Engadget reports: Electrek notes that Tesla has released its promised holiday update, and the centerpiece appears to be a Boombox mode that pumps media outside as long as you have a recent-enough EV with a pedestrian speaker system, like later Model 3 production runs...

Other updates include a smarter Scheduled Departure that preconditions the battery and cabin without plugging in, larger driving visualizations (helpful for Autopilot) and at-a-glance views of the number of open stalls at Superchargers.
Electrek's report highlights some additional features: Earlier this week, we reported that it included 3 new in-car video games, but we now have the full release notes with all the details... "You can also customize the sound that your car makes when you press the horn, drive the car or when your car is moving with Summon. Select an option from the dropdown menu or insert your own USB device and save up to five custom sounds."

Since 1955 the U.S./Canadian operation that monitors North American airspace with radars and satellite to maintain air sovereignty has also, at Christmas time, been tracking Santa.

And this year their trackers received additional support from the U.S. Space Command, a joint-military command drawing its units from five military service branches (including the U.S. Space Force). That command "launched a new reindeer tracker to pinpoint the exact location of Santa's sleigh at any given time during the night," according to NPR's Morning Edition, with General James Dickinson telling them the equipment's official name: Rudolph Infrared Tracking System. "We made some upgrades this year."

And that was just the beginning, reports The Hill: Santa knows astronauts need presents, too, and made his first known visit to the International Space Station to deliver them this year.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which tracks Santa's Christmas Eve journey every year, depicted in a tweet Santa arriving at the International Space Station on Christmas Eve...

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared Santa for the flight to space on Wednesday, providing him "for the first time ever" with a special commercial space license.
The astronauts aboard the ISS recorded a special Christmas video this year. (And a new article in Business Insider expores how astronauts on the space station have celebrated Christmas over the years.)

And NORAD is even maintaining a special web site at NORADSanta.org which not only let visitors track Santa, but through December 31st will also offer an arcade with Christmas-themed videogames, a selection of music by the U.S. Air Force Academy Band, and even a gift shop where you can buy "Santa and NORAD gear," including NORAD hoodies and tote bags.

Though a pop-up window warns visitors that "Clicking through to this next website does not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the United States Department of Defense or NORAD of any product or service."

Ananda Sharma, founder of the app Gyroscope, describes to a local TV station the monolith he discovered during a Christmas-morning jog under a candy-cane red sunrise.

"I think I smelled it before I saw it..."

He spotted a double rainbow and wanted to peek at that too. At first, he thought the monolith was "a big post," but as he got closer, he smelled the gingerbread scent wafting toward him. The monolith is standing in panels separated by icing...

"It made me smile.
SFGate spoke to another eye-witness: Alexis Gallagher also happened upon the sweet monolith at about 8:25 a.m. Friday morning, confirming it was made of gingerbread, frosting and gumdrops... "I had a closer look and it looks like there's a plywood skeleton underneath, but I try not to dwell on such mundane realities."

Gallagher added that he had to "stop my dog from nibbling on it..."
When reached for an official comment, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department General Manager told the TV news reporter that the gingerbread monolith "Looks like a great spot to get baked."

Then he added more sternly that "we will leave it up until the cookie crumbles."

But their article notes it raises several questions for Bay Area residents: Did Christmas-happy aliens beam it down from above? Did some rogue artificial intelligence escape a nearby Google campus, and, driven mad by our plethora of Christmas music...design an art piece to brighten our days? And just how expensive is it to rent a highrise apartment within its crumbly, ginger-pungent walls...?
SFGate's report ends with Ananda Sharma noting that it began raining in San Francisco at 11:30 a.m., adding, "not sure what happens to gingerbread in the rain but it probably isn't good."

