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A look at Mozilla’s rebrand. “Mozilla’s new logo is a flag symbol... by Jason Kottke
Wednesday October 9th, 2024 at 12:09 AM

kottke.org
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A look at Mozilla’s rebrand. “Mozilla’s new logo is a flag symbol built from the Mozilla M that comes to life to reveal the company’s iconic Tyrannosaurus Rex symbol and mascot, originally designed by Shepard Fairey.”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

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Belfong
43 days ago
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I love it!
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What happens when solar panels die?
Monday October 7th, 2024 at 5:00 AM

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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By the end of 2024, the world will have nearly 2,000 Gigawatts of solar generation capacity in service. Each panel is made of silicon, glass, various polymers, aluminum, copper and an assortment of other metals that capture the sun’s energy. It’s a rule of thumb that, barring damage, a panel will last for up to 30 years before it needs to be replaced. But what happens to all of those raw materials when the current crop of solar panels becomes obsolete? Surely, we’re not just wasting it all, are we?

Received wisdom suggests solar panels last for around 30 years, but that’s not the whole story here. “30 years is our best guess,” explained Garvin Heath of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). NREL found there was a higher rate of failures at the start of a panel’s life, often due to manufacturing or installation faults. In midlife, only a handful of panels fail. Then the statistics begin to climb northward the closer to the three decade mark you get but, even so, the number of panels that break are “less than one percent” of the total in operation at that time.

Matt Burnell is the founder of ReSolar, a British startup looking into reusing, repowering and recycling solar panels. As part of his work, Burnell visited a 40,000 panel array solar farm where 200 of the panels were broken during installation. “I took about 50 from that site, tested them to see their value for reuse [and] generation capacity,” he said, most of which were within the “tolerance range of the manufacturer.” Essentially, for the odd crack in the glass or bump on the frame — which may cause problems down the line — the panels were otherwise perfectly functional.

If a panel has survived its birth and installation, then the biggest thing that kills solar panels is the weather. Heath said a common cause is extreme weather events damaging the panel, or even just regular, aggressive weather causing things to degrade. Sadly, once a panel is broken, it’s often not worth the effort to repair.

So panels deemed “broken” during manufacture or installation may still be very capable of making power from the sun. But there are also plenty of panels that are being withdrawn from service after 25 or 30 years, even if they aren't broken in any meaningful sense. There's a fairly simple reason solar farms don't allow these panels to soak up rays until they simply cease to function.

The key issue is efficiency loss, which is when panels aren’t able to generate as much power as they did when first installed. Most solar panels are made with laminated adhesive layers that sit between the glass and the solar cells to hold them together and aid rigidity. Sun exposure can cause those laminated layers to discolor, reducing the amount of light that can reach the cells. That diminishes the energy-generation capacity, which is a problem for large commercial farms.

“Manufacturer's warranty their [solar] modules’ performance for a 30-year period,” explained Garvin Heath. For instance, a maker will pledge that its panels will be at least 80-percent efficient for the bulk of its expected three-decade service life. These warranties give large utility-scale customers confidence in what they’re buying, and at the point that term has expired, it’s often far more cost-effective to simply junk and replace them.

Power grids have a limited number of interconnections, essentially the on-ramp that enables them to push power to the grid. Each interconnection has a hard upper limit in terms of the power it can send, so solar farms need to generate the maximum permitted electricity at all times. “[Even when] they’re working within warranty performance, the opportunity cost of having a module producing [more] power on your interconnection is quite valuable,” said Heath.

ReSolar’s Matt Burnell used an example of a 10 Megawatt solar farm in the UK that had a 15 Megawatt interconnection. “10 years ago, they could only fit 10 megawatts into the space that they had [...] but with newer and more efficient modules, it’s now financially viable for them to strip the asset down and rebuild it.” “You have these big pension funds looking at this from a spreadsheet,” looking for ways to better maximize their investment. The end result is that all of these otherwise fine panels are junked. “When you think about the embedded carbon of bringing [the panels] over [from China]” said Burnell “and then they go into the waste stream [...] seems mad.”

Even if panels could be repaired to full efficiency,it’s not likely solar panel repair shops will be opening in droves. “There’s a serious question around the labor costs of testing and repairing versus just buying a new panel,” said Burnell. He added in another example of panels that had to be taken down to address fire safety legislation, which were similarly at risk of being discarded because the effort to repurpose them was too great. To reduce waste, ReSolar actually wound up collecting and sending on a consignment of those panels to Ukraine for use in a hospital.

Another rule of thumb is that only one in 10 solar panels is recycled, with the remaining nine sent to landfills. There is no standard method for tracking a panel’s eventual destination, and it’s not clear how such a system would be implemented. But there’s a risk landfills are about to be overwhelmed with the volume of panels that’ll be coming down from roofs. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, reported on the coming glut of panels in California after the state’s push to get more solar installed from 2006 onwards.

The legal situation is barely patchwork, with Grist describing things in 2020 as the “wild west,” since only Washington has any sort of mandatory legislation. Decommissioned solar panels are covered by federal solid and hazardous waste rules, dependent on the materials used in their construction. If a panel includes heavy metals like lead and cadmium, then they can’t be sent to a general landfill, lest their poisons leech into the soil. But that often just means those panels are redirected to landfills that are designed to handle specialist waste.

The EPA is, at present, looking at developing rules that would standardize the recycling process for solar panels and lithium batteries. But while there are no federal mandates for recycling, or even tough legislation at the state level, the situation is far from ideal. A small fraction of the panels are actually sent to recycling centers, the rest left to an uncertain fate. As Heath points out, the risk is that while recycling is uneconomical and unavailable, we’ll see huge boneyards of working solar panels, left piled up while the situation changes.

