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AI Creates Photo Evidence Of 2001 Earthquake That Never Happened

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AI Creates Photo Evidence Of 2001 Earthquake That Never Happened

Fake image created with AI depicting the fictional Cascadia earthquake of 2001, published with the … [+] caption “Amateur video captures the moment a magnitude 9.1 earthquake strikes off the coast of Oregon on April 3rd, 2001”

Midjourney / Reddit

Do you remember the Great Cascadia earthquake and tsunami that hit the Pacific Northwest in 2001? Well, you shouldn’t, because it never happened. But there are now photos of this completely fake event circulating on the internet. And it’s a great case study in how images created with artificial intelligence tools like Midjourney can rewrite history with minimal effort.

Photo-realistic images of the fake tragedy were posted to the Midjourney forum on Reddit a few days ago, where people who experiment with AI art share their creations. The post became so popular that it was pushed to the so-called “front page” of Reddit, where some people who didn’t realize they were looking at AI-generated images admitted they thought it must be real.

“I was immediately convinced because I didn’t have my guard up at all. I use the software often, edit art & photography for my current job, and have a healthy dose of fear of the singularity and STILL, my brain gave off zero ‘This ain’t real’ signals,” one user commented.

Fake devastation in Seattle from a fake earthquake imagined by AI-image creator Midjourney, … [+] published with the caption, “Major segments of the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle suffered major damage, if not a complete collapse”

Midjourney / Reddit

The completely fake Great Cascadia earthquake registered as a 9.1, according to Reddit, and the photos of the devastation look terrible. The Reddit post has 20 images that could easily pass as a real historical event. But, again, these aren’t real photos. None of this happened.

The photos even have captions that explain the fake events, such as, “Rescue workers in Vancouver, BC, pull trapped survivor from the rubble of a collapsed bookstore.” The details give the whole thing an air of legitimacy, despite the fact that it’s all a complete fiction.

Some of the images are chilling just for how much they resemble the aftermath of the very real terror attacks on September 11, 2001. The AI image creators clearly drew inspiration from that day for these fake photos.

Fake images created with AI that depict the aftermath of an earthquake that never happened.

Midjourney / Reddit

As countless internet sleuths have learned, the quickest way to tell if you’re looking at an image that’s been created with AI is to look at the hands and teeth. AI still struggled with creating hands for some reason.

For example, take a look at the fake photo below. Notice anything weird about the visible hand?

Fake image posted to Reddit with the caption “Resident in Tofino, BC, recovers a Canadian flag from … [+] the piles of debris following the tsunami.”

Midjourney / Reddit

That person is facing away from the camera, but their hand is holding that Canadian flag in a way that would perplex even the most skilled circus contortionist.

Closer view of the backwards hand in this AI-created image.

Midjourney / Reddit

As another commenter points out, for some reason these images aren’t being flagged by AI-detection software, like the site at Hugging Face. For example, I ran that Canadian flag image through the Hugging Face AI Detector software and it only came back with a 54% likelihood that it was fake. The second image in this post came back as 86% real, which it most certainly is not.

Midjourney lets anyone create incredibly realistic images by merely typing out text, and the photo-realistic images are created in mere minutes, which has led to confusion on social media in recent months. We’ve seen everything from Donald Trump getting arrested to Pope Francis wearing an enormous puffer coat.

Trump even shared a fake photo of himself praying, but it was actually generated using the same artificial intelligence tools that created the fake Cascadia earthquake of April 3, 2001. Another president—this time George W. Bush—got the AI treatment in his fake visit to Tacoma, Washington after the fake quake.

Fake image created with AI depicting “President George W. Bush meeting with the Mayor of Tacoma, WA”

Midjourney / Reddit

While it’s one thing to be creating fake news, creating fake history that humans may or may not remember is definitely a new wrinkle for those of us who live so much of our lives online. And as this technology proliferates, it’ll only get harder to tell which images are real and which are fake.

The machines will figure out how to create better human hands sooner or later. And when that day comes, we’ll all be left to wonder if we really trust our lying eyes.

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Reddit’s IPO: Priced at $34 a Share, Marking a Bullish Outlook for Tech

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In a sign of investor interest in expanding digital companies, Reddit priced its shares at $34 for its IPO on Wednesday, beyond market estimates.

The social media corporation based in San Francisco had projected that the price range for its shares would be $31 to $34. Reddit’s valuation was $6.4 billion at the $34 price, less than the $10 billion it received in a private funding round in 2021. Through the transaction, the company raised $748 million.

On Thursday, its shares will start trading under the ticker name RDDT on the New York Stock Exchange.

For start-ups and venture capitalists who have been closely observing Reddit’s offering as a test for private Internet companies hoping to face the public markets, the pricing was a positive omen. Just over 100 firms went public in the US last year, which is about a fourth of the companies that went public in 2021, according to data provided by Renaissance Capital, an exchange-traded fund manager that specializes in initial public offerings (I.P.O.s). Activity has been slow.

