Tag: News

• In a new interview, Jack Dorsey explained Elon Musk's seemingly chaotic decisions at X.
• The mass layoffs, advertiser exodus, and blue-check revamp fit into a push for free speech, Dorsey said.
• It's all part of ditching Twitter's "core, critical sin" of advertiser control, he said.

Elon Musk's handling of Twitter has been panned as erratic. But the platform's cofounder, Jack Dorsey, is defending his fellow billionaire's approach, saying Musk's sweeping job cuts and ditching of advertisers made sense for a shift toward free speech.

Dorsey spoke with Mike Solana, the head of marketing for VC firm Founders Fund and editor of digital media brand Pirate Wires, in an interview published Thursday. Dorsey said he shared Musk's goal of creating an internet bastion for free speech. But Dorsey said Twitter had been weighed down by its revenue model.

Twitter chose brand advertising as its main source of income, a "core, critical sin" that exposed the platform's moderation to the whims of corporations effectively financing the social-media platform, Dorsey said.

"And when you're entirely dependent on that, if a brand like P&G or Unilever doesn't like what's happening on the platform, and they threaten to pull the budget, which accounts for like 20% of your revenue? You have no choice," Dorsey told Solana.

Musk, who rebranded Twitter to X, triggered an advertiser exodus late in 2023 when he appeared to endorse an antisemitic post — the tipping point for many organizations after months of Musk's controversial and confusing remarks.

The Tesla and SpaceX owner appeared nonchalant when big players such as Disney, IBM, and Apple left his platform, publicly telling advertisers to "go fuck yourself" and calling them the "greatest oppressors of free speech."

Pundits were shocked. But Dorsey said Musk made the right choice to stick by his vision for a censorship-free "digital town square" and reduce the emphasis on advertisers.

"You have to build up a lot more than advertising to make that model work. You have to build subscriptions, which Elon is doing. You have to build commerce," Dorsey said.

That addresses another sore point for fans of old Twitter. Shortly after taking over, Musk revamped its subscription service by giving blue-check verification to paid users and aggressively promoting monthly memberships.

Building a different business model

To many, Musk seemed to be axing Twitter's entire business model. But Dorsey said the bleeding is part of decoupling from big advertisers' control and finding new revenue streams.

"Twitter was a $5 billion a year business," Dorsey said. "I don't know what it is now, but it's obviously nowhere near that, right? These are choices that can be made, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be the same level of business for quite some time, until you figure out a completely different model around it."

The mass layoffs at Twitter, in which Musk slashed global headcount by 80%, also made sense to Dorsey, who said the majority of employees were in sales.

Dorsey's comments come as he quit Bluesky, a platform he helped create after leaving Twitter, and told users to use Musk's X instead.

He then scrapped his entire Twitter follow list except for Musk, Edward Snowden, and the wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Twitter cofounder has generally spoken approvingly of Musk, though he's previously said he felt Musk lacked finesse in handling big changes at X, like the messy, abrupt layoffs that led to lawsuits from former employees.

"It all looked fairly reckless," Dorsey said in June of Musk's moves.

Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, taking the company private. Less than six months later — after imposing wide-scale changes — he reportedly said that it was worth less than half of what he bought it for.

• FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted on seven counts, gave an interview from prison to Puck.
• SBF told Puck he spends his days in a large dormitory room with 35 other men.
• He said he lives off beans and rice purchased from the commissary, and his rice is now prison currency.

Sam Bankman-Fried has a new currency to trade in prison at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

The disgraced FTX founder and cofounder of Alameda Research was convicted of wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy in November.

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March and gave his first in-person interview from MDC to Puck News' William D. Cohan.

In the interview, published on Thursday, Bankman-Fried discussed his conditions in the federal prison. He also said he did not do anything wrong and is planning to appeal his conviction.

Cohan was not permitted a pen, pad, recorder, phone, or watch during the interview, so his observations were subsequently written down.

The former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange told Puck that he subsists off beans and bags of rice purchased from the commissary and that his rice "has become one of the currencies of the realm inside MDC."

