Technology

mercredi 23 novembre 2022

San Francisco police consider letting robots use ‘deadly force’

An image showing a remote-controlled robot used to disarm bombs — *A remote-controlled robot used to disarm bombs.* | ARNO BURGI/DPA/AFP via Getty Images

The San Francisco Police Department is proposing a new policy that would give robots the license to kill, as reported earlier by Mission Local (via Engadget). The draft policy, which outlines how the SFPD can use military-style weapons, states robots can be “used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option.”

As reported by Mission Local, members of the city’s Board of Supervisors Rules Committee have been reviewing the new equipment policy for several weeks. The original version of the draft didn’t include any language surrounding robots’ use of deadly force until Aaron Peskin, the Dean of the city’s Board of Supervisors, initially added that “robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person.”

However, the SFPD returned the draft with a red line crossing out Peskin’s addition, replacing it with the line that gives robots the authority to kill suspects. According to Mission Local, Peskin eventually decided to accept the change because “there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option.” San Francisco’s rules committee unanimously approved a version of the draft last week, which will face the Board of Supervisors on November 29th.

*A machine gun mounted to the same type of Talon robot owned by the SFPD.*

As outlined in the equipment policy, the SFPD currently has 17 remotely piloted robots, but only 12 are functioning. In addition to granting robots the ability to use deadly force, the proposal also authorizes them for use in “training and simulations, criminal apprehensions, critical incidents, exigent circumstances, executing a warrant or during suspicious device assessments.”

While most of the robots listed in the SFPD’s inventory are primarily used for defusing bombs or dealing with hazardous materials, newer Remotec models have an optional weapons system, and the department’s existing F5A has a tool called the PAN disruptor that can load 12-gauge shotgun shells. It’s typically used to detonate bombs from a distance. The department’s QinetiQ Talon can also be modified to hold various weapons — a weaponized version of the robot is currently used by the US Army and can equip grenade launchers, machine guns, or even a .50-caliber anti-materiel rifle.

“SFPD has always had the ability to use lethal force when the risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available,” says SFPD Officer Eve Laokwansathitaya, in a statement to The Verge. “SFPD does not have any sort of specific plan in place as the unusually dangerous or spontaneous operations where SFPD’s need to deliver deadly force via robot would be a rare and exceptional circumstance.”

The Dallas Police Department used a robot to carry out deadly force for the first time in 2016. It used a bomb-disposal robot — the same Remotec F5A model owned by the SFPD — armed with an explosive device to kill a suspect who shot and killed five police officers and wounded several others. At the time, Dallas police chief David Brown said the department “saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was.”

Last month, a report from The Intercept revealed that California’s Oakland Police Department was also considering letting shotgun-equipped Remotec F5A robots use deadly force. Shortly after the report came out, the Oakland PD announced on Facebook it decided against adding “armed remote vehicles to the department.” Meanwhile, a group of robot makers, including Boston Dynamics, signed a pledge not to weaponize their robots earlier this year.

Google Messages has started letting some users react with any emoji

Two screenshots, one showing the extra emoji button in the reactions pop-up, and the other showing the emoji picker that appears when you tap that button. — *And just like that, Messages are now way more fun.*

Google has started letting some users of its Messages app react to text messages with any emoji, instead of limiting them to the standard set of seven that have been available in the app for a while now (via 9to5Google). The feature’s similar to what other messaging platforms like Slack, WhatsApp, and paid versions of Telegram have — pressing and holding on a message gives you the standard emoji reactions, but you can then access the picker to react with whatever you want.

The expanded emoji reactions appear to be a limited test at this point — 9to5Google says it’s heard two reports of it being rolled out, and while one person on The Verge’s staff has access to it, two other people who checked do not. Google didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment on the feature.

As with any features that are added to messaging services, the extra reactions can be a bit messy depending on who you’re texting, and what communications standards their phone supports. They seem to work fine if both parties are using RCS, the SMS replacement that Google’s been pushing for. My phone doesn’t have access to the extended picker yet, but my colleague’s reactions showed up correctly when I was using Google’s Messages app.

Screenshot of a text saying “Can you react to this message?” A face screaming in fear emoji is added to the message bubble. — *I can’t react with this emoji, but I was able to see when someone reacted to my message with it.*

Other configurations can get messy, though. On the same phone, which obviously supports RCS, Samsung’s Messages app shows the reaction as a separate text message, saying “ to ‘Can you react to this message?’” The same’s true when my colleague reacts to a text from an iPhone user, as those are SMS only (much to Google’s chagrin).

Screenshot of a text message conversation. One message says “Hi,” and a reply says “face with wide open eyes emoji to ‘Hi.’” — *So we’re back to this...*

That the reactions don’t translate to iPhones isn’t a surprise. For one, Apple’s Tapback system only lets you use a specific set of symbols, so it’s unlikely the company’s Messages app has the ability to add an arbitrary emoji to a message. Even if it did, who knows if it would; after years of Apple users’ reactions showing up as separate text messages for Android users, it appeared as if the two companies had worked out a solution, with iMessage’s and Google Message’s reactions translating between the two platforms. And yet, when I tested it today with the standard reactions, I was back to the same old system of getting separate “[emoji] to [message]” texts instead of beautifully-displayed reactions when messaging between an Android phone and iPhone.

Regardless of whatever Apple and Google have going on, I am happy to see Google bringing this feature to its texting platform, even if it’s really only elegant when you’re doing RCS chats. It’s a feature I’ve always wanted everywhere, and it seems like Google’s working on making that the case, at least for the people using its app.

