Renault 4 E-Tech Electric named EV of the year, Pegasus Spyware maker ordered to pay WhatsApp $167m

The Renault 4 E-Tech electric has been named ‘Electric Car of the Year’ at the TopGear.com Electric Car Awards 2025. The vehicle also won the ‘Best Compact EV’ category. TopGear.com’s judges praised the Renault 4 E-Tech electric for its styling, interior space, and technology. Paul Horrell, Consultant Editor at TopGear.com, said: “The new Renault 4 is a smart little modern car in itself, recognisably different from the waves of generic-looking stuff washing up in dealers all over the country. In the EV age, design matters more and more.” Tech Digest 

Need a reminder of how big GTA 6 is going to be? The game’s mind-blowing Trailer 2, which released roughly 12 hours ago, has already been watched over 45 million times on maker Rockstar’s official YouTube channel. This, of course, excludes mirrors on various other channels, like PlayStation’s version which has added over 300k views to the total. The IGN upload has over two million views, too. The first trailer, which launched over a year ago, has amassed 254 million views thus far, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see this second teaser attract a similar number once all’s said and done. Push Square

Apple is on the brink of releasing the iOS 18.5 update, and it’ll come with a bunch of useful new features that could enhance all the best iPhones when it arrives. And judging by Apple’s release notes for the update, there’s a particularly useful change coming to Screen Time. According to Apple, parents will soon be notified when their Screen Time passcode has been successfully entered into a child’s device. That should immediately let parents know that their offspring have found a way past the restrictions on their device. Tech Radar 

Amazon said it has made a “fundamental leap forward in robotics” after developing a robot with a sense of touch that will be capable of grabbing about three-quarters of the items in its vast warehouses. Vulcan – which launches at the US firm’s “Delivering the Future” event in Dortmund, Germany, on Wednesday and is to be deployed around the world in the next few years – is designed to help humans sort items for storage and then prepare them for delivery as the latest in a suite of robots which have an ever-growing role in the online retailer’s extensive operation. The Guardian 

The firm behind the Pegasus spyware has been ordered to pay WhatsApp $167m (£125m) for hacking 1,400 people in 2019. Pegasus is malicious software which can be installed remotely on mobile phones to access, among other things, people’s microphones and cameras. NSO Group, which sells the tech, has been accused of enabling authoritarian regimes to monitor journalists, activists and even political figures. WhatsApp owner Meta said it marked the “first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware”.NSO said it would “carefully examine the verdict’s details and pursue appropriate legal remedies, including further proceedings and an appeal“. BBC 

If you’d ever spent your afternoons wondering if this hill was a real place you could run up and down while waiting for the computer to finish booting up, then you’ll be relieved to know it is in-fact a real place. The hill can be found near the Napa–Sonoma county line in California, but expect to be a little disappointed if you ever visit. Images taken at the location over the years have revealed the bright green hill exists only in our imaginations (and computer screens) with more recent photographs showing a very different environment. See image below. Lad Bible

 

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