Owners of 2017 to 2019 Chevrolet Bolt EVs should not park their cars indoors or leave them to charge overnight unattended, according to a safety alert issued by The National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA). The warning comes after two Bolt EVs included in GM’s 2020 recall of the vehicle caught fire recently. One blaze happened outside the home of a Vermont state legislator at the start of the month, while the other occurred in New Jersey.

“At GM, safety is our highest priority, and we are moving as quickly as we can to investigate this issue,” a spokesperson for the automaker told CNBC. According to NHTSA, the batteries in the vehicles included in the safety warning can smoke and catch fire.

In the US, GM recalled nearly 51,000 Bolt EVs. The company pushed an update to those cars that limited their batteries to 90 percent of a full charge. More recently, GM said it would install diagnostic software on those cars to prevent future fires. It also promised to assess and replace batteries that featured any “anomalies.” Notably, at the same time, it also removed the charging cap it had implemented when it originally recalled the Bolt.

Part of the reason the ongoing reports of Bolt fires are a cause for concern is due to the fact the 2017 to 2019 models use the same cells at the center of a similar issue with the Hyundai Kona. Both companies sourced the batteries for those vehicles from LG Chem. Last year, Hyundai recalled 25,564 Kona EVs after more than a dozen incidents of fire and then later went on to replace the batteries in 75,680 vehicles.

Virginia will use $700 million in American Rescue Plan funding to expedite broadband buildouts in underserved communities throughout the state, Governor Ralph Northam announced on Friday. With the investment, Virginia says it’s on track to become one of the first states in the US to achieve universal broadband access.

An estimated 233,500 homes and businesses throughout the Commonwealth fall under what the Federal Communications Commission would consider an underserved location. They don’t have an internet connection that can achieve download speeds of 25Mbps down. The state estimates the additional funding will allow it to connect those places to faster internet by the end of 2024, instead of 2028, as previously planned. What’s more, the “majority” of those connections will be completed within the next 18 months.

“It’s time to close the digital divide in our Commonwealth and treat internet service like the 21st-century necessity that it is — not just a luxury for some, but an essential utility for all,” Governor Northam said.

Across nine provisions, President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan provides approximately $388 billion in funding for state and local governments to address the digital divide in their communities. Virginia is only one of the states across the country that plans to use that money to build faster internet infrastructure. In May, California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a $7 billion investment in public broadband.

Impossible Foods will debut plant-based chicken nuggets this fall, the company told Bloomberg on Friday. As with its past releases, the startup plans to first sell the food to restaurants, with supermarket availability to follow later. But before all that, it will debut them at a trade show next week.

One thing that will distinguish the nuggets from Impossible’s past products is the absence of heme, a molecule the company says is what makes “meat taste like meat.” But the problem with Impossible’s heme is that the company makes it with genetically engineered yeast. That’s something that has prevented Impossible from selling its burgers and sausages in China and throughout Europe. But when it comes to real chicken, there isn’t a lot of heme in the white meat of the animal. “We found in a nugget format, which is breaded and has some seasoning, it really wasn’t that necessary.” Laura Kilman, a flavor scientist with Impossible, told Bloomberg. The formula the company eventually settled on mostly makes use of soy protein and sunflower oil.

Compared to Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods is late to offer a chicken alternative. “We’ve been busy with other things,” Dennis Woodside, the company’s president, told Bloomberg. To that point, Impossible introduced a pork substitute at CES 2020. 

All the same, that might not matter much. Earlier in the week, Popeyes announced it was adding chicken nuggets to its menu in hopes of replicating the success of its chicken sandwich. The latter sparked a “war” between fast food chains as demand for chicken increased in the US and throughout the world. That's something that could help Impossible when its plant-based chicken starts making its way to consumers. 

Ubisoft has delayed its two big September releases. Both Rainbow Six Extraction and Riders Republic won’t make their previously announced release dates, the company shared in separate blog posts on Friday. Originally scheduled to come out on September 16th, Ubisoft now plans to release Extraction in January 2022. Meanwhile, it has pushed Riders Republic from September 2nd to October 28th.

