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Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), as a company and as a brand has redefined social media in the nouveau digital era. In fact, in a smartphone-centric world, Facebook, owner of the largest social network and two of the most popular messaging services, seems pretty invincible. We were flabbergasted when we came across this recent report of a certain browser extension that has the mighty Facebook quaking in fear. What power can a few lines of innocuous code running atop a browser possess that is making the mighty Facebook ponder in worry and this is what we intend to find out.
Let us first, formally introduce Facebook’s incredible foe- the Ad Block. And while Facebook may be the first to voice their concerns over it, Ad Block has been plaguing the bottom lines of digital ad revenues for quite a while. However, according to recent events, Ad Block has evolved from being a niche tool in a tech nerd’s browser to something that almost every internet accessing individual is aware of. While the role of obnoxious ads being peddled by the likes of ad networks including Facebook in the growth of popularity for Ad Block remains debatable, what is beyond doubt that the Internet ad industry is in dire straits, and something needs to be done to fix it as early as possible.
Ad Blockers and Their Impact on Internet Advertisement
While Ad Blocking had been mentioned in reports before, this year was the first time that Facebook has dedicated a paragraph in their risk assessment document to the software. While we had reports coming in from various sources in 2015, that companies like Google had potentially made deals with Ad Block to whitelist their ads, the extreme necessity of such an agreement had not been brought to the limelight until now.
As noted in the 10k filing, Facebook is dependent on ads for 96% of their revenue. While ad blocking has been more prevalent in desktop browsers so far, it could seriously affect Facebook’s revenue if ad blockers made a successful transition to mobile. With the contribution of desktop PC’s waning in Facebook’s revenue, the recent reports of ad blocking software being bundled with both Android and iOS devices could ring warning bells at Menlo Park.
With the introduction of iOS 9 last year, Apple introduced ad blocking capabilities to their default Safari browser and considering the sheer volumes of iPhones being sold each year, losing out in ad revenue from the entire Apple userbase can be very scary for Facebook. To add fuel to the fire, Samsung has recently added ad blocking capabilities to their default browser, and with the top two smartphone OEMs in the world declaring war on mobile advertisements, it translates into dwindling profits for all ad publishers alike, including Facebook.
Mobile AdBlockers: The Problem As We See It
As this infograph above demonstrates, ad blocking on mobile is still not an immediate concern as it contributed to only 2% of the total ad blocking scenario in 2015. However, that doesn’t mean that ad blocking is something to be considered casually. As previous reports have indicated, we will observe a sea change in the way media and content are consumed by people and leading the way will be the phablet class of devices. Furthermore, as the proliferation of 4G LTE devices increases, reports indicate that a significant chunk of people will be dependent on wireless broadband connections from their smartphones as their primary internet gateway. With that in mind, we feel that ad blocking in the mobile world would have a much larger impact than it is apparent at this point in time.
In regards to Ad blockers, Google Ads SVP Sridhar Ramaswamy says ,”In my mind, it’s a very blunt instrument. And that’s why we need to be worried.”
So what are the possible ways to combat the situation? We have shortlisted some of the methods that have been used thus far to combat ad blockers, though, it is important to mention that none of them has reaped satisfactory results as yet.
- The first and quite simply the most obvious solution has been to ignore ad blockers and their effect on advertisement revenues as a whole. With more than 198 million users on board, we don’t think that ad blockers are a niche community as they have been previously made out to be.
- The next attempt has been at outsmarting the ad block software with even more advanced anti-ad block software. While it sounds good in practice, the technical limitations and investments in this project make it seem like a lost cause.
- A third attempt has been made to thwart Ad Blockers by dragging them into lawsuits and legislation by pointing out that whitelist in ad blocking is basically an extortion attempt. We reserve comments on this as the courts know better.
- With all efforts fizzing out, some innovative minds have turned to the root of the problem. Ad block users are largely annoyed internet denizens, who are irked by ads and their presence. Figuring out a way to make ads appeal to them might solve the problem and increase ad revenue by growing user engagement at the same time.
However, Native ads are not the answer to the problem as explained in detail by a report from Page Fair. That leaves us with the question we started with, “So what do we do to solve this mess?” and we believe we have the answer to that in our finishing segment.
And Our Solution For It
Let’s clear out the obvious question first. How does a categorical distribution of sites with most ad blockers among the viewers help us solve the problem? Well, for starters it provides an interesting view at the demographic of the majority of ad block users. The preference of gaming, social networking and tech at the top 3 spots leads us to believe we are looking at a demographic of tech-savvy young teens who are very much aware of the distinction between content and advertisement in the digital realm.
As the infographic above points out, users are now, actively downloading other browsers if their default browser doesn’t support ad block. In fact, as evident in a recent post by Ad Block Plus on intrusive Facebook apps, there is a large and vocal community of Ad Block users who have had enough of annoying pop-ups, banner ads as well as auto-play video ads. However, the blanket action of Ad Blockers removes even non-obtrusive ads and puts the entire freely available information structure of the internet at risk.
Faced with such a situation, a few innovative solutions have come up of serving ads in a contextual manner, a few use case scenarios of which we have detailed below:
- The development of concierge services in the Facebook Messenger app and commercial applications inside WhatsApp Messenger provides new ways of advertising for businesses.
- Apps have proved to be a safe haven for advertisement and with companies coming up with new and innovative ways to draw in more consumers, we could see a new era of mobile advertisement taking birth, based around an app-based ecosystem.
- Contextual apps which keep in mind the geo-location of the consumer to push relevant ads right onto the home screens of users can play a vital role in the future of mobile ads especially when used in conjunction with contactless payment services.
With all these new technologies coming up, we predict mobile advertisements to have a long and prosperous future, just not in their current boring form of banners and texts and pop-ups. The real question is, whether if Facebook will be able to transition its social network into the new genre of mobile ads or will it face some hiccups like its elder brother, Google!


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Projects will support Amazon’s commitment to The Climate Pledge to be net zero carbon by 2040 and supply renewable energy for the company’s fulfillment network and Amazon Web Services data centers which support Amazon and millions of AWS customers globally
Amazon’s first large-scale renewable energy project in Spain, first in the state of Illinois, and ninth in the Commonwealth of Virginia – combined, are expected to produce 329 MW of additional renewable capacity and almost 700,000 MWh of energy annually, or enough to power more than 67,000 homes
Globally, Amazon has more than 70 renewable energy projects that have the capacity to generate over 1,900 MW and deliver more than 5.3 million MWh of energy annually
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced three new renewable energy projects in the US and Spain that support Amazon’s commitment to The Climate Pledge and reaching 80% renewable energy by 2024 and 100% renewable energy target by 2030 on its path to net zero carbon by 2040.
Amazon is committed to major investments in renewable energy as a critical step toward addressing the company’s carbon footprint globally, and Amazon’s newest renewable energy project in Europe will be the company’s first large-scale project in Spain, located southeast of Sevilla. Once complete, the new solar farm will provide 149 megawatts (MW) of new renewable capacity.
Amazon’s newest renewable energy solar projects in the US will be located in Lee County, Illinois and in Northern Virginia. Together, they total 180 MW and are expected to generate almost 400,000 MWh of renewable energy annually. This will be Amazon’s first large-scale renewable energy project in the state of Illinois and ninth in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Once complete, the three new Amazon renewable energy solar projects will provide an estimated 329 MW of additional renewable capacity supplying energy to the company’s fulfillment network in Europe and Amazon Web Services data centers, which power Amazon and millions of AWS customers globally.
To date, Amazon has launched over 70 renewable energy projects that will provide over 1,900 MW of renewable capacity and are projected to deliver more than 5.3 million MWh of renewable energy annually. These projects include 21 utility-scale wind and solar farms and more than 50 solar rooftops installed on fulfillment centers and sort centers around the globe.
“Earlier this year, we announced The Climate Pledge, setting a goal to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years early and be net zero carbon by 2040. We also plan to run on 80% renewable energy by 2024 and 100% renewable energy by 2030,” said Kara Hurst, Director of Sustainability, Amazon. “We’re committed to investing in renewable energy as a critical step toward addressing our carbon footprint globally.”
“As we work to put our state on a path to 100% clean and renewable energy, Illinois is proud to have Amazon invest in a major solar project in our state,” said Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. “Addressing climate change will take all of us working together, and leadership from state governments and the business community will demonstrate how we can sustainably power a modern economy and create good-paying jobs.”
“I applaud Amazon for their investment in renewable energy projects in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” said Virginia Senator Mark R. Warner. “This solar energy project will generate 80 megawatts of renewable energy, which will help lead to a cleaner and healthier environment.”
To track progress toward these goals, Amazon launched a new sustainability website to report on its sustainability commitments, initiatives, and performance. The site includes information on Amazon’s carbon footprint and other sustainability metrics that share the progress the company is making towards reaching The Climate Pledge. The new goals, commitments, investments, and programs build on Amazon’s long-term commitment to sustainability through existing innovative programs, including Shipment Zero – Amazon’s vision to make all shipments net zero carbon, with 50% net zero carbon by 2030; sustainable packaging initiatives like Frustration-Free Packaging and Ship in Own Container, which have reduced packaging waste by 25% since 2015; renewable energy programs; investments in the circular economy with the Closed Loop Fund; and numerous other initiatives happening every day by teams across Amazon.
Visit https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/ to view the company’s new sustainability report and learn more.
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
About Amazon Web Services
For 13 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 165 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 69 Availability Zones (AZs) within 22 geographic regions, with announced plans for 13 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Indonesia, Italy, South Africa, and Spain. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

