Jan. 31st, 2024

thewayne: (Default)
Its stock is trading at about $0.76 and the Nasdaq is threatening to delist them. THAT is a pretty far fall!

The core problem is that it is sort of a one-trick pony: once you get your genes tested, there's no reason to go back to the company. No repeating revenue stream. And now that revenue stream has dried up and they're facing a grim future. With their stock trading so low, it's going to be hard to raise more money.

This is a similar problem faced by the company that sells the Instapot. Once you buy one, you're not going to buy two or three (unless you have very special needs). The company soared, then tanked as the demand crashed. And there are only so many ways you can update that tech to try to hype up that demand. The inventors of the Instapot sold out to a larger kitchen goods maker, who is now struggling with the price they paid since it's no longer the sales horse that they had hoped it was.

My big question is: if 23andMe goes away, what happens to all that data that they collected?

I would have linked an article, but the only one listed in the Slashdot headline was from the Wall Street Journal which is behind a paywall.

https://slashdot.org/story/24/01/31/1532255/23andmes-fall-from-6-billion-to-nearly-0
thewayne: (Default)
VMWare is a virtualization product that allows IT departments to buy humongoid computers and run lots of smaller servers on them virtually. It's really cool stuff. If I need a server to test some new stuff on it, I can literally spin up a new one in a matter of minutes, do my testing on it, then erase it. Very convenient stuff. And it didn't run just Windows Server, it could run a number of operating systems, all inside one box!

IT departments have been using virtualization, and VMWare for years. It's really solid tech. Sadly, they sold out to Broadcom. And things have gone downhill from there. Downhill as in many, MANY corporations and companies are looking everywhere for alternatives to VMWare to get away from the horrible things that Broadcom is doing to the licensing that used to be a very good deal and quite stable.

The latest change that Broadcom has made is with Dell. Dell is a fairly reputable computer vendor, and it used to be that you could buy a humongoid computer from them pre-equipped with VMWare and you could reach out to Dell right off the bat if you had any problems with said software. If Dell couldn't fix it, they could escalate the call to VMWare. Well, those days are over. Dell will no longer be providing VMWare on its boxes, and presumably Dell will no longer be providing support on older installs, though that might be a slow deprecation as existing licenses expire, I don't know and the article doesn't discuss that.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/30/dell_terminates_vmware_distribution_agreement/
thewayne: (Default)
Now, why they would think he wasn't worth $56 billion a year, I just can't imagine!

A shareholder group sued to block his compensation package, saying that the compensation board had too close a relationship with Musk, that it wasn't sufficiently independent. While the compensation package was voted on by shareholders, the judge ruled that they were not properly informed of how close the ties were between Musk and the board, which voted for the package.

From the article: "Musk's pay plan "is the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets by multiple orders of magnitude—250 times larger than the contemporaneous median peer compensation plan and over 33 times larger than the plan's closest comparison, which was Musk's prior compensation plan," the ruling said."

But this is the clincher: "McCormick criticized the Tesla board, writing that Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm had a "lackadaisical approach to her oversight obligations." Although Musk and his brother Kimbal recused themselves from the pay-plan vote, "five of the six directors who voted on the Grant were beholden to Musk or had compromising conflicts." This "allow[ed] Musk to dictate the timing of the process and the terms of the Grant," McCormick.

For example, board member James Murdoch "was a long-time friend of Musk before he joined the Board, and they repeatedly vacationed together with their respective families." Board member Antonio Gracias "had business relationships with Musk dating back over 20 years, as well as the sort of personal relationship that had him vacationing with Musk's family on a regular basis."

Ira Ehrenpreis, who chaired the board's compensation committee, was a close friend of Kimbal's and acknowledged that "his personal and professional relationship with the Musk brothers has had a 'significant influence on his professional career.'" Board member Brad Buss "owed roughly 44 percent of his net worth to Musk entities," and "Denholm derived the vast majority of her wealth from her compensation as a Tesla director," the ruling said.

Todd Maron, Tesla's general counsel, wasn't on the board but played a key role in negotiating Musk's pay.

"The working group included management members who were beholden to Musk, such as General Counsel Todd Maron, who was Musk's former divorce attorney and whose admiration for Musk moved him to tears during his deposition," McCormick wrote. "In fact, Maron was a primary go-between Musk and the committee, and it is unclear on whose side Maron viewed himself. Yet many of the documents cited by the defendants as proof of a fair process were drafted by Maron."


Yeah. Must be nice to have the entire board in the palm of your hand for one reason or another.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/elon-musks-56-billion-pay-plan-voided-as-shareholders-beat-tesla-in-court/

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