Tesla’s federal tax credit dropped, but other EVs still have the full amount

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To anyone dreaming of buying a Tesla electric vehicle: Your timing is terrible.

Today is July 1, and for Tesla, that means $1,875 less of a federal tax credit is available for buying an electric vehicle. The federal credit started at $7,500, but then once Tesla hit 200,000 electric vehicles sold (since 2010) it started to shrink. 

Tesla pricing is already confusing, but the tax incentive is pretty straightforward. Tesla hit the threshold last year and it was halved to $3,750 in the beginning of 2019. Six months later, it’s half of that with $1,875 in subsidies. Other tax incentives at the state and local levels follow a different schedule, as Tesla lays out on its website.  Read more…

More about Tesla, Electric Vehicles, Tech, Elon Musk, and Transportation

This iPhone game could help heart surgeons save lives

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Sam Glassenberg is no doctor, but he was happy to perform a colonoscopy before a crowd of hundreds in Los Angeles this June.

“This polyp is attached to a blood vessel, so if you try to remove it, it bleeds,” he explained. Blood gushed while the crowd winced and moaned.

No, Glassenberg was not operating on a real patient. He was at the Social Innovation Summit in Los Angeles, showcasing a colonoscopy “game” that his company, Level Ex, has developed to help train doctors. 

“We capture the challenges of the practice of medicine — diagnosis, clinical challenges, procedural challenges — and we capture them as video game mechanics,” Glassenberg told Mashable. Read more…

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John Oliver slammed Amazon working conditions and this exec wasn’t happy

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Shed a tear for Dave Clark. 

The Amazon senior vice president is having a bad day after a television show he likes, Last Week Tonight, called his company to account for the way it treats its warehouse workers. Can you believe the gall of host John Oliver? Dave Clark is a fan, after all. 

Clark made his displeasure known via Twitter, where he repeatedly insisted that Oliver has it all wrong.

“As a fan of the show, I enjoy watching John make an entertaining case for the failings of companies, governments and most recently – Mount Everest,” wrote Clark. “But he is wrong on Amazon. Industry-leading $15 minimum wage and comprehensive benefits are just one of many programs we offer…” Read more…

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Aziz Ansari returns to standup with upcoming Netflix special

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Aziz Ansari is dropping a surprise standup special with Spike Jonze on Netflix. Though the special’s immediacy is surprising, Ansari has spent months returning to performing and touring standup, after a 2018 hiatus instigated by accusations of sexual misconduct.

Ansari was accused of inappropriate behavior during a date in a widely contested exposé on babe.net in January 2018 (the site has since folded after years of mismanagement). He issued a public statement and then disappeared almost completely from the spotlight for several months. By fall, Ansari was workshopping new material at New York’s Comedy Cellar. By winter, he was discussing the babe.net piece and the date that led to it in his standup (he also joined Paleyfest’s Parks and Recreation reunion). Read more…

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What to know about the huge losses of Antarctic sea ice

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The giant donut of ice encircling Antarctica is volatile.

This ring of sea ice around the continent — which grows each winter and largely melts each summer — had been gradually increasing in size for 36 years, since reliable satellite measurements came online in 1979. But in late 2014, things changed dramatically. Between 2014 and 2017, the average sea ice extent plummeted, each year losing an area of ice (280,000 square miles) larger than the size of France.

“It’s just a huge decrease,” marveled NASA scientist Claire Parkinson, who for over 40 years has used satellites to track sea ice trends in Earth’s frigid polar worlds. Read more…

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Revolut launches new, effortless way to donate to charities

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Revolut is a UK-based financial services company that offers clients a bank account and a pre-paid card, with many of its services free or incurring a lower fee than you’d get from a typical bank. It’s now also offering a new feature that makes it really easy to donate to charities — every time you make a payment. 

The feature, called Donations, lets you round up your Revolut card payments and donate the spare change to a charity of your choice. The service is kicking off with three charities: ILGA-Europe, Save the Children and WWF. 

SEE ALSO: You can now donate through stickers in Instagram Stories Read more…

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Android might finally get a better AirDrop alternative

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Google might finally deliver a viable version of AirDrop for Android phones.

The company is testing a new Android feature called “Fast Share” that would allow phone owners to wirelessly transmit photos, text, and other files to nearby devices using Bluetooth. The currently unreleased feature was uncovered by two separate publications, 9to5Google and XDA Developers.

According to screenshots posted by the publications, Fast Share allows you to share photos, text, and URLs with devices that are nearby even if you don’t have an internet connection. Interestingly, the list of devices in the screenshots includes an iPhone as well as a Chromebook and Pixel 3 phone, suggesting the intention is for Fast Share to enable cross-platform sharing. Read more…

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This sneaky kitten is a terrible and adorable little stalker

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Cats are natural predators. They can’t help but hunt and stalk. This one just happens to be exceedingly bad at it.

The 8-week-old kitten in question belongs to Twitter user @_TakivaBreanna. Her baby cat has developed a habit of hiding just behind a wall whenever she knows her human is approaching and then leaping out at just the right moment to surprise her much larger prey.

That’s the apparent intent, anyway. The execution… could be better. See for yourself.

My 8 week old kitten started doing this thing to where she will know i’m about to come in the room and she will hide by the bathroom door and jump out to scare me when i’m walking up. ? just thought I’d share this cuteness ? pic.twitter.com/SOz1ckGGpr

— BAE ? (@_TakivaBreanna) June 30, 2019 Read more…

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Facebook’s Libra hasn’t launched, but big banks are already taking notice

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Facebook has only just revealed its far-reaching cryptocurrency plans, but Libra is already prompting global financial institutions to take action.

Central banks are reportedly becoming more interested in the idea of creating their own digital currencies following Facebook’s Libra reveal, as evidenced by new comments from the head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 

As the bank used by central bankers. BIS is, in the words of Quartz, among the “the stodgiest of stodgy institutions.” But BIS bank head Agustín Carstens now says central banks have to take digital currency much more seriously as a result of Facebook’s move. Read more…

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