Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 143
June 1, 2017
Amazon to pay out $70 million in refunds over unauthorized in-app purchases
Amazon is offering customers refunds for unauthorized charges their children have incurred playing games from the company’s Appstore.
The move comes nearly three years after the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon in federal court over in-game charges that shocked unsuspecting parents.
“Amazon’s in-app system allowed children to incur unlimited charges on their parents’ accounts without permission,” the FTC’s then-Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said when the lawsuit was filed.
A judge concurred and the FTC says the company has agreed to refund up to $70 million in unintended charges.
Amazon spokesman Jonathan Richardson said in a statement to NPR: “We have contacted all eligible customers who have not already received a refund for unauthorized charges to help ensure their refunds are confirmed quickly.”
If you believe your child made an in-app purchase without your permission between November 2011 and May 2016, you may be eligible for a refund. The FTC says you can visit this Amazon webpage or log into your Amazon account and look in the Message Center under “Important Messages.” Or you can call Amazon at 866-216-1072. Refund requests are due by May 28, 2018.
Julie Comeaux is one of many parents who had no idea her daughter was continually spending money inside a game on her new Amazon Kindle. Comeaux described on Morning Edition last month how she typed in her password once to approve a $5 in-app purchase—then left the Kindle with her daughter.
“When we checked the account and we saw hundreds of charges from Amazon, it totaled near $10,000,” Comeaux said.
“She cried. I had to calm her down,” Comeaux recalled. “She was very upset, didn’t know she was spending real money.”
According to the FTC complaint, games often blur the lines between what kids can buy with virtual currency and what they’re buying with actual money. It cited the app Ice Age Village, in which players can use virtual coins and acorns to buy items — and can also pay real money to buy more of the virtual currencies, on a screen that looks very similar.
But Amazon’s Richardson said Wednesday, “Since the launch of the Appstore in 2011, Amazon has helped parents prevent purchases made without their permission by offering access to parental controls, clear notice of in-app purchasing, real-time notification for every in-app purchase and refund assistance for unauthorized purchases.”
The FTC asked the court to require that Amazon refund unauthorized charges and to prevent it from billing account holders for future in-app charges without their consent.
A year ago, federal district court Judge John Coughenour agreed to the refunds. He wrote: “The Court determines that the scope of Amazon’s unfair billing practices pertains to all in-app charges made by account users without express, informed authorization.” But he denied the FTC’s request for the future billing ban.
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Richardson noted, “The Court here affirmed our commitment to customers when it ruled no changes to current Appstore practices were required. To continue ensuring a great customer experience, we are happy to provide our customers what we have always provided: refunds for purchases they did not approve.”
The FTC appealed the judge’s decision in hopes of securing a future ban, and Amazon appealed the refund order. Last month, both sides agreed to drop their appeals so the refund process could begin.
According to the FTC, when Amazon introduced in-app charges in its Appstore in November 2011, it didn’t require any password to spend real money inside an app. In March 2012, the FTC said, the company updated its system to require the account owner to enter a password for single purchases over $20. That meant children could still make an unlimited number of purchases under $20 each.
Then in early 2013, Amazon began requiring a password for some charges, the FTC said. But even when a parent authorized a single charge, that permission sometimes lasted for up to an hour, allowing children to make more purchases without new authorization.
“Not until June 2014, roughly two and a half years after the problem first surfaced,” did Amazon begin to require account holders’ consent for in-app charges on its newer mobile devices,” the FTC explained in a statement.
The judge’s ruling noted that, “By December 2011, (Amazon Appstore Director) Aaron Rubenson referred to the amount of customer complaints as ‘near house on fire.’… Rubenson also referred to ‘accidental purchasing by kids’ as one of two issues the company needed to solve.”
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May 31, 2017
Michael Kors Closing Up to 125 Stores As Sales Plummet
Michael Kors (KORS, -8.57%) is closing up to 125 stores this year as it continues to partially unwind an aggressive expansion that had served it well when its namesake brand was hot.
The upscale brand reported on Wednesday that sales at stores open at least a year (comparable sales) fell 14.1% in its most recent quarter, and continue to fall sharply this year. What’s more, Michael Kors’ wholesale business, sales largely made to the struggling department store sector, fell 22.8% in the quarter.
Shares fell 6% in premarket trading. The company operates 827 stores, meaning the closings represent up to 15% or so of its fleet.
