Profiles are back in Tesla's latest "Full Self-Driving" beta 10.3 with an "Assertive Mode" that may perform rolling stops and other borderline maneuvers, The Verge has reported. The update was originally released in October 2021 with three profiles ("Chill," "Average" and "Assertive"), but was pulled just two days later over issues with traffic light left turns, unexpected stopping and more. 

The latest update issued yesterday shows that the Full Self-Driving (Beta) profiles are back. If you choose "Assertive," the notes state that "in this profile, your Model X will have a smaller follow distance, perform more frequent speed lane changes, will not exit passing lanes and may perform rolling stops." As @Digitalhen notes, the system may also perform rolling stops even in "Average" mode. 

Generally, a rolling stop means a vehicle doesn't come to a complete halt at a stop sign (which is illegal and dangerous) but it's not yet clear if that's what FSD will do. It's also illegal in many states to stay in the left or passing lane if you're not passing anyone, and of course, it's never a great idea to follow the vehicle ahead too closely. All of that said, the mode hasn't been tested enough yet to demonstrate exactly how it's doing those things. 

On the weekend, CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla would be raising the price of FSD from $10,000 to $12,000, even though it's still in beta. As we've pointed out before, the name "Full Self-Driving" is misleading (much like Autopilot), as FSD does not offer true Level 4 self-driving, but simply Level 2 advanced driver assistance. 

After announcing that it would accept cryptocurrency donations last week, the Mozilla Foundation has put them on hold following critical comments from a Mozilla founder and numerous others, TechCrunch reported. "Starting today we are reviewing if and how our current policy on crypto donations fits with our climate goals," the company tweeted." And as we conduct our review, we will pause the ability to donate cryptocurrency."

Mozilla announced the new policy with a jokey tweet, saying folks who "dabble in @dogecoin" or are "HODLing some #Bitcoin & Ethereum" can donate their crypto directly to the foundation. That was met by a caustic reply from Mozilla co-founder Jamie Zawinski. "F*** you and f*** this," he tweeted. "Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters." Peter Linss, the designer of the Gecko engine that powers Firefox, chimed in as well, telling Mozilla that "you were meant to be better than this." 

Yesterday, Mozilla backpedaled on the idea, saying in a tweet that the comments "led to an important discussion about cryptocurrency's environmental impact." It added that "decentralized web technology continues to be an important area for us to explore, but a lot has changed since we started accepting crypto donations."

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are created by solving complex math problems and by design, become harder to "mine" over time. They also have to be stored in a public ledger, something that also consumes energy. As a result, Bitcoin uses more energy than many countries, and much of that comes from dirty sources like coal. 

Last year Tesla announced that it would accept Bitcoin payment for its EVs, and even bought up $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin to smooth the process. However, many folks pointed out that the environmental benefits of an EV could heavily reduced by the staggering amount of electricity required to mine a single Bitcoin. 

Mozilla said it will continue to explore the cryptocurrency donation idea but keep folks in the loop this time. "In the spirit of open-source, this will be a transparent process and we'll share regular updates," the Foundation tweeted. "We look forward to having this conversation and appreciate our community for bringing this to our attention."

Tinder is working on a new feature called Swipe Party that will let you invite friends online to help you vet dates, TechCrunch has reported. The feature was first spotted in the app's code by the Dutch site Gratisdatingtips and has yet to be announced, but Tinder confirmed that it's in in the works.

The feature would be not unlike Apple's SharePlay, which lets you do watch parties with friends via FaceTime on supported apps like Disney+ and Hulu. With Tinder, you could similarly invite friends to your swiping sessions so they could help you pick a match. A lot of folks already do that in person, so the new feature bring that online — handy in the time of COVID-19. 

Code snippets show that Swipe Party would let you invite friends to join a session by providing their phone number, confirming it with a code, then entering their name and date of birth. If you want their help, however, you'd need to give them access to your phone's camera and microphone.

Tinder recently let users add videos to their dating profiles, and parent Match recently promised to introduce other audio and chat features to its dating apps. While Tinder confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature was in development, it didn't provide any additional details. 

