Richard Lawler
Green light.
This year’s Mobile World Congress event is in full swing, with news from Google (the new Keep widget seems useful), Nokia, and others.
You can stay tuned in to all of the updates with our event storystream.
Richard Lawler
Senior News Editor
Senior News Editor
More From Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
This week on The Vergecast we talked about Section 230.
On the latest episode (you can find the audio feeds here) TC, Nilay, and Alex broke down this week’s Supreme Court hearings that could significantly impact the internet.
After a break and a lineup change, we also dig into the new fraud charges filed against Sam Bankman-Fried, Spotify’s AI DJ (I don’t trust it), the Microsoft vs. Sony battle over Activision, and Tesla’s new California engineering HQ.
Richard Lawler
Green light.
It has been one year since the day Russia invaded Ukraine.
Reflections of War: A Year in Ukraine
[Associated Press]
Richard Lawler
Remember Ozy Media, the company with splashy New York events, star guests, high-profile writers, and no readers?
Its 2021 shutdown followed this NYT article (called a “hit job” at the time by founder and CEO Carlos Watson) exposing the whole thing as a sham, reporting COO Samir Rao pretended to be a YouTube executive while on a call with potential investors.
Now Rao has pleaded guilty while Watson has been arrested, with prosecutors calling him a con man whose lies didn’t stop there:
Watson directed Ozy’s then-Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to send the bank a fake signed contract between Ozy and the cable network purporting to be for the second season. When the then-CFO refused, Rao, with Watson’s approval, sent the fake contract — which contained terms favorable to Ozy and a forged signature — to the bank, copying the then-CFO.
Later that day, the then-CFO emailed Watson and Rao to say that she was resigning effective immediately. She explained, “this . . . is illegal. This is fraud. This is forging someone’s signature with the intent of getting an advance from a publicly traded bank.” She continued, “To be crystal clear, what you see as a measured risk — I see as a felony.”
Ozy Media and Its Founder Carlos Watson Indicted in a Years-Long Multi-Million Dollar Fraud Scheme
[U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York]
Richard Lawler
Bill Gates snags a 3.76 percent stake in Heineken’s parent company.
His shares are reportedly worth about 880 million euros ($936 million). Despite being “not a big beer drinker,” it’s a 2007 investment in another brewery, Femsa, that has brought Heineken into the Gates investment fold.
It’s an interesting arrangement, considering the Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation-sponsored study released last year laying out both potential health risks (particularly for people under 40) and benefits from alcohol consumption:
These findings highlight the need for tailored guidelines that discourage alcohol consumption among young people, as well as alcohol control policies and interventions that are targeted especially towards young males.
Richard Lawler
If you need to use AI to respond to a tragedy, maybe it’s better to say nothing at all.
The Vanderbilt Hustler reports the school’s Peabody Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion is apologizing after sending a message regarding the shooting at Michigan State University that was “paraphrased” from OpenAI’s ChatGPT model (via Gizmodo).
The generic-sounding email lacks any kind of personal touch, and responses to it reflect that, as noted by this quote from Vanderbilt student Laith Kayat:
Deans, provosts, and the chancellor: Do more. Do anything. And lead us into a better future with genuine, human empathy, not a robot
Image: Peabody Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)
