Today, YouTube TV announced a 4K Plus add-on package with offline downloads, 5.1 Dolby audio, and features that make it easier to watch live sports. From a report: YouTube TV is already one of the pricier streaming services out there -- at $64.99 per month, you might not save much money by choosing YouTube in lieu of your cable service. Hulu + Live TV is priced the same, but offers a Disney+ and ESPN+ add-on for a total of $72.99 per month. But if you want to kick your video quality (and your monthly bill) up a notch, you can now enable 4K streaming for an extra $19.99 per month, bringing your grand total to $84.98 monthly.

The 4K Plus add-on package will also allow subscribers to download shows from DVR to watch offline -- currently, that's not possible on the standard $64.99 per month package. Meanwhile, the 5.1 Dolby audio capabilities will be a free addition for all YouTube TV members -- in a blog post, the company says this has been one of users' "biggest requests." The sports upgrades also come at no additional cost -- one new feature will let viewers jump to key plays and specific highlight moments when watching a DVR recording or trying to catch up live.

Billionaire bitcoin owner Mircea Popescu has reportedly died, leaving behind a cache of virtual currency and a controversial crypto legacy. MarketWatch reports: The bitcoin pioneer, who was believed to own over $1 billion in the world's No. 1 crypto, making him, at the time, one of the asset's larger single-holders, died off the coast of Costa Rica, according to a Spanish-language publication, Teletica.com, which reported last week that a foreigner had drowned at Playa Hermosa de Garabito, Puntarenas in Costa Rica, describing him as a 41-year old of Polish origin. Popescu was viewed as a pioneer in digital assets and one of the earliest adopters. An article in Bitcoin Magazine written by Pete Rizzo said that Popescu was known for starting MPEx, a Bitcoin securities exchange, around the same time as the Coinbase Global launched. At its mid-April peak this year, Popescu's bitcoin holdings would have been worth nearly $2 billion. Further reading: Bitcoin Magazine, Coinspeaker

There are some big announcements on DuckDuckGo's blog at SpreadPrivacy.com:

• "Our apps have been downloaded more than 50 million times over the last 12 months, more than all prior years combined...

• "Spurred by the increase in DuckDuckGo app usage, over the last 12 months our monthly search traffic increased 55% and we grew to become the #2 search engine on mobile in many countries including in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. (StatCounter/Wikipedia)."

• "We don't track our users so we can't say for sure how many we have, but based on market share estimates, download numbers, and national surveys, we believe there are between 70-100 million DuckDuckGo users."

• "We're excited to start rolling out additional privacy features to our all-in-one privacy bundle. In a few weeks, DuckDuckGo Email Protection will be available in beta which will give users more privacy without having to get a new inbox. Later this summer, app tracker blocking will be available in beta for Android devices, allowing users to block app trackers and providing more transparency on what's happening behind the scenes on their device. Before the end of the year, we also plan to release a brand-new desktop version of our existing mobile app which people can use as a primary browser."

They're now pulling in over $100 million a year in revenue, "giving us the financial resources to continue growing rapidly," and at the end of 2020 they also landed a "mainly secondary investment" of over $100 million from a long list of investors (which included Tim Berners-Lee as well as Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor).

One thing they're doing with their money is spreading the word about online privacy — by purchasing billboard, radio, and TV ads in 175 different markets across the U.S., with more marketing blitzes now planned soon for Europe and other countries around the world.

The Wall Street Journal reports: Authorities in the U.K. and Japan took aim at affiliates of Binance Holdings Ltd., the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange network, in the latest regulatory crackdown on the wildly popular trade in bitcoin and other digital assets. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the country's lead financial regulator, told consumers Saturday that Binance's local unit wasn't permitted to conduct operations related to regulated financial activities...

Binance Markets Ltd., the company's U.K. arm, applied to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority and withdrew its application on May 17. "A significantly high number of cryptoasset businesses are not meeting the required standards" under money-laundering regulations, said a spokesperson for the FCA in an email. "Of the firms we've assessed to date, over 90% have withdrawn applications following our intervention."

