Clubhouse, the invite-only social audio app that went viral during the pandemic, is trying to make a comeback by rebranding itself as a better alternative for group texting. Engadget reports: The audio app is pivoting from its signature "drop-in" audio conversations to friend-centric voice chats, the company said in an update. Instead of sprawling rooms where users host live-streamed conversations open to any and all of the app's users, the new Clubhouse will instead encourage users to join groups with people they know.

The groups are, somewhat confusingly, called "chats," and allow friends and friends-of-friends to exchange voice messages. There's still a "drop-in" element, but it's less focused on real-time talking and geared more toward something like an Instagram Story -- a destination for checking in and sharing quick updates. The app is also ditching text-based direct messages in favor of private audio messages which, yes, it's calling voicemails or VMs.

The biggest shift, however, isn't just the format of the conversations but that Clubhouse is now positioning itself as more of a Snapchat, where smaller groups of friends communicate privately or semi-privately, than a Twitter, where all the app's users are shouting into the void. "It's not about passively listening to people speaking," the company wrote in an update. "You can listen to great conversations on podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, and a lot of other platforms. It's about talking with people ... and becoming real-life friends with your friends' friends, and people you never would have met otherwise."

Google is killing off the last vestiges of Google Play Movies & TV, a service that sold premium Hollywood films and TV shows as part of Google's once-cohesive string of Google Play content stores. From a report: The company emailed users of Android TV to say that the "Google Play Movies & TV app will no longer be available on your Android TV device from 05 October 2023. You can continue to buy or rent movies directly through the Shop tab on your Android TV." Play Movies has been going through a slow death as Google shuffles around its media content. The smartphone Play Movies app became "Google TV" in 2022, and that same year, the Play Store app was stripped of movie and TV sales.

On third-party smart TVs (this is a different category than today's Android TV announcement) the app was killed in 2021. On Android TV, the new "Shop" tab seems to just be an OS-integrated Google TV content store. If you think this sounds confusing, you're not alone. Google's support page reflects the ridiculous state of Google's video apps, instructing users that "in Your Library, you can find content that you bought from: Google Play Movies & TV, YouTube, Android TV, Google TV." How any normal person is supposed to understand that pile of Google media brands, and how it works across phones, the web, and various smart TV OSes, is beyond me.

YouTube is trying out games as its next experimental offering. The company is adding a new "Playables" section on the site that will include games that can be played on both the desktop website and mobile devices. From a report: Playables will only appear for "a limited number of users to start," and there was no list of game titles published at this time. 9to5Google reports that one of the games to grace the new YouTube Playables experiment includes Stack Bounce, which involves a 3D ball bouncing on top of rings you must smash through with well-timed clicks. If you've heard of the game before, it's because Google already offers it on its minigames service, GameSnacks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Rick Klein and his team have been preserving TV adverts, forgotten tapes, and decades-old TV programming for years. Now operating as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, the Museum of Classic Chicago Television has called YouTube home since 2007. However, copyright notices sent on behalf of Sony, protecting TV shows between 40 and 60 years old, could shut down the project in 48 hours. "Our YouTube channel with 150k subscribers is in danger of being terminated by September 6th if I don't find a way to resolve these copyright claims that Markscan made," Klein told TorrentFreak on Friday. "At this point, I don't even care if they were issued under authorization by Sony or not -- I just need to reach a live human being to try to resolve this without copyright strikes. I am willing to remove the material manually to get the strikes reversed."

Over the weekend Klein shared details of the copyright complaints filed with YouTube. Two of the claims can be seen in the image below and on first view, appear straightforward enough. Two episodes of the TV series Bewitched dated 1964 aired on ABC Network and almost sixty years later, archive copies of those transmissions were removed from YouTube for violating Sony copyrights, with MCCTv receiving a strike. A claim targeting an upload titled Bewitched -- 'Twitch or Treat' -- WPWR Channel 60 (Complete Broadcast, 8/6/1984) follows the same pattern, but what isn't shown are the details added by MCCTv to place the episode (and the included commercials) in historical context. Another takedown target -- Bewitched -- 'Sam in the Moon' (Complete 16mm Network Print, 1/5/1967) is accompanied by even more detail, including references in the episode to then-current events.

