Kim Dotcom is ‘not giving an inch’ after sentencing of two Megaupload execs
Megaupload officers Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk have each been sentenced in the years-long Megaupload case. | Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
I didn’t expect to write about Megaupload in 2023, but here we are — former Megaupload officers Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk have been sentenced to more than two years in prison over their roles in the company, Associated Press reported on Thursday. The two men have been granted delayed sentences owing to the impending birth of Ortmann’s child and van der Kolk’s ill mother.
Dotcom tweeted about the convictions on Thursday, saying the light sentences two men got off easy because they are pinning the blame on him, adding that they “will make terrible witnesses for the US Govt.”
Megaupload Update
“There is no conspiracy. You did nothing wrong. All the bad optics are because of Mathias and I. It takes 3 for a conspiracy.” — Bram
Megaupload, which was a file-sharing site, has been gone for over 10 years, since the US Department of Justice seized its assets and charged several executives, including Kim Dotcom, with a host of criminal charges including racketeering, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit various crimes.
In December 2013, the US Department of Justice published 191 pages of evidence against Dotcom and Megaupload, with its investigation finding that the site had made more than $175 million in membership and ad revenue.
Arlo’s Essential Wired Doorbell is on sale for less than $60 right now
Arlo’s Essential Wired Video Doorbell offers a high-res camera and a wide field of view. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
It’s unfortunate, but many video doorbells require you to lock yourself into one platform’s smart home ecosystem to really make the most of them. Thankfully, there’s at least one video doorbell that works well with any smart home platform: the Arlo Essential Wired Doorbell. And right now, it’s on sale in white for $59.49 (about $91 off) at Amazon. If you prefer another retailer (or color), you can also buy it in black at Verizon for $64.99.
Not only is Arlo’s video doorbell compatible with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and even Apple Home, but it works well with many of these platforms. In fact, you can even use it to view live feeds from the Google Home app, which is a rarity for a non-Google camera. It also shares the same high video resolution as Amazon’s Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 — our top pick when it comes to wired doorbells — along with smart alerts for people and packages. Although it’s not nearly as fast or reliable, the Arlo does come with features the Pro 2 lacks, including smart alerts for animals and vehicles as well as a wider 180-degree field of view that’ll capture your entire porch.
Just be mindful that the doorbell doesn’t support HomeKit Secure Video and thus you’ll need to buy the Arlo SmartHub ($100) to integrate it into Apple Home. Also, be aware that you’ll need to pay $4.99 a month for cloud video storage, interactive notifications, and other perks. If that’s not a problem, though, Arlo’s budget option is a great pick that will help you keep tabs on your porch well.
Apple may not have released an updated iMac alongside the 15-inch MacBook Air and new Mac Studio this week, but at least the latest model continues to drop in price. Right now, for instance, Apple’s M1-powered iMac has returned to its all-time low at Woot, where you can pick it up in silver or pink with an eight-core GPU and 256GB of storage for $979.99 ($519 off). Woot is also selling the silver model with a seven-core GPU for $899.99 ($399 off), but note these are “open box” models, which means they’ll arrive in the original packaging but have previously been opened. They also only carry a 90-day warranty from Woot, as opposed to Apple’s standard one-year warranty.
If you’re looking for an attractive-looking family desktop, however, the 2021 iMac remains an excellent all-in-one machine. It comes with everything you’ll need to get started, including a keyboard, a mouse, a trackpad, and a 24-inch display. Plus, it boasts a 1080p webcam and a terrific six-speaker sound system. Admittedly, it’s not for creative professionals or power users who may find some specs limiting, but if all you need is a good-performing desktop that’s suitable for everyday work, you’ll be more than happy with the latest iMac.
If you’re in the market for a smart display, Amazon’s second-gen Echo Show 8 is currently available for half off at Amazon, where you can pick it up for a new low of $64.99 when you use promo code SHOW8 at checkout. Best Buy and Target are also discounting the smart display, albeit selling it for $74.99 instead, which is still one of its better prices to date.
Amazon’s versatile, Alexa-enabled smart display offers a lot of value for your money. With its spacious 8-inch screen and 13-megapixel camera, you can use it to comfortably make Zoom calls and stream a variety of video content. You can also use it to perform a wealth of other voice-enabled tasks, giving you a quick means of controlling your smart lighting, catching up on the news, and playing the latest tracks from T-Swift.
We wrote about Sonos’ Father’s Day promo earlier this month, but it’s worth flagging again since you only have through tomorrow, June 18th, to score a discount on the company’s impressive line of smart speakers and soundbars. Right now, for example, you can pick up the pint-sized Sonos Roam from Best Buy, Target, and Sonos for $134.25 (about $45 off). In addition to offering good sound quality and a rugged design, the portable smart speaker offers support for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s AirPlay 2.
Alternatively, if you’re looking to splurge on a quality soundbar, you can also buy the Sonos Arc from Sonos, Best Buy, and Target for $719.20 (about $181 off). That’s the best price we’ve seen this year on the Arc, which delivers immersive, powerful sound and Dolby Atmos support.
If you’re looking for a good Kindle alternative, the Kobo Libra 2 is on sale for $169.99 ($20 off) at Kobo as a part of Kobo’s ongoing summer sale. This is my favorite e-reader, one that’s devoid of ads and offers physical page-turning buttons alongside waterproofing and a crisp 300ppi display. The only drawback is that, like all Kobo e-readers, you can’t easily read Kindle ebooks on it.
Speaking of good Costco deals, members can purchase a $100 Nintendo eShop gift card for just $79.99 through June 18th. Now is also a particularly good time to do so, namely because Nintendo’s so-called “Hyper Max Sale” runs through the end of next week.
The latest Tile Mate is on sale for around $20 ($5 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. The platform-agnostic Bluetooth tracker is a handy little travel gadget, one that’ll help you keep tabs on your luggage and other personal belongings from up to 250 feet away. It’s also a good budget-friendly Father’s Day gift that should arrive ahead of the holiday if you buy it from Walmart or pick it up in-store from Best Buy.
