Less than 12 hours after Scout Motors unveiled a pair of buzzy electrified vehicles last week, car dealers started threatening lawsuits.
Technology
The Beats Solo 4 headphones are half off
Right now Amazon is offering a pretty good deal on the Beats Solo 4 wireless headphones that’s worth a look. Wireless headphones can be a great accessory to have if you listen to a lot of music on the go. Quite simply because it’s more convenient to have no wires tying you down while you’re out and about. You don’t have to worry about cables going to and from your phone getting caught on stuff.
Normally these headphones would cost $199.99 if they were available at their full retail price. However, Amazon currently has them on sale for just $99.99. That’s half off, and the lowest price for these headphones to date. That being said, they have been discounted to $99.99 once before, back in early October.
Now worth noting is that Amazon has four colors fo the Beat Solo 4 and all four of them are on sale for the $99.99 price. This includes Cloud Pink, Slate Blue, Matte Black, and Black/Gold. As far as wireless headphones go the Beat Solo 4 have a lot to offer. Not the least of which is the 50-hour battery life. This is a pretty long time for battery life on a single charge and gives you plenty of listening time.
On top of that, when the battery does die, there’s the “Fast Fuel” feature that gets you up to 5 hours of listening time with just 10 minutes on the charger. One of the other really awesome features is the spatial audio capability. You don’t have to enable this, but it makes a huge difference in how content sounds, and it’s well worth it in our opinion. These headphones are also compatible with both iOS and Android. So it doesn’t matter which platform you use.
Technology
In-game advertising can help build brand loyalty, says Anzu, SuperAwesome report
Gaming advertising platform Anzu and kidtech company SuperAwesome recently released a new report on which they collaborated. The report, called “Gaming the future: how to make an impact with younger generations,” details the effects that in-game advertising has on younger gamers, including how it can inspire interest and brand loyalty.…Read More
Technology
Solideon wants to decentralize rocket manufacturing through 3D printing
Nearly five years after COVID-19 ground the world to a halt, the global supply chain still hasn’t fully recovered. Specialty industries like space travel were particularly hard hit, given the impossibility of heading down to the corner to pick up spare rocket parts.
Industries began taking a long, hard look at 3D printing as a solution to such woes. What additive manufacturing lacks in scale, it makes up for both in terms of creating specialty parts and decentralizing a manufacturing industry that is highly concentrated in a handful of locations across the globe.
Solideon co-founder and CEO Oluseun Taiwo saw firsthand the havoc such global events can wreak on the space industry. He was employed as a propulsion engineer in the additive manufacturing division of Virgin Orbit in May 2020, when the company failed to launch its LauncherOne rocket. Virgin Orbit’s journey ended in May 2023.
“What I saw at that time was, if we had a localized way to manufacturer and didn’t have to rely on the global supply chain during a global pandemic, the company would have done better,” Taiwo tells TechCrunch. “There was this hard thing of needing to build something like 30 rockets a year for the business model to work. We were doing maybe three a year, which was never good enough.”
Taiwo left Virgin Orbit in 2021 to work for 3D printing stalwart 3D Systems in 2021, before founding Solideon at Techstars the following year. The Bay Area-based rocket-printing service has raised $6.5 million in funding to date. It’s just a start, given the firm’s celestial ambitions. Solideon presented onstage today as part of the Startup Battlefield 20 at Disrupt SF.
“What we really do is build robots for deployable microfactories that help 3D-print and assemble large aerospace structures and products,” says Taiwo.
“The reason that matters is you can decentralize manufacturing and actually get closer to building an entire product without any human intervention in the loop. Our long-term goal is to do that anywhere in the solar system at any point.”
Manufacturing for space in space is still a ways off, naturally. In the meantime, the company is focused on solving more immediate-term problems, with an eye on defense contracts. Taiwo notes that the U.S. Defense Department is currently in the process of auditing its own supply chain, in anticipation of further disruption — be it a natural disaster or global conflict.
“The Navy is having the issue with very expensive assets,” he says. “The short term is to go help them solve that problem. The medium term that we’re more focused on is the smaller, autonomous, attributable systems. That’s where we’re seeing the biggest play for technology like this. Building a microfactory that’s very mobile that operates close to where the changing landscape of the conflict is and being able to adapt appropriately.”
Technology
Scout Motors’ plan to ditch dealers is exactly what customers want
Scout, which is backed by Volkswagen, thinks that dealers are history. It would rather sell its EVs directly to consumers, following in the footsteps of Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar in completely rethinking the business of car selling. But unlike those brands, it’s doing so while receiving financial support from an incumbent automaker: VW.
But if the company is nervous about challenging a century-old business model, it isn’t showing it.
“Scout is a 100 percent separate brand, separate entity, separate structure, separate everything,” Scout CEO Scott Keogh said last week, noting that the Scout buying experience will be “transparent, super fast, and super easy.”