In the UK and Europe, solar panels are covered by the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive, or WEEE. The rules oblige supplying companies to collect and recycle discarded panels, or to shoulder the cost for another entity to do so. It means that, hopefully, we won’t see tons more panels being dumped to landfills, but also means it’s often going to be more economical to send working panels to recycling rather than repurposing them.

If you want to free up the raw materials lurking inside a solar panel, then there are two approaches. There’s the mechanical way, in which you can shred the components, which is both simpler and more wasteful: it can recover glass and metal, but little else. Or there are thermal and chemical approaches that seek to separate the components, enabling more of the rarer metals to be recovered.

“Existing recyclers have traditional markets that their economics are built around, so glass recyclers look at a module and say ‘wow, a module is 80 percent glass by weight, I know what to do with that,” said Heath. “With the materials inside, there are more precious metals with higher value,” he said, “but they’re mixed in with the plastic polymer layers [...] which are hard to separate economically.” Consequently, the silicon, silver and copper embedded in the cells are often ground down into bulk and abandoned.

The IEA’s 2024 report on panel recycling looked into how these mechanical methods aren’t great for material qualities. “The outputs of mechanical processing are usually not very pure and better yields of high-quality materials [...] especially silicon and silver, should be targeted,” it said. It added that often these recycling processes aren’t optimized to run solar panels, and so “there is frequently some downgrading of recovered material quality,” hardly a great step on the road to circularity.

It’s also hard to know what goes into a solar panel. “The variation in materials [found in solar panels] is wild,” said ReSolar’s Matt Burnell. The litany of manufacturers don’t yet have any obligation to share their raw material data, although new regulations will change that soon. Until then, it’s difficult for recyclers to know what they’ll be pulling out of the panels they’re looking to process.

As well as recyclers not knowing the composition of the panels, there’s the risk of noxious chemicals being added to expedite some processes. Antoine Chalaux is the general manager of ROSI Solar, a specialist solar panel recycler in France. He talked about the inclusion of chemicals like Teflon and antimony, both of which are toxic and cannot be released into the atmosphere. “We’ve developed our recycling processes to capture [them],” he explained, “but we’re pushing [manufacturers] to use it less [in future].”

Burnell believes that the industry is really at the “very dawn” of solar recycling but is confident that with investment today, solutions will be quickly found in the very near future. “We’ve got this massive lead-in time,” he said “so we know what’s coming onto the market today, and we know what’s coming into the system in 25 to 30 years.” The real ticking clock is for the glut of panels that were installed in the early 2010s that will start entering the waste stream in the next decade.

Right now, ROSI’s processes aren’t as cheap as other recyclers, and Chalaux knows that it can be a problem. “Right now, there’s no economic reason for companies to [recycle with us], but there’s the question of image,” he said. “All of the manufacturers and owners of PV projects want a good story for the end of life for their panels.” The other benefit of this process, however, is to produce high-purity recycled materials that can be used by local manufacturers.

One step toward a more recyclable solar panel might be to eliminate the use of those adhesive polymers in its construction. If a panel could just use sheets of glass with the solar cells sandwiched inside, it would be a lot easier to deconstruct. Not to mention you’d likely get a longer and better performance out of them, since there would be no polymer layers to discolor.

Thankfully, a team from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has demonstrated that such a product can exist. Rather than gluing the layers together, femtosecond lasers weld the front and back panels of glass to each other. The solar cells are sandwiched inside, held by the bonding of the glass to its sibling, and nothing else. And when the panel eventually reaches its end of life, which may be a lot longer than 30 years, it can just be recycled by shattering the glass.

The project, led by Dr. David Young, says that if the proposals are accepted, we could see a commercial version of the panel within two to three years. He added that the rigidity offered by welding will be just as sturdy and waterproof as panels using polymer layers. Unfortunately, by that point, we’ll have decades upon decades of panels made using the old system that we’ll still need to deal with. And until we get a cost-effective, scalable way to recycle them, the answer to the question ‘What happens to solar panels when they die?’ will be ‘nothing good.’

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Belfong
44 days ago
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Useful to note when researching about solar panels in the future.
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Truth Social Users Are Losing Ridiculous Sums of Money to Scams
Monday October 7th, 2024 at 4:54 AM

Gizmodo
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Donald Trump launched Truth Social in 2022 as a social media platform where the MAGA faithful could hang out without any liberals to spoil the fun. The biggest selling point? It was the only place where Trump was personally posting his unhinged screeds after getting banned from Twitter over that whole coup attempt. But new documents obtained by Gizmodo reveal the site has also been flooded with scammers who are swindling users out of enormous sums of money. We’re talking about people who’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a relatively short period of time.

Gizmodo submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FTC for consumer complaints about Truth Social filed in the past two years. The complaints to the federal agency include some stories from people who’ve been banned from the site (unjustly, they claim) and others who say they got signed up for mailing lists they never wanted to be on in the first place. But the complaints about scams are the most shocking, if only because there are such large sums of money involved. And we’re publishing a sample of the full, unedited complaints below.

One person who says they lost $170,000 explained they were initially scammed on a different site but met someone on Truth Social who claimed they could help get their money back. That turned out to be a scam as well. But more often, the victims are first contacted on Truth Social before being told to take the conversation somewhere else, like WhatsApp. Truth Social seems to be a target-rich environment for people who are easy to con.

Another thing that sticks out about the complaints filed with the FTC is that they seem to involve plenty of elderly fans of Donald Trump. One 72-year-old man who reported chatting with a “beautiful” woman on the site was scammed out of $21,000. His complaint ends with, “I haven’t told my wife about this blunder. She still doesn’t know about it.” Another person in their 60s said they lost $500,000 to scammers on Truth Social and seemed to think there might be a way they could get their money back, telling the FTC, “After I pay this they promise there will be no more fees and I will receive my assets.”

