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Massive Data Breach: 190 Million Americans Affected by Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack

2025-01-25
Massive Data Breach: 190 Million Americans Affected by Change Healthcare Ransomware Attack

UnitedHealth Group confirmed that a ransomware attack on its subsidiary, Change Healthcare, in February 2024 affected approximately 190 million Americans – nearly double previous estimates. The attack resulted in the theft of massive amounts of sensitive health and insurance data, including names, addresses, birthdates, Social Security numbers, and medical records. Some data was even published online by the hackers. Change Healthcare paid ransoms to prevent further data release. This is the largest healthcare data breach in US history, highlighting critical vulnerabilities in the healthcare system's cybersecurity.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech healthcare security

IMDb Founder Steps Down After 35 Years

2025-01-22
IMDb Founder Steps Down After 35 Years

Col Needham, founder of the Amazon-owned IMDb database, stepped down as CEO after 35 years at the helm. He's succeeded by Nikki Santoro, the former COO, who becomes the first woman to lead the company. Needham will transition to executive chairman. Santoro, with the company since 2016, has overseen expansion of the database and improvements to IMDbPro. This marks a significant transition for IMDb into a new era.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech CEO transition Tech Company

Meta Launches Edits: A CapCut Competitor

2025-01-20
Meta Launches Edits: A CapCut Competitor

Capitalizing on CapCut's removal from app stores due to the TikTok ban, Meta unveiled its new video editing app, Edits. Launching next month on iOS (Android later), Edits boasts a suite of creative tools including an inspiration tab, idea tracker, and high-quality camera. Collaboration features and Instagram performance insights are also included. This strategic move mirrors Meta's past responses to market gaps, like launching Instagram Reels and Threads, demonstrating a proactive approach to competition and the potential void left by CapCut's absence.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech Video Editing

Failed Startups Leave Employees Vulnerable to Data Breaches via Google Logins

2025-01-20
Failed Startups Leave Employees Vulnerable to Data Breaches via Google Logins

A security researcher discovered a critical vulnerability exposing employees of defunct startups to significant data breaches. By acquiring expired domains, attackers can exploit "Sign in with Google" to access company cloud software, potentially stealing Slack messages, Social Security numbers, and bank account details. While Google's OAuth configuration includes safeguards, improper implementation by some SaaS providers leaves the vulnerability exploitable. Tens of thousands of former employees and millions of SaaS accounts are at risk. Google has updated its documentation, advising companies to properly shut down cloud services, but the issue remains unresolved.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech startups

TikTok Goes Dark in the US: Overnight Ban

2025-01-19
TikTok Goes Dark in the US: Overnight Ban

Following a new federal law, TikTok has been banned in the US, rendering the popular social media app inaccessible to millions of American users overnight. Users began receiving notifications about the ban Friday evening, and by Saturday evening, the app was also removed from the Apple App Store. This event highlights US government concerns about data security and national security, and has sparked discussion about alternative social media apps.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

Perplexity AI Bids to Merge with TikTok to Avoid US Ban

2025-01-18
Perplexity AI Bids to Merge with TikTok to Avoid US Ban

With a US ban on TikTok looming, AI search engine Perplexity AI has surprisingly submitted a bid to merge with TikTok US. The proposal would create a new entity combining Perplexity, TikTok US, and new equity partners, bringing more video content to Perplexity's search engine while allowing most ByteDance investors to retain their equity. While ByteDance has repeatedly stated its unwillingness to sell TikTok, Perplexity hopes a merger, rather than an acquisition, will overcome this obstacle. This unexpected move has sent ripples through the tech world, with its success or failure having significant implications for US tech regulation and the convergence of AI and social media.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

Google Search Now Requires JavaScript: Security or Something Else?

2025-01-17
Google Search Now Requires JavaScript: Security or Something Else?

Google has announced that its search engine now mandates JavaScript for use. The stated reason is to better protect against malicious activity like bots and spam, improving the overall user experience. However, this move may inconvenience users relying on accessibility tools and has sparked speculation about Google's intent to limit third-party search trend analysis tools. While Google claims the affected user percentage is minuscule, the sheer volume of daily Google searches means millions are still impacted, leading to widespread discussion.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech Malicious Activity

GM Banned from Selling Driver Data to Insurers

2025-01-17
GM Banned from Selling Driver Data to Insurers

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges that General Motors (GM) and OnStar collected, used, and sold drivers' precise geolocation data and driving behavior without adequate notification or consent. The FTC issued a proposed order banning GM from selling this data to consumer reporting agencies for five years. This follows a New York Times investigation revealing GM's sale of driving data—including instances of hard braking and speeding—to insurers, leading to increased premiums for drivers. GM claims it has already taken steps to address these issues, including ending its Smart Driver program and ceasing data sales to analytics firms. The FTC's order is subject to a 30-day public comment period.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

