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The National Basketball Association has announced that it will suspend all games after tonight until further notice, following a player on the Utah Jazz testing positive for COVID-19. “The NBA will use this hiatus to determine next steps for moving forward in response to the coronavirus pandemic,” the association said in a statement.
The Jazz were in Oklahoma City to play the Thunder this evening, but the game was called off right before it was due to start, with players already introduced and the arena packed with fans. Utah’s star center Rudy Gobert was the player who tested positive for coronavirus, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania. The NBA says the player was not in the arena tonight.
Breaking: The Thunder-Jazz game has...
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump announced that his administration would be rolling new travel restrictions, prohibiting travel from Europe to the US. The restrictions will start on Friday, March 13 and last for 30 days. This travel ban does not affect flights from the United Kingdom.
“There will be exceptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings,” Trump said. It’s not clear if these new restrictions will affect trade.
The administration had previously placed travel restrictions on China, which is hardest-hit by the novel coronavirus. The effects of those restrictions and other, similar restrictions remains unknown. A recent study that modeled the virus’ spread found that at this point...
Enjoy a free drink with that sandwich.
If you are a sandwich and sub fan, Apple's newest Apple Pay promotion is made fresh for you. Apple is partnering up with popular sandwich chain Jimmy John's to give Apple Pay customers a free drink between now and March 15th.
In order to take advantage of the promotion, you have to either order ahead with the Jimmy John's app or pay for your order in-store using Apple Pay. The total of the order must also be more than $10.
"Use Apple Pay with Freaky Fast Rewards and earn a free drink on your account. Spend $10 or more in-store, in the Jimmy John's app or on jimmyjohns.com, through March 15."
The offer is only valid at participating locations, so check to make sure your drink is free before you fully check out. The promotion is going on between March 9th and March 15th, so you still have a few days to take Apple and Jimmy John's up on the offer.
"Only at participating locations. Must use Freaky Fast Rewards® to place one (1) qualifying order with a minimum subtotal of $10 paid with Apple Pay to be delivered or picked up in-store March 9 through March 15, 2020. Limit one (1) reward per day per Freaky Fast Rewards account."
If you'd like to use the app and order ahead, you can download the Jimmy John's Sandwiches app, which is made for both iPhone and iPad, from the App Store.
Augmented reality headset maker Magic Leap has struggled with the laws of physics and failed to get to market. Now it’s seeking an acquirer, but talks with Facebook and medical goods giant Johnson & Johnson led nowhere according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Ed Hammond.
After raising over $2 billion and being valued between $6 billion and $8 billion back when it still had momentum, Hammond writes that “Magic Leap could fetch more than $10 billion if it pursues a sale” according to his sources. That price seems ridiculous. It’s the kind of number a prideful company might strategically leak in hopes of drumming up acquisition interest, even at a lower price.
Startups have been getting their valuations chopped when they go public. The whole economy is hurting due to coronavirus. Augmented Reality seems less interesting than virtual reality with people avoiding public places. Getting people to strap used AR hardware to their face for demos seems like a tough sell for the forseeable future.
No one has proven a killer consumer use case for augmented reality eyewear that warrants an expensive and awkward-to-wear gadget. Our phones can already deliver plenty of AR’s value while letting you take selfies and do video chat that headsets can’t. My experiences with Magic Leap at Sundance Film Festival last year were laughably disappointing, with its clunky hardware, ghostly projections, and narrow field of view.
Apple and Facebook are throwing the enduring profits of iPhones and the News Feed into building a better consumer headset. Snapchat has built intermediary glasses since CEO Evan Spiegel thinks it will be a decade before AR headsets see mainstream adoption. AR rivals like Microsoft have better enterprise experience, connections, and distribution. Enterprise AR startup Daqri crashed and burned.
Magic Leap’s CEO said he wanted to sell 1 million of its $2300 headset in its first year, then projected it would sell 100,000 headsets, but only moved 6,000 in the first six months, according to a daming report from The Information’s Alex Heath. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai left Magic Leap’s board despite Google leading a $514 million funding round for the startup in 2014. Business Insider’s Steven Tweedie and Kevin Webb revealed CFO Scott Henry and SVP of creative strategy John Gaeta bailed in November. The company suffered dozens of layoffs. It lost a $500 million contract to Microsoft last year. The CEOs of Apple, Google, and Facebook visited Magic Leap headquarters in 2016 to explore an acquisition deal, but no offers emerged.
Is AR eyewear part of the future? Almost surely. And is this startup valuable? Certainly somewhat. But Magic Leap may prove to be too little too early for a company burning cash by the hundreds of millions in a market newly fixated on efficiency. A $10 billion price tag would require one of the world’s biggest corporations to believe Magic Leap has irreplicable talent and technology that will earn them a fortune in the somewhat distant future.
