Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and author of the Network State, has announced his first Network State Conference. This is a conference for people interested in founding, funding, and finding new communities.
Topics include startup societies, network states, digital nomadism, competitive government, legalizing innovation, and building alternatives. Speakers include Glenn Greenwald, Vitalik Buterin, Anatoly Yakovenko, Garry Tan, the Winklevosses, and Tyler Cowen. See presentations by startup society founders around the world, invest in them, and search for the community that fits you.

With this and Joseon, the first legally recognized cyber state, the network state movement is beginning to get interesting.

Another anonymous reader quotes from the Joseon Official X Account's reply to Balaji's announcement:

Joseon, the first legally recognized cyber nation state, will be there.
Interestingly, Joseon dons the same grey checkmark that is for governments on its X account.

Pebble, the first of the would-be Twitter replacements to emerge after Elon Musk bought Twitter, is shutting down. The social media platform -- previously known as T2 to indicate a desire to build a Twitter clone -- was founded by former Twitter employees Sarah Oh and Gabor Cselle. Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: Pebble was an early-stage, Twitter-like social network. Its goal was to become the "place to have the authentic conversations we've always wanted to have." Its founders, who were largely Twitter alumni, designed Pebble to look and feel like pre-Musk Twitter, with a 280-character limit and direct messaging. I rather liked it, but it appears I was in the minority. Pebble was always a bit rough around the edges, and it never made it past about 20,000 users.

In what was still a surprising announcement, Pebble revealed its plans to shut down operations on November 1, 2023. In a letter to users, Pebble said: "The painful truth, however, is that we were not growing quickly enough for investors to believe that we will break out. Combine that with a crowded space of alternatives -- and the uphill climb is even steeper. In order to continue to build out a complete Pebble, we would have needed more investment, and more time." That was not to be -- and Pebble's backers ran out of money and time.

A spokesperson for the platform stated: "While we are immensely proud of what we achieved with our dedicated team and an incredible community, the reality is that our growth rate was not meeting the expectations set by our investors." With the digital landscape burgeoning with alternative platforms, Pebble was competing in an increasingly crowded marketplace. As the platform prepares for its final curtain call, the team behind Pebble is shifting its focus to showing gratitude to its supportive community. They are exploring potential avenues to ensure that the connections formed on Pebble can continue in another guise. Further details are expected to be shared soon.

Apple has announced a Mac event for October 30th with the caption "Scary Fast." According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company is expected to focus on the M3 series MacBook Pro models. MacRumors reports: Kuo's wording suggests that he is expecting multiple M3 chips rather than just a single M3 chip, hinting at the possibility of M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips. If Apple does release M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips at once, we can expect to see the new chips introduced in 13-inch, 14-inch, and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. Kuo says that he previously predicted that Apple would not likely introduce new MacBook Pro models in 2023 because of "limited 4Q 23 shipments," and if new MacBook Pros do come out in November or December, the tight supply will last until the first quarter of 2024. Kuo further says that Mac shipments have declined due to the "limited M2 computing power upgrade," which may be the reason why Apple might launch M3 MacBook Pro models with low production volume.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman also says that Apple has been testing M3 Max and M3 Pro MacBook Pro models, suggesting that these machines are going to be refreshed. Gurman just last week claimed that Apple would not update the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips until early 2024, so it seems that his predictions have since changed. That Kuo and Gurman are both now suggesting that we'll see 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models at Apple's October event comes as a surprise because much of their prior information pointed toward a 2024 refresh for these devices.

Gurman maintains that Apple will not refresh the MacBook Air models, Mac mini, Mac Studio, or Mac Pro at this time, which leaves the iMac, 13-inch MacBook Pro, 14-inch MacBook Pro, and 16-inch MacBook Pro for the October event. As Gurman has previously pointed out, these are the machines that are facing extended shipping times in Apple's online store. You can watch the event live via Apple's website starting at 5 p.m. PT on October 30th.

