Tesla Superchargers close to the Ukraine border will offer free electric vehicle charging to support those leaving the country following Russia's invasion. Owners of Tesla and non-Tesla EVs will be able to use stations at Trzebownisko, Poland; Košice, Slovakia; and Miskolc and Debrecen (both Hungary) at no cost for a limited time. It's unclear whether Tesla plans to expand the program to other Supercharger sites.

"We hope that this helps give you the peace of mind to get to a safe location," Tesla wrote in an email to local owners, according to Elektrek. It's said to be the first time Tesla has offered free charging to owners of third-party EVs.

Tesla doesn't currently operate in Ukraine, though some people there are said to have imported its EVs and the company wants to open Supercharger sites in the country (it's not clear how the conflict may have impacted those plans). The company has offered free charging during other times of crisis, including when hurricanes struck the US.

Airbnb has pledged to work with Ukraine's neighbors to provide free temporary housing to up to 100,000 refugees who are fleeing the country after Russia invaded. Executives are sending letters to the leaders of several European nations — beginning with Poland, Germany, Hungary and Romania — to offer their support. More than 300,000 people have left Ukraine since the invasion commenced on Thursday, as Bloomberg notes.

The Airbnb.org nonprofit will work with governments and local organizations to support the needs of refugees in each nation, which may include providing longer-term housing. The housing costs will be covered by Airbnb, along with donors to the Airbnb.org Refugee Fund and hosts. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that, while partnerships are being forged with nonprofits in European countries, refugees and asylum seekers can seek help from the UN Refugee Agency

The nonprofit last week announced it has facilitated housing for 21,300 Afghan refugees. It said it would house up to 40,000 Afghan refugees on a temporary basis after the Taliban assumed power. Airbnb.org last week set a target of providing free short-term housing to another 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America and other territories. That goal is separate from the pledge to help Ukrainian refugees.

Panasonic aims to start mass production of a higher-capacity battery for Tesla by March 2024. The company is building a production facility for the battery at its Wakayama Factory, where it will create two more production lines and make structural improvements.

Development is continuing on the 4,680 lithium-ion battery. It's expected to be around twice the size of current batteries and have a fivefold increase in energy capacity. While fewer of them would be required for each car (which will reduce costs and potentially lower EV prices), the batteries could boost the range of an EV by over 15 percent.

Panasonic's announcement lines up with previous reports suggesting it could start making the battery next year. The company was said to be investing approximately 80 billion yen (around $694 million) into production equipment. It started working on the battery following a request from Tesla, though it may sell the 4,680 to other automakers.

Lenovo has refreshed its ThinkPad lineup once again with the latest version of its beefy X1 Extreme laptop. The performance-focused ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 is powered by a 12th-gen Intel Core i9 H-Series processor up to i9 and supports NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX laptop GPUs.

Vapor chamber cooling and integrated liquid metal thermal paste deliver up to a 10 percent performance boost, Lenovo claims. The system can have up to 64GB of DDR5 memory and up to 8TB of SSD storage. In other words, this isn't exactly an entry-level laptop.

There's Dolby Voice noise canceling support, along with a Dolby Atmos speaker system. Some of the display options include Dolby Vision support. There's a 16-inch, 16:10 aspect ratio panel option with a refresh rate of 165Hz and low-blue-light tech. Other options have features such as touch input, factory color calibration and up to 600 nit brightness with 4K resolution.

Lenovo

In addition, the laptop comes with a 90Wh battery, WiFi 6/6E and 5G connectivity, a Full HD front-facing camera and a SD Express 7.0 card reader. Like other current ThinkPad X1 Models, Tile's tracking tech is built in. You'll be able to track the laptop for up to 14 days, even when it's switched off.

The ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 will be available in June. It starts at $2,049.

On top of that, Lenovo has revealed new business-centric ThinkPad T series laptops. The company is largely moving that lineup to panels with a 16:10 aspect ratio and low-blue-light tech. As with the X1 Extreme, there are Full HD camera options and support for Dolby Audio, Dolby Voice and WiFi 6E.

