Business, Financial & Legal - Page 54

As what the mainstream would call a "conspiracy theorist" it has been a wild ride -- I've never gone through so much popcorn, 17 bags so far -- Elon Musk is ramping things up (again).

The SpaceX and Tesla boss has already jumped on President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and his "Laptop From Hell". If the "conspiracies" and reports on that Laptop From Hell are true, it implements the President of the United States and the people of the United States. Compromising material of the President's son, while he sits on the board of a Ukrainian-based energy company... President Trump used to mention that.

But in a fresh tweet, Elon is now jumping on the Harvey Weinstein story, Matt Lauer raping women in his office at NBC, and now Jeffrey Epstein's BFF Ghislaine Maxwell. Musk was spotted with Maxwell at a Vanity Fair party in 2014, where I've even seen posts myself questioning why he was caught in a photo anywhere near Maxwell. Especially considering someone of his wealth and power would know, he would know for SURE, what she and her kind were into.

The crisis in Ukraine is creating so many more issues than when it first started, with the US Army providing around 25% of its Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles over the last couple of months to Ukraine... and that's causing a major issue for the USA.

During a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the health of the defense industrial base, former Pentagon undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment Ellen Lord said that according to public-domain sources: "We have probably given Ukraine a quarter of our stocks" of Stinger missiles, but "we cannot, within the next couple of years, produce more, because we have a problem with the government not paying to maintain production capacity".

Not only that, but Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes explained: "We've been working with the DoD for the last couple of weeks, we're actively trying to resource some of the material, but unfortunately, DoD hasn't bought a Stinger in about 18 years and some of the components are no longer commercially available. So we're going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile".

Meta, formerly Facebook, recently took a massive hit as its stock price dropped by more than 25%, wiping out more than $230 billion in market value, marking the biggest one-day loss ever by a US company.

The drop in share price came after the company released its fourth-quarter performance results that showcased a decline in daily active users, from 196 million to 195 million. This and other statistics hardly impressed investors. Furthermore, Facebook was suffering from Apple's software change allowed users to opt-in or out for their data to be gathered for advertising. That change crippled Facebook's revenue as it limited advertising, according to Meta.

When $230 billion was wiped out in market value, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg personally lost about $29 billion, knocking him from his number 9 spot among the world's 10 richest people. Zuckerberg owns 13% of Meta, and according to CNN, Zuckberg's ranked at number 18 on Bloomberg's Billionaire Index with a net worth of $65 billion, and by the end of the Thursday or start of Friday, Meta's stock would have increased by more than 19% in a single day. Making Zuckerberg's stock value rise by $11.5 billion.

Elon Musk buying Twitter has ruffled more feathers than President Trump could've done, short of doing a Tony Stark and saying "fuck it, yeah... I'm Q".

Musk's adventures in securing Twitter have set the minds of even the likes of The New York Times, which announced it was preparing a TV documentary about the SpaceX and Tesla CEO. The upcoming film is called "Elon Musk's Crash Course" and is the latest in FX and The New York Times' collaborative documentary series "The New York Times Presents".

The new documentary "Elon Musk's Crash Course" is directed by Emma Schwartz, and will be an "expose into Musk's company Tesla, and its work on self-driving cars". The doco will include reporting from both Cade Metz and Neal Boudette of The New York Times, and will deep dive into Tesla's Autopilot program, which has resulted in multiple deaths that "Musk and the company has yet to publicly acknowledge, and details Musk's efforts to kill government investigations into the incidents. Several former Tesla employees will be featured in the documentary, speaking out against Musk for the first time".

Elon Musk has been making waves forever, before the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, and after... through to joking about buying Coca-Cola and putting cocaine back into it (it originally had cocaine in it... people thought this was just a joke).

But the bigger tweet is that leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden's son -- Hunter Biden -- had a scandal surrounding his laptop. He took it into a repair shop, the storage was accessed, and lots of incriminating evidence -- some of it of the worst crimes you can commit -- were found. The story was buried by the mainstream media of course, as it put their candidate in the wrong light.

I wasn't the only one disgusted with the censorship of Hunter Biden and his "Laptop From Hell" as President Trump famously called it, but nothing surprises me in this Bizarro alternate reality we live in. You can research that for yourself, as TweakTown isn't the type of website where I would report and detail those types of articles as I like to stick to tech/mainstream as much as I can... but the laptop and its contents are disgusting. It creates an opportunity that is unlimited in size, for corruption, and for the Biden administration to have their hands tied with blackmail.

Both The Boring Company and its founder Elon Musk have recently tweeted about plans for upcoming hyperloop work by the company.

"Full-scale" will begin at some point this year for a hyperloop, while according to Musk "in the coming years" the company will try to build a working hyperloop. He claimed that a hyperloop would be the fastest possible way to get from one city center to another for journeys under about two thousand miles, and Starship would be faster for anything longer.

Musk claims this comes "from a known physics standpoint," however, as of yet, other companies have yet to realize working hyperloops, with some claiming they are not commercially viable. Musk originally estimated in his white paper published on this concept in 2013 that a hyperloop would cost about $11 million per mile.

