If you want to sneak malware onto people's Android devices via the official Google Play store, it may cost you about $20,000 to do so, Kaspersky suggests. The Register reports: This comes after the Russian infosec outfit studied nine dark-web markets between 2019 and 2023, and found a slew of code and services for sale to infect and hijack the phones and tablets of Google Play users. Before cybercriminals can share their malicious apps from Google's official store, they'll need a Play developer account, and Kaspersky says those sell for between $60 and $200 each. Once someone's bought one of these accounts, they'll be encouraged use something called a loader.

Uploading straight-up spyware to the Play store for people to download and install may attract Google's attention, and cause the app and developer account to be thrown out. A loader will attempt to avoid that: it's software a criminal can hide in their otherwise innocent legit-looking app, installed from the official store, and at some convenient point, the loader will fetch and apply an update for the app that contains malicious code that does stuff like steal data or commit fraud. That update may ask for extra permissions to access the victim's files, and may need to be pulled from an unofficial store with the victim's blessing; it depends on the set up. The app may refuse to work as normal until the loader is allowed to do its thing, convincing marks into opening up their devices to crooks. These tools are more pricey, ranging from $2,000 to $20,000, depending on the complexity and capabilities required.

Would-be crims who don't want to pay thousands for a loader can pay substantially less -- between $50 and $100 -- for a binding service, which hides a malicious APK file in a legitimate application. However, these have lower successful install rates compared to loaders, so even in the criminal underground you get what you pay for. Some other illicit services offered for sale on these forums include virtual private servers ($300), which allow attackers to redirect traffic or control infected devices, and web injectors ($25 to $80) that look out for victims' visiting selected websites on their infected devices and replacing those pages with malicious ones that steal login info or similar. Criminals can pay for obfuscation of their malware, and they may even get a better price if they buy a package deal. "One of the sellers offers obfuscation of 50 files for $440, while the cost of processing only one file by the same provider is about $30," Team Kaspersky says. Additionally, to increase the number of downloads to a malicious app, thus making it more attractive to other mobile users, attackers can buy installs for 10 cents to $1 apiece. Kaspersky's report can be found here.

According to South Korean prosecutors, Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon converted most of the illicit funds associated with him and his associates into Bitcoin. CoinTelegraph reports: South Korean prosecutors have identified 414.5 billion won ($314.2 million) in illicit assets associated with Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon and his associates. Out of the identified illegal assets, prosecutors have linked about 91.4 billion won ($69 million) of the specified amount directly to Kwon. Although Kwon amassed millions, none of the assets tied to him are recoverable or under the jurisdiction of the South Korean authorities. This is mainly because the now-arrested former CEO reportedly converted most of the illicit funds into Bitcoin using overseas crypto exchanges instead of investing in physical assets, per a report published by local media outlet KBS.

The South Korean authorities have requested Binance to halt any withdrawal request associated with Kwon. Binance confirmed to Cointelegraph that they are cooperating with the prosecutors and offering any assistance they need. South Korean prosecutors are actively tracing properties associated with Terraform Labs executives to recover some illicit funds from the Terra debacle. On April 3, prosecutors seized homes and other assets to stop former Terra employees from selling things that might be tied to legal cases. In addition to the residences in Seoul owned by former CEO Shin Hyun-seong and others, the prosecutors also filed foreclosure actions against their foreign-registered vehicles, lands in Hwaseong and Gapyeong in Gyeonggi-do, and Taean in South Chungcheong Province. Kwon evaded arrest for almost a year before getting caught in Montenegro on March 23rd.

US bank lending contracted by the most on record in the last two weeks of March, indicating a tightening of credit conditions in the wake of several high-profile bank collapses that risks damaging the economy. From a report: Commercial bank lending dropped nearly $105 billion in the two weeks ended March 29, the most in Federal Reserve data back to 1973. The more than $45 billion decrease in the latest week was primarily due to a a drop in loans by small banks. The pullback in total lending in the last half of March was broad and included fewer real estate loans, as well as commercial and industrial loans. Friday's report also showed commercial bank deposits dropped $64.7 billion in the latest week, marking the 10th-straight decrease that mainly reflected a decline at large firms.

The slide in lending follows the collapse of several firms including Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Economists are closely monitoring the Fed's so-called H.8 report, which provides an estimated weekly aggregate balance sheet for all commercial banks in the US, to gauge credit conditions. The recent bank failures have complicated the central bank's efforts to reduce inflation without sending the economy into a recession.

