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Tag Archives: arts
4th Douglas Anderson School of the Arts teacher removed from the classroom – WJXT News4JAX
- 4th Douglas Anderson School of the Arts teacher removed from the classroom WJXT News4JAX
- Board of Ed has ‘grave concerns’ about failure to report additional 50 incidents at Duval Schools FirstCoastNews.com WTLV-WJXX
- Douglas Anderson department chair removed from classroom while under professional standards review ActionNewsJax.com
- Once on top, what’s ahead for Duval schools superintendent Diana Greene? The Florida Times-Union
- ‘My high school hell’: Letters from former Douglas Anderson students detail years of anguish involving accused teacher WJXT News4JAX
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Dark arts of politics: how ‘Team Jorge’ and Cambridge Analytica meddled in Nigerian election – The Guardian
- Dark arts of politics: how ‘Team Jorge’ and Cambridge Analytica meddled in Nigerian election The Guardian
- ‘Team Jorge’, threat to democracy: Israeli firm meddled in more than 30 elections • FRANCE 24 FRANCE 24 English
- Congress seeks probe into alleged use of Israeli firm ‘Team Jorge’ in elections in India The Tribune India
- Thursday briefing: The secret disinformation group who claim to influence elections worldwide The Guardian
- Israeli firm sought to discredit Red Cross in Burkina Faso at request of local gov’t The Times of Israel
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Chevron Rides High Oil Prices to Record $35.5 Billion Annual Profit
Chevron Corp.
CVX -4.44%
banked historic profit last year as the pandemic receded and the war in Ukraine pushed oil prices to multiyear highs, with its shares climbing 53% for the year while other sectors tumbled.
The U.S. oil company in its quarterly earnings reported Friday that it collected $35.5 billion in its highest-ever annual profit in 2022, more than double the prior year and about one-third higher than its previous record in 2011. Almost $50 billion in cash streamed in from its oil-leveraged operations, another record that is underpinning plans to pay investors through a new $75 billion share-repurchase program over the next several years.
That payout, announced Wednesday, is roughly equivalent to the stock-market value of companies such as the big-box retailer
Target Corp.
, the pharmaceutical firm
Moderna Inc.
and
Airbnb Inc.
Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company after
Exxon Mobil Corp.
, posted revenue of $246.3 billion, up from $162.5 billion the previous year. The San Ramon, Calif., company reported a fourth-quarter profit of $6.4 billion, up from $5.1 billion in the same period the prior year.
The fourth-quarter results came short of analyst expectations, and Chevron shares closed down more than 4% Friday.
For all of its recent winnings, though, Chevron and its rival oil-and-gas producers could face a rockier year in 2023, according to investors and analysts, if an anticipated slowdown in U.S. economic growth dents demand for oil, and if China’s reopening from strict Covid-19 restrictions unfolds slowly.
U.S. oil prices have held steady this year, but are off about 36% from last year’s peak. The industry is proceeding with caution, holding capital expenditures for 2023 below prepandemic levels and saying production will grow only modestly. Chevron has said it plans to spend about $17 billion in capital expenditures this year, up more than 25% from the prior year, but $3 billion less than it planned to spend in 2020 before Covid-19 took root.
Oil companies are still outperforming other sectors such as tech and finance, which have seen widespread job cuts in recent weeks. The energy segment of the S&P 500 index has climbed 43.7% over the past year, compared with a 6.7% drop for the broader index.
Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth said the company is unsure of what 2023 will bring after global energy supplies were squeezed because of geopolitical events last year, particularly in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said markets appeared to be stabilizing.
“We certainly have seen a very unusual and volatile year in 2022,” Mr. Wirth said, noting the European energy crisis has proven less dire than anticipated thanks to milder winter weather, growing natural gas inventories in Europe. “China’s economy has been slow throughout the year, which looks to be turning around. It’s good that markets have calmed.”
Chevron projects its output in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico to grow at a slower pace this year.
Photo:
David Goldman/Associated Press
Chevron hit a record in U.S. oil-and-gas production in 2022, increasing 4% to about 1.2 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, stemming from its increased focus on capital investments in the Western Hemisphere, particularly in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, where it boosted output 16% last year. Worldwide, Chevron’s oil-and-gas production was down 3.2% compared with the prior year, at 2.99 million barrels of oil-equivalent a day.
