text:
Sony representatives reached out to us to set the record straight on the expected software support for the Xperia 1 III flagship. The company plans to deliver at least two Android OS updates to the Mark 3 flagship.
That’s a lot better than the single OS update that Sony Netherlands was claiming. And yes, the statement is worded defensively, but that’s to cover unforeseen circumstances.
We have to point out that the Sony Xperia 1 III will launch in August in the US and in Europe with Android 11 pre-installed. Google’s schedule shows that Android 12 will reach “platform stability” with Beta 4, set to be released in August and to be followed by a proper release soon after that.
With that in mind, the Xperia 1 III should be updated to Android 13 at a minimum with security updates stretching beyond that.
Yes I'm saying you are trying to side track away from facts.
So are you saying that illuminati who are responsible for this climate change that made the sun shines brighter than few years ago thus make anything below 1000 nits is unusable in daylight?
Oh years ago when it was the norm nobody complained so we should accept it now years later when tech has advanced past that. So because it was ok back then its fine now to fall short yet charge more....😒😒


text:
Bank outages, spiralling online payments fraud and a slew of major corporate data breaches are set to feel the sting of regulatory leather after corporate and financial regulator the Australian Securities and Investments Commission revealed its four year hit list.
The corporate cop on Wednesday drew a line under the cuddly days of ‘light touch’ and industry initiated self-regulation, publishing its panned action and public to-do list that ASIC chairman James Shipton said is “underpinned by the ‘Why not litigate?’ operational discipline”.
The short, sharp message to banks, brokers and the consumer credit industry is that attempts to sweep shoddy behaviour and systemic deficiencies under the rug will be met with court action, public shaming, penalties and stiff fines.
Importantly, bank and digital payments outages, online and electronic card fraud, dodgy online consumer lending practices and lax IT and data security all make the cut on the list of activities set for a caning as ASIC moves to shake out escalating systemic risk from sectoral dependence on interconnected digital systems.
Rope and lamp-post methodology
“The aim of our enforcement work is to effectively bring wrongdoers to account through punishment and public denunciation, ASIC said in its corporate plan.
“In doing so, we not only seek to deter poor behaviour, but to also encourage a greater willingness among entities and individuals to act in accordance with the law and for the benefit of consumers and investors,” it continued, adding it “will target cases of high deterrence value and those involving egregious harm or misconduct (particularly towards vulnerable consumers).”
Serendipitously, ASIC’s hit list publication came on the same day as the ASX’s most popular digital payments and credit arbitrageur Afterpay lodged its results, trumpeting a new partnership with global giant Visa around debit cards.
The banking and venture cap sectors have been anticipating a dose of parasite control in the digital credit and fintech sector for at least a year, especially as speculative money piles into start-ups, effectively promulgating shadow lending to people with blotchy credit or poor credit ratings.
At a policy level, the fear is an unchecked proliferation of app-based low quality shadow lending could lead to a consumer and investor rout in the event of an economic shock because the evolution of the digital payments and fintech sector has outpaced laws and regulations.
Conspicuously heavy on the tech talk, ASIC’s corporate plan persistently weaves in current and emerging technologies like AI, data analytics, machine learning and automation in its enhanced approach to patrolling its beat, alongside some heavy spruiking of regtech opportunities.
“This technology has significant potential to help organisations build a culture of compliance and save time and money relating to compliance activities,” ASIC said, a line that tacitly acknowledges the steep cost of manual compliance burdens which have for years leached cash from IT budgets.
De-lousing digital payments and online fraud
With online payments fraud in Australia now at an all-time high of $478 million a year for 2018 – think about it as each of the big-four losing $100 million each – ASIC is finally showing signs it might bite the bullet in terms of making banks and credit card schemes clean up their act.
A key action listed as ‘new’ in the corporate plan is a review of the ASIC's infamously archaic ePayments Code that was literally developed in the pre-internet analogue era when electronic payments arrived in the 1980s under what was then EFTPOS (electronic funds transfer point of sale).
A still voluntary code – yes, voluntary – the mechanism has been sorely deficient in its protections for online merchants who cop the vast majority of online card fraud passed through to them as chargebacks by banks and credit card schemes.
These days, even the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Philip Lowe, is a victim of online card fraud, a point the central banker has very publicly pressed home to industry.
Banks and schemes have for decades kicked hard against any prospect of indemnifying merchants for online card fraud, despite a large proportion of it being caused by insecure, frequently defective cumbersome and expensive efforts by the likes of Mastercard and Visa to secure payments across their schemes.
Online liability shift
What’s less known is that most of the rules surrounding card-not-present transactions, which is how online payments are classified by industry self-regulator AusPayNet, were derived from rules surrounding telephone-based credit card transactions where a merchant never eyeballed a card.
The generous position that banks extracted, and which has never been reversed, is that merchants who accepted payments without seeing a plastic card, its cardholder or getting a signature to check could wear their own liability for fraud.
Which made initial sense in the 1990s, when a good proportion of e-commerce and web transactions were for pills, adult industries, remote gaming and wagering and the phenomenon known as ‘chat lines’.
Back to the future
Three decades later ASIC says its “reviewing the ePayments Code to take into account new market and industry developments, ensuring that it continues to be effective and relevant to consumers and Code subscribers, listing the initiative as new (it kicked off in March).
While the review is expected to be stinging, especially in terms of the huge digital liability shift back to merchants, the bad news is that because the ePayments Code is voluntary and not black letter law, legislative changes are out of scope for ASIC.
Which is not to say voluntary rules can’t be changed.
A report on submissions to the review is due October November with an amended ePayments code scheduled for release across December or January.
The outage economy
If online fraud is a pinpoint for Australian businesses, escalating payments outages are a material and potentially existential threat.
The RBA has already ordered banks to start handing over their online and payments system outage stats amid fears over what dud routers, switches and rubbish upgrades will do the economy when everything is online.
ASIC, as an enforcement agency, also wants a slice of the action making sure systems don’t go belly-up, especially when it comes to protecting access to consumer and business funds and savings from glitches.
While there’s no explicit callout for banks, telcos, schemes or platforms to be prosecuted or penalised for technical incompetence – outage control for ASIC falls under its mandate to “promote strong and innovative development of the financial system” – it’s clearly an issue it's ready to wade in on.
Under the action point of mitigating “the potential harms of technological change” ASIC has set itself the task of “identifying and addressing technology, security and operational failures that result in harmful outcomes for consumers, investors and markets, or expose them to fraud.”
Which, if considered, is a large and fertile regulatory pasture to plough.
Also on the task list is “identifying and addressing potential technological failures that may have a systemic impact on the market and/or the capacity of intermediaries and operators to comply with their obligations.”
Notably, that’s not just banks, payment systems and telcos – it’s also the ASX’s massive CHESS rebuild and a bunch of other transactional systems across property, superannuation and insurance.
But let’s face it, it’s the banks and telcos where the most immediate action is.
Just ask A2B, formerly known as Cabcharge that on Tuesday booked through a $5 million charge for a Telstra payment systems outage in its annual results.
If ASIC really does want numbers, costs and targets to go after to clean-up Australia’s booming digital sector they will not be that hard to find.

domain: news


text:
Ron & Donna Heivilin are celebrating 50 years of marriage. They planned to spend their golden anniversary with family on an Alaskan cruise but the trip was run aground by a travel company.
The family booked a Princess cruise through the vacation company called RCI. When they made their final payment in February and thought they were all set.
“We got three cabins together, signed the contract, made all the payments and got ready to go,” said Ron.
The ship is supposed to set sail May 17. So a few weeks ago Ron went online to check their reservation and found they had been left high and dry.
“Nope this bookings been cancelled,” recalled Donna.
Ron thought it was a mistake and called RCI. The company just confirmed his fears.
“There's been a glitch in our system and your reservation has been canceled,” explained Ron.
Ron says he called Princess and was told his trip was canceled because of lack of payment. He had no idea there was an issue because all the emails from Princess were going to RCI.
“It was such a shock because we were just on a few days before and we had got the welcome from the Captain, you know we're just looking forward to seeing you,” remembered Donna.
The couple wasn't going to let a company sink their golden dream. They asked me to help out and I contacted RCI. Just a few days later, RCI was able to get the Heivilin's back on the cruise and even upgraded their cabin.
When you are booking a trip through another company keep all correspondence and receipts and monitor your reservation. Because if the Heivilin’s hadn't looked, getting Jesse at the dock wouldn't have done any good.


text:
Those hoping to spend a weekend in tents
at the Reading Festival
must now look to the resale market after the official supply of weekend tickets sold out.
Although day passes - which do not allow camping
- are still available, the opportunity to buy full weekend passes directly has now gone, leaving anyone still hoping to go needing to turn to the Viagogo website for spares and cancellations.Festival
organisers have stated this is the only website that official resales can take place through, with the danger that those seeking a ticket from another source may end up being scammed.
As of today's date (July 27th), there are still weekend passes on sale for Leeds, which has largely the same line-up as Reading but in a different order.
Performers on show include Muse, Elbow, Pulp, The Strokes, Pete Doherty, Flogging Molly, Pulled Apart By Horses and Mercury Prize nominees Everything Everything.
take place over the bank holiday weekend of August 26th to 28th.


