Why bother to design your own robots when you can just reuse what nature created?
This was the thought process behind a research project from engineers at Rice University who successfully transformed dead spiders into robotic gripping claws. The scientists have dubbed their new area of research “necrobotics” and say it could create cheap, effective, and biodegradable alternatives to current robotic systems.
So why spiders? Well, while humans move their limbs using pairs of antagonistic muscles, like biceps and triceps, spiders’ legs contain only a single flexor muscle that draws the leg inward. This is opposed by a hydraulic system: a chamber in the center of the spider’s body (known as a prosoma) pushes out fluid to open the leg, with...
Another one of Meta’s social experiments is shutting down. It’s called Tuned, and if you’re like me, this is probably the first and last time you’ll ever hear of it (via TechCrunch).
Tuned launched in 2020, back when Meta was still Facebook, as an app designed for couples looking to connect even when they’re apart. The app comes from Meta’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) team, which develops experimental apps and services. Through Tuned, couples can privately share their thoughts and moods as well as send notes to one another. There are also games that couples can play to get to know each other better, in addition to Spotify integration for exchanging music.
As noted by TechCrunch, Meta has started notifying Tuned users that the app...
It will be a little while longer before Google’s browser stops supporting cookies. | Ali Balikci/Anadolu Agency
Chrome’s third-party cookie ban has been delayed for another year, again.
Google is once again delaying its big plans to stop its Chrome browser from tracking you. Its long promised move to block third-party cookies will now begin in the second half of 2024 — at least. This is the second time the company has had to push the deadline back. Both times, the company blamed the delay on difficulties coming up with a new way to track users that was still privacy-friendly.
Google’s business model likely factored into the decision, too: It relies on third-party cookies for some of its lucrative ad business and is a major player in the digital advertising ecosystem that will be upended by the change. So Google has never been all that eager to make it.
Third-party cookies are how many ad companies and data brokers track you across the internet. They can see which sites you go to and use that to build a profile of you and your interests — which is then used to target ads to you.
People who care about their online privacy generally don’t like being tracked this way. Some browsers have responded to this by blocking third-party cookies and making their privacy bona fides a selling point. You can check out Recode’s guide to browsers if you want to know more, but Firefox, Brave, and Apple’s Safari already block third-party cookies by default and have for some time now. Chrome, by contrast, has dragged its heels to do the same. Now it’s dragging them even more.
Google announced in January 2020 that it would eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome by 2022. The company promised to use those two years to come up with a more private alternative that users and advertisers (and Google) would be happy with. It’s rolled out some attempts since then, most notably the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).
The problem is, FLoC doesn’t completely stop tracking. Rather, it puts that tracking squarely in Google’s hands: Chrome users’ internet activity will be tracked through the browser itself, and then Google will put users in large groups based on their interests. Advertisers can then target the groups, rather than the individual. That’s supposed to keep users anonymous while still letting advertisers target them, but it also gives Google much more control over the information collected through it, and ad companies much less. Google was pretty pumped about FLoC, but it wasn’t exactly popular with privacy experts, ad tech companies, or regulators. The United Kingdom and the European Union are investigating if it violates their antitrust laws.
So Google — which, to be fair, said all along that 2022 was a projected date and not an absolutely certain one — announced in June 2021 that it would need more time to institute its cookie ban.
“We need to move at a responsible pace,” the company said then in a blog post. “This will allow sufficient time for public discussion on the right solutions, continued engagement with regulators, and for publishers and the advertising industry to migrate their services. This is important to avoid jeopardizing the business models of many web publishers which support freely available content.”
That last sentence is key — it’s a reminder that your data is the “free” internet’s currency.
Any company that trades in that currency is always going to find a way to collect it.
Google’s new timeline was the end of 2023, but on Wednesday, the company announced that it would have to push that back again. Google’s reasoning was that it still needs more time to find an acceptable substitute to cookies after other attempts like FloC flopped.
“We now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024,” the company said in its Wednesday post. That’s more than two years from now, and at least four and half years since the company first announced that it was working on phasing out those cookies.
The length of time this has taken indicates either that getting rid of third-party cookies isn’t much of a priority for the company, or that they are so woven into the online tracking ecosystem that finding an adequate replacement for them is very difficult.
Chrome is the most popular browser out there, and it’s also the only one that’s run by a company with a substantial ad platform. Getting rid of cookies and tracking is going to hurt Google. That’s not a factor for its rivals, which is why they’ve been quick to adopt anti-tracking tools and Google is lagging behind until it can find a way to make tracking more palatable.
Update, July 27, 2022, 2:25 pm: Updated to reflect that Google’s one-year delay is now a two-year delay, with changes in tracking now projected for 2024.
“Get Connected” helps bolster productivity and streamline voice collaboration anywhere and at any time
Plano, TX – July 27, 2022 –Ribbon Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: RBBN), a global provider of real time communications technology and IP optical networking solutions to many of the world’s largest service providers, enterprises, and critical infrastructure operators to modernize and protect their networks, today announced it has partnered with Poly and TD SYNNEX to launch the “Get Connected” Microsoft Teams bundle. The new solution offers remote and hybrid businesses a quick, risk-free approach to adopting Microsoft Teams so employees can stay focused, engaged and efficient regardless of location.
“Today’s work environments are more complex and fluid than ever before. As a result, organizations need streamlined solutions that deliver full-fledged, secure communications capabilities so employees can enjoy a seamless work experience,” said Tony Scarfo, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cloud and Edge Business Unit at Ribbon. “We’re partnering with Poly and TD SYNNEX to equip enterprises with a secure, easily scalable solution that enables voice connectivity anywhere, anytime.”
Get Connected centers on proven technology from two Gold Microsoft Partners. The bundle combines Ribbon Connect with up to five Poly performance media CCX 600 desk phones or P15 personal video bars. Ribbon Connect is a cloud-based voice enablement service that securely connects new or existing phone lines, numbers and service plans to Microsoft Teams, simplifying adoption of Microsoft Teams and preserving existing investments and business workflows. Poly endpoints are designed to improve engagement with customers and enhance productivity between employees.
“Hybrid work is here to stay, but there are significant hurdles to overcome before organizations can call it a success,” said Steven Fair, Global Head of Audio Sales Acceleration, Poly. “By participating in the ‘try before you buy’ bundle offer, Poly is making it easier for employers to keep their teams connected wherever work takes them.”
“We believe this offer is exactly what the market demands for today’s distributed workforce,” said TJ Trojan, Sr. Vice President of NA Unified Communications, Collaboration and Connectivity, TD SYNNEX. “And with TD SYNNEX ConnectSolv, our industry-leading communications and connectivity enablement platform and support program, partners can implement solutions quickly so that enterprises can provide all workers with the same quality services whether in the office or remote.”
The bundle is available today from TD SYNNEX and any of its certified partners. TD SYNNEX allows enterprises to test the productivity-enhancing bundle for up to 60 days free of charge.
TD SYNNEX (NYSE: SNX) is a leading global distributor and solutions aggregator for the IT ecosystem. We’re an innovative partner helping more than 150,000 customers in 100+ countries to maximize the value of technology investments, demonstrate business outcomes and unlock growth opportunities. Headquartered in Clearwater, Florida, and Fremont, California, TD SYNNEX’ 22,000 co-workers are dedicated to uniting compelling IT products, services and solutions from 1,500+ best-in-class technology vendors. Our edge-to-cloud portfolio is anchored in some of the highest-growth technology segments including cloud, cybersecurity, big data/analytics, IoT, mobility and everything as a service. TD SYNNEX is committed to serving customers and communities, and we believe we can have a positive impact on our people and our planet, intentionally acting as a respected corporate citizen. We aspire to be a diverse and inclusive employer of choice for talent across the IT ecosystem. For more information, visit www.TDSYNNEX.com.
About Poly
Poly (NYSE: POLY) empowers businesses to evolve beyond the limitations of physical space so that teams can work as one, wherever in the world they may be. No one can afford to miss a good idea—and that means the technology that brings us together must be inclusive: People-focused video. Distraction-free audio. Intuitive, frictionless, effortless. Supported by exceptional software, service, and analytics. Poly MeetingAI delivers a broadcast-quality video conferencing experience with Poly DirectorAI technology which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver real-time automatic transitions, framing, and tracking, while NoiseBlockAI and Acoustic Fence technologies block out unwanted background noise. We’re here so your business can be everywhere. And we’re not satisfied until no one can remember whether you were on the screen or in the room. For more information visit www.Poly.com.
