Amazon will allow individual directors to decide how often their teams can work remotely as part of its latest return-to-office plan. Like Apple, Facebook and Google, the company had most recently planned for its corporate employees to return to the office by the start of 2022. At that point, Amazon said its expectation was most would come into work at least three days a week. Recognizing the ongoing complexity of the pandemic, the company has decided to take a more flexible approach.

“We expect that there will be teams that continue working mostly remotely, others that will work some combination of remotely and in the office, and still others that will decide customers are best served having the team work mostly in the office,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an email to employees the company shared online.

The company expects most teams will need a few weeks to develop and communicate their respective plans. Once they’re ready, Amazon anticipates they’ll share details before January 3rd, which is the date the company had previously set for employees to return to the office. Of all the office reopening plans we've seen detailed in recent months, Amazon's seems the most reasonable yet. Factors like varying vaccination rates and caseloads in different cities and states have made it difficult to predict how the pandemic will continue to evolve.  

With the F-150 Lightning set to debut early next year, Ford plans to employ a group of “Charge Angels” to ensure owners of its EVs can find reliable charging when they need it. In an interview with Automotive News, Ford EV lead Darren Palmer said technicians in specially-equipped Mustang Mach-Es will travel the US to test out charging stations where connected vehicle data and “angry social media posts” indicate they may not be working properly.

“All they’ll do all day long is go and check them to see where they fail and why,” Palmer told the outlet. “There are a lot of plugs out there, but some of them are old and they don’t have the quality or reliability we want. Over 99.5 percent of customers go into a charger and get a charge. We’re pleased about that. But a number less than that get a charge the first time they charge.”

The company is reportedly finalizing the details of the program but hopes to have the first group of Charge Angels out on the road by the end of the year. Either way, it’s a smart move for an automaker that has a network of approximately 63,000 chargers across the US but ultimately depends on companies like Electrify America and ChargePoint for that infrastructure.

Following multiple production delays, the latest Chevy Bolt EV recall is officially underway. Per Ars Technica, GM has started replacing the battery packs of affected vehicles. The automaker is reaching out to Bolt owners with cars manufactured “during specific build timeframes” first. Once you get your EV to a Chevy dealership, the replacement process should take approximately two days. Each new pack comes with an eight-year or 100,000-mile warranty.

Replacing the battery of every Chevy Bolt manufactured between 2017 and 2019 is expected to cost GM more than $1.8 billion. The fault that led to the fires that necessitated the recall stemmed from a pair of related issues. A problem with the original manufacturing process could cause the battery anodes in affected cars to tear and cathode-anode separators to fold. If both defects came up in the same battery, it would have a higher chance of catching fire.

"LG has implemented new manufacturing processes and has worked with GM to review and enhance its quality assurance programs to provide confidence in its batteries moving forward," GM said last month when it first detailed how it would go about replacing batteries. “LG will institute these new processes in other facilities that will provide cells to GM in the future.” 

GM will also start rolling out new diagnostic software in November for all Bolt EVs. The company says the firmware will help it prioritize the cars that need service sooner.

Google TV is about to make it easier for everyone in your household to maintain their own watchlists. If you already use the platform, you may know that more than one person can sign in with their Google Account. However, at the moment, Google TV will only generate recommendations for the primary account holder. That’s about to change.

Google is introducing support for personalized profiles, allowing everyone with a Google account in your household to maintain their own watchlists and Assistant settings. That also means they’ll be able to get their own content recommendations. Support for personalized accounts will start rolling out next month to Chromecast with Google TV in addition to supported sets from TCL and Sony.

With the introduction of accounts, Google is also enhancing the platform’s ambient mode. In addition to shortcuts for things like podcasts, music and photos, you’ll see glanceable cards that will include personalized information related to the weather, news and more. This feature will first be available only in the US. Lastly, if you’re a Philo TV subscriber, you’ll now see content from the service show up in Google TV’s Live and For you tabs. Separately from today's announcements, Google told Engadget the mobile remote app for Google TV will be available soon through the Google Home app on Android and iOS.

At the start of September, Impossible’s plant-based “chicken” nuggets started appearing at select restaurants and grocery stores across the US. It was a limited debut that meant not everyone who wanted to try them could. While it’s not exactly a nationwide expansion, Burger King is about to begin carrying the nuggets.

Starting on Monday, October 11th, the fast-food chain will add an eight-piece order of Impossible Nuggets to the menu at select restaurants in Des Moines, Iowa, Boston, Massachusetts and Miami, Florida. While they’ll be only available for a limited time, you’ll have a choice of dipping sauce. The nuggets themselves are made mostly from soy protein and sunflower oil. 

According to Impossible, its nuggets have 40 percent less saturated fat and 25 percent less sodium than animal-based chicken nuggets. One thing to note is that the nuggets BK plans to sell won’t be vegan since they’ll be fried in the same oil those restaurants cook their meat and cheese products in.

Following the test, we could see Burger King start offering the food item nationwide fairly quickly. After it introduced the Impossible Whopper at select restaurants in 2019, it was only four months later before the plant-based burgers became available at BK spots across the US.

This week, the 2021 Rebelle Rally kicked off with participants in the all-female race embarking on a 1,500-mile trek across the deserts of Nevada and California. Hyundai’s Kia is fielding two modified Sorento plug-in hybrids as part of the event. In the spirit of the rally, the automaker asked LGE-CTS Motorsports, a female-owned shop in Southern California, to make the two vehicles race-ready.

