In the future, you may come across a lot more two-wheeled Porsches on the streets. The luxury automaker has launched two new joint ventures with Dutch company Ponooc Investment B.V., and they're both all about electric bikes. Porsche eBike Performance GmbH is based in Ottobrunn near Munich and will develop components, including motors and batteries. Anything it creates will then be used by P2 eBike GmbH, the second joint venture based in Stuttgart, to manufacture Porsche-branded e-bikes for consumers that the company plyans to launch starting in the middle of the decade.
Porsche is far from a newcomer in the e-bike space. In 2021, it debuted two electric bikes inspired by the Taycan and were made to complement the Cross Turismo, which has a rear carrier. Those bikes, however, along with their motors and gear shifting systems, were manufactured by Japanese bicycle industry giant Shimano. With one company developing parts and another working on the consumer bikes themselves, the upcoming products the joint ventures will release will be all (or at least mostly) Porsche.
The components business will use the e-bike drive systems develop by Fazua, a company Porsche recently acquired, as noted by Electrek. However, it will also develop e-bike systems under the Porsche brand name — it will even sell the technology it designs to other brands. As with anything Porsche, the bikes under the new ventures will most likely not come cheap: Its Taycan-inspired bikes, for instance, set buyers back at least $8,500 at launch, with the sports model selling for prices that start at $10,700.
The latest Pokémon Presents is livestreaming at 9AM ET today, promising updates on Pokémon apps and games "including Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet," The Pokémon Company said. It didn't add more details, but the last Pokémon Presents revealed the Scarlet and Violet release windows, among other news.
The company also showed off some visuals from the game at the last Pokémon Presents, including a pastoral countryside and urban landscapes, as well as the three new starters Sprigatito, Fuecoco and Quaxly. It also announced a new "Daybreak" update for Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
We now know that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are coming to Switch on November 18th. A subsequent reveal in June showed two new professors and clues about the game's open world. In addition, a series of rough screenshots may have shown new battle mechanics and evolutions, as well as clues about the total number of Pokémon. Hopefully, all will be revealed when the trailer drops today at 3PM Et.
Microsoft has flagged a formatting bug that freezes Outlook whenever you open emails with complex tables, including, er, Uber receipts. The glitch is so powerful it even crashes Word, too. The problem was first noted in a standard release of Outlook, but existing beta and Current Channel Preview versions face the same bug if they try to open messages with tables.
Microsoft says it’s developed a fix to reach beta users "shortly" and get to everyone in a patch arriving August 9th. If you really need to see a breakdown of that last Uber trip, you can revert to the earlier version in Windows by running Command Prompt instructions in Microsoft's support document.
The middle of the smartphone road has amazing options that balance price and features. These days, you can still get incredible cameras, vivid screens and decent battery life without breaking the bank. But there are so many — so where do you start? How about this guide? We’ve just updated it with a new overall winner.
Infrared light detection has increased the detail.
NASA
NASA and its partners on the James Webb Space Telescope have shared a fresh look at the Cartwheel Galaxy. It reveals extra details about both the star formation and the black hole at the center of the galaxy, which is around 500 million light-years from Earth. Using infrared light detection, JWST could peer through the dust that obscured the Cartwheel Galaxy from view when other telescopes observed it.
Samsung's self-repair program, in collaboration with iFixit, is finally available. You can now try to fix your Galaxy S20, Galaxy S21 or Galaxy Tab S7+ with officially sanctioned components and tools, complete with guides to walk you through the repair process. The initial selection is just screen and batteries, charging ports and back glass, with prices ranging between $67 (for a charging port on any model) to $227 (for a Tab S7+ display).
The Prime perk is currently available in 10 US metro areas.
Amazon is giving some Prime members another perk. Subscribers in more than 10 US metro areas will now be able to shop from select local brick-and-mortar stores through Amazon and have the items delivered to their home on the same day. At the moment, participating retailers include apparel brands PacSun, Superdry and Diesel, as well as popular vitamin retailer GNC.
They're working with Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce Now.
Logitech and Tencent have announced they're working on a handheld cloud gaming device. They're blending the Logitech G brand's hardware know-how with Tencent's software prowess. According to their landing page, the device is tentatively — and imaginatively — called the Logitech G Gaming Handheld. It will "support multiple cloud gaming services," Logitech said. Tencent and Logitech are working with the Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce Now teams at Microsoft and NVIDIA, so expect the handheld to support both platforms.
The site was bombarded by more than 200 times the normal traffic.
As more than 300,000 people anxiously watched the flight path of SPAR19, the US Air Force plane carrying Nancy Pelosi on her tour of Asia, Taiwan’s presidential website went down in an apparent cyberattack. According to Taiwanese presidential spokesperson Chang Tun-Han, the attack originated outside Taiwan and saw the website bombarded with more than 200 times its regular traffic. They claim the website was back to normal operation “within 20 minutes.”