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The consumers association Consumentenbond has urged junior economic affairs minister Frank Heemskerk to take action against mobile phone providers which it claims have not done enough to warn holidaymakers about the high cost of mobile internet abroad.
The organisation says it has received dozens of calls from people confronted with bills running into the thousands of euros after using their phone or laptop to access the internet while on holiday.
Some providers charge up to €30 for mailing 1 MB of information from abroad, equal to one mail with a high-resolution photograph, the organisation said.
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Smartphone maker BlackBerry reportedly plans to slash thousands of jobs by the end of the year.
The company, which has lost market share to rivals Apple and Samsung, launched a new flagship smartphone, the Z30, yesterday in an effort to revive its fortunes.
But a report in the Wall Street Journal claimed the company, which formerly dominated the smartphone arena, could get rid up to 40 per cent of its workforce in a massive cost-cutting drive.
In March it employed 12,700 people but once had almost 20,000 employees.
BlackBerry has previously warned that job cuts were imminent, and has talked of a possible sale, but declined to comment on the rumours.
In January, BlackBerry unveiled new phones running with a revamped operating system called BlackBerry 10 to try and claw back market share.
Yesterday, the firm, which has lost 7.5 per cent of its share in the UK to rivals Android, iOS and Windows Phone in the last year, launched its first ever entirely touchscreen smartphone.
The BlackBerry Z30 comes with a 5in screen, the largest battery ever to be built into a BlackBerry handset, which the company claims makes the device last for around 25 hours, and new technology to boost signal in areas where reception is low.
A spokesman for parent company Research In Motion said: ‘We will not comment on rumours and speculation.
‘As previously stated, we are in the second phase of our transformation plan.
‘Organisational moves will continue to occur to ensure we have the right people in the right roles to drive new opportunities in mobile computing.’
Meanwhile, Apple fans were already queuing up yesterday to be the first to get hold of the latest iPhone, due to be released tomorrow.


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Posted on April 14, 2017
In an area where, for many, swimwear is part of our regular wardrobe for much of the year, Kari Rubin’s recently opened SunSplash Swimwear boutique in the Del Mar Shopping Center is a welcome ally in a styling effort that’s not always one that women look forward to with eager anticipation. For Rubin, a 14-year veteran in the swimwear business, the difference-maker is offering an extensive variety of high-quality swimwear in sizes to match every body type, from extra small to size 16 and bra sizes to an F-cup. “We take a lot of time to make sure the fit is perfect for our customers,” she says. “We have fit specialists to help them find the perfect style to flatter their figure.”
The store takes special orders and even has someone on staff to tailor pieces to fit. Her high-end brands, including L*Space, Vix, Luli Fama, La Blanca, and Miraclesuit, garnered a dedicated clientele who’ll be happy to have her closer to home following her relocation from Pacific Beach. The boutique is stocked with the season’s hottest looks, which Rubin says include bright colors, embellishments, and strappy styles. SunSplash also offers resort wear, cover-ups, hats, sandals, and workout wear to round out your warm weather wardrobe.
858.523.9116, facebook.com/Sun-Splash-Swimwear Deanna Murphy
Photo by Vincent Knakal


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The Daily News published an article on our strip-search lawsuit against the City of New York. Click here to read the article.
Today on the Leonard Lopate Show, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, author of the NYT trilogy against arbitration, gave a fantastic overview on the rise of consumer arbitration and its repercussions. Listen to it here.
Earlier this week, 18 United States Senators–including New Jersey Senator and local superhero Cory Booker–called upon the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to regulate prepaid debit cards issued to released prisoners. These “prison release cards” often carry exorbitant fees and are all around exploitative.
Over 650,000 prisoners leave state and federal jails each year. The majority are booked and released shortly thereafter; most people released from jails are never convicted of any crime. These individuals constitute an involuntary pool of consumers with no choice or say in whether they have to use prepaid debit cards to access their own money. Giskan Solotaroff is working with lawyers around the country to litigate a class action in Oregon and an arbitration in Florida against two prison release card companies: EZ Card & Kiosk LLC, which issues the EZ Exit Card, and Numi Financial, which issues the Prestige Prepaid MasterCard.
Senator Booker’s letter is available here.
In case you missed it, the New York Times ran an excellent three part series on arbitration agreements and class action waivers. The series makes it clear that arbitration clauses deprive consumers and individuals of their day in court, whether it be because the individual case is not economically viable, or worse yet, because the arbitration process is rigged.
Hopefully, this marks the beginning of a broad public awareness of how corporations insulate themselves from liability by sneaking arbitration clauses into their Terms and Conditions. If this issue can remain in the public eye, change will follow.
Here are the links to the series:
By Oren Giskan, Esq.
The people have spoken and while they like Cheerios, they do not like mandatory arbitration. General Mills tried to impose mandatory arbitration on anyone who “liked” it on social media or downloaded a coupon for one of its products. Because General Mills had no direct dealings (or a contract) with consumers, it had to come up with a novel way to obtain consumers’ “consent” to arbitration.
It turns out consumers do not like mandatory arbitration and they protested. So General Mills did the right thing and abandoned its efforts to prohibit consumers from suing in court (and suing as a class). General Mills undoubtedly recognized that if consumers are given a choice, they will take their business elsewhere.
By Catherine Anderson, Esq.
On June 28, 2013, Courthouse News Service reported on our class action which had been filed against OneWest Bank, IndyMac, Financial Freedom Senior Funding and other defendants concerning the force placement of insurance (commonly referred to in the industry as “force placed insurance” or “lender placed insurance”) on homeowner’s mortgages for hazard or fire insurance.
As alleged in our complaint, lender placed insurance is often twice to ten times as expensive as voluntary homeowner’s insurance obtained in the open market and includes the cost of kickbacks and other improper commissions to the lender and/or insurer which get charged to the homeowner’s mortgage. Recently, our action has been divided into two potential class actions: One action involves the lender placed hazard insurance which has been charged to homeowners with standard Fannie Mae Freddie Mac uniform mortgages by OneWest Bank and IndyMac through the insurance company Assurant and its subsidiary, American Security Insurance Company. From October 2010 through June 2013, American Security Insurance Company issued 65,136 lender placed hazard insurance policies on real property serviced by OneWest and/or IndyMac. The second action involves lender placed hazard insurance which has been charged to homeowners with reverse mortgages by OneWest and Financial Freedom Senior Funding through the insurance company Balboa Insurance and also includes claims for violation of the California Financial Elder Abuse statute.
By Oren Giskan, Esq.
Have you been following the FINRA v Charles Schwab (“Schwab”) battle? Schwab is a stock brokerage that recently inserted a ban on class actions in its customer agreement. FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc., who regulates brokerages such as Schwab didn’t like it so it sued Schwab.
The Hearing Panel, which is part of FINRA, sided with Schwab and upheld the ban on class actions. This means that Schwab customers cannot band together in a class action and seek redress for any unlawful or deceptive practices that Schwab may engage in. (Keep in mind that Schwab was caught once before and paid over $200 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it marketed risky securities as conservative investments.) In other words, Schwab customers must individually take on Schwab no matter how many Schwab customers are affected by the same practice.
By Oren Giskan, Esq.
As we know, most companies now force their customers and/or their employees to arbitration through mandatory arbitration provisions in their contracts, whether it be an employment contract or the tiny print on the back of an invoice.
Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, Inc. (or “JAMS”) is the largest private alternative dispute provider in the world and is often named in contracts as the tribunal where your claim must be heard rather than being permitted to file in court. According to proponents of mandatory arbitration, arbitration is far more efficient and less costly than litigating before a judge.
by Catherine Anderson, Esq.
From now until February 15, 2013, consumers may opt-out of the Arbitration Provision of the American Express credit card agreement. Consumers who opt-out of arbitration will be able to bring claims and disputes in court, on an individual or class basis, against American Express. Consumers who do not opt-out will lose valuable rights, such as “the right to litigate …claim[s] in court or have a jury trial on that claim” and “the right to participate in a representative capacity or as a member of any class pertaining to any claim.”
Why opt out of arbitration? Statistics from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, show that the corporate clients, not consumers, are routinely the predominant winners in arbitration. Moreover, the class action device is one of the most important tools consumers have against large companies. While an individual consumer claim is often for a modest sum, when aggregated among similarly situated consumers, the amount in controversy sky rockets. The American Express Arbitration Provision eliminates the corporate risk of class action liability. By opting out of arbitration, consumers can preserve the vital class action device and their right to trial by jury.


