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Google's researchers succeeded at the beginning of September in creating a complete 3D model of the brain of a common adult, male fruit fly.

It was the first time that the entire brain structure of a reasonably complex animal was digitized into a 3D model containing over 166,000 neurons. The achievement is considered a significant milestone for brain research and is hoped to help researchers understand brain function more precisely.

But because humans are, after all, humans, such a fine scientific achievement was also harnessed for a rather perplexing use.

A few days later, programmer Alex Wormuth announced on social media (link leads to X/Twitter) that he had taken the fruit fly brain model created by Google and taught it to play Doom.

Because why not.

Wormuth states that the teaching process was based on brain stimulation, where each game frame (frame) is sent to the fruit fly's brain neurons that process external stimuli. The subsequent brain activity is then returned to Doom for character control. Correspondingly, whenever enemies are successfully damaged in the game, a reward-indicating stimulus is fed to the brain, stimulating its dopamine-sensitive cells.

The world's largest so-called content delivery network, American Cloudflare, has set a deadline that is fast approaching.

On Tuesday, September 15, 2026, Cloudflare will by default start blocking all bots that use the data they collect for training or developing AI services.

Cloudflare itself may not mean anything to the average internet user, but about a third of all significant websites in the world use Cloudflare as a kind of doorman for their content, which lightens the load on the sites' own servers - and blocks unwanted bot traffic.

And starting September 15, bots that collect data for "mixed use" purposes will also be included in that group of "unwanted bot traffic".

This category includes advertising giant Google's own bot, Googlebot.

Google uses its data-collecting bot to create the index for its traditional search engine, but the same bot also collects data for Google's AI search.

As Cloudflare's rules change on September 15, Google's bots that collect and index website content will therefore be blocked by default, unless the site administrator has decided to specifically allow them. Cloudflare calls the upcoming change day Content Independence Day.

Korean giant LG is once again at the center of a privacy scandal, as it was revealed that the company's smart TVs collect a frightening amount of data.

A two-hour video from the Gamers Nexus channel goes through all the alarming revelations that emerged when LG's televisions were examined more closely.

Firstly, the company's smart TVs constantly scan the local network to which they are connected and gather information about other devices found on the same local network. This means, for example, data from home phones, printers, and computers is collected and stored by the TV.

In addition, the TV's WiFi constantly collects information about other nearby WiFi networks, even when WiFi has not been used to connect the TV to the home's local network. The TV also stores this information in its own storage with timestamps.

Another observation concerned the operation of smart TV voice control. After voice control is activated and a voice command is given to the TV about what it should do, the TV does not stop listening. Instead, it actively listens to conversations for an extended period and transcribes the speech into text format, which is stored in the TV's storage.

The Playstation 3 emulator for PC, RPCS3, has received a significant update, allowing PlayStation 3 games to now be played on PC directly from original PS3 game discs.

The new feature works on Windows, Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD, bringing the emulator closer to its original goal: preserving the entire PS3 game library for future generations, even in a future where PS3 consoles no longer exist.

Previously, PS3 games had to be transferred from the original game discs to the computer's hard drive, which often required tools classified as illegal in Europe, for example, that bypassed PS3 game disc copy protections. At the same time, the content of the game discs naturally consumed computer storage space, and the transfer itself took quite a lot of time. After the update, RPCS3 works on the same principle as the original PS3 console: disc in and game starts.

The process doesn't work effortlessly on every computer, as a Blu-Ray drive must, of course, be present. Additionally, PS3 games use their own disc format, which not all Blu-ray drives can read - the RPCS3 project website lists all compatible Blu-Ray drives separately that are known to work reliably with the emulator. According to the developers, this is a hardware-level limitation that developers simply cannot bypass programmatically.

Google has yielded to the fear of massive fines from the European Union and significantly changed its search engine's operations across the entire EU area.

The advertising giant, which owns by far the world's largest search engine, has been under investigation by EU competition authorities for a long time.

Criticism has focused on Google seizing a large share of the revenue from brokering hotels, flights, restaurants, and sports events by displaying its own price comparisons at the top of its search results when a user searches for, say, hotel nights.

