SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge on Friday approved a $650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users. U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illlinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 …
Elon Musk is ready for a rematch with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The billionaire Tesla chief appeared to welcome rumors that the agency was probing his Twitter posts about Dogecoin, his favorite meme-inspired cryptocurrency. “I hope they do! It would be awesome,” Musk tweeted Thursday, adding two emojis of a face crying with laughter. …
NASA released new images on Wednesday showing a gorgeous panorama of Mars taken by its newly-landed Perseverance rover. The rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system took 142 images upon landing on the Red Planet on Sunday. The first high-definition photos of the planet show the rim of Jezero Crater, a prehistoric lake that’s believed to have had …
Shares of a blank-check company that’s set to merge with electric-car maker Lucid Motors tumbled Tuesday after it inked a deal to take the Tesla rival public. Churchill Capital Corp IV — a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, backed by former Citigroup banker Michael Klein — saw its stock price drop 32 percent to $38.78 …
WASHINGTON – Chinese spies used code first developed by the US National Security Agency to support their hacking operations, Israeli researchers said on Monday, another indication of how malicious software developed by governments can boomerang against their creators. Tel Aviv-based Check Point Software Technologies issued a report noting that some features in a piece of …
Lawmakers in Congress are drafting a bill that would let news publishers team up against Facebook and Google. The House Judiciary Committee plans to roll out legislation in the coming weeks to allow small US news organizations to collectively bargain with the two tech titans, according to Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), the panel’s top Republican. …
WhatsApp is pressing ahead with a privacy policy update that sparked a backlash last month — but it promised to give people plenty of time to review the changes. The messaging service took another crack at reassuring users that the update would not let Facebook, its parent company, read their private chats. Those concerns led WhatsApp …
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Nicaragua has created a new National Ministry for Extraterrestrial Space Affairs, The Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, which is drawing amused reactions on social media in a nation that has been struggling since anti-government protests three years ago. The agency was approved by 76 legislators Wednesday in the country’s congress, which is …
Facebook will start weighing in on climate-related news posts by directing readers to visit its own “Climate Science Information Center,” the media giant announced Thursday. Labels directing climate-story readers to the newly expanded information center will be rolled out first in the U.K., and will help fight the misinformation that finds its way onto the …
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit Wednesday to shut down the cryptocurrency platform Coinseed for allegedly defrauding thousands of investors, including by charging hidden trading fees and selling “worthless” digital tokens. James said Coinseed traded cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin without registering as a broker-dealer, and sold “CSD” tokens without authorization to raise money …