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- SiriusXM launches music channel dedicated to TikTok hits
- Clubhouse removed personal info from Afghan users' accounts as a safety measure
- Four new games land on... the Atari Lynx
- First look: Cadillac’s luxury EV debut seems like a winner
- ICYMI: We open (and close) the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3
- Google has already discontinued the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a with 5G
- Hitting the Books: How Tesla engineers solved the problem of exploding EV batteries
- Recommended Reading: Apple's inside man with the leakers
- GM expands fire risk recall to cover all Chevy Bolts sold worldwide
| SiriusXM launches music channel dedicated to TikTok hits Posted: 21 Aug 2021 05:00 PM PDT You can't escape viral TikTok songs. They're everywhere, and you're bound to hear them over and over again if you spend time on any social media platform. If you actually like listening to TikTok earworms, you can now also listen to them on SiriusXM. The satellite radio service has launched TikTok Radio, a full-fledged music channel dedicated to viral hits from the platform that's now available in vehicles, on desktop, connected devices and on the SXM app. According to the companies, the channel will sound like a radio version of the platform's "For You" feed. In fact, some of TikTok's most popular creators will be presenting music and sharing stories about the viral hits you can listen to. They named Billy (@8illy), Cat Haley (@itscathaley), HINDZ (@hindzsight), Lamar Dawson (@dirrtykingofpop) and Taylor Cassidy (@taylorcassidyj), in particular, though the channel will feature more creators in the future. One of the shows you can look forward to is The TikTok Radio Trending Ten, which will have the creators presenting the current most popular songs on the platform. It will stream every Friday at 3PM ET with replays throughout the weekend. You can also listen to it anytime through the SXM app. DJ Habibeats (@djhabibeats) and DJ CONST (@erinconstantineofficial) will also serve as the channel's resident DJs and will mix trending hits live simultaneously on TikTok and Tiktok Radio every Fridays and Saturdays starting at 7 PM ET. Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content Officer of SiriusXM, said in a statement:
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| Clubhouse removed personal info from Afghan users' accounts as a safety measure Posted: 21 Aug 2021 02:45 PM PDT Earlier this week, Facebook introduced tools to help people in Afghanistan lock down their accounts. Clubhouse, the social audio app, is doing the same thing. The company announced on Twitter that it was proactively making some changes to the privacy settings for users in Afghanistan. Specifically, for users who "haven't been active," Clubhouse is hiding their photo and bio and making it harder to find the accounts in search.
Users are free to then add back any information they feel comfortable sharing, and they can also reach out to support to make their account "more discoverable." As noted by The Verge, Clubhouse says that all the actions it is taking are reversible, and that these changes won't affect users' followers. The company also says that users can use pseudonyms rather than real names for safety purposes. This move comes about a month after Clubhouse came out of beta and opened its service to everyone. More crucially, it comes as the Taliban has taken control of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan; the militant organization is using social media to help change perceptions. The US still considers the Taliban a terrorist organization, and as such Facebook has banned all content from the group. There hasn't been a similarly straightforward statement from Clubhouse, but it's clear the company is thinking about how to protect its users in the region. |
| Four new games land on... the Atari Lynx Posted: 21 Aug 2021 01:00 PM PDT If you're a retro gamer, it's hard not to ignore the Atari Lynx. The first color hand-held it might have been, but its small library of games (under 100 official titles) and general mishandling by Atari itself earned it little more than a walk-on role in gaming history for most people. As such, the homebrew and indie scene for the Lynx is pretty thin compared to its contemporaries (the Game Boy and the Game Gear). The system still has its fans, though, (me included) and a few dedicated folks still hold a candle for the chonky handheld, with new titles now more common than they were a decade ago. But the real rarity is the full, physical release. Here are four new games you can play on original hardware, complete with cartridge and box, just as nature intended. For Lynx diehards, there's one destination to gather: AtariAge. And user Fadest (real name, Frédéric Descharmes) is one of the long-standing members of the handheld's forum there. He's perhaps best known for his Yastuna series of puzzle games. His two new releases keep the puzzle trend, but with a shoot-em-up/adventure