Kiran Upadhyay

Harley-Davidson reveals new 121-hp Sportster S

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 08:00:00 +0530

As part of its lineup overhaul, Harley-Davidson officially pulled the sheet off its new 121-horsepower Sportster S model, topping off the performance bike range with double the output of its Iron 1200 model.

Harley has been teasing the new Sportster S for a while now, touting its performance and hinting that it would render the bikes it replaces obsolete. Power comes from Harley-Davidson's new 1,250cc water-cooled V-twin, dubbed the Revolution Max 1250T. It makes 121 horses and 94 pound-feet in the Sportster S (as opposed to the 150 horsepower it produces in Harley's Pan America 1250 adventure touring bike). Despite nearly doubling the Iron 1200's horsepower, its fuel economy is expected to be 1 mpg better (49 vs. 48).

“The Sportster S is the next all-new motorcycle built on the Revolution Max platform and sets a new performance standard for the Sportster line," said Jochen Zeitz, chairman, president and CEO, Harley-Davidson. "This is a next-generation Sportster defined by power, performance, technology and style. And it’s part of our commitment to introduce motorcycles that align with our strategy to increase desirability and to drive the legacy of Harley-Davidson."

"Every visual design element of the Sportster S model is an expression of the motorcycle’s raw power," said Harley-Davidson design boss Brad Richards. "This is a wolf in wolf’s clothing."

The Sportster S is more than just a new engine. Its powertrain is a structural member of the chassis, which means it doesn't have a conventional frame, but sub-frame elements bolted directly to the driveline. H-D says this significantly reduces the bike's weight (it weighs 62 lbs less than the Iron 1200) and helps centralize the mass better for superior control. Its high-mounted exhaust and forward-mounted controls reinforce its performance ambitions, but H-D will offer a relocation kit for those who want a more relaxed posture.

The Sportster S will be available this fall with a starting price of $14,999.

This shag-adelic custom Ford van with only 873 miles is the best kind of flashback

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 00:30:00 +0530

The custom van craze of the 1970s was huge, but relatively few have survived. They were unlikely to be squirreled away by collectors, nor were their original owners the type who only drove them to church on Sundays. All of which makes this 1974 Ford Econoline, with just 873 miles from new, a most unusual time capsule. And it's for sale right now on eBay Motors, offered by Classic Auto Mall.

Bought new from Miller McVeigh Ford of State College, Pennsylvania, in November 1974, this Econoline sold new for $6,791.02. The bill of sale shows the original owner as Larry A. Brown, and his Econoline Custom 100 was equipped with a 302-cubic-inch V8, three-on-the-tree, and a high-output heater.

Moreover, it was decked out in full-'70s regalia, with an 8-track stereo, Cragar slotted mags, side pipes, and bubble porthole windows. A flame-design stripe encircles the exterior, and there's the must-have mural. In this case, a trippy mountain scene with a dead tree in the foreground. The interior is predictably shag-tastic, and given the ultra-low miles, it's possible that carpet has never had bong water spilled on it.

Astoundingly, this custom treatment isn't the result of some peyote-fueled artist's vision. Instead, it came courtesy of aftermarket van up-fitter Turtle Top, which marketed it as the Terrapin, "The Swinging Turtle," which was "Designed for young persons on the GO!" (And, yes, the brochure is among the documentation included, along with the original bill of sale.) Turtle Top is still in business today — sadly, no longer turning out shag-lined sin bins. Instead, it makes mini-busses from van chassis.

At this writing, bidding stands at $20,100, still shy of the reserve. But there's still six days to go. Surely cooler than any #vanlife Sprinter, this Econoline's time to swing is now.

Zoom buys cloud call center firm Five9 for $14.7 billion

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:05:00 +0530

Zoom is taking advantage of the impressive rise in its stock price in the past year to make its first major acquisition. The popular video conferencing firm, which was valued at about $9 billion at its IPO two years ago, said Sunday evening it has agreed a deal to buy cloud call centre service provider Five9 for about $14.7 billion in an all-stock transaction.

20-year-old Five9 will become an operating unit of Zoom after the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2022, the two firms said.

The proposed acquisition is Zoom’s latest attempt to expand its offerings. In the past year, the video conferencing software has added several office collaboration products, a cloud phone system, and an all-in-one home communications appliance.

The acquisition of Five9 — which has amassed over 2,000 customers worldwide including Citrix and Under Armour and processes over 7 billion minutes of calls annually — will help Zoom enter the “$24 billion” market for contact centers, the company said.

“We are continuously looking for ways to enhance our platform, and the addition of Five9 is a natural fit that will deliver even more happiness and value to our customers,” said Eric S. Yuan, founder and chief executive of Zoom, in a statement.

Germany will have 1 million electric cars on the road in July

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Thu, 8 Jul 2021 01:30:00 +0530

BERLIN — Germany will in July have 1 million electric cars on the road, hitting its target six months late, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told the Tagesspiegel daily on Friday, saying subsidy programs had boosted demand.