Here's a good reason to use Google Pay: Google might send you a bunch of free money. From a report: Many users report that Google accidentally deposited cash in their accounts -- anywhere from $10 to $1,000. Android researcher Mishaal Rahman got hit with the bug and shared most of the relevant details on Twitter. The cash arrived via Google Pay's "reward" program. Just like a credit card, you're supposed to get a few bucks back occasionally for various promotions, but nothing like this. Numerous screenshots show users receiving loads of "Reward" money for what the message called "dogfooding the Google Pay Remittance experience." "Dogfooding" is tech speak for "internally beta testing pre-release software," so if a message like this was ever supposed to go out, it should have only gone out to Google employees and/or some testing partners. Many regular users received multiple copies of this message with multiple payouts.

MSI has confirmed it suffered a data breach after a ransomware gang claimed it stole files from the PC maker. The company published a Taiwanese stock exchange filing about experiencing a âoecyber attack,â although the company is thin on details. From a report: "After detecting some information systems being attacked by hackers, MSI's IT department has initiated information security defense mechanism and recovery procedures," the PC maker said. The company also reported the incident to authorities. MSI didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, making it unclear whether customer data is affected. But in the stock exchange filing, the PC maker says it anticipates the breach having "no significant impact" on its financials or operations. A new ransomware group called Money Message claims it breached the PC maker to steal the company's source code, including the framework for the BIOS used in MSI products.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) services that aren't compliant with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules pose "the most significant current illicit finance risk" in that corner of the crypto sector, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury's first analysis of hazards from the technology. From a report: In an expected risk assessment, published Thursday, the Treasury Department said thieves, scammers, ransomware cyber criminals and actors for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) are using DeFi to launder proceeds from crime. On the basis of its findings, the department recommends an assessment of "possible enhancements" to U.S. anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and the rules for countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) as they should be applied to DeFi services. It also calls for input from the private sector to inform the next steps. "Clearly, we can't do this alone," said Brian Nelson, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, in a Thursday webcast hosted by ACAMS, a global organization focused on preventing financial crime. "We call on the private sector to use the findings of the risk assessment to inform your own risk-mitigation strategies." The 40-page report warns that "DeFi services at present often do not implement AML/CFT controls or other processes to identify customers, allowing layering of proceeds to take place instantaneously and pseudonymously."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Americans have grown so fond of working from home that many are are willing to sacrifice pay for the privilege of skipping the office. So found a recent survey by recruiting firm Robert Half, which polled thousands of U.S. employees and hiring managers about their attitudes toward remote work. Some workers said they're willing to take a pay cut -- with an average reduction of 18% -- to remain fully remote, Paul McDonald, a Robert Half senior executive director, told CBS News. Overall, roughly one in three workers who go into the office at least one day a week said they were willing to earn less for the opportunity to work remotely.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Like so much in our modern era, Australia's high-stakes gamble on renewable energy starts with an Elon Musk Twitter brag. South Australia's last coal-fired power plant had closed, leaving the province of 1.8 million heavily reliant on wind farms and power imports from a neighboring region. When an unprecedented blackout caused much of the country to question the state's dependence on clean power, Tesla boasted -- on Twitter, of course -- that it had a solution: It could build the world's biggest battery, and fast. "@Elonmusk, how serious are you about this," replied Australian software billionaire and climate activist Mike Cannon-Brookes. "Can you guarantee 100MW in 100 days?" Musk responded: "Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?"

To the astonishment of many, Tesla succeeded, and today, almost seven years later, that battery and more like it have become central to a shockingly rapid energy transition. By the middle of the next decade, major coal-fired power stations that generate about half of Australia's electricity will shut down. Gas-fired plants are being retired, too, and nuclear power is banned. That leaves solar, wind and hydro as the major options in the country's post-coal future. "It's really a remarkable story," said Audrey Zibelman, the former head of the Australian Energy Market Operator, or AEMO, the agency that runs the grid, and now an adviser to Alphabet's X. "Because we're not interconnected, we've had to learn to do it in a much more sophisticated way, where a lot of other countries will go once they've shut down their fossils."

