Tag: technology
Spacex Rocket

'We Have Lost Contact': Musk Spacex Rocket Blows Up Again

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk may have an additional work-related headache outside of the public outcry to his ongoing efforts to slash public budgets.

TechCrunch reported Thursday evening that the SpaceX Starship Flight 8 launch ended in failure after less than nine minutes. The unmanned rocket managed to leave its Texas launch pad intact, and the SpaceX launch tower caught the rocket's booster after it successfully separated once reaching space. However, eight minutes and nine seconds into the flight, the ship began spiraling out of control.

"We just saw some engines go out, it looks like we are losing attitude control of the ship," SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said during the company's broadcast of the launch. "At this point we have lost contact with the ship."

This is roughly the same amount of time it took for the Flight 7 launch to fail in January. Pro-Elon Musk site Teslarati noted that the previous Starship rocket failed approximately eight minutes and 20 seconds after launch. An investigation attributed Flight 7's failure to a propellant leak in one of the ship's Raptor engines that caused "flashes" roughly two minutes into the flight.

After Flight 8's failure, SpaceX's official X account posted a statement describing the failed launch as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" during its ascent burn.

"Our team immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses. We will review the data from today's flight test to better understand root cause," SpaceX tweeted. "As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship's reliability."

SpaceX remains one of the biggest government contractors even as Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is cancelling millions of dollars in federal contracts across multiple agencies. ABC News reported in February that the South African centibillionaire's space exploration company had $3.7 billion in federal contracts as of fiscal year 2024.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Bitcoin

Trump's Crypto 'Meme Coin' Looks Like A Billion-Dollar Scam

President-elect Donald Trump has now found yet another way to convince his followers to throw their money his way — this time with a questionable cryptocurrency venture.

Axios is reporting that the soon-to-be 47th president of the United States has rolled out a "meme coin" dubbed $TRUMP, which is being billed as the "only official Trump meme." According to Axios, $TRUMP has already accumulated a valuation of roughly $32 billion. And because the Trump Organization is keeping 80% of the coins, this means the president-elect and his businesses are roughly $25 billion richer as a result.

Techdirt writer Mike Masnick wrote on Bluesky that the meme coin's market cap topped $9 billion in less than 12 hours, and that it soon jumped to $15 billion just hours later. As of 1:30 PM Eastern Time, the coin is trading at nearly $30 per unit.

"People are dumping like crazy and it's dropping fast," Masnick wrote early Saturday morning. "Noticing many large dollar sales, while buys are small amounts."

Journalist Judd Legum, who publishes the Popular Information Substack newsletter, called the meme coin a "brazen grift." And British novelist Hari Kunzru predicted that the Trump supporters who were eagerly buying the meme coin were in for a shock.

"Wake up to find that the incoming president is pumping a meme coin and is probably about to rugpull his followers and make several billion dollars," Kunzru wrote on Bluesky.

Matt Novak, who writes for tech publication Gizmodo, remarked that it was "crazy" that "the incoming president "launched his fake money right before taking office." He noted that this venture was different from his campaign's non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that he sold alongside pieces of the suit he wore while having his mugshot taken.

"I assumed this was more NFTs but it’s specifically a *fungible* asset meaning he’s selling his own crypto coin. On top of that, it has a crazy f—ing disclaimer and all the hallmarks of a f—ing rugpull," Novak wrote. "This is f—ing nuts."

The disclaimer Novak referred to in his skeet (the generally accepted term for a Bluesky post) openly tells prospective buyers that it is only meant to be "an expression of support for, and engagement with the ideals and beliefs embodied by" the president-elect. It goes on to warn that the coins themselves "are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract or security of any type."

Author Benjamin Dreyer was more direct in his criticism, telling his followers: "I have no idea what a fungible meme coin is, and if you attempt to explain it to me I’ll block you."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Truth Social

Trump Media Has Lost Over $300M So Far In 2024

Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform, has filed its first quarter revenue numbers to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The good news for MAGA-loving stockholders is that the company, of which Trump owns a reported 64.9 percent of the outstanding shares, pulled in a cool $770,500. Now get your sad horn sound ready: It also reported a net loss of $327.6 million.

In a statement, the company’s CEO, former House member and Republican attack dog Devin Nunes, said the losses were due to costs in finalizing a merger with shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp. Nunes, best known for suing parody Twitter accounts, said Trump Media would now be exploring and pursuing “a wide array of initiatives and innovations to build out the Truth Social platform including potential mergers and acquisitions activities.”