Further reading: Apple To Revamp TV App in Step Toward Simplifying Video Services

Oregon State University on Tuesday urged students and staff to "avoid all robots" after a bomb threat was reported in Starship food delivery robots. NBC News reports: The warning was issued at 12:20 p.m. local time and by 12:59 p.m., the potentially dangerous bots had been isolated at safe locations, the school said. The robots were being "investigated by" a technician, OSU said in a statement posted at 1:23 p.m. "Remain vigilant for suspicious activity," the school said. Finally, at around 1:45 p.m., the school issued an "all clear" alert. "Emergency is over," the message said. "You may now resume normal activities. Robot inspection continues in a safe location."

A representative for Starship, the company that produces the robots, could not be immediately reached for comment. The company calls itself a "global leader in autonomous delivery" with agreements at a host of universities across the United States. Developing...

"Mark Zuckerberg is making good on his promise to accelerate the use of Threads," reports Business Insider: The Meta CEO insisted in July that the app was not in its final form. "I'm highly confident that we're gonna be able to pour enough gasoline on this to help it grow," Zuckerberg said. Since then, Threads has rolled out a host of major new features, including a web version, keyword search, voice posts, and the ability to edit posts, even as it avoids promoting news. Smaller things, too, like being able to follow updates in individual threads at the tap of a bell icon, a way to mass follow people mentioned in a post, and even tag people's Instagram accounts, are now available... More Threads features are said to be on the way, like polls.
But Insider also reports that "As the app has matured quickly in recent weeks, users have started to return and downloads have continued to rise." So far in October, Threads has hovered around 33 million daily active users and 120 million monthly active users, according to data from Apptopia, up from about 25 million daily users and 100 million monthly users in July... Since the app launched on July 6, it's been downloaded 260 million times, Apptopia data shows, with downloads in September almost double the downloads in August...

Although the entire team working on Threads remains small by Meta standards, around 50 people, the company was surprised by the interest in the app and "really wants it to work," an employee said. To that end, Threads is now being integrated to an extent with Facebook and Instagram, two of the most popular apps in the world. There is a direct link to Threads on each user's Instagram page, a post on Threads can be sent in Instagram DMs, and as of this week, Threads is being promoted within the Instagram app feed via a small carousel of select posts under the header "Threads for you...."
It's not just Instagram, according to BGR. "If you've been posting some especially strange messages Threads, thinking that only the few people who follow you will see them, I have some bad news for you..." As spotted by TechCrunch, users on Facebook have noticed something new on their News Feed: content from Threads. It appears that Meta is now showing Facebook users a new "For You from Threads" section on the News Feed that contains recommended content from the sibling social media platform.

"The major online platforms are breaking up with news," reports the New York Times: Campbell Brown, Facebook's top news executive, said this month that she was leaving the company. Twitter, now known as X, removed headlines from the platform days later. The head of Instagram's Threads app, an X competitor, reiterated that his social network would not amplify news. Even Google — the strongest partner to news organizations over the past 10 years — has become less dependable, making publishers more wary of their reliance on the search giant. The company has laid off news employees in two recent team reorganizations, and some publishers say traffic from Google has tapered off... Some executives of the largest tech companies, like Adam Mosseri at Instagram, have said in no uncertain terms that hosting news on their sites can often be more trouble than it is worth because it generates polarized debates...

Publishers seem resigned to the idea that traffic from the big tech companies will not return to what it once was. Even in the long-fractious relationship between publishers and tech platforms, the latest rift stands out — and the consequences for the news industry are stark. Many news companies have struggled to survive after the tech companies threw the industry's business model into upheaval more than a decade ago. One lifeline was the traffic — and, by extension, advertising — that came from sites like Facebook and Twitter. Now that traffic is disappearing. Top news sites got about 11.5% of their web traffic in the United States from social networks in September 2020, according to Similarweb, a data and analytics company. By September this year, it was down to 6.5%...

The sharp decline in referral traffic from social media platforms over the past two years has hit all news publishers, including The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal noticed a decline starting about 18 months ago, according to a recording of a September staff meeting obtained by the Times. "We are at the mercy of social algorithms and tech giants for much of our distribution," Emma Tucker, the Journal's editor-in-chief, told the newsroom in the meeting...

