The final series of Game of Thrones disappointed a number of viewers. What if you tried to evaluate series’ popularity and identify dips? CC-licensed photo by Stephanie Holton on Flickr.

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A selection of 10 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

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Epic v. Google, explained: why we’re going back to Fortnite court again • The Verge

Sean Hollister:

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Epic is of course the studio behind Fortnite, the extraordinarily popular free-to-play game. Fortnite makes money by selling in-game items with its virtual currency V-Bucks. Players often buy V-Bucks the same place they play Fortnite. And until August 13th, 2020, if the player used an Android or iOS device and installed the game through an official app store, that purchase triggered an in-app payment fee to Google or Apple. 

Critics call such fees the “Google tax” or the “Apple tax,” and Epic definitely wasn’t a fan. 

When Epic decided to take action against these respective “taxes,” it made August 13th, 2020 a very busy day for Apple, Google, Epic, and us here at The Verge. First, Epic announced it was bypassing Apple and Google’s app store fees. It deployed a hotfix update to Fortnite without either company’s knowledge, letting you purchase V-Bucks directly through its own payment processing option at a discount. Apple and Google almost immediately reacted by kicking Fortnite off their app stores for breaking the rules.

Then: surprise! Epic was ready and waiting with two lawsuits and an attack ad, depicting a Fortnite hero throwing a unicorn-llama hammer into a giant screen reminiscent of Apple’s famous “1984” Macintosh ad.

It was a striking publicity blitz, followed by a lot of slow-moving court proceedings. While the Apple lawsuit went to court in 2021, the Google one was delayed again and again. A ruling came down for the Apple trial that September, and it was mostly decided in Apple’s favor, though both parties are waiting for the Supreme Court to potentially weigh in. Meanwhile, the machinations for its fight against Google continued, and now… 

It is time for trial number two.

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As Hollister points out, it’s only taken 1,180 days to reach court. (Starts today!) Hard to see why this one should go in a different direction from the Apple one, unless Epic has discovered a dramatic new line of argument for its case.
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Middle-aged salarymen exploit volatile yen with smartphone trades • Blomberg via The Japan Times

Mia Glass:

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Salarymen scrolling through their phones on the subway are a common sight in Tokyo, but they aren’t all playing Pokemon Go — many are on trading apps, aggressively buying and selling the yen to profit from short-term swings.

Retail currency traders are having a field day as speculation mounts that the Bank of Japan is getting closer to raising its rock-bottom interest rates, with some betting on a move as soon as next week. The cohort of mainly middle-aged men is amplifying volatility in the fast-paced currency markets by seizing on intraday moves, in a departure from their previous focus on interest rate differentials.

“I’m really convinced that in the current market, short-term trades have become superprofitable,” said Satoshi Hirai, 43, who trades alongside running a video studio in Gifu Prefecture. Hirai’s been buying and selling the yen about 100 times a day recently, and used the money he’s made to buy a Leica camera and guitars to play in his punk rock band.

The increased involvement of mom-and-pop traders reflects the new monetary policy paradigm that Japan is facing. The country is the last hold-out for negative rates globally, despite inflation that’s remained elevated, spurring investors to pile on bets that the BOJ may adjust policy sooner rather than later.

Ads for foreign-exchange trading apps have popped up around Tokyo subway stations, cartoon characters including sheep and pigs are all over social media to promote currency trading, and a bar dedicated to retail trading in the upscale shopping area of Ginza is drawing patrons who swap tips over drinks.

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I wonder why it’s “middle-aged” salarymen who are seen as the troublesome ones. Can’t there be youthful salarymen doing this, or are they all tied up with crypto?
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Elon Musk’s X seems to have started selling off old Twitter handles for $50,000 • Forbes

Alex Konrad:

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X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, appears to have begun ramping up efforts to sell disused user handles, kicking off a program previously signaled by billionaire owner Elon Musk.

Emails obtained by Forbes reveal that a team within the company, known as the @Handle Team, has begun work on a handle marketplace for the purchase of account names left unused by the people who originally registered them. In at least some cases, X/Twitter has emailed solicitations to potential buyers requesting a flat fee of $50,000 to initiate a purchase.

The emails, which Forbes agreed not to publish in their entirety to protect the anonymity of their recipients, came from active X employees and noted that the company recently made updates to its @handle guidelines, process and fees.

An automated response from X’s press email account to Forbes as of publication time said only: “Busy now, please check back later.”

Musk’s company has been rumoured to be planning to put such a program into effect for months. As early as November 2022, Musk posted on the social media site that a “vast number” of handles had been taken by “bots and trolls” and that he planned to start “freeing them up next month.” (In response, a user suggested a “Handle Marketplace” where people could sell accounts to each other, with the site pocketing a fee; Forbes couldn’t determine whether such a practice is now in place.)

