UK space race fires up in first Shetland rocket launch June 15, 2020 Scottish firm Skyrora completed the first ever rocket launch from the Shetlands over the weekend, as the UK space race continues to heat up. The 6.5 feet tall Skylark Nano rocket was launched from the Fethaland Peninsula at North Roe on the Scottish island on Saturday, utilising the area’s remote location to its advantage. The [...]
Bezos open to testifying before Congress on anti-competitive behaviour June 15, 2020 Amazon has told US politicians it will make chief executive Jeff Bezos available to testify before Congress as part of a widespread antitrust investigation into Big Tech. The e-commerce giant had previously resisted calls for Bezos to appear before lawmakers, prompting threats from members of the House Judiciary Committee to force him to testify. A [...]
Microsoft’s Github drops ‘slave’ and ‘master’ terms amid protests June 15, 2020 Code repository giant Github has said it is ditching parts of traditional software jargon to avoid causing offence as anti-racism protests continue worldwide. Chief executive Nat Friedman said Github is developing a transition away from “master” — a term for the main version of code — to something more neutral. As the world’s largest website [...]
Tesla revs up in China as car registrations boom June 15, 2020 Car registrations for US electric carmaker Tesla jumped 150 per cent month on month in May, as China gets back on track after lockdown. Tesla’s China registrations, including cars that were imported, grew to 11,565 in May from 4,633 units in April. Data from the China Passenger Car Association publisuhed today showed sales of Tesla’s [...]
Softbank triples spending on share buybacks in June to £1.4bn June 15, 2020 Japanese investment giant Softbank has ramped up share buybacks this month, more than tripling its purchases month on month. Filings released today showed Softbank has spent ¥188.3bn (£1.4bn) on buying back shares between 1 June and 15 June, compared to ¥61bn for the entire month of May. The acceleration takes the total amount spent by [...]
Executive at League of Legends creator resigns over George Floyd post June 12, 2020 A top executive at the games giant behind the successful online multiplayer League of Legends has stepped down over a Facebook post he wrote about the death of George Floyd. Ron Johnson, who was global head of consumer products at Riot Games, posted a meme which featured the criminal history of Floyd, who was killed [...]
Peter Thiel’s Palantir set to file to go public ‘within weeks’ June 12, 2020 Palantir, the data analytics firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, is said to be preparing documents to file for an initial public offering (IPO) within the next few weeks. People familiar with the matter told Reuters that Palantir has been encouraged by recent successful IPOs on Wall Street, and wants to cash in on the [...]
Competition watchdog to investigate Facebook’s Giphy acquisition June 12, 2020 The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has today begun an investigation into the completed acquisition of Giphy by Facebook. An initial enforcement order was sent earlier this week as the CMA conducts an inquiry into whether the merger of Facebook and Giphy will “result in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets [...]
Zoom to allow Beijing to censor individuals June 12, 2020 Video communications platform Zoom has said it is working on technology that will allow the Chinese government to shut out individual users from meetings if Beijing deems them illegal. The revelation comes after the US firm was criticised for shutting down a number of meetings organised by dissidents last week to commemorate the anniversary of [...]
Is a virtual world the new norm for SME Accounting? June 12, 2020 | City Talk It does seem hard to apply a history lesson to this in such a strange time that we have seen over the last 3 months. However, if you look back over the last 30 years in accounting the trend would suggest that we have already made a huge leap to a virtual position from an [...]