Enlarge / The Tesla Cybertruck. (credit: Tesla)

On Monday, we learned that Tesla had suspended customer deliveries of its stainless steel-clad electric pickup truck. Now, the automaker has issued a recall for all the Cybertrucks in customer hands—nearly 4,000 of them—in order to fix a problem with the accelerator pedal. It has come at an inconvenient time for Tesla, which is laying off more than 10 percent of its workforce due to shrinking sales even as CEO Elon Musk asks for an extra $55.8 billion in compensation.

The problem, which affects all 3,878 Cybertrucks delivered so far, has to do with the EV's accelerator pedal. Tesla has fitted this with a metal-finish cover to match the brushed metal appearance of the truck itself—no word on whether the pedals rust, too—but it says that at some point, "an unapproved change introduced lubricant (soap) to aid in the component assembly of the pad onto the accelerator pedal. Residual lubricant reduced the retention of the pad to the pedal."

Thanks to the profile of the Cybertruck's under dash, if the pedal cover becomes partially detached it can slide up and become trapped in place, wedging the pedal down and unleashing all of the Cybertruck's substantial power—the dual-motor truck boasts 600 hp (447 kW) and can reach 60 mph (98 km/h) in just over four seconds.

Enlarge / A sample image from Microsoft for "VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time." (credit: Microsoft)

On Tuesday, Microsoft Research Asia unveiled VASA-1, an AI model that can create a synchronized animated video of a person talking or singing from a single photo and an existing audio track. In the future, it could power virtual avatars that render locally and don't require video feeds—or allow anyone with similar tools to take a photo of a person found online and make them appear to say whatever they want.

"It paves the way for real-time engagements with lifelike avatars that emulate human conversational behaviors," reads the abstract of the accompanying research paper titled, "VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time." It's the work of Sicheng Xu, Guojun Chen, Yu-Xiao Guo, Jiaolong Yang, Chong Li, Zhenyu Zang, Yizhong Zhang, Xin Tong, and Baining Guo.

The VASA framework (short for "Visual Affective Skills Animator") uses machine learning to analyze a static image along with a speech audio clip. It is then able to generate a realistic video with precise facial expressions, head movements, and lip-syncing to the audio. It does not clone or simulate voices (like other Microsoft research) but relies on an existing audio input that could be specially recorded or spoken for a particular purpose.

Enlarge / Reddit user Kidipadeli75 spotted a fossilized hominin jawbone in his parents' new travertine kitchen tile. (credit: Reddit user Kidipadeli75)

Ah, Reddit! It's a constant source of amazing stories that sound too good to be true... and yet! The latest example comes to us from a user named Kidipadeli75, a dentist who visited his parents after the latter's kitchen renovation and noticed what appeared to be a human-like jawbone embedded in the new travertine tile. Naturally, he posted a photograph to Reddit seeking advice and input. And Reddit was happy to oblige.

User MAJOR_Blarg, for instance, is a dentist "with forensic odontology training" and offered the following:

While all old-world monkeys, apes, and hominids share the same dental formula, 2-1-2-3, and the individual molars and premolars can look similar, the specific spacing in the mandible itself is very specifically and characteristically human, or at least related and very recent hominid relative/ancestor. Most likely human given the success of the proliferation of H.s. and the (relatively) rapid formation of travertine.

Against modern Homo sapiens, which may not be entirely relevant, the morphology of the mandible is likely not northern European, but more similar to African, middle Eastern, mainland Asian.

Another user, deamatrona, who claims to hold an anthropology degree, also thought the dentition looked Asiatic, "which could be a significant find." The thread also drew the attention of John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and longtime science blogger who provided some valuable context on his own website. (Hawks has been involved with the team that discovered Homo naledi at the Rising Star cave system in 2013.)

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Password-manager LastPass users were recently targeted by a convincing phishing campaign that used a combination of email, SMS, and voice calls to trick targets into divulging their master passwords, company officials said.

The attackers used an advanced phishing-as-a-service kit discovered in February by researchers from mobile security firm Lookout. Dubbed CryptoChameleon for its focus on cryptocurrency accounts, the kit provides all the resources needed to trick even relatively savvy people into believing the communications are legitimate. Elements include high-quality URLs, a counterfeit single sign-on page for the service the target is using, and everything needed to make voice calls or send emails or texts in real time as targets are visiting a fake site. The end-to-end service can also bypass multi-factor authentication in the event a target is using the protection.

LastPass in the crosshairs

Lookout said that LastPass was one of dozens of sensitive services or sites CryptoChameleon was configured to spoof. Others targeted included the Federal Communications Commission, Coinbase and other cryptocurrency exchanges, and email, password management, and single sign-on services including Okta, iCloud, and Outlook. When Lookout researchers accessed a database one CryptoChameleon subscriber used, they found that a high percentage of the contents collected in the scams appeared to be legitimate email addresses, passwords, one-time-password tokens, password reset URLs, and photos of driver’s licenses. Typically, such databases are filled with junk entries.

Enlarge (credit: Frame Studio)

Almost from the start, arguments about mitigating climate change have included an element of cost-benefit analysis: Would it cost more to move the world off fossil fuels than it would to simply try to adapt to a changing world? A strong consensus has built that the answer to the question is a clear no, capped off by a Nobel in Economics given to one of the people whose work was key to building that consensus.

While most academics may have considered the argument put to rest, it has enjoyed an extended life in the political sphere. Large unknowns remain about both the costs and benefits, which depend in part on the remaining uncertainties in climate science and in part on the assumptions baked into economic models.

In Wednesday's edition of Nature, a small team of researchers analyzed how local economies have responded to the last 40 years of warming and projected those effects forward to 2050. They find that we're already committed to warming that will see the growth of the global economy undercut by 20 percent. That places the cost of even a limited period of climate change at roughly six times the estimated price of putting the world on a path to limit the warming to 2° C.

Enlarge / The new, all-electric Atlas. (credit: Boston Dynamics)

The humanoid robotics market is starting to heat up, and the company that's been doing this the longest isn't going to sit by and watch. Boston Dynamics has a new humanoid robot that the company says represents a path to commercialization. It's the company's next-generation, all-electric "Atlas" robot.

While new Atlas and old Atlas share a name, they couldn't be more different when it comes to construction. The old Atlas—a research platform and viral sensation that could handle nearly any terrain, do backflips, and pick up heavy objects—was powered by a heavy, complicated hydraulics system. The new Atlas is all-electric and looks like it's a fraction of the size and weight of the hydraulic version. It also looks like a product, with covers around all the major components and consumer-friendly design touches like a giant status light in the head and a light-up power button that looks like it was ripped right from the Spot assembly line.

Hydraulic Atlas is being retired to make way for the all-electric version. The company posted one last goodbye video for the hydraulic model on its YouTube page, showing the history of the project. Atlas has done a lot of neat tricks over the years, but getting there has required a lot of learning—part of that is taking some absolutely gnarly slams, which are highlighted in the video. The video seemed to go out of its way to show just how cumbersome hydraulics can be. At one point, it looks like Atlas' foot completely breaks off, and hydraulic fluid gushes all over the floor. Other times, the robot just springs a leak, and a fine mist of high-pressure fluid sprays everywhere as the robot goes limp. The fluid has a red tinge to it, so with a little imagination, it can look pretty gory!