Elon Musk ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about his paid verification scheme

Elon Musk ignored Twitter’s internal warnings about his paid verification scheme

Laura Normand / The Verge

Employees and advertisers keep telling him about the risks of the changes he’s making to Twitter — but he’s not listening

On Thursday evening, after a full day of chaos on the timeline, Elon Musk’s Twitter halted new enrollment into its $8-a-month Blue subscription offering. Offering anyone the chance to slap a “verified” badge on their account had led to widespread impersonation of government officials, corporations, and celebrities. The resulting mayhem, which led to memorable hoaxes from accounts misrepresenting themselves as Eli Lilly, Tesla, Lockheed Martin and others, had triggered an advertiser pullout and a general sense that the platform had descended into chaos.

As the significance of all this began to register with Musk, he tweeted that satirical accounts must now include “parody” in both their name and bio. But if any of the fallout had come as a shock to Musk and his team, they can’t say they weren’t warned.

Days before the November 9th launch, the company’s trust and safety team had prepared a seven-page list of recommendations intended to help Musk avoid the most obvious and damaging consequences of his plans for Blue. The document, which was obtained by Platformer, predicts with eerie accuracy some of the events that follow.

“Motivated scammers/bad actors could be willing to pay … to leverage increased amplification to achieve their ends where their upside exceeds the cost,” reads the document’s first recommendation, which the team labeled “P0” to denote a concern in the highest risk category.

“Impersonation of world leaders, advertisers, brand partners, election officials, and other high profile individuals” represented another P0 risk, the team found. “Legacy verification provides a critical signal in enforcing impersonation rules, the loss of which is likely to lead to an increase in impersonation of high-profile accounts on Twitter.”

“Removing privileges and exemptions from legacy verified accounts could cause confusion and loss of trust among high profile users.”

On November 1st, when the document was circulated internally, Musk was considering a $99-a-year annual subscription for Blue; only later, after an exchange online with writer Stephen King, did he lower the cost. The move wound up increasing the risk for scams, as the desire to make fun of brands and government officials became an impulse buy at $8.

The team also noted removing the verified badge and its related privileges from high-profile users unless they paid, coupled with the heightened impersonation risk, would potentially drive them away from Twitter for good. “Removing privileges and exemptions from legacy verified accounts could cause confusion and loss of trust among high profile users,” they wrote. “We use the health-related protections … to manage against the risk of false-positive actions on high-profile users, under the assumption that the accounts have been heavily vetted. If that signal is deprecated, we run the risk of false positives or the loss of privileges such as higher rate limits resulting in escalation and user flight.”

The team identified several other risks for which Twitter has yet to identify any solutions. For starters, the company lacks any automated way to remove verified badges from user accounts. “Given that we will have a large amount of legacy verified users on the platform (400K Twitter customers), and that we anticipate we’ll need to debadge a large number of legacy verified accounts if they decide not to pay for Blue, this will require high operational lift without investment.”

(And this was before the company laid off 80 percent of its contractors, but we’ll get to that.)

The company’s trust and safety team did win support for some solutions, including retaining verification for some high-profile accounts using the “official badge.”

For the most part, though, the document offers a wish list for features that would make the product safer and easier to use, most of which have not been approved.

It was presented to Esther Crawford, a director of product management at the company who in recent weeks has risen to become one of Musk’s top lieutenants. Musk was briefed as well, sources said, as was his attorney Alex Spiro. And while Crawford appeared sympathetic to many of the concerns in the document, sources said, she declined to implement any suggestions that would delay the launch of Blue. (Crawford did not respond to a request for comment.)

Despite the warnings, the launch proceeded as planned. A few days later, with the predictions of the trust and safety team largely realized, Musk belatedly stopped the rollout.

The contractor wipeout

On Saturday afternoon, a week after an initial round of layoffs had cut Twitter in half, Platformer was the first to report that a second massive wave of cuts had hit the company. This time, the cuts were aimed at Twitter’s contract workers. And on a percentage basis, these losses were even more severe: by the next day, we reported, about 4,400 of 5,500 or so contractors — 80 percent of the team — had lost their jobs.

Functions affected included content moderation, recruiting, ad sales, marketing, and real estate, among others. At the moment, it’s unclear how the loss of what may have been thousands of moderators will affect the service. But it seems clear that Twitter now has dramatically fewer people available to police the site for harmful material.

Unlike Twitter’s full-time employees, who at least got the courtesy of an email informing them that layoffs were coming a night before, contractors received nothing. Neither did their managers, who discovered one by one over the weekend that people they had been counting on to perform critical tasks had suddenly disappeared from the company’s systems.

“One of my contractors just got deactivated without notice in the middle of making critical changes to our child safety workflows,” one manager noted in the company’s Slack channels. This is particularly worrisome because Twitter has for years struggled to adequately police child sexual exploitation material on the platform, as we previously reported.

Over the course of the day, similar messages trickled in on Blind, an app for coworkers to anonymously discuss their workplaces, and on external Slacks that employees have established to have more candid discussions.

Several workers said they had learned about their employment status after seeing our tweets, attempting to log in to Gmail and Slack, and finding that they no longer had access.

“Found out through your tweet and just happened to check,” one person who worked on content moderation told us. “What a lovely Saturday night.”

Said another, who worked in recruiting: “If I didn’t see your tweet just now, I wouldn’t have even known.”

Some employees told us that they had been bracing for cuts ever since the layoffs earlier this month. But the abrupt nature of the cuts will likely send many former contractors scrambling: as Platformer was first to report, vendors told them via email their medical benefits would end today, their final day of employment.

Meanwhile, the company’s Slack channels over the weekend told a story of already-low morale finding a new basement.

“I’m wondering when people will realize the value of Twitter was the people that worked here,” one employee said, according to screenshots obtained by Platformer.

Replied another: “In 2 weeks Twitter has gone from being the most welcoming and healthy workplace I’ve ever known to the most openly hostile and degrading I’ve ever known.”

Employees continue to show a great deal of solidarity among one another. But not to the coterie of volunteer venture capitalists and on-loan engineers from Tesla and the Boring Company that have been carrying out Musk’s orders: those they refer to universally, including on Slack, as “the goons.”

Code freeze

On Monday morning, at around 1:45 AM, Twitter engineers were called into an emergency meeting. A new order had just come down from Musk: freeze all production changes on Twitter systems, effective immediately.

This was more than just a run-of-the-mill code freeze, during which engineers can commit code but not deploy it. Those are fairly common, and Twitter has been under one for most of the time since Musk took over. Such freezes are generally intended to reduce the chances that a bug disrupts Twitter’s systems.

