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Enlarge (credit: Tesla / Aurich Lawson)

On Wednesday, Tesla published its financial results for the third quarter of 2020. The company says it ended Q3 2020 with a GAAP profit of $331 million, the fifth profitable quarter in a row for the US automaker. Despite the pandemic, it's a strong improvement on Q3 2019.

Tesla ends Q3 2020 with a positive free cash flow of $1.4 billion and $14.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Tesla says in its presentation to investors that Q3 was marked by substantial growth in vehicle deliveries, which counteracted a decrease in the average selling price as the company sells fewer and fewer Models S and X and sells more and more Models 3 and Y. Regulatory credits accounted for $397 million of its revenues, and the company had to pay out $280 million in stock-based compensation for CEO Elon Musk after the company reached certain milestones.

The automaker had already released data on its Q3 deliveries earlier in October, but to reiterate, it made 16,992 Models S and X, delivering 15,725 of the same. Models 3 and Y production clocked in at 128,044; in total, it delivered 124,318 of these vehicles during the three months in question. Impressively, total deliveries are up 54 percent quarter-on-quarter and 44 percent year-on-year. In total, the company's automotive business brought in $7.6 billion in revenue.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Streaming platform Twitch this week surprised many of its users when it sent out a huge batch of copyright takedown emails. These messages not only didn't tell streamers what supposedly infringing content they posted, but it also said that Twitch had simply deleted content outright without giving users a chance to appeal.

Many Twitch "partners"—the folks who make actual money from their Twitch participation—received emails on Tuesday warning that some of their archival content was about to be deleted for violating copyright law.

"We are writing to inform you that your channel was subject to one or more of these DMCA takedown notifications and that the content identified has been deleted," a screenshot of the email posted to Twitter by streamer Devin Nash reads. The email then goes on to recommend that users familiarize themselves with Twitch's guide to copyright law before "normal processing" of DMCA notifications resumes on Friday (October 23).

Enlarge / It's not a great tombstone, but... well, we'll just leave it at that. RIP Quibi. (credit: Getty Images / Sam Machkovech)

Quibi, the video-streaming service designed to revolve around smartphone screens, is no more, according to The Wall Street Journal.

After launching only in April this year, with a $1.75 billion infusion of cash and the leadership of former NBC bigwig Jeffrey Katzenberg, the service is ending as part of the closure of its holding company, Quibi Holdings LLC, according to "people familiar with the matter," the WSJ says. The news was delivered directly by Katzenberg to the LLC's investors on Wednesday, according to the report.

The writing appeared to be on the wall as soon as Quibi's primary sales pitch—quick-burst videos designed to attract the average on-the-go smartphone user—fell apart all over the United States in the wake of coronavirus-related shutdowns. (People just weren't watching videos on their phones as much this year while, say, commuting on crowded trains or going to and from schools and universities.) This issue was compounded by Quibi's surprising lack of home-friendly ways to watch its content, with zero major launches on set-top platforms like Roku, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire TV.

Enlarge / Woman receives an experimental COVID-19 vaccine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA, on September 04, 2020, as part of a clinical trial. (credit: Getty | Boston Globe)

Researchers in the United Kingdom plan to begin intentionally infecting a small batch of healthy young people with the novel coronavirus in January as part of a first “human challenge trial,” according to an announcement Monday.

The plan has not yet been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which regulates clinical trials in the UK, and outside experts have had mixed reactions to the announcement so far.

Nevertheless, the UK government is planning to invest $43.4 million (33.6 million pounds) in the trials. Researchers meanwhile are preparing to recruit an initial 30 to 50 people, aged 18 to 30, who have no underlying health conditions. Those conditions include diabetes, heart disease, or obesity, all of which would put them at greater risk of the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and the disease it causes, COVID-19.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Peter Dazeley)

The Federal Communications Commission's top lawyer today explained the FCC's theory of why it can grant President Donald Trump's request for a new interpretation of a law that provides legal protection to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Critics of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan from both the left and right say the FCC has no authority to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives legal immunity to online platforms that block or modify content posted by users. FCC General Counsel Thomas Johnson said those critics are wrong in a blog post published on the FCC website today.

Johnson noted that the Communications Decency Act was passed by Congress as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which was an update to the Communications Act of 1934 that established the FCC and provided it with regulatory authority. Johnson also pointed to Section 201(b) of the Communications Act, which gave the FCC power to "prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest to carry out the provisions of this Act."

Enlarge (credit: John Lambert Pearson / Flickr)

For many people, the most familiar way to “go green” or “be eco-friendly” is probably paper recycling. (And perhaps its aging office cousin: “Consider a tree before you print this email.”) There are many ways to evaluate the environmental benefits of such actions, and one of those is greenhouse gas emissions. So how does paper recycling stack up in this regard?

That’s a more interesting question than it may seem, namely because of the way paper products are made. Processing pulp to make paper is typically powered by “black liquor”—a byproduct organic sludge with some useful properties. Burning it for heat and electricity to run the mill is approximately carbon neutral, since the carbon you emit into the air started out in the air (before a temporary stint as tree stuff). So if your recycling process generates CO₂ as it makes new paper, recycling could end up increasing emissions.

A new study led by Stijn van Ewijk at Yale University tries to do the math on this, using practical scenarios for the next few decades. Namely, they calculate whether increasing paper recycling would make it easier or harder to hit emissions targets that would halt global warming at 2°C.