Month: November 2022

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  The Waymo and Geely driverless car. [credit: Waymo ]

Waymo is now running a robotaxi service in two states, but the vehicles for those services are retrofitted commercial cars. The company rolls around in either the "4th-gen" Waymo vehicles, built on the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, or the "5th-gen" driver, built on the Jaguar I-Pace. That's all great for enabling Waymo's service to get up and running, but these vehicles, which are full of controls and dials for human drivers, are driven by a robot that, in the long term, doesn't actually need a steering wheel or pedals.

So, for the second time now, Waymo is doing a ground-up design of a driverless vehicle, without any of those useless, legacy human controls. The car was originally announced in December, but today Waymo is showing off a bit more detail about the vehicle. Real-life models are actually being built now, with Waymo showing off the car at an LA press event and a camouflaged, sensorless, human-driven test mule recently hitting a test track.

The car is being built with Geely Group's Zeekr brand and designed as an all-electric "transportation-as-a-service (TaaS)-optimized" vehicle. The car has no steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors, and four automated sliding doors open up like it's some kind of road-going subway train. Inside, the minivan seats five people, including two in the front, where the dashboard contains nothing but a centrally mounted touchscreen. There are also two seat-back touchscreens for the back seats, where you can play music, pick a destination, or see what the car is currently thinking.

Enlarge / Elon Musk arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York. (credit: Getty Images | Angela Weiss)

Eight former SpaceX employees who were fired after circulating an internal letter criticizing Elon Musk have filed charges claiming they were unlawfully fired. Unfair labor practice charges for the "retaliatory firings" were filed yesterday with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the former employees' law firm said in a press release.

"The charges allege that SpaceX violated the National Labor Relations Act by terminating the employees for engaging in protected concerted activity," the Lieff Cabraser law firm said. "Specifically, the employees were fired for being part of a larger group that drafted a letter to SpaceX's executive team expressing concern about recent allegations of sexual harassment by CEO Elon Musk, and his harmful behavior on Twitter that hurt the company's reputation and also the company culture."

The letter urged "SpaceX to take appropriate remedial action, including condemning Musk's harmful Twitter behavior, holding leadership accountable, and seeking uniform definition and enforcement of SpaceX's 'No Asshole' policy. The letter was shared internally within SpaceX only, and called for other employees to sign on to endorse the recommendations," the press release said.

Enlarge / Apple's AirPods Pro, with their noise-cancelling and live-listening features, perform fairly well in tests against more traditional hearing aids. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

A study in the journal iScience suggests that, in some noise situations, AirPods, particularly the Pro model, can work just as well as far pricier prescription-only models.

AirPods are not sold or approved by the Food and Drug Administration as devices for those with mild to moderate hearing loss. But with cheaper, over-the-counter hearing aids now available at common retailers, there's a renewed interest in non-medical companies moving into the space to help people who don't need expert care—including from Apple itself.

Researchers from the Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan's National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, and other entities conducted what they believe is the first comparison of smartphone-oriented earphones with medically prescribed hearing aids. The study had a very small sample size of 21 people between 26 and 60 years old and was conducted in a lab setting with a single source of sound. Still, the results are intriguing, especially considering how many people already have access to iPhones, AirPods, and their audio-enhancing features.

Enlarge (credit: urfinguss | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Last month, the alleged masterminds behind Z-Library—an ebook pirate site that claims to be “the world’s largest library”—were arrested. According to a press release yesterday from the US Department of Justice, Russian nationals Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova have been charged with “criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud and money laundering for operating Z-Library.”

“As alleged, the defendants profited illegally off work they stole, often uploading works within mere hours of publication, and in the process victimized authors, publishers, and booksellers,” Breon Peace, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

At the request of the US government, Napolsky and Ermakova were arrested in Argentina on November 3. On the same day, the US government seized “a complex network of approximately 249 interrelated web domains,” the press release said. For many less web-savvy users, the domain seizure essentially shut down access to Z-Library’s 11 million ebooks, but anyone on the dark web knows it’s still up and running—suggesting that while arresting Napolsky and Ermakova has stifled Z-Library, it has not shuttered it, and it could come back.

Enlarge / After a controversially styled fourth-generation Prius, the new car looks much more cohesive. (credit: Toyota)

This week, Toyota revealed the 2023 Prius hybrid. It's the company's fifth-generation Prius, and when it goes on sale, it will be the most efficient Prius yet, with an estimated 57 mpg (4.1 L/100 km), according to Toyota.

First seen on US roads in 2000, the Prius soon became a byword for environmentally conscious driving, marked by distinctive styling that was hard to mistake for anything else on the road. In the intervening decades, Toyota has sold millions, although many fewer now than during the nameplate's heyday in the early teens.

In part, that might have been due to the Prius's highly efficient Atkinson Cycle powertrain making its way into other Toyotas. The powertrain still offered nearly as impressive fuel economy, sometimes paired with a small traction battery as a "regular" hybrid and sometimes paired with a larger one as a plug-in hybrid (or Prime, in Toyota-speak).