The country’s government passed a bill legalizing crypto, but it doesn’t recognize bitcoin or other tokens as legal tender.
Ukraine passed a bill legalizing crypto.
Ukraine is going further and faster on crypto than its powerful neighbor, Russia.
The country’s parliament passed a bill Thursday legalizing cryptocurrencies. It notably does not recognize bitcoin or other forms of crypto as legal tender. The bill instead ensures businesses are protected against crypto-related fraud or abuse.
“Market participants will receive legal protection and the opportunity to make decisions based on open consultations with government agencies,” Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said in a statement.
Even though Ukraine hasn’t formally regulated digital currencies before, it has still proven itself as a leading crypto hub. The country ranks fourth on the Global Crypto Adoption Index by Chainalysis. Legalizing the currency will ensure exchanges are better protected, Fedorov said. “Ukrainians could protect their assets from possible abuse or fraud,” Fedorov said.
Several countries are working to adopt their own forms of a digital currency, with India being one of the latest. At least 87 other countries are looking to introduce a CBDC, and nine have already launched their own. The Federal Reserve is currently gathering public comment on whether to launch a digital currency.
Russia, meanwhile, is caught up in a bureaucratic battle over whether to ban crypto or regulate it.
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Sarah Roach is a reporter and producer at Protocol (@sarahroach_) where she contributes to Source Code, Protocol’s daily newsletter. She is a recent graduate of George Washington University, where she studied journalism and mass communication and criminal justice. She previously worked for two years as editor in chief of her school’s independent newspaper, The GW Hatchet.
Better.com is preparing for another round of layoffs, several unnamed people told TechCrunch on Friday. The real estate tech company has reportedly been bleeding senior executives since it let go 900 employees in a 3-minute Zoom call in December.
The current and former employees who spoke to TechCrunch said the latest wave of layoffs are expected to come in March, and could affect as much as 40% to 50% of the staff. Four top executives have resigned since the original round of layoffs: finance VP Clayton Coral, Head of Real Estate Christian Wallace, General Manager of Purchase Paul Tyger, and Head of Sales Stephen Rosen, according to the TechCrunch report as well as posts on LinkedIn and Blind.
On top of the executive-suite turmoil, two board members recently stepped down, and the company delayed a $6.9 billion SPAC deal indefinitely.
Better.com CEO Vishal Garg apologized for his handling of the firings in December, saying he “blundered the execution” in a letter to employees leaked on Blind. Garg also reportedly insulted an investor, calling him “sewage.” He took a leave of absence after the layoffs starting Dec. 10, and was reinstated in his position on Jan. 19 by the board of directors, but now faces a fraud suit from investors who allege he misused their funds to invest in startups.
A couple of key memos in the legal brawl between Ripple and the SEC finally became public Friday. Ripple immediately claimed victory in the disclosure, though the language in the controversial documents raised questions about the company’s arguments.
Ripple General Counsel Stuart Alderoty said the memos proved the company received legal advice in 2012 that XRP, the cryptocurrency Ripple uses for its payment network, would not be considered a security by regulators. The SEC sued Ripple in 2020, arguing that XRP is not a currency but a security, and therefore subject to strict securities laws.
“We are pleased with the Court’s order to release these documents to the public,” Alderoty said in a statement. “The documents show a ‘compelling’ legal analysis that Ripple received in 2012 that XRP is not a security.”
Alderoty also argued that “the fact that Ripple sought such advice in 2012 should be applauded. That fact that it took the SEC eight years to suggest they disagreed with that analysis — while XRP traded in a massive global market — is baffling.”
The SEC could not immediately be reached for comment. The regulatory agency had earlier argued that the memos would show that Ripple was aware that the XRP could be considered as a security under federal law, according to a Reuters report.
The SEC’s position appeared to be supported by one of the memos dated Oct. 19, 2012, in which Ripple’s lawyers told the company, “Although we believe that there is a compelling argument can be made that Ripple Credits [as XRP was referred to in the document] do not constitute ‘securities’ under the federal securities laws, given the lack of applicable case law, we believe that there is some risk, albeit small, that the Securities and Exchange Commission disagrees with our analysis.”
Two Chinese ecommerce services operated by Alibaba and Tencent were included in a Thursday update of the Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy, a list maintained by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
One of the sites is Alibaba’s AliExpress, the international arm of the ecommerce giant that’s available in more than 190 countries. The other is Tencent’s WeChat ecommerce ecosystem, a loose grouping of several mobile-based channels for vendors to sell on China’s most popular communication tool.
The idea of “notorious markets” was first introduced in 2006, and the list has been updated annually by USTR since 2011. Its 2021 iteration includes 42 online markets and 35 physical stores.
