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☆ I'm 43 and still have $25,000 left to pay in student loans — but now I have to take out more debt to stay in my field. This system is ridiculous.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Anne Wen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

She's paid off 75% of her student loans, but must return to school and add up to $15,000 more debt. I've been paying my student loans this entire timeI've never defaulted on my loans, even through the COVID-19 pandemic. One of my student loans was forgiven through the Perkins Loan system after I spent five years in the profession, but that was only $5,000. I could fall back on my husband, since he's wanted to help me pay off my student loans, but it concerns me. Folks believe the hype and the politicization of what it means to take out student loans, but I've been a law-abiding citizen.

☆ Nick Clegg led Meta's decision to reinstate Trump to Facebook and Instagram. Here's how the former UK deputy prime minister charmed his way into Mark Zuckerberg's inner circle.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Philip Webster | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +18 min

Nick Clegg has risen quickly to become one of Mark Zuckerberg's closest confidants at Meta. Clegg, a former UK deputy prime minister, led the decision to reinstate Donald Trump to Facebook. It was updated on February 16, 2022 following the news that Nick Clegg had been promoted to the role of President for Global Affairs. In a challenging economic climate, the Lib Dems and their Conservative coalition partners voted to raise tuition fees. Nick Clegg (left) and Chris Huhne appearing on the BBC's "The Andrew Marr Show" in October 2007.

☆ Private venture-capital returns from one of the largest endowments reveal Union Square Ventures has been wildly successful. Sequoia and Y Combinator have lost money so far.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

USV's 2004 fund returned more than $305 million in cash from a $22 million UTIMCO investment, with an IRR of 66%. Thrive Capital, the venture firm Joshua Kushner founded in 2009, has delivered -34% IRR on two funds from late 2021. UTIMCO's $6.7 million invested has been marked down to $4.6 million. Two funds UTIMCO invested in the VC firm Initialized at the beginning of 2022 have a -5.5% IRR. Upfront Ventures, the most prominent early-stage firm in Los Angeles, has returned only $31 million though UTIMCO invested $110 million since 2015.

☆ Robinhood must face customers' lawsuit alleging it hid trading costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Jonathan Stempel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Jan 18 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday said Robinhood Markets Inc (HOOD.O) must face a lawsuit by customers who accused the online trading platform of fraudulently concealing their actual trading costs while promising "commission free" trades. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, said customers in the proposed class action had standing to sue over securities they bought and sold on Robinhood's platform. Customers led by Ji Kwon, a Californian, said they ultimately bore these costs and often got worse prices on trades than if they had gone to rivals that charged commissions. The proposed class includes U.S. users of Robinhood from Sept. 1, 2016 to June 16, 2020 who placed trades where the company received payment for order flow. The case is In re Robinhood Order Flow Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No.

☆ Tesla faked a 2016 video promoting its self-driving technology, according to a senior company engineer's deposition testimony
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tesla staged a video showing its self-driving capability, according to a company engineer's testimony. Tesla's director of Autopilot software, Ashok Elluswamy, revealed the information in a deposition in July 2022. Tesla has come under increasing scrutiny recently for its self-driving technology. Musk, however, posted that video on Twitter in 2016 as evidence that Tesla could drive itself. In footage that didn't make it into the final video, according to TechCrunch, the test car crashed into a fence in Tesla's parking lot, Elluswamy said in his deposition, according to Reuters.

☆ Watch two moments from a 2016 Tesla self-driving ad that are totally staged, according to a senior engineer
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A senior Tesla engineer testified in a deposition that the company staged a 2016 self-driving ad. In Tesla's self-driving ad from 2016, the car is able to stop at a red light. In the self-driving video, the Tesla is able to accelerate forward when the traffic light turns green. Tesla's Autopilot system is an "advanced driver assistance system" that "reduces your overall workload as a driver," according to the company website. The electric carmaker's autopilot system has come under scrutiny from regulators and customers.

