Author: easyfilo

Enlarge / Tesla’s camera-only approach to driver assistance keeps landing it in trouble. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Tesla)

Tesla is facing a new headache this week. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into a “phantom braking” problem after receiving hundreds of complaints from owners of recent Models 3 and Y. In total, the NHTSA says that about 416,000 cars are affected.

In May 2021, Tesla decided to remove the forward-looking radar sensor from the Model 3 and Model Y EVs. This sensor was used by some of the cars’ advanced driver-assistance systems, like adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, and automatic emergency braking.

Instead, new Teslas built for the North American market rely entirely on cameras. At the time of the removal, Tesla noted that the change meant the cars’ forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking functions were no longer rated by the NHTSA but that the company expected that rating to happen “in the coming weeks.”

Enlarge / Tom Holland stars as Indi—er, as Nathan Drake in Columbia Pictures’ Uncharted. (credit: Columbia Pictures)

Imagine a video game sequel that does away with pretty much everything fans liked about the original. There’s less action, uninteresting puzzles, boring environments, plot holes big enough to drive a “Hog Wild” seaplane through, and, perhaps worst of all, dull dialogue. This imaginary game opens with an interminable 80-minute cut scene, only to be followed by an energetic action sequence that recalls the original game’s best moments.

That’s what the first-ever Uncharted film feels like. It’s based on the popular PlayStation-exclusive game series of the same name, and it stars the same main characters. But while it’s reminiscent of the Indiana Jones films that inspired the video games, the movie doesn’t have the same breezy, comical, action-packed magic of that franchise—or of the Uncharted games. How wild that a video game delivers better movie-like thrills than its live-action version.

A brief glimpse of gold

“Professor, what’s another word for pirate treasure?” “Drake, stop asking me that question.” (credit: Columbia Pictures)

The final scene is the only decent part of this movie, so I’ll start there. Like its namesake game series, this week’s theatrical exclusive is all about adventurers surviving fistfights and solving mysteries while searching for an ancient-treasure jackpot. Uncharted‘s booty is a doozy: two stranded, treasure-filled pirate ships, somehow hidden from all satellite and radar imaging or explorers for over 500 years. A villain captures the ships and decides to airlift them via helicopters.

Enlarge (credit: Liteboxer)

The melding of fitness and video games has never been more natural than in the expanding realm of virtual reality.

I’ve been a fan of fitness games since the days of boxing with nunchucks in Wii Sports and the tethered play of All-In-One Sports VR for the Oculus Rift. Now, there’s a totally wireless boxing experience in Liteboxer VR, exclusively on the Meta (née Oculus) Quest 2.

Liteboxer is one of the newest VR games to put the gym and personal trainers right in front of you. It’s a boxing class experience that’s fun, engaging, and challenging, even for an intermediate-level boxer like me. The company is hoping to be the Peloton of boxing, but VR may not be the best place for its software, at least not yet. We took the pre-release version of Liteboxer VR for a spin to see how far we are from real gym experiences in the metaverse.

Enlarge / The Largo di Torre Argentina in Rome contains the Curia of Pompey. New study concludes it was built in 3 phases. (credit: Adam Carr / Wikipedia)

The Curia of Pompey is famous for being the site where Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on the ides of March in 44 BCE. It is of great interest to tourists, historians, and archaeologists alike. After analyzing mortar samples collected from the curia, researchers from Italy and Spain have confirmed an earlier hypothesis that the structure was constructed in three distinct phases, according to a recent paper published in the journal Archaeometry.

In ancient Rome, a curia was a structure where members of the senate would meet. The great Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey) built this particular curia as a memorial to his own military achievements. A large theater section contained a temple, a stage, and seating on one end; a large porticus (housing the general’s art and books) surrounded a garden in the middle; and the Curia of Pompey was at the opposite end.

During Julius Caesar’s reign, the Roman senators temporarily met in the Curia of Pompey after their usual Curia on the Comitium burned down in 52 BCE. (Followers of an assassinated tribune named Publius Clodius Pulcher set it on fire while cremating his body.) Caesar’s planned replacement (Curia Julia) was under construction as a replacement meeting site when the ruler met his own brutal demise at the base of the Curia of Pompey. The senators who killed him thought assassination was the only way to preserve the republic, but the murder ultimately led to the republic’s collapse.