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What AI "remembers" about you is privacy's next frontier

MIT Technology Review

What AI "remembers" about you is privacy's next frontier Agents' technical underpinnings create the potential for breaches that expose the entire mosaic of your life. The ability to remember you and your preferences is rapidly becoming a big selling point for AI chatbots and agents. Earlier this month, Google announced Personal Intelligence, a new way for people to interact with the company's Gemini chatbot that draws on their Gmail, photos, search, and YouTube histories to make Gemini "more personal, proactive, and powerful." It echoes similar moves by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta to add new ways for their AI products to remember and draw from people's personal details and preferences. While these features have potential advantages, we need to do more to prepare for the new risks they could introduce into these complex technologies. Personalized, interactive AI systems are built to act on our behalf, maintain context across conversations, and improve our ability to carry out all sorts of tasks, from booking travel to filing taxes.


From bones to steel: Why ice skates were a terrible idea that worked

Popular Science

Fleming went on to win the gold medal. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. From figure skating to ice hockey, many of the most popular winter sports stem from a long history of people simply playing around on ice skates . Part of what makes a good skater so fun to watch is the juxtaposition of their clear technical skill and the seeming effortlessness with which they glide across the ice. They make it seem so natural.


Rules fail at the prompt, succeed at the boundary

MIT Technology Review

From the Gemini Calendar prompt-injection attack of 2026 to the September 2025 state-sponsored hack using Anthropic's Claude code as an automated intrusion engine, the coercion of human-in-the-loop agentic actions and fully autonomous agentic workflows are the new attack vector for hackers. In the Anthropic case, roughly 30 organizations across tech, finance, manufacturing, and government were affected. Anthropic's threat team assessed that the attackers used AI to carry out 80% to 90% of the operation: reconnaissance, exploit development, credential harvesting, lateral movement, and data exfiltration, with humans stepping in only at a handful of key decision points. This was not a lab demo; it was a live espionage campaign. The attackers hijacked an agentic setup (Claude code plus tools exposed via Model Context Protocol (MCP)) and jailbroke it by decomposing the attack into small, seemingly benign tasks and telling the model it was doing legitimate penetration testing. The same loop that powers developer copilots and internal agents was repurposed as an autonomous cyber-operator.


BBC director general to depart in April after resignation

BBC News

The BBC's director general is to leave the broadcaster in April, five months after he announced his resignation amid a storm about the way Panorama edited a Donald Trump speech. Tim Davie stayed in his post after announcing his resignation in November, but will depart on 2 April. He will be replaced by an interim DG, Rhodri Talfan Davies, who has been director of nations since 2021 and is currently leading the BBC's work on generative AI. The search is under way for a permanent director general, one of the most demanding jobs in the British media. Davie has been responsible for dealing with a series of scandals and crises since becoming the BBC's 17th director general in 2020.


UK wants to give web publishers a 'fairer' deal with Google's AI overviews

Engadget

Apple could unveil Gemini-powered Siri in Feb. UK wants to give web publishers a'fairer' deal with Google's AI overviews It's recommending measures including an'opt out' and proper attribution. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is recommending measures to give publishers more control over how their content is used in Google's AI overviews. The aim is to "provide a fairer deal for content publishers, particularly news organizations," the CMA's chief executive Sarah Cardell said in a press release . With Google accounting for more than 90 percent of search inquiries in the UK, the CMA recently designated the company with "strategic market status" for search under the Digital Market Act. That allows the regulator to apply "conduct requirements" on Google to promote competition and avoid antitrust issues.


The Download: A bid to treat blindness, and bridging the internet divide

MIT Technology Review

Plus: TikTok won't be heading to court this week The first human test of a rejuvenation method will begin "shortly" Life Biosciences, a small Boston startup founded by Harvard professor and life-extension evangelist David Sinclair, has won FDA approval to proceed with the first targeted attempt at age reversal in human volunteers. The company plans to try to treat eye disease with a radical rejuvenation concept called "reprogramming" that has recently attracted hundreds of millions in investment for Silicon Valley firms like Altos Labs, New Limit, and Retro Biosciences, backed by many of the biggest names in tech. Today, an estimated 2.2 billion people still have either limited or no access to the internet, largely because they live in remote places. But that number could drop this year, thanks to tests of stratospheric airships, uncrewed aircraft, and other high-altitude platforms for internet delivery. Although Google shuttered its high-profile internet balloon project Loon in 2021, work on other kinds of high-altitude platform stations has continued behind the scenes. Now, several companies claim they have solved Loon's problems--and are getting ready to prove the tech's internet beaming potential starting this year.


Shokz OpenFit Pro review: Reducing distractions while keeping your ears open

Engadget

Apple could unveil Gemini-powered Siri in Feb. These open-fit earbuds actually make a difference with background noise. Rarely does a set of open-fit earbuds actually impress me. I tend to find them underwhelming because overall sound quality is subpar compared to the more "traditional" in-ear models. The first time I used the Shokz OpenFit Pro ($249.95)


No Phone, No Social Safety Net: Welcome to the 'Offline Club'

WIRED

No Phone, No Social Safety Net: Welcome to the'Offline Club' Across Europe's largest cities, people are gathering for semi-silent, offline hangouts, in search of an experience that isn't mediated through their smartphones. On cue, the room fell silent. A man seated to my left at a long wooden table began to scratch at a piece of paper with a coloring pencil. To my right, another guy picked up a book. Across the way, someone buried themselves in a puzzle.


Windscribe review: Despite the annoyances, it has the right idea

Engadget

The first step is always to figure out how easy or hard the VPN is to use. Windscribe and other VPNs are important tools, but you'll never use them if the UI gets in the way. I tested Windscribe's desktop apps on Windows and Mac, its mobile apps on iOS and Android and its Chrome and Firefox browser extensions. To start with, let me say that installing Windscribe is a breeze no matter where you do it. The downloaders and installers handle their own business, only requiring you to grant a few permissions. The apps arrive on your system ready to use out of the box.


Amazon's latest round of layoffs will affect 16,000 workers

Engadget

Apple could unveil Gemini-powered Siri in Feb. Amazon's latest round of layoffs will affect 16,000 workers The news was first leaked in an email mistakenly sent early to workers. Sydney, Australia - 2022-07-22 Amazon prime boxes and envelopes delivered to a front door of residential building. Amazon has confirmed that it's letting go of 16,000 workers and employees across its organization. In an announcement by company SVP Beth Galetti, she explained that Amazon was going through organizational changes to reduce layers and remove bureaucracy. Affected employees in the US will be given 90 days to look for another internal role and will receive severance pay if they do not find any.