by ponchi101 Well, it is Wall Street. It is dog eat dog there.
If you invest in stocks, just remember what Kurt Vonnegut called them: "The Casinos in Wall Street".
by JazzNU A finance guy came on a pod I listen to about 2 week ago and said very clearly, Wall Street does not think that Elon's going to complete the deal. It's what people were saying out loud and what the money was saying too, because essentially, the buyout price is one that should've attracted a substantial amount of buying of Twitter stock because it's basically found money. But there was little movement from typical Wall Street buyers in that direction meaning they didn't think the deal would get completed and that Musk would take the $1 billion dollar penalty and move on, but in doing so tank the Twitter stock price.
The BS meter is always sky high with Elon.
by ponchi101
JazzNU wrote: ↑Fri May 13, 2022 7:02 pm
A finance guy came on a pod I listen to about 2 week ago and said very clearly, Wall Street does not think that Elon's going to complete the deal. It's what people were saying out loud and what the money was saying too, because essentially, the buyout price is one that should've attracted a substantial amount of buying of Twitter stock because it's basically found money. But there was little movement from typical Wall Street buyers in that direction meaning they didn't think the deal would get completed and that Musk would take the $1 billion dollar penalty and move on, but in doing so tank the Twitter stock price.
The BS meter is always sky high with Elon.
Or, somewhere in the Cayman islands, there is a small company that owns a company in Dubai that owns a company in The Maldives that owns a company in Panama that owns a company in Kitts and Neives that owns a small office in Wall Street that shorted Twitter tremendously, and somehow Elon has stock in THAT little Cayman islands company.
Because by now, I can believe anything.
by ti-amie
Martha Stewart went to jail for less or am I misremembering? Stephanie Ruhle is a very good business reporter.
by ponchi101 The tweet became unavailable. As this is in this topic, was it related to Elon?
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon May 16, 2022 9:00 pm
The tweet became unavailable. As this is in this topic, was it related to Elon?
Ms Ruhle said that Musk was speaking at a private event and quoting a stock price below what had been publicly offered. She has deleted it and replaced it with the following:
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
There's no posted answer to the last question yet.
by ti-amie
A short tl;dr on the above.
WSJ is usually paywalled.
by ponchi101 He can be brilliant at times, he can be a buffoon so many others.
by ti-amie
by JazzNU This is exactly right. Because if you recall, there were competing offers for Twitter's accepted value that would've been taken but for the ridiculous offer Musk made that far exceeded its value.
by Suliso Is this really science and technology?
by MJ2004 It should be in Business News. I think we have that thread but can never find it.
by ponchi101
MJ2004 wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 11:35 am
It should be in Business News. I think we have that thread but can never find it.
No, we don't. You are missing good ol' TAT1.0. We never started such a topic.
I will start it and move these last posts there. It is related to technology solely in the fact that it deals with techno companies, but the market side.
by ponchi101 Just to keep these issues separate from other topics. As, most of the times, these news need to be read wearing a full hazmat suit.
MJ2004 wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 11:35 am
It should be in Business News. I think we have that thread but can never find it.
No, we don't. You are missing good ol' TAT1.0. We never started such a topic.
I will start it and move these last posts there. It is related to technology solely in the fact that it deals with techno companies, but the market side.
Tech business news was regularly placed in the Tech thread on TAT 1.0, not in the Business News thread. So it's fine to have another thread, but this is hardly a departure.
by ti-amie YAY for this thread.
by ti-amie
Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC
·
Anyway, the implication of this decision is that most (all?) agency enforcement power is unconstitutional. Which, in plain English, means that the federal government can't enforce a huge swath of regulations. I mean, this is basically striking down the administrative state.
by ponchi101 Ronald Reagan. If just the USA would get over the illusion that the man was competent.
"I'm from the government and I am here to help". Sure. You don't like that? Move to Somalia or Sudan, where there is basically no government, and see how you like it.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 They were not punished (I mean Wall Street and all the banks) for what they did in 2007. So why would they ever stop being this unethical group? They know they can get away with anything.
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu May 19, 2022 3:48 pm
They were not punished (I mean Wall Street and all the banks) for what they did in 2007. So why would they ever stop being this unethical group? They know they can get away with anything.
??? Yes many of them were punished. And many of the banks and firms went bankrupt as a result of the violations and class actions lawsuits against them.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu May 19, 2022 3:48 pm
They were not punished (I mean Wall Street and all the banks) for what they did in 2007. So why would they ever stop being this unethical group? They know they can get away with anything.
??? Yes many of them were punished. And many of the banks and firms went bankrupt as a result of the violations and class actions lawsuits against them.
Sorry. What they got was bailed out by the American public, when Obama came to power and the entire US Gov decided that almost all these companies were "too big too fail". Sure, Lehman Brothers went belly up, but that was basically the sole big player. Everybody else got a slap on the wrist.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu May 19, 2022 3:48 pm
They were not punished (I mean Wall Street and all the banks) for what they did in 2007. So why would they ever stop being this unethical group? They know they can get away with anything.
??? Yes many of them were punished. And many of the banks and firms went bankrupt as a result of the violations and class actions lawsuits against them.
Sorry. What they got was bailed out by the American public, when Obama came to power and the entire US Gov decided that almost all these companies were "too big too fail". Sure, Lehman Brothers went belly up, but that was basically the sole big player. Everybody else got a slap on the wrist.
Maybe that's how it seems, but no, there were definitely more big ones than just Lehman Brothers that collapsed. I think Lehman's was so public and embarrassing seeing them literally close the doors that some could be under that impression, but it's truly not the only one.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Not a fan of Meta/FB, but calling their COO one of the biggest criminals in the country is too much.
Especially with all the competition for the top place.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 8:37 pm
Not a fan of Meta/FB, but calling their COO one of the biggest criminals in the country is too much. Especially with all the competition for the top place.
Agree
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 8:37 pm
Not a fan of Meta/FB, but calling their COO one of the biggest criminals in the country is too much.
Especially with all the competition for the top place.
I think if you view it in this context (view another Tweet in the spoiler tag) it makes more sense. But I also think most aren't calling her one of the biggest criminals in the country, that was one person's comment that isn't getting a high level of engagement. But this take one is getting considerably more and is more in line with how I think some people think of her.
Mind you, she's successfully cultivated a very specific persona that makes it seem like she has not been involved with the ills of Facebook, even though as COO there's no way she's not up to her neck in the multitude of bad decisions from FB.
► Show Spoiler
by ponchi101 Thanks for that (and the spoiler). I have said it before, I believe META is not good for society and it should be regulated to the gills. But calling its owners, and I include Zuckerberg there, CRIMINALS, is very tough.
I mean, if you call them criminals, but do you call the Mar-A-Lago mob, or even "real life" criminals with guns and working for the real mafias? It is just, for me, that we are running out of words for some descriptions.
No thanks, you're not the only one making cars and rockets, Elon. Maybe Elon could shut his mouth for 40+ hours a week?
by ponchi101 He has been very vocal lately about how people have to work MORE.
That is a very common theme for these super successful "managers". They think that because they like to work 70 hours a week, everybody has to do it too. Zero quality of life for the rest of the people.
I remember the CEO of Yahoo! telling the story of how she was back to work hours after giving birth. As if that were commendable.
by Suliso Yes, exactly. He has established very admirable companies, but no way I would want to work for any of them. At most maybe few years in my 20-ties.
by ponchi101 And the point is: if you have a "fun" job, ok, maybe you want to be at the office 40 hours or more a week. But I am sure there are a lot of accountants at Tesla/SpaceX/Boring, and those people simply do not have to be at a desk 40 hours every week. Some weeks will be more, some weeks will be less.
It is a surprising statement in the sense that it is so outdated. A company like that should be result driven, not time driven.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 The governments of the USA/EU/JAPAN MUST make sure that when this bubble bursts, the general public will not be affected. It is all I would consider.
Biden et al must make it clear that these bozos will not be bailed out.
by ti-amie There's been a lot going on with crypto lately.
by ti-amie
BNN Newsroom
@BNNBreaking
Musk or SpaceX, Tesla, and Tesla's lawyer did not respond to press inquiries about the lawsuit right away. $DOGE is down 70% this year and is currently trading at $0.05818. It peaked at 74 cents last year before plummeting.
by ponchi101 "Oh, these people lied to me and told me that something that is completely fictitious and worthless had an actual value. I was fooled! "
Back in February, as I was doing my taxes in the USA, I asked the people at H&R Block about Crypto, expecting a reply along the lines of "it is a Ponzi". I was told it was a solid investment; you could get a 10% profit in a week or two. They had one person there, solely dedicated to crypto. He claimed it was, again, solid, "fluctuating between 37K and 47K. So you buy low and sell high".
I was wondering if these people were listening to themselves. And now I wonder if next year I will look for another accountant to do my taxes.
by ti-amie
BreezyScroll
@BreezyScroll
The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to Ignatova’s capture
by MJ2004 Exactly. From day one, this was clearly never gonna happen.
by ponchi101 Elon has done some very interesting things. Tesla produces technically interesting cars, the designs are clean, and SpaceX will lead in many important technological areas about space.
But, as a personality, he is becoming pretty boring and, at times, borderline ridiculous. This whole farce just adds to that, IMO.
by MJ2004
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:54 pm
Elon has done some very interesting things. Tesla produces technically interesting cars, the designs are clean, and SpaceX will lead in many important technological areas about space.
But, as a personality, he is becoming pretty boring and, at times, borderline ridiculous. This whole farce just adds to that, IMO.
Fixed that for you.
by ti-amie From the FaFo files:
by ti-amie
by ti-amie I don't pretend to understand everything Musk has put at risk here but the only way he can fulfill the deal is by selling a ton of Tesla stock. This was true from the beginning. The Twitter board is basically saying you're not getting away with this and we don't care if we destroy you in the process.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie If Musk has the best lawyers money can buy how the he** did he sign a contract with this paragraph in it?
p1
by ti-amie
P2/l
The thread by Morgan Ricks is also fascinating.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Eye opening.
The (supposed) backing of this crypto ponzi scheme was real money. Not other crypto, not any good. Real, tangible money. Because the FDIC does not pay you back in Bitcoin, it pays you in real mullah.
And they still invested in this scam.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 The ponzi is over. Let's see who remains holding the sack of in the end.
Oh, right, the little people. I always forget.
by ti-amie Someone posted commentary from people who were scammed by the people behind Celsius. It's not an easy read. I'll try and find the thread. And you're right Ponchi, they're the little people.
by ti-amie
by Suliso Investing in crypto (particularly other than bitcoin) was always a very high risk endeavor. Surely everybody understood that, right? Might have still made sense for many as a get rich quick gamble with a small part of savings.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 6:49 am
Investing in crypto (particularly other than bitcoin) was always a very high risk endeavor. Surely everybody understood that, right? Might have still made sense for many as a get rich quick gamble with a small part of savings.
This year, I was filing my taxes in the USA. I was at H&R Block, and was finishing the process. I overheard one of their advisors talking to somebody on a phone, about Crypto. A solid investment, quick turnaround, etc. I talked to my tax expert and asked her about it. To my surprise, she said it was solid: you could get a 10% return in a matter of weeks. Finding out a bit more, I spoke to the other person, who said that the investment was simple: BT would fluctuate between 32K and 47K, so the trick was to buy low, and sell high.
I wonder what they are telling their clients now. I could not believe that these people could not see the financial fallacies in what they were saying. I may be looking for a new tax advisor next year.
No, I don't think that everybody understood the real risks of BT and all other crypto. They don't understand how real currencies have a value, or, unreal currencies (like the Venezuelan Bolivar) don't. They just saw Matt Damon and Tom Brady telling them they were going to get rich and fell for it. A quick profit is always hard to pass, more so if you don't have the financial training or smarts to see the scheme.
by ti-amie
P1/2
by ponchi101 Yes, the little people.
But from the picture in her profile, it seems that this was a young person, and therefore somebody with no knowledge of what a Ponzi scheme is because she never lived through one.
Wonder how many more Molly's there are.
by ti-amie p 2/2
Molly White @molly0xFFF
"... and that should anything go wrong they have more than enough money to make all depositors whole. He also started that he himself would personally compensate investors to make them whole if ever needed."
Molly White
@molly0xFFF
·
Jul 21
92: "I am very affected by Celsius Network freezing my account and filing bankruptcy due to lack of risk management and false promises. Even though my assets were not in six figures, that was the majority of my life savings and retirement fund."
by ti-amie
They really don't and wouldn't care.
by ponchi101 The next and only thing they will read will be their serving papers.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:56 pm
The next and only thing they will read will be their serving papers.
Hopefully
by ponchi101 Amidst all the bitcoin lunacy.
I am here in Caracas now, and WE (meaning TAT'ers) had forgotten that El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as its official currency after the new, super smart, super young president decided it was the way of the future. There are enough news about that move here, because the Vennie Govt has its own cyber-scam (the PETRO).
There are a lot of problems there, as you can imagine in El Salvador).
Again, our penchant for electing buffoons (US being S. America).
by Suliso Just repeating myself, but still... Crypto is a risky investment. It's ok to do risky investments as long as you understand them AND losing that money would not be catastrophic for you.
by ponchi101 Which this guy didn't. He risked his entire country's economy. And lost.
sigh...
by ti-amie NYC's new Mayor (less than a year in office) was on the crypto bandwagon and was talking about getting part of his salary in crypto. I haven't heard him talking that talk lately.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 I know that I am an old gizzard, and I am outdated, but that this silly app is worth the GDP of a small country... it is hard to wrap my head around that.
Of course, Europe. Here in S. America, the idea is that people need to work MORE.
Proletariats of the world, rejoice!
by ti-amie
by ti-amie This should've been posted first. Sorry.
by ti-amie
Woulda, coulda, shoulda filed by lawyers who charge an hourly rate that is more than many in this country make in a pay period.
He's got to sell the Tesla stock and everyone in this charade knows it.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Serious here.
I know twitter is a built brand, and it is the largest of its kind. But Elon is not a technological ingenue. Why didn't he start a similar platform, with some different gizmos? If he was able to take on the automotive industry and the rocket industry, this thing was feasible.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 06, 2022 9:21 pm
Serious here.
I know twitter is a built brand, and it is the largest of its kind. But Elon is not a technological ingenue. Why didn't he start a similar platform, with some different gizmos? If he was able to take on the automotive industry and the rocket industry, this thing was feasible.
The RW has set up alternate Twitter like platforms and they've failed miserably. Users are already saying if Musk takes over they're out. It may not seem like it but it's been a much saner place since TFG was kicked out.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 They haven't delivered the pick up truck.
They never delivered the roadster.
That is a very good point.
by Owendonovan I think once Musk lets the racist, homophobic, misogynist, orange thing back on twitter, the stock tanks. Why would anyone with a hint of morals want to share any kind of platform with him?
by ponchi101 70 million people might.
He is still the leader of a cult. Sadly.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amieMeta's value has plunged by $700 billion. Wall Street calls it a "train wreck."
moneywatch
BY AIMEE PICCHI
OCTOBER 27, 2022 / 2:45 PM / MONEYWATCH
Facebook parent Meta Platforms is making a huge investment in virtual reality, but its actual reality is looking like a real disaster.
Meta shares tumbled 24% on Thursday to its lowest level in nearly four years following an earnings report that one Wall Street analyst described as a "train wreck." It's a far cry from the company's position nearly a year ago, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg on October 28, 2021, announced with great fanfare that Facebook was changing its name to Meta Platforms to emphasize its focus on the "metaverse."
Last fall, Facebook was still riding high: Its market value reached a peak of more than $1 trillion in September 2021. Revenue and profits were surging as advertisers flocked to Facebook and Instagram to reach their billions of users.
To be sure, practically the entire tech industry has taken a beating this year, but Meta's stock plunge has far outpaced the overall sector, with its shares down 67% from a year earlier compared with the tech-heavy Nasdaq's 31% slide over the same period. Meta's plunge translates into an eye-popping loss of about $700 billion in market value.
On Thursday, Meta's market value sank to $268 billion, down from more than $1 trillion in September of 2021.
The company's travails raise questions about its all-in bet on the metaverse, as well as whether the social media company could suffer the fate of other major businesses whose gambles on the future failed to pay off. In the near-term, Meta's core Facebook business is facing challenges as the economy slows and advertisers trim spending.
"Meta's results last night was an absolute train wreck that speaks to pervasive digital advertising doldrums ahead for Zuckerberg & Co. as they make the risky and head scratching bet on the metaverse," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a report.
Here are three key issues slamming Meta shares and deepening questions about its longer-term prospects.
$9.4 billion in metaverse losses
On a Wednesday conference call to discuss Meta's latest earnings, Zuckerberg told investors he is "pretty confident this is going in a good direction."
Investors aren't convinced. The company is making what amounts to a wildly expensive bet on its ability to transform into a virtual reality behemoth and whether that technology can power the next phase in Meta's growth.
Although such strategic pivots can take years for big companies to execute — as it did for IBM and Microsoft as they morphed from selling hardware to software — the early returns for Meta have been grim. For the first nine months of the year, Meta lost $9.4 billion on its metaverse unit, Reality Labs. It expects the unit to have "significantly" wider operating losses in 2023, the company said on Wednesday.
Investors are skeptical because, at least so far, consumers aren't exactly flocking to the fledgling metaverse. Unlike the longer time-lines for building businesses common in Silicon Valley, Wall Street values companies based on near-term returns rather than hazier projections that stretch years into the future.
Horizon Worlds, Meta's new virtual space, trimmed its goal for monthly active users to 280,000 from 500,000, but the space is attracting fewer than 200,000, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
"nvestors should remain on the sidelines as it will take many years before progress in the metaverse can be truly monetized," Angelo Zino, senior equity analyst CFRA Research, told investors in a research note.
Slower Facebook growth
By comparison, Facebook had a massive base of 1.98 billion active daily users on average for September — a 3% increase from a year ago.
That may seem respectable, but it's far from the huge growth Facebook experienced in earlier years. And the slower growth comes after Facebook in February said it had lost users for the first time in its history.
The social media juggernaut, Meta's huge moneymaker, is battling challenges from upstarts like TikTok, which is grabbing younger consumers.
Advertising challenges
Meta's lifeblood is the advertising revenue booked by Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with businesses eager to reach their billions daily users. But its ad revenue fell in the most recent quarter, with sales drooping 3.7% and adding to investor concerns.
On the ad front, Meta faces a double whammy. An economic slowdown means that advertisers are cutting spending, with the company on Wednesday pointing to an "uncertain and volatile macroeconomic landscape" for ads. The company is also grappling with the impact of Apple's privacy changes to apps that run on its devices. That change means consumers can ask apps to not track them, and which Facebook has said will cost it $10 billion this year.
by Suliso Facebook will slowly wither in my opinion. Doesn't apply to its sister businesses WhatsApp and Instagram, but can they really generate the same revenue? I doubt it.
by ponchi101 WhatsApp has become such an important tool in trade and business, not to mention, international calling, that if META were to go belly up (and I am not saying it could) the effects would be felt.
IG has also become a very important marketing tool. It would have effects.
But I am not sure how they can monetize them; I am sure that if people were to be charged for using WA we would slowly stop using it.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Inflation, high food prices, markets collapsing, a lot of countries having issues trying to balance budgets and still provide for basic needs.
And, except in the USA, shrinking job markets. Tough times for almost everybody.
ALMOST everybody.
The Über Rich are doing so well, Bentley has doubled profits while only selling 3% more units. How? Customization. You not only want to have a Bentley; you want to have a unique Bentley.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 02, 2022 7:55 pm
And, except in the USA, shrinking job markets. Tough times for almost everybody.
I have several family members and friends in management positions who have been in meetings in the last 2 months about getting recs together on layoffs on their teams and some have already acted on them since then. So wouldn't exclude the US. Might seem better than it is from the outside.
by ti-amie The last time I tried to move posts I deleted one of Ashkor's so I will start fresh here with the fiasco created by Musk who seems to be in way over his head unless this is part of the plan...
If you want to know where folks are setting up their back up plan accounts they're moving to Mastodon, Tribel or Counter Social. Mastodon admits that it's servers are overwhelmed at the moment. From what I saw they're Euro-focused and there is no server for sports.
One account is pushing Tribel hard so I've stayed away from it. Mastodon looks like Reddit to me which I have/had trouble navigating. When I start seeing tennis journos move I'll try and set up an account there.
Max Woolf@minimaxir
Replying to
@Popehat
And advertising on said media outlet has lower ROI than other media outlets.
by ti-amie
by JazzNU
by ponchi101 A very sensible explanation. Since I am not in any SM, I really do not know how things are laid out. So sure, imagine having your add next to a PRIDE BOYS public statement.
by ti-amie
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 2:56 pm
A very sensible explanation. Since I am not in any SM, I really do not know how things are laid out. So sure, imagine having your add next to a PRIDE BOYS public statement.
Yes, and for those who aren't on Twitter, they absolutely display ads that have no relation to the search you have done or the account you are viewing. I will regularly see like Red Bull ads or something after doing a search for like House Hunters. So it's not just possible, but probable that someone could screenshot some heinous tweet and have that Cheerios box sitting right above or below it.
by MJ2004 I use Adblock Plus on both computer and phone and it blocks ads on Twitter. Doesn't block promoted posts, sadly.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie It's time for me to take a nap.
This is really baby with the bathwater stuff.
by JazzNU
MJ2004 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 7:14 pm
I use Adblock Plus on both computer and phone and it blocks ads on Twitter. Doesn't block promoted posts, sadly.
I use uBlock Origin and it does the same. Not sure there's a way to block promoted posts, which have increased a lot in the last year. I assume it's part of the longtime criticism of Twitter not knowing how to monetize well.
by dryrunguy I don't know about anyone else, but I'm shocked by the amount of soft core porn showing up on my Twitter feed. What shows up on my Twitter feed should be driven by who I follow and my engagement habits on Twitter. I have given Twitter zero indication that such content interests me. Especially since I block every account peddling such stuff. It started yesterday and is even more saturated in my Twitter feed today. Super annoying.
by ponchi101 I use the perfect Ad-block and content block for my Twitter feed.
Ti-amie.
If she doesn't post it, I don't see it. And I do not want to see it.
by ti-amie This may be why he's trying to rehire people.
Twitter sued in class action lawsuit over mass layoffs without proper legal notice
Sarah Perez, Ivan Mehta/ 9:50 AM EDT•November 4, 2022
Twitter is being sued for not giving employees advance notice of a mass layoff that began in earnest early Friday. The lawsuit alleges that Twitter violated worker protection laws, including the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act as well as the California WARN Act, both of which require 60 days of advance notice.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday as news spread that the company — now under the ownership and direction of Elon Musk — would begin mass layoffs early Friday in an effort to reduce costs by eliminating 3,700 jobs, or 50% of its total workforce.
Bloomberg first reported the news of the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California.
The complaint alleges that Twitter began its layoffs November 1, when it terminated the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Emmanuel Cornet, without providing the proper written notice in violation of U.S. and California law. Additional plaintiffs, Justine De Caires, Jessica Pan, and Grae Kindel said they were terminated November 3 by being locked out of their accounts. The lawsuit added that California’s Employment Development Department had not received a notice related to the mass layoffs that began Friday.
The lawsuit reminds the court that Musk has previously laid off employees without notice. Tesla, where Musk is CEO and its largest shareholder, was sued by former employees after a mass layoff in June 2022. In that case, Musk directed Tesla executives to pause all hiring and to prepare for job cuts. Employees were never given advance warning and hundreds were laid off a couple of weeks later.
Lawyers representing two Tesla workers initially filed an emergency injunction asking a judge to prohibit the EV maker from forcing workers to sign releases in exchange for less severance than federal law provides.
A lawsuit was later filed on behalf of those same employees alleging that the company did not provide the 60 days of advance notice required by federal law during a recent round of layoffs. A federal judge later ruled that Tesla must inform workers of the proposed class action lawsuit, as the termination agreements they had signed may have been misleading and caused them to waive their rights under federal law. Musk had dismissed that lawsuit as “trivial” when commenting on the lawsuit at the Qatar Economic Forum organized by Bloomberg.
In the new complaint against Twitter, the plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that Twitter has violated the federal and California WARN Acts and certify the case as a class action suit. Similar to the Tesla layoff lawsuit, lawyers are also asking the court to prohibit Twitter from forcing laid-off employees to sign documents that would release their claims without informing them of this lawsuit. The lawsuit is seeking a range of relief, including compensatory damages (including wages owed), as well as declaratory relief, pre- and post-judgment interest, plus other attorneys’ fees and costs.
Under Twitter’s takeover deal terms, Musk had agreed to keep employee compensation and benefits the same. That means the laid-off employees should receive 60 days of salary and the cash value of the stock they were to receive within three months of their last date at the company, per law.
“Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has made clear that he believes complying with federal labor laws is ‘trivial.’ We have filed this federal complaint to ensure that Twitter should be held accountable to our laws and to prevent Twitter employees from unknowingly signing away their rights,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, said in an email sent to TechCrunch.
“Employees should be very careful about signing anything they are offered. We are prepared to file claims on behalf of Twitter employees who get laid off without proper notice or severance. We are also investigating whether Twitter has attempted to avoid its obligations to pay stock options it owes to employees by laying them off now,” she added.
Twitter hasn’t responded to requests for comment, likely because its communications staff has been included in the layoffs.
The company’s layoff process has been chaotic and conducted in a cold fashion. Instead of being informed personally, Twitter employees were told they would receive an email with an update about their employment status by Friday 9 AM PT. If they still had a job, the email would come to their work inbox. If not, they’d receive a personal email as access to internal systems was cut off.
A number of Twitter employees around the world have already posted tweets indicating they have been laid off and are sharing sympathies with their fellow “tweeps.” Twitter also closed its offices temporarily as the layoffs were underway by disabling badge access.
The transition has been one of confusion for Twitter staff. It’s been reported that Twitter’s new owner hadn’t officially communicated with employees following the deal’s closure on October 27, leading staff to learn of events by following Musk’s tweets, through private chats, on workplace gossip site Blind and by reading news media reports. Immediately after the takeover, Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde.
Other top executives, like Chief Consumer Officer Sarah Personette and Chief of People and Diversity Dalana Brand, handed in their resignations the following day. General manager for core technologies Nick Caldwell, Chief Marketing Officer Leslie Berland, Twitter’s head of Product Jay Sullivan and its vice president of global sales, Jean-Philippe Maheu, have also left.
The company canceled its upcoming developer conference, Chirp, and it appears that Twitter’s head of its developer platform, Amir Shevat, is also out, as he tweeted he’s “better out than in” and thanked the developer community for the amazing journey they had.
In addition to reducing the number of employees, Musk has also been overhauling Twitter’s product at a rapid pace.
Earlier this week, he announced his intention to enact a new version of the Twitter Blue paid subscription, which will cost $8 per month and offer users the verification check mark, fewer ads and the ability to post longer videos. According to a report by The Platformer, Twitter is also planning to shut down its long-form writing product Notes and newsletter product Revue, which was acquired in 2021. Tweets indicate that staff that worked on Twitter Communities were also laid off, suggesting that product may also be shut down.
The new legal complaint is embedded below.
Twitter class action lawsuit over mass layoffs by TechCrunch on Scribd
by ponchi101 Well, that's dumb. FINANCIALLY speaking. Tesla is not related to TWT, and even if they are at times doing things that are not financially sound (where are the pick up truck and the roadster?), they have a cult following and produce a solid product, which has little competition.
Tesla is not going to go bankrupt.
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 12:01 am
Well, that's dumb. FINANCIALLY speaking. Tesla is not related to TWT, and even if they are at times doing things that are not financially sound (where are the pick up truck and the roadster?), they have a cult following and produce a solid product, which has little competition.
Tesla is not going to go bankrupt.
Yes it is related. He put up Tesla stock as collateral to buy Twitter. If he can't repay, his control of Tesla is in doubt. Tesla can absolutely be in jeopardy if Twitter fails.
And Elon is behaving very erratically. Investors like stability. And his image has propped up that stock significantly. Those investors know exactly what they are doing.
Tesla definitely has a cult following. But at least in the US, I know exactly who makes up most of that cult.
by Owendonovan If they want to burn Musk, they will.
by Suliso Tesla is on a solid path to be a top 5 car making company (by volume not stock price). These stock fluctuations are most likely temporary.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by JazzNU I'm interested in seeing if the Tesla car owners, who are generally extremely well off and haven't pressed for resolutions on matters that clearly indicate fraud because of their love of the brand, finally file larger class action suits against the company about the promised FSD.
by ti-amie
JazzNU wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 6:32 pm
I'm interested in seeing if the Tesla car owners, who are generally extremely well off and haven't pressed for resolutions on matters that clearly indicate fraud because of their love of the brand, finally file larger class action suits against the company about the promised FSD.
What is FSD?
The Cult of E1on seems to be on shaky ground right now.
JazzNU wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 6:32 pm
I'm interested in seeing if the Tesla car owners, who are generally extremely well off and haven't pressed for resolutions on matters that clearly indicate fraud because of their love of the brand, finally file larger class action suits against the company about the promised FSD.
What is FSD?
The Cult of E1on seems to be on shaky ground right now.
Full Self Drive.
They won't sue because, you know, their Tesla's are the greatest, superest, magnificentest, incredibilest machine ever invented in the entire history of the universe.
Serious here. They are good cars, and the design and lines are minimalistically pretty. Right now, I would buy a Lucid before a Tesla, but that one is even more expensive. But, Tesla's do have a reputation for some manufacturing issues: loose hinges, missing bolts, minor things. Still, they are solid, if you are bent on an EV.
JazzNU wrote: ↑Tue Nov 08, 2022 6:32 pm
I'm interested in seeing if the Tesla car owners, who are generally extremely well off and haven't pressed for resolutions on matters that clearly indicate fraud because of their love of the brand, finally file larger class action suits against the company about the promised FSD.
What is FSD?
The Cult of E1on seems to be on shaky ground right now.
Full Self Driving. From looking at Tesla Reddit awhile ago, it was clear that many owners dropped thousands on it, early ones like $2-5k, but more recent ones spent $10-12k on that tech when they bought their cars and it wasn't delivered as a full feature and the progress, timeline, and parameters of use were greatly overstated at the time of sale. That's a scam.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 To me, the real question is not Why has Bitcoin (example) fallen down to $18k? The question is Why is it STILL at $18k? What more evidence do people need, to see/understand this was a Ponzi?
The people I feel more sorry for are the citizens of El Salvador. They had no say, other than the election, on having their national currency changed to this ether is currency.
by ti-amie NYC Mayor Adams was going to try something similar but it seems he was talked down from that ledge...
by JazzNU Miami's mayor went heavy into crypto. Last time I heard, it was a mess, and that's before this more epic downward spiral for crypto.
by ponchi101 By now it is entering the territory where the sharks short it into oblivion. Together with all the phony companies that were telling you what a great investment it was (looking at you, Damon, Brady and Bunchen...)
by ti-amieElon Musk sells at least $3.95 billion worth of Tesla shares after Twitter deal
PUBLISHED TUE, NOV 8 20228:28 PM ESTUPDATED TUE, NOV 8 20229:53 PM EST
thumbnail
Lora Kolodny
@LORAKOLODNY
KEY POINTS
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold additional shares of his electric car company after closing a $44 billion purchase of Twitter.
Musk closed the deal on Oct. 28, with equity and debt financing from a wide range of friends and institutions.
Before he sold shares today, Elon Musk owned about 25% of Tesla between stock and options.
Elon Musk has sold at least another $3.95 billion worth of shares in his electric car company Tesla
after closing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission published Tuesday, Musk sold 19.5 million more shares of Tesla.
Musk sold almost $22 billion worth of Tesla shares in 2021, a year when the stock jumped over 50%. This year, he sold over $8 billion worth of stock in April and roughly $7 billion worth in August.
In addition to pouring billions of his own capital into taking Twitter private, the Tesla CEO relied on partners, including equity investors Binance, Ron Baron’s BAMCO, Andreessen Horowitz, Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, to finance the deal, or to roll their existing shares into his holding company for Twitter.
As NBC News previously reported, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) has called for an investigation into the national security implications of Saudi Arabia’s stake in Twitter following Musk’s take-private deal.
On Aug. 9, Musk told fans he was done selling Tesla shares to fund a possible Twitter acquisition. He wrote, in a tweet, “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.”
At the time, Musk was still battling the social media company in court to try to get out of the deal — which he proposed and agreed to in April.
Since closing the purchase, Musk has pulled dozens of Tesla engineers to Twitter to assist him with code review and other work.
Compared to the Nasdaq Composite which has declined about 33% year to date, Tesla shares are off 46%, wiping out a big chunk of Musk’s fortune. However, he’s still the world’s richest person with a net worth of close to $200 billion, according to Forbes.
At a conference last week, Musk told hedge fund manager Ron Baron that his “workload went up from about, I don’t know, 78 hours a week to probably 120.”
Musk, who’s also CEO of SpaceX, said on stage that “once Twitter is set on the right path, I think it is a much easier thing to manage” than his other companies. Musk hasn’t said who will be the new CEO of Twitter, but he’s suggested that his role as “Chief Twit” and sole director at the company is only temporary.
by ti-amie I think it's safe to say that if this really happens all of the communities that exist on Twitter - from Tennis Twitter to NBA Twitter to Cricket Twitter to Football/Soccer Twitter to Figure Skating Twitter and the various ethnic twitters as well as nature and cute pets twitter will be gone. So will Political and business Twitter.
by ponchi101 Keeping the differences: this is starting to look, financially and economically, as disastrous as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been politically and militarily.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by MJ2004 I set up an account on Mastodon a few days ago. Not much happening there right now (or likely ever), but still I'm ready to go. More likely people I follow will go Instagram and less so to Tiktok (where I won't follow them).
by ti-amie
MJ2004 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 09, 2022 10:29 pm
I set up an account on Mastodon a few days ago. Not much happening there right now (or likely ever), but still I'm ready to go. More likely people I follow will go Instagram and less so to Tiktok (where I won't follow them).
I finally set up an account on Mastodon too. I think it's "dull" because of the thing with "silos". I'm in one for the San Francisco Bay Area because there are none for the NYC area, and last I checked there are still none for sports of any kind. They were not ready for the large influx of people they've experienced. I wonder if they'll change how they present their site.
I reactivated my Tumblr and was immediately reminded about why I rarely (never) used the site. I searched for the tag "tennis" and a naked woman straddling a tennis net was among the possibilities that they sent to me.
I finally set up an account on Mastodon too. I think it's "dull" because of the thing with "silos". I'm in one for the San Francisco Bay Area because there are none for the NYC area, and last I checked there are still none for sports of any kind. They were not ready for the large influx of people they've experienced. I wonder if they'll change how they present their site.
I reactivated my Tumblr and was immediately reminded about why I rarely (never) used the site. I searched for the tag "tennis" and a naked woman straddling a tennis net was among the possibilities that they sent to me.
Link, please....
(No, I would have to ban both of us, which is half terrible )
by Suliso Sadly there are no very good alternatives. By the way how is Mastodon making money?
by ponchi101 The alternative is for this sort of media to disappear.
And that is NOT a bad alternative. The belief that you can say anything meaningful in a tweet is beyond my comprehension.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 10, 2022 3:04 pm
The alternative is for this sort of media to disappear.
And that is NOT a bad alternative. The belief that you can say anything meaningful in a tweet is beyond my comprehension.
I think you're not well informed here. There are ways to write much longer than the allowed character count. Either by making a thread (I've seen as much as 30 connected tweets) or using a picture of a text.
Alternative is that you'll have to listen to what standard media writes with no way of getting alternative views or news from the ground when something important happens. It used to be like that, but doesn't mean we need to go back.
by ponchi101 Which is one thing I don't understand. If you need to write a "thread", the subject is obviously not meant to be in a tweet. You need a larger medium.
Therefore, open a blog, or have syndication in a more thorough medium.
About alternative view. While the original idea was sound, what that has degenerated is into alternative "misinformation". ANYBODY can post, share and spread any kind of falsehoods; I see it constantly with my loony friend N and his barrage of misinformation regarding C19. The speed at which a tweet can spread means that no editing or content control can be done, and therefore, the malicious or simply uninformed people can spread lies at a considerable speed. With traditional media, at least theoretically we have an editor that, if ethical, can stop the publication of something patently false.
With TWT, that is gone. Something pops in your mind, you post, and it spreads. Be it true or false.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 10, 2022 3:34 pm
Which is one thing I don't understand. If you need to write a "thread", the subject is obviously not meant to be in a tweet. You need a larger medium.
Therefore, open a blog, or have syndication in a more thorough medium.
Yes, but unless you can publish in NYT or similar good luck reaching an audience as large as you might in TW.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 10, 2022 3:34 pm About alternative view. While the original idea was sound, what that has degenerated is into alternative "misinformation". ANYBODY can post, share and spread any kind of falsehoods; I see it constantly with my loony friend N and his barrage of misinformation regarding C19. The speed at which a tweet can spread means that no editing or content control can be done, and therefore, the malicious or simply uninformed people can spread lies at a considerable speed. With traditional media, at least theoretically we have an editor that, if ethical, can stop the publication of something patently false.
With TWT, that is gone. Something pops in your mind, you post, and it spreads. Be it true or false.
Certainly lots of garbage on TW. Really difficult to avoid... But there is also a lot of expertise. For example, it has been a great source for finding out what's going on in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Also it helps if you avoid discussing politics there. If you do you're just inviting a (expletive)...
by JazzNU If memory serves people here aren't the biggest fans of Reddit and therefore don't use it, but Reddit is the alternative to Twitter that accomplishes similar things if something happens to Twitter or people no longer want to be on there. There are other technical alternatives, but most are either going to wind up being too new or too complicated for new and casual users.
This is in a US context. Maybe @suliso can weigh in on how things are in Switzerland and Latvia. But for the US, Reddit is the Twitter alternative and already a very large and thriving social media network that doesn't need to worry about how to handle a massive influx of users.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie Advertisers will love this!
by JazzNU
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
That Whitney gif is the best though.
by ti-amie I am sick and tired of this person but just when I'm doing other stuff someone sent me this.
