An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: IOUpay, a fintech firm that went into overdrive on a social media-backed retail trading frenzy, has plummeted in the past two months. The stock is set for more declines as the firm's newly launched buy-now-pay-later services -- which allows customers to purchase goods and then pay for them in installments -- faces intensified competition in Southeast Asia from larger Australian rival Afterpay, say analysts. IOUpay had drawn comparisons to U.S. videogame retailer GameStop after surging 6,400% in the past year as it has been the subject of several discussion threads on Reddit. The Reddit-fueled day-trading crowd turned the first quarter of 2021 into one of the wildest periods of stock market frenzy in modern history. Despite a more than 40% slump since mid-February, IOUpay remains Asia's top-performing interactive media and services stock over the past year.

The wild ride by IOUpay, which lists Standard Chartered Plc and Citigroup as its clients, began in June after it was touted by investors on Reddit. Its shares continued gaining on a "buy now, pay later" deal with Malaysian online marketplace Easystore. That partnership inked in February sparked a more than 200% rally in its stock over a three-day period. "We may see the price subdued for a long period of time as retail investors get bored waiting and sell out to find something more exciting," said Carl Capolingua, an analyst at online brokerage ThinkMarkets Australia. "The question will be if they can get traction in the Asian markets they're targeting before the bigger players come in."

The Federal Trade Commission has urged a federal judge in DC to reject Facebook's request to dismiss the FTC's high-stakes antitrust lawsuit. In a 56-page legal brief, the FTC reiterated its arguments that Facebook's profits have come from years of anticompetitive conduct. From a report: "Facebook is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the history of the world," the FTC wrote. "Facebook reaps massive profits from its [social networking] monopoly, not by offering a superior or more innovative product because it has, for nearly a decade, taken anticompetitive actions to neutralize, hinder, or deter would-be competitors." The FTC's case against Facebook focuses on two blockbuster acquisitions that Facebook made early in the last decade. In 2012, Facebook paid $1 billion for the fast-growing startup Instagram. While Instagram the company was still tiny -- it had only about a dozen employees at the time of the acquisition -- it had millions of users and was growing rapidly. Mark Zuckerberg realized it could grow into a serious rival for Facebook, and the FTC alleges Zuckerberg bought the company to prevent that from happening.

Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of the open-source blogging platform WordPress, writes: Wix, the website builder company you may remember from stealing WordPress code and lying about it, has now decided the best way to gain relevance is attacking the open source WordPress community in a bizarre set of ads. They can't even come up with original concepts for attack ads, and have tried to rip-off of Apple's Mac vs PC ads, but tastelessly personify the WordPress community as an absent, drunken father in a therapy session.

I have a lot of empathy for whoever was forced to work on these ads, including the actors, it must have felt bad working on something that's like Encyclopedia Britannica attacking Wikipedia. WordPress is a global movement of hundreds of thousands of volunteers and community members, coming together to make the web a better place. The code, and everything you put into it, belongs to you, and its open source license ensures that you're in complete control, now and forever. WordPress is free, and also gives you freedom. So if we're comparing website builders to abusive relationships, Wix is one that locks you in the basement and doesn't let you leave. I'm surprised consumer protection agencies haven't gone after them.

Wix is a for-profit company with a valuation that peaked at around 20 billion dollars, and whose business model is getting customers to pay more and more every year and making it difficult to leave or get a refund. (Don't take my word for it, look at their investor presentations.) They are so insecure that they are also the only website creator I'm aware of that doesn't allow you to export your content, so they're like a roach motel where you can check in but never check out. Once you buy into their proprietary stack you're locked in, which even their support documentation admits.

Charging is a common concern with electric vehicles. But some owners of the brand-new Mustang Mach-E have run into a peculiar problem: their electric SUVs won't start even when the main battery pack is full. From a report: That's because, The Verge has learned, there's a problem with some early Mustang Mach-E SUVs that involves how the much smaller 12-volt battery gets charged. It's the latest in a growing line of small issues that have come to light during the rollout of Ford's first long-range electric car. As is the case in other electric cars, the Mustang Mach-E keeps its 12-volt lead-acid battery topped up by essentially sipping power from the much larger lithium-ion battery pack. Based on owners' accounts across multiple forum threads, including one who spoke to The Verge, the problem is this stops happening whenever the Mustang Mach-E is plugged in to charge up the larger battery pack. That is especially an issue for owners in areas with cold weather, as Ford encourages them to leave their Mustang Mach-Es plugged in so the SUVs can use power from the grid to warm up before driving. The 12-volt battery powers many of the Mustang Mach-E's systems (since the larger battery pack is high-voltage), and so when it dies, the electric SUV cannot be started. When this happens, owners have reported the FordPass app says the vehicle is in "deep sleep" mode. Some forum members have started referring to it as the "electric brick" problem.

