Tesla Names Robyn Denholm Company Board Chair
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| Tesla Names Robyn Denholm Company Board Chair | |
| Number | 669 |
| Broadcast Date | NOVEMBER 8, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:25 |
| Hosts | Sarah Lane |
Alexa app now available to all Windows 10 users, Facebook starts selling Portal and Portal Plus smart displays, Ford to buy electric scooter startup Spin.
Headlines
- Windows 10 users are reporting problems with their Pro licenses, with some claiming they're getting notices that their Windows 10 Pro systems aren't activated and that they need to install Windows 10 Home instead. The majority seem to be users who got the Windows 10 license as a free upgrade from Microsoft in 2015. Microsoft says there's indeed an ongoing issue with its activation servers that is triggering the system errors, but the problem should be fixed within a couple of days.
- In better Windows 10 news, Amazon is releasing its Alexa app for the OS today. The app was previously available for select Windows 10 laptops. You can download and install A on any Windows 10 PC, but only compatible devices will support the wake word functionality. Otherwise a button within the app or a keyboard shortcut triggers the assistant.
- Tesla has named Robyn Denholm as chair of the company's board, replacing Elon Musk. Denholm has been on Tesla’s board since 2014 and will leave her current role as CFO and Head of Strategy at Australian telecommunications company Telstra, to focus on Tesla full-time. Musk was required to step down from his role as chairman of the board at Tesla as part of a settlement with the SEC after he tweeted about taking the company private and drove the stock price up back in August.
- Facebook announced its Portal Plus and Portal smart displays are available to buy on the Portal online store, and at Amazon and Best Buy. The Portal Plus is a $349 smart display with a camera and a 15.6 inch 1080p HD display that can be viewed in landscape or portrait mode, and Portal goes for $199 with a720p, 10.1-inch screen that's landscape mode only. Both devices can be used as Alexa speakers along with Facebook's "Hey, Portal" voice service. And if you buy two Portals together you save $100.
- Police in the Netherlands claim to have decrypted more than 258,000 messages sent using the app IronChat, an end-to-end encrypted chat service. The two men who ran Blackbox Security who operated Ironchat have been arrested on charges of money laundering. Police have taken the server used to send messages offline. It's an unknown how the police were able to read the messages but the best guesses involve some kind of weakness in how the IronChat app handled encryption. An article published by Dutch public broadcaster NOS detailed several weaknesses in IronChat like easy to miss notifications of a change in key and failure to check if the server sending messages is the correct one.
- Axios reported Thursday that Ford is buying electric scooter startup Spin. A source says “the total consideration in the deal was close to $100m.” Spin operates scooter service in Coral Gables, Fla., Washington, D.C., Charlotte, N.C., Durham, N.C., Lexington, Ky., Denver, Colo., Detroit, Mich. and Long Beach, Calif., as well as several college campuses. As recently as June, Spin had a contract with electric scooter manufacturer Ninebot, which Segway owns, to buy 30,000 scooters a month through the end of this year, sources say.
- Daimler AG and Bosch have chosen San Jose CA as the pilot city for a joint autonomous ride-hailing service set to launch in the second half of next year. The two companies say they'll start with a fleet of self-driving Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedans, offered to a "selected user community" in a corridor between downtown and west San Jose. General Motors autonomous-vehicle arm GM Cruise is readying driverless taxi service next year as well, and likely also in the Bay Area where the company does most of its testing. And Alphabet's Waymo has been piloting its ride-hailing service with its driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans in suburban Phoenix since last year.
- Facebook is expanding its Facebook Dating service to Canada and Thailand after launching in Colombia back in September. With the new rollout, users can temporarily pause matches, and give a "second look" at potential matches they already passed on.
Links
| Preceded by: "Identification by the Way You Walk" |
Tesla Names Robyn Denholm Company Board Chair |
Followed by: "The World's Biggest Online Shopping Day" |