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  #1  
Old Posted Jul 7, 2022, 5:09 AM
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Elon Musk Gossip

Elon Musk Secretly Fathered Twins With Neuralink Executive, Report Says

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nichola...h=6b4f26d46505

Elon Musk had twins in November with Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk’s company Neuralink, according to court records obtained by Insider on Wednesday, bringing the number of known living children fathered by the world's richest man to nine.

Musk and Zilis filed a petition in a Travis County, Texas, court in April to change the twins' names to "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name," a request a judge approved in May, according to Insider, which published a copy of the court petition but redacted the twins’ names.

Musk, 51, is co-founder and CEO of Neuralink, a company that develops neural implants with the eventual goal of connecting human brains with machines, while Zilis has been director of operations and special projects at the company since 2017.

The twins were reportedly born just weeks before Musk and his former partner Claire Boucher, better known by the stage name Grimes, had a second child through a surrogate last year.

Zilis, 36, has worked in top roles in several Musk ventures, serving as a board member of OpenAI starting in 2020 and project director at Tesla from May 2017 to August 2019.

Zilis was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the venture capital category in 2015 for being part of a series of investment teams, including Bloomberg Beta.

Musk and Zilis did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Forbes.

...

Musk has repeatedly warned of what he claims is a looming crisis of population decline—and endorsed bringing more children into the world. Musk fathered six children with his first wife, Justine Wilson, but the couple's first child died of sudden infant death syndrome in 2002 at just 10 weeks old. He had one son and one daughter with musician Grimes, though the two broke up in September 2021, three months before the birth of their daughter. Vivian Jenna Wilson, Musk and Wilson's 18-year-old child, announced last month she was granted a name and gender change and no longer wanted to associate with her father.
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  #2  
Old Posted Jul 8, 2022, 4:05 PM
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Musk expected to take “drastic action” to break Twitter deal, report says

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...l-report-says/

Elon Musk is expected to take "drastic action" to get out of his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, The Washington Post wrote yesterday in an article citing "three people familiar with the matter."

The anonymous sources seem to be from Musk's camp. "Musk's team has concluded it cannot verify Twitter's figures on spam accounts," and the Musk side's "doubts about the spam figures signal they believe they do not have enough information to evaluate Twitter's prospects as a business," the Post wrote. Musk's people have also reportedly "stopped engaging in certain discussions around funding for the $44 billion deal, including with a party named as a likely backer."

According to the Post, one of its sources said Musk's team is now "expected to take potentially drastic action. The person said it was likely a change in direction from Musk's team would come soon, though they did not say exactly what they thought that change would be."

None of the comments are far off from what Musk has publicly said himself since he began trying to get out of the Twitter deal. Even though his offer to buy Twitter waived "business due diligence," he later threatened to pull out of the contract and claimed Twitter violated the merger agreement by refusing to provide the data behind its spam estimates. Twitter then gave Musk access to its data "firehose."
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Old Posted Jul 8, 2022, 5:12 PM
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Shocked.
     
     
  #4  
Old Posted Jul 16, 2022, 3:17 PM
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Elon Musk has reason to worry about the judge set to rule on Twitter lawsuit

Musk draws judge who refused to let reluctant buyer out of a merger deal in 2021.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ger-last-year/

Elon Musk has reason to worry about the Delaware Court of Chancery judge handling Twitter's lawsuit against him. Kathaleen McCormick, the court's chancellor, or chief judge, "has a no-nonsense reputation as well as the distinction of being one of the few jurists who has ever ordered a reluctant buyer to close a US corporate merger," Reuters wrote today.

Specifically, McCormick last year "order[ed] an affiliate of private equity firm Kohlberg & Co LLC to close its $550 million purchase of DecoPac Holding Inc, which makes cake decorating products," Reuters wrote.

...

Twitter has proposed a four-day trial with a September 19 start date. If the court rules that Musk has to complete the merger and he refuses, the "Delaware Court of Chancery can hold someone in contempt of court, and it has the power to send someone to jail," NPR wrote.

