Enlarge (credit: YouTube Red) A couple of big names are severing ties with Felix Kjellberg, otherwise known as PewDiePie on YouTube. The Wall Street Journal reported that Disney’s Maker Studios dropped PewDiePie from its company, which had previously partnered with the YouTube creator to make the entertainment network Revelmode. Shortly after that announcement, Variety reported that YouTube cancelled the second season of Scare PewDiePie , the YouTube Red show starring Kjellberg, and dropped PewDiePie from Google Preferred, one of the company’s advertising programs for top-tier brands and talent. All of this follows PewDiePie’s video posted last month in which he paid two Indian men to hold up a sign that says “Death to all Jews.” He did this using a site called Fiverr , a freelance website that lets anyone pay for a variety of services—including graphic design and programming—for just $5. One of the services listed at the time was for Funny Guys, a comedy duo consisting of the two Indian men who would hold up a sign with anything written on it for $5. After the initial backlash toward PewDiePie’s video, the YouTube creator posted a follow-up video in which he says he didn’t think the men would actually hold up such an offensive sign. Fiverr banned Funny Guys after the incident; the duo said they didn’t understand what the sign meant at the time. PewDiePie apologized while asking Fiverr to reinstate the men to its website, claiming he felt “partially responsible.” He also responded to the controversy on his Tumblr page this weekend, defending his channel as “entertainment, and not a place for any serious political commentary,” but he also admitted that his previous actions were “ultimately offensive.” PewDiePie is no stranger to offensive content, as most of his videos showcase his bombastic sense of humor, but that hasn’t stopped 53 million people from subscribing to his channel. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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YouTube, Disney come down hard on PewDiePie after anti-Semitic stunt
Some people probably already know this, but for those who don’t: UPS truck drivers don’t take left turns, and despite this usually resulting in longer route, they are saving millions of dollars in fuel costs. From a report: The company decided on eliminating left turns (or right turns in left-hand driving countries such as India) wherever possible after it found that drivers have to sit idly in the trucks while waiting to take the left turn to pass through traffic. So, it created an algorithm that eliminated left turns from drivers’ routes even if meant a longer journey. This meant that drivers do not have to wait in traffic to take a left turn and can take the right turn at junctions. Of course, the algorithm does not entirely eliminate left turns, but the number of left turns taken by UPS trucks is less than 10 percent of all turns made. Turns out that UPS was right — the idea really paid off. In 2005, a year after it announced that it will minimize left turns, the company said that the total distance covered by its 96, 000 trucks was reduced by 747, 000km, and 190, 000 litres of fuel had been saved. In 2011, Bob Stoffel, a UPS Senior Vice President, told Fortune that the company had reduced distance traveled by trucks by 20.4 million miles, and reduced CO2 emissions by 20, 000 metric tons, by not taking left turns. A recent report by The Independent says that the total reduction in distance traveled by UPS trucks now stands at 45.8 million miles, and there are 1, 100 fewer trucks in its fleet because of the algorithm. Even by conservative estimates, that’s tens of millions of dollar of savings in fuel costs. Read more of this story at Slashdot.