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What you need to know
- The latest update for Google Mobile Services outlines Google's future for Android navigation.
- Custom gestures from companies like Samsung and OnePlus will be more difficult to find/use.
- Android Pie's two-button navigation system is being killed off.
The current state of navigation on Android is a bit of a mess. Google introduced its first vision of gesture-based navigation with Android Pie, added a completely new system with Android 10, and a bunch of companies like Samsung and OnePlus are off doing their own thing, too.
9to5Google recently got its hands on an updated document for the Google Mobile Services (also known as GMS) agreement, and it mentions some rather interesting tidbits regarding the future of gestures on Android.
According to 9to5:
Thanks to this document, we're getting further clarification on Google's requirements. Apparently, any Android device using GMS that launches on Android 10 will need to ship out of the box with either the classic three-button or the new Android 10 gestures. If a device ships with the gestures by default, the three-button setup must be supported as an optional setting.
In other words, any Android 10 device with Google services needs to be using Google's new gesture navigation or the old three-button layout. Phones that are upgraded to Android 10 from an older version are recommended to keep Pie's two-button navigation with the iconic pill, but phones that ship with Android 10 out of the box won't have any option to use it.
Another big change has to do with the way custom navigation systems from other companies are handled — such as gestures made by OnePlus, Samsung, etc.
These gestures will apparently need to be absent from the setup process, along with being buried deeper in the settings. Third-party gestures are still allowed in Android 10, but Google does seem keen on making them more difficult to seek out.
We're interested to see how this plays out, especially considering that the OnePlus 7T ships with Android 10 and allows you to very-easily access OnePlus's custom gestures. It's noted that the document mentions "implementation details" for this, but there's no explanation as to what that means.
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Control's Foundation DLC shows Remedy's still in top form
Remedy takes us back to the Oldest House on another exciting mission to save the Federal Bureau of Control. If this expansion is any indication, the next one potentially involving Alan Wake should be incredible.
Everything you need to know about the OnePlus 8, 8 Lite, and 8 Pro!
OnePlus wowed us in 2019 with an onslaught of excellent handsets, and for 2020, the company looks to one-up itself yet again. Between the OnePlus 8, 8 Lite, and 8 Pro, here's everything you need to know about what OnePlus is cooking up this year.
Top 15 Google Duo tips and tricks for better video calls
Google Duo is a solid yet simple video chat app that is available across several platforms, including Android, iOS, and web. Yet despite how simple it is, there are a number of useful tips and tricks to be learned to get the most out of the app. We'll walk you through the top 15.
These cases will ensure that your Tab S4 is safe from accidents and more
If you want to keep your Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 protected, you’ll need to find the best case. We have found some of the best protective and functional cases that money can buy for your Tab S4.


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By Chris Lisinski
TOWNSEND — Deal-seekers and collectors in Townsend will have an entire day to hunt for treasure among the trash of others during the first-ever town-wide yard sale this spring, an event that will also raise money for the Kids Kountry Playground.
On May 7, dozens of homes will hold simultaneous yard sales across Townsend, and organizers will hand out maps listing each location as well as specific items available at each sale. Those maps will be available at both 99 Main St. and also 36 Ponderosa Drive, the day’s two “starting points.”
Cindy Schuster, who created a Facebook group for the event, said she is “thrilled” that the town will get its own edition of a town-wide yard sale.
“I know on any given nice day in this town, you’ll see five or 10 yard sales on the main drag (in Townsend),” she said. “Even if we only have a handful (of homes), it’ll be fun for the people who want to get out and do it.”
Several neighboring areas, including Pepperell and Westford, have been hosting such organized yard sales for years. In that time, several Townsend residents have expressed an interest in bringing one to their area, which finally motivated organizers to set it up.
“I’m psyched because every year when Dunstable does it and Pepperell does it, I can’t wait to go,” Schuster said. “It’s really, really fun.”
The sale will begin at 8:30 a.m., and each house will decide when it closes for the day.
Schuster is also attempting to raise money for the Kids Kountry Playground, for which she is the coordinator. She is asking — but not requiring — shoppers to donate $2 per map and homeowners to donate $10 when they sign up.
“This year, we’ve got a few things that we’d like to do and we’ve got a wishlist a mile long,” Schuster said about the playground. “The fence needs repair – somebody backed into it … We’ve got to get a couple more signs. I’d love to get electricity at the playground eventually … We definitely need some more picnic tables.”
Schuster is also working to get local businesses to donate items to the yard sale. Her hope is to create a “treasure hunt”: donated items will be scattered among participating homes, and any shopper who picks one up and sees a sticker indicating it was donated can keep it for free. Those businesses will be listed on the map as a form of free advertising.
So far, about 20 homes have signed up to participate, though Schuster expects that number to grow. Anyone who would like to include a home on the map must email her at email@example.com by April 15. She asked that homeowners give a general overview of some items they will offer.

domain: news


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When more than 150,000 attendees gather for this week’s 2013 International CES in Las Vegas, much of the discussion will again surround smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, game consoles and other Internet- connected devices delivering record amounts of video content to consumers.
For the moment, the proliferation of new screens for watching TV hasn’t hurt the traditional television industry — and may even be helping it. The year 2012 brought record-breaking multichannel-TV subscriber counts and ad revenues, as well as improved ratings.
But behind the these rosy top-line trends, there are a number of developments that promise to signifi cantly alter the way programs are funded, promoted, distributed and viewed in this coming year and beyond.
The impact of over-the-top video — delivered directly to viewers via the public Internet — is one of the most discussed questions in recent years. As OTT players such as Netflix grow in size and financial clout, they are making their mark as buyers of TV and theatrical film content. Last month, Netflix acquired exclusive pay TV window rights to The Walt Disney Co.’s theatrical films starting in 2016.
With Netflix now streaming more than 1 billion hours of content each month, “you would think that this [massive usage] would be eroding linear television viewing like crazy,” chief content officer Ted Sarandos said at December’s UBS Global Media and Communications Conference.
As Sarandos and others have noted, however, traditional TV viewing continues to grow. Despite the rising popularity of online and mobile video, live TV viewing declined by only five minutes per day from the second quarter of 2008 through Q2 of 2012. Overall TV viewing hit a record of four hours, 40 minutes in the second quarter of 2012.
This dynamic of rising OTT video consumption, coupled with record levels of TV viewing, has translated into a generally healthy landscape for both OTT players and the multichannel industry. Pointing to SNL Kagan data showing that the number of multichannel subscribers rose by 400,000 in the third quarter of 2012 from a year earlier, Turner Broadcasting System chief research officer Jack Wakshlag said, “I’m still waiting for evidence of cord-cutting.”
Consumers who drop their pay TV service continue to do so for economic, not technical reasons, Wakshlag said. In one Turner study, which covers cord-cutters between February of 2011 and February of 2012, the data showed that the average cord cutter is much less likely to have a high-school diploma and own a computer than the general population. This group also is significantly more likely to have dial- up Internet access and household income of less than $20,000 — and to not own a computer.
An earlier study, from March 2010 through 2011, concluded that cord-cutters did not conform to the popular stereotype of affl uent, professional and tech-savvy urban viewers who were embracing overthe- top video at cable’s expense.
Others note that the numbers remain small. “We see just a few hundred thousand people leaving the pay TV universe each year,” Vincent Letang, executive vice president and director of global forecasting at Magna Global, said. Magna estimated that the number of cord cutters was only 918,000 and the number of “cord shavers,” or those who cut back on pay TV service, was 3.1 million in 2012.
Over time, according to SNL Kagan senior analyst Ian Olgeirson, the increasing number of people who get their TV programming over the Internet will lead to a decline in pay TV penetration rates. But the number of overall multichannel subscribers will continue to rise, according to Olgierson and other analysts.
Meanwhile, the overall cable programming market also remains strong. While broadcast- network ratings have declined this fall, cable channels have increased audience share from 67% in third-quarter 2008 to 70% in Q3 2012, according to Wakshlag. Cable’s share of advertising has grown to 42% to 33% over that span, he said.
Magna Global is also predicting national cable ad revenue will grow by 5.3% in 2012 before slowing to a 4.6% gain in 2013. That’s better than the drop predicted for the broadcasters, Letang noted.
Still, the new video landscape raises a number of major issues for programmers and operators.
One is audience measurement. Nielsen currently can’t provide combined TV, internet and mobile ratings and such data “will be a minimum of two years away,” Pivotal Research Group senior analyst Brian Wieser noted.
That’s not a huge problem right now. “[There’s not] anywhere near as much change in video consumption as many observers would have others believe,” Wieser said. Mobile viewing, for example, accounted for about 1% of the time spent viewing video in the second quarter of 2012, compared to 82% for live TV viewing and 7% for time-shifted TV.
But the potential mobile audience is large, making better measurement a key issue for 2013 and beyond. The number of Americans using the Web via mobile increased by 82% from July 2011 to July 2012, to 95.1 million, while the number of people using mobile apps was up 85%, to 101.8 million, according to the most recent Nielsen data.
The rapidly expanding amount of available on-demand content also raises some major issues for programmers.
Networks have long relied on their hits and their scheduling to promote and launch new shows, Fox Networks president of distribution Mike Hopkins said, but the availability of more on-demand content is causing that model to change.
“We want to make sure we are not just a collection of shows and thumbnails that people can access on some new user interface that disconnects the network brand from the TV show,” he said. “Otherwise, we think you end up with a really tough model.”
In recent years, Amazon, Hulu, Google’s YouTube, Sony, Netflix and others have also ramped up their investments in original online programming as more ad dollars have migrated online, said Roku CEO and founder Anthony Wood. Wood’s firm has worked with a number of programmers and operators, such as Dish Network and HBO, to make their content available on the Roku box.
Over time, online originals “will evolve to the point where it competes directly with cable in terms of quality,” he argues, creating an opening for strong online brands that could compete directly with programmers and operators. “If TV incumbents wait until that happens they are in trouble,” he said.
That dynamic makes TV Everywhere eff orts to make more content available on more devices increasingly important. SNL Kagan’s Olgeirson noted that the overall “scorecard for TV everywhere has so far is mixed,” but that the overall impact has been positive because “the operators have largely been able to prevent” a signifi cant number of people giving up their multichannel subscriptions for OTT services.
How operators are working to strengthen those efforts is the subject of the next story, “TV Everywhere’s Unfinished Business.”