Lenovo

There's a new 16-inch ThinkPad T16 alongside the 14-inch ThinkPad T14s Gen 3 and T14 Gen 3. The business-focused laptops will run on either 12th-gen Intel Core or AMD Ryzen Pro 6000 Series processors. Opting for an Intel-powered model means you can add a NVIDIA GeForce MX 550 or RTX 2050 GPU. Otherwise, the systems will use integrated graphics. There are two battery options for each device too, as well as built-in Tile support.

The ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 and T16 will be available in April, starting at $1,399 and $1,419, respectively, for Intel models. AMD-powered versions of either size start at $1,299. Timing and pricing for the ThinkPad T14s Gen 3 are a bit different. Intel models will arrive in June, starting at $1,529, while AMD versions will be available in May from $1,399.

Lenovo

Meanwhile, Lenovo says the ThinkVision M14d monitor is the world’s first 14-inch mobile display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. It has an IPS 2.2K panel with a resolution of 2240 x 1400. There's power passthrough support, so you'll only need one USB-C cable connected to a computer or tablet. There's a second USB-C port to which you can connect certain peripherals, such as an external storage drive or a phone.

The ThinkVision M14d, which comes with a protective sleeve, weighs less than 1.3 pounds (600 grams) and has a 60Hz refresh rate. It will ship in July and cost $299.

Lenovo also announced the ThinkBook 14s Yoga Gen 2 and ThinkBook 13s Gen 4, which have dual-tone color highlights and an anodized aluminum exterior design. They run on 12th-gen Intel Core processors and have Thunderbolt 4 and WiFi 6E connectivity. The 2-in-1s will be available in April, starting at $849 for both the 13-inch and 14-inch variants.

Lenovo

Catch up on all of the news from MWC 2022 right here!

The Steam Deck will start shipping in the next few days and while there's no real shortage of games to play on it, Valve is adding another one to the mix. The company that created the portable gaming system has created a Portal spinoff called Aperture Desk Job.

In the free playable short, you'll take on the role of a product inspector at Aperture, the corporation at the center of the Half-Life and Portal games. Valve says "Desk Job walks you through the handheld’s controls and features, while not being nearly as boring as that sounds." It seems to be a demo for the Steam Deck's capabilities, similar to how Astro's Playroom shows off the PS5 DualSense controller.

If you haven't been able to secure a Steam Deck just yet, you'll still be able to play Aperture Desk Job on PC. However, it's a controller-only game, so don't expect to play it with a keyboard and mouse.

NVIDIA's email systems and developer tools have reportedly been experiencing outages over the last two days due to a suspected cyberattack. The company told The Telegraph, which first reported on the issue, that it was "investigating an incident" and didn't have anything else to share for now.

The company is believed to be dealing with a "malicious network intrusion" that, in the words of one person with knowledge of the situation, "completely compromised" NVIDIA's internal systems. Some of its email services were said to be back online on Friday. It's not yet clear whether hackers obtained data on NVIDIA or its customers if this is actually a cyberattack.

There's currently no evidence tying the incident to Russia, following concerns it would retaliate against the West with cyberwarfare. The US and other nations slapped Russia with sanctions after it invaded Ukraine on Thursday, including a moratorium on exporting semiconductors to the country.

"We have no information to suggest a specific credible cyber threat against the US homeland, but it is our responsibility to be prepared," secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas said this week, before Russia commenced its military offensive.

Tumblr has reached a settlement with New York City’s Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) over how the social media platform handled its ban on adult content, which came into force in 2018. CCHR officials, which started an investigation soon after Tumblr announced the ban, claimed that the move disproportionately impacted LGBTQ+ users.

Under the settlement, which was first reported by The Verge, Tumblr will bring in an expert to review its moderation algorithms for potential bias. It will put its moderators through a diversity and inclusion training program, revise the appeals process. Tumblr will also re-assess around 3,000 old cases of successful user appeals against takedowns to look for indicators of bias.

Tumblr says that, since WordPress owner Automattic bought the service in 2019 from Verizon, it replaced the algorithm that was used to classify adult content. According to the agreement with CCHR, which didn't make a formal legal complaint, the new system can "more accurately classify images and data." The appeal process for images deemed to violate Tumblr's adult content ban has also been revamped. Human reviewers now review appeals and make the final calls.