Binance Reaches Deal With Government to Avert U.S. Shutdown The Securities and Exchange Commission agreed on a compromise with Binance that will keep the exchange open as it battles a fraud lawsuit.
Everyone Says Social Media Is Bad for Teens. Proving It Is Another Thing. Parents, scientists and the surgeon general are worried. But there isn’t even a shared definition of what social media is.
As U.S. and Chinese Officials Meet, Businesses Temper Their Hopes Chief executives in the U.S. have long pushed for closer ties between the two countries. Now they just hope a rocky situation won’t get worse.
Uber’s about to stick video ads in its cars, apps, and anywhere else it can
Video ads will begin rolling out across Uber services in the US this week. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Uber is about to start displaying video ads across its various service apps, including Uber Eats, Drizly (an Uber-owned alcohol delivery platform), and its namesake ride-hailing app. Announced via a press release on Thursday, full-length video ads — which will play on the main Uber app while users wait for their taxi to arrive — will begin rolling out to users in the US “over the coming weeks.” Uber hopes to entice advertisers with what it knows about its users.
“We have two minutes of your attention. We know where you are, we know where you are going to, we know what you have eaten,” said Uber ad exec Mark Grether to The Wall Street Journal. “We can use all of that to then basically target a video ad towards you.” Two minutes is roughly how long Uber estimates an average customer looks at the Uber app on a typical 15-minute long journey.
Grether says that the video ads, dubbed “Journey Ads,” will play in the Uber app during the rider’s trip, and that Uber additionally plans to install tablets in the seats of select Uber vehicles that will play ads to passengers. Uber Eats will similarly play video ads in the app after users have placed an order and are waiting for their food to arrive, and Drizley will start running video ads in the search results of both its app and website.
Uber will install tablets into vehicles on a city-by-city basis, and plans to roll out video ads into other markets like the UK, France, and Australia later this year. The video ads will be muted by default on all devices except in-car tablets and will run for up to 90 seconds. Uber hasn’t mentioned if users will be able to skip the ads. The company said that users can opt out of receiving ads that use targeted demographic data, like their gender or ride history, but will be unable to opt out of seeing the video ads entirely.
Uber isn’t the first ride-sharing company to introduce video ads, with Lyft already displaying them on in-car tablets in Los Angeles-based vehicles. Static ads are also a fairly recent addition to the primary Uber app, having been introduced in 2022 — the same year that Uber finally reported a positive cash flow after years of operating at a loss.
Google sues alleged scammer over fake business and review scheme
Illustration: The Verge
Google is suing an alleged scammer for running an elaborate scheme to flood its search product with fake businesses and reviews.
In the complaint filed Friday, Google accuses the defendant, Ethan Hu, of abusing the company’s products “to create fake online listings for businesses that do not exist, and to bolster them with fake reviews from people who do not exist.” After establishing the fake companies, Hu and 20 unnamed co-defendants allegedly sold these fake listings to other businesses looking to promote their own services in Google’s search results.
Over the last two years, Google says the defendants created over 350 fake business profiles that received at least 14,000 fake reviews. While Google can automatically create listings for businesses, business owners can also make them themselves by either requesting a verification postcard be sent to their address or by proving their legitimacy on either a voice or video call with a Google employee.
In its complaint, Google accuses the defendants of posing as fake business owners on these calls “armed with an elaborate set of props which they use to pass off their fake listings as real small businesses.”
In one instance, Google included a picture it believes to be Hu on one of these calls, where Hu allegedly claimed to be associated with a fictitious chiropractor, Wilmington Chiro Health, in June 2021. In March of 2022, he allegedly showed a Google employee a tool bench to demonstrate the existence of “Western Los Angeles Garage Door Repair,’’ then used the same bench to verify two other businesses in different parts of the country later that month. In yet another instance, Google says Hu assembled essential oils and a massage chair to verify an aromatherapy and reiki business.
Google claims that Hu would advertise these listings for rent and sale on Facebook pages. In one example, Hu allegedly asked potential buyers for $1,000 for access to a fake plumbing listing in Monterey, California, that received “‘~40 calls and 5 form submissions’” the month before, likely from people in the area searching for a plumber. Callers would be routed through that fake listing to a real plumbing business with a less sophisticated online footprint.
Google is asking to be awarded damages and for Hu and his co-defendants to be permanently banned from advertising or selling false verification services.
The lawsuit comes as Google attempts to fend off competition from a new set of competitors like the AI-assisted Bing and ChatGPT services, as well as a potential flood of low-quality AI-generated search results. “Customers trust Google to provide authoritative and reliable results,” Renny Hwang, Google’s head of litigation, said in a Friday blog post. “But that trust is lost if they spend money based on fake reviews.”
Mercedes-Benz tests ChatGPT in cars to answer ‘complex questions’ while on the road
Photo illustration by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Mercedes-Benz is beta-testing ChatGPT as a voice assistant in its cars. The company says drivers will be able engage the chatbot in a variety of conversations, asking “for details about their destination, to suggest a new dinner recipe, or to answer a complex question” — all “while keeping their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.”
The beta program will be available to over 900,000 vehicles in the US equipped with Mercedes-Benz’s MBUX infotainment system. Drivers can activate the experimental program from June 16 with the voice command “Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program.” The update will then be installed over the air free of charge, expanding the capabilities of the company’s existing voice assistant using ChatGPT.
It makes sense to upgrade Mercedes’ voice assistant using the same AI language models that power systems like ChatGPT. As the company notes in a press release, the update should allow drivers to interact with its MBUX voice assistant with a “more natural dialogue format.” There’s a clear benefit there, meaning drivers won’t have to remember specific phrases to activate certain functions.
