Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, has signalled dog-themed memecoin creators to bark up another tree, reports CoinDesk. From the report: In a move that captivated the attention of Crypto Twitter on Wednesday, the Ethereum founder re-gifted tokens sent to his public wallet by the creators of Shiba Inu coin (SHIB), Dogelon (ELON) and Akita Inu (AKITA). Notably, Buterin donated 50 trillion SHIB tokens (worth a nominal $1.2 billion at press time) to the India Covid Relief Fund kicked off by Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal late last month. Memecoin creators started sending large amounts of their tokens to the Ethereum figurehead in recent days. Vitalik was sent trillions of SHIB tokens worth over $8 billion dollars at one point. The knockoff tokens are beginning to tank.

China's ruling Communist Party has opened a new front in its long, ambitious war to shape global public opinion: Western social media. From a report: Liu Xiaoming, who recently stepped down as China's ambassador to the United Kingdom, is one of the party's most successful foot soldiers on this evolving online battlefield. He joined Twitter in October 2019, as scores of Chinese diplomats surged onto Twitter and Facebook, which are both banned in China. Since then, Liu has deftly elevated his public profile, gaining a following of more than 119,000 as he transformed himself into an exemplar of China's new sharp-edged "wolf warrior" diplomacy, a term borrowed from the title of a top-grossing Chinese action movie. "As I see it, there are so-called 'wolf warriors' because there are 'wolfs' in the world and you need warriors to fight them," Liu, who is now China's Special Representative on Korean Peninsula Affairs, tweeted in February. His stream of posts -- principled and gutsy ripostes to Western anti-Chinese bias to his fans, aggressive bombast to his detractors -- were retweeted more than 43,000 times from June through February alone. But much of the popular support Liu and many of his colleagues seem to enjoy on Twitter has, in fact, been manufactured.

A seven-month investigation by the Associated Press and the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, found that China's rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of times, covertly amplifying propaganda that can reach hundreds of millions of people -- often without disclosing the fact that the content is government-sponsored. More than half the retweets Liu got from June through January came from accounts that Twitter has suspended for violating the platform's rules, which prohibit manipulation. Overall, more than one in ten of the retweets 189 Chinese diplomats got in that time frame came from accounts that Twitter had suspended by Mar. 1. But Twitter's suspensions did not stop the pro-China amplification machine. An additional cluster of fake accounts, many of them impersonating U.K. citizens, continued to push Chinese government content, racking up over 16,000 retweets and replies before Twitter kicked them off late last month and early this month, in response to the AP and Oxford Internet Institute's investigation.

Following Twitter's lead, Facebook is trying out a new feature designed to encourage users to read a link before sharing it. TechCrunch reports: The test will reach 6% of Facebook's Android users globally in a gradual rollout that aims to encourage "informed sharing" of news stories on the platform. Users can still easily click through to share a given story, but the idea is that by adding friction to the experience, people might rethink their original impulses to share the kind of inflammatory content that currently dominates on the platform.

The strategy demonstrates Facebook's preference for a passive strategy of nudging people away from misinformation and toward its own verified resources on hot-button issues like COVID-19 and the 2020 election. While the jury is still out on how much of an impact this kind of gentle behavioral shaping can make on the misinformation epidemic, both Twitter and Facebook have also explored prompts that discourage users from posting abusive comments.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security has begun implementing a strategy to gather and analyze intelligence about security threats from public social media posts, DHS officials said. The goal is to build a warning system to detect the sort of posts that appeared to predict an attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 but were missed or ignored by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the officials said. The focus is not on the identity of the posters but rather on gleaning insights about potential security threats based on emerging narratives and grievances. So far, DHS is using human beings, not computer algorithms, to make sense of the data, the officials said. "We're not looking at who are the individual posters," said a senior official involved in the effort. "We are looking at what narratives are resonating and spreading across platforms. From there you may be able to determine what are the potential targets you need to protect."