text:
May 26, 2021
Are you producing truck rear axles? And are you facing challenges in maintaining quality and accuracy?
Stay tuned for an innovation in rear axle CNC machining.
In October 2021, we will unveil a new development for machining rear axles – an innovation, the likes of which the truck industry has never seen before.
>>> watch the announcement of our CEO Paul van Ruth
To give you just a taste of what we have in store:
Our new Unisign machine is capable of machining a rear axle:
1. to the greatest precision
2. in the shortest time possible
3. all in a single set-up!


text:
The Federal Reserve has been reducing the interest rates for about seven years in order to spur an economy in recession. Lowered interest rates make corporate and consumer loans easier to acquire. This, in turn, puts more money in circulation to boost the economy. However, this injection of money cannot be left unchecked. A rapid growth in the economy can lead to inflation which will render the economy undervalued. Thus, the fed will then have to hike interest rates to keep the economy at a steady growth pace.
Today, we are at the point where it’s time to increase the interest rates. In fact, the Federal Reserve has already started the rate increase. It will, of course, be a slow process. But still, the truth is it has already started. Now you as an investor must adjust accordingly. Different companies will be affected by this event and you must be ready to put your money in the stocks that will matter. To help you decide, we have researched and narrowed the most probable stocks to avoid as the fed hikes interest rates. Here are the companies which you must be cautious of.
Colgate-Palmolive is one of the most common household names in the country and yet it is facing major competitions to remain just that. The company is already facing a high-floating rate debt that forced it to cut cost, increase prices, and endure volatility to keep itself from losing more profit. The stronger dollar and steadily rising interest rates has affected the company negatively as 80% of its revenue comes from abroad. In the third quarter of 2015, Colgate-Palmolive has already lost 13% with sales in Latin America plunging by 11% where more than one-quarter of the company’s sales come from.
The American global information technology company has a good track record against the broader market. However, it’s earnings and revenues are still on a downward slope. This left them with no choice but to cut down the operating cost in order to stay relevant in the market. The fact is Hewlett-Packard is slowly fading away with the mass of new technology companies that are continually expanding and growing to take its place. The competitive technology market is steadily excluding the once technology powerhouse. It also doesn’t help that it still uses traditional hardware such as printers to pull them out of the gutter. Meanwhile, it’s competitors have already made significant advances using cloud computing and mobile solutions while Hewlett-Packard remains conventional. All in all, it is highly likely that the company will be significantly affected by the rising interest rates and unstable emerging markets.
Johnson & Johnson
One of the S&P 500’s most dominant company’s, Johnson & Johnson has been showing a weak performance in a little more than over two years with no signs of improving anytime soon. The company is currently wrestling with a constantly changing global economy to acquire an organic growth. The sudden influx of the US dollar has hit the company and with almost half of it’s revenue depending on overseas business, Johnson & Johnson has certainly struggle in recent years. It doesn’t stop there. The dollar is predicted to even grow stronger in the next years and it will surely drag the company even more. For the third quarter of this year, the company dropped by 7.4% with the loss being attributed to the 0.8% increase in operational costs and a negative currency impact of 8.2%.
The increase in interest rates that the Federal Reserve is imposing will definitely affect all stocks in some kind of way. The economy itself will slow it’s growth and the financial system will also change. The best thing you can do as an investor is to keep vigilant and always research before any decision.


text:
- What women of color don’t need is another white person saying “Yes, Black Lives Matter” or “our company rejects racism.” What we need is more investors willing to ask: what can I do to change the system?
- Dedicating 15% of a venture fund is a platitude, a pat on the head, particularly when you consider that 46% of the country are people of color.
- This current environment also stifles economic growth and chokes off the true innovation we need.
- Stephanie Lee is a former staffer to former First Lady Michelle Obama and former product developer at the global brand, MAC Cosmetics.
- This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Too many women of color are being asked to prove first that our ideas are worthy of investment, while white founders get the benefit of the doubt over


text:
East Anglia: Total Car Parks technology solves issue of time and space
ESSEX-based Total Car Parks is rolling out mobile technology designed to help motorists avoid hefty fines for over-staying the time they have paid for.
The Colchester company, which operates more than 40 car parks across the country, in towns including Colchester, Ipswich, Woodbridge and Braintree, has launched a mobile-friendly webpage.
Besides enabling motorists to book and pay for their space, it also has a facility for parkers to be send a reminder 10 minutes before their ticket is due to expire.
They are then given the opportunity to extend their parking time at the touch of a button, so helping them avoid a potential fine.
According to figures from the DVLA, parkers paid more than £93million in private car parking fines in 2011, compared with just £21m five years before.
You may also want to watch:
Essy Eslamian, managing director of Total Car Parks, said:“We’ve always worked hard to ensure enforcement is an absolute last resort in all of our car parks.
“Being able to offer this method of booking, payment and reminder service enables us to ensure our customers are having a positive experience parking with us.
- 1 'If offers are higher elsewhere, so be it' - Wigan CEO on losing Evans to Ipswich
- 2 Get ready for League One's 'Arizona Derby' as Lincoln follow Town with Phoenix investment
- 3 Why these Suffolk villages were named among 'most beautiful to visit'
- 4 Shop opens at Suffolk village pub
- 5 Thunderstorms expected to continue until Saturday in Suffolk and Essex
- 6 Saxmundham man, 26, appears in court charged with 11 child sex offences
- 7 Traffic at standstill on A12 between Ipswich and Colchester
- 8 Man and woman charged in connection with the theft of 85 dogs
- 9 'We're keeping about 10% of the roster' - Johnson on Ipswich squad overhaul
- 10 Aldi targets Felixstowe, Saxmundham and Sudbury for new stores
“Given recent parking fine figures, we felt it necessary to make it our priority to do everything we can to reduce the number of fines given to parkers.”
He added: “If parkers think they are not going to make it back to their car before their parking ticket expires, they can simply log in to their previous booking via their mobile phone and top up their ticket using their original payment method; their booking is updated within seconds.
“We also provide each parker with a unique ‘Quick Response’ code so they can quickly restore their parking history and amend their booking details.
“We’re delighted with the success of this technology and can confirm that 50% of Total Car Parks’ online bookings are already being made via our mobile website”.


text:
Making Olive Oil
What Will Save Salento’s Olive Trees?
Is uprooting the only option to save Apulia's olive groves? In Italy, there's a growing outcry against proposed measures to stem a deadly bacteria.
Canadian Farmer Succeeds with Olives and Gives Kelp Seaweed Some of the Credit
On Pender Island, Andrew Butt nurtures 100 trees for table olives and the future goal of producing the first made-in-Canada extra virgin olive oil.
Europe Proposes Cutting Down Millions of Olive Trees in Italy to Fight Outbreak
The proposed measures would include eradication, buffer zones and a strict limit on the movement of young trees.
Olive Tree’s Cool-Weather Offshoot
An Oregon conference exposed the growing culture of pioneers willing to think outside the box about where olive oil comes from and where it’s going.
U.S. Program Provides Hand Tools to Olive Oil Producers in Lebanon
A U.S. foreign aid program in Lebanon is providing mechanized tools and training for farmers to increase the competitiveness of Lebanese olive oil abroad.
Corsican Oils are ‘Tree Harvested’ or ‘Old Style’
Corsican olive oil producers announced that their products will be labeled depending on whether the olives were picked or dropped to the ground.
France Pledges Aid for Olive Oil Sector
French olive producers affected by this year's poor harvest will benefit from new financial aid measures proposed by the French ministry of agriculture.
Oregon Farm Produces Quality EVOO in Cool Climate of Pacific Northwest
Experiments are showing promise in western Oregon, USA, where David and Carmen Lawrence have evaluated dozens of cultivars over the past decade.
Seal Factory Looks to Olives in the Off-Season
A seal processing plant plans to provide new employment by producing olive oil in Henties Bay, Namibia.
Power Plant in Spain Fueled by Olive Oil Waste
A new power plant in Andalucia is generating electricity and saving the environment by using waste from olive oil production as fuel.
Linking Chemistry with Italian EVOO Origins
Chemical compounds in Italian olive oils depend on the olive variety and cultivation site, according to research promoted by Unaprol.
Food Safety Authority Warns Bacteria Threatens Olive Trees Across Europe
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) warns that Xylella Fastidiosa could spread from Apulia to olive groves across Europe.


text:
For reasons I don’t need to go into here I’ve recently spent quite a bit of time with a particular group of occupational drivers.
Most of us know the official fuel consumption figures for vehicles are pretty meaningless in the real world.
With the northern hemisphere summer holiday season rapidly approaching, and driving being a major part of many trips, now is a good time to focus people’s attention on safe and happy holiday travel.
Our part of the car industry has been focused on low-CO2 and carbon footprints for somewhat longer than the retail market.
Did you, like me, assume that a low CO2 car was a clean car?
All organisations requiring staff to travel as part of their work are being urged to get involved in Road Safety Week to help raise awareness of the need for slower speeds in communities to help reduce on roads.
We held the launch of the Fleet200 yesterday in London, attended by 25 fleets, each with more than 1,000 vehicles.
Some of us are car enthusiasts and some of us aren’t.
For some of us, a day out at the Goodwood Festival of Speed would be a highlight of the motoring year.
As the doors opened at Greener Company Car In Action at 9am this morning, whose stands did the fleet decision makers rush toward first?
Looking to acquire new vehicles? Check how much they'll cost to run with our Car Running Cost calculator.
The Fleet News car tax calculator lets you work out tax costs for both employer and employee
Fleet News offers a range of reports, whitepapers, in-depth features and manufacturer brochures to enhance fleet decision-makers' understanding of key issues and products.
Fleet News is published monthly, in print and digital formats.
Register now to see if you qualify for a free subscription.