About Ribbon
Ribbon Communications (Nasdaq: RBBN) delivers communications software, IP and optical networking solutions to service providers, enterprises and critical infrastructure sectors globally. We engage deeply with our customers, helping them modernize their networks for improved competitive positioning and business outcomes in today’s smart, always-on and data-hungry world. Our innovative, end-to-end solutions portfolio delivers unparalleled scale, performance, and agility, including core to edge software-centric solutions, cloud-native offers, leading-edge security and analytics tools, along with IP and optical networking solutions for 5G. We maintain a keen focus on our commitments to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) matters, offering an annual Sustainability Report to our stakeholders. To learn more about Ribbon, please visit rbbn.com.
Important Information Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
The information in this release contains forward-looking statements regarding future events that involve risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this release, including those regarding the expected benefits from use of Ribbon Communication’s products, are forward-looking statements. The actual results of Ribbon Communications may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. For further information regarding risks and uncertainties associated with Ribbon Communications’ business, please refer to the “Risk Factors” section of Ribbon Communications’ most recent annual or quarterly report filed with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements represent Ribbon Communications’ views only as of the date on which such statement is made and should not be relied upon as representing Ribbon Communications’ views as of any subsequent date. While Ribbon Communications may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point, Ribbon Communications specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.
Atos used its fiscal 2022 first half financial report to unveil the securing of a new debt package to help finance the company through its split into two separate global solution providers later this year, and said it expect to see real revenue growth in the second half of the year.
Partnerships with Avocor, Jabra and EPOS provide RingCentral customers with more choice; New features enhance rooms experience for better interactivity and more seamless collaboration in meetings
BELMONT, CA – July 25, 2022 – RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG), a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center solutions, today announced an expansion of its hardware ecosystem and new feature enhancements for RingCentral Rooms™. With return to office becoming a focus for many organizations, 76% of respondents in a recent survey1 reported that technological improvements and upgrades to conference rooms is a key priority.
RingCentral Rooms enables organizations to transform their meeting spaces into dynamically enabled video conferencing destinations. It extends RingCentral Video and allows customers to have the same great video experience in a conference room that they already have in a home office or on the go. Now customers can select among several new hardware partners to enhance their conference rooms with high-quality, intelligent audio and video, and whiteboard – allowing room participants to better collaborate and be better seen and heard.
“RingCentral Video has been great for maintaining that sense of team, especially during the lockdowns when we were all remote. And now that some of us are coming back into the office, having RingCentral Rooms is also great to make everyone’s conference room experience consistent and ensure we can always include anyone, anywhere, in our meeting,” said Justin Collins, IT manager at Credit Human Federal Credit Union.
New RingCentral Rooms Hardware Partners
As old conference rooms undergo improvement, IT decision makers are turning to technology providers for the most advanced rooms solutions that allow workers to collaborate efficiently. To meet these needs, RingCentral is partnering with three added hardware vendors.
Avocor: RingCentral has partnered with Avocor, a leading global provider of touch-enabled interactive displays, to unveil new innovations for RingCentral Rooms. Through this partnership, the company is bringing RingCentral Rooms For Touch™ to market, which allows customers to join and end meetings with the touch of a finger. Through a new series of Avocor Collab Touch hardware displays with RingCentral Rooms for Touch software built in, customers can harness new capabilities–including digital whiteboarding and on-screen annotation. RingCentral Rooms for Touch will be compatible with Whiteboard, a virtual collaborative canvas, which is now available to customers in beta.
EPOS:A premium audio brand, Epos, recently announced a new line of meeting room solutions using EPOS BrainAdapt™, a group of technologies that are designed to support the brain’s natural way of processing sound. It enables users to easily adapt to a hybrid meeting sound environment and reduce cognitive load through a video bar device. With support for RingCentral Rooms on EPOS Expand Vision 5, customers will be able to leverage the premium audio of EPOS and the latest collaboration features for meeting rooms to deliver a great experience for customers. (RingCentral Rooms software is scheduled to be certified with EPOS Expand Vision 5 video bar by Q4.)
Jabra: By partnering with a leader in personal sound and office solutions, RingCentral Rooms is able to harness Jabra’s advanced on-board AI to deliver an intelligent feature set that takes users’ video experience to the next level. Jabra’s PanaCast 50 intelligent video bar is certified for RingCentral Rooms. PanaCast 50 can automatically detect who’s speaking and intelligently adjust the picture to focus on them, delivering a better meeting experience that puts the most important content front and center.
“Strong relationships with strategic hardware partners are important as we strive to address the complex challenges around fostering collaboration in modern hybrid work environments. We are excited to work with innovative partners like Avocor, EPOS and Jabra,” said Kira Makagon, chief innovation officer at RingCentral. “When paired with our partners’ advanced hardware offerings, RingCentral Rooms can unlock the full potential of today’s hybrid workforce and enable equitable collaboration for workers wherever they are.”
In addition to these new partners, RingCentral continues to innovate through long standing Rooms partnerships with hardware solution providers Logitech, Poly and Yealink, giving users a wide range of RingCentral Rooms-enabled, all-in-one video conferencing solutions.
A Plethora of Rich and Intuitive Rooms Features
In addition to partnerships, RingCentral has also announced key new feature enhancements for RingCentral Rooms that will enable interactive experiences for customers in hybrid work environments. These features include:
Whiteboard for RingCentral Rooms: Available in beta, Whiteboard for RingCentral Rooms allows users to co-create and collaborate with other participants regardless if they are in a room or home office. It’s easy to annotate and organize ideas with digital sticky notes and shapes using the whiteboard’s immersive, near infinite canvas.
Proximity sharing mobile: Sharing content from a user’s mobile device amongst meeting participants in a room is now made possible with the new proximity sharing mobile feature.
Share and View room camera full screen: Just like screen sharing, this feature further elevates the collaboration experience by sharing the meeting room camera full screen to enable remote participants to get closer views of what’s happening in a room.
E2EE Rooms support: RingCentral Rooms supports end-to-end encryption, which means data is encrypted for its entire journey between endpoints, and no one other than meeting participants have access to that information.
Closed Captioning: With closed captioning, users can enable on-screen captions. This gives better engagement for those who need extra language assistance, are hearing impaired, or simply want to be able to follow along and read what’s being said in the room’s environment.
HDMI share: With new HDMI share, it’s easy to share presentations or content from a user’s laptop into the meeting room. Simply plug the RingCentral Rooms HDMI into any laptop to instantly share screens with all meeting participants.
Rooms activation code: Instead of using admin credentials to register each new conference room with a Rooms license, it’s just a matter of hitting a few buttons. Admins can provide an activation code for each room and turn on Rooms remotely, easing the burden on IT.
“As businesses adapt to the hybrid work model, one thing is clear – investments in office meeting spaces will continue to grow,” said Roopam Jain, VP of Research at Frost & Sullivan’s Connected Work Practice. “RingCentral’s new features, including Whiteboard, are designed to enhance team creativity and inclusivity with the goal of narrowing the effectiveness gaps found in most hybrid collaboration environments and better connect today’s dispersed workforce.”
Remember when everyone wanted to own your phone and your laptop? Dell’s finally tossing in the towel (via Windows Central).
On a support page, Dell announced that it’s discontinuing Mobile Connect, the program that syncs your phone’s texts, calls, and notifications to your computer. While Dell is stopping downloads on November 30th for users in the US, Canada, and Japan, it will no longer be available to use starting January 31st, 2023. The service is shutting down even earlier for users outside these three countries, with downloads stopping on July 31st and a total shutdown occurring on November 30th.
Workers in Amsterdam spray water on a bridge to prevent metal parts from expanding and jamming the bridge shut, on July 19. Much of Europe is experiencing unprecedented heat that is pushing infrastructure to the breaking point. | Peter Dejong/AP
The world wasn’t built for this heat.
Europe is baking under heat so extreme that it’s causing train tracks to bend and roads to buckle.
The heat wave, which brought record-breaking temperatures to the UK, France, and elsewhere in the past two weeks, is exposing a frightening reality: Much of Europe isn’t built for extreme heat, or for a climate that’s swiftly changing.
