Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Tesla owners and customers hoping for a refreshed Model S or Model X are going to be waiting indefinitely. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Monday night that there will be no “refreshed” Model X or Model S coming.

In automotive speak, refreshed typically means small revisions to a vehicle model that extend beyond the typical yearly updates made by manufacturers. A refresh is not a major redesign, although there’s often a noticeable change to the vehicle model.

The company will make minor ongoing changes to the luxury electric sedan and sport utility vehicle, Musk said. One recent example is Tesla has taken the Model 3 rear drive unit as the front drive unit in the S and X. That change went into production three months ago, Musk said in the tweet.

Musk added that the interior of the Model S and Model X will remain the same. There’s been speculation that Tesla would eventually change the X and S interiors to match the newer Model 3.

The S and X are sticking around, however. Tesla won’t discontinue either model for now, according to Musk when asked via Twitter if the company would get rid of the S and X and new release new model lines for “anticipated full self-driving capabilities.”

It’s unclear if Tesla will eventually phase out its flagship S and its complicated X, which Musk once described as an act of hubris. Neither vehicle garners as many sales as its cheaper counterpart, the Model 3. Tesla delivered 17,650 Model S and X vehicles compared to 77,550 Model 3s in the second quarter.

A vulnerability in the Mac client for popular web conferencing app Zoom may allow any website to join a video call without permission, writes software engineer and security researcher Jonathan Leitschuch. In a Medium post published today, Leitschuch detailed the vulnerability, writing that it remains an issue even if users have uninstalled the Mac client: “If you’ve ever installed the Zoom client and then uninstalled it, you still have a localhost webserver on your machine that will happily reinstall the Zoom client for you, without requiring any user interaction on your behalf besides visiting a webpage. This re-install ‘feature’ continues to work to this day.”

Leitschuch included patches for the vulnerability, including how to disable the ability for Zoom to turn on your webcam when joining a meeting, a terminal command for disabling video by default and instructions on how to shut down the web server and remove web server application files.

In a timeline, Leitschuch said that the vulnerability was originally disclosed to Zoom on March 26, with a proposed “quick fix,” but that Zoom took 10 days to confirm the vulnerability, and that despite talking to the company he only saw on June 24 that Zoom had implemented the quick fix.

“Ultimately, Zoom failed at quickly confirming that the reported vulnerability actually existed and they failed at having a fix to the issue delivered to customers in a timely manner. An organization of this profile and with such a large user base should have been more proactive in protecting their users from attack,” he wrote.

Leitschuch added that he is publicizing the vulnerability because “this is essentially a Zero Day. Unfortunately, Zoom has not fixed this vulnerability in the allotted 90-day disclosure window I gave them, as is the industry standard. As such, the 4+ million users of Zoom on Mac are now vulnerable to an invasion of their privacy by using this service.”

A Zoom spokesperson told TechCrunch that “Zoom is working with a security researcher who raised concerns about video-on-by-default as a security vulnerability: Zoom by default turns on the video of a user when they join a meeting. This could, in theory, create the potential for a hacker to trick a target into joining a video meeting on camera. Of note, we have no indication that this has ever happened.”

In a longer statement, the company said that currently, “All first-time Zoom users, upon joining their first meeting from a given device, are asked whether they would like their video to be turned OFF. For subsequent meetings, users can configure their client video settings to turn OFF video when joining a meeting. Additionally, system administrators can pre-configure video settings for supported devices at the time of install or change the configuration at anytime.”

It added that “As part of our July 2019 release, Zoom will apply and save the user’s video preference from their first Zoom meeting to all future Zoom meetings. Users and system administrators can still configure their client video settings to turn OFF video when joining a meeting. This change will apply to all client platforms.”

Competing with a company that counts you as an investor is hardly conventional — some might call it strange — but for Uber it’s a situation that is not only normal but essential.