Chinese tech companies appear frequently on the list. Alibaba’s Taobao, the domestic-facing ecommerce website, was first added in 2008, removed in 2012, and re-added in 2016. Other prominent Chinese tech companies like Pinduoduo and Baidu have also stayed on the list for years.
“We strongly disagree with the decision made by the United States Trade Representative and are committed to working collaboratively to resolve this matter,” a Tencent spokesperson told BBC. Alibaba told the Wall Street Journal that it “look[s] forward to continuing the work with governments to understand and address all concerns in IP protection across our platforms.”
Asked about the addition on Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the ministry “urge[s] the U.S. side to stop politicizing economic and trade issues” and “view Chinese companies’ efforts and achievements in IPR protection in a comprehensive, objective and just manner.”
Company leaders love NFTs. Their employees, not so much.
The most recent example came this week when more than 400 Salesforce employees signed a letter pushing back on the company’s plans to launch an NFT cloud service that allows people to create and sell NFTs, according to documents reviewed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The workers who signed the letter expressed concern over the environmental and economic impact of NFTs, especially in light of the company’s recent Super Bowl ad emphasizing its focus on sustainability. (Salesforce has also positioned itself as a climate leader, with CEO Marc Benioff backing controversial climate measures like planting 1 trillion trees.)
“I’ll find a company that lives by its stated values,” one Salesforce employee told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that he’ll quit if the company’s plan goes through.
“We welcome our employees’ feedback and are proud to foster a culture of trust that empowers them to raise diverse points of view,” a Salesforce spokesperson told the publication. The spokesperson said Salesforce will hold a listening session sometime next week but didn’t say whether it will address criticism of its NFT plans.
Salesforce workers aren’t the only ones to criticize their company’s push into digital art that comes at a high carbon cost. Ubisoft employees expressed concern over their company’s foray into crypto, with one employee calling the day Ubisoft announced its NFT plans “deeply embarrassing.” When GameStop announced its own NFT project, employees took to the official GameStop subreddit to voice their discontent. Other gaming companies, including Team17 and GSC Game World, dropped their NFT projects following backlash from both fans and collaborators.
The reasons for pushing back on NFT plans seem to vary. While Salesforce employees cite climate concerns, GameStop workers said it would be unfair to invest in NFTs while refusing to give store workers a raise. Other gaming employees say adding NFT tech into their games simply isn’t necessary.
Chamath Palihapitiya is resigning as Virgin Galactic’s chair, the company announced Friday. Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive turned investor, will leave immediately to “focus on other public company board commitments,” and Evan Lovell will fill in as the interim chair.
“Chamath was instrumental in the launch of Virgin Galactic as a public company and, as our inaugural chair, his deep and astute insights have been incredibly valuable to both me and the company as we have grown and strengthened our business foundation,” Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier said in a statement.
Palihapitiya’s reason for leaving — beyond the stated rationale of tending to his other investments — wasn’t evident. He joined the company’s board in 2019, just as Virgin Galactic went public, and has gained a reputation as “SPAC king” for supporting companies going public via blank-check vehicles. But SPACs, in general, aren’t doing too hot anymore, and shares in four companies that Palihapitiya’s SPACs have backed fell last year, according to DealBook.
“It has been an honor to help guide Virgin Galactic through some of its greatest milestones to date, including taking the company public, building a strong capital base for future growth, and assembling a best-in-class management team to bring the company to even greater heights,” Palihapitiya said in the announcement.
The now-former chair has also faced heat in recent weeks for his remarks that “nobody cares” about China’s repression of the Uyghur Muslims. He never exactly apologized for it either, though he expressed a broad support for human rights.
Virgin Galactic tapped executive search firm Spencer Stuart to look for a new chair, the company said. The company’s shares fell sharply Friday morning following the announcement.
In the fall, Palihapitiya sold 15% of his stake in SoFi, another company whose SPAC deal he had backed.
The U.S. Defense Department has a new office dedicated to advancing the use of AI throughout the military. Now the money from a $249 million blanket purchase agreement is starting to flow to several AI tech providers that also work with enterprises in other industries, including companies like Arthur that help monitor AI models to avoid bias and inaccuracy.
Arthur’s software tracks performance of AI models including computer vision and natural-language processing models. Arthur is among a burgeoning sector of companies providing software and services for auditing how machine-learning and AI models are built, and monitoring them for problems after they’re in use. The company collected $15 million in series A funding in December 2020.
The DoD also signed on earlier this month to use DataRobot’s cloud AI platform and services, including to detect, measure and prevent bias when building and operating machine-learning models.
Companies working with the Pentagon to provide AI and related tech have drawn their fair share of scrutiny, perhaps most famously when Google employees protested the company’s Project Maven effort to develop drone AI technology with the military. Less media attention went to C3.ai when it signed a massive $500 million deal to provide its enterprise AI products to all Defense Department agencies.
