Republicans angry that ISPs receiving US grants must offer low-cost plans
Getty Images | Matt Anderson Photography Republican lawmakers are fighting a Biden administration attempt to bring cheap broadband service to low-income people, claiming it is an illegal form of rate regulation. GOP leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee…
Nearly all AT&T subscribers’ call records stolen in Snowflake cloud hack
Getty Images | SOPA Images AT&T today said a breach on a third-party cloud platform exposed the call and text records of nearly all its cellular customers. The leaked data is said to include phone numbers that AT&T subscribers communicated…
Elon Musk’s X faces big EU fines as paid checkmarks are ruled deceptive
Getty Images | NurPhoto Elon Musk’s overhaul of the Twitter verification system deceives users and violates the Digital Services Act, the European Commission said today in an announcement of preliminary findings that could lead to a big financial penalty. The…
Elon Musk calls for “criminal prosecution” of X ad boycott perpetrators
After the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary released a report accusing the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) of colluding with companies to censor conservative voices online, Elon Musk chimed in. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Musk…
Apple settles EU probe by opening up its mobile payments system
In two weeks, iPhone users in the European Union will be able to use any mobile wallet they like to complete “tap and go” payments with the ease of using Apple Pay. The change comes as part of a settlement…
Court ordered penalties for 15 teens who created naked AI images of classmates
A Spanish youth court has sentenced 15 minors to one year of probation after spreading AI-generated nude images of female classmates in two WhatsApp groups. The minors were charged with 20 counts of creating child sex abuse images and 20…
What is a Constructive Dismissal Letter Sample?
Constructive Dismissal Letter Sample An employee can claim constructive dismissal if they feel that their employer has broken their employment contract by making their working life so unbearable that they are left with no choice but to resign. If an…
Elon Musk beats one lawsuit seeking severance for laid-off Twitter employees
Enlarge / An X sign at company headquarters in San Francisco. Getty Images | Bloomberg A federal judge yesterday granted Elon Musk’s motion to dismiss a class-action complaint alleging that laid-off Twitter employees were wrongfully denied the severance they were…
Drug middlemen inflate US prices, squeeze out competition, FTC says
Enlarge / Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), testifies before the House Appropriations Subcommittee at the Rayburn House Office Building on May 15, 2024, in Washington, DC. Firms that serve as intermediaries to negotiate and control prescription…
FCC to block phone company over robocalls pushing scam “Tax Relief Program”
Getty Images | Diy13 The Federal Communications Commission said it is preparing to block a phone company that carried illegal robocalls pushing fake programs that promised to wipe out consumers’ tax debt. Veriwave Telco “has not complied with FCC call…
Boeing to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud FAA Aircraft Evaluation Group
Enlarge / An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft approaches San Diego International Airport for a landing on June 28, 2024. Getty Images | Kevin Carter Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge and pay $243.6…
First-known TikTok mob attack led by middle schoolers tormenting teachers
A bunch of eighth graders in a “wealthy Philadelphia suburb” recently targeted teachers with an extreme online harassment campaign that The New York Times reported was “the first known group TikTok attack of its kind by middle schoolers on their…
Meta defends charging fee for privacy amid showdown with EU
Meta continues to hit walls with its heavily scrutinized plan to comply with the European Union’s strict online competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), by offering Facebook and Instagram subscriptions as an alternative for privacy-inclined users who want to…
Biden rushes to avert labor shortage with CHIPS act funding for workers
Enlarge / US President Joe Biden (C) speaks during a tour of the TSMC Semiconductor Manufacturing Facility in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 6, 2022. In the hopes of dodging a significant projected worker shortage in the next few years, the…
AI trains on kids’ photos even when parents use strict privacy settings
Human Rights Watch (HRW) continues to reveal how photos of real children casually posted online years ago are being used to train AI models powering image generators—even when platforms prohibit scraping and families use strict privacy settings. Last month, HRW…
The “Netflix of anime” piracy site abruptly shuts down, shocking users
Enlarge / Disney+ promotional art for The Fable, an anime series that triggered Animeflix takedown notices. Disney+ Thousands of anime fans were shocked Thursday when the popular piracy site Animeflix voluntarily shut down without explaining why, TorrentFreak reported. “It is…
Elon Musk denies tweets misled Twitter investors ahead of purchase
Just before the Fourth of July holiday, Elon Musk moved to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that he intentionally misled Twitter investors in 2022 by failing to disclose his growing stake in Twitter while tweeting about potentially starting his own social network in…
Judge says FTC lacks authority to issue rule banning noncompete agreements
Enlarge / FTC Chair Lina Khan testifies before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on May 15, 2024, in Washington, DC. Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch A US judge ruled against the Federal Trade Commission in a challenge to its rule banning…
Millions of OnlyFans paywalls make it hard to detect child sex abuse, cops say
OnlyFans’ paywalls make it hard for police to detect child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on the platform, Reuters reported—especially new CSAM that can be harder to uncover online. Because each OnlyFans creator posts their content behind their own paywall, five…
Tool preventing AI mimicry cracked; artists wonder what’s next
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images For many artists, it’s a precarious time to post art online. AI image generators keep getting better at cheaply replicating a wider range of unique styles, and basically every popular platform is rushing to update…
Japan wins 2-year “war on floppy disks,” kills regulations requiring old tech
About two years after the country’s digital minister publicly declared a “war on floppy discs,” Japan reportedly stopped using floppy disks in governmental systems as of June 28. Per a Reuters report on Wednesday, Japan’s government “eliminated the use of…
“Everything’s frozen”: Ransomware locks credit union users out of bank accounts
Enlarge / ATM at a Patelco Credit Union branch in Dublin, California, on July 23, 2018. Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado A California-based credit union with over 450,000 members said it suffered a ransomware attack that is disrupting account services…
Apple Vision Pro, new cameras fail user-repairability analysis
Enlarge / Apple’s Vision Pro scored 0 points in US PIRG’s self-repairability analysis. Kyle Orland In December, New York became the first state to enact a “Right to Repair” law for electronics. Since then, other states, including Oregon and Minnesota,…
SCOTUS agrees to review Texas law that caused Pornhub to leave the state
Getty Images | Kathryn8 The US Supreme Court today agreed to hear a challenge to the Texas law that requires age verification on porn sites. A list of orders released this morning shows that the court granted a petition for…
GameStop investor retracts suit accusing Roaring Kitty of pump-and-dump scheme
Keith Gill—the meme stock influencer known as “Roaring Kitty” and “DeepF—Value” who has rallied millions on X and Reddit behind GameStop—briefly faced a lawsuit claiming that he knowingly deceived his loyal followers to reap millions of dollars in gains. The…
Supreme Court vacates rulings on Texas and Florida social media laws
Enlarge / The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, DC, in May 2023. Getty Images | NurPhoto The US Supreme Court has avoided making a final decision on challenges to the Texas and Florida social media laws, but…
SCOTUS tears down Sacklers’ immunity, blowing up opioid settlement
Enlarge / Grace Bisch holds a picture of stepson Eddie Bisch who died as a result of an overdose on outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on December 4, 2023 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court heard arguments regarding a…
T-Mobile users enraged as “Un-carrier” breaks promise to never raise prices
