Tesla, one of the biggest and most profitable car companies, recently recalled more than 360,000 of its cars for being unsafe and more accident-prone right after theNational Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) declared its Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) unsafe. It was on February 16th when Elon Musk took to the internet and confirmed that the process of recalling all its 363,000 cars has been initiated as it may lead to bigger crashes because of the Beta.
What the NHTSA Found
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) figured out that the FSD Beta, which Tesla has been using in many of its vehicles, is unsafe, especially around intersections. It has noticed incidents such as cars not stopping completely at a stop-sign-controlled intersection and cars recklessly approaching an intersection even when the yellow traffic light is on. This is what concerned the authorities, and that’s when they asked the company to recall all their cars, including 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles, 2016-2023 Model S, Model X, 2017-2023 Model 3, and more that work on the same self-driving beta. Before the issue takes a drastic turn, NHTSA has asked them to do a software update and resolve the problem by the first week of April.
Other Issues
The FSD Beta issue isn’t the only issue that Tesla has had these days. Quite recently, some Tesla owners encountered a ‘503 Server Maintenance’ error. This appeared when Tesla owners were not able to open the doors of their cars with the keycard. This eventually prevented them from even using the Tesla app, and the issue was neither addressed nor communicated by Tesla for hours. A lot of drivers had to wait for many hours for the error message to disappear so that they could go ahead and use the application again.
Could the Next Solar Storm Bring in an Internet Apocalypse? A New Study Suggests So
Climate change and the increasing environmental degradation may have a serious impact on our lifestyles on a global scale. This fact has been doing the rounds for a very long time. The magnitude of change is touted to have multiple ramifications ranging from economic disruption, the outbreak of newer diseases to further evolution of disease-causing microbes. As per a recent study, the next solar storm on the earth can potentially shut down the Internet across the world causing massive disruption to the economic activities of the nations worldwide.
About the Study
The paper, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, posits that such an Internet shutdown would last for days, weeks, and maybe months – and could vary from nation to nation. As we increasingly rely on technology and the internet, being in such a situation would be no less than living a nightmare. The research paper was presented at the SIGCOMM 2021 Data Communication Conference by Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, an Assistant Professor at the University of Irvine, California.
Possible Impacts of the Phenomenon
In her research paper, Jyothi says that the existing infrastructure is poorly equipped to handle the magnitude of the future solar storm. But, the silver lining here is that these solar storms (also called coronal mass ejections) are relatively rare in occurrence. Only two such solar storms have been recorded in history – one in 1859, and the second in 1921. Both these storms created acute geothermal turbulence on the earth causing the local electricity to go kaput. The research paper goes on to say if such an event happens, the nations at high latitudes will bear the brunt of catastrophe more than the nations that are at lower latitudes. That said, though their occurrence is rare, we shouldn’t rule out their possibility and do our bit to preserve the environment whenever we can.