THE RUNDOWN

A serious vulnerability in macOS is letting remote attackers take full control of Macs by bypassing the login screen entirely through the screen-sharing feature. It's under active exploitation, meaning real attackers are using it right now — not just researchers. If you haven't applied the latest macOS security update, stop reading and go do that. This one's serious enough to treat as an emergency, and it's worth bookmarking our security section to stay on top of these disclosures.

Google has updated its AI tools to let users toggle off the visible watermarks on AI-generated images, videos, and music. The invisible SynthID markers — the ones embedded in the file itself for identification purposes — stay in place. It's a small but telling policy shift: Google's essentially saying visible watermarks are a user-experience choice, not a transparency requirement. Whether that's the right call is a conversation worth having as AI content floods the internet.

Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI have both received permits from California's DMV to test autonomous trucks on public highways. No safety drivers required. This is a significant milestone for the freight industry, even if full commercial deployment is still some years away. Africa's logistics sector, which faces massive driver shortages and road safety challenges, is watching technology like this from the sidelines — but not forever.

Negotiations over a potential sale of PayPal to payments rival Stripe and private equity firm Advent are reportedly intensifying. PayPal's new CEO is under pressure to turn the company around, and a deal of this scale would reshape the global digital payments industry. For Ghanaians and Africans navigating cross-border payments daily, who owns PayPal matters — it affects fees, access, and how seamlessly money moves across the continent.

Waymo has received permission to offer paid rides in Sacramento and San Diego, and will also be able to expand its fleet across more of the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. The company is quietly becoming the dominant force in autonomous ride-hailing, while competitors stumble. It's a slow, methodical expansion strategy — and it seems to be working.

Joshua Kushner of Thrive Capital — one of Silicon Valley's more grounded voices — used his first-ever letter to investors to warn that while AI's potential is enormous, letting excitement override investment discipline would be 'a grave error.' It's a rare moment of restraint from a sector that's been throwing money at anything with 'AI' in the pitch deck. Worth reading between the lines if you're building or investing in tech startups right now — including on this continent.

France's top court has struck down the country's proposed social media ban for children under 15, forcing President Macron's government to go back and rewrite the legislation. The debate over how to protect young people online without creating an unworkable blanket ban is playing out across the world — and African governments grappling with similar questions are watching how Europe handles it. Our news section has been tracking these digital rights conversations closely.

A US federal judge has ordered Google to make it significantly easier for users to find and install third-party app stores on Android devices — and given the company just one week to comply. It's a direct consequence of the Epic antitrust case, and it could meaningfully change how Android users discover and install apps, especially in markets where Google Play isn't always the most practical option.

If you're shopping for a back-to-school laptop and sticker shock has hit you, you're not imagining it. An ongoing RAM shortage is pushing up component prices across the board, making budget laptops harder to find at genuinely affordable prices. The advice circulating right now is to prioritise at least 16GB RAM and look at last-gen models with solid specs rather than chasing the newest hardware. For students in Ghana and across Africa where budgets are tighter, this matters more than most tech outlets will admit.

The world's largest all-electric aircraft completed its first test flight — and it used just $5 worth of electricity to do it. The airline-backed venture developing it is ultimately aiming at hybrid-electric commercial planes rather than pure-electric, which is the more realistic near-term path for commercial aviation. It won't replace jet fuel tomorrow, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.

That Mac vulnerability is the one to act on today — everything else can wait until after you've checked for updates.