My daughter said from the beginning that this was his end game.
by MJ2004 I agree. He's either a moron or deliberately trying to run the company out of business. Both are not impossible.
I definitely don't think he's the genius he's made out to be, but the latter would be my bet here.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Nov 10, 2022 9:47 pm
I am sick and tired of this person but just when I'm doing other stuff someone sent me this.
Ben (and his mental health) are doing the Lord's work. The beat he works on would break a lesser man in a day. I can't believe he is doing Elon stuff now in addition surveilling QAnon and the far right news networks.
by JazzNU Goodness gracious. Saw this in the replies of the Eli Lilly post from @Ti above and then searched and found the second one.
by ti-amie
This is re the bankruptcy idea he floated.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Ok. It is madness.
But you have to admit: by now, it is a very long article in The Onion. And when you get through the lunacy, it is starting to be hilarious:
"Richest man in Earth flushed $44 billion down the drain. Reasons why he plans to die in Mars finally unveiled".
by ti-amie
by dryrunguy I'll just drop this here.
by ponchi101
Wait. Yes, do it.
by ti-amie There is non E!on business news...
P1/2
by ti-amie P2/L
More:
by ti-amie Our fearless leader was the first person I remember calling this whole thing a Ponzi scheme.
by ti-amie
May as well start here and believe me there is a lot more.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
My nomination for Tweet of the Day
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by MJ2004
Lol
by MJ2004
Doing a stellar job of exemplifying the absurdity of the situation.
Absolutely hysterical, in view that Buffet has been extremely vocal that crypto holds no value and is a scheme.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 And the Miami Heat naively announce that they have cancelled their agreement with FTX for the naming rights of their arena.
Nope. When the company disappears and can no longer pay you, THEY cancelled the deal.
Wonder how the Lakers/Clippers are feeling about that Crypto.com deal.
by ti-amie More on FTX which will leave you shaking your head.
Investors Who Put $2 Billion Into FTX Face Scrutiny, Too
Venture capital firms and investment funds showered the failed crypto exchange and its founder with money. There were few strings attached.
Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder, once told interested investors to “support him and observe.” Credit...Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times
By Erin Griffith and David Yaffe-Bellany
Erin Griffith reports on start-ups and Silicon Valley, and David Yaffe-Bellany reports on crypto.
Nov. 11, 2022
Sam Bankman-Fried’s pitch to investors was not much of a pitch: It was a take-it-or-leave-it offer.
In meetings to raise money for his cryptocurrency exchange FTX over the last year, the entrepreneur left little room for negotiation, two investors said. FTX was his company, Mr. Bankman-Fried told them, and he planned to run it with little oversight. Interested investors should “support him and observe,” one investor who heard the pitch said.
They responded by giving him $500 million early this year, valuing the privately held FTX at $32 billion.
This week, Mr. Bankman-Fried met with investors again — but with a different tone. FTX had collapsed overnight, putting billions of dollars in customer funds in jeopardy, setting off a slew of government investigations and thrusting the crypto markets into chaos. He was sorry, he said. He had messed up. Without a bailout, FTX could fail.
It was a humbling fall for Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, who had cultivated a reputation as an iconoclastic wunderkind who could multitask effortlessly and slept on a beanbag at the office. Yet more than 80 investors went along with his vision, pouring nearly $2 billion into FTX in just two years.
Now investors are under scrutiny, too, for enabling Mr. Bankman-Fried with so little oversight. It was the most dramatic example in recent history of what happens when so-called visionary founders are given lots of money with few strings attached.
The events showed that even the top investors — whose money in FTX has vaporized — can wildly miss the mark, said Kevin Werbach, a professor of business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“You can look like a genius making successful big bets,” he said, “but sooner or later you’ll crash spectacularly if you weren’t doing real diligence.”
On Friday, FTX, facing a cash shortfall of $8 billion and scrambling to drum up money, filed for bankruptcy. Mr. Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive. The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are examining whether FTX improperly used customer funds to prop up a separate trading firm, Alameda Research, which Mr. Bankman-Fried also founded.
FTX’s list of investors spans powerful and well-known investment firms: NEA, IVP, Iconiq Capital, Third Point Ventures, Tiger Global, Altimeter Capital Management, Lux Capital, Mayfield, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Ribbit Capital, Temasek Holdings, BlackRock and Thoma Bravo.
Some of FTX’s investors declined to comment or did not respond to requests.
Four FTX investors, who declined to be identified, said they were shocked by the company’s sudden collapse. They said they had properly researched the company’s financials, which showed a healthy, growing business that provided an easy-to-use platform for people to buy, sell and store crypto. And they were completely in the dark about FTX’s possible self-dealing with Alameda, they said.
Investing in FTX gave them a piece of the hottest start-up in an emerging sector that promised to be as big as smartphone apps or the internet itself. Many investors had trumpeted their support of the deal. Sequoia even published a glowing profile of Mr. Bankman-Fried to its website.
Now the deal represents a major black eye.
Paradigm, a crypto-focused venture fund that put $278 million into FTX, told its own backers in a letter on Wednesday that the investment was likely worthless. Sequoia said in a statement that it valued its $213 million investment in FTX at $0. The venture capital arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which put $95 million into FTX, said in a statement, “Not all of the investments in this early-stage asset class perform to expectations.”
FTX’s lack of oversight also left investors out of the loop about what happened this week as Mr. Bankman-Fried tried to find a last-minute bailout.
“The full nature and extent of this risk is not known at this time,” Sequoia wrote. FTX’s liquidity shortfall “will take many months to fully understand,” Paradigm said.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, had never made it a secret that he thumbed his nose at tradition.
In an interview with The New York Times in April, Ramnik Arora, one of FTX’s top executives, described a video meeting last year between Mr. Bankman-Fried and partners at a top venture firm. In the meeting, Mr. Bankman-Fried delivered a well-received presentation while simultaneously playing a video game.
“The entire partner meeting, he was playing League of Legends at the same time,” Mr. Arora said.
Before another investor meeting, Mr. Arora said, the investors asked Mr. Bankman-Fried to put together a slide deck. The entrepreneur threw the presentation together in about a couple of hours.
“There’s no formatting anywhere, fonts are everywhere,” Mr. Arora said. “You can just feel discomfort — both sides — because the investors are like, ‘How the hell are we being shown a deck that clearly no one spent any time on?’”
Still, investors weren’t offended. For years, they had been loosening deal-making practices that gave them control over a company and protected their investments. It was a way to get into the best deals as money from all over the world flooded into high-growth start-ups. Last year’s overlapping investment manias in cryptocurrencies, equities and start-up valuations intensified the trend.
Some of FTX’s investors viewed the company as a way to dip a toe in cryptocurrency investing without buying volatile tokens. Others saw FTX as a safer bet than Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges, since FTX had pushed to establish a regulatory regime in Washington while Binance has come under fire for its secrecy and for skirting financial regulations around the world.
Above all, the investors emphasized that venture capital is designed to take big risks that often fail.
But even by 2021’s frothy standards, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s latitude from investors was extreme. Despite raising $2 billion, he remained the majority owner of the company. No investors joined FTX’s board of directors, which was made up of Mr. Bankman-Fried, an FTX employee and a lawyer. (An advisory board of investors had no functional control over the company.) The company did not tell investors the nature of its business with Alameda Research, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s separate crypto trading operation.
Mr. Bankman-Fried was so averse to outside input that investors who dared suggest that a more experienced executive run the company were likely to be shut out of future rounds of funding, one investor said.
In an April interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Bankman-Fried accused venture capital investors of doing deals based on a fear of missing out, rather than financial models. “Like all the models are made up, right?” he said.
In return, investors showered Mr. Bankman-Fried with fawning praise. Orlando Bravo, whose firm, Thoma Bravo, invested $150 million into FTX, said at a conference in September that, despite his misgivings about the overall crypto industry, he believed Mr. Bankman-Fried was “one of the best entrepreneurs” he had met.
The Sequoia profile explained that Mr. Bankman-Fried “lives his life by a calculus of altruistic impact.” During a video call with the FTX founder, the profile said, Sequoia’s partners commented excitedly to one another in the chat. “I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” one partner wrote.
This week, Sequoia replaced the article with an update. “A liquidity crunch has created solvency risk for FTX and its future is uncertain,” it said.
At the end of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s call with investors this week, several accused him of hiding details of FTX’s dealings with Alameda Research and asked for more information, a person on the call said. He sidestepped the questions and ended the conversation.
by ti-amie They'll be making a movie about this mess in two years.
by ponchi101 No. They will make a SERIES, because BTCN is below $17K, and people are still clinging to this mirage.
It will take a bit longer; but there is something that needs to be done. ALL the governments in the world must make it clear that these people (the crytpo promoters) MUST not be bailed out.
by ti-amieEurope Braces for Recession as Economies Falter
Britain’s economic output fell in the third quarter and European Union officials forecast weakening growth for countries across the continent.
Britain saw its highest annual rate of inflation in 40 years in September, and prices are expected to rise even more before peaking.Credit...Sam Bush for The New York Times
By Patricia Cohen and Melissa Eddy
Patricia Cohen reported from London and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.
Nov. 11, 2022
The ride down may be shallow or steep, but either way, the European Union and Britain could be starting to slide into recession.
The British economy shrank 0.2 percent over July, August and September compared with the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics reported on Friday. It was a decline that is expected to continue and spread to the continent by the end of the year.
Many countries are likely to enter a recession in the last three months of 2022, Paolo Gentiloni, the European Union’s commissioner for the economy, said on Friday. “The E.U. economy is at a turning point,” he said. “Recent survey data points to a contraction for the winter.”
But while central bankers in Britain have warned of a “prolonged” recession lasting up to two years, the European Union predicted that the 27 member-bloc would face a “short-lived and not excessively deep” one.
Indeed, Mr. Gentiloni said he expected the union to end 2022 with better-than-expected 3.3 percent growth, although that total is likely to significantly weaken next year, to just 0.3 percent.
The divergent outlooks illustrate how the economic fallout from the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is having an uneven impact on the region’s smorgasbord of countries.
Britain and the Europe Union are suffering from the twin plagues of rising inflation and slowing or declining growth. The war and retaliatory sanctions against Russia, one of the world’s biggest energy and grain producers, have caused global fuel, food and fertilizer prices to soar. Supply chain disruptions rooted in the pandemic and continuing Covid-19 lockdowns in China — most recently in the manufacturing hub of Guangzhou — have added to the pile of economic problems, as have climate-related disasters.
In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, the annual inflation rate, according to one measure, reached 10.4 percent in October. In Britain, inflation hit 10.1 percent in September, the highest level in 40 years, and is expected to rise even more before peaking. Call-in radio talk shows on the BBC are dominated by people who are anxious about being able to afford to heat and light their homes.
“There is a tough road ahead,” Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor of the Exchequer, declared on Friday, “one which will require extremely difficult decision to restore confidence and economic stability.”
The national statistics office’s preliminary estimates showed that the slowdown in Britain was broad — including the production and services sectors — and meant that the country’s gross domestic product, or total output, remained below its prepandemic level. The drop-off was particularly sharp in September, down 0.6 percent from the previous month, although that number was affected by the death of Queen Elizabeth II, which prompted widespread, unplanned business closures.
The quarterly contraction was less than expected — economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a 0.5 percent decline — and after the announcement, 10-year British government bond yields briefly dropped before rising somewhat to 3.33 percent.
A recession is traditionally defined as several months of a significant decline in economic activity.
The Bank of England has emphasized its determination to halt inflation’s upward march by raising interest rates even at the risk of throwing the economy into a recession, although it has signaled that it is unlikely to raise rates as high as traders had expected. Last week, the bank again lifted its key rate, and predicted that the British economy would contract in the second half of this year and continue to shrink until the middle of 2024.
Higher interest rates, which make borrowing money for mortgages and investments more expensive, curb spending by both businesses and consumers and can increase unemployment.
Yet Britain’s economy is also suffering from a series of self-inflicted wounds by the governing Conservative Party. A widely criticized economic plan that Liz Truss, the prime minister at the time, proposed in September, and that included steep, unfunded tax cuts and big spending increases to help households afford rising energy bills, sent financial markets into a tizzy.
The political and economic instability that ensued resulted in a stunning policy reversal and Ms. Truss’s resignation. Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister, and Mr. Hunt are scheduled to announce their economic game plan next week, and it is expected to include tax increases, spending cuts and debt reduction.
There is also wide agreement among economists and analysts that Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016 was a major and long-lasting blow to its economy.
Very few countries in the European Union are expected to fall into the negative growth range next year, but the outlook for Germany, which has been hit hard by the loss of Russian pipeline gas, is grim. The European Union estimates that its economy will shrink 0.6 percent in 2023.
Across Europe, inflation is expected to persist at higher levels than previously forecast. A strong labor market remains what Mr. Gentiloni called “a bright spot.”
The picture is darker in Britain, where long-term illnesses are keeping roughly 2.5 million people out of the work force, leaving employment below what it was before the pandemic.
Across London, Christmas lights are going up, but throughout the country fewer consumers visited shopping centers and main streets last week than in the previous week, the statistics office reported. Consumer confidence is hovering near record lows, while businesses are reporting a decline in orders. The number of people looking to buy a house dropped last month as mortgage rates rose.
“The U.K. economy has slipped to the back of the G7 pack again,” Pantheon wrote in its daily newsletter, referring to a group of some of the world’s biggest advanced economies.
your #1 source for absurdist true crime
@davidgerard
ya know, most zillionaires like to keep it on the down low, they don't seek out publicity. any time you hear about these guys, it's marketing. they want you to think they're Steve Jobs. for some reason they keep turning out to be Elizabeth Holmes. I wonder why that is.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amieFounder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX denies he has fled to South America
The crypto exchange has become mired in further controversy after it said it had detected unauthorised transactions and analysts flagged that millions of dollars of assets had been moved from the platform in "suspicious circumstances".
Saturday 12 November 2022 18:39, UK
The former chief executive of one of the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchanges has denied he fled to South America after firm filed for bankruptcy.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was asked by Reuters about Twitter speculation he had flown to Argentina and responded in a text message: "Nope."
The 30-year-old, who has been removed as chief executive, told Reuters he was in the Bahamas, where he lives.
Meanwhile the crypto exchange has become mired in further controversy after it said it had detected unauthorised transactions and analysts flagged that millions of dollars of assets had been moved from the platform in "suspicious circumstances".
FTX filed for bankruptcy on Friday after its bigger rival Binance walked away from a proposed acquisition.
At least $1bn (£845m) worth of customer funds have vanished from the platform, Reuters reported, quoting sources.
The news agency said Mr Bankman-Fried had transferred $10bn (£8.4bn) of customer funds to his trading company, Alameda Research.
Further problems emerged when FTX's US general counsel Ryne Miller tweeted to say the firm's digital assets were being moved into so-called cold storage "to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorised transactions".
Cold storage refers to crypto wallets which are not connected to the internet to guard against hackers.
Earlier Mr Miller tweeted to say he was "investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of FTX balances across exchanges."
Blockchain analytics firm Nansen said it saw $659m (£557m) in outflows from FTX International and FTX US in the last 24 hours.
A separate analytics firm, Elliptic, said around $473m (£400m) worth of cryptoassets were "moved out of FTX wallets in suspicious circumstances early this morning", but it could not confirm the tokens had been stolen.
The crisis surrounding the exchange has raised further questions about the regulation of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
Casey Newton
@CaseyNewton
Update: company sources tell me that yesterday Twitter eliminated ~4,400 of its ~5,500 contract employees, with cuts expected to have significant impact to content moderation and the core infrastructure services that keep the site up and running.
People inside are stunned.
by ti-amie
by JazzNU A large advertising company already advised their companies to hold all Twitter spending. Was that not posted before? I'll see if I can find it.
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 12, 2022 3:42 pm
And the Miami Heat naively announce that they have cancelled their agreement with FTX for the naming rights of their arena.
Nope. When the company disappears and can no longer pay you, THEY cancelled the deal.
Wonder how the Lakers/Clippers are feeling about that Crypto.com deal.
I think they feel fine just as the Heat likely do. They basically took the money and ran like any crypto investor should've done. The deals were paid in actual money, not crypto and they collected more upfront than what the actual yearly rate is. Now, LA if things turn, will have options for the Staples Center sponsor. Miami, not so much at anything close to the same amount. Unless something has changed since they signed the FTX deal just a year or two ago, their next best naming rights offer was from BangBros. Seriously.
by ti-amie
On Slate Money Felix Salmon made it clear that if you participated in one of the US based exchanges you're probably getting some kind of money returned due to US laws. If you were invested or whatever it is you do with crypto in one of the many off shore what evers you're S.O.L.
by ti-amie
by JazzNU
JazzNU wrote: ↑Mon Nov 14, 2022 8:24 pm
A large advertising company already advised their companies to hold all Twitter spending. Was that not posted before? I'll see if I can find it.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie This just keeps getting worse.
by ti-amie From Legal Twitter:
by ti-amie He seems to think this is a PR problem he can talk his way out of. It was all a game to him.
by ponchi101 The criminals people that led us to the 2007 debacle walked away unpunished. Why would he think he will be treated differently?
Plus: any ENRON top executives ever did any time? I ask that seriously. I don't know.
by skatingfan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 15, 2022 12:08 am
The criminals people that led us to the 2007 debacle walked away unpunished. Why would he think he will be treated differently?
Plus: any ENRON top executives ever did any time? I ask that seriously. I don't know.
Jeffrey Skilling did 12 years, and Ken Lay would have served time, but died of a heart attack after being convicted, and before being sentenced.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 11, 2022 10:58 pm
Absolutely hysterical, in view that Buffet has been extremely vocal that crypto holds no value and is a scheme.
by ti-amie Seeing that video and knowing that the "old heads" at Black Rock got taken leaves me speechless.
by ponchi101 Buffet said it from the beginning.
But he was hardly the only one; the lack of an underlying value is the key issue to know this is a scam. Which leads me to a weird thing.
The Gov of Vennieland has issued a crypto. It is called the PETRO. But, surprisingly, it is backed by the countries oil reserves, so it has some underlying value. Also, as oil is quoted in dollars, there is a second underlying value to that crypto.
So, it is one crypto that could be of value, because something props it. Then again, it is managed by the Vennie govt, so all potential value is wiped out by the corruption and mismanagement that comes with that.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 This does not end there. FTX and CRYPTO are the largest traders but, by definition, they traded FOR somebody. My local H&R branch in Colorado was peddling crypto to investors there, saying that "it fluctuates between 32k and 44k, so you can always buy low and sell high". I was seriously considering dropping them as tax-filers.
I wonder what they are telling those clients that BOUGHT BTC at 32K, and it now stands at 18k. Almost a 40% drop.
So, repeat that story in many places. This FTX fiasco is far from over.
by ti-amie
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by JazzNU Hilarious how they're citing violation of regulatory laws just about all crypto investors claimed to want no part of. FOH
by ti-amie This person is a member of Tennis Twitter who has been vocal about politics. I hope they don't get banned.
by ti-amie
For example
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by ti-amie
Lisa Bloom
@LisaBloom
·
11h
Finally, let’s just talk about how cruel it is to force everyone to opt in to these ridiculous terms within 24 hours or be fired.
Workers depend on their jobs. Their livelihood is not a game to be toyed with by a billionaire bully.
#TwitterLayoffs
by skatingfan An explanation of the FTX scandal.
by ponchi101 Elon certainly misread the atmosphere in this "quiet quitting" era.
ONLY EXCEPTIONAL work will be accepted. Also, he is not understanding basic statistics. If ONLY EXCEPTIONAL work is accepted, then that becomes the average, and there is a new exceptional.
What do I know.
by ti-amie
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Casablanca shocked.
by ti-amie
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:27 pm
Elon certainly misread the atmosphere in this "quiet quitting" era.
ONLY EXCEPTIONAL work will be accepted. Also, he is not understanding basic statistics. If ONLY EXCEPTIONAL work is accepted, then that becomes the average, and there is a new exceptional.
What do I know.
He's also woefully ignorant of employment law, especially employment laws in CA. His approach is going to literally cost Twitter a billion, and given they are not flush with cash to anyone's knowledge, maybe billions since delays only compound the issue. It's astounding to be this version of inept at that aspect of running things when this isn't his first company in the state.
by ti-amie And now for today's episode of As The Muskox Roams
Forget about yesterday when the directive was y'all come back to the office by sundown or else. There's a new directive.
by ti-amie A different report
by ti-amie
by ti-amie There are some great parody accounts giving people a bit of laughter amid the widespread feeling that because Twitter has no more employees the site could go down tonight.
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by ponchi101 I suppose that if twitter disappears, it will be impossible for people to get organized, right?
Like, how on earth people could set up a, let's say, BULLETIN BOARD running on FREE SOFTWARE, and accessible to ONLY THE PEOPE YOU WANT while maintaining better control of content and spam?
I mean, basically impossible, right? It would take years for that to be set up...
by ti-amie
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by ti-amie I mean when Dan Rather is piling on...
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by ti-amie
by JazzNU Thanks for the rundown of what the latest Twitter debacle is @Ti.
by ti-amie The doom scrolling is really out of control right now. Everyone saying goodbyes, asking for their Twitter Archive(s) and posting links to wherever they've migrated.
It's taken three weeks for one ego maniac to take a site that whether you like it or not allowed people to keep up with breaking news on real time, post pictures of kittens and puppies, birds and other fauna and flowers and reduced it almost to ashes. Shame.
by JazzNU For sure Jack Dorsey is building something that will serve as a Twitter alternative and I'd think that's the one that is going to be one that will pick up users quickly once it officially launches. It's called Bluesky.
I was thinking there was likely language in the contract that would delay the alternative from launching, but it looks like it was a pretty short time period because they are already in Beta. I'm sure he had no idea that the replacement would be wanted so quickly, so impressive that he's already at this stage.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie And of course the shenanigans at the Bird App continued today.
by ti-amie The msm report on the same topic. The NYT is still considered the paper of record.
Elon Musk’s Twitter Teeters on the Edge After Another 1,200 Leave
Mr. Musk sent emails on Friday asking to learn about Twitter’s underlying technology as key infrastructure teams have been decimated.
By Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac and Kellen Browning
Nov. 18, 2022
Updated 3:09 p.m. ET
Elon Musk sent a flurry of emails to Twitter employees on Friday morning with a plea.
“Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 p.m. today,” he wrote in a two-paragraph message, which was viewed by The New York Times. “Thanks, Elon.”
About 30 minutes later, Mr. Musk sent another email saying he wanted to learn about Twitter’s “tech stack,” a term used to describe a company’s software and related systems. Then in another email, he asked some people to fly to Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to meet in person.
Twitter is teetering on the edge as Mr. Musk remakes the company after buying it for $44 billion last month. The billionaire has pushed relentlessly to put his imprint on the social media service, slashing 50 percent of its work force, firing dissenters, pursuing new subscription products and delivering a harsh message that the company needs to shape up or it will face bankruptcy.
Now the question is whether Mr. Musk, 51, has gone too far. On Thursday, hundreds of Twitter employees resigned en masse after Mr. Musk gave them a deadline to decide whether to leave or stay. So many workers chose to depart that Twitter users began questioning whether the site would survive, tweeting farewell messages to the service and turning hashtags like #TwitterMigration and #TwitterTakeover into trending topics.
Some internal estimates showed that at least 1,200 full-time employees resigned on Thursday, three people close to the company said. Twitter had 7,500 full-time employees at the end of October, which dropped to about 3,700 after mass layoffs earlier this month.
The employee numbers are likely to remain fluid as the dust settles on the exits, with confusion abounding over who is keeping a tally of workers and running other workplace systems. Some employees who quit said they were separating themselves from the company by disconnecting from email and logging out of the internal messaging system Slack because human resources representatives were not available.
Mr. Musk and representatives for Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
But the billionaire on Friday tweeted what he said would be changes to Twitter’s content policy. Hateful tweets will no longer be promoted algorithmically in users’ feeds, he said, but they will not be taken down. He also reinstated several previously banned accounts, including the comedian Kathy Griffin and the author Jordan Peterson.
Perhaps the most crucial question now is how Twitter can keep running after the giant reduction to its work force in such a short time. The effects of the cuts and resignations have played out across the company’s technology teams, people with knowledge of the matter said.
One team known as Twitter Command Center, a 20-person organization crucial to preventing outages and technology failures during high-traffic events, had multiple people from around the world resign, two former employees said. The “core services” team, which handles computing architecture, was cut to four people from more than 100. Other teams that deal with how media appears in tweets or how profiles show follower counts were down to zero people.
“Wednesday offered a clean exit and 80 percent of the remaining were gone,” Peter Clowes, a senior software engineer, tweeted on Thursday about the departures on his team. “3/75 engineers stayed.” He said on Twitter that he quit on Thursday.
Mr. Musk is also considering shuttering one of Twitter’s three main U.S. data centers, a location known as SMF1 in Sacramento, Calif., which is used to store information needed to run the social media site, four people with knowledge of the effort said. If the data center in Sacramento is taken offline, it will leave the company with data centers in Atlanta and Portland, Ore., with potentially less back up computing capacity in case something fails.
Twitter is still operating, but it may become harder for the company to fix serious issues when they come up, former employees said. One former Twitter engineer likened the service’s current state to Wile E. Coyote, the Looney Tunes cartoon character, as he runs off the edge of a cliff. Though he may still be running in midair for some time, once he looks down, he drops like a stone.
“The larger and more prominent a platform is, the more care and feeding is needed to keep it running and maintain the expectations of the users,” said Richard Forno, the assistant director of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “It’s a huge challenge.”
The employee reductions are coinciding with Twitter entering one of its busiest periods in terms of visitors to the site. The World Cup, which begins on Sunday, is expected to bring a deluge of traffic to Twitter, which is the world’s fourth most visited website, according to Similarweb, a digital intelligence platform that tracks web traffic. Twitter gets 6.9 billion visits each month, slightly more than Instagram’s 6.4 billion, though far fewer than Google, YouTube or Facebook, according to Similarweb estimates.
On Twitter late Thursday, Mr. Musk professed confidence that the service would be fine.
“The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried,” he tweeted.
Fortune reported earlier that 1,000 to 1,200 Twitter employees had resigned. The Information earlier reported on some of Twitter’s infrastructure issues. The Verge earlier reported on departures from the Twitter Command Center.
Keeping a site like Twitter online is typically a task for senior engineers, who must constantly guard against cyberattacks and monitor web traffic to ensure servers are not overloaded, Dr. Forno said. If too many veteran employees depart, leaving Twitter without the expertise or manpower to monitor or quickly fix issues, problems could start, he said.
Many tech issues can be fixed remotely, but some may require workers at Twitter’s data centers around the country, Dr. Forno added. If issues fall through the cracks, Twitter users are not likely to see the site disappear all at once, at least at first. But timelines could start refreshing more slowly, the site might struggle to load and users would find Twitter to be full of glitches.
“It’s like putting a car on the road, hitting the accelerator and then the driver jumps out,” he said. “How far is it going to go before it crashes?”
Inside Twitter on Friday, remaining employees said they were bewildered by Mr. Musk’s changing directives. The company had said on Thursday afternoon that it was closing “our office buildings” and disabling employee badge access until Monday. But in his emails on Friday, Mr. Musk appeared to want to talk to people in person at the company’s San Francisco offices.
Employees were also having difficulties figuring out who was still on staff, and what areas of infrastructure needed more support to keep things up and running.
One worker who wanted to resign said she had spent two days looking for her manager, whose identity she no longer knew because so many people had quit in the days beforehand. After finally finding her direct supervisor, she tendered her resignation. The next day, her supervisor also quit.
Others were spending hours trying to track down which teams they were on. Some said they were asked to oversee duties they had never handled before.
The changes were occurring in a near total information vacuum internally, employees said. Twitter’s internal communications staff has been laid off or left and workers said they were looking outward for information from media articles. Mr. Musk has increasingly downplayed the role of traditional media over the past few months, citing Twitter as one of the best platforms for the rise in “citizen journalism,” as he put it.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Mon Nov 21, 2022 2:21 am
I do not understand.
I do.
Elon thinks TWT is a toy. You know, like electric cars and space rockets. He thinks this is just a plaything.
You know what? I have no issues with that. If TWT is going to become a sandbox in a playground in a park, go for it.
by ti-amie
NoelCaslerComedy
@caslernoel
The LGBTQ community ALWAYS responds with heroism & love. That's why they're targeted by cowards and fools. The GOP sells hate and fear, they appeal to broken spirits, men made evil by the the rhetoric and intolerance of the ChristoFascist gun lobby and their imps in Congress.
by ti-amie Mike Pierce
@millennial_debt
The scale of these "small" crypto fraud rings is breathtaking.
I can't think of anything else quite like it.
A $575 million fraud would be front page news in any other market.
by ti-amie
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by ti-amie
TL;dr
The people we took to the cleaners don't want their names made public because they should've known better.
by ponchi101 Or (and I don't want to justify this ponzi).
Crypto seems to me to be a perfect scheme for money laundering. Something with no specific value, which can be inflated rapidly and with no justification. So maybe, just maybe, FTX was a gigantic washing machine, turn to the max. And you would not want this to be investigated too much if you put in there a few tens of millions to clean a few hundred.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 8:17 pm
Or (and I don't want to justify this ponzi).
Crypto seems to me to be a perfect scheme for money laundering. Something with no specific value, which can be inflated rapidly and with no justification. So maybe, just maybe, FTX was a gigantic washing machine, turn to the max. And you would not want this to be investigated too much if you put in there a few tens of millions to clean a few hundred.
This is what I thought from the beginning. It's why the world wide criminal element loves it. It's just one big ol' laundromat.
More than a few got paid out just like a Ponzi scheme. Crypto is a more than decade-long scheme with cartoonishly high exchange rates going on several years now. That's why when it exploded into the 20k range a few years ago you had people who were buying mansions and fancy cars and showing them off online and when the government started taxing crypto you had fools on Reddit who were like oh damn, I don't have cash to cover this gargantuan bill because they apparently don't know math. FTX hasn't been around long, but it was around for the highest of the highs, many got paid out of it.
For me, what you've got here are hundreds of thousands of greedy people angry that they stayed in the scam too long, kept buying into it and now looking to blame someone for not getting out earlier. You didn't sell when it was worth $60k? Fine, maybe you thought this was going to go a bit higher. But when it dropped to 50K? then 40k? then 30k? Why didn't you dump almost every Bitcoin you own at that point? Could've and should've taken the money and run. I sure as heck would've if I had bought Bitcoin when I first started hearing more about it and not cared a lick about it being less than the $60k height, just been thrilled to get anything out of this scam. But people were greedy trying to double down on crypto with no tangible value, some of which took like 3 transactions to attempt to even turn it into a usable currency.
by ti-amie
I was wondering why Elmo was having a meltdown.
by ti-amie
by Suliso
JazzNU wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:53 pm
More than a few got paid out just like a Ponzi scheme. Crypto is a more than decade-long scheme with cartoonishly high exchange rates going on several years now. That's why when it exploded into the 20k range a few years ago you had people who were buying mansions and fancy cars and showing them off online and when the government started taxing crypto you had fools on Reddit who were like oh damn, I don't have cash to cover this gargantuan bill because they apparently don't know math. FTX hasn't been around long, but it was around for the highest of the highs, many got paid out of it.
For me, what you've got here are hundreds of thousands of greedy people angry that they stayed in the scam too long, kept buying into it and now looking to blame someone for not getting out earlier. You didn't sell when it was worth $60k? Fine, maybe you thought this was going to go a bit higher. But when it dropped to 50K? then 40k? then 30k? Why didn't you dump almost every Bitcoin you own at that point? Could've and should've taken the money and run. I sure as heck would've if I had bought Bitcoin when I first started hearing more about it and not cared a lick about it being less than the $60k height, just been thrilled to get anything out of this scam. But people were greedy trying to double down on crypto with no tangible value, some of which took like 3 transactions to attempt to even turn it into a usable currency.
This 5x. There was indeed plenty of opportunity to get rich from bitcoin if you started early enough and were a bit more of a risk taker than me.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 I'm missing something.
They think the Russians are going to sell them oil at a $20/bbl discount, when China and India will pay a better price? Are they delusional?
by skatingfan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 23, 2022 8:40 pm
I'm missing something.
They think the Russians are going to sell them oil at a $20/bbl discount, when China and India will pay a better price? Are they delusional?
No, they're compromised - they want to keep the Putin-allied countries in the European Union.
by ti-amie
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by Suliso Surprisingly I personally in my mini bubble don't see any difference from a month ago. Maybe still to come...
by ti-amie
And the bots/ghost accounts have it!
The man responding is a legit journalist. You have to check these things now.
by ti-amie Zhuowei Zhang
@zhuowei@notnow.dev
Government opposition in France forces Zuckerberg to let go of his dream to revolutionize online shopping logistics using cryptocurrency (Libra Pay Delivery)
by ponchi101 Vennieland has not done any exploration of reservoir mapping/management in at least 8 years.
This is largely symbolic. I can't see Venezuela regaining any capacity to export a significant amount of oil for a few years. The industry has been devastated.
by ti-amie
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by ti-amie V!
@cmdshiftv@mstdn.social
lol imagine only learning about apple’s 30% cut several weeks after becoming CEO of Twitter
literally a clown
the 30% isn’t a “secret” it’s well known and reported on. just say you don’t read (expletive) and move on a**hole
also lmao not all his simps clamouring to jump from iPhone - good luck with the inevitable unpatched android bugs on the elon phone
by ti-amie Robert Reich
@rbreich@masto.ai
As big crypto companies go through yet another financial meltdown, let me remind you: It's a giant Ponzi scheme that urgently needs to be regulated.
by JazzNU This is about more than just the CNN layoffs, it's about the merger takeover and how they are going about managing the WB assets. Many are watching to see how quickly and the method by which Discover ruins HBO Max with these cost cutting measures. There was not so great sign today with a move they made on the content side of things.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie This can go here and in the Brexit thread.
by ponchi101
JazzNU wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 6:41 pm
This is about more than just the CNN layoffs, it's about the merger takeover and how they are going about managing the WB assets. Many are watching to see how quickly and the method by which Discover ruins HBO Max with these cost cutting measures. There was not so great sign today with a move they made on the content side of things.
These mega-mergers, IN ANY INDUSTRY, have to stop. Every time two of these massive companies merge, their immediate action is "we have to cut costs", which is a frigging code for "we have to fire people". It is the only cost that can be cut; getting rid of machinery does not reduce costs.
Around the world, what we need is not mergers; we need SPLITS. Like when Standard Oil got broken up into 7 companies. THAT generated employment and wealth. Not these greedy acquisitions in which the sole thing that ever really gets negotiated is the severance packages for the top executives of the company to be bought.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 I guess you could say you can screw a deal or a company in a million ways but, since he is a billionaire...
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by ponchi101 The miners.
Better names:
The accomplices
The minions
The henchmen
The implementers
...
Miners are real people, extracting real stuff. For good or for bad, they have real jobs. Threse crypto frauds are not miners in any way.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie She left out all the ads for crypto but this has been my experience too.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Has any town square in any real town ever been on fire? Like, smoldering, burning to the ground, fire?
by ti-amie
Duty To Warn @duty2warn
TESLA closed at 167.82, another low. $30B of market cap went poof.
Market Insider says Tesla will face buyback pressure. Wedbush says activist investors will pressure them. WSJ says the stock is STILL no bargain...
by ti-amie
The US government's extradition treaty with the Bahamas allows the US to extradite defendants for charges involving offenses that would be considered crimes in both countries, and which could result in a jail sentence of longer than a year.4 hours ago
by ti-amieMusk Shakes Up Twitter’s Legal Team as He Looks to Cut More Costs
Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures.
By Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac and Kate Conger
Dec. 13, 2022, 4:10 p.m. ET
SAN FRANCISCO — Over the past two weeks, Elon Musk has shaken up Twitter’s legal department, disbanded a council that advised the social media company on safety issues and is continuing to take drastic steps to cut costs.
Mr. Musk appears to be gearing up for legal battles at Twitter, which he purchased in October for $44 billion, according to seven people familiar with internal conversations. He and his team have revamped Twitter’s legal department and pushed out one of his closest advisers in the process. They have also instructed employees to not pay vendors in anticipation of potential litigation, the people said.
To cut costs, Twitter has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company said. Twitter has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Mr. Musk’s takeover, according to a copy of a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire District Court and obtained by The New York Times.
Twitter’s leaders have also discussed the consequences of denying severance payments to thousands of people who have been laid off since the takeover, two people familiar with the talks said. And Mr. Musk has threatened employees with lawsuits if they talk to the media and “act in a manner contrary to the company’s interest,” according to an internal email sent last Friday.
The aggressive moves signal that Mr. Musk is still slashing expenditures and is bending or breaking Twitter’s previous agreements to make his mark. His reign has been characterized by chaos, a series of resignations and layoffs, reversals of the platform’s previous suspensions and rules, and capricious decisions that have driven away advertisers.
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
As he has transitioned into the role of Twitter’s new leader, Mr. Musk has had a cast of rotating legal professionals by his side. In October, he fired both Twitter’s chief legal officer and general counsel “for cause” within hours of closing his acquisition and installed his personal lawyer, Alex Spiro, to head up legal and policy matters at the company.
Mr. Spiro is no longer working at Twitter, according to six people familiar with the decision. Those people said that Mr. Musk has been unhappy with some of the decisions made by Mr. Spiro, a noted criminal defense lawyer who successfully defended the billionaire in a high-profile defamation case in late 2019 and worked his way into the Twitter owner’s inner circle.
Among those decisions was Mr. Spiro’s call to retain the Twitter deputy general counsel, James A. Baker, through Mr. Musk’s various rounds of layoffs and firings. Mr. Baker had served as general counsel at the F.B.I. until May 2018 — advising the agency on politically fraught investigations into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and Donald J. Trump’s campaign — and joined Twitter in 2020.
