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Technology

How to set up Amazon Echo new home security features

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The Amazon Echo has some new home security features that are now going live. Among other things, your Amazon Echo can make it sound like a dog is barking inside your house if your security cameras sense movement when you’re not home.

The feature is part of Alexa Guard Plus, a subscription service that costs $4.99 per month or $49 per year after a 30-day free trial. It’s another way Amazon is using the Echo to generate recurring revenue from its hardware, but it’s also useful for folks who may not want to pay for a full-blown security system.

Guard Plus can also alert you to any sounds in your home using your Amazon Echo and sound a siren if activity is detected inside. You can also ask your Echo to call an emergency helpline if you’re home and there’s an intruder.

Here’s how to set it up:

How to set up Alexa Guard Plus on Amazon Echo

Amazon Alexa Guard

Todd Haselton | CNBC

  • First you have to sign up for the trial on Amazon’s website, or say “Alexa, try Guard Plus” near your Amazon Echo.
  • Open the Alexa app on your phone.
  • Tap “More” on the bottom right.
  • Choose Settings.
  • Tap “Guard” toward the bottom of the page.
  • You’ll see an option to set up Guard with your existing devices, but it’s easier to tap the Settings icon on the top right of the page to move through all of the options.
  • Choose “Dog barking sounds” under “Deter” to set your Echo to attempt to scare off intruders while you’re away. This requires cameras that are either outdoors or facing outdoors. Select the cameras you want to use.
  • Choose “Activity Sounds with Siren” to have your Echo sound a siren if you’re away from home and it hears someone inside. Amazon warns that a pet can trigger this, so consider that.
  • Lastly, tap “Emergency Helpline.” This is where you’ll enter in your address in case you need to reach out for help. If you have an emergency, just say “Alexa, call for help.” It will dial “trained agents who can request the dispatch of emergency responders — such as police, the fire department or an ambulance, on your behalf.” Note this isn’t 911 and is only available in the U.S. Agents are available 24/7.

If you don’t want to pay, there’s also a free tier of Alexa Guard that’s pretty useful.

For instance, you can select “Away Lighting” under “Deter,” which turns your smart lights on and off when you’re away to make it look like you’re home. Amazon says it learns from your regular patterns, so it’s not just random.

The free tier can also alert you to smoke and carbon monoxide alarm sounds, or if your Echo hears glass breaking. Just choose “Sound Detection” under “Detect.”

Once you’re set up, just say “Alexa, I’m leaving,” to turn on away mode.

You can also set Alexa to guard from your phone when you leave the house. When you get home, just say “Alexa, I’m home.”

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Science

Axiom Space unveils AX-1 crew for fully-private SpaceX mission to ISS

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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour seen docked with the International Space Station on July 1, 2020.

NASA

A pair of investors are joining the first fully-private flight to the International Space Station — not as financial backers, but as the passengers flying along.

Houston-based start-up Axiom Space on Tuesday unveiled that real estate investor Larry Connor and Canadian investor Mark Pathy will fly on its upcoming AX-1 mission. The pair join former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, who will be the commander of the flight, and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe. Connor will be the mission’s pilot, which will make him the first private spaceflight pilot.

Axiom last year signed a deal with SpaceX for the mission. Elon Musk’s company is scheduled to launch the all-private crew no earlier than January 2022, using a Crew Dragon capsule to carry them to the space station. The mission comes at a steep price — $55 million per person — but will net them an eight-day stay on the space station.

“Never has an entire crew been non-professional astronauts,” López-Alegría told CNBC. “This is really groundbreaking, and I think it’s very important that the mission be successful and safe because we’re really paving the way for lots of things to happen after us.”

López-Alegría flew to space four times for NASA as a professional astronaut but now works for Axiom. He will lead them through about 15 weeks of training starting in the fall, command the spacecraft and make sure the other three crew members “have a safe and productive time,” he said.

AX-1 was originally scheduled for October 2021, but slid to early 2022. Axiom wants to fly “a couple of these missions per year,” López-Alegría added, so future missions are on deck. Speculation abounded that AX-1 would feature actor Tom Cruise, as last year NASA announced that it is working with Cruise to film a movie on the ISS.

Connor has lead The Connor Group since 2003, building the Ohio-based real estate investment firm to more than $3 billion in assets. Pathy, who is set to become the 11th Canadian astronaut, is the CEO and chairman of family office fund MAVRIK Corp, as well as chairman of the board at publicly-traded Montreal-based music company Stingray Group.

