Technology
The Justice Department calls Apple’s privacy justifications a “flexible shield” for financial gain
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”:
“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.)
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.
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.
Technology
Department of Justice tells Google to sell Chrome
Welcome back to the week in review. This week, we take a look at how the Department of Justice ordered Google to sell Chrome to break its monopoly, whether OpenAI by chance deleted potential evidence in a copyright lawsuit filed by The New York Times, and the way artificial intelligence corporations are exploiting TikTok for research purposes. Let’s do it.
The U.S. Department of Justice argued that Google should get rid of its Chrome browser to help break the corporate’s illegal monopoly on online search. U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google is an illegal monopoly for abusing its power within the search industry, and the Department of Justice’s latest filing says Google’s ownership of Android and Chrome poses a “significant challenge” to pursuing countermeasures aimed toward establishing a competitive search engine market.
Anthropic raised a further $4 billion from Amazon and agreed to make Amazon Web Services the first training site for its flagship generative artificial intelligence models. Anthropic can be working with Annapurna Labs, AWS’s chip manufacturing division, to develop future generations of Trainium accelerators, custom AWS chips for training artificial intelligence models. Amazon’s recent money injection brings the tech giant’s total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion.
OpenAI by chance deleted potential evidence in The New York Times and Daily News’ copyright lawsuit, say the publisher’s lawyers. As part of the lawsuit, OpenAI agreed to provide two virtual machines so the lawyer could seek for copyrighted content in its AI training kits. However, within the letter, lawyers for the publishers claim that OpenAI engineers deleted all publisher search data stored on one of the virtual machines.
News
Kim Kardashian meets Optimus: The fashion mogul had hands-on experience with Tesla’s bipedal humanoid robot. In videos posted to X, Kardashian encourages Optimus to make a heart out of his hand, dance like he’s at a luau and play rock, paper, scissors. Read more
Oura’s valuation exceeds $5 billion: The smart ring maker has received a $75 million investment from glucose device maker Dexcom. The investment, which constitutes Oura’s Series D financing round, raises the corporate’s valuation to over $5 billion. Read more
Let’s organize a celebration for Partiful: The customizable event planning app challenges legacy solutions like Evite, Eventbrite, and Facebook Events, is a favourite amongst Gen Z users, and was just named a top app of 2024 by Google. Read more
Talk to me in your language: Microsoft will soon allow Teams users to clone their voices so that they can talk to others in up to nine languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Read more
Hackers attack Andrew Tate: According to The Daily Dot, hackers breached a web-based course founded by an influencer and self-confessed misogynist, exposing data on nearly 800,000 users. Tate is currently under house arrest awaiting trial on sex trafficking and rape charges. Read more
What makes a bank a bank? The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ruled that each one digital services that handle significant volumes of transactions needs to be subject to bank-style supervision, which could impact Apple Pay, Cash App, Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo. Read more
A more conversational Siri: According to sources cited by Bloomberg, Apple is developing a new edition of Siri based on advanced multilingual models in an attempt to meet up with more natural-sounding competitors comparable to Google Gemini Live. Read more
Making Money With TikTok Brains: Several AI-powered research tools are taking advantage of the “PDF to Brainrot” trend, during which the text of an uploaded document is read in a monotone voice against a backdrop of “weirdly satisfying” vertical videos like Subway Surfers gameplay. Read more
Threads attacks Bluesky: As Bluesky’s user base surpasses 20 million, Instagram Threads has begun rolling out a brand new feature called custom feeds to capitalize on user demand for more personalization. Read more
ChatGPT within the classroom: OpenAI has released a free online course to help elementary and middle school teachers find out how to introduce ChatGPT into their classrooms. However, some educators are concerned about this technology and its potential for error. Read more
Do we want one other day by day word game? Normally I’m an evangelist for word games and crosswords, but I feel like we’re quickly approaching market saturation. Netflix has launched a brand new day by day word puzzle game in partnership with TED called TED Tumblewords. Read more
Analysis
Please don’t send X-ray images to the chatbot: People often turn to generative AI chatbots to ask questions on their health concerns and higher understand their health. Since October, X users have been encouraged to upload their X-rays, MRIs and PET scans to the AI-powered chatbot, Grok, to help interpret the outcomes. Medical data is a special category subject to federal protections that, usually, only you may circumvent. But simply because you may does not imply you need to. As Zack Whittaker writes, it’s price remembering that what goes on the Internet never leaves it. Read more
Technology
How the digital “you” can withstand your torturous online conference calls
Now you can appear like you are on a Zoom call in your office, even whilst you’re sipping a margarita in a hammock far, far-off. Courtesy of a several-month-old startup called Marinadethe premise is easy: upload a five-minute training video of you creating an avatar, and 24 hours later you may seemingly be able to go. Do you ought to call from your automotive? This can be your secret. Too lazy to get away from bed? No problem. At the beach club? You’re probably pushing it, although judging by the demo video, that is not the only problem that should be solved. (The service is currently available in Basic, Standard and Professional versions, with prices starting from $300 to $1,150 per yr.)
The technology, backed by Los Angeles-based Krew Capital, currently only works with macOS, Pickle says, but a Windows version is anticipated next month. As for the conferencing apps that customers can pick from, they include Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, in keeping with Pickle. However, you should have to attend to make use of them. According to the website, “due to high demand, clone generation is currently delayed.”
Technology
‘Wolves’ sequel canceled because director ‘no longer trusted’ Apple
It could also be hard to recollect, but George Clooney and Brad Pitt starred together within the movie “Wolves,” which Apple released just two months ago.
On Friday, the film’s author and director Jon Watts said Friday that the sequel is not any longer happening; IN one other interview for Deadlinehe explained that he “no longer trusts (Apple) as a creative partner.”
According to reports, the corporate limiting your film strategy. For example, “Wolfs” was imagined to have a giant theatrical release, but as an alternative it played in a limited variety of theaters for just per week before it landed on Apple TV+.
Watts, who also created the brand new Star Wars series “Skeleton Crew,” said Apple’s change “came as a complete surprise and was made without any explanation or discussion.”
“I was completely shocked and asked them not to tell me I was writing a sequel,” Watts said. “They ignored my request and announced it in their press release anyway, apparently to put a positive spin on their streaming axis.”
As a result, Watts said he “quietly refunded the money they gave me to continue” and canceled the project.
-
Press Release8 months ago
CEO of 360WiSE Launches Mentorship Program in Overtown Miami FL
-
Business and Finance6 months ago
The Importance of Owning Your Distribution Media Platform
-
Press Release8 months ago
U.S.-Africa Chamber of Commerce Appoints Robert Alexander of 360WiseMedia as Board Director
-
Business and Finance8 months ago
360Wise Media and McDonald’s NY Tri-State Owner Operators Celebrate Success of “Faces of Black History” Campaign with Over 2 Million Event Visits
-
Ben Crump7 months ago
Another lawsuit accuses Google of bias against Black minority employees
-
Fitness7 months ago
Black sportswear brands for your 2024 fitness journey
-
Theater8 months ago
Applications open for the 2020-2021 Soul Producing National Black Theater residency – Black Theater Matters
-
Ben Crump8 months ago
Henrietta Lacks’ family members reach an agreement after her cells undergo advanced medical tests