Month: April 2017

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Twitter, Yelp, Instagram, Foursquare and a few other apps are agreeing to a $5.3 million settlement to an invasion-of-privacy class action in which the companies' apps were accused of accessing the address books of iOS users without their knowledge or consent. About 30 percent of the deal likely will go to the lawyers who sued—about $1.59 million. The remainder is earmarked for the estimated 7 million members of the class. If distributed evenly, that's about 53 cents for each class member—and within the ballpark of distribution ratios of other Silicon Valley privacy class-action settlements.

The lawsuit (PDF) was filed in 2012 and alleged that the apps engaged in "unconscionable, illegal practices" because iOS users' contacts "have now been accessed and stolen." The suit originally claimed that "each" class member was entitled to hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in damages. The suit was filed after The New York Times and others reported of the privacy breaches, which even attracted the attention of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission.

If the deal (PDF) is approved by a San Francisco federal judge, payments will be sent to the Amazon accounts of class members. Checks will be sent to those who insist upon that method of payment. Unclaimed funds will go to the civil rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Andrew Cunningham

If you want the “best” Windows laptop right now, it’s hard to argue with stuff like Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1 or HP’s Spectre x360. But a lot of the time, people don’t want the “best” laptop so much as they want the best laptop they can get for a certain amount of money.

In the last couple of years, a few of Asus’ midrange Zenbooks have done a nice job striking a balance between price and features. The $700-ish Zenbook UX305 laptops in particular were easy to recommend, though the Zenbook Flip model that debuted at the same price had a few too many flaws for our liking.

Enlarge / Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai listens during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday, March 8, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and his counterpart at the Federal Trade Commission today argued that strict privacy rules for ISPs aren't necessary in part because the broadband market is more competitive than the search engine market.

Internet users who have only one choice of high-speed home broadband providers would probably scoff at this claim. But an op-ed written by Pai and Acting FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen ignored the lack of competition in home Internet service, focusing only on the competitive wireless broadband market. Because of this competition, it isn't fair to impose different rules on ISPs than on websites, they wrote.

"Others argue that ISPs should be treated differently because consumers face a unique lack of choice and competition in the broadband marketplace," Pai and Ohlhausen wrote in their op-ed for The Washington Post yesterday. "But that claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny either. For example, according to one industry analysis, Google dominates desktop search with an estimated 81 percent market share (and 96 percent of the mobile search market), whereas Verizon, the largest mobile broadband provider, holds only an estimated 35 percent of its market."

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While it's quite clear that video game publishers have the legal right to restrict the broadcast of their games however they want, few companies actually place many restrictions on enthusiastic fans who want to share their own gameplay with the world. Atlus became a major exception to that rule this week, threatening to issue takedown notices for Persona 5 videos that spoil important story moments.

In a blog post yesterday, Atlus starts off with the usual polite request that players be considerate and avoid revealing late-game secrets in their videos:

Simply put, we don’t want the experience to be spoiled for people who haven’t played the game. Our fans have waited years for the game to come out and we really want to make sure they can experience it fully as a totally new adventure. ...

Please, PLEASE do not post any specific plot points or story spoilers, and only talk about the game in broad strokes.

This request is followed by a list of specific in-game moments that Atlus would prefer go unspoiled online. Where Atlus' guidelines go further than most similar requests, though, is in the threat to issue YouTube takedown notices for players that post late-game content: