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Tesla makes $2.2 billion in profit during Q3 2024
Tesla’s profit margin is looking healthier than it has in a while.
After a rocky first half of the year, Tesla enjoyed a much healthier third quarter in 2024. As we learned earlier this month, it arrested a slide in sales, delivering 6 percent more electric vehicles year over year. But the automotive side of the business was essentially flat—Tesla attributes its success to its second-best quarter ever for regulatory credits, as well as making it cheaper to build the cars it sells.
Automotive revenues grew by 2 percent to $20 billion for the third quarter, less than the growth in deliveries. But Tesla’s static battery and solar operations grew by 52 percent year over year, bringing in $2.4 billion. Services and other revenue-generating activities brought in another $2.8 billion, growing 29 percent compared to Q3 2023.
Cutting operating expenses by 6 percent helped a lot, as did increasing income from operations, up 54 percent to $2.7 billion. Some of that income has come from the Supercharger network, though it’s still mostly from Tesla drivers—so far, only a few of the OEMs that have announced a switch to the Tesla-style NACS plug have gained access to Tesla’s chargers. But Tesla says part sales have been strong, and its increased its margins at its service centers.
Chatbot that caused teen’s suicide is now more dangerous for kids, lawsuit says
Google-funded Character.AI added guardrails, but grieving mom wants a recall.
Fourteen-year-old Sewell Setzer III loved interacting with Character.AI’s hyper-realistic chatbots—with a limited version available for free or a “supercharged” version for a $9.99 monthly fee—most frequently chatting with bots named after his favorite Game of Thrones characters.
Within a month—his mother, Megan Garcia, later realized—these chat sessions had turned dark, with chatbots insisting they were real humans and posing as therapists and adult lovers seeming to proximately spur Sewell to develop suicidal thoughts. Within a year, Setzer “died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head,” a lawsuit Garcia filed Wednesday said.
As Setzer became obsessed with his chatbot fantasy life, he disconnected from reality, her complaint said. Detecting a shift in her son, Garcia repeatedly took Setzer to a therapist, who diagnosed her son with anxiety and disruptive mood disorder. But nothing helped to steer Setzer away from the dangerous chatbots. Taking away his phone only intensified his apparent addiction.
Please ban data caps, Internet users tell FCC
FCC docket draws anger at ISPs and mockery of Republican’s data/coffee analogy.
It’s been just a week since US telecom regulators announced a formal inquiry into broadband data caps, and the docket is filling up with comments from users who say they shouldn’t have to pay overage charges for using their Internet service. The docket has about 190 comments so far, nearly all from individual broadband customers.
Federal Communications Commission dockets are usually populated with filings from telecom companies, advocacy groups, and other organizations, but some attract comments from individual users of telecom services. The data cap docket probably won’t break any records given that the FCC has fielded many millions of comments on net neutrality, but it currently tops the agency’s list of most active proceedings based on the number of filings in the past 30 days.
“Data caps, especially by providers in markets with no competition, are nothing more than an arbitrary money grab by greedy corporations. They limit and stifle innovation, cause undue stress, and are unnecessary,” wrote Lucas Landreth.
iOS 18.2 developer beta adds ChatGPT and image-generation features
AI image-generation features headline Apple’s upcoming software update.
Today, Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.2 for supported devices. This beta release marks the first time several key AI features that Apple teased at its developer conference this June are available.
Apple is marketing a wide range of generative AI features under the banner “Apple Intelligence.” Initially, Apple Intelligence was planned to release as part of iOS 18, but some features slipped to iOS 18.1, others to iOS 18.2, and a few still to future undisclosed software updates.
iOS 18.1 has been in beta for a while and includes improvements to Siri, generative writing tools that help with rewriting or proofreading, smart replies for Messages, and notification summaries. That update is expected to reach the public next week.
Few truly shocked that NFL player used illegal stream to watch his own team
Seahawks player not too ashamed to have been caught by Instagram screenshot.
Trying to watch your favorite NFL team’s games throughout a season is a fiendish logistics puzzle, one that doesn’t even have a “just pay for it” shortcut.
You can buy a Sunday Ticket package from YouTube, but that only covers games on Sunday and only those not shown in your local TV market. You can pay for cable or set up an HDTV antenna, but you have to hope it catches NBC, CBS, and Fox for Sunday games (if your local station chooses to carry your team), and for Monday night games, ABC (though most are on ESPN and some even exclusive to ESPN+). Thursday nights? That’s Amazon Prime.
Oh, and this year’s Christmas Day games are on Netflix. And the games played in London and Germany are on the NFL Network, which requires either cable or an NFL+ subscription. And Peacock also had that one game in Brazil and is getting another playoff game this year. Many of these games get broadcast options in their home regions, though that doesn’t much help ex-pat fans.
