Coinbase now supports buying and selling Ethereum Classic

Elon Musk announced some major executive changes at Tesla, shuffling in a new president to oversee automotive operations, a new Gigafactory vice president in charge of ramping up Model 3 production, and a new duo to lead Tesla's human-resources division.

Musk posted the news on the company blog Friday:

Securities and Exchange Commission filings released Friday revealed Tesla's chief accountant, Dave Morton left the company just one month after he arrived, and Toledano's departure, which was announced after she took leave from the company, comes after Ganesh Srivats, a top sales executive at the company, left under similar circumstances.

The promotions follow what have been a tumultuous few weeks for Musk, an increasingly mercurial chief executive who got himself into some hot water last month with a proposal to take Tesla private. That saga ended with a Friday night announcement in late August, in which Musk said Tesla would remain a publicly traded company.

Separately, Musk touted the company's overall progress on Friday. "We're about to have to most amazing quarter in our history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter," Musk wrote. Tesla delivered 40,740 vehicles worldwide in the second quarter — 18,440 of which were Model 3 sedans.

Elon Musk introducing the second-generation Tesla Roadster, November 16, 2017. Tesla

Additionally, Musk shouted out the coming Model Y crossover, the Tesla pickup truck, Tesla Semi, and the second-generation Tesla Roadster.

He also warned there would be "a lot of fuss and noise in the media" in the near term, seemingly an acknowledgement of the fallout from a 2 1/2-hour on-camera interview he participated in just hours earlier with comedy host Joe Rogan.

The Tesla CEO mused about life and work with Rogan over whiskey and a marijuana joint. The smoke session caught lots of attention on social media Thursday night, and rattled some Tesla investors early Friday morning.

One of those investors, Ross Gerber, told Business Insider's Graham Rapier Musk has "lost a lot of confidence in some of his core investment community."

"That's what we're seeing in the stock right now," Gerber said. His firm, Gerber Kawasaki, owns about $10.5 million in Tesla stock.

Tesla shares fell as much as 10% on Friday, rebounding slightly to $265 per share in after hours trading.

Several public health officials in India are calling for Facebook to make changes to its blood donation tool, warning that the tech project — although well-meaning — risks fueling a dangerous black market for blood and harming the country's fragile blood collection system.

Facebook's one-year-old blood donation feature has already helped facilitate tens of thousands of donations since it was launched, saving lives by making it easier for people in need of transfusions to find willing donors with matching blood types.

But the tool's person-to-person format is ringing alarm bells among experts and professionals in the field, who say that it's too easy for unscrupulous characters to latch onto, leaving vulnerable people at risk of paying exorbitant prices and receiving tainted blood, among other issues.

Facebook said that it has only had one report of forbidden behavior on the tool — but the head of one Indian blood donor organization said he has been told about incidents of black market blood selling on Facebook and suggested victims of black marketers were unlikely to report them to the social media firm.

"These types of products ... definitely bring in black marketing, and it's definitely promoting it unknowingly, because it was not the intent of Facebook to promote black marketing," said Biswaroop Biswas, the National Secretary of the Federation of Indian Blood Donor Organisations (FIBDO), a coalition of 126 blood donation groups across India.

The issue, which has not been previously been reported, illustrates the ongoing challenges Facebook faces in its efforts to ensure that its 2-billion member social network is not exploited for nefarious ends, whether that be interfering in US elections or promoting ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

The company is walking a delicate tightrope with the India blood donation tool, as it tries balance the unprecedented power, and undeniable benefits, that its technology brings with the potential for it to exacerbate thorny and endemic problems within the country.

In an interview, Facebook health product manager Hema Budaraju said: "What I would like to emphasize is our role is to get more and more blood banks to adopt our features, and to actually build up the culture of blood donation. And as you're already well aware, this system doesn't exist in the US, right? It's because donors are motivated [to give blood regularly]."

"That's the world we are trying to get to, and we are working constantly with NGOs and blood banks."

India has a worrying black market in blood

India quite simply doesn't have enough blood to go around.

