Technology

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• The drone system is priced at 16,000 yuan – or around $2,195
• Unfortunately, it is only available in mainland China for now
• Dubbed Ling Yuan, it will be available on numerous BYD models

BYD has recently announced a new partnership with China’s top drone-maker DJI, stating that it has created an innovative launch pad that can be built into a number of its electric vehicles, allowing for drone take-offs and landing directly from the vehicle.

The Ling Yuan system, as it is known, consists of a bespoke ‘hangar’ system that is housed on the roof, which folds open to reveal a built-in DJI drone, as well as an automated system that both charges and swaps out depleted battery packs.

According to CNEV Post, the unit also has on-board positioning module, which we assume allows for greater accuracy when landing back in the hangar, as well as a bespoke Ling Yuan app that allows for quick movie edits on the go.

Apparently, the system supports ‘dynamic take-offs and landings”, with the drone able to be deployed and called home while the vehicle is traveling at 25km/h (or around 15mph). The drone can then follow the vehicle at speeds up to 54km/h (33mph) to snare dynamic footage.

A video posted by Shanghai Eye on YouTube (see above) shows the drone in action, with the driver of BYD’s electric SUV simply tapping a button on the infotainment system, whereby the Ling Yuan drone hangar opens on the roof and what appears to be a DJI Air 3 shoots into the sky.

The idea is that adventurous BYD owners can capture their various road trips and automotive escapades via the drone, whether that’s action-packed video clips or drone-based group shots with epic vistas in the background.

Analysis: BYD knows what gets tech-heads excited

(Image credit: BYD)

BYD is slowly making science-fiction a reality, whether that’s through its jumping Yangwang U9 supercar, which can leap over potholes, or its recently announced Blade Runner-inspired drone system that can automatically launch from the roof of an SUV.

It's all good fun, but there’s zero word on the legality or related safety implications of launching a drone from a moving vehicle, or the potential issues with multiple drones being launched at once to work out the cause of a traffic jam up ahead, for example.

It’s also not clear whether the Ling Yuang drone system has to be ordered at the point of purchase as an optional extra, or whether customers can retrofit it to existing BYD vehicles.

Either way, it’s a slightly madcap look at the future and proof that China is constantly innovating when it comes to ensuring the next generation of electric vehicles fit into increasingly tech-heavy lifestyles.

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Look past the glitzy phone launches, and you'll find some truly bizarre, sometimes ingenious devices and concepts lurking in the halls of Mobile World Congress.

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• Scientists have developed a new AI tool to accelerate scientific discoveries
• LLM4SD explains the reasoning behind its predictions, for transparency
• Instead of replacing standard machine learning models, LLM4SD improves them

An Australian research team led by Monash University has come up with a generative AI tool designed to speed up scientific discoveries. Called LLM4SD (Large Language Model 4 Scientific Discovery), the open source tool retrieves information, analyzes the data, and then generates hypotheses from it.

While LLMs are used in natural sciences, their role in scientific discovery remains largely unexplored, and unlike many validation tools, LLM4SD explains its reasoning, making its predictions more transparent (and hopefully cutting down on hallucinations).

PhD candidate Yizhen Zheng from Monash University’s Department of Data Science and AI explains, “Just like ChatGPT writes essays or solves math problems, our LLM4SD tool reads decades of scientific literature and analyses lab data to predict how molecules behave - answering questions like, ‘Can this drug cross the brain’s protective barrier?’ or ‘Will this compound dissolve in water?’”

Simulating scientists

LLM4SD was tested over 58 research tasks across physiology, physical chemistry, biophysics, and quantum mechanics, and outperformed leading scientific models, improving accuracy by up to 48% in predicting quantum properties crucial for materials design. Zheng said, “Apart from outperforming current validation tools that operate like a ‘black box,’ this system can explain its analysis process, predictions and results using simple rules, which can help scientists trust and act on its insights.”

PhD candidate Jiaxin Ju from Griffith University said, “Rather than replacing traditional machine learning models, LLM4SD enhances them by synthesizing knowledge and generating interpretable explanations”.

The team views the tool as essentially “simulating scientists”. Professor Geoff Webb from Monash University stressed the importance of AI’s role in research. “We are already fully immersed in the age of generative AI and we need to start harnessing this as much as possible to advance science, while ensuring we are developing it ethically,” he said.