Financial seizure is another enforcement possibility, as Tesla and SpaceX are both incorporated in Delaware. "Elon Musk owns a lot of stock in Delaware corporations, which may be subject to seizure in Delaware... so, there may be means of compelling him," NPR was told by Michael Hanrahan, a corporate litigator whose practice is mostly in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
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Old Posted Jul 18, 2022, 4:41 PM
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I used to work in the M&A space in risk management - I think he's going to lose a substantial amount of money on this deal falling through if not forced to purchase the company anyway.

Like, Twitter's bot numbers are on their SEC filings, even if the numbers are objectively wrong this data was available to Musk and his team during the due diligence process.

Agreeing to a purchase and recanting because the deal has become worse for you isn't really a thing.

If I was the Twitter board I would do everything in my power to force the acquisition to go through, its a *substantial* premium over current share price and the tech sector in general has seen a strong retraction in pricing. Twitter's own price is largely overvalued right now because this deal exists.

He is certainly not getting out of this for the billion.
     
     
  #6  
Old Posted Jul 19, 2022, 12:25 AM
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Musk wants Twitter trial pushed to 2023 so he has time to analyze spam data

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...yze-spam-data/

Elon Musk urged the Delaware Court of Chancery to reject Twitter's motion for an expedited trial, saying he needs extensive time to analyze Twitter's spam-account data. While Twitter's motion sought a four-day trial to be completed in September 2022, Musk's court filing on Friday said the trial should begin on or after February 13, 2023.

"Twitter has engaged in tactical delay for two months by resisting Defendants' information requests... Twitter's sudden request for warp speed after two months of foot-dragging and obfuscation is its latest tactic to shroud the truth about spam accounts long enough to railroad Defendants into closing," Musk's motion said. Musk's legal team argued that the "core dispute over false and spam accounts is fundamental to Twitter's value," and that resolving "these issues will require complex, technical discovery—including the forensic review and analysis of large swaths of data."

Twitter sued Musk on July 12, demanding that he complete the $44 billion purchase he agreed to in April. Twitter's motion for a September 2022 trial cited the contract's "presumptive drop-dead date of October 24, 2022 for completion of the merger."

"Expedition of trial proceedings is essential to ensure sufficient time for this Court to grant effective relief and for the Delaware Supreme Court to review this Court's decision," Twitter wrote. "And a trial in September still leaves the parties and this Court more than two months to complete pre-trial discovery and briefing—a timeline appropriately tailored to the needs of this case and consistent with expedited schedules this Court has ordered in similar merger enforcement cases."
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  #7  
Old Posted Aug 11, 2022, 4:24 PM
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Elon Musk Gossip

So gab/truth social 2.0?



Elon Musk teases X.com social media site as Twitter lawsuit rolls along

https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/lo...e-17364843.php

If you can't buy ’em, beat ’em.

Elon Musk, currently embroiled in a lawsuit with Twitter, the social media company he made a $44 billion bid to purchase back in April, appears to be trying to compete with the company he once coveted. On Tuesday night, August 9, when prompted by the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley Twitter account about forming his own social media company if the Twitter deal died, Musk dropped a curious URL.

https://t.co/bOUOejO16Y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022

Musk did not elaborate further about X.com, and the link directs to a blank landing page, save for a lowercase "x" in the top left corner.

X.com refers to a financial services company that Musk co-founded in 1999, which merged with a company called Cofinity the following year. Cofinity was the Silicon Valley-based software company that created PayPal, which assumed both companies' names in 2000. Musk was briefly CEO of the merged PayPal until he was replaced by the company's co-founder Peter Thiel in September 2000.

In 2017, Musk bought back the x.com domain name from PayPal for an undisclosed sum for what he called "sentimental reasons." The 2002 $1.5 billion sale of PayPal to eBay netted Musk somewhere between $160 and $180 million, meaning that x.com is largely responsible for the billionaire entrepreneur we know and (some of us) love today.

On July 11, 2017, Musk tweeted: "No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me," in response to the purchase. There have been no x.com updates until today, if you can call it that.
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Old Posted Aug 16, 2022, 12:59 AM
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Elon Musk Criticized for Writing in China's Censorship Agency's Magazine

https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-c...gazine-1733744

Elon Musk is facing backlash after writing a recent column for the official magazine of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the agency that oversees the country's data security and censors online content.

