News

Roku Announces New Tiny Models of Streaming Stick and Streaming Stick Plus

Max Account Sharing Crackdown: Streaming Service Starts Charging Extra

Microsoft Discontinuing Authenticator: Save Your Passwords to an Alternative Before August

In June, Microsoft removed the ability to add or import new passwords to the Authenticator app, and in July the autofill function will be disabled and all payment information will be deleted. Although any saved passwords won’t be available in Authenticator as of August, they are synced to users Microsoft account so users can still...

By Jackie Leavitt — 04 Jul'25 Last Updated: 04 Jul'25

Supreme Court Upholds Texas Age-Verification Laws Ruling; Pornhub Blocked In South Dakota

On June 30, 2025, South Dakota became the latest state to pass an age-verification law for adult-content sites, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026. The move came just days after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling in favor of Texas, allowing states to require pornography websites to verify the ages of...

By Jackie Leavitt — 01 Jul'25 Last Updated: 01 Jul'25

Judge Sides With Anthropic in Fair Use of Copyrighted Books, But Not Pirating

However, Federal judge William Alsup also ruled that there would be a trial held to evaluate damages for the online pirating of those books. According to the Northern California U.S. District Court ruling, Anthropic’s LLM, the company pirated millions of copyrighted books and also purchased physical books, “tore off the bindings, scanned every page, and...

By Jackie Leavitt — 25 Jun'25 Last Updated: 25 Jun'25

Prime Deals Already Live Ahead of 2025’s 96-Hour Prime “Day”

In much the same way Black Friday has expanded beyond the singular Friday into a full week of Christmas sales, Amazon announced that Amazon Prime Day will not be a single day, but four days of savings across 35 categories, running from July 8-11. Deals will run in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil,...

By Jackie Leavitt — 24 Jun'25 Last Updated: 24 Jun'25

Amazon Prime Video Users Face Doubled Ad Time, Frustration

When Amazon started including ads on all Prime Video streaming accounts in January 2024, it reportedly aimed to have far fewer ads than rivals, roughly two to three-and-a-half minutes per hour. Now according to AdWeek, the streaming service has quietly doubled that to range between four and six minutes per hour. All this comes as...

By Jackie Leavitt — 19 Jun'25 Last Updated: 19 Jun'25

OpenAI Forced to Retain Chat Logs Indefinitely To Comply With Court Order

The lawsuit, which was filed in December 2023, alleges that OpenAI used copyrighted material from The New York Times and other publications to train its large language model, and that ChatGPT can produce verbatim copies of published articles. The lawsuit also alleges that the chatbot allows users to circumvent the publication’s paywalls by prompting the...

By Aleksander Hougen — 12 Jun'25 Last Updated: 18 Jun'25

How to Submit Your Claim for Apple’s $95 Million Siri Eavesdropping Settlement

The settlement comes from a 2021 lawsuit, with consumers alleging the voice assistant unintentionally activated and recorded private or confidential conversations, then shared those discussions with third-party businesses that then were used in targeted ads in Apple search and Safari web browser. “Apple denies all of the allegations made in the lawsuit and denies that...

By Jackie Leavitt — 02 Jun'25 Last Updated: 02 Jun'25

Texas Becomes the Second State to Implement Age-Verification Laws for App Stores

Despite opposition from Apple and Google, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the SB 2420 bill into law on May 27, 2025. This makes Texas the second U.S. state, after Utah, to enact age-verification laws in the effort to protect minors online. The Texan law would require app stores to verify the age of Texan users,...

By Jackie Leavitt — 29 May'25 Last Updated: 29 May'25

Google AI Mode Merges With AI Overviews in Search Amid Publishing and Privacy Concerns

This Google I/O ‘25 Keynote announcement comes roughly one year after Google announced the launch of its AI Overviews in 2024. Google began testing AI Mode with a small group of real-world users at the beginning of May 2025, replacing the “I’m feeling lucky” button and bringing AI Mode into AI overviews. The Future of...

By Jackie Leavitt — 23 May'25 Last Updated: 23 May'25

Huge Backlash After VPNSecure Cancels All VPN Lifetime Plans

Thousands of VPNSecure accounts were deactivated, with users being notified by an email that included a renewal offer. According to the email, VPNSecure’s current owner purchased the VPN two years ago in May 2023 and claims the previous owner didn’t disclose thousands of lifetime users. The new owners discovered these users a couple months after...

