Firstly, good job for staying away from these. MSM did try hard to call them ‘mEmE StOcKs’. MSM tried even harder to push innocent investors like you and me into them. These pieces of illicit trash were, and still are, uninvestable. Remain clear of these pump and dumps, they’re junk. They are not meme stocks; they’ll never be.
Let’s take a look at where things are today:
Ticker
Book Value a week ago (in Billions of USD)
Book Value today (in Billions of USD)
HKD
477.00
39.23
AMTD
16.70
2.81
QRTEB
4.60
1.36
LTRPB
0.40
0.15
MEGL
4.91
0.25
Total:
504
43
Let’s remember that this criminal balloon was developed beginning July 15th during the GameStop split/dividend process that was defrauded by DTCC into a split. Also remember that Loop Capital, a GameStop short seller who is a stones throw away from Citadel in Chicago, underwrote the major one above.
These tickers, just last week, were able to be used as half a Trillion USDin collateral [for margin requirements] on the books. Now down 92% overnight to $43B, which is less than the margin alert received by Susquehanna.
Hackers recently stole $190 million from cryptocurrency cross-chain token platform Nomad, and now the company says it will pay a bounty to the thieves if they return those assets.
Nomad says it will pay the hackers an amount that is worth up to 10% of the stolen funds and call off its lawyers after the money is returned to an official “recovery wallet.” It will also consider the cyberthieves to be ethical — or “white hat” — hackers.
The initial theft happened earlier this week when Nomad’s routing systems were being upgraded, which allowed attackers to spoof messages and copy and paste transactions. Nomad’s bridge was zapped quickly in what one researcher called a ““frenzied free-for-all.”
The exploit is the seventh major incident to target a bridge in 2022, and it is the eighth largest cryptocurrency theft of all time, according to blockchain analysis firm Elliptic. Added together, over a dozen unique hacks have occurred in 2022, with more than $2 billion stolen from cross-chain bridges like Nomad.
Nomad’s willingness to work with the intruders
Elliptic said there were 40 hackers involved in the Nomad incident, and the company appears to want to make the return of its money as much of a win-win as possible.
For anyone to qualify for the bounty, the only caveats Nomad has is that the hackers have to return at least 90% of the total funds they hacked, use Ethereum as the currency, use Anchorage Digital (a nationally regulated custodian bank), and do it in a “timely” fashion. The company didn’t give a specific number of days or weeks as a deadline, but it said it will continue to work with its online community, blockchain analysis firms, and law enforcement to guarantee that all funds are returned.
At least one big bitcoin mining operation in Texas that was not actually mining much bitcoin during this season’s record-breaking heat netted millions of dollars in profits—more than they would have if they just kept on mining without any shutdowns. It’s thanks to power purchase agreements signed with the local grid, allowing them to sell electricity they purchased earlier back to the provider for a tidy sum.
Riot Blockchain itself announced it had made an estimated $9.5 million in power credits thanks to the multiple times it shut down its mining rigs. This was even more than the amount the company gained in selling bitcoin that month. The company’s page said it sold 275 bitcoin, with net proceeds equalling just $5.6 million. This is compared to last year when the company said it produced 444 bitcoin, worth approximately $16 million just before the price of BTC really spiked toward the tail end of 2021.
[…]
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas—AKA ERCOT—had asked businesses to routinely power down in order to conserve electricity throughout July. Riot and its massive 750-megawatt bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas reduced power multiple times during times of peak demand. Of course, many of the dozens of large-scale bitcoin mining operations also cut activity during the past month to not over-stress the often overtaxed grid, but Riot remains the largest token miner in the Lone Star State.
The amount of bitcoin produced during this past month was 318, 28% less than the same month last year. While the companies did publicly agree to shutdowns in order to preserve the grid, they were also avoiding scaling electricity prices during peak loads.
ERCOT provides power purchase agreements that are usually termed for one year, but Lee Bratcher, the president of the Texas Blockchain Council, told Gizmodo in a phone interview that only a handful of the biggest bitcoin miners actually have these PPAs. The ones that do, like Riot, can take advantage of the need to curtail power, while other miners simply have to make do.
The Texas Blockchain Council networks and promotes the many crypto mining operations in the state. Bratcher called these PPAs “a good deal” for ERCOT, since it can regain the power needed for the rest of its grid during peak times.
At the same time, the massive draw of these mining operations is only expected to increase. Texas’ grid system has said that Texas crypto miners will put a six gigawatt-demand on the grid by next year. Congressional Democrats have warned the seven largest mining rigs in the U.S. draw power equivalent to all the residential homes in the city of Houston. These crypto miners are only expected to get bigger over time.