As for the demand for technology in 2024, Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, acknowledged some concerns. However, he said that Reddit’s pricing and the artificial intelligence startup Astera Labs’s successful first day of trading on Wednesday were a “positive indication for the remainder of the pipeline.”

The grocery delivery startup Instacart saw one of the most exciting tech business launches last year, and its shares are up almost 58 percent so far this year. In the same time frame, shares of Arm, a chip company that went public last year, have increased by about 90%.

The largest shareholders of Reddit benefit greatly from the offering. They include Advance Magazine Publishers, connected to Condé Nast’s parent business; Steve Huffman, a co-founder with a 3.3 percent share; and Tencent Cloud Europe, a division of Tencent, the massive Chinese internet corporation. The second co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, was not identified as a principal stakeholder in Reddit’s disclosures.

It has taken Reddit a long time to reach the public marketplace. The company, which was founded in 2005, was a pioneer of the social network era, having grown up during the height of MySpace’s popularity and the early stages of Facebook.

Reddit was built on classic message boards, mostly text-based, topic-organized, and viewed by anonymous users. After years of stagnation under the previous administration, the company was spun out and sold to Condé Nast in 2006 for $10 million.

The Foreign Language That Transformed the Life of My Adolescent Son

Reddit’s earnings were meager for many years. It tried a variety of ways to make money, such as a neighborhood-based giving economy that proved popular but did not provide a lot of revenue. 

Reddit saw a turnover of CEOs and a string of community uprisings before seeing a surge in users to over 100 million by 2015. However, the platform only made $12 million in income annually. Mr. Huffman, who had departed in 2006, came back to head the business that year.

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Amy Lombard for The New York Times

Since then, Reddit has developed its advertising business, which presently generates the bulk of its revenue. Last year’s revenue of $804 million increased by almost 21% over the previous year. In contrast to the previous year’s $158 million loss, the net loss this year was $90 million.

In addition, Reddit has developed a data licensing business, offering Wall Street corporations and hedge funds access to information on user discussions and trends throughout the site. The firms utilize this information to obtain a trading advantage.In an effort to position itself as a resource for training huge language models—which aid artificially intelligent machines in learning more human-like speaking capabilities—Reddit has more recently made use of its enormous repositories of conversation data. These kinds of agreements, which the corporation has made with Google and other companies, are expected to bring in more than $200 million over the next three years.

The users of Reddit have been perhaps the largest impediment to a seamless I.P.O. The site’s thousands of forums, or “subreddits,” are mostly supervised by a group of moderators who work as volunteers. Some people are opposed to Reddit becoming a publicly traded corporation because they believe some of the aspects that first drew them in will be undermined by market forces and shareholder expectations for quarterly reports.

According to Mr. Huffman, the nervousness associated with being public is a typical “maturation process.”

“We share our community’s love and fear of losing Reddit,” he said in an interview.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were two of the investment firms that spearheaded Reddit’s IPO.

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Nvidia is experiencing a slight decline as investors eagerly await further information regarding its upcoming AI chip.

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After more than tripling in value over the previous year, Nvidia’s shares (NVDA.O), which opened a new tab, fell on Tuesday as investors awaited further information on the company’s most recent AI chip, which is anticipated to further solidify its leadership in the sector.

The third-most valuable business in the world saw a 1.4% decline in its stock price to $872. According to some analysts, investors had already taken the B200 Blackwell chip—which the company claims is 30 times quicker than its predecessor at particular tasks—into account.

Although it’s always difficult to live up to the hype, Blackwell technology exhibits a notable performance boost over Hopper, the current flagship chip, according to David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors. Wagner also noted that investors were still processing the nearly 80% year-to-date price increase.

Just seven sessions ago, Nvidia’s shares reached a record high of $974.

Nvidia unveiled a new suite of software tools on Monday in addition to the Blackwell chip, which combines two silicon squares the size of the company’s previous offering. These tools are intended to make it easier for developers to pitch artificial intelligence models to businesses that utilize Nvidia’s technology.

It is anticipated that Alphabet (GOOGL.O) and Amazon.com (AMZN.O) will employ the new flagship processor. OpenAI, Tesla (TSLA.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O), Google, Meta Platforms (META.O), and OpenAI all open new tabs.

Additionally, Nvidia is moving from selling individual processors to selling complete systems.

Nvidia’s data center revenue predictions for 2026 and 2028 have been raised by Morningstar analysts, who also stated that its hardware products will probably continue to be the “best-of-breed” in the AI market.

“We remain impressed with Nvidia’s ability to elbow into additional hardware, software, and networking products and platforms,” they stated.

The software push demonstrates Nvidia’s efforts to make its hardware more easily adaptable for enterprises scrambling to incorporate generative AI into their operations. Nvidia’s GPUs are primarily used to train large-language models, like as Google’s Gemini.

