This year's Microsoft Ability Summit is underway and the company has revealed its latest advancements for accessibility and disability inclusion. First, it's bringing an accessibility assistant to Microsoft 365 (formerly Microsoft Office). The aim is to help people produce content that's more accessible.

The assistant will offer suggestions on how to prevent and correct accessibility issues, along with what Microsoft calls "better defaults" and "real-time remediation." The assistant follows an accessibility checker in Visual Studio. On a similar note, Microsoft has released a guidebook (PDF) to help people design products with cognitive diversity in mind.

Later this year, there will be 3D-printed attachments for the Surface Pen — they're already available for the Business Pen and Classroom Pen 2. According to Microsoft, the grips can make the pens easier to hold for those with limited mobility so they can use the peripherals on their Surface devices.

Elsewhere, Microsoft detailed more accessibility-minded updates that are built on the Azure platform. The Seeing AI app recently added a feature to help blind users and those with low vision to make their way through a building with the guidance of spatial audio cues. 

Azure Cognitive Services for vision will be employed to automatically add alt-text descriptions and captioning on LinkedIn as well. Microsoft notes that more than 40 percent of LinkedIn posts have at least one image. While automatically generated descriptions won't be perfect, they're better than having no alt text at all.

On top of all that, Microsoft Translator today gained support for an additional 13 African languages, including Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. Additionally, Microsoft says it will delve into some of the ways that Bing AI can bolster accessibility during the summit.

Google One is expanding its security features. First, Google is making its virtual private network (VPN) available to all subscribers at no extra cost. A VPN for Google One members was first introduced in October 2020, but only for those on plans with at least 2TB of storage. The 2TB plan costs $10 per month or $100 per year, but you now won't need to pay that much to access Google's VPN.

Starting today and over the next few weeks, Google will open up access to the VPN across all plans. That includes the Basic $2 per month option, which gives you 100GB of storage across your Google account. The VPN will be available in 22 countries on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac devices. You'll be able to share it with up to five other people who are on your One plan.

The VPN will hide your internet activity from hackers and network operators. Google says. The company claims it will "never use the VPN connection to track, log, or sell your online activity."

Elsewhere, Google is adding another feature to help One subscribers protect themselves. A dark web report, which the company will start rolling out to members in the US over the next few weeks, can scan the dark web for your personal details to check if your information has been included in a data breach.

You can select which details — such as your name, address, email, phone number and Social Security Number — you'd like Google to look out for on your monitoring profile. Google says it will handle this data according to its privacy policy. You can remove the details from your profile at any time and ask Google to stop monitoring the dark web for your information, if you prefer.

If Google finds your tracked information on the dark web, it'll notify you and offer some suggestions on how to protect yourself. It says that, for instance, if it spots your Social Security number, you might want to report it as stolen and take action to protect your credit. The report will also highlight information potentially related to you beyond the details you add to your monitoring profile.

Google has been adding other features to One beyond security measures and extra storage. It revealed in February that subscribers can access the Magic Eraser feature in Google Photos. Before then, the feature was only available on Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 devices.

Starfield once again has a firm release date, but it's one that marks another delay for Bethesda's sci-fi RPG. The game is now slated to arrive on September 6th. It was supposed to debut in the first half of this year after Bethesda previously delayed it from November 11th, 2022.

Bethesda has also set a date for the promised deep dive into the game. A Starfield Direct presentation is set for June 11th. Starfield was not featured during Xbox's Developer Direct event in January, as Microsoft wanted to give the game a separate spotlight.

"There's so much that we still have to show you," game director Todd Howard said in a release date announcement. "The game has many of the hallmarks that you'd expect from us, but it's also a very unique experience." The video also has another few gameplay clips, including a fight with an alien.

The Starfield Direct will premiere right around the time Xbox and Bethesda usually hold their big summer showcase, just ahead of E3 (though it's unclear whether Microsoft will officially be involved with the expo this year). In the meantime, Bethesda will release co-op vampire hunting title Redfall in May.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into Tesla following reports of steering wheels falling off while on the road. The agency said it's aware of two reports of the wheel completely detaching from the steering column in the Model Y vehicles. It added that the vehicles were delivered to their owners without the retaining bolt that keeps the steering wheel attached.

