Monday briefing: Tesla is reportedly asking suppliers to give its money back

Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, Tesla has asked suppliers to give back its money to help it become profitable, Facebook plans to launch its first internet satellite next year, WhatsApp has limited message forwarding following an Indian government violence warning and more.

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A memo obtained by The Wall Street Journal indicates that Tesla is asking its suppliers to refund money already paid for parts since 2016 (TechCrunch). The memo, which was sent to the newspaper by a global supply manager, requested the return of "a meaningful amount of money" to aid in its continued operation, characterising it as an investment to aid in long-term growth for both firms and apparently indicating that such requests were being made from multiple suppliers. Tesla did not comment on the memo but confirmed that it is seeking price reductions from suppliers from projects dating back to 2016 in order to improve its competitive advantage after recently reaching its production goal of 5,000 Model 3s in a week.

Facebook has confirmed that it is working on satellite broadband technology after WIRED obtained US government communications about its Athena satellite project. Emails obtained through a freedom of information request to the Federal Communications Commission indicate that Facebook subsidiary PointView Tech LLC intends to launch a "small LEO (low Earth orbit) satellite system with a limited duration mission" in early 2019. The stated goal of the project – which is likely to be a testbed for a future microsatellite constellation – is to "efficiently provide broadband access to unserved and underserved areas throughout the world."

WhatsApp has changed its message forwarding rules after the Indian government warned that the service was being used to incite mob violence (BBC News). The move follows a spate of lynchings that have killed at least 18 people after child kidnapping rumours, spread through large WhatsApp groups, prompted people to lynch strangers. All WhatsApp users will get a new – unspecified – limit to the number of chat groups they can forward messages to, while in India, users are now further restricted to sending messages to just five groups at once and the quick forward button has been removed from media messages. The Facebook-owned secure messaging firm says these changes are intended to "help keep WhatsApp the way it was designed to be: a private messaging app."

Long thought an impossible dream, the emerging field of palaeocolour is revolutionising our view of the prehistoric world, turning it from black-and-white into glorious technicolour (WIRED). Finding evidence of colour in the fossil record will do much more than simply tell us what hue to paint a T-Rex. Bones can fossilise. but behaviour does not. “When we look at the animals and plants we see in the world around us we see striking colours and colour patterns,” says Maria McNamara from the University of Cork. “Animals use colour for camouflage, for avoiding predators, for mating signals and also for signalling within their social group. So evidence of colour in animals has the potential to tell us about this very enigmatic aspect of the biology of ancient organisms.”

The first full trailer for Disenchantment, the forthcoming Netflix series from The Simpsons and Futurama creator Matt Groening, has landed (Engadget). It introduces the background to protagonist Princess Bean's boozy coming-of-age adventures and hits all the right notes when it comes to Groening's characteristic art style, although it remains to be seen whether its humour will shine as brightly as Futurama's did in its heyday, or whether that humour will still be a fit for today's audiences. Disenchantment's first 10-episode season comes to the streaming service on August 17.

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Even for Google, $5 billion isn't insignificant. In the last financial year, revenues at parent company Alphabet hit $110.8 billion, up $20bn on the previous period. The EU's antitrust fine, which competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager doled out this week, has certainly made executives in Silicon Valley sit up and listen. But the money is the least of Google's headaches. While it appeals the EU's decision, in a process that will likely take several years, it also has to make changes to its Android system within 90 days.

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