Many of the people don’t seem to understand that any amount they might see on their end that’s supposedly sitting in an account is completely fictitious. The scammers will often give the victim access to a website that shows a certain dollar amount in “their” account but the money is long gone. It’s not sitting there for them to withdraw. It’s simply a ruse for the victim to see their imaginary money grow, luring them into “investing” even more.

There are many different kinds of scams on social media sites. We recently explored the dating app sextortion scams on Ashley Madison and sextortion that’s happening on Grindr with FOIA requests to the FTC. But the scams happening on Truth Social appear to be most commonly pig butchering, a method of gaining someone’s trust while getting them to give you increasingly large amounts of money, all while making it seem like the victim is making wise investments. Truth Social, with its older user base of Boomers who have access to a lifetime of savings and retirement accounts, appears to be an attractive target for scammers running pig butchering operations.

The complaints below were redacted by the FTC before being released to Gizmodo, making it impossible for us to verify each individual claim. But we believe the patterns that emerge give some degree of confidence that these are real scams. And publishing these stories has the potential to help other people, identify when to be skeptical after they’ve met someone online, no matter the social media platform. To be clear, this doesn’t just happen on Truth Social. Pig butchering is a scam that’s happening across the internet, from Facebook to Instagram, and it’s possible for even intelligent people to get swindled. But if you were a scammer, who would you think might be the easiest marks on the planet, ready to believe anything a conman might say? If you said Trump supporters, you’re clearly not alone.

Gizmodo tried to contact representatives from Truth Social on Thursday, but after sending an email to the address listed for media organizations on the social media platform’s website, it bounced back as undeliverable. After finally getting a hold of someone at something called the MZ Group, which works for Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social, the representative said they have “a robust team that actively searches for scams and bots on the platform and bans them as soon as they’re found.” Follow-up questions did not receive a response.

1) “I paid a fee to get past this security risk.”

  • Minnesota
  • Total reported loss: $500,000
  • Age: 60-64
  • April 2024

Met on truth social. She said she was in the business of trading cryptocurrency. Got me to trade with a company called coincorner based in england. Money was sent via bank transfer to a crypto wallet then to coincorner. When i tried to withdraw money, i had to pay taxes up front. then site said i had one too many numbers in my bank account number and now a security risk. I paid a fee to get past this security risk. Then i was told i could not transfer my money by wire and i would be issued a check instead. Then they had a minimum amount they would write a check for and needed to fund up my account to reach the minimum. After this, i filed a report with the sheriffs office in Hibbing mn. Case[redacted]. Later i filed an online report with the FBI. On march 30 an [redacted] ph [redacted] contacted me. Says she is an accountant with coincorner and trying to get my funds returned to me. She tells me she is in oregon, but works for coincorner. My assets are now in a bank called Top City choice Bank. I need to pay a withdrawal charge of $10,000 wire transfer to [redacted]. Rte [redacted] acct [redacted]. Wells fargo. [redacted] new orleans la 70128. I made this payment. Then a COT cost of transfer fee $15,000. Same wire destination after that a bank account activation fee $25,000. Same wire address. Now they want $70,000 for an authentication transfer pin. After i pay this they promise there will be no more fees and i will receive my assets. This is unpaid. I have also texted with a guy that claims to be one of the 4 founders of coincorner, Phil Collins ph. [redacted]. This is where i am at today. [redacted]. Ph [redacted]

2) “After being scammed by another site…”

  • Total reported loss: $170,000
  • Tennessee
  • March 2024

After being scammed by another site, i was given a link by a [redacted] on truth social social media to have them get my money back after she stated they could retrieve it! Supposedly they did, had me pay them 10% to go get it then told me there were no fees or limits to store my xrp and xlm their! When i got it in my account they said they were delivering a debit card for my account, it never came! I questioned it but they then said when my account reached 20,000 i would get one. I refused to add any more funds to my account after that! The lady is still harrassing me on truth social! Telling me to just pay it to get my card! I have snapshots of it all.

3) “Now that I want to withdraw my funds they are telling me I need to pay the taxes”

  • Total reported loss: $168,920
  • New York
  • Age: 65-69
  • September 2024

I fell victim to a cryptocurrency fraud and need guidance/help. I was contacted on the Truth Social media app, from a girl, she says her name is [redacted] phone [redacted] and lives in Queens supposedly and originally from russia, after talking for a few weeks she asked if I knew anything about bitcoin, I said I heard of it but didn’t know much about it, so she started explaining it to me and I was interested, she asked if I wanted to invest so I did I started out with a small amount, then asked to increase it a few more time for a total of $ 168,920.00, This was all a wire transfer from my bank account to coinbase into a USDT then since coinbase doesn’t USDT to trade she said I need to open a DeFi wallet now that I want to withdraw my funds they are telling me I need to pay the taxes to the DeFi wallet to be able to withdraw my funds, and coinbase does not receive USDT funds and they say I need to pay the DeFi taxes before I supposedly before they will do anything for me. I supposedly earned a total 1,061,155.26. the taxes they want me to pay is $196,972.69 at a 22%00 interest. the wallet is GDXTracex and the website is <a href="http://gdxtracex-web3.com" rel="nofollow">gdxtracex-web3.com</a>. and they say I only have until 10/5/24 to pay them. or my account with them will be frozen

4) “…well-known investors namely President Trump (co-founder), Dan Bongino, Devin Nunes, and many more”