According to many analysts, the market for inference chips—which assist AI models in responding to questions and generating images when prompted by the user—will eventually be far larger than that of training chips, which Nvidia currently controls.

Although its dominance is anticipated to stay unopposed, Nvidia’s market share is predicted to decline by several percentage points this year as rivals introduce new products and the company’s biggest clients produce their processors.

The company, which now controls 80% of the market for AI chips, is anticipated to disclose further information about pricing during its financial analyst presentation on Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT).

Although Blackwell is a “monster in the chip world,” Kathleen Brooks, research director at Polish broker XTB, noted that it might take some time to determine whether it can benefit Nvidia’s financial line in the same manner as the present chip does. 

Other leading chipmakers’ shares dropped as well; the Philadelphia chip index (.SOX), opening a new tab, dropped 1.3%.

A popular tool for valuing stocks, the forward price-to-earnings ratio for Nvidia was 34.6, lower than its three-year average of 42.

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Resilient Rebound: Cryptocurrency Surges in the Philippines Despite Previous Meltdown

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Ten kilometers outside Manila, on Tuesday evening, about twenty individuals crammed onto the second floor of Joniel Bon’s recently opened internet cafe in Quezon City. They sat at desks sporting 34-inch curved monitors and played video games like Nifty Island and Heroes of Mavia while Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift’s songs buzzed over the speakers.

With pizza slices to keep them going through the night, several of Mr. Bon’s patrons had made their way to the end of a long day of gaming. The games give users tokens worth cryptocurrency in exchange for solving quick, everyday tasks. Players frequently exchange their tokens for pesos, the national currency of the Philippines, making around twice the minimum income of $11 per day.

Mr. Bon, forty, had dreamed of the flurry of activity at his own company following the stunning collapse of cryptocurrencies two years prior, which dashed his ambitions of having a successful gaming collective at the time.

“I had to declare at one point that I believed in this. Mr. Bon, a former employee in information technology, said, “I had to hope.” “We made it through.”

The resurgence of cryptocurrency in the Philippines, a hub for years, is demonstrated by Mr. Bon’s new internet cafe. This month saw a record high for Bitcoin, which completed a recovery from the 2022 market crash and brought other cryptocurrencies like Ether with it. Bitcoin was trading at over $67,000 on Monday.

Recently, new cryptocurrency company advertisements have appeared all around Manila. As a new source of revenue, people have begun to gather virtual crops from a cryptocurrency farming game called Pixels. In addition, O.F.W.s—overseas Filipino workers—are coming home to work as M.F.W.s, or metaverse Filipino workers, to earn cryptocurrency.

According to data from research firm Chainalysis, the value of cryptocurrency transactions in the Philippines surged by 70% from September and October to $7.3 billion in November and December.

According to the game’s producers, the number of Filipino players increased from 80,000 in November to over 830,000 in March. According to their report, the Philippines is home to over 30% of the world’s cryptocurrency-earning video gamers.

Some Philippine officials are taking note of the increased activities. During a November cryptocurrency conference in Manila, Kelvin Lee, who was a commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission of the nation, stated that the government was having difficulty figuring out how to regulate the technology as it became more and more popular.

In the past, scams and frauds centered around cryptocurrencies. Because the tokens distributed by cryptocurrency-earning games are more erratic than Bitcoin and Ether, the surge may collapse once more.

“We want a safe space to operate well,” Mr. Lee stated, conceding that the Philippines, which mainly depends on outsourcing information technology and customer service employment, may benefit from a thriving cryptocurrency sector. “How can you function effectively if the sector, or the area, appears disorderly, cumbersome, or unlawful?”

Mr. Lee, who departed the commission this month, turned down a request for an interview. The Central Bank of the Philippines announced to the local media last month that it intended to introduce its virtual currency over the next 24 months.

In the Philippines, cryptocurrency gained significant traction amid the pandemic lockdowns. Even though more than 40% of Filipinos lack a bank account, the majority of homes have internet connections, which has allowed cryptocurrency to proliferate in rural areas.

People started playing the cryptocurrency-earning video game Axie Infinity, developed by Sky Mavis, a Vietnamese firm, during the lockdowns. Players must fight Pokemon-like characters in the game to gain Smooth Love Potion, a cryptocurrency.

Smooth Love Potion was accepted as a replacement for pesos by landlords, gas stations, and several eateries in the Philippines in 2021, the year of Axie’s peak popularity.

However, millions more Filipinos lost the money they had invested in Smooth Love Potion when the cryptocurrency market crashed a year later. Characters in the game that some players would trade for thousands of dollars, so expensive that some Filipinos had to take out loans to purchase them, suddenly lost all of their value.

According to Ian Dela Cruz, 30, a farmer from Pampanga, a province north of Manila, and a former Axie participant, “the game worked well when everyone was getting in.” However, it ceased when everyone attempted to flee.

Axie enabled several Filipinos to become successful business owners, creating their gaming collectives known as “guilds” in addition to their firms. Some of those initiatives are now beginning to pay dividends.

