Amazon Selling Cashierless Tech To Others; Twitter Tags Manipulated Biden Vid + Dorsey Stays CEO; Apple Watch 6 May Get Blood Oxygen Detection; Gates Foundation Targets COVID- 19 Detection

Amazon is offering its cashier less tech, which they have dubbed ‘Just Walk Out’, to other retailers. Cnet.com reports that Amazon has cut deals on the swipe and go shopping, which eliminates check out lines and registers, with several retailers so far. No names have been released, nor has the cost or timeline for implementing the system in other retail stores. Amazon does have a facility in LA which is several times larger than the one just opened in Seattle where they are trialing the tech.

Twitter has slapped a ‘manipulated media’ tag on a doctored video of Joe Biden that was shared by White House social media director Dan Scavino, then retweeted by Donald Trump. According to theverge.com, its the first use by Twitter of the tag to indicate fake media. Greg Shultz, Biden’s campaign manager, sent a heated statement to Facebook for NOT taking similar action on an obviously fake video. Twitter rolled out its ban on faked media March 5th. It covers ‘synthetic’ and manipulated media ‘likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm’, including sophisticated deepfakes as well as other content which has been deceptively edited.

In other Twitter news, the platform has cut a deal with conservative activist group Elliott Management. The firm had been trying to push out CEO Jack Dorsey. Twitter will buy back $2 billion worth o stock and name a couple new board members: one from Elliott and another from Sliver Lake, and investment firm that is putting a billion into Twitter to help fund the buybacks. The new board members will be part of a committee evaluating ‘the CEO succession plan,’ which should be revealed by year’s end.

Tim Cook has always looked to make the Apple Watch more of a health monitor. Now, it looks like the Series 6, due out this Fall, will have blood oxygen detection, and a better ECG. Appleinsider.com notes that the watch already has fall detection and heart rate monitoring features. Regarding the oxygen, if a wearer’s blood oxygen level drops below healthy levels, generally considered to be 95-100% saturation, the can lead to heart health issues or even cardiac arrest. The Watch’s detector will send the wearer a push notification if it finds a level below 95%. The Watch already has an ECG monitor built into the Digital Crown, but it has been somewhat limited. It will return inconclusive results if the heart rate is too high. the improved version will allow Electrocardiograms with a wider range.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is readying to fund at-home testing kits for the novel coronavirus in Seattle. Geekwire.com says plans aren’t final yet, but kits might be available in the ‘coming weeks,’ and would quickly identify where the disease is spreading. The tests are an offshoot of the Seattle Flu Study, a two year old research institute at the University of Washington, which is funded by Bill Gates’ private office to the tune of $20 million. Gates has been sounding the alarm for years about the rise of an unchecked epidemic that could result in over 10 million deaths and be a once in a century pandemic, and now his concerns and funding of research may pay off by saving millions of lives.

Microsoft Asks Seattle & SF Bay Employees- Work From Home; GM Reveals New EV Platform; Twitter tests ‘Fleets’; Coronavirus Spread Via Cash

Microsoft has asked employees located around Seattle and in the San Francisco Bay Area to work from home most of March due to the coronavirus. Businessinsider.com says this policy will be in place until March 25th, and that Microsoft will review it then and decide if it should be extended or lifted. Ten of the 11 deaths from the COVID-19 virus have been in the Seattle area, and Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, now has at least 14 confirmed cases of the virus.

General Motors rolled out around a dozen products yesterday to investors, underscoring the auto maker’s seriousness about moving to an electric future. According to theverge.com, GM showed a new modular EV platform with an improved battery pack called Ultium. The platform is intended to be flexible enough to work with a number of different vehicle types and shapes. the new batteries are unique due to the “large-format, pouch-style cells,” as opposed to cylindrical cells, which GM says enables them to be stacked vertically or horizontally inside the battery pack. These batteries will offer power ranging from 50 to 200 kWh, which could allow for a driving range up to “400 miles or more.” Motors designed in-house will support front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and performance all-wheel drive applications. GM has added aluminum to their battery mix, which reduced the cobalt content by 70%. They are striving to get the costs under $100/kWh, which is kind of the magic bullet amount to make EVs completely compatible with gas cars. Tesla will reportedly show off a new battery system next month that hits this level.

