We are getting more information on the ongoing layoffs at Tesla. Several employees describe the situation as Elon Musk “throwing...
electrek.co
Sources familiar with the matter believe that some of the layoffs have nothing to do with hiring inefficiencies or restructuring, but rather with Musk throwing his weight around Tesla.
Two sources told Electrek that Tinucci was fighting back pressure from Musk to fire a bigger percentage of her team, and the CEO decided to let go of the entire team as an example.
Musk wrote in an email to executives on Sunday:
“Hopefully, these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard-core about headcount and cost reduction. While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so.”
Some of the internships are unpaid, while others reportedly offer $18 to $28 an hour.
fortune.com
People familiar with Musk’s thinking have said the billionaire is determined to cut head count amid sagging electric vehicle sales and big expenditures for his Robotaxi dreams. They say Musk is targeting a 20% reduction, Bloomberg reported.
Revoking intern offers isn’t likely to save Tesla much money. At least one of the posts was for an unpaid position, while paid internships at the automaker typically offer $18 to $28 an hour, according to data from Glassdoor.
But the decisions will have an impact in the company’s hiring pipeline: More than 3,000 university and community college students from around the world are hired for Tesla internships each year, according to the company’s last Impact Report. “Perform meaningful work from day one,” reads the company’s intern website.
Elon Musk hosted an ‘anti-Biden’ dinner party. Here’s who attended
Kelly Rissman
Thu, May 2, 2024 at 10:36 PM GMT+2·3 min read
Elon Musk hosted an “anti-Joe Biden” dinner party last month with a guest list featuring some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people.
The elite gathering was co-hosted by entrepreneur and investor David Sacks at his mansion in the Hollywood Hills in April, Puck first reported. The dinner party conversation largely revolved around how to raise money to defeat Democrats, a source told the outlet.
The gathering was branded “anti-Biden” by Puck but was not specifically in support of former president and presumed Republican nominee, Donald Trump. In fact, Mr Sacks said that Mr Trump’s actions on January 6 “disqualified himself from being a candidate at a national level again” on a January 2021 podcast.
The guest list reportedly included Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, and Travis Kalanick.
Elon Musk arrives at an event in Los Angeles in April. He also reportedly hosted an ‘anti-Biden’ dinner party in the city last month (2024 Invision)
Immigration was a hot topic at the dinner, Puck reported.
Mr Musk, the world’s second richest person, has shown a growing interest in politics in recent years, and is often seen in the company of world leaders. He has publicly shared an array of political views on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Mr Musk has yet to endorse a candidate in the US presidential election this November. The billionaire said in March that he didn’t plan on donating to campaigns for either Mr Biden or Mr Trump.
However, the SpaceX founder said he voted for Mr Biden in 2020. In January, he posted on his social media network, X: “I cannot see myself voting for Biden this time.”
He has openly criticized Mr Biden’s immigration policy, and called for the impeachment of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “for deliberately breaking the law and massively increasing illegal immigration beyond all historical precedent.”
He is also an outspoken advocate for “free speech” on X, and expressed his discontent with Anthony Fauci, the president’s former chief medical advisor, posting:“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”
Mr Musk has also been critical of Mr Trump. The Tesla billionaire stepped down from his roles on Mr Trump’s presidential advisory councils in June 2017 after the US withdrew from the Paris climate accord.
In July 2022, Mr Trump blasted the billionaire as a “bulls*** artist”, prompting Mr Musk to respond: “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
Other guests at the dinner were at one point closely aligned with Mr Trump.
Michael Milken, a financier who Mr Trump pardoned, was in attendance along with Steven Mnuchin, the Trump administration’s treasury secretary.
Rounding out the party was media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former chair of News Corp which owns Fox News; former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, one-time member of Trump’s economic advisory council; and PayPal co-founder and 2016 Trump supporter Peter Thiel. The Independent has contacted representatives for Mr Musk, Mr Sack, Mr Thiel, Mr Murdoch, Mr Milken, and Mr Kalanick for comment.
Looking back, I kind of hate that Tesla really held back PHEV development by getting every company to go all in on pure EVs, instead of coming out with cars (eg the Prius Prime) that have enough pure EV range to commute round trip to work, yet still have as much gas range as every other car.
Guess I shouldn't really blame Tesla for the fact that most other car companies weren't able to resist jumping on the bandwagon, but I really wish PHEVs could have gone mainstream.
