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EU Wants Addictive Designs Should Be Removed By Meta

2026-07-31T15:14:41.497+08:00

The European Union (EU) has accused Meta last 10 July of breaching its social media law by designing Facebook and Instagram to get users hooked, and demanded it disable "key addictive features" like infinite scrolling.

The EU's executive arm issued a fresh set of charges against Meta Platforms as part of its investigation under the 27-nation bloc's strict digital rule book known as the Digital Services Act. The sweeping set of regulations from Brussels requires tech platforms to protect internet users under threat of hefty fines.

The European Commission said Meta failed to properly assess the risks its design features pose to the physical and mental health of users, including minors. And while the company has tools and controls to help manage Facebook and Instagram use, it said they were easily overridden, dismissed, or technically challenging to use.

Meta "needs to implement design changes" to Instagram and Facebook, such as disabling "key addictive features" like autoplay of videos and infinite scroll so they're not turned on by default, the commission said in its preliminary findings.

Meta now has the chance to respond and defend itself before the commission issues its final decision, which could result in a fine worth up to 6% of the company's global annual revenue.

Meta said that the preliminary findings do not recognize the steps that the company has already taken to protect teens.

"Since this investigation began, we rolled out Teen Accounts that automatically protect teens and put parents in control - allowing them to block access to Instagram at night and cap daily screen time at just 15 minutes," Meta said in a prepared statement. "We share the European Commission's commitment to providing teens with safe, positive online experiences and will continue to engage constructively with them."

Europe is committed to enforcing its legislation that holds platforms accountable for addictive design features, said Henna Virkkunen, an executive vice-president at the commission overseeing tech.

"Protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans must be a priority for social media platforms," Virkkunen said in a written statement.

Facebook and Instagram design features, including personalized recommendations and push notifications, serve up an endless stream of content, putting users' brains on "autopilot" and fueling compulsive use, the commission said. Meanwhile, screen time controls that parents can impose on their teens' devices can be "easily dismissed" and don't result in a meaningful reduction of use, the commission said. And the controls are undermined by the technical expertise, time and effort that parents need to understand and use them, it said. The commission's proposed design changes also included finding better ways to encourage screen time breaks, and changing the content recommendation system so that it's less "engagement-oriented."

The Effects Of Australia's Social Media Law

2026-07-29T16:26:19.138+08:00

Australia's new social media law took effect last 10 December 2025, raising the age to open or maintain social media accounts to 16. It was a global first. The law called for the biggest social media platforms to do more than just ask for a birthdate. Now, they would be legally required to take responsibility for verifying and enforcing an age minimum.

Half a year on, the world is watching closely. Are the restrictions working?

Some critics and media outlets have prematurely concluded that the policy has failed. They point to early surveys showing that under-16 social media use has fallen only partially, and that most kids are still accessing social media. And they argue that age limits will never work, that these laws miss the real problem of harmful platform design, and that the countries considering following Australia—of which there are many—should reconsider.

The truth is far more encouraging. There are several promising trends that other countries are now building upon, reflecting the importance of Australia's pioneering policies.

It started with a relatively smooth rollout. All 10 platforms took steps to verify users' ages and remove accounts of those under 16. Now, fewer kids in the land down under are using social media, and more than a dozen other countries, including Indonesia, Canada, Malaysia, the UAE, France, Spain, and the U.K., are beginning their own journeys to rein in social media.

The world is, and should, follow Oz's lead.

When Australia's law went into effect last December, 10 social media platforms—Facebook, Kick, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, Snapchat, X, and YouTube—removed 4.7 million under-16 accounts belonging to an estimated 2.5 million Aussies between the ages of eight and 15.

To be sure, that does not mean that these kids can't access social media altogether, since many likely have several accounts across platforms. But it shows that the law made immediate progress and compelled platforms to take action on a massive scale.

Still, some have said that this decline is too modest, suggested that kids could also be finding workarounds, and concluded that therefore, the law is failing. So let's look more closely at the numbers.

Several early studies indicate that social media use and account ownership among Australian children under 16 declined between 9 percent and 40 percent. To understand this wide variation between studies, it's important to know what Australia's social media age minimum actually does.

The law prevents those under the age of 16 from creating or keeping accounts on covered platforms by limiting the age at which minors can sign the contract required to open an account and consent to share their data via a terms of service.

Some studies examine account ownership, others measure actual usage, and still others focus on either individual platforms or multiple platforms combined, leading to substantial variation in the results of different studies.

The law does not eliminate children's access to social media content. That is because it was never designed to. Account-based access—and the data the user agrees to share with the platform upon sign-up—is the vehicle for many of the worst social media harms that children experience, such as late-night notifications, interactions with anonymous strangers, posting one's images online, "like" counts, and algorithmic recommendations designed to maximally "engage" or addict that particular child.

For this reason, studies that measure whether a kid has access to any platform, whether an underage user is using an account or not, will greatly underestimate the law's effects.

So social media use among Australian kids has declined somewhat. And while disappointment about the rate and speed of decline is understandable, it ultimately misunderstands how the law was crafted.

OpenAI Reported A Security Breach Inside Hugging Face System

2026-07-22T15:23:44.885+08:00

OpenAI admitted last 21 July that one of its AI models breached the systems of Hugging Face, the unaffiliated AI hosting platform, during an internal cybersecurity test that went awry. The models reportedly escaped their isolated testing environment and reached Hugging Face's systems from there. Hugging Face initially attributed the breach to an "external AI agent."

In a blog post published Tuesday afternoon, OpenAI detailed the steps that led the models to compromise the service.

"After investigating, we now know that this particular incident was driven by a combination of OpenAI models — including GPT‑5.6 Sol and an even more capable pre-release model, all with reduced cyber refusals for evaluation purposes — while being internally tested on a benchmark⁠ of cyber capabilities," the post reads.

In particular, the breach appears to have focused on ExploitGym, a publicly hosted benchmark measuring models' ability to execute attacks based on existing vulnerabilities. Benchmarks like ExploitGym are commonly used in model training to refine specific skills, but this is the first known incident in which that testing resulted in an actual cyberattack.

In this case, the model in question should not have even had internet access, outside of a specific tool that enabled models to install software packages they might need to complete their task. Instead, the model was able to find an undisclosed vulnerability in the package-installer program, which it used to access the broader internet at will.

