Tech Digest daily roundup: Alef claims Model A is ‘first true flying car’

At a launch event at Draper University in San Mateo, California, a start-up revealed how its flying car hopes to take off. Alef bills its still-in-development electric vehicle, the Model A, as the first true flying car – a vehicle that it hopes will look like a sleek electric car but be capable of vertical take-off, and able to fly for 110km (68 miles). The firm hopes to compete in a market occupied by well-advanced rivals, such as AirCar and the Pal-V gyrocopter that are already flying and driving. But Jim Dukhovny, Alef’s chief executive and co-founder, argues most existing vehicles are not strictly flying cars in his opinion. “A flying car has to be a car, which means it can drive on a regular street, park in a regular parking space. And it also should have vertical take-off,” he told the BBC. BBC 

The public has been asked for its take on Microsoft’s record-breaking proposed takeover of the gaming giant Activision Blizzard. The $69bn (£61.8bn) deal was announced back in January, but has come under scrutiny around the world over concerns it would give the Xbox maker an unfair advantage over rivals such as Sony, which makes the PlayStation. An investigation by the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) was announced in July, and last month the watchdog decided there were enough issues to move the inquiry into a second phase. Sky News 

The rich and famous insist that private jets, which can emit up to two tonnes of CO2 every hour, are a necessary “work tool”. But that didn’t stop Bernard Arnault, the world’s second richest man, from being forced to give up using his thanks to an army of flight tracking enthusiasts.   “The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes,” the Louis Vuitton boss, who is worth more than $150 billion (£135bn), told a company podcast. While Arnault’s decision to abandon his aircraft may have upset plane tracking enthusiasts, it shows how technology has made it trivially easy to track almost anyone. Telegraph