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Lululemon's lawsuit against Costco highlights the rise of fashion 'dupes'
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A Lululemon store in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty
Fashion 'dupes,' or less expensive versions of high-end clothing and other accessories, are just about everywhere these days. They're also drawing some businesses into legal battles. In the latest example, Lululemon slapped a lawsuit against Costco on Friday, accusing the wholesale club operator of selling lower-priced duplicates of some of its popular athleisure apparel. Across the retail industry, it's far from a new phenomenon. But social media is pushing the culture of online dupe shopping to new heights as influencers direct their followers to where they can buy the knockoffs. Want a taste of Hermès's $1,000 fuzzy slippers? Target has a version for $15. Looking for a $2,800 price Bottega Veneta hobo bag? There's a version for $99 on online clothing and accessories upstart Quince, which has become a go-to for fashionistas. It's not even the first time Lululemon has encountered what it says are knockoffs of its clothing, which often carry steep price tags of over $100 each for leggings and sporty zip-ups. Without specifying additional sellers beyond Costco in Friday's complaint, Lululemon noted that a handful of companies have 'replicated or copied' its apparel to sell cheaper offerings — including those popularized online through hashtags like 'LululemonDupes' on TikTok and other social media platforms. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
TECH
Cloudflare introduces default blocking of AI data scrapers
The Cloudflare headquarters in San Francisco in 2019.
Michael Short/Bloomberg
Cloudflare, a tech company that helps websites secure and manage their internet traffic, said Tuesday that it had rolled out a new permission-based setting that allows customers to automatically block artificial intelligence companies from collecting their digital data, a move that has implications for publishers and the race to build AI. With Cloudflare's new setting, websites can block — by default — online bots that scrape their data, requiring the website owner to grant access for a bot to collect the content, the company said. In the past, those whom Cloudflare did not flag as a hacker or malicious actor could get through to a website to gather its information. 'We're changing the rules of the internet across all of Cloudflare,' said Matthew Prince, the chief executive of the company, which provides tools that protect websites from cyberattacks and helps them load content more efficiently. 'If you're a robot, now you have to go on the toll road in order to get the content of all of these publishers.' Cloudflare is making the change to protect original content on the internet, Prince said. If AI companies freely use data from various websites without permission or payment, people will be discouraged from creating new digital content, he said. The company, which says its network of servers handles about 20 percent of internet traffic, has seen a sharp increase in AI data crawlers on the web. Data for AI systems has become an increasingly contentious issue. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other companies building AI systems have amassed reams of information from across the internet to train their AI models. High-quality data is particularly prized because it helps AI models become more proficient in generating accurate answers, videos, and images. But website publishers, authors, news organizations, and other content creators have accused AI companies of using their material without permission and payment. — NEW YORK TIMES
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ENTERTAINMENT
New 'Squid Game' season breaks Netflix records in win for Korea
Participants performed during the "Squid Game" Season 3 parade and finale event on June 28 in Seoul.
Chung Sung-Jun/Getty
The third season of Netflix Inc.'s blockbuster series Squid Game racked up record viewership in its first three days, reinforcing the Korean survival drama's status as a global cultural phenomenon. The final season of the dystopian thriller logged more than 60 million views in its first three days — the biggest debut in that time frame — and ranked No. 1 across all 93 countries with top 10 rankings, according to Netflix. That compares with the debut of the previous season, which drew 68 million views in the first four days. The runaway success of Squid Game highlights the enduring international appeal of Korean storytelling and Netflix's pivotal role in amplifying it. The series reflects deep-seated social anxieties while spotlighting South Korea's creative firepower. For Netflix, which has invested billions of dollars into Korean content, the challenge now is sustaining momentum with a pipeline strong enough to command global attention. Originally released in 2021, Squid Game was an instant hit and a cornerstone of Netflix's local-for-local strategy. The series remains Netflix's most-watched title of all time, amassing approximately 600 million views across its first two seasons to date. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
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MEDIA
Trump and Paramount in 'advanced' talks to settle '60 Minutes' suit
Shari Redstone, Paramount's controlling shareholder.
