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Lucid Motors has drastically reduced its production target, again

Luxury EV startup Lucid Motors changed its yearly production target again, lowering it to an expected output of between 6,000 and 7,000 vehicles, the company announced today. That’s only a fraction of the 20,000 cars that Lucid initially promised to deliver in 2022. The Tesla competitor has only produced 1,405 vehicles so far this year, giving it a mere four months to build thousands of new cars.

Supply chain woes and a shortage of parts and raw materials are to blame for the slow output, the company claims. In a call with investors, the California-based company’s CEO Peter Rawlinson said it is planning a number of structural changes to amp up production. “Our revised production guidance reflects the extraordinary supply chain and logistics challenges we encountered,” said Rawlinson. “We’ve identified the primary bottlenecks, and we are taking appropriate measures – bringing our logistics operations in-house, adding key hires to the executive team, and restructuring our logistics and manufacturing organization.”

On top of ongoing production struggles, this May the company was forced to recall all of its 2022 Air EVs due to wiring issues — a total of over 1,000 cars. Such challenges haven’t appeared to impact demand for the luxury vehicles. So far, there have been 37,000 reservations for Lucid Motor’s all-electric sedan, the Lucid Air, the company disclosed in the call. On top of that, Lucid plans to sell over 100,000 cars to the government of Saudi Arabia — which poured over $1 billion into the company and owns a 62 percent stake.

Google decided having two apps called Meet was a good idea

Google is moving forward with its merger of Duo and Meet, if not quite as elegantly as some might like. TechCrunchreports Google is rebranding Duo for Android and iOS as the Meet app, complete with the video calling-centric logo. The company had already migrated many of Meet’s features. However, the old Meet app isn’t going away for now — instead, it will be rebranded as “Google Meet (original).”

All Duo users should see the rebrand by September. You’ll have to use your Google account for any meeting features, but familiar elements (like effects and contacts) will remain intact. The original Meet app will continue to work, but won’t get ad hoc calling and will eventually disappear.

As a spokesperson explained in June, the merger is meant to adapt to the “evolving needs” of video calling, including meetings, by providing a unified experience. To some extent, it’s also further acknowledgment that Google’s communication app mix had grown too complex. The tech firm plans to shut down Hangouts this fall to focus on Chat, for instance, and it dropped Allo in early 2019. While the old Meet’s existence could still prove confusing, it should soon be clearer as to just which Google apps you should use for work meetings or keeping up with friends.

Facebook Live Shopping is coming to an end in favor of Reels

Facebook Live Shopping events appear to be another casualty of Meta’s shift to short-form video. According to an announcement on the company’s website, live shopping events on Facebook will retire on October 1st. The little-known feature let Facebook B…

College textbook maker Pearson eyes NFTs to claim a cut of second-hand sales

NFT advocates often tout the technology’s ability to grant the creator a cut of second-hand sales as one of its major attributes. Artists can earn from one of their digital creations years after first selling it. Others are looking at NFTs to earn a buck from the secondary market too, including the publishers of college textbooks.

Pearson, which said in 2019 it would focus on digital textbook sales, wants a piece of the action. “In the analogue world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times, and we would only participate in the first sale,” CEO Andy Bird told Bloomberg this week. “The move to digital helps diminish the secondary market, and technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life.”

There’s an obvious reason why students resell textbooks. They’re expensive! Students often have to spend hundreds of dollars on required materials each semester — or even hundreds of dollars on a single textbook. Selling on a textbook when it’s no longer needed just makes sense.

Turning textbooks into NFTs and banking on the blockchain to track ownership of them (from “owner A to owner B to owner C,” as Bird put it) seems unnecessary, though. Digital rights management already exists and doesn’t need to go anywhere near cryptocurrency. Pearson has a $15 per month subscription service for its textbooks as well.

Bird could simply be bloviating about a zeitgeisty technology to try and keep Pearson’s investors happy — even though NFT sales have plummeted this year. In any case, there’s still not much he or Pearson could do to stop students from screenshotting every page of a textbook before selling it on.

Twitter hopes to revive Spaces with themed stations and daily digests

Twitter is overhauling its Spaces audio chatrooms. The company has confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s developing an experiment for the Spaces tab in its social media app. While it didn’t say just what that would entail, early screenshots of test code from Watchful hint at a revised interface with major feature additions. You could browse themed stations (such as music or sports), or play a personalized daily digest with a handful of content.

The company warned TechCrunch that the screens were outdated and didn’t reflect what you’d see in the final product. The revamp appears to take advantage of Spaces’ support for topic tags that help you quickly find a relevant chatroom.

The rethink could help newcomers discover Spaces, not to mention expand it beyond the business and cryptocurrency users that frequently dominate the discussions. While it’s not clear how many people currently use Spaces, the current interface is aimed more at veteran users.

Whether or not the update is timely is another matter. The audio chatroom phenomenon has lost some of its momentum, with pioneer Clubhouse laying off staff as it shifts strategy. While Twitter, Meta and Spotify all leaped into the field soon after Clubhouse’s rise to prominence, it’s not clear these piggyback efforts took off. Internal data obtained by The Washington Post suggested that Spaces was already in decline last summer with under 1 million users by July 2021. The audio chat bubble might have popped a while back, in other words, and there’s no guarantee a Spaces redesign will help.

Winamp, your parents’ favorite MP3 software, is back

Winamp is the music software that just won’t die, apparently. Pitchforknotes that the developers recently released the classic MP3 program’s first update (5.9 RC1 Build 9999) in four years. While it isn’t a dramatic change on the outside, the producers described it as the “culmination” of years of hard work, including two teams and a pandemic-dictated hiatus. There are significant under-the-hood changes, including a migration to a much newer development platform.

The software has a long history. Winamp gained fame as the playback software of choice during the early music download era — it was the home for all the MP3s you (or possibly your parents) got from fledgling digital stores and peer-to-peer apps. It played numerous common formats, and was well-known for its highly customizable interface skins and visualizers.

Parent company AOL (formerly Engadget’s owner) shut down work in 2013, years after rival apps and streaming options like Spotify took hold, but that wasn’t the end. Radionomy bought Winamp in 2014 to aid its online music plans. and the team has lately promised a “totally remastered” experience with podcast and radio features as well as a closer connection to artists.

Winamp’s return won’t revive the turn-of-the-millennium digital zeitgeist. Streaming still dominates, and there’s a chance you listen on your phone or smart speaker more than you do your PC. If the llama-themed startup sound is permanently etched in your brain, though, this could be a welcome dose of nostalgia.