Apple occasionally makes choices that tarnish its strong privacy-forward reputation, like when it was secretly collecting users’ Siri interactions. Yesterday, a blog post from developer Jeff Johnson highlighted such a choice: an “Enhanced Visual Search” toggle for the Apple Photos app that is seemingly on by default, giving your device permission to share data from your photos with Apple.

Sure enough, when I checked my iPhone 15 Pro this morning, the toggle was switched to on. You can find it for yourself by going to Settings > Photos (or System Settings > Photos on a Mac). Enhanced Visual Search lets you look up landmarks you’ve taken pictures of or search for those images using the names of those landmarks.

To see what it enables in the Photos app, swipe up on a picture you’ve taken of a building and select “Look up Landmark,” and a card will appear that ideally identifies it. Here are a couple of examples from my phone:

Screenshots: Apple Photos

On its face, it’s a convenient expansion of Photos’ Visual Look Up feature that Apple introduced in iOS 15 that lets you identify plants or, say, find out what those symbols on a laundry tag mean. But Visual Look Up doesn’t need special permission to share data with Apple, and this does.

A description under the toggle says you’re giving Apple permission to “privately match places in your photos with a global index maintained by Apple.” As for how, there are details in an Apple machine-learning research blog about Enhanced Visual Search that Johnson links to:

The process starts with an on-device ML model that analyzes a given photo to determine if there is a “region of interest” (ROI) that may contain a landmark. If the model detects an ROI in the “landmark” domain, a vector embedding is calculated for that region of the image.

According to the blog, that vector embedding is then encrypted and sent to Apple to compare with its database. The company offers a very technical explanation of vector embeddings in a research paper, but IBM put it more simply, writing that embeddings transform “a data point, such as a word, sentence or image, into an n-dimensional array of numbers representing that data point’s characteristics.”

Like Johnson, I don’t fully understand Apple’s research blogs and Apple didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment about Johnson’s concerns. It seems as though the company went to great lengths to keep the data private, in part by condensing image data into a format that’s legible to an ML model.

Even so, making the toggle opt-in, like those for sharing analytics data or recordings or Siri interactions, rather than something users have to discover seems like it would have been a better option.

Brady Corbet’s 3.5-hour saga is a tale of one man’s journey through architecture and assimilation — and one of the year’s best films. The director tells The Verge how he got away with it.

Read the full story at The Verge.

With rumors of Nvidia entering the CPU market, 2025 might be an even bigger year for Microsoft’s Arm efforts.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta updated a note on the top of its Quest support site to say that a “software update issue” has been bricking Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest 3S headsets. The company writes that while “most” people can now use their headsets normally, it’s “actively working on resolving the issue for all users.”

That Meta is now saying it’s working on a fix “for all users” may be good news for Quest 2 and 3 owners who’ve reported that Meta wouldn’t fix or replace their headsets because they were out of warranty. Some Reddit users say the company has emailed a confirmation that they were getting out-of-warranty service for the issue, and a Meta support forum community manager wrote in an update yesterday that Meta’s customer support “should have new directions on how to support users now.”

Meta posted on December 6th that there were software update issues affecting “some new Quest 3S devices,” but didn’t mention Quest 2 or 3 headsets or what software version was involved, either then or in an earlier version of the new support site message that UploadVR reported this week. The company announced on December 9th that it was rolling out its most recent update, Meta Quest v71, adding features like a revamped virtual desktop display connection method and keyboard passthrough support in virtual environments.

The US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is proposing new cybersecurity requirements for healthcare organizations aimed at protecting patients’ private data in the event of cyberattacks, reports Reuters. The rules come after major cyberattacks like one that leaked the private information of more than 100 million UnitedHealth patients earlier this year.

The OCR’s proposal includes requiring that healthcare organizations make multifactor authentication mandatory in most situations, that they segment their networks to reduce risks of intrusions spreading from one system to another, and that they encrypt patient data so that even if it’s stolen, it can’t be accessed. It would also direct regulated groups to undertake certain risk analysis practices, keep compliance documentation, and more.

