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Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, Tesla has been accused of poor pay and working conditions at its Fremont manufacturing plant, Brogan BamBrogan is back with a new hyperloop venture, Wikipedia has banned citations from the Daily Mail, and more.
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Tesla has been asked to improve working conditions and below-industry-standard pay in an open letter by Jose Moran, who describes himself as a "production worker at Tesla’s plant in Fremont for the past four years" (Gizmodo). Moran writes that "most Tesla production workers earn between $17 and $21 hourly" - compared to a national auto worker average of $25.58 an hour, that "excessive mandatory overtime" sees him and his colleagues regularly working 60 - 70 hour weeks, that "preventable injuries happen often", and that workers' attempts to unionise in order to better communicate with management were followed by staff being required to sign "a confidentiality policy that threatens consequences if we exercise our right to speak out about wages and working conditions". Moran concludes that "just as CEO Elon Musk is a respected champion for green energy and innovation, I hope he can also become a champion for his employees". Musk, meanwhile, says that staff are barred from discussing wages to prevent trade secrets from leaking and claims that a union conspiracy is acting against him, telling Gizmodo that "our understanding is that this guy was paid by the UAW (United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America) to join Tesla and agitate for a union".
Brogan BamBrogan, the co-founder and CTO of Hyperloop One who was ousted last year over claims that he was attempting to poach staff for a new company, has formed a new hyperloop company (Recode). Arrivo, as BamBrogan's new firm is called, will design both pods and infrastructure elements of hyperloop systems, and could later work with partners to manufacture its designs. The company aims to commercialise its version of hyperloop within three years. BamBrogan told Recode that "There are a lot of ways to address hyperloop... I think the ways to differentiate are going to be many, and they are certainly going to be how to serve the market best. We at Arrivo are going to be developing a pretty full product lineup."
Wikipedia has banned the Daily Mail from being used as a source, citation, or proof of notability in the encyclopaedia's articles, due to "poor fact checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication" (Ars Technica). Wikipedia administrators have called for a feature to warn editors against using the Daily Mail as a source and have asked Wikipedia's volunteer contributors to remove "thousands of existing citations" that refer to the tabloid. While the Mail is the first newspaper to be officially outlawed in a vote by Wikipedians, it's unlikely to be the last, with publications including The Sun, The Daily Mirror and RT all appearing on Wikipedia's list of potentially unreliable sources.
Astronomers have, for the first time, witnessed a comet-like object being ripped apart and scattered across the atmosphere of a white dwarf (WIRED). It has been dubbed Halley's Comet's 'big brother' because the destroyed object had a similar chemical composition but was significantly more massive than its famous counterpart. The international team of astronomers made the observation around the white dwarf WD 1425+540, situated 170 light-years from Earth in the constellation Boötes. While studying the white dwarf’s atmosphere using the Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory, the team found evidence that an object rather like a massive comet was falling onto the star, getting "tidally disrupted" while doing so.
US taxi app firm Lyft has hired Luc Vincent, who was formerly senior director of engineering at Google (The Verge). Vincent is best known for his role in creating Google Street View, which allows Google Maps users to get a first person view of roads almost anywhere in the world. In his new position at Lyft, he'll be working to fist staff the company's engineering division as Lyft prepares to move from connecting human drivers with passengers to sending out self-driving cars. The company has said that it hopes most of its rides will take place in self-driving vehicles by 2021.
On March 9 at 30 Euston Square, London, WIRED Health's fourth annual event features speakers including the co-inventor of CRISPR; the scientist behind applying behavioural economics to public policy; and the entrepreneur tackling the fragmented health records system.
Fertility app Natural Cycles has become the first app to be officially approved for use as contraception, and could now be prescribed on the NHS alongside condoms and the pill (WIRED). German testing organisation Tüv Süd, one of the certification bodies employed by the Department of Health to test the safety of new drugs and medical devices, has given its seal of approval to the app, which currently has 100,000 users paying £6.99 per month. Developed by two Swedish physicists, Natural Cycles uses body temperature to measure fertility. After ovulation, increased levels of progesterone make women's bodies up to 0.45°C warmer. Users input their daily temperature into the app, which compares their readings against those in its dataset. If the app determines it’s safe to have unprotected sex it will show a green day in its calendar. Days when it’s not safe to have unprotected sex are shown as red – on these days, users need to find an alternative form of contraception.
A new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has found that over a quarter of-of Europe's crickets and grasshoppers could face extinction (BBC). Europe is home to over 1,000 species of Orthoptera, and the IUCN writes that "out of the 739 species that are endemic to Europe (i.e., they are found nowhere else in the world), 231 (31.3%) are threatened, highlighting the responsibility that European countries have to protect the global populations of these species." It says that the key threat faced by crickets and grasshoppers is the loss and degradation of natural habitats resulting from harmful agricultural practices that range from pesticide use to overgrazing and the conversion of grasslands and shrublands into cropland. Jean-Christophe Vié, deputy director, IUCN Global Species Programme, told the BBC that "if we do not act now, the sound of crickets in European grasslands could soon become a thing of the past."
Version 56 of Chrome for Android has just been released, and is for the first time bringing the WebVR standard to the mobile browser (TechCrunch). Following a successful beta, Chrome for Android users will now be able to view 360-degree videos in the browser, and phones that support Google's latest Daydream virtual reality headset and controller will be able to use them with WebVR content for a fully immersive experience. Google says that it'll soon add support for other headsets, including its own Cardboard standard. The WebVR API is also supported on mobile by the Samsung GearVR browser, and on Windows PCs through Firefox and experimental builds of Chromium.
Cars from the Hot Wheels toy range are coming to Psyonix's wildly popular car football game, Rocket League (GameSpot). The first two new Hot Wheels DLC cars, due out on February 21 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, will be the Twin Mill III and Bone Shaker. They'll be accompanied by an updated range of Hot Wheels themed loot drops. The cars are set to cost $2 each, which should equate to £1.69 in the UK DLC store.
We could see a violent new adult animated series retelling the story of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the near future (Polygon). The series is in the hands of writer and producer Adi Shankar, who's currently involved in Netflix's forthcoming Castlevania spin-off series and is best known as executive producer of The Grey and underrated 2000AD comic adaptation Dredd. Shankar also produced the dark Bootleg Universe short Power/Rangers, a 14-minute film set in an alternate universe where the Power Rangers lost against the Machine Empire. Shankar says that the animated series would be "a complete retelling of the first three seasons, and it’s going to be really fucking dark. Darker than any other Power Rangers series.” He has yet to sell the show, but says that he hopes to bring it to Netflix.
Artificial intelligence changes the way it behaves based on the environment it is in, much like humans do, according to the latest research from DeepMind . Computer scientists from the Google-owned firm have studied how their AI behaves in social situations by using principles from game theory and social sciences. During the work, they found it is possible for AI to act in an "aggressive manner" when it feels it is going to lose out, but agents will work as a team when there is more to be gained.
This month we meet the Cambridge team taking on killer asteroids, rogue AIs and tyrannical leaders to protect us all from annihilation. Plus: how to fix fake news on Facebook, Neil Gaiman talks American Gods, and much more. Out now in print, iPad and iPhone. Subscribe now and save.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