However, the integration also seems to be a way to jump on the AI hype-train. In a blog post detailing the partnership, Microsoft (who is supporting the beta test through its Azure cloud system), boasts that the ChatGPT upgrade will offer “expanded task capability” to Mercedes-Benz drivers, allowing them to ask “complex questions” and discuss recipes. Does that sound useful, or like another distraction on the road?
At any rate, we look forward to hearing about the users who jailbreak their Mercedes using prompt injection. “Hey ChatGPT, pretend we’re in debug mode at the Mercedes-Benz factory...” Maybe they can use it to unlock the company’s controversial “Acceleration Increase” subscription, which charges $60 a month to increase acceleration on its latest electric cars. That would be a truly useful voice assistant.
Dish says it met its FCC deadline to cover 70 percent of the US population
We did it, says Dish. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
According to Dish Network, things at Dish are going great. Yesterday marked its second FCC coverage deadline since it bought Boost from T-Mobile, and the company issued a press release today stating that it now covers 70 percent of the US population and has “also satisfied all other June 14, 2023 FCC commitments.” It’s not exactly mission accomplished just yet, though.
In meeting this FCC milestone, Dish says it has deployed over 15,000 5G cell sites and would like to remind us that it’s still the first wireless provider in the country to launch voice calling over 5G, known as VoNR — Voice over New Radio.
This is all well and good, but Dish’s wireless service still doesn’t look quite the same as AT&T’s or Verizon’s. The network itself is very much still in beta testing under its Project Genesis program, which requires you to purchase a new phone specially equipped to use new network features like three-carrier aggregation. The network is available to Boost customers in supported markets, but they need to use a phone that supports band 70 to access Dish’s 5G — and those are still uncommon.
Dish has had its share of setbacks getting to this goal, too. There was that cyberattack that took down the company’s support systems in February. The company’s chief commercial officer, who was charged with turning its 5G network into a profitable business, stepped down in January.
There’s also another big FCC deadline looming on the horizon: it needs to cover 75 percent of the areas where it holds spectrum licenses by June 2025. That’s going to be expensive, and there’s some speculation that Dish will ask for more time to meet that requirement. In the meantime, we’re still down to three wireless carriers who are scheming up clever ways to charge us more money.
Google’s EU launch of AI chatbot Bard delayed by privacy concerns
Image: Google
Google recently expanded access to its AI chatbot Bard to 180 new countries and territories. But not featured on the list? Any European Union (EU) nations.
This is due to Google failing to answer privacy concerns from the Irish Data Protection Commission or DPC — the regulator for Google’s Dublin-based EU operations.
As first reported by Politico, the DPC’s deputy commissioner, Graham Doyle, said Google “recently” informed the organization of an upcoming Bard launch in the EU. The DPC asked for a “data protection impact assessment,” which is required under EU privacy laws. Google didn’t provide the docs, the DPC asked more questions, and Google has yet to respond. As a result, says Doyle, “Bard will not now launch this week.”
A Google spokesperson told Politico: “We said in May that we wanted to make Bard more widely available, including in the European Union, and that we would do so responsibly, after engagement with experts, regulators and policymakers ... As part of that process, we’ve been talking with privacy regulators to address their questions and hear feedback.”
In other words: the new breed of AI chatbots continue to be a privacy concern in the EU, and companies aren’t yet up to speed on exactly what is required of them. We’ve seen this before with ChatGPT. The bot was temporarily banned in Italy and is currently being investigated in Germany, France, and Spain, with a pan-EU task force on the job, too.
The privacy concerns with chatbots like Bard and ChatGPT are various, ranging from insufficient protections for minors, to an inability to opt out of the data scrapes that power these systems. Did you know OpenAI records your conversations with ChatGPT by default, and uses this info to train its system? And that this same data can also be examined by human moderators? It’s not necessarily bad, but users aren’t always aware when it’s happening.
It’s not clear exactly what the DPC’s concerns were with Bard, but alternatives like Bing AI and ChatGPT remain available across the EU.
Who gets to regulate crypto, anyway?
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
A brief guide to the politics behind the Binance and Coinbase SEC cases.
I’m sure you’ve read, by now, about the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase. Since they were filed last week, many Objective Journalists have covered them. I would like to get Subjective because I think there’s some interesting politicking going on here: a regulatory land grab for cryptocurrency. Directly or indirectly, these lawsuits will determine how it’s parceled out.
Any reasonably close observation of crypto suggests a lot of petty infighting about which government agencies are in charge of it. This is largely based on a simple question: are crypto tokens securities, commodities, or some secret third thing?
So far, the loudest rumbles have come from the SEC — which, unsurprisingly, considers most of them securities. The agency has already plonked some cards on the table with cases like the insider trading claims at Coinbase. With these two new lawsuits, it’s putting down the rest of them and reaching for the pot.
Because I love this sort of thing, I’ve put together my notes to what I think is happening:
The Binance case is the most fun. It also suggests there might be a criminal case on the way.
The Coinbase case is probably more important for setting regulatory policy.
These two big cases threaten to upend just about everything in cryptocurrency.
These cases are the natural outcome of statements the SEC has been making for years about tokens, according to Joshua Klayman, who leads the law firm Linklaters’ digital asset practice. “I see this as a massive push, a very unsubtle move by the chairman Gensler and the SEC,” Klayman said in an interview with CoinDesk. “They’ve been trying to nudge the industry for a long time to change its practices, and now it seems they moved from nudging to a pretty swift kick, or, you might say, a one-two punch.”
The timing here is significant, and it is the first of several small but important things that are somewhat outside the scope of the actual text of the lawsuits. The crypto industry is correct to say that there are politics afoot.
The Friday before Binance dropped, Rep. Patrick McHenry and Rep. Glenn Thompson introduced a bill for regulating digital assets. The plan would determine which tokens are securities and which are commodities and give tokens that started as securities a path for becoming commodities if the blockchain network is sufficiently decentralized. That puts a lot of power in the hands of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That’s on top of its existing cases against FTX and Binance that mostly involve derivatives, which the agency plainly already regulates.
