Peloton gives up on building its own products after just three years

Peloton will no longer build its own connected fitness products, as it’s moving entirely to third-party manufacturing. It said in a statement that it’s “exiting all owned-manufacturing operations” to simplify its supply chain and cut costs. “We believe that this along with other initiatives will enable us to continue reducing the cash burden on the business and increase our flexibility,” Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy said. “Partnering with market-leading third party suppliers, Peloton will be able to focus on what we do best — using technology and content to help our 7 million members become the best versions of themselves.”

The company is expanding its long-existing partnership with Taiwanese manufacturer Rexon, which will be the primary builder of Bike and Tread devices. Peloton says it will suspend operations at Tonic Fitness for the rest of the year. It bought that company in 2019 to bring some manufacturing in house.

Things haven’t exactly been going swimmingly over at Peloton. In January, then-CEO John Foley said the company was “resetting our production levels for sustainable growth” following reports it was putting all production on hold. It was suggested that Peloton had thousands of products sitting in warehouses and on cargo ships amid decreased demand. The following month, Peloton brought in McCarthy as CEO and laid off around 2,800 corporate employees, equivalent to 20 percent of the total workforce.

After the pandemic-driven boom, when many people were buying Peloton gear to help them work out at home, business took a significant hit. Peloton posted a net loss of $757.1 million for the first three months of 2022 on revenue of $964 million, compared with revenue of $1.262 billion and a loss of $8.6 million a year earlier. It attributed the diminishing returns to a significant increase in operating expenses (which represented 95.4 percent of total revenue for the quarter) and having to manage its stockpile of products, which it believed it would sell eventually.

In April, Peloton cut the prices of some products to lower the barrier to entry while announcing plans to increase subscription fees in the US and Canada for the first time. The company now has a rental program for the original Peloton Bike. It costs $89 per month and an All-Access Membership is included. There’s a $150 delivery fee, though you can cancel at any time and there’s free pick-up. Customers have the option to buy the device outright after 12 months. Meanwhile, in May, Peloton teased its first rowing machine.

Rivian reportedly plans to lay off around five percent of its workforce

Electric truck maker Rivian is reportedly planning to lay off hundreds of workers. While the company hasn’t made a firm decision on mass job cuts, according to Bloomberg, it may shed around five percent of the workforce. With a headcount of more than 14,000, that equates to around 700 employees. Layoffs may be announced in the coming weeks, the report suggests. Rivian declined to comment to Engadget.

The job cuts would primarily be for non-manufacturing positions in areas where Rivian has expanded too quickly. Teams with duplicate functions are said to be among those the company has targeted. The total number of employees at Rivian has more or less doubled over the last year as the automaker increased production.

The automotive industry has been hit hard by supply chain issues and the economic climate, and it seems Rivian is no exception. The company still expects to build 25,000 EVs this year despite production difficulties. Rivian eventually aims to manufacture 600,000 vehicles per year between its existing plant in Normal, Illinois and a second planned factory in Georgia that’s expected to open in 2024.

The company has a backlog of tens of thousands of EV orders. It will have to juggle those with the 100,000 delivery vehicles it will build for Amazon by the end of the decade. As such, bolstering production while streamlining operations elsewhere seems a logical move.

The news follows a recent report noting that Rivian hired dozens of former Tesla employees in recent months, according to LinkedIn data. It was reported in late June that Tesla cut around 200 people from its Autopilot team after CEO Elon Musk announced plans to reduce the company’s salaried workforce by 10 percent. Musk told employees earlier that month he had a “super bad feeling” about the state of the economy and for them to expect layoffs.

Apple’s iOS 16, macOS Ventura and watchOS 9 public betas are ready to download

We’re a couple of months out from Apple officially rolling out the next major versions of its various operating systems. However, you can try out iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, macOS Ventura and tvOS 16 right now. Apple has released a public beta, a few…

Sony’s LinkBuds S are cheaper than ever ahead of Prime Day

Sony released its LinkBuds S less than two months ago, but you can already pick up the true wireless earbuds for a solid discount on Amazon. Just ahead of Prime Day, they’re down to $157. That’s a drop of 22 percent from the regular price of $200. It’s the lowest price we’ve seen to date for LinkBuds S and the discount applies to both the white and black variants.