Given that copyright law locks content down for decades, Klein understands that can sometimes cause issues, although 16 years on YouTube suggests that the overwhelming majority of rightsholders don't consider his channel a threat. If they did, the option to monetize the recordings can be an option. [...] Klein says MCCTv certainly doesn't set out to hurt copyright holders. However, there's always a balance between preserving "rare pieces of video ephemera" and the likelihood that nobody needs to enforce any rights, versus unusual circumstances like these where unexpected complaints need to be resolved with impossible-to-reach parties. Klein says the team is happy to comply with Sony's wishes and they hope that given a little leeway, the project won't be consigned to history. Perhaps Sony will recall the importance of time-shifting while understanding that time itself is running out for The Museum of Classic Chicago Television.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Arkansas from enforcing a new law that would have required parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts, preventing the state from becoming the first to impose such a restriction. U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks granted a preliminary injunction that NetChoice -- a tech industry trade group whose members include TikTok, Facebook parent Meta, and X, formerly known as Twitter -- had requested against the law. The measure, which Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law in April, was set to take effect Friday.

In a 50-page ruling, Brooks said NetChoice was likely to succeed in its challenge to the Arkansas law's constitutionality and questioned the effectiveness of the restrictions. "Age-gating social media platforms for adults and minors does not appear to be an effective approach when, in reality, it is the content on particular platforms that is driving the state's true concerns," wrote Brooks, who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama. NetChoice argued the requirement violated the constitutional rights of users and arbitrarily singled out types of speech that would be restricted.

Arkansas' restrictions would have only applied to social media platforms that generate more than $100 million in annual revenue. It also wouldn't have applied to certain platforms, including LinkedIn, Google and YouTube. Brooks' ruling said the the exemptions nullified the state's intent for imposing the restrictions, and said the law also didn't adequately define which platforms they would apply to. As an example, he cited confusion over whether the social media platform Snapchat would be subject to the age-verification requirement. Social media companies that knowingly violate the age verification requirement would have faced a $2,500 fine for each violation under the now-blocked law. The law also prohibited social media companies and third-party vendors from retaining users' identifying information after they've been granted access to the social media site. In a statement on X, Sanders wrote: "Big Tech companies put our kids' lives at risk. They push an addictive product that is shown to increase depression, loneliness, and anxiety and puts our kids in human traffickers' crosshairs. Today's court decision delaying this needed protection is disappointing but I'm confident the Attorney General will vigorously defend the law and protect our children."

An autonomous, artificial-intelligence-powered drone called Swift has beaten humanity's best drone racers. "The AI-equipped drone, developed by researchers at the University of Zurich, came out on top in 15 out of 25 races and recorded the single fastest lap time," reports Gizmodo. The findings have been published in the journal Nature. From the report: Swift beat the humans in the niche but growing sport of first-person view drone racing. Human competitors navigate using a headset connected to a camera on their drones to pilot a quadcopter through complex obstacle courses at extreme speeds, with the goal of finishing the race with the fastest time and avoiding taking too much damage in the process. Drones in these races can top 50 miles per hour when they're really buzzing. The [video here] shows Swift battling it out against the human-controlled drones.

Swift emerged victorious in 15 out of the 25 total head-to-head races against the human pilots and clocked the fastest overall lap time at 17.47 seconds. That brisk lap time was nearly half a second better than the best human. The three human competitors, Alex Vanover, Thomas Bitmatta, and Marvin Schaepper, have each won drone racing championships in the past. In this case, the human competitors had a week to learn the new course and train for the race. During that same time, Swift was training as well but in a digitally simulated environment meant to resemble the course. Swift, according to the paper, used deep reinforcement learning while in the simulation along with additional data collected from the outside world.