Bankman-Fried reportedly also met with SEC Chair Gary Gensler, and Gensler was supposedly less impressed — he’s said he told FTX representatives to “take their slide deck down” on their second presentation slide. But there’s still plenty of embarrassment to go around. There are persistent questions about how many times Gensler met with Bankman-Fried. Additionally, McHenry has been asking questions about Gensler’s timing in the Bankman-Fried arrest and generally pestering him about his approach to cryptocurrency.
Regulatory agencies, like everyone else in DC, ride the waves of politics. So there is one other significant bit of timing: the SEC’s Coinbase suit became public the same day the company’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal, was scheduled to testify before House Committee on Agriculture about digital markets. I don’t know if the House Republicans got wind of the SEC cases or if the SEC filed its business as quickly as possible in response to these events. However it happened, I think it’s unlikely to be a coincidence.
“These are two of the biggest enforcement actions in the space ever,” says Josh White, a former financial economist for the SEC who now teaches at Vanderbilt University. “And they’re sandwiched between the bill and the testimony.”
There’s another reason to see all this as infighting: it’s business as usual. The Secret Service handles anti-counterfeiting efforts around the US dollar, for instance, because an entrepreneurial individual named William P. Wood established an anti-counterfeiting force without Congressional approval while running the Old Capitol Prison. Wood was then sworn in as the head of the Secret Service, formalizing the job he’d already been doing.
The cases themselves are about the rules governing cryptocurrency exchanges. But outside of the cases, we are seeing a fight about who gets to play sheriff in the crypto world. And the cowboys aren’t just in the cryptocurrency business; some of them have law degrees and work for the US government.
Binance
In politics, perception can create reality. I suspect that’s why Binance’s lawsuit was filed first, despite being more complicated than the Coinbase case. It sets the tone: “We are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.” That’s Binance’s chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim. In writing.
It does suggest an industry knowingly operating outside the bounds of law, doesn’t it? Other Lim bangers from the earlier CFTC case against Binance include “Like come on. They are here for crime” and “On the surface we cannot be seen to have US users but in reality we should get them through other creative means.” The CFTC case charges Binance, Changpeng Zhao, and Lim with operating an unlicensed derivatives exchange, but it also hints at possible criminal conduct
Similarly, the SEC’s Binance complaint reads like a possible criminal case with some securities violations stapled to it. Some things are familiar from the CFTC case — steering big US customers to use VPNs so they can use Binance, for instance — and some from reporting from Forbes. Binance.US was effectively a front for “the mothership” — as Catherine Coley (aka BAM CEO A) put it.
There are bonus allegations of improper commingling of customer money, a bizarre purchase of an $11 million yacht, and wash trading — which, in the case of one crypto asset, allegedly accounted for 99 percent of the trading volume in the first hour it was available.
There is also an org chart — never a good sign. The org chart suggests that Zhao, CEO of Binance, directly controls several entities that do business with each other. Two of those, Sigma Chain and Merit Peak, were allegedly used to mix customer funds and engage in “manipulative trading.” Sigma Chain allegedly engaged in market manipulation. These allegations are unavoidably FTX-like.
One reason the SEC may have gotten the dirt for this org chart is that Binance made transactions at two banks now controlled by the Feds. Apparently, Binance ran something like $70 billion (!) through Silvergate and Signature Bank. Some of that money was funneled through to an entity controlled by Paxos, which issued BUSD, a stablecoin that the SEC alleges is also a security. If I were Paxos’ lawyers, I’d be limbering up.
Actually, let’s pause on the BUSD thing. The entire point of a stablecoin is that its price doesn’t change. It’s a token that stands in for the dollar. But in the complaint, the SEC claims that buying BUSD is investing “in a common enterprise with each other and with Binance — the BUSD ecosystem through which BUSD holders and Binance could and did earn returns through various forms of capital deployment.” There were some alleged profit-generating schemes associated with BUSD, which Protos deals with in detail — but if these coins are classed as securities, it does make stablecoins seem a little riskier than they used to be, doesn’t it?
The SEC case strongly suggests these people are pirates, and the SEC is more than justified in cracking down. The agency even requested a temporary restraining order that would pointedly let Binance.US customers withdraw their money but ban Zhao from touching it — combined with the yacht thing, it implies Zhao might attempt a more competent version of Do Kwon’s recent adventures as a fugitive. In response, Binance.US has said it will become a crypto-only exchange.
The judge in the case, Amy Berman Jackson, urged the SEC and Binance to make a deal instead of issuing the temporary restraining order. Some of the confusion about whether crypto counted as a security or not spilled over into the court, where Jackson asked the Binance.US attorney if BNB was a commodity. According to CoinDesk, the lawyer replied, “It is a crypto asset.”
One does not typically stop piracy with lawsuits. The CFTC and SEC’s civil cases form the clear outline of a criminal case. We also know that Binance has been in the crosshairs of the Justice Department for some time. Binance lawyers have gotten around with their plea deal discussions, Reuters reported last December. Binance is reportedly under investigation for money laundering and sanctions evasion. The CFTC case accuses Zhao of the kind of compliance failures that make money laundering possible.
Binance’s response doesn’t mention the more damning allegations directly, saying only, “All user assets on Binance and Binance affiliate platforms, including Binance.US, are safe and secure, and we will vigorously defend against any allegations to the contrary.” Instead, it’s responding as though it is a paragon of propriety. “Most recently, we have engaged in extensive good-faith discussions to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve their investigations,” the response begins. These people should go into comedy; their talents are wasted in finance.
“The SEC is certainly relishing in the Binance suit and the various comically damning quotes,” crypto lawyer Erich Dylus said in an email. He expects the DOJ will follow at some point.
I agree. At this point, the Justice Department looks incompetent if it does not pursue Binance, which is not something the Justice Department generally enjoys. Should a DOJ case drop — and at this point, it’s odd that it hasn’t — it would then take precedence over the CFTC and SEC proceedings.
