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Canada offers more than C$13 billion for the VW battery plant

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According to a government source, Canada has agreed to offer up to C$13 billion ($9.7 billion) in subsidies and a C$700 million grant to entice Volkswagen AG to locate its North American battery production in the nation.

According to the source, the entire Canadian investment—which might possibly include money from the Ontario government—will be roughly equivalent to what Volkswagen would have received from the United States under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Canada
Image Source: finance.yahoo.com

The source stated that the subsidies will be paid out over a ten-year period, but the automaker chose not to respond. The source told Reuters that the plant’s construction will cost roughly C$7 billion, corroborating a previous story by Bloomberg News.

Also Read: Meta lays off tech teams, battering employee morale

The agreement demonstrates how the United States’ green package, which provides $369 billion in subsidies for electric automobiles and other green technologies, is pressuring foreign governments to increase financial incentives to entice investment.

According to Handelsblatt, which cited a business source with knowledge of the situation, the brand-new Volkswagen battery plant in Canada is expected to have a maximal capacity of 90-gigawatt hours, which will be sufficient to produce batteries for more than a million vehicles yearly.

Volkswagen opted not to respond to the Handeslblatt story. More information on the project is anticipated to be released on Friday during a meeting between the leadership of its battery unit PowerCo and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ontario, where the plant would be located.

The contract is drafted in such a way that Canada’s production subsidies are only guaranteed for the duration of the Inflation Reduction Act. Canada’s incentives for clean production will decrease proportionately if those in the US are cut.

Additionally, under its Strategic Innovation Fund, Canada is providing Volkswagen with capital expense grants totaling nearly C$700 million. Despite its name, the Inflation Reduction Act actually implements substantial incentives for low-carbon companies, primarily via production tax credits.

According to a board member for technology at Europe’s largest automaker who spoke to Reuters in March, PowerCo aspires to become a global battery provider and meet half of its own requirements with plants mostly in Europe and North America.

By 2030, PowerCo, which was founded last year, wants to have annual sales of over $21.94 billion. In Ontario, production is anticipated to begin in 2027.

Also Read: Google wins appeal of $20 mln US patent verdict

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s finance minister, cautioned that democracies need to prevent a “race to the bottom” in corporate subsidies that might erode their tax bases and social protection systems in an address in Washington last week.

The Volkswagen contract in Canada also makes one wonder how much financial assistance other automakers and battery manufacturers may be eligible for. A $4 billion joint venture between LG and Stellantis was announced last year in Windsor, Ontario, a city close to Detroit.

Dead Island 2

Will Dead Island 2 Be On Game Pass?

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Dead Island 2 is an upcoming action role-playing game that is currently under development by Dambuster Studios and published by Deep Silver. It is a follow-up to the video game Dead Island from 2011 and the third significant entry in the Dead Island series.

Dead Island 2
Image Source: thenerdstash.com

Dead Island 2 distinguishes itself from its predecessors by taking place in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which have been quarantined as a result of the zombie outbreak.

Also Read: What is Minecraft Legends? Everything we know so far

Dead Island 2 is set in California, where a viral outbreak has turned most of the population into zombies. The player takes on the role of a survivor, who must fight against the undead and other human factions while trying to find a cure for the virus.

The game features an open-world environment, which allows players to explore various locations and interact with other survivors.

On April 21, 2023, the game was made available for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/Shere is a high probability that this game will rank among the best ones released this year.

The developers at Deep Silver Dambuster Studios went above and above to make the game thrilling and enjoyable. You’ll need to develop resilience to the zombie virus which has taken hold in Los Angeles in order to survive as one of the very few.

Also Read: What Is ChaosGPT: Can The AI Bot Destroy Humanity?

As for killing zombies, there are hundreds of different methods to do so, including leveraging the power of zombies, if you want to stay alive in HELL-A, as the locals now refer to it. The game will be available on all gaming platforms, so everyone—except Game Pass subscribers—can play it.

Sadly, Dead Island 2 won’t be available with the Game Pass. It is somewhat odd that in order to play multiplayer on Xbox platforms, players must acquire either Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or Xbox Live Gold. To play the game, you must still purchase it separately. However, there is a probability that this state will only last a short while.

Meta

Meta lays off tech teams, battering employee morale

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Another round of employment layoffs was implemented by Meta on Wednesday, this time affecting engineers and related tech teams as CEO Mark Zuckerberg continued to restructure the company in an effort to make 2023 a “year of efficiency.”

