Halliday has come up with eyewear we didn't know we needed: smart glasses with no lenses. Welcome to the age of AI smart glasses.Read More

Welcome back to another week of paying very little for a whole lot of escapism. Today is very much all about scoring some of the best games 2024 had to offer for 2022 prices. I've also sifted through vast lakes of discounts in order to dredge out the hidden golden oldies submerged within. Let's hook you up with those right now!Meanwhile, in retro news, we're trying to celebrate the 17th birthday of Magnetica on DS, a critically well-received puzzler. As per my policy of complete, 100% honesty, I have to admit to you that I never bought this back in the day, nor did I play it in later years. Magnetica looks...uh, okay, and is clearly somewhat inspired by Bust-a-Move (a game series I have indeed sacrificed months of my life to and could speak at great, great length about). This Day in Gaming Aussie birthdays for notable games.- Magnetica (DS) 2007.Table of ContentsNice Savings for Nintendo SwitchDonkey Kong Country Returns HDDonkey Kong and Diddy Kong are back for some ground-pounding action in this HD version of Donkey Kong Country Returns, originally released on the Wii system. Incidentally, that original was a rather brutal platformer and we 9ed it.Tunic (-50%) - A$21No More Heroes (-75%) - A$7.48Rayman Legends Def. (-80%) - A$11.99Saints Row The Third Comp. (-85%) - A$4.49Portal Col. (-75%) - A$6.99Expiring Recent DealsPaper Mario: Thousand-Year Door (-15%) - A$68Mario & Luigi: Brothership (-15%) - A$68Hogwarts Legacy (-75%) - A$22.48Axiom Verge (-85%) - A$4.05Disco Elysium: TFC (-70%) - A$18Immortals Fenyx Rising (-80%) - A$11.99Slay the Spire (-66%) - A$12.90Or gift a Nintendo eShop Card.Switch Console PricesHow much to Switch it up?Switch OLED + Mario Wonder: $539 $499 | Switch Original: $499 $448 | Switch OLED Black: $539 $479 | Switch OLED White: $539 $479 | Switch Lite: $329 $299 | Switch Lite Hyrule: $339 $299See itBack to topPurchase Cheap for PC8 items!Monster Hunter 8 Game BndlBuild your own Monster Hunter Bundle (2 for $8.63 each, 4 for $7.77 each, or 8 for $5.39 each)Hell Let Loose (-100%) - FREEJust Cause 2 Complete (-90%) - A$2.99Speedrunner 7 Game Bndl (-93%) - A$18.81Star Wars Collection (-87%) - A$134.99Expiring Recent DealsTrials: Rising (Gold Ed) (-80%) - A$5.90Streets of Rogue (-80%) - A$5.90Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (-75%) - A$5.99Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (-85%) - A$5.99Fury Unleashed (-90%) - A$2.95N++ (-50%) - A$10.75Assault Android Cactus (-75%) - A$7.23BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend (-85%) - A$4.34Supreme Commander Forged Alliance (-80%) - A$3.10Distance (-80%) - A$7.19One Finger Death Punch (-75%) - A$1.87Tales of Maj'Eyal (-56%) - A$15.67Cryptark (-80%) - A$4.30Or just get a Steam Wallet CardPC Hardware PricesSlay your pile of shame.Official launch in NovSteam Deck 256GB LCD: $649 | Steam Deck 512GB OLED: $899 | Steam Deck 1TB OLED: $1,049See it at SteamBack to topExciting Bargains for XboxLow stock!Persona 5 RoyalPersona 5 was already a strong front-runner for being the best JRPG ever made, and Royal really gets me wondering what else could even compete. 10/10, masterpiece.Wolfenstein: Alt History Col. (-80%) - A$19.99X/S cont. White (-28%) - A$64XCOM 2 Del. (-90%) - A$9.27LEGO Skywalker Saga (-80%) - A$17.99Assetto Corsa Ult. (-75%) - A$13.11Expiring Recent DealsOr just invest in an Xbox Card.Xbox Console PricesHow many bucks for a 'Box? Series X: $799 $729 | Series S Black: $549 $545 | Series S White:$499 $471 | Series S Starter: N/ASee itBack to topPure Scores for PlayStationSpace Marine 2Just a terrific third-person shooter with a compelling story, loads of weapons that are a blast to use, and a healthy variety of enemies to use them on. 8/10, great.Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (-75%) - A$27.48The Last of Us Part 1 (-46%) - A$67.95Metaphor: ReFantazio (-32%) - A$69.41Persona 5 Royal (-50%) - A$49.75Hogwarts Legacy [PS5] (-75%) - A$27.48Resi 4 Remake (-50%) - A$27.47Expiring Recent DealsPS+ Monthly FreebiesYours to keep from Jan 7 with this subscriptionSuicide Squad: KTJL [PS5]NFS Hot Pursuit Remastered [PS4]The Stanley Parable: Ultra [PS4/5]Or purchase a PS Store Card.What you'll pay to 'Station.PS5 Slim Disc:$799 $759 | PS5 Slim Digital:679 $678 | PS VR2: $899 | PS VR2 + Horizon: $899 | PS5 Pro $1,199 | PS Portal: $329See itBack to topLegit LEGO DealsAvatar Floating MountainsThe cheapest price Ive seen for this admittedly cool looking space-cat-smurf set.Expiring Recent DealsBack to top Adam Mathew is our Aussie deals wrangler. He plays practically everything, often on YouTube.

