Business of Technology News Now: Recent Episodes
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-Tesla's stock is at risk of plunging further due to increased competition in the EV market and CEO Elon Musk's recent Twitter antics. -Investors are worried that Tesla's market share will continue to decline in the coming years, as more and more cheaper EV options become available. -Tesla currently dominates the EV market in the US, but this is slowly changing as rivals offer more affordable options. -S&P Global Mobility predicts that Tesla's market share will drop to less than 20% by 2025. -If Tesla wants to remain the dominant force in the EV market, they will either need to increase demand or bring more affordable electric cars to market.
Salesforce reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for its third quarter ended October 31, 2022. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.40 on revenue of $7.84 billion, beating analyst estimates of $1.22 on revenue of $7.83 billion. The company also announced that co-CEO Bret Taylor is stepping down, effective January 31, 2023. Looking ahead, Salesforce said it expects fourth-quarter earnings to be between $1.35 and $1.37 per share, with revenue for the period slightly below guidance at between $7.932 and $8.032 billion. Shares of Salesforce fell 5.2% in extended trading following the release.
-Zuckerberg has joined Musk in criticizing Apple's App Store policies, calling them unilateral and unsustainable. -Zuckerberg echoed some of Musk's sentiment, calling Apple's content moderation rules a "conflict of interest," and saying they were often leveraged at rivals. -Zuckerberg made a contrast between Apple and Google, praising the latter for allowing for alternate content on Android phones. -Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that "there is a conflict of interest" with companies that "deliver their apps exclusively through platforms that are controlled by competitors." -On the issue of content moderation, Zuckerberg said that he doesn't want one person or one company making those decisions, which is why Meta has an oversight board.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk met with Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple's headquarters. Musk tweeted that he appreciated Cook giving him a tour of the facilities. It was recently reported that Twitter is delaying the launch of its Twitter Blue subscription service due to disagreements with Apple over the 30% cut that Apple takes of in-app purchases made through its devices. Musk has accused Apple of censorship and questioned the company's commitment to free speech after noticing a decrease in Apple advertising on Twitter. Musk has also suggested that Apple is threatening to remove the Twitter app from the App Store.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has retracted her earlier comments that there was no basis for an investigation into Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. She has now said that such an investigation may be appropriate if national security concerns are raised.
This change in stance comes after President Joe Biden said that Musk's ties to foreign investors warranted scrutiny. Yellen has said that the government is currently looking into the matter.
FTX, a company affiliated with Musk, has filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware. However, the process may be complicated by the fact that the government of the Bahamas, where FTX is based, is asserting its own jurisdiction over FTX's assets.
Yellen also commented on the slowing economy in China, saying that it could have a negative impact on the global outlook.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has published a blog post that predicts the demise of Bitcoin. The blog post, written by ECB execs Ulrich Bindseil and Jürgen Schaaf, claims that Bitcoin is in its "last gasp before the road to irrelevance." The ECB officials believe that the current period of relative stabilization in Bitcoin's value is merely a prelude to the eventual destruction of the cryptocurrency. They argue that lobbying efforts by the crypto industry are delaying regulation and that this delay is contributing to the slow progress in regulating crypto. The blog post also describes Bitcoin as an "unprecedented polluter" with mining consuming as much electricity in a year as Austria.
DoorDash Inc. is cutting about 1,250 jobs to rein in expenses, acknowledging that a rapid expansion during the pandemic boom has led to mounting losses.
Food-delivery platform DoorDash Inc. plans to lay off about 1,250 employees, becoming the latest technology company to admit that it grew expenses too rapidly for the current climate.
In the latest major layoff in the tech space, DoorDash Inc. (NYSE:DASH) is reducing its headcount by 1250.
Xu said he was "truly sorry" for the move and that he expected it to "come as a shock, especially because our business remains strong and continues to grow."
The cuts will affect about 6% of the company’s workforce, a mix of US and non-US based staff, according to people familiar with the matter asking not to be identified as the announcement was not yet public. By scaling back headcount, DoorDash aims to curb operating expenses, which topped $2 billion in the third quarter.
In a recent tweet, Elon Musk has predicted a severe recession in 2023, saying that the US Federal Reserve's actions are amplifying the probability of one.
Musk's comments come days after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos warned of an impending recession, and echo those of NorthmanTrader founder Sven Henrich, who also believes the Fed is to blame.
The Fed has raised rates rapidly this year in an attempt to quash inflation, which is currently running at more than three times the central bank's target.
Fed officials have said they expect smaller rate increases in the future, but Bullard says the Fed needs to be more aggressive in order to reduce inflation.
Powell is set to address the public on the US economic outlook Wednesday afternoon.
In 2019 and 2020, Google allegedly paid iHeartMedia more than $2.6 million to record and broadcast advertisements featuring radio personalities endorsing the Pixel 4. iHeartMedia and eleven other radio networks in ten major markets were paid for on-air endorsements with Google-provided scripts, the FTC said.
As per the complaint, "Google paid iHeartMedia more than $2.6 million to record and broadcast advertisements featuring Radio Personalities endorsing the Pixel 4." The Verge report further mentions that Google had paid around $2.6 million and $2 million to iHeartMedia and eleven others to promote the Pixel 4 smartphone.
Google spokesperson José Castañeda told Gizmodo the company was “pleased to resolve this issue.” He added that Google takes “compliance with advertising laws seriously and ha[s] processes in place designed to help ensure we follow relevant regulations and industry standards.”
The latest press release also indicates that back in 2019, Google recruited iHeartMedia and 11 more radio networks in 10 key markets to have on-air personalities record and broadcast endorsements for the Pixel 4 smartphone.
Elon Musk has caused controversy with his recent comments about working long hours at high intensity. David Marcus, a former Facebook and PayPal executive, has criticized Musk's comments. Marcus posted a tweet on November 16th about an employee who complained about the quality of a company's toilet paper during an all-hands meeting. The mass resignation of two weeks ago was in response to one such overnight email from Musk, giving everyone in the company about two days to click a sign-up link that would consider them having agreed to work on his "extremely hardcore" Twitter 2.0. Musk has also taken brutal action on Twitter’s costs, which were $5.6bn last year. He fired half of the company’s 7,500 staff within days of taking over the company.
Amazon Security Lake allows customers to build a security data lake from integrated cloud and on-premises data sources as well as from their private applications. With support for the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) standard, Amazon Security Lake reduces the complexity and costs for customers to make their security solutions data accessible to address a variety of security use cases such as threat detection, investigation, and incident response. In a new feature release, Amazon Connect users get Contact Lens chat analytics, integrated with the contact center AI services AWS has offered since 2019 for voice conversations. Amazon Security Lake helps customers aggregate, manage, and derive value from log and event data on the cloud and on-premises to give security teams greater visibility across their organizations. "Amazon Security Lake makes it easier for teams to manage their cloud security data and analyze it with partner solutions of their choice," said Rod Wallace, General Manager for Amazon Security Lake.
Jack Ma, the Chinese billionaire and founder of Alibaba, has been living in Tokyo for the past six months, following Beijing's crackdown on the technology sector. Ma has kept a low profile during his time in Japan, socializing mainly within private members' clubs, and has made trips to the US and Israel. The co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Ma is a close friend of Masayoshi Son, founder of Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. and an early investor in Alibaba.
In 2018, A.P. Moller-Maersk and IBM announced the creation of TradeLens, a blockchain-based global trade platform. However, the two companies have now announced that they will be withdrawing the TradeLens offerings and discontinuing the platform. The decision was made due to a lack of full global industry collaboration, which has prevented the platform from reaching the level of commercial viability necessary to continue work and meet financial expectations. Maersk has indicated that it will leverage the work of TradeLens as a stepping stone to further digitizing its global operations.
Bitfront, a crypto exchange based in the US, is shutting down. The company has cited challenges in the "rapidly evolving" industry as the reason for the shutdown. Bitfront is backed by Japanese social media giant Line Corp. The company has suspended new sign-ups and credit card payments, and will suspend withdrawals on March 31, 2023. FTX, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.