"We will reach our target of 1 million electric cars by 2020, which everyone thought was unattainable, this July, just six months late," the minister was quoted as saying.

An 82-Year-Old Woman, Who Trained as an Astronaut in Her Youth, Will Travel to Space With Jeff Bezos

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Wed, 7 Jul 2021 18:25:00 +0530

Wally Funk, a woman who trained for NASA's "Mercury 13" program in the 1960s, is Jeff Bezos' guest for the trip to be made by his aerospace company, Blue Origin, on July 20.

The 82-year-old Funk was trained as an astronaut in 1961 in a class known as the "Women in Space Program," which was privately funded with the goal of including women on NASA expeditions.

However, after the group of 13 women finished their training, they were not selected to travel to space because they were women. "They told me I had done better and completed the job faster than any of the guys," Funk explains in the promotional video for Blue Origin.

2022 BMW 2 Series is bigger, more powerful, has a normal grille

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Wed, 7 Jul 2021 18:18:00 +0530

With the controversial design of the BMW 4 Series, we've anxiously awaited what the company would do with the 2022 2 Series coupe. The good news is that the über-grille has not reappeared. In addition, the 2 Series packs even more power than before.

Although the grille is relatively normal by BMW standards, the 2 Series coupe is still distinctive. It has shark-like headlights and bulging, blistered fenders. The long nose and short deck seem even more prominent than before. And some of that may be a result of the fact that the new 2 is in fact larger than its predecessor. Depending on whether it's a 230i or an M240i, it ranges between 3.5 and 4.3 inches longer overall. And both versions have a 2-inch longer wheelbase and are 2.6 inches wider.

Powering the 2 Series is a choice of two engines. The base 230i models will get a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder making an extra 7 horsepower and 37 pound-feet of torque for totals of 255 and 295 respectively. The M240i models come with a turbocharged 3.0-liter six-cylinder making 382 horsepower and 369 pound-feet of torque. That's an increase of 47 horsepower over the previous year, but just 1 pound-foot of torque. Both models will be available with rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive, but the sole transmission option is an eight-speed automatic, whereas the outgoing 2 Series could still be had with a six-speed manual.

The 2 Series coupe uses a strut front suspension and a multilink setup at the rear. It also features aluminum front fenders and an aluminum hood to get the weight distribution even front to rear. The 230i, which weighs 3,519 pounds, has a distribution of 51.6% front and 48.4% rear, whereas the 3,871-pound 240i xDrive has 53.1% of its weight at the front and 46.9% at the back. Only these two variants were given, as they'll be the first ones on sale, with 230i xDrive and M240i will come a little later. The M240i models will get a few extra performance goodies, too. It will get an electronically-controlled rear limited-slip differential, adaptive suspension and larger brakes with four-piston front calipers.

As for the interior, it's still clearly BMW, but brought up to date. It has geometric vents and screens that are all nicely implemented, but not particularly bold. Standard features include three-zone automatic climate control, power seats, navigation, automatic emergency braking, lane-keep assist, blind-spot warning, rear cross-traffic alert, 10-speaker sound system and wireless CarPlay and Android Auto. A variety of wheels, colors, interiors and body and trim upgrades will be available as options.

The 2022 2 Series goes on sale this November. As we already mentioned, the rear-drive 230i and the all-wheel-drive M240i xDrive will be the first two versions available. The all-wheel-drive 230i xDrive and rear-drive M240i will come later. Pricing has not been announced, but expect it to be revealed by this fall.

MoviePass drops pricing to under $7 per month, if you opt for the annual plan

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 22:30:00 +0530

MoviePass, the subscription service that lets consumers pay a monthly fee to see unlimited movies in theaters across the U.S., is slashing its prices yet again. The company announced today it’s now offering its service for $6.95 per month, down from the current price of $9.95 per month, when customers commit to a one-year subscription plan. That works out to a flat fee of $89.95 annually.

The deal is a limited-time promotion, as opposed to a permanent pricing change, but MoviePass didn’t say how long the offer is valid. However, it is open to both new and existing subscribers – the latter who would receive a 25 percent savings on their current subscription if switching over to the annual plan.

This is not the first time that MoviePass has dropped its pricing.

When the company introduced its $9.95 per month, one-movie-per-day plan this August, down from $15 for 2 movies per month (or more in select markets like L.A. and NYC, and going as high as $50), it saw so many new sign-ups it had trouble meeting demand. Within a couple of days, 150,000 new users joined, and by September, the company said that its number of subscriptions had grown to 400,000.

As of October, MoviePass had grown to over 600,000 subscribers.

It also said its subscriber churn had dropped from 4.2 percent in the first month, to 2.4 percent in month two.

