The close of 2021 finds Tesla wealthier than ever — and, in CEO Elon Musk’s case, wealthier than everybody else. The electric vehicle manufacturer notched records for both deliveries and profits this year despite a global chip shortage that decimated supply chains worldwide, effectively kneecapping the rest of the automotive industry’s production capacity. However its financial successes were often overshadowed by Tesla’s continuing production quality issues, multiple NHTSA and SEC investigations, high profile failures of its vaunted “Full Self Driving” system, as well as numerous vehicle recalls and delays for upcoming models. And with existing industry stalwarts like Ford, GM, Honda and the Volkswagen Group making concerted efforts to electrify their own offerings, could 2022 be the year that Tesla’s reign as top EV automaker finally ends?

The Good

2021 was, without a doubt, a banner year for Tesla’s bottom line. The company entered this year having met its 2020 goal of producing a half-million vehicles (of which it delivered 499,550 to customers), a nearly 133,000 unit increase over 2019. By April, Tesla had produced a record 180,338 vehicles and delivered 184,800 of them. Demand remained strong throughout the first half of the year thanks, in part, to price cuts on both the Model 3 and Model Y.

The company then broke its same record in July, having built 200,000 vehicles over the past three months, earning Tesla $1.1 billion in net income during the same period. “Public sentiment towards EVs is at an inflexion point and, at this point, I think almost everyone agrees that electric vehicles are the only way forward,” Musk said during the Q2 earnings call.

Unsurprisingly, Tesla’s record-breaking trend continued unabated through Q3 with the company rolling 237,823 vehicles off its production lines — nearly all of which were of the Model 3 and Model Y varieties — and delivering 241,300 of them. The company also began taking pre-orders for the UK version of the Model Y in October and announced that those Model Ys destined for the Chinese market would be receiving upgraded AMD Ryzen chipsets.

Tesla capped off its stellar financial year with announcements from Hertz that it plans to order 100,000 vehicles (though there remains uncertainty about how that deal will actually play out) and from Uber Eats that it intends to rent as many as 50,000 Tesla vehicles to its drivers.

The Bad

While Tesla enjoyed unabashed sales success with its core lineup, the company often struggled to meet release deadlines for a number of its yet-to-be-released models. Both the Cybertruck and Semi have both been pushed back to 2022 while the Tesla Roadster reportedly won’t be arriving until at least 2023. Tesla also took the strange tack of releasing an “entry-level” standard range Model Y for just a few weeks before discontinuing the trim level. Similarly, Tesla pushed back the release of its $130,000 Model S Plaid edition to June 10th, debuting it mere days after Musk unilaterally announced that the Model S Plaid+ was canceled outright,

The company was also beset by a wide array of production woes and vehicle recalls this year. In February, Tesla bowed to pressure from the NHTSA and recalled 135,000 Model X and S vehicles on account of faulty touchscreens. That same month, Tesla was forced to issue a recall for another 12,300 Model Xs on account of loose trim panels. In April, customers reported that the company had double-charged them for their vehicles, up to $71,000 in some cases, though Tesla was quick to reimburse the affected buyers and even threw in a $200 gift certificate for the company store.

June saw yet another recall, this time for 6,000 Model 3 and Ys over faulty brake caliper bolts, and in October, Tesla had to recall another set of Ys and 3s because their suspensions kept separating. Just last month, the company had to pull nearly 12,000 vehicles from across its product line on account of software issues — that’s not to be confused with the recent Tesla App outage that locked drivers around the world out of their own vehicles.

Tesla’s parade of crises also extended to the production lines themselves with the Fremont factory facing a sizeable COVID outbreak shortly after reopening in March. Musk complained often and loudly throughout 2020 over California’s quarantine lockdown laws and finally made good on threats to take his toys and go home, officially moving Tesla’s headquarters to Texas in October.

