By rolling back auto industry fuel efficiency goals, US president Donald Trump hopes to make new cars cheaper. But prices won't drop for years, and consumers will spend more on gas in the meantime. The Trump administration says its proposal to roll back vehicle fuel economy standards, announced officially in the Oval Office on Wednesday, is an attempt to shave dollars off the ballooning cost of new cars in the US. But the intended price drops likely won't show up on dealership lots and showroom floors for months if not years, given the length of automakers' product planning schedule. It would also likely force Americans to pay more, long-term, at another place they tend to visit more frequently: the pump.

From gas to groceries, has Trump kept his promise to tackle rising prices? President Donald Trump was swept to power for a second time on the back of a central campaign promise to tackle inflation. The steep rise in the cost of living was top of voters' minds and Trump blamed President Joe Biden. He also made sweeping promises to bring down prices for Americans starting on day one. One year on from his victory, BBC Verify revisits some of the president's claims.

Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) raised concerns over potential misuse, such as for spreading misinformation. In response two counter measures emerged: machine learning-based detectors that predict if text is synthetic, and LLM watermarking, which subtly marks generated text for identification and attribution. Meanwhile, humans are known to adjust language to their conversational partners both syntactically and lexically. By implication, it is possible that humans or unwatermarked LLMs could unintentionally mimic properties of LLM generated text, making counter measures unreliable. In this work we investigate the extent to which such conversational adaptation happens. We call the concept $\textit{mimicry}$ and demonstrate that both humans and LLMs end up mimicking, including the watermarking signal even in seemingly improbable settings. This challenges current academic assumptions and suggests that for long-term watermarking to be reliable, the likelihood of false positives needs to be significantly lower, while longer word sequences should be used for seeding watermarking mechanisms.

At the moment they may exist only in our wildest dreams or in Hollywood science-fiction epics. But humanoid robots that wash dishes, vacuum the carpets, cook and pick up dirty laundry could be available within a decade – and all for the price of a family car. These machines – equipped with hands, arms and legs capable of doing basic household chores – are currently in development around the world. Pulkit Agrawal, associate professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said: 'Silicon Valley companies are promising this year you can buy a robot, but my guess would be more like five to ten years, at least. 'The technology is progressing, but it's good to be realistic that it will take time to deploy.'

Last week, WIRED published a deep-dive investigation into Trickbot, the prolific Russian ransomware gang. This week, US and UK authorities sanctioned 11 alleged members of Trickbot and its related group, Conti, including Maksim Galochkin, aka Bentley, one of the alleged members whose real-world identity we confirmed through our investigation. In addition to the US and UK sanctions, the US Justice Department also unsealed indictments filed in three US federal courts against Galochkin and eight other alleged Trickbot members for ransomware attacks against entities in Ohio, Tennessee, and California. Because everyone charged is a Russian national, however, it is unlikely they will ever be arrested or face trial. While Russian cybercriminals typically enjoy immunity, the same may not remain true for the country's military hackers.

There's just nothing like that "new car smell," many people believe. There is a health angle to consider, though. A recent study by the Beijing Institute of Technology and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, found that the cabin of a new vehicle contained 20 common "volatile organic compounds" (VOCs), which could potentially contain cancer-causing agents. The Environmental Protection Agency defines VOCs as "compounds that have a high vapor pressure and low water solubility," which are found in paints, pharmaceuticals and petroleum fuels. In particular, the study found high levels of formaldehyde (34.9%) and acetaldehyde (60.5%) inside a new car.

Tesla is removing sensors from its cars as it shifts toward a system based solely on eight cameras that feed information into its self-driving artificial intelligence. Ultrasonic sensors (USS), which emit high-frequency sounds that bounce off of potential obstacles, will in the coming months be phased out of new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles sold in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Taiwan, and then globally. They will be phased out of Model 4 and Model X cars next year. The announcement from the company led by CEO Elon Musk comes as Tesla is facing intense regulatory and legal scrutiny over a series of crashes involving its self-driving system. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) identified 392 reported accidents as of May 2022 involving cars with assisted-driver features - out of those, 273 involved Teslas. Tesla is removing sensors from its cars as it shifts toward a system based solely on eight cameras that feed information into its self-driving artificial intelligence.

The dream of roads filled with fully autonomous vehicles is, in the end, about safety. Properly trained and tuned AI will take human error, like driver fatigue and DUIs, out of the equation. But despite the autonomous trucks taking to the road and ride services being rolled out in Las Vegas and the Valley of the Sun, that dream of safer, fully automated vehicles zipping around in perfect harmony is still further down the distant pike -- if it arrives at all. In the meantime, especially in new cars, drivers now operate in a kind of liminal space between "let the car drive itself" and bearing full responsibility for each action these fast-moving tons of steel take. Automated driving features can have the knock-on effect of increasing driver fatigue and distraction.

It's been a difficult year for shoppers looking for cars, electronics and anything that requires a computer chip. A global semiconductor shortage has left many companies unable to fill orders or even finish products they've started assembling, clogging up warehouses and leaving a lack of inventory across the nation. Buying a new PlayStation 5 console remains nearly impossible. Several automakers have slowed down production in their factories, delaying shipments of new vehicles. It's even impacted more obscure products--just try to find an affordable dog washing booth these days.

Earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a report documenting crashes involving cars with automated driving components. The report looked at data on Automated Driving Systems (commonly referred to as "self-driving cars") and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (cars equipped with lane-keeping technology and adaptive cruise control, such as Tesla's Autopilot). The New York Times covered the report's release. A quick scroll through Twitter showed that the public divided: Is this technology something to praise, or something to fear? Ultimately, the NHTSA report, while an essential first step, doesn't leave a clear picture whether self-driving cars will prevent crashes when they arrive in the future.