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Meta is bringing back facial recognition with new safety features for Facebook and Instagram
21 Oct

Meta is bringing back facial recognition with new safety features for Facebook and Instagram

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Meta is bringing facial recognition tech back to its apps more than three years after it shut down Facebook’s “face recognition” system amid a broader backlash against the technology. Now, the social network will begin to deploy facial recognition tools on Facebook and Instagram to fight scams and help users who have lost access to their accounts, the company said in an update.The first test will use facial recognition to detect scam ads that use the faces of celebrities and other public figures. “If our systems suspect that an ad may be a scam that contains the image of a…
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The Morning After: We test Canon’s new EOS R5 II
21 Oct

The Morning After: We test Canon’s new EOS R5 II

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If you’re after a high-resolution mirrorless camera, most folks in the know will point you to the Sony’s A1. Canon, annoyed at not being everyone’s first choice, is fighting back with its new , a 45-megapixel mirrorless with plenty of bells and whistles. Engadget’s Steve Dent knows a thing or two about high-end cameras, . It isn’t perfect, but he was impressed by the faster shooting and better autofocus, especially given the A1 is a lot more expensive. To learn all about the new R5 II and decide if it’s the camera to put at the top of your wish…
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Uber is reportedly exploring an Expedia takeover
21 Oct

Uber is reportedly exploring an Expedia takeover

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Uber is reportedly exploring the idea of purchasing Expedia, one of the largest travel booking companies in the world, according to the Financial Times. Expedia, which is valued at $20 billion and which reported its highest-ever annual revenue in 2023, will be the company's biggest acquisition, if the deal does indeed push through. The Times says it's very early days, however, and Uber hasn't even made a formal offer for the travel company yet. It's still in the process of studying the implications of acquiring Expedia and has, over the past months, worked with advisers to figure out whether the…
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Microsoft recruits accessibility app to make its AI more useful to blind and low-vision users
21 Oct

Microsoft recruits accessibility app to make its AI more useful to blind and low-vision users

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Be My Eyes, the accessibility app for mobile devices that puts blind and low-vision people on a live video call with a sighted guide, will help Microsoft train its AI. Be My Eyes will provide anonymized video data to improve scene understanding in Microsoft’s accessibility-focused AI models.The data sets Be My Eyes gives Microsoft will include “unique objects, lighting and framing that realistically represents the lived experience of the blind and low vision community.” The goal is to make Microsoft’s AI more inclusive for people with vision disabilities.The companies say all personal info has been scrubbed from the metadata. The…
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A new Chrome extension can reliably detect AI-generated voices
21 Oct

A new Chrome extension can reliably detect AI-generated voices

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Just in time for the 2024 US elections, the call screening and fraud detection company Hiya has launched a free Chrome extension to spot deepfake voices. The aptly named Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector “listens” to voices played in video or audio streams and assigns an authenticity score, telling you whether it’s likely real or fake.Hiya tells Engadget that third-party testers have validated the extension as over 99 percent accurate. The company says that even covers AI-generated voices the detection model hasn’t trained on, and the company claims it can spot voices created by new synthesis models as soon as they’re…
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LG’s C3 OLED TVs are more than $600 off before Black Friday
20 Oct

LG’s C3 OLED TVs are more than $600 off before Black Friday

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Update 10/17/24 11:05am ET: Amazon has raised the price of the 55-inch model by $100, which brings the final price down to $1,297. While not quite as low as it was just a few hours ago, that's still about $500 off the original price and a good deal.I don't know about you but I will be spending most of the upcoming cold months sitting on my couch and watching television (with some books thrown in). The only thing I'm missing is a really good television set and, while I'll be opting for a more budget-friendly pick, I'm tempted by the…
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Engadget review recap: Budget-friendly gadgets that are good
20 Oct

Engadget review recap: Budget-friendly gadgets that are good

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It’s a slower October than usual in the tech industry, thanks mostly to Google and Microsoft having held their typical fall hardware announcements earlier this year. Still, we’ve seen a fair number of companies reveal new devices in the last two weeks, while Amazon’s October Prime Day raged on. Whether you were busy shopping or watching Elon Musk talk up robotaxis and cybervans, the Engadget team continued to review recently (and not-so-recently) launched products. As usual, this bi-weekly roundup is here to help you catch up, though because I missed last week's edition (as I was out on time off),…
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A $105,000 robot arm nobody needs cooked me a delicious lunch
20 Oct

A $105,000 robot arm nobody needs cooked me a delicious lunch

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London’s W1 is somewhere to go if you’ve got too much money to spend on something. Within minutes of each other, you can visit the city’s priciest private doctor, buy a Steinway and a pair of designer glasses that cost more than my mortgage. Wigmore Street is also where the ultra rich go to buy a kitchen that Thorstein Veblen would weep at the sight of. It’s also the new home of Moley Robotics, a company selling luxury kitchens and the robot arm that’ll kinda/sorta do all of the cooking for you, too.Moley is the brainchild of Dr. Mark Oleynik…
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FCC now requires georouting for wireless calls to 988, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline
20 Oct

FCC now requires georouting for wireless calls to 988, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline

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The Federal Communications Commission has passed rules that will require all wireless calls to the 988 Lifeline to be georouted. Geographic routing ensures that attempts to reach the National Suicide Prevention Hotline for intervention services will be sent to the location where the call is placed rather than to the location of the caller's area code and exchange.Once the rules take effect, national providers will have 30 days to implement georouting for these calls. Smaller, non-national providers have a timeline of 24 months to comply. The agency also issued a proposal that the same georouting policy be applied to texts…
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The FBI arrested an Alabama man for allegedly helping hack the SEC’s X account
20 Oct

The FBI arrested an Alabama man for allegedly helping hack the SEC’s X account

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A 25-year-old Alabama man has been arrested by the FBI for his alleged role in the takeover of the Securities and Exchange Commission's X account earlier this year. The hack resulted in a that falsely claimed bitcoin ETFs had been approved by the regulator, which temporarily juiced bitcoin prices.Now, the FBI has identified Eric Council Jr. as one of the people allegedly behind the exploit. Council was charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud, the Justice Department. While the SEC had previously confirmed that its X account was compromised via a attack, the indictment offers…
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