Last week, Mr. Musk said he terminated Mr. Baker after he learned that the lawyer had been responsible for reviewing internal communications about the company’s decision to suppress a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Mr. Musk had ordered that those communications, which he has called the “Twitter Files,” be given to a group of journalists to release and discredit the decision-making of the company’s past executives.
With Twitter drained of legal talent from layoffs and departures, Mr. Musk has sought lawyers from his other companies, including rocket maker SpaceX, to fill the void. More than half a dozen lawyers from the space exploration company have been given access to Twitter’s internal systems, according to two people and documents seen by The Times. SpaceX employees who have been brought in to Twitter include Chris Cardaci, the company’s vice president of legal, and Tim Hughes, its senior vice president and general counsel.
A SpaceX spokesman did not return a request for comment.
Among its legal challenges, Twitter is facing more questions from the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating whether the company is still adhering to a consent decree. In 2011, the company signed a consent decree with the F.T.C. after two data breaches and said it would not mislead users about privacy protection. In May, the company paid $150 million to the F.T.C. and Justice Department to settle allegations that it had violated the terms of that consent decree, which was expanded.
The F.T.C. has sent Twitter letters asking whether it still has the resources and staff to adhere to the consent decree, two people with knowledge of the matter said. An F.T.C. spokeswoman declined to comment.
On Friday, as Mr. Musk encouraged the release of internal information through the continuation of his Twitter Files, he also sent an email to employees noting “many detailed leaks of confidential Twitter information” showed that some were violating their nondisclosure agreements.
“If you clearly and deliberately violate the NDA that you signed when joining Twitter, you accept liability to the full extent of the law and Twitter will immediately seek damages,” he wrote. The email was first reported by the Platformer newsletter.
Mr. Musk’s team has also deliberated the merits of not paying severance to the thousands of people who have left the company since he took over, when there were about 7,500 full-time employees. While Mr. Musk and his advisers had previously considered forgoing any severance when discussing cuts in late October, the company ultimately decided that U.S.-based employees would be given at least two months of pay and one month of severance pay so that the company would be compliant with federal and state labor laws.
Mr. Musk’s team is now reconsidering whether it should pay some of those months, according to two people familiar with the discussions, or just face lawsuits from disgruntled former employees. Many former employees still have not received any paperwork formalizing their separation from Twitter, five people said. Mr. Musk has already refused to pay millions of dollars in exit packages to executives he claims were terminated “for cause.”
As Twitter has downsized, Mr. Musk’s team has been hoping to renegotiate the terms of lease agreements, two people familiar with the discussion said. The company has received complaints from real estate investment and management firms including Shorenstein, which owns the San Francisco buildings that Twitter occupies.
A spokesman for Shorenstein declined to comment.
In other money-saving moves, Twitter has laid off its kitchen staff and begun to list office supplies, industrial-grade kitchen equipment and electronics from its San Francisco office for auction.
Mr. Musk also continues to cut staff and leaders, including Nelson Abramson, Twitter’s global head of infrastructure, and Alan Rosa, the global information technology head and vice president of information security, according to four people familiar with the moves.
On Sunday night, Mr. Musk sent two emails to Twitter’s staff with advice about how to work for him that he had previously shared with SpaceX and Tesla employees. One message focused on first principles thinking, a worldview based on the teachings of Aristotle to reduce assumptions to basic axioms, which Mr. Musk credited with helping him make difficult decisions. The other advocated against workplace hierarchies.
On Monday, Twitter notified members of its trust and safety council, an advisory group formed in 2016, that it would dissolve immediately. The council was created to guide Twitter through challenging safety problems and content moderation issues, and was made up of organizations focused on civil rights and child safety.
“Safety online can mean survival offline,” said Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, one of the organizations involved in the council. “As a platform that has become a critical tool in both open and repressive countries, Twitter must play a constructive role in ensuring that journalists and the public at large are able to receive and impart information without fear of reprisals.”
Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
by ti-amieThe Parents in the Middle of FTX’s Collapse
The FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother and father, who teach at Stanford Law School, are under scrutiny for their connections to their son’s crypto business.
Joseph Bankman, a longtime tax professor at Stanford Law School and the father of Sam Bankman-Fried, the now-disgraced founder of FTX.Credit...Josh Edelson
By David Yaffe-Bellany, Lora Kelley and Kenneth P. Vogel
Dec. 12, 2022
At the height of its corporate power, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX convened a group of athletes and celebrities for a charity event in March at the Miami Heat’s N.B.A. arena. Local high school students competed for more than $1 million in prizes, pitching “Shark Tank”-style business ideas to a panel of judges that included David Ortiz, the former Boston Red Sox slugger, and Kevin O’Leary, an actual “Shark Tank” host.
But the event’s organizer was a figure better known in academic circles — Joseph Bankman, a longtime tax professor at Stanford Law School and the father of Sam Bankman-Fried, the now-disgraced founder of FTX.
Wearing a baseball cap with FTX’s logo, Mr. Bankman walked onstage to help announce the winners of two $500,000 checks. Behind the scenes, he played the role of FTX diplomat, introducing his son to the head of a Florida nonprofit organization that was helping adults in the area set up bank accounts linked to the crypto exchange’s platform. Two months later, Mr. Bankman-Fried promoted the partnership in testimony to Congress, where he was pushing crypto-friendly legislation.
In the months before FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, Mr. Bankman was a prominent cheerleader for the company, helping to shape the narrative that his son was using crypto to save the world by donating to charity and giving low-income people access to the financial system.
He and his wife, the Stanford Law professor Barbara Fried, were more than just supportive parents backing their child’s business. Mr. Bankman was a paid FTX employee who traveled frequently to the Bahamas, where the exchange was based. Ms. Fried did not work for the company, but her son was among the donors in a political advocacy network that she orchestrated.
Now Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried are under scrutiny for their connections to a business that collapsed amid accusations of fraud and misuse of customer funds. No evidence has emerged linking them to the potentially criminal practices that caused the exchange to implode. But their son was arrested on Monday in the Bahamas after U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges against him, and his fortune has dwindled to almost nothing. The charitable work that Mr. Bankman spearheaded has largely collapsed.
The couple’s careers have been upended. Ms. Fried, 71, resigned last month as chairwoman of the board of a political donor network, Mind the Gap, which she had helped start to support Democratic campaigns and causes. Mr. Bankman, 67, has postponed a Stanford class he had been scheduled to teach in the winter, and he’s recruited a white-collar criminal defense lawyer to represent him. The family faces huge legal bills, and they have become the subject of gossip on Stanford’s campus.
“I had a friend who said, ‘You don’t want to be seen with them,’” said Larry Kramer, a former dean of the law school and a close friend of the Bankman-Fried family. “I don’t see how this doesn’t bankrupt them.”
In a statement, Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for the couple, said that Mr. Bankman worked for FTX for 11 months but that Ms. Fried had no role in the company. “Joe has spent a lot of his life trying to figure out ways to lift people up out of poverty,” Ms. Heller said. “Most of his time was spent identifying worthy health-related charities.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, said in an interview that his parents “weren’t involved in any of the relevant parts” of the business. “None of them were involved in FTX balances or risk management or anything like that,” he said.
Long before their son became a billionaire celebrity, Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried were popular faculty members at Stanford, where they have taught since the late 1980s. At their home on campus, they regularly hosted Sunday dinners with friends and colleagues, which multiple attendees compared to a modern salon.
A leading taxation expert, Mr. Bankman has been an outspoken advocate for simplifying the tax filing system and has testified in Congress on tax matters. He also has a degree in clinical psychology and practices as a therapist.
Ms. Fried, who retired this year, is an expert on the intersection of law and philosophy, and has written about effective altruism, the charitable movement embraced by Mr. Bankman-Fried that uses data to maximize the benefits of donations. In 2018, she helped start Mind the Gap, hoping to bring “Moneyball”-style analytics to political spending, people familiar with her role in the group said.
The couple’s lives transformed after Mr. Bankman-Fried started FTX in 2019. He grew the company into a $32 billion business, cultivating a reputation as a hard-working do-gooder who barely slept and intended to donate his fortune to causes backed by the effective altruist movement.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried supported their son’s work, though Ms. Fried expressed concerns about his lifestyle. “The sleep worries me,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in May. “I just hope that it’s not exacting a high price on him.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried’s business and political empire was always a family affair. The FTX founder was a prolific political donor, and he was part of a network of contributors who gave money to groups recommended by Mind the Gap, people familiar with the organization said. He also helped bankroll a nonprofit organization called Guarding Against Pandemics that was run by his 27-year-old brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried.
Mr. Bankman was deeply involved in FTX. In its early days, he helped the company recruit its first lawyers. Last year, he joined FTX staff in meetings on Capitol Hill and advised his son as Mr. Bankman-Fried prepared to testify to the House Financial Services Committee, a person familiar with the matter said. FTX employees occasionally consulted him on tax-related matters, the person said.
“From the start whenever I was useful, I’d lend a hand,” Mr. Bankman said on an FTX podcast in August.
Mr. Bankman visited the FTX offices in the Bahamas as often as once a month, a person who saw him there said. Among the much-younger staff, he cultivated an avuncular persona, regaling employees with stories from his son’s youth, the person said. He and Ms. Fried stayed in a $16.4 million house in Old Fort Bay, a gated community in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas; the couple’s names appear on real estate documents, according to Reuters, though Mr. Bankman-Fried has said the house was “intended to be the company’s property.”
Ms. Heller, the couple’s spokeswoman, said Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried “never intended to and never believed they had any beneficial or economic ownership in the house.”
As an employee, Mr. Bankman focused on FTX’s charitable operations. He put together the Miami event, selecting the teams of high school students who competed for $1 million in FTX grants.
Mr. Bankman also leveraged family connections to expand FTX’s reach. His sister, Barbara Miller, works in Florida as a political consultant and introduced him to Newton Sanon, the chief executive of OIC of South Florida, a nonprofit organization that helps people with work force development training to promote economic mobility. (Ms. Miller did not respond to a request for comment.)
Mr. Sanon worked with Mr. Bankman on a financial literacy initiative for low-to-moderate-income adults enrolled in education programs. As part of the collaboration, students who did not have bank accounts could open one linked to FTX’s platform, giving them the option to spend their money on cryptocurrency. Nobody was pushed to buy digital currencies through FTX, Mr. Sanon said, but one participant chose to do so.
In Washington, Mr. Bankman-Fried invoked the Florida program as he pressed for legislation to make the United States more hospitable to the crypto industry, testifying to a House committee that the initiative would help low-income people “build savings.”
After FTX collapsed, however, Mr. Sanon informed Mr. Bankman that some participants in the FTX initiative may have lost funds they had stored on the platform (including money students had received as a stipend for joining the program).
“They wired money in for us to be able to take care of students,” Mr. Sanon said. He declined to specify the amount that the organization received, but he said it was “substantial and very kind.”
Mr. Bankman used his personal funds to cover the losses, according to his spokeswoman. Mr. Sanon said that “none of us are happy with how this played out,” but that “those folks were very good to us.”
Not all of Mr. Bankman’s partners were so lucky. On Nov. 11, the day that FTX filed for bankruptcy, Mr. Bankman wrote to a Chicago nonprofit that had been promised $600,000 by FTX’s charitable arm. The money wasn’t going to materialize, Mr. Bankman explained, and he couldn’t afford to make up for the shortfall himself.
“I’ll be spending substantially all of my resources on Sam’s defense,” he wrote in an email, which was obtained by The Times.
Mr. Bankman-Fried’s whole family has felt the effects of his actions. Gabe Bankman-Fried resigned from Guarding Against Pandemics in November. (He did not respond to requests for comment.) Ms. Fried stepped down from Mind the Gap, which held a meeting last month to elect an interim chair and discuss how to proceed without her, people familiar with the matter said. The stress of the situation is exacting a toll: Mr. Bankman looks as if he’s aged 10 years in one month, a friend said.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried are part of a small group offering Mr. Bankman-Fried legal advice, according to a person familiar with the matter. The couple has also turned to the Stanford faculty for support: David Mills, a criminal law professor at Stanford and a close family friend, is part of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s legal team. Mr. Bankman has his own lawyer, the former federal prosecutor Ronald G. White.
Colleagues and family acquaintances are wrestling with what to say the next time they run into Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried. Their son has widely been compared to Bernie Madoff, the notorious fraudster who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
Still, many people in the family’s social circle view the situation through a sympathetic lens, according to interviews with more than a dozen friends and colleagues. They insist that Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried couldn’t have known about any wrongdoing at FTX, while acknowledging that Mr. Bankman may have been naïve in his embrace of crypto.
“It’s like a Greek tragedy,” said John Donohue, a colleague who has attended Sunday dinners at the Bankman-Fried home. “The story of flying too close to the sun, and having your wings singed.”
If I were the #2 electric car company, Rivian, I'd be poaching from Tesla hard these days. I won't buy a Tesla because of Musk, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
by ponchi101 Tesla relies on "cult" marketing. This will not affect its sales.
(Other things might).
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
I expect him to head to a non-extradition to US country almost as soon as he's released.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie I'm glad to see Ms Lopez is back on the bird app...
by ti-amie Jim Stewartson :toad:
@jimstewartson@toad.social
Let’s see. #QElon sold $40 billion in TSLA starting at its highest value, now trading 70% down and it still has a 38x P/E.
How exactly is this not insider trading, if not blatant market manipulation aka pump-and-dump?
The reason he wants people focused on SBF is that his fraud is orders of magnitude larger. #Dogecoin
by ti-amie
by ti-amie I saw it trending earlier so this is, from personal observation, true.
If you click on $TSLA above you will see the latest stock price.
ETA:
Because my VPN is set in Vancouver today I can see this:
Trending in Canada
$TSLA
by Suliso I'd say a fair Tesla stock price is somewhere in 30-50 $ range. Note that even at that price it would be among the top 5 most valuable car companies. Price in 2021 made any sense only if you assumed they would dominate electric car market AND electric cars would rapidly replace ICE's AND full self driving would succeed soon. I think neither assumption is true. The exact timing is precipitated by Musk's shenigans, but the stock was always about to fall.
by ponchi101 It was overvalued, that is for sure. And his recent idiocies did not help.
But such a brisk collapse is an over-reaction. The WORST, worst case scenario for Tesla is that it would be bought by some other company. I am sure that the VW, GM or Toyota groups (or even Daimler Benz) would swoop in and buy it if some opportunity would come up.
Toyota, VW or Daimler would be very able to correct some of the "issues" with the cars (related to quality, not the technology).
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Sued AND evicted, I guess? That is what happens to the rest of us when we don't pay rent.
by Owendonovan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 4:20 pm
Sued AND evicted, I guess? That is what happens to the rest of us when we don't pay rent.
And then we can't rent again or have a lot of difficulty doing so.
by ti-amie
by ti-amieDeputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco Delivers Remarks on Founder and Majority Owner of Cryptocurrency Exchange Charged with Processing Illicit Funds
Washington, DC ~ Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here.
Today, the Department of Justice dealt a significant blow to the cryptocrime ecosystem.
Justice Department agents and prosecutors, working in partnership with the Treasury Department and French law enforcement authorities, have disrupted Bitzlato, a China-based cryptocurrency exchange notorious for laundering criminal proceeds from the darknet. And last night, agents of the FBI arrested Bitzlato’s founder, Anatoly Legkodymov.
I am joined today by the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, Kenneth Polite, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, FBI Associate Deputy Director Brian Turner, and the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Wally Adeyemo.
Today’s law enforcement actions serve notice to all those who seek to exploit the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
First, the Department of Justice and our partners will use all tools at our disposal to attack the use of the darknet and cryptocurrencies to promote criminal activity.
And second, we are taking steps to address a crisis of confidence in the cryptocurrency markets, where criminals and fraudsters seek to operate outside the laws and rules that protect our financial system.
Malicious actors working from perceived sanctuaries abroad are exploiting crypto markets and flouting the laws and regulations that guard the integrity of our financial system and, along with it, the earnings and investments of hard-working Americans.
It’s no secret that cybercriminals rely on those bad actors to launder their criminal proceeds from cryptocurrency into fiat currency.
Today, thanks to a coordinated international effort, Justice Department prosecutors and agents have disrupted a busy corner of this criminal ecosystem.
Last night in Miami, FBI agents arrested Legkodymov, a Russian national and founder and majority owner of Bitzlato, a Hong Kong-registered cryptocurrency exchange.
The charges allege that Legkodymov operated Bitzlato as a high-tech financial hub that, in his own words, catered to “known crooks.”
Bitzlato failed to implement safeguards required by U.S. law – safeguards that enable authorities to detect and investigate financial crimes.
Instead, Bitzlato facilitated the transmission of hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit funds fueling darknet marketplaces and laundering the proceeds of ransomware attacks.
For example, as alleged, Bitzlato was a crucial financial resource for the notorious Hydra darknet market, the disruption of which I announced from this podium last April – that time with our German partners.
Hydra was the world’s longest running and largest darknet marketplace responsible for 80% of the world’s darknet transactions.
Hydra and Bitzlato formed a high-tech axis of cryptocrime: Hydra buyers funded illicit purchases — of illegal drugs, stolen financial information, and hacking services — from crypto accounts hosted at Bitzlato, and sellers of these illegal goods and services at Hydra sent criminal proceeds to accounts at Bitzlato – all to the tune of over $700 million in direct and indirect transfers between 2018 and 2022.
I have said before that we would go after the entire ecosystem that allows cyber criminals and illicit actors to flourish.
Today’s action against Bitzlato – as with the disruption of Hydra – reflects another critical step in executing that strategy.
At the time of Legkodymov’s arrest and continuing into today, the Department’s international and domestic partners engaged in a coordinated campaign of disruption, which include enforcement actions in multiple European countries, the seizure of Bitzlato’s servers and cryptocurrency, and regulatory enforcement actions here in the United States.
Today’s actions show not only the broad international scope of the defendant’s alleged crimes—but also the international net that law enforcement used to stop him and his business partners.
Today marks the elimination of the Hydra-Bitzlato cryptocrime axis.
We have also busted the business model of the cybercriminals that Bitzlato supported.
Coordinated operations like this against Bitzlato—using all tools and designed for maximum impact—are the linchpins of international success against cybercrime.
Our actions in this case also mark the most significant enforcement effort by the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team against a cryptocurrency platform.
To all those exploiting the cryptocurrency ecosystem to enable cryptocrime, we have a clear message: we will not only target hackers, fraudsters, and criminals that mask their profits in cryptocurrency; we are also unleashing the full force of the Department of Justice on the illicit actors and entities that support cybercriminals – like Legkodymov and Bitzlato.
Operating offshore or moving your servers out of the continental U.S. will not shield you.
Whether you break our laws from China or Europe or abuse our financial system from a tropical island—you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom.
I want to thank the agents, analysts, and prosecutors who worked diligently to investigate this case.
And finally, a tremendous thanks to our foreign partners and the Department of the Treasury for their collaboration in this and many other cryptocurrency and cybercrime cases.
I’ll now turn the podium over to Assistant Attorney General Polite of the Criminal Division.
Speaker:
Lisa O. Monaco, Deputy Attorney General
Topic(s):
Cybercrime
Component(s):
by ti-amie JUSTICE NEWS
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 18, 2023 Founder and Majority Owner of Cryptocurrency Exchange Charged with Processing Over $700 Million of Illicit Funds
The founder and majority owner of a cryptocurrency exchange, Bitzlato Ltd. (Bitzlato), was arrested last night in Miami for his alleged operation of a money transmitting business that transported and transmitted illicit funds and that failed to meet U.S. regulatory safeguards, including anti-money laundering requirements.
Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, a Russian national who resides in Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China, is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. French authorities and the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) are taking concurrent enforcement actions.
“Today the Department of Justice dealt a significant blow to the cryptocrime ecosystem,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. “Overnight, the Department worked with key partners here and abroad to disrupt Bitzlato, the China-based money laundering engine that fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime, and to arrest its founder, Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov. Today’s actions send the clear message: whether you break our laws from China or Europe – or abuse our financial system from a tropical island – you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom.”
“As alleged, the defendant helped operate a cryptocurrency exchange that failed to implement required anti-money laundering safeguards and enabled criminals to profit from their wrongdoing, including ransomware and drug trafficking,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team’s tremendous efforts to disrupt Bitzlato and arrest the defendant demonstrate that we will continue to work with our partners – both foreign and domestic – to combat cryptocurrency-fueled crimes, even if they transcend international borders.”
According to court documents, Legkodymov is a senior executive and the majority shareholder of Bitzlato, a Hong Kong-registered cryptocurrency exchange that operates globally. Bitzlato has marketed itself as requiring minimal identification from its users, specifying that “neither selfies nor passports [are] required.” On occasions when Bitzlato did direct users to submit identifying information, it repeatedly allowed them to provide information belonging to “straw man” registrants.
“Institutions that trade in cryptocurrency are not above the law and their owners are not beyond our reach,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. “As alleged, Bitzlato sold itself to criminals as a no-questions-asked cryptocurrency exchange, and reaped hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of deposits as a result. The defendant is now paying the price for the malign role that his company played in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.”
As a result of these deficient know-your-customer (KYC) procedures, Bitzlato allegedly became a haven for criminal proceeds and funds intended for use in criminal activity. Bitzlato’s largest counterparty in cryptocurrency transactions was Hydra Market (Hydra), an anonymous, illicit online marketplace for narcotics, stolen financial information, fraudulent identification documents, and money laundering services that was the largest and longest running darknet market in the world. Hydra users exchanged more than $700 million in cryptocurrency with Bitzlato, either directly or through intermediaries, until Hydra was shuttered by U.S. and German law enforcement in April 2022. Bitzlato also received more than $15 million in ransomware proceeds.
“The FBI will continue to pursue actors who attempt to mask their criminal activity behind keyboards and use means such as cryptocurrency to evade law enforcement,” said Assistant Deputy Director Brian Turner of the FBI. “We, along with our federal and international partners, will work relentlessly to disrupt and dismantle these types of criminal enterprises. Today’s arrest should serve as a reminder the FBI will impose risk and consequences upon those who engage in these activities.”
“As alleged today, Legkodymov knowingly allowed Bitzlato to become a perceived safe haven for funds used for and resulting from a variety of criminal activities,” said Assistant Director in Charge Michael J. Driscoll of the FBI New York Field Office. “The FBI and our partners remain steadfast in our commitment to keeping cryptocurrency markets – as with any financial market – free from illicit activity. Today’s action should serve as an example of this commitment as Legkodymov will now face the consequences of his actions in our criminal justice system.”
As alleged in the complaint, Bitzlato’s customers routinely used the company’s customer service portal to request support for transactions with Hydra, which Bitzlato often provided, and admitted in chats with Bitzlato personnel that they were trading under assumed identities. Moreover, Legkodymov and Bitzlato’s other managers were aware that Bitzlato’s accounts were rife with illicit activity and that many of its users were registered under others’ identities. For instance, on May 29, 2019, Legkodymov used Bitzlato’s internal chat system to write to a colleague that Bitzlato’s users were “known to be crooks,” using others’ identity documents to register their accounts. Legkodymov was repeatedly warned by colleagues that Bitzlato’s customer base consisted of “addicts who buy drugs at [] Hydra” and “drug traffickers,” with one senior executive even stressing that Bitzlato should combat drug dealers only “nominally,” to avoid hurting the company’s bottom line. An internal spreadsheet saved in Bitzlato’s shared management folder encapsulated the company’s view of itself: “Positives: No KYC. . . . Negatives: Dirty money. . . .”
As alleged in the complaint, although Bitzlato claimed not to accept users from the United States, it did substantial business with U.S.-based customers, and its customer service representatives repeatedly advised users that they could transfer funds from U.S. financial institutions. Moreover, Legkodymov – who himself administered Bitzlato from Miami in 2022 and 2023 – received reports reflecting substantial traffic to Bitzlato’s website from U.S.-based Internet Protocol addresses, including over 250 million such visits in July 2022.
Legkodymov is charged with conducting an unlicensed money transmitting business. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Concurrent with the arrest announced today, French authorities, working with Europol and partners in Spain, Portugal, and Cyprus, dismantled Bitzlato’s digital infrastructure, seized Bitzlato’s cryptocurrency, and took other enforcement actions.
In addition, the Treasury Department’s FinCEN announced an Order pursuant to section 9714(a) of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act, as amended, identifying Bitzlato as a “primary money laundering concern” in connection to Russian illicit finance. The order imposes a special measure prohibiting certain transmittals of funds involving Bitzlato by any covered financial institution.
National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) Trial Attorneys Alexander Mindlin, Scott Meisler, and Matthew Blackwood of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Artie McConnell for the Eastern District of New York are prosecuting the case, with assistance from Paralegal Specialist Mary Clare McMahon.
The Justice Department investigated this case in close coordination with French law enforcement authorities and the Treasury Department’s FinCEN, both of which took separate enforcement actions today under their respective authorities. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs and the FBI’s Legal Attaché in France provided critical assistance in this case, with significant support from the department’s Cyber Operations International Liaison. The NCET and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York also extend their appreciation to the Cyber Division of the Paris Prosecution Office and to France’s Gendarmerie Nationale Cyberspace Command (Cyber Crime Investigation Unit / C3N). Assistance was also provided by the Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Safety Administration, and the New York City Police Department. EUROPOL and Dutch and Belgian authorities have contributed to the overall investigation with respect to operational expertise, coordination, and information-sharing.
The NCET was established to combat the growing illicit use of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Under the Criminal Division, the NCET conducts and supports investigations into individuals and entities that enable the use of digital assets to commit and facilitate a variety of crimes, with a particular focus on virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and infrastructure providers. The NCET also sets strategic priorities regarding digital asset technologies, identifies areas for increased investigative and prosecutorial focus, and leads the department’s efforts to collaborate with domestic and foreign government agencies as well as the private sector to aggressively investigate and prosecute crimes involving cryptocurrency and digital assets.
A criminal complaint is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Attachment(s):
Download Complaint
Topic(s):
Cybercrime
Component(s):
Criminal Division
Criminal - Office of International Affairs
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Office of the Deputy Attorney General
USAO - New York, Eastern
Press Release Number:
23-51
Updated January 18, 2023
ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed Jan 18, 2023 8:00 pmDeputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco Delivers Remarks on Founder and Majority Owner of Cryptocurrency Exchange Charged with Processing Illicit Funds
Washington, DC ~ Wednesday, January 18, 2023
...
Now Tesla stock is up 65% since the beginning of the year recovering some of the loses. What does it mean for the future of Tesla? Not very much... Same as the decline last year didn't mean all that much. When will folks finally learn not to give a supreme importance to stock market fluctuations?
Of course some companies are viable and others are not, but it makes more sense to look at profitability, cash flow, revenues, growth etc to gauge that. Unless of course you're owning a stock of the given company....
by ponchi101 Because the MODERN stock market measures its cycles in minutes.
You are not expected to buy any stock as an investment for the FUTURE, that future being measured in human lives scales. You are supposed to measure them, at most, in daily cycles: if you bought a stock in the morning and it lost value during the day, you dump it in the afternoon and cover the losses (who knows how).
In 2005 I had a mutual fund with a guaranteed return at 10 years (10%). Then, 2008-9 happened and the fund collapsed. It lost 60% of its value. I talked to my broker and he asked me if I needed the money at the moment (I didn't, there was work at the time). The fund was buying back at 50% (a profit over the 60% decline) but they would still be honored to pay that 10% (plus price) in 2015. I decided not to sell.
I sold in 2018 at a 50% PROFIT over what I bought in 2005. But some people sold, and that is how the market makes its money (one of the ways).
If you want immediate profits, TESLA is not for you. If you want long term, maybe also not. But a lot of other companies are long term investments. Just check the prices for the oil giants: they are doing swell.
by ti-amie
by JazzNU
FTX sues Voyager Digital to claw back $446 million in 2022 loan payments
Story by By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK(Reuters) - Bankrupt crypt exchange FTX sued crypto lender Voyager Digital on Monday, seeking to claw back $445.8 million in loan repayments that FTX made before collapsing into bankruptcy in November 2022.
FTX and Voyager both filed for bankruptcy amid a 2022 collapse in cryptocurrency markets, but Voyager’s bankruptcy preceded FTX’s filing by four months.
After Voyager filed in July, it demanded repayment of all outstanding loans to FTX and its affiliate hedge fund Alameda Research.
FTX said in a court filing that on Alameda’s behalf, it paid Voyager $248.8 million in September and $193.9 million in October. FTX also made a $3.2 million interest payment in August, according to its court filings.
Because those loan payments were made so close to FTX’s own bankruptcy filing, they are eligible to be clawed back and potentially used to repay other FTX creditors, according to FTX’s complaint.
FTX, once among the world's top crypto exchanges, shook the sector in November by filing for bankruptcy, leaving an estimated 9 million customers and other investors facing losses in the billions of dollars.
Its founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been indicted on fraud charges, and several top executives, including Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, have pleaded guilty to fraud. Bankman-Fried has denied wrongdoing and is scheduled for trial in October.
FTX initially appeared to weather the storm that brought down Voyager and other crypto firms in summer 2022, presenting itself as a "white knight" that could stabilize reeling crypto markets. FTX offered to buy Voyager's platform in a bankruptcy auction, but the proposed acquisition fell apart when FTX imploded in November.
In its Monday court filing, FTX acknowledged the allegations that Alameda raided FTX customer assets to cover its risky borrowing and lending. But it said Voyager and other crypto lenders were complicit in Alameda’s conduct, "knowingly or recklessly" pushing their clients' assets toward Alameda.
"Voyager's business model was that of a feeder fund," FTX said. "It solicited retail investors and invested their money with little or no due diligence in cryptocurrency investment funds like Alameda and Three Arrows Capital."
Three Arrows Capital also went bankrupt in 2022, and its founders have refused to cooperate with court-appointed liquidators who are trying to recover assets for Three Arrows customers.
by ponchi101 There must be some lawyer in Wall Street that are right now looking at the Rolls Royce and Grumman catalogues, without even looking at the prices.
by JazzNU
Boeing delivers last 747, saying goodbye to 'Queen of the Skies'
Story by By Valerie Insinna
Boeing employees and executives attend the delivery of the final 747 jet in Everett
SEATTLE (Reuters) -Boeing bid farewell to the iconic 747, delivering the final plane to Atlas Air on Tuesday afternoon and marking an end of an era when the first-ever "jumbo jet" ruled the skies.
Thousands of Boeing employees – including some of the so-called "Incredibles" who developed the jet in the 1960s – watched the last delivery of the historic plane, which brought air travel to the masses and represented an indelible slice of Americana.
The event at the mammoth manufacturing plant was capped off by a celebrity appearance by John Travolta, who recounted learning to fly the 747-400 as an ambassador for Qantas Airlines. “[It was] the toughest program that any commercial pilot will ever have to endure,” said Travolta, who called the jet the “most well thought out and safest aircraft ever built.”
Known as the "Queen of the Skies," the 747 was the world's first twin-aisle jetliner, which Boeing designed and built in 28 months and Pan Am introduced in 1970.
"It's the airplane that redefined the industry and redefined air travel," said Guy Norris, co-author of "Boeing 747: Design and Development Since 1969."
A British Airways Boeing 747 comes in to land at Heathrow airport in London
British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, who was inspired to start an airline with a single Boeing 747 after getting stuck on a delayed flight, earlier on Tuesday called it a "wonderful beast" as he bid farewell.
A Qantas Boeing 747 plane takes off at Kingsford Smith International Airport in Sydney
Boeing's Everett, Washington, facility has been the 747's production site since the plane's conception. Built in 1967 to produce the mammoth jet, it remains the world's largest manufacturing plant according to Boeing.
But after five decades, customer demand for the 747 eroded as Boeing and Airbus developed more fuel efficient two-engine widebody planes. When Boeing confirmed in July 2020 that it would end 747 production, it was already only producing at a rate of half an aircraft a month.
Boeing delivered five 747s in 2022, while in 1990, the peak delivery year of the bestselling 747-400 version, Boeing delivered 70 747s.
As different sections of the last 747 – the wings or fuselage structures, for example – were complete, the production line "just slowly started to shut down," said Kim Smith, Boeing's vice president and general manager for the 747 and 767 programs.
Smith said all 747 program workers were transferred to other jobs or voluntarily retired.
The last 747 rolled out on Dec. 7, capping the program at 1,574 total. The plane has since completed inspections and flight tests, flying to Portland over the holidays to get a paint job. The plane will fly off on Wednesday morning to Atlas’ headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.
While Boeing also builds the 767 and 777 in Everett, the company has yet to decide which program will permanently take over the 747 production bay, which is currently being used for 787 inventory and 777X work, Smith said.
Boeing will remain tied to the 747 through the aftermarket business and the Air Force One replacement program, which Boeing won in 2018.
The heir apparent to the 747, the 777X will not be ready for delivery until 2025, but Boeing Chief Executive David Calhoun focused his goodbye on that future: “The 777, the next plane to dominate this space, displaced all its competition just like that - and we haven’t even introduced the best version.”
(Reporting by Valerie Insinna; additional reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Josie Kao)
ti-amie wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 2:43 am
The end of an era.
It really is. I feel like 747 and Concorde were the two mainstay plane references in pop culture for a long stretch of time and now both are no more. Not at all sure what will take it's place.
by ponchi101 NOTHING will take its place. I have flown in almost all commercial planes (from a DC-6 to the 787, even a 717 (they were very limited), and I am only missing the Concorde, the A380 and the A350) and nothing was as spacious and comfortable as a 747. I once flew business class in a Cathay Pacific 747 and it was indeed a case of "please, DON'T LAND. Fly some more!"
by Suliso A380 is pretty good, but it wasn't a commercial success. The trend seems to be towards smaller planes.
by JazzNU
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:04 pm
NOTHING will take its place. I have flown in almost all commercial planes (from a DC-6 to the 787, even a 717 (they were very limited), and I am only missing the Concorde, the A380 and the A350) and nothing was as spacious and comfortable as a 747. I once flew business class in a Cathay Pacific 747 and it was indeed a case of "please, DON'T LAND. Fly some more!"
Completely agree. It was SO comfy. I used to tell people that were scared to fly for the first time, try to fly on a 747 if you can, it'll be the best first experience you can have. I mean maybe those flights had a little turbulence, but you rarely felt a damn thing. It was such a nice ride.
On the flip side. I couldn't suggest enough not to fly a smaller propeller plane if you're new to flying. Thank the good lord I wasn't anything close to that when I accidentally booked a round trip on one. The opposite of a comfortable ride and very loud. Never again unless it's an emergency.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 6:24 pm
A380 is pretty good, but it wasn't a commercial success. The trend seems to be towards smaller planes.
It went the opposite way. it was too big. 650+ people was above what the market needs.
Emirates will continue to fly it. Most other airlines will retire them too.
The heir to the 747 will be the 777, in the ER versions. The 787 is a better plane, but the 777 is more practical for long range.
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 And, I am sorry, it is not the fault of the rich.
IF the USA is willing to have a national debt that is 2:1 in ratio to its GDP, you must have a way to finance that. The USA have been warned about this national debt for decades now, and nobody does anything to correct that. Greece went belly up when its debt/GDP ratio reached 1:1. The USA has not gone belly up because, if it does, the entire world's economy does too.
If you want the rich to lend the USA money, and NOT collect interest, it is easy. It is called taxation: they would not collect interest, and would not collect capital either.
Go tell that to your senators. Not the rich.
by skatingfan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 11:37 pm
And, I am sorry, it is not the fault of the rich.
Accept that the current situation is not an accident, or a coincidence. It is a plan that was put into place starting with Reagan in the '80's, and it's working exactly as intended.
by ponchi101 It is the sickening idea of "trickle down" economics, I agree with that. But that is the rich having your senators in their pocket.
Jimmy Carter (whom I detest even more than Reagan) said it: the USA is NOT a democracy. It is a plutocracy.
But if the people keep voting for those that are minions of the rich, I say that it is not the fault of the rich.
by ti-amie Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
Two senior Republican lawmakers are asking the US Securities and Exchange Commission to justify including private funds in a proposal that would require high-frequency trading firms to register as securities dealers. https://t.co/4Q9ANVOY8H
by ponchi101
ti-amie wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 1:28 am
Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
Two senior Republican lawmakers WHO MOST LIKELY HAVE LARGE STAKES IN PRIVATE FUNDS are asking the US Securities and Exchange Commission to justify including private funds in a proposal that would require high-frequency trading firms to register as securities dealers AND PUBLISH PUBLICLY OPEN STATEMENTS. https://t.co/4Q9ANVOY8H
As we used to say, fixed that for you
by ti-amie How it started
How it's going
by Ainsley Twitter is a company that I would get as far away from as I could. Esther Crawford being out is probably the best thing that has happened to her in quite some time.
by ti-amie In case it wasn't clear she was laid off.
Twitter Blue head Esther Crawford is out at Twitter
Esther Crawford led Twitter Blue and the company’s payments project. Now she and much of her team have been let go.
By EMMA ROTH
Updated Feb 26, 2023, 3:55 PM EST|
Twitter product manager Esther Crawford no longer has a job at the company following yet another wave of layoffs, as first reported by Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer. Crawford headed up various projects at Twitter, including the company’s Blue with verification subscription as well as Twitter’s forthcoming payments platform.
Alex Heath of The Verge confirmed Crawford and most of the remaining product team were laid off this weekend, leading to speculation that Twitter’s owner Elon Musk may be about to install a new regime at the company.
In a recent interview, Musk said, “I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place in that the product roadmap is clearly laid out” before guessing that “before the end of the year” would be a good time to find a replacement for himself as Twitter CEO.
During her time at Twitter, Crawford emerged as one of Twitter’s most prominent product managers under Elon Musk’s leadership, and notably tweeted a picture of herself on the floor of Twitter’s office in a sleeping bag and eye mask. “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,” the tweet reads.
This latest round of layoffs is at least the fourth one since Musk assumed ownership of Twitter last November. According to Schiffer, the layoffs affected “well above 50” people and were spread throughout multiple departments. They also included Martijn de Kuijper, the founder of the now-shuttered Revue newsletter platform that Twitter acquired in 2021.
