SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 internet satellites

SpaceX has just asked the FCC for permission to launch 4,425 satellites that can provide high-speed (1 Gbps) internet around the globe. That’s more than thrice the current number of active satellites orbiting our planet, based on the data posted by the Union of Concerned Scientists. SpaceX chief Elon Musk first talked about the project back in 2015, wherein he revealed that it would cost the company $10 billion and that it will operate out of the private space corp’s new Seattle office. One of its earliest investors is Google, which contributed $1 billion to the initiative.

The satellites the company plans to launch will be much bigger than CubeSats at 850 pounds each and will be designed to last five to seven years before they decay. They’ll be orbiting our planet from 714 to 823 miles above the surface, higher than the space station that typically maintains an altitude of around 268 miles. According to the FCC filing, the project has two phases: SpaceX will initially launch 800 satellites that can provide internet services in the US and other locations. Once all 4,425 satellites are in orbit — it could take five years to launch them all — the array will be able to provide 1 Gbps connection to users across the globe.

Besides providing details about the project, the FCC filing has also revealed the kind of power Elon Musk wields over SpaceX. Apparently, Musk has a 54 percent stake in the space corporation, more than twice his 22 percent stake in Tesla.

Source: FCC, Business Insider, SpaceX

GoPro videos can now show native speed and motion data

When GoPro introduced the Hero5 Black, it came with a long overdue feature found on many other action cameras: GPS. The problem was, beyond tagging where your photos and videos were shot, it didn’t really add much. That changes today with the introduction of “gauges.” As the name suggests, you can add widgets on top of your action videos that show how fast you’re going, your GPS path, current height/elevation and G-Force. And while the feature is available starting today (you’ll need to download the latest version of GoPro’s Quik for desktop), videos you already shot with GPS activated can also make use of the gauges.

If you’re itching to show off how fast your last black run was, or the amount of Gs you handled on that hairpin bend, you’ll need to import your videos into Quik, GoPro’s lightweight video editing software. Preview/play any clip in your library that has GPS info and you should see the dials and widgets right away. There is a control panel with toggle switches, so if your bike run doesn’t have any jumps in it, you can only show the most relevant metrics (or remove the pesky GoPro watermark). You’ll also be able to move the stats or graphs around and resize them so they don’t get in the way of the action.

While the gauges will show automatically in Quik’s “view” mode, they don’t instantly carry over to the edit screen. To include them on edited clips, click the “scissors” icon under Quik’s preview window, and select the whole video (or the part you want) and save it as a new clip. Re-import this into your library and you’re good to go. As the metrics are handled by the Quik software, there’s currently no way to turn them on by default so that they are added to videos directly on the camera. Still it’s a more elegant solution than using third party accessories like Blast Motion, or even GoPro’s partnership with Polar.

The new gauges aren’t just handy for data nerds or for adding visual candy to your clips, they also serve as another way to spot the highlights before you edit. The speed graph and GPS trail, for example, are handy visual ways to find action points if you forgot (or were unable) to add a highlight tag at the time. But mostly they’re just for showing off.

Source: GoPro

Volkwagen wants to make you forget about diesel with new e-Golf

Volkswagen is looking for as much goodwill as it can muster. With that in mind, it introduced a new e-Golf Touch electric vehicle with range of 124 miles. The car has the same styling as it’s gas-powered sibling, so potential buyers don’t have to fret about losing the compact vehicle’s looks to live a greener lifestyle.

The new e-Golf extended range puts the car on below the range of the upcoming Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3. But while those two cars are brand new, the Golf line is established and that might appeal to those wanting to make the EV plunge without the concern of buying into a new model. But those drivers also have to be cool with more frequent charging.

In addition to driving without being powered by dead dinosaurs, the new e-Golf has 134 horsepower, a 35.8 kWh battery (50-percent more than the previous generation) and front autonmous emergency braking for potential collisions with vehicles and pedestrians.

While dieselgate doesn’t look like it’s close to being over, it’s important for Volkswagen to embrace alternative powertrains. It’s been touting its upcoming MEB electric vehicle platform since January and announced I.D. concept car in September. The company says the battery-centric system will have a 373 mile range and can be charged 80 percent in 15 minutes.

