Starting today, owners of non-Tesla electric vehicles can juice up their batteries at select Superchargers in France and Norway. Drivers can find eligible locations in the Tesla app. Based on screenshots Tesla shared, there are 20 such sites in France and 15 in Norway.

Tesla started opening up broader access to its Supercharger network in November. It initially allowed drivers of non-Tesla EVs to charge their car at 10 stations in the Netherlands. The pilot is open to EV drivers who live in the Netherlands, France, Norway, Germany and Belgium.

Only CCS-enabled vehicles are supported for now. Tesla owners will still be able to charge at Supercharger stations as normal, though drivers of other EVs will need to pay some additional fees to “support charging a broad range of vehicles and adjustments to our sites to accommodate these vehicles.”

The company said it will keep an eye on possible congestion at each site. Future expansion of the pilot will depend on capacity, though Tesla said that “more customers using the Supercharger network enables faster expansion.” It aims to eventually open all of its sites to all EV owners. Tesla said it has long been its ambition to open Supercharger locations to non-Tesla EVs to boost the overall availability of charging locations and encourage more drivers to opt for an electric vehicle (while earning some more scratch, of course).

Source: Engadget – Tesla is opening more of its European Superchargers to third-party EVs

Pinterest is expanding its augmented reality “try on” feature to home furniture. With the update, users will be able to preview how furniture and other home decor will look in their space.

The company has teamed up with major retailers, including Wayfair, Crate & Barrel, Macy’s and Target, which have made more than 20,000 products to the service. And, like Pinterest’s earlier AR try-on features for beauty products, the new furniture pins are shoppable, so users can buy the items they are trying out.

Pinterest isn’t the first to use augmented reality for furniture shopping — Ikea introduced an AR-powered app in 2017 — the app is also able to recommend specific items based on your previous searches and pins you’ve saved. “Home decor and redesigning and planning for the future is one of the main things people come to Pinterest for,” says Jeremy King, Pinterest’s head of engineering.

While the new pins have an obvious benefit to retailers, King says the platform’s creators are also interested in the feature. Pinterest has been leaning into creator-centric features over the last year, and while AR shopping isn’t explicitly a creator tool, it gives the app’s lifestyle influencers another avenue to create (potentially monetizable) content.

And while the company has had shoppable AR for beauty products for years, the addition of furniture will vastly expand the number of shoppable pins with “try on” enabled, from 14,000 beauty pins to 80,000 home decor pins.

In addition to boosting Pinterest’s commerce features, having a catalog of shoppable AR objects would seem to make the service well-positioned for an eventual metaverse play, should one ever materialize. “We’re definitely watching it,” King says of the metaverse. “The good news is all this technology translates exactly into the metaverse. I think it’s on its way, but there’s not a lot of people shopping for physical objects yet in the metaverse.”

Source: Engadget – Pinterest adds augmented reality furniture shopping to its app

Grindr is still facing trouble in China. Bloombergreports the gay dating app has disappeared from Apple’s App Store in the country, with researchers at Qimai estimating the software was removed on January 27th. There was no immediate explanation for the departure, but it came just days after China’s Cyberspace Administration launched a campaign to purge illegal online material, porn and rumors ahead of the Winter Olympics.

We’ve asked Apple and Grindr for comment. The app’s departure came after weeks of glitches with Grindr’s service, such as problems adding likes or sending messages.

Homosexuality is not a crime in China. Nonetheless, the country has occasionally censored gay and other LGBT content. Bloombergnotes the National Radio and Television Administration has recently used homophobic terms to blast androgynous-looking men, and has called for boycotts of gay male love stories. If regulators ordered Grindr’s removal, it may have been part of this larger campaign to impose social conformity.

With that said, Grindr already had a fraught relationship with the Chinese government. The company was Chinese-owned before it was forced to sell due to US sanctions, and China-based rivals like Blued remain on the App Store despite Grindr’s disappearance. If those apps persist, their presence would suggest China singled out Grindr instead of targeting all gay dating apps.

Whatever the reasons, the removal highlights a constant problem for Apple and other foreign app store owners who want to operate in China. While they may tout the importances of freedom and privacy in their home countries, China’s rules frequently force them to pull apps or exclude features if they want to continue participating in one of the world’s largest mobile device markets. Simply put, companies like Apple have to accept compromises if they want to retain a significant Chinese presence.

Source: Engadget – Dating app Grindr disappears from Apple’s App Store in China