Of the two, Extraction is the more significant delay given the popularity of Rainbow Six Siege and the timeframe involved. “Our ambition with Rainbow Six Extraction is to deliver a full-fledged AAA experience that changes the way you play and think about cooperative games,” Ubisoft said. “We are embracing the opportunity to take additional time to bring this vision to life in the way it deserves in January 2022. We are confident this will ensure Rainbow Six Extraction is the immersive, cooperative, and thrilling experience we set out to create, and the one you aspire to play.”

As for the latter game, Ubisoft said the delay will “give us more time to fine tune the experience and give you another chance to jump in before launch and provide feedback.” At its Ubisoft Forward event in June, the company said players would get a chance to beta test Riders Republic before release.

Neither delay is the first for Rainbow Six Extraction and Riders Republic. The latter was originally supposed to come out at the start of 2021. However, Extraction has had a more complicated development. Ubisoft first announced the game at E3 2019, at which point it was known as Rainbow Six Quarantine. At that point, it was supposed to come out in 2020, but then that didn’t happen. Ubisoft then didn't say much about the game until it revealed it was considering a name change. 

Just in time for World Snake Day, Razer has released a pair of slippers that feature the company’s adorable Sneki Snek mascot. For $49.99, they come with slip-resistant soles and plush inner lining that the company says will keep your feet “snug and warm during long gaming sessions. They’re also made from recycled materials. Before you dismiss the slippers as just another oddball product from Razer, we’ll point out that there’s a cool story behind them.

The slippers are part of Razer’s growing Sneki Snek lineup. It all started with a doodle one of the company’s designers drew for their newborn child. As these things usually go, Razer fans took to the mascot and started using it in memes. Some even got tattoos of Sneki Snek. It all eventually led to where we are today, with Razer releasing one Sneki Snek product after another.

Early in the process, the company decided to work with Conservation International to donate part of the proceeds from each Sneki Snek sale towards saving forests. The company claims each purchase will help save 10 trees in countries like Costa Rica, Madagascar and China. Razer hopes to help save 1 million trees eventually. With each 100,000 milestone, the company has released a new Sneki Snek product. Previous releases include an adorable plushie “optimized for cuddles” and a head pillow that “fits most gaming chairs.”

You can buy the Sneki Snek Slippers on Razer’s website.

With just two days before World Emoji Day on July 17th, Emojipedia has shared a list of draft characters the Unicode Consortium will consider for final inclusion in Unicode 14.0. The list includes charming candidates like a melting smiley face, a disco ball, beans and a pointing finger in various skin tones. Not every emoji you see below will make the cut. However, once the Unicode Consortium decides on a final candidate list in September, the remaining ones will make their way to your devices starting in late 2021 and throughout 2022.

Emojipedia

As with almost every potential Unicode release since 2014, the draft list includes characters designed with diversity and inclusivity in mind. In particular, you’ll notice there are several new versions of the handshake emoji. And that’s a big deal. Due to technical limitations, it was one of the few characters you couldn’t modify with a skin tone, but after about two years of work, that’s almost certainly changing with Unicode 14.0.

What’s also notable about the above list is that the Unicode Consortium has been working on it longer than usual. In 2020, the organization delayed the release of Unicode 14.0 due to the pandemic. “This year we simply can’t commit to the same schedule we’ve adhered to in the past,” it said at the time, noting the pandemic had overwhelmed the volunteer contributors it depends on for its work around emoji.

On July 16th, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain will open in US theatres. Like many documentaries, the film pieces together archival footage, including interviews and show outtakes, to attempt to tell the story of its subject in their own words. It also includes words Bourdain never spoke to a camera before his death by suicide in 2018, and yet you’ll hear his voice saying them.

In an interview with The New Yorker, the film’s director, Morgan Neville, said there were three quotes he wanted Bourdain to narrate where there were no recordings, and so he recreated them with software instead. “I created an AI model of his voice,” he told the magazine.

It appears that was no easy feat either. In a separate interview with GQ, Neville said he contacted four different companies about the project before deciding on the best one. That company fed about a dozen hours of audio to an AI model. A lot of the work involved deciding the exact tone of Bourdain’s voice Neville wanted the software to replicate since the way the author and travel host narrated his writing changed so much over the years he was on TV.

