An Amazon Prime subscriber has a significant problem with the companys implementation of ads on Prime Video and filed a class action lawsuit on Friday challenging the move.
The plaintiff, who lives in California, leveled allegations of misleading advertising and consumer protection law breaches against Amazon in connection to its “unfair” change to ads on Prime Video. The court filing was published and earlier reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
The lawsuit comes about a week and a half after the company started automatically showing limited ads to US subscribers and asking those looking to continue streaming without them to pay an extra charge each month. The fee to go ad-free is $2.99.
The plaintiff asked the court to certify it as a class action covering people who paid for an annual Amazon Prime membership before Dec. 28 of last year. He also urged the court to grant other relief like an injunction “prohibiting Defendants deceptive conduct,” various damages and a jury trial, according to the filing.
In the lawsuit, it argued consumers “who subscribed to Amazon Prime before the change reasonably expected that their Amazon Prime subscription would include ad-free streaming of movies and tv shows for the duration of the subscription” due to advertising the e-commerce giant had done over the years for the service. Amazons marketing of the service misled and hurt annual subscription consumers “by depriving them of the reasonable expectations to which they are entitled” after the automatic ads kicked in, the filing claimed.
It also alleged, among other things, that Amazon “breached the contracts with Plaintiff and class members by failing to provide ad-free streaming of tv shows and movies as promised” when they signed up for an annual membership.
Amazon declined a FOX Business request for comment about the lawsuit.
When Amazon first revealed in late September that it would bring limited ads to Prime Video content, the company pointed to its desire to “continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time” as the reason for the change. It has put out content like “The Boys,” “Reacher,” “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
The company also said at the time that it would “email Prime membersseveral weeks before ads are introduced into Prime Video with information on how to sign up for the ad-free option if they would like.” The cost of Prime stayed flat for the option with ads.
Ad-supported plans have become increasingly more common among streaming platforms in recent years as they seek to boost revenue.
Crosby, who began the night one point behind Lemieux, now has 645 goals and 1,079 assists for 1,724 points in 1,387 games. It also moved him past Lemieux for the eighth-most points in NHL history.
Crosby tipped Erik Karlsson‘s point shot at 7:58 of the first period for a goal to tie the record. He then broke the mark with 7:20 left in the period when his shot on a power play hit Bryan Rust and Rickard Rakell tapped the rebound behind Jakub Dobes.
Crosby, Rust and Rakell embraced behind the net after the goal and the Penguins spilled over the bench to congratulate their captain. Later in the period, a video message recorded by Lemieux congratulating Crosby on the accomplishment was played.
“I knew when we played together in 2005, that you were going to be a very special player, and accomplish a lot of great things in your career,” Lemieux said in a message posted on the club’s social media accounts. “Here we are, 20 years later, you are now one of the best to ever play the game.”
Lemieux, a Hall of Famer who also owned the franchise following his second retirement, became the Penguins’ all-time points leader, surpassing then-assistant coach Rick Kehoe on January 20, 1989, when Crosby was 17 months old. Lemieux, who was in the lineup when Crosby recorded his first NHL point, finished his career with 1,723 points in 915 games.
Crosby, the No. 1 pick in 2005, is the seventh outright all-time points leader in 58 years of the franchise’s history and the ninth active player to lead a franchise in points. Crosby previously broke Lemieux’s record for most assists in franchise history this past Dec. 29 against the New York Islanders. Crosby is 45 goals behind Lemieux’s franchise record of 690.
Crosby is now third on the NHL’s all-time points list with a single franchise, behind only Steve Yzerman (1,755) and Gordie Howe (1,809), both with Detroit.
Crosby also passed Phil Esposito (449) for sole possession of the ninth-most even-strength goals in NHL history. He also tied Adam Oates for the eighth-most assists in NHL history in the first period. Crosby, who has 20 goals this season, achieved his 18th 20-goal season. Only six players in NHL history have more.
Alphabet-owned Waymo has resumed its driverless ride-hail service in the San Francisco Bay Area after a temporary pause during blackouts that plagued the city beginning on Saturday afternoon.
“Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions,” a Waymo spokesperson, Suzanne Philion, told CNBC in an e-mailed statement Sunday afternoon.
“While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events,” she added.
Waymo notice of service outage in San Francisco.
Source: Waymo
As power outages spread yesterday, videos shared on social media appeared to show multiple Waymo vehicles stalled in traffic in different parts of the city.
San Francisco resident Matt Schoolfield said he saw at least three Waymo autonomous vehicles stopped in traffic Saturday around 9:45 p.m. local time, including one he photographed on Turk Boulevard near Parker Avenue.
“They were just stopping in the middle of the street,” Schoolfield said.