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With the release of Valorant Episode 6 patch, Riot Games has announced that the game will no longer be compatible with Windows 7
Valorant, a tactical FPS game developed by Riot Games, reached many users in a short time and became very successful. Valorant, which is preferred by many users thanks to its low system requirements as well as its enjoyable gameplay, is coming to an end.
Valorant will no longer be playable on Windows 7 computers
With the release of the Valorant Episode 6 patch, Riot Games announced that the game will no longer be compatible with Windows 7. While this change is not mentioned in the patch notes, the developers have removed compatibility with systems older than Windows 10 to combat cheating.
A member of the Valorant community brought this to light on Twitter. The fact that this information was not shared in the patch notes of Valorant, which became unplayable on Windows 7 with the new patch, caused controversy. It is thought that Riot Games did not include this situation in the patch notes so that cheaters would not be warned in advance.
In November 2022, the company disabled systems that were not compatible with its anti-cheat software Riot Vanguard. However, it seems that Windows 7 needs to be completely removed from the game for the anti-cheat system to work fully efficiently.
The Riot Vanguard system has been very useful against cheaters in the past. Especially in competitive mode, the system provides a higher level of gaming experience and disables players who cheat. This ensures a much healthier environment in the Valorant game.
With the 6.0 patch in Valorant, many innovations also joined the game. Lotus and new costume packs have been added to the game, as well as a new Battle Pass and a reset rank system. Those who want to continue the game in the new season will have to update their systems.


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Builder's Millwork & Window combines showroom and warehouse, moves to new building
Builder's Millwork & Window is expanding and combining into a new location due to a rise in business and growth in the city.
The supplier store specializing in interior trim, cabinetry, doors, windows and counter tops is moving into the former Campbell Supply building on East Tenth Street that it purchased a month ago from Runnings, said co-owner Bob Haub.
“I mean with what the population has done ever since we opened our business 26 years ago, we’ve always been growing. We’ve been growing since the day we opened,” Haub said.
Haub said he and co-owner Mike Bruns started Builder's Millwork in 1994 and had been working out of their current showroom location at 2310 E. 10th St. for the last 15 years.
The men will be combining their current Sioux Falls showroom and Tea warehouse in the former Campbell Supply building so they can have both under the same roof. The new building also comes with another 20,000 more square feet, almost doubling the capacity of the showroom, and a bigger parking lot. The office showroom area will take up 18,000 square feet and the warehouse will have 35,000 square feet.
“The parking lot was very important to us," Haub said. "We were kind of running out of space at our current location, both with employees and customers. The parking in the building we have right now is inadequate for what we need."
Haub said with their business growing their team will grow, too. The supply store currently employees about 52 people, four of them college students on break and as they move they’ll likely hire more people, he said.
Builder's Millwork plans to open their new building on Aug. 1, 2021.


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They’re doubtless top of every traditionalist’s Christmas list: ten lords-a-leaping, eight maids-a-milking and a partridge in a pear tree.
But family members may now have to scour the shops for ‘buy one get one free’ turtle doves, three-for-two offers on French hens and a value pack of drummers.
The price of the gifts in the Twelve Days Of Christmas song has shot up to more than £15,000, a 9.2 per cent rise on last year, according to the Christmas Price Index.
Buying all the 364 items as repeated in the song’s verses would set a loved one back more than £60,000.
The percentage rise was the second-highest jump in the survey’s 27-year history, said James Dunigan of US financial services firm PNC Wealth Management, which created the whimsical survey.
‘This year’s jump can be attributed to rising gold commodity prices, represented by the five gold rings, which went up by 30 per cent,’ added Mr Dunigan.
‘And there’s no doubt that our feathered friends in general make up a good portion of the increase.’
The price of feed contributed to a 78.6 per cent increase in the price of two turtle doves and a staggering 233 per cent increase in the cost of three French hens to £96.50.
However, the dancers added the greatest monetary rise, shooting up by more than £520 – mainly because they didn’t get a pay rise last year.


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|By Business Wire||
|January 27, 2014 01:00 PM EST||
Databox, the mobile-first executive dashboard was selected as a finalist in the Enterprise and Big Data Technologies category for the 6th annual SXSW Accelerator competition. The two-day event will be held the first weekend of SXSW Interactive, Saturday, March 8th-9th, 2014.
“Our mission is to structure complex data in a simple and intuitive way. While everyone is talking about big data, Databox is putting in the hands of executives and line of business managers when they need it on their mobile devices.” said Davorin Gabrovec, CEO of Databox. “Being recognized as a SXSW finalist, is a clear indicator that our App is resonating with our users as they choose Databox over the competitors.”
Databox is a mobile dashboard with a powerful platform that can connect to any data source—cloud services, BI tools, custom databases, excel files and more—and enable executives to have real-time visibility into their company data. With a simple and intuitive solution for smartphones, Databox is tackling a huge gap in the business intelligence (BI) and Big Data market. According to Gartner, the use of mobile BI increased 42 percent year-over-year in 2013 but has the lowest satisfaction rate among existing BI customers.
"The expectation continues to rise sharply for great enterprise mobile Apps, especially around business intelligence. One of the most requested Apps coming from enterprise is an executive dashboard. Databox is quickly becoming the platform of choice for executives and managers who demand the best user experience that allows them to get just-in-time information they need to make critical decisions when they are mobile.” said Chuck Goldman, a former Director of Apple Enterprise, who is on the company’s advisory board.
The race for the industry’s best mobile BI platform is heating up and Databox has accelerated past the more established mobile BI platforms by being recognized in 2013 by winning the Best Big Data Startup award by SAP.
Download Databox for free on the App Store or sign up for an enterprise demo at http://databox.com.
Databox is a Mobile BI / Analytics company based in Boston, founded in 2011 by a group of experienced SaaS entrepreneurs. The company graduated from TechStars Boston in 2012 and is currently part of PayPal’s Start Tank. For more information, please visit http://databox.com.
ABOUT SXSW Interactive
The 21st annual SXSW Interactive Festival returns to Austin from Friday, March 7 through Tuesday, March 11. An incubator of cutting-edge technologies and digital creativity, the 2014 event features five days of compelling presentations and panels from the brightest minds in emerging technology, scores of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders and an unbeatable lineup of special programs showcasing the best new websites, video games and startup ideas the community has to offer.


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From 32MP to 108MP, Samsung is going smaller with its latest camera sensors
Samsung has delivered a variety of ultra high resolution smartphone sensors in recent times, with most of them offering relatively small 0.8 micron pixels while delivering pixel-binning for better image quality. Samsung isn’t stopping at 0.8 micron pixels though, as it’s just announced several image sensors packing plenty of megapixels and even smaller 0.7 micron pixels.
Smaller pixels generally mean less impressive light gathering capabilities and therefore less impressive low-light images, but Samsung thinks this approach will also yield sleeker designs and reduce the size of camera bumps. In fact, the company says these sensors are up to 15% smaller than 0.8 micron pixel sensors with the same resolution, while the height is reduced by up to 10% as well.
Furthermore, all the new sensors pack Isocell Plus technology to prevent light bleed and cross-talk between pixels, as well as its Smart ISO tech for improved exposures.
All the new Samsung sensors
Leading the charge is the Samsung Isocell HM2, which is Samsung’s third 108MP sensor. Samsung adds that the new sensor is 15% smaller than its predecessors (1/1.52 inches) while also offering previous features like 3x lossless zoom and Super PD autofocus. Much like the Isocell HM1 used on the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and Note 20 Ultra, you can expect nonabinning tech on the Isocell HM2 as well, combining data from nine pixels into one and therefore churning out 12MP shots. You’re also getting 8K/24fps and 4K/120fps video recording support.
The second camera sensor revealed today is the 64MP Isocell GW3, following on from the 64MP GW1 and GW2. The firm notes that this is optimized for “mainstream devices,” suggesting that we could see this sensor in much cheaper devices than flagships or mid-range phones. It adds that the GW3’s “optical size” is almost identical to its 48MP 0.8 micron pixel sensors (1/1.97-inches). You can also expect 4K/60fps recording support as well as gyro-based image stabilization.
Speaking of 48MP camera sensors, the Korean company is also launching a 48MP sensor with 0.7 micron pixels and a 1/2.55-inch sensor size. Dubbed the Isocell GM5, Samsung says this sensor is made with ultra-wide cameras or periscope cameras in mind. In fact, users can expect a smaller camera bulge if the sensor is used for 5x periscope/folding zoom.
The last sensor on the list is the 32MP Isocell JD1, which Samsung says is the smallest 32MP sensor in the industry (1/3.14 inches). Samsung is positioning this sensor as being ideal for pop-up selfie cameras as well as under-display selfie cameras. The camera sits “comfortably” beneath the display, with the module height comparable to 16MP one micron pixel and 20MP 0.9 micron pixel cameras.
What else should you know?
Both the 48MP Isocell GM5 and the 32MP Isocell JD1 pack Samsung’s staggered HDR technology as well. The company says staggered HDR “expedites image processing by sending a readout of long, medium, and short exposures of each row of pixels respectively to the mobile processor.” This is touted as a faster and more power-efficient HDR solution. You should also get brighter and clearer images with less noise as the HDR method is based on pixel-binned 1.4 micron pixels rather than the smaller individual pixels.
The new 108MP, 64MP, and 32MP camera sensors are currently in mass production, while the 48MP Isocell GM5 is now available for sampling. There’s no word on when we’ll see the first phones with these sensors. Nevertheless, we’ll need to check out the first phones to figure out whether going smaller is worthwhile.
Samsung confirmed that more 0.7 micron pixel sensors are coming later this year though, and that they’ll offer brand-new Isocell 2.0 technology. The Korean company says the new tech should improve light sensitivity by up to 12% compared to the Isocell Plus tech currently used on its sensors.


