Business, Financial & Legal - Page 103

Reload Studios has just secured $4 million in its first round of funding, with Reload Studios' CEO James Chung saying: "Now the foundation is set. Gaining partners who believed in the future of VR is like gaining a huge army for the battle. We are ready to take on the whole world of VR".

The investors included Rothenberg Ventures, World Innovation Lab, Barunson E&A, YK CRCM RS LLC as well as a few undisclosed private backers. Reload Studios has only just announced its first VR title 'World War Toons' as well as the creation of its own VR Lab. The studio has partnered up with WoofbertVR, an arts education VR company.

General Partner at YK CRCM RS LLC, Chun Ding, said: "Today's digital consumers will best experience and embrace virtual reality through its most exciting and breath-taking content. We applaud the talented team at Reload Studios for what they have accomplished and are thrilled to partner with them to bring the best of these contents to the consumers".

Hours after we broke news that AMD might not have the HBM2 game wrapped up, news has broken that AMD will be culling 5% of its global workforce. Around 500 jobs will be lost due to a restructuring process, which is said to streamline AMD's business and reduce costs as the company continues to struggle against Intel, reports Bloomberg.

AMD will record charges of around $42 million due to the restructuring plan, which will outsource some of its IT services and application development. The company will save around $2 million and $7 million in the last two quarters of the year, and a total savings of $58 million in 2016.

While Bloomberg might say this is down to Intel beating the company, AMD is taking an even worse battering from NVIDIA. In the discrete GPU market, NVIDIA controls 82% of the dGPU market share with its GeForce products, leaving AMD with scraps. The new Fiji-based cards powered by the next-generation High Bandwidth Memory seem to be few and far between, with stock not filling shelves, or gamers' PCs.

Amazon continues to evolve, with the launch of its latest service that pays part-time drivers to deliver packages for Amazon. Amazon Flex is an Uber-like delivery service that pays drivers between $18 and $25 per hour to deliver packages using Amazon Prime Now, within the promised one-hour delivery window.

Interested drivers need to be at least 21 years old, have their own vehicle, an Android-powered smartphone, and have to pass a background check. We don't know how many drivers Amazon is after, the delivery distance and package size they'd be handling and other factors that would determine how much a driver is paid per hour.

Part-time drivers can work two-, four-, or eight-hour shifts to supplement their income - or with the eight-hour shifts, it could very well be a full-time job. It's not as flexible as being an Uber driver, but the benefits are there. Amazon Flex drivers can work as much as they want, as Amazon needs delivery drivers seven days a week.

Volkswagen continues to dig a bigger grave for itself, but the company is getting its hands dirty trying to crawl out of it. The company's fresh CEO, Matthias Mueller, has told his employees that the company will be contacting customers in the coming days to fixing their diesel-powered cars.

We don't know how the company will do that, whether it's going to be something mechanical or whether it will be a software-based patch. Regulators are going to be busy with Volkswagen when it happens, to make sure that the solution is absolutely 100%. Volkswagen is ready to spend $7.3 billion cleaning up the massive problem, but things are just continuing to get worse, with the likes of BMW and Mercedes now caught up in it.

Earlier this month we reported that AMD had split its GPU division off into Radeon Technolgoies Group, while the larger chunk of the company was hoping to sell a 20% stake in itself to investment firm Silver Lake.

Well, that deal has fallen through according to Bloomberg, which reports: "Advanced Micro Devices Inc., a struggling competitor to Intel Corp., was in talks to sell about a 25 percent stake to private-equity firm Silver Lake Management before the negotiations stalled, people with knowledge of the matter said".

Bloomberg added: "The two sides, which met over the summer, have put the discussions on hold after failing to agree on a price and strategy, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. AMD is also considering other strategic options, another person said".

Kayne West has a lot to say, and while the rapper and husband of Kim Kardashian will be running for US president in 2020, Kanye has come out slamming 3D printers.

In the latest episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians, Kanye said: "This is what I'm afraid of right here, 3D printing. Because the Internet destroyed the music industry and now this is what we're afraid of right now with the textile industry. There will come a time where people are making the shoes at home".