For this reason, the company was slapped with a 460 million euro fine in July for violating the Digital Markets Act legislation. However, the company was given the opportunity to avoid paying the fine if it permanently changes its operating model.

According to information obtained by Reuters, Google has today changed its search engine's operations in these respects across the entire European Union.

IFPI Finland has updated the acceptance criteria for Finland's official single and album charts, effectively banning all AI-generated music.

According to the revised rules (PDF, in Finnish), songs and albums that have been entirely created or produced with the help of artificial intelligence will not be accepted on the Official Finnish Chart. The criterion for acceptance on the chart has been set in the rules as follows: "AI-generated recordings are accepted on the Official Finnish Chart only when they are predominantly made by humans and the services used in their creation are properly licensed and legal."

If there is any ambiguity about how songs were created, the chart committee will decide whether or not the song or album is accepted on the chart. If a song or album that is later found to be AI-generated ends up on the charts, it can also be retroactively removed from previous charts.

IFPI Finland also published quite detailed instructions (PDF, in Finnish) regarding the criteria for AI music that can be accepted on the chart.

Google has acquired all documents from the bankrupt American airline Spirit Airlines.

And the emphasis is on the word "all", as the deal includes the company's internal documents, spreadsheet files, email messages, and even Teams messages.

The seller was Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy estate, which auctioned off the data mass accumulated by Spirit Airlines over decades. There were several bidders in the auction, and Google's offer of 10 million dollars was ultimately the highest bid according to court records (PDF).

According to a statement given to CNN, Google plans to use the acquired data "to improve its products and develop its AI models". The second highest bid came from a company that also intended to use the data for developing its own AI models.

According to information submitted to the court, all personal and individually identifying data will be removed from the delivered information, meaning they do not violate anyone's privacy under US law.

SpaceX has completed the acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor, one of the largest technology deals in recent months. The deal is valued at $60 billion and will be paid in new SpaceX shares. The arrangement concerns Cursor's parent company, Anysphere, and was finalized on Friday, August 14, well before the previously announced third-quarter deadline.

The corporate arrangement was prepared in several stages. Already in April, SpaceX signed an agreement with Anysphere, which gave SpaceX two options: either acquire the company for $60 billion during the current year or pay $10 billion for collaboration without an acquisition. According to information, the acquisition was not intended to be finalized before SpaceX's stock market listing in early June, to avoid delaying the listing process.

Cursor confirmed in its blog that it is now officially part of SpaceX. The announcement particularly highlighted SpaceX's managed data centers, which SpaceX has recently leased with large contracts to companies such as Anthropic and Google. According to Cursor, the acquisition gives it access to SpaceX's available computing capacity, meaning Cursor will be able to freely use its parent company's data centers in the future.

France's Constitutional Council has overturned a law that would have banned access to social media services for under-15s.

The decision halts - at least for now - a legislative project that would have made France the first European country to restrict minors' social media use so strictly. The law had been approved by the French parliament in July by a clear majority, and was set to come into force on September 1, 2026, but the court deemed it unconstitutional.

The Constitutional Council found (in French) that a general ban disproportionately restricts minors' freedom of speech and communication. The Council did acknowledge in its decision that the state has a constitutional obligation to protect the best interests of children and address the potential harms of social media to young people. However, it simultaneously stated that the legislator had not sufficiently demonstrated that the online services covered by the ban would pose proven risks to the health or safety of minors. The court therefore considered the solution too broad, as it would have applied one and the same rule to a wide variety of platforms categorized as "social media".

Meta-owned, the world's most popular photo-focused social media service Instagram has changed its text-based logo.

The matter was announced by Instagram head Adam Mosseri in his Threads post.

The world's best-known ad-blocking application, uBlock Origin, has had to conclude that the software's development team has met a tougher opponent than itself.

According to the developers, they have decided to definitively give up even trying to block Facebook's ads.

The reason behind the decision is that Facebook constantly changes the technology of its ads when some larger ad-blocking software learns to identify and block them.

