The United States Supreme Court is about to decide on two cases brought by NVIDIA and Meta (Facebook) to avoid legal action against them for fraud on securities. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear NVIDIA's arguments on November 13 regarding the dismissal attempt of the securities class action lawsuit. Swedish investment firm E. Ohman J:or Fonder AB claims NVIDIA misled investors in 2017-2018 by understating its revenue dependency on cryptocurrency mining. NVIDIA's stand lies in the plaintiff's failure to meet the criteria established by the 1995 Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Earlier this year, NVIDIA settled with the U.S. regulatory authority to pay $5.5 million to settle charges about the poor reporting of crypto mining's impact on its gaming segment.

The Supreme Court is also set to adjudicate the case brought by Facebook to dismiss the securities lawsuit where investors led by Amalgamated Bank accused the company of deceiving them by not revealing a 2015 data breach that involved Cambridge Analytica and which, in turn, affected more than 30 million users. The case came to the fore after Facebook's stock tanked in the light of reports about Cambridge Analytica's misuse of user data during the 2016 Trump campaign. Facebook maintains it wasn't obliged to disclose past breaches in risk statements, as these are supposedly forward-looking. The company had previously paid $100 million in penalty to the SEC and $5 billion to the FTC over the same issue. Recently, three Supreme Court decisions in June had eroded federal regulators, namely the SEC which is the principal regulator of securities fraud, and appear to bring more limitations to the power of private plaintiffs to be able to enforce federal rules set out for corporate misconduct.

Supermicro shares took a big hit today when Ernst & Young quit as its auditor, making its stock fall over 30%. EY decided to leave because of their worries in July about how Supermicro runs things, shares information, and keeps track of its money. In August, Supermicro delayed its annual report as they were looking over internal financial controls following Hindenburg Research's allegations of accounting manipulation. Ernst & Young's letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about quitting says they can't trust what the company's leaders say anymore. They also don't want their name on the company's financial papers after discovering new information during their check. "We are resigning due to information that has recently come to our attention which has led us to no longer be able to rely on management's and the Audit Committee's representations and to be unwilling to be associated with the financial statements prepared by management."

Supermicro doesn't agree with the accounting firm's decision, and they say fixing these problems won't mean they have to redo any of their financial reports from 2024 or earlier. Commenting on this subject, Nathan Anderson, the founder of Hindenburg, said in a post on X, "As far as auditor statements go, E&Y's SMCI resignation letter is about as strongly worded as I have seen." According to The Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice is currently looking into the company. Supermicro will present its first quarter fiscal 2025 business update on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. ET / 2:00 p.m. PT.

Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) and Apollo (NYSE: APO) today announced a definitive agreement under which Apollo-managed funds and affiliates will lead an investment of $11 billion to acquire from Intel a 49% equity interest in a joint venture entity related to Intel's Fab 34. The transaction represents Intel's second Semiconductor Co-Investment Program (SCIP) arrangement. SCIP is an element of Intel's Smart Capital strategy, a funding approach designed to create financial flexibility to accelerate the company's strategy, including investing in its global manufacturing operations, while maintaining a strong balance sheet.

Located in Leixlip, Ireland, Fab 34 is Intel's leading-edge high-volume manufacturing (HVM) facility designed for wafers using the Intel 4 and Intel 3 process technologies. To date, Intel has invested $18.4 billion in Fab 34. This transaction allows Intel to unlock and redeploy to other parts of its business a portion of this investment while continuing the build-out of Fab 34. As part of its transformation strategy, Intel has committed billions of dollars of investments to regaining process leadership and building out leading-edge wafer fabrication and advanced packaging capacity globally.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) was notified on March 27, 2024, of an unsolicited "mini-tender" offer by Tutanota LLC ("Tutanota"). Pursuant to the offer, which is dated March 18, 2024, Tutanota is offering to purchase up to 150,000 shares of AMD common stock at $200.00 per share, which represents approximately 0.009283% of AMD's outstanding shares. The offer price of $200.00 per share is conditioned on, among other things, the closing price per share of AMD common stock exceeding $200.00 per share on the last trading day before the offer expires. This means that unless this condition is waived by Tutanota, AMD stockholders who tender shares in the offer will receive a below-market price. Tutanota can extend the offer for successive periods of 45 to 180 days until the market price of AMD common stock exceeds the offer price, in which case payment would be delayed beyond the scheduled expiration date of Friday, April 19, 2024.