Bankman-Fried, Cohan estimates, has lost 25 pounds and looks fitter, which may be in part because he says the vegan food he is served is inedible and his fellow inmates told him it smells like "shit."

The former crypto mogul, who is known by his initials SBF, told Puck he is in a section of the prison that mainly houses female prisoners but that his ward is a large room with bunk beds that holds 35 men. He said that maybe half of the men had been convicted of murder and became cooperating witnesses.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about Bankman-Fried's prison quarters, nor did his attorneys.

He told Puck his days consist of sitting in the room with the other men while four televisions play different channels. He said he doesn't watch much TV but uses a tablet to play games or watch movies.

He told Puck that he has not been abused and does not "fear for his safety." And the only time he is pestered is at night "about those bags of rice, which they intend to use to barter," he said.

SBF was found guilty of stealing $8 billion from FTX customers. Following his conviction, US Attorney Damian Williams said SBF "perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history — a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the King of Crypto." He was found guilty of commingling FTX customer money with that of Alameda Research, money that prosecutors said went to enriching executives.

FTX said this week that it plans to pay back customers.

• Hemant Pandey, a Meta senior software engineer, suggests exploring the job market every two years.
• Pandey's pre-interview prep includes reading up on past interviews and preparing good questions.
• His strategy not only helps him stand out at interviews but also provides insights into company culture.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hemant Pandey, a senior software engineer at Meta in California. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment history.

I graduated with a master's in computer science in 2017. I was a few months into my first job at Tesla when I was laid off due to budget cuts.

Things worked out well, and I landed on my feet within a few weeks, but the experience left a mark on me.

I realized that the relationship between an employer and employee is transactional, and there will always be ups and downs.

Since then, I have made it a practice to interview and explore the job market every two years even if I don't plan to switch jobs, just to get an idea of my demand in the market and what employers are paying.

Over the last seven years, I have interned at Amazon and worked full time at Tesla, SAP, Salesforce, and Meta.

At various points in my career, I have also received offers from LinkedIn, TikTok, Square, and Splunk. Over time, I have solidified an interview preparation strategy that has worked for me and one I share with juniors I mentor.

This is what 24 hours before a Big Tech interview look like for me:

Read up on past interview questions

I have found that Big Tech interviews largely follow a set pattern of processes. It is common for the recruiter to explain all the steps in the first call — including the types and number of interviews. This information is also easily accessible on online forums.

I have a list of technical topics that I revise a week before the interview so that I am relaxed on the last day. On the day before, I go online and look up the experiences of people who have recently interviewed at the company.

For example, if I am applying for Google, I'll go to a coding practice website called Leetcode and click on the "discuss" tab. Here, people share their company-specific interview experiences. I look at what popular questions are and if the user has any advice on how to pass them.

I mostly use it as a checklist to ensure I am comfortable answering those questions. If I spot anything new, I look into it.

I keep the the last day light, because I don't want to be stressed during the interview or even the day before. Interviews require you to be good at communication and time management and pressurizing yourself on the last day might cause more harm than good.

Prepare questions to ask

On the day before a big interview, I focus on planning what I want to ask the hiring managers at the end of our conversation.

This step is important for not only doing well in the interview but also for analyzing the company.

I usually ask hiring managers these three questions:

1. What advice do they have for someone who wants to succeed in the company?
2. What has their growth been in the company — what level did they join, and where are they at now?
3. I do my research on the company's upcoming projects or the systems they use and bring it up in the form of a question.

Answers to these questions give me more information about the company and play a role in my decision if I am comparing multiple offers.

For the second question, if someone says they joined the company as a fresh graduate and moved to a staff engineer role in three years, it tells me the company rewards top performers. I try to ask multiple people this question and look for a pattern. A few people saying they are at the same level they joined a couple of years ago makes the company culture less appealing to me.

Besides helping me, these questions tell the hiring team that I am someone who has done their homework about the company and is interested in the work they do.

As someone who is now on the other side of the interview panel, I love when candidates ask me about my career growth in the company, or specific questions like why Meta is focusing on AI. This shows me that they keep up-to-date with tech and are passionate about my company.