Nintendo's Switch sales fell significantly last quarter, dropping to 3.43 million units compared to 4.45 million during the same period last year, according to its earnings report. Software sales also fell to 41.4 million units compared to 45.3 million year over year. All that that resulted in an operating profit of 101.6 billion yen ($763 million), down from last year and short of what was expected.
The company chalked up the Switch sales issue to a parts shortage, the same thing that bedeviled Sony during the same quarter. "Hardware production was impacted by factors such as the global shortage of semiconductor components, resulting in a decrease of hardware shipments," the company said. It noted that the OLED model made up a large chunk of Switch sales with 1.52 million units sold, and the lower margins on that model dragged profit down a bit.
While game sales also dropped, Nintendo managed to boost the overall percentage of first-party games sold. In fact, it was the second best first quarter for first-party game sell-through since the Switch launched — second only to Q1 2021, which was fueled by Animal Crossing: New Horizons. All told, however, Nintendo would have to call the quarter a success considering that game buyers spent 13 percent less this year compared to 2021, according to Bloomberg.
Some of that was aided by the launch of three key games, the company pointed out, particularly Nintendo Switch Sports which arrived on April 29th. Mario Strikers: Battles League launched on June 10th, while Fire Emblem Warriors arrived on June 24th. "More than 100 million users played Nintendo Switch in the latest 12-month period," the company added.
Compact Open-Source 600 MHz CPU Board with WiFi/BLE Communication Utilizes the Power of LuaJIT
EdgePro1 from EdgePro is a tiny (32 mm by 16 mm) open-source development platform that utilizes powerful hardware and state-of-the-art firmware based on the POSIX-compliant Real-Time Operating System. Equipped with the U-Blox NINA-W102 communication module, EdgePro1 supports Wi-Fi and BLE communication and the main advantage of it is the full use of the LuaJIT interpreter to develop and execute programs written in the Lua scripting language.
As it promised earlier this year, Uber is testing bus and train travel options in the UK via a partnership with Berlin-based travel platform Omio, TechCrunch has reported. "We’re excited to launch our new travel offering this summer, allowing a seamless door-to-door travel experience across the UK," Uber UK general manager Andrew Brem said in a statement.
Omio covers over 1,000 transportation providers in 37 countries. It has its own travel app for consumers, but has also been developing a business-to-business API that allows partners to access its ground transport network. The company also offers air and ferry travel on its consumer app and website, but its primary focus is on train and bus/coach travel.
The company has already partnered with UK's LNER, travel site Kayak and others, but Uber is its biggest partner so far. "Uber is the first partner that is both at this scale but also the first that gets access to our full ticketing API so you actually are, as a customer, able to do everything within the Uber app," Omio CEO and founder Narem Shaam told TechCrunch.
With access to Omio's API, Uber will be able to offer international train travel to UK users right away. Trips booked via Uber's app will generate a commission for Omio, which it will share with Uber via an undisclosed split. Uber is also paying Omio to license its technology.
Omio believes that its app has a "high overlap" with Uber users, and is hoping the deal will increase its UK market penetration. Ground transport functionality will be added in phases with a basic feature set launching today and building out over the coming months.
In the latest in what seems to be a string of challenges the company has to grapple with, Robinhood's crypto division has been slapped with a $30 million fine by the New York State Department of Financial Services. It's the first crypto-focused enforcement action by the regulator, which has issued the multimillion dollar penalty against Robinhood for what it says are violations against the state's anti-money laundering and cybersecurity regulations. In its announcement, the Financial Services Department said it found significant deficiencies in the company's compliance programs following a supervisory examination.
Apparently, there weren't enough people working in Robinhood's money laundering compliance program. The company also failed to transition from a manual monitoring system, which is no longer sufficient now that it's much larger than when it started. In addition, the department found that policies within Robinhood's cybersecurity program aren't in full compliance with official cybersecurity and virtual currency regulations.
The New York regulator also mentioned that Robinhood improperly certified compliance with the Department's Transaction Monitoring Regulation and Cybersecurity Regulation. Since it wasn't fully compliant with the state's cybersecurity rules, Robinhood violated the law by claiming compliance. Finally, the regulator said Robinhood failed to adhere to consumer protection requirements by not maintaining a separate phone number (and displaying it on its website) specifically for consumer complaints.
