Toyota announced a pair of voluntary safety recalls this week affecting two of its newest products. The 2022 Tundra pickup and 2023 BZ4X electric SUV are the subjects of two separate recalls that cover more than 46,000 vehicles in the US.

The Tundra recall concerns rear axle nuts that can loosen over time and potentially fall off. “If complete separation occurs, this can affect vehicle stability and brake performance, increasing the risk of a crash,” Toyota said in a statement. Owners of the defective trucks will be notified by the end of July, and Toyota says approximately 46,000 Tundras are affected.

The BZ4X recall is significantly smaller; Toyota says roughly 260 vehicles are involved. This one is far more serious, however. “After low-mileage use, all of the hub bolts on the wheel can loosen to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle,” Toyota said. It’s pretty obvious why this is not good.

In fact, Toyota says the affected BZ4X SUVs should not be driven until a fix is performed. However, “no remedy is available at this time,” Toyota said. “Until the remedy is available, any authorized Toyota dealer will pick up the vehicle and provide a loaner vehicle free of charge to the owner.”

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This recall also applies to the BZ4X’s kissin’ cousin, the Subaru Solterra. According to Reuters, about 2,600 Solterras are affected globally, though a US spokesperson said none of the EVs have been delivered to customers.

To check if your car is affected by this or any other recall, visit CNET’s how-to guide.

Mehul DasJun 24, 2022 15:55:07 IST

Verifying a user’s age is one of the biggest challenges that social media platforms face today. To counter that, Meta-owned Instagram is now testing a number of new methods for age verification, including having the user upload a video selfie and then letting their own piece of AI software judge their age.

At present, some users when they update their date of birth on the platform to reflect that they are over 18, are required to show upload an ID. Because Instagram has encountered several cases where teenagers have used fake IDs, they had to come up with a new way to verify their age. Instagram also had to face concerned parents and patrons over the fact that people had to upload IDs, given Meta’s coloured history with collecting a user’s data.

While the ID-based system will stay on for the time being, Instagram is developing a number of other ways to verify the age of a user. In a test run, they are asking users to get three mutual friends who can verify their age. They are calling this “social vouching,” although clearly, there is a lot of potential for abuse here.

The most interesting way that they are going about this age verification business is by using AI. Instagram is asking some users to shoot a selfie video and submit it for verification. An AI bot will then study the footage and check for a number of parameters, and then “judge” whether one is indeed over the age of 18 years.

Instagram is using the services of an online verification company called Yoti, a company that uses AI to verify the user’s age.

Instagram says that Yoti trains its AI on “anonymous images of diverse people from around the world who have transparently allowed Yoti to use their data and who can ask Yoti to delete their data at any time.” And for people under the age of 13, Yoti collected data with parents or guardians giving explicit consent.

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Instagram says that once you upload a video selfie and Yoti uses it to confirm your age, the image isn’t used for anything else, and is deleted after your age has been confirmed. However, given Instagram’s parent company Meta’s history of misusing user data, one should be cautious to take this approach.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, Google’s chief people officer Fiona Cicconi sent a staff-wide email to employees on Friday informing them of Google’s response to the ruling. Among other things, the email states that Googlers that they can “apply for relocation without justification,” and that people in charge of the relocation process “will be aware of the situation” in assessing their requests.

The Supreme Court’s ruling does not make abortion illegal throughout the US — instead, it leaves the decision up to individual states. A number of states have immediately restricted abortion rights, including Louisiana, Missouri and Kentucky. Other states, including California, where Google is headquartered, have vowed to protect abortion rights within their borders.

Here’s the letter in full:

Hi everyone,

This morning the US Supreme Court issued a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that rolls back Roe v. Wade.

This is a profound change for the country that deeply affects so many of us, especially women. Everyone will respond in their own way, whether that’s wanting space and time to process, speaking up, volunteering outside of work, not wanting to discuss it at all, or something else entirely. Please be mindful of what your co-workers may be feeling and, as always, treat each other with respect.

Equity is extraordinarily important to us as a company, and we share concerns about the impact this ruling will have on people’s health, lives, and careers. We will keep working to make information on reproductive healthcare accessible across our products and continue our work to protect user privacy.

To support Googlers and their dependents, our US benefits plan and health insurance covers out-of-state medical procedures that are not available where an employee lives and works. Googlers can also apply for relocation without justification, and those overseeing this process will be aware of the situation. If you need additional support, please connect 1:1 with a People Consultant via [link to internal tool redacted].

We will be arranging support sessions for Googlers in the US in the coming days. These will be posted to Googler News.

Please don’t hesitate to lean on your Google community in the days ahead and continue to take good care of yourselves and each other.

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The Verge has reached out to Google to clarify whether the relocation policy is new, or if it’s be changed due to the Supreme Court’s decision. We will update this story if we hear back.