Twitter is testing out a version of Stories it calls ‘Fleets.’ Techcrunch.com reports that the testing is beginning in Brazil. Unlike Tweets, Twitter’s new Fleets can’t receive Likes, Replies or Retweets. And they’ll disappear entirely after 24 hours. The ephemeral posts aren’t private, but they are less accessible…you have to visit a person’s public profile to set them (even if you don’t follow them.) the Fleets won’t circulate Twitter’s network, or show up in Search or Moments, and they can’t be embedded on an external website. Fleets are intended to be ‘text centric,’ but you will be able to add photos, GIFs, and videos…although there are no editing tools for them. Videos will be limited to 2:20, or 512MB.

The WHO says cash may be spreading the coronavirus, COVID-19. Businessinsider.com reports that people should use contactless payments whenever possible, and wash hands or use hand sanitizer after handling cash, especially before eating. China has already indicated it would destroy cash from highly impacted areas in that country. The World Health Organization says the virus could remain on money for days after being exposed to it. This gives new meaning to ‘filthy lucre!’

Seattle Amazon Employee Tests + for Coronavirus; 14.1 Inch MacBook Pro Coming; Facebook-New Anti-Spam Tool; Google Cancels I/O

An Amazon employee in Seattle has tested positive for coronavirus. Geekwire.com reports that the person went home sick February 25th, and later tested positive for COVID-19. Amazon has notified other employees who came into close contact with the infected individual. The employee worked in Amazon’s Brazil building at 400 9th Ave N, near downtown.

Well reputed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says 6 new Apple products are coming this year with mini-LED displays, including a 14.1 inch MacBook Pro. In a story picked up by 9to5mac.com, Kuo also says they will release mini-LED screens in a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, a 27 inch iMac Pro, 16 inch MacBook Pro, a 10.2 inch iPad, and a 7.9 inch iPad. No release dates, but Kuo says the iMac Pro will drop 4th quarter. Why mini-LED screens? Apple is interested in adopting mini-LED screen panels for the rich wide color gamut, high contrast ratios, high dynamic range, and localized dimming. mini-LED is also believed to result in thinner panels that are more power-efficient, and they do not suffer from burn-in like OLED.

Trying to get rid of fake accounts is a perpetual game of whack-a-mole for social media like Facebook. Now, zdnet.com says Facebook engineers have cooked up a more efficient machine learning tool which has already helped the platform to kill 6.6 billion fake accounts in the past year. Facebook notes that there are additional millions of attempts to create fake accounts daily that they are able to block. They call the tech behind the takedown tool Deep Entity Classification. It looks for the “deep features” of each account, which are the behavioral patterns of profiles, rather than the direct characteristics of an account. In other words, instead of only registering details like the creation date of an account or the number of friend requests it has sent, DEP also looks at all of the properties of the profiles, groups or pages that a particular user has made contact with. It can reportedly catalog up to 20,000 unique features per account, and gives them a way to squash fake accounts that is super hard to reverse engineer. Of course, spammers will take this as a challenge!

Due to the COVID-19 coronavirus, Google won’t hold its I/O 2020. According to 9to5google.com, Google is looking at some sort of alternative format, like doing events and interactive learning sessions online. Since they already have been streaming all the keynotes and sessions on YouTube, it may be that they can announce an alternative I/O pretty quickly….stay tuned.

Amazon Expands Same Day Delivery, Waymo Raises $2.25 Billion to Scale Up; Facebook Pulls out of SXSW; Browser Extension Adds Masks

Amazon is expanding same day delivery services with a series of mini warehouses. It’s expected that some Prime members will be able to get deliveries within hours of ordering. Amazon has quietly built smaller versions of its fulfillment centers closer to customers in Philadelphia, Phoenix, Orlando and Dallas to bolster same-day delivery in those areas. They claim they will offer over 3 million items for same day delivery from the mini centers. When you go to order, you will see a ‘Today by’ tag on items eligible for the service. Overnight delivery will also be available. If something is ordered before midnight, they say it will be delivered by 8AM the next day. The ‘mini’ centers are about a tenth the size of a normal Amazon fulfillment center.

Alphabet subsidiary Waymo has raised $2.25 billion as the autonomous vehicle division begins to scale up operations. According to venturebeat.com, the financing came from Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Mubadala Investment Company (the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi), as well as auto parts supplier Magna International, Andreessen Horowitz, auto retail giant AutoNation, and Alphabet itself. It’s an initial close on the company’s first round of funding.