UN Security Council Debates Commercial Spyware Regulation for the First Time

2025-01-16
UN Security Council Debates Commercial Spyware Regulation for the First Time

The UN Security Council held its first-ever meeting on the dangers of commercial spyware, with the US and 15 other countries calling for regulation. While no concrete proposals emerged, most nations agreed on the need for action to control its proliferation and misuse. Citizen Lab highlighted a secretive global ecosystem of spyware developers, citing Europe as a hotspot for abuse. Russia and China criticized the meeting; Russia blamed the US, while China argued that government-developed cyberweapons pose a greater threat.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech UN Security Council

Bluesky's New Photo-Sharing App, Flashes, Launches Soon

2025-01-15
Bluesky's New Photo-Sharing App, Flashes, Launches Soon

Independent developer Sebastian Vogelsang is building Flashes, a new photo-sharing app for the decentralized social network Bluesky. Leveraging the AT Protocol and code from his previous Bluesky client, Skeets, Flashes aims to offer an alternative to Instagram. It supports multi-photo posts and short videos, syncing content to the main Bluesky platform. This provides an alternative for users seeking to escape Meta's ecosystem and those interested in visual content sharing, offering a fresh entry point for new Bluesky users.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech Decentralized Social

UnitedHealth Buried Change Healthcare's Data Breach Notice for Months

2025-01-15
UnitedHealth Buried Change Healthcare's Data Breach Notice for Months

Change Healthcare, a UnitedHealth-owned health tech company, suffered a ransomware attack last year exposing the sensitive health data of over 100 million individuals. The company delayed notifying affected individuals for months and, shockingly, used “noindex” code to hide the data breach notice from search engines. This secrecy has drawn criticism and prompted investigations and lawsuits from several states. The incident highlights Change Healthcare's significant security flaws and the lack of transparency and slow response from large healthcare organizations in dealing with data breaches.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech healthcare data

Meta's Internal Emails Reveal Obsession with Beating GPT-4

2025-01-15
Meta's Internal Emails Reveal Obsession with Beating GPT-4

Leaked internal emails reveal Meta executives and researchers were fiercely focused on surpassing OpenAI's GPT-4 while developing Llama 3. Messages show a strong desire to outcompete rivals, even dismissing open-source competitors as insignificant. Their ambition led them to use the LibGen dataset, containing copyrighted works, for training, now resulting in multiple copyright lawsuits. While the released Llama 3 proved competitive with leading closed-source models, even outperforming some, Meta's aggressive tactics highlight the intense competition and risks in the AI race.

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(techcrunch.com)
AI AI race

Mastodon Goes Nonprofit: Decentralization Takes Center Stage

2025-01-13
Mastodon Goes Nonprofit: Decentralization Takes Center Stage

Decentralized social network Mastodon announced its transition to a European nonprofit organization. Founder Eugen Rochko will hand over management of key platform components to this new entity, preventing single-person control. This move distinguishes Mastodon from centralized networks controlled by CEOs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Mastodon will continue operating mastodon.social and mastodon.online, remaining open-source and free. The shift reflects Mastodon's commitment to decentralization and community governance, addressing recent concerns about ownership in open-source projects.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech Nonprofit

WordPress Founder Deactivates Accounts of Contributors Planning a Fork

2025-01-11
WordPress Founder Deactivates Accounts of Contributors Planning a Fork

WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members involved in efforts to create a fork of the open-source project. The conflict stemmed from a dispute with WP Engine, a commercial hosting company criticized for insufficient community contribution. Following this, key community figures like Joost de Valk (Yoast) and Karim Marucchi (Crowd Favorite) expressed concerns about WordPress governance, hinting at a potential fork. Mullenweg, ostensibly to support their independent efforts, deactivated their accounts and others, sparking controversy.

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(techcrunch.com)
Development Community Governance

Kirin's Electric Salt Spoon: A CES 2025 Taste of the Future?

2025-01-11
Kirin's Electric Salt Spoon: A CES 2025 Taste of the Future?

