With self-driving vehicles possibly arriving on UK roads later this year, the government is starting to put rules in place to accommodate them, the BBC has reported. As part of that, it will allow drivers in autonomous vehicles to watch TV from an infotainment screen in self-driving mode, as long as they're ready to take back control. That's a modification of a law that has been on the books since 1986 that prohibits drivers from viewing a "television-receiving apparatus" when behind the wheel.

It will still not allow the use of mobile phones, which were officially banned in the UK last year. That's because automakers can implement technology to stop a car's built-in screen from displaying content when the driver needs to take back control, but can't do the same on a smartphone. The government also decided that insurance companies and not people will be liable for accident claims in a number of circumstances. The changes will be an "interim measure" until an all-new set of rules can be put in place by 2025.

Self-driving cars are not yet legal in the UK, but the Department for Transport (DfT) said they may be ready later in 2022. A year ago, the government announced that basic self-driving cars with automated lane-keeping systems could arrive on British roads by the end of last year. 

The UK government predicted that self-driving tech could "improve road safety across Britain by reducing human error, which is a contributory factor in 88 percent of all recorded road collisions." In the meantime, though, self-driving tech has gone nowhere over the last few years, apart from a few exceptions like GM's Cruise offering public driverless taxi rides in San Francisco. 

A court in London has formally issued the order to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US. That puts his fate in the hands of UK home secretary Priti Patel, who'll be the one deciding whether Assange will be sent back to the US where he's set to face espionage charges. WikiLeaks made waves in 2010 after publishing thousands of classified documents and diplomatic cables sent to the US State Department. Assange is wanted in the US for 18 criminal charges due to those leaks, and he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted.

Assange sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy of London in 2012 and stayed there for years until his asylum was withdrawn in 2019. WikiLeaks claimed back then that the embassy spied on its founder and took photos, videos and audio recordings of him. He was arrested from the embassy, and the US government has been trying to get him extradited since then. 

In January 2021, a British court ruled that he shouldn't be extradited to the United States to stand trial, because "the risk to his mental and physical wellbeing was too great." However, the US government appealed and argued that he had no history of "serious and enduring mental illness." A UK appeals court reversed the previous ruling in December 2021, opening the doors for his extradition. 

Assange joined the most recent trial via video call from the Belmarsh Prison in London. The extradition order was issued by Paul Goldspring, the chief magistrate, who said during the trial: "I am duty bound to send your case to the secretary of state for a decision." According to The Guardian, Assange's side will have the chance to sway Patel's decision by sending the home secretary "serious submissions" and could also challenge issues he lost in court but haven't appealed yet. And it is possible to convince a home secretary to block extraditions — former UK home secretary Theresa May blocked Scottish hacker Gary McKinnon's extradition on human rights grounds. British activist Lauri Love also successfully convinced the UK High Court to side with him when he appealed his extradition orders. 

Researchers in Japan have developed a set of electric chopsticks they claim enhance the taste of salt. The device is attached to a wristband computer. It uses electrical stimulation to transmit sodium ions from food to the eater's mouth, according to Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita, who developed the chopsticks with food and drink maker Kirin.

Reuters

Miyashita is also the person behind the lickable TV that was announced a few months ago. Japan was also where I first saw a similarly specced-out electric fork, using the same theories, but with the Western implement. It’s an unusual sensation: like air-fried food compared to actually fried food, it was a different, almost salty, kind of experience.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Amazon ordered to reinstate warehouse worker who was fired after protest

• Bang & Olufsen's Beoplay EX earbuds have an AirPods-like design

• Mercedes' EQS SUV arrives in US showrooms this year

• 'Love Death and Robots' Season 3 comes to Netflix on May 20th

• Amy Hennig's studio is making a Star Wars game

• Apple workers at New York store call for minimum wage of $30 per hour

• Sega's Super Game project already has a ‘Crazy Taxi’ reboot underway

• Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro is back down to a record low of $1,749

Samsung's Pokémon-themed Galaxy Z Flip 3 is a delight

It comes with a Pokédex pouch.