  • Total reported loss: $150,000
  • North Carolina
  • Age: 60-64
  • July 2024

August 2023 I was on the platform Truth Social interacting with [redacted] and what I thought was a response from him telling me to contact him for a chat on WhatsApp we talked and he proposed an investment opportunity in Crypto Currency. He referred me to Elite Republican Trades. I decided to check out the information. That is when [redacted] contacted me via WhatsApp and explained the platform and benefits for well-known investors namely President Trump (co-founder), Dan Bongino, Devin Nunes, and many more. We researched Mr. [redacted] and didn’t find any negative information. I was instructed to open a Crypto Account to invest in Crypto. Throughout the following 11 months I’ve been investing with this platform seeing profits daily as promised. As recently as May Mr. [redacted] came to me with a bigger investment opportunity with billionaire Carl Ichan, I checked out the information and what I was told was factual, and I was looking at gaining a 5000 profit on my account and was promised to make no less than 3M. I gave Mr. [redacted] 100K to put into this platform. In the beginning of July he notified me that I made 3.5M in profit. I requested a payout of my account at which time I found out I would get (1) bitcoin in my wallet per day until all profits were in place. At that time the money would be released–i.e. approximately August 2024 it would be released. A couple days later Mr. [redacted] contacted me and stated that he withdrew all the money from all the accounts I had invested with him because bitcoin was starting to rapidly lose money. He told me my account fell to 2.5M and he cashed it out and sent it to my Coinbase Wallet through Ethereum Meta Crypto. He used another platform to send the money to me the assets is on the BNB (Binance Smart Chain Network. I can see the money in my Coinbase Wallet but I cannot access the account to make transactions. July 11th Mr. [redacted] contacted me and told me I had to pay a fee of 50K for me to receive a code to open the wallet for me to access, that never happened, no code was received. I contacted Mr. [redacted] and asked him about the code, he said his manager would have to sign off on the letter releasing the code. Three days pass and I hear nothing, he’s unreachable. July 16th I finally hear from Mr. [redacted] and tells me that he plans to send money when the value goes back up. He then told me there was a slight problem I was being told I have to pay a fine because I had setup side accounts with Mr. [redacted] that they did not know about. I was not aware I had any side accounts, he told me it was all still part of the platform. Then he gave me a phone number to contact him manager to reduce the fine, I contacted the manager and he was not happy with me because he said I never paid the fee to withdraw 2.5M. He said I owed $250,000. He said Mr. [redacted] told him I could not afford this so he lowered it to $15,000. As of today 17 July 2024 they are wanting me to send this 15K today. I am not sending any more money that’s the reason for this fraud report. I have everything in detail, conversations, emails, bank wire records if they are needed. I would like this information shared with the FBI!

5) “I then thought things were legit.”

  • Total reported loss: $133,000
  • California
  • Age: 60-69
  • February 2023

I met [redacted] on Truth Social. Talked about stock market and i was experiencing losses. she took me to WhataApp. She then spoke of <a href="http://mdyscoin.com" rel="nofollow">mdyscoin.com</a>. Had me sign up and then do practice trading for a bit. I then invested $3000 to just try it out. I did a wire transfer from the bank to <a href="http://crypto.com" rel="nofollow">crypto.com</a> then to <a href="http://mdyscoin.com" rel="nofollow">mdyscoin.com</a>. I used that money to do bids. when I made some I wired money back to my bank. I then thought things were legit.  [redacted] then said to put more money in for bigger payoffs. I then invested $130,000 to work with. A week or so into it, I decided to remove my funds and work with just what I made. Mdyscoin said my account was frozen that I had joined a 500,000 vip club. I told them I did not join this and to take me off that, they said it was a done deal and if I didn’t come up with the rest of the funds they would freeze my account. I told [redacted] of this and she said she wired $150,000 to my account to help but I needed to com up with the rest to unlock the freeze. I didn’t have the rest of the funds. So now the account is frozen and I take it all monies lost because they won’t wire money back to my bank. I’ve tried. I then went to file a police report, they sent me to the DA’s office, which I filed a report to. Basically they said sorry for you loss. they looked into the web page and found it to be a scam site. I do have the <a href="http://crypto.com" rel="nofollow">crypto.com</a> wallet address to were it went to. But I think now I seek help in what to do at this point.

6) “The more I write the dumber I feel that I would even fall for something like this.”

  • Total reported loss: $120,000
  • Oregon
  • Age: 70-79
  • February 2024

I was talking to this person on Truth Social for several months, then was asked if I ever ran a business. He said yes and this person asked if he would be open to help her run her late fathers businesses and help with her inheritance and would pay him to do so. He was sent certificates saying he was part owner of the gold and diamonds that her dad left her in exchange for helping her run the business and help sell her gold. We ended up paying for all the supposed customs fees, attorney fees etc. Always through 3rd party people, the Gold was coming from the UK, went to Canada Customs then to US customs Adding up to over 100K, the money we sent was always through third party people one in particular that took in at least 60K of that amount, we have a receipt with her name and the bank on it. I know what idiots we are. What can we do to investigate this? Every certificate and website she has given us turns out to be fake. We don’t know where to go from here. It is such a long story but this is it in a nut shell. The more I write the dumber I feel that I would even fall for something like this.

7) “I was misled by a person who claimed to be someone he is not on Truth social”

  • Total reported loss: $110,000
  • Iowa
  • Age: 40-49
  • March 2024

I was misled by a person who claimed to be someone he is not on Truth social who coached me to invest money into an invalid crypto wallet called qledger.live, based in Texas. Now the ledger will not release my funds except in small amounts every few days. Still do not know if I will be able to withdraw funds.