☆ Tesla video promoting self-driving was staged, engineer testifies
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Hyunjoo Jin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The previously unreported testimony by Elluswamy represents the first time a Tesla employee has confirmed and detailed how the video was produced. The car is driving itself.”Elluswamy said Tesla’s Autopilot team set out to engineer and record a “demonstration of the system’s capabilities” at the request of Musk. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system,” Elluswamy said, according to a transcript of his testimony seen by Reuters. When asked if the 2016 video showed the performance of the Tesla Autopilot system available in a production car at the time, Elluswamy said, "It does not." Elluswamy said drivers could “fool the system,” making a Tesla system believe that they were paying attention based on feedback from the steering wheel when they were not.

☆ Sleep experts say you can 'catch up' on sleep but sleeping in on the weekends isn't the way to do it
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-14 | by ( Kelly Burch | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Researchers proposed it takes 4 days of quality sleep to recover from just 1 hour of sleep debt. Why it's hard to catch up on sleepPsychiatrist and sleep medicine expert, Dr. Alex Dimitriu, is of the mindset that you can catch up on sleep, but only if you haven't let your sleep debt grow too great. By definition, one hour of sleep lost equals one hour of sleep debt. "If the sleep debt is greater, the time to recover becomes markedly longer, and complete recovery may not be possible, so it's important to not let sleep debt go too far," Dimitriu, founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, told Insider. How to pay back sleep debtPaying back sleep debt is like paying back credit card debt: Try to pay all, or as much, of the total balance so that the debt doesn't grow too large.

☆ Facebook considered reviving a disused railway line to make it easier for workers to reach its Menlo Park headquarters, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-08 | by ( Ryan Hogg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Facebook spent $20 million on plans to revive a railway line that would run near its office. Meta's Juan Salazar told The New York Times it wanted to reduce congestion caused by its staff. Political pressure and impatience put pressure on plans that were abandoned after the pandemic. Slocum told the Times he approached tech companies including Facebook in 2017 to discuss securing funds. Parts of the railway were expected to be operational by 2028, per the Times report.

☆ 'One of our best years on record': With VC deals on the decline, venture-debt investors are cleaning up. But there's a dark side to startups borrowing cash.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

As the Fed keeps raising interest rates to fight inflation, venture-debt defaults could soon go up. Venture debt, like a typical venture-capital investment, involves betting big on fledgling startups that may be far off from profitability. In the first six months of the year, venture debt increased 7.5%, even as VC funding fell 8% over the same period. The year for debtArmentum's Markell said venture debt had exploded in popularity this year as traditional VC deals dwindled and startup valuations plummeted. Factoring in expected Fed rate rises, Kroll thinks these interest rates will climb to as much as 12% next year.

☆ In scathing exit memo, Meta VR expert John Carmack derides the company's bureaucracy: 'I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage.'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-17 | by ( Ashley Stewart | Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

John Carmack, the consulting CTO for Meta's virtual-reality efforts, announced his exit in an internal memo. Carmack joined Oculus in 2013 before Facebook acquired it, and moved to a new consulting role at Oculus in 2019. John Carmack, the consulting CTO for Meta's virtual-reality efforts, announced plans to leave the company Friday in an internal memo viewed by Insider. The scathing note, posted to the company's internal Workplace forum, openly criticized Meta's AR and VR work, core to its metaverse ambitions. "We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort," Carmack wrote in the memo.

☆ Venture Capitalists Seek to Buy Phoenix Suns With Potential Financing From Peter Thiel and Others
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-10 | by ( Marc Vartabedian | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Two venture capitalists have submitted a bid to buy the Phoenix Suns and Mercury professional basketball teams for $3 billion, an offer that could include financing from tech mogul Peter Thiel, according to people familiar with the matter and an offer sheet reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The group is one of a handful of potential buyers, according to the people. The bid was submitted by Jack Selby, the managing director of West Hollywood, Calif.-based investment firm Thiel Capital, which was founded by Mr. Thiel, and Jason Pressman, the managing director of Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture firm Shasta Ventures.

☆ Facebook Threatens to Pull News From Platform if Congress Passes Bill Helping Publishers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Alexandra Bruell | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Menlo Park, Calif-based Meta this year began telling publishers in the U.S. it wouldn’t continue to pay them to feature their content in Facebook’s news tab. Meta Platforms Inc. is threatening to remove news from Facebook in the U.S. if Congress passes legislation meant to help publishers team up to negotiate payments from tech companies, echoing similar warnings that the company has lobbed at various governments around the world. “If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions,” Meta tweeted on Monday as part of a longer statement condemning the bill, known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.

