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Trump’s victory will benefit Elon Musk and xAI

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Trump's victory will benefit Elon Musk and xAI

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Disclaimer: I voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and stand by my choice.

Republican politician and businessman Donald J. Trump has won the 2024 U.S. presidential election in a strong political comeback, despite various pre-election polls showing him neck-and-neck with his opponent Kamala Harris (the current and now outgoing Vice President, a Democrat).

As many who follow the news know all too well, one of his most outspoken allies in this election was none other six-company owner/operator and technology multibillionaire Elon Musk, who committed tens of millions in funding to a political action committee advocating Trump’s re-election.

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All of Musk’s technology companies stand to benefit from Trump’s return to office

Musk owns or operates the following companies, all of which stand to benefit from Trump retaking power:

  • Tesla Motors: Though Trump has pledged not to enforce electric vehicle mandates or tighter emissions standards, Musk’s popular electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle company could benefit from loosened restrictions on vehicle standards overall, especially with regards to autonomy. Already, Tesla stock is up more than 13% today on the election being called for Trump.
  • SpaceX: Musk’s rocketry and spacefaring company has feuded before with the federal government, particularly the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which just last month levied $633,009 in fines to SpaceX alleging it failed to “follow its license requirements during two launches in 2023.” Musk would likely seek to use the Trump Administration to recall this fine and remove future licensing requirements preventing what he sees as necessary speed and nimbleness from the agency or a more “hands-off” approach.
  • Starlink: Similarly, Musk’s satellite internet offshoot Starlink, which currently has more than 6,000 satellites beaming internet from orbit, would likely benefit from Trump’s pledges to reduce administrative burdens and red tape from federal regulatory agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and FAA.
  • Neuralink: Musk’s experimental brain implant company has reportedly caused the death, injury and dismemberment of test monkeys but also also been successfully implanted into a paralyzed human patient, allowing them to control a computer with their brain signals. Given it is a medical device, it is overseen by the federal Food and Drug Administration, which has already approved Neuralink implantation in humans and trials. But the Trump victory will likely only further clear the way for Neuralink to ramp up its trials on more human subjects and do so faster.
  • X: Musk’s social network, the renamed Twitter he purchased for $44 billion two years ago, has already been through a process of mass and targeted layoffs, as well as policy and feature updates permitting more freewheeling and extremist speech and content, and led to a more political right-wing oriented userbase and content. This trend is likely to continue and X to gain even more prominence as a mouthpiece for Musk’s, Trump’s, and their allies’ positions.

xAI may benefit and move from being a runner-up in the AI race to a leader

But most importantly of all, xAI, Musk’s AI startup offshoot of X designed to rival his former company OpenAI, is now likely to become far more of a viable alternative to the U.S. government and military as a contractor and AI technology services provider.

Already, the U.S. government has been courted by and is reportedly working with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta to integrate generative AI models into various departments.

However, now that Musk helped propel Trump to a victory, expect xAI to join in the list of federally approved AI vendors and possibly even preferred AI vendors — though of course, the government is technically supposed to remain vendor-neutral for companies operating within the U.S., signing contracts based on request-for-proposals and the businesses’ fitness for the job.

xAI will also likely benefit from repealed Biden-era AI Executive Order

Yet as AI influencer Andrew Curran noted on Musk’s X network this morning, another direct outcome of Trump reassuming the White House come January 2025 (when he is to be sworn in) is a strong likelihood — outlined in the Republican Party election platform — of the repeal of outgoing President Joe Biden’s Executive Order (EO) on AI, which Biden issued in October 2023 and requires developers of powerful foundation models to share safety test results and other critical information with the US government and subjects companies training AI models to red-teaming exercises by the federal agency The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

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While many in the AI industry and outside of it applauded this order as a means of ensuring safety of AI deployments on American and global society, some analysts suggested it could lead to undermining U.S. AI competitiveness on the global stage, both in the commercial (direct-to-consumer and business-to-business) marketplace and the military arena.

As such, with the likely repeal of this EO come January 2025 or early 2025, it could aid xAI and its competitors in shipping new models faster — though as we’ve seen with xAI’s Grok-2 and its permissive image generation feature, that can also lead to a rise in deepfakes and other wild, offensive, but also creative and imaginative AI imagery.

