Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 1

Facebook has confirmed that they will be actively battling the coronavirus on their platform in the form of removing any false advertising regarding the subject.

A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that "We recently implemented a policy to prohibit ads that refer to the coronavirus and create a sense of urgency, like implying a limited supply, or guaranteeing a cure or prevention. We also have policies for surfaces like Marketplace that prohibit similar behavior."

So, while Facebook can't necessarily do anything about the physical spreading of COVID-19, they have decided to battle it in their own way by removing any misinformation on its platforms. The spokesperson seems to be talking about any advertising about COVID-19 that will cause a "sense of urgency". Examples of this could be ads promoting any fake cures to the virus, prompts for donations to the infected, protective gear, prevention methods, misleading claims about health resources etc.

The COVID-19 virus is hitting numerous markets in the technology industry, and one of those markets is the PC market. Analysts are now stating their expectations for how much it will fall by the end of this year.

According to analyst firm, Canalys, the global PC market is expected to shrink by a whole 3.4% in total by the end of the year if shipments continue to be hindered by the outbreak. The analyst firm also says that if the state of the outbreak worsens over time, the global PC market is expected to take a larger hit of around 8.4%.

The country that suffers the most from this outbreak if obviously China, and in the event of the worst possible scenario, Chinese sales will fall by 12.2%. In the best-case scenario, analysts predict it should only be 3.8%. Here are some numbers that make it a bit easier to understand -- in 2019, around 396 million PC's were sold, and in 2020 Canalys predicts it could be anywhere between 362-382 million units.

A new report by the Department of Defence has revealed that the United States has failed to account for $715.8 million dollars worth of weapons and equipment while in Syria.

Members of the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Operations Inherent Resolve (SOJTF-OIR), which is apart of the United States' Combined Joint Task Force in Syria, purportedly "did not maintain comprehensive lists of all equipment purchased and received". These weapons and equipment were supplied to the United States and allies during the years of 2017 and 2018. Not only were weapons and equipment not accounted for, but some of the weapons and equipment that were accounted for suffered rust due to them not being correctly stored.

The report says that this rust happened because of "SOJTF-OIR personnel did not divest or dispose of CTEF-S equipment, which led to overcrowding at the BPC Kuwait warehouse". The Department of Defence report doesn't state if the 'lost' weapons and equipment ended up in the hands of Daesh and Al-Qaeda affiliates, but according to the Military Times some of it did "battlefield losses by partner forces and as a result of Islamic State [Daesh] fighters plundering the armories of U.S.-backed groups in early 2014 as the jihadi group surged across Iraq and Syria".

Seventeen members of a German parliamentary group have nominated whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.

According to the full letter, which was published on the Courage Foundation's website, these seventeen members of the parliamentary group believe that Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning have shown extraordinary efforts towards deserving a Nobel Peace Prize.

The group believes that Assange's efforts to expose "the extent of harm and illegality behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars", Snowden's revealing of "illegal mass surveillance, in defence of the liberties", and Manning's disclosure of 750,000 "classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents" to WikiLeaks represents enormous sacrifice for these individuals. The group also believe that a Nobel Peace Prize would more than honor the actions of these individuals, and represent their own sacrifice of liberties.

NVIDIA shareholders would be smiling right now, with stock reaching a new all-time high for the company -- hitting $314 with a market cap of $192 billion.

The last time NVIDIA was on this trajectory was back in September 2018 as it launched its new Turing GPU architecture and the GeForce RTX brand. NVIDIA stock was hitting close to $280 at the time, but cratered just before Christmas 2018 reaching the lows of around $129.

NVIDIA didn't have quite the success that it expected with the GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards, but the shift down to 7nm and the upcoming Ampere GPU architecture that should be unveiled at its GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in March will help that. We can expect the launch of the next-gen GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics cards this year, which will mark for an even more successful year for NVIDIA.

The coronavirus is not only affecting millions of people's lives, but it's also affecting massive industries such as technology is most of its forms.