The service is today majority owned by data firm Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. (HMNY), after selling a $27 million stake in August. The firm then increased the purchase price in October to $28.5 million, raising its stake to 53.71 percent from 53 percent. In November, HMNY announced plans to raise $100 million to increase its investment even further.

This influx of capital has allowed MoviePass to continue to subsidize the cost of this subscription to the benefit of pass holders, though obviously not profitability at this point. It’s operating in the red while it focuses on growing subscribers.

MoviePass hopes to eventually convince theater owners it’s growing their customer base, so it can be cut in on profits, according to CEO Mitch Lowe, in a report from Variety in August. It also believes it may be able to sell the data collected on its subscribers in the future.

In the meantime, MoviePass is a ridiculously cheap deal for movie-goers. It now works at 91 percent of theaters across the U.S., though not all are happy with the service.

AMC specifically threatened the startup with legal action in August, and announced that MoviePass was “not welcome here.” It said it would try to find a way to opt out, as it believes lowering the cost of ticket prices would devalue the theater-going experience overall.

Others, like Regal and Cinemark, are taking a wait-and-see approach, Lowe earlier said.

“HMNY continues to be the biggest supporter of MoviePass, as it outpaces any other movie theater subscription service and continues to disrupt the movie theater industry,” said Ted Farnsworth, Chairman and CEO of HMNY, in a statement about today’s new, lower pricing. “We look forward to helping MoviePass continue to broaden its reach and modernize the movie theater industry,” he added.

The annual subscription is available now through MoviePass.com

The FCC’s craven net neutrality vote announcement makes no mention of the 22 million comments filed

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 16:28:00 +0530

For someone who claims to be working for the American people, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai sure doesn’t seem to care what they have to say. In his announcement today that the Commission would vote whether to roll back net neutrality rules on December 14, he made no mention of the inconvenient and embarrassing fact that his proposal had attracted historic attention, garnering over 22 million comments — the majority of which opposed it.

The statement mentions benefiting or protecting consumers five times, so clearly the idea here is to help the users of internet services. Yet those very same consumers wrote the Chairman by the millions to say that they felt the existing rules protect them very well and that to remove them would be detrimental to their safety and privacy.

Just like when their safety and privacy were put at risk by the elimination of the Broadband Privacy Rule earlier this year. Strangely enough, the Chairman didn’t listen to the outcry then, either.

The response has been so strong, in fact, that the FCC was obliged to upgrade its filing system and then extend the comment period in order to accommodate the volume of comments.

Technically the FCC is not obliged to include public commentary in its considerations when proposing rules, something Pai and other officials have repeated constantly. In fact, just this morning, during a media call, a representative of the Commission said that comments which “did not introduce new facts to the record but just stated an opinion… do not have much bearing on decisions,” which is as much as saying the positions expressed by millions do not matter.

But this would have been an excellent opportunity to address the millions of fake comments, the allegations from Congress that the Commission has mismanaged its cybersecurity, the accusations of industry favoritism, and other concerns. And of course it would have been rewarding simply to hear the Chairman acknowledge the unprecedented level of public involvement on display.

Instead, the Chairman’s statement repeats the well-worn justifications for his proposal, which range from questionable to misleading to outright wrong. (I collected the arguments and counter-arguments here.)

Pai writes that the 2015 rules have “depressed investment in building and expanding broadband networks and deterred innovation.”

In fact the numbers are far from decisive on this and many industry experts and ISPs themselves have said that the net neutrality rules had nothing to do with changes in investment — instead, they follow years-long cycles of updating infrastructure, accommodating technology changes like 5G and so on.

And even if the numbers did show a slight change, that wouldn’t constitute proof that the rules aren’t working. As several representatives who actually worked on the 1996 Telecommunications Act (under the authority of which all this is playing out) wrote:

The proposal single-mindedly concentrates on one issue to the exclusion of all others: the raw dollars spent on network deployment. This narrow focus is clearly contrary to the public interest—if we had intended network investment to be the sole measure by which the FCC determines policy, we would have specifically written that into the law.

Pai also calls the rules “failed” but cites no metric by which they could be considered to be so. Perhaps he has picked up this habit from the president.

He calls the previous lack of Title II-based net neutrality rules a “longstanding consensus.” But it was neither. In fact, net neutrality rules have been in and out of the courts since 2002, with the FCC and various industries disagreeing fundamentally on what constitutes an “information service” versus a “telecommunications service,” the dichotomy at the heart of this conflict.

The “consensus” he speaks of is the telecommunications industry putting net neutrality in a legal holding pattern for more than a decade. Notably he does not mention the current and overwhelming consensus of the American people in support of the 2015 rules.

Source

Uber orders up to 24,000 Volvo XC90s for driverless fleet

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 23:30:00 +0530

Uber has entered into an agreement with carmaker Volvo to purchase 24,000 of its XC90 SUVs between 2019 and 2021 to form a fleet of autonomous vehicles, according to Bloomberg News. The XC90 is the base of Uber’s latest-generation self-driving test car, which features sensors and autonomous driving computing capability installed by Uber after purchase on the XC90 vehicle.

