Month: January 2023

The FTC fines HomeAdvisor up to $7.2M for using deceptive tactics to sell home improvement project leads, marking the agency’s first fine related to gig work (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: The FTC fines HomeAdvisor up to $7.2M for using deceptive tactics to sell home improvement project leads, marking the agency’s first fine related to gig work  —  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ordered home services marketplace HomeAdvisor up to $7.2 million for its use of deceptive …

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The FBI says North Korea-backed hacking groups Lazarus and APT38 are behind the June 2022 theft of ~$100M in ETH, USDT, and wBTC from Harmony’s Horizon bridge (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)

Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk: The FBI says North Korea-backed hacking groups Lazarus and APT38 are behind the June 2022 theft of ~$100M in ETH, USDT, and wBTC from Harmony’s Horizon bridge  —  Lazarus Group and APT38, both associated with North Korea, are responsible for the attack in June, the agency concluded.

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Chinese gamers lose access to Blizzard’s games after its 14-year partnership with NetEase ended; servers hosting the games shut down in China on January 23 (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Chinese gamers lose access to Blizzard’s games after its 14-year partnership with NetEase ended; servers hosting the games shut down in China on January 23  —  Millions of Chinese gamers have lost access to World of Warcraft after a furious dispute between US title owner Activision Blizzard Inc …

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Chinese gamers lose access to Blizzard’s games after its 14-year partnership with NetEase ended; servers hosting the games shut down in China on January 23 (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)

Zheping Huang / Bloomberg: Chinese gamers lose access to Blizzard’s games after its 14-year partnership with NetEase ended; servers hosting the games shut down in China on January 23  —  Millions of Chinese gamers have lost access to World of Warcraft after a furious dispute between US title owner Activision Blizzard Inc …

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CodeSandbox adds Rust support

Developers now can build Rust applications in the CodeSandbox cloud development platform. Newly added Rust support in CodeSandbox allows developers to spin up a Rust development environment within two seconds, the company announced on January 18. A Rust starter template helps developers kickstart their projects. CodeSandbox is positioned as an environment for anyone to code,

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DIY Custom Earplugs For Pennies Per Pair

Hearing is one of our most precious senses, and yet many take their hearing for granted, exposing themselves to loud noises that do lasting damage. [Jonathan Levi] of The Next Level does no such thing, at least not anymore. He’s even gone so far as to have custom acrylic earplugs made, which he carried around

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Internal messages: TikTok told some of its US employees they could lose their jobs unless they show they already moved to an address near their assigned offices (Kaya Yurieff/The Information)

Kaya Yurieff / The Information: Internal messages: TikTok told some of its US employees they could lose their jobs unless they show they already moved to an address near their assigned offices  —  TikTok is cracking down on remote work, telling some U.S. workers they could lose their jobs unless they show they have already

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Filings: Apple’s US lobbying spend grew 44% YoY to $9.4M in 2022; Amazon’s grew ~2% to $19.7M, Meta’s fell 4.6% to $19.2M; Google spent $10.9M, Microsoft $9.8M (Lauren Feiner/CNBC)

Lauren Feiner / CNBC: Filings: Apple’s US lobbying spend grew 44% YoY to $9.4M in 2022; Amazon’s grew ~2% to $19.7M, Meta’s fell 4.6% to $19.2M; Google spent $10.9M, Microsoft $9.8M  —  – Apple grew its lobbying spend the most last year compared to its peers, according to public disclosures.

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Sources: the DOJ is poised to sue Google this week for dominating the $278.6B US digital ad market, the fifth major US case challenging its business practices (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: Sources: the DOJ is poised to sue Google this week for dominating the $278.6B US digital ad market, the fifth major US case challenging its business practices  —  The US Justice Department is poised to sue Alphabet Inc.’s Google as soon as Tuesday regarding the search giant’s dominance …

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Blizzard games go offline in China

Key Art: Blizzard Today’s the day most Blizzard games go offline in China. After failing to reach a deal with publishing partner NetEase, Blizzard has shuttered most of its games in the country, including World of Warcraft, Overwatch 2, and Diablo. (Diablo Immortal remains unaffected, distributed through a separate publishing deal with NetEase.) The closure

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Source: CEO Satya Nadella voiced concerns for years that Microsoft was slow to commercialize its AI research; in 2022, its researchers said rivals seemed ahead (Kevin McLaughlin/The Information)

Kevin McLaughlin / The Information: Source: CEO Satya Nadella voiced concerns for years that Microsoft was slow to commercialize its AI research; in 2022, its researchers said rivals seemed ahead  —  For more than a decade, Microsoft Research, the company’s in-house research group, has touted artificial intelligence breakthroughs …

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Source: Satya Nadella voiced concerns Microsoft was slow to commercialize its AI research advances; in 2022, its researchers said Apple and Google seemed ahead (Kevin McLaughlin/The Information)

Kevin McLaughlin / The Information: Source: Satya Nadella voiced concerns Microsoft was slow to commercialize its AI research advances; in 2022, its researchers said Apple and Google seemed ahead  —  For more than a decade, Microsoft Research, the company’s in-house research group, has touted artificial intelligence breakthroughs …

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After OpenAI opened a waitlist for a faster, paid version of ChatGPT, some users report seeing a “pro” plan for $42/month; the company hasn’t announced pricing (James Vincent/The Verge)

James Vincent / The Verge: After OpenAI opened a waitlist for a faster, paid version of ChatGPT, some users report seeing a “pro” plan for $42/month; the company hasn’t announced pricing  —  Earlier this month, OpenAI said it was exploring ways to monetize its AI chatbot ChatGPT, giving users the opportunity …

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