Business, Financial & Legal - Page 74

Like virtually all retail locations around the United States, Apple's retail stores have been closed down due to the coronavirus pandemic for over a month. Apple's retail chief recently told employees in a video briefing that Apple expects that the company will reopen many retail locations in May. Apple's retail stores have been closed outside of China since March.

Word of the store openings in May came from Deirdre O'Brien, vice president of retail and people for Apple. Word of her comments surfaced from unnamed retail employees who viewed the video. According to the employees, in the video, she said that "we are continuing to analyze his health situation in every location, and I do expect we will reopen up many stores in May." She failed to announce any specific stores or regions that would be reopening in May.

O'Brien had previously told Apple employees that some locations in the United States would resume operations in early May. Many states around the country are getting back to work as stay-at-home orders are being lifted around the nation. In some states, such as Georgia, some businesses have already reopened.

Much of the business world has seen business plummet during the coronavirus pandemic. Some segments of the technology world have seen business boom. Among the technology businesses that are growing rapidly with coronavirus are instant messaging and videoconferencing companies. Many schools and businesses around the US, and the world, have turned to videoconferencing and instant messaging to keep groups working from home.

Instant messaging service Telegram has announced that it has 400 million monthly active users. The company gained 100 million active users since October 2019. The company announced to the SEC via a disclosure in October that it had 300 million active users. Telegram founder Pavel Durov says the service is adding about 1.5 million users each day.

Durov says that the app is the most downloaded social media application in over 20 countries. Telegram is also working on upgrades to its application to allow it to be more useful to those trying to work and learn from home during the coronavirus pandemic. One of those features is the addition of a secure video call feature that the company intends to roll out this year.

A report has surfaced that claims Amazon tech workers are calling in sick in protest of the company's treatment of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the protesters are taking the social distancing and rules concerning how many people can gather once seriously, they are hosting a series of live-streamed speakers virtually rather than a physical rally, a sort of virtual walkout. The protest is reportedly a response to Amazon allegedly firing six workers in recent weeks who have called for improved safety precautions during the coronavirus pandemic.

Among those allegedly terminated for calling for improved safety precautions were two long-time user experience designers with the company. Both of the terminated workers are said to have been prominent members of the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and had publicly voiced support for improved warehouse conditions. The two workers are called Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham.

Both of those women were allegedly fired shortly after a colleague sent an email inviting employees to an online event that featured warehouse workers speaking about their experience. Over 1500 Amazon employees had registered to attend the event, which is said to have been deleted from calendars along with the email. Costa says that she was fired for violating the company's non-solicitation policy during a short video call with an HR representative.

Tech titan Intel reports strong Q1 results thanks to growth in all segments from data center to PC gaming.

Today Intel announced its Q1'2020 results for the period ending March 31, 2020, and they're quite good. The chip-maker earned $19.8 billion in total net revenues across all segments, up 23% year-over-year, driven by strong adoption of its new Xeon processors in the Data Center Group segment. Operating income, or revenues generated from operations, was up a staggering 69% YoY to $7 billion, and total profits for the quarter jumped by a whopping 42% from last year to $5.7 billion. Earnings per share (EPS) was up a tremendous 51% to $1.31 in the quarter.

Intel's important segments rose quite a bit during Q1. The PC gaming Client Computing Group, which makes the lion's share of Intel's earnings, jumped by a healthy 14% to $9.8 billion thanks to hardware purchases and the release of Intel's latest 10th-gen H-series chips in newer gaming notebooks.

One of the things people forced to work from home don't like is having coworkers see their home in the background. Few are keen to be judged on their housekeeping capabilities or decor. One of the features that have made Zoom so popular is that it can add custom backgrounds to block out what's behind you.

Those who prefer Skype will be glad to hear that Skype has rolled out a new version of the app for Mac, Windows, Linux, and the web that add support for custom backgrounds. The support that was previously available to blur the background during a video call remains. Skype says in its description for the new feature that users can look like they're anywhere, including calling from the beach or space.