Compared to some of the other ways we’ve seen AI and deepfakes used to trick people, this isn't the worst example, but the ethics of it are still questionable. The film, as far as we’re aware, doesn’t include a disclosure that AI was used to replicate Bourdain’s voice. “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the AI, and you’re not going to know,” Neville told The New Yorker. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.” In his interview with GQ, he said Bourdain’s family told him “Tony would have been cool with that,” adding, “I was just trying to make [the quotes] come alive,”

Twenty years after being unceremoniously dumped from Microsoft Office, Clippy is ready to make a triumphant return. As part of a broader update to 1,800 emoji, the one-time assistant will replace the paperclip emoji in various Microsoft 365 products, including Office, Teams and Windows. Microsoft is updating its emoji library to make the characters 3D, as well as more colorful and fun. The company told The Verge approximately 900 of the redesigned emoji would feature some sort of animation, which you’ll be able to see in action in apps like Teams.

Microsoft / The Verge

The company said it plans to roll out the new characters to Windows and Teams sometime in the upcoming holiday season. They will then make their way to other Office apps, including Yammer and Outlook, sometime after that. 

Microsoft teased Clippy’s return earlier this month when it said on Twitter it would replace the paperclip emoji in Office if at least 20,000 people liked its tweet. As of the writing of this article, that message has 151,000 likes and counting. The tweet was an about-face for Microsoft. In 2019, a group of employees released a Teams sticker pack dedicated to the Office assistant on GitHub, only for the company to remove it a day later. This time, it appears Clippy is here to stay for good.

On Thursday, Facebook disclosed that a network of hackers with ties to Iran tried to use its platform to target US military personnel. At the center of the campaign was a group known as Tortiseshell. Facebook says the collective went after individuals and companies in the defense and aerospace industries. Its primary targets were in the US, but they also sought out people in the UK and parts of Europe.

“This activity had the hallmarks of a well-resourced and persistent operation, while relying on relatively strong operational security measures to hide who’s behind it,” Facebook said. "Our platform was one of the elements of the much broader cross-platform cyber-espionage operation, and its activity on Facebook manifested primarily in social engineering and driving people off-platform (e.g. email, messaging and collaboration services and websites), rather than directly sharing of the malware itself."

What went down appears to be unprecedented for Tortoiseshell. In the past, the group has primarily targeted IT companies throughout the Middle East. The methods it employed were similar to those that China’s Evil Eye used to target the Uyghur community earlier in the year.

Facebook says the group created “sophisticated online personas” to contact its targets and build trust with them before trying to convince them to click on malicious links. They had accounts across multiple social media platforms to make their ruse appear more credible. The group built fake recruiting websites and even went so far as to spoof a legitimate US Department of Labor job search tool. Facebook believes at least some of the malware the group deployed was developed by Mahak Rayan Afraz, a company with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran has been accused of a variety of malicious online activities over the past year. Most notably, Microsoft said last September it was one of the countries that tried to meddle in the 2020 US presidential election.

If you want to secure the new OLED variant of the Nintendo Switch before its October 8th release date, now’s your chance. In the US, pre-orders will open at 3PM ET today and we're already seeing the console listed at Best Buy, B&H, GameStop and other retailers. 

Buy Switch OLED at Amazon - $350Buy Switch OLED at Best Buy - $350 Buy Switch OLED at GameStop - $350Buy Switch OLED at B&H - $350

The newest Switch comes with a larger, 7-inch OLED display, as well as 64GB of internal storage, a redesigned kickstand, “enhanced audio” and a new dock that adds a wired LAN port. Nintendo will offer the $350 console in two colorways at launch: classic neon red and blue, and black and white.

What you won’t find on this version of the Switch is a new chipset. Ahead of the OLED model’s announcement at the start of the month, there were reports Nintendo planned to include an updated SoC with NVIDIA’s DLSS tech to enable the console to output games at 4K. That didn’t happen, but that’s not to say a Switch “Pro” is off the table.

Whether the OLED Switch represents a missed opportunity or not, we expect demand for the console will easily outstrip supply. In May, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa told investors the company was still contending with production issues, and the global semiconductor shortage isn’t expected to end anytime soon.