In today’s issue we discuss Usher got married after performing at the Super Bowl, Larry Page just bought his 5th private island that we know about, Elon Musk is changing where his companies are incorporated, OpenAI debuts Sora that can create video from your text description, and Adobe created a pattern-shifting dress that is mesmerizing.  

YouTube

Did Taylor Swift Get Kanye West Kicked Out Of The Super Bowl?

Business

Why is Elon Musk changing where all of his companies are incorporated?

On January 31, 2024 a Delaware court judge ruled that Elon Musk's $56 billion dollar Tesla compensation package was voided, due to it being unfair to shareholders. The judge also criticized Tesla’s board for in her opinion failing to provide oversight of Elon Musk while he also was the CEO of several other companies, in effect saying his attention was not being spent in the best interest of Tesla shareholders.

In other words the judge thinks Elon Musk is too distracted to justify his record-breaking $56 billion Tesla pay package.

Cathie Wood, who runs Ark Invest, thinks Elon Musk is right in wanting to move Tesla’s incorporation from Delaware, where it is currently incorporated, to Texas, which would give more power to Tesla’s board to make their own decisions in the best interest of shareholders.

And Tesla isn’t the only Elon Musk owned company that he’d like to change the state in which the company is incorporated.

Already, Elon Musk has begun making moves to change the incorporation of his private company Neuralink from Delaware to Nevada, and both SpaceX and X (formerly known as Twitter) from Delaware to Texas.

During a video interview with Julie Hyman on Yahoo! Finance, Cathie Wood said the judge's ruling was "basically taking the vote away from us, the shareholder." and that the ruling was "un-American. It's anti-investor. And it's an insult to the board of directors of Tesla."

She’s not wrong.

As a long time Tesla shareholder I don’t like the idea of a Delaware judge ruling that the board of a company I’m an investor in can’t decide to compensate the head of the company who has increased the value of the company for shareholders, which is one of the key tenets of what CEOs and their board of directors are tasked with doing for shareholders.

Will this create a stampede of companies leaving Delaware to incorporate in Texas?

Probably not, but hopefully it will raise awareness of the rights of corporations to empower their board of directors to make decisions for shareholders without having to worry about what a judge might think of the compensation packages they put together to motivate their leadership to increase shareholder value.

SpaceX files to move incorporation site from Delaware to Texas

AI

What if you could just write what you wanted to see, and then an AI generated a realistic video for you in real time?

Now you can get exactly that from a new feature OpenAI just revealed.

In an announcement on Thursday, February 8, 2024, OpenAI announced “it has expanded beyond text and images to offer video-generation AI for the first time.” according to an article on CNBC.

OpenAI’s new AI model is called Sora, and it allows a user to type what they’d like to see in a video scene, and the software then generates a photo-realistic high-definition video rendering in real-time.

OpenAI already has an image-generation AI tool called DALL-E, but the introduction of Sora takes video generation to a whole new level.

“Sora can also generate video clips inspired by still images, and extend existing videos or fill in missing frames.” according to the same article on CNBC.

With this announcement instantly came fears of even higher, better quality deep fake videos, especially in the lead up to the 2024 Presidential race here in the U.S., although any AI generated video of either of the front-running candidates running would be easy to spot as a fake due to the candidates ages.

OpenAI is already on top of this.

They have a group of safety testers called “red teamers” testing the model for vulnerabilities including for misinformation and bias, and they are building a “detection classifier” that can identify Sora-generated video clips. With this functionality they would be able to identify deep fakes generated with Sora AI-generated videos based on the video metadata from when it was generated.

At least it won’t be a boring future we have to look forward to.

OpenAI's new software lets you create realistic video by just typing a sentence

Entertainment

What would you do to celebrate after performing at the Super Bowl?

If you're Usher you get married to your longtime girlfriend Jennifer Gocoechea, who’s the mother of 2 of your children.

That’s what Usher did after performing at this year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas. In a private ceremony with a small group of friends and family, Usher married Jennifer Gocoechea.

And it sounds like a super romantic wedding (that’s meant to be ready with a heavy dose of sarcasm).

According to reports, Usher and Jennifer exchanged their wedding vows at Vegas Weddings' drive-thru tunnel The Fast Lane, and Usher's mother Jonetta Patton was the couple's witness, at least that’s what the couple’s official marriage certificate says.

Like I said, it sounds super romantic.

Not that anyone’s counting, but this is Usher's third time walking down the aisle, and Jennifer Gocoechea’s first time getting married.

And Usher isn’t alone. An estimated 120,000 weddings are performed in Las Vegas every year. Las Vegas accounted for 3.5 percent of the United States’ wedding market share in 2021. The wedding industry in Las Vegas accounted for 4 percent of tourism and generated $88 million in tax revenue for 2021.

Every year in the United States, there are approximately 2.5 million weddings. The United States wedding industry was estimated to be worth about $70.5 billion as of 2022.”

Let's hope Usher’s third time getting married is the charm!

Usher follows Super Bowl performance with Las Vegas wedding

Real Estate

How many private islands does one person need?

If you’re Google co-founder Larry Page you collect at least five private islands (that we know about) scattered all around the world.

It was recently revealed that Larry Page purchased a 300-acre private island named Cayo Norte for $32 million in 2018 off the coast of Puerto Rico using a limited liability company named “US Virgin Island Properties”. 

Larry Page and his wife Lucinda Southworth are listed as the trustees of the sole owners of the LLC according to a legal motion filed by the LLC in 2017 when it was incorporated. This is the same LLC that Larry Page has used previously to purchase other private islands across the Caribbean, including Hans Lollik and Little Hand Lollik islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which is 23 miles east of Cayo Norte, that he purchased in 2014 for $23 million dollars 

And Larry Page certainly can afford it. He’s the world’s 8th-richest person, with an estimated net worth of $132 billion dollars.

Among Larry Page’s other private islands he owns is Tavarua Island in Fiji, Eustatia Island in the British Virgin Islands, and Hans Lollik and Little Hand Lollik in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

It sounds like it’s pretty good to be Larry Page.

A Google Co-Founder Dropped $32M Puerto Rico’s Largest Private Island – Robb Report

Tech

Adobe isn’t exactly known for creating fashion, but that’s exactly what they’ve recently done with the introduction of their new hypnotic digital dress from their Project Primrose.

To create the dress Adobe partnered with designer Christian Cowan, and used "laser-cut polymer dispersed liquid crystal 'petals' that can electronically change patterns multiple times per second," according to a blog post by Adobe.

The dress uses pattern-shifting technology to create a hypnotic wave-like movement in the bodice, and it looks good doing it too!

Adobe's hypnotic digital dress is finally runway ready

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So much news, so little time. Until tomorrow we’re signing out.

— Chris