Tag • #silicon valley

Elon Musk is a lesson in the dangers of unchecked corporate leaders | Siva Vaidhyanathan

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 12 September - 13:24

When rich people convince themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart – instead of lucky and ruthless – they misapply their talents to areas beyond their expertise

Elon Musk is not the most reckless, destructive or dangerous corporate leader in world history. But he just might be the most reckless, destructive and dangerous corporate leader at this moment.

For the past year, as Musk destroyed Twitter from the inside and expanded the influence of his rocket-and-satellite company, SpaceX, we have read accounts of how dependent Ukraine is for military and civilian internet service on a SpaceX subsidiary called StarLink . Meanwhile, Musk’s financial debts to the sovereign investment fund of the Saudi royal family has generated significant scrutiny among policy makers and human rights advocates around the world.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. He is also a Guardian US columnist

Yes, it’s OK to laugh at wealthy Burning Man attendees mired in muck | Moira Donegan

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 6 September - 10:11

Maybe it feels satisfying to see the US elite in discomfort because we’re so unlikely to see them face accountability in normal life

It feels important to note that most of the people at Burning Man, the week-long festival of “radical self-reliance” held every summer in the inhospitable Nevada desert, are not evil. But the festival, which draws thousands of people for its music, experiments in self-governance, revealing costuming and ready availability of drugs, has become a stand-in for a certain kind of self-congratulatory excess.

At least in the popular imagination, Burning Man has become associated with the kind of person who will rapturously tell you about their love for taxidermy, or polyamory, or electronic dance music, often while you smile stiffly and scan the room for an exit. Imagine a white person with dreadlocks: that person loves Burning Man. The clientele is heavy on privilege and light on self-awareness. But most of them, it should be emphasized, do not deserve to suffer. Their only crime is being annoying.

Plan for 55,000-acre utopia dreamed by Silicon Valley elites unveiled

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 2 September - 05:00

Flannery Associates, the California group behind the $800m effort, launched a website showcasing renderings

The Silicon Valley elites who have been quietly buying up northern California farmland for several years have gone public with their vision for the utopian city they hope to build from scratch on 55,000 acres in Solano county.

This week the group behind the effort, Flannery Associates, launched a website for the initiative and released a series of sunny renderings showing Mediterranean-style homes and walkable and bikeable neighborhoods.

Silicon Valley elites revealed as buyers of $800m of land to build utopian city

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 26 August - 14:25

Group Flannery Associates, backed by prominent investors, quietly buy 55,000 acres of farmland in northern California

After weeks of local speculation, the purchasers of 55,000 acres of northern California land have been revealed. The group Flannery Associates – backed by a cohort of Silicon Valley investors – has quietly purchased $800m worth of agricultural and empty land, the New York Times has reported. Their goal is to build a utopian new town that will offer its thousands of residents reliable public transportation and urban living, all of which would operate using clean energy.

The project was spearheaded by Jan Sramek, a 36-year-old former trader for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, and is backed by prominent Silicon Valley investors including Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist; Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of Linkedin; Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the philanthropic group Emerson Collective and wife of Steve Jobs; Marc Andreessen, an investor and software developer; Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the payment processor Stripe; and the entrepreneurs Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, the Times reported.

Elon Musk won’t fight Mark Zuckerberg – because he knows he will lose | Hamilton Nolan

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 16 August - 10:12

America’s richest and most cowardly man, Musk, proposed an idiotic cage-match, then came up with every excuse not to actually do it

Never challenge anyone to a fight . Not even if you think you would win. Especially not if you think you would win. To break this commandment is to invite the wrath of all universal karma down upon your head. It is to engage in the folly of hubris, to break the prohibition against violence, and to set oneself up as a poster child for “getting what’s coming to you”. As a general rule, the people who forge ahead in defiance of this wisdom do so only because they are spoiled, confidence-poisoned children who can only learn things the hard way.

Having $200bn only makes all of these poisonous characteristics more potent. But unlike most things, money cannot protect you from the consequences of this particular mistake.

Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York City and a member of the WGAE

Elizabeth Holmes’ no good, very bad day: Bail denied and a bill for $452 million

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 17 May - 21:06

Elizabeth Holmes (C), founder and former CEO of blood-testing and life sciences company Theranos, walks with her mother Noel Holmes and partner Billy Evans into the federal courthouse for her sentencing hearing on November 18, 2022, in San Jose, California.

Enlarge / Elizabeth Holmes (C), founder and former CEO of blood-testing and life sciences company Theranos, walks with her mother Noel Holmes and partner Billy Evans into the federal courthouse for her sentencing hearing on November 18, 2022, in San Jose, California. (credit: Getty | AMY OSBORNE )

Convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes had a rough Tuesday.

The judge in her fraud case, US District Judge Edward Davila, ordered her and her ex-boyfriend, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, to pay $452 million in restitution to defrauded investors of their infamous and now defunct blood-testing company, Theranos. Holmes, the company's founder and former CEO, and Balwani, the former president, are jointly responsible for paying back the entirety of the hefty sum.

Meanwhile, a three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit denied Holmes' last-ditch effort to stay out of prison while she appeals her conviction. Last month, Holmes' challenged Davila's previous denial of bail, asking the 9th Circuit appeals court to weigh it. The move triggered an automatic delay to the start of her 11-year-and-three-month prison term while the appeals court reviewed her argument. Davila had previously ordered her to report to prison on April 27.

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Elizabeth Holmes gets bail extension one day before prison term start

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 26 April - 20:27

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, alongside her partner Billy Evans, leaves a hearing at the Robert E. Peckham US Courthouse on March 17 in San Jose, California.

Enlarge / Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, alongside her partner Billy Evans, leaves a hearing at the Robert E. Peckham US Courthouse on March 17 in San Jose, California. (credit: Getty | Philip Pacheco )

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes just got a little more freedom—a delay of her 11-year prison sentence, which was previously scheduled to start Thursday, April 27.

In an unsurprising legal move, Holmes filed a last-ditch motion with the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, challenging a lower court's denial of bail as she appeals her conviction . Her motion in the appeals court triggered an automatic freeze of the bail denial until the appeals court issues a ruling.

On April 10, US District Judge Edward Davila denied her request to remain free as she pursued an appeal of her conviction. Davila ruled that her arguments for appealing the conviction did not raise a "substantial question of law or fact" and was unlikely to succeed. Thus, she was ordered to begin her prison term as scheduled.

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Convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison, judge rules

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 11 April - 18:53 · 1 minute

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes alongside her partner Billy Evans, leaves a hearing at the Robert E. Peckham US Courthouse on March 17, 2023, in San Jose, California.

Enlarge / Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes alongside her partner Billy Evans, leaves a hearing at the Robert E. Peckham US Courthouse on March 17, 2023, in San Jose, California. (credit: Getty | Philip Pacheco )

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison later this month as she appeals her conviction of three counts of defrauding investors, a judge ruled Monday, denying her request to remain free on bail as her legal saga continues.

Holmes skyrocketed to fame in the early 2010s, falsely claiming her company's technology could accurately perform hundreds of medical tests with just a small drop of blood. In 2014, she was a Silicon Valley superstar, and the company was valued at more than $9 billion. But as technological failings and fraud claims came to light, the company imploded.

In 2018, Holmes was indicted on criminal charges and, last year, was convicted and sentenced to 135 months (11 years and three months) in prison . She has been ordered to report to prison on April 27. The judge in her case, US District Judge Edward Davila, has proposed that Holmes serve her sentence in a relatively cushy, minimum-security women's prison camp in Bryan, Texas, outside of Houston, though the decision of where she will serve is ultimately up to the US Bureau of Prisons.

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Faillite de SVB : 4 questions sur la chute de la banque et la panique du monde de la tech

news.movim.eu / Numerama · Monday, 13 March, 2023 - 15:51

banque SVB

Une importante banque américaine, très prisée par le secteur de la tech, a fait faillite en mars. Plusieurs phénomènes s'agglomérant depuis un an ont conduit à sa perte, dont le point d'orgue a été une panique bancaire. Depuis, des inquiétudes se sont exprimées sur l'émergence d'une éventuelle nouvelle crise bancaire. [Lire la suite]

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