Month: November 2019

Enlarge / Tim Cook announces Apple TV+ at an event on March 25, 2019. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

According to a report in Bloomberg, Apple may be planning to launch a bundled subscription service that would include services like Apple News+, Apple TV+, and Apple Music as soon as 2020. This strategy would be similar to that of Amazon Prime, though not as far-reaching—at least at first.

The report says that, at a minimum, Apple has left the door open for this in its contracts with Apple News+ content providers. Its sources say that there is "a provision that Apple included in deals with publishers that lets the iPhone maker bundle the News+ subscription service with other paid digital offerings."

While this would likely be appealing to consumers and could bolster Apple's services revenue, not all stakeholders in the decision are likely to be happy about it. Bloomberg's sources said they believed that publishers could see reduced revenues from Apple News+ because they'd likely be sharing a smaller piece of the subscription pie than they do under the $10/month Apple News+ service. Currently, Apple pockets 50% of the money that comes in to Apple News+, while the other 50% is split between publishers based on how much their content is read and engaged with.

Enlarge / Ola Källenius of Daimler AG. (credit: Christoph Schmidt/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Daimler is planning to "rightsize" its spending on self-driving taxis, Chairman Ola Källenius said on Thursday. Getting self-driving cars to operate safely in complex urban environments has proved more challenging than people expected a few years ago, he admitted.

"There has been a reality check setting in here," Källenius said, according to Reuters.

He is just the latest executive to acknowledge that work on self-driving taxi technology is not progressing as fast as optimists expected two or three years ago. Earlier this year, Ford CEO Jim Hackett sought to dampen expectations for Ford's own self-driving vehicles. Industry leaders Waymo and GM's Cruise missed self-imposed deadlines to launch driverless commercial taxi services in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

Enlarge / This controller attachment was shown in Microsoft's xCloud promo video, and Bluetooth wireless controller support is also planned. (credit: Microsoft)

At Microsoft's annual X0 fan conference in London on Thursday, Microsoft confirmed a huge piece of news for its game-streaming platform, Project xCloud. The service will launch with full compatibility for all Xbox software in "2020," meaning that it will work with "all games you own, or games you purchase in the future," according to xCloud reps.

What's more, Xbox may have just thrown the gauntlet down in the game-streaming price wars by announcing a clear tie between the Project xCloud streaming service and the paid Xbox Game Pass subscription service.

"Next year, we will bring game streaming to Xbox Game Pass, so that you are free to discover and play anywhere and everywhere," xCloud General Manager Catherine Gluckstein told the X019 crowd on Thursday.

Plenty of technology development comes in areas where we've already settled on an efficient design. Wind turbines are a great example. Several decades ago, some radical ideas were floating around, touted as providing heightened efficiencies. But wind turbines have since stabilized on a standard design, and most research now goes into figuring out how to get the most out of that design. In a lot of ways, it's boring compared to the lingering potential for a complete reinvention.

Right now, 3D displays are back in the much more fun "radical ideas" phase. While various VR technologies are on the market, they're unsatisfying in various ways. A handful of technologies has been demonstrated that provide 3D images without the need for goggles or glasses. But these ideas have their own problems, including slow refresh and complicated hardware, and they lack a standardized mode of user interaction. One company has developed a 3D display that can be manipulated by hand, but without any feedback, this can be tricky.

This week, researchers are describing a new take on a recent 3D display development that mixes in a key ingredient: sound. The use of ultrasound allows the researchers to both run the display and provide haptic feedback for interactions with it. As an added bonus, the new display can allow audible sound to originate from objects within the display itself.

Enlarge / Teams from NASA, Boeing, and the White Sands Missile Range rehearse landing and crew extraction from Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on Monday, Sept. 9, 2019. (credit: NASA)

On Thursday, NASA's inspector general released a report on the space agency's commercial crew program, which seeks to pay Boeing and SpaceX to develop vehicles to transport astronauts to the International Space Station.

Although the report cites the usual technical issues that the companies are having with the development of their respective Starliner and Dragon spacecraft, far more illuminating is its discussion of costs. Notably, the report publishes estimated seat prices for the first time, and it also delves into the extent that Boeing has gone to extract more money from NASA above and beyond its fixed-price award.

Boeing's per-seat price already seemed like it would cost more than SpaceX. The company has received a total of $4.82 billion from NASA over the lifetime of the commercial crew program, compared to $3.14 billion for SpaceX. However, for the first time the government has published a per-seat price: $90 million for Starliner and $55 million for Dragon. Each capsule is expected to carry four astronauts to the space station during a nominal mission.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | eccolo74)

The Federal Communications Commission faces a legal battle against dozens of cities from across the United States, which sued the FCC to stop an order that preempts local fees and regulation of cable-broadband networks.

The cities filed lawsuits in response to the FCC's August 1 vote that limits the fees municipalities can charge cable companies and prohibits cities and towns from regulating broadband services offered over cable networks.

"At least 46 cities are asking federal appeals courts to undo an FCC order they argue will force them to raise taxes or cut spending on local media services, including channels that schools, governments, and the general public can use for programming," Bloomberg Law wrote Tuesday.

Enlarge / FTC Chairman Joseph Simons testifying about antitrust matters before a Senate committee in September 2019. (credit: Alex Edelman | Bloomberg | Getty Images)

In testimony before a House subcommittee Wednesday, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons renewed his call for Congress to pass new privacy legislation, telling representatives, essentially, he can't enforce a law that doesn't exist.

Simons was on Capitol Hill testifying in a hearing on "Online Platforms and Market Power," the probe the House Antitrust subcommittee launched in June to dig into Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

At the highest level, the FTC is responsible for basically two things: protecting competition and protecting consumers. To that end, it's one of the two bodies with antitrust oversight, sharing responsibility with the Justice Department for reviewing mergers and challenging anticompetitive behavior.