TikTok has helped users discover both current and past musical artists, and now it might be starting its own music streaming service. Parent ByteDance has filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for "TikTok Music," Insider has reported. The service would let users "purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics... live stream audio and video... edit and upload photographs as the cover of playlists.. [and] comment on music, songs and albums."
ByteDance already has a music streaming app called Resso, but it's only available in India, Brazil and Indonesia. That app has some of the features mentioned in the trademark filing, like playlists, song-sharing and community interaction. On top of that, TikTok redirects users in Brazil to the full song on Resso, as Insider notes.
The trademark application was first submitted in Australia and then filed in the US on May 9th. It's not clear if it intends to base such a service on Resso, but it has to demonstrate that it will actually use the trademark before applying for it in the US — so it's not just a placeholder, according to Insider. The company also described said you could "live stream audio and video interactive media programming in the field of entertainment, fashion, sports, and current events," as other possible use cases.
Google has responded to last week’s rumors that it may sunset its Stadia gaming service this year: “Stadia is not shutting down,” the official Stadia Twitter account told a concerned fan in a tweet spotted by PC Gamer. “Rest assured we’re always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro.”
I mentioned in my story about Xbox’s streaming adventures into Samsung TVs that it’s all been a little too quiet on the Stadia front when rival game streaming options have upped their game. Hopefully, Google has some exciting plans to reveal sooner rather than later.
But it's only available on Galaxy S21 phones in Korea for now.
With horror stories of hackers selling personal information, it can be stressful to send your smartphone for repair. Yes, you could wipe your phone, but then you have to go through the hassle of restoring it afterward. Now, Samsung has introduced a solution with its own Repair Mode.
According to a Korean announcement spotted by SamMobile, you can activate the new mode under Battery and Device Care in Settings. Samsung didn't explain the technology behind the feature, but when activated, it’ll hide your personal information, photos, messages and linked accounts. Only the device's pre-installed apps will be visible to the technician.
A group of former CD Projekt Red developers is working on a new online action game set in feudal Japan. This week, Dark Passenger co-founders, Jakub Ben and Marcin Michalski, announced the formation of their studio and put out a call for talent in a series of tweets. Ben and Michalski were part of the art team on The Witcher 3 and did contract work on Cyberpunk 2077.
A free tool developed by Tencent researchers, GFP-GAN (Generative Facial Prior-Generative Adversarial Network) can restore damaged and low-resolution portraits. The technology merges info from two AI models to fill in a photo's missing details with realistic detail in a few seconds. However, it's making educated guesses about missing content, so you might see a "slight change of identity." That’s not grandma. You can test it out right here.
Samsung is set to unveil its next foldable phones in just a few days, but these marketing photos leaked by Evan Blass give the game away a little. He posted images of the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4 in different colors, suggesting hardware design that doesn’t differ too much from Samsung’s last foldables. The company’s Unpacked event is scheduled to take place on August 10th.
An e-bike- and scooter-sharing startup co-founded by Olympian Usain Bolt appears to have shut down operations, highlighting recent problems in the micromobility sector, TechCrunch has reported. Bolt Mobility was present in around five cities including Portland, Burlington, Vermont and Richmond in California, along with others via an acquisition, and some of those are facing abandoned equipment and unanswered calls.
"We learned a couple of weeks ago (from them) that Bolt is ceasing operations," a transportation planner in Chittenden County, Vermont, told TechCrunch. "They’ve vanished, leaving equipment behind and emails and calls unanswered. We’re unable to reach anyone, but it seems they’ve closed shop in other markets as well."
Bolt Mobility actually expanded not less than 18 months ago, buying the assets of Last Mile Holdings, which operated Gotcha and OjO Electric. That opened up 48 new markets to the company in mostly smaller cities like Raleigh, NC and Mobile, Alabama. (Bolt Mobility is not to be confused with the Bolt ride-sharing and scooter app in Europe.)
