Business, Financial & Legal - Page 80

Kickstarter continues growing and growing, or at least the amount of money that is pledged to the website.

According to LearnBonds, Kickstarter has registered over $4.56 billion USD that has been pledged to different projects. This number represents an over 16% increase since October 2018, and according to LearnBonds "Crowdfunding have been expanding all over the world during the last twenty years. Kickstarter was launched in 2009 and it launched over 460,000 projects."

It should be noted that Kickstarter does take a portion of the money that is pledged to successful projects, this is of course to keep the site running and give the creators some form of income for the idea. It should also be noted that 63.7& of projects don't receive the funding required to continue, while 37.3% are successful. Justinas Baltrusaitis, Editor at LearnBonds, said "The growth of these platforms is inevitable considering there are more and more creators being inspired by the success of the other crowdfunded projects."

Microsoft Japan recently went through a trial of a 4-day work week, with the results of the experiment showing that there was a huge 40% increase in productivity.

The 40% increase in productivity was mostly through shorter, more efficient meetings which saw all 2300 staff at Microsoft Japan taking 5 Fridays off in a row with the same salary, and no days removed from their annual leave. Microsoft Japan named the project the "Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019".

Microsoft Japan president and CEO Takuya Hirano said: "Work a short time, rest well and learn a lot. It's necessary to have an environment that allows you to feel your purpose in life and make a greater impact at work. I want employees to think about and experience how they can achieve the same results with 20 percent less working time".

Joker is scaring up some serious cash at the box office, with the darker DC movie reaching $934 million worldwide since its debut.

So far, the movie has made $300 million domestically in the US and $634 million in international box office sales. Given that WB spent just $70 million to make Joker (and say another $100 million in marketing) then the profits on the movie are actually far greater than even something like Avengers: Infinity War which had a $316 million budget and most likely $200-250 million.

Avengers: Infinity War was also the 4th most-expensive movie ever made, while Joker has a modest $70 million budget. This is a very big win for DC and I'm sure unexpected (at least at hitting $1 billion) when it has already beaten Wonder Woman which had a great reception, and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice which was drowning in controversy (I don't know why, it was great -- especially the Ultimate Edition). We won't even talk about Justice League, but I do talk about it with the Snyder Cut of Justice League chatter.

TikTok's parent company could be in a little bit of trouble as an investigation has been opened up regarding its acquisition of Musical.ly.

According to a new report out of Reuters, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has begun to open up an investigation into ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly back in 2017. The acquisition for Musical.ly was for a whopping $1 billion, and the reason for the investigation is over U.S. concerns the Chinese owned company might be censoring politically sensitive content.

Reuters reports that CFIUS has reviewed the company acquisition, and found that TikTok did not seek proper clearance from the CFIUS. A TikTok spokesperson said, "While we cannot comment on ongoing regulatory processes, TikTok has made clear that we have no higher priority than earning the trust of users and regulators in the U.S. Part of that effort includes working with Congress and we are committed to doing so." The CFIUS also had a spokesperson who declined to reveal any details regarding the ongoing investigation.

Google has acquired Fitbit in a deal worth $2.1 billion, with Google SVP of devices and services Rick Osterloh explaining in a blog post that acquiring Fitbit is "an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market".

Fitbit will be joining Google itself just like when the company acquired Nest, versus breaking it up or sending it to join Alphabet and be used in a different fashion. Fitbit also had something to say in their own press release, standing by its privacy for health and fitness data (especially now that it's joined the do-no-evil Google). Fitbit said: "Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads".

This is a good fit for Google as it transitions into 2020 it'll need to better fight Apple and its Watch family of wearables, and Google can bring some of its smarts into Fitbit's smartwatches and future wearables. Google has its own fitness tracking software and apps, and could see Fitbit blend works with Google Fit.

NVIDIA and AMD have been releasing products one after the other for over 12 moths now with NVIDIA unleashing an entire stack of new Turing-based GeForce RTX and GeForce GTX graphics cards while AMD has been firing on all cylinders.

In the last 12 months AMD has released its next-gen Zen 2 CPU architecture and new Ryzen 3000 series processors, EPYC Rome server chips, and the soon-to-be-released Ryzen Threadripper 3000 series. AMD also returned to graphics cards with the new Navi GPU architecture and the two new Radeon RX 5700 series cards and the impending launch of the RX 5500 series family.

Now we have Harvard Business Review naming NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang as the #1 CEO in the world for 2019, while AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su ranks at #26. Huang was the #2 CEO for HBR in 2018, and #3 in 2017. He has been credited with the 14x increase in the price of NVIDIA share prices from 2015-2018 which is a gigantic achievement (even better for anyone who holds NVIDIA stock).

