Month: April 2021

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images | Getty)

Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, will later this week issue charges against Apple stating that its App Store rules break EU law, according to several people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The charges relate to a complaint brought two years ago by Spotify, the music streaming app, that Apple takes 30 percent commission to distribute apps through its iPhone App Store and forbids apps from directing users to pay for subscriptions elsewhere.

Brussels opened an official competition investigation in June, when Vestager said Apple appeared to be a so-called gatekeeper “when it comes to the distribution of apps and content to users of Apple’s popular devices.”

Enlarge / Julie Schablitsky searches for artifacts at the site. (credit: Tim Pratt, MDOT)

In the years before the American Civil War, Harriet Tubman led dozens of enslaved people to freedom through the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the war, she scouted, spied, and led military raids against Confederate forces. Now, archaeologists have pinpointed the Maryland childhood home where she learned her fieldcraft.

Tubman’s father Ben Ross inherited the 10-acre tract of land from his former enslaver in the late 1830s. “She would’ve spent time here as a child, but also she would’ve come back and been living here with her father in her teenage years, working alongside him,” said Schabitsky in a recent press conference announcing the find.

“This was the opportunity she had to learn about how to navigate and survive in the wetlands and the woods,” said Schabitsky. “We believe this experience was able to benefit her when she began to move people to freedom.” Her experience with her father also taught her the region’s coastal shipping routes and probably provided her with useful contacts.

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  The Lotus Emira will be unveiled in early July, and it's going to be the last new Lotus with an internal combustion engine. [credit: Lotus ]

Car enthusiasts have been wondering for a while now what's next for Lotus Cars. The British carmaker is best-known for lightweight sports cars, but it's probably nearly as well-known for being perennially broke. At least it was. In 2017, Geely bought the brand and its Malaysian parent company Proton, with the promise of reinvestment. And Geely has a track record in that regard—in 2010 it bought Volvo from Ford, then bankrolled it and stood back to watch as the Swedish OEM revitalized itself.

Well, wonder no more, for on Tuesday morning Lotus revealed its master plan. It's preparing not one but four separate vehicle architectures, which it says will be exclusive to Lotus within the Geely group (which includes Polestar as well as Volvo) but available to other OEMs through the well-respected Lotus Engineering consultancy.

The first vehicle architecture, and probably least important, is called Extreme. We've actually already seen the first car that will use this hypercar platform: the Evija, a four-motor electric vehicle with 1,971 hp (1,470 kW) and a $2.1 million price tag to go with it.