In his article in China Cyberspace magazine, Musk discusses how technology can help humanity, and he cites as examples the work of his companies SpaceX, Tesla and Neuralink. Some news outlets have focused on Musk's description in the column of the upcoming general-purpose robot being developed by Tesla, but it was the very act of contributing to the censorship agency's publication that has resulted in a large amount of social media criticism.

Many people upset at Musk for the story note how he once referred to himself as a "free speech absolutist."
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  #9  
Old Posted Aug 16, 2022, 10:30 PM
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Musk wins one, loses 21 others as judge denies access to many Twitter records

Twitter must produce documents from a fired executive—but Musk wanted a lot more.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...itter-records/

The judge overseeing the Twitter/Elon Musk case is giving Musk access to evidence from one former Twitter executive but rejected his request for documents from 21 other potential witnesses. As previously reported, Musk was seeking evidence from employees responsible for calculating spam-account estimates and reportedly claimed Twitter was hiding key witnesses.

In response, Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick ruled yesterday that Twitter "is required to collect, review, and produce documents from Kayvon Beykpour," the recently fired head of Twitter's consumer product group. But Twitter "is not required to collect, review, or produce documents from any other of the defendants' proposed 22 additional custodians. The plaintiff need only collect, review, and produce documents from the 41 custodians to which plaintiff has agreed to date and Mr. Beykpour."

Musk's request was part of his effort to disprove Twitter's estimate that fewer than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users (mDAU) are spam or fake.

Though Musk's letter detailing his request was filed under seal, his response to Twitter's lawsuit briefly discussed Beykpour.

Musk accused Twitter of firing Beykpour while the merger was pending "without seeking the Musk Parties' consent." Beykpour was fired in May after seven years at Twitter. CEO Parag Agrawal "asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction," Beykpour wrote at the time.

Musk's response to Twitter's lawsuit said Beykpour "was the head of all things consumer-facing for Twitter and took a high-profile role on Twitter's investor calls. He was therefore one of the Twitter executives that the Musk Parties believe would have been most intimately involved with how Twitter calculated its mDAU, how it suspended or moderated accounts on its platform, and how it determined that there was always less than 5 percent spam or false accounts within mDAU on every day of every month of every quarter for all time."

Twitter sued Musk after he tried to back out of his commitment to buy the company for $44 billion. The lawsuit aims to force Musk to complete the transaction, and a trial is scheduled for October 17.

Musk's argument centers on his unproven claim that Twitter's spam account estimate is incorrect. Twitter says the estimate is accurate and that Musk has no right to exit the merger agreement based on the number of spam accounts.
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Old Posted Aug 23, 2022, 6:48 AM
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As takeover battle heats up, Elon Musk subpoenas former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/22/11188...pagetopstories

Elon Musk has subpoenaed his friend Jack Dorsey, Twitter's former CEO, as part of his legal effort to abandon his bid to acquire the social media company.

Twitter is suing Musk in Delaware Chancery Court to make him follow through on an agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Both parties have filed dozens of subpoena requests, asking banks, investment firms, executives and high-profile Silicon Valley figures for information and communications about the deal.

According to legal filings made public Monday, Musk's attorneys are seeking documents and communications from Dorsey regarding how Twitter detects, labels and counts fake accounts, and how it uses daily active users as a key metric in its financial disclosures.
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Old Posted Aug 24, 2022, 10:47 PM
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Twitter whistleblower claims Musk was right about bots; FTC reviewing report

Twitter’s former security chief alleges execs hid security risks from regulators.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...iewing-report/

The pressure on Twitter to talk publicly about how it monitors and removes spam accounts continues to mount.

Reports from CNN and The Washington Post reveal an 84-page whistleblower complaint alleging that Twitter isn’t motivated to track the true number of spam accounts and hid security vulnerabilities from federal regulators.

...

How US government is responding

The Federal Trade Commission is now reviewing Zatko’s complaint, which was filed in July to the FTC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Department of Justice. A Senate Intelligence Committee spokesperson, Rachel Cohen, told CNN that the committee is also taking the complaint seriously and has set up a meeting to discuss Zatko’s allegations.