The deal is said to be worth around $1.4 billion, per the Financial Times, with the XC90 starting at $46,900 in the U.S. in terms of base model consumer pricing. Uber is already testing the XC90 in Arizona, San Francisco and Pittsburgh in trials with safety drivers on board to help refine and improve their software. Uber also paired up with Volvo to jointly develop autonomous driving and a vehicle ready for self-driving implementation, with investment from both sides committed last year.

Uber’s new fleet of XC90s will go further than the existing test vehicles, in that they will incorporate redundant systems for braking and steering that will allow them to operate without a human safety driver on board. The 24,000 vehicle model is also subject to change, depending on Uber’s needs. Uber also paints the right to order vehicles from other OEMs to help contribute to its fleet as part of the deal.

Driverless rival Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle unit, recently announced plans to launch its own self-driving ride hailing service open to consumers soon, which might be part of the impetus behind Uber accelerating its own plans. Still, no timeline has been given from either company for when everyday users might be able to access the services in a non-testing capacity.

An Uber spokesperson confirmed the 24,000 number offers a general framework, but does not represent the actual confirmed number of cars that will be purchased

Cost of wind keeps dropping, and there’s little coal, nuclear can do to stop it

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 05:30:00 +0530

Though a lot has changed since 2016, not much has changed for energy economics in the US. The cost of wind generation continues to fall, solar costs are falling, too, and the cost of coal-power energy has seen no movement, while the cost of building and maintaining nuclear plants has gone up. And none of those conclusions reflect subsidies and tax credits applied by the federal government.

The conclusions come from Lazard (PDF), an asset management company that publishes cost estimates for various types of electricity-generation assets each year. Lazard’s numbers reflect the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), which averages the estimated costs of construction, maintenance, and fuel for electricity-generating assets over the number of megawatt-hours that each asset is expected to produce over its lifetime. In other words, the LCOE is the lifetime cost of a turbine divided by the amount of energy that turbine will produce over its lifetime. LCOE is a good way of comparing electricity generation sources that vary dramatically in cost to build and cost to maintain.

The result, tracked over years, is one way of gauging how the US energy mix is changing and could change in the coming year. Though the new presidential administration was expected (and still is expected) to be a boon to coal and nuclear energy, those efforts are still mired in the political process. And even if they succeed, thwarting the cost advantages of wind and solar energy while propping up coal and nuclear power will require not-inconsiderable amounts of intervention from the US government.

Read More

Inboard Technology raises $8 million to be the Tesla of electric skateboards

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 01:00:00 +0530

If you’re a company working on an electric skateboard that’s already raised nearly $500,000 on Kickstarter and slayed the Shark Tank sharks what do you do for an encore?

The answer, at least for Inboard Technology, is to go out and raise $8 million in a new round of venture funding to become the Tesla of skateboards.

Founded in 2014 by Ryan Evans and Theo Cerboneschi, the company began with Cerboneschi’s collegiate vision of zooming around campus on an electric skateboard.

Evans, the former president of the action sports gear maker Pure Action Sports, met Cerboneschi, who had become a professional kite-boarder, when the two worked together at Pure Action.

Both men shared a love of skateboarding and both loved the idea of a rugged, software enabled electric skateboard and from that, Inboard Technology was born.

Based in Santa Cruz, Calif., the company has skated from success-to-success culminating in this most recent round, led by Los Angeles-based Upfront Ventures. Kobie Fuller, a partner at the firm will be joining the company’s board of directors.

Read More

Facebook launches Creator app for influencers to build video communities

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 23:30:00 +0530

Facebook wants to turn mindless, passive video consumption into “time well spent,” and now it’s giving social media stars a powerful tool to foster communities around their content. Today Facebook launches Facebook Creator, offering influencers Live Creative Kit for adding intros and outros to broadcasts, a unified inbox of Facebook and Instagram comments plus Messenger chats, cross-posting to Twitter and expansive analytics.

Facebook promised the Creator app back in June at VidCon and today it launches globally on iOS with Android planned for the coming months. It’s actually a rebrand and update of the 2014 Facebook Mentions app that was only available to verified public figures and Pages, but now is open to everyone. Weirdly, it still appears as “Mentions” in the App Store for now.

Canadian grocery chain orders 25 Tesla electric Semi trucks

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 21:30:00 +0530

Tesla’s Semi is off to a promising start, despite there being no official pricing information available yet: In addition to a Walmart pilot, Canadian grocery giant Loblaw is purchasing 25 of the heavy duty all-electric transport trucks (via Canadian Press), with a $5,000 deposit for each upfront even though pricing is TBD for the vehicle, which is supposed to start shipping in 2019.