Digital sales and service
To make that happen, Scout Motors is relying heavily on a digital platform that it’s building in-house. “Scout Motors doesn’t have any legacy apparatus,” Cody Thacker, Scout’s VP of growth, said. “We kept asking ourselves, if an OEM could start over again, what would they do differently?”
This clean-sheet approach is trying to remake car buying, one of the most loathed financial transactions Americans go through. According to research compiled by Scout, the car-buying experience consumes an average of 13 hours, 31 minutes per shopper. Just 8 percent of consumers have high or very high trust in dealers, resulting in more than 180,000 dealer-related complaints to the Federal Trade Commission every year. And nearly 70 percent of customers prefer independent service shops over dealer servicing because of issues like overcharging and delays.
Car buying is one of the most loathed financial transactions in America
Add in the fact that, nationwide, 49 percent of dealers are “not excited at all” to sell EVs, and Scout sees its rationale for smoothing out the experience. It also wants to more closely control customer data, allowing the company to target sales in certain areas, control vehicle supplies, and adjust incentives to keep the company profitable.
“A big point of frustration for consumers is that they want transparency in pricing and they resent all the hidden fees and markups. Only through a direct-to-consumer model can we tackle these head on and resolve them,” Thacker said.
Scout envisions its sales platform as a place where customers can do all the things they’d normally do at a dealership, like purchase accessories, set up service appointments, and get details about over-the-air updates. But instead of chatting with a human dealer, they may instead encounter an AI-powered chatbot. (AI chatbots have been a mixed bag for a variety of industries, but the automotive space, in particular, has struggled to make them work.)
Scout says that it will launch 25 brick-and-mortar “Scout Workshops” and “Scout Studios” around the country in the next five years, where consumers can test-drive and check out Scout vehicles. To be sure, automakers have tied themselves in knots, trying to rename and rebrand dealerships and service centers in different ways to avoid the negative connotation they have for consumers and circumvent the roundly hated system.
The renderings Scout presented of the workshops are slick-looking and airy, with open work bays in full view of consumer spaces, where vehicle owners can sit and sip coffee while overseeing the work done on their vehicles. In addition to the brick-and-mortar locations, Scout will also offer consumers who live outside of a 45-minute radius of a Scout Workshop the option to book mobile service through Scout-certified partners. Scout will also offer Scout Studios, which will act as marketing and sales locations, much like the Tesla stores located in malls around the country.
It’s the data
The decades-old dealership model evolved in the early 1900s, when companies like Ford and GM used to sell directly to consumers. As the automobile industry took off, there were increasing concerns about monopolistic practices, and state franchise laws arose.
Today, dealerships have an iron grip on car sales, though some companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Polestar have found workarounds. Hyundai is testing direct-to-consumer sales via Amazon (albeit with dealers involved), and Honda is selling its Acura EV exclusively online. Dealers have made direct-to-consumer sales as difficult as possible, filing lawsuits and lobbying heavily through their trade group, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA).
True to form, as soon as Scout announced its plan to go “Scout-to-Consumer” on Thursday, dealers began to rattle their sabers. NADA announced that it “will challenge this and all attempts to sell direct in courthouses and statehouses across the country.”
Dealerships have an iron grip on car sales
Part of the issue that makes this battle a bit different is that Scout has close ties to Volkswagen, and VW dealers have long wanted the company to launch a truck in North America because they see it as a cash cow. Indeed, Scout says that at least two-thirds of the reservations that came in since the launch have been for the Scout Traveler SUV and one-third are for the Scout Terra truck.
Of course, these are also the same dealers that argued that “Americans aren’t ready for EVs,” in an open letter to the Biden administration less than a year ago, stating that EVs were just sitting on their lots (though another study by Sierra Club showed that 66 percent of dealers have no EVs on their lots). NADA has been in a drawn-out battle with Tesla over its direct-to-consumer model for many years.
At the heart of the conflict, ultimately, is data and who controls it. “Only through a direct sales model can Scout Motors get a full 360-degree view of the customer,” Thacker said. “This means that we can completely influence the customer journey. We can have unprecedented access to customer data, which drives deep customer insights, which can then drive intelligence throughout the business.” Dealerships currently manage most of the customer data and relationships, including financing, in the current model.
Scout seems unfazed by dealer threats. In a statement, Scout spokesperson Lindsay Bago said, “Just as utilizing franchised dealers may be appropriate for some brands and their customers, utilizing a direct sales model best supports our customers and our strategic customer-first vision as we launch a new vehicle platform, a new production center, and a new retail network.”
While Scout Motors has opened online reservations for their new Terra and Traveler vehicles that debuted last week, the company hasn’t nailed down details of a financial partner for purchasing or leasing just yet. The company could tap VW’s huge financial arm to handle financing, though Thacker said that portion of the equation is still being figured out. “I think what we can say today is that we want this to be a seamless experience,” Thacker said.
