Wednesday, April 20, 2022

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Netflix isn't blaming the pandemic recovery for its lost subscribers

Posted: 19 Apr 2022 01:45 PM PDT

Netflix may have benefitted from the COVID-19 pandemic, but it's not blaming its latest troubles on people leaving their homes. The company has revealed that it lost about 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, a sharp contrast from the millions of additions per quarter over the past year. However, the streaming giant said that the pandemic only "obscured the picture" — there were multiple problems hiding under the surface.

The company pointed to stiffer competition from online services like Disney+ and Prime Video. While Netflix has still been gaining share at a modest rate, it wants to grow "faster." The firm also blamed limited room to expand in many countries due to both technology factors outside of its control (such as smart TV adoption and data prices) and the abundance of account sharing. There are more than 222 million paying households, Netflix said, but another 100 million-plus sharing those accounts.

The decision to halt service in Russia also helped swing Netflix from growth to a loss. It would have added 500,000 customers, but ultimately lost 700,000 after dropping its Russian base in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Growth was still "soft" across all regions, however.

Netflix outlined multiple efforts to turn things around. It hoped to improve the quality of its shows, profit from sharing (such as an option for paid sharing in Latin America) and produce more content to suit audiences outside the US, where growth was stronger.

These results might not pay off in the short term. Netflix still expects either mild growth (no more than 1.5 million new members) or a loss (up to 2 million) in the ongoing second quarter. With that said, Netflix is clearly under no illusion that mobile games and minor feature additions will be enough to spark renewed interest by themselves — its fundamentals need to improve if it's going to fend off rivals.

Amazon will perform a racial equality audit of its hourly workers

Posted: 19 Apr 2022 01:25 PM PDT

Amazon will perform a racial equity audit of its nearly one million hourly employees, the company said last week in a statement to shareholders. The company is hiring a law firm to conduct the audit, which will be led by former US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and released to the public. But some critics say the audit should extend to the corporate level, instead of Amazon's traditionally more diverse warehouse workers.

"Before you applaud this step, read the fine print. This audit will not include Amazon's negative practices impacting Black employees at the corporate level. That's a major carve out," tweeted tech entrepreneur Charlotte Newman, a former corporate employee who once sued the company for racial and gender discrimination.

Amazon made clear that the purpose of the audit would be to study if there was any disparate racial impacts from its policies. "The focus of the audit will be to evaluate any disparate racial impacts on our nearly one million US hourly employees resulting from our policies, programs and practices," the company said in its statement.

The decision comes after Amazon investors rejected 11 proposals from shareholders to improve racial equity and diversity at the company. One of the rejected proposals would invite an hourly employee to join Amazon's board.

"Amazon's board lacks representation from hourly employees, who thoroughly understand the company's daily operations. Women and racial minorities, which constitute a large percentage of Amazon's hourly associates, are also comparatively underrepresented at the board level, which remains predominantly male and white," wrote the proposal's author.

Amazon's board of directors recommended against voting for the proposal. "Our current process to identify and nominate directors has successfully recruited diverse and qualified directors with extensive human capital management experience," wrote the board.

Another rejected proposal called for a more extensive racial audit of Amazon's corporate and hourly workforce. A large percentage of Amazon's hourly associates are women and racial minorities and its corporate workforce is overwhelmingly white. Nearly 60 percent of Amazon's lowest-paid hourly workers are Black or Hispanic, according to a 2021 company report that looked at the past two years of demographic data. More than half of Amazon's hourly workers are women. Meanwhile, Amazon's highest-paid workers are white or Asian and male.

The company has faced multiple lawsuits from former and current employees who allege they faced race and gender discrimination at work. Back in February, a New York federal judge dismissed a class action racial discrimination lawsuit made by a former Amazon warehouse manager regarding its Covid-19 policies.

Amazon plans to hold its annual shareholder's meeting on May 25th, where investors will vote on a number of proposals on racial equity and healthcare. Amazon has advised shareholders to vote against a proposal that would call for a full, top-down racial equity audit of the entire company.

"There is no public evidence that Amazon is assessing the potential or actual negative impacts of its polices, practices, products and services through a racial equity lens," stated the shareholder's proposal.

Nitecore’s new Sony camera battery charges through built-in USB-C

Posted: 19 Apr 2022 01:03 PM PDT

Every year, companies like Canon and Nikon push camera technology forward with new models that add features like 8K video recording and 30 fps shooting speeds. But the batteries powering those cameras haven't changed nearly as much during the mirrorless era.

Enter Chinese manufacturer Nitecore with its newly announced replacement for Sony's NP-FZ100. Spotted by Sony Addict and later Gizmodo, the UFZ100 features a built-in USB-C port so that you don't need to use a proprietary Sony power adapter to charge it. The battery also includes a handy LED indicator to tell you when it's below 10 percent charge. That same LED will indicate when the UFZ100 is below half power, above 50 percent and finally fully topped up, with a constant green light indicating the final state. With a 2,250mAh capacity, it's only slightly smaller than Sony's 2,280mAh NP-FZ100 and works with many of the company's most recent camera models, including the A6600 and A7 IV.

USB-C charging has been a standard feature on Sony cameras for a few years now, so it's not like you couldn't live without one of the company's proprietary power adapters before. But having a USB-C port on the battery does make things more convenient since you don't need access to a wall outlet. With enough cables, you could also more easily charge multiple batteries simultaneously.

One thing we don't know about the UFZ100 yet is how much it will cost. Third-party battery manufacturers tend to price their offerings lower than Sony, Canon and Nikon to entice consumers to buy their products, but the added USC-C port on the UFZ100 could make it more expensive.
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