Business, Financial & Legal - Page 4

Amidst the AI revolution, programmers, writers and every type of white-collar worker has been affected by the rise of the tools. However, an unexpected area has emerged in the field of sports - using AI to assist with decisions on the basketball court.

Daryl Morey, the GM of the Philadelphia 76ers, was previously known for his 'Moreyball' strategy - utilizing analytics in the construction of a roster, and essentially min-maxing in terms of applying the team's strategies on the court by prioritizing threes and layups.

At a recent conference, Morey opened up about the use of analytics in the AI era. Notably, he expanded on his use of LLMs, in particular, their widespread use within the team's decision-making.

McDonald's has been ordered to pay $800,000 in damages after serving "unreasonably" hot chicken nuggets to a four-year-old daughter.

The case dates back to 2019 and states a family visited a McDonald's in Tamarac, Florida, where their then four-year-old daughter was served "unreasonably" hot Chicken McNuggets, resulting in the daughter being burned. According to the mother of the child, a Happy Meal was purchased for herself and the daughter, and after collecting the meals at the drive-thru, she handed one of the meals to her daughter. Shortly after the handover, a chicken nugget became stuck in the child's car seat and burned the daughter's leg, resulting in second-degree burns.

In May 2023, a jury found McDonald's and the franchise owners were at fault for the incident, resulting in the jury being responsible for deciding how much in damages the family was owed. The family was requesting $15 million in damages and instead was granted $800,000 by the jury. Despite receiving much less than what she asked for, the mother of the child, Philana Holmes, said she was more than pleased with the outcome as she had "no expectations".

NBC has secured the rights to broadcast the Olympics until 2036 after huge ratings were generated with the Paris Olympics.

Comcast NBCUniversal has announced a $3 billion deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to keep the Olympics on NBC and Peakcock until at least 2036, following a huge success with last summer's Paris Olympics that secured more advertisers than the 2016 Rio Games, and the 2020 Tokyo Games - combined.

According to NBC, digital ad revenue from the Paris Games doubled the ad revenue generated by Tokyo and was even so successful that it set a new record high for NBCUniversal. The newly inked deal secures the broadcasting and streaming rights for the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, along with the 2036 Summer Olympics, and is an extension of NBC's current contract with the IOC that states NBC maintains the Olympics rights until 2032, which the games are scheduled to take place in Brisbane, Australia.

Personal stories about Zuckerberg have reached a new crescendo, after ex-Facebook director Sarah Wynn-Williams released her new book Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism. The book is an expose detailing her time working at the company between 2011 and 2017.

The book makes some relatively scathing claims. Meta has condemned its release, calling it 'out of date' and filled with 'false accusations' about its executives. Meta spokesperson Erin Logan told SFGate that the book was 'defamatory', alleging that Wynn-Williams had skipped fact-checking processes conventionally associated with book publishing.

Wynn-Williams' includes anecdotes on stories that are already public. For example, the accusations that Zuckerberg lied during a 2018 senate hearing, and his alleged efforts to work with the Chinese Communist Party to get his app unblocked.

President Trump recently announced that TSMC would be investing a further $100 billion into US semiconductor manufacturing, but it is leaving Taiwanese officials with a sour taste in their mouths as this sounds and feels like a technology transfer.

In a new report from UDN, we're learning that TSMC's new investment of another $100 billion into the US chipmaking industry has Taiwanese officials concerned it would lose its global dominance on the semiconductor industry, and that the US would take that position over.

TSMC has however assured Taiwan that its expansion into the US won't downgrade the country's importance on the semiconductor supply chain, and that its core technologies will remain in Taiwan. TSMC Taiwan has a massive R&D team on home soil, with its cutting-edge process node production only taking place at its Taiwan-based fabs, with other nations like the US making previous-gen chips.

Tesla has suffered unprecedented market losses to start 2025, with nearly half of the company's value wiped out in just a few months.

As reported by Business Insider, Tesla was valued at $1.54 trillion in December 2024, but as of March 2025, that number has dropped to $777 billion - a staggering 49% decline.

JPMorgan analysts call it one of the largest and fastest stock crashes in automotive history, saying they struggle to find a comparable event in terms of both scale and speed. The closest examples, they note, were Japanese and Korean automakers losing sales in 2012 and 2017 due to diplomatic disputes with China. However, they highlighted that Tesla's decline is global, not confined to a single market.

Intel stocks have had a resurgence, trending 12% since the company's new chief executive Lip-Bu Tan was appointed. The move follows the retirement of former CEO Pat Gelsinger in December 2024, who was later found to have been pushed out.

As detailed in a company press release, Tan will be stepping into the CEO role March 18th, taking over from interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus. Zinser will retain an executive role as Intel's CFO, and Holthaus will remain the CEO of Intel products.

The company outlined Tan's experience as a technology investor and widely respected executive in the sector. Tan has over 20 years of experience with semiconductors and software, and has established relationships across the ecosystem that the company believes to be beneficial.

Apple's Safari and Google Chrome are the two largest browsers in the market at the moment - by quite a large margin. However, a recent investigation from the UK suggests that the large tech firms are holding back innovation and limiting growth in these markets.

The investigation, conducted by an independent inquiry group in the UK, was officially published on March 12. Margot Daly, the Chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), concluded that competition between different mobile browsers "is not working well" and that this is "holding back innovation in the UK."

The analysis set out to identify issues in the marketplace and outline potential interventions to facilitate the healthy functioning of digital markets. One of the key focuses was to identify whether Apple or Google have what they call 'strategic market status' (SMS) - which essentially refers to monopolistic power in a digital market. When firms are assigned this designation, the UK Government's Digital Markets Unit (DMU) is granted powers to implement pro-competitive interventions. While the investigation has flagged concerns, whether Apple and Google are designated with this status is part of an ongoing investigation expected to conclude later this year.

TSMC has reportedly pitched a joint venture foundry idea to US chip designers including NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcomm, and Qualcomm that would see the companies operating Intel's semiconductor fabs.

In a new report from Reuters, we're learning that TSMC would run the operations of Intel Foundry, but it wouldn't own more than 50% according to their sources. The talks are at an "early stage" and come after President Trump requested TSMC to help turn the US semiconductor market around as they've been bleeding out its semiconductor prowess to Taiwan and President Trump wants that business back.

Reuters reports that the details of the plan for TSMC to take "no more than a 50% stake and its overtures to potential partners are being reported for the first time. Any final deal -- the value of which is unclear -- would need approval from the Trump administration, which does not want Intel or its foundry division to be fully foreign-owned".

Niantic, the makers of the hit app Pokemon GO have just been acquired by Scopely, a mobile gaming firm, for $3.5 billion.

Scopely has already established portfolio of mobile games, such as Monoloply Go, Stumble Guys, Star Trek TM Fleet Command, and Marvel Strike Force. Now, Scopely can add Niantic's video game business under its belt, which has been helmed by longtime leaders Kei Kawai and Ed Wu, who will remain on as studio heads. Pokemon GO launched in 2016 and quickly became a global phenomenon, drawing in millions of players, and even today, it still remains in the top 10 apps with more than 100 million players in 2024.

One of the main aspects of Pokemon GO and it's attractiveness is the social element, which has evolved into more than just catching Pokemon with your friends as themed festivals and events around the world have been setup in celebration of the game. Scopely even mentioned this in its press release, with the company stating that more people attended Pokemon GO Fest last year than Coachella, Lollapalooza, Glastonbury, Electric Daisy Carnival, and Tomorrowland combined.