Business

Ars Technica reports: Tesla has revived a contract clause that says the electric carmaker could sue Cybertruck buyers for $50,000 or more if they resell during their first year of ownership. As we reported a month ago, the Cybertruck-only clause was added to the public version of Tesla’s Motor Vehicle Order Agreement Terms & Conditions and then deleted after the …

Ars Technica reports: Elon Musk yesterday appealed to the Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to terminate his settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk has claimed he was coerced into the deal with the SEC and that it violates his free speech rights, but the settlement has been upheld by every court that’s reviewed it so far. In …

CBS News reports: McDonald’s said it is opening a new chain called CosMc’s that will focus on coffee and other drinks, a step that is viewed as a challenge to Starbucks and Dunkin’ as the fast-food giant seeks to boost afternoon sales. The company opened its first CosMc’s location in Illinois on Thursday. The rationale for the restaurant stems for …

The New York Daily News reports: According to authorities who uncovered the scheme during their “Operation Bad Elf” crackdown, a shocking number of gift cards were found to have been tampered with. Police say thieves have been stealing gift cards, replacing the barcodes with their own, and putting them back on the shelves. “When the consumer goes to check out, …

The New York Times reports: A national lobbying group has retracted its startling estimate that “organized retail crime” was responsible for nearly half the $94.5 billion in store merchandise that disappeared in 2021, a figure that helped amplify claims that the United States was experiencing a nationwide wave of shoplifting. The group, the National Retail Federation, edited that claim last …

Reuters reports: A former executive at Twitter Inc, now called X Corp, has filed a lawsuit claiming he was fired after Elon Musk acquired the company for objecting to budget cuts that would prevent the company from complying with a U.S. government settlement over its security practices. Alan Rosa, who was Twitter’s global head of information security, filed the lawsuit …

Ars Technica reports: AI face detection now counts among the tools that could be used to help adult sites effectively estimate UK user ages and block minors from accessing pornography, the UK’s Office of Communications said in a press release on Tuesday. The only foreseeable problem, Ofcom noted: There’s little evidence that the AI method of age estimation will be …

Axios reports: A factory planning to pump out 10,000 two-legged robots a year is taking shape in Salem, Oregon — the better to help Amazon and other giant companies with dangerous hauling, lifting and moving. Agility Robotics says that its RoboFab manufacturing facility will be the first to mass-produce humanoid robots, which could be nimbler and more versatile than their …

TechCrunch reports: 23andMe spokesperson Katie Watson confirmed that hackers accessed the personal information of about 5.5 million people who opted-in to 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, which allows customers to automatically share some of their data with others. The stolen data included the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels, the percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports and self-reported location. …

Bloomberg News reports: Alaska Air Group Inc. agreed to buy rival Hawaiian Holdings Inc. for $1.9 billion in cash and debt, challenging the Biden administration’s aggressive stance on mergers that has already derailed one partnership between carriers. Alaska will pay $18 per share in cash in a deal that includes about $900 million of Hawaiian’s debt, according to a statement …

Reuters reports: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday is set to hear a challenge by President Joe Biden’s administration to the legality of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement, a deal that if approved would shield its wealthy Sackler family owners from lawsuits over their role in the country’s opioid epidemic. Purdue’s owners under the settlement would receive immunity in …

Reuters reports: Walmart said on Friday it is not advertising on social media platform X, one of the latest brands to say it has dropped the Elon Musk-owned site. “We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found other platforms to better reach our customers,” a Walmart spokesperson said. The platform has struggled to retain advertisers since Musk acquired the company …

Courthouse News reports: A 12-year-old federal antitrust case against the nation’s largest egg producers came to a tentative close on Friday, after a jury delivered a verdict awarding four food corporations $17.7 in damages. Jurors in awarded Kraft, Kellogg’s, General Mills and Nestle the money after a two-day damages trial in Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse, the second half of a …

Axios reports: Mark Cuban tells Axios that he never plans to run for any elective office, cooling off speculation that began after he struck a deal earlier this week to sell his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks. Cuban had previously told NBC News that he had “no plans” to run for president in 2024, but hadn’t issued a blanket …

Deadline reports: Elon Musk made plain his view of the widespread advertiser withdrawal this month from X, formerly Twitter. “Don’t advertise,” he advised any marketer with misgivings. “Somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising?! Blackmail me with money? Go f–k yourself. Go. F–k. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.” The remarks came at the beginning of …

The New York Times reports: Meta has received more than 1.1 million reports of users under the age of 13 on its Instagram platform since early 2019 yet it “disabled only a fraction” of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint against the company brought by the attorneys general of 33 states. Instead, the social media giant “routinely …

The New York Times reports: X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter, could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year as dozens of major brands pause their marketing campaigns after its owner, Elon Musk, endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory this month. Internal documents viewed by The New York Times this …

Reuters reports: Florida judge found “reasonable evidence” that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and other managers knew the automaker’s vehicles had a defective Autopilot system but still allowed the cars to be driven unsafely, according to a ruling. Judge Reid Scott, in the Circuit Court for Palm Beach County, ruled last week that the plaintiff in a lawsuit over a …

Bloomberg Law reports: General Mills Inc., a Kraft Heinz Co. unit, Kellogg Co., and Nestle SA for years likely overpaid for eggs because the nation’s largest producers and two trade groups conspired to restrict the supply, an Illinois federal jury decided on Tuesday. A US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois jury of nine men and three women …

Bloomberg News reports: In February 2019, Binance Holdings Ltd.’s then-Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim acknowledged that the cryptocurrency exchange was being used to funnel money to Hamas, explaining to a colleague that terrorists normally sent “small sums.” That apparently nonchalant attitude caught up with Binance and its chief executive officer, Changpeng Zhao [photo], on Tuesday. In announcing $4.3 billion in …