Martina Albertazzi/Bloomberg
Lawyers for President Trump and the parent company of CBS News said in a legal filing Monday that the two sides were 'engaged in good faith, advanced, settlement negotiations' over his suit against the company and requested that the court stay its proceedings until Thursday. Trump's lawyers have argued that CBS News misleadingly edited a '60 Minutes' interview with former vice president Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign, tipping the scales toward the Democratic Party. CBS News has denied wrongdoing. The filing is the clearest sign yet that the two sides are nearing a settlement that they have discussed for several months. The lawsuit, which many legal experts have said was baseless, was viewed by some executives at Paramount, which owns CBS, as a potential hurdle to completing a multibillion-dollar sale of the company to the Hollywood studio Skydance. Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, has said the president's lawsuit against Paramount was not linked to the FCC's review of the company's merger with Skydance. Paramount has said that the lawsuit with Trump is 'completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction.' — NEW YORK TIMES
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Fox News
24 minutes ago
- Fox News
Cuban man marvels at Costco food choices and American abundance
A married couple who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba have been going viral on social media, with wife Marissa Diaz sharing their food-focused videos — and husband Yoel Diaz marveling at the head-spinning array of choices most Americans have on a daily basis. The couple's TikTok account, @yoelandmari, has nearly half a million followers, plus millions of likes — and now they've shared their story on camera with Fox News Digital. (See the video at the top of this article.) "It's impressive. It's beautiful," said Yoel Diaz about Costco in particular. Yoel Diaz, who arrived here in 2021 on a K1 visa and then applied for residency, told Fox News Digital he actually felt dizzy walking inside the big box store for the first time. He loved seeing the abundance of meat available, he said. "We Cubans love the meat," he said. The Arizona-based couple grew up as family friends living on the same street in a province west of Havana. Yoel Diaz worked as a computer science teacher in Cuba, earning very little money — and in America in 2022, he earned his very first paycheck from UPS, which he celebrated joyfully. He said the "simple" ability in America to walk around a grocery store and fill up a shopping cart with his own choices – something he'd only seen previously in movies – feels like a gift to him. "This country has given me the opportunity to be a human," he said. By contrast, Marissa Diaz said grocery stores back in their native Cuba are divided by those who have access to dollars from their family abroad — and those who don't. "In Cuba, the medium salary is around $40 a month, so you have to choose [very carefully] what you're going to buy," she said. "[Those who] get paid in Cuban pesos don't have access [to those stores and instead] have to go to a bodega, which is very limited with what you can get." She said that on WhatsApp and other messaging groups, Cubans share with each other the foods that are available – from milk to butter – at any given time. "It's not like in the United States, where you never have to think about if there's going to be butter in the grocery stores or not," she said. Marissa Diaz said the only time she's experienced something similar in the United States was during the COVID pandemic. "That's what it's like being in Cuba, but all the time," she said. Yoel Diaz described the ability to go to a grocery store as a privilege. The same goes for living here and being able to put food on the table, he said. "[You] can have whatever brand of food you want, whatever meal. You can go [down] the street [and buy] whatever coffee you want," he said. "We don't have that [in Cuba]," he added. "My mom is dying for [a] coffee. She knows [what a privilege it is]." The couple couldn't help sharing thoughts about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a self-declared Democratic socialist who's proposed a pilot program of government-owned grocery stores in a bid to lower costs and reduce food insecurity in underserved areas. "We have seen time and time again that government is inefficient in distributing things," Marissa Diaz said. She said it failed in Cuba and is "not sure why he thinks New York City is going to be different." "[You] can have whatever brand of food you want, whatever meal." Yoel Diaz said Americans who support this particular candidate should "be careful" of what they're asking for – something he said he learned in Cuba. Diaz currently works in maintenance for an apartment complex – and continues to be thankful for what this country offers.
