Amazon Wants You To Pay $120 For A Glorified Library Card

Amazon officially unveiled an all-you-can-read subscription service on Friday that gives you access to more e-books than you could ever finish.

That's right, never have more books been available to you -- unless you have a public library card.

The service, "Kindle Unlimited," is essentially an e-book version of your free neighborhood library, except it costs money. For $9.99 a month, or about $120 a year, you can read more than 600,000 e-books and 2,000 audiobooks. (It also comes with a three-month Audible membership, giving you access to another 150,000 audiobooks.) In its press release, Amazon highlighted available selections like those of the "Harry Potter," "Lord of the Rings" and "Hunger Games" series.

The argument for Amazon's service and against buying a freaking library card is that going to the library requires putting pants on and... going to the library. But library systems from New York to Los Angeles actually do lend e-books for free over the Internet, meaning you can download them in your home with your pants off.

Still, plenty of people will choose Amazon over their government-run library system because they will expect Kindle Unlimited to be faster and more convenient to use, since speed and convenience are two things Amazon's proven to be good at. Also, Amazon knows Americans love Amazon and like to buy things from it.

Similar services already exist for slightly less money, like Oyster Books ($9.95 per month) and Scribd ($8.99 per month). But both of those services have smaller book selections than Kindle Unlimited (500,000 and 400,000 titles, respectively).

Offering e-books on the cheap should do nothing to ease tensions between Amazon and book publisher Hachette. Though no one's exactly sure what the dispute between the two is about, there are reports it's over e-book prices. The only way Amazon can sell cheap e-book subscriptions is if it's able to secure cheap e-book rights, so an e-book squabble would make some sense.

If you're resigned to the fact that it's basically impossible to quit Amazon, no matter what it does, you can start a free 30-day trial for Kindle Unlimited here.

Time Warner Acquisition Would Make Rupert Murdoch A U.S. Media King

(Recasts, adding quote from Bewkes)

By Soyoung Kim and Liana B. Baker

NEW YORK, July 16 (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox Inc made an audacious offer for Time Warner Inc that if it succeeds would transform the American media landscape and cement the 83-year-old's status as the most powerful magnate in U.S. media and entertainment.

While Time Warner, whose assets include the HBO cable channel and the Warner Bros movie studio, rejected the $80 billion bid, Murdoch is unlikely to abandon the pursuit and has the "disciplined determination" to get the deal done, people close to the situation said. Investors expect he will eventually raise the offer and increase the cash component - 40 percent - to win the prize.

Murdoch's proposal, fresh on the heels of his high-profile divorce and a damaging phone-hacking scandal that involved his British tabloids, is aggressively bold even for a media mogul whose ambitions are legendary.

A combined Fox-Time Warner would have a massive array of media and sports content and be in a very powerful negotiating position with cable and satellite distributors - some of whom have themselves announced mega-deals and newer ways of getting to consumers, such as online video distributors Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc.

"It's a chance to put some great programming and content assets under one umbrella," a person close to the situation said. "There are other alternatives, but none of them fit anywhere near as well as this does."

Still, Time Warner pushed back strongly against Murdoch's approach, insisting the offer undervalued the media conglomerate and raising fears about the dominating role that his family would play, another person close to the situation said on Wednesday.

In particular, the board is worried about the future value of Fox's shares, which represented 60 percent of its cash-and-stock proposal. Those fears were magnified by a lack of voting rights, the source said, as that would concentrate too much power in the hands of Murdoch and his sons.

"To do a merger of this scale and size where Time Warner shareholders have no insight into the destiny of the company is very troubling," the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told Reuters.

Time Warner Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Bewkes told the conglomerate's employees in a videotaped appearance that the company's standalone strategic plan would create value "superior to any proposal" that Fox could offer.

The acquisition, if ever completed, would mark the second-largest media deal ever, when debt is included, trailing only Time Warner's disastrous takeover of AOL in 2000.

In the end, a Time Warner deal is likely to hinge on price. The source pointed out that Fox's stock has traded at the highest multiple of its peer group and Time Warner - prior to its 17 percent rally on Wednesday - was trading at the lowest. Time Warner worries that the stock - the main "currency" of the deal - may be ripe for a pullback, lowering the value that is currently on the table.

According to StarMine SmartEstimates, Fox shares trade at a multiple of about 19.5 times 12-month forward earnings, above the group median of 17.8 and now in line with Time Warner's 19.5 times - a valuation substantially above where the shares closed on Tuesday.

