Technology
Fisker failed because he wasn’t ready to be a car company

Two years ago, an worker of Fisker Inc. told me that the electrical vehicle startup’s most pressing concern wasn’t whether its Ocean SUV would be built. Fisker eventually outsourced production of its first electric vehicle to highly respected automotive supplier Magna. The startup’s November 2022 production start goal was ambitious, but not unattainable for a company like Magna, which makes vehicles like BMW.
Instead, this person said, employees became increasingly fearful that Fisker would not be ready to take care of all the issues that arise when the company puts a car on the road. They were concerned that the main target was solely on constructing the car and never the company.
The conversation stuck with me because a decade ago, Fisker founder and CEO Henrik Fisker caused an automotive startup to fail, probably because of this. This company, Fisker Automotive, provided several thousand customers with a hybrid sports car. However, the company imploded shortly thereafter because it faced quality complaints, a battery supplier failure, and a hurricane that literally sank a ship stuffed with vehicles.
The worker’s warning that the brand new Fisker would follow a similar path was striking and ultimately prophetic. Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week after spending just a 12 months delivering its SUV to customers world wide. Much of its demise is directly linked to its inability to address the concerns raised by the worker in 2022.
This person was not alone. Since then, dozens of other individuals who worked at Fisker have repeated this sentiment to me in conversations, just about all of them on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs or retaliating from the company. From these conversations emerged the stories I told – Ocean’s quality and repair problems, the interior chaos at Fisker, and the selections by Henrik Fisker and his co-founder, wife, CFO and COO, Geeta Gupta-Fisker, that brought the company down.
Most of them told me how the shortage of preparation was profound and permeated almost every department of the company, as I even have previously reported for TechCrunch and Bloomberg News.
The software powering the Ocean SUV was underdeveloped. This contributed to the delay within the launch of the SUVand even thwarted the primary delivery in May 2023, which Fisker had to repair and resolve issues shortly after handover. The same thing happened when the company made its first deliveries within the US in June 2023, when one in all its executives’ SUV lost power shortly after delivery.
The company delivered significantly fewer Ocean SUVs than originally anticipated. Even after lowering its 2023 goal multiple times, it still struggled to meet its internal sales targets. Sales staff told stories of repeatedly calling potential customers in hopes of selling vehicles because so few recent leads were coming in. Others eventually applied to sell cars, even in the event that they worked in completely different departments.
Many customers who took delivery of their Ocean experienced problems akin to a sudden lack of power, brake system problems, faulty key fobs, problematic door handles that would temporarily lock them in or out of the car, and buggy software. (The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened 4 investigations into Ocean.)
Fisker had quality problems with a few of its suppliers, and employees alleged it failed to provide an adequate buffer of spare parts. This put additional pressure on the people liable for repairing the cars after they encountered problems, and ultimately led to the company taking parts not only from the Magna production line in Austria, but additionally from Henrik Fisker’s own car. (Fisker denied these claims.)
Throughout this time, junior and mid-level employees have strived to do every little thing they will to help the slowly growing customer base. One owner told me that in a funeral, an worker received a call from his personal mobile phone. Other employees shared stories of employees performing job duties while within the hospital. Many people worked long days, nights and weekends – a lot in order that a minimum of one hourly worker filed a potential class motion lawsuit over this very issue.
The company itself has repeatedly admitted that it doesn’t have enough employees to handle the influx of customer support calls. This was one other place where employees from other departments got involved. Some are even receiving calls from customers today, though they left Fisker weeks or months ago.
Fisker also struggled with the mundane but serious work of being a public company. At one point, it lost track of roughly $16 million in customer payments due to a mess of internal accounting practices. It suffered multiple delays in required reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission. One of those delays was allowed by one in all the company’s largest lenders to finally take over in recent months.
Despite all this, Fisker is there still praises speed to market is an achievement originally of the bankruptcy process. “Fisker has made incredible progress since our founding, bringing the Ocean SUV to market twice as quickly as expected in the automotive industry,” an unnamed spokesperson said in a press release in regards to the Chapter 11 filing.
The ephemeral corporate representative goes on to say that Fisker “has faced various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted our ability to operate efficiently.” While that is actually true to some extent, there may be otherwise no introspection on the myriad problems which have brought the company to its current point.
This may come to light during Chapter 11 proceedings, through which the company seeks to settle its debts (of which it claims to have between $100 million and $500 million) and to divest or otherwise restructure its assets (totaling between 500 million to 1 billion dollars).