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“Inactive” means “not logged in for 30 days”. (Unclear how this applies to Verified users who are still paying.) It’s reasonable, inasmuch as user handles belong to the company, not the user. And no doubt there will be howling up and down the yard once the sales become visible. It used to be done differently: people who knew insiders at Twitter could get them to hold a username. Or, of course, hackers would find ways to socially engineer their owners and take control of the account.
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Can one episode ruin a TV show? A statistical analysis • Stat Significant

Daniel Parris:

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Can a show collapse in just one episode, or do quality declines manifest slowly? To identify series-ruining installments, we’ll utilize IMDB user reviews and the following five criteria:

• A series-ruining episode cannot be in season one: there needs to be an established show worthy of viewer frustration
• A series-ruining episode cannot be the last instalment of the final season: show quality needs to worsen in the episode’s aftermath
• A series-ruining episode’s rating should be +15% lower than the average of all previous episodes: this series-ruining instalment must represent a stark shift in quality
• The five instalments following our series-ruining episode should demonstrate a +15% drop in average rating compared to the five episodes prior: this rapid quality decline should persist immediately following our series-ruining episode
• All instalments following the series-ruining episode should demonstrate a +15% drop in average rating compared to all previous episodes: this quality decline should remain for the rest of the show’s run.

Ultimately, about ~2% of television series meet our five criteria. The prevalence of these spontaneously sputtering series is relatively consistent over time, with a notable rise in the 2020s.

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He uses IMDB data, and picks out Game of Thrones (S8 E1 – huh?), of course, because everyone loves to rag on that. There are others, some of which have reached 23 series (Top Gear) or 13 (Spongebob Squarepants, in the 2020s). What’s more notable is how many have this “collapse episode” in the second season. That is, if we accept the entire premise.
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One year out from Election 2024 • The Status Kuo

Jay Kuo:

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In lieu of a week ahead summary, I thought it might be helpful to discuss how things look a year out from the national election. Polls have folks very much on edge, which I suppose is part of the point, and today’s bad battleground state poll for Biden by the New York Times / Siena is sure to cause much handwringing. The thought of a repeat of Donald Trump is enough to raise the blood pressure of any voter who values the rule of law, pluralism and our democratic institutions.

So am I losing sleep over it?

In a word, no.

Allow me to paint some pretty big pictures using a necessarily broad brush. I wouldn’t call what I feel “confidence,” but I would consider my thinking “well-supported by available data.”

So why don’t I think Donald Trump will win in 2024? Here are some big reasons.

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The reasons are pretty good, and point out actual salient data (not sampling polls) that makes a good case for Kuo being right.
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Sam Bankman-Fried gambled on a trial and his parents lost • The Verge

Elizabeth Lopatto:

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I suppose it’s possible that [Sam] Bankman-Fried is delusional enough to believe himself innocent, to think he did nothing wrong, and to think a jury would agree with him. But given what else I know about him, I don’t think that’s what happened.

Sam Bankman-Fried loved risk, and he loved to gamble. He knew that if he went to trial, there was a chance, however small, that he might walk away a free man. Pleading guilty meant guaranteed punishment, and probably prison time. And so he chose to gamble, not only with his own life, but with his parents’.

Bankman and Fried were respected law professors at Stanford. Bankman worked on the US tax code, on behalf of low-income people. Fried is known for her work on legal ethics, and ran a donor network, Mind the Gap, for Democratic causes. Their FTX entanglement has certainly marred their reputation at the end of their lives — that $26m in cash and real estate in 2022 looks very different now. This is to say nothing of the lawsuit from the FTX bankruptcy estate, which seeks to claw back millions. 

Bankman and Fried have been vocal in their son’s defense, as I assume any loving parent would be
Bankman-Fried’s failed defense wasn’t cheap — lawyers never are. And there will be more bills, as his lawyers seek to appeal the verdict. There may also be a second trial, scheduled for next March, for some other counts that were severed from this case. 

But it’s not just the money. This trial revealed Bankman-Fried’s father was in 17 Signal group chats associated with FTX, including the “small group chat” that was attempting to stave off FTX’s impending collapse. Joseph Bankman was mentioned in witness testimony about Bankman-Fried’s meetings with Bahamian regulators. Should the second trial take place, there is the possibility for further embarrassment.

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This is the first example of how the prospect of getting your hands on huge amounts of money distorts people’s view of themselves and the world. The next example follows below.
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Crypto collapse: Bankman-Fried trial draws to a close, SafeMoon arrested, fourth US bank failure was crypto • Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain

David Gerard and Amy Castor:

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We talked before about a fourth 2023 bank failure — Heartland Tri-State Bank of Elkhart, Kansas became insolvent to the tune of $54m, due to a “huge scam,” and was closed by the Kansas State Bank Commissioner on July 28. [FDIC press release]

Precisely what happened was a mystery at the time. You’ll be as unsurprised as we were to find it was crypto.

On July 5, Heartland CEO Shan Hanes asked a customer to loan him $12m. Shan had some money in crypto — or, it turned out, the bank’s money. But the money was stuck, and $12m would surely unstick it.

The customer declined to help — “he told Hanes it sounded like a crypto scam.” The customer then relayed the bizarre conversation to a board member. Hanes lost his job, and the bank went under.

Lots of details are still missing, but Hanes apparently got caught up in a “pig butchering” scam — where the victim is led to put in more and more money to get existing funds out. Literally a bank CEO fell for this. We’re looking forward to the full FDIC report.

