Category: Technology

After gradually expanding access to its so-called full self-driving (FSD) beta for the last few years, Tesla is opening it up to anyone who has paid for it, Elon Musk announced in a tweet. “Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option,” he said. 

FSD is an extension of Tesla’s “Autopilot” driver-assist feature, expanding on the latter with automated functions like automated steering in cities, automatic parking, smart vehicle summoning and traffic light/stop sign recognition. The feature is a paid upgrade priced at $15,000 following a price hike of $3,000 in September. 

Tesla first promised to launch full self-driving features in 2018, but they only finally appeared in July 2021 to a small number of “expert and careful drivers.” It was released more widely in the version 9.0 beta, but testers were limited to an early access program. On the last FSD release, Tesla dropped the requirement for at least 100 Autopilot miles and an 80 safety score, and now anyone who wants it can have it. 

However, Tesla is rolling out FSD widely at a time when it’s under scrutiny from regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently expanded its investigation into a series of Tesla crashes involving first responders to most models. In a separate probe, it’s also looking into more than 30 incidents involving Autopilot. 

Musk has promised full self-driving with no one behind the wheel for some time now. Most recently, he said he thought it could arrive this year, but backed off those claims in Tesla’s latest earnings report. Tesla’s stock has been on a steep decline of late, following Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter. 

 

Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard is facing scrutiny from antitrust investigators in several countries. In the US, for instance, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) started looking into the acquisition shortly after it was announced. Now, the FTC is reportedly ready to take action and will likely file an antitrust lawsuit to block Microsoft’s massive purchase, according to Politico. Microsoft failed to convince the FTC staff reviewing the deal with its arguments, Politico’s sources said, but the agency’s commissioners have yet to vote on filing a complaint or to meet with lawyers. 

While a lawsuit is not 100 percent guaranteed yet, the commission is reportedly done with the biggest parts of the investigation, including with the depositions of the Microsoft chief Satya Nadella and Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. If the FTC ultimately decides to file a lawsuit, it could do so as soon as next month. The publication says the commission will likely file the case in its own in-house administrative court, since it doesn’t have to bring it to federal court first to seek a temporary injunction. Seeing as other regulators are also looking into the acquisition, it wouldn’t be able to go through (if it’s ultimately allowed to do so) until sometime next year. 

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an in-depth investigation of the deal in September. And more recently, the European Commission announced that it will carry out a full-scale probe into Microsoft’s purchase. Like these two European regulators, the FTC is concerned that the acquisition will give Microsoft an unfair advantage in the gaming sector and that it may significantly reduce competition in the market. 

Sony has been one of the loudest voices opposing the deal and has expressed concerns that Microsoft might make valuable IPs like Call of Duty an Xbox exclusive. Jim Ryan, Sony PlayStation’s CEO, previously revealed that Microsoft only offered to keep Call of Duty available on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement ends. But Xbox chief Phil Spencer said more recently that the company is “not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation.” In Microsoft’s latest filing with the CMA, it argued that the acquisition won’t give it an unfair advantage: Sony has more exclusive games than the Xbox, it said, and many of them are of “better quality.”

 

More than seven years after the first Wall Street Journal story about problems with Theranos’ blood tests, its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was sentenced to over a decade in prison for defrauding the company’s investors. She had been found guilty on four counts of fraud during a months-long trial where her lawyers argued that she was an inexperienced entrepreneur who hadn’t intended to mislead anyone.

Holmes’ story is, by now, well known. She founded Theranos as a college dropout, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from high-profile investors and courting former high-ranking government officials for her board. Since then, the rapid rise and downfall of Holmes and Theranos has taken on a life of its own, with major podcasts, books and a recent Hulu miniseries.

But Holmes herself has been almost completely silent. Her trial, where she testified in her own defense, and her sentencing are the only times she has spoken publicly about what went wrong at Theranos and how she feels all these years later. Watch the video above for the full story.

 

CD Projekt Red has finally shared a gameplay trailer for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt‘s imminent “next-gen” update, and it’s largely what you’d hope for. The overhauled action role-playing game looks better thanks to more detailed character models (with 4K textures), ray-traced lighting effects and other cosmetic upgrades. Geralt looks more grizzled than ever, while even the water reflections are prettier. It’s not surprising that the refreshed game would look at least somewhat better than the 2015 original, and it’s not necessarily a night-and-day difference. Still, the changes are welcome if you thought the title was showing its age.

The update also brings gameplay tweaks, cloud saves and new content inspired by Netflix’s The Witcher series. You can play at 60 frames per second, and a photo mode will help you take snapshots of the game’s bleak-yet-beautiful landscapes.

The next-gen (really, current-gen) update will be available December 14th on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. It’s not a full-fledged sequel or even a remake, but it could be worth a go if you’re either new to The Witcher games or just haven’t touched The Witcher 3 in years. Think of it as the start to CDPR’s revival of the franchise.

 

Add HP to the list of tech companies cutting staff. The PC maker plans to lay off as many as 6,000 employees over the next three years. The cuts are part of a broader restructuring HP announced during its Q4 earnings call on Tuesday (via Gizmodo). The company estimates its “Future Ready Transformation plan” will save it $1.4 billion by the end of fiscal 2025, in part by reducing its headcount by at least 4,000 employees.