Power-hungry robots, space colonization, cyborgs: inside the bizarre world of ‘longtermism’

Sam Bankman-Fried said his billions would save the world – but his philanthropic ideas ranged from the worthy to the severely outlandish

Most of us don’t think of power-hungry killer robots as an imminent threat to humanity, especially when poverty and the climate crisis are already ravaging the Earth.

This wasn’t the case for Sam Bankman-Fried and his followers, powerful actors who have embraced a school of thought within the effective altruism movement called “longtermism”.

Frederick P. Brooks Jr., Computer Design Innovator, Dies at 91

Frederick P. Brooks Jr., Computer Design Innovator, Dies at 91 He was a lead designer of the computers that cemented IBM’s dominance for decades. He later wrote a book on software engineering that became a quirky classic.

mardi 22 novembre 2022

Polyamory, penthouses and plenty of loans: inside the crazy world of FTX

After the crypto firm collapsed, the executive who handled the Enron debacle was brought in – and said he’d never seen anything like it

• ‘I don’t have this kind of money to lose’ – investors’ stories

Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX is another typical tale of financial mismanagement. That’s how its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, terms it: a liquidity crisis that tipped over into a solvency one.

FTX had deposits and loans and when depositors tried to get their money back, FTX didn’t have it to hand. Sure, the loans were in fancy digital money, rather than stale dollars, but at first glance, it appears like just another big company failure.

Embracer is ripping a beloved mobile game away from people who paid for it

Did you ever buy Deus Ex Go, the excellent mobile puzzler from Square Enix Montreal that still ranks among the top 150 puzzle games on the App Store despite charging actual money to download? Then you’ll probably be frustrated to hear: Embracer Group, the massive conglomerate that’s gobbling up rights to franchises like Deus Ex and Tomb Raider and The Lord of the Rings and more, has decided you can’t play it anymore.

Three weeks after shutting down the studio that produced it (which had incidentally just finished going through an expensive rebrand), Embracer has decided not only to remove their games from mobile app stores, it’s apparently taking the extra step of making them inaccessible even if you’ve already downloaded them — or in the case of Deus Ex, even if you’ve paid $5 or $6 to do so.

“Current players will not be able to access the games past January 4th,” reads part of a tweet from the defunct Studio Onoma, which is also seeing three free-to-play games (Arena Battle Champions, Hitman Sniper: The Shadows and Space Invaders: Hidden Heroes) shut down. “We encourage prior in-game purchases to be used before January 4th, as they will not be refunded.”

the tweet explains there will be no refunds for players and games will be shut down on January 4th — *No refunds.*

Usually when a downloadable game is removed from a digital marketplace, you can at least download a copy first — in many cases, you can even re-download purchased games indefinitely. (I can still get my Steam copies of Mass Effect 2 and Indigo Prophecy even though they were yanked from the Steam store many years ago.)

But apparently that won’t be the case here. Like Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett says, it’s a games preservation tragedy. It’s also ready-made ammunition for critics of digital purchases, and of Embracer Group itself, which is already under scrutiny from gamers both for buying up franchises and for taking a billion dollars from Saudi Arabia.

And it’s not clear why this is happening with Deus Ex in particular. There shouldn’t be a rights issue, right? Embracer explicitly purchased the rights to Deus Ex alongside the mobile games studio that developed the title. All we know, via games journalist Jason Schreier, is that Embracer apparently decided it wasn’t interested in mobile games anymore.

Onoma was part of the acquisition that saw Embracer take control of Eidos and the Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Legacy of Kain franchises. The company informed staff at a 2pm ET meeting today that Onoma is shutting down as the company pivots to focus only on PC and console
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) November 1, 2022

The Embracer Group didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

UK’s digital services tax reaps almost £360m from US tech giants in first year

Figure raised exceeds what most of the digital businesses have been paying in UK corporation tax

The digital services tax has reaped almost £360m from US tech giants including Amazon, Google and Apple in its first year, raising more from most of the digital businesses than they have been paying in UK corporation tax.

A National Audit Office (NAO) report has found the UK’s digital services tax, which was introduced in April 2020 and imposes a 2% charge on the gross revenues made by digital titans running search engines, social media services and online marketplaces, hauled in 30% more than the government had forecast in 2021.

The best Black Friday Google deals you can get

Pixel 7 and 7 Pro from the back — *The Pixel 7 (left) and Pixel 7 Pro (right) are some of the many big Google deals going on.* | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

It’s a good time to be in the market for some new Google hardware. Google recently kicked off its Black Friday sales promotions on its store, and that set off a chain reaction of the same or better deals being offered all over. While some products on sale are mainstays that see frequent discounts (like the Nest Mini smart speaker for $19.99), there are also excellent deals on the latest flagship phones and accessories. For example, the Pixel 7 Pro is on sale for $749, and the new Pixel Watch is $50 off.

This may just be the tip of the iceberg of this season’s Black Friday sales, as there are all kinds of other early deals worth your attention. So we’ll forgive you if you need a moment to digest it all, but the good thing about these Google deals is they’re set to stick around for Black Friday and even through the weekend, ending on November 28th.

We’ve combed through all the Pixel, Nest, and Chromecast sales to pool together the best and most worthwhile deals you should know about.

Pixel phone deals

The latest crop of Pixel phones is just over a month old, but they’re already nicely discounted. The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro are an excellent follow-up to last year’s Pixel 6 generation, honing the quality of the hardware and software for an overall better experience. They both have a new, second-gen Google Tensor CPU and refined camera performance.

The Pixel 7 with 128GB of storage is on sale for $499 ($100 off) at Best Buy, Target, Amazon, and Google.

The jumbo-sized flagship Pixel 7 Pro is normally a little more affordable than its direct competition from Apple and Samsung, but it’s even more appealing at a lower $749 ($150 off) from Best Buy, Target, Amazon, and Google.