Apple stock is trading lower today amid concerns of an iPhone production shortfall due to the COVID-19 outbreak at Foxconn's factory in Zhengzhou, China. Many Apple stores are already grappling with iPhone Pro shortages of up to 35%-45% of typical inventory. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives estimates that the iPhone shortage could reduce sales by a rough 5% of units for the current quarter, and potentially up 10% depending on what happens in the short-term around that factory. Ives added that many Apple (AAPL) stores have seen "major" iPhone 14 Pro shortages by as much as 40% compared to typical inventory levels and delivery dates have been pushed into early January in some cases. Bloomberg reported Monday that a source familiar with operations at the Foxconn facility estimated a production shortfall of 6 million iPhone 14 Pros this year, primarily due to the tumult.
Twitter owner Elon Musk has accused Apple of censorship, claiming that the tech giant has threatened to remove the Twitter app from the Apple App Store without providing a reason for doing so. In response to a question, Musk said that he would reluctantly make his own smartphone if there was no other choice. Apple has not commented on Musk's charges. However, his stated intentions concerning how he will operate Twitter since he formally acquired the social media platform could run afoul of Apple's moderating rules.
Anti-COVID lockdown protests are taking place in various cities throughout China. A deluge of pornographic spam on Twitter is making it difficult for users to search for information on the protests. The spam tweets appear to be coming from bot accounts and have increased in number over the last three days. It is believed that the Chinese government is behind the spamming in an attempt to censor information about the protests. Prominent journalists and observers are calling on Twitter to take action to stop the spam.
A massive Twitter data breach reported earlier this year of information on 5.4 million Twitter users was worse than initially reported.
According to the news site 9to5Mac, initially one hacker was suspected of exploiting a vulnerability, which exposed Twitter IDs, names, login names, phone numbers and email addresses of subscribers.
But last week 9to5Mac reported that security researchers say multiple hackers downloaded personal data using that same hole. One researcher now says he’s found a new list with data on millions of Twitter users.
The Bleeping Computer news site has seen some of this data and said it appears to be different from the 5.4 million list of names reported stolen earlier this year. That may not be the worst part of this. Bleeping Computer said that list of 5.4 million records stolen earlier this year is being given away for free to crooks on a hacker forum.
In addition, there’s a stolen list floating around criminal circles of 1.4 million Twitter profiles of suspended users.
Meta has been fined €265 million by the Irish data protection commission (DPC) for a massive 2021 Facebook data leak exposing the information of hundreds of million users worldwide. The leak was discovered in April 2021 and affected over 500 million Facebook users. The DPC has imposed a range of corrective measures on Meta, including an order to bring its processing into compliance and a €265 million fine. Recently, the Russian authorities included Meta in its list of extremist organizations and issued a fine of $18.6 million. Meta has cooperated fully with the DPC and has made changes to its systems to prevent future data scraping.
Axsome Therapeutics' candidate for Alzheimer's disease agitation, AXS-05, met the main goal in a Phase 3 trial. The drug was shown to significantly reduce agitation in patients with Alzheimer's disease, with caregivers reporting improvements in symptoms starting as soon as a week after treatment. The company plans to discuss the data with the FDA with the goal of bringing the medication to Alzheimer's patients experiencing agitation.
The aviation industry is looking into hydrogen as a possible zero-emission fuel source. Airbus is testing hydrogen propulsion on a superjumbo A380 with the goal of having a hydrogen-powered aircraft in service by 2035. Rolls-Royce and easyJet are working together to test hydrogen fuel on jet engines with the goal of having hydrogen-powered aircraft in service by the mid-2030s. The benefits of hydrogen fuel are that it is clean and efficient. The aviation industry is under pressure to reduce emissions, and hydrogen is seen as a promising way to do this.
BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US in order to try and salvage its business.
The company is facing difficulties following the collapse of FTX, with whom it had close financial ties.
BlockFi hopes to focus on recovering all obligations owed to it by FTX and other counterparties during its restructuring process.
The company has $256.9 million in cash on hand, which should help it to continue certain operations during the restructuring process.
BlockFi has over 100,000 creditors, with liabilities and assets both estimated to be between $1 billion and $10 billion.
