Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 108

Disney has set another record in 2019 at the box office, with Frozen 2 becoming the largest debut of an animated movie ever with $350 million in its opening weekend.

Frozen 2 has already dethroned Toy Story 4 and its global record haul of $240 million back in June, and far exceeds expectations of the opening weekend sitting at around the same $240-$250 million mark. I think people underestimate the power of Frozen and how badly people wanted a sequel given how much the original movie went mega viral.

The domestic opening weekend of Frozen 2 was a big one, with around $130 million in box office sales in the US so far. This means that Disney sees Frozen 2 becoming the fifth highest opening of a movie in November of all time, behind Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($158M), Twilight Saga: New Moon ($142.8M), Twilight Breaking Dawn 2 ($141M), Breaking Dawn 1 ($138.1M) and ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 ($125M).

Elon Musk, the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX has written an email to all of his SpaceX employee's regarding drug use in the workplace.

While on The Joe Rogan Podcast back in September last year, Elon Musk decided to take a load off and have a puff a blunt containing cannabis and tobacco. Musk also mentioned that smoking the cannabis on the JRE Podcast "was not wise", and that the way that he smoked the drugs is a clear demonstration of his unfamiliarity of it. Musk also reinforced that the JRE Podcast is located in California where cannabis is recreational legal.

Since that time, Musk has emailed SpaceX employees regarding drug use at work, saying "SpaceX personnel may not use or possess any controlled substance while in the workplace, and also may not be under the influence of legal or illegal drugs while at work". This information was acquired by The Washington Post and it reads, "Anyone who appears to be inebriated or under the influence while at work is subject to drug testing and potentially other employment actions".

Elon Musk is well-known for his commitment to the public forum Twitter. His comments to fans are his way of addressing supporters and the public. Sometimes those comments can get out of hand, though, or at least they are alleged to be out of hand.

Back in 2018, Musk gave a comment that left the public in distaste and especially the person/s who were on the receiving end. Tesla's CEO allegedly abused a British diver, Vernon Unsworth, calling him a 'pedo guy' and also abused a BuzzFeed reporter. Unsworth is now taking Musk to court, and the US District Court has said that they will hear his suit.

Unsworth said that Musk's efforts to rescue children in Thailand were a mere "PR stunt" and Musk's intelligence of the caves the children were trapped in was below par. In response to Unsworth's critics of Musk's methods, Musk called Unsworth a "pedo-guy" and Unsworth followed up with the response "stick his submarine where it hurts." The United States District Court in Los Angeles will commence hearing the suit on December 3rd.

Qualcomm has been at the forefront of 5G for years now, with the Snapdragon giant set to unleash 5G onto the world in a big way over the coming years -- with plans of seeing over 750 million 5G-capable smartphones in the wild by 2022.

The company recently made the prediction during its recent Analyst Day 2019, providing an idea of what to expect over the next few years when it comes to 5G. Qualcomm talked about 5G growth during the event, where it said it expects to see 175-225 million 5G handsets deployed in 2020, over 450 million by 2021, and a huge 750 million by 2022.

Qualcomm notes that 5G adoption will be faster than 4G due to the "timing of China commercialization and availability of chipsets across tiers". The company will have three different tiers of its Snapdragon processors with 5G capabilities in 2020, with the Snapdragon 600 and 700 series to both pack 5G while its flagship Snapdragon 800 series will continue on with its 5G powers.

Bill Gates certainly has some dollars in the bank, and since he stopped working full-time at Microsoft back in 2008, most of those dollars have been going to charity and his philanthropy ventures. Despite that, Gates has reclaimed his seat as the world's richest person.

According to Bloomberg, as of November 16th, Gates has de-thrones Amazon head Jeff Bezos for the world's richest person seat. Gates, who is worth around $110 billion, took the lead ahead of Bezos, who is worth approximately $109 billion. Over the course of the years, Gates has distanced himself from Microsoft while still maintaining a hefty amount of the companies stock. Throughout his distancing, he has been replaced as the world's richest person on numerous occasions by; Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim, and Jeff Bezos.