The I.D. itself is expected to launch in 2020, VW didn’t share e-Golf’s on-sale date or pricing.

National Intelligence director James Clapper stepping down in January

While it doesn’t come as a surprise, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has submitted his resignation effective at the end of the Obama administration in January. Clapper said multiple times over the last year that he planned to resign at the end of President Obama’s second term and today he made it official. The intelligence chief has explained that after 50 years of service, it was time for him to step down.

Clapper was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2010. Since then, he oversaw the United States’ 17 intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA and DEA. His tenure will be mostly remembered for the 2013 revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden who revealed the US government collected phone records on over 120 million people.

After details of the so-called PRISM program were reported by The Guardian and The Washington Post, Clapper declassified some information on the initiative and maintained that it was only used to gather foreign intelligence info under court supervision. Earlier this year, Clapper’s personal email, phone and internet accounts were accessed by hackers using the name “Crackas With Attitude.” Authorities in the UK and in the US later arrested four people in connection with the hacking of a number of government officials, including Clapper.

When making his resignation official on Thursday, Clapper tried to reassure the American people that after a crazy election cycle, things would turn out just fine. “I know a lot of people have been feeling uncertain about what will happen with this Presidential transition,” he said. “There has been a lot of catastrophizing, if I can use that term, in the 24-hour news cycle and social media. So, I’m here with a message: It will be okay.”

In a lengthy interview with Wired published today, Clapper discusses his decade-spanning career with the US government. He speaks about Snowden and how much the world of intelligence is different than it was decades ago. “Sometimes I long for the halcyon days of the cold war,” Clapper tells Wired’s Garret M. Graff. “We had a single adversary and we understood it.”

Clapper’s resignation comes on the heels of reports that President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team are struggling to piece together a cabinet. All of those new officials in high-ranking positions will likely coincide with a change in national security strategy after Trump takes office in January.

As required of all appointed Administration officials, DNI Clapper has signed a letter of resignation effective at noon on Jan 20, 2017.

— Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) November 17, 2016

Source: NBC News

AirPods Launch Rumors Now Include Dates in Late November and December

Adding to the pile of recent guesswork rumors centering around the launch of Apple’s AirPods, this week a collection of foreign retail websites have listed the Bluetooth headphones with new dates suggesting availability before the end of the year.

First off, today Mac4Ever discovered that French retail website Fnac has posted the AirPods for pre-order, with a suggested shipping date of November 30. If true, that would mark a launch following Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but still leave customers plenty of time to add AirPods to their holiday shopping list.

One of many predicted AirPods shipping dates from foreign resellers, this one Fnac
Last week, a launch supposedly set for around tomorrow, November 18, was floated by an Apple reseller, which reportedly told a customer it would be getting AirPods stock today, November 17. Although an impending launch as soon as tomorrow is unlikely, many Apple retail stores have been receiving demo units of the AirPods to demonstrate to customers and teach employees how to use them, suggesting Apple still intends to launch the device sooner rather than later next year.

Earlier in the week Letem svetem Applem discovered that Czech website Alza had listed the AirPods as launching December 2016. That date has since been removed from the site, which now simply states that it “accepts pre-orders” for the AirPods.

If production does begin in December, as predicted by Barclays, that still leaves the option that AirPods might not launch until January 2017, which was one of the first delayed date estimates for the headphones after Apple postponed the launch beyond October. Despite that rumor, and a few other extraneous websites that mark AirPods availability as late as March 2017, many still believe it’s most likely that Apple will get the AirPods out in time for the holiday shopping season.

With the highly divergent launch dates sprouting up online, it’s clear that no one officially knows exactly when the AirPods will come out. On Apple.com, the AirPods are listed as both “coming soon” and “currently unavailable.” Following the delay, Apple explained that it needed “a little more time” with the AirPods before they would be ready to launch, but didn’t divulge specific reasons why it chose to do so.

