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US DOT approves Nuro’s next-gen driverless delivery vehicle design

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With this exemption, Nuro can replace mirrors with cameras and other sensors, round the edges of the vehicle so that it takes up less space and replace the windshield with an opaque panel. Nuro will also be able to run the rear view cameras continuously, whereas in passenger vehicles they must be turned off when the vehicle is moving forward to avoid distracting human drivers.

As the company explains, “Federal vehicle standards were written for today’s passenger cars and trucks. But at Nuro, we’re building something entirely different: a zero-occupant vehicle.”

Following public road testing, Nuro plans to begin the first driverless deliveries to customers’ homes in Houston, Texas, where it already partners with Walmart and Domino’s. (The company has also partnered with Kroger in Arizona.) While Nuro is grateful for the DOT and NHTSA exemption, the company says it hopes this will lead to new design regulations for zero-occupant delivery vehicles, so that companies can advance the technology without requiring exemptions.

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How do you feel about the PlayStation 2 as it turns 20?

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In a few short weeks, the PlayStation 2 will turn 20. It was released March 4, 2000 in Japan, with the rest of the world eventually getting their hands on it that fall. It was backward compatible with games for the original PlayStation, and also played DVDs. (Personally, it was the first video disc player I ever owned.) And of course, there were the games. Shadow of the Colossus, Kingdom Hearts, Katamari Damacy — plenty of classic titles and series got their start there, as well as new installments in famous franchises, like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X. The system was ultimately in production for a whopping 13 years, with more than 4,000 games released in total and over 155 million consoles sold.

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Facebook and Venmo demand Clearview AI stops scraping their data

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Before sending the letter, it appears Facebook had tried several different approaches to get Clearview to comply. According to CBS News, the social media giant sent multiple letters to Clearview, attempting to clarify its policies. CBS News says the company had also requested detailed information from Clearview about its practices and demanded that the startup stop using data from Facebook’s products.

Clearview came under intense scrutiny earlier this year when a report from The New York Times showed that the company has been scraping billions of images from websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without consent to build out its facial recognition database. The startup works with more than 600 police departments across North American and claims its technology is 99.6 percent accurate in identifying individuals.

It’s unclear why Facebook took longer to take formal legal action against Clearview than other companies such as Google. One possible reason is that Facebook board member Peter Thiel was an early investor in the startup. The fact that Thiel has a relationship with both companies may have complicated Facebook’s response. In either case, we’ve reached out to Facebook for comment, and we’ll update this article when we hear back from the company.

CBS News reports Venmo recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to Clearview as well. In an interview with the broadcaster, Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That said his company would challenge the letters by arguing it has a First Amendment right to publicly available information. “Google can pull in information from all different websites,” he said, comparing Clearview’s product to Google’s search engine. “So if it’s public, you know, and it’s out there, it could be inside Google search engine, it can be inside ours as well.” In a statement it issued this week, Google said Ton-That’s comparison was misleading. “Most websites want to be included in Google Search, and we give webmasters control over what information from their site is included in our search results, including the option to opt-out entirely,” the company said.

Complicating the entire situation is that there aren’t any federal laws that regulate the use of facial recognition in the US. Some cities such as San Francisco have enacted partial bans of the technology, but there’s no consensus between different cities and states.

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EU investigates Qualcomm for alleged anti-competitive tactics

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The tech firm said it was in the “process of responding” to the investigation, which started on December 3rd but wasn’t public knowledge until now. It maintained that its methods “do not violate” EU competition rules.

The consequences of losing the case could be serious. The Commission could fine Qualcomm up to 10 percent of its annual revenue and force the company to alter its behavior. However, there are questions as to whether or not any penalty would significantly affect Qualcomm’s long-term strategy. The Commission fined Qualcomm €242 million ($271 million at the time) in July 2019 for alleged price dumping on 3G chips, and €997 million ($1.23 billion) in January 2018 for paying Apple to secure an exclusive modem deal. Those are modest amounts for a company that made an estimate $925 million in profit in its latest quarter alone, and it might not feel compelled to make significant changes if there’s a similarly-sized fine for any possible 5G abuses.

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Coronavirus outbreak is affecting Nintendo Switch supply in Japan

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We’ve asked Nintendo for comment on how this will affect the US and Western countries as a whole, if at all.

Containing the virus clearly takes top priority, and Nintendo isn’t going to be the only company affected. Apple suppliers in China like Foxconn and Quanta aren’t expected to resume full production until around February 10th, for instance. This is just one of the more conspicuous examples, and it won’t be surprising if more tech companies delay products until (and unless) it’s evident the coronavirus is under control.

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Twitter doesn’t want to call its users ‘users’ anymore

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It’s part of an initiative to make Twitter a happier, cuddlier place to be, with the usual boast that it’s shrunk the number of “unhealthy” tweets on the service. That includes a 27 percent decline in “bystander reports,” on Tweets that violate the company’s code of conduct. Much of that is down to machine-learning models that are designed to proactively find, and take down, material before people flag it as needing moderation.

