Tesla Recalls All Cybertrucks for Defective Pedals

Tesla is recalling all 3,878 Cybertrucks sold so far in order to repair or replace defective gas pedals, according to a voluntary recall program posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website. This is yet another issue facing Tesla as it has recently encountered slumping sales, plummeting stock prices, announced layoffs and executive departures.

Information released by the NHTSA shows that the Cybertruck’s assembly process uses soap as a lubricant in an unapproved manner, and the residual portion of it reduces the firmness of the pedal. As a result, the pedals can become dislodged and stuck during use, causing the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally and increasing the risk of a crash. Tesla first received reports of gas pedal accidents from customers on March 31, but no crashes, injuries or fatalities have been reported as a result.

As of last Wednesday, all Cybertrucks in production were fitted with the new gas pedal assembly. Cybertrucks that have been shipped to delivery centers will be delivered after repairs are made. As of last Friday, Cybertruck deliveries had not resumed. Earlier this year, Tesla had already issued a software recall for all of its vehicles, including the Cybertruck, because the font on the warning indicator was too small.

Bitcoin Halving

The 840,000th Bitcoin block was ‘mined’ at around 0000 UTC on April 20, marking the return of the ‘halving’ node that occurs every four years. “Halving is a built-in mechanism in Bitcoin’s supply control that periodically halves the amount of Bitcoins available to “miners”. With the current Halving, the average number of bitcoins released every 10 minutes has been halved from 6.25 to 3.125.

Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, capped the supply of Bitcoins at 21 million, and more than 90 percent of Bitcoins have already been mined. It is generally believed that the ‘halving’ will further limit the supply of Bitcoins and drive up the price. Strong demand for Bitcoin, which was first approved as a spot ETF (exchange-traded fund) in the US at the beginning of the year, has already pushed the price of Bitcoin to new highs in recent weeks; with ‘miners’ earning more than $70 million per day from newly mined coins.

According to the Wall Street Journal, despite the rally in the price of Bitcoin, shares of Bitcoin mining companies have fallen sharply this year due to concerns over the ‘halving’ event, as smaller ‘miners’ may not be able to afford the rising costs of mining rooms and electricity. In response to the crisis, some mining companies are looking for opportunities to sell their technology to AI firms, while others are considering acquiring smaller competitors and older computers at discounted prices.

Linus Torvalds Interviewed on Open Source Security and AI Hype

Linus Torvalds recently attended the Linux Foundation’s North American Open Source Summit in Seattle, where he was interviewed by early Linux contributor Dirk Hohndel (now head of Verizon’s Office of Open Source Programs), according to The New Stack.

Regarding open source hardware, Torvalds expressed some concern about the pace of development, saying that even though the RISC-V architecture has been in development for many years, it may not be able to avoid all of the problems that x86 and ARM have historically encountered in the deployment phase. Open source hardware by itself does not reduce the friction in software adaptation due to the number of layers of abstraction between the software level work and the hardware.

Regarding the recent xz vulnerability, Torvalds said that both open source and closed source software rely on “trust,” and the question of how to tell if trust has been broken remains open. There is no defense mechanism to prevent malicious code from being submitted upstream, but experience seems to indicate that the open source community is inherently robust and can quickly detect such vulnerabilities after the fact.

Regarding AI, Torvalds expressed distaste for the hype involved, calling for a rational view of proclamations that AI will supposedly replace human jobs, just as it did with passing crazes such as cryptocurrencies. As for the use of AI tools to assist in programming, he is optimistic that making tools smarter is not a bad thing; the trend toward intelligence is inevitable, but it is far from pessimistic and hype-mongering.

Regarding open source work, Torvalds said that the whole point of open source is that different people can focus on different areas; for example, he works on the kernel because he’s interested in the underlying workings of the CPU, whereas someone else in the Linux Foundation might focus on an open source data project; and that an open source project needs to be useful to other people, not just to itself. Torvalds also said that he doesn’t plan to start any new projects because Linux has already solved all the problems he has encountered.

Amazon Secretly Sells Goods on Rival Platforms to Gather Intelligence

For years, Amazon has been selling goods on e-commerce platforms such as Walmart and eBay through a company it controls, Big River, in order to obtain various pieces of intelligence on its rivals, such as pricing data and logistical information about e-commerce platforms, logistics operations and payment services, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Big River team was reportedly formed in 2015 under the internal moniker Project Curiosity (later renamed the ‘Small Business Insights Team’). The team, which operates in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., India, and Japan, focuses on Amazon’s biggest competitor, Walmart, and has even earned the designation of “Pro Seller” on Walmart’s platform.Big River also works with logistics companies such as FedEx in order to obtain data on their services that Amazon can use to fine-tune its own logistics operations.

In order to maintain confidentiality, Big River team members do not disclose their Amazon identities to the public, nor do they use Amazon domain name email addresses to communicate; when reporting, they only provide Amazon executives with paper copies of their materials, each of which is printed with a number so that it can be retrieved after the meeting; and Big River sells merchandise under its own brand names, which it changes every time it sells out of inventory or puts a new product on the shelves. The team also developed a plan for the leak, including claiming that its purpose was to improve the seller experience on Amazon.com and that it was normal business research. Walmart was unaware of Amazon’s practices before this story was reported.

Apple News

X user Kosutami claims that Apple has decided to discontinue FineWoven accessories due to their poor durability, and may switch to another non-leather material for future accessories. Apple announced last September that it would stop selling leather accessories in favor of FineWoven twill. In its product overview, Apple said that fine-woven twill “has a suede-like softness,” and that it is “68 percent post-consumer recycled content, with a significantly reduced carbon footprint compared to leather materials. Pricing for the Fine Woven Twill accessories is essentially the same as previous leather accessories, starting at $59 for the iPhone case and MagSafe card case, $35 for the AirTag keychain, and $99 for the Apple Watch band collection. At the time of this year’s new spring accessories release, Apple no longer had new accessories in the material on its shelves.

According to Mark Gurman, Apple is developing a large language model based on local computing, possibly filling in the gaps with technology from Google and other providers.

According to Mark Gurman, the Mac mini is expected to skip the M3 generation of processors, as there’s not enough time to launch the M3 model before Apple’s proposed launch of the new Mac mini with the M4 and M4 Pro chips late this year and early next year.