text:
In the past year, I have reviewed the ZTE Axon 30 and two RedMagic gaming phones which are a sub-brand of ZTE. I have been impressed with the company and it reminds me of when Xiaomi and Realme started to make waves in the EU and UK market.
Recently there have been several leaks and teasers for the new flagship ZTE nubia Z40 Pro and one of the highlights is that it will use a custom 35mm lens paired with Sony's IMX787 sensor. This will then be paired up with a 50MP ultrawide camera and 8MP 5x zoom lens which should make this one of the better camera-focussed phones of the year.
Nubia also confirmed the Z40 Pro will feature Neovision 11 which is their first attempt at computational photography, again giving this a significant boost in photography performance.
As you’d expect from a flagship phone it will have the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset.
The only other tidbit of information we have so far is that the Z40 Pro will have magnetic wireless charging much like the MagSafe charging with Apple or the Realme Flash concept phone.
In the UK, ZTE doesn’t use the nubia brand and instead, this comes under ZTE Axon. The ZTE Axon 30 Ultra was essentially identical to the ZTE nubia Z30 Pro apart from some minor tweaks such as OS skin and battery.
The ZTE Axon 30 Ultra 5G received good reviews last year and it was priced attractively for a Snapdragon 888 phone and it had a good camera specification that made it stand out from the affordable SD888 and gaming phones.
The nubia Z40 Pro is launching later this month on the 25th of February but there has been no word on the Axon 40 Ultra, but I would expect it within the next couple of months.


text:
86,000 people have been reached by WFP so far with cash, voucher and in-kind assistance. This includes 18,000 people who received cash and voucher assistance over the past week.
550 trucks have been mobilized by WFP to transport 612,500 family food packs from food packaging facilities of the Government of the Philippines
24 locations have been connected to internet by WFP: 15 satellite dishes (VSATs) at government offices and 9 for humanitarian responders (via local internet providers
• WFP launched a cash assistance programme in Bohol and Southern Leyte. The programme allows vulnerable people to purchase food according to their needs. Enabling them to buy from local markets also boosts the economy.
• WFP began voucher distributions in Surigao Del Norte (mainland). Beneficiaries redeem these vouchers from locally selected retailers delivering goods to the barangays.
• WFP is preparing to commence cash assistance programmes in Dinagat and Siargao Islands in parallel with the ongoing rice distribution.


text:
The inaugural season at Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Adventures Dinner & Show continues with a new story that invites families to come together and experience Christmas memories that shaped Dolly and her family.
Independent from Parton’s Dollywood theme park, this new dinner show runs now through Dec. 31, and combines festive holiday music, acrobatics from both performers and canine stars, $2 million in special effects, a mischievous elf, “reindeer games,” a live nativity and more into one spectacular display.
The show is set in a small town, hit by a major snowstorm, leaving the fate of the town’s holiday celebration unknown. The audience joins in for the ride as the cast finds out whether or not their Christmas will be canceled or saved.
“Thanks to the powerful story of when Parton’s parents met and fell in love, Smoky Mountain Adventures has experienced an amazing debut season,” said Jamie Parish, general manager of the dinner and show attraction. “We are excited about sharing more of this special story in our new holiday show, inspired by heartfelt moments that will capture the simple joys of Christmas.”
The food at this wintertime show cannot be missed, and includes tastes inspired by some of Dolly’s favorite holiday recipes: homemade buttery biscuits, pan-fried chicken, spiral ham, a special holiday soup, old-fashioned Southern dressing, buttery corn on the cob, a sweet potato treat, and Southern Peach Pie for dessert. Guests are welcome to unlimited Pepsi, coffee and tea during their meal.
For more information on Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Adventures dinner & show, and the complete Christmas show schedule, visit smokymountainadventures.com.


text:
The Facebook Shutdown Hoax or Fake Article
<National Report> Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, has announced that the social media giant will experience a week-long shutdown, due to standard maintenance being performed on the site.
Starting at midnight PST on January 1, 2015, users will not be able to login to their Facebook accounts for seven full days. Access to Facebook will be restored to the public on January 8, 2015, at midnight PST.
The shutdown includes all media devices as well, meaning those who access the site through their smartphones and tablets will not be able to until the maintenance is finished. Zuckerberg allegedly feels that the most current update issued to the platform fell short of even it’s lowest performance expectations.
The news article is called news satire, also called fake news, and is a type of a humorous imitation presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, and called a satire because of its content.
Please remember that not everything that you read on the internet is true. That is why it is important to check with reputable or popular news websites first, to verify the authenticity of the news.
If Facebook had such operation to carry to out, they would have informed all Facebook users as soon as they sign into their accounts.
The website www.nationalreport.net a few weeks ago, almost caused mass public panic, after they published the following fake stories:
The website www.nationalreport.net is considered a threat because some persons are taking the fake articles that they have published as authentic news, which can cause public panic.
For information about the website www.nationalreport.net, please click the following link:


text:
The Californian tech company filed with an initial offering of $100 million (£75.4m) and is targeting a valuation of $2.5 to $3 billion (£1.88 to £2.26bn), according to Bloomberg.
In the filing, Sonos described the speaker market as “extremely competitive and rapidly evolving”. The music industry has been anticipating a boost to the streaming business from the variety of devices available to consumers.
Sonos has been a pioneer in wireless speakers, which are compatible with various streaming platforms. However, it has faced competition from both ends of the market: Amazon’s Echo is the dominant device, while Apple launched its high-end HomePod speaker earlier this year.
The lead underwriters for the IPO are Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Allen and Co.


text:
Fans concerned about the release of the new Fate/Grand Order film being pushed back can rest a bit easier. IG Port studios, Signal.M.D and Production IG confirmed that the adaptation of the “Sixth Singularity” of the popular mobile game, Fate/Grand Order will be released on August 15th. The movie is called Fate/Grand Order: Wandering Agrateram, and is part of a trilogy of films that will adapt the “Sixth Singularity” arc of the original game. The studio also released a new trailer, with all new footage:
— 劇場版 Fate/Grand Order -神聖円卓領域キャメロット- (@FGOAP_ep6) March 21, 2020
Fans hoping for an English release will have to wait a bit longer, since the creators have only said that it’s coming in “2020”, with no concrete release date. Fate/Grand Order was released on July 30th, 2015, and has been one of the most profitable games ever made. It’s made more money in one release than the entirety of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, grossing a total of $5 billion USD, and was the most discussed game of both 2018 and 2019, beating the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Fortnite. The game is based off of the multimedia franchise Fate/, which debuted in 2004 with it’s first game, known as Fate/stay night. The Fate/ series features characters from both history and mythology fighting each other for the “masters” that summoned them in order to secure the Holy Grail, a magical item that can grant wishes.
The final film of the Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel trilogy releases later this month, on April 25th.


text:
Ear- and eyedrops shortage looming
Australia is facing a possible shortage of certain popular ear and eye drops, pharmaceutical company Sanofi has warned.
The company has issued an alert to GPs about limited stock of Sofradex ear drops, Otodex ear drops and Soframycin ear and eye drops.
Supplies of the medications — used for otitis externa and eye conditions such as conjunctivitis and corneal abrasions — may run out, they warned.
"While we are trying to proactively manage this situation through our wholesale channel, we expect there will be out of stock situations in some cases," Sanofi said, in a letter sent to


text: A number of manufacturers are working on smartphones with screens without cutouts and openings, but with a sub-screen camera. Oppo and Xiaomi have already demonstrated prototypes of gadgets of this kind. Oppo introduced technology on a prototype of an as yet unknown device. Xiaomi showed development on a special version of the flagship Mi 9. In this case, the front camera was placed under the display, and the teardrop-shaped cutout was removed from the smartphone. Apparently, the implementation of the technology in both versions is identical. When such smartphones enter the market, manufacturers have not yet voiced. However, experts believe that this year is unlikely. So far it is only a demonstration of potential opportunities.


text:
TomTom has taken its first step into India’s fast-growing mobile market after the sat-nav maker announced plans to supply mapping services for HTC smartphones in the country.
The deal will see the Amsterdam-headquartered company provide a range of services — including basic maps, points of interest and turn-by-turn directions — on the entire range of HTC smartphone devices.
Speaking of the deal, which was announced at the Mobile World Congress event today, Nuno Campos, VP of sales and marketing, was delighted by its move into the 1.2 billion populated country:
This is our first major partnership in India, and we look forward to providing HTC and its customers with the most comprehensive and easy to use maps and navigation services.
The significance of India’s market was stressed by Faisal Siddiqui, HTC country manager India, who said, “India is not only a key market for HTC, but also one of the largest countries with the second largest population in the world.”
With HTC using TomTom services across its entire range of devices in India, both it and the navigation firm will hope that they partnership raises their visibility and usage in the country.
Recent CyberMedia research concluded that last year saw smartphone shipments to India pass the 10 million mark for the first time. Though smartphones account for just 6 percent of all shipments, they have enormous potential to grow in the country.
Last year, TomTom revealed that its users have shared five trillion pieces of information, that’s enough to cover every road 3,000 times. Its UK business is putting that data to good use with a campaign to help car owners reduce their insurance premiums by agreeing to be tracked on the service.