What are we looking for?We are looking for a passionate Channel Account Manager who will play a pivotal role in expanding our market presence through strategic partners in the DACH region. You will be responsible for cultivating executive and partner relationships and driving incremental joint business opportunities with our partners.How will you make an impact? Engage and partner with Regional Sales leadership, Sales & Sales Engineers, and marketing teams to ensure awareness and leverage of Checkmarx channel strategy and philosophy. Work with the extended team to build dedicated Checkmarx practices in leading regional system integrators and MSSPs. Oversee your assigned DACH regional partners business planning process, setting business objectives, financial targets, and critical milestones. Build out and own executive VP and C-level relationships across DACH and across all parts of the partner ecosystem, including SIs, Advisory, VAD & VAR network and MSP. Identify demand generation opportunities and help partners build out an ability to drive pipeline and identify mutual greenfield opportunities across DACH. Help connect the partner and Checkmarx Sales team(s) to drive white space discussions and opportunities together. Work with the channel marketing to design and execute channel programs and campaigns. Participate in regular quarterly business reviews with our focus partners in the DACH region. Partner with your Regional Sales Director for DACH and provide critical partner ecosystem business visibility and weekly business status. Share your understanding of business dynamics and key drivers in the region and help drive a localized strategy. Oversee SFDC for partners and deal registrations for the overall region. Stay abreast of competitive products, technologies, and industry trends. Preparation of presentations, territory plans, and reports.RequirementsWhat is needed to succeed? 7-10 years of sales experience managing channel programs and relationships in software and/or SaaS environments. Experience managing partner relationships that are based on developing and delivering service offerings tied to vendor products. Experience selling in the Enterprise Security, Cloud, and Developer facing solutions space. Ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment; must be high energy, motivated, and a self-starter. Ability to travel up to 50% within the assigned territory. Effective communicator with excellent interpersonal skills and an ability to build strong relationships with partners and Checkmarx teams. Strong personal network within the industry. Driven, highly motivated, and results driven. You share our values and work in accordance with those values.What we have to offerCheckmarx offers a great work environment, professional development, challenging careers, competitive compensation, great work-life balance, as well as great benefits and perks throughout the year. Checkmarx is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex,sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, or other characteristics protected by law. Related Jobs See more Sales and Marketing jobs

Your day-to-day This role is all about collaborating with your team to make a difference to your customers. As a backend engineer youll work in a squad alongside other disciplines like product managers, marketers, user researchers, designers, mobile engineers, web engineers, data analysts, business analysts, writers and more!Together youll build and support a particular part of Monzo. Our squads belong to our wider collectives (a word we use to describe self-governing business units of ~100 people). They are; Core Banking, Business Banking, Wealth, Borrowing, Growth, Payments, Platform, Fincrime, Security & Expansion.Theyre all looking for additional Backend Engineers right now, we do a standard interview process across all our collectives and at the end we will find the best match for you based on your skills, experience, preferences and aligning with the business need!Our backend engineers have a variety of different backgrounds. As long as you enjoy learning new things, wed love to talk to you. We do not ask for formal qualifications or degree requirements for any of our engineering roles.You should apply if:you have strong experience working on the backend of a technology productyou want to be involved in building a product that you (and the people you know) use every dayyou have a product mindset: you care about customer outcomes and you want to make data-informed decisionsyoure comfortable working in a team that deals with ambiguityyoure interested in distributed systems and writing resilient softwareyou have some experience with strongly-typed languages (Go, Java, C, Scala etc.).you