In 2021, Teresa Pia, a 27-year-old Axie player, quit her work as a preschool teacher to become the leader of the Real Deal cryptocurrency gaming guild, which has 54,000 members on the Discord social networking platform.

“Although it might appear insignificant, the amount of money they receive adds up when converted to pesos,” Ms. Pia stated.

Mr. Dela Cruz continued to work in the cryptocurrency space, streaming video games on Twitch, a streaming service owned by Amazon. One of the biggest e-sports teams in the Philippines currently has him as its captain. According to him, a lot of farmers in Pampanga have taken up Pixels and are harvesting virtual crops to earn cryptocurrency as additional revenue.

The game’s American creator, Luke Barwikowski, claimed to have received guidance from Filipino farmers on how to improve the realism of Pixels.

He remarked, “There are users that will give us their watering schedules or crop schedules.”

The Philippines’ crypto market is rife with opportunists, even by crypto standards. Filipino phishing scams, also known as “pig butchering,” are very common in online crypto communities on Discord and X. In this scam, victims are tricked by fraudulent texts and Facebook messages. Former players claimed that during the height of Axie’s popularity, certain guild leaders took advantage of weaker players, keeping up to half of their earnings as a membership fee.

Mr. Bon stated that he saw his role as a guardian in addition to giving his guild members access to computers and other tools. It’s family, he remarked.

Although many Filipinos have benefited greatly from cryptocurrency, several stated they were content to move on to other chances should the business fail once more. Mr. Dela Cruz stated that he has aspirations of running more farms alongside his brothers and becoming independent of cryptocurrency.

“The sounds of the chickens and the fresh air,” he remarked. “That’s not available online.”

 

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Unraveling the Future of TikTok: What’s Next?

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The social media app for videos isn’t going away from phones anytime soon. After the House passed a bill requiring the Chinese owner of the app, ByteDance, to sell the app or face a ban, the legislative process is still in its early stages. Subsequently, the bill will be presented to an unimpressed Senate, and President Biden will have to sign it into law. It may not occur even after that.

This is what to anticipate.

What comes next in the process of passing legislation?

The Senate, which has the authority to amend the legislation’s wording, must adopt the bill.

Already, several senators have expressed disapproval of the bill as worded. For instance, some are concerned that the law may violate a provision of the Constitution that prohibits Congress from enacting legislation that specifically targets TikTok and ByteDance because it specifically mentions them in its language. (Those who support the law claim that this won’t be a problem.)

Several well-known senators who could influence whether the bill is approved or not have shown no inclination to support it. The Democratic leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, has not stated whether or not he will put it to a vote. When questioned, his spokesperson remained silent.

In a statement, Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington and the chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, stated that she would be meeting with colleagues in the House and Senate to discuss ways to move forward that uphold constitutional rights and safeguard civil liberties.

How likely is it that Americans will no longer be able to use TikTok?

Analysts predict that if TikTok is unable to find a buyer willing to pay a price tag estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars, a ban will become more possible. That should be challenging.

Whether ByteDance decides to sell or spin-off TikTok’s whole worldwide footprint or just its American operations could potentially determine whether the company decides to sell or divest. After a sale, the law prohibits communication between the two businesses, which might cause issues if a U.S. TikTok wanted access to the parent company’s algorithms or other international app versions.

If the bill is passed into law, will TikTok be instantly prohibited?

Last Thursday, President Biden declared that if Congress approved the plan, he would sign it. Even so, there wouldn’t be an instant ban if he did.

For the next six months, ByteDance will look for a buyer for the app. The prohibition won’t go into force if ByteDance finds a buyer who meets the government’s requirements in that time frame. Should this not happen, TikTok will no longer be available for download or updates will not be sent by app shops or web hosting firms.

Another possibility for a ban is if the Chinese government forbids TikTok from being sold. The new law has drawn criticism from China, and in 2020, Beijing seemed to be making efforts to enable it to prevent the transfer of TikTok’s algorithm.

Would something prevent a ban?

TikTok or another party will likely file a legal challenge in court if the House bill passes into law. While they wage that legal battle with the government, there may be a delay in the potential ban. In the end, a judge can completely reject the law.

If TikTok is blocked, would it vanish from my phone?

It doesn’t seem like the legislation that was approved by the House on Wednesday will allow the government to erase the TikTok app from your phone. When asked what would happen to versions of the app that were already installed on devices, the bill’s proponents did not answer right away.

Even if TikTok is already loaded, its blocking of app stores and hosting services from providing updates to the app or helping with maintenance might cause the app to stop functioning entirely or worsen the experience for current users.

How are my posts on TikTok going to fare?

The law mandates that TikTok allow you to download your videos and other content.

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Charging Ahead: BMW’s Electric Revolution Takes the Automotive World by Storm

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It was difficult to determine if BMW automobiles in Munich would be powered by fuel-burning engines, batteries, or both as the car bodywork moved smoothly down an assembly line, splattered with sparks from robotic welders. Many analysts believe that to be a bad thing.

