Business, Financial & Legal - Page 95

John McAfee is in the headlines again, this time, the founder of McAfee is suing chipmaker Intel, claiming that they don't have the right to use his name, throwing trademark issues into the mix.

McAfee recently joined MGT Capital Investments, an online gaming company, as its CEO and chairman, and had planned to rename the company to John McAfee Global Technologies Inc., but Intel owns McAfee's "trademarks, tradenames, and associated goodwill" and warned that McAfee would be infringing on those properties.

MGT and McAfee argued in a complaint to the New York District Court that "at no point in the Agreement did McAfee assign the rights to his personal name [...] or agree to restrict his right to do business using his own name", and that the agreement with Intel "did not contain any non-compete provisions of any kind".

If the mess that was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice wasn't enough for Warner Bros. to cry itself to sleep at night, then the news that the company reported its own websites as piracy sites should be.

Warner Bros. and many other major Hollywood studios think that Google is making it way too easy for people to find pirated content, so they want to hand Google mountains of money in order to remove torrent sites like The Pirate Bay from search results entirely, reports TorrentFreak.

Thanks to its anti-piracy partner Vobile, Warner asked Google to censor a bunch of URLs, including some of its own. TorrentFreak has some screenshots from its DCMA notice, which lists some of Warner Bros. own pages, including The Dark Knight and Matrix websites. Not only are some of Warner's websites on the DCMA notice, but there are links to Amazon stores where you can buy or rent copies of The Dark Knight, but Google noticed their mistakes and didn't take any action against Amazon or IMBd links.

Apple is facing a record €13bn ($14.5bn) fine after a probe by the European Commission, which found the company was routing profits through Ireland to minimize taxes.

According to the probe, Apple's scheme allowed it to pay as little as 0.005% on its European profits, or £50 in taxes for every £1m of profit (a "completely made-up number", according to Chief financial officer Luca Maestri). It's said to have achieved its goal by setting up virtual offices with no employees, offices, or real activity and enacting provisions of Irish law no longer in use.

Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook says his company has done no wrong and he doesn't expect the decision to stick.

Massachusetts, USA is introducing a first of its kind tax on ride hailing services like Uber and Lyft, a portion of which will be funneled into the taxi industry. It's said the money will help the industry adopt "new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities", as well as develop the workforce.

The tax will be 20 cents per trip and will be sourced from the ride hailing companies themselves; 5 cents will go toward taxi companies, with 10 going to cities and towns, and 5 toward state transportation. Currently, Uber and Lyft alone account for 2.5 million rides per month in the state, so raising millions per year is plausible.

The move is part of Republican Governor Charlie Baker's plan to regulate the industry with a broad package, which ride services aren't happy with.

Twitch is all set to acquire Curse, the company behind the Curse client, which offers streaming tools, text and voice chat, an in-game overlay, and various other functions. As Twitch is itself owned by Amazon, this will make Curse a subsidiary of a subsidiary.

Logic says Twitch will likely use the acquisition to offer its own client to streamers, as opposed to now where users are required to use external programs like Xsplit, OBS, and so on in order to stream. I'd expect integrated live chat and other functionality as well.

"We've long been fans of Curse, which is an innovator in the games industry with a strong culture built around its offerings-from Curse Voice and Curse Client to Gamepedia," said Emmett Shear, CEO of Twitch. "While it's still early days for Twitch and Curse, we're kindred spirits in many ways and are looking forward to working together to enhance our users' gaming experience."

Apple has announced it has plans to build a new R&D center in China by the end of this year, and while the company didn't elaborate on the plans, it's part of an "overall increased investment in Apple's second-largest market," reports Engadget.

China regulators haven't been happy with large investments in companies like local ridesharing giant Didi Chuxing merging with Uber in a $35 billion deal, who have been outright banning services, and aren't sold on large American companies coming in and doing big business in their country. Apple is trying something new here with the R&D center plans for China, where it can show the country that it can create jobs in China, and discover new talent in the country.

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi is known as the 'Apple of China' so you can just imagine that they won't be pleased with this news, especially with the IDC estimating that Xiaomi had a 38.4% year-over-year decline in smartphone shipments.

Intel is now set to compete against NVIDIA in the deep learning and AI arena, acquiring AI startup Nervana. Nervana specializes in processor-based "deep learning as a service" through technology like its upcoming Nervana Engine, a dedicated AI hardware accelerator due out in early 2017.

Intel wants to utilize Nervana's expertise to help its AI performance on its Xeon and Xeon Phi processors, as it sees AI as a big future for the company. NVIDIA is already knee deep in deep learning, with self-driving cars, AI, and more.

