Welcome to Tech Beat, your daily read on the technology stories that actually matter.
Waymo is under fire this week after the autonomous vehicle company defended its robotaxis for pulling into bike lanes during passenger drop-offs. The company says riders request it, but cyclists aren't buying that explanation. It's a sharp reminder that self-driving technology doesn't exist in a vacuum — it shares space with some of the most vulnerable people on the road, and convenience for one user can mean real danger for another.
Shifting gears, MIT Technology Review is out with a deep look at how humanoid robot companies are scrambling to collect the training data their machines desperately need. It turns out teaching a robot to move like a person requires an almost staggering volume of human demonstration footage, and the industry is only beginning to reckon with just how hard and expensive that pipeline is to build at scale.
And on the quieter end of the spectrum, a project called JQuake is drawing attention for giving anyone with a browser a real-time window into seismic activity across Japan. It's a clean, practical tool that sits at an interesting intersection of public safety and open data — the kind of thing that reminds you technology can still just solve a clear problem without asking anything in return.
That's your Tech Beat for today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.["https://temporary.pw/","https://github.com/superhac/vpinfe","https://jquake.net/en/","https://askbetter.dev/","https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/21/1135656/humanoid-data-robot-training-ai-artificial-intelligence/","https://github.com/salmanjavaid/rapunzel/tree/main","https://road.cc/news/driverless-taxis-veering-into-cycle-lanes-normal-practice-says-waymo"]📺 Tech Beat · 11 PM Update · player loading…