While severe heat waves, fueled by climate change, have become the new reality of summer, the extreme temperatures now rolling through Europe seem especially catastrophic. On Tuesday, temperatures in the UK broke the national record, reaching 40.3 degrees Celsius (104.5 degrees Fahrenheit), and the weather agency declared itsfirst-ever “red warning” for exceptional heat — the highest level of weather warning possible.France, meanwhile, saw more than 100 record-breaking temperatures across the country in the last week.
“Even as a climate scientist who studies this stuff, this is scary,” said Hannah Cloke, a professor at the University of Reading who studies natural hazards. “We have had heat waves in the UK before,” she added, but the severity of the forecasted heat “is enough to kill people and animals, damage property, and hobble the economy.”
Part of the problem is that many buildings, highways, and other infrastructure in Europe are old and built with outdated temperature extremes in mind, said Mikhail Chester, a professor of engineering at Arizona State University. They simply can’t tolerate the new normal, he said. Hence things like railway fires in London.
Thank you to @NetworkRailSE and the London Fire Brigade for responding promptly to a lineside fire this morning and allowing services to safely resume to Victoria pic.twitter.com/9ZYibliuyF
Cities like Dubai and Phoenix, Arizona, in contrast, can withstand higher temperature extremes because their infrastructure was built more recently and with heat in mind. While these places may face issues related to water and energy usage, 100-degree weather isn’t as big of a problem for them, Chester said.
It’s important that urban planners and politicians who oversee city budgets recognize that so-called temperate places can get really hot as the climate warms. It’s not just Europe, either. Roughly 40 million Americans living around the Great Plains were under heat alerts Tuesday, and last week the Texas power grid took emergency measures to avoid heat-related blackouts.
“It’s becoming so tough to ignore the reality that stuff just isn’t working as well as it has in the past,” Chester said. “You can’t hide from this.”
Images that popped up on social media this week are a warning of what the future holds — and a stark reminder that climate adaptation is essential.
The record temperatures warped metal rails and set train tracks on fire
You know it’s hot when steel railroad tracks start to warp.
This week, soaring temperatures caused steel rails in London to expand and buckle, as temperatures on the tracks reached nearly 120°F, according to Network Rail, an organization that manages the railway infrastructure in England, Scotland, and Wales.
“For some of our track, such high temperatures are more than our track is designed to cope with,” the organization explains on its website. “The problem is that when steel rails get hot, they expand, which can cause a buckled rail.”
In a tweet Monday, Network Rail said it was painting the rails white to keep them as cool as possible during the heat wave.
We've found a kink in the rail at Vauxhall, London due to extreme heat.
️ The rail temperature here is over 48 degrees Celsius so we're painting the rails white to prevent them from getting hotter.
Railways aren’t only bending, but also catching fire under the extreme heat. Early last week, the network shared a photo of its tracks on fire, warning that the heat would be “a serious challenge.”
It’s also caused roads and runways to buckle
Scorching temperatures can also start to soften or warp roads. Earlier this week, a major road in Cambridge called A14 closed after it developed a large kink from the heat (you can see an image of it here).
Intense heat can even soften asphalt, Chester, the engineering professor, said. So when you drive a heavy vehicle like a garbage truck or school bus on a road during a severe heat wave, it can cause the road to “rut,” he said, or warp.
— London Luton Airport (@LDNLutonAirport) July 18, 2022
Extreme heat can also be a problem for runways (which are basically big roads). On Monday, Luton, a major airport in London, suspended flights after the heat caused a section of runway to “lift,” the airport said on Twitter. (It resumed flights later that day.)
Heat-fueled wildfires threaten buildings and transit infrastructure
Extreme temperatures can suck moisture out of vegetation, turning it into a tinderbox. So it’s no surprise that wildfires have erupted in recent weeks across France, Spain, and the UK, where tens of thousands of acres have burned, causing transit delays and threatening homes and buildings.
Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
Firefighters try to control a forest fire in Avila, Spain on July 18. Wildfires have broken out across southern Europe in a heat wave bringing record temperatures to the region.
Early this week, a passenger on a train traveling through Zamora, Spain, captured a terrifying scene: Outside the window — where the train had temporarily stopped — a bright red wildfire raged near the tracks. Train services in the area were suspended for a day and a half because of the fire.
— Francisco Seoane Pérez (@PacoSeoanePerez) July 18, 2022
Air conditioning isn’t standard in much of Europe. Commuters felt the heat.
Air conditioning is relatively rare in most of northern Europe, especially compared to the United States. The same is true of the London Tube — only 40 percent of the train network has air conditioning, and authorities warned commuters in the British capital to carry water with them if they traveled.
As Vox’s Umair Irfan has explained, extreme heat is an immense health risk:
Extreme heat is one of the deadliest weather phenomena in the world. There are direct health effects like heat stroke, which occurs when body temperature rises to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to organ failure, and heat exhaustion ... But high temperatures can also worsen conditions like high blood pressure and can limit the effectiveness of certain medications.
European commuters face tough choices. They must either bear the heat and suffer, or avoid (perhaps important) travel. And they need to make that choice because the system was simply not designed for the heat.
Aaron Chown/PA Images via Getty Images
Commuters walk by a sign warning them not to travel due to the heat in a London train station on July 18.
Angel Garcia/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Paramedics help a patient into an ambulance in Barcelona, Spain on July 18. More than 500 people have died from the heat in Spain.
To protect vital infrastructure, cut back carbon emissions
Heat waves are a symptom of the larger problem of climate change, and the best way to safeguard our highways, railways, and buildings is to tackle the root cause by lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Climate-fueled disasters are likely to get worse before they get better.
But emissions reductions take time and money, and there are some things cities can do in the interim, Chester said. The most obvious one is to update infrastructure to reflect the reality of climate change. “We probably need to be designing well past what the minimum regulation tells us, which, by the way, is often based on historical temperatures,” he said.
In other words, architects and civil engineers should be building like it’s, say, 2060, rather than 1960.
Revamping infrastructure is expensive, so we should also be turning to other solutions to make cities more resilient, Chester said, such as green infrastructure. Planting trees, for example, could help reduce urban heat islands (though they also require water).
These solutions are clearly urgent, considering what this week has brought. The start of the summer has been a signal of what’s to come, and there are still two months left.
Europe is just the beginning. Heat waves are the new baseline, and countries around the world will have to decide quickly whether they wish to take real climate action or accept a future of extreme heat and the pain that comes with it. Neither path is easy. Only one will lead to less suffering.
In Los Angeles in mid-July, some stores and public places began requiring patrons to wear masks, hoping to limit the spread of Covid-19’s BA.5 subvariant. | Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Despite increased cases, public health officials’ plans seem muted, at best.
The BA.5 Covid-19 subvariant is now the most dominant strain in the country; the highly infectious variant has caused an uptick in cases and hospitalizations both in hotspots like New York City and the nation overall, but public health action and messaging is less aggressive than with previous outbreaks.
BA.5 typically causes familiar symptoms like fever, headache, muscle aches, cough, and sore throat, but can still cause serious illness, especially in individuals with preexisting conditions. It’s even entered the highest halls of power, with President Joe Biden’s doctor saying in a letter Saturday that Biden is likely infected with BA.5. But there’s been little focus on the national plan to keep the subvariant under control, which the Biden administration rolled out July 12.
Tracking BA.5’s rise is somewhat complicated because of an increase in at-home rapid testing to confirm infection, rather than testing in a clinical setting, which would send test results to health authorities and paint a fuller picture of the data. While the number of cases is nowhere near the level of infections due to omicron last winter, the week-on-week total of hospital admissions overall has trended up steadily over the past month, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Furthermore, it’s likely that the full magnitude of the BA.5 outbreak isn’t being captured by available data. In some places like San Diego that use wastewater monitoring, wastewater analysis showed a massive surge in copies of the virus shed into the community’s sewage — 15.5 million copies per liter of wastewater on Wednesday of last week, versus 8 million from the same location the previous week, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Paul Sisson. That trend directly contradicts data available from the San Diego County health department, which actually showed case rates declining 8.3 percent over the same period. For comparison, Sisson reported, there were 47.6 million copies per liter in the same location on January 9, 2022, during the omicron wave.
The recent dominance of BA.5 and its fellow omicron subvariant BA.4 likely comes from a combination of increased transmissibility and mutations that enhance their ability to evade immunity people have from previous infection or vaccination, Natalie Dean, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, told Reuters. “You don’t even need an increase in transmissibility to explain the advantage,” she said.
