Lawyers for the family of a man who died in a fiery Tesla Model S crash are calling the vehicle a 'death trap' in a lawsuit against the company - Business Insider

The Tesla Model S fire that killed Omar Awan in February.Local 10 News

• The family of Omar Awan, a Tesla lessee who died in February after his Model S sedan caught fire, is suing the electric-car maker, alleging that "the Model S' design was defective and unreasonably dangerous."
• A policeman and other bystanders were not able to attempt to rescue Awan because the design of the Model S' door handles prevented them from opening the vehicle's doors, the family's attorneys claim in the lawsuit.
• The Model S has distinctive door handles that are flush with the vehicle's sheet metal unless the key fob is nearby, at which point they can extend outward, allowing the driver or passenger to grab them and open the door.
• The door handles on Awan's car would not extend for the policeman and other bystanders on the scene of the fire who tried to rescue him, according to the lawsuit.
• The attorneys representing Awan's family allege that Awan did not die from the collision's impact. Instead, they claim he was killed by the smoke that filled the car after its battery caught fire.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The family of Omar Awan, a Tesla lessee who died after his Model S sedan caught fire, is suing the electric-car maker, alleging that "the Model S' design was defective and unreasonably dangerous."

Awan died in February after his Model S veered off a parkway, hit a palm tree, and caught fire. A policeman and other bystanders on the scene of the fire were not able to attempt to rescue Awan because the design of the Model S' door handles prevented them from opening the vehicle's doors, the family's attorneys claim in the lawsuit.

The Model S has distinctive door handles that lie flush with the vehicle's sheet metal unless the key fob is nearby, at which point they can extend outward, allowing the driver or passenger to grab them and open the door. The door handles on Awan's car would not extend for the policeman and other bystanders who tried to rescue him, according to the lawsuit.

In February, a Tesla representative directed Business Insider to its emergency-response guide for the Model S, which says the vehicle must be opened from the inside if the exterior door handles are not working.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit on Thursday.

The attorneys representing Awan's family allege that Awan did not die from the collision's impact. Instead, they claim he was killed by the smoke that filled the car after its battery caught fire.

"The Model S's design precluded those on the scene of the crash from getting Dr. Awan out of the cabin because the door handles failed," the lawsuit claims. "The Model S had an unreasonably dangerous fire risk that was not addressed through proper design. And Tesla failed to give any appropriate, adequate, full or fair warnings about the risks relating to the door handles or the smoke and fire."

Are you a current or former Tesla employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com. You can ask for more secure methods of communication, like Signal or ProtonMail, by email or Twitter direct message.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sued-by-family-of-man-died-model-s-fire-2019-10

2019-10-25 08:30:58Z
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Lawyers for the family of a man who died in a fiery Tesla Model S crash are calling the vehicle a 'death trap' in a lawsuit against the company - Business Insider

The Tesla Model S fire that killed Omar Awan in February.Local 10 News

• The family of Omar Awan, a Tesla lessee who died in February after his Model S sedan caught fire, is suing the electric-car maker, alleging that "the Model S' design was defective and unreasonably dangerous."
• A policeman and other bystanders were not able to attempt to rescue Awan because the design of the Model S' door handles prevented them from opening the vehicle's doors, the family's attorneys claim in the lawsuit.
• The Model S has distinctive door handles that are flush with the vehicle's sheet metal unless the key fob is nearby, at which point they can extend outward, allowing the driver or passenger to grab them and open the door.
• The door handles on Awan's car would not extend for the policeman and other bystanders on the scene of the fire who tried to rescue him, according to the lawsuit.
• The attorneys representing Awan's family allege that Awan did not die from the collision's impact. Instead, they claim he was killed by the smoke that filled the car after its battery caught fire.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The family of Omar Awan, a Tesla lessee who died after his Model S sedan caught fire, is suing the electric-car maker, alleging that "the Model S' design was defective and unreasonably dangerous."

Awan died in February after his Model S veered off a parkway, hit a palm tree, and caught fire. A policeman and other bystanders on the scene of the fire were not able to attempt to rescue Awan because the design of the Model S' door handles prevented them from opening the vehicle's doors, the family's attorneys claim in the lawsuit.

The Model S has distinctive door handles that lie flush with the vehicle's sheet metal unless the key fob is nearby, at which point they can extend outward, allowing the driver or passenger to grab them and open the door. The door handles on Awan's car would not extend for the policeman and other bystanders who tried to rescue him, according to the lawsuit.

In February, a Tesla representative directed Business Insider to its emergency-response guide for the Model S, which says the vehicle must be opened from the inside if the exterior door handles are not working.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit on Thursday.

