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In case you haven’t see this exciting news over the past few days!
Legacy Family Tree Webinars has announced the addition of closed captioning to its services. This includes my November 2018 webinar, Railroad Records and Railroad History: Methods for Tracking.
From their press release: “Implemented as a full human-curated transcription via synced subtitles, closed captioning is now available as an option for all live and members-only webinar recordings released since May 1,2018. In addition, the most popular 50 webinars on the platform and all MyHeritage-specific webinars have been captioned. Legacy will add captioning to all new webinars going forward.
We are committed to providing the best genealogy and DNA education for all,including people who are hard of hearing,” said Geoff Rasmussen, founder and host of Legacy Family Tree Webinars. “Captioning is an excellent way to make online education more accessible, and is also a benefit to non-native English speakers who struggle with spoken English but have an easier time with written English.
Legacy has exciting plans for 2019, which include the hosting of webinars in non-English languages as well as the translation of English captions to select foreign languages.
When we acquired Legacy last year, we promised to invest resources to improve the webinar platform and increase its reach, while maintaining its high quality and unique character”, said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “The addition of closed captioning makes good on this promise and, with translated captioning coming up soon, will help make the webinars accessible to millions of people in Europe and other countries, true to MyHeritage’s goal of making genealogy and DNA testing available to huge consumer audiences worldwide”.
To access closed captioning, click on the blue CC icon in the lower right-hand side of the video you choose to view. 207 webinars are already captioned! Those from the MyHeritage live 2018 conference in Norway are already captioned.
To access the closed captioning requires a subscription to the webinars. The low cost of $49.95 for one year of unlimited access to all the 800+ webinars.
This post includes affiliate links.
© 2018, Paula Stuart-Warren. All rights reserved.


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Buick launches Avenir sub-brand
Buick will launch a sub-brand, Avenir, to highlight higher trim levels of each model, much as GMC has done with Denali.
Such sub-brands help differentiate certain models with more upscale cues and set a higher sticker price that can boost profits.
Distinguishing features of the Avenir packages will include three-dimensional mesh grilles, larger-diameter wheels and certain exterior trim finishes. As for interior elements, Avenir models will showcase higher-grade materials, unique seats and an Avenir script identification.
Avenir is a French word for "future" that was the name of the concept car Buick showed at the 2015 North American International Auto Show. That vehicle served as a guidepost for Buick designers in creating these defining features.
"Avenir will be Buick's signature, the highest expression of the luxury experience we're delivering now and in the future," said Duncan Aldred, vice president of global Buick sales, service and marketing, in a statement.
►Related:Striking concepts define Buick's past and future
More details about Avenir's availability on each model, as well as pricing, will be disclosed later this year.
Buick sales in the U.S. totaled 148,845 this year through August, flat from a year earlier, but it is in the process of launching two new models, the Envision SUV and the LaCrosse sedan. It sells about three times as many vehicles in China — about 990,000 in 2015 — as it sells in the U.S.
Contact Greg Gardner: 313-222-8762 or email@example.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregGardner12

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Challenged by a still-uncertain economy, technology companies are increasing their marketing budgets by a cautious 1.7% this year, according to the “2012 CMO Tech Marketing Benchmark Study” from International Data Corp.
IDC's 10th annual forecast, released to clients Sept. 25, was based on a survey of 91 senior marketers at technology companies, conducted between May and August.
The marketers who participated in the survey work at tech companies with an average revenue of $7.5 billion.
“Marketers continue to try to get the funding they need in a slow-growth industry against a backdrop of uncertainty,” said Rich Vancil, group VP-executive advisory strategies at IDC, during a webcast with IDC clients. “Management is unwilling to turn up the investment in marketing until they see more revenue growth.”
Tech marketing budgets hit a low point in 2009, when they decreased by 8.3% in the wake of the financial crisis. In 2010, tech marketing budgets were up 3.7% over the previous year, and last year they rose 3.5%.
“There is a lowering overall, year over year, and we believe it represents caution companies are feeling about their futures,” said Kathleen Schaub, VP-research, IDC's CMO Advisory Service.
However, she added, “There is quite a bit of difference in the vendor sectors—the success story is clearly software. Software companies are investing more in marketing, and there seems to be more confidence by software vendors.”
Software companies will increase their marketing budgets an average 5.2% this year, while hardware vendors will trim their budgets an average 0.5% and services companies will cut them an average 3.7%, IDC found.
Software companies also have the highest marketing budget ratio (marketing spending as a percent of total company revenue) at 3.9%, compared with 2.0% for hardware companies and 0.5% for services companies.
“This is a story about marketing transformation,” Schaub said. “A lot of companies are retooling their products and are pulling back [marketing budgets] as they are rethinking their portfolio. The thinking is: Why invest in the current portfolio when they are going through this transformation.”
IDC also asked tech marketers about their budget allocations. This year, only 9.9% of marketing budgets will be spent on traditional advertising, down from 13.4% last year.
Digital marketing will make up 29.2% of marketing budgets, up from 26.4% last year.
Event spending will account for 20.5% of the mix, up from 16.6%; direct marketing will make up 6.9%, down from 9.6% last year. All other areas, including analyst relations, PR, and marketing support and sales tools, will comprise 33.5%.
Within digital spending, the top areas of investment this year are: display ads (making up 23.6% of the digital budget), followed by company websites (17.4%), search ads (15.9%), marketing automation (14.9%), email marketing (13.6%), digital events (4.5%), search engine optimization (5.8%), social networks (3.7%) and other websites (0.6%).
“There is more emphasis on digital ads and events this year,” Schaub said. “As companies lean in closer to the customer and do more solutions marketing, events tend to be a default, go-to activity.”
IDC also examined the amount of time it takes to create a customer, from the first contact with a prospect to the close of sale.
The average length of time in the pipeline remained unchanged this year at 19 months, although the amount of time spent in the first phase—interacting with prospects—lengthened to 3.5 months this year from 1.8 months last year.
“Vendors are meeting buyers earlier in the pipeline,” Schaub said. “We're seeing a shift into more "pull' media. Companies are doing more thought-leadership campaigns and are spending more time at the top of the funnel nurturing leads.”
The survey also found that marketers are spending less time at the lower part of the funnel converting initial contacts into marketing qualified leads. This year, the average amount of time spent converting a target into a marketing qualified lead is 2.4 months, down from 4.1 months last year.


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John McAfee: I'll Hack San Bernardino Terrorist's iPhone
Cybersecurity expert John McAfee said on Fox Business Network today that he'll help unlock an iPhone that once belonged to one of the San Bernardino terrorists.
McAfee agreed with tech giants Google and Microsoft that Apple should not comply with the FBI's request that the company create a backdoor to the iPhone.
The Justice Department filed a motion today to compel Apple to go along with the request.
McAfee said on The Intelligence Report with Trish Regan that Apple is being asked by the FBI to alter its operating system to allow a "backdoor to all encryption" on iPhones.
"We are human beings. Even if only one person in the FBI has that backdoor, I promise you, soon 100 people will have it and soon it will be outside the FBI. This is the way the world works," he said.
McAfee explained that it would take about three weeks to crack this one terrorist's phone, joking that if he can't do it, he'll "eat his shoe" on Neil Cavuto's show.
Regan argued that the backdoor could potentially allow the FBI to prevent catastrophic terror attacks in the future.
McAfee said he has no issue with Apple opening up just that one phone.
"Why don't they just crack that one phone? That's the phone they want. They're asking Apple to give them the ability to crack every Apple cell phone in existence," he said, arguing that "backdoor" technology always falls into the wrong hands.