Facebook has now bailed out of SXSW in Austin over concerns about coronavirus. They had previously cancelled their own F8 developer conference in the Bay Area. Theverge.com says Google and Microsoft just today cancelled two smaller conferences, although both are still on for their major developer conferences coming up in May. The Game Developers Conference, which was cancelled in February, has been postponed to sometime this summer. Date to be announced. **Update: Google will not hold an in-person I/O in May. They will hold a series of online events.

You can never be too safe! A new browser extension will put a face mask on every face it detects on the internet. According to businessinsider.com, it’s a proof of concept…so expect it to slow your browser way down. The extension is a creation of web developer Moritz Klack. A mask on every face on web pages is probably as effective as actually wearing masks to prevent the COVID-19 coronavirus…although experts say the masks do prevent infected people from spreading germs as widely.

Samsung Cancels Vietnam Event; Apple Cams Affected by C. Virus; Walgreens App Leak; Facebook Expands 3D Photo Feature

South Korea’s Samsung has started building a $220 million research and development center in Vietnam, the Vietnamese government said on Monday. Businessinsider.com reports that a ground-breaking ceremony, scheduled for this past Saturday, was canceled because of a virus outbreak that led to travel restrictions on South Koreans.
Construction of the center in Hanoi will be completed by the end of 2022, Samsung Vietnam said in a statement, adding that the center will employ between 2,200 and 3,000 people. Samsung is the single largest foreign investor in Vietnam, with investments totaling $17 billion.

Apple continues to be affected by the coronavirus outbreak around the world. Reuters reports this weekend that LG Innotek, which supplies camera modules for the iPhone, has been forced to shut down one of its factories due to a worker contracting the virus. According to 9to5mac.com, both Samsung and LG Innotek have been forced to shut down factories in South Korea over the weekend. The closure of the LG Innotek factory is more important to Apple, as LG Innotek supplies camera modules for the iPhone. Whether or not that means it will reopen on Tuesday after disinfection remains to be seen. More than anything, this situation underscores that even though Cook thinks the the situation is “under control” in China, supply chain disruptions to Apple are still possible as coronavirus becomes a global problem.

Walgreens, the second-largest pharmacy chain in the US, says its mobile app contained a bug that exposed the personal details of some of its users. Cnet.com says the leak, described as “an error within the Walgreens mobile app personal secure messaging feature,” exposed details such as first and last name, prescription details, store number, and shipping addresses, where available for a week in January. Walgreens said it fixed the bug on the day it learned of the error, which was January 15th. The company did say that sensitive drugs prescription details were only exposed for a small percentage of the total users who were affected. The app’s messaging feature has temporarily been disabled.

Imagine if every photo in your Facebook news feed looked alive, like something out of a Harry Potter universe newspaper. That’s the reality Facebook is moving toward with a new feature that makes 3D photos available to everyone, according to mashable.com. First launched in 2018, the feature let people give their photos the appearance of a “moving” 3D background, provided the source image was shot using some manner of portrait mode. Now, the company confirms that portrait mode photos are no longer necessary. With the help of artificial intelligence, your boring, old 2D photos can now join the 3D party as well. Any photo you have, no matter how old, should play nice with Facebook’s newly upgraded 3D photos.

Internet Recovery for iOS; Tesla Roadrunner Battery Project; Samsung Already Fixing Galaxy S20 Cams; Clearview Face Match Startup’s Customer List Stolen

Recently, we reported on Apple’s CarKey API, that will enable iPhones with proper credentialing from your car maker’s app to open and start your car. Now, 9to5mac.com reports that more has been discovered in the beta of iOS 13.4, including the ability to restore an iPhone or iPad over the air…Internet Recovery for iOS! Apple has had this for their Macs for some time, but it would be especially helpful for iOS devices…and even more for the Watch or HomePod than for phones or iPads, since the Watch and HomePod don’t have external connectors. A new feature has been spotted in iOS 13.4 called OS Recovery. Except for the name and a graphic, not much else appears, so stay tuned…this could be a real boon to Apple mobile device users, saving a trip to the Apple Store or sending the device in to Apple if the system quits working.