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The consumer confidence index plummeted to 91.4 this month, down 8.5 percentage points from last month, undermined by decreasing confidence in all component measures, primarily in economic performance over the coming five years, a survey by Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ) and Roy Morgan Research showed.
The latest ANZ-Roy Morgan Taiwan Consumer Confidence reading is unfavorable for GDP growth, as domestic demand is relied on to prop up the economy as external demand falters.
“As we pointed out last month, consumer sentiment will be badly affected by global equity sell-off and the volatility of foreign currencies, notably the Chinese yuan,” ANZ Hong Kong-based economist Raymond Yeung (楊宇霆) said.
Now only 22.2 percent of respondents expect Taiwan to flourish economically in the next five years, down 11.3 percentage points from one month earlier, while numbers of respondents with a pessimistic outlook gained 5.7 percentage points to 19.5 percent, the survey found.
The grim outlook falls in line with poor export and industrial production data that are clouding growth prospects in the near term.
In terms of personal finances, 6.8 percent of respondents said their families are better off financially compared with last year, while 29.5 percent said their families are worse off, the survey found.
About 11.6 percent of respondents think their families would be better off financially this time next year, while 19.7 percent think their families would be worse off, according to the survey.
Weakening confidence encourages belt-tightening, with 25.5 percent of respondents saying it is unwise to buy major household items now, up 3.5 percentage points from last month.
Only 6.7 percent think it is a good time for big purchases, the lowest level since August last year, the survey found.
The central bank would maintain an accommodative monetary environment through open market operations, Yeung said.
DEVELOPING TALENT: The electronics contractor is looking to recruit people to work in core tech fields and emerging industries like electric cars and robotics Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest contract electronics maker, has launched a recruitment drive, offering a monthly salary of no less than NT$45,000 (US$1,485) to university graduates. For those with a master’s degree, the starting pay would be NT$52,000 per month at the minimum, while doctorate degree holders would receive at least NT$60,000 a month, Hon Hai said a statement issued early this week. The latest recruitment drive is aimed at attracting talent in core technology fields — artificial intelligence, semiconductors and next-generation mobile communications — and emerging industries — electric vehicles, digital healthcare and robotics, the
MRT TRAVEL FALLS: In February, ridership on the Taipei MRT System fell 8.96 percent from an average of 2.01 million per day in January Scooter sales jumped 13 percent last month as more commuters turned to two-wheelers to avoid public transportation amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest statistics showed. Sales expanded to 74,493 units last month, compared with 65,913 units in February, statistics released on Wednesday by Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽工業) and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications showed. In the first quarter, aggregate sales slid 0.51 percent year-over-year to 186,627 units, from 187,580 units, data showed. Kwang Yang, the nation’s biggest scooter manufacturer, continued to lead the market by selling 24,136 vehicles last month, growing 6.12 percent from 20,785 units in the previous month, while
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the nation’s leading PC vendor, yesterday launched its first dual-screen gaming laptop powered by Intel Corp’s latest central processing units (CPUs). The PC manufacturer’s announcement closely followed the US chipmaker’s unveiling of its 10th Generation Core H-series, the fastest commercial mobile processors with speeds of up to 5 gigahertz. Although Asustek’s Zephyrus Duo 15, the highlight of its Republic of Gamers line, is not the company’s first laptop with two screens, it is its first designed specifically for gaming. Nestled between the primary display panel and the keyboard, the secondary display, which Asustek calls the ScreenPad Plus, is angled
NO ILL EFFECT: Last month’s data mainly reflected deals made in February, when the spread of COVID-19 was still relatively mild in Taiwan, housing brokers said Housing transactions in the six special municipalities totaled 19,824 units last month, up 7.8 percent from a year earlier, brokers said, citing government data. Last month’s data mainly reflected deals made in February, when the pinch of the COVID-19 pandemic was not yet evident, they said. Taoyuan posted the largest improvement, with housing transactions soaring 36.6 percent year-on-year to 3,676 units, local government data showed. Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) attributed the pickup to the completion of two presale residential projects in the municipality. Houses in Taoyuan have increasingly gained in popularity in the past few year years due to relatively affordable home prices and


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An organic check-off would be unlike any other check-off program in American agriculture. Nothing like it has ever been tried, so the idea has understandably raised some questions. OTA has talked to lots of organic stakeholders over the past three years, and has found there’s a core group of concerns that keep coming up. We’ve also found that most of these concerns are based on perceptions of older check-offs, and we’ve addressed these issues.
June 14, 2010, I arrived at the west end of the National Mall in D.C. for my first day of employment advising the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture on organic farming and localizing food systems. It was quite a leap for me. After spending 25 years of advocacy and agitation as an organic farmer and non-profit policy wonk, I was about to be assimilated into the Obama Administration. Later that day, I sat outside in the recently inaugurated “People’s Garden,” a patch of reclaimed parking pavement just becoming a working garden of food and flowers.
Research to bring new farmers into organic, to find organic solutions to fight invasive pests and weeds, to breed organic seeds that are so scarce. Regular dissemination of the latest information and technical data to assist organic farmers and keep them up to date on key research findings and other vital facts.


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The latest rotten deeds of Microsoft may be found below, mixed within positive Linux and Open Source news.
Microsoft is no stranger to using Windows and other software to promote more of its own apps and services. The latest way the company is doing this is via Edge. Accusations of using its products as an advertising tool or as a means of forcing products onto users are nothing new for the Windows maker, and the company’s latest move with Edge does nothing to shake them off. The browser has been found to install Microsoft Office web apps without asking for permission.
Microsoft on Tuesday reminded customers that Office 2010 and Office 2016 for Mac have received their final security updates, as the suites have now dropped off the company’s support list. And as Microsoft has done before, the Redmond, Wash. company exploited the end of support to pitch customers on changing to the subscription-based Office 365.
Microsoft has released today its monthly batch of security updates known as Patch Tuesday, and this month the OS maker has patched 87 vulnerabilities across a wide range of Microsoft products. By far, the most dangerous bug patched this month is CVE-2020-16898. Described as a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Windows TCP/IP stack, this bug can allow attackers to take over Windows systems by sending malicious ICMPv6 Router Advertisement packets to an unpatched computer via a network connection.
Microsoft is rebranding its Bing search engine to Microsoft Bing today as part of a rebranding effort. While the vast majority of people are likely to still just call it Bing, Microsoft unveiled its shift toward Microsoft Bing in a blog post today. Microsoft doesn’t go into detail about why it added the company’s name to the Bing brand, other than it reflecting “the continued integration of our search experiences across the Microsoft family.”
It used to be really hard to find a Linux-powered laptop. You had to turn to small, specialty Linux-friendly PC vendors such as Purism, System76, or ZaReason. Now, Lenovo is releasing almost 30 Ubuntu Linux PCs and laptops. And, in days, Dell will release a new XPS 13 Developer Edition pre-loaded with Ubuntu 20.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Linux and a faster-than-ever 11th Gen Intel Core Tiger Lake processor.
In a surprising development, Lenovo announced today that it will offer Ubuntu Linux preinstalled on ThinkPad laptops and ThinkStation desktop PCs. Lenovo announced that it was bringing Linux to its workstation products in June, but this expansion brings the open-source platform to the firm’s mainstream business PCs. That said, Lenovo is targeting developers with this support, not traditional business users.


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This week’s news story sees Squishy Robotics and its soft landing robot transitioning from the NASA Moon project to assisting first responders on Earth; then how Locus Robotics leverages the LocusBots product line to offer a new-age solution for the growing demands of warehouses; then China’s newly developed robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery system is slated to compete with industry leader Intuitive Robotics using 3D glasses instead of traditional monitors and hoods; and lastly, why have robots been so slow to disrupt the garment industry?
“What is going on?” Ask Squishy Robotics
In a disaster scenario, situational awareness, or “What happened?” in disaster areas, information is often very difficult or impossible to obtain.
Squishy Robotics (based in Berkeley, CA), spin-off of a project originally funded by NASA (2014) to develop new ways of landing rovers and other types of equipment on the Moon, have produced robots for use by first responders in disaster situations that provide situational awareness, where no one has to take risks. It also delivers critical information in the field much more quickly than first responders can.
Berkeley researcher Alice Agogino’s first brainchild for a $500,000 NASA grant posed the question: Why not make the robot itself a landing gear? That way, there’s no need for a separate lander to bring the rover to the surface. Answering that fundamental question is how he developed his startup, Squishy Robotics.
As Agogino recalls: “We thought, wow, if we can do this on the Moon, we should be able to do it on planet Earth and save some lives.”
The idea is to make a skeleton of the rods and elastic cord in the shape of a ball, based on the design principle of tension integrity, or “tension”. The term itself was coined by Buckminster Fuller as a portmanteau of “tension” and “integrity” in 1955.
Functionally, the spherical robot frame is dropped from the drone into disaster situations or even rescue situations that are difficult for first responders to access. The robot’s sensors and other information-gathering instruments will be in the center of the robot, and when dropped, the impact force will spread across the frame, keeping vital loads safe.
Locus Robotics upgrades the AMR fleet
AMR providers to the logistics and e-commerce industries have moved quickly to expand their mobile robot platforms and operational software to accommodate the increasingly rapid churn and diverse warehouse logistics.
Not to increase the risk of being bypassed by an industry that is already in a high position and accelerating to meet the huge demands of e-commerce.
Based in Massachusetts Robotics Locussupplier of highly successful LocusBots, has been building to meet those needs since 2021 when it acquired Waypoint Robotics. Heavyweight chassis, larger form factor, and increased capabilities of Locus Vector and Max (rebranded from Waypoint) along with earlier releases Locus origincreated the company’s new product line, recently introduced for the EU in Amsterdam Delivering the 2023 conference held June 7-8.
Smart AMR is the wave of the future and Locus now has three. Locus DHL Supply Chain customers will see Locus Origin deployed to its 1,500 warehouses and distribution centers by the end of 2023, Locus claims.
“We are excited to showcase our latest technology innovations at Deliver 2023 to our global and European customers,” said Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics. “Together with our state-of-the-art LocusONE Warehouse Automation Platform, we are changing the way warehouses operate.”
3D glasses for China’s newly launched surgical robot
The world is heading in that direction minimally invasive surgical procedure. And surgical robots are envisioned to become the platform of choice to provide safer, minimally invasive surgeries with significantly less postoperative trauma.
Although more than a dozen developers have marketed, or are in the process of marketing the surgical robot, the US-based da Vinci Intuitive Surgical robot has been the crown jewel of surgery since its debut in 2009, even with a system of over $2.5 million, plus more than million dollars in parts and supplies each year. Now, however, competitors from the EU (Versius Surgical Robotic System) and, more recently, China are challenging the Intuitive’s dominance.
Weigao Groupheadquartered in Weihai, Shandong province, has become the first Chinese developer of robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery systems (2021). “Currently we have 20 units in the hospital for clinical research engaged in various surgeries, such as urological, liver and thoracic procedures,” said Wang Bingqiang, general manager of the Weigao Group’s medical instruments division. “Our robotic system will be sold for general surgical use from June (2023).”
With 20 systems in use, Weigao still has a long way to go to even begin to compete with the more than 6,000 da Vinci systems Intuitive deploys worldwide. According to Fosun International Securities, of the 189 robot-assisted laparoscopic surgical systems currently used in China (almost 5% of the world market), Intuitive has almost 100% share.
Unique among robotic surgical systems, the Weigao surgical robot is operated using 3D glasses—rather than the standard monitors and hoods used by others—which the company says reduces doctor fatigue. “Doctors can also more easily communicate with other doctors and nurses in the operating room,” Wang added.
Lazy robots disrupt the garment industry
There aren’t too many industries these days that robotics is difficult to interfere with, but the garment industry seems to be one that is particularly elusive.
However, there is a fortune awaiting those who succeed. Revenue in the clothing/garment market for 2023 is $343 billion! Automating even a small part of an industry can save billions in productivity gains and employ tens of thousands of robots, especially in sewing clothes together.
There are 10-20 different steps needed to make a simple t-shirt; 70-80 for long sleeve shirts.
Although laser cutting of fabrics has spread throughout garment manufacturing, laser cut pieces still need to be joined into finished pieces, and therein lies a problem for robots. Human hands are still relied upon for finishing.
Based in Germany Robot textiles is one of several companies trying to bring more automation to garment manufacturing.
“Textile researcher at RWTH Aachen University Germany estimate that in manufacturing a piece of clothing, handling time — as distinct from the cutting or sewing steps — accounts for about 80% of production time and about 80% of manufacturing costs.”
The Robottextile fabric-sorting work cell uses a standard KUKA Scara robot with a working diameter of 1600mm and a payload of 5kg (cobots are also possible). Depending on layout and general conditions, cycle times of 2 to 4 seconds per layer of fabric are possible.
But make no mistake, the bells are ringing for manual labor in the garment business. However, for now, Asian hands still dress the majority of people around the world.
The video below showcases the daunting challenges automation faces.