Not one to be outdone when it comes to value proposition, the midrange Google Pixel 6A is still an excellent option if you prefer your Pixel a little smaller (though 6.1 inches isn’t exactly tiny). It’s on sale for $299 ($150 off) at Google, Amazon, Target, and Best Buy.

Pixel accessories deals

The new Google Pixel Watch is on sale for $299.99 at Target, Best Buy, Amazon, and Google. The battery life leaves a bit to be desired, but it’s a very functional smartwatch for notifications on your wrist and tracking your fitness; it also looks pretty sharp and unique with that domed glass case. Be sure to check out our excellent Versus video comparing it to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5.

The Pixel Buds Pro are on sale for $149.99 ($50 off) from Google, Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Google’s flagship wireless earbuds have active noise cancellation, some great sound, and a quality microphone for calls.

If you need some budget-friendly earbuds, the Pixel Buds A-Series are great for just $64 ($35 off) at Google, Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. They’re not noise-canceling, but they’re very affordable and offer hands-free Google Assistant controls.

Nest smart home deals

Several quality Google Nest products are on some sizable sales for Black Friday. Each one can be worth considering unless you’ve already staked a claim over your home with a rival ecosystem.

The tiny and colorful second-gen Nest Mini smart speaker is just $18 ($31 off) at Walmart. It’s priced slightly higher at $19.99 from Best Buy, Target, and Google. It doesn’t have room-filling sound for listening to music, but it does sound better when mounted to a wall, and it’s the cheapest way to get Google Assistant voice controls into your home.

Speaking of tiny Google smart home devices, the latest Nest Hub smart display is $49.99 ($50 off) at Walmart, Google, Target, and Best Buy. This little seven-inch display is handy for news and weather or listening to music, and it doubles as a digital photo frame for Google Photos shared albums.

Google’s larger 10-inch Nest Hub Max smart display is $164 ($65 off) at Google, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart. It’s a similar formula to the smaller version but with a bigger screen and front-facing camera for video calls.

The Nest Audio smart speaker is $49.99 ($50 off) at Target, Walmart, Best Buy, and Google or $89 ($110.98 off) when you buy two from Google. You can pair these Google Assistant-powered speakers in stereo mode, so buying the two-pack may make some sense if you’re looking to pump lots of music in your home.

The entry-level Nest Thermostat is on sale for $89.99 ($40 off) at Best Buy, Target, Amazon, and Google. It’s not the most advanced smart thermostat on the market, but it’s simple to operate remotely and has a clean, modern aesthetic.

Google’s latest Nest Learning Thermostat is $179 ($70 off) at Best Buy, Target, Google, and Amazon. This is Google’s smart thermostat with a whole lot more smarts in it; it can learn your habits and preferences over time to make automatic adjustments for comfort and saving energy.

Chromecast deals

The best deal around on the 4K Chromecast with Google TV is Walmart’s bundle of it with a Stranger Things Funko Pop! vinyl figure for $29 (about $20 off the Chromecast alone) if it’s available for store pickup in your area. It’s somehow cheaper than the sale price of the 4K Chromecast itself, which is widely available to ship for $39.99 ($10 off) at Best Buy, Target, and Amazon. This may be the weirdest deal of all for Black Friday — it’s certainly the strangest... thing. Alright, we’re done here.

Actually, the newer but lower-res HD Chromecast with Google TV is also on sale. It’s discounted to $18 (about $12 off) at Walmart and $19.99 ($10 off) at Best Buy, Target, and Google. But unless you need to save every dollar, you might as well get higher quality video with the deal on the 4K version above, plus you get that free figure of Eleven for... $11 more (seriously???).

Musk antagonist George Hotz hired to fix Twitter search — he’s got 12 weeks

Comm.ai team — *Hotz demonstrating his former company’s advanced driver assistance technology.* | Photo by Michael Zelenko / The Verge

George Hotz, the noted iPhone hacker who was reported to have once turned down a job at Tesla working on its driver-assistance technology, has embarked upon a 12-week “internship” at Twitter under Elon Musk’s leadership. Hotz said his priority at the social media company is to fix its search feature, as well as to remove the prompt that prevents you from browsing the service on the web without logging in.

The internship came about after Hotz expressed support for Musk’s “extremely hardcore” ultimatum to Twitter’s employees, which demanded that they work “long hours at high intensity” or else depart the company. Hotz said that “this is the attitude that builds incredible things” and that he’d be willing to do an internship at the company. “Sure, let’s talk,” was Musk’s response.

Sure, let’s talk.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2022

Hotz appears to be in-between major projects right now, having recently departed his advanced driver assistance company Comma.ai late last month (although he was quick to announce a new company developing software for AI chips). In a note announcing his departure, Hotz suggested that Comma.ai requires a new style of leader as it attempts to scale up from a startup into a sustainable consumer-focused business.

Comma.ai aims to build driver assistance technology that can be retrofitted into existing cars, as opposed to Tesla vehicles which ship with the technology built-in. But early claims about the Hotz’s driver assistance technology in a feature in Bloomberg prompted a stern rebuke from Tesla, which said that it was “extremely unlikely that a single person or even a small company that lacks extensive engineering validation capability will be able to produce an autonomous driving system that can be deployed to production vehicles.” Comma.ai currently sells a $1,999 driver assistance developer kit that it claims is compatible with over 200 vehicles, and is working on turning this into a consumer product, TechCrunch notes.

In the same 2015 Bloomberg feature Hotz said that he’d been discussing working at Tesla, but that the plans fell through when Musk kept changing the terms of their deal. “I appreciate the offer,” Hotz told Musk, “but like I’ve said, I’m not looking for a job. I’ll ping you when I crush Mobileye.” At the time, Mobileye was the company supplying some of the technology Tesla used in its Autopilot system, before the two parted ways in 2016.