This time, however, engineers were told they couldn’t even write any code — “until further notice,” according to an internal email obtained by Platformer. Exceptions will be granted if there is an “urgent change that is needed to resolve an issue with a production service, including any changes reflecting hard promised deadlines for clients,” the email said, and employees get “approval from VP level and Elon explicitly stating that the change needs to be made.”

On Slack, even engineers who attended the late-night meeting were confused. “Is there a ticket I can reference?” asked an engineer who was being tasked with implementing the freeze. “I don’t see any context.” “We don’t have much context as of now,” a colleague responded. “But this is coming from Elon’s team.”

In the meantime, we’re told engineers are writing code locally, on their laptops, and waiting for the freeze to end.

Meanwhile over the last day, Musk has made several public statements about the quality of Twitter’s code and service that have drawn rebukes from current engineers.

Another current engineer explained it to us this way: “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“I’d like to apologize for Twitter being super slow in many countries. App is doing >1000 poorly batched RPCs just to render a home timeline!” Musk tweeted on Sunday morning, referring to remote procedure calls. Musk also complained about the number of microservices Twitter employs, which are generally understood to prevent the entire site from breaking every time one part of it goes down.

Engineer Eric Frohnhoefer pushed back on Musk’s criticism, and offered a detailed thread about why Twitter loads more slowly in some places than others. Musk fired him by the end of the day, Bloomberg reported, along with a second engineer who commented on the affair: “As the former tech lead for timelines infrastructure at Twitter, I can confidently say that this man has no idea wtf he’s talking about.”

Another current engineer explained it to us this way:

The fact that he’s focusing on performance being worse in certain countries kind of shows that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

If it was an issue with the microservices talking to each other inside of a data center, everyone in the world would have the same crappy experience.

Instead, the experience is not great in India, for example. That’s because the payload gets delivered from further away (laws of physics come into effect) and that back-and-forth data transfer between the phone and the data center starts compounding.

Not to mention that places like India have a higher concentration of low power phones that tend to perform worse in general — as opposed to all of our overpowered iPhones and such.

So why the code freeze? No one knows for sure, but some are speculating that Musk has grown paranoid that some disgruntled engineers may intend to sabotage the site on their way out.

Fallout

On Friday, after the disaster of the Blue rollout, Eli Lilly paused all its ad campaigns on Twitter. The move potentially cost Twitter millions of dollars in revenue, according to the Washington Post. (A “verified” fake account impersonating Eli Lilly had said insulin would now be free, and it took Twitter six hours to remove the tweet.)

The pharmaceutical giant is one of many large companies pulling ad dollars from Twitter in recent days. Companies including Volkswagen and Pfizer have paused their campaigns, and large advertising firms like IPG’s Mediabrands and Omnicom Media Group are advising clients to do the same.

The news has left Twitter’s ad teams — particularly those responsible for managing ad agency relationships — in a lurch, according to internal screenshots and conversations with current employees.

“I know that many of your markets and clients are seeing large declines in Q4 and in particular L7D,” wrote Twitter’s global business lead in Slack. “Please add any commentary, questions, issues in this thread and I’ll endeavor to raise as many as possible TY!”

One employee responded that T-Mobile had requested to “pause the campaigns due to brand safety concerns.” (Three days later, former T-Mobile CEO John Legere asked Musk to let him run Twitter, to which Musk responded simply “no.”)

Another Twitter employee said General Motors had also asked to pause campaigns. “The initial reason they gave is elections, but it looks like an open-ended pause, because the team requested to meet next week to help them make a case to global on why they shouldn’t.” Later, this same employee added: “Pause on [GM] til end of year confirmed and implemented. The reason now is brand safety.”

GroupM, the largest media-buying agency in the world, with $60 billion in annual media spend, told its clients that Twitter was a high-risk media buy, according to Digiday and an email obtained by Platformer. Twitter’s agency partnerships lead explained the situation in Slack: “Given the recent senior departures in key operational areas (specifically Security, Trust & Safety, Compliance), GroupM have updated Twitter’s brand safety guidance to high risk. While they understand that our policies remain in place, they feel that Twitter’s ability to scale and manage infractions at speed is uncertain at this time.”

The employee went on:

GroupM will consider lowering the risk grade when the below requirements have been met, which we are working through with leadership:

–Return to baseline levels of NSFW / toxic conversation on the platform

–Re-population of IT Security, Privacy, Trust & Safety senior staff

–Establishment of internal checks & balances

–Full transparency on future development plans of community guidelines / content moderation / anything affecting user security or brand safety

–Demonstrated commitment of effective content moderation, enforcing current Twitter Rules (e.g. account impersonation, violative content removal timing, intolerance of hate speech and misinformation)

As with the list of product recommendations prepared by trust and safety for the Blue rollout, advertisers appear to have a better understanding of what Twitter needs than Musk does. Massive cuts to the content moderation team, a paralyzing code freeze, and open hostility between the “goons” and the pre-Musk Tweeps have created a company that continues to court a larger crisis.

Mid-afternoon on Monday, after Musk announced he would begin disconnecting up to 80 percent of unspecified microservices, some users said two-factor authentication temporarily stopped working via SMS. Others reported noticing partial site outages and difficulty downloading their archives.

There are people who know how to fix all those things, but they either no longer work for the company or have been told not to ship any new code. And the question haunting engineers at the end of the day was not whether any new cracks in the service would emerge, but how many, and when.

Google is bringing Material You-style color themes to desktop Chrome

Google is bringing Material You-style color themes to desktop Chrome

Picking a yellow colored wallpaper adjusts Chrome’s interface to match. | Screenshot by Jon Porter / The Verge

The latest Canary build of Google Chrome includes a neat feature that automatically picks a color scheme for the browser based on the wallpaper shown when you open a new tab. The feature was first spotted by u/Leopeva64-2 over on Reddit, who shows how changing the new tab wallpaper automatically adjusts the color scheme of the browser’s address bar and interface. It’s previously been possible to manually change Chrome’s color scheme to one of your choosing, but this simplifies the process.

According to Google’s software, the feature “enables setting theme color based on background image color when background image is changed in New Tab Page,” and is available on Mac, Windows, and Linux, as well as Google’s own ChromeOS and Fuchsia operating systems.

We were able to turn on the “Customize Chrome Color Extraction” feature in version 110 of Chrome’s Canary build (specifically 110.0.5418.0) to test it ourselves. It seemed to work best with more colorful wallpapers, whereas darker backgrounds tended to make Chrome’s interface a muddy black, brown, or gray — not much of an improvement over its default color scheme. We were able to get it working with Google’s own wallpapers, although the automatic color theming option didn’t work when we uploaded our own image. It’s unclear if this is a bug or by design.

Screenshot by Jon Porter / The Verge

Chrome in a pink theme.

Screenshot by Jon Porter / The Verge

Chrome in a desert orange theme.

