CNBC reported that Sean Cassidy, Amazon’s chief liaison to the Federal Aviation Administration, said in an internal memo last week that it was his last day.
Since 2015, Cassidy has worked to get approval for drone deliveries. In August, the FAA, at Cassidy’s request, lifted a requirement that drone operators can see the drones at all times. That restriction, among others, put Prime Air way behind expectations earlier this year.
After over a month with interim CEO and ex-Verizon CTO Richard Lynch, Blackberry gave the job to John Giamatteo, who led its cybersecurity business. Lynch will stay on and chair its board of directors. Giamatteo took over for ex-CEO John Chen.
Blackberry has also decided not to take its IoT business public after all, as it said in October it would after spinning the division off from its cybersecurity branch.
Senator Warren, who often calls out anticompetitive big tech behavior, weighed in today on Apple’s blockage of Beeper’s Android iMessage workaround.
She’s right that SMS is less secure than Apple’s encrypted iMessage platform. Things could improve with RCS on iPhones, if Apple works out encryption for it.
A Savanah, Georgia NBC morning show booked a young Dan Deacon, who would eventually become known for his frenetic live performances, in 2005. (Here’s an NPR story if you don’t know who I’m talking about.)
The audacity to put him on right when people were waking up is astounding. I grabbed a time-stamped link below, but the pre-performance interview is well worth a watch if you’re curious about this young Deacon’s equipment.
A judge had ruled in November that postal workers who, in solidarity with Tesla’s unionized Swedish mechanics, refused to deliver the plates had to let Tesla pick them up. But Fortune writes that another Swedish court overturned the ruling pending a final decision.
The strike began when Tesla refused to bargain with around 120 unionized Swedish mechanics. Soon, other unions joined, including dockworkers and postal workers, then the strike spread to unions in Denmark and Norway.
A pair of stories in The Washington Post today highlighted how little seems to stop Tesla drivers from ignoring company guidance about where and how to use Autopilot. It’s resulted in years of fatal crashes, court cases, scoldings, and investigations, but no impactful regulation.
As some drivers choose to use Autopilot where they shouldn’t, they wait for Full Self Driving, which Musk has promised for years, but Tesla has never delivered on.
[The Washington Post]
After reiterating that the 13- and- 15-inch MacBook Airs will each get upgraded to Apple’s M3 chip next year (and that Apple will drop the 2020 M1 Air from its lineup), Mark Gurman wrote this in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg:
The move means there’s only a couple Macs left that don’t have the latest processor generation: the Mac Studio and Mac Pro. But they probably won’t get upgraded until the end of 2024 at the earliest, if not 2025.
That’s not terribly surprising, but Gurman notably didn’t mention the Mac Mini, a machine he’s written previously would get an M3 upgrade next year along with the new MacBook Air models, in today’s newsletter.