News of the internship comes as Twitter is actively recruiting for roles in engineering and sales after laying off nearly two-thirds of its staff in the immediate aftermath of Musk’s takeover of the company. Thousands were fired directly, while hundreds of others chose to leave after Musk’s ultimatum about the company’s new “extremely hardcore” work ethos.

George Hotz is wasting no time working out fixes for Twitter’s search feature. In a tweet, Hotz said these include making it easier to find the search function’s advanced modifiers, and making the feature less reliant on typing the exact text you want to find.

Okay, summarizing:
‣ Searching within "liked" and "seen" tweets with a modifier should be table stakes.
‣ The modifiers and advanced search should be surfaced a lot better. Discord does this well.
‣ Move away from exact text search and toward embeddings.
— George Hotz (@realGeorgeHotz) November 22, 2022

Crypto exchange FTX owes nearly $3.1bn to 50 biggest creditors

Company says cryptocurrency allegedly stolen in collapse being transferred to other exchanges

The collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX owes its 50 biggest creditors nearly $3.1bn (£2.6bn), according to a filing in a US bankruptcy court.

The exchange owes about $1.45bn to its top 10 creditors, it said in a court filing over the weekend, without naming them. The largest creditor is owed $226m.

lundi 21 novembre 2022

‘Verified’ anti-vax accounts proliferate as Twitter struggles to police content

Platform’s paid verification system is being used to give sense of validity to accounts pushing health misinformation

As the troubled social media platform Twitter rolled out a paid verification system and laid off thousands of content moderators, health misinformation accounts on the social network began pushing their messages to a wider audience than ever.

Under Elon Musk’s new direction for Twitter, several anti-vaccine accounts with tens of thousands of followers are now verified by paying $7.99 a month for Twitter Blue.

Monday’s top tech news: Don’t call it a comeback

Bob Iger’s back at Disney, and Ye, Trump, and others are back on Twitter.

Iger is back, Trump is back, Ye is back, and Elon Musk, well, he never leaves the news cycle.

Ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger is back at the helm of the Mouse House in an announcement that surprised everyone, including executives and employees who thought Iger’s email announcing the change came from a hacked account, according to the Wall Street Journal. The outgoing Bob — Bob Chapek — wasn’t even quoted in Disney’s official announcement.

Elon Musk brought Trump, Ye, and others back to Twitter, despite previously saying that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen” before a new content moderation council “with widely diverse viewpoints” had a chance to convene. Trump has yet to tweet, but Ye returned with an is-thing-on mic test followed by a smiley face and the Jewish greeting for peace.

Shalom : )
— ye (@kanyewest) November 20, 2022

Stay tuned, as we continue to update this list with the most important news of today: Monday, November 21st, 2022.

The metaverse will be a digital graveyard if we let new technologies distract us from today’s problems | Jordan Guiao

The collapse of digital ventures like FTX shows that no amount of hype and starry-eyed proselytising can escape reality

The tiny island nation of Tuvalu recently announced that it would be the first country to fully replicate itself as a virtual reproduction in the metaverse.

Tuvalu, comprising of nine small islands in the Pacific situated between Australia and Hawaii, fears that its demise is inevitable due to human-induced climate change, and wanted to preserve “the most precious assets of its people … and move them to the cloud”.

Inside Gary Gensler’s SEC Campaign to Rein In the Crypto Industry

Inside Gary Gensler’s SEC Campaign to Rein In the Crypto Industry Gary Gensler, the chair of the S.E.C., is at the center of a reckoning over the future of cryptocurrency after the implosion of FTX.

dimanche 20 novembre 2022

Amazon has delivered £3,500-worth of the same cookbook

My brother-in-law has been charged for countless shipments which has forced him into the red

We are having a bizarre problem with Amazon that has resulted in countless boxes of the same Ninja cookbook being delivered to my brother-in-law.

He lives in a supportive care establishment and, shortly after moving in, started receiving the boxes over several days, none of which he had ordered.

Bob Iger steps back in as Disney CEO, replacing Bob Chapek

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In a sudden turn of events, Disney has reversed the CEO swap that surprised us in early 2020, with Bob Iger returning to his post, replacing his own successor, Bob Chapek. Iger, who is also the company’s largest shareholder, is now set to serve a new two-year term as CEO. Part of Iger’s job in those two years will be to pick and groom his long-term successor.

Of course, Chapek was an Iger choice too. Chapek had been called the “Tim Cook to Iger’s Steve Jobs,” but during his tenure, their handover got off to a rocky start, while blowups like the Scarlett Johansson Black Widow lawsuit and Disney’s initial lack of reaction to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida scuffed its all-important reputation.

During an episode of the Decoder podcast in April, former Verge writer and now Parrot Analytics senior strategy analyst Julia Alexander described the issues facing Chapek:

...Bob Chapek is in a difficult position of trying to take Disney, a legacy company of yesterday, and make it into a legacy company of tomorrow. That means becoming more like a tech company rather than a traditional media and entertainment company. He arguably runs it the way that some tech companies might, where he breaks up the content production and the distribution. He goes in and says, “This is how it is going to work; we are focusing on streaming, on the Metaverse, and on how to get into these different positions.”

All of these issues happen at the same time. So it seems like Bob Chapek is losing control of the kingdom, versus Bob Iger had control over it. But what I think gets lost in that is that Bob Chapek is just over two years into his tenure as CEO, and his first job was pulling the company out of the pandemic and focusing on how to just survive it. Now he’s being tasked with carrying the company very publicly in a way that generates support from the shareholders, from the consumers, and from his employees. That’s easier said than done, especially for someone who’s so new to the role.