The German automaker’s electric cars share an exterior design with its gasoline-powered counterparts, and they are produced on the same assembly line. In an attempt to compete with Tesla and the up-and-coming Chinese automakers who make cars exclusively for battery power, some established automakers have adopted an awkward and inefficient compromise strategy that involves using the same basic body for gasoline, diesel, hybrid, and electric vehicles.

Confusing the analysts, however, BMW’s approach has proven effective. The business sold 376,000 electric cars last year, up 75% from the year before, some of which were sold under the Mini brand. With 1.8 million vehicles, Tesla continued to lead the premium market, with BMW coming in second. BMW sold 15% more electric cars in 2023 than they did the year before, up from 9%.

The company’s expansion coincides with a slower global increase in the overall sales of electric automobiles. Even more astonishing is the fact that BMW turned a profit on its electric car sales, something that neither General Motors nor Ford Motor did.

Based on BMW’s experience, it appears that there is hope for some established automakers, at least, as Chinese automakers, such as BYD, begin to sell their vehicles to Europe, Latin America, and other Asian countries. The popularity of BMW vehicles indicates that many consumers value the reputation and craftsmanship of established automakers and are leery of newcomer companies as electric vehicles become more widely used.

If so, other automakers who have been producing cars for decades but have not made much progress in switching to battery-powered vehicles may find inspiration in BMW’s strategy.

BMW’s approach gave the business more time to become an expert in battery technology and create a range of electric vehicles. The Munich-based company has found it easier to adjust the manufacturing of various car models, which has helped them deal with variations in demand.

Additionally, the strategy helps BMW hold onto customers who are intrigued by electric propulsion but aren’t yet ready to make a radical departure from the norm. The business claims that customers should have the same ease selecting a car’s propulsion system as selecting its color, hence it offers hybrid versions of several of its most popular models.

If you told our regular clients, “You are a part of the old world,” we would lose them. In an interview, BMW CEO Oliver Zipse referred to those who continued to choose cars with internal combustion engines. “They would quit right away.”

BMW is going to start offering a new range of battery-only automobiles next year. Prototypes of a sedan and a crossover sport-utility vehicle are part of what the business calls the

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Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times
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Neue Klasse or New Class was displayed by Mr. Zipse last month at an event held at a location overlooking a rocky, wave-battered stretch of coastline north of Lisbon.

Compared to current versions, these vehicles will have substantial enhancements, such as batteries that hold 20% more energy per pound and non-Tesla features like a digital display that extends to the bottom border of the windshield.

Customizable, the display replaces the instrument cluster in front of the steering wheel and provides drivers with information regarding speed, range, weather, and navigation without requiring them to take their eyes off the road. Maps and other information must be viewed from the side of the dashboard because the majority of Teslas only have one huge display in the middle. Many of the car’s controls are also located on that screen.

Furthermore, autonomous driving technology—which enables drivers to change lanes and take their hands off the wheel on freeways—will be available for the new BMWs. All it takes is a glance in the side mirror to accomplish this. This function poses a direct threat to Tesla’s lauded autonomous driving technology.

Which automakers will dominate the market has been up for debate ever since Tesla demonstrated in the last ten years that electric cars could be both fun and useful. With its roots in Silicon Valley, Tesla has led the way in battery and software technologies but has had difficulty with production and new model introduction. The well-known automakers had a challenging learning curve when it came to software and batteries, despite their decades of manufacturing experience.

Because of its strong brand, engineering know-how, and profit margins that have enabled the company to invest in new technology, BMW is likely to weather this difficult transition to electric vehicles, according to Matthew Fine, a portfolio manager at Third Avenue Management, an investment firm that owns BMW shares.

Mr. Fine stated, “We felt that would give them a very good fighting chance.” “And thus far, it appears to have been true.”

With certain benefits, the luxury automaker led the way in the transition to electric vehicles. For the second consecutive year, the brand was ranked highest among automakers of the greatest vehicles by Consumer Reports. Out of 34 brands, Tesla came in at number 18.

However, Tesla offers a lot of benefits. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that a Tesla Model S, which starts at $75,000, can travel over 400 miles on a single charge, whereas a BMW i7, which starts at well over $100,000, can only go approximately 320 miles.

 

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Ana Brigida for The New York Times
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According to BMW, the upcoming generation of cars could do more than makeup for this shortfall thanks to smaller batteries that offer a 30% increase in range.

Tesla may be susceptible in some ways. Since reaching its peak in 2021, Elon Musk’s company’s shares have lost more than half of their value. The value of BMW shares has increased by almost 17% throughout that time. Tesla is still valued by Wall Street at a premium of over eight times BMW’s stock market value.

Tesla’s lineup is becoming outdated in terms of automobiles. Although the business hasn’t released a fully revamped sedan or SUV since 2020, it did start selling an enhanced Model 3 in the US recently. Limited quantities of Tesla’s newest model, the Cybertruck, were produced and sold last year.