That’s according to the ride-hailing giant’s CTO, Thuan Pham, who talked about the complicated rivalry Uber has with China’s Didi Chuxing, which counts each other as investors. Uber famously exited China in 2016 — it has since left Southeast Asia and merged with a rival in Russia, too — and part of that deal saw it take nearly six percent of the Chinese company’s business while Didi got equity in Uber. Yet, years later, the two compete in the growing Latin America market, where Didi is making aggressive moves, and also in Australia.

“If you don’t have competition then you can become complacent because there’s no competition to challenge,” Pham said during an interview at the Rise conference in Hong Kong today. “This competition is definitely a very healthy thing, it’s very very necessary.”

When competing in China, “both of the companies had to be on our best in order to compete,” Pham said, and he maintains that iron continues to sharpen iron on the other side of the planet.

“Even after we exited [China] we ran into them in other markets as well,” he added. “Our philosophy [is that] if they are doing something better in terms of features, we try harder to close the gap and surpass them. In the areas where our services are better, we try not to rest on our laurels because we see them trying to catch up all the time.”

Pham didn’t address the fact that Uber owns pieces of its rivals directly — and thus it burns money competing with them — but he did allude to that fact that the battle in some markets may make or break ride-hailing services.

“The best few companies will ultimately get to stay around and the lesser companies will get absorbed,” he said.

HONG KONG , Hong Kong – 9 July 2019; Thuan Pham, CTO, Uber, left, with Shelly Banjo, Asia Tech Reporter, Bloomberg, on Centre Stage during day one of RISE 2019 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Hong Kong. (Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

Uber’s relationship with its competition is very tangled. It owns stakes in Didi and Grab and its M&A activity included buying Careem in the Middle East for $3.1 billion. Didi, meanwhile, spent $1 billion to acquire Brazil’s 99 to kickstart its Latin America business — Uber is said to have bid for 99 unsuccessfully. Didi is also a prolific investor and it owns stakes in Ola, Grab, Careem and Bolt, each of which competes with Uber… which counts Didi as a shareholder.

An added wrinkle to the global rivalry is that investors such as SoftBank, its Vision Fund and Coatue own stakes in multiple ride-hailing services.

Despite a trio of global retreats which suggest that Uber’s one-size-fits-all approach to international markets struggles against localized plays, Pham maintained that Uber’s approach is still to “build globally.”

That may be up for debate, but those retreats do give the company interesting options for the future. Already, Uber has made billions on paper from the stakes it owns in markets where it exited. The big question is whether, in the long term, it’ll cash out of those deals and realized profits or look at M&A opportunities to re-enter those regions. It’s certainly a unique situation.

Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota are planning to strike during Prime Day on July 15, one of the company’s biggest sales events. Bloomberg reports that about 100 employees are expected to walk out for a total of six hours to demand changes in labor practices, including converting more temporary workers to employees and relaxing productivity quotas that they say create unsafe working conditions.

Striking workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota will be joined by several engineers in a show of solidarity. The activism is being led by the Awood Center, a workers’ rights advocacy group, and backed by the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters and the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Amazon claimed that it “offers already what this outside organization is asking for,” including hourly rates from $16.25 to $20.80 with benefits. It also said that “on average” 90 percent of workers at the Shakopee warehouse are full-time Amazon employees and it provides coaching for people who are not reaching their productivity quotas.

Amazon announced last October that it was raising minimum wage for all workers to $15 an hour, but many workers said that increase was not enough, especially since it was also getting rid of incentive pay and restricted stock unit grants (the company claimed that its new wage hike compensated for the new wage structure).

There are more than 100 Amazon warehouses in the United States and the walkout will probably not affect logistics on Prime Day, but it is notable as the latest example of activism against the company’s labor practices, which are also under scrutiny from lawmakers. Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have made Amazon’s practices a key part of their platforms. For example, Sanders introduced legislation aimed at forcing Amazon, Walmart and other large companies to pay higher wages, while Amazon is one of the tech companies Warren wants to break up.