Email from Bob Iger to Disney staff, 7:19 p.m. pic.twitter.com/IiTQvBYYZp
— The Ankler (@TheAnkler) November 21, 2022

While Iger initially pushed Disney into the streaming wars, Chapek’s reorganization of the company ruffled feathers by placing Kareem Daniel, a non-streaming executive, in charge of everything streaming and studio budgets and increasing the emphasis on streaming.

The change in leadership comes nearly two weeks after Disney reported its Q4 2022 results, noting that both its parks and media divisions failed to reach analyst estimates. Its streaming business has grown, with an increasing number of subscribers opting for a bundle offering combining Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN Plus, but the costs of streaming are rising too. An ad-supported Disney Plus streaming plan will launch on December 8th, and there are rumors of coming layoffs.

Disney’s board chair Susan Arnold said in a statement that, “We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic. The Board has concluded that as Disney embarks on an increasingly complex period of industry transformation, Bob Iger is uniquely situated to lead the Company through this pivotal period.”

Bob Chapek was not quoted in the press release.

Twitter fails to delete 99% of racist tweets aimed at footballers in run-up to World Cup

Reported posts aimed at 43 players remain live, according to anti-hate speech campaigners, fuelling concerns over possible abuse during World Cup

Tweets hurling racist abuse at footballers, including the N-word, monkey emojis and calls for them to be deported, are not being removed by Twitter.

New research shows the platform failed to act on 99 out of 100 racist tweets reported to it in the week before the World Cup.

Beware self-made ‘genius’ entrepreneurs promising the earth. Just look at Elon Musk | Kenan Malik

Beware self-made ‘genius’ entrepreneurs promising the earth. Just look at Elon Musk | Kenan Malik Silicon Valley ‘saviours’ are the heroes of the hour. Too often they have feet of clay

Trussonomics trashed within eight weeks. Donald Trump’s anointed candidates cut down in the US midterms. Sam Bankman-Fried, the poster boy of the crypto world, collapsing into bankruptcy. Elon Musk throwing Twitter into turmoil. The bursting of myths and the shredding of reputations seem to be the themes of the day.

Each of these cases is, of course, distinct and the root causes of each disaster different. There is a danger, too, in discussing these developments, of seeming to revel in failure. Too much of the debate about Musk and Twitter, especially, has mixed despair with schadenfreude. Yet, viewed collectively, these cases also tell us something deeper about our age and in particular about the ways in which we think about innovation and change.

samedi 19 novembre 2022

Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison for her Theranos fraud

Fortune Global Forum - Day 1 — Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Fortune

The former billionaire has been convicted and sentenced after it was revealed that her blood-testing company hadn’t achieved the breakthroughs it claimed.

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder, and CEO of disgraced blood-testing company Theranos, has been found guilty on three counts of wire fraud, as well as a count of conspiracy to commit fraud along with her co-founder Sunny Balwani. On November 18th, she was sentenced to 135 months, or about 11 and a half years, in prison for defrauding 10 victims out of $121 million.

Theranos was valued as high as $9 billion, and Holmes was a darling of Silicon Valley, sporting black turtlenecks that prompted comparisons to Steve Jobs.

Until John Carreyrou’s exposé was published in The Wall Street Journal. In that article, Carreyrou wrote that Theranos was using its own device for only a handful of tests and that other employees were concerned that the device wasn’t accurate.

Then it came out that Theranos’ labs weren’t up to par and its partnerships with Safeway and Walgreens fell apart. Also, Theranos junked two years’ worth of test results. Eventually, Holmes was banned from operating labs, and Theranos dissolved in 2018.

Crypto collapse: it’s looking like a long, cold, contagious winter

A coin is set aflame to reveal a digital wireframe underneath. — Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

FTX is just the latest company facing an uncertain future as cryptocurrency values drop, revealing flaws in risky financial strategies that fueled the recent crypto and NFT boom.

On January 1st of 2022, one Bitcoin would cost you about $46,000. By November 8th, that same coin went for about $18,500. And that’s when the year’s most dramatic crypto story was just starting: the ongoing collapse of the FTX exchange, which brought yet another round of existential threats to the crypto industry as a whole.

This year has looked like death by a thousand scandals for crypto. There was the Luna / Terra crash, which wiped out billions in value practically overnight. There was Axie Infinity, the once-hot NFT game that lost $625 million in a hack and has struggled to recover. Celsius collapsed. Three Arrows Capital collapsed. Remember when NFTs were cool and people thought their JPGs were worth millions?

All this happened, of course, as the overall economy began to crash back down to earth after a pandemic-created spike in stock prices — which also dampened society’s overall tolerance for chaotic, nonsensical gambling on internet money. As the economy began to even out and our collective risk tolerance went down, crypto went for many investors from a fun plaything to a dangerous bet.

Crypto has crashed before, and as ever, the HODLers are saying there’s upside left to come. But right now, the future for cryptocurrencies of all kinds looks pretty bleak.

Here’s all our coverage from the ongoing crypto winter:

Elon Musk says he’s letting Donald Trump back on Twitter

President Donald J. Trump... — Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Donald Trump is allowed to rejoin Twitter, Elon Musk has announced. Musk justified that decision based on the results of his own personal Twitter poll. The @realDonaldTrump account and its tweets are fully visible again.

Shortly after taking control of the social network, Musk said he wouldn’t be reinstating any banned accounts until the company had set up and convened a content moderation council with “widely diverse viewpoints.”

Instead, on Friday evening, as people drifted off for the pre-Thanksgiving weekend, he decided to poll his own followers on Twitter. “Reinstate former President Trump,” he tweeted, alongside a poll with buttons to pick “Yes” or “No.”

“Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” he added in a follow-up tweet, Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”

The people have spoken.

Trump will be reinstated.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei. https://t.co/jmkhFuyfkv
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2022

The “Yes” responses won by a slim 52–48 margin. It is not clear how many of them may have been bots; Musk himself suggested that the poll was being attacked by bots. Musk also famously attempted to get out of the Twitter deal by claiming that as many as 20 percent of Twitter’s accounts were fake, and he once suggested that bots were responsible for the results of his controversial poll about Russia and Ukraine.

Over 134 million people saw the poll, according to Musk, though it wound up with just over 15 million responses. That would suggest only around 11 percent of those who saw it clicked on one of the buttons.

We will likely never know whether Musk actually made the decision based on the poll or whether he already made up his mind. In November 2021, he sold 10 percent of his Tesla shares after he polled his followers, and the majority responded that he should. At the time, he wrote, “I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.” But The Wall Street Journal revealed he’d already made the decision to sell those shares by September, two months earlier, as part of a preset trading plan meant to keep executives from insider trading.

Former President Trump was banned from Twitter on January 8th, 2021, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” after Trump’s role in inciting the January 6th Capitol attacks. Twitter said at the time that Trump’s messages broke its rules against the glorification of violence. From that time until this evening, visitors to his Twitter profile were greeted with an “account suspended” message, instead of seeing his tweets.

*51.8 percent of respondents responded yes, according to Musk’s Twitter. 48.2 percent responded no.*

During the long and rocky process of purchasing Twitter, Musk said he would restore Trump’s account. “I do think that it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” said Musk in May. “I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice ... So I guess the answer is I would reverse the permaban.”

It’s not clear whether Trump will come back to Twitter, invited or not. After being booted off Twitter, Trump joined Truth Social, a right-wing social media company developed by a firm founded by the former president. Following Musk’s comments on allowing him to rejoin Twitter, Trump said he would stay on Truth Social regardless of whether he was invited back. “Twitter’s become very boring. They’ve gotten rid of a lot of good voices on Twitter, a lot of their conservative voices,” said Trump at the time.

On Saturday, after being asked about Musk’s poll during a Q&A, Trump suggested he might not rejoin, saying, “I don’t see it because I don’t see any reason for it.” But Trump also reportedly told his followers on Truth Social to vote for the Twitter poll, roughly three hours before it ended.

That is not a no https://t.co/71IEFQNqnL
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 19, 2022

Musk has described himself as a centrist in the past, but said in May 2022 that he ”can no longer support [Democrats] and will vote Republican.” Just ahead of the US midterms, Musk publicly suggested to his followers to vote Republican as well.

Musk also announced that Jordan Peterson, Kathy Griffin, and The Babylon Bee would all be reinstated, without making any mention of the aforementioned content moderation council having been set up. Musk made no mention of a content moderation council alongside this evening’s decision to reinstate Trump, either. It is not clear what happened to his promise that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

*“No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before [the content moderation council] convenes,” wrote Musk in late October.*

If Trump decides to return to Twitter, it could have a significant effect on the 2024 US election, with the former president once more in possession of his favorite megaphone: a Twitter account watched by the world’s media that he can use to direct both support and abuse, and the implicit support of that platform’s owner in doing so.

Developing...

The US government still isn’t sure about Elon Musk’s Twitter

Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images

Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter hasn’t escaped government scrutiny just yet. According to a report from Bloomberg, the US government is looking into whether Musk’s foreign investment partners have access to users’ private data on the platform.

Sources close to the situation told Bloomberg that the government’s asking for more details about Musk’s private agreements with the international investors who hold stakes in the company, which include Saudi Arabia’s Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud and the Qatar Investment Authority. Musk’s business dealings in both Ukraine and China have also drawn concern.

Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who is also the head of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), said that she sees “no basis” to investigate Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. However, President Joe Biden expressed that Musk’s “relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at,” and Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) also called for CFIUS to look into Saudi Arabia’s stake in Twitter. “I don’t understand this decision,” Murphy said in response to Yellen’s statement. “CFIUS is designed to review transactions like this.”

Separately, a number of lawmakers, including Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), and Cory Booker (D-NJ), are also pushing for the Federal Trade Commission to take action against Twitter.

In a letter to FTC chairwoman Lina Khan, the senators ask the agency to investigate whether the Musk-owned Twitter has violated consumer protection laws, stating Musk “has taken alarming steps that have undermined the integrity and safety of the platform.” The letter makes references to Musk’s Twitter Blue with verification subscription as, which Twitter pulled after it became rife with fake verified accounts. Musk plans on reinstating Blue with verification later this month.

Twitter is also on the hook to comply with the conditions of the settlement it reached with the FTC earlier this year over claims it used personal information to sell targeted ads. As reported by The Verge’s Alex Heath, Twitter’s lawyer has already warned the company could face billions in fines if it doesn’t follow the agency’s consent order.

vendredi 18 novembre 2022

NASA Blazes a Path Back to the Moon With Artemis I Rocket Launch

NASA Blazes a Path Back to the Moon With Artemis I Rocket Launch The uncrewed flight of the giant Space Launch System on Wednesday began a new era of spaceflight amid a debate over how to finance rocket development.

Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to over 11 years in prison

Elizabeth Holmes on a blue background with red streaks — Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge

Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 135 months, or just over 11 years, in prison, according to journalist John Carreyrou. She will have to report to prison on April 27th, 2023, and will have an additional three years of supervised release once she’s out, according to Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Keenan.