Samsung

If this doesn’t get you into foldables, nothing will.

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Audi’s Urbansphere EV concept is for tomorrow's megacities

What can a car be when it has to be more than a car?

Audi

Audi is reimagining the role of the vehicle’s cabin space — from a rigid, safety-centered, face-forward setup to a more open, communal design. This is the biggest Audi concept vehicle to date. It sits on 24-inch rims and measures a whopping 18 feet in length — the same as GM’s Hummer EV; it's over 6.5 feet wide and 5.8 feet tall. And because the Urbansphere doesn’t have to account for a conventional arrangement of a combustion-powered car's components, “it prioritizes the occupants’ need to experience ample space as a distinctive comfort factor.”

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The best webcams you can buy

Time to upgrade from your tiny laptop cam.

Even if you’re back to taking some of your meetings in the office, chances are back-to-back Zoom calls are now a permanent part of your professional life. Once an afterthought, your computer’s webcam has become one of its most important components — and the fact remains that most built-in cameras are not able to provide consistent high-quality video chat experiences. We tested out a bunch of the latest webcams to see which are worth your money and which you can safely skip.

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This third-party Sony camera battery has a built-in USB-C port

Why isn't this how all rechargeable batteries work?

Nitecore's UFZ100 has a built-in USB-C port so you don’t need to use a proprietary Sony power adapter to charge it. The battery also includes a handy LED indicator to tell you when it’s below 10 percent charge. With a 2,250mAh capacity, it’s only slightly smaller than Sony’s 2,280mAh NP-FZ100 and works with many of the company’s most recent camera models, including the A6600 and A7 IV. One thing we don’t know about the UFZ100 yet is how much it’ll cost. Third-party battery manufacturers tend to price their offerings lower than Sony, Canon and Nikon, but the added USB-C port on the UFZ100 could make it more expensive.

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Lexus has today announced the RZ, the luxury marque’s second entry into the EV market, and the first designed from the ground-up as an electric vehicle. With a 71.4kWh battery and a claimed range of around 280 miles, the RZ will also show off a new active four-wheel drive system dubbed DIRECT4. That will, so the company says, enable the car to automatically distribute force to each wheel according to its need. And Lexus says that DIRECT4 will offer “excellent driving performance” with a “stronger human-machine connection.”

Given this is Toyota’s luxury brand, there’s plenty of mention of omotenashi, the Japanese concept of overwhelming your guests with hospitality. Here, Lexus says that owners can expect lots of interior space and plenty of comfort, both for the driver and their passengers. Rear passengers look like they’ll get decent legroom, and a dimming panoramic roof will help make those seats feel a little more spacious, especially compared to most Lexus crossover SUVs.

Lexus

Of course, the only thing anyone will likely want to focus on is the steering yoke, because you can’t drive a futuristic EV with something as old-fashioned as a wheel, come on. (Don't worry, it's an option, the default version comes with a wheel). 

The RZ isn’t Lexus first foray into making a battery electric vehicle, and offered a EV version of its UX series (the 300e), which garnered lukewarm praise from critics. The Lexus build quality and luxury on offer might have been appreciated, but with a range under 200 miles, cramped rear space and poor charging dimmed its shine. Thankfully, the RZ is based on the same e-TNGA EV platform you’ll find underpinning both Toyota’s new bZ4X and Subaru’s Solterra. And we’d expect the RZ to sit as a fancier-pantsier version of the bZ4X, with better interior options and the already-mentioned longer range.

Lenovo launched a new smart clock at CES earlier this year, and it improved upon its previous models by giving it a pogo docking pin at the bottom and support for Amazon's Alexa. If you've been thinking of picking it up but haven't gotten the chance to until now, you may want to head over to the device's listing at Best Buy. Lenovo's Smart Clock Essential with Alexa is currently on sale for $45 on the retailer's website only for today — there's less than 20 hours left for the deal as of this writing. That's $25 off the smart clock's $70 retail price and lower than a previous deal at Amazon. 