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Read more Click here to read the original, longer version of this story
THE vaping crackdown has begun.
Last week the European Parliament approved legislation governing the sale of electronic cigarettes, setting a precedent for other parts of the world where e cigarettes are still unregulated.
The new law allows shops to continue selling e cigarettes as consumer goods to Europe’s estimated 10 million e cigarette smokers, or “vapers”. They will not be classified as medicines like an earlier draft proposed. But the final draft, which now just needs member state approval, imposes strict conditions on the sale and advertising of e cigarettes.
From mid 2016, all advertising will be banned in the 28 European Union countries. Packaging will include the warning that “nicotine is addictive and could be harmful”, despite scant evidence so far of the product’s ill effects.
The nicotine in e cigarettes will be capped at 20 milligrams per millilitre of vaporising fluid. Scientists have said this might deter smokers from using them because the strength of a normal cigarette would be closer to 50 milligrams.
This article appeared in print under the headline “E cigs regulated”
E-cigarettes: sending the wrong smoke-signal
- United States
- Health care
- Smoking and tobacco
- Health and fitness
E cigarettes are not entirely risk free. Little research has yet been done about their long term health effects. Nicotine is, in implausibly large doses, a poison. Even in small ones it is addictive and the amount of the chemical dispensed by e cigarettes varies from one brand to another. But it is already clear that whatever health risks may emerge in studies of e cigarette use, they are vastly less lethal than traditional smokes.
Given the prospect of weaning the world s billion or so smokers onto something much less harmful, as well as protecting children and others from second hand smoke, there is a more sensible approach. Europe should tighten the existing rules on labelling and quality control that affect e cigarettes. America should also increase oversight. Governments should then invest in rigorous testing and see how the product evolves. For e cigarettes are changing rapidly in response to consumer demand. In America around 300m of them will be sold this year, three times the figure in 2012.
This seems to worry pharmaceutical firms, which in Europe are lobbying for curbs on e cigarettes, a competitor to their nicotine patches and other quitting aids. Big tobacco firms are working on e cigarettes of their own, as well as cigarettes that heat rather than burn the tobacco. But they have an interest in slowing the switch to smokeless smokes. If the innovative smaller firms that make most e cigarettes have to seek a licence every time they want to offer a new flavour or strength, the move towards safer nicotine consumption will be slowed.
Careless regulation costs lives
So far it seems that most regular vapers of e cigarettes are smokers or ex smokers. But over time the prospect of a relatively harm free nicotine kick could draw in many new users. This risk, and the lack of long term research on the residual risks of nicotine, argue for restricting the sales of e cigarettes to children. But as far as adults are concerned, they should be subject to less regulation than alcohol (which is far more harmful) and perhaps to no more than caffeine, another addictive and mildly poisonous substance whose widespread use governments see no need to curb. The risk of getting more people addicted to something relatively harmless is well worth taking, given the opportunity for curbing dramatically the world s single most harmful voluntary activity. Politicians should stand back and let a thousand e cig brands bloom.


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The move builds on the long established (15 years) Waitrose Responsible Fish Sourcing Policy. And as well as providing customers with extra assurance that their fish is from responsible sources, it will also enable the retailer to ensure a longer-term guarantee of sustainability in the face of increasing global pressure on fish stocks.
Waitrose Fish Buyer, Jeremy Langley, said: “For us, this pledge feels like a natural evolution of our long-standing responsible fishing policy. We started to have concerns over stocks of some of our favourite fish in 1997 - we thought this was something we needed to look at so we started work building a policy with our suppliers.
“Our Waitrose policies have been evolving for more than 15 years, and will continue to evolve. But - with global demand for fish increasing, and the size of our business increasing - we need to ensure we’re putting the right steps in place now if we’re to ensure a sustainable supply of fish in the decades to come.”
Waitrose sells 12 per cent of the fish bought in British supermarkets (Nielsen) - so its actions have the potential to significantly influence the seafood market.
Cod and haddock
The first major change will be all Waitrose fresh, smoked and breaded cod and haddock, which from 6th May will be certified as sustainable by the MSC, famous for its well-recognised blue tick logo.
Mr Langley commented: “This is a major step in our pledge to become 100 per cent fully certified by 2016. And being two of the ‘big five’ species, cod and haddock account for a significant proportion of our sales so it’s a satisfying step forward.”
Toby Middleton, MSC UK Country Manager, said: “This in a hugely significant move by Waitrose and we’re delighted that MSC certified seafood is playing such a key role in help Waitrose achieve their target. By committing to full independent seafood certification by the end of 2016, they are helping to drive the transformation of the seafood market around the world. Cod and haddock are hugely important to British shoppers and, despite the abundance in many stocks, cod is still an iconic poster-child for seafood’s sustainability challenges. By adding MSC certification to all of their fresh, smoked and breaded cod and haddock, Waitrose are helping to drive demand for certified sustainable seafood and, in turn, having a direct impact on improving the sustainability of the worlds’ oceans.”
The Waitrose announcement to source only independently certified fish is one of 12 CSR pledges launching publicly today (2 May) as the Waitrose Way Commitments.
The Commitments span the four ‘Waitrose Way’ CSR pillars: Treading Lightly, Championing British, Treating People Fairly and Living Well, and consolidate the retailer's responsibility work in to one place - setting clear targets for the business to achieve.
Waitrose Head of Sustainability and Ethical Sourcing, Quentin Clark, said: “These pledges by no means cover everything we're up to. But when we spoke to customers these 12 areas are what people said really mattered most.
"As a nation we're getting busier, and lack of time means we need to be able to trust the retailer we are using. So when creating these pledges we made sure the emphasis was on how we we're being part of the solution, now and in the future - we want it to be really easy for our customers to know we’re doing right thing."


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Snoop Dogg has partnered with MetroPCS to launch the very first commercially available 4G LTE Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy Indulge.
In celebration of the new technology, Snoop Dogg has doubled down on his Gs by creating “The G-Connection” video series.
And now, The Boss and MetroPCS are giving one lucky BOSSIP winner the chance up their Gs with a brand new Samsung Galaxy Indulge.
HERE’S WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO ENTER:
2.) Use Twitter to tweet this message to enter: “Double down on your Gʼs with Snoop DoGGGG, @MetroPCS and @Bossip. RT for your chance to win a Samsung Galaxy Indulge phone”
3.) Enter as many times as you like. The winner will be chosen at random.
4.) Contestants MUST Be US Residents
5.) Contest ends at 11:59 PM PST on March 13, 2011.
5.) The grand prize winner will be announced on Monday, March 14, 2011 via Twitter and on BOSSIP.com!
GOOD LUCK!! Check out Part 2 of The G-Connection belowVodpod videos no longer available.
Flip the page for part 3 of the G-Connection!


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New Chief Executive Officer appointed for MTT David Moran has today been named as Chief Executive Officer of MTT, the specialist in mobile travel commerce and digital travel services.asics running shoes 2016 escolar The facility, which will be the largest of its kind in Europe, is on schedule to open later in 2015, creating another 1,000 permanent full time jobs. Musk has previously announced that the vehicle will be powered by the batteries produced in Tesla's new 'Gigafactory' – a huge plant in the middle of Nevada aimed at manufacturing a more sustainable and affordable future for electric cars.
OUR LOW PRICE PROMISEGREAT SERVICE JUST CALL USFREE UK DELIVERY OVER £50RETURNS WITH ZERO HASSLEPAYMENT TAKEN ON DISPATCHINTERNATIONALDELIVERY FROM JUST £8.asics shoes online store usa website Also with the expectations, of course, and also if things aren't going the right way with his experience he can help the youngsters. The old Defender was a clunky piece of machinery that took a lot of labour hours to build, and sales had fallen to as low as 15,000 – 20,000 a year.asics gel-cruz ladies trail walking shoes
Not only for festivals anymore, this classic style is perfect for teaming with mini skirts, summer dresses and jeans. ) September 30, 2013 BMW's future models 1 The new BMW M3 and M4 The brand new M3 and M4 will produce 430 BHP with a peak torque of 369lb ft. As for Google themselves, the deal would see them benefit from Ford's expertise in the mass manufacturing of cars and mean that they would avoid spending billions of dollars developing their own manufacturing methods to make vehicles.asics gel elite 2 volleyball shoes
Again, whether you fully believe Donaghy or not, he does provide a fascinating perspective into the world of refereeing that simply no one else can provide.