twist. Descharmes began programming for the Lynx as a way to channel his enthusiasm for retro gaming while he soothed his son to sleep late at night. He came to the Lynx specifically for its technological limitations (although it was advanced for its time). "I like the NES and Game Boy, and even code for them, but in my beginner situation, the Lynx was probably the best choice when I started in 2004," he told Engadget. Fadest Raid on TriCity takes the classic Tetris format and introduces a shoot-em-up component. As the blocks fall, you can't move them or rotate them, but you can shoot them away brick by brick. You score, as normal, by completing lines (and not by shooting), and some of the Tetrominoes contain power-ups or enemies/ways to die. Descharmes already released a pay-what-you-want ROM-only version of Raid on TriCity. "Second Wave" is essentially the same game as a physical release with some new in-game perks. The two most important ones would be the addition of an EEPROM for storing progress/high scores (no retail Lynx games ever had batteries or memory like some Game Boy titles did) and a new story mode which injects some life into an otherwise pick-up-and play time killer. As simple as the game may sound, the hybrid dynamic picks the best elements of both genres and blends them to great effect. As you see blocks falling you have to make a quick decision about whether you want to go for a complete line, or whether a power-up might be more appealing or perhaps you have to sacrifice one to get rid of a baddie behind it. Sometimes this can be a bit of a gamble if a power-up you want has blocks above it that might bring you closer to the upper threshold and thus the end of the game. Likewise, as lines complete and bring any power-ups above it one row down, a helpful bomb can become a death sentence (bombs trigger when a line is completed taking anything one square around it along with it — including your spaceship if you're not careful). The story mode isn't exactly its own adventure, more it serves as a way to break up the game play with some narrative interludes and an element of interactivity in choosing your "path" through a network of levels. The levels themselves are really just more of the same shoot-a-block business, but it makes it feel more like making progress, and thus a game with an end to reach (rather than a high score to beat). Fadest Fadest's second new title is another puzzler, but this time it's more about strategy and fortune. I say fortune, but it's usually mis-fortune to be fair. The game looks like it's going to be a retro space shooter at first glance, but is more akin to a card game. Each turn you'll be presented with an item/card and can only place it one square away in any direction from your last move. But each item/card will either be a scoring opportunity or a penalty of some kind. This simple premise is deceptively addictive. There are four main "cards" to place: A probe, an asteroid (two types!) a mine or a pirate ship. Your job is to surround the asteroids with four probes to earn points (hence the game's name). However, the pirates have other ideas and will disable any probes adjacent to them. This not only robs you of points, but can also be fatal: mines are diffused by surrounding them with probes, and you can only have three "live" ones on the map at any time. This means an ill-placed pirate, or just a string of bad luck with many mine cards can end your mission in a snap. The goal is simple, reach the end of the "deck" while scoring as many points as you can along the way. At first, the game feels frustrating, as if you are merely at the whim of whatever cards are in the pile. And while this is true, you soon learn some strategies to increase your chances of getting to the end and racking up some points to boot. For me, the fun of the game is built right into that frustrating nature. Many times I was killed early on, which only stoked my desire to beat the game and make it to the end. Once you do, you find yourself wanting to then beat your own high score. As with Raid on TriCity, Asteroid Chasers can remember your high scores giving the game longer term appeal. There are also many achievements to unlock (fortunately, also remembered) which will reward you with different music and other goodies giving this relatively simple game a lot more longevity than it first suggests. Songbird ProductionsIf you've paid any attention to Atari's handheld or the Jaguar indie scene in the last 20 years, you'll be familiar with Songbird Productions. Not only is it a popular retailer of rare and homebrew games, its founder, Carl Forhan, is responsible for a number of Lynx titles being saved from obscurity by finding unfinished IP and seeing them through to completion, along with some original titles of his own. One such title is CyberVirus, a first person space shooter. "In CyberVirus, I had to redo all the missions, redo the health and powerup system, and add new features to the game which were not in the original prototype." Forhan told Engadget. I