Racers Stoffel Vandoorne and Jean-Éric Vergne’s team, DS Penske, was hit with a €25,000 fine and a pit lane start for today’s Portland race after it surreptitiously used RFID scanners to collect live data from other cars’ tires during the qualifying round.
RFID chips, says Rubber Journal Asia, collect data about tire temperature, pressure, and more.
It wasn’t the biggest announcement at WWDC this year, but Apple debuting TV AirPlay in hotels is a welcome thing, and LG announced Thursday it’ll support it on LG Pro:Centric Smart Hotel TVs later this year (via MacRumors).
When you encounter one, you’ll be able to connect and start AirPlaying TikToks or whatever by scanning a QR code on the TV.
Travel Weekly EIC Arnie Weissman wrote a series of articles about a May trip he almost took aboard the OceanGate Titan (via Insider).
He says OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told him the sub’s hull used discounted Boeing carbon fiber that was “past its shelf life for use in airplanes” and claimed Boeing, NASA, and the University of Washington (UW) were involved in Titan’s design and testing.
Boeing and UW have both denied involvement, and NASA says it only served in a consulting capacity, per Insider.
[www.travelweekly.com]
The texts, which Bloom posted to Facebook, show Rush offering a cut-rate deal at just $150,000 per seat for a trip on the Titan. Bloom said he wasn’t able to go because of a scheduling conflict, and the slots went to Shahzada Dawood and his son, Sulemon, who were on the sub when it imploded.
In the texts, Bloom said his son was concerned about danger, but Rush waved him off:
“While there’s obviously risk it’s way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba divind. There hasn’t been even an injury in 35 years in a non-miltary sub.”
In 2019, after taking a trip on the ill-fated OceanGate Titan, submersible expert Karl Stanley said he heard an increasingly loud cracking sound over the two-hour trip down, according to The New York Times. He tried to warn Rush:
In the April 2019 email to Mr. Rush, Mr. Stanley said the loud cracking sounds that they had heard during their dive “sounded like a flaw/defect in one area being acted on by the tremendous pressures and being crushed/damaged.” He wrote that the loud, cracking noise signaled there was “an area of the hull that is breaking down.”
Stanley said experts confronted Rush about the safety of his sub at a 2018 crewed submersible conference, but he was “determined” to build it anyway. Shortly after, over three dozen industry experts wrote Rush, urging him to put his sub through certification.
[The New York Times]
A write-up in The Washington Post says the Zuck’s latest attempt at image rehabilitation (remember the “only eating meat from animals he’d personally killed” phase?) is, in part, a bid to win over Musk stans.
Zuckerberg has appeared on podcasts hosted by provocateur Joe Rogan and AI researcher Lex Fridman, both popular among fans of Twitter owner Musk. He has posted sweaty action shots on Instagram displaying his jujitsu skills. And this week, he accepted Musk’s challenge to a cage fight after news reports on Meta creating a Twitter competitor.
But Zuckerberg has really ramped it up over the past year, one of the people said, courting the same “tech bros” who have been captivated by Musk — who is suddenly Zuckerberg’s competition in more ways than one.
The cage match between him and Musk may just be the most recent part of his new pitch, even before Instagram’s “sane” Twitter alternative arrives.
On May 31st, a group of six AI chatbot trainers employed by Google subcontractor Appen were fired after they spoke out about how their poor working conditions could make Google’s Bard chatbot dangerous.
The Alphabet Workers Union now says the workers’ jobs have been reinstated with backpay. AWU provided The Verge with a copy of the email from Appen’s RaterLabs explaining the decision:
Based on our continuing consideration and review of our business needs, we have determined that some recent reductions of our workforce were not necessary and can be reversed. Consequently, we are pleased to offer you the option to return to work with RaterLabs.
Internal complaints about Bard previously called it “a pathological liar” and begged the company not to launch it.
