Month: September 2022

Enlarge / A Firestone race tire made from guayule plants, pictured next to the little woody shrubs that made it possible. (credit: Bridgestone)

There's still a lot of petroleum hanging onto electric cars, specifically around the rims. It takes about seven gallons of oil to make each standard car tire, and the world produces more than 2 billion tires every year. Now, some tire companies are turning to a desert shrub and a novel means of pulling natural rubber compounds out of it.

Bridgestone Americas has been working with guayule (Parthenium argentatum) since 2012. The tire company broke ground on a research facility in Mesa, Arizona, in 2012, started evaluating sample tires in 2015, and received multiple grants from the US Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Energy for its research and molecular breeding work. Just last month, the company committed another $42 million to expanding its harvesting partnerships, with 350 acres in the short term and 250,000 more planned. That's part of more than $100 million invested into guayule-based rubber, the company says.

"With guayule, we can reduce the environmental impacts that come with overseas sourcing while also realizing a more sustainable agricultural system for parts of this country that are facing persistent and worsening climate conditions, so it’s really something with many benefits for our environment and our economy," said Nizar Trigui, chief technology officer for Bridgestone Americas, in a press release.

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

Apple will no longer limit how frequently AppleCare+ owners can pay Apple for supported product repairs. As spotted by MacRumors yesterday, the company updated the AppleCare+ subscription support service to offer "unlimited" repairs across its current product line. That's much more flexible than the two repairs per year previously offered, as per the Wayback Machine.

According to the fine print, this only covers "physical damage from handling due to unexpected and unintentional events." And there are associated service fees. Fixing broken glass on an iPhone, for example, will cost you $29 in addition to your monthly subscription fee. And you can pay $299 for accidental Mac damage on top of the unit's subscription cost.

For anyone curious about how subscription pricing compares for Apple's just-announced offerings, Apple is charging the same biennial fee for the iPhone 14 announced yesterday as it is for the iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, and iPhone 12 ($149). However, coverage for the iPhone 14 Plus is $179 for two years, and it'll run you $199 to cover the iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max for two years (Apple also sells monthly subscriptions).

Enlarge / The $50 Chromecast with Google TV. It comes in colors. (credit: Google)

The base-model $30 Chromecast is 4 years old at this point, so it's probably time for an upgrade. The usually reliable WinFuture has gotten wind that a new Chromecast launch should be happening any day, saying that a new device is already landing in dealer inventory systems.

The report says that the "Google G454V," which hit the Federal Communications Commission a few months ago, is a 1080p streaming device that runs Google TV. In Europe, the device has a price of "around 40 euro" which would slot it in below the existing "Chromecast with Google TV," which is 69.99 euro.

A new Chromecast makes a ton of sense. Besides being pretty old for a piece of technology, Google upended the Chromecast formula when it launched the high-end, 4K "Chromecast with Google TV" in 2020. The Chromecast changed from a dead-simple, zero-interface media receiver to having a full-blown TV OS with a remote control, an app store, and onboard storage. With that big shift came a change in operating systems: "Google TV" means it's running Android, while the current entry-level Chromecast runs the cast OS.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Samuel Corum)

Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick yesterday slammed Elon Musk for failing to provide text messages sought by Twitter. McCormick cited "glaring deficiencies" in the Musk side's document production in an order partially granting Twitter's request for more records, writing:

Plaintiff's Fourth Discovery Motion identifies clear deficiencies in Defendants' document production. Third parties produced text messages with Musk that Musk himself did not produce, and Musk's own production of text messages revealed glaring deficiencies. As just one example, Defendants produced two texts sent to Musk from Robert Steel of Parella Weinberg Partners on June 17 at 9:57 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. The 9:57 a.m. text asks a question. The 10:15 a.m. text—stating "Ok. Got it. ..."—implies that Musk responded. Assuming that Musk's response was not telepathic, one would expect some evidence of it in Defendants' document production. But Defendants provided none by the deadline for substantially completing document discovery.

McCormick further wrote that "Musk's approach to answering interrogatories also left much to be desired." After being ordered "to respond to interrogatories that required Defendants to identify persons with knowledge of relevant facts," Musk's side "supplemented their responses on August 26, but they did a bad job of it, identifying only a handful of people about whom Twitter was already aware." Musk later supplemented that by identifying 491"people with knowledge" but could have provided that information "much earlier," the judge wrote.

"Defendants have now cured many of the deficiencies about which Plaintiff complained in its Fourth Discovery Motion. They accuse Plaintiff of jumping the gun and seeking sanctions prematurely, but I do not see it that way. I can understand why Plaintiff requires relief. Plaintiff has born[e] the bulk of the burden of discovery."

Enlarge / A colorful waveform dramatically swirls through latent space, seeking kawaii. (credit: Getty Images)

Thanks to a web demo of a new AI tool called Koe Recast, you can transform up to 20 seconds of your voice into different styles, including an anime character, a deep male narrator, an ASMR whisper, and more. It's an eye-opening preview of a potential commercial product currently undergoing private alpha testing.

Koe Recast emerged recently from a Texas-based developer named Asara Near, who is working independently to develop a desktop app with the aim of allowing people to change their voices in real time through other apps like Zoom and Discord. "My goal is to help people express themselves in any way that makes them happier," said Near in a brief interview with Ars.

Several demos on the Koe website show altered clips of Mark Zuckerberg talking about augmented reality with a female voice, a deep male narrator voice, and a high-pitched anime voice, all powered by Recast.