Bloomberg says that Gates now 1st position is due to Microsoft earning $10 billion from a Pentagon contract, which ultimately raised their stock price. The contract was for cloud computing services for the Defense Department's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). Back in June, the Microsoft stock price was at $136, now the current price for the stock is sitting at a solid $150. Microsoft are also planning on releasing their next-gen Xbox soon, so they could increase stock prices further, which would then give Gates a more sturdy lead.

Tesla will build its new Gigafactory in Germany rather than the UK, with Tesla and SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk saying that the on-going battle of Brexit in the UK was the deciding force for Germany being the location of Gigafactory 4.

Musk spoke with an English car enthusiast publication about the matter, telling Auto Express that Brexit is the reason he and his executive team decided to not build Gigafactory 4 in the UK. Musk explained: "Brexit's [uncertain future] made it too risky to put a Gigafactory in the UK".

He added that Tesla will be building a new research and development center in Europe, meaning that both Gigafactory 4 and the new R&D center will not be built in the UK because of Brexit. This means the UK misses out on billions of dollars, and the creation of thousands of high-skilled jobs with the Gigafactory 4 and R&D center being built in Germany instead.

Google has updated the terms of service (ToS) to YouTube, and it has content creators and YouTubers very, very concerned -- and rightfully so.

YouTube's new ToS states in a section titled "Account Suspension & Termination" under the subheading of "Terminations by YouTube for Service Changes" that "YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account's access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable".

Yeah, you read that right -- if YouTube isn't making money from your content, it can remove you from its platform at a whim. The new terms of service kick in on December 10, with the current ToS not stating this right now.

Since we first broke the story about the possible upcoming fate of Silicon Valley-based retail chain Fry's Electronics, not much has changed within the stores. Shelves are still empty with what limited product they have in stock being spread out across as many isles as possible.

After our story, numerous other news outlets including CBS, San Jose Mercury News, and PC Gamer have begun to speculate, as well as obtain denials from Fry's Electronics spokesperson Manuel Valerio that the company has no immediate plans to go out of business. Even though it is closing its Palo Alto store, the company insists it has no plans to close its other 33 stores in nine states.

One store manager commented to us that they are clearing out the existing product to make room for new vendors. We specifically asked what vendor was replacing copies of Microsoft Windows, which at that point, the manager refused to make any additional comments. On recent store visits to Bay Area and Southern California stores, not only have we seen little to no new products arriving, but employees have told us that what new products we are seeing are mostly inter-store transfers.

AT&T is giving customers some bonus data to enjoy, but what kind of 'bonus' would this be if a company didn't make you pay for it?

Yes, I know that sentence is a strange one to read, but its factually correct. AT&T has recently decided to offer Mobile Share plan customers a 'bonus' 15GB of data, which applies to all Share Value plans. Examples of this are the $130 plan that originally gave 30GB of data, now give 45GB and the $225 a month plan that gave 60GB of data, now gives 75GB.

The catch? Well, AT&T is not giving these 'bonuses' out for free. Instead, they will be adding an additional $10 to customers' monthly bills. It should also be noted that these 'bonuses' are not optional and are completely intentional by AT&T. "Starting with your October 2019 bill, you'll get an additional 15GB of data on your Mobile Share plan. This bonus data comes with a $10 price increase." said AT&T in an article.

If you have ever been on a flight of any kind, you know there are rigorous security checks to ensure passengers aren't carrying anything suspicious, let alone something illegal. Gun-shaped objects (not surprisingly) fall into those categories.

Recently, the Transportation Security Administration agents at the Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey came across something in someone's carry-on luggage that was quite strange. The object was gun-shaped and appeared to be a revolver, but before things got really serious, the TSA agents realized it was just a toilet paper roller.

The toilet paper roller looked remarkably similar to a revolver, and as you would imagine, bringing anything on a plane that even resembles a gun is not allowed at all. The TSA agents gave the passenger three options: give it to someone who wasn't boarding the plane, check it into the cargo luggage, or let them confiscate it. The passenger didn't have any attachment to the item and decided to let the TSA agents keep it.