Keogh, the CEO of Scout, is confident that the model will work and support the consumer in the right way. “Scout wants to be old-school,” he told The Verge last week, “We want a brand that you can have data trust and customer trust, because I think it’s finally into a place that people are apprehensive and rightfully so,” he continued. “We can control the customer data, secure the customer, and not badger our customers. So that’s what we’re looking to do, what it will do.”
Technology
Wi-Fi Alliance test suite has a worrying security flaw
Wi-Fi Test Suite carries a vulnerability that allows for elevation of privilege and remote code execution (RCE) attacks – and since there is no patch, and no word if there ever will be a patch, users are advised to replace the affected endpoints, or at least stop using them until any sort of resolution.
The Wi-Fi Test Suite is a certification toolset, developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance, and used to test, validate, and ensure interoperability and performance of Wi-Fi devices based on Wi-Fi standards.
This suite includes a variety of tests that cover different aspects of Wi-Fi functionality, such as connectivity, throughput, security, and coexistence with other wireless technologies.
No patch yet
According to the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), this toolset carries a command injection vulnerability, which allows threat actors to execute arbitrary commands with root privileges on affected routers. The routers affected by this vulnerability seem to be from Arcadyan, a Taiwanese-based hardware manufacturer. To exploit the flaw, the threat actor only needs to send a specially crafted packet to the vulnerable device.
What’s interesting here is that the test suite was never designed to be used in production environments – its goal was to support the development of certification programs, and device certification, the CERT Coordination Center says. However, it somehow made it into commercial routers, and thus the vulnerability trickled down to households, and possibly small businesses.
The Hacker News says the Taiwanese router maker is not building a patch for this vulnerability, and there is no word if it ever will. Therefore, other vendors using the Wi-Fi Test Suite are advised to remove it, or update to version 9.0 or later, thus minimizing the risk of exploitation.
Being omnipresent, and a gateway for all data, routers are one of the most targeted endpoint devices in cyberattacks. Therefore, using routers from reputable manufacturers, and keeping them secured and up-to-date, remains pivotal in cybersecurity best practices.
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Technology
AI features start to roll out to some iPhones
After a long wait, Apple has finally released its artificial intelligence (AI) tools for iPhone – to a select few.
Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI tools announced in June, became available to owners of some iPhones around the world on Monday.
The new features include notification summaries, tools to assist users in writing messages, and a glowing new interface for virtual assistant Siri.
But they will only be available to people with the latest devices – including all iPhone 16 models, and the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.
Apple Intelligence is also available on Mac computers and iPad tablets that are powered by its latest chips.
But some of the tools made available on Monday have arrived later than equivalent features on other popular devices.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the public release of its AI tools introduced “a new era” for its products.
It comes after the company said on Friday it would reward ethical hackers who could demonstrate vulnerabilities in its AI software with a bounty of up to $1m (£770,000).
The bundle of features released on Monday in its iOS 18.1 update are the first wave of AI tools previously shown off at Apple’s summer developer conference.
More features expected later this year include generating images and emoji from text prompts.
Google and Samsung have already introduced AI features to their devices.
These include allowing users to translate conversations in real-time, automatically organise notes, and search for something online by drawing a circle around it.
While initially making its Galaxy AI features available on its latest handsets, Samsung widened it to include S22 devices released in 2022.
The South Korean tech giant said in February it planned to introduce Galaxy AI for more than 100 million users within 2024.
Apple’s new Clean Up tool, allowing people to remove unwanted objects or people from an image, also follows Google’s previous release of a similar tool called Magic Eraser.
Mr Cook told the Wall Street Journal in October that the company was “perfectly fine with not being first”, adding it “takes a while to get it really great”.
Technology
The best hidden gems on Netflix right now
Who has time to watch all of their favorite shows on Netflix? That’s hard enough to pull off for even seasoned TV watchers. Inevitably, some great shows fall by the wayside because no single person can catch everything that Netflix puts out until someone invents a way for us to watch television while we sleep. Even then, it might still be too much TV.
The best hidden gems on Netflix are the shows off the beaten path that deserve more attention from the streaming audience. This month, Netflix’s latest additions to our list include a short-lived Comedy Central sitcom called Detroiters, as well as The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox, which gives sports fans a chance to look back at the team that turned around Boston’s fortunes after more than eight decades of failure.
You can find all of our picks for the best hidden gems on Netflix below.
Want to watch something with more buzz? Check out the the best shows to stream this week, best movies on Netflix and the best shows on Netflix right now. For a much-needed laugh, peruse the best stand-up comedy on Netflix right now.
Related topics: Netflix | Hulu | Amazon Prime | More streaming services
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