Tesla Dumping Unsold Cybertrucks At Mall Parking Lot And The City’s Fed Up Detroit’s planning and community chief told the run-down lot’s landlord that storage of vehicles was not a permitted use of the land https://www.carscoops.com/author/chris-chilton-cc/ by Chris Chilton May 28, 2025 at 09:50 html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" Farmington Hills officials are fuming over a glut of unsold Cybertrucks being stored in the city. Tesla has been parking the EVs at a shopping center earmarked for major redevelopment. Officials say the electric vehicles violate zoning codes and are warning the property owner. Tesla’s Cybertruck is a big silver sales flop and that’s given the company several problems, including working out what to do with all the electric pickups it can’t sell. Some of those trucks ended up stored at a run-down mall in Farmington Hills outside of Detroit in Michigan. Unsurprisingly, local officials are not happy about it. Dozens of Cybertrucks and some other Tesla models are currently occupying several rows of parking bays at the Hunter’s Square shopping center, Crain’s Detroit Business reports. The lot is home to a now-closed Bed, Bath and Beyond, an also-shuttered Torrid, and a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant that’s still open, and has plenty of space for the EVs. But using the land for vehicle storage is against city code. Related: Cybertruck Owners Can’t Believe Tesla’s Trade-In Values The shopping center landlord has already been informed of the violation, according to comments made by Charmaine Kettler-Schmult, director of planning and community development for Farmington Hills, Michigan to CDB. But she admitted to reporters that the enforcement process “takes time.” The report notes Tesla recently opened a brand new showroom close to the Hunter’s Square shopping center in West Bloomfield, which could be the source of the idled Cybertrucks. Crain’s Detroit Business reached out to both the registered owner of that site and the landlord of Hunter’s Square, which is due to get a major overhaul, but neither responded. Tesla CEO Elon Musk once bragged of having 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck, but the much-delayed EV has failed to live up to sales expectations since its official debut in late 2023. Only 40,000 were sold last year, well short of the 250,000 Tesla predicted, according to Forbes. And recently the Cybertruck was outperformed by its more conventional-looking Ford F-150 Lightning rival. More: What Happened To Musk’s 1 Million Cybertruck Reservations? Tesla has made moves to open up the Cybetruck’s appeal, however. In April it finally unveiled a single-motor, rear-wheel drive, entry-level model for $69,990 and buyers of other grades have been offered discounts, lease deals and free supercharging. Lead image: Instagram/@cheapyd Load more comments

The company's net losses just doubled.Do No KlarnSwedish buy-now-pay-later company Klarna, whose CEO once bragged about its automated customer service AI bots doing the work of "700 full-time agents," is now in deep trouble.The fintech outfit is facing net losses of $99 million for the first quarter of this year, CNBC reports, which is more than double compared to the same period last year.The company had already paused its highly anticipated IPO in the US last month, which once valued it at over $15 billion.And it's all particularly noteworthy because of how CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski previously bragged that he hadn't hired anyone in a year, following a doubling down on AI tech.During an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month, however, Siemiatkowski struck a dramatically different tone, revealing that the gambit hadn't paid off. He admitted that "there will always be a human if you want" when it comes to customer service — a sign of the times, as investors are starting to ask some tough questions given widespread economic uncertainty.Cash FlowNonetheless, it wasn't a complete reversal. Siemiatkowski defended his embrace of AI last week, boasting that the tech allowed Klarna to shrink its workforce by 40 percent.During its Monday earnings call, an AI-generated avatar of Siemiatkowski took over for the executive, the Financial Times reports, showing that the company is far from giving up on the tech.But public support for the tech is unmistakably falling off. Translation company Duolingo has faced a torrent of pushback from social media users, particularly on TikTok, after its controversial CEO Luis von Ahn announced that AI will gradually replace all contractors.However, while it could be easy to see Klarna as the canary in the coal mine for the AI industry as a whole, its rapidly mounting losses involve other factors as well. As the FT points out, many of the company's American customers are failing to repay their buy-now-pay-later loans.Klarna's credit losses have risen 17 percent year-on-year to $136 million, reflecting widespread economic uncertainty and falling consumer confidence as president Donald Trump's trade war takes its toll.In response, Klarna has said that it's "closely monitoring changes in the macroeconomic environment" and "remains well-positioned to adapt swiftly if required."Share This Article