Crawford “began angling for a bigger role” shortly after Musk’s takeover, as documented in this inside look at Twitter from Schiffer, Casey Newton, and Alex Heath. She also commented on Musk’s massive layoffs that halved the company’s workforce last year, and at the time wrote on Slack that “drastic cuts were going to be required to survive, no matter who owned the company.”
Update 3:53PM ET: Added additional information on this weekend’s layoffs.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 10:45 pm
In case it wasn't clear she was laid off.
Twitter Blue head Esther Crawford is out at Twitter
Esther Crawford led Twitter Blue and the company’s payments project. Now she and much of her team have been let go.
By EMMA ROTH
Updated Feb 26, 2023, 3:55 PM EST|
Twitter product manager Esther Crawford no longer has a job at the company following yet another wave of layoffs, as first reported by Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer. Crawford headed up various projects at Twitter, including the company’s Blue with verification subscription as well as Twitter’s forthcoming payments platform.
Alex Heath of The Verge confirmed Crawford and most of the remaining product team were laid off this weekend, leading to speculation that Twitter’s owner Elon Musk may be about to install a new regime at the company.
In a recent interview, Musk said, “I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place in that the product roadmap is clearly laid out” before guessing that “before the end of the year” would be a good time to find a replacement for himself as Twitter CEO.
During her time at Twitter, Crawford emerged as one of Twitter’s most prominent product managers under Elon Musk’s leadership, and notably tweeted a picture of herself on the floor of Twitter’s office in a sleeping bag and eye mask. “When your team is pushing round the clock to make deadlines sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork,” the tweet reads.
This latest round of layoffs is at least the fourth one since Musk assumed ownership of Twitter last November. According to Schiffer, the layoffs affected “well above 50” people and were spread throughout multiple departments. They also included Martijn de Kuijper, the founder of the now-shuttered Revue newsletter platform that Twitter acquired in 2021.
Crawford “began angling for a bigger role” shortly after Musk’s takeover, as documented in this inside look at Twitter from Schiffer, Casey Newton, and Alex Heath. She also commented on Musk’s massive layoffs that halved the company’s workforce last year, and at the time wrote on Slack that “drastic cuts were going to be required to survive, no matter who owned the company.”
Update 3:53PM ET: Added additional information on this weekend’s layoffs.
Yeah, she should use this time being laid off to search for another job.
by Owendonovan ^Sucker.
by ti-amie
Owendonovan wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 11:47 pm^Sucker.
It's not funny but...
by ti-amie
by ti-amieTwitter insiders: We can't protect users from trolling under Musk
By Marianna Spring
BBC Disinformation and social media correspondent
Twitter insiders have told the BBC that the company is no longer able to protect users from trolling, state-co-ordinated disinformation and child sexual exploitation, following lay-offs and changes under owner Elon Musk.
Exclusive academic data plus testimony from Twitter users backs up their allegations, suggesting hate is thriving under Mr Musk's leadership, with trolls emboldened, harassment intensifying and a spike in accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.
Current and former employees of the company tell BBC Panorama that features intended to protect Twitter users from trolling and harassment are proving difficult to maintain, amid what they describe as a chaotic working environment in which Mr Musk is shadowed by bodyguards at all times. I've spoken to dozens, with several going on the record for the first time.
The former head of content design says everyone on her team - which created safety measures such as nudge buttons - has been sacked. She later resigned. Internal research by Twitter suggests those safety measures reduced trolling by 60%. An engineer working for Twitter told me "nobody's taking care" of this type of work now, likening the platform to a building that seems fine from the outside, but inside is "on fire".
Twitter has not replied to the BBC's request for comment.
My investigation also reveals:
Concerns that child sexual exploitation is on the rise on Twitter and not being sufficiently raised with law enforcement
Targeted harassment campaigns aimed at curbing freedom of expression, and foreign influence operations - once removed daily from Twitter - are going "undetected", according to a recent employee.
Exclusive data showing how misogynistic online hate targeting me is on the rise since the takeover, and that there has been a 69% increase in new accounts following misogynistic and abusive profiles.
Rape survivors have been targeted by accounts that have become more active since the takeover, with indications they've been reinstated or newly created.
Short presentational grey line
Abuse on Twitter is nothing new for me - I'm a reporter who shares my coverage of disinformation, conspiracies and hate there. But throughout most of last year I noticed it steadily lessening across all of the social media sites. And then in November I realised it had got worse on Twitter again.
It turns out, I was right. A team from the International Center for Journalists and the University of Sheffield have been tracking the hate I receive, and their data revealed the abuse targeted at me on Twitter had more than tripled since Mr Musk took over, compared with the same period in the year before.
All of the social media sites have been under pressure to tackle online hate and harmful content - but they say they're taking measures to deal with it. Measures that no longer seem to be top of the agenda at Twitter.
In San Francisco, the home of Twitter's headquarters, I set out to look for answers. What better place to get them than from an engineer - responsible for the computer code that makes Twitter work. Because he's still working there, he's asked us to conceal his identity, so we're calling him Sam.
"For someone on the inside, it's like a building where all the pieces are on fire," he revealed.
"When you look at it from the outside the façade looks fine, but I can see that nothing is working. All the plumbing is broken, all the faucets, everything."
He says the chaos has been created by the huge disruption in staffing. At least half of Twitter's workforce have been sacked or chosen to leave since Musk bought it. Now people from other teams are having to shift their focus, he says.
"A totally new person, without the expertise, is doing what used to be done by more than 20 people," says Sam. "That leaves room for much more risk, many more possibilities of things that can go wrong."
He says previous features still exist but those who designed and maintained them have left - he thinks they are now left unmanned.
"There are so many things broken and there's nobody taking care of it, that you see this inconsistent behaviour," he tells me.
The level of disarray, in his view, is because Mr Musk doesn't trust Twitter employees. He describes him bringing in engineers from his other company - electric car manufacturer Tesla - and asking them to evaluate engineers' code over just a few days before deciding who to sack. Code like that would take "months" to understand, he tells me.
He believes this lack of trust is betrayed by the level of security Mr Musk surrounds himself with.
"Wherever he goes in the office, there are at least two bodyguards - very bulky, tall, Hollywood movie-[style] bodyguards. Even when [he goes] to the restroom," he tells me.
He thinks for Mr Musk it's about money. He says cleaning and catering staff were all sacked - and that Mr Musk even tried to sell the office plants to employees.
Lisa Jennings Young, Twitter's former head of content design, was one of the people who specialised in introducing features designed to protect users from hate. Twitter was a hotbed for trolling long before Mr Musk took over, but she says her team had made good headway at limiting this. Internal Twitter research, seen by the BBC, appears to back this up.
"It was not at all perfect. But we were trying, and we were making things better all the time," she says. It is the first time she's publicly spoken of her experience since she left after Mr Musk's takeover.
Ms Jennings Young's team worked on several new features including safety mode, which can automatically block abusive accounts. They also designed labels applied to misleading tweets, and something called the "harmful reply nudge". The "nudge" alerts users before they send a tweet in which AI technology has detected trigger words or harmful language.
Twitter's own research, seen by the BBC, appears to show the "nudge" and other safety tools being effective.
"Overall 60% of users deleted or edited their reply when given a chance through the nudge," she says. "But what was more interesting, is that after we nudged people once, they composed 11% fewer harmful replies in the future."
These safety features were being implemented around the time my abuse on Twitter seemed to reduce, according to data collated by the University of Sheffield and International Center for Journalists. It's impossible to directly correlate the two, but given what the evidence tells us about the efficacy of these measures, it's possible to draw a link.
But after Mr Musk took over the social media company in late October 2022, Lisa's entire team was laid off, and she herself chose to leave in late November. I asked Ms Jennings Young what happened to features like the harmful reply nudge.
"There's no-one there to work on that at this time," she told me. She has no idea what has happened to the projects she was doing.
So we tried an experiment.
She suggested a tweet that she would have expected to trigger a nudge. "Twitter employees are lazy losers, jump off the Golden Gate bridge and die." I shared it on a private profile in response to one of her tweets, but to Ms Jennings Young's surprise, no nudge was sent. Another tweet with offensive language we shared was picked up - but Lisa says the nudge should have picked up a message wishing death on a user, not just swear words. As Sam had predicted, it didn't seem to be working as it was designed to.
During this investigation, I've had messages from many people who've told me how the hate they receive on Twitter has been increasing since Mr Musk took over - sharing examples of racism, antisemitism and misogyny.
Ellie Wilson, who lives in Glasgow, was raped while at university and began posting about that experience on social media last summer. At the time, she received a supportive response on Twitter.
But when she tweeted about her attacker in January after he was sentenced, she was subject to a wave of hateful messages. She received abusive and misogynistic replies - with some even telling her she deserved to be raped.
"[What] I find most difficult [is] the people that say that I wasn't raped or that this didn't happen and that I'm lying. It's sort of like a secondary trauma," Ms Wilson told me.
Her Twitter following was smaller before the takeover, but when I looked into accounts targeting her with hate this time around, I noticed the trolls' profiles had become more active since the takeover, suggesting they'd been suspended previously and recently reinstated.
Some of the accounts had even been set up around the time of Mr Musk's takeover. They appeared to be dedicated to sending out hate, without profile pictures or identifying features. Several follow and interact with content from popular accounts that have been accused of promoting misogyny and hate - reinstated on Twitter after Musk decided to restore thousands of suspended accounts, including that of controversial influencer Andrew Tate.
"By allowing those people a platform, you're empowering them. And you're saying, 'This is OK, you can do that.'"
Several of the accounts also targeted other rape survivors she's in contact with.
Andrew Tate did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.
New research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue - a UK think tank that investigates disinformation and hate - echoes what I've uncovered about the troll accounts targeting Ellie.
It shows that tens of thousands of new accounts have been created since Mr Musk took over, which then immediately followed known abusive and misogynistic profiles - 69% higher than before he was in charge.
The research suggests these abusive networks are now growing - and that Mr Musk's takeover has created a "permissive environment" for the creation and use of these kinds of accounts.
by ti-amieWorker asks Elon Musk on Twitter: Have I been fired?
By James Clayton
North America technology reporter
A Twitter employee has appealed to Elon Musk on the platform to ask whether he had been sacked.
In a tweet to the firm's chief executive, Halli Thorleifsson said: "Your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am employed or not".
Mr Musk responded by asking: "What work have you been doing?"
Mr Thorleifsson told the BBC that nine days after being frozen out of Twitter's accounts he did not know whether he had been fired or not.
After a series of follow up questions and answers with Mr Musk, that read like a live interview for his job, Mr Thorleifsson said he received an email confirming that he had been sacked.
Twitter did not immediately respond to the BBC's request for comment.
Mr Thorleifsson, 45, was a senior director in product design for Twitter. He told the BBC the ambiguity around his job was "strange" and "extremely stressful".
"I opened my computer on Sunday morning nine days ago and saw that the screen was grey and locked, indicating that I had been locked out of my Twitter accounts", he said.
"After a few days had passed I started reaching out to people, including Elon and the head of HR to ask about my situation.
"The head of HR has since twice emailed me and has not been able to answer whether or not I am an employee at Twitter."
Frustrated, he tweeted his top boss, Elon Musk.
After several follow up questions Mr Thorleifsson supplied a list of things he had done at the company. The exchange ended with Mr Musk posting two laughing emojis.
Shortly after that exchange Mr Thorleifsson said that Twitter's Human Resources department had contacted him and said that he had been fired.
The exchange was widely shared on Twitter, with Mr Musk wading in with some replies.
He went on to further criticise Mr Thorleifsson saying: "The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm.
"Can't say I have a lot of respect for that."
The Iceland-based entrepreneur had sold his company, Ueno, a creative design agency, to Twitter in early 2021 - after founding the firm in Reykjavik in 2014.
As part of the acquisition he became a full-time employee at Twitter.
"I decided to sell for a few reasons but one of them is that I have muscular dystrophy and my body is slowly but surely failing me," he told the BBC.
"I have a few good work years left in me so this was a way to wrap up my company, and set up myself and my family for years when I won't be able to do as much."
Mr Thorleifsson is worried that Mr Musk will not honour the contract he signed with Twitter when he sold them his company.
"This is extremely stressful. This is my retirement fund, a way to take care of myself and my family as my disease progresses. Having the richest man in the world on the other end of this, potentially refusing to stand by contracts is not easy for me to accept," he said.
Last month, Elon Musk appeared to fire another 200 Twitter employees. It means that Twitter now has just over 2,000 workers - down from approximately 7,500 in October.
"Companies let people go, that's within their rights," Mr Thorleifsson said. "They usually tell people about it but that's seemingly the optional part at Twitter now".
James Clayton is the BBC's North America technology reporter based in San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter @jamesclayton5.
Musk's reply showing his laughing emoji's is embedded in the article. Link is below.
Replying to
@iamharaldur
and
@elonmusk
If he doesn’t pay you, you can sue him & would likely be entitled to at least a year in wages — if not more — in damages. you should definitely seek counsel! plenty would take this case for free
by ti-amie Twitter Death Cult
@cspam@mastodon.cloud
The guy didn't even insult Elon or slight him at all, and Elon just openly, in front of God, the Meme Community, and everyone viciously (expletive) talked this dude for daring to speak to him.
This is a new nadir, even for Elon. Proper Twilight Zone (expletive) seeing that all play out in public. Of all the things that have happened this in particular has left me reeling, like it’s too surreal to have actually happened in our reality.
Twitter Death Cult
@cspam@mastodon.cloud
This information matches what's been reported in this BBC article:
I sincerely hope that the dude has a contract like resetera states and it then gets a goddamn country to sue Twitter for breaking contract and drags him over the coals. Dude deserves way better then how's he's being treated
Twitter Death Cult
@cspam@mastodon.cloud
Here's some background on Hali's alleged deal with Twitter, taken from ResetEra's Musk thread:
Sounds like he's owed a rather large amount of money over time as compensation for pre-Musk Twitter acquiring his company, and Musk is trying to stiff him
by ti-amie I am FLOORED that this was all done in full view of the public. It looks to me that Elmo is going to stiff those who were cut off from their access but were never officially notified that they were fired.
by Suliso Some lawyers will make a lot of money out of all this. Seeing all this I'm amazed he managed to found several highly successful companies. How did he do that despite this way of managing?
by ponchi101 I am amazed at Musk's last statement.
If you were NOT working, then you can still be fired. Properly fired, perhaps, but fired still.
by ti-amie Ólafur Waage
@olafurw@mastodon.social
This is the guy Elon decided to lambast last night.
by ponchi101 I have said it before. The Scandinavians countries (together with Japan and the Kiwis) are nothing more than extraterrestrials that got stranded in this planet.
---0---
I was recently thinking about how to make a "development" ranking. For example. If a given country developed a railway system in 1920, then ANY country that has not developed one, or developed it in the 1980's, has a lag of so many years. First university, first airline, potable water system, so forth. You could work it both ways: a country lags another by how much, or a country is ahead by so much,
Iceland would probably be about to enter the 21st century.
by ti-amie More on Elmo's stupidity re Halli.
P1/
by ti-amie
Courtney Milan @courtneymilan
I guess we will find out the truth when the lawsuit is filed!
Robert Westbrook, Aircraft & Accordion Repair
@Swampfeet
Replying to
@courtneymilan
And Halli comes off as the exact opposite of 'bitter' in this exchange. Seems like a great person.
P2/L
by ti-amie
P1/
by ti-amie
Halli @iamharaldur
I hope that helps! Let me know if you are going to pay what you owe me?
I think you can afford it?
Also
P2/
by ti-amie
P3/L
by ti-amie So when the law suit is filed do Halli's attorney's have to do more than produce these exchanges?
I wonder where Halli will file - Iceland or the US?
by ti-amie Sabri :verified:
@sabri@mastouille.fr
This message is not written by Elon Musk but his lawyers
---
RT @elonmusk
@danielhoughton @anothercohen @iamharaldur I would like to apologize to Halli for my misunderstanding of his situation. It was based on things I was told that were untrue or, in some cases, true, but not meaningful.
He is considering remaining at Twitter.
by ti-amie I dunno if I'm Halli and staring a difficult medical condition in the face I might still ask for the buyout based on the contract I signed.
by ti-amieSilicon Valley Bank is seized by US after historic failure
By KEN SWEET
an hour ago
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S rushed to seize the assets of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday after it experienced a run on the bank, the largest failure of a financial institution since Washington Mutual during the height of the financial crisis more than a decade ago.
Silicon Valley, the nation’s 16th largest bank, failed after depositors — mostly technology workers and venture capital-backed companies — hurried to withdraw money this week as anxiety over the bank’s balance sheet spread. It is the second biggest bank failure in history, behind Washington Mutual.
Silicon Valley was heavily exposed to tech industry and there is little chance of contagion in the banking sector similar to the chaos in the months leading up to the Great Recession more than a decade ago. The biggest banks — those most likely to cause a systemic economic issue — have healthy balance sheets and plenty of capital.
In 2007, the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression rippled across the globe after mortgage-backed securities tied to ill-advised housing loans rippled from the U.S. to Asia and Europe. The panic on Wall Street led to the collapse of the storied Lehman Brothers, founded in 1847. Because major banks had extensive exposure to one another, it led to cascading disruption throughout the global financial system, putting millions out of work.
However, there has been unease in the banking sector all week and the collapse of Silicon Valley pushed shares of almost all financial institutions lower Friday, shares that had already tumbled by double digits since Monday.
Silicon Valley Bank’s failure arrived with incredible speed, with some industry analysts on Friday suggesting it was a good company and still likely a wise investment. Silicon Valley Bank executives were trying to raise capital early Friday and find additional investors. However, trading in the bank’s shares was halted before the opening bell due to extreme volatility.
Shortly before noon eastern, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation moved to shutter the bank. Notably, the FDIC did not wait until the close of business to seize the bank, as is typical in an orderly wind down of a financial institution. The FDIC could not immediately find a buyer for the bank’s assets, signaling how fast depositors had cashed out. The bank’s remaining uninsured deposits will now be locked up in receivership.
by ti-amie Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
The fallout from Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse has led to a selloff in financial stocks that has erased about C$20 billion in value from Canada’s top banks in four days https://t.co/AJrHndWazL
by ti-amie Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
Founders are starting to worry about whether startups will be able to keep paying employees following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank https://t.co/Cxd7jaEEL8
by ti-amie Max Kennerly
@maxkennerly@mstdn.social
In four days, Silicon Valley Bank went from Forbes' "Best Banks" and "Financial All-Stars" to FDIC receivership.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ti-amie Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
ICYMI: Silicon Valley Bank abandoned a planned equity raise, casting doubt on its efforts to shore up capital as it grapples with losses on its securities portfolio and dwindling deposits from start-ups https://t.co/642lk9om12
by ponchi101 You never have a ONE-BANK collapse. The system is too interactive.
There might be more.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 11:27 pm
You never have a ONE-BANK collapse. The system is too interactive.
There might be more.
Agree
by Owendonovan
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 11:27 pm
You never have a ONE-BANK collapse. The system is too interactive.
There might be more.
Yup, no bank is tied to just itself. Possibly the first domino.
by ti-amie I had no idea that this bank is THEE bank for silicon valley.
by ti-amie
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by ponchi101 What will happen on Monday, when the markets open?
by ti-amie
Exhibit A of failing up. Wherever he goes fraud miraculously appears.
Yellen was at pains to make a distinction between a bailout *of the bank* vs a bailout *of depositors* (which is what people want). This headline at the margin makes people more worried, but also helps frame a depositor bailout as, somehow, not-a-bailout https://www.huffpost.com/entry/janet-yelle
by ti-amie This guy wrote his own movie script.
Alexander Torrenegra
@torrenegra
Silicon Valley Bank was the main bank for two of our companies, my personal savings, and my mortgage. This is how things unfolded for us:
Between 2013 and 2023, all good.
Thursday, 9 AM: in one chat with 200+ tech founders (most in the Bay Area), questions about SVB start to show up.
10 AM: some suggest getting the money out of SVB for safety. Only upside. No downside.
10:50 AM: I read the messages in a bathroom break. Immediately cancel the meeting I had. Ask my wife, Tania, to wire all of our personal money out to other banks. Call my teams. Ask them to do the same. One of them, at the dentist, has to stop the procedure and run home.
11:10 AM: We can't get the money out of any of the accounts. For our personal savings, we don't have other bank accounts readily available. For one of the companies, the permissions are not set up to allow such a significant exit of money. We can only get half of the money out. We wire it to Ameritrade, as we don't have any other bank account set up. For the 2nd company, the banking credentials had been changed. I cannot log in.
11:15 AM: Tania gets a hold of another bank we were already talking to, UBS. Ask them to open a bank account pronto.
11:20 AM: I change the permissions for the 1st company. We request another wire out to Ameritrade for the remaining money from that company. We have to wait for the wires to get out.
11:25 AM: After a long wait, I get a hold of an SVB agent. They reset my credentials for the 2nd company.
~12:00 PM: All of my chats with tech founders in the US light on fire with what’s happening. Obviously, we have a bank runoff. Surreal.
12:30 AM: We request two wires for all the money from the 2nd company to Mercury.
12:38 PM: Wires to Ameritrade clear. The 1st company is safe.
12:45 PM: We sign dozens of documents -without reading them- and complete the opening of a personal bank account with UBS.
12:50 PM: Tania requests SVB, via their website, to wire all of our personal savings to UBS. Given the permission settings in place, they tell us that they have to call us.
1:30 PM: SVB is a solid bank. I know their CEO, Greg Becker. Great guy. I figure this is a temporary issue caused mainly by people panicking. They'll recover. I buy shares of SVB at what I consider significantly low prices.
2:09 PM: One of the wires for the other company clears.
~3:00 PM: My chats with tech founders from Latin America start to catch up.
4:05 PM: SVB calls us. Tells us that our savings will be wired the same day, as requested.
4:10 PM: We jump on a plane to fly back to San Francisco.
11:50 PM: We land. We learn that the 2nd wire for the 2nd company hasn’t cleared yet. Worst, the wire to get our personal savings out of SVB is still in the queue.
2 AM: Go to bed.
Friday 7 AM: Wake up. Nothing. SVB stock is 60% down overnight.
7:30 AM: Cancel all morning meetings to focus on the problem.
~8:00 AM: Learn that SVB is now controlled by the government. The shares I bought the day before are now likely worthless. I made a mistake.
9:00 AM: Host a town hall with my team. Explain what's happening. Answer questions.
All day long: Wait and cope with the anxiety. Help other entrepreneurs. Share what we know. Answer questions from investors.
~4:00 PM: Figure that the money for the company with the pending wire is safe. It will be available as of Monday. Unfortunately, for our personal savings, only a portion is safe. We may recover most of the money. The percentage, however, remains unclear. It may take years.
5:00 PM: Play with the kids. They help me forget about the material world.
At night: Reflect. "What did I do wrong?". "Am I good enough to do what I do?" Hug Tania.
Saturday: Figure there is nothing of value by focusing on the topic. It’s an externality. We shouldn’t invest too much time thinking about them. Or trying to predict the markets. Time to go back to what we can control: the execution of our companies.
The learn to code VC genius types wiped out their own troubled but probably ultimately solid bank because they were all in a group chat together and panicked.
by ponchi101 So, if I am reading this well.
A SOLID back can go under in a matter of hours if, in a chat, a group of people question how solid it is and their default mechanism to protect assets is to take their assets in that bank out of the bank, because it is the safe thing to do (no downside) and, in doing so, they then create a runoff that does make the bank unstable, together with all their assets, which make them, at a minimum, place such assets at risk and, at a maximum, lose them.
Therefore: NO BANK IN THE WORLD is safe. Might as well turn all your assets to gold and bury them in the backyard.
Am I misreading this?
by ti-amie
British Banks in Talks Over Rescue Plan for SVB UK’s Depositors
Big banks push for government guarantee to take on customers
Scheme is Plan B if hopes for a sale of SVB UK fall through
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:17 pm
So, if I am reading this well.
A SOLID back can go under in a matter of hours if, in a chat, a group of people question how solid it is and their default mechanism to protect assets is to take their assets in that bank out of the bank, because it is the safe thing to do (no downside) and, in doing so, they then create a runoff that does make the bank unstable, together with all their assets, which make them, at a minimum, place such assets at risk and, at a maximum, lose them.
Therefore: NO BANK IN THE WORLD is safe. Might as well turn all your assets to gold and bury them in the backyard.
Am I misreading this?
Nope.
by ti-amie PRESS RELEASES
Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC
March 12, 2023
WASHINGTON, DC -- The following statement was released by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell, and FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg:
Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system. This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth.
After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, and consulting with the President, Secretary Yellen approved actions enabling the FDIC to complete its resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, in a manner that fully protects all depositors. Depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13. No losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.
We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority. All depositors of this institution will be made whole. As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer.
Shareholders and certain unsecured debtholders will not be protected. Senior management has also been removed. Any losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund to support uninsured depositors will be recovered by a special assessment on banks, as required by law.
Finally, the Federal Reserve Board on Sunday announced it will make available additional funding to eligible depository institutions to help assure banks have the ability to meet the needs of all their depositors.
The U.S. banking system remains resilient and on a solid foundation, in large part due to reforms that were made after the financial crisis that ensured better safeguards for the banking industry. Those reforms combined with today’s actions demonstrate our commitment to take the necessary steps to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 3:07 am
What will happen on Monday, when the markets open?
by ti-amie MARKETS Regulators close New York’s Signature Bank, citing systemic risk
PUBLISHED SUN, MAR 12 20236:24 PM EDT UPDATED 1 MIN AGO
U.S. regulators said Sunday it shut down New York-based Signature Bank
, a second financial institution they shuttered after Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.
“We are also announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank, New York, New York, which was closed today by its state chartering authority,” Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC said in a joined statement Sunday evening.
The banking regulators said depositors at Signature Bank will have full access to their deposits.
“All depositors of this institution will be made whole. As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer,” the regulators said.
Signature is one of the main banks to the cryptocurrency industry. As of Dec. 31, Signature had $110.4 billion in total assets and $88.6 billion in total deposits, according to a securities filing.
To stem the damage and stave off a bigger crisis, the Fed and Treasury created an emergency a program to backstop deposits at Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank using the Fed’s emergency lending authority.
The regulators shuttered SVB on Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis — and the second-largest ever.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
So if the affected banks paid into this fund they should be okay I guess.
The Joe Biden administration is the worst POS administration in the history of all POS administration that have ever administrated anything that was administratable.
I guess.
(man, do I like this uncle. Get (expletive) done. Can we have him as president of SOUTH America when he is done with you guys?).
by ponchi101
ti-amie wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:46 pm
MARKETS Regulators close New York’s Signature Bank, citing systemic risk
PUBLISHED SUN, MAR 12 20236:24 PM EDT UPDATED 1 MIN AGO
...
Signature is one of the main banks to the cryptocurrency industry. As of Dec. 31, Signature had $110.4 billion in total assets and $88.6 billion in total deposits, according to a securities filing.
...
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
I know that I just posted that Uncle Joe is the man. The old man, but the man.
But he has to step up, together with all people that have any credibility and explain it to the world: crypto is a scam. Because, sooner or later, it will smear everybody.
by ti-amie Dan Froomkin/presswatchers.org
@froomkin@journa.host
Can you ethically work in the @WSJ newsroom for the same people who publish this racist sewage?
Not without saying something.
---
RT @JamesFallows
Have long said that WSJ ed and op-ed page are Fox News, in print.
But not sure that even Fox would have aired this right now. On causes of SVB collapse.
by ti-amieFirst Republic drops 50%, leads decline in bank stocks despite government’s backstop of SVB
PUBLISHED MON, MAR 13 20236:49 AM EDTUPDATED 21 MIN AGO
Jesse Pound
John Melloy
KEY POINTS
First Republic said Sunday it had received additional liquidity from the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase.
The bank said the move raises its unused liquidity to $70 billion, before any funding it could get from a new Fed facility.
The Federal Reserve created a new Bank Term Funding Program that will offer loans for up to a year to banks in return for high quality collateral like Treasurys.
First Republic Bank led a decline in bank shares Monday that came even after regulators’ extraordinary actions Sunday evening to backstop all depositors in failed Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and offer additional funding to other troubled institutions.
San Francisco’s First Republic shares lost 61.8% on Monday after declining 33% last week. PacWest Bancorp dropped 45%, and Western Alliance Bancorp lost more than 47% as regional bank stocks fell sharply. Zions Bancorporation shed about 26%, while KeyCorp
fell 27%. Other financial firms were also under pressure, as Bank of America slipped 5.8%, while Charles Schwab tumbled more than 11%.
Many of the bank stocks were halted repeatedly for volatility throughout the day.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 8:22 pm
Dan Froomkin/presswatchers.org
@froomkin@journa.host
Can you ethically work in the @WSJ newsroom for the same people who publish this racist sewage?
Not without saying something.
---
RT @JamesFallows
Have long said that WSJ ed and op-ed page are Fox News, in print.
For sure. This sounds like business as usual at WSJ to me.
by ti-amie
by ti-amieUS banks launch $30bn rescue of First Republic to stem spiraling crisis
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan agree to prop up troubled bank after its shares tumbled amid wider turmoil
Dominic Rushe in New York
Thu 16 Mar 2023 20.47 GMT
Wall Street’s giants moved to end the US’s spiraling banking crisis on Thursday by agreeing to prop up troubled First Republic, a mid-sized bank whose shares have been pummeled amid a wider banking turmoil.
Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and others will deposit $30bn in First Republic, which has seen customers yank their money following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and fears that First Republic could be next.
“The actions of America’s largest banks reflect their confidence in the country’s banking system. Together, we are deploying our financial strength and liquidity into the larger system, where it is needed the most,” the banks said in a joint statement on Thursday.
The big banks have received billions in deposits from smaller, regional banks as the banking crisis has spooked their customers. US authorities swooped in to take control of SVB and New York’s Signature bank last weekend after frightened customers pulled their deposits.
Banks and regulators are hoping that the action will act as a firewall by protecting First Republic and stopping the crisis spreading to other smaller banks.
Shares in First Republic – a San Francisco-based bank that largely caters to wealthier clients including Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg – had fallen about 70% since the news of SVB’s collapse. They fell another 22% on Thursday before the bailout but ended the day up nearly 10%.
In a joint statement, US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell and senior regulators said: “This show of support by a group of large banks is most welcome, and demonstrates the resilience of the banking system.”
Ahead of the news Yellen assured Congress on Thursday that the US banking system was “sound”.
“I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system is sound, and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” she told the Senate finance committee.
SVB had a high percentage of “uninsured” deposits – deposits above the $250,000 government insured limit. SVB’s uninsured deposits accounted for 94% of its total. First Republic’s percentage of uninsured deposits was far lower – at 68% according to S&P Global - but was high enough to worry investors and depositors with more than $250,000 in accounts at the bank.
The unprecedented rescue plan will see most of the US’s largest banks making uninsured deposits into First Republic. Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo are each making a $5bn deposit into First Republic. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are each making deposits of $2.5bn, and BNY Mellon, PNC Bank, State Street, Truist and US Bank are each making a deposit of $1bn, for a total deposit from the eleven banks of $30bn.
The news came as the Swiss central bank issued a $53.7bn loan to Credit Suisse to stem its own crisis of confidence. The long-troubled bank’s share price had collapsed after its largest shareholder, Saudi National Bank, said it was unable to provide more financing to Credit Suisse.
by ti-amie Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
LIVE: UBS agreed to buy Credit Suisse in a historic, government-brokered deal aimed at containing a crisis of confidence that threatened to spread across global financial markets.
by ponchi101 Two ladies (and I mean, my age-old women) yesterday were at the little market I shop at, in front of me. They were talking about "the banks", and how they needed to take their money out because "all the banks will fail".
I thought I should have interrupted and explain a couple of things (yes, mansplain, I guess). I decided not to. But if on Tuesday (tomorrow is a holiday here) all the frigging banks in Colombia go belly up, I will know where it started.
At a supermarket. By two little old ladies.
This may spread.
by ti-amie Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
Signature Bank wasn’t some nationwide retail behemoth or slick tech star.
Mostly, it was an old-school New York bank that survived business with cabbies, Trump and "bad landlords" — only to be brought down after pivoting to crypto https://t.co/gKxipZ3vLR
by ti-amie
Why Credit Suisse ‘CoCo’ Bonds Are Causing So Much Anxiety
Analysis by Hannah Benjamin-Cook, Ronan Martin and Paul Cohen | Bloomberg
March 18, 2023 at 2:09 p.m. EDT
Much of the financial world has been watching Credit Suisse Group AG closely as it flirted with disaster, but few have done so with more worry than the holders of its contingent convertible bonds, also known as CoCos. Sometimes described as high-yield investments with a hand grenade attached, CoCos are the lowest rung of bank debt. That means that while they produce juicy returns in good times, they’re designed to be among the first to feel pain if a bank’s troubles get bad enough. Credit Suisse got a $54 billion vote of confidence from the Swiss National Bank, but the value of its CoCos tumbled, leaving holders nursing some serious losses along with serious apprehensions.
1. What is a CoCo bond?
Introduced after the global financial crisis, they’re essentially a cross between a bond and a stock that helps banks bolster capital to meet regulations designed to prevent failure. They’re contingent in the sense that their status can change if a bank’s capital levels fall below a specified level; they’re convertible because in many cases they can be turned into equity — shares of the bank — if the shortfall gets big enough. In other cases CoCos are written down in whole or in part. This buffer of debt and equity is intended to prevent taxpayers from having to shoulder the bill for a bank’s collapse, with CoCos giving banks a bigger capital cushion amid concern in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that many were over-leveraged. For regulators, CoCos are a way for banks to be pulled back from the brink without the cost falling on taxpayers or existing shareholders. CoCos are also known as Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds.
2. How many does Credit Suisse have?
The Swiss lender’s holding company has 13 CoCos outstanding worth a combined $17.3 billion, issued in Swiss francs, US dollars and Singapore dollars, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s just above 20% of its total debt pile. Its biggest CoCos are denominated in US dollars — it has a $2b perpetual note that can be called in July and a $2.25b note with a first call in December. The securities are typically undated, meaning the bond has no defined maturity but lenders can call for repayment normally after around five years. Investors price CoCos to their expected worth at their first call dates. When they’re not called — in other words, when they’re extended — prices tend to fall. The recent global market selloff has driven corporate funding costs higher, meaning there’s now a higher chance a lender could opt to skip a call because it could prove expensive to replace an existing note with a new one.
3. Should Credit Suisse’s CoCo investors be worried?
Potentially, yes, because CoCos are among the last in line to be paid if a bank fails and all of Credit Suisse’s outstanding CoCos are writedown ones rather than the type that can be converted in to equity. Yields on its CoCos have surged to distressed levels, alongside that of its other bail-in bonds. Credit Suisse Group AG has about 78 billion Swiss francs ($84 billion) of holding company debt that includes both types of notes. If the regulator were to step in to protect depositors, then the CoCos would be written off and bail-in-able senior holding company debt converted to equity. Under the international banking regulations known as Basel rules, big European banks need to meet a minimum requirement for the amount of their own funds and eligible liabilities, more commonly known as MREL, to support an effective resolution in the event of a collapse. If a lender’s capital ratios fall below a predetermined level, then CoCos can be written down. They rank just behind common shares in the capital structure and are intended to absorb losses. Next in line is tier 2 debt, which will only stop paying investors when a bank is already defunct.
4. Have CoCos ever been wiped out?
Yes — there’s been one instance of a lender’s CoCos being wiped out. In 2017, Banco Popular Espanol SA was taken over by Spanish rival Santander SA after it was unable to fill a big capital hole. The event prompted regulators to forcibly write off its CoCos. If regulators push through a takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS Group AG, it’s possible that they would force a writedown of CoCos as part of the deal.
5. Why do Credit Suisse’s CoCos matter?
No one really knows how bad the fallout would be but Spanish lender Banco Popular’s CoCos wipeout shows that it is possible for the worst to happen. As Credit Suisse only has writedown AT1s outstanding, if it did fail then those notes would simply be written off. To be sure, CoCos were dreamed up by regulators after the 2008 financial crisis as a way of helping banks bolster capital ratios by tapping debt investors, so the risks of holding them are well-known. (As were their attractions — as recently as early March subordinated debt was seen as an attractive alternative to longer-duration bonds whose value was sinking. European CoCos were up 2.8%, according to a ICE BofA indexes.)
6. How might regulators get involved?
If a bank runs into serious trouble, regulators can declare a Point of Non-Viability to try to protect depositors, limit a bank’s losses and avoid contagion, that is, having one bank’s troubles pull other banks down. This would happen if regulators believed a lender’s balance sheet had deteriorated to a point of non-viability. Since the financial crisis, lenders have had to make known their Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratios of liquid holdings of cash and stock so that regulators can monitor capital strength. The European Banking Authority has also conducted stress tests using the CET1 ratio — the higher the ratio, the better a lender’s financial strength. It’s unlikely regulators would let a situation carry on long enough for a bank’s CET1 ratio to fall below the required threshold. However, even in the case of the collapsed Banco Popular, its CET1 disclosures failed to reveal the extend of its problems in a timely fashion, suggesting that fast-moving situations could make it difficult for regulators to fully gauge the extent of any serious problems. European regulators’ reach extends to more senior debt as well: In the aftermath of the euro area debt crisis they introduced a so-called bail-in approach to avoid situations where taxpayers have to foot the bill of a bank rescue. If Swiss authorities decide to impose losses onto bondholders as part of an intervention, about 60 billion francs of senior debt issued by Credit Suisse Group will be converted into equity.
by ponchi101 In the end, the banks always get bailed out.
Has got to be the safest industry ever. No matter how bad you screw up, you never get punished.
by Suliso Depends... Shareholders will only get 1/3 of the last stock price. One could argue it should be zero, but still lots of people will lose money here.
by ponchi101 I meant the people running the bank. Not shareholders and much less users of the bank. Those get shafted regularly.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
UPDATE: Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, who presided over a more than $40 billion cryptocurrency implosion last year, was detained in Podgorica while trying to fly to Dubai using falsified Costa Rican traveling documents https://t.co/lF5yBM5w6u
Podgorica is the capital of Montenegro.
by ti-amie
by JazzNU The level of stupidity is astounding. They've turned blue checkmarks from proof that you've been verified after a very thorough process that you are who you say you are to proof that you paid $8/month and literally nothing else but let's still call it verified. The replies are hilarious. It's truly shocking how they can't seem to make a single good change. I'm not sure who is using Twitter more since they took it over, but it's certainly no one that I know. I've never used Twitter less or Instagram and Reddit more.
by ti-amie
So $24b went up in smoke?