Defenders of the military’s push toward using AI point to ethical AI principles the Pentagon established in 2020, which included goals for responsibility and equity.
Other companies working with the DoD as part of the blanket purchase agreement include CrowdAI, a no-code computer vision company, and enterprise AI tech provider Veritone.
Chief metamate Mark Zuckerberg just got some bad news. His company is the subject of another SEC complaint filed by Whistleblower Aid, the group representing former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen, alleging the company has misled investors about its efforts to combat climate misinformation.
The complaint, filed earlier this month and reported by the Washington Post on Friday, alleges that while Facebook — now Meta — has touted its renewable energy buys and its investment in a Climate Science Information Center, internal communications tell a slightly different story.
Previously reported documents included in the tranche leaked by Haugen last year show that the Climate Science Information Center, a clearinghouse for climate facts on the platform, had relatively low penetration with users compared to viral posts chock full of misinformation. Employees raised concerns about a post by conservative group Turning Point USA that racked up 6.6 million views in a week despite being based on falsehoods. In comparison, Meta’s own data shows the Climate Science Information Center sees an average of 100,000 visitors per day.
Per the Post, Whistleblower Aid filed a complaint about these and other issues tied to COVID-19 misinformation, alleging that Meta made “material misrepresentations and omissions in statements to investors” about how it deals with misinformation.
“There are no one-size-fits-all solutions to stopping the spread of misinformation, but we’re committed to building new tools and policies to combat it,” Drew Pusateri, a spokesperson for Meta, said in an email, noting the company has pointed 2 billion people to accurate public health information and that its Climate Science Information Center is available in 150 countries.
While tools to combat misinformation once it’s out in the wild are part of the puzzle, cutting it off at the tap is also a surefire way to ensure it doesn’t spread in the first place. Yet Meta has declined to take those steps.
Investors have taken an increasing interest in companies’ climate goals, which makes this complaint one to watch. So, too, do the stakes of, you know, actually addressing climate change by reducing carbon pollution over the coming decades. Misinformation has polluted discourse for years, starting with oil companies using the pages of newspapers to run advertorials and concoct a concerted misinformation campaign modeled off of denying the link between smoking and cancer. That’s left the world facing a make or break moment. Emissions need to fall roughly 7% per year this decade to have a decent shot at keeping the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a crucial threshold outlined by the United Nations and numerous scientists.
Meta’s own employees seem to be aware of those stakes and the dangers of letting misinformation flourish. In the internal documents supporting the SEC complaint, an employee asked if the company was ready to face accusations that its lax approach to climate denial could “jeopardize the lives of billions of people over the coming decades.”
Reese Witherspoon is getting in on the NFT craze.
Witherspoon’s media company Hello Sunshine is partnering with World of Women — an NFT collective with over 10,000 works from women creators — to develop WoW characters into feature films, scripted and unscripted TV shows and educational events. The move is yet another sign of the growing popularity of NFTs and their potential in the entertainment realm.
“While the crypto and NFT space is largely dominated by men, there are inspiring leaders like World of Women creating incredible communities for women during this massive shift for media and technology,” Witherspoon said in a statement. “We’re proud to partner with WoW to expand their universe of characters and to develop innovative scripted and unscripted content.”
WoW founder and digital illustrator Yam Karkai echoed the sentiment: “I could not have envisioned a better partner to expand the ethos core values of our beautiful community through storytelling in new and innovative ways.” But this isn’t WoW’s first brush with Hollywood; the collective is signed to Guy O’Seary, whose management roster also includes Madonna, U2 and Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. And WoW has previously attracted the attention of celebrities like Eva Longoria and Shonda Rhimes, whose Twitter profiles each feature a WoW NFT.
Witherspoon isn’t alone: Plenty of celebrities are jumping on the NFT train. BFF, an on-ramp for women and nonbinary people into crypto, has recruited the likes of Tyra Banks and Gwyneth Paltrow. Afterparty, meanwhile, relies on the appeal of exclusivity. Members of the NFT community, which hosts minting parties at a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, include musician Jaden Hossler and model Heidi Klum. Other efforts have been met with backlash, like Matt Damon becoming the face of Crypto.com, Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon comparing their Bored Apes on The Tonight Show and Larry David starring in FTX’s Super Bowl ad.
Other crypto companies are exploring entertainment options, too. Dapper Labs has a licensing deal with the NBA, and Larva Labs has signed with United Talent Agency to sell the rights for three NFT collections for film, TV and video games. Although, since NFT IP standards aren’t set in stone, the expectations among NFT users differ from those in the traditional creative world. Companies are navigating these expectations as crypto’s entertainment possibilities pile up.
