Business
Netflix turns to Microsoft to help build its new ad-supported service.
Netflix has chosen Microsoft to assist construct its forthcoming ad-supported tier, the streaming big stated on Wednesday.
In April, after asserting in its first-quarter earnings report that it had misplaced subscribers for the primary time in a decade, Netflix unexpectedly stated it might introduce a cheaper providing with commercials to attempt to increase subscription numbers. On the time, Reed Hastings, a co-chief govt at Netflix, stated the corporate would search a 3rd celebration to assist construct the brand new tier. Netflix has by no means had a devoted gross sales and promoting group, and for years had vowed that commercials would by no means seem on its service.
For the reason that announcement, Netflix had talked to plenty of firms a few potential partnership, together with NBCUniversal, Google and the Commerce Desk.
Netflix has additionally informed employees that it hopes to introduce the promoting tier by the top of the yr. The corporate will nonetheless have its commercial-free tier, which is dearer for subscribers.
“Microsoft has the confirmed capacity to help all our promoting wants as we work collectively to construct a brand new ad-supported providing,” Greg Peters, Netflix’s chief working officer, stated in an announcement. “Extra importantly, Microsoft supplied the flexibleness to innovate over time on each the know-how and gross sales facet, in addition to robust privateness protections for our members.”
It has been an unpleasant few months for Netflix. The corporate has laid off tons of of employees members, and its inventory value has gone right into a tailspin. On Tuesday, the corporate garnered fewer Emmy nominations than its rival HBO, regardless of having considerably extra programming than the cable community and its streaming service, HBO Max. Netflix will announce its second-quarter earnings subsequent week, and beforehand stated it may lose one other two million subscribers throughout the quarter.
Netflix executives hope that introducing a lower-priced promoting tier will appeal to cost-conscious subscribers. Some analysts have cautioned that by introducing a less expensive service, the streaming service may cannibalize from its base of subscribers who pay extra for a commercial-free expertise.
“At launch, customers could have extra choices to entry Netflix’s award-winning content material,” stated Mikhail Parakhin, the president of internet experiences at Microsoft. “Entrepreneurs seeking to Microsoft for his or her promoting wants could have entry to the Netflix viewers and premium linked TV stock.”
Business
Fitbit Agrees to Pay $12 Million for Not Quickly Reporting Burn Risk With Watches
Reports that Fitbit’s Ionic smartwatch was overheating began in 2018 and continued into 2020. But according to U.S. officials, the company did not quickly report, as the law requires, that the battery inside the watch was creating an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death to consumers.
On Thursday, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that Fitbit had agreed to pay a $12.25 million civil penalty over its delay in reporting that the lithium-ion battery in the watch can overheat, creating a burn hazard.
The commission noted that in early 2020, Fitbit had issued a firmware update to reduce the potential for battery overheating, as consumers continued to report suffering burns because of the watch. But Fitbit did not voluntarily recall the Ionic smart watch until March 2, 2022.
By then, the commission said, Fitbit had received at least 174 reports globally of the lithium-ion battery’s overheating, leading to 118 reported injuries, including two cases of third-degree burns and four of second-degree burns.
“Fitbit should have immediately reported numerous overheating incidents, including second- and third-degree burns,” Commissioner Rich Trumka Jr. said Thursday in a statement. “Instead, Fitbit broke the law by delaying its reporting, leaving consumers exposed to the burn hazard. Many of these injuries could have been prevented.”
In a statement on Friday, a Fitbit spokesman said, “Customer safety continues to be our top priority, and we’re pleased to resolve this matter with the C.P.S.C. stemming from the 2022 voluntary recall of Fitbit Ionic.”
About one million of the devices, which track activity, heart rate and sleep, were sold in the United States from September 2017 through December 2021, with an additional 693,000 sold globally. Fitbit said that the injury reports represented fewer than 0.01 percent of all Ionic watches sold. The company stopped production of the Ionic in 2020, according to the consumer commission.
At the time of the 2022 recall, owners were offered $299 after returning their Ionic watches and received a discount code for select Fitbit devices, according to the consumer commission.
As part of the settlement agreement, Fitbit agreed to submit an annual report, including updates on the effectiveness of its revamped compliance policies.
Google bought Fitbit for $2.1 billion in early 2021 after agreeing not to use the health and wellness data that Fitbit had created to target ads at internet users.
In 2014, Fitbit recalled more than a million of its Force wristbands after customers complained of severe skin irritation.
But the company avoided a recall of its Flex wristbands later that year, after similar complaints, by adding a warning about nickel allergies and a sizing guideline to prevent users from wearing the wristbands too tightly.
Business
With an executive order, Trump casts doubt on the future of EVs in California
Shel Singh has gone all-in on electric vehicles in recent years. The 36-year-old business owner currently drives an electric Porsche. Before that, it was a Tesla.
But with President Trump working aggressively to reverse policies enacted by former President Biden intended to bolster the EV market and phase out gas-powered vehicles, he’s starting to question the wisdom of his choices.
