Month: February 2023

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Samuel Corum)

Twitter CEO Elon Musk had Twitter engineers set up a "special system" to boost his tweets after his post about the Super Bowl got fewer views than a tweet from President Biden, according to a report by Platformer yesterday.

Biden's tweet supporting the Philadelphia Eagles has 29.1 million views, while Musk's now-deleted tweet also supporting the Eagles received a mere 9.1 million. Hours after the Eagles' loss, Musk's cousin James Musk posted a message in Twitter's Slack asking anyone "who can make dashboards and write software" to help with "debugging an issue with engagement across the platform," the report said. James Musk's Slack message reportedly called the situation one of "high urgency."

Additionally, Elon Musk "flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team."

Enlarge / One Ars staffer's Hyundai, as it was found by police after a theft. (credit: Ars Technica)

After months of thefts that have led to at least eight deaths, car makers Hyundai and Kia are offering free software updates to roughly 8.3 million cars that can be stolen with the aid of a USB-A cable.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tuesday that the manufacturers' updates make it so affected cars require a key to be in the ignition switch to start. The cars' no-key alarms will also sound for one minute instead of 30 seconds. The updates should start arriving later this month, with phased rollouts over subsequent months for 3.8 million Hyundais and 4.5 million Kias.

According to news reports and at least one class-action lawsuit, the most-affected vehicles are Kias made between 2010 and 2021 and Hyundais produced between 2015 and 2021. Thieves typically break a back window to avoid alarms, expose the steering column, and fit a USB-A cable into a matching plug. Turning the plug with an inserted cable starts the car because the cars lack an engine immobilizer that prevents the engine from starting without a paired key.