According to the Bloomberg report, stronger unions in Europe mean Amazon employees there often stage walkouts on important sales days like Prime Day and Black Friday, but this is the first time American employees have walked out during a major sales events. The Minnesota strike follows other activism by Amazon warehouse workers in Minnesota, including a three-hour strike in March for better working conditions and calls last year for more prayer time and reduced workloads during fasting for Ramadan led by East African Muslim immigrants.

Volkswagen and Autodesk teamed up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the automaker’s biggest R&D facilities with an iconic vintage VW Microbus that looks retro on the outside but packs a ton of tech on the inside, including an electric powertrain and significant weight savings afforded through use of ‘generative design.’

That’s the design practice in which designers use software to autonomously create (or ‘generate,’ get it?) designs based on input of their desired performance requirements, the materials they have available, or what they’re using in terms of manufacturing.

In this case, one of the key requirements for this retrofit was saving space and weight to make the Microbus more energy efficient. That’s what led to things like the almost organic-looking wheel design, which offer 18 percent weight savings vs. standard wheels. Similarly, the steering wheel, rear-view side mirror mounts and back bench supports sport similar, root-structure like looks that it was grown more than manufactured.

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In addition to light weight, strength and ease of construction, designers on the project say they hope that these results of generative design generally invite touch more often from users of the vehicle, which is not typically a result of utilitarian support structure design for your average car.

Engineers and designers from both Autodesk (which has also done generative design collaborations with GM and NASA JPL previously) and Volkswagen’s Innovation and Engineering Center California worked together on this project, but it’s just a show car so don’t expect to be able to buy any tree vans anytime soon.

HQ Trivia’s troubles continue after a failed mutiny to oust the CEO, a 92% decline in downloads since versus a year ago, and layoffs of 20% of its staff last week. Users continue to complain about delays for payouts of their prizes from the live mobile trivia game, and about being booted from the game for no reason while on the final question.

Notably, Jeopardy winner Alex Jacob claims he hasn’t been paid the $20,000 he won on HQ Trivia on June 10th. This could shake players faith in HQ and erode their incentive to compete.

An HQ Trivia representative tells TechCrunch that the game has paid out $6.25 million to date and that 99% of players have been eligible to cash out within 48 hours of winning, but some winners may have to wait up to 90 days for it to ensure they didn’t break the rules to win. Given Jacob’s large jackpot, it’s possible the delay could be due to the company investigating to ensure he won fairly, though he’s clearly skilled at trivia given he won Jeopardy’s Tournament Of Champions in 2015. Jacob did not respond to requests for interview.

“We strive to make a game that is fair and fun for all players. As such, we have a rigorous process of reviewing winners for eligibility to receive cash prizes. Infrequently, we disqualify players for violating HQ‘s Terms of Service and Contest Rules” HQ Trivia’s press alias anonymously reponded to our request for comment. “It may take some eligible winners up to 90 days to receive cash prizes, however 99% of players have been able to cash out within 48 hours of winning a game and we have paid out a total of $6,252,634.58 USD to winners since launch.”

It seems that HQ’s internal problems are now metastasizing into public issues. Its team being short-staffed and distracted by weak morale could lengthen payout delays, which make players worry if they’ll ever get their cash. When they share those sentiments to social media, it could discourage others from playing. That, combined with concerns that bots and cheaters are winning the games, splitting the jackpots into tiny fractions so legitimate winners get less, has hurt the perception of HQ as a game where the smartest can win big.

Back in April, TechCrunch reported that 20 of HQ’s 35 staffers were preparing a petition to the board to remove CEO and co-founder Rus Yusupov for mismanagement. Yusupov caught wind of the plot and fired two of the leaders of the movement. However, HQ’s board decided it would bring in a new CEO. Board member and Tinder CEO Elie Seidman told TechCrunch that Yusupov had accepted he would be replaced by someone with the ability fire him and that a CEO search was ongoing. The startup’s lead investor Lightspeed has pledged to provide 18 months of funding once a new CEO was hired.

However, multiple sources tell TechCrunch that a new CEO has yet to be installed. One source tells me that management had promised a new CEO by the beginning of August, but that Yusupov had stalled the process seemingly to remain in power. HQ Trivia, Yusupov, and Seidman did not respond for requests for comment regarding the CEO search.

