Business, Financial & Legal - Page 77

A new report has come out from The Wall Street Journal that claims Amazon CEO and founder; Jeff Bezos has bought the most expensive property in Los Angeles.

Amazon founder has reportedly bought the Warner Estate, the most prestigious property in all of Los Angeles from David Geffen for $165 million dollars. Bezos' net worth is currently sitting at around $131.9 billion, which means that if he did purchase the estate from Geffen for $165 million, that's only one-eight hundredth of his net worth.

The Warner Estate was built in the 1930s for Jack Warner, who was the former president and driving force behind the now-massive Warner Bros. Studios. The estate took around a decade to be built and features everything you could dream of; terraces, guest houses, golf courses, pools, tennis courts, and a lot more.

Can you believe we're in 2020, where you'll be able to major in weed at Colorado State University-Pueblo? It's true, with Denver Post reporting that the university just received approval for the Denver's first degree program focused on cannabis.

The program is called "Cannabis, Biology and Chemistry" and will see the course similar to double-majoring in biology and chemistry, while focusing on the science required to work in the world of cannabis, according to David Lehmpuhl, dean of CSU-Pueblo's College of Science and Mathematics.

Lehmpuhl said: "It's a rigorous degree geared toward the increasing demand coming about because of the cannabis industry. Hemp and marijuana has really come to the forefront in a lot of economic sectors in the country. We're not pro-cannabis or anti-cannabis. What we're about will be the science and training students to look at that science".

Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to ask the public their thoughts on whether or not he should build a new gigafactory in Texas.

Musk posted a poll to his Twitter account with the simple, yet effective caption "Giga Texas?". At the time of writing this, 80.1% of people voted "Hell yeah," and only 19.9% of people voted "no." If this plan goes ahead, this will mark Musk's fourth gigafactory, the first being near Reno, Nevada, the second in Buffalo, New York, third in China, Shanghai, and fourth near Berlin, Germany.

At the moment, Musk is on a roll with his electric vehicle and clean energy company Tesla, as the company's stock price recently hit an all-time high. This all-time high pushed the company's total market value over Bitcoin's market value, quite an achievement if you ask me. In other news about Musk's ventures, SpaceX recently launched 60 more Starlink satellites into the atmosphere in an effort to bring a global internet connection to everyone.

It has been a question for quite some time - how much does Google make from hardware sales? Until now, no one has ever really known, but we have just been thrown a bone (pardon the rhyme).

Alphabet, Google's parent company recently conducted its Q4 earnings call, and according to that report, Google's hardware division is a "multi-billion dollar" hardware business. There were no specific numbers released on what device/s are Google's most profitable, but since Alphabet stated "multi," we can accurately assume that hardware sales exceed $2 billion.

Google as a slew of hardware products; examples include Pixel phones, laptops, Nest doorbells, cameras, speakers, routers, and Chromecasts. Which of these is the top-selling is still a mystery, but we do know from Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh (last May) that the company's hardware numbers are "good, but not where we want to be at the end of five years".

Tesla has shaken up the financial market with the company's stock price skyrocketing in comparison to where it was sitting a year ago. Now, the market cap of Tesla has exceeded Bitcoin's.

According to CNBC, Tesla opened at nearly $883 per share, then it hit an all-time high of $968.99 per share, bringing the company's total market cap to above $170 billion. For a helpful comparison to just how big that is, other car companies such as GM and Ford closed out Tuesday with a combined market cap of $85 billion. Tesla is more than double that.

Now a new metric has been thrown into the mix. Tesla's market cap is now larger than Bitcoin's. Yes, Tesla, the automotive and energy company, was worth more than a digital currency (at that period in time). At the time of writing this, Bitcoin's market cap is currently sitting at around $166 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. This means that during Tuesday's high, Tesla's market cap was larger than Bitcoin's, quite an achievement for Mr. Musk and Tesla as a whole.

Super Bowl 2020 is now over and done, and while the game was undoubtedly amazing to watch, so were the extremely expensive ads.

Millions of eyes were glued to Super Bowl 2020, which means it was extremely expensive for companies to get a slot at the half-time-show commercial break. But for the companies that did get a slot, they didn't waste it as many of the commercials that were seen contained celebrities to peak potential customers' interests.

A full list has been provided in the entirety of this article of all of the technology-related Super Bowl ads. We have commercials from companies such as Amazon, Audi, Dashlane, Facebook, Google, Hyundai Microsoft, Pringles (Rick and Morty), SodaStream, Squarespace, and T-Mobile.

Just this past Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed a fine to a man who did 6,000 robocalls that were both politically and racially charged.

In a filing by the FCC, it's explained that a single man conducted an astonishing 6,000 robocalls in six different states (California, Flordia, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Virginia). These phone calls used an online tool that can mask the caller's voice and number. According to the FCC, the intention behind the calls was for the man to acquire "notoriety/ publicity" for his website and brand.

It seems that wasn't his only intention either as the FCC details that 827 calls were made to people in Brooklyn, Iowa "following the murder of a local college student and the arrest of an illegal alien from Mexico for the crime". The calls made racist remarks to people on the other end, such as "brown horde" and "kill them all". The robocaller even called the parents of the victim. It's unclear whether the FCC will be able to acquire the full amount from the man, but it's unfortunately doubtful.

