Technology

Google Settles $5B Lawsuit Over “Incognito” Browser

Business Insider reports: On Thursday, Google agreed to settle a $5 billion class-action privacy lawsuit alleging that it spied on people who used the “incognito” mode in its Chrome browser to track their internet use. The lawsuit filed in 2020 claimed Google misled users into believing that it wouldn’t track their internet activities while using incognito mode. The suit argued …

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India Targets Apple For Warning About Govt Hacking

The Washington Post reports: A day after Apple warned independent Indian journalists and opposition party politicians in October that government hackers may have tried to break into their iPhones, officials under Prime Minister Narendra Modi promptly took action — against Apple. Officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) publicly questioned whether the Silicon Valley company’s internal threat algorithms were …

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Apple Wins Reprieve On US Ban On Smart Watch Sales

Yahoo Finance reports: Apple can for now resume sales of its flagship smartwatches, after a U.S. appeals court on Wednesday paused a government commission’s import ban on the devices imposed in a patent dispute over its medical monitoring technology. The tech giant had filed an emergency request asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to halt an …

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NYT Sues OpenAI And Microsoft Over Copyright Issues

The New York Times reports: The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies. The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular …

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Apple Files Emergency Appeal Over Watch Sales Ban

Axios reports: Apple filed an appeal Tuesday to the International Trade Commission’s decision to ban U.S. sales of Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 models. The emergency request came after the U.S. trade representative’s office said in a statement that it has declined to overturn the ban, which has now gone into effect. Masimo, a medical device company, claims …

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Biden Admin Declines To Veto Apple Watch Sales Ban

Reuters reports: Apple Watch import and sales to the U.S. are banned effective today after the Biden’s administration declined to veto a decision by the International Trade Commission. The ITC determined earlier this year that Apple uses a blood oxygen technology that infringes on patents held by Masimo. The government could have vetoed the ITC decision by December 25. The …

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NASA Streams Cat Video From 19 Million Miles Away

Mashable reports: NASA has a lot on its plate, between staring at strange things on Uranus, monitoring solar flares, investigating Enceladus, visualising Mars’ wet past, probing dead stars, recovering space rock, figuring out what’s going on with Voyager, and generally preparing to get humans on the moon. But there’s always time for a cat video,  On Monday, NASA announced it …

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Phone Carriers: Xmas Is The Busiest Day For Texting

Axios reports: Americans send and receive more text messages on Christmas than any other day of the year, according to wireless carrier data shared with Axios. AT&T’s busiest day last year was Christmas. Group messages and photo or video messages were especially popular. It’s also the busiest day for T-Mobile, whose network saw 3 billion messages last year. Read the …

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Latest Tesla Recall: Doors Unlocking During Crash

Reuter reports: Tesla is recalling 120,423 vehicles in the U.S. over the risk of cabin doors being unlocked during a crash, the country’s road safety regulator said on Friday, days after announcing another recall by the electric-vehicle maker. Tesla recalled over 2 million vehicles in the U.S. last week, its largest ever recall, covering nearly all of its vehicles on …

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Bloomberg: Musk’s Hyperloop One Is Shutting Down

Bloomberg News reports: Hyperloop One, the futuristic transportation company building tube-encased lines to zip passengers and freight from city to city at airplane-like speeds, is shutting down. The company had captured the public’s imagination since its founding in 2014, a year after Elon Musk released a white paper outlining a vision for hyperloop technology. The concept was a tantalizing promise …

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Apple Halts Sales Of Apple Watches In Patent Dispute

CNET reports: Apple will pause sales of its Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches in the US this month as the result of an ongoing legal battle with health tech company Masimo. The US International Trade Commission, the federal agency that handles trade-related mandates, previously issued an order that would prohibit Apple from importing the Series 9 and …

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Wikipedia’s Most Searched Topic For 2023: ChatGPT

The Associated Press reports: English Wikipedia raked in more than 84 billion views this year, according to numbers released Tuesday by the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit behind the free, publicly edited online encyclopedia. And the most popular article was about ChatGPT (yes, the AI chatbot that’s seemingly everywhere today). The second most-read article on Wikipedia in 2023 was the annual …

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UK May Require “AI Face Scan” To View Online Porn

Ars Technica reports: AI face detection now counts among the tools that could be used to help adult sites effectively estimate UK user ages and block minors from accessing pornography, the UK’s Office of Communications said in a press release on Tuesday. The only foreseeable problem, Ofcom noted: There’s little evidence that the AI method of age estimation will be …

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Factory Plans To Produce 10,000 “Humanoid Robots”

Axios reports: A factory planning to pump out 10,000 two-legged robots a year is taking shape in Salem, Oregon — the better to help Amazon and other giant companies with dangerous hauling, lifting and moving. Agility Robotics says that its RoboFab manufacturing facility will be the first to mass-produce humanoid robots, which could be nimbler and more versatile than their …

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“Gay Furry Hackers” Breach Idaho Nuclear Research Lab

Engadget reports: The nuclear research hub Idaho National Laboratory (INL) confirmed that it fell victim to a data breach on Tuesday. SiegedSec, a group of self-proclaimed “gay furry hackers,” took responsibility for the attack and claimed they accessed sensitive employee data like social security numbers, home addresses and more. “We’re willing to make a deal with INL. If they research …

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Florida Chick-Fil-A Offers Delivery By Drone [VIDEO]

The Tampa Bay Times reports: Chick-fil-A is starting to deliver food by drone in the Tampa Bay area — so far only from one location within Hillsborough County. A Brandon-Valrico Chick-fil-A restaurant announced Monday on Facebook that it now has drone delivery service to locations within a 1.2-mile radius. The drone delivery fee is free for a limited time, according …

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Feds Propose In-Car Tech To Stop Extreme Speeding

Fast Company reports: The traffic signal on North Las Vegas’s North Commerce Street had been red for at least 29 seconds, but the Dodge Challenger did not slow down. Instead, it flew through the intersection with Cheyenne Avenue at 103 mph, almost three times the 35 mph speed limit. Carnage ensued. The crash that occurred on January 29, 2022, was …

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Senate Hears Testimony About Scammer Who Used AI To Clone The Voice Of Man’s “Arrested” Son [VIDEO]

The Hill reports: Tech scholars and scam victims told lawmakers artificial intelligence (AI) is driving more sophisticated scams during a Senate hearing Thursday morning. Witness Gary Schildhorn testified about his experience being scammed. The scammer used AI to mimic his son’s voice. The scammer, posing as an attorney, told Schildhorn his son had been driving while drunk, caused a car …

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Man Killed When Robot Confuses Him For Box Of Food

The BBC reports: A man has been crushed to death by a robot in South Korea after it failed to differentiate him from the boxes of food it was handling, reports say. The incident occurred when the man, a robotics company employee in his 40s, was inspecting the robot. The robotic arm, confusing the man for a box of vegetables, …

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USMC Test-Fires Rockets From “Robotic Goat” [VIDEO]

The Military Times reports: Marines strapped a rocket launcher to a so-called robotic goat in the California desert in September, in a test of robots’ abilities to carry and fire weapons in battle. Marines with Tactical Training and Exercise Control Group conducted the proof-of-concept test at Twentynine Palms, California ― a vast installation with many ranges where Marines can do …

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