Aurich Lawson In 2017, Kathleen Odean thought she had found the last cell phone plan she would ever need. T-Mobile was offering a mobile service for people age 55 and over, with an “Un-contract” guarantee that it would never raise…
Tesla says Model 3 that burst into flames in fatal tree crash wasn’t defective
Tesla has denied that “any defect in the Autopilot system caused or contributed” to the 2022 death of a Tesla employee, Hans von Ohain, whose Tesla Model 3 burst into flames after the car suddenly veered off a road and…
SCOTUS kills Chevron deference, giving courts more power to block federal rules
Enlarge / Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor arrive for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 7, 2024, in Washington, DC. Getty Images | Win McNamee The US Supreme Court today…
Appeals court seems lost on how Internet Archive harms publishers
The Internet Archive (IA) went before a three-judge panel Friday to defend its open library’s controlled digital lending (CDL) practices after book publishers last year won a lawsuit claiming that the archive’s lending violated copyright law. In the weeks ahead…
Brussels explores antitrust probe into Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI
Enlarge / EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said the bloc was looking into practices that could in effect lead to a company controlling a greater share of the AI market. Brussels is preparing for an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s $13…
Supreme Court issues stay on EPA’s ozone plan, despite blistering dissent
Enlarge / Ozone-producing chemicals come from a variety of sources and don’t respect state borders. On Tuesday, a slim majority of the US Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling that places a stay on rules developed by the Environmental Protection…
Shopping app Temu is “dangerous malware,” spying on your texts, lawsuit claims
Enlarge / A person is holding a package from Temu. Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is “dangerous malware” that’s secretly monetizing a broad swath…
SCOTUS nixes injunction that limited Biden admin contacts with social networks
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court tossed out claims that the Biden administration coerced social media platforms into censoring users by removing COVID-19 and election-related content. Complaints alleging that high-ranking government officials were censoring conservatives had previously convinced a lower court…
Tesla announces third and fourth Cybertruck recalls
Enlarge / A Tesla Cybertruck at the Viva Technology show at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on May 24, 2024 in Paris, France. Getty Images | Chesnot Tesla has announced two more recalls of the Cybertruck, both of which…
Verizon screwup caused 911 outage in 6 states—carrier agrees to $1M fine
Verizon Wireless agreed to pay a $1,050,000 penalty to the US Treasury and implement a compliance plan because of a 911 outage in December 2022 that was caused by a botched update, the Federal Communications Commission announced today. A consent…
Microsoft risks huge fine over “possibly abusive” bundling of Teams and Office
Enlarge / A screen shows a virtual meeting with Microsoft Teams at a conference on January 30, 2024 in Barcelona, Spain. Microsoft may be hit with a massive fine in the European Union for “possibly abusively” bundling Teams with its…
Music industry giants allege mass copyright violation by AI firms
Enlarge / Michael Jackson in concert, 1986. Sony Music owns a large portion of publishing rights to Jackson’s music. Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Records have sued AI music-synthesis companies Udio and Suno for allegedly committing mass copyright…
EU says Apple violated app developers’ rights, could be fined 10% of revenue
Getty Images | SOPA Images The European Commission today said it found that Apple is violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA) with App Store rules and fees that “prevent app developers from freely steering consumers to alternative channels for offers…
Adobe’s hidden cancellation fee is unlawful, FTC suit says
Adobe prioritized profits while spending years ignoring numerous complaints from users struggling to cancel costly subscriptions without incurring hefty hidden fees, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged in a lawsuit Monday. According to the FTC, Adobe knew that canceling…
Apple abruptly abandons “buy now, pay later” service amid regulatory scrutiny
Apple has abruptly discontinued its “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) service, Apple Pay Later, which turned Apple into a money lender when it launched last March in the US and became widely available in October. The service previously allowed users…
T-Mobile defends misleading “Price Lock” claim but agrees to change ads
Getty Images | SOPA Images T-Mobile has agreed to change its advertising for the “Price Lock” guarantee that doesn’t actually lock in a customer’s price, but continues to defend the offer. T-Mobile users expressed their displeasure about being hit with…
Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Pornhub will soon be blocked in five more states as the adult site continues to fight what it considers privacy-infringing age-verification laws that require Internet users to provide an ID to access pornography. On July…
Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win
As a result of book publishers successfully suing the Internet Archive (IA) last year, the free online library that strives to keep growing online access to books recently shrank by about 500,000 titles. IA reported in a blog post this…
AT&T can’t hang up on landline phone customers, California agency rules
Getty Images | Joe Raedle The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) yesterday rejected AT&T’s request to end its landline phone obligations. The state agency also urged AT&T to upgrade copper facilities to fiber instead of trying to shut down the…
Citing national security, US will ban Kaspersky anti-virus software in July
The Biden administration will ban all sales of Kaspersky antivirus software in the US starting in July, according to reporting from Reuters and a filing from the US Department of Commerce (PDF). The US believes that security software made by…
Faulty firewall blocked 911 calls throughout Massachusetts for two hours
Getty Images | artas A 911 vendor’s malfunctioning firewall caused a statewide outage in the emergency calling system in Massachusetts on Tuesday afternoon, the state government said. A Massachusetts government press release issued yesterday said the state’s 911 vendor, Comtech,…
Elon Musk rushes to debut X payments as tech issues hamper creator payouts
Elon Musk is still frantically pushing to launch X payment services in the US by the end of 2024, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. Launching payment services is arguably one of the reasons why Musk paid so much to acquire Twitter in…
AT&T imposes $10 price hike on most of its older unlimited plans
AT&T is imposing $10 and $20 monthly price hikes on users of older unlimited wireless plans starting in August 2024, the company announced. The single-line price of these 10 “retired” plans will increase by $10 per month, while customers with…
Lawsuit: Meta engineer told to resign after calling out sexist hiring practices
Meta got hit Tuesday with a lawsuit alleging that the company knowingly overlooks sexist treatment of female employees. That includes an apparent practice of hiring and promoting less qualified men to roles over more qualified female applicants. The complaint was…
Apple set to be first Big Tech group to face charges under EU digital law
Getty Images | NurPhoto Brussels is set to charge Apple over allegedly stifling competition on its mobile app store, the first time EU regulators have used new digital rules to target a Big Tech group. The European Commission has determined…
Tesla investors sue Elon Musk for diverting carmaker’s resources to xAI
Getty Images | SOPA Images A group of Tesla investors yesterday sued Elon Musk, the company, and its board members, alleging that Tesla was harmed by Musk’s diversion of resources to his xAI venture. The diversion of resources includes hiring…
Apple punishes women for same behaviors that get men promoted, lawsuit says
Apple has spent years “intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately paying women less than men for substantially similar work,” a proposed class action lawsuit filed in California on Thursday alleged. A victory for women suing could mean that more than 12,000 current…
Meta halts plans to train AI on Facebook, Instagram posts in EU
Meta has apparently paused plans to process mounds of user data to bring new AI experiences to Europe. The decision comes after data regulators rebuffed the tech giant’s claims that it had “legitimate interests” in processing European Union- and European…
Apakah ada versi demo yang tersedia untuk game Pragmatis Mainkan Indonesia?