Loblaw has a target of running a fully electric vehicle fleet to support its stores, as part of a goal of reducing its emissions impact by 2030. The plan is to eventually have as many as 350 zero-emission vehicles in operation by that time, and taking those diesel cars off the road could help it reduce its carbon footprint by the equivalent of taking around 20,000 consumer cars with internal combustion engines off the road.

Tesla has said that its cost of operation for the Semi will help shippers save money on a per mile basis right away, and that’s likely meant to help lessen the impact of sticker shock when it finally does reveal the upfront price. But as I mentioned with the Walmart pilot, which will involve a trial of 15 Semi trucks across the U.S. and Canada, there’s additional value in helping these major shippers meet their green targets.

This Loblaw backing is another sign that Tesla’s crazy truck dreams likely aren’t all that crazy after all, and could be perfectly timed to take advantage of a business climate where major retailers with significant logistics operations are looking for ways to minimize their carbon footprint, while also hoping to achieve cost benefits over the lifetime of their fleet.

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot is a parkour master

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Mon, 20 Nov 2017 17:06:00 +0530

Parkour! That’s what we should all be devoting our combined robotics expertise towards. There’s no nobler human pursuit, so of course we should create a robot that can master the so-called ‘sport of kings.’ And yes, that is the true sport of kings.

Boston Dynamics has shown off its new version of SpotMini, a robot dog that’s slightly less intimating cased in its more consumer friendly rounded future armor. But now it’s also catching us up on what’s been going down with its bipedal Atlas bot, the most humanoid of its creations.

Atlas can now jump from elevated block to elevated block, and do a complete about-face in the air. It can leap pretty high, and also do a backflip – and then celebrate its backflipping ability. I could do without the grandstanding, future destroyer of worlds.

Tesla unveils the new Roadster

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 20:30:00 +0530

Tesla has unveiled a new Roadster, the new version of its original sports car. It’s the fastest production car ever made, according to Elon Musk, with speeds of just 1.9 seconds for 0 to 60 4.2 seconds for 0 to 100. It can handle a quarter-mile in 8.9 seconds.

“This is the base model,” Musk said, then went on to mention that its top speed is above 250 mph. and it has a 200 kWh battery pack that offers 630 miles of highway driving range.

It’s also a 2 by 2 four-seater, and it’s available in 2020 starting at $200,000, with the first 1,000 sold being Founder’s Series models that will retail for $250,000 apiece. Which is a steal for the fastest production car ever.

Understandably, the crowd was in awe when Musk revealed the new Roadster, which has a look inside and out that owes a lot to classic sports car design. The car also ripped up the runway at the hangar where the event was held, before pulling to a stop and being flanked by the two new Tesla Semi trucks on either side.

That 1.9-second 0 to 60 mph time is well beyond the 2.5 second time the Tesla Model S P100D can achieve in ‘Ludicrous mode,’ and Musk reiterated that this was the best time for a prototype vehicle, with a possibility of exceeding that on a production vehicle. But what’s better than best?

Tesla was also giving rides to anyone at the event who put down a $50,000 deposit on a purchase for when it’s available – without knowing the full price. And more than a few avid Tesla fans were taking them up on that offer, too.

Read More

Firefox Quantum Arrives to Challenge Google Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 11:28:00 +0530

Mozilla has released Firefox 57, codenamed Quantum, into the wild. This is the most ambitious version of Firefox released in a long time. It’s faster, better-looking, more streamlined, and more useful, and it may be able to give Chrome a run for its money. It certainly uses less RAM.

In terms of web browsers, Firefox was once the big daddy. But now Google Chrome enjoys a 55 percent share of the market, and Firefox is down in third, behind Safari. Rather than carry on releasing incremental updates, Mozilla has taken a risk with a bold new version of Firefox…

Firefox Quantum Is Flat Out Better

Firefox Quantum has been built from the ground up, with Mozilla pulling out all of the stops to get back in the game. Mozilla claims Firefox Quantum is “the biggest update we’ve had since we launched Firefox 1.0 in 2004,” and “just flat out better in every way”. And this may well be true.

The most obvious improvement is the speed, with Mozilla claiming Quantum is “twice as fast as Firefox from 6 months ago”. However, thanks to Quantum using multiple CPU cores, and a new CSS engine built in Rust, Quantum actually uses less resources than older versions of Firefox.

As well as the technical improvements, Firefox Quantum looks better too. This is thanks to a new user interface called Photon, which boasts a modern, minimalist design, square tabs, and smooth animations. The result is a clean UI which makes other browsers look dated by comparison.

Anyone already using Firefox should be automatically upgraded to Quantum. Everyone else can try it for themselves on Windows, Mac, or Linux, on Android or on iOS. Mozilla is keen to point out this is just the start for this next-generation of Firefox too, with more to come in the future.

