Month: September 2020

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Epic dodging harm from Apple's decisions (and perhaps its own).

As Epic's continuing legal fight with Apple builds toward a coming September 28 hearing, Epic is formally asking for a temporary injunction to force Fortnite back onto the iOS App Store.

In a new motion filed with the court late Friday night, Epic calls Apple a "monopolist" that "retaliated with ferocity" to Epic's "daring to challenge Apple's misconduct." Epic cites precedent to suggest it shouldn't face such retaliation for fighting against "illegal contract provisions" in Apple's developer agreements.

More specifically, Epic accuses Apple of using its monopoly in iOS app distribution (via the App Store) "to coerce developers into using [Apple's in-app purchasing platform]."

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Shares of Tesla opened at $356 on Tuesday morning—down about 15 percent from Friday's closing price. The decline capped a rough week of trading for the carmaker. A week ago Tuesday, Tesla shares opened slightly above $500, a new record. They have been sliding ever since and are now down about 30 percent from last week's highs.

To be fair, those losses have merely put Tesla's stock back to the level it last reached in mid-August. Tesla stock soared in the second half of August after the company announced a five-for-one stock split on August 11. The value of Tesla's shares is still about four times what it was on January 1.

Snubbed by the S&P 500

Several factors seem to be weighing on Tesla's share price. One is the decision not to include Tesla in its influential S&P 500 index.

Enlarge / The Nikola Badger. (credit: Nikola Motors)

On Tuesday morning, General Motors announced that it was entering into a partnership with Nikola Motor Company, the hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) startup. For its part, Nikola is bringing $2 billion to the table in the form of newly issued stock, an 11 percent share in the company. In return, it appears GM will do pretty much everything else—engineering, homologating, validating, and manufacturing battery EV and FCEV variants of the Nikola Badger pickup truck.

"This strategic partnership with Nikola, an industry leading disrupter, continues the broader deployment of General Motors’ all-new Ultium battery and Hydrotec fuel cell systems. We are growing our presence in multiple high-volume EV segments while building scale to lower battery and fuel cell costs and increase profitability," said General Motors chairperson and CEO Mary Barra in a statement.

"Nikola is one of the most innovative companies in the world. General Motors is one of the top engineering and manufacturing companies in the world. You couldn’t dream of a better partnership than this,” said Trevor Milton, founder and CEO of Nikola.

Enlarge (credit: Traitov | Getty Images)

The Supreme Court is considering whether to adopt a broad reading of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that critics say could criminalize some types of independent security research and create legal uncertainty for many security researchers. Voatz, an online voting vendor whose software was used by West Virginia for overseas military voters in the 2018 election, argues that this wouldn't be a problem.

"Necessary research and testing can be performed by authorized parties," Voatz writes in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court. "Voatz’s own security experience provides a helpful illustration of the benefits of authorized security research, and also shows how unauthorized research and public dissemination of unvalidated or theoretical security vulnerabilities can actually cause harmful effects."

As it happens, we covered a recent conflict between Voatz and an independent security researcher in last Thursday's deep dive on online voting. And others involved in that altercation did not see it the way Voatz did.

Enlarge / A Long March 4B carrier rocket lifts off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Taiyuan in north China's Shanxi Province in April, 2019. (credit: Xinhua/Liu Qiaoming via Getty Images)

On Monday, a Long March 4B rocket launched from China's Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center carrying a remote-sensing satellite. This 50-year-old spaceport is located in north-central China, about 500km to the southwest of Beijing.

As often happens with the first stages of Chinese rockets launching from the inland Taiyuan facility, the spent Long March 4B booster fell downstream of the spaceport. In this case, it landed near a school, creating a predictably large cloud of toxic gas.

Unlike most of the world's spaceports, several of China's launch sites are located at inland locations rather than near water to avoid such hazards. For security purposes, China built three of its major launch centers away from water during the Cold War, amid tensions with both America and the Soviet Union.