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Age Verification Doesn't Need to Be a Privacy Footgun

“Won’t someone think of the poor children?” they say, clutching their pearls as they enact another stupid law that will harm the privacy of every adult on Earth and create Prior Restraint that inhibits the freedom of speech in liberal democracies. If you’re totally ignorant of how things work, the proposal of “verifying you’re an adult” before you access adult content sounds, superficially, like a reasonable thing to do. But it’s a patently stupid idea at every level. Age Verification Makes Th

Proton launches free and open-source Authenticator app to take on Google and Microsoft

What just happened? Swiss technology company Proton has expanded its privacy-focused software lineup with the launch of Proton Authenticator, a free and open-source two-factor authentication app. Best known for its encrypted webmail service, Proton also offers a VPN, password manager, cloud storage, and an online document editor. Proton Authenticator is positioned as a privacy-focused alternative to authentication apps from Google, Microsoft, Authy, and Duo. It replaces legacy SMS-based verific

How Apple’s New Spotlight Compares to Raycast

There are all kinds of actions included out of the box. You can add calendar appointments and reminders and set timers. You can send text messages or start FaceTime calls. You can even set dedicated keyboard shortcuts for any of these actions. It's also the exact kind of thing that, until now, Raycast did that Spotlight could not. The difference is one of implementation. Apple's approach currently only works with Mac applications that implement the Spotlight feature. Right now, it’s basically l

Proton releases a new app for two-factor authentication

Privacy-focused productivity tool company Proton released a new authenticator app today, allowing users to log in to services using dynamically generated two-factor authentication codes. The free app is available on all platforms starting today, including iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux. The app allows users to sync codes and accounts across devices. The company said that just like its other products, Proton Authenticator is open source and uses end-to-end encryption to protect user dat

Critical vulnerability in AI coding platform Base44 allowing unauthorized access

One of the most profoundly transformed domains in the wake of the LLM revolution has been code generation, especially the rise of vibe coding, where natural language prompts replace traditional programming. This shift has empowered millions of users with little to no technical background to build fully functional applications with ease. Platforms like Loveable, Bolt, and Base44 are on the front of this movement - they have enabled the creation of millions of applications spanning from persona

This Android 16 feature solved my biggest problem with phone notifications - how it works

Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Have you ever been relaxing when, out of nowhere, your phone blows up with notifications? I've been there too many times, which led me to keep my phone on silent mode 24/7. Then Google teased a new feature in Android 15 called Notification Cooldown that promised to change everything. Notification Cooldown didn't exactly hit the mark in Android 15, but it has made a comeback in the latest iteration (Android 16) to ensure that it works exactly as expect

Another airline joins AirTag luggage tracking program, now supported by 30 carriers (list)

Introduced in iOS 18.2, the Share Item Location feature lets users share a live tracking link for AirTag or other Find My-compatible accessories, including with airlines to help locate lost luggage. Today, another airline joined the list of official partners. Here’s the full updated list. Saudi Arabia gets Share Item Location support When Apple announced the Share Location Feature for AirTag, it also started working with “more than 15 airlines” to implement a system that would let users secure

Critical Vulnerability in AI Vibe Coding platform Base44

One of the most profoundly transformed domains in the wake of the LLM revolution has been code generation, especially the rise of vibe coding, where natural language prompts replace traditional programming. This shift has empowered millions of users with little to no technical background to build fully functional applications with ease. Platforms like Loveable, Bolt, and Base44 are on the front of this movement - they have enabled the creation of millions of applications spanning from persona

YouTube's Age-Estimation Tech Will Spot Kids Pretending to Be Adults. Here's How It Works

If kids are lying about their age, YouTube will know about it. Or at least will try its best to find out. The streaming service announced Tuesday it's rolling out age-estimation technology that will use various data to determine if someone is under the age of 18, and then use that signal "to deliver our age-appropriate product experiences and protections." Basically -- assuming it works as it should -- kids will not be able to access what YouTube deems as age-restricted content. Google, YouTub

Critical Vulnerability Discovered 11 Days After Wix Buys Base44

One of the most profoundly transformed domains in the wake of the LLM revolution has been code generation, especially the rise of vibe coding, where natural language prompts replace traditional programming. This shift has empowered millions of users with little to no technical background to build fully functional applications with ease. Platforms like Loveable, Bolt, and Base44 are on the front of this movement - they have enabled the creation of millions of applications spanning from persona

Ready or not, age verification is rolling out across the internet

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. On July 25th, the UK became one of the first countries to widely implement age verification. Its Online Safety Act requires sites hosting porn and other content deemed “harmful” — including Reddit, Discord, Grindr, X, and Bluesky — to verify that users are over the age of 18. The early results have been chaotic. While many services have complied, so

Ubuntu Linux lagging? Try my 10 go-to tricks to speed it up

Yuichiro Chino/Getty Unless you're using a computer from the '90s or early 2000s, typically speaking, Ubuntu runs very well on most machines. I've found it to be fairly predictable in that respect. However, nothing is perfect, and you might run into an instance where the open-source operating system doesn't perform up to your standards. So, what do you do? Do you hop to a different distribution? You certainly could, as there are plenty of Linux distributions that work perfectly on older hardwa