NVIDIA could face serious competition in the deep learning and AI space if Nervana can help Intel tune its processors for machine learning tasks. Whatever happens, it's an exciting time to be alive! To my future Skynet overlords: please make Half-Life 3 a reality with your AI brains.

NVIDIA will surely be popping open bottles of champagne after it has posted record results for Q2 2016, exceeding revenue guidance and seeing strong demand for its new products, reports The Wall Street Journal. We also just found out that NVIDIA's next-gen GPUs will be made on the 14nm process, with Samsung securing the manufacturing contract.

NVIDIA projects revenue of $1.68 billion (plus or minus 2%), for its Q3 results, with the company pushing into new sectors that it will dominate in the future, such as VR and self-driving cars. NVIDIA boss Jen-Hsun Huang said: "Strong demand for our new Pascal-generation GPUs and surging interest in deep learning drove record results".

The company saw revenue increase 24% to $1.43 billion, while its gaming platform made $781 million in revenue, up 18%. NVIDIA's professional visualization revenue was up 22%, hitting $214 million while the automotive revenue from infotainment modules and product development contracts rose 68% to $119 million.

Airbnb is now valued at a mammoth $30 billion, after its latest funding round secured $850 million, according to reports from Bloomberg.

Last year, Airbnb was valued at around $25.6 billion, but with the latest funding round it has bounced up to $30 billion. Since Airbnb opened up shop in 2008, it has raised $2.39 billion, and the new $850 million funding round pushes that up to just over $3.2 billion.

Airbnb is preparing to allow members rent out or book each other's rooms or homes when traveling, which is a new direction for the company.

Apple has reportedly acquired an artificial intelligence startup for a swift $200 million, with Turi based in Seattle, and working on various AI technologies.

Turi has some interesting technology its developing, with apps that use machine learning to model patterns, and they combine advanced machine learning which can be deployed in various scenarios that range from production to server data management.

The work that Turi uses on data analysis could have had Apple interested, and under Apple's wing, a great piece of AI could be used in various ways. If Apple were to combine the AI goodness from Turi into its Siri and iCloud, it might help iOS users through everyday tasks. The issue is now, Google is worlds ahead in terms of its software and services line-up, while Apple is now playing catch-up. Maybe it has acquired Turi so it can ask an AI how to beat their competitors?

Apple has announced that App Store developers have earned $50 billion so far, with company CEO Tim Cook revealing the news on Twitter.

Cook added that July was a record-breaking month for the App Store, with the highest-ever monthly billings and money paid to iOS developers. Apple takes a nice cut of those profits, so the iPhone giant is laughing all the way to the bank. Apple reported a quarterly revenue of $42.4 billion, with a net income for the quarter of $7.8 billion.

Apple CFO Luca Maestri said: "Our Services business grew 19 percent year-over-year and App Store revenue was the highest ever, as our installed base continued to grow and transacting customers hit an all-time record".

After hackers stole approximately $65 million worth of Bitcoins this week, Bitfinex's price plunged 15 percent. Though the losses have since been erased, customers are still suffering.

"We will look at various options to address customer losses later in the investigation," Bitfinex wrote in a blog post. "We ask for the community's patience as we unravel the causes and consequences of this breach."

The US dollar is confirmed to have not been affected.

HTC has just posted its Q2 2016 financials, with the Taiwanese giant bleeding another $133 million for the quarter, even with strong Vive and HTC 10 smartphone sales.

Compared to the same quarter of 2015, HTC's sales are down 42.7%, but not as bad as the quarter that just passed, where HTC sales plummeted by 64%. This is the fifth quarter in a row that HTC has had troubles financially, but when the company saw that it was going to have a hit with the Vive headset, it creates its own subsidiary company known as HTC Vive Tech Corporation in order to manage it.

The company received a $100 million fund to expand the Vive ecosystem, and sales from this division count towards HTC's overall earnings. HTC has been shy on revealing the amount of Vive headsets that it has shipped, which would be nice to know right about now.

Uber has pulled a surprising move in China, merging with its biggest competitor in the country in a mammoth $35 billion deal with Didi Chuxing.

Didi Chuxing is Uber's biggest competitor in China, with Bloomberg and Recode reporting that Didi will scoop up Uber's operations in China with the deal, which will create a combined value of $35 billion. Uber and its investors in the Chinese business will receive a 20% stake in the new entity, which pre-merger was balued at $28 billion. Uber's Chinese operations are valued at around $7 billion, with the US company losing $1 billion per year in China as it couldn't compete against Didi Chuxing.

