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It may seem like blasphemy for an Engadget writer to diss touch controls, but as the demise of the MacBook Pro's Touch Bar has proven, those aren't always a good idea — especially on cars. As spotted by Autocar at Volkswagen City Studio in Copenhagen, the ID. 2all concept electric car now features a slightly updated interior, with the most notable change being the return of physical buttons below the central touchscreen. According to the brand's interior designer Darius Watola, this will be "a new approach for all models" based on "recent feedback from customers" — especially those in Europe who wanted "more physical buttons."

In Autocar's Tiguan launch interview back in June, Volkswagen CEO Thomas Schäfer already acknowledged customers' criticism on the over-reliance on touch controls — namely on the Golf Mk8 and ID.3, not to mention the same trend across the motor industry. The exec went as far as saying the earlier touch-heavy approach — endorsed by his predecessor, Herbert Diess — "definitely did a lot of damage" in terms of customer loyalty.

The ID. 2all is based on Volkswagen's updated MEB Entry platform, and packs a 223HP motor that can go up to 62MPH in under seven seconds. As far as range goes, this car can apparently travel up to 280 miles on a single charge, but that's with the larger and more advanced 56kWh battery instead of the base 38kWh version. Expect this concept electric vehicle to cost under €25,000 (around $27,300), when it arrives as a production model in Europe in 2025. The company also recently teased the ID. 2all SUV, which is described as "the brother of the ID. 2all," but it won't arrive until 2026.

Google is giving anyone who has a WiFi-only Stadia controller lying around an additional year to convert it to Bluetooth. The deadline to do this was previously until the end of this year, but Google is now extending it to December 31, 2024.

Google axed Stadia, its cloud gaming service, at the beginning of this year. Most customers who bought digital games through the Google Store got refunds, but some physical hardware such as Stadia’s controller that connected directly to WiFi, is still out there. Enabling Bluetooth on Stadia controllers will let people use them with any other devices such as PCs, Macs, phones or tablets. This, as Kotaku points out, could prevent e-waste.

Switching your controller to Bluetooth is permanent. It takes about three minutes and requires a USB cable, according to Google. To pair a Stadia controller to Bluetooth, you need to press and hold the Y and Stadia button for at least two seconds. You’ll know that the controller has entered “pairing mode” when the status light flashes orange. If you’re having issues establishing a connection, Google advises making sure that the controller is charged for at least 30 minutes.

Trevor Milton, the disgraced founder of Nikola, was just sentenced to four years in prison on three counts of fraud. 

In October 2022, a jury found Milton guilty of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. Milton faced up to 60 years in prison. Prosecutors asked the judge for an 11-year prison sentence and a $5 million fine, according to The New York Times, while the defense argued for probation. 

After announcing the sentence at a federal court hearing in New York City, U.S. District Judge Edgar Ramos spoke directly to Milton. "As difficult as it may be for you or your family to hear, I believe the jury got it right," Ramos said, as transcribed Reuters.

Milton addressed the court before sentencing was handed down, saying "I did not intend to harm anyone and I did not commit those crimes levied against me." He also spoke at length about his rural upbringing and recited biblical verse. 

Prosecutors claimed that Milton pumped up the value of the company's stock by lying to investors about "nearly all aspects" of Nikola's business. Among other things, Milton claimed his company had a fully functional electric truck. The company released a video that made it appear as though a Nikola One prototype was able to move by itself. However, an indictment alleged that the truck was actually rolling down a hill and that Milton was involved in the video's creation.

In addition, Milton was accused of lying about Nikola having billions of dollars worth of pre-order reservations and that it was producing hydrogen fuel at four times less than market rates. Prosecutors also said Milton falsely claimed Nikola had developed "game-changing" battery tech.

Nikola is still in business and it plans to resume deliveries of its battery electric truck in early 2024 following a recall over battery issues that cost around $61.8 million to resolve. In the nine months to September 30, Nikola produced 96 trucks and shipped 79.

The company's stock price has dropped by 99 percent since 2020 and investors are said to have lost more than $660 million. Milton sold around $100 million of his Nikola stock in 2020 and spent most of that on luxury goods such as a plane and real estate, according to the Times. It's likely that Milton will appeal this conviction, as he's already asked Ramos for a new trial following the jury's guilty verdict.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has a treat to celebrate the upcoming second anniversary of its launch. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), which operate the craft alongside the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), shared a recent image of the icy planet Uranus. The picture, resembling a glowing blue marble rippling into a black ocean, was funneled through the telescope’s infrared filters to capture wavelengths future space travelers wouldn’t see with the naked eye.

