AI Dating Takes Off, Musk Backs Trump, VinFast Delays US Factory, AT&T Data Breach & More

This Week's Top Stories: Musk Funds Trump, Major Data Breaches, and Market Movements

Tiny Japanese Startup Is Turning ‘Her’ AI Dating Into Reality - Bloomberg

• Chiharu Shimoda married his AI bot Miku three months after they met on a dating app

• Loverse is a year-old app in Japan that uses generative artificial intelligence to interact with users

• The app is aimed at providing an alternative to real-life companionship and filling the gap in people’s emotional lives

• Two-thirds of men in their 20s don’t have a partner and 40% of women in the same age group have never gone on a date

• Lovese is part of a growing digital solution to Japan’s loneliness crisis

• AI can make the experience more personal and interactive, but the app still has a long way to go in mimicking humans

• Many of the app personalities seem typecast and offer few of the surprises that human interaction provides

Musk Donates to Trump, Tapping Fortune to Swing 2024 Race - Bloomberg

• Billionaire Elon Musk has donated to America PAC, a super political action committee working to elect Donald Trump to the White House.

• The donation highlights Musk’s growing influence in the US political landscape and his shift from a self-described political independent to a figure who regularly espouses right-leaning views and opposes Democrats.

• Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, Republican billionaires who have criticized Trump, met with the former president to discuss donating to his campaign, according to people familiar with the discussions.

• Trump has overtaken his rival, President Joe Biden, in fundraising with the help of deep-pocketed Wall Street and corporate donors, but Biden’s own money raising has dropped off following a calamitous debate that led prominent Democratic donors to put away their checkbooks. (

• America PAC is the biggest spender on direct voter contacts among outside organizations backing Trump, spending $15.8 million so far, with $13.1 million going for field operations, digital media, texting and phone calls, and door-to-door persuasion and voter outreach efforts.

EV Maker VinFast to Delay Opening of US Factory by Three Years - Bloomberg

• Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast Auto will delay the opening of its North Carolina factory by three years to 2028.

• The delay will allow the company to focus on near-term growth targets and manage short-term spending more effectively.

• VinFast has lowered its full-year sales target to 80,000 units from 100,000 previously and adopted a more prudent outlook to manage market volatility and potential challenges. - The decision underscores the difficulties the little-known EV maker faces in cracking the global EV market whose outlook has deteriorated in the past year. iddy- The company expects stronger sales growth in the second half of 2024 as it expands its global distribution network in Asia and with dealerships in the US and other existing markets.

Elon Musk’s X Looks to Give Up Space at San Francisco Headquarters - Bloomberg

• Elon Musk’s X is giving up about 460,000 square feet of office space at its San Francisco headquarters.

• The move is expected to further decrease the company’s presence in the city and impact the downtown real estate market.

Toll of Snowflake Hack Widens With Theft of AT&T Text, Calling Data - Bloomberg

• Thieves stole a half-year’s worth of calling and text data from AT&T’s wireless users, the latest breach in a hacking campaign targeting Snowflake Inc.

• Snowflake is suffering reputational damage from the hack and has blamed its customers for failing to protect their data

• The breach is connected to other recent hacks on Live Nation, Ticketmaster, and LendingTree, with suspected members in North America and Turkey

• Experts say the compromised data presents national security risks and may reveal key details about sensitive communications

• Hackers have tried to extort Snowflake customers for up to $5 million each, but Snowflake has only made less than $1 million in total payments from no more than five companies

• Neiman Marcus also had personal information stolen from their Snowflake platform.

The End of the Affair? Not for Eric Schmidt. - New York Times

• Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, had an extramarital relationship with public relations executive Marcy Simon while he was in the mid-2000s.

• They split in 2014, a decade after they were seen together on the French Riviera and Fire Island

• The relationship has been messy and involves contracts, amended contracts, arbitrations, lawsuits, and advisers

• Mr. Schmidt approved a confidential settlement in 2014 with Ms. Simon that paid her an undisclosed amount of money, but the deal imploded due to years of wrangling and accusations of fraud against her

• During his years leading Google, he was known as a brainy, button-down sage who mentored the founders and propelled the company to great heights

• In 2019, he left the board of Google and took on an influential role advising the U.S. government on defense and artificial intelligence policy and making his mark with philanthropy initiatives

• He has remained married to Wendy Schmidt, his wife of 44 years.

