Category Archives: Elon Musk

Elon Musk reveals new Twitter logo X

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Experts warn that rebranding of 15-year-old app may be a risky move at a time when competitors are upping their game

Elon Musk has revealed a new logo for Twitter, choosing a “minimalist art deco” X as part of a rebrand of the platform.

The Twitter owner indicated that the design would be altered, tweeting that it “probably changes later, certainly will be refined”. Twitter’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, confirmed the choice on Monday by tweeting the design and writing: “X is here! Let’s do this.”

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Tesla beats Wall Street expectations to produce record number of vehicles

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Report comes amid concerns Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, Neuralink and Twitter, is spread too thin

Tesla narrowly beat Wall Street expectations in the second quarter of 2023, but shares began to fall in after hours trading following an earnings call that offered shareholders little reassurance surrounding Tesla’s promised Cybertruck release and other production concerns.

Revenue for the quarter topped $24.97bn compared to analyst predictions of $24.7 bn.

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Twitter investor writes down stake by 47% as analyst claims Threads user fall

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Elon Musk has said advertising has plunged on his social media platform and it is cashflow negative

An investor in Elon Musk’s Twitter has written down their stake in the business by 47% as advertisers rein in their spending on the social media platform.

The move by ARK Investment Management came as an analysis firm claimed that usage of the “Twitter killer” Threads app has fallen by half since its launch by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

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Tesla directors agree to return $735m to settle claims they were grossly overpaid

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Shareholders sued the directors over stock option awards in 2017, accusing them of unfair and excessive compensation

Tesla Inc’s directors will return $735m to the company to settle claims they grossly overpaid themselves in one of the largest shareholder settlements of its kind, according to a Monday filing in a Delaware court.

The settlement resolves a 2020 lawsuit by a retirement fund which holds Tesla stock and challenged stock options that were granted to Tesla directors starting in June 2017.

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Twitter owes ex-employees $500m in severance, lawsuit claims

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Former head of employee benefits files proposed class action over workers laid off after Elon Musk acquired company

Twitter allegedly refused to pay at least $500m in promised severance to thousands of employees who were laid off after Elon Musk acquired the company, a lawsuit filed on Wednesday claims.

Courtney McMillian, who oversaw Twitter’s employee benefits programs as its “head of total rewards” before she was laid off in January, filed the proposed class action in San Francisco federal court.

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Elon Musk goes low against Zuckerberg as Twitter-Threads spat intensifies

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Twitter owner calls Facebook founder a ‘cuck’ as rancour grows over launch of Threads, a competitor to Musk’s network

Twitter owner Elon Musk has suggested he and Mark Zuckerberg should have “a literal dick-measuring contest” in the latest broadside aimed at his rival billionaire.

In a message inspired by the Meta chief executive’s launch last week of Threads, a Twitter competitor, Musk added a ruler emoji.

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Twitter threatens to sue Meta over launch of rival Threads app

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In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a lawyer for the Elon Musk-owned app said Meta had unlawfully misappropriated trade secrets

Twitter has threatened to sue Meta over its new Threads app, which Mark Zuckerberg has openly billed as a rival, claiming the company has violated Twitter’s “intellectual property rights”.

In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, first published by the news outlet Semafor, a lawyer for Twitter said the company “has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.

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Twitter faces lawsuit over alleged non-payment for office services in four countries

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Australia-based company Facilitate seeks more than A$1m for work done at offices in London, Dublin, Sydney and Singapore

Twitter is facing another lawsuit after the company was accused of failing to pay for services for offices in London, Dublin, Sydney and Singapore.

Sydney-based infrastructure company Facilitate is seeking a collective payment over A$1m ($666,000) across the three businesses in alleged owed payments dating back to October last year, when Elon Musk bought Twitter.

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Euclid telescope lifts off in search of the secrets of dark universe

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European Space Agency mission launches on SpaceX rocket from Florida to shed light on dark energy and dark matter

A European-built orbital satellite was launched into space on Saturday from Florida on a mission to shed new light on dark energy and dark matter, the mysterious cosmic forces scientists say account for 95% of the known universe.

The Euclid telescope, named for the ancient Greek mathematician known as the “father of geometry”, was carried in the cargo bay of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which blasted off about 11am EDT (1500 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force station. A live stream of the liftoff was shown on Nasa TV.

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Australia’s eSafety umpire issues legal warning to Twitter amid rise in online hate

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Julie Inman Grant says platform has ‘dropped the ball’ on tackling ‘peddlers of outrage’

Australia’s eSafety commissioner says Twitter has “dropped the ball” on tackling online hate and has issued a legal notice to the social media giant demanding an explanation about what it is doing about the scourge.

The commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said there have been more complaints about online hate on Twitter in the past year than any other platform, and complaints have spiked since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company in October.

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Twitter and Tesla’s interests at odds in Elon Musk’s quiet China visit

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The world’s richest person lapsed into an unusual silence on social media during his trip to the electric carmaker’s second largest market

Followers of Elon Musk didn’t know what to expect from his trip to China. Would he speak about Tesla, a company with a large market and manufacturing footprint there? Or SpaceX, with its symbiotic relationship with the American state? Or even Twitter, the social network he bought because “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”?