Zatko’s lawyer at Whistleblower Aid, John Tye, told CNN that Zatko has not been in touch with potential Twitter buyer Elon Musk. That doesn’t mean, however, that Musk won’t benefit from these reports.

...

But is it really “ammunition” for Musk?

Yesterday, Reuters reported that Musk, in a court filing, “sought documents and communications” from Twitter that would detail how the company measures daily active users who can be targeted for ads. Musk suggests that Twitter is attempting to defraud him as an investor “by hiding the number [of] fake accounts in its regulatory filings.” In the same filing, Musk also sought documents and communications describing how Twitter weighed any alternative methods of counting that metric and how that metric ultimately influences executives' annual targets and pay rates.

...

Lawmakers plan to investigate

Like Musk, Zatko alleged in his complaint that the true number of spam accounts is “meaningfully higher” than Twitter’s long-touted 5 percent spam account estimate among daily active users. But while Musk's Twitter drama has captivated much of the world, it seemingly isn’t the top concern for lawmakers, who instead expressed more shock over other aspects of Zatko's complaint.
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Old Posted Aug 30, 2022, 8:07 PM
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Tesla’s ban on pro-union shirts is illegal and must be rescinded, NLRB rules

Tesla ordered to scrap shirt ban and notify workers that it violated US labor law.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ed-nlrb-rules/

Tesla violated US labor law by implicitly banning employees from wearing shirts with union insignias, the National Labor Relations Board ruled yesterday. In addition to ruling that Tesla broke the law, the NLRB overturned a Trump-era decision in a similar case involving Walmart.

The NLRB's 3-2 decision went along party lines, with Republicans dissenting. The Democratic majority said it "found that it was unlawful for Tesla to maintain a policy requiring employees to wear a plain black T-shirt or one imprinted with the employer's logo, thus prohibiting employees from substituting a shirt bearing union insignia." Tesla's strict enforcement of the policy began in 2017, shortly after employees started wearing union shirts in a Fremont, California, factory.

Such "interference is presumptively unlawful, and the employer has the burden to establish special circumstances that make the rule necessary to maintain production or discipline," the NLRB said. The majority further ruled "that Tesla failed to establish special circumstances in this case."

The NLRB ordered Tesla to rescind its team-wear policy or revise it "to make clear that it does not prohibit production associates from wearing black union shirts." Tesla must also notify all current employees of the change and post copies of an NLRB notice at its Fremont facility. The required notice to employees says the NLRB found that Tesla violated federal labor law and advises employees of their rights.

NLRB Chairman Lauren McFerran issued a statement:

Wearing union insignia, whether a button or a T-shirt, is a critical form of protected communication. For many decades, employees have used insignia to advocate for their workplace interests—from supporting organizing campaigns, to protesting unfair conditions in the workplace—and the law has always protected them. With today's decision, the Board reaffirms that any attempt to restrict the wearing of union clothing or insignia is presumptively unlawful and—consistent with Supreme Court precedent—an employer has a heightened burden to justify attempts to limit this important right.
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  #13  
Old Posted Sep 3, 2022, 3:28 PM
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Elon Musk wants to get out of buying Twitter. A whistleblower's claims might help him

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/03/11208...pagetopstories

Billionaire Elon Musk's chances of walking away unscathed from his commitment to buy Twitter just improved, thanks to recent allegations from the company's former security chief.

Twitter looks like a cybersecurity dumpster fire in a whistleblower complaint submitted to federal regulators by Peiter Zatko. He complains of lax security practices that put users' personal data at risk and the social media company in danger of violating a settlement agreement with federal regulators. He also alleges that the Indian government forced Twitter to hire two government agents who had access to sensitive data.

Soon after Zatko's concerns became public, Musk referenced them in new legal claims. The Tesla CEO now argues that Twitter is damaged goods and by hiding such egregious problems, it committed fraud.

Twitter calls Zatko's complaints inaccurate, inconsistent and opportunistic.





I am not a fan of Elon Musk, but I hope he gets his way in this instance. He would make Twitter a deeper cesspool than it already is. Cross your fingers he wins this one.
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Old Posted Sep 7, 2022, 8:52 PM
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Musk cited possible “World War III” as reason to break Twitter deal, text shows

After hearing, judge rejects Musk request to delay Twitter trial by four weeks.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...al-text-shows/

Two weeks after Elon Musk made a commitment to buy Twitter for $44 billion, he wrote in a May 8 text message to one of his Morgan Stanley bankers that he was thinking of exiting the merger agreement due to the possibility of World War III.