demo yang tersedia untuk game Pragmatis Mainkan Indonesia Pragmatic Play Indonesia telah berkecimpung di industri iGaming kurang dari 10 tahun, namun sudah menorehkan namanya sebagai salah satu penyedia software terbaik. Permainannya tersedia di kasino online teratas, dan produknya memiliki kualitas…
Microsoft in damage-control mode, says it will prioritize security over AI
Enlarge / Brad Smith, vice chairman and president of Microsoft, is sworn in before testifying about Microsoft’s cybersecurity work during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on June 13, 2024. Microsoft is pivoting…
Tesla shareholders re-approve Elon Musk’s $44.9 billion pay package
Getty Images | Bloomberg Tesla shareholders have re-approved CEO Elon Musk’s $44.9 billion pay package, the company announced today. “Our stockholders have approved the ratification of the 100 percent performance-based stock option award to Elon Musk that was approved by…
Elon Musk is livid about new OpenAI/Apple deal
Elon Musk is so opposed to Apple’s plan to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT with device operating systems that he’s seemingly spreading misconceptions while heavily criticizing the partnership. On X (formerly Twitter), Musk has been criticizing alleged privacy and security risks since…
Elon Musk drops claims that OpenAI abandoned mission
While Musk has spent much of today loudly criticizing the Apple/OpenAI deal, he also sought to drop his lawsuit against OpenAI, a court filing today showed. In the filing, Musk’s lawyer, Morgan Chu, notified the Superior Court of California in…
Musk’s X demands money from laid-off employees, claims they were overpaid
Getty Images | Kirill Kudryavtsev Elon Musk’s X Corp. is reportedly demanding money from at least six Australians who were laid off, saying the company accidentally overpaid them. The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that “X is threatening to take…
T-Mobile users thought they had a lifetime price lock—guess what happened next
Enlarge / T-Mobile logo above the Deutsche Telekom pavilion at Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona, Spain, on February 28, 2024. Getty Images | NurPhoto When T-Mobile announced price hikes of up to $5 per line on older smartphone plans…
Adobe to update vague AI terms after users threaten to cancel subscriptions
Adobe has promised to update its terms of service to make it “abundantly clear” that the company will “never” train generative AI on creators’ content after days of customer backlash, with some saying they would cancel Adobe subscriptions over its…
AI trained on photos from kids’ entire childhood without their consent
Photos of Brazilian kids—sometimes spanning their entire childhood—have been used without their consent to power AI tools, including popular image generators like Stable Diffusion, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Monday. This act poses urgent privacy risks to kids and…
ISPs ask FCC for tax on Big Tech to fund broadband networks and discounts
Internet service providers are again urging the Federal Communications Commission to impose new fees on Big Tech firms and use the money to subsidize broadband network deployment and affordability programs. If approved, the request would force Big Tech firms to…
Elon Musk’s X defeats Australia’s global takedown order of stabbing video
Australia’s safety regulator has ended a legal battle with X (formerly Twitter) after threatening approximately $500,000 daily fines for failing to remove 65 instances of a religiously motivated stabbing video from X globally. Enforcing Australia’s Online Safety Act, eSafety commissioner…
Top news app caught sharing “entirely false” AI-generated news
After the most downloaded local news app in the US, NewsBreak, shared an AI-generated story about a fake New Jersey shooting last Christmas Eve, New Jersey police had to post a statement online to reassure troubled citizens that the story…
Meta uses “dark patterns” to thwart AI opt-outs in EU, complaint says
The European Center for Digital Rights, known as Noyb, has filed complaints in 11 European countries to halt Meta’s plan to start training vague new AI technologies on European Union-based Facebook and Instagram users’ personal posts and pictures. Meta’s AI…
Google avoids jury trial by sending $2.3 million check to US government
Getty Images | Justin Sullivan Google has achieved its goal of avoiding a jury trial in one antitrust case after sending a $2.3 million check to the US Department of Justice. Google will face a bench trial, a trial conducted…
Tesla chair says Elon Musk needs $46 billion pay plan to stay motivated
Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks onstage at SXSW on March 11, 2018, in Austin, Texas. Getty Images | Diego Donamaria Tesla Board Chairperson Robyn Denholm urged shareholders to re-approve CEO Elon Musk’s $46 billion pay package this week, saying the…
FCC pushes ISPs to fix security flaws in Internet routing
Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino The Federal Communications Commission wants to verify that Internet service providers are strengthening their networks against attacks that take advantage of vulnerabilities in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The FCC today unanimously approved a Notice of…
US agencies to probe AI dominance of Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI
Enlarge / Nvidia logo at Impact 2024 event in Poznan, Poland on May 16, 2024. Getty Images | NurPhoto The US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reportedly plan investigations into whether Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI are snuffing out competition…
T-Mobile hopes you’ll buy $30 “Home Internet Backup” for when cable goes out
Enlarge / T-Mobile logo exhibited during Mobile World Congress on February 28, 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. Getty Images | NurPhoto / T-Mobile is hoping that home Internet customers who suffer from frequent service outages will pay $30 a month for…
Canada demands 5% of revenue from Netflix, Spotify, and other streamers
Getty Images | NurPhoto / Canada has ordered large online streaming services to pay 5 percent of their Canadian revenue to the government in a program expected to raise $200 million per year to support local news and other home-grown…
ISPs seek halt of net neutrality rules before they take effect next month
Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino As expected, broadband industry lobby groups have sued the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to nullify net neutrality rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Lobby groups representing cable, telecom, and mobile Internet…
GameStop stock influencer Roaring Kitty may lose access to E-Trade, report says
Enlarge / Keith Gill, known on Reddit under the pseudonym DeepFuckingValue and as Roaring Kitty, is seen on a fragment of a YouTube video. E-Trade is apparently struggling to balance the risks and rewards of allowing Keith Gill to continue…
Butts, breasts, and genitals now explicitly allowed on Elon Musk’s X