During the actual race, Swift would take in video collected by its camera and send that to a neural network capable of identifying the gates it had to fly through. A combination of onboard sensors are then used to aid the drone with positioning, speed, and orientation. All of this happened autonomously, at extreme speeds. The researchers noticed some interesting differences in the ways Swift approached the course as opposed to its human competitors. The autonomous system, they noted, was more consistent across laps and appeared to take tighter turns. Those tight turns can add up and give a drone an edge in a race by repeatedly shaving off fractions of a second from lap times.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: A Saudi court has sentenced a man to death over his posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, and his activity on YouTube, the latest in a widening crackdown on dissent in the kingdom that has drawn international criticism. The judgement against Mohammed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, seen Wednesday by The Associated Press, comes against the backdrop of doctoral student Salma al-Shehab and others facing decades-long prison sentences over their comments online. The sentences appear part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's wider effort to stamp out any defiance in the kingdom as he pursues massive building projects and other diplomatic deals to raise his profile globally.

According to court documents, the charges levied against al-Ghamdi include "betraying his religion," "disturbing the security of society," "conspiring against the government" and "impugning the kingdom and the crown prince" -- all for his activity online that involved re-sharing critics' posts. Saudi officials offered no reason for why they specifically targeted al-Ghamdi, a retired school teacher living in the city of Mecca. However, his brother, Saeed bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, is a well-known critic of the Saudi government living in the United Kingdom. "This false ruling aims to spite me personally after failed attempts by the investigators to have me return to the country," the brother tweeted last Thursday. Saudi Arabia has used arrests of family members in the past as a means to pressure those abroad into returning home, activists and those targeted in the past say. [...]

Saudi Arabia is one of the world's top executioners, behind only China and Iran in 2022, according to Amnesty International. The number of people Saudi Arabia executed last year -- 196 inmates -- was the highest recorded by Amnesty in 30 years. In one day alone last March, the kingdom executed 81 people, the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in its modern history. However, al-Ghamdi's case appears to be the first in the current crackdown to level the death penalty against someone for their online behavior.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is discontinuing its Pixel Pass subscription service that allowed people to get a Pixel phone combined with premium services including YouTube Premium, Google Play Pass, and YouTube Premium for a monthly fee. The company said on its support page that it will stop offering purchases or renewals for the Pixel Pass.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Cities across the country are suing Kia and Hyundai for failing to install basic anti-theft technology, with a subsequent massive surge of stolen cars burdening police departments, according to lawsuits filed in recent months. Since the beginning of the year, Seattle, Baltimore, Cleveland, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Columbus have all sued Kia and Hyundai, which are owned by the same parent company, for selling cars without engine immobilizers, a technology that has served as a major contributor to the plummeting rate of stolen vehicles in the U.S. As the rest of the industry adopted immobilizers, Kia and Hyundai didn't, with only 26 percent of their cars including them in 2015, compared to 96 percent for other manufacturers.

Without the immobilizers, the cars are trivially easy to steal, requiring just a USB cable. A viral Youtube and Tiktok trend instructed people how to steal the cars. Kia and Hyundai cars manufactured without the immobilizers between 2015 and 2020, especially lower-end models like the Accent, Rio, and Sportage, are especially vulnerable. A lawsuit filed by dozens of insurance companies against Kia and Hyundai allege the lack of immobilizers violated federal regulations. The surge in Kia and Hyundai thefts in cities around the country has been staggering and it shows no sign of abating. In a lawsuit filed last week, the City of Chicago said that in 2022, more than 8,800 Kia and Hyundai vehicles were stolen in the city, which accounts for 41 percent of all of Chicago's car thefts, despite Kia and Hyundai making up just seven percent of the city's vehicles. In a press release announcing the lawsuit, the city said it is getting even worse in 2023, with Kias and Hyundais making up more than half of all stolen cars in the city this year. Chicago is hardly alone. [...]