It’s a similar feature to Android’s Material You, which adjusts the operating system’s color scheme based on what it detects in your home screen wallpaper. It debuted on Android 12 last year, was expanded upon in this year’s Android 13 update, and Google has also rolled out the theming option to several of its Android apps. But as Android Police points out, this appears to be the first time Google has rolled out a similar feature on a non-Google operating system.

The feature isn’t enabled by default. Instead, if you want to try it out, you’ll need to enable the Chrome flag “chrome://flags/#customize-chrome-color-extraction.” Once it’s turned on, open a new Chrome tab, click the pen icon on the bottom right of the new tab window, and select a new wallpaper to see its color scheme reflected in Chrome’s interface. Once you’ve selected a wallpaper, the color scheme persists across different tabs as you browse the web.

There’s no word on if or when the feature will get a wider rollout, but given it’s currently an opt-in feature on Google Chrome’s Canary build (which is the earliest beta version of its software), we wouldn’t expect it to get a widespread release for at least a few months.

The Case of the Golden Idol review – delicious Sherlockian murder mystery

The Case of the Golden Idol review – delicious Sherlockian murder mystery

Playstack; Color Gray Games; Windows
A treasure inspires murder, and your job as detective is to piece together the crime in this addictive 18th-century whodunnit

What is the source of the murderous curse? The golden idol, found by a pair of explorers who followed a treasure map to its long-forgotten island hiding place? Or the misfortune that accompanies the arrival of sudden wealth into any complex family dynamic? Or perhaps it’s the shortcomings of character often found in the sort of people drawn to such gilded mysteries: not only thieves and thugs, but also members of clandestine societies who roam Whitehall in search of power.

Whatever the reasons, murder is seemingly the price commanded by this artefact, as evidenced by the string of cases relating to the treasure that you are tasked to investigate in Color Gray Games’ delicious, moreish and utterly singular 18th-century detective spree.

Continue reading...

Airline Travel Hacks To Avoid Holiday Excursion Headaches

Airline Travel Hacks To Avoid Holiday Excursion Headaches

This week, I'll share some tips on how to survive traveling over the holidays. We'll close with my product of the week: my favorite suitcase from Solgaard, which is like a rolling dresser. The post Airline Travel Hacks To Avoid Holiday Excursion Headaches appeared first on TechNewsWorld.

Elizabeth Holmes to be sentenced this week as Theranos saga nears conclusion

Elizabeth Holmes to be sentenced this week as Theranos saga nears conclusion

The blood testing company’s founder could serve up to 20 years in prison after she was convicted in January for four counts of fraud

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, will be sentenced this week to up to 20 years in prison for her role in the blood testing company that tumbled from the heights of Silicon Valley after its fraudulent claims were exposed.

The sentencing is set to take place in a California courtroom on Friday, after a federal judge denied Holmes’s request for a new trial last week. Holmes had requested a new trial after she said a key witness for the prosecution apologized for the role he played in her conviction.

Continue reading...

‘I lie in the bath, imagining that I am wandering the Rialto in Venice’: my obsession with Duolingo

‘I lie in the bath, imagining that I am wandering the Rialto in Venice’: my obsession with Duolingo

First it was Italian, then I added French, Portuguese and even Latin. But does the language learning app, which has almost 15 million people using it, really work?

This morning, before checking in on my young son or making a coffee, I opened the Duolingo app on my phone and translated “They love smelling meat” into Italian. I’ve been starting my days like this for a few months now: wake up, wash face, grapple with the gerund. I usually spend between 10 and 20 minutes on it while the kettle boils or I load CBeebies or write some emails. It used to be eBay. Then Wordle. Now it’s this.

Duolingo is a language learning app and pretty simple to use. After you’ve chosen which language you want to learn, you are presented with about 100 skill-sets divided by scenario or grammar (grocery shopping, the future tense and so on). Each level is structured like branches of a tree, and when you complete one, you move down the tree earning gems to “spend” on the app or hearts that you need to perform the exercises. Make a mistake, and you must correct it before moving on. It’s all fun and games until you make too many mistakes, run out of hearts and lose your progress. This is when you’ll engage with Duolingo’s mascot, an officious green owl called Duo who, if you’re anything like me, will eventually define your self-esteem. Duo’s face is the first thing I see each day and increasingly, the last thing, too.

Continue reading...

Is Time Running Out for the Leap Second?

Is Time Running Out for the Leap Second? To the world’s timekeepers, the leap second is a kludge, a bane, a pain in the little hand. Now they’re proposing to ditch it. Will our days ever be the same?

TikTok Builds Itself Into an Ads Juggernaut

TikTok Builds Itself Into an Ads Juggernaut The Chinese-owned video app’s ad business is thriving, even as a digital advertising slump hurts Meta, Snap and other rivals.

‘Fix your companies. Or Congress will,’ Senator Ed Markey warns Elon Musk

‘Fix your companies. Or Congress will,’ Senator Ed Markey warns Elon Musk

Illustration by Lille Allen / The Verge

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) told Elon Musk, “Fix your companies. Or Congress will,” after Musk snarkily replied to the senator’s concerns about fake verified accounts on Twitter, and suggested Markey’s real account “sounds like a parody.”

On Friday, Markey sent out a tweet containing a link to a letter he wrote to Musk, criticizing the new $7.99 per month Blue with verification subscription. The letter cites a report from the Washington Post that details how a reporter was able to easily create a fake verified account impersonating Markey and calls on Musk to address the issue. “Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again,” Markey writes.

One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will. https://t.co/lE178gPRoM

— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) November 13, 2022

Musk’s response? “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody.” The billionaire followed up with another tweet about an hour later, saying “And why does your pp have a mask?” in reference to the Senator’s profile picture on Twitter that shows him wearing a face covering.

Markey didn’t take too kindly to Musk’s reply and warned that Congress could take action against Musk and his many companies if he doesn’t straighten things out. “One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online,” Markey writes. “Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”

The senator’s concerns about impersonation on Twitter aren’t unfounded. After Twitter rolled out the ability to pay your way to verification on iOS last week, a wave of fake verified accounts impersonating high-profile users flooded the platform. One account impersonating Nintendo posted an image of Mario flipping the bird, while another pretending to be LeBron James falsely claimed he planned on leaving the Los Angeles Lakers.

Most of these accounts have since been taken down, but some remained online for an extended period of time, potentially causing harm to the brand — or person — they’ve been impersonating. Musk later announced that Twitter will ban users who impersonate others on the platform, but fake accounts still persisted, forcing Twitter to shut off all Blue signups in response.

While Markey obviously doesn’t represent all of Congress, the Democrats will keep their control of the Senate following the midterm elections. Markey is also on a number of commissions that could affect the Musk-owned Tesla — including the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee — and has raised concerns over the electric vehicle maker’s full-self driving software several times in the past.

