Business, Financial & Legal - Page 57

In response to Russia's invasion into Ukraine, two massive global brands have halted service throughout Russia.

According to reports from ABC, McDonald's has announced it will temporarily close all 847 of its restaurants across Russia, in an effort to show its support for the Ukrainian people and its stance on Russia's recent decisions. McDonald's employs 62,000 individuals across its 847 stores and has announced it will continue to pay the salaries of all of its employee's.

McDonald's isn't the only global brand that is halting service across Russia, as Starbucks recently announced it will also be taking a stand against Russia by temporarily closing at least 100 Starbucks cafes and suspending all shipments of its products. According to Starbucks' announcement the nearly 2,000 partners in Russia that depend on Starbucks for their livelihood will continue to be supported by the Kuwait-based Alshaya Group.

The governor of the Reserve Bank warned that Russia's invasion of Ukraine will have economic and psychological impacts around the world.

The warnings have come from Reserve Bank governor Phillip Lowe who said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine will cause a new wave of inflation to ripple around the world. As soon as Russia began its invasion into Ukraine, the nation was hit with sanctions designed to cripple its economy, which as a result has created a supply shock that is increasing prices.

According to Dr. Lowe, "The war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia have created a new supply shock that is pushing prices up, especially for commodities". Dr. Lowe added that this "supply shock" will cause a new wave of inflation that will rise above central banks' current targets. As a result of central banks' targets not being met and widespread higher inflation, a larger monetary policy response will be required to remedy the issue.

If you can believe it was nearly 10 years ago now when Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Internet was originally created as a "CIA project".

I have been working full-time for TweakTown for close to 12 years now, and wrote a story back in April 2014 -- close to 8 years ago now -- headlined "Vladimir Putin says that the Internet is a 'CIA project'". Well, it wasn't just a random conspiracy theory -- but Putin was speaking at a media forum in St. Petersburg when he said the Internet was created as a "CIA project" and that it "is still developing as such".

Putin said at the time that Russia needed to "fight for its interests online".

NVIDIA has admitted that it was the victim of a cyberattack, confirming that it was smashed by hackers on February 23, 2022, and that they got away with intellectual property, and much more.

An NVIDIA representative explained to HardwareLuxx: "On February 23, 2022, NVIDIA became aware of a cybersecurity incident which impacted IT resources. Shortly after discovering the incident, we further hardened our network, engaged cybersecurity incident response experts, and notified law enforcement".

"We have no evidence of ransomware being deployed on the NVIDIA environment or that this is related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. However, we are aware that the threat actor took employee credentials and some NVIDIA proprietary information from our systems and has begun leaking it online. Our team is working to analyze that information. We do not anticipate any disruption to our business or our ability to serve our customers as a result of the incident".

Russia has been hit with sanctions following its invasion into Ukraine and has now said it may have to take trillions from its citizens.

As a result of Russia beginning its invasion into Ukraine, the world has imposed harsh sanctions on the nation, crippling its economy to the point where officials are talking about needing to seize funds from the population. The Russian dollar "Ruble" has been in free-fall since the sanctions were imposed, crashing to record lows. The State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), Nikolai Arefiev, has said the Russian government might seize Russian residents' funds in the event of an economic collapse.

At the moment, reports indicate that Russia has around $640 billion in reserves, with an additional $158 billion and $470 billion held offshore. If Russia seizes its resident's money, it will be used to restructure the economy, and when asked if Russians would get this money back, Arefiev said, "Five generations will pass until the state pays off, by that time inflation will devour all this."

The official Twitter account for Ukraine, has tweeted out in appreciation of SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, and his next-gen SpaceX Starlink satellite internet connectivity.

In the last 24 hours, Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov took to Twitter to ask Musk to supply Ukraine with his Starlink internet service through SpaceX. Within a few hours Musk was on it, tweeting back to Fedorov and having SpaceX blast off some Starlink satellites above the country.

Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said: "while you try to colonize Mars - Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space - Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand".

Douglas Wright Jr., a 27-year old operations manager for Amazon, has pleaded guilty to stealing over $273,000 worth of PC hardware from an Amazon warehouse in Charlotte.

The goods were stolen during June 2020 and September 2021, where Wright used his special access at Amazon to steal PC components including CPUs, GPUs, and storage devices. The US Department of Justice reports that Wright shipped the items from the Amazon warehouse to his home address -- stupidly, I might add -- and then sold them to a California-based wholesaler.

The DOJ report reads: "According to plea documents and today's hearing, from June 2020 to September 2021, Wright executed a scheme to defraud Amazon by stealing merchandise worth over $273,000 from the company's warehouse. Over the course of the scheme, Wright was employed as an Operation's Manager at Amazon's warehouse in Charlotte".