Do you work in tech, finance, or consulting and have tips to share about your interview strategy? Email this reporter at shubhangigoel@insider.com.

• There are approximately 22 million remote workers in the US, many of whom are looking for new locales.
• MakeMyMove recently released its list of top 10 destinations for remote workers.
• The list includes popular hotspots and up-and-coming hidden gems. 

Remote work has fundamentally changed the landscape of American life. As more and more people can do their jobs from anywhere in the country, new communities are popping up as hot spots for remote workers.

There are about 22 million adults in the US who work from home. The flexibility has allowed people to prioritize affordability and location, with many people ditching big cities for smaller towns.

MakeMyMove, a company that connects people who work from home with up-and-coming communities, released a list last week of its top 10 places for remote workers, highlighting places that are both well-known remote work locales and hidden gems.

• Google's CEO clapped back at Satya Nadella's comments about making Google dance with the "new Bing."
• Sundar Pichai said one of the ways you can go wrong is by listening to someone else's music.
• Pichai said competition is normal in tech and he has a clear sense of what Google needs to do.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella once said he hopes the "new Bing" will make Google "come out and show that they can dance."

"And I want people to know that we made them dance, and I think that'll be a great day," Nadella said in February 2023 after it launched the revamped Bing search engine it made with OpenAI.

But Google CEO Sundar Pichai likes to listen to his own music, he said in a new interview with Bloomberg published Wednesday.

"One of the ways you can do the wrong thing is by listening to noise out there and playing to someone else's dance music," Pichai said in the interview, in response to Nadella's remarks.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft announced its "New Bing," powered by OpenAI in February 2023. Nadella previously told The Verge that he waited 20 years to compete with Google, and it "should have been the default winner" of the Big Tech AI race.

Despite Google's early investment in AI and all of its resources and talent, Microsoft started off leading the AI race when it partnered with OpenAI and the new Bing and 365 Copilot, an AI-powered productivity tool for Microsoft apps.

Meanwhile, Google was caught flat-footed.

When ChatGPT launched in 2022, Google reportedly issued a "code red" to employees about the potential threat to its search business. The company also refocused its AI strategy following the new competition.

Soon after, Google launched its AI chatbot Bard, now called Gemini. Later, when it announced upgrades, Google faced almost immediate backlash for inaccurate depictions of historical figures created by the image-generator tool.

But the tech giant is catching up, capitalizing on its massive user base to promote its AI products.

Google recently announced it's building its own AI chips. It's also ramping up its AI efforts with a series of cloud advancements, the general availability of TPU v5p, the new release of Gemini 1.5, and various AI additions to Google Workspace.

It's also been restructuring its teams and cutting staff over the last year to make room for its biggest priorities, namely AI advancement. In 2023, Google reduced its workforce by about 6% and thousands of layoffs have come in waves so far in 2024.

Pichai told Bloomberg that AI is in its earliest stage and competition is always a part of working in the tech space.

"It's happening at a faster pace, but you know technology changes tend to get faster over time," Pichai said in the interview. "So it's not surprising to me at all."

"I think we have a clear sense of what we need to do," Pichai added.

Meanwhile, Google is still dominating search compared to Bing — something Nadella acknowledged in the time since his remarks about making his rival dance.

"I think when you have 3% share of global search and you're competing with somebody who has 97%, even a small gain here and there is an exciting moment," Nadella told Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, in an October interview. "But Google is a very strong company, and they are going to come out strong."

"Google has a number of structural advantages right there: they already have the share, they control Android, they control Chrome," Nadella added. "I always say that Google makes more money on Windows than all of Microsoft. It keeps us grounded."

Do you have a tip about Google? We want to hear from you. Email the reporter from a non-work device at aaltchek@insider.com

• Trump's lawyers argued that portions of Stormy Daniels' testimony warranted a mistrial.
• Daniels had testified Tuesday that Trump didn't use a condom during their sexual encounter in 2006.
• Trump's lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, called that testimony "a dog whistle for rape."

