• Former PlayStation exec Shawn Layden has suggested Xbox can’t save Game Pass
• Layden said Xbox is “trying so hard to will this into health” despite the current issues
• This comes after a leaked memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma revealed plans to “evolve” the “expensive” service

Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has suggested Microsoft can’t save Xbox Game Pass, following comments made by Xbox CEO Asha Sharma about wanting to “evolve” the service.

Earlier this week, a leaked memo to employees obtained and reported on by The Verge showed Sharma admitting that the subscription service is now too expensive for members as she outlined a brief plan for how she aims to change things, writing, “Game Pass is central to gaming value on Xbox. It’s also clear that the current model isn’t the final one.

Slash, the vertical banking platform built by two college dropouts, has raised a $100M Series C backed by Khosla Ventures and Ribbit Capital. The company’s valuation has nearly quadrupled since its May 2025 Series B, the latest leg of a comeback story that began when its core market evaporated overnight.

Slash, the San Francisco-based vertical banking platform, has raised $100 million in a Series C round at a $1.4 billion valuation, backed by Khosla Ventures and Ribbit Capital, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

The raise marks a sharp acceleration in the company’s trajectory: less than a year ago, Slash closed its Series B at a $370 million valuation. The new round values the company at nearly four times that figure.

Slash was founded by Victor Cardenas, a Stanford dropout, and Kevin Bai, who left the University of Waterloo, and its origin story is one of the more unusual in recent fintech. The pair initially built banking services for sneaker resellers, a niche that took off quickly.

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Then Kanye West made a series of antisemitic public statements in late 2022. Adidas terminated its partnership with the rapper, collapsing the Yeezy market that was the backbone of the sneaker reselling economy.

According to Cardenas, Slash’s revenue fell by 80% almost overnight. The company had raised $19 million and built a team around a market that had suddenly ceased to exist.

Rather than fold, Cardenas and Bai pivoted to a broader thesis: vertical banking for online businesses. Instead of competing horizontally against Ramp, Mercury, and Brex, platforms that serve businesses across all industries, Slash builds tailored financial products for specific sectors.

The first post-pivot target was performance marketing firms, which run digital advertising campaigns on behalf of e-commerce companies.

A key pain point: these firms needed to create distinct accounts within their banking system for each end client to track prepayment and spending separately. Slash built that. By the time of its Series B announcement in May 2025, Cardenas told Fortune that more than 1% of all Facebook ads are bought with a Slash-issued card.

The pivot worked. Slash now serves verticals including web3, e-commerce, agencies, contractors, affiliate marketers, healthcare suppliers, online travel agencies, and wholesalers, alongside a stablecoin payments product and treasury and working capital tools.

The company’s product suite has expanded considerably since the early days of virtual debit cards for teenagers. Current offerings include corporate cards, business banking, stablecoin payments, treasury management, working capital, global USD accounts, invoicing, and a platform layer with multi-entity support, accounting integration, expense management, global payments, an API, analytics, and AI agents.

The platform is built on Column, a chartered bank co-founded by a Plaid executive that was designed from the ground up to serve tech-forward fintech companies, a relationship Cardenas has credited with helping Slash navigate the turbulence that hit the fintech middleware sector when Synapse, a major banking-as-a-service intermediary, collapsed.

Khosla Ventures has a long record of early fintech bets that have paid off at scale, the firm was an early investor in Stripe, Affirm, and Ramp. Ribbit Capital specialises exclusively in financial services and has backed Robinhood, Coinbase, and Credit Karma.

Their joint involvement in this round signals a conviction that Slash’s vertical model, winning in niche after niche rather than fighting for share across a horizontal market, has the structural advantages to compound into something large.

In the Series B announcement, Cardenas articulated the longer-term ambition: “If we continue solving these niche, vertical, specific financial workflows for businesses across different industries, then we can sneakily become one of the largest commercial credit card issuers in the country.”

The Copenhagen fintech has built a platform of specialised AI agents that handle KYC and KYB work, document reviews, ownership mapping, risk rationale, in minutes rather than hours. NEA led the Series A; Northzone, Seedcamp, and PSV Tech participated.

Spektr, a Copenhagen-based startup building AI infrastructure for financial compliance, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by NEA, with continued participation from existing investors Northzone, Seedcamp, and PSV Tech.

The round brings total funding to just under $26 million, and will be used to expand Spektr’s engineering team, accelerate adoption among banks and large financial institutions, and open offices in London and New York. 

Spektr’s pitch is built on a specific frustration: that despite years of investment in compliance technology, most KYC and KYB work is still done by analysts manually.

