Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News based in Ireland covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact him via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
Elon Musk has been accused of insider trading by investors who alleged that he manipulated the price of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, causing them to lose billions of dollars.
Ella Irwin, the head of trust and safety at Twitter, has resigned from her position, marking the second high-profile departure from the role since Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media giant.
Tech giant Microsoft has announced a long-term partnership with woke advocacy group GLAAD, aiming to increase the representation of LGBT characters in its first-party Xbox games.
Amazon has agreed to pay more than $30 million to settle FTC allegations of privacy violations violating privacy laws by holding onto children’s data, according to federal filings.
In a stark warning, Mo Gawdat, a former chief business officer at Google X, has declared that the rapid development of AI poses a greater emergency than climate change — once the ultimate sacred cow of Silicon Valley leftists.
In a dramatic standoff between tech giants and the news industry, Mark Zuckerberg hasthreatened to block all news articles in California from Facebook and Instagram if a proposed bill, known as the California Journalism Preservation Act, is passed.
Amazon has announced the discontinuation of its celebrity voices feature for Alexa, signaling a continued tough road forward for the tech giant’s voice assistant. Customers that paid for their Alexa to use the voice of celebrities including Samuel L. Jackson, Shaw, and Melissa McCarthy can apply for a refund.
Doug Rushkoff, a leading theorist on digital culture, has voiced his concerns about the current state of technology, suggesting that tech billionaires are in “escape mode,” planning for catastrophic events and creating virtual realities to escape from societal realities that their own industry are causing. Speaking of Mark Zuckerberg and those like him, Rushkoff says, “They’re torturing themselves now, which is kind of fun to see. They’re afraid that their little AIs are going to come for them. They’re apocalyptic, and so existential, because they have no connection to real life and how things work.”
Fidelity Investments has reported that Twitter is now worth just one-third of the $44 billion that tech mogul Elon Musk paid for the social media giant about nine months ago. Fidelity holds a stake in Twitter after backing Musk’s takeover.
In a surprising shift from traditional automotive rivalries, Ford CEO Jim Farley has identified Chinese car companies as the primary competitors in the electric vehicle (EV) market, sidelining the likes of General Motors and Toyota. Farley made no mention of Tesla, the current market leader.
More than 350 executives, researchers, and engineers from leading artificial intelligence companies have signed an open letter cautioning that the AI technology they are developing could pose an existential threat to humanity.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has touched down in Beijing, marking his first visit to China in three years, amidst intensifying competition in the electric vehicle market and speculation over Tesla’s expansion plans in the country.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, designed to ferry astronauts to the moon, has been reportedly found by an audit to be $6 billion over budget and six years behind its original schedule.
A New York-based attorney is facing potential sanctions after using OpenAI’s ChatGPT to write a legal brief he submitted to the court. The problem? The AI Chatbot filled the brief with citations to fictitious cases, a symptom of AI chatbots called “hallucinating.” In an affadavit, the lawyer claimed, “I was unaware of the possibility that [ChatGPT’s] content could be false.”
In a recent escalation of their ongoing feud, leftist billionaire Mark Cuban has accused Elon Musk, the most followed person on Twitter along with its new owner, of manipulating the platform’s algorithm to promote his own tweets and viewpoints.
eBay founder and leftist billionaire Pierre Omidyar is reported to have invested heavily in a private security start-up nicknamed “Uber for bodyguards,” even as he significantly funds movements advocating for the defunding or abolition of police forces, creating an interesting contrast between his philanthropic approach and investment strategy.
Foad Dabiri, Twitter’s Head of Engineering, announced his resignation from Elon Musk’s company on Thursday, a day after the platform’s attempt launch Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign was marred by technical difficulties.
A massive leak of alleged internal files from Elon Musk’s Tesla has revealed over 1,000 accident reports concerning phantom braking or unintended acceleration, with a disturbing trend of the company dismissing customer complaints about dangerous Autopilot glitches.
In a significant move towards personalized advertising, Google has announced its plans to roll out more generative AI tools that will automatically create online advertising campaigns based on users’ search queries.
Facebook’s recent layoffs have reportedly left remaining staff in a state of confusion and anxiety, with some even resorting to inventing their own tasks to seem busy or avoiding work altogether for fear of falling prey to Mark Zuckerberg’s dreaded “year of efficiency.”
In a striking oversight, Elon Musk and his SpaceX team failed to properly implement privacy measures offered by an FAA program, which has allowed continued tracking of Musk’s private jet. Self-proclaimed “free speech advocate” Musk had previously banned a teenager from Twitter for running “@ElonJet,” an account that tracked his private jet’s flight activity.
