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Hulu brings 4K content to the Xbox One

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The company has been timid about adopting 4K compared to its rivals. It introduced support in December 2016 with just a few original shows and 20 James Bond movies, only to pull the format later. Amazon, Netflix and other services have either supported 4K for longer or introduced it to a wider selection of their lineups.

However, Hulu also hasn’t had as much pressure to adopt 4K as its peers. Much of its catalog revolves around TV shows from conventional broadcasters. And importantly, it doesn’t charge extra for 4K — it may be easier to accept the dearth of high-res material when you don’t have to pay for the privilege.

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Ford’s remote car starting and unlocking are available for free

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This unsurprisingly doesn’t include the WiFi hotspot service, since that requires an LTE connection (AT&T in the US). All the same, Ford is eager to rub this in the nose of competitors. GM’s OnStar can cost up to $15 per month, and your trial only lasts three months. Toyota charges $8 per month with a similar trial period. While free FordPass service isn’t a huge savings in the context of the car, it could add up if you intend to keep a car for several years or more.

A move like this is likely easy to justify. What Ford loses in subscription revenue it might gain by spurring more customers to buy higher trim levels with FordPass Connect. There’s also the simple matter of matching drivers’ evolving expectations. When it’s increasingly common to manage your car through a phone app, charging extra for the functionality may seem arbitrary.

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Facebook’s Libra loses one more member as its council becomes official

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PayPal, eBay, Mastercard, Visa and Stripe were some the most prominent companies to pull out, each of them leaving within days of each other.

Not that Facebook is deterred. Libra Association policy head Dante Disparte told Reuters that the departures were a “correction” and “not a setback.” The outfit also touted the number of potential members that could fill the exiting partners’ shoes, noting that about 180 entities met the initial membership requirements.

The formalization suggests the Association should be more stable going forward, and the remaining 21 members still have considerable clout. Nonetheless, this probably isn’t how Facebook envisioned progress on Libra — and this is before it faces some of its fiercest government scrutiny.

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The UK likely got more power from renewables than fossil fuels last quarter

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According to the analysis, from July through September, renewables generated 29.5 terawatt hours (TWh) while fossil fuels generated 29.1 TWh. As Gizmodo points out, a 0.4 TWh may sound small but it represents the electricity used by hundreds of thousands of customers. For context, in the third quarter of 2009, the UK generated twice as much electricity from fossil fuels (60.4 TWh) and only 5.7 TWh from renewables.

Of the energy produced last quarter, 20 percent came from wind, 12 percent from biomass (which isn’t a perfect source) and six percent from solar. Wind power got a boost from farms like the Hornsea One, East Anglia One and Walney Extension. In the first half of 2019, Scotland generated enough wind energy to power its homes twice, and it’s working to build a massive battery to store some of its excess wind power. While solar is understandably less productive in the UK, the country is still looking for ways to put it to use for things like a solar-powered rail line.

The analysis doesn’t touch on the fact that most of the UK’s carbon emissions come from its transportation sector. The country has pledged to make improvements there, too. It previously committed to banning the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2040. While the findings from the analysis represent an important milestone and an encouraging trend, there’s still plenty of work to do in the UK and beyond.

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One of Linux’s most important commands had a glaring security flaw

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The quirk revolved around sudo’s treatment of user IDs. If you typed the command with a user ID of -1 or its unsigned equivalent 4294967295, it would treat you as if you had root access (user ID 0) even as it recorded the actual user ID in the log. The user IDs in question don’t exist in the password database, either, so the command won’t require a password to use.

Linux users can update to a newer sudo package (1.8.28 or later) to fix the flaw. You might not be immediately vulnerable, as any attacker will need to have command line control over your system before they can even consider exploiting the flaw — at that point, you probably have larger problems. Still, it’s not entirely comforting to know that such an important command was vulnerable.

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New leak shows Google’s Nest Mini comes with a wall mount

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Most notable about today’s leak is that it doesn’t look like the Nest Mini features a 3.5mm headphone jack. Back when information about the Nest Mini first started making the online rounds, at least one report suggested Google would add an auxiliary port for external speakers. For whatever reason, it doesn’t look like Google has decided to go down that route.

