Microsoft is celebrating World Password Day (IT folks deserve holidays, too!) by helping to kill them. The company has finally rolled out consumer passkey support for Microsoft accounts, nearly two years after Apple and Google.
Once you set it up, the passkey lets you sign into your Microsoft account using your face, fingerprint or device PIN. It works not only on Windows but also on Apple and Google’s mobile and desktop platforms.
Passkeys are an easier and more secure way to access your account. They use what’s called a cryptographic key pair to ensure only you can get in. One half of the pair is stored on your local device, only accessible via your secure local login. The other part stays on the app or website. Requiring both of them to sign in acts as a deterrent for things like password leaks and phishing attacks.
In addition to Apple, Google and now Microsoft, companies adopting passkeys include Amazon, 1Password, Dashlane, Docusign, eBay, PayPal and WhatsApp (among others). Google said on Thursday that its passkeys have already been used a billion times.
Microsoft’s passkey support works starting today on the company’s desktop apps and websites, including Microsoft 365 (Office) and its Copilot AI assistant. The Windows maker says passkey support for its mobile apps “will follow in the coming weeks.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-finally-use-passkeys-to-sign-into-your-microsoft-account-155431241.html?src=rss
In a heavily redacted 2019 email thread titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella forwards a lengthy message from CTO Kevin Scott to CFO Amy Hood. “Very good email that explains, why I want us to do this ... and also why we will then ensure our infra folks execute,” Nadella wrote.
Scott wrote that he was “very, very worried” about Google’s rapidly growing AI capabilities. He says he initially dismissed the company’s “game-playing stunts,” likely referring to Google’s AlphaGo models. One of them beat Go world champion Ke Jie in 2017, a remarkable feat at the time. (Google’s later models surpassed that one, dropping the need for human training altogether.)
But Scott says brushing off Google’s game-playing progress “was a mistake.” “When they took all of the infrastructure that they had built to build [natural language] models that we couldn’t easily replicate, I started to take things more seriously,” Scott wrote. “And as I dug in to try to understand where all of the capability gaps were between Google and us for model training, I got very, very worried.”
Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott
Microsoft
Scott recounts how Microsoft struggled to copy Google’s BERT-large, an AI model that deciphers the meaning and context of words in a sentence. Scott pinned the blame on infrastructure leaps its rival had made — and that Microsoft hadn’t.
“Turns out, just replicating BERT-large wasn’t easy to do for us. Even though we had the template for the model, it took us ~6 months to get the model trained because our infrastructure wasn’t up to the task,” the Microsoft CTO wrote. “Google had BERT for at least six months prior to that, so in the time that it took us to hack together the capability to train a 340M parameter model, they had a year to figure out how to get it into production and to move on to larger scale, more interesting models.”
He also admired and envied Google’s Gmail auto-complete capabilities, saying it was “getting scarily good.” He commented that Microsoft was “multiple years behind the competition in terms of [machine learning] scale.” He commented on the “interesting” growth of OpenAI, DeepMind and Google Brain.
Scott touted Microsoft’s “very smart” people on its machine-learning teams but said their ambitions were curbed. “But the core deep learning teams within each of these bigger teams are very small, and their ambitions have also been constrained, which means that even as we start to feed them resources, they still have to go through a learning process to scale up,” Scott wrote. “And we are multiple years behind the competition in terms of ML scale.”
After prompting Hood that Scott’s concerns were “why I want us to do this,” meaning invest in OpenAI, the company made good on its CEO’s wishes. Microsoft invested a billion dollars in the Sam Altman-led startup in 2019, and the rest is a rapidly changing history. (It’s now invested $13 billion.) It’s a technology that does some incredible things but threatens to gut the labor market and give propagandists their most powerful tools to date in what was already an age of rampant disinformation.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsofts-openai-partnership-was-born-from-google-envy-202143989.html?src=rss
Block appears to be squarely in the government’s sights. Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York are reportedly probing extensive compliance lapses at the parent company of Square and Cash App. NBC Newssays a former Block employee has handed over documents to federal authorities, painting a picture of how the company failed to gather required risk-assessment information from customers and subsequently processed illegal transactions.
The documents allegedly show that Block greenlit multiple crypto transactions involving known terrorist organizations. Furthermore, Square reportedly processed thousands of transfers involving nations under economic sanctions. “From the ground up, everything in the compliance section was flawed,” the whistleblower allegedly told NBC News. “It is led by people who should not be in charge of a regulated compliance program.”
Most transactions allegedly involved credit cards, dollar transfers or Bitcoin and weren’t reported to the government as mandated by law. In addition, Block reportedly refused to “correct company processes” when notified of the breaches.
