Electric car company reports $18.8bn in revenue for the first quarter, up 81% from a year before
Tesla surpassed Wall Street estimates for its first-quarter revenue and profit Wednesday, despite a tumultuous few months for its CEO, Elon Musk, and ongoing supply chain concerns.
The electric car manufacturer reported $18.8bn in revenue for Q1 of 2022, up 81% from a year earlier. The report beat analyst expectations of $17.8bn, sending Tesla shares up 4% in after hours trading.
Continue reading...Putin boasts new intercontinental ballistic weapon will provide rivals with ‘food for thought’
Russia has said it had test-launched its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, a new addition to its nuclear arsenal, which Vladimir Putin said would give Moscow’s enemies something to think about.
The Russian president was shown on television being told by the military that the missile had been launched from Plesetsk in the north-west and hit targets in the Kamchatka peninsula in the far east.
Continue reading...Peter Ricketts’ warning comes as UAE accused of using Pegasus spyware to hack into mobile phone at Downing Street
Boris Johnson should “pay close attention” to basic rules of cybersecurity, a former national security adviser has said, after it emerged that the United Arab Emirates was accused of hacking into a mobile phone at Downing Street.
Peter Ricketts, who held the post between 2010 and 2012, said the cyber-attack demonstrated that “commercially made” Pegasus software from NSO Group allowed a “wide range of actors” to engage in sophisticated espionage.
Continue reading...No 10 subjected to UAE-linked spyware attack, says report, but Israeli firm suggests allegations are false
Boris Johnson has been told his Downing Street office has been targeted with “multiple” suspected infections using Pegasus, the sophisticated hacking software that can turn a phone into a remote listening device, it was claimed on Monday.
A report released by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said the United Arab Emirates was suspected of orchestrating spyware attacks on No 10 in 2020 and 2021.
Continue reading...Americans paid through digital payment service required to notify IRS of payments amounting to more than $600 a year, down from $20,000
It’s tax day in the US, the deadline for most individuals to file and pay tax owed. But while this year’s tax season may be closing for millions of Americans who are paid through a digital payment service such as PayPal, Venmo, Zelle and Cash App, the next tax year could come with even more complications.
Under a new law buried in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, digital payment services, or Third-Party Settlement Organizations (TPSOs), will now be required to notify federal tax collectors of payments amounting to more than $600 in total during the course of the year.
Continue reading...Victims said to include Pere Aragonès and Carles Puigdemont, but Israeli firm suggests claims are false
Dozens of pro-independence Catalan figures, including the president of the north-eastern Spanish region and three of his predecessors, have been targeted using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to a report from cybersecurity experts.
The research published on Monday by Citizen Lab, considered among the world’s leading experts in detecting digital attacks, said victims of the mobile phone targeting included Pere Aragonès, who has led Catalonia since last year, as well as the former regional presidents Quim Torra, Carles Puigdemont and Artur Mas.
Continue reading...Raider gains voting rights over digital currency and uses them to transfer contents of treasury
The Beanstalk cryptocurrency has been stripped of reserves valued at more than $180m (£138m) in seconds, after an attacker used borrowed money to snap up enough voting rights to transfer the money away.
The lightning hostile takeover raises fresh questions about the unregulated nature of digital currencies and the lack of protections for investors.
Continue reading...It disrupted the market and has more than 200m subscribers. But with slower growth, some say Netflix must change its game
Twelve years ago Jeff Bewkes, then chief executive of Time Warner, compared Netflix to the Albanian army. “It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world? I don’t think so,” Bewkes told the New York Times, disparaging the streaming service’s ability to take on the established media players.
Well, the Albanian army won. Time Warner followed Netflix into streaming, NBCUniversal and Disney came after and so it carried on. In Britain, BBC and ITV invested in their streaming portals. Media was now living in Netflix’s world.
Continue reading...Tech entrepreneur makes offer of $54.20 a share in cash to ‘unlock potential’ of social media site
Elon Musk has launched an audacious bid to buy Twitter for more than $40bn, saying he wants to release its “extraordinary potential” to boost free speech and democracy across the world.
The Tesla chief executive and world’s richest person revealed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that he had launched a hostile takeover of Twitter. The news came just days after he bought a 9.2% stake in the social media company and was subsequently offered a seat on the board, but then refused to take up the position.
Continue reading...Operations stopped in Chinese cities of Shanghai and Kunshan as global supply chains feel pinch of Beijing's zero-Covid measures
Key iPhone maker Pegatron has halted operations at two subsidiaries in the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Kunshan, as global supply chains feel the pinch of Beijing’s strict zero-Covid measures.
The business hub of Shanghai has become the heart of China’s biggest Covid-19 outbreak since the virus surfaced more than two years ago.