Read More

Nearly 7 weeks after hurricane, more than 50% of Puerto Rico power generation offline

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Sat, 18 Nov 2017 10:36:00 +0530

Since Puerto Rico was struck by Hurricane Maria in late September, the island has struggled to repair power lines, water pumps, cell phone towers, roads, and bridges. The electrical system has come under the most scrutiny. The commonwealth’s power provider—Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority or PREPA—was bankrupt going into the disaster and has faced scandal after scandal in recent weeks. After reconnecting more than 40 percent of its generating sources early last week, a major power line failed on Thursday, reducing the grid's online capacity to 18 percent. Although the line was quickly fixed, PREPA's grid is only working at 47 percent capacity now, according to statistics from the Puerto Rican government.

With more than 50 percent of the grid offline, previously connected Puerto Ricans have been living off generators or solar panels for nearly 7 weeks, or they live without power.

On Thursday, Governor Ricardo Rosselló demanded that his entire cabinet submit undated letters of resignation to his office, according to The New York Times. Rosselló said he hoped to cut cabinet members to form a more nimble government.

The major power outage on Thursday was another blow to the grid restoration efforts in Puerto Rico. The damaged line ran from Manatí, 32 miles (51 km) west of San Juan, to Cambalache, which is another 17 miles (28km) west of Manatí. The failure took out service in San Juan, Toa Baja, Bayamón, and Guaynabo, according to El Nuevo Día.

The month prior, that same power line had been repaired by the Montana firm Whitefish Energy. A PREPA official said that cause for the power line failure was a “mechanical issue on the line.” Whitefish told The Hill that none of the outages “have anything to do with the repairs Whitefish Energy performed.”

Whitefish found itself in the limelight last month when it was discovered that PREPA hadn’t reached out to other US state or municipal governments for mutual aid in grid repair (which is the norm). Instead, PREPA awarded Whitefish a $300 million contract to make the necessary repairs. The contract was bigger than anything the company had been hired for previously, and only two full-time employees staffed the firm. (Whitefish hires contractors to complete its grid repair services.)

Suspicion deepened when it was learned that the owners of Whitefish Energy knew Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, although Zinke denied having helped the firm get the contract. Later, an inspection of the contract signed between PREPA and Whitefish revealed terms prohibiting a government audit into Whitefish’s labor costs or profit. PREPA had even signed the contract attesting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had reviewed and approved of the contract, but FEMA denied ever doing so.

Amid the controversy, US Congress members in the House and the Senate began requesting investigations, and on October 30, the day after Gov. Rosselló demanded that PREPA end its contract with Whitefish, the FBI opened its own investigation into the firm.

Whitefish is scheduled to leave Puerto Rico at the end of November. At the end of October, PREPA had paid $8 million of the promised $300 million to Whitefish. FEMA has refused to pay for Whitefish services.

Whether the outage last week was the result of faulty repairs or not, the fact remains that the lives of regular people have been disrupted by grid failure for too long.

Source

With $70M from Alphabet, UnitedMasters replaces record labels

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 23:00:00 +0530

Record labels are obsolete. They haven’t kept up as music evolved from selling CDs to streaming songs to promoting concert tickets and merchandise. Labels were meant to help artists generate albums, fame, and money. But now anyone can record themselves and no one “buys” music. So today that requires being a technology company, combining analytics with hyper-targeted advertising. And the old labels don’t have the engineering talent for it.

That’s why last year, the former president of Interscope Records Steve Stoute secretly raised $70 million from Google’s corporate umbrella Alphabet, prestigious venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, and entertainment giant 20th Century Fox.

Today, his startup UnitedMasters emerges from stealth.

UnitedMasters is ready to give musicians an alternative to exploitative record label deals. Artists pay UnitedMasters a competitive rate to distribute their music across the internet from Spotify to YouTube to SoundCloud, and they split the royalties while the artist retains the rights to the master recordings. Then UnitedMasters sucks back in all the analytics, identifies the listeners, builds artists a CRM tool, and helps them retarget their top fans with pinpointed ads for tickets and merch.

Source

Twitter removes verified checkmarks from several white supremacists’ profiles

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 11:51:00 +0530

A few hours after announcing a review of its verification program, Twitter began revoking the verified status of some accounts. White supremacists Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler are among the users who no longer have a blue checkmark displayed on their profiles.

On Wednesday, Twitter admitted in a thread on its support account that “verification has long been perceived as an endorsement,” something its critics have argued for years about the program, which began in 2009 to prevent impersonation accounts. The problem was compounded last year when the verification program opened to allow public submissions. Twitter said yesterday that it has stopped accepting public submissions as it reviews the program and “remove(s) verification from accounts whose behavior does not fall within these new guidelines.”

Its updated rules says Twitter will now remove verification for “behaviors on and off Twitter,” including promoting hate and violence; threatening people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease; supporting hate groups; harassing others and violent behavior. Accounts can still tweet after losing verification.

