If you’re a Zoom user, you could be entitled to a minimum $15 payment for your troubles over the company’s security flaws that enabled the practice of “Zoombombing.”
The payment amount comes after Zoom announced earlier this year that it had reached an agreement of $85 million to settle the privacy issues at the heart of the class-action lawsuit.
Zoombombing emerged as a result of lax security protocols inside Zoom’s videoconferencing and collaboration app, which gained popularity as a work tool during the global pandemic. Outsiders were able to hijack and disrupt private video calls as a result of Zoom’s security practices at the time. Disruptions could potentially involve vulgar, racist, pornographic, or otherwise objectionable content.
The company has since made changes to how Zoom operates to prevent Zoombombing disruptions.
Even if you have never experienced Zoombombing, you can still be entitled to compensation as part of the class-action settlement terms. At the minimum, the agreement will pay you $15 for a claim if you ever registered, used, opened, or downloaded the Zoom Meeting App in the period between March 30, 2016 and July 30, 2021.
If you are a paid user of the Zoom Meetings App, you may eligible for a larger $25 settlement. Paid users can submit a claim for the larger amount of either $25 or up to 15% of the subscription cost before any optional features were tacked on, according to Zoom’s settlement agreement.
The bad news is that if you are a government user or an owner of an enterprise-level account, you’re excluded from making any claims.
If you qualify for either compensation level, you can make an online claim. The claim form must be completed by March 5, 2022. According to The Verge, the preliminary settlement has been approved by the court, but the final approval is subject to a final hearing scheduled for April 7, 2022.
Zoom has denied any wrongdoing as part of its settlement agreement.
As a result of the nuisance created by Zoombombing, the company has since made changes to the platform, including alerting users and hosts when meeting participants join from third-party apps, providing users with privacy training, and fixing its end-to-end encryption technology to make video calls more secure.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.