think youd enjoy the kind of work were doingWe're on the look out for L50 Engineers at the moment, you can read more in our Engineering Progression Framework - we will interview you across the whole frame work, so if you are not sure what level you are aiming for please chat to your recruiters!Not ticking every box? Thats totally okay! Studies show that women and people of colour might hesitate to apply unless they meet every single requirement. At Monzo, were dedicated to creating a diverse and welcoming team. If youre passionate about this role and keen to learn and grow with us, we encourage you to apply even if you dont have everything thats listed just yet. Drop us your application, wed love to hear from you!What youll be working on:We hire very technically agnostic so whilst we use the below technologies we do not expect prior knowledge, you will be fully supported in our organised onboarding to get up to speed in the below:Go to write our application code (theres an excellent interactive Go tutorial here)Cassandra for most persistent data storageKafka for our asynchronous message queueKubernetes and Docker to schedule and run our servicesEnvoy Proxy for RPCAWS for most of our production infrastructure andGCP for most of our data infrastructureReact for our public web apps and internal toolsWe also have physical datacenters with actual cables to connect to various third partiesThe Interview Process:Our interview process involves three main stages:Initial CallTake home task or pair coding exerciseFinal interview: including a system design and a behavioural interviewOur average process takes around 4 weeks but we will always work around your availability.You will have the chance to speak to our recruitment team at various points during your process but if you do have any specific questions ahead of this please contact us on [emailprotected]One of our engineers has written a detailed blog on their experience through this process, for extra details, hints and tips please see here.Whats in it for you: 95,000 - 130,000 base salary plus stock optionsWe can help you relocate to the UKWe can sponsor visas.This role can be based in our London office, but we're open to distributed working within the UK (with ad hoc meetings in London).We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team.Learning budget of 1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferencesAnd much more, see our full list of benefits hereWe're usually always hiring for Backend Engineers, so there's no closing date for this job.Equal opportunities for everyoneDiversity and inclusion are a priority for us and were making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, were embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, 2023 Diversity and Inclusion Report and 2023 Gender Pay Gap Report.Were an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage

The challengeOur Digital Experience suite of products is market leading in the Enterprise Digital Marketing space and we have had terrific success globally with major brands. Our growth targets are aggressive, and we need smart, successful software sales professionals who have the skills, experience and track record to work with major accounts and drive enterprise wide growth with our strategic accounts.What youll doClose in excess of $1m+ software revenues in first 12 monthsMake an impact and build a rewarding career with our Digital Experience sales teamGenerating revenue for Adobe from defined strategic accounts that you will own the relationship withManaging and developing new business contacts for Adobe within defined account baseManaging sales cycles efficiently and ensuring that revenues are received promptlyLeading a team across sales, solution consulting, customer success, consulting, partners, business development, digital strategy etc to drive the sales cycleSubmitting accurate forecast to Adobe Senior management to assist in business planning and reportingPreparing sales plans in association with Adobe Senior management; assisting company growth into new markets for its products by successfully executing on those plansWorking with and supporting the business development team to drive qualified pipe within the sales cycleWhat you need to succeedSignificant experience in enterprise level software sales into complex key or strategic accountsIdeally experience gained from within a SaaS environmentProven success in selling to executives, VP and/or "C" levelExcellent networking abilityAble to identify, cultivate and close deals in new areasSkilled Solution seller with proven ability to create win-win proposalsOutstanding communication, presentation and negotiation skills (verbal and written).Able to maintain a high level