Google will take firmer action against British businesses that use fake reviews to boost their star ratings on the search giant’s reviews platform. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on Friday that Google has agreed to improve its processes for detecting and removing fake reviews, and will take action against the businesses and reviewers that post them.

This includes deactivating the ability to add new reviews for businesses found to be using fake reviews, and deleting all existing reviews for at least six months if they repeatedly engage in suspicious review activity. Google will also place prominent “warning alerts” on the Google profiles of businesses using fake reviews to help consumers be more aware of potentially misleading feedback. Individuals who repeatedly post fake or misleading reviews on UK business pages will be banned and have their review history deleted, even if they’re located in another country.

Google is required to report to the CMA over the next three years to ensure it’s complying with the agreement.

“The changes we’ve secured from Google ensure robust processes are in place, so people can have confidence in reviews and make the best possible choices,” CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said in a statement. “This is a matter of fairness – for both business and consumers – and we encourage the entire sector to take note.”

Google made similar changes to reviews in Maps last year, saying that contributions “should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business.” However, those changes apply globally while Google’s commitment to improving reviews across all its properties appears to just apply to the UK for now.

The changes to reviews follow a CMA investigation launched against Google and Amazon in 2021 over concerns the companies had violated consumer protection laws by not doing enough to tackle fake reviews on their platforms. The CMA says its probe into Amazon is still ongoing and that an update will be announced “in due course.”

LG Electronics is betting on robotics as its next big growth driver. The South Korean electronics company said on Friday that it has agreed to acquire an additional 30% stake in Bear Robotics, a California-based startup it previously backed that is building AI-powered server robots for restaurants. The deal gives LG a majority ownership of 51% in the startup, which will now become a subsidiary of the larger company. LG declined to comment on the value of its latest stake; a local outlet in Korea say it’s around $180 million. If accurate, that would give Bear an overall valuation of $600 million.

A company spokesperson added that the exact figure would be disclosed once the deal closes.

Bear is known for its expertise in AI technology that is capable of controlling multiple robots, specifically the management of fleets remotely, LG said in its statement. The tech giant intends to integrate Bear with its commercial robot unit, which has developed “LG CLOi Robots,” to reinforce its home robot and industrial robot divisions.

The tech behemoth says it is working on developing a comprehensive software platform for commercial, industrial, and home robots using Bear’s technology. With the robotics industry moving more towards AI-focused solutions, this investment and deal is expected to improve LG’s robotics software capabilities, LG said.

The news comes less than a year after the electronics company poured $60 million into Bear Robotics in March 2024. That deal already made LG into Bear’s largest shareholder. Bear’s previous funding in 2022 valued it at over $490 million, per PitchBook data.

CEO and founder John Ha and the Bear management team will remain and continue to help create synergies with LG’s robotics unit.

Ha, a former Google software engineer turned restaurateur, founded Bear in 2017 after witnessing the challenges of running a restaurant, which motivated him to develop serving robots. The SoftBank-backed startup operates indoor delivery robots in the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. Its robots are designed to help deliver food to restaurant customers.

“This additional investment underscores our dedication to positioning robots as a pivotal growth engine for the company, reflecting our belief in their inevitable role in the future,” Lee Sam-soo, chief strategy officer at LG Electronics, said in a statement. “We will persist in driving innovation across all sectors of robotics, encompassing commercial, industrial and home applications.”

Robots and robotics were a bit theme this year at CES 2025, and LG made itself a part of that story. with LG CEO William Cho emphasizing the potential for robots to broaden their applications beyond their current roles in sectors like hospitality and delivery logistics.

LG’s interest in the tech goes back well before this year and the recent vogue of AI in everything, with both Korea and Japan being early commercial adopters of some of the earliest iterations in the field. The Korean electronics company has been researching and developing robot software and hardware more than a decade. In 2017, LG deployed guide robots at South Korea’s largest airport, Incheon International Airport.

LG also has a substantial home robotics business by way of its LG Home Appliance Solution Division. Its home robots are designed to work with home appliances and other domestic scenarios. One example the self-driving AI home hub, a project named Q9, which is scheduled for release later this year. It has autonomous driving technology and can sense voices, sounds, and images. The Q9 has Microsoft’s voice recognition and synthesis technology, so users can have easy and natural conversations with it.

Its industrial robot, the “Autonomous Vertical Articulated Robot,” uses sensors to navigate, move, and carry out tasks with its robotic arm.

Samsung, LG’s rival in the electronics sector, said earlier this month that it will roll out its home robot in the first half of this year.

• Purported Nvidia RTX 5080 Geekbench results have been shared
• They suggest roughly a 20% gen-on-gen uplift compared to the RTX 4080
• However, the RTX 5080 appears to come up short compared to the older RTX 4090

With the RTX 5090 now reviewed and fully evaluated – as an undoubtedly powerful GPU, albeit to the point of overkill in many ways – the attention of the benchmark-spilling world has turned to the RTX 5080.