However, Bolt Mobility lost its permit to operate in Portland in July due to issues with insurance and outstanding fees. A spokesperson in Burlington said that around 100 bikes were left inoperable and with dead batteries, with the city telling the company to claim them before the country takes ownership. "All of our contacts at Bolt, including their CEO, have gone radio silent and have not replied to our emails," a Burlington representative said.
As CrunchBase reported earlier, scooter startups like Bird have hit the skids after starting as billion-dollar "unicorns." Bird's problem is essentially that it charges a fair amount of money, around $6 for a 20-minute rental — quite a bit more than a metro or bus ride.t Bird lost a huge amount of money in 2020 after taking in just $79 million in revenue — down 40 percent over 2019. Following a SPAC merge, it's stock price has subsequently cratered from $10 to just over 50 cents today.
Apple has famously bragged that it will never invade your privacy to serve ads, but it does have an ad business on its App Store and elsewhere. The company is now expanding that business by adding a new ad slot to its "Today" homepage tab and on individual app pages, 9to5Mac reported. Those are on top of the ads already found on the App Store's main "Search" tab and in the Search results.
"Apple Search Ads provides opportunities for developers of all sizes to grow their business," Apple wrote. "Like our other advertising offerings, these new ad placements are built upon the same foundation—they will only contain content from apps’ approved App Store product pages, and will adhere to the same rigorous privacy standards."
The Today tab is the first thing that loads in the App Store and features a curated and personalized selection of apps to browse (it arrived in 2017 with a significant App Store redesign). The other new space is in the "You Might Also Like" section of an app's product page. The new ads will let developers promote apps alongside Apple's own content and are clearly marked as ads.
The new slots will adhere to Apple's policies on privacy and transparency, by not offering personalized ads to users under 18, never using sensitive data and avoiding hyper-targeting, Apple said. The company didn't say when the new ad slots will appear, but Apple plans to start testing them "soon."
After years of providing off-the-grid camping, cooking and pocketable charger tech, BioLite has moved further into the genre with its newest and more robust power-backup solutions. The company just announced the BaseCharge 600 and BaseCharge 1500 portable power stations, along with an accompanying SolarPanel 100. As with most products of this type, they’re great for powering entertainment tech, appliances and workspaces when you’re far from an outlet. They’re also helpful in the home when the electricity goes out.
Both power stations provide an LCD dashboard with power metrics, system notifications, temperature alerts, port activations and battery life status. You can also view cumulative usage over time and reset the counter as needed. They should hold a charge for quite a while, but its recommended to top these up every six months, so they're ready when you need them.
Each device is encased in a hard plastic shell with small rubber feet on the bottom. There are inset areas on each side to help carry these relatively heavy devices. As for ruggedness, they’re not exactly built for big drops considering the weight. And while they’re great for bringing along as off-the-grid power backups, there’s no IP rating or weather protection to speak of, so you’ll want to keep them out of rain.
BaseCharge 600
BaseCharge 600
BioLite
The more affordable of the power station pair is the BaseCharge 600 ($699). This has a Li-ion battery capacity of 622 Wh, with three types of inputs: a combo wall and solar charger input, plus a port for USB-C PD input. Charge times range from seven hours via wall charger, three and a half hours with both wall and USB-C PD charging and six hours using a SolarPanel 100 at peak sunlight. It weighs 13 pounds and measures 12.2 x 7.9 x 7.9 inches.
There are ten outputs:
2 - 110V AC (600W up to 1,000W surge)
1 - Wireless charging for Qi and related devices on the top platform (10W)
2 - 12V DC barrel ports (120W)
1 - 12V car port (aka cigarette lighter port - 120W)
2 - USB-A (5V)
1 - USB-C (5V)
1 - USB-C PD (5V / 100W)
BaseCharge 1500
BaseCharge 1500
BioLite
The larger, heavier and more powerful model is the BaseCharge 1500 ($1,699). It has a Li-ion battery capacity of 1521 Wh and the same three inputs as the 600 model. Charge times range from 13.5 hours using the wall charger, eight hours with wall charger and USB-C PD, and four hours at peak sunlight if you have four SolarPanel 100 units. This larger device weighs 26.5 pounds and measures 14.4 x 12.2 x 8.2 inches.
