Category Archives: Financial

Business, Financial, Science, TechNews

SpaceX is already breaking the record from the previous year

At the weekend, SpaceX brought its number of rocket launches to 33 with two more missions. Elon Musk’s group broke its record from the previous year – and that in July. 

Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX launched 31 rockets last year. In 2022, the group already exceeded this number when the Falcon 9 rocket sent a load of 46 Starlink satellites into space on Friday, setting off on its 32nd mission. On Sunday, SpaceX added 53 satellites – rocket launch number 33.

The company has already broken its existing record for most rocket launches in a year, as confirmed by Elon Musk on Twitter , where he congratulated his team. In addition, there are still several months left to further expand the record.

Screenshot: Twitter

Elon Musk’s goal for 2022: 52 rocket launches

SpaceX intends to do the same, because at the beginning of the year the ambitious goal was announced of sending 52 rockets into space this year. So far, SpaceX is on track to meet its schedule. This is made possible by the reusable rocket stages of the Falcon 9. The rocket, which was launched on Sunday, has already completed four missions. Another rocket already has 13 missions under its belt. These cycles allow SpaceX to ramp up its rocket launch cadence every year except for 2019, when the number dropped.

In addition, SpaceX is its own customer for a large number of the rocket launches. The company is using the missions to increase its fleet of Starlink Internet satellites. Around 2,900 have been sent into orbit so far, of which around 2,600 are currently active. SpaceX has approval for a total of 12,000 but is seeking to relax international rules to allow up to 30,000 satellites into orbit.

SpaceX has big plans

But even without its Starlink project, SpaceX will not run out of work. Thanks to the cooperation with NASA, the company repeatedly sends off Dragon-type space capsules to send people and cargo to the ISS. There are also SpaceX’s commercial space flights, which take tourists into space, and launches for the US Department of Defense.

In the long term, Elon Musk is pursuing particularly ambitious plans with SpaceX. The billionaire has never made a secret of the fact that he has set himself the goal of populating Mars – and even wants to outperform NASA in the race for the red planet . 

Business, Financial

Microsoft Store completely bans the sale of open source software

Microsoft has now announced that it will ban the sale of open source software in the Microsoft Store. The change will officially come into effect on July 16.

Image: Microsoft Store

The Microsoft Store is known for its many illegitimate apps. Numerous open source programs have been offered for sale in the past without the rightful developers of the project being compensated or involved in any way. The group had announced that it would take action. And they seem to have opted for the worst possible compromise.

Microsoft bans the sale of all open source programs from its store. So that they can only be offered there for free or not at all. Many projects had previously used the store for funding by paying for the program on the store while at the same time making it available for free through the official site. Developers were disappointed with the move and have already given their opinion on Twitter. Projects like WinSCP or Krita make paid versions of their open source programs available in the store. They ask for a small sum in the store, which can be considered a donation, to support the development of the application.

Developers are asking Microsoft to revise the policy and provide actual open source developers with a way to make their apps available through the Store for a fee. In-store sales can help projects get better funding, which will also benefit the programs themselves.

Business, Computer Chips, Financial, TechNews

Why the chip shortage could keep us busy for longer

With the chip bottlenecks in the Corona crisis, months of waiting for washing machines and cars became just as normal as the futile search for new Playstation consoles. How long will this go on?

Source: dpa

Some experts are cautiously optimistic: Industry analyst Alan Priestley from the IT market researcher Gartner can imagine that overcapacities will occur again in the coming year. At the chip group Intel, however, company boss Pat Gelsinger warns that problems with production capacity and the availability of necessary machines are likely to last at least until 2024.

Expert Priestley is counting on the large-scale expansion of production soon bearing fruit. The industry has been investing in new factories since the first signs of bottlenecks at the beginning of the corona pandemic. “Therefore we will probably have overcapacity in 2023 or 2024,” he predicted. At least until the increasing demand eats them up.

This interplay is in itself typical for the chip industry, stressed Priestley. “As soon as demand and supply are in balance, investments are made in order to have capacities for the next surge in demand.” The current chip crisis was so severe because in some areas not enough was invested in expansion – and at the same time demand increased by leaps and bounds with the increased work and learning in the corona pandemic.

Different chips require different production processes

It makes everything even more complex that there is not just one semiconductor industry. Different chips are required for different tasks – and for these there are different production processes that cannot be arbitrarily interchanged. An important feature is the so-called structure widths – roughly speaking, how finely the circuits are worked. The narrower the structure widths in modern production processes, the more powerful and efficient the processors are.

For something like a transformer or other simple tasks, old production processes are sufficient – which are also less lucrative, so that the capacities for them had leveled off at a low level. And then came the Corona boom. It was often the lack of a few simple components that prevented cars or computers from being completed.

