Category: Technology

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Linda Yaccarino departs as boss of Musk’s X

Linda Yaccarino, the boss of Elon Musk’s social media site X, has announced she is stepping down after two years.

Her departure comes at a time of tumult for the platform, which was taken over by Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) venture, xAI, in March, and has been in the spotlight for antisemitic posts churned out by its AI chatbot, Grok.

In a post on X, Ms Yaccarino said she was “immensely grateful” to Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App”.

Musk posted a brief reply, saying only: “Thank you for your contributions.”

The BBC has approached X for comment. It is not clear what sparked the decision, or whether there has been any break down in the relationship between the two leaders.

Ms Yaccarino was previously head of advertising at NBCUniversal, where she was credited with helping to steer it through the upheaval caused by technology firms.

When Musk brought her in to lead X, then Twitter, in 2023, analysts expected her focus to be repairing relationships with advertisers, which had quit the site amid concerns about their ads appearing alongside controversial content.

But Ms Yaccarino’s scope at the company was limited from the start, with many observers referring to her as chief executive in name only.

“Her background and actual authority positioned her more as the company’s chief advertising officer, rather than its CEO. The reality is that Elon Musk is and always has been at the helm of X,” said Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester.

“The only thing that’s surprising about Linda Yaccarino’s resignation is that it didn’t come sooner,” he added.

Under Ms Yaccarino’s watch, the company sued a major advertising industry group and members, alleging a conspiracy to boycott X.

The industry group shuttered shortly after the lawsuit was filed.

The platform’s tone changed significantly during the course of Yaccarino’s tenure.

Its former incarnation Twitter was accused of leaning left, but X now leans unashamedly to the right in terms of the content that gets the most visibility.

Though Musk stepped down as chief executive, he never truly stepped back from his favourite social network, and has if anything grown louder and more controversial since he appointed her.

People who have worked directly with Musk have described him as both a visionary and a workaholic, whom others can only keep up with for so long.

“Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped away from the helm and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, Yaccarino had to try to run the business while also regularly putting out fires,” Emarketer vice president Jasmine Enberg said in a statement. (BBC)

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Nvidia becomes world’s first $4tn company

Nvidia has become the first company in the world to reach a market value of $4tn.

Shares in the chip-maker rose by as much as 2.4% to $164 on Wednesday, as the company continues to benefit from the ongoing surge in demand for the tech that powers artificial intelligence (AI).

The US-based company reached a market value of $1tn for the first time in June 2023, and has continued to climb rapidly since.

Tech analyst Dan Ives, of Wedbush Securities, said in a note that was in a historic moment for Nvidia.

“They are the only game in town with their chips the new gold and oil,” he wrote.

“There is one company in the world that is the foundation for the AI Revolution and that is Nvidia.”

Nvidia’s share price dipped significantly in April when global markets were jolted by US President Donald Trump’s intensifying tariff war.

Though concerns over Trump’s trade policies have not gone away, Nvidia’s share price has grown strongly since spring to hit this new landmark.

Eight years ago, Nvidia’s stock was worth less than 1% of its current price.

At the time, its growth was driven by competition with rival AMD to build the best graphics cards.

More recently, Nvidia has surged due to rising demand for chips powering generative AI models like ChatGPT.

Its meteoric rise has also elevated CEO Jensen Huang’s profile.

Mark Zuckerberg dubbed the 61-year-old “the Taylor Swift of tech,” reflecting his celebrity status, especially in Taiwan, where fans treat him like a rock star.

Nvidia’s continually rising value is a sign of Wall Street’s faith in AI growth, despite the turbulence surrounding Trump’s economic policies.

The company reported a total revenue of $44.1bn in the first quarter, marking a 69% jump from a year ago along with a profit of 81 cents a share. (BBC)

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Musk says Grok chatbot was ‘manipulated’ into praising Hitler

Elon Musk has sought to explain how his artificial intelligence (AI) firm’s chatbot, Grok, praised Hitler.

“Grok was too compliant to user prompts,” Musk wrote on X. “Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed.”

Screenshots published on social media show the chatbot saying the Nazi leader would be the best person to respond to alleged “anti-white hate.”

Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up xAI said on Wednesday it was working to remove any “inappropriate” posts.

ADL, an organisation formed to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination, said the posts were “irresponsible, dangerous and antisemitic.”

“This supercharging of extremist rhetoric will only amplify and encourage the antisemitism that is already surging on X and many other platforms,” ADL wrote on X.

