Richard Lawler

Google Pixel 8 phones manufactured in India will start to roll out next year. Google’s move is similar to what we’ve seen from Apple, which started producing iPhones there in 2017 as it diversified its production line beyond China. This year, for the first time, it had India-manufactured iPhone 15s for sale at launch.

It’s been almost a year since Elon Musk took over Twitter and, well, a lot of things have happened since then. Now, after previously diving into the backstories of dating apps, Meta, and Tesla, the Vox Media podcast Land of the Giants launches a new season about Twitter, its richest user, and “why Twitter’s cultural and political influence far exceeds its size,” hosted by Peter Kafka.

A year ago, the DOJ announced it recovered more than 50k Bitcoin stolen from the Silk Road market in 2012 and that James Zhong had pleaded guilty to the crime.

Kashmir Hill, author of the book Your Face Belongs to Us and “not a privacy nihilist,” spoke to Nilay on Decoder about whether or not we can do anything about the rise of a facial recognition-enabled dystopian world.

I liked the game’s new progression system, which requires players to actually drive the cars they own in order to unlock upgraded parts, but tweaks are appreciated. The 1.0 update released today makes it much easier to unlock upgrades, with Turn10 saying that now “most” parts should be able to be unlocked within a single Builders’ Cup series.

Netflix isn’t the only one with sports streaming news — NBC Sports has announced SportsEngine Play, which offers free live streams of youth and amateur sporting events.

CoinDesk notes that Binance.US just updated its terms of service, saying users can only withdraw funds in the form of stablecoins or other crypto instead of US dollars. Oh, and that US dollar funds in Binance.US wallets are not protected by FDIC insurance.

Now Samsung has another list of outlets among the 2,000 authorized service centers for its slabs and multiple foldables, with the announcement today that this fall, 35 Batteries Plus stores will have the Samsung Authorized Service Center tag, similar to its arrangements with uBreakiFix and Best Buy.

Amazon streamlined logistics for moving goods, and Amazon Web Services does the same for many operations on the internet. Now, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has announced (in a brief post not much longer than this one) a familiar approach for its Blue Ring spacecraft platform and In-Space Systems business unit, built to support missions “in medium Earth orbit out to the cislunar region and beyond.”