The company was also ordered to pay $137 million to former employee Owen Diaz after a San Francisco federal court jury found Tesla liable for the unconscionable racial bigotry Diaz faced while working at the Fremont plant. That lawsuit has been followed up by another, filed in November by Jessica Barraza who alleged “rampant sexual harassment” as well as continued verbal and physical abuse while she worked at the Fremont location.

Tesla’s Full Self Driving beta also turned out to be a mixed bag for the company in 2021. Following its debut in October of last year, beta 8.3 rolled out in May, doubling the size of the test program, before releasing beta 9 in July. Version 9’s rollout coincided with a new FSD subscription program charging customers $199 a month (or $99 a month if they’d previously purchased the now-discontinued Enhanced Autopilot feature) — assuming they already had the $1,500 FSD computer hardware installed in their vehicle.

However, Tesla’s decision to abandon radar-based autonomation sensors in favor of an optical-only setup in May led to a backlash from the NHTSA which subsequently forced the company to remove some of its driver-assist designations such as forward collision and lane departure warnings. In an effort to counter claims that the use of the Autopilot feature can cause drivers to become inattentive and less responsive once they resume control of the vehicle, Tesla activated its in-car driver monitoring cameras in late May.

FSD beta 10 arrived to great fanfare in September with owners noting smoother turns on city streets, improved display visuals and an overall improvement in the vehicle’s off-highway navigation. Those feelings were short-lived when, in October, the company was forced to revert its beta 10.3 implementation after becoming aware of "some issues," per Musk, including a "regression" with left turns. Users also reported phantom forward-collision warnings and auto-steering bugs.

The company’s FSD faults — which have been implicated in multiple crashes where Teslas inexplicably rammed into first responder vehicles and other civilian drivers as well as a widely-reported wreck in Houston with nobody behind the wheel — has led to calls for increased scrutiny from and by the NHTSA, NTSB, the US Senate, and even the California DMV.

The FSD feature also prompted a 300,000-unit recall at the behest of the Chinese government over the ease in which FSD can be activated, though that was far from the only issue Tesla faced with the nation. In April, China banned Tesla vehicles from its military bases and “key state-owned companies” over fears that the cars’ myriad cameras could be leveraged for espionage. After nearly a month of wrangling and appeals to social media, Tesla finally caved to China’s cybersecurity demands and established a local clearinghouse for that data.

The Musk

And what would a Year in Review of Tesla be without a look back at CEO Elon Musk’s unique brand of shenanigans? Last October, Musk unilaterally disbanded Tesla’s PR department, thereby making his personal Twitter account the first, last and only stop for confirmation of the company’s decisions. This January, Musk reversed course slightly and, instead of reforming the department, began hiring people to respond to customer complaints made toward him on the social media platform.

Speaking of tweets, Tesla was also sued this year for allegedly breaking a previously struck deal with the SEC by allowing Musk to continue sending unapproved, "erratic" tweets as well as for the company failing to obtain a neutral general counsel to reign in its CEO. The National Labor Relations Board also went after Tesla in 2021, finding that the company had illegally fired a union activist. The NLRB consequently demanded that the worker be rehired and Musk delete a 2018 union-busting tweet related to the case.

2021 was also the year that Musk leaned hard into crypto. Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of the stuff in February and briefly toyed with the idea of allowing customers to use the currency to purchase its vehicles, though those plans were quickly canned over concerns about Bitcoin mining’s environmental impacts. Musk also took time out of his Saturday Night Live hosting duties in May to crash the value of Bitcoin rival Dogecoin, though his later tweets helped the price of Dogecoin rebound, to a degree.

And then there was the whole Tesla “Robot” debacle, which I can’t even, I mean, it was literally just an actor in a spandex jumpsuit dancing around while Musk made a bunch of wildly unsubstantiated claims.

What’s Next

Looking ahead to 2022, Tesla appears to be on track for continued success. Its Berlin Gigafactory is nearly ready to start production and is expected to do so by the end of this month – barring any unforeseen setbacks. The company’s stockpile of chipsets and aggressive maneuvers to shore up supplies of battery precursor materials will insulate Tesla from many of the production bottlenecks that many other EV automakers are likely to struggle with throughout the new year.

