Month: October 2017

Enlarge / Robert Scoble, as seen in 2013. (credit: Thomas Hawk)

In a Wednesday blog post, Robert Scoble, the Silicon Valley pundit who was recently publicly accused of sexual assault and harassment, now claims that he didn’t sexually harass anyone because they were never his employees.

"I don’t have employees, I don’t cut checks for investment," he wrote. "None of the women who came forward were ever in a position where I could make or break their careers. Sexual Harassment requires that I have such power."

When Ars asked Scoble how he came to his understanding of what did and did not constitute sexual harassment, he did not directly respond but wrote in an e-mail that "the legal definition of sexual harassment has to do with the power position of the two people."

Enlarge / Image of Tesla's solar+storage system outside of Hospital del Niño. (credit: Tesla)

Two weeks ago, battery makers Tesla and Sonnen pledged to build microgrids and deliver batteries to hospitals and other critical infrastructure in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which wiped out power to nearly all of the island’s electricity customers. Today, Tesla tweeted that Hospital del Niño, a children’s hospital in Puerto Rico, was the “first of many solar+storage projects going live.” The company didn't immediately respond to requests for comments on the size of the installation or how much it cost.)

But Tesla's not the only company working on putting renewable energy in Puerto Rico. In an e-mail to Ars, a Sonnen spokesperson Hilary Donnell said that the company's first microgrid in Puerto Rico would go live sometime next week, with 3 to 5 Sonnen microgrids serving communities on the island by mid-November.

Microgrids have often been cited as infrastructure to improve electric resiliency. They tend to be small, community-based systems that run on solar power, batteries, wind, or diesel generators, which can be quickly repaired and linked up to other microgrids in case of failure. In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy in 2012, New York set aside $500,000 in grants to do feasibility studies for microgrid construction. Similarly, Puerto Rico seems enthusiastic to place microgrids where more traditional energy was once served. According to Bloomberg, Puerto Rico officials have talked not only to Tesla and Sonnen, but also to Arensis and Sunnova to discuss improving and privatizing parts of the commonwealth's public grid.

Enlarge / A graphic illustrating one of PragerU's videos, "Does God Exist?"

A conservative media company has sued YouTube, saying that the online video giant illegally censors the short videos it produces.

PragerU was founded in 2011 by Dennis Prager, a prominent conservative writer and radio talk show host. The organization is a nonprofit that espouses conservative viewpoints on various issues by means of short, animated videos, which it posts on its own website, as well as its YouTube channel.

"Google/YouTube have represented that their platforms and services are intended to effectuate the exercise free speech among the public," write PragerU lawyers in the organization's complaint (PDF), filed Monday. "As applied to PragerU, Google/YouTube use their restricted mode filtering not to protect younger or sensitive viewers from 'inappropriate' video content, but as a political gag mechanism to silence PragerU."

You used to know where you were with BMW. It made dependable, fun-to-drive sedans, with the occasional foray into GT cars like the 6 and 8 Series. But then the car buying public went mad, and everyone decided they really wanted a wagon. But they wouldn't buy actual wagons, apparently because of the association with mom's station wagon from the '70s. And they wouldn't buy hatchbacks, either, because those were only for college kids. So the marketers took those form factors and jacked them up in the air, adding some styling tweaks meant to suggest the utilitarianism of military surplus.

Because BMW wants to keep selling cars, it joined in on the fun with its range of X vehicles: SUVs, crossovers, and the increasingly odd Sports Activity Coupes. It's to the latter category that its newest vehicle belongs—meet the BMW X2.

Microsoft is no longer building any Kinect devices for consoles or PCs, writes Fast Co. Design. Since their 2010 introduction on the Xbox 360 and through major updates for Xbox One and PC, the sensors combined a depth-sensing camera, a regular video camera, and a microphone array into a device that Microsoft hoped would usher in a new wave of games and apps packed with voice and motion-based controls. Microsoft's own marketing promised gamers that they themselves would be the controller.

With Kinect, Microsoft appeared to be leading the tech world with a rich mix of voice and motion controls that nobody else could match, all neatly packaged into a consumer-friendly box.

But a world of compelling voice and motion games never really materialized, so a device that once held such promise—as a box in your living room that you talk to; as a showcase of machine vision; as a basis for complex multimodal input mixing controllers, movement, and voice—is being killed off after never quite living up to the potential we felt it had. And as someone who still uses a Kinect every single day, I'm more than a little saddened.