It may be Australia's biggest power buildout since electrification in the 1920s and 30s. And, if successful, could be replicated across the 80% of the world's population that lives in the so-called sun belt -- which includes Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, India, southern China and Southeast Asia, says Professor Andrew Blakers, an expert in renewable energy and solar technology at Australian National University. That, in turn, would go a long way to halting climate change. Building battery storage is just one critical piece of the national project, and AEMO and others are worried coal plants will shut before there's enough additional electricity supply. Australia needs to increase its grid-scale wind and solar capacity ninefold by 2050. Connecting all that generation and storage into the grid will require more investment. Overall, the cost could be a staggering A$320 billion ($215 billion), and the money is starting to flow: Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., Macquarie Group Ltd., and billionaires Andrew Forrest and Cannon-Brookes have all been involved in headline-grabbing energy deals in recent months. New government support for renewables has also improved investor sentiment, according to the Clean Energy Investor Group, which includes project developers and financiers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On a recent Friday morning north of Johannesburg, the head of South Africa's largest telecoms company surveyed the arsenal of backup systems keeping just one of his 15,000 network towers online amid the worst power cuts on record. A diesel generator. Solar panels. A bank of expensive backup batteries, theft-proofed within a block of concrete. "Our costs have gone through the roof," lamented Sitho Mdlalose, managing director of Vodacom South Africa. As the national power grid crumbles, leaving Africa's most advanced economy in the dark for up to 10 hours a day, mobile operators including Vodacom, MTN and majority state-owned Telkom are scrambling to ensure their networks stay up and running.

They're spending millions to install solar panels, batteries and are even trialling wind turbines, while targeting deals with independent power producers to supplement struggling state utility Eskom's increasingly unreliable output, three company executives told Reuters. At stake: essential voice and data services in a nation where landlines are rare but nearly 80% of residents have access to mobile internet. Overall, the power crisis and logistical constraints are expected to erase 2 percentage points from economic growth this year, according to the South African Reserve Bank governor. Mary-Jane Mphahlele, an attorney who also runs a small travel agency in the city of Polokwane, experiences that lost economic activity every time the power is cut. "New clients can't call me ... That means no money is going to come into my business," the 29-year-old said. "It's hell." As they battle to simply mitigate the worsening crisis, telecommunications companies have seen operating costs balloon. Vodacom and MTN executives told Reuters they're having to divert capital away from much needed network upgrades and 5G rollouts. Meanwhile, they said government regulations are blocking potential solutions, such as sharing backup power infrastructure with their competitors, and revealed they're lobbying authorities to help ease the pain.

Facebook owner Meta intends to commercialize its proprietary generative artificial intelligence by December, joining Google in finding practical applications for the tech. From a report: The company, which began full-scale AI research in 2013, stands out along with Google in the number of studies published. "We've been investing in artificial intelligence for over a decade, and have one of the leading research institutes in the world," Andrew Bosworth, Meta's chief technology officer, told Nikkei in an exclusive interview on Wednesday in Tokyo. "We certainly have a large research organization, hundreds of people." Meta announced in February that it would establish a new organization to develop generative AI, but this is the first time it has indicated a timeline for commercialization. The technology, which can instantly create sentences and graphics, has already been commercialized by ChatGPT creator OpenAI of the U.S. But Bosworth insists Meta remains on the technology's cutting edge.

"We feel very confident that ... we are at the very forefront," he said. "Quite a few of the techniques that are in large language model development were pioneered [by] our teams. "[I] expect we'll start seeing some of them [commercialization of the tech] this year. We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy. It's probably the area that I'm spending the most time [in], as well as Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox." Bosworth believes Meta's artificial intelligence can improve an ad's effectiveness partly by telling the advertiser what tools to use in making it. He said that instead of a company using a single image in an advertising campaign, it can "ask the AI, 'Make images for my company that work for different audiences.' And it can save a lot of time and money."

The stress on the financial sector caused by two bank failures in the United States last month is still a threat and should be addressed by a reimagining of the regulatory process, according to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. From a report: "As I write this letter, the current crisis is not yet over, and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come," the longtime CEO said in his annual letter to shareholders Tuesday. "But importantly, recent events are nothing like what occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis," he added. The recent banking issues in the U.S. began with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which was closed by regulators on March 10 as depositors pulled tens of billions of dollars from the bank. The smaller Signature Bank was closed two days later. And in Europe, Swiss regulators brokered a purchase of Credit Suisse by UBS.