The poor results continue a difficult stretch for the company launched in the early 1980’s by the former Project Runway judge, a company that for years seemed to be able to do no wrong. Michael Kors Chief Executive John Idol in a statement blamed “a difficult retail environment with elevated promotional levels” while conceding that the product and store experience had gotten a bit stale.
Yet the company has itself to blame for most of its woes. By opening so many stores so quickly to ride the handbag boom earlier this decade and become the largest brand, Michael Kors created a ubiquity that was contradictory to a luxury cachet and hurt its ability to turn out new and exciting products.
The idea at the time was to siphon off shoppers from rival Coach (COH, +0.02%)by opening nearby stores at countless malls. For a while it worked, as Kors eclipsed the more established Coach a few years ago. But Coach, which had earlier opened too many stores and cheapened its brand, started closing stores three years ago, seeing this danger before Kors did.
The result is that the Michael Kors brand has become a fixture at off-price stores and outlets. Case in point: Michael Kors merchandise take up about a quarter of the floor space at a Bloomingdale’s outlet.
Kors has said it plans to reduce its exposure to U.S. department stores, which are struggling up and down the price spectrum. But for now it has to contend with a quickly shrinking business, much as Coach had to.
Coach has now reported four quarters in a row of comparable sales growth in North America, regaining its ability to charge higher prices, and recently agreed to buy Kate Spade, making it an even tougher competitor for Kors. Michael Kors’ stock market value is now less than half of Coach’s.
As for Kors, it forecast revenue of $4.25 billion for fiscal year 2018. Analysts on average had estimated revenue of $4.37 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Kors also said it expects high single-digit drop in same-store sales for the fiscal year.
Total sales fell 11.2% to $1.06 billion in the fourth quarter ended April 1, while analysts had expected $1.05 billion. Net loss attributable to Michael Kors was $26.8 million, or 17 cents per share, in the latest quarter, compared with net income of $177 million, or 98 cents per share, a year earlier.
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Source:
http://fortune.com/2017/05/31/michaelkors-stores/
Lyft drivers call for investigation into alleged ‘wage theft’
A New York labor organization is calling for an investigation of Lyft and other ride-hailing services for allegedly cheating drivers on their fares.
The Independent Drivers Guild (IDG), which formed last year as an affiliate of an existing labor union, said Wednesday that Lyft has been engaged in “large-scale deception” by improperly deducting more than 11 percent from drivers’ fares on interstate trips. In effect, the ride-hailing company is stealing some of the drivers’ wages by collecting taxes and surcharges on trips out of state that should apply only to in-state trips, and then disguising those charges as administrative fees, the labor group says.
New York State Assembly member Robert Rodriguez backed the IDG’s request for a full investigation in a letter addressed to the state’s attorney general and the Department of Taxation and Finance.
Drivers have also accused Uber, Juno and other ride-hailing services of being less than upfront in their dealings with their citizen drivers.
“There is no merit to this allegation,” Lyft spokesman Adrian Durbin said Wednesday afternoon. “Our driver agreement lays out what commissions and fees apply to driving on the Lyft platform, and we’ve consistently abided by the agreement since entering the New York market in 2014.”
Ride-hailing drivers in New York have discovered that Lyft appears to be deducting a state sales tax on out-of-state trips that should be applied only to rides that begin and end in New York, the drivers guild says. The ride-hailing service also appears to be improperly collecting a surcharge for the Black Car Fund that shouldn’t apply to out-of-state trips.
When the drivers complained to Lyft, however, they were told that the charges were administrative fees. Those fees also happen to mimic the rates of the 8.875 percent state sales tax and the 2.5 percent surcharge for the Black Car Fund, which funds workers’ compensation for the drivers, according to the drivers group.
“This is an egregious and deliberate tax scam that amounts to wage theft affecting thousands of our members. By disguising these pay deductions as state taxes, Lyft willfully deceived drivers in order to rob them of their earnings and further enrich the company,” Ryan Price, executive director of the IDG, said in a written statement.
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LeBron James says his ‘next thing’ is to own an NBA team
Although many athletes struggle to launch successful careers after their playing days are over, including some who face financial ruin, Cleveland Cavaliers all-star LeBron James already has a plan in mind when he retires: to own an NBA team.
“I will own a team someday,” says James, a four-time league Most Valuable Player, in an interview with The Athletic. “That’s my next thing.”