"Let's slow down just a few days. Putin's speech tomorrow is really important. It won't make sense to buy Twitter if we're heading into World War III," Musk wrote to Morgan Stanley's head of global technology investment banking, Michael Grimes. Twitter lawyer Bill Savitt read the text out in a court hearing yesterday, multiple news reports said. In the May 9 speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin defended his invasion of Ukraine. The invasion began in February, two months before Musk's April 25 agreement to buy Twitter.

...

Musk can’t delay trial, judge rules

The text from Musk to Grimes was read during a pre-trial hearing in the Delaware Court of Chancery, perhaps offering a preview of arguments to be made in the trial scheduled to begin on October 17. Of more immediate importance, Twitter and Musk lawyers argued over Musk's request to delay the trial by a month and Musk's request to amend his countersuit to include whistleblower allegations made by Twitter's former security chief.

Judge Kathaleen McCormick settled both questions in a ruling today, denying Musk's request for delay but allowing him to amend the countersuit.

...

Musk can amend countersuit

McCormick ruled that Musk can amend his countersuit against Twitter to include allegations made in a whistleblower complaint by former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko.

"The newly published Whistleblower Complaint would be grounds in most instances to permit an amendment under the low bar of [Court of Chancery] Rule 15(a)," McCormick wrote. "Twitter argues that the amendment would be futile, but their arguments falter against the exceedingly movant-friendly standard of Rule 15(a). I am reticent to say more concerning the merits of the counterclaims at this posture before they have been fully litigated. The world will have to wait for the post-trial decision."

...

Twitter and Musk debate whistleblower claims

Zatko's complaint, submitted to members of Congress and several government agencies, alleged major security problems within the company and claimed that Twitter is guilty of "lying about bots to Elon Musk." However, Zatko's complaint doesn't seem to disprove Twitter's public disclosure that less than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users (mDAU) are spam or fake. Zatko's attempt to support Musk's claim that Twitter's spam estimate is incorrect hinges on counting spam bots that aren't part of the mDAU number.

Twitter's lawyer described "Zatko as a disgruntled former employee with an ax to grind" and "said Mr. Zatko's work at the company wasn't related to the alleged undercounting of spam and bot accounts that Mr. Musk cited in his counterclaims," according to a Wall Street Journal article that described yesterday's three-and-a-half-hour hearing.
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Old Posted Sep 8, 2022, 6:52 PM
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Judge slams Musk for withholding text messages, cites “glaring” omissions

Judge also chides Musk for wasting time, says there's no time for "just kiddings."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ing-omissions/

Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick yesterday slammed Elon Musk for failing to provide text messages sought by Twitter. McCormick cited "glaring deficiencies" in the Musk side's document production in an order partially granting Twitter's request for more records, writing:

"Plaintiff's Fourth Discovery Motion identifies clear deficiencies in Defendants' document production. Third parties produced text messages with Musk that Musk himself did not produce, and Musk's own production of text messages revealed glaring deficiencies. As just one example, Defendants produced two texts sent to Musk from Robert Steel of Parella Weinberg Partners on June 17 at 9:57 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. The 9:57 a.m. text asks a question. The 10:15 a.m. text—stating "Ok. Got it. ..."—implies that Musk responded. Assuming that Musk's response was not telepathic, one would expect some evidence of it in Defendants' document production. But Defendants provided none by the deadline for substantially completing document discovery."

McCormick further wrote that "Musk's approach to answering interrogatories also left much to be desired." After being ordered "to respond to interrogatories that required Defendants to identify persons with knowledge of relevant facts," Musk's side "supplemented their responses on August 26, but they did a bad job of it, identifying only a handful of people about whom Twitter was already aware." Musk later supplemented that by identifying 491 "people with knowledge" but could have provided that information "much earlier," the judge wrote.

...

Judge to Musk: There’s no time for “just kiddings”

McCormick issued that ruling and one other after 5 pm ET yesterday. The other ruling, resolving a Musk motion to compel production of Slack messages from additional people, also had pointed criticism of the billionaire who has been trying to pull out of an agreement to buy Twitter.

