Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 06/28 – Binance Runs Into Trouble Around The Globe

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

The UK orders a halt to regulated activities by Binance, joining everybody, all the sudden. Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon 888 Plus. Lenovo unveils an Android tablet that works as a portable monitor. And meet the activists perfecting the craft of anti-surveillance. Sponsors: Masterworks.io promocode RIDE AirMedCareNetwork.com/tech offer code TECH Links: Financial watchdog bans crypto exchange Binance from UK (Financial Times) The world’s biggest crypto exchange is running into trouble everywhere (Quartz) Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 Plus will speed up gaming, AI in high-end 5G phones (Cnet) Lenovo announces $679 13-inch Android tablet that works as a portable monitor (The Verge) Apple Explores Bigger iPads and Reshuffles Its Car Team (Bloomberg) Microsoft admits to signing rootkit malware in supply chain fiasco (Bleeping Computer) Microsoft keeps hinting at an October release for Windows 11 (The Verge) Meet the activists perfecting the craft of anti-surveillance (Financial Times) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMean right home for Monday, June 28th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. The UK orders a halt to regulated activities by Binance, joining everybody all of a sudden. Qualcomm unveils the Snapdragon 888 plus. Lenovo unveils an Android tablet that works as a portable monitor and meet the activists perfecting the craft of anti-surveillance. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The hits keep on coming for crypto lately. The UK's financial. Conduct Authority has ordered Crypto Exchange Binance to stop all regulated activities in Britain by June 30th and has issued a consumer alert against the company, quoting the Financial Times.

Binance Markets Limited is not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority said, adding, quote, no other entity in the Binance Group holds any form of UK authorization, registration, or license to conduct regulated activity in the UK, end quote. Binance Markets Limited is not approved under the FCA's cryptocurrency registration regime, which is required for UK groups offering digital asset services. The entity had applied to become a registered cryptocurrency company with the regulator, but pooled that application last month, according to two people familiar with the situation.

The watchdog confirmed the application had been dropped, quote, following intensive engagement from the FCA, end quote. The FCA's focus in deciding whether or not to approve such applications is based on a view of controls and practices to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Binance is one of the most important operators in the fast-emerging crypto market, offering a wide range of services to customers around the world, including trading in dozens of digital coins, futures, options, stock tokens, as well as savings accounts and lending. It recorded crypto trading volumes equivalent to $1.5 trillion last month, according to data

from the block crypto, end quote. Actually, the hits keep coming for Binance in particular. Lately, quoting Axios. This past weekend alone, it ran into obstacles in Japan, the UK, and the Canadian province of Ontario. On Friday, the Japanese Financial Services Agency issued Binance its second warning in three years that the company isn't registered to operate in Japan. The same day, Binance decided to stop operating in Ontario, where authorities have issued notices to at least three other crypto exchanges over the past month, accusing them of failing to comply with regulations. Binance was already negotiating problems in other countries as well. In Germany, this past April, financial regulators warned Binance that it would incur fines for offering digital tokens that track publicly traded

companies like Microsoft and Apple. Binance was selling these tokens without publishing an investor prospectus as required by law, a violation that could invite a penalty of 5 million euros or around $6 million. Binance is also being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. tax authorities to determine if money launderers or tax evaders are able to use the exchange for their particular particular purposes. In 2019, 27 and a half percent of all illicit Bitcoin, Bitcoin that went from criminal entities to exchanges, was received by Binance, according to a report by the research firm Chainalysis. No other exchange received more, end quote. Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon 888 plus, sporting a 3 gigahertz clock speed, and a claimed 20% boost in AI

capabilities, which should all be arriving in devices during Q3 of this year. Quoting CNet. Device makers are working on more than 130 designs using the Snapdragon 8888 and 888 plus. Qualcomm said the 888 plus will be in devices starting on the third quarter. Along with the Snapdragon 888 plus, Qualcomm unveiled its second-generation 5G RAN platform for small cells. The technology will expand MMWave to more places indoors and outdoors as well as new locations around the globe. And it will also introduce new lower-band 5G capabilities, with small cell densification in public and private networks. Qualcomm's new 5G

DUX-100 accelerator card will let operators and infrastructure vendors take advantage of high-performance, low-latency, and power-efficient 5G. When it comes to phones, Qualcomm said more than 35 operators and device makers across the globe have committed to supporting millimeter wave. The technology has super-fast speeds, but it's not as reliable as mid-and-versions of 5G. It can only travel short distances and is blocked by trees, windows and other items. In the U.S., Verizon has been MMWave's biggest proponent, while virtually all other carriers across the globe have favored slower but more reliable versions of 5G. Even in the U.S., MMWave is only in dense parts of cities or in venues like sports arenas, but MMWAVE's footprint