Shares of Fox dropped 6.2 percent to $33.

The offer, first reported by The New York Times, was worth about $80 billion, or $85 a share, when it was made in June.

Fox estimates that a combined company, which would have $60 billion in annual revenue, would save $1 billion in costs and possibly more, the people familiar with the matter said.

Detailed negotiations with Time Warner could reveal even more potential savings, they said, which may then justify sweetening the offer.



Fox said no talks were under way, and it has no desire to go hostile or to bid against itself with a higher offer, the people familiar with the matter said.

Either way, a takeover by Fox could win the blessing of many of Time Warner's shareholders, a majority of whom also own Fox's non-voting stock. In addition, Time Warner does not have a staggered board and its bylaws allow as few as 15 percent of shareholders to call a special meeting, factors that could help a takeover bid.

A number of Time Warner shareholders said Twenty-First Century Fox and Murdoch might have to raise the bid to as high as $95 per share from $85 when the bid was made in June to wrap up a merger. Murdoch also would do well to offer more cash upfront, investors said.

Time Warner has no controlling shareholder, meaning the company could easily go into play, said Ken Griffin, founder and chief executive of Citadel LLC, which owns shares in both companies. "It's going to be tough to say no," he said during a conference in New York.

Mario Gabelli, chairman and CEO of Gamco Investors, said he expects a technology company with more cash than Fox, such as Apple or Amazon, could emerge with a bid.

"It's not a dynamic I want to dismiss out of hand. They have a currency, and they understand the value of content," he said of the tech companies." Gamco's funds own about 3.6 million shares of Time Warner and about 10.5 million Fox shares.


SEEKING DANCE PARTNERS

Fox's overtures are likely to reverberate across the industry, accelerating a wave of consolidation that is already well underway.

Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable provider, offered in February to buy Time Warner Cable Inc for $45.2 billion in stock. Overseas, Fox's 39 percent-owned British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc is negotiating to buy Fox's Sky Italia and its Sky Deutschland subsidiary in a deal that could net Fox as much as $13 billion.

As a consequence of the Murdoch bid, "the urgency to find a dance partner will increase across the sector," said Bernstein Research analyst Todd Juenger.

U.S. media shares closed higher on the deal, with top gainers including Discovery Communications Inc, up 6.3 percent; Viacom Inc, which rose 3.3 percent; and AMC Networks Inc, ending 4.5 percent higher.

Murdoch started thinking about a potential merger with Time Warner as he was separating Twenty-First Century Fox, which mostly consists of media properties, from News Corp, focused on the Wall Street Journal and other publishing assets, people familiar with the company said.

The separation, triggered by the British phone-hacking scandal which dragged Murdoch before the British parliament, has in the end positioned Fox to become a powerful consolidator of media properties, people familiar with the matter said.

Fox has indicated it would sell Time Warner's CNN cable channel, a direct competitor of Fox News, to clear any regulatory hurdles, according to the people.

At least one antitrust expert, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said it was unlikely that any issues that arise would kill a Fox deal for Time Warner. The source pointed out that there were five major content companies in the United States, plus numerous smaller ones.

News of the Time Warner bid comes as Fox is reorganizing its television business, aiming to lift its network out of last place among the big U.S. broadcasters.

Fox is being advised by Goldman Sachs and Centerview Partners, while Time Warner is working with Citigroup, people familiar with the matter said. JPMorgan Chase & Co and Goldman Sachs would lead any financing required for the bid.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is providing legal advice to Fox, while Cravath, Swaine & Moore is legal adviser to Time Warner. (Additional reporting by Soham Chatterjee in Bangalore, Ross Kerber in Boston Luciana Lopez in New York and Diane Bartz in Washington; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty , Lisa Von Ahn and Bernard Orr)

These Workers Can Only Spend 6 Minutes In The Bathroom Each Day

Roughly the time it takes to microwave a frozen meal or play two pop songs back-to-back is all the time a group of union workers say they have for all of their daily bathroom breaks, according to a new complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

During a protest before work last Wednesday, Teamsters union members at the WaterSaver Faucet Co. in Chicago told a local CBS affiliate they filed a complaint with the NLRB over a company policy that penalizes workers for spending more than 30 minutes per week -- which breaks down to just six minutes a day -- for bathroom breaks.