However, even with Tesla’s record-breaking production figures from the past couple of years, the number of vehicles it delivers annually is still a small fraction of what more established automakers sell. BMW, for example, sold 2.3 million vehicles worldwide in 2020. In the same year, GM sold 2.5 million in the US alone. And as those companies increasingly turn their attention to the EV market while leveraging economies of scale that Tesla cannot match, Musk’s company could soon find itself relegated back to being a niche EV brand rather than an industry titan.

With features like smart house mapping and voice assistant control, iRobot's Roomba i7 is among the best robotic vacuums you can get. As a relatively high-end device, however, it normally commands a pretty high price ($540) — but you can now pick one up at Amazon for just $399, for a savings of $141 (26 percent).

You can program the Roomba i7 to clean at certain times, or just yell at Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant to start it up if there's some unscheduled filth. Once in operation, it's one of iRobot's quietest vacuums yet thanks to a change in the placement of the motor. On top of that, it supposedly has twice the suction power as the Roomba 960. 

It does a great job of avoiding obstacles and cleaning efficiently, thanks to the smart mapping feature that can create an entire plan of your house. You can then label each area and ask it to only clean specific rooms. It's ideal if you have pets, as the multi-surface robber brushes supposedly won't tangle up with pet hair. It also traps 99 percent of cat and dog dander allergens. 

The i7 won't automatically empty its bag like the Roomba i7+ or j7+, but guess what: the latter model is still on sale at Amazon's all-time low price of $649 ($200 off). The Roomba j7+ has many of the same features as the i7, but can dump its waste into a bin that you only need to empty every couple of months. It also has longer battery life and AI-powered vision that can detect pet waste and other nasty stuff. The only drawback is that it's not quite as good for low-pile carpet as the i7, and takes a bit longer to charge. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

It's been a surprisingly solid year for television. Partially because many major film releases ended up hitting streaming services early. (Don't forget about Warner Bros. unprecedented decision to stream their releases on HBO Max when they hit theaters.) Film and TV productions that were delayed due to the pandemic in 2020 also managed to cross the finish line thanks to safer shooting schedules and vaccines. The result was a wealth of content for couch potatoes.

As you settle in for holiday celebrations, here are a few selections that you may have missed during the year. (And be sure to check out our recommendations from last year!)

Netflix

Arcane

I'll be honest: I didn't expect much from a League of Legends TV show. But Arcane surprised me with its well-written characters, wonderfully realized fantasy world and luscious animation. While there are some killer action sequences, what really makes Arcane work is its commitment to mature storytelling. Characters you love will die. Villains are never one-note and heroes are never perfect. It's not only a solid video game adaptation, it's one of the best TV shows to debut this year.

Midnight Mass

Religious-focused horror may seem more like anti-holiday programming, but that's not going to stop us from recommending Midnight Mass. The show is an exploration of dogma, fanaticism, our connection to the cosmos and another compelling series from the rising horror master Mike Flanagan. Unlike his previous haunted house entries (The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor), Midnight Mass focuses on a small island community off the coast of Massachusetts, the sort of place that has its own demons festering under the surface. I won't spoil what happens, but it's the sort of thing that fans of Stephen King will eat up.

Also on Netflix:

The Power of the Dog: Jane Campion returns to feature films with a hauntingly beautiful Western. Benedict Cumberbatch steals the show as a monstrous cowboy poisoned by the spell of toxic masculinity.

Voir: The latest Netflix project from director David Fincher is a series of visual essays about the power of cinema from some of the best critics and thinkers today.

Gabby's Dollhouse: An adorable cat-themed show about a young girl who goes on the occasional dollhouse adventure.

HBO Max

Hacks

A once-legendary comedian (Jean Smart) is forced to team up with a young, semi-cancelled writer (Hannah Einbinder) to whip her act into shape. Hilarity ensues. Hacks takes this simple sitcom premise and elevates it with Smart's ferocious performance. On the face of it, it's a story about two creative generations learning to coexist. But really, it's the story of lost people finding direction in each other. It's the sort of genius comedy and drama we'd expect from the folks behind Broad City.

