A 19-year-old dual United States and Estonian citizen arrested in Finland earlier this month faces federal charges in the U.S. alleging he was a prolific member of the notorious Scattered Spider hacking collective.
According to temporarily unsealed court records obtained by the Chicago Tribune, the suspect (who used the online alias “Bouquet”) helped extort millions of dollars from multiple large corporations worldwide.
The suspected Scattered Spider member, who was allegedly arrested by Finnish law enforcement at Helsinki’s airport on April 10 while attempting to board a flight to Japan, is facing wire fraud, conspiracy, and computer intrusion charges.
In a six-count complaint filed under seal in December, prosecutors say that Bouquet was involved in at least four Scattered Spider breaches (including a March 2023 hack of an online communication platform, conducted when he was 16 years old) that forced the victim companies to pay millions of dollars in ransoms.
The list of companies breached with Bouquet’s help also includes an unnamed multibillion-dollar “luxury item retailer” in May 2025, when the hackers allegedly called the company’s IT helpdesk posing as employees to reset authentication credentials, then gained access to administrator accounts.
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The group later sent a ransom demand, claiming to have 100 gigabytes of stolen data, and eventually demanded $8 million. However, even though the company refused to pay, it still incurred more than $2 million in disruption and remediation costs.
BleepingComputer reached out to the Department of Justice and the Office of the Attorney General for more details, but a response was not immediately available.
The Scattered Spider cybercrime collective
Scattered Spider (also tracked as 0ktapus, Scatter Swine, Octo Tempest, Starfraud, UNC3944, and Muddled Libra) surfaced in 2022 and is a loosely knit, financially motivated hacking collective composed largely of teenagers and young adults from the U.S. and Great Britain.
According to the FBI, they are known for using a blend of social engineering, targeted multi-factor authentication (MFA) bombing (aka MFA fatigue), and SMS credential phishing attacks to steal user credentials and sensitive documents for extortion leverage after breaching their targets’ networks.
Earlier this month, 24-year-old Tyler Robert Buchanan, believed to be one of Scattered Spider’s leaders, pleaded guilty in the United States to charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming.
At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what’s exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop.
Most fitness bands still look like tiny gym equipment strapped to your wrist. Inllie’s Luna Core Bracelet goes in a different direction, looking more like a polished piece of jewelry than something quietly counting your steps and judging your sleep.
It launches alongside the Sense Core Band, with both wearables taking a more refined, accessory-inspired approach to fitness tracking.
Inllie Design
A fitness tracker you can dress up
Luna Core is the model that makes the stronger first impression. Its slim bracelet design gives it a jewelry-like look, making it easier to wear with office outfits, evening plans, or everyday casual fits. It has the kind of finish that would not look odd next to rings, watches, or other accessories.
Inllie Design
The Sense Core Band takes a slightly more familiar route, while keeping the look clean. Its slim front display can show key information such as battery, steps, and heart rate at a glance, while the option of a metal Milanese or silicone strap gives it more flexibility. You can make it look polished for the day or more practical for workouts.
Beauty with health tracking built in
Both wearables are designed to fit into everyday life without dominating your wrist. They track heart rate, blood oxygen, stress, heart rate variability, menstrual cycles, sleep, steps, and a range of workout modes, covering the usual wellness metrics in a more understated form. You get the full set of health tracking features without having to wear something that leans heavily into a sporty look.
Inllie Design
Inllie also says the Luna Core Bracelet and Sense Core Band have been tested for drop and vibration resistance, so they are built for regular use. Both devices are rated for five to seven days of use, so you won’t need to think about charging them every night.
Luna Core costs $149, while Sense Core is priced at $109. For a wearable that looks this polished, Inllie has kept the price surprisingly reasonable. The company is also offering a limited-time bundle on both models, saving customers $79.
Sniffies, a Seattle-based meetup platform for gay, bisexual and sexually curious men, has landed a $100 million investment from Match Group. The deal gives Match a significant minority ownership stake in the Grindr competitor, along with an option to acquire the company outright.