8) “I took $92,400 from my retirement account”

  • Total reported loss: $100,000
  • Arizona
  • Age: 65-69
  • September 2023

I got involved with [redacted] through Truth Social which turned out to be a romance scam. She convinced me to at first to invest $6000.00 which she also invested $6000.00 In Forex trading through [redacted]. The [redacted] Account Is solely in my name so she transferred her money into this account. The trade made $1500.00. after further convincing from [redacted] I took $92,400 from my retirement account and then wire transferred $94,000.00 to the [redacted] account. I was very reluctant at first but she again convinced me because she also put $200,000.00 in the [redacted] account to show she wasn’t trying to screw me out of my money. We did 2 Forex trades which grew the account to $447,000.00. In the meantime [redacted] wanted me to move to LA so her and I could purchase a house together in Huntington Beach. we needed to raise $1.75 million to purchase this house. She again convinced me to sell my house which that is in process now and to be very honest, I needed to anyway.

My concern which was brought up by my family, is the money that I invested was legal but the money [redacted] added may not be. And I don’t want to get caught in some sort of fraud. The Red Flag that caught my attention was [redacted] only wants her initial investment back of $206,000.00. I’d like to know or be insured that if I take my original investment of $100,000.00 out of the [redacted] account I won’t be committing a crime of some sorts.

9) “I invested $1,000 to start and eventually ended up investing $76,764.00”

  • Total reported loss: $76,000
  • Mississippi
  • Age: 65-69
  • June 2024

I met a lady on Truth Social and after several conversations I mentioned that I wanted to invest some money in the crypto market. She said that her and her uncle traded in Bitcoin and did pretty well and offered to show me how to get started. I downloaded the <a href="http://crypto.com" rel="nofollow">crypto.com</a> app and their DeFi wallet app and by using screenshots back and forth between us I invested $1,000 to start and eventually ended up investing $76,764.00. I withdrew a small amount around $300.00 and it worked fine so I thought everything was safe and working. We only participated in trading bitcoin a few times and my account got up to $208,636.00 so I asked for a withdrawal of $100,000.00 to get my investment back and they said I needed to pay a tax of about $22,000.00 before I could withdraw that much money. I asked them to take it from the withdrawal and send me the balance. They said they wouldn’t do that and that I must pay it myself. This is making me very nervous because I don’t have much money left so I take out loan and pay the tax. Then they come back and say that I need to pay a deposit of $10,000.00 because I made so much money so fast that they were suspicious of money laundering. I didn’t have that much money so I sent $2,700.00 and my lady friend sent the balance directly to me account and they came back and said that the money had to come from my account. I told them that I only had $3,000.00 and they said would unlock my account if I sent it and they said would take up to 10 working days to process. I waited the 10 days and sent them a message (all communication with them is online) asking about the withdrawal and they said that they wouldn’t release my money unless I paid $6,000.00 and I asked to speak to a supervisor or their legal department and told them I was done sending money.

10) “…targeted by a pig butchering scam”

  • Total reported loss: $73,500
  • Michigan and Virginia
  • Age: 60-64
  • September 2024

[Redacted] was targeted by a pig butchering scam. In May 2024, [redacted] started chatting with an investment scammer on the Truth Social site they subsequently spoke via WhatsApp. The scammer goes by the name [redacted] (supposed DOB: [redacted]) she claims to be from Hong Kong she claims to be residing in San Franciso now (though the address she provided is in Rancho Palos Verdes in Southern California). She said they could make money by investing. [redacted] first invested $10,000.

11) “They keep trying to get me to invest more money…”

  • Total reported loss: $51,000
  • Texas
  • Age: 60-64
  • January 2024

I was contacted by a person claiming to be [redacted] after i made a comment to a post on truth social . I was given a contact number for Whatsapp [redacted] for [redacted] who in turn gave me another number to an account manager b(6) . I made 2 $500.00 transfers in august . My account was showing great returns and I became interested in investing more for my retirement . I made another transfer of $50,000.00 in december . My account was showing great returns then it stopped .When i contacted them about my account i was notified that i would need to pay $1,000.00 a week to keep an account manager who would invest my money .I was making over that each week and told them to deduct it from my account. They then told me it didn’t work that way and in order to continue I would need to upgrade to a high level by investing more money . I finally got in touch with the Real [redacted] who told me he was not involved with the investment firm and that it was a possibly a scam. They keep trying to get me to invest more money on a weekly basis. I have noticed that the first website is gone ,but the second link is for the site now. I told them my wife is dieing and that I will be getting an insurance settlement so i can upgrade my investment just to keep them hanging .

12) “I can only login and see my balance and I can’t do anything else with it.”

  • Total reported loss: $40,000
  • Michigan
  • Age: 60-64
  • March 2024

She reached out to me on truth social and after a few messages we moved the conversation to whatsapp and talked for a couple of weeks and then we moved to telegram and i was talked into doing short term spot gold trading on the Ivision Market through the ARADMAX APP , She told me that her uncle would let her know when to trade , so after making trades for a few weeks she decided I should withdrawal my funds , so while trying to withdraw funds I was told by Ivision Market I had to pay 30 of my funds balance to the monetary authority to authenticate my identity in order withdraw my funds and since I didn’t have the funds to pay it my account was locked and I can only login and see my balance and I can’t do anything else with it.

13) “None of this happened and the woman has been absent and unresponsive”

  • Total reported loss: $34,500
  • Age: 65-69
  • California
  • February 2023

A woman contacted me through Truth Social and requested money for a phone, her mothers medical costs and prescription, and then to pay delinquent storage fees and taxes on an inheritance. All this was based on developing a personal relationship with this person and a promise to repay everything along with interest when her inheritance could be liquified/sold. None of this happened and the woman has been absent and unresponsive. I’ve lent her a total of $34,500 since July/August 2022.

14) “He told me once the equipment was released he would fly to Austin where I live and so we could be together.”

