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The European Union is one step closer to banning sales of new gas-powered cars. The European Parliament has voted in favor of a Council agreement requiring that all new passenger cars and vans produce zero emissions by 2035. The move also revises some 2030 targets. Officials will now require that at least 25 percent of car sales (and 17 percent of vans) are zero-emissions models if a company wants to qualify for incentives between 2025 and 2029. The incentive will go away in 2030.

The new rules task the European Commission with keeping an eye on real-world achievements. It will have until 2025 to develop a way to report data on the emissions of the “full life-cycle” of cars sold in the EU, and will track the gap between emission limits and real consumption data starting in 2026. From the end of 2025, the Commission will publish updates every two years to gauge progress toward zero-emissions transportation.

The Council still has to endorse the text before it can be published in the EU Official Journal and take effect. The measure loosens the pre-2035 transition rules for niche automakers that produce fewer than 10,000 new cars or 22,000 new vans per year, and those making fewer than 1,000 cars per year will still be exempt.

That final approval is largely a formality, however, and the EU’s years-long move toward a gas car sales ban has already had its intended effect. Manufacturers like GM, Stellantis, Volvo and VW already plan to stop all combustion engine car sales in the region (and sometimes worldwide) by 2035 or earlier, while marques like Renault have committed to electrifying most of their lineup as soon as 2025. The shift is well underway — it’s just a question of which companies finish first.

 

The marquee show on Apple TV+ is coming back after a year and a half. Apple has revealed that the third season of Ted Lasso will premiere March 15th, with a new episode (12 total) arriving every week. The teaser trailer below doesn’t shed much light on the story, but those who’ve followed so far know there’s a lot to resolve after the end of season two.

Season three has AFC Richmond fighting not just to prove itself after promotion to the Premier League, but against one of its former allies — Nate is now working for Rebecca’s ex Rupert at West Ham United. Roy Kent has to fill Nate’s shoes, while Ted, Rebecca and Keeley have to grapple with both personal and professional challenges. It’s safe to presume the series’ optimistic-but-not-naive tone will carry forward.

Much is riding on this new chapter. Ted Lasso remains Apple’s best-known production, having earned multiple awards. It’s potential proof the company can produce a quality show with a substantial run. With that said, Apple isn’t quite so dependent on the comedy as it once was. Apple TV+ is gathering momentum with a number of well-received titles that include Severance, Slow Horses and the Oscar-winning CODA. The service is still small compared to streaming heavyweights like Amazon and Netflix, but it’s no longer an untested rookie.

 

A group of Tesla workers in New York has sent company chief Elon Musk a letter stating their intention to unionize, according to Bloomberg. It could end up being the first Tesla union if successful, seeing as previous attempts fizzled out before organizers could petition for a vote. The employees involved in the campaign are in charge of labeling data for Tesla’s Autopilot technology at the company’s Buffalo, New York facility. Bloomberg says the group is asking for better pay, job security and a better work environment that eases the production pressures placed on them. 

Workers told the news organization that they’ve been skipping bathroom breaks, since Tesla keeps a close eye on their every move. Apparently, the company monitors their keystrokes to see how long they spend on each particular task and how much time they spend working per day. They also said that the company shut down an internal chatroom where they can air their grievances, such as the how Tesla handles snow days. It was after that happened that the group started talking about unionizing. They’re now planning to distribute Valentine-themed materials at the facility with links to a website where employees can sign union cards. 

The employees are working with Service Employees International Union affiliate Workers United, which unionized Starbucks cafes across the US. While Workers United has a good track record, the group still faces a tough road ahead, considering Elon Musk is known to be a staunch critic of unions. In 2017, he fired back against allegations of poor working conditions at Tesla’s Fremont factory and criticized the United Auto Workers (UAW) for inciting the company’s workers to unionize. He said UAW’s allegiance is in “giant car companies, where the money they take from employees in dues is vastly more than they could ever make from Tesla.”