Each one features underbody armor to protect its vulnerable internal components. Additionally, the shop fitted both Sorentos with bumper guards, skid plates and 1-inch spacers to elevate them just a bit higher off the ground. They’re riding on 17-inch KMC matte black wheels fitted with Hankook Dynapro AT2 tires. For carrying equipment, LGE-CTS removed the rear seats to make room for an interior cargo mounting system and added roof racks. Notably, the shop didn’t modify the powertrain of either PHEV.

We’re starting to see more and more electric vehicles take part in endurance races like the Rebelle Rally. At the end of April, Volkswagen’s ID.4 SUV took part in the Mexican 1000 Rally. The company’s Audi division is also getting ready to race a custom-built PHEV at the Dakar Rally at the start of next year. At this rate, it feels like it's only a matter of time before they become a more common sight at endurance races.

In 2020, Panasonic announced the BGH1, its first-ever box-style camera. The company took the internals of its well-liked Micro Four ThirdsGH5S and rehoused them in a body better suited for video production workloads. Almost exactly one year later, Panasonic has announced the DC-BS1H. Like its predecessor, this latest release from the company takes an existing Panasonic camera, the full-frame S1H, and puts it in a new body.

At the heart of the BS1H is a 24.2-megapixel CMOS sensor that can capture footage at up to a 6K resolution. Specifically, it’s capable of recording 6K video at up to 24 frames per second, 5.4K at 30 frames per second with a 3:2 crop and 5.9K at 30 frames per second with a 16:9 framing. Panasonic claims the BS1H’s sensor features more than 14 stops of dynamic range and the inclusion of both an optical low pass filter a Dual Native ISO feature help reduce moire and digital noise.

But if you’re looking at a box-style camera for yourself, you want one for the added connectivity options the format promises. On the front, the BS1H is no slouch. Notably, it includes a USB 3.1 Type-C connection, an HDMI Type-A port and a 3G serial digital interface. It’s also possible to connect 12 BS1H cameras together to create a multi-camera setup. Additionally, you’ll find the usual assortment of 3.5mm and XLR microphone connections, on top of a LAN port. Oh, and it comes with dual SD card slots for worry-free redundancy.

Panasonic will sell the DC-BS1H for $3,500 when it becomes available in November.

More than a decade after Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher dramatized the rise of Facebook with The Social Network, a new TV series will attempt to tell the story of the company’s more recent history. Per Deadline, production companies Anonymous Content and Wiip, best known for their work on Mr. Robot and Dickinson, are working on a show titled Doomsday Machine that will star two-time Emmy winner Claire Foy as COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Based in part on AnUgly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, Deadline reports the series will cover everything from Facebook’s actions during the 2016 presidential election up to more recent revelations about its business. That includes recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal that showed Facebook has for years ran a program called XCheck, which has allowed high-profile users, including former President Donald Trump, to skirt its content moderation rules.

The timing of the announcement comes as Facebook faces increasing scrutiny from federal lawmakers. On Wednesday, whistleblower Frances Haugen told the Senate Commerce Committee Congress should regulate the social media giant. It also comes after the company went through an hours-long outage on October 4th that left people unable to access Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In the aftermath of that event, there have been renewed calls from American lawmakers, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to break the company up into smaller entities.

The 2022 Geneva International Motor Show (GIMS) won’t go forward due to the coronavirus pandemic. Following cancellations in 2020 and 2021, the trade show was supposed to return on February 19th, 2022, but that’s no longer happening. Organizers are billing the move not as a cancellation but as a postponement that will see GIMS come back as a “more impactful” event in 2023.

“The decision to cancel GIMS 2022 was made with the best interests of both car manufacturers and automotive fans in mind,” said the Committee and Council of the Foundation “Salon International de l’Automobile,” which is responsible for organizing the auto show. The group blamed the impact COVID-19 has had both on travel and event restrictions and automakers through the global semiconductor supply for the decision.

We’ve seen plenty of other auto shows get canceled in 2021, but the way GIMS continues to struggle is not a good sign for the industry. Pre-pandemic, it was one of the largest car shows in the world. It would usually attract more than 600,000 visitors, including some 10,000 journalists, to Swizterland. Beyond its sheer size and scale, the show was particularly known for all the new and wild concepts cars that would debut on its floor.

Marvel Studios is reportedly developing a new Disney+ series that will see WandaVision’s Kathryn Hahn reprise her role as Agatha Harkness, according to Variety. If the project moves forward, Jac Schaeffer, the lead writer of WandaVision, is expected to return to write the new series. She’s also likely to produce the show. Other than the fact it’s supposed to be a dark comedy, plot details are limited at the moment.

Marvel Studios did not comment on the possibility of a WandaVision spinoff when Variety reached out to the subsidiary, but there’s a chance we could learn more about the project when Disney holds its first-ever Disney+ Day on November 12th. The company said the event would include a “look toward the future” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Either way, Marvel fans would likely welcome the chance to see Hahn in her own series. Agatha was one of the show’s more memorable characters, and Hahn even earned an Emmy nomination for the performance. The spinoff likely won't debut before sometime in 2022 at the earliest. Until then, there's Hawkeye, which will premiere on November 24th.