Wednesday Newsbytes: PimEyes- Too Dangerous for Google; Amazon’s New Internet Service Challenges Spectrum, Comcast; Microsoft Shows You How to Install Linux; Microsoft Edge’s Hidden Features … and more!
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
‘Too dangerous’: Why even Google was afraid to release this technology
Imagine strolling down a busy city street and snapping a photo of a stranger then uploading it into a search engine that almost instantaneously helps you identify the person.
This isn’t a hypothetical. It’s possible now, thanks to a website called PimEyes, considered one of the most powerful publicly available facial recognition tools online.
On TikTok, PimEyes has become a formidable tool for internet sleuths trying to identify strangers, with videos notching many millions of views showing how a combination of PimEyes, and other search tools, can, for example, figure out the name of a random cameraman at a Taylor Swift concert. TikTok’s community guidelines ban content with personal information that could lead to stalking, identity theft and other crimes. But this particular video was still up on Wednesday morning.
Originally founded in 2017 by two computer programmers in Poland, it’s an AI tool that’s like a reverse image search on steroids — it scans a face in a photo and crawls dark corners of the internet to surface photos many people didn’t even know existed of themselves in the background of restaurants or attending a concert…
As cord cutting has matured and helped millions save money on TV now cord cutters have new ways to save money. Now cord cutting has come for internet services and will make it easy to save money with cord cutting 2.0.
Last week, Amazon launched the first satellites for its new internet service that will bring more options to cord cutters. This will help make cord cutting 2.0 easier as it will bring options to many Americans we are left with just Starlink as an option right now.
So what is cord cutting 2.0? Cord Cutting 1.0 was cutting the cord on cable TV. Now in 2023, cord cutting 2.0 is about cutting the cord on home internet and getting new options.
Cable broadband providers like Comcast and Spectrum are facing competition from fiber, fixed wireless access service providers, and more. For the first time ever, many Americans finally have options for home internet, and they are starting to cut the cord.
That’s not the only factor contributing to subscriber losses. Pricing is heavily factored into people’s decisions on whether switching providers is the best option for them, and a growing number of people have decided yes.
This comes as T-Mobile reported that in just three months of the 1st quarter of 2023, T-Mobile added 523,000 home internet customers.
That number is more new home internet customers than AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Verizon added in the 4th quarter of 2022 combined…
Read more at Cord Cutters News.
Microsoft suddenly wants to tell you how to install Linux – but why?
We’re as confused as you are
Microsoft has released its own instructions on how to install Linux on your PC, detailing in a step-by-step guide how you should go about choosing a Linux distro and then installing it.
In the help article, Redmond suggests four methods of getting Linux to run on your machine: Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), bare metal Linux, a local VM, or a cloud VM.
The guide also directs Linux perspectives to a Microsoft-hosted library of Linux resources. But all of this while it continues to try to push its own OS, Windows 11.
Microsoft wants to help you run Linux
Although both Linux and Windows are separate operating systems, their purposes are fundamentally very different. Because of Linux’s open-source nature, it’s a lot more customizable and a broad array of distros have been created to cater to certain types of industries and businesses.
It could be that Microsoft just wants to help you run Linux alongside Windows…
One of Microsoft Edge’s best-hidden features is about to get even better
Split Screen is already a great feature in Edge but drag and drop support is a seriously sweet addition.
Microsoft recently added a new feature to its Edge browser that makes it easier to open a page side-by-side with another webpage. The addition of drag and drop support to Split Screen was spotted by user “HotCakeX,” who posted about it and shared a video in Tech Community post. The option is available for Edge Canary testers now and could make its way to other versions of Edge in the near future.
At the moment, you need to click a button in the address bar of Edge to open a tab in Split Screen mode. That isn’t difficult, but it also is as intuitive as it should be. The ability to drag and drop a tab into place is a bit smoother than clicking a button and choosing to open a current tab or a new page.
Split Screen is a relatively new feature for Edge in general, only making its way to the browser this year…
Amazon has added passkey support to replace using a password – and it’s not great
Amazon has secretly rolled out passkey support on its site and joined the many other tech giants in carving out an easier, quicker way to log in.
If you’re unfamiliar with passkeys, it’s essentially a way to securely sign into apps and websites without needing to remember a password or username. Strong passwords are hard to remember, and if you’re going to be remembering a lot most people will either keep the same password across accounts or use an easy-to-guess phrase or code – thus putting you at risk of having your accounts compromised.
On sites or apps that use passkeys, you’ll be prompted to create a passkey and use the authentication of choice depending on the device (either FaceID or fingerprint input). So, instead of having to use multiple passwords you can just glance at your screen or tap your finger to log in.
So, that’s exactly what you’ll be using to log into the Amazon website while doing your shopping (assuming you choose to enable the passkey feature). According to TechCrunch though, the implementation is not without its faults…
Chicago woman, 104, skydives from plane, aiming for record as the world’s oldest skydiver
A 104-year-old Chicago woman is hoping to be certified as the oldest person to ever skydive after leaving her walker on the ground and making a tandem jump in northern Illinois.
“Age is just a number,” Dorothy Hoffner told a cheering crowd moments after touching the ground Sunday at Skydive Chicago in Ottawa, about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The Guinness World Record for oldest skydiver was set in May 2022 by 103-year-old Linnéa Ingegärd Larsson from Sweden. But Skydive Chicago is working to have Guinness World Records certify Hoffner’s jump as a record, WLS-TV reported.
Hoffner first skydived when she was 100. On Sunday, she left her walker behind just short of the plane…
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