Last year, he also challenged UAW to hold a union vote, claiming that Tesla’s (non-unionized) factory workers have the highest compensation in the auto industry. And let’s not forget one of his perhaps most infamous tweets regarding unionization. In 2018, he tweeted that there’s nothing stopping Tesla’s workers from unionizing, but then he added: “why pay union dues [and] give up stock options for nothing?” The NLRB asked Musk to delete his post, deeming it as a threat that employees would be giving up company-paid stock options if they join a union. The tweet in question is still live, and Tesla is still appealing the labor board’s ruling. 

 

Amazon-owned Zoox has started offering driverless robotaxi rides in California after receiving a testing permit from the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), the company announced. Unlike the autonomous vehicles from Cruise and Waymo, Zoox’s vehicles are purpose built for driverless taxi rides, so they have no steering wheel or pedals.

On February 11th, shortly after receiving the permit, Zoox conducted the “first run of its employee shuttle service in Foster City, California, marking the first time in history a purpose-built autonomous robotaxi without traditional driving controls carried passengers on open public roads,” it wrote in a press release.

To get to that point, the company completed what it called “rigorous” testing with the vehicles on private roads. It also ran its L3 test fleet (hybrid Toyota Highlanders with safety drivers) over a million autonomous miles on data-gathering missions in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Seattle. 

Zoox has been developing its unique vehicles since it launched nine years ago, and was acquired by Amazon in a $1.2 billion merger in the summer of 2020. Its robotaxis, introduced later that year, are relatively tiny at 3.63 meters (11.9 feet) long, have passenger bench seats that face each other, four-wheel steering and can drive in either direction. That makes them highly maneuverable, but they can also travel at speeds up to 75 MPH and run 16 hours on a charge thanks to the immense 133kWh battery packs. 

Zoox will now offer full-time employees robotaxi rides between its Foster City offices during business hours. “As the company continues to advance its progress and secure additional government clearances, it will expand its service to the general public,” the company wrote. 

 

An artificial intelligence agent recently flew a Lockheed Martin VISTA X-62A training aircraft for over 17 hours. VISTA (which stands for Variable In-flight Simulation Test Aircraft) normally uses software to simulate the performance characteristics of other aircraft. On this flight during a testing period in December, however, it mimicked a human pilot. US Air Force Test Pilot School (USAF TPS) Director of Research Dr. M. Christopher Cotting said in a statement, “VISTA will allow us to parallelize the development and test of cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques with new uncrewed vehicle designs.”

This is the first time AI has been engaged in such a way on a tactical aircraft, Lockheed says. It’s like they’ve never seen the 2005 box-office bomb, Stealth…

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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Look at this tiny VR headset

Bigscreen’s first VR unit boasts 5K displays.

Bigscreen is best known for its namesake virtual social platform – which I’ve never heard of either – but it’s now getting into VR headsets. The Beyond is a PC-only wearable it claims is both the “world’s smallest” VR headset and extremely light at just under six ounces with a strap. Despite that weight, it includes two 5K (5,120 x 2,560) 90Hz OLED displays and six-degrees-of-freedom tracking. But some difficult choices have been made, too: You have to scan your face using an iPhone app (sorry, Android fans) to produce a custom-fitted design and buy custom prescription lenses if you normally wear glasses. Built-in headphones are only available with an optional “audio strap,” all to keep the headset as compact as possible.

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Blue Origin made solar cells from simulated Moon dust

Lunar bases might not need resources from Earth.

Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company revealed it can produce solar cells and transmission wire using simulated Moon regolith. Blue Origin’s Blue Alchemist technique uses molten electrolysis to separate the lunar soil’s aluminum, iron and silicon from oxygen to build solar cells, cover glass and aluminum wire using only sunlight and the reactor’s silicon. While the concept of using regolith to build outposts isn’t new, it’s normally focused on large-scale habitat materials rather than power supply solutions.