Stormy Daniels blew "a dog whistle for rape" when she testified that Donald Trump did not use a condom during their alleged sexual encounter, a defense lawyer complained Thursday.

The remarkable accusation was made by Trump attorney Todd Blanche on Thursday afternoon, during a failed bid for a mistrial in the ongoing hush-money trial in Manhattan.

The porn star and director had testified on direct examination Tuesday that she'd always worked for a condom-mandatory company — but that Trump did not use a condom as she lay "blacked out" during sex.

"We didn't know that this was coming," Blanche complained Thursday of the testimony. "It's a dog whistle for rape."

Blanche was complaining about multiple times in Daniels' testimony when she made graphic, highly salacious accusations against Trump that the lawyer said irreparably prejudiced the jury.

But the judge countered that Blanche and the rest of the defense team have no one to blame but themselves.

Trump's lawyers denied the sex ever happened, creating a credibility battle

In her testimony — and in a book, documentaries, and multiple media interviews — Daniels said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, during a Lake Tahoe golf tournament in California.

She was working for Wicked Pictures, a pornography production company, which had sponsored a single hole on a golf course.

After meeting Trump during the tournament, she was invited to his hotel suite for dinner. Hoping to avoid some coworkers who had planned their own dinner, she reluctantly agreed, she said.

In his hotel room, Trump never actually got food for them, she said. Instead, they spent hours talking as her stomach growled, Daniels said.

Daniels has not explicitly accused Trump of rape. But in her testimony this week, she described the encounter with Trump in anxious terms.

She said that, after leaving the bathroom attached to the bedroom of his penthouse hotel suite, she saw him on the bed wearing only boxers and a T-shirt. Seeing him there "minus a lot of clothing" was a "jump scare," she said.

"That's when I had that moment where I felt the room spin in slow motion," Daniels told jurors. "I felt the blood basically leave my hands and my feet and almost like if you stand up too fast, and everything kind of spinned, that happened too."

"I was moving like I was in a funhouse, like slow motion," she added later.

Daniels said she tried to make a joke out of the situation, and then Trump stood up between her body and the room's door.

She was also aware that Keith Schiller, Trump's bodyguard, was nearby and that if she wanted to leave the suite, she would have to wait by the elevator. She stressed, however, that she "was not threatened verbally or physically."

"There was an imbalance of power for sure," she said. "He was bigger and blocking the way."

Daniels said she didn't drink or use drugs that night. She didn't share the details of what happened next.

"I just think I blacked out," Daniels testified.

Trump reacted with fury toward Daniels' testimony. In court, he audibly cursed, the judge said later, threatening to hold him in contempt yet again.

And Daniels reacted with caution. Under intense cross-examination from Necheles, she was circumspect about discussing her family and whispered to the judge out of concern when shown documents that included her address.

Trump has denied having any sex with Daniels at all, saying they met only once, during the golf tournament earlier that day.

In his opening statement, Blanche accused Daniels of inventing a story about sex.

That made it necessary for prosecutors to elicit vivid, credibility-bolstering details from her on the stand, Merchan said.

And Necheles repeatedly failed to object to the testimony when she could have the judge added— including when Daniels dropped the word "condom" in front of jurors.

"There were many times where Ms Necheles could have objected but didn't," Merchan said.

"Yet, for some unexplained reason, which I still don't understand," there were no objections to some testimony, he continued. "For example, the condom."

Merchan said he wished the discussion of the condom didn't come into the trial and wasn't heard by the jury.

"For the life of me, I don't know why Ms. Necheles didn't object," he said, while the defense attorney looked toward the floor.

The details were only necessary, he noted, because the defense has outright denied the sex ever happened.

Merchan said that it's only because the defense set up their case accusing Daniels' of lying that he had to allow the prosecution to "rehabilitate" her.

• Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey helped found Bluesky as a Twitter alternative.
• But Dorsey says he left Bluesky because it was "literally repeating all the mistakes" Twitter made.
• Dorsey's back on Twitter, posting up a storm. But he believes the best version of Twitter will be something called Nostr.