“The company expects to reduce gross global headcount by approximately 4,000-6,000 employees,” HP said. “These actions are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal 2025.”

HP employs approximately 51,000 employees globally. The company’s most recent fiscal quarter saw revenue drop by more than 11 percent year-on-year to $14.8 billion. CEO Enrique Lores blamed the poor performance on macroeconomic conditions and “softening demand” for the company’s PCs and printers.

Following Tuesday’s announcement, Lores said HP’s restructuring plan would “enable [the company] to better serve our customers and drive long-term value creation by reducing our costs and reinvesting in key growth initiatives to position our business for the future.”

HP isn’t the only tech company to announce significant job cuts in recent weeks. Twitter completed multiple rounds of layoffs after Elon Musk took control of the company on October 27th. Meta and Amazon also announced job cuts this month. In the case of the social media giant, the 11,000 employees it let go on November 9th represented the first mass layoffs in the company’s history.

 

The European Space Agency on Wednesday selected the world’s first astronaut with a disability. John McFall, whose right leg was amputated at age 19, is the first recruit for a new program investigating accommodations for astronauts with disabilities.

The agency called for applications in March 2021, seeking people with disabilities who could pass stringent physical and psychological testing but were limited by a lack of hardware accommodations. The program will investigate the changes and costs required to send astronauts with disabilities into space. The ESA chose McFall out of 257 entrants, and describes him as the world’s first “parastronaut.” And next spring, he will enter the 12-month training program at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.

“I’ve always been hugely interested in science generally, and space exploration has always been on my radar,” said the 41-year-old McFall on Wednesday. “But having had a motorcycle accident when I was 19, like wanting to join the armed forces, having a disability was always a contraindication to doing that.”

After McFall’s accident and amputation, he learned to run again and won a bronze medal in the 100-meter dash at the 2008 Paralympic Games. In addition, he earned several medical degrees and was a Foundation Doctor in the British National Health Service from 2014 to 2016. McFall currently works as a trauma and orthopedic specialist in South England.

“In early 2021 when the advert for an astronaut with a physical disability came out,” said McFall, “I read the person specifications and what it entailed, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is such a huge and interesting opportunity.’ And I thought that I would be a very good candidate to help ESA answer the question they were asking: ‘Can we get someone with a physical disability into space?’ And I felt compelled to apply.”

 

Tesla isn’t the only car brand asking you to pay extra to unlock your car’s existing capabilities. As The Vergeobserves, Mercedes has introduced a $1,200 per year “Acceleration Increase” subscription that improves the performance of the EQE and EQS in their standard sedan and SUV variants. Pay the annual fee and your 0-60MPH time will improve by 0.8 to 1 seconds thanks to a higher peak motor output and increased torque.

Mercedes is quick to explain that this is strictly a software change. In other words, you’re paying to get performance your car could already handle. While you’re still getting more value than BMW’s $18 per month heated seats, it’s an odd move when these cars are already expensive and have speedier models that only require a one-time outlay. Why buy an EQS 450 with the acceleration add-on when an EQS 580 will be faster and include more creature comforts in the bargain?

The German automaker isn’t the first to charge extra for added performance. Tesla has long asked customers to shell out for its most advanced driver assists. For a while, it also charged entry Model S buyers a premium to unlock battery capacity. And if you’re more inclined toward motorcycles, Zero asks nearly $1,800 to maximize the power of the 2022 SR. The difference, of course, is that those are still one-off purchases where Mercedes wants you to keep paying for the life of the car.

The business strategy is clear. As with the tech world’s general shift toward subscription services, Mercedes is hoping for a steady stream of revenue from customers who might otherwise spend little beyond the initial purchase. Acceleration Increase is decidedly more lucrative than periodic navigation updates and maintenance. Unlike those, though, there’s no recurring costs to help justify the power boost’s existence.

 

With the United States facing a historic housing shortage, researchers from the University of Maine believe they may have found a solution to the problem. Using one of the world’s largest 3D printers, the university’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) recently created the first 3D-printed home made entirely of bio-based materials. Finding a way to manufacture 3D-printed homes at scale is a challenge many have tried to tackle in recent years. To date, most solutions have involved the use of concrete or clay and traditional building methods like wood framing. The ASCC’s “BioHome3D” is different.

The center’s 600-square-foot prototype features 3D-printed floors, walls and a roof made of sustainably-sourced wood fibers and biological resins. The house is also fully recyclable and doesn’t require weeks- and months-worth of on-site construction time to assemble. After 3D-printing four modules, the center assembled the BioHome3D in half a day. It then took one electrician about two hours to wire the house for electricity.

The ASCC suggests that BioHome3D could help address the US housing shortage by reducing the material and labor needed to build affordable homes. In Maine alone, there’s a growing shortage of about 20,000 housing units across the state.

It’s worth noting the US housing shortage predates the pandemic and the supply chain issues that came with it. Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, argues current housing issues can be traced back to restrictive zoning laws and land use regulations that allow residents to block attempts to build more homes in their neighborhoods. Put another way, it’s better to look at the housing crisis as a policy issue, not a technological one.