“I’m like everyone else: I hate wearing that mask. But more than that, I hate the idea that I might accidentally transmit to somebody else,” Barbara Ferrer, the Los Angeles County public health director, told the New York Times. “That’s my biggest fear — that we’re so anxious to be done with this virus that we’re getting complacent.”
New York City is a hot spot. Does anyone care?
Throughout the pandemic, New York City has been a hot spot; crowded living conditions and public transit make it easy for the virus to spread through the air. While the city’s BA.5 infection rate is nowhere near the highs of previous waves, it’s continuing to trend up — and may even be much higher than available data shows.
“We are always re-evaluating our response efforts to ensure we are providing New Yorkers with the best information possible and so that they can make the decisions that are right for them,” Fabien Levy, Adams’s press secretary, told Vox in an email. However, as City & State, an outlet covering New York politics, noted earlier this month, the city’s health department removed a color-coded alert system that included specific guidance about how to handle different levels of Covid-19 outbreak, including public health measures to enact. As the New York Times reported earlier this month, the system — which Adams unveiled in March — recommended that the mayor require face masks at indoor settings and crowded outdoor settings, and bring back the vaccine requirement to enter restaurants and bars.
As of Sunday, the website still states that the administration is “re-evaluating the city’s COVID Alert system,” and advises users to “check back here for updates in the coming weeks.” It also recommends that New Yorkers “wear a high-quality mask in all public indoor settings and around crowds outside,” as “there are currently high transmission levels of COVID-19 throughout the city.”
Instead of bringing back such measures, Adams’s office has promoted vaccination, at-home and community testing locations, and antivirals to address Covid-19.
“New York is leading the nation in testing and treatment delivery, and, in the last six months alone, we’ve given out more than 35 million at-home tests to New Yorkers and delivered approximately 90,000 courses of Paxlovid,” Levy said in his email to Vox. “We review the numbers every day and will continue to follow the guidance of health experts to keep New Yorkers safe and healthy.”
But New Yorkers are continuing to get sick, with reported Covid-19 cases up 22 percent over the past two weeks, hospitalizations up 25 percent, and deaths up 29 percent, according to the Times. Again, the numbers are still small in comparison to the early pandemic; the current daily average of 12 deaths is nothing like the daily averages in spring 2020. Vaccines and antivirals undoubtedly help prevent serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths — but they need to be supplemented with other mitigation and support measures like masking, as Ed Yong pointed out in the Atlantic earlier this month.
Things aren’t so clear from the White House, either
Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, and while he’s reportedly still working and experiencing only mild symptoms, his age, 79, puts him at increased risk for complications from the disease. He has twice been boosted, as Vox’s Dylan Scott and Li Zhou wrote Thursday, and is being treated with Paxlovid. In a short video address posted to Twitter, Biden assured the public that he was feeling fine and getting lots of work done.
Though he shared that he had been vaccinated and fully boosted, he didn’t give any guidance for those watching — no exhortations to get vaccinated or boosted, or to wear masks indoors. “In the meantime, keep the faith,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”
That’s not to say that the White House has made no effort to address the prevalence of BA.5; on July 12, the administration rolled out new guidance to manage the latest Covid-19 subvariant.
A press release announcing the strategy acknowledged that BA.5’s apparent ability to evade at least some immunity “has the potential to cause the numbers of infections to rise in the coming weeks,” particularly where people are unvaccinated or where vaccine immunity is waning.
To address this, the White House proposal includes increasing access to antiviral treatments like the one Biden is taking, as well as continuing to encourage vaccine and booster uptake. Increasing availability of and access to free testing is also a key tenet of the strategy, as is better indoor ventilation, increasing access to the preventive treatment Evusheld for immunocompromised people, ensuring access to respirators, and being clear about situations in which masking is advised.
That guidance at least presents a comprehensive — if not aggressive — approach to the new subvariant and the “new normal” of life with Covid-19. As experts have warned throughout the pandemic, relying on vaccines as a silver bullet, particularly when an omicron-specific vaccine booster is months away, won’t stop Covid-19 and won’t prevent new variants from forming. As Yong points out, we don’t know what those variants will look like, and we have no way of predicting the seriousness of the resulting illness, or the ways they’ll evade our immune responses in the future.
“Everybody’s hoping to get a degree of what they call endemicity — living with the virus at a level that does not disrupt society,” Anthony Fauci, the US’s top infectious diseases expert, told Barron’s in an interview Thursday. “That’s where I think we’re going. I don’t believe we’re going to eradicate this.”
Without congressional action on climate, there will be even more riding on Biden’s regulations on power plants, transportation, and fossil fuel leasing. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
What Biden meant when he called climate change an emergency.
President Joe Biden promised on Wednesday that since Congress won’t tackle the climate crisis, he will.
“Let me be clear, climate change is an emergency,” Biden said, standing in front of a closed coal power plant turned renewable energy hub in Somerset, Massachusetts. “In the coming weeks, I’m going to use the power I have as president to turn these words into formal official government actions, through the appropriate proclamations, executive orders, and regulatory power that a president possesses.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) shredded any last hope this week for a climate-focused reconciliation package to get through Congress. As president, Biden still has the power to have more impact on climate change than he has so far. He’s also more constrained than Congress was to meaningfully cut emissions across the economy.
On Wednesday, Biden announced mostly piecemeal actions: $2.3 billion for a FEMA buildings program to combat heat waves and other disasters, releasing guidance for the Low Income Housing Assistance Program to establish programs like community cooling centers, and opening up 700,000 acres for offshore wind energy bids in the Southeast.
None of this will fill the gap left by $550 billion in undelivered climate funds in the once-hoped-for reconciliation bill.
But Biden faces immense pressure from the left to do a lot more, and to announce it soon.Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told reporters at the Capitol on Monday that the demise of a climate bill “frees up the president to use the full powers of the executive branch.”
One of the powers Biden could use is his emergency authorities under the National Emergencies Act of 1976. Declaring the first-ever climate emergency would show Biden is putting the full weight of the executive branch behind combating the climate crisis, climate advocates argue. In 2021, more than 40 percent of the country lived somewhere hit by a climate-related disaster; even as Biden spoke, more than 100 million Americans were under excessive heat warnings.
The Center for Biological Diversity argued in a February report that an emergency declaration would allow the president, among other actions, to use the Defense Production Act to boost renewable manufacturing; use the National Emergencies Act to halt crude oil exports and stop leasing to fossil fuels companies and new drilling offshore; and use the executive branch’s $650 billion procurement budget to buy clean energy and electric vehicles.
Biden did call climate change an “emergency” on Wednesday, but he was not moving forward with any kind of official declaration just yet, although the White House hasn’t taken it off the table. There is precedent for Biden to invoke these kinds of powers, even if it has never been attempted for climate change. Since 1976, every president has declared at least one national emergency while in office, although the vast majority have been for individual disasters.
Whether Biden would want to use the emergency declaration to implement those policies is another question. Biden might theoretically be able to halt fossil fuel exports, but practically, he’s very unlikely to do it given Russia’s war in Ukraine. And an emergency declaration isn’t a silver bullet for climate change; it doesn’t necessarily exempt Biden from the scrutiny of the courts or asking for funding from Congress. Former President Donald Trump invoked the same law to redirect Defense Department funding to “build a wall,” which drew lawsuits challenging the reallocation (though courts ultimately sided with Trump or declined to review his actions).
There’s a lot Biden can still do that doesn’t depend on an emergency declaration
Every idea that the advocacy group Evergreen Action proposes is a regulation that agencies can pass without Congress. The most important rules would tackle pollution economy-wide, such as that from the power sector, transportation, and industry. Biden’s EPA is working on new climate rules for coal-fired power plants and has eight other rules to finalize that would also impact pollution from the power sector. The EPA also has regulations tackling truck pollution in the works and still hasn’t approved California’s waiver for setting more aggressive car-pollution standards. The EPA has not yet addressed emissions from heavy industry and buildings, either. And the Interior Department could change its five-year plan to prohibit all new offshore oil and gas leases.
But even the full power of the executive branch won’t make up for what Congress could have done with $550 billion for climate programs. It’s even more distant from Biden’s campaign hopes of spending $2 trillion on clean energy manufacturing and programs.
A congressional bill was critical for reaching the US goal of slashing pollution in half by 2030. Right now, with no additional action, modelers at research firm Rhodium Group expect the US to reduce its emissions by no more than 35 percent by 2030.