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On the rise
Shares of Vancouver-based Zymeworks Inc. (ZYME-N), a developer of antibody therapies for cancer, soared following news of an approach from investment firm All Blue Capital with a US$773-million acquisition offer.
In a regulatory filing late on Thursday, All Blue said it had made a non-binding offer for US$10.50 per share in cash, which represents a 116-per-cent premium to Wednesday’s closing price of US$4.86.
There is no certainty that Zymeworks, which carries roughly US$65-million of debt, will negotiate a deal, people familiar with the matter said. The company unsuccessfully engaged with potential buyers last year, the sources added, requesting anonymity.
Zymeworks confirmed in a release late Thursday it had received “an unsolicited, non-binding proposal,” but no formal offer yet from All Blue Falcons for US$10.50 per share in cash. The company said the board would “carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the company and all Zymeworks shareholders.”
The offer from Blue Falcons is one of the earliest examples of what many industry watchers predict will blossom into a full-blown trend later this year: private capital firms, which are sitting on record amounts of committed capital, offering to privatize publicly traded technology firms whose stocks have been beaten down in recent months.
In the filing, All Blue said it is currently in talks with potential co-investors and financing partners for the proposed acquisition.
Zymeworks develops antibody treatments for different types of cancer and is currently working on clinical trials for a number of its products. It has repeatedly missed earnings estimates over the past few quarters and its shares have lost about 84 per cent of their market value over the past 12 months.
- Sean Silcoff
During the quarter, global crude prices soared to their highest in nearly 14 years as sanctions on major oil exporter Russia over its invasion of Ukraine fueled concerns about already tight supplies.
Imperial, which is majority-owned by Exxon Mobil Corp, said its quarterly gross upstream production averaged 380,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day (boepd), down from 432,000 boepd a year earlier when it recorded its highest first-quarter production in 30 years.
The Canadian oil company said its production took a hit from extreme cold weather and unplanned downtime at Kearl, Imperial’s huge oil sands mine in northern Alberta.
Its refinery throughput rose 9.6 per cent to 399,000 barrels per day, boosted by higher demand for fuels and other refined products as pandemic restrictions started to ease late in the quarter.
Imperial posted net earnings of $1.17-billion, or $1.75 per share, from $392-million, or 53 cents per share, a year ago. The company said this was its highest first-quarter earnings in over 30 years.
The company also said it will launch a substantial issuer bid within the next two weeks to buy back up to $2.5 billion of its common shares.
Imperial’s results mirror those of its rival Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE-T). Cenovus posted a seven-fold jump in quarterly profit that surpassed Wall Street estimates and nearly tripled its dividend.
Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. (FFH-T) turned positive in afternoon trading in the wake of reporting its net income attributable to shareholders plunged to US$125.5-million in the first quarter, in part due to a loss on investments.
The Toronto-based insurance company says it earned US$4.49 per diluted share, compared with US$28.91 per share or US$806-million a year earlier.
The results included US$214.4-million in losses on investments, compared with a gain of US$908.7-million in the first quarter of 2021. Fairfax says it had US$262.9-million in net gains on common stocks, but had US$494.1-million in unrealized losses on bonds due to rising interest rates.
Gross premiums written up increased 21.9 per cent to US$6.62-billion while net premiums rose 27.8 per cent to US$5.3-billion.
Revenues for the three months ended March 31 were US$5.98-billion, down from nearly US$6 billion in the year-ago period.
Fairfax was expected to earn US$3.96 per share on US$6.15-billion in revenues, according to financial data firm Refinitiv.
Pot producer Hexo Corp. (HEXO-T) rose after it named Charlie Bowman as its acting chief executive officer on Friday, replacing Scott Cooper who is stepping down after just six months into the job.
In February, the company had said it would refresh its board as part of a deal with activist shareholder Adam Arviv and his fund Kaos Capital.
Mr. Bowman had previously served as Hexo’s acting chief operating officer and general manager of the company’s U.S operations.
The company also appointed Julius Ivancsits as the acting Chief Financial Officer, effective May 16.
Mr. Cooper took the helm from Hexo’s co-founder Sebastien St-Louis in October last year, who, according to media reports, was ousted from his role after an investor alleged the company had “not acted in the best interest of its shareholders” under him.
On the decline
Calgary-based pipeline operator TC Energy Corp. (TRP-T) was down after it reported quarterly profit that narrowly beat estimates on Friday, helped by rising demand for its energy transport services as oil and gas prices surged after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Canada is studying ways to increase pipeline utilization to boost crude exports as Europe seeks to reduce its dependence on Russian oil, the country’s natural resources minister said last month.
“The global environment continues to be complex, representing an urgent need to develop greater energy security. Now more than ever, we understand the importance of North America’s role in securing global energy supply,” François Poirier, chief executive officer of TC Energy, said in a statement.
The pipeline operator said its U.S. natural gas pipelines reached average flows of 30 billion cubic feet per day (bcfpd) in the quarter, up 5 per cent from last year, which include an all-time daily system delivery record of nearly 35 bcf in January.
Around a quarter of the U.S. LNG export volumes travel through company’s natural gas pipelines in the country, TC said.
The company’s liquids pipelines unit posted a profit of $272-million, compared with a year-ago loss of $2.51-billion, while earnings at its Canadian natural gas pipelines rose marginally.
Net income attributable to common shares stood at $358-million, or 36 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31, compared with a loss of $1.1-billion, or $1.1 per share, a year earlier.
In the year-ago quarter, TC took $2.2-billion in impairment charges related to the suspension of its Keystone XL pipeline project.
On comparable basis, the company posted a profit of $1.12 per share, compared with estimates of $1.11 per share, according to Refinitiv IBES.
TFI International Inc. (TFII-T) reversed course after it more than doubled its profits in its first quarter as surging demand for consumer items, raw materials and manufacturing components fuels growth across the shipping industry.
Alain Bedard, chairman and CEO of Canada’s largest trucking company, says TFI was able to seize on “favourable trends” across its segments, which range from logistics to courier service.
TFI says net income jumped 121 per cent to US$147.7-million in the quarter ended March 31 from $66.9-million in the same period a year earlier.
Revenue rose 91 per cent to US$2.19-billion from US$1.15-billion last year, bolstered by TFI’s US$800-million acquisition last April of TForce Freight, the massive transporter of smaller packages and cargo previously known as UPS Freight.
Adjusted diluted earnings jumped to US$1.68 per share last quarter from 77 US cents per share in 2021, blowing past analyst expectations of US$1.21 per share.
The improved earnings come despite a range of hurdles faced by the trucking sector including a dire labour shortage and high fuel prices.
West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. (WFG-T) declined after saying its net profit soared 64 per cent from a year ago to US$1.09-billion in its latest quarter on higher revenues despite significant transportation and mill challenges in B.C.
The Vancouver-based company said it earned US$10.25 per diluted share in the first quarter, up from US$6.96 per share or US$665-million a year earlier.
Revenues for the three months ended March 31 were US$3.11-billion, up 33 per cent from US$2.3-billion in the first quarter of 2021.
West Fraser was expected to earn US$9.45 per share on US$2.93-billion of revenues, according to financial data firm Refinitiv.
Chief executive Ray Ferris said the challenges that were exacerbated by Canadian winter weather were offset by continued strong demand.
However, the company said demand for new home construction and wood building products could be reduced by rising interest rates.
“While we continue to monitor rising mortgage rates and the potential risk to demand for new home construction and our wood building products, fundamentals for housing and repair and remodelling activity appear favourable,” he said in a news release.
Auto parts maker Magna International Inc. (MG-T) slid after it lowered its annual profit forecast on Friday as strict COVID-19 lockdowns in China, rising inflation and raw material costs are set to pressure vehicle sales.
Magna, which counts Toyota Motor Corp and General Motors Co as its customers, also cut its light vehicle production forecast for the year in North America and Europe as semiconductor worries continue to persist.
“Due to current geopolitical events and COVID-19 lockdowns in China, industry estimates for vehicle production have been lowered, and we are facing inflation and commodity headwinds,” Magna Chief Executive Officer Swamy Kotagiri said.
Fresh lockdowns in China as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have reignited supply snarls that were easing over recent months.
Industrial firms including GE, chipmakers such SK Hynix and carmaker Mercedes Benz warned that China’s COVID-19 curbs were intensifying supply chain disruptions and raising uncertainty about the business outlook.
Magna said it expects 2022 net income attributable between US$1.3-billion and US$1.5-billion, down from its previous forecast of US$1.7-billion to US$1.9-billion.
Adjusted profit per share for the quarter through March was US$1.28, compared with average analysts’ expectation of US$1.10 per share.
The Aurora, Ont.-based manufacturer reported net sales of US$9.64-billion for the first quarter, beating analysts’ expectations of US$9.08-billion.
NFI Group Inc. (NFI-T) plummeted after it announced that it’s lowering its 2022 financial guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA, citing market conditions and supply chain disruptions, including shortages of critical parts.
The bus maker said revenue is expected to come in at US$2.3-billion from US$2.6-billion. The result is in line with expectations of US$2.5-billion. The guidance is down from expectations announced in its fourth-quarter report of US$2.5-billion to US$2.8-bilion.
Adjusted EBITDA is expected between US$15-million to US$45-million, compared to previous guidance of US$100-million to US$130-million.
The company said it was recently notified by a supplier that it will see shortages of critical microprocessor control modules for its North American transit buses during the second and third quarters of 2022.
- Brenda Bouw
Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN-Q) delivered a disappointing quarter and outlook on Thursday as the e-commerce giant was swamped by higher costs to run its warehouses and deliver packages to customers.
Shares fell on Friday.
After a long-running surge in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon is facing a litany of challenges. The company’s expenses swelled as it offered higher pay to attract workers. A fulfillment centre in New York City voted to create Amazon’s first U.S. union, a result the retailer is contesting. And the higher price of fuel risks diminishing consumers’ disposable income just as it is making delivery more expensive for Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer.
Amazon’s forecast shows hiking the price of its fast-shipping club Prime last quarter may not be enough to prop up its profit. The company expects to lose as much as US$1-billion in operating income this quarter, or make as much as US$3-billion. That’s down from an operating profit of US$7.7-billion in the same period last year.
“This was a tough quarter for Amazon with trends across every key area of the business heading in the wrong direction and a weak outlook for Q2,” said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Andrew Lipsman.
Still, there were bright spots, like Amazon Web Services, the division that new CEO Andy Jassy ran before taking the company’s top job last year. The unit increased revenue 37 per cent to US$18.4-billion, slightly ahead of analysts’ estimates.
The company has finally met its warehouse staffing and capacity needs, but it still has work to do in improving productivity.
“This may take some time, particularly as we work through ongoing inflationary and supply chain pressures, he said in a press release. “We see encouraging progress on a number of customer experience dimensions, including delivery speed performance as we’re now approaching levels not seen since the months immediately preceding the pandemic in early 2020.”
Net sales were US$116.4-billion in the first quarter, in line with analysts’ expectations, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Amazon reported a loss of US$3.8-billion, or US$7.56 per share, compared with a profit of US$8.1-billion, or US$15.79 per share, a year earlier. That partly reflected a US$7.6-billion decline in the value of its stake in electric vehicle maker Rivian.
In North America, the company’s largest market, sales rose 8 per cent while operating expenses soared 16 per cent to US$71-billion.
Amazon projected net sales will be between US$116-billion and US$121-billion for the second quarter. Analysts were expecting US$125.5-billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Apple Inc. (AAPL-Q) on Thursday forecast bigger problems as COVID-19 lockdowns snarl production and demand in China, the war in Ukraine dents sales and growth slows in services, which the iPhone maker sees as its engine for expansion.
Shares was down after executives laid out their glum outlook on a conference call. The news outweighed record profit and sales for Apple’s fiscal second quarter, which ended in March.
Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri warned in an interview that the war in Ukraine, which led Apple to stop sales in Russia, would cut sales more deeply in the fiscal third quarter.
He told analysts on the call that supply-chain issues would hurt sales in the quarter by US$4-billion to US$8-billion, “substantially larger” than the hit in the second quarter.
Supply problems were focused on a corridor in Shanghai, China and reflected COVID disruptions and chip shortages, he added. The pandemic was also affecting demand in China, he said.
Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said that almost all of the Chinese factories doing final assembly of Apple products had restarted after recent COVID shutdowns, but the company is not forecasting when the chips shortage, mostly affecting older products, would end.
Mr. Cook said he hoped COVID issues would be “transitory” and “get better over time.”
At least one analyst said the outlook lacked clarity.
“We were all looking for just better guidance on what is really going on over there (China) ... and that didn’t come out,” said Louis Navellier, chief investment officer for Navellier & Associates.
Kim Caughey Forrest, Chief Investment Officer at Bokeh Capital Partners, said that ongoing demand remained a big question, despite Apple’s management of supply chain in the March quarter.
Apple’s overall fiscal second-quarter revenue was US$97.3-billion, up 8.6 per cent from last year and higher than analysts’ average estimate of US$93.89-billion, according to Refinitiv data.
Worldwide phone sales revenue was US$50.6-billion, a 5.5-per-cent increase from a year ago, and services sales rose 17 per cent to US$19.8-billion, both ahead of analyst average forecasts.
Total profit was US$25-billion, or US$1.52 per share and easily topped analysts’ expectations of US$23.2-billion and US$1.43.
Apple also raised its dividend 5 per cent to 23 US cents per share and the board approved a buyback for an added US$90-billion in shares.
Chipmaker Intel Corp. (INTC-Q) dropped as it forecast second-quarter revenue and profit below Wall Street expectations on Thursday on worries of weak demand in its largest market, PCs, and increased supply-chain uncertainty due to COVID-19 lockdowns in China.
Rising inflation, resurgence of COVID-19 in China and uncertainties around the war in Ukraine have shifted consumer spending away from gadgets, hurting Intel. More than half of its revenue last year came from the segment selling processors for PCs.
“We are expecting that Shanghai does open up fairly soon, but that does moderate our outlook a little bit on Q2,” Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger told Reuters. “It doesn’t change any perspective on the year, which we think as we go into the second half, you have more PC demand.”
The first quarter beats help Intel meet its full-year revenue outlook, he added.
As lockdowns in China continue, supply-chain bottlenecks are likely to hurt Intel’s customers, in turn affecting the chipmaker’s business.
“We think Intel still has to prove they can meet guidance targets before the stock receives full credit for a strong guide,” said Logan Purk, analyst at Edward Jones.
Analysts say the PC market is coming off of searing rates of growth over the last two years as remote working and learning triggered high demand during the pandemic.
Revenue at Intel’s Client Computing Group, which supplies PC makers and is the largest contributor to the company’s revenue, fell 13 per cent to US$9.3-billion in the first quarter.
The company expects current-quarter adjusted profit of 70 US cents per share on revenue of about US$18-billion, below analysts’ average estimate of 83 US cents per share on US$18.38-billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Adjusted revenue for the first quarter was US$18.4-billion, compared with analysts’ average estimate of US$18.31-billion.
On an adjusted basis, Intel earned 87 US cents per share, above expectations of 81 US cents.
Tesla Inc. (TSLA-Q) was lower as U.S. securities filings showed Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk sold US$8.5-billion worth of shares of the electric vehicle maker in sales likely aimed at helping finance his planned purchase of Twitter Inc. (TWTR-N).
Mr. Musk said in a tweet on Thursday that there are “no further TSLA sales planned after today”. He sold about 9.6 million shares this week, according to the filings on Thursday and Friday, equating to 5.6 per cent of his stake in the company.
The sale came after Mr. Musk on Monday clinched a deal to buy Twitter for US$44-billion cash in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world’s richest person. Mr. Musk’s net worth is US$268-billion, according to Forbes.
As part of the deal, Mr. Musk said he would provide a US$21-billion equity commitment.
It is not clear how he will cover the remaining US$17-billion of equity financing. Mr. Musk holds a 43.61-per-cent stake in unlisted rocket company SpaceX that is reportedly valued at US$100-billion.
Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM-N) was lower despite doubling its first-quarter per-share profit, as the results fell short of Wall Street estimates, even excluding a US$3.4-billion writedown from its withdrawal from Russia.
The top U.S. oil producer tripled the size of its buyback program, similar to other energy giants like TotalEnergies that are sending more cash back to shareholders. Exxon said it will repurchase up to US$30-billion in shares by the end of next year, compared with its earlier estimates for US$10-billion in repurchases.
Exxon reported net income of US$5.48-billion, or US$1.28 per share, in the three months ended March 31, compared with US$2.73-billion, or 64 US cents per share, last year.
The company’s adjusted earnings per share came to US$2.07, short of the Refinitiv consensus for US$2.12 a share, while revenue came in at US$90.5-billion, below the US$92.7 billion consensus.
U.S. oil majors were hurt by price volatility in fuel markets in the quarter, according to consultancy Palissy Advisors. Heavy market volatility caused both Chevron and Exxon had a negative effect on downstream results due to swift changes in prices between the time when feedstock was purchased and products were sold.
“The market is very volatile now,” said Anish Kapadia, energy director at Palissy. “You are also starting to see the cost of inflation” affecting companies, he said.
The results included a US$3.4-billion after-tax hit on the oil major’s Russia Sakhalin-1 operation, which it said it would exit on March 1, shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Exxon’s writedown follows others oil majors exiting Russia after the Ukraine invasion. BP PLC and Shell PLC have flagged up to US$25-billion and US$5-billion in writedowns from leaving their Russian businesses, respectively.
Exxon has been trying to boost output in its primary development areas, the U.S. Permian basin, and in Guyana, the tiny South American nation that has seen windfall oil discoveries in recent years and where Exxon has two major offshore developments.
Notably, the company’s refining division posted much weaker results from the previous quarter, with earnings of US$332-million, compared with US$1.5-billion in the fourth quarter. The company said the sharp rise in prices ended up costing US$1.3-billion of “negative timing impacts,” including US$760-million in mark-to-market effects on open derivatives positions.
The company said those losses will be unwound when it makes certain physical sales.
Exxon’s output of crude and other liquids including bitumen and synthetic oil was 2.3 million barrels per day, a 5-per-cent drop from the previous quarter. Natural gas production fell by 1.5 per cent.
Chevron Corp. (CVX-N) slid despite its first-quarter profit nearly quadrupling from the same period a year ago, easily surpassing Wall Street’s forecasts as oil and gas prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The second-largest U.S. oil producer on Friday posted adjusted earnings of US$6.5-billion, or US$3.36 per share, 8 US cents above Wall Street’s mean estimate of US$3.27, according to Refinitiv. Chevron earned US$1.7-billion, or 90 US cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
The world’s largest energy companies have profited handsomely on the back of rising oil and gas prices, which surged in February as Moscow planned its advance on Ukraine.
Chevron’s revenue rose 70 per cent to US$54.4-billion in the first quarter, above the Refinitiv consensus of US$47.9-billion.
The producer is using its massive profit to raise investments in production and in renewable fuels, return cash to shareholders and pay down debt.
The company’s U.S. oil and gas production rose by 10 per cent from the year-ago period. Russia’s output has dipped after the United States and allies imposed heavy sanctions on Moscow. The United States is the world’s largest crude oil producer, but output has grown slowly in 2022 even as prices have increased.
In the first quarter, Chevron pumped a record of 692,000 barrels of oil and gas per day (boed) in the Permian, the top U.S. unconventional basin, and boosted full-year guidance to a range of 700,000 to 750,000 boed.
“Chevron is doing its part to grow domestic supply,” Chevron’s Chief Executive Mike Wirth said in an earnings release.
The revenues from higher oil prices could be used to return cash to shareholders, expand Chevron’s low-carbon business and pay down debt, Chief Financial Officer Pierre Breber told Reuters.
“First is the dividend. The second is investing in the business. Third is maintaining a balanced strong balance sheet. And then the fourth is returning excess cash to shareholders,” he said.
Chevron earlier this year increased its dividend payments by 6 per cent to US$1.42 per share and increased its buyback program to $10 billion annually.
The company has the capacity to raise buybacks further but Chevron is aiming at a level it can maintain when the oil industry goes through a downturn, Mr. Breber said.
Shares in Robinhood Markets Inc. (HOOD-Q), the brokerage at the center of last year’s retail trading frenzy, were lower after it posted a 43-per-cent fall in first-quarter revenue and a decline in monthly active users.
“For most of our history, Robinhood has operated in a period of low interest rates, low inflation and rising markets. Our customers are now experiencing all three of these trends going in the opposite direction, perhaps for the first time in their lives,” said Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev on a call with analysts.
Trading volumes have eased from last year’s frenetic pace when retail investors used the platform to pump money into shares of so-called meme stocks including GameStop (GME-N) and AMC Entertainment (AMC-N).
Robinhood said on Tuesday it was laying off about 9 per cent of its full-time employees, adding rapid headcount growth had led to some duplicate roles and job functions.
“We’re moving back to being a more lean company with a leaner operating model, starting with the reduction in force that we announced earlier this week,” said Chief Financial Officer Jason Warnick on a call with reporters.
High-growth technology stocks have come under pressure this year as the poor performance of shares and falling analyst confidence sours investor sentiment.
Common with other high-growth tech firms, Robinhood has yet to turn a profit since its market debut. The company reported a net loss of US$392-million or 45 US cents per share in the three months ended March. A year earlier, which was before its IPO, it company posted net loss of US$1.4-billion or US$6.26 per share.
Analysts on average had expected a net loss of 36 US cents per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Total net revenues decreased to US$299-million, compared with US$522-million a year earlier.
Robinhood’s monthly active users fell 10 per cent to 15.9 million for March 2022, compared with 17.7 million for March 2021. The company attributed the decline to users with lower balances.
With files from staff and wires