Some of the first users who lost their checkmarks are accusing Twitter of censorship. Thanks to a talent for self-promotion, including on social media platforms like Twitter, Richard Spencer is one of the best-known white nationalist and neo-Nazis in the United States. After Twitter revoked his verified status, Spencer, who is banned from visiting the United Kingdom because of his white supremacist views, tweeted “Is it not okay to be proudly White?”

Read More

Most scientists now reject the idea that the first Americans came by land

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Tue, 7 Nov 2017 22:30:00 +0530

It's been one of the most contentious debates in anthropology, and now scientists are saying it's pretty much over. A group of prominent anthropologists have done an overview of the scientific literature and declare in Science magazine that the "Clovis first" hypothesis of the peopling of the Americas is dead.

For decades, students were taught that the first people in the Americas were a group called the Clovis who walked over the Bering land bridge about 13,500 years ago. They arrived (so the narrative goes) via an ice-free corridor between glaciers in North America. But evidence has been piling up since the 1980s of human campsites in North and South America that date back much earlier than 13,500 years. At sites ranging from Oregon in the US to Monte Verde in Chile, evidence of human habitation goes back as far as 18,000 years.

In the 2000s, overwhelming evidence suggested that a pre-Clovis group had come to the Americans before there was an ice-free passage connecting Beringia to the Americas. As Smithsonian anthropologist Torben C. Rick and his colleagues put it, "In a dramatic intellectual turnabout, most archaeologists and other scholars now believe that the earliest Americans followed Pacific Rim shorelines from northeast Asia to Beringia and the Americas."

Now scholars are supporting the "kelp highway hypothesis," which holds that people reached the Americas when glaciers withdrew from the coasts of the Pacific Northwest 17,000 years ago, creating "a possible dispersal corridor rich in aquatic and terrestrial resources." Humans were able to boat and hike into the Americas along the coast due to the food-rich ecosystem provided by coastal kelp forests, which attracted fish, crustaceans, and more.

No one disputes that the Clovis peoples came through Beringia and the ice free corridor. But the Clovis would have formed a second wave of immigrants to the continent.

Despite all the evidence for human habitation, ranging from tools and butchered animal bones to the remains of campfires, scientists are still uncertain who the pre-Clovis peoples were. We have many examples of Clovis technology, with characteristic shapes for projectile points made from bone and stone. But we have no recognizable pre-Clovis toolkit.

Read More

Drop test concludes iPhone X is the “most breakable iPhone”

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Tue, 7 Nov 2017 13:22:00 +0530

As we suspected in our review, the iPhone X is not faring well in the first drop and durability tests. Two different drop tests showed immediate damage to the device.

Consumer electronics site CNET ran a drop test from a height of three feet. The glass at the corner of the phone cracked on the very first test, which dropped the phone on its side. A second test dropped the phone on its face, leading to even more fractures. CNET concluded that dropping the phone without a case is "out of the question."

The damage CNET encountered was only cosmetic—a more extreme drop test from SquareTrade showed damage to functionality as well. SquareTrade is a company that offers protection plans for mobile devices, so it should be noted that the company has an incentive to convince consumers that their devices may be at risk

Source

N26 launches business bank accounts for freelancers

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 01:30:00 +0530

If you’re a freelancer or self-employed person, you can now open a dedicated business account with N26 in just a few minutes. These business accounts are pretty similar to the consumer accounts with one additional feature — you get 0.1 percent cashback on all your card purchases.

Business accounts are available in all European countries where N26 already operates. You can’t open an account for a full-fledged company yet, but N26 says that more business features are coming soon.

Here’s a quick recap of what you can do with an N26 account. You can control your card in real time from the app. For instance, you can block foreign transaction or set a limit on ATM transactions because you rarely withdraw cash.

You can pay anywhere around the world with your N26 card without any exchange rate markup or foreign transaction fee. You can also get real time notifications of your transactions on your phone if you care about security.

N26 already has 300,000 customers. It’s clear that the startup wants to recreate a retail bank for European consumers first and foremost. In its current state, business bank accounts seem like an afterthought. But it’s interesting to see that it took little effort to customize the product for freelancers and self-employed persons.

Business bank accounts also seem like another market altogether. Startups like Qonto and Ibanfirst are committed to business bank accounts with a different set of features when you compare it to N26. But maybe the N26 for business bank accounts is going to be N26, after all.

As a side note, I’ve been using N26 as my main personal checking account for a few months now, and it’s been rock solid. I’m quite impressed with N26’s product offering. It’s clean, straight to the point and reliable. I consider my bank account as infrastructure, so that’s all I need.

Read more

Spotify is launching a Messenger bot for sharing song clips with friends

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 00:30:00 +0530

Spotify will be launching a bot for Facebook Messenger users that lets friends discover and share music directly in their chats. The bot, which takes advantage of Facebook’s soon-to-launch chat extensions, includes search tools, music recommendations, and sharing functionality for sending 30-second song clips to friends that can either be listened to within Messenger, or launched in Spotify’s app to hear the song in full.

