ExclusiveBypassing TikTok Ban? | Business Matters (Jan. 08)

It is time for Business Matters and today we've got Paul Greaney with us. Paul, how's it going? Fiona, great. Thanks so much. What have you got for us today? Well, let's get into it. All right. Great to see everyone there at home. JetBezos' Blue Origin company has a new rocket named New Glenn. It's set to take flight its maiden flight with the uncrewed launch vehicle, marking the company's first attempt to send a rocket into orbit. Now, you may know that so far, Blue Origin has made space tourism launches on its smaller rocket that's called New Shepard. It's not as powerful, though. It's not even powerful enough to send satellites into space. New Glenn will be a critical launch to challenge SpaceX's dominance in the industry. SpaceX has deployed hundreds of missions to orbit since its first successful launch in 2008. New Glenn is set to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as early as next week. And a sour note for anyone trying to bypass an impending TikTok ban with the increasingly popular sister app Lemon8. Influencers have been promoting the sister app, and some have hailed it as the go-to place if TikTok is banned. Now, Lemon8 is similar to TikTok with short-form videos. This past month, it was one of the top-ranking free apps on Apple's App Store. TikTok's parent company ByteDance has until January 19th, not far away, to sell the company to an approved buyer or it will be banned here in the United States. But the law states that the divest or be banned requirement applies to apps owned or operated by ByteDance, and that would include Lemon8. And Delta is trying to entice travelers with new partnerships. At CES 2025, the airline announced collaborations with YouTube, with Uber, with Qualtronics and Joby Aviation. SkyMiles members will be able to watch creators, podcasts and musicians ad-free on YouTube. Meanwhile, Qualtrics will be personalizing travel by reviewing feedback to pinpoint what you, the traveler, care most about. Delta's also teamed up with Joby Aviation for its taxi service, Uber for a more seamless travel experience from the air to the ground, with Delta's airline stressing, its CEO stressing the importance of using technology to create a premium experience. And the DOJ is suing America's largest landlords over alleged price collusion. The department says the scheme harmed millions of American renters. Here's the story. The Justice Department is suing the nation's largest landlords over an alleged scheme to set prices. Price collusion is illegal. It theoretically creates higher prices for renters, prices higher than what the free market would have created. The DOJ accused property management firm RealPage of facilitating the collusion. It says landlords shared pricing data with RealPage's software, which then recommended allegedly unfair prices. NTD reached out to RealPage but did not hear back before airtime. The DOJ says these landlords operate more than 1.3 million rental units in 43 states and the District of Columbia. The department alleges their actions harmed millions of American renters. One of the firms, Cortland, agreed to settle with the DOJ. And a computer chip supplier is anchoring itself into the health care industry. AMD is investing $20 million in AppSci that's a drug discovery company. AMD said the investment and partnership will help reduce hardware costs and optimize AI solutions for AppSci. This is AMD's first move with its AI chips into life science. The company is trying to make headway in the GPU market that's dominated by NVIDIA. As part of the investment, AppSci plans to have greater use of AMD's GPUS. Right now it's mostly using NVIDIA's. AppSci also said it plans to use the funding to continue building its AI models and continue work on internal drug development. And Honda is planning to build two prototype electric vehicles right here in America. The futuristic looking Honda Zero has been featured at the Consumer Electronics Show in the past. Now the automaker has updated its plans. D. Sean Marshall has more. Honda says that the Honda Zero SUV prototype and Honda Zero saloon will be built in U.S. factories. The announcement came at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show. It's a prototype of the new our flagship model of our Zero series, the Honda Zero saloon. This new production design maintains the exact shape of the original concept introduced last year. We are very excited to bring this model to market in 2026. Thin, light and wise is how Honda describes the core values the vehicles are based on. Honda says these vehicles offer a new vision, overwhelmingly different from others, to evoke a new perspective for people. The vehicles will feature advanced AI, sensing technology, recognition, decision making and driver monitoring technologies. Honda's press release states that the company will develop and offer new energy services based on two core concepts, building a charging network that enables customers to enjoy stress-free freedom of mobility and enabling people to enjoy clean and smart daily lives utilizing EV batteries. In North America, we established a joint venture with seven other automakers to create a charging network called Iona. Iona aims to include at least 30,000 high quality charge points by 2030. Production models based on the two prototypes will be built at the Honda EV hub in Ohio. They're scheduled to be introduced in the North American market in the first half of 2026, then in global markets, including Japan and Europe. Sean Marshall, NTD News. And a guilty plea entered for the former CEO of