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(Bloomberg) -- Key iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.’s third-quarter profit beat estimates, underscoring how the Taiwanese manufacturer is extending its post-Covid-19 recovery.
The company, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, said net income for the three months ended in September was NT$30.9 billion ($1.1 billion), against average analyst estimates of NT$28.7 billion. Sales for the period totaled NT$1.29 trillion, down about 6.8% from a year earlier after Apple Inc. pushed back the launch of its flagship handsets this year, according to Bloomberg News calculations based on previously released monthly sales numbers.
Apple -- which accounts for roughly half the Taiwanese company’s revenue -- typically introduces new mobile devices in September each year but the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro went on sale in late October, while two other models have only become available this month. The handset’s launch will likely boost Hon Hai’s results for the October-December quarter, with Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook saying in late October the response to the 5G iPhone lineup and other new devices has been “tremendously positive.”
Month-on-month sales growth in September was slower than the year-earlier period, “showing revenue impact from iPhone launch,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Matthew Kanterman and Simon Chan wrote in a note. “Strength in Covid-driven demand for computing and enterprise cloud products drove Hon Hai’s sequential sales growth in 3Q faster than consensus expectations, based on its monthly disclosures. Coupled with new iPhone’s launch in 4Q, Hon Hai is poised for sales recovery in 2H.”
Hon Hai shares have shed roughly 10% this year. The stock took a beating early on and the manufacturer struggled through much of February, when the Covid-19 outbreak disrupted transportation and logistics and delayed the return of the hundreds of thousands of workers it needed to assemble iPhones and other electronics in China. The China-based tech supply chain has since bounced back after Beijing got the virus under control.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.


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Bethesda has released an E3 2019 teaser trailer for the highly anticipated sequel to Doom 2016, Doom Eternal. The publisher will showcase this new shooter during its E3 2019 press conference so here is hoping that alongside the new gameplay footage we’ll also get a release date for it.
"What you interfere with now is bigger than you can imagine."
— DOOM (@DOOM) June 6, 2019
Doom Eternal promises to bring the ultimate combination of speed and power with the next leap in push-forward, first-person combat. The game will be powered by id Tech 7 Engine and promises to feature levels/places we have never been before in a Doom game, 10X times higher geometric detail than its predecessor, as well as greater texture fidelity than id Software has ever put on screen.
From what we know so far, DOOM Eternal will not feature a SnapMap Editor though it will support the Vulkan API. The publisher has not announced whether this new shooter will support any real-time ray tracing effects, though we won’t be surprised if NVIDIA and Bethesda announce a new collaboration for it (after all, the new Wolfenstein will support both real-time ray tracing and NVIDIA’s Adaptive Shading).
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!


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Millions of people in the world have given up owning cars and have opted to join car sharing networks, which can make transportation more efficient and potentially cheaper, parking easier, and traffic lighter in cities. Will companies and cities join in the car-sharing craze? Startup Local Motion hopes so, and on Wednesday it announced that it’s raised a $6 million Series A round, led by venture capital heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz, to grow its staff and customer base.
Steven Sinofsky, the former head of Microsoft Windows business who just joined Andreessen Horowitz, has also joined the company’s board.
Local Motion — which counts Google (s GOOG) and the city of Sacramento as some of its bigger clients — makes software and hardware that enables companies and organizations to share a fleet of vehicles. The company is three years old, and actually started out its life building electric car technology, but over the last year has pivoted towards car sharing tech. Clearly its investors think that was a good call.
Local Motion installs its connected hardware in customers’ cars (at no upfront cost to the owner) and customers pay a monthly fee for the service. The customer can use a web portal to track data about fleet utilization and optimization, and the system can also offer apps for drivers like recognizing the driver and customizing the experience.
The result is that a company like Google can have its own Zipcar-style reservation and mobile phone or badge-unlocking systems. Cities like Sacramento — and Local Motion is in discussions with Las Vegas’ Downtown Project, too — can have hundreds of cars that they need to keep track of on a tight budget. For now, much of this is done manually, without a lot of transparency.
Local Motion’s co-founder Clement Gires — who spent time working on Paris’ famous bike-sharing network — tells me that his company’s car sharing tech can quickly help their customers save money and better utilize cars. Better, more convenient use of cars can mean easier access by employees (so happier employees), but also more efficient use of fuel (potentially lower fuel costs). Transparency of company and public assets is important, too, when running a business or city.
Another side perk of the system is that the car sharing tech can help the company bring electric vehicles into the network. The software and hardware can determine if the cars’ routes are regular enough for EV driving and charging and figure out if (and how much) money the company will save if they switch cars over to electricity.
Gires tells me that they’ll be using the venture capital money to expand staff to potentially 25 by next year, and the startup is hiring employees like electrical engineers, module and mobile developers, web and app developers, and marketing and sales people.
All of this innovation in the car sharing space has been spurred by the dropping costs of the wireless networks, computing and mobile hardware that have to be installed in the car. In addition, the rise of the smartphone as a device that can be used to lock and unlock doors, or reserve a car, has emerged as an obvious way to manage cars. These car sharing systems wouldn’t have been cheap enough or convenient enough 5-7 years ago.
In fact, a lot of other companies throughout the years have tried various ways to use connected wireless devices in cars to make company fleets better — but a lot of them have been kludgey and expensive. Cellphone companies early on sold corporate tech that enabled cellphones to manage company cars and trucks (remember iDEN?). Startup Green Road has built a business off of selling connected hardware and a service for corporate fleets that gives real-time feedback to drivers and tries to teach them to be better drivers.
The connected car will be an area of significant innovation over the next few years as startups and big companies alike figure out how to make cars more efficient and smarter, and create in-car data systems that will deliver new types of content and services.


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Yesterday, the BlackBerry Camera app received an update to version 188.8.131.5205. According to the Google Play Store, the update adds support for widescreen (16:9) photos on the BlackBerry Priv, while making the camera zippier. Indicators will now alert users when a particular photo is being shot under low-light conditions, and when HDR is being employed to meld together the perfect shot. Auto-focus and capture are now optimized, and there is an improved peek preview. The update also kills bugs and makes the camera application more stable.
The BlackBerry Camera includes professional settings that you can apply as you frame the scene, including live filter effects and exposure control. Features like Phase Detection Auto Focus, OIS, and a dual-color flash help the camera focus instantly, deliver feedback to you quickly, and capture crisp, vibrant photos, even in low light"-BlackBerry Camera app"
The update can now be found in the Google Play Store. Click on the hamburger menu and go to My apps and games. You should see the update ready to be downloaded and installed on your BlackBerry Priv.
source: BlackBerryCamera via Crackberry


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A number of media stocks are gearing up to report earnings this week, and one top technician says Disney could be set to soar.
Shares of the media giant were in rally mode Monday, hitting the highest level since November 2015. According to Carter Worth, head of technical analysis at Cornerstone Macro, there's something in the charts implying an even bigger breakout ahead.
"We're contending with a high and we are setting up for a presumptive breakout," Worth said Friday on CNBC's "Options Action." Shares of the media company are up more than 11 percent in the last month.
Despite its most recent outperformance, Disney has lagged the broader market in the longer term. Since 2015, the company's shares have risen 7 percent, well behind the S&P 500 which has surged nearly 37 percent in the same time period.
Nonetheless, Worth believes Disney is now poised for a catch-up. Looking at a one-year chart, Worth illustrated a bullish cup and handle formation. This reveals that after selling off in the beginning of the year, shares of Disney have more than retraced their losses, suggesting sentiment around the name may be shifting to the upside.
"I like the outperformance of [Disney] in the last month ... with the precondition of three years of underperformance," Worth said.
In the past 20 years, Disney has soared nearly 300 percent. However, shares of the media giant have struggled to break through its all-time high of $122.08 set in 2015.
Irrespectively though, Worth believes the stock's recent move through the $110 level shows Disney has "actually broken above the upper band of [a] wedge."
"What I'm thinking here is [a] pretty big move," he said. "[I'm] buying Disney into earnings."
Disney is expected to report its latest quarterly earnings after the bell on Tuesday. Shares of Disney were up 1.7 percent on Monday afternoon at around $116.


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Mar 18, 2016
Swiss watchmakers face another challenging year
Mar 18, 2016
Swiss watchmakers are braced for another difficult year as economic woes in major markets curb consumers' appetite for pricey timepieces, industry executives said on Thursday.
Sales in Hong Kong, the biggest market for Swiss watches, have been depressed as China's economic slowdown and Beijing's anti-corruption campaign have hurt spending by mainland Chinese, which shows no signs of rebounding.
Zenith, the upmarket watch brand owned by LVMH, sells almost two out of three watches to Chinese customers.
"2016 is very complicated because people no longer have the confidence needed to simply go and buy our products," Zenith's Chief Executive Aldo Magada told Reuters at the Baselworld watch fair.
He said he could not rule out job cuts.
As well as China's slowdown, tourism in Paris, another luxury goods hub, has been hit by the Islamist attacks in November, while Russians travel and spend less because of the weak rouble, the Ukraine crisis and the low oil price - which is also tempering luxury spending in the Middle East.
Like other upscale brands, Zenith has expanded into more affordable watches to meet the demands of more price-conscious consumers, a trend already visible at January's Geneva watch fair dominated by luxury goods group Richemont's high-end brands.
"Our product mix has changed, we sell fewer gold watches, more steel," said Magada.
Competition from smartwatches is also threatening the luxury watch sector.
Among luxury giant LVMH's watch brands, Zenith has suffered the most with a single-digit decline in sales last year, whereas TAG Heuer and Hublot generated growth thanks to their smaller exposure to China, said LVMH watch and jewelry head Jean-Claude Biver.
"The first quarter makes us think that we'll again outperform the market this year," Biver said, adding TAG Heuer was hiring staff to push ahead with its smartwatch project.
Swiss watch exports, which reflect the value of watches leaving the country but give no indication on what has really been sold to end consumers, tumbled 7.9 percent in January year-on-year after falling 3.3 percent last year.
"I'm hearing from peers that the overall situation has become rather more tense since the beginning of the year," said Laurent Dordet, head of Hermes' watch business, who would not comment on his own company's performance this year.
Tissot and Longines, Swatch Group's mid-price luxury brands, had slightly negative to flat sales growth last year and see at best a slight improvement this year.
Independent high-end label Patek Philippe, so sought-after by collectors that it can grow sales by 1-3 percent in good times and bad, says many luxury watchmakers made the mistake of focusing too much on China and Chinese travelers.
"They went too quickly. Now stock levels are too high everywhere," said Patek Philippe president Thierry Stern.
Shares of luxury watchmakers and their parent groups have been hit hard in the past year as sales have slowed. However, some analysts say selling may have been overdone as industry executives see some brightspots such as Japan and South Korea, which are drawing more Chinese tourists.
Shares in Swatch, the world's biggest watchmaker, for example, fell 21 percent last year and are down a further 2 percent this year, while Richemont has shed 11 percent this year after sliding nearly 19 percent last year.
"There is of course the special case of Hong Kong, where a lot of wholesalers are still very cautious. Overall, however, the mood has become too negative," said Scilla Huang Sun, portfolio manager of the Julius Baer Luxury Brands fund.
She forecasts 5 percent organic growth for luxury brands this year, but says most of that will come in the second half.
© Thomson Reuters 2023 All rights reserved.