The rule is part of the cybersecurity strategy that the Biden administration announced last year. Once finalized, it would update the Security Rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which regulates doctors, nursing homes, health insurance companies, and more, and was last updated in 2013.

US deputy national security advisor Anne Neuberger put the cost of implementing the requirements at “an estimated $9 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in years two through five,” writes Reuters. The proposal is due to be published in the Federal Register on January 6th, which will kick off the 60-day public comment period before the final rule is set.

If you’re somebody who likes to clean and declutter in preparation for a new year, one way to speed it up is by investing in a good robot vacuum. The SwitchBot S10 is one of our favorite vacuums that also happens to be a terrific mop, too, and is currently down to its all-time low price of $699.99 ($500 off) when you clip the on-page coupon at Amazon. It’s also available for the same price directly from SwitchBot when you apply the promo code BFCM500A.

Of all the robot vacuums we’ve ever tested, the SwitchBot S10 offers the most hands-free experience, so you really can set it and forget it. The self-cleaning roller mop does an excellent job of polishing up your floors, and is even capable of lifting itself up to keep carpets dry. What’s more, the Switch S10 comes with an auto-empty dock as well as a separate battery-powered dock water station, which means the bot can empty and refill its own water tank. Just bear in mind you’ll have to hook it into your water supply.

Aside from offering a fantastic mopping and hands-free experience, the SwitchBot S10 is also a good vacuum with 6,500Pa suction power and decent AI-powered obstacle avoidance, although it admittedly can’t rival specs from competitors like Roborock, Dreame, and Ecovacs. That said, the SwitchBot S10 costs about $1,000 less, and for the price it does a great job of leaving the floor mostly spotless.

Read our SwitchBot S10 review.

Some more deals to kickstart your weekend

• The Mobvoi Home Walking Treadmill is on sale for $79.99 ($160 off) at Amazon, which is an all-time low price. The under-desk walking treadmill supports Bluetooth and can connect to Android smartwatches, allowing you to keep tabs on your steps and other metrics from your wrist. That said, it works best if you own a Mobvoi smartwatch, given you’ll need the Mobvoi Health app if you want to save your data on your phone. Read our review.
• Sennheiser’s Momentum 4 Wireless headphones are on sale for $199.99 ($200 off) at Amazon, which is their best price to date. The over-ears headphones deliver impressive battery life and can last a whopping 60 hours on a single charge, which is why they’re amongst our favorites. They also offer other impressive capabilities, including excellent noise cancellation, comfort, and sound. Read our review.
• The Twelve South AirFly Pro is on sale for $39.99 ($15 off) at Amazon and Best Buy, which is its second best price to date. The Bluetooth transmitter features an integrated 3.5mm cable, allowing you to pair two sets of wireless Bluetooth-equipped wireless headphones or earbuds to in-flight entertainment systems. It works with other tech as well, like treadmills and the Nintendo Switch, while offering an an aux input for older devices.

A cyberattack campaign inserted malicious code into multiple Chrome browser extensions as far back as mid-December, Reuters reported yesterday. The code appeared designed to steal browser cookies and authentication sessions, targeting “specific social media advertising and AI platforms,” according to a blog post from Cyberhaven, one of the companies that was targeted.

Cyberhaven blames a phishing email for the attack, writing in a separate technical analysis post that the code appeared to specifically target Facebook Ads accounts. According to Reuters, security researcher Jaime Blasco believes the attack was “just random” and not targeting Cyberhaven specifically. He posted on X that he’d found VPN and AI extensions that contained the same malicious code that was inserted into Cyberhaven.

Other extensions possibly affected include Internxt VPN, VPNCity, Uvoice, and ParrotTalks, as Bleeping Computer writes.

Cyberhaven says hackers pushed an update (version 24.10.4) of its Cyberhaven data loss prevention extension containing the malicious code on Christmas Eve at 8:32PM ET. Cyberhaven says it discovered the code on December 25th at 6:54PM ET and removed it within an hour, but that the code was active until December 25th at 9:50PM ET. The company says it released a clean version in its 24.10.5 update.