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In Oman, the port of Duqm is to commence the export of minerals as of February from its breakbulk terminal. The initial commodity will be dolomite, for which capacity exists to handle consignments of up to 50,000 tonnes. According to CEO Reggy Vermeulan, the terminal potentially could generate volumes of 5mt (million tonnes) as part of its first phase development, although this could be scaled up substantially in the future. He said that there is huge potential for mineral exports from Oman, which wishes to reduce its dependency on oil revenue.
The CEO explained that the port is working with Oman Railway ramping up the amount of mineral exports that could be brought into the port area or stored nearby. The two organizations have recently signed a memorandum of understanding, which will see a better connection and also the development of our support cluster on industrial land near the port.
“We will build a conveyor belt system and pre-staging areas to dramatically increase the capacity,” saidVermeulan.“Although the initial plan is to build capacity for 5mt, it can be quickly enhanced to 20mt or 30mt.”
Oman has various minerals that it can export, including limestone, for which India is a very important market, gypsum and silica sand.


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Last year at CES, BlackBerry unveiled the phone that would eventually become the KeyOne, the first smartphone released under the new management of TCL, which bought the rights to the company.
And while BlackBerry didn’t have any news about a follow-up for its flagship model at CES this year, the company did come with a pair of smaller announcements: US availability for the full touchscreen BlackBerry Motion, which was announced back in October, and a new bronze color for the KeyOne.
The Motion is set to hit the US as a GSM unlocked phone on January 12th, sold online through Amazon and Best Buy for $449.99. Spec wise, you’re getting a 5.5-inch display, a Snapdragon 625 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a 4,000mAh battery that BlackBerry notes is the largest ever put in a BlackBerry device. It still runs Nougat for now, but BlackBerry is promising an update to Oreo sometime this year.
The BlackBerry KeyOne Bronze Edition is a new colorway for the KeyOne, similar to the black model that the company released in October, which also has 4GB of memory and 64GB of internal storage. There is one new addition, in the form of dual SIM support. The KeyOne Bronze Edition is set to come out sometime in Q1 2018 in “select markets across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.”


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UNDATED (WSAU-Wheeler News) Wisconsin’s two U-S senators split their votes yesterday, when the Senate agreed to force online retailers to charge state sales taxes – just like brick-and-mortar stores have to do. The measure was passed 69-to-27.
Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin voted yes, and Republican Ron Johnson voted no. He said he favors a level playing field but the bill puts “too much of a burden on online retailers.” The bill now goes to the House, where observers say it faces tougher sledding. State revenue officials say Wisconsin would get an extra $95-million a year, once an Internet sales tax is fully implemented. Right now, only stores with a physical presence in a state must charge sales tax on Web purchases within that state.
Wisconsin shoppers are supposed to voluntarily report sales taxes on their income tax returns – but relatively few people do so. Sheboygan jeweler Alan Rudnick said the current situation puts him at a 5-percent cost disadvantage against Internet retailers who don’t have to charge the sales tax like he does.
Catalog retailer Miles Kimball of Oshkosh says it would be a headache to keep each state’s sales tax straight, and provide refunds to those who overpay the tax. Stores with less than a million dollars a year in online sales would be exempt from the proposed law.


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Last Updated Jul 4, 2011 12:27 PM EDT
There is no word on whether Everson will make everyone wear cowls and masks, as in Eyes Wide Shut. Although it is not unusual for companies to hear advice from marketing partners in confidence, Everson wants her meetings to take place in public venues such as the Association of National Advertisers' conference in October. In other words, she's ostentatiously holding a party to which you and most other people in the ad biz will not be invited. There will be 12 members of the "client council," whose invitations are already in the mail -- and they don't yet know that they're on the list. It's a virtual velvet rope.
The Facebook Ad Illuminati are likely to generate more ad dollars for the social network -- which has of late upped its game with advertisers. But one casualty of this success is likely to be consumer privacy. Facebook has been working assiduously to scrape the site for every byte of user data it can sell to advertisers, even though it is not obvious to Facebook's users that their lives are being constantly spied on by the company's biggest advertisers.
A lawsuit against 'Like'
This month, a lawsuit alleging Facebook illegally allows advertisers to track users' use of the "Like" button was filed in a California federal court. The case claims that the social network tells advertisers the identities of the people who click on their ads in violation of Facebook's terms of service.
Maintaining your privacy on Facebook is almost a full-time job. Every time Facebook updates its privacy options, default settings that users must adjust themselves kick in. Lifehacker recently identified 12 different sets of settings you need to adjust to stop Facebook from mining your data, from the obvious -- allowing only friends to see your photos -- to the Orwellian (you remembered to switch Facebook's facial recognition technology to "off" in your settings, right? That's not a joke. There's a guide to disabling facial recognition here.)
It's not just Facebook. Advertisers who may not feel bound by Facebook's rules are collecting information too, according to PCWorld:
... you don't have to buy user data from Facebook to obtain it. Some marketers plant a widget (a small app) at their Facebook page, and then track all of the people who click on the widget. And make no mistake that the companies that post quizzes, lists, and games on Facebook are indeed aggregating the personal data of everyone who agrees to their terms of service. Web marketers can acquire user data in various forms from them, too.Facebook ads 'misleading'
Even Facebook's regular display ads can be misleading, according to Forrester Research, because unlike Google's they do not display the URL to which a user will be directed if you click on them.
All of which goes to say that as Congress increasingly eyes online privacy issues, and as consumers become more aware of the information Facebook has taken from them (and the fact that they have not been compensated in cash for the loss of that valuable asset), it seems odd that Everson would structure her counsel along the lines of a Bilderberg-style international conspiracy.


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Colin Clements, global product line director, beside a 1966 MK1 screening machine. This was the sixth machine built and remains a permanent feature at the front of the Dungannon plant.
In 2016 Powerscreen marks half a century of serving the crushing and screening industry around the world. Established in 1966, Powerscreen has achieved its five-decade legacy through industry leadership, customer input and innovation.
Powerscreen was founded in 1966 under the name of Ulster Plant in Country Tyrone, Northern Ireland and today that is where the research, development and manufacturing of products continue. By the 1970's the Powerscreen name was born. When the founders set up Powerscreen in 1966 they pioneered the concept of mobile screening, taking the machines to the quarry face rather than the expensive process of moving the material to the machine. In 1969 Powerscreen exported its first machine to Sweden. Today Powerscreen has a true global presence, operating in worldwide scale in more than 80 countries. In 1966 Powerscreen employed eight people, now that figure has risen to 600 people producing a range of more than 30 machines.
Powerscreen started out from mobile machines in a sand pit to machine designs now serving quarry, mining, C&D and recycling industries globally. Powerscreen not only pioneered the mobile machine concept but also set new standards for many products and technologies that have become widely adopted in the industry, including the Chieftain and Warrior ranges of mobile screens. In 2015 Powerscreen launched the Warrior 600, making the Warriors the most comprehensive range of mobile scalping units in the industry, according to the manufacturer.
“From Ulster Plant to serving customers around the world today, Powerscreen is the story of teamwork. Our customers have trusted us and helped us to build and define the industry, as well as creating ways for people to work safely. It is through teamwork that we will continue to find new solutions and opportunities” said Colin Clements, Powerscreen product line director.
In the last 50 years, Powerscreen has gone above and beyond in its product development efforts, focusing on what customers need to be successful in their industries and applications — Powerscreen innovations are changing the market and setting the industry standard for quality, reliability and safety in crushing and screening equipment, according to the manufacturer.
Key to the success of the Powerscreen brand is the global distribution network — there are more than 120 distributors operating globally providing local service and support service to end users.
Pat McGeary, Blue Group chairman, said “Powerscreen is in my blood, I joined in 1968 when it was just a little local factory and today its part of my family's life. I am proud to have been part of the success story and to see the passion and dedication that was there when I joined is still there today.”
Today's top stories


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The Blackberry Bold 9700 series has always been pretty popular in the UK and now there are a couple of mobile providers who are offering good deals on the handset.
Carphone Warehouse is selling the phone for Now £279.99 was £299.95 Plus £10 top-up on the Pay As You Go plan. You can check it out at the Carephone Warehouse website.
Orange is also having a sale on the phone including the £10 top up but the phone is only £229.99. Check out Orange’s website for more details.