Reviews of this second Blackwell GeForce GPU are imminent, and thanks to Benchleaks (via Tom’s Hardware), we’ve caught a purported Geekbench result (be skeptical with it, as with any such spillage).

Mere moments after his swearing in Monday, President Donald Trump made a proclamation to attendees of his inauguration: “It shall henceforth be the policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.” Trump then signed an executive order disparaging what the White House called “gender ideology” and claiming that a person’s sex is “not changeable and [is] grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

Trump’s order, which was widely seen as an unscientific attempt to roll back the rights of transgender and gender-expansive people, also instructs federal agencies “to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex,” rather than their gender identity. It was one of 78 orders signed on Monday, some of which were part of Trump’s attempts to end Biden-era policies that “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”

While the executive order only affects federal policy, the broader implications are vast. It’s only been a decade since Facebook’s “real name” policy made it hard for people to hold accounts under names different than the ones on their IDs. Facebook has since amended these guidelines, but as companies like Meta clear the way for users to claim trans people have “mental illness,” digital safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people seem to be dwindling. Except in one arena: dating apps.

Following Trump’s executive order, Match Group and Feeld both told WIRED they have no intention of reversing course when it comes to the gender identity options offered on their respective platforms.

“We are not making changes to our apps,” says Kayla Whaling, a spokesperson for Match Group, which owns OkCupid, Tinder, Hinge, and several other dating platforms.

It remains to be seen how other tech companies will respond to the executive order. Some, like Meta, seemed to be making overtures to the incoming Trump administration before this week. Earlier this month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would end its third-party fact-checking program and transition to a Community Notes model, à la X.

Zuckerberg peddled the sudden reversal as a bid to scale up free speech across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads and allow for more political content. “We’re going to simplify our content policies and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse,” Zuckerberg said in a video accompanying the announcement.

Should online life become even less inclusive for LGBTQ+ people during Trump’s term, apps like OkCupid, Feeld, and Hinge could become digital havens, places to connect. “In a time when many of our civil rights are under threat, dating apps have the ability to serve as crucial spaces for gender, racial, and sexual inclusivity,” says Apryl Williams, a professor of communication and digital studies at the University of Michigan.

Over a decade ago, in 2014, OkCupid expanded its gender options for users to include identifications such as transgender, pangender, intersex, agender, and genderqueer. It was among the first dating apps to capture an accurate picture of identity online, and the different ways it was evolving. Currently, Tinder provides an option for “beyond binary” and Hinge allows users to select “nonbinary” on their profiles.

• Apple has removed claims that CarPlay 2 will arrive in 2024 from its website
• The company has confirmed it’s still working with “several” car makers
• But there’s no indication of when CarPlay 2 might launch

Apple’s CarPlay 2 system is designed to help you manage maps, media and more inside your car. It was meant to arrive in 2024, yet for one reason or another, that never happened. And now, we’ve finally had official word from Apple on what we can expect to see in the future.

In an official statement provided to MacRumors, Apple said that “several” car manufacturers would be incorporating CarPlay 2 into their vehicles, and that each company would share more details at the appropriate time. However, there was no indication of when that might be.

This raises fundamental questions. “If they are going to designate traffickers as narco-terrorists, will they also include the Americans who are part of these networks? Because we are not just talking about the famous drug cartels, but also trafficking networks, money laundering, arms smuggling and other structures, many of which are incorporated in the United States. There is an enormous complexity in defining where a cartel begins and where it ends. There is a dispersion of actors, organizations and relationships on both sides of the border involved in drug trafficking. Therefore, to speak of narcoterrorism is to speak of something vague and imprecise. This term is not supported by concrete evidence; rather, its use is eminently political,” argues Zavala.

According to Zavala, the narrative allows figures like President Trump to use the concept of narcoterrorism as a tool of intimidation, threat and extortion towards the Mexican government. “Rather than describing realities, narcoterrorism is based on spectral notions, on political phantoms that are used to force Mexico to align with Washington’s interests,” he says.

An Executive Order to Intervene Militarily in Mexico

Intervening militarily in Mexican territory with selective incursions aimed at damaging the cartels is something that has been on the US radar screen for some time now. But analysts argue that it would be a shot in the foot for the Trump administration.

“By using the concept of narcoterrorism, the US government empowers itself to intervene militarily in Mexico. That is something very complicated, because intervening in that way would seriously damage the binational relationship, which is very delicate. It is almost inconceivable [the idea of military aggression],” Zavala explains. “I believe that in addition to the bravado, the Mexican government has generally been aligned because in the end our security policy has always been subordinated and violated; even subalternized by the United States.”

