Business, Financial & Legal - Page 126

The hits just keep coming for Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. Earlier this year, the US Department of Homeland Security had seized $2.9 million from Mt. Gox's Dwolla account, and now reports are coming in that say an additional $2.1 million was seized from the company's Wells Fargo accounts.

That brings the total of the seizures up to $5 million and explains why recent withdrawal attempts from Bitcoin traders failed to process. On June 19, the $2.1 million held in Wells Fargo accounts was seized, which was one day before Mt. Gox suspended all US withdrawals.

The legal issues arose when Mt. Gox opened a Wells Fargo business account for Mutum Sigillum LLC (Mt. Gox's American subsidiary) but declared it as a business not engaged in money services. This was a falsification and the US government does not like it when you falsify financial documents. Head over to Source #2 to read the full seizure warrants.

The US Department of Justice has its hands busy with paperwork regarding Microsoft and its possible involvement with bribing foreign government officials into accepting software contracts in both Russia and Pakistan.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the story, and according to the Journal's sources, "in Pakistana a tipster alleged that Microsoft authorized a consulting firm to pay for a five-day trip to Egypt for a government official and his wife in order to win a tender."

Moving onto Russia, the tipster said that "resellers of its software allegedly funneled kickbacks to executives of a state-owned company to win a deal." Microsoft is cooperating with the investigation, but why? Just give the DoJ some Windows-based PCs filled with security holes so that the NSA can send the e-mails back and forth.

I've just woken up this morning (it's 7am here in my part of Australia) to the news of a three-hour shutdown of NASDAQ. Yes, a three-hour shutdown to trading in NASDAQ securities, which is massive news.

NASDAQ pegged the issue on an 'unexplained technological problem' and resumed trading at 3:25pm EDT, after a 3-hour, 11-minute shutdown of trading in US companies' stocks. The shutdown is the largest in recent history. Sal Arnuk, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading in Chatnam, New Jersey said: "Any brokerage firm gets paid by executing orders. So yes, we are frustrated, and this hurts us, it hurts the market and it hurts public confidence."

The exchange blamed the issue with distributing stock price quotes for the shutdown, with a source close to the matter describing the problem as a "data feed issue" reports Reuters. Ok, now let's talk serious for a little bit, because a "technical issue", in my opinion, doesn't just happen to NASDAQ.

We all know HTC is going through troubled times, but at the same time they've seen some decent success with some of its latest smartphones. The Taiwanese company has even enlisted the help of Robert Downey Jr, or Iron Man, in its latest advertising campaign.

But, the company still has issues. Reuters has an interesting interview lineup, where they've interviewed over a dozen of former, and current HTC executives, who talked about HTC's CEO, Peter Chou. They said they Chou was a quick decision maker with an attention to detail, which stop HTC from climbing higher up the smartphone success ladder.

Chou's traits have, however, helped the company over the last few years, as Chou could quickly make a decision on a product, or quickly snap together a concept for a new device. Reuters did talk of an offsite meeting two years ago where the HTC CEO sketched his plans for the design, price and launch date of the Sensation XL a mere three months before its launch.

It's no secret that copyright and patent trolls are not the most ethical of creatures. In fact, many regard them as little more than the scum of the earth. Today, website Torrentfreak has released a report that shows just how immoral and unethical copyright trolls can be.

The report says that Comcast has confirmed that a Pirate Bay user going by the name "Sharkmp4" has been directly linked to the notorious copyright troll Prenda Law. In a weird turn of events, The Pirate Bay actually helped Comcast expose the copyright troll who is running a honeypot on the popular torrent listing service.

The exposure came after a June report released by Delvan Neville, who works for a company that monitors BitTorrent users, that accused Prenda of running the so-called honeypot. The report says that the law firm was the major seeder of the very files they claim to be protecting. The Pirate Bay jumped in and exposed the IP address that Sharkmp4 was using, which matched up with Prenda's IP address.