Faced with what he expects to be declining demand for EVs and fewer resources to build a network of charging stations under Trump, Singh, who lives near Sylmar in northern Los Angeles County, said he’s not optimistic about his chances for re-selling his Porsche in the future.
He is not alone. Electric vehicle owners, sellers and manufacturers are awash in uncertainty after Trump signed an executive order Monday that took aim at several EV-friendly initiatives. With the stroke of a pen, the President froze funding allocated for charging infrastructure and abandoned Biden’s ambitious goal that EVs make up half of new cars sold in the U.S. by 2030.
Trump also signaled in the order that he would eliminate a popular $7,500 tax credit available to eligible buyers of electric vehicles and revoke California’s authority to set its own regulations on gas-powered cars. Both of those moves come with legal hurdles, said Bryant Walker Smith, an associate law professor at the University of South Carolina.
“The executive order is clearly evidence of a change in tone from the last administration,” Smith said. “But there are legal constraints that in theory should limit some of the short-term implications.”
Although Trump has said he wants to do away with what he calls Biden’s “EV mandate,” there is no federal rule requiring the purchase of EVs. Last December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed off on a California clean air rule that would ban the sale of new gasoline vehicles in the state by 2035. If it survives Trump’s challenges, the Advanced Clean Cars II rule would require 35% of new vehicles sold in the state to be all-electric by 2026, a goal that dealerships have said is unrealistic.
More than a dozen states have followed California’s lead in adopting clean air standards that are stricter than federal law. Trump is seeking to eliminate these standards and the EV incentive programs that come with them.
If Trump is successful in killing the tax credit, EV sales will take a hit, experts agreed. The credit goes a long way in making a new or used EV more affordable and desirable, said Karl Brauer, an executive analyst at iSeeCars.com.
“We’re going to see an undeniable drop in electric vehicle sales when the $7,500 credit goes away,” he said. “It’s not as easy to pin down how drastic that drop will be.”
When he bought his Tesla 3, Singh, who owns an online electronics company, said he was told by the salesperson that he would receive the credit, but later discovered his income was too high for him to be eligible. His frustration led to him trading out his Tesla for the Porsche.
Preparing for a drop in interest driven by the new administration, some manufacturers have already begun shifting away from sales strategies dominated by electric vehicles, including Porsche, which hinted last October that it would stray from its electric-only strategy.
Major manufacturers that produce electric and gasoline-powered vehicles have a better chance of adapting if EV sales fall significantly, Brauer said, including Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors. Companies like Rivian and Lucid, which make only EVs and sell directly to consumers, are in a more precarious position.
Days before Trump took office, Rivian finalized a $6.6-billion loan agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to fund a manufacturing facility in Georgia. Rivian’s stock has dropped more than 9% over the past month.
Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities industry analyst, said his company predicts demand for EVs will fall between 15% and 20% over the next three to four years if the tax credit is revoked. As a result, he said, the EV market will shrink.
“There’s going to be consolidation,” Ives said. “There’s less incentives for car manufacturers to head down that road when the government is going the opposite way.”
While the elimination of the tax credit would hurt most sellers of EVs, Tesla is a likely exception, Ives said. Because of the company’s size and market dominance, Tesla could actually benefit from decreased competition from manufacturers who relied on the credit to increase sales.
Across California, dealerships vary in their reliance on EV sales. Robb Hernandez, president of Camino Real Chevrolet in Monterey Park, said roughly 50 to 60 of the 150 to 200 new cars they sell per month are electric.
“EV sales have been strong for us the last four to six months with new launches,” Hernandez said, which include the Blazer EV and Silverado EV. “Because of the incentives and lease programs and everything else out there, we’ve been able to do pretty well moving them.”
With Trump targeting those incentives, Hernandez said he’s not sure how things will play out.
“We’re in a holding pattern,” he said. “We don’t really know what kind of short- or long-term effects this is going to have on the market.”
Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Assn., said an average of 13% of sales across the 1,400 dealerships his organization represents are electric, but that number can vary significantly based on location and manufacturer.
Jessie Dosanjh, who owns 18 dealerships in the Bay Area, said electric vehicles make up around 15% of sales in aggregate. That’s a far cry from the 35% the state wants to see by 2026, he said.
Orange County resident Tina Thurm received the $7,500 tax credit when she purchased her Tesla Model S in 2020, but said she likely would have bought the car anyway. “That wasn’t instrumental in my decision to purchase,” she said of the credit. “It was the test drive that pushed me over.”
Thurm, who owns two gas-powered vehicles along with her Tesla, said Trump is protecting Americans’ right to choose what kind of car they drive.
“Nothing should be mandated,” said Thurm, who owns a jewelry business and is now semi-retired at 70 years old. “I certainly don’t want the government to tell me what I must purchase.”
Other SoCal residents are discouraged by Trump’s actions and what they signify for the EV market.
“Not getting another EV after my Tesla lease ends,” one Californian wrote on social media this week. “This country is moving backwards and isn’t ready for full EV adoption. It’s a shame because I really love my Tesla.”
Business
What Is the H-1B Visa Program and Why Are Trump Backers Feuding Over It?