California Institute of Technology (CalTech) filed a lawsuit against Apple and Broadcom back in 2016, claiming that the Wi-Fi chips made by Broadcom and used in a range of Apple's products are infringing on filed patents by CalTech.

CalTech has since been in court against Broadcom and Apple for damages, and now recent news has surfaced from Bloomberg that has claimed that Apple and Broadcom have been ordered to pay a combined $1.1 billion to Caltech. According to Law360, the jury sided with CalTech by saying the patented technologies were "key to keeping Apple competitive in the cellphone market."

Apple has been ordered to pay CalTech $838 million, and Broadcom has been ordered to pick up the rest of the bill - $270 million. According to CalTech's lawyer, William Price, "Caltech's damages expert used a hypothetical royalty negotiation that would have occurred in 2010 - when Broadcom allegedly started selling Apple the infringing Wi-Fi chips - and came up with a rate of $1.40 per device for Apple and 26 cents per device for Broadcom. The jury's verdict aligned with those figures."

Tesla really showed its colors in 2019, as the company recently hit $100+ billion in market value and became the second most valuable car manufacturer in the world.

Now, some new statistics have come out revealing how Tesla managed to take that second place, knocking off German car manufacturer Volkswagen. According to Learnbonds, Tesla had a massive increase of 40% increase in car delivery productivity in 2019 in comparison to 2018. The data provided on their website indicates that Tesla sold 367,200 vehicles around the world in 2019. This is quite a hike up when compared to 2018's 244,920 vehicles.

Since 2016, Tesla is on the exponential rise of delivering more and more vehicles out to new customers. These sales are so apparent that throughout 2019 Tesla sold more vehicles than both 2017 (103,020) and 2018 (244,920) combined. These statistics are really quite promising; at this rate, the electric car manufacturer is paving the future road of more environmentally friendly vehicle options that other car companies are already attempting to jump in on.

Tesla has earned itself a new achievement, as Elon Musk's company has managed to overtake Volkswagen and become the world's second most valuable car manufacturer.

Tesla's market evaluation has risen over $102.66 billion, which exceeds the German car manufacturer Volkswagen at $89.68 billion. Other big companies such as General Motors are currently sitting at fourth with $49.88 billion, Honda at fifth with $49.71 billion, and Daimler at sixth with $48.29 million.

So who's first? Toyota has pulled ahead and is in the lead by far, with a market value of $230.95 billion. It seems that Tesla has a lot of leg work to do to take first place, which means that the company is going to be aiming to sell a lot more cars. In 2019 Tesla only sold 367,000 cars, compared to Volkswagen's 11 million. 2020 and beyond will be a different story, as the company will be pushing the electric vehicle standard further than ever before.

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO, seems to be in a spot of hot water as of late, and the water doesn't seem to be getting any cooler anytime soon.

Reports have come out from both The New York Times (NYT) and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) about Bezos' leaked text messages that revealed the world's richest man was having an affair. Of course, with any 'leaked' text messages, the first question that was raised was - 'How did those text messages get leaked?' According to both the NYT and WSJ, Lauren Sanchez, the women who Bezos had an affair with, reportedly sent her brother the text messages, who then sold them off to the National Enquirer.

The reports state that Michael Sanchez (brother) received texts from his sister in 2018 that included flirtatious messages from Bezos and a shirtless photo of him. Bezos followed up with an "extortion and blackmail" accusation on Medium aimed towards the parent company of the National Enquirer, American Media. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are currently investigating the intent of the National Enquirer and if there is a basis for a blackmail or extortion case.

I can't believe I'm writing this but WarnerMedia subsidiary company Otter Media has a division that is a "social content company for talent and brands" called Fullscreen.

Twitch streamer 'AnneMunition' had two of her videos demonetized... for using the numbers "36" and "50". Yeah, you read that right. The videos in question are from 2017, with AnneMunition's playthrough of The Witcher 3. Both of these videos didn't have millions of views or anything, but just a few thousand views and bad news for the Twitch streamer as it will leave a bad record on her YouTube account.

She has of course disputed the claims, telling YouTube: "you can't copyright a number, you wombats".

A big story was released by The Guardian this week, and it was about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his phone reportedly being hacked by the Saudi Prince.

The original report stated that Bezos received a message from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman that contained a malicious file. Security forensics firm FTI Consulting conducted an investigation into the file and concluded with "medium to high confidence" that the Saudi Prince was to blame. If you are interested in checking out the report, a link to it can be found here.

Cybersccop, a fellow security professional, has openly said that FTI didn't go far enough into their investigation. There's also Facebook's former Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos who goes against the FTI's report, stating there was "no smoking gun". At the moment, this story has a lot of contradictory statements, with one report claiming the Saudi Prince was responsible, and other security officials saying there isn't enough evidence in the report to claim that Bezos' phone was even hacked.

Yesterday news came out about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' phone being hacked by the Saudi crown prince. Now, we are learning that Bezos could have had his phone microphone enabled for months.

