The Verge

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images The majority of Comcast Xfinity internet customers have suffered ridiculous and unnecessary data caps since 2016, and the company planned to extend those caps to a dozen more US states this year. But after taking well-deserved flak for attempting to bilk customers in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Comcast delayed them once, twice, and now a third time — now they won’t arrive until 2023 at the earliest, Light Reading reports.“We don’t have plans to implement our data usage plan in our Northeast markets in 2022 at this time,” a Comcast spokesperson told the publication.Does that mean the planned 1.2TB data cap for those states is gone for good, or is Comcast simply biding its time? Hard to say. Technically, “We don’t have plans... Continue reading…

Photo by Mitchell Clark / The Verge Amazon-backed EV startup Rivian is going to build a second factory in Georgia where it will assemble up to 400,000 electric vehicles per year. The company made the announcement on Thursday alongside state representatives after months of speculation over where it would look to expand its manufacturing footprint. Rivian will start construction of the $5 billion facility in the summer of 2022 and expects to start making vehicles there in 2024.Rivian is already building its first electric pickup trucks at a former Mitsubishi factory in Normal, Illinois. But the company is getting ready to start building its electric SUV and is committed to producing 100,000 custom delivery vans for Amazon, so it has been searching for a place to create a... Continue reading…

Sidewalk Labs will be folded into Google as its CEO steps down for health reasons. | Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff is stepping down for health reasons, and the six-year-old company and its products will be folded into Google, he wrote in a blog post Thursday. Doctoroff says he’s been diagnosed with what may be ALS and wants to spend more time with his family.“Starting next year, Sidewalk products Pebble, Mesa, Delve, and Affordable Electrification will join Google, becoming core to Google’s urban sustainability product efforts,” Doctoroff wrote in the post. “These products will continue to be led by Sidewalk Labs President of Urban Products Prem Ramaswami and Chief Technology Officer Craig Nevill-Manning, both Google alumni, and the teams will continue to execute on their vision and serve customers.”Google parent... Continue reading…

Portal now offers sign language interpreters | Meta Facebook parent company Meta is adding video relay services (VRS) to its Portal video calling devices, allowing users to bring English or Spanish sign language interpreters into video conversations. The new feature is part of a collaboration with ZP Better Together, a tech firm that makes communication solutions for Deaf and hard-of-hearing users.Meta spokesperson Lisa Auslen explained in an email to The Verge that users will need to apply for a ZP account to confirm they’re eligible for the service, which is federally funded under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Both the service and the Portal devices are free for those who qualify; they must be VRS users in the US who communicate using ASL.Once the user has their ZP account and... Continue reading…

The Nokia X20 is HMD Global’s first device to get Android 12. HMD Global offered its first Android 12 update this week, starting with the midrange Nokia X20. The company says users in this first wave will receive the update by December 17th.Good. That’s what HMD said it would do, and it’s doing just that. We love to see it.You’re forgiven if you forgot that the Nokia X20 exists — it’s a mostly unremarkable device with a 6.67-inch 60Hz display, Snapdragon 480 processor, and four rear-facing cameras. In fact, its most compelling features might just be its healthy support policy (three years of OS updates) and an unusually generous three-year warranty.Generally speaking, the Android 12 rollout has been a rocky oneThat’s a great policy in theory — as my colleague Jon Porter pointed out in his... Continue reading…

Courtesy of DJI DJI is one of the biggest drone companies in the world, and last year, the US government added it to the Department of Commerce’s Entity List, which marked it as a national security concern and banned US-based companies from exporting technology to it. Today, the Treasury Department placed further sanctions on DJI, including it as one of eight Chinese companies added to the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies (NS-CMIC) List.US Treasury:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify continues to beef up its audio product arsenal. Today, it announced the acquisition of Whooshkaa, a nearly six-year-old Australian company focused on helping radio broadcasters monetize, edit, and distribute their shows as podcasts. Spotify says some radio broadcasters, like the Australian Radio Network, already rely on its podcast hosting platform Megaphone, and this Whooshkaa radio technology will be integrated into it. The selling price was not disclosed.Radio networks will be able to prepare shows for publishing by capturing live broadcasts and using the Whooshkaa tech to edit and remove ads to make room for podcast-only spots. From there, Megaphone can host the shows, and Spotify can help the shows monetize by encouraging... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Update 3:25PM ET, December 16th: Best Buy has sold out of consoles for now. This one lasted a bit longer than some recent restocks, though availability seemed dependent on your location and proximity to Best Buy stores.If you’re currently shopping for a PlayStation 5 console and have been recently striking out with restocks at Walmart, Costco, and other retailers, you have another chance right now at Best Buy. The electronics retailer just opened up a fresh batch of PlayStation 5 consoles for $499.99. Best Buy is only selling the disc-based version, however, not the Digital Edition.Be sure to log in and queue up on Best Buy’s site, with your billing and shipping info saved. Click the “Add to Cart” button on the right to jump into the... Continue reading…