Google cut some members of its news partnership team in September, and this week it laid off as many as 45 workers from its Google News team, the Alphabet Workers Union said. (The Information, a tech news website, reported the Google News layoffs earlier.) "We've made some internal changes to streamline our organization," Jenn Crider, a Google spokesperson, said in a statement... Jaffer Zaidi [Google's vice president of global news partnerships], wrote in an internal memo reviewed by the Times that the team would be adopting more artificial intelligence. "We had to make some difficult decisions to better position our team for what lies ahead," he wrote...

Privately, a number of publishers have discussed what a post-Google traffic future may look like and how to better prepare if Google's AI products become more popular and further bury links to news publications.

Redis, the go-to in-memory database used as a cache and system broker, is looking to include disk as part of a tiered storage architecture to reduce costs and broaden the system's appeal. From a report: Speaking to The Register, CEO Rowan Trollope said he hoped the move would help customers lower costs and simplify their architecture. Redis counts Twitter X, Snapchat, and Craigslist among its customers, and it's popular among developers of modern internet-scale applications owing to its ability to create a cache to prevent the main database from overloading. Trollope said the sub-millisecond distributed system gives devs the performance they need, but admitted other systems built for internet scale, such as MongoDB, might offer price advantages. To address this, the company has already created a tiered approach to memory by offering flash support behind its in-memory system.

"We have a half-step between disk and memory. For some specific use cases, in gaming for example, a company might use us for leaderboards and other in-game stats, which they need in real time," he said. However, after an initial flush of the game launch, a large chunk of users would finish the game and their accounts would go dormant until the release of a new episode or some new content, when they might return. Trollope said using flash allowed users to dynamically tier memory. "We can take the lesser-used data that hasn't been touched in a while and shuttle it off to flash where it can sit for a while. When the user comes back eventually, it's very easy for us to seamlessly move it from flash back into memory. And that allows the company to save costs," he said.

Ty Roush reports via Forbes: Convoy, a Seattle-based digital freight booker with investors that include billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, announced Thursday it would be shutting down, according to Bloomberg, after the company failed to find a buyer amid a "massive freight recession." Convoy's founder and chief executive Dan Lewis notified employees in an internal memo Thursday that "today is your last day at the company," noting the company is "exploring and evaluating strategic options for what might come next," Bloomberg reported.

Lewis said the company had evaluated potential suitors to acquire it, though "none of the options ultimately materialized into anything sufficient to keep the company going in its then current form." Convoy was in "the middle of a massive freight recession and a contraction in the capital markets," according to Lewis, who added "this combination ultimately crushed our progress" and likely swayed potential suitors away from acquiring the firm. "Following an exhaustive process, spanning many, many months during which we explored all viable strategic options for the business, the result is where we are today," Lewis wrote. Convoy was founded in 2015 in an effort to prevent trucks from driving "empty miles" without loads. The idea was to use technology to make freight more efficient by connecting truck drivers with freight companies -- reducing shippers' costs, increasing carriers' earnings, and eliminating carbon emissions in the process.

Aidin Vaziri reports via the San Francisco Chronicle: Epic Games has initiated layoffs at Bandcamp, the Oakland-based online music distribution platform it recently sold to Songtradr. Among those affected were members of Bandcamp Daily, the platform's editorial arm, as confirmed by former staff members on social media channels. "About half the company was laid off today," senior editor JJ Skolnik announced on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday morning. This move comes weeks after Songtradr's acquisition of Bandcamp was announced on Sept. 28. The company did not disclose how many employees were impacted by the cuts.

Songtradr, a Santa Monica-based licensing company, had previously stated that not all Bandcamp employees would be absorbed after the platform's sale from Epic, citing the service's financial situation as the basis for workforce adjustments. [...] The sale comes as the company cuts around 16% of its workforce, about 830 employees, in the face of lower profits that were outpaced by growing expenses.

The BBC reports: Doctor Who's first writer could finally be recognised 60 years after he helped launch the hugely-popular series. Anthony Coburn penned the first four episodes of the sci-fi drama in 1963 — a story called An Unearthly Child. But after his second story did not air, the writer has been seen as a minor figure among some Doctor Who fans.