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A senior executive of a global company, which was hopeful of a more liberal retail regime and was contemplating setting up brick-and-mortar stores, said the new food retailing policy does not provide a level-playing field to multinational retailers vis-a-vis domestic counterparts.
“Imagine a scenario where there are two outlets within five km radius. The shop owned by a domestic company is allowed to sell everything — from local and imported food items to general merchandise while the outlet owned by the foreign company is allowed to sell only food products sourced and produced within India. Where do you think the consumer will go?”
He said there are high costs associated with retail in India including skyrocketing rentals, overhead costs and other expenses including electricity charges that makes it very difficult to make money on wafer thin margins associated with food-only retailing. Asked if Walmart India is preparing to open food-only stores in India, its spokesperson said: “We are evaluating the model as per the guidelines announced.”
The lacklustre response from global firms to set up physical stores has punctured the government’s high hopes of attracting heavy foreign capital and know-how to create millions of jobs and improve farmers’ incomes by opening up FDI (foreign direct investment) in retailing of food manufactured and sourced within India.
Now, the government is using various methods from luring companies to even pressurising them to invest, according to various executives directly aware of the matter. Earlier this month, Minister for Food Processing Harsimrat Kaur Badal, a proponent of FDI in food retailing, headed a team of officials to London and met representatives of British retailers including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Harrods, Marks & Spencer and Cobra Beer in a bid to drum up support for the non-starter policy.
The executives told government must allow such ventures to also sell a small portion of non-food items to make such ventures work. Some executives even suggested allowing about 15% non-food in such stores, according to officials who attended the meeting in New Delhi.
K Radhakrishnan, co-founder of Grocermax.com, said even if companies including Walmart and Tesco apply for such ventures, it may not see overwhelming response from companies to actually open such outlets until the government allows companies to run an amalgamation of food and non-food stuff.
“While this policy is progressive but it will not create any difference because it is not possible to open stores which only sell food,” said Radhakrishnan, a food retailing veteran who has worked as head of food at Future Group. “The customer shops for everything in one place when it comes to grocery shopping. As per this legislation, I have to go somewhere else if I want to buy toothpaste.”
Radhakrishnan and other food-retailing experts feel various companies including Walmart, Tesco and even online grocery retailers may apply for the food licence in coming months anyway so that they are ready whenever the government tweaks the rules to allow non-food items in such stores.
“Since there is a notification and it is allowing them to take 100% FDI, they may make applications and keep the permission,” says Radhakrishnan. “This is the stepping stone to open up fully. It is a precursor to a larger plan whenever the time is right.”
In June, India amended its single brand retail policy for “cutting edge technology” companies by extending the period from 5 years to 8 years.
ET VIEW: Scrap the rule
The government should simply scrap the sourcing rule if is serious about attracting FDI. There is no reason why a retailer should not have the leeway to decide on how much to source locally and how much from abroad. The reasoning is simple. The economics of production that includes scale, capital concentration, skill and other costs determine how and where things should be made, subject, of course, to the essential forces of technology at any time. To nurture the SME sector, we need reforms on other fronts, not absurd conditions.


text: Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd, which operates as Times Group has invested in a furniture rental start-up from Gurgaon called Cityfurnish.com. Brand Capital, the investment arm of Times Group has funded the startup but the amount has still not been disclosed. Cityfurnish, which currently works in Delhi, Gurgaon and Bangalore, aims to use the multiple publications of Times Group to advertise its brand. As more and more people are locating to different cities, this tie-up will help the startup in penetrating into other cities as a rental space for premium lifestyle products, and with local unorganised vendors present, that space is still very open. Neerav Jain, Founding Director of Cityfurnish said, "We are happy and excited about our new association with Times Group. We intend to leverage their ability to build brands through their prestigious advertising channels. We foresee a new elevated status for our brand, which shall help us expand faster in new cities." "Currently, Cityfurnish offers a variety of home furniture and furnishing on affordable monthly rental plans. It has also launched a new category of exercise equipment recently. We want to become a one-stop solution for premium lifestyle products on rent," he said.


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There are a lot of things to be anxious about in the midst of the novel coronavirus outbreak, but ensuring you stay connected shouldn’t be one of them. Today, Verizon announced that it would be granting all customers with a data cap 15GB of extra data during the coronavirus outbreak.
In a press release, Verizon lays out its plans to help customers during the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. For those financially impacted by the virus, Verizon is waiving all overage and late fees for the time being, as well as free internet and voice service for its “Lifeline” customers that provides internet for low-income households.
Further, Verizon is granting all customers an extra 15GB of high-speed mobile data for both consumers and businesses. This is applied automatically with no customer interaction required. This also includes 15GB of hotspot data being added to all unlimited customers too! Verizon explains:
From March 25 through April 30, wireless consumer and small business customers will see an additional 15GB of data added to their plan for no additional charge. New consumer and business customers can also take advantage of this additional data. Specifically:
- For Verizon consumer and small business postpaid unlimited customers, 15GB of 4G LTE hotspot data will be added to your current plan.
- For Verizon consumer prepaid and consumer and small business postpaid metered customers, 15GB will be added to your current standalone or shared data plan, which can be used for smartphone, hotspot or other connected device use.
- Standalone metered and unlimited Jetpack plans will also be provided an additional 15GB of 4G LTE data.
- There is no action needed as the data will automatically be added to your plan.
All consumer wireless plans available since 2015 are eligible for this data boost, including More Everything, Verizon Plan 1.0, Verizon Plan 2.0, the Verizon Unlimited Plan, and all Mix & Match Unlimited plans.
More on COVID-19:
- Sling TV pushes free news channels during coronavirus outbreak
- Verily launches COVID-19 screener and testing for California
- Google cancels I/O 2020 entirely in light of coronavirus
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.


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BMW Motorrad is all set to make a debut with its range of motorcycles at the India Bike Week (IBW) in Vagator, Goa from 24-25 November 2017. BMW Motorrad will also launch two iconic motorcycles at the India Bike Week 2017 – the new BMW K 1600 B and the new BMW R nineT Racer on November 24, 2017. Dimitris Raptis, Head of Region Asia, China, Pacific, South Africa, BMW Motorrad will unveil the new motorcycles.
What will BMW Motorrad showcase?
BMW Motorrad pavilion will showcase a 14 bike display including BMW S 1000 RR, BMW R 1200 R, BMW S 1000 R, BMW R nineT, BMW R nineT Scrambler, BMW R 1200 GS Adventure, BMW R 1200 GS, BMW S 1000 XR, BMW K 1600 GTL, BMW R 1200 RT, the new BMW K 1600 B and the new BMW R nineT Racer.
Enthusiasts and customers can discover all the latest models from BMW Motorrad, interact with experts and experience one of their dream machines up close and personal at the BMW Motorrad pavilion. An exclusive VIP zone, R nine T Café Bar and BMW Motorrad Beer Garden will keep the motorcycling enthusiasts enthralled during the motorcycle festival.
BMW Motorrad officially started its operations as a part of the Indian subsidiary of BMW Group in 2017. Presently, BMW Motorrad is in the process of setting up the team and dealer network in India. Till date, BMW Motorrad India has set up seven sales outlets in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chennai and Kochi.


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Rohlík.cz has opened up a new online food store in Hungary.
According to the owner of the company Tomáš Čupr, the Hungarian market is similar to the Czech one. “There are big brands in Hungary, but they don’t offer such a fast service. Tesco, Spar, and Auchan offer only a next day delivery,” Čupr added.
The e-shop will also embrace the Hungarian wine tradition as it plans to cooperate with local producers.
Hungary is the first international market Rohlik.cz is breaking into. „The local competition only delivers orders on the following day. We deliver the goods within three hours of customers placing their order. In the Czech Republic, we offer a two-hour delivery, but Budapest is big and traffic jams are a common occurrence,“ said Jana Posseltová, Supply Chain Manager.
Rohlík.cz e-shop will also introduce the Marks & Spencer food brand to Hungary. “It will be interesting to test the entrance of the brand to the market as there are no Marks & Spencer stores in Hungary,” said Čupr, adding that in the future, the e-shop would also like to deliver Marks & Spencer fresh food.
Rohlík.cz is currently active in seven Czech cities and has served over 1 million customers.
In 2018 the sales of Rohlik.cz showed an annual increase of 62 per cent, reaching 2.4 billion Czech crowns, and the company made a profit for the first time in history.
In order to allow small producers to participate with ease, Rohlik.cz has been offering Roger’s service called Platba to its suppliers since this autumn. Thanks to this service, Rohlik.cz’s business partners can now shorten their invoice due dates from 30 to 3 days.