To customize the background for Skype while in a call, Microsoft says landscape images work best, and the image has to be locally saved on the computer. The first step is hovering over the video button or clicking the more menu during a call. Next up is clicking the choose background effect button. After that button is clicked, users can blur the room they're in, or choose an image previously added for the new custom image to change the background effect.

One of the services has been heavily used during the coronavirus outbreak as more people work from home, and schools teach remotely, is Google Meet. Google has announced an update to the service that allows Google Meet to see 16 participants at once using a tiled layout. Google says that being able to see more people at the same time can help improve the dynamics of larger group meetings and classes.

Being able to see 16 faces on the screen at once allows the user to see reactions to what's being discussed or more easily track multiple speakers, according to Google. The update can also help meetings conducted remotely feel more like in-person meetings and encourage participation. Google has designed the layout to adjust to show the active speaker.

For those participating in a meeting that has more than 16 people, an option to open the list of participants to see who else is in the meeting has been added. Google took the opportunity to remind that all G Suite customers can host meetings with up to 250 participants at no additional cost through September 30, 2020. That feature is currently only available on Meet on the web.

Facebook has announced that it has rolled out its Facebook Messenger Kids messaging service to 70 additional countries. The social network says that with schools closed and people physically distancing from each other, parents are turning to technology to help keep kids connected with friends and family. Messenger Kids is a video chat messaging app that helps kids connect with friends and family in a fun and parent-controlled space.

As of today, kids in more than 70 additional countries around the world can use Messenger Kids with more countries coming soon. The full list of supported countries is available here. The Messenger Kids app is available for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and all Android devices. The app is available to download from the App Store, Amazon Appstore, and Google Play Store.

Facebook says that it has brought in advisors to ensure that Messenger Kids is a service that balances parental control with features that allow kids to learn how to connect with others responsibly online. One complaint Facebook says it's heard from parents and kids that it's hard to find friends and connect with them in the app. To help make finding friends easier, there are new options to help parents connect kids with their friends.

It couldn't come at a worse time, but the CDC, Gates Foundation, NIH, WHO, and the World Bank have been hacked and close to 25,000 email addresses and passwords were leaked online.

I saw this get leaked onto Twitter by "conspiracy theorists" and didn't look twice, but now it is hitting the media and seems a little more serious. Unknown hackers -- and from some of what I've read, Anonymous -- have leaked out nearly 25,000 email addresses and passwords from the likes of CDC, Gates Foundation, NIH, WHO, and the World Bank.

The SITE Intelligence Group monitors online extremism and terrorist organizations said that on Sunday, the email logins were shared -- and 24 hours later they were used in hacking and harassment attempts by "far-right extremists".

Google has a new feature coming that anyone with multiple Google Assistant devices in their home will appreciate. The new feature will allow users to adjust the sensitivity of the "Hey Google" word that wakes the device up so it can hear what you want to tell it to do. The ability to adjust the hotword sensitivity was first seen in the Google Assistant software earlier this year.

The reason Google is rolling out the ability to adjust hotword sensitivity has to do with reducing the number of accidental awakenings of the device. Screenshots posted of the software in a tweet by Mishaal Rahman show that there will be a slider that allows users to adjust the front speaker sensitivity from default to least sensitive or most sensitive.

That will allow users to make the hotword sensitivity either less sensitive than the Google Assistant device comes from the factory, or more sensitive depending on their needs. Speculation suggests that for users with multiple devices in the home, each can have its own sensitivity level even if they are networked together. This change will be welcomed by users who frequently have a problem with waking their Google Assistant by mistake.

Lordstown Motors CEO Steve Burns has written an open letter to fans of the company, and it's all-electric Endurance pickup. The Endurance pickup was supposed to be unveiled officially at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in June. That event has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. With the official reveal canceled, Lordstown Motors is talking about its revised plans for unveiling the pickup.