also enjoy the purity of these older, smaller machines where you have to fight for RAM and CPU cycles to do everything. It's a fun challenge for my brain, I suppose." James Trew / Engadget This new title, as the name suggests, is a follow-up to the original CyberVirus. The first version was released almost 20 years ago and is one of the "unfinished" games that Songbird rescued. It's also a rare first-person/3D shooter on the Lynx. Lost Missions is a collection of levels that were also in the original, developed initially by Beyond Games, and presented to Atari as a demo back in 1993. The nine new missions see you take on a familiar cast of robotic foes as you seek to achieve your objective. This could be as simple as destroying some communication towers, but the number of enemies soon ramps up making each mission exponentially harder. You have a selection of weapons at your disposal and a semi-open 3D world to explore, not bad for a console released in 1989. CV-TLM will appeal to fans of early first person shooters like Doom, but instead of a complex map you must navigate open terrain. Thank's to the game's origins, the graphics and gameplay are much nearer to those found in official releases (given that this nearly was one) compared to even some of the more ambitious homebrew titles that have emerged since the Lynx's commercial demise. The result is a fun, frantic shooter that deserved to make it onto shelves back in the '90s. Forhan's given the game the next best thing in this release which comes with a slick, glossy box and a physical cartridge that's indistinguishable from the originals (many homebrew releases, including the above are 3D printed). The catalog of official releases for the Lynx tends to skew toward arcade titles, puzzlers and racing games. There's a little bit of everything for sure, but adventure games and RPGs are generally lacking. Unnamed is a welcome salve, then, for fans of either of those genres. While the game is published by Songbird, it's the work of Marcin Siwek who's other Lynx title — Unseen — was a dark, choose your own adventure style game. Siwek's second title is much more immersive with your onscreen character free to move around, find items and solve puzzles. You awaken in a strange place with no memory of how you got there. Your task is to figure out why and how they find themselves in this strange world. Along your journey you find new rooms to explore and items to help you along the way. It's a classic recipe, but one that lends itself particularly well to the handheld format. Unnamed is refreshing, not just for its playstyle, but as a true indie game (rather than a rescued abandoned title) it has a surprising amount of depth and atmosphere. Within moments of playing, I knew that this is a game that I would truly want to "get into" and complete. As with Descharmes' titles, Unnamed features an EEPROM for saving progress meaning you can pick it up without having to start from scratch every time. The graphics are a good blend of cute and sinister and the music strikes the perfect balance of ambiance without being a distraction. The challenges and puzzles to be solved are pitched just at the right level and there's a genuine sense of wondering if you might have missed something — which might sound annoying, but I think is the hallmark of a good RPG. |
| First look: Cadillac’s luxury EV debut seems like a winner Posted: 21 Aug 2021 11:30 AM PDT As parent company GM begins its rollout of EV's based on the Ultium battery platform, automaker Cadillac is readying its very first electric Caddy, the Lyriq, for production. With a range of over 300 miles, a starting price of $60,000 and all the bells and whistles expected from the brand, the Lyriq could be a surprise hit when it starts landing in dealerships in the first half of 2022. Cadillac gave us an opportunity to check out the vehicle at a studio in Los Angeles and while we can't comment on how well it drives, it does look the part. It's a Caddy with some extra bits of flair afforded to an EV including vertical headlights and taillights that are an homage to the automaker's classic fin era. Reservations for the 2023 Lyriq will open in September. Check the video above for the full story. |
| ICYMI: We open (and close) the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 Posted: 21 Aug 2021 10:15 AM PDT This week was all about smartphones at Engadget. Cherlynn Low spent some time with the Galaxy Z Flip 3 to determine who it's really for. Terrence O'Brien compared and contrasted the Pixel 5a against previous versions to find out where the value lies in the upgraded model. Cherlynn also put the ASUS-Qualcomm Snapdragon smartphone through its paces to see how it stacks up against mainstream devices. The Galaxy Z Flip 3 is now in the same price range as regular flagshipsEngadget Cherlynn Low was upfront about the Galaxy Z Flip 3 in her review. Not only is it the best foldable phone yet with a fast, large screen, neat software tricks and water resistance, but it's also now available at a (relatively) reasonable $1,000. She says it's basically a regular smartphone that folds in half with a satisfying snap. The stronger aluminum, refined hinge and tough screen made it the first foldable she was willing to throw into a purse without worrying about scratching. She liked the widgets available for the Cover Display window, the new color options and the Flex mode, which assisted with one-handed use. Despite that, she still feels the Z Flip 3 is a hard sell. The battery life was woefully short and rarely lasted an entire day, and the software was a bit buggy. While most apps fit nicely on the screen, there was an occasional mismatch of aspect ratios that caused difficulties. For example, the pop-up dialogs in Settlers of Catan disappeared into the edges of the display. Plus, it was hard to find the benefit for more mainstream audiences who could purchase an iPhone or Samsung handset for the same price. For those who are nostalgic or curious enough to buy the Z Flip 3, they 'll find themselves with a capable device that has the best any foldable can offer. Google's Pixel 5a is an incremental (and somewhat boring) updateEngadget Terrence O'Brien is quick to point out that the $449 Pixel 5a is a bit of a stop-gap: The Pixel 4a 5G was a solid offering and the Pixel 6 should be right around the corner. That being said, there's still a few things about the 5a that make it worth considering. While the 5a keeps the same processor, RAM and camera experience as the previous version, it adds IP67 water and dust resistance and an incredible battery. Terrence said the 4,680mAh battery survived through nearly 23 hours of video play before powering down, and was still at 40 percent after 24 hours of general heavy usage. The rest of the features on the 5a include a metal unibody with a matte texture, an upgrade to Gorilla Glass 6 and a 6.34-inch OLED panel with HDR support and 2,400 x 1,080 resolution. Terrence admits that the Snapdragon 765G processor is a bit outdated, but also says that the 5a still felt responsive and quick while reading email or playing The Elder Scrolls: Blades. However, it stuttered a few times while navigating YouTube and editing photos. The camera experience is also excellent, though the same as the features on the 4a 5G: an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, a 12.2-megapixel main lens and a 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle. Overall, Terrence's biggest objection to the 5a was that it was a bit boring in that it's very close to a reproduction of the 4a 5G. The Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders truly isn't for everyoneEngadget Qualcomm and ASUS teamed up to create a smartphone for fans of the Snapdragon chipset, but Cherlynn Low says it's a bit too niche to broadly recommend. With a 6.8-inch screen and weighing in at 210 grams, this is one of the heavier phones that she's tested recently — and its looks differentiate it from the competition. Cherlynn says its rounded-rectangle body, matte blue finish and shiny red accents make it stand out, but she was less fond of the illuminated icon on the rear which can glow on and off. The rest of the $1,499 device includes a 144Hz refresh rate display, comprehensive 5G support and rapid charging. The AMOLED panel runs at a resolution of 2,448 x 1,080 and delivers vibrant colors and deep blacks. However, the 20.4:9 aspect ratio cut off some content like the ends of longer messages in Telegram. The phone includes a pair of wireless Master and Dynamic earbuds to pair with Qualcomm's High Dynamic Range Audio Record to support high-res 24-bit 96kHz audio. However, there were several features that had yet to be released, and the phone did tend to run hot. Cherlynn says unless you're a big Qualcomm fan or really need the refresh rate, you've got better options elsewhere. Loupedeck Live is a control surface ideal for desktop appsEngadget First, James Trew wants you to understand what the Loupedeck Live is: a Mac or PC control surface with multiple configurable dials and buttons. He also wants you to understand what it's best for, which is audio- or image-editing and a workflow of dynamic profiles. When using these profiles, the Loupedeck will automatically switch to the assigned buttons and rotaries you've selected for that program. This means the Live is adaptive and will follow you with a variety of actions and choices as you navigate. That puts it in contrast to the competition, the Elgato Stream Deck, which works as more of a program launcher. The Loupedeck Live offers three models of control surface with each being physically distinct and intended for different uses; James says the Live version looked good on his desk. He particularly liked the mini LCD displays on the buttons, which show what each does, and the rotary dials, which he found useful for volume control or scrolling through a list. James felt the particular strength of the Loupedeck was the large amount of native-app support it offers — not only can it be helpful for streaming, but it will also lend a hand when editing or designing a logo. |
