Jumat, 28 Juni 2019

Tesla gives updates on cause of a battery fire, says single module is responsible - Electrek

Tesla has given an update on the cause of a Model S battery fire that happened in Shanghai earlier this year after the government started putting pressure on electric automakers.

In April, a Tesla Model S was caught on video bursting into flames seemingly on its own when parked in a garage — pictured above.

Following the accident, a few Nio electric SUVs also had thermal events in China and it led to a lot of attention on battery fires in the country.

The government asked automakers making electric vehicles to investigate fire risks and report on what they are doing to prevent their cars from catching on fire.

Earlier this week, Nio announced that it is recalling its SUV.

A month after the incident in Shanghai, Tesla released an update for its battery software in order to help prevent further fires in Model S and Model X.

Today, Tesla also issued a statement on Weibo about the cause of the Shanghai fire and said that it didn’t find any defect in its system:

The automaker says that they conducted a “joint investigation” with “Chinese and American experts” who “didn’t find that the system has any defects.”

Tesla added that preliminary findings show the source of the fire as a single battery module at the front of the vehicle. Here’s a Tesla battery pack teardown exposing the battery modules:

However, they didn’t explain what in the battery module, which Tesla makes itself, could have caused it to ignite.

The automaker reiterated that it believes its vehicles are 10 times less likely to catch on fire than gasoline vehicles.

Electrek’s Take

While Tesla is correct to claim that gasoline cars are on average more likely to catch on fire than Tesla vehicles, that’s based on all vehicle fires and not just newer vehicles like Tesla’s cars.

In either case, it’s still statistically not something that people should be concerned about, but it’s obviously not the case, especially in China following those events.

That’s why Tesla needs to be transparent about its investigation into the cause of the fire when the vehicles are not involved in accidents.

As of now, it sounds like Tesla is just sharing the results of a preliminary investigation, because saying that the cause has been traced to a single battery module isn’t saying much.

They have already released a software update to make the thermal management system safer, but it sounds like they did so way before the findings from this incident.

Hopefully, they can learn more and it can lead to safer battery packs.


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https://electrek.co/2019/06/28/tesla-updates-cause-shanghai-battery-fire/

2019-06-28 13:52:00Z
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Americans still love Mexican beers Corona and Modelo - CNN

Shares of Constellation soared 7% in early trading Friday after the company reported earnings and sales that topped forecasts and also issued a solid outlook for the rest of this fiscal year.
Constellation, which imports the Corona and Modelo brands from Mexico, posted a more than 7% jump in beer sales and nearly 12% increase in operating profits from its beer unit compared to a year ago.
Corona-maker Constellation Brands is investing in female entrepreneurs to help it sell alcohol to women
"Our iconic beer portfolio continues to be a cornerstone of growth in the U.S. beer industry," said Constellation CEO Bill Newlands in a statement.
The solid beer performance helped offset a decline in revenue and earnings from its wine and spirits business, which owns the Kim Crawford wine and Svedka vodka brands. Constellation reached a deal earlier in April to sell some struggling wine brands.
Constellation shares are now up about 25% this year. The stock briefly plunged in May due to concerns that President Donald Trump would impose higher tariffs on products from Mexico unless the country took a harder stance on illegal immigration to the United States.
He took the leap into cannabis. Now everyone is following
But Trump dropped the threat earlier this month after the two countries came to an agreement on border enforcement.
Constellation is also poised to benefit from the boom in legal marijuana sales in Canada and some US states as well as increased demand for products derived from CBD -- the non-psychoactive component of cannabis -- following the passage of the Farm Bill. That's because Constellation owns about a 37% stake in Canadian cannabis firm Canopy Growth (CGC).

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/28/investing/constellation-earnings-mexican-beer-corona-modelo/index.html

2019-06-28 13:34:00Z
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Apple and the end of the genius - The Verge

As the news about Jony Ive leaving Apple sinks in, you’ll be seeing a lot of people weighing in on what the Ive era of Apple meant and what’s next. That’s all for the good, because Ive was remarkably influential — a singular person who drove the design not just for Apple’s products, but for the industry at large. The only person who could claim the same level of both fame and influence was Steve Jobs himself.

It’s annoying to keep using the word “era,” but that’s the word. It sounds unnecessarily portentous for talking about designing computers, but it’s appropriate to the scale of this turnover. So, with Ive leaving, I’ll join in and say this: the era of the singular genius at Apple is over.

The truth is, it’s been over for some time. I would like you to take a look at this remarkable quote Tim Cook gave to the Financial Times, meant to assuage those who will argue that Apple is in serious trouble without Ive:

“The company runs very much horizontally,” said Mr Cook. “The reason it’s probably not so clear about who [sets product strategy] is that the most important decisions, there are several people involved in it, by the nature of how we operate.”

