A survey of 1,517 US adults by data removal service Incogni found that people who say they have 'nothing to hide' are more likely to spy on others' phone or laptop screens in public than those who admit to having something to hide. The survey also found generational differences, with Gen Z most likely to peek at others' screens, and revealed that many respondents who dismiss their own privacy concerns still snoop through partners' or family members' devices without permission.
zdnet.com
· 2026-09-10
A user posting on Hacker News says OpenAI's account setting that disables use of chat data for model training has reverted to 'on' after being turned off, despite no action from the user. They say this has happened more than once, and they only caught it by deliberately tracking when they last disabled the option.
news.ycombinator.com
· 2026-09-10
Utah mother Kalie Robins posted a video of herself and her daughter singing in a car without naming the child. Meta AI later surfaced suggested prompts asking about the 'child passenger,' and when Robins engaged, it compiled detailed information on both her daughters—including names and ages—by pulling from years of family posts shared by relatives like grandparents.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-10
Microsoft and the American Federation of Teachers signed a legally enforceable agreement barring the company from using student or teacher data to train its AI models, except in narrow safety and security cases. The deal also prohibits tracking students, requires human oversight for any AI decisions affecting schools, and mandates transparency with parents and educators about how the tools function. Protections take effect for school districts starting November 1.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-09
At Apple's Surprise and Shine event, new CEO John Ternus argued that the iPhone already fulfills the role of an ideal AI device, citing its processing power, connectivity, cameras, display and battery life. Rather than announcing new AI-specific hardware, Ternus positioned the existing iPhone as Apple's answer to competitors building standalone AI gadgets.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-09
Microsoft has signed an agreement with the American Federation of Teachers and its New York affiliate, the United Federation of Teachers, laying out ten enforceable privacy and safety commitments for AI use in schools. The rules bar Microsoft from training models on student or teacher data, limit data collection, ban AI companions, and require human oversight for high-stakes decisions. Districts can add these terms to contracts starting in November without renegotiating existing agreements.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-09
A historical piece revisits how Lotus Notes, launched in 1989, offered encryption, rich formatting, read receipts, and app-building tools years before equivalent standards like MIME or PGP existed for email. It traces the software's conceptual origins back to a 1973 University of Illinois project called PLATO Notes, built by a teenage programmer, David Woolley, to replace a chaotic open text file used for campus communication.
buttondown.com
· 2026-09-09
An investigation by YouTube channels Gamers Nexus and Level1Techs, using packet capture tools and firmware analysis, found that LG TVs including the $2,500 G5 OLED can scan a household's entire local network, detecting phones, smartwatches and other unrelated devices even when those devices are never connected to the TV. Researchers say this behavior is built into the TV's native functionality rather than the result of a security flaw, and can occur even when the TV is turned off.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-08
Researchers demonstrated that large language models can analyze scattered public information—writing style, posting patterns, and incidental details—to identify the real people behind pseudonymous social media accounts with notable accuracy. The technique relies on piecing together fragments of publicly available data rather than any single identifying clue.
wsj.com
· 2026-09-08
Huawei unveiled the Mate XT2, a tri-folding smartphone that unfolds from a 6.5-inch display into a 10.2-inch 3K screen, now paired with an optional built-in privacy display. The device runs HarmonyOS and uses Huawei's new Kirin 9050 Pro chip, said to be 42 percent faster than its predecessor, alongside a four-camera setup led by a 50-megapixel main sensor and 3.5x periscope zoom. Pricing starts around $2,980 and climbs to roughly $4,470 for a 2TB collector's edition.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-07
A developer found that CodePen's updated editor sends everything typed into its code fields to codepen.dev within one to two seconds, even without saving. Using a unique test marker in an HTML file, they confirmed CodePen triggered a build with save disabled and the marker still appeared verbatim in the generated preview page served from a codepen.dev subdomain.
news.ycombinator.com
· 2026-09-07
Meta has remotely disabled photo and video functions on smart glasses that owners modified to hide or disable the recording indicator light. The company's wearables VP told Semafor that under 0.1% of the roughly 7 million glasses sold in 2025 were altered this way, meaning up to several thousand devices were affected. The move follows a wave of complaints about people using the glasses to secretly film others, particularly women, without consent.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-07
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