AI
AI coding model bias: test it like a hiring audit
Change one phrase saying who the code is for, and Qwen3-Coder's apps got easier to hack. Labour economists have tested for this kind of gap for twenty years.
Society & Culture
Airbnb banned checkout chores. Who pays for the dishes now?
From 20 November, Airbnb hosts can't require guests to strip beds or wash dishes. The cleaning fee already claimed that work. Here's who ends up paying.
Science & Health
We will overshoot 1.5°C. Can a missed target still do its job?
UNEP now plans to overshoot 1.5°C and come back by 2100. The UK's inflation letters show what a missed target needs to keep meaning something.
Society & Culture
The EU's new refund form fixes the smaller problem
The European Parliament voted 652 to 2 for a standard refund form and 14-day refunds. The Commission's own survey says paperwork is only the third reason people don't claim.
World
Can a country fine a website it can't reach?
Ofcom's chief told MPs nine of its 11 online safety fines are unpaid. Six of those services changed or left the UK anyway. Speed cameras and foreign cars explain why.
Engineering
Eight certificate keys could be guessed in 256 tries
Eight certificate authority keys trusted by every major browser were numbers below 256. Browsers fixed it in hours. Everything else that trusts the same roots is another story.
Science & Health
Who pays when spill damage shows up a decade later?
A PNAS paper finds deep-sea life in the Gulf fell 60 to 85% after Deepwater Horizon and hasn't recovered. The 2016 settlement had already capped payment for unknown harm.
Fintech
One cloud zone lost power. Why did banks go dark?
A power event in one of Google's three London zones disrupted bank apps for hours on 20 October. The 2019 Thameslink lock-out shows where outages are really lost: the restart.
AI
Agents that think off the page leave one reader: the vendor
A new AI agent does most of its reasoning in hidden states and stays readable, but only through a component its maker owns. Aviation settled who may hear a cockpit recording by law.
Science & Health
Can organ chips replace animal tests? Ask a pilot
The FDA now accepts non-animal tests in principle, and some organ chips beat animals at spotting toxic drugs. Rabbits are still used anyway. Flight simulators show what was missing: a pass mark.
World
China's solar curbs ban know-how. Britain banned workers.
China's draft export curbs target solar know-how, not panels. Britain spent 150 years trying to keep its mill know-how home, and the record shows what actually leaked: people.
Science & Health
Bleached coral recovered by touching its clone. Keep the clone.
Stanford researchers found bleached coral fragments recovered in weeks when they touched a healthy clone of themselves. The catch is the clone. Engineers who run databases know that catch well.