That’s not to say technology doesn’t have a role to play in improving housing. Cement, the key ingredient in concrete, has a massive carbon footprint. As of 2018, global production of the material contributed to about 8 percent of annual greenhouse emissions, or more pollution than was produced by the entire airline industry. Reducing or entirely removing the need for concrete in homebuilding could be a game-changer for the environment.

 

God of War: Ragnarok has sold more copies in its debut week than any other first-party PlayStation title, according to the official PlayStation Twitter account. Sony says the game tallied 5.1 million sales through its first week, placing it ahead of The Last of Us Part II, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Ragnarok’s predecessor, God of War (2018).

The AAA action-adventure epic, released on November 9th, has become a commercial and critical darling. In addition to moving tons of copies, it currently holds a 94 percent score on Metacritic, based on 135 critic reviews. That’s the same score as the previous game. Our review of the PS5 version of Ragnarok commended the satisfying combat with the Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos, majestic set pieces and surprising twists. And our own Nate Ingraham thought the more varied enemies were a huge improvement over the 2018 title. His one serious reservation was with the narrative which he found overly long, and at times seemed bogged down by a lack of editing.

Comparing sales with past Sony exclusives isn’t always apples-to-apples. The company has used various periods of time for different games, presumably to fit the moment’s PR needs. For example, it announced first-three-days sales for The Last of Us Part II (four million in 2020), Marvel’s Spider-Man (3.3 million in 2018) and God of War (3.1 million in 2018). However, Ragnarok’s first-week sales nearly doubled those of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which sold 2.7 million during its first week in 2016.

 

Sony has more exclusive games than Xbox does, according to Microsoft, which claims that many of its rival’s first-party titles “are better quality.” Lest you believe Microsoft is dunking on its own game studios for no reason, the company made the assertion in a filing with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is conducting an in-depth review of the planned Activision Blizzard acquisition. Although the filing is dated October 31st, Eurogamer notes that the document has just been made publicly available.

“In addition to being the dominant console provider, Sony is also a powerful game publisher,” Microsoft wrote in its response to the CMA. “Sony is roughly equivalent in size to Activision and nearly double the size of Microsoft’s game publishing business.” The company added that “there were over 280 exclusive first- and third-party titles on PlayStation in 2021, nearly five times as many as on Xbox.”

Along with Sony’s own franchises — such as The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War and Spider-Man — the company signs deals with third-party publishers for exclusive rights to games. Microsoft cites Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Bloodborne, as well as the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI and Silent Hill 2 remake as major titles that aren’t or won’t be available on Xbox.

Console exclusives account for a higher percentage of global game sales for Sony than Microsoft, the latter claimed (Sony just revealed that it sold 5.1 million copies of God of War Ragnarok in the game’s launch week). However, many Xbox players opt to access Microsoft’s exclusives through Game Pass instead of buying them outright — a point that Microsoft doesn’t touch on while discussing the companies’ sales proportions for their exclusive games.

In addition, Microsoft pointed to review scores for PlayStation and Xbox games. “The average Metacritic score for Sony’s top 20 exclusive games in 2021 was 87/100, against 80/100 for Xbox,” Microsoft claimed.

Microsoft is spotlighting these factors because game exclusivity and competition concerns are important considerations that regulators reviewing the proposed Activision buyout are exploring. From Sony’s perspective, one of the key sticking points of the Activision merger is the possibility that Microsoft will make the Call of Duty franchise (said to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year to PlayStation) exclusive to Xbox. Microsoft said it offered Sony a 10-year deal to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation earlier this month. Nevertheless, Microsoft claimed in the filing “it is implausible that Sony, the leading console with a more than 2-to-1 lead, would be foreclosed as a result of not having access to a single franchise.”

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer suggested on The Verge‘s Decoder podcast last week that the Activision deal was largely about scooping up mobile gaming giant King. Mobile “is a place where if we don’t gain relevancy as a gaming brand, over time the business will become untenable,” Spencer said. (Xbox Cloud Gaming runs on phones and tablets as well.)

Microsoft doubled down on the mobile side of the deal in its CMA filing. “As it stands, Xbox has no material presence in mobile and its ability to reach gamers on mobile is impeded by Apple and Google’s effective duopoly in the provision of mobile app stores. The acquisition of Activision provides Xbox with capabilities and content on mobile, which it currently lacks, while creating new distribution options for game developers outside of the mobile app stores.” Of note, the CMA said this week it’s investigating Apple and Google’s “stranglehold over operating systems, app stores and web browsers on mobile devices.”

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has tried to downplay the significance of the proposed $68.7 billion Activision deal. It claimed over the summer that Activision Blizzard has no “must-have” games, despite being behind the likes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (which raked in $1 billion in sales in 10 days), Overwatch 2 (35 million players in its first month), World of Warcraft and Candy Crush Saga (3 billion downloads since launch). Activision Blizzard’s games had 368 million monthly active users last quarter. However, Blizzard stands to lose millions of players in China when many of its games go offline there in January.