At CES 2025, Kirin Holdings unveiled an electronic spoon that uses a weak electric current to enhance the salty and umami flavors of food, particularly low-sodium options. Based on research that won a 2013 Ig Nobel Prize, the spoon has already launched in Japan and Kirin aims for global distribution. The device aims to help reduce salt intake, especially relevant in Japan's high-sodium diet culture. While TechCrunch didn't sample it, the enthusiastic crowd at CES Unveiled suggests it's a hit.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech Electric Salt Spoon Low-Sodium Diet

OpenAI Bot Crushes Small E-commerce Site

2025-01-10
OpenAI Bot Crushes Small E-commerce Site

Triplegangers, a seven-person e-commerce company, had its website crippled by OpenAI's GPTBot in a DDoS-like attack. GPTBot relentlessly scraped images and descriptions of over 65,000 products, causing the site to crash and incurring significant AWS charges. Triplegangers discovered their robots.txt file was improperly configured, failing to effectively block GPTBot. While OpenAI claims to respect robots.txt, its bot didn't immediately respond to the updated file. This incident highlights the potential risks of AI data scraping for small businesses and OpenAI's delayed opt-out tool.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech AI data scraping DDoS attack

India's Digital Payments Strategy Sidelines Visa and Mastercard

2025-01-10
India's Digital Payments Strategy Sidelines Visa and Mastercard

India is strategically reducing its reliance on Western payment networks like Visa and Mastercard, leveraging its homegrown Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay. UPI's massive transaction volume and user-friendliness have made it the dominant payment method, while RuPay, with exclusive rights to process credit card transactions through UPI, is rapidly gaining market share. This strategy lowers merchant fees, boosts India's digital economy independence, and presents a significant challenge to Visa and Mastercard.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech Digital Payments

TikTok's LA Staff Face Paid Time Off Crunch Amid Wildfires

2025-01-10
TikTok's LA Staff Face Paid Time Off Crunch Amid Wildfires

Devastating wildfires in Los Angeles have forced the closure of TikTok's LA office, leaving employees scrambling. The company is instructing staff to work from home if possible, but those unable to do so are told to use their personal/sick days. Many employees are facing power outages, internet disruptions, or even evacuation orders at home. TikTok's strict return-to-office policy, requiring three days a week in the office, exacerbates the issue, as employees are forced to use paid time off even for illness. While the company claims to prioritize employee safety, this policy has sparked controversy for its lack of flexibility during a natural disaster.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech Employee benefits

May Mobility Unveils Electric Autonomous Minibus at CES 2025

2025-01-10
May Mobility Unveils Electric Autonomous Minibus at CES 2025

Autonomous vehicle startup May Mobility revealed its latest creation at CES 2025: an electric, autonomous minibus developed in partnership with European electric bus manufacturer Tecnobus. Capable of carrying up to 30 passengers, including wheelchair users, this minibus is slated to join May Mobility's existing fleet of 40 retrofitted Toyota Siennas by late 2026. Designed for urban transit, corporate campuses, airports, and planned communities, it features swappable batteries for minimal downtime and is approved for use in Europe and Canada. May Mobility currently operates autonomous shuttle services in several US cities and has a pilot program in Japan with NTT.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

Zuckerberg Approved Meta's Use of Pirated Data to Train Llama, Lawsuit Claims

2025-01-09
Zuckerberg Approved Meta's Use of Pirated Data to Train Llama, Lawsuit Claims

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly approved the use of a dataset called LibGen, containing pirated ebooks and articles, to train Meta's Llama AI models. Plaintiffs, including bestselling authors Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, accuse Meta of copyright infringement. Meta claims fair use, but plaintiffs argue Meta attempted to conceal infringement by stripping copyright information and even using torrenting to obtain LibGen, exacerbating the violation. The case currently only pertains to Meta's earliest Llama models, and the outcome remains uncertain, but the allegations have already damaged Meta's reputation.

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(techcrunch.com)
AI

Zero-Day Exploit in Ivanti VPN Allows Hackers Network Access

2025-01-09
Zero-Day Exploit in Ivanti VPN Allows Hackers Network Access

A critical zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-0282) in Ivanti's widely used enterprise VPN appliance has been exploited by hackers to compromise corporate networks. The vulnerability affects Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateways products, with Connect Secure being the most widely adopted SSL VPN. Mandiant and Microsoft researchers observed exploitation as early as mid-December 2024. The attack shows hallmarks of an advanced persistent threat (APT), and suspicions point towards a China-linked cyberespionage group. Ivanti has released a patch for Connect Secure, with patches for others coming January 21st.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech zero-day exploit

Nvidia Unveils Cosmos WFMs: Physics-Aware Open World Models

2025-01-09
Nvidia Unveils Cosmos WFMs: Physics-Aware Open World Models

At CES 2025, Nvidia launched Cosmos World Foundation Models (Cosmos WFMs), a family of AI world models capable of predicting and generating physics-aware videos. These models, categorized as Nano, Super, and Ultra based on size and performance (4 to 14 billion parameters), are designed for robotics, autonomous driving, and more. While Nvidia calls them 'open,' they aren't fully open-source, and their training data, reportedly including unauthorized YouTube videos, is controversial. Despite this, several companies have already adopted Cosmos WFMs for various applications.

