 |
|
|
|||||
Time (and perhaps a large check or two) heals all wounds. Amazon and the longtime producers and custodians of the James Bond movies have finally agreed on a way forward for the series. Amazon MGM Studios will form a joint venture with Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli that will hold the intellectual property rights and ensure they remain co-owners of the franchise. However, Wilson and Broccoli will be stepping back to focus on other projects, with Amazon gaining full creative control. The company bought MGM in 2022 for $8.45 billion to get its hands on a renowned film studio with a vast library of film and TV episodes. Co-ownership of the Bond series was a big part of that. However, production of Bond movies had been on hold amid reports of a power struggle between Amazon and Broccoli, who is said to have felt that an ecommerce giant was not the right fit for her family's franchise (she inherited the series from her father, Albert Cubby Broccoli, who died in 1996). Until now, Broccoli and her half-brother Wilson had retained creative control. She and her family have been very protective of the series and its legacy. Broccoli reportedly rebuffed most of Amazon's attempts to develop spinoffs, save for the reality competition series 007: Road to a Million. But that's about to change with Amazon seemingly eager to propel the series forward before Ian Fleming's Bond novels fully enter the public domain in a decade allowing anyone to publish their own adaptations of them. "My life has been dedicated to maintaining and building upon the extraordinary legacy that was handed to Michael and me by our father, producer Cubby Broccoli," Broccoli said in a statement. "I have had the honor of working closely with four of the tremendously talented actors who have played 007 and thousands of wonderful artists within the industry. With the conclusion of No Time to Die and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects. On one hand, the series will be exiting the limbo it's been in since Daniel Craig stepped away from the role after 2021's No Time To Die. We might finally learn who the next James Bond is in the near future. On the other, there's no telling how Amazon might dilute the prestige quality of the franchise with spinoffs and more projects like the game show Brian Cox didn't realize he was signing up to host. The movies have a tradition of product placement from luxury brands, and we could see Amazon replacing the likes of LG monitors with, say, Echo Show displays. And if ever there was an opportunity for Amazon to create and market its own smartwatch...This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/amazon-will-take-full-creative-control-of-the-james-bond-franchise-174255959.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
The Pokémon Company is hosting a morning livestream on February 27 at 9AM ET to share the "latest news and updates" from Pikachu and pals. You can stream it via the official YouTube channel. This is the yearly Pokémon Presents event that typically provides info on whats coming to empty our wallets throughout the year (and beyond.) So what can we expect this year? Both The Pokémon Company and Nintendo remain tight-lipped, but we can make some educated guesses. Pokemon Legends: Z-A, the follow-up to the open-world Pokémon Legends: Arceus, was announced in early 2024. Its high time we got some more details on the upcoming game. The title was originally advertised as a Switch exclusive, but now that the Switch 2 is on our radar, maybe itll be a dual-release or something. We could get that information, along with an announcement regarding the games trio of starter Pokémon. Theres a new Pokémon TGC set arriving in May. Its called Destined Rivals, so we can expect a detailed look at this update. We might even get a tease for another set down the line. Pokémon cards, both digital and physical, are still very much a big deal. To that end, we could get details regarding new features for TGC Pocket. Pokémon GO's next season starts on March 4, which is just a few days after the stream. Well most definitely get a trailer for that, along with some updates on any new features. Beyond that, its a guessing game. Hope springs eternal that well finally get those remakes of Pokémon Black and White. In any event, February 27 is right around the corner.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/theres-a-pokemon-presents-livestream-scheduled-for-february-27-171813096.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