Compared with the generic-looking images of Uranus taken by Voyager 2 in the 1980s, the Webb telescope paints a more vivid picture. Capturing light in the infrared spectrum, the craft’s sensors reveal a “strange and dynamic ice world filled with exciting, atmospheric features,” as the team operating the telescope described it.

The JWST’s image showcases the planet’s rings surrounding the planet, including “the elusive Zeta ring,” Uranus’ faint and scattered innermost one. You can also catch its north polar cloud cap, the white blob near the center.

NASA / ESA / CSA

The image also captures 14 of Uranus’ 27 moons, labeled in the photo above. Among the (mostly Shakespearean-named) orbiting bodies pictured are Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, Juliet, Perdita, Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Ariel, Miranda, Bianca and Portia.

The JWST’s photo uses four NIRCam filters, revealing detail in the near-infrared spectrum. These include F140M (blue), F210M (cyan), F300M (yellow) and F460M (orange). An image NASA shared earlier this year showed Uranus in only two filters (blue and orange), resulting in a more primitive-looking view of the icy giant.

Speaking of ice, Uranus has loads of it. The planet rotates on its side at about 98 degrees, plunging the opposite side of the planet into extreme cold and darkness for a quarter of a Uranian year. Oh, and since Uranian years last around 84 Earth years, that means, by our calendar, the planet’s dark side enjoys a blustery 21-year winter.

NASA / ESA / CSA

Astronomers believe the Webb telescope’s images will help them better understand Uranus, especially its Zeta ring, for future missions. They also view the pictures as a proxy for learning about the nearly 2,000 documented exoplanets in other solar systems that share traits with our ringed and icy neighbor.

Acura has opened reservations for its first fully electric vehicle (EV). Starting today, you can order the Acura ZDX at around $60,000 for a baseline model with a single-motor (rear-wheel-drive) powertrain. The first deliveries of the “performance SUV” are expected in early 2024.

The automaker said earlier this year it would shift to online-only sales of Acura EVs starting in 2024, and ZDX preorders appear to reflect that. The company said the EV is available through “a new, omni-channel digital sales process,” which buyers can use themselves at home, or receive assistance in using at Acura dealers (although the EVs won't be available at the dealership itself.)

The ZDX comes in two models. The standard ($60,000 and up) A-Spec variant ships with a 325-mile range, 340 horsepower, a rear-wheel-drive single motor and 20-inch wheels. Meanwhile, the all-wheel-drive ZDX Type S has a shorter 288-mile range but a more potent 500 horsepower, 22-inch wheels and a starting price of around $70,000. Parent company Honda describes the pricier Type S as “the most powerful and best performing Acura SUV ever.”

Acura

The EV has Android Auto, built-in Google apps and Apple CarPlay integration. It includes an 11-inch driver-side touchscreen, an 11.3-inch center display and a Bang & Olufsen audio system, which is standard. Its safety features include a rear pedestrian alert and blind zone steering assist. It even has hands-free cruise driver assistance.

The ZDX supports DC Fast Charging (and can add 81 miles through a 10-minute top-off). In addition, Honda has teamed with six other automakers on a project to build a network of 30,000 stations across North America. That initiative is expected to begin in the US by the summer of 2024.

Acura

You can order your ZDX in either model in Acura’s online reservations portal. Honda notes pre-orders will include a bonus Acura Energy Key Card, which can unlock “exclusive benefits,” including “discounts to Acura entertainment partners and special events.”

VF Corporation reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday that it had been hit by a cyberattack. The company owns a slew of apparel brands, including Vans, North Face, Timberland, Dickies and more — and it warns the disruption could affect your holiday shopping. 

VF first noticed "unauthorized occurrences" on its IT systems on December 13, it said in a statement to Engadget. While it began to mitigate the damage, VF found that the hackers had encrypted some of its IT systems and stole personal data. It's trying to come up with work arounds so that people can still buy from VF brands, but the $7 billion company said the attack messed with its ability to fulfill orders. 

"At this time, VF-operated retail stores globally are open, and currently consumers can purchase available merchandise, but VF is experiencing certain operational disruptions," a company spokesperson told Engadget on Monday. "At this time, consumers are also able to place orders on most of the brand e-commerce sites globally. However, the Company’s ability to fulfill orders is currently impacted." VF did not confirm who was behind the attack or provide additional details on what delays customers could experience.