However, a campaign to erect a memorial to Coburn in his home town of Herne Bay, Kent, is gathering pace a month ahead of the show's 60th anniversary.
A local elected councillor told the BBC they're working to find a location for the memorial.

The BBC writes that Coburn's episode — broadcast November 23, 1963 — "introduced the character of The Doctor, his three travelling companions, and his time and space machine, the TARDIS, stuck in the form of a British police box." Richard Bignell, a Doctor Who historian, believes Coburn played a significant role in sowing the seeds of the programme's success. He said: "Although the major elements that would go on to form the core of the series were devised within the BBC, as the scriptwriter for the first story, Coburn was the one who really put the flesh on the bones of the idea and how it would work dramatically. "Many opening episodes of a new television series can be very clunky as they attempt to land their audience with too much information about the characters, the setting and what's going to happen, but Coburn was very reserved in how much he revealed, preserving all the wonder and mystery."
In 2013, the Independent reported: Mr Coburn's son claims that the BBC has been in breach of copyright since his father's death in 1977. He has demanded that the corporation either stop using the Tardis in the show or pay his family for its every use since then. Stef Coburn claims that upon his father's death, any informal permission his father gave the BBC to use his work expired and the copyright of all of his ideas passed to his widow, Joan. Earlier this year she passed it on to him.

He said: "It is by no means my wish to deprive legions of Doctor Who fans (of whom I was never one) of any aspect of their favourite children's programme. The only ends I wish to accomplish, by whatever lawful means present themselves, involve bringing about the public recognition that should by rights always have been his due, of my father James Anthony Coburn's seminal contribution to Doctor Who, and proper lawful recompense to his surviving estate."
Today jd (Slashdot reader #1,658) notes that Stef Coburn apparently has a Twitter feed, where this week Stef claimed he'd cancelled the BBC's license to distribute his father's episodes after being offered what he complained was "a pittance" to relicense them.

In response to someone who asked "What do you actually gain from doing this though?" Stef Coburn replied: "Vengeance." But elsewhere Stef Coburn writes "There are OTHER as yet unfulfilled projects & aspirations of Tony's (of one of which, I was a significant part, in his final year), which I would like to see brought to fruition. If Doctor Who is my ONLY available leverage. So be it!"

Stef Coburn also announced plans to publish his father's "precursor draft-scripts (At least one very different backstory; sans 'Timelords') plus accompanying notes, for the story that became 'The Tribe of Gum'."

The singer known as Tomberlin says their first five years in the music industry may have been a net loss, according to MarketWatch. Selling "merch[andise]" like t-shirts "is what really is covering your costs and hopefully helping you make, like, an actual profit."

And then... After being told she would have to hand over more than 40% of the money she collected from selling T-shirts and other items, Tomberlin refused to sell her merchandise at the venue and publicly spoke about a practice she calls robbery — venues taking cuts from bands' merchandise sales... Other musicians are also speaking out about the practice, and their complaints seem to be having an effect. Industry giant Live Nation Entertainment Inc. announced recently that it would stop collecting merch fees at nearly 80 of the smaller clubs it owns and operates and provide all bands that play at those venues with an additional $1,500 in gas cards and cash.

Musicians who spoke with MarketWatch remain unsatisfied, however. Because of the way the announcement is phrased, many think merch fees at Live Nation clubs are only being paused until the end of the year. The musicians said they also wonder about the roughly 250 other Live Nation concert facilities, as well as the hundreds of venues owned by other companies. A Live Nation spokesperson told MarketWatch the change is "open-ended."

[...] As Tomberlin continues on her current tour, she wonders if she will be able to make a profitable career in music. Of all her ways of earning money, streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music provide "the least amount of money," she said, and with tours not leaving her with any cash at the end, she feels that even modest ambitions are out of reach.
Musician Laura Jane Grace is even soliciting signers for an online petition demanding venues stop taking cuts of the musicians' merchandise sales...

Thanks to Slashdot reader quonset for sharing the news.