In statements to Motherboard, Kia spokesperson James Bell said the lawsuits filed by cities against the company are "without merit" and that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration determined it did not violate any regulations or safety standards. In June, NHTSA's acting associate director of enforcement Cem Hatipoglu responded to 18 state attorneys general that asked for a recall of the cars by saying, "At this time, NHTSA has not determined that this issue constitutes either a safety defect or noncompliance requiring a recall." A NHTSA spokesperson told Motherboard the agency has been meeting with Kia and Hyundai about the issue but wouldn't say if it agreed with Kia's interpretation. Hyundai spokesperson Ira Gabriel similarly said that all its vehicles are "fully compliant with federal anti-theft requirements." Hyundai and Kia owners can get steering wheel locks from their local police departments or through dedicated websites. Both companies also offer a free software patch that they say removes the threat of theft, which requires visiting a dealer. Bell of Kia says the company has distributed more than 190,000 wheel locks and that 650,000 vehicles have gotten the software update, out of three million total. Both companies now include immobilizers on all their new cars.

According to a report from Technews Taiwan, ASUS has shut down its Zenfone division responsible for making some of the best compact Android flagships on the market. The reason is due to "internal restructuring." Employees in the Zenfone division are being moved over to the ROG Phone team and other parts of the business. Android Authority reports: The report further asserts that the Zenfone 10 will be the last phone in the Zenfone series. Since the team no longer exists, there is unlikely to be a successor to this phone. The report follows other incidents around Zenfone. Earlier in the month, ASUS stopped allowing bootloader unlocks for Zenfone owners. The company maintained that they are not stopping the possibility of unlocking, just that the tool is currently unavailable.

A few weeks ago, community members also spotted that ASUS had removed older Zenfone firmwares from its website. Community moderators responded that ASUS no longer provides previous firmware versions or downgrade packages to ensure users remain on up-to-date firmware. Both of these incidents do not directly point to the shutdown of the Zenfone division. But they add the value of hindsight to the report, and we can't help but wonder if the writing was on the wall all this time.

An advertising watchdog has recommended that YouTube TV, Google's growing pay-TV streaming service, drops an ad claim that the service is "$600 less than cable." The recommendation from the National Advertising Division (NAD) stems from a complaint lodged by Charter Communications. From a report: NAD, which used an expedited process for single-issue advertising cases in making this decision, found that YouTube TV's pricing claim, which identifies "comparable standalone cable" as the basis of comparison, doesn't hold up. NAD noted that the price calculation underlying the challenged claim includes the cost of two set-top boxes per household for "standalone cable" services," but argued that such a comparison isn't a good fit because operators such as Charter offer pay-TV streaming options that may not require a set-top box. In Charter's case, its Spectrum TV app, billed as a platform that can "stream outside the cable box," is compatible with iOS and Android mobile devices along with several retail streaming devices and/or integrated connected TVs from companies such as Apple, Roku, Google and Samsung. "In the context of the 'cable' comparison, NAD found the claim reasonably conveys the cost of YouTube TV is compared to all cable services," the organization explained.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times: It is powered into flight by a rocket engine. It can fly a distance equal to the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range. But what really distinguishes the Air Force's pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie experimental aircraft is that it is run by artificial intelligence, putting it at the forefront of efforts by the U.S. military to harness the capacities of an emerging technology whose vast potential benefits are tempered by deep concerns about how much autonomy to grant to a lethal weapon.

Essentially a next-generation drone, the Valkyrie is a prototype for what the Air Force hopes can become a potent supplement to its fleet of traditional fighter jets, giving human pilots a swarm of highly capable robot wingmen to deploy in battle. Its mission is to marry artificial intelligence and its sensors to identify and evaluate enemy threats and then, after getting human sign-off, to move in for the kill... The emergence of artificial intelligence is helping to spawn a new generation of Pentagon contractors who are seeking to undercut, or at least disrupt, the longstanding primacy of the handful of giant firms who supply the armed forces with planes, missiles, tanks and ships. The possibility of building fleets of smart but relatively inexpensive weapons that could be deployed in large numbers is allowing Pentagon officials to think in new ways about taking on enemy forces.

