Tag: 2.5%
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang takes a $2.5 million pay cut after disappointing sales
Netflix doubles down on K-dramas with a $2.5 billion investment
After a meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol yesterday, Netflix announced it’s planning to invest $2.5 billion into “the creation of Korean series, films, and unscripted shows over the next four years” — which is a fancy way of saying Netflix is about to make a crapload of K-dramas.
The amount is double what Netflix has invested in K-dramas since 2016 — and it’s no surprise given the monumental success of Squid Game as well as The Glory and Physical: 100. In a statement, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company had “great confidence that the Korean creative industry will continue to tell great stories,” noting that Korean entertainment was “now at the heart of the global cultural zeitgeist.”
As a second-generation…
Galaxy Book 3 Series sales 2.5 times higher than predecessor, Samsung says
US government opens $2.5 biilion in funding for community EV chargers
The Biden administration just made good on one of its promises to make EV charger funding available to local governments. The Department of Transportation is now accepting applications for its $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program, which will hand out funds to cities, counties, regional governments and tribes to help deploy EV chargers, hydrogen fuel stations and other reduced-emissions systems near their residents.
Half of the program’s funding will go to chargers and stations in “publicly accessible” places like parking facilities, parks and schools. The rest will install this equipment in “alternative fuel corridors” along highways to help with long-distance travel. The initial round of funding will make $700 million available, with the rest coming over the program’s five-year span. Officials have to apply no later than May 30th.
The initiative is part of President Biden’s broader campaign to build 500,000 charging stations by 2030, or about five times as many as there were in early 2022. The money, assigned as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is meant to ensure charging access within 50 miles of someone’s location in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. While the effort is intended to spur overall EV adoption, there’s an added focus on underserved communities like some urban and rural areas.
A strong charging infrastructure is widely considered vital to successfully transitioning away from combustion engine cars. Existing stations can sometimes be crowded or unreliable, and don’t always support the fast charging available with recent EVs. The government funding isn’t guaranteed to fix these problems, but should increase the likelihood that you can travel cross-country in an electrified ride.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-government-opens-25-biilion-in-funding-for-community-ev-chargers-213048515.html?src=rss
Twitter’s new API plan costs up to $2.5 million per year
Twitter is finally starting to put a price on its paid API plans after announcing that the platform’s free API access would soon be cut off.
And, it’s not cheap.
Existing users of Twitter’s current free API service have started to receive emails from the company that finally share pricing details about the new subscription packages. According to Chris Stokel-Walker at Wired who first reported the news, those looking at Enterprise API access are going to pay millions of dollars per year.
The documents sent to those API users by Twitter representatives details price packages that start at $42,000 per month for access to 50 million tweets. The pricing goes all the way up to $210,000 per month for the highest plan with 200 million tweets. A mid tier plan that provides 100 million tweets is priced at $125,000.
Oddly, instead of higher tiers being offered at a discount for customers who pay more like many other online companies provide, the pricing model charges extra. (For example, 100 million tweets should be priced at $84,000 for double the tweets, yet Twitter is charging $125,00.)
Previously, before Elon Musk came along, Twitter offered a generous free tier of its API. “Premium” and “Enterprise” API plans were offered. The highest advertised subscription rate was a “premium” plan that would set a customer back $2,899 per month. Only large businesses with more than 250 users were previously eligible for the “Enterprise” API tier. The cost of that was worked out on a case-by-case basis by Twitter, depending on the organization or company.
On top of the high pricing, under the new rules, the lowest plan only provides access to 0.3 percent of tweets. According to those currently using the API, the soon-to-be phased out free plan provides access to one percent of tweets.
Researchers make up a significant portion of the user base for Twitter’s API. Many academics have pointed out that this pricing puts utilizing Twitter’s API out of their reach financially.
Just a little over one month ago on Feb. 2, Twitter announced one of the biggest changes it was making to its platform since Elon Musk took over the company. The free basic API access that Twitter had long offered to everyone from small indie developers to academic researchers would cease to exist. Users of all types would now have to pay. However, no further details were provided at the time.
Musk’s plan to charge for API access has not gone smoothly. The date that free access was slated to shut off, Feb. 9, came and went without any changes. Twitter then announced the new API rules would come on Feb. 13, but instead Twitter just announced another delay on that day.
Then earlier this week, Twitter suffered a major platform issue causing links, photos, and other services to go down completely for hours. It later came out that the crash was caused by a developer trying to prepare Twitter for the move to its paid API subscription.