Why did Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey leave Bluesky, the Twitter alternative he helped create?

Because — in Dorsey's telling, at least — Bluesky was "literally repeating all the mistakes [Twitter] made as a company."

That's the TLDR from an interview Dorsey conducted with journalist Mike Solana at his Pirate Wires site.

The longer version of that explanation: Very early in Twitter's history, Dorsey imagined that Twitter could be an open-source protocol that wasn't controlled by anyone, instead of a venture-backed, for-profit company. But that didn't happen. And later on, when Dorsey got frustrated while running the for-profit version of Twitter, he imagined that Twitter could help start an independent, open-source protocol version of itself — Bluesky.

But then — in Dorsey's telling — he got frustrated that Bluesky was doing things like the old Twitter. Things like raising money, and moderating what happened on its platform, and having a board. Which Dorsey was on.

And then Dorsey decided what he really wanted to do was help Nostr, another Twitter alternative, which promises to actually be an open-source protocol, instead.

"So I just decided to delete my account on Bluesky, and really focus on Nostr, and funding that to the best of my ability. I asked to get off the board as well, because I just don't think a protocol needs a board or wants a board. And if it has a board, that's not the thing that I wanted to help build or wanted to help fund."

So there you go. That's the whole mystery, solved.

There's more to the interview. Dorsey, for instance, has some mostly kind words about Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022. And there's a lot of space dedicated to Dorsey's telling around What Went Wrong With Twitter. Though that mostly repeats his idea that Twitter's original sin was becoming a venture-backed, for-profit company that went public with a business model based on advertising, positioned as a Facebook competitor.

But that story/argument isn't a new one — you can find it in this four-episode podcast series I hosted last year, for instance.

And the version of it that Dorsey tells here doesn't touch on any of Dorsey's responsibility for Twitter's problems, which he lays at the feet of Wall Street investors, his board of directors and his advertisers. And not, for instance, the fact that he was running Twitter at the same time he was running Square.

For a more complete version, I'd suggest Kurt Wagner's Battle for the Bird.

• Google cofounder Larry Page is the world's seventh-richest person, worth $128.6 billion
• Fellow Google cofounder Sergey Brin is No. 9, with a reported net worth of $123.5 billion.
• The centibillionaires spend their fortunes on sprawling estates, superyachts, and trapeze lessons.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin may have only taken salaries of $1 during their time at Google, but they're still two of the richest people in the world.

Both Page and Brin are among the largest shareholders of Google's parent company, Alphabet, despite stepping down from their posts in December 2019. Their combined fortune is valued at $257 billion, according to the Forbes Billionaires List.

Here's a look at how Page and Brin made and spend their fortunes.

Brin and Page met in 1995, when Brin gave Page a tour around Stanford University

Brin was a second-year graduate student in Stanford's computer science department and Page was considering attending. They reportedly both found each other "obnoxious" at first, but they became classmates.

Despite their initial spats, Brin and Page started working together on an interesting idea Page had about cataloging every link on the internet. BackRub, as it was called at its inception in 1996, took off.

After dropping out of Stanford, the two founded Google in 1998

Google was first launched in a garage in Menlo Park, California.

Page had two stints as Google's CEO while Brin was president. In 2019, the billionaire duo announced that they would be stepping back from their roles at Alphabet.

"We've never been ones to hold on to management roles when we think there's a better way to run the company," their letter read.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai then took on the additional title of CEO of Alphabet.

In 2005, Larry Page bought a $7.2 million home in Old Palo Alto

The home, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was built from 1931 to 1941 for Bay Area artist Pedro de Lemos.

At 9,000 square feet, the two-story home was built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. It's constructed of stucco and tile around a courtyard. Parts of the home were salvaged from a chapel that was partially destroyed during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

In 2009, after Page bought the historic home, he started buying adjacent properties to construct an environmentally friendly estate. The 6,000-square-foot home has a roof garden with solar panels and four bedrooms.

Brin has even swankier digs in New York City's tony West Village

Brin bought a West Village penthouse for $8.5 million in 2008. Celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker and Tiger Woods have also scooped up property in that neighborhood.