Cyberhaven’s recommendations for companies that may be affected include that they check their logs for suspicious activity and revoke or rotate any passwords not using the FIDO2 multifactor authentication standard. Prior to publishing its posts, the company notified customers via an email that TechCrunch reported Friday morning.

We’re all impatiently awaiting Nintendo’s next console, but in the meantime, it’s been quite the sendoff year for the Switch.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Amazon’s finally added a key feature to the Scribe, but it has a long way to go before it’s actually useful.

Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple is no longer selling its iPhone SE and iPhone 14 series in Europe — the last phone models with Apple’s proprietary Lightning charging port — as the EU shifts to a common charging solution built around USB-C. EU Directive 2022/2380 goes into force today in an effort to reduce e-waste and solve market fragmentation.

A spot check by The Verge shows the iPhone SE, iPhone 14 and 14 Plus, and the Lightning-based Magic Keyboard have been pulled from Apple’s online stores in The Netherlands, France, Norway, and Germany. Those same devices are still for sale in the US and other countries outside the EEA’s 30 member states. A new iPhone SE with USB-C and other upgrades like an OLED display is rumored for 2025.

In addition to requiring a USB-C port on a wide range of devices sold in the EU from December 28th, 2024, the Directive also requires devices that support fast charging to support the USB PD standard, allows for the unbundling of charging bricks from retail devices, and helps consumers to better understand the power requirements of the devices they’re buying through improved labeling.

President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to let him negotiate a deal to save TikTok from an imminent US ban.

In an amicus brief filed to the court, Trump says he “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office,” and that he “alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform.”

Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments that a bill passed by Congress banning TikTok on national security grounds violates the First Amendment. The bill gives wide latitude to the president to delay its enforcement if there’s progress being made towards a deal that ensures TikTok isn’t fully controlled by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

But the deadline for that determination is January 19th, which is one day before Trump is set to be sworn in.

In his Supreme Court filing, Trump asks for the bill’s January 19th deadline to be stayed, arguing that the deal he’d negotiate “would obviate the need for this Court to decide the historically challenging First Amendment question presented here on the current, highly expedited basis.”

He offers no details on what said deal would look like, though it would likely have to involve ByteDance selling a signification portion of its ownership in TikTok to an American company.

Trump argues that having over 14 million followers on TikTok, along with his ownership of Truth Social, gives him unique ability to “evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech.” He also cites Brazil’s temporary ban of Elon Musk’s X as an example of “the historic dangers presented” by a government banning a social media platform.

While Trump pushed aggressively for a TikTok ban during his first term, he changed his tune after his campaign successfully used the video app during the 2024 election. He recently met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago and told a crowd that “maybe we gotta keep this sucker around for a little while.”

There’s still plenty of political pressure to enforce a TikTok ban, however. A group of senators and congressmen, including Mitch McConnell and Ro Khanna, filed petitions on Friday, joined by 22 U.S. states and former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, urging the Supreme Court to reject TikTok’s appeal.

If you’ve been waiting patiently to see how Matt Reeves’ story for The Batman continues once the reboot’s sequel arrives, you’ll have to wait a little longer. It was once set to open October 2nd, 2026, after an initial delay caused by the Hollywood writers’ strike derailed Warner Bros. plans to release it in 2025, but the studio has now announced that it’s pushing The Batman Part II even further back to October 1st, 2027, according to Variety.

It appears the most recent shift could be strategic. Variety adds that Warner Bros. has rushed to fill that October 2nd, 2026, slot with an unnamed film featuring Tom Cruise and directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

While that sucks for fans of the bat, one nice consolation is news that Bong Joon-Ho’s Mickey 17 is coming even sooner than expected; it is now scheduled for March 7th, 2025, after delays of its own caused the original 2024 release to slip. Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson (who also plays Bruce Wayne in The Batman Part II) and is directly inspired by the Edward Ashton novel Mickey7, which follows a willingly and literally disposable employee through his many doors of death. Also starring in the film are Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo, and Thomas Turgoose. Warner Bros. reportedly swapped its release date with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which now opens April 18th, to give Mickey 17 more time on Imax screens.