Japan's financial watchdog issued a statement on June 25, saying that Binance isn't registered to do business in the country...

As of April, Binance operated the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, allowing tens of billions of dollars of trades to pass through its networks, according to data provider CryptoCompare. It was founded in 2017 and initially based in China, later moving offices to Japan and Malta. It recently said it is a decentralized organization with no headquarters... The FCA move doesn't ban customers from using Binance completely; U.K. customers can continue to use Binance's non-U.K. operations for activities the FCA doesn't directly regulate, such as buying and selling direct holdings in bitcoin.
The Financial Times called the move "one of the most significant moves any global regulator has made against Binance" and "a sign of how regulators are cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry over concerns relating to its potential role in illicit activities such as money laundering and fraud, and over often weak consumer protection." But more countries are also taking action, Reuters reports: Last month, Bloomberg reported that officials from the U.S. Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service who probe money laundering and tax offences had sought information from individuals with insight into Binance's business. In April, Germany's financial regulator BaFin warned the exchange risked being fined for offering digital tokens without an investor prospectus.
And CoinDesk adds: Binance is no longer open for business in Canada's most populous province, apparently choosing to close shop rather than meet the fate of other cryptocurrency exchanges that have had actions filed against them for allegedly failing to comply with Ontario securities laws.

Remember when ProPublica said they'd obtained the tax returns of some of America's richest people?

Now they're reporting that Peter Thiel turned a small retirement account — the kind meant to help middle class investors — "into a $5 billion tax-free piggy bank." Billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, has publicly condemned "confiscatory taxes." He's been a major funder of one of the most prominent anti-tax political action committees in the country. And he's bankrolled a group that promotes building floating nations that would impose no compulsory income taxes. But Thiel doesn't need a man-made island to avoid paying taxes. He has something just as effective: a Roth individual retirement account.

Over the last 20 years, Thiel has quietly turned his Roth IRA — a humdrum retirement vehicle intended to spur Americans to save for their golden years — into a gargantuan tax-exempt piggy bank, confidential Internal Revenue Service data shows. Using stock deals unavailable to most people, Thiel has taken a retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and spun it into a $5 billion windfall. To put that into perspective, here's how much the average Roth was worth at the end of 2018: $39,108... What's more, as long as Thiel waits to withdraw his money until April 2027, when he is six months shy of his 60th birthday, he will never have to pay a penny of tax on those billions....

While most Americans are dutifully paying taxes — chipping in their part to fund the military, highways and safety-net programs — the country's richest citizens are finding ways to sidestep the tax system. One of the most surprising of these techniques involves the Roth IRA, which limits most people to contributing just $6,000 each year... Yet, from the start, a small number of entrepreneurs, like Thiel, made an end run around the rules: Open a Roth with $2,000 or less. Get a sweetheart deal to buy a stake in a startup that has a good chance of one day exploding in value. Pay just fractions of a penny per share, a price low enough to buy huge numbers of shares. Watch as all the gains on that stock — no matter how giant — are shielded from taxes forever, as long as the IRA remains untouched until age 59 and a half. Then use the proceeds, still inside the Roth, to make other investments.
ProPublica argues Thiel's move alone "deprived the U.S. government of untold millions in tax revenue. Perhaps billions." But he's not the only multi-millionaire they found stashing vast sums into untaxed accounts:

• Ted Weschler, a deputy of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway had $264.4 million at the end of 2018.
• Hedge fund manager Randall Smith, whose Alden Global Capital has gutted newspapers around the country, had $252.6 million in his.
• Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world and a vocal supporter of higher taxes on the rich: $20.2 million
• Former Renaissance Technologies hedge fund manager Robert Mercer: $31.5 million

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For years, security researchers and cybercriminals have hacked ATMs by using all possible avenues to their innards, from opening a front panel and sticking a thumb drive into a USB port to drilling a hole that exposes internal wiring. Now, one researcher has found a collection of bugs that allow him to hack ATMs -- along with a wide variety of point-of-sale terminals -- in a new way: with a wave of his phone over a contactless credit card reader. Josep Rodriguez, a researcher and consultant at security firm IOActive, has spent the last year digging up and reporting vulnerabilities in the so-called near-field communications reader chips used in millions of ATMs and point-of-sale systems worldwide. NFC systems are what let you wave a credit card over a reader -- rather than swipe or insert it -- to make a payment or extract money from a cash machine. You can find them on countless retail store and restaurant counters, vending machines, taxis, and parking meters around the globe.