The Fallout streaming TV series based on the Bethesda's post-apocalyptic game from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy's Kilter Films is moving along smartly, Deadline has reported. Production is set to start this year with Nolan directing the series premiere. Amazon Studios also revealed that Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Captain Marvel) and Graham Wagner (Silicon Valley) have been hired as showrunners.

"Fallout is one of the greatest game series of all time," Joy and Nolan said last year. "Each chapter of this insanely imaginative story has cost us countless hours we could have spent with family and friends. So we’re incredibly excited to partner with Todd Howard and the rest of the brilliant lunatics at Bethesda to bring this massive, subversive, and darkly funny universe to life with Amazon Studios."

Fallout (the game) takes place in a wasteland caused by a 2077 nuclear war. While that has the makings of a pretty grim series, it'll reportedly feature plenty of ironic humor and callbacks to B-movie nuclear fantasies as well. The series is part of a big overall deal inked by Nolan and Joy with Amazon Studios, which licensed the rights to Fallout back in 2020. So far, there are no details on the plot or who might star in the series.

OrCam, a company that makes products to aid accessibility for the visually impaired, has won a CES innovation award for its glasses-mounted MyEye Pro device. It aids the blind and visually impaired by reading out printed and digital text, recognizing people, identifying products, and more. OrCam took the prize in both the CES innovation accessibility and health and wellness categories. 

"We are living in uncertain times, yet... our users’ challenges related to access have not stopped during the pandemic. If anything, they have intensified,” said OrCam co-founder and co-chairman Prof. Amnon Shashua in OrCam's blog post.

MyEye Pro mounts on a pair of eyeglasses and communicates visual information audibly. A key new feature is "Smart Reading" that works much like the Crtl-F/CMD-F (Find) functions on a PC or Mac, allowing users to get specific information — something that helped sway the CES panel "The interactive smart reading capability allows users an experience tailored specifically for them," the judges wrote.

Another recent feature that arrived last year is the OrCam voice assistant. Users can speak to MyEye Pro (or the company's handheld OrCam Read) to activate facial recognition, or tell the device to read pages in books, newspapers, and restaurant menus. "Newly released 'Hey OrCam' enables control of all device features and settings hands-free, using voice commands," as the CES judges noted. 

As for the hardware itself, the OrCam Eye Pro is an update over the previous OrCam Eye product with a faster processor, two microphones instead of one, longer battery life, improved eyeglass attachment and more. Thanks to the processor improvements, it powers on quicker and "responds faster and with heightened accuracy [for] pointing gesture responsiveness, bar code and banknote identification, and face recognition," OrCam wrote.

Just ahead of CES 2021 last year, we noted that accessibility in tech had improved but that more had to be done. Adding functionality to existing products and software is an important part of that, but purpose-built devices play a role as well. "Both OrCam MyEye and OrCam Read have been instrumental devices in ensuring our users have been able to continue their academic, professional and personal pursuits and remain connected to family, friends and society at large," Shashua said.

France's data regulator CNIL has fined Google €150 million ($170 million) and Meta/Facebook €60 million ($68 million) for violating EU privacy rules. Both companies failed to allow French users to easily reject cookie tracking technology as required by EU privacy rules, according to CNIL's news release.  

The fines were specifically levied against Google's US and Irish operations (€90 million and €60 million respectively) and against Facebook's Irish arm. Both companies face daily fines of €100,000 if they don't change their practices within three months of CNIL's official decision. 

In addition to the fines, the restricted committee ordered the companies to provide Internet users located in France with a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them, in order to guarantee their freedom of consent, within three months. If they fail to do so, the companies will have to pay a penalty of 100,000 euros per day of delay.

"​​We are reviewing the authority's decision and remain committed to working with relevant authorities," a Meta spokesperson told Politico. "Our cookie consent controls provide people with greater control over their data, including a new settings menu on Facebook and Instagram where people can revisit and manage their decisions at any time, and we continue to develop and improve these controls."