Burns says that the company still intends to introduce the first production-intent Endurance pickup sometime in early summer. Most likely, the event will be a virtual reveal hosted at their headquarters in Lordstown. Burns notes that the company hopes to solidify the plans of the next "month or so." As for production plans, the letter states that the company intends to hand the keys to the first production versions of the Endurance in January 2021.

Burns wrote in the letter that most of the staff has been working from home and carrying out as much of their work as possible. Essential maintenance at the plant is still being conducted, and design engineers are continuing to test and fine-tune the technology that will power the truck. For those unfamiliar with the Endurance electric pickup, it will have an in-wheel motor at all four corners giving the truck all-wheel drive.

Admit it: you either use, or know someone who has been binging TV shows and movies on Netflix while on stay-at-home lockdowns and quarantines over COVID-19 coronavirus.

Netflix has now announced its Q1 2020 results, where the streaming giant revealed it experienced its biggest quarter ever. The company reeled in another 15.77 million subscribers in the last 3 months, blowing away analyst expectations of 8.22 million -- nearly double that amount.

This time last year Netflix added 9.6 million global subscriptions all the way back in Q1 2019 when no one uttered the words "quarantine", "lockdown", "novel", "COVID-19" or "coronavirus". Netflix reported that it earned $709 million in Q1 2020, versus shared earnings of $344 million in Q1 2019.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has explained in a letter to all staff that there will be no job losses at any level of the company during the COVID-19 outbreak, and instead will be getting raises to staff faster than before.

There are 13,775 employees that work for NVIDIA, so there would be a lot of happy people and families in Team Green now -- especially in the wake of millions of job losses and the further fear of industry-wide job losses in the near future. NVIDIA is doing some great work here for its staff.

In the letter, Huang writes: "Immediately I received questions about whether we are also planning a layoff. NO - precisely the opposite. We are accelerating your raise to put some extra money in your hands. We can put tens of millions of more dollars in the hands of our families in the coming months".

The Tor Project has been around since the mid-1990s and started with people who had a common belief that all Internet users should be allowed to have private access to an uncensored web. The project focused on onion routing, which is a way for people to use the Internet with as much privacy as possible. This routing process sends the traffic through multiple servers and encrypts it at each step of the way. The Tor Project says that is still a straightforward explanation of how Tor works today. As with other companies around the world during the coronavirus pandemic, Tor has announced that it has been forced to make cutbacks with its staff.

The Tor Project has announced that the coronavirus pandemic has forced it to let go of "13 great people" that it says help make Tor available to millions of Internet users around the world. Moving forward, The Tor Project will have a core team of 22 people that it says will remain "dedicated" to continuing to work on the Tor Browser and the Tor software ecosystem.

The project says that the world won't be the same after the coronavirus pandemic crisis passes, and the need for privacy and secure access to information will become "more urgent." The Tor Project says that being online is critical, and many people around the globe face obstacles getting to and sharing information. The layoffs were done to help "ensure the Tor Project continues to exist and our technology stays available."

We all know that crazy amounts of emails are sent around the world per day, with Gmail stopping a huge 18 million malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19 each and everyday.

This might sound like a lot, but it's nowhere near the number of emails that Google blocks from inboxes per day. This 18 million emails blocked for COVID-19 malware makes up around 20% of the total number of phishing emails that Gmail blocks each day, as over 100 million emails per day are blocked by Gmail.

Automated systems filter out another 240 million emails that are coronavirus-related spam, but there are some slipping through the cracks. But what are the phishing emails masquerading as? Well, some are impersonating the World Health Organization (WHO) asking people to donate to them in Bitcoin.

Activision has just stepped up in a really big way with its 10,000 strong staff, with CEO Bobby Kotick giving all 10,000 of his employees his personal phone number -- imploring them to call him directly over any concerns about healthcare given the COVID-19 outbreak.