The announcement of the new bot was published to Spotify’s blog this afternoon, but the post is not publicly available at present. It was likely posted ahead of Facebook’s big announcement at its developer conference F8, where it’s expected to unveil new features for Messenger, including “chat extensions,” which will expand the default Messenger experience with new functionality.

However, we were able to read through the details of Spotify’s post, thanks to the magic of RSS readers. (Google it.)

Explains the company, the Spotify bot will be able to serve up music recommendations based on mood, activity, or genres, or you can search across Spotify’s catalog to share songs, albums and playlists with your friends in your Messenger chat.

Of course, you could already paste Spotify links into Messenger before, which would include a preview of the item in question – like an image thumbnail and song or album title, for example. But with the new Messenger bot, friends will be able to listen to a 30-second clip in chat for the first time, without having to exit to Spotify. (If they want to hear the full song, of course, they’ll still need to visit Spotify.)

The Spotify bot appears to be an expansion on the company’s earlier integration with Messenger, which was more limited. Last year, the company rolled out a Messenger add-on that would launch Spotify for the search and discovery portion, with the option to share the photo of the song, album or playlist with a friend as well as a link that would again launch Spotify when clicked.

The new bot, however, brings the search and discovery features into Messenger itself, instead of being an external experience.

To use the Spotify bot, the blog post says, you’ll tap on the blue plus (“+”) icon to the left of the text box in Messenger, then tap on Spotify to launch the bot. A new window pops up, overlaid on the chat, where you can find the music you want to share.

Thanks to the photo shared along with the blog post, it looks like we’ve got a sneak peek at other Messenger extensions, as well – names like Instacart, OpenTable, Quip and Airbnb are featured here, too.

When the bot officially launches, it will be available at http://m.me/Spotify. Facebook is expected to announce Chat Extensions at F8 around 11 AM PT, so that would be the time to check back as the post implies the bot is going live today in conjunction with Facebook’s news.

Microsoft to shut down Wunderlist in favor of its new app, To-Do

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 02:30:00 +0530

Microsoft acquired the popular mobile to do list application Wunderlist back in 2015, and now it’s preparing users for its eventual demise with the release of its new application “To-Do,” announced today. The new app was built by the team behind Wunderlist, and will bring in the favorite elements of that app in the months ahead, Microsoft says. The company also added that it won’t shut down Wunderlist until it’s confident that it has “incorporated the best of Wunderlist into To-Do.”

In case you’re hoping Wunderlist will get some sort of reprieve, Microsoft makes its forthcoming demise pretty clear. Stating its plans in black-and-white: “we will retire Wunderlist,” it says in a blog post.

In the meantime, Microsoft is encouraging Wunderlist users to make the switch by offering an importer that will bring in your lists and to-dos from Wunderlist into To-Do, where those items will now be available in other Microsoft products, like Exchange and Outlook.

Microsoft’s plans for To-Do were previously leaked, when the company was found to be testing a new app, then under the codename Project Cheshire.

At the time of the leaks, that was a fairly bare bones to-do app that let users create lists, add items, set reminders, and sync lists across platforms. The only interesting feature was that it was able to offer suggestions of tasks to add to a list – something that has now transformed into To-Do’s “Intelligent Suggestions” feature.

According to Microsoft’s announcement, To-Do starts you off in a screen called “My Day” which offers a list of items that need to get done today. You can customize this list further by accessing the “Intelligent Suggestions” feature – available with a tap on the lightbulb icon – which will offer suggestions of things you may want to add to your list.

Read More

Facebook is building brain-computer interfaces for typing and skin-hearing

noreply@blogger.com (Kiran Upadhyay) — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 00:30:00 +0530

Today at F8, Facebook revealed it has a team of 60 engineers working on building a brain-computer interface that will let you type with just your mind without invasive implants. The team plans to use optical imaging to scan your brain a hundred times per second to detect you speaking silently in your head, and translate it into text.

Regina Dugan, the head of Facebook’s R&D division Building 8, explained to conference attendees that the goal is to eventually allow people to type at 100 words per minute, 5X faster than typing on a phone, with just your mind.

Eventually, brain-computer interfaces could let people control augmented reality and virtual reality experiences with their mind instead of a screen or controller. Facebook’s CEO and CTO teased these details of this “direct brain interface” technology over the last two days at F8.

Brain-Typing

“What if you could type directly from your brain?” Dugan asked. She showed a video of a paralyzed medical patient at Stanford who can type using their mind thanks to an implanted sensor. She went on to explain how Facebook wants to do this without surgical implants.

Building 8 only began working on the brain typing project six months ago, but it now is collaborating with UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Researchers who specialize in machine learning for decoding speech and language, building optical neuroimaging systems with advanced spatial resolution and next-generation neural prosthetics are involved.

Read More