Hackers Target Pentagon Contractor, Tesla's Big Decisions, and the Rise of Robotaxis
Security Breach at Leidos, Tesla's $5B AI Vote, and Baidu's Robotaxi Ambitions
Hackers Leak Documents From Pentagon IT Provider Leidos - Bloomberg
Hackers have leaked internal documents stolen from Leidos Holdings Inc., one of the largest IT services providers to the US government. The documents were stolen in a previously disclosed breach of a Diligent Corp. system it used, according to a person familiar with the matter. The incident did not affect the network or any sensitive customer data. The leaked documents were believed to have been stolen as part of two breaches of Diligent in 2022. The Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and NASA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk Asks X Followers If Tesla Should Sink $5 Billion Into xAI - Bloomberg
Elon Musk is asking his X followers whether Tesla should invest $5 billion into his AI startup.
Musk was supportive of the idea of Tesla investing in xAI if there was shareholder approval.
Baidu’s Robotaxi Ambition Draws Skeptics After Brief Stock Rally - Bloomberg
Baidu Inc.'s expansion into ride hailing with a fleet of fully self-driving cars in Wuhan has led to a decline in its stock price.
Analysts are concerned about the success of the technology and the lack of certainty around pending regulations and consumer demand for autonomous driving in China
The company’s autonomous ride-hailing arm, Apollo Go, launched a cheap robotaxi model in May and aims to be profitable by next year
Market competition and a weak macro environment may also weigh on the stock
At least six cities or provinces recently announced trials to promote autonomous driving over the past month, which may help grow demand
China currently has about 4-5 million ride-railing cars in operation, with 5% of those cars potentially translating into a $5 billion market
Google is expected to report 1.2% growth in revenue for the second quarter.
Rivian to Face Trial Over Tesla Tech Theft Claims, Judge Says - Bloomberg
Rivian Automotive Inc. will likely go to trial over claims that it encouraged employees who defected from Tesla to steal electric-vehicle trade secrets.- A California state judge has denied Rivian’s request to dismiss the claims and ruled that there is enough evidence to warrant a trial.
Both companies have been struggling with sales slumps amid a slowdown in demand for electric vehicles and have halted plans to build a factory in Georgia.
Texas Instruments Outlook Eases Fear of a Chip Downturn - Bloomberg
Texas Instruments forecasts sales of $3.94 billion to $4.96 billion for the third quarter, in line with analysts’ estimates.
The company sees a rise in demand from industrial and automotive markets, counteracting concerns caused by peer NXP Semiconductors’.
Revenue declined by 16% in the second quarter, while profit was $1.22 billion compared with an estimate of $0.16.
Despite the decline, Texas Instruments is spending heavily on new plants to bring most production back in-house.
Tesla Q2 Earnings Report Reveals 45% Profit Drop Amid Weak E.V. Sales - New York Times
Tesla reported a significant drop in profit in the second quarter of the year due to falling sales of its electric cars.
The company earned $1.5 billion in the quarter, down from $2.7 billion a year earlier, and revenue of $24.9 billion, down 9%.
Sales of Tesla’s electric cars fell 4.8% to 444,000 vehicles in Q2, while production declined 14% to about 411,000 cars, according to data from the California New Car Dealers Association.
Tesla is facing increasing competition from other manufacturers, with Ford Motor and General Motors ramping up production of electric models and increasing their own sales of battery-powered models. - Tesla has cut costs, including 2,000 workers at its plant in Fremont, Calif., and nearly 2,700 at another in Austin, Texas, and has also cut the prices of its cars. The company’s current operating profit margin is 6.3% compared with 9.6% in the same period a year ago. The results will likely heighten pressure on Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, to find new ways to grow and make money.
Alphabet Reports 29% Jump in Profit as A.I. Efforts Begin to Pay Off - New York Times
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported strong revenue growth in its search advertising business and a rising profit in the second quarter.
The company’s profit climbed 29% to $23.6 billion, beating Wall Street’s expectation of $22.7 billion, its biggest profit on record at $84.1 billion.
Google Cloud, the company’s division that offers software and technology services to other businesses, recorded a 29% increase in revenue to $10.3 billion, higher than analysts’ estimate of $9.2 billion. Google has largely overcome a digital advertising slump that began in 2022 in the midst of economic uncertainty, rising interest rates, and inflation.