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Adult content has always proliferated on Twitter, but the platform now called X recently clarified its policy to officially allow “consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior.” X’s rules seem simple. As long…
Lawsuit argues Call of Duty helped cause the Uvalde school shooting
Enlarge / Is this an aspirational image for mass shooters? The families of multiple victims of the 2022 mass shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School are suing Activision in a California civil court, alleging that the company’s Call of Duty…
NYT targets Street View Worldle game in fight to wipe out Wordle clones
The New York Times is fighting to take down a game called Worldle, according to a legal filing viewed by the BBC, in which The Times apparently argued that the geography-based game is “creating confusion” by using a name that’s…
TikTok vaguely disputes report that it’s making a US-only app
TikTok is now disputing a Reuters report that claims the short-video app is cloning its algorithm to potentially offer a different version of the app, which might degrade over time, just for US users. Sources “with direct knowledge” of the…
Musk can’t avoid testifying in SEC probe of Twitter buyout by playing victim
After months of loudly protesting a subpoena, Elon Musk has once again agreed to testify in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into his acquisition of Twitter (now called X). Musk tried to avoid testifying by arguing that the…
Washing machine chime scandal shows how absurd YouTube copyright abuse can get
YouTube’s Content ID system—which automatically detects content registered by rightsholders—is “completely fucking broken,” a YouTuber called “Albino” declared in a rant on X (formerly Twitter) viewed more than 950,000 times. Albino, who is also a popular Twitch streamer, complained that…
Amazon execs may be personally liable for tricking users into Prime sign-ups
Yesterday, Amazon failed to convince a US district court to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit targeting the tech giant’s alleged history of tricking people into signing up for Prime. The FTC has alleged that Amazon “tricked, coerced, and manipulated…
Google accused of secretly tracking drivers with disabilities
Google needs to pump the brakes when it comes to tracking sensitive information shared with DMV sites, a new lawsuit suggests. Filing a proposed class-action suit in California, Katherine Wilson has accused Google of using Google Analytics and DoubleClick trackers…
Nvidia denies pirate e-book sites are “shadow libraries” to shut down lawsuit
Some of the most infamous so-called shadow libraries have increasingly faced legal pressure to either stop pirating books or risk being shut down or driven to the dark web. Among the biggest targets are Z-Library, which the US Department of…
Municipal broadband advocates fight off attacks from “dark money” groups
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Cities and towns that build their own broadband networks often say they only considered the do-it-yourself option because private Internet service providers didn’t meet their communities’ needs. When a cable or phone company’s Internet service…
Tesla shareholder group opposes Musk’s $46B pay, slams board “dysfunction”
Aurich Lawson / Duncan Hull / Getty A Tesla shareholder group yesterday urged other shareholders to vote against Elon Musk’s $46 billion pay package, saying the Tesla board is dysfunctional and “overly beholden to CEO Musk.” The group’s letter also…
Investigation shows how easy it is to find escorts, oxycodone on Eventbrite
This June, approximately 150 motorcycles will thunder down Route 9W in Saugerties, New York, for Ryan’s Ride for Recovery. Organized by Vince Kelder and his family, the barbecue and raffle will raise money to support their sober-living facility and honor…
US sues Ticketmaster and owner Live Nation, seeks breakup of monopoly
Enlarge / Ticketmaster advertisements in the United States v. South Africa women’s soccer match at Soldier Field on September 24, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. Getty Images | Daniel Bartel/ISI Photos/USSF The US government today sued Live Nation and its Ticketmaster…
OpenAI ends harsh non-disparagement agreements that could claw back millions
Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Former and current OpenAI employees received a memo this week that the AI company hopes to end the most embarrassing scandal that Sam Altman has ever faced as OpenAI’s CEO. The memo finally clarified…
Biden’s new import rules will hit e-bike batteries too
Last week, the Biden administration announced it would levy dramatic new tariffs on electric vehicles, electric vehicle batteries, and battery components imported into the United States from China. The move kicked off another round of global debate on how best…
Another US state repeals law that protected ISPs from municipal competition
Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino Minnesota this week eliminated two laws that made it harder for cities and towns to build their own broadband networks. The state-imposed restrictions were repealed in an omnibus commerce policy bill signed on Tuesday by…
Democratic consultant indicted for Biden deepfake that told people not to vote
Enlarge / President Joe Biden at a Rose Garden event at the White House on May 1, 2023, in Washington, DC. Getty Images | Alex Wong A Democratic consultant was indicted on charges of voter suppression and impersonation of a…
Sky voice actor says nobody ever compared her to ScarJo before OpenAI drama
Enlarge / Scarlett Johansson attends the Golden Heart Awards in 2023. OpenAI is sticking to its story that it never intended to copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice when seeking an actor for ChatGPT’s “Sky” voice mode. The company provided The Washington…
T-Mobile imposes $5 monthly price hike on customers using older plans
Enlarge / A T-Mobile logo at a store in New York on April 30, 2018. T-Mobile today is notifying customers on some older smartphone plans that their monthly prices will soon be increased by either $2 or $5. T-Mobile confirmed…
Lawmakers say Section 230 repeal will protect children—opponents predict chaos
Enlarge / US Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.), right, speaks as House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) looks on during a hearing about TikTok on Thursday, March 23, 2023. Getty Images | Tom Williams A proposed repeal of…
Google sends DOJ unexpected check in attempt to avoid monopoly jury trial
Last week, Google sent a cashier’s check to the US government that it claimed in a court filing covers “every dollar the United States could conceivably hope to recover” in damages during the Google adtech monopoly trial scheduled to start…
“CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM,” DOJ says after rare arrest
