8 Advertising Pitfalls Car Dealers Should Avoid

To encourage truthfulness in automotive advertising, the Federal Trade Commission announced Operation Turnaround—a coast-to-coast enforcement effort focused on combating deceptive television, newspaper and online claims about sales, financing and leasing. . If you have clients in the automotive industry, the lessons learned from Moving to Clear Action can help them stay on the right track.

The companies named in the 10 lawsuits include four California dealerships: Casino Auto Sales in La Puente, Rainbow Auto Sales in South Gate, Honda of Hollywood in Los Angeles and Norm Reeves Honda in Cerritos. Also the subject of the enforcement action were Fowlerville Ford of Fowlerville, Miss.; South Atlanta Nissan Motor Co. of Morrow, Ga.; Infiniti of Clarendon Hills, Ill.; and Pie in Hickory, N.C. Ramon KIA. Additionally, the FTC has taken action against Texas-based Southwest Kia companies, including New World Auto Imports of Dallas, New World Auto Imports of Rockwall and Hampton of Mesquite Two car companies. A lawsuit against Courtesy Auto Group in Attleboro, Mass., is headed to an administrative law judge.

You’ll need to review the complaints to see the allegations in each specific case, but busy dealers can supplement their “to do” lists with these “don’ts” related to advertising in one or more of the following Cases challenged by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as illegal:

Deceptive pricing. Some dealers advertise vehicles at specific low prices to attract potential buyers. But the actual price is $5,000 higher. (The complaint noted that some of the ads used a mix of English and Spanish.)

Deceptive advance payments. In some cases, dealers will advertise compelling low monthly payments. What they didn’t explain upfront was that these were temporary preview payments that would soon increase. The FTC said the dealer failed to account for the number of payments and how much they would amount to after the first few low monthly payments.

Undisclosed large payments. Another dealer advertised lower monthly payments without explicitly disclosing that the buyer would owe a large final payment. What’s more, the FTC said the dealer didn’t disclose the amount of the balloons — in this case, more than $10,000.

False $0 prepaid lease claim. Some companies advertise that consumers can lease cars without paying anything upfront. The Federal Trade Commission says that’s not the case. In fact, these goose eggs lurk high fees and other upfront amounts.

Undisclosed lease terms. The FTC said some companies advertised low down payments and low monthly payments without clearly explaining that the deal was actually a lease and involved numerous hidden fees.

Hidden rates. In one case, the FTC accused a dealer of claiming to offer 0% interest rate for 60 months. But it turns out that tax rate only applies when people buy a new car for a certain amount, such as $12,000. For example, if a consumer’s dream car costs $18,000, the buyer will have to pay a higher price that is not clearly stated.

False prize promotions. One dealer used the mail to drive people to their door, falsely claiming the consumer had won a raffle prize.

Credit and lease violations. In numerous cases, the FTC has accused companies of violating the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Regulation Z, the Consumer Lease Act, and Regulation M—long-standing laws that any dealer should be familiar with. One common thread: a failure to disclose key credit or lease-related terms in the ad.

To resolve the FTC lawsuit, the companies signed proposed orders that would change the way they do business going forward. Notable provisions of these legally binding settlements include a prohibition on advertising that misrepresents the cost of purchasing, leasing or financing a vehicle and a prohibition on other deceptive statements regarding pricing, sales, leasing or financing. The order forces the dealer to comply with TILA and the Consumer Leasing Act, as charged in the complaint. Also prohibited: False claims about sweepstakes, prizes, or other incentives.

The FTC will accept comments on the proposed settlement until the February 10, 2014 deadline.

Is it time for compliance adjustments? Bookmark the Business Center’s Automotive page for guidance on avoiding deceptive practices.

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AI-generated George Carlin comedy special was written by humans

As generative AI (and the use of AI tools) continues to grow, expect to see more “George Carlin: I’m glad I’m dead” riots. The show, posted on YouTube (and later taken down), was billed as an hour of new “material” by the comedian, who died in 2008. Of course, this is not the case. Nor is it based on old notes or lost routines, like the Beatles’ recent release, for which George Carlin’s estate has filed a lawsuit against the makers.

Preliminary reports from NPR Said the artificial intelligence was trained on thousands of hours of Carlin routines to create the material.Dudesy, the channel that created and posted the video, later contacted New York Timestheir spokesperson said the video was “entirely written by Chad Kultgen, one of the channel’s hosts.”

Both hosts, comedian Will Sasso and author Kurt Gen, appear in the lawsuit. They claim that the artificial intelligence created Carlin to resemble an impressionist painter. (Although, this is indeed not a good thing…)

The complaint seeks unspecified damages and the immediate removal of “any video or audio copies” of the special.

