Good morning! Today: people are recreating office sounds to help them work at home, how North Korean hackers turn their stolen cryptocurrency into cash, and why the most controversial US internet law is worth saving. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. | People who really miss the office are listening to its sounds at home
A strange craving: Since the pandemic, audio engineer Stéphane Pigeon was inundated with unusual requests: would he consider making sounds that replicated the office? Since its release in March, there have been 250,000 streams of Calm Office as people flock to its clackety keys, fax machine whirrs, and distant strains of conversation. Concentration and comfort: People who use sounds to concentrate, many of them students, have tended to veer towards the natural or peaceful: chirping birds or rainstorms. The difference is that quarantine created the same demand among white-collar workers, who were used to open office plans and traversing from cubicle to meeting room and back. For some it’s a joke, but Giedrius Norvilas, a 28-year-old working at a tech startup in Belfast, Ireland, says “the sound of someone else punching the keys is an indication that there are people around me,” he says. It helps him feel safe. Read the full story. —Tanya Basu
| | North Korean hackers steal billions in cryptocurrency. How do they turn it into real cash? What’s happening: In the last decade, North Korea’s Kim dynasty has increasingly turned to cybercrime to make money—using armies of hackers to conduct billion-dollar heists against banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, such as an attack in 2018 that netted $250 million in one fell swoop. That’s the easy part: There is a big difference between hacking a cryptocurrency exchange and actually getting your hands on all the cash. Doing that requires moving the stolen cryptocurrency, laundering it so no one can trace it, and then exchanging it for dollars, euros, or yuan that can buy the weapons, luxuries, and necessities bitcoins cannot. How it works: Tactics include moving money in thousands of rapid and automated transactions from one Bitcoin wallet to other addresses, thus hiding the source and reducing the risk of setting off red flags. Another approach moves the money into different cryptocurrencies. The operation involves creating and maintaining hundreds of false accounts and identities. That means the ultimate destination of the coin is often an over-the-counter trader who can turn it into cash. Read the full story. —Patrick Howell O’Neill | Why the most controversial US internet law is worth saving Common ground: US president Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, agree on at least one issue: that a federal law known as Section 230 should be repealed. What is it? Enacted in 1996, Section 230 protects websites from lawsuits related to content posted by users. And it guarantees this immunity even if companies actively police the content they host. This legal insulation has encouraged innovation and growth. Still, many people have rightly questioned whether internet companies do enough to counter harmful content, and whether Section 230 effectively lets them off the hook. What we should do instead: There are real problems with the way Section 230 is worded today, but that doesn’t mean lawmakers should toss the whole thing out, writes Paul Barrett, the deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. He says its core ought to be preserved, but the law should be updated to push internet companies to accept greater responsibility for the content on their sites. Moreover, the US needs a specialized government body—call it the Digital Regulatory Agency—to ensure that this responsibility is fulfilled. Read the full story. | | The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 What will winter mean for the pandemic? ❄️ We may look back at this period of 2020 as the calm before the storm. ( New Scientist $) + The pandemic is levelling off in the US, but numbers remain troublingly high. ( WP $) + How coronavirus attacks the brain. ( NYT $) + Where medicine stands now in the fight against covid-19. ( New Yorker $) + We lack enough planes to deliver a vaccine, an aviation group has warned. ( The Guardian) + Social gatherings of more than six people will be banned in England from Monday. ( Sky) 2 Drone photos show an apocalyptic-looking smoky San Francisco Sometimes there is no other word for it. ( The Verge) + Seven people died in wildfires in the west yesterday. ( NYT $) + Climate change poses a huge risk to the economy unless we act soon, warns a federal report. ( Ars Technica) + Wildlife populations are plummeting. ( Axios) 3 Amazon spent $24,000 lobbying against Portland’s facial recognition ban It fears the ban on both government and commercial use could set a national precedent. ( Vice) + The bill was voted into law yesterday anyway. ( CNET) + Amazon has recruited the former director of the NSA to join its board. ( The Verge) 4 TikTok censors LGBTQ+ hashtags in nine languages The word “gay” is suppressed in Russian, Arabic, Estonian, and Bosnian. ( New Scientist $) + That TikTok sale is looking less and less likely. ( WSJ $) + Meet the TikTok husband. ( Glamour) + TikTok thrives on “lurkers.” ( Medium) + An AI was tasked with coming up with the perfect TikTok tune. ( The Next Web) 5 China’s UK embassy wants Twitter to investigate why its account “liked” a porn clip I mean, there’s a pretty obvious explanation. ( BBC) 6 Brazil’s “fake news” bill won’t solve its misinformation problem Instead, it will jeopardize citizens’ freedom of expression. ( TR) 7 Walmart is testing grocery deliveries by drone In Fayetteville, North Carolina, of all places. ( NBC) + You still shouldn’t expect to receive a drone delivery any time soon though. ( Wired $) 8 You could probably make a deepfake It’s possible to spin one up in just a few hours, zero coding skills required. ( The Verge) 9 When will we see ordinary people going into space? 👨🚀 Not any time soon. Think decades (and they’ll need to be super-wealthy.) ( TR) 10 We should resurrect the “away” message Then we might all be able to actually get stuff done. ( OneZero) | | "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down.” —President Donald Trump tells reporter Bob Woodward about his approach to the coronavirus pandemic back in March, the Washington Post reports. | | | | | |
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