According to CoinDesk, crypto exchange Bittrex has filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. state of Delaware, "months after announcing it would wind down operations in the country and weeks after being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)." From the report: The exchange believes it has more than 100,000 creditors, with estimated liabilities and assets both within the $500 million to $1 billion range, according to a court filing shared by Randall Reese of Chapter 11 Dockets, a bankruptcy tracker. Bittrex's U.S. branch has had a rough 2023 so far, laying off 80 people in February and announcing in March that it would end all operations by the end of April. These changes have not affected Bittrex Global, the non-U.S. crypto exchange.

Despite Bittrex's impending exit from the U.S., the SEC sued it in mid-April on allegations it operated a national securities exchange, broker and clearing agency. The SEC also sued former Bittrex CEO Bill Shihara and Bittrex Global. Bittrex Global CEO Oliver Linch said last month that the exchange intended to fight these charges in court, but a bankruptcy proceeding may make this more difficult.

Windows 11's Settings panel has been seen with a number of adverts in test builds of the OS, in what's becoming a sadly familiar theme for preview builds of late. From a report: As spotted by German tech site Deskmodder, this was flagged up by a respected source for Microsoft leaks, Albacore, on Twitter. Albacore shared some screenshots of the new home page for the Settings app, as uncovered by digging into a Windows 11 preview from the Canary channel (the earliest test builds). The first screen grab (on the left in the above tweet) shows an ad for Microsoft 365 at the top of the panel, telling users what they get with the service and that they can try it for free (for a trial period). Under that, there's a prompt to 'finish setting up your account,' which refers to completing the setup of your Microsoft Account. The other screenshots also have prompts relating to the Microsoft Account, this time urging users to sign into the account, one of which is shown on the Settings home page and another in the Accounts section. In the latter, users are told to 'Sign in to get the most out of Windows.'

"I write all novel client-side code as JavaScript instead of TypeScript, and it's a delight," says the creator of Ruby on Rails. Posting on Twitter, David Heinemeier Hansson opined that TypeScript "sucked out much of the joy I had writing JavaScript. I'm forever grateful that Yukihiro 'Matz' Matsumoto didn't succumb to the pressure of adding similar type hints to Ruby."

When it comes to static vs dynamic typing, "I've heard a million arguments from both sides throughout my entire career," Hansson wrote on his blog today, "but seen very few of them ever convinced anyone of anything."

But wait — he thinks we can all get along: Personally, I'm unashamedly a dynamic typing kind of guy. That's why I love Ruby so very much. It takes full advantage of dynamic typing to allow the poetic syntax that results in such beautiful code. To me, Ruby with explicit, static typing would be like a salad with a scoop of ice cream. They just don't go together.

I'll also confess to having embraced the evangelical position for dynamic typing in the past. To the point of suffering from a One True Proposition affliction. Seeing the lack of enthusiasm for dynamic typing as a reflection of missing education, experience, or perhaps even competence.

Oh what folly. Like trying to convince an introvert that they'd really like parties if they'd just loosen up a bit...

These days, I've come to appreciate the magnificence of multiplicity. Programming would be an awful endeavor if we were all confined to the same paradigm. Human nature is much too varied to accept such constraint on its creativity...But it took a while for me to come to these conclusions. I'm a recovering solutionist. So when I see folks cross their heart in disbelief that anyone, anywhere might fancy JavaScript over TypeScript, I smile, and I remember the days when I'd recognize their zeal in the mirror.
Hansson also sees the "magnificence of multiplicity" in positions about functional vs object-oriented programming. "Poles on both these axes have shown to deliver excellent software over the decades (and awful stuff too!)."

CoinDesk reports that Binance "temporarily paused bitcoin withdrawals Sunday morning U.S. time as the Bitcoin blockchain became overwhelmed with pending transactions and sky-high fees." The company resumed withdrawals within two hours of its initial Twitter posting about the withdrawals.

