From Kara Swisher’s interview with Ben Mezrich, author of Breaking Twitter:
In the book, there’s a scene when Musk signs the papers to take over Twitter, the first thing he screams out is, “Fuck Zuck! Fuck Zuck!” — which I haven’t seen reported anywhere else.
Not reported, but easily imagined.
[Intelligencer]
Android Police says the chat-like message box that appears below new emails in the Android app is in limited server-side testing right now. The drop-down menu offers options to Reply All and edit recipients. It’s a useful looking update that will hopefully rollout to everyone, soon.
After producing hundreds of the self-driving vans already, “we did make the decision with GM to pause production of the Origin,” said Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt in leaked audio obtained by Forbes and later confirmed by GM. The decision comes after Cruise recently halted its robotaxi services nationwide. The company is on a trust-building campaign after California suspended Cruise’s operating license, calling autonomous vehicles a public risk.
This time last year Musk said that Starlink was losing about $20 million a month. Now he says it’s breakeven, which is good news for a service that keeps people connected in remote locations, in times of disaster and war, or while tooling around in a van or boat. Unimpeded growth could be bad for astronomers trying to see past those roughly 5,000 satellites currently operating in low-Earth orbit, with plans for up to 37,000 more.
Uber will pay $290 million (3 percent of its revenue generated last quarter) and Lyft will pay $38 million (4 percent of its revenue) to settle allegations that the ride-sharing companies illegally withheld wages and mandatory sick leave from drivers in New York. Over 100,000 drivers in the state could be eligible to receive funds under the settlement.
Bloomberg has a sprawling piece chronicling the history of Apple’s efforts to expand into health care. One revelation is this:
“The work was nearly complete when Project Fennel was canceled, in part because the Apple Watch is a driver of iPhone sales. ‘If you gave up the watch to Android, you would dilute the value of the watch to the iPhone,’ said someone with knowledge of the decision.”
Purists might argue that an initialism formed by the words “artificial” and “intelligence” should be disqualified for Collins’ most notable word of 2023. But if nothing else, it confirms that society is at the peak of inflated expectations in the hype cycle before the eventual plunge into the trough of disillusionment.
See also: VR.
[www.collinsdictionary.com]
If you can, then you my friend are a Waterloo supernerd. But it’s wasted knowledge as John Chen is retiring next week, after serving as CEO since 2013, six years after the iPhone (and later Android) put the brakes on Research In Motion. Stepping into the roll as interim CEO will be Richard Lynch, BlackBerry board member and ex-Verizon CTO.
“We’re so far from being a security minded company. Every time I hear about our head geeks talking about security I want to throw up,” said one unnamed SolarWinds employee to the SEC.
The lawsuit says that Texas-based SolarWinds and its chief information security officer Timothy Brown defrauded investors by knowingly misrepresenting SolarWinds’ cybersecurity weaknesses as Russia-linked hackers exploited the company’s Orion software to infiltrate hundreds of US government agencies and international businesses.
As expected, the company’s memory chip woes continue to weigh-down quarterly earnings, but it sees recovery in the year ahead. Samsung says that demand for generative AI should be a boon to its foundry business, as will an expected return to growth for premium smartphones, PCs, and TVs which will also benefit Samsung Display.
You know, unless WAR.