The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is probing whether John Deere used unfair practices related to the repair of its agricultural equipment that might violate the FTC Act.
Technology
The FTC is trying to find out if John Deere’s repair policies broke the law
The investigation into John Deere’s restrictions on customers’ right to repair agricultural equipment was revealed by data analytics company Hargrove & Associates, Inc. (HAI), as it fights a subpoena-like civil investigative demand (CID) from the FTC to hand over sales data. As reported earlier by Reuters, the company fears sharing the information the FTC seeks about agricultural equipment sales could harm its business relationships.
“We are cooperating with the FTC, at this time we cannot comment any further while an investigation is ongoing,” John Deere spokesperson Jen Hartmann said in a statement.
John Deere has been one of the main targets of the right-to-repair movement (along with Apple), which seeks to give customers more options to repair equipment with third-party services to expand access and lower costs. But companies that have resisted fully opening their ecosystem tend to cite issues with security, which is a message John Deere CTO Jahmy Hindman echoed during his 2021 appearance on the Decoder podcast. He argued, “Do you really want a tractor going down the road with software on it that has been modified for steering or modified for braking in some way that might have a consequence that nobody thought of?”
Science & Environment
BlackRock’s ETF chief says 75% of its bitcoin buyers are crypto fans new to Wall Street
Marquee at the main entrance to BlackRock headquarters building in Manhattan.
Erik Mcgregor | Lightrocket | Getty Images
SALT LAKE CITY — A year ago, Samara Cohen believed there was so much pent-up demand for bitcoin that she and her team at BlackRock launched one of the first-ever spot bitcoin exchange-traded products in the U.S. Now investors are flocking in, and a lot of them are crypto enthusiasts who are new to Wall Street.
Cohen, who heads up the asset manager’s exchange-traded funds and index investments as chief investment officer, told CNBC that BlackRock now sees the demand was for a better way to access bitcoin. “It was for the ETF wrapper,” she told CNBC on stage at the Permissionless Conference in Utah.
The total market cap of all eleven spot bitcoin ETFs now tops $63 billion, with total flows of nearly $20 billion. In the last five trading days alone, spot bitcoin ETFs have seen net inflows of more than $2.1 billion, with BlackRock accounting for half of those sales.
The spike in trading volume comes as bitcoin hit its highest level since July this week, trading above $68,300. Bitcoin ended the third quarter up around 140% from the same quarter a year ago, outpacing the S&P 500, as these spot token funds and the crypto market cap move higher in lock-step. Crypto-aligned stock Coinbase closed up about 24% this week, its best week since February.
Cohen told CNBC that part of the strategy for attracting customers to its funds was teaching crypto investors about the benefits of exchange-traded products (ETPs).
13F filings, which offer quarterly reads on equity positions taken by large investors, show that 80% of the buyers of these new spot bitcoin products in the U.S. are direct investors. Of the 80% of direct investors, Cohen told CNBC that 75% had never before owned an iShare, one of the best-known and largest ETF providers on the planet.
“So we went into this journey with the expectation that we needed to educate ETF investors on crypto and on bitcoin specifically,” said Cohen. “As it turns out, we have done a lot of education of crypto investors on the benefits of the ETP wrapper.”
Before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission green-lit spot bitcoin funds in January, investors had a few ways to buy and custody cryptocurrencies. A centralized exchange like Coinbase was among the most user-friendly options for U.S investors. But the blockbuster debut of bitcoin ETPs has laid bare to Cohen and others across Wall Street, that crypto exchanges weren’t giving digital asset investors everything they needed.
BlackRock’s IBIT vs. bitcoin YTD
It helps that the U.S. is a huge market for digital assets. New data from Chainalysis shows that North America remains the biggest crypto market globally, accounting for nearly 23% of all crypto trading volume. The blockchain analytics platform estimates that between July 2023 and July 2024, there was $1.3 trillion in on-chain value received.
Venture firm a16z found in its recently released State of Crypto report that more than 40 million Americans hold crypto.
So far, adoption has mostly been through wealth management clients asking advisors to add new spot crypto products to their portfolio.
In August, Morgan Stanley was the first big bank to allow its 15,000 financial advisors to pitch bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock and Fidelity to clients with a net worth over $1.5 million. Other firms are still performing in-house due diligence before allowing their armies of FAs to start actively pitching the funds.
“Wealth manager allocators have not been allocating,” VanEck CEO Jan van Eck told CNBC in Utah. “I mean, they’re barely even warming up.”