The investigation follows a separate report from NBC News in February highlighting two different whistleblowers who flagged the same issues at Block. They cited “questionable Cash App transactions with entities under sanction by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, operations known to sell personal information and credit card data for illegal purposes, and offshore gambling sites barred to U.S. citizens.”
The practice allegedly spanned multiple years. NBC News says it reviewed around 100 pages of documents from the whistleblower involving people or organizations in countries under US sanctions, including Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. Some of them were reportedly from as recent as 2023.
Block
The whistleblower claims Block’s management was aware of the alleged offenses. “It’s my understanding from the documents that compliance lapses were known to Block leadership and the board in recent years,” Edward Siedle, a former SEC attorney representing the whistleblower, told NBC News.
The whistleblower says that, besides senior management, Block’s board was told about the compliance issues. Coincidentally or not, several board members made unexpected exits recently, including former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, who resigned in February, and Sharon Rothstein, who had been on the board since 2022. Block told NBC News that they were leaving to devote more time to other activities and that their exits weren’t “a result of any disagreements with the company on any matter relating to the company’s operations, policies or practices.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/block-reportedly-greenlit-transactions-involving-terrorist-groups-and-sanctioned-nations-181222712.html?src=rss
A federal judge has sentenced Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (often known as “CZ”) to four months in prison, as first reported byThe New York Times. Prosecutors had recommended three years. Zhao pleaded guilty in November to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to set up an anti-money-laundering program.
The DOJ accused Zhao of allowing criminal activity to flourish on the crypto exchange. “Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in November.
The government accused Binance of refusing to comply with American sanctions and failing to report suspicious transactions related to drugs and child sexual abuse materials. Prosecutors said in court that Zhao had told Binance employees it was “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” while bragging that if Binance had obeyed the law, it wouldn’t be “as big as we are today.”
Under the plea deal’s terms, Binance agreed to forfeit $2.5 billion and pay a $1.8 billion fine. Zhao personally paid $50 million as part of the settlement.
Zhao played an integral role in Bankman-Fried’s downfall — and the crypto industry’s broader decline in the last 18 months. The Binance founder tweeted in November 2022 that his company would liquidate its holdings in FTX’s de facto token. He said “recent revelations that have came[sic] to light” while citing “ethical concerns” and “regulatory risks.” The posts not only crushed FTX but the crypto world at large. (They likely helped attract the government’s attention as well.) When FTX’s wells dried up following the platform’s rapid collapse, Zhao briefly agreed to buy the company but quickly backed out.
Prosecutors said Zhao’s crime carried a standard federal sentence of 12 to 18 months but argued for a three-year term, describing his crimes as being “on an unprecedented scale.” But Judge Richard A. Jones saw it differently, sentencing him to a measly one-twelfth of the government’s suggested term.
“This wasn’t a mistake — it wasn’t a regulatory oops,” Kevin Mosley, a DOJ lawyer, reportedly said in court on Tuesday. “Breaking U.S. law was not incidental to his plan to make as much money as possible. Violating the law was integral to that endeavor.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/binance-founder-changpeng-zhao-sentenced-to-four-months-in-prison-205550299.html?src=rss
A federal judge has sentenced Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (often known as “CZ”) to four months in prison, as first reported byThe New York Times. Prosecutors had recommended three years. Zhao pleaded guilty in November to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to set up an anti-money-laundering program.
The DOJ accused Zhao of allowing criminal activity to flourish on the crypto exchange. “Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in November.
The government accused Binance of refusing to comply with American sanctions and failing to report suspicious transactions related to drugs and child sexual abuse materials. Prosecutors said in court that Zhao had told Binance employees it was “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” while bragging that if Binance had obeyed the law, it wouldn’t be “as big as we are today.”
Under the plea deal’s terms, Binance agreed to forfeit $2.5 billion and pay a $1.8 billion fine. Zhao personally paid $50 million as part of the settlement.
Zhao played an integral role in Bankman-Fried’s downfall — and the crypto industry’s broader decline in the last 18 months. The Binance founder tweeted in November 2022 that his company would liquidate its holdings in FTX’s de facto token. He said “recent revelations that have came[sic] to light” while citing “ethical concerns” and “regulatory risks.” The posts not only crushed FTX but the crypto world at large. (They likely helped attract the government’s attention as well.) When FTX’s wells dried up following the platform’s rapid collapse, Zhao briefly agreed to buy the company but quickly backed out.