Automattic's acquisition of Tumblr may have led to the deal being struck. The Verge notes that, under its current ownership, Tumblr has tried to make amends with LGBTQ+ users who left the platform in the wake of the ban. Even before Tumblr outlawed porn, the platform apologized after its Safe Mode filtered out LGBTQ+ posts that were not explicit.

Russia is partially restricting access to Facebook. Telecom regulator Roskomnadzor says the move is in response to parent company Meta restricting the official accounts of four Russian media outlets. It said Meta was violating Russian law by doing so.

Roskomnadzor asked Meta for an explanation and to remove the restrictions on Thursday. After the company "ignored" the demands, officials decided to restrict access to Facebook, a measure Roskomnadzor says is in accordance with the law. The watchdog claims to have recorded 23 cases of "such censorship of Russian media and Internet resources by Facebook" since October 2020 (per a Google Translate version of its announcement).

The extent of these restrictions on Facebook is not yet clear. Engadget has asked Meta for comment.

Reports suggest Russia tried to spread propaganda and misinformation for weeks in the lead up to its invasion of Ukraine. According to NBC News, experts expect the level of disinformation to increase significantly.

As the invasion began on Thursday, Facebook enabled its "lock profile" tool in Ukraine to help residents protect their accounts. Twitter's Safety team, meanwhile, shared some tips in Ukrainian on how to keep accounts secure.

The long wait is over: Elden Ring has finally arrived. FromSoftware's latest opus has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but there are some notable issues with the RPG. For one thing, there's a problem with game save data on PlayStation 5 that's worth keeping in mind.

Publisher Bandai Namco said that if your console switches off unexpectedly while you're playing Elden Ring or you put the PS5 in rest mode, "saved data may not be saved correctly." It's working on a fix for the issue, but for now it's best for PS5 players to save their progress manually "by exiting the game regularly." Bandai Namco said your data will be saved properly when you open the menu with the Option button and select Quit Game.

For the time being, it's probably best for PS5 players to exit and restart the game after completing a major event (the bosses already seem tough enough without having to beat them twice) or visiting a site of Lost Grace checkpoint. It's an annoyance that will likely break the level of immersion, but until FromSoftware and Bandai Namco release a patch to fix the issue, exiting the game every so often is still better than losing a big chunk of progress.

The bug is especially grievous given that Elden Ring doesn't have a pause option. PS5 players might have been tempted to put their console into rest mode when they take a break, but it doesn't seem like a great idea to do that for now.

Bandai Namco also says it's working to resolve performance issues, particularly on PC. Those include framerate drops, stuttering, Easy Anti-Cheat not launching for some Steam accounts and the mouse sensitivity being too high. The publisher didn't offer a timeline for rolling out the fixes.

Elden Ring is already a big hit. At the time of writing, Twitch streams have more than 796,000 viewers, an impressive number for a primarily single-player game in this genre. Elden Ring hit peak concurrent viewership of 910,000, according to Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad. Elden Ring is far outpacing the peak player counts of other FromSoftware titles on Steam too. The number of concurrent players has hit a high of 764,835 — even before people have more free time to play at the weekend. 

If you’re looking for a massive open-world game to play this weekend that isn’t Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, Dying Light 2 or Cyberpunk 2077, it might be worth checking out Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The latest entry in Ubisoft’s long-running series is free to play right now on Xbox, PlayStation, PC, Stadia Pro and Amazon Luna. You’ll get access to the full game until February 28th.

Players can take on the guise of a Viking raider named Eivor as they explore ninth-century versions of Norway and England. You can lead raids against fortresses and enemy territories, grow your own settlement and build out a version of Eivor that suits your preferred playstyle.

The free weekend arrives ahead of a paid DLC called "Dawn of Ragnarok," which Ubisoft has described as the "most ambitious expansion" in the history of the franchise. That'll arrive on March 10th.

The trial doesn’t include AC Valhalla’s expansions, but given that the main story alone can take around 60 hours or so to beat, it's unlikely you'll get that far by Monday anyway. If you want to keep Eivor's adventure going after February 28th, it's worth noting AC Valhalla is currently on sale on all platforms.