All posts tagged: user

AI company deleted OKCupid user photos, data after FTC scrutiny

AI company deleted OKCupid user photos, data after FTC scrutiny

Published by Sam Flores

April 20 : Artificial intelligence company Clarifai said this month it had deleted 3 million OkCupid user photos and facial-recognition models trained on them after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission settled with the dating site over privacy violations. OkCupid settled with the FTC in late March for providing photos and demographic data to train Clarifai’s facial-recognition models in 2014, but the settlement drew criticism from some Democrats who alleged it did not go far enough. The incident reflects how AI has become a political flashpoint ahead of U.S. congressional elections, as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to promote American dominance in the industry. Clarifai certified to the FTC on April 7 that it had deleted the data, according to a document seen by Reuters. COMPANY DELETES MODELS AND DATA The company also told the office of U.S. Representative Lori Trahan on April 16 that it had deleted any models trained on the data and had not shared the data with third parties, her office said.  The Democrat from Massachusetts called the confirmation “a step in the …

Social Media Companies Fined for Harming User

Social Media Companies Fined for Harming User

Published by Jenni Sidey

Meta and YouTube were just ordered to pay a woman a combined six million dollars for creating addictive products that harmed her psychologically. TikTok and Snapchat were also sued but settled out of court. The 20-year-old woman joined YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9. Over the course of her childhood and adolescence, she explained that her experience on these platforms gave her body dysmorphia and thoughts of suicide, and led her to self-harm. The lawsuit accused Meta and YouTube of intentionally creating addictive platforms that enabled harm. Importantly, this circumvented Section 230, which protects social media companies from liability for content posted on their platforms. This strategy accused the platforms themselves of being harmful, not just what users uploaded or posted. Competing for Our Attention Meta and companies like it are engaged in what one design ethicist calls a “race to the bottom of the brainstem.” That is, each social media company has to compete for our attention. When one company designs a feature like infinite scrolling, all similar companies must either …

Docker isn’t just for developers — I’m a regular user and it changed how I run apps

Docker isn’t just for developers — I’m a regular user and it changed how I run apps

Published by skeptic

Docker had been sitting in my mental “not for me” folder for years. Right next to Kubernetes, enterprise dashboards, and anything that sounds like it requires a Slack channel just to exist. It had that aura. Containers, images, orchestration. Words that don’t just suggest complexity, they announce it. So I ignored it. Until I got tired of my system doing that subtle Linux thing where nothing is technically broken, but something is definitely off. I saw apps stepping on each other, and felt dependencies shifting under my feet. That creeping feeling that installing one more thing might be the thing that finally makes everything weird. Docker didn’t fix Linux. It just removed most of the reasons I was side-eyeing it. Since I’ve already written a few Docker articles and gotten one joint comment from you guys, here’s what Docker is! Docker sounds complicated, but it really isn’t It’s just apps in isolated boxes that don’t touch your system Afam Onyimadu / MUO Here’s Docker without the TED Talk. A container is just an app packaged …

8 powerful apt commands every Linux user should know – or else you’re missing out

8 powerful apt commands every Linux user should know – or else you’re missing out

Published by skeptic

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways Apt is more than just a software installer. The Debian/Ubuntu package manager can do much more. With these commands at your disposal, apt becomes more powerful. I’ve used Debian/Ubuntu-based distributions for decades. Because of that, I’m quite familiar with the Apt package manager. I’ve always found this command-line tool to be quite easy and efficient to use. Also: How to install Linux applications from the command line Although you can get away with just using the basic commands, there’s much more to Apt than just install, remove, update, and upgrade. In fact, there are several lesser-known options for Apt, and I’m going to introduce you to them. 1. apt list If you want to know which packages are accessible, installed, and upgradeable, you can use apt list. If you want to get a complete list of packages, run: apt list That will show every available package, whether installed or not. You probably won’t think that’s very useful, so you’ll want …