This Wednesday, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, said that the secretary of foreign affairs, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, had a telephone conversation with US secretary of state Marco Rubio. She did not provide details of the conversation, but said it was “a very cordial conversation” and they discussed “migration and security issues.” Rubio has said that he would prefer that any action, any decision taken from Washington have the consent, the collaboration of the Mexican government.

“Cartels Do Not Exist”

Oswaldo Zavala (Ciudad Juarez, 1975) has specialized in Mexican narrative, and has an alternative vision of the narco phenomenon in Mexico. He believes that the image of the power of the cartels is exaggerated and sponsored by the State. The author of The Imaginary U.S.—Mexico Drug Wars: State Power, Organized Crime, and the Political History of Narconarratives (1975–2012), explains to WIRED that the war against drug trafficking is generally built on fantastical, contradictory and often absurd concepts, which gradually form an imaginary that presents drug trafficking in an alarmist manner.

“The US government has managed with great skill to create a long list of concepts, monsters and criminal actors that not only dominate the public debate in the United States, but also in Mexico. Thus, when Americans want it, one organization or another becomes the center of discussion. In the 1980s, for example, it was the Guadalajara Cartel, with figures such as Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. In the 1990s, the central figure was El Chapo Guzman, and later, Amado Carrillo. Today, the conversation revolves around fentanyl and, above all, the Sinaloa Cartel,” Zavala explains.

Zavala argues that the narratives used by the US government are ways of simplifying a complex problem, giving a common sense to the debate that would otherwise be much more complicated. “If we take into account that a large part of drug consumption occurs in the United States, that there are organizations within that country that facilitate trafficking, launder money and, in many cases, are as or more dangerous than the Mexican ones, the discussion becomes much more complex for the Mexican panorama. What these narratives do, then, is to simplify the situation, presenting Mexico as the primary enemy of US security. In doing so, the US government can intervene not only mediatically but also politically, diplomatically, and even militarily in Mexico,” he says.

“As citizens we must be very careful with the narratives that are generated from Washington,” he warns. “It is essential to learn to analyze them critically and to distance ourselves from what we are being told. This process is neither easy nor quick, since, unfortunately, not only the Mexican government repeats these narratives, but the media also replicates them, and sometimes institutions and other actors push them. And, to complicate things even more, a popular culture is created that feeds these ideas: today there are already corridos about fentanyl, about the ‘Chapitos’ and about the supposed criminal empires of the cartels. It is very difficult to escape from all this.”

A War That Has Left More Than 100,000 People Missing

More than 100,000 people have been missing in Mexico since 1964, when the count began. The National Registry of Disappeared and Unaccounted for Persons has for months now exceeded this figure, which is evidence of the grave situation in the country. Most of these people were registered as missing since 2006, when the administration of Felipe Calderón, who took the army to the streets to combat the violence of organized crime, began.

“Many of the most serious effects of the anti-drug policy we have been suffering in Mexico for decades. More than half a million murders since the militarization began with President Calderon, more than 100,000 forced disappearances. We know that all that violence is unloaded, above all, against poor, racialized, brown young people, who live in the most disadvantaged areas of the country,” says Zavala, who is surprised when people are alarmed by what Trump says. “As if we weren’t already living, for years now, a really serious wave of violence in the country.”

According to the researcher, military violence is often expressed as a form of social control, as a management of violence. “You’re not going to see militarization in areas like the Condesa or Roma, but in the margins of Mexico City, in the most impoverished areas. The violence is happening in the peripheries, in the poorest neighborhoods, where there is not even adequate monitoring by the media or human rights institutions,” Zavala says.

What should surprise us, Zavala says, are the very high rates of violence we are experiencing, as a background of what is already happening, not of something that is yet to come. “I think we still don’t fully understand that this violence has a clear class dimension. It is not generalized violence, but systematized and directed against the most vulnerable sectors of society,” he says.

The Solution: Demilitarizing the Country

The decision taken by Calderón 16 years ago to entrust the Army with the responsibility of public security in several areas of the country has shown us its fatal consequences. Both Enrique Peña Nieto and Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged, during their respective electoral campaigns, to return peace, security, and civility to us. However, once in power, both presented proposals to consolidate, through legislation and even constitutional reforms, the militarized public security model. The situation does not seem to change with Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration.

In this way, Mexico’s recent presidents have maintained a “peace and security” policy based on a militarized strategy, justifying it on the supposed operational incapacity of police corporations to confront organized crime.

“I agree with the view that drugs need to be decriminalized, addictions treated, all that. But in my opinion, most of the violence in Mexico is not necessarily linked to drug trafficking, but to the experience of militarization itself. And I think there is solid empirical data to support this idea. We know that there is a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ militarization in Mexico,” Zavala explains. “Before the deployment of the army, our homicide rates were declining throughout the country, and there is a direct correlation between military occupation, the presence of the armed forces, and the increase in homicides and forced disappearances.”

