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Apple may soon drop mask requirements for retail and corporate employees
Apple is starting to eliminate mask requirements for both retail and corporate US employees.
Amazon more than doubles base pay cap for corporate and tech employees
With the US labor market getting tighter and employees changing jobs or quitting in droves, Amazon has made a big move to become more competitive.
Microsoft indefinitely delays employees' return to its offices
The company blamed 'the uncertainty of COVID-19' and the delta variant.
Amazon delays employee office return until 2022 amid COVID-19 surge
Amazon has announced a further delay of employees returning to the office until January 3rd, 2022.
Uber Eats makes it easier to expense business lunch
If you're pulling an all-nighter at the office, it's easy enough to reach for your phone and grab something from Uber Eats. It's a popular thing to do, too, with corporate expense platforms seeing Eats requests skyrocket over the last year. It's why Uber for Business is now integrating Eats for Business, a new way for companies to keep an eye on, and control, what you're ordering.
This funky new font is made up entirely of brands
A digital studio called Hello Velocity has created a typeface that embraces well-known corporate logos and is still somehow far less annoying than Comic Sans. The studio says it creates "thought-provoking internet experiences," and its Brand New Roman font is a clever statement on consumerism.
Cyber attacks reportedly cost the US as much as $109 billion in 2016
Cyber attacks are increasingly becoming a fact of life. North Korea attacked aerospace and telecom networks last year. Olympics officials confirmed a recent attack that took place during the opening ceremonies. While Russia denied its involvement in the devastating NotPetya attacks, the US has finally joined other countries in blaming Russia for them. Now, a report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers says that malicious cyber activity like this cost the US economy between $57 and $109 billion in 2016.
What's on TV: 'Monster Hunter: World,' 'Drunk History' and 'Mosaic'
We're back! After a CES and NAIAS-induced hiatus, we're digging into this week's lineup, which features the debut of Monster Hunter on new-gen consoles. Also, it's time for the return of Drunk History on Comedy Central featuring Tiffany Haddish, and Steven Soderbergh's edit of Mosaic is airing all week on HBO. While the Grammy Awards and season finale of Shameless are weekend highlights, I recommend checking out a new show that debuted during our break, Corporate, that should appeal to all Better Off Ted fans. Look after the break to check out each day's highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).
Google won't have to pay $1.3 billion in back taxes to France
Back in February, France took Google to court demanding back taxes of $1.7 billion. But it wasn't clear whether the search titan, whose European headquarters is based in Ireland, would be subject to continental taxes. A French court just decided in Google's favor, sparing it from the $1.3 billion award for tax years 2005 to 2010 that France was seeking.
EVE Evolved: Rebuilding EVE's corporation tools
The MMO genre is defined by the online interactions of thousands of players, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the single-shard sandbox of EVE Online. While it's possible to play EVE solo, it's the players who make most of the game's meaningful content, and it's only in your emergent interactions with other players that I think the game truly comes to life. Some time ago, I wrote about the importance of CCP supporting EVE's power players, the corporation owners, fleet commanders, and event organisers who give the rest of us something fun to do. Now it looks like CCP is starting to deliver that support, with developers currently looking at updating EVE's archaic corp management tools. CCP Punkturis recently asked corporation owners for a list of the most annoying "little things" they'd like to see fixed with the corporation management interface and was instead flooded with requests for big features and complete overhauls. Developers later confirmed on The o7 Show that at least one highly requested big feature is definitely on its way: CEOs will soon be able to switch off friendly-fire between corp members. The threat of corporate infiltrators attacking corp members has been a massive barrier preventing corps from recruiting new players, so its removal is good news for everyone (except spies). So now that corporation management is finally back on the drawing board, what other features do corp owners need? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at a few ideas for corporation tools and features that would make EVE a better place for everyone.
