privacy

Twenty months into the EU’s campaign to slash red tape, many of the businesses that demanded it are unimpressed. Firms told Politico the “simplification” drive is too slow, too costly, and too complicated. Politico spoke to 17 companies, consultancies, and trade bodies across sectors. A common complaint was that an institution built to write laws is ill-suited […]

The fight over AI’s harms has played out state by state. One US senator wants to make it federal, all at once. Ed Markey has a long list of worries about artificial intelligence. Thirsty data centres. Workplace surveillance. Biased algorithms. Chatbots that prey on children. On Friday the Massachusetts Democrat tried to turn that list […]

Humanoid robots learned to walk years ago. The thing still tripping them up is the hand. 1X has given its NEO home robot new hands, and they are the most interesting thing about it. A robot can stride across a stage and still be useless in a kitchen. Lifting a wet glass takes precision, fast […]

This week, two of the world’s biggest car regulators looked at the same question and reached opposite answers. The question is simple. What should sit between a human and a moving vehicle? In the United States, the top auto-safety official floated pulling the steering wheel out altogether. In Europe, new rules took effect that point […]

Anthropic has built a feature that does something odd for a tech company. It counts how much you lean on its product, then gently suggests you might want to lean a little less. The feature is called Reflect, and it landed in beta on Thursday. It is a dashboard, tucked into Claude’s settings, that shows […]

The European Parliament has voted to advance a bill letting tech companies legally scan for child sexual abuse material. On Thursday in Strasbourg, lawmakers sent the proposal to EU member states for approval, Politico reports. The twist is that Parliament rejected this same bill in March. It was revived after a push by the centre-right European […]

Two 15-year-olds in San Mateo learned this week that a driverless taxi can still tell on you. The pair were drinking alcohol and shooting Orbeez, soft water-filled pellets, out of a moving Waymo on Monday afternoon. The car’s remote monitors spotted it, called 911, and pulled the vehicle over to wait for police, the Associated […]

A new wave of mandatory safety technology took effect for cars and vans across the EU on 7 July. Every newly manufactured passenger car and van must now carry advanced driver aids, the European Commission has confirmed. The headline additions are an advanced emergency brake that detects pedestrians and cyclists, and a driver distraction warning system. […]

Meta is updating its smart glasses to shut off the camera if the recording light has been physically tampered with or destroyed. The change, announced in a 7 July blog post, closes a loophole that let modders turn the glasses into covert recorders. A white LED lights up whenever the glasses capture photos or video, signalling […]