Google plans to reduce the equity packages for Durham, North Carolina; Des Moines, Iowa; and Houston, Texas, in January 2022, according to an Alphabet Workers Union petition circulating today that demands a reversion to pay and equity cuts.
The Research Triangle area, where the Durham, North Carolina, office is located, was also moved from the “National” pay band to a “Discount” pay band in late 2020, according to the AWU petition. The union said it would affect 300 workers there, but that Google plans to expand to 1,000 employees in the coming years.
The company has targeted the region for growing its workforce and touted the location as valuable in its efforts to recruit students from historically Black colleges and universities and hire workers with diverse backgrounds. Many workers relocated there before the changes in pay and equity were made, the union wrote.
“Our goal is to always pay at the top of the local market, including in the Raleigh-Durham area. In our annual review, we found that our compensation guidelines in the Research Triangle region exceeded the market pay benchmarks, so we made adjustments to align with the local market. Employees working there have not seen a reduction in salary or in their existing equity grant,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email to Protocol. “As we continue to invest in the region, new employees and those who transfer from other offices will still be paid at the top of the local market, and all employees have the potential to be rewarded further based on performance and promotion opportunities.”
The petition claims that Google’s plans to scale equity reduction in January 2022 will apply only to the Research Triangle, Des Moines and Houston areas, meaning equity packages for all other offices in the U.S. would remain the same.
“Although Google claims that they pay based on the local market, this is *lower* than the surrounding, less populated areas,” the union wrote in the petition. “They are reaching out to local HBCUs to tell students about the upcoming opportunities at the new hub, without telling them about the pay disparity.”
Tech companies have battled for talent over the past year in an increasingly favorable labor market. Many, including Google and Apple, have publicized efforts to recruit from locations like Durham and Atlanta, where a broader range of diverse workers might be interested in living and where a number of HBCUs are located.
Some Apple Store employees are pushing to formally unionize with the National Labor Relations Board, citing discontent with the company’s pay, according to a Washington Post report.
Groups at least two Apple retail stores plan to file union paperwork with the NLRB soon, and several other locations are still in talks about unionizing, according to The Washington Post. Apple Store employees said similar unionization efforts among Starbucks workers motivated them to move forward with their own plans.
The employees said their wages haven’t kept up with inflation through the years, and they haven’t enjoyed the same financial gains as the rest of the company. “I have a lot of co-workers and friends who I genuinely love and they do not make enough to get by,” one labor organizer who works at an Apple Store told The Washington Post.
While no Apple workers have formed official, legally recognized unions, an informal organizing movement called “AppleToo” emerged last year and focused on sharing stories from workers across all parts of the company, including retail.
Apple recently increased pay for some retail employees. Still, Tim Cook makes way more than a typical Apple employee, and brought in $3 million in annual base salary last year. Apple shareholders are urging investors to vote against Cook’s pay and bonus package, citing “significant concern” with his stock award last year, according to the Financial Times.
In the vast web of misinformation on social media, YouTube videos often sit at the center. Videos that may have started on YouTube, or even been suppressed by YouTube’s moderators, have a way of creeping across the internet where they can find a life of their own on other social platforms.
Now, YouTube is working on ways to change that.
Neal Mohan, the platform’s chief product officer, wrote in a blog post Thursday that YouTube is working to take on misinformation by stemming its reach, which could include limiting cross-platform sharing and expanding the keywords it uses to suppress misinformation content.
Part of the goal is to catch new narratives as they’re bubbling up, before they go viral. Though some conspiracies have long been topics of conversation among users — take moon landing conspiracy theories and flat earthers, for example — new types of misinformation can often arise and spread quickly before trusted sources have a chance to debunk it.
“Increasingly, a completely new narrative can quickly crop up and gain views,” Mohan said. “Or, narratives can slide from one topic to another—for example, some general wellness content can lead to vaccine hesitancy.”
One potential change is using keywords in more languages to catch and flag misinformation in other regions, as well as working with regional analysts to catch local misinformation theories that YouTube may have missed. The company is also considering partnerships with non-governmental organizations to better understand regional and local misinformation.
But the biggest change is the possibility — still under consideration — that YouTube might disable the share button on misinformation videos. The company is also considering breaking links to videos that have already been suppressed on YouTube, but may have been shared on other platforms. “We grapple with whether preventing shares may go too far in restricting a viewer’s freedoms,” Mohan said. “Our systems reduce borderline content in recommendations, but sharing a link is an active choice a person can make, distinct from a more passive action like watching a recommended video.”
Another potential solution Mohan proposed: embedding interstitials, which act “like a speed bump” to let users know that the video may contain misinformation.
For major breaking news events, such as natural disasters, the company is exploring new disclaimer labels for videos or search results “warning viewers there’s a lack of high quality information,” Mohan said.
