Tech Digest daily roundup: US will not delay plane refit to prevent 5G interference
The US will not delay a deadline for airlines to refit planes with new sensors to address possible 5G interference, despite concerns the cut-off date could cause travel disruption. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Tuesday that airlines were told the 1 July deadline remained in place. Airlines have warned that they will not be able to meet the deadline and may be forced to ground some planes. Telecoms firms have previously delayed 5G rollout to allow airlines to adapt. In the US, the radio frequencies being used for 5G are in part of the spectrum known as C-Band. BBC
Chatbots pretending to be journalists have been discovered running almost 50 AI-generated “content farms” so far, according to an investigation by the anti-misinformation outfit NewsGuard. The websites churn out content relating to politics, health, environment, finance and technology at a “high volume”, the researchers found, to provide rapid turnover of material to saturate with adverts for profit. “Some publish hundreds of articles a day,” Newsguard’s McKenzie Sadeghi and Lorenzo Arvanitis said. “Some of the content advances false narratives. Nearly all of the content features bland language and repetitive phrases, hallmarks of artificial intelligence.” The Guardian
Apple and Google have teamed up to thwart people who try to track others using devices designed to help find lost keys and luggage. The rival tech giants do not often collaborate on new features for their smartphones, with a joint initiative to create contact tracing software during the pandemic one of few past examples. But now they have submitted a proposal to set standards for combating secret surveillance, following reports that gadgets like Apple’s AirTags have been used for malicious purposes. Sky News
The Moto Watch series has been augmented by new 70 and 200 variants today (May 2, 2023). They have been added to Motorola’s web-site without pricing for the time being, although it is clear that the latter will be the more premium of the 2. It has a 1.78-inch AMOLED display rated to stay on as long as 14 days per charge, as opposed to 1.69-inch LCD with up to 10 days of battery life in the Moto Watch 70. Its version of Moto OS is rated to focus on sleep-tracking and weather reports, whereas that of the 200 is imbued with the ability to compile and share “daily vital reports” and to show text messages from a connected smartphone. NotebookCheck
A woman has taken to TikTok to share her horror at discovering a hidden camera in the Airbnb she was renting with a group of friends. Kennedy Calwell and 14 others were staying in Vancouver, Canada, to celebrate a 30th birthday when their “paranoid” friend said she had a feeling that there were cameras watching them, reports Stuff After finding a strange outlet that wouldn’t fit any appliance, they took it apart with a butter knife. She said the wall socket “faced directly to the shower”, and the group soon discovered there was a tiny camera in it. Independent
Elon Musk has agreed to settle in a three-year-old defamation lawsuit brought against him by an outspoken critic of Tesla. The billionaire will pay out $10,000 to Randeep Hothi, concluding the drawn out court proceedings, according to multiple reports and a tweet from the plaintiff posted Monday. The settlement comes about a year after Musk said Tesla would “never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose,” in a tweet thread aiming to attract lawyers to Tesla’s “hardcore litigation department.” Gizmodo