should improve, call-com said, end quote. Yeah, I feel like we keep hearing that. I mean, I still haven't been back in Manhattan in person yet, but I wonder if I've ever gotten five. 5G, especially MMWave on my phone yet. Maybe I'll have to actually go out and do one of those field tests and report back to you. Lenovo has unveiled the $679 Yoga Tab 13 Android tablet that does double duty as a portable monitor with a stainless steel kickstand and 1080P display. Interesting, quoting the verge. The tablet can function as an external display for a laptop or a Nintendo switch or any other HDMI device, thanks to its built-in micro-hdmai port. And with an attached stainless steel kickstand that can rotate 180 degrees from the back of

the device, you can stand it up or hang it from a wall. The tab 13 was announced alongside a slew of other Android tablets that Lenovo expects to launch later this summer, including a smaller Yoga Tab 11, a Tab P11 plus with a 2,000 by 1,200 display, and the budget-oriented tab M7 and tab M8. This last will not be sold in the U.S. The Tab 13 is compatible with Lenovo's precision pen 2, meaning you could draw or take notes while it's propped up. It includes an 8 megapixel camera for smarter login per Lenovo

with background noise reduction for video calls. Lenovo claims you'll get up to 12 hours of battery life and that its 1080p screen can reach 400 nits of brightness. All of the new tablets support Google's new entertainment space, which allows users to access videos, books, and games from multiple different apps in a single hub, end quote. Grab bag of Apple rumors here from Mark German. His sources say that Apple is considering iPads with displays larger than 12.9 inches

and has promoted new execs to the leadership team of its car projects. So again, smoke from Apple's car project continues to be cited, quoting Bloomberg. I'm told that Apple has engineers and designers exploring larger iPads that could hit stores a couple years down the road at the earliest. They're unlikely for next year with Apple's attention on a redesigned iPad. iPad Pro in the current sizes for 2022, and it's possible they will never come at all, but a big iPad would be the perfect device for many people, including me, and would continue to blur the lines between tablet and laptop. As for the Apple car, since the project started to take shape around

2014, Apple's self-driving team has seen several leadership changes, but in 2018, it gained some management stability with the hair of Doug Field, a vice president who now runs the effort after steering Tesla's development of the Model 3. This year, however, the car team, underwent some more change. At least three top members of the group departed this year, Benjamin Lyon, Jamie Waydoo, and Dave Scott, who worked on engineering safety systems and robotics respectively. More recently, Apple hired Ulrich Krantz as a top lieutenant to field. Krantz is an auto industry veteran who helped oversee the development of BMW's I-3 electric car and I-8 hybrid and held leading roles at self-driving startups, Kanoe and Faraday Future.

Crants's resume isn't exactly a slam dunk in the car world, with the BMWs being panned by some design critics and both of his startups mostly failing, but his experience reaffirms Apple's ultimate ambitions, end quote. Microsoft has had to come out and say that it signed a malicious driver called Net Filter, which was targeting gaming environments. The root kit malware was also observed communicating with Chinese IPs, quoting bleeping computer. This incident has once again exposed threats to software supply chain security, except this time it stemmed from a weakness in Microsoft's code signing process. Microsoft is actively investigating this incident, though thus far there is no evidence that stolen code signing certificates were used. The mishap seems to have resulted from the threat actor following Microsoft's process to submit the malicious net filter drivers and managing to acquire the Microsoft sign binary

in a legitimate manner. Quote, Microsoft is investigating. investigating a malicious actor distributing malicious drivers within gaming environments. The actor submitted drivers for certification through the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program. The drivers were built by a third party. We have suspended the account and reviewed their submissions for additional signs of malware, said Microsoft yesterday. And further, according to Microsoft, the threat actor has mainly targeted the gaming sector specifically in China with these malicious drivers,

and there is no indication of enterprise environments having been affected so far. Microsoft has refrained from attributing this incident. to nation-state actors just yet, end quote. By the way, one more important update on the Windows 11 front. Remember, we didn't hear definitive word on when Windows 11 would be released. But sources are telling Tom Warren at the verge that Microsoft is planning to release Windows 11 in October. Microsoft employees have hinted at specifically October 20th, at least in marketing images.

Quote, officially Microsoft has only said Windows 11 is arriving this holiday, and the company hasn't committed to a date or even a month. Month. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell the verge that the company is aiming to release Windows 11 in October, ready for new devices from OEMs. Microsoft's hints seem to focus on October 20th as a possible launch date for Windows 11. Most of Microsoft's press images for Windows 11 include the October 20th date in the task bar alongside the time set to 11.11am. Another marketing image also includes an October 6th date, so all eyes are certainly on October over at Microsoft. Alongside Microsoft's own hints,

Walmart is also promising a free upgrade to Windows October 2021 when available on several laptops it's currently selling. Microsoft has promised to deliver Windows 11 as a, quote, free upgrade for eligible Windows 10 PCs and on new PCs beginning this holiday, so Walmart is already promoting a likely October date, end quote. Finally today, we heard a lot about this last year, but the Financial Times looks at the evolving state of anti-surveillance technology being genned up by activists around the world. Quote, in the eight years since the Edward Snowden leaks revealed the breadth of mass surveillance, public anxiety about privacy from the prying eyes of authorities has steadily grown.

