WhatsApp takes down 6.8 million scam accounts, Unitree robot can run, jump – even smash through glass!

WhatsApp has taken down 6.8 million accounts linked to scammers targeting people around the world in the first half of this year, its parent company Meta says. Many were tied to scam centres run by organised criminals in South East Asia, who often used forced labour in their operations, according to the social media giant. Meta made the announcement as WhatsApp rolled out new anti-scam measures, external to alert users to potential fraudulent activity, such as a user being added to a group chat by someone not in their contacts list. BBC

Google is set to take the wraps off the latest additions to its Pixel lineup in just a couple weeks, but some devices might not be available at launch. A new report from WinFuture suggests that Google is having “supply chain problems” that could push back the release of the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, Pixel Watch 4, and Pixel Buds 2A until October 9th, 2025. That means that, following the Made by Google event on August 20th, users might only be able to purchase the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and Pixel 10 Pro XL. The Verge 

If someone were casting a robot action hero movie and they didn’t want a humanoid (or Arnold Schwarzenegger), they might hire the all-new Unitree A2. This quadruped robot can run, jump, climb, scamper down hills, tumble, carry a heavy load, and, yes, as depicted in the promo video, smash through a plate of glass. All that’s missing here is the blockbuster action movie soundtrack. With a max speed of 11.2mph, the new A2 is something of a landmark in quadrupeds, outrunning the standard Robo Dynamics Spot robot by almost 8 miles per hour. Tech Radar 

All police forces investigating grooming gangs in England and Wales will be given access to new AI tools to help speed up their investigations. The artificial intelligence tools are already thought to have saved officers in 13 forces more than £20m and 16,000 hours of investigation time. The apps can translate large amounts of text in foreign languages from mobile phones seized by police, and analyse a mass of digital data to find patterns and relationships between suspects. Sky News 

OpenAI is taking on Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Chinese rival DeepSeek by launching its own freely available artificial intelligence models. The ChatGPT developer has announced two “open weight” large language models, which are free to download and can be customised by developers. Meta’s Llama models are available on a similar basis, and OpenAI’s move marks a departure from ChatGPT, which is based on a “closed” model that cannot be customised. Guardian

Two Chinese nationals have been arrested and charged by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) for allegedly orchestrating an illegal scheme to export millions of dollars’ worth of high-end Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China. The DOJ announced on Tuesday that Chuan Geng and Shiwei Yang, who allegedly operated a company called ALX Solutions, had illegally shipped chips from the US to China over a three-year period without the required licenses. Tech Digest 

Labour should scrap its ban on the sale of new petrol cars by 2030 amid growing concerns over the shift to electric vehicles, the boss of a British engineering giant has said. Liam Butterworth, the chief executive of London-listed Dowlais, a car parts supplier, has urged Sir Keir Starmer to review the “impossible” target to ensure the UK isn’t out of step with the rest of Europe and America. He said the Government must relax the ban in response to escalating turmoil across the auto industry, which has recently seen UK car production fall to its lowest level since 1952. Telegraph