DJT stock falls after Donald Trump returns to X ahead of Elon Musk interview

Alexandra Canal
·Senior Reporter
Updated Tue, Aug 13, 2024,

Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT) stock fell over 1% in premarket trading on Tuesday, continuing its decline after dropping Monday afternoon. The sell-off followed former President Donald Trump's return to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and after his much-anticipated conversation with Elon Musk.

It was the first time Trump had posted on his X account since Aug. 24, 2023.

Shares of the parent company of Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, closed down around 5% to trade near $25.

On Friday, DJT reported second quarter results that revealed a net loss of $16.4 million, about half of which was tied to expenses related to the company's SPAC deal. The company also reported revenue of just under $837,000 for the quarter ending June 30, a 30% year-over-year drop.

In April, an updated regulatory filing showed Trump Media reported sales of just over $4 million as net losses reached nearly $60 million for the full year ending Dec. 31. The company warned it expects losses to continue amid greater profitability challenges.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (DJT)

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Shares of DJT have been on a bumpy ride in recent months, oscillating between highs and lows.

In June, the stock popped (then fell) after current commander in chief Joe Biden stumbled in his first presidential debate of 2024 with Trump. Biden dropped out of the race one month later.

Since Biden's announcement, shares have remained under pressure as vice president Kamala Harris, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, tracks ahead of Trump in the latest polling.

In May, Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records intended to influence the 2016 presidential campaign — a verdict that sent shares down 5% the day after the conviction.


Trump Media went public on the Nasdaq after merging with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp.

Shares have fallen about 50% since the company's public debut at the end of March.

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Bozeman, Mont., Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Trump founded Truth Social after he was kicked off major social media apps like Facebook (META) and Twitter following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in 2021. Trump has since been reinstated on those platforms.

Trump maintains a roughly 60% stake in DJT. At current levels of around $25 a share, Trump Media boasts a market cap of roughly $3.39 billion, giving the former president a stake worth around $2 billion. Right after the company's public debut, Trump's stake was worth just over $4.5 billion.

In late April, the stock hit a milestone that secured Trump an additional $1.2 billion in cash. Stakeholders, however, are still subject to a six-month lockup period before selling or transferring shares.

StockStory aims to help individual investors beat the market.

Alexandra Canal is a Senior Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @allie_canal, LinkedIn, and email her at alexandra.canal@yahoofinance.com.

Kamala Harris Campaign Trolls ‘Slurring’ Trump and Musk Using Their Own Words During X Livestream

Stephanie Kaloi
Mon, August 12, 2024 

The Kamala Harris campaign trolled Elon Musk and Donald Trump in real time during the much-hyped and subsequently much-mocked “conversation” with Trump that Musk hosted on X.

At one point during the conversation, the Harris team pointed out that Trump was “slurring” while arguing that climate change isn’t a problem because he’ll “have more oceanfront property.”

The X account Kamala HQ first shared an older tweet from Musk in which he wrote, “Donald Trump will be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.” Kamala HQ retweeted the post and simply captioned it, “Interesting.”

The team also trolled Trump from his platform of choice, Truth Social, where they reshared a 2023 post in which the former president mocked political rival Rick Desantis’ own failed interview on X.

The campaign also sent out an email to supporters with the subject line, “The two worst people you know are live this evening,” and an opening that pointedly called Musk’s website Twitter and refused to call it X.

After the discussion ended, the Harris campaign released a statement mocking it as “whatever that was,” and also poking fun at the glitchy start that delayed the interview by more than half an hour. Musk blamed the delay, without providing evidence, on a “massive DDOS attack,” though it should be noted that previous events he’s held on Spaces were beset by similar problems.

The campaign also dismissed Trump and Musk as “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.”

Kamala HQ weren’t the only people who took advantage of the failure to roast Musk and Trump. Antonio Arellano, vice president of communications at NextGen America, wrote on X, “The Elon <> Trump interview just crashed. Just like his campaign will in November.”

Journalist Aaron Rupar shared a photo from “The Simpsons” of Homer Simpson pouring water on a computer system and wrote on X, “twitter engineers logging on ahead of the Elon/Trump space.”

As it became apparent the planned conversation was not only going to begin late but was going to begin very, very late, others began to join the mix. MSNBC’s Tim Miller tweeted, “Elon probably shouldn’t have fired all those childless cat ladies maybe one of them could have figured out how to successfully host an interview on this platform.”

Miller later added, “Hopefully the people working on the Neuralink chip Elon wants to plant in our brains doesn’t overlap with the team in charge of the live audio blog he can’t get to work.”

xx

The post Kamala Harris Campaign Trolls ‘Slurring’ Trump and Musk Using Their Own Words During X Livestream appeared first on TheWrap.

Opinion

Trump rambles, slurs his way through Elon Musk interview. It was an unmitigated disaster.

Rex Huppke, USA TODAY
Mon, August 12, 2024 

For a fascism-curious billionaire who loves cuddling up to right-wing loons, Elon Musk sure is good at making right-wing politicians look stupid.

Former President Donald Trump had loudly trumpeted a planned Monday night interview with Musk that would stream on X. But much like the disastrous X-platformed launch of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, the Musk/Trump interview failed to launch, leaving social media users laughing at the collective incompetence.