  • Total reported loss: $31,700
  • Age: 50-59
  • Texas
  • June 2024

He friended me on Truth Social. Within a week we exchanged phone numbers. We chatted there for a few days then he told me he had to fly to Dubai he closed a contract he had been working on. Before he left he sent me a pic of his passport and private jet voucher. This all happened in late April 2024. By June he had mentioned that the equipment he purchased from China was being held up in customs in Dubai and needed help financially to release the equipment. He told me he paid for some a colleague paid for some but the remaining amount was $25k. He asked me to deposit the $ into bitcoin which in turn cost me $31,200 due to fees at the bitcoin machine. He also had me purchase a $500 Apple Card. He told me once the equipment was released he would fly to Austin where I live and so we could be together. We talked 2xs per day by phone by way of video chat but he indicated the rules on the oil rig were stricked so he had to black out his screen when we talked. Once he claimed the equipment was received on the oil rig he then stated the pilot he prepaid was not responding to his messages to return home to the states. He then asked me to pay $68,000 to get him and the equipment back to the US. I decided to disengage from him at this point.

15) “They were friends and blossomed into something more.”

  • Total reported loss: $25,500
  • Age: 60-64
  • Wyoming
  • February 2024

[redacted] met someone on Truth Social, [redacted] who was assisting him with trading. She claimed to be in Charlotte, SC. She sent him a picture that is supposedly of her. They were friends and blossomed into something more. He was setting up a liquidity mining through Truth Social. He spoke to this person about a month through Telegram (username: [redacted]). In Dec 2023, he invested $3,000 by transferring it to Kraken and it then went to Trust Wallet in an account ending in 07fd9 that they helped him set up. Crypto type was Ethereum. On Jan 26, 2024 he added $22,000 in the same manner to the same wallet address. The total balance in the wallet was $29,821.75 after he deposited the $22k. On Jan 30, 2024 – [redacted] got a notice in the Trust Wallet app saying he was a winner, and more money would be deposited into his account. The scammer told him that he had 30 days to come up with $107,000 more or he would lose the current $43,000 that was supposed to be in the Trust Wallet account. [redacted] did not want to be involved, and they threatened him to charge a penalty fee if he did not comply. [redacted] has reported it to Kraken. When [redacted] reached out to Trust Wallet, they refused to assist him and threatened legal proceedings against him if he continued to say they were scamming him. [redacted] has screenshots/documentation of this situation. Browser Address that [redacted] sees: defi.trust [redacted]

16) “At this point, I knew it was a fraud.”

  • Total reported loss: $21,000
  • Age: 70-79
  • Missouri
  • October 2023

Began a chat on Truth Social on August 12, 2023. The contact wanted to start a friendship. Her Truth Social name was [redacted]. The chat was friendly, but not romantic in nature. The person had a very beautiful photo and portrayed herself as a wealthy business owner. So I questioned immediately why she would want to be friends with me. It carried on from there and i looked into her background information. She had provided a link to Facebook and the name was [redacted]. It was the same picture as on Truth Social. She said that was her nickname to avoid predators. Unbelievably, I continued the chat. We ended up on WhatsApp and continued to the chat. After a while I saw others on Truth Social with the same picture. When I questioned her she said someone had hacked her accounts. She switched us to Telegram. Over weeks that passed she sent me numerous pictures that was the same person as originally shown. Sadly it turned a bit romantic and I developed feelings for her.

and of course she said she had feelings for me. The chat continued. She said she was harassed on Telegram, so she switched us back to WhatsApp. She eventually convinced me of an investment opportunity and to open an Account on Crypto.Com and transfer funds to Trust Wallet. I ended up sending $21,000. I can hardly believe I did that but she was very persuasive. I am 72 years old and probably just too gullible and lonely at this point in my life. After transferring the funds to Trust Wallet she convinced me to invest in a U Plan which was a smart contract on the blockchain. Last night she informed me that I needed to add $36,000 or I would lose my money. At this point, I knew it was a fraud. I should have know much sooner looking back. I was too confident with the Apps that I downloaded from Apple App Store. <a href="http://Crypto.com" rel="nofollow">Crypto.com</a> and Trust Wallet apps. I read online that Crypto criminals could modify the apps and make them look real. I suspect that she and her team modified the Trust Wallet app and stole my money. It was an elaborate scheme probably with a team which I suspect is very effective. It definitely worked on me. I saved all her photos and all our conversations. I haven’t told my wife about this blunder. She still doesn’t know about it.

17) “I believe now all 3 options are fake and rigged to draw one in further.”

  • Total reported loss: $12,656
  • Age: 60-64
  • Texas
  • December 2023

I was contacted by the person listed below on Truth Social. She started up a compelling conversation where she came across as a caring and trustworthy individual. Over time the conversation become more engaged and felt like there was a connection. She asked to continue the conversation on Telegram. We had a video call to confirm she was real. She sent me pictures of her which I now believe at least some are fake. I had suspicions but feared confronting her directly and rationalized it somehow.

As the relationship got as I perceived closer, she introduced XAUT.cc. site extolling the virtues of Tether gold (XAUT) and how she was getting great returns. And that I would be stupid to not get involved. Returns are made via Storage of XAUT tokens, Arbitrage (AI bots) or option trading. I believe now all 3 options are fake and rigged to draw one in further. I was very reluctant to get involved but she kept pushing and eventually helped me to set up a wallet. In hindsight she was very manipulative. Assured me it is all safe as it is all on the block chain. She talked about where she grew up in Singapore and how she moved to Switzerland, about friend b(6) and neighbor b(6) and all sounded so believable. She also talked about her mom and her dad and her uncles. What they did weekends around San Diego and what they had for dinner, etc. She indicated she works at a place in San Diego called <a href="http://ECOhomebuildersinc.com" rel="nofollow">ECOhomebuildersinc.com</a>. She kept making a great case and questioned whether I cared about us. She kept pushing the stakes higher and higher. I realized eventually I was getting manipulated but did know how to get out safely. It all seemed so real, So continued to play along. All wanted to do is get my money back. I thought I could do it. I was wrong. They have threatened me. I wish I had known about this site to report fraud sooner. The info I have on the individual is what was volunteered to me and can not confirm it. I feel so stupid now and scarred of what they may do.

