Staple Street Capital bought Dominion Voting Systems in 2018, with a $38 million equity check and an $80 million enterprise value. It might have been the best private equity deal ever.
When the TED audience was asked Tuesday whether they were excited by artificial intelligence, most people raised their hands. When asked whether they were scared about AI, most people also raised their hands.
Why it matters: This enthusiastic ambivalence reflects society's broader split over a rapidly advancing technology that both tantalizes and terrifies.
A viral AI song that replicates Drake and The Weeknd's vocals has been pulled from multiple streaming platforms following a complaint from label Universal Music Group (UMG).
Driving the news: "Heart on My Sleeve" was removed from Spotify and Apple Music on Monday. By Tuesday, it was removed from YouTube, Amazon, SoundCloud, Tidal, Deezer, and TikTok — where it was streamed 15 million times after being originally uploaded on the platform by a user called Ghostwriter977. Some versions were still available online.
Netflix on Tuesday said it's ending its 25-year-old mail-in DVD business and delaying plans to crack down on password sharing more broadly until later this year.
Why it matters: The streamer has been looking closely at costs as its growth slows amid greater competition.
Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday for over $787 million in what would have been a historic defamation trial in a Delaware court.
Why it matters: The 11th-hour settlement protects Fox executives from having to possibly testify in court about their role in the network's airing of 2020 election lies.
Why it matters: The trial, which was slated to last six weeks, was watched closely for potential implications for the First Amendment and the impact it might have on Fox News ahead of the 2024 election.
Seventeen House members and 585 congressional aides were affected by a data breach at the D.C.'s health insurance marketplace last month, the marketplace's director will tell Congress on Wednesday.
Why it matters: Both Congress and insurance marketplace DC Health Link have been investigating the scope of the recent breach following posts on underground hacker forums selling stolen customer data.
Wednesday's hearing will mark the first time both parties will discuss the findings from their investigations — including how the breach happened and the estimated scope of the incident.
Driving the news: Mila Kofman, executive director of DC Health Link, will tell the House Oversight Committee that a misconfigured cloud server allowed malicious actors to steal thousands of customers' data in early March, according to a copy of her testimony published ahead of the hearing.
The breach affected 56,415 current and past customers of the health insurance exchange, and the stolen data included names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, per Kofman's written testimony.
43 family members of House lawmakers and 231 dependents of the House staff members are among those affected, as well.
The big picture: DC Health Link is just the latest organization to face a breach due to a misconfigured cloud server.
About two-thirds of exposed cloud storage buckets had sensitive data, according to a report from Palo Alto Networks released Tuesday.
"The server was misconfigured to allow access to the reports on the server without proper authentication," Kofman will say. "Based on our investigation to-date, we believe the misconfiguration was not intentional but human mistake."
The intrigue: Kofman's figures are lower than what congressional aides had originally told other news outlets in the weeks leading up to the upcoming hearing.
Details: DC Health Link enlisted help from the FBI and Google-owned cyber firm Mandiant on March 6, the day the exchange first learned about the breach, Kofman will testify.
By March 8, Mandiant had identified the source of the breach, and DC Health Link's security manager was able to "immediately shut it down," she'll add.
DC Health Link notified six other federal agencies about the breach, as well as three local D.C. chambers of commerce whose members enrolled in health insurance through the exchange.
What's next: DC Health Link is still conducting its own investigation into the extent of the breach.
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Southwest Airlines was temporarily forced to halt domestic departures Tuesday following a technical issue.
Why it matters: This is the latest hurdle for the airline, which suffered a disastrous holiday meltdown late last year that prompted days of delays, cancellations, and baggage claim chaos.
The majority of cloud accounts are riddled with improper security controls, exposed sensitive databases and high-risk vulnerabilities, according to new research from Palo Alto Networks.
Driving the news: Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 threat intelligence team analyzed 210,000 cloud accounts across 1,300 organizations in its annual cloud threat report released Tuesday.
Now that the Biden administration has taken a stronger stance against some commercial spyware vendors, the real race begins: detecting and squashing them.
AI was everywhere Monday as the annual TED conference kicked off in Vancouver.
What's happening: An AI-infused opera kicked off the conference and the first talks included a mix of deepfakes and using AI to hear animals whose sounds are too low or high for humans to hear. And that was just Monday, with artificial intelligence topics dominating this week's program and surrounding exhibits.
Elon Musk is on a reputation-mending media tour as Twitter faces business challenges and advertiser skepticism tied to his erratic and controversial product and policy changes.
Why it matters: Musk claimed in an interview with BBC last week that most of Twitter's advertisers have returned, but analysts suggest Twitter's ad revenue is rapidly declining.
Love is not patient, as fans of Netflix's "Love is Blind" reality show demonstrated on Sunday night when a live reunion episode failed to stream as promised.
Driving the news: The "Love is Blind Live Reunion" was the streamer's second-ever live show.
Apple has launched a high-yield savings account with a 4.15% annual percentage yield, the company announced Monday.
Why it matters: It's the tech giant's latest move to entice people to sign up for its growing basket of financial products at a time when the national average annual percentage yield for savings accounts is sitting at under 0.4%.
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