In both cases, only friction was keeping the wheel in place until the force exerted on it "overcame the resistance of the friction fit while the vehicles were in motion," the NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation said (PDF). The vehicles each had low mileage.

One owner is said to have taken delivery of their Model Y just five days before the incident. When the wheel detached, there was no car behind the driver, who noted on Twitter and in an NHTSA complaint that they were safely able to pull onto the divider. There were no injuries in the incident, which the owner said occurred on Route 1 in Woodbridge, New Jersey, in late January.

"Both vehicles received an end of line repair requiring removal and reinstallation of the steering wheel," the NHTSA said. The agency's investigation, which covers an estimated 120,000 model year 2023 vehicles, will "assess the scope, frequency and manufacturing processes associated with this condition."

Tesla, which no longer has a communications department that can be reached for comment, has faced several NHTSA investigations over the last few years. Last month, the agency announced that Tesla was recalling almost 363,000 vehicles over issues with the Full Self-Driving software. The NHTSA said the system could "exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner." Tesla said it would issue an over-the-air update to resolve the issues.

As the Associated Press notes, Tesla has had to issue 20 recalls since January 2022. Several of the recalls were mandated by the NHTSA. In November, for instance, the automaker recalled 321,000 Model 3 and Model Y cars over a rear light issue (one that was again remedied by a software update). That was Tesla's second recall in as many days.

It's been so long since Meta cut Messenger out of the Facebook mobile app that Windows Phone was still somewhat of a thing at the time. Almost nine years later, Meta is ready to bring them back together. "We are testing the ability for people to access their Messenger inbox within the Facebook app and you’ll see us expand this testing soon," Facebook head Tom Alison wrote. "Ultimately, we want it to be easy and convenient for people to connect and share, whether in the Messenger app or directly within Facebook."

When Meta removed Messenger from the Facebook app in 2014, it said that "our goal is to focus development efforts on making Messenger the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences." It's unclear whether Meta has any plans to bring messaging back to the mobile browser version of Facebook. It started pushing mobile web users toward the Messenger app in 2016. In any case, having one fewer app to juggle on your phone is probably not a bad thing. You might be able to send messages to Instagram users from the Facebook app too.

Meta made the announcement in a bizarrely framed blog post about Facebook's focus areas for 2023. The post seeks to assure people that "Facebook is not dead nor dying," as it now has more than 2 billion users.

In an effort to become more competitive with TikTok, Meta is attempting to shift Facebook away from an app where you keep up with friends and family to more of an entertainment and discovery platform. It's trying to "make Facebook the best place for social discovery and sharing," as Alison put it in the blog post. 

A key reason why Meta is bringing messaging back to the Facebook app is to "make it easier for people to share what they discover on Facebook via messaging, when, where and how it suits their needs, without needing to switch to another app," Alison wrote. TikTok enables users to share videos that they stumble upon with their friends through built-in direct messaging. So, on one hand Meta is reversing course and going back to an older way of doing things, but on the other it is, once again, aping a competitor.

Slack is the latest notable app to embrace ChatGPT as the generative AI buzz continues to sweep through the tech industry. OpenAI has built a ChatGPT app using Slack's development tools and it's available in beta today.

The app can draft messages and summarize conversations and threads, according to Slack. If you have the ChatGPT app installed, you can click on a thread's menu button and select the "summarize thread" or "draft reply" option. The app will whip up a summary or response that only you can see. You'll then be able to share that information.

Slack says the app can also use AI to deliver answers and insights on any project or topic, chatbot-style. It suggests this could be useful when looking up best practices or researching a potential new customer. Slack notes OpenAI won't use any of the data that the ChatGPT app can access on the platform to train its language models.

Meanwhile, Slack's parent company Salesforce has created a generative AI system called Einstein. It includes integration with OpenAI’s tech, but companies that use Salesforce products can tap into other third-party AI models through Einstein too. As such, Salesforce says its customers can "use natural-language prompts directly within their Salesforce CRM [customer relationship management tools] to generate content that continuously adapts to changing customer information and needs in real time."

In any case, this is another case of generative AI quickly being shoved into even more mainstream tech products beyond search engines and many facets of the Microsoft ecosystem. But hey, at least you won't have to bother thinking up responses to your coworkers' terrible jokes in Slack DMs.