Have you been scammed on Truth Social? Send an email to [email protected] to tell us your story.

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Belfong
44 days ago
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It boggles the mind that people's inherent greed is so easy to take advantage of. Something to keep in mind as the scam gets more and more sophisticated.
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Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand is a master class in distraction by Paris Marx
Monday October 7th, 2024 at 4:15 AM

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Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand is a master class in distraction

In October 2021, Facebook was mired in controversy. Weeks earlier, the Wall Street Journal had begun publishing stories based on leaked documents Frances Haugen had provided that showed how the company ignored Instagram’s harmful impacts on teens and Facebook’s contribution to violence around the world. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was not happy and was determined not to let there be a repeat of the scandal that consumed the company in 2018.

Ahead of a keynote presentation at the company’s annual Facebook Connect, Zuckerberg addressed the leaks, but not in the way many might have imagined. He acknowledged the concerns they presented, then turned the table, claiming his critics were people who would never find it to be “a good time to focus on the future.” Instead, he was representing those doing the hard work, saying the future will only be built “by those who are willing to stand up and say, ‘This is the future we want and I’m going to keep pushing and giving everything I’ve got to make this happen.’” He clearly saw himself as part of that group, even though the future in question was the metaverse.

That moment represented an important shift; one that’s become much more apparent three years later. In the twelve months, Zuckerberg has started working out, changed his hairstyle, and is wearing gold chains, but most importantly, he’s given up on trying to seriously respond to his critics. Instead, as one of the richest men in the world, he wants to do what he pleases regardless of the consequences and be praised for those endeavors. That doesn’t mean the harms created by Zuckerberg’s companies have lessened, but his public relations team are working hard to direct people’s attention away from them — and, shamefully for the media who cover the company, it’s working.

Remaking Mark Zuckerberg’s image

As recently as five years ago, Zuckerberg was arguably the most hated executive in Silicon Valley. Facebook was accused of helping enable Brexit in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s election in the United States (often inaccurately, to be fair), but more broadly, the company was rightfully skewered for its mass data collection and the poor decisions it was making on content moderation. Facebook’s neglect contributed to the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, and despite those issues, several years later former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang leaked documents showing its poor moderation in many parts of the world was a factor in political destabilization. Even the company’s US content moderators faced poor working conditions, let alone the much more poorly staffed teams around the world working in other languages.

But there was a political angle to this too. Conservatives have long claimed the mainstream press holds a “liberal bias,” and they’ve used that claim as a cudgel to consistently push major outlets to legitimize more and more extreme right-wing perspectives over the course of several decades. As social media rose and became politically important, they saw the opportunity to use that same strategy once again, claiming the platforms suppressed conservative voices and used the combined power of right-wing media and congressional authority to push executives to make decisions that benefited right-wing users and narratives.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand is a master class in distractionDisconnectParis Marx
Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand is a master class in distraction

In the 2010s, a more politically naive Zuckerberg began hiring on more Republican advisors and executives, who helped shape the policies of the platform to ensure extreme right-wing media was legitimized and that users espousing those views would not be overly moderated or penalized. Chief among them was Joel Kaplan, who worked in the George W. Bush administration before later heading up Facebook’s global public policy team. Employees at the company described how he crafted policies — with Zuckerberg’s approval — that delayed the suspension of extremist figures like Alex Jones and ensured groups like the Oath Keepers could continue organizing on the platform ahead of January 6, 2021.

An internal memo from December 2020 claimed Kaplan would protect “powerful constituencies” by allowing right-wing pages to get away with spreading misinformation, limiting enforcement against conservative accounts, and shaping decisions about what would appear in people’s news feeds. Setting up a more lenient enforcement mechanism for conservatives was how Zuckerberg believed he would get out of their crosshairs, but in fact it showed them their strategy was working. That right-wing pressure only escalated after Facebook started doing the bare minimum during the early part of the pandemic to try to rein in misinformation about Covid-19 and the vaccines.

Embracing right-wing politics

Whereas the Zuckerberg of the past tried to placate Republican content pressures and Democratic investigations of the company’s wider social harms, he’s begun taking a very different stance — and that’s been reflected in his personal politics. A recent story in the New York Times explained that while Zuckerberg used to present himself as a supporter of liberal causes — and engaged in philanthropic efforts to that effect — he’s more recently started identifying as a libertarian or “classical liberal.” For Zuckerberg, that means an opposition to regulation, an embrace of free markets, and an openness to social justice, as long as it doesn’t involve calling out Israel for its war crimes in Gaza — and surely not taxing people like him more either. Let’s be clear: it’s nothing more than a billionaire embracing right-wing politics that are designed to serve his interests.

In recent months, Zuckerberg has called Donald Trump a “badass” and there have been reports they’ve spoken on the phone on more than one occasion. He gave a win to Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, saying Facebook was “wrong” to “censor certain covid-19 content” after he was supposedly “repeatedly pressured” to do so by the Biden administration. He also confirmed he will not donate to support local election offices around the United States in this cycle, after his donation to that effect in 2020 was portrayed as “Zuckerbucks” by Republicans trying to claim the election had been stolen by Democrats. But that political shift, along with his outward makeover, has corresponded to a change in how he approaches his platforms too.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand is a master class in distractionDisconnectParis Marx
Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand is a master class in distraction

The days of placating are over; now Zuckerberg just wants to be done with the complaints and move on to other things, while still enjoying the ad profits from his legacy platforms. After Elon Musk overhauled Twitter/X’s approach to moderation and suspensions, Zuckerberg took the opportunity to start making his own changes. Meta has downgraded “political” content across its platforms, yet right-wing misinformation continues to spread through dedicated pages, and lifted the limits placed on Donald Trump’s accounts several years ago. The company has also made it harder for researchers to see what’s happening on the platform by shutting down a tracking tool called CrowdTangle and claims it wants to allow users to choose the type of content they see — effectively shifting responsibility to users and allowing people to see vile, hate-filled garbage if they so choose.

