Technology

Tesla’s new vehicles rolling out of the factory will include a bizarre feature designed to prevent abuse of the seat adjustment controls. The new seats will track and measure the amount of adjustments users make and will disable the controls if they detect “excessive” changes. The feature was first identified by @greentheonly, an anonymous hacker and researcher, and subsequently covered by Jalopnik. Tesla recently began installing new seat motors in some of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, in addition to the seats it gets from China’s Yangfeng and the ones it makes in-house. The new motors come from Brose, a 110-year-old German company that supplies a lot of components to the automotive industry. “seat abuse” metrics The difference between the Brose seats and Yangfeng and Tesla’s are what...

Yahoo Japan has announced that most of its online services will cease to be accessible in the European Economic Area and the UK as of April 6th. The company’s email, credit card, and ebook services will continue to be available, but everything else is going dark. The given reason is the cost of complying with European regulations, which would include GDPR. In a statement, Yahoo Japan says it would be difficult to provide continuous service for customers in the EEA and UK, and went further in telling Japanese publication IT Media that it would be “impossible” to meet the cost of compliance and respond to the related laws. Yahoo Japan is an entirely separate entity to the American former web giant now owned by the Apollo private equity firm. Set up as a joint venture between the US Yahoo and...

Diem, the cryptocurrency project founded by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced on Monday that it is selling its intellectual property and other assets to Silvergate Capital Corporation. The Diem Association, formerly known as Libra, was first introduced in 2019. In a statement, CEO Stuart Levey said that the project ran into roadblocks from federal regulators, preventing it from moving ahead.  “From the outset, the Diem project has been focused on leveraging the benefits of blockchain technology to design a better and more inclusive payment system,” he said. “The members of the Diem Association and our outstanding team pursued this vision with determination and perseverance, motivated by the desire to deliver substantial benefits to consumers and bu...

Bloodborne is finally on PC — in a manner of speaking. Fans of 2015’s FromSoftware roguelike have been fervently wishing for a PC port. At long last, their prayers have been answered on the gnarled finger of a monkey’s paw with a PSX “demake” available now for free. Developer Lilith Walther has been working on the demake for 13 months and has drummed up considerable interest from fans of PS1-era games and Bloodborne enthusiasts alike. The game already has its own Twitch category with (as of right now) over 25,000 people tuned in to see the technical feat of de-yassifiying one of the best games of the PS4 era. It’s unclear just how much of the original Bloodborne Walther has included, but it seems like only Yharnam, the game’s first zone, has been faithfully de-created. Though this demake d...

After multiple rebrands, congressional hearings, and several high-profile staff departures, the Meta-backed cryptocurrency known as Diem is calling it quits. The association behind Diem confirmed Monday that it sold its assets for around $200 million to Silvergate, a crypto-focused bank it was working with last year to launch a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. The decision to sell was made after it “became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not move ahead,” Diem CEO Stuart Levey said in a press release. (It’s already known that the U.S. Federal Reserve was a key opponent to Diem launching.) The sale of Diem’s assets marks the end of an effort that, in retrospect, was doomed from the start. The sale of Diem’s assets marks the end of an effort that, i...

Crisis Text Line has decided to stop sharing conversation data with spun-off AI company Loris.ai after facing scrutiny from data privacy experts. “During these past days, we have listened closely to our community’s concerns,” the hotline service writes in a statement on its website. “We hear you. Crisis Text Line has had an open and public relationship with Loris AI. We understand that you don’t want Crisis Text Line to share any data with Loris, even though the data is handled securely, anonymized and scrubbed of personally identifiable information.” Loris.ai will delete any data it has received from Crisis Text Line. Politico recently reported how Crisis Text Line (which is not affiliated with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) is sharing data from conversations with Loris.ai, whi...

Google has announced that Gmail’s new layout, which changes how Google Chat, Meet, and Spaces are integrated, will be available to try starting in February; become default by April; and become the only option by the end of Q2 2022. The view makes it so Google’s other messaging tools, which are part of (but not necessarily limited to) its business-focused Workspace suite, are no longer just little windows floating alongside your emails, but get their own screens in Gmail that are accessible with large buttons on the left-hand side. Google calls this the integrated view, and it’ll soon be familiar if you (or your employer) are a Workspace customer. Starting February 8th, Google says you’ll be able to start testing the layout for yourself. By April, anyone who hasn’t opted in (Google shows th...

In some more bad news for Peloton, rival Echelon Fitness has persuaded the US Patent and Trademark Office that two of Peloton’s patents related to streaming and on-demand classes aren’t actually patentable. The decision was made last week by the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board as they were found to be “obvious inventions,” according to Bloomberg Law. While it may not be the biggest blow Peloton has faced in recent months, it does raise questions about the company’s tendency to be heavy-handed with patent lawsuits. To back things up, all this came about after Peloton sued Echelon in 2019 for getting a “free ride” off its technology and thereby flooding the market with cheaper copycat imitators. If you’ve ever considered buying a connected fitness bike, you’ve probably come across Eche...

Discord is finally rolling out the ability to connect your PlayStation Network account to the chat app, following an announcement last May that it and Sony would “bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile.” Right now, the integration is pretty limited, both in terms of what it can do and seemingly who has access to it, but it’s likely the first step for things to come later. Outside of its partnership with Sony, Discord is also working on an interesting account management feature that we’d love to see make it to everyone. Linking your accounts will let your Discord friends see what game you’re currently playing on your PlayStation, and you have the option of adding your PSN ID to your Discord profile so that other people can easily add you on the s...

Tesla last week released its latest distraction product: a set of karaoke microphones dubbed TeslaMic for use in its vehicles (via Electrek) and works with accompanied in-car software. The accessory, which is only available in China for now, was released alongside a Chinese New Year software update that includes a companion karaoke app called Leishi KTV. The TeslaMic was available on the Chinese Tesla online shop for 1,199 CNY ($188.48 USD). We say “was” because it apparently sold out within an hour, and the listing does not currently load anymore. There are accounts of people already scalping the product for more than it’s worth: “Caraoke” was the original Tesla in-car karaoke software released in other regions in 2019, which till this day can still be used while driving. That is similar ...