There’s a much more pithy phrase for what Cook is talking about. It’s the phrase for when decisions are made by a consensus from a group instead of by one sole person. That phrase is, of course, “design by committee.”

It’s a damning phrase, so it’s no wonder that Cook avoided it. But make no mistake, that’s what he’s referring to here. It’s a scary thing to consider for Apple, because so much of our idea of what the company is and what it means has been tied up with the idea of a singular genius.

The singular genius is the mythos of how Apple was founded and how it became the global giant it is today. And I don’t mean “genius” just as “very smart,” but as the Romantic Genius — the person who is in touch with the sublime in a way the rest of us cannot understand. That version of “genius” still lives with us today and — like many potent concepts — turns out to be more of a social invention buttressed by technology (the need to assign value to copyrighted works) than some innate human divinity.

While Apple might have a good story about having been founded in a garage, the true founding myth of Apple is the myth of genius. You know the fable, which has the benefit of also being true. When Steve Jobs was in charge, Apple made amazing things: the Apple computer, the Mac. Jobs not in charge: the very bad ‘90s with Scully and the Newton. Jobs back in charge: the renaissance, the iPod, the iPhone.

After Steve Jobs, that mantle was passed to Jony Ive. And he quietly (quite literally) took it. It was important to our concept of Apple that there be a single, discerning decision maker. Somebody uncompromising about quality. Somebody with very good taste. A capital G Genius.

The genius is the opposite of the committee. John Gruber very correctly points out that it is deeply weird that the two people tapped as Ive’s successors report to the Chief Operating Officer. I agree, but mainly because it’s deeply weird at Apple.

There are two big changes to pick apart. First, there are two people replacing Ive, not one. And second: they report to the COO, not directly to Tim Cook. That is precisely the opposite of how Steve Jobs had set up Jony Ive at Apple. Here’s how Jobs himself described Ive’s role:

He’s not just a designer. That’s why he works directly for me. He has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. There’s no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That’s the way I set it up.

Compare that quote about Ive to the earlier one from Cook about how product decisions are made. The difference is stark! Cook’s vision is not how we imagine Apple operates. As Gruber succinctly put it: “I don’t worry that Apple is in trouble because Jony Ive is leaving; I worry that Apple is in trouble because he’s not being replaced.”

It’s far too early to know whether that level of worry is warranted. I do know that it comes from a real place — it’s a place where I also sit. From here, it looks like Apple has lost a step when it comes to design leadership. There are the easy dunks you can make on some of Apple’s products like the first Apple Pencil, the iPhone battery case, and the iPad Smart Keyboard. But there are much more fundamental worries about the MacBook’s keyboard, the length of time it took to recover from the “trashcan” Mac Pro, and the weirdly unergonomic Apple TV remote.

The thing about those missteps is we don’t know their cause. One way of thinking about them is that they stem from a lack of product focus — there’s no genius sending things back to the drawing board when they’re not good enough. Another, though, is that they stem from too much focus — focus on form over function, on making things thin and beautiful instead of making things usable.

In that framework, the problem was either that Jony Ive wasn’t paying attention or that he had too much power and misused it. That’s how the thinking goes, because our thinking about Apple has been defined by trusting in the taste of a singular genius, because design by committee is obviously worse than that.

The reality is that boiling down Apple’s design to those two contradictory explanations is reductive. Apple’s product strategy is not dictated by a single person anymore — and I wonder just how much even Ive drove it, especially in the last couple of years. Multiple stories — including this one from Bloomberg — suggest Ive hasn’t been as engaged as he once was.

Even though Ive is leaving, he’s still going to be around. More importantly, the team he led isn’t going anywhere and isn’t suddenly going to change their entire design philosophy overnight. At the very least, Apple designs products years in advance, so Ive’s designs are going to be with us for a little bit longer.

Nevertheless, his departure will have real consequences. The first consequence isn’t Apple’s problem, it’s ours: we should stop thinking of Apple as the singular expression of one person’s genius. History has moved beyond the Great Man theory, and so too should our ideas about how Apple operates.

When I look at some of the design decisions Apple has been making in both its hardware and software, the only word that comes to mind is “uncompromising.” That’s a virtue when it applies to a leader who is paying attention to quality, but it can be a vice when it applies to products that need to be used by messy, messy humans.

Committees are a pain, they’re not as mythic as a singular genius, they’re often more timid than they should be. But maybe what Apple design needs right now is a little less mythos and a little more compromise.

