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Nothing is reportedly preparing to release a pair of true wireless headphones under a new flanker brand. Digging through the company’s latest firmware, developer Kuba Wojciechowski (via 91mobiles) found evidence of an unreleased set of “Particles by XO” earbuds.

Renders of the headphones showcase a unique design that’s reminiscent of a peanut or molecular chain. According to Wojciechowski, the earbuds include LHDC codec support and active noise cancelation. In other words, it looks like Nothing is preparing a product that has traits from both its Ear 1 and Ear Stick wireless buds. There are a few bits of evidence linking the earbuds to Nothing. To start, the company’s internal codename for them is “B154.” Nothing has reportedly used a similar codename, B155, for its upcoming Ear 2 headphones. On Saturday, the US Patent and Trademark Office awarded a shell company called “The Most Unknown LLC” a trademark for “Particles by XO.”

As for why Nothing, a company with only three products to its name, would establish a new brand just to launch another pair of wireless earbuds, it’s probably another marketing scheme by the company’s founder, former OnePlus executive Carl Pei.

 

The California Energy Commission (CEC) will spend $2.9 billion to accelerate the state’s zero-emission transportation strategy. In an announcement spotted by Reuters, the agency detailed an investment plan it estimated would result in California building about 90,000 new chargers over the next four years, a move that would more than double the number of chargers available across the state.

About $900 million will go toward chargers designed for light-duty EVs, with another $1.7 billion earmarked for infrastructure that supports medium and heavy-duty zero-emissions vehicles, including those powered by hydrogen fuel cells. When you add in funding from utilities and other programs, the commission says it expects California to hit its goal of deploying 250,000 chargers by 2025.

“This transformative investment will deploy charging and refueling infrastructure swiftly and equitably to make sure drivers of zero-emission cars and trucks feel confident they can refuel wherever they go,” said CEC Lead Commissioner for Transportation Patty Monahan. “The plan will increase access to charging and hydrogen fueling for individuals, businesses and public agencies, while supporting our emerging manufacturing ecosystem and creating jobs.”

Building enough charging infrastructure to support a growing number of EVs will be critical to California’s climate change plan. Earlier this year, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), following an order from Governor Gavin Newsom, said it would require all cars sold in the state by 2035 to be either fully electric or plug-in hybrids. More recently, the agency approved a $2.6 billion investment to incentivize consumers and companies to switch to electric vehicles.

 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Elon Musk has reportedly laid off more of Twitter’s workforce. According to The Information, the company cut part of its infrastructure division on Friday evening. The scale of the layoffs is unclear, but some engineers took to Twitter yesterday to say they were told over email their contribution was no longer required. The latest cuts come after The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Musk had laid off Nelson Abramson, Twitter’s head of infrastructure, among a handful of other high-ranking employees at the company.

Twitter did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. The company has not had a communications team since it began reducing its workforce. By The Information’s estimate, Twitter’s headcount has shrunk by about 75 percent since Musk’s takeover of the company in late October. The social media website employed approximately 7,500 under former CEO Parag Agrawal. As of a week ago, Twitter’s internal Slack listed around 2,000 employees, according to the outlet. In November, Musk reportedly told what was left of the company’s workforce Twitter would not lay off any more workers. The pledge came after the billionaire’s “extremely hardcore” ultimatum led to at least 1,200 resignations.

Additional casualties among the team responsible for keeping Twitter up and running are likely to add to fears about how unreliable the site may become in the near future. At the same time, the move may further alienate Tesla investors who were already considered how much time Musk was spending on Twitter. According to The Information, Musk tapped Tesla engineer Sheen Austin to run the social media website’s infrastructure team following Abramson’s departure.

The layoffs also point to the seemingly precarious financial position Twitter has found itself in since Musk’s takeover. In recent weeks, Elon and other executives reportedly discussed the potential consequences of denying severance payments to the thousands of people who were let go from the company in recent weeks. The company is also behind on rent for its San Fransisco headquarters and network of global satellite offices.

