The legal battle between Apple and medical technology company Masimo rages on, with the bigger company — sorta, kinda — winning their latest face off. A federal jury has agreed with Apple that previous versions of Masimo’s W1 and Freedom (pictured above) watches infringed on its design patents, according to Reuters. It only awarded Apple $250 in damages, which is the smallest amount that could be awarded for patent infringement, but the company’s lawyers reportedly told the court that it wasn’t after money anyway.

What Apple, which is worth $3.5 trillion, wanted was an injunction on the sales of Masimo’s current smartwatch models. However, the jury determined that those newer models don’t violate Apple’s intellectual property. That is why Masimo is also treating the jury’s decision as a win, telling the news organization that it’s thankful for the verdict that’s “in favor of Masimo and against Apple on nearly all issues.” Apparently, the ruling only affects a “discontinued module and charger.” As for Apple, it told Reuters that it was “glad the jury’s decision today will protect the innovations [it advances] on behalf of [its] customers.”

Masimo sued Apple in 2021, accusing it of infringing on several of its light-based blood-oxygen monitoring patents, while the tech giant countersued a year later. A court sided with Masimo in 2023, forcing Apple to pause sales on its latest smartwatch models, as the US International Trade Commission blocked all Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 imports into the country. The company appealed and was ultimately able to sell its watches in the country earlier this year by removing the technology from the units offered in the US.

Before Jon McNeill was CEO at VC firm DVx Ventures, he was the president of Tesla and chief operating officer at Lyft. He helped Tesla grow its revenue run rate from $2 billion to $20 billion in 30 months, and he doubled Lyft’s revenue ahead of its IPO. He’s also on the board of GM’s Cruise and Lululemon, among other companies. So when he comes out with advice for how to build an innovative company, startups listen.

During the World Business Forum this week in New York City, McNeill presented insights into building innovative companies, a method Tesla CEO Elon Musk calls “the algorithm.” This approach, covered in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, emphasizes radically simplifying both goals and processes. 

McNeill’s key lesson: Start by identifying the problem you’re solving, then aim for massive (not incremental) goals. “Order of magnitude big,” he said.

He recounted Tesla’s 2017 “production hell” when the company, facing bankruptcy, sought to boost digital sales of the $100,000 Model S by 20x. Tesla reduced the 63 clicks to buy a car online to 10, simplifying both the process and the supply chain.

McNeill’s takeaway for startups? 

“The answer isn’t ‘No,’ or ‘It’s crazy.’ The answer in innovative communities is: ‘I have no idea how to do that, but we’ll try.’”

Five steps of innovation by subtraction

1. Question every requirement

The only requirements McNeill said are truly important are requirements of the law and requirements of physics. Everything else can be poked and prodded at.

“When you have a large organization, things that started out as a good idea can become a rule, and then those rules can become requirements,” McNeill told TechCrunch. “And it’s almost like a tribal myth or a telephone game. And so [Musk] wants to really understand, is this a real requirement, or is this something that somebody thought was a good idea that, over time, has been codified into a requirement?” 

2. Delete every step in the process that you can

McNeill advises companies to track every process in a spreadsheet so they can identify only the steps that add value to the customer. Everything else they should delete, with the caveat that they can always add some of those steps back in if needed. 

“Until you have to add back in 10% of steps, you haven’t cut deeply enough,” he said.

For managers to succeed at this, they need to spend 20% of their time on the front lines, he said. If you’re the CEO of Starbucks, that means rolling up your sleeves and understanding not only how to make a cup of coffee end to end, but also understanding why your customers are frustrated with that process. 

3. Simplify and optimize

In 2018, when Tesla was trying to figure out how to ramp production of Model 3s, Tesla executive Jerome Guillen realized Tesla had over-automated production. He said the company needed to go back to basics, and for him, that meant building a massive tent in which the team could build the cars by hand. 

McNeill says the Model 3s were built this way, manually, for months, which helped Tesla simplify the production process further when the team eventually moved the line back inside the main building. 