On-chain data shows that there are nearly 400,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions, which is higher than anything seen during the bull runs of 2018 and 2021. The average transaction fee has also doubled since March, pushing it to a two-year high. The current transaction fee is just over $8, a 309% change from a year ago.
In an earlier CoinDesk article, an executive at Luxor Technologies, a full-stack Bitcoin mining pool, blamed the rising fees on the adoption of the new BRC-20 token standard, a new way to "inscribe" additional data during transactions. But meanwhile, an anonymous reader shared another report from Mashable about Binance: Bloomberg reported that the crypto exchange (currently the world's largest) is facing a U.S. Department of Justice probe over possibly allowing Russians to move money in a way that would violate U.S. sanctions... It's worth noting that no formal accusation has been made against Binance, as this is just a probe. It may be some time before accusations manifest — if they manifest at all. In 2021, Binance was under a similar investigation related to possible money laundering.
But another Reuters article adds that Bloomberg's sources "also said that Binance is discussing the possibility of settling with the Department of Justice regarding previous allegations that the exchange was also used to move money to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran."

And elsewhere, Reuters reports: Israel has seized around 190 crypto accounts at crypto exchange Binance since 2021 , including two it said were linked to Islamic State and dozens of others it said were owned by Palestinian firms connected to the Islamist Hamas group, documents released by the country's counter-terror authorities show...

In a blog post after its publication, Binance said that Reuters was "deliberately leaving out critical facts." The exchange has been "working closely with international counter-terrorism authorities" on the seizures, Binance said. "With regard to the specific organizations mentioned in the article, it's important to clarify that bad actors don't register accounts under the names of their criminal enterprises," it said...

Under Israeli law, the country's defense minister can order the seizure and confiscation of assets that the ministry deems related to terrorism... The seizures by Israel's National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing highlight how governments are targeting crypto companies in their efforts to prevent illegal activity. Binance, founded in 2017 by CEO Changpeng Zhao, says on its website it reviews information requests from governments and law enforcement agencies on a case-by-case basis, disclosing information as legally required.

Binance has also said it checks users for connections to terrorism and has "continued to invest tremendous resources to enhance its compliance program," it told U.S. senators in March in response to their requests for information on Binance's regulatory compliance and finances.

The Today show's food reporter delivers a strange report on a viral AI-generated ad "for an imaginary pizza place called 'Pepperoni Hug Spot'."

Everything looks slightly ... off. Generated by AI, the audience is reminded constantly through the uncanny valley that the people aren't real — and neither is the pizza. "Cheese, pepperoni, vegetable, and more secret things," says the voiceover, which is also artificially generated... "Knock, knock, who's there? Pizza magic," the AI narrator says after a delivery driver (whose steering column is on the left side of his car) is shown delivering a pizza.

"Eat Pepperoni Hug Spot pizza. Your tummy say 'Thank you.' Your mouth say, 'Mmm,'" the ad continues while showing a trio of women eating pizza in the oddest possible fashion, complete with bizarre cheese pulls and facial contortions out of a food-based nightmare. "Pepperoni Hug Spot: Like family, but with more cheese..."

Using AI technologies Runway Gen2, Chat GPT4, Eleven Labs, Midjourney and Soundraw AI, the creator was able to produce the background music, voiceover, graphics, video and even generate the script for the ad. "I used Adobe After Effects to combine all the elements, adding title cards, transitions, and graphics," he adds... Seeing it spread, he whipped up a website that fit the uncanny vibe of the commercial and even created merch including hats and T-shirts.

"I figured I should capitalize on my 15 minutes of internet fame, right?" he jokes.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk "simply responded with an exploding head emoji."

And Pizza Hut's official Twitter account posted their reaction: "My heebies have been jeebied."

UPDATE: Saturday Pizza Hut Canada "transformed" one of its restaurants into the restaurant from the commercial, emblazoning the logo for Pepperoni Hug Spot onto its boxes, employee t-shirts, and the sign outside. There's two videos on the official Instagram feed for Pizza Hut Canada (which for the occasion changed its tagline to "Like family, but with more cheese.")

One video closes by promising the pizza does, indeed, contain "secret things."