HKD, a spinoff IPO with 51 employees within the space of a few days had a stock price explosion up to around $2555 per stock from around $75 starting on 28th July. No buy button was disabled (as was the case with Gamestop / $GME) and within a few days the rug was pulled on 3rd of August leading to a (current) value of around $1000. This is around the time of the very confusing $GME stock dividend split (splividend) which has caused chaos with brokers not issuing the split shares or dividend to clients with $GME stock. Redditors were caught completely flat footed by this, but the media has been blaming Reddit with headlines like the following
Redditors are affronted that this stock is being treated differently from $GME – a stock that was being short squeezed for no reason apart from monetary gains for huge institutional investors such as Ken Griffin and Citadel and many more.
TLDR: They took over an insurer in HK (Hong Kong) when China took over. They also bought up a couple insurers in Singapore. They may offer some fintech services and possibly a small media platform for some SE Asia internet celebs. Their “SpiderNet” is, according to them, their most profitable system. It appears to just be a business network that you have to pay to be a part of. It all sounds like a corporate crime syndicate straight out of a comic book.
They mention a “controlling shareholder” a few times, which I assume is AMTD Idea Group, a holding company. They’ve been investigated for some very fradulastic crap, which I will be writing up next. (https://hindenburgresearch.com/ebang/)
This stock just IPO’d, is based in a foreign country, and has run 30,000% in two weeks on very low volume. Translation: Please do not read this and conclude, “Wow, what a great stock that I should definitely buy!” — That is absolutely NOT what we’re saying here
the website’s explanation of SpiderNet is extremely vague.
What can be gleaned from the website is:
AMTD provides investment banking and asset management services to clients on an international basis
AMTD Digital raised $125M in its New York IPO — the largest listing by a Chinese company in 2022
It owns the SpiderNet platform
That’s really all the website explains. After digging through a few press releases, we were able to determine that the SpiderNet platform intends to provide capital and technology to digital startups, as well as provide networking services to other digital startups. In turn, SpiderNet collects a fee from its members, which is where it gets almost all of its revenue.
In short: AMTD Digital is a Hong Kong based fintech play which essentially provides loans and services to startups in exchange for fees.
An unknown actor has drained over 8,000 internet-connected wallets in an ongoing attack on the Solana blockchain ecosystem. According to Blockchain auditor OtterSec, the attacks were still ongoing when it posted an update in the evening of August 2nd and that they had affected multiple wallets, including Phantom, Slope, Solflare and TrustWallet, across a wide variety of platforms.
As TechCrunch notes, the bad actor seems to have stolen both Solana tokens and USDC stablecoins, with the estimated losses so far amounting to around $8 million. OtterSec is now encouraging users to move all their assets to a hardware wallet, and the Solana Status Twitter account echoed that advice, adding that there’s no evidence “cold” wallets have been impacted.
The Solana Status account has also revealed that an exploit allowed a malicious actor to drain funds from the compromised wallets and that it seems to have affected both their mobile versions and extensions. Engineers from multiple ecosystems have already banded together to work with security researchers to identify the root cause of the exploit, which is yet to be discovered.
As evidenced by its namesake, apparently there wasn’t much security stopping a hoard of wandering strangers from breaking into the Nomad DeFi project’s token bridge, allowing hundreds of unknown hackers and some users to walk away with over $190 million crypto, leaving behind a bare pittance in the project’s wallet.
Late on Monday, users started noticing tokens being extracted from Nomad’s accounts “in million-dollar increments.” Crypto security company CertiK confirmed in a Tuesday analysis that the bridge protocol, which allows users to send tokens between separate blockchains, had been breached thanks to a routine upgrade that allowed bad actors to skip verification messages. CoinTelegraph reported that the first transaction, likely the initial hacker, managed to remove about $2.3 million in crypto from the bridge.
Apparently, this breach further allowed other users to exploit the bridge, turning it essentially into a Black Friday-esque free-for-all. CertiK’s analysis further said the vulnerability was in the token bridge’s initialization process, introduced in the flawed upgrade, allowing users to copy and paste the original hackers transaction number and replace it with a personal one. Researchers said in just four hours, other hackers, bots, and even community members drained the protocol in a “frenzied mob.”
The crypto developer who goes by Foobar on Twitter wrote that this attack was “the first decentralized crowd-looting of a 9-figure bridge in history.” There are hundreds of addresses that show they’ve received tokens from the bridge during the exploit.
Some users have actually gone back to the protocol, hanging their heads in shame and offering to return the stolen funds. Some claimed it was “an accident,” while others said they were trying to protect their friend’s assets, according to screenshots posted by Foobar. DefiLlama shows that the current value of the blockchain is sitting at just a little under $16,000.
In a setback for Visa in a case alleging the payment processor is liable for the distribution of child pornography on Pornhub and other sites operated by parent company MindGeek, a federal judge ruled that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa knowingly facilitated the criminal activity.