of productivity and work effectively in a fast-paced, collaborative and team-oriented environmentSelf-motivated and disciplinedCreativity, Integrity, Team playerExceptional organizational, time management, presentation, and communication skills both verbal and written including fluent English Adobe is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and affirmative action employer. We do not discriminate based on gender, race or color, ethnicity or national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other applicable characteristics protected by law. Learn more.Adobe values a free and open marketplace for all employees and has policies in place to ensure that we do not enter into illegal agreements with other companies to not recruit or hire each others employees. Related Jobs See more Sales and Marketing jobs

Samsung's Balliemade waves at CES 2020 as a home robot concept that could one day roam your home. In 2024, Samsung brought it back to CES to share that it was giving the device a projector that can stream information and content onto different surfaces. At CES 2025 in Las Vegas, it's taking things a step further and announcing that it will actually ship the rolling robot this year in the US.We don't have the price or a release timeframe yet, but during one presentation, the theWall-E-like robot was able to share information about Las Vegas attractions, turn on lights and various smart home products by voice command and project the Uncharted movie onto a nearby wall.Asking Ballie to "make the screen bigger" had the circular robot turn around and find a different wall that it could project a larger image onto. The device has built-in speakers for sound.In addition to voice controls, Ballie also recognizes your "foot presses" onto a virtual button to complete a task, like saying OK or "show me more." An array of cameras and sensors makes this virtual interaction possible. After being presented two wines and being asked which would pair better with steak, Ballie was able to use your "foot presses" to ask follow-up questions and eventually provide a recommendation.Samsung isn't the first company to try to bring robots into the home. For the last couple of years Amazon has sold its Astro home robot that is powered by Alexa and can move around the home, ""="">but today it only is selling the $1,600 device by "exclusive invitations." LG has similarly showed off ambitions for home robotsat previous CES', but its unclear when or if those products will ever be available.Even Apple has been rumored to expand into the smart home, with a reportlast year suggesting that the company was looking into the space.More recent rumors have claimed that Apple might share more news about new smart home products as soon as March.

At CES 2025 the most popular TV maker in the world unveiled its latest batch of screens. And the order of the day is "glare-free."In my testing Samsung's reflection-reducing screen technology allowed the 2024S95D OLED TV to beat its long-standing rival from LG the best TV for picture quality. The S95D's matte screen finish did a great job of taming overhead lights and other reflections to improve bright-room fidelity, and while it did sacrifice some contrast, I thought it was worth it. Watch this: Samsung OLED and Neo QLED TVs Reduce Glare, Add More AI 03:54 In 2025 Samsung is going hard to the matte by adding that glare-free finish to its Neo QLED TVs in addition to its best 2025 OLED model. The bad news? The company decided to keep the standard, glossy screen on its other, less-expensive OLED TVs for 2025, namely the S85F and S90F. While Samsung hasn't announced pricing yet, I expect the new glare-free S95F OLED to cost roughly as much as the S95D. New for 2025 Samsung OLED TVs are available in an 83-inch size. James Martin/CNETSamsung says its glare-reducing technology is better than last year, and it has added an 83-inch size and a 165Hz refresh rate (which will only be useful for PC gamers, but otherwise it's seems similar to last year.OLED (S85F, S90F, S95F)Glare-free (matte) screen, S95F only165Hz refresh rate42 and 48-inch (S90F only), 55, 65, 77 and 83-inchThe non-OLED models, called Neo QLED by Samsung, use Mini-LED technology and come in both 8K and 4K varieties. As always I don't expect them to match the image quality of the OLED sets, but they'll likely be brighter and (in the non-8K series) generally less-expensive. The 70F is an edge-lit Mini-LED, the first I've seen, so I don't expect it to match the image quality of the high-end direct LED models. New for 2025 are triple-digit sizes including 115- and 100-inch models. Many of Samsung's Neo QLED TVs will go glare-free in 2025. James Martin/CNETNeo QLED 8K (QN990F and QN900F)Glare-free (matte) screen to reduce reflectionsWireless One Connect Box (8K at 120Hz, Wi-Fi 7), 990F onlySamsung Art Store65, 75, 85 inches, 98-inch in 990F onlyNeo QLED 4K (QN90F, QN80F, QN70F)Glare-free (matte) screen, 90F onlyFull-array local dimming, 80F and 90F onlySamsung Art Store165Hz refresh rate55, 65, 75, 85, 98 and 115-inch (90F only), 100-inch (80F only)Another improvement for this year is the addition of the Samsung Art Store to all of the Neo QLED TVs listed above. That feature, previously only available on Samsung's The Frame TVs, allows you to display free and purchased art on the TV screen. Samsung is also adding a bunch of AI-powered features to its 2025 TVs this year, as well as an AI button on the remote. Samsung's Art Store is coming to non-Frame TVs in 2025. James Martin/CNETSamsung's new OLED and Neo QLED TVs will ship later this year and pricing was not announced. We'll have more details then.

Samsung OLED and Neo QLED TVs Reduce Glare, Add More AI Jan 6, 2025 Tech The company also unveiled two concepts: a Holographic TV and a MicroLED mirror display that analyzes your face. Hey guys, Samsung is releasing a ton of new TVs in 2025. There's new glare-free models. There's new frame TVs. They're even stepping that art store down to all the other TVs. Lots of AI stuff too. We're going to check it all out starting now. So I'll start with my favorite innovation that Samsung has. It's called the Glare Free screen technology. It's not completely glare-free, but what it's designed to do is improve picture quality in bright rooms. So last year we tested this on their OLED TV. This year they're also using it on an OLED TV at the highest end, but they're also saying it's a little bit. this year, so we'll see that in the lab. The idea is that it takes reflections, reduces them, so they really don't distract, especially if you have bright stuff in the background of your room. It won't distract on the screen. So I really liked how it worked. They've improved it this year. That Glare Free tech is also available in 83 inch screen size, so Samsung is expanding the size of their OLED TVs this year. Also new for 2025 is a new Frame Pro. So Samsung's frame TVs are kind of like an art store in the TV. You turn them off and there's actually pictures, art on the wall. Look like a TV. This is the newest version of that. It actually has better picture quality than any other framed TV. It uses mini LEDs arranged around the edge. They say it uses local dimming as well, so all that to say, I think it's going to have better picture quality than any framed TV before. It'll also be a lot more expensive. And by the way, they're throwing a wireless box on this TV to connect your devices without running all those wires up to the back of the television. That's the frame Pro. So one more thing Samsung is doing with its art store is it's making it available on TVs that aren't the frame. If you buy a TV at the Q70 level and above this year, you'll be able to go in there and purchase paintings and other things from the art store, even if it's not a framed television, and of course display them and have it be that art that's not a TV show or a movie. So that's a new option available on Samsung TVs this year. Finally, Samsung is expanding its AI features to more TVs this year, so they've always had these AI picture enhancements that's still going to be there, but now they're adding a few other AI features. I'm not really convinced that they're going to be better than AI on the phone. But they are pretty TV specific. For example, one is called Click to Search, so it'll identify actors or things on the screen automatically using AI. If you press a button. There's also a feature for AI karaoke where you can use your phone as a microphone and it'll turn off the words just like regular karaoke. A few other AI features that they're adding, none of them are really going to move the needle, and a lot of them are similar to what you find on AI in your phones. We'll see how they perform later this year. Hey guys, so that's it for the TVs that are actually going to go on sale this year, but behind me you'll see some TV. That are concepts, so these aren't going to go on sale anytime soon, but they're still pretty cool. One of them is a hollow display. So this thing is essentially like a hologram. The images stick out from the TV. I walked around and they actually disappear when you move off center. When you go to an extreme angle, you can kind of see them pop right back out again. So it's a really cool effect in person. I don't know how well you can see it on the video here, but trust me, it's a neat hologram. Another one is a mirror display. It's a mirror micro LED. They're saying it's potentially