The stunt was in the making for over ten years and was set to be undertaken by pilots Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington.

The two pilots planned to take their respective Cessna 182 aircraft to an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) before going into a nosedive, intending to leave their aircraft then and hop in the other. Each Cessna was equipped with a custom airbrake to allow the aircraft to descend at a steady speed of 225 kilometers per hour (140 miles per hour).

The stunt attempt was initiated from an undisclosed location in Arizona at around 5:45 pm local time. The pilots began their nosedive about an hour into the flight, jumping out of their respective planes after engaging the airbrakes at approximately 12,100 feet (3688 meters).

Zoom Video Communications Inc. has been made to pay users a settlement and implement changes to its business due to a class-action lawsuit.

The class-action lawsuit involved multiple instances of "Zoombombing," where outsiders interrupted Zoom meetings, and other privacy concerns leveled against Zoom. In one example, outsiders streamed pornography during a Bible study class on the platform held by Saint Paulus Lutheran Church in San Francisco, and a Sunday service by Oak Life Church in Oakland was subjected to similar material.

Plaintiffs in the case alleged that data was improperly shared by Zoom to Facebook, Google, and other third parties. They also said Zoom claimed to have end-to-end encryption when it didn't and that Zoom failed to prevent disruptive Zoombombings.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has struck a deal staggering $46.5 billion deal with Twitter for the purchase of the world's second-largest social media platform.

The news was confirmed via a press release that states Twitter has entered a "definitive agreement" to be acquired by Elon Musk and that Twitter's board has accepted Musk's offer of $54.20 a share, which is a 38% premium on Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, 2022. Now, Twitter employees have held a meeting Monday morning with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who only recently took his position four months ago, and board chair Bret Taylor.

CNN reports that the meeting included Twitter employees asking Agrawal and Taylor questions regarding the impact of Musk acquiring Twitter. Agrawal said all staff shouldn't expect any big changes at the company until the deal is officially closed, which is scheduled to happen closer to the end of the year. Furthermore, Agrawal said that "there are no plans for any layoffs at this point", but did say that "once the deal closes, different decisions might be made".

It's official: Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, with President Trump saying he won't be coming back to the new Musk-owned social networking site.

President Trump spoke with Fox News on Monday shortly after the SpaceX and Tesla CEO secured his new goodies, where he said: "I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he'll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH. We're taking in millions of people, and what we're finding is that the response on TRUTH is much better than being on Twitter. Twitter has bots and fake accounts, and we are doing everything we can".

"The bottom line is, no, I am not going back to Twitter".

Twitter has announced that it has entered a "definitive agreement" to be acquired by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

After facing pressure from shareholders to reconsider Musk's offer of $46.5 billion to purchase Twitter, the company has rolled out a new press release that states the Twitter board has accepted Musk's offer to buy out the company at $54.20 a share.

In an effort to stop Musk's hostile takeover of Twitter the board of directors unanimously decided to take a "poison pill" that allows existing shareholders to purchase Twitter stock at a discount price, in an effort to dilute the holdings of any new investors and thwart Musk's attempt at securing a deal.

For the first time in 11 years, the world's largest streaming platform, Netflix, announced its losing subscribers, sending its stock price plummeting.

Netflix revealed on April 19 its disappointing Q1 results that showcased that subscription growth has decreased by 203,000 paid subscribers across its largest regions; US, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. In Q4 2021, Netflix announced it had 221.8 paying subscribers, and according to the streaming platform, the decrease is due to accounting sharing, economic issues, COVID-19 mis-projections, and more.

As a result of this news, Netflix's share price took a large tumble, and now reports from Bloomberg reveal that former and current Netflix employees are reporting, "More people are looking to leave Netflix right now than at any point in recent memory, current and former employees said this past week". The Information reported that Netflix employees have also asked upper management to roll out new stock grants to employees to compensate for the loss that they experienced over the last week.

A social media scandal in China has caused one of the top 500 wealthiest individuals to lose $2.8 billion.

Mr. Wang, the son of property billionaire Wang Jianlin, created a video on April 15 that was posted to China's social video platform Weibo. The video questioned whether the World Health Organization had recommended the herbal remedy, Lianhua Qingwen, created by Wu Yiling, one of China's leading scientists.

Lianhua Qingwen is one of the three government-recommended COVID-19 treatments, and before the video by Mr. Wang, Mr. Yiling's total wealth was around the $6 billion mark, according to Bloomberg. The video caused doubt to spread among investors, sending Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical Co's share price in a downwards spiral that saw it decrease by 35% from its peak on April 11. Mr. Yiling's wealth saw a catastrophic drop, sliding by $2.6 billion, and is now sitting at a total of around $4 billion.

Elon Musk has confirmed leaked texts between himself and Microsoft founder Bill Gates regarding a possible meeting.

The leaked texts have circulated on social media platforms such as Reddit and Twitter, with SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk being tagged in the images to verify their authenticity. The texts state that Gates wished to meet with Musk to discuss "philanthropy possibilities" on climate change and judging by the sentiments in the texts, it appears a meeting place was previously discussed.