Crypto.com sent $400 million to the wrong recipient, but got it back this time

Crypto.com sent $400 million to the wrong recipient, but got it back this time

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Crypto.com just admitted to making another very large and concerning clerical error: it mistakenly sent 320,000 in Ethereum (~$416 million USD) to another cryptocurrency exchange, called Gate.io, about three weeks ago (via Web3 Is Going Just Great). In a post on Twitter, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek says the company was supposed to send the crypto to one of its cold, or offline, wallets, but accidentally sent it to a “whitelisted” address belonging to its corporate account at Gate.io.

This all unfolded after Marszalek publicly posted the company’s cold wallet addresses to provide transparency about what the exchange does with its funds. After digging into Crypto.com’s transactions, one user, Conor Grogan, points out that the exchange sent 320,000 in Ethereum to Gate.io on October 21st, an amount that makes up about 80 percent of the company’s Ethereum holdings.

https://t.co/pFc4Pz9nFR proceeded to withdraw the funds back to its cold wallets over the following days. The entirety of ETH was successfully withdrawn by https://t.co/pFc4Pz9nFR and returned to our cold storage.

— Kris | Crypto.com (@kris) November 13, 2022

Marszalek later added that it was able to recover “the entirety” of the transferred assets. Users on Twitter confirmed that Crypto.com received its funds back about a week later, transferring 285,000 Ethereum (~350 million USD) into one wallet and putting the remaining 35,000 Ethereum (~43 million USD) into another. Gate.io also issued a response, noting that it started returning the funds once it realized the transfer was “an operation error.” But hey, at least Crypto.com’s funds were actually returned this time. In August, a pretty unfortunate typo resulted in Crypto.com giving a customer $7.2 million instead of a $68 refund, which it’s currently suing to get back.

Despite the reassurances from Marszalek that “all our systems are operating normally,” this whole ordeal is sparking withdrawals from the platform as users begin to worry whether Crypto.com will suffer the same fate as the now-bankrupt FTX and other beleaguered firms. Some users speculate whether the transfer was made in order to alter the proof of reserves that numerous crypto exchanges promised to provide in response to FTX’s collapse.

While Gate.io published its asset audit snapshot on October 19th and, clarified that “Crypto.com’s deposit was not included,” Crypto.com provided partial proof of reserves on November 11th. Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao appeared to allude to the situation in a tweet on Sunday morning, stating: “If an exchange have to move large amounts of crypto before or after they demonstrate their wallet addresses, it is a clear sign of problems. Stay away.”

LG C2 OLED TV review: you can’t go wrong

LG C2 OLED TV review: you can’t go wrong

It’s far from the brightest TV out there, but as the sweet spot in LG’s lineup, the C2 combines stunning picture quality with an exhaustive list of features and terrific gaming prowess.

LG’s C2 OLED is a truly impressive 4K TV that provides impeccable picture quality and best-in-class gaming performance. Even though the higher-tier and more expensive G2 is LG’s flagship and offers a brighter display, the C2 is easier on your wallet and still delivers a viewing experience that can wow anyone sitting in your living room.

I reviewed the 65-inch C2, which costs $2,499 but is routinely on sale for much less. Thanks to those frequent discounts, the C-series has established itself as the sweet spot of LG’s lineup, and this feature-packed TV showcases everything the company has learned after years of manufacturing OLED sets. You can count on an engrossing image with unmatched blacks, striking contrast, and a surprising level of depth. There’s been a lot of buzz this year about the arrival of QD-OLED TVs, and while they do offer some noticeable picture benefits, the first sets from Samsung and Sony are pricier than the C2 — and neither can match LG’s comprehensive gaming chops.

HOW WE RATE AND REVIEW PRODUCTS

But one of the main improvements that LG has made to the C2 will be obvious long before you power it on. The most notable thing about this TV’s design is just how remarkably light it is. By switching to composite fiber materials, LG has reduced the heft in a big way. The 65-inch model I’ve been testing weighs 40.8 pounds with the stand or 36.6 pounds without. Stack that up against last year’s version, which came in at 71.9 pounds with the stand attached or 52.9 pounds without, and the difference is substantial. You’ll still want a helping hand when unboxing and setting up one of the larger-sized C2s, but that’s really only because of the screen’s width; the weight is entirely manageable now. The pedestal stand is also now lighter, narrower, and appreciably taller; my Sonos soundbar partially obstructed the screen with my old CX, but that’s not a problem thanks to this stand’s extra clearance.

How can a premium TV weigh so little?

A TV’s weight is the sort of thing you might never think about again after putting it on a media stand or mounting it, but the reduced heft should make for less strain on your wall in the latter scenario. Above all else, it’s just impressive engineering and a welcome change after years of weighty OLEDs that also happened to be very fragile. That combination often proved stressful, but the C2 felt much easier to unbox and maneuver by comparison. It comes in sizes ranging from 42 inches ($1,399) all the way up to a gargantuan 83-inch model ($5,499). Again, all of them are regularly on sale for significantly less. No matter how big or small you go, the TVs share the same features, and all have four HDMI ports.

You’re not going to be paying any attention to the C2’s thin bezels.

Elsewhere, the C2 takes after its sleek predecessors in overall design, but there are still noticeable upgrades. LG has managed to shave down the bezels to the point that they’re nearly imperceptible when the TV is powered on, keeping you fully immersed in whatever’s on the screen — be that a movie, game, or those gorgeous Apple TV screensavers that can often steal my attention for minutes at a time. The glossy glass panel can be prone to distracting reflections depending on the time of day or where the TV is positioned in a room; I missed the anti-glare coating of the TCL 6-Series and other TVs at times. But when the viewing conditions are right, LG’s chosen materials only enhance the richness and punch of the TV’s image.

The C2 has impeccable contrast and a surprising amount of depth to its image.

As for the HDMI ports, all four are capable of 120Hz 4K gaming and the whole array of HDMI 2.1 features. It’s nice not having to be so precious about which device gets plugged into what port. Obviously, you’ll want to ensure your soundbar is running through the eARC HDMI port, but the rest provide ample flexibility. LG has been doing this for years, and while some TV makers are finally catching up and going full-bandwidth on every HDMI port, others like Hisense and TCL still limit some of the most important features (like 120Hz) to two ports instead of the whole lot.

Switch on the C2 using LG’s Magic Motion remote — yes, you can still use it like a Wii wand controller with motion controls if you want — and you’re greeted by the latest version of webOS. The company’s TV software switched to a full “homescreen” experience a couple years ago that’s more akin to Samsung’s Tizen and Vizio’s Smartcast OS. I preferred the less busy lower-third “blades” interface of older LGs, but I can’t fault the company for getting with the times. Navigating around webOS on the C2 is smooth and responsive, whether you’re browsing apps on the homescreen, using features like AirPlay 2, or toggling on smart lights through the Home Dashboard.

