Apple pushes back EV launch date, children on TikTok for over 2 hours a day
Apple has pushed back the launch date for its long-rumoured electric vehicle and scaled back its self-driving features as the iPhone maker struggles with the shift from gadgets to cars. The Californian tech giant has delayed its internal target to launch a car from 2026 to 2028, according to Bloomberg. The vehicle will also have fewer advanced autonomous driving capabilities than first hoped. The revisions come as Apple finds the push into cars more challenging than it initially hoped. Known internally as Project Titan, Apple has been working on the secretive electric car project since 2014. Telegraph
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has not done enough to safeguard children after Molly Russell’s death, according to a whistleblower. Arturo Béjar, a former senior engineer and consultant at the Instagram and Facebook owner, said if the company had learned its lessons from Molly’s death and subsequent inquest it would have created a safer experience for young users. According to research conducted by Béjar on Instagram users, 8.4% of 13- to 15-year-olds had seen someone harm themselves or threaten to harm themselves in the past week. The Guardian
Meta is introducing changes to Instagram and Facebook Messenger that aim to better protect minors from unwanted contact online, placing greater restrictions on who can message teens while giving parents more control over their children’s security settings. Notably, the company announced that by default, teens under the age of 16 (or under 18 in some countries) will no longer be able to receive messages, or be added to group chats, by users they don’t follow or aren’t connected with on Instagram and Messenger. The Verge
The Pokémon Company says it plans to investigate copycat claims against online multiplayer sensation Palworld. Fans have been pointing out similarities after the new title exploded in popularity this week. In its first statement since, the Pokémon Company said it would take “appropriate action” if it found its copyright had been breached. The boss of Palworld maker Pocketpair has said the game passed legal checks before release. BBC
UK vehicle production in 2023 hit one million units for the first time since pre-Covid 2019, with multibillion-pound EV investment from major car makers pushing the UK “back in the game”, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said today. SMMT chief Mike Hawes called the 1,025,474 total (905,117 cars, 120,357 commercial vehicles; up 17% year on year) a “surprise”, especially given the supply chain difficulties that hampered car makers in 2023. Autocar
Children in the UK are using TikTok for more than two hours a day, making British youngsters some of the heaviest users of the social media app worldwide, a new report has claimed. British children who used the app spent an average of 127 minutes per day on it last year, an increase of 11pc on the previous year, according to parental controls company Qustodio. This has almost doubled since 2020, when youngsters spent around 70 minutes on TikTok each day. Telegraph
Japan’s moon lander touched down with “pinpoint” precision, its space agency has said, after the country become the fifth in the world to successfully reach lunar soil. The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), also known as the “moon sniper”, landed within 100m (328ft) of its target, out-striping conventional accuracy targets, it was announced on Thursday. But the spacecraft, launched at the weekend, lost power within just two hours and 37 minutes. Sky News