As reported by Bloomberg, Netflix plans to open a number of brick-and-mortar retail locations, called Netflix House, in 2025. Engadget reports: The stores will sell merchandise based on hit Netflix shows, so you can finally snag that Lincoln Lawyer coffee mug you've always dreamed of. Netflix House establishments will also offer dining and curated live experiences. To the latter point, the two initial locations are going to feature an obstacle course based on Squid Game. This seems to miss the point of the show's brutal satire of modern capitalism, but that's been par for the course since it took the world by storm back in 2021.

Netflix House will also boast rotating art installations based on hit shows and live performances to excite fans. Additionally, the in-house restaurant will serve cuisine and drinks originally featured on the streamer's many unscripted food-based reality shows. The menu will range from fast casual to high-end dining.

The first two locations should open up in the US some time in 2025, though Netflix hasn't said where, with more global outlets to come at a later date. Why the big global push? Josh Simon, the company's vice president of consumer products, told Bloomberg that its customers "love to immerse themselves in the world of our movies and TV shows, and we've been thinking a lot about how we take that to the next level." [...] The company's still finalizing details regarding menus, locations and just about everything else. It has more than a year, after all, to set up shop.

Last month, OpenAI launched GPT-4 with vision (GPT-4V), allowing the chatbot to read and respond to questions about images. One of the many ways AI users are using this new feature is to decode redacted government documents on UFO sightings. "ChatGPT-4V Multimodal decodes a redacted government document on a UFO sighting released by NASA," one tweet raves. "Maybe the truth isn't out there; it's right here in GPT-V." Decrypt reports: Trying to fill gaps in a string of text is basically what LLMs do. The user did the next best thing when trying to test GPT-V's capabilities and made it guess parts of a text that he censored. "Nearly 100% intent accuracy." he reported. Of course, it's hard to verify whether its guess at what's otherwise obscured is accurate -- it's not like we can ask the CIA how well it did peering through the black lines. Some other ways users are utilizing GPT-4V include: deciphering a doctor's handwriting; understanding medical images, such as X-rays, and receiving analysis and insights for specific medical cases; providing information about the nutritional content of meals or food items; assisting interior design enthusiasts by offering design suggestions based on personal preferences and images of living spaces; and proving technical analysis for stocks and cryptocurrencies based on screenshots.

Tom Mitchelhill reports via CoinTelegraph: Crypto exchange FTX used hidden Python code to misrepresent the value of its insurance fund -- a pool of funds meant to prevent user losses during huge liquidation events -- according to testimony from FTX co-founder Gary Wang. In a damning testimony on Oct. 6, FTX's former chief technology officer, Gary Wang, said that FTX's so-called $100 million insurance fund in 2021 was fabricated and never contained any of the exchanges' FTX tokens (FTT) as claimed. Instead, the figure shown to the public was calculated by multiplying the daily trading volume of the FTX Token by a random number close to 7,500.

When the prosecution surfaced the above tweet -- among other public statements of its value -- and asked Wang whether this amount was accurate, he replied with a single word: "No." "For one, there is no FTT in the insurance fund. It's just the USD number. And, two, the number listed here does not match what was in the database." An exhibit in the Oct. 6 trial shows the alleged code used to generate the size of the so-called "Backstop Fund" or public insurance fund.

FTX's insurance fund was designed to protect user losses in case of huge, sudden market movements and its value was often touted on its website and social media. According to Wang's testimony, however, the amount contained within the fund was often insufficient to cover these losses. [...] In addition to revealing the allegedly fraudulent nature of FTX's insurance fund, Wang claimed that Bankman-Fried prompted him and Nishad Singh to implement an "allow_negative" balance feature in the code at FTX, which allowed Alameda Research to trade with near-unlimited liquidity on the crypto exchange.

Microsoft says Chinese state-backed hackers are exploiting a "critical"-rated zero-day vulnerability in Atlassian software to break into customer systems. From a report: The technology giant's threat intelligence team said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that it has observed a nation-state threat actor it calls Storm-0062 exploiting a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server. Microsoft has previously identified Storm-0062 as a China-based state-sponsored hacker.