Days after IGN’s report highlighting Bungie’s years-long struggle with harassment, abuse, and crunch conditions, Gayle d’Hondt, head of HR, is stepping down.According to a report from IGN, d’Hondt served at Bungie for 14 years before stepping down from her role as head of HR effective immediately. It is not yet known if she will remain with the company in another role. In an email obtained by IGN, d’Hondt shared her experiences at Bungie, which included “deeply challenging interpersonal conflicts” and reporting her own abuse.Last week, IGN reported that the culture at the studio was at times at odds with its image of being a progressive video game development company. The report captured incidents of a manager yelling frequently at... Continue reading…

Illustration by Richard Parry Clever gift ideas to satisfy the pickiest of dads Continue reading…

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Apple is reportedly working to design more chip components in-house, with the company said to be establishing a new office with the aim of replacing components that Apple currently sources from Broadcom and Skyworks, according to Bloomberg.The new office is said to be in its early stages but will eventually focus on “wireless radios, radio-frequency integrated circuits and a wireless system-on-a-chip,” in addition to “semiconductors for connecting to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi,” Bloomberg says.While the A-series and M-series SoCs that contain the CPU and GPU for Apple’s iPhones and Macs get most of the attention, there are tons of additional chips inside those devices, handling things like power management, USB connectivity, wireless... Continue reading…

Success! You just installed the last Google Toolbar. | Screenshot by Umar Shakir / The Verge I was lost and in search of myself after hearing the devastating news on Ars Technica: Google Toolbar had been put down by the search giant after nearly 21 years — longer than most projects the company lets live. (A recent newsletter effort didn’t make it past three months).There was no ceremony, no announcement, no moment of silence, nor any closure — just a “no longer available.” That’s what Google has now on its Install Google Toolbar help page; it tells you how to uninstall the Google Toolbar and install Chrome instead. How to “install” Google Toolbar — the result may surprise you. It feels unreal for Google to silently forsake a tool that was, in 2008, responsible for 12 percent of all Google searches — and... Continue reading…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Peter Membrey, chief architect of ExpressVPN, remembers vividly seeing the news of the Log4j vulnerability break online.“As soon as I saw how you could exploit it, it was horrifying,” says Membrey. “Like one of those disaster movies where there’s a nuclear power plant, they find it’s going to melt down, but they can’t stop it. You know what’s coming, but there are very limited things you can do.”Since the vulnerability was uncovered last week, the cybersecurity world has kicked into overdrive to identify vulnerable applications, detect potential attacks, and mitigate against exploits however possible. Nonetheless, serious hacks making use of the exploit are all but certain.“As soon as I saw how you could exploit it, it was horrifying”... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge With time ticking away before shipping deadlines put a stop to your online holiday shopping, Google is highlighting a few new Chrome features that might help you out. Still, it’s not lost on us that these features used to keep track of stuff to help you shop are also useful for the nearly $2 trillion company that makes most of its money from serving up relevant advertisements and making sure shoppers hit the “buy” button.But you will probably use Chrome anyway, so you should know that a new feature in the mobile browser on Android will show updated pricing for items inside your open tabs grid, so you’ll know if the prices suddenly drop. Google says iOS Chrome browsers will get the feature “in the coming weeks.” Image:... Continue reading…

