An anonymous reader shares a report from Decrypt about BitClout, an ambitious decentralized social network that tokenizes Twitter personalities. Here's an excerpt from the report: At first glance, BitClout looks and feels like primitive mashup of Twitter and Robinhood, including a stream of messages and buttons to like or share what other people post. Anyone can create a profile and begin participating in the network by providing a phone number. But BitClout has already created 15,000 profiles based on popular Twitter personalities, including ones for Elon Musk and influencers in the cryptocurrency world -- all without asking anyone's permission. Diamondhands [the man behind BitClout who asked for anonymity even though his real identity is well known] says BitClout created the profiles to prevent impostors from creating fake accounts and squatting on them. Every BitClout account is also tied to a "coin" that rises and falls in value depending on how many people use it. Anyone can follow a given account -- as they would on Twitter or Instagram -- but the coin means they can also own an asset that is hypothetically tied to the person's public reputation. "What you get to do is monetize yourself," says Diamondhands. "All the positive things you put out in the world will cause people to like you and buy your coin. You can monetize pent up enthusiasm for you, and let fans ride the rocket ship with you." BitClout users who feel inclined to being bought and sold in this way can create a profile to earn a portion of the coins associated with their image. In the case of those Twitter personalities whom BitClout already added to the platform, they can claim their profile (and a portion of the coins associated with it) by tweeting that they have joined the network -- a requirement that conveniently provides free marketing for BitClout. [...] A tracking site called BitClout Pulse has already sprung up to track the value of more popular coins. BitClout's unusual twist on social networking extends beyond adding people without their permission. The project also stands out for its technical operations, which rely on dozens of autonomous blockchain-based nodes scattered around the world -- a very different architecture than Facebook or Twitter, which rely on centralized servers to keep their networks running. Every message or transaction is recorded to BitClout's blockchain, which Diamondhands describes vaguely as custom-built software similar to Bitcoin's, but with greater capacity for social networking functions. He says BitClout's code is open source and the team will soon publish it. All of this, says Diamondhands, will eventually lead to brand-name organizations hosting BitClout nodes that will display feeds tailored to various interests. For instance, he says, ESPN could run a node that displays a feed heavily populated with sports figures, while Politico might do the same with a focus on political leaders. But Bitclout's node structure also means it will lack centralized moderation policies like those found on platforms like Twitter or Facebook. Yes, we're on BitClout: bitclout.com/u/slashdotorg

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I could live off Granny Smith apples.

Netflix says it has a plan to hit net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2022, with a big part of the streaming giant's efforts aimed at operating more eco-friendly film and TV productions. From a report: The "Net Zero + Nature" plan was outlined Tuesday in a blog post by Emma Stewart, PhD, who joined Netflix as its first sustainability officer last fall. At Netflix, "we aspire to entertain the world," she wrote. "But that requires a habitable world to entertain." In 2020, Netflix estimates its carbon footprint was 1.13 million metric tons, down slightly from 1.31 million the year prior (mostly due to delayed content productions during the COVID-19 pandemic). Roughly 50% of that was generated by the physical production of Netflix films and series, including third-party projects licensed as Netflix-branded originals. Another 45% came from corporate operations (e.g. office space) and purchased goods (like marketing spend) and 5% was attributed to internet cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Netflix's Open Connect content delivery network. Netflix's Net Zero + Nature approach encompasses three steps: reducing emissions, aligning with the Paris Agreement's goal to limit global warming to 1.5C; investing in projects that prevent carbon from entering the atmosphere; and investing in projects that remove carbon. (Netflix says its goal of reaching net zero CO2 emissions is a higher standard than "carbon neutral," which doesn't require reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.) By 2030, Netflix is aiming to reduce direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1 and 2 emissions) by 45%, in line with the guidance from the Science Based Targets Initiative, a partnership among CDP, the U.N. Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

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"SpaceX's fourth attempt to successfully launch and land its Mars rocket prototype has once again gone up in flames," writes smooth wombat. CNN reports: SpaceX engineer John Insprucker, who hosted a webcast of the test launch, said the rocket, known as SN11, had a normal ascent and that all appeared to be well before on-board cameras lost signal and the vehicle was subsumed by fog moments before landing. Insprucker said the company will share updates on social media once SpaceX engineers are able to check out the landing site. The area surrounding the vehicle must be cleared before liftoff for safety reasons. Insprucker said the company is not expecting to recover video footage. "Don't wait for landing," he advised webcast viewers. Independent video streamers that recorded the flight did not capture the last stretch of the flight either due to fog, but NASASpaceflight -- a media site -- reported that one of the outlet's cameras may have been struck by debris from the rocket. Footage of the launch pad showed SN11 was nowhere in sight after the rocket's descent. For his part, Musk tweeted: "At least the crater is in the right place!" He later added: "Looks like engine 2 had issues on ascent & didn't reach operating chamber pressure during landing burn, but, in theory, it wasn't needed. Something significant happened shortly after landing burn start. Should know what it was once we can examine the bits later today."