Congress’s failure means the executive branch has virtually no margin for error. And whatever Biden does, he must face the possibility that the Supreme Court could interfere with his regulations.
Samsung is gearing up the hype machine for the release of its next foldables once again, and ahead of the next Unpacked event on August 10th, mobile president TM Roh has published another blog post making the case that the time for foldables is now — and that more people are picking up foldable phones.
“Three years ago, Galaxy foldables could be summed up in a single word: radical,” Roh wrote. “Very quickly, however, it became clear that this groundbreaking, flexible design fit perfectly into modern lifestyles. As a result, what was once a novelty three years ago is now the preferred choice for millions.”
Samsung says that nearly 10 million foldable smartphones shipped worldwide in 2021
In the post, Roh says that the industry shipped...
2600Hz has launched a new marketplace for its KAZOO platform, designed to give customers the services they need, and developers a space to create and monetize innovative applications to solve modern communications needs.
The marketplace is now live. In this first phase, the site is both an information resource for all developers who want to learn about 2600Hz applications for KAZOO platform and a site to purchase and install applications for existing Private Cloud and Global Infrastructure customers.
In the coming months the goal for 2600Hz is to make the marketplace a hub for all the innovative applications that leverage KAZOO. They are working with several third party partners to include access to their solutions on the site by the end of this quarter.
Speaking to UC Today, Head of 2600Hz CPaaS and Developer Experience team Emily Ransford said that a marketplace was a feature that KAZOO users have been crying out for at KAZOOcon – both this year and in previous years–adding that there currently isn’t a single resource for KAZOO users to learn about solutions on the platform.
“As our platform has grown and the community has expanded, we get more and more requests from users about integration options, vertical solutions, and diagnostic tools that work with our platform.
“We know there are some incredibly talented developers who have been working with KAZOO a long time and have developed compelling solutions that they want to share. Our goal is to provide a resource where all things KAZOO can be showcased. It validates the platform and enables all users a chance to leverage what’s already been built and grow their business with these amazing tools and apps.”
Helping Developers
One of the fundamental goals for 2600Hz Marketplace is to streamline the discovery, preview, purchase, and installation of applications for existing Private Cloud and Global Infrastructure customers on their personal KAZOO instance, or cluster.
With this newly developed ease of adoption in mind, 2600Hz expects the marketplace will become a place for both existing and potential KAZOO users to learn about KAZOO, and see how others are using it in order to promote growth.
Looking toward another project they’re working on for developers, Ransford says that 2600Hz is aiming to “Provide a public sandbox or staging arena where new developers can try out KAZOO and test applications they or others develop.
“We have partners who have integrated CRM and Teams, who have created amazing vertical solutions for hotels and food chains, are experts at analyzing call data records, and some who have created tutorials and even simple webhook routines that can save a lot of headaches and time for new users.
“Aside from KAZOOcon, up until now learning about these solutions and finding out who can help has been hit-or-miss at best. By providing a resource where all developers can see how KAZOO is being used and what apps are available, we can leverage each other’s work.”
Streamlining Submissions
According to Ransford, the next phase of the development for the Marketplace has already begun, with a focus particularly on streamlining the application submission process.
“One of the things we are focusing on is streamlining the developer app submission process, so it’s an online submission and the steps and requirements are clearly outlined.
“Currently we’re working directly with pilot apps as a way to capture best practices and work out some standard steps. Now that our infrastructure has been developed, it is fairly straightforward to add more of our own apps to the marketplace, and in the long term we intend to list all our current apps there.
“In addition, as our team is focused on Platform solutions we have kicked off several projects to refresh some of our own flagship applications, including Accounts Manager, Pivot, and Callflows. It’s a big, big list!”
For more information about 2600Hz Marketplace visit 2600Hz.
‘Communications can be an albatross with all the different channels and all the technology out there today. This drops everything into one bucket … This will be the further differentiator between [Nextiva] and RingCentral and 8x8 because they have pieces and parts, but they don’t have anything all together like this,’ says one longtime Nextiva partner about the company’s new Workhub platform.
On a summer Sunday a half-century ago, a satellite launched into space and opened an eye on Earth that has kept watch over our planet’s immense beauty, and its rapid transformation at the hands of humans, ever since.
The Landsat program, which has produced the longest-running view of Earth from space in existence, turns 50 on Saturday, a milestone that marks the launch of that first space observer, now known as Landsat 1, on July 23, 1972. Since that inaugural mission, Landsat has successfully launched seven other satellites, three of which are still in operation, and experienced one launch failure when Landsat 6 did not reach orbit.
Managed jointly by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Landsat has captured more than ten million images, which are available to anyone at no cost, enabling humans to both behold our planet’s grandeur and the pressures we are exerting on it. Landsat has built a mosaic of our planet out of photographic tiles, each capturing an area of Earth that is 115 miles in length and width. These postcards-from-space reveal dune-rippled deserts, remote islands, sprawling cities, and branching river systems that flow through landscapes like veins, among other marvels.
In addition to informing countless scientific disciplines, Landsat’s pictures are just plain gorgeous, which has inspired an “Earth as Art” series that spotlights its most captivating shots. But they are also a stark reminder of the changes that human-caused climate change is wreaking across the globe, as the program’s images have monitored intensifying wildfires, assessed damage from hurricanes, and watched as lakes have dried, coasts have eroded, and forests have been demolished.
Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 images of record flooding along the Gulf Coast of Texas caused by Hurricane Harvey, August 2017. image: NASA/USGS
For those who have worked on Landsat over the decades, the program is a labor of love that has engaged generations of scientists, including Virginia Norwood, a trailblazing physicist who designed the key imaging instrument used on Landsat 1 and several other early missions in the program.
Eastern Kazakhstan, captured by Landsat 8. Image: NASA/USGU
Landsat 1, which retired in 1978, was a relatively simple spacecraft compared to its modern successors, but many still recognized it as “a wave of the future” at the time, according to Jim Irons, who has been a Landsat leader for decades and currently serves as deputy project scientist for Landsat 7 and project scientist for Landsat 8 at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“I think it was clear that it was going to revolutionize the way we observe the Earth over time,” said Irons, who recently retired as director of Earth Science Division at Goddard, in a joint call with fellow Landsat team member Temilola Fatoyinbo.
“Even if we use more high resolution data sets—because now we have all these other really amazing, very high-resolution data—it's still useful to compare it to Landsat,” added Fatoyinbo, who is a research physical scientist specializing in coastal ecosystems at Goddard’s Biospheric Sciences Lab. “The power lies in the ability to compare and look at the same spot on Earth through time, and we can only do that with Landsat.”
"The Eye of the Sahara" near the western edge of the Sahara Desert, captured by Landsat 8. Image: NASA/USGS
The world that Landsat 1 left all those decades ago was very different from the one that its current operational successors, Landsat 7 through 9, are observing today. Scientists were raising alarms about human-driven climate change, which is caused by greenhouse gas emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels, when the program began, but its 50-year record has documented the disastrous consequences in unprecedented detail.
Because Landsat has provided consistent calibrated coverage at no cost for decades, it is “a really powerful tool for understanding the impacts of climate change in many, many ways,” Irons said, citing observations of “retreating glaciers, Amazonian deforestation and forest disturbance, urban growth, changes in ecosystems” which “are all reflective of climate change—the list is huge.”
“For me, as someone who works in the coastal zone a lot, I see a lot of changes happening,” Fatoyinbo noted. “Both deforestation and coastal change are two really shocking images when you see them.”
Landsat images of change in the Mississippi Delta over a 30-year time span. Left to right: 1973, 1989, 2003. Image: USGS/NASA Landsat.
Landsat has also tracked the deterioration of wilderness all over the globe as cities, farms, and other human spaces steamroll natural habitats. These frightening changes can be hard to grapple with, but the program’s stunning catalog of Earth imagery presents the ultimate argument for action and resolve in the face of anthropogenic pressures.
Landsat images reveal our familiar home planet as somehow otherworldly when viewed from outer space, and they also expose its fragility—and therefore our own vulnerability—in a cosmic context. The program can make you rethink those little patches of Earth that you may know and love, a power that both Irons and Fatoyinbo reflected on as the program turns 50.
“I grew up in West Africa; I spent a lot of time there and a lot of places you just can't get to because it's huge, it's far, and there might not be transport,” Fatoyinbo said. “In some areas, there might be unrest or you just can't physically go there, especially in the type of wetlands that I work in.”