JPMorgan and other large banks stepped in to make $30 billion of deposits at First Republic, another regional lender that investors feared could become the next SVB. The stress on the regional banks has led investors and analysts to suggest that the too big to fail institutions would be a beneficiary of the crisis, but Dimon said JPMorgan wants to strengthen the smaller banks for the benefit of the whole financial system. "Any crisis that damages Americans' trust in their banks damages all banks -- a fact that was known even before this crisis. While it is true that this bank crisis 'benefited' larger banks due to the inflow of deposits they received from smaller institutions, the notion that this meltdown was good for them in any way is absurd," Dimon wrote. Dimon also cautioned against knee-jerk changes to the regulatory system. He wrote that most of the risks, including the potential losses from held-to-maturity bonds, were "hiding in plain sight." The interconnected network of SVB's deposit base was the unknown variable, he said. "The recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the United States and Credit Suisse in Europe, and the related stress in the banking system, underscore that simply satisfying regulatory requirements is not sufficient. Risks are abundant, and managing those risks requires constant and vigilant scrutiny as the world evolves," Dimon wrote.

The U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) is funding a 6-year, up to $300 million project to build a massive Alzheimer's research database that can track the health of Americans for decades and enable researchers to gain new insights on the brain-wasting disease. Reuters reports: The NIA, part of the government's National Institutes of Health (NIH), aims to build a data platform capable of housing long-term health information on 70% to 90% of the U.S. population, officials told Reuters of the grant, which had not been previously reported. The platform will draw on data from medical records, insurance claims, pharmacies, mobile devices, sensors and various government agencies, they said.

Tracking patients before and after they develop Alzheimer's symptoms is seen as integral to making advances against the disease, which can start some 20 years before memory issues develop. The database could help identify healthy people at risk for Alzheimer's, which affects about 6 million Americans, for future drug trials. It also aims to address chronic underrepresentation of people of color and different ethnicities in Alzheimer's clinical trials and could help increase enrollment from outside of urban academic medical centers.

Once built, the platform could also track patients after they receive treatments such as Leqembi, which won accelerated U.S. approval in January, and is widely expected to receive traditional FDA approval by July 6. The U.S. Medicare health plan for older adults will likely require such tracking in a registry as a condition of reimbursement for Leqembi. [T]he data platform could also help researchers working in other disease areas understand which patients are most at risk and the impact of medications. The grant, which was posted on March 13, has been years in the making. The funding announcement sets its earliest start date at April 2024, with a goal to establish an Alzheimer's registry 21 months later.

For flights, Google already showed you whether the flight price you were looking at was high, low, or typical compared to historical prices. Now it's going a step further by putting a guarantee on those predictions. Android Police reports: Now, whenever Google thinks a flight is priced as low as it's going to go, it will put a "Price Guarantee" badge beside the price indicating it doesn't think that price will drop any further. If you decide to book a flight with a price guarantee through Google and the price does go down, the company will reimburse you for the difference in price via Google Pay similar to the promotion it ran in 2019. The price guarantee was announced in a blog post today alongside new features for researching hotels.

"Now when you search for a hotel on mobile, you'll be able to swipe through full-screen images of the hotel similar to how you might view a story on Instagram," reports Android Police. "From that photo page, you can also quickly tap into reviews to see if a property is as good as it looks and learn more about the area where a potential hotel is located. There's also a link to the hotel's website right on the page when you're ready to book."

It's not just the Ford Mustang that's losing its AM radio. The Detroit Free Press reports: "We are transitioning from AM radio for most new and updated 2024 models," Ford spokesman Wes Sherwood told the Free Press. "A majority of U.S. AM stations, as well as a number of countries and automakers globally, are modernizing radio by offering internet streaming through mobile apps, FM, digital and satellite radio options. Ford will continue to offer these alternatives for customers to hear their favorite AM radio music, news and podcasts as we remove amplitude modulation — the definition of AM in this case — from most new and updated models we bring to market." Commercial vehicles will continue to offer AM radio because of longstanding contract language, Sherwood said....