Its overall return on capital employed came in at 20%, it said.
“There aren’t many sectors generating the type of free cash flow that energy is right now,” said
Jeff Wyll,
an analyst at investment firm Neuberger Berman, which has invested in Chevron. “The sector really can’t be ignored. Given the supply-demand balance, you have to have some things go wrong here to see a pullback in oil prices.”
Even so, institutional investors have shown limited interest so far in returning to the energy sector, after years of poor returns and heightened concerns about their environmental impact prompted large financiers to sell off their stakes in oil-and-gas companies or stop investing in drillers outright.
Pete Bowden,
global head of industrial, energy and infrastructure banking at
Jefferies Financial Group Inc.,
said energy companies in the S&P 500 index are throwing off 12% of the group’s free-cash flow, but only account for about 5% of the index’s weighting—an indication their stock prices are lagging behind.
Investors’ concerns around environmental, social and governance-related issues are a constraint on the share prices of energy companies, “yet the earnings power of these businesses is superior to the earnings power of companies in other sectors,” he said.
Chevron and others have faced criticism from the Biden administration and others that they are giving priority to shareholder returns over pumping oil and gas at a time when global supplies are tight and Americans are feeling pain at the pump. On Thursday, the White House assailed Chevron’s $75 billion buyout program, saying the payout was proof the company could boost production but was choosing to reward investors instead.
Pierre Breber,
Chevron’s finance chief, said the company expects oil prices to be volatile but within a range needed to sustain its dividend and investments. There are some optimistic signs, he added, including that the U.S. economy grew faster than expected in the fourth quarter, at 2.9%.
“Supply is tight. Oil-field services are near capacity, and we continue to have sanctions on Russian production,” Mr. Breber said. “You’re seeing international flights out of China are way up, and low unemployment in the U.S.”
Mr. Breber said Chevron’s output in the Permian this year is expected to grow at a slower pace, around 10%, because it has exhausted much of its inventory of wells that it had drilled but hadn’t brought into production.
Exxon, which has typically posted quarterly earnings on the same day as Chevron, will report Tuesday. Analysts expect it will also post record profit for 2022, according to FactSet.
Both companies expect to slow their output growth this year in the Permian, considered their growth engine. The two U.S. oil majors, which had been growing output faster in the U.S. than most independent shale producers, are beginning to step up their focus on shareholder returns and allow output growth to ease, said Neal Dingmann, an analyst at Truist Securities.
“This has all been driven by investor requirements,” Mr. Dingmann said.
Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com
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Corporate Layoffs Spread Beyond High-Growth Tech Giants
The headline-grabbing expansion of layoffs beyond high-growth technology companies stands in contrast to historically low levels of jobless claims and news that companies such as
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.
and
Airbus SE
are adding jobs.
This week, four companies trimmed more than 10,000 jobs, just a fraction of their total workforces. Still, the decisions mark a shift in sentiment inside executive suites, where many leaders have been holding on to workers after struggling to hire and retain them in recent years when the pandemic disrupted workplaces.
Live Q&A
Tech Layoffs: What Do They Mean?
The creator of the popular layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi Roger Lee and the head of talent at venture firm M13 Matt Hoffman sit down with WSJ reporter Chip Cutter, to discuss what’s behind the recent downsizing and whether it will be enough to recalibrate ahead of a possible recession.
Unlike
Microsoft Corp.
and Google parent
Alphabet Inc.,
which announced larger layoffs this month, these companies haven’t expanded their workforces dramatically during the pandemic. Instead, the leaders of these global giants said they were shrinking to adjust to slowing growth, or responding to weaker demand for their products.
“We are taking these actions to further optimize our cost structure,”
Jim Fitterling,
Dow’s chief executive, said in announcing the cuts, noting the company was navigating “macro uncertainties and challenging energy markets, particularly in Europe.”
The U.S. labor market broadly remains strong but has gradually lost steam in recent months. Employers added 223,000 jobs in December, the smallest gain in two years. The Labor Department will release January employment data next week.
