Business, Financial & Legal - Page 128

Western Digital, a company known for their magnetic hard drives, has signed a deal to acquire sTec, a company known for their solid state drives. Specifically, Western Digital has announced that HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital, will make the acquisition for $340 million, allowing Western Digital to enter into the solid state market.

The deal is expected to close in the third or fourth quarter of 2013, allowing Western Digital to hopefully enter the solid state market with the new technology sometime in 2014. Western Digital wants to add SSDs to its enterprise line-up at a time when big companies are ready to start implementing the technology.

For those not aware of who Machinima are, you might want to take a look - they feature more than two billion (that's with a B) YouTube views per month, and are one of the Internet's biggest entities on YouTube.

This is obviously worth a lot of money, but just how much? Well, the people behind the company are looking for a "mega-round" of financing. In 2012, Machinima executives raised $35 million in a financing round led by Google, and this time, they are looking for more than that, much more in fact. The money they hope to raise will help the company setup more advanced content ambitions.

At the moment, Machinima rely on clips contributed by YouTubers, but they want to spend more money licensing original shows like the big boys do. Also, instead of just running their new shows on YouTube for free, Machinima want to work out a way where they can create a subscription-based model like Netflix, or Hulu.

Apple has had a shocking past twelve months or so, where we've seen them fall from grace, and fast. I called it out, and was one of the first to see they were about to stumble, and now everyone else seems to have jumped on the TT bandwagon, which is nice.

Now it seems that Tim Cook is about to feel all of that pain, with Apple's board changing the way the CEO's pay packet is handled. Here's what will happen: If Apple's stock outperforms the market over the next eight years, Cook will keep the one million Apple shares he has now - which he was set to receive no matter what happened to Apple stock. But, if Apple's stock continues to dwindle, which I think it will, Cook could lose up to 40% of his shares.

When Apple first gave Cook his original package, those one million shares were worth $376 million. At the peak of Apple's shares at the end of last year, those shares were worth a cool $705 million, and today? Just $413 million. Apple filed a document with the SEC, which says Cook "has the full support of the Board of Directors", noting that the way they give out bonuses is being changed to all of Apple's top execs.

We all know the United States government and their various agencies such as the NSA, FBI and CIA have counterparts across the world - but NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has leaked more documents to The Guardian, which suggest British counterparts also intercept data.

The British operation is codenamed "Tempora" by Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and has been in operation for at least 18 months. This operation involves the use of "intercept probes" which are directly attached to transatlantic fiber-optic cables going onto British shores from telephone exchanges and Internet servers in the US. "Intercept partners", or commercial companies as the documents describe them, were secretly used to attach the intercepts on behalf of the GCHQ.

The companies weren't revealed in the documents, but were forced by law to help the GCHQ, and were even paid in some cases. This has allowed the GCHQ to take in countless amounts of data from citizens - with everything from phone calls, to e-mails and Facebook data. The Guardian notes: "For the 2 billion users of the world wide web, Tempora represents a window on to their everyday lives, sucking up every form of communication from the fiber-optic cables that ring the world."

We all know that you can't just talk about the secret programs the United States government and their multiple tentacles like the NSA run, such as PRISM, and if you do you face criminal charges and are branded with the word 'espionage'.

Edward Snowden talked of NSA's top-secret PRISM program, and is now facing charges that include Theft of Government Property, Unauthorized Communications on National Defense Information and "Willful Communication of Classified Information to an Unauthorized Person." My question is, if he is being charged - is this the United States government's way of admitting the system is there? Is now the time for the United States citizens to stand up to the government?

We've seen Bradley Manning thrown away in a hole somewhere, Julian Assange hiding out in another country, Kim Dotcom with multiple hits against him and now Edward Snowden. It seems if you come forth with a nugget of information that they don't want the general public to see, they'll build a case against you with everything they've got. The papers say that the US government has asked Hong Kon to detain Snowden Let's all hope Snowden makes it out of this and the Chinese government don't get on their knees to the Obama administration.

Sitting at Starbucks sipping on a coffee while enjoying their free Wi-Fi? You'll now be shown a free trial offer which will give you access to Google Play Music All Access. The deal started this week, which saw the two companies partnering up to connect Starbucks' free Wi-Fi offer promotional deals to content on Google Play.

Starbucks will now be displaying an advertisement for Google Play Music All Access, where they will be promoting features of Google's music service and offering a click-through for a free trial. Clicking through will offer up a full browser page where you'll see the full features of the service, offering a 30-day free trial. It also offers the same $7.99 discounted price when signing up before June 30, but doesn't offer this deal beyond Starbucks customers.