Tesla has just reported its Q3 2019 earnings, surprising Wall Street and seeing TSLA shares increasing in after-marketing trading.

The reason? Tesla reported $143 million in net income, or 80c a share -- which when compared to the same quarter of 2018, saw the Elon Musk-led company reporting $311 million, or $1.82 per share. However, when adjusted for one-time items Tesla earned $342 million, at $1.91 a share.

Tesla reported overall revenues of $6.3 billion, lower than analysts' expectations of $6.42 billion, and 7.5% lower than Q3 2018. Tesla added that the company was "highly confident" deliveries will easily pass 360,000 this year.

I don't know about you, but I'd trade positions with Elon Musk in a second. The owner of SpaceX and Tesla Motors has had some financial details revealed, through a defamation lawsuit against him.

British diver Vernon Unsworth is suing Musk for defamation against him when the SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO called him a "pedo guy" on Twitter in 2018. If you remember back in 2018, Unsworth was involved in the huge rescue of a young soccer team and their coach who was trapped in a cave in Thailand.

At the time, Musk sent a small submarine to Thailand to help in the efforts to save the kids and their coach. But Unsworth said the submarine would've been ineffective in the rescue, and was just a publicity stunt by Musk.

TikTok has just banned around two dozen ISIS-affiliated accounts from its service, with social media monitoring agency Storyful recently finding the ISIS-related accounts and TikTok swiftly removing them.

The ISIS-connected accounts were posting videos looking to recruit followers and increase support for ISIS, with videos showing ISIS anthems and videos of corpses and ISIS fighters.

ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok based in China, with a US-based TikTok representative telling Engadget: "Content promoting terrorist organizations has absolutely no place on TikTok. We permanently ban any such accounts and associated devices as soon as identified, and we continuously develop ever-stronger controls to proactively detect suspicious activity. This is an industry-wide challenge complicated by bad actors who actively seek to circumvent protective measures, but we have a team dedicated to aggressively protecting against malicious behavior on TikTok".

In what feels like an extremely weird move given the on-going issues with China, Apple CEO Tim Cook has just been appointed the chairman of the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing, an influential Beijing university.

Cook's new role will see him replace Jim Breyer, founder and chief executive of Breyer Capital, with the Apple CEO sitting in his new chairman position for three years. Cook isn't the first prominent member of silicon valley to join the Beijing university's board, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk both involved with the school.

This position gives them access to the upper echelon of Chinese leaders in both business, and politics. Cook's official role with the board, like its other influential board members is to assist with the development of the school. Chinese business leaders in Jack Ma the founder of Alibaba, and Pony Ma the founder of Tencent.

A new report out of CNBC has stated that third-party Amazon sellers are shipping out expired food to buyers much to frequently.

According to the report, numerous Amazon customers are receiving foods and products such as baby formula, coffee creamer, beef jerky, granola bars and more well past their sell-by-date. Interviews have been conducted with the Amazon third-party sellers, consumers and consultants and majority of the formulated opinions point the finger at Amazon for having numerous system loopholes.

CNBC also states in their article that an analytics firm that specializes in the Amazon Marketplace combed over the sites 100 best-selling food products. They found that out of the 40% of sellers, more than five customer complaints were lodged about expired goods. It seems that as Amazon grows and expands its food business so does the amount of problems that arise. According to some safety advocates these issues will only increase as Amazon doesn't have accountability for its products due to the previously mentioned system "loopholes".

Netflix is pretty much unstoppable, but remember... the streaming wars are only just beginning as Disney is about to unleash Disney+ into the world. However, Netflix did pretty well in Q3 2018.

The streaming giant shared the details of its Q3 2019, with Netflix expecting 7 million new subscribers but only adding 6.77 million new subscribers, but it still made for an all-time record quarter. The recent price hikes didn't help Netflix keep as many subscribers as it expected. Netflix explained the bleeding out of customers: "With more revenue, we'll continue to invest to improve our service to further strengthen our value proposition".

Amazon Prime and Hulu are Netflix competitors in the here and now, but then we have Apple TV+ coming with a third outing in the Band of Brothers franchise, Disney+ with a near unlimited library of content to add to its service, and then we have HBO Max (please release the Snyder Cut of Justice League as an exclusive, WB) as well as NBC's upcoming Peacock subscription service.

A new study has been released showing that an increase in product variety can cause consumers to automatically discount an influencers positive recommendation of a certain product, despite its recommended quality.

This new research has been published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, and picks apart how recommendations for product quality affect the consumer. According to research, nearly 50% of consumers rely on digital influencers for product recommendations, and furthermore 40% of those consumers make purchases based on their recommendations.

Liao, a professor in the business school at The Chinese University of Hong Kong said "When many types of a product are available, consumers may expect an expert to find a better fit, and this consideration would then reduce consumer expectations of the product quality. As a result, the consumer valuation may decrease, which could lead to a lower profit."

