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Intuit is shutting down its free budgeting app Mint, which had 3.6 million active users in 2021, Bloomberg reported. The company will absorb users into its other service called Credit Karma when Mint disappears on January 1st, 2024 — less than two months from now. 

"Credit Karma is thrilled to invite all Minters to continue their financial journey on Credit Karma, where they will have access to Credit Karma’s suite of features, products, tools and services, including some of Mint’s most popular features," Mint wrote in its product blog. The company noted that Mint's product team and some features have already shifted over to Credit Karma. 

Mint helps users manage their budget, track expenses and keep track of subscriptions and monthly bills so you don't pay late fees. Intuit acquired the company in 2009 for $170 million, with Mint saying the acquisition would help bring the app to millions more users. 

Intuit will shift users to Credit Karma (a company it acquired in 2020), even though they're not exactly the same. Credit Karma is more like a banking app that lets users view transactions, monitor credit and see multiple accounts, but lacks the budget tracking features that make Mint attractive to many. Intuit specifically notes on a support page that "the new experience in Credit Karma does not offer the ability to set monthly and category budgets," instead helping users "build awareness" of their spending. However, Mint's net worth feature was recently ported over to Credit Karma.

Mint users will be able to transfer their accounts by logging into Credit Karma from the Mint app, after which they'll lose access to their Mint profiles. They can also download or erase any Mint data if they'd rather not switch. 

Some Mint users on Reddit don't seem thrilled with the switch, with one saying that without the budgeting feature, "Mint is just a glorified checkbook register." Intuit, meanwhile, was recently ordered to pay $141 million for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free. 

If you have an iota of musicality, you’ve no doubt noticed that you can play music using glass bottles, especially if you have several of different sizes and fill them with varying levels of water. But what if you wanted to accompany yourself on the bottles? Well, then you’d need to build a bottle-playing robot.

First, [Jens Maker Adventures] wrote a song and condensed it down to eight notes. With a whole lot of tinkling with a butter knife against their collection of wine and other bottles, [Jens] was able to figure out the lowest note for a given bottle by filing it with water, and the highest note by emptying it out.

With the bottle notes selected, the original plan was to strike the bottles with sticks. As it turned out, 9g servos weren’t up to the task, so he went with solenoids instead. Using Boxes.py, he was able to parameterize a just-right bottle holder to allow for arranging the bottles in a circle and striking them from the inside, all while hiding the Arduino and the solenoid driver board. Be sure to check it out after the break.

Don’t have a bunch of bottles lying around? You can use an Arduino to play the glasses.

A federal jury has found Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, guilty on all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy he was charged with in relation to the downfall of his cryptocurrency exchange. According to The New York Times, he faces a maximum sentence of 110 years in federal prison. Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas back in December 2022 after the Department of Justice took a close look at his role in the rapid collapse of FTX. The agency examined whether he transferred hundreds of millions of dollars when the exchange filed for bankruptcy and whether FTX broke the law when it moved funds to sister company Alameda Research.

During Bankman-Fried's trial that took place over the past month, prosecutors argued that he used FTX's funds to keep Alameda Research running. The fallen entrepreneur also founded the cryptocurrency hedge fund, which was ran by his girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who was aware that he used FTX customers' money to help Alameda meet its liabilities. Bankman-Fried previously denied that he deliberately misused FTX's funds. The Times says his lawyers tried to portray him as a math nerd who had to grapple with "forces largely outside of his control," but the jury clearly disagreed after the prosecution called Ellison and three of Bankman-Fried's former top advisers to the witness stand. Ellison and all of those advisers had pleaded guilty, with the Alameda Research chief admitting that she committed fraud at Bankman-Fried's direction.

Bankman-Fried was charged with wire fraud on FTX customers, wire fraud on Alameda Research lenders, conspiracy to commit wire fraud on both, conspiracy to commit securities and commodities fraud on FTX customers, as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 28, 2024 by US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who also presided over his trial. 

TikTok is pushing back on critics who claim the video app is falling short in its content moderation duties amid the Israel-Hamas war. In a statement, the company offered new details about the number of accounts and videos it has taken down since the October 7th attacks by Hamas.

