Author Archives: Chris Davies

A third COVID-19 vaccine candidate, co-developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, is the latest to deliver successful trial results, with particularly promising pricing and logistics promised. The drug, ChAdOx1 nCoV-2019, showed up to 90-percent efficacy in one treatment regimen, and both Oxford and AstraZeneca have committed to supplying it on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic.

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Wisdom, as an enthusiast, basically boils down to knowing when to spend and when to save, and few cars illustrate that quite as neatly as the 2020 Porsche 718 Cayman T. Purists and badge-zealots may sniff that, because it doesn't have "911" on the trunk, this isn't the "proper" Porsche coupe. They're wrong.

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Silvercar, Audi's car rental service, is closing its airport locations, with the service shifting its attention to dealer-based pickup instead. Acquired in full by the automaker in 2017, Silvercar distinguishes itself by only offering Audi vehicles and pushing an app-first experience, in an attempt to differentiate from other airport rental operators.

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Thanksgiving 2020 is coming, but Americans should stay home and avoid travel or gatherings outside of their immediate family, according to the CDC this week. The stark COVID-19 warning came as deaths from the pandemic neared 250,000, with cases rising rapidly and experts cautioning that even with potential vaccines in the pipeline, the end of coronavirus is not yet in sight.

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Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine has been submitted to the US FDA for emergency use authorization, paving the way for use of the drug potentially as soon as mid-December 2020. The vaccine candidate, co-developed with German firm BioNTech, has indicated a 95-percent success rate in Phase 3 trials, with no signs of serious safety concerns or side-effects.

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Samsung is giving its smart TVs a voice control boost, expanding Google Assistant support in its latest sets and in the process taking the array of AIs you can chat with to three. The latest 2020 Samsung smart TVs already offered Amazon Alexa along with Samsung's own Bixby, and now owners will be be able to switch between all three.

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Apple has pushed out iOS 14.2.1, addressing a number of bugs in the latest release but, most important, fixing a display problem some iPhone 12 mini owners had reported. The glitch was identified earlier this week with the new, smallest iPhone, where the lock screen could sometimes become unresponsive to taps and swipes.

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Advanced driver assistance systems that help drivers stay in lane and keep pace with highway traffic also lead to a big uptick in driver disengagement, a new study by IIHS concludes, as users get complacent about just what the tech can and can't do. It's likely to be another controversial addition to the arguments between safety regulators and automakers, over just how safe so-called Level 2 systems can be.

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GM is cranking up its EV ambitions, raising the maximum range estimates for its new Ultium platform for electric vehicles, and increasing the number of launches for its next-generation models. By the end of 2025, the automaker confirmed today, it aims to have thirty new global EV launches under its belt.

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Amazon's Alexa glasses, the Echo Frames, are graduating from the retailer's tech preview and going up for general sale, with a bunch of new updates for those eager to wear the assistant on their face. At the same time, fellow Amazon Day 1 Editions product Echo Loop - effectively a ring for interacting with Alexa - is being discontinued, the retailer says.

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Tesla's Powerwall is getting some new competition, with Sonnen launching a home backup battery of its own for those wanting reliability should the grid go down. The sonnenCore home battery is designed to integrate with solar power systems if you have one, with enough juice in the wall-mounted pack to potentially keep a whole house running.

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NVIDIA has brought GeForce NOW to Safari, bypassing the iOS App Store - and the controversy around Apple's refusal to approve cloud gaming services - eventually giving Fortnite fans a way to get their hit as the streaming game wars escalate. GeForce NOW was mired in the same problems as Google's Stadia and Xbox Game Pass cloud gaming, after Apple argued that the iPhone and iPad apps didn't comply with its rules.

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