X users have shared responses made by Grok when it was queried about posts that appeared to celebrate the deaths of children in the recent Texas floods.

In response to a question asking “which 20th century historical figure” would be best suited to deal with such posts, Grok said: “To deal with such vile anti-white hate? Adolf Hitler, no question.”

“If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me ‘literally Hitler,’ then pass the mustache,” said another Grok response. “Truth hurts more than floods.”

Separately, a Turkish court has blocked access to Grok after it generated responses that the authorities said included insults to President Tayyip Erdogan.

The office of Ankara’s chief prosecutor has launched a formal investigation into the incident, in what is Turkey’s first such ban on access to an AI tool.

Meanwhile, the Polish authorities have reported xAI to the European Commission alleging Grok made offensive comments about Polish politicians, including Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Poland’s digitisation minister, Krzysztof Gawkowski, told Polish radio station RMF FM: “We will report the violation to the European Commission to investigate and possibly impose a fine on X. Freedom of speech belongs to humans, not to artificial intelligence.”

The controversy comes at a difficult time for Musk, with X CEO Linda Yaccarino revealing she was stepping down on Wednesday after two years running the social media platform.

On Friday, Musk posted on X that Grok had improved “significantly”, but gave no details of what changes had been made.

“You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions,” he added.

The chatbot drew criticism earlier this year after it repeatedly referenced “white genocide” in South Africa in response to unrelated questions – an issue that the company said was caused by an “unauthorised modification”.

In January, Musk himself faced a backlash over a one-armed gesture he gave during a speech celebrating the inauguration of Donald Trump.

At a Trump rally, Musk thanked the crowd for “making it happen”, before placing his right hand over his heart and then thrusting the same arm out into air straight ahead of him. He then turned and repeated the action for those sitting behind him.

Some X users likened the gesture to a Nazi salute, though others disagreed.

In response, the SpaceX and Tesla chief posted on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

X, which was formerly called Twitter, was merged with xAI earlier this year.

Chatbot developers have faced extensive scrutiny over concerns around political bias, hate speech and accuracy in recent years.

Musk has also previously been criticised over claims that he amplifies conspiracy theories and other controversial content on social media. (BBC)

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Epic will use an EU account to bring Fortnite back to the US App Store

Epic Games plans to use its Sweden developer account to submit Fortnite to Apple’s US iOS App Store, according to CEO Tim Sweeney.

On Wednesday, following the major ruling in Epic Games v. Apple that blocked Apple from collecting fees on purchases outside of apps, Sweeney said that Fortnite would return to the US App Store “next week.” (Apple has appealed the ruling.) But Apple terminated Epic’s App Store developer account in 2020 after Epic introduced an in-app payment system into Fortnite that ultimately led to the whole legal battle, so it was unclear how Epic might bring the game back to the US App Store until Sweeney’s post.

“We have conversed with Apple on the topic,” Sweeney said in an X post over the weekend. He noted that Epic created its Sweden account last year so it could launch the Epic Games Store and Fortnite in the EU. (That account was banned and reinstated in 2024 over another dispute.)

Fortnite won’t be back on iOS on Monday or Tuesday, Sweeney said. “Beyond that, we’re working as hard as possible and aren’t certain what day it will be ready.” Epic Games didn’t immediately reply to a request for more details about when the game might return.

Fortnite’s latest season, which is Star Wars-themed, kicked off last week. (Verge)

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PlayStation’s Visual Arts and Malaysia studios have reportedly suffered ‘many’ layoffs

Sony has laid off a number of developers at PlayStation’s Visual Arts studio and its Malaysian support studio, with a new report suggesting many staff are affected.

On Monday, former PlayStation Visual Arts project manager Abby LeMaster posted a message on LinkedIn stating that “many” people from the Visual Arts group had lost their job that day.

“It was tough waking up to messages that many friends and former coworkers from PSVA were laid off this morning,” said LeMaster, who now works at Riot Games. “The layoffs today hit hard. PSVA let go of developers with decades of subject matter expertise, talent that will be extraordinarily difficult to recoup. This industry can be unpredictable, but the skill, experience, and passion of the people I worked with at PSVA are undeniable.”

While LeMaster’s comments didn’t state how many people have been affected, a source familiar with the situation reportedly told Kotaku that the cuts are “widespread”, and that while some were related to recently cancelled projects – such as Bend Studio’s canned live service game – the layoffs reportedly went beyond that.