Today he's claiming that some of Twitter's source code was leaked and that the hunt is on for the perpetrator. Better that than the above be the focus of the public.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie Bloomberg News Bot
@bloombergnews@mstdnnewsbots.org
EXCLUSIVE: President Maduro's administration said it would push back a legal deadline on Venezuela's $60 billion in defaulted debt, a move that creditors welcomed as an important first step https://t.co/QGuVQRpXri
by ponchi101 Nope. Self driving cars/trucks are not a political tool. Self driving trucks would be a fantastic cost reduction for the transportation industry. The taxi systems in all cities would be radically modified.
And millions of drivers would be left without work.
It was not to stop public investment in other systems.
I've known about this non-delivery for a couple of years, read several articles and a ton on Reddit about it and it was wild how okay some people were with being ripped off for so much. Really spoke to the economics of the Tesla customer and really the skewed fandom that people were trying to give the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't a rip off and it was on the way, despite it being promised and delayed over and over and over again. Now that was only some people, others were getting disillusioned and way more said, I know a scam when I see one. Even more of a scam because they continued to sell it when it wasn't ready and hadn't been ready year after year, model after model.
They should've been had a massive class action about this fraud, so it's about time, I hope they finally do something on a wider scale. Not because I hate Musk, even though I do, but because no company should be getting away with charging $5K, then $10k, then $12k for a promised service that hasn't been delivered after years of it first being purchased. It's just a scam and no company should be doing it, let alone prop up their bottom line with that fraud while customers have nothing to show for that money. If Tesla gets away with it, other companies will come along with similar things. It won't work as well with other companies, but ones with fandom tied to it, like a Peloton, could definitely rip people off in a similar manner. This shouldn't be part of a company's financial portfolio.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by mmmm8
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 7:54 pm
Nope. Self driving cars/trucks are not a political tool. Self driving trucks would be a fantastic cost reduction for the transportation industry. The taxi systems in all cities would be radically modified.
And millions of drivers would be left without work.
It was not to stop public investment in other systems.
by mmmm8 An interesting part of the Twitter blue check thing is that they're asking corporate accounts to pay $1,000 to be a "verified organization" and all affiliated account have to pay $50 to be part of the "verified organization." A month.
Now, for big corporates, it's not really a huge amount if it got them access to such a large audience... except it was free before and instead they could just pay $8 a month for the stupid checkmark.
For small and non-profit organizations, this is an issue.
by ponchi101 I know nothing about this, not being in SM, but from what my GF sees, most small companies are in IG, and not in TWT. Again, I do not know if it is right.
So, TWT charging these amounts will not affect these companies; at least, not those in Colombia, where almost all smaller businesses handle their SM presence via IG or WA.
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 7:54 pm
Nope. Self driving cars/trucks are not a political tool. Self driving trucks would be a fantastic cost reduction for the transportation industry. The taxi systems in all cities would be radically modified.
And millions of drivers would be left without work.
It was not to stop public investment in other systems.
Because if you were to get some public (and massive) investment in infrastructure, the FSD vision would be easier.
Imagine dedicated FSD lanes in highways. That would take care of a large part of the problem: OTHER drivers. If you could coordinate roads where only FSD would be allowed, it would be easier.
In dedicated roads, you could implement other hardware and software to make FSD better. So, if anything, FSD would need more investment on roads and structures, not less.
by mmmm8
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 3:01 pm
Because if you were to get some public (and massive) investment in infrastructure, the FSD vision would be easier.
Imagine dedicated FSD lanes in highways. That would take care of a large part of the problem: OTHER drivers. If you could coordinate roads where only FSD would be allowed, it would be easier.
In dedicated roads, you could implement other hardware and software to make FSD better. So, if anything, FSD would need more investment on roads and structures, not less.
The tweet was about investing in rail and public transit, rather than highway infrastructure, though. There hasn't been pushback against highway infrastructure in the same way as against mass transit.
by Suliso It's not all mutually exclusive. Rail is a big plus, but of course it doesn't replace highways. I should know living in a country with possibly the world's best passenger railway infrastructure.
by ponchi101 Do you know that the plot of ROGER RABBIT (yes, the CARTOON movie) was based on reality? Early in the 20th century, the big three in Detroit pushed for the dismantling of the California (and all the west) rail system, so people would have to buy cars.
Which has its minuses. I should know, as I live in a continent with basically NO railway infrastructure.
(Did I just flipped my position?)
by Suliso Coincidentally I'm on a train to Milan right now. It's rare to see a Swiss train fully booked out. That's ca 800 people.
by ti-amie I still remember the ease and convenience of getting around Europe via its rail system. I was thinking about taking a rail trip to Chicago but was shocked that there is no way to do that without changing a bunch of times. And what about high speed rail in the US? We're so far behind.
by Suliso In US it's hard. You could go to DC or Boston easily, I suppose, but that's about it.
by ponchi101
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 5:54 pm
Coincidentally I'm on a train to Milan right now. It's rare to see a Swiss train fully booked out. That's ca 800 people.
You live in some sort of fairy tale, to me.
You are in a train from one country to another, with full internet access. The sole internet access we get here is via cell phones (which is pretty good, I have to admit) but, a train from Bogota to Lima? Go ahead, joke.
by JazzNU
ti-amie wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 6:09 pm
I still remember the ease and convenience of getting around Europe via its rail system. I was thinking about taking a rail trip to Chicago but was shocked that there is no way to do that without changing a bunch of times. And what about high speed rail in the US? We're so far behind.
I really don't recommend it even when it's more of a direct route. Or more to the point, I've made sure people know what they are getting into with a trip of that kind and to pack their patience. So less don't do it and more be aware. Because I think people who live in the Northeast would be generally somewhat displeased with train rides outside of the Northeast. I've taken the train from somewhere between DC and Boston more times than I can possibly count, I was basically a regular somewhere on that route since I was young teenager. Amtrak owns the rails in the Northeast, they move about to their own schedules that they set. In other parts of the country, they must cede to the owner of the rails, typically Conrail, CSX or whatever name is the owner these days.
Short trips are less of an issue. When I would take the train from Chicago to Champaign, the trains were typically on time or close to it and no big deal, very similar to riding in the Northeast, though the trains themselves were a different style. It's the longer distance once outside of the Northeast that I'm really talking about.
I've take the train direct from Chicago to Pittsburgh and back when I was a student because it was much cheaper than a flight last minute (I needed to go to a funeral). It is not fun sitting and waiting for a Conrail train to pass, can't get those many hours back. But that's when I would suggest it, when you're a poor student with much more time than money.
by ti-amie Thanks for the details Jazz. I never thought about the reasons behind the long trip or that the northeast really does have a good rail system because of Amtrak.
Sigh.
by mmmm8
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 5:54 pm
Coincidentally I'm on a train to Milan right now. It's rare to see a Swiss train fully booked out. That's ca 800 people.
I've taken that train!
Also, I was on a train this weekend, it goes between Boston and Washington, DC (I was on the NYC to Philly stretch). There are frequent trains, a couple an hour. The one I was on was fully booked too. I know this is an established route in a very populated region, somewhere in the Midwest might see more hesitancy, but believe there is demand in the US too.
by Suliso Funny effect riding a train parallel to a highway. Visually looks like a perpetual traffic jam on a highway, but actually no. We're just moving ca 100 mph faster than them.
We're on a Milan-Rome high speed train to Bologna today.
by ponchi101 I said it before, I will say it again: I envy you.
To me, this is the equivalent of a person in the middle ages hearing somebody else talking about his magic carpet
by Suliso You've traveled the world perhaps still more than me and to some very funny places too.
Suliso wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 5:54 pm
Coincidentally I'm on a train to Milan right now. It's rare to see a Swiss train fully booked out. That's ca 800 people.
I've taken that train!
Also, I was on a train this weekend, it goes between Boston and Washington, DC (I was on the NYC to Philly stretch). There are frequent trains, a couple an hour. The one I was on was fully booked too. I know this is an established route in a very populated region, somewhere in the Midwest might see more hesitancy, but believe there is demand in the US too.
That route is really cheap if you buy a few weeks out as well.
by ti-amieTwitter Isn’t a Company Anymore
It’s been merged into a new entity called X Corp. Here’s what that could mean.
BY NITISH PAHWA AND MARK JOSEPH STERN
APRIL 10, 20234:29 PM
In a court filing on Tuesday, April 4, Twitter Inc. quietly revealed a major development: It no longer exists. The company is currently being sued by right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, who accused it of violating federal racketeering laws when it banned her account in 2019. Loomer has a Twitter account again, and her absurd lawsuit is bound to fail—but until it does, Twitter, as a defendant, must continue to submit corporate disclosure statements to the court. And so, in its most recent filing, the company provided notice that “Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists.” As the “successor in interest” to Twitter Inc.—that is, the survivor of the merger—X Corp. is now the defendant in Loomer’s suit. Its parent corporation is identified as X Holdings Corp.
It’s hard to know what to make of Musk’s transformation of Twitter into X Corp. (When asked for comment, Twitter responded with a poop emoji, as is its recent custom.) Elon Musk, who owns Twitter as well as X Holdings Corp., has not yet revealed this merger to the public. But it appears to have been on his mind since he first plotted his purchase of the social media company. In April 2022, Musk registered X Holdings I, II, and III in Delaware, three separate companies designed to facilitate his purchase of Twitter. According to that deal, Twitter would merge with X Holdings II, but keep its name and general corporate structure while continuing to operate under Delaware law. X Holdings I, controlled by Musk, would then serve as the merged entity’s parent company, while X Holdings III would take on the $13 billion loan that a group of big banks provided Musk to help cover the $44 billion purchase. (According to Twitter’s demands in its litigation against Musk, X Holdings I would be intended “solely for the purpose of engaging in, and arranging financing for, the transactions.”)
Here’s where things get interesting. As the merger agreement stated, X Holdings II would cease to exist as a functioning entity after merging with Twitter. So the official structure after Musk’s takeover was: X Holdings I oversees Twitter Inc., while X Holdings III handles the cash. The Nevada filings show this exact arrangement is no longer in effect.
According to the Nevada secretary of state’s online business portal, Elon Musk registered two new businesses in the state on March 9: X Holdings Corp., and X Corp. Then, on March 15, Musk applied to merge those Nevada businesses with two of his existing companies: X Holdings I with X Holdings Corp., and Twitter Inc. with X Corp. In the latter’s case, the articles of the merger mandate that X Corp. fully acquire Twitter—meaning that, for all intents and purposes, “Twitter Inc.” no longer exists as a Delaware-based company. Now it’s part of X Corp., whose parent company is the $2 million X Holdings Corp. And that means X Holdings I no longer exists, either. Both X Holdings Corp. and X Corp. now fall under Nevada’s jurisdiction instead of Delaware’s. (It seems an anonymous SPAC-trader tracker first broke this news.)
The structural overhaul was acknowledged in the Loomer case about three weeks after X Corp. was registered in Carson City. So far, it doesn’t appear that the changeover has been noted in other legal documents, much less announced to the public. Currently, the company known as “Twitter Inc.” is involved in a host of litigation: against the entire country of India over censorship concerns, against vendors who claim Twitter is not paying them what they’re owed, and against former Twitter employees who claim Musk violated labor laws when he fired them en masse last fall. As far as we can tell, there are no updates in any of those cases regarding Twitter’s transformation into X Corp.
So why is X Corp. now a thing, and why is it established in Nevada? Some vintage Musk lore may provide insight here.
Elon Musk has long been attached to the letter X, even outside of his kids’ names. In 1999, he founded X.com, an online bank that soon merged with another company to become PayPal. The letter appeared in other business ventures over the years: SpaceX, Tesla’s Model X car, the three X Holdings corporations, and “Project X,” the official SEC-recognized name for the Twitter purchase’s $13 billion bank loan. After completing the Twitter takeover in October, Musk claimed this purchase would “accelerate” the creation of an “everything app” that would be named—you guessed it—after the letter X. Such a “super app,” Musk has stated, could resemble something like China’s WeChat, the combination messaging/social networking/payment app that boasts a billion users; Twitter’s functions would play an important role in this megasize app.
In a court filing on Tuesday, April 4, Twitter Inc. quietly revealed a major development: It no longer exists. The company is currently being sued by right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer, who accused it of violating federal racketeering laws when it banned her account in 2019. Loomer has a Twitter account again, and her absurd lawsuit is bound to fail—but until it does, Twitter, as a defendant, must continue to submit corporate disclosure statements to the court. And so, in its most recent filing, the company provided notice that “Twitter, Inc. has been merged into X Corp. and no longer exists.” As the “successor in interest” to Twitter Inc.—that is, the survivor of the merger—X Corp. is now the defendant in Loomer’s suit. Its parent corporation is identified as X Holdings Corp.
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It’s hard to know what to make of Musk’s transformation of Twitter into X Corp. (When asked for comment, Twitter responded with a poop emoji, as is its recent custom.) Elon Musk, who owns Twitter as well as X Holdings Corp., has not yet revealed this merger to the public. But it appears to have been on his mind since he first plotted his purchase of the social media company. In April 2022, Musk registered X Holdings I, II, and III in Delaware, three separate companies designed to facilitate his purchase of Twitter. According to that deal, Twitter would merge with X Holdings II, but keep its name and general corporate structure while continuing to operate under Delaware law. X Holdings I, controlled by Musk, would then serve as the merged entity’s parent company, while X Holdings III would take on the $13 billion loan that a group of big banks provided Musk to help cover the $44 billion purchase. (According to Twitter’s demands in its litigation against Musk, X Holdings I would be intended “solely for the purpose of engaging in, and arranging financing for, the transactions.”)
Here’s where things get interesting. As the merger agreement stated, X Holdings II would cease to exist as a functioning entity after merging with Twitter. So the official structure after Musk’s takeover was: X Holdings I oversees Twitter Inc., while X Holdings III handles the cash. The Nevada filings show this exact arrangement is no longer in effect.
According to the Nevada secretary of state’s online business portal, Elon Musk registered two new businesses in the state on March 9: X Holdings Corp., and X Corp. Then, on March 15, Musk applied to merge those Nevada businesses with two of his existing companies: X Holdings I with X Holdings Corp., and Twitter Inc. with X Corp. In the latter’s case, the articles of the merger mandate that X Corp. fully acquire Twitter—meaning that, for all intents and purposes, “Twitter Inc.” no longer exists as a Delaware-based company. Now it’s part of X Corp., whose parent company is the $2 million X Holdings Corp. And that means X Holdings I no longer exists, either. Both X Holdings Corp. and X Corp. now fall under Nevada’s jurisdiction instead of Delaware’s. (It seems an anonymous SPAC-trader tracker first broke this news.)
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Wait, Twitter soon to be X?
Merger filed with Twitter and X Corp and X being the survivor? pic.twitter.com/oNDkZufsHQ
— SpacTrader110 (@SpacTrader110) April 4, 2023
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The structural overhaul was acknowledged in the Loomer case about three weeks after X Corp. was registered in Carson City. So far, it doesn’t appear that the changeover has been noted in other legal documents, much less announced to the public. Currently, the company known as “Twitter Inc.” is involved in a host of litigation: against the entire country of India over censorship concerns, against vendors who claim Twitter is not paying them what they’re owed, and against former Twitter employees who claim Musk violated labor laws when he fired them en masse last fall. As far as we can tell, there are no updates in any of those cases regarding Twitter’s transformation into X Corp.
So why is X Corp. now a thing, and why is it established in Nevada? Some vintage Musk lore may provide insight here.
Elon Musk has long been attached to the letter X, even outside of his kids’ names. In 1999, he founded X.com, an online bank that soon merged with another company to become PayPal. The letter appeared in other business ventures over the years: SpaceX, Tesla’s Model X car, the three X Holdings corporations, and “Project X,” the official SEC-recognized name for the Twitter purchase’s $13 billion bank loan. After completing the Twitter takeover in October, Musk claimed this purchase would “accelerate” the creation of an “everything app” that would be named—you guessed it—after the letter X. Such a “super app,” Musk has stated, could resemble something like China’s WeChat, the combination messaging/social networking/payment app that boasts a billion users; Twitter’s functions would play an important role in this megasize app.
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It’s also possible that X is meant to be more of an everything company than an everything app. In late 2020, YouTuber and longtime Tesla investor Dave Lee tweeted that Musk should “form a holding company called X” to serve as the “parent company of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and Boring Company.” (Musk’s response: “Good idea.”) In that light, Musk’s choice of Nevada as home base for X Corp. takes on extra significance, considering the entrepreneur has established some of his largest ventures in the Silver State. In 2016, he opened a Tesla Gigafactory near Reno to produce electric vehicle batteries; earlier this year, he announced a $3.6 billion expansion of the facility in order to manufacture electric trucks. Nevada also hosts a few projects from Musk’s Boring Company, like the transit tunnel built under the Las Vegas Convention Center in 2021, and the still-in-development Vegas Loop. In 2020, when Musk threatened to move Tesla headquarters out of California in response to the state’s pandemic-shutdown measures, he proposed Nevada as a potential option before settling on Texas. With the new filing, Musk now operates at least three businesses in Nevada, one of which is now part of an overarching X company.
No matter which path he chooses, Musk’s X faces a difficult future. A now-tech-skeptical Congress would undoubtedly cast a close eye over an American version of WeChat, as would regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission now taking a firmer stance against tech monopolies. And investors might not be happy if Musk tries to stuff each of his separate companies into X Holdings Corporation. For now, his Twitter is likely to garner only more scrutiny, making the big X he just put on it all the more fitting.
Well, if it's POC losing their jobs, no biggie, right, it's the GOP.
by ti-amieGOP readies debt ceiling vote as Wall Street braces for costly standoff
Investors are beginning to hedge against a possible government default, laying bare the stakes of congressional inaction
By Tony Romm
Investors on Wall Street are bracing for the prospect of a protracted, costly standoff in Washington over the debt ceiling, underscoring the economic risks as House Republicans prepare to vote on new legislation as soon as Wednesday.
In recent weeks, two key developments — including a drop in yields on government bonds set to mature imminently — have suggested a growing panic that the GOP’s demands could cause the country to default, touching off what analysts widely believe would be another U.S. recession.
The uncertainty has added to the challenge facing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as he looks to assuage some Republicans’ last-minute reservations over a bill that Democrats uniformly oppose. The GOP proposal would slash federal spending dramatically and unwind some of President Biden’s top priorities, including student debt cancellation, in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling — the statutory cap on how much the U.S. government can borrow to pay its bills.
With no resolution in sight — and the deadline drawing closer by the day — some on Wall Street have started to contemplate the possibility of a default. Joseph Brusuelas, the principal and chief economist at RSM, an accounting firm, said this week that “financial markets are now moving to begin pricing in the more difficult portion of the gridlock over the debt ceiling,” adding that the uncertain state of the economy has left some investors “on edge.”
The financial turbulence highlights the stakes in the nation’s capital, more than a decade after Republicans last used the debt ceiling as leverage to seek spending cuts. That 2011 fight — between ascendant, conservative tea-party Republicans and President Barack Obama — rattled the stock market, precipitated a downgrade in U.S. credit and ultimately cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.
This year, McCarthy has maintained that Republicans hope to avoid default. In a speech at the New York Stock Exchange last week, he blamed Biden, who has refused to negotiate out of a belief that the debt ceiling should be raised without conditions to prevent any disruptions to the fragile U.S. economy.
Two days later, McCarthy unveiled legislation that he said would preserve U.S. credit and slow the accumulation of debt. The so-called Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 would cap federal agency spending over the next decade, achieving more than $3 trillion in savings, according to GOP estimates. It would also repeal key climate investments and impose new work requirements on recipients of federal aid, including Medicaid.
But McCarthy still must cobble together the necessary 218 votes for it to pass — no easy feat for a narrow majority of 222 members long troubled by its own ideological divisions. By Tuesday morning, the party appeared to have at least a half-dozen remaining holdouts, whose opposition could scuttle the bill, since Republicans only have four votes to spare.
Some moderate Republicans, including Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), have signaled early unease that the GOP plan could hurt their districts, particularly by rolling back tax credits to boost solar energy. Conservatives, meanwhile, have demanded that McCarthy and other Republican leaders commit to holding their ground and resisting any changes that weaken the bill in the Senate, where Democrats say they’ll refuse to consider the GOP legislation.
“This is the bare minimum for me and a host of other people,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a top member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, estimating there are four lawmakers in his ranks that are “leaning no” until they can secure hard commitments from McCarthy.
Later Tuesday, the House Rules Committee plans to take the first procedural step toward starting debate on the chamber floor. Lawmakers could vote on the bill as soon as Wednesday, a timeline that prompted some Republicans to express a note of confidence about their odds for success.
“Speaker McCarthy’s been at the table. And he has offered to negotiate with the president. Now we’re going to put our terms on a piece of paper, get 218 Republicans, and we’re going to put the ball in their court,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.), the leader of the House Budget Committee, in an interview on Fox News.
The White House, meanwhile, threatened to veto the bill on Tuesday, citing its adverse impact it could have on families and the broader economy.
But the precarious political environment has not been lost on Wall Street, where investors began to raise alarms shortly after McCarthy’s speech. The primary source of their concern was federal tax collections: In the days before 2022 returns were due, analysts began to notice that tax receipts had come in lower than anticipated.
The drop carries immense implications for the debt ceiling deadline, known in Washington as the “x-date,” since it helps determine how long the United States can use a mix of its own revenue and special budgetary maneuvers to stave off a default. The Treasury Department is expected to release a more complete analysis next month, reflecting taxes collected through the April 18 filing deadline.
“There’s nothing like the sight of the gallows to concentrate the mind. That could cause the conversation to become more serious,” said David Kelly, the head of the Global Market Insights Strategy Team for J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
In an ominous note last week, analysts at Goldman Sachs said the tax shortfall could shorten the timeline for action — meaning the government could run out of options in July, though they could not rule out a deadline as soon as early June. That could unleash an urgent scramble on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers had been counting on the possibility they had until as late as September.
“We think that non-withheld tax receipts so far still lean slightly in favor of a late July deadline, but it would take only a few days of slightly weaker tax collections to tip the deadline to early June,” the analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote in their April 19 note.
In response, investors have started to shift their behavior. Some have avoided Treasury bills — bonds issued by the federal government — that mature around the likely debt ceiling deadline. In its own note last week, analysts at J.P. Morgan noted that yields on a three-month Treasury bill have spiked, while one-month yields have plummeted, a gap they noted is the “widest in over 20 years.” Historically, those yields tend to move in concert, so the gap may reflect investors’ fear about a default over the summer.
“We expect these oddities to continue as policymakers work out the kinks to reassure investors of the soundness of short-term government debt,” the bank found.
Other analysts saw early cause for concern in the price of sovereign credit default swaps — essentially, a hedge against a default on U.S. government debt, which would pay out if the government does fail to pay bond interest. Prices are “substantially more” than they were at the last debt ceiling crisis in 2011, according to a new analysis by Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, published late Monday.
Zandi cautioned the market is an imperfect gauge of investor sentiment, particularly given the role of hedge funds in placing such bets. Still, his report found that global investors “appear to be attaching non-zero odds that the debt limit drama will end with a default sometime in June or July.” He also warned that the adoption of the GOP proposal could carry its own adverse effects, potentially reducing gross domestic product by 0.65 percent by the end of the fourth quarter of 2024.
Seizing on the findings, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that the GOP bill would “cut the American economy off at the knees.”
“President Biden believes we should be investing in America to revitalize American manufacturing,” she added, “not holding our economy hostage over disastrous proposals that would lead hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their jobs.”
GramGram (Dr. Betsy)
@GramG46133627
Republicans Are Coming With Knives to Gut FDR's New Deal
While the American people loved Roosevelt's democratic socialism—and still do—the extremely rich have always opposed any programs that lift up average working people.
by ti-amie Bob Jamieson
@bobjmsn@mastodon.scot
Britons ‘need to accept’ they’re poorer, says Bank of England economist
Chief economist Huw Pill says workers and firms should stop trying to pass on rising costs by hiking prices or demanding better wages
In other words "we, the rich, are fleecing you, and you need to stop asking for more, because that means we get less."
by ponchi101 About this "game of chicken" that gets to be played so often in the USA, regarding the debt ceiling.
This is not an American problem. When your economy is 1/3 of the world's, this is a world economy. But as long as the USA keeps accruing more and more debt, this is simply a larger ticking bomb.
The USA needs to make a plan to reduce its debt; taxing Wall Street is an easy start (economically; we know it will never happen because of the politics). Otherwise, one day we will wake up with a world's economy that imploded.
by ti-amie
by ti-amie Welp
by ti-amie
by ti-amie
by ponchi101 Maybe the software update cannot be made over the internet because China's internet is not "open" as the rest of the world knows it.
by ti-amieBillionaire investor George Soros' fund dumped its entire Tesla stake in the first quarter - cashing out on the EV's maker's 2023 rebound
Zahra Tayeb May 15, 2023, 5:54 AM EDT
George Soros' family office cashed out on Tesla's impressive stock-market rebound this year by selling its entire stake in the first quarter, according to a 13F filing published Friday.
Soros Fund Management had gradually added to its holdings of Tesla stock during the second quarter of 2022, holding around 132,000 shares by the end of last year. By offloading that position, the fund likely enjoyed significant gains from the surge in the EV maker's stock price this year.
Tesla shares jumped 68% in the first quarter, thanks to a broad rally in the technology sector amid expectations that cooling inflation would allow the Federal Reserve to halt its interest-rate increases. The stock has pared its advance since then, and is currently up about 37% year-to-date.
Soros' fund also cut its holdings in electric-vehicle startup Rivian Automotive, and held 3.58 million shares at the end of the first quarter.
In the banking sector, Soros reduced its stake in First Horizon Bank by 14.37% to 7.31 million shares as the industry weathered its biggest turmoil since the 2008 financial crisis, which started with Silicon Valley Bank's shocking collapse in March.
Meanwhile, the fund newly purchased shares in Walmart, Netflix, and Chinese e-commerce company JD.com during the quarter.
Elmo was not happy and has been attacking Mr. Soros ever since.
by ti-amieElon Musk Sparks Outrage With Antisemitic Twitter Rant About George Soros
After Elon Musk compared George Soros to X-Men supervillain Magneto on Twitter, the antisemitic tropes escalated form there.
Winn Sioux Christnot-Peters
May. 16, 2023
Conspiracy theories about billionaire George Soros abound, and Elon Musk has apparently bought into some of them. The outgoing Twitter CEO recently tweeted Soros "hates humanity."
Musk first tweeted Soros "reminds me of Magneto," referring to the antagonist from X-Men comics—a series well-known to be an allegory for the civil rights movement.
Magneto was a Holocaust survivor whose experience strongly influenced his actions in the comics. Soros is also a Jewish Holocaust survivor, though as far as anyone is aware he doesn't share Magneto's mutant magnetic powers.
Musk's tirade against Soros came just after it was reported Soros investment group sold their shares of Tesla sometime in the first quarter of 2023.
Antisemitic hate speech on the platform has been on the rise since Musk acquired Twitter, with a huge spike the day he took over.
There were, of course, a plethora of Musk fans in the comments parroting his antisemitic conspiracy theories about Soros.
But many were criticizing Musk too.
Some simply questioned or criticized Musk's assertion Soros "hates humanity."
Some pointed out Musk is pretty close to being the very thing he accuses Soros of being.
Whatever his intentions, Musk's tweets were very popular with his growing White supremacist, neo-Nazi right-wing fanbase.
by ponchi101 I thought the whole point of buying stock was to eventually cash in.
Must be the reason why I am worth 1/trillion th of what Elon is.
by Owendonovan It's even easier to avoid twitter if you're not anti-semitic. (I can't be convinced twitter is necessary for anything or anyone)
by ti-amieElon Musk ‘takes ketamine to manage depression’
Drug use by the Tesla chief and the Google founder Sergey Brin revealed in Wall Street Journal
Keiran Southern, Los Angeles
Tuesday June 27 2023, 8.20pm BST, The Times
Elon Musk takes small doses of ketamine to manage depression while the Google co-founder Sergey Brin enjoys magic mushrooms, according to a new report.
Musk, the world’s richest person, is also said to take full doses of ketamine, an anesthetic that can cause hallucinations, at parties.
Studies have shown the drug is effective at treating severe depression.
Musk, 51, has not directly addressed the claims, made in the Wall Street Journal. However, he has previously tweeted about the drug as an alternative to the class of medicines known as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are widely prescribed to treat mental health issues.
“Depression is overdiagnosed in the US, but for some people it really is a brain chemistry issue,” the Tesla chief executive wrote in response to the controversial influencer Andrew Tate tweeting “depression is a choice”.
“But zombifying people with SSRIs for sure happens way too much. From what I’ve seen with friends, ketamine taken occasionally is a better option.”
Musk has previously criticised antidepressants and last year called for Wellbutrin, a widely used antidepressant, to be taken off the market.
Ketamine is an anaestetic that can cause hallucinations. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is said to have taken it at parties
AP
He said: “Every time that drug has come up in conversation, someone at the table has a suicide or near suicide story.”
Experts countered that Wellbutrin had been an effective treatment for depression for years and accused Musk of spreading misinformation.
The report of Musk’s alleged use of ketamine and 49-year-old Brin’s alleged fondness of magic mushrooms also featured the claim that executives at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm had thrown parties that included psychedelics.
A spokeswoman for Founders Fund, based in San Francisco, said: “Research shows that psychedelics can provide significant mental health benefits, and we support public and private sector efforts to make these drugs safely and legally available.”
Illegal and legal drug use is believed to be widespread in Silicon Valley, with executives said to be keen to expand their minds in the hopes of making business breakthroughs.
Earlier this year the so-called “Lifestyle” among tech industry elites made international headlines after the death of Bob Lee, the founder of payment system Cash App. Lee, fatally stabbed during a row with another tech worker, is said to have regularly taken recreational drugs at secretive parties. A post mortem examination showed that he had ketamine and cocaine in his system.
Edward Sullivan, the chief executive of Velocity Coaching, a business that helps tech industry executives, said drug use in Silicon Valley has increased dramatically in the last five years, with about 40 per cent of his clients now expressing an interest in using psychedelics.
Half a decade ago it was just a handful, he said.
“A few years ago, talking about psychedelics in Silicon Valley was a big no-no,” Sullivan told the Journal. “That has really changed.”
While ketamine is available on prescription in the US, including as a medically-supervised treatment for depression, non-medical uses are illegal.
Psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, has meanwhile been decriminalised at a local level in various cities, including Oakland, Washington DC, Seattle and Detroit, since Denver, Colorado became the first to do so in 2019. Oregon has gone a step further and this year became the first state to legalise psilocybin.
The Times contacted representatives for Musk and Brin for comment.
Musk has previously found himself scrutinised over his drug use.
In 2018 he smoked cannabis, which is legal in California but illegal at the federal level,while appearing on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, leading to a sharp drop in the Tesla share price.
Musk said that for the next year the federal government subjected him to drug tests as his SpaceX company has contracts with the US.
by ponchi101 He does make the news with frequency.
by ti-amie My first thought was about the legions of people who, hearing he doesn't sleep, tried to imitate him not knowing he's a drug addict/speed freak.
This does however explain a lot of things.
by Suliso On the same Musk topic I was reading that he fired ca 75% of TW employees. Granted the site has significantly lost quality likely because of it BUT it still does work. Makes one think that had he fired half as many there would be no real effect at all.
The big tech giants are minting money and most of them overemploy and overpay. Good for those few who work there of course, but not that great for the local economy. Google is now making trouble even in Zurich...
by ponchi101 What does "overemploy" and "overpay" means, from the social aspect? Let's say you have ten people to do one job (a team). I have seen situations in which there are redundancies, so, in theory, you could fire some of the people.
And then, if anything happens to any one person, you have no backup. If one employee goes, s/he takes with him/her all her knowhow, and you are in a jam.
You need some redundancy in companies. And if you over employ, and you company keeps doing well, thank you so much. You are helping society to remain in balance.
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:00 pm
What does "overemploy" and "overpay" means, from the social aspect? Let's say you have ten people to do one job (a team). I have seen situations in which there are redundancies, so, in theory, you could fire some of the people.
And then, if anything happens to any one person, you have no backup. If one employee goes, s/he takes with him/her all her knowhow, and you are in a jam.
You need some redundancy in companies. And if you over employ, and you company keeps doing well, thank you so much. You are helping society to remain in balance.
Some back up is needed indeed, but not 5x back up. I've read stories from recently fired office workers at Amazon and Facebook that entire teams had little to do. They were hired, given hardly anything useful to do and a year or two later fired. Nothing as extreme as in TW, but the same idea.
As for overpaying that's of course from a perspective of those not employed there. For example, recently Google has greatly expanded its presence in Zurich (5,000 employees, Meta and IBM are here too). They pay enormous salaries (300-400 k for high caliber IT professional, interns are making 100k) which allows them to price out pretty much anyone else from the real estate market in neighborhoods nearby. Young guys come and pay 6,000 $ for a rent for a two bedroom apartment (for reference 1,500-2,000 is a standard in Basel) without blinking an eye. Local companies, even very good ones, can't compete with that.
In fact the same situation, but on a much grander scale is happening in SF area. Social protection is less there so lower income quarter people have nowhere to live at all hence increased homelessness, drug use etc. Quality of life in San Francisco has declined despite all the mega companies in the area.
Just before covid I was supposed to travel for a conference in SF. The plan was that my partner would join me after the conference, we'd rent a car and go to Napa valley among other places. That idea was discarded quickly enough when I saw that there is nowhere to stay for less than 500 $/night in Napa. We found some other places to go, but of course the whole trip was called off anyway for well known reasons.
We might be going to Denver next year for ACS conference if company agrees to pay for it. I believe that part of US still operates normally.
by ti-amie I really thought this had happened already.
by ponchi101 I thought their only new business model was to offer YOU $250K to go for a dive.
How can this company survive is beyond my comprehension.
by ti-amie BUFFERING 4:30 P.M. How a Strike Over Streaming Could End Up Killing Network TV
By Josef Adalian, Vulture's West Coast editor
Netflix has plenty of shows, like Matthew Broderick’s Painkiller, in the pipeline, while network shows like The Good Doctor will likely suffer. Photo-Illustration: Vulture. Photos: Netflix; ABC
While Hollywood studios’ failure to strike a fair deal with writers and actors hasn’t caused any real pain for Netflix (yet), that’s not the case over at the platform’s broadcast network rivals. For them, the ongoing WGA and SAG strikes represent apocalypse now: With soundstages dark, new episodes of big scripted hits like Abbott Elementary, Chicago P.D., and Ghosts will be missing from prime time this fall, replaced mostly by reality shows, reruns, and imports from the U.K. and Canada. “Network TV was already in a bad place, and this is really going to kick it in the nuts,” says one veteran broadcast exec, who expects ratings to plunge 30 to 40 percent as a result of the de facto cancellation of the fall season. “Every week the strike goes on, the networks get weaker, and Netflix gets stronger.”
You would think such a prospect would send the parent companies of ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox scrambling back to the negotiating table to cut a deal. After all, many of the big issues in the current impasse — streaming residuals, tiny writers’ rooms, short episode orders — are not ones that really impact broadcast TV. These companies also own streamers, but unlike Netflix, those platforms are bleeding money; linear networks still turn a profit every year (though it’s far smaller than years past). What’s more, the autumnal absence of network programming isn’t just an issue for broadcasters: Some of the best-performing titles on Peacock, Hulu, and Paramount+ are next-day runs of network shows — the ones that will soon be AWOL. By letting the strike drag on, legacy companies such as Disney, NBCUniversal, and Paramount Global are risking real damage to both their linear and digital businesses in a way that Netflix isn’t, at least not in the short term. (The long lead times in streaming means it has a deep stockpile of existing programming for fall, while a roster of international content will help keep the lights on when the well eventually dries up in 2024.) “I’ve gotta believe that Netflix is very happy to just sit back and let the networks burn,” one industry vet says. “Whether that’s by design or happy accident, I don’t know. But even if they don’t see the broadcasters as their main competition, everyone is competition in the video space. Now you’re gonna knock three or four of your competitors off who represent 20 percent of viewing.”
Despite all this, the old-school media giants have so far seemed content to link arms with digital-native platforms like Netflix and Amazon, even though the newbies have far more reason to preserve the status quo. That alliance has many longtime broadcast insiders shaking their heads — and wondering whether it will last. With broadcast ratings almost certain to plunge further and faster than they had been already, “it almost feels like the networks are complicit in their own self-destruction,” says former longtime Law & Order: SVU showrunner Warren Leight. “It’s like Stockholm syndrome. They’re siding with people who’ve been eating their lunch for the last decade. I probably have more in common with execs at NBC than the execs at NBC have with execs at Netflix.” The longtime broadcast exec is similarly befuddled: “Maybe their plan is to let their networks wither and die, which is what it seems,” he says.
So what’s behind this very weird marriage of traditional media companies and their disruptors? One line of thinking matches up with what our network suit suggests: The conglomerates actually don’t think their linear businesses can be saved and are fine with the process being sped up by a strike. Just last week, Disney’s Bob Iger seemed to suggest as much when he put a “for sale” sign on ABC and the Mouse House’s cable networks (save for ESPN). Over at Paramount Global, CEO Bob Bakish still talks about the power of his linear brands, but his actions suggest he’s all about streaming: Showtime is now basically a tile on Paramount+, MTV is 24/7 Ridiculousness, and CBS has gotten far less prolific in its scripted output and has let franchises such as SEAL Team and Criminal Minds migrate to its streaming sibling.
