The Daily Crunch 10/13/16

The scope of the Note 7 recall revealed, car companies that want to remain car companies and a wrongheaded approach to SF's homelessness issues. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for October 13, 2016.

1. Samsung's second recall of the Note 7 basically doubles the damage

We know more about the scope of Samsung's ongoing Note 7 recall, thanks to an official CPSC recall notice published today. The total number of devices affected includes 1.9 million devices, including the 1 million originally recalled by Samsung before it started issuing replacements. The CPSC note also says that 23 new reports of incidents have occurred since the first recall, making for 96 total reports of batteries overheating. It isn't clear how many of those are replacement devices, but we know that at least a few of them were "fixed" devices. And all of this is in the U.S. alone.

Samsung is trying to mitigate the brand damage with a $100 incentive for Note 7 owners to stick with its devices, but $100 may not seem like much with perceived explosion possibilities weighing as a counter consideration. If you want to see how the Note 7 saga unfolded in its operatic entirety, check out this timeline.

2. Nissan-Renault isn't trying to be a tech company

Renault-Nissan had some stuff to show off at the Paris Motor Show this year, but it was mainly talking about partnerships when it comes to tech, including one with Microsoft. The company doesn't want to be a tech company, according to CEO Carlos Ghosn, and would rather partner when it needs that kind of expertise, and focus on the business of making cars. Ghosn said that they're okay with coming up with new technology when they believe it will move things forward and no one else is already doing it, but by and large they prefer to partner than to build tech teams in house.

3. Bad billionaires

San Francisco's homelessness problem definitely needs to be addressed with funding, among other things, but pouring money into a bylaw that would essentially just make it okay for SF authorities to knock down tent cities isn't exactly an ideal solution. Problems don't go away just because you try to improve their outward appearance, billionaires.

4. Valve's already working on the next generation of VR controllers

VR is still a big old question mark, but Valve is pushing forward, and it showed off a lot of hardware under development with HTC at its Dev Days conference. This includes new controllers that will detect your hand and its motions without you having to grip it, for more natural interaction with virtual environments. As a Vive user myself, this sounds like something that can't come soon enough.

5. Baidu's new $3 billion fund is for more mature startups

Baidu has a new $3 billion investment fund, dedicated to getting larger startups over the growth hump to becoming truly big companies. It's a natural continuation of their existing startup investment strategy, but that's a lot of billions in one fund.

6. Tesla and SolarCity deal shareholder vote set for November 17

This is it – Musk's dreams of an end-to-end consumer offering from clean power generation to clean power consumption and transportation gets its big shareholder vote next month. Between now and then, the CEO hopes to make it more clear what the two can accomplish together at a special event October 28, so he'd better wow 'em.