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Google is improving passkey support in Chrome by making it easier to use the passwordless sign-in credentials across different devices. The search giant is introducing a Google Password Manager PIN that allows users to securely save and synchronize passkeys for use across Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android devices. These updates are available in beta on ChromeOS as well, with iOS support “coming soon.”

Passkeys needed to be saved to Google Password Manager on Android prior to this update and required users to scan a QR code on their Android device to access them on other platforms. The new PIN replaces the need to scan the QR code while ensuring that your saved passkeys remain protected by end-to-end encryption, so not even Google can access them. Users will need to either unlock their Android screen or use their Password Manager PIN to use passkeys on a new device.

The F.T.C. found that the companies voraciously consumed data about users, and often bought information about people who weren’t users through data brokers. They also gathered information from accounts linked to other services.

Most of the companies collected the age, gender and the language spoken by users. Many platforms also obtained information on education, income and marital status. The companies didn’t give users easy ways to opt-out of data collection and often retained sensitive information much longer than consumers would expect, the agency said.

The companies used data to create profiles on users — often merging the information they gathered with information on habits collected on other sites — to serve up ads.

The agency also found that many of the sites claimed they restricted access to users under the age of 13, but many children remained on the platforms. Teens were also treated like adults on many of the apps, subjecting them to the same data collection as adults.

Many of the companies couldn’t tell the F.T.C. how much data they were collecting, according to the study.

iOS 18 includes a new feature where you can choose to require Face ID to open an app, or go one step further and hide it from your device altogether. This second option removes the icon from the home screen, and places the app in a specially obscured Hidden folder in the App Library.

Biometrics are normally required to even see the contents of this hidden folder, before you can access one of the apps hidden inside it. However, now that iOS 18 has been released to the world, users are discovering ways to find out which apps have been hidden, with no Face ID required.

In iOS 18, you can lock and hide an app by long-pressing on its app icon. Then, tap ‘Require Face ID’ in the menu and then choose ‘Hide and Require Face ID’.

When an app is locked and hidden, iOS 18 prevents detection via many of the typical methods. App notifications are not shown, nor do results from that app appear in Spotlight search. Even if you go into the Storage screen in Settings, the names of hidden apps are obscured until biometrics authentication takes place.

However, this hidden state is not foolproof. Some settings screen can still list hidden apps without authentication. For instance, when the Reddit app is hidden, it still shows up in the Background App Refresh list. Similarly, Reddit will show up in the Privacy -> Photos section, if you have granted the app access to your photo library.

If you search for Reddit in the App Store on a device where the Reddit app has been hidden, the App Store will show the listing with an ‘Open’ button. If the app was not installed, it would be a ‘Get’ button. This tells prying eyes the Reddit app is indeed installed, although by this method you do have to search for each app name one-by-one.

“At Apple, we’re proud of the fact that we’ve built over 250,000 APIs that allow developers to build apps that access our operating system and functionalities in a way that ensures users’ privacy and security. To comply with the DMA, we’ve also created ways for apps in the European Union to request additional interoperability with iOS and iPadOS while protecting our users. Undermining the protections we’ve built over time would put European consumers at risk, giving bad actors more ways to access their devices and data. We will continue to work constructively with the European Commission on a path forward that both protects our EU users and clarifies the regulation.”

Under the scope of the Digital Markets Act, the EU commission today announced proceedings to compel Apple to improve support for third-party connected devices like smartwatches, headphones, VR headsets with iPhone and iPad.

The notice says the Commission will specify how Apple should provide interoperability with iOS functions like notifications and device pairing. Within six months, the commission will have instructed Apple about how it expects third-party device integration to work.

One piece of good news from the keynote is that the shiny new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 will also be made available to developers of third-party camera apps.

Apple has published its guidelines for developers, which give us some idea of what we can expect when supported by our favorite photo and video apps …

Available now to Google TV devices such as Chromecast, seven more channels can be streamed directly through the homescreen or via the Freeplay app experience.

The latest additions, which bring Google TV’s total number of built-in free channels to 157, include:

The Bob Ross Channel Comedy Dynamics Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan Dazn Ringside Dazn Women’s Football Dove Channel The Hill TV

They have two bills that may get voted on today that seek to wipe out all of the good things discussed above. EFF has a summary of each:

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA, S. 2140) would overturn Alice, enabling patent trolls to extort small business owners and even hobbyists, just for using common software systems to express themselves or run their businesses. PERA would also overturn another 2013 Supreme Court case that prevents most kinds of patenting of human genes.

Meanwhile, the PREVAIL Act (S. 2220) seeks to severely limit how the public can challenge bad patents at the patent office. Challenges like these are one of the most effective ways to throw out patents that never should have been granted in the first place.

Both of these would be horrific for the future of innovation and would bring back into the foreground more patent trolling shakedowns over completely bogus patents that never should have been granted. It would literally set innovation back a decade. And for what? To help a few lawyers shakedown more innovators? Who wants that other than the patent trolls?