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free io game, fun io game, best io game
Players will have to wait until 2021 to get their hands on the game
Developer Crows Crows Crows has announced that The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe will be delayed to 2021.
The company revealed the postponement with a series of hilarious tweets, which use delay announcements of games such as Halo Infinite and Deathloop, but with pertinent details crudely photoshopped over certain parts of the statements.
Check them out below.
Crows Crows Crows later updated the official website for The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, noting that the game will now only come out in 2021.
Designer Davey Wreden later took to his personal Twitter account to shed more light on the delay, stating “there was just no way to plan for the huge changes in schedule that COVID-19 has introduced”.
“And at the same time, the scope of the game has expanded as we keep getting really cool ideas to add. I hope it feels worth it in the end,” he added.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe was originally announced at The Game Awards 2018, and had been planned for a 2019 release on PC and unannounced console platforms. In November 2019, the game was delayed to mid-2020.
The original version of The Stanley Parable was first released in 2011 as a free mod within Valve’s Half-Life 2. It was later remade as a standalone game and released for PC in 2013.
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is the latest game in recent weeks to be delayed. Earlier this month, Larian Studios revealed that Baldur’s Gate III would miss its planned early access launch window of August.
However, last week the company announced that the game would enter early access on September 30 for PC and Google Stadia. The early access version of Baldur’s Gate III is estimated to take around 20 hours to complete and will be packed with a wealth of content.


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Leasing In Big-Box Buildings Breaks Records After Perfect Storm Fuels 2020 Market
The Huntley Outlet Mall in far north suburban Huntley was knocked down several years ago after its occupancy rate fell to an unacceptable level, but this year a new industrial distribution development will rise to take its place, the latest sign of how e-commerce has upended the Chicago region’s retail sector.
The Prime Group developed the 320K SF mall in 1995, then formed a joint venture that purchased it in 2016 from Simon Property Group, originally planning to lease it up. But with occupancy then at 40%, it was too big of a challenge. Along with partners Craig Realty Group and The Capital Cos., Prime now plans to start construction this summer on what will eventually be 717K SF of industrial buildings.
“Our company’s history with this site — having developed the original retail outlet mall — gave us a deep understanding of and insight into its highest and best use,” The Prime Group Vice President Michael Reschke Jr. said in a statement.
Developers across the region are making similar decisions, setting all-time records for new construction in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic further fueled the rise of online shopping and at-home deliveries. But the pandemic isn’t just boosting the overall amount of space underway. The growing demand has led to users taking down huge amounts of space all at once, creating demand for big-box buildings of more than 200K SF, along with megaprojects of more than 1M SF. Demand for the latter group had largely evaporated before the COVID-19 crisis, leaving some spec buildings vacant for several years.
“Between the acceleration of online retailing and the DYI sector, the Lowe’s and Home Depots of the world, there has never been such robust demand,” he added.
Lowe’s Cos.’ decision in early 2020 to lease a 1.3M SF distribution building at 1600 Boudreau Road in southwest suburban Manteno, once occupied by Sears, was an important signal to developers that new buildings would find users, Stauber said.
Leasing activity in Chicagoland big-box buildings larger than 200K SF hit 24.9M SF in 2020, the most ever, and up from 20.7M SF in 2019 and 16.4M SF in 2018, according to Colliers International’s year-end report on the sector. Developers now have 25 such projects underway, totaling 18.5M SF, another regional record. And 61% of that space is for build-to-suit projects, flipping the script from previous years, when spec developments were the norm.
The coming year so far looks similar.
Venture One Real Estate started construction in January on a 1.3M SF distribution building for ScottsMiracle-Gro at its 3.3M SF Crossroads 55 Business Park in southwest suburban Channahon. The lawn and gardening company was originally looking for 800K SF, according to Stauber, but increased demand in 2020 led it to instead sign a lease for the proposed 1.3M SF Crossroads 55 building, allowing Venture One to change it from spec into a build-to-suit.
“Nine big box buildings greater than 1M SF are under construction, a record for the market,” according to the Colliers report. “Only one of these projects is purely speculative, while the remaining seven are build-to-suit projects or have been leased by a tenant.”
Institutional investors again see chances for big returns from the region’s big-box sector, Stauber said. That could help shift the balance between spec and build-to-suit developments.
“We will continue to see build-to-suits from a development standpoint,” he said. “But we’ll also see another big spike in spec development in the coming year.”


text: According to forecasts published by Bloomberg News, the New Zealand trade deficit is projected to have narrowed during July to NZ$150 million from NZ$417 million due primarily to a drop in imports. In fact, imports are anticipated to slow to NZ$3.3 billion from NZ$3.62 billion, while exports are projected to slip to NZ$3.15 billion from NZ$3.2 billion. With the recent improvements in the New Zealand economy, imports have held up rather well, which has been the main driver of the drop in the trade balance last month. However, a further decline in exports will hurt the case for a global economic recovery, and thus, a New Zealand economic recovery. Overall, a surprise widening of the trade deficit should impact the New Zealand dollar the most, and could lead pairs like NZDUSD and NZDJPY lower.


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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) unveiled higher-priced versions of its hardware that were well in line with the market expectations. However, the company made significant changes in its software, and for the first time offered all-new versions of the operating system and other applications for free. According to analysts Tavis C. McCourt and Daniel Toomey from Raymond James, Apple is once again counting on its tactic of selling high-priced gadgets coupled with free software.
Apple relying more on hardware
Apple’s strategy stands in contrast to its rivals, as most of them keep hardware priced low and earn revenue through software license or advertising.
Quant ESG With PanAgora Asset Management’s George Mussalli
ValueWalk's Raul Panganiban interviews George Mussalli, Chief Investment Officer and Head of Equity Research at PanAgora Asset Management. In this epispode, they discuss quant ESG as well as PanAgora’s unique approach to it. The following is a computer generated transcript and may contain some errors. Q3 2020 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Interview . Read More
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) unveiled new MacBooks and iPads that are faster, thinner, lighter and more powerful than the previous versions. Apple made changes to its Mac line of PC also, which suggest that the company believes in ongoing innovation and strives to make better products, believe analysts.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) did not announce any update for its Apple TV or iPod as was largely expected. Around 64% of users have now adopted iOS7 in the first month of its availability, and 20 million users have adopted iTunes radio already, from this it can be inferred “App Store monetization remains robust in 2013.”
Developer payouts surge 50%
Analysts believe the most important stat was the payment to developers, which was around $6 billion this year, an increase of 50% year on year suggesting that the ecosystem is in a strong position.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has around 1 million apps in its app store and around 475,000 of them are tailor-made for the iPad. Apple claimed that to date, there have been around 60 billion downloads which generated $13 billion in revenue for developers compared to $8 billion in 2012, and $4 billion in 2011. Two months are left in fiscal 2013, which suggest that the revenue can further surge for developers.
Nokia also unveiled new gadgets
Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) also launched new gadgets though this new hardware holds little importance as the device division of the Finnish company will soon be taken over by Microsoft corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). Nokia announced a phablet, tablet and low-priced Asha devices will be joining its string of products. Lumia 2520 is a tablet from Nokia that sits on Windows RT 8.1, has a 10.1 inch HD screen, LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity and fast charging capability. The price of Lumia 2520 is $499, and will probably sell in the United States, UK and Finland markets from this quarter.


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French developer Microids has announced that it is working on a new action-adventure video game centred on the Adventures of Tintin comic series.
The company revealed the news with a blog post on its official website, in celebration of its 35th anniversary. The as-yet-untitled game will follow Tintin and his trusty dog Snowy as they are thrust into “a whirlwind of incredible situations and suspense”.
Microids has also confirmed that the game will also feature iconic characters such as Captain Haddock, the genius professor Calculus and detectives Thomson & Thompson. The game is in partnership with Moulinsart, which owns the Tintin copyright.
Nick Rodwell, Moulinsart’s director, said that “our ambition is to provide a mainstream audience with a fun and friendly game for everyone to enjoy. Microids is for us the ideal partner to bring to life this new Tintin’s adventure.”
The game is planned to launch on PC as well as consoles, although no specific systems were mentioned. The companies also noted that the game’s title, artwork and details “will soon be unveiled”.
The last Tintin game to be released was 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, a tie-in to the 2011 movie, released by Ubisoft. It was an action-adventure platformer with puzzle, driving, fighting and flying elements.
Microids’ last release was the 2019 adventure game, Blacksad: Under the Skin, an adaptation of the Spanish comic series Blacksad. The title was first released for PC, macOS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November. It was later ported to the Nintendo Switch a month later.


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Markets mostly down … Oil sags … Bright picture
UNDATED (AP) – Global shares were mostly lower today following Friday’s steep slide in technology shares on Wall Street. The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.1 percent and the future for the Dow lost 0.2 percent.
NEW YORK (AP) – Benchmark U.S. crude lost 44 cents to $67.96 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Friday it gained 7 cents. Brent crude sagged 39 cents. The dollar rose to 108.19 yen from 107.64 yen on Friday.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – General Motors says it’s reached a tentative agreement with its South Korean labor union on measures to cut costs and allocate new car models to GM Korea factories. The union will vote on the deal later this week.
SHANGHAI (AP) – Companies are complaining that Alibaba punished them after they refused to enter exclusive partnerships with the e-commerce giant. Five major consumer brands tell the AP that after they rebuffed Alibaba, traffic to their products fell.
WASHINGTON (AP) – America’s business economists are sketching a bright picture for the coming months. A survey finds that more of their companies foresee rising sales and expect to continue hiring and raising pay.


