Elon Musk is now the world’s second-richest person, and more tech news today

Your Tech News Digest via the DGiT Daily Tech Newsletter for Tuesday, November 24th, 2020.

1. Elon Musk blows from Bill Gates to become the second richest person in the world

Bill Gates was, for the most part, the richest person in the world for as long as I can remember, and even when he was deposed by the likes of Carlos Slim it seemed like an aberration.

• Now Gates is way behind Jeff Bezos, who (even after a costly divorce) will be the first to reach a net worth of $ 200 billion, and not that the numbers mean anything at this point.
• And Gates has donated more than $ 27 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 2006, which has helped all of us get a COVID-19 vaccine faster, among other things. A new piece in the New York Times underscores his Foundation’s ongoing efforts.
• Now Musk has taken Gates off the seat too, after walking past Mark Zuckerberg for the past few weeks.

What’s strange about Elon Musk shooting up the ladder to get a net worth of $ 128 billion squeaking according to the Bill Gates Bill? Bloomberg According to the Billionaires Index, Musk increased his net worth by approximately $ 100 billion in 2020, one of the most volatile years in history.

Well, it’s all paper money, not cash. But that’s how these indexes have always worked. And Musk caught a Falcon 9 to the top, largely due to Tesla’s price surge.

• Tesla has a market capitalization of nearly $ 500 billion.
• That’s almost as much as anything Germany’s medium-sized companies are grouped together ((Twitter).
• Toyota, valued at $ 199.5 billion, will manufacture around 10 million cars in 2020.
• Tesla produced around 367,000 cars in 2019. 500,000 are to be delivered by 2020, an increase of 36 percent.
• Tesla’s stock is up more than 600 percent since January 1, 2020 and more than 1,000 percent in the past 12 months.
• Tesla is different, but is it different enough? The company is supported by Musk with absolute over-fans who own the various Tesla model cars. Tesla is a massive reason electric vehicles are becoming profitable and popular, and it is aggressively promoting its autonomous vehicle technology and performance (which is a controversial argument, to say the least).
• With a huge market cap, Tesla can easily raise cash by issuing stocks with little impact on shareholders, as it did back in September when it raised $ 5 billion.
• There is no longer any risk of running out of money and so people see incredible blue skies potential as Ford and VW are just starting to offer a true EV platform car.
• Now, Musk isn’t just relying on Tesla, the company founded in 2003 that he joined in 2004.
• Musk’s SpaceX project is arguably better than Tesla when you consider that the mission of the four astronaut crew Dragon missions for the ISS and Starlink was successful.

Bloomberg Also highlights the recent disagreements between Gates and Musk that could normally be fun, aside from Musk’s COVID-19 rejection strategy:

• “Musk drops an occasional verbal sparring partner at Gates who does the Tesla billionaire made a fool of himself on Twitter partly because I have no idea about electric vehicles. The two also swapped barbs for Covid-19. Gates, whose nonprofit foundation is one of the pre-eminent institutions supporting vaccine research, expressed concern about Musk’s stated suspicions of pandemic data and the acceptance of certain conspiracy theories.”

The difference between Musk and me is that I never want to suggest that Bill Gates has no idea about anything. (But hey, let’s not compare fortune or anything …)

• Not because Bill is a rich guy and a charity person or whatever, all those good things.
• But I’ll never forget a 2010 interview with him as part of a long-running series on the Financial Timeswho dealt, among other things, with Gates’ passion for science and technology that flowed into medical advances – which, understandably, Gates might not be the expert in an expert room.
• Quote: “Gates speaks extensively and enthusiastically about the various areas of research involved in finding vaccines for HIV and malaria, but has no medical training. I ask him if he ever feels overwhelmed and talks about the latest developments. He throws me a slightly incredulous look and says, “No, because I read everything that is necessary and can learn what I want to learn. And I can spend time with people who work in the field and they are very nice to raise me. So I have a lot to learn about immunology, which is a very interesting area, ”he says, grinning with pleasure and taking a bite out of his cheeseburger.”

By the way, the interview ended with this nugget:

• “I’ll finish my coffee and ask for the bill. Gates looks a little amused as I show my credit card. “Are you sure you want to pay for this?” he says. “I have money.”
• “I don’t doubt it. But the rules are that the FT pays for lunch … “

2. The new Redmi Note 9 Pro has an official picture showing a circular quad camera with new sensor before takeoff (Android Authority).

3. Poll: How many times a day do you unlock your phone? I registered 117 yesterday. Hmm (Android Authority).

4th The test surveys for blind smartphone cameras from MKBHD for 2020 are now live – The annual smartphone competition usually reveals interesting things that people prefer in photos, although it is usually about colors. In any case, you can participate on Twitter, preferably on a smartphone rather than a desktop (Twitter).

5.Apple Security Chief charged with allegedly trading in iPads for covert gun permits (Gizmodo).

6. Snapchat has a TikTok clone called Spotlight … which actually seems fair and decent and original? With Snapchat, users get a $ 1 a day share of the most fun clips as part of a new Scroll Snap feed (The guard).

7. Twitter will now warn you before liking a tweet that is flagged as misinformation (The next web).

8. “Why is it so hard to turn off the PS5?” ((The edge).

9. ‘Super Mario Bros. 3’ sold for $ 156,000: Most expensive game ever sold at auction (Engadget).

10.Nintendo’s Game & Watch can barely do Doom (The edge).

11. GPS rules everything. And a major upgrade is being made via a GPS III satellite: three times stronger signal, new L1C civil frequency, and more. Long read but worth thinking about! ((CNET).

12.China embarks on an ambitious mission to bring back samples from the moon, the first attempt to obtain lunar grain since 1976 (The edge). SpaceX is aiming for the next Starlink launch tonight, by the way.

13. A solar powered rocket could be our ticket to interstellar space (Wired).

14. Feathers disheveled like a 1991 Thanksgiving gag at NASA Mission Control (Ars Technica).

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