Since Vice President Kamala Harris rose to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket last month, Trump’s reelection campaign has been flailing. His childish attacks against her aren’t working. His racist comments about her mixed-race heritage have repelled all but his most loyal supporters. His vice presidential pick, JD Vance, becomes less likable every time he speaks.

This illustration photo shows former US President Donald Trump mugshot on X (formerly Twitter), on August 24, 2023.

So his answer, weirdly, was to sit down with Musk and talk to what would undoubtedly be a very online audience that doesn’t represent the broader electorate. Had the conversation gone off without a hitch, it still would have been odd and largely useless for Trump’s effort to halt Harris’ momentum.
Trump's interview with Elon Musk was an unmitigated disaster

But the online interview went off (the rails) with a multitude of hitches. X users erupted with either frustration or laughter as the planned start time passed, and nothing could be accessed. It took more than 40 minutes before the interview could start and be heard by anyone. It was amateur hour, the last thing a campaign struggling to project competence needed.

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally held along his running mate Senator JD Vance, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., August 3, 2024.

In May 2023, when DeSantis' presidential campaign premiered with a glitch-tastic interview with Musk on what was then called Twitter, Trump mocked the debacle, writing on social media: “Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”

On behalf of DeSantis, allow me to say this: HAH!
Forget the glitches, Trump's X interview got worse when he started talking

Of course, things didn’t get better for Trump once the interview was able to proceed.

Trump says AI did it: Trump blames Harris' crowds on AI, so let's all assume everything we don't like is fake!

He was rambling, babbling on about crowd sizes and immigration and President Joe Biden and whatever else seemed to pass through his mind. He was also badly slurring his words, raising questions about his health, and doing nothing to knock down rising concerns about his age and well-being.

He sounded like a disoriented, racist Daffy Duck.
Elon Musk is no Barbara Walters – his interview skills stink

Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk speaks with other delegates on Day 1 of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Britain on Nov. 1, 2023.

Musk, meanwhile, has the interviewing skills of a stoned introvert. He did little but cheerlead Trump and agree with every bizarro thing that fell out of his mouth, while occasionally going on the kind of odd right-wing tangents you’d expect from a man too rich to ever be told to pipe down.

I’m not going to quote anything Trump said in the interview because it was either too stupid to merit transcription or a mere repetition of the nonsense he spouts at every rally he holds.

Harris can beat Trump: I was wrong about Kamala Harris. And that's a huge problem for Donald Trump

A big part of Trump’s problem right now is he has become almost unbearably boring. Build a wall. Drill, baby, drill. Marxist, socialist something-something. Harris only recently became Black. Blah, blah, blah.

Musk gave Trump the same gift he gave Ron DeSantis. Whomp whomp.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are seen at the Firing Room Four after the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S. May 30, 2020.

So for Trump, sitting down with a rich weirdo few people like and slurring his way through an interview that failed to launch was, in the words of one Donald J. Trump, “a DISASTER!”

Musk, with his social-media ineptness and unmerited sense of self-importance, made DeSantis look like a fool. And now he’s done the same to Trump.

Heck, if Musk keeps this up, I might start to like him.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

Trump’s interview with Musk devolves into yet another X catastrophe

Brittany Gibson

POLITICO US
Mon, August 12, 2024 



Elon Musk guaranteed entertainment. He delivered technical difficulties instead.

Musk planned to host GOP nominee Donald Trump for an interview “Live on X,” formerly Twitter Spaces,” at 8 p.m. But for the second time in the 2024 presidential election, the social media site was glitchy and many users apparently couldn’t listen to the interview.

Musk posted that “there appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down,” adding that he may proceed with the interview with a smaller set of listeners. DDOS stands for “distributed denial of service.”

The interview started about 45 minutes late.

The swirl of posts about technical difficulties echoed Musk’s previous X Live event with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who launched his Republican presidential primary campaign on an X live interview with Musk. As appeared to happen with Trump’s event, the site’s livestream portal, which is audio only, crashed.


“I’m assuming all the Trump supporters who ridiculed DeSantis for the crashing of his Twitter Space with Musk will do the same here. LOLOLOLOL,” wrote conservative commentator Erick Erickson, with a clown face emoji.

Musk posted ahead of the event with Trump that he was “going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance.” But these precautionary measures couldn’t save the platform from crashing.

Some X users were able to enter the livestream portal, but as Bloomberg’s Stephanie Lai posted, “We’re ten minutes in and there is still background music playing.”

Many other users couldn’t enter at all, getting either a gray-toned webpage where the portal would usually pop up or an unavailable notification on the mobile app.

Trump’s campaign spokesperson claimed that the GOP nominee and Musk were “breaking the internet.”

Musk’s interview with Trump was supposed to be the third in a series with 2024 presidential candidates who have interested the tech mogul this year. But Musk has now pledged to put his full support — and X feed real estate — behind Trump’s third campaign. The multibillionaire has the potential to boost Trump’s reelection chances with contributions from his personal fortune and mobilizing his devoted online followers.

When the interview finally started, with about 1 million people tuned into the livestream, Trump and Musk discussed the assaination attempt that the former president survived before pivoting to verbal attacks on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now the Democratic nominee.

During the unstructured interview, Musk often agreed with Trump on issues like immigration, inflation and crime. Both men during the hour-plus interview rambled at times over the criminal cases Trump is facing as well as the ongoing foreign wars where the U.S. is providing aid.

“That war had zero chance of happening if I was there,” Trump said of the Russia-Ukraine war. And he said “this stupid administration” allowed inflation to happen.