Nest Mini Leak

Otherwise, the new photos nearly confirm everything else we’ve heard about the Nest Mini going into tomorrow’s event. Hard to miss is the new groove on the back of the device for mounting it against a wall. Besides the new mounting mechanism, Quandt says the device features the same dimensions as the current Home Mini.

He adds that Google will offer the Nest Mini in four colors: “Coral,” “Sky Blue,” “anthracite” and “rock candy.” 9to5Google suggests the latter two are codenames for “Chalk” and “Charcoal,” two colors you can buy the Home Mini in currently. In short, it appears Google no longer plans to offer the “Aqua” color it started to offer partway through the device’s lifecycle. While on the subject of colors, one other tidbit of information to glean from the photos is that the bottom of the device matches the rest of the exterior. With the current Home Mini, that’s mostly not the case as three of the four models feature coral-colored bases.

Nest Mini Leak

Based on the photos we have, it’s tough to say whether Google has added a USB-C port to the device. It doesn’t look like USB, but we don’t know for sure. However, WinFuture does say the Nest Mini will come with a more powerful 15W power adapter. This may suggest the rumors about the new Mini including a more capable speaker setup were accurate. Quandt also notes the device will include Bluetooth 5.0, which is an upgrade from the Home Mini’s 4.1 connectivity.

We’ll hear everything Google has to share about its fall hardware slate, including details about the Pixel 4 and Pixelbook Go, tomorrow.

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Harley-Davidson suspends LiveWire production over a charging glitch

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Customers who have already purchased LiveWires can continue to ride the bikes, but Harley says they should only be charged with the professional ChargePoint chargers available at its dealerships. Customers should not attempt to charge the motorcycles at home.

Harley has been talking about its electric bike since 2014, and it hopes that going electric will appeal to a new generation of motorcyclists. Still, since this is Harley’s first electric motorcycle, it’s a bit of a gamble, and a glitch like this is not something you want in a $30,000 purchase.

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Uber lays off employees from Eats, self-driving cars and other teams

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Over 70 percent of employees affected by the latest round are based in North America, with the remainder spread across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, according to TechCrunch. Uber has laid off more than 1,100 employees across the three rounds, and it also asked some staff members to relocate.

“As you know, over the past few months, our leaders have looked carefully at their teams to ensure our organizations are structured for success for the next few years,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote in an email to employees Monday. “This has resulted in difficult but necessary changes to ensure we have the right people in the right roles in the right locations, and that we’re always holding ourselves accountable to top performance.”

In the second quarter, Uber reported a loss of over $5 billion, much of which was due to stock-based compensation awards to employees after its May IPO. It’s set to post its Q3 earnings November 4th.

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Nubia’s $529 dual-screen phone is now available in the US

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Besides working as a viewfinder, the Z20’s secondary screen can also double as an always-on display, showing you your notifications on the back of the phone. If you want to save battery life, Nubia suggests you can use it as your primary display in a pinch. Similarly, it’s possible to use the display for multi-tasking by putting two separate apps on each screen — though constantly flipping your phone seems like it would get tedious quickly. It’s also worth mentioning that the Z20’s secondary display is both less bright and not as dense as its main counterpart, so whether you’ll actually want to use it frequently is hard to say.

Nubia Z20

Otherwise, the Z20 is about what you expect from a high-end Android phone in 2019. It features Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 855 Plus processor, which has only made its way to a handful of phones this year, including the OnePlus 7T and ASUS ROG Phone 2. Additionally, it includes 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Powering the phone is a 4,000mAh battery. With a 27W power adapter, Nubia claims you can charge the battery to full in under 100 minutes. As for the main display, it measures in at 6.42 inches and features a 2,340 x 1,080 resolution.

For camera hardware, the Z20 comes with a primary 48-megapixel camera with an f/1.7 aperture lens. It also includes a 16-megapixel wide-angle camera and an 8-megapixel telephoto lens with three times optical zoom. In addition to the usual video capabilities, the camera can capture 8K video — though only at 15 frames per second, which means you probably won’t end up using it a lot since no one wants to watch a slideshow posing as a video.

While you can’t buy it through a US carrier, the Z20 is available to purchase directly from Nubia’s website for $529.

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