Superintendent of Financial Services, Adrienne A. Harris, said in a statement:
"As its business grew, Robinhood Crypto failed to invest the proper resources and attention to develop and maintain a culture of compliance—a failure that resulted in significant violations of the Department’s anti-money laundering and cybersecurity regulations. All virtual currency companies licensed in New York State are subject to the same anti-money laundering, consumer protection, and cybersecurity regulations as traditional financial services companies. DFS will continue to investigate and take action when any licensee violates the law or the Department’s regulations, which are critical to protecting consumers and ensuring the safety and soundness of the institutions."
Aside from having to pay $30 million, Robinhood must retain an independent consultant who will evaluate if it has taken the appropriate actions to address its violations and deficiencies under the settlement.
Robinhood also recently announced that it's laying off 23 percent of its workforce due to record inflation and the cryptocurrency crash. It's the company's second round of job cuts this year and will affect employees across divisions. That revelation came after Robinhood published its earnings for the second quarter of 2022, wherein it posted a net loss of $295 million and announced a decrease of 1.9 million in monthly active users.
For the second time this year, Robinhood is cutting its headcount. On Tuesday, the company announced it would lay off 23 percent of its workforce. According to CEO Vlad Tenev, the cuts will affect every part of Robinhood’s business but will primarily target the company’s “operations, marketing and program management functions.”
Tenev blamed a deteriorating macro environment for the decision, pointing to record inflation and the cryptocurrency crash as the primary drivers of the company’s recent woes. Additionally, he acknowledged the company overhired last year on the assumption retail investors would continue trading stocks and crypto assets at the rate they had during the early stages of the pandemic. Prior to April when Robinhood laid off nine percent of its workforce, the company had a headcount of approximately 3,800. “As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory – this is on me,” he said.
On Tuesday, Robinhood also announced its Q2 results one day ahead of schedule. The company reported a net loss of $295 million after revenue fell by 44 percent year-on-year to $318 million.
In his letter to employees, Tenev said Robinhood would transition to an organizational model where general managers would oversee broad parts of the company’s business. “This change will flatten hierarchies, reduce cross-functional dependencies, and remove redundant roles and positions,” he claimed. Tenev added that Robinhood would notify affected employees via Slack and email. They can stay with the company until October 1st, 2022.
Cryptocurrency hacks are all too common, but they've rarely been quite so anarchic as the latest example. As The Vergenotes, Nomad has confirmed that its cryptocurrency bridge (a service that lets you swap tokens between blockchains) was the victim of an August 1st "incident" where a slew of hackers stole nearly $200 million in funds. As Paradigm researcher Samczsun explained, the intruders took advantage of a misconfiguration that let any reasonably knowledgeable user authorize their own withdrawals. The result was a "chaotic" hack where people could swap their crypto address into a known-good transaction to steal digital money.
In an update, Nomad said it's "working around the clock" to resolve the problem with help from law enforcement and blockchain intelligence firms. It hopes to both pinpoint involved accounts and recover funds. A16z's security team suggested that well-intentioned white hat hackers would return crypto they took "preemptively," but there's no word on identifying thieves.
1/ Nomad just got drained for over $150M in one of the most chaotic hacks that Web3 has ever seen. How exactly did this happen, and what was the root cause? Allow me to take you behind the scenes 👇 pic.twitter.com/Y7Q3fZ7ezm
Bridges like these are major targets for hackers thanks to both their high asset volume and the potential for exploits in their sophisticated code. An attacker swiped roughly $625 million from the Ronin blockchain underpinning Axie Infinity in March, and an exploit in the Wormhole bridge led to a $325 million hack in February. While the Nomad breach isn't quite as financially damaging, it illustrates just how vulnerable bridges can be.
Back at the 2020 edition of The Game Awards, we learned about We Are OFK, a new project from Hyper Light Drifter co-designer Teddy Dief and their collaborators at Team OFK. It was supposed to debut in spring 2021 but, as has been the way of things for the last few years, it was delayed. Now, We Are OFK finally has a release date. Or, more accurately, release dates, since it's an episodic series. The first two episodes will hit Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PS5, Steam and Epic Games Store on August 18th. The remaining three episodes will arrive on a weekly basis.
We Are OFK follows a virtual four-piece indie band called, strangely enough, OFK. It's billed as an interactive musical biopic that OFK is making about its own origins. As Dief wrote on the PlayStation Blog, "What would it look like to create virtual musicians who watch performances of [pop stars] on their laptops in bed, and know they’re probably never going to play a stadium concert? We wanted to tell that story — how hard it is to make music, to write even one song, to record another video to post online and hope someone leaves a nice comment."
The game costs $20. Along with each episode, OFK and Sony Music Masterworks will release a new single. A vinyl package of the singles will be available from iam8bit for $32. A limited-edition physical version of We Are OFK is available to pre-order for PS5 and Switch too. You can also pre-save the group's first EP.