text:
Halo 5 coming out alongside Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox console, Xbox One as one of the launch title would have been great idea and could have prove a killer app thereby pulling out even more sales figure than One Million units in first 24 hours time period.
But Microsoft thought otherwise, in a recent interview with Kotaku, corporate vice president Phil Spencer explained why Halo 5 missed Xbox One launch lineup and also discussed the possibility of developer 343 Industries developing a brand new Halo game so close to the launch of Halo 4.
Spencer said: “A couple of years ago we had the discussion of: ‘Should we do Halo at launch and not do Halo 4 last year?’ But I was committed to getting Halo 4 done last year, and there was no way we were going to turn around with 343 a full Halo game in a year. So that was the plan we set on. I feel good about that.”
He further added, “Unlike some franchises that manage through 1,000 people, Halo is 343 and that team obviously has tight control.They are our Halo team”
“A discussion around having a Halo game at launch, a true Halo at launch, meaning like a Halo 4 or 5-size game, would have been something we’d have had to start two or three years ago. We had the discussion, and we thought having Halo 4 come out when it came out from 343 and having them really land their first full version of Halo that they developed internally would be great for the 360 customers, great for 343 in shipping something.”
Halo 4 was definitely the best game in Halo series, and now its great to know that Microsoft and 343 Industries didn’t rush into developing a brand new Halo game just for the sake to have it in the launch lineup of Xbox One.
A brand new Halo title for Xbox One is already in development and we already have seen a teaser trailer of it. If you missed out, you can take a look at it below.
Let us know in the comment section below, whether you would have like to see a rush HALO 5 for Xbox One at launch or would have allowed Microsoft and 343 Industries all the time in the world to develope another masterpiece?.


text:
Sears said Tuesday it's cutting 400 jobs at corporate offices as it works towards a goal of reducing costs by $1.25 billion in fiscal 2017.
The cuts will primarily affect workers at Sears' headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.
The move comes one week after the retailer revealed it was closing 65 more Sears and Kmart stores, in addition to the 180 closures announced earlier this year.
Sears has also been eliminating store-level positions this year, as well as slashing hours for its part-time workers.
RELATED: Here are more major retailers closing their doors this year:
"We are making progress with the fundamental restructuring of our operations that we initiated in February," Sears CEO Eddie Lampert said in a statement Tuesday. "We remain focused on realigning our business model in an evolving and highly competitive retail environment. This requires us to optimize our store footprint and operate as a leaner and simpler organization."
The company said it has achieved $1 billion in cost cuts so far this year and is on track to meet its goal of $1.25 billion in savings by the end of the year.
Do you work at Sears or Kmart and have a story to tell? Email this reporter at email@example.com
More from Business Insider:
J.Crew is 'rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic' as sales plummet
Sears Canada says it's running out of cash and reveals 'significant doubt' it can stay in business
A grocery chain many Americans have never heard of is about to be one of the biggest in the US


text:
PENDLETON - Many people were surprised by the sunshine that helped them enjoy shopping and browsing at an open-air market Saturday on the village green in Pendleton.
The first day of the third annual Holidays in the Village Christmas Market attracted a good number of buyers, said Barbara Seals, one of the organizers of the event. The market offers a variety of handmade items such as jewelry, baked goods, knitted pieces and bird feeders.
Pat Austin, another of the organizers of the event, said some vendors had stayed away Saturday fearing bad weather.
"We have a good crowd and steady sales today despite what the weatherman told everyone," she said.
Barbara Seals' husband, Harold, displayed many of the scroll saw creations he makes in his garage in Pendleton.
"I enjoy making these decorative pieces," he said as he demonstrated how he shaped wood into moose, wolves, stars and moons that could decorate Christmas trees and holiday packages.
He has been woodworking for 37 years, he said.
Monique "Mo" Sowiecki of Pendleton offered her homemade quiches and freshly baked cookies for sale. Sowiecki also sold knit scarves and purses that she made.
"I make some of these things one-handed sometimes because I had a stroke and do not have full use of both hands," she said.
Austin, the owner of Mountainside Crochet in Pendleton, makes crocheted goods and needlework items that were for sale at the market.
"This event almost did not get off the ground this year," she said. "The town was going to drop it from the schedule because no one was available to organize it. Barbara and I jumped in and took it on because it is a favorite of so many people."
The holiday market will continue the next two Saturdays, Dec. 12 and Dec. 19, on the village green from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. each day.
Anyone who would like to be a vendor at the market can contact Barbara Seals at email@example.com or Austin at firstname.lastname@example.org or (864) 646-8484.
The annual Pendleton Christmas parade is scheduled to start Dec. 13 at 3 p.m.
Need Help? Call us at 1-864-260-1284.
Monday-Friday: 6am-4:30pm / Saturday: 7am-11am / Sunday: 7am-2pm


text:
We're pleased to announce a new Mog Bonanza event in celebration of sixteen years of FINAL FANTASY XI!
This bonanza's offering includes a bevy of wonderful items, weapons, and armor, including the style lock-friendly Brave Blade II!
Read on for details.
* Marble sales are scheduled for the period from Wednesday, May 16, to Friday, June 15.
* Only characters for which 32 days or more have passed since creation are eligible to purchase marbles.
* All prizes available in the Mog Bonanza are in-game items or gil, and have no value outside the game.


text:
Complete List Now Live Online!
The highly-anticipated list of restaurants participating in the 10th Anniversary of Hudson Valley Restaurant Week (HVRW), March 7 to 20, is now live online on the event’s recently renovated website.A record number of restaurants, more than 220, have already registered for the two-week culinary event that offers diners the chance to experience the best restaurants of the region at a fraction of the normal price point.
The two-week dining fest, presented by The Valley Table magazine showcases the tantalizing flavors, talented chefs and exceptional dining experiences in the Hudson River Valley that spans 114 miles. It’s an opportunity for chefs to flaunt their best fare, for diners to check out new restaurants or visit old favorites and for all customers to toast and enjoy the bounty of the Hudson Valley.
“Whether it’s the new restaurant Baja 328 Tequila Bar & Southwest Grill in Beacon or the historic Olde Stone Mill in Tuckahoe, with so many restaurants participating, there is something for everyone. Be it date night, corporate lunch, girl’s night out or just a night off from cooking, now’s the time to take advantage of HVRW specials,” says Janet Crawshaw, publisher of The Valley Table magazine, founding sponsor of HVRW. Crawshaw adds, “The growing popularity and participation in HVRW over the past decade underscores the importance of the Hudson Valley as a culinary capital, both regionally and nationally. Restaurant owners eager to sign up demonstrate the economic success of the event which has helped it grow to become one of the largest restaurant weeks in the nation.”
The HVRW roster is a balance of restaurants who have participated in Restaurant Week since its inception ten years ago like Crabtree’s Kittle House in Chappaqua and Restaurant X & Bully Boy Bar in Congers and restaurants on both side of the Hudson River who are new to the party like: Vigneto Café in Highland; Austin’s in Piermont and New City;Mountainside at the Catskill Resort in Barryville; Woodnotes Grille at Emerson Resort and Spa in Mt. Tremper; Rabbit & Turtle in Poughkeepsie and Winston Restaurant in Mount Kisco.
HVRW features prix fixe, three-course dinners for $29.95 and lunches for $20.95. Participating restaurants span throughout seven New York State counties, (Westchester, Rockland, Dutchess, Putnam, Orange, Ulster and Sullivan). Participating chefs take great pride in using seasonal and sustainable products—often sourcing from surrounding farms—and represent a wide variety of cuisines, including Argentinean, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mediterranean, Mexican, New American, Thai and Swiss. Stay tuned to see what spring themed, locally sourced dishes appear on this season’s menus.
In 2015, HVRW generated an estimated $10.2 million in sales revenue and an estimated $844,387 in tax revenue, representing a 37% average increase in business during the event, according to a survey of participating restaurants.
For more details including a complete list of participating restaurants, visit the recently revamped site: www.HudsonValleyRestaurantWeek.com.
Find The Valley Table’s Hudson Valley Restaurant Week on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: #HVRW and@ValleyTable.
About Hudson Valley Restaurant Week:
In 1996, Janet Crawshaw and Jerry Novesky took an eight-month sabbatical, traveling 35,000 miles across the country seeking authentic American experiences. They found that local farms, bakeries, fish markets, wineries and breweries were the key to understanding the country’s distinct regions. Inspired by their trip and the Chefs Collaborative, an educational sustainable food movement, the couple returned to their home in the Hudson Valley with a mission to awaken the region’s food consciousness. In 1998, they launched The Valley Table, a colorful quarterly magazine that celebrates the agricultural heritage and cuisine of the region, fueling the development of the Hudson Valley’s local food movement. Crawshaw and Novesky launched Hudson Valley Restaurant Week in 2006 with a distinguished board of advisors, including chefs, restaurateurs and tourism leaders. The two-week culinary event premiered with 70 restaurants. Today, with more than 200 participating restaurants spanning seven counties it is among the largest Restaurant Week events in the country, involving farmers, growers, wine makers and chefs. Participating counties include Dutchess, Westchester, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Ulster. To learn more about Hudson Valley Restaurant Week or to become a sponsor please visit: www.hudsonvalleyrestaurantweek.com


text: Anastasia Beverly Hills is celebrating 20 years in beauty. The brand, which opened its salon doors in Beverly Hills in 1997, has become one of the most iconic brands in beauty. The trailblazer launched its first product line in 2000, bringing a new focus to the beauty space: brows. It further upended the beauty market when founder and CEO Anastasia Soare decided to focus its marketing attention on social media influencers. This decision helped catapult the brand to household-name status.