"The models were hyperfocused on finding a solution for ExploitGym, going to extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal," OpenAI's post reads. "After gaining Internet access, the models inferred that Hugging Face potentially hosted models, datasets and solutions for ExploitGym. Knowing this, the model searched for and successfully found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation."

Ultimately, the models found vulnerabilities in Hugging Face's infrastructure that allowed them to "obtain test solutions directly from Hugging Face's production database," effectively providing the answers to the benchmark.

For Hugging Face, the apparent result was a sophisticated and aggressive cyberattack, with "many thousands of individual actions across a swarm of short-lived sandboxes, with self-migrating command-and-control staged on public services," as the company stated in its initial disclosure.

OpenAI has identified and reported the vulnerabilities in the package installer and is working with Hugging Face to investigate the incident further. The company also said it would implement new controls on both model testing and the related infrastructure, meant to prevent similar incidents in the future.

It's unclear whether OpenAI will face any legal consequences as a result of the breach, although it's likely that the models' actions violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Nevertheless, the result is an unusually vivid illustration of the power and dangers of frontier AI models operating on long time horizons. As OpenAI researcher Micah Carroll posted in response to the news, "If this doesn't convince you that misalignment risks are going to be a key concern going forward, I don't know what will."

Meta Abandons AI Image Feature Only Days After Launch

2026-07-21T13:29:30.536+08:00

Meta said last 9 July that it is discontinuing an AI feature launched this week that ‌allowed users to generate images using public Instagram accounts, after drawing ‌widespread criticism over privacy concerns, including from a Hollywood union.

"Our intent was to provide a useful creative tool and to give people control over whether their public content could be referenced in this way," Meta said in a statement.

"We've heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it's no longer available," it said.

Meta, owner of Facebook ‌and Instagram, had launched ⁠Muse Image on Tuesday, its first image-generation model from Meta Superintelligence Labs. The feature, integrated into its Meta AI chatbot, can ⁠use photos as input and lets users edit generated images directly through sketches.

The feature soon faced backlash over privacy concerns and being an automatic opt-in for users.

Emmy-winning actor Hannah Einbinder, known for "Hacks," criticized the feature on Instagram, saying it had been turned ‌on automatically and urging users to turn it off.

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors and other media professionals, also urged members and other Instagram users on Thursday to opt out of the feature.

"Anything other than a clear and conspicuous opt-in for these types of uses of Instagram users' images is unacceptable, and an utter ‌miscalculation of public sentiment regarding the obvious dangers and harms inherent in such use," SAG-AFTRA said.

Following Meta's decision to remove the feature, SAG-AFTRA welcomed the move.

"With the dangers of nonconsensual digital ‌replicas well known to all, a feature that encouraged that behavior is unwise. We appreciate its discontinuance. It is the responsible thing to do," a union spokesperson said.

The reversal reflects increasing pressure on technology companies to give users clear ‌control over how their publicly shared content is used by AI features.

Discord Blames AI Moderation For Wrongfully Banning Users

2026-07-13T10:50:31.303+08:00

Discord has admitted that a bug in its AI moderation system mistakenly banned more than 8,000 users over the past two months, after harmless images—including spreadsheets, chessboards, game textures, as well as white and gray transparent backgrounds — were incorrectly flagged as harmful content.

The company confirmed that the issue had been affecting accounts since May, with an additional 200 users banned over the weekend before its team identified and fixed the problem. All affected accounts are currently in the process of being restored.

The incident highlights one of the growing challenges surrounding AI-assisted moderation as many platforms increasingly rely on automated systems to identify illegal or abusive material at scale.

In a detailed thread on X, Discord explained that its automated safety system works by matching uploaded content against databases of known harmful material. While the technology is designed to catch illegal content, the company acknowledged that it can sometimes generate false positives. A human moderator reviews the content, but a bug caused the system to immediately ban affected accounts.

"We're working on better safeguards so this can't happen again," the company wrote.

This weekend, our safety systems incorrectly triggered and banned around 200 accounts. Everyone affected has been reinstated.

Here's what happened. A thread 🧵 https://t.co/wXH32iiv8I
— Discord Support (@discord_support) July 7, 2026

Across X and Reddit, users have claimed they had been permanently suspended simply for uploading images containing square grid patterns. Several users speculated that Discord's AI moderation tools have become increasingly sensitive to grid-like patterns because they have previously been used in attempts to obscure or disguise NSFW and child exploitation content from automated detection systems.

Affected users have been expressing frustration on social media, with some arguing that permanent account bans based solely on automated detection can have serious consequences, particularly for users who rely on Discord for work, gaming communities, or long-distance social connections.

"Losing a Discord account to something as unfair as this can be extremely devastating and affect users severely, and every day millions of users are affected by false AI bans. This needs to be stopped," one X user wrote.

AI Image Generation Tools Is Now In Instagram and WhatsApp

2026-07-11T11:08:02.892+08:00

Meta has launched the first ever advanced AI image generation tool for Instagram and WhatsApp, bringing it in line with rivals like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT.

The generative AI feature Muse Image, built by Meta Superintelligence Labs, will be integrated into the tech giant's Meta AI chatbot, allowing users of the apps to edit and create images using prompts and sketches.

Instagram and WhatsApp each have more than 3 billion users globally, though Muse Image will only be available in select countries at first.

"Muse Image acts as the creative partner that knows your world, making it easy to turn your ideas into high-quality visuals that you can download and share anywhere, including directly to your feed, story, or chat," the company said in a blog post.

"Whether you're starting from scratch or working with an existing photo, you can describe what you want in simple, conversational language, and Meta AI handles the rest thanks to Muse Image."

The new feature is being introduced to Instagram and WhatsApp users in "limited countries", with a broader roll out expected in the coming weeks.

Meta is also planning to launch it for its other apps, including Facebook and Messenger.

"It powers the social experiences we do best," a Meta spokesperson told The Independent. "People come to our apps to connect and share – Muse Image gives them new, creative ways to do exactly that."

Muse Image powers more than 30 new AI-powered effects on Instagram Stories, and image generation in direct chats with Meta AI on WhatsApp.

Meta also shared a preview of its AI video generation tool Muse Video, which is expected to roll out soon.

Meta said the new feature was bringing the tech giant "one step closer to personal superintelligence", which has been the stated goal of CEO Mark Zuckerberg since announcing in 2024 that his company was pursuing artificial general intelligence (AGI).

In June 2025, the tech boss officially launched Meta Superintelligence Labs and has since spent billions of dollars to acquire the top AI talent from rivals like Anthropic, Google DeepMind and OpenAI.

"Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful," he wrote in a July 2025 blog post.

"Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices."

"Made By Google" Event Is Set For 12 August

2026-07-09T11:19:59.941+08:00

Google has just sent out press invitations to its next Made by Google event, and it's slated for 12 August in New York City. The invitation, shared by 9to5 Google, shows what appears to be a metallic gold device, and a tease for "the next generation of Pixel."

The company is expected to unveil its line of Pixel 11 devices, including the Pixel 11 Pro Fold. According to Tom's Guide, leaked info shows the base model Pixel 11 will start at 256GB of memory, and a price tag close to or over US$ 1,000, with a 1TB version of the Pixel 11 Pro, Pro XL and Pro Fold models, possibly topping out over US$ 2,000.

Google's also expected to unveil the Pixel Watch 5, and no major design updates have been leaked so far. Ditto the next generation of Pixel Buds ear buds.

What has changed since last year's event is the escalating shortage of RAM, better known as RAMmaggedon, which has prompted Apple, Microsoft and others to raise prices on consumer products. Whether the memory and storage issues will push Google to raise Pixel prices, and by how much, is still to be seen.

It's a little unusual for Google to hold a Made by event in the evening, but the invitation lists 3 p.m. PT/ 6 p.m. ET as the start time. In addition to being a few weeks earlier than last year's Made by Google, which was held 20 August, this year's event arrives a month ahead of Apple's expected September event, where rumors have the iPhone maker introducing its first-ever foldable phone.

No word yet if "Tonight Show" host Jimmy Fallon and/or a live studio audience will return for this year's event. Fallon (for some reason) demonstrated the Pixel 10 at the 2025 Made by Google.

Meta Is Facing Stiff Penalty In Social Media Addiction Trial

2026-07-08T14:33:22.145+08:00

There are now four U.S. states that are seeking a combined US$ 1.4 trillion in penalties from Meta in an upcoming trial over charges the company has misled the public about the safety of its Facebook and Instagram platforms.

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey allege the social media giant designed its algorithms to be addictive for young users, and in a new filing, Meta says the states are seeking penalties out of proportion with the alleged offenses. As first reported by Reuters, the penalty total sought by the states is close to Meta's market cap of US$ 1.5 trillion.

"A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement," the company argues in its 6 July filing with the U.S. District Court of Northern California.

The filing is in response to a June hearing where the states described how they were calculating the potential penalties in the case, multiplying the number of violations by the fine amount set by each state's law. The states said the total number of violations is based on an estimate of how many teens and young users may have been affected by Meta's practices.

Meta claims in its recent filing that the states' calculations "sweep in, and double count, every single teen who uses Meta's platforms, and every single month in which a teen uses Meta's platforms for more than a half-hour." Meta argues that the monetary claims sought by the states "are not linked to wrongful conduct or supported by the record."

In a 30 June statement, Davenport praised the district court's decision to deny Meta's attempt for a summary judgment, which allows the case to continue to trial.

"We are thrilled that a federal district court has ruled that our case against Meta will proceed to trial," Davenport said. "For years, Meta has failed to protect kids on Facebook and Instagram, endangering their mental health while profiting at their expense. Our office is proud to co-lead this case against Meta on behalf of a bipartisan coalition of state AGs, and we look forward to proving our case against Meta in court."

The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in an email that the lawsuit "alleges Meta has prioritized profits over the safety of kids and fueled the mental health crisis we see impacting a generation of American children. The California Department of Justice looks forward to holding Meta fully accountable at trial in August."

A total of 29 states have filed suit against Meta in federal court, with the majority of the cases focused on allegations that the social media giant violated the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by gathering data on underage users without their parents' consent. The trial, set for August in Oakland, Calif., will focus on the alleged COPPA violations, as well as the states' claims that Meta violated state consumer protection laws when it misled users about its platforms' safety.

Meta has denied the allegations.

In the past, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has largely shielded internet companies from being held liable for its users' content and for making "good faith" efforts to moderate content. But the most recent legal actions against social media platforms have focused on how the platforms were designed.

Google Limits Meta's Use Of Gemini For Chatbot

2026-07-06T14:21:05.245+08:00

Earlier this year, Google limited Meta's use of its Gemini AI, after the Facebook and Instagram parent company tried to buy more computing capacity than the search giant was able to provide, the Financial Times reported.

The Gemini cap, which Google put into place in March, has held back some of Meta's internal AI projects, according to the FT. Google has put limits on other companies as well as its backlog of cloud contracts continues to grow.

Both companies declined to comment. But the FT notes that Google CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned during a first-quarter earnings call in April that the company's already substantial revenue from cloud contracts would have been higher if it had not been "compute-constrained in the near term."

Meta does not have its own cloud business, but the company said in February during its fourth-quarter earnings announcement that it planned to spend as much as $135 billion this year in an expansion of its AI plans. In April, it launched its Muse Spark AI model developed by its Meta Superintelligence Lab, but it has lagged rivals in the race to compete in the generative AI boom.

According to the FT, Meta uses Gemini internally to automate some of its safety processes, for its chatbots and for some coding and workflows, along with other models including Anthropic's Claude.

Windows 10 Gets A New Lease On Life

2026-07-04T13:28:10.972+08:00

A few days ago, Microsoft quietly announced that it will extend support for Windows 10 through 2027, even though the operating system officially reached the end of support on 14 October 2025. Initially, the company had planned to offer just one additional year of updates under its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, but the new decision gives Windows 10 a longer lifeline.

However, critics and groups like The Restart Project, which helped co-develop the "End of 10" toolkit to support Windows 10 users who can't upgrade to Windows 11, claimed that Microsoft's move to continue pushing security updates to Windows 10 beyond its end-of-support feels like a last-minute snooze button, which only acts as a band-aid on a bleeding system.

They argued that the move would force up to 400 million working PCs into early retirement, prompting many users to brand it as programmed obsolescence rather than anything else. It also seems like an outright, blatant attempt designed to make users transition to Windows 11.

However, if previous complaints lodged are anything to go by — Microsoft's stringent hardware requirements for the operating system, coupled with arguments of flawed design elements, including unnecessary AI and Copilot integrations, will only widen the digital divide, making the jump even harder.

Currently, users enrolled in Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program will continue receiving critical security patches for one additional year, extending coverage beyond the original end-of-support date of 14 October 2025, through 14 October 2026.