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Intel announces that it will release discrete GPUs in 2020
ByVGA Legacy MK III
IntelMany CPUs are installed in many PCs and servers, Intel is in the position of the de facto standard in this field. About GPU, however, the company is not active in development,Intel HD GraphicsAlthough it provides GPU with built-in CPU with built-in CPU, higher performance independent GPU (discrete GPU) was not provided. Intel CEO Brian Kruzanich announced that it will release Intel's discrete GPU in 2020 and revealed that the company will enter the field of discrete GPUs.
Intel makes it a three-way race with AMD and Nvidia on graphics chips - MarketWatch
Intel announced on 8th November 2017AMDAnnounced that Mr. Raja Kodri, who had led the GPU department, joined the company. Since this announcement "Is not Intel serious about developing discrete GPUs?"It came to be rumored to be.
And this rumor becomes a reality on June 12, 2018 about 7 months after Mr. Kodri joined. Mr. Kurzanich said,Intel's Twitter accountAnnounced that "Intel's first discrete GPU will appear in 2020," acknowledging Intel's emphasis on GPU development and revealing that it will enter the field of discrete GPUs from 2020.
According to Navin Shenoyi who is vice president at Intel, although detailed information such as what purpose Intel GPU is developed in this announcement is not disclosed, according to AI and game , It is supposed to be used for development purposes.
There is no doubt that Intel's development capability is high considering the achievements of CPU development, but in development of discrete GPUs, both achievement and know-howNVIDIA, It is the fact that AMD precedes it, Intel is largely drained. It is drawing attention to how Intel fills this difference and overtakes it.
in Hardware, Posted by darkhorse_log