text:
Hurtigruten Norway has unveiled plans for its first zero-emission ship.
The unveiling comes weeks before the cruise line’s 130th anniversary and was initially announced in March 2022, under the project name ‘Sea Zero.
The first-of-its-kind initiative has revealed early concept plans for the world’s most energy-efficient cruise ship.
The cruise line presented the findings alongside its consortium of 12 maritime partners and research institute SINTEF.
Hedda Felin, the CEO of Hurtigruten Norway, said:
“When we initially announced the ‘Sea Zero’ project over a year ago, we were faced with the challenge of not knowing which technologies would be available to us in 2030.
“Our task was to pave the way for new innovations and enhance existing ones to align with our sustainability objectives.
“While some of these technologies have reached a relatively advanced stage, they still necessitate dedicated research and development to ensure successful implementation within the maritime context.
“On the other hand, certain technologies are still in early development and require fundamental research and thorough testing.
“Following a rigorous feasibility study, we have pinpointed the most promising technologies for our groundbreaking future cruise ships.
“We are committed to delivering a ship that surpasses all others in terms of energy efficiency and sustainability within just a few years.”
Hurtigruten Norway plans for smaller, custom-built ships that leave a positive footprint with zero emissions to both sea and land.
With the first ship ready in 2030, the company plans to transform its entire fleet into zero-emission vessels, it said in a statement.
The company said that only 0.1% of ships worldwide currently use zero-emission technology, and the project aims to drastically improve the greater cruise industry’s sustainability record and future of travel.
Hurtigruten Norway confirms that its future ships will be electric and equipped with batteries that charge in port.
Combining 60-megawatt-hour battery solutions with wind technology, the vessel is expected to feature numerous firsts and improved solutions that do not exist on cruise ships today.
This includes retractable sails with solar panels, artificial intelligence manoeuvring, contra-rotating propellers, and multiple retractable thrusters.
Additional technologies include air lubrication, advanced hull coating, and proactive hull cleaning.
Battery levels will be displayed on the ship’s external sides, while the bridge, is expected to reduce significantly in size following enhanced A.I. maneuvering, mimicking that of an airplane cockpit.
Guests can minimize energy consumption through an interactive mobile app, where they can operate ultra-modern cabin ventilation, as well as measure their own water and energy consumption.
Sea Zero has now entered a two-year phase in which the proposed technologies will be tried, tested, and developed further in pursuit of the final zero-emission ship.
The current research and development phase focuses on battery production, propulsion technology, hull design, and sustainable practices that reduce energy use to an absolute minimum.
Developing new technologies for onboard hotel operations, which can consume up to 50% of the ship’s total energy use, will be crucial to the project’s success.
The goal is a 50% energy reduction compared to Hurtigruten Norway’s current ships.
The company is also currently undertaking one of the most extensive environmental upgrades in European maritime history with its existing fleet.
Two of the seven ships have been upgraded to battery-hybrid-powered ships, with a third to be upgraded this fall.
The five other vessels are being outfitted with various technologies that will cut CO² emissions by 25% and NOx (nitrogen oxides) by 80%.
In 2019, sister company Hurtigruten Expeditions introduced the world’s first battery-hybrid-powered ship, MS Roald Amundsen; the Expeditions arm now has three battery-hybrid ships out of its seven-ship fleet.
The new zero-emission ship is modelled at 135 meters (443 feet) long, with 270 cabins that hold 500 guests and 99 crew.
Just as Hurtigruten Norway has been transporting cargo along the Norwegian coast for 130 years, the new ship will also have a significant cargo hold and transport cars.
Click here for more exciting trade updates or browse Travel Pursuit UK for the latest travel news from your favourite travel brands!


text:
There is a report that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is selling the digital signature to his first tweet
With an original recording, you have the actual spoke words of someone like Graham Bell saying “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you.” That would be the first audible message that could be replayed so others would hear exactly how it sounded. This is a digital copy of words that can be replicated in the same exact form – and have been replicated millions of times.
Another analogy is like selling the first words printed in the oldest known book, Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist book from Dunhuang, China from around 868 A.D. For most of us, the words are only as valuable as their content not as meaningless memorabilia of the first publication since they are fungible. Here the only non-fungible element is the autograph since even the copy is just a printing of a digital message.
Next Dorsey can sell digital pillows made from the virtual feathers of the Twitter bird for the ultimate virtual sleep. He could be the digital MyPillowGuy with an alternative of Giga rather than “Giza” cotton.
If we are going to sell off digital relics, I would be more interested in memorabilia of free speech that once defined Twitter and other Big Tech companies. That is now the ultimate “non-fungible token” (NFT) on social media. Indeed, Dorsey’s has added to its scarcity (and market value) with his expanded censorship of opposing viewpoints.


text:
Posted on December 13, 2010 by Mari Silbey
If you’re not living in Canada, chances are good you missed the announcement last week that Canadian cable operator Cogeco is planning an addressable advertising trial with Invidi in 2011. Motorola is also involved in the activity, working closely with Invidi and the broadcast station CHCH to deliver advanced ad capabilities to customer Cogeco.
Advanced advertising has had a lot of false starts in the TV world. We’re starting to see some traction for interactive ads in the US with Comcast’s successful request-for-information spots, and Canoe’s announcement that it is now offering interactive ad inventory on a national basis. But the interactive revolution has been slow, and the push behind addressable advertising even slower.
The Cogeco announcement is encouraging because it promises a good real-world reference case for addressable advertising. According to the press release, Invidi’s Advatar system “enables television advertisers to deliver tailored messaging to individual households during a commercial break.” (Emphasis my own) In other words, Cogeco will be able to deliver finely targeted commercials during a broadcast show. This is significant both because of the ability to target households, and because the trial goes beyond many existing field tests which have focused primarily on VOD platforms. The system will use demographic information available in the public domain, and the trial will take place in the Golden Horseshoe area of South-Central Ontario.
Beyond the technical implications here, the Cogeco news suggests new territory may be opening up for cable operators in broadcast advertising.
Filed under: Advertising, Motorola News | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 7, 2010 by Mari Silbey
Just last week Canoe made headlines with the news that companies can now buy interactive ad inventory for cable TV on a national basis. However, Comcast wants to highlight the fact that it’s already been successful with interactive ads on a regional basis. In this case, interactive ads (EBIF-based) are request-for-information applications. Viewers see an ad overlay and have the opportunity to click a button to have more information or a product sample sent to them.
Comcast listed several successful RFI campaigns in a news announcement this week. California candidate Meg Whitman has used an RFI ad to offer consumers campaign bumper stickers. A tourism organization in Illinois is offering free visitor magazines. And Chicago Rockford International Airport is using Comcast’s RFI capabilities to offer discounted tickets. According to Comcast, “more than 160 advertisers have run a total of more than 340 RFI-enabled advertising campaigns with Comcast Spotlight, delivering nearly 280 million impressions.”
Filed under: Advertising, Comcast, EBIF | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 29, 2010 by Mari Silbey
Canoe Ventures has been laying low since a bout of frenetic activity in 2009, but the organization, charged with creating an advanced advertising platform for the cable industry, finally has some news to celebrate. Canoe CEO David Verklin has announced that five cable networks are now taking orders for national interactive ad placements. The two key words here? National and interactive.
On the national front, this is a big deal for cable because of the industry’s inherently regional nature. Typically, advertisers have had to buy cable TV time from different operators in different geographic areas. Canoe is consolidating ad buys across networks so that advertisers who want to reach a national audience only have to place one order.
On the interactive front, Canoe has finally made headway with the EBIF standard, creating a platform for interactive ads to work on existing set-tops in consumer homes. Early interactive ads will show up as request-for-information overlays. These ad overlays will allow TV viewers to get more info and order samples of whatever product is being advertised.
From a practical perspective, the new interactive ads will show up mainly in Comcast and Time Warner Cable systems to start, with the majority in Comcast regions. Motorola set-tops alone account for roughly 20 million EBIF-enabled boxes ready to receive the new ads. The first five cable networks to sell national interactive ads include Rainbow Media’s AMC, Comcast Networks’ E! and Style, Discovery Channel, and two NBC Universal networks. Canoe ran limited trials of the new ad platform this summer, but there’s no word yet on the results of those trials.
Filed under: Advertising, Cable, EBIF | 2 Comments »
Posted on March 1, 2010 by Mari Silbey
If you’ve followed the TV tech industry at all, you know the difficulties associated with getting interactive television apps to market. Technologists and marketers have held out the promise of iTV for years with little to show for it. But slowly that’s changing. Two years ago CableLabs and Comcast put tru2way (aka OCAP) front and center at CES. Last year, the reality of legacy equipment in the field set in, and the focus shifted (back) to EBIF. This year EBIF has gotten an update, and several cable operators have committed to widespread EBIF rollouts.
Official tallies are hard to come by, but we know Comcast deployed EBIF on Motorola set-tops last year, and Verizon started even earlier with EBIF embedded in a guide update that was pushed out at the end of 2008 and into 2009. Now that CableLabs has updated the EBIF spec, several other cable operators are on board. Most notably, Time Warner Cable has said EBIF is a priority in 2010. Charter, Cox, and Bright House have also reiterated their commitments to the technology.
So what does this mean for consumers? Addressable (targeted) advertising is going to be a big focus, at least in trials, but consumers should also see a number of new widget-type experiences. As an example, Verizon just launched the Showtime Sports Interactive service. During Showtime boxing and mixed martial arts events, consumers can now access bios, stats, trivia, polls, and more directly on the TV screen. Verizon states that this is the first-ever HD EBIF app, and the first-ever EBIF app to incorporate interactive polling. It won’t be the last by a long shot.
*Note: Industry folks know that Biap, the company listed in the photo above, changed its name to FourthWall Media last year. The photo is outdated, but I love the visual enough that I’ve decided to ignore that fact.
Filed under: Advertising, Cable, Comcast, EBIF, OCAP, Time Warner, Tru2way, TV, Verizon | 3 Comments »
Posted on July 2, 2009 by Mari Silbey
Wondering what to pay attention to in the world of broadband this week? Here are a few stories that have caught my eye.
Remote Storage DVR Gets a Green Light
Several pubs this week have covered the fact that cable operators now have the legal go-ahead to implement remote-storage DVR. This court saga began back in 2007 when a district court ruled against Cablevision and its plans for network-based DVR services. But that ruling was overturned by an appeals court, and this week the Supreme Court upheld that appeal. Technically speaking, an RS-DVR service could be highly disruptive to the way on-demand networks are currently constructed. However, with the right streaming, storage, and ingest solutions, the potential benefits to consumers and operators are very real.
Targeted Advertising Effects on Brand Loyalty
CED has a very interesting piece up on its website regarding a new study commissioned by the CMO Council. The study calls into question the lasting effect of brand loyalty on consumer purchasing, but it also shows how targeted advertising and promotions can be used to strengthen the loyalty tie. As the article points out, this is good news for targeted advertising initiatives currently underway among pay-TV operators.
The researchers say they have hundreds of instances where they have successfully increased sales by identifying likely loyal buyers and by delivering relevant advertising followed by coupons to specific households.
Mobile Broadband as Customer Retention Tool
I’ve written before about how operators are adding smart services to their “dumb” pipes (Wi-Fi access at hotspots, ESPN360, etc.), but Paul Kapustka at Sidecut Reports handily adds WiMAX to the list of cable customer retention tools. In fact, he pairs Comcast’s launch of mobile broadband service this week with the TV Everywhere initiatives in the works. Comcast is giving subscribers more places to watch content and a price-competitive mobile broadband service to make that content accessible. Not a bad way to keep subscribers.
Filed under: Advertising, Cable, Comcast, DVR, VOD, WiMAX | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 1, 2009 by Mari Silbey
For those of you who aren’t following an RSS feed of CableLabs press releases, the organization has just announced a new set of advanced advertising specifications. They go the by the unwieldy title of Stewardship and Fulfillment Interfaces, or the much easier SaFI for short.
SaFI consists of standards for sharing information contained in advanced advertising campaigns. Advanced advertising here includes addressable advertising, on-demand ad insertion, and interactive advertising. As advertisers try out new platforms for ad delivery (which should generate better returns), they are looking for assurances that they can process messages and compare metrics across the range of hardware and software present in existing cable systems. SaFI is designed to provide those assurances.
Naturally CableLabs doesn’t pull new standards out of thin air. SaFI is partially the result of work being done across the technology vendor community, which was demonstrated recently at a CableLabs interoperability event. Companies at the event, Motorola included, showed the interoperability of their products in a demonstration of dynamic, addressable VOD ad insertion.
Filed under: Advertising, Cable, VOD | 1 Comment »
Posted on March 26, 2009 by Mari Silbey
Today is clearly the day for video processing news. In addition to this morning’s announcement of Motorola’s new bandwidth-saving satellite receiver, I have sneak peek information on another product to be highlighted at The Cable Show. The Motorola CAP-1000 CherryPicker platform is getting an application update. The new application provides a dedicated low-latency statmuxing capability targeted specifically for optimizing VOD bandwidth.
Breaking down the industry jargon, the CAP-1000 will now allow operators to increase the number of VOD programs in a single QAM channel by up to 50 percent.
As mentioned in this morning’s post, statmuxing is a fancy way of describing technology that dynamically allocates bandwidth as needed. In the video delivery chain the CAP-1000 ‘s work happens down the line from the processing work done by the new DSR-6300. However, the goal of both is the same: optimize the network for better bandwidth usage. Better bandwidth usage means more VOD and HD content.
For historical context, the most recent version of the CherryPicker CAP-1000 was launched at The Cable Show last year and configured for ad insertion with the Motorola B3 video server. It does MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 rate shaping in addition to enabling hundreds of ads to be digitally inserted at the same time.
One final note: I’m assured that the bandwidth improvements Motorola is introducing completely maintain video quality. The demos on the show floor should illustrate that.
Filed under: Advertising, Bandwidth, Cable, Cable Show 2009, Motorola News, VOD | 1 Comment »