MoviePass, a ticket subscription service. The Justice Department says Theodore Farnsworth pleaded guilty to charges of security fraud and conspiracy. Farnsworth allegedly engaged in schemes to defraud investors in MoviePass's parent company. The Justice Department says he made materially false claims and artificially inflated the company's stock price to attract new investors. Farnsworth faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for the securities fraud and five years for the conspiracy count. And you want to get a jump on filing your taxes this year. The IRS has your back. Internal Revenue Service says its free file guide, free file guided tax software will be available starting today. Those guided software tools aren't written by the IRS, though they come from trusted partners who as part of the free file program. But to make sure you get the best out of this software and get it for free, you must access the vendor sites through links at IRS.gov. Also, the program only works for people who make less than $84,000 in adjusted gross income. If you made more than that and you want to file for free, you'll have to use what's called free file fillable forms. And just in time for dry January, actor Tom Holland's non-alcoholic beer brand is coming to Target. Biro debuted in October. Target announced the product is hitting store shelves at about 1,400 U.S. locations this week. Holland recently spoke candidly about his struggle with sobriety and creating Biro to feel included in social situations where people are drinking. Some of Holland's brands have expressed frustration that Biro is so hard to find. So the company hopes the Target partnership will help with that. Last year, sales of non-alcoholic drinks jumped 27 percent, raking in more than 800 million dollars. And the United States ranks among the world's top 10 most powerful passports for 2025, as according to a new index that uses exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association. It tracks global freedoms in 227 countries and territories around the world. Singapore is at the top with visa free access to 195 out of 227 destinations worldwide. Japan in second in the ranking with 193 destinations and the European Union member states of France, Germany, Italy and Spain tied for third, along with Finland and South Korea. Fourth position in the rankings is held by seven EU countries and squeaking in the fifth place are Belgium, New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland and the UK. The United States comes in ninth place with access to 186 visa free destinations. Get your holiday plans in order. The index was created 20 years ago by London-based global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley and Partners. Now, artificial intelligence could pose a threat to your job. According to a survey from the World Economic Forum, 41 percent of employers will cut their staff levels in favor of automation. And that's by 2030. It's not far away. Nearly 80 percent of large companies worldwide also say they will reskill or upskill workers to work alongside AI over the next five years. Among the jobs expected to see the biggest declines in employment, you've got executive secretaries, payroll clerks and postal service clerks. Samsung showing off its smart home gear at the CES Tech Fest in Las Vegas this week. But right now, the outlook for the South Korean giant isn't looking so bright and chips are the problem. Here's the story. On Wednesday, Samsung gave a fourth quarter profit estimate that fell far short of analyst expectations. It predicted an operating profit of just under four point five billion dollars for the three months to the end of December, approaching a billion less than markets expected. The firm said it faced slowing demand for memory chips used in PCs and phones. Its earnings also face a dent from rising research and development costs and investments in manufacturing capacity. Meanwhile, it's lagging local rival SK Hynix in the battle to supply high-end processors for AI. Speaking at CES this week, NVIDIA boss Jensen Huang said Samsung needed to engineer a new design to supply so-called high-bandwidth memory chips to his firm. However, he said the company was working fast and could do it. Wednesday's profit outlook from Samsung saw no update on that. Back in October, it issued a rare apology for a disappointing performance in the third quarter, but said it was making progress on supplying NVIDIA. Samsung shares were up around three percent in morning trade as investors focused on the encouraging words from Huang. And a California man is turning his boyhood dreams into reality. Joe Ben Beirut is the CEO of Joby Aviation, and he and a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are about to launch a new class of electric powered flying taxis. I was born and raised in the Santa Cruz Mountains and dreamt of building a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that I could fly home from school. We see this as a new class of transportation, as a first step in moving into the skies for our daily transportation. So 10, maybe 15 years down the road, I believe you will see highways in the sky. There will be hundreds, thousands of these aircraft flying in individual cities, and it will truly change the way our cities are even built. Now, the aircraft are known as EVTOLs, which is short for electric vertical takeoff and landing. They lift off the ground like helicopters, but fly like planes, reaching speeds of 200 miles an hour. Flying taxis have made inroads with the federal government, too. Recently, a new category of aircraft called Powered Lift was