Hackers Claim Massive Breach of Location Data Giant, Threaten to Leak Data

Hackers claim to have compromised Gravy Analytics, the parent company of Venntel which has sold masses of smartphone location data to the U.S. government.  The hackers said they have stolen a massive amount of data, including customer lists, information on the broader industry, and even location data harvested from smartphones which show peoples’ precise movements,…

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Cybertruck Tried to Drive ‘Straight Off an Overpass’ Attorney Claims

A Cybertruck owner in Texas is suing Tesla for $1,000,000 in damages for “ grossly negligent conduct” following an accident on a Houston highway that involved the vehicle’s self-driving feature. According to the lawsuit, Tesla is to blame for the crash because CEO Elon Musk has oversold the truck’s ability to drive itself. As originally…

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Musk Ally Demands Admin Access to System That Lets Government Text the Public

A worker at the General Services Administration told colleagues in a Slack message Tuesday that they have resigned in protest after Elon Musk ally Thomas Shedd requested “admin/root access to all components of the Notify.gov system,” which is a government system used to send mass text messages to the public that contains information the worker…

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Company Helps Men Scrub Negative Posts About Them from Tea App

Tea App Green Flags, a service that claims it can “protect your digital reputation,” will remove negative posts about men from private online groups where women share “red flags” about men they’ve dated in order to help other women.  The service is another escalation in the age of online dating, women attempting to protect each…

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a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service

A new startup backed by one of the biggest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), is building a service that allows clients to “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment.” Essentially, the startup, called Doublespeed, is pitching an astroturfing AI-powered bot service, which is in…

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EMERGENCY BREAKING NEWS PODCAST: Tim, Cooked

Today after recording our normal weekly podcast, Sam, Emanuel, and Jason spontaneously began discussing the legacy of Tim Cook as Apple CEO, the #BreakingTechNewsofTheWeek. We got really riled up so decided to press record to discuss Tim Cook’s accountant energy, his legacy of creating different sizes and shapes of rectangle and square phone-like devices, and…

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