It looks like NVIDIA is taking a different, and great new path with their business - where they'll shift from simply making their own GPU's and SoC's to licensing their technology to other manufacturers.

NVIDIA will begin by offering their Kepler GPU architecture, which the company state is the world's most advanced and efficient GPU, and the reference design for their next-generation Tegra mobile processors. Licensees of NVIDIA's technology will receive designs, collateral and support to integrate Kepler into their devices. NVIDIA will also license their vast visual computing portfolio, which will open up to licensees the intellectual property necessary to make their own GPU's.

The company have had trouble getting into the mainstream with their Tegra processors, as good as they are, it's still not mainstream. This new path could lead to a much better future for NVIDIA, as OEM's will most likely just dive onto this plan versus spending buckets of money on their own internal R&D.

Google is one of the first companies to release transparency reports that disclose the number of requests for personal data they receive from various governments. Unfortunately for Google, FISA and NSL requests often come with gag orders to prevent them from disclosing the fact they even received a request.

Google has filed a motion to gain permission to specifically separate the number of FISA requests they receive from general criminal requests in their transparency reports. Facebook, Apple, and Yahoo have all started publishing national security orders in their respective transparency reports.

In the motion, Google cites its first amendment rights, the value it places on transparency, and the need to defend itself from claims that it gave access to user data to the NSA. It will be interesting to see if FISA numbers start being broken out in future transparency reports.

This is something that could be like pulling a thread from a very large ball of wool, but defense lawyers for Terrance Brown, who is a south Florida man currently facing bank robbery charges, have requested the NSA to provide them with Brown's mobile phone surveillance records to support his claim that he wasn't anywhere near the bank at the time of the robbery.

The reason this request has been done is that we now know that the NSA requires all American phone companies to hand over the complete records of all of their clients' calls, including the GPS location data of the calls themselves.

Brown's attorney, Marshall Dore Louis, said:

Most people are unaware of Amazon's grocery business that it runs in its home base of Seattle. More people are about to become aware, if a report by Reuters is accurate. According to their sources who are familiar with the situation, Amazon is preparing to expand its grocery business to Los Angeles as soon as this week and San Fransisco later this year.

Amazon's current grocery business utilizes their own fleet of trucks to deliver fresh produce--eggs, strawberries, and meat--to residents of Seattle. The current business, AmazonFresh, has been operating for a least five years. These sources say that the business could expand to 20 aditional urban areas in 2014, provided the two new markets said to be launching this year go well.

Grocery experts feel Amazon faces a major challenge with AmazonFresh. However, if successful, it could pave the way for Amazon to start delivering their own products via the same trucks used to deliver the groceries.

Apple is reportedly looking towards Pegatron to produce their rumored low-cost iPhone. The Wall Street Journal reports that Pegatron will be the primary producer of a new low-cost iPhone as Apple looks to diversify its supply chain. Up until 2011, Foxconn was responsible for all iPhone production.

According to the report, which cites people familiar with the matter, Apple is making the shift in order to reduce risk. They note the issues Foxconn had with the iPhone 5, including scratches on the metal casings. Apple will also be producing more product lines and product, meaning they'll need more capacity.

Analysts also believe Pegatron is willing to accept lower profit margins while attempting to gain Apple's business, meaning higher profit for Apple.

We all know the PC market isn't doing too well, but new projections from the IDC think that we haven't seen the worst of it just yet. According to the IDC's latest numbers, PC shipments will continue to decline, by 7.8% in 2013 and will fall by another 1.2% in 2014.

IDC are projecting that 2014's numbers are a little stronger as companies that continue to use Windows XP will shift to Windows 8 once Microsoft halts support for the older OS next year. The drop in PC sales are of course thanks to the constantly surging numbers for smart devices such as smartphones and tablets. IDC analyst Loren Loverde says:

Kim Dotcom has Hollywood's feathers rustled over his new Mega service, with Warner Bros. and NBC Universal asking Google to remove Mega from their search results, claiming that Dotcom's service is hosting copyrighted material on its servers.

Dotcom has hit back, as usual, where he responded to the requests in a statement to TorrentFreak, where he said the requests are the same "unreasonable content industry behavior" that he has put up with for years now. Google haven't complied with the movie studio's requests just yet, with the Mega domain continuing to show up in Google search results. Dotcom does note that a lot of these requests are actually false alarms, which happen from an automated and abusive system:

Samsung has been on a roll lately with new product launches and this coming June 20th should be no exception. The company will hold a launch event at London's Earls Court 2 in which we can expect to see "several" Galaxy and ATIV devices unveiled.

