Blog

Nvidia, with a market capitalization of .34 trillion, becomes the most valuable company

Nvidia, with a market capitalization of $3.34 trillion, becomes the most valuable company

Associated media - Related media On Tuesday, Nvidia leapfrogged two of the tech industry’s most storied names to become the world’s most valuable public company, according to data from S&P Global. Its rise has been fueled by the boom in generative artificial intelligence and growing demand for the company’s chips – known as graphics processing units, or GPUs – that have made it possible to create artificial intelligence systems. Nvidia’s rise is among the fastest in the history of the market. Just two years ago, the company’s market valuation exceeded $400 billion. Now, in the span of a year, it…
Read More
EU takes aim at Microsoft Teams bundling, saying it stifles competition

EU takes aim at Microsoft Teams bundling, saying it stifles competition

Related media - Associated media The European Union (EU) is accusing Microsoft of foul play after regulators charged the tech giant with unfairly bundling its popular Teams video conferencing software with its Office suite. This practice, the EU says, gives Teams an unfair advantage over competitors like Zoom and Slack. The issue centers on how Microsoft packages Teams within its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions, which include programs like Word, Excel, and Outlook. Regulators believe this bundling essentially forces companies to adopt Teams if they want those other widely used Microsoft programs. This, they argue, hurts competition by limiting…
Read More
How to make digital photos from your smartphone look old

How to make digital photos from your smartphone look old

Related media - Linked media Like the allure of vinyl records, classic video games, and even the early Internet, the fascination with old photographic standards like point-and-shoot cameras or 35-millimeter film persists, even in people too young to remember when that equipment was state of the art. The appeal of “vintage” photography goes beyond nostalgia and Instagram filters, judging by the sheer number of apps designed to emulate the film, lenses, and visual quirks of pre-digital photos and films. Despite the irony of using a high-end smartphone’s camera to produce imperfect images that appear oversaturated, jittery, low-contrast, unfiltered, or otherwise…
Read More
Anthony O’Reilly, the flamboyant Irish tycoon who ran Heinz, has died at 88

Anthony O’Reilly, the flamboyant Irish tycoon who ran Heinz, has died at 88

Linked media - Connected media Anthony J.F. O’Reilly, a charming, ambitious, Irish-born former president of the H.J. Heinz Company, who also owned newspapers, luxury brands, and trophy houses in France and the Bahamas, only to lose nearly everything in his eighth decade, died on 18 May in Dublin. He was 88 years old. The Irish Times and other Irish newspapers, citing a family spokesperson, said he died in hospital. No cause was given. From his earliest days, Mr. O’Reilly, known as Tony, showed an embarrassment about gifts. He was a top-flight rugby player while still a teenager: the “red-haired pin-up…
Read More
The future of Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services

The future of Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services

Associated media - Associated media Ted Sarandos, 59, co-chief executive of Netflix, worked his way up through the now-defunct DVD industry before going straight to Netflix when the company was still renting DVDs by mail. Mike Hopkins, 55, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, was steeped in digital as chief executive of Hulu, the pioneering streaming service owned by Disney, Fox and NBCU, before joining Sony as head of its television unit in 2017. He came to Amazon in 2020 and reports to the company’s chief executive, Andy Jassy, 56, who has no professional background in entertainment. Over…
Read More
Biden proposes eliminating medical debt from credit reports

Biden proposes eliminating medical debt from credit reports

Related media - Associated media That has changed significantly in recent years, as the three national credit reporting agencies – TransUnion, Equifax and Experian – have eliminated much of that debt from credit reports. Over the past two years, they have stopped reporting debts under $500 and debts less than a year in collections. According to a recent study by the Urban Institute, these changes have erased medical debt from the credit reports of millions of Americans. The percentage of Americans with unpaid healthcare bills on their credit reports dropped from 12% in August 2022 to 5% in August 2023.…
Read More
Chinese restaurants move to Hong Kong

Chinese restaurants move to Hong Kong

Connected media - Associated media In the Shek Tong Tsui area, where Return Home Hunan opened in May, many of the brightly colored restaurants – once mainstays of the neighborhood – had recently closed their doors. A restaurant that served cheap noodles and milk tea was gone, as was a restaurant where retirees gathered to eat dim sum and catch up on the day’s news. “The restaurant business is hard work,” said Roy Tse, the owner of a local restaurant that sold lunch rice dishes once popular among office workers in Hong Kong’s Taikoo Shing business district. There are fewer…
Read More
Google CEO testifies in Ozy Media founder’s fraud trial

Google CEO testifies in Ozy Media founder’s fraud trial

Related media - Linked media At the center of the federal criminal trial is an incident in 2021 in which Mr. Watson’s deputy deceived Goldman Sachs employees on a fundraising call by posing as a YouTube executive. The revelation of the call precipitated Ozy’s downfall. Defense lawyers for Mr. Watson and Ozy blamed his deputy, Samir Rao, for the fake phone call and for misrepresenting Ozy’s financial data to potential investors. Ms. Frison said in her opening statement in May that Mr. Rao was “incompetent for the role he was filling.” Mr. Rao and Suzee Han, Ozy’s former chief of…
Read More
wallets are not cool. Go digital.

wallets are not cool. Go digital.

Connected media - Associated media In a survey that asked just over 2,500 Americans about digital payments, about 80% of Gen Z respondents said they use mobile wallets, and among them, half were eager to use their phone a lot of more than paying for things, according to recent data from Pymnts Intelligence, a research firm that studies trade. Younger people are increasingly using their phones for purposes that older adults would use a traditional wallet for, such as carrying around documents like driver’s licenses, boarding passes and event tickets. Some of these digital items can be added to Apple…
Read More