🌏 Tesla goes off roading

Plus: Pork prices in the US are still sizzling.

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Photo: Alexandria Sage (Reuters)

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Tesla is recalling nearly every car it has sold in the US. The autopilot feature in more than 2 million vehicles will need to be updated following a two-year investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Starlink traffic more than tripled this year globally. SpaceX’s satellites have a monopoly in South American nations.

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Ministers from nearly 200 countries agreed to transition from fossil fuels. The accord reached at the United Nations’ climate summit fell short of completely phasing out hydrocarbons.

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Argentina devalued the peso by 54%. The currency policy is part of president Javier Milei’s plan to shock the country’s economy.

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Pork prices in the US are still sizzling

It’s no secret that Americans love bacon. In one US survey, more than 20% of respondents said they’d be happy to eat bacon every day for the rest of their lives. But love only goes so far.

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US consumers’ demand for pork has waned dramatically over the past year. Pork may have gotten cheaper in November, but prices still remain at historic highs that consumers aren’t willing to pay.

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Pork producers and consumers are feeling the heat—but can Canada and South Korea save the day?


Netflix is playing the numbers game

Netflix has historically kept its data under lock and key. But the trove of information it released yesterday—18,000 titles line by line on an Excel spreadsheet, covering 99% of all viewing on Netflix and nearly 100 billion hours viewed—flipped that script.

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But as Quartz’s Ananya Bhattacharya asks, what can this data really help anyone evaluate? Aside from rankings that make for fun visualizations (like the one below), viewing time and how often people rewatch longer series and shorter movies can’t be an apples-to-apples comparison—release dates play a big part in consumption levels. Also, when competitors aren’t releasing similar data, there’s nothing to measure it against. Context, as always, matters.

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Starbucks wants to give its customers another kind of charge

Caffeine buzzes are great, but Starbucks hopes its customers will take advantage of another kind of fuel-up at its stores.

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The Seattle-based coffee chain opened electric vehicle charging stations at 15 locations, pictured below, along the thousand-mile stretch between Denver and Seattle as part of its partnership with Swedish automaker Volvo.

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Quartz’s Laura Bratton has the latest details of the partnership—including which kind of plug the stations will use (hint: it’s not Tesla’s… yet).


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Surprising discoveries

One more Tesla thing: It really, really doesn’t want people reselling Cybertrucks. In fact, it may even sue those who try to do so within their first year of ownership.

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Solar- and wind-powered electricity is expected to reach a milestone in the US. For the first time next year, combined generation from both sources will surpass that of coal.

More than 60% of people who speak French are in Africa. The capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo has as many speakers as does Paris.

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Menswear is wholly embracing the ballet flat. Easy to throw on? Comfortable? Elegant? Honestly, it makes perfect sense.

The Mars rover has been hanging out on the planet for 1,000 days. Its job is pretty much done–all that’s left is somehow getting the robot’s samples back to Earth.

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Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, Cybertruck eBay listings, and velvet ballet flats to talk@qz.com. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Morgan Haefner.