Nearly half of Elon Musk’s 90 million Twitter followers are ‘fake’

 According to Twitter auditing tool SparkToro, of Musk’s 87.9 million followers (at the time of the research audit), roughly 48 per cent are fake, reports Time

As Tesla CEO and soon-to-be Twitter boss Elon Musk aims to crack down on spam bots, nearly half of his own followers on the micro-blogging platform are fake. According to Twitter auditing tool SparkToro, of Musk’s 87.9 million followers (at the time of the research audit), roughly 48 per cent are fake, reports Time. These are the accounts that are “unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter”. Musk currently has nearly 90 million followers on Twitter.

He has nearly 7 per cent more fake followers than the median 41 per cent accounts with a similar sized followings have, according to SparkToro. The auditing tool found that “accounts that are on an unusually small number of lists, accounts that have no url or a non-resolving url in their profile, and accounts that have a suspiciously small number of followers were some of the most frequently observed traits of a sample of 2,000 random accounts from the most recent 100,000 accounts that followed Musk”….

Ex-Starlink India head now plans a white paper on broadband, poverty

 Sanjay Bhargava on Wednesday revealed that he now plans to write a white paper on how to ensure countrywide broadband access by 2023 and end poverty by 2030.

Sanjay Bhargava, who has quit as India Director for Elon Musk-run satellite internet company Starlink, on Wednesday revealed that he now plans to write a white paper on how to ensure countrywide broadband access by 2023 and end poverty by 2030. After announcing a dramatic exit as the India head of Starlink operations late on Tuesday, Bhargava posted on LinkedIn that he has always tried to give back to India by blaming no one and inspiring everyone over the last 17 years.

“As I retire, I am thinking of writing a short whitepaper on ‘Good Broadband Pan India by Dec 2023 & Ending Poverty by 2030’. Is this possible?” he wrote. “My concern is that even though my intentions are good my words will be twisted, and all kinds of motives will be ascribed even though my only motive is to provoke thinking to achieve the METRO’s (Measurable Timebound Real Outcomes) outlined in the title,” Bhargava added.

“My tentative deadline to publish (the white paper) is January 15, 2022,” he said. His resignation came after the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) under the Ministry of Communications in December warned Starlink to get necessary permission required to offer satellite-based Internet services in India.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk to testify in defamation case over ‘pedo guy’ tweet

In his opening statement, Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro told the jurors that his client meant no harm when he hit out at Unsworth and that his words were spoken in anger.

Tesla co-founder Elon Musk went on trial in Los Angeles in a defamation case involving a British caver he allegedly called a pedophile during a spat on Twitter. A jury of six women and two men were selected to hear the case with the tech billionnaire set to testify early on in the trial, possibly Tuesday afternoon.

Musk will likely be asked about his state of mind when he called British diver Vernon Unsworth — who helped rescue youth soccer players trapped in a cave in Thailand in July 2018 — “pedo guy” in a tweet. The 48-year-old entrepreneur had lashed out at Unsworth in a series of tweets after the latter dismissed Musk’s proposal to build a mini-submarine to rescue the youths as a “PR stunt.”

Unsworth said the custom-built device would never have fit in the cave and suggested that Elon Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts.” In his opening statement, Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro told the jurors that his client meant no harm when he hit out at Unsworth and that his words were spoken in anger. “The tweets are not allegations of crimes, they are joking, taunting tweets in a fight between two men,” Spiro told the court.

He noted that Musk had apologized for the ‘pedo guy’ tweet and removed it from his feed, repeating his clients’ claim that the term was a common insult in South Africa, where Musk grew up. “Pedo guy (means) creepy old guy,” in South Africa, Spiro said. He added that Musk felt compelled to write the tweets as he was hurt by the suggestion that he was seeking publicity when he offered to help in the cave rescue...

US 2020 election: Bloomberg bashes Trump’s policies, backs immigrants

Arizona has received scant attention form the Democrats running for president, but Bloomberg has put a heavy focus in a state he said will be crucial to the general election.

International News: US presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has said that the United States needs “an awful lot more immigrants rather than less.” On his second day campaigning for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, the former New York City mayor contrasted his views on immigration with President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies and laid out a vision of a multicultural society enriched by immigrants.

We need immigrants to take all the different kinds of jobs that the country needs improve our culture, our cuisine, our religion, our dialogue and certainly improve our economy, the billionaire told reporters at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix.

He blasted Trump’s policies that resulted in the separation of families arriving on the border. Ripping kids away from their parents is a disgrace, he said. Bloomberg reiterated his Nov. 17 apology for supporting New York’s stop-and-frisk police strategy, a practice that he embraced as mayor and continued to defend despite its disproportionate impact on people of color.

He said it was a mistake but also credited it with reducing New York’s murder rate. “How many times do you hear elected officials say, ‘I made a mistake’? Bloomberg said. None of us do everything perfectly. I’m sorry it happened, I can’t rewrite history. Let’s get on with it….

US cautions India over buying S-400 missile defence system from Russia

The S-400 is known as Russia’s most advanced long-range surface-to-air missile defence system

BS: The US is ready to help India’s defence needs with the latest technologies and equipment, but New Delhi purchasing long-range S-400 missile defence system from Russia would limit cooperation, the Trump administration has cautioned.

The statement came weeks after an identical warning from a senior State Department official who had said that New Delhi’s deal to procure the lethal missile system from Moscow will have “serious implications” on India-US defence ties. The S-400 is known as Russia’s most advanced long-range surface-to-air missile defence system. China was the first foreign buyer to seal a government-to-government deal with Russia in 2014 for the system.

India and Russia signed a USD 5 billion S-400 air defence system deal in October last year after wide-ranging talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Senior State Department official (South and Central Asian Affairs) Alice G Wells told House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee for Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation on Thursday that the US now does more military exercises with India than any other country.

“Under the Trump administration, we’ve been very clear that we’re ready to help meet India’s defence needs and we are seeking a very different kind of defence partnership building on the ‘Major Defence Partner’ designation that India has received from Congress,” Wells said. She was replying to the Congressional sub-committee on India buying S-400 from Russia and how to make India-US ties as robust and as meaningful as possible.

Just a few weeks ago, India, the United States, the Philippines and Japan did a sail by in the South China Sea, she said. “In both our bilateral, trilateral, quadrilateral formats, we’re working together in ways that we didn’t even conceive of 10 years ago. And so we’d like all aspects of our military relationship to catch up to this new partnership,” Wells said…