Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 4

Samsung might have kicked off mass production of its next-gen 3nm GAA chips before TSMC, but the company has run into a multitude of problems so far... so much so that the South Korean electronics giant has reportedly needed to team with a US-based firm to help them get yields higher.

The new Samsung 3nm GAA yields are reportedly at just 20% -- which is horrible, absolutely horrible -- and after their disastrous last couple of process nodes, this isn't what anyone wants to hear. A new report from the Commercial Times suggests that while Samsung's new 3nm GAA process node was meant to deliver huge improvements across the board over its 5nm process node, there are serious issues at hand.

Samsung has reportedly partnered up with US-based Silicon Frontline Technology, in the hope that the company can help boost its disastrous 3nm GAA yield rate. Silicon Frontline Technology has used methods to improve yield rates through water qualification and electrostatic discharge prevention technologies, but that's still not a good look for Samsung up against the titan that is TSMC.

On November 16, Elon Musk tweeted that "Blue Verified," or Twitter Blue needed to be relaunched following the rocky start to the company's newly revised subscription service.

On the very first day of Twitter Blue being available to users, the social media platform experienced a massive influx of account impersonators that created new fake profiles of individuals/companies. This wave of impersonators with newly purchased check marks caused many problems for individuals and companies, as some individuals impersonated Twitter's own Twitter account, writing that Twitter Blue was "free" to cryptocurrency and NFT holders that "authenticated" their digital wallet via the included link. This illegitimate post sadly wasn't removed until it already had more than 30,000 retweets.

Musk wrote that Blue Verified would relaunch on November 29. However, the Tesla CEO has now said that the company will be "holding off" on the relaunch of "Blue Verified" until it has "high confidence" it can stop impersonation across the platform. Musk added that Twitter will likely use a different color checkmark for organizations and individuals. An example of this would be NASA having a different colored checkmark than Lebron James, who's a public figure.

Twitter has been hit with another departure from a top executive that on her way out, took a swing at Twitter owner Elon Musk over the changes he's made at the company.

The top Twitter executive is Sarah Rosen, the head of Twitter's US content partnerships, who has spent the last 8.5 years at the company. According to a tweet from Rosen, the former Twitter executive has spent the last several days coming to terms with saying "goodbye to Twitter", with Rosen adding that her time at the company was an absolute "privilege of my career" while also thanking her colleagues and partners she was able to work with throughout her employment.

Before Rosen rounded up her tweet, the former head of Twitter's US content partnerships seemingly took a swing at Musk's vision for Twitter, writing, "hot damn we had it good at Twitter 1.0", which seems to be a reference to Musk's announced Twitter 2.0 vision that includes mass restructuring at the company, overhauls, increased workload, and much more. Notably, Rosen used a salute emoji along with a blue heart emoji at the end of her tweet, which seems to be what lots of former Twitter employees are using to say goodbye to the company.

The collapse of what was the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange has shaken the entire cryptocurrency space, with warnings now coming out from officials at the Bank of England.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

According to Jon Cunliffe, the Bank of England's deputy governor for financial stability, who spoke at a conference at Warwick Business School this past Monday, the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX exchange is an indicator that the cryptocurrency space is in dire need of regulation before it grows to the point of being able to impact the global financial system.

Notably, Cunliffe said that at the moment, cryptocurrency isn't large enough to threaten the stability of the financial system, but it's fast-growing, and "its links with mainstream finance have been developing rapidly." Furthermore, the top bank official said that lawmakers "should not wait" to develop the laws "necessary to prevent a crypto shock that could have a much greater destabilizing impact."

A former Twitter employee has said that he wishes he had written more "devastating jokes" about Elon Musk if he knew he'd be fired for it.

Elon Musk's Twitter has certainly had its ups and downs since the SpaceX and Tesla CEO took control on October 27. Musk has since fired half of Twitter's employees, reducing the company's workforce from approximately 8,000 people to around 4,000, and now reports are surfacing accusing Musk of firing employees that are criticizing him behind his back.

According to a report from Insider, the Twitter owner is targeting employees that are part of a Slack chat group called "Social Watercooler", which contains about 2,000 employees that typically criticize the company. The publication reports that former Twitter employee Daniel Fletcher, who claims to be a former Twitter engineer, said on November 15 that he was fired "fired for unspecified recent behavior in violation of unnamed company policy i.e. hanging out in the #social-watercooler."

Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to ask his 116 million followers if former President Donald Trump's Twitter account should be reinstated.

The poll from the Tesla CEO comes after he announced that several banned Twitter accounts were coming back to the platform, including Kathie Griffin, Jordan Peterson, and the satire account Babylon Bee. While Musk didn't mention in his announcement tweet that it wasn't his choice to bring back these specific accounts, the SpaceX CEO has previously stated that all account reinstatements would be handled by the new Twitter Council, which he has said consists of a group of individuals with vast viewpoints.

If Musk's previous statements on establishing a Twitter Council remain true, then we can assume that the Twitter owner wasn't the sole decider in reinstating the aforementioned banned accounts. Additionally, Musk asked what "should Twitter do next?", which sparked a reply from one individual that said the company should reinstate Alex Jones' account. Musk swiftly replied with a solid "No."

Amazon has joined the growing list of massive companies laying off thousands of workers, or at least that's what recent reports are claiming.

Officially, Amazon are preparing to "consolidate some teams and programs", according to the head of Amazon's hardware division. Dave Limp, who leads the company's Devices & Services organization, wrote to staff in a note that, "It pains me to have to deliver this news as we know we will lose talented Amazonians from the Devices & Services org as a result." Adding, "While I know this news is tough to digest, I do want to emphasize that the Devices & Services organization remains an important area of investment for Amazon, and we will continue to invent on behalf of our customers."

Limp wrote that individuals affected by the layoff would receive separation payments, transitional benefits as well as external job placement support. Notably, Limp didn't specify how many people would be laid off. However, The New York Times reported earlier that Amazon could be laying off as many as 10,000 workers.

On November 16, Elon Musk sent out a company-wide email that outlined what he called "Twitter 2.0" and the new requirements staff would need to agree to for their position to remain at the company.

Musk titled the email "A Fork in the Road" and stated that for Twitter to breakthrough into "Twitter 2.0" and succeed against its competitors as well as in the wider world, all staff would need to work long hours at "high-intensity". Adding that the company would only be accepting "exceptional performance" as a passing grade.

Furthermore, Musk's email stated that Twitter would be shifting to a more engineer-focused mindset and that engineers who are able to write "great code" will comprise the majority of the team while also having the biggest sway when it comes to decisions. Musk's new list didn't stop there, as the Twitter owner stated at the bottom of the email that all staff who don't agree to these new standards by clicking the link provided in the email will receive their three-month severance.

Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk has taken to his Twitter account to announce that the social media platform has reached a new milestone.

It was only on November 10 that Musk took to his Twitter account to announce that Twitter usage had reached an all-time high, while writing that he hoped the servers didn't melt. Musk didn't provide any specific metric he was going by, and the Tweet on November 18 where he announced that Twitter had broken that record and "hit another all-time high in Twitter usage lol".

Musk followed up that Tweet with a call back to his joke of bringing an actual sink into Twitter HQ while also writing on his Twitter, "let that sink in!", after he closed to deal for the company. Shortly after the announcement of Twitter's usage hitting a new all-time high, the SpaceX CEO wrote once again, "let that sink in..."

Elon Musk has further fueled a hoax that was pulled by two individuals that pretended to be fired Twitter staff by admitting that he was wrong to fire them in the first place.

Pranksters Rahul Ligma and Daniel Johnson pretended to be Twitter employees that were laid off at the company by being photographed holding boxes of their belongings and leaving the company headquarters in San Francisco. Ligma and Johnson even conducted interviews with numerous media outlets that had to issue public apologies once it was discovered that the due was simply trolling. Before the apologies could reach everyone's ears, Musk amplified the chaos by tweeting, "Ligma Johnson had it coming", and then reacted to the entire prank, saying, "one of the best trolls ever".

Ligma didn't stop there as he was filmed stating that he was recently fired from now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Both FTX and Twitter have recently experienced massive layoffs of real employees, hence the public confusion that is being caused by the pranksters. Now, Musk has turned up the heat once again in what could be viewed as a somewhat insensitive tweet that welcomes back "Ligma & Johnson" to their fake jobs at Twitter while also simultaneously stating its "Important to admit when I'm wrong & firing them was truly one of my biggest mistakes".