— Matt Smith

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But updates will be released over the years.

fossil

Fossil officially exits the smartwatch business. Its Wear OS smartwatch range has not launched a new model since 2021, and the company has now confirmed that it will exit the wearables space. If you own a Fossil brand watch (which covers fashion brands such as Skagen, Michael Kors, Diesel and even Emporio Armani), you should receive updates in the coming years.

But let’s be clear: It may not be the Pixel Watch that delivers the final blow.

continue reading.

A software problem prevented the vehicle from starting when it was in reverse.

Tesla is recalling 200,000 vehicles in the U.S. after reports that the backup camera wouldn’t activate when the car was in reverse – and that’s the whole point.Tesla is said to have processed 81 warranty claims potentially related to the issue Auto blog. The recall includes some Model Y, Model S and Model X vehicles starting in 2023. Tesla said it delivered 1.8 million vehicles last year, so the recall represents more than 10% of the company’s annual production. If this sounds familiar, six weeks ago Tesla recalled more than 2 million vehicles due to serious safety issues with the Autopilot feature.

continue reading.

Last week, a pornographic deepfake of the singer went viral.

Reuters/Reuters

X confirmed it was blocking users from searching for Taylor Swift’s name after pornographic deepfakes of her began circulating on the platform. Visitors to the site began noticing on Saturday that some searches containing Swift’s name returned only an error message.

The platform has been slow to address the issue. After the images went viral last Wednesday, Swift took matters into her own hands (of course!) by mass reporting the accounts that shared them and flooding hashtags related to the singer with positive content . Don’t you remember the snake emoji legend?

continue reading.

We reviewed Framework Laptop 16.

This week’s thoughts, feelings, and facts about Macs entering middle age, modular laptops that can play games, and the dream of an Apple car that’s still very much alive. Devindra was joined this week by news editor Nathan Ingraham.

Listen here.

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Arc’s new iPhone browser wants to be your search companion

The browser company launched Arc’s first iPhone companion app last year, allowing users to save links for later use on the desktop app. The company has now released a new mobile app called Arc Search, designed to focus on the search experience.

The app’s artificial intelligence feature, Browse for Me, returns a carefully crafted web page containing information about the search query. The feature, powered by models from OpenAI and other companies, reads at least six web pages and builds a new page with different sections.

Image Source: TechCrunch screenshot

For example, when I searched for “how to make perfect poached eggs,” Arc Search created a page for me with sections for “Ingredients and Tools,” “Poached Egg Techniques,” “Cooking Process,” and other tips. This page also has lots of useful photos and videos.

Image Source: TechCrunch screenshot

When I asked “What changes has Apple made to the App Store in response to DMA?” the browser also gave me a concise summary. While it doesn’t convey all the key points, the page contains the core of the announcement from the Cupertino-based tech giant.

Second, Arc Search does the browsing for you.

Enter your search query and click “Browse for me”—and we’ll read 6 pages on your behalf…

…and create the perfect tab to answer your query. Get a custom page for every search you make.

feat. YouTube embeds, verified quotes, and more! pic.twitter.com/e8hryskRbx

— Josh Miller (@joshm) January 28, 2024

These pages are great for me to get information at a glance, and I can also use the “Drill Down” section to explore other links listed for the topic. However, I currently cannot share these pages with anyone unless I take a screenshot.

Other features

If users don’t want to use AI features, they can just click on a query to use Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or Ecosia—whichever you set as the default.

It’s worth noting that last week the browser company announced that users can set Preplexity as the default search engine on the Arc desktop client. It’s unclear whether this option will be available for mobile clients.

All web pages also have a reader mode for easy reading, and you can also bookmark web pages. But there is no folder system to store these bookmarks.

The Arc Search browser also archives tabs after 1 day (this is customizable) to prevent tab overload. You can view your open tabs via the tab switcher on the bottom bar, or by swiping and holding from the left edge of the screen.

Image Source: browser company

Additionally, Arc Search automatically blocks GDPR and newsletter pop-ups, ads, and trackers. Unlike the first companion browser, you can set it as the default browser on your iPhone.

Why does Arc build the browser this way?

Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, said in a post on So it starts with the search bar in the middle. It opens a keyboard so you can start typing your query immediately.

With its new page creation feature Search, the new Arc Search browser wants to make you feel like you’re interacting with an AI agent that will do the heavy lifting of finding content, summarizing it, and presenting it well. We’ve seen this approach with Google’s Search Generated Experience (SGE) or Perplexity AI. Browsers, on the other hand, mainly introduce AI-driven features to summarize pages or help you write posts. Arc Search is trying to merge these two feature surfaces.

