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Do You Use Coinbase or Venmo? Join the Plaid Lawsuit

Andrew Orr ·

Join the Plaid lawsuit if you’ve ever used Coinbase, Venmo, Robinhood, or dozens of other apps.

Plaid, a middleman connecting bank accounts to other fintech services, says it’s been used by tens of millions in North America. According to the settlement website, Plaid allegedly obtained “more financial data than was needed” and set up log-in pages that deceptively mimicked those of the user’s own bank account, but fed the credentials directly to itself. For its part, Plaid has denied any wrongdoing and argued it was transparent about its practices.

I filed a claim and look forward to getting my US$5.00.

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Someone Reverse Engineered 'Wordle', Here are the Secrets

Andrew Orr ·

Robert Reichel has reverse engineered Worldle and posted a write-up on his blog. It includes a list of words the game uses.

At this point, we’ve done enough digging to know how Wordle is choosing the word of the day. We know that Wordle uses a client-side date-based algorithm to determine which word to use from a static wordlist. Each day is predictable so long as we have all of the code pieced together.

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YouTuber Ruben Sim Must Pay Roblox Over 'Cybermob'

Andrew Orr ·

The Roblox Corporation sued YouTuber Ruben Sim over leading a “cybermob” on its platform and terrorizing players, many of whom are kids.

The original ban, according to Roblox’s lawyers, was issued after the YouTube creator harassed other players using racist and homophobic slurs, allegedly sexually harassed users, and uploaded photos of Adolph Hitler to Roblox. Sim disputed this characterization in a YouTube video uploaded last week.

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Congress Explores Blockchain Energy Usage From Mining

Andrew Orr ·

On January 20, the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the U.S. Congress House Energy and Commerce Committee discussed blockchain energy usage and other concepts related to mining and consensus.

Representatives then took to the floor with statements and questions. A few used their time for partisan attacks and political grandstanding, yet most made an honest effort to ask questions that either tackled the energy-related issues at the core of the hearing or sought broader context on the uses and potential applications of blockchain technology.

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Federal Reserve Releases Paper on Digital Dollar, Seeks Public Comment

Andrew Orr ·

The Federal Reserve has released a 40-page paper [PDF] on its study of a digital dollar. It seeks public comment as it takes no position at this time.

Instead, it provides an exhaustive look at benefits such as speeding up the electronic payments system at a time when financial transactions around the world already are highly digitized. Some of the downside issues the report discusses are financial stability risks and privacy protection while guarding against fraud and other illegal issues.

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Peloton Pauses Production of Bikes, Treadmills Over Decreasing Demand

Andrew Orr ·

Peloton is pausing production of its bikes and treadmills in February-March, according to internal documents obtained by CNBC.

Peloton has essentially guessed wrong about how many people would be buying its products, after so much demand was pulled forward during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s now left with thousands of cycles and treadmills sitting in warehouses or on cargo ships, and it needs to reset its inventory levels.

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Twitter NFT Profile Photos Roll Out to iOS Subscribers

Andrew Orr ·

Twitter NFT profile photos are rolling out to members of the Twitter Blue subscription in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

At launch, Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, MetaMask, Ledger Live, Argent, and Trust Wallet are supported. After authenticating, you’ll select the NFT you want to showcase. Twitter says that, currently, JPEG and PNG NFTs minted on the Ethereum (ERC-721 or ERC-1155 tokens) can be used as NFT Profile Pictures.