Lineker contacts Musk after Twitter user sends abusive message to son
Lineker tweets a screenshot of a private message sent by a Twitter user describing his eldest son, George, as a “mug” who needed to be “burned at the stake” for defending his father.
Is this acceptable @Twitter @elonmusk? And I don’t mean the grammar.
Musk does not respond.
Is this acceptable @Twitter @elonmusk? And I don’t mean the grammar. pic.twitter.com/fCVIIq3we2
— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) March 14, 2023
Musk ‘open’ to buying Silicon Valley Bank
Responding to a Twitter user who suggested that the social media platform “buy SVB and become a digital bank,” Musk tweets that he’s “open to the idea.” (In 2022, he purchased Twitter, which was also struggling.)
I’m open to the idea
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 11, 2023
Musk buys land for own town
Musk’s companies are reportedly buying land in Texas with the hope of incorporating their own town, where employees can live and work. The town is to be called Snailbrook, an apparent reference to the mascot of Musk’s tunneling firm, the Boring Company. Snailbrook reportedly includes plans to build more than 100 homes, as well as neighborhood features such as a pool and outdoor sports area.
Musk incorporates X.AI
0 0 Mark Devlin Mark Devlin2023-04-17 16:22:562023-04-17 16:22:56Musk incorporates X.AIMusk ‘not saying’ Starship will get to orbit
SpaceX will debut its Starship vehicle in a month or so, but the chances of its first-ever orbital mission being a success are apparently only about 50%.
I’m not saying it will get to orbit, but I am guaranteeing excitement. So, won’t be boring!…So I think we’ve got, hopefully, about an 80% chance of reaching orbit this year. It’ll probably take us a couple more years to achieve full and rapid reusability.
According to Musk, Starship will be the most powerful rocket to ever fly, featuring about 2.5 times more thrust at liftoff than NASA’s Saturn V. SpaceX hopes that, among other things, Starship will get people and cargo to the moon and Mars. It is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, which Musk considers the most important breakthrough for making Mars colonization and other ambitious exploration feats feasible.
Musk supports Adams, says ‘The media is racist’
The media is racist. For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians. Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist.
For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians.
Same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America.
Maybe they can try not being racist.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 26, 2023
Musk’s cost-cutting hurts Goldman Sachs
Musk’s “cost-cutting exercise” contributes to a rapid growth in delinquencies of commercial real estate loans for Goldman Sachs. After Musk’s attempt to avoid taking over Twitter, he began seeking ways to cut costs, which included not paying rent. Now, Twitter’s landlord, Columbia Property, is suing and defaulted on its loan from Goldman Sachs as a result. (Goldman Sachs was part of a group of banks that provided $1.7 billion in loans to Columbia Property. The loan was secured against seven office buildings in San Francisco and New York, two of which accommodate large Twitter offices.)
Massive Twitter outage
Many users find they cannot tweet, retweet, quote tweet and direct message on Twitter, with users recieving messages such as:
You are over the daily limit for sending tweets
Some users could not access their direct message, with the tab only showing the message “something went wrong.”
Musk sends a brief email to Twitter staff, instructing them to “pause new feature development” in order to ensure “system stability and robustness”.
Twitter may not be working as expected for some of you. Sorry for the trouble. We're aware and working to get this fixed.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) February 8, 2023
Musk announces Master Plan 3, says ‘the future is bright’
Musk announces the the third version of Tesla’s “master plan” on March 1. At the upcoming investor day to be held at its gigafactory in Texas, Tesla said it will share details about its next-generation vehicle platforms, which Musk has said would produce a vehicle about half the cost of Tesla’s current vehicle underpinings. Tesla also said it will discuss long-term expansion plans, capital allocation and other subjects. Master Plan, Part Deux was released in 2016 and Part 1 in 2006.
Master Plan 3, the path to a fully sustainable energy future for Earth will be presented on March 1. The future is bright!
Master Plan 3, the path to a fully sustainable energy future for Earth will be presented on March 1.
The future is bright! pic.twitter.com/11ug0LRlbD
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2023
Report: Twitter has 180,000 US subscribers
According to The Information, only 180,000 people in the US have paid for a Twitter Blue subscription, 0.2% of the website’s monthly active users. The publication said it saw the information on a document that also revealed that 62% company’s paying users reside in the US, meaning Twitter has approximately 290,000 subscribers worldwide. Musk told Twitter employees last year that he wants half of the website’s revenue to come from subscriptions. One avenue the company is considering to earn more from its subscription services is to offer a higher-priced membership tier that allows users to browse the website with zero ads.
Musk found not guilty of Tesla tweet fraud
In less than two hours, nine jurors unanimously clear Musk of wrongdoing in a Tesla shareholder class action suit, taken over a tweet in which he said he had “funding secured” to take the electric carmaker private in August 2018. The proposed $72bn (£60bn) buyout never materialised. Sharholders claimed Musk had lied when he tweeted later in the day that “investor support is confirmed”. According to an economist hired by the shareholders, investor losses were calculated as high as $12bn. During the three-week trial, Musk, who took the stand for nearly nine hours, argued he thought he had a verbal commitment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund for the deal.
Musk tweets his thansk to the jurors:
Thank goodness, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!
I am deeply appreciative of the jury’s unanimous finding of innocence in the Tesla 420 take-private case.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2023
Tesla lost $140m on Bitcoin in 2022
According to SEC filings, Tesla lost $140m on its Bitcoin investments in 2022, losing $204m overall, although it gained back $64m through trading. The company holds $184m in Bitcoin, having offloaded most of its initial £1.5 billion purchase a few weeks after it was purchased in early 2021.