According to a forensic analysis of Bezos' hacked phone, Bezos could have had the Saudi government in his pocket listening for months. The report comes from cybersecurity firm FTI Consulting which are the investigators that were hired by Bezos after he realized his phone was compromised.

The report says, "FTI assesses that Bezos' device was compromised on May 1, 2018 and that the compromise resulted in gigabytes of data exfiltration that likely contained sensitive data such as personal photos, text messages, instant messages, emails, and possibly local (eavesdropped) recordings done via the phone's microphone."

We all know and love Linus Sebastian from LinusTechTips, and the man himself and his tech channel have reached a massive milestone of 10 million subscribers. But his latest video, in my opinion, is one of his best:

The video is one of, if not his most personal yet and that is something I love more than the usual hands-in-the-air, super-fun videos. It's raw Linus, addressing a near mid-life crisis of sorts. He had some life changing events happened which made him look through the prism of life a little differently, something that I've been doing over the last year or so.

By the end of the video Linus himself says he is not immediately retiring, but doesn't rule it out -- it's something that he might eventually do, so we could see the end of Linus appearing in a majority of the videos. LTT is run by a team of talented people who can easily take the reigns, but it would be a gigantic change for the tech channel if/when that happens.

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO and the world's richest man, reportedly had his phone "hacked" by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

According to the report by The Guardian, sources who have remained anonymous have told the site that Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman sent a malicious file that infiltrated Bezos' phone through WhatsApp on May 1st, 2018. Before the file was sent, Bezos and Salman were said to be having a friendly exchange, then the file was sent over, and according to those same sources, large amounts of data were transferred off Bezos' phone.

At the moment, there's no knowledge of what was taken off Bezos' phone, but since the "hack" happened back in 2018, Bezos has had some private messages leaked online. The text messages reflected an extramarital relationship, which then triggered Bezos to put full force in discovering how these texts made it online. Bezos' own investigation team says they are "highly confident" that the Saudis had managed to "access" Bezos's phone and acquired "private information".

Facebook has taken one on the chin, as recently the big company incorrectly translated the Chinese President's name into something extremely rude.

Facebook has openly apologized for displaying Chinese President Xi Jinping's name as "Mr. Sh*thole" when translating it from Burmese to English. So how was this translation error realized? China's President was visited by Myanmar's President and was required to sign a bunch of new agreements. Translations of these new agreements were then published on Burmese state counselor Aung San Suu Kyi's Facebook page.

When readers translated the statements from Burmese to English, they were shocked at the multiple references to Xi Jinping's name and the wording "Mr. Sh*thole". Facebook has since apologized for the error, claiming it happened due to "technical issue". The company also said that Xi Jinping's name wasn't present in their database, so they took a wild stab in the dark at translating it and failed.

NBCUniversal has just secured Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, with MacFarlane signing a huge $200 million TV deal that gives him some great flexibility.

MacFarlane will be leaving his warm home of 20th Century Fox TV, with MacFarlane's new deal will see the Family Guy creator creating new content for NBC's entire portfolio. Not only that, but MacFarlane will be free to sell to outside buyers including Netflix, as well as being a free agent on the movie side of things.

MacFarlane is a big fish to catch, so it should come as no surprise that he was being courted by Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Warners, Sony, ViacomCBS and Disney. In the end, the 5-year $200 million deal with more freedom at NBCUniversal won him over.

Bose has announced some rather large news for its retail dominance in major markets globally, with the audio-focused company announcing it will be closing retail stores in multiple countries.

Bose will be closing its retail storefronts in the US, Australia, Europe and Japan which will see a total of 119 stores closing and hundreds of jobs slashed. It's a big shock considering Bose first opened its first physical store in 1993, and has continued to spread its audio retail goodness across the world since.

The retail stores have been the perfect way to display and show off their audio products like headphones and speakers, especially Bose's iconic noise-cancellation headphones. Recently, Bose has been pushing into smart speakers, earbuds, sunglasses, and other products.

If you thought that the mobile market wasn't big, then you thought wrong. Sensor Tower has released new statistics that reveal throughout 2019, an estimated $83.5 billion dollars was spent in the mobile market.

The new statistics have been released on the Sensor Tower website, and show that throughout 2019 a growth of 16.3% occurred in spending for Apple's App Store. In 2018, the App Store pulled in $46.6 billion in spending, compared to in 2019, where it managed to beat the record with $54.2 billion. Looking at the Android market in 2018, the Google Play Store's total revenue was estimated to be $24.8 billion. In 2019 that number increased slightly to $29.3 billion.

The mobile gaming market was a massive player in the total revenue, pulling in a lions share of $61.7 billion spent, a 12.8% increase when compared to 2018. So what mobile games generated the most revenue? According to Sensor Tower, games such as Honor of Kings, Pokemon GO, Fire Emblem Heroes, Garena Free Fire, Call of Duty Mobile, and more contributed the most towards the gaming market's total revenue earnings. The game that managed to rake in the most revenue was Tencent's Honor of Kings with a ridiculous $1.5 billion.