Judge Edward Davila, who has overseen the case, declared that the charges she had been found guilty of made her responsible for defrauding 10 victims out of $121 million, according to The New York Times’ Erin Griffith. Davila said that Holmes’ refusal to accept responsibility for the fraud counted against her in his sentencing decision, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A jury found Holmes guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud earlier this year. In the weeks leading up to the former Theranos CEO’s sentencing, prosecutors asked the judge to give her 15 years of prison time and to pay victims more than $800 million. On the day of the trial, the government argued Holmes’ actions put patients in harm’s way, according to the WSJ.

Elizabeth Holmes just got sentenced to 135 months in prison (11.25 years)
— John Carreyrou (@JohnCarreyrou) November 18, 2022

Meanwhile, Holmes’ lawyers filed an 82-page document arguing why she should get a much lighter punishment — 18 months of house arrest and community service, at most — and provided well over 100 letters written in support of the founder.

Holmes led a company that promised to revolutionize the medical industry by running over 240 tests on a single drop of blood, where traditional panels required much larger samples.

But it turned out that the company’s tech didn’t work and gave patients inaccurate results. (Holmes was found not guilty on two counts of defrauding patients and one count of conspiracy to defraud patients.) The trial mainly hinged on whether Holmes knew she was giving out false information. In announcing his decision, Davila cited texts between Holmes and Sunny Balwani, former chief operating officer and president of Theranos, as proof that Holmes conspired to defraud investors, according to NBC News’ Scott Budman.

Judge: “What is the pathology of fraud? Is it the inability to accept responsibility? Perhaps that the cautionary tale to come from this case.”
— scott budman (@scottbudman) November 18, 2022

Balwani was also found guilty in a separate trial: 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Unlike Holmes, Balwani was found to have misled both investors and patients. He is set to be sentenced on December 7th.

What Employees Does Twitter Need, Anyway?

What Employees Does Twitter Need, Anyway? The many departures have set off a wave of hand-wringing about whether the site can continue to operate well.

FTX’s Unraveling and Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Twitter Employees

FTX’s Unraveling and Elon Musk’s Ultimatum to Twitter Employees Sam Bankman-Fried’s DMs go public, and Congress announces an investigation. Tech’s nightmare November continues.

What does $5,000 a month get you? The viral star barging into New York apartments

Caleb Simpson’s man-on-the-street TikTok videos capture the insides of stranger’s homes for millions of followers

Come inside a shoebox studio apartment with a stripper pole in downtown Manhattan that rents for $2,095 (£1,764) a month. Or an $800 (£674) housing project unit with hand-painted kitchen walls. What about a luxury $5,000-a-month rental with marble countertops? Curious voyeurs can see them all on Caleb Simpson’s TikTok, and they won’t be alone. Nearly 6 million people follow his short-form house tours, romps that he bills as “this generation’s MTV Cribs”.

“Seeing the inside of someone’s home is one of the most intimate things you can ever do,” Simpson, 30, tells the Guardian. “And then there are the price points, what you pay for your space – people will be curious about that.”

jeudi 17 novembre 2022

Users urged to archive tweets amid rumors of Twitter implosion

People are wondering what parts of their online selves, loved ones and favorite celebrities to save in case the bird goes belly-up

Amid ongoing fallout from Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, speculation of the platform’s imminent collapse is swirling – leaving users wondering what parts of their online selves they’ll get to keep.

After Musk laid off thousands of workers, many users have reported signs the platform is falling apart in real time – from glitching home pages to log-in failures – and researchers are desperately urging users to download their tweets in case Twitter implodes completely.

Hundreds of employees say no to being part of Elon Musk’s ‘extremely hardcore’ Twitter

Musk gave Twitter staff a deadline to say if they are staying for his cultural reset of the company. And right on deadline, the farewell emojis started pouring into Twitter’s Slack.

Hundreds of Twitter’s remaining employees have resigned ahead of Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” cultural reset of the company, according to internal Slack messages seen by The Verge and employee tweets.

The fresh purge of Twitter’s ranks comes after Musk recently fired dozens of employees who criticized or mocked him in tweets and internal messages. Musk then set a deadline of 5PM ET on Thursday for all employees to respond “yes” on in Google form if they want to stay for what he is calling “Twitter 2.0;” otherwise, today would be their final day of work and they would receive a severance package. After the deadline hit, hundreds of employees quickly started posting farewell messages and salute emojis in Twitter’s Slack, announcing that they had said no to Musk’s ultimatum.

Twitter had roughly 2,900 remaining employees before the deadline Thursday, thanks to Musk unceremoniously laying off about half of the 7,500-person workforce when he took over and the resignations that followed. Remaining and departing Twitter employees told The Verge that, given the scale of the resignations this week, they expect the platform to start breaking soon. One said that they’ve watched “legendary engineers” and others they look up to leave one by one.

“It feels like all the people who made this place incredible are leaving,” the Twitter staffer said. “It will be extremely hard for Twitter to recover from here, no matter how hardcore the people who remain try to be.”

“I have worked here at Twitter for over 11 years,” wrote another in Twitter’s Slack. “Back in July, I was the 27th most tenured employee at the company. Now I’m the 15th.”

“I’m not pressing the button,” another posted in Slack. “My watch ends with Twitter 1.0. I do not wish to be part of Twitter 2.0”

“Where did all these chopped onions come from,” another message read.

