But there are still some quality of life improvements. These will become available to devices from other brands in the next major Android release, namely Android 14. Android 13 QPR3 Beta 2 offers a new feature that will be available for other devices in Android 14: improved PIN privacy.

The feature that improves PIN privacy will make it harder for over-the-shoulder surfers to watch you enter your PIN, as Android’s lock screen won’t show an obvious visual cue for every number you tap.

A recent report by The Wall Street Journal showed how surfers can gain almost complete access to a user’s Apple or Google account by simply observing the unlock code on the phone and then swiping their device.

Improved PIN privacy isn’t the only new lock screen-related improvement coming to Android 14. There’s also a new feature called “auto confirm correct PIN” that lets you bypass pressing Enter to unlock your phone. It’s not yet available to users, unlike the new enhanced PIN privacy toggle seen in Android 13 QPR3 Beta 2. Android 14 Beta 1 is likely to be available in early April. Stay tuned for details.

If this doesn’t happen, there’s a good chance that any effort to succeed will be delayed or worse – abandoned. To avoid this, it can be useful to identify which skills make someone stand out as a technology leader.

Today, we’ve chosen to present some skills that show tech leaders are looking to the future, according to The Enterprisers Project.

Inspiring others
Harvesting innovation requires changing how teams plan, think, and act. Inspiring others is key to encouraging teams to think differently. This is a challenge, as most organizations create barriers to change – opting for minor incremental improvements versus leapfrog breakthroughs. Inspirational technology leaders create teams that challenge the status quo, risk failure, and seek continuous learning to unlock innovation.

Inspirational leadership is a continuous activity. Future-ready technology leaders keep teams motivated and progressing toward a shared goal through committed action.

Storytelling
Once teams are motivated to create change, the next step is moving the entire organization toward the transformation goals. To achieve this cross-organization momentum, today’s technology leader must be a strong storyteller. A leader’s ability to connect the purpose of a transformation with each member of the organization is critical to help everyone see themselves as part of the journey.

All transformations require team members to learn new skills and possibly take on new roles in the future. This can be a challenge for many team members if they are successful in their current role and do not see the need to change. Being a storyteller helps team members envision themselves being successful at the end of the transformational journey.

Decisiveness
Teams look to leaders to be decisive. As the pace of change quickens, it is even more critical for technology leaders to build confidence through decision-making, and most do not. With abundant choices and decisions, most technology leaders adopt a wait-and-see approach out of concern that making the wrong decision can hurt the team. However, with a timely decision based on the best information available, teams can accelerate progress.

Flexibility
Decisiveness by itself is not enough. A strong technology leader needs to operate with flexibility. The pace of change is no longer linear, and leaders have less time to assess and understand every aspect of a decision. Consequently, decisions are made faster and are not always the best ones. Realizing which decisions are not spot-on and being able to adapt quickly is an example of the type of flexibility a leader needs.

Sascha Deri is CEO at bluShift Aerospace. He is the man behind the “Starless Rogue” – the long-awaited suborbital sounding rocket powered by a groundbreaking non-toxic, carbon-neutral, bio-derived solid fuel, on which is also the movie devoted.

The company has worked with Knack Factory for the official trailer and it also designed a film poster for this occasion. In addition, Deri directs from a script by Knack Factory, based on real-life events and an ongoing, first-of-its-kind equity crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder, according to a post from the official bluShift’s Facebook profile.

The money raised in the Race To $1 Million will help with testing of MAREVL™ 2.0 and unlock $100,000 in non-dilutive funding from the Maine Technology Institute. After they pass $1 Million, Sascha will draw 5 winners at the monthly webinar.

The company’s goal is “to create an earth-friendly aerospace industry – with an Uber-like space launch service that carries small payloads for paying customers”.

Hence, people who have opted in to its Face Recognition setting will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and video, because the facial recognition will be deleted.

More than a third of Facebook’s daily active users have opted in to our Face Recognition setting and are able to be recognized, and its removal will result in the deletion of more than a billion people’s individual facial templates.

For a long time, Facebook has also given people the option to be automatically notified when they appear in photos or videos posted by others, and provided recommendations for who to tag in photos. These features are also powered by the Face Recognition system which will be shutted down.

However, nobody want to doubt the power of facial recognition technology. For instance, it is very useful for people needing to verify their identity, or to prevent fraud and impersonation. Meta promises that they will still be working on improving these tools in the future.

We all know that there are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use. From their point of view, Meta’s team believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate. This includes services that help people gain access to a locked account, verify their identity in financial products or unlock a personal device.

But like most challenges involving complex social issues, Meta’s team is aware that their approach  involves some difficult tradeoffs. For instance, the ability to tell a blind or visually impaired user that the person in a photo on their News Feed is their high school friend, or former colleague, is a valuable feature that makes the platforms more accessible. But it also depends on an underlying technology that attempts to evaluate the faces in a photo to match them with those kept in a database of people who opted-in. The following changes involve a company-wide move away from this kind of broad identification, and toward narrower forms of personal authentication.

Photo Credits: Meta

Facial recognition can be particularly valuable when the technology operates privately on a person’s own devices. This method of on-device facial recognition, requiring no communication of face data with an external server, is most commonly deployed today in the systems used to unlock smartphones.

For potential future applications of technologies Meta will continue to be public about intended use, how people can have control over these systems and their personal data, and how they are living up to their responsible innovation framework. Ending the use of the existing Face Recognition system means the serviceswill be removed over the coming weeks, as will the setting allowing people to opt into the system.

This will lead to a number of changes:

• The technology will no longer automatically recognize if people’s faces appear in Memories, photos or videos.
• People will no longer be able to turn on face recognition for suggested tagging or see a suggested tag with their name in photos and videos they may appear in.
• This change will also impact Automatic Alt Text (AAT), a technology used to create image descriptions for people who are blind or visually impaired. AAT currently identifies people in about 4% of photos. After the change, AAT will still be able to recognize how many people are in a photo, but will no longer attempt to identify who each person is using facial recognition.
• If you have opted into the Face Recognition setting, Meta will delete the template used to identify you. If you have the face recognition setting turned off, there is no template to delete and there will be no change.

However, despite everything, Meta promises they will continue engaging in that conversation and working with the civil society groups and regulators who are leading this discussion.