The SEC may be happy to see Binance kicked to a criminal court. Binance and Coinbase are huge cases that would demand heavy department resources, points out Yesha Yadav, a law professor at Vanderbilt. Crypto is only a tiny sliver of the SEC’s oversight responsibilities. There’s also one more embarrassing detail: Binance alleges that SEC Chair Gensler offered to serve as an advisor to the company in 2019.
Coinbase
As a practical matter of using limited resources, I think the SEC can really only take one case here, and it’s Coinbase. Coinbase is absolutely going to fight; the suit’s an existential threat.
The SEC’s complaint against Coinbase is — for a crypto lawsuit — bloodless. There are no group chats called “wirefraud” or even any profanity. Imagine the lawyers in their horrible cubicles, sweating into their Brylcreem, as they lay out the case that yes, these tokens are securities, and yes, Coinbase listed them anyway.
Coinbase has consistently argued that securities laws can’t apply to crypto because crypto didn’t exist when they were written. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not equipped to evaluate the argument. However, Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine is. “A decent rule of thumb is that all cryptocurrency exchanges are doing crimes, and if you’re lucky your exchange is doing only process crimes,” he wrote in March. More recently, he added: “The view of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, at least, is that every crypto exchange in the US is illegal.” This case will put that view to the test.
The Coinbase perspective here is that they simply want to be good boys, and the mean old SEC won’t tell them how. Remember, Coinbase sued the SEC first, in what Grewel termed a “narrow action” meant to give the company regulatory clarity. That case is ongoing, and most recently, the SEC has replied by saying, “The Commission has not decided what action to take on Coinbase’s rulemaking petition.”
It goes on to say, “As explained in the Commission’s response, agencies regularly enforce existing, applicable law while simultaneously considering whether there are reasonable policy justifications for modifying those regulations going forward.”
Coinbase is more sympathetic than Binance. “Coinbase spent serious resources and capital meeting with the SEC and even suggesting prospective guidance for their review, only to be ghosted” and sued, said Dylus.
Because Coinbase is a US public company, the SEC had to send a “no surprises” letter called a Wells notice that informs the target of an investigation that the SEC is thinking of bringing a suit. Coinbase’s response to the Wells notice is a preview of its defense. First of all, the SEC approved its disclosures when it went public and ought to be consistent For The Sake of Our Democracy And Upholding Our Trusted Institutions; second, Coinbase doesn’t list securities.
Coinbase’s position, as presented by its CEO Brian Armstrong, is that the SEC’s tone began to change last year — can’t think what might have led to that. But it’s maybe worth noticing that the SEC overshadowed what appears to be a coordinated action from 10 states that also allege Coinbase is selling unregistered securities. This more narrowly targets staking programs, but if I were an Ethereum booster, I’d be paying close attention; moving to proof-of-stake may be better for the environment, but does it shift the way that Ethereum gets regulated?
Also outside the bounds of the legal arguments is the person who is making the call. The SEC’s Coinbase case is being argued before Jennifer H. Rearden, who placed a hold on Voyager’s sale to Binance.US in March; Binance.US scuttled the deal shortly afterward. She is not the most sympathetic judge Coinbase could have drawn.
The SEC’s current stance appears to be that many, if not all, cryptocurrencies are securities. If that’s true, no new law needs to be made for it to win in court. It’s a little weird that the SEC didn’t come to this conclusion sometime sooner than now, but that’s not really my business.
Coinbase can win outside court. The SEC suit will probably take years. The political process is happening in parallel to the court cases, says Moish Peltz of the law firm Falcon, Rappaport & Berkman. While the Coinbase case drags on, Congress could pass a law that renders it irrelevant — which, I’d imagine, is the ideal outcome for most of the crypto industry. The CFTC seems to be crypto’s preferred regulatory agency in both the McHenry bill and a previous bipartisan bill, so I’d assume that future bills would make the same move.
Naturally, if your token’s been deemed a security, you should expect yourself to be in the crosshairs. Does the SEC have the resources to go after all these tokens? Maybe not, but I expect the crypto lawyers to suddenly become busy all the same.
One strategy the industry has adopted is “utility tokens,” which are designed to do specific things in the ecosystem. One of the tokens named in the SEC case as a security, MANA, is the utility token for Decentraland, which is used to buy and sell virtual assets; it also lets holders vote on governance proposals. If so-called utility tokens are actually securities, the wider cryptocurrency universe — and particularly Web3 gaming — has a problem.
“Is a utility token even a thing?” asks Peltz. “It seems like the SEC is saying everything is a security.”
More immediately, there’s been general carnage in the crypto market. Bitcoin liquidity, already shakier following the collapse of two major crypto banks, has gotten worse. BNB token, one of the Schrodinger’s securities named in the Binance suit, is down about 20 percent in response to the suit.
As for the looming possibility of the DOJ case: Binance is the biggest player in crypto right now. If Zhao goes down, goes on the run, or is otherwise In Trouble, that’s trouble for the whole market!
As these two cases currently stand, I’m not sure this is enough to kill off the entire crypto industry. There are a lot of true believers out there, and as long as they keep clapping, Tinkerbell lives. But when I explain my job in any civilian setting (e.g., making friends in yoga class) in 2023, people seem to assume crypto is inherently shady — kind of like Napster. Not a good omen for the trajectory of Number.
Microsoft Teams integration is being removed from Windows 11
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft is preparing to remove its built-in Microsoft Teams client in Windows 11 nearly two years after the integration was first announced. The Chat functionality will be replaced with the more flexible free version of Microsoft Teams that’s also available as an app for Windows 10. Microsoft announced the changes in a new Windows 11 test build this week.
“Starting with his build, Chat is now Microsoft Teams – Free,” says Brandon LeBlanc, senior program manager at Microsoft, in a blog post. “Microsoft Teams – Free is pinned by default to the taskbar and can be unpinned like other apps on the taskbar.” We asked Microsoft to comment on why Chat is being removed, but the company hasn’t responded in time for publication.