text:
UK-Facing Wagering Operators Skin Regulatory Stress over Illegal online pokies australia that accept paysafe Sign-Up Added bonus Promotions
Three important UK casino operators have agreed to use certain changes in their on the net gaming deals , using an investigation and as a result from a corporate pressure by way of UK’s Competitiveness and Stores Authority (CMA). Such modifications will be required to be presented industrywide, the actual regulatory body also added in a fact from previous today.
Ladbrokes roxy palace online pokies Coral, William Incline, and PT Entertainment , which keeps going the Titanbet iGaming brand name, have approved allow their valuable players to help free online pokies gold rush withdraw most of their winnings if he or she want to without becoming required to fulfill best online pokies australia reddit different conditions and terms beforehand.
The very CMA designed a probe in to the nation’s betting industry inside October 2016. It attained input originating from a number of gambling online customers, who else complained they can were not capable of collect most of their winnings thanks to unclear plus misleading sign-up promotion finer points.
Last year, their competitors regulator declared it was searching the activity with several main online gambling travel operators, explaining these might have been breaking consumer coverage laws.
Joining promotions having cash signup bonuses of different size have always been among video games companies’ favourite means for online australian pokies no deposit obtaining players to their websites. Nonetheless such promotions often come with an array of terms and conditions that will players discover difficult to think of properly . For instance, competitors may free pokies play australia online pokies for free be important to play even more, thus guess more, within a given betting website to able to case their winnings.
Winds of Changes Needs to Blow
Beneath regulatory demand from the CMA, Ladbrokes Coral, William Huge batch, and REHABILITATION Entertainment online pokies signup bonus turn out to be planning to change their extra promotions in a manner that will provide players with clear explanation what exactly each linking includes and with the capability to relieve their profits whenever they choose to.
The three above-mentioned operators and also all other UK-facing gaming firms will have to undertake sign-up promotion policies that wont require through players for you to ‘play several times’ ahead of being able best online pokies aus to withdraw their own capital.
In addition , gambling companies will have to make sure that shoppers are provided having clear specifics of any game play restrictions. Lastly, players won’t be required to gets involved in any publicity in order to be qualified play free pokies online nz to claim their particular winnings regardless of what size these include.
The CMA said that there is certainly ongoing enforcement activity during the sector and this operators would be urged for you to roll out and about more demands for the reasonable treatment of their customers. The regulator revealed that they are simply considering upcoming changes in affiliate agreement that require out of players to be able to withdraw winnings in obligations over best online casino australia pokies long periods of time.
The CMA said that is probably the best working very closely with the UK Gambling Payment in its probe into the state’s gambling market place. The bingo regulator discharged a statement, worrying that it might sanction almost any operator in which fails to abide by customer defense laws .
The CMA said that online pokies online slots a lot of the operators’ linking practices should be changed by simply February 37, 2018. Extra changes will have to be implemented by way of July 31st, 2018.


text:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2014 – The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is repeating its plea to get four antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella listed as adulterants under federal law – allowing the government to get infected meat and poultry off supermarket shelves before they are linked to illnesses.
USDA in July denied a 2011 CSPI petition to declare as adulterants antibiotic resistant Salmonella strains in ground meat and poultry. The new petition makes the same request but covers all meat and poultry products, not just ground products. The document points out that antibiotic strains on meat and poultry have been linked to at least 2,358 illnesses, 424 hospitalizations, and eight deaths, which the advocacy group says “obligates USDA to keep those strains out of the food supply.”
In a news release, CSPI said that since its 2011 petition, two multi-state outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella Heidelberg linked to non-ground chicken products from Foster Farms have sickened 750 consumers and hospitalized 233. In the second outbreak, it said, USDA allowed contaminated products to remain on the market for nearly 10 months as the number of those sickened doubled.
CSPI says that USDA, which had initiated recalls in some but not other outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella, uses its authority in an arbitrary and inconsistent way —putting consumers at risk.
“The Foster Farms outbreaks should have served as a wake-up call to USDA, but the agency keeps hitting the snooze button,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal, CSPI food safety director. “USDA should be testing for antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella to keep contaminated foods out of grocery stores — just as it now can do for the most dangerous strains of E. coli. Antibiotic-resistant Salmonella is no less dangerous and kills twice as many Americans each year.”
In its release, CSPI noted that in 1994, USDA declared E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant after it sickened more than 700 consumers and caused three deaths from undercooked hamburgers. The agency acted again in 2011 when it declared six strains of shiga-toxin-producing E. coli to be adulterants, though those strains weren’t linked to a single outbreak in the U.S. from meat or poultry products.
CSPI said it is now asking USDA to institute a sampling and testing program to detect the presence of the Heidelberg, Typhimurium, Newport, and Hadar strains of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella.
One reason USDA said it denied CSPI’s 2011 petition was that ordinary cooking is sufficient to kill Salmonella. But CSPI said the agency did not provide any scientific support for that assertion, and pointed to a number of studies indicating that consumers’ cooking, handling, and cleaning practices do not adequately control the bacteria at home.
CSPI also noted that USDA considers E. coli O157.H7 an adulterant in beef partly because some consumers prefer to eat the meat rare or medium rare. And it said that USDA, in response to its petition, said it was “not aware of any data to suggest” consumers consider ground poultry, pork or lamb to be properly cooked when rare, medium-rare or medium.
CSPI said its latest petition provides USDA with recipes from the New York Times, the Food Network and other sources that show otherwise.
“The number of illnesses and hospitalizations alone shows that USDA’s confidence in Americans to control antibiotic-resistant Salmonella with proper cooking is misplaced,” DeWaal said. “The key is to reduce consumer exposure by keeping these strains out of the meat and poultry products altogether.”
For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com


