Friday’s top tech news: 1080p but better
Friday’s top tech news: 1080p but better
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External Link 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]
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Feb 24, 2023, 2:00 PM UTCCasey Newton and Zoe Schiffer
Twitter shut off its internal Slack, and now ‘everyone is barely working’
Jira went down, Slack’s gone, and site performance is degraded. What’s next?
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Feb 24, 2023, 1:00 PM UTCAndrew J. Hawkins
Meet the couple that built an EV rock crawler for King of the Hammers
Electrified powertrains are not favored by many fans of rock-crawling, off-roading events like California’s King of the Hammers. But Keith and Melissa Silva pushed themselves and their rig to the limit at this year’s Every Man Challenge.
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Feb 24, 2023, 12:00 PM UTCVictoria Song
What is going on with Fitbit?
Longtime Fitbit users are beyond fed up with server outages, nerfed products, and Google sunsetting their favorite social feature.
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Feb 24, 2023, 10:46 AM UTCJess Weatherbed
Popular video editing app LumaFusion now widely available for Android and ChromeOS
The award-winning professional video editor for Apple devices has been rebuilt to get the most out of Android and ChromeOS hardware.
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Feb 24, 2023, 7:00 AM UTCThomas Ricker
Ampler Axel e-bike review: this is the way
After a year-long struggle, the boutique maker of stealthy electric bikes finally gets it right.
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Feb 24, 2023, 3:00 AM UTCCharles Pulliam-Moore
Creed III brings Adonis’ story full circle by trading in one set of daddy issues for another
Michael B. Jordan’s directorial debut feels like an experimental remake of Rocky V that finally lets Adonis Creed step outside of his mentor’s shadow.
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External Link Meta’s next big round of layoffs are coming.From the newest edition of my Command Line newsletter, which just hit inboxes for paid subscribers:
Meta is planning another round of layoffs, I can unfortunately confirm. Leadership has been coy both internally and externally about what is coming, but I’m told that the current plan is to announce more cuts in March after last year’s performance bonuses are paid out. Given what I’ve heard about plans to cut certain orgs by double-digit percentages, I wouldn’t be surprised if the total number is somewhere in the ballpark of the last layoff, which was about 11,000 people or 13 percent of the company.
Subscribe to Command Line[The Verge]
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Feb 23, 2023, 11:58 PM UTCMitchell Clark
YouTube says it isn’t messing with 1080p — ‘1080p Premium’ is higher-bitrate
The company also says it’s not changing ‘the existing quality offerings for 1080p.’
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Feb 23, 2023, 11:29 PM UTCAsh Parrish
The biggest news from PlayStation’s State of Play
Featuring new trailers for Street Fighter 6, Baldur’s Gate 3, Tchia, and more.
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