Starstruck

A lost twenty-something (Rose Matafeo) accidentally has a one-night stand with a movie star (Nikesh Patel). Again, hilarity ensues. (HBO Max really has a knack for collecting great show premises!) Starstruck is the rare season of TV that you can easily binge all at once—it's just six twenty-two minute episodes. But I'd recommend taking your time. Matafeo is uproariously funny, but there's also a romantic undercurrent that makes you root for these crazy kids.

Also on HBO:

The White Lotus: Rich resort-goers vs. the people who are forced to cater to them. It's great to see another funny, yet deeply human, show from Mike White.

Search Party: This former TBS show (now an HBO Max original) is the best hipster murder mystery you'll ever see.

Succession: There are plenty of shows about rich blowhards these days, but Succession stands out as a sharply written dark comedy filled with characters you love to hate.

Hulu

Reservation Dogs

Stories about the everyday lives of Native Americans are far too rare, so it's refreshing to see a dramedy like Reservation Dogs. Set in a rural Oklahoma reservation, it follows a group of teenagers as they get into trouble, help their community, and pursue their dream of moving to the promised land of California. It's the first TV series to feature an entirely Indigenous crew of writers and directors (it was co-created by the ever-delightful Taiki Waititi), and it's a reminder of how the push for better on-screen representation can lead to fresh storytelling.

Also on Hulu:

Top of the Lake: If you're looking for a smart crime thriller, don't sleep on this Jane Campion series. It stars Elisabeth Moss as an Australian detective who, across two seasons, investigates cases focusing on missing and murdered women.

Y: The Last Man: The rare adaptation that manages to improve on its source material, Y is a compelling portrait of a world where almost every person with a Y chromosome dies, leaving women in charge.

Apple TV+

For All Mankind

One of the first Apple TV+ series has evolved from being a mildly intriguing alternative history tale — what if the Soviet Union landed on the Moon first? — to one of the best dramas ever made about space travel. My advice? Get past the rocky first two episodes to find the show's true genius: NASA's push to get more women, and eventually people of color, into space. If it miraculously lasts several seasons, I wouldn't be surprised if For All Mankind shows us how something like Star Trek's space-faring society could be formed.

Also on Apple TV+:

Dr. Brain: Apple's first Korean series, from visionary director Kim Jee-woon, explores the possibility of downloading and reliving someone else's memories. Strap in – it’s a lot.

Disney+

Hawkeye

Even if you're tired of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hawkeye is worth a watch simply because it's fun. Clint Barton has never been the most interesting Avenger, but he's fantastic as the foil to Kate Bishop, a plucky arrow-slinging protege. It may not reach the heights of Loki or Wandavision, but it's miles ahead of the supremely disappointing Falcon v. Winter Soldier.

Also on Disney+:

The Beatles: Get Back: An astounding fly-on-the-wall documentary featuring some previously unseen Beatles footage.

Star Wars: Visions: The anime spin on Star Wars I've always dreamed of.

Bluey: Hands down the best kids show on TV.

Other things to watch

Yellowjackets (Showtime): An elite girls' soccer team gets stranded in the woods after a plane crash. How did they manage to stay alive for over a year? Yellowjackets follows the surviving adults as they try to figure out who's digging into their traumatic past.

Star Trek Prodigy (Paramount+): What happens when a group of alien kids get their hands on an Enterprise starship? Something we’ve never seen in the Star Trek universe before: how people outside of the affluent Federation live. Prodigy features some genuinely fun characters and gorgeous animation in a kid-friendly package.

If you find that some apps, websites and games are having trouble loading this morning or seem more sluggish than usual, there might be an explanation. Amazon Web Services, on which many apps and websites run, experienced more difficulties today, impacting a number of services for at least the third time in the last few weeks.