| Google has already discontinued the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a with 5G Posted: 21 Aug 2021 09:12 AM PDT Google just released the excellent and relatively inexpensive Pixel 5a, and the company has also already given us a look at the upcoming Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. So you could easily guess that the Pixel 5 is not long for this world, and you'd be right. According to a statement received by DigitalTrends, Google is done selling the Pixel 5 as well as the Pixel 4a 5G. "With our current forecasts, we expect Google Store in the U.S. to sell out of Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 in the coming weeks following the launch of Pixel 5a (5G). The Pixel 5a (5G) is a great option for customers and delivers valuable hardware upgrades compared to the Pixel 4a (5G), all at a lower price point," Google said to DigitalTrends. On Google's store in the US, both phones are showing as out of stock currently, which means the only Pixel phones currently available are the Pixel 5a (which doesn't arrive until August 26th) and the Pixel 4a, which doesn't have 5G. And since the Pixel 5a is only being sold in the US and Japan, at least for starters, Google will be going without a 5G-capable phone in other markets until the Pixel 6 arrives. That situation will likely be remedied soon — Google announced the Pixel 5 on September 30th last year, so it seems likely that we'll get an official reveal of the Pixel 6 sometime in the next month, as well. Google's Pixel phones have never exactly sold like gangbusters, but it's still somewhat surprising to see them pull the Pixel 5 so quickly in areas where they aren't seeing the 5a. But given that Google is already showing off the Pixel 5's successor, chances are good most people would wait that extra month to get the the company's next flagship. As the first phone with Google's own custom silicon, it's definitely a lot more intriguing than the somewhat stale Pixel 5, anyway. |
| Hitting the Books: How Tesla engineers solved the problem of exploding EV batteries Posted: 21 Aug 2021 08:00 AM PDT Between CEO Elon Musk's often erratic antics, strident competition from existing industry titans, and a public that is still not fully sold on the idea of traveling via electrical charge, Tesla's road to prominence has not been a smooth one. But facing a federal investigation into its driver assist systems, is far from the biggest roadblock the company has navigated. As journalist Tim Higgins explains in his new book, Power Play, back in the early aughts, Tesla's engineering team had to overcome an even tougher challenge: keeping the first iterations of its EVs from randomly exploding. Knopf Doubleday - Penguin Randomhouse From the book POWER PLAY: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century by Tim Higgins, published in the US on August 3, 2021 by Doubleday, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and in the UK on August 5, 2021 by WH Allen. Copyright © 2021 by Tim Higgins. A panicked letter from LG Chem arrived at Tesla with a dire demand: Return its batteries. Just as Tesla was proving it could craft a lithium-ion battery pack on its own, the battery industry was grappling with the danger that cells posed when they were handled incorrectly. AC Propulsion had learned this the hard way months earlier, in one of an increasing number of incidents that sent shudders through the battery industry. En route from Los Angeles to Paris, a shipment of AC Propulsion's batteries caught fire as it was being loaded onto a FedEx airplane while it refueled in Memphis, triggering an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and prompting concerns about how to transport batteries in the future. Personal electronics companies, such as Apple Inc., were recalling devices with lithium-ion batteries out of concern they could overheat and catch fire. In 2004 and 2005, Apple recalled more than 150,000 laptops — with batteries made by LG Chem. When LG Chem realized it had sold a large number of its batteries to a Silicon Valley startup that planned to use all of them for a single device — a car, as it happened — its legal department sent a letter demanding the cells be returned. The battery maker didn't want to be associated with a potentially fiery experiment. [Tesla's first CEO, Martin] Eberhard ignored the request. He had little choice. His bet that Tesla would be able to find a ready battery supplier was proving harder to cover than expected. Without these batteries, there might not be a second chance to get more. Amid all of the attention on lithium-ion batteries, [Tesla Co-Founder/CTO, JB] Straubel thought back to his former house in LA, where he and [Tesla employee number 7, Gene] Berdichevsky celebrated the idea of an electric car by setting cells afire. If struck with a hammer, they put on quite a show. Cars were always in danger of that kind of impact, but there was also a more insidious threat. He began to wonder what might happen if one of the