Well Elon Musk unveiled the Cybertruck and its design is divisive to say the LEAST. All of Twitter rushed to make fun of it and then to say wait maybe it’s good and then to say nah it’s not for several hours last night.
You can find all our coverage in the link below, and I cannot encourage you to click strongly enough. You have to see this thing to believe it and you have to watch our short video recapping the event, which includes a demo fail where a metal orb is chucked at a window and breaks it.
+ Tesla Cybertruck: all the news about Elon Musk’s futuristic pickup truck
Looks aside (just try for a minute), the utility, price, and range were all better than I would have guessed. Thing is, will the ship date better than you’d guess? Because if you’re anything like me, your guess consists of doubling Musk’s proposed timeline and then adding on a few more months for good measure.
If I’ve learned anything from watching the LA Auto Show this week, it’s that we are not very far off from electric cars becoming completely normal and that will put Tesla in a different light. It’s one thing to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt on manufacturing delays and problems when it’s inventing and shipping things literally nobody else is making — it’s something else entirely when it’s one electric car company among many.
Programming note: I am taking all of Thanksgiving week off, but some of my colleagues may take over to send some updates. Specifically, Black Friday sales this year seem much more aggressive and interesting than they have been in some years. (Maybe it’s because everybody is trying to get one last good quarter in before a recession hits. Womp.) So this newsletter space will have some news but also a lot of Black Friday deals.
- Dieter
+ Tesla Cybertruck: Elon Musk announces electric pickup truck
Always a showman, Musk put the truck through its paces in an effort to demonstrate its ruggedness. He had Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief of design, hit the door of the truck with a sledgehammer several times, claimed it was practically bulletproof, and showed the truck winning a tug-of-war with a Ford F150 and a drag race with a Porsche 911.
However, when he tried to show how shatterproof the glass was, things went awry. A metal ball thrown by Holzhausen shattered both the truck’s windows. “We’ll fix it in post,” a sheepish Musk quipped.
Verge Deal of the day
Dolby Atmos-ready sound systems can cost you a lot, but Vizio’s 5.1.2 system is the perfect starting point if you don’t want to spend a bunch of money. It includes a 36-inch soundbar, two satellite speakers, and a wireless sub. It’s currently $200 off at Best Buy, bringing the price down to an even more reasonable $299.
More from The Verge
+ Sonos buys Snips, a privacy-focused voice assistant
I argued in August that there should be more of these single-purpose voice assistants. What I hope is that they’ll all talk to each other in a coherent and consistent way. Amazon is trying to form an alliance to do at least make it easier and standardized for different assistants to be active at the same time on the same speaker -- and Sonos is a signatory.
I really hope this works well. Because friends I use the Google Assistant on Sonos speakers and it is not great.
+ Apple reportedly focusing on its buggy iOS problems again with iOS 14
My iPad Pro froze when I was trying to read this story at Bloomberg. I wish I was kidding.
+ How one company you’ve never heard of swallowed tens of thousands of text messages — then spit them back out
Absolutely incredible story from Jake Kastrenakes, including some quotes that are absolute bangers. Wonder why SMS sucks? Turns out it’s industry consolidation, just like everything else.
From Syniverse’s perspective, its actions were never meant to be anticompetitive — Iris Wireless was so tiny that it wasn’t even a competitor in the first place, argues Ruppert, who led Syniverse’s messaging division at the time of the conflict and made the decision to cut off Iris. “That couldn’t be more fucking aspirational from their perpsective,” Ruppert says. “That’s just bullshit spinning. That’s all I can say.”
+ Donald Trump says he asked Tim Cook to help build out 5G in the US
Every single thing about this visit is embarrassing at best, disheartening in the middle, and downright shameful at worst. All three, really.
+ The flying taxi future is coming, but it’s elitist and underwhelming
The technical details are all here and all interesting, but the parts about why it’s launching in Singapore are what grabbed me.
Volocopter doesn’t view electric air transport as a solution to alleviate existing transportation problems. It wants to build something entirely new. And while the company’s goal to usher in a new age of air transport isn’t necessarily unrealistic, its current approach avoids wading into the class politics of urban transportation. Singapore is home to over 200,000 millionaires, and a recent Credit Suisse report showed that almost half of its adult population is among the world’s richest 10 percent.
+ Amazon’s Dash Smart Shelf can automatically order new office supplies when they run out
I need one of these for my the drawer in my fridge where we keep the Honeycrisp apples.
+ Google Assistant is getting new calendar and email functions for G Suite accounts
I was excited until I got to the caveats.
First, these features are turned off by default and are currently still in beta. You’ll have to apply to use them. If you’re a domain administrator, that’s no problem; you can sign up here. But if you’re trying to access this for a work account, you might have to convince your admin to apply it for your whole team.
Secondly, if you’re logged in to both a personal Google account and a work G Suite account, Assistant will only work with one account at a time.
+ Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch review: the one you’ve been waiting for
Here’s one of the reasons I’ve been keeping the newsletter short this week. I hope you also watch the video, which seems simple but we worked really hard on it. The most frequent question I’ve gotten is “When will Apple do this for [insert smaller laptop here]?” and I KNOW. I mean I don’t actually know but I know what you mean, it’s frustrating. If Apple doesn’t get either the Air or the Pro revved by Spring, it’s going to be A Problem.
+ Slack accuses Microsoft of ripping off its ads
It’s really, really blatant. Shame on Microsoft.
+ Boeing rolls out Starliner passenger spacecraft to launch site ahead of December flight
Loren Grush:
Boeing is now less than a month away from Starliner’s first flight to space. After the Atlas V puts Starliner in orbit, the capsule is tasked with meeting up with the space station and automatically docking with one of the available ports on the ISS. Following a brief stay, Starliner will then depart and come back to Earth, where it will attempt to land at one of five locations in the western US. A combination of parachutes and airbags are designed to land the Starliner gently on solid ground.
While no people will be on board the capsule in December, Boeing plans to fly a dummy — just like SpaceX did — wearing one of the blue pressure suits the company developed for future astronauts.
+ Half-Life: Alyx: everything you need to know about Valve’s return to Half-Life
The whole damn internet lost its mind over this and I totally get it except I also don’t get it because for whatever reason I missed Half Life 2 being an important part of my life. It’s possible I’m too old? I was all in on Doom and Quake and then I guess I figured I’d had enough of that for awhile and missed out.
Anyway, this trailer looks dope we have a bunch of stories about it rounded up at the link above.
+ Googlers will rally to protest ‘brute force intimidation’ against organizers
The rally is the latest turn in the accelerating disputes between organizers and management. Employee activists have protested several company projects and policies, successfully pressing Google to scuttle work like plans for a censored Chinese search engine. The activism culminated in a mass walkout last year. But management at the company has recently made internal policy changes, including scaling back its employee all-hands meetings, that suggest a crackdown on the activity.
+ Alphabet X’s new Everyday Robot project wants to build robots that can learn from the world around them
