Author: Megan Geuss

On Monday, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced that it had “exclusively licensed” a technology that could help it bring the transit system idea, popularized by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, to fruition.

The licensed technology, called passive magnetic levitation, departs significantly from the system that Musk theorized back in 2013. Musk’s Hyperloop design involves a low-pressure tube through which the system's trains, floating an inch above the track on skis ejecting compressed air, are propelled with the help of a magnetic field created by electricity-fed magnets on the tube’s internal surface.

The HTT technology, on the other hand, is based on passive magnetic levitation, which relies on magnets placed on the underside of the passenger train in a Halbach array—an arrangement that focuses the magnetic field of a set of magnets on one side of the array while canceling out the field on the other side. Those magnetic fields under the train cause it to levitate as it passes over non-powered electromagnetic coils on the rail beneath the train at even low speeds created by an electric motor.

Last week, a Northern California District Judge ruled that Facebook will have to face a class action lawsuit (PDF) from Illinois Facebook users who are unnerved by the site’s photo-tagging feature that relies on facial recognition to suggest people to tag.

The plaintiffs argue that the feature runs afoul of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which was passed in 2008 and restricts how private companies are allowed to collect biometric data.

The lawsuit had been transferred from an Illinois court to one in California at Facebook’s request. The social media company then asked the judge to dismiss the case, saying that the plaintiffs had no grounds to sue given that Facebook’s Terms and Conditions have stipulated since 2015 that claims against the company must be litigated according to California law, where no such provision against biometric tagging exists.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that General Motors and Lyft would be testing a self-driving taxi service within the year. GM pledged $500 million to Lyft in January, hoping to advance “driverless taxi research.” At the time, however, there was no mention of how long it would take for the companies to roll out an actual driverless taxi experience.

The WSJ indicates that GM will be using Chevy Bolts to test the service. The all-electric Bolt is slated to go into production toward the end of 2016, and it’s seen as the only real competitor to the all-electric, mass-market Tesla Model 3, which will go into production in late 2017. Tesla has already pushed some autonomous vehicle functions out to its Model X and S owners, and GM seems to be trying to follow suit—in March, the Detroit-based automaker bought Cruise Automation, a Silicon Valley software company, for $1 billion.

A Lyft executive told the paper that when the self-driving taxi service rolls out, it will be available to Lyft customers in one city that's yet to be determined. Customers will be able to opt out of hailing a self-driving car and, at the beginning, a driver will be required to sit in the driver’s seat in case anything happens. That's meant to appease regulators, "but the driver is expected to eventually be obsolete,” the WSJ reports.

On Wednesday, Tesla reported a $283 million loss for Q1 2016, its 12^th straight quarterly loss in a row. Last quarter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla would find itself in the black this quarter, but that prediction did not pan out. Still, the loss was narrower than Wall Street expected, leading to a 4.4 percent climb in stock price in after hours trading as of this writing. (Tesla’s Q1 loss is a wider $320 million according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which includes stock-based compensation and treats vehicle leases differently.)

Still, the company’s overall quarterly revenue rose 22 percent from Q1 in 2015 to $1.6 billion (or 1.15 billion according to GAAP).

In addition, Tesla said it would be sticking by its promise to deliver 80,000 to 90,000 vehicles this year, and it made its long-term delivery outlook more aggressive, promising 500,000 Teslas on the road by 2018 instead of 2020.

NASHVILLE, TN—For the last several years, GM’s Chevrolet has remade itself deftly, rising from the ashes of bankruptcy to deliver cars that perform well, stretch for fuel economy, and judiciously incorporate new tech. The first Chevy Cruze was one of those cars. It hit car lots in 2009 and saw respectable sales—as of 2014, the Cruze line sold more than 900,000 vehicles in the US alone.

Specs at a glance: 2016 Chevy Cruze
Body Type	4-door compact
Layout	Front-wheel drive
Steering	Rack-mounted electric power steering
Horsepower	153 hp @ 5600 rpm
Torque	177 lb-ft @ 2000-4000 rpm
Fuel Economy	Manual: 29/41 mph Auto (LS/LT): 30/42 mph Auto (Premier): 30/40 mph
Weight	2,932lbs (LT Automatic)
Dimensions	Headroom: 38.9" in front, 37.3" in rear Legroom: 42" in front, 36.1" in rear
Base price	$17,495
Price as tested (Premium RS)	$29,035

Now Chevy is introducing the 2016 Cruze, but the Detroit automaker stresses that this new model is a significant departure from the old line. This metamorphosis has taken place to accommodate a continued shift in priorities among car buyers these days, who value fuel economy and connectivity above all else.