Either way, things are looking good for Musk’s companies and xAI in particular – and that may help the company’s models become more enticing to developers and business customers.


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The FTC orders Sitejabber to stop faking product reviews

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The FTC orders Sitejabber to stop faking product reviews

The Federal Trade Commission has charged Sitejabber, an online review platform, with violating its new fake reviews rules by using point-of-sale reviews to misrepresent what customers think about products. In one of its first enforcement actions under new rules banning companies from making or selling fake reviews, the FTC is ordering the company to stop.

The FTC says Sitejabber “deceptively” punched up businesses’ review counts by incorporating responses to point-of-sale questionnaires asking customers to rate and review their shopping experience, before they’d actually gotten any products or services. It also alleges that by giving its clients tools to publish that feedback on their own sites, Sitejabber enabled them to mislead people to think the ratings and reviews were based on actual experience with what the companies were selling.

The FTC now forbids Sitejabber from “misrepresenting, or assisting anyone else in misrepresenting” that such reviews are based on customer experience with a product or service. The company is also barred from helping other companies misrepresent the reviews that “it collects, moderates, or displays.”

The regulator’s new anti-fake review rules, which went into effect last month, aim to address AI-generated reviews online, including on Amazon and other e-commerce sites. The FTC prohibits a swath of deceptive practices, such as offering incentives to leave feedback or creating a fake review website that seems independent but is actually owned by the very company that makes the products being reviewed. Or at least, it will for the next couple of months, after which the next US President will be sworn in and (probably) replace its leadership — and we’ll see what happens next.

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xAI’s Colossus supercomputer cluster uses 100,000 Nvidia Hopper GPUs — and it was all made possible using Nvidia’s Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform

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Nvidia H100


  • Nvidia and xAI collaborate on Colossus development
  • xAI has markedly cut down ‘flow collisions’ during AI model training
  • Spectrum-X has been crucial in training the Grok AI model family

Nvidia has shed light on how xAI’s ‘Colossus’ supercomputer cluster can keep a handle on 100,000 Hopper GPUs – and it’s all down to using the chipmaker’s Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform.

Spectrum-X, the company revealed, is designed to provide massive performance capabilities to multi-tenant, hyperscale AI factories using its Remote Directory Memory Access (RDMA) network.

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Get $50 off a Samsung 1TB SSD with this Best Buy deal

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Get $50 off a Samsung 1TB SSD with this Best Buy deal
The Samsung 990 Evo 1TB SSD at a side angle.
Samsung

One of the best SSD deals around is available at Best Buy today: You can buy the Samsung 990 Evo 1TB SSD for just $70 meaning, you’re saving $50 off the regular price of $120. That’s a huge saving on something that will be a massive upgrade to your PC, boosting performance speeds compared to a regular hard drive. It also means more room — SSD speeds are a better option than any of the external hard drive deals happening. If that instantly sounds appealing, read on while we take you through all you need to know about this deal.

Why you should buy the Samsung 990 Evo 1TB SSD

If you’ve read through our SSD buying guide, you’ll know the Samsung 990 Evo 1TB SSD has a ton of potential. It promises read/write speeds of up to 5,000/4,2000 MBps while also being highly energy efficient. That means up to 70% improved performance per watt over the 970 EVO Plus that came before it. It uses Samsung’s fine tuned Smart Thermal Control and heat spreading label to provide effective thermal control so there are no performance drops, circumventing one issue with these kinds of SSDs.

The Samsung 990 Evo 1TB SSD is compatible with both PCIe 4.0 x4 and PCIe 5.0 x2, so it’s all good for your future proofing plans. If you’re still unsure about the difference between SSD and HDD, trust us when we say that SSD is faster. Besides the raw performance, the Samsung 990 Evo 1TB SSD also comes with Magician Software for easy updates. Adding to the simplicity, the Samsung 990 Evo 1TB SSD is super easy to install once you open up your PC. It’s hard to pick fault in this, especially at this price.

Usually priced at $120, the Samsung 990 Evo 1TB SSD is currently reduced by $50 at Best Buy, down to a bargain price of $70. That’s a budget price for a great, easy upgrade to your PC. Check it out now by tapping the button below to be one step nearer to improving your PC’s performance. It’s a super easy upgrade that will make a big difference to your PC.






