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The inspector general's office of the Social Security Administration is investigating allegations of a security breach by a member of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency operation spearheaded by Elon Musk. A whistleblower has claimed that a former software engineer from DOGE said he possessed two databases from the SSA, "Numident" and the "Master Death File." The person reportedly asked for help transferring the databases from a thumb drive "to his personal computer so that he could sanitize the data before using it at [the company]," an unnamed government contractor where he is currently employed. Those databases include personal information about more than 500 million living and deceased Americans. The Washington Post reported that the whistleblower complaint was filed with the inspector general in January. "When The Post contacted the agency and the company in January, both said they had not heard of the complaint. Both said they subsequently looked into the allegations and did not find evidence to confirm the claims," the publication said. It is unclear why the complaint is now being investigated and neither party offered comment this week for The Post's article. The SSA watchdog informed both members of Congress and the Government Accountability Office of its investigation. These allegations follow a different whistleblower complaint filed last August about DOGE access and mishandling of data from the SSA. Charles Borges, former chief data officer at the agency, claimed that a SSA database was stored in an unsecured cloud environment. "This is absolutely the worst-case scenario," Borges told The Post of the latest claims. "There could be one or a million copies of it, and we will never know now."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/social-security-watchdog-investigating-claims-that-doge-engineer-copied-its-databases-212722061.html?src=rss
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AI companies have been spending a lot of time in court arguing copyright cases over the past year and the latest plaintiff is Gracenote, the metadata company owned by Nielsen. Axios reports that Gracenote is suing OpenAI for the unauthorized and unpaid use of both its metadata and its framework for connecting that information. Gracenote specializes in entertainment metadata, creating descriptions and identifiers for content that clients such as TV providers use to help their own customers with discovery. Most of the lawsuits against AI businesses have focused on the content used to train LLMs, but the Gracenote case brings an extra layer with the alleged infringement of the structure or sequence for a dataset in addition to the actual data. "Defendants could have paid Gracenote to license its valuable Gracenote Data. Or they could have sought to train and ground their models only on information in the public domain. They did neither. Defendants instead improperly copied and used Gracenote Data to create their own commercially valuable AI products, all without paying a dime," the complaint states. The company claims that its previous attempts to work with OpenAI for a licensing agreement were rebuffed or ignored. Gracenote has recently inked deals to back AI ventures from other companies, including Samsung and Google. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/metadata-company-gracenote-is-the-latest-to-sue-openai-for-copyright-infringement-200347812.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
The real world price of impulse-buying Fortnite skins is going up, Epic has announced. Not because skins themselves are getting more expensive on paper, but because V-Bucks, Fortnite's digital currency, is. The same prices you paid for bundles of V-Bucks in February will now effectively earn you fewer bucks starting on March 19, along with several other Fortnite-related pricing changes.Epic will still offer bundles of V-Bucks starting at $8.99 and running all the way to $89.99, but with a new "conversion rate. The new bundle prices breakdown as follows:$8.99 will get you 800 V-Bucks, down from 1,000 V-Bucks$22.99 will get you 2,400 V-Bucks, down from 2,800 V-Bucks$36.99 will get you 4,500 V-Bucks, down from 5,000 V-Bucks$89.99 will get you 12,500 V-Bucks, down from 13,500 V-BucksOn top of those changes, the cost of Epic's "Exact Amount Pack," which lets you buy the exact amount of V-Bucks necessary to complete a specific purchase, is changing from around $0.50 for 50 V-Bucks to $0.99 for 50 V-Bucks. These new prices for V-Bucks are US-specific and will vary in other regions. They're also not entirely representative of the value Epic is offering with each purchase. As part of the company's Epic Rewards program, you get 20 percent back on purchases made in Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League when you use the Epic Games Store or Epic's payment system on Android, iOS, PC or the web. That means you can receive anywhere from $1.79 (for 800 V-Bucks) to $17.99 (for 12,500 V-Bucks) to spend in Fortnite or the Epic Games Store when you use the company's payment system.Changes to the value of V-Bucks are also impacting Fortnite's various passes. The standard Battle Pass will now cost 800 V-Bucks and award 800 V-Bucks, down from its previous price of 1,000 V-Bucks. Meanwhile, the price of the OG Pass (for Fortnite's throwback game mode) is lowering from 1,000 V-Bucks to 800 V-Bucks, and both the Music and Lego Passes are going from costing 1,400 V-Bucks to 1,200 V-Bucks. For any subscribers to Fortnite Crew, Fortnite's monthly subscription service, your monthly stipend of the digital currency is also shrinking from 1,000 V-Bucks to 800 V-Bucks.Epic claims that it's making all of these changes because "the cost of running Fortnite has gone up a lot" and raising prices helps pay the bills, but the company is also in a much better position to make money on every transaction that happens in the game. In securing largely favorable outcomes in its lawsuits against Apple and Google, Epic now has a way to point users to its payment system on iOS and Android (all the better to avoid app store fees), and its won major concessions that seem poised to reshape how app store economies work. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/epic-is-increasing-the-price-of-fortnites-v-bucks-currency-185800744.html?src=rss
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