☆ Some Meta employees claim they're not getting promised severance
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

The employees are members of Meta's Sourcer Development Program, intended to help workers from diverse backgrounds obtain careers in corporate technology recruiting. The Sourcer Development Program is part of Meta's Pathways program, which helps people with non-traditional professional backgrounds obtain apprenticeships at the social networking giant for various roles. Several members of Meta's Sourcer Development Program told CNBC they joined Meta in April as part of the company's latest cohort. After completing the 12-month program, the employees would then be converted to full-time employees if they met the necessary criteria. The impacted Meta workers said they have not received any replies from Meta's human resources and management staff explaining their situation.

☆ 'A lot of people are going to see less money in their pocket.' Here are must-know tax changes for 2022
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Kate Dore | Cfp | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Tom Werner | DigitalVision | Getty ImagesCertain tax credits have been reducedOne possible reason for a smaller tax refund is the child tax credit and the child and dependent care tax credit have been reduced for 2022, explained certified financial planner Cecil Staton, president and wealth advisor at Arch Financial Planning in Athens, Georgia. "The big picture is a lot of people are going to see less money in their pocket," Staton said. In 2021, the child tax credit offered up to $3,600 per child under age 6, and up to $3,000 per child ages 6 through 17, with half available via upfront payments. But for 2022, the tax break reverts to the previous amount — up to $2,000 per child under age 17. You may get Form 1099-K for third-party paymentsIf you've received payments through apps like Venmo or PayPal in 2022, you may get Form 1099-K in early 2023, which reports income from third-party networks.

☆ Tech layoffs send visa holders on frantic search for employment to avoid deportation
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Annie Palmer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Workers on temporary visas often have 60 to 90 days to find a new gig so they can avoid being deported. More than 50,000 tech workers were let go from their jobs in November, according to data collected by the website Layoffs.fyi. A search for "layoffs H1B" on LinkedIn surfaces a stream of posts from workers who recently lost their jobs and are expressing concern about the 60-day unemployment window. An engineer who was recently laid off by gene-sequencing technology company Illumina said he hoped his employer would sponsor his transfer to an H-1B visa. WATCH: Tech layoffs double from October to November

☆ Andreessen Horowitz's buzzy tech publication Future is shutting down
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Rob Price | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

A source familiar with Andreessen Horowitz's content strategy confirmed to Insider that Future is shutting down. An Andreessen Horowitz spokesperson declined to comment on the record. Joe LonsdaleIn this new climate, many tech and venture firms' media strategy has shifted from glorified marketing to a more full-fledged editorial operation. In 2021, an army of more than two dozen marketers at Andreessen Horowitz doubled down on this approach. Disclosure: Melia Russell's husband is a former employee of Andreessen Horowitz.

☆ Irish watchdog fines Meta 265M euros in latest privacy case
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

The Data Protection Commission said Meta Platforms infringed sections of the EU rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, that require technical and organizational measures aimed at protecting user data. The company said it had “cooperated fully” with the Irish watchdog. “We made changes to our systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers,” Meta said in a statement. Meta was fined 17 million euro fines in March for its handling of a dozen data breach notifications. Last year, the watchdog fined Meta’s chat service WhatsApp 225 million euros for violating rules on sharing people’s data with other Meta companies.

☆ Popular tax prep software sent financial information to Meta, report finds
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Lauren Feiner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Popular tax prep software including TaxAct , TaxSlayer and H&R Block sent sensitive financial information to Facebook parent company Meta through its widespread code, known as a pixel, that helps developers track user activity on their sites, an investigation by The Markup found. In a report published with The Verge on Tuesday, the outlet found the software sent information like names, email addresses, income information and refund amounts to Meta. "Advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools," a Meta spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect." Meta considers potentially sensitive information to include information about income, loan amounts and debt status.