This year's Kentucky Derby was won by a 15-to-1 longshot named Mage, reports sports magazine the Athletic. It was only the horse's third race — but the story gets even stranger: Mage is owned by a collective of horse racing fans that doesn't follow your standard ownership structure. Fans can purchase shares of a horse for as little as $50. It's a publicly owned racehorse. Mage has 391 owners on the Commonwealth app. Many were at the 2023 Kentucky Derby wearing Mage hats and they were shown on NBC's lead up to the Kentucky Derby.
The Commonwealth app even tried to arrange watch parties for the horse race across the country. Shareholders own 25% of the racehorse, reports Sporting News: Although horses are the most common commodity, there are golfers on the app as well, specifically Joey Vrzich and Cooper Dossey, whom it says are "coming Spring 2023." Commonwealth has a partnership with WinStar Farm, a premiere breeder of thoroughbreds... "Together we are going to revolutionize the ownership experience and give the world access to horses that were once unavailable to the public," Brian Doxtator, CEO of Commonwealth said, per the collective's website.

According to Action Network's Darren Rovell, Commonwealth owners will be paid out $94.52 per share (prior to taxes) for the win.
Before the race the Athletic sports magazine asked seven experts for their picks — and only one of them had even mentioned Mage. (The Athletic's senior sports betting editor correctly picked Mage and "Angel of Empire" to finish somewhere in the top three positions.) But just for fun, the Athletic also asked three AI chatbots — and none of them picked the winner: Bing AI: That's a tough question. I don't have a personal preference, but based on the odds and the past performances, I think Forte has a good chance of winning. He has been very consistent and impressive in his races, and he has a top trainer and jockey. He also has a favorable post position at No. 14, which gives him some room to maneuver and avoid traffic. But as I said, anything can happen in the Kentucky Derby, and there are many other talented horses in the field. It will be an exciting race to watch.


Google Bard: I like the chances of Tapit Trice to win the 2023 Kentucky Derby. He is the second-lowest odds horse at 5-1, and has won twice and finished second twice in six career races. He has one of the best pedigrees a horse could ask for, being sired by Justify, the 2018 Triple Crown winner. He is also coming off an impressive showing in the 2023 Blue Grass Stakes, where he finished second just barely behind Verifying.

Here are some other horses that I like to finish in the money... The Kentucky Derby is always a tough race to predict, but I think these horses have a good chance of winning or finishing in the money. [Bard then listed five more of the 18 horses — one of which ultimately finished third.]


Chat GPT: As an artificial intelligence language model, I don't have personal opinions or preferences. However, based on the current information I have, I cannot accurately predict the winner of the Kentucky Derby. Horse racing involves many variables, including the skill of the jockey, the health and performance of the horse, and even the weather conditions on race day. The outcome of any given race is always uncertain and subject to chance. It's important to note that gambling can be risky, and I don't encourage it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Insider: Employees at Apple's first unionized store in Towson, Maryland are pushing for a contract that includes the introduction of tipping. The proposed system would allow customers to tip store workers in increments of 3%, 5%, or a customized amount for in-store credit card transactions. It's part of a broader list of economic proposals as the union heads into negotiation with Apple. Bloomberg first reported the details of the proposals Wednesday. The employees at the Towson store organized as the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees in June when they voted to be represented by The International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers.

CORE's Twitter account outlined some of the proposals in a thread on Thursday, where it acknowledged the tipping system might be a "little controversial." "A big ask from our team when preparing for negotiations was to include some sort of profit-sharing or bonus structure," the union said in the thread. "We thought a lot about the easiest way to accomplish this and we thought adopting a model already used by other workers who provide services to their community might be the simplest to implement." The union also noted that "all monies collected through this manner would be dispersed to members of the bargaining unit biweekly based on any hours worked." Other proposals for negotiation with Apple include expanding Apple's list of paid holidays, increasing vacation time for full-time and part-time employees, and offering wellness leave.

They're also asking Apple to double pay for staffers who work over 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week, double overtime weekend pay, increased pay for first-aid certified workers, and offering a maximum of 34 weeks of severance pay after layoffs. "We realize that this is a negotiation, and these are initial proposals," said a union representative. "Our goal is and always has been to bring back an acceptable contract for the membership to ratify."

