A child rights advocacy organisation in the United States is accusing Google of bypassing parental authority by allowing children to disable parental supervision over Google accounts after they turn 13. Melissa McKay, president of the Digital Childhood Institute, stated on LinkedIn that Google sent her 12-year-old an email that will unlock additional tools once he turns 13, posting screenshots of the email. Among the changes, once children turn the age of 13, they can turn off supervised experiences on YouTube and can add payment methods to Google Pay. Parents will no longer be able to block apps, turn on location sharing without the permission of the child user or block access to payment features. "Google is asserting authority over a boundary that does not belong to them. It reframes parents as a temporary inconvenience to be outgrown and positions corporate platforms as the default replacement," McKay said in a post on LinkedIn.

MIT Technology Review's senior editor for AI shares what he's been thinking about lately. My daughter introduced me to El Estepario Siberiano's YouTube channel a few months back, and I have been obsessed ever since. The Spanish drummer (real name: Jorge Garrido) posts videos of himself playing supercharged cover versions of popular tracks, hitting his drums with such jaw-dropping speed and technique that he makes other pro drummers shake their heads in disbelief. The dozens of reaction videos posted by other musicians are a joy in themselves. Garrido is up-front about the countless hours that it took to get this good. He says he sat behind his kit almost all day, every day for years.

This week, a new range of Google smartphones capable of AI image generation has been launched. But for an increasing number of people, the appeal of a less cutting-edge piece of equipment is proving hard to resist: the point-and-shoot camera. The US footballer Megan Rapinoe was seen snapping from the stands at the Paris Olympics. The model Alexa Chung captioned a recent Instagram of her with a camera: "Just another Millennial with a dependency on Snappy Snaps, fighting digital threat with an analogue mode. " A recent glimpse of home life for Rihanna and A AP Rocky showed a disposable camera lying among the clutter.

A new shortcut allows Apple users to'replace' Siri with the revolutionary AI program ChatGPT on their iPhones and iPads. The technique effectively upgrades Siri with the full power of the chatbot, giving it the ability to dictate emails, suggest recipes and even write song lyrics from scratch with a basic prompt of just a few words. The device will continue to respond using Apple's voice -- but it draws on the chatbot's algorithms and is no longer limited in length. Only people who have a premium developer version of ChatGPT will be able to replace their Siri with the AI model, though. Here's how to activate it: The shortcut has been devised by AI software builder Wrigley McKay.

"Microlegislation" is a term for small pieces of proposed law that cater--sometimes unexpectedly--to narrow interests. Political scientist Amy McKay coined the term. She studied the 564 amendments to the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") considered by the Senate Finance Committee in 2009, as well as the positions of 866 lobbying groups and their campaign contributions. She documented instances where lobbyist comments--on health-care research, vaccine services, and other provisions--were translated directly into microlegislation in the form of amendments. And she found that those groups' financial contributions to specific senators on the committee increased the amendments' chances of passing.

An Oxford University tech spinout has invented a'ground breaking' AI tool that scans users' bodies to provide accurate clothing measurements, with the intention of streamlining the online shopping experience and saving UK retailers billions in returns. Initially founded in 2019 by Duncan McKay, INSEAD MBA and Phil Torr, Professor of Computer Vision and Deep Learning at the University of Oxford, the tech firm went on to be awarded two Innovate UK Grants, and one Future Fashion Factory Grant in partnership with the University of Leeds with funding totalling approximately £1.2 million. McKay said: "I have worked for L'Oreal, Unilever and PepsiCo coming up with new product ideas and consumer solutions – I built an £18m net revenue business in a year whilst at PepsiCo. I got into this because I love innovating – I get a kick out of innovation, building and scaling businesses. I founded Aistetic with Phil Torr as I experienced the problem of poor-fitting clothes personally and we both felt that we could solve this with a technology solution. With the development of our patent-pending solution, we quickly realised that our purpose is bigger than that – we want to make next-gen 3D body modelling available to anyone with a mobile device."

The Mozambique National Institute for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction (INGD) and World Food Programme (WFP) built the case for drones' capacity to give all responders an accurate picture of cyclone damage and flooding extent. Two back-to-back cyclones battered Mozambique in 2019, destroying more than 800,000 hectares of farmland during harvest season. The devastation to crops and livelihoods left nearly two million people facing acute food insecurity. The United Nations (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) responded quickly, with two helicopters to ferry supplies and rescue stranded people. Given flooded roads, the air support was crucial but not nearly enough to distribute food and find stranded people across such a wide area of impact.

Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication. Adapted from The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration by Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees, published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It also contains spoilers for the film Don't Look Up. Streaming just in time for Christmas, Adam McKay's decidedly uncheery Netflix comedy, Don't Look Up, finds Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio playing a pair of intrepid astronomers as they try (and mostly fail) to warn the world about a planet-killing comet that's hurtling toward Earth. From the beginning, the scientists' efforts are marked by futility, encapsulated in an early scene in which Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence) and Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) are brought to the White House to debrief President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) on the impending extinction-level event. Predictably, the meeting goes disastrously.

This article contains spoilers for the film Don't Look Up. Streaming just in time for Christmas, Adam McKay's decidedly uncheery Netflix comedy, Don't Look Up, finds Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio playing a pair of intrepid astronomers as they try (and mostly fail) to warn the world about a planet-killing comet that's hurtling toward Earth. From the beginning, the scientists' efforts are marked by futility, encapsulated in an early scene in which Kate Dibiasky (Lawrence) and Randall Mindy (DiCaprio) are brought to the White House to debrief President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep) on the impending extinction-level event. Predictably, the meeting goes disastrously. The president's son and chief of staff (played by Jonah Hill) lounges on the couch, nurses a bad case of coke sniffles, and proclaims to be "so bored" by all the world-ending comet talk.