Now Rodriguez has built an Android app that allows his smartphone to mimic those credit card radio communications and exploit flaws in the NFC systems' firmware. With a wave of his phone, he can exploit a variety of bugs to crash point-of-sale devices, hack them to collect and transmit credit card data, invisibly change the value of transactions, and even lock the devices while displaying a ransomware message. Rodriguez says he can even force at least one brand of ATMs to dispense cash -- though that "jackpotting" hack only works in combination with additional bugs he says he has found in the ATMs' software. He declined to specify or disclose those flaws publicly due to nondisclosure agreements with the ATM vendors. "You can modify the firmware and change the price to one dollar, for instance, even when the screen shows that you're paying 50 dollars. You can make the device useless, or install a kind of ransomware. There are a lot of possibilities here," says Rodriguez of the point-of-sale attacks he discovered. "If you chain the attack and also send a special payload to an ATM's computer, you can jackpot the ATM -- like cash out, just by tapping your phone."

Rodriguez says he alerted the affected vendors -- which include ID Tech, Ingenico, Verifone, Crane Payment Innovations, BBPOS, Nexgo, and the unnamed ATM vendor -- to his findings between seven months and a year ago. Even so, he warns that the sheer number of affected systems and the fact that many point-of-sale terminals and ATMs don't regularly receive software updates -- and in many cases require physical access to update -- mean that many of those devices likely remain vulnerable. "Patching so many hundreds of thousands of ATMs physically, it's something that would require a lot of time," Rodriguez says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Blockchain.com will let people use human-readable usernames in blockchain transactions thanks to a partnership with Unstoppable Domains. San Francisco-based Blockchain.com now supports Unstoppable Domains, a domain name provider for blockchains, which are the secure and transparent digital ledgers behind cryptocurrencies. That's a big deal because Blockchain.com is the world's largest crypto wallet provider, and people have been stumbling around with encoded names that are impossible to remember. And when people lose these names for their wallets or the passwords that go with them, they are often unable to recover their names. This particular deal won't help you with your passwords, but it does help with usernames. And that helps people send money to each other more easily, with fewer mistakes. Traditionally, sending Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, and other cryptocurrencies requires entering the recipient's 25- to 42-digit alphanumeric wallet address, said Matthew Gould, CEO of Unstoppable Domains, said in an interview with VentureBeat. If a person mistypes or miscopies a wallet address, those funds can be lost forever. Now, instead of "156i6HJfMWb1h2BEsKpfvZ2tQugqo4vs2w," users can simply type "[YourName].crypto" to send money to others or transfer it between accounts. "What is funny is this is a case of history repeating itself because we did the exact same thing with computer networks in the 90s, where the very first way to look up websites was actually using IP addresses," Gould said. "You actually had to remember long strings of numbers in order to find the very first content on the internet. And then they invented a naming service for those so that you could use .com names. It's a very similar thing."

Warren Buffett, the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, announced his resignation as a trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Wednesday, according to a press release. Interesting Engineering reports: Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they were getting divorced in May of 2021. For many, it was an earth-shattering announcement, one that raises a host of questions about the future of their foundation and its quest to end disease worldwide. This latest announcement adds to the growing number of questions about what's in store for the many enterprises currently being managed by the Gates Foundation. The foundation supplies grants to researchers studying polio, nutrition, agriculture, global education, sanitation, HIV, malaria, tobacco control, vaccines, gender inequality...and we're just getting started.

At the age of 90, Buffet has donated $41 billion worth of Berkshire stock to the five foundations. In today's announcement, he added that he has donated an extra $4.1 billion, but he didn't give a reason for his decision. "Today is a milestone for me," Buffett wrote in a statement. "In 2006, I pledged to distribute all of my Berkshire Hathaway shares -- more than 99% of my net worth -- to philanthropy. With today's $4.1 billion distribution, I'm halfway there."

