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Drako’s GTE electric supercar will be a four-motor, 1,200HP monster

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The machine also touts a 206MPH top speed — again, not the fastest, but it’s quicker than you normally expect for high-performance EVs. You can also expect high-performance parts including Brembo ceramic brakes and an Öhlins suspension. It’s based on a Fisker Karma chassis, but that also allows room for four people and their cargo.

If there’s a concern, it’s the longevity. Drako is powering the GTE with a 90kWh battery, and hasn’t estimated the range. A four-motor setup with that kind of power could put serious strain on the the battery pack — don’t expect to travel great distances if you’re enthusiastic with the throttle. It’ll top up relatively quickly with 150kW DC fast charging, at least.

One thing’s for certain: Drako is committed to a real-world launch. Production is starting shortly, and the first GTE deliveries are expected to start in 2020. The biggest obstacle is simply the exclusivity. The automaker is only producing 25 examples, each of which will start at $1.25 million. Tesla’s $200,000 Roadster will seem like a mass-produced bargain in comparison. However, that’s not really the point. This is more of a statement car that shows EVs can compete with the best of the best.

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'Travis Strikes Again' comes to PC and PS4 on October 17th

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You won't have to own a Switch to play a modern take on the No More Heroes universe. Suda51's Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes Complete Edition is now slated to launch on PC (via Steam) and PS4 October 17th. The expanded title includes both the…

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Nintendo says there is no Switch exchange program

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The reported program lets anyone who bought an old Switch after July 17th (when the more efficient model was announced) send in their old console for a replacement as long as they’re willing to cover the shipping and insurance costs. The revised Switch is virtually identical to the old model outside of a processor built on a newer manufacturing process that saves energy. For some, though, that makes all the difference. The nine hours of peak battery life could mean the difference between playing games on an entire long-haul flight or having to stop mid-session.

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IKEA creates a business unit devoted to smart home tech

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The company has been involved in connected homes since 2012, but this investment in a division help it “grasp the full potential” of the technology. It’ll work with “all other departments” to digitize the IKEA lineup.

You could see this coming — IKEA hinted that it saw the Home Smart app as the eventual hub for controlling a broader ecosystem. Even so, it could have a tremendous impact on the smart home field. IKEA is unique in the field in its ability to develop both smart home tech and the furnishings you’ll use in conjunction with that tech. It could thrive simply by creating harmonious combos that its competition can’t offer.

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US will reportedly give Huawei another temporary reprieve

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The situation “remains fluid” and leaves a chance that the license will be allowed to expire, according to the tipsters. The Commerce Department declined to comment.

It wouldn’t be a shocking move. The US has used the ban and the initial reprieve as leverage in its trade dispute with China, and granting an extension could be part of that strategy. If China wants to keep that license going or permanently lift some of the restrictions, it might have to make key concessions. Don’t assume that any Huawei devices you have will keep receiving software upgrades throughout its lifespan, then, as the US could just as easily yank support.

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Beto O’Rourke wants to hold internet companies liable for hate speech

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O’Rourke’s proposals would also demand that bigger internet platforms have terms of service banning “hateful activities” that foster violence, harassment, threats and defamation based on a host of cultural and physical traits, including skin color, religion, gender identity and immigration status. Companies would have to implement systems that identify and clamp down on this content, although they’d also have to be transparent about the process and offer appeals in case of abuse.

The policy theoretically wouldn’t punish companies that unwittingly carry hate speech. However, there are concerns that it could jeopardize protections for companies as a whole.

There are already worries that FOSTA’s changes to Section 230 erode free speech — this could exacerbate the problems and raise questions about removing other protections. To some extent, the section is already under attack. Civil rights advocates have objected to Sen. Ted Cruz’s calls to strip immunity from large sites that don’t eliminate alleged biases, seeing it as a free speech violation that would let the government dictate the ideologies private entities must carry. O’Rourke’s approach takes a different angle and a narrower focus, but the consequences might be similar.

