Kalakshar US

Tesla has reported its first-ever decline in annual deliveries. The total number of deliveries for 2024 hovers at around 1.78 million, but the company delivered 1.81 million vehicles in 2023. Company shares fell by as much as seven percent at the news, but has since rallied a couple of points. This follows similar news from Q1 of 2024, but that was just for a single quarter. 

Q4 showed a slight uptick in deliveries, with 495,000 this year and 484,000 in 2023. However, analysts had predicted a more robust final quarter, according to reporting by CNBC. These analysts expected Q4 deliveries to be somewhere in the range of 506,000. Tesla doesn’t publish actual sales numbers in the US, so these delivery metrics are the closest we get.

Numbers are also down in Europe, with a 14 percent decline in 2024 when compared to last year. This is according to registration data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

We don’t have a concrete reason as to why Tesla deliveries have started to falter, but there are a myriad of options. The company still hasn’t made a budget-friendly EV, instead focusing its energies on the oft-maligned Cybertruck and dreams of robotic taxis. Patrick George, editor in chief of InsideEVs, told CNBC that Cybertrucks have begun “piling up on used car lots.”

The company is also no longer the only EV game in town. It faces steep competition from rival upstarts like Rivian, but also legacy manufacturers. Entities like BMW, GM, Hyundai and Volkswagen have all begun cranking out electric vehicles in large numbers. Finally, there’s the Elon Musk of it all. 

Tesla’s stock still finished strong for the year, with a 60 percent increase from 2023. Shares actually hit a new high in December, dwarfing the previous all-time high from 2021.

In other news, I do not understand stocks. Ford, which sold 1.72 million vehicles in the US by Q3, is worth under $10 per share. Tesla is currently trading at $380 per share, all while selling significantly fewer vehicles than Ford and, well, just about every other major automobile manufacturer. Maybe rival stocks would shoot up if the big US auto companies started putting more effort into humanoid robots that don’t actually do anything. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/tesla-reports-its-first-ever-annual-drop-in-deliveries-163154201.html?src=rss 

The US Treasury Department told lawmakers in a letter back in December that its documents and workstations were accessed by an external party in a security breach. It described the attack as “a major cybersecurity incident” and attributed it to a “China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat actor.” Now, The Washington Post has reported that the bad actors infiltrated a “highly sensitive office” within the Treasury in charge of deliberating and administering US government sanctions. 

As The Post explains, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is in possession of some important information that could be very useful to another country’s government. While the hackers were only able to steal unclassified data, they could still have gotten their hands on the identities of potential sanction targets. They could also have stolen pieces of evidence that the agency had collected as part of its investigation on entities that the government is thinking of sanctioning. Overall, the attackers could have gotten enough information to give them the knowledge of how the US develops sanctions against foreign entities. 

In addition to OFAC, the Office of the Treasury Secretary and the Office of Financial Research were also affected by the breach. The attackers infiltrated the Treasury’s systems by gaining access to a key used by BeyondTrust, a cloud-based service that provides the department with technical support. 

The US government has attributed numerous cyberattacks on its agencies and American companies to China state-sponsored actors over the years. Just last year, the FBI blamed “PRC-affiliated actors” for a massive hack on US telecom companies. The actors, a group known as Salt Typhoon, reportedly targeted the mobile devices of diplomats, government officials and other people linked to both presidential campaigns. According to The Post, Chinese officials called claims that their country was involved in the attack on the Treasury Department “groundless” and insisted that their government “has always opposed all forms of hacker attacks.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/china-linked-attack-on-us-treasury-department-reportedly-targeted-its-sanctions-office-150033082.html?src=rss 

Telegram has introduced a new third-party account verification system as part of its latest app update, the company announced in a blog post. The idea is to let public figures or companies that are already verified by Telegram in turn verify others, for instance employees in the organization. “This decentralized platform for additional verification will help prevent scams and reduce misinformation — with a unique proactive solution that sets a new safety standard for social platforms,” Telegram wrote. 

Individuals or groups that want to be able to verify others must already have an official bot verified by Telegram. Once that happens, they can apply to become a third-party verifier on Telegram. They’re also required to have a unique icon (simple and. minimalistic in a solid color) that will appear next of the names of accounts they verify. 

Any accounts verified in this way will have that logo next to their name, and opening their profile will show a detailed explanation of that status and what it means. The company emphasized that this type of verification is “completely separate” from its internal verification, and provided more details in a guide. 

Telegram also introduced new search filters that let you refine a list of results only from private chats, group chats or channels. It also added custom emojis for folder names, reactions for service messages and the ability to upgrade gifts to NFTs. 

The company also announced that it reached profitability for the first time thanks to monetization features like Premium subscriptions, ads, Telegram Stars and more. Not all has been rosy for the company of late, though: In August last year, the founder of the chat app, Pavel Durov, was arrested over charges that the company hadn’t done enough to stop illegal activity on the app. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/telegram-introduces-third-party-verification-and-new-search-filters-140013424.html?src=rss