Links are completely busted on Twitter at the minute across the company's website and mobile apps, as well as TweetDeck. Clicking on one brings up an error message that reads "Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint, please see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api for more information." As it happens, that link is also broken at the time of writing.

Developing...

Apple is surely hoping that you're not tired of post-apocalyptic TV shows, because it has another one up its sleeve. Silo, which is based on Hugh Howey's series of books, will debut on Apple TV+ on May 5th and the company has released the first teaser for it.

Silotells the story of the last 10,000 people on Earth. They live in a bunker that's a mile underground, but how or why the silo came to be and exactly why they're there remains a mystery. Trying to find out spells doom. Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) is an engineer who tries to get to the bottom of a loved one's murder and ends up discovering some surprising secrets.

The teaser doesn't give too much away, but it does offer a look at the multi-level silo and how its denizens survive there, such as by growing food. Along with Ferguson, the show has a strong cast featuring the likes of Common, Harriet Walter, Chinaza Uche (“Dickinson”), David Oyelowo, Rashida Jones and Tim Robbins.

Apple TV+ has released several post-apocalyptic shows and movies, including See and Finch. Foundation is largely about the collapse of a galactic empire, while the upcoming Extrapolations takes a look at how climate change could ravage the planet by the middle of the 21st century. If you're not too burned out by TV shows set after the collapse of society, Silo might be another one worth checking out.

Those who've been looking for more details on Nothing's next earphones won't have to wait much longer. The company will spill the beans on the Ear 2 on March 22nd. There's an event scheduled for 10AM ET that day and you'll be able to watch it on Nothing's website, which claims that the Ear 2 will have "better sound" and "better clarity."

The latest Ear 2 teaser suggests that the charging case will cling onto the transparent aesthetic of Nothing's other products to date. The image shows a beetle pushing what appears to be a charging case outside of the frame. Founder Carl Pei's companies have a predilection for drip feeding information about products, so we could learn more about the Ear 2 in the run up to the event. 

Nothing released the Ear 1 in summer 2021. It followed up on its first earbuds up with last year's Ear Stick. The Ear 2 will be Nothing's fourth product, as it released the Phone 1 in 2022.

Late last year, there were indications that Nothing is set to debut a different set of earbuds under a flanker brand. There were references to Particles by XO earbuds in Nothing Phone 1 firmware at the end of last year. Renders suggested that the earphones could have a peanut-style design. In any case, we'll find out what's on the immediate horizon for Nothing in a couple weeks.

A new Senate bill aims to expand protections for Americans' health and location data. It follows concerns that such information could be used to identify individuals seeking reproductive health care services after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion last year. 

The Upholding Protections for Health and Online Location Data (UPHOLD) Privacy Act seeks to block companies from selling personally identifiable health data for advertising purposes and ban data brokers from buying and selling precise location data. Moreover, the proposed legislation would afford consumers more access to and ownership over their health data. It would also place more restrictions on companies’ use of personal health data without the explicit consent of a user.

The bill aims to prohibit the use of personally identifiable health data from any source for advertising. This includes data from users themselves, medical centers, fitness trackers and browser histories. The UPHOLD Privacy Act's restrictions wouldn't apply to public health campaigns.

The legislation was introduced by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono. “With Republicans working to ban and criminalize reproductive health care nationwide, it’s critical we safeguard the reproductive data privacy of everyone in our country,” Hirono said in a statement. “Everyone should be able to trust that personal data about their bodies and their health care will be protected. By restricting the sale and use of personally identifiable health data, this bill will give patients and providers the peace of mind that their private information is secure.”

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, legislators have not made much headway toward protecting consumer health data. Period-tracking apps have given some particular cause for concern. Developers of some of these apps have since introduced features and policies to help protect their users' data.

The Federal Trade Commission said soon after the Supreme Court ruling that it would clamp down on companies which misuse health and location data. This week, the agency moved to ban online counseling service BetterHelp from sharing consumers' health data for ad targeting without consent. The FTC found that the company shared users' email addresses, IPs and health questionnaire responses. BetterHelp says it has never shared clinical data from therapy sessions with advertisers, publishers or social media companies.