There is an annual deficit of more than one million units of blood in the country — meaning patients can sometimes be forced to search for their own sources of blood, asking their social circle for donations or even paying illegal black marketers extortionate sums.

As Facebook grew in the country, it became an avenue for people to request blood donations from others in their network. In response, Facebook launched a tool in 2017 to try and facilitate donations more formally.

Initially available in India and now also live in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Brazil, Facebook's blood donation tool allows organisations and individuals to put out requests for blood donors on the social network at short-notice. Users can voluntarily register themselves on Facebook as blood donors, and then, when a request is put out nearby, they may be notified (or view them in a centralized hub).

These requests may be sent by medical institutions like hospitals and blood banks as part of broad donation drives, or individuals who require blood on behalf on themselves or a family member imminently, and who may or may not be in a medical institution.

More than 11 million people have now signed up for the service across the four countries it operates in, and it has facilitated tens of thousands of donations.

A publicity photo from Facebook showing a request on the blood donation tool.Facebook

There is an existing black market for blood in India, preying on desperate sufferers amid blood shortages. FIBDO expressed concerns that Facebook's product may help fuel this. Black market agents can register on the platform as donors, Biswas said. Then, when notifications and requests go out, the agents can contact the requester directly, offering them blood for a fee.

He said he has spoken to people who have been approached by black market blood sellers on Facebook.

Budaraju said the company has multiple safeguards in place to protect users. New accounts aren't sent notifications about requests, and "the registrations we receive are doubly checked against fake and spammy accounts." Users are also able to report other users if they ask for money in return for blood, and she said there has only been one instance of a report through the platform to date — a post that was soliciting blood in exchange for money, in Bangladesh. (The user was subsequently made unable to use the blood donation tool.)

However, Biswas, who also sits on the governing body of the National Blood Transfusion Council, was skeptical that users would report black market issues to Facebook, suggesting they would simply pay up in a time of need instead. "If you need blood and people ask for money ... Will [you] report or just go with the donor [and] pay him?"

Chethan Gowda, student founder of blood donor organisation Khoon, said unscrupulous middlemen could also potentially use the platform to sell blood at extortionate rates: "The racket personnel can also request for blood, arrange for a donor through Facebook and on the other hand charge huge amount from the patient family, wherein the blood donor who turned up to donate blood will have no idea of what's going on on the other end."

And black market blood that hasn't been vetted carries a risk of being misclassified, tainted or otherwise dangerous, health experts say.

Gowda added: "The Facebook blood donation tool is not only trying to save lives but also indirectly helping to create a very disastrous and illegal blood donation activities."

These problems all pre-date Facebook — but now it has to deal with them

These kinds of problems long pre-date Facebook's entry into the blood donation space, and also take place on other online platforms, Biswas said. Facebook also continues to work with NGOs and blood donor organisations in India to encourage donations, including NTR Trust, the National Blood Transfusion Council, and Giants International.

"There are known issues of scams/exploitation or bad actors in blood donation in some of the countries where our feature is available," Budaraju said in an email. "We've worked closely with partner organizations and NGOs to understand those concerns and the challenges they deal with in order to build a product that helps makes it easier for people to sign-up to be blood donors and find opportunities to donate nearby while also mitigating these risks. While there may be a few bad actors, we see a lot more good happening as a result of this feature."

She said that partners "highlighted a few concerns about potential ... scam[s] or abuse that could happen on Facebook, which is why we've designed the product with a number of safeguards in place. No partners have raised issues since we launched the product in each country, but we continue to work closely with them to ensure the feature is as safe and useful as possible."

But the concerns of the Indian organizations who spoke to Business Insider point to how as Facebook moves into new markets and experiments with new tools designed to do good, it has been forced to grapple with unprecedented new challenges that would have been unimaginable when it was founded as a simple network for college students in 2004.

Facebook has stumbled in India before, with Free Basics — a program to provide a free, limited internet service to users in emerging markets. Facebook promoted it as a magnanimous project, but it was met with protests, and the company was accused of "digital colonialism" and violating net neutrality principles.

