Technology

Recent rumors regarding the release of Apple‘s AirPods Pro 2 have surfaced. Industry insider Mark Gurman explained that Apple is set to launch the third generation of AirPods by the end of the year. This new model is expected to be an updated earbud that comes with a completely new case and shorter stems, looking aesthetically similar to the Pros. The second-generation AirPods Pro on the other hand is expected to be updated with motion sensor features to emphasize the fitness tracking feature. According to Mac Rumors, “The AirPods Pro coming next year will be the first change to that product since October 2019 and will include updated motion sensors with a focus on fitness tracking, the people said, asking not to be named because the plans are private.” While Apple originally planned to re...

Lately I have been reflecting on Alan Eisenman, Theranos investor and human cowboy boot. He’s wealthy, the kind of character Matthew McConaughey will play in about 15 years; on the stand, his hair was almost as white as his shirt, which was unbuttoned at the top. (No tie, of course.) He seemed like someone that would be fun to drink a whiskey with, as long as he got to do all the talking. In court, his sense of grievance was palpable: this man feels he has been done wrong. “I think there was business fraud,” Eisenman said. “I think I was lied to and taken advantage of.” “I think I was lied to and taken advantage of.” It is easy to laugh at these investors, who are committing a tremendous social sin: claiming a role (investor) they appear to be unqualified for (because of an inability to do...

Amazon has been ordered to pay a fine of $500,000 for hiding the number of COVID-19 cases at its California workplaces from employees. First reported by the Los Angeles Times, the company agreed to pay the fine and improve the way it tracks cases and notifies workers and local health agencies. Amazon must also inform its warehouse workers in California of the “exact number of new COVID-19 cases in their workplaces” when cases arise. This is the first fine related to California’s COVID “right to know” legislation California attorney general Rob Bonta said in a press release that the penalty comes after a complaint filed against Amazon alleged that the company didn’t properly notify warehouse workers and local health agencies about new COVID-19 cases “often leaving them in the dark and unabl...

A major Hollywood union has voted to ratify a pair of contracts to improve labor conditions for production workers — though narrowly — after previously voting to authorize a strike over stalled negotiations with major studios. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) announced today its members narrowly voted to ratify both the Basic Agreement and the Area Standards Agreement, three-year contracts that included provisions for things like meal times and breaks, increased base pay for the union’s lowest-paid members, and better terms for productions from streaming services. Both votes were extraordinarily close, and the vote around the Basic Agreement, in particular, is contentious. IATSE uses an electoral college-like voting system (delegates are assigned to IATSE’s ...

JPMorgan has sued Tesla, claiming that the electric car company owes the bank $162 million related to a 2014 stock warrant agreement. The dispute centers around adjustments the companies made to the agreement following Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 “[f]unding secured” tweet and the resulting fallout. The lawsuit was filed late Monday in the Southern District of New York. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and has disbanded its US press team. According to the suit, which was first reported by Reuters, JPMorgan purchased a number of warrants from Tesla in 2014 — back when the company was still trying to fund the construction of the original Gigafactory. Stock warrants give the buyer (JPMorgan, in this case) a right to purchase shares in a company (Tesla) at a set price ...

Bitcoin has just activated Taproot, the cryptocurrency‘s largest update in the past four years. For most users, Taproot will create better privacy and anonymity in transactions. Bitcoin has previously relied on the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, which obtains a unique signature based on your wallet key to identify who owns what. With the new upgrade, Bitcoin will be introducing a second form of signatures known as Schnorr signatures, which allow larger, multi-signature transactions to be unreadable, essentially creating the same amount of privacy for everyone regardless of trade size. Privacy aside, the biggest attraction of Taproot is its ability to open the doors for the introduction of smart contracts, or self-executing agreements, on the Bitcoin blockchain. The tech essent...

TikTokers have demonstrated that Disney’s text-to-speech TikTok voice, meant to sound like Rocket the Raccoon, would refuse to read words like “gay,” “lesbian,” or “queer” out loud. This decision seems to have been reverted — you can now get the voice to read out those words, but it’s unclear why it was happening. The change, however, is very recent — The Verge confirmed that the voice wouldn’t say the words, but it started to do so in a subsequent test minutes later on Monday afternoon. TikTok hasn’t commented on why this happened, but videos posted to highlight the issue still have the words blanked out. Rocket’s voice was introduced to TikTok’s text-to-speech feature as part of a Disney Plus Day promotion last week. Other voices, like C-3PO and Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, are also supp...

EV startup Canoo is moving its headquarters from California to Walmart’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas — though it didn’t announce any deal with the retail giant. Canoo said it will open a new manufacturing facility in Bentonville but didn’t say much about what will be done there or who will build it. The startup also said Monday that it is moving up its timeline for making its first electric vehicles to “before Q4 2022.” Canoo CEO Tony Aquila said it will use the Arkansas facility to make “vehicles for unique use cases” and accelerate its pre-production testing program. It still plans to build a factory outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, which it announced in June. Moving forward, Canoo said it will have parts of its R&D, software development, customer support, and finance teams in Oklahoma...

The early reaction to Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop has been mixed, but there’s one thing that everyone seems to agree on: the soundtrack is killer. Yoko Kanno, who gave the original anime its distinctive jazzy songs, returned as composer on the Netflix series, while her band the Seatbelts performed the tracks. The soundtrack includes a few original songs along with rerecorded classics. Thankfully, it’ll also be available to listen to outside of the show very soon. Netflix revealed that the soundtrack will be on streaming services — that includes Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Amazon, and Tidal — starting November 19th, the same day the 10-episode series lands on Netflix. In the meantime, you can enjoy this photo of Cowboy Bebop star John Cho (who plays the lead role of S...

Peloton isn’t too happy with its rivals. The company has filed lawsuits against Echelon and iFit, claiming each company violated patents related to Peloton’s on-demand classes, Bloomberg Law reports. The issue at hand is that Peloton says Echelon and iFit are gaining “free rides” from its technology. In court documents, the company specifically pointed to its leaderboards and the ability to participate in live classes with other users. In its case against iFit, Peloton says that before it came along, iFit “only allowed subscribers to follow along with pre-recorded exercise classes on their machines, without any sort of community engagement.” It also takes issue with iFit’s ActivePulse and SmartAdjust features, which automatically adjust things like workout speeds based on a specific class....

Developers, historically, have had somewhat limited options when it comes to testing apps for Windows on Arm. They’ve commonly needed to purchase costly Arm devices like the Surface Pro X, which starts at $899.99. Microsoft and Qualcomm aim to lower that barrier to entry with the new ECS Liva Mini Box QC710 Desktop, a tiny Snapdragon-based PC that’s now available for $219 on the Microsoft Store. The QC710 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c Compute SC7180 (the first-generation Snapdragon 7c, rather than the second-generation chip that Qualcomm announced earlier this year). It also comes with 4GB of memory and 64GB of storage, as well as various expansion ports including USB 2.0 Type-A, HDMI, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, USB Type-C, and a microSD slot. Powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c Comput...