Ring, the Amazon-owned smart home company, canceled its partnership with Flock Safety following public pressure and a controversial Super Bowl ad, according to The Verge. This decision comes amidst growing concerns over surveillance technology and its integration with law enforcement.
The partnership cancellation was announced after mounting criticism of the planned integration with Flock Safety, a company that provides license plate reader technology. The Verge reported that the decision was a direct result of the backlash.
In other news, a Trump administration official overruled FDA scientists to reject Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine, according to reports from Stat News and The Wall Street Journal. Vinay Prasad, the top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, made the decision despite a team of career scientists being prepared to review the vaccine. David Kaslow, a top career official, even wrote a memo objecting to Prasad's rejection, according to Stat News.
Meanwhile, United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket experienced another booster problem shortly after liftoff from Florida's Space Coast early Thursday morning, Ars Technica reported. The rocket, carrying a batch of US military satellites, twisted on its axis before recovering and continuing its climb into orbit. This incident follows a similar malfunction sixteen months prior where a booster nozzle was lost. Details of the current booster problem remain unclear, and an investigation is underway.
In the tech world, Google Chrome shipped WebMCP in early preview, turning every website into a structured tool for AI agents, VentureBeat reported. WebMCP, or Web Model Context Protocol, was developed jointly by engineers at Google and Microsoft and is a proposed web standard that allows AI agents to better understand and interact with websites. This aims to improve how AI agents navigate and utilize online information.
Finally, US Deputy Health Secretary Jim O'Neill stated that vaccine guidelines are still subject to change, according to an exclusive interview with MIT Technology Review. O'Neill, who oversees a department with a budget of over a trillion dollars, defended reducing the number of broadly recommended childhood vaccines, a move that has been widely criticized by experts. He also described his plans to increase human healthspan through longevity-focused research supported by ARPA-H, a federal agency dedicated to biomedical breakthroughs.
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