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https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/28/18870887/apple-jony-ive-design-genius-committee

2019-06-28 12:00:00Z
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G20 expectations; Apple departure; Madame Tussauds - CNN

But the big event is Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Saturday.
Markets want the conversation to yield a clear truce on trade, with commitments not to escalate tensions further as Washington and Beijing work toward a final deal.
It's not clear they'll get that. Trump told journalists Friday that additional tariffs on Chinese goods remain on the table.
"We'll see what happens and what comes out of it," Trump said. "It will be a very exciting day, I'm sure. A lot of people are talking about it."
2. Apple departure: Apple's chief design officer Jony Ive is leaving the company after nearly 30 years.
The company said Thursday that Ive will start his own design company, and Apple will be one of its primary clients. He'll continue to work closely on Apple (AAPL) projects.
Ive's departure marks the end of an era at Apple. He worked with Steve Jobs to design the company's most iconic products, from candy-colored iMacs to the iPod and the original iPhone.
Apple's stock dropped 0.9% in premarket trading Friday.
3. Tussauds deal: The Danish family behind Lego has partnered with Blackstone to take Merlin Entertainments private in a deal that values the owner of Madame Tussauds at £4.7 billion ($6 billion).
Merlin Entertainments (MERLY) operates theme parks and other attractions in 25 countries, drawing 67 million visitors a year. It also owns LegoLand and The London Eye.
The company said Friday that it had agreed to be purchased by a consortium made up of Kirkbi, the investment house of Lego's founding family, US private equity giant Blackstone (BX) and a Canadian pension fund.
The consortium will pay £4.55 ($5.75) per share for Merlin Entertainments, a 14% premium over the stock's closing price on Thursday.
4. Markets mixed: US stock futures point higher as investors sit in G20 limbo.
The Dow is poised to rise 90 points, or 0.3%, when markets open. The Nasdaq could climb 0.1% and the S&P 500 could gain 0.3%.
European markets opened largely in the green. Britain's FTSE 100 increased 0.2% in early trading, while Germany's DAX jumped 0.4%.
Stocks in Asia went the opposite direction. Hong Kong's Hang Seng and Japan's Nikkei both fell 0.3%. The Shanghai Composite shed 0.6%.
The Dow closed down slightly Thursday. Boeing (BA) was the index's biggest loser, declining 2.9% after a new flaw was discovered in the updated software for the 737 Max jet.
5. Coming this week:
Friday — US personal income and spending data; Constellation Brands (STZ) earnings

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/28/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html

2019-06-28 11:07:00Z
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Jony Ive's Involvement at Apple Reportedly Tapered After the Original Apple Watch Launched in 2015 - Mac Rumors

Following Apple's surprise announcement yesterday that Jony Ive is leaving the company, fresh details have emerged about the design chief's day-to-day involvement at Apple in recent years that suggest his exit has been a long time in the making.


Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that after the Apple Watch launched in 2015, Ive had already started relinquishing his responsibilities because of the strain it was putting on him personally.

Around the time, Ive told the New Yorker he'd become "deeply, deeply tired," and said the year leading up to the Apple Watch debut was "the most difficult" since he joined Apple.

To extend his time at the company, Apple subsequently agreed to change his official role to Chief Design Officer, which allowed day-to-day responsibility of the hardware and software design teams to shift to executives Alan Dye and Richard Howarth.

From then onward, Ive began coming to Apple headquarters "as little as twice a week," and many meetings with his design team reportedly took place in San Francisco so Ive could avoid the long commute from his home in the Pacific Heights district to Apple's HQ in Cupertino, California.

Ive sometimes even met with his team at the homes of his employees, at hotels, or other venues, according to people familiar with the matter, while the design executive did much of his work at a San Francisco office and studio, which has now become the base of his new LoveFrom business.

Ive also frequently travelled to London, near to where he was raised, according to Bloomberg's Gurman.

About two years into his new role, at the end of 2017, Apple said Ive had re-assumed some of the leadership responsibilities he had previously given up, and Howarth and Dye were removed from Apple's leadership page. But still Ive only came to the office a couple of days a week.

Some people familiar with Apple are worried about the new design leadership, reports Gurman. With Ive leaving, longtime Apple designer Evans Hankey will run the hardware design group. Hankey, who has more than 300 patents to her name, is described as a "great team leader", yet one person familiar with the design team told Gurman that Apple "now lacks a true design brain on its executive team, which is a concern."

Hankey and Dye will report to Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who will likely gain more control over product direction, and some employees are also said to be concerned that the re-organization is another sign that Apple is less design-focused and becoming more of an operations company.

"The design team is made up of the most creative people, but now there is an operations barrier that wasn't there before," one former Apple executive said. "People are scared to be innovative."

