Elon Musk Admits that Owning Twitter Hasn’t been easy | Digital Trends

Twitter CEO Elon Musk agreed to an interview with the BBC on Tuesday night. It took place at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco with BBC journalist James Clayton and was streamed live on Twitter Spaces, the platform’s audio chatroom feature.

The interview covered a lot of areas, from Musk’s controversial acquisition of the platform in October 2022 to the mass layoffs of staff to how the company handles misinformation. He also confirmed reports earlier in the day that legacy blue checkmarks on Twitter accounts that aren’t paying for Twitter Blue will be removed on April 20.

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5 Tips to Increase Your Chances of Getting a Personal Loan | The Startup Magazine

Taking out a loan is a big responsibility, and it can be challenging to secure funding. The thought of your application being rejected can be a scary one. With the right approach and knowledge by your side, increasing your chances of getting accepted for a personal loan is entirely within reach. In this post, we’ll explore all the necessary preparation tips that need to be considered to increase your chances of having the financial flexibility you desire.

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Samsung to cut chip production after profits plunge 96% | BBC News

Samsung Electronics will cut memory chip production after estimating a 96% drop in its quarterly operating profit.

The chip-making giant said sales had dropped sharply due to a slow global economy and less demand after Covid.

Samsung said preliminary numbers showed operating profits fell 600 billion won (£366m) in January-March, from 14 trillion won the previous year.

The firm’s shares rose more than 4% despite the decision to slow chip-making. “We are lowering the production of memory chips by a meaningful level, especially that of products with supply secured,” the South Korean tech giant said.

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FTC orders supplement maker to pay $600K in first case involving hijacked Amazon reviews | TechCrunch

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has approved a final consent order in its first-ever enforcement action over a case involving “review hijacking,” or when a marketer steals consumer reviews of another product to boost the sales of its own. In this case, the FTC has ordered supplements retailer The Bountiful Company, the maker of Nature’s Bounty vitamins and other brands, to pay $600,000 for deceiving customers on Amazon where it used a feature to merge the reviews of different products to make some appear to have better ratings and reviews than they otherwise would have had if marketed under their own listings.

The case exposes how sellers have been exploiting an Amazon feature that allows sellers to request the creation of “variation” relationships between different products and SKUs. The feature is meant to help marketers and consumers alike as it creates a single detail page on Amazon.com that shows similar products that are different only in narrow, specific ways, the FTC explains — like items that come in a different color, size, quantity or flavor. For instance, a t-shirt may have a dozen SKUs associated with one another because the shirt comes in a wide variety of colors. For shoppers, it’s helpful to see all the options on one page so you can pick the item that best matches your needs and budget. In the case of supplements, the feature could be used to combine the same products by merging various SKUs featuring different quantities of the item in question, like bottles with 50, 100 or 200 pills, for example.

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Smart Hockey Helmet | Cool Business Ideas 

While all team sports can be rough, hockey poses a particularly high risk of brain injuries. A new high-tech helmet is designed to warn of such injuries, by detecting and reporting on knocks to its wearer’s head.

The helmet is being developed by Swiss startup Bearmind, which is affiliated with the EPFL research institute. Two former athletes, Mathieu Falbriard and Tom Bertrand, founded the company.

In its current form, the Bearmind helmet looks much like any other hockey helmet, except for the fact that it has a small oval module which fits into a receptacle in the back. That module contains an IMU (inertial measurement unit), pressure sensor, battery and Bluetooth module. When the helmet is subjected to any sudden impacts, the module transmits the impact data to an accompanying app on a rink-side coach’s smartphone.

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NASA’s Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman isn’t perfect | Mashable

The stereotype of an astronaut is apple pie and American exceptionalism — a perfect and fearless adventurer, neatly encapsulated in a bubble helmet. That’s not Reid Wiseman.

He is not some perfect Buzz Lightyear clone. He didn’t make straight-As, he’s occasionally late, and, yes, the idea of dying in space scares him.

There’s a refreshing realness to Wiseman, the commander of the first human mission to the moon in over a half-century, the person NASA chose to lead the Artemis II crew on a test drive of the spanking-new spaceship Orion, 230,000 miles from Earth.

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French bakeries are fighting to survive as energy bills soar | CNN

In Millery, a small town in southeastern France, Élodie Chavret runs a bakery to make a living for herself and her two daughters. The 39-year-old is also a part-time firefighter but, she says, this is not the work that scares her.

Her fear? Not being able to pay the bakery’s electricity bill at the end of the month.

The bill skyrocketed from €900 ($978) in December to €7,500 ($8,146) in January as Chavret renewed her contract. With a government subsidy, her bill would drop to €4,500 ($4,888) per month. That’s still an “unmanageable” increase, she said.

The new rate is “unbearable,” Chavret told CNN, and will all but obliterate her profits, already squeezed by rising raw material and gasoline costs, and higher wages for her six employees.

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Most methods for squashing conspiracy theories don’t work, study finds. Here’s what does. | Live Science

Debunking conspiracy theories with counterarguments is often a fruitless effort — but according to a new scientific review, there may be alternative strategies that can successfully fend off conspiratorial beliefs.

Having already grown over the past 10 years, interest in conspiracy theories skyrocketed during the pandemic, when failure to comply with public health recommendations was sometimes associated with conspiracy beliefs(opens in new tab). For example, proponents of the anti-vax movement(opens in new tab) may avoid vaccinations for themselves or their children on the basis that some hazardous outcome of vaccination is being covered up. Although increasingly prominent in public discourse, conspiracy theories have proved a difficult mindset to shift.

“I wouldn’t have a Ph.D. in this project if conspiracy theories were easy to counteract,” said Cian O’Mahony(opens in new tab), a doctoral candidate in psychology at University College Cork in Ireland who led the systematic review reported in the journal PLOS One(opens in new tab). The review doesn’t reveal “a silver bullet” for countering conspiracy theories, he said, but “we have found some interesting avenues for future research that we should follow up.”

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Benefits Coverage Basics for Self-Employed Workers | Business News Daily

Ready to leave the corporate world behind? Here’s what you need to know about getting benefits coverage when you’re self-employed.

  • Essential benefits coverage to obtain if you decide to become self-employed include liability insurance, health insurance, disability insurance and a retirement plan.
  • Your options for obtaining self-employed health insurance range from government markets to professional employer organizations (PEOs).
  • Additional expenses to consider include self-employment taxes, payroll taxes and overhead.
  • This article is for aspiring entrepreneurs and freelancers looking to get their benefits set up – and their expenses covered – as they go solo.

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Why You Feel Unproductive And What To Dot | LifeHack

Feeling unproductive is an all-too-common experience that can leave you feeling frustrated and guilty. It’s as if you’re stuck in quicksand—the more you try to get out, the deeper you sink. As the day comes to an end, you’re left with a nagging sense of regret, wondering where all the time went and why you weren’t able to accomplish more.

But it’s not just about feeling unproductive. The true danger of unproductivity is the cycle of time poverty it creates. When you’re unproductive, it’s difficult to manage your time effectively, resulting in a state of constant overwhelm. With seemingly too many things to do in too little time, you’re left with a sense of urgency that never quite goes away.

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