 

If you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for a friend or family member who wants to build a streaming channel in 2023, Amazon has your back. The retailer has a great deal on the Logitech StreamCam. After a 41 percent discount, the $170 webcam is currently $100. That’s the best price Engadget has seen for the StreamCam. Moreover, Amazon has discounted both the Graphite and White models. You can also find the webcam on sale for the same price at Best Buy.

Buy Logitech StreamCam at Amazon – $100Buy Logitech StreamCam at Best Buy – $100

The Logitech StreamCam is one of Engadget’s favorite web cameras. With support for 1080p video capture at 60 frames per second and a pair of built-in omnidirectional mics, it will make anyone look and sound great on your Zoom calls and Twitch streams. The StreamCam is also versatile. You can use it in landscape and portrait orientations, making it ideal for Instagram and TikTok videos. Add to that fuss-free autofocus and comprehensive software support for OBS, XSplit and Streamlabs, and you have one of the best all-purpose webcams. The only downside of the StreamCam is its expensive price tag, something this deal helps address.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

 

In 2021, Apple was considered the frontrunner to secure streaming rights to the National Football League’s Sunday Ticket package. Now, a year later, the company has reportedly dropped out of negotiations. The tidbit comes from a Puck article about Bob Iger’s surprise return to Disney. According to author Dylan Byers, Apple recently said no to the NFL “not because they can’t afford [the package], but because they don’t see the logic.”

With Disney reportedly bowing out of the negations as well, the talks have become a two-horse race between Amazon and Google. “Amazon can use [the deal] to drive Prime subscriptions; Google can use it to fuel its YouTube TV business,” adds Byers. Of the two suitors, Amazon is probably the best fit given that Prime Video is the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football for the next decade.

Last year, The Athletic reported the NFL was asking for more than $2 billion per year for Sunday Ticket rights, a price that was at least $500 million more than what DirecTV had been paying to air Sunday games. In a press conference earlier this week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Sunday Ticket negotiations were at “a very critical point” for the league. That seems to have been an understatement.

 

Twitter has announced through its Safety account that it has “identified several policies where permanent suspension was a disproportionate action for breaking Twitter rules.” The website has already started reinstating accounts that were suspended for violating those rules, the tweet continued, and it will lift more suspensions every week over the next month. Twitter didn’t specify the policies it’s talking about and which accounts will be reinstated. But upon checking, the accounts of Mastodon and the journalists recently banned due to the website’s new doxxing rules are up and running again. 

To understand what happened, we have to go back a few days. The website banned several accounts over the past week, starting with @ElonJet, the account that tracked flights of Elon Musk’s private jet using publicly available data. Other accounts that also tracked the planes of government agencies and high-profile individuals were banned, as well. 

On his account, Musk announced that any account “doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended.” In a follow-up tweet, he said that a car carrying his child was “followed by crazy stalker” and that he was taking legal action against Jack Sweeney, the college student who ran @ElonJet, and “organizations who supported harm to [his] family.” As of this writing, the @ElonJet account is still suspended. 

Shortly after that, Twitter also suspended the account of its rival social network Mastodon when it tweeted a link to the account tracking Musk’s jet on its own service. It’s worth noting that Twitter seems to have started flagging posts containing the word “Mastodon” as “sensitive content” days before this happened. Users also found themselves unable to post links to Mastodon servers.

In addition to Mastodon, Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists who report on Elon Musk and the social network itself. Most of them talked about Sweeney or linked to @ElonJet in some way, and based on Musk’s responses to questions about the event, the journalists were suspended due to Twitter’s new doxxing rules. One of the banned journalists, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, posted a screenshot of the tweet that the website had flagged for doxxing: It was a report about Mastodon’s suspension for tweeting a link to it service’s own @ElonJet account.

Following the journalists’ suspensions, Musk posted a poll asking people whether he should reinstate the accounts of users who doxxed his exact location in real time “now” or “in 7 days.” The “now” option won, and Musk promised that those accounts will be restored. So far, Twitter has reinstated Harwell’s account, along with the accounts of The New York Times’Ryan Mac, Mashable’sMatt Binder, The Intercept’sMicah Lee and CNN’sDonie O’Sullivan. Keith Olbermann’s account is still suspended, and it’s unclear if Twitter will lift @ElonJet’s suspension in the coming days. 