Musk then asks Gates if he has a "half a billion-dollar short position against Tesla?", and Gates replies with, "sorry to say I haven't closed it. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities." Musk replies by writing, "Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change."

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk offered to purchase Twitter at $46.5 billion, and reports indicate that Twitter and Musk were scheduled to meet on Sunday to discuss the offer.

Now, the Financial Times has reported that sources close to the deal have said that Twitter is facing pressure to seek a deal with Musk for the sale of Twitter, despite the second largest social media company taking a "poison pill" that would allow existing shareholders to purchase Twitter stock at a discount price, in an effort to dilute the holdings of any new investors and thwart Musk's attempt at securing a deal.

However, if many shareholders back Musk in a tender offer and accept his bid for the company, Twitter's negotiating power would take a hit as the board would be going against many of its shareholders. Even with its defensive "poison pill" and a portion of its shareholders backing it, Twitter may not hold enough negotiating power.

Both of the Russian oligarchs were former executives in the gas industry.

51-year-old Vladislav Avayev and his wife and daughter were found dead on April 18th at his apartment in Moscow. A day later, 55-year-old Sergei Protosenya was found dead alongside his wife and daughter at a villa in Barcelona. Protosenya was formerly the chief accountant of Novatek, Russia's second-largest natural gas producer, while Avayev was the former vice-president of Gazprombank, the third-largest bank in Russia by asset value.

Protosenya was found hanged in his villa while his wife and daughter had been stabbed, and police are considering scenarios where Protosenya killed both his wife and daughter and then himself, or someone staged the crime scene after murdering all three. Avayev was found with a fatal gunshot wound, as were his wife and daughter, with the initial conclusion by investigators being that Avayev killed them and then himself, as there were no signs of anyone else having entered the apartment.

Elon Musk is really sending a message to the powers that be with his latest tweet, striking at Bill Gates and saying "in case u need to lose a boner fast" with a picture of Bill and a "pregnant man" emoji.

There's absolutely no context here, it's just the world's richest man -- and soon-to-be owner of Twitter -- trolling one of the other richest men in the world: Bill Gates. But the pregnant man emoji? I mean a conspiracy theorist would have a field day connecting BOTH of the men to Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, and a million bad people in between... but hey, Musk doesn't like to talk about that.

It can't be a dig at Bill being bigger (fatter, if you don't get triggered by the word) than Elon... Elon is a chunky lad as well. So what exactly is Elon saying here? Is Bill Gates really a woman? Is that why Melinda split up with him? Maybe Melinda is a man, like the rumors of Michelle Obama being a man... I guess we'll have to see what Elon Musk says next.

The dark cloud hanging over Bobby Kotick has been getting thicker and thicker, starting at the end of 2019 before the pandemic kicked off -- in the middle of the Hong Kong protests and China covering it all up -- but I don't forget, and neither does the internet (or Jeffrey Epstein's little black book).

Kotick, who isn't just associated with mystery billionaire ultra-weirdo Jeffrey Epstein -- whose girlfriend and BFF Ghislaine Maxwell is in court right now -- but he used to date Facebook (and now Meta) executive Sheryl Sandberg.

Yeah, well Sheryl used her enormous power to pressure UK outlet the Daily Mail to NOT post stories about her "temporary restraining order" against Kotick in 2014. Kotick dated Sandberg for 3 years until 2019 -- the year when his life started to unravel. The Facebook COO contacted the Daily Mail in 2016 and 2019, putting a brick wall between their stories, and the real-world.

The next time you hear Jim Cramer scream "BUY" on some stock -- maybe don't -- as the host of "Mad Money on CNBC" told the world to buy Netflix stock on January 4... and it has absolutely tanked since.

Netflix stock is down 39% in the last 5 days, down from around $350 to just $214 at the time of writing. A disaster, as Netflix stock has a 52-week high of $700.99 and now we're scraping just over $200. SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk said the "woke mind virus" is killing Netflix... and with shows like "He's Expecting" (about a man who is "pregnant") it's no wonder.

Netflix has been getting worse and worse with its content over the years, where its woke-focused content isn't being consumed anywhere near as much. Not only that, but there are far more competitors in the streaming space now including Disney+, Apple TV, HBO Max, and more.

Netflix can't blame losing 200,000 subscribers from its 200,000,000+ strong base of monthly subscribers for the disastrous 35%+ drop of its stock on the opening bell this morning.

SpaceX and Tesla boss -- as well as Twitter enthusiast and board member, Elon Musk -- said that a "woke mind virus" is the biggest threat to civilization. Musk said Netflix had been neglecting its viewership, focusing too much on "woke issues". Anyone that has watched Netflix over the last few years can agree.

Netflix is competing with other streaming giants in the space now, with Apple TV, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount, and more. The mainstream media wants to blame the Ukraine conflict, but they can't use that as the new pandemic and lay blame for all economic issues because of it. I won't. Because the cost of living and the Ukraine conflict were screwing Netflix, all streaming giants would be suffering.