Meta’s Secret Face-Recognition for Smart Glasses

Meta has quietly shipped face-recognition code to millions of phones via its AI app, despite publicly claiming the technology was still under consideration. The system, internally called ‘NameTag,’ can transform faces into biometric signatures and alert wearers when a recognized person is identified, effectively turning users into a distributed surveillance network.

Google Pays SpaceX $11B+ for AI Compute

Google will pay SpaceX $920 million per month from 2026 to 2029 to access 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs. This ‘bridge capacity’ deal highlights the extreme scarcity of AI infrastructure and SpaceX’s pivot into a high-revenue compute landlord for AI giants like Google and Anthropic.

Smart TVs as AI Scraping Nodes

Connected TVs are being used as ideal residential proxies for AI training data scraping because they are always powered on and unattended. Companies like Bright Data embed SDKs in partner apps to turn home TVs into exit nodes, bypassing cloud-based bot detection and routing massive amounts of scraping traffic through residential IPs.

Meta AI Chatbot Bug Enables Account Hijacking

Meta confirmed that over 20,000 Instagram accounts were hijacked after hackers tricked its AI chatbot into resetting passwords for accounts without two-factor authentication. The bug allowed attackers to provide their own email addresses for recovery links, which the chatbot complied with without verifying the account owner’s email.

Global Chip Supply Threatened by Helium Crisis

A geopolitical crisis in Qatar has removed nearly 30% of the global helium supply, threatening the production of AI chips and HBM memory. Because helium is irreplaceable for critical cooling and vacuum steps in chip making, South Korean memory giants and TSMC face significant yield risks if the disruption persists.

Nintendo Switch 2: EU-Only Replaceable Batteries

Nintendo will release a version of the Switch 2 in the EU with user-replaceable batteries in the console and controllers. This regional hardware revision is a direct response to EU e-waste laws, while the rest of the world continues to receive the standard non-replaceable model.

  • [https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/nintendo-confirms-euonly-switch-2-revision-with-userreplaceable-batteries { “title”: “Nintendo Switch 2: EU-Only Replaceable Batteries”, “urls”: [“https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/nintendo-confirms-euonly-switch-2-revision-with-userreplaceable-batteries”], “technical_significance”: “Hardware revision to comply with EU e-waste laws requiring removable batteries by 2027.”, “summary”: “Nintendo will release a version of the Switch 2 in the EU with user-replaceable batteries in the console and controllers. This regional hardware change is a direct response to EU e-waste laws, while the rest of the world continues to receive the standard non-replaceable model.” } ](https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/nintendo-confirms-euonly-switch-2-revision-with-userreplaceable-batteries { “title”: “Nintendo Switch 2: EU-Only Replaceable Batteries”, “urls”: [“https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/nintendo-confirms-euonly-switch-2-revision-with-userreplaceable-batteries”], “technical_significance”: “Hardware revision to comply with EU e-waste laws requiring removable batteries by 2027.”, “summary”: “Nintendo will release a version of the Switch 2 in the EU with user-replaceable batteries in the console and controllers. This regional hardware change is a direct response to EU e-waste laws, while the rest of the world continues to receive the standard non-replaceable model.” } )

Massachusetts Bans Sale of Location Data

The Massachusetts House passed a landmark data privacy bill that completely bans the sale of precise cell phone location data. The legislation includes a private right of action, allowing citizens to sue Big Tech companies directly for data abuses, marking one of the strongest privacy protections in the US.