Month: June 2021

Enlarge / The new McLaren Artura plug-in hybrid supercar will be the first production car to use tires with built-in monitoring sensors. (credit: McLaren)

When the McLaren Artura reaches the road later this year, it will do so riding on the world's first "Cyber Tires." Made by Pirelli, the tires feature an evolution of the tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) that are now fitted to new cars. Normally, those sensors are in a car's wheels, but Pirelli has here embedded them in the construction of the tire, where they measure pressure, temperature, and acceleration.

That little snippet of information from the Artura press briefing left me intrigued, if a little skeptical. So I reached out to Pirelli to see if it could convince me that smart tires are a good idea.

"Now we have the technology to install at industrial level a sensor inside the tire and, most of all, integrate the sensor into the car itself," said Piero Misani, Pirelli's senior VP of R&D. "You can put in a sensor, you can put in an app [linked to a tire], but this is not a dialogue between the tire and the car. That is something that is a standalone system. With the McLaren Artura, we believe that we'll be the first to fully integrate a sensor in the tire with the car's electronics."

Enlarge / An Amazon Echo smart speaker. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Amazon quietly changed its terms of use last month, dropping a clause that forced customers into arbitration. Now, people can sue the company individually or in a class action.

The change apparently was brought about by a surge in arbitration demands over revelations that Amazon’s Echo devices were sometimes recording and saving conversations without consent, including those involving children. Those recordings allegedly ran afoul of laws in several states that require consent before recording and data collection.

Two state laws, the Illinois Biometrics Information Privacy Act and the California Information Privacy Act, have been key drivers of complaints against Amazon. Lawyers have filed class-action suits on the grounds that Amazon’s Echo recordings violated both consent laws and biometric laws, since some recordings were used to develop voiceprints to identify individual users in a household. But Amazon’s attorneys have successfully argued on several occasions that the cases should be kicked out of court and sent to arbitration.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Nintendo's reaction to the summary judgment.

The now-unemployed owner of a shuttered ROM distribution site has been ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages to Nintendo after trying and failing to defend himself in the case.

In September 2019, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles resident Matthew Storman over his operation of RomUniverse.com, which offered prominent downloads of "Nintendo Switch Scene Roms" and other copyrighted game files. At the time, Nintendo said that the site had been "among the most visited and notorious online hubs for pirated Nintendo video games" for "over a decade."

Storman has admitted that, in 2019, the site made up the bulk of his $30,000 to $36,000 a year in income. This included direct revenue from the sale of "premium unlimited accounts" for $30 per year that provided users with faster downloads and no limits. By the time Storman signed a September 2020 agreement with Nintendo to shut the site down, he said he was deriving $800 a month from the site. According to court documents, Storman's income is now derived primarily from "unemployment and food stamps."

Enlarge / The mirror of the James Webb, with its individual segments unfolded into place. (credit: NASA)

The James Webb Space Telescope won't launch as scheduled on Halloween this year—which is definitely a trick rather than a treat for the space community. However, the delay may only be a few weeks.

Last summer, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) set an October 31, 2021, launch date for the $10 billion telescope. The instrument, which is the largest science observatory ever placed into space, will launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket from a spaceport in French Guiana. Now, however, three considerations have pushed the launch into November or possibly early December.

During a press briefing with reporters on Tuesday, the telescope's director for launch services, Beatriz Romero, said that there are a "combination of different factors" to consider when setting a new launch date. These factors include shipment of the telescope, the readiness of the Ariane 5 rocket, and the readiness of the spaceport in South America as well. Romero said she did not expect to identify a new launch date until later this summer or early fall.

Enlarge / The mirror of the James Webb, with its individual segments unfolded into place. (credit: NASA)

The James Webb Space Telescope won't launch as scheduled on Halloween this year—which is definitely a trick rather than a treat for the space community. However, the delay may only be a few weeks.

Last summer, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) set an October 31, 2021, launch date for the $10 billion telescope. The instrument, which is the largest science observatory ever placed into space, will launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket from a spaceport in French Guiana. Now, however, three considerations have pushed the launch into November or possibly early December.

During a press briefing with reporters on Tuesday, the telescope's director for launch services, Beatriz Romero, said that there are a "combination of different factors" to consider when setting a new launch date. These factors include shipment of the telescope, the readiness of the Ariane 5 rocket, and the readiness of the spaceport in South America as well. Romero said she did not expect to identify a new launch date until later this summer or early fall.