But at least CBS still has a president-level exec that’s focused exclusively on the network: NBC (and ABC) don’t even bother with network presidents anymore. Indeed, NBCUniversal just got rid of content chief Susan Rovner, who despite devoting a ton of her energies to making shows for Peacock was known internally as a strong advocate for treating NBC as something other than a distressed asset whose decline needed to be managed. “The nerds in charge of streaming — even at corporations with broadcast networks — resent the networks and their shows,” laments one industry insider with decades of broadcast experience. “A ton of their [streaming] viewing comes from their network shows. But instead of embracing it, they act like it’s a burden.” That divide isn’t just between networks and streamers: Someone who works at a legacy studio with ties to a streamer seconds that analysis of corporate priorities. “People who work at studios want one thing, but our streaming partners have a different way of looking at things,” he says.
Obviously, execs at the legacy companies push back at the idea that some people just want to watch the networks burn, or even the idea that starving broadcasters of their biggest scripted hits for a few months is such a bad thing. While ratings will surely be way down, and ad revenue will also take a big hit, one of the biggest sources of revenue for broadcasters — the hundreds of millions in fees they collect from their affiliates and cable operators — will remain steady. At the same time, expenses will plunge, because reruns and reality cost a lot less than new episodes of scripted fare. One industry insider forecasts the networks have a “pretty good chance to come out ahead, at least for a little while.” That might sound cold and calculating, but it’s also probably true: In its earnings report Wednesday, Netflix said its cash on hand would jump by around $1.5 billion this year, a revenue jump that’s a direct result of not having to pay actors and writers. “That’s why there’s zero hurry to settle,” the network wag says. “Every quarter they’re on strike, spending is down and profits are up.”
But while there could be some short-term “benefits” to broadcast TV switching to strike mode this fall, there’s also a real risk — specifically that the audience that tunes out will never return. “Whenever SVU is off for two weeks, there’s attrition in the ratings,” says Leight. The reality that most returning shows will go at least eight or nine months between original episodes — or longer if the strike drags on beyond October 1 — could spell Nielsen disaster. “This is going to hammer the ratings when shows are back on,” he says. The biggest danger as these insiders see it is that the audiences who have stayed loyal to the broadcast ecosystem — the folks who still watch Abbott Elementary when it airs on ABC every Wednesday — may finally give up and give in to the streaming dark side. “Do they think they’re going to flip a switch and everyone is going to come running back [to network TV] for ten episodes?,” a network insider says. “Maybe most people will, but it’s going to exacerbate what would’ve already been a 5 to 10 percent decline and make it so they’re down 20 percent when it’s all done. It’s just another chance for people to get out of the habit of watching network TV.”
Privately, some corporate execs don’t disagree that a protracted strike could be devastating to the network model. But they also argue that striking workers — particularly those in the WGA — should be just as worried. Even if the guilds achieve most of their goals, if the result is a dramatically weakened network TV ecosystem, that will mean far fewer of the good-paying, residual-producing, back-end-yielding broadcast jobs. Networks were already cutting back on the percentage of their lineups devoted to comedies and dramas, and the strike promises to further tip the scales against scripted. “The moment the strike was announced, ABC announced an all-reality schedule,” the network insider says. “There’s no going back to a majority of the schedule being scripted. It’s not going to happen. I think the writers have a lot of legit grievances. But some of the best jobs they’ve ever had are going to be gone after this … This feels to me like we’re going to come out of this strike and everybody’s going to lose.”
That might be true, but it’s hardly the guilds’ fault that their employers have embraced a streaming model that clearly does not work for them the way it does for Netflix and other tech-owned streaming platforms. Most of the jobs in TV are now in streaming and at companies not associated with broadcasters. It wouldn’t make sense for the WGA and SAG to ignore the real issues in streaming compensation in the hopes of preserving the shrinking number of good jobs on network TV. That’s not to say there isn’t room for writers and actors to compromise or to concede the legitimate stresses facing their employers. But any such conversation would have to start with companies either conceding there needs to be performance-based compensation attached to streaming residuals or for legacy companies realizing their interests aren’t the same as Netflix or Amazon.
For that to happen, however, there would have to be a massive shift in thinking among the members of the AMPTP, who so far seem more focused on complaining about the rhetoric coming from guild leaders than on trying to come up with serious counterproposals to address central issues such as streaming residuals. Even insiders sympathetic to the studios suggest that is unlikely to happen soon because while people at the network and studio level are still passionate about competing and winning against the tech giants, the folks running most of these corporations are focused on making their bottom lines look as good as possible as quickly as possible — no matter how much pain results. Just look at the last year of brutal layoffs at big media companies, which have been cutting profitable departments and divisions despite the obvious damage it’s doing to their end product. “It’s a mistake to assume there’s zero degree of humanity at any of these corporations. There isn’t,” says one industry veteran. “There’s not one thought given to ‘What does the business look like in five years’ or ‘How do we entertain the public?’ It’s all about what does this quarter look like and where is our stock price going.”
by ti-amieElon Musk Says Twitter Will Soon Change Its Brand to “X”
"Soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds," Musk tweeted late Saturday night.
BY ALEX WEPRIN
JULY 23, 2023 7:19AM
Is the Twitter bird about to go extinct? It appears so, if Elon Musk gets his way.
Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, said in a series of tweets late Saturday night that he was going to change the brand of the social platform to be an “X,” sharing an animated gif of a stylized X against a stark black background.
“If a good enough X logo is posted tonight, we’ll make go live worldwide tomorrow,” he said as part of a series of tweets. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.”
As usual with Musk, it’s hard to tell how serious he is. He is known for making eyebrow-raising comments and then not following through on them or otherwise pivoting.
Still, Musk has long had an obsession with the letter. Or as he tweeted last night while sharing a photo of himself making his hands into an X while standing in front of signage for the Tesla Model X: “Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X.”
Musk has a son named X Æ A-12 Musk with the singer Grimes but calls him by the name X.
But, of course, Musk also founded the website and online banking service X.com in 1999. It would eventually merge with another company to become PayPal. Musk reacquired the X.com domain from PayPal in 2017 and said in a tweet Saturday that the new Twitter, er, X, will operate off of it.
Tweets will be called an X, Musk wrote, and followers will be called “viewers,” a reference to a goal to make Twitter a bit more like TikTok or YouTube.
It’s not immediately clear if Musk cleared the name change with Twitter’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino. Yaccarino, a veteran advertising executive who joined Twitter from NBCUniversal in May, has been touting Twitter’s reach and as a place for premium video. For example, Fox Sports has been hosting a live pre-show on Twitter for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and there are similar plans for NBCUniversal to do so for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Musk said when he hired Yaccarino that he should shift to a role as executive chair and CTO, “overseeing product, software & sysops.”
Microsoft owns the trademark for X. This is just too good.
by Oploskoffie Not that I needed any kind of push, but I just x-ed my X account without as much as a farewell X. (and to me that last sentence nicely sums up why the rebranding doesn't work...) Things weren't great before Musk took over but for the past year-or-so I couldn't venture too far outside of the feeds of the few people I actually followed without running into a ****load of hate, stupidity, ignorance and lies. It became really, really noticable, so... Bye bye blue birdie. It was, ehm, interesting while it lasted.
by ti-amie This a great thread that gives insight into Elmo and his obsession. It's kind of like TFG and golf.
John Bull
@garius@mastodon.me.uk
To understand Musk's renewed obsession with X and focus on financial services, you REALLY need to understand the X/Confinity merger that became PayPal.
And, particularly, the Peter Thiel-led coup that kicked Musk out as CEO/Chief Strategist.
Here's how that happened. 1/ #history #technology
In early 1999 Zip2, the newspaper online directory service Musk had co-founded, was sold to Compaq for $300m. Elon's share of this was about $20m.
Elon begins hitting up old connections from his time at ScotiaBank.
He says he wants to launch "A Financial Superstore" /2
Having drummed up support, he founds a new company to take this forward. He immediately buys the x.com domain off Pittsburgh PowerComputer for 1.5 MILLION shares of A-Stock in his new company, X.
Advisors express concern over X as a brand. Elon loves it. /3
He describes x.com as "the coolest URL on the internet". X, he says, marks the spot for treasure. That's how people will see it he insists.
He invests $12.5m of his own cash into X and begins trying to build an 'online bank'. /4
Musk's obsession with speed and disdain for regulation means X developers love him, but causes worry with the financial expert side.
First Western, the banking partner, discover that accounts are being opened under fake names.
The finance peeps try (but fail) to coup Elon out. /5
In early 2000, X hits the news for a vulnerability that allows money to be moved between accounts with just account details. This is fixed, but spooks investors.
Elon agrees with investor Mike Moritz from Sequoia to become CTO while Bill Harris (ex-Intuit) becomes CEO. /6
Meanwhile, over the road (literally), a startup called Confinity is making waves. It's funded by Peter Thiel, who is also its CEO, but is the brainchild of Ukrainian Max Levchin its CTO.
Backed by Nokia, Confinity is making a way to 'beam' money between PalmPilots by infrared. /7
Need to skip A LOT here. But jump forward a bit and both X and Confinity ACCIDENTALLY create the same killer product as an offshoot of their main one:
The ability to exchange money via email.
Confinity pivot to this exclusively. X don't. Musk's goal is financial superstore. /8
The strength and focus that HAS gone on X's email payment processor has mostly been due to David Sacks, one of Elon's hires who he trusts and who spotted the huge potential.
He keeps Musk grounded with eyes on this while Elon is ALSO pushing into riskier financial service stuff. /9
But Harris (X CEO) sees Confinity and X are BOTH in a death spiral. They are BLEEDING cash fighting. He speaks to Thiel. Thiel suggests a merger.
Musk fights this. But ahead of another funding round, Harris threatens to quit, spooking investors
Elon: "He held a gun to my head." /10
The firms merge. Harris and Thiel insist the new firm (X) focus on email payments, ideally on Confinity's PayPal platform.
Elon INSISTS financial superstore is the future. When Thiel and Harris fall out over strategy, Elon persuades Thiel to help coup Harris out. Elon is now CEO /11
Thiel, and Levchin, are initially fine with this. Musk has promised to focus on email payments, and to improve PayPal first. Financial superstore a "future thing".
But over months Levchin realises that Elon has become obsessed with porting PayPal ENTIRELY to Microsoft not Linux. /12
Months of dev time, with X burning $12m a month, is lost to Musk's obsession with PayPal V2. A complete rework on Microsoft. It's BEYOND a bad plan. Microsoft servers and MSSQL CANNOT scale enough at the time. But Elon decrees it. He even decrees a launch with no rollback option. /13
Elon also orders the killing off the PayPal brand. He orders paypal.com routed to x.com. Logos phased out. Decrees it should now be referred to as X-PayPal and described as part of the X family of financial services. He's not letting the dream go. /14
This obsession with X as a brand causes enormous concern as it CONTINUALLY goes down terribly with consumers.
Vivien Go on focus group testing:
"Again and again, the theme of 'Oh God, I wouldn't trust this website. It's an adult website' and 'I just wouldn't trust that" /15
Meanwhile, Thiel finds out via X's financial wizard, Roelof Botha, that the financial superstore side stuff is WORSE than Musk has let on. X is offering credit on almost no identity checks.
Combined with the V2 fiasco, Thiel and others realise X is on the verge of failing. /16
Thiel and others approach Elon and BEG him to abandon Paypal V2, and his strategy of trying to become a one-stop global financial service. Thiel points out they only have $65m left in the bank.
Musk refuses.
They have to go for "the grand prize" he insists. /17
Thiel, Levchin, Botha and Sacks now cross the rubicon. They decide to coup Elon. They quietly gather the signatures of a lot of the Confinity loyalists on a mass-quit threat.
On 19th Sep 2000, as Elon is taking off for Europe on his honeymoon, they make their move. /18
Thiel and Levkin are board members. The other four are Musk, Malloy (repping another major investor), Moritz and Hurd (Chair).
As Elon is in the air, Thiel asks Hurd to summon an emergency board meeting by phone. /19
Over the phone, Thiel and Levkin reveal the PayPal V2 and financial issues to Malloy, Moritz and Hurd, who had no idea about them. They're sympathetic to Elon as founder and visionary, but horrified this was all done without board approval and at the mass-resignation letter. /20
With Elon out of the country, he can't work his in person magic. He insists over the phone that the financial superstore is the big win. All this is in service of that.
It doesn't work. Malloy, Moritz and Hurd side with Thiel and Levkin. Elon is out as CEO before he can fly back /21
Musk is devastated and furious.
"Sneaky Backstabbing Bastards." He describes them as, but to his credit recognises he can't fight it and presents a public image it was a mutual decision.
Thiel becomes interim (and later permanent) CEO, orders the end of V2 and a focus on PayPal /22
Hopefully you can see the roots of this whole X pivot thing now. Musk has decided that the way to save Twitter and regain his genius status is to fall back on his unrealised vision from 1999.
Build "the world's financial nexus" as he described it then. /23
I think it's a TERRIBLE idea. The world's moved on. He's doing the tech equivalent of drunk-DMing his highschool girlfriend to tell her she's still hot.
But you can see the origins now. He thinks this is the genius idea that got away. And that this time nobody can coup him. /24
Anyway, hope that's useful context. None of what's going on is surprising if you lived through it or have studied it. You just have to get past the hagiography Silicon Valley creates around it's "great men"
by ponchi101 Don't forget he has two kids named with strange X nomenclatures.
by ti-amie He can say what he wants. It still reminds me of a wannabe swastika.
by ti-amie Nice. Somewhere Tony Soprano is smiling.
Taylor Lorenz
@taylorlorenz@mastodon.social
Musk’s rebranded Twitter is offering extremely hefty discounts to advertisers while simultaneously threatening them that if they don’t spend at least $1k on ads in the next 30 days their brand will lose its checkmark and they won’t police impersonation https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-re
Couldn’t have happened to a bigger PoS. So happy for you, @elonmusk—your new logo is winning Bad Design awards *and* getting taken down
by Owendonovan No one will call it X, like no one calls Meta, Meta, they call it Facebook.
by ponchi101 Indeed. Is it even a good marketing plot? One of the most recognized brands in the world that almost holds a monopoly on a type of platform, and you decide to change the name.
Do like Google. The umbrella corporation is called Alphabet, but nobody even uses the name. It was just for stock purposes. But they still call themselves Google.
by ti-amieElon Musk’s X can’t send Blue subscribers their ad revenue-sharing payouts on time
/ Twitter / X announced late on Friday that the check is (not) in the mail.
By Richard Lawler, a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget.
Aug 4, 2023, 9:48 PM EDT|
In news that isn’t very surprising given the recent history of Twitter, which Elon Musk is currently rebranding to X, the company won’t be able to make some promised payments on time. The X Support account says that because its “Ads Revenue Sharing” program is so popular, “We need a bit more time to review everything for the next payout and aim to get all eligible accounts paid as soon as possible.”
From the linked support page:
August 4, 2023 update: The volume of people signing up for revenue sharing has exceeded our expectations. We previously said that payments would occur the week of July 31st. We need a bit more time to review everything for the next payout and hope to get all eligible accounts paid as soon as possible.
Thank you for your patience!
That’s not exactly what you’d want to hear from a program touting itself as “part of our effort to help people earn a living directly on X,” and the key to Elon Musk’s X dream for an app that handles banking, stock trading, and other vital financial features.
Musk announced the revenue-sharing plan in February, and the company sent out the first round of payments for eligible accounts (with paid verification via Twitter Blue or Verified organizations, 15 million “organic” impressions in the last three months, and at least 500 followers) a couple of weeks ago before opening up registration to more people.
However, hearing that payments aren’t arriving is familiar news to a number of people and organizations involved with X / Twitter since Musk’s takeover. That includes landlords of buildings used by Twitter in San Francisco and London or former employees of Twitter Africa who complain they were “ghosted” and left without promised severance payments. The list also features several former employees that filed a lawsuit against the company in May, saying “Twitter’s new leadership deliberately, specifically, and repeatedly announced their intentions to breach contracts, violate laws, and otherwise ignore their legal obligations,” while leaving rent, vendors, and severance unpaid.
A Wall Street Journal article in February counted nine lawsuits covering $14 million in unpaid bills at the time.
In July, Musk tweeted about Twitter / X’s financial situation, saying, “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.”
But hey, Twitter’s unpaid Google Cloud bill reportedly got paid eventually, so maybe everyone who shelled out $8 (or $84 annually) in the hope of cashing in on Elon’s revenue sharing will get paid too — and soon.
by ponchi101 But, but... he wants X to be the platform where you can run ALL your finances!
He is starting (or is already well on his way) to make promises he can't keep on multiple platforms. FSD, the Cybertruck for TESLA, multiple issues with this TWT takeover, several issues with the SpaceX launch. This has to be taken in consideration when dealing with this guy.
by Suliso That's true, but one should also consider that most of the time he eventually delivers. Years late true, but still. SpaceX and Tesla are examples. X might not work out and maybe no one will want to buy Cybertruck, but we should give few more years to judge with clarity.
by ponchi101 You defend him a bit too much, Suliso. This is not a young entrepreneur with no business acumen; he is the head of, currently, at least two of the leading companies in their fields (Tesla and SpaceX; TXT/X is obviously in a field of one).
Yet he continues to make mistakes that are not trivial.
The SpaceX launch, analyzed after a few months of reflection, was not a success. Sure, the chances of the rocket reaching orbit were around 50%, but other aspects that should have been taken care of were not. The launch pad destruction and the pollution and environmental impact should have been assessed prior to the launch; it is not as if this was the first launch of any rocket ever.
I say his management style is a bit reckless; make promises, but do not have a complete picture of what needs to be done or the consequences of cutting a corner. Or several.
And I know of at least one person (a neighbor in Colorado) that already put down money for his Cybertruck. IN 2019. Any other company that would not deliver that product in at least 3 years would have been sued already.
by Suliso I'm not really defending him (his politics are diametrically opposed to mine). All I was saying is that Tesla and SpaceX became dominant companies in their fields despite years of naysayers. Are you disputing that?
Certainly his management style seems to be a disaster, but I'd like to have a good explanation why it works. You'd expect his companies to be bankrupt long ago...
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 3:25 pm
The SpaceX launch, analyzed after a few months of reflection, was not a success. Sure, the chances of the rocket reaching orbit were around 50%, but other aspects that should have been taken care of were not. The launch pad destruction and the pollution and environmental impact should have been assessed prior to the launch; it is not as if this was the first launch of any rocket ever.
Success of the first launch would have been cool, but is of minor importance. The question me and others are eagerly awaiting an answer to is whether the entire Starship program will be a success. There is a good chance it will be, but also a non zero possibility that it will not be.
by ponchi101 One of the explanations is that both SpaceX and Tesla have received considerable subsidies from the US Govt. A quick search gave me a figure $4.9 Bn, just from the government.
One thing he has done that I agree that has been brilliant is his manipulation of the TESLA image; there, I give him full credit. The people that buy TESLA's are acolytes; any car review will tell you that TESLA's have a lot of manufacturing issues, yet their buyers are super loyal and will accept all the issues that come with the cars. Issues that, in other brands, would not be accepted.
But overall, I find him to be the beneficiary of several lucky breaks. His departure from PayPal was less than stellar, for all the hoopla, TESLA has only three viable products (the S, the X and the 3) and we are waiting for SpaceX to deliver on that rocket.
Nothing wrong with that. Several of the big tech names received many breaks here and there. MS had no OS when Gates launched it (he took it from somebody else). Jobs' Apple was weeks away from bankruptcy when MS saved them (to avoid monopoly laws). GM and Chrysler were technically bankrupt after the financial meltdown of 2007. We will see where Musk leads TWT/X to, but if he manages to break it, it cannot be said that nobody saw it (I doubt it; it is simply too big and too ingrained in the modern way of communications).
by Suliso
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 3:53 pmwe are waiting for SpaceX to deliver on that rocket.
Wait a moment! Everything else you wrote makes sense except this. SpaceX has already delivered a dominant rocket. It's called Falcon 9 and launched flawlessly ca 60x last year. Starship is even more revolutionary but it's a product #2 not #1.
by ponchi101 You are right. I was talking about Starship. Falcon 9 is a solid product, but I was not talking about that one.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 3:53 pmOne of the explanations is that both SpaceX and Tesla have received considerable subsidies from the US Govt. A quick search gave me a figure $4.9 Bn, just from the government.
One thing he has done that I agree that has been brilliant is his manipulation of the TESLA image; there, I give him full credit. The people that buy TESLA's are acolytes; any car review will tell you that TESLA's have a lot of manufacturing issues, yet their buyers are super loyal and will accept all the issues that come with the cars. Issues that, in other brands, would not be accepted.
But overall, I find him to be the beneficiary of several lucky breaks. His departure from PayPal was less than stellar, for all the hoopla, TESLA has only three viable products (the S, the X and the 3) and we are waiting for SpaceX to deliver on that rocket.
Nothing wrong with that. Several of the big tech names received many breaks here and there. MS had no OS when Gates launched it (he took it from somebody else). Jobs' Apple was weeks away from bankruptcy when MS saved them (to avoid monopoly laws). GM and Chrysler were technically bankrupt after the financial meltdown of 2007. We will see where Musk leads TWT/X to, but if he manages to break it, it cannot be said that nobody saw it (I doubt it; it is simply too big and too ingrained in the modern way of communications).
by ti-amie billboard
@billboard@mastodon.world
AI-Generated Works Aren’t Protected By Copyrights, Federal Judge Rules
by ponchi101 Yes! Nobody thought of that (or I didn't). You have no copyrights because you are not a person.
Of course, they will simply find somebody to sign and claim they did it.
by ti-amie Mueller, She Wrote
@MuellerSheWrote
NEW: THREAD: Ronan Farrow’s expose on Musk is out. It’s a MUST READ. Here are some stand-out moments.
Musk deliberately throttled Starlink - the communications system Ukraine was relying on in battle. He held it hostage for $400M at critical points in the war. 1/
Musk had spoken to Putin before this decision, and right around that time, he came up with his “peace plan”, which is essentially the same as Russia and trump’s: give Russia chunks of Ukraine. 2/
His pro-Putin stance aligns with his goals in China: keep China happy because that’s where he makes Teslas. Beijing disapproved of Musk helping Ukraine because they lend support to Russia. That explains Musk’s desire to hand Taiwan over to China. 3/
Link to the full article. It's from the New Yorker so you know it's long.
by ponchi101 Why ruin a good conspiracy theory?
A good friend recently told me that the climate change hoax is basically led by Elon, because he wants to sell more Teslas. Just to show that it is always easier to find a boogey man than the truth. Faster too.
by ti-amie Steve Herman
@w7voa@journa.host
“Musk is engaging with and elevating these antisemites at a time when ADL is tracking a surge of bomb threats and swatting attacks of synagogues and Jewish institutions, dramatic levels of antisemitic propaganda being littered throughout Jewish and non-Jewish residential communities, and extremists marching openly through the streets in Nazi gear.” - ADL https://www.adl.org/resources/press-releas
by ti-amie Dave Lee
@DaveLeeBBG
Elon Musk revisiting an idea apparently floated privately in the past -- charging *everyone* to use Twitter. A lower tier than premium. "We’ve moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system," he just told Benjamin Netanyahu, saying it's only way to stamp out bots.
by ponchi101 Do it. Let's see how many people stay. It is not that complicated.
by ti-amieEXCLUSIVE: X, formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet and retweet
BY KYLIE ROBISON
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet, reply, quote, repost, like, bookmark, and create list, according to a source familiar with the matter. This change will go live today for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines.
Roughly 20 minutes after this story went live, X’s Support account confirmed the details, writing that “this new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.”
Support
@Support
Starting today, we're testing a new program (Not A Bot) in New Zealand and the Philippines. New, unverified accounts will be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to be able to post & interact with other posts. Within this test, existing users are not affected.
This new test was developed to bolster our already successful efforts to reduce spam, manipulation of our platform and bot activity, while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount. It is not a profit driver.
And so far, subscription options have proven to be the main solution that works at scale.
X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform. During a recent livestreamed conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Musk said “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.”
The company published the “Not-a-Bot Terms and Conditions” today outlining its plan for a paid subscription service that gives users certain abilities on their platform, like posting content and interacting with other users. This program is different from X Premium, which offers more features like “Undo” and “Edit” for posts for $8 a month.
by Owendonovan "X, formerly known as twitter" can't ever be just X, and should never be. (in the public lexicon)
by ti-amie I call it Xitter pronouncing the "x" as "sh".
It's really really bad now.
by ti-amiePeter Thiel was reportedly an FBI informant
A report from Insider alleges that Thiel passed info about foreign contacts and ‘Silicon Valley intrigue’ to the agency starting in 2021.
By Adi Robertson, a senior tech and policy editor focused on VR, online platforms, and free expression. Adi has covered video games, biohacking, and more for The Verge since 2011.
PayPal co-founder, venture capitalist, Republican megadonor, and disputed vampire Peter Thiel may also have been an FBI informant — at least according to a new report from Insider.
Insider spoke to multiple people who claim Thiel became a “confidential human source” for a Los Angeles-based agent named Johnathan Buma — a term that indicates a long-running relationship with the FBI, allegedly beginning in 2021. While Thiel was once a high-profile supporter of former President Donald Trump, a subject of multiple FBI investigations, the deal is said to have excluded any information about Thiel’s domestic political contacts. Insider says it focused instead on “foreign contacts and Silicon Valley intrigue,” potentially including foreign influence operations in the tech industry. He was apparently outed as revenge for not investing in a right-wing blogger’s startups.
Neither Thiel nor the FBI commented to Insider about the report. And one of Insider’s sources is Charles Johnson, a far-right political figure and blogger that Insider acknowledges has spread a mix of accurate and false information in the past. But Johnson’s relationship with Thiel has been previously reported, including in Kashmir Hill’s recent book on facial recognition startup Clearview AI, a company Johnson claims in a lawsuit to have co-founded. (In that March suit, Johnson identifies himself as an FBI informant as well.) Johnson told Insider he introduced Thiel to Buma — then exposed him because Johnson “felt betrayed that Thiel did not invest in Johnson’s own startups, which he had expected Thiel to do in exchange.”
Holding longtime informant status would put Thiel at odds with parts of the Republican party, which has grown hostile to the FBI amid its investigations of Trump. (Granted, that hostility didn’t stop Trump’s Truth Social from tipping off the agency to a man who made threats on the social network.) But Thiel has stepped back from politics during the 2024 US presidential election, reportedly because he felt that Republicans were focused on domestic culture wars instead of American economic competitiveness. As Insider notes, Thiel has urged the FBI to investigate Google for Chinese government infiltration. Passing the agency tips about foreign contacts would align neatly with his concerns about foreign influence in tech — and until he can hole up full time in a bunker in New Zealand, his deep Silicon Valley connections are likely worth cultivating by the FBI.
ti-amie wrote: ↑Fri Oct 20, 2023 12:01 amPeter Thiel was reportedly an FBI informant
A report from Insider alleges that Thiel passed info about foreign contacts and ‘Silicon Valley intrigue’ to the agency starting in 2021.
By Adi Robertson, a senior tech and policy editor focused on VR, online platforms, and free expression. Adi has covered video games, biohacking, and more for The Verge since 2011.
PayPal co-founder, venture capitalist, Republican megadonor, and disputed vampire Peter Thiel may also have been an FBI informant — at least according to a new report from Insider.
Insider spoke to multiple people who claim Thiel became a “confidential human source” for a Los Angeles-based agent named Johnathan Buma — a term that indicates a long-running relationship with the FBI, allegedly beginning in 2021. While Thiel was once a high-profile supporter of former President Donald Trump, a subject of multiple FBI investigations, the deal is said to have excluded any information about Thiel’s domestic political contacts. Insider says it focused instead on “foreign contacts and Silicon Valley intrigue,” potentially including foreign influence operations in the tech industry. He was apparently outed as revenge for not investing in a right-wing blogger’s startups.
Neither Thiel nor the FBI commented to Insider about the report. And one of Insider’s sources is Charles Johnson, a far-right political figure and blogger that Insider acknowledges has spread a mix of accurate and false information in the past. But Johnson’s relationship with Thiel has been previously reported, including in Kashmir Hill’s recent book on facial recognition startup Clearview AI, a company Johnson claims in a lawsuit to have co-founded. (In that March suit, Johnson identifies himself as an FBI informant as well.) Johnson told Insider he introduced Thiel to Buma — then exposed him because Johnson “felt betrayed that Thiel did not invest in Johnson’s own startups, which he had expected Thiel to do in exchange.”
Holding longtime informant status would put Thiel at odds with parts of the Republican party, which has grown hostile to the FBI amid its investigations of Trump. (Granted, that hostility didn’t stop Trump’s Truth Social from tipping off the agency to a man who made threats on the social network.) But Thiel has stepped back from politics during the 2024 US presidential election, reportedly because he felt that Republicans were focused on domestic culture wars instead of American economic competitiveness. As Insider notes, Thiel has urged the FBI to investigate Google for Chinese government infiltration. Passing the agency tips about foreign contacts would align neatly with his concerns about foreign influence in tech — and until he can hole up full time in a bunker in New Zealand, his deep Silicon Valley connections are likely worth cultivating by the FBI.
So who is it that doesn't like Thiel that started this?
by Owendonovan Sam Bankman-Fried Is Found Guilty of 7 Counts of Fraud and Conspiracy
The case against the founder of the failed FTX exchange had come to symbolize the excesses of the volatile cryptocurrency industry.
By David Yaffe-Bellany, Matthew Goldstein and J. Edward Moreno
Reporting from the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan
Nov. 2, 2023
Updated 9:08 p.m. ET
Sam Bankman-Fried, the tousle-haired mogul who founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, was convicted on Thursday of seven charges of fraud and conspiracy after a monthlong trial that laid bare the rampant hubris and risk-taking across the crypto industry.
Mr. Bankman-Fried became a symbol of crypto’s excesses last year when FTX collapsed and he was charged with stealing as much as $10 billion from customers to finance political contributions, venture capital investments and other extravagant spending. A jury of nine women and three men took just over four hours of deliberation on Thursday to reach a verdict, convicting Mr. Bankman-Fried of wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.
Together the counts carry a maximum sentence of 110 years. Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, is expected to appeal. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on March 28.
Before the verdict was announced, Mr. Bankman-Fried, wearing a gray suit and purple tie, stood to face the jury, with his hands clasped in front of him. He showed little visible emotion as a juror repeated the word “guilty” seven times. He then took his seat, with his head angled down.
Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara Fried, put her head in her hands and stifled a sob. Then she and Mr. Bankman-Fried’s father, Joe Bankman, stood arm in arm, separated from their son by a short wooden barrier. As Mr. Bankman-Fried left the room, accompanied by a U.S. marshal, he nodded at his parents, before quickly turning his face away.
The verdict capped one of the fastest and most spectacular falls from grace in modern corporate history. Just a year ago, Mr. Bankman-Fried was worth more than $20 billion and hailed as a rare good guy in the freewheeling crypto industry, his face plastered on billboards and magazine covers. FTX, valued at $32 billion at its peak, was one of the world’s biggest marketplaces for people to buy and sell digital coins like Bitcoin and Ether.
Crypto enthusiasts, many of whom openly rooted for Mr. Bankman-Fried to be found guilty, had said they hoped his conviction would provide a moment of catharsis that would allow the industry to move on from a scandal-plagued year. But critics cast the verdict as a sign that the industry may face more legal consequences as it struggles to regain public trust.
“Perpetrators of scams will have to face the law and suffer the consequences of their crimes, even in crypto,” said Cory Klippsten, the founder of the Swan Bitcoin financial services firm and a frequent critic of the industry. “The ‘Wild West’ days are over.”
The swift verdict reflected the overwhelming evidence that prosecutors marshaled against Mr. Bankman-Fried, including millions of pages of internal messages, spreadsheets and memos.
“These guilty verdicts must have been easy decisions for the jurors based on how quickly they returned them,” said John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia.
Mr. Bankman-Fried was always expected to face an uphill battle in court. After FTX imploded, three of his top deputies pleaded guilty to fraud and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in return for leniency. During the trial, they testified that Mr. Bankman-Fried had repeatedly directed them to lie to the public and route billions of dollars in customer money from FTX to its sister trading firm, Alameda Research.
Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argued that he had operated his businesses in good faith and never intended to break the law. But they struggled to poke significant holes in the cooperators’ stories, interrupted by wave after wave of government objections. When Mr. Bankman-Fried took the stand to defend himself, he often seemed flustered, claiming numerous times that he couldn’t remember potentially incriminating conversations.
Mark Cohen, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, said in a statement that the defense team respected the jury’s verdict. But he added that Mr. Bankman-Fried “maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him.”
In a news conference outside the courthouse, Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said Mr. Bankman-Fried had “perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”
etc.etc https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/tech ... l-ftx.html
by ponchi101 In complete contrast to the other crypto peddlers, who are NOT engaged in trading a fraudulent "commodity".
by Owendonovan X Races to Contain Damage After Elon Musk Endorses Antisemitic Post
IBM, a major advertiser on X, has pulled its spending from the social media platform, whose employees are grappling with what to tell its other advertisers, according to internal messages.
Ryan Mac
By Ryan Mac
Reporting from Los Angeles
Nov. 16, 2023
Less than 24 hours after Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X as “the actual truth” of what Jewish people were doing, IBM paused its advertising on the social media platform as X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, and others at the company scrambled on Thursday to contain the fallout.
X employees said on Thursday that they had gotten calls from advertisers wondering why Mr. Musk was making comments seen as antisemitic and why their ads were showing up next to white nationalist and Nazi content, according to internal messages that were viewed by The New York Times. IBM cut off about $1 million in advertising spending that it had committed to the platform for the last three months of the year, the messages said.
In a note to employees on Thursday morning, Ms. Yaccarino said that “X is a platform for everyone” and that “discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board.” She said the company had been clear about its work to fight antisemitism and discrimination, and later shared a similar message on X.
In a statement, IBM said it “has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination, and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation.”
X did not respond to a request for comment. The Financial Times earlier reported on IBM’s pause in advertising on X.
Mr. Musk, who bought Twitter last year and renamed it X, has faced increasing criticism that he has tolerated and even encouraged antisemitic abuse on his social media platform. He has attacked George Soros, the financier who is a frequent target of antisemitic abuse, and threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, a rights group that has highlighted the rise in antisemitism on X.
On Wednesday, Mr. Musk went further when he agreed with a post from an X account accusing Jewish communities of pushing “hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” Jewish people are now “coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much,” the account added.
“You have said the actual truth,” Mr. Musk replied to the post.
Jewish groups have compared the statement that Mr. Musk endorsed to the “Great Replacement Theory,” the far-right idea that minorities are replacing white European populations.
“It is the deadliest antisemitic conspiracy theory in modern U.S. history,” the American Jewish Committee, a U.S.-based Israel advocacy group, wrote on X on Thursday. “To amplify it on @X is incredibly dangerous.”
Social media platforms in general have faced rising scrutiny since Hamas attacked Israel last month and Israel retaliated. Antisemitic and Islamophobic hate speech has surged across the sites and has been especially prominent on X, according to the Anti-Defamation League and researchers. On Wednesday night, more than a dozen Jewish creators and celebrities also confronted TikTok executives in a private meeting, urging them to do more to address a rise in antisemitism and harassment on the video service.
In September, Mr. Musk met with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, at a Tesla factory in the San Francisco Bay Area after facing accusations of antisemitism.
“It’s not an easy thing to be maligned — I know you’ve never seen that, right?” Mr. Netanyahu asked Mr. Musk at one point.
“Me, maligned?” Mr. Musk said, laughing. “Never.”
At X, Ms. Yaccarino has previously intervened in situations involving antisemitic content on the platform. This month, a sales employee flagged apparent antisemitic posts that the site had not removed, leading Ms. Yaccarino to ask that the posts be reviewed, two people with knowledge of the situation said. The employee who flagged the posts is no longer with the company, the people said. The Information earlier reported Ms. Yaccarino’s actions on those posts.
On Thursday morning, X sales employees asked about Mr. Musk’s posts and what they could relay to their clients, according to messages seen by The Times. They also cited an article from Media Matters for America, a left-wing advocacy group, which showed that ads from major brands were appearing on X next to posts promoting white nationalist and Nazi perspectives.
“A lot of large advertisers have been called out in this article,” one employee wrote.
Another employee wrote that she was concerned because she worked with Apple, a major advertiser that was mentioned in the Media Matters piece, and asked if some of the posts “were manipulated.” An employee responded that the company’s trust and safety team, which has experienced layoffs and resignations, was “actively looking into this.”
I thought Elmo had established his anti-semitism a long time ago. Seems foolish to advertise on that failing platform.
by ti-amie nixCraft
@nixCraft
OpenAI has just fired Sam Altman as CEO and removed him from the Board of Directors. This seems like a serious matter. He seems to be hiding something big from the Board, and now they fired him. https://openai.com/blog/openai-announc
by ti-amieExclusive: Apple to pause advertising on X after Musk backs antisemitic post
Ina Fried, author of Axios AI+
Apple is pausing all advertising on X, the Elon Musk-owned social network, sources tell Axios.
Why it matters: The move follows Musk's endorsement of antisemitic conspiracy theories as well as Apple ads reportedly being placed alongside far-right content. Apple has been a major advertiser on the social media site and its pause follows a similar move by IBM.
The big picture: Musk faced backlash for endorsing an antisemitic post Wednesday, as 164 Jewish rabbis and activists upped their call to Apple, Google, Amazon and Disney to stop advertising on X, and for Apple and Google to remove it from their platforms.
The left-leaning nonprofit Media Matters for America published a report Thursday that highlighted Apple, IBM, Amazon and Oracle as among those whose ads were shown next to far-right posts.
State of play: Musk posted to X on Wednesday "[y]ou have said the actual truth" in response to an X post that claimed Jewish communities support "dialectical hatred against whites."
That drew widespread condemnation, including from the White House. "It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie behind the most fatal act of Antisemitism in American history at any time, let alone one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement.
Meanwhile, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a Thursday post that the company has been "extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination," adding: "There's no place for it anywhere in the world — it's ugly and wrong. Full stop."