AMD does not in any way recommend or endorse the Tutanota offer because the offer requires that the closing price for AMD common stock exceed the offer price, and the offer price is subject to numerous additional conditions, including Tutanota obtaining financing for the offer. There is no guarantee the conditions of the offer will be satisfied. AMD is in no way associated with Tutanota, the "mini-tender" offer or the offer documentation. "Mini-tender" offers seek less than 5% of a company's outstanding shares thereby avoiding many procedural and disclosure requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") because they are below the SEC's threshold to provide such disclosure and procedural protections for investors.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) has been notified of a "mini-tender" offer by TRC Capital Investment Corporation ("TRC Capital"). Pursuant to the offer, which is dated Dec. 11, 2023, TRC Capital is offering to purchase up to 1 million shares of AMD common stock, which represents approximately 0.06% of its outstanding shares. AMD cautions its stockholders that TRC Capital's unsolicited "mini-tender" offer of $123.45 per share is approximately 4.24% below the $128.92 per share closing price of AMD stock on Dec. 8, 2023, the day before the "mini-tender" offer was commenced and approximately 11.12% below the $138.90 per share closing price of AMD stock on Dec. 18, 2023.

AMD recommends against tendering shares in response to this unsolicited below-market offer. AMD does not in any way recommend or endorse the TRC Capital "mini-tender" offer, and AMD is in no way associated with TRC Capital, the "mini-tender" offer or the offer documentation. "Mini-tender" offers seek less than 5% of a company's outstanding shares thereby avoiding many procedural and disclosure requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) because they are below the SEC's threshold to provide such disclosure and procedural protections for investors.

Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) ("Microsoft") and Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) ("Activision Blizzard") today announced that, in connection with the previously announced merger of Activision Blizzard with and into a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft (the "Merger"), with Activision Blizzard surviving the Merger as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, Microsoft has commenced offers to Eligible Holders (as defined herein) to exchange (each an "Exchange Offer" and collectively, the "Exchange Offers") any and all outstanding notes issued by Activision Blizzard as set forth in the table below (the "Existing Activision Blizzard Notes") for up to $3,650,000,000 aggregate principal amount of new notes issued by Microsoft (the "New Microsoft Notes") and cash.

Concurrently with the Exchange Offers being made by Microsoft, Activision Blizzard is, upon Microsoft's request, soliciting consents from Eligible Holders (each, a "Consent Solicitation" and, collectively, the "Consent Solicitations") to adopt certain proposed amendments to each of the corresponding indentures governing the Existing Activision Blizzard Notes to eliminate certain of the covenants, restrictive provisions and events of default from such indentures (with respect to the corresponding indenture for such Existing Activision Blizzard Notes, the "Proposed Amendments"). Eligible Holders may deliver their consent to the Proposed Amendments only by tendering Existing Activision Blizzard Notes of the applicable series in the Exchange Offers and Consent Solicitations. Eligible Holders may not deliver a consent in a Consent Solicitation without tendering Existing Activision Blizzard Notes in the applicable Exchange Offer and Eligible Holders may not tender Existing Activision Blizzard Notes without also having been deemed to deliver a consent.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2022 fourth quarter ended September 24, 2022. The Company posted a September quarter record revenue of $90.1 billion, up 8 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.29, up 4 percent year over year. Annual revenue was $394.3 billion, up 8 percent year over year, and annual earnings per diluted share were $6.11, up 9 percent year over year.

"This quarter's results reflect Apple's commitment to our customers, to the pursuit of innovation, and to leaving the world better than we found it," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "As we head into the holiday season with our most powerful lineup ever, we are leading with our values in every action we take and every decision we make. We are deeply committed to protecting the environment, to securing user privacy, to strengthening accessibility, and to creating products and services that can unlock humanity's full creative potential."

Elon Musk in a late-Thursday tweet announced that he is placing his Twitter acquisition bid on "temporary hold" over doubts about the platform's spam-bot data. Twitter, in a recent SEC regulatory filing, disclosed that spam bots made up less than 5% of its userbase. The filing revealed that Twitter has 229 million users that viewed consistent ads, while fewer than 5% of the "monetizable daily active users" were fake or spam-bot accounts. Financial analysts predict the substantial fall in cryprocurrency values, as well as a $400 billion drop in market-capitalization of the Tesla stock since Musk announced plans to buy Twitter, may have made the world's richest man squeamish about buying Twitter, and that he is probably looking for a legally safe escape route from the deal. Twitter shares plummeted in value since the Musk tweet.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against technology company NVIDIA Corporation for inadequate disclosures concerning the impact of cryptomining on the company's gaming business. The SEC's order finds that, during consecutive quarters in NVIDIA's fiscal year 2018, the company failed to disclose that cryptomining was a significant element of its material revenue growth from the sale of its graphics processing units (GPUs) designed and marketed for gaming. Cryptomining is the process of obtaining crypto rewards in exchange for verifying crypto transactions on distributed ledgers. As demand for and interest in crypto rose in 2017, NVIDIA customers increasingly used its gaming GPUs for cryptomining.