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T-Mobile will shut down its TVision live-TV service and offer Google's YouTube TV at a promotional discount, ending a three-year effort to create a disruptive alternative to cable. From a report: Customers 'don't want more streaming services -- they want help buying and navigating the services that already exist," T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer Mike Sievert wrote in a blog post Monday. The decision to back out of the crowded streaming market comes just weeks after Sievert said TVision was going to play a big role in the company's plan to enter the broadband market as soon as this month. "We don't actually even think of TVision as a business," Sievert said in an interview on March 11. "You know, we think of it as an initiative, an initiative to help us sell home broadband and serve customers." As part of the revised plan, T-Mobile will sell YouTube TV to its mobile subscribers for $54.99 a month, which is $10 less than Alphabet's Google charges.

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Arm unveiled the biggest overhaul of its technology in almost a decade, with new designs targeting markets currently dominated by Intel, the world's largest chipmaker. From a report: The Cambridge, U.K.-based company is adding capabilities to help chips handle machine learning, a powerful type of artificial intelligence software. Extra security features will lock down data and computer code more. The new blueprints should also deliver 30% performance increases over the next two generations of processors for mobile devices and data center servers, said Arm, which is being acquired by Nvidia. The upgrades are needed to support the spread of computing beyond phones, PCs and servers, Arm said. Thousands of devices and appliances are being connected to the internet and gaining new capabilities through the addition of more chips and AI-powered software and services. The company wants its technology to be just as ubiquitous here as it is in the smartphone industry.

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Duo, the authentication service Cisco acquired for $2.35 billion in 2018, today announced its plans to launch a passwordless authentication service that will allow users to log in to their Duo-protected services through security keys or platform biometrics like Apple's Face ID or Microsoft's Windows Hello. The infrastructure-agnostic service will go into public preview in the summer. From a report: "Cisco has strived to develop passwordless authentication that meets the needs of a diverse and evolving workforce and allows the broadest set of enterprises to securely progress towards a passwordless future, regardless of their IT stack," said Gee Rittenhouse, SVP and GM of Cisco's Security Business Group. "It's not an overstatement to say that passwordless authentication will have the most meaningful global impact on how users access data by making the easiest path the most secure." If you're using Duo or a similar product today, chances are that you are using both passwords and a second factor to log into your work applications. But users are notoriously bad about their password hygiene -- and to the despair of any IT department, they also keep forgetting them.

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Stanley Tucci's not the only one with a popular Italian cooking show, it would seem. From a report: A mafia fugitive has been arrested in the Dominican Republic after inadvertently tipping off police with his culinary hobby. After seven years on the run, Marc Feren Claude Biart was tracked down through a YouTube cooking channel he started with his wife, Italian police said in a statement. The alleged gangster's "love for Italian cuisine" -- and tattoo ink -- made his arrest possible, police said. Though he carefully hid his face, Biart failed to disguise his distinctive body tattoos, they added. Police said they believe Biart is a member of the notorious 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate -- one of the most feared and powerful in Europe -- from the Calabria region at the toe of southern Italy's boot-shaped peninsula. He had been wanted for allegedly trafficking cocaine from the Netherlands since 2014, police said. Biart, 53, had been living in the Dominican Republic for the past five years and police said he had been keeping a low profile during his stay in the Caribbean -- besides the cooking videos posted to the internet. He was known to locals as simply "Marc" and kept his distance from the Italian community in the popular tourist destination. Lt. Col. Massimiliano Galasso, a Reggio-Calabria police official, told NBC News that authorities had never stopped searching for Biart and had recently turned to open source intelligence.

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Not doing much writing today as you can see.

Has anyone built a drone big enough to carry a human?