The officials didn't describe what criteria or methods the analysts would use to parse the data. They said DHS officials have been consulting with social media companies, private companies and nonprofit groups that analyze open-source social media data. Law enforcement officers and intelligence analysts are legally entitled to examine -- without warrants -- what people say openly on Twitter, Facebook and other public social media forums, just as they can take in information from reading newspapers. But civil liberties groups generally oppose government monitoring of social media, arguing that it doesn't produce much intelligence and risks chilling free speech.

Developers are sharing their salaries on Twitter under the hashtag #GameDevPaidMe to encourage pay transparency in their industry. Axios reports: The hashtag started circulating last year, but has returned periodically as developers fight for better working conditions. Salary sharing is a way to equalize the field. By removing the secrecy, as well as the stigma, around discussing pay, workers have more power to advocate for themselves when negotiating salaries and raises. In 2020, Blizzard employees shared their salaries anonymously via a spreadsheet to compare compensation. The pay gap between people at the top, and workers on the ground is measurable in hundreds of thousands of dollars -- even when those CEOs take pay cuts.

What they're saying:
A lead designer on "Hearthstone" working for Blizzard Entertainment: "I started getting paid fairly once I started asking questions. I only started asking questions once I better understood what I was worth. Understanding what your worth can be a difficult question, but this helps."

A lead designer at Blackbird Interactive: "Every single person who plays games should take a good look at #GameDevPaidMe and get a sense for what the people who make your art actually make."

A senior game designer at Reflector Entertainment: "Don't wait for your employer to give you the raise you deserve, be open to talking to other companies even if you feel you are at a 'great' spot."

Slashgear reports that a security researcher was able to reprogram one of Apple's new AirTags, "but the process and the end result might not yet be worth the worry." Like any electronic device, especially "smart" ones, the Apple AirTag has a microcontroller that orchestrates its activities... In a nutshell, Stack Smashing "hacked" the AirTag microcontroller to modify its firmware and make it do something other than what it is designed to. That, at least for now, meant linking to a different URL when an NFC-enabled phone "taps" the tracker. Normally, it would link to found.apple.com in order to initiate the Lost Mode process.

This hack could be used to make phones go to some nefarious website but getting to that point might not exactly be straightforward. The security researcher hasn't disclosed yet the process but he admits bricking at least two AirTags to get there. Unless the tracker's firmware can be modified remotely over the air, the only way you'll get a hacked AirTag would be if you acquired it through other parties.

This AirTag hack might actually be less worrying than the debug menu that Apple may have accidentally left enabled before shipping the trackers. Fortunately, that might be something that is easily fixed with a firmware update...

America's leading social media companies "pledged to put warning labels on COVID-19 and COVID vaccines posts to stop the spread of falsehoods, conspiracy theories and hoaxes that are fueling vaccine hesitancy in the USA," reports USA Today.

"With the exception of Facebook, nearly all of them are losing the war against COVID disinformation." That's the conclusion of a new report shared exclusively with USA TODAY. As the pace of the nation's immunizations slows and public health agencies struggle to get shots in arms, Advance Democracy found that debunked claims sowing unfounded fears about the vaccines are circulating largely unfettered on Twitter and TikTok, including posts and videos that falsely allege the federal government is covering up deaths caused by the vaccines or that it is safer to get COVID-19 than to get the vaccine.

Twitter began labeling tweets that include misleading or false information about COVID-19 vaccines in March. It also started using a "strike system" to eventually remove accounts that repeatedly violate its rules. Yet none of the top tweets on Twitter using popular anti-vaccine hashtags like #vaccineskill, #novaccine, #depopulation and #plandemic had labels as of May 3, according to Advance Democracy, a research organization that studies disinformation and extremism. What's more, when USA TODAY searched these hashtags on Twitter, unlabeled posts were served up along with advertisements for major consumer brands including Cheetos, Volvo, CVS, even Star Wars...