AWS said on its service health dashboard that there was a power outage at a data center in the US-EAST-1 region. It first reported issues at 7:35AM ET. By 8:39AM ET, power had been restored to "all instances and network devices within the affected data center" and AWS noted services that use the data center for hosting and were impacted by the outage were starting to recover. Around 25 minutes later, it said the majority of AWS services had recovered, but noted it was still trying to remedy issues with some Elastic Block Store volumes (a type of AWS storage) due to "degraded IO performance."

Among the affected services were Epic Games Store — which said internet service outages were impacting logins, library, purchases and more — and Slack, which noted it was having trouble with uploading files, editing messages and other features. Imgur, Asana, family location sharing app Life360, Udemy and Honeywell and Fall Guys are among the services that reported issues, while the likes of Hulu, Rocket League, Grindr and the McDonalds app also suffered difficulties, according to user-submitted reports on Down Detector. At the time of writing, some of those issues are ongoing.

An AWS outage on December 7th impacted the likes of the Associated Press, Disney+ and Vice. AWS later said an issue with an automated capacity scaling feature was the cause. A brief outage on December 15th affected Twitch, Slack and online gaming services.

It was only a matter of time before someone other than Fairphone delivered a sustainability-themed smartphone (which is a good thing, of course). Realme, the sister brand of Oppo and OnePlus, announced that its upcoming flagship GT 2 Pro features an eco-friendly bio-polymer material on its back cover — apparently a first in the mobile industry. Better yet, Realme has once again collaborated with Muji and Infobar series design icon Naoto Fukasawa, who finished the GT 2 Pro's design with a textured paper feel on the body. They call this "Paper Tech Master Design."

Realme

This bio-polymer material, supplied by Saudi Arabia's SABIC, is based on paper pulp, and it has obtained International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (or ISCC in short) to prove its environmental friendliness. The Realme GT 2 Pro's packaging also uses much less plastic than its predecessor — from an overall plastic ratio of 21.7 percent down to a mere 0.3 percent.

The phone itself packs some surprises, too. For one, it's one of the first devices to be powered by Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, following the Moto Edge X30. The GT 2 Pro is also the world's first smartphone with a 150-degree ultra-wide camera (most are at around 120 degrees), which offers a unique fisheye camera mode for some fun photography. 

There are also some noteworthy features on the radio side. In Realme's "Antenna Array Matrix System" here, there's the "world's first" ultra-wide-band antenna switching technology, which lets the phone switch to whichever of the 12 antennas has the best signal strength. In addition, this system consists of a symmetrical Wi-Fi antenna which apparently boosts signal stability by up to 20 percent. 

Realme

But the most interesting feature here is perhaps the "360-degree NFC," which is achieved by hooking up the NFC module to the top two cellular antennas as well as its own, thus forming an "NFC 3 antenna array." This allows the upper part of the GT 2 Pro to read NFC on either side, which should make the likes of contactless payment and Bluetooth pairing easier.

For now, the Realme GT 2 Pro is only slated for a China launch at 7:30PM local time (6:30AM ET) on January 4th, 2022, but a company spokesperson confirmed that it will eventually go overseas. Given the brand's track record, this device will likely be competitively priced, but we're just eager to check out Fukasawa's latest mobile design in person — especially the supposedly paper-like texture. Stay tuned for more technical specs, prices and our hands-on.

The James Webb Space Telescope is finally ready for launch after 14 years in development. NASA cleared its launch readiness review and gave it the go-ahead for launch, which was supposed to take place on December 24th. Unfortunately, poor weather conditions have prompted the agency to delay its launch yet again. James Webb will be lifting off from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket with the new target date of December 25th and a launch window of between 7:20 AM and 7:52 AM Eastern time.

This is the closest the telescope has ever gotten to starting its month-long journey towards its destination. It's been delayed numerous times in the past due to one reason or another — NASA targeted an October launch date after its development was delayed by the pandemic, but it determined that the telescope wouldn't be ready until November or December. 