On Friday, July 29, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California issued a decision in the Fleites v. MindGeek case, denying Visa’s motion to dismiss the claim it violated California’s Unfair Competition Law — which prohibits unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business acts and practices — by processing payments for child porn. (A copy of the decision is available at this link.)
In the ruling, Carney held that the plaintiff “adequately alleged” that Visa engaged in a criminal conspiracy with MindGeek to monetize child pornography. Specifically, he wrote, “Visa knew that MindGeek’s websites were teeming with monetized child porn”; that there was a “criminal agreement to financially benefit from child porn that can be inferred from [Visa’s] decision to continue to recognize MindGeek as a merchant despite allegedly knowing that MindGeek monetized a substantial amount of child porn”; and that “the court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn” by “knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime.”
“When MindGeek decides to monetize child porn, and Visa decides to continue to allow its payment network to be used for that goal despite knowledge of MindGeek’s monetization of child porn, it is entirely foreseeable that victims of child porn like plaintiff will suffer the harms that plaintiff alleges,” Carney wrote.
In a statement, a Visa spokesperson said: “Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company. This pre-trial ruling is disappointing and mischaracterizes Visa’s role and its policies and practices. Visa will not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity. We continue to believe that Visa is an improper defendant in this case.”
A rep for MindGeek provided this statement: “At this point in the case, the court has not yet ruled on the veracity of the allegations, and is required to assume all of the plaintiff’s allegations are true and accurate. When the court can actually consider the facts, we are confident the plaintiff’s claims will be dismissed for lack of merit. MindGeek has zero tolerance for the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history.”
The company’s statement continued, “We have banned uploads from anyone who has not submitted government-issued ID that passes third-party verification, eliminated the ability to download free content, integrated several leading technological platform and content moderation tools, instituted digital fingerprinting of all videos found to be in violation of our Non-Consensual Content and CSAM [child sexual abuse material] Policies to help protect against removed videos being reposted, expanded our moderation workforce and processes, and partnered with dozens of non-profit organizations around the world. Any insinuation that MindGeek does not take the elimination of illegal material seriously is categorically false.”
Babel Finance, the Hong Kong-based crypto lender, apparently had other designs when its worldwide user base handed over their crypto to the company than just borrowing and lending. It seems to have been doing what everyone else does with crypto, rapidly speculating and trying to make “line go up.” Of course, all that changed when the line no longer went up.
The Block reported based on restructuring proposal documents that Babel Finance had lost 8,000 bitcoin and 56,000 ether in June, worth close to $280 million, though of course the price is constantly fluctuating. The company had apparently been conducting proprietary trading with customers’ funds. It remains unclear based on reporting if users were/are aware their crypto was/is being used in this way.
The Cyberspace Administration of China has fined ride-sharing company DiDi global ¥8.026 billion ($1.2 billion) for more than 64 billion illegal acts of data collection that it says were carried out maliciously and threatened national security.
Yes, we do mean billion. As in a thousand million.
The Administration enumerated DiDi’s indiscretions as follows:
53.976 billion pieces of information indicating travellers’ intentions were analyzed without informing passengers;
8.323 billion pieces of information were accessed from users’ clipboards and lists of apps;
1.538 billion pieces of information about the cities in which users live were analyzed without permission;
304 million pieces of information describing users’ place of work;
167 million user locations were gathered when users evaluated the DiDi app while it ran in the background;
153 million pieces of information revealing the drivers’ home and business location;
107 million pieces of passenger facial recognition information;
57.8 million pieces of driver’s ID number information in plain text;
53.5092 million pieces of age information;
16.3356 million pieces of occupation information;
11.96 million screenshots were harvested from users’ smartphones;
1.3829 million pieces of family relationship information;
142,900 items describing drivers’ education.
The Administration (CAC) also found DiDi asked for irrelevant permissions on users’ smartphones and did not give an accurate or clear explanation for processing 19 types of personal information.
The fine levied on DiDi is not a run of the mill penalty. The Administration’s Q&A about the incident points out that the fine is a special administrative penalty because DiDi flouted China’s Network Security Law, Data Security Law, and Personal Information Protection Law – and did so for seven years in some cases.
The Q&A adds that China has in recent years introduced many data privacy and information security laws, so it’s not as if DiDi did not have good indicators that it needed to pay attention to such matters.
The fine is around 4.7 percent of DiDi’s annual revenue – just short of the five percent cap on such fines available to Chinese regulators.
Android developers who distribute apps on the Google Play store can now use third-party payment systems in many European countries. The measure applies to the European Economic Area (EEA), which comprises European Union states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. However, the policy will not apply to gaming apps, which still need to use Google Play’s own billing system for the time being.
Google is making the move after the EU’s legislative arm, the European Commission, passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA) this month. Along with the Digital Services Act, the law is designed to rein in the power of big tech by, for instance, prohibiting major platform holders from giving their own systems preferable treatment.