There’s a total of 12 outputs on this device:
3 - 110V AC (1,200W up to 2,400W surge)
1 - Wireless charging for Qi and related devices on the top platform (10W)
2 - 12V DC barrel ports (120W)
1 - 12V car port (aka cigarette lighter port - 120W)
2 - USB-A (5V)
2 - USB-C (5V)
1 - USB-C PD (5V / 100W)
SolarPanel 100
SolarPanel 100
BioLite
If you want to turn your portable power station into a solar generator, there’s the new SolarPanel 100 ($400). This is a single foldable unit, with four panels that offers a power output of 100 watts in peak sunshine. You can also pretend you’re Astronaut Mark Watney and daisy chain up to four SolarPanel 100s to quadruple the wattage.
These panels are rated IPX4 making them relatively durable and resistant to water, such as a continuous light rain. There’s no onboard battery, but you can charge two devices directly from the panel as it soaks up the sun via two USB-A ports and one USB-C PD.
All the panels fold into one 20.1 x 14.3 x 1.5-inch rectangle, with a built-in carrying handle so you can lug around all 9.5 pounds of panel. The backside of the unit, which is the only exposed side when folded, is a gray fabric-like material. There’s also a zippered pouch for storing cables.
When expanded, there’s a surface spanning 20.1 x 57.5 inches and a shallow depth of about one inch, plus two relatively low-slung legs when fully extended. The “optimal sun system” is the same as you’d find on BioLite’s previous solar panels, consisting of a small target and a recessed white area so you can track the angle of the sun by its shadow.
Customers can sign up on a waiting list starting today on the company’s website, with pre-orders opening up on September 7th for all three new products. They’re scheduled to hit retail outlets including Amazon and REI in October 2022.
Cellular service is coming to New York’s subway tunnels. This week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced it was embarking on a 10-year project to wire all 418 miles of underground track underneath the city with wireless connectivity. Transit Wireless will build the necessary infrastructure and foot the resulting $600 million bill as part of an ongoing public-private between the two organizations.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Transit Wireless operates the MTA’s existing underground WiFi network. It’s also a subsidiary of BAI Communications, a company that has completed similar projects in Toronto, Hong Kong and other parts of the world. The agreement will also see Transit Wireless wire all of the MTA's 191 aboveground stations and 21 Staten Island Railway stations with WiFi. The good news for New Yorkers and visitors is that work on the project won’t lead to additional subway service interruptions.
According to The New York Times, Transit Wireless plans to pay for the project through data collection and fiber-optic cable leases to carriers. The company will begin revenue sharing with the MTA once it recoups its initial investment. At first, the agency can look forward to a 20 percent cut before that amount increases to 40 percent in the 15th year after Transit Wireless earns its money back.
The MTA isn’t the only transit agency working to provide cellular service to its riders. Last year, Transport for London said the Underground would get full mobile access by 2024. Other cities such as Seoul and Paris have had similar systems in place for years.
Actress Nichelle Nichols, best known for her role as Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series, has died. Nichols’ son Kyle Johnson shared the news on Sunday. “I regret to inform you that a great light in the firmament no longer shines for us as it has for so many years,” he wrote on Instagram. “Hers was a life well lived and as such a model for us all.” Nichols was 89 when she passed away on Saturday, July 30th of natural causes.
To say Nichols was a trailblazer would be an understatement. She broke into Hollywood at a time when the opportunities for Black women were few and far between. In interviews years after The Original Series ended, Nichols said she had considered quitting the show during its first season to pursue a career on Broadway but had a change of heart after meeting Martin Luther King Jr. King, as a fan of the show and someone who saw Nichols as a role model, was apparently horrified to find out she wanted to leave and convinced her to stay with it.
Beyond starring in The Original Series and its film sequels as well as making memorable appearances in shows like Heroes and Futurama, Nichols spent decades working with NASA to help the space agency diversify its talent pool. She also famously attended the christening of the Space Shuttle Enterprise in 1976 alongside Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and much of the cast of The Original Series. In 2015, she also flew aboard NASA’s SOFIA telescope during an eight-hour flight where the flying observatory studied Mars and Saturn. She will be missed.
