Every new car sold in the European Union will soon include anti-speeding technology known as intelligent speed assistance, or ISA. The EU regulation (part of the broader General Vehicle Safety Regulation) goes into effect today, and states that all new models and types of cars introduced to the European market must include an ISA system. The policy doesn’t apply to any new cars that are in showrooms today — at least, not yet. By July 2024, every new car sold in the EU must have a built-in anti-speeding system.

“The roll out of ISA is a huge step forward for road safety and has the potential to dramatically reduce road traffic injuries and fatalities. Car manufacturers now have the opportunity to maximise the potential ISA presents for creating safer roads for all,” said the European Commission in a press release.

For those unfamiliar with ISA, the term describes a whole raft of systems that can detect road speed limits via front-mounted cameras, GPS data or both. Depending on the specific ISA and how it's configured by the driver, the technology can provide reminder feedback about the speed limit, automatically adjust cruise control to match the road's speed or even reduce power to the motor to slow speeding vehicles.

Many drivers in Europe are already using ISA-equipped vehicles, and major automakers such as Honda, Ford, Jeep and Mercedes-Benz sell certain models with these systems in the European market. According to a projection by the EU-funded PROSPER, a scenario such as this one, where ISA becomes mandated, could result in between 26 and 50 percent fewer fatalities.

As Autocar notes, ISA technology still isn’t perfect. During one test, the ISA system was occasionally “slow to respond” and at one point set the speed limit at 60 mph while driving through a quiet English village.

Time is running out to download Epic Games’ The Matrix Awakens. The free open-world interactive demo made with Unreal Engine 5 will be removed from the PlayStation and Xbox stores on July 9th. Luckily, players can still access the game an unlimited amount of times once it’s downloaded. The tie-in experience to The Matrix Resurrections debuted last year, and was one of the first examples of what Epic’s next generation game engine can do. UE5 has since been released to the wider developer community.

While The Matrix Awakens isn’t a full game, it’s still a memorable introduction to UE5’s immersive visuals and natural lighting. Players are essentially given free rein to roam through the titular Matrix and soak in the visual effects. The game was written by Lana Wachowski, the co-writer and director of The Matrix trilogy films, and features performances by both Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves.

If you’ve already dipped your toe into the world of The Matrix Awakens and are interested in experiencing more games using UE5, a number of new titles have been announced, including a new Tomb Raider game, ARK 2, the upcoming Witcher game and Black Myth: Wukong. You can check out gameplay footage from The Matrix Awakens (available on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S console) below.

Vegan meal kit startup Daily Harvest has been hit with two lawsuits by customers alleging they needed gallbladder removals after eating one of the company's products, reportedCNN. Last month the company issued a voluntary recall of its “French Lentil + Leek Crumbles” dish following multiple claims of gastrointestinal and liver from consumers. The first lawsuit was filed by Carol Ann Ready, an Oklahoma woman who is suing the company in the federal court for the Southern District of New York. Ready purchased and ate lentil crumbles from Daily Harvest on two separate occasions in May, both of which both of which resulted in trips to the emergency room. The second of these was a four-day stay, which ended with Ready's physician recommending gallbladder removal. 

Attorneys for Ready are asking for a jury trial, alleging that damages for the case exceed what the court normally allows. “Plaintiff has sustained serious personal injuries; suffered, and will continue to suffer, significant pain and other physical discomfort; incurred, and will continue to incur, substantial medical expenses; have missed, and will likely miss in the future, work and time necessarily dedicated to advancement in her profession; and remains at risk for future health complications with damages far in excess of $75,000, the jurisdictional threshold of this court,” says the complaint, obtained by Food Safety News.

Earlier this week, an Oregon-based content creator who claimed he also consumed the lentils and subsequently had to have his gallbladder removed filed a personal injury lawsuit against Daily Harvest. In a video posted to Twitter on June 21, the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Luke Wesley Pearson, warned his followers not to eat the lentil crumbles.

Daily Harvest still hasn’t pinpointed what may have caused the adverse reactions. "All pathogen and toxicology results have come back negative so far, but we're continuing to do extensive testing so we can get to the bottom of this. Everyone who has been affected deserves an answer, and we are committed to making this right,” the company said in a statement to CNN.

Yesterday the FDA announced a formal investigation into the outbreak, in an effort to determine the cause. In a blog post, Daily Harvest said it received approximately 470 reports from customers who suffered adverse reactions after eating the product.

FIFA World Cup 2022 will feature an updated VAR (video assistant referee) system known as semi-automated offside technology, the international soccer governing body announced today. SAOT will replace the old (and still controversial) VAR system that FIFA first debuted at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The new system features 12 stadium cameras that will track the positioning of both the ball and each individual player, including 29 different data points on each player’s limbs and extremities. On top of that, a ball outfitted with a motion sensor will be used in each match, which will deliver live data on a player’s position at the time it's kicked.

FIFA believes that SOAT will help match officials make faster and more accurate decisions on offside calls. “VAR has already had a very positive impact on football and we can see that the number of major mistakes has already been dramatically reduced. We expect that semi-automated offside technology can take us a step further,” said FIFA Referees Committee Chairman Pierluigi Collina in a statement.