The DMA isn’t expected to come into effect until sometime in 2024. However, Google’s director of EU government affairs and public policy, Estelle Werth, wrote in a blog post that the company is “launching this program now to allow us to work closely with our developer partners and ensure our compliance plans serve the needs of our shared users and the broader ecosystem.”
The move partially reverses a policy that required all in-app payments to be processed through the Play Store’s billing system. Developers who opt for a different billing system won’t be able to avoid Google’s fees entirely. However, Google will lower the service fees it charges them by three percent.
Google says that 99 percent of developers qualify for a fee of 15 percent or less. The others typically pay 30 percent. The fees Google charges would drop to 12 percent (or lower) or 27 percent, respectively, if they select a third-party billing system.
A Russian court fined Google $374 million on Monday for its failure to remove prohibited content, according to the country’s internet watchdog Roskomnadzor.
The Tagansky District Court of Moscow took exception to YouTube content it claimed contained “fakes about the course of a special military operation in Ukraine” and discredited Russia’s armed forces. The court also claimed some material promoted extremism and/or terrorism. Google also stands convicted an “indifferent attitude to the life and health of minors” that the court feels are worthy of protest by Russian citizens.
The court also alleged Google systemically violated Russian law.
As punishment, Google users will receive warnings of the company’s alleged misdeeds, and won’t be permitted to buy ads tied to Google Search results or on YouTube.
A London court on Tuesday authorized a lawsuit that seeks to have Google pay £920 million ($1.1 billion) for overcharging customers for app store purchases.
Filed as a class action on behalf of 19.5 million UK citizens, the suit alleges Google charged commission fees up to 30 percent on app sales. Consumer rights advocate Liz Coll, who previously served as digital policy manager at consumer rights organization Citizens Advice, brought the lawsuit, alleging Google has violated both EU and UK competition laws.
Representatives for the claimant group told Reuters that a detailed judgment has yet to be published, but the initial filing made in July 2021 specifies that Google violated multiple sections of the Competition Act 1998.
For incidents happening before the UK left the EU, the suit also alleged violations of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, which covers abuse of dominant market positions.
A proposed class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of payment card issuers accuses Apple of illegally profiting from Apple Pay and breaking antitrust laws. Iowa’s Affinity Credit Union is listed as the plaintiff in the complaint, filed today in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The lawsuit alleges that by restricting contactless payments on iOS devices to Apple Pay and charging payment card issuers fees to use the mobile wallet, the iPhone maker is engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
While Android users have options for contactless mobile wallets, iOS users can only use tap-to-pay technology through Apple Pay. In other words, while iPhone users can download the Google Pay app, they can’t use it to make contactless payments in stores. Android doesn’t charge payment card issuers for use of any supported mobile wallet. But it’s a different story for Apple Pay, which charges card issuers a 0.15% fee on credit transactions and half of a cent on debit transactions. These fees have brought in up to $1 billion annually for Apple, the lawsuit alleges.
“In the Android ecosystem, where multiple digital wallets compete, there are no issuer fees whatsoever, ” said the complaint. “The upshot is that card issuers pay a reported $1 billion annually in fees on Apple Pay and $0 for accessing functionally identical Android wallets. If Apple faced competition, it could not sustain these substantial fees.”
The suit alleges that by restricting iOS users to only Apple Pay for contactless payments, Apple is blocking competing mobile wallets from the market. Payment card issuers are essentially forced to pay Apple’s transaction fees if they want to offer their service to iPhone users.
Apple is facing a similar challenge over its payment system in the EU, where an antitrust commission in May said that the tech giant is illegally blocking third-party developers from enabling contactless payments. Apple has denied the EU’s allegations, arguing that giving third-party developers access would be a security risk. This is an argument that Apple has used before as a reason why it doesn’t open up its platform, such as in the case of third-party app stores.
Engadget has reached out to Apple for comment on the lawsuit and will update if we hear back.
While we were just discussing how everyone occasionally gets reminded that for many digital goods these days you simply don’t actually own what you’ve bought, all thanks to Sony disappearing a bunch of purchased movies and shows from its PlayStation platform, this conversation has been going on for a long, long time. Whereas the expectation by many people is that buying a digital good carries similar ownership rights as it would a physical good, instead there are discussions of “licensing” buried in the Ts and Cs that almost nobody reads. The end result is a massive disconnect between what people think they’re paying for and what they actually are paying for.
Take Ubisoft DLC for instance. Lots of people bought DLC for titles like Assassin’s Creed 3 or Far Cry 3 for the PC versions of those games… and recently found out that all that purchased DLC is simply going away with Ubisoft shutting game servers down.