Microsoft, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), took a major step in dismantling one of the most prolific cybercrime tools currently in circulation. Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) collaborated with the DOJ, Europol, and several global cybersecurity firms to disrupt the Lumma Stealer malware network — a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platform implicated in hundreds of thousands of digital breaches worldwide. According to Microsoft, Lumma Stealer infected over 394,000 Windows machines between March and mid-May 2025. The malware has been a favored tool amongst cybercriminals for stealing login credentials and sensitive financial information including cryptocurrency wallets. It’s been used for extortion campaigns against schools, hospitals, and infrastructure providers. According to the DOJ website, “the FBI has identified at least 1.7 million instances where LummaC2 was used to steal this type of information.” Recommended Videos With a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern Districts of Georgia, Microsoft took down roughly 2,300 malicious domains associated with Lumma’s infrastructure. The DOJ simultaneously took down five critical LummaC2 domains, which acted as command-and-control centers for cybercriminals deploying the malware. These domains now redirect to a government seizure notice. International assistance came from Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and Japan’s JC3, who coordinated efforts to block regional servers. Cybersecurity firms like Bitsight, Cloudflare, ESET, Lumen, CleanDNS, and GMO Registry assisted in identifying and dismantling web infrastructure. Inside the Lumma operation Lumma, also known as LummaC2, has been operating since 2022, possibly earlier, and makes its info-stealing malware available for sale through encrypted forums and Telegram channels. The malware is designed for ease of use and is often bundled with obfuscation tools to help it bypass antivirus software. Distribution techniques include spear-phishing emails, spoofed brand websites, and malicious online ads known as “malvertising.” Cybersecurity researchers say Lumma is particularly dangerous because it allows criminals to rapidly scale attacks. Buyers can customize payloads, track stolen data, and even get customer support via a dedicated user panel. Microsoft Threat Intelligence previously linked Lumma to notorious Octo Tempest gang, also known as “Scattered Spider.” In one phishing campaign earlier this year, hackers were able to spoof Booking.com and used Lumma to harvest financial credentials from unsuspecting victims. Who’s behind it? Authorities believe the developer of Lumma goes by the alias “Shamel” and operates out of Russia. In a 2023 interview, Shamel claimed to have 400 active clients and even bragged about branding Lumma with a dove logo and the slogan: “Making money with us is just as easy.” Long-term disruption, not a knockout Image used with permission by copyright holder While the takedown is significant, experts warn that Lumma and tools like it are rarely eradicated for good. Still, Microsoft and the DOJ say these actions severely hinder and disrupt criminal operations by cutting off their infrastructure and revenue streams. Microsoft will use the seized domains as sinkholes to gather intelligence and further protect victims. This situation highlights the need for international cooperation in cybercrime enforcement. DOJ officials emphasized the value of public-private partnerships, while the FBI noted that court-authorized disruptions remain a critical tool in the government’s cybersecurity playbook. As Microsoft’s DCU continues its work, this Lumma crackdown sets a strong precedent for what can be accomplished when industry and government specialists collaborate to eliminate threats. As more of these organizations are uncovered and disrupted, remember to protect yourself by changing your passwords frequently and avoid clicking links from unknown senders.

Two years after partnering with OpenAI to automate marketing and customer service jobs, financial tech startup Klarna says it's longing for human connection again.Once gunning to be OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's "favorite guinea pig," Klarna is now plotting a big recruitment drive after its AI customer service agents couldn't quite hack it.The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded its marketing contracts in 2023, followed by its customer service team in 2024, which it proudly began replacing with AI agents. Now, the company says it imagines an "Uber-type of setup" to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes."From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want," admitted Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the Swedish fintech's CEO.That's a pretty big shift from his comments in December of 2024, when he told Bloomberg he was "of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do." A year before that, Klarna had stopped hiring humans altogether, reducing its workforce by 22 percent.A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that it saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI. It likewise claimed that its automated customer service agents could do the work of "700 full-time agents."So why the sudden about-face? As it turns out, leaving your already-frustrated customers to deal with a slop-spinning algorithm isn't exactly best practice.As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, "cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality."Klarna isn't alone. Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat — an attitude that's more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech — there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost.In January of last year, a survey of over 1,400 business executives found that 66 percent were "ambivalent or outright dissatisfied with their organization’s progress on AI and GenAI so far." The top issue corporate bosses cited was AI's "lack of talent and skills."It's a problem that evidently hasn't improved over the year. Another survey recently found that over 55 percent of UK business leaders who rushed to replace jobs with AI now regret their decision.It's not hard to see why. An experiment carried out by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University stuffed a fake software company full of AI employees, and their performance was laughably bad — the best AI worker finished just 24 percent of the tasks assigned to it.When it comes to the question of whether AI will take jobs, there seem to be as many answers as there are CEOs excited to save a buck.There are gray areas, to be sure — AI is certainly helping corporations speed up low-wage outsourcing, and the tech is having a verifiable effect on labor market volatility — just don't count on CEOs to have much patience as AI starts to chomp at their bottom line.Share This Article