Avast fined $16.5 million for ‘privacy’ software that actually sold users’ browsing data
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Avast, the cybersecurity software company, is facing a $16.5 million fine after it was caught storing and selling customer information without their consent. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the fine on Thursday and said that it’s banning Avast from selling user
Read moreReddit says it’s made $203M so far licensing its data
Reddit’s prospects as it barrels toward a stock market listing have a lot more to do with relationships with AI vendors such as OpenAI than one might expect. In its IPO prospectus filed today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Reddit repeatedly emphasized how much it thinks it stands
Read moreReddit files to go public — at last
Social media giant Reddit filed to go public today. Its long-awaited S-1 filing will see it approach the public markets potentially at the head of a long column of richly valued technology startups and private companies that need to find an exit this year. The timing of Reddit’s IPO is not
Read moreAhead of testing, Blue Origin raises New Glenn on the launch pad for first time
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin raised a test version of its massive orbital rocket on its launch pad for the first time Wednesday, inaugurating the start of a major test campaign ahead of the first launch later this year. The test version of the rocket is all Blue Origin hardware, but
Read moreFTC bans antivirus giant Avast from selling its users’ browsing data to advertisers
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday said it will ban the antivirus giant Avast from selling consumers’ web browsing data to advertisers after Avast claimed its products would prevent its users from online tracking. Avast also settled the federal regulator’s charges for $16.5 million, which the FTC said will
Read moreSony’s PS VR2 is getting compatibility, possibly by end of year
PlayStation VR often gets overlooked in conversations about mixed reality. These days, it seems all anyone wants to talk about is Apple Vision Pro versus Meta Quest. But Sony has been an enduring presence in VR for years now, throughout the industry’s various ups and downs (mostly downs, if we’re
Read moreHow to Build a Chat Interface using Gradio & Vultr Cloud GPU
Learn how to use Gradio, a Python library, to create customizable interfaces and share them conveniently using a public link for other users. Continue reading How to Build a Chat Interface using Gradio & Vultr Cloud GPU on SitePoint.
Read moreStable Diffusion 3 arrives to solidify early lead in AI imagery against Sora and Gemini
Stability has announced Stable Diffusion 3, the latest and most powerful version of the company’s image-generating AI model. While details are scant, it’s clearly an attempt to fend off the hype around recently announced competitors from OpenAI and Google. We’ll have a more technical breakdown of all this soon, but
Read moreBluesky opens up federation, letting anyone run their own server
Social network Bluesky, a competitor to X, Threads, Mastodon, and others, is opening up its doors with today’s news that the network is now opening up federation, following its public launch earlier this month. The move will allow anyone to run their own server that connects to Bluesky’s network, so
Read moreYorba’s service is like Mint for uncluttering your entire digital life
Spend enough time online, and you’ll collect a digital paper trail of accounts, logins, subscriptions, mailing lists, and passwords wrapped up in data breaches. A new startup called Yorba can help you get a better handle on your ever-expanding digital footprint with the launch of its multi-purpose tool for decluttering
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