According to Ubisoft’s announcement, “the installation and access to downloadable content (DLC) will be unavailable” on the PC versions of the following games as of September 1, 2022:
Assassin’s Creed 3 Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Driver San Francisco Far Cry 3 Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Silent Hunter 5
DLC for the console versions of these games (which is verified through the console platform stores and not Ubisoft’s UPlay platform) will be unaffected, when applicable. Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 3 are also available on PC in remastered re-releases that will not be affected by this server shutdown (though the remastered “Classic Edition” of Far Cry 3 is currently unavailable for purchase from Ubisoft’s own website).
A notable addition to all of this is that the full version of Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD was on sale merely days ago on Steam’s Summer Sale, but that title is going to disappear from Steam entirely on September 1st as well. Read that again. The public bought a game title on Steam for 75% off, thinking it was a great deal, only to subsequently learn that they have 60 days to play the damned thing before it becomes unplayable.
This is not tenable. The consumer can only be jerked around so much before a clapback occurs and losing purchased assets based on the whim of the company that sold them isn’t going to be tolerated forever. And while I’m loathe to be one of the “there should be a law!” guys, well, there should be legal ramifications for this sort of thing. There are other options out there that would not remove purchased items from people, be it local installations, allowing fans in the public to host their own servers, etc.
Instead, Ubisoft appears to be joining a list of companies that believes it can sell you something and then take it away, all while including that same something in some bundled release afterwards.
Google has counter-sued Match seeking monetary damages and a judgement that would let it kick Tinder and the group’s other dating apps out of the Play Store, Bloomberg has reported. Earlier this year, Match sued Google alleging antitrust violations over a decision requiring all Android developers to process “digital goods and services” payments through the Play Store billing system.
Following the initial lawsuit in May, Google and Match reached a temporary agreement allowing Match to remain on the Play Store and use its own payments system. Google also agreed to make a “good faith” effort to address Match’s billing concerns. Match, in turn, was to make an effort to offer Google’s billing system as an alternative.
However, Google parent Alphabet claims that Match Group now wants to avoid paying “nothing at all” to Google, including its 15 to 30 percent Play Store fees, according to a court filing. “Match Group never intended to comply with the contractual terms to which it agreed… it would also place Match Group in an advantaged position relative to other app developers,” the document states.
Match group said that Google’s Play Store policies violate federal and state laws. “Google doesn’t want anyone else to sue them so their counterclaims are designed as a warning shot,” Match told Bloomberg in a statement. “We are confident that our suit, alongside other developers, the US Department of Justice and 37 state attorneys general making similar claims, will be resolved in our favor early next year.”
Match is referring to an antitrust action launched last year by States and the federal government probing Google’s Play Store fees. Shortly before that, Google dropped its fee on app developer revenue to 15 percent on the first $1 million, and 30 percent after that. At the same time, it announced it would enforce a policy requiring all developers to process payments through the Play Store’s billing system. Earlier this year, a Senate bill moved forward targeting in-app payments in both Google and Apple’s stores.
On its ConnectedDrive Store in South Korea, BMW owners can pay a monthly fee to have a creature comfort such as heated seats. It costs ₩24,000 or approximately $18 at current exchange rates. Alternatively, you can get a one-year plan for $176 or a three-year subscription for $283.
The BMW ConnectedDrive Store is a portal used by existing owners to download a variety of apps. It’s all done over the air, without having to visit a dealer to have the new software installed. With heated seats, the German luxury brand is kind enough to provide a one-month test period free of charge. Should you want the feature permanently, that’ll set you back $406.
A similar subscription plan is offered for a heated steering wheel and it costs $10 per month, $92 annually, and $161 for three years. You can also buy it outright for $222. Do you want wireless Apple CarPlay? That’ll be $305. The store also allows BMW customers to upgrade the headlights to include a high-beam assistant, additional safety systems, and the camera-based Driver Recorder.
One of the most unusual items found in the BMW ConnectedDrive Store is called IconicSounds Sport. It essentially plays fake engine noises through the car’s speakers should you be willing to pay $138 to have the feature permanently. There are no monthly or yearly subscription plans available for this “feature.”
[…]
We can already imagine a smartphone-like jailbreak to unlock these goodies without having to pay the automaker. Doing so will likely result in voiding the warranty after taking down the automaker’s paywall. Even if someone is willing to wait until the warranty expires, chances are that person will hack the car the very next day to “download” all the available features.
Of course, this isn’t something new as upgrades through the OBD port have been around for many years, especially for VAG products.
We have done many, many posts explaining how, unfortunately, it seems the idea of a person owning the things they’ve bought has become rather passe. While in the age of antiquity, which existed entire tens of years ago, you used to be able to own things, these days you merely license them under Ts and Cs that are either largely ignored and clicked through or that are indecipherable, written in the otherwise lost language known as “Lawyer-ese”. The end result is a public that buys things, thinks they retain ownership over them, only to find out that the provider of the things alters them, limits their use, or simply erases them from being.