Stibbe would be the second Israeli astronaut — the first was Ilan Ramon, a payload specialist on board Space Shuttle Columbia, who was killed in February 2003 when Columbia broke apart during re-entry. Stibbe was a close friend of Ramon’s.

AX-1 is ‘100% not a vacation’

While space tourism is an emerging sub-sector of the space industry, Axiom’s private passengers do not put themselves in that category.

“We absolutely do not believe that we’re space tourists,” Connor told CNBC.

López-Alegría similarly emphasized that the 10-day mission “is 100% not a vacation for these guys.”

“They’re really focused on having this be a mission to promote a benefit to society, so they each are working on flight programs,” Lopez-Alegria said. “They’re teaming up with various institutions, hospitals and other research entities, as well as to do outreach while they’re up there.”

Each of three have research missions they will be conducting on behalf of other organizations. Connor is collaborating with the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic. Meanwhile, Pathy is working with the Canadian Space Agency and the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Finally, Stibbe is working on behalf of the Ramon Foundation and Israeli Space Agency.

“I’ve volunteered myself to be a test subject,” Connor said. “We’re not going there to be spectators; we’re going there to do research and hopefully add some value for people.”

Connor and Pathy together witnessed SpaceX’s first astronaut launch, the Demo-2 mission in May, which was the first rocket launch either had seen in person.

The private ride to space

The Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft in the hangar ahead of the Crew-1 mission

SpaceX

SpaceX developed Crew Dragon through heavy NASA funding, with the spacecraft built to fly astronauts to-and-from the ISS in low Earth orbit. SpaceX has launched two astronaut crews for NASA so far, including the first operational mission called Crew-1 in November.

Although NASA contributed to its development, Musk’s company owns and operates the spacecraft and rocket — with Axiom managing the mission and preparing the astronauts to launch.

The AX-1 crew has yet to begin its formal training, but Connor said they have stopped by SpaceX’s headquarters in Los Angeles for a spacesuit fitting and to see the spacecraft.

“The Crew Dragon capsule, in terms of quality and professionalism, is just outstanding,” Connor said. “And you can tell that, [as a group SpaceX is] exceptionally talented and committed to the mission.”

Connor emphasized that “NASA and SpaceX have nothing short of a remarkable safety record,” which he said he reviewed with his family when considering the risk of flying to space.

“We got to the point where we’re not only confident but comfortable that we can do both a valuable mission and a safe one,” Connor said.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 crew members seated in the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft during training. From left to right: NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Oliver and Mike Hopkins, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi.

SpaceX

AX-1 is expected to use SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft “Resilience” after it returns from its current Crew-1 mission. While the company regularly lands and reuses its Falcon 9 rocket boosters and its Cargo Dragon capsules, AX-1 would likely be the first time reuse is introduced to a Crew Dragon spacecraft.

“I’m very comfortable with that,” López-Alegría said. “Reusability is something that has been always made sense in human spaceflight.”

An expensive endeavor

The uncrewed SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft at the International Space Station with its nose cone open revealing its docking mechanism while approaching the station.

NASA

At $55 million a seat, it’s unsurprising that the first private space crew includes high net worth individuals like Connor and Pathy. The former said that it’s “a fair question and concern” that some might criticize private spaceflight as only for the ultra rich.

“We have lots of domestic problems and challenges, as well as international, but does that mean we should forget about the future?” Connor asked. “And, if you really think about the future, my view is that space is the next great frontier, so shouldn’t we be trying to explore and in some regards try to pioneer that?”

López-Alegría characterized the mission as “the first crack in the door toward democratization of space,” following closely on the heels of NASA’s decision in 2019 to allow private missions to visit the ISS. NASA will charge each person $35,000 per day while on board, as compensation for the services needed such as food and data usage.

“It’s not a very democratic demographic right now because of the cost of the flights, but we fully anticipate that the costs will start coming down,” López-Alegría said. “At some point we’ll be able to offer these to the man-on-the-street. It’s going to be a while but that’s the goal, and you have to start somewhere.”

For Connor’s part, he asked that critics of private spaceflight “think long term” to 25 or more years from now.

“Will it be that uncommon for people to go into space? I think and I hope the answer is going to be no. So somebody has to start it, somebody has to do the exploration and set the standards and so hopefully people will will look at it in that way,” Connor said.

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Science

NBA plans for private equity investments in teams

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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver addresses the media prior to the game of the Miami Heat against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game one of the 2020 NBA Finals as part of the NBA Restart 2020 on September 30, 2020 at AdventHealth Arena at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida.

Garrett Ellwood | National Basketball Association | Getty Images

Ownership accoutrements.