The attorneys representing Awan's family allege that Awan did not die from the collision's impact. Instead, they claim he was killed by the smoke that filled the car after its battery caught fire.

"The Model S's design precluded those on the scene of the crash from getting Dr. Awan out of the cabin because the door handles failed," the lawsuit claims. "The Model S had an unreasonably dangerous fire risk that was not addressed through proper design. And Tesla failed to give any appropriate, adequate, full or fair warnings about the risks relating to the door handles or the smoke and fire."

Are you a current or former Tesla employee? Do you have an opinion about what it's like to work there? Contact this reporter at mmatousek@businessinsider.com. You can ask for more secure methods of communication, like Signal or ProtonMail, by email or Twitter direct message.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sued-by-family-of-man-died-model-s-fire-2019-10

2019-10-25 08:26:15Z
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Google is improving 10 percent of searches by understanding language context - The Verge

Google is currently rolling out a change to its core search algorithm that it says could change the rankings of results for as many as one in ten queries. It’s based on cutting-edge natural language processing (NLP) techniques developed by Google researchers and applied to its search product over the course of the past 10 months.

In essence, Google is claiming that it is improving results by having a better understanding of how words relate to each other in a sentence. In one example Google discussed at a briefing with journalists yesterday, its search algorithm was able to parse the meaning of the following phrase: “Can you get medicine for someone pharmacy?”

The old Google search algorithm treated that sentence as a “bag of words,” according to Pandu Nayak, Google fellow and VP of search. So it looked at the important words, medicine and pharmacy, and simply returned local results. The new algorithm was able to understand the context of the words “for someone” to realize it was a question about whether you could pick up somebody else’s prescription — and it returned the right results.

The tweaked algorithm is based on BERT, which stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.” Every word of that acronym is a term of art in NLP, but the gist is that instead of treating a sentence like a bag of words, BERT looks at all the words in the sentence as a whole. Doing so allows it to realize that the words “for someone” shouldn’t be thrown away, but rather are essential to the meaning of the sentence.

The way BERT recognizes that it should pay attention to those words is basically by self-learning on a titanic game of Mad Libs. Google takes a corpus of English sentences and randomly removes 15 percent of the words, then BERT is set to the task of figuring out what those words ought to be. Over time, that kind of training turns out to be remarkably effective at making a NLP model “understand” context, according to Jeff Dean, Google senior fellow & SVP of research.

Another example Google cited was “parking on a hill with no curb.” The word “no” is essential to this query, and prior to implementing BERT in search Google’s algorithms missed that.

Google says that it has been rolling the algorithm change out for the past couple of days and that, again, it should affect about 10 percent of search queries made in English in the US. Other languages and countries will be addressed later.

All changes to search are run through a series of tests to ensure they’re actually improving results. One of those tests involves using Google’s cadre of human reviewers who train the company’s algorithms by rating the quality of search results — Google also conducts live live A/B tests.

Not every single query will be affected by BERT, it’s just the latest of many different tools Google uses to rank search results. How exactly all of it works together is a bit of a mystery. Some of that process is kept intentionally mysterious by Google to keep spammers from gaming its systems. But it’s also mysterious for another important reason: when a computer uses machine learning techniques to make a decision, it can be hard to know why it made those choices.

That so-called “black box” of machine learning is a problem because if the results are wrong in some way, it can be hard to diagnose why. Google says that it has worked to ensure that adding BERT to its search algorithm doesn’t increase bias — a common problem with machine learning whose training models are themselves biased. Since BERT is trained on a giant corpus of English sentences, which are also inherently biased, it’s an issue to keep an eye on.

The company also says that it doesn’t anticipate significant changes in how much or where its algorithm will direct traffic, at least when it comes to large publishers. Any time Google signals a change in its search algorithm, the entire web sits up and takes notice. Companies have lived and died by Google’s search rank changes.

Everybody who makes money on web traffic absolutely should take notice. When it comes to the quality of its search results, Payak says that “this is the single biggest ... most positive change we’ve had in the last five years and perhaps one of the biggest since the beginning.”

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https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20931657/google-bert-search-context-algorithm-change-10-percent-langauge

2019-10-25 07:01:00Z
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Jeff Bezos to be No. 2 richest, behind Bill Gates, after Amazon stock drop - Fox News

It’s hard to become the world’s richest person – and just as hard, or even harder, to stay No. 1.

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos will reportedly drop to the No. 2 spot on the list of the world’s richest people after Amazon’s stock price tumbled in after-hours trading Thursday.

