Thom Holwerda (via Hacker News):
If you’re using Windows or macOS and have Adobe Creative Cloud installed, you may want to take a peek at your hosts file. It turns out Adobe adds a bunch of entries into the hosts file, for a very stupid reason.
[…]
If the DNS entry in your hosts file is present, your browser will therefore connect to their server, so they know you have Creative Cloud installed, otherwise the load fails, which they detect.
They used to just hit http://localhost:<various ports>/cc.png which connected to your Creative Cloud app directly, but then Chrome started blocking Local Network Access, so they had to do this hosts file hack instead.
Sure enough, my /etc/hosts contains:
## Adobe Creative Cloud WAM - Start ##
166.117.29.222 detect-ccd.creativecloud.adobe.com
## Adobe Creative Cloud WAM - End ##
I don’t even use Creative Cloud. Lightroom Classic is the only app I wish I could get from the Mac App Store, because Adobe’s own updater is so intrusive and terrible.
Previously:
Adobe Adobe Creative Cloud Adobe Lightroom Domain Name System (DNS) Mac macOS Tahoe 26 Privacy
Joe Rossignol:
Three established YouTube channels have sued Apple, alleging that the company violated the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by unlawfully accessing and scraping millions of copyrighted videos from YouTube to train its AI models.
[…]
Apple “deliberately circumvented” YouTube’s protections against video scraping and “profited substantially” by doing so.
Apple’s research papers indicate that some of the YouTube videos uploaded by the plaintiffs were used to train its AI models, the complaint alleges.
Malcolm Owen:
This apparently involved using computers with rotating IP addresses to scrape the data.
[…]
This data was then used to create an archive that was used to train “Apple AI Video.” As proof of this, the suit refers to an academic paper from Apple’s researchers disclosing it had trained using Panda-70M.
Panda-70M is described as a dataset made entirely of YouTube videos. All acquired via scraping YouTube for content. Ted Entertainment’s content is in a total of 438 videos, with MrShortGameGolf’s content in 8 videos, and Golfholics in 62 videos.
And yet when Musi made an app where users could watch individual YouTube videos, with no circumvention, Apple pulled it from the App Store.
Previously:
Apple Apple Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Copyright Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) iOS Lawsuit Legal Mac Web YouTube
Ashley Belanger (via John Gruber):
Perplexity’s AI search engine encourages users to go deeper with their prompts by engaging in chat sessions that a lawsuit has alleged are often shared in their entirety with Google and Meta without users’ knowledge or consent.
“This happened to every user regardless of whether or not they signed up for a Perplexity account,” the lawsuit alleged, while stressing that “enormous volumes of sensitive information from both subscribed and non-subscribed users” are shared.
[…]
“‘Incognito’ mode does nothing to protect users from having their conversations shared with Meta and Google,” the complaint said. “Even paid users who turned on the ‘Incognito’ feature still had their conversations shared with Meta and Google, along with their email addresses and other identifiers that allowed Meta and Google to personally identify them.”
Previously:
Artificial Intelligence Google Lawsuit Legal Meta Perplexity Privacy Web
Sarah Perez:
Apple is preparing to take its App Store fight with Epic Games back to the Supreme Court. In a new filing, the iPhone maker said it plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review another aspect of this long-running case over App Store fees.
In the meantime, Apple sought to pause the appeals court’s ruling limiting how it can charge for external payments. On Monday, April 6, the court granted Apple’s motion, and Epic Games immediately challenged it.
Juli Clover:
Apple says that it does not want to make multiple major changes to its App Store fee structure. Instead, Apple proposes that the current no-commission setup remain in place until Apple hears back from the Supreme Court. Developers can currently include links to non-App Store purchase options in their apps and Apple charges no fee from purchases made using those links. Apple wants to continue fee-free links and hold off on the long legal battle to determine a fee for the time being.
Marcus Mendes:
Additionally, Epic filed its actual response opposing Apple’s original motion to stay the order. In it, the company reaffirms its stance that “Apple’s effort to stay this Court’s mandate is about nothing other than delay,” and argues that “staying the mandate (…) simply delays relief for consumers and allows Apple to continue reaping supracompetitive profits from IAP.”
Previously:
Antitrust App Store Apple Epic Games External iOS Payments Fortnite In-App Purchase iOS iOS 26 iOS App Lawsuit Legal