The remote hasn’t changed much; you can use the buttons or point it at the TV for an on-screen cursor. Backlit buttons would be nice.

Unfortunately, webOS has grown very busy, bloated, and random in its current state. Are there a lot of features? Sure. The C2 supports Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and LG’s own voice assistant, as just one example. AirPlay 2 and HomeKit are also in there. But LG is trying to do too much, and it all feels messy. The top of the homescreen has seen some iteration and experimentation over the last few months, none of which has resulted in much progress. Initially, it was a hodgepodge of weather, tips for using the TV’s features, and ads.

LG’s latest take on webOS feels haphazard and too ad-heavy

Now there’s just a giant “webOS” logo in the top banner taking up a ton of room. Beneath that are trending recommendations mixed with blatant ads. Next is the App List — the section you’ll likely use most often — and then the Home Dashboard, which combines HDMI inputs and smart home device controls in the same row. After that, it’s row after row of forgettable cruft, and the overall experience feels thrown together and convoluted. Why is an entire row on the homescreen dedicated to the built-in web browser that I’ll never open? If I have no interest in LG’s sports alert carousel, there’s no way to hide or remove it; the best I can do is move it further down the screen. Even in the Apps List row, which is customizable, many of LG’s apps can’t be removed. And then there are repetitive rows of suggested content, some of them only featuring three or four items. There’s little rhyme or reason, and I’d love to see LG rein some of this in and give webOS greater focus and purpose in its next lineup of TVs. But I’m not optimistic.

Life would be better without so many homescreen ads, LG.

None of these sections can be hidden or deleted. You can only rearrange them.

Thankfully, the TV’s actual settings menus remain similar to past years and are straightforward enough to find what you’re looking for. By default, LG enables energy-saving features that can dim the screen and keep the C2 from looking its very best, so you’ll want to turn those off as you explore the different picture modes and other settings. And if the haphazard layout or ads of webOS’ homescreen get on your nerves, you can always hook up a streaming player from Apple, Roku, Amazon, or Google and largely ignore the TV’s software beyond the basic menus.

But let me tell you: you’ll instantly forget any quibbles with the C2’s homescreen or default settings once you start watching a movie or TV. Simply put, this is the best picture quality you can get for the price. With HDR peaking at slightly over 800 nits, the C2 is perceptibly brighter than last year’s C1 (and certainly the CX I owned previously), even if it’s no match for Mini LED TVs like the TCL 6-Series and recent Hisense sets like the blindingly bright U8H. If your living room catches a ton of sunlight, it might make sense to go with those alternatives — or one of the QD-OLEDs I mentioned earlier, since their improved color brightness can make the whole image seem more radiant. LG’s flagship G2 also ups the total brightness beyond what the C2 is capable of with the help of an integrated heatsink.

You’ll want to turn off some of LG’s default settings to get the best picture quality.

So it’s not going to win out in every scenario, but the C2 never left me wanting for more. It makes good on the dazzling contrast and inky blacks that OLEDs have long been known for. Colors are vibrant without going overboard, and HDR highlights pop with support for Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10, and HGiG. Watching Top Gun: Maverick on this thing is a special experience.

But there’s more to it than that. I’ve been genuinely impressed by how much depth and dimensionality the C2’s picture provides. I think this comes down to the way LG’s Alpha 9 Gen 5 chip separates the foreground subject from the background and optimizes the image processing of both. In the past, I’ve dismissed this sort of thing as a marketing gimmick, but I’m sold on it here. It’s not 3D by any stretch; the effect is subtle but adds just that little bit extra to the C2’s video fidelity. The quick response time of OLED panels can produce judder when watching movies and other 24fps content. If you’re sensitive to that kind of thing, LG’s Cinematic Movement toggle does a good job of smoothing things out without leaning too hard into the soap opera effect.

I don’t know many people who splurge on an OLED TV only to rely on its built-in speakers, but if you find yourself without a soundbar or surround system for a while, the C2’s audio output is better than tolerable. The company uses some AI tricks to maintain good balance at moderate volume levels, but don’t expect much in the way of bass. These speakers are fine as a stopgap, but you’ll want to pair the C2 with a better sound system to bring its audio experience up to par with its visual one.

The C2 is perhaps the best gaming TV on the market in 2022.

When you hop over to a gaming console, LG automatically recognizes the hardware. Pressing the settings button on the remote brings up a gaming dashboard that displays the current frame rate, lets you dial in granular black level adjustments, or choose from picture presets based on the genre of the game you’re playing. The C2 exhibits wonderfully low input lag across all of its HDMI ports, and LG stands alone in supporting Dolby Vision gaming in addition to every incarnation of VRR you could want, including AMD FreeSync Premium, Nvidia G-Sync, and the open standard version. This TV is a perfect match for the PS5 and Xbox Series X and can get the most from this generation of consoles. Again, other TVs can go brighter, but the gaming experience isn’t always as consistent. Samsung has had some firmware growing pains with its S95B QD-OLED this year that have at times negatively affected brightness and gaming / VRR performance.

LG’s C2 is a phenomenal TV, and as we enter the holiday season, it’s already being discounted into very tempting territory at many retailers. But you can also still find big savings on last year’s C1, and there’s not a ton separating the two. The C2 gets slightly brighter and offers smoother day-to-day performance, but many of its best attributes can be found in last year’s model. LG is facing impressive competition from Samsung and Sony in the OLED TV space, but it’s still the heavyweight in this market with years of expertise. The C2 is all of that distilled into a beautiful, versatile, and shockingly light rectangle. You can get a very good TV for hundreds less, but few are as uncompromising.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

Medibank: how hackers got your private health data

Medibank: how hackers got your private health data

After hackers infiltrated Medibank’s systems last week, sensitive health data from their customers, including information about abortions and reproductive healthcare, was posted on the dark web. The Australian federal police say they have identified the hackers, who they believe are primarily based in Russia, and will work with Interpol to try and bring them to justice.

On this episode of Full Story, Josh Taylor tells Laura Murphy-Oates how the hack was pulled off, and what Medibank and Australian authorities are doing about the attack

Read more:

Continue reading...

Elon Musk scraps Twitter’s work from home policy

Elon Musk scraps Twitter’s work from home policy

The announcement comes as three top security officials leave the company and employees are asked to ‘self-certify’ compliance

Elon Musk has scrapped Twitter’s work from home policy and ordered its staff back to the office, days after firing 3,700 employees.

The social media platform’s new owner told staff in an email, seen by the Guardian, that its “road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed”.

Continue reading...