Elon Musk’s decision to kill free API access was roundly criticized when first announced. Many popular free Twitter bots and automated accounts planned to shut down rather than pay. In response, Musk altered his plans and said Twitter would provide free “read-only” access with lower API limits to free projects.
While not official, Musk has also floated the idea of charging around $100 per month for more basic API access for small projects and startups that are monetized by their creators.
As Wired points out in its report, Musk once called Twitter the “de facto town square.” He has also claimed that he acquired the company to defend free speech. Now that Musk is in charge, accessing the town square and its speech will cost you a pretty penny.
Mansion Global: Meta exec and former U.K. deputy prime minister books $2.5 million profit on house sale in tony Atherton, Calif.
Diablo 2: Resurrected 2.5 PTR update outlines season 2 release timing
Blizzard has given a Diablo 2: Resurrected 2.5 PTR update for players, discussing feedback and balance change plans for the new Diablo 2 Terror Zones feature as well as outlining its plans for the upcoming ladder season 2 release times. Players trying out the remake of one of the best RPG games on PC in its latest iteration have been tackling the new feature, which creates deadly packs of pumped-up enemies in certain areas of the map, offering a chance at better gear and an alternative way to approach reaching the Diablo 2 max level in a season.
Diablo community manager Adam ‘PezRadar’ Fletcher updates players on the feedback the Diablo 2 team has received during the first week of PTR testing for Diablo 2 Resurrected patch 2.5. He says that the general changes players can expect include a rotation of areas where Terror Zones can appear, to acccount for places where they didn’t work well. There will also be further info provided on the unlock conditions and duration for Terror Zones to improve clarity for players.
Fletcher says that some players remarked that the Terror Zone enemies didn’t feel quite as challenging as expected, but notes that a large proportion of this feedback came specifically from players using a Hammerdin, one of the best Diablo 2 Resurrected Paladin builds. Fletcher explains that the team has some ideas resulting from this discovery, and that he expects the resulting changes – set to be announced soon – to “create a bit of a shift in build/class opportunities for players.”
RELATED LINKS: Diablo 2: Resurrected review, The best RPG games, The best Diablo 2 Resurrected classes
Crypto CEO Behind $2.5 Billion ‘Rug Pull’ Arrested, Faces 40,564 Years In Prison
It’s not the whole story, either. Cryptocrime analysis firm Chainanalysis addressed Thorex specifically in its overview of 2021, in the wider context of a total $2.8 billion worth of crypto scams over this year being ‘rug pulls’: wherein a seemingly legitimate business is set up, operates as normal for a while, then suddenly all the money is gone. It’s large-scale fraud. “We should note that roughly 90% of the total value lost to rug pulls in 2021 can be attributed to one fraudulent centralized exchange, Thodex, whose CEO disappeared soon after the exchange halted users’ ability to withdraw funds,” says the Chainanalysis report. That works out at an estimate of around $2.5 billion of crypto.
Six people have already been jailed for their role in Thodex, including family members of Ozer, while 20 other prosecutions are ongoing. The Turkish daily Harriyet reports that state prosecutors are out to set an example: “A prison sentence of 40,564 years is sought for each of these 21 people, including Ozer, as over 2,000 people are included in the indictment as complainants.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Diablo 2: Resurrected PTR patch 2.5 introduces Terror Zones
Diablo 2 Resurrected PTR patch 2.5 introduces a new experimental feature called Terror Zones to spice up the Diablo 2 leveling process. The journey to level 99 is a core part of the experience for players of the classic RPG game, and Blizzard says that it hopes Terror Zones will provide an alternative to the currently popular methods of farming. In addition, the latest patch also implements additional gameplay changes, bug fixes, and quality of life improvements to help polish one of the best fantasy games of all time.
Terror Zones are an experimental feature added with PTR patch 2.5 that players can choose to enable when starting a game. When turned on, specific zones will be terrorised by the armies of the Burning Hells every hour, creating a deadly zone populated with monsters at least two levels higher than your current (or their original level). The experience received from and loot dropped by killing a terrorised monster will be based on its new level.
Blizzard says that it wants to offer Terror Zones as “an alternative to repeatedly farming Baal, Diablo, or Nihlathak.” In addition, the patch notes from Blizzard say that it wants “the journey to level 99 to be accessible to a larger population of players, full of variety, and, most importantly, challenging. Players will be informed of currently terrorised areas when joining a game with Terror Zones enabled courtesy of a message in the chat box.
RELATED LINKS: Diablo 2: Resurrected review, The best RPG games, The best Diablo 2 Resurrected classes