No issues with PHEV they serve a purpose.. it’s for people who want the best of both worlds but EV adoption is still major and for people who want to bush ice vehicle completely
X, formerly Twitter, is now using Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to power a feature that summarizes the personalized trending stories in the app’s Explore section. According to an announcement and screenshots posted by the X Engineering team on Friday, X’s Premium subscribers will be able to read a summary of posts on X associated with each trending story featured on the For You tab in Explore.
The For You page showcases the news and stories being shared across X’s platform that are popular within your network, along with other suggested items. It’s among the first stops for X users who want to catch up with what’s being said on the platform, without having to spend long amounts of time scrolling their timeline.
For instance, a TechCrunch reader’s For You page today may feature stories about Apple’s coming iPad event, Microsoft’s security overhaul, and burnout among AI engineers. As you tap into each story to view the associated X posts, a summary of the story will now appear at the top of the page, offering an overview of the subject matter.
In the case of the AI burnout story, for example, the Grok-powered summary begins: “AI engineers are facing burnout and rushed rollouts due to the competitive race in the tech industry, as companies prioritize investor satisfaction over solving actual problems.” After briefly touching on the problem of the AI “rat race,” the story concludes by saying that “critics argue that proper safeguards and thoughtful innovation should not be afterthoughts in the pursuit of AI investments …”
Humorously, a message appears below that summary, warning: “Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.”
The idea of summarizing trends is not a new one, but it is new in terms of how the summaries are being handled. Under its prior leadership, Twitter began adding headlines and descriptions to its trends in 2020, though not with the help of an AI bot. Instead, Twitter itself would annotate some of its daily trends with extra information and pin a representative tweet to provide further context. However, Twitter’s rollout was haphazard, with some trends getting written up and others not.
With Grok’s Stories, as the summaries are called, all the top news on the For You page is summarized.
Access to xAI’s chatbot Grok is meant to be a selling point to push users to buy premium subscriptions. With the Premium and top-tier Premium+ plans, users can access Grok by tapping on the bottom middle button of the app. A snarky and “rebellious” AI, Grok’s differentiator from other AI chatbots like ChatGPT is its exclusive and real-time access to X data.
A post published to X on Friday by tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz lays out Elon Musk’s further plan for AI-powered news on X, based on an email conversation with the X owner.
Kantrowitz says that conversations on X will make up the core of Grok’s summaries. Grok won’t look at the article text, in other words, even if that’s what people are discussing on the platform. That could be a problem in terms of painting a true picture of the news being shared, as what people are chattering about on X may be their reactions or opinions, not the news itself. Kantrowitz calls the move “controversial” but admits there’s opportunity there.
Journalists are already having to contend with AI news summaries in other areas as well, including from startups. For example, Arc’s new web browser includes an AI summary feature and former Twitter engineers are building an AI news summary service called Particle. How this will play out in terms of traffic to the news sites themselves remains to be seen. Kantrowitz believes that users may be interested in going “deeper into the source material once their curiosity is piqued,” he writes. But it’s also likely that at least some news sites will go out of business as page views drop due to AI summaries, leaving fewer sources for AI bots like Grok to summarize in the long run.
For that reason, some news publishers are doing deals with AI providers like OpenAI’s recently announced partnership with the FT. Others, such as Axel Springer, the AP, and Le Monde, have also announced similar moves. In X’s case, it’s able to get at the news by way of the conversation around it — and without having to partner to access the news content itself. That’s both clever and worrisome, the latter from a misinformation standpoint.
Grok’s Stories are rolling out to Premium X subscribers now. Access to Premium starts at $8 per month, if paying on the web and not through the app stores.
Just going to point out Elon Musk stole "Grok" from Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" and he in no way owns it so feel free to use it in a way that makes it clear Elon just stole it from an author.
The funny thing is that this wouldn't be *quite* as insane a proposition before Musk broke twitter's ability to function as an independent source of news [contains quote post or other embedded content]
“Given the challenges we face to our fundamental shared understanding of the world, I would like to destroy it” [contains quote post or other embedded content]
LLM Bots summarizing posts that porn bots and crypto bots make about real articles without reading them sounds like the kind of amazing proposition that you can only find on X: The Everything App [contains quote post or other embedded content]
I, too, like to ask my psychotic acquaintance to tell me things he vaguely knows about, where he heard it "in a pub from a mate who's cousin with this guy who knew the guy who it happened to". [contains quote post or other embedded content]
A bot that summarizes what the users of a racist social media platform say about stories it hasn't actually read definitely sounds worthy of the $6 billion xAI is reportedly raising at a $18b valuation. [contains quote post or other embedded content]
You may be aware that there has been a recent adjustment with the Supercharger organization which is presently undergoing a sudden and thorough restructuring. If you have already received this email, please disregard it as we are attempting to connect with our suppliers and contractors. As part of this process, we are in the midst of establishing new leadership roles, prioritizing projects, and streamlining our payment procedures. Due to the transitional nature of this phase, we are asking for your patience with our response time.