"For years I have been a trustee -- an inactive trustee at that -- of only one recipient of my funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMG). I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire's," Buffett said. "The CEO of BMG is Mark Suzman, an outstanding recent selection who has my full support. My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve these goals."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Peloton's Treadmills cost between $2,500 and $4,000. They've also injured 70 people and killed one child. Peloton issued a recall on the treadmills after an investigation by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Those who kept the Tread+ got a nasty shock in their inbox recently: After the treadmill downloaded an update Peloton said was designed to make the device safer, users reported they could no longer run on it without paying Peloton a $39.99 per month subscription fee. "We care deeply about the safety and well being of our Members and we created Tread Lock to secure your Tread+ against unauthorized access," Peloton said in an email it sent to customers. "Unfortunately at this time 'Just Runn' is no longer accessible without a Peloton Membership." It offered to waive the subscription fee for the first three months and apologized for the inconvenience.

Peloton's subscription ecosystem provides users with live classes, crafted playlists, and customized tracks. For people who just want to run or bike, they can select the "Just Bike" or "Just Run" feature and use their devices like normal exercise equipment. Unless, of course, the user has updated the Tread+ to get the safety update. [...] The new Tread Lock update adds another layer of safety to the Tread+. "Tread Lock is a safety feature that automatically locks the Peloton Tread+ after you put your Tread+ to sleep or after 45 seconds of inactivity outside of a class," Peloton said on its website. For now, the cost of using that new feature is, apparently, about $40 a month, though Peloton claimed it would not always be so. "Unfortunately due to current technical limitations, Tread Lock is not yet available without a Peloton Membership," Peloton told Motherboard in an email. "We understand that this is an inconvenience for some and are working on updates to Tread Lock that will allow us to make Tread Lock and Just Run available without a Peloton Membership."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Amazon won a Texas trial in which it was accused of incorporating an Israeli company's patented "smart kitchen" inventions for voice commands to shop for groceries online into the Alexa digital assistant. Amazon didn't infringe three patents owned by closely held Ikan Holdings LLC's Freshub unit, the federal jury in Waco, Texas, said Tuesday. Freshub said its inventions allow consumers to create shopping lists, establish a shopping cart and order from their local grocer by using voice commands or scanning bar codes of products with an internet-connected device. Amazon knew of Freshub and its patents when it incorporated the technology into its Alexa assistant and Echo smart speakers, and promoted it for use with its Whole Foods grocery chain, Freshub claimed.

Amazon accused the company of manipulating patent applications to ensure they covered Alexa and Echo after the popular products had already entered the market. Amazon also warned jurors that a victory for Freshub would mean more lawsuits by the company against other tech firms like Apple and Google. Freshub argued consumers using the technology spent more money, so it was entitled to $3.50 per unit sold with the functionality, for a total of $246 million. Amazon argued that the patents were worth at most $1 million.

Tim Berners-Lee has defended his decision to auction an NFT (non-fungible token) representing the source code to the web, comparing the sale to an autographed book or a speaking tour. From a report: The creator of the world wide web announced his decision to create and sell the digital asset through Sotheby's auction house last week. In the auction, which begins on Wednesday and will run for one week, collectors will have the chance to bid on a bundle of items, including the 10,000 lines of the source code to the original web browser, a digital poster created by Berners-Lee representing the code, a letter from him, and an animated video showing the code being entered.

