Framing It: 11.5.19

Fitbit is an Alphabit, AirPods can’t be repaired, Flying Cars, and Battery Explosions

Google has bought Fitbit for $2B

• Google has acquired Fitbit for a bit more than $2 Billion
• Google, and the entire Android ecosystem, hasn’t seen much in the way of wearables, as compared to the very popular Apple watch. Wear OS has been largely a flop.

He Can’t Hear Us, He’s Wearing AirPods!

• Apple has released their latest edition of AirPods. They’re called AirPods Pro. Yes, they’re AirPods Pro and not AirPod Pros, just like how they’re Whoppers Junior and not Whopper Juniors.
• According to the iFixit teardown, the new AirPods Pro are completely unrepairable, although I guess you could pair them with a different iPhone if you wanted.

Oh Great, Flying Cars

• Ehang, perpetual display piece at the Consumer Electronics Show, has filed with the SEC for an IPO. They build the Ehang 184 and Ehang 216, a one and two-passenger (with no pilot) ‘autonomous flying car’.
• According to Ehang, ‘there’s no regulation yet for this type of aircraft’. This is a lie, because that’s what the FAA does.
• In any event the Ehang flying car was designed by someone who looked at an airplane kinda closely. The red navigation lights are on the front and green nav lights are in the back; this makes sense if the Ehang flies sideways all the time.

Faster Battery Charging!

• An article in Nature tells us how to recharge the batteries in an electric car in just ten minutes. The answer: just make the batteries hot.
• By increasing the temperature of the batteries to about 60 °C, the charge rate can be vastly increased.
• This is only speculation, but how do you heat the batteries in a car? Well, Teslas already have a battery cooling solution, and it’s not unthinkable that you could just run that in reverse.
• Anyway, we all know what you’re thinking, so here’s a video of lithium batteries exploding.

The Hackaday Superconference

The Hackaday Superconference is happening in Los Angeles, November 2019. That’s also when Blade Runner is set, and with the fires it looks like we’ll have the right amount of smog. It’s November 15–17, it’s sold out, but there’s a wait list for tickets. Or you could just cruise Craigslist for someone else’s tickets, we don’t care.