Do Kwon, the co-founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs, will be extradited to the US to face federal fraud charges, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The Montenegro Ministry of Justice announced the decision on Friday, which comes more than one year after the authorities arrested Kwon in the country.

Kwon faces charges in the US and South Korea after the TerraUSD stablecoin and its sister token Luna crashed in 2022, causing investors to lose $40 billion in the process. Both countries have issued extradition requests for Kwon, and have been awaiting Montenegro’s decision for months.

“It was concluded that most of the criteria provided for by law support the extradition request of the competent authorities of the United States of America,” a machine-translated version of Montenegro’s Ministry of Justice’s statement said. It doesn’t say when Montenegro plans on releasing Kwon to the US. As noted by Bloomberg, it’s also unclear whether this decision is final, since Montenegro ruled to extradite Kwon to South Korea in August.

Federal prosecutors in New York charged Kwon with wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and engage in market manipulation last year. In June, Terraform Labs and Kwon agreed to pay more than $4.5 billion to settle a separate lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and other members of President-elect Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley coalition are clashing with the MAGA movement’s hardline anti-immigrant faction, and it’s allegedly resulted in Musk stripping far-right critics’ verification badges on X.

The conflict centers on Musk and Ramaswamy’s recent praise for foreign tech workers, beginning soon after Indian immigrant Sriram Krishnan joined the team of Trump’s AI and crypto czar David Sacks. It’s pitted Trump’s tech mogul donor class against his older network of far-right influencers like activist and Trump companion Laura Loomer while escalating into racist rhetoric against Indian Americans in particular. The ugly, extremely online fight between the American far-right influence network parallels the immigration debate currently being hashed out more quietly in Washington.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric was a cornerstone of Trump’s pitch to voters; on top of promoting false, racist rumors about immigrants and promising mass deportations that could destabilize the American economy, he’s expected to revive an H-1B visa crackdown that he imposed during his first term. At the same time, Trump is leaning heavily on...

Read the full story at The Verge.

If you need help shedding pounds from all the junk food you indulged in over Christmas, music is a great activity motivator — which is why wireless earbuds are a useful investment. Luckily, today the Beats Fit Pro — our favorite pair of earbuds for working out — are matching their all-time low price of about $149 ($50 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart.

The Beats Fit Pro offer a wide range of features that’ll help you keep motivated while working out. They sport excellent noise cancellation and a transparency mode that sounds natural, so you can tune distractions out and allow outside sound in when needed. They’re also designed for vigorous workouts, with built-in wing tips to keep them firmly in place and IPX4 rating for water resistance.

Even more conveniently, the wireless earbuds offer a host of Apple-centric features typically reserved for AirPods, like support for head tracking spatial audio, Find My, and automatic device switching. They also work well with Android devices, though you won’t be able to take advantage of native Android features like Fast Pairing that are found in newer models like the Studio Buds Plus. All in all, these are a fantastic pair of fitness-friendly earbuds that most people will find helpful, even if they do lack a wireless charging case.

Read our Beats Fit Pro review.

Some more ways to save

• Epicka’s Universal Travel Adapter has returned to its all-time low price of $19.99 ($5 off) at Amazon. The all-in-one adapter features four USB-A ports, a single USB-C port, and one AC socket, allowing you to simultaneously charge smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other gadgets. The adapter also works in over 150 countries, ranging from the UK and Canada to Japan, China, Australia, Argentina, and more.
• You can buy two Meross Matter Smart Wi-Fi Plug Minis at Amazon starting at $26.99 ($8 off) while a bundle of four is on sale for $38.99 ($11 off). That’s some of the best prices we’ve seen on the plugs, which add smarts to lamps, TVs, blenders, coffee makers, and other traditional gadgets. Most notably, they’re compatible with Matter, so you can connect them to a wide a range of smart home platforms.
• Target is still selling the green Fujifilm Instax Mini 12 Instant Camera Gift Set for $79.99 ($10 off) and throwing in a $5 gift card. The instant camera is my top pick for most people, as it’s easy for all ages to use and prints relatively true to life photos. The bundle also includes a pack of ten sheets, a photo album, camera case, and stickers, making it an excellent value all around even if you just plan on gifting it to yourself.

