Less then 24 hours after getting "awarded" Time magazine's man of the year, multiple stories about Elon Musk's companies sounding like hell holes to work at have surfaced. First up, an essay from a former mission integration engineer at SpaceX calling it, "an environmentally irresponsible company so rife with sexism, the only remedy is for women to leave". Over at Tesla, six women working in the Fremont factory and service centre have filed lawsuits, claiming that "male coworkers frequently make lewd comments towards their bodies or clothes, as well as engage in abusive behavior like catcalling and inappropriate touching". To top it all off a fight on the factory floor in Fremont resulted in a murder in the carpark.
Toyota is finally going all-in on electric vehicles, announcing they'll have 30 battery electric (not hybrid or plug-in hybrid) cars in their range by 2030 and will invest US$100b to do so. 16 of those vehicles were shown off today, but most were prototypes and concepts. The only confirmed EV from Toyota is the bZ4X, basically an electric RAV4 with about 400km range that'll go on sale towards the end of 2022. Toyota's been sucking at the hydrogen teat for a while, so it's nice to see them realise that it's a dead-end for passenger vehicles. As to when we will actually see a Toyota EV on the road in Australia, my guess is 2025. Oh, and if you're curious, NSW just hit 10,000 registered EVs - 61% of them are Teslas.
Oppo's Air Glass is "a detachable monocle waveguide device" that'll project text and simple graphics for you to stare at as you go about your life. Think of it like Google Glass, but with only one eye. They'll go in sale Q1 2022, but only in China. Seems like more of a tech demo than a "product", but like I've said whenever I spot a smart glasses announcement, I'd love to use them! I've got to wear glasses all the time anyways so I'm very open to connecting them to my smartphone and having notifications and information be projected onto them. I'll even put up with relatively chunky frames! Unfortunately the Air Glass doesn't work with prescription glasses, so I won't be importing one via Banggood any time soon. Here's the full Air Glass presentation from Oppo's Inno Day.
Analogue's Pocket is literally a modern re-issue of a Nintendo Game Boy that you can buy and use in 2021. Due to its FPGA CPU, it can be re-configured in software to pretend to be pretty much any retro handheld gaming console and use the original cartridges. I honestly don't know why you'd want this, but when it comes to gamer obsessiveness, there is no upper limit. I assume the Pocket falls into that realm of OCD. The good news is that if are after something like this to play all your Game Boy carts on, the Pocket does an excellent job. The bad news is that it costs US$219 plus an outrageous US$89.99 for shipping to Australia. I'm honestly surprised there's enough of a market for this kinda thing that Analogue can at least plan to turn a profit.
📻 Kerosene - Big Black
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