According to ESPN, the new system should cut the average time it takes to make a VAR offside decision from 70 seconds to 25 seconds. The old VAR system required manually drawing offside lines and calculating the kick point. FIFA officials claim that SOAT will automatically select both the offside line and kick point in seconds, using both data from the ball and limb-tracking data from the cameras. Human officials will then manually confirm each decision. After each decision is reached, a 3D animation will be displayed to spectators that visualizes the offside decision.

While it may seem risky to debut a completely new virtual referee system at a global event like the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a more basic version of SOAT went through trial runs at last year’s Arab Cup in Qatar and this year’s FIFA Club World Cup. You can watch a demonstration of SOAT here. 

Starting today, small phone carriers must implement a special caller ID authentication tool that will help identify robocallers, the Federal Communication Commission announced. Known as STIR/SHAKEN, major carriers such as AT&T and Verizon — due to an FCC rule adopted in 2020 — have had the same tool in place since last year. The agency initially gave small carriers a more generous deadline of June 2023 to adopt STIR/SHAKEN, but opted to fast-track adoption because it discovered "a subset of these small voice service providers were originating an increasing quantity of illegal robocalls."

But as a new report from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) notes, merely flagging suspected robocalls is not enough to tackle the robocall industry. "The problem is that applying the STIR/SHAKEN methodology requires only that originating providers apply a certification indicating how confident they are that the caller ID displayed in the calls is correct," the report states. Presumably, this means calls can still be routed through gateway carriers from abroad where the FCC's rules don't apply. But as EPIC also mentions, implementing STIR/SHAKEN may help identify spam callers, but there aren't any real metrics in place by which to measure how effective carriers are at stopping the calls. "The FCC’s pending regulatory efforts would continue to require only that providers have procedures in place to mitigate illegal robocalls," the report points out, "with no meaningful and enforceable requirement that these procedures actually be effective."

NFT marketplace OpenSea shared today that it’s the victim of another data breach — though this time the target is one of its vendors. An employee of its email delivery vendor, Customer.io, allegedly downloaded and shared stored email addresses associated with OpenSea accounts and newsletter subscriptions with an unknown third party. Any OpenSea account holder or newsletter subscriber should assume their email address was among those impacted, according to a blog post by the company’s head of security Cory Hardman. At this time it does not appear any passwords or other personal information was stolen.

The company is working with Customer.io to investigate the matter. “Please stay vigilant about your email practices, and be alert for any attempt to impersonate OpenSea via email,” wrote Hardman.

Unlike a previous phishing attack on OpenSea in February that resulted in hundreds of NFTs being stolen, there appears to be no further reported damage beyond the leaked email addresses. Still, the number of people likely impacted by the breach is significant. Hackread noted that 1.8 million users made purchases through the Ethereum network on OpenSea, according to data from Dune Analytics.

Yesterday the company sent emails to OpenSea users who they suspected were involved, warning them to be on the lookout for phishing emails and other scams. Beyond standard advice such as not to download attachments or click on a link from an OpenSea email, users were also warned not to sign wallet transactions directly from an email or to share or confirm secret wallet phrases.

The identity of the third party who received the breached email addresses has not been revealed. A representative from Customer.io toldTechCrunch that the employee behind the breach had “role-specific” access to the OpenSea data that they abused. “We do not believe any other clients’ data has been compromised, but we are continuing to investigate. The employee in question has had all access removed and has been suspended pending the conclusion of our investigation.”

A small fleet of Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco suddenly stopped operating on Tuesday night, effectively stopping traffic on a street in the city's Fillmore district for a couple of hours until employees were able to arrive. TechCrunch first noticed a Reddit post that featured a photo of the stalled driverless cabs at the corner of Gough and Fulton streets. Cruise — which is General Motor’s AV subsidiary — only launched its commercial robotaxi service in the city last week. The rides feature no human safety driver, are geo-restricted to certain streets and can only operate in the late evening hours.

Cruise apologized for the incident in a statement, but gave little explanation for what caused the mishap. “We had an issue earlier this week that caused some of our vehicles to cluster together,” a Cruise spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “While it was resolved and no passengers were impacted, we apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced.”

The GM-backed AV startup won the first driverless taxi permit in a major US city, and began offering San Francisco residents free rides in February. After launching its paid passenger service on June 24, early reviews from Cruise passengers came pouring in. One passenger noted that his Cruise car took an unusually long route to get to his home. Another passenger seemed to have a more positive experience, even leaving a cash tip for the driverless car.

This week’s traffic jam appears to be Cruise’s first major stumbling block, at least for its commercial service. Back in April, police stopped a Cruise car for not having its headlights on. Officers appeared unsure of how to proceed after discovering there was no human behind the wheel.

The State of California requires AV companies to report any collision that involve property damage, bodily harm or death to the DMV, which publishes the data online. A total of 18 reports involving Cruise vehicles have been filed this year.