Continue reading...Clip prompts amusement online as car stops, then drives across an intersection, leaving police behind
A video recently posted online shows what happens when police try to apprehend an autonomous vehicle – only to find nobody inside.
Police in San Francisco stopped a vehicle operated by Cruise, an autonomous car company backed by General Motors, in a video posted on 1 April. Officers approached the car, which had been driving without headlights, only to find it was empty.
Continue reading...A judge also granted a restraining order to the pair accused of terrorizing students who ‘provoked extreme fear and anxiety’
A pair of YouTubers are facing a lawsuit and a restraining order after allegedly filming themselves disrupting classes at the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles and uploading footage of the staged pranks online.
The University of Southern California sued Ernest Kanevsky and Yuguo Bai over the incidents, USC Annenberg Media reported last week. A judge granted a restraining order banning Kanevsky and Bai, who are not USC students, from campus after university attorneys said the pranks had terrorized “students to the point where they are running out of lecture halls for fear of their lives”.
Continue reading...The Tesla boss, who now has a 9.2% stake in the social network, has offered suggestions and criticisms in a series of tweets
Elon Musk has set out his vision for Twitter after buying a 9.2% stake in the company, in a series of posts on the social network described by one commentator as having “chaos energy”.
Since being appointed to the Twitter board on Tuesday, Musk has posted a stream of open questions about the present and future of the site, proposing new features, highlighting areas of concern, and making jokes. Typically for the Tesla billionaire, it was not always clear which was which.
Continue reading...Greens digital rights spokesperson says officers should be required to get a warrant before going through travellers’ mobile phones
Australian Border Force officials searched 822 travellers’ mobile phones in 2021, despite admitting it has no power to force arrivals to give them the passcode to their devices.
In January, Sydney software developer James told Guardian Australia that he and his partner were stopped on their return from Fiji by border force officials who asked them to write their phone passcodes on a piece of paper before taking the codes and their phones to another room to examine for half an hour. The phones were then returned and they were allowed to leave.
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Continue reading...Facebook owner Meta removes network from social media in move which could damage President Jair Bolsonaro
Facebook owner Meta Platforms has removed a network of social media accounts with ties to the Brazilian military that posed as fake non-profits to play down the dangers of deforestation.
The comments by Meta, published in a quarterly report, pose a reputational risk to Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro. The far-right former army captain is a longtime sceptic of environmentalism.
Continue reading...Activists say companies like Lyft and Uber ‘try to protect their bottom line by offloading risk’ on to workers
On a Sunday afternoon in August 2021, the Lyft driver Isabella Lewis was shot in the head by a passenger she had just picked up and left for dead as the man sped off in what appeared to be a fatal carjacking.
Lyft released a statement to the press at the time saying it was “heartbroken by this incident” – but Allyssa Lewis, Isabella’s sister, said her family had never received direct communication from the company, nor any financial compensation.
Continue reading...Planned social media app would also prevent workers from using terms such as ‘fire’, ‘slave labor’, ‘diversity’ and ‘injustice’
Amazon reportedly plans to block the word “union” and other related keywords from an internal messaging app the company is developing for workers.
The list of banned words includes “union”, “fire”, “compensation”, “plantation”, “slave labor”, “diversity”, “robots”, “grievance” and “injustice”, among others, according to leaked internal messages seen by the Intercept. The news came days after Amazon workers in New York made history by voting to form a union, the first successful US organizing effort in the company’s history.
Continue reading...Quartet targeted by clients – thought to be Jordanian government agencies – of Israeli company even after Apple sued in November
New evidence has revealed that an Apple iPhone was successfully hacked by a government user of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware in December, weeks after the technology giant sued the Israeli company in a US court and called for it to be banned from “harming individuals” using Apple products.
A report published on Tuesday by security researchers at Front Line Defenders (FLD) and Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto found that phones belonging to four Jordanian human rights defenders, lawyers and journalists were hacked by government clients of NSO – which appear to be Jordanian government agencies – from August 2019 to December 2021.
Continue reading...Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien says the e-commerce company has ‘total disrespect’ for its workers
The Teamsters’ new president has pledged his powerful union will step up the pressure on Amazon and mount its own efforts to unionize the company after workers in New York voted to form the company’s first US union.
In an interview with the Guardian Sean O’Brien said it was vital to organize Amazon, asserting that the e-commerce company has “total disrespect” for its workers and was putting downward pressure on standards for unionized warehouse workers and truck drivers across the US.
Continue reading...Chancellor’s wife, Akshata Murthy, has £690m stake in Indian IT firm, which is now moving staff out of Russia
Indian IT services company Infosys, in which the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s wife owns an estimated £690m stake and collects about £11.5m in annual dividends, is “urgently” closing its office in Russia.
Infosys’s decision to shut its Moscow office comes as pressure mounts on Sunak to answer accusations that his family is collecting “blood money” dividends from the firm’s continued operation in Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine.
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