Turing test | Definition & Facts - Britannica

Tech companies have settled on a convenient dodge for the privacy problem created by always-listening wearables: redefine what counts as a recording. Apple, Amazon, and Meta all argue that if audio is transcribed and the raw file deleted, nothing has been "recorded" at all. Victoria Song, The Verge's wearables reporter, dismantles that logic in a recent Vergecast conversation, arguing that a transcript is impossible without first recording the audio — and that the public's real discomfort is about being listened to, not about what gets stored. The episode's core framework: previous wearables put only your own data at risk, while always-listening devices make every wearer an "unintentional spy" responsible for stewarding everyone else's conversations. Song uses a poisoned M&Ms metaphor to explain why the public cannot distinguish legitimate users from creeps when 10% of smart-glasses wearers could be recording at any moment. The episode also covers Meta's camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, which Song says she didn't miss the camera on at all, and Amazon's $74.99 Bee Frontier wearable, which turns ambient conversation into shopping recommendations.

Here’s your NYT Strands hint for today, plus the spangram and all of today’s Strands answers for puzzle No. 959 on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. Today’s Strands theme was tricky. It helps to be a runner. Read on for all the answers.

A supply-chain attack involving ConnectWise’s cloud services has exposed Microsoft 365 customers to unauthorized application access, with researchers reporting successful sign-ins across 173 partner and customer tenants. The incident centres on credentials associated with ConnectWise Cloud Backup, formerly SkyKick, and raises concerns about attackers exploiting permissions already entrusted to business software. ConnectWise has confirmed unauthorized access to application identities within its Cloud Backup environment. In an October 17 update on its service-status page, the company said it was shutting off application access, interrupting customer backups while investigation and remediation continued.

You once played Basil Fawlty in an amateur student production of Fawlty Towers at Queen’s College in Melbourne. How amateur was your Basil Fawlty moustache? It was terrible. It was real but it was definitely coloured in – I still have holes in my beard. I’d also shaved my head, so if you look at the early promo posters, you can clearly see I’m wearing a wig. Our theatre was closed so we had to perform in a circus tent in the middle of winter, on an oval in the university grounds, which was all very Fawlty Towers. I’ve always loved comedy. I didn’t really do anything serious until drama school. I always thought there might be a good spin-off with Sauron and Celebrimbor as an odd-couple situation. You play Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Tolkien wrote that Sauron “represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as is possible”. What do you consider wholly evil? A complete disregard for the feelings and wellbeing of other people, to put it simply. It’s the intention, I think. I have horrible flashbacks to playing Aussie rules when I was about 17. I thought people were being quite evil to me at the time.