Technology

GM is set to resume production of its electric Chevy Bolt in April after halting production to address a battery recall, according to reports from the Wall Street Journal and The Detroit News. The automaker originally predicted it wouldn’t start building Bolts until at least the end of January 2022. GM paused production of all Bolts last August “GM will resume production at its Orion Township, MI, plant the week of April 4, 2022,” GM spokesperson Dan Flores said in a statement obtained by The Detroit News. “We remain committed to Bolt EV and EUV and this decision will allow us to simultaneously replace battery modules and resume retail sales soon, which were strong before the recall.” Recalls for the 2017-2019 Chevy Bolt started in 2020 following reports of the car catching fire, and they ...

Showtime’s anthology series Super Pumped is getting a second season, and this one will be about Facebook with a focus on founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s relationship with COO Sheryl Sandberg, according to The Hollywood Reporter. There are some big names in the cast of the first and forthcoming Uber-focused season — Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Uber founder Travis Kalanick, Kyle Chandler plays venture capitalist Bill Gurley, and Uma Thurman plays Arianna Huffington — so we have to wonder who will be tapped to play Zuckerberg and Sandberg season two. (Perhaps Showtime will bring Jesse Eisenberg back to reprise his role from The Social Network?) It seems that the relationship between the two Facebook (now Meta) leaders will be foundational to the coming season, as Entertainment Weekly reports...

The Nintendo Switch has been Nintendo’s main console for years now, but the company has still kept the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS’s eShop open for people who want to buy games on those platforms. In March 2023, though, that will no longer be the case — Nintendo won’t let you buy things on the Wii U or Nintendo 3DS eShop “as of late March 2023,” the company announced on Tuesday. Nintendo will be slowly making changes to eShop purchases up until that deadline: On May 23rd, 2022, you won’t be able to use a credit card to add funds to your eShop accounts on Wii U or 3DS devices. On August 29th, 2022, you won’t be able to use eShop gift cards to add funds to your accounts on those devices, either. If you have any download codes, you won’t be able to redeem those after late March 2023. You won’t be ...

The Walt Disney Company has hired an executive to run its metaverse strategy, Reuters reported, citing an internal email sent from Disney CEO Bob Chapek to staff. Working within the Media and Entertainment Distribution group, Mike White has assumed the role of senior vice president of Next Generation Storytelling and Consumer Experiences. He will define how Disney’s consumers experience its metaverse and collaborate with the company’s creative teams. “For nearly 100 years, our company has defined and re-defined entertainment by leveraging technology to bring stories to life in deeper, more impactful ways,” Chapek wrote in the email, per Reuters. “Today, we have an opportunity to connect those universes and create an entirely new paradigm for how audiences experience and engage with ou...

Twitter is expanding access to its Safety Mode tool, a new way to limit undesired interactions on the platform. Last September, Safety Mode was first rolled out to a small group of 1,000 English-language users. After months of feedback, Twitter is bringing the feature to more users in English-speaking markets, located across the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand. The company said that the rollout will allow it to “gain more feedback and insights.” For those with access to the beta, Safety Mode can be enabled in the settings menu, launching a screening process that automatically filters our potentially harmful or abusive content. In turn, accounts posting tweets deemed harmful won’t be able to follow the user, see their tweets or DM them. Accounts that a user regularly ...

Virgin Galactic has announced that it will open its space travel to the general public beginning tomorrow, February 16, allowing them to purchase reservations on spaceflights for $450,000 USD per individual, with an initial deposit of $150,000 USD. Following several days of activities to prepare future astronauts, the space flights take off from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The entire journey is 90-minutes, including a signature air launch and Mach-3 boost to space. Astronauts will have the opportunity to experience several minutes of out-of-seat weightlessness as the spaceship flips, all the while enjoying once-in-a-lifetime views of planet Earth. “At Virgin Galactic, we believe that space is transformational,” CEO Michael Colglazier said. “We plan to have our first 1,000 customers on...