 

John Carmack, the virtual reality pioneer who joined Meta from Oculus after its $2 billion acquisition, has left the social network. Business Insider first reported his departure, citing people familiar with the company, and published pieces of his internal memo that contained sentiments critical of Meta and its augmented and virtual reality efforts. After Insider’s and The New York Times’ reports came out, Carmack confirmed on Twitter and Facebook that he is indeed leaving the company and even published his note to staff members in full. 

“This is the end of my decade in VR,” Carmack said in his memo. He started by praising the Quest 2 headset for being what he “wanted to see from the beginning,” with its inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, cost effectiveness and a screen with a resolution that’s nearly 4K. However, he argued that it could “have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made.”

Carmack’s main issue with Meta seems to be the company’s efficiency — or, based on his memo, its lack thereof. “We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort,” he wrote. “There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy.”

The executive said that as “a voice at the highest levels,” he felt like he should’ve been able to move things along, but he was “evidently not persuasive enough.” While he didn’t give detailed examples, Carmack noted that a good fraction of the things he complained about only turned his way a year or two after evidence of the issue had already piled up. “I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it,” he added. Carmack admitted near the end of the memo that he was “wearied of the fight” but that he still believes that “VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta.”

As the executive said on Twitter, he makes it no secret that he has “always been pretty frustrated with how things get done at [Meta.]” In a podcast interview with Lex Fridman back in August, he said the $10 billion loss by the company’s AR and VR division made him “sick to [his] stomach thinking about that much money being spent.” He wrote posts on Meta’s internal messaging board criticizing its headsets’ features and the need to install software updates before being able to use them. Apparently, he was also pushing Meta to put immediate user experience first when it comes to how it wants build out its vision of the metaverse. 

Carmack became Oculus’ first chief technology officer in 2013 after he left id Software, where he co-created the Doom and Quake franchises. He joined Meta when, as Facebook, it purchased Oculus for $2 billion back in 2014. In 2019, he took a step back from Oculus and acted as CTO only in a consulting capacity to focus on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or the kind of AI that’s capable of performing human tasks. His startup, Keen Technologies, is working on developing that type of AI systems.

 

Google, Apple and Mozilla are collaborating on a better web browser benchmark. Speedometer 3 will be a “cross-industry collaborative effort” from the Chrome, Safari and Firefox makers to create a new model that balances the companies’ visions for measuring responsiveness.

Three companies making a tool that will rate the effectiveness of their competing products sounds like a recipe for disaster. However, Speedometer’s governance policy includes a consent system that differs based on potential ramifications. For example, significant changes will require approval from the other two companies, while “non-trivial changes” will need consent from one of the other two parties. Meanwhile, “trivial changes” can be green-lit by a reviewer from any of the three browser makers. The policy’s aim is that “the working team should be able to move quickly for most changes, with a higher level of process and consensus expected based on the impact of the change.”

The project will follow Speedometer 2, the current de facto benchmark developed by Apple’s WebKit team. Chrome, Safari and Firefox are three of the four most-used browsers today. That fourth browser, Microsoft Edge, doesn’t run its own engine, instead relying on Google’s open-sourced Chromium with Blink and V8 engines.

The Speedometer 3 project is still in its infancy, and its GitHub page warns that it is “in active development and is unstable.” The groups recommend using Speedometer 2.1 until development is further along, though we don’t yet know when Speedometer 3 will be ready.

 

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration announced Thursday that it is opening an investigation into the self-driving technology behind General Motors’ robotaxi fleet. This announcement follows three reported accidents allegedly caused by Cruise vehicles braking hard or otherwise becoming immobilized in traffic, creating unannounced obstacles for other vehicles and resulting in rear-end collisions with other motorists.

“With respect to the incidents of hard braking, NHTSA has received three reports of the ADS initiating a hard braking maneuver in response to another road user that was quickly approaching from the rear,” the agency reports, noting that human supervisors were aboard for each incident. “In each case, the other road user subsequently struck the rear of the ADS-equipped vehicle.”