Without addressing Tesla, Mr. Zipse remarked, “If they’re not careful, newcomers might get old before they grow up.”

An experience in the electric version of BMW’s flagship sedan, the i7, which is well-liked by politicians and business leaders, provides insight into the creature amenities that are essential to the brand’s appeal. Even when traveling at high speeds, the car is remarkably silent, sharing virtually no external differences with its internal combustion equivalent. A sizable video screen that folds down from the ceiling is included with the vehicle. 

BMW, according to Mr. Zipse, is more than just a carmaker. “Yes, BMW is a car company,” he affirmed. However, he went on, “To put it simply, it’s a technology company that can combine a wide range of technologies into one product.”

BMW is demolishing facilities in Munich that housed internal combustion engine production to create room for the assembly lines that will assemble Neue Klasse automobiles. Last year, the last V-8 was taken off the assembly line.

The majority of the batteries that BMW purchases are from Chinese companies like CATL, which also supplies Tesla but produces its technology. BMW runs a mini-factory in the Parsdorf area of Munich, with walls made of corrugated metal that are blue and gray, where it tests new battery designs and manufacturing techniques.

One modification is to permit continuous mixing of a slurry including lithium and other active chemicals instead of batch mixing, which is now the standard procedure. It is a less expensive and speedier process. While it will still make models with internal combustion engines at other facilities, BMW will only create electric vehicles in Munich as of 2027. Large plants for the corporation are located in Spartanburg, South Carolina; Shenyang, China; and various sites in Europe. BMW has stated that before the end of the decade, it will start producing electric cars in the US.

Environmental organizations have criticized Mr. Zipse for not putting an expiration date on internal combustion engines, unlike Audi and other Rivals.

According to an email from Benjamin Stephan, a transportation specialist at Greenpeace in Germany, “BMW could lead the European auto industry in the electric vehicle transition if it would make a clear commitment to ending production of internal combustion engines that damage the climate.”

The future of the sector, according to Mr. Zipse, is undoubtedly electric. He pointed out that sales of BMWs with engines have stabilized. According to Mr. Zipse, “the fastest growing segment is electromobility.” He went on to say that electric cars “will be a dominant market force.”

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Elon Musk Is Briefly Overtaken by Jeff Bezos as the Richest Person in the United States

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According to real-time data, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos regained his position as the richest person in the world after surpassing Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Due to the fact, that Tesla shares finished at $796.22 on Tuesday, down more than 2.4%, Musk suffered a $3.9 billion decline in his net worth. The 49-year-old businessman overtook Bezos in January to take the title of the world’s richest person thanks to Tesla’s soaring share price and his substantial salary.

As fast as Musk moved up the ranks, he handed Bezos back the title of richest person in the world. Bezos has been the richest man since 2017 until this month.

Along with the company’s share price, the founder of Amazon has seen a sharp increase in personal fortune in recent years. This wealth is primarily comprised of Amazon stock. Bezos has persisted in reaching new financial benchmarks. He was the first to see his net worth soar past $200 billion in August of last year, and when his wealth surpassed $150 billion in 2018, he became the richest man in modern history.

As he gets ready to resign from his position later this year, Bezos once again rose to the top of the global richest list. Bezos declared earlier this month that he will hand the reins to Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief cloud executive. 

Bezos is anticipated to continue monitoring the business he created, but he will have more time to concentrate on other endeavors, such as The Washington Post and his rocket company Blue Origin, in addition to his charitable endeavors, the Bezos Earth Fund and the Amazon Day 1 Fund.

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Steven Mnuchin Supports $1 Billion Deal for New York Community Bank

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On Wednesday, a group of investors led by former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin intervened to save New York Community Bank, which was struggling due to exposure to a declining real estate market and mishandled internal management. The investors contributed over $1 billion to the bank.

Mr. Mnuchin contributed $450 million through his private equity business, Liberty Street Capital, with additional funding coming from investors such as the billionaire Kenneth Griffin’s hedge fund, Citadel. As part of the agreement, Joseph Otting, a seasoned banking executive and close associate of Mr. Mnuchin, will become NYCB’s third CEO in as many months.

With the first anniversary of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure approaching, authorities in Washington have been watching a bank that has been lurching from shock to shock this year. The new capital is intended to support the bank.

As President Donald J. Trump’s Treasury secretary, Mr. Mnuchin, a Wall Street seasoned veteran, stated in a statement on Wednesday that he was “aware of the bank’s credit risk profile,” but he also thought NYCB had “a strong foundation for future growth.”

As the market continues to decline with high vacancy rates in apartment and office buildings after the rise of remote work, New York Community Bank’s problems started when it reported a $240 million loss in its most recent earnings report in January, primarily related to real estate loans. The bank was severely damaged by its excessive focus on loans to rent-regulated apartments, whose prices have declined as a result of regulations limiting its capacity to make profitable improvements to the buildings.