Shares of Taboola surged on Monday after the company announced a 30-year commercial agreement with Yahoo.
Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo will take a 25% stake in Taboola.
The deal will help Taboola boost its revenue to $1.0 billion by 2025.
Taboola shares have fallen sharply over the past year, but the company's latest quarterly results showed a 1.9% year-on-year fall in revenues.
Wall Street analysts remain bullish on Taboola, with one firm seeing another 40% upside in the stock.
On November 27, 2022, Elon Musk revealed his Twitter 2.0, saying that new user signups are at an all-time high and that the company is actively recruiting.
Musk's 2.0 version of Twitter includes long-form tweets, encrypted DMs, and "advertising as entertainment."
According to internal company data, signups have increased by 66% and user active minutes have increased by 30%.
Hate speech impressions appear to be slightly lower than a year ago, despite spikes around the time Musk took over the company.
Twitter is also recruiting, after mass layoffs and resignations transformed the company's workforce.
WhatsApp phone numbers of 487 million users have been stolen and put on sale on a "well-known" hacking community forum, the media reported. This is an unsettling amount of users affected by the WhatsApp leak. The information can be used by attackers for phishing attacks, and WhatsApp has around two billion monthly active users worldwide.
The report said it investigated a data sample -- after a post on a “well-known hacking community forum” claimed to be selling an up-to-date database of 487 million WhatsApp users -- and found that the claim was likely true, meaning 25% of the total 2 billion monthly active users worldwide could be at risk.
The hacker claims to have a significant number of phone numbers belonging to the citizens of Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), and Turkey (20 million).
Cybernews researchers were able to get in touch with the hacker and also able to collect a sample of the data in which they found out that the shared sample contained 1,097 UK and 817 US user numbers.
However, the hacker did not specify how they obtained the data, suggesting they "used their strategy," and that all the numbers belong to WhatsApp users, said the report. This database can be used by hackers for spamming, phishing attempts, identity theft, and other cybercriminal activities.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has stated that he is open to developing his own "alternative" smartphone in the event the tech giants deplatform his social media site, implying that he may be left with no other choice.
This comes after conservative commentator Liz Wheeler tweeted that if Apple and Google ban Twitter from their app stores, Musk should produce his own smartphone.
On Friday, the Twitter CEO responded to Wheeler's tweet, saying that he would "make an alternative phone" if there is no other choice.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, said in a New York Times op-ed that the social media giant risks being kicked out of the Apple and Google app stores if they fail to adhere to the guidelines.
Roth's comments come after Phil Schiller, an Apple fellow who's responsible for leading the App Store, deleted his Twitter account.
Elon Musk wants Twitter to diversify its revenue stream beyond advertising, but no major social network has managed to go without ads altogether. Facebook pretty much set the standard for having an ad model for social networks, but that doesn't have to be the way social platforms monetize. Social networks are facing budget cuts from inflation-afflicted advertisers and increased regulations on the use of personal data, so it makes sense for them to be exploring new, non-ad monetization techniques.
The issue is delicate for Twitter, whose revenue is 90% dependent on advertising. Advertisers do not necessarily need Twitter and can turn to other social networks. In recent weeks, half of Twitter's 100 top advertisers have announced they are suspending or have otherwise stopped advertising on Twitter. They fear being associated with toxic content as Musk, who describes himself as a "free speech absolutist," advocates for laxer moderation.
That said, "It's always hard to charge for something that used to be free," said Carolina Milanesi of research firm Creative Strategies. "Unless you give something different or create a different product, you can't go from not charging to charging." A partial launch of Twitter Blue was chaotic, however, and prompted the proliferation of so many fake accounts that the rollout has now been paused.
"Figuring out a way to charge users for premium features and make money off of users is not a bad idea," Enberg said. Finally, because paid subscribers would see 50% less advertising than non-paying users, the plan would "dilute the quality and the size of the addressable audience for advertisers."