Musk locks his Twitter account
Musk makes his Twitter account private – only visible to his followers – after hearing reports from users that posts on private accounts were getting more reach than public accounts. Normally, an account would see less engagement when going private as doing this blocks users from being able to retweet posts. When a Twitter user showed that, of two similar tweets posted in the same five-minute period, the one posted when the account was locked received five times as many likes, Musk replies:
Wow, this is extremely concerning
Followed by:
Made my account private until tomorrow morning to test whether you see my private tweets more than my public ones
This helped identify some issues with the system. Should be addressed by next week.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2023
Some users questioned why Musk was doing this test, when he owns the platform.
Musk: Expendable Starship is ‘an option’
Musk says SpaceX could eventually develop an expendable version of its next-generation Starship rocket.
Expendable upper stage may or may not fly, but it is an option
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2023
Starship is designed to launch up to 150 tons (330,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit while still recovering the orbital ship and suborbital booster for reuse (by comaprison, the Saturn V rocket could lift 118 tons). Musk says the reusable ship may be turned aoround in hours, enabling multiple flights a day, lowering the price of each launch. However, in early 2023, SpaceX updated the Starship section of its website, revealing that an expendable version of the rocket will be able to launch up to 250 metric tons (~550,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit in a single launch.
StarshipSpaceX’s Starbase factory is already building multiple intentionally-expendable Starships. Ship 26 and Ship 27 feature no thermal protection, have no heat shield tiles, and will not be fitted with flaps, making them impossible to recover or reuse. They will be used to test other crucial Starship technologies like orbital refilling and cryogenic fluid management. The first few Starship Moon landers may also be functionally expendable.
SEC probes Musk Tesla self-driving claims
US regulators are investigating Elon Musk’s role as part of an ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission probe of the company’s statements about its Autopilot driver-assistance system. SEC officials are weighing whether Musk may have inappropriately made forward-looking statements, although which statements have not been revealed.
An investigation by the agency’s enforcement unit doesn’t always lead to consequences, but can result in lawsuits, fines or other civil penalties for companies and executives.
Musk meets Biden EV officials
Musk meets with Podesta, Biden’s senior advisor for clean energy innovation, and Landrieu, who oversees infrastructure spending, in the building that houses Tesla’s Washington lobbying operation and the Center for American Progress, Podesta’s think tank.
John Podesta and Mitch Landrieu met with Elon Musk to discuss shared goals around electrification and how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act can advance electric vehicle production and charging as well as the broader cause of electrification
True
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2023
Musk denies Twitter use hurts Tesla, expects share price recovery
On an Earnings Call with investors [transcript], Musk rejects that his political influencing on Twitter is hurting Tesla’s brand.
Since Elon started political influencing, polls from Morning Consult & YouGov show Tesla brand favorability declining in 2022 and division along partisan lines. Such brand damage can impact demand. Does Tesla track favorability and how will any brand damage be mitigated?
Musk replies by citing his own popularity on Twitter:
Well, let me check my Twitter account (pause as he appears to actually pull out his phone). So I got 127 million followers and it continues to grow rapidly. That suggests that I’m reasonably popular. Now I might not be popular with some people, but for the vast majority of people, my follower count speaks for itself. I have the most interacted social account maybe in the world – certainly on Twitter.
And then talking about his impact on the brand:
I think Twitter is actually an incredibly powerful tool for driving demand for Tesla…I would really encourage companies out there of all kinds, automotive or otherwise, to make more use of Twitter and to use their Twitter accounts in ways that are interesting and informative, entertaining, and it will help them drive sales just as it has with Tesla.
Musk says he expects Tesla’s share price to recover over the long-term, though warned that he anticipated a “pretty difficult recession” in 2023 which could lead to setbacks.
We think demand will be good despite, probably, a contraction in the automotive market as a whole…There’s going to be bumps along the way and we’ll probably have a pretty difficult recession this year, probably. I hope not, but probably.
Crown Estate sues Twitter for London HQ back rent
Britain’s Crown Estate, an independent commercial business that manages the property portfolio belonging to the UK monarchy, issues court proceedings to Musk’s Twitter for rental arrears, in relation to an office space close to London’s Piccadilly Circus. In December, Musk stopped paying rent on all of Twitter’s office space around the world, including its headquarters, in a cost-cutting effort.
Musk: I had enough funds to take Tesla private
On his second day of testimony in a court case where he is accused of artificially boosting Tesla’s stock price with a tweet, Musk says that he had sufficient financial backing to take Tesla private. Musk says he believed it was “a done deal” that the Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund would support a possible attempt to take Tesla private at $420 a share, a 20 per cent premium at the time, though he acknowledged there was no contract and that many details had not been worked out.
Musk said the PIF had “many multiples” of what was required to take Tesla private, especially because it was not expected to purchase the entire company, and added that his own shares in SpaceX, his rocket company, would make up for any shortfall.
It’s important for the jury to know that
Musk, said it was “difficult to say” if Tesla shares would rise or fall based on his tweet, because markets can act in “counter-intuitive” ways, but admitted it was more likely it would rise.
I expected that there (would) probably be some increase in the stock price — seems likely. If you say that you’re considering taking a company private or acquiring a company . . . there is going to be some premium . . . In this case, I’m clear about what the premium would be.
Mussk disagreed with the shareholders’ lawyers, who suggested the $420 price was based on a reference to cannabis that his girlfriend at the time found funny, saying he was applying a 20 per cent premium to the stock, then rounding up slightly.
There is some karma around 420, although I’d question (whether it) is good or bad karma, at this point
Musk: Twitter to launch ad-free subscription tier
Musk says Twitter is planning an advertising-free version of its subscription product. Increasing subscription revenue is a key part of the social media platform’s business plan under his ownership.
There will be a higher priced subscription that allows zero ads.
Also, there will be a higher priced subscription that allows zero ads
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2023