Enlarge (credit: PM ImagesDigitalVision) On Wednesday, Colorado expanded the scope of its privacy law initially designed to protect biometric data like fingerprints or face images to become first in the nation to also shield sensitive neural data. That could stop companies from hoarding brain activity data without residents realizing the risks. The New York Times reported that neural data is increasingly being collected and sold nationwide. And after a market analysis showed that investments in neurotechnology leapt by 60 percent globally from 2019 to 2020—and were valued at $30 billion in 2 ..read more

Enlarge / That is in no way what the Z button looks like or where it goes... Apple's decision earlier this month to open the iOS App Store to generic retro game emulators is already bearing fruit. Delta launched Wednesday as one of the first officially approved iOS apps to emulate Nintendo consoles from the NES through the N64 and the Game Boy through the Nintendo DS (though unofficial options have snuck through in the past). Delta is an outgrowth of developer Riley Testut's earlier sideloadable GBA4iOS project, which recently had its own unauthorized clone removed from the App Sto ..read more

Enlarge / Here it is: two virtual Mac displays in Vision Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon) Apple's Vision Pro headset holds the promise to be a powerful extension of your Mac workflow, but the Mac integration it shipped with is just neat, not a big step forward. Now, an app by established independent developers Jordi Bruin, Mathijs Kadijk, and Tom Lokhorst aims to fix that. Called Splitscreen, it enables you to use two virtual displays at once while working with your Mac and wearing Vision Pro. By contrast, Apple's default implementation only supports mirroring a single Mac display to a resizable v ..read more

(credit: Getty Images) Apple has always had a strong preference that only its own parts be used in repairs, but only if they're brand-new. Now, soon after Oregon passed a repair bill forbidding devices from rejecting parts with software locks, or "parts pairing," Apple says it will allow for used Apple parts in future iPhone repairs. While noting that "pairing" is "critical to preserving the privacy, security, and safety of an iPhone," Apple states that it has worked for two years to allow for reusing Face ID and Touch ID sensors (i.e., biometric sensors) as well as moving part calibration f ..read more

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / ContributorPhotothek) Smaller web browsers are gaining traction in the European Union after the Digital Markets Act (DMA) started requiring designated gatekeepers like Google and Apple to make it easier to switch default web browsers on devices. Previously, tech giants were able to lock users into setting their own browsers as defaults—or at least make it complicated to update the defaults—offering the majority of users their own browsing services for free while collecting data used for ad-targeting. This, the EU feared, kept users from switching to defaul ..read more

Enlarge / Beeper's new apps are now available, without waitlist, across nearly all mobile and desktop platforms. Beeper, the multinetwork messaging app that recently gave up on trying to engineer around Apple's walled-off iMessage service, has been acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. It is now open to everyone and has a completely revamped Android app. All of Beeper's workers will join Automattic and will continue operating as an independent team, according to a press release. Eric Migicovsky, creator of the Pebble smartwatch and co-founder of Beeper, will become Automattic ..read more

Jony Ive, the former Apple designer. (credit: Gary Cohen) Former Apple design lead Jony Ive and current OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are seeking funding for a new company that will produce an "artificial intelligence-powered personal device," according to The Information's sources, who are said to be familiar with the plans. The exact nature of the device is unknown, but it will not look anything like a smartphone, according to the sources. We first heard tell of this venture in the fall of 2023, but The Information's story reveals that talks are moving forward to get the company off the ground. Iv ..read more

Enlarge / The TSMC facility in Phoenix, Arizona. (credit: The Washington Post / ContributorThe Washington Post) The US Department of Commerce has proposed another round of CHIPS Act funding up to $6.6 billion for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which President Joe Biden hopes will "support the construction of leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing facilities right here in the United States." With this award—which includes additional funding up to $5 billion in low-cost government loans—TSMC has agreed to increase funding in Arizona fabrication plants to $65 billion. That ..read more

Enlarge / The classic Sega Genesis game Sonic the Hedgehog running on an iPhone—in this case, as a standalone app. (credit: Samuel Axon) When Apple posted its latest update to the App Store's app review and submission policies for developers, it included language that appears to explicitly allow a new kind of app for emulating retro console games. Apple has long forbidden apps that run code from an external source, but today's announced changes now allow "software that is not embedded in the binary" in certain cases, with "retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games" specifi ..read more

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart's interview with FTC Chair Lina Khan. The conversation about Apple begins around 16:30 in the video. Before the cancellation of The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+, Apple forbade the inclusion of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan as a guest and steered the show away from confronting issues related to artificial intelligence, according to Jon Stewart. This isn't the first we've heard of this rift between Apple and Stewart. When the Apple TV+ show was canceled last October, reports circulated that he told his staff that creative differences over ..read more