text:
A new Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 has been making the rumor rounds for quite some time after Galaxy Tab S2 unveiled. However, company still has to make an official announcement about Tab S3, new rumors suggest that Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 will be released in September.
The rumored Galaxy Tab S3 launch date comes from Russian leaker Eldar Murtazin has posted an anonymous on Twitter.
September 1 – Tab S3 😉 видимо так и будет
— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) July 19, 2016
Early this year, import and export movements tracks website in India revealed that two new Samsung sample tablets have been imported from South Korea for testing to India. The samples were labeled SM-T719 and SM-T813 believed to be the Galaxy Tab S3 8-inch and 9-inch variant, respectively.
The notable differences between the two models are the size and the battery backup. The leak shows that SM-T819 has an AMOLED screen with 2,048 x 1,536 display resolution with five-finger gesture support. It has the Snapdragon 652 chipset with four Cortex-A72 cores and four A53s with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB storage. The rear camera is 8 megapixels, while the front camera is 2 megapixels and running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow.


text:
Online transactions becoming primary method of banking, research shows
- 12th January 2018
- Innovation & Technology
Research from Swiss investment bank UBS has shown that online banking is now becoming a global trend, with more than half of transactions being done digitally.
The study surveyed 24,000 customers in 19 countries and found that 52 per cent of transactions are now carried out online, up from 33 per cent two years ago.
The research showed that online banking has overtaken branch visits, with the proportion of transactions carried out in branches dropping to 34 per cent from 48 per cent two years earlier.
The rise in popularity of online transactions has led to banks closing down branches, with the UK seeing a record number of closures. The UK’s five biggest banks now have less than 6,000 branches, a considerable drop from the number of branches 20 years ago, which stood at 11,240.
Further closures are set to take place, with RBS and Lloyds shutting down 259 and 49 branches respectively. Following the announcement of more closures, RBS said that it will be investing in its remaining branches, the bank’s online services and its mobile banks.
UBS’s research also revealed the impact that respondents expect online banking to have on costs, with the majority (78 per cent) believing that it will lead to reduced operating costs. Fifteen per cent said that they believe that the adoption of this method of banking will push up costs.
Global banks were found to be feeling optimistic at the start of the year, with 57 per cent having a positive outlook on the sector, up from 45 per cent in the previous quarter.
A study from data analytics firm Consumer Intelligence has highlighted the impact of technology failures in banking, with more than…


text:
A new phase of structural adjustments prompted by Bullwhip
The latest data on the 2020-21 Q4 GDP shows a growth of 1.6 per cent over 2019-20 Q4, which in absolute numbers looks like Rs 38.96 lakh crore, as against Rs 38.33 lakh crore in Q4 of 2019-20. If anyone wants to see this in dollar terms, the dollar made a steep fall against the Rupee (Rs 75 v/s Rs 72.5) over this period, thus making the growth look like 5 per cent instead of 1.6 per cent. Despite these aberrations, the Indian economy weathered a major storm last year and both Q3 (0.5 per cent) and Q4 (1.6 per cent) have been two quarters of growth thus signaling a “coming out” from the technical recession that was caused in Q1 and Q2 of 2020-21.
The drivers of growth however have shifted majorly in Q4, if one sees the sectorial data, the biggest unit of rise came from the government consumption expenditure increase of 28.3 per cent in the same period over last year. If we start with gross value added (GVA) growth (GDP growth minus product taxes), the manufacturing sector accelerated to 6.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020-21 compared to a contraction of 4.2 per cent a year ago and construction grew by 14.5 per cent against 0.7 per cent, while both agricultural growth (down 3.1 per cent from 6.8 per cent) and hospitality and transport (down -2.3 per cent from 5.7 per cent) showed markedly lower numbers. We must keep in mind that only a week was lost in production activity in the corresponding quarter of last year, due to lockdowns, thus the two periods in terms of economic flow are not out of whack in comparison.
The crucial question is what we now expect the economy to perform, given that 66 per cent of the time in Q1 2021-22 is mired in semi-lockdowns, the informal sector is impacted heavily and working capital is locked in unforeseen inventories of all kind and debt moratoriums are being requested for another extended period of time over the previously allowed one. The question cannot be about comparing period numbers alone. Last year’s similar period was worse off with national lockdowns and the expectation at the start of the quarter was to achieve 22 per cent growth over that quarter. This looks a tall ask given the current state of the economic activities.
Let us move to some other dampening factor, perhaps more ominous than the stalling of economic activities through lockdowns. It is the rising commodity prices, which has seen no calming effects, either from the government or trade interventions, left to its own, the prices have spiraled into an orbit; many are calling this a precursor to the super cycle for commodities.
I am however of the view that the rise in global commodity prices, which finally impact every citizen of every country, were actually fueled by rising international logistics cost, global shipping to start with and followed by the inland full truckload freight costs, which later spilled over to every aspect of commodity prices.
The global barometer of logistics costs, the Baltic Dry Index stands at 2750 today, compared to 400 at the start of the crisis and the Shanghai containerised freight index stands at 3500 against 1000 at the start of the crisis last year. These numbers portray how many times the shipping costs have soared to move commodities from oil, coal, pet coke, to agricultural commodities to intermediate products to finally finished goods. The dollar weakness in the same period did adjust in some normative ways to counteract, but it is nowhere close to fully compensate for the deluge.
Every household item has moved several notches up in terms of prices, if they have not then sellers are simply absorbing the brunt of the increase from the input side.
This is what I call the supply side structural shift that every economy has to weather for the next several quarters. It all started with a shipping disruption, where vessels were stranded in high seas, which later moved to ports in form of congestion and then later impacted loading and unloading of vessels as people were not available. The final nail was the concentration of big five shipping lines that shared space among their carriers thus making the supply side even more tight, thus raising prices.
The structural shift needs to be seen from the point of what supply chains grapple with, the Whiplash effect, or the more commonly known Bullwhip effect. This essentially means that in a multi-echelon supply chain, for a small change in supply or demand conditions at the downstream part of the chain could translate to a much bigger change in the supply or demand conditions at the upstream part of the chain.
For an economy as diverse as India, with several supply chains crisscrossing each other, the disruptions in supply conditions in one part of the chain moves up or down the chain in varying degree of ripple effects, that are caused due to asymmetry of information, error propagation, ship-set mismatches and a host of financial woes travelling in multiple directions, working capital, inventory and cash flows being the key ones.
The supply chains in India have to adjust in these conditions and create new rules so that they are able to reconfigure their outputs and flows such that the new varying degrees of demand can be matched with varying supply conditions under constraints. This is the task that will be able to respond to price conditions better, something that will determine the next phase of GDP growth, not only for India, but for the globally connected markets as well.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Procyon Mukherjee is an ex-Chief Procurement Officer at LafargeHolcim India.


text:
Meet Stalqer -- a curiously named location-based social network that TechCrunch describes as "Foursquare on steroids." Similar to Foursquare, the free iPhone app tracks you and your friends' locations
and broadcasts this data via the application, and through push notifications. A key differentiator, however, is that Stalqer updates the location in the "background."
In other words,
Stalqer has found a way to record your location without you having to actually open up the application. The service also lets you import your Facebook friends, via Facebook Connect, to the app, which
will potentially allow you to track their every move whether they've joined Stalqer or not. It's expected to hit the app store on Wednesday, ushering in a whole new era of privacy invasion.
Read the whole story at TechCrunch »


text: January 1 marks the first day US hospitals must comply with the Inpatient Prospective Payment System rule to post the price for each individually offered service on their websites. Advocates for price transparency are pretty happy, but providers aren’t—92% of them are concerned about the new policy. After all, list prices aren’t out-of-pocket prices. Providers are also concerned about other initiatives in 2019, including the International Pricing Index proposed by the White House to bring American drug costs in line with other developed nations. Another policy to watch is the proposal to include prescription drug costs in DTC TV ads. Drugmakers have a lot to spend on ads considering they spent $3.7B on them in 2018, so maybe that change won’t be too hard to make monetarily-speaking. Speaking of drug pricing, here’s 2018’s most expensive retail pharmacy drugs.