Economists from Capital Economics estimate a further slowdown to an increase of 150,000 jobs in January, which would push job growth below its 2019 monthly average, the year before pandemic began.
There is “mounting evidence of weakness below the surface,”
Andrew Hunter,
senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics wrote in a note to clients Thursday.
Last month, the unemployment rate was 3.5%, matching multidecade lows. Wage growth remained strong, but had cooled from earlier in 2022. The Federal Reserve, which has been raising interest rates to combat high inflation, is looking for signs of slower wage growth and easing demand for workers.
Many CEOs say companies are beginning to scrutinize hiring more closely.
Slower hiring has already lengthened the time it takes Americans to land a new job. In December, 826,000 unemployed workers had been out of a job for about 3½ to 6 months, up from 526,000 in April 2022, according to the Labor Department.
“Employers are hovering with their feet above the brake. They’re more cautious. They’re more precise in their hiring,” said
Jonas Prising,
chief executive of
ManpowerGroup Inc.,
a provider of temporary workers. “But they’ve not stopped hiring.”
Additional signs of a cooling economy emerged on Thursday when the Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product growth slowed to a 2.9% annual rate in the fourth quarter, down from a 3.2% annual rate in the third quarter.
Not all companies are in layoff mode.
Walmart Inc.,
the country’s biggest private employer, said this week it was raising its starting wages for hourly U.S. workers to $14 from $12, amid a still tight job market for front line workers. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. said Thursday it plans to hire 15,000 new employees to work in its restaurants, while plane maker Airbus SE said it is recruiting over 13,000 new staffers this year. Airbus said 9,000 of the new jobs would be based in Europe with the rest spread among the U.S., China and elsewhere.
General Electric Co.
, which slashed thousands of aerospace workers in 2020 and is currently laying off 2,000 workers from its wind turbine business, is hiring in other areas. “If you know any welders or machinists, send them my way,” Chief Executive
Larry Culp
said this week.
Annette Clayton,
CEO of North American operations at
Schneider Electric SE,
a Europe-headquartered energy-management and automation company, said the U.S. needs far more electricians to install electric-vehicle chargers and perform other tasks. “The shortage of electricians is very, very important for us,” she said.
Railroad CSX Corp. told investors on Wednesday that after sustained effort, it had reached its goal of about 7,000 train and engine employees around the beginning of the year, but plans to hire several hundred more people in those roles to serve as a cushion and to accommodate attrition that remains higher than the company would like.
Freeport-McMoRan Inc.
executives said Wednesday they expect U.S. labor shortages to continue to crimp production at the mining giant. The company has about 1,300 job openings in a U.S. workforce of about 10,000 to 12,000, and many of its domestic workers are new and need training and experience to match prior expertise, President
Kathleen Quirk
told analysts.
“We could have in 2022 produced more if we were fully staffed, and I believe that is the case again this year,” Ms. Quirk said.
The latest layoffs are modest relative to the size of these companies. For example, IBM’s plan to eliminate about 3,900 roles would amount to a 1.4% reduction in its head count of 280,000, according to its latest annual report.
The planned 3,000 job cuts at SAP affect about 2.5% of the business-software maker’s global workforce. Finance chief
Luka Mucic
said the job cuts would be spread across the company’s geographic footprint, with most of them happening outside its home base in Germany. “The purpose is to further focus on strategic growth areas,” Mr. Mucic said. The company employed around 111,015 people on average last year.
Chemicals giant Dow said on Thursday it was trimming about 2,000 employees. The Midland, Mich., company said it currently employs about 37,800 people. Executives said they were targeting $1 billion in cost cuts this year and shutting down some assets to align spending with the macroeconomic environment.
Manufacturer
3M Co.
, which had about 95,000 employees at the end of 2021, cited weakening consumer demand when it announced this week plans to eliminate 2,500 manufacturing jobs. The maker of Scotch tape, Post-it Notes and thousands of other industrial and consumer products said it expects lower sales and profit in 2023.
“We’re looking at everything that we do as we manage through the challenges that we’re facing in the end markets,” 3M Chief Executive
Mike Roman
said during an earnings conference call. “We expect the demand trends we saw in December to extend through the first half of 2023.”