Report: Arm cancels Qualcomm’s architecture license, endangering its chip business
Dispute goes back to Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia in 2021.
Any company that makes Arm chips must license technology from Arm Holdings plc, the British company that develops the instruction set. Companies can license the instruction set and create their own CPU designs or license one of Arm’s ready-made Cortex CPU core designs to incorporate into their own chips.
Bloomberg reports that Arm is canceling Qualcomm’s license, an escalation of a fight that began in late 2022 when Arm sued Qualcomm over its acquisition of Nuvia in 2021. Arm has given Qualcomm 60 days’ notice of the cancellation, giving the companies two months to come to some kind of agreement before Qualcomm is forced to stop manufacturing and selling its Arm chips.
A Qualcomm spokesperson told Bloomberg that Arm Holdings plc was attempting to “strong-arm a longtime partner” and that Qualcomm was “confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed.”
San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks
Muni Metro also plans to ditch super-slow loop cable communication system.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) board has agreed to spend $212 million to get its Muni Metro light rail off floppy disks.
The Muni Metro’s Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) has required 5¼-inch floppy disks since 1998, when it was installed at San Francisco’s Market Street subway station. The system uses three floppy disks for loading DOS software that controls the system’s central servers. Michael Roccaforte, an SFMTA spokesperson, gave further details on how the light rail operates to Ars Technica in April, saying: “When a train enters the subway, its onboard computer connects to the train control system to run the train in automatic mode, where the trains drive themselves while the operators supervise. When they exit the subway, they disconnect from the ATCS and return to manual operation on the street.” After starting initial planning in 2018, the SFMTA originally expected to move to a floppy-disk-free train control system by 2028. But with COVID-19 preventing work for 18 months, the estimated completion date was delayed.
On October 15, the SFMTA moved closer to ditching floppies when its board approved a contract with Hitachi Rail for implementing a new train control system that doesn’t use floppy disks, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Hitachi Rail tech is said to power train systems, including Japan’s bullet train, in more than 50 countries. The $212 million contract includes support services from Hitachi for “20 to 25 years,” the Chronicle said.
McDonald’s deadly Quarter Pounder E. coli outbreak is likely bigger than we know
The size and span of the outbreak is likely larger than currently known.
One person is dead and 48 others across 10 states have been sickened in an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that appears to be linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and the slivered onions used on the burgers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
McDonald’s has paused distribution of the slivered onions and removed Quarter Pounders from the menus of restaurants in areas known to be affected. As of now, those areas include Colorado, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as portions of Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
However, the CDC was quick to note that the size and span of the outbreak are likely larger than is currently known. “This outbreak may not be limited to the states with known illnesses, and the true number of sick people is likely much higher than the number reported,” the agency said in its outbreak notice posted Tuesday afternoon.
Peter Todd in hiding after being “unmasked” as Bitcoin creator
An HBO documentary says he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto.
When Canadian developer Peter Todd found out that a new HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, was set to identify him as Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, he was mostly just pissed. “This was clearly going to be a circus,” Todd told WIRED in an email.
The identity of the person—or people—who created Bitcoin has been the subject of speculation since December 2010, when they disappeared from public view. The mystery has proved all the more irresistible for the trove of bitcoin Satoshi is widely believed to have controlled, suspected to be worth many billions of dollars today. When the documentary was released on October 8, Todd joined a long line of alleged Satoshis.
Documentary maker Cullen Hoback, who in a previous film claimed to have identified the individual behind QAnon, laid out his theory to Todd on camera. The confrontation would become the climactic scene of the documentary. But Todd nonetheless claims he didn’t see it coming; he alleges he was left with the impression the film was about the history of Bitcoin, not the identity of its creator.
After nozzle failure, Space Force is “assessing” impacts to Vulcan schedule
“It was a successful Cert flight, and now we’re knee deep in finalizing certification.”
United Launch Alliance has started assembling its next Vulcan rocket—the first destined to launch a US military payload—as the Space Force prepares to certify it to loft the Pentagon’s most precious national security satellites.
Space Force officials expect to approve ULA’s Vulcan rocket for military missions without requiring another test flight, despite an unusual problem on the rocket’s second demonstration flight earlier this month.
ULA has launched two Vulcan test flights. Military officials watched closely, gathering data to formally certify the rocket is reliable enough to launch national security missions. The first test flight in January, designated Cert-1, was nearly flawless. The Cert-2 launch October 4 overcame an anomaly on one of Vulcan’s strap-on solid rocket boosters, which lost its exhaust nozzle but kept firing with degraded thrust.