When asked about morale at the company, a source familiar with HQ’s internal situation told me “It’s terrible.” Yusupov is said to continue to be tough to work with, making decisions without full buy-in from the rest of the company. A substantial portion of the team was allegedly unaware of plans to launch a $9.99 subscription tier for HQ’s second game HQ Words until the company tweeted out the announcement.

Hopefully HQ Trivia can find a new captain to steer this ship back into smoother waters. The game has hundreds of thousands of players and many more with fond memories of competing. There’s still hope if it can evolve the product to give new users a taste of gameplay without waiting for the next scheduled match, find new revenue in expanded brand partnerships, fight off the bots and cheaters, and get everyone paid promptly. Perhaps there’s room for television tie-ins to bring HQ to a wider audience.

But before the startup can keep quizzing the world, HQ Trivia must endure its internal tests of resolve and find a champ to lead it.

Just in time for tonight’s Home Run Derby, Major League Baseball is rolling out a new feature on its Ballpark app that utilizes Apple’s Business Chat feature for a customized in-person experience. MLB says it’s the first league to roll out out the feature, letting users ask location specific questions. Though Apple Business Chat has been used for things like drink orders in the past.

Clicking into the Indians section will bring you Progressive Field, the center of this week’s festivities, where you can access the new All-Star Concierge feature. Developed alongside New York-based AI startup Satisfi Labs, the feature is designed to answer simple questions.

From there, it will either answer straight away or open the appropriate app, like Maps and Calendar. In the case of this week’s events, that could mean something as simple as the start time for the derby or something more specific like where to pick up a shuttle to a specific hotel.

The feature is being rolled out to start with tonight’s Home Run Derby and tomorrow’s All-Star game, but it should start arriving in more parks after the All-Star break as different stadiums begin to implement it. MLB has been experimenting with a number of different features to enhance the ballpark experience via smartphone, including, notably, the addition of an AR stat feature.

SpaceX has been awarded a new contract by NASA to launch the agency’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE. This research spacecraft will study polarized light from sources including neutron stars, pulsar wind nebulae and supermassive black holes, and provide much more imaging than existing space-based observation resources.

The mission will help scientists in the study of magnetars (a specific type of neutron star with especially powerful magnetic fields), black holes and ‘Pulsar Wind Nebulae,’ which are nebula that are found within the remains of supernova.

SpaceX will launch this IXPE mission aboard a flight-proven Falcon 9, and the total cost for the contract is around $50.3 million. The launch will take place in April 2021 per current plans, taking off from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“SpaceX is honored that NASA continues to place its trust in our proven launch vehicles to deliver important science payloads to orbit,” said SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell in a statement. “IXPE will serve as SpaceX’s sixth contracted mission under NASA’s LSP, two of which were successfully launched in 2016 and 2018, increasing the agency’s scientific observational capabilities.”

This is just one of a number of upcoming launches SpaceX is contracted to perform for NASA, including the commercial resupply missions it regularly performs for the International Space Station.

Instagram announced two new features today that it said are designed to combat online bullying.

In both cases, the Facebook -owned service seems to be trying to find ways to limit bad behavior without outright blocking posts or banning users.

“We can do more to prevent bullying from happening on Instagram, and we can do more to empower the targets of bullying to stand up for themselves,” wrote Instagram head Adam Mosseri in the announcement. “Today we’re announcing one new feature in both areas. These tools are grounded in a deep understanding of how people bully each other and how they respond to bullying on Instagram, but they’re only two steps on a longer path.”

The first feature is supposed to use artificial intelligence to flag comments that “may be considered offensive.” In those cases, users are asked, “Are you sure you want to post this?” and then given the option button to “undo” their comment before it posts.

This might seem like a relatively tame response, particularly since users can still go ahead and post the original comment if they want, but Mosseri said that in early tests, his team found that the prompt “encourages some people to undo their comment and share something less hurtful once they have had a chance to reflect.”