Buy Sony LinkBuds S at Amazon – $157

The LinkBuds S have a more regular closed design rather than the open wear format of the standard LinkBuds that Sony unleashed earlier this year. The company claims the more recent model is smaller and lighter than other earbuds that have active noise cancellation (though it admits the ANC isn’t as sturdy as on its WF-1000XM4 model).

The earbuds have a passthrough/transparency mode too, so you can hear “natural” ambient sound. With the Adaptive Sound Control feature, Sony says the LinkBuds S can learn your preferences over time and automatically tweak the sound settings based on your location or activity.

They have 5mm drivers that provide what Sony claims are “powerful bass and stunningly clear vocals.” With the Integrated Processor V1, which is also found on Sony’s WH-1000XM5 headphones, the company aims to bolster sound quality, mitigate distortion and boost ANC. There’s support for high-resolution audio as well, powered by Sony’s LDAC codec and DSEE Extreme upscaling.

In addition, LinkBuds S have Sony’s Speak-to-Chat feature. The idea is that the earbuds will be able to automatically detect your voice. They will pause the audio and switch on the passthrough mode when you start talking. There’s a feature called Auto Play as well. This allows LinkBuds S to play or resume audio based on your activity when you put them in or end a call. However, the functionality is somewhat limited for now — it currently works with Spotify and Endel.

Elsewhere, the earbuds have an IPX4 water resistance rating, so they should be able to withstand bad weather and workouts. There’s built-in Alexa functionality too.

Sony says LinkBuds S have a battery life of six hours if ANC is switched on. You’ll get another 14 hours of ANC listening time thanks to the charging case. Through a quick-charge function, you’ll get up to an hour of extra use after five minutes of charging time.

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Great, there’s a buy now, pay later service for NFTs

For those who desperately yearn to own a certificate of authenticity for a URL pointing to an ugly ape illustration or another popular non-fungible token, there’s a buy now, pay later (BNPL) service they can use to finance their purchases. The offering from Teller works with some of the more notable NFT collections, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Adidas Originals: Into the Metaverse. It runs on the Polygon blockchain and has a fittingly terrible name: Ape Now, Pay Later.

“Buying NFTs is one of the core things Web3 consumers want to do right now,” Teller founder and CEO Ryan Berkun told Decrypt. “Buy now, pay later is a no-brainer.” No wisecrack is necessary at this juncture.

Like other BNPL services, Tether requires a down payment. When someone sees a compatible NFT they want on the OpenSea marketplace, they can use Teller’s service to signal their intention to buy it. That person will need to fork over between 25 and 50 percent of the NFT’s price at the outset. Teller’s platform will then try to match them with a lender, who is another user.

If the lender accepts the proposal, they’ll transfer the remaining cryptocurrency needed to buy the NFT from OpenSea. The NFT will then be held in an escrow wallet. If the buyer pays off what they borrowed on time, they’ll receive the NFT. Otherwise, the lender can claim the NFT and sell it if they wish. Lenders can also set interest rates for the repayments.

Considering the volatility of the cryptocurrency market and the state of the global economy, buying an NFT through a BNPL service seems like a bad idea. Sure, cryptocurrency prices have cratered in recent months (which played a role in victims of the Axie Infinity hack losing significant sums), but there’s a chance they could jump back up again. Suddenly, those BNPL payments could get a lot more expensive. Buyers only have 90 days to make the repayments too.

The NFT market has bottomed out too. Bloomberg notes that the base price for a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT was around 90 Ethereum (around $110,000 at the time of writing). That’s down around 40 percent since May.

NFL commissioner says the league’s own streaming service will launch ahead of the 2022 season

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has confirmed the league will launch its own streaming service ahead of the 2022 season. “The consumers want it, so we’re very excited about what NFL+ is going to be,” Goodell told CNBC. “It’s really in an early stage. I think over the years it will continue to grow. It will be an important strategy for us going forward.”

Goodell declined to reveal details about pricing, what exactly NFL+ will offer and precisely when it will arrive. However, he said that information will be announced in a few weeks. A report previously suggested that NFL+ will debut this month. With pre-season games getting underway in early August, that timing makes sense.

