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Volvo hat trotz Coronakrise seine Ankündigung eingehalten, die ersten Polstar-Elektroautos im Sommer auszuliefern. (Volvo, Technologie)
Volvo hat trotz Coronakrise seine Ankündigung eingehalten, die ersten Polstar-Elektroautos im Sommer auszuliefern. (Volvo, Technologie) In May, Tesla told workers they could stay home if they felt unsafe.
Enlarge / Tesla's main US factory in Fremont, California. (credit: Andrei Stanescu / Getty)
Two workers, Carlos Gabriel and Jessica Naro, say that they received termination notices from Tesla last week after taking unpaid time off in an effort to avoid the coronavirus. The San Jose Mercury News first reported Gabriel's termination notice last week.
Both workers say that they were contacted this week by Tesla's HR department. Naro was given the opportunity to come back to work if she committed to a return date. She declined because her 6-year-old son has a health condition that puts him at heightened risk.
Gabriel ended his call after the Tesla rep refused to allow him to record it. He hasn't heard back since and believes he is no longer on Tesla's payroll.
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Die Telekom setzt weiter hauptsächlich auf Vectoring, doch auch FTTH nimmt etwas zu. (Glasfaser, DSL)
Safe-for-work chat with the famed sex columnist behind this crazy online event.
Enlarge / Columnist and author Dan Savage spoke with Ars Technica about the first year that Hump!, his offline amateur-porn festival, has had an online component. (credit: The Stranger / Hump! / Aurich Lawson)
However cooped up you may feel after months of bingeing films and TV series in quarantine, it's not entirely likely that you'd look at this article's headline and say, "Yes, I need to kick my viewing habits up a notch with a curated selection of homemade porn." The people behind Hump!, the United States' best-known amateur-pornography festival, certainly didn't want things this way, either.
"One thing about Hump! is, if you couldn't get to a theater, you weren't going to see it," series curator and sex columnist Dan Savage tells me over the phone from his Seattle home. "Ever since the first Hump!, people have asked, 'Are you going to sell DVDs?' Which turned into, 'Can you watch it online?' But you can't. There are no DVDs, and you can't see it online."
Hump! was always supposed to be offline. But just like pretty much everything else this year, Savage's creation had to concede to the realities of coronavirus. And after launching a test run earlier in 2020, Hump! Greatest Hits, Volume 1 is following as a streamed-video exclusive (not VOD) over the next three weekends. And while the festival was never designed for online distribution, the silver lining is a very weird, and surprisingly eye-opening, perspective on what porn on the Internet can look like in 2020.
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“We’re not going to make it more dangerous than orbital flight.”
Enlarge / Space Perspective aims to launch humans in balloons by 2024. (credit: Space Perspective)
Welcome to Edition 3.05 of the Rocket Report! This week, much of the focus is on small rockets, and we have plenty of new deals to discuss. So let's jump right into it!
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
NASA ready to buy suborbital rides for its people. This week, NASA formally asked the US space industry to dish the details on its plans for brief spaceflights. In essence, the space agency said it wants to buy brief hops into space for its Astronaut Corps and scientists, but it needs more information, Ars reports. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the program seeks mostly to increase the time NASA spends in microgravity.
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YouTube und Co. – unsere wöchentliche Telepolis-Videoschau
The EFF has revealed it is teaming up with law firm Durie Tangri to defend the Internet Archive against a lawsuit targeting its Open Library. According to court filings, the impending storm is shaping up to be a battle of the giants, with opposing attorneys having previously defended Google in book scanning cases and won a $1bn verdict for the RIAA against ISP Cox.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In March and faced with the chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Internet Archive (IA) launched its National Emergency Library (NEL)
Built on its existing Open Library, the NEL provided users with unlimited borrowing of more than a million books, something which the IA hoped would help “displaced learners” restricted by quarantine measures.
After making a lot of noise in opposition to both the Open and Emergency libraries, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley and Penguin Random House filed a massive copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive.
Declaring the libraries little more than ‘pirate’ services that have no right to scan books and lend them out, even in a controlled fashion, the publishers bemoaned the direct threat to their businesses and demanded millions of dollars in statutory damages.
Earlier this month the IA announced the early closure of the NEL, with IA founder Brewster Kahle calling for an end to litigation and the start of cooperation. There are no public signs of either. Indeed, the opposing sides are preparing for action.
Last evening the EFF announced that it is joining forces with California-based law firm Durie Tangri to defend the Internet Archive against a lawsuit which they say is a threat to IA’s Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program.
The CDL program allows people to check out scanned copies of books for which the IA and its partners can produce physically-owned copies. The publishers clearly have a major problem with the system but according to IA and EFF, the service is no different from that offered by other libraries.
“EFF is proud to stand with the Archive and protect this important public service,” says EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry.
“Controlled digital lending helps get books to teachers, children and the general public at a time when that is more needed and more difficult than ever. It is no threat to any publisher’s bottom line.”
Durie Tangri partner Joe Gratz agrees, noting that there is no issue with the Internet Archive lending books to one patron at a time.
“That’s what libraries have done for centuries, and we’re proud to represent Internet Archive in standing up for the rights of libraries in the digital age,” he adds.
With Gratz on the team, the IA and EFF are clearly taking matters seriously. His profile states that he’s as “comfortable on his feet in court as he is hashing over source code with a group of engineers”, adding that he represented Google in the Google Book Search copyright cases.
Also on the team, according to the lawsuit docket, is Harvard Law School graduate Adi Kamdar, who was an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Before that, Kamdar was an EFF activist advocating on issues of privacy, speech, and intellectual property policy.
The docket reveals some prominent veterans acting for the publishers too.
Matthew Jan Oppenheim, for example, served as lead counsel in the record-breaking $1 billion jury verdict against Cox Communications for the music industry, and the $34 million verdict against Book Dog Books for the publishing industry.
A former partner at the music industry law firm Jenner & Block, Oppenheim previously worked at the RIAA, handling landmark cases against Napster and Grokster.
Meredith Santana represented Miley Cyrus in the “We Can’t Stop’ copyright infringement lawsuit while Linda Steinman represents and counsels content providers on how to protect their work from “challenges ranging from aggregators to ad blockers.”
It’s still not too late for the parties to reach a negotiated settlement but given the legal forces now massing on both sides, that is becoming a more distant prospect.
The stakes are high for all parties and beyond, with either side coming out on top having the potential to affect how the public can consume scanned and borrowed content in the future.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Im Verkehrssektor steigen die Kohlendioxidemissionen. Synthetische Kraftstoffe könnten für bessere Luft sorgen – wenn sie nicht ihre eigenen Probleme hätten. Eine Analyse von Werner Pluta (Verkehrswende, Elektroauto)
Im Verkehrssektor steigen die Kohlendioxidemissionen. Synthetische Kraftstoffe könnten für bessere Luft sorgen - wenn sie nicht ihre eigenen Probleme hätten. Eine Analyse von Werner Pluta (Verkehrswende, Elektroauto) Klage gegen Uralt-Planung letztinstanzlich abgewiesen
Außerdem: Virgin Galactic beteiligt sich am kommerziellen Raumfahrtprogramm der Nasa. (Virgin Galactic, Mark Shuttleworth)
Außerdem: Virgin Galactic beteiligt sich am kommerziellen Raumfahrtprogramm der Nasa. (Virgin Galactic, Mark Shuttleworth) 
Die Telekom setzt weiter hauptsächlich auf Vectoring, doch auch FTTH nimmt etwas zu. (