The family of a slain Uber driver wants the company to help them | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Ahmad Fawad Yusufi, a refugee from Afghanistan and father of three, was shot and killed last month in San Francisco during what police said was a botched robbery attempt. His family says Yusufi, a former interpreter with the US Army who lived in Sacramento, was in San Francisco to drive for Uber, a job which was their sole source of income.The ride-hailing company has said Yusufi appeared to be “offline” at the time of the shooting, meaning he was not on duty, but his brother Ilyas says Yusufi worked all night Sunday driving for Uber, which was his reason for being in San Francisco at the time of the shooting early on a Monday morning. He’s written a letter to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, chief legal officer Tony West, and senior VP for... Continue reading…

The Buds Z2 in black and white. | Image: OnePlus OnePlus’ latest pair of true wireless earbuds are the $99 OnePlus Buds Z2. They’re double the price of the $49.99 OnePlus Buds Z from last year but now benefit from active noise cancellation, a shorter stem, and a more lightweight construction. They’re available now in the US and will release in the UK and EU on December 20th for £99 and €99, respectively.Although the Buds Z2’s price sits halfway between the Buds Z and OnePlus’ more premium $150 Buds Pro, it actually has better battery life than both of them. Battery life from the earbuds themselves is around five hours with ANC turned on, rising to seven hours when you turn it off, and combined with the case you get up to 38 hours total (dropping to 27 hours with ANC on). In... Continue reading…

A Waymo vehicle apparently struck a pedestrian in Lower Haight in San Francisco | KWillets on Reddit A Waymo autonomous vehicle struck a pedestrian in San Francisco Wednesday night, according to a post on Reddit. A spokesperson for the Alphabet-owned company confirmed the incident on Twitter but clarified that the vehicle was in manual mode at the time of the collision.The incident took place in the Lower Haight neighborhood of San Francisco, where Waymo has been testing its vehicles since last summer. The Reddit user KWillets, who claims to have witnessed the collision, posted a photo of a Waymo vehicle stopped in the middle of the road with the driver-side door open. A firetruck is parked to the side, while a number of firefighters and bystanders are gathered in front of the vehicle. According to KWillets:

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon Web Services barely finished the postmortem on last week’s incident that interrupted deliveries and shut off feeds from security cameras before AWS started having problems again. While last week’s outage was in the US-EAST-1 region, reports around 10:45AM showed connections to the company’s US-West servers were failing.

Sifu, the newest game from Absolver developer Sloclap, feels like exactly the kind of shot in the arm the roguelike genre needs. Far too many of that style of game favors sword and board combat in medieval or otherwise indeterminate but distant past fantasy settings. Sifu is a refreshingly modern take on the die-and-restart style of play that ditches the sword in favor of these hands.I got to play a bit of Sifu in a hands-on preview that demos the first half of the second chapter. The preview dropped me right into the action — no tutorial mission, no story explanation, just a destination simply known as The Club. The preview makes you fight your way through the club, battling simple minions that go down in one or two punches to heavy... Continue reading…

Illustration by Richard Parry Cross some names off your list without spending a mint Continue reading…

The Logitech G604 was originally available for $99.99 but is currently discounted to $44.99 at Amazon, the lowest price we’ve seen for this versatile, MOBA-oriented mouse. The G604 features a powerful 25K DPI optical sensor and 15 programmable buttons. Perhaps the most striking feature of this claw-shaped mouse is the cluster of six buttons above the thumb rest that is ideal for storing macros. This mouse may lack the trademark RGB lighting present with most gaming mice, but this lends the G604 an impressive battery life, reportedly capable of lasting up to 240 hours with a single AA battery.One of the more impressive ambidextrous mice available from Logitech, the G903 Hero, features a 25K DPI sensor and has buttons that can be... Continue reading…

Image: Disney Plus Apple users will now be able to stream thousands of movies and series on Disney Plus with friends and family.Apple started rolling out its anticipated SharePlay feature to iPhone users with its iOS 15.1 update (and on macOS with the latest Monterey update). SharePlay allows Apple users to sync their playback for supported streaming in FaceTime services so they can watch movies and shows or listen to music together in real-time.Disney already offers a GroupWatch feature of its own, but SharePlay allows users to FaceTime while doing other things on their Apple devices when a video is playing on their screen. If you’re watching on your iPad, for example, your video will appear as a picture-in-picture tile while you navigate across other... Continue reading…

Photo by Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images Innovation is possible, even if it’s not magic Continue reading…