"Defendants gave Plaintiff the impression that they were seeking limited Slack custodians, only to then say that they never meant it. In this highly expedited case, there is no time for 'just kiddings.' Parties must be able to rely upon one another's good faith proposals for the discovery process to function," McCormick wrote.

...

Ruling mostly goes Twitter’s way

McCormick ordered Twitter to produce Slack messages from two more custodians in addition to the six that Twitter previously agreed to but refused to grant Musk access to the other 34. This ruling also mentioned that Twitter has faced much more burdensome document production than Musk's side:

"On the issue of burden, I have repeatedly noted the substantial disparity in the discovery burden placed upon the warring factions. I will not repeat all of these observations here, except to say that Plaintiff's had it far worse, and I am hesitant to impose a large additional discovery burden on Plaintiff at this stage in litigation."

...

Some Twitter requests “too extreme”

McCormick's other ruling yesterday evening didn't give Twitter everything it asked for, calling the company's fourth discovery motion "too extreme." For example, a Twitter request "for all text messages from Defendants' two custodians for the negotiated period regardless of whether such text messages are relevant" was deemed "intrusive."

McCormick denied that and a couple of other Twitter requests but granted Twitter's request for the defendants to "obtain and produce phone company records concerning the text messages that Musk and [money manager Jared] Birchall sent or received during the relevant period." These records "will allow Plaintiff to confirm whether Defendants' representations that Musk did not text about Twitter during key periods are accurate," she wrote.
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Old Posted Sep 17, 2022, 6:11 PM
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Twitter shareholders approve the $44B merger Musk is trying to get out of

Musk wants out, but shareholders approve $54.20-per-share purchase agreement.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...to-get-out-of/

Twitter shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk's purchase of the company, weeks ahead of a trial over Musk's attempt to exit the merger deal. Though a specific vote tally wasn't available today, multiple news reports said investors backed the Twitter board's recommendation to approve the $44 billion deal that Musk agreed to in April before changing his mind.

"A majority of Twitter shareholders voted in favor of accepting Musk's $54.20-a-share offer to acquire the social-networking company, according to a preliminary vote count read on Tuesday," Bloomberg wrote.

Today's shareholder vote was the last remaining approval Twitter needed for the Musk deal, but the bigger question is what will happen at the upcoming trial at Delaware Court of Chancery. Twitter sued Musk to force him to complete the deal, and a trial is scheduled to begin on October 17.

Musk owns about 9.2 percent of Twitter stock and wasn't expected to vote "given that he has alleged that Twitter breached the merger agreement," The Wall Street Journal wrote. "The agreement requires Mr. Musk to vote his shares in favor of the deal, though his support isn't crucial if enough other investors back it."

Twitter stock was up 0.7 percent today despite a big drop in the overall market. Twitter was at $41.70 at closing, and shareholders would receive $54.20 per share if Musk has to complete the purchase.

Today's "shareholder meeting lasted 7 minutes, with polls open for about 3 minutes," the Bloomberg article said. "Shareholders could also submit votes for several weeks ahead of the meeting." News reports before today's meeting indicated there were already enough votes to approve the merger.

Judge criticized Musk ahead of trial

Musk has tried to exit the merger by claiming Twitter lied about the number of spam bots on its service. Musk has repeatedly complained about the overall number of bots on Twitter but hasn't disproven Twitter's specific estimate, which is that less than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users (mDAU) are spam or fake.

Musk lost some key rulings in the pre-trial phase. His attempt to delay the trial until February 2023 was rejected in July. Last week, Judge Kathaleen McCormick rejected Musk's newer motion for a four-week delay, writing in her ruling that "even four weeks' delay would risk further harm to Twitter too great to justify."

McCormick last week also criticized Musk for failing to provide documents sought by Twitter, writing that "Musk's own production of text messages revealed glaring deficiencies." She ordered Musk to produce more documents, noting that Twitter "has born[e] the bulk of the burden of discovery" while "Defendants had less to do but still fell short in their obligations."

