Technology

Toyota will invest around $13.6 billion in battery tech over the next decade, including a $9 billion investment in production, as it attempts to electrify its vehicle lineup, The Wall Street Journal reports. It reportedly plans to have 10 battery production lines by 2025, eventually increasing to around 70 across an unannounced number of factories around the world. Eventually, it could produce as much as 200GWh of batteries, the company’s chief technology officer, Masahiko Maeda, announced in a press briefing. Toyota’s commitments mirror similar investments planned by others across the auto industry. Volkwagen plans to produce around 240GWh of batteries in Europe alone by 2030, the WSJ notes, while Ford has said it plans to produce 240GWh globally by then, including 140GWh in North America...

Media companies in Australia can be held responsible for defamatory comments left on their social media pages by members of the public, the country’s High Court has ruled. The decision is part of a long-running defamation case that could have huge consequences for Australia’s media industry, forcing news sites to strictly moderate or remove comments on stories shared on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. Writing in The Conversation, David Rolph, a professor of law at the University of Sydney, said the ruling “may mean anyone who runs a social media page can theoretically be sued over disparaging comments posted by readers or random group members — even if you aren’t aware of the comment.” “anyone who runs a social media page can theoretically be sued over disparaging comments” The ruling (w...

Amazon is bringing its cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology to two new Whole Foods locations next year, the company has announced. One of the stores will be in Washington, DC, while the second will be in Sherman Oaks, California. When they’re open, customers will have the option of paying at a traditional self-checkout or customer service booth, or having the new technology automatically bill them when they leave the store. The move marks Amazon’s latest step towards scaling its cashierless technology, which works by using a series of cameras and sensors to automatically detect what people pick up off shelves, into a variety of larger stores. Just Walk Out originally debuted in small Amazon Go convenience stores, before the company scaled it up to work in bigger and bigger grocery stores...

When I say “Elizabeth Holmes,” a character probably comes to mind: wispy bleach-blonde hair, black turtleneck, thin, white, unusually low voice, unblinking gaze. In most of her magazine covers, she’s holding a tiny vial meant to contain the “few drops of blood” needed for her company’s finger-prick blood tests. “When I finally connected with what Elizabeth fundamentally is, I realized that I could have just as well been looking into the eyes of a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates,” Theranos advisor Channing Robertson, a Stanford chemical engineering professor, told Fortune in 2014. “She has sometimes been called another Steve Jobs, but I think that’s an inadequate comparison,” former defense secretary and Theranos board member William Perry told The New Yorker the same year. (Perry knew Jobs.) “S...

Chinese electric vehicle maker XPeng has now unveiled its latest creation: a robot unicorn. A brainchild of the automaker’s robotics branch, the new concept has taken Boston Dynamics‘ robot dog Spot one step further to re-create a robotic iteration of the mythical creature. The robot will be rideable for children and uses a host of AI technologies previously developed for the company’s vehicles to allow for autonomous “prancing,” giving it the ability to recognize and track different objects, navigate through obstacles and terrain, and even provide kids with what it calls “emotional interaction.” There’s currently no release date or pricing details for the robot unicorn at the moment. Most of the trailer above shows renderings of the machine instead of a physical sample, so it could be pos...

NASA‘s Mars rover Perseverance — also commonly known as Percy  — has managed to collect rock samples from the red planet for the very first time. Celebrating the achievement, the space agency tweeted through the rover’s own account on Twitter an image of the collected sample as well as an explanatory message. The rock was collected by Percy on its 190th day on Mars, and NASA confirmed the data on September 1 following a series of hiccups in previous attempts. Despite receiving data from the rover, scientists wanted to be certain that rock samples had actually been taken and so had to wait for proper lighting before snapping an image of the sample itself inside the titanium collection tube, which was ultimately achieved on September 5. As for the sample itself, images depict rust-red s...

Joining an army of OLED laptops that have launched this month is Lenovo’s new IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon (branded as the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon outside of North America). Lenovo claims it’s the lightest 14-inch OLED laptop on the market at 2.37 pounds. (I’m guessing the company is right. The closest competitor I can think of is Asus’ ZenBook 14X OLED, which is 3.09 pounds. It’s also lighter than both the ZenBook 13 OLED and the Dell XPS 13 OLED.) One thing to note is that the OLED panel (from Samsung Display) comes with QHD+ resolution, rather than the 4K resolution that you often see on OLED laptops. This means you won’t get as many pixels as you would on a 4K OLED machine (like the ZenBook 14X), but you may also see better battery life. QHD+ is still plenty sharp, especially at this size. There a...

Over a year after it was unveiled, Lenovo’s category-defining Chromebook Duet is getting a sequel. The Chromebook Duet 5 (branded as the IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook outside of North America) is a head-to-toe reimagining of the detachable budget-oriented Duet, with a higher price, a new processor, and — most interestingly — a 13.3-inch OLED screen. Lenovo says the Duet 5 is likely the first of multiple additions to the Duet line, in an ambitious effort to bring the detachable form factor to multiple price points. The company will continue selling the 10.1-inch Duet (for the time being). A 2-in-1 Chrome OS tablet with a detachable keyboard The new OLED display covers 100 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut, Lenovo says, and will emit “70 percent less blue light” than an LCD panel would, with the...

Environmental activists, including Greenpeace and the Climate Action Network, around the world are calling on the United Nations to further delay a pivotal climate conference scheduled for this fall. The uneven rollout of COVID-19 vaccines around the world could prevent many delegates and advocates from attending, they say, especially representatives of countries hardest hit by both COVID-19 and the climate crisis. The UK is preparing to host the climate talks in Glasgow in November, a year after they were supposed to take place. But the virus that delayed the talks in the first place is still killing thousands of people across the world daily, many of whom are living in countries where it’s hard to get a vaccine. “Not only unfair but prohibitive” “Expecting already disadvantaged people to...

Hulu’s streaming plans cost $1 more starting on October 8th, with its ad-supported tier going up to $6.99 each month and its ad-free tier going up to $12.99 monthly. According to Variety, the price of Hulu’s live TV service, which also includes access to its streaming content, isn’t increasing. Disney, the majority owner of Hulu, has increased the prices of its other streaming services over the past year, making its bundle that includes all of them look more and more attractive. The price of the Disney bundle, which includes Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN Plus, doesn’t appear to be going up along with Hulu’s prices — however, it already went up by a dollar earlier this year when Disney Plus got a $1 per month price hike. It currently costs $13.99 per month for a version with ad-supported Hulu...

John Gibson, CEO of Tripwire Interactive — the studio known for making horror games like Killing Floor and Maneater — was made to step down a blisteringly quick 53 hours after he tweeted in favor of the controversial Texas abortion law. In the tweet, Gibson says, “Proud of #USSupremeCourt affirming the Texas law banning abortion for babies with a heartbeat. As an entertainer I don’t get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer.” The tweet drew sharp criticisms from across the gaming industry with many consumers stating they would no longer buy Tripwire games and sharing how to block the developer from showing up in Steam recommendations. Detractors also noted that Gibson’s pro-lif...

Twitter has begun testing the first of its proposed suite of new privacy tools: the ability to remove a follower without blocking them. The remove follower feature is currently being tested on the web and seems to canonize the “soft block” concept as an official Twitter tool. According to the tweet announcing the test, you can remove followers from the follower list on your profile page. You just click the three-dot menu next to a follower’s name, click “Remove follower,” and your tweets will no longer automatically show up in their timeline. The remove follower option.Image: Twitter This is different than blocking someone, which keeps them from viewing your tweets and direct messaging you (and keeps you from doing the same with them). Twitter’s new remove follower feature is more of a rem...