As highlighted in the recent poll results, a clear majority of participants (68 percent) indicated they plan to continue running Windows 10 on their devices following Microsoft's support extension. Interestingly, 19 percent of respondents said they have already upgraded to Windows 11, highlighting a smaller but notable shift toward the newer operating system.

Granted, only 321 people voted, so we need to take the results with a pinch of salt.

If you are still running Windows 10 on your PC, you can take advantage of the extended lifeline by enrolling in the ESU program for free by signing in with a Microsoft account, or pay for access via 1,000 Microsoft reward points or US$ 30.

Australia's Floating Solar Panels Could Address Water Crisis

2026-06-27T14:50:38.195+08:00

Australia was reported to be on the edge of a water shortage crisis. Farming represents the biggest drain on the continent in this context, using 70 percent of the country's water supply, though the issue is also compounded by prolonged periods of drought and increased human activity. In the spirit of preserving its water supplies, the country has designed a new kind of floating solar panel that could help.

Called floating photovoltaics (FPV), these solar panels can be found in the country's dams and water reservoirs. Essentially, they form a sort of roof over these bodies of water, trapping evaporation in by covering the water's surface. At the same time, they provide renewable energy to power grids in much the same way that standard solar panels help the environment.

These floating solar panels have the potential to save a lot of water. The dams and reservoirs across Australia see 1,400 gigaliters of water evaporate each year. As reported by Bloomberg, one company developing these panels has claimed these panels can reduce that evaporation by more than half.

In an attempt to save water in the country, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency invested AUS$ 8.5 million in an initiative designed to deploy more floating solar panels across its irrigation farms in 2025.

Wannon Water currently has one of Australia's largest floating solar panel systems, generating over 600,000 kilowatt-hours of renewable electricity each year over Warrnambool's Brierly Basinin southern Victoria.

The 1,260 panels installed in the network capture direct sunlight not just from the sky above but from its reflection on the water's surface below. Since they have been installed, they have helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by close to 600 tons every year. A similar installation of 644 floating solar panels by Gippsland Water is generating enough kilowatts to power 90 homes per day at peak capacity in the region as well.

What's unique about these floating solar panels is that they don't completely cover the water source like some other strategies designed to reduce evaporation. This is a plus because it avoids triggering algal blooms and keeps the water clean. With so many environmental benefits, floating solar panels are becoming a critical part of not just Au energy plans going forward, but also Germany, California, and other regions.

Critic Disputes Microsoft's Quantum Computing Claim

2026-06-26T10:48:59.502+08:00

There is a new critique in the scientific journal Nature, who is raising fresh questions about Microsoft's claimed quantum computing breakthrough last year. This has now underpinned the company's announcement this month that it will have a working quantum system by 2029.

Quantum computers ‌could solve scientific and cybersecurity problems beyond the reach of conventional machines. They have become a priority for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, which ‌invested US$ 2 billion in the field and this week set goals for a scientific quantum system by 2028.

Like Big Tech rivals IBM, Alphabet's Google and others, Microsoft is developing its own quantum computer. But while rivals are engineering machines based on better-understood quantum technologies, Microsoft has spent nearly two decades trying to break new scientific ground on a technology it says could help it leapfrog competitors.

In a formal reply to the critique and an interview with Reuters, Microsoft said it stands behind its research and that its quantum program is making practical progress despite any concerns.

Microsoft's scientific effort has drawn skepticism. Two previous Microsoft-backed papers were retracted from Nature, while editors flagged alerts about possible research problems in two others, one ‌in Nature and another in Science.

Microsoft said the previously ⁠retracted papers in Nature were done outside its labs and it did not review the data in them before publication.

The peer-reviewed critique published in Nature on Wednesday by Henry Legg, a lecturer in quantum physics at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, ⁠raises concerns about a fifth paper, published in February 2025, and an associated press announcement. The paper, which is not being retracted, is central to all of Microsoft's subsequent quantum efforts.

Microsoft said publicly last year it had found the Majorana, a long-theorized subatomic particle central to its approach. However, it has not published that discovery in a peer-reviewed journal, such as Nature. The February 2025 Nature paper made a narrower claim: that Microsoft had developed software to identify a minute gap in an otherwise highly conductive ‌wire.

The gap matters because qubits, the basic units of quantum computers, are powerful but fragile, often losing their state within fractions of a second. Microsoft says that finding a stable gap in a conductive wire is part of a process that could create longer-lasting, more useful qubits.

Legg, however, found Microsoft's software "yielded inconsistent and misreported outcomes." He also said a broader dataset Microsoft released but did not include in the paper showed random noise, with no clear evidence of the gap Microsoft claimed to find.

In an interview, Legg compared the effort to finding an image of Jesus in toast by looking through an entire bakery's worth of loaves.

"If you're looking into something ‌which is essentially just random physics, eventually you will find the Jesus in your toast," Legg said.

In its reply in Nature, Microsoft defended its claims and said the software was a "practical tuning tool" to find good places on its chips to place qubits.

Chetan Nayak, who oversees Microsoft's quantum hardware efforts, told Reuters in an interview that the code works well enough that Microsoft regularly ‌uses it to set up chips now carrying out quantum computing operations.

"It's almost like arguing, is flight possible or not? And then you're standing next to an airplane," Nayak said. "Well, why don't you hop in and take a ride?"

Sergey Frolov, a University of Pittsburgh physicist who has also criticized Microsoft's work, said Microsoft lacks the longstanding evidence supporting the approaches taken by rivals such as IBM and Quantinuum that do not rely on the existence of the ‌Majorana.

"Neither Microsoft nor anyone else has laid a foundation where it is clear that these (Majorana-based) advances are plausible, through a series of reliable experiments," Frolov said. "On the contrary, we have a series of papers that keep being challenged at the very basic level, by different people."

Meta Joining The Prediction App Market

2026-06-25T18:57:17.007+08:00

There's a potential competitor in the prediction market space and its Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a development team working on an experimental standalone app, internally called "Arena," through which users would be able to weigh in on the outcomes of sporting events, political contests and other questions, The New York Times reports.

Unlike Kalshi and Polymarket, however, the Meta platform would not involve cash wagers, at least initially. Instead, Arena would employ a points system reminiscent of a video game, according to the article, which cited two unnamed Meta employees.

Meta would leverage its social media platforms to nudge people to its prediction market.

CNBC said news of Zuckerberg's initiative may have caused declines in the market values of DraftKings and the parent of FanDuel, Flutter Entertainment, last 23 June. The sports betting platforms are seen as potentially vulnerable to prediction markets.