The other addition, which Mosseri said the service will start testing soon, is the ability to “restrict” users looking at your account.

“We’ve heard from young people in our community that they’re reluctant to block, unfollow, or report their bully because it could escalate the situation, especially if they interact with their bully in real life,” Mosseri wrote.

So by using this new option, you can limit another user’s interaction with your account without making it obvious. If you’ve restrict someone, their comments on your posts will only be visible to them, unless you approve a comment for general consumption. They also won’t be able to see if you’re active on Instagram or if you’ve read their direct messages.

Mosseri described earlier versions of these features at Facebook’s F8 developer conference in April.

The International Space Station is such a unique and important test bed that practically every spacecraft that docks with it carries new experiments for the crew to run. This month’s mission is no different, bringing biological tests that could be important for long-distance space travel — as well as some new docking hardware for the station.

A commercial resupply mission (CRS-18) is planned at present for July 21, bringing the usual fresh food, spare parts, and science. Several experiments are going up that in one way or another test how life adapts to microgravity — as the recently completed landmark test of human physiology showed, large-scale changes don’t seem harmful, but it can be hard to quantify things at a smaller scale.

Three of the experiments are focused on just that: small scale human physiology. The first focuses on stem cells and how they grow and arrange themselves into nerve tissue under the effects of microgravity. Of course the astronauts we’d be sending on long trips through space will have pretty complete nervous systems, but the results could indicate how treatment could need to be changed on those missions.

Perhaps more importantly, the experiment may provide new insights into the progression of Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. The researchers are hopeful that the microgravity environment will, as it has in other experiments, provide an interesting new venue for observing changes and therapies that are difficult to create conditions for on Earth.

The second human-focused experiment looks at how microgravity affects the healing and regeneration of bone cells, and tests two therapies intended to boost those processes. Astronauts don’t break a lot of bones while in space, but it’s crucial that we understand how the healing process may be affected (or improved) when it inevitably happens. It’s using sophisticated incubator system you see up top.

The third one is an attempt to 3D print biological structures in microgravity. We’re doing this already on the surface — printing organ replacements and the like — but it’s very difficult because the biological material must be attached to a scaffold in order to take the right shape and have the right spacing. It’s thought that 3D printing organs may actually be easier in space, since there’s no need to worry about gravity pulling the cells out of their carefully engineered structure.

Space Moss is an experiment that pretty much explains itself right there in the name. But if you think astronauts may be noshing on moss during the long trip to Mars, think again — it’s actually an experiment to verify that we shouldn’t do that.

Space moss!

It turns out that this moss being studied thrives under conditions of hypergravity — increased gravity conditions artificially created within a centrifuge. At 10 Gs the moss spread faster and photosynthesized harder than control plants. So the question is, does it spread slower and process light less effectively in microgravity?

Ultimately this line of research could lead to biologically engineered plants that have the opposite tendencies, but for now Space Moss is not a promising source of food. Of course they have to test it to make sure, which is why the experiment is heading up there.

Dock dock, who’s there?

In addition to these experiments, the Dragon capsule (launched on a Falcon 9 rocket, naturally) will carry IDA-3, an important new component for the space station.

IDA stands for international docking adapter; it attaches to the existing, older docking mechanism to provide improved capabilities for spacecraft arriving and departing from the station. IDAs were intended to be sent up to the ISS in 2015 and 2016, but one was aboard CRS-7, which exploded, destroying all its cargo.

The second IDA, however, made it up in 2016 and was attached to the Harmony module. IDA-3, the replacement for the lost adapter,  had to be built and manifested after the disaster, and is just this month making it up there. IDA-3 will join its predecessor on Harmy and provide upcoming missions with improved safety and other benefits.

The new docking interfaces will make it easier to schedule commercial missions, since both commercial crew and cargo will be able to dock with Harmony at the same time, with the same system.

The launch of CRS-18 is tentatively scheduled for July 21, but the date may slip due to weather or ground delays. Like other SpaceX launches, it will be streamed live (and covered here).