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The Justice Department calls Apple’s privacy justifications a “flexible shield” for financial gain

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The US Department of Justice sued Apple on Thursday over monopolistic practices. The grievance accuses Apple of shaping its privacy and security practices in a way that advantages the corporate financially.

One quote specifically stands out, through which the Department of Justice calls Apple’s privacy and security justification a “flexible shield”:

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“Apple uses privacy and security justifications as a flexible shield that can expand or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests,” it says.

“Apple cloaks itself in a cloak of privacy, security and consumer preference to justify its anticompetitive behavior. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving assumption that only Apple can protect consumers’ privacy and security interests.”

That’s not all – there are several other cases where the Department of Justice believes Apple is flexing privacy to degrade customer satisfaction:

App Store and application distribution

It was also identified that Apple doesn’t allow the creation and use of different app stores. However, the grievance notes that it allows governments and enterprise customers to put in secure app stores. It also stated that developers are unable to supply a separate app store for children presently. It is value noting that a few of these have partially modified with the EU’s enforcement of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). (Some changes only apply to the EU region.)

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The Department of Justice identified that Apple allows users to simply load applications on a Mac. The Department of Justice says developers can moreover distribute apps on the platform with fewer restrictions. The Justice Department also argued that Apple was restricting “super apps” that would provide a higher alternative to accessing services within the App Store.

The news

The Department of Justice also accused Apple of restricting third-party apps from receiving SMS messages from carriers. Apple is claimed to mark SMS as “private” in its API documentation so other developers cannot access them. Apple allows users to text anyone by entering their number within the “to:” field within the Messages app, but this is not possible with other messaging apps, the grievance says.

The plaintiff also argued that Apple reduces the safety of iPhones by failing to implement encryption protection when iPhone users send messages to Android users.

Data Sharing Practices

The grievance also accuses Apple of using “vast amounts of personal and sensitive data” to distribute apps by itself App Store. He also criticized the Cupertino company for using user data for promoting purposes.

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Additionally, the lawsuit alleged that Apple entered into agreements with Google to make the service the default search engine for Safari, regardless that Apple knew there have been higher privacy-focused alternatives.

The Justice Department also argued that users must share information with Apple to make use of the digital wallet, not only share it with a bank or medical facility.

Essentially, the Justice Department argues that Apple’s privacy and security practices are pretextual and that the corporate is taking “alternative courses” to guard its monopoly.

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This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

Technology

Benchmarks meta for new AI models are somewhat misleading

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Meta sign

One of the new flagship AI Meta models released on Saturday, Maverick, Second rating at LM ArenaA test during which human rankings compare the outcomes of models and select which they like. But it appears that evidently the Maverick version, that the finish implemented on LM Arena differs from the version that’s widely available to programmers.

How several And researchers He pointed to X, Meta noticed within the announcement that Maverick on LM Arena is a “experimental version of the chat.” Chart on The official website of LlamaMeanwhile, it reveals that the testing of the LM META Arena was carried out using “Llama 4 Maverick optimized for conversation.”

As we wrote earlier, for various reasons LM Arena has never been essentially the most reliable measure of the performance of the AI ​​model. But AI firms generally didn’t adapt or otherwise adapted their models to higher rating at LM Arena-Lub a minimum of didn’t admit it.

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The problem related to adapting the model to the reference point, suspension of it, after which releasing the “vanilla” variant of the identical model, is that programmers are difficult to predict how good it can work in specific contexts. It can be misleading. It is best if the tests tests – miserably inadequate – provide a shutter of strong and weaknesses of 1 model in various tasks.

Indeed, scientists on X have Stark was observed Differences in behavior From publicly to download maverick in comparison with the hosted model on LM Arena. The LM Arena version seems to make use of many emoji and provides extremely long answers.

We arrived at Meta and Chatbot Arena, a company that maintains LM Arena to comment.

(Tagstotransate) benchmark

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Trump delays the ban

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TikTok ban, rednote

Donald Trump has signed a brand new executive order “Save Tiktok”.


Tiktok will live to see the next day – at the least for now. On April 4, President Donald Trump signed a brand new executive order delaying the ban on a preferred social application by one other 75 days. The application was to darken in the USA on April 5.

The application, belonging to the Chinese company Bytedance, is now on the second extension in the first quarter of the 12 months. In 2024, President Biden signed bilateral laws of Ban Tiktok, citing fears about national security. Congress voted in a predominant means. Although Trump has signed the executive order to “save” the application, many questioned the legality of the movement. Like many president’s actions at the starting of his term, they complain that evidently he exceeds the authority of the executive office.

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Trump announced his move to Stop the ban on social truthSaying that his administration remains to be working on the contract.

“My administration worked very hard on the Tiktok saving contract, and we have made great progress,” Trump wrote on April 4. “The contract requires more work to ensure the signing of all necessary approvals, which is why I sign an executive order to continue tiktok for an additional 75 days.”

Trump quoted his newly imposed tariffs to China as a key reason for detained negotiations for the buyer.

“We hope to continue working in good faith with China, which, as I understand, are not very satisfied with our mutual tariffs – necessary for honest and balanced trade between China and the USA,” wrote Trump. “It proves that tariffs are the most powerful economic tool and very important for our national security. We do not want Tiktok to go dark. We are looking forward to cooperation with Tiktok and China to complete the contract.”

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This means a second time Trump entered to delay the ban. On January 2, just a couple of days after returning to the office, he signed the first extension to stop Tiktok, utilized by over 170 million Americans available to users.

The potential sales of Tiktok draws the major attention of the principal players in the business world. According to HillMany private equity firms, the Venture Capital groups and the best technological investors have introduced offers for a preferred application.

Among the firms, apparently in the mix are Blackstone, Oracle, Amazon – led by Jeff Bezos – and the founding father of Onlyfans Tim Stokely. Interest in purchasing Tiktok has increased, how uncertainty about its future in the US is always growing.

The application, utilized by 170 million Americans, is situated at the center of ongoing political and economic negotiations between the United States and China. Along with the upcoming pressure and deadlines, the possibility of selling opened the door to the largest technological and financial names.

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This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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Doge is supposedly planning Hackathon to build a “mega api” for IRS data

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The Department of Government Elon Musk (DOGE) is planning Organize Hackathon next week Focused on creating a “mega API interface”, which is able to provide access to taxpayers, according to Wired.

Wired claims that Hackathon is organized by two Doge employees within the service of the inner rule – Gavin Kliger and Sam Corcos, who’re also the final director at the extent of Healthtech startups. Corcos reportedly said to others in Doge that his goal is to build “one new API to rule them all.”

This would facilitate cloud suppliers access to IRS data, including taxpayers’ names, addresses, social insurance numbers, tax declarations and employment information, which may very well be exported to external systems. According to Wired, the vendor of external parties managed parts of the project, and Palantir “consistently” grew up as a candidate.

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“Basically, they are open door controlled by Musk for the most sensitive information of all Americans without any rules that normally secure this data,” said an anonymous IRS worker said.

(Tagstranslate) dog

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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