Business, Financial & Legal - Page 116

Japan is known as the place to go if you want odd gadgets and other quirky items and Yahoo has a service that sounds like something you would find in Japan called Yahoo Ending. Yahoo Ending is a portal that has a place to go to get all your final affairs in order with the ability to deal with your worldly remains and delete your online data as well.

The new portal launched this week and a video that is making the rounds shows a family getting messages on mobile phones from a dad who just died. When Yahoo receives an official notification that someone has died, it deletes all the Yahoo Japan data, cancels all charges to the Yahoo digital wallet, deletes files from the Yahoo Box online storage, and sends out farewell messages to loved ones automatically.

Some of the services on Yahoo Ending are premium and require payment. Among the services is the ability to set up a memorial space with invitations to the funeral and the ability to send messages to family and friends, show personal movies, and share information on the deceased's favorite films and music. The service also offers full funeral packages costing up to $18,000.

Intel has just reported a great quarter, something that the PC market has helped the chipmaker achieve. The company has reported second quarter earnings of $2.8 billion, or 55 cents per share across revenues of $13.8 billion.

Wall Street had pegged Intel at earnings of 52 cents on revenue of $13.7 billion, so we have a slight increase on those predictions. Leading this revenue increase was the PC client group from Intel, which saw a huge $8.7 billion in revenue, setting a new quarterly record for unit sales. Last month was when Intel began teasing that it had stronger than expected PC demand, adding a massive chunk of money (around $700 million) to its quarterly revenue. This is a big note here, as its the first increase for that group since late 2009, some five years ago.

Intel has said that the increase of PC chip purchasing on multiple fronts: from around 600 million PCs being four years or older, new prices for its processors, and the retirement of Windows XP. Intel has said that it expects to see this trend continue throughout the year, but whether it continues into 2015 is unknown.

Jon Peddie Research, or JPR, has a new report out that sees the PC hardware market valued at a huge $21.5 billion. This figure is over twice the amount of the console gaming market, which should see people finally seeing that the PC market is just as, if not more important than the console market.

JPR Senior Analyst Ted Pollak said: "We continue to see a shift in casual console customers moving to mobile. While this is also occurring in the lower-end PC gaming world, more money is being directed to mid- and high-range builds and upgrades by gamers". Pollak continued, saying that PC gamers simply aren't interested in gaming consoles, something he calls "pure content consumption platforms".

He added that PC gamers have no problems paying thousands of dollars for "the ability to play games at very high settings" while also having the ability to do other desktop tasks, such as content creation and video editing "with maximum horsepower at their disposal in a desktop ergonomic environment".

Vending machines in the United States are evolving because of advanced technology and more affordable development prices. Instead of just selling cheap candy and soda, many vending machines now offer everything from beauty products to electronics, or higher quality food.

Denis Koci's Burritobox, selling hot burritos to visitors via his Box Brands companies, recently rolled out six more machines - featuring hand-rolled burritos which can be customized with sour cream, guacamole, and other choices. The company also has interest in Pizzaboxes and other niche food vending machines which can be in shopping malls, near parks, and other locations with high foot traffic.

"There is a lot of innovation happening in vending machines," said Omar Khedr, IBISWorld industry research analyst, in a statement. "It's occurring in niche markets like organic foods, propelled forward by access to new technology and convenience."

The controversial "right to be forgotten" ruling in Europe has seen Google censor news articles and remove search results - and now the company has shed some light on the process itself.

Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, penned a statement, published in the Guardian, in which he put forward the company's case. "When it comes to determining what's in the public interest, we're taking into account a number of factors," Drummond wrote. "These include whether the information relates to a politician, celebrity or other public figure; if the material comes from a reputable news source, and how recent it is; whether it involves political speech; questions of professional conduct that might be relevant to consumers; the involvement of criminal convictions that are not yet "spent"; and if the information is being published by a government. But these will always be difficult and debatable judgments."

That Google is having to decide the validity of each request on a case by case basis is testament to its power - delisting results is at the company's discretion. Of course, Google is not able to remove articles or websites from the internet, but as by far the largest search engine on the planet, taking down searches tends to considerably reduce the access to such pages. But Drummond asserted that adapting to the European ruling will be part of a learning curve. "Only two months in our process is still very much a work in progress," Drummond wrote. "It's why we incorrectly removed links to some articles last week (they've since been reinstated). But the good news is that the ongoing, active debate that's happening will inform the development of our principles, policies and practices."