The Google Pixel 8a mid-tier smartphone is back on sale for $399 via Amazon. This is close to a record-low price and represents a discount of 20 percent. Even better? The sale applies to multiple colorways, including mint green, light blue and white. This deal is for the 128GB model. This device topped our list of the best mid-range smartphones, and with good reason. Its a well-designed phone that gets the job done. It features a powerful Tensor G3 chip, offers support for Google Gemini AI tools and includes an excellent camera system. The 120Hz OLED display is gorgeous and the battery life is on point. We called the Pixel 8a one of the best values of any phone on sale today in our official review, and that was at the original $499 asking price. Its especially well-valued with todays sale. We even enjoyed gaming with this device, which isnt always the case with mid-range phones. The 8a also comes with IP67 dust and water resistance and 7.5-watt Qi wireless charging. There arent any major downsides to this phone, though we do have a couple of nitpicks. The wireless charging, while convenient, is pretty slow. The display bezels are also on the thicker side, so you lose some precious screen real estate. Other than that, this is a near-perfect mid-range phone. Its also a full $200 cheaper than Apples just-announced budget smartphone, the iPhone 16e. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/googles-pixel-8a-drops-to-399-at-amazon-163059224.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
While there's a new iPhone that's surely soaking up the attention of many Apple fans, it's often worth keeping an eye on the company's other products as you might find a decent deal. If you've been on the lookout for a discount on the latest Mac mini, you're in luck. The M4 Mac mini is back on sale as it has dropped to $549. The deal is for the base model with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of SSD storage. It's not the lowest price we've seen for this Mac mini it was $100 off during the Black Friday period. But with a $50 discount, this is the best price we've seen so far this year. If you'd like more built-in storage, you might want to opt for a configuration with a 512GB SSD. That'll currently run you $719, which is $80 off the regular price. However, it's worth bearing in mind that you can connect an external SSD to your Mac mini if Apple's internal storage upgrade prices are too pricey for you to justify. We gave the Mac mini (albeit one equipped with a more powerful M4 Pro chipset) a score of 90 in our review. That said, the base M4 model should be zippy enough for most people's needs. For instance, those who like to play games on Mac should find that the GPU is fast enough to support 60 fps gameplay at a resolution of 1080p on many titles. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-m4-mac-mini-is-back-on-sale-for-549-161512511.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising
On the Friday after Christmas, OpenAI published a blog post titled "Why OpenAI's structure must evolve to advance our mission." In it, the company detailed a plan to reorganize its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation (PBC). In the weeks since that announcement, I've spoken to some of the country's leading corporate law experts to gain a better understanding of OpenAI's plan, and, more importantly, what it might mean for its mission to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI). What is a public benefit corporation? "Public benefit corporations are a relatively recent addition to the universe of business entity types," says Jens Dammann, professor of corporate law at the University of Texas School of Law. Depending on who you ask, you may get a different history of PBCs, but in the dominant narrative, they came out of a certification program created by a nonprofit called B Lab. Companies that complete a self-assessment and pay an annual fee to B Lab can carry the B Lab logo on their products and websites and call themselves B-Corps. Critically, B Corp status isn't a designation with the weight of law, or even an industry-wide group, behind it it's a stamp of approval from this specific nonprofit. As a result, B Lab eventually felt the certification program "was not enough," says Professor Michael Dorff, executive director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA. "They wanted something more permanent and more rooted in the law." So the organization began working with legal experts to create a model statute for what would become the benefit corporation. B Lab lobbied state legislatures to pass laws recognizing benefit corporations as legal entities, and in 2010, Maryland became the first state to do so. In 2013, Delaware enacted its own version of the law. To make things somewhat confusing, the state went with a different name: the public benefit corporation. Delaware is arguably the most important state for corporate law in the US, thanks to the Delaware Chancery Court and its body of business-friendly case law. As of 2022, 68.2 percent of all Fortune 500 companies, including many tech giants, are incorporated in the state despite largely operating elsewhere. Delaware is also the state where OpenAI plans to reincorporate its for-profit as a PBC. The basic idea behind public benefit corporations is that they're business entities that impose a constraint on their board to balance profit maximization, a public benefit that's stated in the charter of the company, and the concerns of people impacted by its conduct. "It's a bit of a paradigm shift," says Professor Dammann, but don't confuse a PBC with a nonprofit. "The key characteristic of a nonprofit is what we call a non-distribution constraint, meaning if a nonprofit makes a profit, they can't distribute it to their shareholders," Professor Dammann says. "If you form a public benefit corporation, there's no such non-distribution constraint. At its heart, a PBC is still a for-profit corporation." Why is