Author: TechBrunch

The Federal Trade Commission announced Thursday that it will ban antivirus giant Avast from selling consumers' web browsing data to advertisers after the company claimed its products interfere with users' online tracking. Avast also settled a federal regulator's claim for $16.5 million, which the FTC says provides relief to Avast users whose sensitive browsing data was improperly sold to advertising giants and data brokers. Stated. “While Avast promised users that its products would protect the privacy of their browsing data, the opposite was true,” FTC Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levin said in a statement Thursday. “Avast's bait-and-switch surveillance tactics violated…

update: You may have come here because you heard that Google is “killing Gmail” this year, as per a hoax that is spreading rapidly online. The hoax claims to show an email from Google that says, “Your Gmail journey is coming to an end.” Here's one version I found on Twitter/X. rest assured. That doesn't mean Gmail won't go anywhere, but there is one way to access it, as explained below. In most cases, the “new” Gmail view was set by default a long time ago, so nothing needs to be changed unless you specifically requested the “basic HTML” view.…

Stability has announced Stable Diffusion 3, the latest and most powerful version of its image generation AI model. Details are sparse, but it's clear that this is an attempt to fend off the hype surrounding competitors recently announced by OpenAI and Google. We'll be covering all these technical details soon, but for now, know that Stable Diffusion 3 is based on a new architecture and will work with a variety of hardware (but not the most powerful ones). is required). It's not on sale yet, but you can join the waiting list here. The SD3 uses an updated “diffusion transformer”.…

Social network Bluesky, a competitor to the likes of X, Threads, and Mastodon, opened its doors with today's news that the network is opening up federation, following a public launch earlier this month. The move will allow anyone to run their own server that connects to Bluesky's network, hosting their own data, their own accounts, and creating their own rules. This distributed model of social networking is similar to the one already used by Mastodon, but in Bluesky it is underpinned by a different protocol, and for now he has kept the two networks separate. The growing interest in federation…

If you spend enough time online, you can collect a digital paper trail of accounts, logins, subscriptions, mailing lists, and passwords that were involved in a data breach. A new startup called Yorba is helping you better manage your ever-expanding digital footprint by releasing a versatile tool to keep your online life organized. Organize, monitor, and manage your online accounts, unsubscribe from mailing lists, cancel subscriptions, review our privacy policy, and more from our web-based dashboard. The end result is a mint of your entire online life, so to speak. Like Mint, Yorba doesn't keep any data of its own,…

Substack is updating its peer-to-peer recommendation system, the company announced today. With this new update, Substack now allows writers to help other writers expand their reach and gain more subscribers and followers. This allows the company to share a curated list of publications that writers subscribe to for their readers. The company said in a blog post that the changes mark a move away from the era of social media based on “centralized discovery and management.” Substack facilitates a peer-to-peer recommendation system that helps writers grow their audience by allowing writers to recommend a network of other writers to their…

While the NFT space may be down significantly from all-time highs, there can still be value for brands and loyalty programs looking to reach fans in new ways, he said. steve kaczynskico-author of the book “The Everything Token” and community lead for Starbucks Odyssey. “Brand anchors” to gate areas such as rewards programs are something companies will expand on in 2024, he said. “I think we're going to see a lot of community-based brand building this year,” he said on TechCrunch's Chain Reaction podcast. Starbucks launched Starbucks Odyssey in 2022 as its first foray into the world of Web3. The…

Today, we're adding a new AI lighting generator to Google Chrome. Powered by Gemin, the core of the tool is essentially Gmail's existing “Help me write” feature, but extended across the web and powered by one of Google's latest Gemini AI models. The company first announced this new tool back in January, but it's still in the “experimental” phase and must be explicitly enabled. First, go to the Chrome settings menu and look for the “Experimental AI” page. From there, you can easily enable new writing features, as well as Google's new automatic tab organizer (which I've never found particularly…

We are excited to announce exciting additions to the speaker lineup for StrictlyVC Los Angeles on February 29th. Jesse Lyu, founder and CEO of rabbit Inc., joins us to show off Rabbit R1, his pocket-sized AI hardware assistant that made waves at CES. And the broader news cycle took by storm last month. Liu is an entrepreneur known for his research in human-machine interaction. Along with Rabbit, he leads a team dedicated to creating intuitive experiences that redefine the way we interact with technology. Lyu also graciously agreed to stay on after his appearance so attendees could experience an “amazingly…

After years of copying and pasting shopping links into spreadsheets and taking screenshots of products to share with friends and family, Kristin Locker finally has a social shopping platform that lets her capture and organize her endless tabs. (named after her own name). She has a shareable virtual wishlist all in one place. Dubbed the “Pinterest of online shopping,” Locker will be released in 2022 as a Chrome extension that lets you save online products to categorized wishlists, discover collages of outfits created by others, and collaborate with friends. Work, create and share gift-worthy collections. via email or social media.…