A chinese woman has had her eye and hand damaged when her iPhone 5 exploded, where beforehand, she stated that her iPhone 5 was hotter than usual during phone calls.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time an iPhone 5 has hurt someone, where a flight attendant died and a man was electrocuted, which was found to be caused by a fake charger. Apple has since sent out an advisory to warn all Chinese customers to buy original, official Apple chargers. The Cupertino-based company is even offering discounted chargers when you trade in your old charger.

The woman who was hurt, who only goes by the last name of 'Li', has said she dropped her iPhone 5. The drop caused a crack in the top right hand corner of the display, after which she noticed the iPhone 5 was getting quite hot during a 40-minute phone call. She tried to disconnect the phone call, noticing that the display was no longer working.

League of Legends is getting bigger by the day, and now American Express are jumping on the bandwagon with a new line of League of Legends themed credit cards. The financial services company will launch the new credit cards on Wednesday, which is all part of a partnership between American Express and Riot Games. In the new lineup of cards, we'll see pre-paid debit cards that will reward cardholders with Riot Points, which is the in-game currency of League of Legends.

Just for signing up for the card, the future League of Legends AMEX owner will receive 1000 Riot Pionds, and will earn an additional 1000 Riot Points for adding $20 to it. After the first 10 purchases on the new AMEX card, the cardholder will receive 1000 more Points. After linking the new AMEX card to a checking account, 10,000 Riot Points will be given to the cardholder.

American Express' general manager for online and mobile in the United States, Stefan Happ, told the New York Times that the new partnership was established to "expand our traditional reach beyond the mass affluent." One of the primary reasons American Express teamed up with Riot Games was because League of Legends features a very strong 32 million player base, and a "staggering one billion hours of game play a month."

Today, AOL released its earnings report for the second quarter of 2013. The company says that its revenue grew to $541 million, which is up more than 2 percent during the same period last year. This equates to a diluted earnings per share of $0.35.

Net income per quarter was $28.5 million, which was actually significantly lower than the same period in 2012, but AOL was quick to note that this is because it sold $1.1 billion worth of patents to Microsoft in Q2 2012. However, Q2 2013's net income is up $3 million over quarter one 2013.

"AOL takes a major step forward today with another quarter of growth and our agreement to acquire the Adap.tv video marketplace platform that will make AOL a clear global leader in the most important growth segment in our industry - online video," AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong said in the report. "AOL continued to get leaner during Q2 while growing consumer traffic, growing all advertising revenue lines, and improving our subscription trends."

Today, the Washington Post officially announced that it would be selling its operations to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for a reported $250 million. The 135-year-old Washington Post is being sold because of the current owners' unsuccessful attempts to thwart years of newspaper-industry challenges. The company hopes that Bezos, with his tax savvy business skills, can help steer the company a new direction that will once again return it to being an industry leader.

Bezos says that the values of the Post do not need to change, but things about the company will change. We are sure this means that the Post will become much more intertwined into the Internet and a reduction in its print media levels could be on the horizon. In a statement to the Washington Post's staff, Bezos had the following to say:

It looks like Sony are starting to make some money from their smartphone business - and so they should - they've been releasing some great smartphones lately, such as the Xperia Z, and the new Xperia Z Ultra.

Sony's latest earnings report showed that the Japanese company sold 9.6 million smartphones in the last quarter, a huge improvement year-over-year for the same quarter in 2012 of just 7.4 million units. As for the business side of things, Sony made a $60 million profit in their smartphone division, which is a stark contrast to the same quarter of last year, which saw them gobble up a $28.1 million loss.

This might not sound like much, but this is big for Sony considering the strong competition in Apple and Samsung. These two companies secure most of the profits in the smartphone market, and Sony are making waves pretty quickly if you ask me.

Micron have just closed a deal to purchase Elpida for an estimated $2 billion. Micron have been working on the deal to acquire the Japan-based company since mid last year.

Included in the deal are the entirety of Elpida's assets, which include a DRAM fabrication facility located in Hiroshima, Japan and a 65% stake in Rexchip, who are another memory company with a DRAM fabrication facility in Taiwan. Micron also scored Elpida's 100% stake in Akita Elpida Memory, who owns an assembly and test facility in Akita, Japan.

