An anonymous worker who services Waymo vehicles for third-party contractor Transdev US told Bay Area Current that the job involves chaotic mass onboarding with no real interview process, rapid-fire training, and covert monitors who report contractors to management. The worker also described unpleasant physical tasks, including cleaning bodily waste left in vehicles, as part of daily duties. Neither Waymo nor Transdev responded to requests for comment on the claims.
Candidates across parties are campaigning against Flock Safety's AI-powered license-plate camera network, which operates in thousands of U.S. communities and lets police search shared vehicle data. Politicians in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida have called for bans, funding cuts, warrant requirements, or campaigned directly against the surveillance system. Flock defends the technology, citing its role in solving roughly a million crimes and reuniting thousands of missing people with families.
A Brooklyn father of two used AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude to research and compare back-to-school products instead of manually checking retailer sites and online reviews. The AI consolidated his shopping list across multiple stores and even advised him on optimal timing to buy items at the lowest prices. Retail surveys indicate this behavior is becoming widespread among shoppers this school season.
Google announced that its Gemini Spark personal agent can now perform tasks within Google Photos, including editing images, curating and sharing albums, converting flyer photos into calendar events, and running automated workflows. Google Photos lead Shimrit Ben-Yair revealed the update on X, saying it will roll out over the coming weeks to Gemini AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S. using English, with no timeline given for international availability.
Personal finance personality Suze Orman, who is worth tens of millions of dollars, says she still refuses to buy coffee out and brews her own Cafe Bustelo daily. She argues that redirecting the roughly $100 a month people spend on coffee into a Roth IRA could grow to about $1 million over 40 years, and she extends the same frugality to eating out, preferring home-cooked meals with her wife.
Tesla began limited commercial Cybercab service in Austin, Texas, using vehicles that lack a steering wheel, pedals or mirrors. Shortly after launch, the NHTSA opened an audit query covering roughly 1,000 vehicles to review how Tesla self-certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal safety standards.
Leaked sketches obtained by AndroidHeadlines suggest Motorola is designing a wide-format foldable phone that would join its existing flip and book-style foldable lines. The renderings show a horizontal triple-camera bar reminiscent of the Xiaomi 18 Fold, along with an easy-open hinge profile, a creaseless display, 3D glass, and an ultra-thin chassis. No launch date or specs have been confirmed, but the device is said to arrive within the coming months.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman published fresh details on Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, set to debut September 9. He says the phones will get a mechanical aperture camera system for adjusting light and depth, a second-generation vapor chamber for cooling, improved battery life, and in-house C2 modems.
A veteran product leader who left a decade-long healthtech career to become a part-time fractional product leader reports ongoing burnout even after her health issue resolved and her workload dropped to its lightest in years. She sought coaching after struggling repeatedly in job interviews for enterprise roles, question whether her burnout was blocking her performance or whether she had overestimated her own skills. Standard fixes like rest, PTO, and quitting for a new company failed to resolve her exhaustion.
Microsoft introduced Project Zenith, a decluttered version of Windows 11 aimed at developers doing local AI work, initially available on AMD's Ryzen AI Halo mini-desktop with 64GB of RAM. The build comes preloaded with developer tools and languages, enables settings like visible file extensions by default, and is designed to let users run large AI models locally without cloud costs.
Jacob Stokes, a former Obama national security official now at the Center for a New American Security, published a report titled 'Superpowers and AGI' urging the US to prepare drastic responses if China reaches artificial general intelligence first. His proposed options range from cyberattacks to sabotage AI systems up to kinetic military strikes on physical data centers, which he acknowledges carries the highest risk of escalation.
GoPro published an open letter addressing customer concerns that its planned merger with Starman could shift focus away from consumer and professional cameras. The company said the deal will strengthen its finances and enable continued investment in new cameras, accessories and software, pointing to its history of over 2,500 patents as evidence of ongoing innovation.
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