Make no mistake: these decisions are a prime example of conservatives getting their way and succeeding in reshaping the platforms that we use to communicate and find out what’s happening in the world around us. Zuckerberg surely wants the political pressure — especially that coming from Republicans — to go away, but he also doesn’t really care about the impacts of his decisions as long as he can play at being the great future-builder he sees himself to be. The problem is that whereas these decisions would’ve received ample press a few years ago, today they pass a just another story in the news cycle, showing how successful Meta’s public relations team has been.

Reshaping the corporate narrative

The metaverse effort Zuckerberg unveiled in 2021 wasn’t just about his personal desire to go big on virtual reality — the company had bought Oculus for $2 billion in 2014 — it was also about trying to turn the page and write a new narrative. To some degree, that worked. The scrutiny on Facebook didn’t fully go away, but Zuckerberg was no longer just the evil social media baron — he was increasingly the nerd king with a cartoonish avatar taking a photo in front of a virtual Eiffel Tower and expecting us all to want to join in with our own legless virtual selves. It was better to be laughed at than roundly reviled.

That was the first stage of the rebrand, and over the past year we’ve seen the second stage, which has been far more effective, as the Meta Connect presentation at the end of September put on full display. Coming out of that showcase, few people were talking about social media — even though that’s the company’s main business and, as I’ve described, the company has been reshaping its platforms in unsavory ways. Instead, the talk and press coverage was all about AI (given the current hype cycle) and even more so a set of surveillance glasses (my words, not Meta’s) called Orion that are more of a tech demo than a real product.

In the days that followed, we were treated to glowing write ups about the glasses that were long on praise and short on context: namely, the ongoing problems with the company’s business, the longstanding privacy concerns with camera-enabled glasses, or the fact Meta has spent a decade and tens of billions of dollars just to build this product that still looks quite bad, has a paltry battery life, and costs $10,000 to make. Like with the metaverse, the idea that Zuckerberg was building the next big platform was everywhere — with no real proof we’re ever going to abandon our smartphones for glasses, and certainly not in the near future.

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Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand is a master class in distraction

When Zuckerberg sat down with The Verge for one of their regularly scheduled softball interviews, he did make some surprising statements, but they were treated as secondary to his vision for the next big thing. On the AI front, he made the argument that stealing data to train AI models should be considered fair use and that “individual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content.” Like Meta has done with news, Zuckerberg said they’d simply remove content if its makers demand payment — but that doesn’t mean Meta is going to open up a way for people to ask their data be removed from the company’s datasets. Even more importantly, he disputed the growing controversy over the effects of social media on the mental health of teens.

At another time, those statements that would have received a lot more scrutiny because they play into broader issues with key parts of the company’s business. But because they came at the same moment Meta was unveiling a flashy tech demo and in the broader context of Zuckerberg’s personal rebrand, the news cycle quickly moved on and placed its focus on what Zuckerberg wanted the focus to be on: his grand vision for the future. But that future is a distraction that may never arrive, designed to shift the spotlight away from the present and allow Zuckerberg to evade the accountability he deserves.

Mark Zuckerberg has changed, but not in the way the narratives disseminated by his PR team suggest. He is not done with politics; he’s simply adopting a more right-wing worldview that’s more aligned with his interests and that he hopes will lessen the scrutiny applied to his company. But more than anything, he’s decided he doesn’t have to answer to critics anymore. He’s the second richest person in the world and can’t be dislodged from his company. His platforms will keep causing harm, but as long as he pushes a story about the future he hopes he won’t be held to account like he was in the past — and so far, that gamble is working.

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Belfong
44 days ago
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tante
45 days ago
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Zuckerberg rebrand works right now but I wonder how well it would stick if Elon Musk hadn't shat the bed this badly.
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Relax With George Clooney at the End of a Movie by Jason Kottke
Saturday October 5th, 2024 at 4:04 AM

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It has been a week. It’s not going to fix anything, but maybe watching George Clooney chilling at the end of a movie will help you in some small way.

He has perfected the art of just chillin’ out silently for an extended period of time during the last shot of a movie while the credits roll…

(via laura olin)

Tags: George Clooney ¡ movies ¡ video

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

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Belfong
46 days ago
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The latest on the WordPress fight over trademarks and open source by Jess Weatherbed
Saturday October 5th, 2024 at 3:37 AM

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Vector illustration of the WordPress logo.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

WordPress and its cofounder Matt Mullenweg are embroiled in a public battle against the third-party hosting provider WP Engine.

In late September, Automattic CEO and WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg started a public dispute with the hosting provider WP Engine, calling the company “a cancer to WordPress.” He accused WP Engine of not contributing enough to the WordPress ecosystem and profiting off of trademark confusion. As a result, WP Engine was blocked from accessing WordPress.org’s servers.

Automattic has since sent a cease and desist order to WP Engine to stop it from using its trademarks, while WP Engine has followed up with a lawsuit that accuses Automattic and Mullenweg of extortion.

The series of events set off a public battle that calls into question the boundaries between WordPress.com host Automattic, the WordPress open-source project, and the nonprofit that’s behind it.

Here’s all the latest news so far.

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Belfong
46 days ago
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