OpenAI pursuing a PBC structure? First and foremost, a PBC structure whether it's private or selling share on the open market would get OpenAI out from under that non-distribution constraint. But there are likely some other considerations at play. OpenAI hasn't publicly said this, but it appears some of its employees believe a PBC structure could protect the company from a hostile takeover if it were to go public. In a recent Financial Times report, a source within the company said a PBC structure would give OpenAI a "safe harbor" if a rival firm were to try to buy the company. It "gives you even more flexibility to say 'thanks for calling and have a nice day'," the person said. The specific threat OpenAI likely wants safe harbor from is what's known as the Revlon doctrine, which is named after a 1986 Delaware Supreme Court case involving the cosmetics company Revlon Inc. and now defunct supermarket chain Pantry Pride, then led by CEO Ronald Perelman. "The Revlon doctrine holds that if you're a publicly traded corporation [incorporated in Delaware] and somebody stages a takeover attempt, then under certain conditions, you have to sell to the highest bidder," says Professor Dammann. The underlying rationale behind Revlon is that a for-profit companys sole function is to generate profits, so the board is forced to make whatever choice will return the most money to shareholders. "We don't know for sure, but we're fairly confident that the Revlon doctrine doesn't apply to public benefit corporations," says Professor Dammann. Theoretically, PBC boards may have the flexibility to reject a takeover bid if they believe a buyer won't adhere to the social values the company was founded on. However, because "none of this has been litigated," according to Professor Dorff, it remains a purely hypothetical defense. Moreover, it's unclear if reorganizing as a PBC would offer OpenAI more protection against a hostile takeover attempt than what it already has as a nonprofit. "I don't think this has been tested with this particular kind of structure, but my sense is that the nonprofit would not be obligated to sell even in a Revlon moment," says Professor Dorff. "We need to raise more capital" OpenAI Publicly, OpenAI has said it needs to secure more investment, and that its current structure is holding it back. "We once again need to raise more capital than we'd imagined," OpenAI wrote in December, two months after securing $6 billion in new venture funding. "Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness." Unpacking what the company likely means by "structural bespokeness" requires a short history lesson. In 2019, when OpenAI originally created its for-profit arm, it organized the company using a unique "capped-profit" structure. The company said it would limit investor returns to 100x, with excess returns going to the nonprofit. "We expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds as we make further progress," OpenAI added. It's fair to be critical of the company's claims. "You'd have to ask the investors, but I have to say that 100x is an exceptional rate or return, so the idea that you cannot get investment because of a 100x cap seems ric to me," says Professor Dorff. In fact, there are suggestions OpenAI was already making itself more attractive to investors before announcing its reorganization plan in December. In 2023, The Economist reported that the company changed its cap to increase (and not decrease as OpenAI had originally said it would) by 20 percent per year starting in 2025. At this time, OpenAI does not expect to be profitable until 2029, and racked up about $5 billion in losses last year. "We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing structure we know of strikes the right balance," OpenAI said in 2019. At that point, Delaware's PBC legislation had been law for nearly six years. However, the company is now arguing that a PBC structure would "enable us to raise the necessary capital with conventional terms like others in this space." In OpenAI's defense, calling its current structure convoluted would be an understatement. As you can see from the company's own org chart, there are two other entities under the OpenAI umbrella, including a holding company that's an intermediary between the nonprofit and for-profit. Engadget was able to find at least 11 different Delaware companies registered to OpenAI. George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult and other members of the Author's Guild probably described it best in their copyright lawsuit against the company, calling OpenAI "a tangled thicket of interlocking entities that generally keep from the public what the precise relationships among them are and what function each entity serves within the larger corporate structure." OpenAI did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Engadget. "A stronger nonprofit supported by the for-profits success" Reuters OpenAI's nonprofit arm does essentially two things: controls the for-profit side's business, and exists as a "vehicle" to develop "safe and broadly beneficial AGI" (artificial general intelligence). According to the company, its current structure does not allow its nonprofit arm to "easily do more than control the for-profit." If it were