NASA sent its Parker Solar Probe just 3.8 million miles from the surface of the Sun — and it survived. The probe transmitted a signal back to Earth on the night of December 26th, “indicating it’s in good health and operating normally,” according to NASA.

The mission marks the closest the Parker Solar Probe — or any human-man object at all — has ever gotten to the Sun. The probe set off on its mission on December 20th, with the closest approach occurring on December 24th as it flew 430,000 miles per hour past the solar surface. Mission operations were out of contact with the probe during this time.

Now that NASA has confirmation of the mission’s success, it expects the Parker Solar Probe to send “detailed telemetry data on its status” on January 1st. The close flyby is supposed to help scientists get a better understanding of solar wind, the Sun’s heat, and how “energetic particles are accelerated to near light speed.”

The Parker Solar Probe was first launched by NASA and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in 2018. It’s designed to why study the corona — the atmosphere surrounding the sun — gets so hot. To survive these close encounters, the Parker Solar Probe is equipped with a Sun-facing heat shield that reaches around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, while the probe itself remains just 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

I’ve finally had a chance to test out the new hybrid powerhouse from Canon, the R5 Mark II. The camera comes with much-improved autofocus powered by the new Digic X processor, new eye-controlled autofocus, a backside illuminated sensor capable of faster readout and better low-light performance, and stunning video specs like recording in 8K internally with Canon Log 2 color profile.

But as much as those specs sound impressive (and they are), using the R5 Mark II also brought back so many memories I’ve made with previous 5D cameras that have been a huge part of my professional and personal life for well over 15 years, specifically the 5D Mark II.

In this review video, I decided to try something a little bit different. Instead of going through every single one of the specs and pixel-peeping every photo I’ve taken over the past month, I’ve picked the top three photos that have taught me something about the new Canon R5. Let us know what you think about the new format.

Read the full story at The Verge.

From postapocalyptic wastelands to cozy sci-fi futures, there’s a lot to dig into on Microsoft’s subscription service this year.

Read the full story at The Verge.

OpenAI has laid out plans to become a for-profit company. In a blog post published on Friday, OpenAI’s board said it will replace the company’s existing structure with one that puts control into the hands of its for-profit arm.

Going into 2025, OpenAI plans to become a Public Benefit Corporation⁠ (PBC), which is a for-profit company meant to operate for the good of society. This division will “run and control OpenAI’s operations and business,” while OpenAI’s nonprofit will retain a stake in the business but lose its oversight role.

The nonprofit will operate separately with its own leadership team and staff “to pursue charitable initiatives in sectors such as health care, education, and science.” The board said the structure will allow OpenAI to “raise the necessary capital” to build toward artificial general intelligence while also creating “one of the best resourced non-profits in history.” OpenAI’s competitors, including Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, also operate as PBCs.

Rumors about OpenAI’s transition into a for-profit company have been swirling for months as the company looks for ways to appeal to investors and raise money to keep its data-hungry AI models up and running. In September, Bloomberg reported that CEO Sam Altman would receive around a 7 percent equity stake as part of OpenAI’s plans to become a for-profit company, something Altman reportedly denied.

“The hundreds⁠ of⁠ billions⁠ of⁠ dollars that major companies are now investing into AI development show what it will really take for OpenAI to continue pursuing the mission,” the board wrote. “We once again need to raise more capital than we’d imagined. Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness.”

Under the structure outlined by OpenAI’s board, the nonprofit would get shares in the PBC “at a fair valuation determined by independent financial advisors.” Concerns about keeping OpenAI’s nonprofit board in control boiled over last year, when its members ousted Altman but later reinstated him.

Even with these plans to switch to a for-profit, OpenAI could have a fight on its hands. Last month, Elon Musk filed a motion to stop OpenAI from becoming a for-profit company, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg similarly asked California Attorney General Rob Bonta to block the transition.

After years of of chasing live-service and open-world blockbusters, games like Astro Bot and Balatro showed that old formats could be a solution to modern industry problems.

Read the full story at The Verge.