Tesla has been running a super secret project to make improved batteries called Roadrunner. Apparently, they are using the dry electrode tech of Maxwell, a company they acquired, and have built on it with their own team based in Canada at a Tesla research lab. According to electrek.co, they will move away fro wire bonding on the cells and use a laser welded tech instead. Tesla plans to build their own batterie packs, and is making the equipment to build the assembly line, too. If all is true, they have found the holy grail of batteries…cheaper to make, and higher energy density..enabling them to use less batteries and still get longer range than ever. The packs apparently can hit the almost mythical $100 perf kWh price point that allows electric vehicles to hit price parity with gas cars with no subsidies. The tech will also enable the Tesla pickup and the big rig to have monster range between charges. Elon Musk plans to have one of the new battery packs installed in a Model S or Model X for the ‘Battery Investor Day’ in April! Tesla will produce the cells themselves in the US, Europe, and China.

It seems like we just went through this with Samsung last year…remember when the Galaxy Fold screens were breaking on review units before the phone ever came out to the public? Now, engadget.com says reviewers are having trouble with the new (unreleased) Galaxy S20’s super duper cameras. Samsung says they are working on a fix coming in a future update to ‘improve the camera experience.’ Neither the reviewers…including PC Mag…nor Samsung will say what the problems are. The issues seem to be with the autofocus on the S20 Ultra (the one with the 108 MP cam), and are causing out of focus pics, as well as wobbles in the image. Also, reviewers say the image processing is too aggressive, causing excessive smoothing in skin tones. The S20 and S20+ have a different camera setup, and don’t seem to be as affected. It’s unclear if Samsung will have the fix in place before the phone gets into the hands of the public, which could be dicey.

We’ve written about Clearview, which has been scraping the net for pictures of billions of faces and putting them in their massive, secret database. The company has deals with some 600 law enforcement agencies to use their software. Now, arstechnica.com reports that someone hacked their system and stole their entire customer list! Clearview’s response seems to be a shrug. “Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century,” Tor Ekeland, an attorney for Clearview, told The Daily Beast. “Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw and continue to work to strengthen our security.” Clearview did post a couple of notes on their blog, making it clear that they don’t make their software available to the public, and that its not a consumer application. Whether it was industrial espionage, government spies for a nation, or a hacker group…they don’t know at this point. It’s becoming a new normal…if information gets into a database and especially if it flies across the internet, good luck on anything being kept private!

Facebook Bans Coronavirus ‘Cure’ Ads; iPhone XR Topped All Smartphones Year; Apple Team Delayed in Checking New iPhones in China; Surface Duo ‘Peek’ Feature; Peanut Butter Wades into Jif vs Gif

Facebook is banning ads that promise to cure coronavirus, and some that ‘create a sense of urgency around it.’ According to businessinsider.com, there has been a raft of posts and ads full of misinformation and false claims. The social net has deployed its fact-checkers and adjusted algorithms to fight the lies about the virus. They aren’t the only tech platform having to take action— Amazon has cracked down on price-gouging by third party sellers trying to cash in on the rush by people to buy masks. Some were jacking up the prices to many times the normal selling price.

The final numbers are tabulated, and Apple’s iPhone XR was the most popular smartphone worldwide in 2019. 9to5mac.com reports that the data was crunched by Omdia. The XR sold 9 million more units than the #2 seller, which was the iPhone 11. Samsung rounded out the top 5 smartphones, with the Galaxy A10, A150, and A20. The iPhone 11 Pro Max was #6, and the iPhone 8 bagged the #7 spot. Redmi’s Note 7 snuck in at 8, and the iPhone 11 Pro was 9th, and Galaxy 12 Core was 10th.

Virtually all smartphone sales will probably be impacted by the coronavirus this year. Normally by now, Apple engineers and execs would be in China, examining the next crop of iPhones. Foxconn workers would have built a small number of devices and they would be poring over the new models. Macrumors.com says due to concerns over coronavirus, the later opening of plants, and lack of flights to China…especially by United, which Apple tends to use…it may back up Apple’s finalization of the new phones and their finalization of chip and component orders with suppliers. Some work can be done by video chat, but there may be a delay in the new iPhones this fall or very limited supply for a while.

A leaked video from a Twitter user calling himself WalkingCat has showed of a ‘peek’ feature on Microsoft’s new Android tablet the Surface Duo. theverge.com says you can lift the egg and peek at a row of notifications on the edge of the right hand display without fully opening the device…then dismiss them if you like. The thought is that this would sub for no third screen on the outside such as on folding phones like the Galaxy Fold and Z Flip phones. The Surface Duo is set to launch later this year.