“Why do I want to own a team? I think it’ll be cool. I’ll stay part of the game and still be able to put people in positions of power,” says James, 32. “I’ve always loved that, putting people in a position of power to feel like they can make a change and make things happen.”
James has spoken about this retirement goal in the past. According to Cleveland.com, in a 2016 podcast called Open Run, he said: “My dream is to actually own a team, and I don’t need to [be] fully hands on. If I’m fortunate enough to own a team, then I’m going to hire the best GM and president that I can.”
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To make his dream a reality, James tells The Athletic that he’ll continue to work with his business partners, including Maverick Carter, Randy Mims and agent Rich Paul.
If any player is well-suited to be an owner, it’s James. The Ohio native has proved to be a master both on and off the court, scoring lucrative endorsements with companies like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. Just last year, business manager Carter suggested James’ lifetime endorsement deal with Nike may top $1 billion, making it the largest in the history of the company.
Meanwhile, the NBA star has an estimated net worth of $275 million, according to Forbes, and is slated to make $33 million for the 2017-2018 season as part of the three-year $100 million deal he signed in 2016 when he returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Carter, who’s working with James to build the SpringHill Entertainment Production company, told CNBC last year that the basketball superstar “has an almost sixth sense, an alien-like ability to see things before they happen. He’s like three or four plays ahead of everyone. The same thing in business.”
It seems he’s already mapping out his next moves. “I know there will be more time of my life spent off the floor than on the floor,” he said in a recent episode of the JPMorgan Chase series “Kneading Dough.” “I still have to live life beyond the hardwood.”
Source:
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/lebron-james-says-his-next-thing-is-to-own-an-nba-team.html
Wonder Woman: How real-life athletes united to populate the film’s badass Amazon nation
As a Dutch supermodel, Victoria’s Secret Angel and trained horsewoman, Doutzen Kroes has had some pretty remarkable experiences throughout her career. But none of them have been quite as memorable as riding down an Italian beach on horseback, wearing full Amazonian armor and pretending to slit a man’s throat with a sword. “The challenge was that I had to ride with one hand and have the sword in the other hand and kill a person at the same time,” she explains, laughing. “Which sounds horrible, but it was so fun to do!”
Kroes was just one of the many accomplished women recruited to play Amazon warriors in Wonder Woman. From an Olympic bobsledder and a heptathlete to a police officer and the former Miss Greece, these real-life Amazons hailed from around the world and helped populate Diana’s home of Themyscira. Some of the Amazons, like Kroes, auditioned, while the filmmakers plucked others from the athletic world — Brooke Ence, an American Crossfit champion, and Madeleine Vall Beijner, a Swedish professional fighter, among them. “I got an e-mail asking if I could do fighting on film,” Beijner recalls. “I said, ‘Well, yes, I can fight, and I think I can fight in a movie. So yes, I’ll do it!’ ”
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Months before the cameras started rolling, the women gathered in London for weeks of training. Not only did they go through basic strength training to look properly Amazonian, but they also spent hours each day practicing swordplay, horseback riding and stunt choreography. “The trainers said they wanted us to look like the female version of 300,” Beijner says. For several of the athletes, many of whom compete in individual sports, it was a refreshing change of pace to feel like part of an all-female team. “It really is cool to see this whole training area, and there’s not one male figure in sight,” Ence adds. “It’s just women wrestling other women, kickboxing, doing pull-ups and practicing with spears — just a lot of stuff that in the real world is very male-dominated.”
Kroes plays Venelia, the right hand of Queen Hippolyta, while Beijner and Ence play Egeria and Penthesilea, respectively — two warriors under the command of General Antiope. Many of the women weren’t quite sure what to expect when they got on-set, especially as many of them had never worked on a Hollywood movie before, but they found themselves adapting quickly and bonding with their fellow Amazons. Still, it took a little adjustment. “I’ve been training for 12 years not to show anything, even how hard I get hit,” Beijner says. “They called me RoboCop because when we were training, they were like, ‘You’re supposed to show that it hurts!’ And I was like, ‘No, I don’t get hurt! I’m a fighter!’ ”
Once they all donned their Amazon armor and took to the beach for the big Themysciran battle scenes, Ence says she was surprised by how easy it was to tap into her inner warrior, especially when surrounded by a whole horde of fellow soldiers. “The first day we were on-set with all of our swords and shields, it felt like a different type of power,” she says. “And we looked awesome.” She wasn’t the only one who got swept up by all the swords and stunts: Kroes recalls a day when her young son visited her, and she greeted him in full battle regalia. “If I could just have that face framed as a picture on my wall,” she says. “I think I melted because he has never looked at me like that ever. He was just in full admiration of his mommy as a warrior.”
