PROVEN RESULTS

Auto makers in the U.S. said car sales rose by a double-digit percentage in October, driven by the month having five weekends and continued strong demand for larger vehicles amid low oil prices.

Overall, car sales are on track to reach their highest October sales volume since 2001. General Motors Co. said the seasonally adjusted annual selling rate for light vehicles reached an estimated 18.2 million units in October.

GM led the Big Three, posting a 15.9% jump to 262,993 light vehicles sold in the month, which surpasses the estimate for 12% growth from car research firm Edmunds.com.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV recorded a 14.7% leap, propelled in part by searing demand for the auto maker’s Jeep brand, and was above the 14% estimate. Ford Motor Co.’s 13.4% growth in sales, came in a bit lower from expectations for 14.2% growth.

Car shoppers continued to drive away in larger, pricier vehicles amid low interest rates, cheap fuel and a stronger economy. The October numbers also were helped by another weekend in the month versus last year.

Nissan Motor Co. finished the month 12.5% higher than last year at 116,047 light vehicles. Overall sales of Nissan crossovers, trucks and SUVs rose 26% for an October record as Rogue sales shot up 70% and the Murano crossover jumped 25%.

Fiat Chrysler—which recorded its best sales for the month since 2001—sold 195,545 vehicles, compared with 170,480 for the month last year, extending the Italian-U.S. company’s sales-gains streak to 67 months.

Jeep brand sales spiked 33%. Eight Fiat-Chrysler vehicles posted their best October ever: Dodge Charger, Dodge Challenger, Dodge Journey, Jeep Cherokee, Jeep Compass, Jeep Patriot, Jeep Wrangler and Ram ProMaster.

Overall, U.S. auto sales are expected to increase 12% year-over-year to 1.43 million vehicles. Compact utilities are expected to hit their third month as the top segment with 40% growth. “Exploding popularity” of small utility vehicles means small and midsize cars are losing market share. The firm estimates market share for both smaller-car segments will drop more than a full percentage point.

Volkswagen AG is seen as a black mark on the month following fallout from its emissions scandal.

October could be the last month Volkswagen’s Audi sales remain untainted. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency slapped additional Clean Air Act violations on the German auto maker, widening the scandal to thousands of more diesel-powered vehicles, including multiple Audi models.

“In this year of booming auto sales, no auto maker should be relieved to see flat year-over-year performance, but this may be the best that Volkswagen can hope for this month,” said Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell. “Until VW starts down a road to recovery by informing owners of a specific fix to their diesel vehicles, the company is likely to make far fewer sales than this surging market would otherwise deliver to them.”

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Instagram star exposes why life on social media is far from the real thing

Model Essena O'neill said that going to scenic places and taking pictures just to get likes and compliments is not life.

Australian model Essena O'neill has more than half a million followers on Instagram and around 260,000 subscribers on YouTube. She had the life most people living in the digital age envied, yet she has decided to quit social media, and while doing so, she exposed the real stories behind the seemingly-perfect life she flaunted online.

"Social media is not real life," she decried.

The 19-year-old model, who earned her living through brand-sponsored posts and online advertisements, shared a raw and emotional video blog on her YouTube page, explaining the real reason why she is quitting social media.

"I am quitting social media to tell everyone, anyone that I was miserable. I had it 'all' and I was miserable," she said, adding that she decided to do it for her younger self who didn't get to live life because she was too focused on concocting a perfect life online that would be the envy of many.

O'neill added that she didn't get to live her real life, by just being with people and talking to them, because she was too busy "living in the screen and wishing that people would value" her.

She added that going to scenic places and taking pictures just to get likes and compliments is not life.

"You want to be valued and loved, but you also want to be free. You don't have to go on social media to connect. You don't have to prove your life on Instagram for it to be a good life."

To those dreaming of building a career by blogging, she gave this advice: "I have everything to lose by doing this. But to the majority of the people without a career on social media, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain."

She said that she was prompted to expose the social media industry when she turned off her smartphone for a week and that she didn't recognize herself when she wasn't connected to the digital world.

"There were so many things I could have done with my time. I could have just enjoyed, [but instead] I threw away real connections. I was, somehow, showing people that likes and views equal worth," thus she decided to create the movement "Let's Be Game Changers."

She added that the movement is bigger than her and what she is doing is a statement that real life isn't through screens. "You don't have to do anything but explore what excites you."

In an Instagram post, her edited caption revealed that she was then paid $400 to post a photo of her wearing a dress from a clothing brand when she only had 150,000 followers, but those with more than half a million followers, online brands pay up to $2,000 per post.

She asked for support, because her exposé and decision to leave the industry left her broke, adding that she can't even afford to pay her rent anymore.

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Activision Blizzard is purchasing King Digital, the makers of popular game Candy Crush, for a total equity value of $5.9 billion. The deal is all in cash.

The sale was unanimously approved by the boards of both Activision and King. It is expected that the sale will completed by Spring 2016.

With the acquisition, Activision Blizzard will add two of the top five US mobile games to its already impressive war chest of intellectual properties, including Call of Duty, World of WarCraft, StarCraft, Hearthstone, Guitar Hero, Destiny and others.

Here's the statement from Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard:

“The combined revenues and profits solidify our position as the largest, most profitable standalone company in interactive entertainment. With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before.”

The purchase is a major signal by Activision that it plans to move more aggressively into mobile gaming. As of its 2nd quarter earnings, just 5 percent of its net revenue came from mobile and other sources. 54 percent came from console games, 21 percent from online and 14 percent from PC gaming.

That should change. King Digital reported $490 million in second quarter revenue in August, according to the Wall Street Journal. All of that is from web and mobile games.

Though Candy Crush has been a rousing commercial and popular success since it was first launched in 2012, King has struggled to release another title even coming close to the puzzle game's popularity.

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This car is faster than Ferrari and Bugatti, but its price tag is nowhere near any of them.

The new Tesla Model S P90D, a 7-seat electric car, accelerates faster than sports cars from Ferrari, Lamborghini and Bugatti, according to tests by the car enthusiast magazine Motor Trend.

The all-wheel drive P90D went from a dead stop to 60 miles an hour in a mind-blowing 2.6 seconds, according to the magazine. The average family sedan today takes about 8 seconds to do the same.

Among the cars that would take longer to reach highway speeds, according to Motor Trend, are the $400,000 Lamborghini Aventador and the $2 million Bugatti Veyron, both two-seat high-performance sports cars.

There are a few cars that are quicker, but very few. Among them are the Ferrari LaFerrari and the Porsche 918 Spyder, both plug-in hybrid supercars with price tags much higher than the Tesla. Prices for the Model S P90D electric car, with Tesla's new Ludicrous Mode performance software, start at about $120,000.

The P90D has two electric motors, one driving the front wheels, the other back wheels that can produce up to 762 horsepower. Unlike gasoline engines which have certain speed ranges in which they pull best, electric motors produce full pulling power at all speeds.

P9OD’s fast acceleration seems almost unreal. "For the first few seconds, you're accelerating faster than free-fall," said Motor Trend road test editor Chris Walton, "so it's literally like being on an amusement park ride."

Also, unlike other cars, the Model S accelerates almost noiselessly, making the experience even stranger, he said.

Ludicrous Mode is also available on the Model X SUV. A next-generation Tesla Roadster sports car, due out in four years, will have a mode called "Maximum Plaid," Tesla has said, which should be even faster.

Tesla recently released new software updates for the Model S that allow the car to steer itself, to some extent, and also to brake automatically to avoid hitting other cars.

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