something you could buy next. It's a concept for now. Imagine a mirror you put on your vanity and you can actually use it to scan your face, and it'll tell you what kind of skincare products you need and you can even use it to watch like a YouTube video while you're doing your skincare at the same time. Perfect for me. I totally use that all the time. And the third concept here is a transparent micro LED. Now Samsung released this last year, but this year they're showing even more applications for it. So there's some kind of things where you can see through the screen with like a frame in the background. There's the micro. LED transparent screen itself that's kind of a concept of how this works and again this is a completely see-through display not available for sale this year and probably not anytime soon, but it's a really cool concept of being able to see right through that screen and put whatever you want behind it. So that's a look at Samsung's 2025 TVs, both the ones that are shipping this year, and the concepts, bunch of TVs, a bunch of screens from the world's largest screen manufacturer, but that's you'd expect. I'm here at CES 2025. If you liked what you saw, be sure to like and subscribe. Up Next New Nike Boots Include Compression and Heat for Post-Workout Recovery Up Next New Nike Boots Include Compression and Heat for Post-Workout Recovery 02:38 LG G5 OLED TV Bumps Brightness Even Higher LG G5 OLED TV Bumps Brightness Even Higher 03:10 Roborock Gives a First Look at the Saros Z70 Robovacuum Roborock Gives a First Look at the Saros Z70 Robovacuum 01:06 First Look at TSA's Self-Screening Tech (in VR!) 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Apple last year deployed a mechanism for identifying landmarks and places of interest in images stored in the Photos application on its customers iOS and macOS devices and enabled it by default, seemingly without explicit consent.Apple customers have only just begun to notice.The feature, known as Enhanced Visual Search, was called out last week by software developer Jeff Johnson, who expressed concern in two write-ups about Apple's failure to explain the technology, which is believed to have arrived with iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 on October 28, 2024.In a policy document dated November 18, 2024 (not indexed by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine until December 28, 2024, the date of Johnson's initial article), Apple describes the feature thus:Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides [your] IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos. You can turn off Enhanced Visual Search at any time on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Apps > Photos. On Mac, open Photos and go to Settings > General.Apple did explain the technology in a technical paper published on October 24, 2024, around the time that Enhanced Visual Search is believed to have debuted. A local machine-learning model analyzes photos to look for a "region of interest" that may depict a landmark. If the AI model finds a likely match, it calculates a vector embedding an array of numbers representing that portion of the image.The device then uses homomorphic encryption to scramble the embedding in such a way that it can be run through carefully designed algorithms that produce an equally encrypted output. The goal here being that the encrypted data can be sent to a remote system to analyze without whoever is operating that system from knowing the contents of that data; they just have the ability to perform computations on it, the result of which remain encrypted. The input and output are end-to-end encrypted, and not decrypted during the mathematical operations, or so it's claimed.The dimension and precision of the embedding is adjusted to reduce the high computational demands for this homomorphic encryption (presumably at the cost of labeling accuracy) "to meet the latency and cost requirements of large-scale production services." That is to say Apple wants to minimize its cloud compute cost and mobile device resource usage for this free feature.With some server optimization metadata and the help of Apple's private nearest neighbor search (PNNS), the relevant Apple server shard receives a homomorphically-encrypted embedding from the device, and performs the aforementioned encrypted computations on that data to find a landmark match from a database and return the result to the client device without providing identifying information to Apple nor its OHTTP partner Cloudflare.Thus, Apple unilaterally began running people's Photos through a locally running machine-learning algorithm that analyzes image details (on a purely visual basis, without using location data) and