The typical compliance review at a bank involves searching company registries, cross-referencing documents from multiple sources, mapping beneficial ownership structures, and writing risk rationales by hand, work that looks the same every day, is difficult to audit consistently, and scales poorly as regulatory volume increases.

Most of the tools built to address this have focused on workflow management and data aggregation, which reduces friction but does not eliminate the underlying analytical labour.

Spektr’s response is a platform of specialised AI agents that perform the analytical work itself, researching companies, verifying business activity, interpreting documents from multiple sources, generating structured risk assessments, with compliance teams reviewing and approving results rather than producing them from scratch.

According to the company, work that previously took an analyst hours completes in minutes. Financial institutions can design their own onboarding and monitoring workflows and deploy networks of these agents within them, turning manual analyst-driven processes into automated operations that can run at the scale of a large bank’s customer portfolio.

The platform handles both onboarding and ongoing monitoring, covering KYC, KYB, source-of-funds checks, document review, and false-positive reduction across the compliance lifecycle.

NEA partner Luke Pappas, who led the investment, told Crunchbase News he believes Spektr wins through “taste” and deep domain expertise in a market where AI can mass-produce functionality.

The company’s customers include Pleo, Santander Leasing, Mercuryo, Phantom, and Monta, as well as what the company describes as major US marketplace clients.

Pappas characterised Spektr’s differentiation as the ability to “coexist with existing solutions” while providing orchestration for compliance teams that are not yet ready to consolidate onto a single vendor.

CEO and co-founder Mikkel Skarnager described the core problem in the company’s announcement:

“Compliance technology has mostly focused on workflow and data collection. But the real bottleneck has always been the work itself, analysts researching companies, interpreting information, and documenting decisions.”

The company was seeded in February 2024 and has grown to 45 employees, with the new capital earmarked to scale engineering capacity for the more complex technical requirements of serving Tier 1 banks and large fintechs.

from the dumb-questions,-asked-unseriously dept

I cut my teeth as a telecom reporter, so I spent a lot of time writing about how broadband monopolies and cable TV giants rip off consumers with sleazy, misleading fees. I also spent a lot of that time writing about how lobbying and regulatory capture have ensured that big companies see no meaningful penalties should they falsely advertise one price, then sock you with a bunch of spurious surcharges.

The Biden administration, for its faults, at least tried to tackle some of this. The Biden FTC considered new and popular rules outlawing “junk fees”. The Biden FCC also implemented rules that didn’t ban sleazy fees (unfortunately), but forced broadband ISPs to clearly list them out at the point of sale (something recently dismantled by the Trump administration).

The Trump administration (and its courts) has taken an absolute hatchet to U.S. consumer protection on regulatory autonomy, ensuring that the problem of predatory fees is much worse across every sector you interface with. So it was funny to see Wall Street Journal reporters recently openly wondering why there are so many shitty fees all of a sudden (non-paywalled alternative):

“An extra 3% for paying with a credit card. A 5% involuntary contribution to a restaurant’s employee wellness fund. $25 a month in addition to rent for trash collection.  

Consumers already weary of rising inflation are now contending with a new crop of costs that are hidden in plain sight. New fees or surcharges are popping up everywhere as companies search for ways to recoup their own rising costs while blaming outside pressures.”

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The WSJ reporters and editors decided to cover soaring sleazy fees, but at no point in the article do they mention (even in passing) that Trump has dismantled most of the (already fleeting) efforts to rein in such predation. Or that the Trump Supreme Court has issued numerous rulings effectively making it almost impossible for regulators to fine corporations or hold them accountable for bad behavior.

The article mentions that the Trump FTC did grudgingly implement the Biden-era plan to ban junk fees, but they don’t think it’s worth mentioning that the Trump administration refuses to enforce it:

“The Federal Trade Commission banned drip pricing in short-term lodging and live-event ticketing in 2025, citing research showing that consumers were manipulated by low initial prices even when the full cost was eventually disclosed.”

They also don’t think it’s worth mentioning that the worst offenders of this kind of stuff, like Ticketmaster, were recently let off the hook by the Trump FTC via a piddly settlement (that left states, which had partnered with the FTC legally, high and dry). They’ve chosen to cover consumer protection, but not really. Not with any sort of interest in full, contextual reality.

While this particular instance is the Wall Street Journal, you’ll notice this same habit across most of corporate media. They’re dedicated to an alternate reality where Trump isn’t historically corrupt, and the regulators you’ve historically trusted to be at least semi-present to police the worst offenses are still dutifully on the beat protecting the public interest.

