Tesla recalls 363K vehicles

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Good Afternoon. Welcome to the Friday edition of Refactored. Let’s round up the major tech news before we head into the long weekend!

In today's edition:

• Tesla recalls 363K vehicles.

• Meta gives 7,000 (10%) employees poor performance review.

• Amazon ends remote work.

Reading time is 4 minutes. Let’s dive in!

Main Thing ☕️

Tesla recalls 363K vehicles over self-driving Bug

What: Nearly 363,000 Tesla vehicles were issued a recall yesterday, because of a bug in the full self-driving beta software.

Issue: The full-self driving beta software (that doesn't self drive) has trouble handling intersections. When the feature is engaged, the car might -

• Ignore yellow traffic light, traveling or turning without caution.

• Not come to a complete stop at the stop signs.

• Have trouble adjusting vehicle speed while traveling through certain variable speed zones.

• Go straight while in a turn-only lane!

This might sound like a regular New Jersey driver but its unacceptable for a self-driving car and creates unsafe driving conditions for everyone on the road.

Zoom out: Tesla was one of the first car companies to promise full-self driving, but just like Nuclear Fusion, it’s always a couple of years away. Here’s a tweet from Elon Musk dating Jan 10, 2016:

Meanwhile, other auto-manufacturers are leaping ahead in autonomous self-driving technology. Notably, Mercedes-Benz became the first car company to get legal approval for ‘Level-3’ self-driving capability in the US.

Big Picture 🔍

Meta: About 7,000 or ~10% of the employees were given 'poor' performance reviews, in what could lead to another round of mass layoffs. 11,000 employees were laid off couple of months ago, and some middle managers have been asked to switch to individual contributors, as the company 'flattens' the organization structure.

Amazon: End of remote work at Amazon! All employees will be required to be in the office at least three days a week, beginning May 1, 2023. This week Walmart also ended the remote work policy and a sign of big-tech’s crackdown on remote work.

Hotstar: Disney's Hotstar suffered an outage in India during live streaming of a cricket match, apparently because the company forgot to renew its domain name! Reminds us of the time when Google forgot to update its registration and accidentally sold the 'Google.com' for $12.

Friday Fun