After carrying the latest piece of the country’s Tiangong space station to orbit on July 24th, a Chinese Long March 5B rocket reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, creating a dazzling (albeit somewhat unsettling) display as it crashed down in the Indian Ocean. A Twitter user named Nazri Sulaiman captured a 27-second clip of the rocket’s first stage breaking up in the skies above Kuching, Malaysia. Sulaiman and others initially confused the spacecraft with a meteor shower until astronomers correctly identified the debris as the remains of a Chinese rocket.
On Saturday afternoon, US Space Command confirmed the Long March 5B re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at 12:45PM ET. China said most of the debris burned up in re-entry over the Sulu Sea between the Philippines and Malaysia. Unlike many modern rockets, including the SpaceX Falcon 9, the Long March 5B can’t reignite its engine to complete a controlled atmospheric re-entry. That has led to worry about where the rocket would land every time China has launched one. On a test flight in 2020, remnants of a Long March 5B fell on villages in the Ivory Coast, leading to property damage.
Reentry looks to have been observed from Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia. Debris would land downrange in northern Borneo, possbily Brunei. [corrected] https://t.co/sX6m1XMYoO
Following Saturday's re-entry, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson criticized China for lack of transparency. “The People’s Republic of China did not share specific trajectory information as their Long March 5B rocket fell back to Earth,” he said on Twitter. “All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices, and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk, especially for heavy-lift vehicles, like the Long March 5B, which carry a significant risk of loss of life and property.”
China plans to employ the Long March 5B at least two more times. In October, the rocket will carry the third and final part of Tiangong to space. Next year, it will do the same with the country’s Xuntian space telescope.
BMW is recalling 83 iX and i4 vehicles after investigating multiple battery fire incidents involving the two EVs. In an advisory spotted by Autoblog, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warns owners of select iX xDrive 50, iX M60, i4 eDrive40 and i4 M50 vehicles not to drive their cars, charge them or park them inside.
After first investigating an overseas incident involving a 2022 i4 eDrive back in April, BMW found a manufacturing defect with select Samsung SDI battery cells in iX models produced between December 2nd, 2021 and June 30th, 2022, and i4 models built between November 22nd, 2021 and June 13th, 2022.
BMW has already notified dealers of the recall. The automaker will replace the batteries in affected vehicles free of charge. BMW adds it’s not aware of any accidents or injuries due to the battery defect. Affected owners can expect a notification letter by September 19th. You can also contact BMW support ahead of time for more information.
For those worried about a potential repeat of the situation Chevy Bolt owners went through with GM, it’s worth noting BMW sources batteries for its iX and i4 EVs from two manufacturers: CATL and Samsung SDI. By contrast, GM single-sourced the Bolt’s battery from LG Chem before it announced a worldwide recall in 2021.
The national news cycle may have largely moved on from coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic — despite, as of this writing, infections being on the rise and more than 300 deaths tallied daily from the disease. But that certainly doesn't diminish the unprecedented international response effort and warp speed development of effective vaccines.
In The Messenger: Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Gamble That Changed the World, veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Loftus takes readers through the harrowing days of 2020 as the virus raged across the globe and biotech startup Moderna raced to create a vaccine to halt the viral rampage. The excerpt below takes place in early 2021, as the company works to adapt its treatments to slow the surging Delta variant's spread.
Viruses of all types frequently change. They mutate as they jump from person to person. The coronavirus was no different. Throughout the pandemic, health officials tracked variants of the SARS CoV-2 virus first found in Wuhan, China, as those variants arose. None seemed a big concern, until one was flagged in the United Kingdom in December 2020, right as Moderna’s vaccine neared approval. This UK variant appeared to be as much as 70 percent more transmissible. It was given the name the Alpha variant.