Apple first announced the “next generation of CarPlay” back in 2022, but updates about its arrival have been sporadic. Porsche and Aston Martin haven’t provided any launch dates despite saying their cars would be the first to get the new CarPlay. Some automakers like Ford and Mercedes were slow to confirm support, while others like General Motors and Rivian have snubbed CarPlay entirely in favor of having more control over their vehicles.

Despite not posting a revised date, there are indications that Apple will launch it eventually. There are references to next-generation ‌CarPlay‌ in the iOS 18.3 beta released last month, for example, and Apple has recently filed new images of it in an EU database. Apple also told 9to5Mac that it’s working closely with several automakers that will implement the new CarPlay experience.

“Each car brand will share more details as they near the announcements of their models that will support the next generation of CarPlay,” Apple told the outlet.

After releasing two developer beta versions last year, Google introduced the first public beta for Android 16 on Thursday. New features include live updates on the lock screen (like Live Activities on iOS), Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec for high-quality video recording, and a framework for developers to make their apps adaptable for different screen sizes and aspect ratios.

For consumers, support for live updates will be the most visible change. Apple introduced Live Activities to show ever-changing updates such as delivery status, workouts, or sports scores with iOS 16 in 2022. Android is now adopting that format to let developers push real-time updates natively with Android 16.

Google is also adding frameworks and tools to make apps more responsive when it comes to design. The company is phasing out size restriction controls for developers, so their apps can look and work better on large screens such as tablets and foldable devices.

Android 16 also gets a new Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec for high-quality video recording and post-processing. The company said that this codec will help creators with faster editing capabilities and features like multi-view video and auxiliary video. This is possibly a direct answer to Apple’s ProRes and ProRes Raw formats.

With APV, the company says that users can expect a “perceptually” lossless quality, which is closer to raw footage. Plus, the codec will support a high bitrate range of footage for up to a few gigabits per second for 2K, 4K, and 8K.

Google is also adding a way for apps to know if the camera within their app should switch to night mode for better-quality low-light pictures. The company worked with Instagram to bring this feature to users of select devices last year.

Android 16 will also bring improvements on the accessibility front, with a new required field indicator in the APIs. Thanks to this new feature, apps can tell the user that a specific field is mandatory. Google said this could also be useful for situations where users need to check the terms and conditions box.

Google took a different approach with Android 16 by releasing the first developer preview in November instead of Q1 2025. The company wanted to accelerate the update cycle of the Android release by shipping the final version in Q2 rather than Q3 and shipping a minor update later in the year. This is Google’s effort to ensure that device makers have enough time to issue updates and reduce the fragmentation of software versions across different devices.

• Filming of the DCU movie Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is officially underway
• DC Studios co-chief James Gunn has revealed the first image from the film’s set
• The Milly Alcock-starring superhero flick will be released in July 2026

Principal photography has officially begun on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow – and, to celebrate the occasion, DC Studios co-chief James Gunn has released a new behind-the-scenes image from the movie’s UK-based set.

Taking to Instagram yesterday (January 23), Gunn confirmed that filming was finally underway on the hotly-anticipated DC Universe (DCU) movie. With the cameras rolling on the Milly Alcock-fronted comic book movie, Gunn shared an image from the film’s set that’ll look very familiar to DC devotees.

It’s been three long years since Sony launched its flagship WH-1000XM5 headphones, our pick for the best wireless headphones for most people, so we’re due a follow-up — and a regulatory filing indicates that the XM6 cans might nearly be ready to launch. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing hints at a slight redesign, including a new hinge and what appear to be detachable earpads.

The Walkman Blog first spotted the filing, which includes a product diagram showing off some of the details of the right earcup. Most interestingly, the diagram shows the earpad lifting off to reveal the location of the “user-visible name plate” containing the model and serial numbers. Since the FCC requires this name plate be accessible to users, it seems likely that the pad is attached without screws, though we don’t know if that’s with clips, magnets, or something else. The XM5s hid their FCC details under the inner edge of the pads instead, which were not removable.

Otherwise there’s not too much to glean from the filing. The headphones’ hinge looks slightly different from the previous generation’s, though there’s no reason yet to believe that means a return to the folding design of the XM4s. The Bluetooth version is reported to be 5.3, and there are some details on the antenna and power specs, but nothing to suggest how the headphones will look or sound.

The FCC filing doesn’t name these as the XM6 headphones, but the model numbers seem to give it away. These headphones have the model number YY2984, remarkably similar to the XM5s’ YY2954 designation. The only note of caution is that the tested model is marked as a prototype, rather than a pre-production or mass production unit, so some details may change before release.

The FCC filing includes a “short-term confidentiality” request dated to end on July 22nd 2025, which certainly suggests that we’ll get an official reveal before that date. The XM5s launched in May 2022, so we may be due another spring release.