Match Group owns a suite of dating apps including Tinder, Hinge, Match and OKCupid. Its CEO is Spencer Rascoff, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Zillow and later led the Seattle real estate giant, and who also co-founded the second-home marketplace Pacaso.
Blake Gallagher, Sniffies founder and CEO. (Sniffies Photo)
Blake Gallagher launched Sniffies more than eight years ago and serves as CEO. On LinkedIn, he describes the app as a “no-holds-barred, sex-positive platform that enables and encourages its users to genuinely explore their sexuality, fantasies, and kinks both virtually and physically.”
The platform claims roughly 3 million monthly active users worldwide and more than 20 million messages exchanged daily. It has 65 employees.
The investment — which is the startup’s first — “unlocks our ability to move faster on the things that matter most: stronger trust & safety, better product, and a more dynamic network,” Gallagher said in a LinkedIn post.
The company is profitable and will continue operating independently under Gallagher’s leadership, Bloomberg reported. As part of the arrangement, Match will phase out Archer app, its existing app for queer men that the company launched three years ago.
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In a statement, Rascoff pointed to growing demand in this space, adding that “Sniffies feels genuinely different and authentic to its audience.”
Gallager studied architecture at the University of Washington, and then served as a project designer at HOK and McClennan Design where he worked on urban development projects across the globe and Microsoft’s Executive Briefing Center renovation project. The company’s chief marketing officer is Eli Martin, who studied business at Western Washington University and prior to Sniffies worked as a producer on broadcast and digital campaigns for PepsiCo and JPMorgan Chase.
In a LinkedIn post, Gallagher said “the product, the tone, and the community will continue to be shaped by the people who use it.”
Rascoff, meanwhile, responded that it’s clear the product “came from a strong founder instinct and a deep understanding of the community and how they actually want to connect.”
We all know that you can’t bring a box cutter or a baseball bat onto a plane, but it can be hard to keep up with some of the restrictions on electronic items from airlines, especially on international flights. In the U.S., the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) allows you to carry on antlers and shock collars for pets, but cast iron skillets and snow cleats are a no-go.
When it comes to electronics, you should definitely do a quick Google search before you board your flight. The rules are ever-changing and it can be difficult to keep up. Almost all of us travel with our smart phones, and many of us also pack tablets, laptops, and other electronics, along with portable power banks to keep those items charged while we travel. In 2025, TSA prohibited portable chargers and power banks in checked luggage due to the lithium-ion batteries those items use, but another country is taking it a step further.
Beginning on April 24, 2026, Japan will no longer allow the use of portable power banks and chargers on all commercial flights to and from Japan. Though passengers can still pack up to two of them per person in carry-on bags, travelers are not allowed to use them to recharge phones. They are also prohibited from charging any device with a lithium-ion battery using power outlets inside the plane. The concern is that power banks and other items with these batteries may overheat and catch fire.
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More and more authorities have been restricting power banks on planes
Phuong D. Nguyen/Shutterstock
You may be frustrated to learn that you can’t charge your devices, including your smart phone, on commercial flights into and out of Japan. However, the decision was made to improve safety. In the U.S. alone, there have been 717 verified incidents aboard airplanes since 2006 that were caused by lithium-ion batteries, including 281 that were caused by batteries or battery packs. These incidents involve smoke, fire, or extreme heat. In one such incident caused by a passenger’s personal device in 2025, a cabin fire broke out on an American Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Phoenix, forcing an emergency landing in Washington, D.C.
Japan reported 123 incidents involving batteries in 2024, which represents a 160% increase since 2020. The country’s new regulations were made in response to revised international standards from the International Civil Aviation Organization, a specialized United Nations agency that “helps 193 countries to cooperate together and share their skies to their mutual benefit.”
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In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) limits passengers to carrying two spare batteries or power banks per person, and individual airlines may have additional rules and limitations. For example, Southwest Airlines limits passengers to one power bank that cannot be placed in the overhead bin and cannot be charged with in-seat power. If you plan to fly with a power bank, be sure to check your airline’s rules and regulations prior to traveling.