Kayne visited the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies in Armenia in the latest episode, which is where the quote came from, as well as Kanye adding that he "likes robots", but he doesn't like all robots. If Kayne is elected president, you can be sure 3D printers will most likely be banned under a new Executive Order.

Volkswagen is at the heart of the biggest car fraud story ever, but the likes of Mercedes and BMW will soon be involved. According to the latest on-the-road results from Transport & Environment (T&E), some Mercedes A, C, and E class cars as well as BMW's latest 5 series and Peugeot 308 cars are using up to 50% more fuel than their lab test results.

The problems that this is creating, is that the official numbers given by Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW are different to the real-world performance numbers and this gap is becoming so wide that "it cannot be explained through known factors including test manipulations", reports Ademloos.be. Things have gotten worse in the last 15 years or so, where the official test results for CO2 emissions/fuel economy and real-world performance have increased from 8% in 2001 to a huge 40% on average for 2014.

The numbers are coming from T&E's 2015 Mind the Gap report, which takes a look at on-the-road fuel consumption by motorists and highlights what Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW have been doing for years. These carmakers have been abusing the system, with EU regulators not closing the various loopholes that allow this to happen. T&E has added that without action, the gap will grow from 40% from 2014, to over 50% on average by 2020.

The barrage of legal woes against Volkswagen continues as the auto company confirmed that approximately 2.1 million Audi vehicles across the globe are equipped with software that's specifically designed to cheat diesel emission tests. The auto titan was reportedly told some four years ago that the software posed a significant legal concern and would one day jeopardize the entire company, but VW ignored the warnings.

The software was specifically designed to recognize when emission tests were being conducted, then obfuscate actual diesel emissions by shifting into a low-emissions mode. Volkswagen clarified that over 1.42 million Audi vehicles in Western Europe had the software, with 13,000 cars in the United States and 577,000 in VW's native homeland of Germany.

The "Dieselgate" scandal has taken a serious toll on Volkswagen; shortly after the scandal broke VW shares fell by 30%, and the company has since suspended its heads of research and development. VW CEO Martin Winterkorn jumped ship after the guitly admission, and Porsche exec Matthias Mueller stepped in as acting CEO to take control over the company as it faces turbulent waters ahead.

We all know advertising makes the world go round, but there are some people who pay to opt out of seeing ads, but what use is paying that bill every month if ad-blocking companies are allowing them to hit you anyway, all while making money out of it.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that ad-blocking companies are taking in payments from specific publishers that would see ad-free subscribers receiving ads anyway. The WSJ reports: "Eyeo GmbH, the company behind popular desktop ad-blocking tool Adblock Plus, now accepts payment from around 70 companies in exchange for letting their ads through its filter. Eyeo stipulates that they must comply with its "acceptable ads" policy, meaning their ads aren't too disruptive or intrusive to users. In total, ads from some 700 companies meet the acceptable ads policy".

Better yet, is that Eyeo has been contacting other ad-blocking developers to make deals that would see their ads pushed through their filters to more paying ad-blocking customers, for a fee of course. Eyeo reportedly "seeks payment from any firm that generates more than 10 million unblocked ad impressions a month". The WSJ reports that Eyeo's cost is associated revenue that their clients make from the ads that they allow through their filters.

If you've ever received a bill with the wrong 'amount owing' amount, you will never again complain after reading this story. One couple received a $2.1 million bill from Verizon Wireless, after Ken Slusher from Damascus, Oregon received his bill for $2,156,593.64. Slusher said: "Yeah, it's been very stressful to say the least".

While FOX 12 was with him, Slusher called Verizon Wireless' automated phone line to check his account balance, where a voice recording said "Your total amount due is $2,156,593.64". Slusher and his girlfriend opened the Verizon account last November, where they purchased two smartphones. The couple only kept the service going for one month after they kept getting incorrect bills.

Slusher added that their first bill should've been $120, where instead he received a bill of $698 plus a previous balance of $451. The next statement? Just $9. Slusher continued: "The number of errors and the comedy of which they happened is astounding to me". In January, the couple returned the smartphones they had, and thought it was all over and done with. That is, until they received notices from multiple collection agencies demanding up to $2000 each.