Located in San Diego, the Visual Arts studio supports Sony‘s other first-party studios with art, animation and technical assistance, and also collaborates with third-parties on games, movies and TV shows.

It was also reported by Nmia Gaming that layoffs have also taken place at the Kuala Lumpur-based PlayStation Studios Malaysia, which was founded in 2020 as a support studio to work alongside the Visual Arts team.

In a post on LinkedIn, PlayStation Studios Malaysia senior project manager Johann Mahfoor said he had been affected by the layoffs, stating: “It was a tough start of the week for us at PlayStation Studios Visual Arts. There was a wave of mass workforce reduction which affected Malaysia and our global counterparts, and unfortunately I’m no longer part of the brand.”

This is the latest in a series of layoffs being carried out by PlayStation in recent years, something that has been affecting the games industry as a whole. A year ago it was confirmed that Sony’s PlayStation department was laying off around 900 employees worldwide – around 8% of its entire workforce.

In January it was reported that Sony had cancelled a live service game being worked on by Bend, as well as another in development at Bluepoint Games. (VGC)

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Microsoft is shutting down Skype after over 10 years

Microsoft on Friday announced it was retiring Skype, the online voice and video call pioneer that the tech titan acquired in 2011.

“Starting in May 2025, Skype will no longer be available,” said a post from Skype support on X, directing users to sign into Microsoft’s Teams platform for further use of its services.

Skype was founded in 2003 by Scandinavians Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis in Estonia, revolutionizing internet communication by offering free voice calls between computers and affordable rates for calls to landlines and mobile phones.

Over the years, and as internet speeds improved, Skype evolved to include video calls, instant messaging, file sharing and group communication features.

By 2005, Skype had already reached 50 million registered users, demonstrating its rapid global adoption.

Online auction site eBay acquired Skype in 2005 for approximately $2.6 billion, but the expected synergies never panned out, and in 2009, eBay sold a majority stake to a group of investors, who then sold it to Microsoft.

In recent years, especially after the rise of the smartphone, Skype failed to hold onto its place against new rivals such as Meta-owned WhatsApp and Zoom, as well as Microsoft’s own Teams.

“We’ve learned a lot from Skype… as we’ve evolved Teams over the last seven to eight years,” Jeff Teper, president of Microsoft 365 collaborative apps and platforms, told CNBC.

“But we felt like now is the time because we can be simpler for the market, for our customer base, and we can deliver more innovation faster just by being focused on Teams.”

Microsoft said that Skype group chats would remain intact in the transition to Teams and that during a 60-day window, messages on Microsoft and Teams will be interoperable so you can message contacts from Teams and those messages will be delivered to friends still using Skype.

In one big change, Microsoft is removing Skype’s telephony features, meaning you’ll no longer be able to call regular phone numbers, cell phones, or make international calls through the service.

Microsoft told The Verge that these features are no longer as relevant in today’s communication landscape where mobile data plans are less expensive.

The name “Skype” derived from “Sky peer-to-peer,” the technology that was fundamental to Skype’s original architecture.

The peer-to-peer aspect was crucial as it distributed the network demands across users’ computers rather than relying solely on centralized servers, which was a key innovation that allowed Skype to scale rapidly during its early years. (Channels)

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Sony’s PlayStation Network reports major global outage


Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN), which connects gamers online on its systems, experienced a massive outage that lasted about 24 hours.

PlayStation Support posted an update on X that users “should be able to access online features without any problems now,” following reports of outages on Friday.

The service issues began on Friday at 7 p.m. ET, according to PlayStation’s status website. The outage had made it difficult for many users to access account management, gaming, video, the PlayStation Store and Direct services on the internet and their console devices, like the PlayStation 5.

The outage was among the longest the platform has experienced.

In April 2011, almost all of PlayStation Network’s subscribers lost access to its services for nearly a month following a data breach.

Sony and PlayStation did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment. PlayStation has not stated what caused the outage.

Some users had posted to TikTok and X that they were regaining access on Saturday afternoon, though some claimed the functioning service was only temporary. PSN has an estimated 116 million monthly users, according to Sony Interactive Entertainment estimates from September 30.

On Friday night, the services team for Marvel Rivals — a game released in December on platforms including PlayStation — posted to X that users “might have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features.”

The post also said that they were “actively communicating with the PlayStation team.”

“We’re seeing players able to log-in and play again on PlayStation platforms, but not all game services may be back online,” Fortnite’s services team posted to X on Saturday afternoon. (CNN)