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is backing AliveCor, a startup specializing in heart-monitoring technology, in a protracted legal battle against tech giant Apple. AliveCor alleges that Apple stole its heart monitoring technology and stifled its capacity to offer its services on the popular Apple Watch platform. Describing Apple, Khosla said, “I think it’s really important that they not bully people and so we decided to make it a public battle.”
Spotify is reportedly developing AI tools capable of creating targeted ads using its podcast hosts’ voices, as revealed by Bill Simmons, the founder of The Ringer, a Spotify-owned podcast network.
In a recent virtual appearance at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London, Elon Musk defended the large-scale layoffs executed since his acquisition of Twitter and hinted at a potential hiring surge in the future. According to Musk Twitter and many other Silicon Valley companies are filled with people doing “fake work” measured by “vanity metrics.”
Virgin Orbit, the satellite launch provider founded by Sir Richard Branson, has confirmed it is shutting down after selling its facility leases and equipment to three aerospace companies following bankruptcy.
Tensions are escalating among tech workers at Amazon, Facebook, and Google as layoffs, return-to-office mandates, and other concerns fuel dissatisfaction and unrest. Unrest is so high at Amazon that workers are reportedly planning a walkout.
In a shocking incident, a Tesla Model Y spontaneously caught fire on a California highway, leaving the owner, Bishal Malla, scrambling for answers from a largely unresponsive customer service team. Incredibly, Elon Musk’s Tesla asked him to bring the charred ruin left after a battery fire into a company service center. The owner responded, “How in the world am I going to do that?”
Mike Rowe, the host of popular TV shows Dirty Jobs and How America Works, has claimed that blue-collar jobs and skilled trades are safe from the growth of AI despite widespread fears of job losses due to technological advancements. According to Rowe, “I’ve been hearing for years that robots are going to wreck blue-collar work. Turns out AI is coming for your white-collar job.”
In the midst of the booming AI industry, Timnit Gebru, a former lead researcher on Google’s ethical AI team who was fired by the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe, is cautioning against potential dangers. She argues that the rapid growth in the field, akin to a “gold rush,” is sidelining important ethical safeguards, and calls for more external regulation.
Apple has placed restrictions on its employees’ use of generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GitHub’s Copilot, citing data security concerns. According to an internal communication, Apple believes that “Generative AIs, while powerful, can potentially collect and share confidential data, leading to a breach of our security protocols.”
Uber’s Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Bo Young Lee, has been put on temporary leave by the woke Silicon Valley giant following employee backlash over an event she moderated titled “Don’t Call Me Karen” which focused on the negative connotations of the stereotype about white women. Outraged employees felt the event minimized the experiences of minorities, resulting in the company announced, “We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session.”
Former Twitter employees are suing Elon Musk and his new holding company for Twitter, X. Corp, over allegations including fraud and breach of contract related to claims of unpaid severance. But some of the most interesting revelations from the lawsuit are the exposure of Musk’s attitude towards paying rent for the company’s buildings. Musk reportedly said in one conversation that he would pay rent “over his dead body.” His lawyer later claimed that charging rent in “derelict zombie apocalypse” San Francisco is unreasonable.
A group of senior students at Texas A&M University–Commerce had their graduation plans temporarily derailed after a professor misused AI software and falsely accused multiple students of using ChatGPT to complete coursework. Students fought back against the baseless claims, including one student who showed ChatGPT claiming credit for the professor’s own dissertation.
A popular fertility tracking app, Premom, is facing allegations of unlawfully sharing sensitive health data of its users with third-party advertisers including Google and Chinese companies, according to a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In response to a growing trend among car manufacturers to exclude traditional AM radio from their vehicles, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers has proposed legislation that would require automakers to retain the ability for drivers to tune in to the airwaves dominated by conservative talk radio.
In a dramatic shift following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the social media giant’s workforce was slashed by a staggering 90 percent over the past six months. However, Musk hinted in a recent interview that the company might attempt to rehire some of the ousted employees.
A recent study suggests that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm may expose children to graphic and violent gun-related content, despite the platform’s content moderation policies. Researchers created profiles for typical nine-year-old and 14-year-old boys, finding that the accounts that followed YouTube’s recommended videos were faced with an onslaught of violent content including videos related to school shootings.
Areej Al-Sadhan, a US-based human rights activist, has accused Twitter of sharing her brother’s identifying information with the Saudi Arabian government, leading to his imprisonment. According to the activist, Twitter shared her brother’s personal details, then “As a result, Saudi Arabia kidnapped, tortured, imprisoned, and —through a sham trial — sentenced my brother to 20 years in prison, simply for criticizing Saudi repression on his Twitter account.”
The DOJ announced on Tuesday that Apple software engineer Weibao Wang has been indicted on charges of stealing crucial autonomous technology from the tech giant for a Chinese self-driving car company.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently testified to Congress about the potential risks and implications of AI technologies like ChatGPT, which have gained significant popularity in recent months.