Kotick says: "So far, that's been working well" and that hundreds of employees have already personally called him. The Activision CEO was quick to say that "very few" have tested positive for COVID-19 so far, and sees a new world where people will continue to work from home for forseeable future.

He said that many employees had parents that were tested positive for COVID-19, with Kotick also announcing Activision Blizzard is working on a new trial for a blood serum, something that he said would be cheap and easy to access.

The future of travel might involve something that some governments are already discussing, a new COVID-19 "immunity passport". This immunity passport would certify you, the traveler, as immune to COVID-19 and approved to travel.

Germany, Italy, the UK and the US are already considering a COVID-19 immunity passport, which would acknowledge that you've had the disease and are now immune to it. You won't be able to infect others if you travel to foreign countries, and it would give a government stamp of approval to those working in critical sectors and essential workers.

While a COVID-19 immunity passport would be super beneficial to those in specific industries like healthcare workers (nurses, doctors, surgeons), police, army, first responders, and other essential and emergency services, it isn't all good. How long does COVID-19 immunity last? Will it mutate like the flu does every year, requiring up-to-date vaccinations to comply with your COVID-19 immunity passport.

According to a new report from research firm Canalys, PC shipments are way down this quarter and it's all because of COVID-19.

The report sees companies shipping 53.7 million PCs (desktops, notebooks and workstations) worldwide in Q1 2020, which is an 8% drop in same period of 2019. But Q1 2020 and its 8% drop is the largest decline in PC shipments in a few years now, with the above chart from Canalys showing a 12% drop in Q1 2016.

The data shows that Lenovo came out on top with 12.8 million systems shipped, HP wasn't far behind with 10.4 million, and Dell in third place with 10.4 million. Apple is a huge drop below that with 3.2 million shipped, while Acer shipped 3.1 million -- "others" covers all the other brands and makes up 12.3 million systems shipped in Q1 2020.

Japan has announced a large $2.2 billion stimulus package that will help companies with production in China, bring it back home to Japan -- all because coronavirus is wrecking havoc on supply chains worldwide.

The Japanese government announced the new 220 billion yen ($2 billion) to see companies shift production back into the country, while 23.5 billion yen was put aside to help companies move production to other countries (not in Japan, but still out of China).

The news couldn't come at a more critical time as Chinese president Xi Jinping had a visit to Japan inked on his calendar for earlier this month, this trip would've been the first visit from Xi in over 10 years but it was delayed over the coronavirus outbreak.

MAINGEAR is known in the United States as one of the highest-end custom gaming PC makers, but the company has quickly pivoted to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic with the release of the LIV -- a new ventilator being made on the cheap.

MAINGEAR is shifting over a certain allocation of its manufacturing capabilities, to help New York City and its overwhelmed intensive care units. MAINGEAR developed the new LIV ventilator in-house with medical advisers in just a matter of weeks, all while using off-the-shelf parts that can be "produced for approximately a quarter of the price" of a regular ventilator.

The company is now awaiting FDA clearance, with MAINGEAR ready to start delivering its new LIV ventilator in as little as two weeks from now. MAINGEAR is using an "easy to use touchscreen interface", where the company has used an NVIDIA Shield rocking custom software and "redundant power supplies".

Can you believe Wuhan, China has been under extreme lockdown for 76 days -- the largest lockdown in human history. But now, the people of Wuhan are enjoying a post-lockdown lifestyle... for now.

Wuhan has re-opened its highway tolls, flights and train services are leaving the city -- and to make it more personal, I'm based in Australia and we just had a flight from Wuhan land at the Sydney Airport. As for Wuhan residents, they are free to travel throughout China as long as they are not infected with COVID-19.

Jia Shengzhi, a delivery driver in Wuhan, told the BBC: "During the past two months, almost no-one was on the streets. It made me feel sad. We sometimes received phone calls from customers asking for help such as sending medicines to their ageing parents".