The two-story, three-bedroom, 3,457-square-foot penthouse also has a 1,200-square-foot wraparound terrace with views of lower Manhattan. The kitchen is outfitted with custom Moroccan tiles and top-of-the-line appliances.

Brin has also purchased an estate in an undisclosed location in Los Altos Hills, California.

The Google cofounders are both regulars at Burning Man

Page and Brin are known for attending Burning Man. To disguise their identities, they've worn full spandex body suits.

They've also been known to spend time vacationing in Fiji.

Page and Brin also regularly traveled to Sicily to host the super-exclusive Google Camp.

Google Camp takes place at the Verdura Resort, which has a 200-foot infinity pool, a mile of private coastline on the Mediterranean, and two 18-hole golf courses.

Brin and Page have each bought superyachts

While they were in Fiji in 2012, Brin and Page rode in Brin's superyacht, the Dragonfly, a vessel measuring 240 feet Brin reportedly bought for $80 million in 2011. Previously, it was available to charter for $773,000 per week.

Constructed in 2009, the Dragonfly was the world's fastest superyacht. It has an open-air cinema, a Jacuzzi, and a dance floor. It can hold 18 guests and 16 crew members.

Brin has several luxury yachts and water-sports vehicles that those in his inner circle call the "Fly Fleet."

Besides the Dragonfly, the fleet also includes a 130-foot yacht called the Butterfly, as well as a smaller pleasure craft called the Firefly.

Meanwhile, Page's superyacht, called "Senses," measures 60 meters and accommodates up to 12, has six decks, open and shaded sun decks, a gym, and Jacuzzi — as well as five Waverunners. He reportedly paid $45 million for it in 2011.

Brin and Page also travel in style by air

They bought a Boeing 767-200 in 2005 — an unusual choice as executives usually prefer Gulfstream jets.

The former passenger jet carries 50 passengers. There are several seating areas, two staterooms with connecting bathrooms and showers, and a dining area.

These guys don't just have a private plane — they also have an $82 million private airport. Google began building its own private airport near the San Jose airport in 2014.

Page doesn't just dabble in typical aircraft. While we don't know how often Page himself is taking the products for a spin, he has funded three flying car companies — a fitting hobby for the man who once oversaw Waymo, Google's self-driving car service.

Page and Brin both have been taken with Teslas

The duo led an investment round of $40 million in Elon Musk's EV company back in 2006.

Brin was the fourth person to receive a Tesla Model X Crossover SUV in 2015 when it was first released — he snagged a white one.

Page took his interest in Tesla even further in 2014 when he said he would donate his billions to Elon Musk instead of a charity, his family, or his own business.

Page and Brin have both frequently given to philanthropic causes

From 2000 to 2017, Brin donated donated $37.5 billion and Page $38.5 billion. In 2018, however, both Brin and Page gave 0% of their fortunes to charity.

Brin has reportedly donated more than $1.1 billion to Parkinson's disease research, making him the largest individual donor to the cause. (Brin has previously said his mother has Parkinson's, and he has a rare genetic mutation that puts him at a higher risk for developing it than the general population.)

In both 2020 and 2021, The Sergey Brin Family Foundation gave roughly $250 million to groups with causes like tackling climate change and homelessness, and even a nonprofit supporting colonization of the moon.

Page's Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation disbursed nearly $200 million to charities in 2021, of which 99% went to the National Philanthropic Trust, a donor-advised fund. DAFs, as they're known, let donors make tax-deductible contributions that are given to charities over time, though money can stay in DAFs indefinitely, and when it is disbursed, you can't publicly track where it goes.

Brin also spends his money on a variety of thrill-seeking hobbies

Brin has been reportedly building an entire flying airship at a NASA research center near Mountain View, California, not far from Google's headquarters.

The project has been estimated to cost between $100 and $150 million — and is funded entirely by Brin. Brin's airship received FAA clearance last year.

Sources say Brin pictures the airship delivering goods and food on humanitarian missions, as well as being an "air yacht" for the billionaire's friends and family.

