Welcome to Tech Beat, your daily read on the technology stories shaping our world.
Europe's push for digital age verification is drawing sharp criticism after technical specifications revealed the system effectively requires users to run either Android or iOS, locking out anyone on alternative platforms. Critics argue that a government-mandated identity tool built on the terms of two American corporations raises serious questions about sovereignty and inclusion.
From regulation to something closer to reckoning — a new piece in Tribune Magazine argues that the major AI companies are no longer speculating about dystopian outcomes, they are actively building the infrastructure for them. The argument isn't that disaster is coming, but that the choices being made right now, quietly and at scale, are already narrowing what the future can look like.
And in the United States, the FCC has approved the launch of a mirror satellite called Eärendil-one, designed to reflect sunlight back down to Earth after dark. The company behind it, Reflect Orbital, frames it as a novel illumination tool, but the European Southern Observatory calls it an existential threat to optical astronomy — a reminder that space is not empty, and neither are the trade-offs we make in it.
Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