The fledgling photo-sharing app BeReal is hoping to not have to sell ads by making money through in-app purchases instead. Snapchat, which also launched a paid version in June, has gained more and more users, but not necessarily money. This represents "a really big opportunity" for Twitter, Enberg said. Twitter "does have a lot of celebrities and big-name influencers, politicians and journalists" with whom it could form a mutually financially beneficial relationship.
Gold checks will be given to verified companies, grey checks to verified government officials, and blue checks to verified individual accounts (celebrities or not) on Twitter.
This verification process will be painful but necessary, according to CEO Elon Musk.
All verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check mark is activated.
Individuals can also have a secondary "tiny logo" if they belong to a verified organisation.
The new system is a shift from the original plan to make the blue verification tick available to anyone willing to pay $8 per month for Twitter Blue.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the company aims to re-launch its account verification scheme next Friday, on Dec. 2.
The new program will have multiple colors for different kinds of accounts, and Musk says that there will be manual verification before the checkmark activates.
This is the second time that Musk has tried to launch a paid verification system, after the first attempt was met with criticism.
Musk has made the paid verification service a cornerstone of his tenure atop the social media platform, as a number of advertisers have slowed or stopped spending on Twitter.
Amazon has announced that it is shutting down its food delivery service in India by the end of December. The company has cited its annual operating planning review process as the reason for the decision.
According to Amazon, the decision to shut down the food delivery service will not impact its other operations in India, which include grocery, smartphones and consumer electronics, fashion and beauty, as well as B2B offerings such as Amazon Business.
The company has told its restaurant partners that it is committed to meeting all its payments and other contractual obligations. Restaurants will have access to all Amazon tools and reports till January 2023, and the company will also provide support till March 31 for any compliance-related issues.
Tesla is recalling over 80,000 cars in China due to software and seat belt issues.
The recall affects Tesla's Model S and Model X cars, which were produced between 2013 and 2020.
Tesla is also recalling 2,736 imported Model 3 cars, as well as 10,127 China-made Model 3 cars, due to seat belt issues.
The recalls are costly and reputationally damaging for Tesla, especially in a hyper-competitive market.
Amazon workers in dozens of countries are protesting for better wages and working conditions as part of a campaign dubbed "Make Amazon Pay." The campaign is being coordinated by an international coalition of trade unions, with the support of environmental and civil society groups. In the U.S., UK, India, Japan, Australia, South Africa and across Europe, workers are demanding better wages and conditions as the cost-of-living crisis deepens. Unions in France and Germany are spearheading the latest collective action, with coordinated strikes in 18 major warehouses, intended to disrupt shipments across key European markets.
Monika di Silvestre, head of Ver.di's Amazon committee in Germany, said that workers are particularly concerned about the way their productivity is closely monitored by computers, with algorithms determining targets, for example for the number of packages they need to handle per hour. She called on European politicians to strengthen labor rights across the bloc.
In the UK, workers associated with GMB union have planned protests outside several warehouses, including Coventry. Any workers who walk out during a shift could lose out on the second half of a £500 bonus that Amazon announced for UK warehouse workers last month.
In the U.S., protests and rallies will take place in more than 10 cities and outside an apartment block on 5th Avenue, New York, where Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a condo. Multiple rallies are also planned in India while in Japan, members of a recently created union will protest in front of the company’s national headquarters in Tokyo. In Bangladesh, garment workers in Amazon’s supply chain will march in Dhaka and Chittagong.
According to a Twitter conversation between Elon Musk and George Hotz, Hotz has been hired to fix the search feature on Twitter and remove the non-dismissible login pop-up.
Hotz received the offer from Twitter's new boss after Musk issued an ultimatum to Twitter employees to either go "extremely hardcore" or leave.
In a tweet, Hotz said he is down for a 12-week internship at Twitter, and that he is "not about accumulating capital in a dead world, it's about making the world alive."
Hotz later announced that he has been taken up on his offer and will be interning at Twitter for 12 weeks.
Twitter has closed its office in Brussels, Belgium, according to the Financial Times. The move has raised concerns about the social media company's compliance with new EU laws to control big tech.
Twitter's Brussels office was small, but it was perceived as a “crucial conduit to European policymakers,” according to the Financial Times.
