Jon Wiley announced today that he is leaving Google after a nearly 15-year career. The designer played a big role in unifying the company’s design language at the start of the last decade.
Wiley joined Google as a product designer in 2006. Three years later he became head of design for Search and led the product through three major designs and the big transition from desktop to mobile…
In a notable technology push, Walmart is giving 740,000 US employees a Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro that’s preloaded with a new internal app to help customers. This Android phone will also be available for personal usage.
This large-scale phone distribution is driven by a…
In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):
US president Joe Biden’s electric vehicles plan includes boosting battery recycling in the US.
Germany is upping its wind and solar 2030 targets, according to a draft law seen by Reuters.
UnderstandSolar is a free service…
With $438,000 in pre-orders, Raine One electric scooter founders bail, won’t issue refunds
June 5, 2021
The Raine One electric scooter was supposed to be a giant leap forward for the industry, promising higher performance and a sexier design at a lower price. But after collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in pre-orders on Kickstarter and running over a year past the original delivery date, the Enova design team behind the Raine One scooter announced today that they would be stopping…
Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia have figured out how to extract lithium, an essential part of electric vehicle batteries, from seawater in a more cost-effective way.
The study, just published in the journal Energy…
Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla working to standardize browser extension development
June 5, 2021
Google, Apple, and the other major browser vendors today announced a WebExtensions Community Group (WECG) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to “work together to advance a common browser extension platform.”
Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari), Microsoft (Edge), and…
The Google Assistant preferences page allows you to sign in and select what services to use on Smart Displays and speakers. A small tweak today sees Google Assistant separate settings for “Photos” from “Videos.”
Since Assistant’s launch, Google has offered a unified “Videos & Photos” menu that first lists streaming services. The bottom of this page is home to a toggle for…
Tesla has officially applied to manufacture battery cells at Gigafactory Berlin. It’s expected to be among the first locations to produce Tesla’s new 4680 cell.
At its “Battery Day” earlier this year, Tesla unveiled its own battery cell, the Tesla 4680, and…
With the launch of the Pixel 5 and 4a 5G last year, Photos got a redesigned editing experience focused on smart suggestions and more granular controls. A small tweak today sees the Markup tools for drawing and adding text get elevated in the Google Photos editor.
Last…
The proposed U.S. Navy shipbuilding budget for fiscal 2021 contains only good news for China. The threat of a larger U.S. Navy has disappeared. Reductions of cruisers eliminate long-range offensive and anti-submarine warfare ships. Frigates and Marine expeditionary ship programs are delayed.
Force assessments form the plan for the Navy. An assessment conducted in the 1970s and implemented in…