"This is totally aligned with the values of the web," Berners-Lee told the Guardian. "The questions I've got, they said: 'Oh, that doesn't sound like the free and open web.' Well, wait a minute, the web is just as free and just as open as it always was. The core codes and protocols on the web are royalty free, just as they always have been. I'm not selling the web -- you won't have to start paying money to follow links. "I'm not even selling the source code. I'm selling a picture that I made, with a Python programme that I wrote myself, of what the source code would look like if it was stuck on the wall and signed by me. "If they felt that me selling an NFT of a poster is inappropriate, then what about me selling a book? I do things like that, which involve money, but the free and open web is still free and open. And we do still, every now and again, have to fight to keep it free and open, fight for net neutrality and so on."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In a short CCTV video, a clerk at a small convenience store can be seen taking a bottle of coffee from a cooler and drinking it. When he returns to the cash register, an unseen person's voice emits from a speaker on the ceiling and interrogates him about whether he scanned and paid for the item. In another video, a cashier is standing behind the counter talking to someone just out of frame. There's a 'ding' sound, and the voice from above questions the cashier about who the other man is -- he's there to give the cashier a ride at the end of his shift -- then orders the man to stand on the other side of the counter.

The videos are just a few examples that Washington-based Live Eye Surveillance uses to demonstrate its flagship product: a surveillance camera system that keeps constant watch over shops and lets a remote human operator intervene whenever they see something they deem suspicious. For enough money -- $399 per month according to one sales email Motherboard viewed -- a person in Karnal, India will watch the video feed from your business 24/7. The monitors "act as a virtual supervisor for the sites, in terms of assuring the safety of the employees located overseas and requesting them to complete assigned tasks," according to a job posting on the company's website. [...] On its website, the company claims several major corporations as customers, including 7-Eleven, Shell, Dairy Queen, and Holiday Inn. Many of those businesses are franchised, and it isn't clear from Live Eye's materials whether the corporations have purchased the surveillance systems or if they've been bought by individual franchise owners.

Microsoft's market capitalization hit $2 trillion for the first time. GeekWire reports: The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant trails only Apple among the world's most valuable companies. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach the $2 trillion mark in August. Fellow Seattle-area giant Amazon, valued Tuesday at $1.77 trillion, is also approaching the $2 trillion club. Microsoft stock was up 1.1% Tuesday and is up more than 20% this year.

The company continues to see growing demand for its cloud services as the pandemic has accelerated technology adoption. It beat quarterly expectations with $41.7 billion in revenue for the March quarter, up 19% year-over-year -- its biggest revenue growth since 2018 -- and profits of $15.5 billion, up 44%. A Wedbush report last month projected more growth ahead for Microsoft, with Azure's cloud momentum "still in its early days" and the company "firmly positioned to gain more market share vs. AWS in this cloud arms race." Microsoft also continues to invest heavily in its gaming business; add new features to its Teams collaboration software; and is staying active in the M&A arena with its $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance Communications and reported interest in Discord and Pinterest.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: While bitcoin leaves a visible trail of transactions on its underlying blockchain, the niche "privacy coin" monero was designed to obscure the sender and receiver, as well as the amount exchanged. As a result, it has become an increasingly sought-after tool for criminals such as ransomware gangs, posing new problems for law enforcement. "We've seen ransomware groups specifically shifting to monero," said Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, director of intelligence at GroupSense, a cyber security group that has helped a growing number of victims pay out ransoms in monero. "[Cyber criminals] have recognized the ability for mistakes to be made using bitcoin that allow blockchain transactions to reveal their identity."

Russia-linked REvil, the notorious ransomware group believed to be behind the attack this month on meatpacker JBS, has removed the option of paying in bitcoin this year, demanding monero only, according to Brett Callow, threat analyst at Emsisoft. Meanwhile, both DarkSide, the group blamed for the Colonial Pipeline hack, and Babuk, which was behind the attack on Washington DC police this year, allow payments in either cryptocurrency but charge a 10 to 20 percent premium to victims paying in riskier bitcoin, experts say. Justin Ehrenhofer, a cryptocurrency compliance expert and member of the monero developer community, said that at the beginning of 2020, its use by ransomware gangs was "a rounding error." Today he estimates that about 10 to 20 percent of ransoms are paid in monero and that the figure will probably rise to 50 percent by the end of the year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Bitcoin continued its dramatic plunge to $32,281 Monday morning, down 17.65% from a week earlier as some of China's largest bitcoin mining farms were shut down over the weekend. The bitcoin mining facilities of Sichuan Province received an order on Friday to stop doing business by Sunday, according to Chinese state media outlet the Global Times. The Sichuan Provincial Development and Reform Commission and the Sichuan Energy Bureau issued an order to all electricity companies in the region on Friday to stop supplying electricity to any known crypto mining organizations, including 26 firms that had already been publicly identified, according to the Global Times.

