Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 08/23 – M1X Mac Mini Incoming…

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

Mark Gurman says when a new high end M1X Mac mini might be coming. The USDC stablecoin looks to get right with the accounting Gods. Visa buys a CryptoPunk. Did Giphy pay dividend to lower its value for Facebook to acquire it? And do we now know the real reason why OnlyFans is attempting to abandon porn? Sponsors: Oracle.com/goto/ride Modern Finance Podcast Links: High-End 'M1X' Mac Mini With New Design and Additional Ports Expected to Launch in the 'Next Several Months' (MacRumors) The world’s second-largest stablecoin is undergoing a massive change (CNBC) Visa buys a CryptoPunk as it takes first steps into 'NFT commerce' (The Block) Razer bug lets you become a Windows 10 admin by plugging in a mouse (BleepingComputer) Facebook’s Stealth M&A Puts Focus on Deals Under Antitrust Radar (Bloomberg) Facebook says post that cast doubt on covid-19 vaccine was most popular on the platform from January through March (The Washington Post) Post-Culture Review Twitter Thread 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 tech meme right home for Monday, August 23rd, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Mark German says when a new high-end M1X Mac Mini might be coming, the U.S.DC. stablecoin looks to get right with the accounting gods. Visa buys a crypto punk. Did Jiffy pay dividends to its owners to lower its value for Facebook to acquire it?

And do we now know the real reason why OnlyFans is attempting to abandon porn? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Mark German is reporting that a high-end M1X Mac Mini with an updated design and possibly more ports than the current M1 Mac Mini should replace the Intel model of the Mac Mini in the next several months, quoting Mac Rumors. This presumably means the new Mac Mini may launch alongside the redesigned 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros this fall, as German writes, quote, Last fall, as part of its trio of initial Macs to transition over to Apple Silicon Chips, the company updated the older Mac Mini design with the M1 processor. The Mac Mini is used for more basic tasks like video streaming, but many people use it as a software development machine as a server or for their video editing needs.

Apple knows that, so it kept the Intel model around. Well, expect that to go away in the next several months with a high-end M1X Mac Mini. It will have an updated design and more ports than the current model, end quote. Apple leaker John Prosser in May shared renders of what the upcoming Mac Mini may look like, and according to those renders, allegedly based on images from internal Apple sources, the new Mac Mini will feature a plexiglass top and a magnetic power port. The new Mac Mini is also rumored to feature additional ports, end quote. P.S., given that traditionally the iPhone events for Apple are usually in the first or second week of September,

virtual invites to that virtual event should be going out any minute now, though I've also heard that there might be a completely separate event for Mac announcements after the iPhone event this fall. After some recent criticism center, the consortium founded by Circle and Coinbase says that its stablecoin, USDC, will now back reserves with only cash and US treasuries, quoting CNBC. Digital currency company Circle had long claimed its stablecoin, USD coin, or USDC, was backed one-to-one by actual dollars in a bank account. In July, it was revealed this was no longer the case, with Circle disclosing in an attestation from auditor's Grant Thornton, that cash made up just over

60% of USD coins reserves. The other 40% was backed by various forms of debt securities and bonds. Now Circle says it's changing the makeup of USD coins reserves, once again, with just cash and U.S. Treasury bonds underpinning the stable coin. Center, a consortium founded by Circle and Cryptoexchange Coinbase, which developed the stable coin unveiled the change on Sunday, quote, mindful of community sentiment, our commitment to trust and transparency and an evolving regulatory landscape, Circle with the support of Center and Coinbase, has announced that it will now hold the USDC reserve entirely in cash and short duration U.S. Treasuries, Circle said,

and a blog post, end quote. Let me quote from further down in the piece to explain why this is important. Remember how I told you that stable coins are because of the same. very powerful in crypto land because they are a popular way for traders to jump in and out of various coins. Quoting again, U.S.D. coin is the second largest stable coin globally with $27 billion worth of coins in circulation. Tether, the largest stable coin with $75 billion in circulation, has drawn scrutiny from regulators amid fears it doesn't have enough assets to support its peg to the greenback. Earlier this year, Tether's issuer revealed that just 2.9% of its reserves,

were held in cash. The vast majority of its reserves were made up of commercial paper, a form of unsecured short-term debt that's riskier than government bonds. This sparked fears that a sudden mass redemption of tethered tokens could destabilize short-term credit markets. In their latest policy meeting, officials at the U.S. Federal Reserve said stablecoins should be regulated as they pose a potential threat to financial stability. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has previously said a U.S. Central Bank digital currency could eliminate the need for cryptocurrencies and stable coins like USDC and Tether, end quote. Also from CryptoLand, Visa says it has acquired Cryptopunk 7610, one of the 3,840 female punk NFTs for around $150,000 last week,