Authorities have sentenced a teenager to five years in prison and a $400 fine for planning to blow up a Russian government building constructed by the teenagers in Minecraft.

16-year-old student Nikita Uvarov was sentenced on Thursday by the Eastern District Military Court and was found guilty of terrorism and, more specifically, conducting training exercises to carry out criminal activity, per Uvarov's lawyer, Pavel Chikov. Uvarov, along with two other males of similar age, constructed replica buildings of the Kansk police department, and a local headquarters of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). The group of teenagers planned on virtually blowing these buildings up to demonstrate how the real buildings would explode.

Russian authorities were able to gain access to online discussions between the teenagers, which is where they found the group had discussed anarchism, pyrotechnics, and criticisms of the FSB. Additionally, authorities located through the online communications with the group the plans for the virtual detonations of the buildings. Russian publication Novaya Gazeta writes that the group of teenagers had been learning about explosive manufacturing since 2019.

A famous painting has been ruined by a "bored" security guard during his very first shift at a Russian gallery.

A security that was on his first day of the job was "bored" and decided it would be a good idea to deface a famous painting by artist Anna Leporskaya. The security drew eyes on the "Three Figures" painting during an abstract art exhibition at the Yeltsin Center located in the city of Yekaterinburg, western Russia. The security guard has not been named as of the time of writing this article, but it's believed that he is 60 years old and works for a private security company.

Authorities have opened an investigation for vandalism which could lay a $500 fine at the security guard's feet or a one-year correctional labor service. As for the painting, it has been sent off to an art restoration expert at State Tretyakov Gallery, who reportedly said that the painting could be restored for $3,700 USD with no long-term damage to the original piece. For more information on this story, check out this link here.

It has almost been an entire year since Tesla first invested $1.5 billion into Bitcoin, causing a massive spike in the value of the digital asset.

Tesla has recently published its 10-K, which is a detailed financial report that the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission requires all publicly traded companies to provide annually. Within the report, Tesla discusses its investment into Bitcoin, stating that as of December 21, the company has profited $128 million by selling some of the Bitcoin it purchased in early 2021, while also stating it had recorded a loss of $101 million on its position.

This would make Tesla's net profit to be $27 million, but due to the accounting rules, or lack of for crypto assets, the company's exact net profit isn't completely disclosed. Tesla states within its report that as of December 31, 2021, the "fair value" of its Bitcoin, which takes into account value increase throughout 2021 as well as recorded impairment losses, was nearly worth $2 billion, putting the company's BTC position up $500 million.

Amid the viral controversy surrounding Joe Rogan and some of the comments he has made throughout The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the famous comic and commentator has received an official offer to trade over to a new video platform.

The controversy Rogan has found himself in began when musician Neil Young requested that his music be removed from the platform as he didn't want to be associated with a platform that he believes was spreading misinformation through the JRE podcast. Following Young's request came other prominent figures requesting their content be removed as well, and then over the weekend, a compilation video of Rogan saying the n-word went viral, only adding more fuel to the fire.

Rogan has responded to both the controversy surrounding the misinformation and the racial slurs he used throughout the years of the JRE podcast. Now, while things are reaching its boiling point, Rumble, a video-hosting website that is attempting to compete with YouTube, has offered Rogan $100 million to leave Spotify and bring his infamous podcast over to Rumble. The offer came directly from Rumble founder and CEO Chris Pavlovski.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has threatened to shut down services for both of the platforms over a regulation issue.

According to a report from Euronews Next, the issue at hand is new regulatory measures being introduced that prevent Meta from sending, storing, or processing Europeans' data across servers in the United States. Meta recently released its annual report where it stated that it's likely that it will be able to reach a new agreement with European regulators, but if it doesn't, it will have to shut down Facebook and Instagram within Europe.

Previously, Meta was able to send, store and process European user data on US servers, but in July 2020, the European Court of Justice annulled the original treaty between countries and introduced new policies that have simply cut out Meta's data harvesting. Legal authorities argued that the previous standard was ineffective at protecting Europeans' privacy, hence the change. A European Commission spokesperson reassured the public that securing a new agreement between the US and the EU is of the highest priority.

The public has put recently put a spotlight on Joe Rogan following some of his comments on the coronavirus vaccine, health regarding COVID-19, and racial slurs.

Individuals have voiced their concerns over the host of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast being able to speak freely on his podcast about sensitive topics such as COVID-19 and vaccines as it could spread misinformation. Individuals unhappy with Rogan's content have publicly called for Spotify to remove Rogan and his podcasts from the platform.

Netflix has slowly updated its user interface over the years and as more competitors enter the streaming space -- Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu -- but it looks like a much bigger redesign is in the works.

The new redesign for Netflix was spotted by BGR, who noticed that when visiting Netflix through his browser he was greeted with a new style Netflix. It's not available for everyone just yet, but the Netflix redesign might just be a glitch in the Matrix... or it could be a sign of some things that will be changing with Netflix in the coming months.