It also is forcing them to confront questions about what role humans should play in conflicts waged with software that is written to kill...
The article adds that the U.S. Air Force plans to build 1,000 to 2,000 AI drones for as little as $3 million apiece. "Some will focus on surveillance or resupply missions, others will fly in attack swarms and still others will serve as a 'loyal wingman' to a human pilot....

"A recently revised Pentagon policy on the use of artificial intelligence in weapons systems allows for the autonomous use of lethal force — but any particular plan to build or deploy such a weapon must first be reviewed and approved by a special military panel."

For SpaceX's 11th crewed mission — its eighth flight for NASA — "A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts will arrive at the International Space Station early Sunday," reports Space.com, "and you can watch it all live online in a free livestream." The Crew Dragon capsule Endurance is scheduled to reach the International Space Station at 8:39 a.m. EDT (1239 GMT), where it will dock itself to a space-facing port on the outpost's U.S.-built Harmony module.

The docking will mark the end of a nearly 30-hour journey for the capsule's four-person crew, which launched in the wee hours of Saturday from NASA's Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida... "SpaceX, thanks for the ride, it was awesome," Crew-7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA said after the crew reached orbit. "Go Crew-7, awesome ride." SpaceX's Crew-7 mission for NASA is ferrying Moghbeli to the ISS with a truly international crew: pilot Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency; and mission specialists Konstantin Borisov of Russia's Roscosmos agency and Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The quartet is the first all-international crew, with members from four different agencies and countries, to fly on the same Dragon capsule...

The Crew-7 astronauts are beginning a six-month expedition to the space station and will relieve the four astronauts of NASA's Crew-6 mission, who are due to return shortly after Moghbeli and her crew arrive.
SpaceX has created a "follow Dragon" web page with graphics tracking the capsule's progress to the Space Station...

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: During the U.S. presidential campaign of 1928, a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won there would be "a chicken in every pot". Times change. When talk turned to education at Wednesday night's 2024 Republican U.S. Presidential Candidate Debate, candidate Asa Hutchinson promised there will be 'CS in every school' if he wins (YouTube).

"Look at Arkansas," the former Arkansas Governor explained. "We have to compete with China. I built computer science education. We led the nation in Computer Science education, going from 1,100 students to 23,000 students taking it. This is how you compete with China. As President of the United States, I will make sure we go from 51% of our schools offering computer science to every school in rural areas and urban areas offering computer science for the benefit of our kids and we can compete with China in terms of technology."

In his last year in office, Hutchinson served as Chair of the National Governors Association (NGA) and rallied the nation's Governors around tech CEOs' demands for more K-12 CS education to culminate his year-long CS evangelism initiative, which the NGA noted enjoyed the support of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Hutchinson's pitch to the Governors included a video challenging them with a question. "Will it be American students who learn to code," Hutchinson asked, "or will industry be required to go overseas to find the talent that we need here in the United States of America?"
Later in the debate former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said entrepreneur/candidate Vivek Ramaswamy "sounds like ChatGPT."

72-year-old Bjarne Stroustrup invented C++ (first released in 1985). 38 years later, he gave a short interview for Honeypot.io (which calls itself "Europe's largest tech-focused job platform") offering his own advice for life: Don't overspecialize. Don't be too sure that you know the future. Be flexible, and remember that careers and jobs are a long-term thing. Too many young people think they can optimize something, and then they find they've spent a couple of years or more specializing in something that may not have been the right thing. And in the process they burn out, because they haven't spent enough time building up friendships and having a life outside computing.