Facebook, owned by Meta, is able to do this trickery because the ads displayed in the company's services load directly from Facebook's own servers. The lion's share of regular online services use external parties to display ads, but Meta itself is one of the world's largest ad distributors, so the company can freely tinker with its ad technology.

The developers announced their decision on Reddit, describing Facebook's practices as "disgusting".

The development team has not completely thrown in the towel regarding Facebook's ads either; instead, the team encourages volunteers who are interested in the challenge to participate in the development of uBlock Origin. However, the current developers will no longer spend their time on a cat-and-mouse game with Facebook.

Google has officially introduced its next-generation smartphone lineup, consisting of the base Google Pixel 11, the Pixel 11 Pro, the Pixel 11 Pro XL, and the foldable Pixel 11 Pro Fold.

Pre-orders for the new devices are now open, with official retail availability set for August 20. Alongside the global release, Finnish buyers are receiving an unusually unique localized pre-order incentive: a free iconic Finnish Jopo bicycle with their purchase through select regional retailers.

Powering the entire Pixel 11 series is Google's new Tensor G6 chipset, which delivers a 20 percent improvement in processor energy efficiency, 25 percent faster web browsing, and 15 percent faster app loading times. The dedicated Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) sees a 50 percent boost in AI compute performance, enabling lower-latency on-device processing for Gemini Nano.

Security is handled by the Titan M3 chip featuring post-quantum encryption. In terms of software, new capabilities include automatic filler-word removal in voice typing, Gboard writing tools, system-wide Circle to Search from the camera app, and seamless Quick Share integration with iOS and macOS AirDrop. Pro model buyers also receive six months of Google AI Pro, which includes expanded Gemini limits, 5TB of cloud storage, and Google Health Premium.

Both the European Union and the state of California now require AI-generated content to be identifiable and clearly labeled as being created by AI.

So this is not merely an "annoying European Union requirement". An essentially identical requirement is also coming into effect in California, the most populous state in the United States.

And AI companies have already said that they are taking steps to comply with these requirements. Images, videos and audio are being given so-called digital watermarks that can be detected programmatically from the file, even though they are not actually visible in the image or video - or audible in the audio.

But what has caused considerably more confusion is the fact that AI companies are also adding digital identifiers to AI-generated text. For example, Anthropic has already stated that all text generated by its Claude AI will contain a digital identifier within the European Union starting August 2, 2026.

In France, a law came into force on August 11, 2026, which prohibits telemarketing and telesales.

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the law was driven by about a dozen consumer organizations, and at their initiative, the French parliament drafted the legislation that has now come into force.

The law prohibits both companies and individuals from making unauthorized marketing calls. At the same time, the French state launched a website where those violating the law can be reported.

However, there are a couple of exceptions in the law: a consumer can personally give permission for telesales, but permission can only be given to a specific company, which cannot transfer or extend the consent to other companies. An example of such a situation is when a customer requests a quote from a company via its website and, at the same time, ticks their approval for the company to make sales calls to the customer, both in the form of an offer call and in the future.

The second exception concerns situations where the consumer already has an existing customer relationship with the company. For example, a publishing house may market its other magazines to a customer who already subscribes to one of the group's magazines.

YouTube's ad-free, paid version - YouTube Premium - has become a huge hit around the world. But its price tag is too hefty for some potential subscribers - it currently costs more than $20 per month in some countries.

To address this, YouTube introduced a few years ago a kind of lightened version of the full YouTube Premium subscription, called YouTube Premium Lite.

The main difference of Premium Lite compared to the full version is that ads are shown as usual with music videos. Other video content is ad-free (with certain, relatively rare exceptions) for Premium Lite subscribers.

Another significant difference is that the full version of the Premium subscription also includes the YouTube Music Premium music service, which Premium Lite does not include.

Like the full version, YouTube Premium Lite allows you to play videos in the background, even when the phone screen is off - meaning videos can be used as a kind of podcast substitute, as audio only.

Unfortunately, Premium Lite has only been available in a handful of countries: for example, in Europe, most countries don't have it as of now.