But there are tradeoffs to consider. “We also have to weigh whether surfacing a label could unintentionally put a spotlight on a topic that might not otherwise gain traction,” he said.
Google announced on Thursday that it will launch a $100 million Google Career Certificates Fund in an effort to increase the wages of American workers. The fund, which was announced via video in tandem with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, is anticipated to reach 20,000 people via Google Career Certificates.
Unlike Amazon’s free college program for employees, Google’s program is aimed at job seekers. This certification program provides online professional training in subjects spanning from IT support to data analytics on Coursera with the goal of getting more people into high-growth industries and positions. Financial nonprofit Social Finance will be in charge of distributing the funds from Google to other organizations like Merit America and Year Up.
The program is designed for students to pay zero upfront costs for the three to six-month courses, but Google certificate students are expected to repay program costs if they land a job that pays at least $40,000 annually. While the exact amount of the monthly payments was not shared in the announcement, Google said it will be low no-interest payments for Social Finance to reinvest in the program for additional participants.
Google’s initiative relates to President Biden’s larger push for access to education and higher-paying jobs. “The Biden administration is laser-focused on creating good-paying jobs for American workers, and it is especially important for us to come up with creative solutions that enable women and parents to fully participate in our economy,” said Raimondo.
Spotify’s massive contract for Joe Rogan is reportedly worth upwards of $200 million, double what the deal was previously thought to be worth, the New York Times reported Thursday. Rogan’s contract covers 3.5 years of exclusivity on his podcasts for the streaming giant.
The Times story tracks Spotify’s quest to become a podcast behemoth, which has included the acquisition of several major podcasting companies, and has only been aided by “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which the company said has been its biggest podcast in more than 90 countries. But the show has been riddled with problematic themes and accused of spreading misinformation, including on the COVID-19 vaccine.
Spotify came under fire in recent weeks for not moderating Rogan’s podcast. Major artists Neil Young and Joni Mitchell left the audio service in protest while #DeleteSpotify trended on social media platforms, but CEO Daniel Ek said in a blog post that the company isn’t interested in being a “content censor.”
Tesla’s EVs have been beaten out — at least in the eyes of Consumer Reports.
The publication ranked Ford’s Mustang Mach-E as a “Top Pick” for electric vehicles for 2022, pushing the Tesla Model 3 off the list for the first time in two years.
That’s not the only place Tesla has seen its star fall on the consumer watchdog’s rankings. In Consumer Reports’ overall ranking of 32 auto brands, Tesla fell seven spots to 23rd place, the worst it’s received since joining the “Top Picks” list seven years ago. The ranking factors in road-test performance, reliability, owner satisfaction and safety. Tesla shares fell nearly 5% in mid-morning trading following the announcement.
The Mach-E has had very few problems so far, Consumer Reports writer Jeff Bartlett reported, giving it an “edge when it comes to reliability.” Meanwhile, several Tesla models have been subject to recall after recall in recent months. The designation is a win for Ford, whose CEO Jim Farley has been vying to upend Tesla’s dominance over the EV market. That includes the Mach-E as well as upping production of the F-150 Lightning, its all-electric truck.
“The F-150 Lightning, if we had full production today to meet our current demand, we would rival the [Tesla] Model Y as the leading [battery electric vehicle] nameplate in the U.S. market,” Farley said in the company’s February earnings call.
Tesla has butted heads with Consumer Reports more than once. Last year, some Tesla vehicles lost their “Top Pick” status due to lacking key safety features. They returned to the list, though, after further testing by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Tesla also lost and regained “Top Pick” status in 2018 for the Model 3 due to issues with inconsistent braking distance that were fixed in a software update. Consumer Reports has also given the EV-maker low or average reliability rankings more than once.
EVs have become a hot ticket for automakers recently, most notably in a bevy of Super Bowl ads this year. With companies from Ford to GM pouring billions into upping their EV game and the Biden administration’s recently announced charging network plan backed by $5 billion, it’s clear Tesla is about to face even more competition on streets and highways.
The Justice Department has named a veteran prosecutor to lead the newly-formed team set up to take on crypto-related crimes.
Eun Young Choi will serve as the first director of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, the DOJ announced Thursday.
Choi recently served as senior counsel to the deputy attorney general. She also worked nine years at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York as an assistant U.S. attorney and cybercrime coordinator, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The Justice Department announced in October that it was creating the NCET to focus on “combating misuse of cryptocurrency” marketplaces and other systems which have been used by criminals to “launder or hide their criminal proceeds.”
Sequoia Capital has launched a new investment fund focused on crypto tokens, according to a report.
The venture capital giant is allocating $500 million for a new strategy geared toward acquiring and earning returns from cryptocurrencies, Axios reported Thursday.