What happens next will rely upon the course of those proceedings. Fisker has at all times taken an “asset-less” approach, comparing itself to how Apple used Foxconn to help make the iPhone a global phenomenon. The problem with saving on assets is that it naturally means you’ve gotten fewer opportunities to borrow or sell when things go south.
Magna has halted production of Ocean and is looking for $400 million lack of revenue as a result this 12 months. It’s unclear what progress Fisker has made on its future products, the sub-$30,000 Pear EV and the Alaska pickup truck. The engineering firm that co-created these vehicles with Fisker recently sued the startup, casting doubt on these designs.
Fisker said in its press release that it will proceed “limited operations,” including “maintaining customer programs and compensating needed vendors in the future.” In other words, it is going to proceed to operate its core business within the event that there may be a willing buyer for the assets it’s putting up on the market in a Chapter 11 case.
Ten years ago, the bankrupt Fisker Automotive found a buyer. It eventually evolved into a start-up generally known as Karma Automotive, which nominally still exists today. There have been similar results recently. Three other electric vehicle startups that recently filed for bankruptcy – Lordstown Motors, Arrival and Electric Last Mile Solutions – were able to sell assets to comparable corporations within the industry.
But the final word fate of the startup and its assets won’t change the essential problem: Fisker wasn’t ready to take care of bringing a defective car to market.
Technology
Why the new Porn Law Anti-Revenge disturbs experts on freedom

Proponents of privacy and digital rights increase the alarms over the law, which many would expect to support: federal repression of pornography of revenge and deep cabinets generated by AI.
The newly signed Act on Take IT Down implies that the publishing of unjustified clear photos-vigorous or generated AI-I gives platforms only 48 hours to follow the request to remove the victim or face responsibility. Although widely praised as an extended win for victims, experts also warned their unclear language, loose standards for verification of claims, and a decent compatibility window can pave the way for excessive implementation, censorship of justified content and even supervision.
“Large -scale model moderation is very problematic and always ends with an important and necessary assessment speech,” said India McKinney, Federal Director at Electronic Frontier Foundation, a corporation of digital rights.
Internet platforms have one 12 months to determine a means of removing senseless intimate images (NCII). Although the law requires that the request to be removed comes from victims or their representatives, he only asks for a physical or electronic signature – no photo identifier or other type of verification is required. This might be geared toward reducing barriers for victims, but it could possibly create the possibility of abuse.
“I really want to be wrong in this, but I think there will be more requests to take photos of Queer and trance people in relationships, and even more, I think it will be consensual porn,” said McKinney.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a co-person of the Take IT Down Act, also sponsored the Safety Act for youngsters, which puts a burden on platforms to guard children from harmful online content. Blackburn said he believed Content related to transgender individuals It is harmful to children. Similarly, the Heritage Foundation – conservative Think Tank behind the 2025 project – also has he said that “keeping the content away from children protects children.”
Due to the responsibility with which they encounter platforms, in the event that they don’t take off the image inside 48 hours of receiving the request: “By default it will be that they simply take it off without conducting an investigation to see if it is NCII or whether it is another type of protected speech, or whether it is even important for the person who submits the application,” said McKinney.
Snapchat and Meta said that they support the law, but none of them answered TechCrunch’s request for more information on how they’d check if the person asking for removal is a victim.
Mastodon, a decentralized platform, which hosts his own flagship server, to which others can join, told Techcrunch that he could be inclined to remove if he was too difficult to confirm the victim.
Mastodon and other decentralized platforms, comparable to blues or pixfed, could be particularly exposed to the cold of the 48-hour removal rule. These networks are based on independently supported servers, often run by non -profit organizations or natural individuals. Under the law, FTC may treat any platform that is just not “reasonably consistent” with demands of removal as “unfair or deceptive action or practice” – even when the host is just not a business subject.
“It’s disturbing on his face, but especially when he took the FTC chair unprecedented Steps to politicize The agency and clearly promised to make use of the agency’s power to punish platforms and services on ideologicalIn contrast to the rules, the basics, “cyberspace initiative, a non -profit organization dedicated to the end of pornography of revenge, she said in statement.
Proactive monitoring
McKinney predicts that the platforms will start moderating content before distribution, so in the future they’ve fewer problematic posts.
Platforms already use artificial intelligence to observe harmful content.
Kevin Guo, general director and co -founder of the content detection startup, said that his company cooperates with web platforms to detect deep materials and sexual materials of kids (CSAM). Some of the Hive clients are Reddit, Giphy, Vevo, BlueSky and Bereal.
“In fact, we were one of the technology companies that supported this bill,” said Guo Techcrunch. “This will help solve some quite important problems and force these platforms to take more proactive solutions.”
