Bytes: What’s new in tech

How GM secretly monitors drivers

Car companies stealthily track how you drive, and they are ratting you out to insurers, said Kashmir Hill in The New York Times. “Carconnected” apps pushed by automakers like General Motors, Honda, Kia, and Hyundai can collect information about mileage driven, “speed, braking, and acceleration.” The companies say the tracking is optional, but several GM owners “expressed shock to find that LexisNexis,” a data broker, “had their driving data.” LexisNexis sells that data to insurers, and numerous drivers have “complained about spiking premiums as a result.” Many GM owners said they had no idea they were enrolled in the company’s data-collection feature, called OnStar Smart Driver. Even those who did opt in were given “no warning that any third party would get access” to driving info.

The biggest social media advertiser

Chinese e-commerce company Temu spent nearly $2 billion last year on advertising through Facebook and Instagram alone, said Dana Mattioli in The Wall Street Journal. Temu, Shein, and other Chinese retail platforms “are spending aggressively to reach American consumers.” In addition to its staggering outlay on Facebook and Instagram,

Temu “became one of the top five advertisers on Google last year.” Meta employees were so blown away by Temu’s spending, they “joked that they should thank Temu by sending them a gift card.” Goldman Sachs estimates that with the cost of ads Temu loses money on every sale, but it’s shown no signs of slowing. It spent $20-plus million on Super Bowl ads in February.

Google engineer charged with spying

Authorities arrested a former Google engineer who allegedly stole AI secrets while working in China, said Kelsey Vlamis and Alistair Barr in Business Insider. According to the Department of Justice, Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, “stole more than 500 files detailing Google’s information about its AI data center hardware and software—the building blocks for powerful AI models.” While working for Google, Ding “attended meetings” for a Chinese tech company and later “launched his own China-based tech startup in the AI space.” He kept his whereabouts secret by enlisting “a colleague to badge in for him at Google offices in the U.S.” Ding, hired as a software engineer in 2019, “was authorized to access” confidential information about Google’s supercomputing data centers.