“This year, they installed a washroom monitoring system that basically keeps track of every minute you’re in the bathroom,” Teamsters Local 743 business agent Nick Kreitman told CBS Chicago.

The union said as of June, WaterSaver had already "unfairly" disciplined 19 workers for "excessive use" of the bathroom.

The company, which make faucets on a manufacturing line, reportedly installed a system that requires workers to swipe in and out of the bathroom earlier this year. But the union told Progress Illinois the disciplinary action for going over the bathroom time limit is recent -- and, perhaps not coincidentally, it came after tense labor contract negotiations during which members asked for paid sick days and health care benefits.

WaterSaver owner Steven Kersten told the Chicago Tribune the workers' current contract allows for a 10-minute morning break, a 30-minute lunch and 15-minute afternoon break. Kersten, who admitted to CNN he doesn't have to swipe in to use the bathroom, said the company lost 120 hours of productivity in May due to unscheduled bathroom breaks.

Kersten told CNN that as an incentive to employees, the company has a rewards system under which workers can earn a gift card of up to $20 each month -- $1 a day -- if they don't use the bathroom at all during work.

The union, meanwhile, says monitoring the workers' bathroom time is an invasion of privacy.

"I'm 61 years old," Rudy Dixon, a 33 year veteran of the company, told Progress Illinois. "How are you going to tell me how to use the bathroom?"

Sheldon Adelson, Warren Buffett, And Bill Gates Chastise House GOP On Immigration

Three of the world's richest men are calling on Congress to pass legislation that would overhaul the nation's immigration system and provide some sort of path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Casino magnate and conservative donor Sheldon Adelson joined Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates to criticize House Republicans, in particular, for failing to address current policy, which they said "borders on insanity."

"Whatever the precise provisions of a law, it’s time for the House to draft and pass a bill that reflects both our country’s humanity and its self-interest," they wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Thursday night.

The likelihood of any immigration reform bill moving through the House is currently slim to none given opposition from conservative members and Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) unwillingness to bring it to the floor without the support of a majority of his caucus. Despite those obstacles, the three men, who are worth a combined $184.3 billion according to Bloomberg, urged Republicans to listen to reason.

"A Congress that does nothing about these problems is extending an irrational policy by default; that is, if lawmakers don’t act to change it, it stays the way it is, irrational," they added. "The current stalemate -- in which greater pride is attached to thwarting the opposition than to advancing the nation’s interests -- is depressing to most Americans and virtually all of its business managers. The impasse certainly depresses the three of us.

"Signs of a more productive attitude in Washington -- which passage of a well-designed immigration bill would provide -- might well lift spirits and thereby stimulate the economy. It’s time for 535 of America’s citizens to remember what they owe to the 318 million who employ them."

Read the whole op-ed at The New York Times.

Apple Patent Hints The 'iPhone 6' Will Be Made Of Indestructible Glass

A new Apple patent gives more weight to rumors that the next iPhone will be made of a nearly indestructible type of glass.

Apple won a patent this week for “fused glass device housings," a new method of fusing together pieces of glass, which could be used to make casings for devices like the iPhone and iPad, Apple Insider reports.

The patent award comes amid rumors that the front panel of Apple's next phone, which may or may not be called the "iPhone 6," will be built with a super-durable substance known as sapphire glass. Tech vlogger Marques Brownlee on Monday uploaded a YouTube video demonstrating just how unbreakable iPhone's sapphire-glass front could be. Brownlee scratched it with a knife and a set of keys and bent it to more than 90 degrees under his shoe, all without leaving a mark.

The new patent suggests that the entire "iPhone 6" outer casing could be made of sapphire glass, Apple Insider points out. Apple applied a while back for a patent for "sapphire laminates," a hint it was trying to figure out how to use sapphire glass to make casings.

According to the new patent, Apple has figured out a way to build an all-glass device that would still be durable and lightweight, essentially by fusing multiple pieces of glass together rather than designing casings out of a single slab. Rough sketches from the filing show how the glass can be fused together to create boxy or rounded casings, with cutouts for buttons and charger ports.

This drawing from the patent filing shows an electronic device and supporting stand made of the fused glass casing.

A frontal view of an "an illustrative portable electronic device such as a cellular telephone," according to the patent.

A sketch of a media player with the fused glass casing.

The patent, which can be viewed in full here, lists Apple Senior Vice President of Design Jonathan Ive as one of the inventors. It was filed in January 2012 but was only awarded on Tuesday.

