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Paypal

Paypal – Say No To Traditional Payment Methods

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Elon MuskOnline transaction is a boon in our everyday life. It has made our life better by saving us time and making transactions by a few clicks. One does not need to run to the bank or ATM in the eleventh hour for withdrawing cash. Applications like GooglePay, PhonePe have become some of the most popular interfaces for money transactions. But, way before these applications came into play, an American company, PayPal ruled the market.

Founded in 1998, PayPal serves the entire world with its payment services. It was a subsidiary of eBay for a long time. PayPal has launched many divisions of online payment in the last twenty years. The founders of the company are Elon Musk, Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Yu Pan. Currently, Dan Schulman serves as the President and CEO of the company. The company’s headquarters is based in San Jose, California.

Founders

The world-famous tech pro, investor and entrepreneur, Elon Musk founded more than just one company. PayPal was his third start-up after co-founding Zip2 with his brother, Kimbal followed by founding X.com. Musk founded SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and many more giant businesses.

Howery went to Stanford University and acquired a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. While he was a university student, he served as the managing editor of The Standard Review. Howery co-founded PayPal the very year he graduated. He was made Director of corporate development for eBay after it acquired PayPal.

Nosek is a computer engineer who co-founded SponsorNet New Media prior to co-founding PayPal. He served as PayPal’s vice president of marketing and strategy until the company was acquired by eBay.

Levchin has a degree in computer science who co-founded PayPal right after completing his graduation. He has also co-founded Slide, HVF, and Affirm. Levchin is mostly known for his efforts in managing fraud and contributions in CAPTCHA response.

The great venture capitalist and investor, Peter Thiel has a degree in law from Stanford. Before becoming a venture capitalist, Thiel served as a security lawyer. Thiel is a board member of Facebook, a partner at Founders Fund and a great philanthropist.

Pan has a degree in computer science from the University of Illinois. Pan served as a Google employee prior to co-founding PayPal. He was also hired by Youtube as a software engineer.

Early History

Back in 1998, the company was launched by the name Confinity. Confinity was founded to provide security software which later launched its money transfer service in 1999. BlueRun Ventures provided the initial funding for this new company.

After a year, Confinity merged with X.com, Musk’s online banking start-up. X.com had many other online payment services which Musk decided to shut down and focus exclusively on PayPal. In 2001, the company gained popularity as PayPal and not X.com anymore. It went public in 2002.

The major acquisition

In 3rd October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. It was the biggest turning point in the success story of PayPal. After this business deal was closed, PayPal payments increased exponentially. Most of the eBay users paid through PayPal as it appeared as the default choice. Five years from buying PayPal, the company’s annual revenue summed up to $1.8 billion. In 2008, PayPal made two big acquisitions including Fraud Science (for managing frauds) and Bill Me Later.

Success of PayPal

The company reached 100 million active users from more than twenty-five different countries by 2010. Till now PayPal only provided online money transactions. In 2011, the company decided to provide offline services. The company wanted to deliver the advantage of paying in retail shops via PayPal. For launching this, PayPal came into a partnership with Discover Card in 2012. After the offline scheme was launched, it reached more than 7 million retail shops. This led the volume of PayPal’s payment transaction to $145 billion.

An independent company

In 2014, the company decided to establish itself independently. The spin-off was finally completed on 18th July 2015. After this agreement, Dan Schulman was made the CEO and President of the company and John Donahoe was declared as the Chairman.

he first acquisition made by PayPal as an independent entity was Xoom Corporation. Other acquisitions also include Hyperwallet, Simility, and GoPay, etc. The company today has more than 170 million active users and 21,000 employees approximately.

starship rocket

SpaceX Unveils its Starship Prototype that may Take People to The Mars Next Year

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Elon Musk is dreamy about making interplanetary possible for humans. And for that, he and his company SpaceX have been researching and developing things that possibly can help humans to start living in different planets and visit space whenever they want to. SpaceX completed 11 years since it first made it to the orbit on 28th Septemeber. Marking the date, on Saturday, the CEO unveiled the prototype of another rocket, Starship vehicle named Starhopper, that would take him and his company a bit closer to his dream.

On Saturday night, Elon Musk addressed a gathering of hundreds of people, including employees, local supporters, space enthusiasts and space reporters at the company’s South Texas launch site, where he showcased the new rocket’s prototype named mk. 1. The event was also live-streamed.