The hack comes shortly after VF said it was experiencing financial headwinds at its quarterly earning meeting. It's still unclear whether customer data may have been impacted. 

You can now mindlessly scroll your TikTok’s ‘for you page’ on larger screens and foldable devices. The new update will be available for users worldwide and on devices like the iPad or the various foldable Android phones out there. TikTok, which is traditionally mobile-forward, said it will deliver a clear video feed of content on bigger screens with “enhanced clarity.”

The top and bottom of screens that stream TikTok videos will have a navigation bar that makes it easier to access tabs and featured videos. With this update, clips can also be watched in landscape orientation. This creates new opportunities for video creators to generate content in a horizontal format after years of a vertical-only.

TikTok also said it is going to continue experimenting with features like Topic Feeds, which would allow users to explore videos in specific categories like gaming, food or fashion. The platform has been exploring new ways to deliver content to users and it has been quietly testing the idea of an AI-powered chatbot that can recommend videos to users. While it’s still the leading app for short-form videos, creating unique ways to deliver content to its users can help set the social media company itself apart from competitors in the space, like Instagram’s Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Flipboard is the latest mainstream app to officially join the fediverse, the collection of decentralized services that run on the ActivityPub protocol. The news reading app, which has been experimenting with Mastodon for nearly a year, now plans to become fully interoperable with Mastodon and the rest of the fediverse.

The news reading app is starting with the accounts of about two dozen publishers, including Polygon, Medium, Semafor, Kotaku and Mental Floss, whose Flipboard content will be discoverable across the fediverse. By next month, the company expects all public Flipboard accounts will be federated, meaning anyone on an ActivityPub-powered app will be able to view their posts and interact with them.

And beginning in April, according to Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, all fediverse content will also be readily available within the Flipboard app itself. This means users will be able to use Flipboard browse content shared to Mastodon, Pixelfed (a photo sharing app kind of like Instagram), PeerTube (a decentralized video platform) and the rest of the apps that make up the fediverse.

Flipboard’s official entrance into the fediverse comes at a moment where there is increasing enthusiasm for ActivityPub within the social media industry. Last week, Meta announced that it was taking its first steps toward making Threads compatible with Mastodon and the rest of the fediverse. “I think you’ll probably have more than 150 million people in the fediverse by the end of the next year,” McCue tells Engadget, “You have millions of Flipboard users, millions of Threads users all joining this network ... it’s not going to take very long before this becomes the largest social network.”

McCue’s enthusiasm for Mastodon and the fediverse is especially notable given his once close ties to Twitter. The Flipboard CEO was a member of Twitter’s board between 2010 and 2012, and reportedly considered selling Flipboard to the company in 2015. But Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, and the disintegration of its API, prompted him to begin experimenting with Mastodon and Bluesky integrations earlier this year.

He now believes that momentum for the fediverse is so strong, Twitter may ultimately end up supporting ActivityPub too. “More and more companies will have to look at ActivityPub,” he predicts. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitter ultimately decides they’re going to have to do this.”

Apple’s recently-released tvOS 17 update allows for native VPN apps and big-name providers are wasting no time. ExpressVPN dropped an app a couple of weeks ago and now the same is true of one of its primary competitors. NordVPN now has an official Apple TV app available for download.

This is the real deal and works with your current NordVPN subscription, if you have one. The setup is simple. Just download the app and sign in. If you’re new to the service, download the app and create an account. Once connected, you’ll have access to the company’s global array of secure servers.

The app encrypts all network traffic and uses the company’s NordLynx protocol to speed up the connection, which should offer an optimized streaming experience with minimal buffering. Of course, this will likely depend on the locations of your actual network connection and virtual network connection.

Back when Apple first announced that native VPNs would be coming to tvOS 17, NordVPN expressed doubts, telling The Verge that the company was “concerned that there may be some limitations.” It looks like it got over those doubts.

So, why would you even want or need a dedicated VPN on your Apple streaming box? There are a couple of reasons, all of which involve traveling with the diminutive device. You can customize settings, like preferred server location, which helps get around geographic restrictions regarding streaming content. Nobody’s gonna stop you from binging Foundation while on vacation. Even without geo-restrictions, bringing your Apple TV into a hotel room will allow you to stream whatever you want instead of relying on, gag, cable.