Van Eck drew parallels to the European market, where the company has 12 token-based products trading in Europe.
“It’s exactly what we see in Europe,” he said. “Very few private banks have really approved investment in bitcoin or ethereum or anything else in a major way.” Van Eck said his company has about $2 billion in its European crypto ETPs, and that a lot of the volume is from individual investors.
Wall Street needs rules from lawmakers on Capitol Hill before it gets more comfortable with crypto.
ETFs create transparency
Cohen thinks that in a lot of ways, ETFs and blockchain technology are solving for similar things.
“ETFs have been a decentralizing force in TradFi markets that have brought a lot more access and transparency, and importantly, really accelerated in growth during the post crisis 2008, 2009 period,” said Cohen, referring to traditional finance markets.
“I find it incredibly meaningful to look at the fact that the bitcoin whitepaper was published on October 31, 2008, and then you have the G20 leaders from around the world meeting to discuss the aftermath of the financial crisis and how do you create more transparency through public reporting,” Cohen continued.
BlackRock took on less risk by using counterparty clearing and multilateral trading. In TradFi markets, those moves created huge tailwinds for ETFs.
“Then at the same time, DeFi is becoming a reality over the intervening 15 years,” she said.
“Was this a win for Bitcoin? Was this a win for ETPs? To me, the answer is: It’s a win for investors, to the extent we can effectively marry these ecosystems which are solving for the same goals.”
Technology
Writing backwards can trick an AI into providing a bomb recipe
State-of-the-art generative AI models like ChatGPT can be tricked into giving instructions on how to make a bomb by simply writing the request in reverse, warn researchers.
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are trained on vast swathes of data from the internet and can create a range of outputs – some of which their makers would prefer didn’t spill out again. Unshackled, they are equally likely to be able to provide a decent cake recipe as know how to make explosives from household chemicals.
Technology
Snag this excellent 2K gaming PC for just $1,899
If you’re not that inclined to build a PC from scratch, then buying a pre-built gaming PC makes a lot of sense, especially since there are a lot of great deals now that more than make up for anything you would lose for not building it yourself. One great example is the RDY Y60 from iBuyPower, a solid gaming desktop from a boutique maker specializing in interesting builds, and the best part is that it has quite a significant discount on it for a configuration that comes with an RTX 40-series card. Instead of the usual $2,349 the RDY Y60 goes for, you can snag it for just $1,899, which accounts for a solid $450 discount. Also, if you use the code IBP25YR, you can get an extra $50 discount, or up to $300 if you spend up to $3,999 on an iBuyPower PC.
Why you should buy the RDY Y60 gaming desktop
One of the most important parts of any gaming desktop is the GPU, and in this case, you get the excellent RTX 4070 Super, which straddles the line between performance and price. This is actually the perfect 1440p GPU since you’re going to be getting between 60-100 fps with ultra settings, depending on the game. You could theoretically push it to 4K if you want to pair it with the latest and best gaming monitors, but you likely won’t see more than 55-60fps, at best, and you may need to have to play around with graphical settings.
Besides that, you get one of the best CPUs on the market, the Intel Core i9-14900KF CPU, which will easily handle any game or task you throw at it and even allow you to do some streaming while you game. The 32GB of RAM included is also very impressive, as is the 2TB of storage that you get to work with. Of course, you could always expand that storage with one of these SSD deals, but it probably isn’t necessary once you first get it. Also, it should be noted that the RDY Y60 ships without the GPU installed, so there will be some minor assembly required, but at least iBuyPower provides you with instructions.
This configuration iBuyPower’s RDY Y60 has a lot of powerful specs under the hood, and for the $1,899 price tag, it’s essentially a steal. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a few different options to pick from, these gaming PC deals are worth checking out.
Technology
Amazon’s 55-inch 4K Fire TV drops to $339.99
Right now Amazon has a pretty decent deal on the 55-inch 4 Series Fire TV that you might want to consider if you’re in the market for a TV upgrade. This is a 4K TV with HDR 10 support and it’s a smart TV with easy access to tons of apps for streaming media and entertainment content. Amazon currently has it on sale for $339.99 which is a decent price considering how much it normally costs.
It’s not the cheapest this TV has ever been according to the price tracking history on Camel Camel Camel. In fact it dropped to as low as $259.99 on September 21 of last year. Having said that, it normally sits around $382.36, and the full retail price for this TV is $519.99. That still makes this recent discount a pretty good one as it’s almost $200 off. Which is honestly not bad at all for the features you get here.