A man named Ryan W Simonetti and two of his coworkers were in Washington DC recently where they hailed an Uber ride via the app. When the trio walked up to the Uber car, they noticed a DC Taxi inspector talking to the driver of the Uber car. As the inspector walked off, Simonetti says the Uber driver just drove off.

The inspector turned on his lights and started to follow the Uber car according to Simonetti. The passenger told the driver the cop was following him and the Uber driver allegedly responded, "He's not a real cop." The driver then ran a red light and proceeded to drive above the speed limit. Simonetti said it was like an episode of cops.

The driver allegedly told the passengers he couldn't stop and let them out because he would get a $2,000 fine. "It was insane," Simonetti said. "I physically tried to force his leg to hit the brake. I ripped off his pant leg ... I said, 'Here's two options. You take this exit, or I'm going to knock the side of your head in. If we crash, we crash, but you're gonna kill us anyway.'" The driver eventually let them out of the car and continued to flee authorities. The matter is under investigation by law enforcement and Uber.

Armed robbers have attacked one of Samsung's factories in Brazil, holding workers hostage while they took truckloads of smartphones, tablets and notebooks from a factory near Sao Paulo, Brazil. These goods were valued at $36 million.

The thieves carjacked a shuttle used by factory employees, after which they took the place overnight during the four-hour heist in Campinas. Campinas is an industrial hub in the southeastern state of Sao Paulo. The thieves reportedly made off with an incredible seven trucks of goods, stealing over 40,000 products.

A Samsung spokesperson has said: "We have cooperated fully with the police investigation that is underway and will do our best to avoid any sort of repeat incident".

YouTube is one of the most popular sites on the internet for streaming video and as such, it consumes a lot of bandwidth on many IPS networks. Some ISPs are allegedly slowing the streaming of YouTube videos down and YouTube is calling the ISPs out on the practice. YouTube has begun putting little messages on videos that are having streaming issues.

The message pops up over the title of the video and reads "Experiencing Interruptions?" and on the right side of the message, a button for users to click reads, "Find out Why." When the user clicks on that button, they are taken to a Video Quality Report that is localized for the person streaming the video. That report allows the user to compare video consumption times in their area and compare their ISP with the performance of other local ISPs in the area.

The best providers in the area receive a YouTube HD Verified tag with other carriers possibly having badges putting them in Standard Definition or lower tiers. The idea is to give the viewer an idea of why a video is slow rather than just assuming YouTube is having issues and to give the viewer options to change to other carriers that aren't putting limits on video streaming.

In a new interview, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has revealed just how outright difficult Steve Jobs could be, even in the earliest days of Apple.

Some early Apple employees said they would never, ever work with Jobs again if they could help it - and Wozniak described these workers as some of the brightest and among his best friends in Apple. "Steve Jobs had a lot of these questionable things, like some of my very best friends in Apple, the most creative people who worked on the Macintosh, almost all of them said they would never, ever work for Steve Jobs again," Wozniak said, speaking with the Milwaukee Business Journal. "It was that bad. I'm shocked."

However, Woz went on to say that from the early days, Jobs really respected people who would stand up to his pushy attitude. "He would directly confront people and almost call them idiots," Wozniak said. "But ... when they confronted him back and told him why they were right in understandable forms, he was just testing and learning, and he would respect those people and give them high privileges in the company." In the interview, as BusinessInsider points out, Wozniak also revealed that in the early days, Jobs would be happy to rush products out before they were ready.

It wasn't even a week ago that we reported that Crytek wasn't paying some of its staff on time, but now according to people familiar with the matter, Crytek's UK office has seen the majority of its employees stop coming into work.

Kotaku's Jason Schreier has "spoken with four people connected to Crytek's UK studio" and according to those people "Crytek's UK staff have still not been paid the full amounts they are owed, and this week, according to two sources, the staff at Crytek's UK office handed in formal grievance letters and went home".

One person familiar with the studio has said that an estimated 100 people have left the company, but we don't know if these people have left permanently or not. The new rumors are that Deep Silver, the studio behind Dead Island, the Metro series, Saints Row IV and Homefront: The Revolution (which the Crytek UK studio is currently working on) will buy Crytek. One source said: "They have invested a lot in Homefront and will want to protect their investment". We should see some movement on this story in the coming weeks.