Hasbro Inc.
on Thursday said it would eliminate 15% of its workforce, or about 1,000 jobs, after the toy maker’s consumer-products business underperformed in the fourth quarter.
Some companies still hiring now say the job cuts across the economy are making it easier to find qualified candidates. “We’ve got the pick of the litter,” said
Bill McDermott,
CEO of business-software provider
ServiceNow Inc.
“We have so many applicants.”
At
Honeywell International Inc.,
CEO
Darius Adamczyk
said the job market remains competitive. With the layoffs in technology, though, Mr. Adamczyk said he anticipated that the labor market would likely soften, potentially also expanding the applicants Honeywell could attract.
“We’re probably going to be even more selective than we were before because we’re going to have a broader pool to draw from,” he said.
Across the corporate sphere, many of the layoffs happening now are still small relative to the size of the organizations, said
Denis Machuel,
CEO of global staffing firm Adecco Group AG.
“I would qualify it more as a recalibration of the workforce than deep cuts,” Mr. Machuel said. “They are adjusting, but they are not cutting the muscle.”
Write to Chip Cutter at chip.cutter@wsj.com and Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Vince McMahon Plots Return to WWE
Vince McMahon,
the majority owner and former chief executive of
World Wrestling Entertainment Inc.,
WWE 2.26%
plans to return to the company following his retirement last year amid a sexual-harassment scandal to pursue a sale of the business, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. McMahon, who has majority voting power through his ownership of WWE’s Class-B stock, has told the company that he is electing himself and two former co-presidents and directors, Michelle Wilson and
George Barrios,
to the board, the people said. The move to reinstate Mr. McMahon, which the board previously rebuffed, and the others will require three current directors to vacate their positions.
Mr. McMahon, whose abrupt departure in July 2022 followed disclosures by The Wall Street Journal of multiple payouts to women who had alleged sexual misconduct and infidelity, expects he will be able to assume the role of executive chairman, though he would need board approval for that, the people said.
It isn’t clear where that would leave his daughter, Stephanie McMahon. After his departure, she took over as chairwoman and co-CEO alongside
Nick Khan,
the company’s former president.
The 77-year-old sent a letter to WWE’s board in late December detailing his desire to return to the company he ran for four decades, to help spearhead a strategic-review process, the people said. Mr. McMahon believes there is a narrow window to kick off a sales process because WWE’s media rights—including for its flagship programs “Raw” and “SmackDown”—are about to be renegotiated, according to the people.
Mr. McMahon believes the media landscape is evolving quickly and more companies are looking to own the intellectual property they use on their streaming platforms, making WWE an attractive takeover target, the people said. WWE, which generates most of its revenue from selling content rights, posted its first year of over $1 billion in revenue in 2021. The company currently has a market value of just over $5 billion.
The board responded last month in a letter to Mr. McMahon that it was prepared to initiate a review process and would welcome working with him on it. However, it said it unanimously agreed that Mr. McMahon’s return to the business wouldn’t be in shareholders’ best interest, according to people familiar with the letters.
The board also asked Mr. McMahon to confirm his commitment to repay expenses incurred by WWE related to an investigation of the allegations and requested that he agree not to return to the company during government probes of the matter, the people said. Mr. McMahon said in response that he remains willing to continue working to complete any reimbursement for reasonable expenses related to the investigation, to the extent they aren’t covered by insurance, but he declined to agree to not return to the company.
He has communicated to the board that unless he has direct involvement as executive chairman from the outset of a strategic review, he won’t support or approve any media-rights deal or sale, the people said.
Mr. McMahon retired as WWE chief executive and chairman in July amid a board investigation of sexual-misconduct claims against him. The Journal reported that he had agreed to pay more than $12 million in secret settlements since 2006 to his accusers.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors launched inquiries into the payments. WWE later disclosed additional payments in 2007 and 2009 totaling $5 million that it said were unrelated to the allegations of misconduct that led to its internal investigation.
WWE’s board ultimately found that the payments, though made by Mr. McMahon personally, should have been booked as WWE expenses because they benefited the company.
Mr. McMahon had told people that he intended to make a comeback at WWE, the Journal reported last month. He said that he received bad advice from people close to him last year to step down, according to the people familiar with his comments.
