Business, Financial & Legal - Page 81

Correction: OBS and Streamlabs OBS are different. Many people reached out to me about this mistake, I'm sorry and the article below has been amended. Streamlabs is built on top of the foundation of OBS, but is not OBS.

Logitech has just announced that it has acquired Streamlabs OBS, used by millions of gamers and professionals for live streaming.

Streamlabs OBS has grown considerably over the years becoming a key tool for streamers so they can get their game stream blasted out to the likes of Twitch, Mixer, Facebook or YouTube. OBS has been an instrumental part in growing big streamers, and will be an important acquisition for Logitech.

Let's see how deep the rabbit hole we're about to go, with the SEC fining Comscore and its former CEO Serge Matta over fluffing its own books and committing fraud.

Comscore -- whose performance metrics on websites is widely used across the world, has its former CEO admitting to fraud as he artificially inflated revenue by $50 million by fluffing numbers between 2014 and 2016, with Matta reportedly seeing Comscore join "non-monetary transactions" that would see the company giving data without expecting money.

The inflated sense of that value was reported as revenue, with Matta lying to both accountants and auditors -- these moves however, made it seem like Comscore was rocketing nowhere but towards the sky.

Disney+ isn't far away with the industry-changing streaming service going live on November 12, but if you want to get in early you can pre-order now.

The service will start at $7 per month or $70 per year, but you'll get a 7-day free trial on November 12 to help sway you over. Disney+ allows you stream ad-free content to 4 devices at once, with no limits to downloads.

If you want access to Hulu and ESPN+ then you'll be spending another $6 per month bumping up the monthly cost of Disney+ to $13 per month. All Disney+ subscription packages automatically review, but the company will be offering cancellations before each renewal date just in case.

Yahoo has changed its logo for the second time in 25 years, after its recent change back in 2013 -- before that, it had the same logo from when Yahoo first opened its doors in 1995.

The company teamed with design firm Pentagram on the new logo, with Yahoo explaining that the new logo is a "refresh of its visual identity". Yahoo says the new logo "captures the exuberant personality of the brand and reimagines it for the future". Pentagram has designed styles for the likes of Citibank, The Daily Show, and United Airlines.

Pentagram added that it continued using Yahoo's iconic purple color, but added in some tweaks. The new Yahoo logo now includes a shade of purple known as "grape jelly" with secondary purples called "hulk pants" (seriously) and "malbec".

The U.S. is granting one-year tariff exceptions to specific goods including power supplies, mice, PCBs, and graphics processors.

The U.S.-China trade war threatens to upend various tech industries with a steep 25% tariff tax, causing significant ripple-down effects across the entire supplier-to-consumer chain by raising manufacturing/shipping costs and MSRP. Major components like those used in consumer and enterprise computers and video game consoles were initially targeted, but U.S. trade regulators have relented by granting key tariff exemptions to specific tech including partially printed circuit boards (PCBs) for graphics cards (and consoles), mice in excess of $70, and power supplies that exceed 500W.

This should exempt graphics cards, video game console components, and most hardware using PCBs from the tariffs.

J.J. Abrams has just signed a huge deal with his production company Bad Robot Productions and WarnerMedia, in a deal reportedly worth $250 million according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Bad Robot Productions will made original series and movies for WarnerMedia and its divisions, something that will include HBO and Warner Bros. Pictures. All I'm hearing right now is "WB announces Man of Steel 2: Metallo directed by J.J. Abrams" -- please?

The new $250M deal will run through to 2024 and will include video games, digital content, original TV shows and movies for WarnerMedia. The deal won't stop Bad Robot from making content to sell to third-party companies, something that Abrams reportedly said was of the "utmost importance" reports THR.

The day has come: GameStop announced during its Q2 earnings call that it is closing between 180-200 of its most 'under-performing' stores globally. The stores will be shut down between now, and the end of the year.

GameStop CFO James Bell was confident in the remaining 5700 stores worldwide, stating that 95% of them are profitable. He said: "While that is an impressive statistic, we have a clear opportunity to improve our overall profitability by de-densifying our chain".

Bell added: "That work is well underway. We are on track to close between 180 and 200 underperforming stores globally by the end of this fiscal year. And while these closures were more opportunistic, we are applying a more definitive, analytic approach, including profit levels and sales transferability, that we expect will yield a much larger tranche of closures over the coming 12 to 24 months".

I'm sure we've all had those thoughts -- eating human flesh, drinking human blood, chilling with your friends and that thought pops into your head 'yeah, I think your skin would taste nice'. Except, no normal person does that -- but that doesn't include Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger.

Sanger took to his personal Twitter with a poll that asked if people would be "in favor of a law against cannibalism, defined as eating living or deceased human flesh *or* drinking blood". But don't worry, he's not crazy as he addresses that question in a direct follow up tweet saying "in case you think I'm crazy for asking" (the question about cannibalism and drinking human blood).

The follow up tweet provides a link to trade between China and Korea for delivering aborted (and still-born) children to be consumed for "health reasons". The link goes to a Washington Times article that talks about South Korean agents seizing pills made with the flesh of human fetuses manufactured in China.