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Starbucks policy on employee dating la tin photo dating yahoo
), there are plenty of other interesting things to learn about this leader of the gourmet coffee revolution. Starbucks spokeswoman Lisa Passe explained how they came up with it to a blogger: "If you take all of our core beverages, multiply them by the modifiers and the customization options, you get more than 87,000 combinations."2.
"It highlights the fact that dyslexia is a disability, and it will encourage employees to come forward and seek more adjustments. "I'll struggle, but don't worry, help me and I'll get there in my own time,” she said.John Moore, who was a corporate marketing manager at Starbucks in 2002 and now writes the Brand Autopsy blog says, "If taken solely as a retailer of pastries, it would be the largest in the U.S." Unfortunately, some of those delicious pastries come at a high price (to your waistline).It also found she had been victimised by her employer, which it said appeared to have little or no knowledge or understanding of equality issues.Ruth Badrick, partner at Brahams Dutt Badrick French LLP which specialises in employment law, said that companies like Starbucks could now be inundated with claims from people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. I just made a mistake." The British Dyslexia Association estimates that one in 10 people has dyslexia to some degree, although many have not been formally diagnosed.


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The recently announced Vivo Y32, carries a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 SoC and a 5,000 mAh battery. This phone was first introduced at the TENAA event at the end of last November and is now officially launched in China.
Vivo Y32 features a glossy plastic material with dimensions of 164.26 x 76.08 x 8mm, weighs 182g, and is available in two color options, Harumi Blue and Foggy Night.
Vivo Y32 is reportedly the first phone to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC 680 chipset.
The chipset is paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage which can be expanded up to 1TB via the MicroSD card slot.
The phone packs a 6.51-inch LCD panel display with a resolution of 1600 x 720 pixels (HD+), 16.9 million colors, and a 60Hz refresh rate.
The display has a 1500:1 contrast ratio, 89 percent screen-to-body ratio, 20:9 aspect ratio, and a dew point notch.
For capturing images, the phone has a 13MP and 2MP dual camera setup on the back. For the front camera, this latest cellphone is supported by an 8MP camera.
This device is equipped with dual-SIM, 4G, dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, USB Type-C port, up to a 3.5mm headphone jack.
There are also sensors such as accelerometer, ambient light sensor, compass, proximity sensor, and side-mounted fingerprint sensor.
Vivo Y32 supports OriginOS based on Android 11 and uses a 5,000mAh battery with support for 18W fast charging. This smartphone is reportedly priced at around 220 USD in China.


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The New Lifeline for Retail
During Christmas of 2007, a link to a YouTube video of a men’s cappella group singing The Twelve Days of Christmas’ went viral. It was really not like any other version that people had ever heard. So what happened next? The only store that had 30 copies of the DVD by the group sold them all in no time. Internet Retailer reports that the popularity of the YouTube performance helped increase the sales of the store dramatically. The small store, with only two full-time employees, finally sold 5,300 copies of the DVD.
While this is a story from the last decade, the industry is still learning how to fully harness the potential of social media to boost brand awareness, engage customers and win business opportunities
Retailers are in a process of fully understanding social media and its capabilities.


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Designers debate the contentious trend, spearheaded by boutique hotels, of situating bathtubs in bedrooms. A cozy innovation or a recipe for discomfort?
Prices dropped 0.4% in the third quarter due to stamp duty
Discover the new Mediterranean marinas capturing the attention of the superyacht set
The “Spider-Man” star has sold the Mission-style home for $3.325 million


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Top digital currencies
October 20, 2014 10:40 ET21 Top Bitcoin and Digital Currency Companies Endorse New Digital Framework for Digital Identity, Trust and Open DataCAMBRIDGE,.How can a digital currency. internet, coffee, etc. then the currency is worthless.Find the top 100 most popular items in Amazon Books Best Sellers.
Top companies for Digital Currencies at VentureRadar with Innovation Scores, Core Health Signals and more.Traveling around the world but do not want to face the risk of carrying too much physical cash with you.
If you want to consider investing in digital currencies like bitcoin, these are the primary methods. The best known among them is bitcoin.
Welcome to Top10money.com - Top 10 MoneyWith Ripple, McCaleb aimed to extend this setup to all currencies, including dollars, yen, euros—anything.
EU's Top Cop Launches Digital Currency Working Group
Best Currency In The World - Top Ten List - TheTopTens®These virtual currencies are worth a look. Here are 12 cryptocurrency alternatives to Bitcoin. and not all are in the top 10 by either measure.You could store your dollars in one gateway, for example, and these could be used to pay someone in euros.Cryptocurrency platforms are websites where you can exchange, sell, or buy cryptocurrencies for traditional currency like Euro or US dollars or other digital currency.Bitcoin has now corrected over 30 percent and is currently faring at levels of USD 2,000, as per the CoinDesk price index.Place your vote on the top 10 list of Best Currency In The World.Digital currencies are changed to and from traditional fiat currencies by means of digital.
Top companies for Digital Currency at VentureRadar with Innovation Scores, Core Health Signals and more.They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction.
But this caused a problem: many assumed McCaleb and the other founders of project were just trying to get rich off the new currency—which, if successful, would continue to rise in value—and eventually, McCaleb fell out with the company he created to build the technology, Ripple Labs.This is what Batista has vowed to set up by the end of August—a gateway—and according to Collison, five organizations have already built their own gateways.You can transmit yen and turn them into dogecoin or Brazilian real.The likes of bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, litecoin have witnessed a sharp dip of around 20 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent, 27 percent respectively, over the past 24 hours.Bitcoin price chart: Ethereum which rallied over 2500 percent this year, reached close to levels of USD 230 and has corrected over 30 percent from its all-time highs.Bitcoin vs Ethereum: The Best Digital Currencies for 2017 Buz Investors Best Digital Currencies Digital currencies have proved lucrative for tech-wise traders, but.Based on over 5,000 votes, Indian Rupees is ranked number 1 out of 66 choices.Offering two factor authentication and elastic offline-storage, where 80% of.
Digital currency ethereum climbed Monday to a near two-month high amid renewed uncertainty about the future of bitcoin.The sudden spike in interest for buying bitcoin shows that the recent rally could probably be a result of a herd mentality trading which is now followed by a healthy correction.Bitcoin is a new currency that was created in 2009 by an unknown person. Now a U.S. Senate panel is taking a close look at the digital currency.This comes as no surprise as it has been a roller coaster ride in the cryptocurrency market since the start of 2017.Extensive Digital Currency Support With blockchain technology continuing to innovate, Bittrex supports established and emerging currencies.
10 Warning Signs That Digital Currency is Replacing MoneyEuro, GBP, etc.) rather than a new, unfamiliar digital currency like.Petar Zivkovski, COO of Whaleclub, a leveraged cryptocurrency trading platform told CoinDesk that traders took this opportunity to capitalize on the excessive hype built around cryoptocurrencies over the past few days.
The Banks and the Law But the bigger aim here is to create a universal way of moving all money—not just stellars—and this effort faces other hurdles.These Are The Most Popular Digital Currencies Three Years Running. it should automatically be crossed off your digital currency.The currencies inspired by Bitcoin are collectively called. which stands for Digital Cash and.Unveiled last week by a not-for-profit foundation bootstrapped by one of the most important developers in the world of digital currency, Jed McCaleb, and one of the hottest startups in the rapidly evolving realm of online payments, Stripe, this new project aims to bring digital currencies to a much wider audience and provide a much smoother way of moving all sorts of money over the internet.Through Stripe, Stellar has a direct avenue to the next wave of online merchants.


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The Division, the latest game by French video game company Ubisoft, is already one of the biggest hits of the year, and has even beat its rival Destiny when it came to first-week sales. The Division is also a solid game by most accounts, with good action gameplay set in a post-apocalyptic New York City, and interesting role-playing and crafting elements as is the norm in Ubisoft’s recent games like Far Cry Primal.
Also, despite The Division’s bleak outlook, there’s no doubt that the game’s New York City is beautifully recreated and accurate, with meticulous attention to detail on the part of Ubisoft’s designers.
Although some players were wary that The Division’s map would not be big enough, especially after creative director Magnus Jansen made a statement saying that “For Tom Clancy’s The Division we are going with Midtown Manhattan. It is because of the 1 to 1 re-creation and the way the pandemic has [happened]. Basically, everything has been hit and there are no more resources because everyone tried to get out”.
This meant areas like Brooklyn and Central Park would be left out, dashing the hopes of those who wanted the game’s city to be as close to real-life New York as possible. It is clear though, that there was no way that even a studio with Ubisoft Massive’s resources could create an accurate rendition of an enormous city like New York, so restricting The Division’s map to Midtown Manhattan was certainly a wise move.
This would also allow Ubisoft to expand the game with new areas via DLC packs in the future, something that is extremely likely as rivals like Destiny have had big expansions released for them since its launch back in 2014.
It turns out though, that The Division’s map size is actually quite big when compared to that of similar open-world games like Fallout 4 and GTA V. A YouTube personality that goes by the name MarcoStyle actually compared the game’s maps, and came to the conclusion that they were all roughly the same size.
About Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout 4, the YouTuber says it’s bigger than Skyrim’s huge map, and that it takes 9 minutes of real-world time to get from one edge of the map to another.
But whereas in a game like GTA V one can get hold of a car or another vehicle easily and travel through the sunny streets of Los Santos quickly, players in The Division move around the game’s virtual Manhattan on foot, given how the city is in a state of disarray after the deadly virus attack.
Also The Division has less “fast travel” points than a game like Fallout 4, and there’s more travelling from point to point on foot than in Bethesda’s game, actually making the city feel bigger than Fallout 4’s Commonwealth.
And even if The Division’s urban and realistic landscape does not feel as distinct as Los Santos colourful avenues and landmarks in GTA V or Fallout 4’s ruined Boston, its similarity to real-life New York means players will end up becoming more familiar with the city’s streets and locations as they sink more time into the game.
But still, it is clear that The Division still offers one of the biggest and most detailed video game playgrounds seen to date, which will hopefully keep growing with new content and expansions in the near future.


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The Colorado Mining Association has joined the state of Wyoming in asking a federal appeals court for a re-hearing following a recent decision upholding a 2001 ban on road-building on more than fifty million acres of National Forest lands.
The University of Colorado’s annual economic forecast released Monday offers a mixed-bag looking ahead to 2012. Much of it depends on what part of the state you live in and in what line of work you’re in. Economists expect farming to continue to be the bright spot, while other sectors such as construction and tourism and hospitality may continue to sputter. But as KUNC's Kirk Siegler reports, overall, the forecast is much brighter than at the height of the recession.
The financially troubled US Postal Service is considering cuts that would slow first-class mail delivery across Colorado—and the country. The change would eliminate the chance of next-day delivery for stamped letters across Colorado.