During a statement, Micron said that Elpida had built themselves a strong presence in the mobile DRAM market using advanced technologies to target mobile phones and tablets. Considering Elpida is one of Apple's biggest clients, this is a huge opportunity for Micron.

Last week during a team effort to combat piracy, a company working in conjunction with Microsoft filed a DMCA takedown request with Google which included 6 URLs from Microsoft itself. Yes, that means Microsoft filed a DMC takedown notice against itself on the grounds of copyright infringement. The links were generated by automated software and show how flawed the system truly is.

The software used to automate the process often hurts many more innocent webmasters than it does copyright infringers, and false triggers like this are far less rare than anyone would ever expect. In the past, Microsoft has accidentally filed DMC takedown request that targeted the US Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, TechCrunch, Wikipedia, BBC News, Bing, Google, and so many others that I could write all night and never get to the end of the list.

The takedown requests are becoming so frequent that in the past Google might have received 225,000 DMCA takedown request per week, but just over a year later they are receiving between 3.5 and 4.5 million requests every week. Google can not simply read every request and check for validity and as a result, the first half of 2013 saw Google erase 100 million links from their search engine all because an automated copyright crawler thought they might be infringing on someone's copyright. That number is double the amount of links Google removed in all of 2012 and several times more than in 2011.

It wasn't long ago that we were reporting that US-based e-tailer Amazon reached record highs on their share prices, and not long after that we reported about Amazon tripling their employees to over 97,000 in the last three years.

Now the company has announced they've created 5,000 new full-time jobs in its US fulfillment network in order to meet increased customer demand. Amazon are quite generous, too, with their median pay in their fulfillment centers around 30% higher than employees in traditional retail stores. This isn't even counting the fact that Amazon offer stock grants to full-time staff, which add an average of 9% to base pay each year.

Dave Clark, Vice President of Worldwide Operations and Customer Service at Amazon said: "We're hiring more than 5,000 people to join our team and help us continue to innovate and serve our customers. We're focused on sustained innovation across Amazon and want to help our employees succeed-whether at Amazon or elsewhere-so we offer programs like Career Choice, where we'll pay for up to 95% of eligible employees' tuition regardless of whether the skills they learn are relevant to a career at Amazon."

We all know that Microsoft's mobile OS, Windows Phone, isn't doing that well against the current champions found in iOS and Android. But when your strongest partner, Nokia, starts talking smack about your mobile OS, you should stand up and listen.

Nokia's Vice President, Bryan Biniak, spoke with IB Times UK on Friday, where he said that Microsoft haven't done enough to push their mobile OS against iOS and Android. Biniak added: "To give you a reason to switch. I need to make sure the apps that you care about on your device are not only on our phones, but are better. I also need to provide you unique experiences you can't get on other devices".

Biniak finished with: "We are releasing new devices frequently and for every new device, if there is an app that somebody cares about that's not there that's a missed opportunity of a sale. We are trying to evolve the cultural thinking [at Microsoft] to say 'time is of the essence.' Waiting until the end of your fiscal year when you need to close your targets, doesn't do us any good when I have phones to sell today."

Julian Assange has launched the WikiLeaks Party in Australia, all the way from his current 'home' in London's Ecuadorian embassy. The WikiLeaks Party have announced their candidates, shortly after their site went down due to a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack from an American "hacktivist".

The candidates for the WikiLeaks Party for the upcoming federal election in Australia are standing for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. In New South Wales, we have human rights lawyer, Kellie Tranter, and academic, journalist and former public servant with the Department of External Affairs and Department of Foreign Affairs, Dr Alison Brionowski.

Journalist, Gerry Georgatos and economist and CEO of the Epilepsy Association for Western Australia, Suresh Rajan, are standing for Western Australia. Victoria will see Julian Assange himself standing, as well as author, ethicist and activist, Dr Leslie Cannold and RMIT lecturer, Dr Binoy Kampmark.

Any of my regular readers know that I absolutely, positively, 100 percent hate patent trolls. They do nothing to further innovation and quite frankly, they hurt the US economy more than anything else. Today, Newegg informed us of updates in a pending patent infringement case in which they have been battling a lawsuit filled by the notorious patent troll TQP Development, LLC.

