Apple's latest iPhones stuck with Face ID as the singular method of biometric authentication in an era when people are wearing face masks everywhere they go. This inevitably means having to enter your passcode constantly throughout the day. But Apple has come up with a stopgap solution that should make it easier to get into your phone during mask life -- as long as you've got an Apple Watch. From a report: As first reported by Pocket-lint, the new iOS 14.5 update, which went into beta today, uses the Apple Watch on your wrist to quickly authenticate and unlock your iPhone. Apple already offers this convenient trick on the Mac, but now it's coming to the iPhone as well. It works similarly here. You lift your iPhone to turn on the screen, and you'll feel a little nudge of haptic feedback on your Apple Watch to indicate that your iPhone has been unlocked. The devices must be in close proximity for this to work in the first place, which is a measure to keep your data secure. (If the Apple Watch is locked, this won't work either.) And this Apple Watch shortcut is only good for unlocking your iPhone; App Store and iTunes purchases will still require other authentication if your face is covered. And as a final security check, you'll still be asked to put in your passcode every few hours even when unlock with Apple Watch is enabled.

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VideoLAN, in a blog post: The VideoLAN project and the VideoLAN non-profit organization are happy to celebrate today the 20th anniversary of the open-sourcing of the project. VideoLAN originally started as a project from the Via Centrale Reseaux student association, after the successful Network 2000 project. But the true release of the project to the world was on 1st of February 2001, the Ecole Centrale Paris director, Mr. Gourisse, allowed the open-sourcing of the whole VideoLAN project under the GNU GPL. This open sourcing concerned all the software developed by the VideoLAN project, including VideoLAN Client, VideoLAN Server, VideoLAN Bridge, VideoLAN Channel Switcher, but also libraries to decode DVDs, like libdca, liba52 or libmpeg2. At that time, this was a risky decision for the Ecole Centrale Paris, and the VideoLAN project is very grateful. Since then, the project evolved to become a French non-profit organization, and continued developing numerous solutions around the free software multimedia world. Today, VLC media player is used regularly by hundreds of millions of users, and has been downloaded more than 3.5 billion times over the years. VLC is today available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android (including TV and Auto versions), iOS (and AppleTV), OS/2 and BSD. Over the years, around 1000 volunteers worked to make VLC a reality.

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Google Stadia, the late 2019 streaming platform that promised to revolutionize gaming by letting users stream games without needing to own a powerful PC or console, is altering course, getting out of the game-making business and will now offer its platform directly to game publishers alongside offering Stadia Pro to the public. From a report: The company is announcing the news today, though Kotaku began to hear rumblings from sources close to Stadia last week that Google's service was heading for a major change. One games industry source told Kotaku that Google was canceling multiple projects, basically any games slated for release beyond a specific 2021 window, though they believed games close to release would still come out. Today brings some clarification. Google will close its two game studios, located in Montreal and Los Angeles. That closure will impact around 150 developers, one source familiar with Stadia operations said. The company says it will try to find those developers new roles at Google. Jade Raymond, the veteran producer who helped build Assassin's Creed for Ubisoft and moved on to EA several years ago before leaving to run game creation at Stadia, is exiting the company, according to Google.

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Ian Allison, reporting at CoinDesk: IBM has cut its blockchain team down to almost nothing, according to four people familiar with the situation. Job losses at IBM escalated as the company failed to meet its revenue targets for the once-fÃted technology by 90% this year, according to one of the sources. "IBM is doing a major reorganization," said a source at a startup that has been interviewing former IBM blockchain staffers. "There is not really going to be a blockchain team any longer. Most of the blockchain people at IBM have left." IBM's blockchain unit missed its revenue targets by a wide margin for two years in a row, said a second source. Expectations for enterprise blockchain were too high, they said, adding that IBM "didn't really manage to execute, despite doing a lot of announcements." A spokesperson for IBM denied the claims. "Our blockchain business is doing well, thank you," Holli Haswell, a director of public relations at IBM, said via email. "We have realigned some leaders and business units to continue to drive growth -- we do that every year."

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Two of the UK’s most sensitive fishing sites are set to receive better protection.