What’s next?

For now, Arc will retain its mobile companion for saving links, but there are plans to merge the two browser clients at a later stage.

What’s more, the company says it plans to roll out cross-browser syncing. Miller said in his post that as the company begins to ramp up the rollout of Windows clients, it can’t rely solely on iCloud. That’s why the team is building Arc’s own sync experience, which will be available soon.

Arc originally offered a waitlist system for Mac and last year abandoned the system for anyone to download. Its Windows client is still in the testing phase and still uses a waitlist system. With this new Arc Search client, the company hopes to provide a low-barrier entry point for users to start browsing immediately without having to create an account.

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Malicious PyPI package transfers WhiteSnake InfoStealer malware to Windows computers

ReportJanuary 29, 2024Editorial DepartmentPyPI repository/malware

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered malicious packages in the open-source Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that deliver a type of malware called “Information Stealer.” white snake thief on Windows systems.

The malware-containing packages are named nigpal, figflix, telerer, seGMM, fbdebug, sGMM, myGens, NewGends, and TestLibs111. They were uploaded by a threat actor known as “WS”.

“These packages incorporate Base64-encoded PE source code or other Python scripts in their setup.py files,” Fortinet FortiGuard Labs said in an analysis published last week.

“Depending on the victim device’s operating system, the final malicious payload is dropped and executed when these Python packages are installed.”

While Windows systems were infected with WhiteSnake Stealer, infected Linux hosts received Python scripts designed to gather information. The campaign, which targets Windows users, overlaps with previous campaigns disclosed by JFrog and Checkmarx last year.

“The Windows-specific payload was identified as […] The WhiteSnake malware has an Anti-VM mechanism, uses the Tor protocol to communicate with the C&C server, and can steal the victim’s information and execute commands,” JFrog pointed out in April 2023.

It is also designed to extract data from web browsers, cryptocurrency wallets and applications such as WinSCP, CoreFTP, Windscribe, Filezilla, AzireVPN, Snowflake, Steam, Discord, Signal and Telegram.

Checkmarx is tracking the threat actors behind a campaign dubbed PYTA31 and says the ultimate goal is to steal sensitive data from target computers, specifically encrypted wallet data.

It has also been observed that some newly released rogue software packages contain Clipper functionality, which can overwrite the clipboard contents with a wallet address owned by the attacker to perform unauthorized transactions. Others have been configured to steal data from browsers, applications and encrypted services.

Fortinet said the discovery “demonstrates the ability of a single malware author to spread a large number of information-stealing malware packages into the PyPI repository over time, each with a different complex payload.”

The revelation comes as ReversingLabs discovered that two malicious packages in the npm package registry leveraged GitHub to store Base64-encrypted SSH keys stolen from the systems of the developers who installed them.

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Google’s Lumiere makes artificial intelligence videos closer to reality than fantasy

Google’s new movie-generating AI model, Lumiere, uses a new diffusion model called Space-Time-U-Net, or STUNet, which can figure out where things are in a movie (space) and how they move and change simultaneously ( time). technical art This method reportedly allows Lumiere to create videos in one process, rather than putting smaller still frames together.

Lumiere starts by building the basic framework according to the prompts. It then uses the STUNet framework to start approximating where objects within that frame will move to create more frames that flow into each other, creating the appearance of seamless motion. Lumiere also produced 80 frames, while Stable Video Diffusion only produced 25 frames.

Granted, I’m more of a text journalist than a video journalist, but the fascinating reels released by Google, as well as the preprint scientific papers, show how AI-powered video generation and editing tools have gone from the uncanny valley in just a few years. A nearly realistic tool. Year. It also established Google’s technology in a space already occupied by competitors such as Runway, Stable Video Diffusion or Meta’s Emu. Runway, one of the first mass-market text-to-video platforms, launched Runway Gen-2 last March and began offering more realistic videos. Track films also struggle to depict movement.

Google kindly placed the clips and tips on the Lumiere website, which allowed me to place the same tips through Runway for comparison. The result is as follows:

Yes, some of the footage presented feels a bit contrived, especially if you look closely at the skin textures or the more atmospheric scenes. But look at that turtle! It moves like a turtle in water! It looks just like a real turtle! I sent the Lumiere introductory video to a friend who is a professional video editor. While she noted that “you could clearly tell it wasn’t entirely real,” she thought it was impressive that if I hadn’t told her it was artificial intelligence, she would have thought it was CGI. (She also said: “It’s going to take away my job, isn’t it?”)

While other models stitch together videos from generated keyframes of motion that has occurred (think of pictures in a flip book), STUNet lets Lumiere focus on the motion itself based on where the generated content should appear at a given time in the video.

