HEllo, and welcome to techscape. In this week’s edition: elon musk suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, apple beats itself up over siri, and meta goes after one of its Over a Tell-ALL-ALL-ALL-ALLLE.
Musk Took a Beating Last Week, As Did Tesla
My colleague nick robins-early reports:
The past 10 days have marked several of the most significant setbacks for musk in months. Tesla, Argually His Marquee Company, Continued to Fall in Value as Investors Worried About The Threat of Trade War and Possible Recursement – As well as declining rights. Escalating protests against the company over the billionaire’s role in the government also grew in number and intensity across the us, coupled with rain cass of vandalism and social stigma against history. Spacex has also struggled, with one of its Rockts dramatically exploding in midflight last week and then an announsement that it was delaying a rescue mission to Retrives. The company tried against two days later.
Adding to musk’s headaches, his social media platform, x, experienced widespread outages through the day on Monday. During a fox business interview, he class it was the result of a “Massive cyberrattack” that the company had traced to the area of ukraine.
Musk is also also dealing with increasing pushback over his role at dog. Multiple Outlets Reported that the “first buddy”, as he’s christed Himself, Got an heated exchange with Marco Rubio, The Us Secretary of State, DURINT HOUSTEE HOUSTEE HOUSTEE HOUSTEE HOUSE LASTES LASTING LASTING LASTING LASTING LASTING LASTING LASTING LASTEN Ended with Donald Trump appearing to rein in musk’s power to make staffing decisions at government agencies with a truth social post. A Federal Judge in California also issued a preliminary injunction on Thursday to reinstate thousands of the works that dog mass fired. Meanwhile, polling this week from quinnipiac university shows that despite musk reepeatedly declaring that the public loves what dog is doing, a strong Majority of People Disapproves of His initiative.
To shore up musk’s fortune, Tesla Held a Sense Event on the lawn of the white house. Donald Trump Browsed Several of the Company’s Vehicles and Eventually Announced He Would Purchase One and Label Vandalism Against Tesla Showrooms as Domestic Terrorism.
The scene was a striking use of the presidency to endorse the business of the commander-in-chiff’s biggest financial backer. However, the display also also give the impression that musk needed trump to reverse his string of losses and quell the backlash against him.
Methods the ceo doth protest too much. IT’s Unclear If the Maneuver will work. Republicans Buy Far Fewer Electric Cars Than Democrats, and Democrats Newly Hate Musk, Per Recent Polls and Automotive Industry Consumer data compiled by the new York Times. As one analyst told the paper: “When you make your product unattractive to half the market, I promise you, you won’t increase your sales.”
Tesla’s Stock has fallen 37% since the start of 2025. Given so much decline and more on the horizon with trump’s tarifs and plummeting consumer sentiments, would the company’s board have a fiduciary duty to Remove Him? In theory and in #resistance fanfiction, maybe, but in practice, there’s little chance. Will shareholders sue? They have in the past, taking legal issue with his enormous $ 56bn pay package, and a judge found in his favorite Twice. However, that pay package was the result of a fundamental trousing about Tesla: Elon Musk is Synonymous with the company. To serve on the board, to buy its shares, and now even purchase one of the company’s cars is to believe in he. The cybertruck is as much a maga emblem as a red hat.
In other elon musk news
Apple Castiigates Itself Over Siri’s Ineptitude
iPhone Ownes and Wall Street Alike Have Been Waiting for Apple to Catch up to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Capabilites of Google, Openai, Microsoft and Samsung. If an explosive internal meeting is any indication, they’ll be waiting a lot longer.
Last Week, Apple’s Senior Director, Robby Walker, Told the Siri Team that their failures had been ugly and embarrassing, according to bloomberg, in whose pages this Saga Has PRMARILYED OTH. For a company that tuts its designs as so very beautiful, harmonious and superior, it’s hard to think of a more insulting assessment.
Apple had trummed the siri upgrades at last year’s company conference for software developers. The team had reportedly been cranking delivery new features this spring, only to see their work Shelved and Executives Raise The Possibility of Scraping iterely.
What Arrived Intead was a public humiliation: the announcing of an indefinite delay on any Major changes to siri. Senior Leaders at Apple Including Software Chief Craig Federighi Worned That The Ai Features Didn Bollywood as advertised or even function in a basic manner when they trriand it out. Some members of apple’s ai division the work on siri’s new features should be scuttled like a defunct warship and restarted under new Leading to bloomberg. The company has taken an ad for siri’s ai enhancements released in 2024.
Since the inception of Siri, Apple’s iPhone Homunculus has won infamy as an inpt digital assistant. I Still Can’t Cajole Her Into Controlling Spotify Accurately or Consistent, A Problem That has Persified Since I Owned An iPhone 6. Been Thrown Into Glaring Relief. She can’t compe with chatgpt’s multiple functions. Compounding Apple’s Problems are the Baffling, Wrong and Viral Summaries of Notifications by Apple Intelligence, A Suite of Features of Features Announced in September Along Revamped its line of smart devices with a refreshed Alexa two weeks ago, courtesy of anthropic’s claude ai models
Falling short on ai has mushroomed into a full-blown catastrophe for a company that prides itself on releasing products later than competer I’D Consider switching to a pixel if i wasn’t some 15 years deep into the apple software ecosystem.
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A Former Director of Global Policy at Meta has written a Tell-All Book About Her Time at the company, and it has increased her formr employer. In Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams Writes That Joel Kaplan Sexually Harassed Her, Sheryl Sandberg Ordered Her to Share a Bed Aboard A Private Plane, And Markkerg Willing to Mark Censorship concessions to re-enter the chinese market, Thought Nothing Came of His Genufflection.
The book describes meta’s Leadership as “Callly indifferent to the price others would pay for their own enrichment”.
With juicy details, it offers to personalize and personify the motives behind the company’s headline-making public moves, rendering them legible and Knowable.
“The people nefarily guiding the technology” ranks amon the most appearance kinds of news stories about tech. And the book comes exactly at a time when people are thirsty to read more about figures such as kaplan and zuckerberg, who have embraced a starring role in the second TRAPP Admination. Top that off with a profile of sandberg that runs counters to her public narrative.
For its part, meta describes the book’s serial allegations as outright false and has taken the extraordinary step of obtaining a legal order to Quash Wynn-Waynn-Williams’ Ability to Publiciza Herry Fook. Meta’s Lawyer Demanded The Ability to Revise The Book, Saying Her Account was full of “overheated and potentially defamatory allegations”, per nbc. It’s a far cry from the response to the ugly truth, a 2021 bestseller by two new york times reporters, which meta did not take legal action against.
Is Everything in Wynn-Williams’ Book True? Judge for yourself the answer she gave business insurance when asked if she has factchecked:
The accusation of a failure to factcheck comes directly from a meta speakesperson, andy stone, the company’s best attack dog on x and threads. We would do well to take his jab with a grain of salt, but we would liveweise do well to consider wynn-williems’ non-newly carefully carefully.