Warner Bros. ruffled some feathers when it announced it would release all of its new 2021 movies simultaneously on HBO Max, but the company seems to be betting that theaters won't become an apocalyptic wasteland. From a report: Variety reports that the company plans to release Furiosa, the prequel to Max Max: Fury Road, and The Color Purple first in theaters in 2023. Warner's plan to launch next year's films online is a great thing for consumers who would rather stay at home than risk contracting a deadly virus to see, say, Godzilla vs. Kong. But the plan immediately made enemies of some Hollywood veterans. Director Christopher Nolan called HBO Max "the worst streaming service" and accused Warner Bros. of not telling anyone about its plan until just 90 minutes before it was announced.

Square, the digital-payment company run by Jack Dorsey, has held talks to acquire the music-streaming service Tidal as part of a push to diversify, according to a person familiar with the situation. From a report: Dorsey has discussed a potential deal with Jay-Z, the rapper and music mogul who acquired Tidal for $56 million in early 2015, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. The negotiations may not result in a transaction.

Roughly half a billion people played Among Us in November, becoming "by far the most popular game ever in terms of monthly players," according to Nielsen's SuperData. The Verge reports: The success is even more remarkable because InnerSloth -- the company that makes Among Us -- only has four employees. That's roughly 125 million players per person who works on the game. It's proven to be so popular that the studio decided to cancel a sequel that was in the works and just put all its effort into improving the original. It even caught the attention of sitting congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who livestreamed herself playing it to try to encourage people to vote, with an audience on Twitch that peaked at over 400 thousand viewers.

In an email to The Verge, Carter Rogers, Principal Analyst at SuperData, said that the next-most popular game in terms of monthly active users only clocked in at 300 million. Rogers notes that Nielsen arrives at its figures through a mix of "point-of-sale and event data from publishers, developers and payment service providers." Among Us' release on the Nintendo Switch was recent enough that it didn't have an appreciable impact on the game's total numbers in Nielsen's analysis.

chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: The acting head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the agency was assessing the cyber risk of smart TVs sold by the Chinese electronics giant TCL, following reports last month in The Security Ledger and elsewhere that the devices may give the company "back door" access to deployed sets, The Security Ledger reports. Speaking at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said that DHS is "reviewing entities such as the Chinese manufacturer TCL." "This year it was discovered that TCL incorporated backdoors into all of its TV sets exposing users to cyber breaches and data exfiltration. TCL also receives CCP state support to compete in the global electronics market, which has propelled it to the third largest television manufacturer in the world," Wolf said, according to a version of prepared remarks published by DHS. His talk was entitled "Homeland Security and the China Challenge."

As reported last month, independent researchers John Jackson -- an application security engineer for Shutter Stock -- and a researcher using the handle Sick Codes identified and described two serious software security holes affecting TCL brand television sets and would allow an unprivileged remote attacker on the adjacent network to download most system files from the TV set up to and including images, personal data and security tokens for connected applications. The flaw could lead to serious critical information disclosure, the researchers warned. Both flaws affect TCL Android Smart TV series V8-R851T02-LF1 V295 and below and V8-T658T01-LF1 V373 and below, according to the official CVE reports. In an interview with The Security Ledger, the researcher Sick Codes said that a TCL TV set he was monitoring was patched for the CVE-2020-27403 vulnerability without any notice from the company and no visible notification on the device itself. In a statement to The Security Ledger, TCL disputed that account. By TCL's account, the patched vulnerability was linked to a feature called "Magic Connect" and an Android APK by the name of T-Cast, which allows users to "stream user content from a mobile device." T-Cast was never installed on televisions distributed in the USA or Canada, TCL said. For TCL smart TV sets outside of North America that did contain T-Cast, the APK was "updated to resolve this issue," the company said. That application update may explain why the TCL TV set studied by the researchers suddenly stopped exhibiting the vulnerability.

In his address on Monday, Acting Secretary Wolf said the warning about TCL will be part of a broader "business advisory" cautioning against using data services and equipment from firms linked to the People's Republic of China (PRC). This advisory will highlight "numerous examples of the PRC government leveraging PRC institutions like businesses, organizations, and citizens to covertly access and obtain the sensitive data of businesses to advance its economic and national security goals," Wolf said. "DHS flags instances where Chinese companies illicitly collect data on American consumers or steal intellectual property. CCP-aligned firms rake in tremendous profits as a result," he said.

