Spin, the e-scooter-sharing startup Ford acquired back in 2018, is shifting its focus in its quest to profitability and is exiting nearly all open permit markets globally as a result. In a post by company CEO Ben Bear, he said Spin has started winding down its operations in a few markets in the US, as well as in the entirety of Germany and Portugal. The company will also shut down its operations in Spain, which could happen sometime in February 22nd.

Open permit markets are places where multiple scooter companies can run businesses, with no caps on fleet sizes. Bear said they "create an uncertain operating environment" with "race to the bottom pricing." It doesn't sound like Spin has been doing well in those markets — Bear wrote that Spin hasn't been able to offer "the type of reliable high quality service [it] prides [itself] on to its riders and city partners" in those locations — so it has decided to take another path instead. 

Spin expanded its operations after it was acquired by Ford to a bunch of cities in the US and around the world. In 2021, it deployed a new scooter model that's more durable than its previous ones and teamed up with Google to show users the nearest e-bike or e-scooter on Maps. Unfortunately, those weren't enough to prevent this restructuring.

Going forward, Spin will focus on limited vendor markets in the US, Canada and the UK. Specifically, in places where cities and campuses "select partners through a competitive procurement process." Apparently, Spin gets double the revenue in those types of places compared to locations with a free-for-all market. Shifting its focus to those places makes sense in that case, but shutting down locations unfortunately also means that the company is letting personnel go: Its move will affect a quarter of its staff, who'll get severance packages and a stipend.

When AT&T's and Verizon's C-band 5G services go live on January 19th, they'll be implementing buffer zones around 50 airports in the US to reduce to risk of flight disruption. The Federal Aviation Administration has released a list (PDF) of the 50 airports it chose, which include major passenger hubs such as Chicago O'Hare International, Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles Int'l. As The Wall Street Journal notes, it also includes airports in foggy and cloudy locations like Seattle-Tacoma International, as well as cargo hubs like Indianapolis Int'l.

The carriers were supposed to roll out their 5G service using their newly purchased frequencies on January 5th, but they agreed to comply with the FAA's and Transportation Department's request to push back their expansion by two more weeks. Authorities intend to use the extra time to investigate concerns that the new frequencies are too close to those used by airplanes' radar altimeters. The devices measure the distance between the plane and the ground to help planes land in poor visibility and poor weather conditions. Wireless companies deny that using the C-band frequencies for 5G will disrupt aviation.

The FAA said that Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and some of the other busiest airports in the US are missing from the list, because they're nowhere near the areas where the new 5G services are deploying. Meanwhile, other large airports are also not included because they're deemed far away enough from the nearest 5G towers. 

Airlines for America, the association that represents major North American airlines, told Reuters and The Post in a statement that it appreciates the "FAA's efforts to implement mitigations for airports that may be most impacted by disruptions generated by the deployment of new 5G service." However, Kevin Burke, the CEO of airport trade group Airports Council International-North America, is less than pleased. Burke said the list is "largely irrelevant because the entire aviation system is about to be adversely impacted by this poorly planned and coordinated expansion of 5G service in and around airports."

PayPal has been expanding its cryptocurrency business since it opened trading to all users in 2020. It allowed US customers to check out with cryptocurrency and increased its crypto buy limit over the past year. In the future, it might also offer a stablecoin of its own. Jose Fernandez da Ponte, SVP of crypto and digital currencies at PayPal, has confirmed to Bloomberg that the online payment provider is "exploring a stablecoin." He also said that the company will work closely with relevant regulators "if and when [it] seek[s] to move forward."

A developer named Steve Moser found hidden code and images for a "PayPal Coin" in the company's app and shared them with Bloomberg. Based on what he discovered, the PayPal Coin will be backed by the US dollar. It may also feature the PayPal logo with two horizontal slashes across it, though that may change upon the coin's launch, if it does see the light of day. A spokesperson told the publication that the tidbits Moser unearthed in the app were leftovers from an internal hackathon by the company's blockchain, crypto and digital currencies division.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies backed by fiat currencies and are typically more, well, stable than their decentralized counterparts. Meta (formerly Facebook) has big crypto plans, as well, and was supposed to launch a digital wallet that supports its own stablecoin called Diem. However, it faced pushback from regulators and launched the cryptocurrency wallet Novi with the stablecoin called the Pax Dollar instead.

Stephen Hawking would've turned 80 on January 8th, 2022 had he still been alive. While he's no longer with us, his contribution to our understanding of the universe remains immense and shouldn't be forgotten. To pay tribute to the celebrated physicist and cosmologist on what would've been his 80th birthday, Google worked with his family to create a video Doodle that gives us a condensed version of his life. Moreover, the tech giant used Hawking's famous computer-generated voice to narrate his work and experiences from the time he graduated. 

Hawking was born in 1942 in Oxford, England and has always been fascinated with the universe. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease, when he was 21. In the years after that, he lost his mobility and his ability to speak, but he was able to communicate through a computer using a voice created in the 1980s by MIT engineer Dennis Klatt. In the Doodle, you'll hear Hawking's voice talk about his work on black holes — one of the scientific works he's most known for is the Hawking radiation, which is the theory that black holes emit radiation. 

