Technology
Some Americans continue to use Kaspersky antivirus despite the US government’s ban
In late September, Kaspersky forcibly uninstalled and replaced a brand new antivirus program called UltraAV on the computers of roughly a million Americans, lots of whom were surprised and dismayed that that they had not been asked to consent to the change. The move was the final result of the US government’s ban on all sales of Kaspersky software in the country and – at the very least in theory – spelled the end of Kaspersky in America.
But not everyone in the US has given up on Russian antivirus. TechCrunch has learned that some Americans have found ways to circumvent the ban and continue to use Kaspersky’s antivirus program.
Several people living in the US claimed in Reddit posts that they were claiming to be Kaspersky customers. When TechCrunch asked them about their motivations, their reasons ranged from skepticism about why they were banned or had already paid for the product, to simply preferring the product over competitors.
“It is widely referred to as the best (antivirus) in the world and has an extended history. There isn’t any actual evidence that that is ‘spyware’ and I am unable to just blindly consider in something that has no evidence of it,” a US-based Reddit user going by the username Blippyz told TechCrunch in a direct message.
Another Reddit user named YouKnowWho_13, who still uses antivirus software from New York-based Kaspersky, said they weren’t concerned about allegations that Kaspersky abused access to some Americans’ computers to send sensitive data back to the Russian government.
“Hey, I’m just a cashier…” they told TechCrunch, suggesting they weren’t an interesting goal for cyber spies. adding that the ban on the sale of Kaspersky products was “a little too harsh” and unnecessary. “(I) have been used to this for 10 years. Force of habit haha. It’s a nice product.”
The way these users circumvent the sales ban is two-fold. First, they purchased a license or key before the ban was implemented, which suggests they didn’t violate the sales ban or sanctions by sending money to the Moscow-based cybersecurity company. Secondly, they’re using a VPN or have manually added a non-US server to the update server list, which suggests that in Kaspersky’s eyes they will not be actually US users.
Kaspersky didn’t respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Avi Fleischer, a longtime Kaspersky user who lives in Brooklyn, New York, told TechCrunch that he still uses the software on his home computer. Fleischer explained that after the ban got here into force “Kaspersky Security Network” – service “designed to receive and process complex global cyber threat data” — became unavailable, but was still able to obtain virus definition updates by pointing the update server to a server outside the United States.
“Now it can automatically update virus definitions,” Fleischer said, adding that he doesn’t use a VPN.
YouKnowWho_13 said he purchased a global license key on eBay. Like others, they said they added an update server positioned outside the United States to the Kaspersky app to continue receiving security updates.
Once the license key expires, YouKnowWho_13 said it might switch to competing antivirus software ESET or Bitdefender.
Another Reddit user, Das1996, told TechCrunch that he uses a VPN to download updates and has a license key that expires in about three or 4 months. Once this happens, they are saying, they may determine what to do next. But “if the VPN option works well, I will continue to use it,” Das1996 said.
Domingothegamer, Reddit user who searched for assistance on the website after they couldn’t update their Kaspersky software, he said he still had a three-year license with two years left, for 10 devices. For them, leaving Kaspersky “seems like a big loss just because of the ban.”
They said they didn’t even need to use a VPN and that apart from adding latest servers to get updates, “it’s just a regular service.”
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.
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