“With respect to the incidents of vehicle immobilization, NHTSA has been notified of multiple reports involving Cruise ADS equipped vehicles, operating without onboard human supervision, becoming immobilized,” the report continues. “When this occurs, the vehicle may strand vehicle passengers in unsafe locations, such as lanes of travel or intersections, and become an unexpected obstacle to other road users.”

In response the company touted its technology’s history of safe operations. “Cruise’s safety record is publicly reported and includes having driven nearly 700,000 fully autonomous miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities,” Hannah Lindow, Cruise spokesperson, told Engadget via email. “This is against the backdrop of over 40,000 deaths each year on American roads. There’s always a balance between healthy regulatory scrutiny and the innovation we desperately need to save lives, which is why we’ll continue to fully cooperate with NHTSA or any regulator in achieving that shared goal.”

The company goes on to argue that in the cases of hard braking, the vehicles were reacting to the actions of other drivers, had a human operator onboard (though the ADS was in control at the time), and has already met with the NHTSA regarding each incident. Cruise frames the immobilization events as equivalent to a flat tire, wherein the ADS encounters an unexpected and potentially dangerous situation, turns on the vehicle’s hazards and pulls off to the side of the road.

Cruise LLC is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded in 2013 by Kyle Vogt and Dan Kan. GM acquired the autonomous driving technology company three years later. Since then, General Motors has lavished its subsidiary with funding, facilities and staffing, even going so far as to develop its own processor chips for the Origin autonomous shuttle bus. The company began testing ADS rides in San Francisco in June, 2021 and earlier this year earned regulatory approval to charge for driverless taxi services within the city. 

The company has also suffered setbacks in its pursuit of self-driving taxis. Division CEO Dan Ammann stepped down from his position in June, replaced for the interim by CTO and founder Kyle Vogt. Cruise made headlines in April when a police officer tried and failed to pull one over during a traffic stop and again in June when seemingly all of them decided that the corner of Gough and Fulton would make for a perfect impromptu parking lot.   

As the NHTSA is sure it’s aware of every braking/immobilization incident to date, the agency is opening a preliminary evaluation,”to determine the scope and severity of the potential problem and fully assess the potential safety-related issues posed by these two types of incidents.” It has not announced a timeline for publication of the PE’s findings.

 

The first in-depth testing for Formula E’s Gen3 car took place this week in Valencia, just one month away from the start of Season 9 in Mexico City. Across three full days, one simulated race and an added one-hour jaunt on a planned media day, some teams ran nearly 600 laps and over 2,000 kilometers to get a handle on what the new cars are capable of. The week wasn’t without incidents, of course, but Formula E co-founder and chief championship officer Alberto Longo said the sessions were “very successful.”

“The teams and drivers are obviously still learning and integrating the new system,” Longo explained. “We know that [going] from Gen2 to Gen3 is much harder to navigate than from Gen 1 to Gen 2, so it’s great to see that we are already much quicker than where we were with Gen2.”

After this week’s testing in Spain, here are the biggest things we learned about Formula E’s pending Gen3 debut next month.

The Gen3 cars look great on track

I’ll be the first to admit that when Formula E pulled the wraps off the Gen3 car in Monaco last April, I was a bit skeptical of the new, bold look. Once the teams started revealing their final liveries in the lead up to the Valencia test, I started to see the potential. All of the teams have been posting clips this week and Formula E has compiled footage as well, showing that the new cars do indeed look great on track despite their fighter jet-esque design.

The Gen3 car isn’t that much faster than Gen2 yet

When the Gen3 car was first revealed one of the main points Formula E hyped up was how much faster the new trim would be. That included a top speed of up to 200MPH. Of course, speed is dependent on a number of factors, including the circuit, but on paper the new cars should be much quicker than the Gen2 EVs. In the first practice session of the week, Maserati MSG Racing’s Maximilian Günther posted the quickest official time of 1:26.096, slower than the fastest lap of Valencia testing last year in the Gen2 car of 1:25.763. The quickest lap this week came when Günther notched a 1:25.127 on the final day.

“When developing a new car, it’s really important to collect as much data as possible and to get a good feel for the car, and I believe that we have achieved this over the past few days,” Günther said. “Now, we just need to refine some aspects of our performance and continue with our preparations ahead of the first race of the season in Mexico.”