It’s of course a reflection of ownership bias seeping into editorial (most media owners are affluent Conservatives or Libertarians who like tax cuts, rubber stamped merger approvals, and mindless deregulation). But it’s also a form of weird normalization bias, where the reporters assume that because regulators have always been there (with natural partisan ebb and flow) they’ll always be there.

But they’re not there anymore. The damage will likely be deadly and permanent, impacting far more than just shitty, sneaky fees. And the press is doing a terrible job informing the public of that fact.

This is particularly amusing because the Wall Street Journal’s own reporting recently highlighted how even the semi-consistent folks within MAGA who sometimes supported things like functional antitrust reform have been easily ousted by lobbyists, but the reporters exploring “why are we getting ripped off more than ever by predatory corporations” aren’t willing to make the obvious connection.

Filed Under: antitrust, consumer protection, corruption, fees, ftc, hidden fees, junk fees, regulations, surcharges, trump

A new cybercrime platform called ATHR can harvest credentials via fully automated voice phishing attacks that use both human operators and AI agents for the social engineering phase.

The malicious operation is advertised on underground forums for $4,000 and a 10% comission from profits, and can steal login data for multiple services, including Google, Microsoft, and Coinbase.

Automation covers the entire telephone-oriented attack delivery (TOAD) stages, from luring targets over email to conducting voice-based social engineering and harvesting account credentials.

ATHR attack chain

According to researchers at cloud email security company Abnormal, ATHR is a complete phishing/vishing attack generator that offers brand-specific email templates, per-target customization, and spoofing mechanisms to make it appear as if the message originates from a trusted sender.

At the time of their analysis, the researchers observed that ATHR supported eight online services: Google, Microsoft, Coinbase, Binance, Gemini, Crypto.com, Yahoo, and AOL.

The attack starts with the victim receiving an email crafted to pass casual verification and even technical authentication checks.

“The lure is typically a fake security alert or account notification – something urgent enough to prompt a phone call but generic enough to avoid triggering content-based filters,” Abnormal notes in a report today.

Calling the phone number in the email routes the victim through Asterisk and WebRTC to AI voice agents driven by carefully crafted prompts that guide the victim through the data theft process.

The agents follow a multi-step script simulating a security incident. For Google accounts, they replicate the account recovery and verification process, using preset prompts that shape their tone, approach, persona, and behavior to mimic professional support staff.

The purpose of the fake recovery process is to extract a six-digit verification code that allows the attacker to gain access to the victim’s account.

Although ATHR does offer the option to route the call to a human operator, the ability to use an AI agent is what sets it apart.

ATHR’s dashboard gives operators control over the entire process and real-time data for each attack per target.

Through the ATHR panel, they control email distribution, handle calls, and manage phishing operations, monitoring outcomes in real time and receiving logs containing the stolen data.

Researchers at Abnormal warn that ATHR significantly reduces the manual effort for the operator and provides threat actors with an integrated platform that can handle all stages of a TOAD attack without the need to configure individual components.

This allows less technical attackers with no infrastructure to deploy automated vishing attacks from start to finish.

“The shift from a fragmented, manually intensive operation to a productized, largely automated one means TOAD attacks no longer require large teams or specialized infrastructure,” Abnormal warns.

With the rise of ATHR-like cybercrime platforms, the researchers expect vishing attacks to become more frequent and more difficult to distinguish from legitimate communications.

Defending against such attacks requires a different approach, since the lure emails carry no reliable indicators, are customized to authenticate correctly, and appear as valid notifications.

However, detection is possible by checking the communication behavioral patterns between a sender and a recipient, and identifying if similar lures containing a phone number reached the organization within a short time frame.

Abnormal researchers say that modeling normal communication behavior across the organization can help AI-powered detection flag anomalies before targets make a call.

Automated pentesting proves the path exists. BAS proves whether your controls stop it. Most teams run one without the other.

This whitepaper maps six validation surfaces, shows where coverage ends, and provides practitioners with three diagnostic questions for any tool evaluation.

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Advance Paris came to AXPONA 2026 with a clear message: the NOVA range is not here to play nice. These modular integrated amplifiers lean hard into a vintage aesthetic with unmistakable French flair, while taking a very un-American approach to features by making streaming and Bluetooth optional add-ons. At these prices, that decision is going to raise eyebrows. It also might be the point.

Playback Distribution made something else equally clear on the show floor. They are not just moving boxes in the United States and Canada. With their new joint venture with Fidelity Imports, they are positioning themselves as one of the most influential forces in high end audio distribution right now. That matters when a brand like Advance Paris shows up with a full ecosystem that includes the award-winning APEX line, but puts the spotlight squarely on NOVA.