Viral anti-masturbation app Quittr exposed sensitive user data

Viral anti-masturbation app Quittr exposed sensitive user data

Published by skeptic

A viral app to help men stop masturbating exposed thousands of users’ data, 404 Media reports. The app, Quittr, claims to be the “#1 Porn Addiction App to Quit Porn Forever” on its website. It apparently blocks porn websites on one’s device, as well as tracks one’s “abstinence” from porn. Quittr also has community features like groups, a “panic button” for “emergency nofap help” and even an AI therapist. (“Nofap” began as a Reddit community to stop masturbating, and experts warn against using AI for therapy.) SEE ALSO: How to unblock Pornhub for free “Porn addiction,” like “sex addiction,” isn’t recognized by the DSM-5, which classifies mental disorders. While porn-viewing can be compulsive, like other behaviors, research suggests that perceived porn addiction predicted distress over actual porn use itself. Yet, the idea of “porn addiction” persists in the U.S., which lacks comprehensive sex education requirements in many states; only 37 percent of states require sex education to be medically accurate, according to Boston University. Hookup apps for everyone AdultFriendFinder — readers’ pick for casual connections …

Meta Lied About Its Smart Glasses Protecting User Privacy, New Class Action Lawsuit Claims

Meta Lied About Its Smart Glasses Protecting User Privacy, New Class Action Lawsuit Claims

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Meta may have sold seven million of its Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2025 alone — but likely didn’t anticipate the outpouring of criticism when a recent investigation by Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten revealed that Meta’s subcontracted data annotators in Nairobi, Kenya, could’ve been watching users through their glasses’ cameras as they went to the bathroom or had sex. The damning revelations shed light on the AI industry’s reliance on overseas labor for data labeling to train their models, a hidden reality glossed over in marketing materials by one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Just days after the investigation was published, Meta has been hit with a class action lawsuit, which accuses the company of woefully misleading its customers by claiming that it had put privacy front and center. “No reasonable consumer would understand ‘designed for privacy, controlled by you’ and similar promises like ‘built for your privacy’ to mean that deeply personal footage from inside …

Anonymous Kalshi User Makes Huge Bet That the White House Is About to Confirm Alien Life or Technology

Anonymous Kalshi User Makes Huge Bet That the White House Is About to Confirm Alien Life or Technology

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Is the US government about to confirm that aliens are real? That’s the claim floating around among those who believe in prediction markets as reliable soothsayers of the future, a promise that prediction markets would very much like you to buy into, so you overlook the obvious fact that they’re just another form of gambling. Let’s cut to the chase. After it reviewed Kalshi trading data, The Atlantic reports that a single trader just bet nearly $100,000 that the Trump administration will confirm the existence of alien life or technology by the end of this year. Actually, that was just the first big bet. Just 35 minutes later, another wager appeared, possibly by the same person, for nearly double that amount. What did the bettor(s) know? Could they possibly have inside knowledge on an impending ET revelation? It’s not quite the spectacular smoking gun that Agent Mulder might’ve stumbled onto in the original run of “The X-Files.” But …

5 programs you need to know about as a Linux user

5 programs you need to know about as a Linux user

Published by skeptic

As great an OS as Linux is, there’s still a major app-gap between it and other, more mainstream operating systems like Windows and macOS. However, that’s not to say that there are no great programs for Linux users. In fact, you can do just about everything you can on other OSes on Linux, as long as you’re willing to work with a replacement. You can even run Windows games better than Windows with just a Linux distro, and there’s no shortage of great tools and utilities that can take you from using Linux to really living in it. All you need is a little time, patience, and experimentation. Btop system monitoring you’ll actually use Screenshot uploaded by Yadullah Abidi | No attribution required. Btop is a modern, terminal-based resource monitor that makes keeping an eye on your system feel almost fun. Think of it as top or htop reimagined with a slick interface, smooth animations, and a ton of useful information presented at a glance. You get per-core CPU usage, temperature readouts, memory and swap …

I’ve been a Kindle user for over a decade – here’s why the Paperwhite is still my top choice

I’ve been a Kindle user for over a decade – here’s why the Paperwhite is still my top choice

Published by skeptic

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition ZDNET’s key takeaways The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is available for $200. I’ve been testing the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, which has the fastest performance yet, and up to 12 weeks of battery life. Remember that Amazon’s promise of up to 12 weeks of battery life assumes 30 minutes of daily use with wireless off. Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. I’ve used the TCL Nxtpaper Tab 10 as my e-reader for about half a year now. Soon after switching to the tablet, I passed off my 2018 Kindle Paperwhite (10th Generation) to my daughter and my 2020 iPad to my husband. Then I tried the latest Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, and I’m not sure I can give it up. Also: How I turned my Android tablet into a dedicated e-reader (and it works on iPad, too) The TCL tablet offers full-color paper, color paper, and black-and-white paper modes, giving you the full experience of a tablet and an e-reader. I love that I can turn pages and navigate …