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The next Apple Watch may come in titanium and ceramic models

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If this reflects Apple’s plans, it promises some intriguing choices for Apple Watch buyers. Titanium is more expensive than stainless steel and tends not to be as flashy, but it’s also stronger, lighter and more scratch-resistant. Ceramic, meanwhile, is more familiar in the Apple Watch world. It’s more brittle if you break it, but it’s also extremely resilient against scratches. Both choices would likely appeal first and foremost to watch aficionados — they don’t necessarily scream “luxury,” even if they’re bound to stand out compared to the aluminum and steel options.

No matter what, Apple Watches made from either case material would be expensive. They might not cost as much as conventional timepieces made with similar substances, mind you. Apple’s engineering know-how and mass production helped its ceramic Watch Edition undercut the prices of other ceramic watches. You’d likely have to think carefully about splurging on a device like this when it’s going to be obsolete in a few years, but probably not as much as you might think.

Apple Watch titanium and ceramic animations

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How big tech might monopolize AI

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Who’s Afraid of AI?: Fear and Promise in the Age of Thinking Machines
by Thomas Ramge

Book cover

Our modern world wouldn’t exist if not for machine learning. From telecommunications to transportation, medicine to aerospace, the accelerating advancement of artificial intelligence has proven a boon for humanity and the public good. However the same ability that allows them to learn from past experience can and likely will be leveraged for underhanded purposes like stifling commercial competition. In the excerpt below from Who’s Afraid of AI? author Thomas Ramge examines feedback loops’ impact on automation and how controlling the data generated by them could enable companies to unfairly influence the market.

Feedback Creates Data Monopolies

For computer learning systems, the human platitude holds true: You never know until you try. As with people, however, it becomes true for computers only if the computer system recognizes whether its attempt succeeded or failed. Therefore, feedback data play a decisive (and often overlooked) role in learning computer systems. The more frequently and precisely a learning system receives feedback as to whether it has found the right telephone number, actually calculated the best route, or correctly diagnosed a skin condition from a photograph, the better and more quickly it learns.

Feedback is the technological core of all methods of controlling machines automatically. The American mathematician Norbert Wiener established the theoretical foundation for this — cybernetics — in the 1940s. Every technological system can be controlled and redirected according to its goals through feedback data. That sounds more complicated than it is.

Some of the first cybernetic systems were the US Army’s automatic rocket-defense systems used to defend British cities against German V-1 cruise missiles. Radar detected the German rockets, informed anti-aircraft cannons of the bomb’s position in a continuous feedback loop, and calculated its future flight path. The cannons aimed themselves according to the continuous feedback signals and then fired at (hopefully) just the right moment. At the end of the war, the British and Americans were shooting about 70 percent of the “vengeance weapons” out of the sky.

Thankfully, feedback loops have led to more than military innovations. Without them, the Apollo missions would never have landed on the Moon, no jetliner would fly across the oceans safely, no injection pump could provide gasoline to pistons with perfect timing, and no elevator door would reopen when a human leg is caught in it. But in no other field are feedback loops as valuable as they are in artificial intelligence. They are its most important raw material.

Feedback data are at work when we begin to type a term into Google and Google immediately suggests what it presumes we are looking for. In fact, Google’s suggestion might be an even better search term, because many other Google users have already given the system feedback that the term is frequently searched for when they clicked on a Google suggestion as they typed in the same or a similar search term. Then, when we accept a suggestion, we create additional feedback data. If we instead type out a different term, we do the same thing, as well. Amazon optimizes its recommendation algorithms using feedback data, and Facebook does the same for the constellation of posts that a user sees in his or her timeline. These data help PayPal predict with ever-improving accuracy whether a payment might be fraudulent; and as you can imagine, feedback about fraudulent charges tends to be quite vehement.

data has a similar effect in the age of artificial intelligence that economies of scale had for mass production during industrialization and network effects have had for the digital economy of the last twenty-five years. Economies of scale reduced the cost per item for physical products ranging from Ford’s Model T, to Sony’s tube televisions, to Huawei’s smartphones, to a degree that Frederick Winslow Taylor, the inventor of scientific management, could hardly have imagined. The network effect—extensively investigated by the Stanford economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian—led to monopoly positions for digital platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba, Facebook and WeChat, and Uber and DiDi. The network effect means that with each new participant, the platform becomes more attractive to everyone who uses it. The more people who use WhatsApp, the more users install the app, because it’s more possible to contact friends or acquaintances through the app or to participate in group chats. The more smartphones that run the Android operating system, the more attractive it is for developers to develop apps for Android, again raising the attractiveness of the operating system.

