Month: February 2021

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One of the Trump administration's last acts in mid-January was to declare Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi a “Communist Chinese military company." The ruling from the Department of Defense (which is different from the Department of Commerce's export ban against Huawei) bans US citizens from holding Xiaomi stock or other investments starting March 15, 2021. This weekend, Xiaomi posted a response to the ruling, which came in the form of legal complaints to the US Defense and Treasury Departments.

Xiaomi's complaint is now addressed to the new Biden-appointed Defense and Treasury secretaries, saying the decision was "factually incorrect and has deprived the company of legal due process." Xiaomi calls the ruling “unlawful and unconstitutional,” denies being controlled by the Chinese military, and would like to see the decision reversed.

As Reuters reports, Xiaomi says that a "substantial number" of its investors are US citizens—including three of the top ten shareholders of ordinary shares—and that the ruling would cause “immediate and irreparable harm to Xiaomi." The company continues, “Moreover, the public association of Xiaomi with the Chinese military will significantly impair the company’s standing with business partners and consumers, causing reputational harms that cannot be readily quantified or easily repaired.”

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On Monday, Ford and Google announced a new partnership that will see the automaker work with Google on in-car technology. Perhaps the biggest news is that Ford is switching to Android for its infotainment systems by 2023. That means future Fords will feature Sync systems that use Google Maps and Android's excellent voice recognition, as well as opening up the platform to third-party developers. Ford will also use Google Cloud for its connected services, and the two companies will collaborate "to create new experiences for customers."

It has been a few years since we first knew that Google was using its Android OS to build infotainment systems for automakers. Last year, we got our first proper exposure to a production Android Automotive infotainment system, first in the Polestar 2, then a few months later in the closely related Volvo XC40 Recharge. And later this year, General Motors' various brands also begin a move to Android Automotive-based infotainment systems.

The user experience in both vehicles stood out from the crowd, particularly due to the extremely effective natural language voice recognition. Unlike voice commands in other vehicles, Android Automotive allows the driver to use voice commands to interact with climate functions as well as pure infotainment tasks, which goes a long way toward ameliorating the distraction danger from an all-touchscreen car interior.

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Dogs tagged along with the first humans to venture into the Americas, according to a recent study that analyzed existing collections of canine and human DNA. The results suggest that people domesticated dogs sometime before 23,000 years ago in Siberia, where isolated groups of wolves and people were struggling to survive the Last Glacial Maximum.

A tail of two species

Researchers generally agree on how dogs evolved (more on that below), but the when and where have remained more elusive. Durham University archaeologist Angela Perri and her colleagues used genetics to try to narrow it down.

Because genomes collect small, random mutations at a predictable rate, geneticists can compare genome sequences and tell how long ago two animals last shared a common ancestor. Perri and her colleagues used already-sequenced genomes from ancient and modern dogs to calculate when populations had split or interbred, and then they repeated the process with human genomes.