Month: October 2020

Here's an interesting experiment Google is kicking around on its smart displays: voice-command input without a hotword. A video detailing the feature is up on YouTube from Jan Boromeusz, a Nest Home hacker who has a proven track record of scoring early smart display features before they get announced.

Boromeusz's Nest Hub Max is somehow in "Dogfood" mode, which means it receives early, non-public builds of the smart display software meant only for internal use at Google. A special menu called "Dogfood features" lists a "Blue Steel" feature that will let the device respond to commands without having to say the "Hey Google" hotword first—you just say a command and it will respond. Boromeusz says the device will listen for commands after "detecting presence," so if someone is in front of the display, it will just start answering questions.

Today Google's voice command hardware listens all the time, but only for the "Hey Google" hotword. Once that's detected, it will start processing additional commands. The more modern implementations also use the hotword as the cutoff point for connecting to the Internet—"Hey Google" detection is processed locally, and anything after that will get uploaded, processed, and stored on Google's servers. The hotword also acts as a form of consent, not just by having the following words uploaded to the Internet, but also because letting the device listen all the time and respond to every possible thing that could be interpreted as a command would be annoying.

NASA scientists confirmed Wednesday that the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully made contact with an asteroid a day earlier, touching the surface for six seconds and collecting dust and pebbles from its surface.

The spacecraft's performance at the asteroid Bennu, which is only about as wide as the Empire State Building is tall, was remarkable. Because the asteroid is so small, its gravity is negligible, which complicates orbital maneuvering by the spacecraft around what is, essentially, a rubble pile.

Despite these challenges, at a distance of 320 million kilometers on Tuesday, NASA engineers and scientists programmed a spacecraft to autonomously touch down within a single meter of its target area.

Enlarge (credit: Tesla / Aurich Lawson)

On Wednesday, Tesla published its financial results for the third quarter of 2020. The company says it ended Q3 2020 with a GAAP profit of $331 million, the fifth profitable quarter in a row for the US automaker. Despite the pandemic, it's a strong improvement on Q3 2019.

Tesla ends Q3 2020 with a positive free cash flow of $1.4 billion and $14.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Tesla says in its presentation to investors that Q3 was marked by substantial growth in vehicle deliveries, which counteracted a decrease in the average selling price as the company sells fewer and fewer Models S and X and sells more and more Models 3 and Y. Regulatory credits accounted for $397 million of its revenues, and the company had to pay out $280 million in stock-based compensation for CEO Elon Musk after the company reached certain milestones.

The automaker had already released data on its Q3 deliveries earlier in October, but to reiterate, it made 16,992 Models S and X, delivering 15,725 of the same. Models 3 and Y production clocked in at 128,044; in total, it delivered 124,318 of these vehicles during the three months in question. Impressively, total deliveries are up 54 percent quarter-on-quarter and 44 percent year-on-year. In total, the company's automotive business brought in $7.6 billion in revenue.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Streaming platform Twitch this week surprised many of its users when it sent out a huge batch of copyright takedown emails. These messages not only didn't tell streamers what supposedly infringing content they posted, but it also said that Twitch had simply deleted content outright without giving users a chance to appeal.

Many Twitch "partners"—the folks who make actual money from their Twitch participation—received emails on Tuesday warning that some of their archival content was about to be deleted for violating copyright law.

"We are writing to inform you that your channel was subject to one or more of these DMCA takedown notifications and that the content identified has been deleted," a screenshot of the email posted to Twitter by streamer Devin Nash reads. The email then goes on to recommend that users familiarize themselves with Twitch's guide to copyright law before "normal processing" of DMCA notifications resumes on Friday (October 23).

Enlarge / It's not a great tombstone, but... well, we'll just leave it at that. RIP Quibi. (credit: Getty Images / Sam Machkovech)

Quibi, the video-streaming service designed to revolve around smartphone screens, is no more, according to The Wall Street Journal.

After launching only in April this year, with a $1.75 billion infusion of cash and the leadership of former NBC bigwig Jeffrey Katzenberg, the service is ending as part of the closure of its holding company, Quibi Holdings LLC, according to "people familiar with the matter," the WSJ says. The news was delivered directly by Katzenberg to the LLC's investors on Wednesday, according to the report.

The writing appeared to be on the wall as soon as Quibi's primary sales pitch—quick-burst videos designed to attract the average on-the-go smartphone user—fell apart all over the United States in the wake of coronavirus-related shutdowns. (People just weren't watching videos on their phones as much this year while, say, commuting on crowded trains or going to and from schools and universities.) This issue was compounded by Quibi's surprising lack of home-friendly ways to watch its content, with zero major launches on set-top platforms like Roku, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire TV.

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)

Researchers in the United Kingdom plan to begin intentionally infecting a small batch of healthy young people with the novel coronavirus in January as part of a first “human challenge trial,” according to an announcement Monday.

The plan has not yet been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which regulates clinical trials in the UK, and outside experts have had mixed reactions to the announcement so far.

Nevertheless, the UK government is planning to invest $43.4 million (33.6 million pounds) in the trials. Researchers meanwhile are preparing to recruit an initial 30 to 50 people, aged 18 to 30, who have no underlying health conditions. Those conditions include diabetes, heart disease, or obesity, all of which would put them at greater risk of the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes, COVID-19.