UK government criticised for failing to protect children from online harm

UK government criticised for failing to protect children from online harm

Organisations representing young people express concern amid fears that manifesto pledges on internet safety are under threat

The government is facing mounting criticism from children’s organisations over its failure to protect young people from harmful material online, amid fears that key legislation promised in the Tory party’s 2019 election manifesto to strengthen internet safety could be under threat.

The Observer understands from sources close to the discussions that hugely controversial and sensitive changes to the online safety bill were to have been announced to parliament this week by the culture secretary, Michelle Donelan, after ministers across government had been consulted in recent days.

Continue reading...

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX now worthless, says key investor

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX now worthless, says key investor

Firm valued at $25bn in 2021 suffered bank run-style crisis as investors rushed to withdraw money

The founder of the world’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, has apologised for his company’s near-collapse this week, saying he “fucked up” in his calculations and in his communications during the crisis.

Sam Bankman-Fried, a billionaire and major donor to the US Democratic party who has lobbied Washington for tighter regulation of the crypto market, was speaking following a run on his Bahamas-headquartered FTX exchange.

Continue reading...

What does a £100,000 ‘invisibility cloak’ look like? Funny you should ask …

What does a £100,000 ‘invisibility cloak’ look like? Funny you should ask …

Three years’ research and a lot of very expensive materials have gone into Steve and Nick Tidball’s thermal camouflage jacket. Can its wearer really blend into the background?

Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak arrived in a parcel for Christmas, with a note from Dumbledore: “Use it well.” Ron Weasley’s reaction was, as you might expect, to be insanely jealous. Who, after all, hasn’t dreamed of having the power of passing through the world without being seen?

Well, there might just be some good news for Ron and the rest of us. A pair of twins have created something very like an invisibility cloak. No, not the Weasley twins, but real-life brothers Steve and Nick Tidball. They call it the thermal camouflage jacket, and I’ve come to see it and Steve, in the offices of the brothers’ futuristic clothing company, hidden away behind a Travelodge in King’s Cross, London.

Continue reading...

How are these fake Roblox and Ohio governor Twitter accounts still up?

How are these fake Roblox and Ohio governor Twitter accounts still up?

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Over the past few days, Twitter has seemingly been doing everything in its power to stop a wave of verified accounts impersonating brands and public figures — including pausing the Twitter Blue signups that allow them to pop up in the first place, and bringing the “Official” grey check marks that were previously announced and then canned by Elon Musk.

And yet some high-profile impersonators have stuck around on the platform for hours or even days, flouting Musk’s rules by not having “parody” in their username. The tweets are getting more and more popular, increasing the danger for Twitter’s brand in the eyes of advertisers.

Let’s look at some of the accounts that are still up, at time of writing:

A tweet from @Roblox_US announces the addition of sex to the game popular with young adults. It’s been up since around 9AM ET on Thursday morning. An account pretending to be Coke (which is currently still active and verified) had a now-deleted post saying “If this gets 1000 retweets we will put cocaine back in Coca-Cola.” It got those retweets.

A screenshot taken at 8:08PM ET on November 11th.

An account parodying Ohio Governor Mike Dewine has also managed to escape a ban, despite its ten-hour old tweet with over 2,000 retweets announcing the governor’s plan for “eradicating the people of Columbus.”

Rip to Columbus, I guess.

To be clear, Twitter is cracking down on some of the accounts. While this article was being written, an account impersonating Senator Chuck Grassley was suspended, though it took almost a full day while one of its tweets garnered tens of thousands of likes. It was a similar situation with a fake Donald Trump account, which had multiple tweets with tens of thousands of likes and one with over 10,000 retweets, and didn’t mark itself as a parody anywhere.

This tweet made it nearly 24 hours.

Still, it’s bad for Twitter that these tweets stayed up for so long, especially the ones from fake brands. As of right now, the company relies on advertising as its main source of revenue. And advertisers have shown that they’re not huge fans of a platform that lets people convincingly impersonate them. There have been several very brand-unsafe viral tweets — perhaps one of the most infamous was someone impersonating pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, announcing that insulin was free.

The company’s official account later issued an apology that people were fooled by the faker. Both Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin, which had an imposter of its own, have seen dramatic drops to their stock prices on Friday, though it’s impossible to say for sure if the tweets were even partially responsible for that.

Even Elon Musk’s companies haven’t been immune:

The account behind this tweet has since been suspended, but it took a surprisingly long time for that to happen.

On Thursday, Musk responded to someone talking about fake posts from Nintendo and President Joe Biden with two laughing emojis, as shown in this incredible compilation of impersonators (most of whom have since been banned, per Twitter’s policy). I doubt he’s laughing much today, though; Omnicom, one of the world’s biggest ad firms with clients like Apple, PepsiCo, and McDonalds, issued a memo advising its clients to hold off on advertising with Twitter for a bit.

Musk has since said that Twitter will be “adding a “Parody” subscript to clarify,” but it’s unclear whether accounts will have to mark themselves as parodies, or if Twitter itself will make that determination.

Disney is preparing to cut jobs, according to leaked memo from CEO

Disney is preparing to cut jobs, according to leaked memo from CEO

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Disney CEO Bob Chapek is predicting “some staff reductions” once the company reviews its spending, according to a leaked memo published by CNBC. The company will also reportedly freeze most hiring, only bringing on new employees for “the most critical, business-driving positions.”

If Disney does end up carrying out a round of layoffs, it’ll be far from the only one among the companies pushing streaming services. Dozens of workers have lost their jobs at Warner Bros. Television and HBO Max this year. Netflix has also laid off hundreds of employees this year while reporting slower subscriber growth but noted during the last earnings call that its business remains profitable, unlike its premium streaming competitors, which include Disney.

Chapek has predicted that the services will become profitable by the end of 2024.

So far, there aren’t any details about how many workers may be affected, as Disney will start by forming a “cost structure taskforce” to go through its finances. However, the prospect of layoffs loomed after its earnings call on Tuesday when CFO Christine McCarthy said Disney was “actively evaluating our cost base currently, and we’re looking for meaningful efficiencies.”

Even the mouse isn’t immune to economic uncertainty

The company is tightening its belt in other ways, too, with Chapek’s memo telling employees to conduct business meetings virtually when they can to cut down on travel expenses.

Disney added millions of subscribers to its streaming services like Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Hulu last quarter. However, even after raising prices and prompting many people to choose a pricier bundle of entertainment services, it's still losing money on its direct-to-consumer business as it spends millions to create content that will keep the subscribers coming in. Last quarter, it lost around $1.5 billion on its streaming efforts — those slick Andor sets and costumes don’t come cheap.

Outside of entertainment, the tech world has seen some brutal cuts: Meta and Twitter have laid off thousands in the last week alone, while Amazon instituted a corporate hiring freeze, Over the last few months, Snap, Microsoft, and several crypto firms have also reduced their ranks.