As President Trump embarked on a sweeping crackdown on immigration upon his return to office this week, he left unresolved a rift that surfaced last month among some of his most influential supporters about the role of skilled foreign workers in the U.S. labor market.
The split over the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States, has pitted hard-line immigration opponents against some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent backers in the tech industry, who say they rely on the program because they can’t find enough qualified American workers.
It’s unclear where Mr. Trump will land. He pledged in his first term to discontinue H-1B visas, but last month he called it “a great program.”
How does the H-1B visa program work?
Congress passed legislation creating the H-1B program in 1990, as a labor shortage loomed. When President George Bush signed it into law, he said the program would “encourage the immigration of exceptionally talented people, such as scientists, engineers and educators.”
Employers use the visas — which are valid for three years and can be extended — to hire foreign workers with specialized skills, mainly in science and technology, to fill openings for which American workers with similar abilities cannot be found.
Employers submit a petition to the government on behalf of a foreign worker they want to hire, describing the job and the qualifications of the person selected to fill it.
The H-1B program confers temporary status in the United States, not residency. However, many employers sponsor workers with H-1B visas for a green card, which puts them on the path to U.S. citizenship.
Who are the workers?
Congress makes 65,000 H-1B visas available each year for workers with a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, and 20,000 more for those with a master’s degree or higher. Universities and research organizations are exempt from those caps.
Many of the workers who have received the visas are software engineers, computer programmers and others in the technology industry. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and I.B.M. were among the companies that employed the most H-1B visa holders last year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
But it’s not just a Silicon Valley story. H-1B recipients work in other professions, including education, health care and manufacturing.
There is no cap for each country, and a vast majority — between about two-thirds and just over three-quarters — of recipients come from one: India.
Do H-1B holders replace American workers?
Employers must attest that they have searched for qualified domestic candidates, and that an H-1B worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of American workers.
The program requires employers to pay H-1B workers, at a minimum, either the average wage for the job and the city where it is based, or the average wage of American-born workers doing the same job. Companies are prohibited from paying H-1B workers less than other workers with similar skills and qualifications. Still, about 60 percent of the positions paid “well below” the local median wage for the occupation in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute, citing the Labor Department’s “broad discretion” to set H-1B wage levels.
Critics say employers often use H-1B visas to hire workers who are willing to accept lower salaries than Americans, and there have been episodes in which the program has been used to bring in immigrants to do jobs that American workers had been doing.
In 2015, about 250 technology workers at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., were told that they were being laid off, and that they would have to train their replacements — H-1B visa holders who had been brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Similar episodes that year affected employees of Toys “R” Us and the New York Life Insurance Company. However, some studies have shown that the visa program helps foster innovation and growth, leading to more jobs, including for U.S.-born workers.
How has the issue divided Republicans, and where does President Trump stand?
A rift erupted among Republicans in December about how much tolerance, if any, the incoming Trump administration should have for immigrants brought into the country on H-1B visas.
Elon Musk, a former H-1B holder, wrote on X that the expertise U.S. companies need “simply does not exist in America in sufficient quantity.” Mr. Musk’s electric-car company, Tesla, obtained 724 of the visas this year.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate who recently quit a government cost-cutting initiative that Mr. Trump had asked him to lead alongside Mr. Musk, blamed American culture for creating people ill-suited for skilled tech positions.
Among those on the other side of the debate were Laura Loomer, the far-right activist, and Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime Trump confidant. Mr. Bannon hosted influencers and researchers on his popular “War Room” podcast in December who critiqued “big tech oligarchs” for supporting the H-1B program.
In 2020, Mr. Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending new H-1B visas, which he had said should go to “only the most skilled and highest-paid applicants and should never, ever be used to replace American workers.” After a federal judge struck that order down, the Trump administration tightened eligibility rules for the visas and required companies to pay higher salaries to H-1B holders. A federal judge also rejected some of those rules, including the salary requirement.
In late December, Mr. Trump appeared to weigh in on the debate, saying he had often used the program as a businessman. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B,” he told The New York Post. “I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”
In fact, Mr. Trump appears to have used the H-1B visa program sparingly. He has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named H-2B visa program, which is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers, as well as the H-2A program, for agricultural workers. Those visas allow a worker to remain in the country for 10 months.
-
Technology1 week ago
Super Bowl LIX will stream for free on Tubi
-
Technology1 week ago
Nintendo omits original Donkey Kong Country Returns team from the remaster’s credits
-
Culture7 days ago
American men can’t win Olympic cross-country skiing medals — or can they?
-
Culture5 days ago
Book Review: ‘Somewhere Toward Freedom,’ by Bennett Parten
-
Education1 week ago
What Happened to Enrollment at Top Colleges After Affirmative Action Ended
-
Politics1 week ago
U.S. Reveals Once-Secret Support for Ukraine’s Drone Industry
-
Politics1 week ago
Johnson Installs Crawford on Intelligence Panel, Pulling It Closer to Trump
-
World1 week ago
Chrystia Freeland, Justin Trudeau’s ‘Minister of Everything,’ Enters Race to Replace Him