A nurse takes blood from a volunteer on April 17, 2007, Manchester, England. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

India wants to move away from 'replacement' blood donations

India has set itself a goal: By 2020, it wants to hit 100% voluntary blood donation.

This means 100% of the blood used in the country will come from volunteers proactively going to hospitals, blood banks, and donation drives to donate, which will then be distributed as necessary. At present, a portion of India's blood donations come from what is known as "replacement blood donations" — when a donor agrees to give blood specifically for someone in their network, rather than to the general blood bank.

This system can be problematic, with donors sometimes feeling pressured to donate blood to those in their community, and the lack of anonymity sometimes causing issues with donors attempting to extract favors (if not outright payment) from the recipients.

FIBDO is concerned that Facebook's mechanism for connecting donors and recipients directly can encourage replacement blood donation. "When they got in touch with us, we told them this is not the way you people will be able to help the society," Biswas said. He believes that Facebook's one-to-one model effectively violates India's National Blood Policy, which calls for a movement away from replacement donors, and he would like to see Facebook remove one-to-one donation options.

Facebook disagrees, arguing that its one-to-one model is a step forward from the status quo, and that it too wants to see a 100% voluntary blood donation model implemented as soon as possible.

Without Facebook's tools, people needing donations might ask people in real life for a donation, applying significant pressure, Budaraju said. In contrast, Facebook's notifications will also go to people outside a recipient's existing social circle, to people who have already registered and signaled their willingness to donate. The recipient is also unaware of the potential donors' identities unless they choose to respond and share information about themselves.

"In some ways I fundamentally believe the current system that we built on Facebook, even when used in the person-to-person, is a step towards voluntary, because people are under no coercion, do not have social pressures, are choosing to respond of their own volition and going in to donate," Facebook's Budaraju said. "So it's actually the opposite of the replacement system."

Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

There are worries around blood wastage

Another area of concern is around potential blood wastage.

Srijan Pal Singh, the CEO of developmental NGO The Kalam Centre, said that Facebook's focus on increasing blood donations, without building out further blood storage infrastructure, could result in some of the blood drawn being wasted.

"The time we worked with them, it seemed all about creating more units, but that's not the idea. It's not about creating more units, it's about helping more lives, and there's a difference between the two," he said.

"It's a well-known fact, three million units of blood was wasted in five years [in India] so unless you have the mechanism to store this blood it doesn't make sense."

Facebook responded that it believes that other organisations in the blood donation ecosystem are better placed to work on these problems than it. "We are still a relatively young product, we are focusing on .. Facebook's strengths in terms of education, communication, context, and in bringing awareness, and to build simple tools for blood banks and hospitals,"Budaraju said.

"I don't know that we would be the most effective people to think about storage and infrastructure."

'People will try to abuse those services in every way possible'

It's difficult to assess to what extent some of these concerns might actually be happening on Facebook.

Khoon's Chethan Gowda conceded that it's hard to measure whether the illegal behavior he has seen elsewhere is taking place on Facebook. "Concrete example[s] of a similar scenario happening through the Facebook blood donation tool is tough," he said. "As there's no track on the request."

Singh urged Facebook to get ahead of the problem. "When you have so much outreach and access, a lot of these touts and brokers may emerge, this is a possibility that I also hope Facebook sees will come up," he said. "When they are implementing this platform with all this good intent they should not end up becoming a victim of encouraging a whole black market brokerage."

Biswas said he is confident that black market selling is already taking place on Facebook, and has spoken to people who have been approached by blood sellers on the platform: "These things are happening. And as you can see when the people are in need of blood, they won't come out to say to the donor organisations afterwards that people are coming and asking for money."

Despite these alleged flaws, Facebook believes it has built a significant improvement on the previous status quo — desperate patients and their families posting unregulated and unmonitored requests for blood directly onto Facebook and other platforms across the web. Both Facebook and FIBDO agree that a priority is education and promoting a cultural shift towards voluntary blood donation; Facebook plans to roll out educational resources for donors in the product soon.