“When I saw my first satellite image, which was actually a printout of Africa in front of my future PhD advisor’s office, I felt like my head was about to explode,” she continued. “I hadn’t even thought about the idea that there would be multiple images, and that you could look through time. I hadn't even digested that yet. But when I ended up doing my PhD, I started working on mapping and working with Landsat data then. I’m still working with it and it keeps getting better.”
Irons also remarked on the interesting experience of beholding familiar stomping grounds from space. When I asked him if he had a favorite Landsat image, he cited an early picture from the program of the Appalachian Mountains around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Through Landsat’s perspective, he recognized places he had hiked and identified geological features he had learned about in courses at Penn State.
“To have it presented as an image taken from space, where the textbook discussion of what the Ridge-and-Valley looked like was right there, in a plain image that you could look at, explore, and say ‘oh, I hiked here’— that always struck me,” he said.
“Our focus, appropriately now, is on anthropogenic effects on the land and on the world, and we spend a lot of time looking at the aftermath of disasters, wildfires, and urban growth, but sometimes it's good just to go back to those ‘Earth as Art’ images and realize the stark beauty of observing the Earth from the high vantage-point of space,” Irons concluded. “We can’t all be astronauts and have that view, but we can all look at Landsat data and imagine what it would look like if we were up in space.”
Wholesale Route-to-Market (RTM) enables partners to deliver managed services to meet the needs of small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) through co-branded offers
Single contract with Service Provider partners enables them to extend Webex voice, video and collaboration technology, and provides support and resources to add value to SMB customer offerings
This Wholesale business model features multiple packages that harness the capabilities of the Webex Suite
SAN JOSE, CA – July 21, 2022 – Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) has launched a new Webex Wholesale Route-to-Market (RTM) for Service Provider partners to address the evolving needs of SMBs. The new sales model includes a single commercial agreement with each partner and a self-service platform for Service Providers to deliver managed services for Webex, as well as the agility, scalability and flexibility to create their own co-branded offers.
Cisco Wholesale for Webex
The Wholesale partner program features consumption-based billing with fixed, predictable per-user/per-month package pricing and equips Service Providers with several invoicing options. The partner onboarding experience includes dedicated Cisco experts, paired with comprehensive online training and a robust set of migration and marketing toolkits to drive market demand and serve SMB customers.
“When Service Providers more fully own the customer journey, it increases control of the solution design, provisioning, billing, and support. This translates into improved customer experiences and greater market velocity. This new wholesale model will do just that for Cisco and its partners,” said Elka Popova, VP of Connected Work Research, ICT, Frost & Sullivan. “This approach also enables providers to offer SMBs a more complete solution by integrating telco services, such as connectivity, security and mobility, with Cisco’s Webex cloud collaboration services suite and Cisco devices.”
This new wholesale solution makes it easy for Service Providers to leverage their brand with a co-branded offer, build on their market position, and innovate with their own services. APIs and Partner Portal features deliver a simple management experience. And by using a monthly consumption model, they can deliver low friction transactions ideally suited for SMBs. Additionally, Cisco’s Success Planning process includes a fully managed onboarding process for Service Provider partners, from pre-work through to production. A parallel go-to-market process accelerates customer acquisition and migration activities with marketing content, sales enablement, adoption assets, support training and launch campaigns.
Nexgen Australia, an Australia-based wholly owned subsidiary of Spirit Technology Solutions ASX ST1, is among the first Service Provider partners to sign-up for the Wholesale for Webex. Cisco is also in active trials of Wholesale for Webex with several Tier 1 global service providers.
“We wanted to bring our customers the benefits of advanced enterprise collaboration tools without the IT complexity and cost that it usually means. When searching for a cloud-based UCaaS solution, Webex was the obvious choice,” said James Harb, Director, Nexgen. “We are an all-digital shop running high-velocity, high-volume transactions. Offering Webex through Cisco’s new Wholesale route-to-market means we can continue to lead the way helping Australian businesses achieve more through the latest technology.”
“By tapping into the brand power of respected Service Providers and combining it with our inclusive Webex technology, rapid innovation, and complete collaboration portfolio, we are creating winning partnerships that address the communication needs of small and medium-sized businesses and help them thrive in a hybrid work world,” said Jeetu Patel, Cisco EVP and GM, Security & Collaboration.
Initial managed services packages for Webex that are available through the Wholesale RTM include:
Webex Calling: Enterprise-grade calling and advanced collaboration with features for 1:1 and group messaging, file-sharing, and secure basic video conferencing for up to 100 users, for a complete PBX replacement, including multi-device support, visual voicemail, intelligent call routing and more.
Common Area Calling: Calling built for shared use and common area locations and phones.
Webex Meetings: A premium meeting and messaging experience with meetings allowing up to 1000 users. Also includes AI-driven intelligence with Webex Assistant, Slido, remote desktop control, moderator controls and more.
Webex Suite: Encompasses all the above with premium calling, messaging and meetings, plus advanced features that are engaging and inclusive.
Managed services for Webex is the first offer available through the Cisco Wholesale Partner Program. More Cisco devices and other Cisco cloud services for the SMB market will be launched this year.
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet. Cisco inspires new possibilities by reimagining your applications, securing your data, transforming your infrastructure, and empowering your teams for a global and inclusive future. Discover more on The Network and follow us on Twitter at @Cisco.
About Cisco Webex
Webex is a leading provider of cloud-based collaboration solutions which includes video meetings, calling, messaging, events, customer experience solutions like contact center and purpose-built collaboration devices. At Webex, we start with people and their experiences first. This focus on delivering inclusive collaboration experiences fuels our innovation, which leverages AI and Machine Learning, to remove the barriers of geography, language, personality, and familiarity with technology. Our solutions are underpinned with security and privacy by design. We work with the world’s leading business and productivity apps – delivered through a single application and interface. Learn more at webex.com.
Last week, the internet dragged BMW for a proposal in which heated seats would become an $18/month subscription service. Now, a community of hackers who have been unlocking features in BMWs for years tell Motherboard they're prepared to help owners unlock subscription-only features.
These companies say they perform vehicle "coding" to add additional features like Android screen mirroring or remove undesired programs like turning off annoying chimes and can also enable a feature on the European model of BMW’s older electric car that was disabled for regulatory reasons. They advertise their services through various enthusiast forums and popular shopping websites like eBay and Etsy. Long viewed as part of the enthusiast/modding culture, some of these modders say they could unlock subscription-based features too.
“We're always listening to our customers and finding ways to offer the features they're looking for. As long as BMW makes it possible to activate heated seats, we can look at offering it. If BMW doesn't allow it, then the same feature could be added with a hardware retrofit, so in the end the driver is always going to be able to get what they want,” Paul Smith, content marketing specialist at Bimmer Tech, a BMW coding firm, told Motherboard in an email.
Historically, cars come with various features offered as part of packages, or “trims,” which the buyer decides when they purchase the car. Originally, these were nearly all physical or hardware upgrades like leather seats, more horsepower, or a sunroof. But, increasingly, they are software-enabled features like automatic headlights and wiper activation and driver assist features like adaptive cruise control. The creation of software-locked features means all versions of a car can have the feature, but only if the customer pays to unlock them. Some coders are helping customers do this off-the-books.
Automakers seem to have figured out they can make more money by making people pay twice for these software-enabled features, once when they buy the car and again via a subscription software to unlock it over the course of ownership. With the proliferation of internet-connected cars and the digitization of nearly every feature a car offers, automakers increasingly view selling software upgrades as part of their business model. Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep, Dodge, and Chrysler, recently told shareholders during its “Software Day” presentation it expects to generate $22.5 billion from selling software and subscriptions alone, matching projections from other major automakers like Volkswagen, General Motors, and Ford.
Arguably, no automaker has pushed the envelope on consumer expectations for paid software upgrades more than BMW. In 2019, the company royally pissed off its customers by announcing it would charge $80 per year to use Apple CarPlay, a feature many owners consider essential and even the cheapest cars provide for free. BMW backtracked, but obviously hasn’t given up on the “Software as a Service” model. It recently announced that in South Korea, owners will have to pay $18 a month to activate the heated front seats. In recent years, BMW owners in Europe have had to pay extra fees to enable features that are arguably just as important for other people on the road, such as automatically disabling high beams when they detect a car in the opposite lane and driving assistant features that help avoid crashes.