Before tvOS 17, you couldn’t configure a VPN on these devices. You’d have to install a VPN client on the router, which is notoriously complicated. Kudos to Apple on this one. NordVPN isn’t the only available VPN on the Apple TV App Store. There’s the aforementioned ExpressVPN, PureVPN and several more. You can install VPN apps on Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K devices, running tvOS 17 or later.

Speaking of tvOS 17, the company just dropped an update. The latest and greatest tvOS 17.2 brings a redesigned interface and the ability to answer FaceTime calls directly from the TV.

As a precocious teen looking to improve my college application, I sat in on a business studies class. I figured taking two extra A-Levels at night school alongside those I took during the day would make me irresistible to admissions tutors. The class I watched examined if it was worth a large factory keeping its own trucks and drivers in-house rather than outsourcing them. The data showed selling the trucks and firing the workers was more expensive in the long run, and yoked the company to the whims of any third-party logistics company in the local area. Not to mention, if you don’t own a mission-critical component of your business, you’re a lot less powerful when negotiating with your suppliers. But the teacher, and the class, all agreed it was smart to sell it all because it made a bigger profit in the quarter and was cheaper for the next two years. These people had never considered if something bad would happen, and how to prepare for it. It was at this point I realized my values were out of step with the commercial orthodoxy and opted not to take the course.

I mention this because I’ve always thought the people in the tech industry with all the money are probably halfway savvy about how All Of This Is Meant To Work. I’d told myself that what, to me, appeared illogical and self-defeating was because they were playing a game of six-dimensional chess on a board I was too dim to see. Unless, of course, the economics of our industry are so unmoored from reality that everyone’s just pretending, or deluding themselves. And more than a decade of cheap money and lax regulation means everyone’s behaved a little bit sillier than they should have. Now the lights are coming up and everyone’s looking to see what’s actually going on, there’s nowhere for these apparently smart people to hide.

It’s stopped making sense for investors

UCG via Getty Images

The Silicon Valley mindset is easy to grasp: If you’re lucky enough to have spare cash, put a small bit of it behind some kids with a big idea. All it takes is for one of those bets – emphasis on the word bet – to win and you’ll get a slice of some pretty big profits. In an era where zero interest-rate policies mean it’s almost free to rack up extraordinary debt, it’s a better route than heading to Las Vegas with your 401k. Not to mention the special cachet and attention you can garner by presenting yourself to the world as a “guru.” But you might have noticed that a lot of high-profile bets haven’t been coming off of late, wasting a lot of cash in the process.

Take WeWork, which this year filed for Chapter 11 after working its way through $16.9 billion since 2014. What logic can we apply to its main backer, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son*, to justify him burning the GDP of Jamaica on such a venture? Especially when Regus, which performs the same decidedly un-techy role of renting temporary office space, owns its properties and makes a small but regular profit every non-COVID year, was available to buy outright for a fraction of the cost? How did this amount of money pass from one company to another without any sort of internal or external oversight? And why did he think that WeWork’s nicer interior design and a beer tap on every floor was such a big draw? The only theory that holds water is that Son was so blindsided by promises of vast future profits (from office rental) that he lost any sense of self-restraint.

That mix of cheap credit and the promise of unbelievable future returns can be applied across the tech industry, too. It might help explain why the cost of streaming has leapt so high while the catalogs available have shrunk. The studios weren’t hurting for profit in the days before Netflix, but the fact it was valued like a tech company enabled it to rack up huge debts. That led plenty of studios to leap onto the bandwagon in the hope of getting some of that mythical profit. In the early days, the hope was that the sheer number of people paying for content would balance out the low cost. But now growth has stalled and there’s still $14.30 billion of debt, plus an audience with an ever-increasing desire for new content.

It’s stopped making sense for consumers

Mario Tama via Getty Images

The debt swinging around Netflix’s neck, and the necks of those who followed it into the streaming world save for Amazon, Apple and Warner Bros***, is directly related to this gold rush. And it’ll need to be paid off to the investors and banks who handed over billions of dollars in expectation of vast rewards further down the line. Which is why the cost of a standard Netflix subscription has pretty much doubled since 2011 – with Premium plans now costing $23 a month. Given the scattershot nature of streaming libraries and the fact Netflix can’t be your sole source of entertainment, most consumers have more than one subscription going at the same time. That’s been fine, more or less, while times are good, so what happens when the world’s economies all start to slow down and you’re looking to make room in your monthly budget?