Chevy swung for the fences to meet those two priorities. The new Cruze comes with 24GB or 24 months (whichever one runs out first) of data from AT&T, broadcast from an internal antenna to a 50 ft radius around the car. Chevy also says that its LT and LS models of the car will get a whopping 42mpg. That’s without a hybrid engine.

According to a report from The New York Times, slides from a 2006 presentation suggest that a "top technology executive" within Volkswagen Group detailed how the company could circumvent US auto emissions regulations by including illegal software on the German automaker’s diesel cars.

That illegal software showed up first in diesel Volkswagen and Audi models from 2009 and later and then in a handful of diesel Audi and Porsche SUV models. The US Environmental Protection Agency cited VW Group for its transgression in September, leading to a huge scandal for the automaker. Last week, VW Group said it would buy back nearly 500,000 affected 2.0L engine vehicles and set aside $18 billion to deal with the buyback, the legal costs, and regulatory fines.

The Times said the 2006 presentation was discovered during the course of investigations into the company’s actions, and two anonymous sources confirmed to the paper that they had seen the slides in question. Volkswagen has maintained that its top management was unaware of the problem for years and then misunderstood the severity of the problem when it was brought to its attention in 2014.

Update April 28, 2016 8:30am: Comcast announced on Thursday morning its acquisition of DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion. In a press release, the conglomerate wrote "The studio will become part of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, which includes Universal Pictures, Fandango, and NBCUniversal Brand Development." The deal still needs to be approved by antitrust regulators, but if it's given the green light, Comcast said it expects the acquisition process to be completed by the end of 2016.

Original Post: Anonymous sources speaking to both the Wall Street Journal and Variety Wednesday morning confirmed that Comcast is in talks to buy DreamWorks Animation for “more than $3 billion.”

DreamWorks is one of the last major animation studios not owned by a conglomerate, and the purchase could bolster it against competition from Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. DreamWorks has had some notable successes like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon, but in the last four years it has also had its fair share of flops. According to The Richest, movies like Rise of the Guardians, Turbo, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and Penguins of Madagascar just barely made a profit.

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO—Across the highway from the US Air Force Academy is a tiny cluster of buildings that represents one of Colorado Springs' earliest claims to fame: mining.

The Western Museum of Mining and Industry (WMMI) looks out onto a glorious expanse of the Rocky Mountains and is home to all manner of antique equipment that extracted minerals from those mountains.

But on a balmy April night, as a spring snowstorm rolled in from the west, Ars attended a lecture at the museum about a nearby mining marvel that was not intended to extract riches, but to bury something more valuable beneath the unyielding rock—knowledge.

On Friday, Volkswagen released a financial statement that it delayed for months while the company’s diesel emissions scandal unfolded. The company has now reported a record loss of $6.2 billion for 2015. Moving forward, VW Group also said it would set aside €16.2 billion (about $18.22 billion) to begin covering "technical modifications,” legal claims, and other fallout from the company’s cheating.

"The current crisis—as the figures presented today also reveal—is having a huge impact on Volkswagen’s financial position," VW Group CEO Matthias Müller said. "Yet we have the firm intention and the means to handle the difficult situation we are in using our own resources.”

After illegal “defeat device” software was found on 500,000 diesel vehicles from VW Group, the company wrote off approximately $7 billion in early 2015 to cover fines and other costs. Today’s $18 billion write-off includes that $7 billion.

In San Francisco this morning, US District Judge Charles Breyer said Volkswagen Group would buy back nearly 500,000 2.0L diesel vehicles which were discovered in September to have software that illegally disabled the emissions control system during normal driving conditions.

VW Group is facing some 600 lawsuits that Judge Breyer is overseeing collectively, and the German automaker was compelled by court order to present a plan for fixing the faulty vehicles by today. Specifics of the plan will be hammered out in the coming months.

Volkswagen will also set up a fund for people who bought certain diesel Jettas, Golfs, Passats, Beetles, and Audi A3s after 2009. Breyer said this would offer customers "substantial compensation," on top of the car buyback.