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(techcrunch.com)
AI AI models

VLC Hits 6 Billion Downloads, Teases AI-Powered Subtitles

2025-01-09
VLC Hits 6 Billion Downloads, Teases AI-Powered Subtitles

The popular open-source media player VLC has surpassed 6 billion downloads. At CES 2025, VideoLAN showcased a new AI-powered subtitle system that generates and translates subtitles in real-time using locally-run open-source AI models. This eliminates the need for internet connectivity. While a release date wasn't announced, this innovative feature demonstrates VLC's continued commitment to free, ad-free, and cutting-edge technology.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech AI subtitles

Nvidia CEO: AI Chip Performance Outpaces Moore's Law

2025-01-08
Nvidia CEO: AI Chip Performance Outpaces Moore's Law

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared at CES 2025 that the company's AI chips are improving faster than Moore's Law. He attributed this to Nvidia's ability to simultaneously innovate across the entire stack – architecture, chip, system, libraries, and algorithms. The new GB200 NVL72 data center superchip boasts a 30-40x performance increase in AI inference workloads compared to its predecessor. Huang believes this will lead to lower AI inference costs and further advancements in AI model capabilities.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech AI chips

Microsoft Bets Big on India's AI Future: A $3 Billion Investment

2025-01-07
Microsoft Bets Big on India's AI Future: A $3 Billion Investment

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced a $3 billion investment in India to expand its AI and Azure cloud services, leveraging India's massive population to fuel revenue growth. The plan includes training 10 million Indians in AI skills. This investment will build a scalable AI computing ecosystem for Indian startups and researchers, highlighting the intense competition among tech giants for the Indian market and its potential as a leading developer hub.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

Nvidia Unveils Project Digits: A Personal AI Supercomputer

2025-01-07
Nvidia Unveils Project Digits: A Personal AI Supercomputer

At CES 2025, Nvidia launched Project Digits, a compact 'personal AI supercomputer' providing access to its Grace Blackwell hardware platform. Powered by the new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, it boasts up to a petaflop of computing power, capable of running AI models with up to 200 billion parameters. Targeted at AI researchers, data scientists, and students, Project Digits costs $3,000 and will be available from select partners starting in May.

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(techcrunch.com)
Hardware Supercomputer

Gift Card Site Leaks Hundreds of Thousands of Identity Documents

2025-01-03
Gift Card Site Leaks Hundreds of Thousands of Identity Documents

A US online gift card store, MyGiftCardSupply, suffered a massive security breach exposing hundreds of thousands of customer identity documents. Security researcher JayeLTee discovered an unsecured server containing over 600,000 images of driver's licenses, passports, and selfies from around 200,000 customers. MyGiftCardSupply claimed the data was collected for anti-money laundering compliance ('know your customer' checks), but its founder admitted the security lapse, stating the data is now secured. However, the company hasn't disclosed the duration of the exposure or plans to notify affected users. This incident highlights the ongoing risks associated with KYC procedures and data breaches.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

India Pulls Cloudflare's VPN App and Others from App Stores

2025-01-03
India Pulls Cloudflare's VPN App and Others from App Stores

India has removed several VPN apps, including Cloudflare's popular 1.1.1.1, from its app stores citing a 2022 regulation requiring VPN providers to store user data for five years. This move has sparked backlash from the industry, with some VPN providers withdrawing from India or ceasing marketing there. The action marks a significant tightening of VPN regulations in India.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech

India Delays Rules to Break PhonePe-Google Pay Duopoly Again

2025-01-01
India Delays Rules to Break PhonePe-Google Pay Duopoly Again

India has once again postponed plans to curb the dominance of major tech companies in the country's digital payments system. The deadline for implementing a 30% cap on any single app's UPI transaction share has been pushed back to December 31, 2026. This provides relief to PhonePe and Google Pay, which together control over 85% of UPI transactions. The regulator cited concerns about disrupting service for millions of users. The delay also marks another setback in India's efforts to rein in the power of global tech giants in its burgeoning digital economy. The initial proposal was made in 2020.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech digital payments

OpenAI Misses Deadline for Creator Opt-Out Tool, Fueling Copyright Concerns

2025-01-01
OpenAI Misses Deadline for Creator Opt-Out Tool, Fueling Copyright Concerns

OpenAI's promised Media Manager tool, designed to let creators control how their work is used in AI training data, has yet to launch, missing its 2025 deadline. This delay fuels ongoing copyright disputes, with OpenAI facing lawsuits from artists, writers, and media companies alleging unauthorized use of their work. While OpenAI offers alternative opt-out methods, these are deemed insufficient. The missed deadline and lack of transparency heighten tensions surrounding AI copyright and underscore the industry's challenges in addressing intellectual property issues.

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(techcrunch.com)
AI AI Copyright
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