TrendForce, a research firm have released their predictions for how the coronavirus will affect certain sub-industries of technology. This is, of course, mainly due to how China has closed down its factories in fear of the coronavirus spreading. TrendForce predicts that smartwatches will suffer the most with a forecast of 12.1 million units being shipped compared to the previous 14.4 million -(16%).

The researchers predict that Notebooks will be the next product to take a hit as it's expected that there will be a 12.3% drop in units (30.7 million units from 35 million). The next industry, after that, seems to be smart speakers with the previous forecast sitting at 26.4 million units and now is estimated to at around 23.4 million units (-12.1%). Smartphones are also following close behind with the previous forecast sitting at 35 million, and now sitting at 30.7 million (-12.3%).

Warren Buffett has just offloaded $800 million worth of his Apple shares in the last quarter, according to SEC filings secured by Business Insider.

Berkshire Hathaway, where Buffett is the CEO, offloaded 3.7 million Apple shares between the months of October and December 2019 when Apple share prices increased by over 30% from $219 to $294. Even with the offloading of 3.7 million shares and securing $800 million, Berkshire Hathaway still holds $72 billion worth of Apple stock -- or around 5.6% of Apple.

In saying that, the $72 billion worth of Apple stock represents over 32% of Berkshire Hathaway's entire portfolio. The investment firm purchased its first loads of Apple stock in 2016, when Apple stock was sitting at around $100 -- Buffett's company spent $1 billion on 9.8 million shares at the time.

Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos has announced via his personal Instagram account the is launching a new fund to battle climate change - the Bezos Earth Fund.

Bezos took to his Instagram to announce what is called the Bezos Earth Fund, and this fund will be dedicated to fighting the effects of climate change. Bezos says that he wants to work alongside others that are fighting climate change, and to kick things off for the Bezos Earth Fund, he will be donating $10 billion that will go towards grants that will be issued out this summer.

Bezos says that the Bezos Earth Fund will fund scientists "scientists, activists, NGOs - any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world". He also says that to save the Earth it will require collective action from "big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals." It should also be noted that the Bezos Earth Fund is separate from Amazon's own initiatives and that the $10 billion came from Bezos' personal account.

The court for Berlin-Brandenburg has officially ordered Tesla to stop all forest clearing and building preparations for their coming gigafactory.

According to a recent report from Reuters, U.S electric car manufacturer, Tesla has been ordered to stop all forms of preparation for their planned construction of a gigafactory. The court has ordered this after it gave Tesla the green light to remove 92 hectares of forest for the construction of the building.

This decision by the court has come after environmental activists (Green League of Brandenburg) have expressed their concerns over the de-forestation being a threat to wildlife and water supplies. It should be noted that Tesla was only three days away from completing the forest clearing, but the court states "It should not be assumed that the motion seeking legal protection brought by the Green League lacks any chance of succeeding." At the moment, Tesla has two gigafactories, one located in the United States and the second in Shanghai, China.

Apple and Nuvia are in the headlines over the weekend, with a former Apple chip executive being sued for 'betraying' Apple by launching a new startup and poaching Apple employees... while Apple is also reportedly trying to poach his new staffers. But the story is a lot juicier than that.

Bloomberg is reporting that Gerard Williams III, who left as the lead chip architect at Apple and co-founded Nuvia, says that Apple is stopping his new company from hiring engineers, all while hiring Nuvia staff from under him. Bloomberg reports that Apple's new lawsuit was made to "suffocate the creation of new technologies and solutions by a new business, and to diminish the freedom of entrepreneurs to seek out more fulfilling work".

But where this gets interesting is that Williams said he is maintaining a distant relationship with Apple and his former colleagues, but AnandTech founder Anand Shimpi -- who left his site to work for Apple, has "sent him numerous texts after Williams left the company, including material marked "Apple Confidential" in an April conversation. Williams said he told Shimpi this was "inappropriate and unwelcome," according to the filing. Apple didn't immediately respond to a query about Shimpi", reports Bloomberg.