Asus puts a workstation’s power in a small, pretty package Continue reading…

How an EV startup and its charismatic CEO nearly cornered the market for electric delivery vans — until it all fell apart Continue reading…

As the trial of Elizabeth Holmes comes to a close, many questions have surfaced about what — or who — enabled Theranos to rise to such heights. As charismatic and ambitious as Holmes was, none of her success would have been possible without the nearly $945 million in funds she received from notable investors like Rupert Murdoch or the Walton family.It’s not unusual for investors to blindly place their money into companies with little to no knowledge of their technology. But when those companies end up on trial for more fraud charges than you can count on two hands, who is to blame?In the first episode of a three-part series, we look into the culture surrounding venture capital investors in Silicon Valley and what role they may have... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The same thing happens every year. Things get busy with work, school, and life in general until you’re suddenly up against the clock as you race your gifts to your local post office, FedEx store, or UPS store. We’ve all been there — and this year is looking the same for me, personally — but we want to offer a little bit of help, so you can plan around the upcoming shipping deadlines and avoid some holiday stress, if at all possible.Below, we’ve rounded up the domestic shipping deadlines for various retailers and shipment carriers to ensure that your package arrives before Christmas or Kwanzaa.UPSYou have until Thursday, December 23rd, to ship via Next Day Air and have your package arrive on Christmas Eve, December 24th. Wednesday,... Continue reading…

You can become an NPC in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 thanks to NFTs. | Image: GSC Game World S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl is one of the bigger releases of 2022, and for better or worse, it’s going to feature one of the biggest tech trends going into next year: non-fungible tokens (or NFTs).GSC Game World, which is developing the game, has announced the “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Metaverse,” which will “use blockchain technology to let the community own a piece of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.” That includes the opportunity to become the “first-ever metahuman,” which GSC Game World appears to define as a non-player character rendered in very high detail. (Though a spokesperson confirmed a metahuman won’t be made with Epic Games’ MetaHuman Creator tool). GSC Game World is partnering with NFT platform DMarket on the new items.To become a... Continue reading…

It didn’t have to be like this Continue reading…

The Analogue Pocket. | Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge The Analogue Pocket, a modern handheld console that can play old Game Boy cartridges, already supports Nintendo’s classic 1998 Game Boy Camera accessory. But with an upcoming firmware update, Gizmodo reports that you’ll be able to actually do something with the low-resolution, grayscale, and yet utterly cool photographs it takes. Namely: transfer them to a microSD card.Since the Game Boy Camera cartridge itself only stores 30 photos, it’s important to have a way to export them if you don’t want to constantly curate your collection. Back in the day, Nintendo’s official solution was a small thermal printer accessory called the Game Boy Printer which could attach to the handheld via its link port. But given its reliance on proprietary 38mm... Continue reading…

Microsoft is planning to make its Windows Terminal the default command line experience in Windows 11 next year. While Windows 11 currently supports setting Windows Terminal as default, the default terminal emulator has always been the Windows Console Host. Microsoft hasn’t ever officially supported replacing this console host, meaning that command prompt and PowerShell always open in Windows Console Host.“Over the course of 2022, we are planning to make Windows Terminal the default experience on Windows 11 devices,” explains Kayla Cinnamon, a program manager for Windows Terminal at Microsoft. “We will start with the Windows Insider Program and start moving through rings until we reach everyone on Windows 11.”While this change won’t... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Amazon has introduced a new novelty voice for Alexa this festive season: Santa Claus. After enabling the skill with the command “Alexa, enable ‘Hey Santa,’” you can ask St. Nick to sing songs, crack jokes, tell stories, or just respond to typical Alexa commands like setting timers or playing music in his more festive voice. Judging by the customer reviews left on the Alexa skill’s Amazon page, the feature appears to have been released earlier this month.There are of course several Christmas-themed questions to ask Santa. Asking “Hey Santa, am I naughty or nice?” will prompt a series of questions to work out whether you’re getting presents or coal on the big day, and the big man will also happily tell you about his reindeer or favorite... Continue reading…