Prosecutors said Zhao’s crime carried a standard federal sentence of 12 to 18 months but argued for a three-year term, describing his crimes as being “on an unprecedented scale.” But Judge Richard A. Jones saw it differently, sentencing him to a measly one-twelfth of the government’s suggested term.
“This wasn’t a mistake — it wasn’t a regulatory oops,” Kevin Mosley, a DOJ lawyer, reportedly said in court on Tuesday. “Breaking U.S. law was not incidental to his plan to make as much money as possible. Violating the law was integral to that endeavor.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/binance-founder-changpeng-zhao-sentenced-to-four-months-in-prison-205550299.html?src=rss
Ubisoft says the mobile version of the AAA title offers “the same experience as the console version” but with adapted touchscreen controls. IGNreports that Ubisoft confirmed the mobile game will support MFi hardware controllers like the Backbone One and Razer Kishi Ultra.
Ubisoft says Assassin’s Creed Mirage supports cross-progression and cross-save through Ubisoft Connect, so you can pick up where you left off no matter your platform. The game launched in October for PC, PS5/4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.
Ubisoft
Engadget’s Kris Holt found Assassin’s Creed Mirage to be a return to form for the series, trading the RPG elements that had grown prominent in recent years for the series' stealth and action roots. “The deeper I got into Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the more a sense of warm nostalgia washed over me,” Holt wrote. “It felt like a cozy hug from an old friend. A comforting, bloody embrace.”
The game will be free to download, and it has a 90-minute free trial. After that, it’ll be a $50 in-app purchase to continue playing on any compatible iPhone or iPad. You can pre-reserve the game now on the App Store.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/assassins-creed-mirage-finally-arrives-on-june-6-for-iphone-and-ipad-190711252.html?src=rss
Ubisoft says the mobile version of the AAA title offers “the same experience as the console version” but with adapted touchscreen controls. IGNreports that Ubisoft confirmed the mobile game will support MFi hardware controllers like the Backbone One and Razer Kishi Ultra.
Ubisoft says Assassin’s Creed Mirage supports cross-progression and cross-save through Ubisoft Connect, so you can pick up where you left off no matter your platform. The game launched in October for PC, PS5/4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.
Ubisoft
Engadget’s Kris Holt found Assassin’s Creed Mirage to be a return to form for the series, trading the RPG elements that had grown prominent in recent years for the series' stealth and action roots. “The deeper I got into Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the more a sense of warm nostalgia washed over me,” Holt wrote. “It felt like a cozy hug from an old friend. A comforting, bloody embrace.”
The game will be free to download, and it has a 90-minute free trial. After that, it’ll be a $50 in-app purchase to continue playing on any compatible iPhone or iPad. You can pre-reserve the game now on the App Store.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/assassins-creed-mirage-finally-arrives-on-june-6-for-iphone-and-ipad-190711252.html?src=rss
The EU has officially opened a significant investigation into Meta for its alleged failures to remove election disinformation. While the European Commission’s statement doesn’t explicitly mention Russia, Meta confirmed to Engadget the EU probe targets the country’s Doppelganger campaign, an online disinformation operation pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda.
Bloomberg’s sources also said the probe was focused on the Russian disinformation operation, describing it as a series of “attempts to replicate the appearance of traditional news sources while churning out content that is favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s policies.”
The investigation comes a day after France said 27 of the EU’s 29 member states had been targeted by pro-Russian online propaganda ahead of European parliamentary elections in June. On Monday, France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot urged social platforms to block websites “participating in a foreign interference operation.”
A Meta spokesperson told Engadget that the company had been at the forefront of exposing Russia’s Doppelganger campaign, first spotlighting it in 2022. The company said it has since investigated, disrupted and blocked tens of thousands of the network’s assets. The Facebook and Instagram owner says it remains on high alerts to monitor the network while claiming Doppelganger has struggled to successfully build organic audiences for the pro-Putin fake news.
Meta
The European Commission’s President said Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA), the landmark legislation passed in 2022 that empowers the EU to regulate social platforms. The law allows the EC to, if necessary, impose heavy fines on violating companies — up to six percent of a company’s global annual turnover, potentially changing how social companies operate.
In a statement to Engadget, Meta said, “We have a well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms. We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.”
The EC probe will cover “Meta’s policies and practices relating to deceptive advertising and political content on its services.” It also addresses “the non-availability of an effective third-party real-time civic discourse and election-monitoring tool ahead of the elections to the European Parliament.”
The latter refers to Meta’s deprecation of its CrowdTangle tool, which researchers and fact-checkers used for years to study how content spreads across Facebook and Instagram. Dozens of groups signed an open letter last month, saying Meta’s planned shutdown during the crucial 2024 global elections poses a “direct threat” to global election integrity.