A sapphire-glass casing could ease fears about Apple returning to the famously breakable glass construction of the iPhone 4 and 4S (it switched to metal bodies for the 5 and 5S).

If the piece of glass Brownlee tested actually was a prototype of a new iPhone's sapphire-glass front panel, it appears to be a vast improvement on the shatter-prone Gorilla Glass that Apple has long used. Apple may be betting that sapphire glass can offer both the aesthetic pleasure of early iPhones and the durability of the newer ones.

No guarantees, but butterfingered Apple fans might want to be cautiously optimistic.

Read an excerpt from the patent filing below:

Washington State Sells Legal Weed, World Does Not End

Washington state completed its first day of legal, recreational marijuana sales -- and the world did not end.

Despite fewer than 10 shops opening across the state and concerns about a possible shortage of legal marijuana, the handful of open shops were met with throngs of exuberant shoppers and resulted in thousands of bags of weed sold.

"We had a line out the store, around the block, for most of the day," John Evich, an investor in Top Shelf Cannabis in the city of Bellingham, told The Huffington Post. Top Shelf Cannabis, the state's first official retail outlet to sell the drug legally, opened at 8 a.m. Tuesday. Evich said that while total revenue for the day from each register in the shop was still being calculated, the store processed about 1,100 transactions and saw about 2,500 shoppers in the store.

Top Shelf was able to secure about 18 pounds of retail cannabis for opening day, Evich said, and had sold well over 2,000 grams by the time the shop closed at 10 p.m.

Seattle's only dispensary, Cannabis City, opened at "high noon" on Tuesday with about 10 pounds of marijuana to sell. Owner James Lathrop told HuffPost last week that he expected his shop to sell out. But while he served more than 700 shoppers on Tuesday, Lathrop told Seattle PI's "Pot Blog" they "still have plenty for tomorrow and the next day."

Altitude dispensary, the only marijuana shop to open in rural Prosser, about 200 miles southeast of Seattle, opened early Tuesday morning, but closed mid-day -- not because the shop ran out of product, but because it decided to cap its total shoppers for the day at 300, each limited to single-gram purchases.

"We are the first shop in this area and we wanted to be able to serve all the people in it, this way we'll be able to stay open all week," said Manel Valenzuela, spokesman for Altitude. The shop plans on keeping staggered hours and likely will continue to cap the total amount of shoppers each day until marijuana supply is more readily available.

"The turnout, the process, the customers -- it was an awesome experience, a very positive environment," Valenzuela said. He noted that law enforcement was present nearby and patrolling during the day, but stopped about one or two hours after the shop opened and it was clear everything was proceeding peacefully.

"We had one, maybe two protestors," Valenzuela added. "But they left after about 15 minutes."

Freedom Market, a dispensary about 130 miles south of Seattle in the city of Kelso, faced long delays in getting its shop open on Tuesday due to supply problems.

"We thought we were going to open at noon, with a delivery at 11:30 that morning, but due to a series of problems that the producers had getting the product to us, our marijuana didn't arrive until 8:30 p.m.," Kathleen Nelson, Freedom Market's owner, told HuffPost. Nelson said she ordered pizzas for the roughly 100 loyal shoppers who waited all day to get an opportunity to legally purchase marijuana for the first time in the state.

"We started selling around 9:30 p.m. and had a steady stream of customers until about midnight," Nelson said, adding that the shop started with more than one pound of marijuana to sell and by the end of the night had sold about half of its supply.

"It was great and exciting, it was a wonderful day, despite all of the delays," Nelson said. "We'll open again Wednesday and have some more product coming in Thursday. It may be rough for about a month or so, but by August when more producers come online, the supply problems should get much better."

The first retail marijuana-growing licenses weren't issued until March of this year by the state's Liquor Control Board, the agency charged with regulating the nascent industry. That left only a few months for producers and processors to grow enough weed to supply the stores that would be open on Tuesday. Only 79 licenses for marijuana producers and processors had been approved by the time the first shops opened this week.

Unsurprisingly, that low supply of product raised prices. Legal marijuana was selling as high as $25 to $30 a gram, shop owners told HuffPost. But supply held steady for all the shops, none of which sold out by end of day and all of which were expected to be open again Wednesday.