adding it to its art collection. Today I learned Visa has an art collection, quoting the block. Cryptopunks are considered the original NFTs, launched in 2017 by Larvalite, These are a collection of 10,000 pixel art images of misfits and eccentrics. Each Cryptopunk has its own personality and unique combination of features. We felt that Cryptopunks would be a great addition to our collection of artifacts that can chart and celebrate the past, present and future of Commerce. Visa's head of Crypto, Kai Sheffield told the block in an interview. Visa owns several vintage pieces related to commerce as part of its art collection, including early paper credit cards and knucklebusters, a device merchants used to recover.

credit card transactions before the advent of electronic point-of-sale terminals, said Sheffield. When asked why Visa added a Cryptopunk to the collection, Sheffield said, Cryptopunks, quote, pioneered the NFT technology and wave of NFT commerce, so Visa wanted to own a punk. He said the decision was less about the individual punk, but more about Cryptopunks in general, given that it is a historical NFT project, end quote. A bug in Razor's Synapse software, which Windows fetches and installs when a Razor accessory is plugged into a computer, has been found to let anyone with a Razor mouse gain administrative privileges to a computer, quoting bleeping computer. Razor is a very popular computer peripherals manufacturer known for its gaming mouse's and keyboards.

When plugging in a Razor device into Windows 10 or Windows 11, the operating system will automatically download and begin installing the Razor Synapse software on the computer. Razor Synapse is software that allows users to configure their hardware devices, set up macros, or map buttons. Razor claims that their Razor Synapse software is used by over 100 million users worldwide. Security researcher John Hat discovered a zero-day vulnerability in the plug-and-play Razor Synapse installation that allows users to gain system privileges on a Windows device quickly. After this zero-day vulnerability gained wide attention on Twitter, Razor has contacted the security researcher to let them know that they will be issuing a fix. Razor also told the researcher that he would be receiving a bug bounty reward, even though the vulnerability was publicly disclosed, end quote.

I didn't cover this, but last week, word came down that the UK's Competition and Markets Authority announced it had provisionally found that Facebook's acquisition of GIFI could negatively impact competition in such cases as maybe denying competitors' access to GIFs. So it's not looking good for acquisition approval, at least in that market. But sources are telling Bloomberg something even more interesting, i.e., before its acquisition by Facebook, Giffy paid investors a dividend, thereby reducing the overall value of Giffy, thereby ensuring antitrust officials did not need to be notified. Quote, Jiffy used a common and legal maneuver that lets companies avoid scrutiny from merger watchdogs. It paid a dividend to investors. The payment,

described by two people familiar with the matter, reduced the size of Jiffy's assets enough so that the companies weren't required to report the deal to antitrust officials. The people asked not to be identified discussing non-public information. Maneuvers like Giffies make policing deals all the more challenging at a time when authorities are being called on to take more aggressive steps to curb the growth of dominant companies, especially in the technology industry. It also raises questions about whether the system used to screen mergers for anti-competitive threats is in need of an overhaul. Firms basically are running wild, said Thomas Woolman, an economics professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, who has studied the issue. Quote, it's a little bit like what happens if the police station closes at 5 p.m. That's when all the crime starts, end quote.

Most mergers in the U.S. are never looked at by regulators. Slightly more than 2,000 deals were filed to government antitrust enforcers, between, October 2018 and September 2019, the most recent period reported by the FTC and the Justice Department, which share antitrust duties. The government reviews account for about 10% of nearly 22,000 acquisitions or company investments announced in that period involving a U.S. company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The U.S. system for screening mergers was created by the 1976 law known as the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act. The law requires companies to notify antitrust officials about deals that meet annually adjusted thresholds.