The research, published in Nature Machine Intelligence and available to view on the arXiv pre-print server, was a collaboration between Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Griffith University.

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Anima Interactive’s forthcoming game Take Us North aims to capture the lived experiences of those trying to cross the US-Mexico border.

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• Google Pixel Feature drop adds people tracking to Find My Device
• You can share your location with friends and family
• It'll appear as a separate tab to your devices

As part of the March Pixel Feature Drop – and Android update – Google Pixel phones (in particular the Google Pixel 9) received a handful of new tools. But one in particular has occupied my thoughts because I’m not sure if I love it or hate: Find My Device’s new people tracking.

Find My Device is Android’s version of Apple’s Find My network. It gathers all of your connected Bluetooth devices and the Android products you’ve signed into and gives you an easy way to quickly locate those gadgets, using directions to their last location or making them play a chime so you can hear where they're lost.

That's all par for the course but the new tool lets you hunt down people, too. Well, it lets friends and family hunt you down specifically via the new People tab (which is currently in beta) if you choose to share your location with them. This works in much the same way as Google Maps, only now you can see people in Find My Device, too.

On the one hand this is super useful. Being able to quickly share my location with people will be great when trying to organize, say, a meetup as I can direct them all to my precise location at the push of a button instead of sending out vague directions. Alternatively, after a night out I can share my location with friends and family so they can see I made it home safely.

Is it safe?

(Image credit: Google)

At the same time, all of these tracking apps (of which Find My Device from Google is but one, there is also Life360, Glympse, and Google Maps to name a few more) make it clear how easy it is for us to be found by our phones, and certainly make me think twice about the threat of digital stalking – especially with news like Apple Find My’s recently discovered exploit.

Thankfully, there are digital protections in place with all of these services, with the main one being that you have to manually send your location to the people you choose. Find My Device will also alert you when tracking is enabled (as do many other services) so you’ll be reminded that your location isn’t private – which means you can either switch it off or keep it active if you still want to share where you are.

And if you’re worried about being tracked by tags you haven’t authorized, Android tech can automatically alert you to the presence of unknown trackers and help you find them – it can even make some compatible trackers play a ring tone to make it even easier to locate them.

Overall, then, the new Find My Device People feature probably falls closer to the useful side of the equation than the creepy one. If you're keen to find out more about the recent feature drop, here are my picks for the seven best tools Google just added to Pixel phone and watches.

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• Cisco warn of new vulnerability in Webex for BroadWorks
• The flaw allowed threat actors to steal sensitive files remotely
• A fix was already deployed, and users should update immediately

Cisco has warned Webex for BroadWorks users of a vulnerability that could allow threat actors to access sensitive data remotely.

Cisco Webex for BroadWorks is a cloud collaboration solution that integrates the video conferencing tool with BroadWorks-based service provider networks, offering messaging, calling, and meeting capabilities for businesses.

In a security advisory published on Cisco’s website, the company said that it uncovered a low-severity vulnerability in the app’s Release 45.2, which allowed malicious actors access to sensitive data if unsecure transport is configured for the SIP communication.

Exploiting the flaw

“This vulnerability is due to the exposure of sensitive information in the SIP headers,” Cisco explained.

It also added that it discovered a related issue that could allow an unauthenticated user to access credentials in plain text, in the client and server logs.

“A malicious actor could exploit this vulnerability and the related issue to access data and credentials and impersonate the user,” Cisco warned.

Since the company already made a configuration change that will fix both the vulnerability and the related issue, users are recommended to restart their Cisco Webex applications to apply the changes. For those who would rather deploy a workaround, Cisco said admins could configure secure transport for SIP communication to encrypt data in transit.

"Cisco also recommends rotating credentials to protect against the possibility that the credentials have been acquired by a malicious actor," the advisory concludes. So far, there has been no evidence that the vulnerability was abused in the wild.

In early February 2025, Cisco released patches for two critical-severity vulnerabilities plaguing its Identity Services Engine (ISE) solution. Both could have been used to run arbitrary commands and steal sensitive information.

Since the fix was already deployed, it advised its customers to restart the application to apply the configuration changes.