cells in the tightly packed cluster that would form a car's battery pack got too warm. One day in the summer of 2005, he and Berdichevsky decided to find out. With the office cleared out for the day, they went to the parking lot with a brick of cells — a cluster of batteries glued together. They wrapped one of the cells with a wire that would allow them to heat it remotely. Then, from a safe distance, they flicked the heater on. The individual cell quickly rose to more than 266 degrees Fahrenheit (130 degrees Celsius), causing the battery to flash into a blinding flame as the temperature spiked to 1,472 degrees, then explode altogether, sending the remaining skin of the battery into the sky like a rocket. Then another cell in the pack caught fire, launching into the air. Soon all of the cells were on fire. Bang. Bang. Bang. Straubel recognized the implications of his amateur pyrotechnics. If an incident like the one he cooked up were to happen in the wild, it could spell the end for Tesla. The next day, after they disclosed their experiment to Eberhard, they showed him the scorched pavement, pitted with holes from the night before. Eberhard urged them to be more careful, but he couldn't deny that more testing was needed. He gathered the team at his rural house on the hills above Silicon Valley for more experiments. This time, they dug a pit and put a brick of cells in it, then covered it with plexiglass. They heated one of the cells and again the batteries ignited, causing a chain of explosions. Straubel had been right: this wasn't good. They needed outside help to understand exactly what they were dealing with — the team needed battery experts. Days later, a small group of battery consultants were gathered with what at first seemed like a manageable message: Yes, even the best battery manufacturers produced a random cell that would have a defect, causing it to short and catch fire. But the odds were remote. "It happens really, really infrequently," one of the consultants said. "I mean like between one in a million and one in ten million cells." But Tesla planned to put about 7,000 cells in a single car. Sitting near Straubel, Berdichevsky pulled out his calculator and computed the likelihood that a cell in one of their cars might catch fire by chance. "Guys, that's like between one in 150 and one in 1,500 cars," he said. And not only would they be churning out cars with defective batteries that, if ignited, could set off a chain reaction, but their cars could be detonating in the garages of the richest of the rich—burning down mansions and lighting up local TV news. The mood in the room shifted. The questions became more urgent: Was there anything that could be done to avoid defective cells? Nope. Random cells were always going to get too hot and spark thermal runaway — basically an explosion sparked by overheating. Straubel and the team returned to their work deflated. The stakes couldn't have been higher for Tesla. This wasn't just about solving a hard problem, one that threatened to drain limited resources and derail development of the Roadster. If they forged a solution that seemed to work, only to see Tesla vehicles catch fire in years to come, the company would be doomed. And it would be a failure not just for Tesla; their dreams of the electric car could be set back a generation. They could not only cause injury or death, they might kill the electric car in the process. If they wanted to truly become an automaker, they had to face the challenge that GM, Ford, and others had been dealing with for a hundred years: They had to ensure they were putting safe cars on the roadway. A solution to thermal runaway could amount to a true breakthrough, one that would set Tesla apart from the auto industry for years to come. Using lithium-ion batteries had seemed like a smart idea, one that a number of thinkers had alighted on. But figuring out how to use them without turning the car into a ticking time bomb could be their greatest innovation. They stopped work on all aspects of the Roadster project and formed a special committee to find a solution. The team set up whiteboards, listing what they knew and what they needed to learn. They began running daily tests. They'd configure a battery pack with the cells spaced differently, to see if there was an ideal distance for containing chain reactions. They tried different methods of keeping the batteries cool, such as having air flow over them or tubes of liquid brush past them. They'd take the packs to a pad used by local firefighters for training and ignite one of the cells to better understand what was taking place. The danger of the situation was driven home while en route to one of those tests. Lyons, their recruit from IDEO, began to smell smoke coming from the back of his Audi A4, where he had loaded a pack of test batteries. It was a sign that a cell was heating up and approaching thermal runaway. He immediately stopped and yanked the batteries out of the car and threw them to the ground before his car could catch fire — a close