—Joe Palazzolo and Ted Mann contributed to this article.
Write to Lauren Thomas at lauren.thomas@wsj.com
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Getting Results—and Money—When Airlines Cancel Flights
Canceled or delayed flights can cost travelers money. Getting an airline to pay you back for expenses like hotel stays and rental cars isn’t impossible, but it can involve lots of legwork.
Southwest pledged to provide refunds to passengers on canceled or significantly delayed flights between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2, but the airline is also providing reimbursement for additional expenses including the cost of staying at a hotel or renting a car. Passengers were also given 25,000 frequent-flier points in a move by Southwest executives to win them back.
Airline passengers “have very few rights,” said
Paul Hudson,
president of FlyersRights, a consumer advocacy organization. Getting the remuneration that passengers believe they are entitled to can come down to perseverance and communicating extensively with the airline over an extended period.
Here’s what travelers need to know about their rights on domestic flights in the U.S. and how to get reimbursed.
My flight was canceled. Can I get a refund?
Airline customers are entitled to a refund if a flight is canceled for any reason or “significantly delayed” and they opt not to travel, according to rules from the Transportation Department. This policy extends to nonrefundable tickets. The DOT determines on a case-by-case basis whether passengers are entitled to a refund for a delayed flight.
While airlines are required to provide refunds in these circumstances if requested, they aren’t barred from offering other forms of redress first. Carriers will often offer a passenger the opportunity to rebook on another flight or a voucher or credit that could be used for future travel.
In these situations, customers will need to speak with an airline representative and request an “involuntary refund,” Mr. Hudson said. Not all customer-service staff will be familiar with this phrase, he warned, but he described it as “the magic words” to use to get a refund quickly.
I had to stay in a hotel because of a flight delay. Am I entitled to reimbursement?
Additional compensation beyond a refund of airfare and other fees isn’t required by the DOT. Still, most airlines have policies on what they will cover.
If a plane has a technical issue or the flight isn’t properly staffed, an airline’s compensation policy typically will kick in. If the delay or cancellation is due to weather, passengers may be out of luck getting assistance.
The DOT maintains a dashboard spelling out what is covered under the customer-service policies at the 10 largest domestic airlines in the U.S. in cases where cancellations or delays were under the carrier’s control. Each of these major airlines has put these policies in writing, making the commitments enforceable, a DOT spokeswoman said in an email.
My checked luggage went missing. What does the airline owe me?
If a checked bag is delayed, missing or damaged, the airline is liable and must reimburse the traveler. For domestic flights, airlines are only required to cover up to $3,800.
Apart from being required to reimburse passengers for the value of items that were lost or damaged, carriers must also compensate people for incidental expenses such as purchasing replacement clothing or medications. Airlines cannot set an arbitrary daily limit for those expenses, though they can require receipts or other proof for valuable items that were lost, according to the DOT.
I can’t rebook with my airline. Are they required to book me on another airline?
Before the airline industry was deregulated in the U.S. in the 1970s, carriers were required to rebook passengers with other airlines in instances where flights were canceled or delayed. “Now, it’s strictly voluntary,” said Mr. Hudson.
Some carriers have formal relationships with other airlines that allow them to rebook reservations at no additional cost, whereas others may buy tickets from competitors for stranded passengers. Southwest said it bought tickets on other airlines during its meltdown, and
Spirit
did the same during its 2021 meltdown.
I was bumped from my flight by my airline. Is that allowed?
Airlines have come under fire in recent years for the practice of overselling flights and then bumping passengers. The practice is allowed, as long as you haven’t boarded the plane. If you’ve already boarded, the airline can remove you from the flight for safety, security or health reasons.
If a passenger is involuntarily bumped, the carrier must provide a written statement of the flier’s rights and how the company decides who is bumped. They may be provided a refund, but they aren’t guaranteed additional compensation.
To be eligible for compensation, the traveler must have a confirmed reservation, have checked in on time and have arrived at the departure gate on time, the DOT states on its website.
If all those conditions apply—and the airline cannot rebook the passenger on a flight that gets them to their destination within one hour of their original scheduled arrival—compensation is calculated based on the price of the original ticket, the length of the delay and whether the flight is domestic or international. Compensation ranges from up to $775 for short delays to no more than $1,550 for longer delays.