In addition, chip factories not only cost billions and have to be built over years – they are also not necessarily flexible. “If I build a factory for chips with a structure width of seven nanometers, I cannot easily convert them to five nanometers,” says Priestley. And it is not as easy as in other areas to simply let production rest. That’s why companies have to plan their expansion decisions with particular foresight – and new capacities in one area are not necessarily helpful for other parts of the industry.

Machines for chip production are still scarce

Another bottleneck are machines for chip production. With super-narrow structure widths, the only way forward is with UV lithography – and the European manufacturer ASML is practically the only supplier for this. He is accordingly fully booked.

Stories of desperate measures are doing the rounds in the industry. At the presentation of the latest quarterly figures, ASML boss Peter Wennink talked about his conversation with the management of a “very large industrial group”, whose name he kept to himself. “They actually told me that they buy washing machines to rip out semiconductors and put them in industrial modules.” Of course, one could say that this is just an anecdote, admitted Wennink. “But that happens everywhere.”

Another problem for the industry came with the war in Ukraine. The lasers of the lithography machines require neon in addition to other gases. And that’s a common by-product of steelmaking. The huge Azovstal steel works in Mariupol, which has been shelled and bombed by Russian troops in their war of aggression against Ukraine for weeks, was an important supplier of neon. The loss of shipments from Ukraine, while disruptive, will be something the industry will have to digest, Priestley said. “There are also other sources” – including the large steel mills in South Korea.

Business, Financial, TechNews

Apple left behind

German Press Agency (dpa)

Apple is no longer the most valuable company in the world. With the iPhone company’s share price falling five percent this week, oil company Saudi Aramco is now the new number one.

The world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, replaced the technology group Apple as the world’s most valuable company on Wednesday. While Saudi Aramco’s share price has benefited from high oil prices in recent weeks, the iPhone manufacturer’s paper has come under increasing pressure due to rising capital market interest rates, supply bottlenecks and growth concerns. This Wednesday, Apple fell five percent to its lowest level since the end of October last year.

apple-stock-price

Saudi Aramco’s share price on the home exchange Tadawul in Riyadh had risen by more than 17 percent since mid-March. The Apple price, on the other hand, has lost more than 18 percent since the end of March. The prospect of rising interest rates caused investors to sell technology stocks in particular. Because in the long phase of cheap money, investors had increasingly relied on high-growth tech companies. Now, however, interest rates are likely to rise sharply in view of the high inflation, which could mean that Apple, Amazon, Microsoft & Co are clearly overvalued.

Apple is no longer the world’s most valuable company for the first time since 2020

The shares of Saudi Aramco, which went public at the end of 2019, had recently reached a record high. The company currently has a market capitalization of $2.43 trillion. In doing so, they left Apple behind for the first time since 2020. The company from Cupertino in California is only worth 2.37 trillion dollars with a loss of a good five percent this Wednesday. However, only a small proportion of Aramco shares are freely tradable, and the vast majority are in state hands. At the beginning of the year, Apple, at around $3 trillion, was $1 trillion heavier than the Saudi Arabian oil producer.

The US Federal Reserve is likely to raise interest rates by a further 1.5 percentage points this year. That and the prospect of an ongoing war in Ukraine mean that the big tech companies cannot be expected to return to their former strength anytime soon, said Tim Ghriskey, portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder. He spoke of “panic selling” at a number of technology stocks and other highly rated companies. Investors are likely to reinvest the funds that are freed up in the process, not least in energy stocks whose growth prospects are rosy. “Companies like Saudi Aramco benefit considerably from this mixed situation,” says the expert.

Business, Financial, Gaming, TechNews

Activision Blizzard sold

Stockholders of Activision Blizzard voted to sale for $68.7 Billion sale to Microsoft

At a special meeting, the stockholders of Activision Blizzard approved Microsoft’s proposal to sell the gaming company for $68.7 billion.

This all-cash transaction values the creator of games like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush at $95 per share.

“Today’s overwhelmingly supportive vote by our stockholders confirms our shared belief that, combined with Microsoft, we will be even better positioned to create great value for our players,” said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick.

He added that the deal would provide “even greater opportunities for our employees, and to continue our focus on becoming an inspiring example of a welcoming, respectful and inclusive workplace.” The company is facing numerous lawsuits for sexual harassment, retaliation and discriminatory workplace practices. Kotick himself has been accused of knowing for years about sexual misconduct and rape allegations at his company but not doing anything about it.

In light of these conflicts, Kotick announced a zero-tolerance policy against harassment and $250 million investment in recruiting gender diverse talent. At that time, only 23% of employees are identifying as women or non-binary people. But employee dissatisfaction has prevailed.

When the acquisition was announced in January, quality assurance testers at Raven Software, a division of Activision, had been on strike for five weeks. They protested the layoffs of 12 contractors, which came after over a month of consistent overtime work.

“We realized in that moment that our day-to-day work and our crucial role in the games industry as QA was not being taken into consideration,” Onah Rongstad, a QA tester at Raven Software, told TechCrunch at the time.