Trump also chastised Harris pledging over the weekend in Nevada to end taxes on tips — a proposal Trump first floated at a rally in Las Vegas in June. He also repeated his criticism of Harris over her role as border czar in Biden’s administration.

“She was the border czar, and you people can’t allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign. Now she’s trying to say she wasn’t really involved,” Trump said of Harris.

Trump also praised Musk for his tough business practices, specifically breaking strikes at his businesses.

“You walk in and you just say, “You want to quit?” They go on strike. I won’t mention the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s ok, you’re all gone. You’re all gone,’” the former president said. “And you are the greatest.”

Musk has previously made donations to a mix of Republicans and Democrats, according to disclosures to the Federal Election Commission. His last disclosed political donation was made in November 2020, an election cycle when he wrote checks to both Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), among others. In the midterms before that, Musk wrote checks each for $33,900 for the Republican and Democratic House campaign arms.

The billionaire is now backing a new super PAC to support Trump, where he will potentially make his first political contributions of the 2024 election cycle. America PAC will file its first financial disclosures in October.

“She’ll be worse than him,” Trump said of Harris. “Because she’s a believer in the radical left and he wasn’t.”

“I think you’re right,” Musk said.

Trump leans into religious extremism to energize rightwing evangelicals

Adam Gabbatt
August 5, 2024

THE GUARDIAN

Donald Trump campaigns in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on 31 July 2024.Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images


Donald Trump, now facing a tougher challenge in the US election after Joe Biden stepped down in favor of Kamala Harris, is increasingly leaning into religious extremism aimed at energizing a key section of his support base: socially conservative Christians.

Fears that Trump would be an authoritarian leader if elected seemed to be realized last week, when he told a group of Christian supporters they “would not have to vote” in four years if he becomes president.

“My theory would be that since Harris has entered the race, Trump has recognized that he’s on shakier ground,” said Matthew D Taylor, author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy.

“If you watched the RNC and saw the discourse there, [Republicans] really were quite confident that they were going to kind of have a cakewalk to victory in November.

Related: ‘We have to be voting biblically’: the Courage Tour rallies Christians to get Trump in office

“I think there’s, there’s more anxiety there now. I think Trump is dialing up religious dog whistles, and sometimes just straight up whistles to really galvanize and submit that religion’s religious support.”

Since 2016, Trump has become an unlikely hero for Christian nationalists – a loose grouping of evangelical Christians who believe the US was founded as a Christian nation, and want to see Christianity feature prominently in American life and politics.

After a stumbling start – during his first run for president the thrice-married Trump struggled to name a single Bible verse, referred to the Eucharist as a “little cracker”, and put money in the communion plate during a church visit – the relationship was cemented when Trump-installed supreme court justices overturned Roe v Wade.

The bond between Trump and Christian nationalists has now deepened to the extent that Trump is comfortable with comparing himself with their messiah, while some on the religious right have come to believe that the one-term president has been chosen, or anointed, by God himself, especially after a recent failed assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Over the past couple of weeks, as Harris has posed a threat that Republicans apparently didn’t see coming, and Trump has been questioned over appointing JD Vance as his running mate, he has looked for the support of these religious groups.

The speech at Turning Point’s Believers’ Summit, a gathering of Christians and Republicans that had the stated aim of “ultimately turning our nation towards the Lord”, was the furthest Trump has gone yet in appealing to this Christian base.

“Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” Trump said in his speech, where he also repeated a promise to form “a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias”, which would investigate “harassment and persecution against Christians in America”.

The crowd at the Believers’ Summit was a gathering of the more extreme type of American Christian, and came days after the Trump campaign launched a “Believers for Trump” coalition, backed by controversial religious figures who reinforced the sense that the base was being pandered to

I think the more overt Christian appeals are maybe a little bit of desperation, but also it’s a tried and true method for them

Matthew D Taylor

Those backers included Eric Metaxas, an anti-vaxxer and conservative radio host, who in the press release accompanying the event claimed that “American Christians are falling for the same religious lies” that German christians succumbed to as the Nazi party ascended in the 1930s”, and who recently retweeted a post on X which discussed “the way to wipe that smug, bitchy smirk off Kamala’s face”.

Taylor said there is a distinction between Christians who merely support Trump and those – like the people at the Believers’ Summit – who have a “religious attachment” to the former president. Those people, who include an array of religious leaders, see Trump in religious terms and have attached “spiritual narratives” to him: one example being the comparison of Trump to King Cyrus, who, according to the Bible, liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity, despite himself being a Persian ruler.

The real goal with Trump’s appeal to this crowd is about more than just winning individual votes, Taylor said.

“I think the more overt Christian appeals are maybe a little bit of desperation, but also it’s a tried and true method for them, of drumming up more and more support and the truth is the religious voters who have a religious attachment to Trump are not just voters – they’re force multipliers,” Taylor said.

“If somebody believes that it is God’s will for Donald Trump to be elected, and they believe that there are demonic and satanic forces pushing back against God’s will, and that they need to be active and pushing against [those things] to see Trump elected. That is a level of political fervor and ardency that is very, very valuable to a candidate, because those are people who are then talking to their friends, who are then mobilizing some of these groups.”

The assassination attempt, Taylor said, “added even more certainty for these folks that God wants Trump to be elected”.