Rob Standley, President and Co-Founder of Playback Distribution, made time early Saturday morning to walk through the lineup alongside the Advance Paris team. The pitch was straightforward. Distinctive design, flexible architecture, and a product strategy that does not follow the same tired playbook as every other streaming amp on the market. Brands that think this is just another European curiosity are about to get a lesson in what strong distribution and retail execution can actually do.

Modular French Integrated Amps with VU Meters That Tip Their Hat to American Vintage

If you’ve spent any time around French hi-fi, you know the extremes. It either strips everything back to the point of near invisibility or goes full statement piece. Devialet and Jadis lean into the theatrical side. Focal threads the needle with polished finishes, wood, and just enough flair. YBA and Lavardin go minimalist and call it a day.

Advance Paris does not follow any of those paths.

The NOVA series lands somewhere in between, but closer to the real world. Metal, glass, and just enough vintage influence to make it feel intentional rather than nostalgic. The VU meters are the tell. They are not there as decoration. They are a deliberate nod to American vintage gear, filtered through a French lens that knows exactly what it is doing.

And here is the part the marketing photos miss. In person, this gear has presence. The tubes glow with just enough warmth to draw your eye without turning the whole thing into a light show. People stop and look. Conversations start there.

The optional remote is absurd in the best way. Heavy, overbuilt, and clearly designed by someone who has no interest in cutting corners. No plastic, no flex. It feels like it belongs in a design exhibit at the Centre Pompidou, not tossed on a coffee table next to a pile of remotes you never use and left to die next to your

The modular pieces, including the streaming and Bluetooth modules, are handled the way they should be. Plug them in, they work, and then you forget about them. No drama, no clutter, no need to babysit the system. The focus stays on the amplifier, where it belongs.

The integrated amplifiers are built like serious hardware. Dense, rigid, and confidence inspiring without feeling overdone. Think AMX-56 Leclerc in terms of intent and execution. This is not lightweight gear.

Around back, the connectivity is extensive and thoughtfully laid out. Plenty of inputs and outputs for real world systems, and none of it feels like it was added just to appease low-life reviewers. It draws you in quietly, the way Catherine Deneuve might in a small café in the Marais, cigarette in hand, a half-finished pastry on the table. Effortless, composed, and fully aware of the room without acknowledging it. You catch yourself looking, then looking again. At some point you stop pretending you’re not interested.

Hybrid Integrated Amplifiers with DSP, Dual Subwoofer Support, and Modular Expansion

Both the A-i130 and A-i190 follow the same design approach: an integrated amplifier that also serves as the central hub for a full system. Each combines hybrid amplification, DAC, DSP-based processing, and subwoofer management in a single chassis, with optional modules available for expansion.

Both models use a hybrid topology with an ECC81 tube stage in the preamplifier section feeding a Class A/B power amplifier. Digital conversion is handled by an ESS9017 DAC operating in Quad mode, paired with a 4-channel DSP that manages EQ and room correction for left, right, and up to two subwoofers.

The A-i130 measures 43 x 17.5 x 35.1 cm (16.9 x 6.9 x 13.8 inches) and weighs 13.3 kg (29.3 lbs). The A-i190 is larger at 43 x19.2 x 45.4 cm (16.9 x 7.6 x 17.9 inches) and weighs 19 kg (41.9 lbs).

Both amplifiers support 2.1 and 2.2 configurations with adjustable crossover and independent subwoofer control, allowing proper integration of one or two subs in a two-channel system.

Connectivity is consistent across both models. Inputs include HDMI eARC, USB with DSD support, multiple optical and coaxial digital inputs, five RCA line-level inputs, and an MM phono stage with ground. Outputs include pre-out, record out, dual subwoofer outputs, and a 6.35 mm headphone jack.

Each model supports optional expansion via the A-NTC streaming module and A-BTC Bluetooth module. These add network streaming capabilities and bi-directional Bluetooth, including headphone transmission. Both are also compatible with the optional rotary remote control.

The A-i190 builds on this platform with a dual mono design using two toroidal transformers, increasing output to 190 watts per channel and improving channel separation. It also adds balanced XLR inputs and a balanced XLR pre-out, alongside the RCA pre-out. The phono stage is upgraded to support both MM and MC cartridges. These additions allow the A-i190 to integrate into more complex systems without requiring external components.

Advance Paris A-NTC and A-BTC Modules

The A-NTC streaming cartridge is Advance Paris’ modular approach to network audio. It can operate as a standalone streamer via its optical output, adding streaming to any system with a digital input, or it can be installed directly into the A-i130 or A-i190 for a fully integrated solution with no external box or cabling.

