe would get an "associated compensation", while severance packages for US staffers would "look different" depending on the location.

Snap shares have fallen through the ground, dropping by a hefty 40% and dragging other tech stocks like Apple, Twitter, and Meta (the parent company of Facebook) at the same time.

The huge 40% sea of red for Snap shares means we're looking at $13.42 at the time of writing, down from ~$30 or so back on April 25. Snap's market cap has dropped, down to $21.9 billion. A recent SEC filing seems to have dragged down the share price of Snap, but there are other moving parts.

The SEC filing reads: "Since we issued guidance on April 21, 2022, the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated. As a result, we believe it is likely that we will report revenue and adjusted EBITDA below the low-end of our Q2 2022 guidance range".

Meta has taken to its website to announce that it will be bringing more transparency to social issue, electoral and political ads.

In a new update posted to its website, Meta states that it will soon be sharing data on the aforementioned advertisement categories and how those ads are targeted to individuals. Meta writes that researchers who are involved in the company's Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) program will be given access to data that will include "interest categories chosen by advertisers" for each individual ad.

Notably, this isn't the first time Meta has let select members of the public look under the hood of its advertising, as the company made political ad data available to FORT researchers for a three-month period just before the 2020 election. As pointed out by Engadget, some researchers may not be happy with the data provided to them by Meta ahead of the 2022 midterms, where it's likely that there will be some attention brought to how pollical advertisements impact elections, especially through platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Airbnb is planning on shutting down business throughout mainland China after facing scrutiny from regulators and overwhelming competition.

Two sources familiar with the coming disconnect from China by Airbnb have spoken to CNBC, which reported that as early as Tuesday morning Beijing time Airbnb will be informing all employees throughout the country that business will be coming to an end. The sources close to the matter told the publication that Airbnb in China accounted for approximately 1% of the company's total revenue over the last few years, and had expensive running costs.

The sources said that the shutdown can be attributed to growing domestic competition in the space, as well as regulatory factors. Furthermore, the sources mentioned that the COVID-19 pandemic made the situation in China a whole lot worse due to the Chinese government's extreme lockdown with outbreaks and an overall large reduction in general tourism. Notably, Airbnb's share price has slunk a grim 30% in 2022 and is currently trading at an approximate price of $113, which is far higher than its 2020 IPO price of $68.

Authorities have arrested a woman who pretended to be the daughter of an elderly cancer patient who she then stole more than $400,000 from.

The Florida woman named Ana Nunez impersonated the 70-year-old cancer patient while they were in the hospital. Authorities have accused Nunez of manipulating the elderly individual into giving Nunez her "power of attorney" by signing several documents that also included her possessions and bank accounts that contained approximately $437,000, per Local 10 News.

Furthermore, the scammer is now facing a slew of serious charges after being arrested on May 20, with additional charges being placed on Nunez' son, Pablo Figueroa, who was arrested in early May under suspicion of being an accomplice.

President Biden has said that the US would step in militarily if China invaded Taiwan, emphasizing that protecting Taiwan was a bigger "burden" than Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Biden said the remarks at a joint news conference in Tokyo, with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. CBS News correspondent Nancy Codes asked Biden: "You didn't want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?".

Biden replied with "Yes. That's the commitment we made". Biden added: "We agree with a 'One China' policy. We signed onto it and all the attendant agreements made from there. But the idea that it (Taiwan) could be taken by force, just taken by force, it's just not - it's just not appropriate. It'll dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine. And so it's a burden that is even stronger".

May 19th saw Tesla's stock price drop to its lowest level so far in 2022, erasing $12.3 billion from Elon Musk's wealth.

Musk took to Twitter that same day to voice political concerns in a multitude of tweets, saying that now he will vote Republican, after voting Democrat in the past, and claimed that "political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months." Musk also tweeted at S&P Global Ratings, saying they "lost their integrity" after Tesla was not included in its S&P 500 ESG (environment, social & governance) Index.