At the Republican national convention, held days after the shooting, speaker after speaker leaned into this idea that God had been at work.

Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, suggested that it was “the devil”; Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Arkansas governor, said “God almighty” had saved Trump; and Ben Carson claimed that God had “lowered a shield of protection over Donald Trump”. Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief who was killed in the shooting, was rarely mentioned.

Trump is appealing to a specific type of Christian, Rev Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, said in a statement. Raushenbush said Trump is trying to reinforce his popularity with the religious right, who do not represent every person of faith.

“The majority of religious people in this country are alarmed and threatened by Trump’s promise to hand Christian nationalists the keys to power. Their agenda hopes to repress diversity and difference and impose one extreme religious worldview on all of us,” he said.

“Trump’s shameless appeals to ‘my beautiful Christians’ are unsettling and infuriating to the many millions of American Christians who proudly believe in pluralistic democracy and healthy boundaries between religion and government.”

The leaning in has continued since Trump made his incendiary speech at the Believers’ Summit. Jake Schneider, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, sent an email out on Tuesday which falsely accused Harris of supporting “taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand without limits until birth”, which was designed to appeal to the Christian base.

On Truth Social, meanwhile, Trump has accused Harris of being “anti-Catholic” and made a direct appeal to Catholics as he tries to expand his religious support.

“I think he’s really trying to win votes and shore up his quote unquote religious base,” said Kristin Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University whose research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion and politics.

Du Mez said Trump “has been unsettled by what’s transpired in the last couple of weeks, that’s been very clear”. But she said it was impossible to say whether Trump had recalibrated his speech in response to Harris replacing Biden on the Democratic ticket.

“There’s no way that isn’t a part of this context. And yet, I don’t really envision that his speech to that particular crowd would have been that different, even if he was still kind of on top of the world as he was a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

The main takeaway from the speech, Du Mez said, was the lingering fear over what Trump has planned if he wins a second term.

“Those of us who study authoritarian movements saw huge red flags right there. That language is unprecedented for a US presidential candidate, and I think it’s important to say that, because Trump is always saying weird things, and it’s important to just put down that marker,” she said.

“This is not normal for a presidential candidate in this country to say anything remotely like that.”

Opinion

Devastating New Poll Is Worst News Yet for J.D. Vance and Trump

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling
Mon, August 12, 2024 



Vice presidential picks don’t normally take center stage during an election year. Unfortunately for Donald Trump, that’s not the case with J.D. Vance.

Democratic attacks on Vance are actually sticking, making the Ohio senator an increasingly unpopular candidate. A pair of polls conducted weeks apart by centrist Democratic pollster Blueprint indicate that Vance’s favorability has fallen from -7 to -11, Semafor reported Monday, with a significant number of voters viewing the vice presidential pick exactly as Democrats describe him: “conservative,” “anti-woman,” and “weird.”

“It’s not just the favorables; it’s what people think of it. It’s how he’s been introduced to the country,” Evan Roth Smith, lead pollster for Blueprint, told Semafor. “Everything has gone exactly as bad as Democrats had hoped and Republicans have feared and everyone suspects.”

Vance, who famously authored the New York Times–bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, has seen a significant decrease of positive labels by voters since he was announced to the Republican ticket. Descriptive options such as “young,” “smart,” and “businessman” have all gone down among survey participants, according to Semafor.

Most participants were aware of Vance’s strange and off-putting remarks, including an instance in which Vance claimed that childless adults should not hold positions of power as they don’t have a “direct stake” in the future of the country, deriding Democratic Party leaders as “childless cat ladies.” Approximately 50 percent of respondents said they were aware of Vance’s comments, while 55 percent said they were bothered by it.

Potential voters were also disturbed by a 2021 interview in which Vance defended a Texas abortion law’s lack of exceptions for instances of rape and incest by claiming that the resulting pregnancies were simply “inconvenient.” Roughly 62 percent of survey participants said they were “bothered” by that description, while 50 percent noted that it “bothers me a lot.”

Trump has attempted to brush off the issue by arguing that, historically, a presidential nominee’s pick for number two has “virtually no impact” on the outcome of the race. But Vance may prove to be the exception, argues The New Republic’s Alex Shephard:


As the race tightens—and Harris is leading in several polls—it’s becoming clear that Donald Trump has slowed down considerably over the last four years. He is very old. He struggles to hold his thoughts together, even by his own standards. And he has considerably less energy than he did even a few years ago. He can’t campaign vigorously. Which means he will have to rely on his running mate—whom everyone seems to hate.
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Trump-Musk interview a 'brazen' violation of federal election laws: FEC complaint

Daniel Hampton
August 13, 2024 
RAW STORY

A Democratic-aligned political action committee filed a complaint with federal election regulators accusing Donald Trump, his campaign and the social media site X of violating federal election laws during Trump's interview with tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump's lengthy interview with Musk on Monday "violated" federal rules banning corporations from making contributions to federal candidates, and barring federal candidates from accepting such contributions, alleged the complaint filed Tuesday by the group End Citizens United.

The group said the interview "amounted to a virtual campaign event for Donald J. Trump financed by X."

"Such a brazen corporate contribution undermines the anti-corruption aims of the Act, and the [Federal Election] Commission should immediately investigate these violations and take appropriate remedial action," the complaint said.

Campaign Treasurer Bradley T. Crate was also named in the complaint.