The original Teams integration in Windows 11, named Chat, was deeply woven into the operating system. Enabled by default, the Chat app was pinned to the taskbar and you’d have to dig into Settings to remove it. Chat offers consumers a way to use Microsoft Teams to contact friends and family. It was weirdly limited to just consumers though, making it useless for the vast majority of Microsoft Teams users that use the work version of the app. Windows 11 users could also end up with two confusing versions of Teams installed to handle work calls and personal ones.
Image: Microsoft
The Chat icon on the Windows 11 taskbar
Up until today, Microsoft had been continually adding new features to Chat inside Windows 11, with improved video calling features in October and Discord-like communities and an AI art tool earlier this month. The built-in Chat functionality in Windows 11 was based on the Microsoft Teams 2.0 client, which served as the foundation for the new Microsoft Teams app that’s rolling out to businesses at the moment.
Microsoft’s decision to axe Windows 11’s built-in Teams client comes just days after the company announced plans to end support for Cortana on Windows 11 later this year. It’s nearly a new financial year for Microsoft and the company is clearly focusing its efforts elsewhere on new projects for Windows, including its AI-powered Windows Copilot tool.
Windows chief Panos Panay previously hinted at the importance of AI for Windows, claiming at CES earlier this year that “AI is going to reinvent how you do everything on Windows.” AI will undoubtedly play a big role in the next major version of Windows, too.
The changes to Teams also comes just months after Microsoft reportedly agree to stop bundling Teams with Office. The Financial Times reported in April that Microsoft will stop forcing Office customers to have to install Teams on their devices, in a move designed to appease EU regulators. Microsoft is trying to avoid a formal antitrust probe by the European Commission, after rival Slack filed a complaint in 2020 about Microsoft’s bundling of Teams.
Pour one out for HDDs because PC games are starting to require SSDs
Are you still hanging on to that giant 8TB spinning HDD for your PC game installs? Well, it’s starting to look like SSDs will become the new minimum spec for modern PC games. While SSDs have shipped as standard in the latest and greatest PC gaming rigs and laptops, we haven’t seen game developers really push for SSDs as a minimum... until this week.
Microsoft held its Xbox Games Showcase on Sunday and revealed that Bethesda’s first new IP in 25 years, Starfield, will require 125GB of SSD storage when it debuts on September 6th. It’s not a recommendation — it’s a minimum spec to play Starfield on a PC.
A single game isn’t a trend, but at the same time CD Projekt Red also revealed that it’s bumping the minimum specs of Cyberpunk 2077 to require an SSD at minimum and phasing out HDD support. While the system requirements change for Cyberpunk 2077 is related to the upcoming Phantom Liberty expansion that won’t ship on older HDD-powered Xbox One and PS4 consoles, the base PC game will be updated soon to this SSD minimum spec.
“One of the changes is the choice to stop supporting HDDs for the minimum requirements – SSDs offer faster loading times, improved streaming, and better overall performance when compared to HDDs,” explains CD Projekt Red in a blog post.
Image: CD Projekt Red
The new Cyberpunk 2077 minimum specs.
Cyberpunk 2077 won’t suddenly stop working on HDDs, but CD Projekt Red will discontinue active support and stop testing the game on HDDs so players could run into performance issues or bugs eventually.
It’s inevitable that we’ll see more PC games require SSDs at minimum as game developers continue to leave behind the Xbox One and PS4 generation of consoles and start to push the limits of the Xbox Series S / X and PS5. Both the Xbox One and PS4 shipped with HDDs and consoles always heavily influence how a cross-platform game is developed.
Now that current gen consoles are all SSD we’re about to see what developers can do with this fast-loading technology now that they’re prepared to leave HDDs in the history books. Hopefully we’ll see more games support DirectStorage too. It will still be a gradual transition where games are unlikely to actually be blocked from running on HDDs, but if you’re still fond of the whirling from a spinning disk then savor the moment because developers are getting ready to move to a world of SSD speed and silence.
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Twitter sued for $250 million by music publishers over ‘massive’ copyright infringement
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
The National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) is suing Twitter on behalf of 17 music publishers representing the biggest artists in the business. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Tennessee, claims the company "fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical compositions, violating Publishers' and others' exclusive rights under copyright law."
It also has a list of 1,700 or so songs (included below) that the publishers say have been included in multiple copyright notices to Twitter without the company doing anything about it, asking the court to fine Twitter up to $150,000 for each violation.
The issue predates Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter last year. The New York Times cites unnamed employees saying Twitter had cut a music licensing deal because of how much it would cost, which it said could amount to over $100 million per year — the Times also reported in March that licensing deals between three major labels and Twitter stalled after Musk's takeover last fall.
Of course, Musk's tweets — and his enhanced Twitter Blue package with the ability to upload longer videos — came up in the lawsuit too. It doesn't mention the flood of movies uploaded to Twitter in the last few months, like copies of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Avatar: The Way of Water that lasted hours before being taken down. Instead, it cites some of Musk's tweets as examples.
A user complained that their account could be suspended after five copyright notices, which Musk said he was "looking into," and advised they should "consider turning on subscriptions," which the suit says encouraged them to pay Twitter to hide the infringing material so it couldn't be flagged. In another tweet, Elon Musk said the "overzealous DMCA is a plague on humanity." It wasn't included in the lawsuit, but in March, Musk also tweeted that "Accounts engaging in repeated, egregious weaponization of DMCA on Twitter or encouraging weaponization of DMCA will receive temporary suspensions" while claiming that "reasonable media takedown requests are, of course, appropriate and will always be supported."
Image: NMPA Lawsuit / TwitterTwo Elon Musk tweets about copyright and the DMCA
Most of the alleged infringement Twitter has been notified about is due to music videos, videos of live music performances, or other videos synchronized to copyrighted music, and it accuses Twitter of using those videos to enhance its value by increasing the amount of time people spend on its site. The NMPA claims that Twitter has failed to remove infringing content once notified and has "continued to assist known repeat infringers with their infringement" without risk of them losing their accounts.