After coming under fire for its slow response to COVID-19 misinformation, Facebook has made significant progress in labeling COVID-19 posts, according to Daniel Jones, president of Advance Democracy... As of May 3, all of the top 10 posts discussing COVID-19 vaccines that used the #vaccineskill hashtag were labeled, compared to only two of the top 10 on March 28, Advance Democracy found... Facebook told USA TODAY it has removed more than 16 million pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram for violating its COVID and vaccine policies since the beginning of the pandemic....

As of May 3, TikTok failed to consistently apply labels to anti-vaccination hashtags used in videos with millions of views, the report said. Nine of the top 10 videos related to COVID-19 vaccines using the hashtag #NoVaccine did not have a label. Videos with the #NoVaccine label racked up 20.5 million views...

The Advance Democracy research did not look at vaccine-related content on Facebook-owned Instagram or Google's YouTube.
"Promises to address public health misinformation online are only consequential if there is action and follow through..." Jones told USA Today.

"This pandemic is not over, and with the rate of vaccinations on the decline, directing users to reliable information on vaccines is more important than ever," Jones said.

NBC News reports on what exactly happened during Elon Musk's appearance on Saturday Night Live — starting with a surprisingly personal monologue: "I don't always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak," Musk said, "which I'm told makes for great comedy." He admitted he's socially awkward and said he was the first person with Asperger syndrome to host the show — "or at least the first to admit it."

"I know I sometimes say or post strange things but that's just how my brain works," Musk, 49, said. "I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?"
ET Canada notes that Twitter users later pointed out that former SNL castmember (and later episode host) Dan Aykroyd has also said he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. But NBC notes that Saturday's show was focused on the interests and eccentricities of Elon Musk. His mother, Maye Musk, appeared as part of the show's pre-celebration of Mother's Day. "I'm excited for my Mother's Day gift," she said, before mentioning a form of cryptocurrency hyped by her son. "I just hope it's not Dogecoin."

"It is," said Musk, a big investor in the cryptocurrency...
And later in a skit with Michael Che, Musk had also played a fictional cryptocurrency expert who's asked repeatedly to explain Dogecoin. "It actually started as a joke based on an internet meme but now it's taken over in a very real way," Musk said. "It's the future of currency." Asked again by Che, he said, "I keep telling you, it's a cryptocurrency you can trade for conventional money."

"Oh," Che said. "So it's a hustle."

"Yeah," Musk said, "it's a hustle...."

Dogecoin tracker Darren Rovell tweeted that the cryptocurrency had, at one point, lost $30 billion in value during the show.
In fact, by early Sunday Dogecoin was down 40%, trading as low as 44 cents, reports CNN: It's unclear what was driving the dogecoin selloff. Perhaps investors wanted Musk to say something more supportive of the cryptocurrency. But more likely, there was some "buy the rumor / sell the news" strategy, trying to capitalize on investors' predictions coming true by selling high. Dogecoin traded so actively that Robinhood announced early Sunday morning it was having issues processing crypto trades and was working to resolve the problem.

This afternoon Elon Musk tweeted a special URL allowing viewers outside the U.S. to simultaenously livestream his 90-minute appearance on Saturday Night Live for the first time in more than 100 countries, starting at 11:30 p.m. EST. The A.V. Club had a sardonic reaction to the livestreaming on YouTube: Good news for anyone looking at tonight's upcoming broadcast of Saturday Night Live — in which labor-busting vaccine skeptic Elon Musk will be given a platform to broadcast his techno-dystopian brain contents to the world — and thought, "Wow, there's not enough Google involved here." Well, not anymore.
Musk has already appeared in a two promos for the show. (Though CNN quips that the tonight's live show means NBC is "relying on Musk to filter his thoughts in real time, despite little evidence, historically, of him holding back on just about anything he wants to say — even when under scrutiny by federal regulators.") And the rest of the world is getting ready too. While Tesla brought the Cybertruck prototype to its New York City store, Lucid Air made plans to broadcast an ad for its coming 500-mile-range electric car that will compete with cars from Musk's Tesla.