As for the fate of Richard Howarth, Gurman tweeted that he didn't want to manage the design team, whereas "Hankey is known as a better manager, but isn't a designer." The entire group of designers has been reporting to Hankey, "and she to Ive after Howarth was demoted from VP a couple years ago," said Gurman. "The [organizational] structure isn't actually changing."

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https://www.macrumors.com/2019/06/28/jony-ives-role-at-apple-reduced-since-2015/

2019-06-28 11:20:00Z
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Binance Talking to Facebook About Libra Listing, Becoming Node: Reports - CoinDesk

According to reports in the crypto press Thursday, cryptocurrency exchange Binance is talking to Facebook about getting involved in the social media giant’s upcoming Libra project.

Finance Magnates says it spoke to Binance at the FinTech Junction event in Israel on Thursday, with the exchange’s CSO, Gin Chao, saying that early discussions have taken place with Facebook over a possible future listing of the libra token.

Chao said that as libra will be on a private blockchain initially, it won’t need external liquidity. However, Facebook may ultimately desire a secondary market, he said, adding:

“Currencies benefit from a secondary market, so it would be in their best interest to want to be listed.”

In another report from CryptoPotato, which also spoke to Chao at the Tel Aviv event, he further suggested that Binance may support the Libra blockchain by acting as a permissioned node that validates transactions.

Facebook has said that it will eventually have 100 nodes and has already named firms like Visa, Uber, eBay and Lyft as having already committed to the role (at the princely sum of roughly $10 million apiece).

Chao said that Binance is “definitely considering” the option, although a final decision is yet to be made.

Speaking generally about the Libra project, which was unveiled in mid-June, he said:

“It’s a good thing, for sure. Any time a company with the weight, size, resources, and impact of Facebook gets involved, it validates both blockchain and [cryptocurrencies]. So whether or not Libra becomes incredibly successful, it’s already a good thing.”

Binance image via Shutterstock

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https://www.coindesk.com/binance-talking-to-facebook-about-libra-listing-becoming-node-reports

2019-06-28 10:00:00Z
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Jony Ive's Apple exit has been a 'long time in the making' after he was only turning up to the office twice a week - INSIDER

  • Apple announced Thursday that its longtime design chief, Jony Ive, would be leaving the company at the end of the year.
  • While the news came as a shock to many, a new report from Bloomberg reveals that his departure has been a "long time in the making."
  • In a report from Apple reporter Mark Gurman, Bloomberg said Ive had disengaged from his role and was only in the office twice a week.
  • Ive is going on to set up his own design company, called LoveFrom, which will count Apple among its clients.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple announced the resignation of its famed design chief Jony Ive on Thursday after his near-30-year tenure at the company.

The news of came as a shock to many including analysts who described Ive as "irreplaceable" and said his departure would "leave a hole" in the company. On hearing the news, Apple's stock dropped -0.87%, wiping out $8 billion of Apple's market cap.

But Ive's departure had been a long time in the making, according to Business Insider's Troy Wolverton who said that there have been "rumblings for years" that he could leave after he shifted focus from the day-to-day business of designing Apple's products.

A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman revealed that Ive had been "shedding responsibilities" since the launch of the Apple Watch in 2015 and he came into Apple's headquarters as little as twice a week.

Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that many of Ive's meetings moved to San Francisco, where he lives and has an office and studio set up, to avoid him having to make the one hour commute to Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California. Other meetings were reportedly held at the homes of his employees or at hotels.

"This has been a long time in the making," one person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, who wished to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to discuss Ive's resignation. "He's been at Apple over 25 years, and it's a really taxing job."

Steve Jobs.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Ive is considered to be the mastermind behind Apple's biggest products, including the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and iPod. He joined the company when it was on the brink of bankruptcy in the late 1990s and help turn it into the trillion-dollar company that it is today.

He was also a close confidant of Steve Jobs, Apple's late cofounder and former CEO, and reported directly to him.

"Most of the greatest debates at Apple happened between those two as they walked together," Matt Rogers, cofounder of Nest Labs who worked on iPhone and iPod software from 2007 to 2010, told Bloomberg.

Jobs and Ive would lunch together regularly and walk around Apple's headquarters making design decisions together, according to Bloomberg. When Jobs died in 2011, Ive became the most important person at the company, it added.

But his intense stint at Apple had reportedly begun to wear him down. "It's been an extremely tense 25 years for him at Apple and there's a time for everyone to slow down," the person who wished to remain anonymous told Bloomberg.

Ive is now going on to set up his own design company, called LoveFrom. Apple will be one of his new clients.

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https://www.insider.com/jony-ive-apple-exit-long-time-in-the-making-2019-6

2019-06-28 10:16:33Z
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