The filing jabbed Musk and his app, noting in the "facts" section that the interview "generated headlines" but was "marred with technical issues that featured express advocacy by X owner Elon Musk to support the Trump Campaign."

In the legal analysis section, the complaint alleges that a "contribution" — which corporations are banned from making to candidates — includes "'anything of value' provided to a federal candidate in connection with their election."

"The Commission has held that activities involving the participation of a federal candidate result in contributions 'if the activities involve i) the solicitation, making, or acceptance of contributions to the candidate's campaign, or ii) communications expressly advocating the nomination, election, or defeat of any candidate."

Tiffany Muller, president of the group, which is supporting Kamala Harris in the race, told The Washington Post in a statement that the interview could “set a dangerous precedent for unfettered, direct corporate engagement in campaigns.”

Broken CPUs, workforce cuts, cancelled dividends and a decade of borked silicon—how has it all gone so wrong for Intel?

Jeremy Laird
Fri, Aug 2, 2024
PC GAMER

Credit: Future

Let's begin with a brief recap of the current state of play at Intel. For starters, despite bold promises to regain technology leadership, it remains miles behind TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited) in chip manufacturing and indeed is increasingly relying on TSMC to manufacture its latest and future CPUs, such as Meteor lake, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake.

Meanwhile, it's losing market share to AMD in server CPUs, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Arm-based chips are a real threat in Intel's largest consumer market, laptops, Intel's Arc graphics effort has been a bit of a flop so far, and now its last two generations of desktop CPUs are badly broken.

Most recently, Intel announced some very poor financial results and decided it needed to fire another 15,000 employees after already trimming 5% of its workforce last year, a move that CEO Pat Gelsinger branded "some of the most consequential changes in our company's history."

That's just the Cliff notes. There are several other lesser horror stories, like reigning in plans to build fabs in Europe and the fact that things are so bad Intel cancelled dividend payments to shareholders. But an obvious question follows. How did Intel get it all so wrong?

Arguably, you could say the rot set in when Paul Otellini replaced Craig Barrett as CEO way back in 2005. Barrett had a PhD in materials science from Stanford. Otellini was an economics grad with an MBA. Put simply, sales replaced engineering at the top of Intel.

Admittedly, Intel's next CEO Brian Krzanich was from the engineering side, but let's not allow details like that to get in the way of an easy narrative. The story goes that Intel got lazy and cynical under sales and marketing-driven leadership, leaned into its near monopoly status in the x86 market, and it was all downhill from there.

More specifically, the most obvious indication of Intel in decline were its troubles with the 10nm node. Originally scheduled to go into production in 2016, Intel first conceded that the node would be delayed in mid 2015.

Strictly speaking, Intel released a small number of dual-core Cannonlake CPUs on 10nm in 2018. But it wasn't until the Ice Lake mobile CPU launched in late 2019 that 10nm really went live. Arguably, it wasn't until 2020 that Ice Lake laptops were available in volume.

Intel Core i5 13400F CPU in a motherboard socket

In the cutting-edge chip industry, that's a catastrophic delay. Indeed, if you consider the Intel chips you can buy in PCs today, the picture barely gets any better. Those broken 13th and 14th Gen desktop CPUs are on the Intel 7 node, which is a rebrand and revision of the 10nm technology that was meant to go on sale nearly 10 years ago.

While you can get Intel 4 silicon in Meteor Lake laptop CPUs, it's a chiplet design with only the CPU tile made on Intel silicon. All the other functional chiplets, which are the majority of the overall processor, are made by TSMC.

Oh, and Intel has conceded that even with just the titchy CPU tile made on Intel 4, it has been struggling to ramp up production. Sales of Meteor Lake laptops have been limited by processor production volume and the latest rumours claim that this problem is ongoing today.

Whatever, it is certainly true that both of the active tiles for Lunar Lake, Intel's next-gen mobile CPU, will be produced by TSMC, not Intel. Only the passive base tile, which is basically a glorified PCB with wiring, is on Intel silicon.

It's not totally clear how Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake desktop chips will be made. But they're definitely chiplet designs and rumours suggest that most models will have all-TSMC silicon for the active tiles, with perhaps a few low-end SKUs using Intel silicon for a single active tile.

In other words, Intel continues to increase the TSMC content in its chips, including for chips that have yet to go on sale. We're still years away from Intel being able to reverse that placeholder strategy of farming out production because its own production nodes aren't good enough.

It's worth dwelling on that for a moment. He we are in 2024 and Intel is increasing the proportion of its production at TSMC for future processors because its own nodes aren't good enough.

Further evidence for how far Intel is from truly turning the ship came in the form of a roadmap produced by Intel Foundry Services or IFS. That's the business unit Intel has separated off composed of its fabs or chip factories.

Intel Wafer Capacity

Intel hopes to move from largely using its fabs to produce its own chips to also being a major contract manufacturer of chips for customers. It's in that new role as a customer fab that it hopes to not only make better chips of its own, but also take on TSMC directly.

So, here's the thing. Going by IFS's own figures, which are presumably more optimistic than pessimistic, the majority of Intel's production capacity won't be on nodes as or more advanced as Intel 4 until 2027. Even in 2026, Intel capacity will be around 65% composed of 10nm-class nodes, now branded Intel 7, or older.

Moreover, if the rumours that Intel 4 yields are still problematic, what are the odds that its upcoming 20A and 18A nodes are going to be zingers from day one? When you put it altogether, it's clear that whatever Intel is claiming for its bold strategy of introducing five new nodes in four years, the company is still a long way from recovery.


