Earlier this week, Ars spent some time driving the new Nissan Leaf. We have to wait until Friday to tell you how that car drives, but among the changes from the previous generation are door handles that retract flush with the bodywork, for the front doors at least. Car designers love them for not ruining the lines of the door with the necessities of real life, but is the benefit from drag reduction worth the safety risk?

That question is in even sharper relief this morning. Bloomberg's Dana Hull has a deeply reported article that looks at the problem of Tesla's door handles, which fail when the cars lose power.

The electric vehicle manufacturer chose not to use conventional door locks in its cars, preferring to use IP-based electronic controls. While the front seat occupants have always had a physical latch that can open the door, it took some years for the automaker to add emergency releases for the rear doors, and even now that it has, many rear-seat Tesla passengers will be unaware of where to find or how to operate the emergency release.

A power failure also affects first responders' ability to rescue occupants, and Hull's article details a number of tragic fatal crashes where the occupants of a crashed Tesla were unable to escape the smoke and flames of their burning cars.

China to the rescue?

In fact, the styling feature might be on borrowed time. It seems that Chinese authorities have been concerned about retractable door handles for some time now and are reportedly close to banning them from 2027. Flush-fit door handles fail far more often during side impacts than regular handles, delaying egress or rescue time after a crash. During heavy rain, flush-fit door handles have short-circuited, trapping people in their cars. Chinese consumers have even reported an increase in finger injuries as they get trapped or pinched.

That's plenty of safety risk, but what about the benefit to vehicle efficiency? As it turns out, it doesn't actually help that much. Adding flush door handles cuts the drag coefficient (Cd) by around 0.01. You really need to know a car's frontal area as well as its Cd, but this equates to perhaps a little more than a mile of EPA range, perhaps two under Europe's Worldwide Harmonised Light vehicles Test Procedure.

If automakers were that serious about drag reduction, we'd see many more EVs riding on smaller wheels. The rotation of the wheels and tires is one of the greatest contributors to drag, yet the stylists' love of huge wheels means most EVs you'll find on the front lot of a dealership will struggle to match their official efficiency numbers (not to mention suffering from a worse ride).

China's importance to the global EV market means that, if it follows through on this ban, we can expect to see many fewer cars arrive with flush door handles in the future.

Read full article

Comments

Google is one of the most ardent proponents of generative AI technology, as evidenced by the recent launch of the Pixel 10 series. The phones were announced with more than 20 new AI experiences, according to Google. However, one of them is already being pulled from the company's phones. If you go looking for your Daily Hub, you may be disappointed. Not that disappointed, though, as it has been pulled because it didn't do very much.

Many of Google's new AI features only make themselves known in specific circumstances, for example when Magic Cue finds an opportunity to suggest an address or calendar appointment based on your screen context. The Daily Hub, on the other hand, asserted itself multiple times throughout the day. It appeared at the top of the Google Discover feed, as well as in the At a Glance widget right at the top of the home screen.

Just a few weeks after release, Google has pulled the Daily Hub preview from Pixel 10 devices. You will no longer see it in Google Discover nor in the home screen widget. After being spotted by 9to5Google, the company has issued a statement explaining its plans.

"To ensure the best possible experience on Pixel, we’re temporarily pausing the public preview of Daily Hub for users. Our teams are actively working to enhance its performance and refine the personalized experience. We look forward to reintroducing an improved Daily Hub when it’s ready," a Google spokesperson said.

It's not surprising that Google has hit pause on Daily Hub. Google's approach to mobile AI relies on the Tensor processor's capable NPU. Pixel phones process your personal data on-device rather than sending it to the cloud, which is how Daily Hub is supposed to glean insights into your life. The problem is that it doesn't do that very well.

As we mentioned in our review of the Pixel 10 series, Daily Hub's premise is similar to Samsung's Now Brief. They both pull in data from your apps and run it all through on-device AI models to create a digest of your life that is refreshed multiple times per day. Samsung has continued promoting Now Brief as its chief AI innovation despite the fact that it rarely offers more than the weather and calendar reminders. Google's Daily Hub was in a similar place, but it may have been even less useful.

In our testing, Daily Hub rarely showed anything beyond the weather, suggested videos, and AI search prompts. When it did integrate calendar data, it seemed unable to differentiate between the user's own calendar and data from shared calendars. This largely useless report was pushed to the At a Glance widget multiple times per day, making it more of a nuisance than helpful.