A House committee overwhelmingly voted to approve a bill that would require new cars to be built with AM radio at no additional cost to the owner. The AM for Every Vehicle Act will now head to the House floor for final approval. If successful, it’ll go to the president’s desk to be signed into law, pending a veto.

Advocates for the bill have argued the decline of AM radio, a consequence of the software-defined vehicle, could make it difficult to broadcast emergency information, particularly in rural areas. The bill was first introduced in May 2023 after automakers, including Ford, Tesla, BMW, and Volkswagen, promised to remove AM radio from new EVs, saying electric engines can interfere with the sound of AM radio stations.

Ford reversed its decision shortly after lawmakers introduced the bill. At the time, Ford told TechCrunch that less than 5% of its customers listened to AM radio.

So, um, can literally anyone in Congress explain how a social media platform will know whether or not (1) someone using their website has been diagnosed with a “serious emotional disturbance,” or (2) that content on their website will lead to a diagnosis of a “serious emotional disturbance”?

A pretty straight reading of this suggests that social media companies need to get direct access to everyone’s medical records to determine if they’ve been diagnosed with an “emotional disturbance.” And, well, that doesn’t seem good.

California will now require social media companies to moderate the spread of election-related impersonations powered by artificial intelligence, known as “deepfakes,” after Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed three new laws on the subject Tuesday.

The three laws, including a first-of-its kind law that imposes a new requirement on social media platforms, largely deal with banning or labeling the deepfakes.

Only one of the laws will take effect in time to affect the 2024 presidential election, but the trio could offer a road map for regulators across the country who are attempting to slow the spread of the manipulative content powered by artificial intelligence.

The update appears to have been pulled following complaints from some ‌iPad Pro‌ owners, who found that the update bricked their devices.

There are reports on Reddit from ‌iPad Pro‌ users who had an interruption in the installation process, leading to an iPad that refused to turn on. A total replacement was required for affected users.

Not all M4 ‌iPad Pro‌ owners have had an issue installing the update, and it could be linked to installing the new iOS 17.7 update before installing iOS 18. Apple will make the software available again when the underlying problem has been addressed.

Update: Apple has provided MacRumors with the following statement: "We have temporarily removed the ‌iPadOS 18‌ update for M4 ‌iPad Pro‌ models as we work to resolve an issue that is impacting a small number of devices."

Today, we are celebrating a significant milestone in the evolution of messaging with the launch of Rich Communication Services (RCS) support on iPhone with the release of iOS 18. This launch is the culmination of years of collaboration across mobile operators, device manufacturers, and technology providers. It represents a step forward in bringing RCS’s feature-rich messaging to more users across both iOS and Android.

With RCS Universal Profile now available in iOS and on Android, users can take advantage of features like typing indicators, read receipts, high-quality media sharing, and improved group messaging when communicating with contacts on other platforms. Now users across both platforms can benefit from a richer, more reliable and seamless messaging experience than SMS and MMS.

The final sentence of Chandler’s passage included the word “Google”:2

“The sudden brightness swung me around and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn’t enough. He was right.”

They pay brisk money for this crap?

“Why is this any different, from a constitutional point of view, than the statute precluding foreign ownership of a broadcasting license?” Ginsburg asked.

Another judge on the panel, Neomi Rao, likened the case to a 1988 ruling by the D.C. Circuit upholding the Reagan administration’s shutdown of a U.S.-based group affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization. In that case, the restriction on the speech rights of the U.S.-based entity was deemed incidental and outweighed by the government’s interest in combating terrorism.

“Why is that not analogous to what’s happening here?” Rao asked.

Pagers carried by thousands of Hezbollah operatives exploded at about the same time Tuesday afternoon in what appeared to be an unprecedented attack that authorities said injured more than 2,700 and killed eight across Lebanon.

The affected pagers were from a new shipment that the group received in recent days, people familiar with the matter said. A Hezbollah official said hundreds of fighters had such devices, speculating that malware may have caused the devices to explode. The official said some people felt the pagers heat up and disposed of them before they burst.

Admittedly, the startup does have competitors: Valimail (raised $84 million), ProofPoint, and Minecast (raised $90.2 million) also provide email security and authentication services.

But, as Hovhannisyan said: “As the name implies, our solution is easy. What matters is customers saying it’s easy; they get peace of mind. They don’t need expert knowledge to implement our solution.”

"We addressed an issue where it appeared as though ChatGPT was starting new conversations," it said. "This issue occurred when the model was trying to respond to a message that didn't send properly and appeared blank. As a result, it either gave a generic response or drew on ChatGPT's memory."

Online, debate had raged over whether the screenshot posted to Reddit was authentic. Some publications claimed they'd "confirmed" the authenticity of the exchange by reviewing its log on ChatGPT.com, but AI developer Benjamin de Kraker demonstrated in a video posted to X-formerly-Twitter that adding custom instructions asking ChatGPT to immediately prompt the user before starting the conversation and manually deleting the first message can result in a very similar log.