What they're saying: An X executive told Axios on Thursday night that the company "did a sweep on the accounts that Media Matters found and they will [no] longer be monetizable" and that the specific posts it highlighted will be labeled "Sensitive Media."
"The X system is not intentionally placing a brand actively next to this type of content, nor is a brand actively trying to support this type of content with an ad placement," the executive continued in the emailed statement.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Apple's decision.
What to watch: This could be the start of an advertising exodus. Lions Gate Entertainment is also pulling all advertising from X, a spokesperson confirmed to Axios.
by ti-amieDisney and Lionsgate halt advertising on X
Brian Fung Clare Duffy
By Brian Fung, Clare Duffy and Samantha Delouya, CNN
Updated 6:47 PM EST, Fri November 17, 2023
CNN
—
Disney said it has suspended advertising on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The decision by one of the world’s most prominent film and television companies suggests an intensifying advertiser backlash to X after the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory popular among White supremacists.
Disney’s advertising pause follows similar moves by Lionsgate and IBM.
A Lionsgate spokesperson who confirmed the company’s decision to CNN did not disclose a specific reason for the move and did not specify how much money Lionsgate had planned to spend advertising on X. Lionsgate’s decision was first reported by Bloomberg.
IBM’s ads were found appearing alongside pro-Nazi content on the platform. In a statement, IBM explicitly called out what it described as an “entirely unacceptable situation.”
“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” an IBM spokesperson said.
CNN has reached out to X for comment.
Amid the pullback, X reportedly lost one of its most visible advertisers: Apple. The iPhone maker also pulled its advertising from the social media platform, according to multiple news outlets, including Axios, which first reported Apple’s withdrawal.
Apple did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a post Thursday afternoon that the company’s position is that “discrimination by everyone should STOP across the board – I think that’s something we can and should all agree on.” She added: “When it comes to this platform – X has also been extremely clear about our efforts to combat antisemitism and discrimination. There’s no place for it anywhere in the world – it’s ugly and wrong. Full stop.”
An analysis by the watchdog group Media Matters found this week that in addition to IBM, ads by Apple, Comcast, NBC and Oracle had appeared alongside similar content.
Spokespersons for Apple, Comcast, NBCU and Oracle have not responded to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for X said the pro-Nazi accounts identified in Thursday’s Media Matters report would no longer be eligible for monetization, meaning ads would no longer be run on those pages.
In August, two other brands, NCTA — the Internet and Television Association — and Gilead Sciences paused their spending on X after their ads were also run alongside pro-Nazi content.
by ti-amie The argument can be made that Elmo wants to tank the company and sell it to someone on the cheap no?
The Blue Check folks aren't going to make up for the ad revenue being lost.
by ti-amie 𝗧𝗢𝗗 𝗠𝗔𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗡 :donate8dollars:
@tod@hci.social
It’s over.
RIP Twitter 2023.
What a sad, pathetic ending.
Suspending ads on Twitter/X (so far);
- Comcast/NBC
- Paramount
- Warner Bros.
- Disney
- Apple
- IBM
- Lionsgate
- European Commission
by Owendonovan I'm not sure how that would benefit him, but I'd be fine with him dumping it and taking a huge loss. He doesn't come back from this unbruised, if not unbroken.
by OwendonovanThe argument can be made that Elmo wants to tank the company and sell it to someone on the cheap no?
I'm not sure how that would benefit him, but I'd be fine with him dumping it and taking a huge loss. He doesn't come back from this unbruised, if not unbroken.
by ti-amieElon Musk to file ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ as advertisers desert X
Social media firm boss says he will sue media watchdog that said ads were being placed alongside antisemitic content
Harry Taylor
@harrytaylr
Sat 18 Nov 2023 05.29 EST
Elon Musk has said he will be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and others, after major US companies paused their adverts on his social media site over concerns about antisemitism.
The media watchdog Media Matters said earlier this week that it found corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content, including that praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
It led to a number of big names in technology and media announcing they would be withdrawing their advertising. It also included Warner Brothers, Paramount and Disney.
“The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” Musk said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Musk on Wednesday agreed with a post on X that falsely claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user, who referenced the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, was speaking “the actual truth”.
“This week Media Matters for America posted a story that completely misrepresented the real experience on X, in another attempt to undermine freedom of speech and mislead advertisers,” a statement posted by Musk said.
“Above everything, including profit, X works to protect the public’s right to free speech. But for speech to be truly free, we must also have the freedom to see or hear things that some people may consider objectionable,” he added.
He did not reference the furore around his tweet, but has previously denied he is antisemitic.
Musk went on to deny Media Matters’ findings.
Apple had been one of X’s biggest advertisers and was spending up to $100m (£80m) a year as of November 2022 when Musk bought it, Bloomberg has reported.
Since then, there has been a trend of X advertisers falling, and user numbers declining – while Musk has brought in a paid premium system, claiming it was to target bots on the site.
The White House joined the outcry against Musk’s tweet on Friday, with a statement calling it an “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate” that runs against our core values as Americans”.
Referring to the 7 October attacks by Hamas against Israel, the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said: “It is unacceptable to repeat the hideous lie … one month after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
by ti-amieBinance chief pleads guilty to money laundering; company to pay $4.3 billion fine
Changpeng Zhao’s guilty plea and departure as chief executive marks the end of an era for one of the crypto industry’s longest standing titans.
By Eli Tan and Devlin Barrett
Changpeng Zhao leaves U.S. District Court in Seattle on Tuesday. (Getty Images)
Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world’s largest crypto exchange, pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and has agreed to step down as chief executive of Binance, which will pay a $4.3 billion fine, according to court documents.
The plea agreement marks the second time this month that a giant of the global cryptocurrency market has been felled by federal charges. Zhao faces a prison sentence of around 18 months, according to sentencing guidelines.
As part of the plea agreement, Zhao is barred from working with the exchange for three years, according to a court filing. He appeared in federal court in Seattle on Tuesday and will be fined $50 million. The company also entered a guilty plea to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, as well as failing to register as a money transfer business and violating sanctions law.
The deal ends the Justice Department’s three-year investigation of Binance and comes months after the firm was accused by regulators of operating as an unregistered securities exchange.
Zhao’s departure marks the end of an era for one of the crypto industry’s longest-standing titans, who sparred with regulators for years. Zhao was also an original investor in FTX, the beleaguered crypto exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted at trial of seven counts of fraud and money laundering earlier this month.
"Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance,” Zhao said in a lengthy post on X, formerly Twitter, that did not mention his guilty plea but said Richard Teng, the firm’s former Global Head of Regional Markets, had been named chief executive. “I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself.”
Court papers filed by the government say Binance chose not to implement anti-money laundering measures, essentially allowing the firm to become a clearinghouse for all manner of illicit financial transactions. Between 2018 and 2022, that led to nearly $900 million in financial transactions that violated sanctions against Iran, the court papers charge.
In its announcement, the Treasury Department accused Binance of allowing Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda and ISIS "to transact freely, supporting activities from child sexual abuse to illegal narcotics to terrorism.” The agency will monitor Binance’s financial records for five years under the threat of a $150 million penalty. Tuesday’s settlement will also ensure Binance’s “complete exit from the United States,” according to a statement.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement that the company “allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform.”
In June, the Securities and Exchange Commission came after Binance and Coinbase, another crypto exchange, asking Binance to freeze all assets on its U.S. platform and accusing Coinbase of acting as a securities exchange, broker and clearing agency.
“Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed – now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. He noted that in the past month, the Justice Department has won a guilty plea or a conviction of the leaders of two of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges — meaning Zhao and Bankman-Fried.
Authorities said Binance earned a 20 percent reduction in its sentencing fine for cooperating with investigators, but noted that it did not receive full credit for cooperation because the company delayed producing key evidence, including recordings of meetings in which executives talked about U.S. legal requirements.
The plea deal is the latest victory in the Securities and Exchange Commissions’s effort to rid bad crypto actors from the United States, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
“Especially after what they did in the Southern District of New York with the other big crypto story this year,” he said, referring to the conviction of Bankman-Fried.
This is developing story. It will be updated.
by Owendonovan If I were an Israeli, I'd be annoyed Bibi is giving tours instead of doing his job.
Elon Musk traveled to Israel and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, touring the scene of a Hamas attack in a visit that appeared aimed at calming the outcry over his endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory on X, the social media platform he owns.
Dozens of major brands suspended their advertising on X after Mr. Musk this month agreed with a post that accused Jewish communities of pushing “hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The flight of advertisers threatened to cost X tens of millions of dollars, and the White House denounced Mr. Musk for “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate.”
On Tuesday, after arriving in Israel, Mr. Musk wrote on X that “actions speak louder than words.” Wearing a flak jacket, he toured Kfar Aza, an Israeli kibbutz where dozens of people were killed during the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7.
Video shared by Mr. Netanyahu’s office showed the two men, accompanied by security personnel, walking through the village in the rain and inspecting the blackened ruins of a house. Mr. Netanyahu said on X that he gave Mr. Musk the tour “to show him up close the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas.”
In a conversation with Mr. Netanyahu broadcast on X, Mr. Musk called the visit to Kfar Aza “jarring” and said he also had been shown footage of the Oct. 7 massacre that he found “troubling.”
Mr. Netanyahu spent the bulk of the conversation explaining the rationale for the war in Gaza. Mr. Musk said in agreement that it was important to “get rid of the ones who are hellbent on murdering Jewish people,” though he also added that it was important to minimize civilian casualties in the enclave.
Mr. Musk also said it was a challenge to stop “the sort of propaganda that is convincing people to engage in murder,” an apparent reference to the ideology that had fueled Hamas’ attack. Mr. Netanyahu did not raise Mr. Musk’s social media post during the conversation and Mr. Musk did not refer to it, or to the role of X in shaping public attitudes over antisemitism. How would you know if you're not trying, Elmo?
Since Mr. Musk’s post, dozens of major brands including IBM, Apple and Disney have paused their advertising campaigns on X, and the company, which Mr. Musk purchased in October last year for $44 billion, could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year. Other major companies, including Amazon, Coca-Cola and Microsoft, have also halted or are considering pausing their ads on the social network, according to internal documents.
Mr. Musk has also faced broader criticism for tolerating and even encouraging antisemitic abuse on his social media platform. He has attacked George Soros, the financier who is a frequent target of antisemitic abuse, and threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, a rights group that has highlighted the rise in antisemitism on X.
In May, he likened the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor to Magneto — the X-Men supervillain who has Jewish roots — and said that Mr. Soros “hates humanity.”
That same month, Mr. Musk cast doubt that a gunman behind a mass shooting in Allen, Texas, that left eight people dead had supported Nazi ideology, calling it a “very bad psyop.”
When asked about those comments on CNBC in May, Mr. Musk was defiant. “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” he said. The company has also said that concerns over antisemitic posts on the platform are overblown. Well, that's been obvious since he bought twitter.
Mr. Musk has not explained why he visited Israel, but he has had past dealings with its prime minister. In September, he hosted Mr. Netanyahu for an event at a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., as both men sought to deflect criticism.
“It’s not an easy thing to be maligned — I know you’ve never seen that, right?” Mr. Netanyahu said during the event.
“Me, maligned?” Mr. Musk responded, laughing. “Never.”
During that exchange Mr. Musk also responded to reports of rising antisemitic content on the social network.
“Obviously I’m against antisemitism — I’m against anti-anything,” he said. “And I’m in favor of that which helps uphold society and takes us to a better future for humanity.”
Following his recent controversy, Mr. Musk posted a similar statement earlier this month, calling news stories that he was antisemitic “bogus.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he wrote.
On Monday, Israel appeared to reach an understanding with Mr. Musk over his proposal this month to deploy Starlink, the satellite internet service he owns, in Gaza for aid agencies to use amid cellular and internet blackouts. Palestinians have blamed Israel for the communications interruptions.
Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said that Mr. Musk had consented not to open access to the system in Israel and in Gaza without the permission of his ministry. “This understanding is vital,” Mr. Karhi wrote on X.
by ti-amie There is just something wrong about a man like Elmo being treated like a head of state.
by Owendonovan Dr Pepper Awards Two $100,000 Scholarships to Correct Halftime Blunder
Dr Pepper awarded each of the contestants in the college football halftime challenge the grand prize after a review found a counting error.
Dr Pepper sponsored a scholarship giveaway at halftime on Saturday during a game between the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma State Cowboys, but the contest did not go as planned.
By Orlando Mayorquin
Dec. 2, 2023
The Big 12 Championship game between the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma State Cowboys on Saturday evening delivered the kind of controversy-mired barn burner that inspires legions of college football fans to pack stadiums and jam sports bars every weekend.
But the real competition, it turned out, was not between the football teams (Texas won a one-sided 49-21 affair), but between two college students competing in the Dr Pepper Tuition Giveaway challenge at halftime, a college football tradition.
Each student had to lob as many footballs as they could into their respective Dr Pepper-branded bin five yards away within the allotted time.
Ryan Georgian, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, and Gavin White, a junior at Ohio State University, were tied at 10 points each at the end of regulation, forcing overtime.
They each had another 15-second period to pull ahead for the victory.
At the whistle, they dipped into their stash of footballs and hurled them from chest level at the opening in the bin, each miss ricocheting forcefully off the target, like corn popping in a kettle.
At the last second, Georgian tied the score at 16, forcing a sudden-death shootout in a second overtime period.
Georgian would go on to win, but fans quickly pointed out that there was a problem.
The game should not have gone to double overtime, fans complained and Dr Pepper later acknowledged.
A review of the video showed Georgian only added five points to his score in the first time period. He was credited with six, enough to force the tie.
Online, the college football world roared. Fans cried foul and pleaded for the soft drink giant to serve “Justice for Gavin.”
Not long after, Dr Pepper said it would rectify the situation.
“In a dramatic double OT Dr Pepper Tuition Giveaway during the Big 12 Conference championship game, an on-field technical error resulted in an inaccurate accounting of the double tie break,” the company said in a statement, which did not elaborate about what went wrong.
“As such, Dr Pepper will recognize both finalists as grand prize winners with both receiving the 100k award in tuition,” the statement continued.
White directed questions to Dr Pepper’s public relations team, and Georgian could not be reached.
In video pitches submitted to Dr Pepper, the students made their case for a chance to compete for the scholarship.
Judges selected the contestants based on their video submissions, using a rubric that assessed their goals and financial need.
Georgian, a business major, said the tuition money would help him achieve his goal of becoming a social entrepreneur, while paying for his sister’s tuition and treatment for her rare blood disease.
For his part, White, an aspiring meteorologist, used weather forecast graphics to paint a gloomy outlook for his college debt: rising out-of-state tuition, pesky loans and high interest rates.
“This scholarship could bring in some sunshine to help push out some of this bad weather,” he said.
Fans online celebrated what they saw as a just outcome, some taking credit for putting the pressure on Dr Pepper.
“Jokes aside I think our tweets forced Dr Pepper’s hand,” wrote one fan. “Thanks to all who contributed and got the word out.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/spor ... error.html
How refreshing how quickly they did the right thing!
by Fastbackss 4.3 billion is a large fine (re: Binance)
by ponchi101 Shocked, shocked to find ANOTHER crypto company involved in a scandal.
by ti-amieTesla recalls 2 million cars with ‘insufficient’ Autopilot safety controls
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tesla will send out a software update to fix the problems
By Leo Sands, Aaron Gregg and Faiz Siddiqui
Updated December 13, 2023 at 12:34 p.m. EST|Published December 13, 2023 at 6:36 a.m. EST
Tesla is recalling more than 2 million vehicles to fix Autopilot systems that U.S. safety regulators determined did not have enough controls to prevent misuse, the largest recall of Tesla’s driver-assistance software to date.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tesla’s method of ensuring drivers are still paying attention while the driver-assistance system is activated is “insufficient.”
“There may be an increased risk of a crash,” the agency wrote, in some situations when the system is engaged “and the driver does not maintain responsibility for vehicle operation and is unprepared to intervene as necessary or fails to recognize when Autosteer is canceled or not engaged.”
The recall comes days after The Washington Post published an investigation that found Teslas in Autopilot had repeatedly been involved in deadly crashes on roads where the software was not intended to be used.
NHTSA said Tesla will send out a software update to fix the problems affecting its 2012-2023 Model S, 2016-2023 Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3, and 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles, effectively encompassing all Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot on U.S. roads. Autopilot is a standard feature on Tesla’s vehicles; only some early Tesla models are not equipped with the software.
“Automated technology holds great promise for improving safety but only when it is deployed responsibly; today’s action is an example of improving automated systems by prioritizing safety,” NHTSA said in a statement.
Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Wednesday.
In a statement this week responding to the Washington Post report, Tesla said it has a “moral obligation” to continue improving its safety systems, while adding that it’s “morally indefensible” to not make these features available to a wider set of consumers. The company argues that vehicles in Autopilot perform more safely than those in normal driving, citing the lower frequency of crashes when the software is enabled.
“The Tesla team looks forward to continuing our work with them towards our common goal of eliminating as many deaths and injuries as possible on our roadways,” reads the company’s post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Federal regulators with NHTSA have been investigating the software for more than two years in a probe examining more than a dozen crashes involving Teslas in Autopilot and parked emergency vehicles. The agency also started requiring in 2021 that automakers deploying driver-assistance software report crashes involving the technology to the agency.
In all, NHTSA said it reviewed 956 crashes allegedly involving Autopilot before zeroing in on 322 software-related crashes that involved “frontal impacts and impacts from potential inadvertent disengagement of the system.”
The Post story reported Tesla’s acknowledgments, based on user manuals, legal documents and statements to regulators, that the key Autopilot feature called Autosteer is “intended for use on controlled-access highways” with “a center divider, clear lane markings, and no cross traffic.” Despite that, drivers managed to activate Autopilot in locations other than those intended for the software — at times with deadly consequences.
In its recall notice, NHTSA said: “Autosteer is designed and intended for use on controlled-access highways when the feature is not operating in conjunction with the Autosteer on City Streets feature,” a more advanced version known as Full Self-Driving.
“In certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, the prominence and scope of the feature’s controls may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse of the SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance feature,” the recall notice said.
Tesla typically addresses NHTSA software recalls through remote updates, meaning the vehicles do not have to be returned to service centers to meet the agency’s requirements. Tesla has remedied multiple software flaws with remote updates at NHTSA’s behest, including issuing a fix to Full Self-Driving software in 2021 after cars started sharply activating their brakes at highway speeds.
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has decried NHTSA as the “fun police” and has taken issue with regulators’ terminology, posting on X that the use of the word “‘recall’ for an over-the-air software update is anachronistic and just flat wrong!”
Tesla’s policy chief Rohan Patel hailed the work of both Tesla and its regulators in a post on X.
“The regulatory system is working about as well as it can given the lack of clear regulations in this field,” he said, adding that those who had “demonized” the company and NHTSA were “on the wrong side of history.”
The investigation will remain open “to support an evaluation of the effectiveness of the remedies deployed by Tesla,” NHTSA said.
The Post report revealed at least eight fatal or serious wrecks involving Tesla Autopilot on roads where the driver-assistance software could not reliably operate. The Post’s report was based on an analysis of two federal databases, legal records and other public documents.
The recall comes after a years-long investigation into crashes while the Autopilot system was activated. According to a timeline released by NHTSA, Tesla cooperated with repeated inquiries starting in August 2021, concluding in a series of meetings in early October 2023. In those meetings, Tesla “did not concur” with the agency’s safety analysis but proposed several “over-the-air” software updates to address the issue.
When Autopilot is activated, the driver is still considered the “operator” of the vehicle. That means the person is responsible for the vehicle’s movement, with hands on the steering wheel at all times and attention being paid to the surroundings at all times in readiness to brake.
In a related safety recall report, NHTSA said the risk of collision can increase if the driver fails to “maintain continuous and sustained responsibility for the vehicle” or fails to recognize when Autopilot turns off.
The software update, which was to be deployed on “certain affected vehicles” starting Dec. 12, will add extra controls and alerts to “encourage the driver to adhere to their continuous driving responsibility,” the recall report said. The update also will include controls that prevent Autosteer from engaging outside of areas where it is supposed to work as well as a feature that can suspend a driver’s Autosteer privileges if the person repeatedly fails to stay engaged at the wheel.
The company’s stock fell around 2.7 percent in trading Wednesday, even as broader stock market indexes were flat.
by ti-amieValue of X has fallen 71% since purchase by Musk and name change from Twitter
Mutual fund Fidelity, which owns stake in social media platform, marks down value of its shares in disclosure obtained by Axios
Adam Gabbatt
@adamgabbatt
Tue 2 Jan 2024 14.24 GMT
The social media platform X has lost 71% of its value since it was bought by Elon Musk, according to the mutual fund Fidelity.
Fidelity, which owns a stake in X Holdings, said in a disclosure obtained by Axios that it had marked down the value of its shares by 71.5% since Musk’s purchase.
Musk acquired Twitter for $44bn in October 2022 and renamed the platform X in July 2023. Fidelity’s estimate would place the value of X at about $12.5bn.
The number of monthly users of X dropped by 15% in the first year since Musk’s takeover amid concerns over a rise in hate speech on the platform.
Since Musk’s takeover, X has cut at least 50% of staff and reduced moderation. And in September, the European Union issued a warning to Musk after it found that X had the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.
Fidelity’s revised valuation of X came from a disclosure which ran to the end of November 2023, Axios reported. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
That disclosure would cover the fallout from a number of major companies pulling advertising on X after Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory, the New York Times reported. Musk responded to the boycott by telling companies to “go (expletive) yourself” during an interview at an event in New York.
Musk is the world’s richest man, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $251bn. When he acquired Twitter, Musk said he was buying the company “to try to help humanity”.
Since the takeover Musk has reinstated a number of people previously banned from the platform, including former president Donald Trump and the rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Trump is facing more than 90 criminal charges stemming from subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden, retention of government secrets after his presidency and hush-money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels. He is also attempting to fend off civil lawsuits over business affairs and a rape allegation deemed substantially true by a judge.
Meanwhile, Jones recently proposed to pay $55m over 10 years to the Sandy Hook families who sued him for spreading lies that the 2012 schoolhouse killings in Newtown, Connecticut, were part of a hoax meant to force the US to accept gun control.
Jones’s offer came after a Texas judge ruled that Jones, the host of Infowars, could not invoke bankruptcy protection to avoid paying the nearly $1.5bn he was ordered to pay to families of the victims of one of the deadliest school shootings in US history. Believers of Jones’s lies aimed abuse and threats at the families.
by ponchi101 Yet, nothing has really replaced Twitter. So, until some other big name starts something that can attract that crowd, X remains the name of the game.
Or am I missing something?
by ti-amie I've noticed that most of what we call Tennis Twitter is still on Xitter. I miss the regulars from that site. I have, however, noticed that since Elmo has let the RWNJ's and blue checker$ run rampant more people are showing up on Mastodon.
If Xitter continues to be a source of Q fantasies masquerading as talking points I don't think it'll be viable for any valid reason much longer. Just recently the Government of Japan was cut off because they made too many posts while trying to inform its citizens about a very real tsunami threat after a series of massive earthquakes hit them. Not to mention they suppress real news outlets in favor of the blue check crazie$ so if you really want to find a legit news source you spend a few minutes scrolling past and/or deleting the nonsense to get to the real stuff making any claims about engagement misleading at best and bogus at worst.
I guess you guys have noticed I'm leaning on Reddit for tennis, something JazzNU recommended. It took me awhile to get the hang of that site but I'm doing better with it now. I found it harder than Mastodon to be honest.
Repeating and paraphrasing what someone posted on Mastodon today: if you want an algo to feed you what it thinks you want Xitter is the place for you. If you want to take the extra five minutes and look for the hashtag for the topic you're interested in on Mastodon you're taking control of your social media.
That said in an emergency my Pavlovian response is still Xitter. It's a hard habit to break.
by ponchi101 i have noticed that you use Reddit more, and the plug in works fine.
The issue with mastodon is/was that there is no plug in to make it work. So, the embedding is not fluid. But sure, if we stop using X I will not be missing much.
by ti-amie
ponchi101 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2024 10:33 pm
i have noticed that you use Reddit more, and the plug in works fine.
The issue with mastodon is/was that there is no plug in to make it work. So, the embedding is not fluid. But sure, if we stop using X I will not be missing much.
I bet the problem with Mastodon has to do with the fact that there are multiple servers "federated" under the name Mastodon. Every one is different. Xitter is still the best for video's though so unless it Elmo manages to completely implode it most of the video will still come from there.
by ponchi101 That is exactly the reply I got from the phpBB guys. Mastodon would require multiple forms of plug ins, so they are a very hard "site" to integrate.
by ti-amie Eff around...
Boeing wants FAA to exempt Max 7 from safety rules to get it in the air
Jan. 5, 2024 Updated Fri., Jan. 5, 2024 at 9:01 p.m.
By Dominic Gates Seattle Times
Seattle Times
SEATTLE – Little noticed, days before the holiday break, Boeing petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration for an exemption from key safety standards for the 737 Max 7 – the still-uncertified smallest member of its newest jet family.
Since August, earlier models of the Max flying passengers in the U.S. have had to limit use of the jet’s engine anti-ice system after Boeing discovered a defect with potentially catastrophic consequences. The flaw could cause the inlet at the front end of the pod surrounding the engine – known as a nacelle – to break and fall off.
In an August Airworthiness Directive, the FAA stated debris from such a breakup could penetrate the fuselage, putting passengers seated at windows behind the wings in danger, and could damage the wing or tail of the plane, “which could result in loss of control of the airplane.”
Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, the union representing 15,000 American Airlines pilots, said the flaw in the engine anti-ice system has “given us great concern.”
He said the pilot procedure the FAA approved as an interim solution – urging pilots to make sure to turn off the system when icing conditions dissipate to avoid overheating that within 5 minutes could seriously damage the structure of the nacelle – is inadequate given the serious potential danger.
“You get our attention when you say people might get killed,” Tajer said. “We’re not interested in seeing exemptions and accommodations that depend on human memory. … There’s just got to be a better way.”
In its petition to the FAA, Boeing argues the breakup of the engine nacelle is “extremely improbable.”
“The 737 Max has been in service since 2017 and has accumulated over 6.5 million flight hours. In that time, there have been no reported cases of parts departing aircraft due to overheating of the engine nacelle inlet structure,” the filing states.
On Thursday, Boeing said in an emailed statement it is “developing a long-term solution that will undergo thorough testing and FAA review before being introduced to the 737 Max fleet.” In the meantime, Boeing said “inspections are ongoing” to check for any damage to the nacelles on Maxes in service.However, without an exemption from safety regulations, the FAA cannot approve the final two Max models, the Max 7 and Max 10, to fly passengers.
On Christmas Eve, just before the deadline for public input on the proposed Max 7 exemption, the Foundation for Aviation Safety – a lobbying group set up by former Boeing manager and whistleblower Ed Pierson following the two deadly Max crashes – filed a submission calling on the FAA not to certify the airplane until Boeing fixes the safety defect.
“The Foundation is alarmed at the FAA safety culture, allowing consideration of an exemption proposal … for certification of a new airplane model with a known catastrophic failure (risk) resulting from a simple mistake by the flight crew,” the Foundation’s submission states.
Don’t forget to turn it off
Industry analysts and Boeing investors have long anticipated Max 7 certification being granted soon. The company’s share price rose significantly toward year-end based partly on that expectation.
If the exemption is granted, certification can go ahead, allowing the Max 7 to begin flying with Southwest Airlines.
Boeing would have until mid-2026 to design, test and certify a fix for the engine anti-ice system defect that would then be retrofitted to all Maxes. By then, there could be nearly 2,000 Maxes in service or more than 4,000 engines needing the retrofit.
Until then, pilots would have to adhere to the limitation currently applied on the Max 8 and Max 9 models. After emerging from icy conditions into drier air they have to make sure they turn off the engine anti-ice system, which heats the inner barrel of the engine pod so that ice doesn’t build up.
If they fail to do so, the system can quickly overheat the carbon composite material and damage the structural integrity of the engine pod. The problem is there’s no alert or indication to the crew that the system needs to be turned off. They just have to remember to do it. If they forget, or are distracted by other tasks, the overheating can begin to damage the structure after just five minutes.
Tajer said it’s “not uncommon” for pilots on other aircraft to inadvertently leave the anti-ice system on when it is no longer needed. On older 737s, for example, it would waste energy, but not do damage. The defect affects only the Max, with engine inlets made from carbon composite rather than the metal used on older models.
Independent aviation safety consultant and pilot John Cox said he’s run the anti-ice system on the previous 737 “for long periods of time.” And he’s unsure how practical it is to ask a Max flight crew to limit the time the system operates in dry air.
“I’ve been in and out of cloud tops,” Cox said. “Do you turn it on, turn it off, turn it on, turn it off?
“If you are doing that and get distracted, and end up with the anti-ice off and you go back into clouds where you pick up inlet icing, the next time you turn it on, you’re going to ingest that ice.”
After reviewing Boeing’s petition, Cox said he’d recommend the FAA turn it down.
“With the possibility of such a failure and an Airworthiness Directive with significant limitation already in place, my vote would be to deny the exemption request,” Cox said. “Yes, it would affect entry into service, but it could create an ‘unsafe condition’ by the FAA’s own words.”
Michael Stumo, father of Samya Rose Stumo, who died in the second Max crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet in 2019, said, “Boeing claims to have learned its lessons with a new focus upon safety. That is not true … Boeing is still avoiding safety rules rather than building safe aircraft.”
A single point of failure?
Boeing’s petition states the potential breakup of the engine pod was discovered through analysis and flight testing and could happen only in the case of “multiple, independent system failures during specific operational and environmental conditions.”
“Boeing’s quantitative risk assessment evaluated this scenario to be extremely improbable,” the filing concludes.
But Joe Jacobsen, a retired FAA safety engineer and adviser to the Foundation for Aviation Safety, says the petition offers no evidence this is not a single point of failure.
“A pilot forgetting to turn it off, that’s all it takes,” said Jacobsen.
Mike Dostert, another retired FAA safety engineer and adviser to the foundation, concurs.
“All it takes is for the system to be left on and you damage the structure,” said Dostert. “I don’t see the multiple failures.”
Without any kind of crew alert to tell the pilots they should shut off the system, he said “there’s a pretty good chance human error is going to occur.”
Notably, among the various regulations Boeing wants exempted from is one requiring the jetmaker to prove that any “single failure or malfunction or probable combination of failures (that) will jeopardize the safe operation of the airplane … is extremely remote.”
Dostert added that this defect could overheat and damage both engines on the plane simultaneously, making such an event potentially even worse than several serious accidents in recent years when broken engine fan blades caused the inlet cowl to break off a single engine.
In 2018, a passenger aboard a Southwest Airlines 737 died when a broken fan blade destroyed an engine cowl. Shrapnel penetrated the aircraft’s fuselage and broke a cabin window beside the passenger.
The pod around the engine is part of the airframe and is the responsibility of Boeing, not the engine maker.
Dostert said an earlier nonfatal engine blowout on a Southwest flight in 2016 had also led to the inlet cowl departing the aircraft but no fix was made before the fatality in 2018.
Almost six years later, the fix for that broken fan blade scenario in older 737s is still in the works. In December, the FAA published a proposal that gives Boeing until the middle of 2028 to develop a retrofit that will strengthen the inlet cowls and fan casings.
“There’s a pattern here,” Dostert said. “Of Boeing knowing about potentially catastrophic single failures, and not addressing them in an expeditious manner.”
Equivalent safety to Max 8, 9
In 2022, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun threatened to cancel the Max 10 if Congress didn’t amend a law granting permission to certify the jet without meeting the safety regulation for crew alerting systems included in the 2020 Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act.
Congress bowed to the pressure and amended the law, amounting to a safety exemption for the Max 7 and Max 10 models.
Boeing argues in its December petition that granting the exemption, with the same procedural limitation on how the pilots use the engine anti-ice system that applies to the Max 8 and Max 9, will leave the Max 7 no less safe than those two aircraft that are flying passengers every day. But Cox said “there’s a difference in an unsafe condition found on the existing fleet and an unsafe condition prior to certification.”
He said he’s uncomfortable with the idea of “certifying an airplane with an acknowledged potential unsafe condition.”
With the Max 8 and 9 flying, Cox said the FAA’s only alternative to imposing the operational restriction on those jets was to ground the fleet.
“Do I think it’s worth grounding the fleet? No, I don’t. It’s a bit of a tough call,” Cox said. Limiting use of the anti-ice system in dry air is “probably the best compromise that the FAA and Boeing could come up with and agree on.”
But for Boeing’s two still-to-be certified airplanes, the Max 7 and Max 10, he thinks a permanent fix is a better approach.
“They need to make it a very strong priority to minimize the time under which the engine is operating with this potential problem and to restore the anti-ice system to normal,” Cox said.
The FAA said in an emailed statement that it will investigate how the defect was missed during the Max’s original development and certification and “will issue a corrective action to ensure Boeing’s future certification programs … are improved.”
The safety agency said it will rule on Boeing’s petition, but “there is no specific timetable.”
US orders Boeing 737 Max 9 planes grounded after Alaska Airlines blowout
Nearly 200 planes out of commission as FAA investigates Saturday flight from Portland, Oregon, where cabin panel blew out mid-air
Alaska Airlines plane makes emergency landing after window blows out mid-air – video
Guardian staff and agencies
Sat 6 Jan 2024 21.28 CET
US regulators have ordered the temporary grounding of 171 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft following a cabin panel blowout late Friday that forced a brand-new airplane operated by Alaska Airlines to make an emergency landing.
“The FAA is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes before they can return to flight,” said Mike Whitaker, a Federal Aviation Administration administrator, on Saturday. “Safety will continue to drive our decision-making as we assist the NTSB’s [National Transportation Safety Board] investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.”
Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, echoed the same message in a social media post: “Safety will always be the top priority for our department and for FAA.”
In their own statement, Boeing officials said: “We agree with and fully support the FAA’s decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 airplanes with the same configuration as the affected plane.”
The company added: “Safety is our top priority, and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers.”
Alaska Airlines first grounded all of its Boeing 737 Max 9 planes on Saturday morning after a window and a chunk of fuselage blew out on one of the aircraft in mid-air shortly after takeoff.
One of the Boeing 737 Max 9s belonging to Alaska Airlines had to make an emergency landing shortly after taking off from Portland, Oregon, on Friday.
A passenger sent the broadcaster KATU-TV a photo showing a gaping hole in the side of the airplane next to passenger seats. The airline said the plane, carrying 174 passengers and six crew members, landed safely.
Evan Smith, who was among those on board, told KATU that a boy sitting in a row with his motherhad his shirt sucked off him and out of the plane. “His mother was holding on to him,” he said. “You heard a big loud bang to the left rear. A whooshing sound and all the oxygen masks deployed instantly and everyone got those on.”
Another passenger, Kyle Rinker, told CNN: “It was really abrupt. Just got to altitude, and the window/wall just popped off and didn’t notice it until the oxygen masks came off.”
Yet another passenger, Emma Vu, told CNN that she sent a text message to her parents with their code word for emergencies to let them know about what was happening on the plane. “I’ve never had to use it before – but I knew that this was the moment.”
Vu said people on either side of her, along with a flight attendant, comforted her and assured her “it was going to be OK”.
“The fact that everyone was kind of freaking out and [the attendant] took that time to kind of make me feel like I was the only passenger – honestly that was really sweet,” Vu added.
In an emailed statement, Alaska Airlines said: “Flight 1282 from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, experienced an incident this evening soon after departure.”
On Saturday morning the company said it had taken the “precautionary step of temporarily grounding our fleet of 65 Boeing Max-9 aircraft”.
The plane was diverted after rising to 16,000ft (4,875 metres) about six minutes after takeoff at 5.07 pm on Friday, according to flight-tracking data from the FlightAware website. It landed again at 5.26pm.
The news outlet KPTV-TV reported photos sent in by a passenger showing a large section of the plane’s fuselage missing.
A passenger named Diego Murillo told KPTV that Alaska Airlines rebooked him on an 11pm flight out of Portland’s airport. Murillo said his family was prepared to arrive at their final destination at about 2am on Saturday – but beyond that, the airline provided little information to him about what had happened.
The Boeing 737 Max 9 at the center of Friday’s events rolled off the assembly line and received its certification two months ago, according to online FAA records. Boeing said it was working to gather more information and was ready to support the investigation.
The Max is the newest version of Boeing’s venerable 737, a twin-engine, single-aisle plane frequently used on US domestic flights. The plane went into service in May 2017.
Two Max 8 planes crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people and leading to a near two-year worldwide grounding of all Max 8 and Max 9 planes. They returned to service only after Boeing made changes to an automated flight-control system implicated in the crashes.
Max deliveries have been interrupted at times to fix manufacturing flaws. In December, the company told airlines to inspect the planes for a possible loose bolt in the rudder-control system.
by ponchi101 Boeing is seriously opening itself to a major lawsuit, certainly in the billions, if they do not certify properly.
Why are they doing this?
by ti-amie If that child and his mother had been sucked out of the plane Boeing would be no more.
That said I think L'il Wayne has it right
by ti-amie
(NTSB/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
United finds loose bolts on Boeing jets grounded after blowout incident
The findings, as part of a preliminary inspection ordered by FAA, raises questions about possible systematic problems with the Boeing 737 Max 9 jet
By Lori Aratani and Kelly Kasulis ChoUpdated 39 minutes ago
MORE COVERAGE
Before plane’s blowout, warning light illuminated during 3 previous flights
Airlines cancel hundreds of flights after Boeing Max 9 grounding order
United Airlines on Monday said preliminary inspections of grounded Boeing 737 Max 9 planes have turned up loose bolts and other issues with the part of the aircraft that failed on an Alaska Airlines flight over Portland last week, raising concerns of a systematic problem with jetliner.
In some cases, bolts needed additional tightening, the carrier said. The inspections of more than 100 Alaska and United planes manufactured by Boeing were ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration after a door plug blew out of the Alaska flight midflight Friday, causing injuries and chaos.