Fallout from Texas' statewide power outages in February continues to spread. Today, the Texas House of Representatives is scheduled to debate a bill that would require power producers to bear the costs of services that help keep the electrical grid stable. From a report: If the bill passes, it would "unfairly shift the cost of ancillary electric services exclusively onto renewable generators rather than all the beneficiaries," according to a letter written by the Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance (PREF), an industry group, and signed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Goldman Sachs, and a number of other firms. Amazon and other big tech firms have invested heavily in renewable power, seeking to spruce up their images while cutting their power bills. Costs for wind and solar have dropped precipitously in recent years, making investments in wind farms and solar plants attractive to power-hungry data center operators like Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

"It is important to note that these changes neither enhance electric reliability nor lower consumer costs," the letter states. "They appear to be premised on the assumption that renewable energy was disproportionately responsible for the state's February power outages, a thesis that has been unequivocally discredited." The bill would require the grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), to "directly assign" ancillary service costs to wind and solar power, specifically. The PREF letter counters that not only do all generators utilize ancillary services, but costs for those services have remained flat over the last decade while wind and solar have grown by more than 250 percent.

Intel is launching an artificial intelligence application that will recognize and redact hate speech in real-time. It's called Bleep, and Intel hopes it'll help with one of gaming's oldest and most intractable problems -- people can be real pieces of shit online. From a report: A video of the app shows that it will allow users to customize what kind and how much hate speech they want to see, including "Racism" and "White Nationalism" sliders that can be set to "none," "some," "most," or "all," and a separate on and off toggle for the "N-word." "While we recognize that solutions like Bleep don't erase the problem, we believe it's a step in the right direction -- giving gamers a tool to control their experience," Roger Chandler, Vice President and General Manager of Intel Client Product Solutions, said during a virtual presentation at 2021's Game Developers Conference.

According to Intel Marketing Engineer Craig Raymond, Bleep is "an end-user application that uses AI to detect and redact audio based on your user preferences." In footage of the application, Bleep presented users with a list of sliders so gamers can control the amount of hate and abuse they encounter. The list included ableism and body shaming, LGBTQ+ hate, aggression, misogyny, name-calling, racism and xenophobia, sexually explicit language, swearing, and white nationalism. As Chandler explained, Intel can't "solve" racism or the long-running and well-documented problems in gaming culture (and culture more broadly). At the same time, Bleep is techno-AI solutionism that feels pretty dystopian, pitching racism, xenophobia, and general toxicity as settings that can be tuned up and down as though they were graphics, sound, or control sliders on a video game. It is also a way of admitting defeat: if we can't stop players from being incredibly racist in chat, we can simply filter out what they say and pretend they don't exist.

Data from 500 million LinkedIn users has been scraped and is for sale online, according to a report from Cyber News. A LinkedIn spokesperson confirmed to Insider that there is a dataset of public information that was scraped from the platform. From a report: "While we're still investigating this issue, the posted dataset appears to include publicly viewable information that was scraped from LinkedIn combined with data aggregated from other websites or companies," a LinkedIn spokesperson told Insider in a statement. "Scraping our members' data from LinkedIn violates our terms of service and we are constantly working to protect our members and their data." LinkedIn has 740 million users, according to its website, so the reported data scraping of 500 million users means about two-thirds of the platform's user base could be affected. The data includes account IDs, full names, email addresses, phone numbers, workplace information, genders, and links to other social media accounts.

A second senior Australian government minister has revealed his mobile phone was hacked through the Telegram messaging app, with a media report saying the phishing scam was aimed at revealing contact details of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. From a report: Health Minister Greg Hunt's office said in an emailed statement on Thursday that "a cyber security attempt to impersonate the minister has been referred to the Australian Federal Police and investigations are underway." That follows Monday's statement by Finance Minister Simon Birmingham that he had been targeted. The Australian newspaper reported late Wednesday that the details of pro-democracy Hong Kongers were provided to someone impersonating Birmingham, with one of the recipients being asked: "Do you have any contacts in Hong Kong?" The person handed over details of Hong Kongers without realizing they were speaking to a cyber-hacker, the paper said, citing the person who it didn't identify.

General Motors is reducing production in some of its North American plants due to a global semiconductor chip shortage. From a report: The chip shortage is affecting automotive companies around the world, with semiconductors functioning as a key component for steering systems, car brakes and other automobile features. GM has temporarily closed some plants, with expected downtimes ranging from a week to several weeks. GM expects the closures will cost them between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in operating profits this year. The chip shortage stems from slowed production and manufacturing in 2020. Semiconductor chips require long lead times due to their complicated technology, resulting in a backlog of demand.

A British company is suing Microsoft for $370m in damages [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] in the English High Court, alleging that the US company is trying to crush a multibillion-dollar market in second-hand versions of its software. From a report: ValueLicensing buys pre-owned Microsoft software licences from companies that upgrade their IT or become insolvent, and then resells them across the UK and Europe. It claims on its website that its customers can save up to 70 per cent by buying used software, and points to one NHS Trust that allegedly saved $1.37 m by using Microsoft Office 2019, rather than the latest version of the office tools suite. Jonathan Horley, ValueLicensing's founder, accused Microsoft of harming competition in the used software market by persuading companies to relinquish their perpetual licences, often in exchange for discounts on Microsoft's cloud-based software, such as Office 365. "Microsoft has an incentive to move to its new cloud-based model and remove the old licences from the market so customers have no choice but to move to its subscription model," said Mr Horley, in an interview with the Financial Times.

