Month: March 2024
Milky Way black hole has ‘strong, twisted’ magnetic field in mesmerizing new image
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Algorithms Can Aid Price Collusion, Even If No Humans Actually Talk To Each Other, US Enforcers Say
Algorithms might help hotels illegally collude on prices, even if no humans from those businesses actually talk to each other about them, according to US antitrust enforcers. From a report: The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission jointly submitted a statement of interest in Cornish-Adebiyi v. Caesars Entertainment, a case brought before the US District Court of New Jersey. The class action case was brought by New Jersey residents who rented rooms in Atlantic City hotels and alleged that several of those hotels engaged in an illegal price-fixing conspiracy through the use of a common pricing algorithm.
The plaintiffs are trying to show that the hotels violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits “conspiracy in restraint of trade” and is used to prosecute illegal price-fixing. They say that the hotels allegedly used a pricing algorithm platform called Rainmaker, knowing that their competitors were also using the platform and choosing it for that reason. The agencies really care about how this issue is handled. “Judicial treatment of the use of algorithms in price fixing has tremendous practical importance,” the DOJ and FTC write in their statement.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Algorithms might help hotels illegally collude on prices, even if no humans from those businesses actually talk to each other about them, according to US antitrust enforcers. From a report: The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission jointly submitted a statement of interest in Cornish-Adebiyi v. Caesars Entertainment, a case brought before the US District Court of New Jersey. The class action case was brought by New Jersey residents who rented rooms in Atlantic City hotels and alleged that several of those hotels engaged in an illegal price-fixing conspiracy through the use of a common pricing algorithm.
The plaintiffs are trying to show that the hotels violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits “conspiracy in restraint of trade” and is used to prosecute illegal price-fixing. They say that the hotels allegedly used a pricing algorithm platform called Rainmaker, knowing that their competitors were also using the platform and choosing it for that reason. The agencies really care about how this issue is handled. “Judicial treatment of the use of algorithms in price fixing has tremendous practical importance,” the DOJ and FTC write in their statement.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After overreaching TOS angers users, cloud provider Vultr backs off
Terms seemed to grant an “irrevocable” right to commercialize any user content.
Enlarge (credit: Wolfgang Reisser / 500px | 500px)
After backlash, the cloud provider Vultr has updated its terms to remove a clause that a Reddit user feared required customers to “fork over rights” to “anything” hosted on its platform.
The alarming clause seemed to grant Vultr a “non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable” license to “use and commercialize” any user content uploaded, posted, hosted, or stored on Vultr “in any way that Vultr deems appropriate, without any further consent” or compensation to users or third parties.
Here’s the full clause that was removed:
Apple’s MacBook Air M3 hits an all-time low, plus the rest of the week’s best tech deals
Amazon’s Big Spring Sale ended earlier this week, but a handful of the better tech discounts we saw during the event are still kicking. We’ve also found a few new deals of note, including all-time lows on the newest MacBook Air, the best price to date for an Apple AirTags four-pack, a larger-than-usual drop for the top pick in our webcam buying guide and more. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-macbook-air-m3-hits-an-all-time-low-plus-the-rest-of-the-weeks-best-tech-deals-163049166.html?src=rss
Amazon’s Big Spring Sale ended earlier this week, but a handful of the better tech discounts we saw during the event are still kicking. We’ve also found a few new deals of note, including all-time lows on the newest MacBook Air, the best price to date for an Apple AirTags four-pack, a larger-than-usual drop for the top pick in our webcam buying guide and more. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-macbook-air-m3-hits-an-all-time-low-plus-the-rest-of-the-weeks-best-tech-deals-163049166.html?src=rss
Godzilla X Kong’s first shot is an answer to Elon Musk
Adam Wingard explains how Elon Musk played a role in Godzilla X Kong’s opening shot.
Mashable entertainment editor Kristy Puchko speaks with Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire director Adam Wingard about how Elon Musk played a role in the film’s opening shot.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire hits theaters on March 29, 2024.
4 Things You Need to Know About Health Care Cyberattacks
Despite the explosion in ransomware hacks like the one against Change Healthcare, regulation is spotty and few new safeguards have been proposed to protect patient data, vulnerable hospitals and medical groups.
Despite the explosion in ransomware hacks like the one against Change Healthcare, regulation is spotty and few new safeguards have been proposed to protect patient data, vulnerable hospitals and medical groups.
Cisco alerts users to password-spraying attacks targeting VPN services
Cisco listed a set of defenses and migitations as Remote Access VPN (RAVPN) services come under attack.
Networking giant Cisco has warned its users of an ongoing attack against its business VPN services.
In a security advisory, Cisco said it had been notified of an ongoing password-spraying attack against different third-party VPN concentrators.
In this instance, it was Remote Access VPN (RAVPN) services configured on Cisco Secure Firewall that were affected.
Russian attackers
“Depending on your environment, the attacks can cause accounts to be locked, resulting in Denial of Service (DoS)-like conditions,” Cisco explained, saying that the activity appears to be a reconnaissance effort. The threat actors were not named.
Password spraying is a type of attack in which the threat actor tries the same password with multiple accounts, until one combination works.
Listing its set of defenses and mitigations, Cisco recommended enabling logging to a remote syslog server for improved correlation and auditing of network and security incidents across various network devices; securing default remote access VPN profiles by pointing unused default connection profiles to sinkhole AAA servers; leveraging TCP shun to manually bloc dangerous IP addresses, configuring control-place ACLs to block unauthorized public IP addresses from running VPN sessions; and using certificate-based authentication for RAVPN.
Security researcher Aaron Martin claims the attack was likely the work of an undocumented malware botnet named Brutus.
He made the connection after observing the malware’s targeting scope and attack patterns, it was said. In his analysis of the botnet, Martin said it counts some 20,000 IP addresses worldwide. At first, the attacks targeted SSLVPN appliances from Fortinet, Palo Alto, SonicWall, and Cisco, but have since evolved to include web apps using Active Directory for authentication, too.
To avoid raising any flags, Brutus rotates its IPs every six attempts.
Although inconclusive, some evidence points to Brutus being the work of APT29, an infamous Russian state-sponsored threat actor.
Via BleepingComputer
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