Month: December 2020

Enlarge / US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on December 7, 2020. (credit: Getty | Saul Loeb)

The Trump administration will host a “Vaccine Summit” today at the White House. But notably absent from the vaccine-centered event will be any companies that actually make vaccines—including the companies leading the race for a COVID-19 vaccine, Moderna, Pfizer, and Pfizer's partner BioNTech.

The companies reportedly declined to attend or withdrew, which is seen as a snub to lame-duck President Trump. Senior officials for the Trump administration, meanwhile, said the administration decided to go “in a different direction.”

The Trump administration has pitched the unusual event as a way to educate the public about vaccine development, regulatory approval, and distribution processes and to congratulate the many players helping to develop COVID-19 vaccine candidates. The event includes a “fire-side chat” with top vaccine regulator Peter Marks from the Food and Drug Administration. There will also be talks with representatives from FedEx, UPS, McKesson, CVS, and Walgreens, who will all help get any FDA-approved vaccines to people’s arms.

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  AirPods Max. [credit: Apple ]

This morning, Apple made a surprise announcement: it has started taking orders today for its long-rumored over-ear headphones bearing the AirPods brand. Called AirPods Max, they take design cues from existing Apple products and use several internal sensors and microphones to deliver "computational audio" features.

Priced at $549, AirPods Max are fully wireless headphones, and they use Bluetooth aided by Apple's custom tech to connect to audio sources like an iPhone or a computer. They come with a "Smart Case" that protects the headphones for storage and puts the headphones in a low-power sleep mode. Additionally, the case has a Lightning port, allowing users to charge the headphones with an included Lightning to USB-C cable.

The above-mentioned sensors include an optical sensor, a position sensor, a case-detect sensor, and an accelerometer in each ear cup, and a gyroscope in just the left ear cup. There are also nine microphones. One is devoted exclusively to voice pickup, while the other eight are used for active noise cancellation; two of the mics perform double duty.

Enlarge / Yeager in 1947 standing next to _Glamorous Glennis_, the rocket-powered Bell X-1 that took him past Mach 1. (credit: US Air Force / Wikimedia Commons)

Hard-charging aviation legend Chuck Yeager, who in 1947 became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound in level flight, died on December 7. Yeager was 97.

Yeager's death was announced by his wife Victoria via Yeager's verified Twitter account:

No information on the cause of Yeager's death was released.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Duncan Hull / Getty)

Tesla is planning to raise another $5 billion from Wall Street, the company announced in a Tuesday morning filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It will be the company's third round of fundraising this year and will bring its 2020 fundraising to $12 billion.

It's a good time for Tesla to raise money because Tesla's stock price hit a record high of $640 on Tuesday—a more than seven-fold increase since the start of 2020. Tesla's market capitalization is now around $600 billion, which means that Tesla's existing shareholders will give up less than 1 percent of their stake from the stock sale.

Still, investors didn't seem thrilled at the news, with Tesla's share price down a little more than 1 percent in morning trading.