"People trust us to respect their right to privacy and keep them safe. We understand our responsibility to protect that trust and are committing to further changes and active work with the CNIL in light of this decision under the ePrivacy Directive," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

CNIL said it has issued 100 orders and sanctions related to non-compliance with cookie legislation since it went into force on March 31, 2021. The regulator previously fined Google €100 million for cookie violations under European e-Privacy rules and €50 million for GDPR violations. 

Google is still fighting the €100 million fine before France's highest court. It's expected to fight the latest sanction as well, according Politico. At the same time, the fines against Google and Meta's Irish operations point to major tension between the EU and Ireland. Europe sees Ireland's actions as too friendly toward tech giants headquartered there, and hostile toward user privacy. 

Nikola Tesla may have been pleased that both of his names were employed by electric car companies, but perhaps less so that Nikola sued Tesla, and vice-versa. Now, Nikola Corp. is reportedly dropping its $2 billion patent infringement lawsuit against Tesla Inc. as Nikola company founder Trevor Milton faces a criminal indictment on fraud charges, Bloomberg has reported. 

According to a filing in a San Francisco court, both companies have agreed to withdraw all claims and counter-claims against each other. Nikola accused Tesla of copying several patented designs for a windshield design, fuselage and side door. Tesla denied all the claims and countersued. 

Nikola unveiled the hydrogen-powered Nikola One semi-truck in 2016 with the promise of an 800-1,200 mile range with no pollution. However, it was accused by the SEC of deceiving investors, in one instance via a video that appeared to show the truck moving under power when it was simply rolling down a hill. CEO Trevor Milton was subsequently charged with two counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud by a federal grand jury. He has denied the claims.

Sony's CES 2022 press conference was jammed with information, as it revealed more details on PlayStation VR2 and plans to launch an electric car company. During the latter announcement, it even brought out an electric SUV called the Vision-S 02, a follow-up vehicle to the Vision-S it showed at CES 2020. 

That's not even mentioning that Spider-Man: No Way Home star Tom Holland came on stage to present a clip from the upcoming Uncharted film or a preview of upcoming games for PS VR2. Luckily, you can get caught up with all the news in less than nine minutes with our supercut, so enjoy!

Walmart has big plans for its InHome delivery service in 2022, aiming to expand it from 6 million households to 30 million by the end of the year. To achieve that, it will hire more than 3,000 full-time associate delivery drivers and build out a fleet of all-electric delivery vans. 

The InHome service, which handles more than 160,000 items from 3,400 stores, first launched in 2019. Since then, it's been operating in select markets at a fee of $19.95 per month or $148 per year, a bit more than the $119 you pay for Amazon Prime membership. However, Walmart notes that tips for associates are built into the fee. 

Once signed up, you can order items from the Walmart app and select InHome as the preferred delivery method. Drivers can unlock the customer's door using a one-time access code, with a vest-worn camera recording the entire delivery. You can use your own smart lock or purchase one from InHome for $50. 

Walmart said that the new associate delivery driver position is full-time and includes benefits like medical, vision and dental insurance, 401K matching, paid time off and free college degrees. Drivers also get paid a $1.50/hour premium compared to other store workers. 

The company plans to equip those workers with a fleet of all-electric vans. It has yet to specify exactly which delivery vehicles it will use, though it has tested EV's used by GM's Cruise division and autonomous, electric box trucks employed by a startup called Gatik. Walmart said it will make InHome delivery service accessible to 30 million households by the end of the year, reaching around 70 percent of the US population. 

CES 2022 press conferences aren't always the most informative, but NVIDIA actually unveiled some pretty interesting products this year. Chief among those is the RTX 3090 Ti, its new flagship graphics card that's likely the most powerful gaming GPU ever built. The company also announced what will be the cheapest RTX 30-series desktop GPU to date, the RTX 3050.

It didn't leave laptops out either. NVIDIA also launched the RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti GPUs for laptops, with the latter available only in pricey models that cost $2,500 and up. It also unveiled new Max-Q GPU technology that will help save your battery, an obvious concern with high-powered GPUs. That's a lot of info, but you can learn about all of that and much more in under 10 minutes with our supercut.