Month: April 2017

Enlarge / We now know for sure that NASA's SLS rocket will not take flight in 2017. (credit: NASA)

NASA has decided it must delay the maiden flight of its Space Launch System rocket, presently scheduled for November 2018, until at least early 2019. This decision was widely expected due to several problems with the rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground launch systems. The delay was confirmed in a letter from a NASA official released Thursday by the US Government Accountability Office.

"We agree with the GAO that maintaining a November 2018 launch readiness date is not in the best interest of the program, and we are in the process of establishing a new target in 2019," wrote William Gerstenmaier, chief of NASA's human spaceflight program. "Caution should be used in referencing the report on the specific technical issues, but the overall conclusions are valid."

The GAO report referenced by Gerstenmaier, NASA Human Space Exploration: Delay Likely for First Exploration Mission, reveals a litany of technical concerns, such as cracking problems in the core stage of the Space Launch System rocket, that have significantly reduced the "margin" in the schedule available to accommodate development delays.

Enlarge / Apple's Craig Federighi talks up Apple Pay on the Web. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Rumors about an Apple-backed peer-to-peer payments system that could compete with services like Square Cash, PayPal's Venmo, and Google Wallet have been floating around for years. Those rumors still haven't amounted to anything yet, but a new report from Recode indicates that Apple is still interested and that it's in talks with banks and other "payments industry partners" about launching a peer-to-peer payments service later this year.

If launched, the service would likely fall under the Apple Pay umbrella. Right now, Apple Pay supports online and in-app payments and in-person contactless payments, but the app only lets users send money to merchants. The company is also allegedly looking into offering its own pre-paid debit cards, though the Recode report suggests Apple could face pushback from the banks it partners with to make the rest of Apple Pay work.

If Apple did get into the money transfer business, it would be a late entry into a crowded market, much as Apple Music was. But the sheer size of Apple's installed base and its ability to push these new services out to people quickly via an operating system update without needing to prompt for any new app downloads or account sign ups still shouldn't be underestimated. At last count in December, Apple's music service had racked up 20 million paid subscribers after a little less than a year and a half. This isn't too shabby compared to the 50 million milestone that Spotify just hit after a little more than eight years on the market, though that is up from 30 million in March of 2016 and 40 million in September. Apple Music obviously hasn't stopped Spotify from growing quickly, and an Apple-backed money transfer service wouldn't necessarily upend that market, either.

Enlarge / An Uber driverless Ford Fusion drives in Pittsburgh in 2016. (credit: Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Uber's love for arbitration is well-known, and it has sought to move its disputes with drivers into that more private forum. Now the question is, will it be able to steer a case as big as the Waymo litigation in the same way?

Waymo, Google's self-driving car division, sued Uber in February, claiming that Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski stole thousands of files that were trade secrets. Now Uber is seeking to move most of the case out of court and into arbitration. Waymo, in turn, wants to keep the whole case in federal court.

Uber filed a motion (PDF) to compel arbitration in March, but most of the courtroom action so far has been about Levandowski himself. Levandowski, who is not a defendant in the case, has declined to answer questions about the allegedly stolen files. He has cited his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

Enlarge / "The court is empty because all potential competitors are scared to face me." (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Last weekend's New York Times profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had plenty of important revelations about Kalanick and the company he runs, both of which have been facing some tough PR lately. But there was one incidental, almost throwaway line buried in the piece that made me stop in my tracks:

"In other personal pursuits, he once held the world’s second-highest score for the Nintendo Wii Tennis video game."

The line baffled me for a number of reasons, not least of which was that the concept of a "high score" in "Wii Tennis" didn't make much sense. Claiming the "world's second-highest score" in Wii Sports tennis is like claiming the second-highest score in Pong based on nothing but playing against the computer and your friends. Absent some sort of sanctioned tournament or logical third-party ranking system, the claim just doesn't parse.

And yet, the boast is oddly specific. Kalanick hadn't earned the best "Wii Tennis" score in the world according to The New York Times. He achieved the second best. If this was just a fabulist boast, why limit yourself to number two? And if it wasn't just puffery, who was number one?