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Prince William announces winners in Cape Town

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Prince William announces winners in Cape Town


PA Billy Porter takes a selfie with the Prince of Wales, Robert Irwin and Nomzamo Mbatha.PA

Actor Billy Porter and Earthshot ambassadors Robert Irwin and Nomzamo Mbatha joined the Prince of Wales on stage

The Prince of Wales has said he wants his environmental Earthshot prize to “change the world for good” over the next decade as he celebrated this year’s winners.

Prince William closed the awards ceremony in Cape Town by calling for people around the world to join the “movement for change”.

Models Heidi Klum and Winnie Harlow, actor Nina Dobrev and artist Tobe Nwigwe announced the £1m ($1.2m) prize winners from each category at the event.

The recipients included an initiative that saved a rare antelope species from extinction and a Kenyan company that uses solar powered fridges to stop harvested crops spoiling.

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The fourth edition of the Prince’s annual Earthshot Prize awards was hosted by Emmy-winning actor Billy Porter and TV presenter Bonang Matheba.

It supports sustainable, eco-friendly projects from around the world, with each of the five winners receiving £1m to scale-up their innovative ideas to “repair” the planet.

There are five ‘Earthshots’ – or goals: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean Our Air; Revive Our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix Our Climate.

Fifteen finalists, from countries including France, Kenya, Indonesia, the UK and Nepal, were competing for their category’s prize pot after being whittled down from 2,500 applicants.

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Earthshot Prize 2024 – Full list of winners

  • Clean Our Air: Green Africa Youth Organization, who use behavioural change to help communities clean up waste and build circular waste management infrastructure across Africa
  • Build a Waste-free World: Keep IT Cool, a Kenyan-based company using solar powered refrigeration to help cut harvest waste for farmers
  • Fix Our Climate: Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems, an American company that convert excess heat, produced during the making of steel or cement, into electricity
PA Winnie Harlow takes a selfie with the Prince of Wales and other performers and presenters during the Earthshot Prize Awards.PA

The awards ceremony in Cape Town featured a star-studded series of guests

Earlier on Wednesday, the prince praised his wife the Princess of Wales, who is recovering after treatment for cancer, saying she has been “amazing this whole year”.

His wife had not travelled to South Africa and would watch the ceremony at home in Windsor, he said.

“I know she’ll be really keen to see tonight be a success,” he added.

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All 2,000 attendees were asked to wear sustainable clothes – either made from recycled materials or a previously worn outfit – and on arrival a host of global stars, made their way down the “green carpet” instead of a traditional red one.

And the prince was no exception, dressed in a second-hand double-breasted Prince of Wales check jacket and white plastic-free fully biodegradable shoes.

Dubbed the prince’s “Super Bowl” moment, the awards were broadcast live across Africa and streamed online. In his closing remarks, the prince said he believed the world could be “rich in possibility, in hope, and in optimism”.

“Our aim was to find solutions to repair our planet and provide real hope for the future.

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“We want to make this the decade in which we transform the world for good, one solution at a time, from the ground up,” he said.

Getty Images Prince William and Nomzamo Mbatha pose for a selfie with young people during the Earthshot Prize Climate Leaders Youth Programme in Cape Town, South Africa. Both are smiling and are surrounded by dozens of smiling young people.Getty Images

The prince’s visit to Cape Town has focused on young people

When asked earlier about achieving the prize’s green goals in a tough political climate, the prince was positive.

“Everyone wants some hope and some optimism and Earthshot comes with urgent optimism,” he said.

Co-host Harlow said she was honoured to be involved in the project, adding: “This should be something near and dear to everyone’s heart when it comes to taking care of Mother Earth.”

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And Klum, who announced the Fix Our Climate category winner, said: “It’s great to spread the word and shine a light on these amazing organisations and what they do.”

What is the Earthshot Prize?

Getty Images Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge standing on the green carpet at the Earthshot awards in 2021. William is wearing a dark green velvet jacket and a navy blue roll-neck sweater. Kate has a simple white dress on. Both of them are smiling at the camera.Getty Images

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attended the first Earthshot awards in 2021

Organisers of the Earthshot Prize, which was first awarded in 2021, say they were inspired by former US president John F Kennedy’s Moonshot project, which set scientists the challenge of getting astronauts to the moon and back safely.