It seems that some local miners were optimistic that Sichuan's abundant hydroelectric energy would insulate the region from a cryptocurrency crackdown by authorities, but that optimism was obviously misplaced. "We had hoped that Sichuan would be an exception during the clampdown as there is an electricity glut there in the rainy season. But Chinese regulators are now taking a uniform approach, which would overhaul and rein in the booming Bitcoin mining industry in China," Shentu Qingchun, CEO of a Shenzhen crypto company told the Global Times. Videos on social media sites purported to show miners in Sichuan turning off their mining machines and packing up their businesses. Miners in China are now looking to sell their equipment overseas, and it appears many have already found buyers.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is calling on Microsoft to face the same antitrust scrutiny as other large tech platforms in a letter to the company Monday. From a report: In the letter, Jordan asks Microsoft president Brad Smith if he believes the company would be affected by the swath of antitrust bills introduced in the House earlier this month. There are five bills in total, spanning from offering up more money for antitrust enforcers to banning large tech platforms from buying up small competitors. The antitrust package came out of a yearslong investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The measures focus on the anticompetitive behaviors of these four companies, and it's not as clear how they would affect other large companies like Microsoft. While Microsoft meets the standard laid out under these bills to be considered a "covered platform," like meeting the over $600 billion market cap and 50 million monthly active users, the bills don't target the company's specific lines of business.

"Big Tech, including Microsoft, Inc., is out to get conservatives," Jordan said in his Monday letter. "It is unclear why Microsoft has avoided significant attention from House Democrats." Assumably, Microsoft would face the same proposed standards in acquiring companies, like taking on the burden of proof, and making the data it takes from users more portable and usable on other platforms. But whereas Amazon and Apple would face more structural changes, like selling off separate lines of business, Microsoft would likely not be subject to the rules.

As ransomware attacks surge, the FBI is doubling down on its guidance to affected businesses: Don't pay the cybercriminals. But the U.S. government also offers a little-noticed incentive for those who do pay: If you pay a ransom, it may be tax deductible. From a report, shared by a Slashdot reader: The Internal Revenue Service offers no formal guidance on ransomware payments, but multiple tax experts interviewed by the Associated Press said deductions of ransomeware payments as a cost of doing business are usually allowed under law and established guidance. Some called it a 'silver lining' for ransomware victims. Those looking to discourage payments are less sanguine. They fear the IRS deduction is a potentially problematic incentive that could entice businesses to pay ransoms against the advice of law enforcement. At a minimum, they say, the deductibility sends a discordant message to businesses under duress.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is better suited than private companies to protect user privacy for the eventual adoption of a digital euro, according to an executive board member. From a report: In an interview with the Financial Times on June 14 and published Sunday, Fabio Panetta said his institution had no commercial interest in storing, managing or monetizing user data. The issue over privacy in the digital euro is a focal point for Europeans as are concerns of security, according to a recent survey by the ECB. "If the central bank gets involved in digital payments, privacy is going to be better protected," said Panetta. "We're not like private companies." The banker also said people felt safer when their information was handled by a public institution, adding the bank would do a better job. "There are many ways in which we can protect confidential data while allowing the checks foreseen by law to avoid illicit transactions, such as those linked to money laundering, the financing of terrorism or tax evasion," said Panetta.

"In 2016 North Korean hackers planned a $1bn raid on Bangladesh's national bank," reports the BBC, "and came within an inch of success — it was only by a fluke that all but $81m of the transfers were halted, report Geoff White and Jean H Lee...

"It all started with a malfunctioning printer..." It was located inside a highly secure room on the 10th floor of the bank's main office in Dhaka, the capital. Its job was to print out records of the multi-million-dollar transfers flowing in and out of the bank. When staff found it wasn't working, at 08:45 on Friday 5 February 2016, "we assumed it was a common problem just like any other day," duty manager Zubair Bin Huda later told police. "Such glitches had happened before." In fact, this was the first indication that Bangladesh Bank was in a lot of trouble. Hackers had broken into its computer networks, and at that very moment were carrying out the most audacious cyber-attack ever attempted. Their goal: to steal a billion dollars.