It’s the phrase National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver used in 2019 to help frame the attraction of becoming a sports owner. And Silver suggested the NBA could incentivize those looking to join its club, even on a minority level.  

The NBA’s plan to lure private equity money is in motion, and it’s betting on the allure of owning limited partnerships in its clubs will pay off.

With valuations in clubs rising to astronomical levels, the NBA joined the private equity chase when owners approved a plan to allow investment firms to own stakes in teams. NBA executive J.B. Lockhart is one the individuals who oversees this strategy and the league picked Dyal Capital as its partner.

They way it works: The NBA rounds up stakes in clubs and sells them to private equity firms like Dyal, who can then technically sell the limited partnerships (LPs) to private investors. Last May, Barron’s reported Dyal was seeking to raise $2 billion to purchase the LPs.

Some in the private equity space praise the NBA’s move, and even attempt to connect it to a more global play down the line.

The pros and cons of PE

By turning to private equity, the NBA solicits more capital for its league, can strike quicker deals to assist with liquidity and finance its future endeavors.

Also, NBA valuations are skyrocketing. The average price of a club is now over $2 billion, and its last two franchises (Brooklyn and Utah) sold for an average of $2.45 billion when considering Nets owner Joseph Tsai paid $1 billion for the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in a separate deal.

Hence, the league needed to expend its investor base as even minority stakes are getting expensive.

“This provides the NBA, its member teams, its entire infrastructure with financial optionality,” said Chris Lencheski, the chairman of private equity consulting company Phoenicia and adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Allowing private equity investments will also help minority owners looking to sell and exit ownership groups. On the majority side, owners who want to recover from Covid-19 losses by can sell shares and benefit, too.

Lencheski, who also serves as CEO of Granite Bridge Partners’ Winning Streak Sports, sees the NBA’s global “economic moat” as a draw for investors as there’s unlikely to be any viable competition for high-level professional basketball. Plus the league is backed by global licensing, merchandise, sponsorship and approximately $2.5 billion in annual media rights income, which runs through the 2024-25 season.

But the move is not risk-free.

Addressing the NBA’s ratings slide at the 2019 Sports Business Journal Dealmakers conference, Silver described cable television model as “broken” and added league’s young viewers “are tuning out traditional cable.”

So should its media rights drop in price as cable subscribers continue to cut the cord, valuations could drop and investors can lose money on LPs. One sports banker pointed to 2009 when valuations dropped due to a bad economy as proof the NBA isn’t immune to a decline due to economic turmoil, either.

And few foreseen the abrupt stop to its estimated 40% in revenue due to the pandemic.

But it could have help from the public’s allure.

Anthony Davis #3 of the Los Angeles Lakers shoots the ball against the Miami Heat during Game Four of the NBA Finals on October 6, 2020 at AdventHealth Arena in Orlando, Florida.

Nathaniel S. Butler | National Basketball Association | Getty Images

The SPAC play

Dyal and investment firm Owl Rock merged with Altimar Acquisition Corporation, a $275 million special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) currently trading on the New York Stock Exchange, allowing the combined firms to go public. The new firm is called Blue Owl, and public investors will soon be able to invest in it under the ticker symbol “OWL” on the NYSE later this year.

And one of its attractions will be its NBA fund.

Dyal did not respond to a CNBC request for comment, but managing partner Michael Rees spoke about the firm’s NBA strategy on a Dec. 23 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission call announcing the plan to launch Blue Owl.

“We’re proud to be a partner, an exclusive partner, with the NBA, the National Basketball Association, where we’re the only approved buyer of a portfolio of minority equity stakes in the 30 teams in the NBA,” said Rees, according to the call’s transcript. “That business is just being launched, and we’re hoping to have our first closing in the not-too-distant future.”

“We think we can grow certainly a very attractive basketball strategy off of this platform, but also possibly expand to a broader sports business that could have tremendous upside,” added Rees, who will also serve as one of the co-presidents of Blue Owl.

It’s not clear what Blue Owl’s overall sports strategy is, nor how it expects to make a return on NBA LPs. A person close to their planning told CNBC it would purchase stakes in some clubs, not all 30 teams.

When discussing the NBA’s private equity play, a Wall Street CEO said the firms make no money on fiduciary capital until it sells something. The person requested to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of discussing the matter publicly.

The CEO, who has an extensive history in private equity, also questioned how private firms would make any return on $2 billion. A long-time sports executive, who also requested anonymity, noted NBA teams can redistribute annual profits to new investors.