Take anyone who bought a movie distributed by StudioCanal in Germany and Austria through Sony’s Playstation store, for instance. Sony previously had a deal to make those movie titles available in its store, but declined to continue offering movies and shows in 2021, stating that streaming services had made the deal un-competitive.
Sony’s PlayStation group stopped offering movie and TV show purchases and rentals, as of Aug. 31, 2021, citing the rise of streaming-video services. At the time, Sony assured customers that they “can still access movie and TV content they have purchased through PlayStation Store for on-demand playback on their PS4, PS5 and mobile devices.
And when Sony said that, it apparently forgot to add two very important words to its statement: “for now.” Instead, Sony decided to drop the bomb with yet another statement regarding StudioCanal content in Germany and Austria. It essentially amounts to: hey fuckers, that shit you bought is about to disappear, mmkay bye.
“As of August 31, 2022, due to our evolving licensing agreements with content providers, you will no longer be able to view your previously purchased Studio Canal content and it will be removed from your video library,” the notices read. “We greatly appreciate your continued support.”
Poof, it’s gone! That remark about appreciating the public’s “continued support” seems more like begging than acknowledging reality. Especially once you start asking the questions that immediately leap to mind.
For example: will customers get a refund for the movies that they bought and now can’t access? As per the source article “it’s unclear”, which likely means “hahahahaha nope.” How many movies were delisted? Literally hundreds. Are these just small-time movies? Nope, they include AAA titles like The Hunger Games and John Wick.
And so a whole bunch of people are going to find out that they didn’t buy anything, they rented some movies for a previously indefinite period of time that just became definite, long after the purchase was made. It’s hard to imagine something more anti-consumer than that.
Amazon (AMZN.O) has offered to share marketplace data with sellers and boost the visibility of rival products on its platform, trying to persuade EU antitrust regulators to close their investigations without a fine by the end of the year, people familiar with the matter said.
The world’s largest online retailer is hoping its concessions will stave off a potential European Union fine that could be as much as 10% of its global turnover, Reuters reported last year. read more
The European Commission in 2020 charged Amazon with using its size, power and data to push its own products and gain an unfair advantage over rival merchants that sell on its online platform.
It also launched an investigation into Amazon’s possible preferential treatment of its own retail offers and those of marketplace sellers that use its logistics and delivery services.
Amazon’s process for choosing which retailer appears in the “buy box” on its website and which generates the bulk of its sales also came under the spotlight.
Amazon has now proposed to allow sellers access to some marketplace data while its commercial arm will not be able to use seller data collected by its retail unit, the people said.
The company will also create a second buy box for rival products in the event an Amazon product appears in the first buy box, the people said.
No way that this is enough. A marketplace owner has no business offering products on their own marketplace at all. That’s always going to be unfair competition. It also fails to address many of the other monopoly problems, like forcing sellers to exclusively use Amazon or downgrading their search results, forcing sellers to use the Amazon delivery options as well as forcing other delivery parties out of business by delivering under cost price.
the European Union has passed a pair of landmark bills designed to rein in Big Tech’s power. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act are intended to promote fairer competition, improve privacy protection, as well as banning both the use of some of the more egregious forms of targeted advertising and misleading practices.
The Digital Services Act, for instance, focuses on online platforms like Facebook, Amazon and Google. They will be tasked with being more proactive both with content moderation and also to prevent the sale of illegal or unsafe goods being sold on their platforms. Users will also be able to learn how and why an algorithm recommended them a certain piece of content, and to challenge any moderation decision that was made algorithmically. Finally, companies will no longer be able to use sensitive personal data for ad-targeting, sell ads to children, or use dark patterns — deceptive page design that can manipulate you into saying yes to something even when you’d much rather say no, such as joining a service or preventing you from leaving one you no longer wish to use.
These obligations operate on a sliding scale, and so the largest platforms will have the greatest obligations placed upon them. Platforms with 45 million or more monthly users will be subject to independent auditing to ensure they are preventing fake news and illegal content. Those platforms will also have to open up their algorithms and data to (approved) researchers to enable them to study the effects, and potential harm, the systems can cause.
The Digital Markets Act, meanwhile, is more focused on preventing dominant platform holders, like Google, Microsoft and Apple, from abusing their scale. This includes offering better interoperability with smaller, rival services, ensuring files can be sent between systems. There is also a large carve-out for app storefronts, with developers now entitled to contact their customers about deals without going via the platform holder in question. And platform holders will no longer be able to give their systems favorable treatment, such as when Google promoted its own shopping service over that of rivals.
