NSO Group, one of the most well-known and controversial makers of government spyware, released a new transparency report on Wednesday, as the company enters what it described as “a new phase of accountability.” But the report, unlike NSO’s previous annual disclosures, lacks details about how many customers the company rejected, investigated, suspended, or terminated due to human rights abuses involving its surveillance tools. While the report contains promises to respect human rights and have controls to demand its customers do the same, the report provides no concrete evidence supporting either.  Experts and critics who have followed NSO and the spyware…

Building software products has never been easier, so why are so many well-funded startups failing to take off no matter how good their product is? In this season finale episode of Build Mode, our guest has an answer: Startups have focused too much on product development and not enough on distribution excellence. Paul Irving is partner and […] Source link

Internet connectivity collapsed across Iran on Thursday amid nationwide protests, according to web monitoring firms.  “I think we’re at a near-total disconnection from the outside world now,” Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity researcher who works for the nonprofit Miaan Group, told TechCrunch.  Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Kentik, a company that monitors internet traffic worldwide, concurred, telling TechCrunch that Iran’s internet has been in “near-total blackout” since around 11:30 a.m. on the U.S. east coast on Thursday, or 8 p.m. local time in Tehran. A chart showing how internet traffic dropped in Iran on Thursday around 11:30…

The health department for the U.S. state of Illinois has confirmed that a years-long security lapse exposed the personal information of more than 700,000 state residents. The Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) said in a statement on January 2 that an internal mapping website containing residents’ personal information, which officials used for assisting with the allocation of state resources, was inadvertently publicly viewable as far back as April 2021 through September 2025, when the security lapse was discovered. Officials said the exposed data included personal information on 672,616 individuals who are Medicaid and Medicare Savings Program recipients. The data…

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI will go to trial after a U.S. judge said there is evidence to support the billionaire’s case.  Musk sued OpenAI and its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, alleging they betrayed their original contractual agreements by pursuing profits instead of the nonprofit’s founding mission to develop AI that benefits humanity.  Musk, who has launched his own for-profit company xAI, was an early financial backer and co-founder of OpenAI. He resigned from the board in 2018 after his bid to take over as CEO was rejected by the other co-founders, who put Altman up…