SINGAPORE'S RICHEST MAN SAYS 'MISSING PIECE WAS GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST'

Who’ll be the new No. 1? Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, according to Bloomberg. Bezos had overtaken Gates to claim the top position in October 2017, the report said.

The Amazon stock drop is estimated to give Bezos a revised net worth of $102.8 billion, nearly $5 billion lower than Gates, Bloomberg said.

It’s been a tough week for Bezos. Earlier this week, The Washington Post – which Bezos owns – reported that he went largely unrecognized by students when he recently paid a visit to a Washington, D.C., high school.

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Bezos visited Dunbar High School to talk about Amazon's Future Engineer Program, the report said.

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https://www.foxnews.com/tech/jeff-bezos-to-be-no-2-richest-behind-bill-gates-after-amazon-stock-drop

2019-10-25 07:13:53Z
CBMiZGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZveG5ld3MuY29tL3RlY2gvamVmZi1iZXpvcy10by1iZS1uby0yLXJpY2hlc3QtYmVoaW5kLWJpbGwtZ2F0ZXMtYWZ0ZXItYW1hem9uLXN0b2NrLWRyb3DSAWhodHRwczovL3d3dy5mb3huZXdzLmNvbS90ZWNoL2plZmYtYmV6b3MtdG8tYmUtbm8tMi1yaWNoZXN0LWJlaGluZC1iaWxsLWdhdGVzLWFmdGVyLWFtYXpvbi1zdG9jay1kcm9wLmFtcA

Southwest revenue rises despite $210 million hit from Boeing 737 Max grounding - CNBC

Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are parked on the tarmac after being grounded, at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California on March 28, 2019.

Mark Ralston | AFP | Getty Images

Strong travel demand helped lift Southwest Airlines revenue and profit in the third quarter, but the low-cost carrier warned the financial hit from the Boeing 737 Max grounding would "grow" into 2020.

The airline is the largest operator of the 737 Max and it had 34 of them in its fleet at the time of the worldwide grounding in mid-March, in the wake of two fatal crashes.

Southwest said the flight ban, the largest ever, cost it $210 million in revenue in the quarter, but sales still rose just over 1% to $5.64 billion, in line with analyst estimates. Net income rose 7% to $659 million, a third-quarter record. On an adjusted per-share basis, third-quarter earnings came in at $1.23, above analysts' expectations of $1.08 a share.

The airline's stock was up close to 2% in premarket trading.

Southwest said the grounding cost it $435 million in revenue in the first nine months of the year. The airline added that it expects "the damages to grow into 2020."

The airline removed the plane from its schedules through Feb. 8, later than any U.S. airline.

The grounding has forced airlines, like Southwest, to curb their growth plans, but the limited capacity has helped boost fares.

Boeing on Wednesday reiterated its forecast for regulators to remove the ban on the planes before the end of the year. The manufacturer has developed software changes for the planes after a flight-control system was implicated in the two crashes, but regulators haven't yet signed off on the fixes.

Southwest's CEO Gary Kelly warned that even if the FAA lifts the ban before the fourth quarter, the carrier would need one to two months to complete pilot training and other steps to get planes ready for passengers.

"The FAA will determine the timing of MAX return to service, and we offer no assurances that current estimations and timelines are correct," Kelly said in a release.

Boeing in the second quarter took a $4.9 billion after-tax charge to compensate airlines but final amounts are unknown because regulators haven't yet lifted the grounding.

"We have not reached a settlement with Boeing, and no estimated settlement amounts have been included in our third quarter 2019 results," Kelly said.

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https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/24/southwest-revenue-rises-despite-210-million-hit-from-boeing-737-max-grounding.html

2019-10-24 11:20:07Z
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Twitter shares tank 20% after earnings miss on the top and bottom lines - CNBC

Twitter shares tanked as much as 20% Thursday after the company reported advertising and revenue "headwinds" and missed Wall Street expectations on the top and bottom lines for its third-quarter.  

Here's what the company reported, compared with what Wall Street analysts were expecting, according to Refinitiv consensus estimates:

• Earnings per share: 17 cents, vs. 20 cents expected
• Revenue: $823.7 million, vs $874.0 million expected
• Monetizable daily active users: 145 million

The company cited "a number of headwinds" in its revenue shortfall, including product issues and lower-than-expected advertising volumes in July and August.

"In Q3 we discovered, and took steps to remediate, bugs that primarily affected our legacy Mobile Application Promotion (MAP) product, impacting our ability to target ads and share data with measurement and ad partners," the company said in its shareholder letter. "We also discovered that certain personalization and data settings were not operating as expected. We believe that, in aggregate, these issues reduced year-over-year revenue growth by 3 or more points in Q3." 