By Jackie Leavitt — 15 May'25 Last Updated: 15 May'25

DOJ Proposes Selling Off Google Ad Empire, Trial Set for September

In Google’s ad tech monopoly trial, the judge ruled in favor of the DOJ on two counts, agreeing that Google intentionally engaged in anti-competitive monopolistic behavior with its publisher ad server, Double Click for Publishers (DFP) and Google Ad Exchange (AdX). Now the court has received proposals from both the DOJ and Google about how...

By Jackie Leavitt — 08 May'25 Last Updated: 08 May'25

GenAI Causes Cyber Security Fears Among Experts

A recent paper published last month by researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) found that AI-generated code has a significant tendency to hallucinate package libraries that do not exist. Analyzing over 500,000 code samples generated by 16 different AI models, the study concludes that at least 5.2% of package dependencies in...

By Aleksander Hougen — 01 May'25 Last Updated: 01 May'25

OpenAI Rolls Out ‘Shopping Features’ for ChatGPT, Causing Immediate Backlash

In a post on OpenAI’s website on Monday, OpenAI announced a new range of “shopping features” that enables ChatGPT to recommend products and services, including reviews and direct purchase links. In its post, the company states that these recommendations are not ads, and the company does not receive any sort of commission for its recommendations:...

By Aleksander Hougen — 01 May'25 Last Updated: 01 May'25

Roku Announces New Tiny Models of Streaming Stick and Streaming Stick Plus

Just when you thought streaming sticks couldn’t get smaller, Roku just made two models that are roughly the size of thumb drives. Roku claims the new Streaming Stick and Streaming Stick Plus are “the most compact sticks on the market,” being 35% smaller than other brands without compromising on performance or speed. They’ve also been...

By Jackie Leavitt — 24 Apr'25 Last Updated: 25 Apr'25

Max Account Sharing Crackdown: Streaming Service Starts Charging Extra

Starting from April 22, 2025, Max users can purchase an “extra member add-on”, costing $7.99 per month plus taxes, to share the streaming service outside the household. There are restrictions, though. This extra-member option is not available through the Disney+/Hulu/Max bundle or through third-party providers, such as TV providers, app stores, etc. The extra members...

By Jackie Leavitt — 24 Apr'25 Last Updated: 24 Apr'25

Viral ChatGPT Photo Geolocation Game Raises Privacy and Safety Concerns

At first, the “geoguess this” game seems fun, with many people online testing it and finding it performs very well to geolocate image locations within cities, by landmarks or even businesses or restaurants, using only subtle visual clues, even with image metadata stripped out. However, this ability can raise significant privacy issues, especially with cyberstalking...

By Jackie Leavitt — 18 Apr'25 Last Updated: 18 Apr'25

Google Loses Ad Tech Monopoly Trial, Plans to Appeal

The court found that Google intentionally engaged in anti-competitive monopolistic behavior — forcing customers to use its publisher ad server (DFP) and its ad exchange (AdX) — which restricted fair advertising competition. In the 115-page ruling, Judge Leonie Brinkema concluded: “Plaintiffs have proven that Google has willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to...

By Jackie Leavitt — 18 Apr'25 Last Updated: 18 Apr'25

How to Clean Up Your Digital Footprint Before US Travel Inspections

In recent weeks, there has been increased scrutiny at U.S. borders, with reports of some travelers being denied entry for suspicious activities — such as circuitous flight routes to their end destination — or even allegedly for having digital evidence of being critical about the Trump administration. There has been rising concern about travelers’ wellbeing...

By Jackie Leavitt — 09 Apr'25 Last Updated: 10 Apr'25

ProtectEU Internal Security Strategy Seemingly Sets the Stage for Attack on EU Encryption

The strategy was first announced as part of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s political guidelines for the 2024-2029 five-year period, where she announced a new “European Internal Security Strategy.” However, only recently did the Commission put out a fleshed out document detailing what the strategy will entail. The document covers many security proposals,...

By Aleksander Hougen — 07 Apr'25 Last Updated: 07 Apr'25

ByteDance Gets Second Extension to Sell, Postponing TikTok Ban Another 75 Days

With the original deadline extension only a few hours from expiring, President Donald Trump on Friday issued another 75-day extension to the order for TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the social media app or face a nationwide ban. This is the second time Trump has granted a stay of execution of sorts for the...

By Aleksander Hougen — 05 Apr'25 Last Updated: 05 Apr'25

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