When I try to examine the threat of facial-recognition software dispassionately, I see the problem boiling down to two basic questions. The first is: Do we trust the government agencies that have access to such systems? If we do, then the benefits of preventing terrorism or child abuse might well outweigh the potential abuses and inaccuracies. If we don’t, then it seems our first task should be to bring these agencies under democratic accountability. After all, if the government is out to get us, it has enough tools to do so even without AI.
The second question is: How much do we value our privacy? There’s been renewed discussion in recent years of the putative “right to privacy” that, in a celebrated 1890 article, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis argued was derivable from existing U.S. law. But if it exists—and this remains debatable—such a right comes, even in its original formulation, with a host of exceptions. A right to privacy can in many cases come into conflict with the better-established First Amendment right to free expression. Most of the photos held in vast corporate databases (think of your Facebook photos) or government databases (think of your passport photo) were gathered with the explicit or implicit permission of the subjects. Experts have long been familiar with the “privacy paradox,” whereby we say we value our privacy while uploading our photos to public forums, opting into requests to monitor and share our online behavior, and so forth.
But does this fear (my fear) help or hinder my kids from growing up and finding their feet – and their autonomy? How much should we really be tracking our kids online?
Apple TV+ has announced that shooting on the fourth season of the beloved sports comedy series has begun in Kansas City, with additional filming due to take place in London. [...]
It was previously reported that Jason Sudeikis would be returning as Ted Lasso for Season 4. Now, it is confirmed that original cast members Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, and Jeremy Swift will all be back as well.
Apple today updated its Sports app with support for the FA Community Shield, the annual English football pre-season opener where the reigning champions of the Premier League take on the FA Cup winners.
One of Apple’s key selling points for decades has been its warranty service. Yes, the company has had some notable points of irritability—some of which have led to apologies or consumer lawsuit settlements—but, by and large, you don’t have to fight or fight much less hard to get your devices repaired.
When it comes to stuff you buy that works with Macs, iPhones, and iPads, the track record is a little murkier, partly because it’s not always clear what warranty service is available and under what terms.
Apple today announced that South Korea's Tmoney card can now be added to the Wallet app, allowing users to pay for public transportation with a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch at subway stations and on most buses throughout the country. The card is also accepted at many major convenience stores in the country.
The online store launched today, seven months after Apple announced that a direct online purchasing option for Saudi Arabia was in the works. Prior to now, Apple users in Saudi Arabia could only shop from Apple Authorized Resellers.
The app includes features for organizing text clips, support for shortcuts to trigger text snippets, duplicate prevention, and code formatting, among other things.
I promise you, if every Apple leaker and rumour site disappeared tomorrow, Apple would celebrate. And keep making great products.
During WWDC25, Apple announced new versions of its on-device and cloud-based foundation models. Now, they have published a tech report detailing how those models were trained, optimized, and evaluated. And the report includes some genuinely interesting under-the-hood tidbits.
Apple was a charter member of the Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) and an early proponent of using a smartphone for digital car key functions, launching that capability as early as 2020. Last week, the company played a key role in an event that will spread digital key capabilities to more vehicles and mobile devices.
The tech giant hosted the CCC’s 13th Plugfest at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, where a broad range of companies from the automotive and mobile device sectors convened to test Version 4 of the CCC’s Digital Key specification. The Plugfest activities were aimed at further improving cross-platform interoperability and cross-version compatibility as digital key adoption continues to grow rapidly.
It seems inevitable to me that, firstly, our faces will all get captured by CCTVs and whatnots, and secondly, face recognition software will be good enough to link all our face captures up.
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Thanks for reading.