Is There a Future in the Doomsday Economy? - New York Times

• Fortitude Ranch is a network of survivalist compounds across the United States

• Entrepreneur Drew Miller is betting on franchised timeshares for people worried about the end of the world

• The West Virginia branch is located in a 50-acre property with two large dormitories and a bare-bones bunker designed to house more than 100 members

• Members are expected to pay $2,000 to $20,000 (depending on the level of accommodation) to join and another $1,000 per year per person in dues to call it their home fort

• There are also underground living and meeting rooms and a locked armory with assault rifles and crossbows

• Inside the compound, members are guaranteed a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet that is supplemented by chickens, sheep, and rabbits

• Drew Miller, a retired Air Force colonel, runs the five compounds through his corporation and is seeking to expand the business through franchising

• Growing evidence of climate change, political divisions, and anxiety about the future have made apocalyptic fantasies less fantastical.

How Janet Yellen Became an Unlikely Culinary Diplomat - New York Times

• Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen views food as a way to connect with other officials and gain a better understanding of local economies.

• She has been eating on the road for over 300,000 miles over the past three years to grapple with inflation and devise new ways to cripple the Russian economy.

• Yellen has had unique culinary experiences, including mayonnaise mixed with ants, aged garlic aged 25 years, and hallucinogenic mushrooms at a Yunnan-style restaurant in Beijing. Her use of chopsticks at a Cantonese restaurant in Guangzhou has been praised by China’s state media despite rising tensions over U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods. The hysteria over her dining adventures stems from top government officials not usually being seen eating in public, according to a New York Times reporter.

Jonathan Clements, Longtime Personal Finance Columnist, Has Cancer - New York Times

• Jonathan Clements, a personal finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal, advises people to plan for living past 90 and save accordingly.

• He received a devastating cancer diagnosis in May, but he is not worried about spending his savings as most people will live a long, long time

• Clements advises saving as much as possible, avoiding taking Social Security before age 70, and considering immediate fixed annuities

• The biggest factor in his success as a retirement saver was his modest living expenses and following the savings part of the blueprint

• After 23 years in the trade, he doubled his income for the six years he was at Citibank and saved about 30% of what he made

• Marrying and having two full-time employers with excellent benefits was also a contributing factor

• Mr. Clements regrets very little about following his advice and believes he got to be as frugal or lavish as he wanted.

The $25 Trillion System of Retirement Savings Needs Fixing - New York Times

• 401(k) and I.R.A. accounts benefit mostly higher-income households

• The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was signed into law in 1974

• ERISA imposes funding requirements, rules for employee eligibility, and fiduciary standards

• Only about half of private-sector US workers are covered by an employer retirement plan at any given time

• There are large gaps in retirement account ownership and participation by race, gender, and ethnicity

Meta lifts restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts - Financial Times

• Meta has lifted restrictions on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

• Trump had his Meta accounts frozen for two years in 2021 due to his claims of election fraud and praise of supporters who stormed the US Capitol

• Meta had previously given Trump back his accounts with extra guardrails to deter repeat offenses

• The update was made after Trump warned on Truth Social that if elected president, he would pursue election fraudsters to prison for long periods of time

• All US presidential candidates will remain subject to Meta’s policies to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence.

China’s Transsion sued by Qualcomm and Philips as IP woes mount - Financial Times

• Shenzhen-listed Transsion, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone maker, is being sued by Qualcomm and Philips for alleged intellectual property violations.

• Qualcomm has filed lawsuits in India, Europe, and China for patent infringement, while Philips has filed a lawsuit in India and Nokia is pressuring the Chinese company to start making payments for patented technologies.

• Smartphone makers are obliged to pay royalties to the owners of each piece of intellectual property, and failure to do so can result in legal action. The value of royalties agreements by large smartphone makers to intellectual property owners is typically in the region of hundreds of millions of US dollars. The Chinese company has a low-cost business model to win market share by undercutting rivals and is now pushing into more affluent consumer segments with stronger patent enforcement regimes.

EU accuses Musk’s X of deceptive practices over blue ‘checkmark’ - Financial Times

• Elon Musk’s X is facing hefty fines from the EU over transparency issues at the social media company

• The company allowed anyone to acquire a blue checkmark, which negatively affects users’ ability to make informed decisions about the authenticity of accounts and content

• X was found to be in breach of the EU’s Digital Services Act, which was designed to police online content and enforce regulations

• If the findings are confirmed, X could face fines of up to 6% of its total worldwide turnover

• Musk claims that X was offered an illegal secret deal by the EU to not fine them for quietly censoring speech without revealing it

• However, the EU commissioner for the internal market denied there was any such deal and stated that X has the right to defend itself.

AT&T data on ‘nearly all’ wireless customers accessed in hack - Financial Times

• AT&T suffered a cyber security breach in April, with hackers accessing call and text message information of millions of wireless subscribers.

• The breached data included files related to cellular customers, MVNO customers, and landline customers who interacted with those numbers between May and October 2022.