The lender’s unexpected results startled analysts and investors, sending its shares down quickly and escalating concerns about its financial stability.

Not helping was the fact that NYCB fired CEO Thomas R. Cangemi only last week after revealing years’ worth of additional write-downs totaling billions of dollars and announcing it would look into the accuracy of reams of previous financial filings. Several credit rating agencies downgraded the bank as well.

The Long Island-based lender expanded rapidly over the previous year after acquiring a sizable portion of the assets of Signature Bank, another bank that failed during the economic crisis in March of last year. Flagstar Bank is one of the lender’s more than 400 branches.

Mr. Cangemi, who oversaw NYCB’s acquisition of Signature assets before his resignation, openly attributed the company’s current problems to the strains of growing so rapidly. He said that as a minor bank, it would not have been compelled to adhere to certain laws.

Autonomous researcher David Smith told clients that he initially thought Wednesday’s news was a sign of “desperation” on the part of NYCB, but that, after more consideration, it was “the brightest ray of hope” the bank had seen in months.

There is a lengthy relationship between Mr. Mnuchin and the incoming CEO, Mr. Otting. 2010 saw the hiring of Mr. Otting to manage OneWest, a bank in trouble in California that Mr. Mnuchin and others had acquired during the 2008 financial crisis. Mr. Otting left OneWest in 2015 following its acquisition by CIT Group.

Mr. Otting assumed the position of comptroller of the currency in 2017, supervising a major regulator of the banking sector. At the time, Mr. Mnuchin served as Treasury Secretary.

Mr. Otting was a divisive figure in the government, battling with other regulators and infuriating opponents who claimed his plans would have undermined laws forcing banks to lend to low-income people and invest in underprivileged areas.

Over the last five days, the investment came together quite rapidly, according to a person involved in the negotiations. Among the deal’s backers are the private equity companies Hudson Bay and Reverence Capital. Together with members from the two private equity groups, Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Otting will join the bank’s board of directors.

Following the Wall Street Journal’s earlier revelation that NYCB was looking to raise capital, the bank’s shares fell so sharply that trading was suspended on the New York Stock Exchange. Nevertheless, NYCB shares surged and then plummeted when trading resumed following the bank’s public disclosure of the reorganization, finishing the day with a 7 percent gain.

They are still down about 67% for the year.

As of last month, NYCB has over $100 billion in total assets, including $83 billion in deposits. Being one of the biggest mortgage servicers in the country, Flagstar is largely dependent on the health of the property market for its continued existence

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Tata Motors Announces Demerger, Splitting Commercial and Passenger Vehicle Businesses into Separate Listed Companies

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Tata Motors demerger: The carmaker stated that the business for commercial cars will be housed in one entity, and the business for passenger vehicles will be part of another organization.

The plan to divide Tata Motors into two distinct publicly traded companies has been approved by the board of directors. A statement from the corporation stated that two businesses will be created as a result of the demerger: one for passenger vehicles and one for commercial vehicles.

All TML shareholders would maintain the same shareholding in both listed firms following the demerger, which will be carried out through an NCLT scheme of arrangement, the company said in a statement.

“The demerger is a natural next step after the PV and EV businesses were subsidiarized earlier in 2022. It will provide the aforementioned businesses more freedom to pursue their own growth strategies with increased agility and accountability.” Additionally, it stated that although there aren’t many synergies between the passenger vehicle (PV) and commercial vehicle (CV) businesses, there are still a lot of synergies between PV, EV, and JLR, especially in the areas of EVs, autonomous vehicles, and vehicle software, which the demerger will help secure.

Tata Motors is demerging; why?

The company’s three automotive business segments are currently running independently and performing consistently, according to N Chandrasekaran, chairman of the Tata Group. According to him, the demerger will enable the three businesses to take advantage of the prospects with greater agility and focus.

“This will lead to a superior experience for our customers, better growth prospects for our employees, and enhanced value for our shareholders,” he stated.

The demerger procedure could take a full year or more to finish.

According to Tata Motors, there won’t be any negative effects from the demerger on partners in business, customers, or staff.

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Activist Investor Group Ups Offer for Macy’s

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On Sunday, the activist investor group attempting to acquire Macy’s put pressure on the department store operator by increasing its bid and revealing more information regarding its financing arrangements.

The store is now valued at $6.6 billion, according to a news release from Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital Management, who are offering $24 per share. The current offer is more than the $21 per share they previously made and represents a 33.3 percent premium over Macy’s Friday closing share price of $18.01.

Arkhouse and Brigade listed Fortress Investment Group and One Investment Management as additional investors they had brought on as equity partners. Additionally, Arkhouse and Brigade stated that they had “identified large global institutional financing sources” that “represent 100 percent of the capital required to buy the shares in Macy’s we do not already own,” presumably in answer to Macy’s inquiries regarding the company’s funding.