Via BleepingComputer

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• YouTube Premium Lite has now fully rolled out in the US
• It lets you watch "most" videos ad-free for $7.99 per month
• YouTube says it'll expand its pilot to more countries "this year"

Here's some good news if you're tired of increasingly lengthy YouTube ad breaks – a new YouTube Premium Lite plan has now fully rolled out in the United States, following some successful pilot tests.

The new plan costs $7.99 per month, compared to $13.99 per month for full YouTube Premium. The key difference between the two is music – while a Premium Lite plans lets you watch "most" videos ad-free, including anything related to "gaming, comedy, cooking or learning", that doesn't apply to music videos.

You also miss out on three other features compared to a full Premium plan. There's no offline or background video playback with the Lite plan, and you don't get full access to YouTube Music. In other words, YouTube Premium Lite is aimed at those who are already signed up to one of the other best music streaming services, but still want (mostly) ad-free YouTube videos.

On Premium Lite, YouTube says that ads "may appear on music content, Shorts, and when you search or browse", so it's not a completely ad-free experience like its pricier Premium alternative. But if you mostly use subscriptions to guide your viewing and don't watch lots of music videos, it could well be worth the price tag.

If that sounds up your street, you may be wondering Premium Lite is rolling out globally. Well, YouTube says that "in the coming weeks" it's going to launch Premium Lite in its other pilot countries, which are Thailand, Germany, and Australia. It added that it'll be bringing the plan in new pilots to "additional countries this year", but hasn't specified exactly when.

How does it compare?

(Image credit: YouTube / Future)

As someone who watches a lot of free YouTube, but who also sadly lives in the UK, this YouTube Lite subscription looks like a no-brainer to me.

I'm a long-time Spotify subscriber, so don't really need YouTube Music and rarely watch music videos on YouTube. I also mainly watch YouTube based on my subscribed channels, and while the ability to download videos and play them in the background on my phone would be nice, that isn't a deal-breaker either.

The main driver for me is that I'm getting close to my limit with YouTube's increasingly lengthy ad breaks, so I would definitely sign up for Premium Lite if it was available in the UK.

It is yet another streaming subscription to add to the list, which is why I'm increasingly using the practice of subscription hopping for the best streaming services. But YouTube is now a significant enough part of my TV watching diet that I could justify the $7.99 a month (or whatever the equivalent is) for the Lite plan.

One thing that isn't yet clear is how easy it is to switch from an existing YouTube Premium plan to the cheaper Premium Lite. Two of my colleagues on TechRadar have checked to see if there's an option to switch, but are so far aren't seeing anything in Subscription Management. I've checked with YouTube on the process and will update this story if we hear back.

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• Integrated AI transcription and translation
• Record, transcribe and summarize meetings
• Viaim RecDot are $236 now (so around £185 or AU$375), usually $249

Fancy an AI feature that's actually useful in your everyday life? Then Viaim's RecDot earbuds could be the very thing. When you're out and about they're a perfectly normal set of hi-res wireless earbuds. But they have extra powers: they can automatically record, transcribe and translate meetings and other sound sources, generating meeting summaries and to-do action lists. You can also use them to record and transcribe phone calls.

You don't necessarily need to wear them to use these features either. You can capture meetings on the buds' memory chip while they're in the case as well as in your ears, as long as you leave the case open and push the red dot on it to start recording (which goes a long way towards explaining the name RecDot), and the pickup range is a promised 7 meters.

The RecDot are one of three pairs of buds unveiled by the company this week. There are two other models: the Nano+, a more compact model, and the Air, which use ear hooks rather than an in-ear design. All three come with the AI features.

(Image credit: Viaim / IFLYTEK) Not just an office experience

The Viaim RecDot are being marketed as a "smarter, more efficient office experience", but if the AI features are as good as claimed then these buds could be useful to a much wider group of people. Think students recording lectures; singers recording vocal harmonies; writers conducting interviews.

I'm currently in the latter category (although I also sing): I use desktop recording software for phone interviews and a small wireless mic system for in-person conversations, feeding the recordings into an AI transcription app that's almost as accurate and considerably faster than me. The prospect of a single device I can use for all of that – and that I can also use to listen to pop music on the way to work – is very compelling.

The Viaim RecDot come with 36 hours of battery, 48dB active noise reduction, an AI meeting assistant and a price tag of $249, currently discounted to $236.55 (so around £185 or AU$375, although availability and official pricing in these regions isn't yet known) for an introductory period. You can find out more at viaim.ai.

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