The one thing no one expected: silence.

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Report: ‘massive’ Tesla leak reveals data breaches, thousands of safety complaints

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Whistleblower files reveal customer and employee information plus complaints about driver assistance system

Tesla has failed to adequately protect data from customers, employees and business partners and has received thousands of customer complaints regarding the carmaker’s driver assistance system, Germany’s Handelsblatt has reported, citing 100 gigabytes of confidential data leaked by a whistleblower.

The Handelsblatt report said customer data could be found “in abundance” in a data set labelled “Tesla Files”.

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Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink approved for in-human study

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The Food and Drug Administration, which had initially rejected the application, finally gave the company the green light

Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-implant company, said on Thursday it had received a green light from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to kickstart its first in-human clinical study, a critical milestone after earlier struggles to gain approval.

Musk has predicted on at least four occasions since 2019 that his medical device company would begin human trials for a brain implant to treat severe conditions such as paralysis and blindness.

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With DeSantis campaign event, Musk seeks to shore up a sinking Twitter

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The social network has floundered since the tech billionaire took over – political live streams may give the platform relevance

The news that Ron DeSantis will launch his presidential campaign during a live Twitter appearance with Elon Musk marks the tech billionaire’s latest attempts to shore up engagement with the social network at a moment of crisis for the company.

The event – which will take place Wednesday on Twitter Spaces, a live stream feature that is often broadcasted at the top of Twitter’s feed – was confirmed by Musk on Tuesday afternoon. Speaking at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit, Musk called the Florida governor’s decision “ground breaking” and said it won’t be the last political event that Twitter will host.

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Elon Musk: I will tweet what I want even if it loses me money

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Twitter owner and Tesla chief defends tweet about George Soros after being accused of antisemitism

Elon Musk has said he will continue sending controversial tweets even it loses him money, as he defended himself against accusations of antisemitism over tweets about George Soros.

The Twitter owner and Tesla chief executive said he is “allowed to say what I want to”, as he defended a tweet posted on Tuesday saying the billionaire financier “reminds me of Magneto” – the Jewish villain in the X-Men series.

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Elon Musk subpoenaed over JPMorgan’s role in Jeffrey Epstein’s activities

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US Virgin Islands is suing the bank over sex trafficking by Epstein, saying he ‘may have referred or attempted to refer’ Musk as a client

The US Virgin islands subpoenaed billionaire cars-to-rockets entrepreneur Elon Musk on Monday to obtain documents in its litigation into the role played by JPMorgan Chase bank in the activity of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when he was a customer, according to a court filing.

The Virgin Islands government is suing the bank over sex trafficking by Epstein. The Virgin Islands has been trying to serve Musk with a subpoena, the filing noted, adding that Epstein “may have referred or attempted to refer” Musk to JPMorgan as a client.

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Debris blast from SpaceX rocket launch faces environmental scrutiny

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The most powerful rocket ever built destroyed its launchpad and sent a plume of concrete dust and rubble into the air

While the spectacle of SpaceX’s new Starship rocket blowing up over the Gulf of Mexico riveted the public’s attention, it was the explosive nature of the launch at ground level that was drawing heightened scrutiny from the government this week.

The shattering force of last Thursday’s launch in south Texas sent a cloud of pulverized concrete raining over a small town nearby, federal regulators said, raising fresh questions about the environmental impact of ramped-up launch operations at the site.

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Fake accounts, chaos and few sign-ups: the first day of Twitter Blue was messy

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Elon Musk’s attempt to make the social media site profitable seemed to flop as the verification check lost all meaning

Friday marked the first full day Twitter’s new policies for verified accounts were applied – and the results were not pretty.

Twenty-four hours after blue checkmarks began to disappear from formerly verified Twitter accounts, chaos reigned on the website, with impersonation and false information running rampant and few people signing up for the service the changes were meant to promote.

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‘Legacy blue checks’ disappear from Twitter as Musk’s changes take effect

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Checkmark denoted accounts verified for authenticity, which can now be bought for an $8 a month subscription called Twitter Blue

Blue checkmarks began to disappear from formerly verified Twitter accounts on Thursday, as policies implemented under new owner Elon Musk began to take hold.

Musk, who purchased the company for $44bn in 2022 and has thus far struggled to make it profitable, has been threatening to remove what he called “legacy blue checks” for months now. The checkmark previously denoted accounts that had been verified for authenticity and was given to accounts of celebrities, journalists and media outlets.

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SpaceX Starship test flight cancelled minutes before blast-off

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Elon Musk says launch of most powerful rocket ever built called off due to ‘pressurisation’ issue

The largest and most powerful rocket ever built was readied and fuelled for its first test flight on Monday, but SpaceX cancelled the launch minutes before blasting off after discovering a “pressurisation” problem.

“A pressurant valve appears to be frozen, so unless it starts operating soon, no launch today,” the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, said on Twitter. Minutes later, the launch was officially abandoned, with operators ending the countdown 40 seconds before lift-off.

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