Lifestyle
Anti-drone defense in focus as airport endangerment episodes rise
In the wake of the drone sightings at London’s Gatwick Airport, an incident which grounded and delayed planes for 32 hours during the Christmas travel rush this past December, the issue of anti-drone defense is receiving serious attention from regulators. Recent studies on the issue are showing the loopholes – according to a recent UK Airprox Board (UKAB) report, around 120 near misses between drones and aircraft were reported across the UK in the last year alone. In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) receives over 100 reports every month of unauthorized drone activity around aircraft. While the future of drone tech has exciting possibilities, the security response will clearly need to grow with it, and the US and UK governments are stepping up their roles in the issue as commercial products expand their solutions.
The United Kingdom’s parliamentary leadership has recently called on all airports to make greater efforts in securing their facilities from the unauthorized small craft flights, specifically by investing in technology that will identify their presence and remedy it immediately. In response, military-grade anti-drone equipment has already been installed at several airports across the country. In the U.S., a pilot program has been launched by the FAA in collaboration with NASA to determine ways to integrate drones (or more broadly Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)) with current airspace traffic. Additionally, proposals will be coming soon for more drone rules that balance security concerns with innovation.
Unauthorized flights by hobbyists in airport spaces, potentially including those with bad intentions in the future, are a serious security risk, even deceptively so given the size difference between passenger aircraft and the typical commercial drone. Cockpit collisions and engine damage could have catastrophic results, something seen in aviation over the years with birds (see: “miracle on the Hudson”). In the wider realm, considering the growing capabilities of drones to carry larger payloads and have longer flight times, the potential security issues increase with the imagination – just about anything that could be a positive service for consumers could be modified into a nefarious one: illegal drug deliveries, spying, hacking, etc. Of course, drones falling onto unsuspecting heads below is also a serious concern.
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- The Skywall 100 anti-drone device. | Credit: OpenWorks Engineering Ltd.
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- The DroneGun Tactical, an anti-drone device. | Credit: DroneShield
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- An overview of the Dedrone DroneTracker system. | Credit: Dedrone
Some of the anti-drone solutions already on the market to assist with the emerging security issues arising from this developing technology are as interesting as the drones themselves. One such tech, called “DroneGun Tactical“, looks like a military rifle and works by jamming the communication signals between drones and their pilots, immediately ceasing video transmission as well. It’s designed to keep drone payloads intact so sensitive cargo (i.e., explosives) can be safely controlled and origination information can be retrieved. A similar product called the “IXI Dronekiller” has a similar function. Another firearm-styled anti-drone tech called “SkyWall100” allows operators to physically capture offending drones and has been previously used for presidential-level security operations.
On the larger scale tracking front, one of the major companies in the anti-drone solution business is Dedrone Inc., a venture using AI-driven tracking software. Dedrone’s technology combines sensors and machine learning to detect, identify, and alert clients of all craft in designated airspace. The system can distinguish between drones, birds, planes, and other moving objects, including the specific drone models being flown, providing additional information for security teams to locate the craft’s origin and determine its threat level. Similar technology such as Fortem Technologies’ “SkyDome” also provides airspace-specific security coverage. Dedrone additionally provided a situational awareness report to 4 UK airports wherein 285 drones were detected in their respective areas over the course of about 5 months, the findings of which further underscored the problem at Gatwick last month.
For whatever reason, the threat warnings regarding drones from those in the security industry haven’t merited responses like the ones now being seen following the UK airport incidence and subsequent revelations. The UKAB report also revealed 18 previously unknown near-misses between drones and airliners last year in the country. Previous crashes – including an airliner-drone nose collision on a Boeing 747 Aeromexico flight, an Army helicopter-drone hit, a small passenger plane-drone strike and a helicopter crash landing after a drone evasion – over the last couple of years weren’t determined by the FAA to be results of “catastrophic” drone risks. Perhaps 1,000 grounded flights affecting 140,000 passengers created enough of a Twitter storm to garner the needed attention.
The embrace of drone technology across multiple industries has already begun. In search and rescue efforts, the crafts have been used to locate missing hikers and accident victims. Retail giants like Amazon are testing consumer deliveries via drone, and hospitals are looking into organ transportation to expand donor organ availability. As with all new technologies, there will be growing pains – remotely controlled hobbyist and professional devices taking to the skies unsurprisingly are no exception.
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Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
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It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
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