Can Kamala Harris Sell Bidenomics? - New York Times
Voters dislike President Biden’s handling of the economy
Vice President Kamala Harris faces a challenge in selling the Biden-Harris economic record
Polls show voters prefer former President Donald Trump on the issue of inflation
Democrats see an opportunity for Harris to distance herself from Biden’s economic liabilities and refocus on her policy vision
Many of Biden’s policies poll better with voters than his economic approval ratings indicate
Republicans have sought to tie Harris to Biden’s failures
Some Democrats hope for a fresh voice closely tied to Mr. Biden.
Judge Refuses to Block F.T.C.’s Noncompete Ban as Lawsuits Play Out - New York Times
A federal judge in Pennsylvania has declined to block the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements, clearing one obstacle to the rule set to take effect on Sept. 4.
ATS Tree Services, a tree-removal company, filed a lawsuit against the rule, arguing that it used noncompetes to provide employees with necessary and valuable specialized training while minimizing the risk of them leaving to benefit a competitor.
The judge ruled that ATS had not proved that it would suffer irreparable harm from the rule and denied the company’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The rule was issued without constitutional and statutory authority, according to several business groups who sued to block it. The three Democrats on the five-member commission who voted to approve the rule maintain that it is consistent with authority granted under the F.T.C. Act of 1914. (
Employers could face a prolonged period of legal limbo even beyond the effective date of the rule as lawsuits weave their way through the courts.
Artificial Intelligence Has a Math Problem - New York Times
-Artificial intelligent chatbots, such as Open AI’s ChatGPT, struggle with math despite being able to write poetry, summarize books, and answer questions with human-level fluency.
Chatbots are fine-tuned for determining probabilities rather than doing rules-based calculations, and language is more flexible and forgiving than math
A.I. chatbots have difficulty with math because they were never designed to do it, according to computer science professor Kristian Hammond
The world’s smartest computer scientists have created AI that is more liberal arts major than numbers whiz
Khan Academy made a significant change to its AI-powered tutor, Khanmigo, by sending numerical problems to a calculator program instead of asking the chatbot to solve them
Conversational chatbots will play an important role in education and improve math proficiency
Math is an ongoing area of research in the field.
French cosmetics chain L’Occitane to delist from Hong Kong stock exchange - Financial Times
Investors bought record amounts of 2-year US Treasury notes at auction, seeking to lock in higher interest rates before Federal Reserve cuts
Primary dealers took up only 9% of the $69bn of new two-year notes at an auction, the lowest percentage on record
Yields move inversely to price, indicating strong demand
US stocks slipped ahead of earnings results from Tesla and Alphabet
UK foreign secretary David Lammy visits India and Asean foreign ministers meet in Vietnam
Thailand announces details of its $13.8bn digital wallet stimulus
Alphabet reports double-digit growth in advertising and cloud computing revenue for Q2
KKR agrees to buy broker dealer Janney Montgomery Scott from Penn Mutual for $19bn
Alphabet revenue jump shows no sign of AI denting search business - Financial Times
Alphabet’s revenues jumped 14% in Q2, with double-digit growth in advertising and strong growth in cloud computing business
Net income was $23.6bn, up 28% from a year earlier, exceeding expectations for $22.9bn
Capital expenditure rose to $13bn, $1bn more than in the prior quarter, as Alphabet continues to invest in data centres and AI suite of products
Advertising revenue on Google search and YouTube rose 11% and 13% respectively, while Google Cloud’s services business saw a 29% increase
Alphabet is the world’s fourth most valuable listed company behind Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
Tesla misses profit estimates as Musk delays ‘robotaxi’ launch - Financial Times
Tesla missed Wall Street’s profit estimates for Q2 due to slower vehicle deliveries and large-scale lay-offs
Net income fell by 45% to $1.47bn, short of analysts’ consensus estimate
Revenue rose by 2% due to record growth in energy storage business
Gross margin fell slightly to 18% in Q2, but company-wide cost reduction remains a focus
Elon Musk prioritizes work on an autonomous taxi service over developing a new $25,000 affordable electric car
Tesla delivered 443,956 electric cars between April and June, remaining the largest EV company ahead of China’s BYD.