A Twitter filing made public yesterday said that gaps in Musk's production of text messages "are notable because they correspond precisely to the period when Musk apparently developed buyer's remorse and set into action his scheme to escape the merger agreement."

More Musk texts made public

It's clear that Musk's document "production was incomplete because other parties have produced messages to and from Musk during this time period that Musk should have produced," Twitter wrote. That includes texts between Musk and Morgan Stanley's head of global technology investment banking, Michael Grimes, which were produced by Morgan Stanley.

Those messages show that on May 8, Musk wrote to Grimes that he was thinking of exiting the merger agreement due to the possibility of "World War III." About a half hour later, according to Twitter's newly public filing, Musk wrote to Grimes that "An extremely fundamental due diligence item is understanding exactly how Twitter confirms that 95% of their daily active users are both real people and not double-counted."

"If that number is more like 50% or lower, which is what I would guess based on my feed, then they have been fundamentally misrepresenting the value of Twitter to advertisers and investors," Musk wrote to Grimes. "To be super clear, this deal moves forward if it passes due diligence, but obviously not if there are massive gaping issues."

Twitter's filing said these messages came weeks after Musk "expressly disclaimed any diligence before signing and agreeing to a no-diligence merger."
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  #17  
Old Posted Sep 18, 2022, 3:05 PM
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Why Elon Musk Said a Remote Controlled Sex Toy Was Used to Cheat at a Chess Tournament
Our heads hurt, too.


https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-sex-toy-chess

Fact-Checkmate

Before you say anything: yes, this is beneath us. But news is news, and this ongoing chess drama demands to be unpacked. And so it's with great regret that we break down why, exactly, Elon Musk accused a young chess player of using vibrating, remote-controlled anal beads to beat the game's current No. 1 star.

"If they want me to strip fully naked, I will do it," the young champion has since declared. "I don't care. Because I know I am clean."
Cheatin' Beads

On September 4, an up-and-coming 19-year-old chess player named Hans Niemann beat the world's top-ranked Grandmaster, Magnus Carlsen, in St. Louis, Missouri's Sinquefield Cup tournament. It was a shocking victory, and Carlsen, his 53-game winning streak having been destroyed, withdrew from the tournament entirely — a rare move for someone of his status.

But the drama was far from over. Carlsen — though he failed to provide a formal statement as to why he chose to exit the competition — took to Twitter to levy a thinly veiled cheating accusation at at his young defeater.

Niemann has confessed to cheating in online arenas back in grade school, and he's recently had a pretty eyebrow-raising — though not necessarily incriminating — rise in ratings. But without any real evidence that he cheated to beat Carlsen, accusations started to pile, and soon, one particularly bizarre allegation surfaced: that Niemann had won by receiving messages from a co-conspirator, in the form of anal bead vibrations.
Meddling Musk

So, how does Elon Musk come in? The billionaire has no real role in what went down, but in true Musk fashion, he inserted himself into the dialogue anyway. Tickled by this strange sex toy conspiracy, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO decided to share his two cents on the saga in a since-deleted tweet.

"'Talent hits a target no one else can hit," the founder wrote in the now-removed post, "genius hits a target no one can see (cause it's in ur butt).'"

Once Musk got involved, the case really exploded, as did the court of public opinion. While the tournament has maintained that there's been no legitimate reason to believe any of these chaotic rumors, the internet, as it does, has continued to run wild with this outlandish theory. But anyway. Does anyone else have a headache?

READ MORE: The Chess World Isn't Ready for a Cheating Scandal [The New York Times]

More on Musk tweets: Elon Musk Says His Tweets Are Being Suppressed, in a Tweet We Can See Perfectly Fine
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Old Posted Sep 18, 2022, 7:58 PM
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Musk filing claims “conspiracy among Twitter executives” to deceive public

Musk countersuit claims "numerous independently sufficient reasons" to break deal.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...eceive-public/

Elon Musk filed an amended countersuit against Twitter, claiming the allegations by Twitter's former security chief, Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, give Musk new legal grounds to kill the merger deal.

"Needless to say, the newest revelations make undeniably clear that the Musk Parties have the full right to walk away from the Merger Agreement—for numerous independently sufficient reasons," the amended countersuit claims. "In short, the Musk Parties and Twitter's many other investors were sold a different company than the Twitter that actually exists—one that was more valuable, more popular, more secure, and more compliant with governing law."