Blog series on creating an OS in Rust

Writing an OS in Rust This blog series creates a small operating system in the Rust programming language. Each post is a small tutorial and includes all needed code, so you can follow along if you like. The source code is also available in the corresponding Github repository. Latest post: Async/Await Bare Bones Interrupts CPU Exceptions CPU exceptions occur in various erroneous situations, for example, when accessing an invalid memory address or when dividing by zero. To react to them, we ha

AIR lands $23M to bring its eVTOLs to the US

The combined forces of escalating geopolitical tensions and rising defense budgets are spurring many electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) makers to take a two-pronged approach to building their aircraft: crewed vehicles for personal or commercial taxi use, and uncrewed vehicles meant for logistics and defense purposes. AIR, an Israel-based startup developing eVTOLs, thought it prudent to adopt a similar approach from the get-go, designing both its uncrewed and piloted aircraft with the

Bridging Digital Infrastructure, AI, and Education in Sri Lanka

An Interview with Prof. Roshan Ragel – 2025 IEEE CS Mary Kenneth Keller Teaching Award Recipient As the first academic from the Global South to win the IEEE CS Mary Kenneth Keller Computer Science & Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award, Prof. Roshan Ragel exemplifies leadership in teaching, research, and digital transformation. A Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Peradeniya and Consultant CEO of LEARN, Sri Lanka’s National Research and Education Network, he has spearhea

Love your new Galaxy Watch 8? Here’s one setting you need to fix immediately

Joe Maring / Android Authority Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 series officially hit store shelves last Friday, and from what we’ve seen so far, Samsung’s newest wearables are likely among the best Wear OS watches you can buy this year. I’ve been wearing the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic for the last few days, and while I’m nowhere near ready to review it, my first impressions have been positive. I’ve long been a fan of Samsung smartwatches, particularly those with rotating bezels. As such, going ba

Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

You can also use the new Vite plugin directly if you want to integrate notebooks into your existing Vite-based application. The build command is implemented on top of Vite, making it incredibly fast. If you prefer to author notebooks in a text editor rather than using Observable Desktop, you can use Vite’s preview server for a live preview as you edit. notebooks preview See the Notebook Kit documentation for more.

Xbox adds age checks in UK to comply with Online Safety Act

Recap: Digital platforms across the United Kingdom are adjusting their operations after the country's new Online Safety Act came into force, with Microsoft's Xbox gaming service among the latest to announce compliance measures. The legislation, aimed at making digital spaces safer for children and young people, has set off a wave of new regulations that require internet companies to verify users' ages if their platforms could potentially host explicit or harmful content. Microsoft confirmed thi

Microsoft plans to bring Xbox age verification to countries outside of the UK

Microsoft is implementing an age verification system on Xbox accounts to comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, and in a new blog post announcing the move, the company suggests it'll come to other countries, too. Players in the UK who indicate on their account that they're 18 years or older will now "begin seeing notifications encouraging them to verify their age," Microsoft says. The process is optional for now, and players will be able to enjoy playing Xbox games until "early 2026," when ver

The UK is slogging through an online age-gate apocalypse

People across the United Kingdom have been faced with a censored and partially inaccessible online landscape since the country introduced its latest digital safety rules on Friday. The Online Safety Act mandates that web service operators must use “highly effective” age verification measures to stop kids from accessing a wide range of material, on penalty of heavy fines and criminal action against senior managers. It’s primarily focused on pornography and content that promotes suicide, self-har

Microsoft starts rolling out Xbox age verification in the UK

is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft is starting to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act by prompting Xbox players to verify their age today. The prompts will be shown to Xbox players who indicate they’re over the age of 18 and will be shown when you sign into an Xbox account in the UK. Microsoft says it’s also exploring bringing similar age verification tools to other countries in the future. To powe

Formal specs as sets of behaviors

Amazon’s recent announcement of their spec-driven AI tool, Kiro, inspired me to write a blog post on a completely unrelated topic: formal specifications. In particular, I wanted to write about how a formal specification is different from a traditional program. It took a while for this idea to really click in my own head, and I wanted to motivate some intuition here. In particular, there have been a number of formal specification tools that have been developed in recent years which use programmi

Where are vacation homes located in the US?

As of 2023, the US has around 142.3 million housing units: roughly one home for every 2.4 people in the country. The vast majority of these homes – 127.5 million – are occupied. The remaining 14.8 million homes are vacant. Of these, around 4.8 million homes, or around 3.5% of the total, are vacant because they’re seasonal, or vacation, homes. I’ve spent a lot of time writing about patterns of housing and home construction in the US, but virtually none of it has been looking at vacation homes sp

Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

Discord’s new age-verification tool may not be as rigorous as it seems, after users reportedly discovered it can be tricked using video game characters. The instant messaging and VoIP platform, commonly used for gaming, implemented an age-check tool earlier this month for UK users in anticipation of a new set of laws aimed at restricting potentially harmful content for under-18s. The Online Safety Act, passed in 2023, requires service providers that host user-generated content to implement age

iOS 26 Public Beta 1 Brings AI Summaries Back to News Apps With a Warning

If you have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone, the first public beta of iOS 26 is bringing AI notification summaries back to news and entertainment apps after being partly removed earlier this year. Apple disabled AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in January. That came a few weeks after the BBC pointed out in December that the feature twisted the media organization's notifications and displayed inaccurate information. The latest beta brings those AI summaries back wi