Science and Tech

Uber is facing an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) into its flagship subscription plan, the company has said. As first reported by Bloomberg, the US consumer watchdog was probing the ride-hailing giant over the enrolment and cancellation procedures of the service. Uber One, which has more than 25 million subscribers around the world, offers fee-paying members discounts …

Getty Ofcom has warned social media companies they will be punished if they fail to take significant extra steps to address the problem of children pretending to be adults online. A newly released survey, conducted by the UK media regulator, indicates 22% of eight to 17 year olds lie that they are 18 or over on social media apps. This …

US weapons scanning company Evolv Technology will be banned from making unsupported claims about its products in a proposed settlement with the US government. The company had claimed its AI scanner, used in the entrances of thousands of US schools, hospitals and stadiums, could detect all weapons. However BBC investigations showed these claims to be false. Evolv said it has …

Tiger tracking cameras have been misused to take videos of women in a forest in India.

Getty Images Career-networking site LinkedIn has told Australian lawmakers it is too dull for kids to warrant its inclusion in a proposed ban on social media for under 16 year olds. “LinkedIn simply does not have content interesting and appealing to minors,” the Microsoft-owned company said in a submission to an Australian senate committee. The Australian government has said it …

Getty Images MrBeast is the most popular YouTuber in the world with more than 300m subscribers MrBeast has claimed he has footage showing that allegations his upcoming reality game show “shamelessly exploited” contestants were “blown out of proportion”. The YouTuber, real name Jimmy Donaldson, released a teaser for Beast Games on Monday and announced it would be released next month. …

Genysys Engine Whiskers help the AI identify what is – and isn’t – a red squirrel An artificial intelligence (AI) tool which has been trained to tell the difference between grey and red squirrels could be “an absolute game changer”, conservationists say. The system, called Squirrel Agent, has been trained on thousands of images of the animals allowing it to …

PDD Holdings, the Chinese owner of online shopping platforms Temu and Pinduoduo, has reported disappointing sales and profit as Chinese consumers continued to hold back amid an economic slowdown. US-listed shares of the e-commerce giant fell nearly 11% on Thursday following the announcement. It comes after PDD’s main rivals in its home market, Alibaba and JD.com, also posted underwhelming results …

Getty Images Jet engines wouldn’t run without high-performance coatings Jet engines are one of the most jaw-dropping feats of engineering humans have ever come up with. But jet engines shouldn’t be possible, says Ben Beake, director of materials research at Micro Materials, an equipment testing company in Wales. “The air coming in is hotter than the melting point of the …

Payment app PayPal experienced a brief outage worldwide on Thursday, it confirmed. It said in a post on its service status page it was experiencing “a system issue” that affecting multiple PayPal Products – including account withdrawal and express checkout. The company said the technical issue was swiftly resolved. However, even a brief outage was enough to cause problems for …