I meet a lot of sort of — I don't know what you call them, "junior geeks"? — that just think that the only thing that matters is the speciality of computing — programming or AI or graphics or something like that. And — well, it isn't... And if they do nothing else, well — if you don't communicate your ideas, you can just as well do Sudoku... You have to communicate. And a lot of sort of caricature nerds forget that. They think that if they can just write the best code, they'll change the world. But you have to be able to listen. You have to be able to communicate with your would-be users and learn from them. And you have to be able to communicate your ideas to them.

So you can't just do code. You have to do something about culture and how to express ideas. I mean, I never regretted the time I spent on history and on math. Math sharpens your mind, history gives you some idea of your limitations and what's going on in the world. And so don't be too sure. Take time to have a balanced life.

And be ready for the opportunity. I mean, a broad-based education, a broad-based skill set — which is what you build up when you educate, you're basically building a portfolio of skills — means that you can take advantage of an opportunity when it comes along. You can recognize it sometimes. We have lots of opportunities. But a lot of them, we either can't take advantage of, or we don't notice. It was my fairly broad education — I've done standard computer science, I've done compilers, I've done multiple languages... I think I knew two dozen at the time. And I have done machine architecture, I've done operating systems. And that skill set turned out to be useful.
At the beginning of the video, Stroustrup jokes that it's hard to give advice — and that it's at least as difficult as it is to take advice.

Earlier this year, Bjarne also told the same site the story of how he became a programmer by mistake — misreading a word when choosing what to study afer his high school exams. Stroustrup had thought he was signing up for an applied mathematics course, which instead turned to be a class in computer science...

One of the world's biggest scientific publishers has retracted a journal article that claimed to have found no evidence of a climate crisis. From a report: Springer Nature said it had retracted the article, by four Italian physicists, after an internal investigation found the conclusions were "not supported by available evidence or data provided by the authors." Climate sceptic groups widely publicised the article, which appeared in the European Physical Journal Plus in January 2022 -- a journal not known for publishing climate change science.

Nine months later the article was reported uncritically in a page one story in the Australian newspaper and promoted in two segments on Sky News Australia -- a channel that has been described as a global hub for climate science misinformation. The segments were viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube. The article claimed to have analysed data to find no trend in rainfall extremes, floods, droughts and food productivity. "In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet," the article said.

Several climate scientists told the Guardian and later the news agency AFP that the article had misrepresented some scientific articles, was "selective and biased" and had "cherrypicked" information. After those concerns were raised, Springer Nature announced in October it was investigating the article. In a statement Springer Nature said its editors had launched a "thorough investigation," which included a post-publication review by subject matter experts. The authors of the article also submitted an addendum to their original work during the course of the investigation, the statement said.

Citizen is temporarily suspending sales of its second-gen CZ Smart watch due to a "technical issue." From a report: The Wear OS watch, which launched in May, had a feature based on tech from IBM's Watson and NASA to track a person's alertness. It appears the decision stems from negative experiences from reviewers. Michael Fisher -- better known as MrMobile on YouTube -- noted that Citizen said it would suspend sales after he had reached out to the company about the watch's many issues. That was corroborated by a Wired story, in which reviewer Julian Chokkattu also detailed several bugs, like laggy screens, bad battery life, inaccurate tracking, and watchfaces that can't even tell the correct time.

Five-time world champion, Magnus Carlsen, has defeated Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu in a tiebreak to become Chess World Cup champion. Chess.com reports: The five-time world champion won his first World Cup crown by defeating GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu 1.5-0.5 in the rapid tiebreaks of the 2023 FIDE World Cup for a match victory of 2.5-1.5. In the third-place playoffs, GM Fabiano Caruana convincingly defeated GM Nijat Abasov in both rapid tiebreaks for a 3-1 victory and third place. It was a heartbreaking defeat for the Indian youngster, who had the initiative in the first game until Carlsen fought back and won in a tense endgame. In the second game, the world number-one allowed no chances, and Praggnanandhaa's impressive World Cup run came to an end as hundreds of thousands of fans watched the tense battle. You can watch the 2023 FIDE World Cup broadcast on Twitch and YouTube.