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Market expectations were for a 1.7% increase in April, according to economists at Royal Bank of Canada.
In its latest monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Friday, Statistics Canada said Manitoba was one of two provinces to see no change in their annual inflation rate from March to April.
"The modest core inflation we're seeing is probably the single, strongest argument the Bank of Canada has to do nothing", Porter said, adding that ongoing uncertainty over USA policy, particularly on trade, would be up there as well.
Trump welcomes Colombia's president to the White House
Mr Ryan said Congress needs to get the facts, but "it is obvious there are some people out there who want to harm the president". The investigation will also look into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
The Bank of Canada's "common" core rate was 1.3 percent in April, the "median" core rate was 1.6 percent and the "trim" measure was 1.3 percent.
Saskatchewan's annual inflation rate sped up to 1.4 per cent last month after rising just 0.6 per cent in March.
CPI median, which shows the median rate across the various components, edged down to 1.6 percent. Still, the downward pace moderated from the previous month's annual 1.9 percent drop. Prices were 1.6 per cent higher than a year earlier.
Flipkart, Amazon top LinkedIn's companies list
LinkedIn further said that numerous good employers have one thing in common - they reward their employees well. From leading tech multinationals to startups, 13 homegrown companies found place in the list.
The agency says total retail trade in March was almost $48.3 billion thanks to stronger sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers.
The gain in retail sales suggests that the economy is continuing to be supported by consumers, said Jimmy Jean, senior economist at Desjardins.
There was also a strong 3.1% increase in electronics sales to give a 11.2% annual gain.
Philadelphia 76ers: 2017 NBA Draft Lottery results
The Phoenix Suns, who had the second-worst record in the National Basketball Association this season, dropped to fourth overall. In an interview with ESPN's Ramona Shelburne , LaVar Ball , Lonzo's father, said, "Oh, he's going to be a Laker".
"It does appear that it will extend a bit into the second quarter", he said.


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Numlock News: February 15, 2019
By Walt Hickey
Have an excellent weekend! We’re off Monday for Presidents’ Day. See you Tuesday. In the meantime, check out my piece over at Marvel about their romance comics, it’s a lot of fun!
Billion With A “B”
The Federal Trade Commission is negotiating with Facebook over what is shaping up to be a multi-billion (billion with a 'b') dollar fine, in an unprecedented and momentous move to settle the company's many privacy lapses. For some perspective, right now the largest fine the FTC has ever imposed on a technology company was $22.5 million (million with an 'm') that Google paid to settle a consumer data security probe. This is a big deal for Facebook, an international data dragnet and precision advertising company that also operates a photo sharing and social networking feature. If talks break down, the FTC may go to the courts. Should Facebook fight it out there, it'd be the Oppenheimer-in-the-desert moment for big tech, as the FTC would plausibly gain broad new regulatory powers and a bad judgement for Facebook could result in a fine that might be existential for the company.
Not Very Neighborly
Amazon will claim a federal tax rebate of $129 million for 2018, essentially paying a federal tax rate of negative 1 percent. The company, which recently concluded it could not hack it in New York, made over $11 billion in 2018, yet will not pay any federal income taxes, but instead get a refund. In 2018, Amazon also didn't pay any federal taxes on $5.6 billion in profits for 2017. From 2011 to 2016, Amazon paid an effective rate of 11.4 percent.
Chicken Soup for the Soul
In 1993 the first of hundreds of Chicken Soup for the Soul books was released. Since then, Quartz has been able to catalog 276 books in the Chicken Soup Literary Universe, a publishing juggernaut of good vibes and ill-advised DARE-related verse. According to the analysis, 28 of those books (10 percent) were focused on teens, preteens, or kids, one in five were targeted at the souls of family members like "Mothers" or "Grandparents," 12 percent had a specific religious target audience, 10 percent a career track, and the rest were aimed at increasingly slim subsets of souls, like golfers, Canadians, country music fans, inmates or extremely specific animal aficionados.
Saffron is an inordinately expensive spice, and the Kashmir region grows the best stuff. The flower’s petals go in medicine, the yellow strands are discarded, but the red strands in the middle of the flower are the pure saffron. One flower produces three red strands. A gram of saffron is 350 strands. A kilogram of saffron requires 150,000 flowers. But lately the crop has been dipping: in 1997, 5,700 hectares of land produced just shy of 16 tonnes of saffron. A severe drought basically wiped out production in 2001, and the next 13 years notched an average 8.71 tonnes annually. In 2015 the crop was 9.6 tonnes off of 3,674 hectares, but production has yet again tanked, with output for the ensuing years less than 10 percent of 2015's figures. As is typical with “perfectly good system suddenly gets weird” stories, climate change is a suspect.
The greeting card industry is booming and is expected to bring in $933 million this Valentine's Day, up from $894 million in 2018, which are honestly staggering numbers. There's still some secrecy in the business —the best guesstimate we have for the number of cards sold annually is based on a 2012 report at 6.5 billion cards — but outside research estimated 3 percent revenue growth last year. The sentiment-on-cardstock biz is thriving thanks to young people who are sticking with the physical manifestations of affection even as the rest of their interpersonal life is exported to the cloud. Younger folks have stomached the rising prices by shelling out for fancier cards as a way to convey affection beyond liking, commenting or subscribing.
Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Last Sunday was all about New Zealand’s bumpu journey to becoming a tourism powerhouse featuring the wonderful Dan Kopf. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.
Put A Modestly-Priced Ring On It
A new poll finds that the median American spent 4 percent of pretax income on an engagement ring, which breaks down to two week's pay. The median payment for a ring was $1,900, and most spent $500 to $3,000 on an engagement ring. Still, you've got some big spenders — 7 percent of respondents paid over $10,000 for the ring — but at the end of the day the marketing campaign pushing three month's salary for an engagement ring is fairly obsolete.
Slime Bills Are Through The Roof!
Nickelodeon and its sibling brands like Nick Jr. are the crown jewel of Viacom, pulling in $729 million in ad revenue in 2018. Still, the company saw its audience aged 2 to 11 decline 24 percent in the fourth quarter. Similar declines were noted at Cartoon Network and Disney Channel, which saw decline of 37 percent and 30 percent in that period. This leaves those companies in a pickle, as you can't have a flagship youth brand if the only people still watching are a bunch of high people and kids who haven't heard of YouTube. That's one motivation for some fairly ambitious new programming efforts at Nickelodeon, namely a Paddington series, the IP rights to some Lego Movie characters, revivals of past Nick successes in the works, and most significantly SpongeBob SquarePants spinoffs.
Thank you so much for subscribing! If you're enjoying the newsletter, forward it to someone you think may enjoy it too! Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips, or feedback at email@example.com. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at firstname.lastname@example.org.


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One of the biggest transformations of Silicon Valley is how young companies finance themselves from cradle to (they hope) stock market riches. The transformation is not necessarily a good thing.
The poster child for startup investment oddities is a Florida company called Magic Leap Inc. You are forgiven if you've never heard of it. Magic Leap has been working for six years on computerized goggles that promise to superimpose virtual objects into people's field of vision.
Based on videos that Magic Leap has produced, the startup imagines a future in which an office worker could see a colleague's text message without looking at a smartphone or a computer screen and simultaneously cue up a three-dimensional virtual model of the sales projections she texted.
Other companies, including Apple Inc., have trumpeted the potential of such virtual-plus-real technology, but Magic Leap has been particularly astute at generating publicity and curiosity. Celebrities including Beyoncé have tried out demonstration versions of Magic Leap goggles.
But there are those who doubt that Magic Leap's technology will ever be as good as promised, or at least not anytime soon. So far the company's only products are its slick promotional YouTube videos. Yet Magic Leap is on track to collect more than $2.3 billion in investments if it sells the full amount of stock the company recently authorized for up to $1 billion. For comparison, from Facebook Inc.'s birth to its initial public offering in 2012, it needed about the same amount of capital.
Even during the current flush times in tech, it is unusual for a startup with zero revenue and no finished products to collect so much investment money. But Magic Leap is an extreme case of broader financing changes that started around 2010 as investors recovered from the financial crisis.
In general, the number of young companies collecting capital has grown modestly, but the amount of financing continues to hit fresh records. In other words, startup financiers are concentrating their bets on the most promising, and typically most capital-hungry, tech companies. This could magnify investor returns and help incubate the type of ambitious technologies that require a lot of money to build. Or the concentration of startup capital could blow up in everyone's faces.
The best snapshot of the change in startup financing is this: In 2012, about $41 billion was invested in more than 7,000 startups in the U.S., or an average of $5.2 million for each investment, according to figures from Pitchbook and the National Venture Capital Association. This year through Sept. 30, $61 billion in combined investments has been made in nearly 6,000 young companies, or an average of about $10.3 million each. (The picture outside the U.S. is similar.)
Both startups just getting off the ground and relatively mature companies like Uber Technologies Inc. that barely fit the definition of "startup" are getting larger checks than their counterparts did a few years ago. But the biggest change in startup investing has been the share of funding for a small number of superstar startups -- or companies that hope to become superstars.
Investments in U.S. startups that value the companies at $1 billion or more accounted for less than 1 percent of all startup investments this year through Sept. 30, according to the Pitchbook and NVCA figures. But those deals represented 22 percent of the total amount of money invested in young U.S. companies with venture-capital backing, compared with 4 percent in 2012. Recent big-ticket investments included more than $4.4 billion for office rental startup WeWork Cos., including funds used to purchase shares from existing stockholders.
These mega investments are a relatively novel development for startups, and they have effectively split Silicon Valley into the haves and have-nots. Many private technology companies have been forced to scale back their businesses and start managing for profits instead of straining to grow at all costs because they thought they could always hit up investors for fresh funds. Then there are the handful of superstars including Magic Leap, Uber, WeWork and Airbnb Inc. There seems to be no limit to investors' desire to thrust cash at them.
It might turn out to be smart to double down on the young companies with the most promise. And the availability of cash for the startup elite has enabled companies that could not have existed in prior Silicon Valley epochs. Without more than $15 billion in funding, Uber could not have become a globe-trotting giant. Magic Leap is cash-hungry because its goals are ambitious; it's trying to create its own hardware, software and electronic components for a technology that may become a foundation of future computing. Or maybe it won't.
Where there is ambition and investors with dollar signs in their eyes, there are also big risks. So far in the post-Facebook startup era, few mega-financed startups have justified the highest hopes of their incubation stage. Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., for example, has had a rocky ride this year as a newly public company. The constant chaos at Uber has made that company look less like a sure hit than it once did.
Silicon Valley's elite have been celebrated like kings with cash bulging in every ermine pocket. Few have yet proved worthy of the adulation.