Write to Jacob Passy at jacob.passy@wsj.com
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Vandals destroy 22,000-year-old sacred cave art in Australia
In a flat, arid stretch of southern Australia, the Koonalda Cave is home to art that dates back 22,000 years — a sacred site for the indigenous Mirning People and a discovery that transformed scientists’ understanding of history.
That protected cave and its art have now been vandalized with graffiti, devastating the indigenous Mirning community as authorities search for the culprits.
“Earlier this year it was discovered that the cave had been unlawfully accessed and a section of the delicate finger flutings had been vandalized, with damage scratched across them into the side of the cave,” a government spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.
The flutings are grooves drawn by the fingers of ice age humans across the soft limestone cave walls.
“The vandalism of Koonalda Cave is shocking and heartbreaking. Koonalda Cave is of significant importance to the Mirning People, and its tens of thousands of years of history show some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation in that part of the country,” the spokesperson said.
“If these vandals can be apprehended they should face the full force of the law.”
The vandals were not deterred by fences at the caves, so the South Australia state government is now considering installing security cameras and has been consulting traditional owners “over recent months” on how to better protect the site, the spokesperson added.
However, Bunna Lawrie, a senior Mirning elder and the custodian of Koonalda, said he hadn’t heard about the vandalism until local media reported it this week.
“We are the traditional custodians of Koonalda and ask for this to be respected and for our Mirning elders to be consulted,” he said in a statement.
The incident has frustrated the Mirning People, who say their previous repeated requests for higher security went unheeded.
As a sacred site, it is closed to the public and only accessible to a few male elders in the community, the group said in a statement. Apart from the cave’s spiritual significance, the restrictions are also to protect the delicate art, some of which is etched into the cave floor.
Despite the legal protections, the group said it has still received requests to allow public access to Koonalda.
“We have opposed opening our sacred place, as this would breach the protocols that have protected Koonalda for so long. Since 2018 we have been asking for support to secure the entrance as a priority and to offer appropriate Mirning signage. This support did not happen,” the statement said.
“Instead, there has been damage done in recent years that includes the cave entrance collapsing, following access works that we were not consulted on and (were) not approved.”
It added that as a site that represented the link to Mirning ancestors and home lands, Koonalda “is more than just a precious work of art, this runs deep in our blood and identity.”
Cave significance
For decades, Australian scientists believed the country’s indigenous people had only existed on the land for about 8,000 years.
Koonalda Cave was the first place in Australia with indigenous rock art that could be dated back 22,000 years — upending the scientific community’s understanding of Australian history.
“The discovery caused a sensation and forever changed the then accepted notions about where, when and how Aboriginal people lived on the Australian continent,” said Greg Hunt, then-environment minister in 2014 when Koonalda was designated a National Heritage List site.
The cave art dating was assessed through archeological remains and finger markings, then confirmed using radiocarbon technology, according to the country’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
Apart from the finger flutings, the cave also had a second type of rock art, with lines cut into harder limestone sections using a sharp tool. The walls feature patterns of horizontal and vertical lines cut into a V-shape, according to a government site.
The cave and its art have been overseen and protected by Mirning elders for generations, the Mirning statement said.
“All of our elders are devastated, shocked and hurt by the recent desecration of this site,” Lawrie said. “We are in mourning for our sacred place. Koonalda is like our ancestor. Our ancestor left his spirit in the wall, of the story, of the songline.”
How Harold Edgerton’s ‘Bullet through Apple’ made time stand still
In Snap, we look at the power of a single photograph, chronicling stories about how both modern and historical images have been made.
Exploding with energy but perfectly still, Harold “Doc” Edgerton’s 1964 image of a .30-caliber bullet ripping through an apple showed an otherwise unseeable moment in captivating detail. The scene took on a serene, sculptural beauty as the disintegrating apple’s skin burst open against a deep blue backdrop.
The picture is widely viewed as a work of art. More importantly to its creator, however, it was also a feat of electrical engineering. The longtime Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor used it to illustrate a lecture, famously titled “How to make applesauce,” in which he explained the pioneering flash technology that helped him take the shot.