ArsTechnica: Today marks the start of retail availability for Intel's 2021 gaming CPU lineup, codenamed Rocket Lake-S. Rocket Lake-S is still stuck on Intel's venerable 14 nm process -- we've long since lost count of how many pluses to tack onto the end -- with features backported from newer 10 nm designs. Clock speed on Rocket Lake-S remains high, but thread counts have decreased on the high end. Overall, most benchmarks show Rocket Lake-S underperforming last year's Comet Lake -- let alone its real competition, coming from AMD Ryzen CPUs. Our hands-on test results did not seem to match up with Intel's marketing claims of up to 19 percent gen-on-gen IPC (Instructions Per Clock cycle) improvement over its 10th-generation parts. It shouldn't come as an enormous surprise that Core i9-11900K underperforms last year's Core i9-10900K in many multithreaded tests -- this year's model only offers eight cores to last year's 10. On the plus side, Intel's claims of 19% gen-on-gen IPC are largely borne out here, mostly balancing the loss out in Passmark and Geekbench. This year's Core i5 makes a much better showing than its Core i9 big sibling. In Cinebench R20, Core i5-11600K almost catches up with Ryzen 5 5600X, and it easily dominates last year's Comet Lake i5 equivalent. It doesn't catch up to its Ryzen competitor in Passmark or Geekbench multithreaded tests, but it outpaces last year's model all the way around.

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The National Labor Relations Board on Monday rejected Amazon's request to install a video camera to keep an eye on boxes containing thousands of ballots key to a high-stakes union election in Alabama. From a report: The closely-watched union election in Bessemer, Alabama, concluded on Monday. Approximately 5,800 workers at the facility in Bessemer were eligible to vote to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). Vote counting begins at 11 a.m. ET on Tuesday, but the final tally may be days or weeks away, as Amazon and the RWDSU can contest ballots. Amazon had sought to place a video camera in the NLRB's Birmingham office, where votes will be tabulated, to keep an eye on the ballot boxes in the off hours between counting, according to an NLRB order denying Amazon's request. The camera feed would have been accessible by both Amazon and the RWDSU. "Though the mail ballot election in this matter is large, it is not, as the Employer asserts, of a 'special nature,'" Lisa Henderson, acting regional director for the NLRB, said in the ruling. "The Region will conduct the ballot count within view of observers participating via virtual platform as well as in-person observers, and in accordance with Agency procedures and protocols, including those for securing ballot boxes."

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Unsplash has announced that as of today it is being acquired by Getty Images. From a report: In a blog post, Unsplash's founder Mikael Cho says that it will continue to operate as a standalone brand inside of Getty and that the free content model won't be changing. Unsplash launched in 2013 as a simple Tumblr blog with free photos, and it has since become well-known as a free photography stock site where photographers upload full-resolution images to the platform. Those photos can then be downloaded and used by anyone for any purpose without requiring attribution (though Unsplash does encourage it). The company has been somewhat controversial among photographers over the years, as people see it as a contributor to lowering the pay rate bar for both stock photographers and the value of photography overall. With more than 100 million images downloaded every month, the platform is clearly popular.

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Spotify said Tuesday it has acquired the company behind the live audio app Locker Room, giving the music and podcast platform a new foothold in a space that has seen a surge of interest following the rise of the app Clubhouse. From a report: The company, Betty Labs, launched Locker Room in October as a sports-focused platform for live audio conversations. Spotify said it plans to "evolve and expand" the app "into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans." Locker Room will soon expand and rebrand to become more like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces: a forum for live conversations about music, culture and all manner of topics. "Creators and fans have been asking for live formats on Spotify, and we're excited that soon, we'll make them available to hundreds of millions of listeners and millions of creators on our platform," Spotify's chief research and development officer Gustav Soderstrom said in a statement. The acquisition comes amid a surge of interest in live audio following the meteoric rise of Clubhouse, an app that has drawn more than 10 million users in under a year, amassed a $1 billion-plus valuation and inspired Facebook, Twitter and others to develop their own Clubhouse competitors.

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PayPal has launched Checkout With Crypto, a cryptocurrency service for merchants across the US, and will roll it out over the next few months. From a report: "This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet," PayPal CEO Dan Schulman told Reuters. Checkout With Crypto service will enable those holding cryptocurrencies on the platform to spend it with all of PayPal's merchants. Supported cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin; the payments company will, however, convert the cryptocurrency to fiat money for the actual payment. "We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies move from being predominantly an asset class that you buy, hold and or sell to now becoming a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants," Schulman added. The payments company won't charge their customers for swapping crypto to make the payment. However, there will be a conversion spread, meaning that it might swap the cryptocurrency as lower-than-market rates and pocket the difference -- a common technique by crypto wallet apps with in-built conversions.

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