July 6 Tech news roundup: Netflix is discontinuing its Basic Ad-free plan, Authy suffers another security breach, Google Translate supports 110 new languages

Microsoft’s Weather app is displaying more ads

Microsoft has made a server-side update to its Weather app. The desktop app, which is pre-installed in Windows 11, now displays multiple advertisements. This is not the first time that the Redmond company has made such a change, it did something similar last year, but later removed the ads from the app after backlash from users who were annoyed by the ads.

Now the ads are back in the Windows 11 Weather app. Basically, the Weather app loads the MSN Weather website, so any ads that appear on the site are also included in the desktop app. The ads appear on all pages in the app, and there are no options to remove the ads, but you can use the app in a minimized window to hide the ads on the main page of the Weather app. However, this trick does not work with any of the other pages in the app.

Authy reveals that hackers stole millions of phone numbers from its server

2FA service Authy has revealed that it suffered a security breach which resulted in over 33 million phone numbers of its users being leaked. The hacker managed to attack a server through an improperly secured API endpoint, and fed the API several phone numbers to detect which ones were associated with Authy’s system. The attacker then leaked a CSV text file that contained phone numbers of over 33 million Authy users. This puts users at risk of SMS based attacks or SIM Swapping attacks. Authy says that it has patched the vulnerable endpoint, and released an update for its mobile apps for Android and iOS. This happens to be the second time that Twilio, the parent company of Authy, has been breached by hackers.

XP-AntiSpy is back for Windows 11

The popular tool XP-AntiSpy is back in a new form, decades after its original launch. The program’s new name is XD-AntiSpy, and it is a fork of the original application. The app had been designed to allow users to manage various settings in Windows 11.

This includes the ability to hide the most used apps in the Start Menu, Pin More apps to the Start Menu, etc. The utility displays a description for each option, to inform the user what the specific option that they selected would do. It would be wise to create a system restore point, or take a backup of your computer before you use this tool, just in case something goes awry.

Netflix is removing the Basic Ad-free plan for existing subscribers

Netflix had discontinued the Basic Ad-Free plan for new and returning users in the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. last year. Now, it appears that the company is phasing out the Basic Ad-free plan for existing users. Several users who are subscribed to the streaming service have said that they are getting a message prompting them to choose a new plan to continue with the service.

Most of these users seem to be from Canada or the U.K., and say they had been subscribed to the old $10 plan for a long time. A support page on the streaming service’s website says that the Netflix basic plan has been discontinued. Unfortunately, the affected users will need to either upgrade to the $15.49 plan to watch Netflix without ads, or the $22.99 Premium 4K plan. The cheapest plan that Netflix offers is the $6.99 plan, but it comes with ads. It is unclear whether when the Basic Ad-free plan will be discontinued for existing subscribers in the U.S.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT app for Mac was storing your chats in plain text

OpenAI released the official ChatGPT app for macOS last week, but it seems the AI chat service’s application had a small issue. A security researcher who analyzed the app discovered that it was storing conversations in plain text format on the user’s computer. He was able to create a special tool that was successful in extracting the user data from the ChatGPT app without any special permissions from the app or macOS.

The researcher explained that the app was not sandboxed, which allowed other apps to access its data. This is because OpenAI is distributing the app via its own website, instead of using Apple’s Mac App Store, which requires all apps to isolate themselves using a sandbox. This does not usually pose a security risk, as many third-party apps, including browsers, text editors, usually store user data in a database locally on the user’s computer. OpenAI has released an update for the ChatGPT Mac app that fixes the problem.

Google Translate adds support for 110 languages

Google Translate has added support for 110 languages that had been requested by users. The Mountain View company says that it used an artificial intelligence called the PaLM 2 large language model to achieve the landmark.

According to Google, the new languages represent over 614 Million speakers around the world, which is about 8% of the population. Some of these languages have over 100 Million speakers, while some are used by small communities. A quarter of the new languages come from Africa. You can find the full list of the new languages here. Google says it is working on adding support for more languages to its translation service.

Google Gemini could be included in iOS 18

Last month, Apple had announced that it has partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT in iOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, as an optional way to interact with Siri. But it looks like it may not be the only artificial intelligence that will be incorporated in the new operating systems.

Apple is in talks with Google to include Gemini in iOS 18. Apple is working on its own AI features, including the recently announced Apple Intelligence, which is capable of performing advanced tasks quickly, using an on-device language model. The Cupertino company is reportedly considering bringing other chatbots to its operating systems, though it decided to skip Meta’s AI due to privacy concerns. The inclusion of Google Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT will allow users to choose which AI service they want to use for their handling their queries.