Business, Financial & Legal - Page 62

Warren Buffett has announced that he will be stepping down as a trustee from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, saying that he has been an "inactive trustee" for years.

In his comments with the annual contribution of Berkshire Hathaway shares to five foundations, Buffett said: "For years I have been a trustee - an inactive trustee at that - of only one recipient of my funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire's".

The news couldn't come at a worse time: Bill and Melinda Gates just announced their divorce, Jeffrey "I didn't kill myself" Epstein possibly blamed for their divorce, and now Warren Buffett distances himself from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So by now, you've probably heard that John McAfee has died -- by suicide according to authorities, but minutes after the news went worldwide his Instagram account posted an image of the letter "Q".

Why the letter Q? Well, one of the largest "conspiracy theories" of all time is Qanon -- and McAfee was no stranger of controversy, so this should come as no surprise. Q hasn't posted since earlier this year when President Biden began assuming his role, but the media has used the Qanon boogeyman ever since... and now out of nowhere, McAfee is dead and his Instagram account posts "Q" minutes after.

If you're not into Qanon at all -- it can be reduced into a high level team of people in the government with Q level clearance. They've been posting "drops" since 2017 on 4chan, and have gone radio silent since December 9, 2020. Since then, Q has been silent -- even through President Trump stepping out of the White House, and President Biden assuming office.

John McAfee is dead.

The Antivirus creator was found dead in his prison cell in Barcelona, Spain -- with local authorities stating that McAfee took his own life through suicide.

McAfee had just had the Spanish high court to extradite him to the US, after he was arrested in October 2020. McAfee said during the recent extradition hearings that the accusations the media have said about him were politically motivated, with the IRS pressing charges against him through to his 2020 US presidential run with the Libertarian Party.

Microsoft employees that were required for the most urgent tasks in their data centers were sleeping in the data centers during the peak of the pandemic.

In a recent in chat with Morgan Stanley analysts Josh Baer and Mark Carlucci Kristen Roby Dimlow, corporate vice president for total rewards, performance and human resources business insights at Microsoft said: "I heard amazing stories about people actually sleeping in data centers".

Dimlow added: "In certain countries there was huge lockdown, and so we would have our own employees choose to sleep in the data center because they were worried they'd get stuck at a roadblock, trying to go home".

Intel is reportedly eyeing off acquiring semiconductor startup SiFive, with Bloomberg reporting that Intel has offered over $2 billion to acquire SiFive.

The site is reporting from anonymous sources "asking not to be identified because the matter is private", but that SiFive has "received takeover offers from multiple parties other than Intel" according to the source, who added that SiFive "has also fielded offers for an investment, which could be a preferable route".

SiFive raised funds back in 2020, where it was valued at around $500 million -- so it is a nice upgrade for the company to be fielding $2 billion acquisition offers just a year later. If you're not familiar with SiFive, the semiconductor startup designs chips based o the RISC-V architecture -- an open-source standard for semiconductor design that makes it much cheaper, and much more open to customers wanting to build chips.

TSMC is reportedly expanding its plans of building facilities on US soil, with its planned Arizona fab plant most likely being joined by even more new facilities in the US according to the latest rumors.

The new information is coming from Nikkei Asia which says its sources tease that TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) will construct new chip packaging facilities on US soil as well, a required part (chip packaging) of any tech product.

TSMC's new facility in Arizona is expected to be operational by 2024, where it will be capable of making 100,000 wafers each month -- this new US-based facility will be churning out next-gen 5nm chips Made in the USA.

There is a "performance issue" with the Taishan nuclear power plant in China's southern Guangdong province, with a purported leak that French nuclear company Framatome -- who part-owns the nuclear plant -- saying that they're working to resolve the issue.

CNN reports that the French company warned of an "imminent radiological threat", which also included an accusation that the Chinese safety authority was "raising the acceptable limits for radiation detection outside the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong province in order to avoid having to shut it down, according to a letter from the French company to the US Department of Energy obtained by CNN".

The Biden administration doesn't think that the nuclear plant issues in China are at a "crisis level" according to one of CNN's sources. Radiation levels in Hong Kong, which is around 85 miles away from the Taishan nuclear plant, "were normal" on Monday according to the Hong Kong Observatory, which monitors radiation around Hong Kong.

A single password... that is all it took to bring down most of the fuel supplies to the US Southeast, with Colonial Pipelines claiming it was the victim of a vicious cyberattack.