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See more photos of the Lamborghini Aventador SV at AutoGuide.comLamborghini is preparing to launch an even more powerful version of its Aventador model and we have the very first photos of the new supercar.
Spotted during filming in southern Europe there’s no denying that this is the SuperVeloce model out getting some photos snapped before the big reveal at the Geneva Motor Show in just a few weeks time.
Making the SuperVeloce so super will be a bump in horsepower likely pushing the 700-hp V12 engine closer to 750-hp. Also expect a significant reduction in weight by as much as 200 lbs.
Notable highlights include the massive rear spoiler and the four exhaust pipes that replace the single unit on the standard Aventador.


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DOMESTIC travelers are expected to pack a wallop into the economy by contributing a projected P3.8 trillion in revenue by 2028, outpacing the P701-billion share of inbound tourists.
According to the just-approved National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP) 2023-2028, under the conservative baseline scenario, total receipts generated from domestic and inbound travelers at P4.5 trillion, will expand the share of the tourism sector to 14 percent of the economy, as expressed in GDP, by 2028. This slightly surpasses the pre-pandemic P3.8-trillion total receipts in 2019, which accounted for 12.9 percent of the GDP, or the total amount of goods and services produced by the local economy. Government economic managers have targeted a GDP growth between 6.5 percent and 8 percent from 2024 to 2028.
On Tuesday, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. approved the third iteration of the NTDP, which serves as the administration’s blueprint to grow the economy by supporting policies, programs, and projects that enhance the tourism sector. Unlike the Plans of the previous administrations, however, the NTDP 2023-2028 has no indicative cost in its implementation, i.e., estimates how much government has to spend on improving infrastructure like roads, bridges, ports, and airports to help lift the tourism industry as well as private sector investments in building hotels and resorts, modernizing air fleet or seacraft, and the like.
6.3M tourism jobs
Under the new Plan, by the time Marcos Jr. steps down in 2028, there should have been 137.5 million domestic trips taken, and 11.5 million international tourists who have visited the Philippines, up from the 85.1 million domestic trips and 4.8 million international visitors projected this year. (See, “235M traveled across globe in 1st quarter of 2023—UNWTO,” in the BusinessMirror, May 18, 2023.)
By 2028, jobs in the tourism sector should have grown to 6.3 million, equivalent to 12.9 percent of the country’s total employment, from the projected 5.3 million jobs, equivalent to 11.8 percent of total employment this year. While tourism jobs are projected to rise in 2028, they still fall short of the 13.6-percent share to total employment recorded in pre-pandemic 2019.
In a statement, Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco said tourism is one of the few industries that can create opportunities and livelihoods in many of the Philippines’s farthest, most remote communities, and across all sectors of society. Though the country has a very productive tourism industry, she also recognized that it has also been hounded by challenges.
“So, it is by unlocking all of these roadblocks that we would be able to fully develop the tourism industry guided by the National Tourism Development Plan,” she said.
To achieve the Plan’s targets, the DOT aims to improve tourism infrastructure and access to destinations; improve connectivity in destinations and digitalize travel procedures; equalize the development and promotion of tourism products; diversify the tourism portfolio; maximize domestic and international tourism; strengthen its ties with local and national local stakeholders, thus enhancing the overall experience of every tourist in the country.
Despite having attained an historic-high of 8.3 million international travelers in pre-pandemic 2019, data show the Philippines still lagging behind its neighbors. That year, Thailand attracted 40 million foreign tourists, followed by Malaysia at 26 million, Singapore at 19 million, Vietnam at 18 million, and Indonesia at 16 million.
But the pandemic, which led to the closure of many borders, has forced the DOT to look inward and implement better policy to encourage domestic tourism. At the height of the pandemic in 2021, the NTDP cited international visitor spending at P41.5 billion, which was just 6.8 percent of the P612 billion recorded in 2019. On the other hand, domestic travel spending surged to P1.62 trillion in 2021, or close to 50 percent of the P3.3 trillion spent in 2019.
Image credits: Joel Paredes


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Qubit the pioneer in delivering context-driven customer experiences, announces the deployment of its machine learning engine as part of its industry-leading digital experience management (DXM) platform, along with several major updates. This demonstrates continued investment in the company’s technology, having completed a $40m Series C funding round led by Goldman Sachs earlier this year.
Built on its new Qubit ML engine, “opportunity mining” empowers marketers by automatically identifying and prioritizing customer groups by their largest revenue opportunities, using predictive analytics and cutting-edge unsupervised machine learning methods. These customer groups, or segments, are surfaced to Qubit users in priority order, ready to deliver highly relevant and personalized digital experiences. With these predictive capabilities, organizations can now focus on the segments that warrant the most attention, rather than randomly engaging specific customer segments with meaningless experiences.
“For companies to succeed, they need to build their businesses around the customer,” said Graham Cooke, CEO and founder of Qubit. “We’re seeing continued change in how consumers interact with brands. The need to build a more complete customer understanding, and to have a robust and agile technology platform that helps deliver the right experiences, is imperative.”
“Qubit ML is poised to completely change the customer experience game, in different ways, across different industries,” said Bud Goswami, head of data science at Qubit. “With opportunity mining, we’re delivering untapped potential. Qubit picks the best customers to target so that marketers can focus on the quality of the customer experiences.”
In this latest release, Qubit has also streamlined the deployment of high-value “programmatic experiences.” Based on AB testing analysis of over 2,000 ecommerce experiments, these context-driven experiences such as abandonment recovery, social proof messaging, and product recommendations, are known to drive as much as 24x increase in revenue per visitor uplift, as compared to traditional optimization initiatives. To support this, Qubit also addressed a critical collaboration challenge facing organizations. Through a new experience design workflow, business users can define and control the rules for many advanced digital experiences and then bring in developers to easily customize and action when ready. This reduces friction between departmental silos and creates a proper balance between ease of use and power, ultimately resulting in greater velocity of experience deployments.
Many other enhancements demonstrate Qubit’s ability to help businesses understand their customers, including increased support for seasonal or time sensitive customer segments. Users can now easily create segments taking into account key moments, ranges of time, or look back historically for specific events, such as Black Friday, summer sales, or when a customer hasn’t shopped for 90 days or more.
This update follows on the successful spring release that included Qubit Live Tap, which gives companies direct and immediate access to all customer data in Qubit Visitor Cloud. Businesses, like Victoria Plum, the online-only designer bathroom company and one of the UK’s fastest growing retailers in 2016, have gained key insights to understand and influence their customers.
“At Victoria Plum we use, and have used, a whole host of business intelligence, and reporting tools, hoping to gain valuable customer understanding,” said Patrick Dobbs, technical architect at Victoria Plum. “Live Tap is now the best way we’ve found to get customer insights every day. Nothing else gets close in terms of freshness and flexibility. Armed with these capabilities we’re now looking to the future, to build out real-time dashboards, as no other reporting tool can update as quickly.”
Added Cooke: “This announcement demonstrates our commitment to power more meaningful customer experiences. Connecting the dots to accomplish this is hard and yet we increasingly make it look easy. With every release, we help businesses better understand and influence their customers.”
All enhancements are expected to be available in November.