Payments using digital wallets surge in Britain - Financial Times
34% of British consumers used mobile contactless payments at least once a month in 2023.
The share of UK adults registered with a digital wallet also surged to 42%.
Cash accounted for 12% of all payments, down from 14% in 2022.
Contactless payments made by card and mobile made up 38%.
Lessons from the global IT outage - Financial Times
A glitch caused by a faulty software update from CrowdStrike affected 8.5mn Microsoft Windows devices, causing chaos worldwide.
The incident should serve as a wake-up call for businesses to be more aware of the threat of crashes, hacks, and data breaches as the global economy becomes more digitalised and interconnected.
Concentration of software and hardware in the hands of a few providers makes matters worse, as tech businesses tend to develop large customer bases, allowing them to collect more data, benefit from economies of scale, and improve their services.
Building resilience is essential to mitigate concentrated risks, including redundancy, diversification, air gapping, and closer collaboration between the public and private sector to share information on breaches, vulnerabilities, and stress tests. The pandemic highlighted how many businesses had become over-reliant on China-linked supply chains that supported their efficient delivery models.
Google Talks to Acquire Cybersecurity Startup Wiz Fall Apart - Wall Street Journal
Google’s talks with Wiz have fallen apart.
Wiz is now aiming for an initial public offering.
Alexa Is in Millions of Households—and Amazon Is Losing Billions - Wall Street Journal
Amazon has lost tens of billions of dollars on its devices business, which includes Echos and other products such as Kindles, Fire TV Sticks and video doorbells.
The company launched Echo smart home devices with its Alexa voice assistant in 2014, but customers mostly used it mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather.
Amazon is launching a paid tier of Alexa as part of a plan to reverse losses, but even some engineers are worried it won’t work
CEO Andy Jassy is rethinking the Bezos-era metric inside Amazon called downstream impact, which assigns a financial value to a product or service based on how customers spend within Amazon’s ecosystem after purchase
Downstream impact has been used across Amazon business lines, from its Prime membership program to its video offerings and music
Some Amazon devices can count on direct revenue, such as selling users subscriptions attached to the product
In other cases, the downstream impact idea broke down, according to people familiar with the devices business
Former CEO Jeff Bezos introduced a Kindle Fire tablet in 2011.
Google Is Keeping Cookies in Chrome After All - Wall Street Journal
Google is ending its plan to eliminate cookies in its Chrome browser after four years of efforts, delays, and disagreements with the advertising industry.
Advertisers objected to the plan to replace cookies, saying it would force them to shift spending to Google’s digital-ad products
Google will present users with a prompt to decide whether to turn cookies on or off instead of eliminating them
The transition requires significant work by many participants and will have an impact on publishers, advertisers, and everyone involved in online advertising
U.K. regulators opened an investigation into whether the plan would hurt competition in digital advertising, and Google delayed cookies’ demise beyond the last announced target date of end of this year.
A Case for Backing Up Your Precious Photos and Files at Home - Wall Street Journal
Back up your precious photos and files through the cloud to safeguard against loss
Some cloud services have unexpectedly shut down or scaled back the space they give users
Storage analysts recommend three moves: backing up files in the cloud, on solid-state drives, and keeping another copy in a remote location
HDDs store files on discs that spin, while SSDs don’t have moving parts and are more fragile
SSD prices have fallen 90% over the past decade and are cheaper long-term than cloud storage
Don’t trust important files to companies you’ve never heard of, such as Samsung or SanDisk
Transfer your files to an SSD to make the backup process completely pain-free
The Tesla of Stoves Comes With a Battery to Power Your Whole House - Wall Street Journal
Battery-powered cooktops may replace gas-powered ranges in the future
Electricity is the best way to power everything from cooking to driving
America’s infrastructure is inadequate to distribute electricity
Copper and Impulse are startups using batteries to upgrade appliances and make the power grid more robust
Impulse plans to integrate its system directly into a home’s wiring to push electricity back into the grid
The stored power could potentially be worth hundreds of dollars a year to a homeowner
In the future, Impulse may sell an array of battery-powered appliances, including hot-water heaters.