You'll also hear his voice say how he's free in his mind even though he cannot move. "I have spent my life traveling across the universe inside my mind," his voice narrates.

In a statement, his daughter Lucy and sons, Robert and Tim Hawking, said:

"We also believe he would have found it important to show that he never allowed the challenges of his physical condition to limit his power of expression nor his determination to make an impact on the world in which he lived. We hope that his example offers inspiration and hope globally to all who face great challenges at this difficult time. Our father would have been 80 years old today and we thank everyone who has joined in the celebration of his extraordinary life and the legacy he gave to us all."

You can watch the whole Doodle below.

A group of hackers is trading a database of stolen information from FlexBooker, a cloud-based tool for scheduling appointments, containing sensitive customer data. According to BleepingComputer, the company suffered a security breach before the holidays and notified its customers about the attack in an email, where it revealed that its Amazon AWS servers were compromised on December 23rd. It also admitted that its system data storage was accessed and downloaded.

Based on information from Have I Been Pwned, the breach compromised 3.7 million accounts containing email addresses, names, passwords, phone numbers and partial credit card numbers. BleepingComputer says a group called Uawrongteam took credit for the attack and shared links to archives with the stolen data, which the group claimed also include users' drivers' licenses, other IDs, password salt and hashed passwords. FlexBooker's typical customers are people who need to be able to quickly schedule appointments with clients, such as doctors, lawyers, dentists, gyms, mechanics, salons, trainers, therapists, so and and so forth. 

In Flexbooker's email to users, it said the infiltrators failed to get "any credit card or other payment card information." We're guessing the company didn't take the stolen partial credit card numbers into account. Before Flexbooker, Uawrongteam previously claimed other data breaches and also traded databases with stolen information from its previous targets. They include data from Racing.com, a digital TV network that broadcasts horse racing, and from rediCASE Case Management Software solution for health services and other businesses. 

The US International Trade Commission has agreed with Sonos' claims that Google had infringed on its speaker and cast patents. It issued its initial decision back in August, and this finalizes its ruling, which prohibits Google from importing products found to have violated Sonos' intellectual properties. Since Google manufactures its products in China, that means it won't be able to gets them shipped to the US when the import ban takes effect in 60 days.

Sonos sued Google in 2020 over five patents, which include one that details a technology allowing wireless speakers to sync with one another. As The New York Times notes, the products affected include Google's Home smart speakers, Pixel phones and computers, as well as Chromecast devices. While Google is facing an import ban, a spokesperson said that the tech giant doesn't expect the ruling to interrupt its ability to import and sell devices. 

"While we disagree with today's decision, we appreciate that the International Trade Commission has approved our modified designs," the spokesperson told Protocol. "We will seek further review and continue to defend ourselves against Sonos' frivolous claims about our partnership and intellectual property." The commission didn't challenge those alternative designs in its final decision, which means Google can implement them. 

In fact, the Nest team has recently announced some changes to speaker groups, which it says is "due to a recent legal ruling." The most notable change is that, going forward, users will no longer be able to adjust the volume of all speakers in a group all at once. They'd have to adjust each speaker individually instead.

In a statement, Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus admitted that there's a possibility that "Google will be able to degrade or eliminate product features in a way that circumvents the importation ban that the ITC has imposed." However, he said the tech giant's products will still "infringe many dozens of Sonos patents" — that is, unless Google pays Sonos royalties for its technologies. 

His whole statement reads:

"We appreciate that the ITC has definitively validated the five Sonos patents at issue in this case and ruled unequivocally that Google infringes all five. That is an across the board win that is surpassingly rare in patent cases and underscores the strength of Sonos’s extensive patent portfolio and the hollowness of Google’s denials of copying. These Sonos patents cover Sonos' groundbreaking invention of extremely popular home audio features, including the set up for controlling home audio systems, the synchronization of multiple speakers, the independent volume control of different speakers, and the stereo pairing of speakers. 

There is a possibility that Google will be able to degrade or eliminate product features in a way that circumvents the importation ban that the ITC has imposed. But while Google may sacrifice consumer experience in an attempt to circumvent this importation ban, its products will still infringe many dozens of Sonos patents, its wrongdoing will persist, and the damages owed Sonos will continue to accrue. Alternatively, Google can —as other companies have already done — pay a fair royalty for the technologies it has misappropriated."

Popcorn Time, the app that was once popular for making pirating movies as easy as watching Netflix, has shut down. Its original developers took the service down and abandoned the project merely a few days after it launched in 2014. But since the project was open source, other developers were able pick up where they left off, and it's been killed and revived a few more times ever since. It remains to be seen whether Popcorn Time is now gone for good, but it looks like the biggest contributor to its most recent demise is the dwindling interest in the app.