I'm going to do what no one in the press has yet: ask President Trump right here, "who is Q?" There, I said it. Now back to some not-so-regular programming: 8chan was taken down shortly after the recent mass shooting in El Paso, with site owner Jim Watkins releasing a video addressing the issue:

At the time, 8chan's host Cloudfare, terminated service of the site. 8chan quickly moved over to BitMitigate but then they were quickly shutdown and 8chan disappeared. Watkins was then subpoenaed to testify over the manifesto hitting 8chan first, except it didn't -- it was on Instagram first, but you won't read that in most stories.

Watkins took 8chan down after BitMitigate was shutdown, and would keep it offline until after his testimony to Congress. Anyone who is into "conspiracy theories" and hell, just reading the countless hit pieces on Qanon online, would know that there has been no new Q drops since 8chan was taken down.

It has been announced that the Fry's Electronics store in Palo Alto will be closing its doors in January. We reported only a couple of weeks ago that the chain they may be closer than ever to facing the fate of other brick and mortar retail chains.

According to an official spokesman for the electronics chain, the lease that Fry's Electronics has for the property is expiring on January 31, 2020. The store has been located at 340 Portage Avenue since 1990. The final day of business for the store has not been announced yet but will have to vacate completely by the end of January. Currently the chain has no plans to relocate in Palo Alto. Any plans to offer transfers to other locations for current employees have yet to have been disclosed.

The city of Palo Alto is already working on plans for the site on which the building that Fry's Electronics occupies. The history of the building dates to 1918 when it originally operated as a canning company. The city hopes to complete their plan for the area by the end of 2020, but as of now the site's future remains uncertain.

Eminem's music publisher, Eight Mile Style has officially filled a lawsuit against music streaming giant Spotify, accusing the platform of "blatant copyright infringement".

According to The Hollywood Reporter, this lawsuit comes under the Music Modernization Act which was signed into law last year. According to MMA, Spotify has to file a "notice of intention" and pay the righholders of the music they are streaming on their platform. This is where it gets dicey, Eight Mile Style has claimed that "Spotify did not have any license to reproduce or distribute the Eight Mile Compositions, either direct, affiliate, or compulsory, but acted deceptively by pretending to have compulsory and/or other licenses."

One of the songs that was claimed to be illegally streamed was Eminem's biggest song ever, 'Lose Yourself', Eight Mile says this is "the most egregious example of Spotify's willful infringement. Spotify, and [the Harry Fox Agency], its agent ... certainly knew (and had the easy means to know) that Eight Mile is the copyright owner of 'Lose Yourself.'" Continuing on, Eight Mile says that 'Lose Yourself' isn't the only song Spotify has illegally streamed, and that in total these songs have been "streamed on Spotify billions of times".

Disney could be in some big trouble with a Walt Disney Co. whistleblower has informed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the company had overstated its revenues for years.

Sandra Kuba used to work as a senior financial analyst for the revenue operations department of Disney, a position she held for 18 years. Kuba alleges that employees that work at Disney's parks-and-resorts business segment "systematically overstated revenue by billions of dollars by exploiting weaknesses in the company's accounting software".

What did Disney purportedly do? Well, MarketWatch has reviewed the whistleblower filings from Kuba where it is alleged that employees were boosting records in multiple ways including "recording fictitious revenue for complimentary golf rounds or for free guest promotions".

Since 1985, Fry's Electronics, a brick and mortar Silicon Valley headquartered electronics chain, was the go-to place for DIY system builders. The stores founded by John Fry were modeled like grocery retailing, but to sell computer and electronics supplies. Fry's Electronics, like most brick and mortar stores these days is having a tough time due to fierce online retailer competition. It seems that they may be closer than ever to facing the fate of other brick and mortar retail chains, like Toys"R"Us, K-Mart, and Sears.

Over the last two years, we have observed significant gaps in their product stock, and over the last six to twelve months entire product lines missing for extended periods of time. Examples include the OEM versions Microsoft Windows 10, internal hard drives, or motherboards which most stores have not had in stock consistently for the last six months. One thing we have heard across multiple stores from employees is that sales have been struggling. Our own visits to the stores have shown entire isles which used to be well stocked, completely devoid of any products.

Over the last few days, two videos have surfaced which you can watch here and here. These videos show a similar situation of product stock in the Arizona based locations.

Spotify is the cream of the crop when it comes to music streaming services, while it might not be first in music quality it certainly is first when it comes to user counts.

Spotify has released the their quarterly earnings for the second quarter of 2019, revealing that the company now has a solid paying userbase of 108 million users compared to the same time last year of 83 million users. While this might sound like a staggering amount of users, Spotify's estimation for the by the end of June was to add 8.5 million more users, which unfortunately fell short. One year-over-year scale, Spotify is actually up 31% growth wise.