We then heard that Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount approved paying $4.5 million in Bitcoin to the ransomware hacking collective DarkSide, and then the US Department of Justice announced the FBI had "recovered most" of the $4.5 million ransomware payment.

But it was all from a single password, with the attack using a legacy Virtual Private Network (VPN) system that didn't have two-factor authentication. Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount said: "In the case of this particular legacy VPN, it only had single-factor authentication. It was a complicated password, I want to be clear on that. It was not a Colonial123-type password".

The Senate has passed the US Innovation and Competition Act, with the new legislation unleashing over $200 billion into scientific and technological innovations on US soil over the next 5 years.

The money will go into semiconductor manufacturing, R&D, next-gen chips, robotics, AI, and more. The US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) legislation being passed means $52 billion for US-based semiconductor manufacturing, a 30% increase in funding for the National Science Foundation, and $29 billion for a new science directorate that will focus on applied sciences.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. said: "It's the largest investment in scientific research and technological innovation in generations. It sets the United States on a path to lead the world in the industries of the future".

Google has been slapped with a $267 million fine over abusing its own ads and will now be changing its own ad practices.

Google was slapped with the fine by Frances competition authority, who found that Google used its own dominant position on advertising servers to "favor its own services over competitors on both ad servers and SSP [sell-side] platforms," said Isabelle de Silva, head of the Autorite de la concurrence.

Google has taken to a blog post to explain that it will be changing its ad policy to allow for publishers to have "increased flexibility". Additionally, Google stated, "Also, we are reaffirming that we will not limit Ad Manager publishers from negotiating specific terms or pricing directly with other sell-side platforms." This isn't the first time Google has felt the force from French regulators, as the company was slapped with a $167 million fine for unclear advertising rules that resulted in a Google Ad's account of a French company being suspended.

Americans will no longer be able to invest in 59 China-based companies as what they are developing poses a national security risk.

President Biden has issued a new executive order that will stop 59 different defense and tech firms in China from receiving any United States investments. According to a press release from the White House, the new executive order was created to stop a continuous "threat posed by the military-industrial complex of the People's Republic of China (PRC)." The White House also said that the development of certain pieces of technology in China and its deployment in other countries poses a national security risk to the United States.

US citizens are now prohibited under the revised E.O. 13959 to make any new investments into the 59 companies listed or "engaging in the purchase or sale". All of the companies that the executive order lists are China-based companies that are involved in the development of surveillance, aviation, and more. All of which are directly linked to the military-industrial complex. The list may not even be completed yet either, as the White House has said that more companies' names could be added to the list on a "rolling basis".

European Union lawmakers have asked top technology companies to increase the efforts being made to stop COVID-19 misinformation.

Currently, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, and Twitter are all participants in the (non-legally binding) Code of Practice on Disinformation, which is an agreement that compels the tech giants to provide monthly reports in how they are stopping COVID-19 misinformation. The European Commission has said the companies have shown the inability to police "dangerous lies" on their own, and that the quality of the data being given to them is not at satisfactory standards.

Vera Jourova, the EU's VP for values and transparency, said, "We decided to extend this programme, because the amount of dangerous lies continues to flood our information space and because it will inform the creation of the new generation Code against disinformation. We need a robust monitoring programme, and clearer indicators to measure impact of actions taken by platforms. They simply cannot police themselves alone."

A new report from Reuters has revealed that Iran's largest warship has caught fire and sunk in the Gulf of Oman.

At the time of writing this, Iranian officials have revealed the exact reason why the IRIS Kharg has sunk, but reports are indicating that the ship's crew was safely rescued before the ship went down. Speculation is growing that the ship's sinking may have something to do with its connection with the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and is responsible for around 21 million barrels of oil per day, or around a fifth of the world's oil.

So how did the fire start? And who is responsible? At the moment, no one knows, but there has been a focus on the Strait of Hormuz, with both Iran and Israel claiming that each other have attacked ships operating in the area. Additionally, there have been many explosion accusations tossed around by both parties. If you are interested in reading more about Iran and Israel, check out this link here.

AMD is simply unstoppable right now: fighting Intel on one side with CPUs, NVIDIA on the other with GPUs and what seems like everyone in between when you throw Tesla + Microsoft + Sony in with electric cars and infotainment systems and next-gen Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 consoles.

But now, AMD and Magic Leap have partnered up on an "AR technology solution" that includes a semi-custom SoC that will "enable enterprise users to re-imagine and transform how virtual content and information is visualized and merged with real-world environments".

