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Elizabeth Lopatto

Elizabeth Lopatto

Senior Reporter

Senior Reporter

    More From Elizabeth Lopatto

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Mr. Beast is “just a guy who has spent a very long time figuring out exactly how much internet traffic costs.”

    I enjoyed this deep dive by Ryan Broderick about charity for YouTube views. The creator economy is weird, y’all!

    Even weirder: the guy who apologized for viewing non-consensual deepfakes of fellow streamers. “The whole thing is a mess and the apology was a car crash and unfortunately the only real takeaway here is that this stuff isn’t going away.”

    An investment in future virality

    [www.garbageday.email]

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    How the streaming wars hugged documentaries to death.

    Subjects who expect paychecks! The loss of editorial control! Reality TV editing!

    I’ve written a little about the fuzzy line of what’s real in documentaries, but things have gotten weirder since then, as the streaming wars pumped money into the genre — and now are threatening to take that money away.

    Reality Check

    [Vulture]

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    “The problem in trucking is that drivers are incentivized to work themselves well beyond healthy limits—sometimes to death.”

    This heart-breaking story on the digital surveillance of long-haul truckers is worth your time — because trucking is a place where worker surveillance is being tested.

    And not just worker surveillance! Artificial intelligence is used, for instance, for “an array of prototypes that will likely define the future of automated oversight: biometric cameras that can monitor truckers’ eyelids for fatigue, or biometric vests that can detect a heart attack.”

    Truckers deserve better.

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Is it time to start the Intel deathwatch?

    Intel has been firing staff — and now, it’s instituting pay cuts, too. But don’t worry, the CEO will continue using cash to offer a dividend, because I guess paying off shareholders is the most important thing.

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Celsius reportedly used investor money to prop up its token price.

    Founders Alex Mashinsky and Daniel Leon also sold the token while this all was going on, according to a court-ordered report on Celsius. If you don’t have time for the full filing, Reuters summarizes its results.

    “When you look at what the banks pay, you say to yourself, ‘Somebody is lying. Either the bank is lying or Celsius is lying,’” Mashinsky said in 2021. Guess we know who it was now!

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Did you want to know more about the software that’s the excuse for jacking up rent prices?

    If you enjoyed this Curbed article about RealPage Revenue Management Software and its effect on the New York rental market, you will also enjoy this blog about its training deck. Among the slides? In ‘“Manage Lease Renewals for Property Managers,’ you can walk through how to jack up a long-time resident’s rent from $1,188 to $1,5976, roughly a 34% increase.”

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Is SBF witness tampering now? His lawyers say no.

    “Bankman-Fried’s use of Signal to reach out to the current general counsel of FTX US, who is a witness, was ‘merely an innocuous attempt to offer assistance in FTX’s bankruptcy process and does not reflect misconduct that warrants the restriction the Government proposes here,’” Bloomberg reports.

    At this point, I wonder if the government has let him out on bail just so he’ll further incriminate himself.

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Black labs really will eat anything, including Apple AirTags.

    An all-time lede on this one: “Colin Mortimer knew there was trouble when his dog Sassy started beeping.” The rest of the story is pretty great, too.

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Twitter’s payments ambitions update: applying for regulatory clearance, designing software.

    We’ve talked a little about Elon Musk’s ambitions for turning Twitter into a “super app” (and his history with risk management at PayPal) — and it looks like Musk is serious. Twitter desperately needs fresh revenue streams as advertisers flee, and the Financial Times says the hope is to complete licensing for payments “within a year.”

    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Elizabeth Lopatto
    Why does it matter that Binance is commingling customer funds?

    Bennett Tomlin of Crypto Critics Corner takes you through it and uh, it’s maybe not great. “Their entire claimed segregation of client crypto assets depends entirely on Binance having perfect, or very, very good internal accounting records,” Tomlin says.

    Yikes.