The amended countersuit was filed under seal last week and a public version was released yesterday. Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick had granted Musk's request to amend the countersuit but rejected his attempt to delay the trial by at least four weeks, so the trial is still scheduled to begin October 17.

Musk's original countersuit focused primarily on his unproven claim that Twitter lied about spam data in its public disclosure that less than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users (mDAU) are spam or fake. Musk's amended countersuit says the alleged mDAU misrepresentations "were only one component of a broader conspiracy among Twitter executives to deceive the public, its investors, and the government about the dysfunction at the heart of the company."
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Old Posted Sep 29, 2022, 12:16 AM
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Twitter says Elon Musk’s own data scientists did not back up bots claims

Social media group seeks sanctions as billionaire attempts to pull out of acquisition.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...p-bots-claims/

Twitter has said Elon Musk’s own data scientists did not support his claim that the number of fake accounts on the social media platform is “wildly higher” than the company’s estimates, as the parties prepare to go to trial in October.

The Tesla chief executive is attempting to pull out of a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, arguing that it misled regulators and investors about the true number of fake and spam accounts on the platform, which he alleges far outstrips the 5 percent figure that Twitter has cited for years.

During a three-hour hearing in a Delaware court on Tuesday, Twitter’s lawyers said documents they had received during discovery showed that two different consultants hired by Musk, Cyabra and CounterAction, had produced estimates of the amount of spam on Twitter of 11 percent and 5 percent, respectively—figures broadly in line with Twitter’s public estimates.

According to Twitter’s lawyers, the reports were handed to the billionaire entrepreneur a day before he announced plans to terminate the merger agreement. Twitter also criticized the methodologies of both data groups, despite their seemingly supportive results.

Twitter has asked the court to force Musk to share more information on the work of multiple data scientist consultants with regard to fake accounts on the social media platform. The company said that while Musk had shared some details produced by his consultants, he had also engaged in a “pattern of delay and obstruction” over the past two months, a claim Musk’s lawyers denied.

Separately, Twitter accused Musk’s team of failing to hand over relevant Signal messages and denying that Musk used the encrypted messaging app, citing evidence of an exchange with investor Marc Andreessen in April in which messages were automatically deleted after a period of time.

The exchange was only revealed after a screenshot of it had been sent by Andreessen to others via email.

Twitter also said Musk’s team had failed to turn over text messages between Musk and Morgan Stanley chief executive James Gorman, as well as with Oracle’s Larry Ellison, ahead of the trial.

Lawyers for Musk denied he had intentionally withheld communications, arguing that “minor mistakes will happen in expedited litigation.”

Twitter asked the court to impose sanctions on Musk over what it described as his misconduct over failure to produce the messages. This included an “adverse inference” finding that would allow the court to assume that Musk was concealing details that would undermine his legal argument.

Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery did not rule immediately, saying she would take the matters under advisement. The five-day trial is set to begin on October 17.
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Old Posted Sep 30, 2022, 2:53 PM
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Texts released ahead of Twitter trial show Elon Musk assembling the deal

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/30/11260...pagetopstories

Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter went down via private text messages between the Tesla CEO and a small circle of Silicon Valley's rich and powerful, plus their underlings, advisers and a handful of reporters, politicians and aspiring dealmakers.

The messages were part of court filings and revealed Thursday as part of the pre-trial discovery process in the court battle over whether Musk has to follow through on the merger agreement he signed to buy Twitter. Twitter and Musk are due in court Oct. 17.

The stream of messages includes Musk's exchanges with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, current CEO Parag Agrawal, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and many more.

The court documents show Musk making overtures to Twitter, discussing the importance of free speech, workshopping ideas on how to improve the platform, assembling the financing for the deal, and then deliberating over how to make the struggling company profitable.

Ann Lipton, a professor of business law at Tulane University, says some corporate cases yield "juicy and embarrassing internal emails." But Twitter's case is extra entertaining because Musk is such a colorful figure and Twitter is a high profile company with outsize influence.

Jack Dorsey, who founded Twitter and stepped down in November 2021, discussed taking Twitter private with Musk in late March.
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