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After one last release date change, ‘Dead Island 2’ will arrive a week early

“You asked for it. You got it.”

After far too many delays to count, Dead Island 2 has a new release date once more. This time, however, publisher Deep Silver is pushing the game up by a week. Instead of arriving on April 28th as previously planned, the game will now hit consoles and PC on April 21st. “You asked for it, you got it. Dead Island 2 went gold and it’s coming out a week early,” the company announced.

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TikTok creators might soon put some videos behind a paywall

A revamped Creator Fund could also boost pay for influencers.

A report from The Information suggests TikTok is developing a paywall feature so producers can charge $1 (or a price of their choice) for video access. While it’s unclear exactly how the system would work, this would help influencers profit directly from their hottest clips. The social network is also considering a revamp of its Creator Fund amid complaints about low payouts. TikTok may require a much larger follower count (100,000 versus 10,000) but could pay eligible creators more as a result.

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The best gaming mouse in 2023

Picks for your FPS, MMO and general playing needs.

A good mouse will give you greater control over your cursor; add a few more buttons and you can customize it to make your clicking and pointing more comfortable. In competitive games, the best gaming mouse won’t magically make you unstoppable, but faster response time and extra inputs should make for a more pleasurable and responsive experience.

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Toyota has revealed its plans for the future under a new CEO, and it looks like the company is finally prioritizing electrification. In his announcement, new President and CEO Koji Sato said the automaker is going to create new electric vehicles unique to Toyota and Lexus, its luxury division. He also said that the company is developing its “next-generation” battery electric vehicles, which will launch under the Lexus brand in 2026. It’s not quite clear what “next-generation” means, but Sato said Toyota is working on “everything from the battery and platform to how a car is built optimized for BEVs” while also expanding its current EV lineup.

As Reuters notes, Toyota is getting flak for dragging its feet when it comes to embracing electric vehicle technology and for its reluctance to move beyond its hybrid models, such as the Prius. Sato explained during the press conference that the automaker’s slow EV adoption was mostly caused by communication issues. He also announced that the automaker will continue its “multi-pathway” and “omni-directional” approach, which means it’s not going to drop its hybrid vehicles anytime soon. However, Toyota intends to accelerate its EV plans under its new management and to take on “a BEV-first mindset”

So far, the automaker has only released one vehicle, the bZ4X, based on its e-TNGA BEV platform. The company previously vowed that it was going to be the first among the seven “Beyond Zero” electric vehicles it plans to release by 2025. Meanwhile, Lexus has yet to start selling the RZ, the brand’s first model that was built from the ground up as an EV.

 

Samsung has announced that its Galaxy Watch 5 temperature sensor will finally be put to use. The company has teamed up with the fertility app Natural Cycles to bring its temperature-based period tracking algorithm to a smartwatch for the first time. The feature will be available in 32 countries across Europe, North America and Asia.  

Galaxy Watch 5 users will get access to “advanced cycle tracking through the Cycle Tracking feature,” recently approved by Korea’s equivalent to the FDA, Samsung said. Much like Apple’s Watch Series 8, it will provide retrospective ovulation estimates and help people better understand their cycles, the company told The Verge. 

Since 2018, Natural Cycles has allowed women to track their temperature and menstrual cycle to check fertility, and the company has said it’s 93 percent effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies. The app has already been approved by the FDA and European regulators to be used on wearables. The company tested it with Oura rings, but the algorithm apparently hasn’t been used on a smartwatch until now. 

Temperature readings are key for those trying to achieve or avoid pregnancy, as basal body temperature tends to increase slightly two to three days after peak fertility. With Oura’s temperature sensors, Natural Cycles was able to cut out the need to take readings from a thermometer, and it will presumably do the same with the Galaxy Watch 5. 

The feature will be integrated into Samsung’s Health app, so you won’t require a separate app to use it. It’ll arrive to Galaxy Watch 5 and Watch 5 Pro users “within the second quarter” in 32 markets, including most of Europe, Korea, the UK and the US. 