With the Gen3 cars being lighter and more powerful, an added 100kW to be exact, you’d expect the lap times to fall from the previous generation running. However, with limited testing, specifically in regards to the new tires, teams haven’t dialed-in their setups to take full advantage of the new cars just yet. Hankook told The Race that some drivers experienced the new compound “for the first time in their life” during the initial session in Valencia.

The new tires are posing a challenge

For the first eight seasons, Formula E ran Michelin tires. Starting with Season 9, however, the series is making the switch to Hankook. More specifically, it moved to a more sustainable compound that aligns with Formula E’s green initiatives. 30 percent of the new tires are made from environmentally-friendlier materials like natural rubber. The challenge for Hankook is not only does the tire have to be better for the Earth, it also has to work well in both wet and dry conditions since Formula E only runs one compound.

Autosport reports that Hankook tested “maybe even 80 different specs” of tire compounds during the development phase, according to the company’s head of motorsport Manfred Sandbichler. The end result is a tire where the inside is softer and the outside is harder – a combination that could have implications for how teams tackle corners at each circuit.

One thing that’s clear throughout the paddock is that the new Hankook tires are more durable than the final spec of Michelins. McLaren Racing’s Jake Hughes told Engadget recently that the new tires “behave very differently” and that they’re “a bit harder, a bit stiffer.” The harder tire should be more durable than what Formula E ran in the past, according to Hughes, as the degradation on the Michlins would lead to the treaded tire being nearly slick by the end of the race.

“We need to try to understand how we can maximize it,” he explained. “At some point we’re talking in miniscule details to try to find an advantage over the competition.”

Teams are dealing with reliability concerns

With limited testing ahead of the official preseason sessions in Valencia, teams are finding issues with their cars. The Race reports that some teams were in such a crunch to make it to Spain that they didn’t have time to shakedown their cars beforehand to make sure the basic systems were functioning properly due to parts that arrived late. According to that report, around-the-clock work shifts were required for some to make it to testing.

During a mock race this week, eight of 22 cars retired before the end of the trial event. One car didn’t make the start due to battery issues and two others had to pit on the first lap. A handful of others had to visit pitlane, which doesn’t happen during a Formula E race unless you have an issue (until the series institutes charging stops at least). The two biggest problems seem to be with the Williams Advanced Engineering battery setups and the brakes, both of which The Race reported teams were having issues with in early November. Formula E is said to be working on a secondary braking system after a number crashes in testing prior to Valencia, but The Race understands that it won’t be available during the first two E-Prix in Mexico City and Diriyah.

Teams expect Gen3 cars to improve quickly and drastically

This isn’t exactly a new development, but teams up and down the paddock echoed the sentiment after the handful of test runs. McLaren’s team principal Ian James told Engadget that he expects “a development rather than a complete evolution.”

“As much as we’ll prepare the best we can for Mexico and that first race, undoubtedly there’s going to be a very steep learning curve as we get into the new season,” he explained. “And a fast rate of development as well.”

Drivers are also clear there’s “a lot to learn and plenty of work to do” before the first race, as Maserati’s Edoardo Mortara explained. “This week of testing has been intense but overall positive, and although we’re still understanding the finer points of the Gen3, I think we are in a strong position,” he said. “From here, we will fully analyze our data, debrief and continue to gather simulations from HQ.”

The first race in Mexico City could be… interesting

The issues with batteries and brakes aside, there are a number of elements of a proper Formula E E-Prix that could make the first full race quite an adventure. The new tires pose a challenge on a full street circuit, as opposed to the smooth track in Valencia. Getting the rubber in the proper window for qualifying and managing any degradation over the course of the race will be key.

There are also some unknowns with race format as well, as Formula E plans to test a mandatory Attack Charge stop in certain races in Season 9. Attack Charge will give drivers a temporary power boost much like Attack Mode has in previous seasons. Formula E says the 30-second stop can deliver 4kWh of energy to power an “enhanced” Attack Mode where the power of the Gen3 cars increases from 300kW to 350kW. It’s unclear where the Attack Charge trials will take place as specific races weren’t announced when the updated sporting regulations were revealed last month.