So, if a private firm is betting on sports teams as a long-term play, it could earn on clubs revenue while holding on to the LPs through dividends. Then, it could sell the LPs at a higher price.

And with the NBA such a global product, billionaires around world looking for an entry point into U.S. sports could be potential consumers of NBA accoutrements.

Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari president Nasser Al-Khelaifi arrives for a training session at the Luz stadium in Lisbon on August 22, 2020 on the eve of the UEFA Champions League final football match between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich.

Miguel A. Lopes | AFP | Getty Images

Foreign investment an option?

Private firms can purchase the LPs and then sell them on the secondary market. If the NBA goes the private equity route, there will be guidelines in place, but it will lose some control on who the LPs are sold to.

Foreign investors could be a way for firms to make money on the LPs.

There is chatter that points to Middle East investors as future buyers of the minority shares. The NBA prohibits sovereign state investment in its teams, but investors from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Qatar have been linked to the league before. In 2010, it was rumored investors were interested in purchasing the Detroit Pistons.

Lencheski added the NBA could also use the private equity investment vehicle to examine individuals who could look to buy majority positions in teams at a later date. The sports executive used Tsai’s entry as an example. He paid Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov $1 billion for a 49% stake in the Brooklyn Nets in 2018 before taking full control.

Lencheski pointed to David Tepper’s entry into the National Football League as another example.

“One of the many factors that certainly helped Charlotte’s ownership in the NFL was the minority interest initially in the Pittsburgh Steelers,” he said. “If David Tepper doesn’t see the way the Steelers organization operates, understands what a best-in-class organization looks like when he goes to his NFL colleagues and says, ‘I want to buy a team,’ he has the funds, but more importantly for the NFL, he understands the culture of a winning community-focused sports organization.”

The NBA appears bullish on its product. Live sports still keeps the cable model from shattering. The league continues to produce international superstars to protect its economic moat — $8.3 billion in revenue. And the NBA’s credit is in good standing.

The NBA’s new focus is expanding the list of those seeking ownership accoutrements via private equity.

“You get some of the benefits of being a team owner,” Silver told SBJ, according to SportsPro. “So it’s not just a pure, ‘What’s my return financial investment?’ Not that that’s not important, but try to come closer to some of the same reasons that traditional franchise owners buy into teams.

“Part of it is financial,” Silver said, “but part of it is the amenities, and the cachet, and the desire to be directly involved with these leagues.”

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Business

Evergrande’s electric car unit gets funding to compete with Tesla, Nio in China

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Evergrande Group Chairman Xu Jiayin attends Evergrande New Energy Auto Global Strategic Partners Summit on November 12, 2019 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province of China.

VCG | Visual China Group | Getty Images

GUANGZHOU, China — Shares of the electric vehicle unit of Chinese property giant Evergrande surged as much as 67% on Monday after the company raised significant funding through a new share sale.

China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group surged to an all-time-high of 50 Hong Kong dollars before paring some of those gains. Shares of the company closed at 45.35 Hong Kong dollars.

The stock rocketed after the Chinese electric car company issued 952.38 million shares to six investors at a price of $27.30 Hong Kong dollars and raised net proceeds of 26 billion Hong Kong dollars ($3.35 billion).

The funding is another sign that China’s electric car market is heating up, and Evergrande could pose a challenge to Tesla as well as domestic rivals such as Nio and Xpeng Motors.

Last year, Evergrande showed off six new electric vehicles under a brand called Hengchi, with the hope of starting production this year. The company has not sold a single car yet.

In September, the company raised around 4 billion Hong Kong dollars through the sale of shares to investors including Chinese internet giant Tencent and ride-hailing service Didi.

China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group is also preparing for a listing on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style Science and Technology Innovation Board, or the Star Market.

China’s electric car companies have been aggressively raising capital to ramp up production and take a lead in the competitive market.

Xpeng Motors raised $1.5 billion in an initial public offering in the U.S. last year and this month secured a credit line of 12.8 billion yuan ($1.98 billion).

This month, BYD — the Chinese electric carmaker backed by American billionaire Warren Buffett — said it raised 29.9 billion Hong Kong dollars through the issuance of new shares.

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Business

China’s Love of TikTok-Style Apps Powers $5 Billion IPO

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Kuaishou Technology has its eyes on the world’s biggest initial public offering in more than a year, seeking to raise about $5 billion from a Hong Kong share sale as short-video and live-streaming apps surge in popularity in China.