The last two pillars of the Brussels office, Julia Mozer and Dario La Nasa, reportedly left the company last week. Mozer and La Nasa oversaw public policy for Twitter in Europe, including the compliance to EU’s disinformation code and the Digital Services Act.
Other executives in Brussels lost their jobs on November 4, when Musk laid-off half of Twitter's 7,500 employees.
“I am concerned about the news of firing such a vast amount of staff of Twitter in Europe,” Věra Jourová, the EU’s VP in charge of the disinformation code, told the Financial Times in a written statement which was later sent to Variety.
In response to a Semafor report that Sam Bankman-Fried owned a stake in his Twitter, Elon Musk denied that the former CEO of FTX had any ownership in the social media platform. He also asked the publication how much of itself Bankman-Fried owned, as the investor is also an investor in Semafor. This exchange comes after Musk has publicly slammed Bankman-Fried for owning shares in Twitter, since the collapse of FTX. The original report claimed that Musk had invited Bankman-Fried to roll his $100 million stake into Twitter after he had purchased the company for $44 billion. Musk denied this, saying that Bankman-Fried may have owned shares in Twitter as a public company, but not as a private company.
Sam Bankman-Fried is set to speak with New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook summit next week.
The interview will likely take place via videolink from the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried is currently located.
Sorkin has said that there are a lot of important questions to be asked and answered in the interview, and that nothing is off limits.
Bankman-Fried's public persona has been relatively muted since he resigned as CEO of FTX earlier this month, and he has been facing criticism for his social media presence.
On Tuesday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk blamed a group of political and social activists for the absence of the company's moderation council.
Musk said that the council was a condition of a large coalition of political and social activists groups, but alleging, without elaboration, that they “broke the deal” by continuing to “try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue.”
Some activists who attended the meeting tweeted to confirm that they never made such a deal with Musk, including Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez, who helped drive a #StopToxicTwitter coalition pressuring Twitter's top 20 advertisers to boycott the platform.
Musk on November 19 launched a poll asking people whether Trump's account should be reinstated. A day later, he announced that the account would be restored as 51.8 per cent of people were for it. More than 15 million people participated in that survey.
The FDA has approved Hemgenix as the first gene therapy for treating hemophilia B. Hemophilia B is a rare, lifelong bleeding disorder caused by a single gene defect, resulting in insufficient production of factor IX, a protein primarily produced by the liver that helps blood clots form. Current treatments for moderate to severe hemophilia B include prophylactic infusions of factor IX replacement therapy to temporarily replace or supplement low levels of blood-clotting factor.
Hemgenix is a gene therapy that has been shown to be effective in reducing the symptoms of hemophilia B. The FDA approval is based on results from the pivotal HOPE-B trial, the largest gene therapy trial in hemophilia B to date. Results from the study demonstrated that HEMGENIX allowed patients to produce mean factor IX activity of 39% at 6 months and 36.7% at 24 months post infusion. 7 to 18 months post-infusion, the mean adjusted annualized bleeding rate (ABR) for all bleeds was reduced by 54% compared to the six-month lead-in period on factor IX prophylactic replacement therapy. In addition, 94% of patients treated with HEMGENIX discontinued use of prophylaxis and remained free of previous continuous routine prophylaxis therapy.
uniQure conducted the research and clinical development for the product, which included three clinical trials across 34 global sites and involving 67 adults with hemophilia B. In May 2021, uniQure and CSL completed a licensing transaction providing CSL Behring with exclusive rights to commercialize and continue clinical development of HEMGENIX globally. CSL Behring plans to make Hemgenix available as soon as possible.
District Judge Edward Davila has recommended that Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes serve her sentence at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas
The Federal Prison Camp in Bryan is a minimum-security prison that houses female inmates.
Davila recommended the prison camp because it is known to have an "open-minded" approach when it comes to dealing with its convicted criminals.
The final decision on where Holmes is incarcerated rests with the US Bureau of Prisons.