Meanwhile, Bleeping Computer reports that Twitter scammers have been hacking into verified Twitter accounts and changing the profiles to impersonate SNL's, then replying to Musk's tweets with URL's lead to cryptocurrency giveaway scams. "We have determined that the scammers have made at least $97,054.62 over the past two days. The Ethereum giveaway scams also earned them $13,758." And the Dogecoin scammers netted at least $42,456.

And this week Slate also noted a spike in the price of Dogecoin. The joke cryptocurrency based on a shiba inu meme is up — uh, let me check — about 20 percent since this time Tuesday, has just about doubled in price since April 27, and as of this moment is up about 26,000 percent for the year (lol). It's trading around 64 cents as I type this... [I]t's probably not worth overthinking this. We're living in the stonks era. Elon is going on a sketch comedy show and is hinting that he might bring up a dumb digital token that everyone finds inherently funny. Now CNBC is hauling on experts to illuminate what the hell is going on, and members of the financial media are having to write earnest explainers about why you should invest in the dog money with caution, as if a single sane person would think otherwise.

What makes the whole rally uniquely amusing, compared with, say, the rise of Bitcoin, is that it's a willfully dumb affront not just to traditional finance, but also to the broader crypto community — which has, shall we say, mixed feelings about Dogecoin, mostly because they think it makes their project, which they tend to treat with self-righteous seriousness, look very silly... Dogecoin is the, well, underdog of the crypto world, the currency that was looked down upon by much of the Bitcoin- and Ethereum-boosting elite. Except now it has an $82 billion market cap. The dogecoiners — basically the sweet, dumb, bong-ripping frat of the crypto world — find all this hilarious.
So what will happen tonight? Ultimately castmember Michael Che, who co-hosts the show's parody newscast segment Weekend Update, joked that while some of the show's performers objected to Musk's appearance, he saw the selection of Musk as both "polarizing" and "exciting."

"You know, what's funny is that I would say I know about 20 to 25% of the white people that get to host the show anyway. So Elon, I was like, 'Oh, I know who he is at least.'"

Share your own reactions in the comments.

"An XKCD comic — and its many remixes — perfectly captures the absurdity of academic research," writes the Atlantic (in an article shared by Slashdot reader shanen).

It argues that the cartoon "captured the attention of scientists — and inspired many to create versions specific to their own disciplines. Together, these became a global, interdisciplinary conversation about the nature of modern research practices." It depicts a taxonomy of the 12 "Types of Scientific Paper," presented in a grid. "The immune system is at it again," one paper's title reads. "My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it," declares another. The gag reveals how research literature, when stripped of its jargon, is just as susceptible to repetition, triviality, pandering, and pettiness as other forms of communication. The cartoon's childlike simplicity, though, seemed to offer cover for scientists to critique and celebrate their work at the same time...

You couldn't keep the biologists away from the fun ("New microscope!! Yours is now obsolete"), and — in their usual fashion — the science journalists soon followed ("Readers love animals"). A doctoral student cobbled together a website to help users generate their own versions. We reached Peak Meme with the creation of a meta-meme outlining a taxonomy of academic-paper memes. At that point, the writer and internet activist Cory Doctorow lauded the collective project of producing these jokes as "an act of wry, insightful auto-ethnography — self-criticism wrapped in humor that tells a story."

Put another way: The joke was on target. "The meme hits the right nerve," says Vinay Prasad, an associate epidemiology professor and a prominent critic of medical research. "Many papers serve no purpose, advance no agenda, may not be correct, make no sense, and are poorly read. But they are required for promotion." The scholarly literature in many fields is riddled with extraneous work; indeed, I've always been intrigued by the idea that this sorry outcome was more or less inevitable, given the incentives at play. Take a bunch of clever, ambitious people and tell them to get as many papers published as possible while still technically passing muster through peer review ... and what do you think is going to happen? Of course the system gets gamed: The results from one experiment get sliced up into a dozen papers, statistics are massaged to produce more interesting results, and conclusions become exaggerated. The most prolific authors have found a way to publish more than one scientific paper a week. Those who can't keep up might hire a paper mill to do (or fake) the work on their behalf.
The article argues the Covid-19 pandemic induced medical journals to forego papers about large-scale clinical trials while "rapidly accepting reports that described just a handful of patients. More than a few CVs were beefed up along the way."