The announcement was on Magic Leap's website and I only spotted it on Sasa Marinkovic's Twitter -- the Director, Gaming Marketing for AMD.

A new report from The Wall Street Journal has revealed Elon Musk is receiving some heat from the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) over some unvetted tweets.

Back in August 2018, Musk tweeted that he had "[f]unding secured" to take Tesla private at the stock price of $420 per share. The SEC ended up charging Musk with securities fraud in September, and after both parties settled, Musk agreed that he would have his public communications (tweets) vetted by the company before they were posted.

The following year Musk tweeted that Tesla would manufacture more cars than what the company officially said it would, as a result, the SEC dragged Musk back to court, where Musk agreed that more specific vetting by Tesla lawyers (two are needed to approve a tweet) would take place before a tweet is posted. Now, the SEC is coming back at Musk over an unvetted tweet from May 2020 where Musk said that Tesla's stock price was "too high imo".

TSMC hit a masterstroke with 7nm... the right place, right time, the right partners, the right products... while its competitors (mainly Intel and NVIDIA at least for consumer technology) lagged behind so badly.

The company announced during its 2021 Online Technology Symposium event, TSMC shared more details on its future N6, N5, N4, and N3 nodes and also announced that it has shipped over 1 billion chips manufactured on its 7nm process node.

Most of the 7nm chips were for AMD designs across Ryzen, Radeon, EPYC, and the next-gen consoles are all using TSMC 7nm chips. AMD was truly in the right place and right time as well, but their competitors didn't fair so well and won't for the next few years either.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are already years ahead of the competition, leaving Intel in its proverbial dust and Samsung not able to catch up until 2030 according to recent reports.

But during TSMC's 2021 Online Technology Symposium which started today, alongside Computex 2021, we found out more details about TSMC's upcoming N6, N5, N4, and N3 process nodes. TSMC provided the world with new details on their defect densities, yields, and production timelines -- as in when you can expect to find these next-gen chips in your favorite products (CPUs, GPUs, game consoles, smartphones).

TSMC's senior vice president of research and development, Dr. Yuh Jier Mii, explained that the 3nm process node will have power consumption and performance improvements over the new 5nm node, which the first-gen N5 chips just went into production.

Bernie Sanders is coming between NASA funding and Jeff Bezos' space exploration company Blue Origin.

In April this year, the Endless Frontier Act was created with the main objective being to keep the US space program competitive with other countries around the world. On Monday, Sanders submitted an amendment to the act that states its purpose is to "eliminate the multi-billion dollar Bezos Bailout."

The "Bezos Bailout" is referencing an amendment submitted by Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, which asked NASA for an additional $10 billion in funding and instructed NASA to select a second company to construct a moon lander for the coming Project Artemis lunar landing missions. Both amendments come after Elon Musk's SpaceX won the original $2.9 billion NASA contract to construct moon landers that will carry astronauts to the moon.

Luxury brand empire owner Bernard Arnault briefly became the world's richest man, with a net worth of $186.3 billion at the time... versus Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his net worth of around $186 billion ($300 million less).

Well, it has been barely 24 hours and those few hundred million dollars matter a great deal when you're this rich and want that coveted "world's richest person" title. Well, Arnault is out -- his real-time net worth has dropped to $188 billion, meanwhile, Bezos has his net worth jump to $188.9 billion.

Bezos was behind by $300 million yesterday and is now $900 million ahead... all in less than 24 hours. I cannot fathom having that much money ($900 million) let alone $188 billion behind it. We should expect this fight to continue until one of their companies sees its share value drop by a few percentage points, but who will be first? Bezos or Arnault?

A court has found that Tesla is guilty after owners of one of the electric vehicles sued the company for their cars battery life being reduced.

Tesla has been ordered by a court in Norway to pay 136,000 kroner, or $16,000 each to owners of specific Model S's after owners of the vehicles complained that the vehicle's battery capacity and charging speeds were reduced. According to Nettavisen, paying out these fines could cost Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars.

Owners complained that there was a drop in range of up to 30 miles after Tesla implemented a 2019 software update. Additionally, these owners also noticed that the DC fast-charging at Tesla Supercharger stations were reduced. These issues are reportedly present in 2013 - 2015 models, and according to Tesla, the update was rolled out to "protect the battery and improve battery longevity". Tesla also said that it would only affect "a small percentage of owners."