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Google is busy rolling out a number of new tools from its DoubleClick Internet advertising subsidiary, and at least one on the horizon should pique the interests of mobile developers and marketers.
The Internet giant revealed it is investing in a new HTML5 creative development tool for building interactive Web experiences with consumers, such as Web sites and applications.
Dubbed Google Web Designer, the service is meant to help digital advertisers connect with consumers across multiple displays, regardless of the device.
Neal Mohan, vice president of display advertising at Google, cited in a blog post on Tuesday that "90 percent of multiple device owners switch between screens to complete tasks."
Thus, this is where the support for standards-based HTML5 technology comes in.
The Google Web Designer will be integrated with DoubleClick Studio and AdMob, further tying Web developers to Google platforms.
Other updates for DoubleClick include a new and upcoming campaign manager for the ad serving process as well as the integration of the social marketing startup Wildfire,.
There isn't an official release date yet except that it should roll out in the "coming months." The last piece of good news for now is that the service will be available for free.


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A while ago Dell started shipping systems with AMD processor but the firm announced this week that they will de-emphasize AMD systems because of the disappointing performance of the Barcelona and Phenom processors:
McConnell says that share gains versus AMD are “rapidly accelerating” in both notebooks and servers. “Our contacts now expect Intel’s overall processor share to move from 75% to 80% currently to 80% to 85% in the first half of 2008,” he writes. McConnell calculates that every 250 basis points of market share boost revenue by $815 million and profits by 3 cents a share.
According to McConnell, Dell (DELL) plans to “de-emphasize” the use of AMD processors in 2008, “due to the disappointing performance of Barcelona and Phenom, poor availability and AMD’s decision to deliver initial shipments of its new Phenom product line to the channel first rather than to OEMs.”


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Some rumors are better than others, particularly those vetted by the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal.
After several weeks of reports and speculation over Apple preparing for a fall release of the iPhone 5, the world’s business publication of record is reporting that a next-generation iPhone will come out some time in the third quarter (which we are currently in and goes thru September).
The meat of the report is as follows:
“According to some suppliers of components to Apple, the new version of the iPhone is expected to be thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4 and sport an 8-megapixel camera. One person said the new iPhone will operate on Qualcomm Inc.'s wireless baseband chips. The current iPhone 4 uses memory chips made by Samsung Electronics Co. and baseband chips from German chip maker Infineon Technologies AG, according to a report by market-research firm iSuppli Corp. Officials at both companies declined to comment.”Other notable nuggets from the story:
-- Apple expects to sell more than 25 million units by year-end
-- An initial shipment of a “few million units” will occur in August
-- All timing bets are off if Apple’s contracted manufacturer, Taiwan-based Hon Hai, can’t deliver according to Apple’s expectations
Stay tuned for more news, analysis and rumor curation related to the inevitable release of a next-generation iPhone in the days, weeks and months ahead.


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On October 18th 2019, Inspire Brands announced that they finally completed the acquisition of Jimmy John’s.
After this big purchase, Inspire Brands now holds over 11,200 restaurants in 16 countries. Their holdings make over $14 billion in sales each year. These figures are enough to make them the 4th biggest restaurant company in the United States.
James North, a former employee of JJ’s holds the position of CEO. While Jimmy John Founder of the business now holds the position of advisor on the team.
How They Started
Jimmy John’s had one of the most humble beginnings. The founder only started with a $25,000 investment in 1993 just after graduating from his high school in the second last Sept.
He had initially planned to start a hotdogs stand, but since his capital was not enough to start that, he settled with a sandwich stand. But with a unique business model, he soon made his business a success. Franchises started being sold, and the business reported 2000 franchises in 2014. They are expected to have over 2,800 franchises by now.
Jimmy sold his business to Roark Capital in two phases. In the first phase, he held on to 35% of the shares and sold the rest to Roark, his business was valued at $3 billion. In 2019, he sold the rest of his shares to Roark as well, completing their acquisition of the business.
A Word About Inspire Brands
As already mentioned, Inspire Brands is one of the leading restaurant companies operating in the United States. It is a subsidiary of Roark Capital, and was found in 2018.
Roark Capital Mostly invests in franchise and multi-unit businesses. Roark currently invests 73 different businesses since its inception. All of the holding of Roark make over $37 billion in sales each year.
Their business empire is spread across 81 countries, 50 states and 36,000 locations.


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The American authorities detained Russian Kirill Firsov on suspicion of theft of personal data of California residents for further sale with the aim of using false identities. This was stated in court materials posted on the electronic database of the Southern District of California.
California Southern District Attorney Office calls Firsova the administrator of the platform deer.io. The Russian was detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York “on Saturday, March 7, 2020.” The prosecutor’s office asked the court to classify the materials of the case before March 9, but Magistrate Judge Allison Goddard on March 9 decided to declassify these materials.
These materials include written evidence from the FBI agent Brian Nilson. According to him, Firsov “without the permission of the issuer of access to the devices of clients of a certain company, found out the names and passwords of account holders, which were used to receive cash, goods, services and other valuable things”. From the point of view of the FBI agent, the Russian did this, knowing that this personal data will be used by deer.io users in the future in order to steal funds and produce false identities.
The FBI claims that the cyber platform deer.io is “based in Russia and allows criminals to access this platform’s online store for the sale of criminal goods and services.” According to the FBI, this resource has been operating since October 2013 and has more than 24 thousand virtual retail outlets with a total sales of $17 million. Firsov is accused of being a “Russian hacker and administrator of deer.io, not only he managed this platform, but also advertised it on other cyber forums that served hackers. ”
According to the materials, the FBI analyzed an assortment of about 250 deer.io virtual retail outlets and concluded that it was mainly about stolen personal and financial information, including years of birth, address of residence, passwords, social security card numbers of US citizens. Affected individuals and organizations in Europe and the United States, including the Southern District of California.
The materials note that on March 4, the FBI, without revealing itself, made a test purchase on deer.io of the data of the owners of about 1.1 thousand accounts for $20, nominated in bitcoins. 249 of these accounts were hacked and belonged to customers of the aforementioned company headquartered in San Diego, California. It is a legal operator of interactive video games.
It is important to mention that Deer.io is working fine and is not seized by F.B.I because they can’t seize russia based business.


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Today, paralyzed people are already testing such applied sciences. Called mind-laptop interfaces, they translate intentions into motion.
Facebook’s dramatic move to dam Australian news-sharing has escalated a broader battle against international regulation. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates mentioned social media silencing corresponding to Twitter’s lifetime ban on former US President Donald Trump risk leading to even more divisiveness. Bitcoin fell sharply on Monday after surging to its latest record high a day earlier as a selloff in global equities curbed threat appetite.
Forwarders are viewing traditional backbone working techniques not as a one-stop technology shop, but rather as a vehicle to attach complementary instruments that help them serve shipper prospects higher. Cross-border carriers lack a load board analogous to the widely-used instruments obtainable to drivers on US domestic strikes, something the broker and technology provider Forager is making an attempt to deal with.
Social media firms use news to attract clients and have been accused by news publishers of not sharing enough promoting income with them. Apple right now eliminated Parler, the choice social media platform in style with conservatives, from its app retailer on Saturday. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Facebook indicated a compromise had been reached on key aspects of a legislation that may drive digital giants to pay news firms for content. Bharti Airtel on Monday stated it will meet international fastened revenue traders on or after February 23, publish which the corporate will take a last choice on the issuance of foreign foreign money bonds, subject to market situations. British culture minister Oliver Dowden will meet Facebook this week to boost London’s concerns, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said on Monday, after the tech company blocked news feeds in Australia final week. Our full-service world marketing program delivers gross sales-prepared leads.
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“My e mail tackle, my notes app and my search-engine historical past are extra reflective of who I am as a person — my identification — than our neural information may ever be,” she says. We enable our smartphones to watch the place we go, what time we fall asleep and even whether we’ve washed our arms for a full 20 seconds.
That viewpoint has gained acceptance in the South American nation of Chile. It is now considering whether to arrange new protections to guard neural data so that corporations cannot get at your knowledge with out your permission. Those details are more powerful than brain information, says Anna Wexler. She’s an ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Google And Levi’s Connected Jacket Helps People With Disabilities
Omni International’s technology is used to separate virus from the saliva or mucous samples collected from members of the Tech community. Georgia Tech laptop science researchers are collaborating with social scientists from GSU because of a brand new $180K grant. New membrane technology might cut back carbon emissions and energy intensity related to oil refining. Flexible massive-area organic photodiodes can now compete in efficiency with standard silicon photodiode technology. Israel based mostly attire manufacturer Delta Galil Industries is enhancing its digital platform with new net software program together with digital showrooms and remote gross sales capabilities.
A bracelet studded with electrodes can detect tiny nerve impulses on the wrist. It picks up the conduct of nerve cells that control muscles, to eavesdrop on alerts that transfer from the mind to hand muscles. The bracelet allows customers to play chess in a digital room, management a hand avatar and kind with tiny actions from inside a pocket, as an example, without a keyboard, mouse or touch screen. Ethicists, scientists and everyday people are grappling with the implications of recent technologies that permit outsiders inside the thoughts. Attend this video symposium with Sean Wisdom, Global Director of Mobility Solutions, and find out about how you can harness powerful new merchandise to mobilize your corporation potential. The pandemic had lots of adverse results, however it also resulted in some unexpected advantages for enterprise technology leaders and groups.
At the same time, individuals share digital breadcrumbs on-line in regards to the diets we try, what TV exhibits we binge and the tweets we love. Thin tendrils laced with lots of or thousands of electrodes will unfold out within the mind to listen in on — and maybe even stimulate — nerve cells . Other labs are testing implanted electrodes in individuals with paralysis. For now, corporations have solely our behavior — our likes, our clicks, our buy histories — to build eerily correct profiles of us. “With this neural information gleaned from neurotechnology, it will not be a guess anymore,” Yuste says. Companies may have the real thing, straight from your brain.