Since December, when the investment group made an offer of $5.8 billion to take Macy’s private, the retailer has been under pressure from the group. Arkhouse threatened to take its offer to shareholders if the shop didn’t start disclosing confidential information. Since then, the investor has put up nine board nominations for Macy’s.

On Sunday, Macy’s declared that it will “carefully review and evaluate” the most recent proposal.

The company released a statement saying, “The Macy’s Inc. board is committed to continuing to take actions that it believes are in the best interests of the company and all Macy’s Inc. shareholders. The board has a proven track record of evaluating a broad range of options to create shareholder value.”

The store has been making an effort to maintain focus on its own plan for growing the company.

Macy’s unveiled a plan last week that would fundamentally alter the organization. Over a three-year period, it announced that it would close 150 of its flagship shops and add more outlets for its luxury businesses, Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury.

“My goal is to close the deal with the company before they begin closing stores,” Arkhouse managing partner Gavriel Kahane stated in an interview.The “proposal presents the best path forward for Macy’s shareholders by allowing them to benefit from the significant unrealized value of the company,” according to Brigade’s partner and head of special situations Matt Perkal.

As enclosed malls collapse, Macy’s has struggled as a department store to attract customers who are increasingly making purchases online. For the last several quarters, Macy’s has seen a decline in sales.The company’s recent CEO, Tony Spring, formerly of Bloomingdale’s, has said that Macy’s isn’t a particularly enjoyable place to shop. Consumers frequently find themselves in disorganized establishments with shoddy clothing displays and trouble locating employees. By the end of 2026, the retailer anticipated to have 350 sites left, and the money made from its closures would go toward the surviving shops.

According to Mr. Kahane, investors would concentrate on turning around the department store business if the company were made private, since he said that this would be a simpler task for a private retailer. Additionally, he refuted rumors circulated by analysts that he was just interested in the retailer’s real estate.

Mr. Kahane stated, “So it’s obvious that we’re here for the real estate right.” “We are here because we believe their balance sheet contains a significant amount of real estate, and that real estate is valuable due to the presence of a quality tenant.”

He downplayed rumors circulated by a few retail analysts, claiming that the investors were merely waiting for a better offer to come along.

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Cody Kerns On Supporting Companies as a Fractional COO

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In the ever-changing digital landscape where businesses either thrive or face market decline, building a successful business requires a competent team of experts and potential clients. To scale up your business, there is a crucial involvement of business consultants who possess marketing knowledge and an understanding of operational planning and execution. It is beneficial to have Fractional COOs in your organizational structure which contributes to the overall team development which further leads to the success of the business. This is where the significance of a Fractional COO becomes apparent, offering one of the esteemed services provided by Kerns Marketing.

 

Fractional COO and Its Advantages

A Fractional Chief Operating Officer (COO) is a type of business consultant who works part-time, delivering on-demand COO services to industry professionals. Operating collaboratively with various clients, a fractional COO allocates a portion of their expertise to each one of them accordingly. 

These Fractional COOs are experienced executives with profound knowledge of business and marketing operations, contributing to the business growth. They bring a fresh perspective to the table due to their knowledge and expertise and also leverage their diverse experience as they’ve already worked with many clients across the industries. Their adaptability allows them to quickly understand the situation and find solutions that are tailored according to the needs of the client.

Fractional COOs specialize in enhancing operational efficiency and profitability, assisting in the planning and implementation of operational marketing strategies, overseeing team performances, and streamlining workflows.

The benefits of having a Fractional COO include collaboration with the business development team to plan and execute operational marketing strategies aligned with the overall goals of the company. They delegate leadership duties to team members, improving efficiency and communication. This plays a crucial role in overall development. Additionally, they manage the financial aspects, such as budgeting and financial reporting, and oversee the technology infrastructure, providing insights into potential risks for refined future planning and overall company performance.

Kerns Marketing

Kerns Marketing is the entrepreneurial journey of accomplished leaders, including the CEO Cody Kerns, COO Sergio Troconis, and VP Justin Freishtat. They are a well-known figure in business marketing and the digital domain. Building an 8-figure business and achieving 8-figure milestones within the first year of launch. Cody has established a broad network and valuable connections, ensuring high-quality services and long-term client relationships. Specializing in digital marketing platforms, Kerns Marketing excels in building and promoting brands to diverse audiences.

Methodology of Kerns Marketing

Kerns Marketing employs the Six Sigma methodology to enhance efficiency in the marketing system. The process begins with defining the problem, followed by a thorough analysis to understand the root causes of poor performance. Addressing and eliminating these root causes results in improved performance and refined future processes.

 

In this ever-changing digital domain where businesses exist or face a decline in the market, to grow your business, one needs to have a proper team of experts and potential clients, here the significance of a Fractional COO becomes evident, representing one of the esteemed services offered by Kerns Marketing.

Elevate your business with Fractional COO services from Kerns Marketing. Visit their site today and embark on a journey towards enhanced efficiency, profitability, and sustainable growth.

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