Enter the BMW coders, who are well placed to offer aftermarket solutions.
BMW coding firms generally offer customers two different ways to receive new features for their vehicle. The company can either offer the coding in person, where a representative will visit the customer at their home and perform the coding there, or they will remotely access the customer’s BMW. While some firms only offer remote coding in the United States and Canada, others perform the task worldwide, according to their websites.
For remote coding, customers will first need to buy an ENET cable. This is a cable with an Ethernet port at one end that plugs into their laptop, and the other end plugs into the on-board diagnostics (OBD) port on their BMW. These go for around $25.
The features that coders then offer to activate is dizzying. They include turning on an alarm sound when unlocking or locking the vehicle which is off by default in some regions; enabling video functions while driving; removing the legal notice on the iDrive BMW entertainment and communications system on startup; automatically unlocking the doors after pressing the Stop Button; closing the car’s windows via the key fob; setting the windows to open with the key fob but keeping the sunroof open; automatic headlamp cleaning, and many, many more.
“When I first started doing this about seven years ago, there were a lot of requests for common comfort features” like using the key fob to open and close windows, a coder in San Francisco, who asked not to use his name because of the gray-market status of his work, told Motherboard. These could be done by using a BMW software suite. “But now it’s kind of changed a little bit because a lot of the scene has matured a bit” with coders hacking the car’s firmware, generating fake certificates to enable paid features, or even coming up with hardware solutions to enable latent features like BMW’s driver assist system.
Back in 2019 when BMW said it would charge customers $80 a year to use CarPlay, some of the BMW coding firms offered access to the baked-in feature for a fraction of the price. “Bimmer Remote Coding,” for instance, advertises “lifetime activation” for CarPlay as well as additional quirks like being able to play videos while the car is in motion for $54.99.
“CarPlay activation has always been one of the most common coding inquiries, back when it was a subscription service and today when it still isn't offered in all markets,” Smith from Bimmer Tech added.
A coder named Rob, who didn’t provide his last name and who is from another firm called Easy Bimmer Coding, initially told Motherboard in an email he would be happy to share “how BMW over the years has ‘nickeled and dimed’ its customers, and how we have filled the market void.” After Motherboard sent a list of specific questions, Rob replied that “I’m actually going to respectfully decline from this due to conflicts that may arise.”
Smith said that third parties being able to access and change diagnostic information isn’t under threat, but that his company does need to keep up with BMW’s own constant changes to its software.
“BMW's software is a moving target, so we need to change things to keep our services working. For example, coding through the vehicle's USB port is only possible in vehicles running certain software versions, so updating the vehicle's software takes away that option,” he said. BMW itself might also reverse any of the applied tweaks. “BMW technicians can also reset the system during a vehicle service, which wipes any changes. For that, we also offer a reactivation service to reinstate any custom features,” he added. The coder from San Francisco said the problem of fixes getting reset after software updates has become more acute since cars became capable of over-the-air updates via internet connections, which has enabled more frequent updates.
While most of the coding services on offer give drivers control over fun or more convenient quirks of their vehicle, others may be skirting U.S. regulations. On its website, Bimmer Tech advertises the ability to turn on the range extender for BMW’s i3 electric car much earlier than ordinarily allowed in the U.S. market.
The i3 REx is an electric car with a small two-cylinder gasoline engine that acts as a range extender by charging the battery which powers the car. In i3 REx vehicles sold in the U.S., this range extender only turns on when the battery charge is below six percent. This is to meet an arcane California Air Resources Board regulation around the definition of battery-electric vehicles as opposed to hybrids. Meanwhile in the European market, drivers can manually turn on the range extender once their battery charge drops below 75 percent.
“A lot of US i3 REx owners look at that European configuration with more than a hint of jealousy in their eyes…,” Bimmer Tech’s website adds. “The solution: BMW i3 hacks.”
In most scenarios, this does not make a difference. But in certain energy-intensive conditions, like driving uphill at highway speeds in cold temperatures, the range extender may not be able to recharge the battery as quickly as it is depleted. So if the battery only has a tiny amount of charge left, it can result in the car only going as fast as the little gas engine—originally designed for BMW motorcycles—can power it, which is typically 45 mph or slower. Being able to plan ahead and activate the range extender earlier solves the problem, but that option was not available to U.S. customers. (A class action lawsuit about the U.S.’s range extender configuration was filed in California in 2016, but was dismissed because the judge ruled it was not actually a product defect but worked as designed. The plaintiffs have appealed.)
However, Bimmer Tech says one of its technicians can remotely turn this latent feature on in U.S. models of the vehicle.
The coder in San Francisco says it’s inevitable people will try to circumvent paid features like heated seats. “I typically don’t like to provide any service that requires firmware hacking. Hardware hacking is whatever, but people typically do that after the warranty anyways,” he told Motherboard. “But what tends to happen is, because a lot of info for coders is shared on forums, if for example there’s a forum post and someone says they figured out how to gain full access to the heated seats, it’s really democratized how people do things. As long as people can read a forum post and follow directions, they can do it themselves. And I guess that’s the neat thing about the internet.” But he said it may be more trouble than it’s worth. “I don’t think there’s going to be, like, a second hand market for it. It really depends how automakers roll out the pricing structure. I think it’s going to be $450 if you want to buy the heated seats outright? That’s nothing. In the grand scheme of things I’d probably just buy the heated seats.”
Exactly 10 years ago today, Microsoft completed its $1.2 billion purchase of Yammer, an enterprise-focused social networking platform. Despite a big Yammer overhaul in 2019, Microsoft has been increasingly focused on Teams and its new Viva platform as the hubs of communication in workplaces.
Microsoft is now launching Viva Engage today, a new Facebook-like app inside Teams that encourages social networking at work.
Viva Engage builds on some of the strengths of Yammer, promoting digital communities, conversations, and self-expression in the workplace. While Yammer often feels like an extension of SharePoint and Office, Viva Engage looks like a Facebook replica. It includes a storylines section, which is effectively your Facebook news...
“In this country, we’re used to treating a hot spell as a chance to go and play in in the sun,” said Penny Endersby, chief executive of the Met Office, in a statement. “This is not that sort of weather.” The heat in the UK has disrupted trains and flights. Hospitals are bracing for an influx of heat-related casualties, and Covid-19 cases are rising as well.
Across the channel, France broke more than 100 all-time heat records across the country in the past week. But just as energy demand is spiking with people desperate to cool off, the high temperatures have forced France to cut down its nuclear power output since the rivers used to cool the power plants have become too hot. Much of Europe is already dealing with a spike in energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led countries to reduce their use of Russian oil and gas.
Bernat Armangue/AP
A resident fights a forest fire with a shovel during a wildfire in Tabara, Spain, on July 19. Firefighters battled wildfires raging out of control in Spain and France during an extreme heat wave that authorities blamed for hundreds of deaths.
Spanish authorities estimate more than 500 people nationwide have already died from the heat through the weekend. High temperatures are fueling a spike in ozone pollution. The heat and dry weather have also created ideal conditions for wildfires, and blazes have already ignited in France, Spain, and Portugal, creating harrowing scenes of flames encroaching on homes, roads, and trains while forcing thousands to evacuate.
— Francisco Seoane Pérez (@PacoSeoanePerez) July 18, 2022
The recent heat wave is a reminder that disasters are rarely polite enough to wait their turn. Covid-19, the war in Ukraine, and the economic stresses of inflation are making it more difficult for countries to respond to the severe weather, and compounding its toll.
The severe heat this week across Europe is unusual for the continent, but it’s not surprising. Scientists have warned for years that more frequent and intense heat waves are one of the most direct consequences of climate change, even in places used to mild weather. While the whole planet has warmed on average by about 2°F since the Industrial Revolution, that small rise in the average is leading to a large spike in extreme temperatures.
Even so, the recent heat is leading scientists to rethink just how quickly extreme temperatures could arrive. But it’s clear that more sweltering summers lie ahead for Europe.
Sophie Garcia/AP
Swimmers walk on a pier in southwestern France, under a large cloud of black smoke and ash from a wildfire consuming the thousand-year-old forest bordering the Dune du Pilat on July 18.
The recent heat wave is exposing Europe’s unique vulnerabilities
Though countries in Europe are wealthy, heat is still a major threat to people and to infrastructure. Europe’s ordinarily mild climate has meant that many homes and businesses have not invested in air conditioning. Fewer than 5 percent of homes across Europe have air conditioning, according to the International Energy Agency.