Roughly 25 percent (23.4 percent to be exact) of the Earth’s sea floor has been mapped, thanks to an international initiative known as Seabed 2030. Relying largely on voluntary contributions of bathymetric data (or ocean topography) by governments, companies and research institutions, the project is part of a larger UN-led initiative called The Ocean Decade. Seabed 2030 hopes to map 100 percent of the ocean floor by 2030, which researchers say will be possible thanks to advances in technology and corralling already available data. Over the past year alone, Seabed 2030 has added measurements for around 3.8 million square miles (roughly the size of Europe) primarily through newly opened archives, rather than active mapping efforts.

Scientists believe collecting more bathymetric data will help further our understanding of climate change and ocean preservation efforts. Ocean floor mapping also helps in the detection of tsunamis and other natural disasters. “A complete map of the ocean floor is the missing tool that will enable us to tackle some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time, including climate change and marine pollution. It will enable us to safeguard the planet’s future,” said Mitsuyuki Unno, executive director of The Nippon Foundation in a press release. 

As the BBC notes, much of the data used in Seabed 2030 already existed. The group largely relies on contributions from governments and companies, though some of these entities are still reluctant to completely open up their archives for fear of spilling national or trade secrets. 

All the data that Seabed 2030 is collecting will be available to the public online on the GEBCO (General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans) global grid. Prior to Seabed 2030, very little directly measured ocean floor data was available for public use. Most bathymetric measurements are estimated using satellite altimeter readings, which give a very rough idea of the shape of the sea floor surface. Some scientists believe a global effort to locate the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 would have been better informed by newer, more precise methods to chart the ocean floor.

The Samsung Gaming Hub is live now on 2022 Samsung smart TVs and smart monitors, and it's adding two services from Amazon to its game-streaming lineup: Twitch and Luna. Twitch is available today, while Luna is coming soon. Gamers will also be able to access Xbox Game Pass now, as well as apps for NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Stadia and Utomik in the same designated area on their TVs. The company plans to release details about the gaming hub's rollout to earlier Samsung smart TV models at a later date, a Samsung spokesperson confirmed to Engadget. 

For those who are unfamiliar with the Samsung Gaming Hub, it essentially offers players a way to access major cloud gaming services on their smart TV using only their Bluetooth controller, no console needed. Apps for both Spotify and YouTube are also included in the gaming hub.

Samsung says it plans on delivering even more gaming-focused content in the future, including new partnerships. “With expanding partnerships across leading game streaming services and expert curated recommendations, players will be able to easily browse and discover games from the widest selection available, regardless of platform,” said Won-Jin Lee, president of Samsung’s Service Business Team.

Amazon’s Luna cloud gaming service has only been available to the general public since March, and is already available on Fire TVs. Its partnership with Samsung could give the nascent gaming service an easy way to reach people who have never used it in their homes. Twitch (which is owned by Amazon) once had an app for Samsung smart TVs, but it was retired in 2019. The platform’s return to the newest Samsung smart TVs will be happy news for streamers and their fans.

It seems natural for Samsung to further embrace the gaming community, given that smart TVs have become close to a necessity in gaming. Last year Microsoft announced that it would begin working with global TV manufacturers to directly integrate Xbox into smart TVs via an Xbox with Game Pass app. The idea of an “all-in-one” destination for all your cloud-based and console games is certainly convenient to some, and may help gamers avoid the time and hassle of switching between modes.

Amazon is limiting sales of Plan B and other emergency contraceptives to three units per customer in the wake of increased demand, the company confirmed to several media outlets. Last week’s US Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade prompted a spike in sales of Plan B and other generic brands of levonorgestrel morning-after pills. 

Customers who order emergency contraception on Amazon still face a bit of a wait. Amazon’s main listing for Plan B (a popular name brand of levonorgestrel made by a company called Foundation Consumer Healthcare) displays an estimated delivery range of July 19 through August 6. MyChoice, a generic brand of levonorgestrel that is cheaper than Plan B displays a delivery date of July 28. Engadget has reached out to Amazon for an estimate on when it will remove its cap on sales, and will update if we hear back. 

Rite-Aid is also capping both online and in-person sales of emergency contraception to three per customer. Walmart has a more generous limit of 10 units of Plan B per customer, and Target limits online sales of Plan B to six orders per customer. Following a temporary cap on sales, both Walgreens and CVS have removed purchase limits on Plan B as of Tuesday evening.

"We continue to have ample supply of emergency contraceptives to meet customer needs," Matt Blanchette, CVS’s senior manager of retail communications toldCNN.

Those who don’t want to turn to Amazon or a major drugstore chain have other online options for Plan. Both Instacart and GoPuff also offer Plan B for same-day delivery. A number of telehealth startups such as Wisp, Nurx and Stix sell generic emergency contraceptive pills (though sales are restricted to certain states). Sales of emergency contraceptive products on Wisp spiked by 40 percent following a leak of the court’s decision back in May, Wisp confirmed to Engadget. Furthermore, sales were 25 times the daily average for May on Friday, the day of the court’s ruling.

“We have been able to meet the current surge in demand. We are not putting any restrictions on emergency contraceptive pills,” noted Wisp CEO Ahmad Bani in a statement to Engadget.