@elonmusk just announced that a new Twitter CEO will be starting in 6 weeks. First order of business - address the massive amount of unlicensed music on the platform. Songs have value.
Most other large social networks have cut deals with music publishers and labels, with the lawsuit listing TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. A fairly short dustup between Amazon-owned Twitch and the music industry that heated up late in 2020 resulted in Twitch announcing an agreement to "work together" with the NMPA by September 2021. Other companies recently deciding to settle with the NMPA over music copyright include Roblox and Peloton.
After Musk announced a new Twitter CEO would be selected soon, NMPA president David Israelite tweeted at Musk that their first order of business should be to "address the massive amount of unlicensed music on the platform," following a similar tweet last spring.
Twitter has not responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit, and since it was filed, Musk has been tweeting about Tucker Carlson and crime in San Francisco, while new CEO Linda Yaccarino has not tweeted since posting the content of her first letter to the company's employees.
Anker’s 240W Prime USB-C charger can fast-charge two MacBook Pros simultaneously
Anker Prime 240W GaN Desktop Charger. | Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge
Anker presented its updated lineup of USB-C power adapters as a solution to e-waste during a product reveal event on Tuesday in New York City, betting these versatile chargers can swoop in as smartphone manufacturers stop shipping adapters in the box. After releasing a slew of new gallium nitride (GaN) chargers dubbed GaNPrime over the last year with the third generation of its fast charging tech, many of them will be rereleased as part of its new line, Anker Prime.
Anker’s new Prime desktop 240W charger is due for release in July and supports a max of 140W per device, which we have seen from manufacturers like Hyper and Ugreen.
Image: Anker
However, if you have two of the larger MacBook Pro laptops for some reason, you could fast-charge them simultaneously on this new desktop charger, assuming you’re using Apple’s MagSafe to USB-C cable and that at least one of them is a smaller 14-inch model. This should be able to deliver 140W of charging to a 16-inch MacBook Pro on one port and 96W on the other. For chargers capable of outputting 240W over a single USB port, we’ll have to keep waiting for Power Delivery 3.1 chargers or even the 180W one coming from laptop maker Framework.
There’s also a third USB-C port on the desktop charger, along with one USB-A port, available for whatever else needs power. And like Satechi’s desktop charger, it has a stand to hold it vertically on your desk. Anker’s 240W desktop charger is coming in July, and the price is to be determined.
Anker’s senior PR manager Mary Woodbury introduced the charger by saying, “Today, with USB-C 2.1 standard, we can now safely build a charger capable of 240 watts of power,” and suggested it as a pack-in to power tech like new gaming laptops. But with current laptops typically maxing out at 100W charging over USB, most gamers will want to keep standard chargers around to eke out the most performance possible without draining their batteries.
Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge
Anker’s Prime 250W Battery Bank
Anker’s first product to support 140W charging for a single device was actually last year’s PowerCore 24K battery bank. And now the company is beefing it up a bit by adding a 27,650mAh battery in place of the previous 24,000mAh, with the new 250W Power Bank (so named because it can output up to a total of 250 watts from all of its ports and pull off the same two-laptop fast-charging as the previously mentioned desktop charger). The upgraded bank also has pins on the bottom that lets you drop it on an optional 100W charging dock, which gives the battery a home so you can habitually keep it charged.
The dock for the new Power Bank was marked as $69.99 and has its own 100W charger with two USB-C ports and one USB-A port for other devices you’d like to keep topped up on your desk.
Image: Umar Shakir / The Verge
This dock has a 100W charger built in and lets you situate the Battery Bank on top for easy daily charging. Image: Anker
Anker Prime Reserve has a pop-out lantern light.
There’s also a new emergency / camping battery called Prime Reserve. It’s got a handle so you can carry it like a lantern, and it even is a lantern since a light can pop out from the top. It’s powered by 60,000mAh LFP batteries, which Anker says have enough power to recharge an iPhone 10 times. Along with its dual USB-C and USB-A (each) ports, the Reserve has an XT60 connector to support add-on solar panels. It’s available now for $169.99.
Anker’s also got an updated power station — the one that has the two pop-out AC ports. This time, the thin power strip that’s married to a DC charger has a power status screen embedded in the area that used to have just a weird circle light (and totally looked like a wireless charging pad but wasn’t). It has two USB-C ports and two USB-A ones as well, all outputting a total of 140 watts of power (up from 100W). You can expect this, and most of the new Anker Prime products, to be available in July.
Image: Chris Welch / The Verge
Anker already sold these as GaN Prime chargers, but they’re now part of Anker Prime.
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Microsoft has been temporarily restrained from buying Activision Blizzard, judge rules
Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge
A federal court has issued a temporary restraining order that will prevent Microsoft from closing its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard — at least for now. The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint on Monday seeking to get the restraining order and a preliminary injunction, and the court has agreed to the restraining order while it considers that injunction. If the courts grant the injunction as well, the FTC would have a chance to make its legal case before any deal can be done.
As a result of today’s order, Microsoft and Activision cannot complete the acquisition until “after 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on the fifth business day after the Court rules on the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction” or a date set by the court (whichever is later). The court has also set an evidentiary hearing on the preliminary injunction for June 22nd and 23rd, so it’s extremely unlikely these companies will close the transaction this month.
Microsoft and Activision announced the planned acquisition in January 2022, and in the months since, it has faced enormous regulatory scrutiny. Although EU regulators approved the deal in May, UK regulators blocked the deal in April (a decision that Microsoft has appealed) and the FTC sued in December in another attempt to block the deal.
Technically, the deal is supposed to close before a July 18th deadline. If the deal isn’t renegotiated to extend that deadline, Microsoft is obligated to pay Activision Blizzard a $3 billion breakup fee.