“They were able to remove more than 50% of the steps because they had just optimized the process manually,” McNeill said. 

4. Apply speed; maximize cycle time

“Simplifying and optimizing can really work into the fourth step, which is to then apply speed,” McNeill said. “Speed exposes all the weaknesses in the process.”

McNeill says speed matters more than ever today. 

“When cash costs 5%, [simplification] speeds up your cash generation,” he said. “Cash velocity is really the metric of elite performers.”

5. At the very end, automate it

Only after companies have simplified the process and really understand the product and customer journey should they move to automation.

“Automation is like the bolts in the floor,” McNeill said. “Once you begin to write code, it gets very hard to unwind it and hard to replace it.”

“You automate to make it repeatable, and you automate to make it scalable, and you only do that when you have a repeatable and scalable process.”

McNeill’s three secret ingredients

On top of the five lessons, McNeill provided three extra cultural principles. 

The first is that companies should expand their view to include the entire customer journey or experience. An example? GM is really good at producing cars, and that includes its EVs. But charging is part of that customer journey, something GM didn’t latch on to right away. Tesla did when it built its Supercharger network. 

His second ingredient is to inject urgency and accountability by identifying the two or three things that matter to a company at any given time. The CEO should be allowed to concentrate entirely on those things.

The third ingredient is to experience the product as your customer experiences the product. Or as McNeill put it: “Eat your own dog food.”

Governor Tim Walz is returning to Twitch and this time, he’ll actually be playing a game. Earlier this month, Kamala Harris’ campaign teamed up with a Twitch streamer to live-stream a Walz rally as part of a World of Warcraft stream. But on Sunday afternoon, Walz will be playing Madden NFL on Twitch with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY).

Loongson is a major player in China, creating domestic chips for the past 22 years with the goal of providing affordable alternatives to Intel and AMD products. Historically, however, there has always been a noticeable performance gap between its homegrown CPUs and those from outside China.

Now, Fast Technology reports Loongson has been working hard behind the scenes to close that gap and is preparing to launch a trio of fourth-generation CPUs, collectively known as the “Three Musketeers.”

India should come out with a road map for nanotechnology usage in order to achieve net zero commitment by 2070. More R&D programmes should be carried out in academic institutions and industries.  

Nanotechnology offers novel approaches to capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and industrial processes. Nanomaterials and Nanotubes can selectively absorb carbon dioxide from gas mixtures, making the capture process more efficient. Nanotechnology can also improve the storage and conversion of captured carbon dioxide and can fasten the conversion of Carbon dioxide into useful chemicals and fuels helping in the reduction of greenhouse gas concentration. 

These observations were made by Rajeevan Madhavan Nair, former secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences and Vice Chancellor of Atria University. He was speaking about the ‘Use of Nanotechnology for Mitigation of Climate Change’ on the sidelines of the 13th edition of the Bengaluru India NANO Summit. 

Nair cited research to say that avoiding a climate disaster will require 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions to be eliminated from the atmosphere each year by 2050 through decarbonisation and capture. “Novel nanomaterials and other nanotechnology-enabled innovations can help accelerate the current timeline and decrease the cost associated with many of the technologies being used and developed. Nanotechnology can act as a catalyst for innovation in key areas and industries that could help accelerate progress towards climate change mitigation and sustainable goals in the short term,” remarked Nair. 

The Bengaluru INDIA NANO Summit is being organised by the Department of Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka, Karnataka Science and  Technology Promotion Society (KSTePS), and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). It was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of  Karnataka Siddaramaiah in the presence of the Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka  D.K. Shivakumar. This year’s theme has been Nanotechnology for Sustainability:  Climate, Energy, and Healthcare. 

Bharat Ratna Prof. C.N.R. Rao was felicitated during the inauguration. “I urge our scientists and engineers to innovate solutions in nanotechnology for critical areas such as food and energy security, water purification, healthcare, and waste management. Addressing the challenges posed by urbanization and environmental hazards requires robust international collaboration and a strong link between academia, industry, and research to advance this promising technology for the benefit of humanity,” said  Siddaramaiah while inaugurating the summit. 