Microsoft said it observed in-the-wild abuse of the maximum rated 10.0 vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-22515, since September 14, some three weeks before Atlassian's public disclosure on October 4. A bug is considered a zero-day when the vendor -- in this case Atlassian -- has zero time to fix the bug before it is exploited. Atlassian updated its advisory this week to confirm it has "evidence to suggest that a known nation-state actor" is exploiting the bug, which the company says could allow a remote attacker to create unauthorized administrator accounts to access Confluence servers. Atlassian's Confluence is a widely popular collaborative wiki system used by corporations around the world to organize and share work.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: An audio clip posted to social media on Sunday, purporting to show Britain's opposition leader Keir Starmer verbally abusing his staff, has been debunked as being AI-generated by private-sector and British government analysis. The audio of Keir Starmer was posted on X (formerly Twitter) by a pseudonymous account on Sunday morning, the opening day of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. The account asserted that the clip, which has now been viewed more than 1.4 million times, was genuine, and that its authenticity had been corroborated by a sound engineer.

Ben Colman, the co-founder and CEO of Reality Defender -- a deepfake detection business -- disputed this assessment when contacted by Recorded Future News: "We found the audio to be 75% likely manipulated based on a copy of a copy that's been going around (a transcoding). As we don't have the ground truth, we give a probability score (in this case 75%) and never a definitive score ('this is fake' or 'this is real'), leaning much more towards 'this is likely manipulated' than not," said Colman. "It is also our opinion that the creator of this file added background noise to attempt evasion of detection, but our system accounts for this as well," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Several groups of hacktivists have targeted Israeli websites with floods of malicious traffic following a surprise land, sea and air attack launched against Israel by militant group Hamas on Saturday, which prompted Israel to declare war and retaliate. Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported Monday that since Saturday morning its website was down "due to a series of cyberattacks initiated against us." At the time of writing, the paper's website still appeared down.

Rob Joyce, director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, reportedly said at a conference on Monday that there have been denial of service (DDoS) attacks and defacements of websites, without attributing the cyberattacks to particular groups. "But we're not yet seeing real [nation] state malicious actors," Joyce reportedly said. [...] Joyce's remarks appear to confirm findings of security researcher Will Thomas, who told TechCrunch that he has seen more than 60 websites taken down with DDoS attacks, and more than five websites that were defaced as of Monday.

It is common for hacktivist groups to launch cyberattacks during armed conflict, similar to what happened in Ukraine. These hackers are often not affiliated with any governments but rather a decentralized group of politically motivated hackers. Their activities can disrupt websites and services, but are far more limited compared to the activities of nation-state hacking groups. Researchers and government agencies like the NSA say they have only seen activity by hacktivists so far in this Hamas-Israel conflict. "The thing that has surprised me about the hacktivism surrounding this conflict is the amount of international groups involved, such as those allegedly from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Morocco all also targeting Israel in support of Palestine," said Thomas. "We also seen long-time threat actors returning who have participated in attacks and spread them using the hashtag #OpIsrael for years."

"I have seen several posts of cybercriminal service operators such as DDoS-for-Hire or Initial Access Brokers offering their services to those wanting to target Israel or Palestine," he added.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: "42 states to go!" exclaimed Code.org to its 1+ million Twitter followers as it celebrated victorious efforts to pass legislation making North Carolina the 8th state to pass a high school computer science graduation requirement, bringing the tech-backed nonprofit a step closer to its goal of making CS a requirement for a HS diploma in all 50 states. But as states make good on pledges made to tech CEOs to make their schoolchildren CS savvy, Education Week cautions that K-12 CS has a big certified teacher shortage problem.
From the article: When trying to ensure all students get access to the knowledge they need for college and careers, sometimes policy can get ahead of teacher capacity. Computer science is a case in point. As of 2022, every state in the nation has passed at least one law or policy intended to promote K-12 computer science education, and 53 percent of high schools offered basic computer science courses that year, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Code.org."