I understand that this period of change may be challenging and that patience is not easy when expecting to be paid, however, I want to express my sincere appreciation for your understanding and support as we navigate through this transition. At this time, please hold on breaking ground on any newly awarded construction projects and planned pre-construction walks. If currently working on an active Supercharging construction site, please continue. Contact [email redacted] for further questions, comments, and concerns. Additionally, hold on working on any new material orders. Contact [email redacted] for further questions, comments, and concerns. If waiting on delayed payment, please contact [email redacted] for a status update. Thank you for your cooperation and patience.
Bluesky’s most prominent backer has left its board.
On Saturday, Jack Dorsey posted on X about grants for open protocols from his philanthropic Start Small initiative. This prompted someone to ask Dorsey if he was still on the Bluesky board, and he responded with a terse “no.” Dorsey did not answer any of the follow-up posts asking him to explain his departure.
We sincerely thank Jack for his help funding and initiating the bluesky project. Today, Bluesky is thriving as an open source social network running on atproto, the decentralized protocol we have built.
With Jack’s departure, we are searching for a new board member for the Bluesky public benefit company who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience. More to come!
Dorsey first announced Bluesky in 2019, back when he was still CEO of Twitter. He wrote that Twitter (now X) was “funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media.”
After deleting his #Bluesky account last year, Jack Dorsey has since reportedly left the board. Honestly? Good riddance. He never had any operational role in Bluesky. He was the one who pushed for Elon Musk to buy #Twitter, a truly successful move as we all know. He himself has been an awful...
After deleting his Bluesky account last year, Jack Dorsey has since reportedly left the board. Honestly? Good riddance. 1/2 [contains quote post or other embedded content]
from over the weekend: Jack Dorsey left the board of Bluesky, which is surprising to me. Also surprising is he seems to be back posting on X, and now just follows 3 people: Elon Musk, Edward Snowden and Stella Assange, wife of the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher...
We sincerely thank Jack for his help funding and initiating the bluesky project. Today, Bluesky is thriving as an open source social network running on atproto, the decentralized protocol we have built.
On related news: Jack #Dorsey is no longer with #BlueSky. Instead, he's lauding the "freedom" of #Twitter (and apparently no longer believed in "building a social network that puts people in control of their experience", from the subtext of the BlueSky announcement stating the requirements for...
With Jack’s departure, we are searching for a new board member for the Bluesky public benefit company who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience. More to come!
i used to look up to him but can’t fathom why he’s doing all these things. is there a mission/agenda? or is he burnt out / disgruntled and doing things out of whim? no hard feelings now that he unfollowed most people, including me.
i for one am glad jack dorsey has moved on from bluesky and is focusing his energy on a better social media platform (being the secret funder of cohost)
Official website is then outdated: bsky.social/about/faq "What is the corporate structure of Bluesky? Bluesky, the company, is a Public Benefit Corporation. It is owned by Jay Graber and the Bluesky team. Jack Dorsey and Jeremie Miller serve on the board, along with Jay"...
Jack Dorsey referred to Twitter, the privately owned company that blocked links to competing social media platforms like Mastodon, as "freedom technology". What a clown. He also deleted his account on Bluesky announced he's no longer on Bluesky's board of directors. Jack's involvement was one...
Also worth nothing that Zuckerberg and the Threads team turned out to be a lot more trustworthy when it came to their promises of supporting decentralizatioin than Jack
Because he groused publicly (iirc) that they focused on the app and not the protocol and then he started looking at nostr. Just like he was getting pushed at Twitter bc the stock sucked so he worked w Elon to take over. An easy guess to say it’s about feeling slighted. Hard to contend it’s about...
All these reply guys who apparently saw this exact sequence of events coming, please post a list of your predictions somewhere so I can get ahead of tomorrow’s news
Truly breaks my brain that Jack is still posting on the website his hand-picked successor destroyed while also abandoning the platform he created that actually achieved his dream of decentralized independence
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electrek.co
techcrunch.com
bsky.app
Not enough Ketamine in the world can soothe that burn Elroy received.
www.threads.net
news.ycombinator.com
www.businessinsider.com
mashable.com