The aim of the awards, organisers say, is to celebrate and support those working to provide innovative solutions for climate and environmental issues.

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There was a focus on ideas from Africa for this year’s Earthshot Prize, with more than 400 African-led projects nominated and another 350 linked to the continent.

Although Africa generates the fewest emissions for global warming, many of its countries are among the most vulnerable to climate change.

As he spoke of his deep connection to Africa last week, Prince William said he wanted this year’s prize to provide a platform for innovators to bring about change for their communities and inspire young people across the continent.

“Africa has always held a special place in my heart – as somewhere I found comfort as a teenager, and where I proposed to my wife,” he said.

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Much of the prince’s visit to Cape Town has focused on young people and the power they have to bring about change.

“Without them the future is looking pretty bleak so these are the game-changers, the innovators, the inventors who are going to make the world a better place for us in future,” he said.

A recent UN report warned that the goals of the Paris agreement to keep global temperatures under 2C while making efforts to stay below 1.5C are now in very serious danger.



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Android trojan ‘ToxicPanda’ can drain bank account

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Android trojan 'ToxicPanda' can drain bank account

Multiple Android devices have been infected by a new trojan dubbed “ToxicPanda”. It primarily targets bank accounts but spoofs common apps to infect devices.

Android trojan ‘ToxicPanda’ threatens banking with advanced attack strategy

Smartphones are now one of the most widely used devices to perform banking functions. Mobile banking apps offer a secure and quick pathway for on-the-go banking. However, this presents an enticing opportunity for hackers and malware creators.

Back in 2023, Trend Micro, a popular antivirus platform, detected TgToxic, a powerful Android malware. TgToxic could steal credentials and funds from crypto wallets.

It appears another hacker or a group has borrowed TgToxic’s tech, and further weaponized the malware. Attackers are still targeting Android devices, but this time, the malware is going after banking apps using a clever technique.

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The Cleafy’s Threat Intelligence team first discovered ToxicPanda. Believed to have originated in China, ToxicPanda has reportedly infected over 1500 Android devices around the world. The trojan seems to be preferring Android devices in Europe and Latin America.

How does ToxicPanda infect and spread on Android devices?

ToxicPanda is primarily a banking malware. However, it acts like a trojan. Moreover, it masquerades as several popular non-banking apps. When users download and side-load infected apps on their Android devices, ToxicPanda uses sophisticated methods to evade detection. It then monitors banking activities. Gradually, it initiates money transfers from compromised devices via Account Takeover (ATO), mentioned Cleafy researchers Michele Roviello, Alessandro Strino, and Federico Valentini.

ToxicPanda isn’t spreading via the Google Play Store or other popular Android app stores. Instead, it relies on unsuspecting victims’ habit of side-loading apps on their devices.

Simply put, Android device users must exercise extreme caution while obtaining Android installer files from outside official app stores. Smartphone users must completely avoid the practice if their Android device has banking apps. Additionally, users must regularly update apps and the Android OS installed on their devices from official sources.

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Several cybersecurity experts have also warned banks and financial institutions. Banking apps, as well as users, must opt for multi-factor authentication, passkeys, OTPs, and other methods to safeguard their accounts.

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OpenAI bought the web domain Chat.com

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OpenAI bought the web domain Chat.com

OpenAI has scooped up a domain name that sounds like a logical fit. TechCrunch reports that Chat.com, which was previously bought for over $15 million, is now in the hands of the ChatGPT maker.

According to the domain history website who.is, Chat.com was first registered way back in September 1996. Before OpenAI’s acquisition, it last changed hands in 2023, when HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah reportedly bought it for $15.5 million. We can speculate that the executive saw the burgeoning AI chatbot industry and the concise term’s potential for a big return. It was reportedly one of the top two publicly reported domain sales ever.

OpenAI hasn’t said how much it paid for Chat.com, but it confirmed with TechCrunch that it bought the domain. And if you’re expecting drastic changes from OpenAI’s chatbot, the move isn’t likely tied to a ChatGPT rebrand. Regardless, the domain now redirects to the world-changing AI tool.

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