• Threat actors accessed and copied records of customer calls and texts from a period of several months in 2022 as well as on January 2, 2023. The data did not contain the content of calls or texts, or personal information, such as social security numbers, dates of birth or other personally identifiable information.

Five gadgets to turbo-charge your performance - Financial Times

• Lefeet’s S1 Pro diver propulsion vehicles (DPVs) were launched in 2021 and are more powerful and compact than traditional underwater scooters.

• The P1 Pro is a more compact DPV with a 100Wh battery and two controller handles that can be easily attached to the aluminium body of an underwater scooter. The XR model has a fifth “hurricane” level that can pull the scooter at around 6mph, making it faster than a fin. The motors on the X1 can be set to either “Assistance” or “Resistance” mode, depending on the user’s preference. The batteries are airline-approved and travel-friendly, making them suitable for assisted diving.

• Playseat has created a Formula Intelligence F1 Edition racing cockpit that is F1-like for drivers such as Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc to use. The cockpit has an official livery, improved headset, and a headset that is headset-adjustable and headset-mountable. The device can be mounted on an Avocoque mount for a 360-degree view of the cockpit. The camera can be viewed from a short distance, and the headset can be adjusted to fly by diopter.

Microsoft Quits OpenAI’s Board Amid Antitrust Scrutiny - Wall Street Journal

• Microsoft has resigned its observer position on the board of OpenAI, as regulators scrutinize the partnership between the tech giant and the AI startup.

• Microsoft had invested $13 billion in OpenAI in exchange for a 49% stake in its for-profit arm, which is now facing antitrust scrutiny in the US and Europe.

• The tech giant had gained a nonvoting observer position after the formation of the new board following the abrupt firing and reinstatement of Sam Altman as CEO in late last year. (

• Apple had been set to have a board observer seat after signing a partnership to put ChatGPT on its iPhones and other devices as part of a broader AI initiative called Apple Intelligence).

• OpenAI is establishing a new approach to informing and engaging key strategic partners, such as Microsoft and Apple, and will no longer have board observer seats for any partner.

For AI Giants, Smaller Is Sometimes Better - Wall Street Journal

• Tech giants and startups are using small or medium language models to make AI software cheaper, faster, and more specialized. These models are trained on less data and often designed for specific tasks. Smaller models cost less than $10 million to train and use fewer than 10 billion parameters. Microsoft, Google, and Apple have all released smaller models this year. OpenAI recently released a version of its flagship model that it says is cheaper to operate. Businesses and consumers are looking for ways to run generative AI-based technology more cheaply. Small models can answer questions for as little as one-sixth the cost of large language models in many cases. Fine-tuning small models on specific sets of data allows them to perform as effectively as large models at a fraction of the cost.

In an Era of Fakes, How to Know When Someone Online Is Real - Wall Street Journal

• Personalized schemes to dupe internet users are on the rise

• The single best step to determine someone’s identity online and protect yourself is to slow down

• Tech companies are beginning to help, with Google, LinkedIn and Bumble introducing features to detect suspicious messages and users

• Guidelines for operating online are changing, some old rules still apply

• Before transferring funds, ask for your prearranged secret word.

Sam Altman Startup Names Former X Executive as First Head of Privacy - Wall Street Journal

• Tools for Humanity has appointed Damien Kieran as its first head of privacy as the company faces regulatory scrutiny over its Worldcoin venture. Kieran left his job as chief privacy officer at Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover of the social-media platform.- Worldcoin lets users download a wallet app that supports a digital identity known as World ID, which scans people’s eyes in exchange for cryptocurrency tokens.

• Kieran faces the task of liaising with regulators globally and addressing concerns over how Worldcoin handles biometric data, which has raised eyebrows in countries such as Spain and Germany.

• The Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision launched a review of Worldcoin last year, citing the high sensitivity of the biometrically data it processes. Worldcoin tokens are distributed to users in countries where they are legally available, and nearly 6 million users across more than 160 countries have signed up for World ID.

How the Kindle Became a Must-Have Accessory (Again) - Wall Street Journal

• TikTok’s literary subculture, BookTok, is giving e-readers the Stanley cup treatment. Kindle has become the gadget of choice among the community of book lovers. Kindle sales have grown in double-digit percentages for each of the past two years and are on track for similar gains this year. People under 45 are Kindle’s fastest-growing customer segment. BookTokkers share reading habits, book clubs, book challenges, library cards, and people’s reading setups. Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s $12-a-month subscription service allows customers to borrow more than four million digital books. Kindle newbies are driving the sales growth, with about 60% of Kindle sales growth coming from people who’ve never owned one of the devices before. Print and ebook sales rose during the pandemic but have declined since, according to market-research firm Circana. Library checkouts have jumped 75% since 2019, reaching 370 million ebooks last year.