The company is asking for $5,000 upfront for Roadster pre-orders, followed by $245,000 within 10 days. But even if you fork over the money, Tesla won’t guarantee your car will be delivered. According to the terms and conditions of the pre-order (emphasis ours):

The latest day of action for the protest movement is today, but unlike previous rallies, this one is focused on increasing early voting turnout ahead of the November elections. Thousands of events are planned or already underway; as usual, there’s a map available on the site.

Delivery estimates are already delayed into 2027. Bloomberg reports that Apple said:

During an interview with Bloomberg, Charles Schwab Corp. CEO Rick Wurster called out Meta’s AI agent, Muse, saying:

In July, we told you how the FCC — and its subcontractor TÜV Rheinland — didn’t bother to do basic Google searches before legally approving banned DJI technology for import and sale. But a new game of whack-a-drone was more successful. Public records show TÜV Rheinland asked the FCC to block applications from another “DJI front company,” Jovistar. The FCC agreed, and Jovistar is now on notice.

I’ve spent the past week testing Asus laptop instead of Asus handheld, so my X20 review got pre-empted. But since you can buy it for $1,300 today, here’s my insta-review: it’s not necessarily the new champ. It’s so refined, but I want to play Star Wars Zero Company right now. That game looks terrible here, but runs fine with the extra power of my Claw EX review unit.

According to The Guardian, the campaign they’re funding is spending over $1 million per day trying to defeat Proposition 40, which would enact a one-time 5 percent tax on California’s billionaires. Google co-founder Sergey Brin is reportedly the biggest donor, contributing at least $102 million, alongside other tech executives:

According to the NYT’s sources, White House press secretary Katie Zacharia is out after just five days in the role, or, by our count, less than half of a Scaramucci. Her time in the role included prediction market intrigue and claims she may have misrepresented herself as an attorney despite failing the bar exam.

The LEDs on the back of your phone can’t compete with the bright flashes built-in to many cameras, so the $85 Godox A2 integrates a xenon flash tube into a magnetic iPhone accessory with a rechargeable battery good for about 400 photos. The A2 can be used remotely up to almost 50 feet away if you want to experiment with flash placement, but it does require you to use Godox’s own iOS camera app to trigger the flash when you press the shutter button.

A “reasonable esthetic standard” will be applied to advertising on the platform, Musk said in a post, though he didn’t elaborate. He has a contentious history with the advertisers who keep the lights on: Shortly after Musk took control of Twitter, major ad groups recommended that clients pause campaigns on the platform, citing brand safety concerns. Musk later told them to “go fuck [themselves]” in the midst of an advertiser boycott in 2023.

With public opinion broadly against AI data centers, the Today, Explained podcast from Vox brought on Nicole Thomas, a marketing and PR exec who represents data center companies.

In addition to latest quote posts, you can sort them by (what appears to be) the ones with the most engagement. Seems like a useful way to see which quote posts might be generating conversations of their own.

The Yashica Y16 Pocket Camera was announced last month as a modern redux of a retro film camera first introduced in 1959. Upgrades include a 12-megapixel sensor, an LCD display on the back, and a Xenon flash. You can preorder it through Yashica’s online store for $114.43 with shipping expected to start in November.

After being announced last June, you can now reserve Honeycomb Aeronautical’s $179.99 Echo Aviation Controller XPC without a deposit ahead of sales staring on November 20th. The gamepad swaps a standard layout for a collection of flight sim-specific controls like throttle levers, a trim wheel, rudder paddles, and even dedicated switches for deploying landing gear and applying an aircraft’s parking brake.

Toggling on the new “Surveillance” switch in the Map Options on MapQuest adds eyeball icons showing the locations of “known license plate readers” and outdoor surveillance cameras, similar to DeFlock’s ALPR mapping project.

Waymo announced that it’s coming to Canada — Toronto to be exact — with the goal of welcoming the first riders in 2028. The robotaxi company, flush with cash but still unprofitable, is increasingly looking at cities outside the US as it seeks to scale its operations. Waymo says it will start with data-gathering, manually driven cars before transitioning to fully autonomous ones. And once it starts its commercial service, Toronto-based Element Fleet Management will handle all the charging, cleaning, and maintenance of the vehicles.

Though OpenAI didn’t give its internal research model access to funds on the network, the AI system instead found a way to access another account with test crypto, using it to help complete its task, according to OpenAI.

Hagerty’s Henry Catchpool sat down with Tesla VP for Engineering Lars Moravy to talk through the details of last night’s impressive Tesla Roadster demonstration. But behind all the flipping and flying (falling?) stunt work is some impressive engineering — as well as some surprising reveals. (The Roadster is rear-wheel drive?!?)

Then check out this episode of TWiT’s Tech News Weekly, where I chat with host Mikah Sargent for an hour about HomeView, Apple TV, HomePod Mini 2, and the Apple Home Collection. (Audio options here.)