You, too, can have a rad name like ‘Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson’

You, too, can have a rad name like ‘Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson’

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 15: Rainn Wilson attends “Jerry & Marge Go Large” premiere during the 2022 Tribeca Festival. | Photo by Dominik Bindl/WireImage

Actor Rainn Wilson (you might know him as Dwight from The Office) had a grand scheme to bring his hilarious brand of climate advocacy to Twitter this week. That plan, however, was quickly thwarted — another victim of the name-changing drama that has flourished on the platform recently.

Wilson took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce he was changing his name on social media to “Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson.” “As a cheap little stunt to help save planet Earth I’ve changed my name on Twitter, Instagram, and even on my fancy writing paper,” Wilson said in a video. He points to a memo pad with scrawled changes to his printed name, so that it reads “Acid Rainn Kills Trees Wilson.”

Some 35 minutes later, Wilson tweeted, “P.S. THEY WON’T LET ME CHANGE MY NAME BECAUSE, ELON!”

Join me @ @ArcticBasecamp in bringing attention to the melting issue. We need world leaders to take action at COP 27!
The Arctic is melting at Millions of Liters per second, yet this problem can’t seem to make a name for itself, so we’ll make a name for it.
Go to link in bio ⬆️ pic.twitter.com/TgEG84fOmQ

— RainnWilson (@rainnwilson) November 9, 2022

Twitter also blocked me from changing my screen name to “Justine Dying from Heat Calma.” Best of luck to anyone trying to add your new name to the free-for-all on Twitter since Elon Musk gave users the power to verify themselves for $7.99 a month. After Jesus Christ and Donald Trump parodies popped up verified on Twitter, Musk has reportedly paused naming and verification privileges.

Luckily, there are alternatives. On Instagram, Wilson’s display name does read “Rainnfall Heat Wave Extreme Winter Wilson” in all caps. I might just go old-school and print myself a nametag instead.

Image: Arctic Basecamp

The wacky monikers come from a fun name generator at arcticrisk.org/name-generator. I typed in my cat’s name on the website, and he now goes by “Collapsing Economies Calma.” The tool was developed by Arctic Basecamp, which puts up a tent each year at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos to call attention to the ways climate change is transforming the Arctic. Wilson’s name change coincides with a United Nations climate conference taking place this month in Egypt.

The Arctic has warmed at a rate almost four times faster than the rest of the world. Those changes have even been linked to more extreme weather in the US, like the deadly cold snap in Texas in 2021. All around the world, climate change is driving more extreme weather — from severe droughts to more intense heat waves.

“Our mission at Arctic Basecamp is to raise awareness of the Global Risks of Arctic weather change. It’s not just bad news for the Arctic, but for us, too. So that’s why I changed my name and you should too,” Wilson says in his video.

Wilson also makes a compelling case for some other celebrities, including “Cardi the Arctic B melting” and “Samuel Earth’s getting hot as L. Jackson.”

Hot damn, the Surface Pro 9’s battery is easier to replace

Hot damn, the Surface Pro 9’s battery is easier to replace

The battery in the Surface Pro 9 is now held by screws instead of adhesives, making it a cinch to swap. | Image: iFixit

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 9 has a new and attractive design on the outside, but a new iFixit teardown shows that its insides are more inviting, too. The newest of the company’s 2-in-1s now has a screwed-in battery module as opposed to an adhered one. Between that and other components having become more modular over the years, repairability is actually achievable.

In the past, the most daunting part of previous Surface tablet repairs was just getting it open: the glass had little flex for prying and would easily crack when attempting to open it after it was heated. Now, as demonstrated in the iFixit video, we can see that the glass edges are a lot more forgiving against the force needed to lift it, making the adhesives easier to tear and remove the screen. iFixit is giving it a preliminary repairability score of seven out of 10.

Microsoft’s hardware repairability was at an all-time low in 2017 with the release of the Surface Laptop. It was called a “glue-filled monster” by iFixit, which couldn't take it apart without permanently damaging it — giving it a repairability score of zero. “This laptop is not meant to be opened or repaired; you can’t get inside without inflicting a lot of damage,” said iFixit at the time. It was a disastrous score for a company supposedly focused on sustainability.

But in 2019, Microsoft addressed repairability with the Arm-based Surface Pro X. That model introduced more modular components and ports than ever before and even had a removable SSD that could be accessed from behind the kickstand. Now, according to Ralf Groene, head of Windows and devices research and design, Microsoft is more firmly committed to making sure the laptops it sells can be repaired if something breaks. “The tradeoff was repairability for perfection and design,” Groene told The Verge last month. “We worked super hard to make it repairable later. I don’t know if I’d make that tradeoff again.”

And the last few years of Surface devices seem to back Groene up. These days, Surface laptops are a lot more repairable. Microsoft even teamed up with iFixit last year to design tools for repair technicians to use to fix Surface devices. The company also works with Best Buy to facilitate repairs, though it’s not determined if the big-box house of Geek Squad will start performing repairs on-site.

Which brings us back to the latest Surface Pro 9. For years, Microsoft and many of its competitors, including the far less repair-friendly Apple, have glued batteries directly into the chassis because it could produce a thinner and lighter laptop. But people don’t always want the thinnest and lightest laptop possible. Sometimes it’s okay to sacrifice a little thinness if it means you can replace the laptop’s battery without repeat use of a heat gun.

“Every opportunity that comes with repairability creates a challenge that you have to solve, like how can you be able to swap something out without really ruining the design,” Robin Seiler, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows and devices, told The Verge. Given Microsoft’s Surface contributed to a major renaissance in laptop design years ago, maybe the company’s embrace of repairable design will spark a new renaissance in the industry. Wouldn’t it be nice to just swap out your battery when it dies?

Additional reporting by Tom Warren

FTX assets frozen by Bahamas regulator as crypto exchange fights for survival

FTX assets frozen by Bahamas regulator as crypto exchange fights for survival

Founder Sam Bankman-Fried races to find funds to fill multibillion-dollar hole in exchange

The Bahamas securities regulator has frozen the assets of the Bahamas subsidiary of FTX, as the world’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange struggles for survival.

The Securities Commission of the Bahamas said on Thursday it had frozen the assets of FTX Digital Markets and related parties, as well appointing a liquidator for the unit.

Continue reading...

Twitter reactivated the ‘Official’ gray check for accounts that are actually verified

Twitter reactivated the ‘Official’ gray check for accounts that are actually verified

But is it officially official this time, or will it get axed again in a few hours? Vote now! | Image: Twitter

Okay, so Twitter broke its own verification system by making the blue check — previously a signal that the account had provided information about its owner’s identity — available for purchase. Yesterday, which is approximately a month ago in Elon Musk time, a solution rolled out: gray checks that indicated that the account was official. By the end of the day, those checks had been rolled back.

