Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.
'Malign actor' hacked UK defence ministry payroll, Sunak says after China reports
Summary: Following a wave of reports from the BBC and other news entities, British Prime Minister Sunak has said that a “malign actor” has likely compromised the payment systems used to pay British military personnel, and that personal information was likely accessed by the hackers.
Context: Those reports indicate that China was behind this cyberattack, though Sunak didn’t name China, and Chinese officials have said they would never do such a thing, and that this is a political smear job; Sunak said that the Ministry of Defence has taken actions to secure the relevant databases, and that folks whose information was accessed would be provided support; this is the third high-profile hack against the UK of which China has been accused in recent years, and these attacks have seemingly hobbled efforts by the UK government to build closer economic ties with China.
—Reuters
TikTok sues to block US ban
Summary: As expected, social video app company TikTok has filed a lawsuit to block the implementation of a recently passed law that would ban the app in the US if the Chinese company behind it, ByteDance, doesn’t divest itself of its US assets within up to a year of the law’s passage.
Context: The lawsuit compares the ban to China’s Great Firewall, which serves to keep foreign influences out of the country and applies strict censorship on pretty much everything, country-wide, and it claims the law is illegal on First Amendment grounds; ByteDance has said it cannot and will not sell its US operations within the allowed time period, so if this lawsuit doesn’t work, it will almost certainly no longer be legal in the States by next January.
—The Wall Street Journal
FTX customers poised to recover all funds lost in collapse
Summary: Folks who lost money when cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed in 2022 may receive their money back, plus interest, following efforts by bankruptcy lawyers to recover said money from the defunct company’s other assets.
Context: According to the bankruptcy plan, essentially everyone who invested in the exchange and lost their assets when FTX collapsed, including individual people and companies, would receive cash payments equivalent to the value of what they held at the time, plus 18% interest on top of that; the downside would be that they’d receive payments and interest equal to the value of these assets in 2022, which in many cases is substantially less than those assets would have been worth had they owned and held onto them until today; this plan still has to be approved by the court before it can be implemented.
—The New York Times
Grid-scale batteries in California are rapidly increasing the state’s renewable energy usage, and dropping electricity prices in the state, in large part because they can shift the use of energy generated by solar during the day to peak-demand periods just after sundown.
—The New York Times
$40,000
Annual price of a new longevity-oriented program being offered by gym chain Equinox.
That membership fee nets members blood tests, a smart ring (which tracks some vital signs all day) and a gym membership, alongside coaching, personal training, and meetings with a sleep coach, nutritionist, and massage therapist.
—The New York Times
One Sentence News / May 10, 2024