Twitter guided toward lighter fourth-quarter revenues than Wall Street was looking for. The company expects to bring in revenue between $940 million and $1.01 billion — just shy of the $1.06 billion that analysts surveyed by Refinitiv had forecast.

Last quarter, Twitter did away with reporting monthly active users and shifted to a new growth metric — monetizable daily active users — to measure the daily active users who are shown ads on the platform.

The 145 million mDAUs that Twitter reported for the third quarter is a 4% increase from the second quarter of 2019, when the company reported 139 million mDAUs, and a 17% increase year over year. 

The "monetizable" distinction is why, Twitter says, its mDAUs fall short of the total DAUs of social media rivals like Snap and Facebook, which boast 203 million and 1.59 billion daily active users, respectively.

"Despite its challenges, this quarter validates our strategy of investing to drive long-term growth. More work remains to deliver improved revenue products. We'll continue to prioritize our ad products along with health and our investments to drive ongoing growth in mDAU," said Ned Segal, Twitter's CFO.

Twitter's quarterly expenses grew 17% during the third period, to $780 million, in part due to hiring and investment in sales, marketing, research and development. The company ended the quarter with 4,600 employees, 300 employees more than at the end of the second quarter.  

The company expects to keep spending. For the fiscal year of 2019, Twitter is predicting capital expenditures to come in between $550 million and $600 million, representing a large hike from total 2018 expenditures of $487 million. 

Advertising revenue for the quarter came in at $702 million, 8% higher than the same quarter during 2018. Total ad engagements increased 23% year over year, and cost per engagement dropped 12%.

Prior to the report, Twitter shares were up 35% so far in 2019, with a market cap just above $30 billion. Thursday's pre-market stock move would shave $6 billion off the company's market cap, if the losses hold into regular trading. 

This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

WATCH: The rise of deepfakes and what Facebook, Twitter and Google are doing to detect them

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Correction: This story has been updated to correct the quarter during which Twitter reported 139 million monetizable daily active users. That report came during the second quarter of 2019. 

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https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/24/twitter-twtr-earnings-q3-2019.html

2019-10-24 10:34:49Z
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Tesla plans to increase vehicle power, range, and charging through new software update - Electrek

Tesla has announced plans to increase vehicle power and range through a new software update coming in the next few weeks.

When Tesla launched the $35,000 Model 3 earlier this year, the automaker surprised many by announcing that it will increase the range of all existing Long-Range Model 3 vehicle delivered to date.

CEO Elon Musk said at the time:

“There’s also some things we’ve been able to do for existing customers that are pretty cool. Tesla is as much a software company as a hardware company and we’ve been able to via firmware improve the range of the long-range rear wheel drive car from 310 miles to 325 miles. This will affect all customers including those that were all long range cars shipped to date and new cars. So both existing and new customers will get a 15 mile range increase from 310 to 325.”

Tesla ended up pushing the update in March – although it didn’t affect all the Model 3 Long Range vehicles the same way.

During a conference call with analysts after Tesla’s Q3 2019 earnings, Musk said that they have more improvements coming through software updates:

“I forgot to mention, we’re also expecting there’s going to be an over-the-air improvement that will improve the power of the Model S, X, and 3. That’s, by the way coming in a few weeks. It should be in the order of 5% power improvement due to improved firmware.”

Tesla VP of technology, Drew Baglino, said that they have found ways to optimize the motor control and it should result in about “5% improvement for all Model 3 customers and 3% for Model S and Model X” customers.

Musk also said that the upcoming update will also bring improvements to the range, single-pedal driving, Supercharging speed, comfort and feel.

They didn’t specify which variants of each model will get the improvements beyond the fact Supercharging speed is going to improve for Model 3 Standard Range and Standard Range Plus.

As for the motor optimizations, if they are going to affect both Model S/X and Model 3, it’s likely for the more recent ‘Raven’ Model S and X, which have a similar motor as Model 3.

Electrek’s Take

The idea of a car receiving performance improvements through software updates is impressive, but we weren’t particularly impressed by the range increase for Model 3 Long Range RWD.

We previously reported on how Tesla played with EPA ratings to advertise all Model 3 versions with 310-mile range even though the Long Range version was able to get more.

So they probably could have always advertised the car with more range.

However, this is a lot more impressive.

It sounds like Tesla has found ways to safely push their electric motors higher and even make them more efficient.

I am looking forward to seeing exactly how it’s going to affect the vehicles.

---

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https://electrek.co/2019/10/24/tesla-increase-vehicle-power-range-software-update/

2019-10-24 09:44:00Z
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