Technology

The National Transportation Safety Board is not happy with Tesla’s failure to respond to its safety recommendations made four years ago concerning the company’s controversial driver assist feature, Autopilot. In 2017, NTSB recommended that Tesla and five other automakers install driver monitoring systems in their vehicles to ensure that drivers stay vigilant even when active safety systems are engaged. The board also implored automakers to limit the use of driver assist features on highways. The recommendations were made in response to an investigation into a crash in which a Tesla owner was killed when his car slammed into a truck that was crossing a highway. The five other automakers officially responded to the recommendations within the 90-day window that the safety board prescribes, an...

Faze Clan is on track to become a publicly traded company. The competitive esports group is merging with B. Riley Principal 150 Merger Corp. in a deal that values the combined companies at $1 billion (via Markets Insider). As a part of the deal, Faze Clan estimates it can get up to $291 million to help fund its growth, according to a post on Faze Clan’s website. Faze Clan is known for its teams that compete in Call of Duty, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and more. With an audience of about 350 million people on social media, the group opened up Faze Studios last year with one of the producers behind the Netflix original 13 Reasons Why. To further bolster its reputation, celebrities like NBA star Ben Simmons, hip hop artist Offset, and popular Twi...

Apple announced a long-awaited update to the AirPods at its Unleashed event earlier this month. The AirPods (3rd generation) — Apple’s first major redesign of its popular flagship wireless earbuds — introduces an entirely new look while also adding in great features like spatial audio and Adaptive EQ borrowed from the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, alongside longer battery life. Most striking is the new design of the AirPods, which offers a shorter stem and a larger earpiece that is less prone to slipping out of your ears during an intense running session (a longstanding gripe of AirPods users). The more snug fit also means the audio quality is less disturbed by the outside environment, making sounds more crisp and direct. To create the new contoured shape, Apple took thousands of ear scans ...

For months, Facebook has been shaken by a steady leak of documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen, beginning in The Wall Street Journal but spreading to government officials and nearly any outlet with an interest in the company. Now, those documents are going much more public, giving us the most sweeping look at the operations of Facebook anyone not directly involved with the company has ever had. The documents stem from disclosures made to the SEC and provided to Congress by Haugen in redacted form. The Verge and a consortium of other news organizations have obtained redacted versions of the documents, which we’re calling The Facebook Papers. In order to receive the documents, we agreed to begin publishing our reporting on them this week, but we are not beholden to report on them in a ...

For the first time since their introduction in 2016, Apple’s AirPods have a completely new design. The third-generation AirPods, priced at $179, bear a much closer resemblance to the AirPods Pro than the long-stemmed original and second-gen pairs. Apple has upgraded their sound, added new features like spatial audio head tracking, made them more durable with IPX4 water resistance, and lengthened their battery life. What remains unchanged about the AirPods is their ease of use and deep integration with Apple’s ecosystem of devices including the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. If you’re living in Apple’s world, you still get exclusive features like the intuitive, just-hold-them-near-your-iPhone setup, audio sharing, automatic device switching, and other software tricks that hav...

Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight venture Blue Origin announced plans to build its own free-flying space station today. Called Orbital Reef, the future space station will begin operating in the second half of this decade, according to Blue Origin, providing a place for researchers, industrial and commercial customers, and international partners to visit and work. Blue Origin is working on the Orbital Reef project in partnership with spaceflight company Sierra Space, a subsidiary of the Sierra Nevada Corporation. Sierra Space’s most well-known project is the Dream Chaser, a winged spaceplane designed to carry cargo — and perhaps people one day — to the International Space Station. Dream Chaser is scheduled to begin cargo flights in 2022. Blue Origin says that Orbital Reef also has the backing of addi...

Mastercard has signed a deal with cryptocurrency firm Bakkt to make crypto options available to merchants and banks across its payments network, the company announced Monday. The news was first reported by CNBC. Banks on Mastercard’s global payments network will be able to provide cryptocurrency rewards on credit and debit cards, for example, and reward points on purchases like airlines or hotels can be paid out in cryptocurrency. Consumers will be able to convert their crypto holdings to pay for purchases and hold digital assets through custodial wallets on Bakkt’s platform. Mastercard said earlier this year it would start allowing its cardholders to conduct some transactions on specific cryptocurrencies on its network, and it said in July it was working with crypto and digital asset star...

At the end of 2019, the group of Facebook employees charged with preventing harms on the network gathered to discuss the year ahead. At the Civic Summit, as it was called, leaders announced where they would invest resources to provide enhanced protections around upcoming global elections — and also where they would not. In a move that has become standard at the company, Facebook had sorted the world’s countries into tiers. Brazil, India, and the United States were placed in “tier zero,” the highest priority. Facebook set up “war rooms” to monitor the network continuously. They created dashboards to analyze network activity and alerted local election officials to any problems. Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, and Italy were placed in tier one. They would be given similar resources, minus s...

Ever needed to quickly edit something or someone out of an image? Maybe it’s the stranger who wandered into your family photo, or the stand holding up your final artwork for school? Whatever the job, if you don’t have the time or Photoshop skills needed to edit the thing yourself, why not try Cleanup.pictures — a handy web tool that does exactly what it promises in the URL. Just upload your picture, paint over the thing you want removed with the brush tool, and hey presto: new image. The results aren’t up to the standards of professionals, especially if the picture is particularly busy or complex, but they’re surprisingly good. The tool is also just quite fun to play around with. You can check out some examples in the gallery below: Grid View Cleanup.pictures seems to be from the same team...

Tesla’s Model 3 has become the first electrical vehicle to top monthly sales of new cars in Europe, beating stalwarts like the Renault Clio and Volkswagen Golf to claim pole position. Sales data shared by research firm Jato Dynamics and first reported by Bloomberg News shows Tesla with a healthy lead over its rivals, selling 24,591 Model 3s in September compared to the 18,264 sales for the Renault Clio in the number two spot. This also marks the first time that a car made outside of Europe has been a monthly best-seller there. The sales data suggests that the automotive market is slowly but surely moving away from combustion engines to electric vehicles. This is helped in no small part by various government subsidies to reduce the price of EVs and hybrid cars and vans. According to Bloombe...

Rental car company Hertz has ordered 100,000 Teslas as part of an ambitious plan to electrify its fleet. A first tranche of Tesla’s Model 3 sedans will be available to rent from Hertz in major US and European markets from early November, said the company in a press statement. The announcement comes just months after Hertz escaped bankruptcy. News of the purchase was first reported by Bloomberg, which says the deal is the single largest order ever for electric vehicles, and worth $4.2. billion in revenue to Tesla. The automaker’s stock was up 4.3 percent on the news in pre-market trading. It was also reported this morning that Tesla’s Model 3 became the first electric vehicle to top monthly sales charts in Europe this September. Earlier this month, the company reported record sales in its t...

Looking ahead at the next generation of iPhone SE, the third rendition of Apple‘s budget phone is expected to release in early 2022. According to reports, rumors suggested that the iPhone SE 3 will be dropped closer to the Spring season. Unlike its predecessor that borrows the design of the iPhone 8, the new SE iteration will adopt the exterior design of the iPhone XR from 2018, equipped with a 6.1-inch display, front notch design, 5G connectivity, and the A15 chip. The touch ID button is replaced with a side fingerprint scanner, while there will also be Face ID recognition. Rumors suggest that the iPhone SE 3 will be priced slightly above the $400 USD price point — similar to the second generation. Instead of resembling the ancient iPhone 8 and its own predecessor, Apple’s 5G iPhone SE (2...