The HIVE model is software as a service, so starting doesn’t control how the platforms use their product to flag or delete content. But Guo said that many shoppers insert the API Hive interface when sent to monitoring before anything is distributed to the community.
Reddit spokesman told Techcrunch that the platform uses “sophisticated internal tools, processes and teams for solving and removal”. Reddit also cooperates with the NON -SWGFL organization in an effort to implement the Stopncia tool, which scans live traffic seeking matches with a database of known NCII and removes accurate fittings. The company didn’t share how it is going to be sure that the person asking for removal is a victim.
McKinney warns that this kind of monitoring can expand to encrypted messages in the future. Although the law focuses on public or semi -public dissemination, it also requires the platforms “removing and making reasonable efforts to prevent” senseless intimate images from re -translating. He claims that this will likely encourage proactive scanning of all content, even in encrypted spaces. The law doesn’t contain any sculptors for encrypted services of encrypted messages, comparable to WhatsApp, Signal or IMessage.
Meta, Signal and Apple didn’t answer TechCrunch for more details about their plans for encrypted messages.
Wider implications of freedom of speech
On March 4, Trump provided a joint address to the congress, wherein he praised the Take It Down act and said he couldn’t wait to sign it.
“And I also intend to use this bill for myself if you don’t mind,” he added. “There is nobody who is treated worse than I do online.”
While the audience laughed at the comment, not everyone considered it a joke. Trump was not ashamed of suppressing or retarding against unfavorable speech, no matter whether it’s the mainstream marking “enemies of individuals” Except for Associated Press from the oval office despite the court order or Financing from NPR and PBS.
Trump administration on Thursday Barred Harvard University From the reception of foreign students, the escalation of the conflict, which began after Harvard refused to follow Trump’s demands to make changes to his curriculum and eliminate, amongst others, content related to Dei. In retaliation, Trump froze federal funds at Harvard and threatened to repeal the status of the tax exemption from the university.
“At a time when we see that school councils are trying to prohibit books and see that some politicians very clearly deal with the types of content that people do not want to ever see, regardless of whether it is a critical theory of breed, or information about abortion or information about climate change …” McKinney said.
(Tagstotransate) Censorship
Technology
PO clarous Director General Zoom also uses AI avatar during a quarterly connection

General directors at the moment are so immersed in artificial intelligence that they send their avatars to cope with quarterly connections from earnings as a substitute, a minimum of partly.
After AI Avatar CEO CEO appeared on the investor’s conversation firstly of this week, the final director of Zoom Eric Yuan also followed them, also Using his avatar for preliminary comments. Yuan implemented his non -standard avatar via Zoom Clips, an asynchronous company video tool.
“I am proud that I am one of the first general directors who used the avatar in a call for earnings,” he said – or fairly his avatar. “This is just one example of how Zoom shifts the limits of communication and cooperation. At the same time, we know that trust and security are necessary. We take seriously the content generated AI and build strong security to prevent improper use, protect the user’s identity and ensure that avatars are used responsibly.”
Yuan has long been in favor of using avatars at meetings and previously said that the corporate goals to create Digital user twins. He just isn’t alone on this vision; The CEO of transcript -powered AI, apparently, trains its own avatar Share the load.
Meanwhile, Zoom said he was doing it Avatar non -standard function available To all users this week.
(Tagstranslat) meetings AI
Technology
The next large Openai plant will not be worn: Report

Opeli pushed generative artificial intelligence into public consciousness. Now it might probably develop a very different variety of AI device.
According to WSJ reportThe general director of Opeli, Altman himself, told employees on Wednesday that one other large product of the corporate would not be worn. Instead, it will be compact, without the screen of the device, fully aware of the user’s environment. Small enough to sit down on the desk or slot in your pocket, Altman described it each as a “third device” next to MacBook Pro and iPhone, in addition to “Comrade AI” integrated with on a regular basis life.
The preview took place after the OpenAI announced that he was purchased by IO, a startup founded last 12 months by the previous Apple Joni Ive designer, in a capital agreement value $ 6.5 billion. I will take a key creative and design role at Openai.
Altman reportedly told employees that the acquisition can ultimately add 1 trillion USD to the corporate conveyorsWearing devices or glasses that got other outfits.
Altman reportedly also emphasized to the staff that the key would be crucial to stop the copying of competitors before starting. As it seems, the recording of his comments leaked to the journal, asking questions on how much he can trust his team and the way rather more he will be able to reveal.
(Tagstotransate) devices
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