The US Department of Justice has started cracking down on the use of AI image generators to produce child sexual abuse materials (CSAM). On Monday, the DOJ arrested Steven Anderegg, a 42-year-old “extremely technologically savvy” Wisconsin man who allegedly used…
23-year-old man accused of running $100 million online narcotics marketplace
ullstein bild / Getty Images News Federal authorities have arrested a 23-year-old Taiwanese national and charged him with running an online market that sold $100 million worth of illicit narcotics, including fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, LSD, and ketamine. The authorities…
Feds probe Waymo driverless cars hitting parked cars, drifting into traffic
Enlarge / A Waymo self-driving car in downtown San Francisco on Bush and Sansome Streets as it drives and transports passengers. Crashing into parked cars, drifting over into oncoming traffic, intruding into construction zones—all this “unexpected behavior” from Waymo’s self-driving…
AT&T paid bribes to get two major pieces of legislation passed, US gov’t says
The US government has provided more detail on how a former AT&T executive allegedly bribed a powerful state lawmaker’s ally in order to obtain legislation favorable to AT&T’s business. Former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza is set to go…
Concerns over addicted kids spur probe into Meta and its use of dark patterns
Getty Images | Chesnot Brussels has opened an in-depth probe into Meta over concerns it is failing to do enough to protect children from becoming addicted to social media platforms such as Instagram. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm,…
Tesla must face fraud suit for claiming its cars could fully drive themselves
Getty Images | SOPA Images A federal judge ruled yesterday that Tesla must face a lawsuit alleging that it committed fraud by misrepresenting the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles. California resident Thomas LoSavio’s lawsuit points to claims made by Tesla…
Slack users horrified to discover messages used for AI training
After launching Slack AI in February, Slack appears to be digging its heels in, defending its vague policy that by default sucks up customers’ data—including messages, content, and files—to train Slack’s global AI models. According to Slack engineer Aaron Maurer,…
Financial institutions have 30 days to disclose breaches under new rules
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will require some financial institutions to disclose security breaches within 30 days of learning about them. On Wednesday, the SEC adopted changes to Regulation S-P, which governs the treatment of the personal information of…
Twitter URLs redirect to x.com as Musk gets closer to killing the Twitter name
Getty Images | Kirill Kudryavtsev Twitter.com links are now redirecting to the x.com domain as Elon Musk gets closer to wiping out the Twitter brand name over a year and half after buying the company. “All core systems are now…
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban
Enlarge / Screenshot from the documentary Who Is Bobby Kennedy? In a lawsuit that seems determined to ignore that Section 230 exists, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sued Meta for allegedly shadowbanning his million-dollar documentary, Who Is Bobby Kennedy? and…
Bumble apologizes for ads shaming women into sex
For the past decade, the dating app Bumble has claimed to be all about empowering women. But under a new CEO, Lidiane Jones, Bumble is now apologizing for a tone-deaf ad campaign that many users said seemed to channel incel…
MIT students stole $25M in seconds by exploiting ETH blockchain bug, DOJ says
Within approximately 12 seconds, two highly educated brothers allegedly stole $25 million by tampering with the ethereum blockchain in a never-before-seen cryptocurrency scheme, according to an indictment that the US Department of Justice unsealed Wednesday. In a DOJ press release,…
DOJ says Boeing faces criminal charge for violating deal over 737 Max crashes
Enlarge / Relatives hold a poster with faces of the victims of Ethiopia flight 302 outside a courthouse in Fort Worth, Texas, on January 26, 2023. Getty Images | Shelby Tauber The US Department of Justice yesterday said it has…
Downranking won’t stop Google’s deepfake porn problem, victims say
After backlash over Google’s search engine becoming the primary traffic source for deepfake porn websites, Google has started burying these links in search results, Bloomberg reported. Over the past year, Google has been driving millions to controversial sites distributing AI-generated…
Report: Microsoft to face antitrust case over Teams
Microsoft Brussels is set to issue new antitrust charges against Microsoft over concerns that the software giant is undermining rivals to its videoconferencing app Teams. According to three people with knowledge of the move, the European Commission is pressing ahead…
AT&T loses key ruling in attempt to escape Carrier-of-Last-Resort obligation
Getty Images | Joe Raedle AT&T’s application to end its landline phone obligations in California is likely to be rejected by state officials following protest from residents worried about losing access to phone lines. An administrative law judge at the…
Elon Musk’s X dodges Australian order to remove church stabbing video
An Australian federal court sided with Elon Musk on Monday, rejecting an Australian safety regulator’s request to extend a temporary order blocking a terrorist attack video from spreading on Musk’s platform X (formerly Twitter). The video showed a teen stabbing…
TikTok and its Chinese owner sue US government over “foreign adversary” law
Getty Images | Chesnot TikTok and its owner ByteDance today sued the federal government to block the “Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications” law that would prohibit TikTok in the US if the company isn’t sold to a non-Chinese firm. The complaint…
Oil companies may soon have to pay for Vermont’s climate recovery
Enlarge / Ripton, VT – July 16, 2023: Ethan Poploski stood in front of his family’s home, which had been destroyed by a landslide overnight. Vermont may soon become the first state to force fossil fuel companies to pay their…
US Cellular is for sale, reportedly could be “carved up” by major carriers
Getty Images | SOPA Images T-Mobile is reportedly close to buying a portion of the regional carrier US Cellular, while Verizon has also held talks about buying some of US Cellular’s assets. “T-Mobile is closing in on a deal to…
Big Three carriers pay $10M to settle claims of false “unlimited” advertising
Verizon T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T will pay a combined $10.2 million in a settlement with US states that alleged the carriers falsely advertised wireless plans as “unlimited” and phones as “free.” The deal was announced yesterday by New York Attorney…
Elon Musk’s X can’t invent its own copyright law, judge says
A US district judge William Alsup has dismissed Elon Musk’s X Corp’s lawsuit against Bright Data, a data-scraping company accused of improperly accessing X (formerly Twitter) systems and violating both X terms and state laws when scraping and selling data….
