Posts

Another day, another patent-related story. According to a report from Bloomberg this morning, the European Union is preparing to announce antitrust objections against Samsung for its use of “standard- essential patents in legal disputes with Apple.” “We will adopt the statement of objections very soon,” said EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia at a press conference, while noting the objections will arrive by the end of 2012 or early 2013 as a formal complaint that lists antitrust concerns....

It looks like this week’s Apple “xxx-gate” is a big one with the Financial Times reporting that the European Commision is about to come down hard on Apple for its long held tax avoidance strategies in Ireland. The US is no happier with Apple’s use of specially created Irish tax loopholes which allow it to avoid paying taxes it would otherwise be due. Apple CEO Tim Cook and other execs faced Senate Subcommittee questioning in May in which focused on Apple’s tax avoidance schemes....

Regardless of how you may feel about his films, there’s no denying that Christopher Nolan is one of the most creative and influential directors of his time. He rose up from innovative independent films to making a major blockbuster superhero trilogy and is now the kind of director with a blank check to get his wild ideas on screen. Christopher Nolan is currently hard at work on his eleventh directorial effort, titled Tenet....

Facebook on Monday reported fiscal results for its third quarter of 2021 with $29.01 billion in revenue coming from advertisements. However, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg remains upset about Apple’s privacy changes, as he said during an investor call that Apple has been hurting not only Facebook, but “millions of small businesses.” Zuckerberg said that Facebook experienced “revenue headwinds” this quarter due to Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency feature, which impacts the advertising business....

The Epic vs. Apple court case started on May 3. As it still has two more weeks to go, here’s what we’ve learned this week with the trial. Day one On day one, it was all about Epic’s and Apple’s opening statements. Epic focused on painting Apple and the App Store as a monopolistic and anti-competitive ecosystem that fails to offer the benefits to consumers that Apple touts. Apple’s lawyers, on the other hand, focused on the benefit provide to developers on its platforms....

The European Commission has complained that Apple is taking too long to implement protections for freemium games in the App Store, reports BBC News. The Commission has decreed that both Apple and Google, the two biggest app store vendors, must make the “true cost of apps” clear before purchase. However, officials are upset that Apple has not yet committed to any such measures. “Apple has proposed to address those concerns. However, no firm commitment and no timing have been provided for the implementation of such possible future changes....

New details about the upcoming Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme park were revealed during a special panel at the Galactic Nights event at Walt Disney World this weekend. Set to open in 2019 (at Disney’s California and Florida locations), the expansion transports park attendees to Black Spire Outpost, located on the planet Batuu. It’s envisioned as a safe haven for smugglers, traders, and others. Batuu is set to become a more meaningful part of Star Wars canon, as evidenced by its inclusion in an upcoming Thrawn novel by Timothy Zahn....

For example, if PL/SQL engine receives an instruction to divide any number by ‘0’, then the PL/SQL engine will throw it as an exception. The exception is only raised at the run-time by the PL/SQL engine. Exceptions will stop the program from executing further, so to avoid such condition, they need to be captured and handled separately. This process is called as Exception-Handling, in which the programmer handles the exception that can occur at the run time....

With another Valentine’s Day fast approaching, it’s time for a new DC Comics anthology to deliver readers tales of romance, betrayal, intrigue, and emotion – all starring the beloved heroes of DC’s Universe. Now fans can mark their calendars for the arrival of DC’s Crimes of Passion this February. It’s an annual tradition, with last year’s Mysteries of Love in Space giving fans a mixture of heartwarming and heartbreak. But this year, DC is giving fans a somewhat more relatable dose of drama, putting the spotlight on the romantic entanglements of of the street level DC heroes: Batman, Nightwing, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Slam Bradley, and more....

EU antitrust regulators have today ruled that Ireland’s tax arrangements with Apple are illegal. It is demanding that the country get Apple to pay back up to 13 billion euros in back taxes, around 15 billion dollars. Last night, it was reported to be in the region of 1.1 billion dollars so this is a substantial increase in the final ruling. The bill is probably subject to appeals but a ruling in the order of billions is a huge deal, even for Apple....