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: At a McDonald's restaurant in Georgia, an angry customer in the drive-through lane threw his drink at the pregnant fast-food worker who had served him. "She was crying and covered in ice and soda and syrup..." remembers another driver in the next car parked in the line. "[C]overed in syrup all over her shoes, pants, and shirt."

That driver created an online fundraiser for the fast-food worker, ultimately raising $1,700 within 24 hours which was later presented to the fast-food worker. "She gave me the envelope and I couldn't do nothing but cry," the worker told CNN later, "because I wasn't expecting that."

The driver also publicized a registry for baby supplies (along with the Cash App handle for future donations), but insisted to CNN that it wasn't doing anything special. "I just saw somebody being mistreated and I didn't like what I saw."

Sony is pulling Cyberpunk 2077 from the PlayStation Store and offering full refunds for anyone who bought the game from the digital storefront, the company said on Thursday. The Verge reports: If you want to start a refund, Sony says to visit this site and sign into your PlayStation account to submit a request. The game has already been removed from the PlayStation Store for a few Verge staffers on their PS5s, and the game doesn't come up in a search for "Cyberpunk 2077" on the web version of the store.

Players have found that Cyberpunk 2077, which has only been out for a week, has been riddled with bugs. The game looks good on PS5, but in my few hours with the game, I've run into a few complete crashes to the PS5's home screen and a number of distracting visual glitches. On PS4, the game fares a lot worse -- Eurogamer reported poor performance, low framerate, and texture pop-in. Further reading: 'Cyberpunk 2077' Players Are Fixing Parts of the Game Before CD Projekt

Six Scottish National Party (SNP) politicians have put forward a motion for consideration in the UK parliament to prohibit the resale of games consoles and PC components at prices "greatly above" MSRP, and the resale of goods purchased using automated bots to be made illegal in these fair isles. PC Gamer reports: A motion on the "Resale of gaming consoles and computer components purchases by automated bots" has been tabled with UK Parliament, and it aims to outlaw resellers' usage of automated bots and make it difficult to sell in-demand tech at prices far exceeding the manufacturer's recommend retail price. The motion has no set date for debate in the Commons, and is what is known as an 'Early Day Motion.' These don't often receive much love in Parliament, often due to the sheer number of Early Day Motions going at any one time, but they are used to highlight specific issues present in society. That's hardly indicative of sweeping change in the near-future, but it's better than nothing.

This week, Google acquired a company called Neverware that allows users to turn their old PCs and Macs into a Chromebook with its CloudReady software. Now, Google is planning to make CloudReady into an official Chrome OS release. Engadget reports: When that happens, Neverware says its existing users will be able to seamlessly upgrade to the updated software. Moreover, once that transition is complete, Google will support CloudReady in the same way that it currently does Chrome OS. In the immediate future, Neverware says it's business as usual. The Home Edition of CloudReady isn't changing, and the company says it's committed to supporting its existing education and enterprise customers. Moreover, there's no plan to change pricing at the moment, and Google will honor any current multi-year licenses.

Not only does this acquisition make a lot of sense from Google's perspective, but it's hard to see a downside for CloudReady users. The fact the operating system wasn't officially supported by Google was one of the few downsides to the software. It meant you couldn't install Android apps on CloudReady devices, even though it's based on Chromium OS. With this acquisition, support for Android apps becomes much more likely. Direct support from Google will also make the software more appealing to schools and businesses since they can get help directly from the company if they have any technical issues.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The board of directors for British developer Codemasters has reached a purchase agreement with Electronic Arts which would sell the company to the mega-publisher for an estimated $1.2 billion (or just under $8 a share) in early 2021. The deal would put Codemasters' popular racing-game franchises -- including DiRT/DiRT Rally, Grid, F1, and Project CARS (which Codemasters acquired in 2019) -- under the same umbrella as EA's Need for Speed, Burnout, and mobile-focused Real Racing. That's not quite a monopoly in the genre -- thanks in large part to console exclusives like Microsoft's Forza Motorsport and Sony's Gran Turismo -- but it's as close as you're likely to find for any major genre in gaming.