The bill signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul will temporarily ban new cryptocurrency mining operations in the state of New York. This is a major victory for environmental groups, as cryptocurrency mining is a highly energy-intensive process that can have negative impacts on the environment. The law will also trigger a study by the state Department of Environmental Conservation to investigate the potential environmental impacts of cryptocurrency mining. There is concern in the industry that this law could set a precedent for other states to follow suit, further harming the already struggling industry.
The federal government has taken another step to try to stop illegal robocalls by blocking a voice provider from the entire U.S. phone network. This is the first time the government has done this. The provider, Global UC, failed to comply with U.S. regulations aimed at countering illegal robocalls. The requirements include implementing caller ID verification technology and providing the agency with explanations about how it otherwise fights spam robocalls. The FCC order effectively severs Global UC's access to the U.S. phone network by forcing other U.S. voice providers to stop doing business with the target company, prohibiting the other providers from accepting phone traffic from Global UC. An FCC official has told CNN that depending on how a voice provider's business may be configured, such an order could amount to an effective death sentence for the company, because a provider that cannot send or receive calls to others in the network may be unable to stay afloat.
HP Inc. plans to eliminate 4,000 to 6,000 jobs over the next three years as part of a transformation plan to achieve $1.4 billion in annualized cost savings.
The company expects to incur approximately $1.0 billion in labor and non-labor costs related to restructuring and other charges, with approximately $0.6 billion in fiscal 2023.
HP's fourth-quarter earnings and revenues declined as demand conditions remained unfavorable. The company expects to earn between $3.20 and $3.60 a share on an adjusted basis for the next fiscal year.
HP's free cash flow for the next fiscal year is expected to be between $3 billion and $3.5 billion.
Digital World Acquisition (DWAC) shareholders voted to extend the company's deadline to merge with former President Trump's media company by an additional year on Tuesday. The vote came after months of delays and wrangling, and followed Twitter CEO Elon Musk's decision to allow Trump back on the platform.
Trump has indicated that he is not interested in returning to Twitter, but experts say the temptation to do so is high. If Trump does return to Twitter, it could undermine the business model of his media company, Truth Social.
Tuesday's vote was just the latest chapter in DWAC's attempt to delay the merger. The company is facing multiple investigations from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a federal grand jury, which DWAC claims have delayed the merger process.
Despite the challenges, DWAC CEO Patrick Orlando remains confident in the company's ability to get the deal done. "It's a really arduous process when you have as many stockholders as we did," he said. "Retail stockholders often don't feel they need to participate."
DraftKings is facing criticism from customers who were hacked, with close to $300,000 in funds being affected. The online betting platform has been targeted by credential-stuffing attacks, which allow cyberthieves to make off with customer funds.
DraftKings cofounder and President Paul Liberman has released a statement saying that the company is investigating the reports and that they believe the login information of these customers was compromised on other websites. They are urging customers to use unique passwords and not to share their information with third-party platforms.
So far, less than $300,000 of customer funds have been affected, and DraftKings intends to make whole any customer that was impacted.
Zoom's share price fell this week after the company released its third quarter 2023 earnings report. The report showed that Zoom's outlook for its online business has been cut by nearly 8% for the year. Zoom's share price has declined by 88% from its all-time high, and the company has lowered its 2023 annual revenue expectations by 7%. Despite these challenges, Zoom's enterprise business continues to grow, with enterprise revenue in Q3 up 20% year over year. Zoom plans to focus on increasing efficiency and profitability going forward.
There are recent rumors that Mark Zuckerberg plans to step down as the CEO of Meta next year, but these rumors are false according to the company.
Zuckerberg has no plans to resign, despite the company's current struggles and controversies.
Zuckerberg is committed to the Metaverse project, which is a multi-billion dollar investment into the next iteration of the internet that embraces augmented and virtual reality experiences.
Despite the company's losses, Zuckerberg remains dedicated to the Metaverse and sees it as central to the future success of Meta.
Alphabet, Google's parent company, is reportedly planning to lay off around 10,000 employees, or 6% of its workforce. The move comes as other tech giants have already begun to lay off staff in the face of the challenging global economic conditions.
Google is said to be using a ranking system to identify which employees will be let go, with the lowest-ranked employees expected to be the first to be fired. The company has already announced that it will be slowing down its hiring process in the fourth quarter of the year.