Gmail is starting to show more ads on mobile devices and the web. "Starting on mobile, we've observed that Google is now showing ads within your inbox's 'Updates' filter," reports 9to5Google. "That automatic filter is designed to capture emails regarding orders, select promotions, billing statements, and more. Now, Gmail is starting to show two ads at the top of the 'Updates' tab, just like it does on the other tabs." From the report: Beyond that, it also appears that Gmail is starting to mix its ads on desktop throughout the list of emails under Gmail tabs -- they're at least not showing in the main inbox. Dozens of reports on Twitter show the change just in the past two days, though we haven't been able to replicate it in our own inbox. Some users also report seeing more ads in general, instead of the two that Google would typically show.

There doesn't appear to be any new setting to change the placement of ads in the inbox lists, and it's not even clear if this is a change that Google is rolling out to all users. In any case, though, the overwhelming opinion seems to be negative regarding the change -- which is fully understandable.

Following the announcement of the bill in March, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele signed a law today eliminating income, property, capital gains, and other tariffs on technology innovations. Watcher Guru reports: The announcement reinforces El Salvador's perspective as a haven for technology development. Additionally, Bukele stated that the new act protects "technology innovations, software and app programming, AI, computer, and communications hardware manufacturing."

The Innovations and Technology Manufacturing Incentives Act will likely attract tech developments to the country. Moreover, the elimination of taxes presents an economic benefit to a host of companies. Conversely, El Salvador continues to maintain its commitment to a variety of tech innovations that are being developed.

Discord is making "big changes" to how identities work on the platform, a move that will force you to change your username. From a report: Up until now, the company has appended four-digit tags to identities as a way to distinguish people with the same username. However, the new system will give everyone a unique username, much like Twitter, Instagram and other services. "The whole point of these changes is that we want to make it a lot easier for you and all the new users coming to Discord to connect and hang out with friends," co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote in a blog post. "We know that your username and identity are important, and we understand that some of you may not like this change and disagree with it." The original aim with the four-digit tags was to allow you to choose any username you wanted, but it has now become "technical debt," according to Discord. The company said that the usernames are "too complicated or obscure" for people to remember.

In a policy reversal, Starlink no longer plans to charge data overage fees to standard residential users who exceed 1TB of monthly usage. Ars Technica reports: When SpaceX's Starlink division first announced the data cap in November 2022, it said that residential customers would get 1TB of "priority access data" each month. After using 1TB, customers could keep accessing the Internet at slower (but unspecified) speeds or pay $0.25 per gigabyte for "additional priority access." This was originally supposed to take effect in December, but Starlink delayed the change to February and then to April.

But now, Starlink's list of support FAQs no longer mentions the residential data cap and the current version of the fair use policy says that standard service plan users have unlimited data. The previous version of the Starlink fair use policy described the 1TB residential cap and optional $0.25-per-gigabyte overage fees. Starlink sent an email to users that said, "Good news! Your Starlink subscription will remain unlimited and will no longer be deprioritized after 1TB of data use." Nathan Owens, a Netflix engineer who frequently tweets about Starlink, posted a screenshot of the email yesterday.

Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief technology officer of Coinbase Global, said he closed out what appeared to be a losing bet that Bitcoin would rise to $1 million within 90 days. From a report: Srinivasan said he gave $1 million to two organizations, including Bitcoin Core development team at researcher Chaincode Labs, as well as paying $500,000 to someone who goes by James Medlock on Twitter, and who won the wager. The goal of the bet, Srinivasan reiterated in a Twitter post and a short video Tuesday, was to show that fiat currencies such as the dollar are in trouble, and that those troubles will push Bitcoin's price up. At $28,710, Bitcoin is about 10% up from when Srinivasan accepted the bet on March 17. "The reason that I did that is I wanted to tell you in a provable way that there's something wrong in the economy and the state isn't telling you about it," Srinivasan said in the video, recounting troubles with US banks, sovereign debt and other potential issues. "That is what I am doing at my own expense, I am raising public alarm."