Margaret Dorn, an executive at S&P Global Ratings, told Reuters that the exclusion was a result of reports of racial discrimination at Tesla facilities, and crashes involving its autonomous vehicles. With Twitter stocks also dropping in value recently, Musk has lost a combined $49 billion in wealth since moving to purchase the social media platform.

A Tesla involved in a crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach in California on May 12th is suspected of having been using a partially automated driving mode.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sent a special crash investigation team to probe the incident as part of a larger inquiry by the agency into crashes where some level of a self-driving system is in use, such as Tesla's Autopilot. The NHTSA has sent teams to inspect 34 crash sites since 2016 in which such systems were either suspected of being in use or confirmed to be.

A new document released by the NHTSA reveals that 28 of the 34 crashes investigated involved vehicles from Tesla. In all the crashes being investigated, 15 people have died, 14 of which were in crashes involving Tesla vehicles, and at least 15 more have been injured.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently stated on Twitter that his deal to purchase Twitter has been put "on hold", but now a Twitter executive has said that the deal is operating as per normal.

It was only a week ago that Elon Musk took to her personal Twitter account to announce that his deal to purchase the world's second largest social media platform, Twitter, was temporarily "on hold" as he was investigating Twitter's claims that it spam/fake accounts represent less than 5% of total users.

Now, according to a recent report from Bloomberg who spoke to Twitter's top lawyer and head of policy, Vijaya Gadde, the deal is proceeding as expected, and there is "no such thing as a deal on hold". The report states that Gadde held a meeting with workers where she informed them that the deal was moving forward and that the company would not be renegotiating Musk's agreed-upon price to purchase the company for $54.20 per share.

NVIDIA has already announced its Computex 2022 keynote for next week, and now AMD has confirmed its new "AMD Advancing the High-Performance Computing Experience" keynote for the same day: May 23.

AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su will be talking about the company's vision on "next generation mobile and desktop PC innovations", which means we can expect some teases of future-gen gear. Dr. Lisa Su recently had MIT rename its Building 12 nanoscience building to "The Dr. Lisa T Su Building", it seems next up for Lisa is Computex 2022 next week... she's been quite busy.

AMD teases: "Join us for the digital AMD CEO keynote at Computex 2022 as Dr. Lisa Su shares the AMD vision to advance the PC experience through next generation mobile and desktop PC innovations. Combining cutting-edge CPUs, GPUs and software, AMD and its ecosystem partners will show breakthrough performance and leadership experiences for gamers, enthusiasts and creators".

Martin Shkreli has been released from prison early, completing under five years of his seven-year prison sentence. Martin "Pharma Bro" Shkreli is now free, and already back on social media.

Shkreli's first post on social media the second he was out of prison: "Getting out of real prison is easier than getting out of Twitter prison". After personally just watching "Pharma Bro", I suggest watching it as it gives a great (and quick 1.5-hour) insight into the life of Martin Shkreli... and what he did "wrong" and how he lived, and his fans... man, his fans.

Ben Brafman, Shkreli's attorney, said: "I am pleased to report that Martin Shkreli has been released from Allenwood prison and transferred to a BOP halfway house after completing all programs that allowed for his prison sentence to be shortened".

The lawsuit claims that the 12-year-old was trying to listen to a movie with the AirPods when an Amber Alert went off.

According to the suit, the 12-year-old boy called B.G in the filing had his AirPods connected to his iPhone and was watching a movie on Netflix at low volume. Apple's Amber Alert was then initiated, and the AirPods produced a high-pitched sound that "tore apart" the child's eardrums, while also causing damage to his cochlea. As a result of the damage, B.G now experiences significant hearing loss, nausea, vertigo, tinnitus, and now has to wear hearing aids.

The lawsuit claims that Apple is aware that some of its AirPods are "defective" and don't reduce the volume level when an Amber Alert is pushed out. Furthermore, the lawsuit claims that Apple doesn't provide a warning anywhere about the potential hazard.