NASA (and its partners, the European and Canadian space agencies) then targeted a December 18th launch date, before pushing it back to December 22nd. The James Webb team needed the extra time to inspect the telescope and make sure nothing was damaged during an incident that happened at testing. Its launch was delayed to December 24th after that because of a communication issue between the telescope and its Ariane 5 launch vehicle. This time, NASA had already conducted a news conference confirming that the telescope is ready for launch before announcing the new target date.

After the James Webb telescope arrives in its orbit near the second Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system, researchers around the world will be able to use it to peer at some of the universe's earliest galaxies, look into black holes and assess exoplanets' habitability. NASA will confirm the new launch date this evening.

Honor has teased the launch of its first foldable smartphone, the Magic V, on Twitter and Weibo. The former Huawei sub-brand called it "Honor's first foldable flagship," and said it will be released "soon," though the company didn't provide an exact date.

Rumors have been circulating about a possible Honor folding device, particularly after the company applied for the terms "Magic Fold" and "Magic Wing" with China's trademarking authority. The company's CEO George Zhao told CNET in 2019 that it was interested in building a folding phone, while its former parent Huawei recently released its third-gen folding device, the Mate X2.

Other details are scant, but a rumor from The Elec stated that an upcoming Honor folding phone would use ultra-thin glass with an 8.03-inch folding display and 6.45-inch exterior screen. If accurate, that means it would be much like Samsung's Galaxy Fold 3 and not the Galaxy Flip 3. Given that it's a flagship, it should have a relatively high-end processor and other parts.

Huawei sold Honor in November 2020 in order to "ensure it's survival," so Honor has been independent for just over a year now. Unlike with Huawei devices, Google apps are available on Honor smartphones. 

Along with Samsung, Huawei and now Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo and Motorola have recently released various types of folding smartphones. Google is also reportedly working on at least one folding Pixel device and recently announced a version of Android designed for tablets and foldables.

It’s nice when there’s balance in the blockchain force. Following the recent boom in NFT success stories (and millions being made), we have the other side of the coin. Ubisoft’s attempts to sell NFTs tied to its Ghost Recon gaming series haven’t gone well. The games company launched its own Quartz NFT platform to monetize game properties.

Alas, it seems Quartz has sold just 15 NFTs of a Ghost Recon Breakpoint gun skin as of yesterday, according to Eurogamer. As of yesterday, it appears to have sold two more M4A1 tactical weapons and one Wolf Enhance Pants #76 for a total of 18. According to their prices, that works out to about $1,755.30 in revenue. But Ubisoft appears to have minted about somewhere north of 3,000 NFTs, total. As many have noted, Breakpoint doesn't have the most alluring visual aesthetic — nor is it the biggest Ubisoft property — making it an odd choice to kick off Ubisoft’s NFT attempts.

In other news, CES is facing the Omicron threat, and many companies are withdrawing from exhibiting early January. Amazon, Meta and several other big tech players will no longer have a presence at the show, citing the spread of the latest COVID-19 variant. The Engadget team will also no longer be attending the show in person, but our remote coverage will still ensure you hear about everything notable from the Las Vegas tech show.

— Mat Smith

Gaze in confusion at LG's DualUp Monitor

Barely vertical, somehow desirable?

LG

I think the pandemic has really helped LG’s creative juices flow. Alongside its unusual new TVs, the company has revealed a new monitor that has "Square Double QHD", two screens stacked atop each other.

Continue reading.

Billionaire Twitter founder Jack Dorsey rants about Web3 on Twitter

Those darn VCs.

CEO Jack Dorsey took to Twitter to warn blockchain enthusiasts how Web3 has already been co-opted by investors. “You don’t own ‘web3,’” he said, “The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Know what you’re getting into…” Now no longer the CEO of Twitter, Dorsey still runs a company heavily involved in blockchain technologies.

Continue reading.

‘The Matrix Resurrections’ is brilliant, but not for everyone

Another divisive Matrix sequel?