Logitech’s CEO is leaving for another job
Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge
Logitech’s CEO of 10 years is leaving the company for a new job. Bracken Darrell has resigned and will be “departing the Company to pursue another opportunity,” according to a Logitech press release. Darrell’s resignation is effective Tuesday, but he’ll stay at Logitech “over the coming month to ensure a seamless transition.”
Logitech has long been a well-known name in computer accessories like keyboards, mice, and webcams, but its products became hugely popular at the start of the covid pandemic when many people had to learn or work from home. However, the company has seen falling revenues now that people are returning to schools and offices. Under Darrell’s watch, Logitech has also made some big acquisitions, including Blue Microphones (a brand that the company is axing), gaming headset maker Astro, and streaming software-maker Streamlabs.
Logitech board member Guy Gecht will be stepping in as interim CEO while the company searches for a new leader. Gecht has been on the board since 2019. “After nearly a decade of consistent growth and building market leadership across multiple categories, I feel this is a good point to hand over leadership,” Darrell said in a statement. “I want to thank all the amazing people across Logitech for their work through the years. I will work with Guy and the board to ensure a smooth transition and I will continue to be a customer, shareholder, and enduring fan of Logitech and its products.”
Google is getting a lot worse because of the Reddit blackouts
Illustration: The Verge
Over 8,000 subreddits have gone dark to protest Reddit’s upcoming API changes, and it’s shown me just how much I rely on Reddit to find useful, human-sounding information in my Google search results.
With Google’s generally poor search results nowadays, appending “reddit” has long been the default way I search for almost anything (and no, I’m not ready to get my info from an AI chatbot, either). But given the sheer volume of subreddits that are currently unavailable — including some of the most-subscribed subreddits — clicking through many Reddit links in search results takes me to a message saying the subreddit is private.
And even if you don’t rely on the Reddit trick like I do, Reddit links often show up at the top of search results anyway, meaning that many people who don’t regularly use the platform have probably found some useful information on the site.
In Tears of the Kingdom, for example, I’m currently on the hunt for a specific piece of armor, but when I searched for tips about it last night, I found that r/TOTK is private. I’ve been having some issues with a pocket door in my home, but I can’t read a promising r/DIY post because I can’t access the community. I’ve been meaning to find some new good music, but r/music and r/spotify went dark.
Sure, Google can provide me answers for any one of those needs. Other sites have great guides for Tears of the Kingdom. Google surfaced some potentially-useful videos for my pocket door problem (on YouTube, of course). And searching “best new music” brought up many lists I could look through.
But none of those have the conversational and community elements that makes Reddit so dang useful. I like perusing the comments below a post to see other recommendations, points of view, and other links to relevant resources, and then seeing other people discuss the merits of those additions to the thread.
There’s often a wealth of information all in one place, and since the best stuff is generally upvoted to the top, I can put trust in what bubbles up based on the community’s response. However, now that many subreddits are planning to stay dark indefinitely, we might be dealing with largely useless links for a lot longer than expected.
Granted, the Reddit trick for Google isn’t completely broken. Many subreddits are functioning like normal, so you might have stumbled upon r/Games when looking for information on Starfield. Some switched to a more restricted format that lets you still read posts, like r/personalfinance. But in my day-to-day internet usage, I’m finding out just how often I used Google to search for things on Reddit, and until something changes, the Reddit trick might not be very useful for a while.
Western Digital NAS drives flash ‘warning’ after three years even if nothing’s wrong
A Synology DS920 Plus NAS system that accepts 3.5-inch drives like Western Digital’s. | Image: Sean Hollister / The Verge
If you’ve owned an HP laser printer like I have, you’ve probably replaced a toner cartridge just because the printer warned you it was depleted. But buried in the printer’s settings is a way to override the message and continue printing 100, 200, or even an indefinite number of sheets — because shocker: the toner is actually still good despite the alert.
That “low toner” warning is similar to what owners of some Western Digital storage drives say they’re seeing with its hard drives and diagnostic software. Ars Technica reports many Synology users are dealing with warning alerts that the Western Digital hard disks they’re using in their NAS are bad. The Synology alert is triggered because the Western Digital disks’ WDDA analytics — internal SMART data that reports usage stats and monitors health — seem to be set by the manufacturer to flash a warning after it’s been powered on for three years.
In March, user andrewilley on the Synology-focused forum SynoForum found the warnings happened to two of their drives, both running for approximately 26,400 hours, or a few days after three years. On top of that, the user notes the warranty for the drives also expired at the three-year mark. And last month, YouTuber SpaceRex pointed out that these warnings can get people to miss real issues like reallocated sectors.
Some say that Synology could be at fault for signaling the alarms on its product to react to Western Digital’s timer and hoping users buy that company’s disks instead. But tech YouTuber SpaceRex doesn’t think so. He found that Western Digital’s documentation that’s valid for Synology’s NAS system software DSM 7 or later indicates to flag for drive replacement as a recommended action at the three-year mark.
Being on for an extended period of time alone, much like a printer only counting how many sheets of paper ran through it (and not how much ink was actually used), is at best an arbitrary reason to indicate a drive is in bad health and needs to be replaced. We reached out to Western Digital to learn more about why the drives are set this way but haven’t heard back at the time of publishing.
The Synology subreddit has had discussions about how to disable WDDA and thereby ignore the warning to use all Synology features again. However, right now, the subreddit is part of the Reddit blackout to protest the company’s intense monetization of APIs, marking all threads private.
Western Digital has made some other eyebrow-raising moves before. The company was sued due to sneakily refreshing some of its Red NAS drives with shingled magnetic recording (SMR) ones that can hold more data per disk by overlapping data at the cost of write speed and longevity. Also, SanDisk, which is owned by Western Digital, recently had its Extreme Pro portable SSD go on an erasing spree for some users, and Western Digital’s own NAS devices with cloud services went down earlier this year due to a security breach.
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