The Smart Clock Essential with Alexa retains the brand's Smart Clock 2 cloth design. While its predecessors only supported Google Assistant, though, this model only supports the Alexa voice assistant. It has a 4-inch LED display that shows the time, day and real-time decibel levels in white text on a black background. Lenovo clearly kept things minimal for the model and gave it just a few buttons for the volume, for activating assistant and for setting the alarm.

Lenovo's compatible docks for the device are optional, but they do improve the experience. The brand has docks that can accommodate the clock along with a wireless charging-capable device like smartphones, for instance. It also sells the Ambient Light Dock in either a sea lion or a squid design that works as a nightlight. You can get the Lenovo Smart Clock Essential from Best Buy at a discount right now in both Misty Blue and Clay Red. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Following a breach of its systems in January, Okta has released a forensic report finding that the threat group Lapsus$ accessed just two active customers via a third-party company. Lapsus$ "actively controlled" a workstation belong to an engineer at support firm Sitel for 25 minutes on January 21st, the company said. 

"The threat actor actively controlled a single workstation, used by a Sitel support engineer, with access to Okta resources," wrote Okta chief security officer David Bradbury. "During that limited window of time, the threat actor accessed two active customer tenants within the SuperUser application and viewed limited additional information in certain other applications like Slack and Jira that cannot be used to perform actions in Okta customer tenants."

While just two customers were accessed, many more users might have been affected, as Otka has 15,000 customers but over 100 million individual users. Despite the access, though, Lapsus$ was not able to do any MFA or password resets, configuration changes or customer support impersonation, Okta said. "The threat actor was unable to authenticate directly to any Okta accounts." 

It took Okta two months to notify customers of the Lapsus$ breach, and eventually released a statement saying it "made a mistake" in how it handled things. In a blog post last month, it revealed that 2.5 percent of its customers may have had their data viewed or acted upon during a five day window.

It now looks like the breach was far more limited in scope, but Okta said it took lessons from the situation. It terminated its relationship with the contractor in question and promised to strengthen audit procedures for others. It's also going to directly manage the devices of third parties with access to customer support tools so it can respond more "effectively" to incidents. Finally, it's adopting new systems to "help us communicate more rapidly with customers" on security issues. 

Brave is putting Google's Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP) on blast with a new feature called De-AMP, The Verge reported. It's designed to bypass any pages rendered with AMP and take users directly to the original website. "Where possible, De-AMP will rewrite links and URLs to prevent users from visiting AMP pages altogether,” the company wrote in a blog post.

If that's not possible, then "Brave will watch as pages are being fetched and redirect users away from AMP pages before the page is even rendered, preventing AMP/Google code from being loaded and executed," it added. 

The new feature was implemented in the name of privacy, security and internet experience, according to Brave. "In practice, AMP is harmful to users and to the Web at large," the article states. "Just as bad, AMP helps Google further monopolize and control the direction of the web." It adds that the next iteration of AMP "will be even worse." 

Google originally promoted AMP as a way to improve the mobile web experience by loading pages faster. However, it has recently been a target of critics who see it as a way for Google to increase its hegemony in the internet ad market by hosting content on its own servers. A group of publishers recently announced it was moving away from AMP, and a lawsuit filed by several US states accuses Google of running a monopoly that harmed ad-industry competitors and publishers.

Brave promises "the best privacy online" with its browser, so of course attacking Google is part of its business strategy. Despite its efforts, though, it lags well behind most other browsers in mobile market share, sitting in the "other" category behind Internet Explorer on Statcounter. De-AMP is now available in beta and "will be enabled by default in the upcoming 1.38 Desktop and Android versions, and will be released on iOS soon after," Brave said.

Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian has revealed in an interview that the airline held talks with SpaceX and conducted "exploratory tests" of Starlink's internet technology for its planes. According to The Wall Street Journal, Bastian declined to divulge specifics about the test, but SpaceX exec Jonathan Hofeller talked about the company's discussion with several airlines back in mid-2021. Hofeller said back then that the company was developing a product for aviation and that it's already done some demonstrations for interested parties. 