In two of its Forms 10-Q for its fiscal year 2018, NVIDIA reported material growth in revenue within its gaming business. NVIDIA had information, however, that this increase in gaming sales was driven in significant part by cryptomining. Despite this, NVIDIA did not disclose in its Forms 10-Q, as it was required to do, these significant earnings and cash flow fluctuations related to a volatile business for investors to ascertain the likelihood that past performance was indicative of future performance. The SEC's order also finds that NVIDIA's omissions of material information about the growth of its gaming business were misleading given that NVIDIA did make statements about how other parts of the company's business were driven by demand for crypto, creating the impression that the company's gaming business was not significantly affected by cryptomining.

Despite its technical advantages over NAND flash, Intel's Optane memory technology never really took off in the consumer space, largely due to its much higher costs. Based on details from Intel's SEC filings, it would appear that its corporate customers haven't been overly impressed either, as Intel filed a US$576 million loss in 2020 with regards to its Optane business.

As to if this trend continued in 2021, we're going to have to wait and see, but it looks like the losses are set to continue based on its revenue figures, according to Blocks and Files. With this in mind, it seems like Micron's exit from 3D XPoint memory isn't so hard to understand, as the technology is clearly too costly to make up for the benefits on offer, for most of its potential customer base. Transitions to higher-density 3D XPoint memory has also been slow, which might be yet another reason customers have shied away from using it, even as a caching solution in storage servers. It wouldn't surprise us if Intel moves on from Optane/3D XPoint memory in the near future, as the company seems to have shifted its focus firmly away from storage solutions.

AMD today announced the expansion of the AMD Ryzen Embedded ecosystem with two new AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 low-power processors that provide customers with a new TDP range of 6 up to 10 W. AMD also announced new customers offering Mini PCs based on the AMD Ryzen Embedded processors from Sapphire, SECO, Simply NUC and others.

"AMD is ushering in a new age of high-performance computing for the embedded industry," said Rajneesh Gaur, corporate vice president and general manager, Embedded Solutions, AMD. "We are doing this with cutting-edge technology to display immersive graphics in 4K resolution with AMD Ryzen Embedded processors, and we are now offering access to high performance in power-efficient solutions with these new low-power Ryzen Embedded R1000 processors."

Cougar today launched the Conquer 2, a premium ATX full-tower chassis it unveiled at Computex 2019. It features a "chassis within chassis" design, in which an inner SECC steel chassis holds all your components and slides into the outer chassis that has the case's industrial design that combines aluminium and tempered glass panels. Massive ARGB LED diffusers dominate the front portion. The inner chassis has a horizontally-partitioned layout. The upper compartment has the motherboard tray with room for CEB, ATX, and smaller motherboard form-factors. You get room for graphics cards up to 40 cm in length. There are 10 expansion slots in all, from which two are vertical.

The bottom compartment houses the PSU bay with up to 22 cm headroom; and two 3.5-inch drives. Two additional 2.5-inch drives can be mounted behind the motherboard tray. Cooling options include two 120 mm front intakes that can hold onto a 240 mm radiator, and three 120 mm top exhausts, which can hold a 360 mm radiator. Measuring 368 mm x 631 mm x 744 mm (WxHxD), the case weighs about 18 kg. The company didn't reveal pricing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued its first no-action letter for a blockchain token made for the game industry. Quarters (Q), a cross-game, cross-platform premium game token, provides a player-friendly and industry-friendly alternative to in-game tokens traditionally locked to a single game.

The Quarters smart contract provides this necessary trust by enabling everyone - players, developers and investors - to securely and transparently buy and use a prepaid arcade token. With the SEC regulatory relief, Quarters are also legal for all players to buy and use as a consumer product in the United States.

TDK Corporation announces the sequential launch of the embedded SD ESRD4 series, the embedded SSD ESS1B series and the M.2 SSD Type 2280-D5-B-M SNS1B series. With the progress of IoT, the demand for micro storage for edge data is rapidly expanding. In particular, eMMC, which can be mounted on a surface, was expected to be potent, but the trend is shifting from eMMC to UFS, which is associated with the larger capacity of smartphones.