"'There's big money behind making [course offerings] go up higher and faster,' thanks to federal and state grants as well as private foundations, said Paul Bruno, an assistant professor of education policy, organization, and leadership at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "But then that raises the question, well, who are we getting to teach these courses...?"

Bruno's work in states such as California and North Carolina suggests that few of those new computer science classes are staffed with teachers who are certified in that subject."

Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto may or may not be businessman Craig Wright, who in 2015 founded the blockchain-tech company nChain.

But nChain's recently-departed CEO Christen Ager-Hanssen's thinks Wright is not Satoshi — and that's just the beginning. According to Forbes Ager-Hanssen went as far as "to leak emails suggesting former gambling billionaire Calvin Ayre, who has heavily backed the company doesn't believe Wright, nChain's chief scientist, is Satoshi Nakamoto.

The alleged email from Ayre begins by citing Wright's "litigation disaster"...' I have been operating under the assumption that you and Ramona have the keys and that you were simply pretending not to have them as part of some strategy that you have trapped yourself in. But now that we are looking at a situation where continuing to deny you have them ruins your life and damages your supporters, I am forced to make a tough decision... There is zero reason to continue to pretend you do not have the keys if you really have them... So either you are a moron for intentionally losing this case, or you are a moron for actually not having the keys... either way, I am not following you over the cliff...
But Ager-Hanssen also shared some thoughts of his own: I can confirm I have departed from nChain Global as its Group CEO with immediate effect after reporting several serious issues to the board of nChain Group including what I believe is a conspiracy to defraud nChain shareholders orchestrated by a significant shareholder. I also had concerns about the ultimate beneficiary shareholder and the real people behind DW Discovery fund registered in Cayman. The chairman also took instructions from shadow directors which I didn't accept.

I have also reported that I have found compelling evidence that Dr Craig Wright has manipulated documents with the aim to deceive the court he is Satoshi. I'm today myself convinced that Dr Craig Wright is NOT Satoshi and I'm persuaded he will lose all his legal battles. The board didn't take action and my job becomes clearly untenable. One of the things I recommended the Chairman of the board was to sack Dr Craig Wright.

I feel sorry for all the great people that work in the company but I don't want to be part of something I clearly don't believe in. #faketoshi
Forbes also notes an X (Twitter) account calling itself "Satoshi Nakamoto" with the handle @Satoshi has posted for the first time since 2018 — though X's community notes feature added: "This isn't the real Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of bitcoin. Its an account related to Craig Wright, who claims to be Satoshi with no material proof."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader UnknowingFool for sharing the news.

Jonathan Greig writes via The Record: Genetic testing giant 23andMe confirmed that a data scraping incident resulted in hackers gaining access to sensitive user information and selling it on the dark web. The information of nearly 7 million 23andMe users was offered for sale on a cybercriminal forum this week. The information included origin estimation, phenotype, health information, photos, identification data and more. 23andMe processes saliva samples submitted by customers to determine their ancestry.

When asked about the post, the company initially denied that the information was legitimate, calling it a "misleading claim" in a statement to Recorded Future News. The company later said it was aware that certain 23andMe customer profile information was compiled through unauthorized access to individual accounts that were signed up for the DNA Relative feature -- which allows users to opt in for the company to show them potential matches for relatives. [...] When pressed on how compromising a handful of user accounts would give someone access to millions of users, the spokesperson said the company does not believe the threat actor had access to all of the accounts but rather gained unauthorized entry to a much smaller number of 23andMe accounts and scraped data from their DNA Relative matches.

A researcher approached Recorded Future News after examining the leaked database and found that much of it looked real. [...] The researcher downloaded two files from the BreachForums post and found that one had information on 1 million 23andMe users of Ashkenazi heritage. The other file included data on more than 300,000 users of Chinese heritage. The data included profile and account ID numbers, names, gender, birth year, maternal and paternal genetic markers, ancestral heritage results, and data on whether or not each user has opted into 23andme's health data. The researcher added that he discovered another issue where someone could enter a 23andme profile ID, like the ones included in the leaked data set, into their URL and see someone's profile. The data available through this only includes profile photos, names, birth years and location but does not include test results.