“This fund will let us manage these tokens differently, from staking to voting rights and having a say on governance,” Sequoia partner Alfred Lin told Axios. About 20% of the VC firm’s investments over the past year were for crypto startups, Lin said.
The crypto fund appears to be in line with Sequoia’s new strategy. The creation of the Sequoia Capital Fund and the firm’s move to register as an investment adviser both allow it to hold investments beyond the traditional 10-year VC timeline and invest in nontraditional asset classes like crypto.
Andreessen Horowitz, one of Sequoia’s fiercest competitors in venture capital, has led the charge into crypto. New investment firms focused on crypto like Paradigm and KRH Partners have also emerged.
Add Intel’s CEO to the list of people who think bitcoin is an environmental disaster. Pat Gelsinger said bitcoin is a “climate crisis” that the company can help address with its newly introduced crypto mining chip during a recent interview with Bloomberg.
“A single ledger in bitcoin consumes enough energy to power your house for almost a day,” Gelsinger said. “That’s a climate crisis. … If we produce the tech that consumes that much energy, wow, that’s not OK.”
Bitcoin energy consumption has soared over the past few years, and with it, the cryptocurrency’s carbon footprint. A single bitcoin transaction has a carbon footprint equivalent to watching more than 170,000 hours of YouTube, and its electricity consumption is comparable to what it would take to keep a U.S. household running for about 76 days, according to Digiconomist. In aggregate, the numbers are even worse; annual mining operations consume as much electricity as Thailand and emit as much carbon pollution as Kuwait.
Intel is currently building an “energy-efficient” chip that aims to address the environmental impact of crypto mining, which Gelsinger said will be “dramatically better” in terms of power performance. “We want to work with the industry to find ways that technologies like blockchain can be properly regulated, managed as well so that they truly can be fully realized,” Gelsinger said.
Digiconomist also found that mining results in nearly 34,000 tons of e-waste each year, though, care of the copious amounts of hardware needed to mine bitcoin at scale. A study co-authored last year by Digiconomist founder Alex de Vries showed the e-waste problem could double if bitcoin price remain high. Whether Intel’s chip will be more robust than what’s currently in use by most miners — or if it will even be widely adopted — remains to be seen.
On top of its detrimental impact on the climate, Gelsinger said bitcoin isn’t a good technology because it can’t currently be used broadly by nations and people as a currency. “That doesn’t mean it’s not good tech, but we’re not using it good yet,” he said.
Elon Musk’s attorney accused the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday of taking advantage of a court agreement “to try to muzzle and harass Mr. Musk and Tesla,” while failing to pay out the $40 million the SEC collected in fines.
Musk and Tesla signed an agreement with the SEC in 2018 over fraud charges after Musk tweeted he could take Tesla private without first filing appropriate regulatory notices to the SEC about the announcement. Tesla and Musk agreed to put in place controls to review Musk’s tweets and pay $40 million in fines, which the SEC would distribute to shareholders.
The filing in New York accuses the SEC of taking advantage of that agreement by opening investigations and issuing subpoenas into Musk’s further communications on Twitter without the permission of the court involved in the settlement. The filing also alleges that the SEC has failed to distribute the $40 million it collected in a timely and appropriate manner, violating the agreement.
Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, also accused the SEC of trying to violate Musk’s First Amendment rights. “The SEC seems to be targeting Mr. Musk and Tesla for unrelenting investigation largely because Mr. Musk remains an outspoken critic of the government; the SEC’s outsized efforts seem calculated to chill his exercise of First Amendment rights rather than to enforce generally applicable laws in evenhanded fashion,” Spiro wrote.
Mark Zuckerberg never wanted much to do with Washington.
It’s easy to forget it’s been less than four years since he was all but dragged kicking and screaming to his first Congressional hearing on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, after first insisting he wasn’t the right guy for the job.
And maybe he wasn’t. In the years since Zuckerberg has taken a more public role in navigating the company’s many global policy problems, things have arguably only gotten worse for the company formerly known as Facebook.
Now, it seems, Zuckerberg wants out. On Wednesday, he announced that Nick Clegg would become the company’s new president of Global Affairs, reporting directly to Zuckerberg and running point on all of the company’s policy work globally. “We need a senior leader at the level of myself (for our products) and Sheryl [Sandberg] (for our business) who can lead and represent us for all of our policy issues globally,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Facebook.
As far as title changes go, it’s a negligible one. Clegg had already been more or less doing this job since 2018 when he joined the company. The shift says far less about Clegg than it does about how both Zuckerberg and Sandberg’s focus has shifted within the company.
Zuckerberg made no secret of the fact that he hopes this change will free him up to focus on the company’s products. “As Nick takes on this new leadership role, it will enable me to focus more of my energy on leading the company as we build new products for the future,” he wrote.
