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On Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) fined Cruise, GMs self-driving vehicle division, $1.5 million. The penalty was imposed for omitting key details from an October 2023 accident in which one of the companys autonomous vehicles struck and dragged a San Francisco pedestrian. Cruise is being fined for initially submitting several incomplete reports. The NHTSAs reports require pre-crash, crash and post-crash details, which the company gave to the agency without a critical detail: that the pedestrian was dragged by the vehicle for 20 feet at around 7 MPH, causing severe injuries. Eventually, the company released a 100-page report from a law firm detailing its failures surrounding the accident. That report states that Cruise executives initially played a video of the accident during October 3 meetings with the San Francisco Mayor's Office, NHTSA, DMV and other officials. However, the video stream was hampered by internet connectivity issues that concealed the part where the vehicle dragged the victim. Executives, who the report stated knew about the dragging, also failed to verbally mention that crucial detail in the initial meetings because they wanted to let the video speak for itself. Investigators finally found out about the dragging after the NHTSA asked the company to submit the full video. The government agency says Cruise also amended four other incomplete crash reports involving its vehicles to add additional details. The NHTSA's new requirements for Cruise include submitting a corrective action plan, along with others covering its total number of vehicles, their miles traveled and whether they operated without a driver. It also has to summarize software updates that affect operation, report citations and observed violations of traffic laws and let the agency know how it will improve safety. Finally, Cruise will have to meet with the NHTSA quarterly to discuss the state of its operations while reviewing its reports and compliance. The order lasts at least two years, and the NHTSA can extend it to a third year. Reuters reported on Monday that, despite the fine, the NHTSAs investigation into whether Cruise is taking proper safety precautions to protect pedestrians is still open. Cruise still faces probes by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. To say the incident sparked shakeups at Cruise would be an understatement. The company halted its self-driving operations after the accident. Then, last November, the dominoes began to fall: Its CEO resigned, and GM said it would cut its Cruise investment by hundreds of millions of dollars and restructure its leadership. Nine more executives were dismissed in December. Nonetheless, Cruise is trying to rebound under its new leadership. Vehicles with drivers returned to Arizona and Houston this year, and GM said its pouring an additional $850 million into it. Earlier this month, it began operating in California again, also with drivers which, its safe to say, is a good thing.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/gms-cruise-fined-15-million-for-omitting-details-about-its-gruesome-2023-crash-210559255.html?src=rss
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If you've been on the lookout for a killer deal on a perfectly decent tablet for streaming videos and catching up on some reading, hunt no more. Just ahead of the October edition of Prime Day, Amazon has slashed the price of the Fire HD 10 tablet to $75, which is a discount of $65. This matches the tablet's lowest price to date, which we saw during Prime Day in July. The deal is for a model with 32GB of storage and ads on the lockscreen. Expanding the storage is easy enough thanks to the microSD slot, but to get rid of the lockscreen ads you'll need to buy a different version (which, at $90, is also currently $65 off). You probably won't be doing as much creative work on a Fire HD tablet as you might on an iPad Pro. But for kicking back and catching up on a show or reading a Kindle book, Amazon's tablet certainly does the trick. It has a 10.1-inch Full HD display with a promise of up to 13 hours of battery life. Amazon says it delivers 25 percent faster performance than the previous model and it has 3GB of storage. You can use the tablet to keep up with family and friends using messaging apps or hop on video calls with the help of the 5MP front-facing camera. You can also use a stylus to sketch in various apps. There's Alexa integration as well, of course you can use the tablet to control smart compatible home devices and get a live view of connected security cameras. One thing worth noting is that Amazon has yet to hold its usual fall devices event, so it may be using the October Prime Day sale to get rid of its current inventory of devices on the cheap before announcing upgraded models. Even if Amazon does have new tablets to show off in the coming weeks, though, you'll still have a solid device in hand if you snap this one up. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice in the lead up to October Prime Day 2024.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/amazons-fire-hd-10-tablet-drops-to-a-record-low-price-ahead-of-october-prime-day-202755183.html?src=rss
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Reddit has just changed the rules so moderators of subreddits must get admin approval to switch from public to private, as originally reported by The Verge. This is being seen by many as an attempt to curb sitewide protests, as these requests must be approved by Reddit staffers. There will be no way for multiple subreddits to go private at once without Reddit having its hand on the lever. The company put a little note on the support page that reads if youre changing your community type after community creation, youll need to submit a request. This page doesn't offer any reasoning behind the decision. Reddit We reached out to Reddit to inquire about this most recent policy change and the company pointed us to a post on the subreddit r/modnews written by VP of community Laura Nestler. She wrote that the ability to instantly change Community Type settings has been used to break the platform and violate our rules. So it looks like last years protests are absolutely connected to today's changes. Nestler also suggested that this is an issue of personal responsibility, writing that communities should honor the expectations they set public communities should remain accessible to all; private communities should remain private. On the topic of recent protests, switching from public to private is the exact way in which subreddits expressed dissatisfaction with last years API pricing changes. In that case, over 8,000 subreddits went private in tandem. This means that the subreddits became inaccessible to the general public, though they remained active for current members. The sites daily traffic suffered as a result. This allegedly had an impact on the functionality of Reddit itself, as there was a major site outage after all of those subreddits went private. The company blamed the protests for this outage, telling Engadget that "a significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues. Not all protests involve switching a subreddit from public to private. Some moderators protest Reddit by labeling a subreddit as NSFW. This disallows advertising on the subreddit and makes it harder to search for. The company also put the kibosh on this move, as that kind of switch also now requires admin approval. Its worth noting that last years protests didnt work. Reddit went ahead with those API charges, which forced third-party apps like Apollo to shut down. The company also went in and took complete control of one of the larger subreddits that participated in the protest. Now, theres todays change that effectively bans sitewide protests altogether. Adding insult to injury, Reddit recently struck gold by licensing its content to train AI models. That deal will reportedly net the company around $60 million per year, but the users who actually created the content thats being licensed will be getting approximately $0 per year. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/reddit-policy-changes-make-sitewide-protests-nearly-impossible-183754240.html?src=rss
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