The Galaxy brand of products needs no introduction, but many of our readers may not have heard of the ATIV brand, which is Samsung's Windows Phone line of smartphones and tablets. While not much info is available on what we might see added to the ATIV line, we most likely will see the Galaxy S4 Mini, Galaxy Active and a new Galaxy Tablet unveiled at the event.

This event comes at the end of what is shaping up to be a very busy month in the tech industry. With Computex 2013 taking place between June 4th and 8th, E3 happening on June 11th until June 13, and Apple's WWDC taking place on June 10th till 14th, the tech media world is going to be in a frenzy with all of the news stories being released.

Rumors have made the rounds that Facebook is interested in the social mapping service. According to a Bloomberg report, Google may also be considering a Waze buyout. This is good news for Waze as the two companies would likely enter into a bidding war; it's not such great news for the companies themselves as the price will go up.

The report states that Google and others have approached Waze since the news of Facebook's talks were made public. Waze is reportedly seeking in excess of $1 billion, so it's very possible that talks fall through and Waze remains an independent company. Greg Sterlin, an analyst at Opus Research, suggests that Google may acquire Waze to prevent competition or add social features to its own Maps product:

We're still a good distance away from Waze being acquired as the acquisition would likely undergo scrutiny from the FTC and other government groups. If Waze does enter into an acquisition deal, you'll be able to read about it here on TweakTown.

Microsoft's customer satisfaction rating has plummeted to levels it hasn't seen since Windows Vista was the current operating system. Most attribute this fall of satisfaction to Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system, which has been received by consumers with much discontent.

Windows 8.1 should hopefully help customer satisfaction recover as its rumored the much-loved Start button will be making a return along with an option to boot straight to the desktop mode. Microsoft's ACSI report has consumer satisfaction at 74 out of 100. Shortly after Vista launched, it was just 73 out of 100. In 2011, Microsoft's ACSI was at 78 out of 100 and it quickly dropped to 75 after Windows 8 launched.

David VanAmburg, director of ACSI:

Sony are in a bad position right now, but now there are rumors floating around that the Japanese company are thinking about selling the films rights to Spider-Man and Resident Evil. The news comes from The Register who says:

It does get a little hot after, with Sony Pictures' boss, Amy Pascal, talking to Ain't It Cool News saying that none of this is actually true:

I guess this means we won't be seeing Spider-Man help The Avengers out anytime soon.

Apple are in the news once more, with Senate investigators accusing the iPhone maker of piecing together a complicated system to hide billions of dollars in international profits from both US and foreign tax collectors.

What puts Apple in hot water is a report that has been released ahead of Apple CEO Tim Cook's inaugural Capitol Hill appearance on Tuesday, which alleges that Apple took advantage of numerous US tax loopholes and avoided taxes of up to $44 billion in offshore, taxable income between 2009 and 2012 - something that Apple rejects completely. The Senate investigation also charges, for the first time, that Apple's established foreign entities don't have tax-resident status there, or anywhere else.

Apple conducts most of their international business in the European country in order to use the lower tax rates, according to the congressional report. The Senate have said that Apple's tax conduct isn't exactly legal, but they aren't looking at the situation with compassion, pressing against Apple for their tax avoiding tactics.

This morning Dell released what could be its final public earnings report. In Q1 of Dell's 2014 fiscal year, the company managed to earn a revenue of $14.4 billion while managing to grow it's Enterprise Solutions, Services and Software department by 8 percent with year-over-year earnings up 12 percent to $5.5 billion. While the numbers are on par for what we thought we would see, the company still failed to meet Wall Street estimates.

In a statement, Dell chief financial officer, Brian Gladden, had the following to say:

If Michael Dell has his way and is able to ward off those standing in his way, this earnings report may just be the last one we see from the company. Dell is so confident that he will be able to take the company private that he has officially made no speculation or announcements on what he thinks the company may do in Q2.

For the most part, the recent success of the Bitcoin can be attributed to Mt. Gox, the largest and most popular Bitcoin exchange on the internet. Earlier this week the Department of Homeland Security seized the Mutum Sigilum account Mt. Gox held at Wells Fargo bank.

The Mutum Sigilum account was the lifeblood of Dwolla, the PayPal like Bitcoin to US currency processor. The account was seized based on several discrepancies in the paperwork Mt. Gox owner Mark Karpeles filled when opening the account with Wells Fargo. When the application asked if Mutum Sigilum LLC was a business engaged in monetary services, Karpeles stated "No." Below is an excerpt from the actual warrant used to seize the account.