Facebook will not notify the more than half a billion people caught up in a huge leak of personal information, it has said. Over the weekend, it emerged that a vast trove of data on more than 530 million users – containing information including their phone numbers and dates of birth – was being made freely available online. Facebook said that the data was gathered before 2019. It later said that " "malicious actors" had obtained the data prior to September 2019 by "scraping" profiles using a vulnerability in the platform's tool for synching contacts, and that the loophole that allowed them to do so had now been closed. But it said that it did not inform users when the leak happened, and does not have plans to do so now.

Neuralink co-founder Max Hodak, who started the brain-computer interface company with Elon Musk, has claimed that humans have the technology to recreate Jurassic Park. "We could probably build jurassic park if we wanted to. "Maybe 15 years of breeding engineering to get super exotic novel species". It is unclear who Hodak is referring to when he says "we". Neuralink has demonstrated a chip implanted into the brain of a pig and a monkey, but does not appear to have made any announcements with regards to animal cloning. If Hodak is referring to scientists and genetic researchers as a whole, the prospect becomes more feasible – although is undeniably difficult. Scientists have cloned a number of animals, including wolves, dogs, cats, monkeys and, famously, sheep. A black-footed ferret, which is on the US endangered species list, has also been cloned, but scientists have not managed to create an extinct animal yet. Starship SN15 test dates set as SpaceX launches debris hotline Aliens would be'friendly but we can't gamble on it' Scientists connect human brain to computer wirelessly for first time ever Nasa reveals Easter eggs hidden on Mars perseverance Aliens would be'friendly but we can't gamble on it' "Biodiversity (antifragility) is definitely valuable; conservation is important and makes sense.

Facebook says that a vast trove of personal information, uploaded freely to the internet, was harvested as part of a feature gone wrong. The data was not stolen in a hack but instead through malicious users of its "contact importer", it said. Though that feature was intended to allow people to upload their contacts from their phone to Facebook, and find people they might know, malicious actors were able to use it to scrape the personal information of people who were already on the platform. That happened before September 2019, Facebook said in a blog post, and the bug that made it possible has now been fixed. But over the weekend it became clear that the data had become availably publicly online, vastly increasing the risk that anyone involved in it might face. That includes 535 million accounts, which belong to people including chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook has addressed rumours that his company is building a car in a new interview. While he declined to confirm any real details of what Apple is planning to release – if anything – he did give an indication of what the company might look to do if it does release a car, as rumoured. He noted that "an autonomous car is a robot" and that Apple looks to integrate hardware and software in all of its products. But the company "investigate so many things internally", many of which never actually "see the light of day", he told Kara Swisher in an interview for her New York Times podcast, Sway. In the same intervew, Mr Cook also discussed his commitment to free speech, his hope that controversial social media app Parler could return to the App Store, and Apple's ongoing fight with competitors including Facebook.

The first wireless commands to a computer have been demonstrated in a breakthrough for people with paralysis. The system is able to transmit brain signals at "single-neuron resolution and in full broadband fidelity", say researchers at Brown University in the US. A clinical trial of the BrainGate technology involved a small transmitter that connects to a person's brain motor cortex. Trial participants with paralysis used the system to control a tablet computer, the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering reports. The participants were able to achieve similar typing speeds and point-and-click accuracy as they could with wired systems.