Goldman Sachs accidentally sent out an e-mail recently, which contained "highly confidential" information, to the wrong person. The investment banking firm is now requesting that Google somehow unsend the e-mail.

Reuters is reporting that a Goldman Sachs contractor was testing changes to the company's internal systems, in order to meet the requirements set out by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The contractor then mistakenly sent out a client's confidential brokerage account information to someone's Gmail account, instead of the correct gs.com account.

This all happened on June 23, which means that whoever received the e-mail, has probably read it. But, Goldman Sachs wants to see its power used, pushing a US judge to issue a court order demanding that Google delete the e-mail, in order to protect itself, and its customer from further damages. Before Goldman Sachs went to court, the firm reached out to the Gmail account owner, but received no response.

Homes and offices around the world have made specialty single cup coffee machines very popular over the last few years. Those coffee machines can brew you up a cup of your favorite coffee and even have flavors from high-end coffee shops like Starbucks among the selections. Beer drinkers may soon have a similar system for getting a pint of their favorite beer anywhere.

The system is called the Synek draft system and it will make a personal pint of beer straight from the tap. This isn't exactly like making a single cup of coffee using water from your faucet at home though. This device is designed to let you fill the beer bag from any tap and then place it inside the machine to keep it cold and fizzy.

The company says that the beer inside the machine can remain fresh for months and dispensing a pint from the bag won't affect the freshness of the beer still in the bag. The bags are also designed to be interchangeable so you can get different brews when you need it. The device is legal in all states except Alabama, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Vermont. It is on Kickstarter now seeking $250,000 in funding.

Google has been fighting in court for a while trying to get out of the trouble it landed in with the Wi-Fi snooping that it performed with its Street View cars several years ago. Google has lost the case in court and has been appealing trying to get a different decision, but it looks like its appeals are over. The US Supreme court has refused to hear Google's appeal on a ruling in the case.

The refusal to hear the appeal will allow consumers to proceed with a privacy suit that stems from the snooping scandal. A lower court had previously ruled against Google saying that it may had violated a federal wiretap law when it collected payload data from Wi-Fi networks using its street view cars.

The data that Google captured with tech aboard those vehicles includes emails, passwords, and URLs that people had visited at home and in the office. The legal case around this issue began in 2010 when it was revealed that Street View cars were collecting data from Wi-Fi networks that weren't protected. Google argues that it didn't violate the wiretap law due to a clause in that law that gives an exception for networks readily accessible to the public.

We reported a few days ago now that Crytek was beginning to walk into some trouble, with developers not flocking to its CryEngine for game development. But now there's multiple outlets reporting that the developer behind Crysis is in a spot of bother over not paying its employees on time.

The developer hasn't been paying its employees on time for a few months now, with multiple games being cancelled, some of which were original prototypes, and even the sequel to the Xbox One exclusive, Ryse. Current and former employees of Crytek explain that the company has a tense, unstable environment which stems from poor communication and a number of high-level staff leading the company's studios in both Britain and Germany. One employee has said that over 100 people have left the company since March.

Crytek has reportedly been experiencing some issues for quite a while now - personally, ever since it shifted focus to consoles over pushing graphical boundaries with CryEngine and Crysis on PC - with multiple contracts cut from the company. Crytek is a privately owned company, so when it loses a multi-million-dollar contract, it hurts, a lot.

A campaign group is seeking to turn the island of Jersey, just off the coast of Normandy, into the most welcoming location for Bitcoin in the world.

Although it's already possible to use the cryptocurrency in a smattering of places around the web and in the physical realm, it's not quite widespread yet. Now bit.coin.je, a new industry body, is hoping to turn Jersey into a "Bitcoin Isle". Jersey is famous as a hotspot for offshore banking, and in a blog post, the group said it is now working with the Channel Islands Information Security Forum to explore how the cryptocurrency can augment this.

In a statement, the CIISF's chairman Matt Palmer said: "Cryptocurrencies are much misunderstood but have the potential to revolutionize the financial system," before adding that currencies such as Bitcoin "could well underpin the future of offshore finance centers."

T-Mobile is putting a lot of pressure on other mobile carriers in the US with a number of offerings that make the smallest of the major carriers look very appealing to customers. T-Mobile in the past made it much cheaper for people to get a new device on its network with cheaper service plans. The carrier has also been paying a large portion of the early termination fee for users to leave their current provider and swap to its service.