The second round of mass layoffs at Meta, which it estimated would affect 10,000 workers, was announced in March, making it the first Big Tech company to do so. It was stated that 10,000 employees would be impacted over a period of months and in three main groups.

Meta
Image Source: livemint.com

According to one of the dismissed workers who spoke with CNBC, the most recent job cuts also affected teams that worked with products, and Meta plans to eliminate business-related positions like those in finance, law, and human resources starting next month.

Also Read: Google wins appeal of $20 mln US patent verdict

This individual also said that technology teams who were not affected by the layoffs on Wednesday might be affected by those scheduled for the following month. The Business Programme Manager at Facebook, Teresa Jimenez, wrote on LinkedIn: “I woke up this morning to the awful news that I was one of the many laid off from Meta today.

While I am undoubtedly disappointed, I am also really #grateful for the chance to have collaborated with some of the most creative people for almost three years! (sic)”

Zuckerberg had stated in March that “We anticipate announcing reorganizations and layoffs in our tech groups by the end of April 2023, followed by our business groups by the end of May 2023.

In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes. Our timelines for international teams will also look different, and local leaders will follow up with more details.”

After a pandemic-driven surge in online advertising and cloud computing, Meta’s initial wave of layoffs in the fall affected more than 11,000 workers, or 13% of its total staff at the time, and came before other significant IT businesses laid off thousands of workers.

Along with the restructuring, Meta is “flattening” the levels of middle management and shelving lower-priority projects. The corporation has benefited from shrinking thanks to investors. In comparison to the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, Meta shares have increased by almost 80% this year.

The company, which will release its first-quarter earnings on April 26, is anticipated to profit from regulatory pressure on primary rival TikTok and a minor uptick in the digital advertising sector

Google

Google wins appeal of $20 mln US patent verdict

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Search Engine Giant, Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, successfully persuaded an appeals court in the United States on Tuesday to invalidate three anti-malware copyrights that were at the center of a Texas court’s twenty million-dollar infringing acts decision against the firm.

Google
Image Source: communicationstoday.co.in

Alfonso Cioffi & Allen Rozman’s copyrights, according to the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit, were found to be inapplicable because they covered ideas that were not covered by a prior version of the claim.

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Google welcomed the choice, according to spokesman José Castada. An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by the inventors’ attorneys.

In 2013, Cioffi along with the daughters of the late Rozman filed a lawsuit against Google in the Federal court in East Texas, claiming that Chrome’s malware protection features violated their patents for a system that stops malware from gaining access to sensitive information on a computer.

A jury found that Google violated the patents in 2017 and granted the complainants a total of 20 million USD in addition to continuing payments, which according to the plaintiff’s representative at that point in time were anticipated to reach approximately seven million dollars yearly for the following nine years.

However, the Federal Circuit declared all of the patents invalid on Tuesday. The three-judge bench reached a unanimous conclusion that the three claims had been reissued from a previous anti-malware claim and that federal law needed the newly issued patents to encompass the same idea as the first.

The new patents described web browser-specific technology that was absent from the original patent, according to the appeals court.

Contrary to popular belief, the defendants in Big Tech’s latest patent litigation argue that bigger firms utilize their clout to squeeze rivals.

The British competition regulator declared that Alphabet’s child firm Google’s measures to permit app developers to bypass Google Play’s invoicing mechanism appeared to be adequate to allay its reservations about in-app purchases.

Also Read: Scan.com raises $12m for US and UK expansion

The entire monopoly Google has over in-app purchases has, according to the Competition and Markets Authorities (CMA) of Britain, unjustly constrained developers by requiring them to adopt Google Play’s charging system, decreasing competition and harming users.

According to the CMA, Google’s suggestions would let app creators provide another means of payment of their choice or give customers the option of choosing from that method and Google Play’s payment system.

Scan.com

Scan.com raises $12m for US and UK expansion

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An ineffective public medical system has provided an ideal environment for health IT businesses to thrive, tackling issues like shortages of staff and enhancing radiologists’ software infrastructure. One such business is Scan.com, a healthcare imaging firm with offices in London that links patients with facilities for MRI, ultrasound, CT scans & X-ray scans.

Scan.com
Image Source: techcrunch.com

As it seeks to improve on its latest U.S. debut, the firm today revealed that it has raised twelve million dollars in an initial round of funding.

Also Read: Google TV now has over 800 ad-supported free channels

The issue, stated by Scan.com, lies in the fact that regardless of whether a patient can schedule an initial visit with a doctor, the referral procedure that follows to obtain the necessary scan can take months to complete, and they may then endure waiting even longer for the results to arrive.