The fact that Facebook, which does not shy from tall acquisition prices, didn’t want to buy Magic Leap is telling. This isn’t a product with hundreds of millions of users or fast-ramping revenue. It’s a gamble on vision and timing that looks to be coming up snake eyes. It’s unclear when the startup would ever be able to deliver on its renderings of flying whales and living room dinosaurs in a form factor people actually want to wear.
One of Magic Leap’s early renderings of what it could supposedly do
With all their money and plenty of time before widespread demand for AR headsets materializes, potential acquirers could likely hire away the talent and make up the development time in cheaper ways than buying Magic Leap. If someone acquires them for too much, it feels like a write-off waiting to happen.
Augmented reality headset maker Magic Leap has struggled with the laws of physics and failed to get to market. Now it’s seeking an acquirer, but talks with Facebook and medical goods giant Johnson & Johnson led nowhere according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Ed Hammond.
After raising over $2 billion and being valued between $6 billion and $8 billion back when it still had momentum, Hammond writes that “Magic Leap could fetch more than $10 billion if it pursues a sale” according to his sources. That price seems ridiculous. It’s the kind of number a prideful company might strategically leak in hopes of drumming up acquisition interest, even at a lower price.
Startups have been getting their valuations chopped when they go public. The whole economy is hurting due to coronavirus. Augmented Reality seems less interesting than virtual reality with people avoiding public places. Getting people to strap used AR hardware to their face for demos seems like a tough sell for the forseeable future.
No one has proven a killer consumer use case for augmented reality eyewear that warrants an expensive and awkward-to-wear gadget. Our phones can already deliver plenty of AR’s value while letting you take selfies and do video chat that headsets can’t. My experiences with Magic Leap at Sundance Film Festival last year were laughably disappointing, with its clunky hardware, ghostly projections, and narrow field of view.
Apple and Facebook are throwing the enduring profits of iPhones and the News Feed into building a better consumer headset. Snapchat has built intermediary glasses since CEO Evan Spiegel thinks it will be a decade before AR headsets see mainstream adoption. AR rivals like Microsoft have better enterprise experience, connections, and distribution. Enterprise AR startup Daqri crashed and burned.
Magic Leap’s CEO said he wanted to sell 1 million of its $2300 headset in its first year, then projected it would sell 100,000 headsets, but only moved 6,000 in the first six months, according to a daming report from The Information’s Alex Heath. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai left Magic Leap’s board despite Google leading a $514 million funding round for the startup in 2014. Business Insider’s Steven Tweedie and Kevin Webb revealed CFO Scott Henry and SVP of creative strategy John Gaeta bailed in November. The company suffered dozens of layoffs. It lost a $500 million contract to Microsoft last year. The CEOs of Apple, Google, and Facebook visited Magic Leap headquarters in 2016 to explore an acquisition deal, but no offers emerged.
Is AR eyewear part of the future? Almost surely. And is this startup valuable? Certainly somewhat. But Magic Leap may prove to be too little too early for a company burning cash by the hundreds of millions in a market newly fixated on efficiency. A $10 billion price tag would require one of the world’s biggest corporations to believe Magic Leap has irreplicable talent and technology that will earn them a fortune in the somewhat distant future.
The fact that Facebook, which does not shy from tall acquisition prices, didn’t want to buy Magic Leap is telling. This isn’t a product with hundreds of millions of users or fast-ramping revenue. It’s a gamble on vision and timing that looks to be coming up snake eyes. It’s unclear when the startup would ever be able to deliver on its renderings of flying whales and living room dinosaurs in a form factor people actually want to wear.
One of Magic Leap’s early renderings of what it could supposedly do
With all their money and plenty of time before widespread demand for AR headsets materializes, potential acquirers could likely hire away the talent and make up the development time in cheaper ways than buying Magic Leap. If someone acquires them for too much, it feels like a write-off waiting to happen.
Apple joins Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in fighting for LGBT rights.
Apple has joined a group of over forty businesses across the United States to oppose legislation that will negatively affect LGBT employees.
Reported by AL.com, the company joined some of the nation's largest businesses including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Mike to oppose twelve pieces of legislation that are currently being considered across the country.
The companies joined together in signing an open letter that was published by the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy organization. The letter states that the bills, if passed, would harm LGBT employees and the companies that want to employ them.
"These bills would harm our team members and their families, stripping them of opportunities and making them feel unwelcome and at risk in their own communities ... As such, it can be exceedingly difficult for us to recruit the most qualified candidates for jobs in states that pursue such laws, and these measures can place substantial burdens on the families of our employees who already reside in these states."
The letter goes further to also say that, not only do these laws cause harm to employees and their families, but they also have a negative effect on the businesses themselves.
"America's business community has consistently communicated to lawmakers at every level that such laws have a negative effect on our employees, our customers, our competitiveness, and state and national economies."