Turing Pharmaceuticals is in the headlines today for all the wrong reasons, increasing the price of their HIV/AIDS medication from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill, overnight - an increase of an insane 4100%.

Daraprim, the medication in question, has been on the market for 62 years now, and is the "standard of care for food-borne illness called toxoplasmosis caused by a parasite that can severely affect those with compromised immune systems. Turing purchased the rights to the drug last month and almost immediately raised prices", reports The Washington Post.

The story gets worse, with consumers taking to Reddit to boycott the company's products, saying that they want new laws that would prevent this price gouging from happening in the future. The editor daily newsletter on the industry, John Carroll of Fierce Biotech, asked Turing's CEO, Martin Shkreli about the huge price increase. Things took to Twitter, where Carroll asked: "Let's see if we can get a statement from @MartinShkreli. Martin, your co. just hiked the price of an old drug - new to you - by 5000%. Why?". The response from Shkreli was explosive, where he straight up said: "You are such a moron".

It was only last week that AMD effectively spun off its GPU division into Radeon Technology Group, and now the chipmaker is in the headlines again as it has lost another high-profile employee in the form of its Chief Architect of Microprocessor Cores, Jim Keller. Keller is leaving AMD to pursue other opportunities.

Keller is known for his work with AMD in their early days of CPU dominance, as he was a key player in the creation of the original Athlon architecture, the K7. After that, he was the lead architect on the K8 architecture, and played a large role in developing the world's first native x86-64 bit architecture. Keller left AMD for Apple to help make its A4 and A5 processors, joining AMD once again in 2012 to lead the development of the Zen architecture.

An AMD spokesperson talked with HEXUS, where they said: "Jim was responsible for overseeing the teams defining the roadmaps for AMD's CPU cores, systems IP, and server and client SoCs". Obviously some people might be worried about AMD losing a key player of theirs, so the spokesperson added: "Jim helped establish a strong leadership team that is well positioned for success as we enter the completion phase of the "Zen" core and associated system IP and SoCs. Jim's departure is not expected to impact our public product or technology roadmaps, and we remain on track for "Zen" sampling in 2016 with first full year of revenue in 2017".

The rumors of Microsoft acquiring AMD are back again, with Microsoft reportedly interested in acquiring both the CPU and GPU divisions, days after AMD announced it was breaking its GPU division away into its own entity called Radeon Technology Group.

With AMD under its wing, Microsoft could truly begin to compete on a totally different level against companies like NVIDIA, Samsung and Apple. With Microsoft's big pockets, AMD could have a massive injection of R&D money and in a few years, we could be looking at a market with one of the strongest competitors being Microsoft.

This is without considering the console side of things, where Microsoft could have AMD exclusively making GPUs, CPUs or APUs for use in its next-generation Xbox consoles. The next step would be VR gaming, and with AMD cooking up Liquid VR we could see Microsoft having a huge win on its hand on the hardware side of things when it comes to VR thanks to it acquiring AMD.

Dell has just announced it is investing massively into China, pushing $125 billion worth into the country over the next five years. Dell CEO Michael Dell said in a statement: "the Internet is the new engine for China's future economic growth and has unlimited potential".

Back in 2010, Dell said that it had planned to spend $250 billion on procurement and other investment into China over 10 years, which is its second biggest market, with the US being their biggest. Michael Dell continued: "Dell will embrace the principle of 'In China, for China' and closely integrate Dell China strategies with national policies".

With Dell being the third in global PC shipments for Q2, the US-run company will be chasing behind Lenovo who sits in second place, and HP who sits at the top of the food chain. Things are going to change with this $125 billion investment, that's for sure.

Hours before the launch of the Radeon R9 Nano, AMD announces that it is effectively spinning off its GPU division, after acquiring ATI back in 2006 for $5.6 billion.