The feedback effect in artificial intelligence, on the other hand, leads to systems becoming more intelligent as more people provide the machine with feedback data. Feedback data are at the center of intelligent technology’s learning processes. Over the next several years, digital feedback will lead to commercially viable autonomous driving systems, language translation programs, and image recognition. And feedback data will cause lawmakers considerable headaches, because without new measures to guard against monopolies, the accumulation of feedback data over the long term will lead almost inexorably to data monopolies. The most popular products and services will quickly improve because the most feedback data will be fed into them. Machine learning will to some degree be built into these products, which means that innovative newcomers will have a chance against the top dogs of the AI-driven economy only in exceptional cases. Self-improving technology shuts out competition. Human beings will have to find a legal answer to this technological problem.

Excerpted from Who’s Afraid of AI?: Fear and Promise in the Age of Thinking Machines © Thomas Ramge, 2018. Translation © Thomas Ramge, 2019. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Experiment. Available wherever books are sold. theexperimentpublishing.com

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Behind the wheel of VW’s electric dune buggy prototype

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Based on the Meyers Manx dune buggies of the 60s, it’s underpinnings are the MEB platform. The modular battery layout allows the automaker use the same vehicle base to build different sized EVs by adding or subtracting battery packs. But unlike the Crozz, ID.3 or even the Buzz, the Buggy is a vehicle of whimsy. It doesn’t have doors, a trunk, a roof (although you can get a cover in case it rains), or even a back seat. But none of that mattered while I was driving it down the road.

Being behind the wheel of Volkswagen’s open-air dune buggy is outstanding. It’s probably the most basic vehicle you can drive legally on the road. The interior is just two seats and space in the back for your beach towels and cooler. There’s no infotainment system. There are no climate controls. Whatever the weather is like, that’s your climate.

The dash gauge has a speedometer, the vehicle’s battery status and what gear you’re in. That’s it and I couldn’t be happier about that. Sometimes all you need are the basics and the Buggy delivers that in a way that makes it feel like this is really all you need from a car. It’s the joy of driving distilled to its purest form.

Volkswagen won’t put this vehicle into production, but it’s likely that something very similar will show up for sale. The automaker has announced that it will sell platforms for third-parties to place bodies on. Essentially, another company could buy a frame, complete with battery and electric powertrain, and then stick any body on top of that. It opens up a world of possibilities.

Volkswagen ID Buggy first drive

So while I’m driving the ID Buggy concept today, in a few years, it could be something very similar that I purchased. Volkswagen says the concept vehicle is based on the platform used by the upcoming ID 3 vehicle. It has a 62kWh battery, 155 miles of range, has 201 horsepower and can do zero to 60 in 7.2 seconds.

Sadly I was unable to test any of that. Concept cars are one of a kind and with that in mind, the ID Buggy I drove around Pebble Beach was limited to about 38 kilometers an hour. The steering was light and the suspension was a bit rougher than anticipated. But that’s typical of a concept car. Even with its limitations, the drive was outstanding because it’s a dune buggy. A head-turning blast from the past reminds us that the electrification of vehicles doesn’t equal the death of car-related fun. If anything, it means that in the future we’ll see more of these niche vehicles that appeal to the folks out there that want to cruise the dunes of their local beach without contributing to the smog above it.

Knowing that the vehicle you’re piloting isn’t contributing harmful fumes to the environment just makes that feeling better.

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The struggles of Formula 1’s underdogs

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“The Walking Dead” and other shows were also forced to pay damages.
‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ fined $395,000 for using emergency alert tones

The FCC has just demonstrated that it’s not messing around with emergency alerts. The agency fined ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live $395,000 for using the real tones during a skit which mocked the idea of President Trump having access to the system. AMC’s The Walking Dead was also fined $104,000 for using an alert tone during a February 19th episode. In total, the FCC said it handed down some $600,000 in civil penalties.