The finding could compound the woes at Boeing, which has struggled to rebuild its reputation after an earlier model of the Max was grounded after two crashes killed 346 people several years ago. Investigations revealed problems with the design of an automated system on that plane, which had not been fully disclosed to the FAA.
Boeing did not comment on United’s reported finding on the loose bolts Monday, which occurred as part of preliminary inspections that have been ongoing since Saturday. On Monday, the FAA said airlines can begin inspections in earnest using guidance from Boeing and the agency.
One hundred seventy one Boeing 737 Max 9 planes have been grounded amid the investigation into the rapid depressurization accident Friday, which triggered an emergency landing and resulted in extensive damage to an Alaska Airlines plane.
There were no serious injuries in the accident, which is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, but the dramatic midair incident caused the FAA to order immediate inspections of the jetliners. Guidance issued Monday by Boeing and approved by the FAA allows the inspections to begin. The FAA previously said the inspections could take four to eight hours per plane, but on Monday said that was no longer accurate, without offering a revised estimate.
“The FAA’s priority is always keeping Americans safe,” the agency said in a statement, adding that all Max 9 aircraft would remain grounded until operators have completed the enhanced inspections.
Two airlines in the United States — Alaska Airlines and United Airlines — have Boeing Max 9 aircraft in their fleets.
Authorities are also investigating the auto-pressurization fail light on the Alaska Airlines flight that experienced the blowout. The light is designed to signal failures in the control of cabin pressure. It had illuminated on three flights in the weeks before Friday’s incident, the NTSB said. Those reports — on Dec. 7, Jan. 3 and Jan. 4 — prompted tests and a reset by maintenance, she said.
Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB, said Sunday that Alaska Airlines had restricted the plane involved in the blowout from flying to Hawaii in case of the need for a swift landing, and that a later request from the airline for a deeper look had gone unfulfilled before Friday’s incident.
“It’s certainly a concern, and it’s one that we want to dig into,” Homendy said. She added that it’s unclear whether the light is linked to the accident, saying it’s possible it could have malfunctioned independently of the plane’s auto-pressurization system.
Inspections will be required on both the left and right cabin-door exit plugs, door components and fasteners. Operators must also complete corrective-action requirements based on findings from the inspections before bringing any aircraft back into service, the FAA said.
“The safety of our airplanes and everyone who steps onboard is a core Boeing value,” Stan Deal, commercial airplanes president and chief executive, and Mike Delaney, chief aerospace safety officer and senior vice president of global aerospace safety, wrote in a message to employees Monday. “We agree with and fully support the FAA’s decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 MAX airplanes with the same configuration as the affected airplane.”
by ti-amieiPhone that got sucked out of Alaska Airlines plane and fell 16,000 feet is found on the ground – and still works
By Li Cohen
January 8, 2024 / 10:00 AM EST / CBS News
When a door plug on an Alaska Airlines plane suddenly ripped off minutes into a flight on Friday evening, everyone on board remained safe, but several objects were sucked out of the aircraft and fell roughly 16,000 feet – including what appears to be an intact and working iPhone.
Washington resident Sean Bates tweeted on Sunday that he found an iPhone on the side of the road that was "still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to a baggage claim" for the plane involved in Friday's incident, Alaska Airlines ASA1282. The phone also has a piece of a charger still stuck inside.
"Thing got *yanked* out the door," Bates tweeted, "...survived a 16,000 foot drop perfect in tact!"
Bates said he called the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency investigating the incident, and an agent told him it was the second phone to be found from the plane.
In a TikTok, Bates said he was out enjoying a walk when he stumbled across the iPhone. He said he was "a little skeptical at first" after coming across it, initially thinking that someone had thrown the device out of their car.
"It was still pretty clean, no scratches on it, sitting under a bush," he said. "And it didn't have a screen lock on it, so I opened it up and it was in airplane mode with travel confirmation and baggage claim for Alaska 1282."
Along with the door plug, several components of the plane were sucked out during Friday evening's incident, including headrests, a seat back and a tray table. The NTSB confirmed during a press briefing on Sunday that two cell phones belonging to people on the plane were located, including one found on the side of the road and another that was found in a yard. The plug that was covering the exit door was found in a teacher's backyard near Portland, Oregon, the city from which the plane departed and had to make an emergency landing.
Boeing 737 Max 9s – the type of plane in the incident – have been grounded by the FAA until the agency is "satisfied that they are safe," a spokesperson said. As of Monday morning, more than 300 Alaska Airlines and United Airlines flights have been canceled, as the two companies are the only U.S. passenger airlines that use the type of aircraft involved.
by ponchi101 My mom and sister are in Macon, GA, visiting our nieces. Their flight back to Caracas was cancelled yesterday, as they were flying a Copa Airlines 737. I am not sure if it was a Max 9, but... yeah, better that way.
by Suliso Boeing would be out of business in the commercial plane sector if it weren't such a duopoly. Switching to Airbus very expensive thus they're stuck.
by ponchi101 I would not go so far. The 737 series has been extremely successful and reliable for decades, and their other products, the 777 and 787 series are solid.
I never understood why they dropped the 757 (it was one hell of a plane) or why they came up with the 767 (that one was not so good).
But both Boeing and Airbus have competition in the 737 line and 320 lines. Embraer's line of 145, 175, 190 and 195 are excellent planes. I like them better than anything Airbus offers (the 320 series has got to be the most uncomfortable planes in the sky today).
by Suliso Airbus a220 is actually pretty good plane in the smaller segment. I probably have flown Embraer, but not recently and thus can't comment. Maybe they're more common in SA.
by ti-amieSEC Twitter/X gets hacked, saying all Bitcoin ETFs are approved
1/9/2024
Chair Gary Gensler clarified on Twitter that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Committee's official account was hacked, following a misleading tweet about the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs. He stated, “The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.”
The financial world has been eagerly anticipating the SEC's decision on spot Bitcoin ETFs, a development that would allow American investors to trade this popular cryptocurrency as shares on major stock exchanges. Despite expectations for an approval announcement at Wednesday's market close, a surprise tweet from the SEC's official account erroneously signaled its approval.
However, Gary Gensler promptly issued a correction on Twitter, emphasizing that the SEC had not yet approved the listing and trading of these much-awaited products.
This incident adds to the ongoing drama surrounding the SEC's historical resistance to sanctioning such investment vehicles, often citing risks of market manipulation. The situation shifted following a significant win in August by Grayscale, a potential issuer for the Bitcoin ETF, in its lawsuit against the SEC. Since then, the agency has been reconsidering applications, now involving major firms like BlackRock.
Suliso wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2024 4:49 pm
Airbus a220 is actually pretty good plane in the smaller segment. I probably have flown Embraer, but not recently and thus can't comment. Maybe they're more common in SA.
Actually, I flew an EA195 in United Airlines. Very comfy plane, even though UA usually tries to cram 200 people in a space designed for a lavatory. That is the reason I say it is a good plane. If not even UA was able to make it suck, it says a lot.
by ti-amieJudge Voids Musk’s $56 Billion Tesla Pay, Citing ‘Deeply Flawed’ Award Process
After the news, Tesla shares fell in after hours trading on Tuesday
Published 01/30/24 05:09 PM ET|Updated 53 min ago
Lily Meier
Tesla shares fell in after hours trading after a judge said that the $56 billion pay package awarded by Tesla's board to Elon Musk to lead the company was extravagant.
Tesla shareholders sued in Delaware Chancery Court to void the compensation plan, which would have been the largest ever to a CEO by a public company, claiming it breached the board's fiduciary duty.
In a 201-page opinion, Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick of Delaware Chancery court concluded Tesla's board had failed to prove the compensation plan was fair, and noted that Tesla's proxy statement to shareholders failed to disclose relationships between Musk and members of the board's compensation committee.
"There was no well-functioning committee of independent directors here," the judge said. "Musk launched a self-driving process, recalibrating the speed and direction along the way as he saw fit. The process arrived at an unfair price. And through this litigation, the plaintiff requests a recall."
After the ruling was released, Musk posted a statement on his social network X saying: “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.”
The next-closest package to the one proposed for Musk was his own previous plan, which was still 33 times smaller than the $56 billion he was awarded under the terms of the new deal, the suit alleged. The board, the shareholders claimed, did not take adequate measures to ensure Musk’s funding was fair.
“The plaintiff thus forces the question: Does Musk control Tesla?,” the judge wrote in the post trial opinion, adding that “the process leading to the approval of Musk’s compensation plan was deeply flawed.”
Some of those involved in the decision-making process had connections with Musk, the judge added, including the board's compensation committee chair, Ira Ehrenpreis, and another member on the working group, Antonio Gracias, who was allegedly known to vacation with Musk. Ehrenpreis and Gracias were also named as defendants in the suit.
Musk, and other defendants, claimed the deliberation process, which took nine months and happened across ten meetings, was “thorough.”
Musk's proposed pay package was nearly four times the amount of Tesla's company-wide earnings for the last full year. Musk owns around 13% of the company’s stock, after selling billions of dollars in shares in order to purchase X.
Earlier this month, Musk threatened to withdraw AI development projects from Tesla and move them to a new company, on the basis of not having sufficient voting control over Tesla's stock. Though his stated justification was that he needed to ensure AI development was managed appropriately, the move was widely seen as an effort to justify, and cement, his proposed compensation plan.
On Tuesday, before news of the decision hit the markets, Musk regained his spot as the richest person in the world with a net worth of around $210 billion, after the carmaker’s shares went up, Forbes reported.
by ti-amie He's also proposing putting a chip in peoples's brains. He being Elmo of course.
by ti-amieThe Mystery of the $400 Million FTX Heist May Have Been Solved
An indictment against three Americans suggests that at least some of the culprits behind the theft of an FTX crypto fortune may be in custody.
When more than $400 million worth of crypto was mysteriously pulled out of the coffers of what was once the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, on the very day that it declared bankruptcy in November of 2022, many initially suspected insiders at the company—including, potentially, then CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, now convicted of fraud. But clues left across blockchains over the past year suggested instead that external thieves had chosen a particularly inconvenient moment during FTX's meltdown to pull off an enormous heist.
Now, new clues revealed in a US Department of Justice indictment suggest something even more surprising: Some of those suspected thieves appear to have been in the United States and have now been arrested.
An indictment filed last week details charges against three people—Robert Powell, Carter Rohn, and Emily Hernandez—who are accused of running a massive cybercriminal theft ring. The group, which authorities say was known as the “Powell SIM Swapping Crew,” allegedly used SIM swaps—tricking phone companies into switching a user's mobile phone registration to the thieves' SIM card so that they can gain access to authentication codes sent to the victim's phone—to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from victims' accounts.
Most notably, the gang is accused of siphoning $400 million in virtual currency from the accounts of a company—named in the indictment only as Victim Company-1—on the night of November 11, 2022, continuing into November 12. As first spotted by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, that is also the exact timing of FTX's theft, which the company itself has pegged at between $415 million and $432 million in stolen crypto.
The blockchain analysis firm Elliptic corroborated Krebs' inference that the $400 million theft described in the report is almost certainly the FTX heist. “We are not aware of any other thefts from crypto businesses on this scale, on these dates,” Elliptic wrote in a blog post. “It therefore appears likely that FTX is the ‘Victim Company-1’ named in the indictment.”
FTX didn't immediately respond to WIRED's request for comment on whether it is the SIM-swapping victim described in the indictment.
If the indictment does, in fact, describe the FTX theft—and given the relative rarity of nine-figure crypto thefts and the exact timing of this one—then the charging document reveals key details about how the FTX heist was pulled off. It describes how Powell allegedly asked Hernandez to target a specific phone number for SIM-swapping. According to prosecutors, Hernandez then obtained a fake ID with her photo but the name of her victim—potentially an FTX staffer—and presented it at an AT&T retail store in Texas to prove her identity as she requested that the staffer's account be transferred to her own phone.
That allowed the group to hijack messages intended for the victim, including authentication codes for his or her account, according to the indictment. Given that those codes usually represent a second-factor authentication mechanism required after a user enters their username and password, it’s not clear how those other credentials might have been stolen, though cybercriminals typically obtain them through phishing, credential-stealing malware, or trying credentials leaked in other database dumps and potentially reused across accounts.
The possibility that the FTX thieves have been identified as Americans, within reach of US law enforcement, comes as a surprise following Elliptic’s discovery in October of last year that the crypto stolen from FTX had moved across blockchains and through cryptocurrency swapping services in a way that suggested Russia-linked money launderers. Portions of the funds, for instance, moved through mixing services—which take in users’ funds and return others to muddy the trail of any blockchain tracing—that are popular with Russian cybercriminals, such as ChipMixer and Sinbad.
Both mixers, in fact, have been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for their illicit use, including by Russian ransomware gangs. “It’s looking increasingly likely that the perpetrator has links to Russia,” Elliptic’s chief scientist and cofounder Tom Robison told WIRED in October. “We can’t attribute this to a Russian actor, but it’s an indication it might be.”
If the money is FTX's, those blockchain footprints suggest that the $400 million that the hackers allegedly stole is long gone, moved into the hands of international money launderers. “It is therefore not clear whether any of the stolen assets are under their control, and might be recovered,” Elliptic wrote in its blog post today. Nonetheless, if the alleged hackers were paid a portion of that sum in exchange for their work to steal it, that money might still be seized and repaid as restitution to FTX’s many creditors.
Either way, it suggests that another mystery in the story of FTX’s implosion and the billions of dollars in missing funds that disappeared with it may be at least partially solved. If so, it would seem this FTX-related crime, at least, can’t be blamed on Sam Bankman-Fried.
by ponchi101 "I feel like stealing something"
"Like what?"
"Cryptocurrencies"
"Cryptocurrencies are a figment of somebody's imagination"
...
"Should be easy, no?"
by ti-amieAT&T Says Service Is Restored After Widespread Cellular Outage
White House officials said the incident was under investigation, but it did not appear to be a cyberattack. Verizon and T-Mobile said their networks were operating normally.
By Jenny Gross and David McCabe
Jenny Gross reported from London and David McCabe reported from Washington.
Feb. 22, 2024
Updated 3:53 p.m. ET
AT&T said on Thursday that it had fully restored service to its wireless network after a widespread outage temporarily cut off connections for users across the United States for many hours, the cause of which was still under investigation.
The outage, which affected people in cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York, was first reported around 3:30 a.m. Eastern time, according to Downdetector.com, which tracks user reports of telecommunication and internet disruptions. At its peak, the site listed around 70,000 reports of disrupted service for the wireless carrier.
Multiple government agencies said they were looking into the incident, although the Biden administration told reporters that AT&T said there was no reason to think it was a cyberattack.
AT&T did not disclose the scope of the outage, nor the reason for it. When the outage first began on Thursday morning, the company listed the cause as “maintenance activity.”
Jim Greer, an AT&T spokesman, apologized in a statement confirming service was restored and said the company was “taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.”
The outage underscored the importance of connectivity to daily life as individuals and businesses were cut off from communications and the ability to use mobile apps. AT&T advised consumers they could make calls over Wi-Fi and sought to respond to angry customers online. Many phones showed an “SOS” symbol on their screen, signaling they could only make emergency calls, while local governments offered alternate ways to reach 911.
Reports of outages on Downdetector began to fall midmorning, and at one point AT&T’s website showed that outages were limited to users in California, though users in other states were still reporting issues. Cricket, which is owned by AT&T, also reported that its users were experiencing wireless service interruptions and said it was working to restore service.
Reports also surfaced early Thursday that FirstNet, the network AT&T maintains for emergency services personnel, had experienced outages, but AT&T said around 10:30 a.m. that the network was fully operational.
Verizon experienced 3,000 reports of outages at one point on Thursday and T-Mobile about half that. Both companies said in statements that their networks were operating normally.
“Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier,” Verizon said. “We are continuing to monitor the situation.”
In an email, T-Mobile said that it did not experience an outage. “Downdetector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.”
Officials in Washington said they were working to understand the cause of the outage. A spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission said its inquiry was being handled by its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, which was in touch with AT&T as well as other providers.
John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, said on a call with reporters on Thursday that the Biden administration was told “that AT&T has no reason to think this was a cybersecurity incident,” although he added that they would not be certain until an investigation had been completed.
Mr. Kirby said that, in addition to the F.C.C., the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. were collaborating with technology companies to investigate the outage.
The F.B.I. said in a statement it was in touch with AT&T and would respond accordingly if any malicious activity was found.
Throughout the day, cities urged residents to find alternate ways of reaching emergency or municipal services, like landlines or phones connected to Wi-Fi. The City of Upper Arlington, Ohio, said the fire department might not be notified of fire alarms because of the outage. It urged that any fire alarm be followed up with a 911 call.
The San Francisco Fire Department said on social media that it was aware of an issue affecting AT&T users who were trying to call 911. “We are actively engaged and monitoring this,” the fire department said. “If you are an AT&T customer and cannot get through to 911, then please try calling from a landline.”
The Massachusetts State Police said on social media on Thursday morning that 911 call centers across the state had been flooded with calls from people checking to see if the emergency service worked from their phones. “Please do not do this,” the police said. “If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service then your 911 service will also work.”
Even in less extreme circumstances, the outage complicated the many elements of life that have come to rely on a reliable connection to the internet.
Staff at the First Watch restaurant in Dania Beach, Fla. had to turn away breakfast customers for a time while the outage prevented them from processing payments.
Debra Maddow, who lives in southwest Houston, said that she first noticed something was off after 7 a.m., when she went to check traffic and Google Maps was offline. Later, she visited a Starbucks to make an urgent call through its free Wi-Fi, she said.
“I’m really frustrated that they’re not telling us anything,” Ms. Maddow said in a phone interview over Wi-Fi. She said she tried to call AT&T for an update, but after a long time on hold, the call was dropped.
Victor Mather, John Keefe, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Adam Goldman contributed reporting.
by ti-amie I worked this side of telecom for many years. If it wasn't a cyber attack the public will never know the true cause. I'd like to be wrong.
by ponchi101 But wait.
AT&T went out. Do you IMMEDIATELY think it is a Russian/Korean/Chinese cyberattack?
Or that it is AT&T?
(I mean, their service is... )
by ti-amie Soft paywall.
Elon Musk Flees To Billionaires’ New Court
Burned by legal decisions, Elon Musk is relocating his rocket company to Texas — where he’ll enjoy a new, separate justice system controlled by his ally, Gov. Greg Abbott.
Elon Musk’s lawsuit-plagued SpaceX rocket company is departing Delaware for a new legal home base in Texas just as the Lone Star State rolls out a new, separate court system for businesses that will allow Republican Texas Governor — and longtime Musk ally — Greg Abbott to handpick judges.
Texas’s oil and gas industries, alongside a host of other corporate interests, lobbied hard last year for the state’s new business court system, which will begin hearing cases this September. The fierce support from Big Oil, Texas’s largest industry, was evidence, critics charged, that business interests in Texas were effectively trying to buy their own courts.
Despite pushback, businesses succeeded. After lawmakers brought the bill to his desk, Abbott signed the proposal into law in June. Texas has now created what critics argue is a two-tiered system of justice, where cases involving massive corporations are funneled into separate courts and heard by judges appointed personally by the governor.
by ponchi101 Secede? I think it is actually time to kick them off.
by ti-amie Mexico if they secede
by ti-amieTrump Media stock plunges as 2023 Truth Social loss put at $58 million
The new figures highlight the huge gap between Trump Media’s hyped market debut and his social network’s revenue
By Drew Harwell
Updated April 1, 2024 at 4:21 p.m. EDT|Published April 1, 2024 at 10:35 a.m. EDT
Former president Donald Trump’s social media company said Monday it lost more than $58 million last year, sending its stock plunging more than 21 percent only days after a highflying public debut set the company’s value at more than $8 billion.
Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the company generated just over $4 million in revenue last year, including less than $1 million in the last quarter.
The nosediving share price of the company — which uses the stock ticker DJT, for Trump’s initials — fell to its lowest level since Trump Media went public last week and shaved more than a fifth of its market value in a single day. It also slashed the value of Trump’s 57 percent ownership in the company by roughly $1 billion, to $3.8 billion.
The new financial figures throw into stark relief the gap between Trump Media’s highly hyped investor-driven valuation on the public stock market and the reality of its business performance.
They also raise questions about the possibility that Trump could use the company as a financial lifeline. Trump cannot sell his shares or use them as collateral for a loan for six months because of a provision in the company’s merger agreement, known as a lockup.
The company’s board could vote to waive that requirement but has yet to do so, the filings state. Cashing out early could sink the stock price further by flooding the market with shares and undermining investor confidence in Trump’s commitment to the brand, financial analysts said.
Trump, who invested no money in Trump Media, was given 78 million shares of the company last week and stands to earn tens of millions more over the next three years if the stock stays above $12 to $17, a filing shows.
Trump Media said in a filing that it expects to incur more “operating losses and negative cash flows” as it works to expand its user base but that it expects its growth will come from Truth Social’s “overall appeal.”
The company said in a filing that its management had “substantial doubt” as of the end of last year that it would have enough money to pay its debts as they come due. The company paid nearly $40 million in interest expenses last year and racked up about $16 million in operating losses.
Trump’s company unlocked nearly $300 million in investor funds last week when it finalized a merger deal with Digital World Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company that helped take Trump Media public.
Trump Media said in a filing that it aimed to spend some of that money toward “strategic investments” in marketing, advertising sales and other technology. About $18 million of it was also paid toward an SEC settlement announced last year.
The company has declined to share performance indicators like those common across the tech industry, such as its number of active users, and said it may continue to withhold such figures. Focusing on those numbers, the company said, “might not align with the best interests” of Trump Media or its shareholders.
Trump Media’s wild booms and busts over the last week have driven some observers to regard it as a “meme stock,” whose value is derived less from its fundamentals and more from investors’ personal feelings about its namesake brand.
That separation of stock value from the company’s ability to make money could hurt it in the long run, said Jay Ritter, a University of Florida finance professor who predicted the share price would continue to decline.
“The stock will almost certainly remain extremely volatile, with both some big upswings and downswings on a daily basis,” he said. But “the long-term trend will be down.”
Trump Media, which makes money through advertising on Truth Social, has struggled to gain a broad audience after two years of operation, according to estimates from the online analytics firm SimilarWeb. On the company’s first day of public trading last week, Truth Social’s website saw its highest-traffic day of the month, with roughly 277,000 U.S. visitors, the estimates show.
That is a small fraction of most online platforms: On that same day, the discussion-board service Reddit saw more than 32 million U.S. visitors, the estimates show. Reddit, which went public a few days before Trump Media and is trading at a similar stock price, generated $800 million in revenue last year, or more than 200 times Trump Media’s 2023 revenue.
Trump’s company said it has begun testing a “state-of-the-art technology that supports video streaming and provides a ‘home’ for canceled content creators,” which it “aims to acquire and incorporate into its product offerings and/or services as soon as practicable.” The company did not respond to a request for comment seeking further details.
The Trump Media board includes Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.; Robert E. Lighthizer, Trump’s former trade representative; Linda McMahon, his former administrator of the Small Business Administration; and Kash Patel, who served on Trump’s National Security Council and was paid $130,000 by Trump Media last year through a consulting agreement.
Trump Media’s chief executive, the former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, was given 115,000 shares, a stake worth more than $5 million today. He and other board members are bound by the same lockup agreement.
Nunes is paid a $750,000 salary that is subject to increase to $1 million within two years, filings show. The company chief financial officer, Phillip Juhan, and chief operating officer, Andrew Northwall, are each paid about $350,000. Nunes, Juhan and Northwall will also each receive $600,000 “retention bonuses” this month.
Dan Scavino Jr., Trump’s White House social media director and an adviser to his 2024 presidential campaign, was also paid $240,000 last year through a consulting agreement that listed him as an independent contractor, a filing shows. He, too, will be given a $600,000 retention bonus.
Trump himself could receive 36 million more shares in the coming weeks as long as the stock price stays above $17.50 for “20 out of any 30 trading days,” according to a company “earnout” provision.
The company’s filings Monday note that five lawsuits have been filed in recent weeks involving Trump Media, Digital World, Trump Media’s co-founders Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, and Digital World’s former chief Patrick Orlando.
Digital World dropped one lawsuit last week after its biggest founding investor — Arc Global Investments II, which is managed by Orlando — voted in favor of the merger. But the other cases are still active, and they include claims from Litinsky, Moss and Orlando that the company had worked to improperly dilute their shares.
Trump Media said in a Monday filing that one ongoing lawsuit, jointly filed by Trump Media and Digital World against Orlando and Arc, could prove “costly and time consuming” and have an adverse effect on Trump Media’s reputation.
In the newest lawsuit, filed last week in a Florida circuit court, Trump Media alleged that Moss and Litinsky had mismanaged the company but that Truth Social had since become “among the fastest growing social media platforms in history.”
CORRECTION
A previous version of this article misstated the position of a member of Trump Media's executive team due to a misstatement in the company's filing. Andrew Northwall is the company's chief operating officer, not its chief financial officer. The article has been corrected.
by ti-amie I guess no one was paying attention to the reason NYS sued him. He just makes s**t up. The only discussion should be if this is a pump and dump, money laundering scheme, or a Ponzi scheme of some kind.
by ti-amie Just in case you thought the information on "Truth Social" in the above post wasn't detailed enough...
Josh Marshall@joshtpm
Truth Social just released their 8-K, so the SEC mandated disclosures where you can't lie without
commiting a crime. Lots of focus on the dollars, which are hilarious: Just over $4.1 M in revenue, $58M in costs. ... https://app.quotemedia.com/data/downloa ... 2024-04-01
I've mentioned before that this is only barely more than TPM brings in each year and since we're a real business we have costs well under $58m. But these aren't the important data points in this filing. In theory a social platform can be losing a lot of money and still ...
3/ legitimately be worth a ton of money. Facebook had already become a force of nature before Zuckerberg even real turned his attention to monetization. That turned out to be a really good idea. He put his energy into building network effects, platform dominance and only after...
4/ he'd basically won that game did he turn in earnest to monetization. So even though Truth Social losing a ton of money and only having very meager revenue makes it seem like a joke, it doesn't prove it's a joke. For the proof you need to skip down to the 4th paragraph under...
5/ Overview. And then you also look at the section titled Key Operating Metrics, which you can see here.
6/ Here it tells us that "adhering to traditional key performance indicators ... could potentially divert its focus from strategic evaluation with respect to the progress and growth of its business." Among those "traditional" indicators it includes ad impressions and ...
7/ revenue per user. Again, that's reasonable in theory. That's monetization not building the engine, if we go back to the Facebook analogy. But it also includes "active user accounts including monthly and daily active users". This is where you get the hard record scratch ...
8/ sound effect straight to bulls**tville. It goes on to say that it may NEVER release those numbers. What this means is they are going to release no information about how many people use Truth Social or the details of that use. As noted, Truth Social has trivial levels of ...
9/ and like 15x the expenses. So business bleeding money like crazy. But if this two year old social network were in the process of building a robust user base which showed strong signs of on-going growth that might not matter. Again, think of Zuckerberg riding a tiger ...
10/ of explosive network/platform growth and focusing on that over near-term monetization. Truth Social is saying that it won't tell investors how many users it has, how quickly that base is growing or what its characteristics are. In fact, it says there's a good chance ...
11/ it won't ever release that data. This is clear cut. This company has zero actual value. The best case for its value is that they haven't actually tried to build the user base. So it's as tho it was still a prospectus with an amazing strategy. But in fact it's been around ...
12/ for two years and has an INSANE amount of publicity behind it. Again, this company has no value. Or I guess better to say that whatever value it may have is premised on the say so of Donald Trump.
by ti-amieExclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation
Trump’s social media company went public relying partly on loans from trust managed by person of interest to prosecutors
Hugo Lowell
Wed 3 Apr 2024 11.00 BST
Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.
The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public.
But Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.
The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.
Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.
The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.
The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions.
The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.
Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.
Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.
There is also no indication that Trump or Trump Media had any idea about the nature of the loans beyond that they were opaque, nor has the company or its executives been accused of wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Trump Media did not respond to a request for comment.
After this story was published, a lawyer representing Trump Media said in a statement: “The Guardian continues to propagate its false narrative that TMTG has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax. Litigation will continue on this point and we are confident that The Guardian will ultimately be held responsible for its defamation and this story should be retracted.”
But Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges.
Postolnikov and the trust
In late 2021, Trump Media was facing financial trouble after the original planned merger with Digital World was delayed indefinitely when the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into the merger, Trump Media’s since-ousted co-founder-turned-whistleblower Will Wilkerson recounted in an interview.
Part of the problem was that Trump Media struggled to get financing because traditional banks were reluctant to lend millions to Trump’s social media company in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack, Wilkerson said.
Trump Media eventually found some lenders, including ES Family Trust, but the sequence of events was curious.
ES Family Trust was established on 18 May 2021, its creation papers show. Postolnikov’s “user” access to the account was “verified” on 30 November 2021 by a Paxum Bank manager in Dominica. The trust was funded for the first time on 2 December 2021.
Trump Media then received the loans from ES Family Trust: $2m on 23 December 2021, and $6m on 17 February 2022.
The loans came in the form of convertible promissory notes, meaning ES Family Trust would gain a major stake in Trump Media because it was offering the money in exchange for Trump Media agreeing to convert the loan principal into “shares of Company Stock”.
Oddly, the notes were never signed. But the investment in Trump Media proved to be huge: while precise figures can only be known by Trump Media, ES Family Trust’s stake in Trump Media is worth between $20m and $40m even after the sharp decline of the company’s share price in the wake of a poor earnings report.
The ES Family Trust account also appears to have benefited Postolnikov personally. As the criminal investigation into the Trump Media deal intensified towards the end of last year, the trust recorded several transfers to Postolnikov with the subject line “Partial Loan Return”.
In total, the documents showed that the trust transferred $4.8m to Postolnikov’s account, although $3m was inexplicably “reversed”.
(On 17 July 2023, Postolnikov received $300,000. On 17 October 2023, Postolnikov received $1.5m, before it was reversed the next day; later the same day, Postolnikov again received $1.5m, which was also reversed. On 19 October 2023, Postolnikov received the $1.5m for a third and final time.)
The reason for the trust’s creation remains unknown. Aside from the money that went to Trump Media, the trust’s statements show the trust has directly invested money with only two other companies: $10.8m to Eleven Ventures LLC, a venture capital firm, and $1m to Wedbush Securities, a wealth management firm.
The current status of ES Family Trust is also unknown. The trust’s address is listed as a residential home in Hollywood, Florida. But, according to the property website Redfin, the six-bedroom home appears to have been sold in December 2023.
The creation papers also contained something notable: a declaration that, if the original trustee – a Paxum employee named Angel Pacheco – stepped down from the role, his successor would be a certain individual named Michael Shvartsman.
Sprawling money-laundering investigation
Last month, federal prosecutors charged Michael Shvartsman, a close associate of Postolnikov, with money laundering in a superseding indictment after previously charging him and two others in July with insider-trading Digital World shares. Shvartsman and his co-defendants pleaded not guilty.
At least part of the evidence against Shvartsman came from a confidential informant for the DHS, court filings show: in one March 2023 meeting with the informant and an associate, Shvartsman mentioned a friend who owned a bank in Dominica and made bridge loans to Trump Media.
“[Shvartsman] stated that a friend of his owns a bank in the island of Dominica and would be able to provide banking services to Russian and Ukraine Nationals if the [confidential informant] had other clients in need of that service,” the DHS report said.
“[Shvartsman’s associate] told the [confidential informant] that he does not think the SEC would be able to go after [Shvartsman] for his part in the investment but mentioned that [Shvartsman] essentially provided ‘bridge financing’ for the firm behind the Truth Social media platform,” it said.
The unredacted parts of the DHS report do not specify whether the “friend” was Postolnikov and what the “bridge financing” referred to – but the report left open the possibility that Shvartsman also had a role with the trust.
A lawyer for Shvartsman declined to comment on his client’s relationship with Postolnikov. A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York also declined to comment.
It is unclear whether federal prosecutors are aware that Trump Media was propped up by Postolnikov via ES Family Trust. At the same time, the money-laundering investigation surrounding the Trump Media merger and the scrutiny on Postolnikov appears to have ballooned in recent months.
The investigation into potential money laundering appears to have started after Wilkerson’s lawyers Phil Brewster, Stephen Bell and Patrick Mincey alerted the US attorney’s office in the southern district of New York to the ES Family Trust loans in October 2022.
Months later, in June 2023, the FBI expanded its investigation to work jointly with the Department of Homeland Security’s El Dorado taskforce, which specializes in money laundering, and its Illicit Proceeds and Foreign Corruption group, which targets corrupt foreign officials who use US entities to launder illicit funds.
by ti-amieElon Musk plans to charge new X users to enable posting
Ivan Mehta@indianidle / 2:48 PM EDT•April 15, 2024
Elon Musk is planning to charge new X users a small fee to enable posting on the social network and to curb the bot problem.
In reply to an X account that posted about changes on X’s website, Musk said charging a small fee to new accounts was the “only way” to stop the “onslaught of bots.”
“Current AI (and troll farms) can pass ‘are you a bot’ with ease,” Musk said, referring to tools like CAPTCHA.
While replying to another user, Musk later added that new accounts would be able to post after three months of creation without paying a fee.
As is the case with a lot of announcements related to the social platform, there are no details at the moment about when this policy will be applicable and what fees new users might have to pay.
Last October, X started charging new unverified users $1 per year in New Zealand and the Philippines. New free users signing up for the platform from these regions could read the posts but couldn’t interact with them. To post content, like, repost, reply, bookmark and quote posts, they had to pay a fee. Musk might apply a fee similar to other regions.
Earlier this month, X said that the platform was starting a major purge of spam accounts, warning users that their follower count might be affected. However, with a plan to charge new users, the social media company seemingly aims to tackle the bot problem better.
While Musk has talked about battling AI bots, last year, X updated its policy to include a clause that public posts could be used to train machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence models. Separately, in July 2023, Musk said that his AI company xAI would use public posts to train models.
Earlier this month, xAI made its Grok chatbot available to Premium users of X, who pay $8 per month. The chatbot was previously available to users paying $16 per month for the Premium+ tier. Last week, Fortune reported that X plans to make Grok available to users to compose posts.
by ti-amie Chris Geidner
@chrisgeidner@journa.host
BREAKING: SpaceX LOSES its attempt to prevent the transfer of its challenge to an NLRB proceeding out of Texas.
On an 8-8 vote, with Judge Ho not participating, the full Fifth Circuit DENIES SpaceX's request for en banc review of a decision allowing transfer to C.D. Cal.
by ti-amieSEC charges Trump Media auditor with ‘massive fraud’ on hundreds of companies, imposes lifetime ban
Published Fri, May 3 20249:34 AM EDTUpdated 2 Hours Ago
Dan Mangan
Rohan Goswami
Key Points
The auditing firm for Trump Media and the auditor’s owner were charged with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission for work that affected more than 1,500 SEC filings, the federal regulator announced.
The auditor, BF Borgers CPA, and its owner, Benjamin Borgers. have agreed to be permanently suspended from practicing as accountants before the SEC, and also agreed to pay a combined $14 million in civil penalties, the SEC said.
The share price of Trump Media, which owns the Truth Social app, was down 9% shortly after trading began.
The auditing firm for Trump Media
and the auditor’s owner were charged Friday with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission for accounting work that affected more than 1,500 SEC filings, the federal regulator announced.
The auditor, BF Borgers CPA, and its owner, Benjamin Borgers, have agreed to be permanently suspended from practicing as accountants before the SEC, and also agreed to pay a combined $14 million in civil penalties, without admitting or denying the allegations, the SEC said.
The agency, calling BF Borgers a “sham audit mill,” said the company and its owner “deliberately systematically failed to conduct” audits and quarterly reviews incorporated in more than 1,500 SEC filings from January 2021 through June 2023 in accordance with Public Company Accounting Oversight Board standards.
The SEC said the Lakewood, Colorado-based auditor lied to clients by saying its work complied with PCAOB standards, fabricated audit documents to make it seem that the work did comply with those standards, and falsely claims in audit reports included in more than 500 public company SEC filings that the firm’s audits complied with such standards.
BF Borgers during the period covered by the SEC complaint acted as the auditor for Trump Media, which was then privately held and moving toward a planned merger with the publicly traded shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp.
Trump Media and DWAC finalized that merger in late March 2024, leading to Trump Media becoming publicly traded under the DJT ticker.
Three days after the company went public, Trump Media’s board approved keeping BF Borgers on as the company’s auditors for 2024.
“Ben Borgers and his audit firm, BF Borgers, were responsible for one of the largest wholesale failures by gatekeepers in our financial markets,” the SEC’s enforcement division director, Gurbir Grewal, said in a statement.
“As a result of their fraudulent conduct, they not only put investors and markets at risk by causing public companies to incorporate noncompliant audits and reviews into more than 1,500 filings with the Commission, but also undermined trust and confidence in our markets,” Grewal said.
BF Borgers did not immediately respond to requests for comment by CNBC.
The bombshell SEC action raised questions about the accuracy of the financial information in thousands of reports that were issued by the companies Borgers audited, including Trump Media, whose majority shareholder is former President Donald Trump.
by ponchi101 From an international member.
There have been tremendously corrupt leaders around the world. Silvio Berlusconni in Italy. Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, several African PM's (Charles Taylor, for example), Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos in the Phillipines. Maduro et al in Vennieland.
NOBODY comes close to Tiny. And he was, and probably will be again, president of the USA. Unbelievable.
by ashkor87 As a recent survey noted, 40% of folks WANT a dictator. Hopefully, that remains at 40% though Biden is doing his best to drive away his own supporters...
"
in the end.
in the end.
@duty2warn
@duty2warn
@courtneymilan
@courtneymilan
Yaccarino, a veteran advertising executive who joined Twitter from NBCUniversal in May, has been touting Twitter’s reach and as a place for premium video. For example, Fox Sports has been hosting a live pre-show on Twitter for the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and there are similar plans for NBCUniversal to do so for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
:TheCDN4:
:TheCDN4:
#history #technology
#history #technology