SpaceX chief Elon Musk tweeted in the same period last year that Starlink antennae for planes would have to be certified for each aircraft type first. He added that the company is focusing on dishes for 737 and A320 planes, because they serve the most number of people.

Hofeller reiterated SpaceX's quest to put Starlink on planes at the Satellite 2022 conference last month, saying that the company believes "[c]onnectivity on airplanes is something [that's] ripe for an overhaul." He said SpaceX is developing a service that would allow every single passenger on a plane to stream content like they're able to do in their homes.

SpaceX filed an application with the FCC in August last year for a ruggedized type of Starlink antenna that can withstand harsh environments meant for use on planes, ships and other types of moving vehicles. A couple of months later, another FCC filing had revealed that SpaceX was going to test the new "mobile user terminal" on an aircraft for six months. 

Even though Delta had already tested Starlink's technology, Summit Ridge Group (a consulting firm with expertise in satellite communications) founder J. Armand Musey told The Journal that it could take several years for SpaceX's satellite broadband to see widespread adoption. It still has to schedule time with airlines to install terminals on their planes, after all, while more established competitors are also taking steps to improve their service. 

Netflix might offer cheaper ad-supported plans in the coming years. In the company's most recent earnings call, co-CEO Reed Hastings has revealed that the streaming giant is currently working on the offering and that it will be finalizing details for those plans "over the next year or two." Hastings said he finds ads complex and he's a huge fan of the simplicity of subscriptions, but giving consumers who don't mind watching ads the option to pay less "makes a lot of sense."

And it could make a lot of sense for the company, too. The service lost around 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, a development it blamed on stiffer competition, inability to expand in some territories due to technological limitations and account sharing. Apparently, 222 million households are paying for Netflix, but over 100 million more are sharing those accounts. 

Back in March, Netflix started testing a feature in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru that allowed subscribers to add two "sub-members," who'll get their own log-ins and profiles, for $3. It may just be a fraction of what a full membership costs, but at least Netflix is getting something from people who'd normally just borrow their friends' accounts.

Hastings clarified during the call that the ad-supported memberships will be added as tiers and members who don't mind paying full subscription fees don't have to be subjected to advertisements. "It is pretty clear that it is working for Hulu, Disney is doing it, HBO did it. We don't have any doubt that it works," he said. The executive also added that Netflix will merely be a publisher and that it will not track user data to match ads like some of its competitors do.

The San Diego Padres will start wearing a Motorola logo on their sleeves, beginning with the 2023 Major League Baseball regular season. While corporate partnerships are nothing new in baseball, it’s the first time we’re seeing an MLB team with a sponsored patch. The league earlier this month said MLB teams could feature the logos of corporate sponsors on their uniforms, similar to what both the NBA and NHL are doing.

Beginning in 2023, the Motorola “batwing” logo will be featured on the right sleeve across versions of the Padres’ jerseys. Motorola will also outfit the Padres’ Hall of Fame with interactive technology displays and product integration throughout the exhibit.

“We are thrilled to partner with a quintessential and innovative brand like Motorola to bring cutting-edge technology, design, and performance to Petco Park,” Padres CEO Erik Greupner said in a press release. “Motorola’s iconic logo on our jersey is a perfect alignment with our Padres brand, and we look forward to teaming up to provide a great experience for our fans.”

The NBA’s jersey patch program has ended in some particularly lucrative deals — the combined value for the 2021-22 season was projected to be $225 million. The brands involved tend to be more unconventional than your run-of-the-mill beverage and sneaker company sponsors. A number of tech companies have sponsored jersey patches, including rebate app Ibotta, Squarespace, Vistaprint and online trading company WeBull. The Philadeliphia 76ers recently entered into a $10-million-a-year jersey patch partnership with Hong Kong-based Crypto.com arena.

Motorola is also the jersey patch sponsor of three separate NBA teams; the Milwaukee Bucks, the Indiana Pacers and the Brooklyn Nets. Perhaps the biggest score for Motorola is that is now the official smartphone sponsor for all these teams. These deals could raise the Android phone maker’s profile and generate more buzz around this year’s new Edge+ and Moto G Stylus.