Apple, Google, & Microsoft Going Passwordless; Musk Picks Up Twitter Investors and $$; Google Buys MicroLED Firm; Microsoft & VW Working on HoloLens for Cars

You’d think Cinco de Mayo was a big enough deal, May 5th is apparently also World Password Day. According to theverge.com, the ubiquitous and annoying little fake words we all make up (and I HOPE you are, and aren’t using Password1), may become a thing of the past at long last. In a joint effort, Apple, Google, and Microsoft announced that they have committed to building support for passwordless sign-in across all of the mobile, desktop, and browser platforms that they control in the coming year, based on the FIDO standard. Look for passwordless authentication to come to all major device platforms in the not too distant future: Android and iOS mobile operating systems; Chrome, Edge, and Safari browsers; and the Windows and macOS desktop environments. 

The system relies on use of one device…the default is your phone. You will still need to use the biometric like your fingerprint or FaceID or the code to access your phone, but then all apps and websites will authenticate from it. The big tech firms believe this will help eliminate phishing, and other hacks. Should you lose your phone, you will be able to download your info to the new phone and set up authentication on that device…or whatever device you choose. If you have a Microsoft Outlook work account, you may already be using Microsoft Authenticator on your phone…this will all work very similar to that. I won’t be sorry to see World Password Day become a relic of the past!

Elon Musk has raised $7.14 billion of funding for his $44 billion buyout of Twitter, from investors including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, crypto exchange Binance and asset management firms Fidelity, Brookfield and Sequoia Capital. Arstechnica.com reports that with the new financing commitments, Musk will cut the margin loan he has taken with a group of lenders by half to $6.25 billion and increase the equity portion to $27.25 billion. The remainder of the purchase price will be paid with debt raised from global banks. Ellison is kicking in the biggest chunk at a cool billion. He currently sits on Elon’s Tesla board. Musk will also become the temporary CEO of Twitter when the deal closes. 

Google has acquired Raxium, an innovator in single panel MicroLED display technologies, according to a blog post from the company. The post says “The team at Raxium has spent five years creating miniaturized, cost-effective and energy efficient high-resolution displays that have laid the foundation for future display technologies.” A deal with Raxium was rumored last March in a report from The Information. Unlike Meta and other rivals, Google hasn’t said much about its augmented reality plans, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t working on it. Last year, news of Google’s Augmented Reality OS leaked out late last year through job listings and the company reportedly plans to release an AR headset by 2024. 

Microsoft and Volkswagen are working together to advance the existing Moving Platform mode for Windows Holographic, the OS inside Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented-reality headset. Zdnet.com says the goal is to enable the use of mixed-reality headsets inside vehicles for tasks like training drivers to handle challenging road conditions or creating new experiences for autonomous vehicles. Microsoft officials believe this capability could be applied to other industries in the future. Volkswagen has been experimenting for several years on how augmented reality could be used in cars. The company added an augmented reality head-up display to its ID. family of electric cars in 2020 that project navigation arrows, lane markings, and other relevant information onto the area in front of cars. Before that, it had done experiments on how augmented reality could help teach driving on a race course.