That’s no small task. Zuckerberg is now in a position he hasn’t really been in before, with user numbers falling on Facebook, investors losing faith and the company’s ad model struggling under new privacy changes. The transition into a metaverse company — whatever that ends up meaning — isn’t just a rebrand to escape from so many years of bad press; it’s a life raft. Navigating that transition is a whole lot trickier when you’re stuck litigating and apologizing for the mistakes of your first 18 years.
As for Sandberg, it’d be easy to see Clegg’s rise as coming at her expense. And in some ways, of course it is. She was, after all, Facebook’s face in Washington during that rocky period between 2016 and 2018, navigating the Russian propaganda crisis and the fallout of the 2016 election. But since that time, it’s been clear both inside of the company and outside of it that Sandberg has ceded some of that territory to Clegg.
“She’s made a clear effort to be less involved in policy over the last few years,” said Crystal Patterson, a former public policy manager for Facebook, who left the company after seven years last fall. “I know externally it looked like she was put in a corner, but I felt like she was happy to take a lower profile and focus on other things after the 2016 mess.” Patterson called Clegg “the best thing they have going in leadership.”
It now falls to Sandberg to figure out how the Facebook business model will translate in its new AR- and VR-focused future, even as Zuckerberg works on developing products themselves. In a comment on Zuckerberg’s post, Sandberg said as much, writing, “The next few years will be a crucial time for our company and our industry as new rules for the internet are written all over the world, and as we set out on our journey to help build the metaverse.”
Clegg’s promotion will give him the gravitas he needs to “get higher-level meetings,” said Katie Harbath, Facebook’s former public policy director, who left the company last spring after 10 years. Plus, she said, “It makes sense given Mark and Sheryl’s lack of interest in policy.”
At least, that’s how it would all work in theory. In practice, Clegg’s promotion may not end up being the magical escape chute Zuckerberg and Sandberg want it to be. At least, not in the big moments. If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that when it comes to Facebook, lawmakers are rarely interested in talking to the clean-up crew. More often, they want a word with the people who actually made the mess.
Thomas Siebel, CEO of data services and tech company C3.ai, has confirmed that he provided a major donation to the truck drivers that have shut down large parts of Canada’s capital and a key border crossing to protest pandemic protections.
The CEO said he contributed $90,000 to the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” noting it was one of many donations he’s made in honor of issues including protecting “human rights” and “individual liberty.” The company happens to be one of many promising to “democratize” artificial intelligence through low- and no-code AI tools.
“I have a long record of providing substantial support to efforts to improve education, advance research, improve access to education, address homelessness, alleviate food scarcity, assure climate security, fund stem cell research, reduce substance abuse, assist the underprivileged, and protect human rights. These are personal initiatives and have nothing to do with the companies or organizations with which he is associated,” Siebel said in a statement sent to Protocol.
However, Siebel swapped “individual liberty” with “human rights” in multiple statements supplied to the media. In a near-identical statement that Siebel gave to Illinois newspaper The News Gazette published Tuesday, Siebel included his goal “to protect individual liberty.”
The tech billionaire’s donation to the disruptive trucker collective and its supporters was first revealed when hackers leaked a list of people who allegedly funded the controversial movement demanding an end to COVID-19 mask mandates in Canada. The jam of parked delivery trucks and their honking drivers, camped since January 28 at the Ambassador Bridge near Detroit, led to a standstill at the U.S.-Canada border. (A related protest in Ottawa has also put residents on edge.)
The Ambassador Bridge was reopened Sunday, but the protest bottleneck created an auto parts shortage and forced Motor City automakers, including General Motors, to charter cargo planes to ship parts over the border.
C3.ai counts trucking, logistics and manufacturing companies among its clientele. The company provides software used for things like package logistics, energy management and predicting fleet maintenance needs, for example.
Despite Siebel’s support for the group of truckers that are fighting to end covid-19 protections and vaccine requirements, he told Illinois newspaper The News Gazette that all employees at C3.ai’s headquarters are tested twice each week using testing technology developed at the University of Illinois. Siebel is a graduate of the school and mega-donor with buildings dedicated to the studies of design and computer science named after him.
Microsoft’s social VR platform AltspaceVR is getting rid of social hubs to crack down on online harassment, the company announced Wednesday morning. Altspace is also instituting additional safeguards by default, and it will require people to use Microsoft accounts in the coming weeks — a measure that is meant to help parents keep their young children out of Altspace.
“Everyone should always feel safe in experiences like AltspaceVR,” wrote Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman, who leads the company’s AR and VR initiatives, in a blog post. “We have a responsibility to establish guardrails and we look forward to sharing more as we continue this journey with you.”