At the T-Mobile Un-carrier 5.0 event held this week, T-Mobile unveiled a new music offering that is different from what other carriers offer. You can stream unlimited music on unRadio just as you would on the music services offered elsewhere, the big difference here is that the streaming music doesn't count against your data allowance.

That means you can stream all you want and your data allowance stays the same, which is a big deal for heavy music streamers. This isn't T-Mobiles own music streaming service, rather it works with existing apps like Pandora, Rhapsody, iTunes Radio and others. T-Mobile doesn't count data used while streaming music from these apps against the user's data allowance. All T-Mobile users on Simple Choice plans get unRadio and the service is available now.

Do you want some bitcoins and have a minimum of $200,000 for a deposit? If so, prepare for the U.S. federal government's auction of bitcoins that once belonged to the defunct Silk Road black market website.

The U.S. Marshals Service is spearheading the auction, and all interested parties must register by June 23. The auction itself begins on June 27 and will run for 12 hours. Everyone participating must submit a registration form, copy of a government-issued photo ID, and a wire transfer deposit. The 30,000 bitcoins are valued around $17.3 million currently exchanging at $600 per bitcoin. It appears the federal government has monitored the value of bitcoin and has tried to time the auction at a time when bitcoin value appears to be rising yet again.

The feds also seized another 144,336 bitcoins that belonged to Silk Road head Ross William Ulbricht, however, he is contesting their forfeiture. Interestingly, Ulbricht's attorney argues that bitcoin isn't real currency, and says charges should be dismissed and the cryptocurrency should be returned.

Everything is getting smart these days from our phones to our watches. A new smart cup has turned up from a company called Mark One that is called the Vessyl. The smart cup has some interesting abilities. It knows what you put inside and can break the liquid down to its most vital components using sensors inside the cup.

The goal of the cup is to help us change how we consume liquids during the day. The cup can monitor caffeine and sugar amounts and tracks calories. It also has a proprietary hydration measurement that it tracks called Pryme. All of these metrics that the cup can record are synced with an app on your smartphone.

Vessyl has a sting of lights on the side of the cup that will glow to give you an indication of how drinking the liquid you place inside will help or hurt your hydration level during the day. Mark one plans to sell Vessyl via its own website. It has pre-orders going now on its website and the cup can be ordered for $99. Retail price once the cup hits market will be $199. Plans are for the first batch to hit the market in early 2015.

Intel has been in court in the EU this week to challenge a fine levied against it totaling 1.06 billion Euros or $1.44 billion. The fine was levied against Intel five years ago and Intel has been appealing the fine ever since. The second highest court in the EU says that regulators weren't overly harsh with the massive fine.

The original decision was handed down when the European Commission ruled that Intel had tried to block some PC makers like Dell and HP among others from buying processors from rival AMD. The competition authority in the EU also ruled that Intel paid a retail chain in Germany called Media Saturn Holding to stock PCs in its locations with Intel chips inside only.

The court Intel was in was located in Luxembourg and it backed the Commission's decision Thursday. "The General Court considers that none of the arguments raised by Intel supports the conclusion that the fine imposed is disproportionate. On the contrary, it must be considered that that fine is appropriate in the light of the facts of the case," judges said.

Hyundai has been working on a new sort of zero emissions vehicle that doesn't rely on gasoline for power. It also doesn't rely on electricity from an outlet to get around either. The car is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and it has landed in California this week. The fuel cell powered Tucson marks commercial availability of mass-produces fuel cell vehicles in the US.

Other automakers have put fuel cell vehicles on the roads in the past, including Honda and others, but in limited numbers. The big challenge is the small number of hydrogen refueling stations that are available. That low number of refueling stations will continue to hamper the growth of the hydrogen fuel cell market for years to come.

The first US customer for the Hyundai hydrogen fuel cell vehicle was Timothy Bush. He leased the car for $499 monthly with a $2999 down payment. The big draw for this vehicle is that the three-year lease includes unlimited hydrogen refueling and free maintenance at any of three participating dealerships in Southern California. The vehicle has a driving range of 265 miles with each fill up. Refueling takes about ten minutes to complete. There are only nine hydrogen-refueling stations in Southern California and to qualify to lease the vehicle, drivers must live within range of the stations.