News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

WSJ Columnist Finds 40% of EV Chargers She Tried in LA County Were Out of Service

A Wall Street Journal journalist who owns an electric vehicle (EV) was dismayed to find that about 40 percent of the chargers she tried throughout LA county were out of service. A troubling data point for car companies and government officials claiming that the entire country will soon go electric.

A test of 30 non-Tesla fast-charging stations in LA County, the EV capital of America, revealed that at least 40 percent of them had some type of issue, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

“From the beach in Santa Monica to parking garages under Rodeo Drive, my video producer Adam Falk and I visited 30 different non-Tesla DC fast-charger stations in a Rivian R1T pickup. I ran into problems at 13 of them — that’s over 40%. Oof is right,” WSJ columnist and EV owner Joanna Stern wrote.

The WSJ columnist added that she had deliberately limited the experiment to Level 3 chargers, noting, “I ignored the more common chargers known as Level 2 because they’re just too slow for quick fill-ups.”

Stern explained that she came across “three problem categories” during her testing expedition: first, the charging station was broken, second, there was a problem with payment, such as it being rejected, and third, there was a software error between the charger and the vehicle.

TikTok Claims to ‘Aggressively’ Take Down Videos Promoting Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’

“Content promoting this letter clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” TikTok said in the statement. “We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform.”

“The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate,” the Chinese app added. “This is not unique to TikTok and has appeared across multiple platforms and the media.”

TikTok was responding to a post by reporter Yashar Ali, who pointed out that “Over the past 24 hours, thousands of TikToks (at least) have been posted where people share how they just read Bin Laden’s infamous ‘Letter to America,’ in which he explained why he attacked the United States.”

As Breitbart News reported, young Americans have been going viral on TikTok, an app owned by a hostile foreign country, for posting videos sympathizing with Osama bin Laden and recirculating his 2002 letter in which he tries to justify the mass murder of Americans on September 11, 2001.

“I’m not about to sit here act like [bin Laden]’s just the worst person in the world when America has literally been terrorizing people since the beginning of history,” one TikTok user said in a video. “Put yourself in their shoes, 3,000 people died on 9/11, compared to the millions that Americans have killed in Palestine.”

I wonder where did they get that impression and such a huge number that makes no sense at all.

Dolly Parton: AI is Terrifying, ‘Nobody Wants to Be Duplicated’

Parton said AI duplicates a person and that even some of the technology’s inventors have issued warnings about it.

“I don’t think, or, at least, I hope nobody can ever replicate me or what I do. AI is a scary thing. I’m sure it’s a good thing for scientists or medical things. But when it comes to trying to duplicate a human being and every little thing they are, it don’t seem right to me,” she said. “It’s too much. Even the people coming up with AI are scared by it.”

Parton said she will continue watching the issue carefully.

“So I’m watching this carefully. I’m sure they’ll be able to do certain things with me and other artists. It’s one of the reasons why we’re having the big strikes here with the Actors’ Guild and Writers’ Guild. Nobody wants to be duplicated. Everybody wants to feel the talent they have is theirs. I’m keeping my eye on AI,” she said.

Amazon Will Allow U.S. Customers to Buy Cars on Its Site from Local Dealers Next Year

The e-commerce giant will launch vehicle sales in the U.S. next year and allow local car dealers to sell directly to customers on its site.

In a joint announcement with car manufacturer Hyundai on Thursday, the two companies said Amazon will begin by offering Hyundai vehicles. In turn, Hyundai will name Amazon’s cloud computing unit AWS as its preferred cloud provider and integrate its next-generation vehicles with Alexa, Amazon’s popular voice assistant.

The idea, according to Amazon, is to have customers purchase a new car online and pick it up – or have it delivered – from their local dealer.

Amazon did not say how many dealers would be participating in the program or if customers across the U.S. would be able to make purchases. An Amazon spokesperson said the company would release more details as it builds the program, which is expected to begin with Hyundai franchised dealers and launch during the later part of next year.

Currently, Amazon sells vehicle equipment online and offers a showroom for consumers who want to research different types of cars they may want to buy. But consumers can not directly purchase a vehicle on its platform.

I really think it is a terrible idea to let a tech giant get a hold of another portion of the market, especially after all of the abuses already reported here this year.