Kuaishou—which competes with ByteDance Ltd., the rival Chinese company behind TikTok and its sister app Douyin—started taking investor orders Monday. With the offering, which could value it at more than $60 billion, Kuaishou is joining a string of tech companies from China that have listed in Hong Kong.

Kuaishou, which means “fast hand” in Chinese, is backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. It was co-founded by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao, software engineers who previously worked for Google China and Hewlett Packard , respectively.

Both Kuaishou and ByteDance have capitalized on growing demand from younger Chinese people to watch and record short videos on their smartphones. Its namesake short-video platform is the world’s second-largest, according to data cited in its prospectus, and there were 305 million average daily active users of its apps and mini-programs in China for the nine months as of September.

With a minimum deal size of $4.95 billion, the IPO would be the largest in the world since late 2019, when state-controlled Saudi Arabian Oil Co., commonly known as Aramco, raised $29.4 billion, Dealogic figures show.

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Business

Apple, Tesla and Facebook ready to report record sales in busiest week of earnings

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U.S. companies have barely managed to eke out positive earnings growth so far in this quarterly results season, but the big test arrives in the week ahead.

Nearly a quarter of the S&P 500
SPX,
-0.30%
is set to report results, with those companies representing 39% of the index by market value, according to calculations based on FactSet data. Given that the S&P 500 is weighted by market capitalization, this roster of companies will have an outsize impact on the profit trajectory for the index.

Earnings are expected to decline for the fourth consecutive quarter once all results are in for the latest period, but those companies that have reported thus far have been beating expectations in aggregate.

The FactSet consensus now models a 5% earnings decline for the index, compared with the 6.3% drop projected a week ago. If profit growth for the S&P 500 ultimately ends up positive, it would mark an end to the current earnings recession, which takes place when corporate profits drop for two or more consecutive quarters.

Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+1.61%
and Facebook Inc.
FB,
+0.60%
are among the highlights of next week’s slate, along with Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+0.20%,
which will deliver results for the first time since it became a member of the S&P 500. All three high-profile companies are scheduled to report Wednesday afternoon and expected to have produced record revenue in the holiday quarter.

The holiday quarter is always crucial for Apple, which releases new iPhones in the fall. With a slightly later launch than usual this year due to the pandemic pushing sales into the period, Apple is widely expected to post its largest quarterly revenue total ever and its first ever total above $100 billion. The technology giant likely also continued to see benefits from remote-work and remote-schooling trends, which have driven strong iPad and Mac sales throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Full preview: Get ready for Apple’s first $100 billion quarter in history

Facebook is also expected to post what should easily be a record quarter given strong digital advertising trends during the holiday period. Still, the company will face questions about user engagement and a decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform indefinitely over his role in inciting the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol. Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik points to “continued usage fatigue” across social media as well as a “conversation skewed towards unmonetizable political events.”

Full preview: Facebook earnings still flourishing amid pandemic, economic slowdown and antitrust scrutiny

Tesla already disclosed delivery numbers for the full year that came in ahead of analyst expectations, and all eyes will be on the company’s outlook for 2021. RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak anticipates a delivery forecast of 825,000 to 875,000 million units for the full year, even though Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tesla’s last earnings call that an analyst was “not far off” for expecting 840,000 to a million deliveries during 2021.

Full preview: Can Tesla’s sales growth match stock’s rise?

Here’s what else to watch for in the week ahead, which brings reports from 117 members of the S&P 500 and 13 Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.57%
components.

Up in the air

Boeing Co.’s
BA,
-0.76%
journey remains turbulent even as the company’s 737-MAX jets were recertified after being grounded for almost two years. Though the company began deliveries of these aircraft, “the pace of delivering all 450 parked 737-MAX will be dictated by airline customers ability to absorb aircraft as well as air traffic demand,” according to Benchmark Company analyst Josh Sullivan.

Boeing’s Wednesday morning report will offer perspective on the company’s recovery expectations amid the pandemic, though Sullivan sees volatility ahead stemming from a recent equity offering and the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on airlines.

The fourth-quarter reports from U.S. airlines have been bleak so far, and American Airlines Group Inc.
AAL,
-0.06%
and Southwest Airlines Co.
LUV,
-0.80%
offer more on Thursday morning.

Can you hear me now?

Verizon Communications Inc.
VZ,
+0.35%
leads off a busy week of telecommunications earnings Tuesday morning, followed by AT&T Inc.
T,
+0.35%
Wednesday morning and Comcast Corp.
CMCSA,
-0.92%
Thursday morning.