The U.S. Commerce Department said Thursday it was adding seven Chinese supercomputing entities to a U.S. economic blacklist for assisting Chinese military efforts. From a report: The department is adding Tianjin Phytium Information Technology, Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center, Sunway Microelectronics, the National Supercomputing Center Jinan, the National Supercomputing Center Shenzhen, the National Supercomputing Center Wuxi, and the National Supercomputing Center Zhengzhou to its blacklist. The Commerce Department said the seven were "involved with building supercomputers used by China's military actors, its destabilizing military modernization efforts, and/or weapons of mass destruction programs.' The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. "Supercomputing capabilities are vital for the development of many -- perhaps almost all -- modern weapons and national security systems, such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement.

Peter Thiel is "pro-crypto" and "pro-Bitcoin maximalist," but he also thinks the cryptocurrency may be undermining America. From a report: Thiel, the venture capitalist and conservative political donor, urged the U.S. government to consider tighter regulations on cryptocurrencies in an appearance on Tuesday. The statements seemed to represent a change of heart for Thiel, who is a major investor in virtual currency ventures as well as in cryptocurriences themselves. "I do wonder whether at this point, Bitcoin should also be thought [of] in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.," Thiel said during an appearance at a virtual event held for members of the Richard Nixon Foundation. "It threatens fiat money, but it especially threatens the U.S. dollar." He added: "[If] China's long Bitcoin, perhaps from a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. should be asking some tougher questions about exactly how that works."

Apple plans to argue at a trial that developers and consumers will suffer if Epic Games succeeds in upending how the iPhone maker's app marketplace is run. From a report: Apple presented a California federal judge on Thursday with a road map of how it will push back against Epic in a high-stakes antitrust fight over how much the App Store charges developers. The filing comes ahead of a May 3 trial before the judge with no jury. In a summary of its legal arguments, Apple contends the 30% commission it charges most developers isn't anticompetitive as it's a typical fee across other mobile and online platforms. Moreover, the company argues taking a share of the revenue is justified by the billions of dollars it has invested in developing the proprietary infrastructure that underpins its App Store, including software development kits and application programming interfaces. The maker of Fortnite, which Apple removed from its store last year, accuses the iPhone maker's app store of being an illegal monopoly because developers are barred from making their iPhone and iPad apps available through their own websites. On Thursday, the game studio laid out its own arguments in the dispute, saying Apple's conduct harms innovation and allows it to profit at the expense of independent developers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: PayPal said it would achieve net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2040 as it looks for ways financial technology can prevent climate change. The payments giant also vowed to use renewable-energy sources to power its data centers by 2023, and pledged to reduce its operational greenhouse gases by 25% by 2025. The promises are part of PayPal's commitment to help limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement.

"Our climate action goes beyond our science-based targets," Sri Shivananda, PayPal's chief technology officer, said in an email. "As we continue to develop more effective and efficient payment solutions, we have an opportunity to identify financial-inclusion solutions that build greater climate resilience and maximize outcomes for underserved communities hit hardest by climate-related extreme events." PayPal said it has also been financing projects in communities where it has significant operations to address the "unavoidable climate pollution" they generate. The firm, for example, has been helping a foundation restore historically Black cemeteries in Richmond, Virginia, as a way to offset its greenhouse gas emissions. "It will take us all to succeed at creating a climate-neutral economy," Shivananda added. "We will lead on researching opportunities and bringing in partners for collaboration to advance innovative fintech solutions that prioritize climate and financial-health impact."

Sky TV, one of the largest broadcasters in the UK, has won a court injunction to prevent links to its TV shows from being illegally shared online. The interim order targets a man who moderated several TV-focused communities on Reddit while raising funds through Patreon and PayPal. TorrentFreak reports: According to an action filed by Sky in a Scottish court, Cherzo1 was the moderator of three sub-Reddits -- r/UKTVLAND, r/notapanelshow, and r/UKPanelShowsOnly -- which together had more than 51,000 subscribers. Cherzo also had a YouTube channel with more than 95,000 subscribers. According to Sky, all of these platforms were used to infringe the company's copyrights. In evidence to support its action, Sky states that Cherzo1 was motivated by money, receiving payments from fans and followers via Patreon and directly into his PayPal account. [...]

In order to curtail Cherzo1's activities, Sky asked the court to hand down an "interdict ad interim," a term used in Scotland to describe an interim injunction. The broadcaster asked the court to order Cherzo1 to stop uploading copies of broadcasts, stop posting hyperlinks to shows on Reddit and anywhere else on the Internet, and forbid him from assisting any third party to do the same. A court will grant an interim interdict if it believes there is a prima facie case against the defendant. [...] Anyone found breaching such an order could be subjected to a fine or even imprisonment.