Prediction markets — on which people buy or sell contracts based on the predicted outcome of an event — have surged in popularity and generate billions of dollars in transactions. They are increasingly scrutinized, too.

Accusations of insider trading, including politicians betting on their own races, have surfaced.

Kalshi reported former New York Congressman George Santos to federal prosecutors after he said he'd be going to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in February before betting against his own attendance.

In April, the U.S. Department of Justice said a special operations officer used classified knowledge to net US$ 400,000 on a prediction market that speculated on the future of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was captured by U.S. forces on 3 January.

Malware Hides Behind Steam Workshop

2026-06-24T17:31:37.006+08:00

One of the best arguments for buying games through Steam is the Steam Workshop. This community hub lets users seamlessly download and install mods for their favorite games. No searching for the right files and the folders they go in; Steam Workshop does all the hard work.

However, since all the content is user-created, sometimes malicious coders upload virus-laden items, and victims are often none the wiser.

Earlier this week, Kaspersky blew the whistle on a new virus that hijacks Steam user accounts. This news came several months after the FBI warned about seven Steam games hiding malware.

According to Kaspersky, hackers are exploiting the sharing features of Steam Workshop's Wallpaper Engine. Unlike your average computer wallpaper, the Wallpaper Engine specializes in animated wallpapers (think the animated backgrounds you can get on your Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5), so there's more space for hackers to hide malicious code.

Kaspersky's analysis indicates that while only "dozens" of these malware-laden wallpapers exist, they are extremely popular — each has been downloaded thousands or tens of thousands of times. While anyone who installs the wallpapers will get infected, currently the people who built them are mostly targeting Chinese players.

How so? The art styles and titles are "tailored specifically to them." 89 percent of all victims hail from China, followed by Russia at 5.5 percent.

As previously stated, the virus is designed to attract people with certain sensibilities. The wallpapers lure victims in with images of women that can be best described as waifu material. And then when downloaded, the virus springs into action.

According to Kaspersky's analysis, once the wallpaper is launched, it installs a backdoor and an executable file that acts as a "game" while also digging for Steam account credentials. Once the executable has what it needs, it sends the data to a server that the hacker owns. From there, they have full control over your account; they can change your password, steal your credit card information, and upload more infested wallpapers under your name. Oh, and they can also hide all of your files behind ransomware and install crypto miner software if they want.

Kaspersky claims the malware is spread in two ways. The first is the most straightforward: Hackers draw from an archive of wallpapers compromised with malicious EXE files, DLLs, and scripts.

However, Kaspersky says some versions of the malware spread by turning victims into unwitting gofers. Basically, the target is tricked into accessing a protected archive containing the malware by entering its password. Although, sometimes the hacker installs a script that does it for them — not all of us are technologically literate enough to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Obviously, the best way to avoid this malware is to stay clear of Steam Workshop's Wallpaper Engine for the time being. If you really need a special wallpaper, use obscure Windows apps such as WinDynamicDesktop or download Van Gogh-inspired wallpapers for your Mac. However, let's assume that you downloaded these wallpapers before reading this article. You're not doomed just yet.

Jerry Seinfeld Funny Take Down Of Anti-Israel Protester

2026-06-20T15:34:57.148+08:00

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was able to shut down an anti-Israel influencer by telling him Palestine "doesn't exist" after he was rushed while leaving the Garden last 10 June following the Knicks' Game 4 win.

The legendary comedian, 72, was walking among the throngs of people after the game when he was ambushed by a struggling streamer armed with a mic and camera.

"What up, Seinfeld? What up? Can we get a 'Free Palestine'?" said the streamer, FinesseFave, sticking a mic in the face of the Jewish actor and writer.

The famously quick-on-his-feet standup responded with a laugh before shutting down the incendiary question in three words.

"It doesn't exist," he said, before walking away.

FinesseFave later shared the video with his 180,000 TikTok followers, along with the caption, "Clown hasn't been relevant in decades anyway."

@finessefave Clown hasn’t been relevant in decades anyway #finessefave #nyc ♬ original sound - finessefave

Lesbian Couple "Triggered" Over Comedian's Crowd Work

2026-06-19T08:59:20.139+08:00

A lesbian couple went to see a comedian perform in Boston. Then they were made fun of by the comedian multiple times during crowd work. They got too sensitive and can't handle it.

TikToker Desii (@xoxo.desii) posted a section of a Boston comedian's set where he singled her and her girlfriend out. Desii said that she laughed because she was uncomfortable and that she almost cried during the set because of comments the comedian made.

So, this begs the question, why did she stay? She should not attend a comedy show because they make fun of everyone, regardless of yout feelings.

Desii, who has a girlfriend, tagged the post #wlw. WLW stands for "women loving women." It's a broad term that refers to women who are attracted to other women. It can also describe non-binary or female-aligned people who are attracted to women.

Desii started recording a portion of a comedian's set at some point after he realized that she was a lesbian. The comedian referred to her by race and started making jokes about her.

"Oh, it's like 90 degrees up here, and she's Mexican and a lez," the comedian said. "My whole time up here I've just been picturing her just getting ... Anyway. It's on. Anyone else, fellas?"

Viewers on the post summed up what the comedian may have been implying. One viewer said, "He's saying he's been imagining her and her gf having [expletive]."

The comedian continued and told his audience he wasn't joking about the sexual innuendo. "I mean, I'm not kidding at all. Nothing I've said here is a joke tonight. I want you to know that," the comedian said in the clip. "This has been all real. I'm kidding. I don't know what's real anymore. I really don't."

Will Google Searches Go To An AI Mode In Chrome?

2026-06-13T11:36:31.431+08:00

A flag hidden in Chrome Canary, the developers' version of Google's browser, suggested the company was considering sending all search queries directly to AI Mode by default. Windows Report first noticed the flag.

Windows Report says it tested and confirmed that when the flag was enabled it worked in Canary, bringing users to what appeared to be a chatbot-like response, rather than the standard Google Search results.

But while Google may be adding more AI to search and other products, Rajan Patel, Google vice president, engineering for search said last 5 June that the flag is "an error. We're not planning to make AI Mode the default for Chrome searches."

The traditional Google Search in Chrome now includes a summarized AI Overview at the top of the results page, above the list of links to different websites. To use AI Mode in Chrome, users have to first toggle it on.