Smartphones are overflowing with personal data, which is one of the reasons they are such attractive targets for hackers. Despite this, both Samsung and Google have found little success generating useful daily insights with on-device AI models. We wait with bated breath to see if Google can make Daily Hub worth using when it returns.

Read full article

Comments

I marked my 8-year anniversary this week of Techtonic, my radio show and podcast at WFMU. The episode, called “Milestones for Big Tech... and Techtonic” (see episode page / downloadable podcast), began with a brief acknowledgement of the anniversary. And that was the end of the good news, as I then proceeded to relate what has been happening in tech.

The headline, if I had to summarize the major developments of the past two weeks, is that the Big Tech CEOs have reached a new stage where they can act with impunity, breaking antitrust laws and cozying up to authoritarians, all without facing any consequences. We’ve reached a moment, not seen since the Gilded Age a century ago – and perhaps never before, at this scale – in which a tiny group of ultra-powerful people no longer face any guardrails. And they know it. Let’s name it: oligarchs achieving escape velocity.

In rocketry, escape velocity is the speed that allows an object to escape Earth’s gravity. Once you hit 25,020 miles an hour (40,270 km/h), you’re free to head wherever you like in the solar system. In the same way, the Big Tech companies are slipping the surly bonds of regulation, democracy, and ethics altogether.

See, for example, Google’s stunning victory in the giant antitrust lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice for the company’s long track record of anticompetitive behavior. After having been determined a monopoly, and after having been shown to act illegally in the preservation of that monopoly, on September 2 Google was finally assigned a remedy – of almost nothing.

As Matt Stoller put it, “this decision isn’t just bad, it’s virtually a statement that crime pays.” Brian Merchant called it a “disaster.”

Cory Doctorow explained:

Let’s start with what’s not in this remedy. Google will not be forced to sell off any of its divisions – not Chrome, not Android. Despite the fact that the judge found that Google’s vertical integration with the world’s dominant mobile operating system and browser were a key factor in its monopolization, Mehta decided to leave the Google octopus with all its limbs intact.

Google won’t be forced to offer users a “choice screen” when they set up their Android accounts, to give browsers other than Chrome a fair shake.

Nor will Google be prevented from bribing competitors to stay out of the search market.

This means Google can continue its bribery of Apple: it’s been paying Apple around $20 billion per year to make Google the default search engine on Apple devices, thereby subjecting Apple users to Google’s surveillance, while squeezing out alternative search engines, and – just as importantly – keeping Apple from developing a search of its own.

Now Google has carte blanche not only to keep up its monopolistic behavior, but find more ways to exploit everyone else.

Escape velocity.

Yet even the antitrust news wasn’t the most disturbing sign of Silicon Valley dominance in the past week. On Sep 4, 2025, Big Tech CEOs descended upon the White House to join the current occupant for an oligarchs’ dinner party. This included Bill Gates (Microsoft founder), Tim Cook (Apple CEO), Safra Katz (Oracle CEO), Sam Altman (OpenAI CEO), Sergey Brin (Google founder), Sundar Pichai (Google CEO), and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook/Meta CEO). On Techtonic I played this clip of those billionaires’ remarks, profusely thanking the current occupant for his “leadership.” (Pointedly, Sergey Brin thanked him for “supporting our companies instead of fighting them” – a veiled reference to the antitrust decision from a few days before – as though exposing his company’s flagrant behavior counts as “fighting” Google.)

Sergey is right about one thing, which is that there is a fight to be had. As I said on the show, the challenge ahead of us isn’t primarily about left versus right but about Big Tech versus the rest of us. About authoritarianism vs. democracy. About a tech industry that serves a handful of billionaires vs. technology that creates widespread good in society. The dinner table on Thursday night was full of people who have chosen their side.

Two days later, the We Are All DC protest filled the streets of Washington, DC with thousands of protesters, chanting “free DC,” in response to the current occupant’s militarization of the city. This is the same occupant who has ordered kidnappings in broad daylight, with masked men forcing civilians into unmarked vehicles. As I wrote in AI is creating a frictionless surveillance state, this is done with the help of Big Tech tools – and now, we can see, it’s with the full and enthusiastic support of the CEOs. They’ve chosen their side.

The truth is that technology can make things better. And tech companies can be stewards of these tools, helping citizens and communities flourish, while – yes – building profitable businesses. It’s just exceedingly hard to achieve those goals in an environment dominated by growth-at-any-cost Big Tech companies enjoying the absence of any meaningful regulation.

Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general for the antitrust division at the Department of Justice from 2021 to 2024, put it well in a September 7 essay in the NYT (here’s a gift link) called “Why Google Got Off Easy”:

My disappointment is not just that Google was not properly held accountable, for the stakes extend beyond this particular case. If companies can flout the rules, reap trillions of dollars and face only modest constraints, the deterrent effect evaporates. The message to other companies is plain: It pays to break the law.

At a time when authoritarian power is on the rise, we must not forget that plutocracy is also its own kind of dictatorship. That is the danger when we fail to enforce antitrust laws with clarity and conviction — that enormous concentrations of wealth will have too much influence over our lives.

One way to choose your side is to find a community that aligns with your values, and join up. If you agree with what I’ve said above, you might consider my own Creative Good community. You can join here. You’ll get access to our members-only Forum, and all of the Big Tech alternatives listed at Good Reports. And you’ll support my writing here, as I try to tell the truth about what tech is doing to all of us.

Until next time, keep choosing the good –

-mark

Mark Hurst, founder, Creative Good
Email: mark@creativegood.com
Podcast/radio show: techtonic.fm
Follow me on Bluesky or Mastodon

Someone might want to tell David Zaslav to read the room. Despite people’s ongoing frustration with the rising prices of streaming services—and just about everything else—the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) thinks that there is reason for HBO Max to charge more.

Zaslav shared his sentiments while speaking at the Goldman Sachs Cornucopia + Technology conference today in San Francisco. The Hollywood Reporter quoted Zaslav as saying:

The fact that this is quality—and that’s true across our company, motion picture, TV production [and] streaming quality—we all ... think that gives us a chance to raise price. We think we’re way underpriced.

Today, HBO Max starts at $10 per month with ads, $17/month for no ads, and $21/month for no ads and premium features (4K streaming, Dolby Atmos, and the ability to stream from more devices simultaneously and perform more downloads). The streaming platform has raised prices twice since launching (as Max) in May 2023. In June 2024, the Standard, ad-free plan went from $16/month to $17/month, and annual subscription fees went up by $20 or $10, depending on the plan. Subscription fees also increased in January 2023.

One of the ways the recently re-renamed HBO Max will try to make more money from its viewership is by getting tougher about subscribers sharing passwords with other households. The streaming service was supposed to crack down on password sharing in 2024, but Zaslav said today that HBO Max hasn't “been pushing” against password sharing yet. That’s largely because WBD's trying to get people to “fall in love" with HBO Max's content first, Zaslav noted.

Once viewers are seemingly hooked on HBO Max, WBD would ideally like to charge more. Per Variety, Zaslav said today that WBD has a "real ability" to raise prices as "people become more and more in love with the quality that we have, and the series that we have, and the offering that we have."

The executive reportedly recalled a time when people relied on broadcast and cable for their TV entertainment and paid more than what the average person pays for streaming today:

Consumers in America would pay twice as much 10 years ago for content. People were spending, on average, $55 for content 10 years ago, and the quality of the content, the amount of content that we’re getting, the spend is 10 or 12 fold and they’re paying dramatically less. I think we want a good deal for consumers, but I think over time, there’s real opportunity, particularly for us, in that quality area, to raise price.

A question of quality

Zaslav is arguing that the quality of the shows and movies on HBO Max warrants an eventual price bump. But, in general, viewers find streaming services are getting less impressive. A Q4 2024 report from TiVo found that the percentage of people who think the streaming services that they use have "moderate to very good quality" has been declining since Q4 2021.

Research also points to people being at their limit when it comes to TV spending. Hub Entertainment Research’s latest “Monetizing Video” study, released last month, found that for consumers, low prices "by far still matters most to the value of a TV service."

Meanwhile, niche streaming services have been gaining popularity as streaming subscribers grow bored with the libraries of mainstream streaming platforms and/or feel like they’ve already seen the best of what those services have to offer. Antenna, a research firm focused on consumer subscription services, reported this month that specialty streaming service subscriptions increased 12 percent year over year in 2025 thus far and grew 22 percent in the first half of 2024.

Zaslav would likely claim that HBO Max is an outlier when it comes to streaming library dissatisfaction. Although WBD’s streaming business (which includes Discovery+) turned a $293 million profit and grew subscriber-related revenue (which includes ad revenues) in its most recent earnings report, investors would likely be unhappy if the company rested on its financial laurels. WBD has one of the most profitable streaming businesses, but it still trails far behind Netflix, which posted an operating income of $3.8 billion in its most recent earnings.