The EU has given both bills plenty of teeth, and can dole out a maximum penalty of 10 percent of its total worldwide turnover from the previous year, should regulators find non-compliance. This figure will, however, jump to 20 percent of worldwide turnover if officials find “repeated non-compliance.” That’s a hefty figure big enough that not even Apple would be able to stomach losing on a regular basis. Although, as with GDPR regulation, the EU still has questions to answer about how much effort, time and money it’s prepared to put behind a body to monitor big tech.
Now that they have been passed, the Digital Services Act will come into force by 1st January 2024 (unless some procedural stuff delays it) while the Digital Markets Act will come into force at some point soon after, and major platforms — dubbed “Gatekeepers” will have a further six months to get their houses in order before the new rules apply to them.
The European Commission has set up a taskforce, with about 80 officials expected to join up, which critics say is inadequate. Last month it put out a 12 million euro ($12.3 million) tender for experts to help in investigations and compliance enforcement over a four-year period.
EU industry chief Thierry Breton sought to address enforcement concerns, saying various teams would focus on different issues such as risk assessments, interoperability of messenger services and data access during implementation of the rules.
Regulators will also set up a European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency to attract data science and algorithm scientists to help with enforcement.
“We have started to gear the internal organisation to this new role, including by shifting existing resources, and we also expect to ramp up recruitment next year and in 2024 to staff the dedicated DG CONNECT team with over 100 full time staff,” Breton said in a blogpost.
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“We raised the alarm last week with other civil society groups that if the Commission does not hire the experts it needs to monitor Big Tech’s practices in the market, the legislation could be hamstrung by ineffective enforcement,” BEUC Deputy Director General Ursula Pachl said in a statement.
The DMA is set to force changes in companies’ businesses, requiring them to make their messaging services interoperable and provide business users access to their data.
Business users would be able to promote competing products and services on a platform and reach deals with customers off the platforms.
Companies will not be allow to favour their own services over rivals’ or prevent users from removing pre-installed software or apps, two rules that will hit Google and Apple hard.
The DSA bans targeted advertising aimed at children or based on sensitive data such as religion, gender, race and political opinions. Dark patterns, which are tactics that mislead people into giving personal data to companies online, will also be prohibited
Government policies often are presented with hefty price tags, but people often zone out as more zeros are added to the total cost. A new study from Carnegie Mellon University suggests that rescaling the cost of programs can increase a person’s understanding of funding choices, which may improve how people participate in the policy debate. The results are available in the July issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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In the first study, 392 participants evaluated four statements about possible U.S. COVID-19 relief packages. The participants evaluated content presented on a total price-per-program ($100 billion versus $2 trillion) or as price-per-person ($1,200 versus $24,000). Both pairs of statements were scaled to a 20:1 ratio. The researchers found the participants had an easier time differentiating between high and low cost when it was presented with the price-per-person option.
“With a simple manipulation rescaling big numbers into smaller numbers, people can understand this information better,”
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In the second study, 401 participants ranked eight programs that had previously been presented with a price-per-program or price-per-person cost. The results confirm the team’s hypothesis that participants were more successful at comprehending the price-per-person cost. To follow on this study, the team presented 399 participants with similar information but scaled the total expenditures using an unfamiliar unit. They found the price-per-person cost offered greater comprehension. These results suggest that by simply rescaling large numbers and transforming them into smaller ones people can digest information more effectively.
“Surprisingly, we rescaled the information using an arbitrary unit [other than a per capita], and we still see the same effect,” said Boyce-Jacino. “People are better at discriminating among smaller numbers.”
Finally, the team presented 399 participants with eight program pairs. Four of the pairs had the same characteristics except for cost. The other four had variations in program characteristics to evaluate beyond price. For all eight scenarios, the program price tag was presented as either price-per-program or price-per-person. The researchers found the participants were more likely to select the least expensive program when cost was presented using the price-per-person format.
Most surprising to the research team was how the information scaled. Unlike past research that assumed a log scale in the scaling of large numbers, they found that people were more sensitive to small numbers than to large ones even when the ratio was held constant at 20 to 1.
“The ratio suggests numerical representation is more curved than a log function,” said Chapman. “It contrasts with previous theoretical perspective, but it remains in the same ballpark.”
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“People are bad at processing and understanding big numbers,” said Chapman. “If your goal is to help people be good citizens and savvy evaluators of how tax dollars are spent, scale numbers that place them in range that people can appreciate.”
More information: Large numbers cause magnitude neglect: The case of government expenditures, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2203037119
On 23 December 2021, the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) appears to have imposed an administrative fine of 2 million euros on the DeGiro of the German company flatexDEGIRO Bank AG (FlatexDeGiro) because the online broker reported unusual transactions too late and incorrectly to Financial Intelligence. Unit – Netherlands (FIU).
DeGiro did this late in 27 cases and an incorrect transaction date was reported in ten cases. Unusual transactions may indicate money laundering by investors.