The company also continues to work with NGOs and blood donation organisations, who have heralded its work to drive blood donations and save lives. "Facebook has long been a positive platform for people in India to connect with Blood Donors and help those in need. NTR Trust welcomes Facebook's efforts to help make it even easier for people to donate blood in India," Vishnu Vardhan, CEO of non-profit organisation NTR Trust, said in a statement when the feature first launched. "We look forward to working together to raise awareness of the importance of donating blood and collectively catalyze sustainable access to safe blood in India. What Facebook is doing has the potential to bring tectonic shifts in Blood Banking in India."

On Friday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a post on the social network reflecting on Facebook's efforts to fix its platform over the last year.

"What I've learned so far is that when you build services that are used by billions of people across countries and cultures, you will see all of the good humanity is capable of, and people will try to abuse those services in every way possible," he wrote.

"It is our responsibility to amplify the good and mitigate the bad."

Do you work at Facebook? Do you know more? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.)You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

Apple said that tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods proposed by the Trump administration could result in higher prices for its products in a letter to the government published on Friday.

In it, Apple says the proposed tariffs would "cover a wide range of Apple products" as well as other materials that Apple uses to make its products.

Those products include Apple Watch and AirPods, two of Apple's core product lines. "Second, because all tariffs ultimately show up as a tax on U.S. consumers, they will increase the cost of Apple products that our customers have come to rely on in their daily lives," Apple wrote in the letter.

Here's a chart with the consumer products Apple expects to be affected. The full letter, which includes a chart with affected Apple components, is at the bottom of this post:

Regulations.gov From Apple's comment, dated September 5:

"The proposed tariff list covers a wide range of Apple products and the products used in our U.S. operations: Apple digital health and wireless connectivity products, including Apple Watch, Apple Pencil and Air Pods; Apple computing tools such as MacMini; Apple adapters, cables and chargers engineered for efficiency and safety; Apple-designed components and made-to-specification tooling for Apple's U.S. manufacturing and product repair facilities; specialty testing equipment for Apple's U.S. product development labs; and servers, hard drives and cables for Apple's U.S. data centers that support our global services such as the App Store."

On Friday, President Donald Trump said the tariffs could be implemented "very soon," but White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration would evaluate public comments — like Apple's — before making any final decisions.

Economists argue that Trump's tariffs could cause the cost of goods to increase for businesses and consumers in the United States, a point of view Apple agrees with in the unsigned letter. Apple also said that tariffs would harm Apple compared to its international competitors.

In addition, proposed tariffs require time and effort to evaluate, Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company's last earnings call.

"Our view on tariffs is that they show up as a tax on the consumer and wind up resulting in lower economic growth and sometimes can bring about significant risk of unintended consequences," Cook said. "That said, the trade relationships and agreements that the U.S. has between the U.S. and other major economies are very complex and it's clear that several are in need of modernizing, but we think that in the vast majority of situations that tariffs are not the approach to doing that and so we're sort of encouraging dialogue and so forth."

"I can't predict the future, but I am optimistic that the countries will get through this and we are hoping that calm heads prevail," he continued.

An Apple representative didn't have anything to add to the letter.

Apple shares dropped over 1% shortly after the letter was published but have been flat in after-hours trading.

NASA's only robot exploring the asteroid belt is about to die, the space agency explained during a live event on Friday.

However, the Dawn probe pulled off a last-ditch maneuver this summer that is helping to create surface maps of a dwarf planet — information that may be used to land a future mission on the distant world.

Dawn launched in 2007 and became the first NASA mission to use superefficient ion thrusters. In its yearslong voyage through deep space, the robot ended up in the asteroid belt, the mysterious and expansive zone between Mars and Jupiter. There, it has studied the region's two largest objects: Ceres and Vesta.

Dawn reached Vesta first, in July 2011. Researchers think of Vesta, the second-largest object in the asteroid belt, as a "time capsule" for planet formation, since it failed to grow into something larger after the solar system's birth.

