Anthropic Sues Government over ‘Supply Chain Risk; Russian Government Hackers Hitting Signal & WhatsApp; Pennsylvania Newest State Fighting Dynamic Pricing; Sony Testing Playstation Dynamic Pricing

After the government not only cut ties with Anthropic over their refusal to let the government use Claude for mass surveillance of US citizens or operating weapons systems without human intervention, the government also designated the company as a ‘supply chain risk,’ with can significantly affect their business. Engadget.com reports that Anthropic has now sued the government over this, as expected. The lawsuit claims the designation is unlawful and violated free speech and due process rights. Anthropic’s statement to media said “These actions are unprecedented and unlawful. The Constitution does not allow ​the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech.” The AI company further said that the government action was part of an ‘unprecedented and unlawful…campaign of retaliation.’ Now, the slugfest in the courts begins.

The Netherlands Defense Intelligence and Security Service has reveled that the Russians are in the midst of a ‘large scale global’ hacking campaign against Signal and WhatsApp users. According to techcrunch.com, they are using phishing and social engineering technics instead of malware to take over accounts on the apps. They are posing on Signal as the app’s support team. On WhatsApp, they are abusing the ‘linked devices’ function, that lets users access WhatsApp from a secondary device like your laptop or tablet. Just a word to the wise. Even platforms that have fully encrypted messaging can be hacked.

Pennsylvania is the newest state to jump into the fight against dynamic pricing. A bill in their legislature would ban ‘unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce,” namely, promoting or engaging in dynamic pricing. In the bill, dynamic pricing refers to changing the prices of essential goods or services within a 24-hour period based on demand or other factors, including the use of artificial intelligence. Mashable.com notes that dynamic pricing has become more common with retailers the last few years. Sometimes you will see something about ‘surge pricing’. Another aspect is surveillance pricing, which uses customers’ behaviors and characteristics to set different costs for the same items. And algorithmic pricing uses data — sometimes generalized data, such as when demand is highest, and other times personalized data, such as one’s demographic — to determine cost. Here you thought that just the increase in gas prices from the Iran war was bumping up grocery prices! Other states considering legislation concerning surveillance pricing are Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.

Speaking of dynamic pricing, a site called PSprices has been tracking prices on Sony’s digital game store, and noticed that some games were being offered at different prices to different users. What’s more, those offers are tracked in the PlayStation API with experiment identifiers.The site says Sony is running A/B testing on prices for over 150 games in 58 regions…although so far, the US doesn’t see to be included. This is yet another reason states are stepping in where the feds won’t, and passing laws against dynamic pricing…which is such a sneaky way to take more money out of your pocket…and in a lot of cases, without you even knowing it.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.