Platform support covers Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect, Qobuz Connect, AirPlay 2, Chromecast, DLNA, and Roon, with connectivity over Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Resolution is capped at 24-bit/192 kHz, which aligns with most current streaming services and use cases.

The A-BTC module adds bi-directional Bluetooth 5.4 using the same expansion slot. It allows both receive mode (streaming from a phone or tablet to the amplifier) and transmit mode (sending audio to wireless headphones), making it useful for flexible listening scenarios.

Codec support includes aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, aptX Low Latency, AAC, along with LDAC and aptX Lossless as confirmed at AXPONA 2026. This provides broad compatibility across devices, with support for higher-quality wireless audio and low-latency playback for video.

Listening with Vienna Acoustics

Playback Distribution covers a wide range of brands, including Esoteric, TEAC, Advance Paris, PMC, Velodyne, Amphion, AVID, Audio Solutions, and Vienna Acoustics. The A-i190 was paired with Vienna Acoustics Beethoven series loudspeakers, and in a relatively small room, the amplifier didn’t need much effort to get them moving.

Power was clearly not a limitation. Even at moderate levels, there was good control and a sense that the amplifier was operating comfortably within its limits rather than being pushed. That’s not always the case in show conditions.

The tonal balance leans slightly warm through the midrange, but the top end remains open with enough edge to avoid sounding soft. There’s solid weight through the midbass and below, with a level of control that keeps things from getting loose. It’s a presentation that feels balanced rather than exaggerated in any one direction.

Based on this brief listen, the A-i190 appears capable of working with a wide range of loudspeakers, including more demanding designs. Planar speakers from Magnepan or electrostatics like the Quad ESL-2912x seem within reason given the amplifier’s stability and output.

It’s still a show demo, so call it the first bite of the galette, not the one with the fève hidden inside. But there’s enough here to suggest this isn’t just style and attitude. There’s substance underneath, even if the French would probably shrug and tell you it was obvious all along.

For more information: advanceparis.com

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Samsung is closing the book on its proprietary texting platform this summer. After years of slowly phasing out the software in favor of a more unified experience, the company is finally pulling the plug on its Messages app this July. While many Galaxy owners have already been using Google’s version for years, those holding onto the legacy interface now have a firm deadline to migrate their conversations before the service goes dark.

On a page with information about the switch, Samsung points to instructions on how to swap over to Google’s Messages app, including for phones that are still on Android 12 and Android 13. Samsung has historically preinstalled its own Messages app on Galaxy phones, but began transitioning toward Google Messages as early as 2021.

To encourage people to switch to Google Messages, Samsung’s instructions list new features offered by Google Messages, like RCS-enabled texting for features like typing indicators, easier group chats and sending higher-quality images. Google’s Messages app also has AI-powered spam detection and spam filters, multi-device access to messages and some built-in Gemini AI features. It’s also the app that most Android phones use as their default texting app, including Samsung’s more recent Galaxy S26. There are other SMS texting app alternatives in the Google Play Store if you don’t want to use the one made by Google.

Samsung has not said when exactly in July messaging will no longer work in the app. A Samsung representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Once the app is deactivated, only messaging to emergency services will work on Samsung Messages. 

While Samsung did stop including it as the default texting app in 2021, it wasn’t until 2024 that Samsung stopped preinstalling the texting app alongside Google Messages. The Galaxy S26 can’t download the Samsung Messages app, and other phones won’t be able to download it after the app’s July sunset.

Samsung said users of Android 11 or lower aren’t affected by the end of service, but would also likely benefit from switching to a supported texting app like Google Messages. To switch to Google Messages, the company asks users to download the app if it’s not already installed and to set it as the default SMS app when prompted after launching it. 

The post also notes that anyone using an older Galaxy Watch that runs on Samsung’s Tizen operating system will no longer have access to their full conversation history since these watches cannot use Google Messages. Samsung said that they will still be able to read and send text messages, but the company’s newer watches (Galaxy Watch 4 and later) that run WearOS will still have access to full conversations.

Recorded from the show floor at AXPONA 2026, the team from SVS breaks down their latest powered subwoofer, the SVS 3000 Micro R|Evolution, and why this compact design hits harder than it has any right to. We dig into the engineering behind the output, the tradeoffs of going small without sacrificing performance, and the bigger question hanging over it all is whether SVS is quietly undercutting its own lineup with each new release that raises the bar and resets expectations.

This episode was recorded on April 10, 2026 (the first day of AXPONA 2026).

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