Welcome to Tech Beat, your daily look at the stories shaping our digital world.
Google has quietly removed Manifest Version Two extensions from the Chrome Web Store, and that includes uBlock Origin, the ad blocker used by tens of millions of people. This move completes Google's years-long push toward Manifest Version Three, a framework critics say weakens the tools users rely on to filter ads and protect their privacy online.
Closer to home, Florida's Department of Transportation has revoked permits for Flock Safety's license plate reader cameras installed along state highways. The cameras, placed on state land adjacent to roads, had been quietly expanding the surveillance network available to local law enforcement. The permit revocation raises real questions about how much automated tracking of ordinary drivers should happen without explicit public debate.
And from the world of AI research, LMSYS has published details on Miles version zero point one, a new approach to post-training large language models aimed at production-level reliability. The work focuses on making model behavior more consistent and predictable once deployed, which is often where the gap between impressive demos and real-world usefulness tends to widen most painfully.
Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