call. Eventually, Straubel began to narrow in on a solution. If they couldn't keep a cell from warming, maybe they could keep it from reaching the point where it set off a chain reaction. Through trial and error, the team realized that if they had each cell lined up a few millimeters from its neighbor, snaked a tube of liquid between them, and dumped a brownie-batter-like mixture of minerals into the resulting battery pack, they could create a system that contained overheating. If a defective cell within began to overheat, its energy would dissipate to its neighboring cells, with no individual cell ever reaching combustibility. Where just months earlier they had been struggling to set up a workshop, now they were on to something utterly new. Straubel was thrilled. Now he just needed to figure out how to convince the battery suppliers to trust them. Straubel was hearing from Eberhard that the established manufacturers weren't interested in their business. As one executive at a supplier told Eberhard: You guys are a shallow pocket. We're a deep pocket. If your car blows up, we'll probably get sued. |
| Recommended Reading: Apple's inside man with the leakers Posted: 21 Aug 2021 06:30 AM PDT Apple's double agentLorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Motherboard Andrey Shumeyko, known as YRH04E and JVHResearch in online circles, spent years trading secrets in the leak and jailbreak community. He was also sharing what he found with Apple. As Motherboard explains, Shumeyko was collecting "personal information of people who sold stolen iPhone prototypes from China, Apple employees who leaked information online, journalists who had relationships with leakers and sellers and anything that he thought the company would find interesting and worth investigating." Sony spent five years building a new PlayStation VR studio, then abruptly shut it downJack Yarwood, Polygon Sony's Manchester studio opened in 2015, and when it was shuttered in 2020, it had yet to release what Polygon describes as "a throwback to old-school action games like Genesis shooter Desert Strike — albeit in 3D and utilizing modern technology on PlayStation 4." While the studio had "AAA aspirations," it never had a staff of more than 30 people. Madden NFL 22's Franchise is a slow — and overdue — burnOwen S. Good, Polygon EA finally reworked Madden NFL's Franchise mode for this year's release. While the updates might not be apparent at first, give it some time. A feature like Gameday Momentum, Polygon explains, "doesn't seem like much, until it seems like a lot." |
| GM expands fire risk recall to cover all Chevy Bolts sold worldwide Posted: 21 Aug 2021 04:59 AM PDT Back in November 2020, GM recalled over 68,000 Chevrolet Bolt EVs after five of the vehicles caught fire between 2017 and 2019. Now, the automaker has expanded the recall to cover all Bolt EVs and Bolt EUVs sold worldwide, starting from the first model up until the latest ones. This recall covers 73,000 additional vehicles, 60,000 of which are in the US, on top of the first batch of recalled Bolts. Upon investigating the initial incidents, GM found a manufacturing defect in the Bolt's batteries manufactured at an LG Chemical Solution plant in South Korea. That became the basis for the models the automaker included in the first recall. AP reports that GM started investigating the newer Bolts after a 2019 model that wasn't included in the recall last year caught fire in Chandler, Arizona a few weeks ago, bringing the total number of battery-related fire incidents to 10. The company found that batteries made in LG's other sites could also suffer from defects, hence the recall expansion. GM will replace all five battery modules for models 2017 to 2019, while only defective modules will be replaced in newer vehicles. All fresh modules installed will come with a new eight year, 100,000 mile warranty. Until owners can get their cars in for module replacement, GM is advising them to limit charging to 90 percent of the battery capacity and to park outdoors. (The company previously determined that the vehicles that went up in flames were almost fully charged.) An email sent to owners contained a link to instructions on how to do just that by using the Target Charge Level mode. The automaker is also advising owners to charge their vehicle more frequently to avoid depleting their battery until there's less than 70 miles of remaining range. This second batch of recalls will cost the company $1 billion in addition to the $800 million it's had to spend for the first one. Further, it remains to be seen how it would affect GM's EV push. In June, the automaker increased its combined EV and self-driving investment from 2020 through 2025 to $35 billion, in hopes that it can have 30 electric vehicles on the market by the end of 2025 and that it can exclusively sell EVs by 2035. For now, the company said it will stop producing and selling Bolts until it determines that there are no longer problems with LG's batteries. |
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