The FCC points out that using such tones is prohibited outside of emergencies, adding that it was a serious public safety concern. “These rules aim to protect the integrity of the alert system by helping to avoid confusion when the tones are used, alert fatigue among listeners and false activation of the EAS by the operative data elements contained in the alert tone,” it explained.

You’ll have to meet specific criteria to receive a large payout.
Google Pixel owners can claim up to $500 in class action settlement

Google’s settlement over faulty Pixel microphones has largely settled, and it’s now time to make a claim — though how much you’ll get depends. Google is offering up to $20 to any US resident who bought a Pixel or Pixel XL made before January 4th, 2017 and didn’t receive a replacement made after January 3rd of that year (or refurbished after June 5th). That’s true whether or not you suffered from the mic flaw. To get any more, though, you’ll have to put in more effort.You’ll receive $350 if you can prove you were hit by the mic flaw on one phone, or $500 if you dealt with the problem on multiple handsets.

Powerful noise cancellation and more gives Sony better competition.
Bose 700 headphones review: The pursuit of perfection

Bose is no longer at the top of the noise cancelling headphone race, but the 700 is an excellent option with powerful active noise cancellation. However, Billy Steele thinks that Sony’s WH-1000XM3 has better overall audio, and arguably better noise cancellation — all for $100 less. The 700 isn’t the best, but it’s still really damn good.

Envious of the big display in your friend’s Tesla? Sony has a solution for you.
Sony’s new receiver makes it easy to install a 9-inch display in your car

Just in time to take advantage of significant Android Auto updates and upcoming CarPlay enhancements in iOS 13, Sony has announced an updated version of its in-car receiver, with a floating touchscreen display. The new 8.95-inch WVGA display is both bigger and requires only a single DIN space to install, making it easier to fit to a wider variety of cars. This new assembly allows the display to tilt, as well as adjust its height and depth. In this way, Sony makes it possible to add a big, spacious display to a car that normally wouldn’t have one. Compared to the car touchscreen competition, at $600 it’s also pretty cheap.

There are too many devices and protocols.
Smart homes are a broken mess and Nest wants to fix it

Rishi Chandra has a vision for what a smart home should look like in five years. As the lead for Google Nest products, well, it’s his job. There are several devices that make up this ecosystem, and therein lies the problem: It’s not convenient for the consumer. “There’s no one thing I can put in my home and just put in the wall and be like, ‘Oh, now it’s all smart,'” Chandra said. Individual smart home companies sell bits and pieces of a puzzle, but all that fragmentation creates friction. And it’s off-putting for a lot of us.

Backwards compatibility and cross-gen gameplay are also on the agenda.
Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox will prioritize high frame rates and fast loading

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has revealed even more about what’s in store for the console, which Microsoft says will be four times as powerful as the Xbox One X.

In an exclusive interview with Gamespot, Spencer said that consistency would be at the top of the agenda for the new console. He wants games loading fast and consistently high frame rates. Crucially, backwards compatibility will play a major role in the console’s design — which is great, but Microsoft’s major challenge against PlayStation competition will remain a unique game lineup that players can’t get elsewhere.

Changes are coming, but they might not be big enough for teams like Renault.
Formula 1’s underdogs struggle with the technical challenges of the sport

As Renault approached the French Grand Prix, a lot was at stake. The race was on the team’s home turf, at a make-or-break point in the season. Nobody was panicking. Yet. Despite having won twice in 2018 with Red Bull, new driver Daniel Ricciardo knew what he had signed on for with Renault. The team was ready: It came in with both engine and chassis changes.

But the Paul Ricard circuit at Castellet in France was not the best test for Renault. On a high-speed track that rewarded horsepower and aerodynamic downforce, Mercedes, Ferrari and other rich, top-tier teams dominated. While Hulkenberg finished in the points, he (and nearly all other teams) were literally lapped by Lewis Hamilton. In the end, it was a dull race for the few fans that did attend and another disappointment for Renault. Here’s how an upcoming F1 team saw a promising season go so wrong.

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