Since going public in March, Truth Media’s inflated valuation led to the stock’s value plunging shortly after an initial rise. The first quarter filing comes just one month after the company’s stock plummeted for a second time after the company announced it was considering adding more than 15 percent more stock to the publicly available shares, devaluing current stockholders’ shares.

The stock ended the trading day only five percent down after the quarterly report was released, NBC reports. However, this seems to go along with what experts have characterized as Trump Media’s “meme stock trajectory.”

Meme stocks show dramatic gains and losses due to their stock value being directly connected to internet popularity on various social media platforms. The inherent issue with these stocks is that they are usually untethered from any material evaluation of the company being traded.

This frequently leads to pump-and-dump activity on stocks like Trump Media, with buyers inflating the value over short periods of time by creating social media buzz and then quickly dumping the stock for a profit.

When Truth Social first launched in early 2022, the site quickly went down with technical issues, potential copyright issues, and executives jumping ship. Even though the net losses this year amount to almost one-third of a billion dollars, the company “believes it has sufficient working capital to fund operations for the foreseeable future.”

Or until Trump dumps his shares for some quick cash.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Elon Musk

Did Elon Musk Wreck Twitter Because He's So Lonesome?

Why does Elon Musk have to be the center of everyone's attention every day? Has he no hobbies? Is running an industrial empire less than a full-time job? Perhaps he's just lonely. Perhaps social media is not filling the need for human companionship — as many a depressed adolescent can explain.

At times the richest man on the planet, Musk certainly has options. He's already done remarkable things, such as supercharge the age of the electric vehicle and send rockets into space. Yet he chooses to pick public fights that offend his customers, while having negligible effect on public policy.

There was no business reason for his buying Twitter other than wanting to control a galactic megaphone. OK. But then he destroys its usefulness by letting a sewer of disinformation mix in with the good stuff. And he attacks the valuable creators who were filling up his feed for free.

Makes no sense unless the Twitter thing is a massively expensive form of psychotherapy to treat a lonely man's need for connection.

Musk seemed to be operating under the illusion that the children could never find another place to post their short messages. Mark Zuckerberg over at Meta, home of Facebook, is showing him otherwise.

Zuck's new social media site, Threads, is now trucking Twitter's user base to its feed. Meanwhile, Twitter ad revenue in the second quarter was down about 40 percent from a year ago, and that was before the Threads launch.

As an exhausting exhibitionist, Musk has company among the Silicon Valley CEOs and tech bros in playing the contrarian game. That means uttering controversial hooey meant, it seems, to set them apart from lesser beings plodding through reality.

Not only did Musk make Twitter worthless as a source of actionable information, he turned off users and advertisers alike by shooting off his mouth. He went so far as to traffic in an antisemitic-flavored reference to George Soros. It's pathetic how unoriginal that was.

The last straw was limiting the number of posts users could read each day. "If you think about it," Ashley Mayer, a venture capitalist, tweeted, "Elon Musk is the greatest PR person of all time. He has us rooting for Meta!?!'

Unlike the other challenges to Twitter that didn't get far, Meta has managed to create an easy-to-use site, many of whose features are familiar to Twitter users. And Meta could plug Threads into its enormous Instagram following. Musk is suing Meta for allegedly stealing Twitter employees and trade secrets. Meta says that's not the case.

Psychiatrists are seeing a surge in drug addiction among financial hotshots, in part to fight off loneliness. A good number, The Wall Street Journal reports, "turn to addiction to mask the reality that achieving their goals — like launching their own fund or making $100 million — can still leave them feeling empty."

Even if they want to develop genuine friendships, the billionaires can't be sure who really likes them, who is only after their money. As for intimate relationships, Musk has had two wives, one of them twice. Now he has none.

One would expect Musk to have better things to do than pursue grudge matches with a tech writer. Sure, Kara Swisher is the dean of tech writers, but is Musk so thin-skinned as to send her an email calling her an "a—-hole"? Apparently, yes.

Funny, but Swisher used to be one of his confidants. Now even she seems to be off Musk's "friend" list, though she's getting great mileage out of his attacks on her. As for Zuckerberg's Twitter replacement, all Threads needs to do now is pick up the tweeters left shipwrecked by an evidently troubled man.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

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