Based in East Texas, TQP has filed hundreds of lawsuits against pretty much every kind of business imaginable over patent infringement. In the case against Newegg, TQP says that Newegg has violated its patent on encryption used on eCommerce websites. Newegg filed a Motion to Compel Discovery of TQP's communications with its patent monetization firm IP Navigation Group, which is associated with yet another patent troll, Erich Spangenberg.

Magistrate Judge Payne of the Eastern District of Texas denied Newegg's Motion on July 23, and said that the communication between TQP and IP Navigation was privileged as "work product" and were to be treated as mental impressions and notes created during litigation. This ruling came even though TQP never argued that its privilege applied to any of its briefs. Additionally, the judge ordered Newegg to pay 50 percent of TQP's reasonable costs and legal fees that occurred as a result of the motion filed by Newegg.

Following both Apple and EA games, AT&T posted their Q2 2013 financial report today with stronger numbers over the same quarter a year ago. During the second quarter, AT&T saw $32.1 billion in total revenue, which is looking pretty good when compared to the same quarter in 2012 in which the company posted $26 billion. Net income for the second quarter totaled $3.8 billion, which amounted to about $0.71 per diluted share.

"This was a solid quarter for revenue and customer additions across our key growth platforms," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. "Our 4G LTE network is the fastest and the most reliable in the nation, and deployment is ahead of schedule. That contributed to a step-up in postpaid subscriber gains, and strong mobile data revenue growth of nearly 20 percent. Growth in U-verse and strategic business services also continued to be strong - adding to our momentum."

The company posted several highlights in the report:

Today, Apple announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2013. The report says that Apple managed to post a revenue of $35.3 billion with a net profit of $6.9 billion, which equates to $7.47 per diluted share. This means that Apple's profit is down by nearly $2 billion over the same quarter in 2012. The company said that international sales accounted for 57 percent of the quarter's revenue.

The Cupertino based company sold 31.2 million iPhones during the third quarter alongside 14.6 million iPads and 3.8 million Macs. Overall, only the iPhone sales were up as during the same quarter last year Apple managed to sell 17 million iPads and 4 million Macs. The company's Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $3.05 per share of the company's common stock which will be payable on August 15, 2013 to all shareholders who own stock before the close of business on August 12, 2013.

"We are especially proud of our record June quarter iPhone sales of over 31 million and the strong growth in revenue from iTunes, Software and Services," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "We are really excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, and we are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014."

EA released its earnings report for Q1 of the fiscal year 2014 today, and the numbers are looking pretty good for the game publishing powerhouse. The company posted a total net revenue of $949 million, which was down about $6 million from the same quarter in 2012. EA said that their gross profit was up $5 million from the previous year at $755 million. Additionally, the company had total operating expenses of $522 million, which brought their net income to $222 million, up $1 million from Q1 of 2012.

"EA had a solid quarter driven by continued digital growth and disciplined cost management," said Executive Chairman Larry Probst. "We are also executing on a clear set of goals for leadership on mobile, PC, current and next generation consoles."

"EA delivered first quarter EPS above our guidance through a combination of revenue growth, phasing of expenses, and cost control," said Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen. "We are reaffirming our annual non-GAAP guidance of $4 billion net revenue and $1.20 earnings per share."

I still haven't gotten into Bitcoin myself, mainly because I live in a country that is behind in technology: Australia. But, a couple will be living in Utah after spending ten days on a tropical honeymoon in Costa Rica, purely on Bitcoin.

It's a tough challenge, a pure 90-day challenge dubbed "Married... With Bitcoin." Austin Craig and Beccy Bingham have a tough road ahead of them, with Craig saying to Forbes during an interview: "The goal is to find out how developed the Bitcoin ecosystem is, what needs to change, and how easy it is to use, understand, and explain."

The three-month challenge is being documented in a number of ways - Facebook, Twitter, blogging and YouTube clips as well as a documentary called "Life on Bitcoin." They announced their plans last month on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, where they raised over $72,000 as well as 82 Bitcoins, which are valued at the current valuation of $7,000 or so.