"In essence, EV motors generate a lot of electromagnetic interference that affects the frequencies of AM radio and make it difficult to get a clear signal," said Mike Ramsey, an analyst with Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner Research Group, which specializes in digital transformation and innovation. "It could be shielded, but given the diminishing listening habits to AM, the automakers haven't chosen to do it. Most of the content there is available through other means, including podcast and internet streaming. In my view, this isn't that different from automakers discontinuing 8-track players, cassette players and CD players. Technology has advanced. The idea that it is a critical safety channel is a bit suspect given that almost all critical communication now is sent through mobile phones...."

Veteran analyst John McEloy, host of "Autoline After Hours" webcast and podcast said automakers don't need to get rid of AM radio. "It's happening because automakers would love to get rid of the cost of an AM radio," he told the Free Press. "Some of them, like Ford, are using EVs as an excuse to get rid of it. GM shields its AM radios in its electric cars to they don't get any interference."
But the article also quotes a spokesperson for GM saying they're "evaluating AM radio on future vehicles and not providing any further details at this time."

Last month U.S. Senator Markey noted that seven more top automakers have already removed AM radio from their electric vehicles — BMW, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen, and Volvo.

Remember that entrepreneur planning an ostentatious NFT-based restaurant/members-only club in San Francisco? Seven months later it's still "an empty husk of a building, hindered by construction delays and unfulfilled crypto dreams," reports SFGate: Last August, Joshua Sigel held a "groundbreaking" event at what he said would be the future home of Sho Restaurant, located atop Salesforce Park in San Francisco. He told the gathered media that construction of the proposed Japanese fine dining restaurant would begin in less than two months, once some permitting issues were resolved, with a targeted opening date of September or October of 2023.

Sigel maintained that he'd soon be offering 3,275 Sho Club NFT (non-fungible token) memberships — first via a private sale, then a larger public sale in late September — which would serve as the backbone of Sho Restaurant's clientele. (Sigel is the CEO of Sho Group, which encapsulates Sho Restaurant and Sho Club.) There were to be 2,878 "Earth" NFT memberships, priced at $7,500 each; 377 "Water" NFT memberships, priced at $15,000 each; and 20 "Fire" NFT memberships; priced at $300,000 each. The NFTs are basically membership cards for the restaurant, spruced up with Web3 jargon.... Each membership tier comes with increasingly luxurious benefits, though restaurant reservations would also be available for nonmembers.

Seven months later, things don't seem to be going very well for Sho Club or for Sho Restaurant. I recently walked over to Salesforce Park and peered inside the shell of the building that's supposed to become a restaurant; I saw an empty space that looks almost exactly the same as it did in August. The mock-up design photos that journalists looked at during the "groundbreaking" in August remain strewn about on the floor. Permits for Sho Restaurant haven't been issued, the result of Sho Restaurant designers not yet responding to a number of San Francisco Department of Building Inspection notes, among a host of permitting steps that haven't been completed. Sho Club social media accounts have been radio silent since late September....

Sho Club appears to have sold around 100 NFT memberships, rather than 3,275, as Sigel originally projected. I repeatedly reached out to Sigel, to Sho Club, and its public relations representatives. No one replied to my questions.

U.S. states are now "doling out more cash than ever to lure multibillion-dollar microchip, electric vehicle and battery factories," reports the Associated Press, "inspiring ever-more competition as they dig deeper into their pockets to attract big employers and capitalize on a wave of huge new projects." Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas have made billion-dollar pledges for a microchip or EV plant, with more state-subsidized plant announcements by profitable automakers and semiconductor giants surely to come. States have long competed for big employers. But now they are floating more billion-dollar offers and offering record-high subsidies, lavishing companies with grants and low-interest loans, municipal road improvements, and breaks on taxes, real estate, power and water....

The projects come at a transformative time for the industries, with automakers investing heavily in electrification and chipmakers expanding production in the U.S. following pandemic-related supply chain disruptions that raised economic and national security concerns. One of the driving forces behind them are federal subsidies signed into law last summer that are meant to encourage companies to produce electric vehicles, EV batteries, and computer chips domestically. Another is that states are flush with cash thanks to inflation-juiced tax collections and federal pandemic relief subsidies. The number of big projects and the size of state subsidy packages are extraordinary, said Nathan Jensen, a University of Texas professor who researches government economic development strategies.

"It is kind of a Wild West moment," Jensen said. "It's wild money and every state seems to be in on it."

