Tech Nuggets with the Technology

Monday, June 3, 2019

Mercedes-Benz is expanding its luxury subscription service

Mercedes-Benz is expanding a pilot subscription service that lets users switch between different luxury models to a third U.S. city a year after launching in Nashville and Philadelphia.

The pilot is another example of how automakers are experimenting — with mixed levels of success — with different ways to make money beyond producing and selling cars, trucks and SUVs. Cadillac, Volvo, Porsche and Audi have also launched subscription plans. Cadillac shuttered its service after a year; it’s recently announced plans to re-launch the service, but this time involving dealers more.

The luxury automaker, which is owned by Daimler, plans to bring its so-called “Mercedes-Benz Collection” to Atlanta, the same city where its U.S. headquarters are located. Clutch Technologies will continue to operate the subscription platform. That’s the same city where Porsche initially launched its subscription service.

Mercedes also plans to test a new subscription tier in Atlanta that will consist exclusively of the company’s high-performance AMG models.

The decision to expand is based on the success in its two initial markets, according to Mercedes. It’s been an especially fruitful program at attracting younger customers and those who have never owned a Mercedes. The automaker says 82% of its subscribers are new to Mercedes-Benz, and

“Interestingly, families and couples are equally accessing the service whether for use as their primary car, for fun or as a way to test drive a wide variety of models,” said Adam Chamberlain, vice president of sales for MBUSA.

The concierge-style service gives customers a choice between more than 50 model variants, depending on what tier a customer has subscribed to. The program has three tiers that range in price from $1,095 to $2,995 a month. Subscribers also pay a one-time activation fee of $495. The monthly subscription fee for the tier also includes insurance, 24/7 roadside assistance, vehicle maintenance and no mileage limitations.

Each tier also allows access to the company’s popular high-performance Mercedes-AMG models.

Once customers have downloaded the app and passed a credit check, they can access the portfolio and request a vehicle. A concierge delivers the new vehicle washed, with a full tank of gas and takes away the previous vehicle.

Our first-look photos of the Apple’s new Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR

Black Shark 2 to Go on Sale in India Today at 12 Noon via Flipkart

Black Shark 2 gaming phone is set to go on sale for the first time today in India starting at 12pm (noon) from Flipkart. http://bit.ly/2WFOAXv

Google Pay recorded more than 240 million transactions in May

Flipkart-owned PhonePe clocked around 230 million UPI payments last month, while digital payments major Paytm posted 200 million transactions. http://bit.ly/2KnM5CQ https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Apple will soon require apps with any third-party logins to offer Sign In With Apple also

Something from the fine print out of today’s WWDC keynote. Sign In With Apple didn’t get a ton of time on-stage today, but it should prove a nice new feature for the company — and for those concerned about handing over sensitive information to third-parties.

Turns out it will also be required for app developers utilizing any sort of third party login service. If they offer social logins or other third party options, they’ll have to offer Sign In With Apple as an option.

TechCrunch has learned that the company will require the new feature for developers utilizing services like Google and Facebook’s third-party login. Apple acknowledges the requirement at the tale end of its newly updated App Store Review Guidelines.

“Sign In with Apple will be available for beta testing this summer,” the company writes. “It will be required as an option for users in apps that support third-party sign-in when it is commercially available later this year.”

Yes, that means that apps with third party logins like Google or Facebook or whatever other service must offer Apple’s sign in service as well — once the service is out of beta later this year. Apple’s position on this is that there is a real benefit to offering users a sign-in option that does not require a user to hand over their personal data to an outside third-party company when trying to use a service.

A company like Bird, for instance, would want to offer customers the quickest possible signup process to get them onto a scooter. Right now, that means a social login that can put a user as little as one tap away from a ride. The tradeoff, of course, is that now Facebook knows that user is logging into that app and whatever information they’ve chosen to share with Facebook can be anonymously paired with that data to serve ads etc.

Apple’s argument is that the consumer benefits if they do not have to pass along information to anyone other than the direct company they are working with — and even then they do not have to give them anything personally identifiable.

Apple noted the lengths it took to ensure user privacy during today’s event. The ability to auto-generate a random “relay” email address that forwards to the users’ received one of the biggest applause breaks of the event.

It wasn’t clear on stage but unless a developer requests an email there is literally no second step to signing into/up for an app or service with Apple’s new sign-in service. It’s literally the holy grail of signups – one single tap and it’s done. This is huge for apps that want to get people onboarded as fast as possible, especially for use in the moment. And, it’s worth noting, they also get the benefit of not having to hand off inferred usage data to outside sign-in services from other companies.

Requiring developers to utilize the feature could go a ways toward minimizing the use of popular logins like Facebook — though it could also rub a few companies the wrong way in the process.

Misconfigured, public ElasticSearch cluster owned by Chinese headhunting firm FMC Consulting exposed private data including 20M+ resumes and 5M+ company records (Sergiu Gatlan/BleepingComputer)

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Misconfigured, public ElasticSearch cluster owned by Chinese headhunting firm FMC Consulting exposed private data including 20M+ resumes and 5M+ company records — A misconfigured and publicly accessible ElasticSearch cluster owned by FMC Consulting, a Chinese headhunting company …

OnePlus 7 to Go on Sale in India Today at 12 Noon

OnePlus 7 will go on sale for the first time in India today at 12pm (noon). OnePlus 7 price in India starts at Rs. 32,999 for the base variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage. http://bit.ly/2wAD0yh

A closer look at Apple’s reinvented Mac Pro

Apple only announced one new piece of hardware at today’s, but it was a doozy. After years of promising a refresh for the long lamented Mac Pro line, the high-end desktop finally got its modular upgrade.