After a year of exploration at Vesta, Dawn ion-propelled itself toward Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet, where it arrived in March 2015. Ever since then, Dawn has made several major discoveries about the 592-mile-wide ice ball, including an ice volcano, shiny salt deposits, and other features that suggest a giant ocean may hide beneath the world's cratered crust — possibly one that could harbor alien microbes.

A false-color view of the dwarf planet Ceres.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDANASA has since used up most of Dawn's remaining fuel to slip into an orbit that zooms within 22 miles of Ceres' surface about once a day.

These flybys are about 10 times as close as the International Space Station orbits above Earth and have led to the sharpest, clearest images of the dwarf planet yet.

"This orbit was like putting your glasses on if you don't see very well — all of the sudden, all of this rich detail is popping out," Carol Raymond, Dawn's principal investigator and a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during the press event on Friday. "It will give us some insight as to what's going on with the plumbing system under the surface."

However, these unprecedented images and other data have come with a cost: a death for Dawn before the end of the year.

Why Dawn is now doomed

A mosaic image of Cerealia Facula, a site with a collection of salt deposits in Occator crater, the largest impact site on Ceres.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI

Using up Dawn's fuel to achieve such a close orbit has essentially stranded the spacecraft at Ceres.

"The current orbit should be stable for 50 years," Mark Sykes, the director of the Planetary Science Institute and a scientist on the Dawn mission, told Business Insider in an email. "There is no desire to change the orbit — and no juice."

Dawn uses its "juice" to keep itself powered and talking to NASA. So using up the last propellant will forever silence the probe.

"It will struggle for a short time, but it will be impotent," Marc Rayman, Dawn's mission manager and chief engineer, wrote in a blog post on August 22. "Unable to point its electricity-generating solar panels at the sun or its radio antenna to Earth, the seasoned explorer will go silent and will explore no more. Its expedition will be over."

Rayman said on Friday that Dawn might go silent within a month or so.

"We can't determine that with exquisite accuracy," he told Business Insider during the press event, adding that it was likely to run out of propellant (and stop talking to Earth) "sometime in the middle of this month to the middle of October."

But the team, while sad about the probe's coming demise, is counting its blessings, since the expedition was supposed to last nine years but has been going for nearly 11. Plus, Dawn continues to take high-resolution images of the surface once every 27 hours.

NASA's Dawn probe photographed landslides on the rim of Occator crater on Ceres.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Once the probe runs out of fuel, it won't spiral down and crash into Ceres for at least 20 years. In fact, Rayman said, the team's analysis shows a "greater than 99%" chance that Dawn will stay in its current orbit for half a century, "and most likely longer than that."

NASA wants to bring a sample of Ceres back to Earth

Rayman said the 20-year no-crash minimum was a core requirement of the Dawn mission.

That's because NASA's planetary protection office, which tries to prevent contamination of other worlds by microbes from Earth, thinks two decades should be enough time for the agency to mount another mission to Ceres. A new probe could then look for signs of life without worrying about contamination by any microbes from Earth stuck to Dawn when it crashed.

"Ceres represents a place in the solar system that we're interested in for future astrobiological exploration," Rayman said. "If NASA chooses to mount a follow-on mission to conduct subsequent astrobiological exploration, it's long enough to without being compromised by Dawn."

Jim Green, NASA's chief scientist, said the agency had pulled together working groups to come up with a plan to send a robot to the surface of Ceres, possibly near a vent, where it could probe salts and other materials — and maybe even send samples from the dwarf planet back to Earth.

What planetary scientists think it looks like inside Ceres. The crust is most likely made of ice, and below may be a layer of briny mud. Its core may be water or metal.NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

"We'll work out in the next decade whether one of those missions will indeed be going back to Ceres," Green said on Friday.

The stakes are high as researchers discover more water and organic compounds elsewhere in the solar system — ingredients that may sustain rudimentary forms of alien life.

"We know there is an active geological cycle that's bringing material from deep [inside] up to the surface," Carol Raymond said. "That gives us an opportunity to sample some of Ceres' internal material."

As Dawn continues to rack up high-resolution images of Ceres' surface, the argument for collecting a sample of the dwarf planet may be strengthened.