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Lauryn Hill, Nas Announce North American Tour
Nas and Lauryn Hill announced a joint tour on Tuesday slated for this fall. The jaunt kicks off September 7th in Chicago, criss-crossing the country before wrapping up in Vancouver on October 11th. Roots reggae singer Chronixx will serve as the opener for 11 shows, with comedian Hannibal Buress warming up the crowd at the other six gigs.
Nas and Hill famously collaborated on the hit “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)” in 1996. They also embarked on a similar tour together in 2012, playing 10 dates after Nas released his Life Is Good album. “This is history,” the rapper said about the joint tour in a statement at the time. “Better late than never. Life is good!”
Nas has not released a new album since that year. But he’s been prolific in the last 15 years compared to Hill, who has not put out an LP since her MTV Unplugged recording in 2002. Most recently, Nas contributed raps to Baz Luhrmann’s just-cancelled Netflix series The Get Down.
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Tickets for Nas and Hill’s tour go on sale to the general public on Friday, June 2nd at 10 a.m. local time.
Nas and Lauryn Hill Tour Dates
September 7 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
September 8 – Sterling Heights, MI @ Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre
September 10 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
September 12 – Boston, MA @ Blue Hills Bank Pavilion
September 14 – Camden, NJ @ BB&T Pavilion
September 15 – Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live
September 20 – Raleigh, NC @ Red Hat Amphitheater
September 22 – Miami, FL @ Bayfront Park Amphitheater
September 23 – Jacksonville, FL @ Daily’s Place
September 27 – Houston, TX @ Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land
September 28 – Dallas, TX @ The Pavilion at Irving Music Factory
September 30 – Austin, TX @ Austin360 Amphitheater
October 3 – San Diego, CA @ Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre
October 5 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
October 7 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
October 10 – Seattle, WA @ WaMu Theater
October 11 – Vancouver, BC @ Pacific Coliseum
Source:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lauryn-hill-nas-announce-north-american-tour-w484745
Nest’s new camera uses the same facial recognition tech as Google Photos
Nest is releasing a new $299 indoor camera that can recognize faces using Google’s artificial intelligence software.
The Nest Cam IQ uses the same facial recognition technology as Google Photos to recognize faces and allow users to label who they are, so the user can know who was in a room when, according to Nest’s director of marketing, Maxime Veron.
Nest incorporated computer vision technology from its sister company for the first time last year when it released its outdoor camera, which is able to detect whether an entity in view of the camera is a person.
What’s being incorporated into the IQ is more advanced: It can distinguish between faces and remember faces that have been labeled by the user. It’s the same FaceNet technology used by Google photos to identify and organize faces found in images.
Computer vision is growing increasingly central to important Google products. In addition to its presence in Google Photos, which has gained half a billion users since its release two years ago, computer vision features are available in Google’s personalized artificial intelligence platform Assistant.
The software has also been updated to send fewer notifications that are more accurate.
“We think the way forward for security cameras is intelligence,” Veron said.
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The IQ boasts other added features such as high definition video and costs $100 more than Nest’s other camera offerings, the Nest Cam Outdoor and Nest Cam Indoor, which will both stay on the market.
More new hardware is in the works after the IQ, according to a report in Bloomberg from March, including a new home-security alarm system, a digital doorbell and a cheaper version of Nest’s smart thermostat.
In addition to the new camera’s smart features, audio quality has improved. But what’s really interesting about the camera is how it handles facial recognition, something Nest’s other cameras don’t do.
When the camera sees a new face in a user’s home, it will notify the user through the mobile app associated with the camera and ask them if they recognize the person, giving them the option of labeling the face. When a labeled face reappears before the camera at a later time or date, a new photo may be taken by the camera and added to the file of images in the user’s app.
The facial identification feature is activated when a person enters a room, and may be reactivated by the subject walking across the room or making a dramatic movement. Faces that are not labeled are not stored.
Google said the feature is not being made available to consumers in Illinois, where laws governing collection of biometric data such as facial image data are stricter than in the rest of the country.
An Illinois resident sued Google last year over Google Photos allegedly violating state law by scanning her face without her consent when someone using the app photographed her.
Nest Cam IQ ships at the end of June.
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