Technology

Tesla has issued voluntary recalls for nearly half a million vehicles to address potential failures in its trunk latching systems, as first reported by Barron’s. The recalls apply to all Model 3 units released between 2017 and 2020, as well as certain Model S units. For the Model 3, Tesla believes the opening and closing of the trunk could damage the cable harness attaching the rearview camera, causing the camera to unexpectedly fail. The Model S issue is more serious, potentially preventing the front trunk from fully latching. According to documents submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), there are 475,318 vehicles subject to the recall, comprising 356,309 Model 3 vehicles and 119,109 Model S vehicles. Tesla estimates that only 1 percent of the Model 3 veh...

BMW has announced it will no longer be showing up in person at CES 2022 — the giant electronics show that’s typically held each January in Las Vegas, attracting well over 100,000 attendees per year from around the world. It’s the latest company to at least partially bail on the show, following announcements from Intel, AMD, GM, Google, T-Mobile, Amazon, Meta, Waymo, and a large number of tech publications, including The Verge, as COVID cases rise in the US. Reports indicated BMW will show a car with color-changing paint and a “Theater Screen” for in-car cinematic experiences A statement from BMW says, “Out of an abundance of caution, BMW will move all planned media activities at CES to a fully online program from Germany on January 5.” While it’s a late scratch compared to some other annou...

Elon Musk has denied recent claims that he is “making the rules” when it comes to the space industry and that his Starlink satellites are taking up too much room. The Tesla founder’s comments follow accusations from the European Space Agency and after China filed a complaint suggesting that its space stations had been forced to avoid collisions with Musk’s satellites on several occasions. “Space is just extremely enormous, and satellites are very tiny,” said Musk in a recent interview. “This is not some situation where we’re effectively blocking others in any way. We’ve not blocked anyone from doing anything, nor do we expect to. This isn’t the first time concerns have been raised regarding collisions in space, with scientists estimating there to be around 30,000 satellites and debris orbi...

A vehicle at EV startup Canoo burned on August 24th after lithium-ion batteries left inside the car started a fire. The local fire department was able to extinguish the blaze and no one was injured, according to an incident report obtained by The Verge. The fire happened in the parking lot outside Canoo’s Torrance, California corporate office, which was once the startup’s headquarters — before it started calling Bentonville, Arkansas home in November. Canoo’s VP of communications Agnes Gomes-Koizumi confirmed the fire occurred after The Verge requested comment. “A small fire occurred several hours after the intentionally destructive testing of a battery module,” Gomes said in an e-mailed statement, noting the module passed the test and did not ignite. The fire happened because “someone ina...

On the Sunday Night Football stage, December 19th, Tom Brady and the Buccaneers were swept for the second consecutive regular season against the Saints — a frustrating shut-out loss that had Brady spiking a poor Microsoft Surface tablet on the sideline. Now, per Brady on his Let’s Go podcast that aired Monday, the NFL is not going to let the Surface abuse continue. Should the seven-time Super Bowl champion throw the tablet again, he will be fined. “I did get warned from the NFL about that so… I won’t throw another Surface.” Brady said. The co-host of the podcast, Jim Gray, joked that the whole incident was just good marketing for Microsoft’s tablet — which has been in use by NFL teams since 2014 and last year won a deal to have all 32 NFL teams use them. Gray asked Brady to clarify w...

Very little has been known about life around the Antarctic. Scientists have recorded footage, but rarely have actual organisms been uncovered. A team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany changed that by uncovering 77 sea-floor dwelling species under an ice shelf. The findings were first discovered in 2018 and recently published in Current Biology. Crew members used hot water to drill two holes in the Weddell Sea’s Ekström Ice Shelf, which contained more species in a given spot in the Antarctic than previously recorded. “This discovery of so much life living in these extreme conditions is a complete surprise and reminds us how Antarctic marine life is so unique and special,” said Dr. David Barnes, a marine biologist at the British Antarctic Survey. The species have be...

Following the revolutionary and successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, into space on Christmas day, NASA announced some unexpected news about the telescope’s future: its science mission is likely to last “significantly more” than 10 years — more than double the minimum time for the mission. Initially, JWST was projected to be operational for 5 to 10 years, but NASA’s latest analysis released today found that the telescope will likely have enough propellant to support scientific operations for even longer. According to NASA, the extra propellant is thanks to the precision of the Ariane 5 rocket that the JWST was on when it was launched into space. It is also due to the precision of the first and second mid-course correction maneuvers — small trajectory tweaks that the...

Xiaomi is at it again — putting another fantastically huge camera on a flagship phone. This time, it’s the Xiaomi 12 Pro with a 50-megapixel main sensor and f/1.9 standard wide lens. It’s not the very biggest sensor Xiaomi has used in a phone, but the combination of a wide aperture lens and sizable imaging chip makes it… well, just look at the thing. On the technical side, it’s a Sony IMX707 chip, which Xiaomi says it’s the first to use in a mobile device. Gizmochina points out that the 707 appears to be a very light refresh of the IMX700, which makes that claim a little less exciting. Either way, it’s a large 1/1.28-inch type sensor. Sony combines its 1.22μm pixels, which are already fairly large for a mobile camera sensor, to create even larger 2.44μm “4-in-1” pixels for better low...

We have bad news if you’re on winter break and hope to play some Fortnite, as Epic Games has confirmed its battle royale shooter is down — and this time it’s not to help expand the game’s lore. According to a tweet from its own status page, “Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We’ll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online.” A follow-up tweet at 3:10PM ET from the team says they are “continuing to work on a fix that will bring Fortnite back online and appreciate everyone’s patience.” Fortnite is currently unavailable and players are unable to log-in while we investigate an issue. We’ll provide more info when we have a solution to bring services back online. pic.twitter.com/B3wXvu5SL6 — Fortni...

Whether you’ve got a stack of gift cards burning a hole in your pocket or ended up with two air fryers that you don’t have room for, there are still plenty of deals to help you stretch your spending before the new year. Below we’ve outlined some of the best tech deals, sales, and promotions from a variety of retailers across a number of categories to make sure you don’t end up with two stand mixers when you didn’t even need one. Select a category Smart home deals While they certainly aren’t for everyone, the usefulness of Amazon’s Echo devices makes them an excellent value, especially if you have an older model to trade in. Currently, many Echo devices — including the standard fourth-generation Echo, the Echo Show 5, and Echo Show 8 — are selling for the same prices we saw on Black Friday....

The Book of Boba Fett finally is giving its titular character the spotlight. The fan-favorite bounty hunter has long lurked in the margins of Star Wars’ history: his brief introduction in an animated short during the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special; and his rocketing to popularity thanks to his iconic armor (practically designed to sell action figures) despite his brief appearances in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, his shoehorned backstory in Attack of the Clones, and a half-baked arc in The Clone Wars. For all that, Fett himself has been an enigma, a blank slate of badassery that’s never been filled in. Fett has spend decades as a blank slate of badassery But after years of rumors of a solo film, an aborted history in the (since excised from canon) Expanded Universe bo...

A team of researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany has discovered a whopping 77 seafloor-dwelling species beneath an Antarctica ice shelf — a hint that this mysterious realm may be far more biologically rich than scientists realized. Little is known about the environment beneath Antarctica’s floating ice shelves, the seaward extensions of the continent’s glaciers that span 1.6 million square kilometers. It’s a harsh, cold environment shrouded in continuous darkness, and previous studies of life beneath the ice have only documented a few dozen hardy life forms. The new research, published earlier this month in Current Biology, identified more species in a single spot than had previously been documented across all the ice shelves of the frozen continent. After drilling two ho...