For years, a debate has raged about how to pronounce the graphic .gif….is it GIFF, or JIFF…hard G or soft J sound? Now, the Jif Peanut Butter people have waded into the middle of things…a rather brilliant marketing ploy by the folks at Smucker’s, who own the brand. Arstechnica.com reports that the ads tout the hard G sound…saying that the soft J…as in Jif, has been around for decades in the form of their peanut butter! They have even labeled jars with Jif on one side as usual, and a question mark G on the other! Of course, it won’t settle the ongoing argument, but is a hell of a clever marketing campaign. If you are allergic to peanuts…just send jpegs!

Amazon Opens 1st Full Amazon Go Grocery in Seattle; Cruise Gets License in CA for Transport Without Safety Drivers; Netflix Adds Top 10 Feature; Intuit Buys Credit Karma

Amazon has rolled out its first ‘Amazon Go Grocery’ store in Seattle. Geekwire.com reports that the space is only 7700 square feet, not as large as a lot of supermarkets, but larger than the smaller Amazon Go stores they have opened so far…those have run between 450 and 2700 feet. The new store has a much larger selection of items, as you might expect. The format is the same, no checkers or check out lanes, and the store bristles with cameras and sensors. The produce is out in the open, like at Amazon-owned Whole Foods, so you can pick and choose the apples, oranges, or lettuce that you prefer. The organic produce is sourced from the same farms aw Whole foods, and will be marked with the 365 label. There is no meat or seafood counter and no food preparation on the premises. Fish, chicken and beef products are brought in several times a week, individually wrapped. There is also an artisan cheese area, but again all self serve. Amazon looks to be opening more of these stores, but the size and item count probably hasn’t been set in stone as yet.

Cruise took another step in the direction of a robo-taxi service this week. According to venture beat.com, the California Public Utilities Commission has issued a permit allowing Cruise to offer passenger service in autonomous Chevy Bolts without drivers behind the wheel. The company has been running an employees only ride-hailing program in San Francisco called Cruise Anywhere. VentureBeat also noted that Cruise will be looking to do service demos with partners, members of the media, and other ‘key people.’

Netflix has added a feature to help you wade through the massive library of shows to stream. Now, you should see a Top 10 row when you fire up Netflix. Cnet.com says the lists update daily, to show what’s popular in your country. There are three ‘buckets;” Netflix overall, shows, and films. Shows and films that make the lists will sport a ‘Top 10’ badge on the Netflix site. They have trialed the feature for the last 6 months in the UK and Mexico.

Intuit has confirmed that it is acquiring Credit Karma for some $7.1 billion in cash and stock. Techcrunch.com reports that it plans to keep Credit Karma as a standalone operation…it has been hauling in over a billion in revenue a year. Intuit will be able to tap into Credit Karma’s customer base and range of services….the company has partnered with some 100 financial service providers. Intuit also hopes to upsell some of the Credit Karma users on its own services.

More NexGen Xbox Specs; Facebook Download Info-Some, Anyway; AirTags-Waterproof; Tesla Model 3 Outsells All EVs; Twitch Will Top 40 Million

Microsoft unveiled more specs for its next generation Xboxes. The biggie is that the new Series X will include 12 teraflops of GPU power, double what the Xbox One X has and eight times that of the original Xbox. According to theverge.com, it should produce graphics far beyond most mid-range graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD. That will be true for both this next generation Xbox and the Sony PlayStation 5. the new Xbox Series will also support 8K gaming and frame rates of up to 120 fps in games. One welcome feature that had already been announced…a so-called ‘quick resume feature.’ This is an expansion of the Xbox One’s resume feature, but apparently you will be able to resume multiple games from a suspended state. Microsoft will be revealing more at the Game Developers Conference next month and E3 in June.

Remember a couple years ago after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when Facebook rolled out ‘Download Your Information?’ Facebook said it would allow users to download all the information that the company has on them since the creation of the account. Yeah…about that. Privacyinternational.org notes that the list of advertisers is incomplete initially and changes over time. What do advertisers get? Usually just an email address, a phone number, an Advertising ID or a users’ Facebook UID, but it can go way beyond that. In the template provided by Facebook, advertisers can also include all sorts of information they might have, such as name, gender, country, street, zip code, age or even date of birth. The advertiser facing tool is vastly more comprehensive than the one provided to users. Since this actually violates the EU’s GDPR, it will be interesting to see what action the European Union takes against Facebook to make them comply.