Brin is a lover of roller hockey, ultimate Frisbee, gymnastics, and high-flying trapeze. He has been spotted at advanced trapeze classes at the Circus Warehouse in New York City, which costs $1,760 per month.

Page has been known to kite board — sometimes with Richard Branson.

Brin reportedly paid the salaries of 47 people who work for him and his family, including ex-bankers who manage his philanthropy and finances, a fitness coordinator, a yacht captain, an archivist, and a photographer.

For those two centibillionaires, their combined net worth is now around a quarter of a trillion — yes, with a "t" — dollars.

That's a far cry from Google's humble beginnings in a garage in Menlo Park.

Rachel Premack and Taylor Nicole Rogers contributed to a previous version of this story.

• The US paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week amid rising concerns over a Rafah assault.
• On Wednesday, President Joe Biden warned that Washington may block additional weaponry.
• It's a politically significant move that could have military implications as well.

After seven months of war in the Gaza Strip, US military support for Israel has arrived at a pivotal moment in recent days: it no longer appears to be unconditional.

Last week, the US paused a shipment of bombs to Israel — marking the first time since the war began last fall that Washington has done so — amid rising concerns that the country was gearing up for a major military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Then, on Wednesday, President Joe Biden warned he would withhold additional weaponry, including artillery, if Israel pressed forward with a widespread ground assault on the city, where more than 1 million Palestinian civilians have sought refuge.

The Biden administration's decision is a politically significant move that appears designed to apply pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to do more to protect civilians in Gaza. Experts say that there could also be military implications as Israel continues to wage war.

Biden is controlling 'one variable'

The weapons shipment that the US put on hold last week was supposed to include 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, according to multiple US officials. A final determination on what to do with this shipment has yet to be made.

Israel has relied heavily on its inventory of the larger, 2,000-pound bombs throughout the war to go after Hamas' vast underground tunnel network. These air-dropped munitions can be outfitted with precision-guidance kits, but even then, they are still capable of causing lots of collateral damage. The State Department is also mulling whether to deliver more of these kits, known as Joint Direct Attack Munitions.

For now, these holds are primarily symbolic, Daniel Byman, a senior fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Business Insider. But that could change over time.

The depth of Israel's stockpile is unclear, but it is believed to have a sufficient supply of munitions to continue fighting in Gaza without this particular shipment of US weaponry, said Byman, a former Middle East analyst for the US intelligence community. But "the campaign may take a while, and as we know, munitions can be used up very, very rapidly in these circumstances," he added.

Hamas isn't Israel's only enemy though, and it wants to have a sizable stockpile of munitions to be ready for the possibility of a full-scale conflict with Lebanon's Hezbollah — another Iranian proxy group like Hamas. That would be a more difficult fight for the Israeli military, Byman said. Whether the US would actually withhold weaponry in that case is unknown.

During a Wednesday interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, Biden acknowledged that civilians in Gaza have been killed by US-provided 2,000-pound bombs. He then said that he would withhold additional weaponry beyond the one shipment last week if the Israeli military proceeds with a major ground invasion in Rafah.

"If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem," Biden said. "We're not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells have been used."

Earlier this week, Israel ordered civilians to evacuate eastern Rafah before announcing a "precise counter-terrorism operation" in the area, during which Israeli military seized control of the Palestinian side of a key crossing with Egypt that it said was being used for "terrorist purposes."

The IDF said as part of its new activity, ground troops and fighter jets were striking Hamas targets in the Rafah area. The White House later described the operation as "limited," and Biden on Wednesday said Israel's actions so far haven't crossed his red line.

Raphael Cohen, the director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program at the RAND Corporation think tank's Project AIR FORCE, explained to BI that by withholding 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs, the US could force Israel to conduct more ground maneuver in Rafah, rather than an intense air campaign like what was seen earlier in the conflict.

It's unclear if that would "necessarily save — minimize — Palestinian civilian casualties, but it does change the nature of combat," said Cohen, a former lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve. Putting a hold on artillery could also force Israel to carry out more high-precision raids, instead of clearing the entire city, he added. There is uncertainty there as well though.