The new deal will see Didi investing $1 billion into Uber, with Uber valued at $68 billion. Didi also just secured $7.3 billion in a new financing round, which included Apple throwing $1 billion into the hat. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has said: "As an entrepreneur, I've learned that being successful is about listening to your head as well as following your heart. Uber and Didi Chuxing are investing billions of dollars in China and both companies have yet to turn a profit there. Getting to profitability is the only way to build a sustainable business that can best serve Chinese riders, drivers and cities over the long term".

Newegg is a huge force in the e-tailer market across the world, but down in Australia the company has announced that it's celebrating its second anniversary Down Under with a discounted Newegg Premier, with a new eBay.com.au store that will "fuel growth in the country".

Newegg started selling to Australian consumers in Q2 2014, and has continued towards dominance in the country with a 300% growth in Australian revenue since November 2015. Danny Lee, Newegg CEO said: "The strategy to expand Newegg's international presence hinges on successfully reaching customers in key markets such as Australia. In two short years our Australian operation has grown significantly, and we are committed to continuing growth in the months and years ahead".

Even though the company opened up operations in Australia two years ago, product availability was limited, and international shipping costs made products more expensive to deliver to consumers. Newegg has improved the product availability, and in November 2015 the company began local order fulfillment from within Australia. Now, over 7000 product SKUs are sold within Australia, while another 41,000 products are available to Australian consumers through Newegg's North American channel.

Washington state's Attorney General Bob Ferguson (pictured below) has filed a $100 million consumer lawsuit against internet and cable giant Comcast.

The suit cites Comcast's "pattern of deceptive practices" that have seen 500,000 customers unnecessarily pay for what's described as as a misrepresented, limited, and worthless protection plan, and alleges over 1.8 million individual violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

It also says the "Comcast Guarantee" program which affects almost 1.2 million WA residents is in violation of the Act, and that it charged for technical issues that were said to have been covered, and took deposits that were supposed to have been waived for those with high credit scores.

Pokemon GO might have exploded in popularity in its mere weeks on the market, but Nintendo's financials for their recent quarter are not good, at all.

Nintendo's net sales are down 31% compared to the same quarter of 2015, hitting $587 million. Nintendo also had an operating loss of $48 million, and only sold 220,000 Wii U consoles in the quarter, bringing the total number of Wii U consoles sold to over 13 million.

The Nintendo 3DS had another 1 million sales, and in regards to Pokemon GO - remember that Nintendo only owns parts of the game and not the entire game as Niantic steers that ship. Nintendo announced that it has delayed the Pokemon Go Plus accessory, which will now be released in September.

Vizio has made a name for itself as budget TV maker in the US, with the company getting acquired by Chinese electronics maker LeEvo in a deal worth $2 billion.

The US-based budget TV maker will continue its day-to-day operations in California, where Vizio will now act as a subsidiary of LeEco. Vizio founder and CEO William Wang will be leaving the company in a way, with Vizio's data business, Inscape, being spun off into a privately held company where LeEco will hold 49% ownership.

Wang will act as chairman and CEO of Inscape where he will hold a controlling 51% stake. During the press event, Wang said he had mixed feelings regarding the deal, and as the owner and CEO of Vizio, he was reluctant to let it go. But, he said the acquisition deal was the best decision for Vizio's hard-working staff and loyal shareholders.

It looks like Yahoo is going to be acquired by Verizon in the very near future, with Recode reporting that while the terms of the acquisition haven't been finalized, Yahoo's board have decided on Verizon as its new owner.

Verizon would be acquiring Yahoo for $5 billion, and while it might not sound like much in the world of other acquisitions worth many times more than that, Yahoo does own companies like Tumblr and Flickr. Verizon acquiring Yahoo sees them also receive those companies, which begins to make more sense.

But the most interesting part of Verizon's reported acquisition of Yahoo is that Verizon isn't interested in keeping Yahoo's current boss, Marissa Mayer. AOL boss Tim Armstrong is expected to take over the Yahoo ship once the acquisition is done. Adding fuel to the fire is that Armstrong proposed an AOL-Yahoo merger to Meyer years ago, with Meyer denying the deal.

AMD has had a great last 6 weeks or so, riding the Polaris wave with the launch of the Radeon RX 480 and now we're at the end of Q2 2016 - so we get some juicy financial reports to gloss over.

How did AMD go for the quarter? Well, they reported better-than-expected earnings and revenues for Q2 2016, and after the market closed, AMD reported an adjusted loss of 5c per share, lower than analysts' expectations of 8c per share. Revenues increased 9% year-over-year to reach $1.03 billion, beating analysts' expectations of $951.3 million.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said in a statement: "Based on the strength of our semi-custom products and demand for our latest Radeon RX GPUs and 7th Generation A-Series APUs, we are well positioned to drive growth and market share gains in the second half of the year".