Pension deadline Aug 14, China WAICO alliance, EU unsold clothes ban

The European Commission's ban on destroying unsold clothing, footwear, and accessories took effect for large companies on July 19. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation requires businesses to disclose how much unsold inventory they discard and prohibits the incineration or landfilling of new, unsold textiles. Smaller companies get a longer transition period. The rule is part of the EU's broader crackdown on fast fashion and textile waste, which generates an estimated 12.6 million tonnes of waste annually in Europe alone. Companies that violate the ban face penalties set by individual member states.

The US Department of Justice confirmed that federal employees can once again download TikTok on government-issued devices, ruling that the 2022 law banning the app is no longer enforceable. The change follows ByteDance's divestiture, which cut its stake to 19.9% and transferred control of US user data and operations to a new entity called TikTok USDS. The ban was originally imposed over national security concerns about Chinese government access to user data. The move effectively ends a nearly four-year restriction on federal devices.

GitHub published a candid engineering post arguing that while AI tools have dramatically lowered the cost of writing code, the cost of owning that code has not budged. Maintenance, security, documentation, testing, and operational burden still scale with complexity. The post proposes a decision framework: before accepting an AI-generated change, teams should assess whether they can commit to supporting it long-term. It is a practical counterweight to the hype around AI-generated code volume.

A new book titled Half a Second by Adrian Mastronardi tells the complete story of the 2024 XZ backdoor attempt, one of the most sophisticated supply chain attacks ever uncovered. The narrative covers the burned-out volunteer maintainer who was patiently and expertly manipulated over two years, the backdoor code hidden across multiple commits that would have allowed remote code execution on every Linux system running SSH, and the Microsoft engineer who caught it by noticing SSH logins were 500ms slower than normal. The book is available for free under a non-commercial, no-derivatives Creative Commons license. A donation option supports the Open Source Collective.

Honda has confirmed the 2026 model year will be the last for the Prologue, its only fully electric vehicle sold in the US. Sales dropped 48.5% in the first half of 2026 to just 8,407 units, making it Honda's second-slowest-selling vehicle. The Prologue, which was based on GM's Chevy Blazer EV platform, lasted only three model years. TechCrunch compiled the full list of EVs killed off in the US this year, which includes models from multiple automakers pulling back as EV adoption growth slows and hybrid demand surges. Honda will now have no BEV option in the US.

TechCrunch took a 600-mile EV road trip and found that DC fast charging has improved dramatically. Charge times were shorter, stations were more reliable, and fewer chargers were broken compared to just a year ago. The data backs up what infrastructure expansion numbers suggest: the US now has over 200,000 public charging ports, up significantly from 2024, and newer stations are deploying higher-power chargers that actually deliver rated speeds. The improvement is driven by NEVI program funding, Tesla's NACS connector becoming the de facto standard, and operators finally getting serious about maintenance.