After teasing its first folding phone last week, Oppo is revealing the Find N in full today. Oppo’s chief product officer Pete Lau told reporters in a briefing that the company has been working on this phone since 2018, with the final Find N the result of six generations of internal development. I can believe it — I’ve been using it since last week, and it’s a surprisingly impressive and refined product.The Find N features a similar design to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold series, with a large, squarish folding OLED panel on the inside and a smaller screen on the outside that can be used when the phone is closed. The 120Hz inner display is 7.1 inches diagonal and has a slightly landscape 9:8.4 aspect ratio, unlike the Z Fold display, which is... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Google employees who haven’t been vaccinated could be put on forced leave and then let go from the company if they fail to follow its COVID-19 rules, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC. The policy will reportedly affect employees that would have fallen under the jurisdiction of President Biden’s vaccine mandate, which is currently facing challenges in the Senate and court system.According to the memo, Google gave its employees until December 3rd to upload proof of vaccination or receive approval for a medical or religious exemption. The company says that anyone who doesn’t do either of those things by January 13th will be placed on a 30-day paid administrative leave. If they’re still not in compliance after the 30 days, they... Continue reading…

Illustration by Richard Parry Gifts for the aspiring and established content creators Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Huawei was involved in building technology for labor and reeducation camps, as well as surveillance systems in China’s Xinjiang region, according to PowerPoint presentations obtained and translated by The Washington Post. The report shows some of the ways the tech giant’s work may have been involved in the persecution against ethnic minorities in the region.The Washington Post says it obtained the PowerPoints from a public Huawei site before they were taken down. According to the report, the slides included details on Huawei’s involvement with other companies in creating several systems and had metadata dating them anywhere from 2014 to 2020 (with copyright dates being listed from 2016 to 2018). Image: The Washington... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Six more women who work at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory and service center have filed lawsuits against the company, according to a report from The Washington Post. Each woman has filed a separate lawsuit in the California Superior Court in Alameda County, alleging that they’re subject to a culture of sexual harassment at the workplace. These new lawsuits come not even a month after two other women filed suit against the company with similar allegations.One woman claims she told HR about the issue but was only moved to a different work areaThe six women claim that their male coworkers frequently make lewd comments towards their bodies or clothes, as well as engage in abusive behavior like catcalling and inappropriate touching.... Continue reading…

Illustration by Richard Parry A collection of our favorite games and gadgets Continue reading…

Climate change continues to create “cascading disruptions” in the Arctic as the region experiences rapid warming, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) writes in its 16th annual Arctic Report Card released earlier today.Pulling together the most recent data on temperature trends, sea ice cover, and more gathered in 2020 and 2021, this year’s Arctic Report Card includes 111 contributing writers from 12 countries, who detail the transformation taking place across the far north as a result of human-caused climate change. That includes dramatic sea ice losses, rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and exceptionally warm autumns. The Arctic experienced its warmest autumn on record between October and December 2020.N... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Instagram has reportedly climbed to 2 billion monthly active users, that is according to anonymous employees who broke the news to CNBC. The Meta-owned company hasn’t — and probably won’t — officially disclosed these numbers, as it has spent the last several months under scrutiny for potentially causing harm to kids and teens.The last time Instagram publicly announced the size of its userbase was back in 2018The last time Instagram publicly announced the size of its userbase was back in 2018 when the platform revealed that it had 1 billion users. It took three years for Instagram to hit the 2 billion mark. The employees who tipped off CNBC say that they found out about the number during internal conversations — one staff member... Continue reading…

The TVision Hub offers 4K streaming and ships with a voice-control remote | Photo: T-Mobile T-Mobile’s TVision streaming service was not long for this world, but its name lives on in the TVision Hub — a $50 dongle with Google TV. It appears to function a lot like Google’s own Chromecast, but along with some T-Mobile branding, 9to5Google points out that it offers a feature you won’t find on Google’s streaming dongle: an ethernet jack. That direct internet connection may be a real benefit if your home Wi-Fi signal isn’t quite up to the task of streaming 4K video.The T-Mo Report spotted the device last week on T-Mobile’s website, which is a new version of the streaming dongle launched with the TVision service. It comes with a remote bearing Netflix, YouTube, and Google Assistant buttons and connects with accessories like game... Continue reading…

