Technology

Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess this week announced plans to suspend production at European factories over COVID-19 fears. The news will impact a number of prominent makes under the umbrella of the worldlargest car maker (by sales).

Plants in Spain, Portugal and Italy will be suspended before the end of this week, with VWnative Germany and other European countries getting ready to follow suit. Production suspension is expect to last two or three weeks, per Reuters. Of course, these numbers are always subject to flux, depending on how the remainder of the pandemic plays out.

&Given the present significant deterioration in the sales situation and the heightened uncertainty regarding parts supplies to our plants,& Diess said, &production is to be suspended in the near future at factories operated by Group brands.&

A number of automakers have run into major supply issues, as China was the first country to be hit by the outbreak. In many cases, however, production has begun to ramp back up, as authorities in the country had taken dramatic actions to stem the spread of the virus. As of earlier this week, some 31 of the 33 VW factories are up and running in the country.

Production continues at many U.S. plants, though executives are monitoring the situation and looking to adjust production schedules. Other automakers, including Fiat Chrysler, PSA Group and Renault, announced the shutdown of European plants earlier this week. In addition to issues of employee health and safety, travel restrictions have made it untenable for many factories to continue production.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe may be thrown out of whack this year. As movies are delayed over coronavirus, Black Widow's May 1 release date isn't just looking less likely – it almost sounds impossible. Disney hasn't said anything about the movie being delayed yet, but at this point it's a very hard environment in which to release a mega b

Itno secret I&m a fan of the reMarkable, a tablet with a paper-like display thatfocused on text and sketching rather than rich media and games. The sequel to the original, announced today, looks to make a good thing even better.

Designed for the creation and consumption of monochromatic content like long documents, e-books, notes and sketches, the reMarkable set itself apart as a more minimalist alternative (or complement) to the likes of the iPad or Surface. The device was crowdfunded and has sold more than 100,000 units; meanwhile, the company has grown and attracted a $15 million A round. One sees in retrospect that the money helped launch this successor.

The most obvious change is to the design. It has a bold asymmetrical look with a chrome band along the left side, indicating the tabletmain use as an alternative to a paper notebook: Hold it with your left hand and write with your right. Sorry, lefties.

The new tablet is just 4.7 mm (0.19 in) thick, thinner than the iPad Pro and Sonycompeting Digital Paper tablets, both of which are 5.9 mm. Letbe honest — at these levels of thinness itgetting hard to tell the difference, but itan accomplishment nevertheless.

Probably the best thing about the original reMarkable, however, was how good it felt to write and draw on, and the company has spent the last few years improving that wherever they can. For one thing, the already very small delay of about 40 ms between touching the screen with the stylus and a line appearing has been nearly cut in half.

Thatan area where every milli-unit counts. The lag on a real pen and paper is zero, of course, and while the reMarkable was good, there was still a very slight lag, especially when making large gestures or lines. As the company explained to me:

The hardware to further push the latency down further did not exist, so we decided to invent the technology ourselves. We redesigned both the hardware and software architecture that controls the display through a completely new display controller that changes how the display itself is electrically controlled, down to the voltages and electrical currents applied in complex waveforms to each individual pixel, millions at a time. The result is a 20ms latency, smoother ink flow with less jitter, and a completely uncontested digital writing experience perfected.

I intend to investigate this myself once I get my hands on one of the new devices. The company worked with E Ink, the main manufacturer and investor in e-paper type displays, to accomplish the new display, which has the same specs as the previous one otherwise: 10.3 inches, monochrome, 1872×1404 resolution for 226 DPI.

Herethe inevitable, yet well-executed, aspirational promo video:

The software running on the reMarkable has received several major updates since the product made its debut, adding things like handwriting recognition, a new interface, better performance and so on. But one of the most requested features is finally coming with the new device: saving articles from the web.

Unfortunately they didn&t answer my specific request of adding Pocket integration, deciding instead to roll their own with a Chrome plugin that sends a reformatted web page to the device. Unfortunately I use Firefox, but I can make an exception for this.

The company is claiming a 3x boost to battery life, using the same 3,000 mAh battery, based on performance improvements throughout and a more efficient (but more powerful) dual-core ARM processor. That means two weeks of use and 90 days of standby. This is welcome news, because frankly the battery life and power management on the last one were not great.

Lastly, the &Marker& itself is getting an upgrade I&ve desperately wanted since the first day I tried the tablet: an eraser. You could always erase by selecting that tool, of course, but now one of the tips of the stylus will activate it automatically, a feature borrowed from Wacom and accomplished in collaboration with them. Of course, the eraser-enabled &Marker Plus& costs $99, $50 more than the plain one. They both stick onto the tablet via magnet, though.

&We&ve worked closely with Wacom the last two years to create Marker Plus, the most beautiful pen we have ever made,& reMarkable co-founder and CEO Magnus Wanberg told TechCrunch. &In addition to premium materials and design, it features an end-cap eraser that works seamlessly with the reMarkable software. We&ve fined-tuned the eraser sensor in collaboration with Wacomengineering team to make sure it looks and feels like just a real eraser on paper.&

But overall you&re looking at a much cheaper package. The reMarkable, for all its merits, was not cheap at $700. The reMarkable 2 will sell for $399 if you pre-order, and comes with a Marker and a nice folio case. For anyone who was on the fence about the first one, the sequel may prove irresistible.

All four major UK mobile operators have been affected by a fault that has prevented some users from making calls.

O2, Three and Vodafone have all confirmed that some customers had encountered difficulties as a result of a “cross-industry” issue.

“There was a relatively short lived problem with around 9 per cent of voice calls on 3G not getting t

If you're looking to snag a discount on the Apple iPhone, then you're in luck. For a limited time, Sprint is offering price cuts on the iPhone lineup, which include deals on the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, XR, and iPhone XS. You can save on monthly payments and get a $300 prepaid Mastercard when you bring your phone and number to Sprint.

Starting now

If you've just started working from home you may understandably be wondering where to start, and how to make sure you're as productive, happy and healthy as possible.

In this guide, we'll show you all the essential kit you need to work from home successfully, as well as giving you tips and tricks on working remotely.

With many of us now expected to