More than that, the acquisition reflects a continuing trend toward consolidation among the game industry's biggest publishers. The acquisition would also likely make Codemaster's current and future titles part of the EA Play subscription service and, by extension, part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Aside from its modern racing sims, Codemasters boasts a legacy catalog going back to the days of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, with titles like Micro Machines and the Dizzy platform-adventure series that were especially popular in the UK. "The combination of Codemasters and Electronic Arts will enable the development and delivery of a market-leading portfolio of creative and exciting racing games and content to more platforms and more players around the world," the companies said in a joint statement.

"Electronic Arts and Codemasters have a shared ambition to lead the video game racing category," Codemasters Chairman Gerhard Florin added. "The Board of Codemasters firmly believes the company would benefit from EA's knowledge, resources and extensive global scale -- both overall and specifically within the racing sector. We feel this union would provide an exciting and prosperous future for Codemasters, allowing our teams to create, launch and service bigger and better games to an extremely passionate audience."

CNN reports: If it wasn't abundantly clear that content is king, especially in the Covid-19 era, Disney hammered that point home Thursday when it previewed dozens of new series and movies for its Disney+ streaming service. And investors are loving it. Shares of Disney jumped 13% Friday to a new all-time high. The stock is now up more than 20% this year, an impressive feat given that the pandemic has wreaked havoc on Disney's theme park business and forced its movie studios to delay big releases in theaters.

Investors are clearly betting that the streaming strength will offset any lingering weakness in other areas of the House of Mouse empire: Disney raised its forecast for subscriber growth and is upping prices for Disney+. Wall Street analysts rushed to upgrade Disney following Thursday's event. At least 13 analysts boosted their price targets on the stock Friday morning. While Disney initially predicted it would have 60-90 million subscribers by 2024, they're now predicting 230-260 million, CNN reported earlier this week. "The sheer scale of content announced on Thursday was a loud reminder to the rest of the streaming world that Disney+ had an amazing year, acting as a lifeboat to a company ravaged by coronavirus, and that Disney is fully committed to the future of streaming."

Besides the two new Star Wars series announced this week, Disney also announced several new series based on Marvel comic book characters:

• "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" and "WandaVision"

• Samuel L. Jackson (as Nick Fury) in "Secret Invasion"

• Don Cheadle as War Machine in "Armor Wars"

• More Marvel-based shows about Hawkeye, Moon Knight, "Ironheart" Riri Williams, She Hulk, and Ms. Marvel

• A series of shorts titled "I Am Groot" and a "Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special"

Other newly-announced Disney+ shows include:

• A live action Pinocchio starring Tom Hanks
• A reboot of "The Mighty Ducks" starring Emilio Estevez

Christopher Nolan isn't too happy with Warner Bros' decision to send all 17 of its films slated for release in 2021 to HBO Max on the same day they're released. Nolan, whose blockbuster movies for Warner Bros have made billions, called HBO Max "the worst streaming service," adding that this shift in Hollywood is "a sign of great danger for the people who work in the movie industry." NPR reports: Nolan was asked whether the move to streaming is really about the pandemic or something bigger — Netflix had more 2020 Oscar nominations than any other studio. "There is this idea that that's been sort of put forward a lot, that the pandemic is sort of accelerating a trend that was already happening," he said. "But 2019 was the biggest year ever for movies financially. That doesn't suit the narrative that the tech companies or the big corporations kind of want to put out there right now.

"But the reality is there was enormous success in 2019 and 2018 wasn't bad either. If you're asking where moviegoing is going, I think the long-term health of the movie business depends on people's desire to get together and experience a story together. And I don't see any signs that that's going anywhere anytime soon." Would you agree with Nolan, or do you applaud Warner Bros' embrace of streaming?