Google announced a major overhaul of of its Search at its I/O 2026 conference in May, including a lot more AI features. The search box has been redesigned to be AI-powered, allowing for longer queries the company says go "beyond autocomplete" and its search now supports Gemini Flash 3.5 in AI Mode.

AWS Is Building An Internet For The Machines

2026-06-12T16:39:12.060+08:00

Cloud infrastructure has long been designed around humans who search, click, scroll, and stream in a steady and predictable fashion. AI agents behave differently. They can unleash a swell of activity, spinning up multiple sub-agents that query hundreds of databases, search documents, and call APIs in seconds and then disappear as quickly as they arrived.

Under that premise, Amazon is redesigning a core piece of its cloud infrastructure.

On 28 May, AWS launched its next generation of OpenSearch Serverless, a fully managed search and vector database — essentially a system for storing and retrieving information at scale — that’s designed specifically for agentic workloads. AWS says the new system can instantly scale up when agents trigger tasks and scale back down to zero when idle.

The launch reflects a growing realization across the tech industry: Infrastructure originally designed for a human-driven internet doesn’t work as well in a world increasingly populated by agents.

While AI agents still represent a relatively small portion of internet activity, machine-generated traffic is already significant, and poised to grow. Cloudflare says bots accounted for 31 percent of overall HTTP traffic over the last six months. AI crawlers, search engines, and assistants made up roughly a quarter of all bot requests during that period.

"Non-human traffic will exceed human traffic sometime in the first half of 2027," said Lai Yi Ohlsen, senior product manager at Cloudflare, to TechCrunch.

At Google’s I/O developer conference last week, the company said users will be able to start delegating tasks to AI systems, like researching purchases, booking travel, browsing the web, and interacting with apps. But the buck doesn’t stop at consumer-focused AI agents. Enterprises are increasingly deploying agents internally and for their customers, creating new kinds of machine-generated traffic behind the scenes.

As a result, cloud providers and infrastructure companies have been reckoning with how to adapt systems built for humans to a world of agents that are constantly and autonomously retrieving information, invoking tools, and generating machine-to-machine traffic.

That’s where AWS’s new OpenSearch Serverless comes in.

"The timing is straightforward. Agents are moving from experimentation into production, and they create traffic patterns that previous infrastructure simply wasn’t designed for," Tia White, general manager for Amazon OpenSearch Service, told TechCrunch. "They spike without warning, they go idle without notice, and enterprise needs search that keeps up without paying for empty or idle compute."

The key technical change with this new generation is that it decouples compute from storage, allowing compute to scale up in seconds to accommodate agent traffic bursts and to scale down to zero, so customers pay US$ 0 when agents are idle.

"Previously, even in our prior Serverless version, you had to have at least one instance operational and running because storage and compute were coupled," White said. "You couldn’t just automatically spin up [compute] at the rate you needed to, so you always had idle compute reserved for your workload, whether you were using it or not."

Think of it like always paying for a parking space, even when you’re not using it. With AWS’s upgraded Serverless, it’s more like paying for a metered parking spot.

At launch, OpenSearch Serverless will integrate natively with AI development platforms like Vercel and Kiro, so developers can deploy production-ready search and vector backends for agents without managing infrastructure.

The shift is emerging across the cloud industry. Databricks and Snowflake are repositioning themselves as AI memory and retrieval systems for enterprise data. Microsoft has rolled out updates to Azure designed to handle AI agent bursts and share memory between agents. Cloudflare, in a similar vein to Amazon, last month introduced infrastructure aimed at giving agents persistent environments and instant scalability.

Oura Ring 5 Offers More Health Tracking Features

2026-06-08T15:52:35.426+08:00

Two years after the Oura Ring 4, Oura is back with a new smart ring that aims to make health tracking smaller, smarter, and more proactive. The newly announced Oura Ring 5 is now available for preorder and begins shipping 4 June. It features a slimmer design, stronger durability, upgraded sensors, and a growing list of AI-powered wellness tools.

This model joins the growing trend of screen-free fitness trackers and minimalist wearables that are becoming increasingly popular among users who want health insights without smartwatch distractions. Starting at US$ 399, the Oura Ring 5 builds on Oura’s wellness-first approach while introducing new features focused on fitness, sleep, and long-term health monitoring.

Oura is introducing a new feature called Health Radar. It’s a system that continuously monitors your biometric patterns and looks for subtle changes that could signal developing issues.

Health Radar currently has two sub-features: Blood Pressure Signals and Nighttime Breathing monitoring.

Blood Pressure Signals looks at trends that may be linked to cardiovascular strain, while Nighttime Blood Pressure tracking monitors how blood pressure changes during sleep. Additionally, Nighttime Breathing provides a 30-day view of breathing disturbances that may affect your sleep quality.

The company is also expanding support for metabolic health. The new GLP-1 medication tracking tools will let you log doses, side effects, and weight changes. Plus, the Lab Uploads will allow subscribers to import blood test results and compare health markers over time.

Oura is also expanding its AI-powered Advisor platform, which serves as a wellness assistant and offers more personalized health guidance. You’ll be able to ask health questions, receive tailored recommendations, and, through a new partnership with Counsel Health, connect with licensed physicians from within the app.

A new live activity mode will allow you to track heart rate, pace, and distance in real time through phone lock-screen widgets. And when you engage in workouts where wearing a ring may not be practical, such as strength training or powerlifting, Oura can now collect your metrics via third-party heart rate monitors.

The brand has also improved the Automatic Activity Detection feature, making it easier for the ring to detect low-motion workouts like Pilates.

According to Oura, the Ring 5 uses LEDs that are four times as powerful as those in the previous model. The redesigned sensors sit closer to the skin and use 12 independent signal pathways to improve accuracy across different finger shapes and skin tones.

Additionally, the new ring has a better battery, and you can expect between six and nine days of battery life on a single charge, depending on usage. The brand is also launching a new portable charging case, which will cost US$ 99. It can provide roughly five additional charges, allowing you to enjoy about a month of extra battery life.

The Oura Ring 5 is 40 percent smaller than the Ring 4, measuring just 6.09 mm wide and 2.28 mm thick. The company is calling it the world’s smallest smart ring, designed to feel lighter and more comfortable for around-the-clock wear.

Google Plans To Release Millions Of Mosquitoes

2026-06-03T13:33:40.016+08:00

California could soon become a testing ground for one of Google’s most ambitious public health projects yet.

The tech giant is seeking federal approval to release up to 32 million specially treated mosquitoes in California and Florida over the next two years as part of an effort to reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, including West Nile virus, St. Louis encephalitis, dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.