Alpha reinforced the possibility that the virus could mutate enough to become resistant to vaccines and treatments that were designed to target the earlier, predominant strain. Or it could fizzle out. But variants would keep coming. Shortly after Alpha, researchers identified another variant circulating in South Africa. Beta.
In late December—just a few days after the United States authorized its vaccine — Moderna issued a statement that it was confident the vaccine would be effective at inducing the necessary immune response against variants. The original vaccine targeted the full length of the spike protein of the coronavirus, and the new variants appeared to have mutations in the spike protein that represented less than a 1 percent difference from the original.
“So, from what we’ve seen so far, the variants being described do not alter the ability of neutralizing antibodies elicited by vaccination to neutralize the virus,” Tal Zaks said during a virtual appearance at the all-important J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in January 2021. “My definition of when to get worried is either when we see real clinical data that suggest that people who’ve either been sick or have been immunized are now getting infected at significant rates with the new variants.”
Even if the vaccine proved less effective against a new variant, Moderna could use its mRNA technology to quickly tweak the design of its Covid-19 vaccine, to better target a variant of the virus, Zaks said. After all, the company and its federal health partners had already demonstrated the year before how quickly they could design, manufacture, and test a new vaccine.
Still, Moderna needed to run a series of tests to see if its original vaccine offered the same high level of protection against variants as it showed in the big Phase 3 clinical trial.
Moderna collaborated again with researchers from NIAID including Barney Graham and Kizzmekia Corbett. They analyzed blood samples taken from eight people who were vaccinated with Moderna’s shot in the Phase 1 trial back in early 2020. They essentially mixed these blood samples with the coronavirus variants, engineered so they copied the mutations of the variants but couldn’t replicate and pose a threat to lab researchers. Researchers then analyzed whether the vaccine-induced antibodies present in the human blood samples could effectively neutralize the virus variants.
The results were mixed. They suggested the vaccine worked as well against the UK Alpha variant as against the original strain of the coronavirus. That was good news. Even if the UK variant spread more easily than the original virus, Moderna’s vaccine could probably mute its effects.
But the Beta variant first identified in South Africa seemed to pose a problem. The vaccine-induced antibodies had a significantly reduced neutralization effect on this strain in the lab tests. “Oh shit,” Bancel said when Stephen Hoge showed him the data. It wouldn’t be the last time. Moderna’s leaders saw the data on a Friday in late January 2021 and spent the weekend discussing it. They hoped that a modified, variant- targeted vaccine wouldn’t be needed, and that Moderna’s original vaccine would suffice, even if it had a reduced neutralizing effect. But Moderna didn’t want to be caught flat-footed if a variant-specific booster was needed.
They decided by the next Monday it was time to take action. They would develop a new version of the vaccine, one that more closely matched the mutations seen in the strain that circulated in South Africa, and which could potentially be given as a booster shot to better protect people who had gotten the original vaccine.
“It really highlights the fact that we need to continue to stay vigilant,” Moderna’s president, Stephen Hoge, said. “This virus is evolving, it’s changing its stripes. And we need to keep testing the new variants, and make sure the vaccine works against them.”
Moderna repeated the steps it took a year earlier: it quickly designed a new variant vaccine and manufactured an initial batch for human testing, shipping it to NIAID in late February, a year to the day after it had shipped the original batch of the original vaccine. The new batch was called mRNA-1273.351, appending the “351” because researchers initially called the variant seen in South Africa “B.1.351.”
“Moderna is going to keep chasing the variants until the pandemic is under control,” Bancel said that day.
Moderna also developed other plans to test. It would try a third dose of its original vaccine, given several months after the second dose, to see if that booster shot would protect against variants. It would also develop a combined vaccine that targeted both the original strain and the Beta strain.
Once again, volunteers stepped up to test these various approaches. Neal Browning, the Microsoft engineer who was the second person to get Moderna’s vaccine, showed up once again to volunteer. In the intervening year, he had gotten married, in a small outdoor ceremony to minimize Covid risk. Now he received a third dose of the Moderna vaccine. He felt tenderness at the injection site and a low-grade fever and chills, but the symptoms went away after several hours. He continued to visit the research site to give blood samples to be analyzed for immune responses.
