Content: Are you being ripped off? , Future Tech, Legal Troubles, AI, Security, Space News.
Welcome to todays ‘What’s New’ in tech. A roundup of key subjects you should probably know about listed below for your ease of access. If you think we’ve missed a story please email us on queries@ringingtreeit.co.uk and we’ll endeavour to add it.
Are you being ripped off?:
FTC sticks a probe into ‘surveillance pricing’ Big Biz uses to gouge us all | 2 Minute Read
“The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into “surveillance pricing,” a phenomenon likely familiar to anyone who’s had to buy something in an incognito browser window to avoid paying a premium.”
Future Tech:
Scientists are making ‘super batteries’ out of rock | 2 Minute Read
“Future electric vehicles could run on “super batteries” made of rocks, according to researchers.”
Musk says Tesla to use humanoid robots next year | 2 Minute Read
“Tesla boss Elon Musk says the electric car maker will start producing and using humanoid robots from next year. In a social media post, Mr Musk said the robots will first be used by Tesla, which will start making them to sell in 2026.”
Chinese researchers create four-gram drone that might fly forever | 3 Minute Read
“Chinese researchers have created a drone that weighs just over four grams, less than a sheet of printer paper and may be able to fly indefinitely.”
Google U-turn over long-running plan to ditch cookies | 3 Minute Read
“In a surprise move Google has abandoned a plan it first announced four years ago to block third-party cookies from its Chrome internet browser. The UK’s data privacy watchdog said it was “disappointed” by the decision.”
Legal Troubles:
EU threatens to fine Meta for saying Facebook is ‘free’ | 2 Minute Read
“The European Union says it has notified Meta that its “pay or consent” model for Facebook and Instagram might violate consumer protection laws.”
Oracle coughs up $115M to make privacy case go away | 2 Minute Read
“Oracle has agreed to cough up $115 million to settle a two-year class action lawsuit that alleged misuse of user data.”
School gets an F for using facial recognition on kids in canteen | 3 Minute Read
“The UK’s data protection watchdog has reprimanded a school in Essex for using facial recognition for canteen payments, nearly three years after other schools were warned about doing the same.”
Microsoft: Our licensing terms do not meaningfully raise cloud rivals’ costs | 3 Minute Read
“Microsoft has responded to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) probe into public cloud services and licensing by insisting that its terms “do not meaningfully raise cloud rivals’ costs.””
This Machine Exposes Privacy Violations | 6 Minute Read & 11 Minute Video
“A former Google engineer has built a search engine, webXray, that aims to find illicit online data collection and tracking—with the goal of becoming “the Henry Ford of tech lawsuits.””
AI:
AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry | 6 Minute Read
“Video games and the people who make them are in trouble. An estimated 10,500 people in the industry were laid off in 2023 alone. This year, layoffs in the nearly $200 billion sector have only gotten worse, with studios axing what is believed to be 11,000 more, and counting.”
AI Is Already Taking Jobs in the Video Game Industry | 3 Minute Read & 3 Minute Video
“Losing traction while driving at high speed is generally very bad news. Scientists from the Toyota Research Institute and Stanford University have developed a pair of self-driving cars that use artificial intelligence to do it in a controlled fashion—a trick better known as “drifting”—to push the limits of autonomous driving.”
Websites clamp down as creepy AI crawlers sneak around for snippets | 3 Minute Read
“The internet is becoming significantly more hostile to webpage crawlers, especially those operated for the sake of generative AI, researchers say.”
Security:
Scam warning as fake emails and websites target users after outage | 2 Minute Read
“Cyber-security experts and agencies around the world are warning people about a wave of opportunistic hacking attempts linked to the IT outage.”
Forget security – Google’s reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit | 4 Minute Read
“Google promotes its reCAPTCHA service as a security mechanism for websites, but researchers affiliated with the University of California, Irvine, argue it’s harvesting information while extracting human labour worth billions.”
Cybercrooks spell trouble with typosquatting domains amid CrowdStrike crisis | 3 Minute Read
“Thousands of typosquatting domains are now registered to exploit the desperation of IT admins still struggling to recover from last week’s CrowdStrike outage, researchers say. According to security shop SentinelOne, the number is growing by the day, however, current attempts are still relatively unsophisticated and largely opportunistic.”
Space News:
Curiosity rover is crushing it: Ran over a rock and found pure sulfur | 2 Minute Read
“The Curiosity rover has found something surprising: rocks made of pure sulfur. NASA revealed the find in a post last week, recounting how the rover was trundling up the Gediz Vallis channel, a formation it’s thought was carved by a river around three billion years ago.”