creates a value associated with what could be a landmark in each picture. That value is then used on a remote server to check an index of such values stored on Apple servers in order to label within each snap the landmarks and places found in Apple's database.Put more simply: You take a photo; your Mac or iThing locally outlines what it thinks is a landmark or place of interest in the snap; it homomorphically encrypts a representation of that portion of the image in a way that can be analyzed without being decrypted; it sends the encrypted data to a remote server to do that analysis, so that the landmark can be identified from a big database of places; and it receives the suggested location again in encrypted form that it alone can decipher.If it all works as claimed, and there are no side-channels or other leaks, Apple can't see what's in your photos, neither the image data nor the looked-up label.Apple claims that its use of this homomorphic encryption plus what's called differential privacy a way to protect the privacy of people whose data appears in a data set precludes potential privacy problems."Apple is being thoughtful about doing this in a (theoretically) privacy-preserving way, but I dont think the company is living up to its ideals here," observed software developer Michael Tsai in an analysis shared Wednesday. "Not only is it not opt-in, but you cant effectively opt out if it starts uploading metadata about your photos before you even use the search feature. It does this even if youve already opted out of uploading your photos to iCloud."Tsai argues Apple's approach is even less private than its abandoned CSAM scanning plan "because it applies to non-iCloud photos and uploads information about all photos, not just ones with suspicious neural hashes."Nonetheless, Tsai acknowledges Apple's claim that data processed in this way is encrypted and disassociated with the user's account and IP address.While there's no evidence at this point that contracts Apple's privacy assertions, the community concern has more to do with the way in which Apple deployed this technology."Its very frustrating when you learn about a service two days before New Years and you find that its already been enabled on your phone," said Matthew Green, associate professor of computer science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute in the US.Apple gives fanbois The Sweetest Thing: A delete button for that U2 albumFLASHBACKThe Register asked Apple to comment, and as usual we've received no reply. We note that lack of communication is the essence of the community discontent."My objection to Apple's Enhanced Visual Search is not the technical details specifically, which are difficult for most users to evaluate, but rather the fact that Apple has taken the choice out of my hands and enabled the online service by default," said Johnson in his second post.He told The Register that it's unclear whether the data/metadata from your Photos library is uploaded before you even have a chance to disable the opt-out setting."I don't think anybody knows, and Apple hasn't said," Johnson observed.

On the first night of CES 2025, Kirin Holdings, a Japanese company known for its beer and beverages, showed off its new electronic spoon that makes your food taste saltier. The company says its spoon uses a weak electric current to concentrate sodium ion molecules in your food, adding a stronger umami and salt flavor to low-sodium foods.A limited supply of the Electronic Salt Spoon went on sale in Japan in 2024 for roughly $127 in American dollars, but Kirin hopes to sell the device around the globe in the coming years. The company claims this device can noticeably increase the saltiness of your food, without adding any additional sodium.A crowd of people tried some soup using Kirins spoon at CES Unveiled in Las Vegas. TechCrunch did not try it ourselves, because theres something about a communal tech conference spoon that just isnt that appetizing. One of the biggest crowds on the first night of CES 2025 was people trying to taste Kirins new spoonWhile the spoon seems too good to be true, theres some convincing research behind it that suggests it may be legit. The product launch of Kirins spoon marked the first commercialization of technology that won the 2023 Ig Nobel prize, a satirical award for unusual scientific research. The researchers behind it first published their thesis in 2011, but have since made spoons, forks, and chopsticks that pass electric currents into food.Kirin says it created the spoon to help people consume less salt. This problem is especially relevant in Japan, where the countrys adult population eats more than double the World Health Organizations recommended intake.