To mark the occasion, Apple devoted a considerable amount of space to showcasing the device is various states, powering multimedia work stations and alone on the table for all the world to see.

The Pro’s certainly striking. Looks-wise, it’s more direct descendent of the shiny metal Power Mac G5 tower of yore than the more recent trashcan Pro. There are plenty of tweaks, of course. It appears a bit smaller than the G5, while the vent holes have been mode much larger, for a kind of cheese grater design, at first glance — an effect that’s only enhanced by the prominent handle, up top.

Otherwise, the enclosure is relatively minimal, with a soft metal metal design and massive Apple logo on the side. The tower is elevated slightly, atop a pair of shiny metal legs (optional wheels have returned, as well, for those who require a slightly more mobile experience). Up top is a large swiveling handle that can be used to move the computer around (in lieu of wheels) or removing the aluminum housing with a pull, for easier access inside.

The more traditional tower design allows for additional modularity. That, of course, was one of the major issues with the previous Mac Pro, which caused Apple to head back to the drawing board. Apple’s version of customization naturally centers around its own engineering, but there’s plenty of potential power to be had here, including the MPX graphic modules with dual Radeon Pro Vega IIs and Intel Xeon chips with up to 28 cores.

The company’s once vice-like grip over the world of creative professionals has been challenged in recent years with lines like Microsoft’s Surface. The iMac Pro represented a reasonable stopgap for the company as it went back to scratch with the Mac Pro line. But while the all-in-one is powerful, those with truly demanding workflows no doubt found it lacking.

The company happily discussed how much it had undercut the competition at $5,999 — but it’s important to note that those who are really serious about the category are almost certainly going to want to upgrade from some of the base-level specs including, notably, the 256GB SSD. When we’re having conversations about editing 4K and 8K video, you’re going to want something beefier out of the box.

The Pro Display XDR 6K monitor is also quite lovely. And it’s interesting to see the company getting back in the monitor game after handing off a lot of the heavy lifting to the likes of LG. At $4,999, it’s $1,000 cheaper than the Pro — until you add back in the optional $1,000 stand.

There are some nice tricks here, too, like the ability to swivel to portrait mode for specific editing needs. Though once you start totaling up that Apple shopping cart, you may need to look into a second mortgage.

As far as firepower goes, however, Apple looks to have delivered with the Pro’s return.

Apple says it is building Real User Indicator, a new tool for developers that uses on-device intelligence to detect bot-like activity during new account signups (Nick Statt/The Verge)

Nick Statt / The Verge:
Apple says it is building Real User Indicator, a new tool for developers that uses on-device intelligence to detect bot-like activity during new account signups — To combat rampant fake behavior on the internet — Apple says it's building a new tool it calls Real User Indicator …

iOS 13 will let users automatically send unknown or spam callers to voicemail, using "Siri intelligence" to recognize numbers from Contacts, Mail, and Messages (Chris Welch/The Verge)

Chris Welch / The Verge:
iOS 13 will let users automatically send unknown or spam callers to voicemail, using “Siri intelligence” to recognize numbers from Contacts, Mail, and Messages — Calls from unknown numbers will be automatically sent to voicemail — Apple is taking a new step to combat spam calls in iOS 13.

LevelTen Energy, which is developing a platform to match SMBs with renewable energy suppliers, raises $20.5M Series B led by Prelude Ventures (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat:
LevelTen Energy, which is developing a platform to match SMBs with renewable energy suppliers, raises $20.5M Series B led by Prelude Ventures — Seattle Techstars graduate LevelTen Energy, a startup developing a platform that matches small- and medium-sized businesses with renewable energy suppliers …

Apple attacks Facebook by becoming the asocial network

Aptiv’s self-driving BMWs have made more than 50,000 rides on the Lyft app in Las Vegas

A little more than a year ago, self-driving software company Aptiv and Lyft launched a pilot project to test a robotaxi service — with human safety drivers still behind the wheel — in Las Vegas during the week of CES.

That one-week pilot never ended. And now, the companies say they’ve given more than 50,000 rides in Aptiv’s self-driving BMW 5 series vehicles via the Lyft app. The average ride received a rating of 4.97 out of 5 stars, according to Lyft, which added that 92% of riders said they felt very safe or extremely safe during the ride.

The milestone illustrates how far Aptiv and Lyft has come in a span of 18 months. It also shows that in spite of amassing so many rides, there’s much left to achieve before humans leave the driver’s seat for good.

Lyft and Aptiv first launched the pilot in January 2018. By August, they had surpassed 5,000 self-driving rides. Aptiv’s investment in Las Vegas expanded as those ridership numbers grew. The company opened a 130,000-square-foot technical center in the city to house its fleet of autonomous vehicles as well as an engineering team dedicated to research and development of software and hardware systems, validation and mapping.

However, this is not a pure robotaxi business, yet. The autonomous vehicles still have safety drivers behind the wheel. And the rides are mostly — but not completely — done in autonomous mode. The cars are required to be in manual mode in parking lots and hotel pick up areas, according to Lyft.

The Lyft-Aptiv program will continue indefinitely, according to Lyft. It could even expand. The ride-hailing said it anticipates “working together to continue to bring self-driving technology to new cities and passengers.”