An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg, which is “based on interviews with more than 30 current and former Amazon employees, most of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity citing fears of litigation or career repercussions.” From the report: Mike Frazzini had never made a video game when he helped start Amazon Game Studios. Eight years later, he has released two duds, withdrew both from stores after a torrent of negative reactions and canceled many more. For a company that dominates countless areas of retail, consumer electronics and enterprise computing, the multiple failures in gaming show one realm that may be impervious toAmazon.com’s distinctive business philosophy. It tried to make games the Amazon way, instead of simply making games people would want to play.

Frazzini is an Amazon lifer who came up in the books section of the website, where he endeared himself to Jeff Bezos as a manager there. Conventional wisdom inside the company is that if you can run one business, you can run any other. Amazon’s deep financial resources certainly help. As head of the games division, Frazzini has acquired established development studios and pushed the company to spend nearly $1 billion for the live video streaming website Twitch. Frazzini recruited some of the top names in the video game industry, including creators of the critically acclaimed franchises EverQuest and Portal, as well as executives fromElectronic Arts Inc.and other big publishers.

Then, according to numerous current and former employees of Frazzini’s game studios, he ignored much of their advice. He frequently told staff that every Amazon game needed to be a “billion-dollar franchise” and then understaffed the projects, they say. Instead of using industry-standard development tools, Frazzini insisted Amazon build its own, which might have saved the company money if the software ever worked properly. Executives under Frazzini initially rejected charges that New World, an Amazon game that would ask players to colonize a mythical land and murder inhabitants who bear a striking resemblance to Native Americans, was racist. They relented after Amazon hired a tribal consultant who found that the portrayal was indeed offensive, say two people who worked on the project. The game, previously planned for release last year, is now scheduled for this spring.

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Source: Slashdot – Amazon Can Make Just About Anything — Except a Good Video Game

Elon Musk confirmed that the new Tesla Roadster has been delayed from 2021 to 2022 — a good two years behind the original schedule set all the way back in 2017. Electrek reports: When first unveiling the next-generation Tesla Roadster in 2017, Musk said that it will come to market in 2020. Tesla started taking reservations for the impressive electric supercar with a 0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds and over 600 miles of range at the unveiling event. People who wanted to be first in line to get the vehicle had to put down between $50,000 and $250,000 in deposits. The vehicle program was later delayed as the CEO said that it wasn’t a priority for Tesla.

Last year, Musk hinted at Tesla Roadster being delayed all the way to 2022 as the automaker focuses on the Cybertruck. Now the CEO confirmed that the production of Tesla’s new Roadster won’t start until next year: Musk wrote on Twitter today: “Finishing engineering [of the new Tesla Roadster] this year, production starts next year. Aiming to have release candidate design drivable late summer. Tri-motor drive system and advanced battery work were important precursors.”

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Source: Slashdot – Tesla Roadster Delayed To 2022

This week’s bizarre “meme stock” rally, which has delivered lottery-like windfalls for holders of GameStop stock, also wiped out $600 million in debt owed by the AMC theater chain. Polygon reports: That’s because, on Wednesday, a private equity firm named Silver Lake — and private equity firms are popularly considered the “bad guys” in this snobs-versus-slobs drama — elected to convert the corporate bonds it held into AMC Entertainment Holdings stock. Although the theater chain’s stock price has tumbled and soared since the move, the debt relief is permanent. Just Monday, AMC was warning investors that “there is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.”

Wiping out more than half-a-billion dollars in debt, though, should take a lot of pressure off AMC in the short term. “A week ago, it was not crazy to think this company was doomed,” Bloomberg’s Matt Levine wrote on Thursday. “Now it is entirely possible that it will survive and thrive and show movies in movie theaters for decades to come because everyone went nuts and bought meme stocks this week.”

Yet, by converting their AMC debt holding to AMC stock, the Silver Lake equity firm has gotten hurt by a falling stock price, too. The conversion price for the bonds Silver Lake held was $13.51; Silver Lake cashed in on Wednesday, when AMC’s shares ended the day at $19.90, more than 400% better than the day before. Smart move, right? Well, AMC’s share price at publication time Friday was about $15 — but it closed Thursday at $8.63. So, unless Silver Lake found some other sucker to buy the stock before it bottomed out, they’ve been riding a roller coaster that at best has them about 5% to 7% ahead of their original position, with no guarantee of staying there.

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Source: Slashdot – ‘Meme Stock’ Rally Rescues AMC Theaters From 0 Million Debt

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Mediacom, a cable company with about 1.4 million Internet customers across 22 states, is telling heavy uploaders to reduce their data usage — even when those users are well below their monthly data caps. Mediacom’s fastest Internet plan offers gigabit download speeds and 50Mbps upload speeds with a monthly data cap of 6TB. But as Stop the Cap wrote in a detailed report on Wednesday, the ISP is “reach[ing] out to a growing number of its heavy uploaders and telling them to reduce usage or face a speed throttle or the possible closure of their account.” Mediacom told Ars that it is contacting heavy uploaders “more frequently than before” because of increased usage triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said that heavy uploaders “may be under their total bandwidth usage allowance but still have a negative impact on Mediacom’s network.”

Mediacom’s terms and conditions say the company charges $10 fees for each additional block of 50GB used by customers who exceed the data cap. But users may be warned about their usage long before they risk overage fees. One user in East Moline, Illinois, who described the predicament on a DSLReports forum in early January, said they paid for the 6TB plan “to make sure we wouldn’t go over the cap” and had never used more than 4TB. Another gigabit user in Missouri named Cory told Stop the Cap that the 6TB monthly cap “is way more than I will ever use, but I still received a warning letter claiming I was uploading too much. I discovered I used about 900GB over the last two months, setting up a cloud backup of my computer. At most I can send files at around 50Mbps, which they claim is interfering with other customers in my neighborhood. I don’t understand.” Mediacom is blaming the pandemic for its hidden limits on uploaders. “When contacted by Ars, Mediacom pointed to cable-industry statistics showing 31.8 percent growth in downstream traffic and 51.1 percent growth in upstream traffic since the pandemic ramped up in March 2020,” reports Ars.

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Source: Slashdot – Cable ISP Warns ‘Excessive’ Uploaders, Says Network Can’t Handle Heavy Usage