I don't even know how to start this story, but a Dutch family was found to be living inside of a hidden room in their farmhouse -- for, get this... 9 years. The family was "waiting for the end of time" according to BBC News.

The family included the 58-year-old father and 6 of his sons aged 18-25, but then one of them escaped and fled to a nearby pub. The boy downed 5 beers (I'd be drinking more if I thought the world was going to end) and told the bar owner that he had escaped and needed some help.

BBC News reports that police officers then visited the farmhouse and searched it, discovering a hidden staircase that was behind a cupboard in the living room. Going down the staircase let them to a secret room where the family was hiding out for "the end of time". The 58-year-old man was arrested, and is now under investigation after refusing to cooperate.

Apple has been met with some well-deserved scrutiny with its recent assumed kowtowing to the Chinese government.

Apple has been targeted as being subservient to China in favor of sales over the freedom of users. Apple, in a controversial move, removed an app called HKmap.live, which was used by protestors of China's oppressive tactics to coordinate demonstrations and resistance to Chinese authoritarian rule.

The app works like other geolocation and mapping apps we have seen on mobile. The app allows users to set emojis in areas to signify police or other protest locations where they could congregate and coordinate with other protestors.

Facebook is no stranger to legal battles, and now they are about to jump right back into another one. This time for allegedly stealing the logo of a banking app.

Facebook formed a subsidiary company called Calibra to watch over its coming cryptocurrency that is planned to launch in 2020. Facebook's cyptocurrency 'Libra' hasn't had the best of weeks, as major backers such as PayPal, eBay, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard have dropped support for it, and now the company is under fire for trademark infringement.

The trademark infringement has been filed by banking app Current, and judging from their official Twitter page located above, they have some grounds to stand on when saying that Facebook copied their logo they have been using since 2016. It should be noted that Facebook announced Libra in June of this year, meaning that Current had their logo for years before Facebook even conceived the idea of developing a cryptocurrency. Current says in their lawsuit that "is not only confusingly similar to, but virtually identical to the Current Marks."

Most of you have likely had some experience with Fitbit. Or at least heard the name or maybe even have come across an ad or store display for them. For the uninitiated, Fitbit was one of the early brands touting the capability and benefits of fitness-based wearable computing.

For the past year or more, the US administrative branch has been imposing and proposing new escalating tariffs on Chinese made goods in an attempt to hedge off the claimed unfair trade deficit.

Fitbit saw this coming as trade negotiations seemed to stall numerous times, and tensions escalated with threats of new tariffs to come if an agreement is not met. With that, any company would think about their current manufacturing supply chain and alternatives to China as a resource. Fitbit did just that, as you will see below in the quote from the current CFO of Fitbit Ron Kisling.

The amount of spending consumers do on mobile apps and games is increasing in a big way, with mobile app research firm Sensor Tower releasing some new data that is quite surprising, to say the least.

Sensor Tower estimates that consumers spent a huge $21.9 billion on mobile apps across the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in Q3 2019 alone, which is up from $17.9 billion in the same quarter of 2018 -- representing an increase of 22.9%.

Apple did the biggest business with $14.2 billion or so in gross app revenue in Q3 2019, up from the $11.6 billion in Q3 2018 while Google made $7.7 billion in revenue in Q3 2019 versus $6.2 billion from Q3 2018.

HP, the acclaimed purveyor of PC systems, printers, and other consumer and enterprise-level tech, announced it would move forward with plans to restructure and 'simplify operations.' The term 'simplify operations' is a cute way to say they want to lower headcount to match their business needs.

Needless to say, HP has seen a downturn in its formerly popular printing business as the world has become far more digital with less reliance on printers and printing technologies. HP has just made the planning announcements last week that they will be restructuring over the next three years and reducing overall headcount by 7000 - 9000 (up to 16%) employees.

This on the surface is not that uncommon as business units falter, companies will try to relocate or reposition employees to avoid the culling. But in this case, it appears between now and 2022, HP's goal is to make the necessary cuts. The strange part in all of this has to do with the fact that the board for HP just approved an extra budget of $5 billion for opportunistic repurchases of HP common stock.

The fight between Disney and Netflix is really starting to fire up, with reports surfacing from CNBC that Disney will be stopping ALL ads for any Netflix-related content on all of the properties it owns... except for ESPN.

CNBC reports that a Disney spokesperson said: "The direct-to-consumer business has evolved, with many more entrants looking to advertise in traditional television, and across our portfolio of networks".

Netflix will be enemy #1 for Disney, at least for now -- but eventually, Disney will ban ads from all competitors big and small as it leads into the launch of its own streaming service in Disney+.