And compared to people who live in warmer climates, Europeans themselves are also less acclimated to extreme heat. That can mean people miss the warning signs of heat danger. These patterns are why heat waves are often more dangerous in cooler climates. In fact, one of the biggest predictors of the dangers of a heat wave is not how high temperatures get, but how much they deviate from the norm for an area.
Europe is also highly urbanized. About 72 percent of European Union residents live in cities, towns, and suburbs. The concrete, glass, and steel of urban environments and the relative lack of green spaces turns cities into heat islands that stay hotter than their surroundings.
Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images
People seeking relief from the heat swim in the Sky Pool, a clear acrylic swimming pool fixed between two apartment blocks in London, England, on July 17.
One especially dangerous aspect of the current heat wave is how warm it’s been after sunset. The UK just broke its record for the hottest temperature recorded at night. In many parts of the world, nighttime temperatures are rising faster than daytime heat. This often leads to worse health problems because people find little relief as heat stress mounts.
“Nights are also likely to be exceptionally warm, especially in urban areas,” said Neil Armstrong, chief meteorologist at the UK Met Office, in a statement. “This is likely to lead to widespread impacts on people and infrastructure. Therefore, it is important people plan for the heat and consider changing their routines.”
Europe may face even more extreme heat in the future because of changes in the jet streams, the narrow, fast-moving bands of air in the upper atmosphere. A study published earlier this month in Nature Communications found that the jet streams are shifting in ways that amplify heat over the European continent.
So the combination of human factors, changes in regional weather patterns, and warming around the world is converging to worsen the toll of extreme heat in Europe.
Michael Probst/AP
A man takes advantage of relatively cooler morning hours for a run on the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany, on July 18.
Europe has been expecting more heat waves, but the current one is still alarming
Much of Europe remains haunted by the 2003 heat wave that killed more than 70,000 people. The good news is that natural disasters like heat waves are becoming less deadly around the world. Better forecasting and more tools to cope with heat have saved lives in Europe. But with disrupted travel, increasing hospital visits, and lost productivity, heat is still extracting a growing social and economic toll.
That’s why, although few Europeans have air conditioners in their homes, worries about extreme heat have been mounting for years.
In 2014, French weather presenter Évelyne Dhéliat imagined an August weather forecast for France in the year 2050 using projections from the World Meteorological Organization. She showed the kind of weather that would be likely after decades of additional warming, with temperatures rising to 109°F in southern France.
But as the French magazine L’Obs points out in the video below, much of that imagined midcentury forecast already came true in 2019:
The recent heat wave showed similar heat patterns to those projections across France. In 2020, the UK Met Office did the same exercise, creating a hypothetical weather forecast for 2050. That forecast has also come true this week:
In 2020, the @metoffice produced a hypothetical weather forecast for 23 July 2050 based on UK climate projections.
Today, the forecast for Tuesday is shockingly almost identical for large parts of the country. pic.twitter.com/U5hQhZwoTi
So does this heat wave mean the weather of tomorrow is already here and that climate models underestimated what’s in store?
It’s not clear yet. Temperatures in Europe this week certainly expand the realm of what’s possible in the present and into the future. “It’s definitely extreme in terms of what’s happened historically, but we should be expecting that we’ll hit more and more extremes moving forward,” said Isla Simpson, a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
However, scientists are still trying to figure out how the current European heat wave fits into previous forecasts and whether it’s more extreme than predicted. Climate models do show that Europe is capable of reaching triple-digit temperatures in the current era, but researchers are calculating how much more likely they’ve become. The current heat wave isn’t over yet, and it will take some time to compare climate predictions to the actual results. Researchers are also investigating exactly how much human-caused climate change made it worse.
Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Travelers wait at a London railway station during a heat wave that led to rail and air travel delays, on July 18.
“Climate change has already influenced the likelihood of temperature extremes in the UK,” said Nikos Christidis, a climate scientist at the UK Met Office, in a statement. “The chances of seeing 40°C [104°F] days in the UK could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence.”
In past heat waves, climate simulations struggled to anticipate the severe temperatures already manifesting in some parts of the world, like the expansive blob of heat that settled over the Pacific Northwest last year.
“It was hard for our models to produce an event that extreme even if you account for climate change,” Simpson said. “We will have to start to wonder, are we missing something, or are we just very unlucky?”
Of course, Europe isn’t the only place that’s sweating this summer. Much of the US is also facing a heat wave that has worsened wildfires and created risks of power outages, while India and Pakistan saw a massive heat wave across the region in May.
And climate change is expected to nudge future thermometers even higher. As hot as it’s already been, this is still likely to be one of the coolest summers we’re going to experience for the rest of our lives.
Facebook will allow some users to have multiple profiles as part of a test, the company announced today, signaling a major shift as Meta looks for new ways to encourage users to stay on the platform amid increased competition from rivals.
As part of the test, some Facebook users will have the ability to create up to four additional profiles tied to their original account. The idea is that additional profiles can be used for different purposes, like one for friends, one for co-workers, and others for interacting with interest groups and influencers. Users will still have one account but be able to switch between profiles with a few clicks.
Users who create extra profiles won’t need to use their real identity for their display name
The Nissan Leaf, a pioneer electric vehicle and one of the cheapest EVs currently on the market, is nearing the end of its life span. According to a report in Automotive News, Nissan does not plan on introducing a next-generation version of the Leaf and may even discontinue the nameplate altogether.
Production of the current version of the Leaf is set to wind down by mid-decade, the outlet reports, citing three anonymous sources. A spokesperson for Nissan declined to speculate on the Leaf’s future but did say that the company has noted a “renewed” interest in the Leaf amid high demand for EVs.
“We are seeing renewed interest in LEAF with the increased demand for EVs and its overall value proposition,” Nissan spokesperson Stephen Oldham...
Chrome OS, Google’s Linux-based operating system for its Chromebook devices, has been around for more than a decade, but the company has made a small but notable branding change: it’s now called ChromeOS, with no space in between. James Croom, Google’s senior director of marketing for ChromeOS, confirmed the change to The Verge.
You can see the change for yourself all over Google’s ChromeOS dev page (though the official logo at the top appears to have a lowercase c.)
Screenshot from Google’s ChromeOS dev pageThat’s three entire spaces saved just in this screenshot. (And four if you count the logo.)
The change hasn’t rolled out everywhere just yet. On this ChromeOS page on Google’s Chromebook site, for example,...
The Wink Hub has been offline for two weeks, the longest ever for the smart home platform. | Image: Wink
Wink, the once-innovative smart home platform, has been down for two weeks with no sign of a fix. The outage has left customers of the Will-i-am-owned company — who pay $5 a month for the service to run their connected lights, locks, sensors, and other devices through the Wink Hub — completely in the lurch. It’s so bad that even Wink’s website and email are affected, which gives off strong whiffs of “somebody didn’t pay the bill this month.”
There was initially no formal word from Wink, but an email to users posted on Reddit arrived 10 days after the outage began. It states in part, “Starting on July 1st, our systems have regrettably become temporarily unavailable …. We assure you that we’re working hard on a resolution for the ongoing...
Tesla is asking its customers in Texas to avoid charging their electric vehicles during peak times in order to prevent overtaxing the state’s power grid. The alerts come as Texas’ grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT, is calling on residents to conserve electricity during the recent heatwave, as the system is being pushed to near-emergency conditions.
Tesla sent an alert to customers’ in-car screens advising them to avoid charging their vehicles from 3PM–8PM. “A heat wave is expected to impact the grid in Texas over the next few days,” the alert reads, according to Electrek. “The grid operator recommends to avoid charging during peak hours between 3pm and 8pm, if possible, to help statewide efforts to manage...
Work-from-home tech doesn’t have to be boring or expensive. | Image: HP
Working from home is just how things are done now for many people, whether you’re a full-time remote employee for the long haul or you have a hybrid role. It’s important to have a comfortable space to get your stuff done easily and efficiently, and with Amazon Prime Day ongoing right now, there are some great chances to save you some coin on the tech and tools you’ll use to make your moolah.
It’s not just webcams and monitors you may want to consider — though those can be important. There are some ongoing deals for laptops, headphones, and even smart home tech that can make your work life at home a little easier. Here are some highlights of the best Prime Day tech deals for working from home going on at Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and...
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