Musk to finally break Trump ties? It could go down as soon as today, once we find out the president's plan on the Paris climate agreement. Also, SpaceX is launching stuff into space – if only it were me. That and more in The Daily Crunch for June 1, 2017. 1. Trump's Paris agreement position rallies tech companies Trump says he'll reveal his plans regarding the Paris climate agreement today at 3 PM ET, and signs indicate he'll move to take the U.S. out of the international effort to counter greenhouse gas emissions and their resulting impact on the environment. This has unified the tech industry (and industry in general), and resulted in phone calls from Apple CEO Tim Cook – and an ultimatum from Elon Musk, who until now has seen fit to remain close to the administration by serving on Trump advisory councils. Leaving Paris is a bridge too far, for Musk, apparently, where past contentious policies were not. 2. Meanwhile, in space... The U.S. exiting the Paris agreement could accelerate Musk's motivation to make it to Mars, so today's SpaceX launch takes on greater significance. It's the first time SpaceX will attempt to use a Dragon it flew before in an active mission to resupply the ISS; reusable Dragon cargo capsules are a key ingredient for making Mars affordable. 3. Uber hemorrhaged cash trying to make UberPOOL viable UberPOOL is a service that aims to make the economics of ride hailing better – but getting there is costing a lot of money, according to new documents published by BuzzFeed. These economics look terrible. Uber told us that all's well with POOL, however; it did not comment on the current economics. 4. Apple's Swift Playgrounds now works with hardware, too Pretty cool – especially since the hardware support for Apple's coding education tool includes LEGO Mindstorms, Sphero's BB-8 bot, Parrot's drones and more. 5. Skype is trying to be cool "Hey have you heard about Snapchat? What if we put that in Skype!" "You're a genius, Bill. Skype will be a huge hit with all of the cool teens now for sure." "It sure will, let's use neon gradients, too!" "Wow you're on fire today." "Thanks! I've been microdosing LSD." 6. Moto Z2 Play shows Motorola is all-in on mods Motorola, kudos for sticking to something that's out of the ordinary. The Z2 Play, the successor to last year's Z Play, will get mods just like the first version. There's a bunch of new mods, even! I'm glad this continues to be a thing. 7. Plex just became your best live TV DVR service Plex's subscription program is already worth it, but now you also get live TV viewing on a range of devices, and DVR capabilities for local and remote streaming. Super good. |