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Former managing director of online hotel booking platform, Jovago, Marek Zmyslwoski, has stepped down from his role in the company to further his interests as a local investor in Nigeria. Zmyslwoski was the company’s managing director for more than two and a half years.
Jovago MD steps down
Zmyslwoski will now use the extra free time on his hands to probably focus on other local startups such as Talking Bookz and SimplePay which he has invested in over the past 5 months
Zmyslwoski will now use the extra free time on his hands to probably focus on other local startups such as Talking Bookz and SimplePay which he has invested in over the past 5 months in addition to serving on the boards of other companies as a director.
“I will definitely be staying back in Nigeria. Last 2 years of Jovago, I gave 100% focus on Jovago but when it comes to Nigeria there are some other opportunities you will like to be part of. But it’s not good to be involved in many things as you loose focus easily. I’m at the stage where I wanted to satisfy the entrepreneur in me and get involved in companies not necessarily as a CEO but as adviser or investor and I would like to use my experience to build up a local company in Nigeria,” Zmyslwoski said, according to a Techpoint report.
Zmyslwoski will be replaced by Kushal Dutta, former head of revenue management at Jovago, as managing director.
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Android 4.4 KitKat might be the talk of the town right now, but the sad reality is that most devices out there are currently stuck at Android versions as old as 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). They’ll probably never see the chocolaty goodness of KitKat, but one device is at least getting the chance to hop
LG might have had only a couple of Android 4.1-running smartphones a few months ago, but right now there are rivers of Jelly Bean flowing through the Optimus family. The L9, 4X HD, Vu 2, L7 and Optimus G on AT&T, as well as in South Korea and Canada have all been Jelly Beaned of
Verizon recently pushed update 4.04 to their LG Intuition model (Optimus Vu) which was supposed to bring in several improvements. Not all updates are supposed to work the way they are meant to work as what was discovered by those who have tried it out. A lot of people have been reporting several issues just
Verizon is rumored to be launching the LG Intuition this coming September 6 online and in retail channels on September 10. The device was initially believed to be slated for a September 15 launch, but it appears that those looking forward to getting their hands on the device would not need to wait that long.
In this amidst crowd of Smart phones, we have another stiff competition at our hands in this September. Who is it this time? Samsung? HTC? It’s neither Samsung nor HTC; in fact it’s none other than LG, joining the big league of Smartphone companies like Samsung and Apple, to be releasing their phone next month.


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The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in an uptick of demand for e-commerce solutions. Both essential and non-essential items that were once purchased in physical retail outlets are increasingly ordered online due to lockdown and social distancing measures. This resulted in an increase of demand for paper packaging, including boxes, wrap, and envelopes. With the e-commerce industry set to continue growing, demand for such products is expected to rise with it.
Environmental and sustainability concerns surrounding excessive plastic usage have also led to an increase in demand for alternative paper products, such as paper straws, plates, and food-grade containers. This is expected to continue in the coming years as consumers expect higher levels of sustainability and organizations make it a higher priority.
As with many industries, technology is set to disrupt the paper packaging industry as more companies are enhancing their products with smartphone scanning and augmented reality. One prominent example is the prominence of interactive packaging that uses QR codes leading users to high-quality video content that can be projected back onto the packaging itself.


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New York website development and online marketing firm says that too many online press releases don’t make the grade, negatively effecting the businesses they are meant to promote
“Online press release distribution companies are seeing an upswing in business lately,” says Peter Crisafi, Vice President of dzine it, Inc., a leading New York online marketing and website design firm that offers press release management to clients across the United States. “Unfortunately, they are also seeing an upswing in black hat search engine optimization tactics as well.”
According to Crisafi, many companies that offer services similar to dzine it are submitting press releases that are stuffed with keywords, key phrases, and anchor links while paying no attention to content. As a result, the clients that these companies represent are suffering.
“There has been a lot of abuse of online press release distribution services and, as a result, they have become stricter about the types of submission that they will approve,” says Crisafi. “In some cases, they have even banned certain users because of their use of black hat search engine optimization techniques.”
Crisafi says that he and his team use online press release distribution services to give authority and ultimately drive traffic to their clients’ websites. Unfortunately, other companies who promise the same services don’t put the time and effort necessary to achieve those goals, giving SEO and online marketing experts like him and his staff a bad name.
“The major complaint among distribution services is the lack of value or meaning within some press releases because they try too hard to subvert search engine rankings,” says Crisafi. “As online marketing experts, we have to consider the purpose of what we are trying to achieve. A good online marketing firm wants to give its client the whole package, not just a quick rank jump.”


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CCJ Top 250
Former owner of Hirschbach Motor Lines dies at 85
George Hirschbach died on Sunday, May 29. The company was founded by his father in 1935.
June 2, 2022
Fleets, nominate your dealer or parts and service provider for an award
Trucks, Parts, Service – a sister publication to CCJ – has opened the nomination periods for its annual awards celebrating our industry's best dealers and independent aftermarket distributors.
May 29, 2022
Are you a top fleet operating 30 or fewer trucks? Enter to be the next Small Fleet Champ
The initial entry period for the Small Fleet Championship ends June 30.
May 20, 2022
CCJ Innovator of the Year named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young
The Entrepreneur of the Year program has recognized more than 10,000 U.S. executives since its inception in 1986.
May 18, 2022
Former DART boss joins AFC Transport | XPO appoints CEO of planned spinoff
Industry veteran named AFC Transport president. Also: XPO looks in-house for chief of its brokerage business spinoff.
May 10, 2022
Don’t Miss Out
Get the business tips, industry insights and trending news every trucking professional needs to know in the CCJ newsletter.
Trump, Teamsters, Yellow Corporation under fire over $700 million loan
Rep. James Clyburn released "troubling new evidence" that he hopes will lead to an OIG investigation into "whether any of the misleading representations Yellow made in applying for its (Federal) loan" violates federal law.
April 27, 2022
Back for a third year, amid turbulent times: Overdrive's Small Fleet Championship
2021 finalist Hallahan Transport's recent experience with a dramatic increase in the fuel bill, van rates sliding: long-term safety performance has paid off with a more than $30K insurance cost reduction. Prove your own mettle in this year's competition.
April 6, 2022
FedEx founder stepping down as CEO | Old Dominion adds to service network
FedEx COO Raj Subramaniam will be promoted to President and CEO, replacing founder Fred Smith. Also: Old Dominion Freight has opened and/or expanded seven new service centers in the last 6 months; Kenwoth, Volvo book EV orders.
March 30, 2022
Load One's Elliott named TCA chair
John Elliott, a third-generation transportation professional, will serve as 2022-23 TCA Chairman.
March 24, 2022
Navistar's latest plant cuts production costs while going green
The plant will serve as Navistar’s benchmark for lean manufacturing principles to eliminate waste, improve product quality, drive operational efficiency and reduce cost and time.
March 23, 2022
Online Transport's Obermeyer named TMC Chair | FedEx founder's son to lead FedEx Express
Shaleen Devgun has been named Chief Innovation and Technology Officer at Schneider. Also: FedEx founder's son to take reigns of FedEx Express, TMC elects new general chairman, and more.
March 13, 2022
Wabash, Meritor joining Road Ready system
Clarience Technologies has formed a technology alliance with Meritor and Wabash.
March 8, 2022
2021 to go down as a record year for carrier earnings
With the fourth quarter results in from most major carriers, it's time to mark down 2021 as a massive year for the trucking and logistics industry when not even labor or equipment shortages, vaccine mandates or the virus itself could slow its roll.
February 15, 2022
Cummins acquiring Jake Brake company
Cummins on Wednesday announced it plans to acquire Jacobs Vehicle Systems.
February 9, 2022
AFC Transport names logistics president
Kyle Ingraham has joined specialized carrier AFC Transport as president of its logistics division. Also: Tommy Mabeley named Montway Auto Transport Director of Carrier Relations.
January 9, 2022
Averitt Express EVP retiring after 40 year career with the carrier
Phil Pierce joined Averitt in 1981 and has served in a wide variety of roles.
December 30, 2021
A.N. Webber to celebrate 75 years
A.N. Webber has grown from a one truck gravel hauling side job to more than 200 late model trucks with four locations and a robust freight brokerage team. Also: DOT awards port grants.
December 28, 2021
Former Volvo Trucks exec joins Navistar as EVP
Göran Nyberg will join Navistar as Executive Vice President Commercial Operations, effective March 1, 2022.
December 20, 2021
Page 1 of 4
Service and repair
Maintaining proper tire pressure presents 'huge opportunity in today's volatile fuel market'
Aside from keeping an eye on the numbers at the pumps, tire experts advise keeping a close eye on tire pressure to help maximize fuel economy at a time when fuel prices have reached historic highs.
Supreme Court will not hear trucking's AB 5 case, law will take effect for industry
Growth of used truck values rival stock market from mid-2020 to mid-2022
Kenan Advantage Group acquires Louisiana petrochem company
USA Truck acquired by DB Schenker
Get all the info on the top 250 trucking companies in America
View, sort and download the trucking industry’s most comprehensive ranking of for-hire carriers in North America, based on a blend of metrics including fleet size, annual revenue and number of drivers.
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As one of your biggest expenses, fuel usage should be watched closely. Download this eBook to learn how fleet management solutions can help you monitor key factors that can contribute to wasted fuel.