By early May, Moderna had some answers. It gave booster shots — either the original vaccine or the Beta variant – targeting vaccine — to people about six to eight months after they had been vaccinated with two doses of the original vaccine. The company found that in the new analysis, both types of booster shots increased neutralizing antibodies against the Beta variant. And they increased antibodies against a related variant that had been detected in Brazil. But the newer version of the vaccine that targeted Beta induced a stronger immune response against the Beta variant than the booster shot of Moderna’s original vaccine.
At the time, Moderna’s plan was to continue testing the different booster approaches, with an eye toward possibly getting government approval to sell the booster shot that specifically targeted the Beta variant. But it didn’t seem particularly urgent. The existing mass vaccination campaign was making good progress at the time.
Then, with the virus on the retreat in the United States, scientists discovered a new variant driving an alarming surge in India. This variant had already jumped to other countries, including the United States. Initially, it was code-named B.1.617.2. It was even more contagious than the Alpha variant and there were fears that it could evade vaccines. This was the Delta variant.
The previous winter the hope provided by vaccines was juxtaposed with the deadliest virus surge in the United States. Again, in early summer 2021, the lifting of mask mandates and reopening of public life was bringing great hope and a sense of relief. And again, this would be juxtaposed with public-health officials sounding the alarm about the Delta variant. It could become the dominant strain of the virus in the United States, they said. The best way to stop its spread, officials said, was to get more people vaccinated, with any of the three vaccines available.
By mid-June, about 55 percent of the US adult population was fully vaccinated, which was good but still left many people exposed to the new Delta variant that spread much more easily than earlier strains. And there were clear geographic vulnerabilities. The Northeast United States had higher vaccination rates than the national average, particularly in some New England states, like Vermont with its 62 percent vaccination rate. But in the South the numbers were much lower in states like Alabama, where only 30 percent were fully vaccinated.
The high proportions of unvaccinated people in those places would serve as a breeding ground for Delta. And the more the variant spread, the more it could mutate into more variants.
By late July, the effects of an ill-fated combination — stubbornly low vaccination rates in some regions, the winding down of masking and distancing, and a rapidly spreading Delta strain—were clearer. Infections, hospitalizations, and deaths were climbing again, especially in open states like Florida, which suffered one of the highest rates of Covid-19 hospitalizations, and low-vaccinated states.
Doctors and nurses who thought they had put the worst of the pandemic behind them were once again scrambling to treat severely ill Covid-19 patients in intensive-care units. By the end of August, the United States was averaging about fifteen hundred Covid-19 deaths a day, versus fewer than two hundred in early July. Nearly all of the patients who ended up in the ICU were unvaccinated.
Some vaccinated people were beginning to test positive for Covid-19, too — commonly called “breakthrough” cases—and a few progressed to severe cases. The vaccines, after all, weren’t 100 percent effective in the clinical trials, either. A small percentage of vaccinated people in the studies got sick with Covid. But it was becoming clear that the vaccines weren’t entirely blocking transmission of the virus or stopping asymptomatic infections, as initially hoped.
Vaccinated people were better protected than unvaccinated people, even when Delta took over. In states like Massachusetts, less than 1 percent of fully vaccinated people in the state had tested positive for Covid-19 by the fall of 2021. Other analysis showed that people who weren’t fully vaccinated were nearly five times more likely to get infected, ten times more likely to be hospitalized and eleven times more likely to die from Covid than fully vaccinated people.
But Delta reminded people, or made them understand for the first time, that the vaccines weren’t bullet-proof. New indoor mask mandates were imposed, including at schools, where educators just weeks earlier had been eager for the first normal back-to-school season in two years. No vaccine was yet authorized for children under twelve (both Moderna and Pfizer were studying that population), raising concerns that Delta would spread rapidly among them as they gathered in classrooms.
By the end of the summer, people wondered if the pandemic would ever end. Some started talking about the coronavirus as endemic, not a pandemic.
And a big slice of America was still saying “No thanks” to the vaccine.
