Tesla just got a major new rival; Latest Obamacare repeal is dead

From vacuums to vehicles: Dyson has been secretly working on electric cars for two years, planning to funnel more than $2.5 billion into developing the vehicles and solid-state batteries to power them. Most competitors, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, are using lithium batteries for their models, but Dyson promised a “radically different” car with smaller, more efficient batteries by 2020 or 2021. Founder James Dyson predicts electric vehicles will be the company’s largest revenue source within a few years. The industry is heating up, with electric or hybrid cars set to comprise more than half of vehicles sold globally by 2040, according to forecasts; and another slew of major automakers, including Volkswagen, Volvo, and Mercedes, are about to join the fray. • Share your thoughts: #DysonCar

GOP lawmakers pulled the plug on their latest effort to replace Obamacare. Lindsey Graham said the Senate wouldn’t vote on the current health bill but would revisit the issue after tackling tax reform. The Graham-Cassidy health bill was dealt a death blow Monday, when Susan Collins of Maine became the third Republican senator to say definitively that she opposed the law — one too many for the GOP-controlled chamber. • Share your thoughts: #GrahamCassidy

Twitter is getting more verbose. Twitter, struggling with sluggish growth, is experimenting with one of its core features in a bid to engage more users. The social network is testing longer tweets — doubling the 140-character limit to 280 — with select accounts before potentially rolling it out more broadly. "When people don't have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters, we see more people tweeting," said Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen. But the Internet wasn’t too happy: “They focused on Twitter screwing up the one thing it’s always done right,” explains WIRED. • Share your thoughts: #TwitterDoubled

While you were streaming: Visitors to Showtime.com and sister site ShowtimeAnywhere.com were mining cryptocurrency without even knowing it. Code embedded in the two websites deployed users’ computer processing power to mine for a digital currency called Monero, Gizmodo reports. It is unclear who added the script, which is said to have slowed computers by 60%; the culprits could have been hackers, or even Showtime or parent company CBS. The code itself isn’t malicious — its creator Coinhive aims to help websites generate income without using ads — but “malware developers have quickly begun to add it to their toolbox of scams,” explains Gizmodo. • Share your thoughts: #ShowtimeMining

A sunnier Silicon Valley: With its great weather and proximity to Hollywood, Los Angeles is fast becoming the perfect home to a new wave of tech startups, says CNBC. In 2016, VCs invested $4.2 billion in LA-based tech firms, a 38% increase from 2015. That's a far cry from the $6.5 billion in funding doled out to Silicon Valley businesses that same year, but the City of Angels is quickly gaining ground; the region also produces some 20,000 engineering grads each year, from top institutions like CalTech, USC, and UCLA. • Share your thoughts: #LATechHub

Idea of the Day: It’s inescapable: How you dress matters. Whether you’re a techie in Zuckerberg-inspired hoodies or a suited-up Wall Street banker, clothes help shape how people think of you — but it's okay to stand out from the crowd. “The goal should always be to match the person on the inside to the person on the outside,” explains brain scientist and entrepreneur Jeff Stibel (who’s currently rocking a “1970s throwback” look). “Show some respect by adhering to your company’s dress code, but pay equal respect to yourself.”

“My advice is to keep it simple: dress for who you are, what you want to become, and how you think of yourself.”