text:
Jan 10, 2017 10:03 AM EST
Virgin Mobile Eyes Of Becoming The First Ever Prepaid Brand To Offer Free Wireless Services; Boost Phones Play Vital Role [REPORT]
Virgin aims to be a disrupter brand amongst the competitors in the tough pre-paid serving arena. Although it has been arguably hard to say that the brand has taken over the top spot, it is keen to do so. Sprint has expressed its desire to validate all new business strategies and put them into fruition to secure Virgin's lead.
In a recent investors' forum, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure announced the company's plan to make Virgin a disrupter brand that will compete for head on with tough rivals in the field of prepaid services. Virgin eyes ditching subsidiaries to proceed with their new vision. The company is yet to come up with the best strategy, Fierce Wireless wrote.
Claure assured that they are going to test new strategies but he came up saying that there is one model that has the biggest potential. Rather than subsidizing handsets, Virgin can actually provide free airtime without any subsidy on a handset. Whereas both Virgin and Boost forms a sure hit alliance to gain the attention of their target market. Claure added that this surely beefs with T-Mobile's MetroPCS and AT&T's Cricket future ventures.
However, such offer sounds impossible. Especially when profit and gains weigh more value, there could be a catch somewhere. Between Claure's words, there are noticeable hitches. For one, the mention of free wireless services and potential phone usage brings up the question of how much extra a lack of subsidy can actually offer for Virgin to make such a big move, Phandroid suggested. In addition, such mobile devices are already available for as low as $100 already open-line, no subsidy or any influence from a specific carrier.
If Virgin is truly capable bringing free wireless services and phone units, only time can tell, Meanwhile, you can tell us in the comment section below your thought on this matter.


text:
Over the past couple of iPhone versions users have complained of “unexpected” shutdowns of their devices. Some iPhone 6, 6S, 6 Plus and 6S Plus devices could basically go dark unexpectedly, forcing a user to have to plug them into an outlet to get them to power back on.
Apple has been working on this very annoying bug and it says it has come up with a fix of sorts that should mitigate the problem on a majority of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s devices. The fix is actually already on your iPhone if you have installed iOS 10.2.1 — something that around 50 percent of iOS users have already done. After letting the fix simmer on customer devices, Apple now has statistics to share on how it has improved the issue, citing 80 percent reduction on iPhone 6s and 70 percent reduction on iPhone 6 devices.
I saw this a few times with my iPhone 6S plus. It was annoying, and hasn’t happened once on my 7 plus since I upgrade, which is good.


text:
The Prime Minister has launched e-RUPI, a person and purpose-specific digital payment solution.
What is e-RUPI?
- e-RUPI is a cashless and contactless instrument for digital payment.
- It is a QR code or SMS string-based e-Voucher, which is delivered to the mobile of the beneficiaries.
- The users of this seamless one-time payment mechanism will be able to redeem the voucher without a card, digital payments app, or internet banking access, at the service provider.
- It has been developed by the National Payments Corporation of India on its UPI platform, in collaboration with the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, and National Health Authority.
Working Mechanism of e-RUPI
- e-RUPI will be delivered to mobile phones of beneficiaries through SMS-string or a QR code.
- It will be like a prepaid gift-voucher that can be redeemed at specific accepting centres without any credit or debit card, mobile app or internet banking.
- It will connect sponsors of the services with beneficiaries and service providers digitally without any physical interface.


text:
| Posted on Mon, June, 23rd 2014 by THCFinder
Marijuana and booze get compared all the time. Two substances, which people say are quite similar, while at the same time being at opposites ends of the substance spectrum. While alcohol kills 88,000 people a year (drunk driving, overdose, accident victims), a marijuana death has still not been reported. However, alcohol is legal and can be bought at any corner store. Marijuana is still very much the subject of prohibition and therefore, doesn't bring in anywhere near the sum that alcohol does. In the legal state of Colorado, we're beginning to see the real effects of marijuana legalization... A push against the booze business.
In Denver, there is a county fair that takes place that attracts hundred of visitors from all over the state. Usually, the fair hosts a beer pavilion but this year, don't expect to see it. Instead, the weed pavilion will be doubling in size, in an effort to replicate the amazing turn outs at other cannabis shindigs, such as the High Times Cannabis Cups, Seattle Hempfest, and the Boston Freedom Rally. The weed pavilion will host contests much like the ones held at the aforementioned events, including the best plants, judging of pot brownies, a speed joint rolling contest, and oh my god, a Doritos eating contest! So say goodbye to the beer!
The events will be 21+ so youngins, don't get your hopes up too fast! There also won't be any pot present on the fair site but the plant judging, brownie eating, and potency contests will be hosted at an offsite location and be fed back to the fair via video. Definitely a good compromise, seeing as the county fair is a family event. This meet-in-the-middle model will allow the stoners to enjoy the fair as well as the families who are used to a PG outing. But if parents plan on taking their kids, they should be aware that glass vendors and other products will be available for purchase at the fair (providing you're age appropriate).
Think Denver officials will be upset? Doubtful. With the absence of alcohol, there aren't many issues expected. In fact, the profits from the event are already through the roof, due to the awesome graphics of the pot pavilion's poster. The graphic features a cherry pie with a marijuana leaf cut out of it. Selling for $20 a pop, the posters have already outsold the main graphic for the fair. Not only that, but bud sponsors are paying top dollar for their spot to be a part of the first pot pavilion. OpenVape, a Denver based company, has paid $10,000 for a place at the fair and Medically Correct, an edibles making company, has put up $5,000. The medicated treat company is also planning on hiring shuttles to drive potheads back and forth to the recreational stores and shops so they can get their weed on during the fair... Hey, they had to make the Doritos contest interesting!


text:
In continuation of its Innovation Voucher Pilot Program which launched in November 2008, the government of Alberta is helping small businesses and entrepreneurs with high-tech projects.
The program has been designed to help small businesses and entrepreneurs at the pre-commercial stage. The innovation vouchers total up to $110,000 and were awarded to three businesses in Alberta’s Lloydminster area, including Amisk, Cardogan and Fort Kent.
The vouchers are designed to help the businesses receive specialized expertise and services so they can move their high-tech innovations forward in the marketplace.
The vouchers can be used towards up to 75 per cent of the total cost of specialized services that are from an approved, non-profit service provider.
Businesses are only eligible to receive one $10,000 voucher and one $50,000 voucher over the lifetime of their business.
In total, 204 vouchers totaling almost $6 million were awarded to companies in 33 of the province’s communities.


text:
EA Sports Replaces Heatley With Sakic On "NHL 2004" Cover
Heatley Removed Following
Crash, Teammate's Death
EA Sports has replaced Thrashers RW Dany Heatley with Avalanche C Joe Sakic as the cover athlete of its "NHL 2004" video game after Heatley's car accident claimed the life of teammate Dan Snyder in October, according to Wayne Karl of THE HOCKEY NEWS. Existing copies of the game "will remain on store shelves, but future production as well as retail advertising and other promotions" will feature Sakic. EA Sports said in a statement, "We decided it would be inappropriate to bring any more attention to Dany by featuring him. ... This has been a tragic event for everyone." EA Sports spokesperson David Lee noted that the company made its first-ever post-production change of a cover athlete as a "gesture of respect and sensitivity," adding, "This wasn't a sales decision. We wanted to do what's right." Karl adds that Canadian satellite provider Bell Express Vu recently changed its print ads by removing an image of Heatley (THE HOCKEY NEWS, 12/2 issue).


text:
Posted by Ars Technic on November 22, 2018 03:16:25It’s not the end of the year, but a new year means new deals, and Ars Technics’ annual list of the biggest tech deals announced in 2018 includes a couple of notable additions.
First up is a $2,500 million investment from Oracle, a massive acquisition for the software giant in the US.
The move comes after Oracle acquired the company that runs the popular Oracle Database and Oracle Open Source Platform (OOPP) software platform.
The deal also marks the largest cash transaction Oracle has made to date, with Oracle paying $1.5 billion for the company.
Oracle also got a $5 million investment, from the UK-based private equity firm Apollo Global Management.
The other big deal of the day is the $1 billion purchase of the Chinese search engine Baidu by Alibaba, which will help the company make inroads in the country.
Baidu is now the number one search engine in China, but its dominance has been waning as Google’s dominance in the market has continued to expand.
In the US, Amazon acquired the video-streaming service Vine for $970 million, bringing its total acquisition fee to $1,150 million.
The acquisition will help Amazon’s video streaming service become the number two on the video streaming market, behind only Netflix.
The big tech deals of the monthIn total, the tech industry’s deals in September brought in a total of $2 billion.
Of those, Apple’s acquisition of Beats Electronics was the largest, with Apple paying $4 billion.
Google bought YouTube for $1 and Amazon bought Amazon’s Prime video-delivery service.
Apple has also gotten the largest deal from Dell, paying $300 million to buy PC maker HP for $9 billion.
Other big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft also received huge deals.
The most significant of these was from Microsoft, which paid $1 in cash and stock for the rights to the Bing search engine.
Microsoft is now used to selling its own software and services, but the Bing acquisition was a rare opportunity to acquire a new technology.
Bing is now a mainstay on the web and in smartphones, but it also runs the Bing Ads platform.
Microsoft has been buying up search engines to make it easier for advertisers to target their ads to consumers and users of other companies’ products.
Microsoft also got $1 million from a group of Chinese tech companies for its research and development efforts.
A $2 million deal with Alibaba was also made, with Alibaba paying $2 to $3 billion for Microsoft.
The biggest deal of September was Microsoft’s acquisition by Google for $2 of its own money.
Microsoft had previously been trying to buy rival search engine DuckDuckGo for around $3.5bn, but Google was interested in getting in on the action.
The deal comes just weeks after Microsoft and Google announced that they would create a new group of partnerships called the “G Suite.”
The new group would work together on new technologies, including new products, and other companies would be able to get in on those deals as well.