Month: September 2020

Enlarge / Woman receives an experimental COVID-19 vaccine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA on September 04, 2020, as part of a clinical trial. (credit: Getty | Boston Globe)

In an extraordinary move Tuesday, nine top pharmaceutical executives made a public pledge that they will not prematurely release a COVID-19 vaccine and that they will only seek federal approval to distribute a vaccine after rigorous ethical and scientific standards are met.

The pledge was signed by the CEOs of AstraZeneca, BioNTech, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer, and Sanofi. All of the represented companies are working on a vaccine against COVID-19 and four—AstraZeneca, Moderna, and a joint venture between BioNTech and Pfizer—have vaccines in phase 3 clinical trials.

The vow appears to be a coordinated resistance to pressure from the Trump administration, which is pushing for a rollout of a vaccine by November 1, just before the presidential election. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told states to be ready to start distributing vaccines by November 1.

Enlarge / An Ouster sensor atop a Postmates robot. (credit: Ouster)

For years, the lidar business has had a lot of hype but not a lot of hard numbers. Dozens of lidar startups have touted their impressive technology, but until recently it wasn't clear who, if anyone, was actually gaining traction with customers.

That's starting to change. This summer, three leading lidar makers have done major fundraising rounds that included releasing public data on their financial performance.

The latest lidar maker to release financial data is Ouster, which announced a $42 million fundraising round in a Tuesday blog post. That blog post also revealed a striking statistic: the company says it now has 800 customers.

Enlarge / The Pentagon in its natural habitat—Arlington, Virginia—in 2018. (credit: Michael Brochstein | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images)

Amazon is continuing to fight the Department of Defense over a $10 billion contract, as the Pentagon has completed its review of the deal and determined once again that it was correct to award the entire project to Microsoft.

The DOD launched bidding for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project, a massive cloud-computing contract, in 2019. By April of that year, the shortlist was down to two finalists: Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. Amazon was widely considered the favorite, and many industry watchers expressed surprise when Microsoft ultimately landed the deal in October 2019.

Amazon filed suit, alleging that the decision was politically motivated and quoting President Donald Trump's alleged intention to "screw Amazon." In February of this year, a federal judge agreed to order an injunction on the deal pending the outcome of the case.

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  Put me in, coach. I'm ready to play... today. [credit: EA ]

Colin Kaepernick may not be a part of today's NFL, but today the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback makes his return to the Madden NFL series. Publisher Electronic Arts has announced that Kaepernick will be available to play later today in Madden NFL 21's Franchise and Play Now modes, where he can be put in charge of any team in the league.

Kaepernick last appeared in Madden NFL 17, which came out shortly after he famously kneeled in protest during the playing of the national anthem before a 2016 preseason game. When Kaepernick became a free agent the next season, he was no longer part of the collective licensing agreement EA arranged with the NFL Players Association and thus did not appear in subsequent Madden NFL titles.

This year, though, The Undefeated reports that EA reached out directly to Kaepernick to negotiate individual rights to his likeness in Madden NFL 21. Kaepernick was reportedly "hands-on" in the negotiations, insisting on his in-game avatar sporting an Afro and raising a "Black Power" fist as his in-game celebration.