As if renewing your real passport wasn’t a big enough pain, you may soon need an internet passport to get into your favourite Reddit thread. 

Driving the news: Per TechCrunch, Worldcoin — a crypto project co-founded by Sam Altman — has created integrations for World ID, its iris-scanning identity verification tool, for some major digital platforms, including Shopify, Reddit, Telegram, and Minecraft.

Governments often play catch-up on regulating new technologies, but when it comes to AI, they are beginning to make up some ground.

What happened: The EU passed its Artificial Intelligence Act, only the second set of AI laws passed by a governing body. China implemented rules for generative AI in August, but the EU’s rules are more far-reaching.

They say you can’t teach an old newspaper new tricks, but The Grey Lady wants to get with the times and dabble in AI. 

What happened: The New York Times hired an editorial director of AI initiatives to chart a path forward for using AI in its newsrooms as more media companies experiment with the technology — a slight change in pace given its approach to AI has been cautious so far. 

Would you be the face of a Russian disinformation campaign for $200? Well, that’s exactly the situation in which a handful of celebrities found themselves this week.  

Driving the news: Several famous faces like Elijah Wood and Priscilla Presley were tricked into making videos that were edited and used to attack Volodymyr Zelensky, the latest in a series of organized efforts by Russian trolls to warp perceptions around the war in Ukraine. 

What is end-to-end encryption?

A messaging system where only the users can participate. This means your internet provider, mobile provider, law enforcement and even the company that makes the app you are using can’t read your messages.

Anyone paying attention to Google’s big AI announcement on Wednesday may have been left with two main questions: how is it different from ChatGPT, and is it any good?

Amazon is still preparing to send its first satellite into space, but it has started laying the groundwork for bringing its internet service to Canada.

What happened: Amazon’s job site currently has a posting for a country manager to run Project Kuiper, the company’s satellite broadband internet service, in Canada.

People are used to getting surprises when they sign up for 23andMe, but “some hackers got their hands on your DNA” usually isn’t among them.

What happened: 23andMe, one of the world’s most popular DNA testing companies, confirmed that an October data breach resulted in hackers successfully swiping data from 6.9 million users—just a touch more than the 14,000 users that were initially estimated. 

The problem: Because no one’s accessibility needs are exactly the same, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all way to make video game consoles accessible to people with disabilities.

The solution: Sony’s Access controller for the PlayStation 5 is a modular device that allows players to arrange and remap the buttons to pick a configuration that works for them.