Only five retail marijuana shops, out of a total of 24 licensed shops statewide, were able to open on the first historic day of sales. A sixth shop, 2020 Solutions, located in Bellingham, was unable to open as expected due to some problems with state-licensed marijuana processors, according to the Bellingham Herald.

In November 2013, the LCB opened the application process for retail marijuana businesses. Unsurprisingly, there was a flood of applications.

"We had a 30-day window beginning Nov. 20 and [the applications] just poured in," recalled Brian Smith, communications director for the state Liquor Control Board. "We received somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 applications."

The LCB has stopped accepting applications and capped the number of recreational marijuana shops at 334. But just as in Colorado, there are dozens of local bans and moratoriums on recreational marijuana shops across the state, so it may take some time for all those state-allotted retail outlets to open.

In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first U.S. states to approve adult-use marijuana. Colorado's first retail marijuana shops opened in January and have since seen soaring revenue. In the first week, the first several dozen shops in Colorado collectively raked in more than $5 million. To date, with more than 100 shops now open, recreational marijuana retailers have generated sales of about $70 million.

Ousted American Apparel CEO Fights Back, Now Owns 43 Percent Of Company

NEW YORK (AP) — The battle for control of clothing chain American Apparel is heating up.

Ousted American Apparel CEO Dov Charney has increased his stake in the clothing chain to nearly 43 percent as he fights to keep control of the company he founded in 1998. Charney was able to increase his stake through a partnership with financial firm Standard General, which is loaning him the money. But the board is scrambling to make its own moves to keep him out.

Legal experts say the dispute will likely end up in the courts at a tough time for the Los Angeles-based company, which has lost money since 2010. The company, which made its name with American-made goods and provocative advertising, is in a cash squeeze.

"This is going to move from the boardroom to the courtroom," said Jerry Reisman, a partner at Reisman, Peirez, Reisman Capobianco, a law firm based in New York. "Hopefully, it won't undermine the company. This company is very fragile."

In regulatory filings this week, Charney reports he now owns 74.6 million shares as of Friday. Previously, his stake was 27 percent.

Charney also sent a letter last week to the board seeking a meeting of stockholders on Sept. 25 for the purpose of expanding the board to 15 members, according to the filing. The company said in a regulatory filing late Monday that Charney's request is "invalid" and "improper" because he was suspended as CEO and relieved of all powers to act on the behalf of the company.

As a result, American Apparel doesn't intend to call a meeting and "intends to vigorously contest any action seeking to compel the company to do so."

American Apparel on Saturday adopted a shareholder rights plan, commonly called a "poison pill," a day after a bid from Charney to increase his control. A poison pill seeks to prevent hostile takeovers by diluting the value of a would-be acquirer's investment.

The documents, filed last Friday, showed that he had entered into a five-year loan agreement with investment firm Standard General LP to increase his stake. According to the terms, Standard General is loaning Charney money to buy at least 10 percent of American Apparel's outstanding shares. The loan will use Charney's stock as collateral.

The poison pill can be activated in two ways: if a person or group acquires 15 percent or more ownership of the company's stock or if a person or group who already owns 15 percent or more of the company's stock buys an additional 1 percent or more.

The plan stipulates the poison pill will be triggered if Charney make an additional move to buy shares by himself or with the help of others beyond his agreement with Standard General.

The Los Angeles-based retailer said early Saturday that the "poison pill" move, made by a special committee of its board of directors, is designed to limit the ability of any person or group, including Charney, "to seize control of the company without appropriately compensating all American Apparel stockholders."

With a 43 percent stake, Charney has to persuade holders of 7 percent of the company's shares before he can exert control on the company. But American Apparel is stalling the process for any shakeup in the board by changing the bylaws. In a regulatory filing Monday, it stipulated that the board has 10 days following a stockholder request after which the board has another 10 days to set a record date.

Reisman noted that American Apparel should look for a financial partner that could make an investment in exchange for newly issued shares.

Randy Katz, a partner at law firm BakerHostetler in Los Angeles, said he was puzzled about why Charney did not or could not acquire the additional 7 percent.

On June, 18, the American Apparel's board fired Charney as chairman and suspended him as president and CEO. His contract requires a 30-day period before he can be terminated. The board cited "alleged misconduct."

Charney has been the subject of several lawsuits alleging inappropriate sexual conduct with female employees. He has acknowledged having sexual relationships with workers, but said they were consensual.

Shares are down 9 cents to 81 cents in early afternoon trading. They've fallen 27 percent this year.

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