For the wireless carriers, a key issue will be the impact of iPhone 12 promotions on recent results. Investors will also be looking for information about a recent wireless auction offering spectrum that will be crucial for 5G network deployments. Though the bids haven’t been made public yet, the auction drove record spending and AT&T and Verizon are both expected to have paid up handsomely to assert their standing. The question for investors is what impact these bids will have on the companies’ financial positioning.

Full preview: AT&T earnings to kick off a defining year for telecom giant

AT&T and Comcast have more media exposure than Verizon, and those two companies have been trying to contend with the new realities brought on by the pandemic. Both companies have made moves to emphasize streaming more with their film slates given theater closures, and the financial implications of these moves will be worth watching.

Paying up

The evolving situation with the pandemic is reflected perhaps no more clearly than in the results of Visa Inc.
V,
-1.52%,
Mastercard Inc.
MA,
-1.63%,
and American Express Co.
AXP,
-1.01%,
which have a pulse on the global consumer spending landscape. The companies should provide insight on a travel recovery toward the end of the year, as well as the impact of recent lockdowns.

Susquehanna analyst James Friedman wrote recently that his Mastercard revenue projection of $3.97 billion is slightly below the consensus view, though he also asked: “does anyone really care about Q4 2020?” Friedman is upbeat about mobile-payments and online-shopping dynamics that suggest “positive trends ahead” for Mastercard, which reports Thursday morning. Visa follows that afternoon, while American Express kicks of the week with its Tuesday morning report.

The chip saga continues

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
AMD,
+1.38%
is poised to keep benefiting from Intel Corp.’s
INTC,
-9.29%
stumbles, which analysts expect to last for some time even as Intel prepares for a new, technology-oriented chief executive to take the helm.

“We have low confidence that Intel will be able to close that transistor gap quickly, and therefore expect it to continue to lose share for the foreseeable future,” Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis wrote after Intel’s latest earnings report. AMD will show how that dynamic has played out on its side of the equation when it posts numbers Tuesday afternoon.

Full preview: If Intel gets its act together, can AMD maintain swollen valuation?

Other chip makers reporting in the week ahead include Texas Instruments Inc.
TXN,
-1.31%
on Tuesday afternoon; Xilinx Inc.
XLNX,
+1.26%,
which is in line to be acquired by AMD, on Wednesday afternoon report, when it will be joined by chip-equipment maker Lam Research Corp.
LRCX,
-0.06%
; and Western Digital Corp.
WDC,
-5.23%
on Thursday afternoon.

Busy week for the Dow

Among the 13 members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.57%
set to report this week are 3M Co
MMM,
-0.96%.
, Johnson & Johnson
JNJ,
+1.13%,
American Express, Verizon, and Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
+0.44%,
all of which report Tuesday.

“Near term, we see the company’s COVID-19 vaccine readout as a key upcoming catalyst and believe efficacy in the 80%+ range would suggest a clear role for the product in the market,” J.P. Morgan analyst Chris Schott wrote of Johnson & Johnson.

Cowen & Co. analyst J. Derrick Wood sees tough comparisons for Microsoft especially in its Azure and server businesses, though he expects a more favorable situation going forward.

Full preview: SolarWinds hack may actually be a good thing for Microsoft

Wednesday brings results from Boeing and Apple, while Thursday features McDonald’s Corp.
MCD,
-0.07%,
Dow Inc.
DOW,
-0.10%,
and Visa. Honeywell International Inc.
HON,
-1.45%,
Chevron Corp.
CVX,
-0.30%,
and Caterpillar Inc.
CAT,
-0.13%
round out the week Friday morning.

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Business

Tesla CEO donates to carbon capture technology prize

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GRUENHEIDE, GERMANY – SEPTEMBER 03: Tesla head Elon Musk talks to the press as he arrives to to have a look at the construction site of the new Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin on September 03, 2020 near Gruenheide, Germany. Musk is currently in Germany where he met with vaccine maker CureVac on Tuesday, with which Tesla has a cooperation to build devices for producing RNA vaccines, as well as German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier yesterday.

Maja Hitij | Getty Images

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced that he is donating $100 million towards a prize for the best technology that can capture carbon dioxide.

Musk, who overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person this month, made the announcement on Twitter late Thursday, saying he would share more details next week.

“Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology,” Musk tweeted to his 42.7 million followers.

Carbon capture is the process of trapping waste carbon dioxide either directly from the air, or just before it gets emitted from factories and power plants.

With the latter, the first step is often to install solvent filters on factory chimneys, which catch the carbon emissions before they’re released into the Earth’s atmosphere. Once captured, carbon dioxide can then be shipped or piped somewhere it can’t escape from (often deep underground) to prevent it contributing to global warming.

