Kalakshar US

Meta is expanding its use of facial recognition in Europe, the UK and South Korea to crack down on accounts that impersonate public figures. The new facial recognition-powered safety features are now live on Facebook in the regions and will expand to Instagram in the coming months.

The technology was initially put to use last year starting in the US, helping to identify ads that fraudulently use a celebrity’s likeness as well as to help people regain access to hacked accounts. Public figures opt in to this program in Europe, which is also being rolled out in South Korea alongside the new protections against impersonation. This new use case is aimed at scammers who pose as public figures to trick unsuspecting users into sending money or other scams of that nature.

“We’ll now use facial recognition technology to compare the profile picture on the suspicious account to the real public figure’s Facebook and Instagram profile pictures. If there’s a match, we will remove the impostor account,” said a Meta spokesperson.

In addition to the US rollout, the company’s facial recognition technology has been used to aid account recovery in the UK, EU and South Korea since March. This came three years after Facebook decided to shut down its facial recognition system on Facebook, due in large part to public backlash against the technology.

The social media giant touts the benefits of these tools, reporting that in the first half of 2025, user reports of “celebrity bait” ads dropped by 22 percent globally. Facial recognition remains a controversial technology, with differing public opinion on its use in law enforcement and the workplace.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-is-bringing-new-facial-recognition-tools-to-the-uk-eu-and-south-korea-185303065.html?src=rss 

The iRobot Roomba 104 robot vacuum is on sale for $150 just ahead of October’s Prime Day. That’s a nice little discount of 40 percent, which represents a savings of $100.

This is a newer version of the unit that topped our list of the best budget robot vacuums. It’s an entry-level robovac that gets the job done. The cleaning motor is fairly powerful and it ships with a multi-surface brush and an edge-sweeping brush. The vacuum uses LiDAR to map a home and to help it avoid obstacles when cleaning.

It’s also been equipped with specialized sensors to prevent falling down stairs. Steps are the natural enemy of all robot vacuums, except maybe this one. The Roomba 104 integrates with the company’s proprietary app, which allows for custom cleaning schedules and the like. The robot can also be controlled via voice assistant and boasts compatibility with Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.

The vacuum will automatically head to the charger for some juice when running low, which is nice. The battery lasts around 200 minutes per charge, which is a decent enough metric for a budget-friendly robovac. The only downside here? This is just a vacuum. It doesn’t mop and it doesn’t come with a dedicated debris canister.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/this-roomba-robot-vacuum-is-on-sale-for-only-150-ahead-of-prime-day-164953406.html?src=rss 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently published a 163-page PDF showing the electrical schematics for the iPhone 16e, despite Apple specifically requesting them to be confidential. This was most likely a mistake on the part of the FCC, according to a report by AppleInsider.

The agency also distributed a cover letter from Apple alongside the schematics, which is dated September 16, 2024. This letter verifies the company’s request for privacy, indicating that the documents contain “confidential and proprietary trade secrets.” The cover letter asks for the documents to be withheld from public view “indefinitely.” Apple even suggested that a release of the files could give competitors an “unfair advantage.”

To that end, the documents feature full schematics of the iPhone 16e. These include block diagrams, electrical schematic diagrams, antenna locations and more. Competitors could simply buy a handset and open it up to get to this information, as the iPhone 16e came out back in February, but this leak would eliminate any guesswork. However, Apple is an extremely litigious company when it comes to stuff like patent infringement.

The FCC hasn’t addressed how this leak happened or what it intends to do about it. AppleInsider’s reporting suggested that this probably happened due to an incorrect setting in a database. This was likely not an intentional act against Apple, which tracks given that the company has been especially supportive of the Trump administration. CEO Tim Cook even brought the president a gold trophy for being such a good and important boy.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/fcc-accidentally-leaked-iphone-schematics-potentially-giving-rivals-a-peek-at-company-secrets-154551807.html?src=rss 

Microsoft is taking inspiration from the AI-driven workflows of “vibe coding” and has now set out to make “vibe working” a thing (yes, those are the words the company chose.) Does AI in the workplace even lead to worthwhile outputs? Does it mortgage our brains’ ability to learn? There are many seemingly critical question unanswered. But in the meantime, sure: vibe working it is.

Using Office Agent within Office apps or Copilot chat, users can begin a document with a single prompt and then work iteratively alongside Copilot to develop a finished product. Microsoft says this is the “new pattern of work for human-agent collaboration.” The Agent Mode tool supports Excel and Word workflows, and Microsoft says PowerPoint support is coming soon; Office Agent works with PowerPoint and Word, with Excel coming soon.

The company waxes poetic about the “full power of Excel” being available only to expert users and promises that an Agent Mode that can “speak Excel” will change all that. In data shared as part of the announcement, Microsoft said that Copilot Agent Mode in Excel achieved 57.2 percent accuracy on the SpreadsheetBench benchmark. This is compared to a 71.3 percent human score, though it’s not clear if that’s for average users, Excel power users or how many human users that score is derived from. Still — not great numbers!

Agent Mode also works in Word to summarize, edit and of course help to create entire drafts (though its unclear what those relative accuracy rates are.) Both the Excel and Word Agent Modes are powered by OpenAI’s latest models. Office Agent in Copilot chat is powered by Anthropic models and can create PowerPoint presentations and Word documents in what Microsoft calls a “chat-first experience.”

Agent Mode for Excel and Word, as well as Office Agent, are available today through the Frontier program. Agent Mode is currently limited to the web-based versions of Word and Excel and is coming to desktop soon.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-is-trying-to-make-vibe-working-a-thing-163334367.html?src=rss