ShinyShiny snippets: YouTube accused of collecting UK children’s data
YouTube has been accused of collecting the viewing data of children aged under 13, in breach of a UK data privacy code designed to protect children. Campaigner Duncan McCann has lodged an official complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). He says the site is gathering data about the videos children watch, where they are watching and what device they are watching it on. YouTube said it had invested in protecting families. This included treating all children’s content as though children were viewing it, even on an adult’s account, it said. BBC
A remote kissing device has been created by a group of university students in China for people in long-distance relationships. The 3D silicone gadget has a mouth-shaped module and is triggered through a kiss, which is then transferred to the “mouth” on the other side. It mimics the movement, temperature and pressure of the kiss using sensors, and links to phones via Bluetooth and an application. The device, which was created by a group of university students in China, has been met with criticism on social media. Some users called the device “weird”, while others found humour in it saying that the device convinced them “that having a long-distance relationship is a pretty bad idea”. Sky News
OnePlus has teased – for the second time this month – that it’s working on its first foldable smartphone, due later this year. Speaking as part of a ‘From Fast & Smooth to Beyond’ panel event on its booth at the MWC trade show in Barcelona, OnePlus President and COO Kinder Liu confirmed that the company has a foldable phone in the works, which will launch in the second half of the year. Liu wouldn’t reveal much more than that, except to hint that the phone will pack flagship specs to match OnePlus’s finest, the OnePlus 11 – which itself only launched earlier this month. Tech Advisor
Meta plans to release its first pair of smart glasses with a display in 2025 alongside a neural interface smartwatch designed to control them, The Verge has learned. Meanwhile, its first pair of full-fledged AR glasses, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has predicted will eventually be as widely used as mobile phones, is planned for 2027. The details were shared with thousands of employees in Meta’s Reality Labs division on Tuesday during a roadmap presentation of its AR and VR efforts that was shared with The Verge.
Volkswagen started to get really serious about its all-electric future with the introduction of the ID.3, a Golf-sized family hatchback that was the first model in the entire VW Group to use the bespoke MEB EV platform. Now, less than three years after the VW ID.3 went on sale, the car is being treated to a series of upgrades that are extensive enough for VW to refer to it as a “second generation” ID.3. From the outside, the evolution of Volkswagen ID.3 looks relatively typical fare for what the car industry often calls ‘mid-life enhancement’. There are new colour options – including the vivid Dark Olivine Green of the vehicle pictured here. Autoexpress
While LG is just as prone to making grand claims as the next TV brand, it’s traditionally very reluctant to reveal hard performance figures and hardware details. It’s a massive surprise, then, that in a recent video briefing, LG’s David Seperson revealed specific peak brightness figures for the new G3, which will be the brightest OLED TV the company has ever produced – and by a long way. The headline is that the TV will apparently be capable of hitting a peak brightness figure of “roughly” 2040 nits. This will specifically be in the HDR Vivid picture mode and is measured using a 3 per cent window – i.e. a pure white block that’s 3 per cent the size of the whole screen, with the rest being pure black. WhatHiFi