Most of the captured carbon dioxide remains underground, but some of it can also used to make plastics and fizzy drinks.

Why is carbon capture needed?

Global carbon dioxide emissions have soared over the last 100 years, leading to unprecedented global warming and climate change.

There are currently around 20 carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) projects operating commercially worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency.

The agency said that 30 new projects had been agreed since 2017, but stressed that many more were needed to prevent carbon emissions from raising the temperature on Earth by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The IEA believes CCUS projects could reduce carbon emissions by almost a fifth, while also slashing the cost of tackling the climate crisis by 70%. Adapting heavy industry to run on clean energy is relatively difficult and expensive compared to installing carbon capture systems.

U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to put more of a focus on cutting emissions than his predecessor and said he wants the U.S. to be carbon neutral by 2050.

‘Plant more trees’

The prize that Musk has said he will contribute to is connected to the Xprize Foundation, TechCrunch reported, citing an anonymous source. The foundation is a nonprofit that puts on competitions to promote and support innovation.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Musk has a total net worth of $201 billion, while Bezos has $193 billion. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the next wealthiest person, with a total net worth of $134 billion.

Musk recently asked his Twitter followers what he should do with his money.

“Critical feedback is always super appreciated, as well as ways to donate money that really make a difference (way harder than it seems),” he tweeted Jan. 8.

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Science

Groundbreaking New Laser System Cuts Through Earth’s Atmosphere Like It’s Nothing

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To artists and romantics, the twinkling of stars is visual poetry; a dance of distant light as it twists and bends through a turbulent ocean of air above our heads.

Not everybody is so enamoured with our atmosphere’s distortions. To many scientists and engineers, a great deal of research and ground-to-satellite communication would be a whole lot easier if the air simply wasn’t there.

 

Losing our planet’s protective bubble of gases isn’t exactly a popular option. But Australian and French researchers have teamed up to design the next best thing – a system that guides light through the tempestuous currents of rippling air with the flick of a mirror.

The result is a laser link capable of holding its own through the atmosphere with unprecedented stability.

While astronomers have a few tricks up their sleeve to correct for the atmosphere’s distortions on incoming light, it’s been a challenge to emit a coherent beam of photons from the ground to a distant receiver so they keep together and on point.

Keeping transmissions on target and coherent – with their phases remaining neatly in line – through hundreds of kilometres of shifting air would allow us to link highly precise measurement tools and communications systems.

Satellites could probe for ores or evaluate water tables with improved precision. High-speed data transfer could require less power, and contain more information.

Lead author Ben Dix-Matthews, an electrical engineer with the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia, explained the technology to ScienceAlert.

 

“The active terminal essentially uses a small four-pixel camera, which measures the sideways movement of the received beam,” says Dix-Matthews.

“This position measurement is then used to actively control a steerable mirror that keeps the received beam centred and removes the sideways movement caused by the atmosphere.”

In effect, the system can be used to compensate for the warping effects of the moving air in three dimensions – not just up and down, or left and right, but along the beam’s trajectory, keeping the link centred and its phases in order.

So far it’s only been tested across a relatively short distance of 265 metres (about 870 feet). About 715 metres (just under half a mile) of optical fibre cable was run underground between the transmitter and receiver to carry a beam for comparison.

The results were so stable they could be used to connect the kinds of optical atomic clocks used to test fundamental physics, such as Einstein’s theories of relativity.

With the proof of concept demonstrated, there’s no reason to think a similar technique won’t one day be aiming for the sky, and beyond. Though there are a few hurdles that need to be overcome first.

 

“During this experiment we had to do the initial alignment by hand, using a visible guide laser that was in line with the stabilised infrared beam,” Dix-Matthews told ScienceAlert.

“When making links between optical atomic clocks, it would be good to have a way of doing this coarse alignment more easily.”

Fortunately Dix-Matthews’ French collaborators are working on a device that will speed up the initial coarse alignment process, promising a second generation of laser link technology that won’t require such an involved set-up.

The team also found temperature variations in the equipment affected the phase’s stability, limiting the duration of the signal to around 100 seconds. This hurdle will also be the focus of future improvements.

We might not need to wait long. The researchers are already making headway on upgrades for their system.

“We have started using a high-power laser amplifier that should help us deal with the larger power losses expected over longer distances, such as to space,” says Dix-Matthews.

“We have also completely rebuilt our active terminal to make it more sensitive to low received powers and make it more effective at cancelling out the movement of the received beam.”