According to Musk the rocket still needs improvements in its design and working, but it may go into the orbit within six months. He also talked about the test flights the rocket will be having in one or two months. The test will be conducted at the highest altitude it can go to, like the tests were done for the Falcon rocket, with its prototype Grasshopper rocket. The company took multiple tests for Grasshopper to practice and perfecting its launching and landing. Till now, mk. 1 has completed two successful flights at a lower altitude.

starship rocket
Image Source: cbsnews.com

The company built the Mk. 1 during this summer on the South Texas coast and the same will take off from the very coast for the test flights. This won’t be a single rocket. But a fleet of Starship rockets will be developed at Texas and the Florida coast.

“What’s really kind of hard to grasp, at a visceral level, is that this giant ship will do the same thing that Grasshopper did. This thing is going to take off, fly to 65,000 feet, about 20 kilometres and come back and land in about one to two months. So that giant thing, it’s really going to be pretty epic to see that thing take off and come back.” said Musk during the event.

Musk also revealed that the Starship rockets can carry around 100 people and that too for long-duration flights to different planets. The company aims to help the governments to build cities on planets like Mars, such that its rockets would be taking of significant quantities of cargo and people to the other planets.

“Starship serves as a large, long-duration spacecraft capable of carrying passengers or cargo to Earth orbit, planetary destinations, and between destinations on Earth,” SpaceX said.

tesla

Tesla Cars Get the Biggest Software Upgrade; User can Now Summon their Cars from the Parking Lot

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We need to admit that Tesla is one company with a mission to save the earth and at the same time, is providing us with the most luxurious fleet of cars. The cars are super comfy, luxurious and autonomous. What else can be better than that? But in order to keep customers interested in those automotive, the company is constantly working on improving its services.

For the same purpose, the company announced a new software upgrade for the Tesla cars on Thursday. The company has got new features and entertainment services like in-car “Car-aoke” (karaoke), Spotify Premium, Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu, to its version 10 in-car software. The karaoke feature will offer a multi-lingual songs collection for the user. Though the entertainment features added to the Tesla software are for the drivers, these can only be accessed when the cars are parked; obviously for the safety purpose.

version 10 in-car software. The karaoke feature will offer a multi-lingual songs collection for the user. Though the entertainment features added to the Tesla software are for the drivers, these can only be accessed when the cars are parked; obviously for the safety purpose.

tesla
Image Source: teslarati.com

Another feature that the company has rolled out with the upgrade is that now the car owners can summon the car when it’s in their line-of-sight, that too, without a driver. Yes exactly like you would do to your pet. It means, if a car is parked in a parking lot, the owners will command it to come out of the parking and pick them up. According to the company, the feature will perfectly work for the ones who have purchased the fully-automatic Tesla cars.

“It’s the perfect feature to use if you have an overflowing shopping cart, are dealing with a fussy child, or simply don’t want to walk to your car through the rain. Though the customers who use the feature must remain responsible for the car and monitor it, and its surroundings, at all times,” stated Tesla in a blog post.

The feature is already out for the Tesla Model S, Model X, and Model 3 owners. The ones who have got the fully autonomous self-driving cars will be the ones getting the feature first. The customers will get a notification to update their software, and they, then after updating it, can enjoy the new features.

According to the company, there will be some other features, too, arriving for the Tesla cars in the coming week, that are built specifically to make improvements to the current software. The company also admitted that these software updates are the largest updates to the software to date. In fact, Tesla shares’ prices also jumped by 6%, after the upgrades were announced on Thursday.

According to an email from Elon Musk, the company is ready to deliver 100000 cars by the end of the third quarter of this year, which can make a record. Though the company has already made a record by selling 95000 cars in three months ending in June.

Elon Musk Neuralink

Neuralink : Elon Musk Finally Talks About his Secretive Company’s Brain Control Interface

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Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder, is always up to something next level. He has been involved in some really big and unique projects, like an online bank, an electric car, a reusable rocket, etc. The CEO of one of the biggest tech giants also owns the secretive experimental company ‘Neuralinks’. Tuesday evening during an event in San Francisco, Musk gave a presentation on the projects that this company has been working on for the past two years.

The company was founded in 2017, and it mainly works on developing the data transmission system between humans and computers. On Tuesday, CEO Musk, on the behalf of Neuralink, introduced devices that can be implanted to a human brain, so that they can operate devices like computer and smartphones through their thoughts.

Musk explained that there will be threads thinner than a normal human hair, which will be connected with a processor inside the human brain. This processor will make the person able to operate various electronic devices through a Bluetooth connection.

Elon Musk Neuralink
Image Source: ingeniousexpress.com

During the presentation, the company demonstrated a computer receiving information from a rats mind. And, in future, the company seeks to get permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to start clinical trials on the human brains. If the company gets the approval, it will start the experiments by the end of the first half of the next year.