Studio: Takedown notice for 15-year-old fan-made Hunt for Gollum was a mistake
Enlarge / WETA “Gollum” figure at Arclight at the opening of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” A day after announcing that the tentatively titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum was scheduled for…
Leaked FBI email stresses need for warrantless surveillance of Americans
Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino A Federal Bureau of Investigation official recently urged employees to “look for ways” to conduct warrantless surveillance on US residents, an internal email obtained by Wired shows. FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate’s email was reportedly sent…
Professor sues Meta to allow release of feed-killing tool for Facebook
themotioncloud/Getty Images Ethan Zuckerman wants to release a tool that would allow Facebook users to control what appears in their newsfeeds. His privacy-friendly browser extension, Unfollow Everything 2.0, is designed to essentially give users a switch to turn the newsfeed…
FCC explicitly prohibits fast lanes, closing possible net neutrality loophole
Getty Images | nadla The Federal Communications Commission clarified its net neutrality rules to prohibit more kinds of fast lanes. While the FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules on April 25, it didn’t release the final text of the…
Microsoft launches AI chatbot for spies
Microsoft has introduced a GPT-4-based generative AI model designed specifically for US intelligence agencies that operates disconnected from the Internet, according to a Bloomberg report. This reportedly marks the first time Microsoft has deployed a major language model in a…
OpenAI’s flawed plan to flag deepfakes ahead of 2024 elections
As the US moves toward criminalizing deepfakes—deceptive AI-generated audio, images, and videos that are increasingly hard to discern from authentic content online—tech companies have rushed to roll out tools to help everyone better detect AI content. But efforts so far…
SEC crypto crackdown continues with Robinhood as lawsuit looms
Continuing its crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may potentially sue Robinhood Markets over securities violations alleged in the popular investing app’s crypto unit, Robinhood Crypto said Monday. In a recent SEC filing, Robinhood Markets Chief…
Telcos keep using “insecure” Chinese gear because of congressional inaction
Getty Images | NurPhoto The US government has pressured telcos to rip out network gear made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE but has allocated only about 38 percent of the money needed to replace equipment with non-Chinese hardware, the…
FTC fines Razer for every cent made selling bogus “N95 grade” RGB masks
Razer The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced this week a proposed settlement [PDF] against Razer that would see the tech company pay $1,171,254.33 for its misleading claims about the Zephyr RGB face mask. Razer marketed the device as offering capabilities…
How Do Employment Lawyers Toronto Charge For Your Legal Services?
Employment Lawyers Toronto Charge For Your Legal Services The costs of legal services can be a source of frustration and confusion for many Ontario consumers. Lawyers charge for their services in a number of ways, including an Hourly Rate or…
Binance’s billionaire founder gets 4 months for violating money laundering law
Enlarge / Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao arrives at federal court in Seattle for sentencing on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Getty Images | Changpeng Zhao Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was sentenced today to four months in prison after pleading guilty…
Supreme Court decides not to block Texas law that age-gates porn websites
Getty Images | PA Thompson The US Supreme Court yesterday denied a request to block a Texas law that requires age-verification systems on porn websites. The Supreme Court denial leaves in place, at least for now, an appeals court ruling…
Apple deal could have been “suicide” for Google, company lawyer says
Enlarge / John Schmidtlein, partner at Williams & Connolly LLP and lead litigator for Alphabet Inc.’s Google, arrives to federal court in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Oct. 2, 2023. Halfway through the first day of closing arguments in the…
Google tells court it shouldn’t have to distribute third-party app stores
Getty Images | Kirill Kudryavtsev Google urged a federal court to reject Epic Games’ request for an injunction that would reduce Google’s control of the Android app distribution and in-app payment markets. “Rather than a judicial injunction against alleged violations…
Judge mulls sanctions over Google’s “shocking” destruction of internal chats
Enlarge / Kenneth Dintzer, litigator for the US Department of Justice, exits federal court in Washington, DC, on September 20, 2023, during the antitrust trial to determine if Alphabet Inc.’s Google maintains a monopoly in the online search business. Near…
Over 100 far-right militias are coordinating on Facebook
“Join Your Local Militia or III% Patriot Group,” a post urged the more than 650 members of a Facebook group called the Free American Army. Accompanied by the logo for the Three Percenters militia network and an image of a…
AT&T announces $7 monthly add-on fee for “Turbo” 5G speeds
Getty Images | Bloomberg AT&T is now charging mobile customers an extra $7 per month for faster wireless data speeds. AT&T says the Turbo add-on, available starting today, is “built to support high-performance mobile applications, like gaming, social video broadcasting…
Email Microsoft didn’t want seen reveals rushed decision to invest in OpenAI
In mid-June 2019, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella received a rude awakening in an email warning that Google had officially gotten too far ahead on AI and that Microsoft may never catch up without investing in OpenAI….
Congress lets broadband funding run out, ending $30 low-income discounts
Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino The Federal Communications Commission chair today made a final plea to Congress, asking for money to continue a broadband-affordability program that gave out its last round of $30 discounts to people with low incomes in…
CenturyLink left users with no service for two months, then billed them $239
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Telecom provider CenturyLink left a couple in Oregon without landline phone service for two months, then sent a bill for $239. CenturyLink customer Kirstin Appel and her husband live in Banks, a city with fewer…
DEA to reclassify marijuana as a lower-risk drug, reports say
Enlarge / Medical marijuana growing in a facility in Canada. The US Drug Enforcement Administration is preparing to reclassify marijuana to a lower-risk drug category, a major federal policy change that is in line with recommendations from the US health…
FCC fines big three carriers $196M for selling users’ real-time location data
Getty Images | SOPA Images The Federal Communications Commission today said it fined T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon $196 million “for illegally sharing access to customers’ location information without consent and without taking reasonable measures to protect that information against unauthorized…
Critics question tech-heavy lineup of new Homeland Security AI safety board
On Friday, the US Department of Homeland Security announced the formation of an Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board that consists of 22 members pulled from the tech industry, government, academia, and civil rights organizations. But given the nebulous nature…
Elon Musk loses at Supreme Court in case over “funding secured” tweets
Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks at the Satellite Conference and Exhibition on March 9, 2020 in Washington, DC. Getty Images | Win McNamee The US Supreme Court today rejected Elon Musk’s attempt to terminate his settlement with the Securities and…
Chamber of Commerce sues FTC in Texas, asks court to block ban on noncompetes
Getty Images | eccolo74 The US Chamber of Commerce and other business groups sued the Federal Trade Commission and FTC Chair Lina Khan today in an attempt to block a newly issued ban on noncompete clauses. The lawsuit was filed…
In the face of bans, ByteDance tightens grip over US TikTok operations
FT/Getty Images TikTok’s Beijing-based owner ByteDance tightened its grip over its US operations over the past two years, according to company insiders, even as momentum to ban the short-video app grew in Washington. The US government passed legislation this week…
TikTok owner has strong First Amendment case against US ban, professors say