A Waymo vehicle stuck between Parker and Beaumont, on the north side of Turk Boulevard in San Francisco.
Credit: Matt Schoolfield
The power outages began around 1:09 p.m. Saturday and peaked roughly two hours later, affecting about 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas and Electric. As of Sunday morning, about 21,000 customers remained without power, mainly in the Presidio, the Richmond District, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown San Francisco.
PG&E said the outage was caused by a fire at a substation that resulted in “significant and extensive” damage, and said it could not yet provide a precise timeline for full restoration.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said in a 9 p.m. update on X that police officers, fire crews, parking control officers and city ambassadors were deployed across affected neighborhoods.
Waymo’s Philion also told CNBC that “While the Waymo Driver is designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops, the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual to confirm the state of the affected intersections. This contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion.”
Waymo “closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials,” she said, and proactively paused its service as of Saturday evening and in the first half of the day on Sunday.
“The majority of active trips were successfully completed before vehicles were safely returned to depots or pulled over,” she noted.
Amid the disruption, Tesla CEO Elon Muskposted on X: “Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage.”
Unlike Waymo, Tesla does not operate a driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco.
Tesla’s local ride-hailing service uses vehicles equipped with “FSD (Supervised),” a premium driver assistance system. The service requires a human driver behind the wheel at all times.
According to state regulators — including the California Department of Motor Vehicles and California Public Utilities Commission — Tesla has not obtained permits to conduct driverless testing or services in the state without human safety supervisors behind the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.
Tesla is vying to become a robotaxi titan, but does not yet operate commercial, driverless services. Tesla’s Robotaxi app allows users to hail a ride; however, its vehicles currently have human safety supervisors or drivers on board, even in states where the company has obtained permits for driverless operations.
Waymo, which leads the nascent industry in the West, is Tesla’s chief competitor in AVs, along with Chinese players like Baidu-owned Apollo Go.
The outage-related disruptions in San Francisco come as robotaxi services are becoming more common in other major U.S. cities. Waymo is among a small number of companies operating fully driverless ride-hailing services for the public, even as unease about autonomous vehicles remains high.
A survey by the American Automobile Association earlier this year found that about two-thirds of U.S. drivers said they were fearful of autonomous vehicles.
The Waymo pause in San Francisco indicates cities are not yet ready for highly automated vehicles to inundate their streets, said Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and co-author of “How to Make AI Useful.”
“Something in the design and development of this technology was missed that clearly illustrates it was not the robust solution many would like to believe it is,” he said.
Reimer noted that power outages are entirely predictable. “Not for eternity, but in the foreseeable future, we will need to mix human and machine intelligence, and have human backup systems in place around highly automated systems, including robotaxis,” he said.
State and city regulators will need to consider what the maximum penetration of highly automated vehicles should be in their region, Reimer added, and AV developers should be held responsible for “chaos gridlock,” just as human drivers would be held responsible for how they drive during a blackout.
— CNBC’s Riya Bhattacharjee contributed reporting.
Thanks to a clever, fully electric swing system and “boom up” power assist features, the big PC365-11 hybrid excavator from Komatsu promises better performance and serious fuel savings compared to conventional diesel machines.
Komatsu says its PC365-11 hybrid excavator uses a “boom-up” power assist feature that captures and stores kinetic energy during different operation cycles, then taps into that power to provide an extra energy boost when needed. The result is 15% more productivity and a 20% improvement in fuel efficiency when compared to non-hybrid excavators in ~40 ton class.
“The PC365LC-11 was engineered for excellence in multifunction applications by leveraging its innovative electric powertrain system to boost job site productivity while reducing fuel consumption,” says Matthew Moen, Komatsu’s product manager. “To highlight these performance enhancements, we’re emphasizing the concept of ‘multifunction plus’ as the defining feature of this machine.”
And, thanks to Komatsu’s proprietary software, all of this energy capture and reuse happens automagically during normal work, without the need for external charging. The fuel savings happen because removing the hydraulic load from the ICE engine allows it to run at an ultra-low idle, while the productivity comes from the greater power and overall speed of the electric operations vs. conventional hydraulics.
Electrek’s Take
Komatsu lunar excavator; image by the author.
Trust me when I tell you that Komatsu didn’t wake up one day and decide to build a capacitor-based hybrid crane. One of their customers had the idea and came to them, promising orders. That’s what Komatsu does – from undersea remote control dozers to lunar mining rigs (above), if you bring Komatsu an order, they will absolutely find a way to fill it.
As for PC365-11 hybrid excavator, it’s packed with clever tech, overall – offering significant fuel, emissions, and TCO reductions without dramatically changing the operational logistics of an existing fleet’s operations. That’s all the sales pitch it needs.
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