The new unit will be called Radeon Technologies Group, which will concentrate on GPU development, as well as the "virtual and augmented reality" markets. The new Radeon Technologies Group is being overseen by current Senior Vice President and Chief Architect of AMD, Raja Koduri. Koduri will be reporting directly to AMD President and CEO Lisa Su, with Koduri taking care of "all aspects of graphics technologies used in AMD's APU, discrete GPU, semi-custom, and GPU compute products".

In a statement, the AMD CEO said: "With the creation of the Radeon Technologies Group we are putting in place a more agile, vertically integrated graphics organization focused on solidifying our position as the graphics industry leader, recapturing profitable share across traditional graphics markets, and staking leadership positions in new markets such as virtual and augmented reality".

The identity of the creator of Popcorn Time, until now, has eluded the world. The creator of the BitTorrent movie sharing software has only been known as "Sebastian", and since his creation was illegal, his identity was something he kept to himself obviously.

That is, until now. The creator of Popcorn Time is an Argentinian designer, Federico Abad. Abad said that he wanted to create an easy and fast for users to watch any movie they wanted. Other options took too long, were too confusing or not easy enough for someone like his own mom to use. If Abad's mom liked the idea, then it was a good idea.

But, Adad noted that Popcorn Time cost people both professionally and personally, as he lost his girlfriend in the process. Also the fact that copyright holders were waiting with all of their legal power behind them would've been scary enough. A lawyer from Warner Bros. had worked out the team's identities, visiting their LinkedIn pages. Abad says that he thinks this was a scare tactic, to show that the studio knew what was going on. He did add that he doesn't regret creating Popcorn Time, but he now thinks it's not worth the possibility of legal action in the future.

In a very surprising move, Ubisoft has just announced that it is set to construct a massive 10,000-square-meter indoor theme park in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The theme park, according to Jean de Rivieres, Senior Vice President of Ubisoft Motion Pictures: "Ubisoft's intention for this park is to immerse people in reactive worlds where they can interact with each other and become the heroes of their own life-sized game. Ubisoft will produce all digital media for the rides, and help design guests' journey into the park to ensure the visitors' experience is at its best".

The studio is working with Malaysian theme park developer RSG, which will both run and own the mark. Ubisoft on the other hand, will have creative control over the park, which is expected to open its doors in 2020.

What would you do with $2.5 billion? I know I would do countless things like buy all of my friends and family houses and put enough money in their accounts that they would never have to worry about money ever again. But what about the man who sold Mojang? The company behind Minecraft. Well, he's super lonely according to his recent tweets.

Markus "Notch" Persson sold Mojang to Microsoft nearly a year ago now for $2.5 billion, purchased a $70 million mansion, and has been hosting insane parties ever since. Recently, Persson tweeted: "The problem with getting everything is you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance. Hanging out in ibiza with a bunch of friends and partying with famous people, able to do whatever I want, and I've never felt more isolated".

The tweets from Persson can be found below.

Acer hasn't been doing so well lately, with the Taiwanese giant welcoming a takeover bid. The news is coming directly from Acer founder Stan Shih, where he welcomed a takeover of his company after big dips in its share price.

Shih told reporters in a response to question about Acer being open for a takeover, that they would be "welcome" and that the buyer would get an "empty shell" and pay deeply. He added: "U.S. and European management teams usually are concerned about money, their CEOs only work for money. But Taiwanese are more concerned about a sense of mission and emotional factors".

A company spokesperson confirmed Shih's remarks on Thursday. Acer has taken some big dips recently, with big on-year sales falls, with a huge 33% drop in July alone. The company took a $90 million loss for the first half of 2015, after a slight profit in the same period of 2015. Acer noted losses for the entire of 2011, 2012 and 2013 following drops in PC sales.

Spotify tried to quietly change its privacy policy, but issued a public apology after members and subscribers voiced their displeasure over the changes.

The policy change requested access to pictures on mobile devices, phone contacts, voice controls, and location information - but Spotify justified the changes.

Users are able to choose which images they choose with Spotify, and have control over how the images are stored and used. The location identification is to help personalize recommendations, along with share information about trending music in a user's area. Spotify might include voice controls so it's easier to control playlists, and isn't interested in accessing a user's microphone without permission.