Employee reviews blast Carbine Studios management
Whenever you hear of a studio laying off 60 people, you have to think things aren't going well. Sometimes it's a matter of bad luck and circumstance, but sometimes it's a case of bad management and poor decisions. Current and former employees of Carbine Studios attribute it to the latter, with the company holding a 41% rating on Glassdoor.com as reported by The Escapist. The reviews uniformly emphasize that WildStar is an excellent game, but they also point out universal flaws with management, decision-making, and communication. Several employee reviews characterize the studio as a "boy's club" with only the top decision-makers given leeway. There are also criticisms of the studio's overall implementation of strategies and willingness to adapt. As the reviews come from both present and former employees, the negativity speaks to some underlying problems at the studio and certainly does little to alleviate the sense of general anxiety for players regarding the state of the game.
Apple hires Alex Hsieh from Atlas Wearables
Apple has hired Alex Hsieh, formerly of Atlas Wearables. According to Hsieh's Linked profile, he began working for Apple in June, 2014 as a firmware developer. No other details about his current role or assignment are available. Here's a video of the Atlas wearable in action. As MacObserver notes, Apple has been on a bit of a hiring spree lately, snatching up people who, collectively, could produce a nice wearable device. If they were so inclined, that is. Meanwhile, Tim Cook recently told Walt Mossberg that "There are lots of gadgets in the [wearable] space. I would say that the ones that are doing more than one thing...there's nothing great out there that I've seen." Time for something great then, Tim?
Konami Digital Entertainment appoints Tomohiro Uesugi as president
Konami Digital Entertainment Inc., the North American division of the Metal Gear Solid publisher, announced a change in its leadership by appointing Tomohiro Uesugi as its president this week. Uesugi was formerly executive vice president of the digital division, which he joined in 2013 following his stint as executive vice president of Sanyo North America Corporation. Uesugi is filling the role of former president Tomoyuki Tsuboi, who was appointed in February 2012. Tsuboi will return to Konami's finance division in Japan, according to a Konami representative that spoke with Gamasutra. [Image: Konami]
Samsung promises 'differentiated' smartphones based on its camera expertise
Samsung has instigated a small corporate reshuffle that could potentially have big implications for its future smartphones. The company has shunted its digital imaging unit sideways so that it sits under the giant umbrella of the mobile division, in the hope of combining "technical know-how" in these two areas and ultimately "differentiating" its smartphones with better camera technology. At the same time, Samsung expects expertise to flow in the opposite direction, allowing its engineers to create cameras with better wireless connectivity. It's a move that makes plenty of sense given the recent spate of Galaxy-branded hybridized products, such as the slightly awkward Galaxy S 4 Zoom and hugely over-priced Galaxy NX mirrorless shooter. It also suggests that Samsung has paid attention to what Nokia has achieved by rethinking mobile camera technology for its PureView phones, instead of using standard off-the-shelf parts.
Samsung lures former BlackBerry UK chief for EU business unit
When Rob Orr left his role as BlackBerry's UK and Ireland chief earlier this month, we knew it wouldn't be long before another company sought out his skills. Turns out, his final destination has been Samsung, where the seven-year RIM veteran will take up a vice presidential role in the Korean giant's business-to-business telecoms operation. There's an official release from Samsung after the break, but we'd have preferred it if Orr had posted something amusing to his Linkedin.
CCP's Petursson discusses how big companies get dumb
CCP Games is doing pretty well for itself at this point. EVE Online is going strong, DUST 514 has been promising thus far, and the company has two more projects in the pipeline. But there's still an underlying focus to the company as a whole, and according to CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson that's a necessity. As Petursson puts it, large companies can get very dumb very quickly unless the people in charge make a conscious effort to avoid it. Petursson notes that a larger company has more difficulty coordinating and understanding how small changes can make larger impacts, something that requires careful structure and planning to avoid. He points out that the company's loss of focus led to layoffs back in 2011, something that he feels personally responsible for. If you're interested in seeing how the company is trying to keep fluid by adapting to new markets without rushing into trends, you can take a look at the full interview.