But pandemic publishing has only served to exacerbate some well-established bad habits, Michael Johansen, a family-medicine physician and researcher who has criticized many studies as being of minimal value, told me. "COVID publications appear to be representative of the literature at large: a few really important papers and a whole bunch of stuff that isn't or shouldn't be read."
Unfortunately, the Atlantic adds, "none of the scientists I talked with could think of a realistic solution."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's safe to say WhatsApp didn't have the ideal start to 2021. Less than a week into the new year, the Facebook-owned instant messaging app had already annoyed hundreds of thousands of users with its scary worded notification about a planned policy update. The backlash grew fast and millions of people, including several high-profile figures, started to explore rival apps Signal and Telegram.

Even governments, including India's -- WhatsApp's biggest market by users -- expressed concerns. (In the case of India, also an antitrust probe.) The backlash prompted WhatsApp to offer a series of clarifications and assurances to users, and it also postponed the deadline for enforcing the planned update by three months. Now with the May 15 deadline just a week away, we are able to quantify the real-world impact the aforementioned backlash had on WhatsApp's user base: Nada. The vast majority of users that WhatsApp has notified about the planned update in recent months have accepted the update, a WhatsApp spokesperson told TechCrunch. And the app continues to grow, added the spokesperson without sharing the exact figures.

schwit1 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum, written by Evan Ackerman: A few weeks ago, the CTO of Cruise tweeted an example of one of their AVs demonstrating a safety behavior where it moves over to make room for a cyclist. What's interesting about this behavior, though, is that the AV does this for cyclists approaching rapidly from behind the vehicle, something a human is far less likely to notice, much less react to. A neat trick -- but what does it mean, and what's next? In the video [here], as the cyclist approaches from the rear right side at a pretty good clip, you can see the autonomous vehicle pull to the left a little bit, increasing the amount of space that the cyclist can use to pass on the right.

One important question that we're not really going to tackle here is whether this is even a good idea in the first place, since (as a cyclist) I'd personally prefer that cars be predictable rather than sometimes doing weirdly nice things that I might not be prepared for. But that's one of the things that makes cyclists tricky: we're unpredictable. And for AVs, dealing with unpredictable things is notoriously problematic. Cruise's approach to this, explains Rashed Haq, VP of Robotics at Cruise, is to try to give their autonomous system some idea of how unpredictable cyclists can be, and then plan its actions accordingly. Cruise has collected millions of miles of real-world data from its sensorized vehicles that include cyclists doing all sorts of things. And their system has built up a model of how certain it can be that when it sees a cyclist, it can accurately predict what that cyclist is going to do next.

Essentially, based on its understanding of the unpredictability of cyclists, the Cruise AV determined that the probability of a safe interaction is improved when it gives cyclists more space, so that's what it tries to do whenever possible. This behavior illustrates some of the critical differences between autonomous and human-driven vehicles. Humans drive around with relatively limited situational awareness and deal with things like uncertainty primarily on a subconscious level. AVs, on the other hand, are constantly predicting the future in very explicit ways. Humans tend to have the edge when something unusual happens, because we're able to instantly apply a lifetime's worth of common-sense knowledge about the world to our decision-making process. Meanwhile, AVs are always considering the safest next course of action across the entire space that they're able to predict.

The biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, has announced it will close its San Francisco offices for good. SFGate reports: The company -- founded in June 2012 by former Airbnb engineer Brian Armstrong -- has had a speedy rise to the top in the nascent crypto industry, though its practices have also sometimes stoked controversy. [...] Coinbase's 1,200 employees are now decentralizing, and the company will no longer have a physical headquarters at all. The announcement on Twitter on Wednesday that the company's Market Street offices would shutter next year wasn't a total shock. A year ago, Armstrong announced the company would be "remote first" and not have a specific headquarters. Coinbase say they will instead offer some smaller offices elsewhere, but didn't give details. "Closing our SF office is an important step in ensuring no office becomes an unofficial HQ and will mean career outcomes are based on capability and output rather than location," the company said in a statement. "Instead, we will offer a network of smaller offices for our employees to work from if they choose to."

Custom TV show playlists? In memoriam pages? They're all things that Netflix is weighing for "N-Plus," a project it describes as a "future online space where you can learn more about the Netflix shows and things related to them." From a report: In a survey sent to users, including Protocol reporter Biz Carson, Netflix queried people about a wide range of features and content, including podcasts, user-generated playlists, how-tos and more. "N-Plus is a future online space where you can learn more about the Netflix shows you love and anything related to them," the survey said. Contacted by Protocol, a Netflix spokesperson said that the survey was part of regular efforts to poll its audience on things the company was exploring, but said that it didn't have anything further to share for now. Netflix has long produced behind-the-scenes interviews, podcasts and other supporting content to promote its originals, and shared it through YouTube, Instagram and other platforms; examples for this include its Netflix Family Instagram account or Strong Black Lead Twitter following. The survey now suggests that the company may double down on those promotional efforts, while also adding some additional social features.

Nasty replies on Twitter will require a little more thought to send. From a report: The tech company said it is releasing a feature that automatically detects "mean" replies on its service and prompts people to review the replies before sending them. "Want to review this before Tweeting?" the prompt asks in a sample provided by the San Francisco-based company. Twitter users will have three options in response: tweet as is, edit or delete. The prompts are part of wider efforts at Twitter and other social media companies to rethink how their products are designed and what incentives they may have built in to encourage anger, harassment, jealousy or other bad behavior. Facebook-owned Instagram is testing ways to hide like counts on its service.

SpaceX has received more than 500,000 preorders for its Starlink satellite internet service and anticipates no technical problems meeting the demand, founder Elon Musk said on Tuesday. Reuters reports: "Only limitation is high density of users in urban areas," Musk tweeted, responding to a post from a CNBC reporter that said the $99 deposits SpaceX took for the service were fully refundable and did not guarantee service. SpaceX has not set a date for Starlink's service launch, but commercial service would not likely be offered in 2020 as it had previously planned. The company plans to eventually deploy 12,000 satellites in total and has said the Starlink constellation will cost it roughly $10 billion.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the remote testing company Proctorio on behalf of Miami University student Erik Johnson. The Verge reports: The lawsuit is intended to "quash a campaign of harassment designed to undermine important concerns" about the company's remote test-proctoring software, according to the EFF. The lawsuit intends to address the company's behavior toward Johnson in September of last year. After Johnson found out that he'd need to use the software for two of his classes, Johnson dug into the source code of Proctorio's Chrome extension and made a lengthy Twitter thread criticizing its practices -- including links to excerpts of the source code, which he'd posted on Pastebin. Proctorio CEO Mike Olsen sent Johnson a direct message on Twitter requesting that he remove the code from Pastebin, according to screenshots viewed by The Verge. After Johnson refused, Proctorio filed a copyright takedown notice, and three of the tweets were removed. (They were reinstated after TechCrunch reported on the controversy.)

In its lawsuit, the EFF is arguing that Johnson made fair use of Proctorio's code and that the company's takedown "interfered with Johnson's First Amendment right." "Copyright holders should be held liable when they falsely accuse their critics of copyright infringement, especially when the goal is plainly to intimidate and undermine them," said EFF Staff Attorney Cara Gagliano in a statement. "I'm doing this to stand up against student surveillance, as well as abuses of copyright law," Johnson told The Verge. "This isn't the first, and won't be the last time a company abuses copyright law to try and make criticism more difficult. If nobody calls out this abuse of power now, it'll just keep happening."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed new standards on Tuesday for what an average or "normal" U.S. climate looks like, showing average temperatures in the U.S. rising significantly. Updating these standards is important for helping shape government policies and what your local weather forecaster says the "average" high temperature is on a given date.