Since 2022, the Sikorsky HH-60W, dubbed the “Jolly Green II” (not to be confused with the much larger “Jolly Green Giant”), has been in service as the United States Air Force’s combat search and rescue (CSAR) helicopter. Its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, claims that the HH-60W is the only helicopter made for the sole purpose of CSAR.
That’s quite a claim, so what makes it different from the visually very similar UH-60 Black Hawk that’s been in service for decades? After all, the HH-60W borrows a lot from the platform. Aside from mechanical components, however, the similarities are little more than skin deep.
What makes the Jolly Green II the perfect purpose-built CSAR helicopter? First, it’s built for survivability. It has chaff and flare launchers to thwart surface-to-air missiles and potential airborne threats, and it has tech onboard to warn the crew if the enemy is firing at it or has achieved missile lock. Additionally, the exhaust vents are configured in such a way that the infrared signature is less noticeable, according to the U.S. Air Force.That survivability is bolstered by the addition of mounted 7.62-millimeter rotary guns (also called miniguns) or .50 caliber heavy machine guns.
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Bigger inside and easier to fly
The HH-60W has also been made better for the crew and overall usability. The avionics and navigation suite have been completely upgraded over the previous generation of search and rescue helicopters (called the “Pave Hawk”). It now has live map displays so crews can more easily navigate difficult terrain to find downed airmen or otherwise missing personnel. The interior cabin has been made larger for more crew space or to house extra medical equipment if needed.
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As for range, the HH-60W enjoys a much larger fuel tank compared to other Black Hawk variants at 644 gallons. The addition of a refueling probe for mid-air refueling gives the HH-60W the range it needs, at 690 miles, to make sure everyone gets home.
Lockheed Martin says that it’s more aerodynamically capable than previous CSAR helicopters. The HH-60W Jolly Green II has a longer range, better tech, a bigger cabin, and more tricks up its sleeve to confound the enemy and bring people home from combat than a run-of-the-mill Black Hawk.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Monday heard a dispute over labels on the popular Roundup weed killer, which thousands of people blame for their cancers. How the Supreme Court rules could have implications for tens of thousands of lawsuits against Roundup maker Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer. The case centers on who decides about warning labels on chemicals: the federal government — or states or juries. […] The justices will not be evaluating whether glyphosate causes cancer. Rather, they’ll consider who should decide what appears on warning labels and whether states have a role to play after the EPA weighs in.
The current U.S. solicitor general backed Monsanto. Sarah Harris, his principal deputy, said the Environmental Protection Agency is in the driver’s seat, not anyone in Missouri. “Missouri thus requires adding cancer warnings but federal law requires EPA to approve new warnings and tasks EPA with deciding what label changes would mitigate any health risks,” Harris argued. “State law must give way.” Several justices, including Brett Kavanaugh, appeared to agree with Monsanto’s argument about the need for a single, uniform standard across the country.
But others, like Chief Justice John Roberts, wondered what would happen if the federal government moved more slowly than states did, who wanted to act quickly on information about new dangers. “Well, it does undermine the uniformity,” Roberts said. “On the other hand, if it turns out they were right, it might have been good if they had an opportunity to do something, to call this danger to the attention of people while the federal government was going through its process,” he said about states.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked about the emergence of new science, and the EPA’s reviews. “There’s a 15-year window between when that product has to be re-registered again and lots of things can happen in science, in terms of development about the product,” she said. Bayer, which now owns Monsanto, only sells Roundup that contains glyphosate to farmers and businesses these days. Bayer has been pushing to resolve scores of the residential cases through a sweeping settlement, trying to put the costly claims behind it.
Amazon has today announced a software update for both the Kindle Colorsoft and Kindle Scribe Colorsoft which will bring dark mode to both e-readers. Even better, users will be able to toggle the settings for specific menus on both devices, so if they want their library dark and their notebook light, they can. Given the option is available on plenty of other Kindle devices, its omission here always felt like something Amazon was just getting around to addressing.