According to Musk, Neuralink is experimenting with such devices so that the paralysed people will be able to control through their mind, but with lesser damage made to their neural system than the other already available devices do.

The process of inserting the processor into a paralysed human’s brain will include drilling four 8mm holes into the patient’s skull and then implant the processor connected to 4 to 6 μm thin polymer threads. This will help them operate various devices only through their thoughts. The company intends to use a laser beam to get through the skull in future.

“We will painlessly laser-drill the holes into the skull, place the threads, plug the hole with the sensor, and then you go home. It’ll be an experience like getting Lasik,” said President Max Hodak.

According to a report by the New York Times, the company will be carrying out the early experiments with the neuroscientists at Stanford University.

“It’s not going to be suddenly Nueuralink will have this neural lace and start taking over people’s brains. Ultimately, the company wants to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence. And that, even in benign scenario humans would be left behind.” said Elon Musk during the presentation.

Earlier in 2006, the scientists from the Brown University developed a similar system named BrainGate that enabled a paralysed person Matthew Nagle play Pong using only his mind. But, this was a way stiffer technology and is prone to cause more damage to the human brain.

But the technology used by Neuralink is more flexible. The company has also developed a robot who will insert those threads into the human brain that too six threads per minute.

Elon Musk Plans To Soon Stop Selling Tesla Cars (at Current Prices) to ‘Save Tesla’

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Tesla is known for its luxurious electric and self-driving high-end cars. But according to a tweet from the founder of the company itself, the consumers won’t be able to buy these fancy cars. No, it is not like that the company will stop making those cars, but with the integration of a new chip, these cars are going to be quite expensive, and not all the people will be able to buy them.

Tesla
Image Source: theverge.com

The company has taken the initiative in order to recover from the losses it has been suffering, due to the cheaper price of its luxury cars. To prevent and overcome them, the company will be embedding a newly developed chip to its new as well as old cars, including Model S, X and 3S, such that these will become fully-autonomous and will not need the intervention of a human driver.



Musk posted a tweet on his official Twitter account on Sunday that the company will be upgrading its old cars, and will integrate the new chip into them as well as to new cars. So the consumers have a limited time to buy Tesla cars. Upon a tweet asking about when these upgrade will take place, Musk replied, “End of Q4, most likely”.

This means the company has already started working on building those new chips for the cars. According to another tweet from Musk, the owners who have purchased the full self-driving feature, the $6000 software package, will get the upgrade for free.

The company launched this new custom chip in the month of March this year, which already have been integrated to new Model 3, Model X and S vehicles. The upgrade of the older cars is a part of Tesla’s ‘Master Plan, Part Deux’, under which the company intends to make every Tesla car fully-autonomous and bring its dream robo-taxis on the road.

With the integration of the new chip into Tesla cars, the price of these cars may reach up to $40,000, and if remained unsold, these cars can earn even more profits as a robo-taxi.

SpaceX to Bring Free and Open Internet to All with the Launch of Starlink Project

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Last year, the aerospace transport agency SpaceX had launched the prototype satellite for its much-talked-about project, Starlink, a project that targets to provide internet to the whole planet through a network of the satellites. And now after a year-long wait, the company will finally be launching the first batch of satellites of Starlink’s “production” version with the help of SpaceX Falcon 9 today at 10:30 PM EDT.

SpaceX Starlink project
Image Source: futurist.com

The company will launch 60 satellites with the help of a Falcon 9 rocket, which will be launched from a launchpad based in Cape Canaveral. After the launch, the satellites will be arranged like a constellation to cover a part of the Earth like a blanket. Starlink project will be responsible to provide open, high speed and low-latency internet to anyone in the world.

The Starlink project revolves around the concept of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Once the satellites are positioned in the orbit, these will link to the small terminals on the surface of the earth. The satellites are able to easily make a connection with the ground terminals as the LEO satellites are positioned at a distance as close as 99 to 1,200 miles from the surface of the Earth. This way the internet speed will also be faster as compared to the conventional methods used to provide internet.

The 60 satellites have been placed like kernels on a corncob, and with the help of a spring, these will be sent to the orbit at a particular velocity.

The launch of those satellites is a challenge for the company, which if went favourably, will be a great achievement for the company. Otherwise, there are other rival companies of SpaceX too that are also looking forward to getting their hands on similar projects, including OneWeb and Amazon too.

But since the company had test-launched similar satellite TinTin A and TinTin B successfully in the month of February, there are higher possibilities of the success of the Starlink project. According to Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX those 60 satellites are the “production design”, and in future, the company plans to launch as many as 12000 satellites to achieve that constellation network. If the experiment goes according to the plan, people will be able to access high speed and free internet by the mid of 2020.