There’s been a lot of excitement this week in East Germany as Elon Musk’s Gigafactory launched to a rapturous reception. Elon flew in to cut the ribbon as the first 30 vehicles produced at the facility were handed over to customers. The event was hosted by Andre Traurig, Vehicle Manufacturing Lead at Tesla, and included a speech by Elon Musk, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, and Brandenburg Prime Minister, Dietmar Woidke in attendance. Big props to Tobi
While drink driving fatalities and injuries have declined in recent decades, it still remains a major problem on Australian roads. Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits have helped since they were put in place over 25 years ago, but new technology may now be able to stop drink driving altogether. In the US, the massive infrastructure bill passed by Congress last year mandated car manufacturers equip vehicles with advanced drink-driving prevention technology. These systems can either monitor a
Ah, 2015. Phones still had headphone jacks, Donald Trump had never been president, and Instagram still had a chronological feed. Those were the glory days. And then, in early 2016, Instagram announced it was getting rid of the chronological feed in favor of algorithmic sorting, something no one asked for. The idea was to ostensibly sort content based on what’s most interesting to you. But pretty much no one was happy about it, and it yielded real ethical and political concerns beyond general ann
A cybercrime gang called Lapsus$ is tearing through tech giants around the world. In the last few months alone, the group has claimed the scalps of Nvidia, Ubisoft, Samsung, Okta, and Microsoft. Their brazen tactics have attracted a large following — and some powerful enemies. Here’s what we know about the digital extortionists. Who are the Lapsus$ hackers? Lapsus$ first hit the headlines last December after taking credit for an attack on Brazil’s health ministry. The group posted a message on t
Ford has a weird habit of extravagant marketing strategies. I’ll never forget the petrol-scented perfume the company launched to accompany the electric Mustang Mach-E GT. I mean, who doesn’t want to smell like gasoline? But now there’s a new marketing campaign to wrap our heads around: online conference calling for… EVs. As if the Zoom fatigue of the past two years and the transformation of our homes into working spaces weren’t enough, Ford has a vision of your car becoming the “best mobile offi
We need to talk about Bruno. The theme song from Disney’s hit movie Encanto (We don’t talk about Bruno) has become the first song from an animated movie to top the US charts for multiple weeks. How did this come about? The answer is, once again, TikTok. The short-video platform is again behind the creation of a hit song. TikTok is changing the music industry, how hits are made and how the platform opens a new way to discover new artists,and new music. At the heart of the phenomenon are viral cha
It’s been a blockbuster month for Yuga Labs, the owner of the Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs. First, it acquired two other popular NFT projects: Crypto Punks and Meebits. Second, it announced the listing of the ApeCoin token on leading exchanges. And last, but not least, the company raised $450 million from marquee investors like a16z crypto, web3 gaming company Animoca Brands, and FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Now, it’s valued at over $4 billion. With this latest funding the firm has announce
For months now, a large and very active community of digital sleuths has been closely tracking the escalating crisis in Ukraine. These people have been using open-source intelligence to investigate and document the build-up to – and now the execution of – Vladimir Putin’s war of choice. But what exactly is open-source intelligence? And how is it helping efforts to understand what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine? Broadly speaking, open-source intelligence describes the knowledge or insight e
A renowned theoretical computer science expert recently released an astonishing physics pre-print paper that tosses fuel on the fiery debate over… whether humans could use wormholes to traverse the universe or not. Don’t worry, I’ll explain what this has to do with self-aware robots in due course. Fun with physics First, however, let’s lay the foundation for our speculation with a quick glance at this all-new wormhole theory. The pre-print paper comes courtesy of French researcher Pascal Koiran.
Among the things my generation has been promised, I’m especially excited about the rise of robotaxis. Sadly, they aren’t yet flooding the streets, as we expected or wished for. Regulatory approvals aren’t that easy to get, and the tech is still facing some hurdles. But don’t despair just yet — there are indeed some places around the world where you can actually take a ride with an AI driver. For now, the major players are operating in the US and China. So unless you already reside in the areas l