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Elon Musk under federal investigation over Twitter deal:
Elon Musk is under a federal investigation related to his $44 billion takeover deal for Twitter.
The news came from a court filing made public on Thursday about the latest in ongoing legal disputes between the billionaire and the social network.
While the filing said he was under investigation, it did not say what the focus was.
"This game of 'hide the ball' must end," the company said in the court filing.
Mr Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter - which sued Mr Musk in July to force him to close the deal - said lawyers for the Tesla CEO had claimed "investigative privilege" when refusing to hand over documents it wanted.
It also said it had requested that Mr Musk's attorneys produce their communications with federal authorities months ago, but they had not done so.
Musk Says SpaceX Cannot Fund Ukraine's Starlink 'Indefinitely'
Musk says SpaceX cannot fund Ukraine's Starlink 'indefinitely':
Billionaire Elon Musk has said his space exploration company SpaceX cannot "indefinitely" fund the Starlink internet service in war-hit Ukraine, days after a proposal to end the conflict that included the country ceding some territory to Russia called his support into question.
"SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable," Musk said on Twitter.
Musk activated Starlink, a satellite internet service operated by SpaceX, in late February after Ukraine's internet services were disrupted due to Russia's invasion. Its internet terminals have been crucial in keeping the Ukrainian military online.
Musk said Starlink was spending nearly $20m a month – which he called a "burn" – for maintaining satellite services in Ukraine. He recently said SpaceX had spent about $80m to enable and support Starlink in Ukraine.
However, Al Jazeera reports earlier today (16 Oct):
Elon Musk has announced his company will continue to pay for Starlink satellite internet services in war-torn Ukraine a day after suggesting he cannot keep funding the project.
“The hell with it,” the world’s richest man wrote on Saturday on Twitter.
“Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”
Although it was not immediately clear whether Musk’s change of mind was genuine, he later appeared to indicate it was. When a Twitter user told Musk “No good deed goes unpunished”, he replied, “Even so, we should still do good deeds”.
(Score: 3, Troll) by Entropy on Sunday October 16 2022, @04:44PM (13 children)
Then months and tens of millions of dollars later people are whining because he doesn't want to keep spending tens of millions of dollars to give
people free Internet?
It's like buying someone a meal, and then them complaining you don't keep doing it for months or years after every single day. He probably gave
away more money than most people have, give the guy some credit. How many millions of dollars have you sent Ukraine?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2022, @05:13PM (1 child)
I am not worth 264.000.000.000 USD. 100 million USD to the man is 100 USD to a well off person in the US. Apples to apples, my dude.
With great
powerwealth, comes great responsibility... especially if none of that wealth is earned.(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16 2022, @06:34PM
I wonder if Musk also employs a fifty cent army, because they are downmodding comments like the one above...
Nah, Musk doesn't do that, he know his shills are dumb enough to do it for free.
(Score: 2) by higuita on Sunday October 16 2022, @05:29PM (9 children)
Isn't like that, but that may look as that, by his (Musk) own fault...
US and other countries requested and paid the initial starlink deployment in Ukraine
Must pick up the momentum and reported that starlink was giving those terminals and service... while they are giving the service, the terminals were paid... basically trying to take the credits for the initiative, to look good
Ukraine used the base stations... A LOT ... if it is all military or if some people are also downloading torrents is not clear... but the usage was much higher than expected
Ukraine also get many base stations destroyed, so they want to replace them (and requested new 500 base stations per month) (unknown who will pay, if they end being delivered)
Musk see armament being paid millions for their goods, yet starlink didn't had any profit from this (the equipment) and only expenses, higher than expected
Musk report that US and others need to pay for the service, or else starlink will not be able to support that for much longer
Musk also notice that Russia will never open hand of Crimeia and that Ukraine will also refuse to do that. This is a deadlock, that will push the war for many years. While Russia can, in the worse case use nukes, to avoid losing the war, Ukraine hope is to trigger a world war 3 and NATO enter the war. Ukraine leaders are really trying to escalate the conflict, either total win or get totally destroyed, with no room for peace talks. (in ANY war, peace talks require compromises from both parties, that is the way it works. If both parties think they will win, neither will make any concessions on their final, and usually unrealistic, total win objectives)
Finally, armament industry, Turkey and Azerbaijan are the only one really winning with this war, everyone else are losing, so having a long conflict means many years of problems for everyone else
Don't be
(Score: 2) by higuita on Sunday October 16 2022, @05:43PM
ignore the last line, forgot to remove that :)
(Score: 0, Interesting) by legont on Sunday October 16 2022, @06:13PM (5 children)
It's not only Crimea. The four freshly attached districts can't be removed from Russia unless constitution is changed. No matter who is to rule in the future, it's quite impossible short of destruction of Russia.
Back to SpaceX, it's the only way Ukrainian military can communicate. Everything else is destroyed already. I am sure Russia will attempt to bring SpaceX down, at least over Ukraine, before the next stage of the war - likely within a month.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tizan on Monday October 17 2022, @05:39AM (1 child)
huh ? It is not part of Russia ...It is disputed at best. Crimea and the other oblasts have been in Ukraine since the fall of USSR and as such recognized the UN and other countries...So Mexico claiming California back and putting it in its constitution would not make it part of Mexico, would it now ?
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday October 17 2022, @10:41PM
No, if Mexico claimed California in her constitution, it would not make it Mexican. However, it would likely mean that total military defeat would be required to change their mind.
A better example would be for Russia trying to return Alaska. Before 1959 it'd be remotely possible. After that it is not; not without destroying the US first.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by higuita on Monday October 17 2022, @11:35AM (2 children)
like i said, if peace is what both parties want, all those "details" can be arranged. If agreed that Crimea ( and/or any other territory) was Russia, Ukraine would change their laws to do so... if it was set that they were Ukraine, Russia would change their own laws. Something in between, both would need to change their laws to reflect that. For peace talks, both parties need to want peace, if they want war, not much success is expected
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday October 17 2022, @10:48PM (1 child)
That's because you don't believe that Russia is actually a country of law. You believe Putin can do anything he wants, which is very far from truth. Putin is limited by many factors, including Russia's constitution. No one can get enough votes in Russia's parliament to get Crimea and now four more areas back. Not without destroying Russia. That's why the stakes are so high.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2022, @11:04PM
The Russian constitution is routinely violated by the government. Freedom of assembly doesn't exist despite being spelled out in Article 31. Of course, Putin has had no trouble getting the rag amended to allow him to continue being President in 2024.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 16 2022, @10:05PM (1 child)
Not true. Only part of those initial costs were paid for. Musk payed 70% of the cost, out of pocket.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by higuita on Monday October 17 2022, @12:31PM
Well, those 70% i read as starlink SERVICE donating, the other 30% is either paid by international countries or companies or privates. This number was not related to the base stations equipment
The exact numbers are unknown, much of this are hidden. It is known that the US, UK, France and Poland send starlink base stations, 3670 in first shipment (1500 paid by the USA), 5000 later on and it is said that should be around 25k terminals in Ukraine. Poland reported that they they paid 9k terminals, that alone is 34% of the total of terminals in Ukraine... and Poland is not as rich as USA, UK and France...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietly-paying-millions-send-starlink-terminals-ukraine-contrary-spacexs-claims/ [washingtonpost.com]
This one reports that 85% of the base stations were paid by countries
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html [cnn.com]
As i said, Musk tried to gain the credits for other people actions (something he have done several times), while he is paying much of the service, others paid much of the terminals
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Monday October 17 2022, @12:32AM
He has no problems taking government subsidies for his other ventures.