freed of that responsibility by say, handing it off to investors OpenAI suggests its nonprofit could focus its resources on charitable initiatives, all while becoming "one of the best-resourced nonprofits in history." To remedy the situation, OpenAI's board says the nonprofit should give up absolute control over the for-profit and take whatever degree of control comes with the amount of stock it's granted through the reorganization process. "The nonprofit's significant interest in the existing for-profit would take the form of shares in the PBC at a fair valuation determined by independent financial advisors," OpenAI says of this part of its plan. Professor Dorff argues who controls OpenAI is critical to the company maintaining its mission. The move to reorganize the for-profit as a PBC is not controversial. "Companies do it all the time; theres a straightforward and clear process to do that," he tells me. "What is controversial is what they're trying to do to change the nature of the nonprofit's ownership interest in the for-profit." At the risk of oversimplifying things, OpenAI's board of directors wants to divest the company's nonprofit of two of its most important assets: control of the for-profit and its rights to the profits from AGI. "You can't just do that," says Professor Dorff. "The assets of the nonprofit must remain dedicated to the purpose of the nonprofit." There are rules that allow nonprofits to modify their purpose if their original one is made defunct, but those won't apply to OpenAI since we're not living in a world with safe (or any) AGI. Think of it this way, what is the value of artificial general intelligence? It's not a traditional asset like real estate or the EVs sold by Tesla. AGI, as defined by OpenAI, doesn't yet and may never exist. "One could imagine it's worth all the labor of the economy because it could eventually replace human labor," says Professor Dorff. Whatever the eventual value of the technology, Professor Dorff says he's unsure "any number would enable the nonprofit to do what it's supposed to do without control." No matter how OpenAI spins it, any version of this plan would result in a massive loss of control for the current nonprofit entity and its board. One more thing Something the experts I spoke to agreed on was that the laws governing PBCs aren't very effective at ensuring companies stick to their social purpose. "The legal constraints aren't very strict," Professor Dammann says, adding, "the problem with a very broad public benefit is that it's not so constraining anymore. If you're dedicated to a very broad version of the public good, then you can always defend every decision, right?" "The dual goal of profit and public purpose doesn't really tell you how a company is going to manage those objectives," says Jill Fisch, professor of Business Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. "To the extent that public purpose sacrifices profits, and it doesn't have to, but to the extent that it does, how much of a sacrifice is contemplated?" "What matters a lot in PBC governance is what the private arrangements are," Professor Dorff adds. "That is, what do the documents say?" A company's certificate of incorporation, shareholder agreements and bylaws can provide "very robust" (or very few) mechanisms to ensure it sticks to its social purpose. As Professor Dorff points out, OpenAI's blog post said "nothing about those." Contrast that with when OpenAI announced its "capped profit" plan. It gave us a glimpse of some of its paperwork, sharing a clause it said was at the start of al of its employee and investor agreements. That snippet made it clear OpenAI was under no obligation to generate a profit. Right now, there's a lot we don't know about its restructuring plan. If the company is still serious about its mission of "ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity" it owes the public more transparency. What happens next? Reuters Elon Musk's recent $97.4 billion bid to buy the nonprofit's assets complicates OpenAI's plan. In this situation, the nonprofit isn't obligated to sell its assets to Musk under Revlon or anything else the company simply is not for sale. However, as part of OpenAI's reorganization plan, the for-profit will need to compensate the nonprofit for its independence. Musk's bid likely an attempt to inflate the price of this transaction to one higher than what Sam Altman and the rest of OpenAI's board of directors had in mind. To say Musk and Altman have had a contentious relationship since the former left OpenAI would be an understatement on a grand scale, and having an enemy who not only has the most money of any human on the planet, but also broad and largely unchecked control of the United States' executive branch data, may frustrate plans. OpenAI also faces a ticking clock. According to documents seen by The New York Times, the company has, under the terms of its latest investment round, less than two years to free its for-profit from control of the nonprofit. If it fails to do so, the $6.6 billion it raised in new funding will become debt.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/why-openai-is-trying-to-untangle-its-bespoke-corporate-structure-160028589.html?src=rss
Category:
Marketing and Advertising