According to a May report from Sports Business Journal, NFL+ may cost $5 per month. It’s expected to grant fans access to some live games on phones and tablets — the ones that they’d be able to see on local TV in their market. Previously, carriers and Yahoo (Engadget’s parent company) streamed such games, but those deals have expired.

Meanwhile, Goodell said the league is likely to partner with a streaming service for NFL Sunday Ticket, with an announcement expected by the fall. “I clearly believe we’ll be moving to a streaming service,” Goodell said.

Amazon, Apple and ESPN+ owner Disney are among those who have reportedly submitted bids. Goodell said discussions have been going on for over a year. 

Goodell acknowledged that the current partnership with DirecTV, which will end after the 2022 season, had worked well for the NFL. However, he pointed to the new opportunities that the likes of Apple and Amazon can open up — especially since fans likely won’t be prompted to sign up for a satellite TV package too.

“We really believe that these new platforms give us an ability to innovate beyond where we are today and make the experience for our consumers so much better,” Goodell said. “I think this will make it more accessible for fans.”

NASA reveals details about James Webb Space Telescope’s first full-color images

It’s only a few days until NASA and its partners on the James Webb Space Telescope project reveal the first full-color images and spectroscopic data captured by the observatory. The agency has shed a little more light on what to expect by revealing the JWST’s initial list of cosmic targets.

One of them is the Carina Nebula, which is around 7,600 light years away. NASA says it’s one of the biggest and brightest nebulae in the sky and it includes stars that are several times larger than the Sun. Another nebula the telescope captured images from is the Southern Ring. That’s roughly 2,000 light years from Earth and is a planetary nebula — it’s an expanding cloud of gas that surrounds a dying star.

Closer to home is the gas planet WASP-96 b, which is almost 1,150 light years away and has around half the mass of Jupiter. NASA will provide a look at the planet’s light spectrum data. Much further from here is Stephan’s Quintet, which is around 290 million light years away in the Pegasus constellation. This is the first compact galaxy group that was discovered, all the way back in 1877. It comprises five galaxies, four of which “are locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters,” NASA said.

Also on Tuesday, NASA, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency will reveal imagery for SMACS 0723. “Massive foreground galaxy clusters magnify and distort the light of objects behind them, permitting a deep field view into both the extremely distant and intrinsically faint galaxy populations,” NASA explained.

A committee of experts from NASA, ESA, CSA and the Space Telescope Science Institute spent five years determining the first targets for Webb’s instruments. The full-color images and spectroscopic data that JSWT captured will be revealed on July 12th at 10:30AM ET. You’ll be able to view them on NASA’s website.

This marks an important step for JWST as it marks the official beginning of the observatory’s general science operations. The aim is to provide us with more detailed images and information about the earliest stars and galaxies as well as potentially habitable exoplanets. After launch in December, it took several months for the JWST to reach its destination and prepare for full operation. We’re very close to finding out just what the observatory is capable of.

New York law requires gun permit applicants to submit social media accounts for review

As of September 1st, New York residents who want to carry concealed handguns will need to submit their social media accounts as part of their permit application. They’ll need to provide details of active and inactive accounts from the previous three years, along with at least four references.

The accounts will be used to review the applicant’s “character and conduct,” according to the Associated Press. Those seeking a permit need to show that they have “the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others.” Local sheriffs’ staff, judges and country clerks will be tasked with looking at social media accounts for warning signs.

The measure was included in legislation that Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law last week. The legislation was passed to enact some gun restrictions following a Supreme Court ruling determining that most people have the right to carry a handgun for their own protection.

Hochul acknowledged that shooters often share details or hints of plans to harm others online. The person accused of killing 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas in May reportedly harassed and threatened to hurt girls and young women on social media apps. Suspects of other mass shootings have posted manifestos online before attacks took place.

Critics have taken issue with the social media provision of the legislation. It’s unclear how the state will address concerns over privacy and free speech, and how it will assess the intent of applicants’ social media posts.

Peter Kehoe, the executive director of the New York Sheriffs’ Association, argued that the law infringes rights under the Second Amendment and suggested local officials may not actually review an applicant’s social media accounts. “I don’t think we would do that,” Kehoe told the AP. “I think it would be a constitutional invasion of privacy.” Others have expressed concern about the law in relation to surveillance of people of color.