"The holy grail of any planetary-science mission is a sample return, but it's also very difficult," Raymond said. "With an object like Ceres, you really want to know where to sample."

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published at 1:27 p.m. ET on September 7, 2018.

A Brief History Of Deep Linking

The chief financial officer of Unity Technologies, whose software tools are used to make games and augmented-reality apps, has left the company, Business Insider has learned.

Unity did not offer a reason for his departure, but in an email sent to company employees in June announcing it, company CEO John Riccitiello said it was "friendly and the decision mutual."

"I want to sincerely thank Mike for his many contributions to Unity," Riccitiello said in the email. He continued: "I will certainly miss him."

Mike Foley's LinkedIn page, which still lists him as Unity's chief financial officer. Mike Foley/LinkedIn Unity spokeswoman Amanda Taggart confirmed Foley's resignation and Riccitiello's letter.

"We're actively looking for a CFO replacement and have some great candidates in the mix," she said in an email.

Foley's departure came soon after the company quietly raised some $145 million in new funding. That funding, which the company closed in June, according to Crunchbase, was part of the company's series D round that it began raising last year. It initially raised $250 million as part of that round in May 2017, according to Crunchbase.

In total Unity, whose tools were used to make the popular "Pokémon Go" game, has raised some $601.5 million. In an interview this week with Business Insider, Riccitiello declined to say whether the company is profitable or whether it expects to raise additional funds in the private market on top of the money it raised in June. He also declined to give any timeline for a potential public offering.

"We're thinking of giving serious thought to questions around an IPO and if and when, but saying that we will and putting a time frame on it is not something that guys like me do lightly," he said.

The Federal Reserve is a critically important body for the global economy that's also frequently misunderstood.

So what happens when you visit the biggest video website in the world, YouTube, which is owned by Google, and look for some basic information about the US central bank?

If you thought you might learn about the Fed's dual mandates for shaping monetary policy, or about the 12 regional banks in the Federal Reserve System, you'd be mistaken.

Instead, what you'll get is a jumble of harebrained conspiracy theories and misinformation, as MSNBC's Chris Hayes pointed out in a series of tweets that are going viral.

All you have to do is type "Federal Reserve" into YouTube to tumble into the bizarre rabbit hole. As Hayes points out, this is pretty worrisome if you imagine a student, or any other well-meaning citizen, trying to educate themselves on the topic.

Follow along with Hayes' thread below, as he demonstrates step-by-step how easily someone can unwittingly be steered by YouTube into the world of the lunatic fringe:

Business Insider was able to recreate all of Hayes' findings in an up-to-date Chrome browser in Incognito Mode on Friday.

And the problem is even broader than what Hayes described.

Hayes' example was based on clicking the top video search result for "Federal Reserve." But most of the other search results YouTube serves up on the page are equally problematic.

YouTube

The top result, which is a paid ad, is from Marginal Revolution University, which is a respected blog run by economists from George Mason University. While the video may take its own stance on controversial topics, it's not going to present any outright misinformation.

There's also a 2013 documentary that appears to be a ripped version of a movie that's on sale from YouTube for $2.99. This video also seems like it's based on reliable information.

But that video's 176,000 views are dwarfed by three videos that are purely conspiratorial — the aforementioned "Century of Enslavement," at 1.6 million views, "The Creature from Jekyll Island," with 557,000 views, and "The Federal Reserve Explained in 3 Minutes," with 794,058 views.

Hayes isn't the only person to encounter this exact issue with finding reliable information on YouTube. A comment on that last video:

Screenshot/YouTube

What's funny is that Google's search results for "Federal Reserve" are far superior, with links to the actual official Federal Reserve website, tweets from the Federal Reserve, a Wikipedia article, and news articles from reliable sources like Bloomberg and Business Insider.

YouTube has been swept up in recent controversies about misinformation and disinformation on large platforms. In July, it announced new features including a "news shelf" on top of search results with links to reliable articles and additional context.