TSMC’s new Arizona chip-making plant has run into construction delays, according to a new report from Nikkei Asia, which notes work has fallen three to six months behind schedule due to a mixture of labor shortages, COVID-19 surges, and complexities in obtaining construction licenses. According to Nikkei Asia’s report, TSMC originally hoped that the construction of facilities would have reached the point that it’d be able to start moving in chip-making equipment by September. It’s now expecting to have to push that to early 2023 instead. It’s important to note that the delays here aren’t actually directly related to chip-making — it’s not that TSMC can’t get a hold of enough semiconductor production equipment. Rather, it seems the delay is more mundane, centered on the difficulties of buil...

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence suffered from a DDoS attack that prevented users from accessing its website, and two Ukrainian banks lost access to online banking services, according to statements from the government. In a tweet posted at around 7PM local time (12PM ET), the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said that its website was probably being hit with a DDoS attack and that work to restore service was underway. Four hours later, the site still could not be accessed. PrivatBank faced a “massive DDoS attack” that blocked online banking services, including payments and balance inquiries The DDoS attack comes as Russia has claimed to be de-escalating potential conflict by withdrawing troops from the Ukraine border — a statement that was met with “cautious optimism” by NATO but has ...

“Baby Shark” — the impossibly catchy viral earworm of a children’s song that’s also the most-watched YouTube video in history — is getting a full-length film, set for release in 2023, Paramount announced. The film won’t technically be Baby Shark’s first foray into a cinematic format: the hour-long Pinkfong and Baby Shark’s Space Adventure had a limited theatrical run, although it was primarily a Netflix release, at least in the US. But the upcoming film appears to be a more traditional full-blow theatrical release, which is an impressive jump for the 2-minute, 16-second YouTube video. Baby Shark swims to a full-length film There are virtually no details on what the Baby Shark movie (which is set to be co-produced by Nickelodeon Animation and the Pinkfong Company) will entail. Presumably, i...

Mercedes-Benz continues to make good on its promise to go all-electric by 2030 with the announcement of the AMG EQE, a high-performance version of the automaker’s electric E-class sedan. The AMG EQE is the second battery-electric production car from the automaker’s in-house performance AMG subsidiary, following the AMG EQS sedan announced last September. Both cars will be built on Mercedes’ EVA2 platform, which underpins the EQS, the smaller EQE, and several SUV sister models. The EVA2 is designed for medium and large vehicles, while the automaker’s MMA (Mercedes Modular Architecture), debuting in 2025, will be for electric compact cars such as the EQA and EQB. The new Mercedes-AMG EQE will be wicked fast The new Mercedes-AMG EQE will be wicked fast, boasting a 0–60mph acceleration of 3.2 ...

Instagram Pauses Development of ‘Instagram Kids’ Following Backlash “We’re going to take a step back and we’re going to take that time to talk and listen to parents, safety experts and researchers.” Sep 27, 2021 11,811 Hypes    Instagram Begins Testing New Chronological Feed Users will soon be able to switch between three feeds: home, favorites and following. Jan 5, 2022 8,918 Hypes    Instagram Will Now Let Users “Rage Shake” Their Phone to Report an Issue Users can also now delete images from a photo carousel. Nov 17, 2021 4,061 Hypes   

Netflix, 2K, and Take-Two Interactive announced Tuesday that they will be partnering to make a live-action film adaptation of BioShock. While it’s a potentially exciting announcement, details beyond the existence of the movie are extremely light. There’s no release date, and according to Variety, it doesn’t have a director or a cast yet. And Netflix’s website says the movie is an adaptation of the BioShock franchise, which leaves open the possibility that it could feature characters and locales from the underwater city of Rapture from BioShock 1 and 2, as well as the sky city of Columbia from BioShock Infinite. However, Netflix did share a press image featuring a creepy Little Sister and an imposing Big Daddy, so it seems like a safe bet that those iconic BioShock characters will show up i...