Still, increasing prices is rarely welcomed by customers. With many other options for streaming these days (including free ones), HBO Max will have to do more to convince people that it is worth the extra money than merely making the claim.

Read full article

Comments

Verizon lost an attempt to overturn a $46.9 million fine for selling customer location data without its users' consent. The US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit rejected Verizon's challenge in a ruling issued today.

The Federal Communications Commission fined the three major carriers last year for violations revealed in 2018. The companies sued the FCC in three different courts, with varying results.

AT&T beat the FCC in the reliably conservative US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, while T-Mobile lost in the District of Columbia Circuit. Although FCC Chairman Brendan Carr voted against the fine last year, when the commission had a Democratic majority, his FCC urged the courts to uphold the Biden-era decisions.

A ruling against the FCC could gut the agency's ability to issue financial penalties. The different rulings from different circuits raise the odds of the cases being taken up by the Supreme Court.

Today's 2nd Circuit ruling against Verizon was issued unanimously by a panel of three judges, and it comes to the same legal conclusions as the DC Circuit did in the T-Mobile case. The court did not accept the carrier's argument that the fine violated its Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial, and that the location data wasn't protected under the law used by the FCC to issue the penalties.

"We disagree [with Verizon]," the 2nd Circuit ruling said. "The customer data at issue plainly qualifies as customer proprietary network information, triggering the Communication Act's privacy protections. And the forfeiture order both soundly imposed liability and remained within the strictures of the penalty cap. Nothing about the Commission's proceedings, moreover, transgressed the Seventh Amendment's jury trial guarantee. Indeed, Verizon had, and chose to forgo, the opportunity for a jury trial in federal court. Thus, we DENY Verizon's petition."

Verizon claimed law doesn’t cover device location data

Until 2019, Verizon "ran a 'location-based services' program that sold access to certain kinds of wireless customer location data," the ruling said. "As part of that program, Verizon contracted with 'location information aggregators,' which collected customer data and resold it to third-party location-based services providers. Verizon had arrangements with two aggregators, LocationSmart and Zumigo, which in turn contracted with 63 third-party entities."

Instead of providing notice to customers and obtaining or verifying customer consent itself, Verizon "largely delegated those functions via contract," the court said. This system and its shortcomings were revealed in 2018 when "the New York Times published an article reporting security breaches involving Verizon's (and other major carriers') location-based services program," the court said.

Securus Technologies, a provider of communications services to correctional facilities, "was misusing the program to enable law enforcement officers to access location data without customers' knowledge or consent, so long as the officers uploaded a warrant or some other legal authorization," the ruling said. A Missouri sheriff "was able to access customer data with no legal process at all" because Securus did not review the documents that law enforcement uploaded.

Verizon claimed that Section 222 of the Communications Act covers only call-location data, as opposed to device location data. The court disagreed, pointing to the law's text stating that customer proprietary network information includes data that is related to the location of a telecommunications service, and which is made available to the carrier "solely by virtue of the carrier-customer relationship."

"Device-location data comfortably satisfies both conditions," the court said.

Verizon chose to pay fine, giving up right to jury trial

As for Verizon's claim that the FCC violated its right to a jury trial, the court said that "Verizon could have gotten such a trial" if it had "declined to pay the forfeiture and preserved its opportunity for a de novo jury trial if the government sought to collect." Instead, Verizon chose to pay the fine "and seek immediate review in our Court."

By contrast, the 5th Circuit decision in AT&T's favor said the FCC "acted as prosecutor, jury, and judge," violating the right to a jury trial. The 5th Circuit said it was guided by the Supreme Court's June 2024 ruling in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, which held that "when the SEC seeks civil penalties against a defendant for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitles the defendant to a jury trial."

The 2nd Circuit ruling said there are key differences between US telecom law and the securities laws considered in Jarkesy. It's because of those differences that Verizon had the option of declining to pay the penalty and preserving its right to a jury trial, the court said.

In the Jarkesy case, the problem "was that the SEC could 'siphon' its securities fraud claims away from Article III courts and compel payment without a jury trial," the 2nd Circuit panel said. "The FCC's forfeiture order, however, does not, by itself, compel payment. The government needs to initiate a collection action to do that. Against this backdrop, the agency's proceedings before a § 504(a) trial create no Seventh Amendment injury."

Read full article

Comments