This years conference included a one-day pre-conference tutorial which is being followed by two days of a multi-track conference. The pre-conference tutorials covered topics including Nano Fabrication, Nano  Characterisation, and Nano Biology. During the opening plenary session featured  Prof. Pulickel Ajayan, Chair of the Department of Materials Science and  NanoEngineering at Rice University, USA, who explored the transformative impact of nano-engineered materials on technology. 

The Global Innovation Alliance Partner Countries of Karnataka including the USA, Netherlands and Germany also conducted sessions in the conference. The Poster Showcase, a highlight of Bengaluru India Nano, featured research from over 200 young researchers across academic and research institutions like various IITs, BITS Pilani, University of Mysore, SASTRA Deemed  University, CSIR National Physical Laboratory, IISER, JNCASR, IISc- Bangalore,  JAIN University, NIT Rourkela, REVA University, Bangalore University, Institute of Chemical Technology- Mumbai, TamilNadu Agriculture University- Coimbatore,  Vellore Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Space Science &  Technology etc. 

The event also has an exhibition that showcases the latest innovations, products, and technologies in nanotechnology. Around 50 companies, research institutions, and startups are presenting their nanotech products and services in the exhibition. 

The Xiaomi 15 series will be the next big launch in the company’s flagship phone lineup. This week, the brand confirmed the launch date of the devices in China. Ahead of the event, the Xiaomi 15 Pro showed its power with impressive results in gaming tests, while the company confirmed details about its cameras, battery, and more.

The Xiaomi 15 Pro shows power and efficiency in demanding gaming tests

To start with, the Xiaomi 15 Pro tested has 16 GB LPDDR5X RAM and 1 TB UFS 4.0. In one of the tests, the Antutu team put the Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered device through the stress of running Genshin Impact at maximum graphics settings for half an hour. The device managed an average frame rate of 59.62 FPS with a power consumption of about 4W. However, what’s more impressive is that the phone reached a maximum temperature of just 39°C.

This makes the Snapdragon 8 Elite one of the most efficient chips when running heavy workloads, such as demanding gaming. The Dimensity 9400, another powerful chip, reached a similar average frame rate in the same test, but with higher power consumption.

Xiaomi’s upcoming flagship phone also ran Honor of Kings under the same conditions. The device reached an average of 119.8 FPS with a maximum temperature of 37.9 °C and a power consumption of just 3.65W. Plus, the test included running Honkai: Star Rail, again under the same conditions. In this case, the device showed an average frame rate of 59.34 FPS, while the maximum temperature rose to 44.4 °C. Antutu claims that the results are “significantly stronger” than those of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip.

Tipster Digital Chat Station also shared results for a couple of additional tests on Weibo. In the Steel Nomad Light graphics benchmark, the Xiaomi 15 achieved a score of 2.5K. Meanwhile, the single-core and multi-core tests of GeekBench v6.6 returned scores of 3K and 9.4K, respectively. In previously leaked benchmarks, the Snapdragon 8 Elite was able to exceed 10K in GeekBench’s multi-core tests.

More confirmed camera, battery and display specs

In addition to the gaming test results, the company confirmed specs for the Xiaomi 15 Pro’s battery, cameras, and more. The company will follow the recent trend of other Chinese brands to include massive batteries in their flagship phones. The Xiaomi 15 Pro will hit the market with an impressive 6,100 mAh cell. The Asian giant also confirmed reduced symmetrical bezels with just 1.38 mm around the screen.

Regarding the screen, it will boast 2K resolution, a maximum brightness of 3,200 nits, and support for hardware-level DC dimming. Likewise, it will be 10% more energy efficient compared to the previous generation. The company says it used custom M9 materials for the OLED panel. Finally, the Xiaomi 15 Pro will have a periscopic sensor for 5x optical zoom in its rear camera system.