Elon Musk’s massive 2018 Tesla pay package restored by Delaware court

Elon Musk’s controversial $56bn pay package from Tesla was reinstated by the Delaware supreme court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the vast compensation deal as “unfathomable”.The reinstated pay package could be worth as much as $139bn today, according to the New York Times. The decision comes less than two months after Tesla shareholders approved a new plan that could be worth $1tn to Musk, already the world’s richest person, in a decade’s time. Musk’s fortune currently stands at an estimated $600bn.Rescinding the pay deal would be “inequitable”, and would leave Musk “uncompensated for his time and efforts over a period of six years”, the Delaware supreme court justices wrote, echoing arguments from Tesla board members earlier this year

‘A black hole’: families and police say tech giants delay investigations in child abuse and drug cases

Max Osterman was 18 when he connected with a drug dealer on Snapchat who used the handle skyhigh.303. Max would message him whenever he wanted to buy Percocet, and they would meet. After about a year, and just days after their last exchange, Max collapsed. The pills he ordered had been laced with fentanyl

The Com: the growing cybercrime network behind recent Pornhub hack

Ransomware hacks, data theft, crypto scams and sextortion cover a broad range of cybercrimes carried out by an equally varied list of assailants.But there is also an English-speaking criminal ecosystem carrying out these activities that defies conventional categorisation. Nonetheless, it does have a name: the Com.Short for community, the Com is a loose affiliation of cybercriminals, largely native English language speakers typically aged from 16 to 25. Its activities run from crippling the IT systems of British retailers to phoning in bomb threats to schools and encouraging teenage girls to harm themselves

Sony collars Snoopy in £340m deal to take control of Peanuts franchise

Sony has taken control of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts franchise including Snoopy and Charlie Brown in a deal worth C$630m (£340m).The Japanese conglomerate has bought 41% of Peanuts Holdings, which owns the intellectual property Schulz created, from the Canadian children’s entertainment company WildBrain.The deal raises Sony’s total stake, which it began building in 2018, to 80%. The Schulz family owns the remaining 20%.Peanuts, which first appeared as a comic strip in seven newspapers in 1950 and ran daily until the cartoonist’s death in 2000, has gone on to become a global franchise spanning TV, toys, films and theme park attractions

TikTok signs Trump-backed deal to avoid US ban

TikTok has reached a deal to form a joint venture that will allow it to continue operating in the US, five years after Donald Trump threatened to ban the social media platform over privacy and national security concerns, a move that further strained relations with China.ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, has signed a deal with Larry Ellison’s Oracle, the private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX that will allow it to retain control of its core US operations.Under the arrangement, the joint venture will take over part of TikTok’s US business, including data protection, algorithm security and content moderation.However, TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, told employees in a memo that ByteDance would continue to run US operations, including its main revenue drivers such as e-commerce, advertising and marketing.The deal ends five years of uncertainty over the future of TikTok in the US, where the platform has more than 130 million users

What will your life look like in 2035?

“Does it hurt when I do this?”“You seem to have dislocat…”A Eye: “NOOOO! The problem is a sprain in the brachial plexus due to you lifting that 10kg carton on Wednesday at 2.58pm and not eating enough blah blah”“Wow, err, thanks”In 2035, AIs are more than co-pilots in medicine, they have become the frontline for much primary care. Gone is the early morning scramble to get through to a harassed GP receptionist for help. Patients now contact their doctor’s AI to explain their ailments. It quickly cross-checks the information against the patient’s medical history and provides a pre-diagnosis, putting the human GP in a position to decide what to do next