Transactions worth $92 million or less don't have to be reported, while those over $368 million do. For deals between $92 and $368 million, filing requirements are based on assets and sales of the buyer and seller. Those levels are far below the multi-billion dollar deals that typically garner the most attention. The thinking behind the cutoffs is that small deals don't raise antitrust concerns, and looking at every deal would be a waste of resources. Now concerns about unexamined deals are prompting calls from some quarters to reform the rules, end quote. One more interesting Facebook story for you. Remember when last week Facebook revealed for the first time its most shared links and clips of media on the Facebook news feed? Remember how they released the

numbers for Q2 of this year? Well, last week, people began alleging that it was, wasn't simply that Facebook released the most recent data it had available. These people allege that Facebook sat on the data from Q1 of this year for reasons. Well, now they have released the numbers from Q1, and I'll let the Washington Post take it from here. Quote, Facebook said Saturday evening that an article raising concerns that the coronavirus vaccine could lead to death was the top performing link in the United States on its platform from January through March of this year, acknowledging the widespread reach of such material for first time. It also said another site that pushed COVID-19 misinformation was also among the top 20

most visited pages on the platform. In a report published this past week, Facebook had identified the most popular information shared on its platform from April to June, a disclosure that raised questions about why the company was not revealing popular posts from the earlier part of this year. The new release of the January through March data by Facebook came one day after the New York Times first reported that it had been withheld by senior executives. The disclosure reflects the challenge of being open with the public at a time when the social network is being attacked by the White House as well as experts for fomenting the spread of health misinformation. Previously, the company had only shared how much COVID-related misinformation it has removed

and has been careful not to acknowledge up to this point what role they've played in disseminating material that misled the public about the virus and the vaccine. For months, executives have debated releasing both this report and other information according to a person familiar with the company's thinking. In those debates, the conversations revolved around whether releasing certain data points were likely to help or hurt the company's already battered public image. In numerous instances, the company held back on investigating information that appeared negative, the person said, end quote. Finally today, since that was a follow-up story to news from last week, I also wanted to give you this. An account on Twitter called Post Culture Review posted a thread

over the weekend that maybe answers my question about what else might be going on behind the scenes to cause OnlyFans to ban porn. And if this account is true, it's kind of what I thought, i.e., only fans is banning sexually explicit content because of new MasterCard rules in force from October 1st, which make hosting such content prohibitively expensive, quoting from the thread. A lot of people are getting the OnlyFans story wrong, and the reality of it is a lot more damaging and concerning to both the livelihood of sex workers and online freedom in general. Only fans isn't ditching porn and sex workers because it's trying to get new investments. It's ditching them because, on October 1st of 2021, MasterCard is implementing new rules

governing sites with adult content that use their payment processing systems. These rules will basically require that only fans and every other site that accepts MasterCard payments not only fully verify every user and every person who appears in every adult video, but review all posted content before publication, including real-time reviews of live streams. The new records-keeping review process, verification, and other requirements are going to be expensive and time-consuming. Only fans seem to have decided it's not worth it. More importantly, though, these rules will put incredible pressure on smaller sites and indie creators. Of course, they could just decide not to accept MasterCard, but it's likely Visa and

others will follow suit eventually. So why change the rules? Because last December, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Nick Christoph called The Children of Pornhub that accused the site and its parent company of profiting off revenge porn, child porn, and sex trafficking, which, to be clear, they kind of were. Pornhub was notoriously bad among the tube sites for its reckless lack of content moderation and exploitation of the people whose videos ended up there. Because of the story, Visa and MasterCard both cut Pornhub off. Pornhub has since moved to a model where it only posts verified users, but the big payment processors haven't relented and are looking to remove themselves from any

other businesses that might be involved in sex trafficking, non-consexual content, etc. Hence the rule changes, end quote. The thread goes on to make political arguments about why pressure has been applied to Visa and MasterCard in this matter, and who is maybe doing the pressuring. I'm not going to share that part because of my longstanding policy of avoiding political points on the show when and if I can, but also because I don't actually know if these further political arguments are true, nor do I have an opinion on this matter one way or another. So there are the functional mechanics that are perhaps behind the only fans move, but if you want to read the speculative political reasons, possibly behind it as well, link to the thread is in the only fans move. but if you want to read the speculative political reasons, possibly behind it as well, link to the thread is in the show notes. This weekend, my wife and I went back to Ann Arbor, Michigan to clean out a storage unit that we had been keeping there for over a decade since shortly after my wife graduated.

It was a star-crossed endeavor from the very beginning. We were scheduled to do it over a year and a half ago right before the pandemic hit. We were scheduled to do it twice this summer before canceling for various reasons. and wouldn't you know it? We were pulling back into Brooklyn right when the hurricane hit yesterday. Talk about a cursed project. And yet, right when we pulled up in front of our house, a parking space large enough for a U-Haul truck opened up right directly in front of our house,

literally right in front. If you know New York City parking struggles, you know what a sort of miracle that was. So I guess it was a case of bad luck, bad luck, bad luck, and then right at the end, extremely good luck. all the stuff is now in our house, the storage unit is empty, and all's well, that ends well, I guess. Talk to you tomorrow.