James Farrell
Latest from James Farrell
Report: Automakers might be secretly selling your driving data to insurance companies
Car companies have been selling their customers’ detailed driving behavior data to third-party brokers, possibly affecting the owners’ insurance premiums, according to a New York Times exposé published today that asks serious questions about privacy within the internet of things. Companies such as the General Motors Co., Honda Motor Co. Ltd., the Kia Corp. and more, ...
Bipartisan bill could see TikTok banned in US if it doesn’t split with China
House Republicans and Democrats have banded together to introduce a bill that will require the Chinese tech giant ByteDance Inc. to sell its popular video-sharing TikTok app or face a ban in the U.S. For years now, TikTok has faced scrutiny in the U.S. from all sides of government. The app has continually been discussed ...
Google details changes for compliance with EU’s Digital Markets Act
With the European Union’s Digital Markets Act coming into effect this week, Google LLC, one of the designated gatekeepers, has had to get busy making a slew of changes to how it does business in Europe. The Digital Markets Act, or DMA, is a piece of far-reaching legislation that has been in the pipeline for ...
Former Twitter executives sue Elon Musk over severance payments
A group of former Twitter Inc. executives filed a lawsuit in a federal court today against Elon Musk and what is now called X Corp., arguing that the company owes them a total of $128 million in unpaid severance. When Musk (pictured) finally took over the social media giant in 2022, he soon got busy ...
US launches ‘unprecedented’ investigation into Chinese connected cars, citing national security concerns
The Biden administration today announced that it’s launching a probe into Chinese-made smart cars, alleging that the vehicles could be used to collect sensitive information on Americans and cause various kinds of mayhem. The investigation, which will be led by the U.S. Commerce Department, will look into how Chinese “connected vehicles” could be used for ...
Google faces $2.3M lawsuit from dozens of European media companies over ad practices
A total of 32 European media companies hit Google LLC with a €2.1 billion ($2.3 billion) lawsuit today, alleging that the American search giant’s advertising practices have led to severe financial losses. The companies come from far and wide – Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain ...
Peace, not war: Tumblr and WordPress are gearing up to sell their data to AI companies
Microblogging website Tumblr and blogging platform WordPress.com will soon begin sharing their data with the artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Midjourney. The platforms’ parent company, Automattic Inc., published a blog post today assuring users of the platform that they will be able to opt out of the deals that will be made to train AI. The ...
US Supreme Court seems split over landmark social media laws
Supreme Court justices today listened to oral arguments for four hours regarding laws in Florida and Texas that seek to regulate how social media companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. and X Corp. run their platforms, a case that could fundamentally alter the future of digital free speech. The Republican-backed laws passed in Florida and ...
FTC hits antivirus firm Avast with fine for selling customer data it promised to protect
The Federal Trade Commission today announced that it’s fining U.K.-based Avast PLC $16.5 million for selling its customer data to third-party data brokers. Avast, one of the antivirus giants of the world, had advertised its product as a shield against people’s browsing data being collected and sold on to brokers. Yet it was doing exactly ...
Google admits its Gemini AI was problematic with racially diverse images, vows to fix it
Google LLC today admitted it “missed the mark” after its the image generator in its generative artificial intelligence Gemini was accused of going too far in trying to promote diversity by consistently making white historical characters nonwhite. As a result, the company has paused generation of images of people until it can come up with a ...