Category: News and Views

Daily Crunch: Android phones become earthquake detectors | TechCrunch

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Google said that smartphone accelerometers are sensitive enough to detect P-waves, which are the first waves to arrive during an earthquake. So if your Android phone thinks it has detected an earthquake, it will communicate with a central server to confirm.

In California, Google is also partnering with the United States Geological Survey and California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to provide earthquake alerts. For everyone else, you’ll only see this earthquake data if you search for “earthquake” or a similar term.

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Volta Zero electric truck to feature panels made of woven flax | New Atlas

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The continuing rise of global carbon emissions has brought with it a rise in sustainable transport solutions, but the Volta Zero truck is one that takes this ethos further than most. In addition to an all-electric drivetrain, the truck will feature panels made from sustainable natural composites and is pitched as a holistically green way for logistics companies to deliver goods around cities.

With the Volta Zero, Volta Trucks hopes to offer a cleaner means of completing freight deliveries in urban settings. The 16-tonne truck features an all-electric drivetrain that draws power from a 160-200-kWh battery pack, which makes for a range of up to 200 km (125 mi) and a top speed of 90 km/h (56 mph).

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How a TikTok ban could work, and what it means for your content | Mashable

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President Donald Trump casually dropped Friday that he would “ban” TikTok. That added heft to earlier statements made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the administration was considering a ban.

But how would a ban on an app that’s already been downloaded by 165 million Americans, and that anyone can currently download from Apple and Google app stores, actually work?

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What to expect from Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked 2020 event | Mashable

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The world may be at something of a standstill thanks to COVID-19, but Samsung is still out here making flagship phones and, uh, other things. As such, we have another Galaxy Unpacked event to look forward to this week.

Samsung previously announced that its next Galaxy Unpacked would be online-only for obvious reasons. The event will stream on Samsung’s website at 10 a.m. ET on Aug. 5. In a blog post, Samsung revealed it would announce five new devices at the event. Since the new Galaxy Z Flip 5G has been officially confirmed, we can probably strike that one off the long list.

Thanks to a litany of leaks (what else is new?), we have a pretty good idea of what we’ll be seeing at Galaxy Unpacked. Get ready to see the word “Galaxy” way too many times.

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Chipotle is using its avocado pits to dye clothes for its new clothing line | CNN

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Chipotle wants its customers to eat — and wear — its avocados.

The company announced a new “responsibly sourced” clothing and goods line Monday, and all of the T-shirts, sweatshirts and tote bags will be dyed with the food chain’s used avocado pits that would otherwise go to waste.

After using avocados to make guacamole, Chipotle is left with nearly 300 million avocado pits that go to waste in its restaurants every year. Each item in the clothing and goods line will require five avocado pits, which is roughly equivalent to five orders of guacamole, according to the press release.

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Sprint, one of America’s most storied brands, is no more | CNN

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Sprint was a storied American brand, but it is no longer. T-Mobile, which closed its $30 billion merger with the wireless carrier in April, officially retired the Sprint brand Monday.

“I want to acknowledge the Sprint history and its 120-year legacy that is now part of our legacy as we launch into this new era,” said T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert in a statement, adding, “We did it! Another historic day for new T-Mobile!”

The long-awaited merger means the end of Sprint’s long corporate history, but it also puts a capstone on several bruising decades of failed bets and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

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Signal’s pin feature shows why putting privacy first is hard | Fast Company

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Signal has become the privacy-focused consumer’s go-to messaging app. But a recent change to its back-end systems that was designed to make the app more accessible and competitive with other encrypted messaging services could be putting user data at risk.

At the core of Signal’s appeal is a level of digital protection and commercial disinterest in its users’ communications rarely seen by messaging service providers. Signal is now used broadly not just by hackers and professional paranoids, but activists, journalists, politicians, and any number of people who believe that their text messages and phone calls should be as private as an in-person conversation. Few other apps offer a similar level of security and privacy.

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Los Angeles-To-Las Vegas High-Speed Train Wins $200 Million Nevada Bond Allocation | Forbes

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XpressWest, a high-speed rail line that will connect Southern California to Las Vegas, won $200 million of private activity bonds from Nevada, a critical final public allocation that allows the company owned by Wall Street investor Wes Edens to raise an additional $800 million for the project.

The Nevada State Board of Finance’s approval for the project, a unit of Edens’ Florida-based Brightline passenger rail service, comes after California awarded it $600 million of private activity bonds in April. XpressWest can sell four times the value of the awards as tax-exempt bonds to private investors, meaning it’s now lined up $3.2 billion of funding from the two states. Including a $1 billion U.S. Department of Transportation allocation in March, XpressWest has lined up $4.2 billion of the 170-mile rail line’s total $5 billion construction cost.

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Disney Delays Star Wars, Avatar Releases, Takes Mulan Off Schedule | Digital Trends

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The coronavirus has shaken up Disney’s biggest franchises — and Star Wars is the latest to be affected.

Disney announced Thursday it would push back the releases of the next set of Star Wars movies as well as James Cameron’s Avatar sequel, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The live-action Mulan remake, which was originally supposed to release in March, has also been taken off its theatrical release calendar.

“Over the last few months, it’s become clear that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to how we release films during this global health crisis, and today that means pausing our release plans for Mulan as we assess how we can most effectively bring this film to audiences around the world,” a Disney spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement.

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