Scan.com is collaborating with numerous scanning facilities to provide users with convenient reports that are complete with clickable graphics and are provided within a week. This allows people to get healthcare imaging services regardless of a general practitioner’s referral.

By paying in advance to guarantee their scan, members of Scan.com’s digital referral program are then scheduled for a virtual meeting with a doctor within forty-eight hours.

If a scan reveals a critical issue, the patient is placed in Scan.com’s urgent findings pathway, during which a clinical team gets in touch with them to talk about the findings and provide advice to determine what to do next.

“Our clinical team offers consultations and guidance to all patients once they’ve booked, which is a core part of the service we offer,” Scan.com CEO Charlie Bullock explained to TechCrunch. “Their time is included in our scan pricing, which is why we take payment at the point of booking. During the consultation, the clinician can amend the scan type, add or amend body parts, and ensure the scan is both safe and medically justified for the patient’s needs.”

Khalid Latief & Jasper Nissim, two doctors who organized testing for the patients they treated, launched Scan.com about five years ago after growing frustrated with the inefficiencies in the process. Scan.com debuted its service in the United States two months back, and as of now, it has about 30 staff working in both the UK as well as the US.

Also Read: South Korea fines Google $32 million for squeezing out rival

With an additional 12 million USD in cash on hand, Scan.com is well-positioned to keep up its U.S. broadening and expanding the scope of its offerings to include things like DEXA scans, echocardiograms, as well as mammograms. The company is also well-funded to pursue business contracts with companies that offer digital health services, staff benefits platforms, and other trade associations.

“Medical imaging covers such a variety of modalities that our focus is to launch as many of these as we can,” Bullock said. “Alongside scans, we also want to design pathways to add value for our patients, such as guided injections for pain relief, or adding in-vitro testing and pathology solutions to our preventative screenings to make them more comprehensive.”

Minecraft Legends

What is Minecraft Legends? Everything we know so far

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Real-time action-strategy video game Minecraft Legends was created by Mojang Studios and Blackbird Interactive in 2023 and released by Xbox Game Studios. It was published on April 18, 2023, for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It is the fifth spin-off of the 2011 sandbox game Minecraft.

Minecraft Legends
Image Source: sportskeeda.com

Action game mechanics are used in the action tactics video game Minecraft Legends, which also contains strategic components at its foundation. It is viewed from a third-person viewpoint. The multiplayer in the game supports both collaborative and competitive play.

Also Read: How Will ChatGPT Change Education and Teaching?

The events of Minecraft Legends occur in the world of Minecraft during an invasion by piggins from the Nether. A great hero (the player) carries their banner to save the Overworld and gathers its mobs to assist in defending their home as the Nether spreads its evil over the Overworld.

The events in Legends occur in a story that has been carried down through the ages and is neither true nor false in the world of Minecraft. In Minecraft Legends, pigling mobs will make a comeback and play a key part as the game’s main adversaries.

The primary danger to towns in the game, in addition to your opponents in RTS engagements, is predicted to come from these visitors from the Nether. Real-time action-packed strategy game Minecraft Legends is more about protecting your settlement from attackers than it is about relaxing sandbox crafting.

There will be some construction components in the mix but don’t anticipate them to take center stage in this game. It can be described as”a colorful mix of RTS and building”.

This initial look at the gameplay also features some story cutscenes, indicating that Minecraft Legends will have both a storyline and passive, non-interactive areas where you can get to know the characters a little better.

Since Minecraft: Story Mode has been available for a while, this isn’t the first time that it has done anything similar, but it’s an intriguing indication that Legends will be shifting farther away from the sandbox to something more specifically goal-oriented.

In Minecraft Legends, the piggins will fall into one of many distinct groups, each with unique functions and visual characteristics. Mook-level foes like Grunters and Runts, beefier and more skilled enemies like Bruisers and Portal Guards, and Piggos who look like mounts are Grunters and Runts.

Also Read: What Is ChaosGPT: Can The AI Bot Destroy Humanity?

The creation of Minecraft Legends started in 2018. On June 12, 2022, the game was unveiled at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase. Additional platforms were revealed through a trailer posted on the Minecraft YouTube channel after the performance.

It is created by the series’ founders Mojang Studios in association with Blackbird Interactive, a group established by formerly employed Relic Entertainment personnel and best known for creating the real-time strategy game series Homeworld.