In addition, the update brings Smart Shapes to notebooks, enabling users to add pre-drawn lines, arrows, circles, triangles and rectangles from the toolbar. In addition, a hold-to-snap tool lets you draw a shape freehand, after which point it’ll pull itself into a nice tidy design. Both should help folks who want to add some graphical zing to their note taking who can’t do all those fancy journal designs on their own.
The update is rolling out across the ecosystem across the next few days, further empowering would-be journal scribes using these tablets. For tablets like the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, it’s clear Amazon needs to build out the Scribe half of the equation, which looks like a poor relative compared to its competition. As Cherlynn Low wrote in her review, it’s a fine e-reader, but one that’s sorely lacking in many areas.
Considering how integral it is to our modern way of life, you could be excused for thinking that the Global Positioning System (GPS) is a product of the smartphone era. But the first satellites actually came online back in 1978, although the system didn’t reach full operational status until April of 1995. While none of the active GPS satellites currently in orbit are quite that old, several of them were launched in the early 2000s — and despite a few tweaks and upgrades, their core technology isn’t far removed from their 1990s era predecessors.
But in the coming years, that’s finally going to change. Just last week, the tenth GPS III satellite was placed in orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Once it’s properly configured and operational, it will join its peers to form the first complete “block” of third-generation GPS satellites. Over the next decade, as many as 22 revised GPS III satellites are slated to take their position over the Earth, eventually replacing all of the aging satellites that billions of people currently rely on.
To understand the future of GPS, it’s helpful to look at its past. Developed by the United States military during the Cold War, what we now call GPS was originally known as Navigation System with Timing and Ranging (NAVSTAR). While the intent was always to allow civilian use of NAVSTAR, the equipment necessary to receive the signal and get a position was cumbersome and expensive.
There was little public interest in the system until Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down in 1983 after mistakenly entering the Soviet Union’s airspace. With the lifesaving potential of NAVSTAR clearly evident, pressure started building on the industry to develop smaller and more affordable receivers — GPS as we know it was born.
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NAVSTAR Satellite
That the development of such devices was possible in the first place was thanks to the design of NAVSTAR. Each satellite in the constellation broadcasts a timed radio signal which receivers on the ground use to compute their distance from the source. By comparing the signals from multiple satellites, a receiver can plot its position without the need for any local infrastructure. Since the process is entirely one-way, the can could be freely used by any device can can receive and decode the signal.
But while this operational simplicity was key to the proliferation of cheap ubiquitous GPS receivers, there’s certainly room for improvement given more modern technology. When NAVSTAR was designed knowing where a receiver was located within a radius of a few meters was more than sufficient, but today there’s a demand for greater accuracy by both civilian and military users. Given the essentially incalculable value of GPS to the global economy, improving reliability is also paramount. Not only has GPS jamming and spoofing become trivial, but even without the involvement of bad actors, legacy GPS struggles in urban environments.
Plans to deliver improved performance in these areas have been in the works for decades, with the United States Congress first authorizing the work on what would become GPS III all the way back in 2000. But when working on a system so critical that even a few minutes of downtime could put the entire planet into turmoil, such changes don’t come easy.
Can You Hear Me Now?
While modern GPS receivers are more sensitive than those in the past, there’s simply no getting over the fact that signals coming from a satellite more than 20,000 kilometers away will be by their very nature weak. So not only is it relatively easy for adverse environmental conditions to block or hinder the signal, but it doesn’t take much to override the signal with a local transmitter if somebody is looking to cause trouble.
As such, one of the key goals of the GPS III program was to deliver higher transmission power. This will lead to better reception for all GPS users across the board, but the new satellites also offer some special modes that offer even greater performance.
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In addition to the backwards compatible signals transmitted by GPS III satellites, there’s also a new “Safety of Life” signal. This signal is transmitted at a different frequency, 1176 MHz, and at a higher power, so compatible receivers should hear it come in at approximately 3 dB above the “classic” signal. It’s intended primarily for high-performance applications such as aviation, but as compatible receivers get cheaper, it will start to show up in more devices.