On the other hand, a reliable and appropriate storage capacity is required for I-IoT that usually uses a small capacity. TDK's embedded SD ESRD4 series is a SD card, equipped with a highly durable SLC/pSLC NAND flash that can be implemented on boards. It covers a wide range of capacities from 1GB to 32GB, suitable for storing a lightweight system such as Linux and RTOS.

In separate interviews with Vice Motherboard, Viceroy Research, the AMD stock short-seller that posted an obituary of AMD, and CTS-Labs, which claims AMD "Zen" architecture is infested with glaring security vulnerabilities; crystallized their financial positions on "AMD Flaws." CTS-Labs and Viceroy Research each went on record to state that they have no financial relationship with each other. "Viceroy [Research] is not a client of CTS[-Labs], and CTS[-Labs] did not send its research to Viceroy [Research]," said Yaron Luk, co-founder of CTS-Labs, but confirmed that his company's business-model involves sharing their cyber-security research with stock research firms (like Viceroy Research), which probably use the information to short tech stocks (a highly unethical though not yet illegal practice). "We are a for-profit company that gets paid for its research by a variety of research clients," Luk stated.

It's becoming increasingly clear that entities other than AMD had access to CTS-Labs' work, at least the report, if not the "research package," greater than 24 hours before public disclosure (i.e. before even AMD could see it), and one such entity, referred to as an "anonymous tipster" in the Motherboard report, "shared" the information with Viceroy Research, which quickly bought itself a shorting position against the AMD stock, and posted a 25-page doomsaying report to accelerate the fall of AMD stock (which isn't quite happening at the time of writing this post). Viceroy Research is brazen about its position on the matter. "We haven't hidden the fact that we short the stock," said Fraser Perring, founder of Viceroy. Cybersecurity guru Alex Stamos, who is associated with Facebook, without taking names, tweeted an ominous warning that short-selling fueled security research "is going to end in tears. Hopefully due to lost money, and not because naive researchers go to prison." Does this foretell new regulation by the SEC that renders Viceroy's position into a black-hole for their money? The SEC has taken a great interest in the behavior of tech corporations and investors around cyber-security research.

Even as we reported, earlier this week, that there's a veritable digital grave of failed ICOs (either through bad management or by design) that have taken millions of dollars with them, news is breaking that the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has started cracking down on these blockchain-fueled practices. According to the Wall Street Journal, citing "people familiar with the matter", the outfit has issued a number of subpoenas and information requests to technology companies and advisers involved in the ICO practices.

The SEC's intention here is to see whether or not any of these ICOs have been designed and offered in ways that contravene the established securities trading practices and regulations (heads-up: many of them most likely have). More specifically, the SEC is demanding information regarding the structure of ICO sales and pre-sales - where many of these actually fall apart in their transparency. According to former SEC commissioner Dan Gallagher, "We're seeing the tip of the iceberg ... there is going to be a ton of enforcement activity". Naturally, the very nature of the blockchain and ICO startups can simply build themselves up in ways that prevent them from ever being identified - after all, fake websites, media accounts, and white papers are all relatively easy to forge, and considering the current state of the cryptocurrency and ICO market (which has improved compared to last year), some users are always bound to be caught in the net.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) came down hard on silicon valley executives trading company stock when their companies were investigating security or design flaws that could potentially bring down stock value; as something like that borders on insider-trading, a felony under US law. This comes in the wake of senior executives of credit rating company Equifax, and chipmaker Intel, dumping company stock while their companies were investigating security flaws in their products or services. Intel CEO Brian Kraznich raised quite a stink when reports emerged that he sold $39 million worth Intel stock while the company was investigating the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in its processors (which hadn't been made public while he dumped the stock).

The SEC has come up with a far-reaching new guideline to keep tech execs from exhibiting similar borderline-insider-trading behavior. "Directors, officers, and other corporate insiders must not trade a public company's securities while in possession of material nonpublic information, which may include knowledge regarding a significant cybersecurity incident experienced by the company," the new guideline reads. "There is no doubt that the cybersecurity landscape and the risks associated with it continue to evolve," said SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. "I have asked the Division of Corporation Finance to continue to carefully monitor cybersecurity disclosures as part of their selective filing reviews. We will continue to evaluate developments in this area and consider feedback about whether any further guidance or rules are needed."