Warner Bros.

There are minor spoilers within, so I haven’t read Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar’s thoughts on The Matrix Resurrections. I’m sure, however, that many of you are intrigued by how the movie turned out. US readers subscribed to HBO Max: You’ll be able to watch it indoors without having to venture to a movie theater.

Continue reading.

Researcher hacked an at-home COVID-19 test to give bogus results

The flaw has been fixed, but it still shows the potential for fraud.

F-Secure researcher Ken Gannon discovered a security flaw in Ellume's Bluetooth-connected nasal swab test that let him change the reported results. The vulnerability was elaborate, but still disconcerting. It has now been patched.

Gannon used a rooted Android device to inspect the Bluetooth traffic Ellume's lateral flow tester was sending to the company's mobile app. The researcher pinpointed the traffic used to indicate test results and wrote scripts to change the outcome. F-Secure Marketing Manager Alexandra Rinehimer even managed to fool Azova, a company issuing certificates for US entry tests.

Continue reading.

The biggest news stories you might have missed

Tascam is making brand new cassettes for its ancient four-track recorders

2021 was the year that streaming pushed our cultural buttons

Three and EE will offer 4G and 5G access across London Underground

Nikola will pay $125 million to settle SEC fraud charges

Arturia is giving away a free lo-fi tape plug-in for the holidays

Google’s nascent Android Automotive operating system is not available on many cars yet, and the app selection can feel limited at times, but today it’s adding a web browser to its arsenal. And, no, we don’t mean Chrome. As of today, the privacy-focused Vivaldi browser is available on Polestar 2 vehicles. It’s a first for Android Automotive and the company, which had yet to offer its software on vehicles before today.

Vivaldi says safety was one of its top priorities when porting the browser over to Android Automotive. To that end, it’s only possible to start a session when your car is parked. If you start streaming something and then resume driving, Vivaldi will limit the video to audio-only. 

Naturally, privacy was also a priority for the team. The browser won’t store your browsing data on the car whenever you open a private tab. If you want to transfer your data between devices, you can do so by signing into your Vivaldi account. That information is something the company says Polestar won’t be able to access.

The Android Automotive version of Vivaldi is based on the company’s mobile release. You won’t find some functionality that is available in the desktop version – for instance, accordion tabs are missing – and Vivaldi has disabled a handful of other features. It’s not possible to download files and scan QR codes, for example. Otherwise, there aren’t many differences between the Android Automotive release and other versions of Vivaldi, and the company says updates will come at a regular cadence.

RadioShack — yes, that RadioShack that used to sell electronic goods — is now a crypto business. The company filed for bankruptcy back in 2015 after 11 unprofitable quarters in a row, bringing it's almost 100-year history to an end. After that, the former retail chain's branding rights were sold several times until they were acquired by Retail Ecommerce Ventures Review (REV). If you visit RadioShack's website right now, you'll see a banner talking about its new mission to bring cryptocurrency to the mainstream. You'll also see a sign up section to be notified as soon as its RADIO token launches. 

As CNET and Tom's Hardware explain, RadioShack is building a Decentralized Finance ecosystem in partnership with the Atlas USV (Universal Store of Value) protocol. Atlas was designed by Alex Mehr and Tai Lopez, who are also the duo behind REV. RadioShack's DeFi ecosystem will start with a decentralized exchange, which the company describes as the "lowest hanging fruit that is full of opportunities" on its website. When it's up, the DeFi exchange will allow users to send cryptocurrency directly to each other rather than through an exchange service like Coinbase.

Based on what's written on RadioShack's website, REV is hoping that the "100-year-old brand" is embedded enough "into the global consciousness" to encourage widespread crypto adoption. It's even hoping that RadioShack could become the gateway for large corporations like Starbucks and Louis Vuitton to becoming blockchain companies. It's a lofty goal, especially for a brand that declared bankruptcy twice within the span of a few years. If you're interested in reading REV's plan for RadioShack, though, you can check out its documentation for the project on its website.