Canadian singer-songwriter Grimes went viral late last month when she invited her fans to create music using her voice, stating that should would split 50% of royalties for any successful AI-generated song. Now, the artist has unveiled an AI voice software, called Elf.Tech, to make it even easier for users to deepfake her voice for their own AI songs. Pitchfork reports: Artists can commercially release the results in exchange for half of any master-recording royalties. Grimes announced a pair of new songs, "Music for Machines" and "I Wanna Be Software," in tandem with the launch, though their release date has not been set. In a Twitter thread about the software, Grimes asked users to "be tasteful" but said she would only block extreme uses, such as an AI Grimes "Nazi anthem" ("unless it's somehow in jest a la The Producers I guess"). "Baby murder songs" are also off the menu.

Through Elf.Tech, Grimes has also shared a demo of her collaborative remake of Richie Hawtin's Plastikman track "Passage (Out)." Find it in the "Bounces" folder on the website. You can also access stems to train your own Grimes AI. The project is powered by the generative AI Triniti.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The New York Police Department (NYPD) and New York City's self-proclaimed computer geek of a mayor are urging resident car owners to equip their vehicles with an Apple AirTag. During a press conference on Sunday, Mayor Eric Adams announced the distribution of 500 free AirTags to New Yorkers, saying the technology would aid in reducing the city's surging car theft numbers. Adams held the press conference at the 43rd precinct in the Bronx, where he said there had been 200 instances of grand larceny of autos. An NYPD official said that in New York City, 966 Hyundais and Kias have been stolen this year thus far, already surpassing 2022's 819 total. The NYPD's public crime statistics tracker says there have been 4,492 vehicle thefts this year, a 13.3 percent increase compared to the same period last year and the largest increase among NYC's seven major crime categories.

Adams, as the city did when announcing litigation against Kia and Hyundai on April 7, largely blamed the rise in car thefts on Kia and Hyundai, which he said are "leading the way" in stolen car brands. Hyundais and Kias were the subjects of the Kia Challenge TikTok trend that encouraged people to jack said vehicles with a mere USB-A cable. The topic has graduated way beyond a social media fad and into a serious concern. [...] Adams was adamant grand larceny auto numbers were dragging the city's overall crime numbers up and urged New Yorkers to "participate" in the fight against car theft by using an AirTag. NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said users who report a stolen vehicle equipped with an AirTag will see the police use "drones, our StarChase technology & good old fashion police work to safely recover your stolen car."

"Help us help you, get an AirTag," he tweeted.

When Intel debuts its forthcoming Meteor Lake client processors, the company may drop its iconic "i" CPU branding and add a new moniker. Chipzilla today told The Register "We are making brand changes as we're at an inflection point in our client roadmap in preparation for the upcoming launch of our Meteor Lake processors. We will provide more details regarding these exciting changes in the coming weeks." From the report: The Register asked Intel about branding after semiconductor analyst Dylan Patel on Monday tweeted "Imagine you're losing market share when you've been monopoly for decades, and your bright idea is to burn all brand recognition to the ground!" "That's Intel's plan by removing the 'i' in i7 i5 i3. All the decades brand recognition being lit on fire for no reason!"

Patel labelled the rebranding a "horrible very short sighted move" that won't fix Intel's woes and "will cause more harm than good, as many buyers know + recognize the i7 i5 branding, they won't once it's changed." "The new branding sounds bad with ultra strewn about + confusing scheme."

Patel's mention of "Ultra" branding appears to be a reference to this benchmark result for game Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation which lists a processor called "Intel Core Ultra 5 1003H".

In October professional poker player Garrett Adelstein lost to a relative newcomer. Last month 15,000 viewers tuned in for his first new public interview, Poker News reports. Adelstein "reiterated his confidence that he was cheated," and said he will not fund the $135,000 the newcomer gave hiim as a peace offering. [Newcomer Robbi Jade Lew] denied cheating and Hustler's third-party investigation concluded there was "no evidence of wrongdoing." Early in the two-hour interview, Polk asked his guest if he still feels the same about what went down on that memorable evening. "In essence, I stand completely by the statement I made. I think it's extremely likely that I was cheated," the high-stakes pro responded... Adelstein said that Lew "has a lot of balls" to return to live-stream poker after, as he claims, cheating him out of a massive pot...

Over the past six months, numerous poker fans have called for Adelstein to return [the $135,000] to, as they believe, its rightful owner. He instead donated it to a charity. But still many believe the right decision is for him to give it back to Lew. Polk asked him if he would do so. "No, I will not be refunding Robbi the money, period. I am extremely confident I was cheated in this hand," Adelstein defiantly stated. Adelstein then pleaded with those who are on "Team Robbi" to put themselves in his shoes and and think about how they'd react if they felt they were cheated at the poker table.
The next week — on April 1st — Poker News jokingly reported that Robbi Jade Lew had published a new book titled If I Did It..

The April Fool's day satire quotes Robbi Jade Lew as saying "I thought it would be fun to write a book about how I would have cheated if I'd actually done it. Which I didn't...."

Clubhouse, the audio app that peaked in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, is laying off more than half of its employees. Axios reports: CEO Paul Davison tweeted that the move was about forming a smaller team focused "relentlessly on product," rather than because of the economic environment. He added it wasn't a financial decision and the San Francisco-based company has "plenty of runway."

No specifics on layoff numbers, but a Clubhouse spokesperson says that company headcount never surpassed 100. Clubhouse raised around $300 million in total venture capital funding (most recently in 2021 led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $4 billion valuation).

In a memo sent to employees, Clubhouse said it would provide those impacted with salaries through April and four months paid severance, accelerated vesting, health insurance through the end of August and help with possible immigration issues.

After security researchers criticized Google for not including end-to-end encryption with Authenticator's account-syncing update, the company announced "plans to offer E2EE" in the future. "Right now, we believe that our current product strikes the right balance for most users and provides significant benefits over offline use," writes Google product manager Christiaan Brand on Twitter. "However, the option to use the app offline will remain an alternative for those who prefer to manage their backup strategy themselves." The Verge reports: Earlier this week, Google Authenticator finally started giving users the option to sync two-factor authentication codes with their Google accounts, making it much easier to sign into accounts on new devices. While this is a welcome change, it also poses some security concerns, as hackers who break into someone's Google account could potentially gain access to a trove of other accounts as a result. If the feature supported E2EE, hackers and other third parties, including Google, wouldn't be able to see this information.

Security researchers Mysk highlighted some of these risks in a post on Twitter, noting that "if there's ever a data breach or if someone obtains access to your Google Account, all of your 2FA secrets would be compromised." They added that Google could potentially use the information linked to your accounts to serve personalized ads and also advised users not to use the syncing feature until it supports E2EE. Brand pushed back against the criticism, stating that while Google encrypts "data in transit, and at rest, across our products, including in Google Authenticator," applying E2EE comes at the "cost of enabling users to get locked out of their own data without recovery."

Thelasko writes: Renowned data journalist, Nate Silver, announced he will be leaving the company as soon as his contract expires. Although Disney owns the FiveThirtyEight brand, it is believed that Silver retains ownership of the site's algorithms. "ABC News remains dedicated to data journalism with a core focus on politics, the economy and enterprise reporting -- this streamlined structure will allow us to be more closely aligned with our priorities for the 2024 election and beyond," an ABC News spokesperson said in a statement. "We are grateful for the invaluable contributions of the team members who will be departing the organization and know they will continue to make an important impact on the future of journalism."

According to a recent Twitter post from Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, the robotaxi service is now operating all day in San Francisco. The post says we will soon see Cruise "open up full operations in other cities," which may soon include Dallas, Texas, according to a recent job listing. From the report: According to a recent LinkedIn post from Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, the robotaxi network is now running 24/7 rides across San Francisco, beginning with employees. As The Kilowatts points out on Twitter, nonemployees in the San Francisco area are still limited to about one-third of the city between f 10:00 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. In his post, Vogt said that in accordance with safety policies, around-the-clock public rides will roll out "very soon."

Cruise is a robotaxi startup founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 2013. In the last decade, the company (along with plenty of support from GM) has made tremendous progress in its home state of California, where it continues to try and expand. Services that began in San Francisco have since grown to Phoenix, Arizona, and, most recently, Austin, Texas. In February, the Cruise president, CEO, and cofounder, Kyle Vogt, shared that the company had surpassed one million miles driven without anyone behind the wheel. In many ways, the city by the bay has become a proving ground for Cruise's electric robotaxis, and its hilly, congested terrain will act as a testing site for yet another major milestone -- around-the-clock robotaxi operations.