Edgerton, who died in 1990 aged 86, is considered the father of high-speed photography. Camera shutter speeds were too slow to capture a bullet flying at 2,800 feet per second, but his stroboscopic flashes — a precursor to modern-day strobe lights — created bursts of light so short that a well-timed photograph, taken in an otherwise dark room, made it appear as if time had stood still. The results were mesmerizing and, often, messy.
“We used to joke that that it took a third of a microsecond (one-millionth of a second) to take the picture — and all morning to clean up,” recalled his former student and teaching assistant, J. Kim Vandiver, on a video call from Massachusetts.
While early camera operators had experimented with pyrotechnic “flash powders” that combined metallic fuels and oxidizing agents to produce a short, bright chemical reaction, Nebraska-born Edgerton created a flash that was far shorter and easier to control. His breakthrough was more a matter of physics than chemistry: After he arrived at MIT in the 1920s, he developed a flashtube filled with xenon gas that, when subjected to high voltage, would cause electricity to jump between two electrodes for a fraction of a second.
By the time he fired the shutter for his now-famous apple photo, Edgerton had developed a microflash that used plain air rather than xenon. He had also produced decades’ worth of well-known images: hummingbirds in mid-flight, golf clubs hitting balls and even nuclear bomb blasts. (During World War II, Edgerton developed a special “rapatronic” — or rapid electronic — camera for the Atomic Energy Commission that could control the amount of light entering the camera during the explosions.)
Another of Edgerton’s famous photos, taken in 1957, shows the crown-like splash produced by milk droplets. Credit: Harold Edgerton/MIT; courtesy Palm Press
Yet, it was his 1960s bullet photos that proved some of this most memorable. According to Vandiver, who still works at MIT as a mechanical engineering professor, the challenge wasn’t producing a flash but setting the camera off at just the right time. Human reactions were too slow to take the photo manually, so Edgerton used the sound of the bullet itself as a trigger.
“There would be a microphone out of the picture, just down below,” Vandiver said. “So, when the shock wave from the bullet hit the microphone, the microphone tripped the flash and then you’d close the (shutter afterwards).”
Making of an icon
Over the years, Edgerton and his students took a rifle to objects including bananas, balloons and playing cards. For Vandiver, the reason why the apple — along with a 1957 image of a splashing milk droplet — became one of Edgerton’s defining photographs is, in part, its simplicity. “It catches your imagination… and you immediately understand what it is,” he said.
There was another factor at play: Edgerton’s artistic eye. The compositional beauty of his images saw them republished in newspapers and magazines around the world, and over 100 of his photos are held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum today. Yet Edgerton rejected the additional title.
“Don’t make me out to be an artist,” he has been quoted as saying. “I am an engineer. I am after the facts, only the facts.”
While Vandiver said “there’s definitely an artistic legacy” to Edgerton’s visual experiments, which advanced the field of photography, his research has greatly impacted science and industry, too. His hands-on approach lives on at MIT’s Edgerton Center, which was established in his honor in 1992. Vandiver, who serves as the center’s director, said every student is encouraged to take a bullet photograph of their own.
“We still teach the course, and students still think of weird things to take pictures of,” he said, recalling recent images of colored chalk and lipstick torn apart by bullets. “Apples are boring now.”
FTC’s Tussle With Microsoft Puts Spotlight on Cloud Gaming
Cloud gaming is an emerging technology that allows people to stream videogames to nearly any internet-connected device, similar to how movies and shows are viewed on
Netflix,
Hulu and other streaming platforms.
The business model being developed alongside cloud gaming is a subscription service, where consumers get to play a catalog of games for a flat monthly or annual fee. With cloud gaming, players can avoid downloading games to their devices, which takes up memory, and they don’t need to invest in hardware such as a console or high-end computer.
The FTC and videogame industry participants anticipate cloud gaming will become a much larger part of the market in years to come. With its lawsuit, the FTC says it is protecting the videogame-distribution market—as it is today and how it is expected to evolve—from being dominated by a few companies.
Microsoft is an early leader in cloud gaming with its Xbox Game Pass subscription service. The company’s $75 billion deal for Activision would bolster its content library, adding several blockbuster franchises including “Call of Duty,” “World of Warcraft” and “Candy Crush Saga.”