☆ Schneider Electric-Backed Venture Firm to Launch $520 Million Fund
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Angus Loten | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

To date, SE Ventures has 30 active investments, including climate and industrial tech ventures, a pace it expects to accelerate with the new fund, he said. About 70% have struck a commercial partnership with Schneider Electric, the company said. SE Ventures first invested in AutoGrid in the company’s Series D fundraising round in 2019. Mr. Hodson said through SE Ventures, Schneider Electric has a good record of targeting investments to areas where it wants to expand. “There’s definitely a market reality where there is a large degree of uncertainty,” Mr. Chaturvedy said.

☆ The 10 people transforming sustainability - from Patagonia's founder to the CEO of BlocPower
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Business Insider | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

Donnel Baird, CEO and Founder, BlocPowerDina Averuk/InsiderSince 2014, Baird's BlocPower — which contracts with local governments, utilities, and building owners to replace fossil fuels in buildings with cleaner alternatives like heat pumps and solar panels — has retrofitted more than 1,200 buildings in New York City and now has citywide electrification projects with Ithaca, New York, and Menlo Park, California. "Greening buildings creates a quadruple bottom line," Baird told Insider. "It creates jobs for local people, saves building owners and residents money on their utility bill, improves health by reducing pollution and reduces emissions. The question was, could you make money while doing it?"

☆ Before his epic fall, Sam Bankman-Fried was hailed as a crypto genius. Some clients saw smoke and mirrors.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Gretchen Morgenson | Gretchen Morgenson Is The Senior Financial Reporter For The Nbc News Investigative Unit. A Former Stockbroker | She Won The Pulitzer Prize In For Her | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +14 min

Until a few days ago, Sam Bankman-Fried was the king of crypto. “I’m sorry I didn’t do better,” Bankman-Fried said Tuesday in a message to investors reviewed by NBC News. The contentions of the people who spoke with NBC News are echoed in a 2019 lawsuit brought in federal court against FTX Alameda, Bankman-Fried and other executives. But the crypto market does not have the protections or price transparency found in listed stock markets, for example. FTX and Alameda, as a major crypto exchange and market maker, attracted crypto developers to list their projects for trading.

Sequoia Capital, whose offices in Menlo Park, Calif., are shown here, is writing a $150 million investment one of its funds had in FTX down to zero. A marquee roster of investors from Silicon Valley and Wall Street swarmed FTX. They invested nearly $2 billion with few strings attached and no oversight on the cryptocurrency exchange’s board, promoting it as a safe bet. Now the backers are nursing a high-profile black eye as the three-year-old company—valued at $32 billion at its peak—teeters. Venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital said on Wednesday it is writing a $150 million investment one of its funds had in FTX down to zero because of solvency risk.

☆ Analysis: Silicon Valley's greatest minds misread pandemic demand. Now their employees are paying for it.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

CNN Business —In the early months of the pandemic, Facebook only grew bigger and more central to our lives. On Wednesday, however, Zuckerberg reversed course and laid off more than 11,000 employees, marking the most significant cuts in the company’s history. In a memo to staff, Zuckerberg coughed up some of the hardest words in the English language. The Federal Reserve maintained near-zero interest rates at the time, giving tech companies easier access to capital. And private and public market valuations for tech companies only seemed to go higher.

☆ Car buried in Silicon Valley in the '90s may have been put there for insurance fraud, police say
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Phil-Helsel-Circle-Byline-Template.Jpg | Phil Helsel | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

A Mercedes-Benz found buried in the backyard of a home in an affluent San Francisco-area community may have been put there for insurance fraud, Atherton police said Thursday. The 1991 500 SL car was found buried beneath 4 to 5 feet of earth as landscapers were doing a project at the home on Oct. 20. Law enforcement personnel investigate a car found buried in a San Francisco area backyard, on Oct. 21, 2022. “Detectives are still investigating this incident and it is believed the vehicle was possibly buried for insurance fraud purposes,” Atherton Police Chief Steven D. McCulley said in Thursday’s statement. Lew was convicted in 2000 of insurance fraud after he paid undercover agents $50,000 in cash and jewelry to sink his 56-foot yacht — worth $1.2 million, NBC Bay Area has reported.

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