The Story of a Man Who Outsourced His Work to China so He Could Watch Cat Videos All Day. A Verizon case study recently revealed that some people will go through great lengths in order to be able to watch cat videos all day.
We first heard about it on TNW. The study documents the scam of a developer, who is referred to as Bob. He worked at a "critical infrastructure" company in the U.S. and started outsourcing his work to China underneath his company's nose, and would only pay those people less than one fifth of his six-figure salary. Here's how it was possible. Bob's company had started letting employees work remotely from home on certain days, so it set up a VPN concentrator to facilitate that. The company eventually noticed strange activity in its VPN logs, so it asked Verizon for some help understanding what was going on. The company initially thought there was some kind of malware routing traffic from an internal connection in China, and then back to the U.S. But Verizon investigators quickly noticed a major red flag. More From Business Insider China. Apple revenue, iPhone sales disappoint; shares dive.
Nokia Reports Profit but Fails to Soothe Investors. Netflix Shares Jump 30% After Hours, As It Beats The Street With Revenues Of $945M And 2M New Subscribers. Netflix had a stellar fourth quarter, posting revenues and subscriber numbers well above analyst estimates.
That has got investors excited again, driving the stock up 25 percent in after hours trading. In its fourth-quarter 2012 earnings report, the company announced $945 million for the quarter, up from $876 million last year. Wall Street’s consensus forecast for the quarter was $935 million. It also reported earnings of 13 cents share, compared to earnings of 64 cents a share in the same quarter last year. That was well above analyst expectations for a loss of $0.12 a share. As in previous quarters, much of Wall Street’s focus is on Netflix’s domestic subscriber growth. Netflix said its improved domestic subscriber numbers were due to users buying new connected devices in the quarter, as well as improved voluntary and involuntary retention. Overseas, Netflix added 1.8 million new subscribers, bringing its total customer count overseas to 6.1 million. NFLX data by YCharts.
Verizon Q4 loss doubles, pushed by Sandy, pension costs. Superstorm Sandy and mounting pension costs took a toll on Verizon.
The New York telecommunications provider posted a fourth-quarter loss of $4.22 billion, or $1.48 a share, compared with a year-ago loss of $2 billion, or 71 cents a share. The results were affected by costs associated with Superstorm Sandy, which devastated the Northeast region late last year, and by a change in the valuation of its pension liabilities owed to its employees. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 38 cents a share. The pension liabilities cut into earnings by $1.55 a share, while the early retirement of debt and other restructuring activities cut another 31 cents a share from earnings. Sandy cost another 7 cents a share. Revenue, meanwhile, rose 5.7 percent to $30 billion. Analysts, on average, expected Verizon to post earnings of 52 cents a share and revenue of $29.75 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.
Unsurprisingly, the iPhone played a big part in wireless subscriber growth. Facebook Graph Search Shows You 'Married People Who Like Prostitutes' And 'Employers Of People Who Like Racism' Some Of The Greatest Facebook Graph Searches So Far.