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An IPO has valued Irish travel website Hostelworld at €245 million following its dual flotation on the Dublin and London stock exchanges.
According to the Irish Times, Hostelworld issued over 71 million shares at €1.85 each. The move is expected to raise €173.7 million in net proceeds for the company.
Fergal Mooney, Hostelworld chief executive, said: “The IPO will further raise our already strong brand awareness in our growing and worldwide marketplace, enhance the group’s profile with investors, business partners and customers and enable access, should it be required, to capital markets to support future growth.”
Hostelworld, which also owns Hostels.com and HostelBookers.com, was originally founded by tech entrepreneur Ray Nolan who sold it to US private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in 2009 for €202.5 million.
Nolan, who received €100 million from the deal, is also the founder of workplace social media site Worky.com and e-tail solutions site XSellCo.


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One of my best friends from high school, Stephanie, died from breast cancer two years ago. She had battled the disease for years and just when things began to positively come together in her life, it came back with a vengeance and killed her.
This being October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I thought of Stephanie and the many breast cancer campaigns now in full swing. Are they really helping? Do we need more action and less awareness? Compounding these questions is the release of a new study by M Booth's Mtelligence research and insights group (full disclosure: I am employed by M Booth). The study suggests that awareness campaigns are falling flat and marketers should dig deeper to make a more meaningful impact in the breast cancer fight.
The study surveyed patients, survivors, caregivers, friends and family, and those not personally affected by breast cancer and found that 78 percent say they are not learning anything new from October brand campaigns. What makes this even more significant is that breast cancer patients and survivors are eager for others to better understand their highly personal and intricate journey, from diagnosis to treatment to life post-treatment.
While some brands are doing some powerful work, many campaigns are generic and miss what people want most--demonstrable action towards a cure or vaccine, and support for the challenges faced by those affected.
From my perspective, if companies want to support breast cancer initiatives, they need to understand that it's a truly personal and individualized disease. To be effective and make an impact in today's socially focused world, they need to know their audience and speak directly to them. A good example is my client Weight Watchers new program. More than affixing a pink ribbon to products sold in their meeting rooms, they recently launched Project L.I.F.T - Live Inspired. Fight Together. In partnership with the American Cancer Society, it specifically provides women surviving breast cancer with a community to lean on and resources to help lift their minds, bodies and souls and achieve the best holistic health possible.
Next year will be the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Pink Ribbon... Let's hope it will not be another 25 years until breast cancer is completely eradicated. We owe that to Stephanie, and to all those who are still fighting.


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Women continue to be substantially underrepresented in the corporate pipeline, and gender equality remains a key issue in business. Despite a plethora of evidence demonstrating that companies are more lucrative when more women are in the C-suite, most businesses still maintain a gender divide.
In the twenty-first century, the new tech industry is rapidly expanding. And the market for this industry is growing by the day. As a result, a fast-growing industry must attract and utilise its workforce effectively and efficiently.
When you started your job search, perhaps you imagined it would take a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months, to land a job. But instead, your job search has gone on longer than expected. Here are 7 mistakes that may just be costing you that job:


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Need to find a condom? There’s an app for that
Launched ahead of World AIDS day, a new Apple iPhone application helps people find their nearest condom dispenser in two US cities. The launch of iCondom in the USA follows the launch of an app for Paris and Marseilles.
The iPhone app uses the iPhone’s geo-location facilities to find and direct users to more than 200 locations in New York where free condoms/ femidoms together with lubricants are available. The locations includes bars, restaurants, night clubs and hospitals. A further 140 locations are listed for Washington DC.
Users are invited to suggest locations missed out to ensure that as many are listed as possible.
The application is being offered free in the iTunes store for World AIDS day.


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Motorola announced today that a new product will be launched in China on December 15th. The Weibo teaser features two smartphones: one with a centered punchhole in the display and another without. The latter could be an under-display camera version. Motorola did not explicitly mention the product name. But since the Edge X30 was launched around the same time last year, the Lenovo-owned brand could unveil the Moto X40 next Wednesday. The international version will be called the Motorola Edge 40 Pro.
Motorola hasn’t revealed anything about the X40/Edge 40 Pro yet. At least the chipset is already known thanks to an AnTuTu benchmark – Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 CPU takes over the drive. A Motorola smartphone with the model code XT2301-5, which is said to be the X40, also appeared at TENAA with pictures and some technical data. Including a curved 6.67 inch FullHD+ display, 8/12/18 GB of RAM and 128/256/512 GB of storage.
Motorola Edge 40 Pro / Moto X40 renders
The XT2301-5 features a triple camera setup on the rear, with a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide, and a 12-megapixel telephoto. There’s an under-display fingerprint sensor and a battery rated at 4,950mAh. However, another variant with a nominal capacity of 4,450 mAh has already appeared.
A Moto X40 Pro / Edge 40 Ultra appeared last week in the renders above. However, it is unclear whether it will also be on stage on December 15th. More teasers should shed some light on the matter before the official event.


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Two supermarket retailers are among nation’s top 10 CEOs
The chief executives of two regional supermarket chains rank among the nation’s highest-rated CEOs.
Charles C. Butt, CEO of H-E-B, and Colleen Wegman, CEO of Wegmans Food Markets, were the only retail chief executives to crack the top 20 of Glassdoor’s annual Employee Choice Awards, which honor the 100 highest rated CEOs of large companies across the United States. Butt ranked No. 7, while Wegman ranked No. 9. (The No. 1 position was held by Zoom Video Communications’ Eric S. Yuan.)
The Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Awards are based on the input of employees who voluntarily provide anonymous feedback, by completing a company review, about their CEOs leadership, along with insight into their job, work environment and employer over the past year.
When employees submit reviews about their employer on Glassdoor, they are asked to rate several factors tied to their employment experience, including sentiment around their CEO’s leadership, in addition to rating workplace attributes like senior management, among others. Specifically, when rating their CEO on Glassdoor, employees are asked to report whether they approve, disapprove or are neutral about the job their CEO is doing.
To see the complete list, click here.


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European Commission hits Intel with new fine over antitrust findings
What a difference a year makes: in June '22 it was asking for half a billion in interest back after a successful appeal
Updated The European Commission has re-imposed a fine of €376.36 million (about $400 million) on chipmaker Intel for abusing its dominant position in the x86 processor market. The move is the latest twist in an antitrust saga that has been now running for more than two decades.
According to the Commission, the fine is in response to previously established anticompetitive practices by the silicon giant, aimed at excluding competitors from the market in breach of EU competition rules.
Intel demands $625m in interest from Europe on overturned antitrust fineREAD MORE
The original fine handed to Intel in 2009 was for €1.06 billion ($1.2 billion), based on findings that the company had given incentives to PC makers to use its CPUs instead of those from rivals, or else delay the launch of specific products containing rival chips.
These incentives consisted of wholly or partially hidden rebates for using Intel chips, or payments in order to delay launching products with rival chips, amounting to so-called “naked restrictions.”
It ultimately goes back to complaints from rival CPU maker AMD in 2000 and again in 2003 that Intel was engaging in anticompetitive conduct by offering rebates to vendors to favor Intel components.
Intel fought the decision, but an appeal by the Silicon Valley outfit to have it overturned was initially denied in 2014. Then in 2022, the EU General Court partially annulled the 2009 ruling by the Commission, in particular the findings related to Intel's conditional rebates, and went on to nix the fine imposed on the company in its entirety.
The decision to drop the fine was based on an argument from Intel that the Commission had not properly applied tests for determining if the rebates and payments had in fact restricted competition.
Always one to push its luck, Intel then asked the General Court to award it compensation from the EU for all the inconvenience.
However, the General Court had also confirmed that Intel's "naked restrictions" amounted to an abuse of dominant market position under EU competition rules, and so the Commission then reopened its administrative procedures in order to determine a fine against Intel based on those findings.
The result is the decision today to impose a financial penalty on Intel that applies only to those "naked restrictions." According to the Commission, these took place between November 2002 and December 2006 and comprised payments from Intel to three computer manufacturers (HP, Acer and Lenovo) to halt or delay the launch of specific products containing rival x86 processors, and to limit the sales channels available to these products.
- Intel CTO suggests using AI to port CUDA code to – surprise! – Intel chips
- Core blimey, Intel's answer to AMD and Ampere's cloudy chips has 288 of them
- Intel slaps forehead, says I got it: AI PCs. Sell them AI PCs
- Intel appeals billion euro fine
The lower fine of €376.36 million imposed with today's decision reflects the narrower scope of the infringement that took place compared to the 2009 decision, the Commission said.
Intel, it seems, was cognizant of the possibility that it could still face some kind of penalty, as it noted in its annual report earlier this year: "Given the procedural posture and the nature of this proceeding, we are unable to make a reasonable estimate of the potential loss or range of losses, if any, that might arise from this matter."
We asked Intel for its reaction to the news and if it intends to appeal the decision, and will update this article if we receive a response. ®
Updated at 15.44 UTC on September 22, 2023, to add:
An Intel spokesperson sent us a statement:
"We are reviewing today’s decision and fine, which follows from the European General Court’s 2022 vindication of Intel in the key contentions of the case, resulting in the return to Intel of the original 2009 fine of 1.06 billion Euros. This decision relates to the smaller part of the original 2009 European Commission Decision. While we are disappointed in a fine of this amount, we continue to focus on our future investments in the EU, and on cooperating with the EC in helping advance Europe’s semiconductor industry."