At 4K resolution, you’ll have a much more enjoyable experience for watching movies and TV shows, so long as the content you watch is in 4K. If you’re into games, the Fire TV platform is now compatible with Xbox Cloud Gaming through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. So you can easily boot up a game and stream it right to the TV. All you need to do is install the app and connect an Xbox wireless controller and you’re good to go. You can also stream games through Amazon’s Luna service, though you’ll want the Luna controller for that if you want the best experience.
Additionally, the TV supports Alexa and features a variety of Alexa skills. So you can do things like ask Alexa through the TV to turn the lights on or off, adjust the thermostat, and more.
Technology
Nightdive Studios revives a cult classic 3DO game from 1996
Nightdive Studios has reimagined another cult classic game for modern audiences. Killing Time: Resurrected is a refresh of the 1996 3DO and PC original. For the uninitiated, the game was notable at the time for attempting to blend full-motion video (FMV) with a first-person shooter. It truly looked like nothing else when it was released during the heyday of Bill Clinton’s first term as president.
Like most Nightdive remakes, Killing Time: Resurrected isn’t just a simple remaster. This title boasts 4K visuals, a 144Hz frame cap and other modern graphical goodies like anti-aliasing. The menu art and 2D screens have also been redone.
As for gameplay, fans will now have access to all of the weapons from both the 3DO and PC versions of the game. Back in the 1990s, several weapons were exclusive to each platform. There’s also plenty of newly-unearthed content that was cut from the original, including a pool house stage and a shipwreck.
The 50 live-action FMV sequences have been fully remastered, and they really pop in this remake. Players can toggle between the original sprites and the updated visuals, which is always a nice touch. Nightdive promises “upscaled environmental texturing, smoother gameplay, more responsive controls.”
The load times between areas have also been completely eliminated. Those load times were pretty brutal back in the 1990s, if memory serves. Killing Time: Resurrected is available right now for PC via Steam. There’s a launch sale going on, dropping the title down to $20 from $25.
Nightdive Studios has been pumping out all kinds of high-quality remakes and remasters lately. It handled the critically-acclaimed remaster of Star Wars: Dark Forces and a complete remake of System Shock. The company was recently purchased by Atari.
Technology
Yuga Labs brings AI to blockchain with ApeChain creator platform
Yuga Labs, the Web3 company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, is bringing AI to blockchain with the launch of ApeChain, a new creator platform.
In order to future-proof its ecosystem, Yuga Labs is partnering with Wire Network, the universal Layer 1 blockchain infrastructure designed for the AI agent economy. That is, it’s the near future where “AI agents” can be prompted to make advanced actions on behalf of humans. The idea is to create a platform for creators that enables them to engage with their fans more easily and profitably.
ApeChain harnesses the momentum of Yuga Labs’ track record as the biggest name in Web3 games. The company is offering a platform that allows entrepreneurs and builders more creative freedom and facilitates a better overall experience for consumers in everything entertainment from art to gaming, Yuga Labs said.
Yuga Labs has been leading the charge on new tech. It was born embracing crypto and non-fungible tokens. It embraced the metaverse with OtherSide and spun up a games business, and now it is banking on the intersection of AI and the creator economy.
As AI comes to the forefront of conversation in the creator economy, this partnership aims to transform the way consumers and creators interact with AI agents, offering enhanced, meaningful engagement across digital and virtual environments, Yuga Labs said.
In addition to decentralized AI capabilities, ApeChain will also benefit from Wire Network’s additional core strengths: no gas fees, seamless cross-chain operations, and lightning-fast transactions. These features will now be integrated into Yuga Labs’ diverse portfolio of digital assets and virtual worlds, and available to everyone who builds on ApeChain.
Ken DiCross, CEO of Wire Network, said in a statement that he sees the collaboration as a significant step forward in realizing the potential of AI.
“Yuga Labs is an established leader in building digital communities and pushing creative boundaries,” DiCross said. “By combining our scalable, next-generation blockchain infrastructure with Yuga’s creativity and cultural influence, we are opening up new possibilities for AI agent interactions that are more immersive, seamless, and beneficial for everyone involved. Our collective goal here is to create a broader, decentralized, user-driven metaverse.”
ApeChain makes its debut alongside the Yuga Labs flagship event, ApeFest, in Lisbon, Portugal, this week.
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