The proposal is currently under review by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which is accepting public comments through 5 June before deciding whether to issue an experimental use permit.

Regulators have not announced where any mosquito releases would occur if the plan is approved.

Researchers say the latest proposal targets Culex mosquitoes, a species known for transmitting West Nile virus and St. Louis encephalitis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Nile virus remains the leading mosquito-borne disease in the U.S.

Those viruses are already established in California, where they circulate naturally among local bird and mosquito populations.

On Friday, a positive sample of West Nile virus was confirmed in Riverside County.

The project is part of Google’s little-known Debug initiative, launched more than a decade ago to develop new technologies aimed at reducing populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Rather than releasing biting insects, the company plans to release male mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacteria. When the infected males mate with wild female mosquitoes, the offspring do not survive, helping suppress mosquito populations over time.

Because only female mosquitoes bite humans, experts say the releases would not increase the number of biting mosquitoes.

UK's Rudest Chalk Figure Gets A Makeover

2026-06-01T09:50:23.996+08:00

For centuries, the Cerne Abbas Giant has been hard to miss because of its rude features.

The 55-metre chalk figure, cut into a hillside near the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, shows a naked, club-wielding man whose outline has made him one of the UK's most instantly recognizable historic landmarks.

But the National Trust, which owns and manages the site, says changing weather patterns are making it harder to keep the Giant prominent on the hillside.

National Trust staff and volunteers will this week pack tonnes of new chalk onto the figure to restore the crisp whiteness of his outline.

Luke Dawson, a National Trust ranger who helps look after the site, says heavier winter rains are washing chalk from the slope more quickly, while mild, damp conditions give algae more chance to grow.

He says this wetter weather has been having "a dulling effect" on the Giant's outline, leaving it greener and less distinct between maintenance work.

The Trust is cautious about attributing the changes directly to climate change at a single site.

"It's one of these things we cannot really prove," says Dawson. "It is more just observation of what we are seeing up there."

The charity has cared for the Giant since 1920. Its rangers and volunteers keep the outline defined by rechalking the figure every decade or so to protect it from weeds and erosion. And between chalking it uses sheep to keep the grass short.

But the Trust says that coupled with heavier winter rains, the frequent dry spells in summer, mean the grass grows back more slowly and can leave the chalk edges more exposed and vulnerable to erosion.

The rechalking could take up to 15 days to complete. Around 300 National Trust staff and volunteers will be involved, carrying about 17 tonnes of fresh chalk up the steep hillside, which in places has a gradient of roughly one in three.

The work is physically demanding, especially in the exceptional heat the UK has experienced in recent days. The old chalk is carefully dug out before fresh material is packed into the Giant's outline by hand - a process the Trust says has changed little for generations.

The Giant's naked, club-wielding form has fuelled centuries of speculation - "a real ding-dong" according to local historian Ian Denness. Some argued he was an ancient fertility figure, others a Roman Hercules, or even a later satire of Oliver Cromwell.

But scientific analysis of sediments published by the National Trust in 2021 suggested the figure was probably first cut in the late Saxon period, between around 700 and 1100AD - much later than the prehistoric or Roman origins once imagined.

However, this finding has not settled the question of his significance.

Google's AI Still Can't Spell, Including The Word "Google"

2026-05-30T10:20:44.826+08:00

And though the Gemini-powered technology has improved its accuracy dramatically over the last two years (unfortunately for publishers), AI Overviews still gets basic questions wrong. And that includes spelling tests.

Google's AI tools remain abysmal at answering questions about spelling, having gone viral two years ago for responding to the question "how many r's are in the word strawberry?" incorrectly. But it's still bad. Last 26 May, X user Naomi Rohatyn tested the large language model's (LLM) current ability to answer to a spelling question.

"There are exactly 2 'e's in the word "astronomical" (a-s-t-r-e-n-o-m-i-c-a-e-l)," replied AI Overview.

How many Ps are in Google? According to Google, there are two.

There’s also is also "exactly 1 'r' in the word 'poop'," Google’s AI Overview says, as well as two ‘d’s in the word journalism, yet spelled it: j-o-u-r-n-a-d-i-s-m. Google did at least identify that there is one P in the last name of the U.S. president, but spelled it as t-r-p-u-m.

Considering users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results, surely the information provided in AI Overviews should be accurate. But it's complicated.

AI chatbots need exact context and specifics to answer as well as they can, so surely spelling words within their training data seems easy. However, things get knotty when you ask an LLM to consider words letter-by-letter, as the model will process text in chunks rather than individual characters (it's called tokenisation).

"Counting within words has been a known challenge for LLMs, and we’re working to fix this particular issue," Google told TechCrunch in an emailed statement.

These basic spelling errors may seem familiar. LLMs, the kind of artificial intelligence that powers chatbots and other text-generators, are not built to understand spelling. It’s been a running joke for years that whenever a company unveils a new AI model, you should ask it how many 'r's are in the word strawberry. These AI models — which can code an app in seconds, or solve problems that have stumped mathematicians for decades — are about as good as a kindergartener at spelling.

Google’s AI overview woes reach beyond silly spelling mistakes though. Google already patched an issue from last week in which searching the word "disregard" would yield what looked like a dictionary definition of the word, only the definition was shown as, "Understood. Let me know whenever you have a new prompt or question!" But these spelling errors have remained amusing because they’re so difficult to quash.

"LLMs are based on this transformer architecture, which notably is not actually reading text. What happens when you input a prompt is that it's translated into an encoding," Matthew Guzdial, an AI researcher and assistant professor at the University of Alberta, told TechCrunch. "When it sees the word ‘the,’ it has this one encoding of what ‘the’ means, but it does not know about 'T,' 'H,' 'E.'"

The token-based architecture that powers LLMs like Google’s AI overview is inherently limiting, and researchers haven’t been optimistic that they can solve the spelling problem.

Windows 11 Is Upgrading To A More "Useful Start Option"

2026-05-29T00:11:09.623+08:00

On Windows 11, as part of Microsoft's broader "Windows K2" initiative to improve the operating system and rebuild user trust, the company has revealed the first tranche of Start menu changes that will soon begin rolling out through the Windows Insider Program.

The upcoming improvements focus heavily on customization and usability. Some of the most notable changes include the ability to resize the Start menu, show or hide individual sections, and separate file recommendations from recent activities.