And Twitter can point to some positives that have emerged from its work to make the service nicer to use and more efficient on the back end. Infrastructure and moderation improvements, alongside new tools that help folks find content that they love, has driven user growth. MDAU (Remember, that now stands for Usage, not Users), has risen to 152 million, from 145 million in the last quarter and 126 million last year.

Which has all driven cash to the company, which boasts that it enjoyed its first ever billion-dollar quarter over the holiday season. That funneled down to a net income of $119 million, although that’s a lot less than the $255 million net income Twitter made in the same three months last year.

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Google Maps for iOS and Android is getting a makeover

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Google Maps new logo

The main thing you’ll notice in the app is a five-icon navigation system down at the bottom of the screen, like so many apps have now. There are two new tabs: saved, which pulls up all the lists and locations you’ve bookmarked, and contribute, which prompts you to add photos and reviews to places you may have visited. With this change, Google also got rid of the old “hamburger” menu where a lot of these features were previously hidden. Given how robust the Google Maps list features are, I’m definitely glad to have easy access to them from anywhere in the app.

Google Maps update

There are a few new features crowdsourced from Maps users that’ll show up when you’re looking at transit directions, as well. For a while now, you’ve been able to see specific transit lines in many cities as well as estimated arrival times and some info on how crowded a train or bus might be. Google is expanding the info that you’ll be able to see by adding details shared by other passengers, including temperature, accessibility, whether there’s security onboard or a women’s only car and how many cars a train has. Google will gather this info by asking Maps users to contribute details from their trips, something it already does to get data on how crowded trains are. It’ll take a bit before Google has enough info to populate all these attributes for all available transit systems, of course, but it’s something to keep an eye out for.

Google Maps update

The last new features of note involves Live View, the AR-powered walking directions that Google launched last year. Initially, Live View overlaid giant blue arrows to show you exactly where you were going, but the new implementation simplifies things a bit. It drops a big red pin to show where your destination is relative to your position and tells you how far away it is. If you need turn-by-turn directions, you can still get those details along with the big blue arrows. But if you just need to get oriented in the right direction when coming off the subway, for example, this new Live View feature should help with that.

These updates should all be rolling out to both the iPhone and Android phones today — except the Live View updates, which Google says are coming soon. It’s certainly a coincidence, but these updates also are coming just a week after Apple finished completely revamping its own maps. It’s been years since Apple Maps was a bad service, at least here in the US, but improvements like the ones Google announced today go a long way towards keeping Google Maps the default option for so many people.

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Ford’s biking jacket shows emoji to everyone behind you

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To bolster road safety, Ford came up with a way to help cyclists communicate: a jacket that displays emoji. The prototype has an LED display on the rear that’s linked to a wireless remote attached to the handlebars. A cyclist might use it to display turn signals or a hazard symbol. They could also indicate their general mood: happy, sad or somewhere in between.

Ford worked with cyclists and industrial designers from Designworks on the Emoji Jacket, which they created as part of its Share the Road safety campaign. Whether you’ll be able to buy an Emoji Jacket at any point remains to be seen. If it does go on sale, though, it might help cyclists get their message across to drivers in a simple, visual way.

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iOS 13.4 could turn your iPhone and Apple Watch into car keys

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In addition, the feature seems to have the capability to give other people access to your vehicle with their devices. You’ll have to send that trusted family member or friend an invite, which you’ll be able to do so via the Wallet app.

The pairing process actually starts with Apple’s Wallet app, though you’ll also need to have your automaker’s app to finish setting up when you link a device with a car for the first time. When you place your device on top of the NFC reader, a CarKey will show up in your Wallet app. You can then add that key to an Apple Watch.

The ability to use your phone as a key is far from being a new concept, but the feature may be a welcome one if your vehicle doesn’t have a digital key app. Of course, you can only hope that your car’s manufacturer will work with the tech giant to implement CarKey for its vehicles.

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Netflix switches to the AV1 codec for data-saving streams on Android

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YouTube setting

One reason for limiting the use of AV1 for playback is likely a lack of hardware support, which could mean people will use more battery life to watch the same videos. You can already enable AV1 instead of VP9 on YouTube videos, under the settings for Playback and Performance, but it warns users that using it for anything above 480p will require a powerful computer.

While Netflix says it still plans to roll out AV1 across all platforms eventually, starting with data savings on mobile follows its 2016 switch to VP9, and the shot-based encoding technique that improved things so much it re-encoded its entire library in 2018. According to Netflix, AV1 shows “20% improved compression efficiency over our VP9 encodes.” There’s no word on which shows you should watch to find the new codec in use, but one way or another it’s a huge leap beyond the days of VC1, Silverlight and 720 x 480 res videos that maxed out at 3,400 kbps.

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