Protestors gather outside US Tesla dealers, South Korea bans DeepSeek
Protesters gathered outside Tesla dealerships across the US on Saturday in response to Elon Musk’s efforts to shred government spending under the president, Donald Trump. Groups of demonstrators up to 100-strong gathered outside the electric carmaker’s showrooms in cities including New York, Seattle, Kansas City and across California. Organisers said the protests took place in dozens of locations. While the protests were scattered, they highlighted the risks to the car company of Musk’s close association with Trump’s radical rightwing agenda. The Guardian
Tech companies including Elon Musk’s X and Google have claimed that businesses could leave Britain over the cost of funding an online safety crackdown. Google said fees that will be charged to internet companies as part of the Online Safety Act risked “driving services” out of the UK, while X warned that it could “disincentivise” global companies from entering the market. It comes as the Government faces pressure to wind back a proposed crackdown on US tech companies from the Trump White House. Telegraph
A right-wing influencer claims she is the mother of billionaire Elon Musk’s 13th child, according to a post she wrote on X. Ashley St Clair, a 26-year-old Maga writer, said on Friday night that she and Musk share a five-month-old child. “Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father,” she wrote. “I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child’s privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause.” Independent
South Korea has banned new downloads of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, according to the country’s personal data protection watchdog. The government agency said the AI model will become available again to South Korean users when “improvements and remedies” are made to ensure it complies with the country’s personal data protection laws. In the week after it made global headlines, DeepSeek became hugely popular in South Korea leaping to the top of app stores with over a million weekly users. BBC
Privacy campaigners have called Google’s new rules on tracking people online “a blatant disregard for user privacy.” Changes which come in on Sunday permit so-called “fingerprinting”, which allows online advertisers to collect more data about users including their IP addresses and information about their devices. Google says this data is already widely used by other companies, and it continues to encourage responsible data use. However the company had previously come out strongly against this kind of data collection, saying in a 2019 blog, that fingerprinting “subverts user choice and is wrong.” BBC
BMW, you may have noticed, is starting to generate quite a head of steam when it comes to its Neue Klasse EVs. It started, predictably enough, with the design concepts long ago, but shifted up a gear when M GmbH started talking in detail (via YouTube) about what the forthcoming electric M3 is going to be like. Now, building on many of the aspects it discussed in those videos, most notably the ‘Heart of Joy’ centralised control unit, BMW has publicly unveiled what it is calling its new high-performance test vehicle – or the Vision Driving Experience as it is catchily known. Pistonheads