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Because someone out there still needs to party like it's 1989, Bugatti is considering a 1,...
Winners and Losers: Porsche sales pop in April
Porsche sales spiked 82 percent in April and are up 46 percent for the year, parking the luxury automaker among the top five winners so far for 2011.
The redesigned Cayenne made the biggest contribution, with sales up an eye-popping 384 percent from last April and 141 percent for this year. Porsche counted 1,578 copies of the Cayenne sold in April, versus 326 the year before. The 911 is also selling briskly, up 66 percent for April and 13 percent for the year. We expect to see a new version of this icon soon.
Undoubtedly a contributing factor, the 24-month leases available for the 911 cut monthly payments by about 10 percent, to $1,263. Porsche also has started a six-month lease pull-ahead incentive for all of its sports cars, which began in March to offset a shortage of used cars coming off lease when sales dropped last year.
Porsche said the time was ripe to offer people an out for 36-month leases and into shorter leases for comparable costs. The company also is experiencing rising interest in the new 911 GTS and GT3 models.
Overall, company sales were up 33 percent for the first two months of the year.
Meanwhile, Saab showed huge sales gains for the first quarter, up 190 percent from last year. Saab was helped by the recently updated 9-5 Aero model and the 9-5 Turbo4 models.
Mini cited the expanding appeal of small cars for its sales gain as well, as its numbers are up 49 percent for the first four months of the year. Mini sold 6,446 units in April alone, up 67.7 percent from a year ago. That included 1,709 copies of the Countryman crossover.
Meanwhile, Mitsubishi and Buick were other big winners this year, with growth of 61 percent and 43 percent, respectively.
Brands suffering the biggest declines were Smart--down 17 percent so far this year--followed by the Chrysler Division, Lincoln and Lexus.
Get more car news, reviews and opinion every day: Sign up to have the Autoweek Daily Drive delivered right to your inbox.


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Elevate Your Design Experience with Vives by GROF March 28, 2024
News from our Brands
Designer Tomás Alía visits Vives at Cevisama 2020
The prestigious architect and designer Tomás Alía has been one of the most prominent visitors to the Vives’ stand during this year’s edition of Cevisama. He was able to discover the latest novelties the company launched both in floor and wall tiles.
As the founder of his own architectural studio, Tomás Alía is one of the most renowned Spanish interior designers globally. Recently, he was also appointed as a member of the jury on the television programme “Masters of Renovation”.


text: Lifestyle publication Obscura Magazine has proudly kicked off their freshly-minted production/video channel ObscuraVision by featuring a rare glimpse into A Bathing Ape/Human Made founder and pop culture icon NIGO’s personal collection space. There, he shares some of his insights into his collecting history and reasons for doing so. A notorious recluse and eccentric figure, NIGO shares a few key items rarely seen in the public eye. This piece of editorial is also part of an ongoing series of features in Obscura focusing on collectors around the world showcasing their respective collections and philosophies behind their obsession. For the full feature, readers can discover the article and full interview in Obscura Magazine’s Fall 2012 issue out in retailers worldwide October 2012.


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Check out the on-demand sessions from the Low-Code/No-Code Summit to learn how to successfully innovate and achieve efficiency by upskilling and scaling citizen developers. Watch now.
Microsoft is about to close the books on its $26.2 billion deal to purchase the professional social networking service LinkedIn. On Tuesday, it was announced that the European Commission had given its blessing to Microsoft, adding it to a list of regulators that approved the merger, including the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and South Africa. However, there’s a bit of a catch.
In order to receive the approval of those in Europe, Microsoft said that it is doing several things over the next 5 years to preserve competition: ensuring that LinkedIn competitors will still receive access to participate in Office Add-in and promotional opportunities in the Office Store, not entering into agreements with PC manufacturers to pre-install a Windows LinkedIn application or tile that would “favor LinkedIn on an exclusive basis,” and more.
After a six-month process, now Microsoft can move forward and wrap up a deal that has seen LinkedIn become entangled in a tug-of-war as Salesforce sought to be the preferred suitor. It was the one that got away from the enterprise company, and the battle resulted in CEO Marc Benioff’s request to the European Union that extra scrutiny be paid to the purchase.
The European Commission seemed uninterested in opening up a probe over the deal, but sources told The Wall Street Journal that regulators could give their approval after accepting the concessions Microsoft presented them in November. Perhaps like most cases, people worry about the impact a big deal like this could have on the ability to compete, and as such, Microsoft had to present an offering that shows it’s willing to be a team player. At the end of the day, it’s all about granting equal access to competitors of all kinds.
So not only will the Office Add-in program, which enables developers to build tools with Microsoft Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, continue to be made available, but so will access to the Office Store and any marketing opportunities. IT administrators and users will continue to customize their Office experience and not be forced to use the LinkedIn profile. And lastly for PC manufacturers, Microsoft won’t force them to include a LinkedIn application or tile, and will allow users to uninstall it if they see fit — at least if you’re in the European Economic Area.
Microsoft made the purchase of LinkedIn in June and promised that the deal would be completed sometime this year. Under the terms, LinkedIn will retain its “brand, culture, and independence.”
Now that the two companies can rest easily, the deal will close “in the coming days.” As Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith wrote in a post, “With this regulatory process behind us, we can bring together two great companies and focus on even broader issues for the future. The events of the past six months make not just this business opportunity, but the broader societal issues connected to them, more important.”
Shares in Microsoft dropped 0.36 percent after the news was announced, while LinkedIn rose 0.35 percent.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings.


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Despite Elon Musk’s dramatic stock selloff that briefly put a dent in Tesla’s share price in the final weeks of 2021, the company proved to investors that its core business remained solid. On Sunday, the electric carmaker reported record quarterly and full-year earnings that easily beat Wall Street expectations.
Tesla delivered 308,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter and 936,000 vehicles in 2021, which almost doubled the total shipment of 2020. Analysts had expected the company to deliver around 270,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter and 897,000 vehicles for the full year.
Tesla shares jumped more than 9 percent Monday morning on the news, pushing the company’s market cap to $1.17 trillion.
The vast majority (90 percent) of Tesla’s 2021 deliveries were Model 3 and Model Y. The company reports combined delivery numbers for its higher-priced vehicles (Model S and X) and lower-priced Model 3 and Y vehicles. It doesn’t break out sales or production numbers by region.
“Great work by Tesla team worldwide!” Musk tweeted Sunday.
“This was a ‘trophy case’ quarter for Musk & Co. with massive momentum moving into 2022,” Wedbush’s Daniel Ives, a top Tesla analyst, tweeted Sunday.
Since turning a profit for the first time in the third quarter of 2019, Tesla has managed to double shipments every year—despite a global chip shortage that has slowed down manufacturing for other automakers for the better part of the past two years. Still, Musk has set a lofty goal for Tesla to ramp up production to 20 million electric vehicles a year by 2030. That’s 20 times what it made last year. “Let’s make the roaring 20’s happen!” the CEO tweeted Sunday.
To achieve that, Tesla plans to start production of the Model Y crossover at a new “gigafactory” in Austin, Texas this year and open another factory in Brandenburg, Germany near Berlin.
For the near term, Wall Street is optimistic that Tesla can double sales again in 2022. “Can Tesla do [two million] units in 2022? At this point we’d still describe 2mm as a stretch target but one that looks far more realistic following 4Q deliveries,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in a note on Monday. “We believe that fully ramped, the addition of Berlin and Austin will take the Tesla global installed capacity to closer to 3 million units.”
Jonas cautioned that continued global supply chain challenges may dampen this outlook. Also, as more startups and legacy auto brands enter the EV market, Tesla is expected to lose some of its market share in the years to come. In the high-end sector, Tesla faces competition from already hyped models such as Lucid Air and Porsche Taycan, as well as luxury EVs by Mercedes and Audi. In the mass market, the Model 3 and Model Y will be challenged by offerings from Volkswagen, GM and Ford, not to mention a crop of well funded Chinese EV startups that are increasingly eating away Tesla’s market share in China, its largest overseas market.