NOAA releases climate averages for the preceding 30-year period every 10 years. The "climate normals" released Tuesday cover 1991-2020 and indicate that the U.S. climate has warmed, and also become wetter over time. NOAA noted that parts of the U.S. may also get drier, due to climate change. "The influence of long-term global warming is obvious," per a press release. The new normals may shift how the climate is described for particular parts of the U.S. With the changes, Fairbanks, Alaska is no longer considered a sub-Arctic climate, but is now termed a "warm summer continental" climate.

Robinhood's trading app crashed for around an hour this morning, as Dogecoin hit record highs and Ethereum continued to gain ground. The outage is reminiscent of the Robinhood-GameStop fiasco last January, where Robinhood deliberately blocked users from trading GameStop stock as it catapulted in value. The Verge reports: Robinhood ran into issues processing cryptocurrency trades this morning, during a spike in the price of Dogecoin that sent users flocking to the app. The website DownDetector shows the outage starting around 9:30AM ET and reducing in severity about an hour later. Robinhood confirmed that it experienced a "partial outage" in crypto trading and said the issues had been resolved as of 11:15AM ET. The outage was particularly noticeable since it came during a spike (and subsequent dip) in Dogecoin prices. Coins were priced at around $0.40 USD at the beginning of the day. Around 8AM ET, they spiked past $0.50 USD and reached as high as $0.60 USD near 10AM ET.

Users were quick to voice their frustrations with the app on Twitter, seeing it as a repeat of the situation that happened in January when Robinhood limited trading on buzzy, soaring stocks, including GameStop and AMC. In the app this morning, a message told users, "We are experiencing intermittent issues with crypto trading. We are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible." Meanwhile, the price ticker on Dogecoin continued its rapid flip up and down.

Developer dekuNukem has detailed a methodology for refilling the DRM-protected detergent cassettes for a $486 portable dishwasher called Bob. Gizmodo reports: Bob is basically a small dishwasher that sits on your counter. It holds half a dozen dishes and some silverware, and you add water to the system by hand. It looks like a great alternative to a larger installed dishwasher or something nice for an apartment dweller. But it has a secret bit of DRM built in that keeps you wedded to the company's products. The Bob uses cassettes, called Rock and Pop (LOL!), that contain concentrated detergent and rinse liquids. The cassettes are similar to inkjet cartridges in that they store a small amount of information on a built-in chip -- in this case, a simple I2C EEPROM that can store a small amount of information. This chip stores the number of washes and will "cancel" a cassette when it's technically empty. The machine will then order new cassettes automatically. To Bob's credit, you can use your own detergent, but it isn't easy. And the cassettes aren't cheap.

"With shipping and VAT added, it costs a whopping $60 for 90 washes! That is 48p (67c) per wash. It might not sound like much, but it quickly adds up," wrote dekuNukem. "Over a year of daily washes, it would have cost $242 in Bob cassettes alone! Imagine paying that much recurring cost for a dishwasher!"

Using an EEPROM reader, they were able to pull the data from the cassette and even modify it, resulting in a simple system to reset the cartridges back to their original wash counts or, in one case, forcing the cassette to run about 70 more washes than originally advertised. Once dekuNukem figured out the coding mechanism, they had to figure out a way to refill the cassettes. They searched the internet for concentrated detergent offerings and found one that matched the website description exactly. "Refilling it yourself is more than 60 times cheaper, resulting in a massive 98% cost saving compared to buying new!" they wrote. The plans are available on dekuNukem's Github. You can also purchase the Cassette Rewinder, a pre-soldered board that will automatically reset the cassette EEPROM, for $29.99.