"The problem is that the Biden administration is controlling one variable, which is munitions," Cohen said.

"It's all well and good to try to go after Hamas via commando raids," he added, but he cautioned that "the targets have to lend themselves to that kind of operation. It's not clear, to me at least, that that's necessarily the operational reality on the ground."

The military utility of Biden's move ultimately has to be weighed against how important Israel views Rafah toward achieving its security objectives, Cohen said. "Countries are willing to go to great lengths if they feel their vital national interest is threatened, and fight even in suboptimal ways."

Israel vows to 'stand alone'

The decision to withhold weapons and Biden's latest warning that he would potentially put a pause on other support follows repeated efforts by the US to press Israel to present a credible plan that would limit civilian casualties ahead of any large-scale Rafah operation.

It is not necessarily an unprecedented move, as past US administrations have also threatened to withhold military support from Israel. But this decision does represent a notable shift in Biden's approach to the war. Since Hamas' Oct. 7 terror attacks, the US has been unwavering in sending Israel a massive amount of weaponry, despite growing international concerns about the rising death toll in Gaza.

John Kirby, the spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, told reporters on Thursday that despite the single shipment of bombs being held up, the Biden administration is still sending weapons to Israel, which is getting the "vast, vast majority of everything that they need to defend themselves."

For now, it remains to be seen how Israel proceeds with its military action in Rafah, but officials have been defiant in saying that they will continue to hunt down Hamas, regardless of how much international support the country retains.

"If we need to stand alone, we will stand alone," Netanyahu asserted on Thursday, per a translation. "I have said that if necessary, we will fight with our fingernails."

• A stunning aurora may be visible farther south than usual this Friday, lighting up the northern US.
• That's thanks to an overactive, giant spot seven times the size of Earth that's erupting on the sun.
• Northern border states from Washington to Michigan are most likely to see the aurora Friday night.

The Northern Lights are forecast to reach farther south than usual this Friday, dazzling the northern US.

Typically, the best time to see aurora is between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. local time, because this is when it will be the most active, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

We mainly owe this spectacle to a giant, hyperactive sunspot called AR3664 that's seven times the size of Earth and has been producing powerful eruptions, called coronal mass ejections, for the last several days.

Powerful eruptions like these can hurl high-energy solar particles toward Earth that interact with our atmosphere to create aurora borealis, a dazzling display of colorful lights.

Typically aurora are contained in the uppermost region of the northern hemisphere. But when Earth receives a more powerful blow of these high-energy particles, it can cause aurora over a larger portion of the planet.

Over the last several days, AR3664 has grown in size, becoming one of the biggest and most active sunspots for this solar cycle (which began in 2019), Space.com reported.

And in the last 24 hours, AR3664 spit out four coronal mass ejections that are now hurtling toward Earth at roughly 560 miles per second, Matt Owens, a professor of space physics at the University of Reading, told Business Insider.

Due to the relatively strong magnetic field of these oncoming coronal mass ejections, Friday's aurora is forecast to make a rare appearance, stretching all the way down to Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Even states including Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania, could catch a glimpse of the aurora low on the horizon, Andrew Gerrard, director of the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, told BI.

"That's the most extreme estimate," Gerrard said. The reality is that we just won't know how bright, active, and wide-reaching the aurora will be until the coronal mass ejections reach Earth's atmosphere. Even experts' estimates of when they'll arrive offers only a rough ballpark.

"Our timing estimates may be way off," Owens said.

While the aurora are beautiful, coronal mass ejections bring some risks with them, too. When they interact with Earth's magnetic field, they can cause radio blackouts and power grid outages. But both Owens and Gerrard expect these approaching ejections won't cause any trouble on Friday.

"With the eruptions from this group, I think we're going to see some really good aurora. I wouldn't expect too many really bad effects," Owens said.

To watch the aurora on Friday, head to the NOAA's space weather website for the latest forecast to see if they'll be visible where you are.

Then, just step outside once it's totally dark and look up. If you're lucky, you may get to see this spectacular sight.