introduced. EVTOLs would fall into this category. Now, Joby Aviation is focusing on high density routes such as airports to city centers, and the CEO hopes to take passengers from New York airports to Manhattan in 10 minutes or less. Pretty good. And staying on airlines, Europe's biggest airline, Ryanair, is going after unruly passengers on its flights. The Ireland-based budget airline announced today it's suing for over $15,000 in damages a passenger who says it disrupted a flight from Ireland to Spain last year. The airline says the passenger's behavior forced the flight to divert to a different city than planned, causing unnecessary disruption to 160 passengers. It's seeking to recover related costs, including overnight accommodations, passenger expenses and landing costs. Now, this would be the first time Ryanair has taken a civil action against a passenger in Ireland, and it comes amid several reports of disruptive behavior on its flights in recent years. Now, the airline saying it hopes that pursuing civil action against the disruptive passengers will help eliminate such behavior. And the nation is honoring the late former President Jimmy Carter on Thursday. President Biden has declared tomorrow, January 9th, as a day of mourning. Now, that's the same day as the official state funeral for Carter, which will be held at the Washington National Cathedral. As a result of the designation, the U.S. Postal Service will not deliver mail. The U.S. Supreme Court, the stock market and the government offices will also be closed. The president is expected to deliver a eulogy and President-elect Trump says he will attend the service. The last time a National Day of Mourning was held was in December of 2018, following the death of former President George H. W. Bush. Then it's that time of year again, the beginning Girl Scout cookie season. But the end is near for two flavors. The Girl Scouts of the USA announced the s'mores and toastier cookies will be discontinued this year. The organization didn't reveal the reason for retiring the cookies, but it often refreshes the lineup. The s'mores debuted in 2017 and the French toast inspired cookies rolled out in 2021. Now, nationally, the price of a box this year could range from four to seven dollars. Girl Scout cookies will be sold at Boots starting this week and online starting February 21st. And the new technology is creating a whole new generation of backyard bird watchers, smart bird feeders equipped with cameras that deliver notifications on your phone are now making it easier to catch birds in action. Bird watching normally requires you to wake up early in the morning, like crazy hours sometimes, right? You have to know the silhouette of the bird. You have to know its song. You have to go out to a place that you know it's going to be there. Right. I took sense of initial pictures on my Facebook and was like, you know, oh, look at this bird, you know, bird camera we got. I never cared about birds. Look, look at their stupid little faces. They're so they're so funny. And people started reacting to that. And then I kept getting more postcards from Bird Buddy and they were just funny and cute. And so I kept posting on Facebook. Now, Bird Buddy has sold over 350,000 units since 2022. They deliver close up photos and videos of visiting birds. The CEO says the idea is to help people connect with parts of nature they might otherwise overlook. And now, while the coronavirus pandemic spurred many people to head outside in search of birds, smart bird feeders have brought the hobby indoors. Bird Buddy is now developing a pedal. It's a tiny flower shaped camera and wonder blocks which can be assembled to provide a habitat for butterflies and other insects. And now to wrap up today, we have the stock market, let's see how things went down on Wall Street today, we see the S&P up about one point six percent, but point one six percent. Dow Jones up about a quarter percent today. The Nasdaq down 10 points, but flat for the day. Not a bad day down on Wall Street at all. With that, Fiona, we'll go back to you. Paul, thank you, as always. Now, I thought that that story about those flying taxis. Hey, we're really, really living in the future, aren't we? I know it's like something you would have seen like the Jetsons, right? Who would have thought we'd get to see that? Yeah, well, let's see. Let's see if it takes off. Look, taxis can be expensive. It was getting more expensive all the time. I know, I know, I know. And I remember reading sci fi books as a kid and reading about, you know, these flying taxis that would take over and then roads would be obsolete. And, you know, maybe one day. Yeah. In the near future. Yeah. Yeah. And onto natural little flyers, those bird watchers. Pretty cool. Yeah, this is pretty cool. I don't know. Look, I've never taken the time to go out bird watching, but everything he talked about, right. You know, you've got to listen for their call and you've got to do this. You've got to do that. It's probably all part of the fun. Right. Right. Right. But I mean, now, hey, this solves the problem, doesn't it? To be in the office, you get a notification. Right. But you just go on your phone and you just see a photo of the guy. You think he's doing like a little selfie like this? Who knows? Who knows? Right. Yeah. Some interesting videos of these animals that they caught in the wild. They are interesting creatures. Yeah. You can make a whole National Geographic documentary. There you go. Could be an idea for NTD. All right. Well, Paul, thank you for joining us today. I'll see you next time. Fiona, thank you. Thank you.