Departing employees also tweeted their decision:

pic.twitter.com/2LOoeLLbvR
— parker lyons  (@tweetsbyparker) November 17, 2022

guess I just said goodbye to the ghost of my dream job forever? Tweeps, you are world-class#LoveWhereYouWorked #OneTeam #NoTeam pic.twitter.com/k7ON7yW3WV
— eli schutze (@elibelly) November 17, 2022

Ain’t all bad #hardcore pic.twitter.com/L2tCas5jRg
— AODHAN FLYNN (@aodhan) November 17, 2022

And just like that, after 12 years, I have left Twitter. I have nothing but love for all my fellow tweeps, past and present. A thousand faces and a thousand scenes are flashing through my mind right now - I love you Twitter and I’ll forever bleed blue
— Satanjeev Banerjee (@satanjeev) November 17, 2022

It’s been a ride pic.twitter.com/0VDf5hn2UA
— Matt Miller (@brainiaq2000) November 17, 2022

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Children’s Groups Want F.T.C. to Ban ‘Unfair’ Online Manipulation of Kids

Children’s Groups Want F.T.C. to Ban ‘Unfair’ Online Manipulation of Kids Children’s privacy and health experts pressed regulators to prohibit video games and social networks from using attention-hacking techniques on youngsters.

Amazon’s CEO says more layoffs will happen in 2023

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Amazon will be cutting jobs again at some point in early 2023, CEO Andy Jassy informed employees in a memo on Thursday. The company publicly confirmed some layoffs on Wednesday, and Jassy says that as Amazon’s annual planning process extends into the new year, “there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments.”

Jassy says the company hasn’t determined exactly how many additional roles will be cut but did state that there will be “reductions in our Stores and [People, Experience, and Technology] organizations.” Amazon will inform who will be impacted by the future cuts early next year.

In the Wednesday notice, devices and services SVP Dave Limp said that some staffers in the organization were being laid off, and Jassy said Thursday that the company has extended voluntary buyouts to some of its HR organization, confirming reporting from Vox. Vox’s article highlighted how layoffs have been communicated internally before top executives shared information publicly, and based on Jassy’s note, it seems that approach will continue.

“As has been the case this week, we will prioritize communicating directly with impacted employees before making broad public or internal announcements,” Jassy wrote. The company will try to find roles for impacted people internally, and if it can’t, workers will be offered severance packages, according to Jassy.

The New York Times reported Monday that Amazon planned to lay off approximately 10,000 employees. Jassy’s memo did not specify how many people will be affected or how many have been already. Amazon didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Pokémon Scarlet/Violet review – poor performance holds an exciting game back

Nintendo Switch; Game Freak/Nintendo
Technical problems and an evident lack of development time take the shine off this ambitious new outing for the world-conquering critters

Modern video games can be so perceptibly realistic – grass rippling in a gentle breeze, non-player characters going about their daily routines, faces and gestures that look so close to those of real humans – that they’ve started to call to mind Plato’s old chin-stroker about the cave (reimagined in 1999’s trench coat-flapping classic The Matrix.) What if we are all trapped inside a shockingly realistic illusion? Would we really know if we were inside a video game? If you’re looking for reassurance that we haven’t yet reached the singularity, boot up the ropey Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

In this second Pokémon outing of the year, developer Game Freak abandons February’s Legends: Arceus’s intriguing feudal-era setting, but otherwise picks up where it left off. It aims to take the series’ expansive-yet-enclosed-environments to the next logical level: a seamless open world, where you can go where you want, catching and battling creatures as you travel. But Scarlet and Violet buckles violently under the weight of that ambition.

Unexpected nudity and vomit-covered cats: how Dwarf Fortress tells some of gaming’s most bizarre stories

For around 20 years, brothers Zach and Tarn Adams have been working on their idiosyncratic fantasy game – and it’s only just got graphics

In 2015, players of the video game Dwarf Fortress – a wildly influential cult hit that has appeared at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and been cited as the inspiration for Minecraft – started finding vomit-covered dead cats in taverns. When the game’s creator, 44-year-old Tarn Adams, attempted to determine the cause, he discovered that cats were walking through puddles of spilled alcohol, licking themselves clean, and promptly dying of heart failure due to a minor error in the game’s code, which overestimated the amount of alcohol ingested.

Most games don’t simulate anything nearly as complex as alcohol poisoning and feline grooming, but Dwarf Fortress does, and the way that its code generates these bizarre situations is symbolic of what people love about it. Dwarf Fortress has a unique, incredibly complicated approach to storytelling and play, but it looks like pure Matrix code, composed entirely of coloured text. Any casual observer would find it indecipherable.

mercredi 16 novembre 2022

Blizzard will suspend World of Warcraft in China because of licensing dispute

Screenshot from Battle For Azeroth launch cinematic featuring a close up of a scowling purple skinned elf — Blizzard

Blizzard will suspend games in China because it can’t reach an agreement with its licensing and publishing partner NetEase, it said in a press release. World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch 2, Starcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III, and Warcraft III: Reforged won’t be available in China after January 23, 2023.

Blizzard will suspend the sale of games and offer guidance to Chinese players “in the coming days,” according to the press release, which did not offer a specific timeline. Development of Diablo Immortal is in a separate agreement and will continue, NetEase said in a statement. Upcoming releases including the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Dragonflight, and the second season of Overwatch 2, “will proceed later this year,” according to Blizzard.

NetEase, the second-largest gaming company in China, has published games for Blizzard since 2008. The partnership ensures that Blizzard’s games meet China’s strict content policies. NetEase also is a franchisee in Blizzard’s Overwatch League, and owns the Shanghai Dragons team. In August, the two companies couldn’t agree on terms of a deal, and canceled a World of Warcraft mobile game, Bloomberg reported.

The problems weren’t just the financial terms of the deal — who owned the intellectual property and player data were also in dispute, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.

“We’re immensely grateful for the passion our Chinese community has shown throughout the nearly 20 years we’ve been bringing our games to China,” said Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Ybarra in the press release. “We are looking for alternatives to bring our games back to players in the future.”

The revenue from these games “represented low single digits as a percentage” of NetEase’s total revenue, the company said.