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Just because someone’s clever or in a high-ranking position doesn’t mean they won’t fall for the scam; it’s the overconfidence of thinking you’re smarter than the scammers that leads to downfall. Yet this is the same scheme – just with different actors – that used to be called the “419 scam”, and blamed on Nigerians. Now it’s usually blamed on the Chinese.
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AI content is publishers’ next burning platform moment • Ian Betteridge’s Substack

Ian Betteridge points to the historical example of the internet, and publishers’ belief that it would give them a natural advantage (it didn’t):

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what can publishers do to retain their competitive advantage? There really is no point in trying to pretend that the AI genii doesn’t exist, in the same way that publishers couldn’t pretend in the 90s that people would just carry on buying huge volumes of print.

Nor will legal claims aimed at the likes of OpenAI, Google and Microsoft succeed. Yes, your content has been scraped to create the language models in the first place. But given the result in the Author’s Guild vs Google Books case, I expect courts to hold that this kind of use is transformative, and therefore fair use. Either way, it will be tied up in the legal system for far too long to make a difference.

Some have suggested that the way forward will be private large language models built solely using the corpus of text publishers hold. There are a few issues with this, but the biggest one is simply that the horse has bolted. OpenAI, Google and others have already trained their models on everything you have published online to date. They probably even have access to content which you no longer have. How many redirects of old, outdated content do you have in place where the original no longer exists? How many of your articles now only exist in the Wayback Machine?

Instead, the only option for publishers is to focus on creating content of a higher quality than any current LLM. You cannot gain competitive advantage at the cheap, low-cost end of the market. Trying to do so will not only make you vulnerable to anyone else with the same tools (at $20 a month) but also devalue your brand over the long term.

Creating higher quality content means employing people, which is why that urge to use LLMs to replace your editorial teams will actually undermine the ability of publishers to survive. Putting that cost saving towards your bottom line today is a guarantee that you will be out-competed and lose revenue in the future.

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I’ll only point out that a Substack written by someone who has a Law of Headlines named after them should be called something more like “Probably Not”.
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His job was to make Instagram safe for teens. His 14-year-old showed him what the app was really like • WSJ

Jeff Horwitz:

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In the fall of 2021 a consultant named Arturo Bejar sent Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg an unusual note.

“I wanted to bring to your attention what l believe is a critical gap in how we as a company approach harm, and how the people we serve experience it,” he began. Though Meta regularly issued public reports suggesting that it was largely on top of safety issues on its platforms, he wrote, the company was deluding itself.

The experience of young users on Meta’s Instagram—where Bejar had spent the previous two years working as a consultant—was especially acute. In a subsequent email to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, one statistic stood out: One in eight users under the age of 16 said they had experienced unwanted sexual advances on the platform over the previous seven days.

For Bejar, that finding was hardly a surprise. His daughter and her friends had been receiving unsolicited penis pictures and other forms of harassment on the platform since the age of 14, he wrote, and Meta’s systems generally ignored their reports—or responded by saying that the harassment didn’t violate platform rules.

“I asked her why boys keep doing that,” Bejar wrote to Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants. “She said if the only thing that happens is they get blocked, why wouldn’t they?”

For the well-being of its users, Bejar argued, Meta needed to change course, focusing less on a flawed system of rules-based policing and more on addressing such bad experiences. The company would need to collect data on what upset users and then work to combat the source of it, nudging those who made others uncomfortable to improve their behavior and isolating communities of users who deliberately sought to harm others.

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His daughter’s experience really is eye-opening: there’s a complete disconnect between how men experience social media, and how women (or girls) do.
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Apple iPhone battery throttling lawsuit to go ahead in UK • Stackdiary

Alex Ivanovs:

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A long-running legal battle between technology giant Apple and millions of its UK customers was allowed to continue this week, as a London court ruled that a class action lawsuit against the company can proceed.

The claim, led by Justin Gutmann, alleges that Apple deliberately throttled the performance of older iPhone models through software updates in order to mask issues with aging batteries and push customers to upgrade their devices. The suit covers iPhone 6, 6S, and 7 models released between 2014-2017.

Mr. Gutmann’s claim seeks compensation for up to 25 million UK iPhone users under consumer law. The total value is estimated at around £1.6bn, with the expected range being £853m (approximately $932m).

However, the case is not without issues moving forward. The Tribunal ruled that Gutmann’s claim still lacks sufficient “clarity and specificity”, which will need to be resolved before proceeding to trial. Additionally, Gutmann may need to modify the terms of financing for the lawsuit. This follows a UK Supreme Court ruling that found many third-party litigation funding arrangements are unlawful.

The controversy, nicknamed Batterygate, first came to light in late 2017 when Apple admitted that an iOS update intentionally slowed down iPhones with older batteries. The company claimed this “power management” feature was necessary to prevent unexpected device shutdowns as batteries deteriorated over time.

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Class actions are comparatively new animals in the UK (ask me, I’m leading part of one) and take quite a long time to put together. By comparison, in the US the class action over exactly the same argument concluded in August, with Apple paying out $310-$500m to affected owners (if they claim it), after an action that began in 2020.
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• Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more.

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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified