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Richard Lawler

Richard Lawler

Senior News Editor

Senior News Editor

    More From Richard Lawler

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Snoop Dogg’s Death Row relaunch managed to get one thing right.

    It’s not the updated version of the label’s iconic prisoner logo (Pen & Pixel could do it so much better).

    And it’s definitely not the plan for the brand — purchased by Snoop earlier this year — to have a “multi-category cultural platform across music, fashion, entertainment, and cannabis, all united by the blockchain for a new generation.”

    But whoever made sure to have DJ Battlecat handling this Death Row Cannabis teaser music instead of going for a cringe BAYC tie-in deserves a raise — paid in real money, not crypto.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    An incomplete list of current crypto scandals.

    I think that’s everything for now, but follow our stream for more updates.

    Bloomberg digs into the $546 million loan Sam Bankman-Fried used to buy a piece of Robinhood.

    CNBC follows $200 million diverted by FTX to invest in crypto companies.

    NBCNews looked at North Dimension, a fake electronics retailer that somehow helped SBF redirect money wired in by FTX customers.

    Investors in the Winklevoss’ twins Gemini Trust Earn say they were wiped out when it abruptly shut down after FTX folded, and now they’re suing.

    And someone leaked API keys for thousands of crypto traders who used a service called 3Commas. CoinDesk reports dozens of users have lost millions in hacks over the last few months, with 3Commas claiming they must have been victims of phishing attacks.

    Oh, and the feds are investigating the $372 million in crypto that conveniently went missing just after FTX shut down.

    FTX Bankruptcy: US DOJ Probes How $372 Million Vanished in Hack After Filing

    [Bloomberg.com]

    Twitter’s recovering from a few hours of glitchinessTwitter’s recovering from a few hours of glitchiness
    Mitchell Clark and Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Maybe this would look better inside an actual car.

    As usual, LG Display isn’t waiting until the show starts, or even the new year, to talk about what it’s bringing to CES 2023.

    This, uh, free-flowing P-OLED and LTPS (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Silicon) LCD display concept (shown below) imagines a bend in the touchscreen splitting climate settings from the main UI.

    Besides the screens, LG Display is also bringing its “Thin Actuator Sound Solution,” a grill-less speaker made with “film-type exciter technology” that’s the size of a passport and 2.5mm thick. It can be installed in places like your car’s “dashboard, headliner, pillar, and headrests.”

    Your move, Sony.

    Mock-up of a car interior, with a massive LCD screen stretching lengthwise along the dashboard, plus a center-mounted tablet-like touchscreen, with the lower third bent for a more vertical orientation where touch climate controls appear.
    LG Display’s Automotive Displays at CES 2023
    Image: LG Display
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Avatar: The Way of Water’s billion-dollar haul is impressive, but there’s still a long way to go.

    Disney announced that Jim Cameron’s sequel pulled in $1 billion at the box office in 14 days, the fastest any movie has done that in 2022.

    It’s already surpassed Jurassic World: Dominion for number two on this year’s list, justifying the staying power of Avatar more than a decade later, despite anyone’s doubts.

    Still, Julia Alexander, director of strategy at Parrot Analytics and a former reporter at The Verge, points out that matching its $2.7 billion predecessor will be tough even with such a hot start.

    Avatar: The Way of Water is a gorgeous rehash of all the first film’s triumphs and failures

    Charles Pulliam-Moore
    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Amazon Prime Sports?

    Disney will tout its ESPN Plus bundle, Apple TV Plus has MLS and baseball, and Google / YouTube just snagged NFL Sunday Ticket, but Amazon has plenty of sports content too, and now The Information reports it’s building a standalone sports streaming app.

    The self-contained sports app would declutter Amazon’s main Prime Video app and better highlight the company’s sports offerings, which include exclusive rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football franchise, as well as some Premier League soccer matches in the U.K. and Yankees baseball games in the New York region.

    Amazon Plans a Stand-Alone Sports App as Andy Jassy Doubles Down on Prime Video

    [The Information]

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    If you think about it, bank robbery could be described as a “highly profitable trading strategy.”

    Reuters reports that authorities in Puerto Rico have arrested Avraham Eisenberg for the October incident referenced in his tweet below.

    By his own admission, he used a cryptocurrency protocol for the MNGO token in a way that flattened the Mango Markets exchange, draining $110 million before negotiating the return of $67 million to Mango to make its users whole.

    While some might say this is legal because “code is law,” the FBI apparently disagrees. Eisenberg faces charges of commodities fraud and commodities manipulation, which you can read in the now-unsealed complaint (pdf).

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Inside the Cadillac of EVs.

    A good way to get a good feel for the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq is this quick video tour guided by Andrew Hawkins.

    Cadillac’s first Ultium-powered EV gets points for a dazzling moonroof, although its gear stalk and door handles weren’t as amazing.

    From the full review:

    Overall, the Lyriq is a long-legged, compellingly priced, sumptuously appointed EV draped with enough high-tech features to make any Tesla owner reconsider their life choices.

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    Workers at Activision Blizzard’s Proletariat studio are organizing.

    Less than a month after a second group of Activision Blizzard workers voted to unionize, the Communications Workers of America announced the latest group filing for a union representation election.

    The 57 workers in the unit include animators, designers, engineers, producers and quality assurance workers. Earlier this year, quality assurance workers at Activision’s Raven Software studio in Wisconsin and Blizzard Albany won their union elections, despite Activision Blizzard’s repeated attempts to prevent workers from voting.

    “Everyone in the video game industry knows Activision Blizzard’s reputation for creating a hostile work environment, so earlier this year, when we heard that Blizzard was planning to acquire Proletariat, we started to discuss how we could protect the great culture we have created here,” said Dustin Yost, a Software Engineer at Proletariat. “By forming a union and negotiating a contract, we can make sure that we are able to continue doing our best work and create innovative experiences at the frontier of game development.”

    Proletariat Workers Become Third Group of Activision Blizzard Workers to Form Union with Communications Workers of America

    [Communications Workers of America]

    Richard Lawler
    Richard Lawler
    The new Benoit Blanc movie was number one on Netflix over the weekend.

    Rian Johnson is “pissed off” that the Glass Onion official title is tagged with “Knives Out” at the end, but a lot of you seem to have watched it anyway.

    I loved it, and Andrew Webster’s review is a pretty good indication of why. Still, through three days, The Hollywood Reporter notes it hasn’t cracked the top five debuts as tracked by Netflix’s viewing hours metric.

    Netflix:

    After only three days, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was the #1 film around the world and with 35M household views (82.1M view hours divided by 2.3 hours of runtime) from over 93 countries, everyone was trying to solve the mystery and figure out whodunit.

    Glass Onion solidifies Knives Out as the next great mystery franchise

    Andrew Webster

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