To spirit the money away, the gang behind the heist would use fake bank accounts, charities, casinos and a wide network of accomplices.... When the bank's staff rebooted the printer, they got some very worrying news. Spilling out of it were urgent messages from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York — the "Fed" — where Bangladesh keeps a US-dollar account. The Fed had received instructions, apparently from Bangladesh Bank, to drain the entire account — close to a billion dollars. The Bangladeshis tried to contact the Fed for clarification, but thanks to the hackers' very careful timing, they couldn't get through... The bank's HQ in Dhaka was beginning two days off. And when the Bangladeshis began to uncover the theft on Saturday, it was already the weekend in New York... And the hackers had another trick up their sleeve to buy even more time. Once they had transferred the money out of the Fed, they needed to send it somewhere. So they wired it to accounts they'd set up in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. And in 2016, Monday 8 February was the first day of the Lunar New Year, a national holiday across Asia...

They had had plenty of time to plan all of this, because it turns out the Lazarus Group had been lurking inside Bangladesh Bank's computer systems for a year... Once inside the bank's systems, Lazarus Group began stealthily hopping from computer to computer, working their way towards the digital vaults and the billions of dollars they contained... But they still had one final hurdle to clear — the printer on the 10th floor. Bangladesh Bank had created a paper back-up system to record all transfers made from its accounts. This record of transactions risked exposing the hackers' work instantly. And so they hacked into the software controlling it and took it out of action.

With their tracks covered, at 20:36 on Thursday 4 February 2016, the hackers began making their transfers — 35 in all, totalling $951m, almost the entire contents of Bangladesh Bank's New York Fed account.
There's more to the story — it's a whole episode on a 10-episode BBC World Service podcast which they're calling an example of "the new front line in a global battleground: a murky nexus of crime, espionage and nation-state power-mongering. And it's growing fast."

The story has a surprise ending — but alongo the way, the BBC's article points out that the consequences for the bank's governor were almost instant. "He was asked to resign," says U.S.-based cyber-security expert Rakesh Asthana. "I never saw him again."

Amid worries that technological advances may someday eliminate jobs, the Associated Press reports on a new experimental universal basic income program in upstate New York: During the pilot program, funded by private donations, 100 county residents making less than $46,900 annually will get $500 a month for a year. The income threshold was based on 80% of the county's average median income, meaning it includes both the poor and a slice of the middle class — people who face financial stress but might not ordinarily qualify for government aid based on income.

For researchers, the pilot could give them a fuller picture of what happens when a range of people are sent payments that guarantee a basic living... Basic income programs elsewhere tend to focus on cities. In contrast, this upstate program stretches out over a mix of places: a city, small towns and remote areas many miles from bus lines and supermarkets. "Showing that this approach will work not just in urban areas, but for rural parts of the country — which we know is one of our big national problems — I think there's great opportunity there," said Ulster County Executive Patrick Ryan... Center for Guaranteed Income Research co-founder Stacia West, who is evaluating more than 20 such pilot programs, is interested in seeing how spending compares to cities like Stockton, California, where more that a third went for food. "Knowing what we know about barriers to employment, especially in rural areas, we may see more money going toward transportation than we've ever seen before in any other experiment," said West, also a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Social Work...

The end goal for a number of advocates is a universal basic income, or UBI, which would distribute cash payment programs for all adults... Critics of cash transfer programs worry about their effectiveness and cost compared to aid programs that target funds for food, shelter or for help raising children. Drake University economics professor Heath Henderson is concerned the programs miss needier people less likely to apply, including those without homes. While there are times people might benefit from a cash infusion, the money is unlikely to address the structural issues holding people back, like inadequate health care and schools, he said.

"If we keep thinking about remedying poverty in terms of just throwing cash at people, you're not thinking about the structures that kind of reproduce poverty in the first place and you're not really solving the problem at all," Henderson said.