Key members of Google's old guard have been shifting roles or leaving the company as it searches for its new identity. From a report: The changes encompass high-profile executives such as finance chief Ruth Porat, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and employee No. 8, Urs Holzle, among others. Some say they have left their roles for a new challenge and others have left to seek opportunities in artificial intelligence. In February, Wojcicki -- one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley -- announced that she was stepping back after nine years at the helm of the Google-owned platform that grew to be the world's most popular video service. She had been at Google for more than 25 years, after famously lending her garage to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to use as their first office.

While she'll still be in an advisory role at Google, she said she wanted to "start a new chapter." Wojcicki wasn't the only executive to leave YouTube. Robert Kyncl, the chief business officer for 12 years, stepped away to become CEO of Warner Music Group at the beginning of the year. In March, CapitalG founder and longtime Google employee David Lawee stepped down from his role after 17 years at Alphabet, saying he wanted to explore new areas of interest and spend more time with his family

The "vast majority of battery-powered and hybrid cars" don't have a spare tire, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Honda told one complaining customer that "if the vehicle is in an accident, the spare tire can cause damage to the electric battery which could cause a failure in the battery." But according to the Times, "car design experts said that explanation was plausible but far-fetched." There's a simpler explanation for the move away from spare tires: They're too big and heavy, and people don't really need them anymore... Car manufacturers have been ridding their sedans and smaller SUVs of full-sized spares for some time. In 2018, Consumer Reports said, 60% of the vehicles it had tested over the previous five years came with small-sized temporary tires ("doughnuts"), and only 10% came with full-sized spares... The best-selling models of electric sedans and SUVs — Teslas, the Chevy Bolt, the Volkswagen ID.4, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, the BMW i4 and the Mercedes EQS — have no spare of any kind, even if they come with a premium price tag. Ditto for hybrids; the Toyota Prius, for example, hasn't included a spare since 2016.

That's not because people magically stopped having flat tires. U.S. drivers suffer 94 million flat tires a year, according to LookupAPlate.com, a site that collects reports about bad drivers... Finding space for a spare is particularly challenging for a car powered by something other than gasoline, designers say. "Pushing the range of EVs requires batteries, electrical systems control units or hydrogen tanks to encroach into the traditional places that spare tires are found: under the trunk floor," said Geoff Wardle, executive director of transportation systems and design at the ArtCenter College of Design. The space crunch is worse for hybrids, which require room for both a battery system and an internal combustion engine, said Scott Grasman, dean of the College of Engineering at Kettering University in Flint, Mich.
The extra weight always made it a little harder to meet fuel efficiency requirements — but spare tires also increase manufacturing costs, the article notes. "And tires for an EV may be more expensive than those for a gas-powered vehicle of the same size. That's because EVs tend to be heavier than their gas-fueled counterparts, so they require sturdier tires. And with comparatively quiet engines, they need tires that don't generate as much road noise."

But Gil Tal, director of the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis, also pointed out to the Times that today's tires are just much better and more durable than they used to be: And because federal regulations require new cars to have tire pressure indicators, he said, drivers are alerted as soon as their tires need air. "In most cases, flat tires ... are the outcome of long low-pressure driving," he said. "And if you drive a modern car, it will tell you [that] you have low pressure long before you get into the catastrophic failure" of a flat.
So what are car manufacturers doing now? According to the article...

• Some manufacturers swap in inflatable spares that take up just a third of the space.

• Some cars ship with puncture kits since, the article points out, many people don't know how to change a tire anyways, and will probably just call a tow truck. "For these drivers, carmakers may safely assume that a can of Fix-a-Flat will be more useful..." (Others like Tesla and GM offer roadside assistance programs.)

Some car manufacturers are also using self-sealing or run-flat tires — but Wardle tells the Times these are "good if it is just a puncture from a nail but useless if you hit a pothole and split the rim and sidewall."