Month: January 2020

• 

  My son doesn't usually ask me to watch YouTube videos. Particularly not in this serious tone. [credit: Jim Salter ]

The other night while I was getting ready to record a podcast, a Hangouts message came beeping in from my nine-year-old son. He wanted me to watch a video—one which he believed was very important—and come discuss it with him personally afterward. That video turned out to be a ten-minute clip from YouTube personality Maxmello—who, along with his wife Wengie, runs the Reacticorns YouTube channel—making a heartfelt appeal to his viewers to understand some unpopular changes he'd made to the channel.

Back in September, YouTube settled a pair of lawsuits from the FTC and the New York Attorney General for $170 million. The lawsuits alleged that the Google-owned YouTube has been flagrantly violating COPPA—the Childhood Privacy Protection Act. COPPA reins in the ability of websites to deliberately target and harvest personal information from children under the age of 13, and—in part—requires sites "directed to children" to "obtain verifiable parental consent" prior to collecting personal information; it also provides means for parents to review such information, once collected.

Although YouTube's terms of service state that users must be at least 13 years of age in the US, the reality is that millions of American children—like my kids—watch a lot of YouTube. In some cases, underage YouTubers watch content without ever logging in at all; in others, they may be using their parents' account, or they or their parents may have created an account for them that simply lies about their age.

• 

  Byton's CEO Daniel Kirchert on stage with the production M-Byte BEV at CES 2020. [credit: Byton ]

The transformation of the annual Consumer Electronics Show into an increasingly automotive-heavy trade show continues apace, particularly with electric vehicle startups like Byton. The company made a big splash at CES in 2018 with its first battery electric concept, the M-Byte. Industry watchers took note of the vehicle's highly experienced management and engineering team, with everyone else being dazzled by the M-Byte's 48-inch (yes, forty-eight inches, or 1.2m) infotainment screen. With production starting later this year in Nanjing, China, it used this year's CES to show us what sort of user experience we can expect from all those pixels.

Earlier Byton demos of the concepts involved a lot of talk about "the Byton life" and cloud-based user profiles that will follow Byton's customers from car to car, complete with facial recognition as biometric authentication. But with Chinese deliveries happening in a few months (and US and European deliveries scheduled for the first half of 2021), the company is getting concrete about developer partnerships, including one with ViacomCBS.

"We knew from the outset that in order to deliver the industry's first Smart Device on Wheels, we would need to invite partners to create truly compelling interactions. We also believe that Byton's unique user interface offers developers a challenge and an opportunity to engage with an in-car experience like none they ever seen," said Jeff Chung, vice president of Digital Engineering at Byton.

Enlarge / This Falcon 9 rocket has launched three times, including on the Telstar VANTAGE 18 mission in 2018. (credit: SpaceX)

In 2019 SpaceX launched two batches of 60 Starlink satellites—one experimental, and the second operational. On Monday, the company plans to add 60 more satellites with a nighttime launch of the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

If all goes to plan, this mission will be just the first of as many as 20 Starlink launches this year as SpaceX builds up a constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit to provide global Internet service. SpaceX may begin to offer "bumpy" service by the middle of this year to some consumers.

Following this next launch, scheduled for 9:19pm ET Monday (02:19 UTC Tuesday), SpaceX will have a constellation of nearly 180 satellites in low-Earth orbit, each weighing a little more than 220kg. This will make the company simultaneously the world's largest private satellite operator (eclipsing Planet Labs), while also being the most active private launch company.

Enlarge / The Jones Live Map was an early 20th century attempt at turn-by-turn navigation. (credit: Seal Cove Auto Museum)

It’s easy to take modern GPS navigation for granted; it’s no longer a novelty. Not only is it offered on the dashboard of your car, it’s on every smartphone in everyone’s purse or pocket. But if you who think that in-car navigation systems started with Garmin in 1991, guess again.

The more savvy amateur car historians might think in-car navigation began with the Etak Navigator. The brainchild of engineer Stan Honey and financier Nolan Bushnell (the cofounder of Atari), Etak was launched in 1985 without use of the US Military’s Global Positioning System—the addition of GPS wouldn’t happen for another decade. Yet Etak paved the way for the systems that followed, using digitized maps stored on cassette tapes since they could resist a bumpy car ride or the heat of a car interior on a hot day. Information was posted on a vector-based CRT screen. Each tape held 3.5 MB of map data. A windshield-mounted electronic compass mated to wheel sensors to determine speed the vehicle’s speed and direction. Two models were offered: the 700, with a 7-inch screen for $1,595, and the 450, with a 4.5-inch screen for $1,395. Map cassettes cost $35 each. Initially offered only with San Francisco area maps, Etak soon offered other major metro areas, with installation provided by local car stereo and cell phone shops.

Initially successful, sales inevitably slumped. In 1989, Etak was purchased by News Corporation for $25 million, followed by Sony Corporation and others before being absorbed into Tom Tom.