TECH NEWS

For the First Time, Zoox Can Charge People for Rides in Its Steering-Wheel-Free Robotaxis

Vehicles purpose-built to drive without human help received the first-ever approval in the US to pick up paid customers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced on Thursday.

The company, Amazon subsidiary Zoox, says it will soon begin to charge for rides in Las Vegas, where it’s been carrying passengers for free since last year. The company is also currently picking up a limited set of passengers in Austin, Miami, and San Francisco, all for free.

The approval is a milestone for the autonomous vehicle industry. Waymo, the nation’s leading robotaxi provider, uses vehicles that still meet government design standards—with steering wheels, pedals, and mirrors, and conventional seating arrangements. (Even the company’s new, purpose-built robotaxihas those legally mandated features.) But some industry players argue that driverless tech can only reach its potential with vehicles built to be driven by computers—ones that don’t meet federal vehicle safety...

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Open source project fools AI scrapers with poisoned font

If you don't want AI scrapers training themselves on your website, there's a new way to stop them that doesn't involve server-side blocking or praying they respect your instructions in robots.txt. A team of creatives have teamed up with a typography company to

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/07/friend-ai-pendant.avif

Everyone hated Friend’s AI necklace, so it came back at double the price

The AI necklace that a chunk of New York wanted gone is back, and this time it talks. Friend, the pendant that listens to your day and pipes up with commentary, has re-launched with a speaker so it can reply out loud. It also costs twice as much. The original

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/07/cosmosescape.avif

Wiz’s AI bug-hunter helped find a master key to every database in Azure Cosmos DB

Wiz researchers found a single credential that could unlock every database running on Microsoft’s Azure Cosmos DB. They named it the Cosmos Master Key. And the vulnerability hunter that helped find it was not entirely human. Microsoft has patched the flaw, disclosed on Thursday and dubbed CosmosEscape. It found

https://media.thenextweb.com/2026/06/nhs-england-microsoft-copilot-505000-staff-ai-rollout.avif

NHS England admits its paperwork hid that Palantir staff can see identifiable patient data

NHS England has admitted that a key data-protection document misstated who could see patients’ medical records. It did not disclose the whole arrangement. Staff at Palantir, the US data-analytics firm, can view identifiable patient data inside part of the new Federated Data Platform. The admission followed a request from the

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Open source project fools AI scrapers with poisoned font

Everyone hated Friend’s AI necklace, so it came back at double the price

Wiz’s AI bug-hunter helped find a master key to every database in Azure Cosmos DB

NHS England admits its paperwork hid that Palantir staff can see identifiable patient data