Getty Images | NurPhoto TikTok owner ByteDance is preparing to sue the US government now that President Biden has signed into law a bill that will ban TikTok in the US if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell the company within…
Message-scraping, user-tracking service Spy Pet shut down by Discord
Discord Spy Pet, a service that sold access to a rich database of allegedly more than 3 billion Discord messages and details on more than 600 million users, has seemingly been shut down. 404 Media, which broke the story of…
Court upholds New York law that says ISPs must offer $15 broadband
Getty Images | Creativeye99 A federal appeals court today reversed a ruling that prevented New York from enforcing a law requiring Internet service providers to sell $15 broadband plans to low-income consumers. The ruling is a loss for six trade…
EPA issues four rules limiting pollution from fossil fuel power plants
Today, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced a suite of rules that target pollution from fossil fuel power plants. In addition to limits on carbon emissions and a tightening of existing regulations on mercury releases, additional rules target coal ash…
FCC restores net neutrality rules that ban blocking and throttling in 3-2 vote
Enlarge / Federal Communication Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, then a commissioner, rallies against repeal of net neutrality rules in December 2017. Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla The Federal Communications Commission voted 3–2 to impose net neutrality rules today, restoring the…
School athletic director arrested for framing principal using AI voice synthesis
On Thursday, Baltimore County Police arrested Pikesville High School’s former athletic director, Dazhon Darien, and charged him with using AI to impersonate Principal Eric Eiswert, according to a report by The Baltimore Banner. Police say Darien used AI voice synthesis…
Deepfakes in the courtroom: US judicial panel debates new AI evidence rules
On Friday, a federal judicial panel convened in Washington, DC, to discuss the challenges of policing AI-generated evidence in court trials, according to a Reuters report. The US Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, an eight-member panel responsible for…
Grindr users seek payouts after dating app shared HIV status with vendors
Getty Images | Thomas Trutschel Grindr is facing a class action lawsuit from hundreds of users over the sharing of HIV statuses and other sensitive personal information with third-party firms. UK law firm Austen Hays filed the claim in the…
FTC bans noncompete clauses, declares vast majority unenforceable
Enlarge / Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan talks with guests during an event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 03, 2024 Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced that it has issued…
North Korea is evading sanctions by animating Max and Amazon shows
Aurich Lawson / Getty For almost a decade, Nick Roy has been scanning North Korea’s tiny Internet presence, spotting new websites coming online and providing a glimpse of the Hermit Kingdoms’ digital life. However, at the end of last year,…
Biden signs bill criticized as “major expansion of warrantless surveillance”
Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino Congress passed and President Biden signed a reauthorization of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), approving a bill that opponents say includes a “major expansion of warrantless surveillance” under Section 702 of…
TikTok ready to “move to the courts” to prevent ban in US
TikTok is gearing up for a long legal battle to fight legislation in the US that threatens to ban the app in its largest market if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, refuses to sell the viral video platform. The US House…
Crypto influencer guilty of $110M scheme that shut down Mango Markets
A jury has unanimously convicted Avi Eisenberg in the US Department of Justice’s first case involving cryptocurrency open-market manipulation, the DOJ announced Thursday. The jury found Eisenberg guilty of commodities fraud, commodities market manipulation, and wire fraud in connection with…
China orders Apple to remove Meta apps after “inflammatory” posts about president
Enlarge / An Apple Store in Shanghai, China, on April 11, 2024. CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images Apple said it complied with orders from the Chinese government to remove the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China….
Netflix doc accused of using AI to manipulate true crime story
Enlarge / A cropped image showing Raw TV’s poster for the Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did, which features a long front tooth that leads critics to believe it was AI-generated. An executive producer of the Netflix hit What Jennifer Did…
Author granted copyright over book with AI-generated text—with a twist
Getty Images Last October, I received an email with a hell of an opening line: “I fired a nuke at the US Copyright Office this morning.” The message was from Elisa Shupe, a 60-year-old retired US Army veteran who had…
Feds appoint “AI doomer” to run AI safety at US institute
The US AI Safety Institute—part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—has finally announced its leadership team after much speculation. Appointed as head of AI safety is Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI researcher who pioneered a foundational AI…
So much for free speech on X; Musk confirms new users must soon pay to post
Elon Musk confirmed Monday that X (formerly Twitter) plans to start charging new users to post on the platform, TechCrunch reported. “Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of…
ISPs can charge extra for fast gaming under FCC’s Internet rules, critics say
Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino Some net neutrality proponents are worried that soon-to-be-approved Federal Communications Commission rules will allow harmful fast lanes because the plan doesn’t explicitly ban “positive” discrimination. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s proposed rules for Internet service providers…
Judge halts Texas probe into Media Matters’ reporting on X
Enlarge / Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting on February 23, 2024. A judge has preliminarily blocked what Media Matters for America (MMFA) described as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to…
US woman arrested, accused of targeting young boys in $1.7M sextortion scheme
A 28-year-old Delaware woman, Hadja Kone, was arrested after cops linked her to an international sextortion scheme targeting thousands of victims—mostly young men and including some minors, the US Department of Justice announced Friday. Citing a recently unsealed indictment, the…
Report details how Russia obtains Starlink terminals for war in Ukraine
Enlarge / A Starlink terminal at the Everything Electric London conference on March 28, 2024 in England. Getty Images | John Keeble A report published today describes how Russia obtained Starlink terminals for its war in Ukraine despite US sanctions…
Report: People are bailing on Safari after DMA makes changing defaults easier
Smaller web browsers are gaining traction in the European Union after the Digital Markets Act (DMA) started requiring designated gatekeepers like Google and Apple to make it easier to switch default web browsers on devices. Previously, tech giants were able…
Movie industry demands US law requiring ISPs to block piracy websites
Enlarge / Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin speaks onstage during CinemaCon, a convention of the National Association of Theatre Owners, at Caesars Palace on April 9, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Getty Images | Jerod Harris Motion Picture Association…
More legal acrimony for Truth Social, as executive says he was hacked
A board member of Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, has been accused of hacking one of the executives who helped bring the firm public as part of a corporate coup attempt, according to a lawsuit filed…
Elon Musk’s X to stop allowing users to hide their blue checks
X will soon stop allowing users to hide their blue checkmarks, and some users are not happy. Previously, a blue tick on Twitter was a mark of a notable account, providing some assurance to followers of the account’s authenticity. But…
Google mocks Epic’s proposed reforms to end Android app market monopoly
Epic Games has filed a proposed injunction that would stop Google from restricting third-party app distribution outside Google Play Store on Android devices after proving that Google had an illegal monopoly in markets for Android app distribution. Epic is suggesting…
Elon Musk X botched an attempt to replace “twitter.com” links with “x.com”
Enlarge / An X sign at company headquarters in San Francisco. Getty Images | Bloomberg Elon Musk’s clumsy brand shift from Twitter to X caused a potentially big problem this week when the social network started automatically changing “twitter.com” to…