These improvements should be enough for civilian use, but the military has higher expectations and operates under more challenging conditions. In such cases, future GPS III satellites will come equipped with a high-gain directional antenna that can project a “spot beam” signal anywhere on Earth. For receivers located within the beam, which is estimated to be a few hundred kilometers in diameter, the received signal from the satellite will be boosted by up to 20 dB. In contested environments, this should make it far more resistant to jamming and spoofing.
Speaking New Languages
The new signals being transmitted by GPS III satellites won’t just be louder than their predecessors, they’ll gain some new features as well.
For one thing, GPS III satellites will transmit a standardized signal known as L1C which offers interoperability with other global navigation systems such as Europe’s Galileo, China’s BeiDou, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), and Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System. In theory a compatible receiver will be able to process signals from any combination of these systems simultaneously, improving overall performance.
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The new satellites will also support the L2C signal. While this signal was technically available on earlier generation satellites, it’s still not considered fully operational and its adoption is expected to accelerate as more GPS III satellites come online. Compared with the legacy GPS protocol, L2C offers improved faster acquisition of signal, better error correction, and a more capable packet format.
To make GPS III transmissions even more secure, the military is also getting their own signal known as M-code. As you might expect, little is publicly known about M-code currently, but it’s a safe bet that it utilizes encryption and other features to make it more difficult for adversaries to create spoofed transmissions. For what it’s worth, a recent press release from the US Space Force claims that the use of M-code makes the next-generation GPS satellites “three-times more accurate and eight times more resistant to jamming than the previous constellation.”
Testing Out New Toys
Although all ten GPS III satellites are now in orbit, that doesn’t mean the constellation is complete. Starting in 2027, a new fleet of revised satellites known as GPS IIIF will start launching. They will take the lessons learned from the initial GPS III deployment to create a smaller, lighter, and more efficient platform that should have a service life of at least 15 years.
Artist impression of a future GPS IIIF satellite.
They’ll also include new in-development equipment that wasn’t quite ready for deployment when the current GPS III satellites were being assembled. This includes optical reflectors that will allow ground stations to more accurately track the position of each satellite, laser data links that will allow high-speed communication between satellites, and an improved atomic clock known as the Digital Rubidium Atomic Frequency Standard (DRAFS).
Of course, the vast majority of the people who use GPS every day will never be aware of all the changes and improvements happening behind the scenes. When they get a new phone with a GPS III-compatible receiver, they may notice that their navigation app locks on a bit faster or that the position shown on the screen is a little closer to where they are actually standing, but only if they are particularly attentive. But that’s entirely by design — the most important aspect of implementing GPS III is making the whole process as invisible as possible.
Late last month we noted how the Trump FCC under Brendan Carr announced a new “ban” on all routers made overseas (which means pretty much all of them). At the time, we also noted how this was less of a ban and more of a shakedown, with router manufacturers required to beg the Trump FCC for conditional waivers (fees, favors, whatever) to continue doing business in the States.
Not long after, Netgear, which does a lot of work with the U.S. government, announced it had received an exemption from the Trump FCC, though neither Netgear or the government transparently indicated what Netgear had to do to get the exemption. Pay a bribe? Host Brendan Carr for a game of golf? Install a surreptitious backdoor for CIA and ICE access? Nobody knows.
Now Amazon is the latest to get an exemption for both its Eero consumer routers and its Leo low Earth orbit (LEO) routers. Amazon showed up on the exemption list, but again there’s absolutely no indication of what the company had to actually do to get it, or the standards the Trump FCC is using to determine what hardware can be trusted. An Amazon announcement is painfully vague:
“We’re pleased to share that the U.S. government has recognized eero as a trusted and secure provider of routers.”
How did this happen? Does anybody trust the Trump administration to make this determination? Are there concerns about backdoors in exchange for being allowed to continue to do business? Nobody knows, though the FCC has indicated the ban has been expanded to include personal hotspots.
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This would all likely be less alarming if the Trump administration wasn’t aggressively transactional, unethical, and authoritarian. Little to nothing Brendan Carr and Donald Trump do is genuinely for the public interest; and while this ban is being proposed as an act to protect national security, with their other hand they’ve taken countless steps to ensure consumers are less secure than ever.