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Analysts reboot Cloudflare stock price target ahead of earnings
Analysts reboot Cloudflare stock price target ahead of earnings originally appeared on TheStreet. Matthew Prince won't back down. The co-founder and chief executive of cybersecurity Cloudflare () warned that search traffic referrals have plummeted as people increasingly rely on artificial intelligence summaries to answer their queries, forcing many publishers to reevaluate their business models. 💵💰Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter 💰💵 While search engines and AI chatbots include links to original sources, publishers can only derive advertising revenue if readers click through. "The future of the web is going to be more and more like AI, and that means that people are going to be reading the summaries of your content, not the original content," Prince told Axios last month. Early this month, Cloudflare announced that it had become the first Internet infrastructure provider to block AI crawlers accessing content without permission or compensation, by default. Prince noted in a statement that "original content is what makes the Internet one of the greatest inventions in the last century, and it's essential that creators continue making it." Cloudflare CEO goes to war every single day If the Internet is going to survive the age of AI, he said, "we need to give publishers the control they deserve and build a new economic model that works for everyone – creators, consumers, tomorrow's AI founders, and the future of the web itself." And Prince is confident his company is up to the challenge. More Tech Stocks: Analyst who correctly predicted Rocket Lab stock surge resets forecast Verizon Q2 earnings report surprises with remarks on tax reform Fund manager who forecast Nvidia stock rally reboots outlook "I go to war every single day with the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Iranians, the North Koreans, probably Americans, the Israelis, all of them who are trying to hack into our customer sites," he declared. "And you're telling me, I can't stop some nerd with a C-corporation in Palo Alto?" Cloudflare recently issued a the 22nd edition of its report on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which are malicious attempts to overwhelm a web property with traffic to disrupt its normal operations. June was the busiest month for DDoS attacks during the second quarter, the company said, accounting for nearly 38% of all observed activity. One notable target was an independent Eastern European news outlet protected by Cloudflare, which reported being attacked following its coverage of a local Pride parade during LGBTQ Pride Month. "We've just crossed halfway through 2025, and so far Cloudflare has already blocked 27.8 million DDoS attacks, equivalent to 130% of all the DDoS attacks we blocked in the full calendar year 2024," the company said. Companies are understandably concerned about protecting themselves and global cybersecurity spending is expected to grow by 12.2% this year, according to the IDC Worldwide Security Spending Guide The increasing complexity and frequency of cyberthreats — accelerated by generative AI and AI in general — are driving organizations worldwide to adopt more advanced defensive measures, IDC said. As a result, security spending is expected to see sustained growth throughout the 2023–2028 forecast period, reaching $377 billion in 2028. Analyst says cybersecurity will remain robust Cloudflare is slated to report second-quarter results on July 31 and investment firms have cited corporate cybersecurity spending as a factor for adjusting their price targets for the company's shares. The San Francisco-based group's stock has climbed 86% this year and shares have soared 157% from this time in JMP raised the firm's price target on Cloudflare to $225 from $180 and kept an outperform rating on the shares, according to The Fly. The firm noted positive data points heading into the earnings report, including positive attainment data, and continues to view Cloudflare as the earliest beneficiary of the AI opportunity in its coverage universe. Jefferies raised the firm's price target on Cloudflare to $200 from $150 and kept a hold rating on the shares. The firm said that it believes cybersecurity spend will remain "robust" and continue to hold a "steady percentage" of software budgets in the coming years. Jefferies said that it is keeping a favorable view on security for the long-term saying it has taken on greater importance. Mizuho raised the firm's price target on Cloudflare to $220 from $155 and kept an outperform rating on the shares as part of a second-quarter earnings preview for the software group. The firm said its second quarter checks were good overall, with cybersecurity demand "generally healthy" and AI adoption "very strong. However, the fundamental upside in the quarter could be constrained, as several contacts noted a slightly higher-than expected number of deal push-outs, where a deal's expected close date is pushed to a later time. Mizuho said its favorite stocks to own ahead of the print are cybersecurity company CyberArk () and software giant Microsoft () .Analysts reboot Cloudflare stock price target ahead of earnings first appeared on TheStreet on Jul 28, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jul 28, 2025, where it first appeared.