Ecamm releases Printopia Pro for corporate users
Ecamm already makes the popular Printopia app; it's a Mac-based solution for printing from iOS devices (and other connected Macs) for those that don't wish to use or purchase specific AirPrint-supported printers. Now the company has released Printopia Pro to tackle the bigger challenges of AirPrint in corporate or institutional networks. Similar to Printopia, Printopia Pro leverages AirPrint, but without the need for investment in new, AirPrint-supported printers. Ecamm has taken the features of Printopia and powered them up in Printopia Pro to work in extremely demanding print circumstances. [Some enterprise users have aimed to solve this problem with Lantronix's xPrintServer hardware, which now comes in both office and home editions. –Ed.] Printopia Pro is scalable to support hundreds of users and supports all the existing printers on your network. With centralized management, you can manage print jobs, access controls, configure printers and monitor printer status in real-time and from any location. The product supports printing across subnets (a key drawback of the basic AirPrint service, which normally requires some DNS and wide-area Bonjour tweaking to overcome) and integrates with corporate directory services for access control to printers. Print jobs can be sent via Secure AirPrint, using SSL encryption to hide them from network snoopers. You can even configure Printopia Pro to provide PDF virtual printers, so iOS users can transparently print to web or server folders for paperless workflows. Pricing starts at US$79 for teams/small businesses and goes up to $499 for enterprise customers. Further details and a trial upon request can be found at the Printopia Pro website, here.
EVE Evolved: Temporarily fixing starbases
With its exploration-focused Odyssey expansion on the way, EVE Online is about to be hit with a deluge of players (new and old) venturing into the unknown. The expansion will introduce the yet-to-be-revealed Discovery Scanner and will add a ton of new exploration content all across New Eden. Odyssey aims to follow the lead of 2009's Apocrypha expansion, which saw hundreds of corporations lead lucrative expeditions into uncharted wormhole systems. We don't yet know whether the expansion will open new systems for exploration, but when Odyssey goes live, the race will be on to find and lay claim to all the goodies hidden in deep space. With no stations to dock at in wormhole space, corps currently have to store everything in destructible starbases that aren't really up to the task. Player-owned starbases were released in 2004 as sandbox-style tools for tech 2 industry and alliance territorial warfare. They were never intended to be the sole base of operations for an entire corporation, so they suffer from some pretty severe security and usability flaws as a result. Theft from ship and item hangars in wormhole space is commonplace, setting up corp roles for them is a nightmare, and living exclusively in a starbase provides a daily dose of frustration players could seriously do without. CCP has been planning to completely overhaul player-owned starbases for years, but some of today's issues can't afford to wait any longer. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the chronic problems faced by starbase-dwelling explorers and how CCP plans to temporarily fix some of them for Odyssey.
The Nexus Telegraph: Giving trust for WildStar
Some of you are probably well aware that I used to write this site's column about City of Heroes. And you may also be aware that I'm talking about that column in the past tense because it's objectively impossible to write anything about City of Heroes in the present tense. NCsoft closed the doors to the game and left me more than a mite unhappy with that decision. Some of you are also well aware that NCsoft is the company behind WildStar. That might seem like a bit of a cognitive disconnect -- why in the world would I trust a company that just made me very unhappy? Lots of reasons. I can understand the vitriol and the anger, but I also think they're just a wee bit misplaced. There are plenty of good reasons to cheer for this game even though I harbor no small amount of bitterness about those we lost before.
Anonymous source sounds off on City of Heroes profitability, NCsoft responds
The chance to prevent City of Heroes from being shut down may have passed, but the debates about the game's profitability and the merit of that shutdown aren't going anywhere. An anonymous source has come forward reaffirming several previous data points but also elaborating on some of the details surrounding the closure, including Paragon Studios' plan to pull away from NCsoft entirely and why NCsoft wouldn't greenlight a sequel to the game. Surprisingly, NCsoft's Chief of Corporate Communications, Lincoln Davis, responded to the information, denying all claims but still shedding some light on the issue. Davis mentions repeatedly that Paragon Studios was not profitable, but at no point does he state that City of Heroes itself was not profitable. He also avoids saying that the company was unable to find a buyer for the game but simply that the company was unable to find a buyer that NCsoft thought would support the game "in a manner [players] were accustomed to for years to come." While it won't bring the game back, it certainly sheds some interesting light on the whole situation, albeit light that will likely be of cold comfort to the game's fans. [Update: We've reached out to NCsoft for a more detailed statement; we'll keep you posted when we hear more.]