IBM and Samsung have announced their latest advance in semiconductor design: a new way to stack transistors vertically on a chip (instead of lying flat on the surface of the semiconductor).The new Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET) design is meant to succeed the current FinFET technology that’s used for some of today’s most advanced chips and could allow for chips that are even more densely packed with transistors than today. In essence, the new design would stack transistors vertically, allowing for current to flow up and down the stack of transistors instead of the side-to-side horizontal layout that’s currently used on most chips.Vertical designs for semiconductors have been a trend for a while (FinFET already... Continue reading…

Inscryption, my game of the year, Polygon’s game of the year, and what should be your game of the year, is getting a free mini update that gives its fans exactly what they want — a way to endlessly play the game’s first act.Kacyee’s Mod, available now as a playable beta, adds new cards, items, and a difficulty modifier that make Inscryption’s already challenging card game even spicier. Daniel Mullins, the creator of Inscryption, says he made this mod in response to fans’ overwhelming support of the game.“This mini-expansion is in part an expression of my gratitude,” Mullins wrote on Steam. “I have received countless requests for an endlessly playable version of Part 1 that emphasizes Leshy’s deckbuilding roguelike as a standalone... Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Today in federal court, a judge said she will deny the state of California’s attempt to intervene in the $18 million settlement between Activision Blizzard and the EEOC, according to a report from Bloomberg.The denial prevents the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing from joining the EEOC’s lawsuit against Activision Blizzard in order to oppose the consent decree that accompanies the creation of an $18 million settlement fund. The DFEH filed the objection in October, stating that the consent decree would harm the state’s case against Activision Blizzard, asserting the decree could, among other adverse outcomes, potentially allow for the destruction of evidence necessary to the state’s case or release the company from... Continue reading…

Illustration by Richard Parry Great gifts to outfit the home office of a working professional Continue reading…

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In a major boon for accessibility, Twitter is now rolling out automatic captions for videos, the company announced Tuesday. Auto captions will be available globally on iOS, Android, and the web in “most languages,” according to Twitter.However, there’s one significant catch with the automatic captions: they’ll only appear on new videos uploaded to Twitter. Old videos that don’t have captions still won’t have them. There’s also no way to report inaccurate or bad captions, a Twitter spokesperson tells The Verge, though they say “we’re always looking at ways to improve our accessibility features.”Twitter has a somewhat rocky history with accessibility features, though it has taken steps to improve. The company was heavily criticized for... Continue reading…

A screenshot of the Sonic 1 title screen opened in the Tesla web browser (the game is not available yet) | Image: The Verge (By Umar Shakir) Sega is bringing back the original 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog game — this time for Tesla Arcade. A PR representative for the company told The Verge that Sonic the Hedgehog 1 will be available on all Tesla models but did not share a timeline.Elon Musk tweeted about the new Sonic game by once again pestering senator Bernie Sanders. The Tesla CEO replied to his own November tweet of a Bernie Sanders “once again asking” meme where the senator is poorly photoshopped with Dr. Robotnik’s mustache and glasses... asking for Chaos Emeralds (the in-game secret power-ups scattered in each zone).

SiriusXM, along with its subsidiaries Stitcher and Pandora, are being sued by Deaf advocates | SiriusXM SiriusXM is facing a lawsuit from the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) and the Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) for failing to provide captioning and transcripts for “the vast majority” of its podcasts. According to the complaint, SiriusXM and its subsidiaries Pandora and Stitcher are in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and New York state law for failing to make their podcast streams accessible for Deaf and hard-of-hearing users.“Defendants’ failures to provide transcripts of their podcasts excludes deaf and hard-of-hearing persons from the critical sources of news, entertainment, educational programs, and popular culture that Defendants make available to their hearing customers, in violation of the... Continue reading…

Stellar design and performance, with more improvements to come Continue reading…

Photo by Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images Pony.ai, an autonomous vehicle startup based in Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China, is temporarily unable to test driverless vehicles in California after a vehicle crash led the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to suspend the company’s testing permit.Pony.ai was one of the few companies approved to test fully autonomous vehicles without safety drivers behind the steering wheel on public roads in California. The DMV has only issued permits to seven other companies, including major operators like Waymo and Cruise.But the permit was suspended — and Pony’s name removed from the DMV’s list of permit holders — after a reported vehicle collision in Fremont, California on October 28th, the agency said in a statement. Pony has 10 Hyundai... Continue reading…