Altspace is one of the oldest social VR platforms and was acquired by Microsoft in 2017. Over the years, there have been repeated reports of sexual harassment in Altspace, which included complaints about incidents happening in social hubs, which are open, town square-like spaces that can be entered by anyone, and were meant to give newcomers a way to take their first steps in VR.
Microsoft’s response to this is now to shut down these spaces. The company is also turning on, by default, people’s personal safety bubble, which prevents others from coming too close, and going forward, people will be automatically muted when they enter an event.
Shopify reported record revenue of $1.38 billion for the fourth quarter, surpassing analysts’ consensus forecast of $1.34 billion. But the beat wasn’t enough for Wall Street. Its shares tumbled by 18% Wednesday after the company reported a slower growth outlook.
The slower growth as compared to last year was attributed by Shopify to the absence of “COVID-triggered acceleration […] in the form of lockdowns and government stimulus,” as well as “caution around inflation and consumer spend near term.” In other words, the pandemic boost to ecommerce is fading.
Shopify said it still expected to grow faster than the ecommerce industry as a whole, and expects growth to pick up speed again in the second half of the year, as it predicts that “certain commercial initiatives and sales and marketing investments will gain momentum over the course of 2022.”
Workers in Belgium now have the right to ask their employers for a four-day workweek. The Belgian government on Tuesday passed the reform, along with a bundle of other revisions to the country’s labor laws.
Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said the goal is to make the economy more productive and increase employment, The Guardian reported. To appease workers, the government is requiring companies to adopt more-flexible working hours and the option to totally disconnect after working hours. Employees requesting a four-day workweek will be expected to work longer hours but won’t lose any salary.
The four-day workweek has been growing in popularity across the globe, including in Iceland, where the government trialed the program from 2015 to 2019. It is also becoming a go-to work perk in Silicon Valley for companies that think they can get more done in a shorter amount of time. Some adopt the policy temporarily to offer three-day weekends over the summer, but others — like ecommerce company Bolt — have adopted the practice permanently.
For smaller startups, the four-day workweek might not be as feasible. But advocates say the shorter week makes workers more productive, and the companies that have transitioned may never go back.
Epic Games’ The Matrix Awakens, an interactive tech demo for its upcoming Unreal Engine 5 platform, has amassed more than 6 million downloads since the company released the free software on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles on Dec. 9.
It’s an impressive figure for what largely amounts to a short, trailer-like experience that doubled at the time as an advertisement for the fourth “Matrix” film. But The Matrix Awakens represents, in Epic’s eyes, the future of its business. It acts as a showcase for the the real-time blend of cinematic storytelling with unprecedented levels of photorealism. It also gives players a peek at the shrinking distinction between real and computer-generated imagery that could dominate both future big-budget video games and the avatars and other assets that populate the metaverse.
The software was created using some of the most cutting-edge video game development tools ever made, and those tools will be released more widely to the game development and Hollywood visual effects communities later this year with the public release of Unreal Engine 5. “We’re on the cusp of really not being able to tell the difference between reality and the virtual world,” Epic CTO Kim Libreri, who worked as visual effects supervisor on the original “Matrix” trilogy, told Protocol in December. “As we head into the metaverse, think of the possibility of games, experiences, stories that are generated in real time.”
“It’s too early to say exactly how the metaverse will take shape, but we see it as a shared social 3D world with persistence, discovery, moderation, and commerce,” the company wrote in a blog post published Wednesday. “It will be an evolution of the internet as we know it, and its foundations will be built on real-time 3D technology.”
Epic is also releasing some metrics for its Unreal platform ahead of the planned spring 2022 release date of Unreal Engine 5. The company says it now has more than 500 million Epic accounts across its PC game store, which includes Fortnite, and its Unreal platform. And 48% of games currently in development for next-gen consoles are using Unreal tools.
Google is following Apple in stopping cross-app tracking on Android phones, the company said Wednesday. The change potentially creates another challenge for platforms that rely on app-tracking to understand consumer behavior and bolster their ads businesses.
“We don’t think there should be a forced choice between privacy and developers building their business,” Anthony Chavez, VP of product management for Android security and privacy, told the Wall Street Journal.
Given the fallout from Apple’s privacy change, which requires apps to ask users if they want to be tracked, platforms like Facebook may have a hard time with Google’s plan for Android. During its most recent earnings call, Meta said Apple’s ad tracking rule will result in a $10 billion sales drop this year. Snap, on the other hand, had expected Apple’s rule would be more of a challenge a few months ago, but the company doesn’t seem too concerned anymore.
Google said it will create a more privacy-focused system for gathering information about users, but details on the new system are sparse, according to WSJ. Some smartphone apps currently collect and share data about users using alphanumeric identifiers, or a series of letters and numbers tied to a device. Google said it will continue supporting those apps for at least two years before implementing any changes.