On its website, the developers posted a graph of "popcorn time" searches over the past seven years. While the app enjoyed a ton of searches in the months after its launch in 2015, the graph shows a sharp decline in interest by 2016. Its popularity continued to wane, and it never really recovered after that, at least based on Google Trends. 

According to Bloomberg, the group behind Popcorn Time announced its closure in an email. While they didn't say whether law enforcement action was a factor behind their decision to shut down the app this time around, Popcorn Time has had brushes with the law in the past. The original version may have closed after authorities got involved, and Hollywood studios even sued individual users who allegedly downloaded and shared copies of movies illegally. 

Developers associated with Popcorn Time previously talked about how they're not responsible for piracy themselves, because the service doesn't actually host any content. Instead, it relied on a peer-to-peer sharing system and only provided a way for users to access content hosted on other people's computers.

Back in June 2020, Lululemon got into the flourishing home gym market in the midst of the pandemic by purchasing home fitness startup Mirror for $500 million. Now, Nike has filed a lawsuit against the company over Mirror, accusing it of patent infringement. According to CNBC and The Wall Street Journal, Nike's lawsuit allege that Mirror — a full-size interactive mirror that brings a live fitness instructor into the user's home — and its apps use technologies that it invented and patented. 

The sports apparel giant specifically mentioned that it filed a patent application in 1983 for a device that can prompt users to exercise, monitor their heart rate, determine their speed while running and the calories they burned. Nike also has a number of mobile apps for fitness, including the Nike Run Club and Nike Training Club. 

Nike sent Lululemon a list of patents it allegedly infringed on back on November 3rd. As you'd expect, the company more known for making yoga pants and other types of gym clothes disagreed with Nike's assessment. A spokesperson told the publications in a statement that the patents "in question are overly broad and invalid." They also said that Lululemon is confident in its position and "look forward to defending it in court."

Mirror operates as a standalone company within Lululemon, putting the workout clothes-maker in direct competition with the likes of Peloton and Tonal. Lululemon CEO Clavin McDonald previously said that the purchase was all about connecting with consumers, because they're bound to spend more the more they engage with the brand. Last month, however, the company halved its sales forecast for the device, calling 2021 "a challenging year for digital fitness." 

This isn't the only patent-related legal battle Lululemon is embroiled in. Last year, it filed a patent infringement lawsuit of its own against Peloton, alleging that the design the other company used for a new line of leggings and sports bras infringe on its intellectual property.

In 2020, Goodyear pledged to develop a new tire made entirely of sustainable materials within the next decade. Today the company has unveiled a tire with 70 percent sustainable material content, which shows the progress it has made towards achieving its ultimate goal. The tire features 13 ingredients across nine different tire components, including three different carbon blacks that are traditionally made by burning petroleum products.

Carbon black is typically used as a filler to reinforce tires, as well as other rubber products, and to lengthen their lifespan. Instead of using carbon black produced using petroleum, Goodyear used ones that were made using methane, carbon dioxide and plant-based oil. The company says the methods of production its suppliers used to create the sustainable carbon blacks generated less carbon emissions than traditional processes. 

Goodyear has also been using soybean oil for certain tire lines instead of petroleum oil, and this one is no different. Soybean oil allows tires to remain pliable in changing temperatures with added traction benefits. The company had been aiming to use 100 percent soybean oil in four of its tire lines in 2020, but it fell short due to production issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Goodyear's new tire uses a variety of silica, which improves tire grip and help lower fuel consumption, made from rice husk ash, as well. Rice husk ash is a by-product of rice milling, and it's pretty abundant in rice producing countries. Researchers have ben looking into its use as an alternative for cement and and as a source of silica, and according to Goodwill, it was able to produce high-quality silica from the waste material. In addition, the company broke down polyester materials recycled from plastic bottles and other plastic wastes into their base chemicals. They were then turned into technical grade polyester used for tire cords that maintain the shape of the tire. 

Chris Helsel, chief technology officer at Goodyear, said the 70 percent sustainable tire "is an exciting achievement that demonstrates [the company's] commitment to increasing the use of sustainable materials." That said, it was manufactured as a demo product, and the company has yet to reveal whether it will be released to the public.

Intel debuted its new chips for laptops — and a handful of devices that use them — at this year's CES. The chipmaker has announced that it's bringing its hybrid 12th-gen CPUs to laptops a few months after they were introduced for desktop computers. These CPUs combine performance cores (P-cores) and efficient cores (E-cores) on a single chip to be able to better handle the demands of various real-world tasks. Their faster cores can power your game, for instance, while the slower cores are taking care of your livestreaming needs. They'll top out at 14 cores for laptops, which include HP's updated EliteBook and ZBooks, as well as MSI's new Stealth GS77 and Stealth GS66 gaming laptops. Intel has also revealed that its 12th-gen KS-series chips for desktop, which are arriving this spring, will be able to reach 5.5GHz on a single core. Plus, it's adding a foldable specification for its premium Evo PC line this year. You can watch a condensed version of the company's CES event in our video above. 

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