fidzu : geek

Apple's new Audio Intelligence features for the Apple Watch Series 12 are drawing privacy concerns because they can process nearby conversations without explicit consent from everyone involved. "Live Rewind lets you instantly see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text," Apple explains in its technical summary (PDF). "Siri Recap summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later." The Register reports: The latest Apple Watch comes with Audio Intelligence, a set of AI audio processing capabilities tuned for the company's S11 chip. Its features include: Sound Recognition, Music Recognition with Shazam, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap. [...] With the double-press of the Digital Crown -- as Apple grandly refers to the button on its Watch -- Live Rewind takes in an audio stream from the Watch microphone, processes it in a Secure Exclave on the S11 chip, and routes the data to the user's nearby iPhone, which runs a speech-to-text algorithm on the 15-second audio segment. The resulting text is saved and the audio is discarded. The wearer's Watch emits an audible tone, even in silent mode, to alert those in the vicinity and provides a visual cue for those able to see the face of the device. Nonetheless, bystanders alerted to the recording -- to the extent they recognize the meaning of the tone -- have not consented to being recorded, which is a legal requirement in 11 US states that have all-party consent laws. Apple characterizes its implementation of brief eavesdropping as respectful of personal privacy. It makes that claim in a section titled, "How Live Rewind respects those around you," citing the audible chime and visual on-screen animation. Siri Recap, meanwhile, "summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later." This too, Apple describes as an act of respect. "By design, Siri Recap does not create a recording, does not produce a verbatim transcript, and does not identify and attribute speakers," Apple's technical documentation explains. "The output is a brief, high-level summary, comparable to notes a person might write after a conversation. There is no audible signal because no raw audio is retained, and there is no way to reconstruct the original audio from a Siri Recap or share raw audio with anyone."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Sep 2026 11:00pm GMT

Laptops don't usually get hot enough to burn-but they can still be harmful.

10 Sep 2026 10:16pm GMT

Anthropic says it has disrupted several cases this year in which scientists used Claude for biological research that could potentially aid bioweapons development. "In a report describing misuses of its A.I. models, Anthropic said it could not determine whether the research served a legitimate or nefarious purpose because valid biological inquiry -- the kind that can lead to breakthroughs like vaccines -- can also help engineer dangerous pathogens," reports The New York Times. "In the face of that uncertainty, Anthropic said it erred on the side of caution because the consequences of missing malicious activity could be severe." From the report: The potential for cutting-edge A.I. models to facilitate the development of known or entirely new biological pathogens is among the gravest concerns experts have about a technology that is developing so rapidly that even its leading architects doubt whether humans will be able to fully control it. Andrew Weber, a senior fellow on the Council on Strategic Risks who reviewed Anthropic's report before its release, said the findings were "chilling examples of state-sponsored biological weapons developers tapping into the rapidly advancing capabilities" of leading A.I. models. The lengthy report Anthropic published on Thursday cataloged a litany of misuses of its A.I. models, including the chatbot Claude, over the past eight months. Some examples were similar to past disclosures from Anthropic and other A.I. labs, including suspected Chinese and Iranian government-linked actors targeting dissident and diaspora communities for surveillance. The report also highlighted cases of Russian state media using Claude to generate online propaganda masquerading as independent reporting, including fabricated claims about an election in Moldova. Anthropic documented another genre of abuse it said was new: attempts to use Claude to develop software for conventional weapons design and development, including firearms, missiles, armed drones and bombs. It detailed three cases in China, two in Russia and one in Yemen. The report does not identify by name which parties were involved in the Yemeni case, but the context makes clear that it is referring to the Iran-backed Houthi militia.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Sep 2026 10:00pm GMT

Android is rolling out a system-level way to securely transfer passwords and passkeys between credential managers, eliminating the need to export passwords as unencrypted text files or manually recreate passkeys. The feature initially supports Google Password Manager, 1Password, Bitwarden, and Dashlane, with other providers able to integrate through Android's Credentials Transfer API. 9to5Google reports on how to initiate the system-backed transfer method: 1. Start the move: Open your new password manager app and choose the option to import or copy your passwords and passkeys from another provider. The password manager will then hand the task over to Android. 2. Let Android securely coordinate the data transfer: Android will automatically detect existing password managers on your device and show you which you can import from. 3. Review and authorize: Once you tap "Continue," Android will bring you to your existing password manager to select, review, and authorize the transfer. Then your data will be quickly and securely transferred between the apps in just a few seconds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

10 Sep 2026 9:00pm GMT

Judge tosses lawsuits, says plaintiffs didn't allege any real privacy violation.

10 Sep 2026 8:55pm GMT

Europe is looking inward, and perhaps to China, as the White House tries to cancel some NASA partnerships.

10 Sep 2026 7:09pm GMT

Do tech companies ever stop to think about the misery they unleash on people's lives? The Apple Watch Series 12 uses "Audio Intelligence" that, as well as secretly taking notes, also has a Live Rewind feature that can replay the last 15 seconds of recently detected audio and view a text transcript. ↫ Matt Growcoot at PetaPixel Another win for us Europeans: this dystopian nightmare will not be available in the EU.

09 Sep 2026 9:50pm GMT

Although Solaris is now mostly defunct, its influence remains substantial; technologies pioneered by Solaris can still be found across a wide range of software A lot of Solaris' inventions have been described and talked about ad nauseam (such as the Slab Allocator), but one I rarely see discussed is its use of turnstiles. Despite being relatively obscure, the idea has quietly spread far beyond Solaris. Variations of it can now be found in major operating systems, web browsers, and language runtimes. In fact, you're probably using several implementations of the same basic concept right now! ↫ Loïc Grégoire I'm not going to pretend to understand all of this, but I know you people do, and many of you will definitely find this interesting to read. Also note that Grégoire develops their own operating system kernel called zag.

09 Sep 2026 9:07pm GMT

Lotus Notes was the future of communications, a decade before laptops had WiFi. Yet of all things, it wasn't even an email app. It was a notes app, a collaboration tool, an all-things-to-all-people software that let you build apps in the way Access and Airtable later would. That, and the notes could be used for email. Love it or hate it (and there were plenty on both sides of the fence), what you couldn't do was ignore it. This email-and-everything-else platform showed what the future of digital communications would become - and provoked, as email itself was always doomed to provoke, equal measures of awe and exasperation. ↫ Matthew Guay I have no experience with Lotus Notes, but I do have some vague memories of the software being used at my parents' employers back in the late '90s. Note that Notes still exists and is in active development as HCL Domino (server) and Notes (the client). If you really want to, you can still run your company of office on Notes. I wonder how many actually still do.

09 Sep 2026 9:00pm GMT

Over the last few weeks, we have been doing research on the integration of our official distribution packages when installed on a target system. In this context we have been looking at the current uses of alpm-install-scriptlet(5) files and alpm-hooks(5) in around 120 package source repositories (alpm-source-repo(7)) to better understand the underlying functionality and use-cases these two integrations offer and target. In this article we are going to look at how these two systems work, how Arch Linux is currently using them and attempt to provide suggestions for when to use which. Learning about alpm-hooks(5) and alpm-install-scriptlet(5) files …

09 Aug 2026 12:00am GMT

This is just a short note on my blog that I have resigned from Arch Linux a package maintainer, developer and security team. I've spent around 10 years as an AUR maintainer, security team, Package Maintainer and then Developer. I implemented support for debug packages, did the initial POC work that would become the git migration and even somehow managed to pull of an online conference during The Plague with the help of others.

01 Aug 2026 12:00am GMT

Good morning from JetBrains Berlin office!

01 Jun 2026 12:00am GMT