Investment firms, such as DeGiro, are required to report unusual transactions to the FIU. DeGiro made a total of 36 reports from mid-2019 to mid-2020. The majority of those reports came in too late, sometimes a few months after the legal deadline.
The transaction date was also incorrect for almost one in three. In doing so, DeGiro violated the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act (Wwft). Because DeGiro was absorbed into FlatexDeGiro through a legal merger in May 2021, the fine is imposed on that company.
Coinbase Tracer, the analytics arm of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, has signed a contract with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement that would allow the agency access to a variety of features and data caches, including “historical geo tracking data.”
Coinbase Tracer, according to the website, is for governments, crypto businesses, and financial institutions. It allows these clients the ability to trace transactions within the blockchain. It is also used to “investigate illicit activities including money laundering and terrorist financing” and “screen risky crypto transactions to ensure regulatory compliance.”
The deal was originally signed September 2021, but the contract was only now obtained by watchdog group Tech Inquiry. The deal was made for a maximum amount of $1.37 million, and we knew at the time that this was a three year contract for Coinbase’s analytic software. The now revealed contract allows us to look more into what this deal entails.
This deal will allow ICE to track transactions made through twelve different currencies, including Ethereum, Tether, and Bitcoin. Other features include “Transaction demixing and shielded transaction analysis,” which appears to be aimed at preventing users from laundering funds or hiding transactions. Another feature is the ability to “Multi-hop link analysis for incoming and outgoing funds” which would give ICE insight into the transfer of the currencies. The most mysterious one is access to “historical geo tracking data,” and ICE gave a little insight into how this tool may be used.
FBI officials and federal prosecutors announced Ignatova’s new designation in a press conference Thursday. Ignatova was charged in 2019 with wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering for her part in the OneCoin crypto company that prosecutors alleged was just a ponzi scheme.
Michael Driscoll, the FBI’s assistant director-in-charge for New York declined to answer Reuters’ questions whether they had any leads, but said Ignatova “left with a tremendous amount of cash,” adding, “money can buy a lot of friends.”
Ignatova was part of a Bulgaria-based crypto company called OneCoin. The company claimed they were performing a regular crypto mining operation—generating new tokens added to a blockchain—and pumped out $3.78 billion in revenue from the end of 2014 to the middle of 2016. But despite the upward momentum, investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice reported that OneCoin’s value was rigged internally, that the coins were essentially worthless, and users could not even trace ownership of the coins. The DOJ alleged those at the head of the company made nearly $2.5 billion in profit that they squirreled away in company bank accounts.
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told reporters Ignatova capitalized “on the frenzied speculation of the early days of cryptocurrency.”
In an FBI-provided video of Ignatova speaking at a London company event dated June, 2016, Ignatova boasted about her two million active users, adding “no other cryptocurrency has as many users as we do,”
Bloomberg reported that after Ignatova grew suspicious that the feds were onto her, she fled to Greece and then investigators lost track of her.
In 2019, the U.S. unsealed an indictment against Ignatova, charging her with the previously mentioned litany of financial crimes. That same year, Konstantin Ignatova, one of OneCoin’s founders and Ruja’s brother, was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Konstantin managed to get a plea deal, and though his sentencing was set for May 13, his attorneys adjourned the date for 90 days so he could further cooperate with authorities.
The Cryptoqueen has evaded police custody and remains at large to this day. So, the FBI says it’ll pay up to a $100,000 reward for any info that leads to an arrest.
The European Union (EU) finally agreed on landmark anti-money laundering rules for crypto transactions Wednesday, despite industry concerns over the law harming privacy and innovation.
The final proposals will mean customer identity needs to be verified for even the smallest crypto transfers, if it’s between two regulated digital wallet providers – but payments to unhosted private wallets will largely be left out of laundering checks.
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EU lawmaker Ondřej Kovařík confirmed the provisional deal in a tweet, saying that it “strikes the right balance in mitigating risks for fighting money laundering in the crypto sector without preventing innovation and overburdening businesses.”
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Kovařík said those unhosted wallet rules would only apply when transfers were made to a person’s own private wallet, and only when the value was over 1,000 euros ($1,052). A further source briefed on talks has confirmed those details.
Ernest Urtasun, a member of the European Greens party, who jointly led parliament’s negotiations on the law, tweeted that the rules were “putting an end to the wild west of unregulated crypto, closing major loopholes in the European anti-money laundering rules.”
Urtasun confirmed that the final deal would mean that, for transactions between regulated wallets, customer identity details have to be recorded for even the smallest transaction. That makes crypto rules unlike those for the conventional banking sector, which only catch those worth over 1,000 euros.
Lawmakers and governments overturned European Commission plans to exempt small transactions, arguing that price volatility and the ability to break up payments into smaller chunks would make it unworkable for crypto.