The quarterly report also reveals an accurate amount of monthly active users the music streaming platform has. According to the report, Spotify now has 232 million monthly active users, in comparison to the same time last year where they had 180 million. To shine a light on some competing music streaming platforms, Apple has a userbase of about 60 million users and Amazon is currently trying to squeeze into the market with Amazon Music which is getting a straight upwards trend of users. could certainly disrupt things.

Apple has confirmed it is releasing its own credit card in August, after first revealing it at its services event earlier this year. Yeah, a credit card, from Apple.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said during Apple's recent 2019 third fiscal quarter earnings call: "Thousands of Apple employees are using the Apple Card every day in a beta test and we will begin to roll out the Apple Card in August". The new Apple Card will arrive in both a digital form, as well as a physical titanium card.

Where the new 'Apple Card' will do things differently is that it won't have a normal 16-digit number, CVV code, expiration date, or personal ID on it like a traditional credit card. Apple Card will generate these numbers on-device, with Apple teaming with Goldman Sachs, randomly each time at the time of transactions to keep purchases secure.

We knew it was coming but now it is official: Apple has acquired Intel's modem division including 17,000 patents and most of its staff, for $1 billion.

Intel will see around 2200 of its employees joining Apple, with physical equipment and facilities to be transferred from Intel to Apple now that the deal is done. Intel is abandoning the modem market, but it's not getting rid of everything in the division. The company explains it will "retain the ability to develop modems for non-smartphone applications, such as PCs, internet-of-things devices and autonomous vehicles".

Apple's SVP of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji adds: "Apple is excited to have so many excellent engineers join our growing cellular technologies group, and know they'll thrive in Apple's creative and dynamic environment. They, together with our significant acquisition of innovative IP, will help expedite our development on future products and allow Apple to further differentiate moving forward".

If you didn't know already, Amazon is currently hosting their own holiday called 'Prime Day'. Prime Day ushers in a range of new sales for consumers to enjoy, but not everyone has taken a liking - as many strikes have formed by Amazon employee's.

This is the second year in a row that Amazon employee's have decided to strike on Prime Day. Many workers located in Germany are refusing to work over what has been called unfair pay, and Minnesota workers are striking over unsafe working conditions. These are the only Amazon workers striking though, due to Amazon owning Twitch.tv some video game streamers have also decided to strike.

Adam "Yoman5" Hernandez, a competitive Magic: The Gathering streamer has decided not to stream for the next two days to show solidarity to the Amazon employee's who have it hard. "I think it's really simple to show solidarity to people who have it hard. A two-day strike did wonders already over at Polygon, and while that's a much smaller affair, a strike is really disruptive to the company's production and can force the company to actually address concerns. A boycott in solidarity with the strike can hit Amazon in the only place they care: sales numbers."

YouTube continues its march right into censorship heaven with a new addition underneath its ban hammer, with the Google-owned video sharing site now banning content posted as "instructional hacking and phishing" that show users "how to bypass secure computer systems or steal user credentials and personal data".

The problem is that YouTube algorithms will be the 1984 control system behind this move once again, and some users are already getting caught up in the mess. Creator of Cyber Weapons Lab YouTube series Kody Kinzie posted to Twitter saying that his team "made a video about launching fireworks over Wi-Fi for the 4th of July to find out YouTube gave us a strike because we teach about hacking, so we can't upload it". What a mess.

Now sure, I get that YouTube should be censoring or removing harmful material -- but it should be mostly done by actual human staff. The issue here is that so many other videos are going to get caught up in this algorithm-happy ban on their instructional videos that don't necessarily instruct you on how to hack someones PC, but rather do some tweaks or trouble shooting to it. I guess we'll see how bad this gets in the coming weeks and months.

In a story that hasn't been covered much at all, you might not have read that an Ars Technica staffer was recently arrested by the FBI after an attempted enticement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual ctivity.

Peter Bright was a respected member of the tech press, openly claiming he was in a relationship with an 11-year-old. His own personal Twitter even states he's "pervy", so it seems ht wasn't trying to hide this at all. An undercover FBI special agent reached out to Bright through KinkD, something I'd never heard of until today, a social media platform for sexual fetish connections.

Where it gets worse is that the undercover FBI agent reached out to "randomanon", or Bright, saying that she was a mother that wanted to talk to people who would teach her kids about the "birds and the bees". Bright bit the bait, being allured with the purported 7- and 9-year old children used as bait.

HBO has always had to fight off pirates of its hit Game of Thrones and with its recent season 8 premiere, analytics company MUSO says the premiere was pirated close to 55 million times in its first day.

MUSO adds that around 76% of these viewers used bootleg streams while 12% downloaded it, 10.8% used public torrents while 0.5% used private torrents. The most popular place for pirate versions of the S8 premiere of Game of Thrones was India with MUSO reporting 10 million views were in India, while China chimed in with 5 million.

Remember that HBO isn't available everywhere so there are those that will look to pirating the show, or for people who aren't subscribed and paying for a TV package of some kind in their country. In saying that, MUSO said that around 4 million people pirated the S8 premiere of Game of Thrones in the US, and that's the home of HBO's main audience.