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Two people will share a $50,000 prize for the best ideas in a “Robocalling Challenge” that sought technological cures to the plague of incessant automated calls, the Federal Trade Commission said this week.
The FTC, which fields about 200,000 robocalling complaints monthly, chose the entries by Serdar Danis Aaron Foss from more than 800 submitted.
Danis suggested software that would block robocalls. Foss proposed a solution that would use a second phone line to screen and hang up on robocalls.
Two engineers from Google, Daniel Klein and Dean Jackson, won a non-monetary award for suggesting “automated algorithms” to identify spam calls.
Commentors on the website lament the lack of detail in the proposals and say that the ideas are not new or are already in existence as real products. One commentor said that the full details of each plan are lodged with the FTC.


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June 29, 2010
Kombucha has long been a favorite for natural product consumers, but does part of the charm come from its hidden alcohol content? Some in the industry think so.
An article from the New York Times by Kim Severson said this fermented tea is facing regulation because of it possible alcohol content. Severson said some fermentation may even occur in the bottle, causing more alcohol to be present than the manufacturer tests show. She noted one popular brand may have as much as 3-percent alcohol content, which is much higher than the legal limit of 0.5.
She said Whole Foods Market decided to stop selling unpasteurized kombucha because possible high levels of alcohol, and the U.S. Treasury Department issued a warning saying kombucha may be subject to the same taxes and regulations as other alcoholic beverages.
The article also noted industry publications have speculated that kombucha will soon face heavy government regulation because of this issue.
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Dead Island 2 Speculated To Release Next Year
Long before Techland’s Dying Light series, the developer made waves in the open-world, zombie-slaying community with Dead Island, an unconventional, tropical take on the beloved post-apocalyptic formula. Dead Island boasted a 4-player coop campaign, zany, moddable/craftable weapons that Dying Light is currently known for, and a satisfying balance of horrifying and comedic gameplay. Perhaps you can already see why Dead Island 2 was an exciting prospect for players that wanted a similar experience with updated visuals and mechanics. And despite the radio silence and rumors of development hell, Dead Island 2 is still speculated to release next year.
According to a VGC report, during a presentation held last week with publisher Deep Silver’s parent company, Embracer Group, the Q&A host opined that the zombie-infested RPG is “very clearly…[still alive], and I expect the release this financial year, or sorry next financial year I should say.” For those who don't know, the company’s next financial year ends on March 31. However, Embracer Group’s CEO Lars Wingefors respond by saying he can’t exactly speak to the development of Dead Island 2 but that an unannounced AAA title that everyone thinks is Dead Island 2 was recently talked about in internal meetings. While this isn’t an exact confirmation, the cryptic nature of the exchange could be a hint that development on Dead Island 2 is still going strong.
In what feels like a century ago, Mike Futter wrote about his hands-on experience with Dead Island 2 in 2014 and stated, “Yager definitely has more work to do, as the pre-alpha code was unsurprisingly imperfect. I'm excited to see more from the game though, as the changes to the crafting system and the increased focus on ranged weapons make for a tighter experience in the same comedic, gory world.” In any case, fans are still patiently waiting for Dead Island 2 news and hopefully, we’ll have more concrete details from the game's developer in the near future.
Do you think Dead Island 2 will ever release? What are you hoping to see in the game if it does? Let us know in the comments below!


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Senators Baldwin, Johnson introduce CURD Act to support Wisconsin dairy industry and provide clarity
MADISON, Wis. (WSAW) - U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) joined Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) on Monday to introduce the Codifying Useful Regulatory Definitions Act, bipartisan legislation to help better inform consumers on cheese purchasing decisions and provide clarity for Wisconsin’s dairy industry.
Under the CURD Act, “natural cheese” would be defined as cheese that is produced from animal milk or other dairy ingredients and is produced in accordance with established cheese-making practices.
“Wisconsin’s dairy farmers and cheesemakers work hard to produce high-quality cheese products that are known across the globe and move our Made in Wisconsin economy forward,” said Sen. Baldwin. “This legislation honors their celebrated products and makes sure consumers know what products on the shelf meet the definition of ‘natural cheese’ and what do not.”
“Wisconsin is known for its cheese, in all its forms and varieties,” Senator Johnson said. “Codifying the definition of ‘natural cheese’ will allow consumers the necessary information to make informed decisions when purchasing and enjoying the great products of our state.”
Cheesemakers have long used the term “natural cheese” to distinguish products that use basic ingredients and are made directly from milk compared to processed cheeses that incorporate extra steps.
“The dairy processing industry has used the term ‘natural cheese’ for decades to help differentiate cheese made with fresh milk and dairy ingredients from pasteurized processed cheese,” said John Umhoefer, Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association executive director.
Sen. Baldwin recently led the introduction of bipartisan legislation to combat the unfair practice of mislabeling non-dairy products using dairy names, the Defending Against Imitations and Replacements of Yogurt, milk, and cheese to Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Everyday Act, also known as the DAIRY PRIDE Act of 2023. The legislation followed the FDA’s proposed guidance allowing nut, oat, soy, and other non-dairy products to use the name “milk.”
Copyright 2023 WSAW. All rights reserved.


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by Liang Chen
This year, recurring virus outbreaks and unexpected changes in the external environment have created many challenges for the Chinese economy. However, in the context of effectively controlling the epidemic, Xu Hongcai (deputy head of the economic policy department of the China Political Science Association) is optimistic that the Chinese economy will rebound and will see further growth in the second half of the year, despite ongoing great pressure.
Politicians put the highest priority on “stability”
“This year’s government work report states that the most important aspects of the” sixfold stabilization “and the” sixfold guarantee “are to support market participants to promote market action and thus ensure a sufficient level of employment. An important prerequisite for ensuring stable market participants is the constant prevention and control of diseases. Therefore, we need to optimize the institutional disease prevention and control mechanism and create a well-functioning supply chain. This way we solve the crux of the problem, ”said Xu Hongcai.
An employee works at a machine manufacturing company in Tangshan, Hebei Province, November 17, 2019.
The effect of providing production and support to market players is already beginning to show: from January to May, large industrial companies – that is, with sales of at least 20 million yuan – recorded significant increases in profits. This would show clear signs of stabilization.
“At the moment, however, the basis for repairing industrial enterprises is not yet firm, and the repair of various industrial sectors is still uneven and uncoordinated. Cost pressures on private companies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the middle and downstream industrial chains remain high. Therefore, it is very important to further strengthen the confidence of market participants, explained Xu.
In May, the Chinese state council unveiled a stimulus package with 33 measures, including an increase in tax breaks by more than 140 billion yuan, which this year will bring total tax breaks and tax cuts to 2.64 trillion yuan. In addition, the three-contribution deferral policy (such as pensions) was extended until the end of the year for small, medium and micro enterprises, sole proprietorships and enterprises in five sectors particularly affected. In addition, these measures have been extended to even more sectors. It is expected to save companies of 320 billion yuan throughout the year.
Xu stressed that all these initiatives would help companies reduce costs and overcome individual difficulties. Therefore, it can be said that these are effective actions supporting market participants and increasing the employment rate. As economic stabilization measures continue to have an impact, the recovery of the Chinese industrial economy is expected to accelerate even further in the third quarter of this year.
The recovery of the Chinese economy is expected in the second half of the year
According to Xu’s analysis, the Chinese economy is expected to continue to recover despite many challenges. As a result, gross domestic product (GDP) growth may stabilize and pick up again in the third and fourth quarters, showing a V-shaped trend later in the year. The reasons for this vary.
First, there is still potential for increased consumption. China’s GDP per capita has now exceeded $ 12,000, and diversified, higher-quality consumer demand will continue to grow in the future, giving birth to many new industries and services. This, in turn, will create new investment opportunities.
Secondly, the structure of foreign trade is constantly being optimized. Over the past two years, exports from China have repeatedly exceeded the expectations of the market, disturbed by the pandemic, becoming a key driver of economic growth. Even in the first half of the year, exports continued to exceed expectations. According to the statistics of the General Customs Administration, the total value of Chinese imports and exports of goods in the first half of the year amounted to 19.8 trillion yuan – up 9.4 percent. more than year to year. Of this, exports accounted for 11.14 trillion yuan, an increase of 13.2 percent.
In addition, the industrial structure was further modernized. The development of the Chinese digital economy deserves special attention in this context. Digital technologies are now increasingly used in traditional industries – from smart (‘smart’) transport and smart cities to smart elderly care, healthcare and culture. The increased use of digital technologies is expected to make a decisive contribution to re-fueling the economy.
In light of these events, Xu Hongcai predicts: “China’s efforts to stabilize domestic growth will continue to gain momentum in the second half of the year and the economy is gradually recovering. As effective coordination of epidemic prevention and control, as well as economic and social development, continue to produce results, and macroeconomic policies will continue to have an impact, I believe that stabilization of the entire economy is possible. That’s why I expect the Chinese economy to rebound and continue to grow.