Got all that? Great. After a great deal of impersonation, hoaxing, and other brand-unsafe behavior from the newly-purchased blue checks, the gray “official” checks are back.

Brands such as Coca-Cola, Twitter, Wired, and Ars Technica have the new-old gray checks (but not @Verge, which is, we promise, our real one, unlike this impostor account). This morning, Musk, Twitter’s new owner, said that there are too many “corrupt legacy Blue ‘verification’ checkmarks.”

Those “corrupt” checks were, of course, unpaid — unlike the ones that have been causing mayhem by imitating brands such as Nintendo, Eli Lilly, and Tesla. A blue check costs $7.99, as part of Twitter Blue, and Musk said it will be the “great leveler” when he got rid of the gray checks yesterday. Twitter product lead Esther Crawford (who is now sporting a Twitter Blue-purchased Verified stamp on her account) said earlier this week that the gray checks would return, with a focus on “government and commercial entities to begin with” instead of individuals.

A Nintendo imposter went viral on Wednesday.

It’s also returning to media outlets like the New York Times, Ars Technica, and Wired.

Elon Musk details his plan to turn Twitter into a bank

Elon Musk details his plan to turn Twitter into a bank

A penny for your tweets. | Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge

Elon Musk seems intent on turning Twitter into a bank, complete with what he describes as a “high-yield money market account,” debit cards, checks, and loans. He described his plans during a last-minute meeting with staff today, and you can read a full transcript of that here.

Musk broached the topic of payments during his introduction, saying that “I think there’s this transformative opportunity in payments,” adding that the goal is “enabling people on Twitter to able to send money anywhere in the world instantly and in real-time. We just want to make it as useful as possible.” He said that the feature, along with “video content and compensating content creators” and improving search, is a “high priority.”

Musk says he’ll do a lot of things, so maybe don’t close your bank account just yet

What will TaaPS (Twitter as a Payment Service) look like? Imagine if every verified Twitter user gets a balance, which they can use to send money to “anywhere in the system.” In theory, that could mean something like tipping other users or paying for paywalled video content, a feature that’s reportedly been floated at the company.

Twitter will set up a “high-yield money market account so that having a Twitter balance is the highest-yield thing that you can do,” according to Musk. Instead of traditional banks’ “complex and expensive” system of credit cards, savings and checking accounts, CDs, and the like, Musk says you’ll have “one balance on Twitter that can simply go positive or a negative.” He said this will let Twitter pay more in interest for positive accounts and charge less interest for accounts in the red.

“...well, if you want to provide a comprehensive service to people, then you can’t be missing key elements.”

For places that don’t accept Twitter payments, Musk says you’ll get a debit card tied to your balance and even traditional checks if you want them. “If you address all things that you want from a finance standpoint, then we will be the people’s financial institution,” he added. When an employee commented that it sounded like Musk wants to build a bank and asked if it would offer loans, the CEO responded: “well, if you want to provide a comprehensive service to people, then you can’t be missing key elements.”

In his speech, he makes the whole thing sound easy. “Payments really are just the exchange of information,” he said “from an information standpoint, [there’s] not a huge difference between, say, just sending a direct message and sending a payment.” He does admit, though, that there are legal hurdles to clear, and the company is looking to get a money transmitter license in Washington, according to a report from Platformer. The report also says that Esther Crawford, who has been in charge of rolling out the new Blue service, has been named CEO of Twitter Payments.

It’s worth pointing out that there’s a massive difference between storing user info and money. If your account gets hacked and your DMs are leaked, it could be a pretty bad day for you. If your bank gets hacked, you could wind up not being able to make rent.

Musk is no stranger to high-stakes enterprises — he also heads companies that sell cars and launch rockets, both of which can be deadly if done wrong. But Tesla and SpaceX have a lot of things Twitter doesn’t have right now. Namely, executives and employees in charge of safety. Musk just laid off almost half the company, which affected core engineering teams, and there have already been some cracks starting to show that may be a result of that. Also, I might not want to navigate the legal and ethical red tape of starting a bank if my chief privacy officer, chief information security officer, and chief compliance officer had all just resigned.

While it’s hard to imagine the average Twitter user actually wants to use the platform as a bank, the idea isn’t completely out of the blue. Musk has said before that he wants to turn Twitter into “X, the everything app,” similar to China’s WeChat. (“Everything” does, in fact, include banking services.) Musk also has a history with banking, as he helped found PayPal, a fact one employee referenced when asking about the company “embarking on a payments journey almost from scratch.”

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has also built a successful payments company called Block, which is behind the Square payment platform and Cash App.

The $50 TinyTV 2 will let you channel surf on a one-inch screen

The $50 TinyTV 2 will let you channel surf on a one-inch screen

GIF: Tiny Circuits

What is this, a television for ants? Basically yes! The TinyTV 2, a Kickstarter project from the company that brought us an even smaller Game Boy, is one of the smallest and cutest video players I’ve ever seen. While it doesn’t have a set of rabbit ears to harness the airwaves, the one-inch 216x135-pixel television is authentic in practically every other way — dials to adjust “channel” and volume, a working speaker and power button, even an infrared receiver for a tiny optional remote control (via Technabob).

There’s a two-hour lithium-ion battery so you can take it on the go and a USB-C port for charging and data. It’s all powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2040 computer. And — get this — it emulates the experience of “changing channels” by remembering your timestamp in each of the video files you preload on its included 8GB micro SD card, so it can seem like you’re surfing live television.

Image: Tiny Circuits

Image: Tiny Circuits

And because that’s clearly not small enough, the company’s offering a TinyTV Mini as well, which shrinks down the idea into a volume of just one cubic inch. It’s got a 0.6-inch OLED screen (instead of IPS) at just 64 x 64 pixels and a single hour of battery life.

Image: Tiny Circuits

TinyTV 2 vs. TinyTV Mini.

Both are currently available to back at Kickstarter for $50 each, and both come with an app that’ll shrink your favorite video files down to the appropriate resolutions.

Tested’s Norman Chan has a great video showing off the original Tiny TV alongside both of the new versions, and you can see how much clearer the TinyTV 2 looks and sounds.

Assuming the Kickstarter campaign doesn’t run into any wrinkles — the Thumby seems to have gone well, shipping over 10,000 units and now freely on sale — this could be an easier way to live the tiny TV dream than rolling your own mini Simpsons CRT. I just funded it myself; I think it’ll be a great home for anime music videos.

Here are a couple more pictures of the TinyTV Mini:

Image: Tiny Circuits

Image: Tiny Circuits

Tiny Circuits’ earlier Game Boy-for-ants inspired another project we recently featured on The Verge, by the way: these working Lego computer bricks with actual computers and screens within.