It’s worth remembering new technologies are expensive, both in cost and how much time and effort you spend to get to grips with them. But while technology has had some world-changing hits in the past – personal computing, the internet, smartphones and, uh, social media – it’s been a while since we’ve had anything that big. But the industry can’t help but keep hyping the next big thing even if it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that it’s not going to be a winner. We’re at the peak of the hype cycle for machine learning, which its boosters tell us will automate us all into obsolescence in a decade or so**. The problem is, whenever you actually sit and try to use a generative AI, the results are underwhelming, so great is the gap between the promise and the reality. Take Google’s new AI which managed to give fake answers to spreadsheet-level questions like who won an Academy Award last year. You can already see the itchy feet of those hoping the Humane Pin will be the Next Big Thing despite its risible introduction video.

Consumers lose out here not just because of these expensive boondoggles but because they suck up all the oxygen from everything else. Many of these technologies were designed not to solve real-world problems, of which we have plenty, but to dazzle investors, placate Wall Street and dupe credulous buyers. It doesn’t help that generative AI, like crypto before it, uses a significant amount more energy than it should, exacerbating climate change. Sadly, when all the attention and money shifts to the next thing, we’ll all be poorer for it, both for the folks who were duped into reading machine-written articles about the importance of volleyball, and the folks who got laid off because some genius thought GPT-3 would do a better job without oversight.

It’s stopped making sense for workers

Embracer Group is a Swedish game publisher that loaded up on debt to buy every small studio and IP it could get its hands on. In 2018, CEO Lars Wingefors told GamesIndustry his company would eschew a “fewer, bigger, better” strategy in favor of a “diversified” lineup. In 2021, it said it had access to more than $2 billion in cash and credit to continue its spending spree, bankrolling a slew of newer, smaller titles. That included reviving TimeSplitters developer Free Radical to start work on a new game in the long-dormant cult series.Two years after that, the company admitted that a deal worth $2 billion in revenue over six years had fallen apart and that it would have to cut costs. Free Radical has now been closed, putting the last two years’ worth of work on the shelf and close to 1,000 people across Embracer have lost their jobs.

Across the industry, countless jobs have been lost as even profitable companies look to trim their headcount. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek even said the quiet part out loud when admitting the company “took advantage of the opportunity presented by lower-cost capital” to staff up. Now that the economic situation has shifted, and money isn’t as cheap as it used to be, the company is letting 1,500 people go less than a month before the holidays. Big names who have also trod the same path this year include (deep breath) Amazon (multiple times), ByteDance, LinkedIn (twice), Epic Games, Lyft, Metabook, Dell, Google and Microsoft.

Reality’s going to hit us in the face like a shovel

krisanapong detraphiphat via Getty Images

When I was a kid, a relative worked for a company that made and sold slot machines for adult gambling. I must have been 10 when he came over and set up a game where he gave me a pound in 2p pieces, which I could wager on the outcome of a deck of cards. He’d rigged the game so that, despite all of the pledges to double my cash as my funds shrunk, I’d wipe out. It was a valuable lesson in why it’s not a smart idea to gamble your money, given by someone who saw it up close and personal every day.

The other lesson he taught me was the vow of gratitude he would utter often, which was doubly amusing given his atheism. Whenever there was a bad story in the news, or a tale of corporate woe closer to home, he’d say “there but for the grace of God go I.” Because he knew that so much of what happens in our lives is governed by chance, so it’s pointless to claim it was wisdom. We should always remember that none of us are untouchable, and that the worst phrase in the English language is “what could possibly go wrong?” It’s just a shame that so many of the supposed great minds in the technology industry didn’t get the chance to learn this lesson when they were young enough to appreciate it.

* Wikipedia – hardly a symbol of partisanship – has gone studs-in on Son. At the time of writing, his biography says “his reputation as an investor rests almost solely on his $20 million initial investment in Alibaba Group in 2000.” Given the rest of his track record – and the fact he is presently in debt to his own company to the tune of several billion, ouch.

** I do wonder how many of its backers who spend their days worrying about Roko’s Basilisk have thought about how they’ll be treated by the 85 million or so people suddenly forced into serfdom.

*** Warner Bros. malaise is more directly related to the debt tied to the various buyouts and sales that has seen it shifted from one corporate parent to another. Not that the streaming wars has helped here, but it's fair to say that its problems are a different realm to those of its peers.