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A research firm estimates the global market for casino gaming equipment will expand by a compound annual growth rate of “more than 15 percent” in the period 2017 to 2021.
Technavio – a market research brand of Infiniti Research Ltd, with offices in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, India and China – thinks moves to legalise and regulate casino business, or ease regulation in existing markets, will be factors in the improvement.
It anticipates the casino gaming equipment market will be worth US$54.16 billion in 2017, rising to US$96.38 billion by 2021.
“The easing of government regulations related to casino markets is one of the major factors contributing to the growing demand for casino gaming equipment,” said Ujjwal Doshi, described in a Technavio press release as a lead analyst for the firm on media and entertainment services research.
“Many countries, such as Japan, are aiming at legalising casino gaming because of the growing popularity of gambling and the high revenue contribution from casinos,” added the analyst in the release.
The study is said to cover the current market for casino gaming equipment and growth prospects globally for 2017 to 2021.
The report lists casino tables, slot machines, gaming chips and video poker machines as the four major product segments. Technavio said casino tables and slot machines accounted for over 50 percent of the market in 2016.
Technavio noted while there was an increase in demand for equipment, the barriers to entering the casino supply market were significant.
“The setting up of manufacture units in various countries is quite expensive for manufacturers as only a few casinos opt for high-quality casino gaming equipment,” the research house said in its press release.
The firm added that online ordering of casino equipment was a growth area of the market. “The online sales of machines such as slot machines and video poker machines increased by nearly 14 percent in 2015 as compared to 2014,” it said.
Investment analysts covering the casino industry have additionally noted the growing importance of online digital casino products to sales and marketing efforts by the traditional casino equipment firms as well as to start-up businesses.
In its quarterly earnings for the three months to September 30, filed in early November, gaming and lottery equipment and services firm Scientific Games Corp reported revenue from its interactive division rose 66.4 percent year-on-year, to US$85.2 million. The interactive segment still only represented 11.8 percent of group revenue for the period.
Technavio suggests however that even in the bricks and mortar casino industry – that remains the main source of traditional suppliers’ business – equipment sales will be increasingly influenced by the tastes of those recently reaching adulthood – people commonly referred to as “Millennials”.
“The increasing digitalisation in most entertainment segments such as gaming and movies has been a major factor attracting the younger age group (18-35),” said the research firm in the release.
It added: “They are more attracted to innovative games, due to which casino players [venues] are integrating games like Call of Duty and Angry Birds into casinos; which are gradually replacing slot machines.”
Many of the traditional equipment manufacturers – that have in the past focused on business in North America and Europe – will need to expand their footprint in markets with faster-growing consumer demand for casino gaming – such as those in Asia Pacific – partly in order to service the debts they acquired in recent takeovers of rival brands, investment analysts have noted.
Between 2013 and 2014, Scientific Games was involved in several leveraged acquisitions of rival gaming equipment suppliers totalling billions of U.S. dollars in value. In 2013 it bought Chicago-based slot machine maker WMS Industries Inc for US$1.5 billion. In November 2014, Scientific Games completed a US$5.1-billion deal to acquire Bally Technologies Inc. A year earlier, Bally Technologies had itself taken over Nevada-based SHFL entertainment Inc in a US$1.3-billion transaction.
Nov 28, 2023American singer-songwriter Bruno Mars is to make a one-night-only concert appearance on the roof terrace of the MGM Cotai casino resort on January 6, said the venue promoter MGM China Holdings Ltd in...
”There’s been a 20 percent or 30 percent increase in our testing staff to handle globally the amount of extra work that we’ve got, and the Philippines and Macau have definitely contributed to that overall growth”
Chief commercial officer of testing and certification firm GLI


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Published on April 9th, 2013 | by Brad Soo, Reporter
Lost Planet 3 Gets Delayed Again
Capcom has revealed that Lost Planet 3 is being delayed yet again.
After originally announced for a release in ‘early 2013,’ the game was delayed to June 25. With this latest delay, revealed by the news fact sheet for the game, Lost Planet 3 is now slated for a late August release date: the 27th for North America and 30th for Europe.
The game will be available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC.
Check out the latest Lost Planet 3 fact sheet.


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Google Says Some Apple Inventions Are So Great They Ought to Be Shared
Patent wars, Apple CEO Tim Cook once said, are “a pain in the ass.” Few more so than the one the company is waging against Google’s new Motorola Mobility division and the new argument the defendants are making around standards-essential patents (SEPs).
In attempting to fend off Apple and Microsoft’s suits against Motorola Mobility and advancing its own patent litigation against both companies, Google, which is facing a lot of regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and abroad over what some allege is abuse of SEPs, has been arguing that proprietary non-standardized technologies that become ubiquitous due to their popularity with consumers should be considered de facto standards.
In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Google General Counsel Kent Walker wrote:
While collaborative [Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs)] play an important part in the overall standard setting system, and are particularly prominent in industries such as telecommunications, they are not the only source of standards. Indeed, many of the same interoperability benefits that the FTC and others have touted in the SSO context also occur when one firm publishes information about an otherwise proprietary standard and other firms then independently decide (whether by choice or of necessity) to make complementary investments to support that standard in their products. … Because proprietary or de facto standards can have just as important effects on consumer welfare, the Committee’s concern regarding the abuse of SEPs should encompass them as well.
In other words, Google’s view is that just as there are patents that are standards essential, there are also patents that are commercially essential — patents that cover features that are so popular as to have become ubiquitous. The latter are just as ripe for abuse as the former, and withholding them is just as harmful to consumers and the competitive marketplace. Viewed through that lens, multitouch technology or slide-to-unlock might be treated the same way as an industry standard patent on, say, a smartphone radio.
This argument, of course, has massive implications for Apple, which has developed a treasure trove of what might be considered by some as commercially essential IP around the iPhone and iPad. And the company was quick to take severe exception to it. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell rebutted Walker’s argument. “That a proprietary technology becomes quite popular does not transform it into a ‘standard’ subject to the same legal constraints as true standards,” he wrote.
The gist of Sewell’s letter is this: Standardized technologies facilitate interoperability among disparate devices by giving them the same core functionality. They create a platform for competition. Non-standardized technologies differentiate those devices, create competition and drive innovation in the marketplace. Subjecting non-standards-essential patents to the same rules as those governing standards-essential ones will hamper innovation and harm consumers. As Sewell writes:
The capabilities of an iPhone are categorically different from a conventional phone, and result from Apple’s ability to bring its traditional innovation in computing to the mobile market. Using an iPhone to take photos, manage a home-finance spreadsheet, play video games, or run countless other applications has nothing to do with standardized protocols. Apple spent billions in research and development to create the iPhone, and third party software developers have spent billions more to develop applications that run on it. The price of an iPhone reflects the value of these nonstandardized technologies — as well as the value of the aesthetic design of the iPhone, which also reflects immense study and development by Apple, and which is entirely unrelated to standards.
Apple’s point is that if you remove the IP distinctions between the two, you remove a key incentive for innovators to innovate. Apple spent billions in research and development to create the iPhone. It didn’t spend that money to create the iPhone’s competition. And this is a point Apple and CEO Tim Cook have hammered home again and again, since the smartphone IP Hundred Years War began.
Now, to be fair, there are some very fundamental differences of opinion between Google and Apple over the viability of patents on these product-differentiating technologies, which is the whole reason for Google’s letter in the first place. And it should be noted that those differences are being litigated, and these two call-and-response letters are all part of the legal positioning around that. It’s also worth noting that Microsoft is a player in this spat as well, given its battle with Motorola over ActiveSync.
Via: All Things D


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Inflation returned to single digit as it remarkably fell to 8.5% in April 2021, from the 10.5% recorded in March 2021, figures from the Ghana Statistical Service have revealed.
It is the first single digit rate recorded in the year, following the ravaging effects of covid-19 on the economy. This means increases in price of goods and services slowdown in April 2021, comparatively to March this year.
However, it is higher than the rate recorded during the same period last year.
Month-on-month inflation between March and April 2021 was however 1.5%.
According to the figures, food inflation rate stood at 6.5%, lower than the 10.8% recorded in March 2021. Non-food inflation rate was however went up to 10.2% in April 2021, from 10.0% recorded in March 2021.
Within the food group, Fruits and Nuts which recorded -0.4% inflation drove the April 2021 down.
For the non-food inflation, Housing, water, Electricity and Gas recorded an inflation rate of 25%, down from 29% recorded in March 2021. It is actually the highest rate of inflation for April 2021.
Transport (9.6%) and Insurance and Financial Services (9%) recorded inflation rates above the national average of 8.5%.
Also, the inflation for imported goods was 7.4%, up from 6.8% recorded last month, while the inflation for locally produced items was 8.7%, down from the 11.7% recorded last month.
For the regions, the Greater Accra region recorded the highest inflation rate of 12.1% percent in April this year, but lower than that of March 2021.
However, the region with the lowest rate of inflation was Upper West with inflation rate of 2%.
Ashanti region was the other region apart from Greater Accra region with inflation rate of 10.1%, higher than the national average.
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