AmiMoJo shares a report: Xiaomi has sued the U.S. Defense and Treasury departments, challenging a blacklisting that blocks American investors from buying the Chinese smartphone giant's securities. The lawsuit came after the Defense Department determined earlier this month that China's biggest smartphone maker was affiliated with the People's Liberation Army. Beijing-based Xiaomi called the blacklisting "unconstitutional" and seeks a court ruling to reverse the designation, which was made in the waning days of the Trump administration. "Xiaomi faces imminent, severe, and irreparable harm if the Designation remains in place and the restrictions take effect," the company said in the filing in the U.S. district court of Columbia. The lawsuit also named Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as defendants. Under former President Donald Trump, the U.S. had targeted scores of Chinese tech companies citing national security. Huawei Technologies, one of the biggest rivals to Xiaomi in smartphone market, was cut off from its key suppliers as a result of a series of restrictions imposed by the former administration.

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Google signed a six-year deal with Ford Motor that will bring Android technology to the automaker's cars and cloud services to its factory floor, in a triumph for the internet giant over rival Microsoft. From a report: Google Cloud Platform will be Ford's "preferred cloud provider" and the partners will form an innovation team called Team Upshift to jointly work on future projects, the companies said Monday in a statement. Ford dashboard infotainment screens will be powered by an Android operating system starting in 2023 and the automaker will adopt Google's artificial intelligence and data-analytics technology. The companies did not disclose the value of their deal, but Google will receive revenue from cloud services as well as a Google apps and services licensing fee for every Ford and Lincoln vehicle sold starting in 2023. Thomas Kurian, chief executive officer of Google Cloud, is trying to sell the Alphabet company's computing and storage services through broad strategic partnerships. Fresh off a multiyear alliance with Deutsche Bank announced in December, Google has snagged Ford, a longtime Microsoft client. Google will need to continue accumulating these types of customer wins to catch cloud market leaders Amazon.com and Microsoft.

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Today's song: Babylon Sisters.

As it sits amid the recent extreme bouts of market volatility, discount online brokerage Robinhood has been able to raise another $2.4 billion from investors, the company said Monday. From a report: That brings to $3.4 billion that the firm has been able to raise since last Thursday, a total that exceeds the amount it has raised in its entire history. "This funding is a strong sign of confidence from investors and will help us build for the future and continue to serve people through the exponential growth we've seen this year," the company said in a statement. The startup started easing trading restrictions on Monday, raising its trading limit on GameStop to four shares from a single share.

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All they talk about on Clubhouse is Clubhouse.

New transparency figures released by Amazon show the company responded to a record number of government data demands in the last six months of 2020. From a report: The new figures land in the company's bi-annual transparency report published to Amazon's website over the weekend. Amazon said it processed 27,664 government demands for user data in the last six months of 2020, up from 3,222 data demands in the first six months of the year, an increase of close to 800%. That user data includes shopping searches and data from its Echo, Fire, and Ring devices. The new report presents the data differently from previous transparency disclosures. Amazon now breaks down the top requesting countries. U.S. authorities historically made up the bulk of the overall data demands Amazon receives, but this latest report shows Germany with 42% of all requests, followed by Spain with 18%, and Italy and the U.S. with 11% share each. But the report also removes the breakdown by legal process, and now only differentiates between the requests it gets for user's content and for non-content. Amazon said it handed over user content data in 52 cases. For its Amazon Web Services cloud business, which it reports separately, Amazon said it processed 523 data demands, with 75% of all requests made by U.S. authorities, and Amazon turned over user's content in 15 cases.

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Software giant Microsoft is confident its search product Bing can fill the gap in Australia if Google pulls its search over required payments to media outlets, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday. From a report: Australia has introduced laws that would force internet giant Google and social media heavyweight Facebook Inc to negotiate payments to domestic media outlets whose content links drive traffic to their platforms. However, the Big Tech firms have called the laws unworkable and said last month they would withdraw key services from Australia if the regulations went ahead. Those services include Google's search engine, which has 94% of the country's search market, according to industry data. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has since spoken with Morrison about the new rules, the tech company told Reuters, and on Monday, Morrison said the software company was ready to grow the presence of its search tool Bing, the distant No. 2 player.

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The supposedly legit press is making the lunatic from Georgia into a major political force in the US. And they have the chutzpah to say social media is destroying the political system of the US.Why don't we all get together and wake the fuck up to how this works.

We should study how QAnon delivered its story, and do what they did, except put out the truth instead of made up stuff. The truth is strange enough. Whatever they did it worked, and I have to say the people who I've heard talk about it seem pretty sane to me.

This is not a request for support. If Spectrum had decent customer service they could probably get me to subscribe again. But last time I had to wait an hour on hold to talk to a rep to cancel my free trial to a service that wasn't well-explained on their site. That said, they have service that's a lot cheaper than the unbundled version, because you have to buy everything twice just to get CNN and MSG because of exclusive deals they've made. I guess the old cable companies are grandfathered in?