Many of the companies drawing the biggest subsidy offers — such as Intel, Hyundai, Panasonic, Micron, Toyota, Ford and General Motors — are profitable and operate around the globe. Some lesser-known names in the nascent EV field are getting big offers too, such as Rivian, Volkswagen-backed Scout Motors and Vietnamese automaker VinFast. The subsidy offers are generally embraced by politicians from both major parties and the business elite, who point to promises of hundreds or thousands of jobs, massive investments in construction and equipment, and what they contend are immeasurable trickle-down benefits.

Still, academics who study such subsidies find them to be a waste of money and rarely decisive in a company's choice of location.

An anonymous reader shares this report from the Washington Post: Steve Jobs never lived to be an old wise man.

But running Apple and Pixar, tumbling and thriving, earned him a lot of wisdom in his 56 years. Now, a small group of his family, friends and former colleagues have collected it into "Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words," available free to the public online starting on April 11. Somewhere between a posthumous memoir and a scrapbook album, it is told through notes and drafts Jobs emailed to himself, excerpts of letters and speeches, oral histories and interviews, photos and mementos. (Some physical copies are being produced for Apple and Disney employees, but that format won't be for sale to the general public.)

"Imagine yourself as an old person looking back on your life," Jobs wrote in a June 2005 email to himself as he was preparing to give the Stanford commencement speech. "Your life will be a story. It will be your story, with its highs and lows, its heros and villains, its forks in the road that mean everything." The book, published by the Steve Jobs Archive, will be released on Apple Books and the Steve Jobs Archive website. The fact that it aesthetically resembles an Apple product — mostly gray and white, minimalist — is no coincidence: It was designed by LoveFrom, the firm founded by Jony Ive, Apple's former chief design officer.

ProPublica looks at "a booming underground community of Instagram scammers and hackers who shut down profiles on the social network and then demand payment to reactivate them." While they also target TikTok and other platforms, takedown-for-hire scammers like OBN are proliferating on Instagram, exploiting the app's slow and often ineffective customer support services and its easily manipulated account reporting systems. These Instascammers often target people whose accounts are vulnerable because their content verges on nudity and pornography, which Instagram and its parent company, Meta, prohibit.... In an article he wrote for factz.com last year, OBN dubbed himself the "log-out king" because "I have deleted multiple celebrities + influencers on Meta & Instagram... I made about $300k just off banning and unbanning pages," he wrote.

OBN exploits weaknesses in Meta's customer service. By allowing anyone to report an account for violating the company's standards, Meta gives enormous leverage to people who are able to trick it into banning someone who relies on Instagram for income. Meta uses a mix of automated systems and human review to evaluate reports. Banners like OBN test and trade tips on how to trigger the system to falsely suspend accounts. In some cases OBN hacks into accounts to post offensive content. In others, he creates duplicate accounts in his targets' names, then reports the original accounts as imposters so they'll be barred for violating Meta's ban on account impersonation. In addition, OBN has posed as a Meta employee to persuade at least one target to pay him to restore her account.

Models, businesspeople, marketers and adult performers across the United States told ProPublica that OBN had ruined their businesses and lives with spurious complaints, even causing one woman to consider suicide. More than half a dozen people with over 45 million total followers on Instagram told ProPublica they lost their accounts temporarily or permanently shortly after OBN threatened to report them. They say Meta failed to help them and to take OBN and other account manipulators seriously. One person who said she was victimized by OBN has an ongoing civil suit against Meta for lost income, while others sent the company legal letters demanding payment....

A Meta spokesperson acknowledged that OBN has had short-term success in getting accounts removed by abusing systems intended to help enforce community standards. But the company has addressed those situations and taken down dozens of accounts linked to OBN, the spokesperson said. Most often, the spokesperson said, OBN scammed people by falsely claiming to be able to ban and restore accounts.... After banning an account, OBN frequently offers to reactivate it for a fee as high as $5,000, kicking off a cycle of bans and reactivations that continues until the victim runs out of money or stops paying.
A Meta spokesperson told the site they're currently "updating our support systems," including a tool to help affected users and letting more speak to a live support agent rather than an automated one. But the Meta spokesperson added that "This remains a highly adversarial space, with scammers constantly trying to evade detection by social media platforms."

ProPublica ultimately traced the money to a 20-year-old who lives with his mother (who claimed he was only "funnelling" the money for someone else). After that conversation OBN "announced he would no longer offer account banning as a service" — but would still sell his services in getting your account verified.