Google isn’t a big player in text-to-video, but it has slowly released more advanced AI models and is leaning toward more modal focus. Its Gemini large language model will eventually bring image generation to Bard. Lumiere is not yet available for testing, but it shows Google’s ability to develop an AI video platform that is comparable to, or even slightly better than, commonly used AI video generators such as Runway and Pika. As a reminder, this is where Google was heading in the AI ​​video space two years ago.

Google Imagen clips in 2022

Image: Google

In addition to text-to-movie generation, Lumiere will also allow image-to-movie generation, stylized generation (allowing users to create movies in a specific style), movie images that animate only part of a movie, and inpainting to mask an area Change the color or pattern of your video.

However, Google’s Lumiere paper notes that “leveraging our technology to create false or harmful content carries risks of abuse, and we believe it is critical to develop and apply tools for detecting bias and malicious use cases to ensure safe and fair use.” The paper’s The author does not explain how to achieve this.

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The New York Times January 28 “Link” Tips and Answers: Tips for solving “Link” #231.

connect is the latest New York Times A play on words that captures the public’s attention. The purpose of the game is to find “the commonalities between words.”like Waddell, connect Reset after midnight, each new set of words gets trickier and trickier, so we’ve included some tips and tricks to help you overcome the hurdles.

If you just want to know today’s puzzle, you can skip to the end of this article on January 28 connect solution. But if you want to figure it out yourself, read on for some clues, tips, and strategies to help you.

what is connect?

this NowThe latest daily word game has become a hot topic on social media.this era Credit to Associate Puzzle Editor Wyna Liu for helping create the new word game and bring it to the games section of the publication. connect It can be played on web browsers and mobile devices and requires players to group four words that have something in common.

Tweet may have been deleted

Each puzzle has 16 words, and each group of words is divided into four categories. These collections can contain anything from book titles to software to country names. Even though multiple words seem to fit together, there is only one correct answer. If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. A wrong guess counts as a mistake – players can make up to four mistakes until the game is over.

Tweet may have been deleted

Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make connections easier to spot. Additionally, each group is color-coded, with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple.like Wardle, You can share the results with your friends on social media.

Here’s today’s tip connect category

Want to learn about the categories without being told about them? Then try these:

• Blue – trophies for robots, cats, mannequins and little girls

• Green – Nanny

• Yellow-Woo

• Purple – Dubya doesn’t speak

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Recommended videos for you

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Links: How to play and how to win

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This is today connect category

Need a little extra help? Today’s links are divided into the following categories:

Looking for Wordle today?Here are today’s answers to Wordle.

Ready to find out? Before we reveal the solution, this is your last chance to go back and solve today’s puzzle.

Drum roll please!

The solution is connect Chapter 231 is…

what is the answer connect today

• blue – Modifiers meaning “small” – baby, mini, pocket, toy

• green – “I can get your ____” (phone information request) – mobile phone number, contact information, digits, number

• yellow – highest point – crest, peak, pinnacle, apex

• purple – Inside the Scrabble box – bag, board, shelf, tiles

Don’t feel frustrated if you don’t get it right this time.there will be new connect You can use your brain tomorrow and we’ll be back with more helpful tips.

this is not connect The game you are looking for?Here are the tips and answers yesterday connect.

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Third Circuit Rules in FTC v. Wyndham

FTC watchers and data security experts, this is the decision you’ve been waiting for.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issues a ruling in favor of the Commission Federal Trade Commission v. Wyndham Worldwide, Inc..

The Federal Trade Commission sued the hotel company and three subsidiaries, alleging data security failures led to three data breaches at Wyndham properties in less than two years. The complaints allege that these failures resulted in millions of dollars in fraudulent charges being charged to consumers’ credit and debit cards and that the account information of hundreds of thousands of consumers was transferred to websites registered in Russia.

In 2014, a federal district court in New Jersey denied Wyndham’s motion to dismiss the FTC lawsuit. The Third Circuit agreed to immediately hear the appeal on two issues: “whether the FTC has authority to regulate cybersecurity under unfair terms in Section 45(a); and, if so, whether Wyndham had sufficient notice of its particular network Road safety practices may not comply with this provision.”

If your customers are concerned about data security (and they should be), you will want to read the full opinion. But in summary, the Third Circuit upheld the district court’s ruling that the FTC can use the unfair conduct prohibition in Section 5 of the FTC Act to challenge the alleged data security breaches outlined in the complaint. The court also rejected Wyndham’s fair notice argument.

Of course, the case is still pending in the district court, but the Third Circuit’s decision affirms important principles about how the FTC Act applies in the data security arena.

The decision is a must-read for business executives and lawyers.

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