With orbiting technology rapidly becoming a major focus for many data providers, potentially filling our skies with satellites, innovations that make linking communications systems across our atmosphere will only become more sought after.

As useful as our atmosphere is for, well, keeping us all alive, there are certainly some downsides to being buried under a restless blanket of warm gas.

This research was published in Nature Communications.

 

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Technology

Former Huawei unit’s first smartphone since being sold

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GUANGZHOU, China — Honor, the Chinese smartphone brand formerly owned by Huawei, has launched its first device since being sold off. 

Huawei sold Honor, its budget smartphone brand, in November to a consortium of buyers in China, as a way to help the unit survive in the face of U.S. sanctions.

In 2019, Huawei was put on a U.S. export blacklist called the Entity List which restricted American firms from selling certain components to the Chinese technology giant. This included both semiconductors and software.

Google was forced to cut ties to Huawei, meaning the U.S. search giant’s Android mobile operating system could not be installed on the Chinese firm’s devices. That hurt Huawei’s sales badly in international markets. 

Last year, Huawei sold Honor to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology, a consortium of 30 agents and dealers. At the time, Huawei said that the sale was made so Honor could “make it through this difficult time.”

“Splitting off the Honor team should help it get the components that it needs, although that could still take many months and is never guaranteed, especially given the geopolitical tension in the air,” Bryan Ma, vice president of devices research at IDC said. 

“Nonetheless, the move helps to keep the team engaged with suppliers in the hopes that it can continue with its product development.”

The majority of Honor’s sales come from China. In 2019, Honor shipped 64 million smartphones globally, according to IDC. In the first nine months of 2020, the company has shipped 42 million units. Complete data for 2020 is not yet available.

The V40 

Honor’s new smartphone is called the V40. It boasts a 6.72-inch display and comes in three colors: silver, black and rose gold.

Honor talked up the phone’s graphics processing and touchscreen capabilities, features that enhance gaming on the device, a popular use of smartphones in China.

It has the ability to connect to next-generation 5G mobile networks, a key requirement in China which is the world’s largest market for 5G phones. 

The V40 uses a key 5G chip from Taiwan’s MediaTek, a company which became China’s number one smartphone semiconductor supplier in 2020. 

Honor’s V40 starts at 3,599 yuan ($556) for the 128GB storage option and 3,999 yuan for the 256GB version. It will be released in China but it is unclear if it will be launched internationally. 

“The message they (Honor) want to convey is they inherited a lot from Huawei, no matter if it’s the chipset capability, photography, and R&D (research and development) all the things they got from Huawei devices, they have it all,” Nicole Peng, a mobile analyst at Canalys said. 

“They don’t want to show they are missing the R&D capability that Huawei has. They want to show they still have it and they have a big team in R&D and that is something people were asking when they separated, whether they can maintain that kind of innovation.” 

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Technology

Thumb injury forces video gamer to retire

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Attendees play the Call of Duty: Black Ops III game by Activision Blizzard during the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California.

Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A 25-year-old professional video gamer has been forced to retire due to a thumb injury.

Thomas “ZooMaa” Paparatto announced he’s “taking a step back from competitive Call of Duty” on Twitter.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write, I am stepping down and will no longer compete in competitive Call of Duty for the foreseeable future,” he said in a separate blog post.

“It breaks my heart to step away from a game I put my heart and soul into every single day for eight years,” he added. “Tearing up just writing this, but I don’t know what else to do at this point.”

Paparatto plays for an esports team called New York Subliners and he has earned $387,019 from 87 tournaments, according to Esports Earnings. His largest prize from a single tournament came in April 2018, when he won $53,125 in a Call of Duty: Cold War II competition.

The U.S. gamer struggled with weakness in his thumb and his wrist a few years ago while playing a game called FaZe Clan. He had to have surgery as a result.

“Going through that process of getting healthy again was one of the hardest things I ever had to do both physically and mentally, which led to a lot of stress and anxiety,” he said. “Unfortunately, the injury has returned making it really hard for me to compete at the highest level against some of the best players in the world.”

He said that playing through the pain in his hand “just isn’t possible anymore” and that he doesn’t enjoy competing when he can’t be the “ZooMaa everyone knows and loves.”

Fans and fellow gamers shared their support following his announcement. 

Many professional gamers train or compete for over 10 hours a day, and some of them rake in over a $1 million a year in the process. However, the physical and mental strain on the body can sometimes result in health problems.  

Sam Matthews, founder and chief executive of Fnatic, told CNBC in December: “These people are fit and healthy largely, but there’s always an anomaly to the rule.”



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