"SpaceX has its first commercial cargo contract to the lunar surface," says Jaret Matthews, the founder of the tiny startup Astrolab which makes a moon rover the size of a Jeep Wrangler. The New York Times reports: On Friday, Astrolab announced that it had signed an agreement with SpaceX for its Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover, or FLEX, to be a payload on an uncrewed Starship cargo mission that is to take off as early as mid-2026...." SpaceX, which did not respond to requests for comment, has yet to announce that it is planning this commercial Starship mission to the moon's surface, headed to the south polar region. Astrolab would be just one of the customers sharing the voluminous cargo compartment of the Starship flight, Mr. Matthews said.

Mr. Matthews, an engineer who previously worked at SpaceX and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, founded Astrolab less than four years ago. Located a stone's throw from SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., it has about 20 full-time employees, he said.... Mr. Matthews declined to say how much it would cost to get FLEX to the moon or how much money Astrolab has raised. He said Astrolab would make money by lifting and deploying cargo for customers on the lunar surface. That could include scientific instruments. In the future, the rover could help build lunar infrastructure. "Essentially providing what I like to call last-mile mobility on the moon," Mr. Matthews said. "You can kind of think of it like being U.P.S. for the moon. And in this analogy, Starship is the container ship crossing the ocean, and we're the local distribution solution...."

Mr. Matthews said Astrolab already had several signed agreements for payloads. That appears to be part of the expanding potential market for [SpaceX's] Starship.... For NASA, Starship is how its astronauts will land on the moon during the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for 2025. Before that, SpaceX is to conduct an uncrewed flight to demonstrate the capability of spacecraft to get to the moon and set down there in one piece. If those schedules hold, the commercial cargo mission with the Astrolab rover could take place the next year....

Farther into the future, the company has even grander visions. "Ultimately our goal is to have a fleet of rovers both on the moon and Mars," Mr. Matthews said. "And I really think I see these vehicles as the catalysts ultimately for the off-Earth economy."

The scientific community is reeling after NASA gutted funding for a key Venus mission that was "poised to answer some of the biggest questions about the planet and its volcanic activity," reports The Verge. From the report: This month saw the announcement of one of the most exciting findings about Venus in decades: the first direct evidence of an active volcano there. [...] This finding is "mind-blowing," Venus scientist Darby Dyar told The Verge, opening up possibilities to learn about Venus' geology and atmosphere as well as whether the planet was once habitable. But in the space science community, the excitement about this finding is being overshadowed by the "soft cancellation" of a key NASA Venus mission, which Dyar is also deputy principal investigator for and which had been set to launch in 2028.

The Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy (VERITAS) mission was one of three missions set to explore Venus in the next few years, kicking off NASA's "decade of Venus" and seeing a return to the study of our planetary neighbor, which scientists have been calling for for years. But at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held recently in Houston, Texas, VERITAS principal investigator Sue Smrekar announced that the mission's funding had been completely gutted, leaving the mission in a state of precarious limbo.

This came as a surprise to many of the conference attendees, who were soon tweeting their support for the mission using the hashtag #SaveVERITAS. The Planetary Society also put out a statement describing the delay of the mission's launch by at least three years as "uncalled-for" and calling on NASA to commit to launching by 2029. NASA has cited problems with another mission, Psyche, as the reason for delaying VERITAS by at least three years. Both Psyche and VERITAS are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the NASA / Caltech research center that is responsible for building robotic spacecraft such as the Mars rovers. JPL had problems meeting its requirements for the Psyche mission, which aims to visit a metal asteroid, and missed its launch date last year. An independent review into the missed launch found it was due to, among other problems, workforce issues at JPL. Budget cuts and cancellations aren't uncommon, but the situation with VERITAS is different because it "had already been selected by NASA to be part of its Discovery Program," adds the Verge. "Historically, once a mission has been selected by NASA, those working on it can be confident that funding will be available. If a delay happens -- as is not uncommon in large, complex missions -- then a lower level of funding is typically made available to keep the basic essentials in place, called bridge funding, until full funding can be restored."

Although the team asked NASA for bridge funding to maintain mission essentials, "virtually all of their funding has been cut, leaving them with a tiny $1.5 million per year," says the report. "This is a highly unusual situation for a selected mission because delaying and restarting missions is so expensive."