Technology

Waymo is working on self-driving taxis, which is a huge deal. Ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft have remade cities, allowed people to give up their cars, and generally connected the buttons you push on your phone to real things happening in the world more directly than almost any other app. Just this week, Bank of America’s trading desk sent out an investor note saying Uber was the most transformational thing to happen to the phone in the past decade. But simply getting a car to show up where you want isn’t the endgame. The endgame is to make a robot show up to your house — a self-driving car. Self-driving cars promise to even more radically remake cities and suburbs, decrease overall car ownership, and let commuters take back hours of their time as they travel. It’s a big dream, and we...

Hello again, welcome to the first week of October. I’m loving the spooky vibes and strong pumpkin energy the fall has wrought, although it was a little steamy here in NYC this past weekend. Summer’s last gasp. But I’m not complaining! I put the heat on in my car for approximately three minutes last week and was sad. Enough about my SAD, though, and more on audio. In today’s newsletter we discuss the fan reaction to Spotify’s latest exclusive move, along with Patreon looking to make its own original podcasts, and more. Off we go. Gimlet’s Heavyweight is becoming a Spotify exclusive, and the fans are mad Heavyweight, one of the longest-running Gimlet Media shows, is becoming a Spotify exclusive next month, five years after it began and two years after the Spotify / Gimlet acquisition. Host J...

In May, Google announced plans to enable two-factor authentication (or two-step verification as it’s referring to the setup) by default to enable more security for many accounts. Now it’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and Google is once again reminding us of that plan, saying in a blog post that it will enable two-factor for 150 million more accounts by the end of this year. In 2018, Google said that only 10 percent of its active accounts were using two-factor authentication. It has been pushing, prodding, and encouraging people to enable the setting ever since. Another prong of the effort will require more than 2 million YouTube creators to turn on two-factor authentication to protect their channels from takeover. Google says it has partnered with organizations to give away more than 10,...

Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 8 has a gorgeous 120Hz display and updated internals, but it’s really the new Surface Slim Pen 2 that has caught my attention. Microsoft has added haptics features to its stylus for the first time, thanks to a new custom chip inside. It has transformed inking on the Surface Pro 8. I thought the haptic feedback would be a gimmick until I started testing it this weekend. In the Sketchable Windows app, you can select from a variety of drawing tools, like brushes, pencils, markers, inking nibs, and even chalk. They all feel totally different now, thanks to the haptics in the Surface Slim Pen 2. Apps like Sketchable support the new Surface pen. This isn’t the buzzy haptic feedback you’re probably used to from a phone, the haptics are more subtle here and adjust to gi...

A jury in California has ordered Tesla to pay $137 million in damages to a Black former elevator operator after he experienced a hostile work environment, including racial harassment and discrimination, at the company’s Fremont plant. Owen Diaz worked at the plant between June 2015 and May 2016 as a contractor, reports CNBC and The Washington Post. Diaz told the court that “daily racist epithets” were used in the plant, including the n-word; that racist graffiti and cartoons appeared in his workspace and the toilets; and that he was told to “go back to Africa” by colleagues. Supervisors failed to consistently intervene in these issues, said Diaz, and the stress of the situation caused him to suffer weight loss and “sleepless nights.” As reported by Bloomberg News, he told the jury: “Some d...

Google is giving away a free Stadia Premiere Edition kit if you purchase a regular Stadia game. This hardware bundle includes a Chromecast Ultra and Stadia controller, and you’ll need to buy a full price game ($59.99 or above) to qualify for the offer. Google’s free offer will run until 11:59PM PT on October 10th, and codes will be distributed by October 20th. The free Stadia Premier Edition offer will run in the US, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Austria, and Switzerland. Google usually sells its Stadia Premiere Edition for $79.99. Google has been giving away free Stadia hardware over the past year This isn’t the first time that Google has given away free Stadia hardware. In November Google started gifting Stadia Premier...

Kobo has announced a pair of new e-readers: the $260 Kobo Sage, which is the company’s new top-end device, and the $180 Libra 2, an update to its mid-range Libra. Both devices keep the asymmetrical design popularized by Amazon’s Oasis e-reader, offer E Ink Carta 1200 screens with Kobo’s ComfortLight Pro feature (which adapts the screen brightness and color based on the time of day), and add Bluetooth support for wireless headphones (though they can only play Kobo’s own audiobooks). The Sage is the larger of the two and also functions as an e-note device. It’s compatible with the company’s Kobo Stylus (sold separately for $40), which lets users make handwritten notes on ebooks and PDFs that can be can converted to plain text. With an 8-inch (1440 x 1920) E Ink display, this makes the Sage s...

The Epic Games Store is taking a bit step towards further competing with more established PC game stores like Steam next week with a proper achievement system (called, of course, “Epic Achievements”). To start, Epic Achievements will only be available on a few games, including Rocket League, Hades, Pillars of Eternity, Kena, Zombie Army 4, and Alan Wake Remastered. Achievements will be broken up into four levels: Bronze (which award 5-45 XP), Silver (50-95 XP), Gold (100-200 XP), and Platinum (which is awarded upon achieving 1000 XP in a game and awards players with an additional 250 XP on their profiles). Games that are updated to support Epic Achievements will now show those achievements on the game’s page in the store, in addition to player’s libraries, where they’ll be able to track pr...

Square Enix released Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin’s second demo, showing off a little bit more of what we can expect from the action-oriented Final Fantasy spinoff. The demo gets… interesting. In one cutscene, Jack, the main character, peaced out after a boss fight in hilarious fashion. Players shared the cutscene all over social media with an air of alarmed confusion, but I am here to state for the record that if all of Stranger of Paradise is going to be like that moment, this game is going to kick so much ass. When Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin was first announced, fans were a bit surprised since the game is being developed by Team Ninja of Dead or Alive fame. Team Ninja is also behind the Dynasty Warriors-ification of franchises like The Legend of Zelda a...

Facebook is back online after a six-hour outage due to DNS routing problems. The outage took down Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, and Oculus VR as well. For some, those services are back online now; however, after a DNS issue like this, it could take hours for everything to work properly on every network. Facebook: “We appreciate your patience as we come back online” The outage started just before noon ET on Monday. It was the most significant outage for Facebook since a 2019 incident took its site offline for more than 24 hours. Journalist Brian Krebs cites a trusted source who told him the incident didn’t have any malicious origins. Instead, they said it started with a routine BGP update that went wrong, wiping out the DNS routing information that Facebook needs so that other networks ca...

Facebook said in a blog post Monday night that the six-hour outage that took it offline along with Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp, and OculusVR was the result of a configuration change to its routers — not of a hack or attempt to get at user data. The explanation doesn’t give much in the way of detail, but it seems like Facebook’s machines weren’t able to talk to one another — Facebook says that “this disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an apology Monday evening, saying the platforms were coming back online. “Sorry for the disruption today — I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about.” The outage began around 11:40AM ET Monday...