The quasi-militarized and highly technological police response to various mass protest movements of the past decade, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter, has only fueled concern among activists and civil society groups. Meanwhile, surveillance as a a market has exploded. Analysts at the business research company estimate that surveillance tech will grow globally from $83 billion in sales in 2020 to $146 billion in sales by 2025. Crypto parties are just the start, fired up by what they see as unchecked state power. Activists have started packing their toolkits with fringe technologies of their own. At some point, the surveilled started fighting technology with technology.

Take the apps, Telegram, and Threma, which offer ephemeral messaging that erases records of conversations after they've taken place. Once favored by drug dealers and organized crime, they've both become more mainstream. Some protesters have adopted another new tactic called steganography, hiding secret messages inside non-secret messages. Typically, this involves using a tool to embed your secret message into a seemingly innocuous file such as an image, video, or audio clip. Stegonography replaces, quote, the unused or useless data of a regular computer file with an invisible message according to the Infosec Resources website. The receiver then uses that same software or a specific command to decode and reveal the hidden

information. You can see who's talking to who, but you have no idea that it's relevant, says a security expert. It's hidden in plain sight, end quote. Another tool being developed by activists is mesh networks. In June 2019, the founder of Telegram claimed that China was behind a cyber attack that hindered its app for several hours during the Hong Kong protests. This prompted activists to explore ways to create interconnected groups of devices that can communicate with one another without going through a centralized node, such as a cell tower or Wi-Fi hub, which a government can tap into. During Occupy Wall Street, there was a lot of ideas around mesh networks and off-grid offline communication, both to help

when they shut down the internet and also to hide yourself, says Nathan Freetas, a developer and director of the Guardian Project, which creates secure apps and open-source software libraries for privacy, activists. There was a dream that we would be like a flock of birds in the street, chirping at each other, and you could have the equivalent of a Twitter happening without needing cell phone towers, end quote. Then William Gibson called it the ugliest t-shirt in the world, a garment so grotesque that it confounds surveillance cameras and renders its wearer invisible. Gibson's zero history was a work of science fiction, but academics and activists are also trying to make something like it a reality, attempts to inject optical hacks into makeup and clothing dubbed stealthware or adversarial fashion

show anti-surveillance kit that may become physical as well as digital. One of the pioneers of design-based defense is Adam Harvey, an American mechanical engineer-turned-activist who lives now in Berlin. In 2010, Harvey launched a project known as CV-Dazzle, exploring ways camouflage could be wielded to disrupt computer vision or how software interprets and analyzes the information contained in images or video. Facial recognition algorithms work by scanning for detectable geometries, the distance from forehead to chin or eye to eye, and matching them to an existing data set. Harvey's human models sport cubist splodges of face paint and jagged asymmetric haircuts, so the algorithms lose all sense of where their features are. He dubs it the antiface.

There are still technological limitations, though. Harvey, Hart, and Bertash all acknowledge that their makeup or outfits were initially designed to upset one specific algorithm, and that newer ones are always developing. What's more, biometric detection systems can already adapt to recognize subjects with modifications such as makeup, if enough photos of the same subject are fed into an algorithm's training data. Then there's the kind of irony, unique to dystopian fiction. You make yourself hyper-visible with this gear, says Harvey. Until that point that everyone has painted their face in the crowd, then actually it could

still be putting you at more risk, end quote. Still the fact that hobbyists can even temporarily thwart costly, machine learning systems raises serious questions about how dependable those systems upon which the outcome of court cases may depend really are, end quote. What a lovely weekend of football we had, and of course two great games today, starting right about as soon as I finish recording this, but tomorrow is the big one, England v. Germany. The entire reason I'm a football fan is because in 1996, the summer after my senior year of high school, I spent a couple weeks in London, right when Euro 96 was happening in London.

I got to see soccer riots in Trafalgar Square. I got to watch game after game in pubs, got to see England beat the Netherlands, beat Scotland, beat Spain. Then inevitably England went out on penalties against Germany because, of course, they did. But by then it was too late. That final match, watching people literally live and die with the game

was one of my greatest ever sporting experiences. I was hooked. I became an Arsenal fan because half the team were Arsenal players in those days, especially in defense, and it has become my one consuming sporting passion since then to see England actually win a major tournament. So here we are. I'm a friggin' England fan of all things.

Will I ever see them win a tournament in my lifetime? Who knows? But by the way, the other greatest sporting event in my life was when the Cincinnati Reds improbably won the World Series in 1990. So take it for me. Miracles can happen. Anyway, that game is tomorrow, so get hype. Talk to you then.