Fast Company
an hour ago
- Fast Company
How Cloudflare declared war on AI scrapers
Cloudflare supports more than 20% of total internet traffic. The company recently made headlines with breakthrough technology that blocks AI companies from scraping online content with impunity. Cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince shares how the new tools are poised to dramatically impact AI firms, publishers, and the future of the internet. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today's top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. You released a new tool that's got a lot of folks buzzing: a blocker for AI crawlers—the bots that scrape content from websites without their consent. You've called this new tool 'the biggest thing' you or the company has ever accomplished? Yeah. I feel incredibly fortunate to have built what today is a $60 billion company on the back of the internet. And we became aware about 18 months ago of a new threat to the internet, to content creators, which was being posed by these AI companies. When we realized that there was something we could do about it, we spent about a year talking to everyone in the content creation space, everyone in the AI space. . . . We're going to change the rules of the road, and say that if you're not paying for content as an AI company, then you don't get that content. Today it's almost 10 times harder to get actual traffic from Google for the same amount of content you created. The minute you show an AI overview, it's less likely that people click on links. And again, that is better for the Google user, but it is worse for the content creator because it means that you can't sell a subscription, you can't sell ads, and you can't even get the ego boost of knowing that people are reading your stuff. Today, OpenAI is 750 times harder to get traffic from than the Google of old. Anthropic is 30,000 times harder to get traffic from than the Google of old. And so, if content creation is struggling today [when it's] 10 times harder, I worry that it won't survive [if it's] 750 times or 30,000 times harder [to read] original content. . . . And if people don't have the incentive to create content, they're not going to create content. So there needs to be some business model behind the future of the web, and it's not going to be around traffic because an AI-driven web doesn't drive traffic. And the irony is that the AI itself needs the content to be able to make those answers. Now who knows where they're going to get their answers from. That's the key: 80% of the major AI companies use Cloudflare in their infrastructure. What they have all said, with a few exceptions, is 'We agree, content creators need to get paid for content, but it has to be a level playing field.' What nobody wants to do is pay for content where all of their competitors get it for free. So, creating that level playing field is incredibly important. Just Anthropic will scrape a site 60,000 times for every one visitor that's there. Someone has to pay for that traffic. Just from a pure fairness perspective, they should be compensating creators that they're pulling that content from. We started as a cybersecurity company. We go to war every day with Russian hackers, Iranian hackers, North Korean hackers, Chinese hackers who are trying to get in and thwart our systems. So when we first started talking to publishers about this, it was almost this sort of nihilistic, 'Oh my gosh, what are we possibly going to do? There's no way we can stop it. These guys are so smart, they're a bunch of nerds in Palo Alto. . . . We can't ever possibly block them.' And I remember thinking, We block the North Koreans every day. AI companies are a piece of cake. Before you release the first round of this tool, did you give the AI companies a heads-up? I think there are some bad actors out there, and I think it'll surprise some people who the bad actors are. We're monitoring them, and very soon we will publish and we will name and shame who is actually a bad actor in this space. And we will take from what has been basically posting a speed limit sign that says 'Don't drive more than 55 miles an hour' . . . and we'll make it into something that is actually much more strict. We're saying, 'Listen, we're taking away your car, you're not allowed to drive on the road anymore.' I understand you're exploring sort of a pay-per-crawl model with some of the content publishers, which to me sounds a little bit like a toll on the highway—that you have to pay a toll if you want to come through. If you are generating a huge amount of cost by crawling somebody, but you're not giving them any benefit, then step one is block them. Then once you've created scarcity, then there can be a market, right? There has to be some compensation for taking content, and it's not going to be traffic anymore, it's going to be something else. Now the question is, 'Okay, how do you pay?' And I think a lot of times, big AI companies and big publishers are just going to negotiate deals themselves. So if you're Condé Nast, you go out and do an OpenAI deal, or a Google deal, or something else, and you negotiate it yourself. We don't have any role in that. I think for the smaller AI companies, or for the long tail of publishers, Cloudflare can hopefully sit in between and help negotiate what is the best deal. And we don't know exactly what that will look like yet. It could be a micropayment every time a page is accessed. It could be something that's closer to a Spotify model where there's a pool of funds and that gets distributed out to all of the different content providers. . . . That will develop, but step one in any market has to be scarcity. If you don't have scarcity, you don't have a market. I'm actually optimistic [that] all of us are going to have subscriptions to a certain number of AI agents that are out there. And how AI companies will differentiate themselves is access to unique content that they have and they have alone. So, imagine Taylor Swift is about to release a new album, and she does an interview with some journalists, and they are willing to give that interview to one AI company exclusively for a week. How much is that worth? Probably quite a bit, right? A lot of people are going to sign up. And so, I'm actually optimistic that we might be at the precipice of a golden age of content creation. If we do this right, and we get the incentives right, it might be that instead of us all worshiping the deity that Google taught us to worship, which is traffic, which has always been a really bad proxy for value, if instead we find a way to compensate creators based on when they actually create something which is worthwhile and advances human knowledge, we can actually do some real good in the world, at the same time that we help the content creators get paid more.