Indeed, when you factor in the debacle with 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake desktop CPUs, rumours of continued problems with Meteor Lake supply and Intel latest financials and belt tightening, it's hard to see how things aren't continuing to get worse.

That's particularly disheartening in the context of the arrival of Intel's latest CEO, Pat Gelsiginer, in 2021. Gelsinger is supposed to be one of the good guys, an Intel engineer who was forced out of the company during its marketing-skewed days, who then returned to right the ship.

Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition graphics card

At last, there was an engineer back at the helm. But as the years tick by, Gelsinger's appointment looks less and less like a case study in how leadership can save a faltering giant and more like proof there's only so much one man can do.

Obviously Intel is far from done. It's still a huge company with massive resources. Who's to say that two years from now it won't have some stellar CPUs on the market, plus perhaps a third generation of Arc graphics cards taking the fight to Nvidia and AMD.

On that latter note, it would be a massive shame if Intel Arc graphics become a casualty of Intel's need to save costs any time soon. The PC gaming graphics market desperately needs more competition and a healthy Intel would be good for all of us.

Your next machine

Gaming PC group shot

The same goes for CPUs, but perhaps to a lesser extent. In the long run, it's hard to imagine that the PC won't eventually be assimilated by the ARM architecture. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chip looks like the first genuine step in that direction. And if it does happen, if Arm does take over the PC, there could be all kinds of competition. Along with Qualcomm, we could see Mediatek, Nvidia and indeed AMD and even Intel making Arm-based CPUs for PCs.

If that's somewhat speculative, what's clear in the here and now is that Intel needs to get its act together and fast. The first thing it should do is provide far better clarity over the status of those borked Raptor Lake processors. Yes, it has now announced a two-year warranty extension, but there's still a lack of clarity hanging over the whole affair.

After that, well, it really could do with sorting out those fabs. But that's looking like a far, far taller order.

China's CXMT begins mass-producing HBM2 memory well ahead of schedule — 2026 was the previously telegraphed target

Anton Shilov
August 4, 2024
TOMS HARDWARE

Credit: AMD

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), a leading memory maker from China, has begun mass production of HBM2 memory, reports DigiTimes. If the story proves accurate, the Chinese company will be about two years ahead of the expected timeframe for production of the memory chips, which are crucial for cutting-edge AI and high-performance computing processors.

Earlier this year, Tom's Hardware reported that CXMT began to acquire tools necessary to make high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products; it typically akes at least a year (and more likely two) to start mass production with decent yields. CXMT has ordered equipment from suppliers in the U.S. and Japan, with U.S. companies including Applied Materials and Lam Research receiving export licenses to supply fab tools.

Producing HBM is a complex process: The memory devices are larger than the commodity DRAMs that CXMT typically produces, and making and assembling base dies is challenging. Apparently, China's desire for self-sufficiency in memory technology is so high that CXMT began to produce HBM2 memory well ahead of schedule, albeit with unknown yields.

High-bandwidth memory: Cutting edge tech

HBM stands out as the top performer in terms of bandwidth due to its 1024-bit wide interface and relatively high data-transfer rates, which range from approximately 2 GT/s to 3.2 GT/s per pin in the case of HBM2. Its wide interface and vertical stacking design mean that producing HBM devices does not necessitate the latest lithography technology, but it requires sufficient manufacturing capacity: HBM DRAM integrated circuits are physically larger than the typical commodity DRAMs that CXMT makes. In fact, leading global DRAM manufacturers often use established technologies for their HBM2E and HBM3 products, so we would expect something similar from CXMT.

HBM production requires advanced packaging techniques, however. Connecting 8 or 12 memory devices vertically using small through silicon vias (TSVs) is a complex process. Still, despite this complexity, assembling an HBM-like known-good stacked die (KGSD) module is actually less challenging than manufacturing a DRAM device using 10nm-class process technology.

With HBM2 production today, CXMT still lags behind global competitors like Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix in DRAM technology, as these companies are already mass-producing HBM3 as well as HBM3E memory and are gearing up to mass-produce HBM4 with 2048-bit interfaces in the next couple of years.

But for China in general, HBM2 is a crucial technology for its advanced AI and HPC processors. Huawei's Ascend 910-series processors use HBM2 memory and producing such memory domestically is a big deal for the Chinese tech industry.

Humor: Popular urban legends rewritten to reflect how women would actually act

Horror needs to accept that girls are smarter than common tropes thanks to true crime podcasts


D-Keine via Getty Images

Yahoo Creator
Kyrie Gray
 August 2, 2024


Urban legends are a cultural barometer for understanding what scares us. For much of the 20th century, classic urban legends featuring hook-handed men and terrified babysitters showed how little American storytellers trusted a woman's instinct. Today, I think we should tell those stories a little differently to reflect how most rational women would act.

The hook

A boy and girl were making out in the back seat of a parked car. His hand was going for the hem of her skirt when she heard a sound from outside.

She shot up, alarmed. "What was that?"

Trying to get her back in the mood, the boy rubbed her shoulders. "Relax."

She wasn't distracted. "I heard a scratching sound. I want to leave."