There have been a number of rumors about Apple’s AirTags…their answer to the Tile, that helps you track items and devices. Now, macrumors.com reports that the AirTags will be completely waterproof, and will use magnetic wireless charging like is used on the Apple Watch. It’s thought that the AirTags were to have been introduced this Spring with the iPhone 9 or whatever they will ultimately call the new smaller, cheaper iPhone….but now, it looks like it will happen in the Fall with the 3 other iPhone models. The AirTag connected devices will show up on the iOS ‘Find My’ app. With the production disruption in China, it’s unlikely we will see Air Tags in any kind of numbers before next Fall.

A story came out over the weekend that Tesla now has over a half million pre-orders for its electric pickup. That’s a big deal, but a bigger one that has flown under the radar is the success of the Model 3. Electrek.co says that in 2019, Tesla sold more Model 3’s in California than all the other EVs combined. They got that figure from the California New Car Dealers Association, too! An even more amazing number? When you remove other Tesla models from the mix, the Model 3 still sold more than twice as many cars as all other manufacturers’ EVs combined! It is the 3rd best selling car overall in California after the Honda Civic and Toyota Camry.

Twitch is on track to exceed 40 million monthly active viewers by next year. Techcrunch.com reports that an eMarketer forecast shows the Amazon owned streaming service hitting 47 million by 2023. Actually, their reach is pretty significant right now, at 37.5 million. Twitch claims they have over 3 million active monthly creators and over 15 million average DAILY streamers. The company is focusing on minutes watched and concurrent viewers, as YouTube, Microsoft Mixer, and Facebook Gaming are eating into their user base. So far, this has just slowed Twitch growth…they remain number one, and eMarketer says they will manage to have 14.3% growth this year.

Apple May Let Chrome & Gmail Be Defaults on iOS; Microsoft Defender Coming to Android & iOS; CBS All Access Getting Tons of New Content; Hyundai Takes Automatic Shift to New Levels

Apple is thinking about letting users use third party apps as the default on iPhones and iPads. Theverge.com reports that this includes Chrome as a default browser and Gmail as your default mail app. As Ron Popeil of infomercial fame used to say, ‘But wait…there’s more!’ Apple is even reportedly working on allowing third party music services like Spotify run directly on the HomePod smart speaker. Another possibility is that they will allow Siri to send messages over third party messaging apps. The changes could come as soon as later this year with the release of iOS 14. Part of the sudden magnanimous attitude by Apple may be driven by the EU’s antitrust investigation into how Apple manages its platforms.

Microsoft has announced that they will make available their Defender software to Android and iOS devices later this year. According to CNBC, they expect it to help you protect your devices from malware and phishing attacks. Redmond had already announced a more robust Office package for mobile devices, essentially compressing Word, Excel, and Powerpoint into one Swiss Army knife type app. Defender was originally introduced on Windows PCs back in 2006, and Microsoft says security has become an $80 billion market.

CBS All Access, the streaming service owned by ViacomCBS post merger, is expanding and picking up content. Techcrunch.com says they will be offering a broad pay service, in addition to their existing free streaming service and premium Showtime stream. In addition to more movies and shows, they will have more content from brands like Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, Smithsonian, and Paramount. CBS says they will be adding 30,000 TV episodes and up to 1,000 movies to the service.

Hyundai is really taking automatic shift to a new level. Automatic transmissions have always had the task of shifting through the gears with a goal of either better performance or better mileage than most drivers can get shifting manually. Cnet.com reports that Hyundai has developed a predictive Information and Communication Technology Connected Shift System. What it does is utilize info from 3D navigation maps, cameras, and radar to further optimize shifting via software. A fuel saving example: you’re stuck in a long stretch of beep and creep traffic. The system will keep the car in neutral as much as possible, only shifting back into gear when you press the pedal and need to move. According to Hyundai (which will also use the system in their Kia line), the automation dropped the number of shifts on winding roads by 43%, and drivers used their brakes 11% less. The system can tell when a driver is merging onto a freeway, and automatically goes into sport mode for quicker shifts. Once at speed, it will return to economy mode. Hyundai says the system will be out soon. A later version using LTE (or better…5G) will be able to predict shift patterns as you approach stoplights.