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UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced plans to introduce legislation forcing Apple and Google to build device-level safeguards preventing children from taking, sharing, or viewing nude images on phones and tablets. The move comes after a three-month voluntary compliance deadline given in June, which Nandy says produced only partial improvements from the companies.
Microsoft is introducing new APIs in Windows 11 that let third-party apps check whether a user falls into a child, teen, or adult age category, without revealing the person's actual birthdate. Developers can use this signal to tailor content, features, or restrictions based on age group rather than requesting precise personal data.
The Ig Nobel Prizes, awarded annually by Improbable Research since 1991, were handed out this year in Zurich to ten offbeat studies. Winners included researchers who crafted a cross-species scientific definition of kissing, a team linking higher social class to unethical behavior, and a chemistry study on the nutritional value of cockroach milk. Other honored work reportedly examined nose-blowing techniques and used buried underwear to gauge soil health.
Microsoft released its September security update addressing roughly 972 vulnerabilities, including 112 rated critical, surpassing the previous record of 570 set just two months ago. The company has now fixed 2,760 vulnerabilities in 2024 alone, more than double last year's total and on pace to exceed the combined totals of the past three years.
Android Authority polled over 2,500 readers on Google Messages' new chat theme feature, which lets users customize individual RCS conversations with colors, preset wallpapers, or personal images visible only on their own device. The results split nearly evenly: 36% said they'd long wanted the feature, 33% were undecided but willing to try it, and just over 31% said they'd never use it.
UK-based AI consultant Grant de Swardt found his Claude Max subscription burning through tokens even when he wasn't using the service. Anthropic investigated and told him a compromised session key had been used to generate unauthorized OAuth tokens, allowing a third party to consume his allotted usage. The company suspended his account, wiped his active sessions, and issued a partial refund but could not explain how the credentials were obtained.
Circular has released two new smart rings, the Ring 3 Pro and Ring 3 Slim, combining health tracking features with NFC-based contactless payment support and haptic feedback. The move puts Circular ahead of rival Oura in offering payment functionality directly on a smart ring.
Cognition, maker of the AI coding assistant Devin, closed a $2 billion funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Avenir, pushing its valuation to $48 billion—up from $26 billion just four months earlier. The company says its annualized run-rate revenue nearly doubled since May, climbing from $492 million to $900 million.
Attackers are exploiting a chain of legitimate Google services, including redirect links, to disguise malicious URLs and slip past email security filters. Victims who follow the multi-hop links are directed either to credential-harvesting phishing pages or prompted to install ScreenConnect remote access software.
Director Na Hong-Jin's new science-fiction film, featuring Hoyeon, Michael Fassbender, and Alicia Vikander, is scheduled to open in theaters on September 9. The film follows a chaotic, high-energy alien encounter storyline that reviewers describe as unpredictable and unconventional.
OpenAI says an unreleased internal AI model, running roughly 10,000 autonomous agents, produced a proof addressing the long-unresolved Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem within about 88 hours. The effort began after the company heard rumors that two Millennium Prize problems had been cracked elsewhere, prompting it to test the model on outstanding mathematical challenges. The result has not been peer-reviewed or accepted by the Clay Mathematics Institute, which oversees the Millennium Prize.
Australian lawmakers are considering new rules that would give users the ability to opt out of algorithm-driven content feeds on social media platforms. The move follows Australia's earlier push to ban social media access for teenagers, extending regulatory pressure on tech platforms operating in the country.