"Aww baby, you're just nervous…"

"Excuse me, baby, but I'm not nervous. We turned off the radio because the news was all about an escaped maniac from a nearby asylum, and YOU thought it ruined the romantic atmosphere. Speaking of which, you don't get to tell me when I'm in the mood. We're leaving."

"Fine." The boy put his keys in the ignition and angrily drove off. The killer in the bushes cursed. He'd been looking forward to gutting some teenagers. However, he was happy that the girl stood up for herself.

The babysitter

Shelly sat on the couch with her legs curled under her sweater while reading a magazine when the phone rang. Thinking it was the parents calling to check in on the kids, she answered without concern.

"Hello!"

"Have you checked on the children?"

"Yeah, about an hour ago. Is this Doug? You sound weird."

"Maybe you should check on them again."

"Ok, Doug!"

After hanging up, she grabbed her cell phone and dialed 911.

"Hello, I'm alone babysitting two small children at 918 Oak Drive. I think someone is going to harm me and the kids."

"Are you sure you're not just being hysterical?"

"Look, my intuition says a creepy man is upstairs waiting. Sure, it might be their dad, Doug, who is a bit creepy if I'm being honest, but please don't belittle the situation or wait until we trace the call and find out that he is upstairs. By that time, me and these kids will probably be dead. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean you get to assume I'm being hysterical. Send someone now."

The police arrived and managed to subdue the man upstairs, who tried to flee from the bathroom where he'd been hiding, waiting to jump the babysitter as she entered the sleeping children's room.

Killer in the backseat

The killer crouched low in the backseat, his knife ready. He'd seen the beautiful young woman leave her car without adequately locking the door before entering the mall almost an hour ago. It would be just a matter of time before he got his prey.

Beep beep!

He smiled as the doors unlocked. After they were further down the road and the twilight morphed entirely into darkness, he would —

He didn't have time to finish the thought. Both passenger doors opened, and he found himself staring at the gun of a police officer.

"Drop your weapon. Hands in the air!"

In the back of the police vehicle, he asked the officers, "What happened to the woman?"

"She's getting a ride home from a friend. Since she was alone, she checked her back seat before leaving the parking lot. Come on! It's 2024. Who doesn't listen to true crime podcasts?"

The vanishing hitchhiker

A man knocks on the door. He holds a red sweater belonging to the lovely girl he dropped off at this address last night. Despite his attempts to converse, she'd been very quiet, so he hadn't pressed her for a phone number. Now, with the sweater, he sees the perfect opportunity to get to know her. Plus, he knows where she lives.

The door opened. A woman in her fifties answered.

"Yes?"

"Hi! I picked up a girl from Juniper Street last evening and dropped her off here. She forgot this sweater. I was hoping I could give it back."

The woman took the sweater in her hands. Then she looked at him in horror.

"This belonged to my daughter. She died last year on that very road."

The man, struck dumb by terror, ran away, unable to believe he'd encountered a ghost. The woman shut the door.

"Is he gone?" The brunette hiding in the other room stared at her mom with trepidation.

"Yes. Thank you for letting me know about the situation. By the way, here's your sweater."

Sighing, the girl slid it on.

"Thank goodness. I usually don't have a problem with Ubers, but that guy gave me bad vibes. I thought he might try something like this when I wouldn't engage with his flirty talk. Thanks, Mom."

Kyrie Gray
Writing dumb things to make you laugh

 THE END OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

Trump's Agenda47 on education: Abolish teacher tenure, universal school choice, patriotism

Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY
Mon, August 12, 2024 

With former teacher Gov. Tim Walz rounding out the Democratic ticket, education could become a talking point in this election.

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has laid out his education policy plans in Agenda47. Separate from the oft-mentioned Project 2025, Agenda47 covers Trump's official policy platform on issues including crime, health care and immigration. Agenda47 on education proposes 10 ideas for "great schools leading to great jobs" that range from curriculum requirements to preferential funding for schools with internship programs.

This election comes at a pivotal time for educators, says Jon Valant, director at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Between the pandemic and the culture wars, teachers have had a rough few years and he says Trump's proposals are unlikely to alleviate the core of those issues.

"All of these are politics more than policy," Valant said in an interview. "My worry is distraction, these types of proposals... they're averting people's eyes from what we should actually be talking about."

The National Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the U.S., has thrown its support behind Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz. NEA President Becky Pringle said Trump's agenda is rooted in his time in office, appointing Betsy DeVos as Education secretary. Pringle said she hopes for an administration that will help teachers get more resources and respect to alleviate the teacher shortage.

"When I started teaching many years ago... I didn't really have a clue every decision that was made about my kids, my classroom, my colleagues, was made by someone who was elected or appointed to some position of power," Pringle said, explaining that they want more educators in public office. "We will have an educator in the White House."

Here are some of Trump's proposed education policies that impact teachers and school systems, as quoted in Agenda47:

Tim Walz career timeline: From high school teacher to Kamala Harris' vice-presidential pick
Give preference to schools that abolish teacher tenure

"To reward good teachers, President Trump will implement funding preferences and favorable treatment for states and school districts that abolish teacher tenure for grades K-12, adopt Merit Pay to reward good teachers and give parents the right to vote for the principals who direct their children’s education."

◾ How we got here: Valant called this proposal "an oldie but a goodie for conservative education reform," as it tends to be popular among conservatives. About a decade ago, several states sought to reform teacher tenure by extending the probationary period, but in recent years the push has been more muted as other education battles took the forefront.