It looks like Netflix could be offering up some of its more secret categories, upright in front of you now -- where you can see from left to right there's The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window and the categories deadpan, absurd, and offbeat. Meanwhile, something like Transformers gets categories including sci-fi, adventure, alien sci-fi, and sci-fi movie.

AMD is going from stride to stride right now, where the company has proudly announced it has had a huge 68% increase in annual revenue for FY 2021 -- while Q4 2021 revenues beat analyst expectations.

Team Red posted 75% year-over-year increase in revenue at $2.2 billion, with 17% quarter-over-quarter driven by higher EPYC and semi-custom processor sales. AMD also posted higher operating income, with $762 million compared to $243 million in the previous year -- and $542 million in the previous quarter.

This is thanks to higher revenue and richer product mix, while AMD has been expanding the internal deployments of its new 3rd Gen EPYC processors, with AMD EPYC processors now powering more Cloud-based providers. AMD has also teased its next-gen 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa" processors that will drop later this year... especially with the monster 96 "Zen 4" cores and next-gen memory + I/O.

A college student that is a fan of tracking aviation created a Twitter bot that tracks and publishes the location of Elon Musk's private jet.

19-year-old Jack Sweeney created a bot that interprets all of the relevant public flight data for Elon Musk's private jet taking off and landing, allowing the bot to predict where it was going and then post the information to Twitter. Elon Musk's private jet wasn't the only aircraft Sweeney tracked, several other bots were created for Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and other celebrity figures. However, the Twitter account for Musk's private jet "ElonJet" gained the most followers, with it currently having 260,000+ at the time of writing.

Protocol published an article with Sweeney that reveals a conversation between the SpaceX CEO and the bot creator. Musk asked Sweeney, "Can you take this down? It is a security risk", Sweeney replied, "Yes, I can, but it'll cost you a Model 3 only joking unless?". Musk said, "I don't love the idea of being shot by a nutcase". It seems Musk is concerned that the public data will allow for people such as paparazzi, fans, or dangerous stalkers to track his location and ambush him at airports. A very real problem for people of high celebrity status.

NVIDIA's next-gen Hopper GPU architecture is facing a hiccup, with a new legal battle over the "Hopper" trademark with Dish Network LLC.

Dish Network is a US-based satellite and DVR services company and is now claiming that NVIDIA Hopper could be infringing on their Hopper, Hopper Go/Duo/Plus, and other trademarks. NVIDIA's new Hopper GPU architecture was recently teased in flagship GH100 form, a true monster 1000mm2 GPU, and is running into issues before its introduction.

NVIDIA named its new GPU after Grace Hopper, a computer scientist who developed the COBOL programming language. The new Hopper GPU architecture was first rumored as a purely MCM-based design (multi-chip module) but fresh rumors have the GH100 GPU as a monolithic GPU, while GH102 will reportedly be the MCM-based GPU.

NBC Universal outlines the current state of its Peacock streaming service and discusses future plans.

Comcast's latest Q4 earnings report outlines strong revenues and a confident roadmap for its content services, including Peacock. NBC Universal's streaming service Peacock currently has 9 million paid subscribers since launching in 2020, which extremely low compared to Netflix (221.8 million) and Disney+ (118 million).

Peacock isn't playing by Netflix's or Disney's rules, though. The service has three options: A free tier with ads, a $4.99 paid tier with reduced ads, and a premium $9.99 tier with no ads. Peacock Premium offers exclusive access to megahit shows like The Office whereas the free tier is limited. Comcast believes strongly in this premium-free combo.

AT&T added over 13 million subscribers to HBO Max and HBO throughout 2021, close to Netflix's adds.

AT&T just reported its Q4 and full-year financials that outline revenue and subscription growth across the company. Throughout its WarnerMedia entertainment branch the company added a combined 13.1 million subscribers across HBO and HBO Max--the largest surge in paid premium subscribers in the history of the service.

"We also surpassed our high-end guidance for global HBO Max and HBO subscribers, adding 13.1 million subscribers in 2021, more than any year in HBO's history. HBO Max and HBO now reaches a base of 73.8 million subscribers globally. WarnerMedia is well positioned as a dynamic global business," AT&T John Stankey said in the Q4 earnings call.

Netflix shares have nose-dived in the past five days...and here's why.

As of today, Tuesday January 25, Netflix shares dropped a new yearly low of $366.42 USD. This follows days of sharp drops and slow climbs that create erosion in the company's projected EPS.

Netflix's most recently Q4 report is the root cause of the dives. Despite announcing 221.8 million paid subscribers and a thunderous $29.7 billion in revenues and $5.1 billion in net income, the company disappointed investors in a number of key ways.