What You Need To Know About Severance Pay
Severance Pay Whether it’s a layoff or simply a company downsizing, firing employees is an unpleasant part of business. Some employers, however, choose to provide severance pay (also called retiring allowance) to departing workers in order to soften the blow…
US lawmaker proposes a public database of all AI training material
Amid a flurry of lawsuits over AI models’ training data, US Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill that would require AI companies to disclose exactly which copyrighted works are included in datasets training AI systems. The Generative AI…
EPA’s PFAS rules: We’d prefer zero, but we’ll accept 4 parts per trillion
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it has finalized rules for handling water supplies that are contaminated by a large family of chemicals collectively termed PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances). Commonly called “forever chemicals,” these contaminants have been linked…
Starting today, ISPs must display labels with price, speeds, and data caps
Getty Images | Smith Collection/Gado Enlarge / A sample consumer label for home Internet service. FCC Starting today, home Internet and mobile broadband providers in the US are required to display consumer labels with information on prices, speeds, and data…
EPA seeks to cut “Cancer Alley” pollutants
Enlarge / An oil refinery in Louisiana. Facilities such as this have led to a proliferation of petrochemical plants in the area. On Tuesday, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced new rules that are intended to cut emissions of two…
Elon Musk denies knowing who’s suing him to dodge defamation suit
After Elon Musk was accused of defaming Ben Brody—a 22-year-old Jewish man falsely linked to a neo-Nazi brawl in tweets that Musk responded to last year—the owner of X (formerly Twitter) sat for a heated Zoom deposition where he repeatedly…
After pushing cloud storage, TV provider to auto-delete 61-day-old DVR recordings
Canadian telecom Bell Canada has been pushing its cloud-based DVR service to its Fibe TV subscribers for years. While it has given customers advantages, like the ability to view their recordings from more devices, such as phones, compared to using…
FCC chair rejects call to impose Universal Service fees on broadband
Getty Images | BernardaSv The Federal Communications Commission chair decided not to impose Universal Service fees on Internet service, rejecting arguments for new assessments to shore up an FCC fund that subsidizes broadband network expansions and provides discounts to low-income…
Elon Musk threatens to disobey court order over banned profiles
Brazil’s attorney general has demanded “urgent regulation” of social media sites after Elon Musk threatened to disobey a court order banning certain profiles on his X platform and after he called for a Supreme Court justice to “resign or be…
“Pink slime” local news outlets erupt all over US as election nears
Enlarge / Chicago City Wire is a hyper-partisan website masquerading as an outlet that does journalism. FT Montage The number of partisan news outlets in the US masquerading as legitimate journalism now equals genuine local newspaper sites, researchers say, as…
Publisher: OpenAI’s GPT Store bots are illegally scraping our textbooks
For the past few months, Morten Blichfeldt Andersen has spent many hours scouring OpenAI’s GPT Store. Since it launched in January, the marketplace for bespoke bots has filled up with a deep bench of useful and sometimes quirky AI tools….
Meta relaxes “incoherent” policy requiring removal of AI videos
On Friday, Meta announced policy updates to stop censoring harmless AI-generated content and instead begin “labeling a wider range of video, audio, and image content as ‘Made with AI.’” Meta’s policy updates came after deciding not to remove a controversial…
Claims of TikTok whistleblower may not add up
The United States government is currently poised to outlaw TikTok. Little of the evidence that convinced Congress the app may be a national security threat has been shared publicly, in some cases because it remains classified. But one former TikTok…
FCC won’t block California net neutrality law, says states can “experiment”
Getty Images | Matt Anderson Photography California can keep enforcing its state net neutrality law after the Federal Communications Commission implements its own rules. The FCC could preempt future state laws if they go far beyond the national standard but…
Google sues two crypto app makers over allegedly vast “pig butchering” scheme
Google has sued two app developers based in China over an alleged scheme targeting 100,000 users globally over four years with at least 87 fraudulent cryptocurrency and other investor apps distributed through the Play Store. The tech giant alleged that…
Elon Musk shares “extremely false” allegation of voting fraud by “illegals”
Getty Images | Nathan Stirk Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson yesterday issued a statement debunking claims of widespread voter fraud that were amplified by X owner Elon Musk on the social network formerly named Twitter. Election officials in two…
Cable lobby vows “years of litigation” to avoid bans on blocking and throttling
Enlarge / FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at a spectrum policy event at the National Press Club on Monday, September 19, 2022. Getty Images | CQ Roll Call/Tom Williams The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore…
Man pleads guilty to stealing former coworker’s identity for 30 years
A high-level Iowa hospital systems administrator, Matthew Kierans, has admitted to stealing a coworker’s identity and posing as William Donald Woods for more than 30 years, The Register reported. On top of using Woods’ identity to commit crimes and rack…
Apple wouldn’t let Jon Stewart interview FTC Chair Lina Khan, TV host claims
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s interview with FTC Chair Lina Khan. The conversation about Apple begins around 16:30 in the video. Before the cancellation of The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+, Apple forbade the inclusion of Federal…
X filing “thermonuclear lawsuit” in Texas should be “fatal,” Media Matters says
Ever since Elon Musk’s X Corp sued Media Matters for America (MMFA) over a pair of reports that X (formerly Twitter) claims caused an advertiser exodus in 2023, one big question has remained for onlookers: Why is this fight happening…
AT&T acknowledges data leak that hit 73 million current and former users
Getty Images | VIEW press AT&T reset passcodes for millions of customers after acknowledging a massive leak involving the data of 73 million current and former subscribers. “Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019…
Google agrees to delete Incognito data despite prior claim that’s “impossible”
To settle a class-action dispute over Chrome’s “Incognito” mode, Google has agreed to delete billions of data records reflecting users’ private browsing activities. In a statement provided to Ars, users’ lawyer, David Boies, described the settlement as “a historic step…
Apple, Google, and Meta are failing DMA compliance, EU suspects
Enlarge / EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton talks to media about non-compliance investigations against Google, Apple, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Not even three weeks after the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) took effect,…
Florida braces for lawsuits over law banning kids from social media
On Monday, Florida became the first state to ban kids under 14 from social media without parental permission. It appears likely that the law—considered one of the most restrictive in the US—will face significant legal challenges, however, before taking effect…
Pornhub could block Florida if child safety law takes effect
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images This week, Florida made headlines after passing HB 3, a law banning children under 14 from accessing social media without parental consent. Much less attention was given to another requirement under the law obligating “pornographic…
After overreaching TOS angers users, cloud provider Vultr backs off
After backlash, the cloud provider Vultr has updated its terms to remove a clause that a Reddit user feared required customers to “fork over rights” to “anything” hosted on its platform. The alarming clause seemed to grant Vultr a “non-exclusive,…
Jails banned visits in “quid pro quo” with prison phone companies, lawsuits say
Getty Images | Charles O’Rear Two lawsuits filed by a civil rights group allege that county jails in Michigan banned in-person visits in order to maximize revenue from voice and video calls as part of a “quid pro quo kickback…