Technology

If you can’t find a PS5 or Xbox Series X, how about an $80,000 electric sports car with comparable performance? Tesla just announced its refreshed Model S today, and a new “Plaid” powertrain isn’t its only performance enhancement — the company claims the car can now compete with next-gen gaming consoles, thanks to a 10-teraflop gaming computer that will apparently come with every new model. Assuming that refers to GPU performance and Tesla isn’t wildly exaggerating, that might indeed be competitive with a PS5 or Xbox Series X, which offer 10.28 teraflops and 12 teraflops of raw GPU power respectively. There’s more to performance than teraflops, though. Now, you might ask: who’s going to put a game in your car that might actually take advantage of a gaming PC? For that, I must ask you to lo...

The story of r/WallStreetBets Contributors: Verge Staff Subreddit r/WallStreetBets has been the talk of the Internet this week, as its members have driven GameStop’s stock prices from around $20 to over $300. The community brands itself as “like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal,” and as time has gone on, it’s targeted other unlikely stocks like AMC, Blackberry, and Tootsie Roll. They’ve also been banned from Discord for hate speech. If you want to read about how the group was able to manipulate the stocks of a massive company like GameStop — and the potential fallout — maybe start with our explainer? Otherwise, you can use this storystream to get caught up on the full story. We’ll be updating it with all the latest twists and turns. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for D...

The r/WallStreetBets subreddit’s own moderators made it private for a little less than an hour on Wednesday evening, Reddit confirmed to The Verge — but now, it’s back, with a new post from the moderators themselves that doesn’t quite explain why it vanished in the first place. The subreddit has seen a significant increase in attention in recent days following the meteoric rise in GameStop’s stock driven in part by traders on the forum. “We have grown to the kind of size we only dreamed of in the time it takes to get a bad nights sleep,” reads a new post from the mods, one which you can read in its entirety at the bottom of this post in case it disappears. “We’ve got so many comments and submissions that we can’t possibly even read them all, let alone act on them as moderators,” the post c...

Users caught between Apple and Microsoft may now have an easier time managing passwords: it looks like iCloud Keychain is coming to Windows 10 as a Chrome extension (via MacRumors). It’s already in the iCloud for Windows 10 app, but there’s just one small problem: the Chrome Extension isn’t available yet. The latest version of iCloud for Windows 10 includes “Support for iCloud Passwords Chrome Extension” in the list of new features, and when you open the app, there’s a new Passwords-syncing option. Checking the box will cause a login prompt to come up, along with a request for two-factor authentication. According to Apple’s support page, you’ll need to have two-factor turned on for your account to have access to the feature, which is probably a good choice since, in theory, you’re going to...

Baidu has gotten the green light to test fully autonomous vehicles on public roads in California. The Chinese search giant is the sixth company to receive a fully autonomous testing permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (the others being Cruise, Waymo, Nuro, Zoox, and AutoX). Currently, 60 companies have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in California. Baidu is the leading Chinese company in the autonomous vehicle space Baidu, which already spent years working on self-driving technology, is the leading Chinese company in the autonomous vehicle space. Last September, the company demonstrated its Level 4 fully autonomous vehicles at its developer conference, Baidu World. In December, Baidu received the first license to test fully autonomous vehi...

There are many moving parts involved in the Biden administration’s goal to administer 100 million vaccine doses in its first 100 days. Boatloads of data need to flow between manufacturers, health agencies, state officials, and local clinics. An article by Cat Ferguson and Karen Hao, published in MIT Technology Review today, lays out each step of vaccine distribution and explains the hurdles that come up along the way. At the federal level, the Department of Health and Human Services uses a Palantir-designed system called Tiberius to plan vaccine allocation. At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s VTrckS helps states order vaccines. Both digital systems are constantly being fed data from a variety of sources. The number-crunching involves census data, reports of w...

Tesla’s record sales in 2020 helped the Silicon Valley company turn its first annual profit, according to financial figures released Wednesday, though not by much. Aided by a fourth quarter that brought in $270 million in profit on $10.7 billion of revenue, Tesla finished 2020 with a $721 million in profit on $31.5 billion in total revenue. To help get over the line, Tesla booked $401 million in regulatory credit sales in the fourth quarter of 2020. The company generates this money by selling these credits to automakers that make fewer clean vehicles than are required by the US government and the European Union. The credit sales have come in handy the past year and a half, as they’ve generated hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter for Tesla. Tesla’s banner 2020 was bolstered by boomi...

CD Projekt Red has added modding tools and resources to Cyberpunk 2077 for players to adjust their experience. The developer announced the news on its website. “Tools will be continuously updated alongside with game patches to ensure compatibility,” the post reads. The game has been rife with problems since its launch late last year. CD Projekt Red released its first big patch on January 22nd. The update is part of a larger effort to clean up the game’s problems, with more significant fixes to come. Since the patch’s release, however, players have run into at least one game-breaking bug introduced in the update; the developer has since released a workaround. Although the tools are official resources from CD Projekt Red, players have been modding their experiences since the game’s release. ...

Google announced today a new feature for electric vehicle owners that uses artificial intelligence to sort through thousands of public charging stations while finding the best route. The level of technology needed to make this type of route planning functional is a pretty clear indication of what an unholy mess EV charging in America is today. In a blog post published Wednesday, Google acknowledges that route planning in an EV can be like “solving a puzzle” (which is an overly polite way of saying it), with EV owners needing to find the right charging station within range that also has the specific type of plug their car needs. Google acknowledges that route planning in an EV can be like “solving a puzzle” The new feature will only work for electric vehicles with Google’s native Android Au...

Apple could start manufacturing iPads in Vietnam by the middle of this year, marking the first time a “significant number” of the tablets would be produced outside of China, Nikkei reports. As well as shifting iPad production, Apple is also reportedly increasing the number of iPhones manufactured in India, where it’s produced some iPhone 11 units since last year. It will reportedly begin producing iPhone 12 series devices in the country as early as this quarter. The report paints a picture of a company that’s increasingly keen to diversify its manufacturing out of China, despite hopes that trade tensions could ease under President Biden. Nikkei notes that the new administration has said it won’t immediately ease tariffs on Chinese imports, and there are also other factors like rising labor...

Intel launched its first Iris Xe desktop graphics cards yesterday, but you won’t see them appearing in AMD-powered systems. While Nvidia and AMD’s desktop GPUs typically work across a variety of Intel and AMD processors, Intel’s new desktop GPUs are a little more limited for now. “The Iris Xe discrete add-in card will be paired with 9th gen (Coffee Lake-S) and 10th gen (Comet Lake-S) Intel® Core™ desktop processors and Intel(R) B460, H410, B365, and H310C chipset-based motherboards and sold as part of pre-built systems,” says an Intel spokesperson in a statement to Legit Reviews. “These motherboards require a special BIOS that supports Intel Iris Xe, so the cards won’t be compatible with other systems.” One of Intel’s first Iris Xe desktop GPUs.Image: Intel The restrictions make mor...