Before getting their big break, a surprising number of future movie stars cut their teeth in the Friday the 13th franchise’s Camp Crystal Lake. Most actors aren’t an overnight success in the world of Hollywood. Even those who seem to come out of nowhere and become superstars still usually had to start off plying their trade in something not so prestigious. A common way to try and move up the ladder is to appear in a horror film, which makes perfect sense, as horror movies don’t really require big name stars to be successful....

Avengers: Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are happy audiences continue to debate the nature of Captain America’s ending. By now, most viewers know that after Steve Rogers returned the Infinity Stones to their rightful places, he decided to go back to the past and finally share his long-awaited dance with Peggy Carter. Steve lived out a full, peaceful life, coming back as an old man in 2023 to pass the Captain America shield to Sam Wilson....

When the Essential model was available for just $700, it was labeled “essentially okay, ” by Ryan. And, with a discount of $250, this week, it became an essential buy. The bargain hunters who have just gotten used to using the Andy Rubin- created device might just prefer they get the answers on Reddit itself. Yes, one cannot deny the gloom future Essential is facing at the present, but Essential is not leaving any stone unturned to make their clients happy....

The Resident Evil series has been around for over twenty years now, and while it’s certainly had its high and low points through the years, it remains a beloved series. While the first game didn’t invent survival horror, it sure made the genre popular, and Resident Evil 4 would later redefine third person action games for years after release. Just the name alone conjures unforgettable images of zombie dogs jumping through windows, terrible dialogue, being chased by the Nemesis, and Chris Redfield punching boulders with his bare fists....

The DC/Vertigo comic series may be built around a journey from the wastelands to the promised land, but in High Level #5, our heroines are getting their first look at their final destination. In the process, realizing it may be harder to reach than expected. Since its debut, the title of the comic series–High Level–has come to refer to both a literal place, a technological mecca, and the desire in humans to ascend, evolve, and otherwise have… more....

The finale is often one of the highlights of a season as its function goes beyond that of a regular episode. Generally, a finale’s job is to tie up all the loose ends established in the previous episodes in addition to leaving viewers always wanting more. Given Bones’s popularity during its original run, it’s fair to say that the show delivered many strong finales, placing characters in peril or leaving viewers hooked on dramatic cliffhangers....

If there’s any reason flashbacks have become faux pas in modern writing it’s because of the Saw series. Untangling the web of twist accomplices is the key to unlocking the chronological order of the Saw movie franchise. The only problem is the origin story is split across various movies. The only proper way for it to all make sense is to order the entries by the flashbacks first, with the list of movies they occur in, then actually listing out the rest of the movies in order....

Epic Games has announced that it plans to appeal the judge’s decision from today’s Epic v. Apple case. Although today’s ruling says that Apple must relax rules around In-App Purchase and allow apps to link out to third-party payment systems, the judge ruled in Apple’s favor on all other counts. For instance, Apple was not shown to have a monopoly nor must be compelled to allow third-party app stores or alternative third-party payment systems inside the app itself, as Epic had hoped....

Evernote, which previously offered only a free Basic membership or a $50/year Premium one, has now added a middle tier. The new Evernote Plus subscription offers many of the premium features for half-price, at $25/year. The catch? Limits to the amount of data you can add to Evernote. Evernote Plus limits you to 1GB/month total, a maximum note size of 50MB and no more than 250 emails per month – and you’ll be missing out on a few features, like the ability to search inside PDFs and Office documents....

WiFi 6 is the next generation of Wi-Fi and brings tech changes designed to improve the way people connect to the internet. While some of the changes are likely to be less obvious to end users, collectively all of the changes will have a profound impact on the computing industry. Here, we will explain what WiFi 6 is and how it is different from the previous version, WiFi 5. WiFi 6 was officially introduced in October 2018 and it is now starting to show up in more devices....