Microsoft, which has pledged to fight the FTC’s suit, has said it is an underdog in the existing console market, with Xbox’s position trailing
Sony Group Corp.’s
PlayStation and
Nintendo Co.
’s Switch. The company doesn’t disclose Xbox sales by volume.
The technology giant has also said that it has no meaningful presence in mobile, the biggest corner of the overall videogame industry by revenue.
Apple Inc.
and
Alphabet Inc.’s
Google, makers of the predominant smartphone operating systems, play a critical role in how people access mobile games, and they take a cut of developers’ in-app and subscription sales.
Xbox Game Pass, which Microsoft launched in 2017, offers a library of hundreds of games for subscribers to play starting at $9.99 a month. The basic plan allows subscribers to download individual games on their Xbox or PC to play whenever they want. For $14.99 a month, subscribers can play some of those games via the cloud, all part of Microsoft’s ambitions to build a “Netflix of gaming.” The company in January said Game Pass had 25 million subscribers.
Global consumer spending on cloud-gaming services and games streamed via the cloud will reach a combined $2.4 billion by the end of this year, according to an estimate from Newzoo BV. That is a tiny fraction—1.4%—of the $184.4 billion in overall spending on videogame software.
Sony, which has aggressively lobbied governments around the world to oppose the Microsoft-Activision tie-up, and others have attempted to grow their own cloud-gaming subscription services. Microsoft, for now, is the dominant player, accounting for 60% of the overall cloud-gaming business last year, according to an estimate from research firm Omdia.
Microsoft is an early leader in cloud gaming with its Xbox Game Pass subscription service.
Photo:
etienne laurent/Shutterstock
The FTC appears concerned that it “can’t see the unintended consequences even just a few years down the road for an acquisition like this,” said
Paul Swanson,
a Denver-based antitrust lawyer at Holland & Hart LLP. “What they’re saying here is we’re going to err on the side of preserving as many independent competitors as we can.”
Over the past decade, Microsoft has poured billions into its cloud operations primarily for selling software and infrastructure for enterprise customers. It is now building out a separate cloud infrastructure to power its videogaming ambitions, which have been under development since it launched its first Xbox console in 2001.
Cloud gaming hasn’t been an easy business to navigate. The technology is difficult for companies to execute smoothly because games need to support multiple players with minimal delay regardless of where players are located. Earlier this year, Google shut down its game-streaming service, Stadia, after struggling to gain traction with users.
Microsoft remains heavily invested in its Xbox hardware, but cloud gaming gives it an opportunity to reach more gamers. It wants to build its own mobile app store, a move it says would create more competition in mobile videogames, not less. The Redmond, Wash., company has argued that Apple and Google’s app marketplaces have policies that pose technical and financial barriers to its goals.
Representatives for Apple and Google didn’t respond to requests for comment. Apple has said that it doesn’t prevent cloud-gaming apps from appearing in the App Store and that it isn’t trying to block their emergence.
Industry researcher and academic
Joost van Dreunen
said Microsoft’s mobile move would likely benefit the videogame ecosystem by diminishing Apple and Google’s grip.
Microsoft has said it is an underdog in the console market, with Xbox trailing consoles such as Nintendo’s Switch.
Photo:
Guillaume Payen/Zuma Press
“It breaks down the so-called walled-garden strategy that has dominated the game industry for 20 years,” he said.
Since Microsoft announced its deal for Activision, which it values at nearly $69 billion after adjusting for the developers’ net cash, some videogame players have been concerned about what it means for industry competition.
Steve Schweitzer of State College, Pa., is worried that Microsoft will raise the price of Game Pass over time. He said that it is affordable now but that in a few years, if Microsoft becomes more dominant, it could bump up the price and start cutting back on quality. Mr. Schweitzer, 55 years old, said he remembers back in the 1990s when Microsoft was able to use its market power to capture market share in the browser wars. “I’ve seen this game before,” he said.
Before its lawsuit, the FTC had been reviewing the deal for months. Regulators in other jurisdictions, including the European Union and the United Kingdom, are doing the same. The company has gained approval for the deal in smaller markets such as Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com and Aaron Tilley at aaron.tilley@wsj.com
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