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Retailers reckon a drop in the number of officers has led to more thefts from stores as crooks become ever more brazen.
Some have walked out of shops with trolleys full of stolen goods.
Store chiefs believe shoplifters think they are unlikely to be arrested and that their confidence has also fuelled violence against staff.
The British Retail Consortium said organised gangs stole goods such as alcohol and DVDs in bulk while also targeting designer clothing, handbags and electrical goods.
Grocery thefts tended to be low value items such as bread and milk.
Shoplifting offences recorded by police forces in England and Wales rose 8% last year to almost 360,000.
Of the 61,500 shoplifters taken to court last year, 57,000 were convicted, of whom around 12,000 were jailed.
The BRC’s Hugo Rosemont said police cuts meant there was “less of a deterrent” and alarm over violence.
Prof David Wilson, of Birmingham City University, agreed the crime surge was “a consequence of a decline in the number of police”.


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Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced the long-anticipated proposed guidance on flavored e-cigarettes and e-juice products earlier this week. Considered the most aggressive policy stance taken by the Trump-era FDA to date, the latest proposal for fighting underage vaping is now open for comment before the agency makes them official.
Gottlieb, who announced his resignation earlier this month, says that this draft guideline is a crucial step in fighting the “epidemic-level rise in youth e-cigarette use.” He adds, via a prepared statement: “We’re proposing to prioritize enforcement of flavored ENDS products (other than tobacco-, mint-, and menthol-flavored) that are offered for sale in ways that pose a greater risk for minors to access the products.”
Vaping industry and tobacco harm reduction advocates responded to the proposal by accurately highlighting what I’ve identified as two significant flaws. The first flaw focuses on the long-argued sentiment that these new regulations are results of an overblown cultural reaction to methodically flawed data surrounding prevalence and use. The second covers concerns regarding access to flavored products for legal consumers. To begin my analysis, allow me to be one of the many to tell you that this proposal is glaringly unbalanced. Upon further examination of the proposed guidance, it is entirely clear that the consideration of critical components that make e-cigarettes and vapes legitimate non-medicinal approaches for smoking cessation are missing.
Access of products and the mixed retail ban
Before Gottlieb released the proposed guidelines, the FDA started to manufacture the idea that there is a public health epidemic surrounding minors ingesting liquid nicotine through e-cigarettes and vaping products. The buzz word that resulted was “JUULing” (a slang word describing the act of vaping on a JUUL device). After national substance abuse surveys revealed increases in vaping’s popularity among minors, alarming headlines started appearing creating panic among parents.
Some of these headlines include frantic calls to action:
“Are your kids JUULing?”
“Here’s What Parents Need To Know Right Now About JUULing.”
“Vaping Is big tobacco’s bait and switch.”
Reports and columns like these, many from reputable news outlets of considerable reputation and several from sites for parental outrage groups, solidified the idea that youth vaping is very widespread and deadly. Rest assured, the reality of the matter is that much of the survey data reports like these reference are statistically flawed for several reasons. For example, the CDC’s National Youth Tobacco Survey only found 5.8 percent (about 845,000) of all high school going youth (15.1 million individuals, grades 9-12) in the United States reporting that they have used e-cigarettes for 20 or more days in any given month. The statistic does not indicate actual daily use or account for whether the e-juice in use contains nicotine or is nicotine-free. Nonetheless, the statistic counteracts the assumption that millions of teens and preteens are vaping in troves like media, tobacco control advocates, even Gottlieb’s regulators would let on. By consequence, this brought forth the immediate proposal.
According to the proposed regulations, only tobacco, menthol, and mint flavored e-cigarette and vaping products will be left for sale in mixed retail locations. Mixed retail locations are establishments like gas stations or grocery stores. Citing enforcement data and the assumption that sweet flavored products directly appeal to minors, the proposed regulation would restrict “non-tobacco” flavors to vape shops, tobacconists, and other specialty smoke shops.
For some, this proposed measure may not seem like an issue. It does make sense that if you want to buy a sweet-flavored e-liquid, you will go to a vape shop that mixes their own. That logic is similar to buying a craft beer at a liquor store. However, this type of mindset can carry negative impacts. One of the fundamental principles to tobacco harm reduction is the support of broad access to safer and lower-risk nicotine products. This policy would noticeably limit the access of these products to legal consumers who rely on non-tobacco flavors to quit combustibles. This point leads directly to how sweetly flavored e-cigarettes have been proven to help legacy smokers switch to a less-harmful alternative. However, this approach does additional harm to retailers. From a purely economic perspective, this measure would add a burden on carrying such products in stores because some independent retailers and retail chains may find it as a growing liability. If this were the case, a company could drop such products altogether. Ultimately, this measure adds more FDA scrutiny over private enterprise based on some flawed assumptions.
Federal substance abuse data additionally brings to question the nature of the aggressive treatment of retailers. Notable tobacco harm reduction researcher Brad Rodu, in a column for Real Clear Politics, takes note of this.
“Only a tiny fraction of American teens who have used e-cigarettes bought them on their own,” Rodu writes, citing data from the FDA’s Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) survey. Rodu justifies this claim by attributing calculations from the most recent PATH results, datasets from 2013 and 2014. Less than 10 percent of youth report that they purchased their own e-cigarette at a retail location without a third party. Out of 771,000, that is around 75,700 individuals. From here, I argue that the regulation is proposed to, more or less, inconvenience retailers.
Adults like sweet flavors too
Researchers led by Konstantinos E. Farsalinos, affiliated with the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Greece at the time, argue that a wide variety of flavors are important for smokers utilizing e-cigarettes and vaping as a cessation method. The 2013 research, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found that “regulatory restrictions to [flavors] could cause harm to current vapers.”
Do note that this study was conducted among former smokers and current vapers using e-cigarettes and sweet flavors. Konstantinos et al. note: “The results of this survey of dedicated users indicate that [flavors] are marketed in order to satisfy vapers’ demand. They appear to contribute to both perceived pleasure and the effort to reduce cigarette consumption or quit smoking.”
Based on the findings of this study, the conclusion can be made that the proposed access restrictions on flavors, as noted before, could cause unintended occurrences. For example, think of a former legal smoker who quit combustibles by using a vape pen that she purchased at a gas station one day. There are no vape shops or tobacconists for over fifty miles because she lives in a rural community. Eventually, this individual was able to ingest nicotine exclusively through a vape pen and got to the point of only vaping low nicotine content or nicotine-free sweetened e-juices. The only challenge she has left is the occasional craving for nicotine that she begins satisfying by puffing a disposable non-tobacco flavored vape pen (e.g., vanilla) until the desire is gone. Other than that, she doesn’t consume any other nicotine.
If the current version of the proposed retail restrictions are implemented and she suddenly gets a craving, she may run the risk of relapse to cigarettes because the flavors accessible are only tobacco flavors. This occurrence, though a hypothetical, could be a classic case for thousands of vapers. Though a causal assumption based on the anecdote presented, this could lead to cigarette use over e-cigarette use.
As a result, I further argue that these regulations do present potentially harmful scenarios. Limiting widespread access to the products that help smokers quit will do direct harm to population-level public health. Additionally, there is the case of harm minimization to consider. Reason Foundation’s director of consumer freedom Guy Bentley agrees: “Most adults switching from cigarettes to vaping opt to switch with a non-tobacco flavor.” This further justifies the public health application of non-tobacco flavors for smoking cessation, despite concerns over youth use.
Indeed, it is true that the vast majority of minors whom vape opt for fruity flavors over menthol or mint. The proposed regulations posit this argument, as noted. Assuming that fruity e-juices are directly targeted at children is a self-defeating line of reasoning, though.
In the end, all of these proposed rules for e-cigarettes and vaping products are indications of flawed rule-making. Let it be known that much of the vaping industry supports responsible regulation to protect public health and curtail underaged use. Many of the industry’s trade groups subject their members to standards for marketing, product safety, and innovation. While these self-regulatory methods are in place and working, proposals from agencies like the immediate draft guidelines presented by the FDA suggest that input from industry is not worth a regulator’s time. A complacent mindset like that is harmful, but as I’ve revealed in my previous reporting on the Bootlegger-Baptist phenomenon, the complacency of the regulator is supposedly morally justifiable.