That’s ranged from firing of officials responsible for online election security and investigating hacks, or to the relentless “deregulation” (real, the elimination of corporate oversight) of a U.S. telecom sector that was just the target of one of the worst cybersecurity incidents in U.S. history (in large part because telecom executives failed to change default router admin passwords).
Most press coverage of this new router ban acts as if the Trump FCC is still a trusted actor when it comes to the public interest, but that’s a pretty broad assumption given all the dodgy, unethical, and illegal behavior we’ve seen from the agency and administration more generally.
I don’t think most U.S. journalism is journalism. It’s some weird simulacrum designed to not offend. Why would you not at least include one sentence or paragraph on how nothing about this is transparent? Or that the administration has a bad track record on ethics and transparency?
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Similarly, no outlets have been inclined to mention that the Trump administration’s open corruption and mindless dismantling of corporate oversight and consumer protection have most certainly endangered national security and consumer cybersecurity and privacy in ways we’ve not yet begun to calculate. “You can trust us on this,” isn’t something anybody, especially media outlets, should be accepting as an answer.
The next gadget you put on your head could scan your brain. Neurable, a Boston-based company that embeds its noninvasive brain-scanning technology into hardware to monitor a person’s focus levels, announced on Tuesday that it is transitioning to a licensing platform model. By certifying third parties, Neurable expects its tech to be in a “flood” of consumer gadgets this year and next.
Neurable has until now focused its efforts on a pair of consumer-grade headphones—made in partnership with audio brand Master & Dynamic. It also has a contract with the US Department of Defense to see how its technology can monitor blast overpressure and potentially help diagnose mild traumatic brain injuries in soldiers. With the licensing model, we could see more of Neurable’s tech in everyday head-based wearables.
The headphones use built-in electroencephalography (EEG) sensors to monitor brain waves. That information is sent to a companion app and lets wearers know when they need a “brain break,” nudging them to take a breather before they feel burnt out to maximize productivity. The app also lets users discover their cognitive readiness for the day, their brain age, and other metrics, such as mental recovery, cognitive strain, and anxiety resilience. WIRED staff writer Emily Mullin tested the original headphones in 2024, though she found it difficult to verify the accuracy of Neurable’s algorithms.
Now, HP-owned gaming brand HyperX is releasing a gaming headset with Neurable’s technology, and it’s all about improving human performance while esports gaming. The headphones are purported to help wearers ease into the right state of mind for the best performance. Ramses Alcaide, Neurable cofounder and CEO, tells WIRED that the company has published a white paper showing improved performance among gamers using Neurable’s tech, with reduced response times in first-person shooter games and a small increase in accuracy.
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The improvements may sound minor, but milliseconds are precious in the fast-paced world of esports gaming. And Alcaide says it could translate similarly to other fields: It could help a student reduce anxiety before an exam, while athletes could condition their nerves ahead of a race or game. Neurable is hardware-agnostic; Alcaide says it can be embedded in headphones, smart glasses, hats, or helmets. “There’s a whole landscape of technology that touches your head that’s yet to be embedded with our platform,” he says.
He likens it to when Fitbit made the idea of a wrist-worn heart-rate tracker popular. In the beginning, no one knew how fitness wearables would be received, but now no one blinks an eye at one on a wrist. Soon, no one will think twice about brain-scanning tech in headphones—or, at least, that’s the idea. Neurable’s tech is “invisible” in these types of gadgets.
Companies licensing Neurable’s tech can integrate it into existing hardware, Alcaide says, and will control the entire experience from product design to the software experience; these products will be advertised as “Powered by Neurable AI.” The user data still flows to Neurable’s servers for processing, but Neurable sets the data privacy protections. User identifiers are separated from the data, and while partner companies host the user-facing layer, Neurable says it keeps control of the underlying system and data handling. Neurable has previously said its business model is not to sell user data.
“Any time there’s a new transition to technology, there’s always going to be some anxiety,” Alcaide says. “We’ve been very careful when it comes to that transition. We’re protecting the data, being as ethical as possible.”
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