When the software giant introduced Windows 11, the company replaced the classic Windows 10 Start menu with a completely redesigned experience. The new design removed Live Tiles and the secondary pane layout in favor of a simplified, centered menu that only included traditional app icons.

While the redesign modernized the interface, it also reduced functionality and customization options compared to Windows 10. Since launch, users have consistently criticized the Start menu for feeling restrictive and less flexible.

Now, Microsoft appears ready to address many of those complaints and one of the biggest additions is support for manually resizing the Start menu.

Until now, the Start menu automatically adjusted its dimensions based on screen size and resolution, offering virtually no control over its appearance. In future updates, users will be able to choose between smaller and larger layouts.

Unlike Windows 10, Windows 11 still won't allow freeform resizing by dragging the edges of the menu or enable a full-screen Start experience. However, the new option is still a major improvement over the current fixed layout.

Microsoft is expected to add the feature through a new "Start menu size" setting available from Settings > Personalization > Start.

Microsoft is also introducing privacy-focused improvements for users who frequently share their screens during meetings, presentations, or live streams.

The company plans to add a new option called "Hide your name and profile picture on Start." When enabled, the Start menu will no longer display the account name and profile image.

The setting will appear under Settings > Personalization > Start > Other.

Originally, the Windows 11 Start menu separated content into multiple areas, including "Pinned," "Recommended," and the separate "All apps" list.

One of the most common complaints after launch was the inability to remove the "Recommended" section entirely. Microsoft eventually added a workaround, but it required turning off several unrelated settings before the section disappeared.

More recently, the company redesigned the Start menu by merging the "All apps" list into the main interface. However, customization still remained limited.

As part of the Windows K2 effort, Microsoft has now confirmed that users will soon get dedicated toggles to individually show or hide the "Pinned," "Recommended," and "All" sections.

A "Living Bandage" Can Speed Up Healing

2026-05-28T10:57:02.476+08:00

There is now an engineered "living bandages" that could offer a new way to treat chronic wounds by delivering healing signals directly where the body needs them most. Researchers at Rice University developed a cytokine factory patch that continuously releases therapeutic proteins inside wounds.

Chronic wounds remain difficult to treat because the body often struggles to maintain the immune signals needed for tissue repair. Existing therapies also face limitations because healing proteins degrade quickly and fail to remain at the wound site for long periods.

The Rice team designed the patch as a cell-based delivery platform that uses engineered cells as miniature factories. These cells continuously produce cytokines over extended periods instead of releasing them in short bursts.

Cytokines are signaling proteins that regulate inflammation, immune activity, and tissue regeneration. By delivering them directly at the wound site, the patch aims to maintain a stable healing environment during recovery.

The device came from the laboratory of Omid Veiseh. Researchers encapsulated ARPE-19 cells engineered to secrete cytokines including IL-10, IL-12 and TGF-β inside a protective biocompatible matrix.

The matrix allows nutrients and therapeutic proteins to move through the material while shielding the engineered cells from the host immune system. Researchers said this setup helps sustain localized cytokine delivery for longer periods.

In preclinical studies, the patch accelerated healing in excisional wound models in mice and pigs. The findings highlighted the potential of sustained, localized immune modulation during tissue repair.

"The findings show how continuous, localized cytokine delivery can support key biological pathways involved in tissue repair," Veiseh said. He added that maintaining a steady supply of signaling molecules at the wound site helped engage the body’s natural healing response more effectively.

Researchers also examined how the patch influenced biological activity at the cellular level. RNA sequencing revealed activation of several pathways associated with wound healing after treatment.

Transcriptomic analysis showed increased activity in genes linked to tissue regeneration and immune modulation. The results provided a molecular explanation for the faster healing observed in the animal models.

The platform also offers flexibility beyond a single treatment strategy. Researchers designed the system so scientists can modify the engineered cells to produce different combinations of cytokines, growth factors, or therapeutic proteins.

That modular structure could help tailor future treatments for different wound types and diseases. The team also integrated an optimized hydrogel matrix that may eventually work alongside bioelectronic technologies.

Researchers believe the cytokine factory concept could extend beyond wound healing. They said the platform may support localized delivery of therapeutic proteins in diseases that require sustained, site-specific immune signaling. Christian Schreib, assistant research professor in Rice’s bioengineering department and co-author of the study, said the team now plans to improve control over cytokine delivery.

Power Banks Kept On Catching Fire Inside Planes

2026-05-26T12:22:53.630+08:00

For those traveling by plane these days, they know that there are some pretty important rules when it comes to packing your luggage. But alongside the usual rules for weapons, liquids, and gels, portable power banks — and other electronic devices containing lithium-ion batteries — are facing heightened scrutiny due to an increased risk of fire and burns due to faulty batteries or misuse.

The FAA reported 93 incidents in 2025, and 2026 is already seeing a spike, with 22 reported by mid-April. In response, Southwest Airlines now requires passengers to keep portable chargers visible during use, while Japan has banned power banks on flights altogether.

So, what's the problem with devices containing lithium-ion batteries?

Faulty lithium-ion batteries can overheat or short-circuit, which can kickstart a dangerous chain reaction called thermal runaway, a process where rising temperatures inside the battery continually release energy, as it perpetually grows hotter and hotter. That increases the risk of fire, but the materials are also highly reactive and flammable.

Lithium fires are aggressive and self-sufficient. Efforts to douse them are likely to fail and if successful, the fire can reignite. As reported by CBS News, an Alaskan Airlines flight had to land after a power bank onboard caught fire. While not aboard a plane, in another incident, a 75-year-old woman died of injuries after a charger exploded in her lap.

The easiest ways to limit your exposure to a lithium battery fire are to avoid cheap, poorly made devices and follow manufacturer recommendations when it comes to properly using the device. Overheating and other complications can happen when the batteries are overused, such as too many devices being plugged in at once. Problems can also arise when lithium devices are treated poorly, damaged, or stored improperly.

Always store batteries away from anything that is flammable or could potentially cause the device or battery harm. Store them at temperatures above 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) and below 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). Try to avoid exposing them to extreme temperatures when you're traveling, too.

When boarding a plane, follow all safety instructions, which generally include information about devices containing lithium batteries — devices with these batteries should never be left in check bags. Following the TSA's battery restrictions for carry-on luggage is a great way to stay safe everywhere, not just at the airport or on a plane. Moreover, the best TSA approved power banks on Amazon, not only meet the allowance requirements, but also are generally well-received and considered safe by many users.