"We said, look, people are coming to our homepage and if we are just showing them videos of gaming or music and something really significant happened in the world, and we are not showing it to them, then in many ways we're missing this opportunity," YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in March.

After an inquiry from Business Insider, YouTube representative Chris Dale said the team was aware of the issues. "Hey @chrislhayes. We're definitely aware and our engineering team is working to improve things. We rolled authoritative ranking for breaking news and news queries. We'll build out to other topics, but it will take time," he tweeted, adding a link to this announcement page.

Getty Images

Tesla sank more than 10% Friday, below $260 a share, after the electric-car maker revealed that its chief accountant, Dave Morton, had resigned Tuesday.

"Since I joined Tesla on August 6th, the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations," Morton said in comments revealed Friday in a regulatory filing.

"As a result, this caused me to reconsider my future. I want to be clear that I believe strongly in Tesla, its mission, and its future prospects, and I have no disagreements with Tesla's leadership or its financial reporting."

Morton took over the role in August after Eric Branderiz left the post after nearly two years. Morton's resignation comes after departures by other Tesla executives including the company's chief engineer Doug Field and top sales executive Ganesh Srivats, each of whom resigned in July. A vice president and a product director departed Tesla's energy unit in May.

Also Friday, Bloomberg reported that Tesla's chief people officer, Gaby Toledano, would not be returning from a leave of absence she took in August. She did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Morton — who did not respond to a request for comment — joined Tesla last month from Seagate Technology, where he served as a vice president for two decades and CFO for almost three years. His first day, August 6, was two days before CEO Elon Musk's tweet about taking Tesla private that has ended in lawsuits and investigations by federal regulators.

CNBC reported Friday that Morton started having second thoughts about the new job about two weeks in, according to a person familiar with the terms of his departure. "When Morton offered advice about capitalizing the company through other means rather than going private, he was ignored," the source told CNBC. 

Now, with the company set on staying public, its finances are under extreme scrutiny from investors and analysts as it fights to become profitable. After rising as high as $387, shares of Tesla have fallen 32% to $261.

Markets Insider

If you ever need to livestream to your Twitter followers while you're having a bad hair day, you're in luck — Twitter just added an audio-only livestreaming feature.

The feature, which is currently only rolling out to iOS devices, is accessed just like Twitter's existing Periscope livestreaming. Tap the 'compose tweet' button, click 'Live' at the bottom of the tweet field, and then click on the microphone to disable the video feed. After that, you're ready to go live in an audio-only broadcast.

Twitter

The "Live" button is easy enough to find.

Twitter

Then, just hit the Mic, and you're good to go.

Twitter

In 2007, the Airbus A380 entered service to great fanfare. The gargantuan jet, dubbed the superjumbo, was designed to take everything that made the Boeing 747 an icon and push it to the limits of modern engineering.

A decade later, things are very different for the A380.

The superjumbo hasn't been the game changer Airbus had hoped it would become when the massive double-decker was conceived two decades ago. This is especially the case on the financial front.

For much of the plane's life, Airbus has struggled to find airlines willing to put the A380 into service.

With a price tag of $445.6 million, the A380 is one of the most expensive and lavish airplanes ever built. With room for as many as 800 passengers, the double-decker's sheer size means it's an occasion whenever a superjumbo arrives.

But in a cost-conscious market and with fluctuating fuel prices, the very attributes that made the plane stand out may have also doomed it. Some say the A380 came two decades too late, while others say that with increasing airport congestion, the plane is ahead of its time.

Some industry observers, such as the Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia, have gone so far as to call it the biggest mistake in the history of Airbus. According to Aboulafia, the A380 is a poorly executed aircraft designed for a market that doesn't really exist. As a result, the $25 billion that Airbus spent on the A380 program could have been better used elsewhere, like on a rival for Boeing's next-generation 777X or on a true replacement for the aging Boeing 757, Aboulafia told Business Insider.

Regardless, no one can deny the engineering marvel of the aircraft. Here's a look at the topsy-turvy history of the Airbus A380 superjumbo.

Diagram: Starry

Jammber chief executive Marcus Cobb