San Francisco - Tesla CEO Elon Musk has offered an enterprising teenager $5 000 (about R78 000) to remove a Twitter bot tracking the movements of his private plane.
The billionaire reached out to the 19-year-old, Jack Sweeney, last November to express concern about a Twitter account he runs called @ElonJet, which provides regular updates on flights of well-known figures by using publicly available data.
Musk offered Jack $5 000 to stop tweeting about his jets. However, Jack turned down Musk's offer and instead demanded $50 000, saying that the amount would cover his college fees and also help him buy a Tesla car, according to Protocol.
Musk said he would think about it, but so far has not paid up.
The negotiation between Musk and Sweeney reportedly happened over several direct messages on Twitter.
The most recent exchange of messages between the two was on January 26, when Sweeney said he would prefer an internship over payment in exchange for deleting the account.
"I understand your view, but I hope that you would see my interest because I have been developing this since I was only in high school," Sweeney told Musk.
So far, Sweeney said that he has not heard back from Musk on his offer.
In the meantime, the Moon will get a fresh crater thanks to a chunk of a SpaceX rocket that blasted off seven years ago and was abandoned in space after completing its mission and is now on a collision course with the lunar surface. It is due to make contact on March 4.
A hefty chunk of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will crash into the far side of the Moon (not visible from the Earth) in a fiery explosion at about 8 000km per hour speed.