The expected layoffs come as a surprise given Google's reputation as an employee-friendly company. However, the current economic conditions have made it necessary for the company to downsize its workforce.
Best Buy Co., Inc. today announced results for the 13-week third quarter ended October 29, 2022, as compared to the 13-week third quarter ended October 30, 2021. Comparable sales are now expected to fall only 10% this year, Best Buy said, slightly better than the previous forecast of an 11% decline.
From a capital allocation perspective, Best Buy resumed share repurchases in November after pausing during the second quarter and now expects to spend approximately $1 billion in share repurchases this year.
For the full year, Best Buy expects comparable sales to decline approximately 10% and non-GAAP operating income rate to be slightly higher than 4.0%. Previously, the company expected comparable sales to decline by around 11%.
Elon Musk, the new CEO of Twitter, has been receiving widespread criticism for quite a long time over his way of handling the micro-blogging site.
Musk has now put out a message for his critics and urged them to stay on other platforms. He concluded his message by tweeting 'namaste'.
This morning, Musk announced a pause on the relaunch of his $8 verification plan for Twitter, citing the mushrooming of fake accounts.
The subscription-based verification plan was among Musk's most prominent moves after his takeover apart from reinstating several banned accounts, including those of former US president Donald Trump and rapper Kanye West.
Tesla stock is down 52% this year, and CEO Elon Musk's wealth has decreased by $101 billion since the beginning of the year.
Tesla is facing a slowdown in China, and reports suggest the company is planning to follow up on its two price cuts over the past month with another before the end of the year as demand dries up.
Musk himself has introduced a risk proposition by deciding to buy Twitter, and he is believed to have overpaid for the platform.
Overall, Tesla stock is down 52.4% this year, and Musk's early decisions caused chaos at Twitter, making it even more difficult for him to turn the platform profitable as soon as possible.
Twitter owner Elon Musk has announced that the relaunch of the company's Blue verified service will be delayed until Twitter can effectively prevent account impersonation. Musk said in a tweet that the firm is "holding off" on the relaunch of the service until there is "high confidence of stopping impersonation." The move comes just a week before the November 29 date Musk had initially posited for the relaunch.
This announcement follows the initial rollout of Musk's paid verification plan earlier this month, which led to a swarm of accounts impersonating brands and high-profile figures. The checkmark has long been used to confirm the authenticity of government officials, prominent figures and journalists.
Musk said in a tweet that Twitter will "probably use different color check for organizations than individuals" once the Blue verified service is relaunched. The decision to hold off on the relaunch comes after advertisers began to leave the platform following the initial rollout of the verification service.
Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin, both 37, were arrested in Tallinn, Estonia yesterday for their alleged roles in a cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering scheme that bilked $575 million from hundreds of thousands of victims. The men have been charged with 18 counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, and they each face a maximum of 20 years behind bars.
According to the indictment, the pair claimed that their company, HashFlare, was a “massive cryptomining operation,” when in reality it was mining at a rate of less than 1% of what it claimed. When investors asked to withdraw their mining proceeds, Potapenko and Turogi resisted making the payments, or paid off the investors using crypto from the open market instead of tokens that were apparently mined at the company.
If they're found guilty, they each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. A jury trial has been requested by the prosecutors.
Pizza chain Domino's is set to roll out more than 800 electric pizza delivery vehicles with Chevy Bolts, for electrifying pizza delivery in the US. According to Domino's, the move will make it the largest all-electric pizza delivery fleet in the country.
The company said that it chose Bolt EVs for its fleet because they offer zero-emissions drive, advanced safety features, and lower maintenance costs as compared to traditional ICE-powered vehicles.
Electric cars benefit Domino’s outlets in several ways, such as it reduces average maintenance costs than non-electric vehicles, it provides enough battery life with the possibility for days of deliveries, and more, without any financial impact of high gas prices.
Domino's is also launching two giveaways that offer customers a chance to win one of two new Chevy Bolt EVs. Customers who place an online order between November 21st, 2022 and February 12th, 2023 are automatically entered for a chance to win.