Tag: AirPods
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Future iPhones Could Be ‘Made in America’ as Foxconn Asked to Consider U.S. Manufacturing

Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn has been studying the possibility of moving iPhone production to the United States, according to Japanese website Nikkei Asian Review, leading to hopeful speculation some iPhones could one day be “Made in America” rather than be assembled and imported from China.

The report claims Apple asked both Foxconn and rival supplier Pegatron, which denied the request, to look into making iPhones stateside, although Foxconn chairman Terry Gou is said to be less enthusiastic about the idea due to inevitably higher production costs in the United States compared to China.

“Apple asked both Foxconn and Pegatron, the two iPhone assemblers, in June to look into making iPhones in the U.S.,” a source said. “Foxconn complied, while Pegatron declined to formulate such a plan due to cost concerns.”

In a speech at Liberty University in Virginia earlier this year, President-elect Donald Trump said “we’re going to get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries,” while he has also threatened to introduce a 45% tax on products imported from China.

Apple CEO Tim Cook previously told 60 Minutes it manufactures iPhones in China because of “skill,” not lower wages. Cook said China has put an “enormous force on manufacturing,” adding that the U.S. workforce has a smaller number of individuals with the “vocational kind of skills” needed.

China put an enormous focus on manufacturing. In what we would call, you and I would call vocational kind of skills. The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills. I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.

Meanwhile, an industry executive told Nikkei the U.S. does not have the “cluster of suppliers” needed to manufacture iPhones. In Asia, Taiwan’s TSMC makes A-series chips for iPhones, Japan’s Sharp and Japan Display supply iPhone displays, and South Korea’s SK Hynix and Japan’s Toshiba produce memory chips for the device.

“To make iPhones, there will need to be a cluster of suppliers in the same place, which the U.S. does not have at the moment,” the executive said. “Even if Trump imposes a 45% tariff, it is still possible that manufacturers will decide to continue production overseas as long as the costs together with the tariffs are lower than the amount they need to spend on building and running production lines in the U.S.”

U.S. manufacturing would inevitably raise concerns about Apple’s profit margins and, in turn, how much the iPhone costs for customers. iPhone 7 component costs are estimated to start at $220, compared to a base price of $649, although Cook has previously dismissed third-party cost estimates as being highly inaccurate.

TSMC and Sharp have acknowledged that while U.S. manufacturing would prove more expensive, the companies would certainly consider the move over losing a major customer such as Apple. But, for now, the idea likely remains a stretch even in light of new political pressures.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: Foxconn, nikkei.com
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Workflow for iOS Updated With Improved Gallery That Makes it Easier Than Ever to Automate Tasks

Popular automation app Workflow is being updated today with a new design, a much-improved Gallery experience, and a streamlined on-boarding process, all of which help to make the app more powerful and easier to use.

For those unfamiliar with Workflow, it’s an automation app that can essentially do anything. It lets you create workflows to accomplish a wide variety of tasks like creating GIFs from a series of photos, grabbing images from a web page, translating an article, calculating a tip, posting photos to multiple social networks at once, and much, much more.

When you first open the Workflow app after updating, there’s a new on-boarding process that walks you through how the app works and all of the different things you can do with it. After a short tutorial, you’re asked to choose a few workflows that sound useful, like a teeth brushing timer or directions to the nearest coffee shop. The new on-boarding process makes it easier for new users to get started because the app no longer opens to a blank slate.

Workflow’s Gallery, which is what’s used to download new workflows, has been overhauled to make it simpler to find new ways to use the Workflow app. The Gallery is organized into several different curated sections that you can scroll through, like Essentials, iOS 10, Quick Shortcuts, Morning Routine, Around the House, Stay Healthy, Collaborate Better, Photography, and more.

Category names are more descriptive than they were previously, and there’s more content right at your fingertips. With a new search function, it’s easy to find exactly what you’re looking for, and there’s also an option to submit your own Workflows to the Gallery so other users can download them.

When adding workflows, there’s now an Import Questions option that simplifies customization, and some existing workflows have been updated to add more context for an improved experience. You’ll also notice that Workflow has seen some slight design changes, brightening up the look of the app.

Workflow can be downloaded from the App Store for $2.99. [Direct Link]

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