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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) suffered a big slump to its sales in Europe during the final month of last year, dropping 16% to underperform a mildly negative market, however for the full year the Italian-American carmaker finished comfortably positive, up 5.1%.
FCA added 62,219 sales in Europe (data counting EU member nations plus the EFTA signatories) last month, a bleak performance that compared unfavourably to December of the previous year when sales amounted to 74,115 units. That represented a hefty drop of 16.1%, triple the overall market’s decline, and means FCA's European market share slipped from 6.2% in December 2016 to 5.5% last month.
All FCA's Italian brands fell during December with that slide led out by the Fiat brand which endured a terrible month as it lost one fifth of its sales to end December with 43,360 units sold. Compared to 54,241 units sold in December 2016 that meant a year-on-year fall of 20.1% to end the year on a poor note. As a result, market share was down from 4.5% to 3.8% year-on-year.
Of equal concern was the performance of Alfa Romeo which unexpectedly slumped 7% to 5,727 units during December compared to 6,160 units it achieved during the final month of the previous year. With the Stelvio crossover now in the showrooms alongside the Giulia sedan the brand's year-on-year sales should be significantly up and that will cause alarm amongst Alfa Romeo executives; they will have to guide the brand very quickly upwards over the next few months. Alfa Romeo's European market share as a result remained static year-on-year at 0.5%.
Lancia, now confined to the Italian market and reliant on the ageing Ypsilon model held out well in the circumstances; it added 3,152 sales in December to fall 29.6%. The luxury brands, Ferrari and Maserati, shifted 736 units during December, down 24% on the previous year when the pair sold 968 cars. Finally, FCA's Jeep brand enjoyed a positive December, up 11.8% to 9,244 units.
For the full year just gone FCA took full advantage of the positive mood in Europe to sell a total of 1,044,714 units, up 5.2%. Significantly, it reversed a long decline and put the carmaker back above the one million units mark having declined to 992,812 units in 2016.
It also put FCA back as the fourth biggest carmaker in Europe having slipping well behind BMW in 2016, albeit it outsold the German carmaker last year by just two thousand units to regain the spot. FCA beat Europe's dominant car making group, VW, in year-on-year growth terms as the German company was up by 2.1% while it also came out on top of BMW, up 1%, and Daimler, up 5%, for growth although it lagged behind Renault, Peugeot-Citroen and Toyota in these terms.
Fiat brand had a decent full year, up 4.5% to 779,534 units and its share of European sales was up as a result by 0.1% to 5%. Alfa Romeo also had a strong year to put on almost twenty thousand units and 29.5% to finish the 2017 having sold 85,691 cars. Lancia was down 9.6% to 60,805 units while Ferrari and Maserati, combined, saw their sales climb up 22.3% to 10,029 units. Finally, Jeep brand was up three and a half thousand units and 3.5% to finish the year on 108,655 units.
Overall in 2017, European demand for new cars grew (+3.4%) for the fourth consecutive year, reaching more than 15 million new passenger cars registered for the first time since 2007. Among the five big markets, Italy (+7.9%) and Spain (+7.7%) recorded the strongest gains, followed by France (+4.7%) and Germany (+2.7%). By contrast, last year demand for cars in the United Kingdom declined (-5.7%) for the first time in six years. Noteworthy is the strong performance of the new EU member states, where registrations went up by 12.8% during the year.


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Overcoming Drone Delivery Regulations in the Time of COVID-19
As the COVID-19 pandemic brought stay-at-home orders and widespread store closures, American consumers went online to do their shopping. In the second quarter of 2020, online shopping increased by 44.4% compared to the same period in 2019, according to U.S. Census Bureau Data. Ecommerce purchases accounted for 20.8% of all retail sales.
Although the pace of online shopping has begun to slow somewhat as brick-and-mortar stores have reopened, the health crisis has been a boon to online retailers, or e-tailers, such as Amazon. That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges. Amazon had to fine-tune its operations to keep up with demand while implementing measures to protect employees from the coronavirus.
One such action was to step up its efforts to implement delivery by drones. The company first announced plans in December 2013 to use drones to make deliveries within 30 minutes. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the service, “Prime Air,” would be rolled out in as little as 4 years.
That estimate proved to be optimistic—Amazon still has not made a drone delivery in the U.S. However, the company recently cleared one regulatory obstacle by obtaining a Part 135 air carrier certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
What most people call a drone is technically an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is autonomous or operated by a human. The first drone was developed during World War I by British engineer Archibald Law, and military UAVs have been used in various capacities ever since. The FAA issued its first nonmilitary UAV permits in 2006 and began developing regulations that would enable the safe commercial and recreational use of drones.
Between 2006 and 2014, the FAA issued just two commercial drone permits per year on average, equal to the number of requests. However, Amazon’s Prime Air announcement and drone use by other companies spurred increasing interest in the technology. The FAA issued 1,000 drone permits in 2015 and 3,100 in 2016. Today, more than 1.2 million recreational UAVs and nearly half a million commercial UAVs are registered with the FAA.
The Regulations Get Simpler
Historically, drone use by operators other than modelers was governed by the same rules as commercial aviation, which made it economically unfeasible. However, in September 2014, the FAA began using its authority under Section 333 of Pub. L. 112-95 to issue exemptions to those rules for drone operation. In 2018, that authority was codified under 49 U.S.C. § 44807, although the term “Section 333 exemption” is still used.
On June 21, 2016, the FAA announced the release of 14 C.F.R. Part 107 governing the operation of drones weighing less than 55 pounds on takeoff. Although the rules impose significant limitations, they apply to most recreational and commercial drone operations without the need for Section 333 exemptions.
Under Part 107, UAVs are limited to a groundspeed of 100 miles per hour and an altitude of 400 feet. The drone may be flown in uncontrolled Class G airspace without permission from air traffic control. The remote pilot in command, the person manipulating the aircraft controls, or a visual observer must maintain unaided visual contact with the aircraft throughout its flight. Flight is limited to daylight and twilight hours with a minimum flight visibility of 3 statute miles. The drone may not be flown over people who are not direct participants in the flight.
Evolving Delivery Drone Regulations and Rules
While operators may “transport property for compensation or hire within state boundaries” under Part 107, the visual contact requirement limits the feasibility of that rule for delivery services. Operators who wish to operate a drone beyond visual line of sight must obtain an air carrier certificate pursuant to 14 C.F.R. Part 135.
Remote pilots operating under Part 107 don’t need a pilot’s license, but they must obtain a certificate with a small UAV rating by meeting eligibility criteria and passing an aeronautical knowledge and safety test. Air carrier certificates, however, are generally issued to operators of manned aircraft used in interstate, foreign, or overseas transportation or to carry mail. UAV pilots must hold a commercial pilot certificate and any applicable ratings or apply for a Section 333 exemption.
Every state also has rules governing the operation of UAVs. Companies seeking to engage in drone-based delivery have a complex regulatory framework to navigate.
The Current State of Drone Delivery
Wing Aviation, a subsidiary of Alphabet (the parent company of Google), received the first air carrier certificate for drone deliveries. The FAA issued a single-pilot operator certificate in April 2019 and a standard certificate for unlimited operations in October 2019. In the U.S., Wing delivers food and over-the-counter medications in Virginia.
The FAA issued the first standard certificate for drone operations with an exemption for operation beyond visual line of sight to UPS Flight Forward on October 1, 2019, according to UPS. The company immediately used its quadcopter drone to deliver medical products and specimens to WakeMed’s hospital campus in Raleigh, North Carolina. Although UPS Flight Forward drone delivery services are currently limited to North Carolina and Florida, the standard certificate gives the company the option to expand its operations.
Those services have not received as much attention as Amazon’s Prime Air. You still can’t order something on Amazon and get it in 30 minutes or less via drone, but the company’s efforts, coupled with evolving FAA regulations, should soon make the concept a reality.
Learn More About the Intersection of Law and Technology
Companies will continue to innovate to overcome the challenges of the health pandemic, and the U.S. legal system will need to respond in kind. Purdue Global Law School offers two online legal degrees:
The Juris Doctor, which trains you to become a California-licensed attorney
The Executive Juris Doctor, a doctorate in law for those who wish to build their legal expertise but do not intend to become practicing attorneys
We also offer single courses in such areas as business law, health law, intellectual property, and cyber law to help you stay up-to-date on legal issues and trends.
Request more information on any of our online programs today.


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TNT Express UK has opened a 44,349ft² depot in Howden, East Riding, to serve customers in the North East. The site on the Ozone Park Trading Estate can handle up to 25,000 parcels per week and provides access to the M62, M18, M1 and A1. TNT has created 32 new jobs in managerial, traffic office and loading bay operative roles at the site, and there will be around 40 additional rounds for the sub-contracted drivers the firm uses. UK MD […]
Linkline Transport has expanded into the home delivery sector in response to the challenges posed by Covid-19 and is relying on Mandata’s cloud-based software to keep track on parcels.
Parcelforce Worldwide has opened a new parcel sort hub in Chorley, Lancashire, as part of parent Royal Mail’s investment in growing its parcels business.
It is an unrealistic consumer expectation, not poor performance from parcel carriers, that has led to a report suggesting a third of peak-time parcels are delivered at the wrong time, according to a market expert.


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After acquiring LucasArts and Lucasfilm last year for a hefty price tag of $4.05 billion, Disney has today announced that LucasArts has seen its final days as the legendary publisher is being shut down.
We evaluate Amazon’s entry into the streaming media market. Plus, Borderlands, Disney Infinity, a new Mario game and more!
That's Just The Reality
Team EBC talks about the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook. Plus, no Watch Dogs Demo, Getting back to Square One, Aliens: Isolation and much more!
Nintendo Direct has details on the New Smash Bros. U!
FIRE IN THE AMAZON
The internet megastore launches a TV box of its own, complete with game streaming services.
THE FORCE IS STRONGER WITH THIS ONE
Former Uncharted writer Amy Hennig joins Visceral Games' Star Wars project.


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Price of gold increased by Rs 900 per tola, while price of silver remained constant over the trading week between May 5 and 10.
According to the Federation of Nepal Gold and Silver Dealers’ Association (FeNeGoSiDA), the bullion market opened on Sunday with gold price fixed at Rs 59,100 per tola. The price of the yellow metal increased by Rs 400 a tola on Monday to be traded at Rs 59,500 per tola and remained constant the next day.
On Wednesday, price of gold went up by Rs 200 per tola to settle at Rs 59,700 a tola. However, it remained constant on Thursday. Meanwhile, the price of gold surged by Rs 300 a tola on Friday to close the week’s trading at Rs 60,000 per tola.
Meanwhile, silver price was fixed at Rs 720 per tola on Sunday and it remained constant till Tuesday. On Wednesday, the price of the grey metal increased by five rupees a tola and reached Rs 725 per tola. However, on Thursday silver price declined by five rupees per tola to be traded at Rs 720 a tola. It remained constant on Friday to close the week’s trading at Rs 720 per tola.
As per FeNeGoSiDA, gold price went up in the review week due to the weak value of the US dollar in the international market. Similarly, the trade war between the US and China is in its peak and that also resulted in gold price soaring, the association added.
According to Reuters, gold edged higher on Friday and was heading for a weekly gain, supported by trade concerns after the United States hiked tariffs on Chinese goods during trade talks between the two countries. Bullion was also supported by a weaker dollar which fell after data showed a lower than expected rise in the US consumer price index last month.
However, world stocks rose on Friday, but were still set for the worst weekly performance since late December 2018 due to an escalation in the US-China trade dispute, Reuters added.
A version of this article appears in print on May 12, 2019 of The Himalayan Times.