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EV maker Byton halts operations for six months amid financial woes
Luxury EV designer Byton has paused its operations for six months due to financial problems worsened by the pandemic.
Headspace is offering free mindfulness courses to unemployed Americans
Mindfulness app Headspace is offering a free one-year subscription to anyone in the US who is unemployed.
Lyft lays off nearly 1,000 employees
Lyft lays off 17 percent of its workforce due to COVID-19.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai cancels CES appearance
For the second year in a row, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has cancelled his appearance at CES, though this time around, it's under very different circumstances. According to Politico Pro, both he and Commissioner Brendan Carr have had to cancel their CES plans due to the partial government shutdown that's still ongoing. Pai was supposed to discuss FCC plans with the Consumer Technology Association's Gary Shapiro while Carr was scheduled to take part in a roundtable discussion.
Faraday Future furloughs hundreds more employees
Electric vehicle startup Faraday Future is planning to furlough hundreds of its employees as a result of an ongoing dispute with the company's primary investor. The latest round of cuts, which will affect at least 250 employees, follows significant cut backs made by the company earlier this year.
Faraday Future co-founder reportedly resigns amid job furloughs (updated)
Faraday Future's struggles only appear to be getting worse. The Verge has obtained an email indicating that company co-founder Nick Sampson (above) has resigned, effective immediately. And he didn't mince words, according to the report. Faraday is "effectively insolvent" after the funding dispute with China's Evergrande, he said, and would "limp along" under the best of conditions. There were "insurmountable barriers" to overcoming the situation, Sampson added.
Good Old Games sympathizes with furloughed workers, offers free games
Furloughed workers of America, Good Old Games feels your pain. You're home, not necessarily getting paid, and you may be running out of land to explore in Grand Theft Auto V's vast expanses. Luckily, they've got a massive library of games waiting for you, and they're making a bundle of 'em free between now and this Friday. Snag free copies of The Guild: Gold Edition, Capitalism, Capitalism 2, Tropico: Gold Edition, Alpha Centauri, Alien Crossfire, Theme Hospital, and Redneck Rampage by sending in "your picture holding the official furlough letter you received" to (the sarcastic, though potentially offensive) thanksobama@gog.com. For us non-government employees, those games are all on sale for 50 percent off for the next 24 hours. Not too shabby either!
Fisker puts US workers on furlough to conserve cash
Fisker's cash reserves have been in trouble ever since its Department of Energy loans were frozen, and now its putting its US workforce on furlough to keep money in the bank while it searches for a partner with deep pockets. "This is a common practice, particularly in the automotive industry, to manage costs and operations based on current activity levels and commercial requirements," said Fisker, which has over 200 employees in America, in a statement concerning the unpaid leave. Considering that battery woes and other mishaps have contributed to keeping assembly lines quiet, current activity levels are indeed low. Reuters says the automaker hasn't built a car since July, and it's coming up against a federal loan payment in late April. According to the outlet, Fisker was aiming to partner with Chinese auto companies that could bolster its finances, but talks are said to have crawled to a stop. Regardless, the firm is still on the lookout for an investor to fuel the production of its Atlantic hybrid.
Nokia furloughing up to 20 percent of employees at only Finnish factory
Of its nine factories around the world, Nokia has just one in its home country -- the only one left in all of Western Europe -- in the town of Salo. As you can imagine, its well-being is probably a pretty touchy subject, not just for locals but for Nokia fans around the world -- especially when you consider that the company's highest-end devices are assembled here, making the health of the factory a bellwether for the health of the coolest models in the range. The company has revealed this week that it'll be sending home up to 20 percent of the plant's staff for up to 90 days at any one time, saying that there's simply no need for it to operate at full capacity in the current market; we say you could argue that making the right phones could lead to a need for full capacity, but what do we know? Anyhow, the move closely mirrors one that had already been made for 2009, and you could look on the bright side -- at least they're not closing it down the same way they did Jyväskylä.
Dutch prisoners could get remote knee locks
The Dutch Ministry of Justice recently announced that special knee locks to prevent prisoner escapes could be tested later this year if parliament gives its approval. In the Netherlands, a "furlough" system is used to gradually reintroduce prisoners that have committed serious offenses back to society: instead of letting prisoners out when their term ends, they are accompanied by a guard to visit relatives, and gradually given more freedom until it is deemed that they are ready for unsupervised parole. Unfortunately, there have been several cases where prisoners on leave committed serious offenses like rape and murder by slipping away from their guards. The purpose of this test is to see whether a knee locking system -- which prevents a prisoner from moving if they move a certain distance away from their guard -- can prevent these kind of unfortunate cases. As draconian as this system may sound, it's probably the most humane of all the solutions that were looked at: prisoners could potentially have had to wear gadgets that gave them electric shocks or injected drugs to prevent them from escaping. The best part about this whole case is what justice ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen compared the system to: illegally parked cars. Probably not the best analogy he could have used -- badly parked car = potentially inconvenient. Escaped prisoner = potentially capable of murder -- but we'll give Wim the benefit of the doubt this time, and mark it up as lost in translation.[Thanks, Joel]