 

If you’ve been using Twitter’s “For You” instead of the chronological “Following” tab, you may have noticed a problem. A number of users have remarked that the algorithmic feed has been showing a lot of Elon Musk’s tweets and replies, whether they follow him or not. Twitter’s CEO effectively confirmed the matter, tweeting “please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh… ‘algorithm.'”

I’d assume that by putting “algorithm” in quotes, Musk is joking that a person, possibly himself, may actually be responsible for the change. That’s not too far-fetched, considering that the Elon-forward feed arrived shortly after Musk complained about a drop in his own engagement and even reportedly fired an engineer over the issue. 

Following that episode, Musk tweeted that a fix was coming after a “long day at Twitter HQ with eng team.” He said that 95 percent of his tweets weren’t getting delivered to the Following feed due to an issue with something called “Fanout,” so that’s now been shunted to another service. He also noted that the Recommendation algorithm wasn’t working correctly, “causing accounts with many followers to be dumped.” 

There’s no word yet on why Twitter went from “Musk lite” to “all Elon all the time,” but it appears that issue is being addressed. In the meantime, you could either mute Musk (at least temporarily) or simply use the Following feed to see only the tweets you want to see, precisely when they happen. 

 

T-Mobile suffered network outages on Monday night, leading to intermittent issues with its voice, text and data services, according to Reuters. Based on reports submitted to Downdetector, over 80,000 subscribers in several areas in the US were experiencing problems by around 10:14PM ET on February 14th. T-Mobile responded to users’ complaints on Twitter, initially to tell people that the carrier was working on a fix for the disruption and then to update everyone about its progress. Shortly after midnight on February 14th, Neville Ray, the company’s President of Technology, announced that T-Mobile has seen “significant improvement and are operating at near normal levels.”

Indeed, the number of outage reports on Downdetector dramatically went down after its peak at 10PM on Monday. Ray said the outage was caused by a third-party fiber interruption issue that affected its services — for some people, even emergency numbers were inaccessible. The outages also seemed to have affected not just T-Mobile’s own customers, but people who use MVNOs that rely on the carrier’s network, as well. 9to5Google says Google Fi users have also been experiencing intermittent access to its services, though they’ll likely be able use them as usual soon, if T-Mobile truly was able to fix the problem. 

 

Twitter is once again delaying the rollout of its paid API. In a tweet spotted by AppleInsider, the company said Tuesday it needs more time to complete work on the redesign. “As part of our efforts to create an optimal experience for the developer community, we will be delaying the launch of our new API platform by a few more days,” Twitter posted.

When the company first announced it was shutting down its free APIs, Twitter said it would cut access off on February 9th. It later pushed back the cutoff date to February 13th without warning. Elon Musk hasn’t said much about how paid access to Twitter’s APIs could work other than to suggest the company will charge $100 per month and add “ID verification” to limit bot abuse. The company has also said it plans to introduce a free access tier that will allow “good” bots to tweet up to 1,500 times a month.

It’s worth noting that third-party clients and the creators of automated accounts aren’t the only people who use Twitter’s APIs. Researchers frequently use the data the platform generates for a variety of purposes. For instance, in the aftermath of the recent 7.8-magnitude earthquake that has killed at least 36,000 people in Turkey and Syria, members of the Turkish diaspora have used tweets to create heatmaps that show where survivors could be located, with the intention of sharing their findings with rescue crews and aid organizations.

In a recent interview with Time, data scientists and people involved with the rescue effort said Elon Musk’s cost-cutting measures, including the multiple rounds of layoffs he has ordered since taking over the company in October, have slowed their work. The company’s API changes are likely to further impact the rescue effort. “If the API stops, the flow of data will stop and people will have to rely solely on slower ways of coordination for the relief efforts,” Sedat Kapanoglu, one of the software engineers involved in the project, told Time. “That can have life-altering effects. It’s that important.”