◾ In today's context: Valant said union politics come into play here, as teachers unions want to protect tenure as a way to defend against unfounded firings. "This one is primarily the... direct shot at teachers unions," Valant said. He also said teacher recruitment and retention after the last few years is already under stress, and he worries taking away tenure could exacerbate that.
Universal school choice

"President Trump supports universal school choice so that parents can send their children to the public, private, or religious school that best suits their needs, their goals, and their values... President Trump commends Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia for leading the American school choice revolution – and he looks forward to working with other states, as well as the U.S. Congress, to provide for universal school choice for every American family."

◾ How we got here: School choice can include a range of policies that give parents the ability to use public money for private school tuition or homeschooling. Valant said there was once bipartisan agreement on limited school choice policies that allowed for charter schools. But more expansive school choice policies, like providing vouchers that give money to parents for their kids to attend private school, dramatically expanded in the last few years. According to Education Week, proponents of school choice say it helps provide another option for kids in underperforming schools.

◾ In today's context: Many outcomes of expanding school choice policies have yet to be seen. But Valant said vouchers are often not enough to cover tuition costs for private schools, and as a result they mostly end up helping relatively wealthy families, many of whom already have kids in private school. He said it could also change the landscape of school enrollment if wealthy kids end up in private schools and low-income kids end up in public schools. "To me...it feels like incredible risk for the damage they may do to their public education systems."
Create a credentialing body to certify patriotic teachers

"President Trump will reinstate the 1776 Commission, which he originally created but was disbanded by Joe Biden on his first day in office, to ensure America’s children learn the truth about their country’s history and the timeless principles of liberty and equality... President Trump will veto any effort to weaponize or nationalize civics education. And he will create a credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values and support the American Way of Life."

◾ How we got here: Trump created the 1776 Commission in November of 2020 as part of the backlash to the New York Times' 1619 Project, which examines the history of slavery in the U.S. That backlash also included conservatives passing "critical race theory" curriculum bans, as a key part of the erupting culture wars. The report the commission produced days before Trump left office excused America's history of slavery and undercut the legacy of the civil rights movement.

◾ In today's context: Political messaging on critical race theory and history curriculums seems to have waned in the last year. Valant said creating a new credentialing body would be politically driven, yet derails from traditional conservative values of stripping down government regulation.

Pringle also said this type of body would be politically driven, and this credentialing body could be made up of unqualified appointees.

"They don't know what our kids need, they haven't trained to be able to teach the diverse learning needs and the skills and meet kids where they are, let alone the preparation of educators," Pringle said. "So we know that anything he does has a political nature to it."

Contributing: Kayla Jimenez, Matthew Brown

Louisiana governor tells parents against Ten Commandments in classrooms: 'Tell your child not to look'

Erik Ortiz
Updated Tue, August 6, 2024 


Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has a suggestion for parents who don't believe the Ten Commandments should be displayed in public school classrooms throughout the state.

"Tell your child not to look at them," he told reporters Monday.

The Republican governor defended the controversial legislation during a news conference announcing how Louisiana intends to fend off a lawsuit that argues that it is unconstitutional to hang the Ten Commandments in state-funded school and college classrooms.

Landry first signed the GOP-backed legislation in June, making Louisiana the first state in the nation to require schools to exhibit posters of the religious text, which was revealed to Moses in the Bible and remains revered by followers of the Christian faith.

But the move prompted a coalition of parents — Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and nonreligious — to sue the state days later in federal court. They argue that the legislation "substantially interferes with and burdens" their First Amendment right to raise their children with whatever religious doctrine they want.

Landry said the backlash against the law is unwarranted. House Bill 71 passed overwhelmingly and included bipartisan support from some Democrats, he added.

Given that Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers of the state Legislature, which has allowed Landry to push forward a conservative, tough-on-crime agenda, the governor upheld the Ten Commandments law as an example of how "the majority gets to rule."

"I don't see what the whole big fuss is about," he said Monday.

The law requires all public K-12 schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments by January.

Louisiana public school students are returning to classrooms for the new school year over the coming days but, as of Monday, Attorney General Liz Murrill told reporters that she was unaware of any schools that have started hanging posters of the Ten Commandments.

Murill held up an example of a poster that can be displayed, saying it was "not very big." She added that no public funds will be required to be spent on printing the posters and they can be supplied through private donations.


As the families' lawsuit plays out, Louisiana also agreed last month not to promote or create rules surrounding the law until at least Nov. 15, as the case and various motions are decided in federal court.

Murrill said that the state on Monday planned to file its motion to seek the suit's dismissal, with officials calling the families' complaint "premature." She added that the state will argue how there are "numerous ways" the law can be applied constitutionally, and said having a display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms allows for "powerful teaching moments."

That state’s motion to dismiss was filed later Monday in federal court.

One of the arguments involves a claim that parents whose children attend charter schools in Orleans Parish School lacked standing to sue Orleans Parish School Board, because it claimed charter schools are independent from the board.

During the news conference earlier Monday, Murrill offered examples of posters that could be created for classroom displays showing the Ten Commandments while also putting the words into context. One poster riffed off the song "Ten Duel Commandments" from the musical "Hamilton," while another poster compared Moses and Martin Luther King Jr.

The U.S. Supreme Court last weighed in on the issue of the Ten Commandments in public schools in 1980, when the justices ruled 5-4 to strike down Kentucky's law.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com