Meta told Engadget that CrowdTangle only provides a fraction of the publicly available data and would be lacking as a full-fledged election monitoring tool. The company says it’s building new tools on its platform to provide more comprehensive data to researchers and other outside parties. It says it’s currently onboarding key third-party fact-checking partners to help identify misinformation.
However, with Europe’s elections in June and the critical US elections in November, Meta had better get moving on its new API if it wants the tools to work when it matters most.
The EC gave Meta five working days to respond to its concerns before it would consider further escalating the matter. “This Commission has created means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries,” EC President von der Leyen wrote. “If we suspect a violation of the rules, we act.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-european-union-is-investigating-metas-election-policies-175134538.html?src=rss
The EU has officially opened a significant investigation into Meta for its alleged failures to remove election disinformation. While the European Commission’s statement doesn’t explicitly mention Russia, Meta confirmed to Engadget the EU probe targets the country’s Doppelganger campaign, an online disinformation operation pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda.
Bloomberg’s sources also said the probe was focused on the Russian disinformation operation, describing it as a series of “attempts to replicate the appearance of traditional news sources while churning out content that is favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s policies.”
The investigation comes a day after France said 27 of the EU’s 29 member states had been targeted by pro-Russian online propaganda ahead of European parliamentary elections in June. On Monday, France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot urged social platforms to block websites “participating in a foreign interference operation.”
A Meta spokesperson told Engadget that the company had been at the forefront of exposing Russia’s Doppelganger campaign, first spotlighting it in 2022. The company said it has since investigated, disrupted and blocked tens of thousands of the network’s assets. The Facebook and Instagram owner says it remains on high alerts to monitor the network while claiming Doppelganger has struggled to successfully build organic audiences for the pro-Putin fake news.
Meta
The European Commission’s President said Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA), the landmark legislation passed in 2022 that empowers the EU to regulate social platforms. The law allows the EC to, if necessary, impose heavy fines on violating companies — up to six percent of a company’s global annual turnover, potentially changing how social companies operate.
In a statement to Engadget, Meta said, “We have a well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms. We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work.”
The EC probe will cover “Meta’s policies and practices relating to deceptive advertising and political content on its services.” It also addresses “the non-availability of an effective third-party real-time civic discourse and election-monitoring tool ahead of the elections to the European Parliament.”
The latter refers to Meta’s deprecation of its CrowdTangle tool, which researchers and fact-checkers used for years to study how content spreads across Facebook and Instagram. Dozens of groups signed an open letter last month, saying Meta’s planned shutdown during the crucial 2024 global elections poses a “direct threat” to global election integrity.
Meta told Engadget that CrowdTangle only provides a fraction of the publicly available data and would be lacking as a full-fledged election monitoring tool. The company says it’s building new tools on its platform to provide more comprehensive data to researchers and other outside parties. It says it’s currently onboarding key third-party fact-checking partners to help identify misinformation.
However, with Europe’s elections in June and the critical US elections in November, Meta had better get moving on its new API if it wants the tools to work when it matters most.
The EC gave Meta five working days to respond to its concerns before it would consider further escalating the matter. “This Commission has created means to protect European citizens from targeted disinformation and manipulation by third countries,” EC President von der Leyen wrote. “If we suspect a violation of the rules, we act.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-european-union-is-investigating-metas-election-policies-175134538.html?src=rss
Microsoft has officially announced the next Xbox Games Showcase. In a blog post, the company said the summer version will be on Sunday, June 9, at 10AM PT / 1PM ET.
The event will be followed by a cryptic “[REDACTED] Direct” that probably isn’t much of a mystery. The teaser logo looks like something ripped from the Call of Duty franchise, and reports already pointed to the military shooter’s next installment arriving this year. Microsoft describes the direct event as “a special deep-dive into the next installment of a beloved franchise.”
Further squashing any intrigue, The Vergesays it’s confirmed the event will focus on Activision-Blizzard’s long-running franchise. This will be the first Xbox showcase with the Call of Duty maker officially within Microsoft’s grasp.
The company wants to turn heads with its new post-acquisition portfolio, and Xbox will use the entire week (which coincides with Summer Game Fest) to pump up its lineup. “June 9’s double-feature broadcast also kicks off a week’s worth of coverage here on Xbox Wire and The Official Xbox Podcast, featuring updates and deep-dives on a ton of games,” the company wrote.
Engadget will have all your Xbox Games Showcase and Summer Game Fest news in early June.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-confirms-its-next-xbox-game-showcase-is-on-june-9-at-1pm-et-153704263.html?src=rss