According to TikTok, it removed more than 925,000 videos “in the conflict region” and millions more “pieces of content” from around the world. The company also said it’s experienced “spikes in fake engagement” in recent weeks. “Since Oct. 7, we've removed more than 24 million fake accounts globally and more than half a million bot comments on content under hashtags related to the conflict.”

The new details come as TikTok has faced increasing scrutiny over how its app is recommending content related to the ongoing conflict. According to NBC News, some lawmakers have recently stepped up their calls for the app to be banned amid allegations that TikTok’s algorithm is disproportionately promoting pro-Palestinian content. In its update, TikTok said that such claims were based on “unsound analysis” of its data. 

“Unfortunately, some misinformed commentators have mischaracterized our work to prevent the spread of hate speech and misinformation surrounding the crisis in Israel and Gaza, especially as it relates to antisemitism,” the company said. “Over the last few days, there has been unsound analysis of TikTok hashtag data around the conflict, causing some commentators to falsely insinuate TikTok is pushing pro-Palestine content over pro-Israel content to U.S. users.” The company added that, in the United States, the hashtag #standwithisrael had been viewed 46 million times since October 7, while #standwithpalestine had been viewed 29 million times.

TikTok isn’t the only platform to face increasing scrutiny over its moderation policies as tensions surrounding the conflict spill over onto social media platforms. Meta has faced accusations that it “shadowbanned” Instagram accounts that posted about conditions within Gaza, which it attributed to a “bug.” X, formerly known as Twitter, is dealing with a European Union investigation into its handling of misinformation related to the conflict.

Apple's latest earnings report paints a picture of software wins amid a hardware slump. In a statement announcing the financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter, the company called out a new all-time high for revenue from its Services products. It also highlighted iPhone revenue as having set a September quarter record. However, this marks the fourth consecutive quarter of overall revenue decline, with its earnings of $89.5 billion representing a 1 percent drop year over year. This also means the record-breaking performances of the iPhone and Services divisions did little to offset weakness elsewhere. 

The lackluster performance is somewhat understandable, though. The company just had a launch event for its new M3 chips, MacBooks and an iMac this week, none of which can be bought yet. And though the new iPhone 15 lineup and Apple Watches were introduced in September, sales of those devices likely did not account for much of this fiscal quarter’s results. We're also anticipating a November release for new iPads this year, which could further fuel hardware revenue. 

Correspondingly, the Mac, iPad and wearables divisions were down this quarter, with the first two taking noticeable hits. Though Apple drummed up significant interest with the Vision Pro headset earlier this year, that device is far from ready to be sold to the public and is unlikely to hit the market until 2024 at the earliest. With holiday shopping about to ramp up, as well as more product releases on the horizon, it’s much more likely that the company’s hardware products will have a greater impact on its bottom line next quarter.

It looks like Amazon is hellbent on keeping its spot as the biggest online retailer — even if that means hurting both sellers and customers. In September, the FTC filed a long-expected antitrust lawsuit against Amazon over its alleged use of illegal strategies to stay on top. Details of the suit were previously withheld from the public, but today a mostly unredacted version was released, including details about Amazon's secret pricing tool, known as Project Nessie. These algorithms helped Amazon increase prices by over $1 billion over two years, the FTC alleges.

As Amazon would argue, Amazon's dominance of the online retail space has helped small businesses reach more consumers. But the FTC would argue that over the years, Amazon has become exploitative in its approach. The company continues to increase third-party seller fees, which are taking a toll on smaller businesses and even causing bankruptcy for some. Amazon previously said these claims were baseless, but the documents revealed today show otherwise.

According to the The Wall Street Journal, the internal documents cited in the original complaint show that Amazon executives were well aware of the effects of the company's policies. In the documents, Amazon executives acknowledged that these policies, which included requiring Amazon sellers to have the lowest prices online or risk consequences, had a “punitive aspect.” One executive pointed out that many sellers “live in constant fear” of being penalized by Amazon for not following the ever-changing pricing policy.

The FTC also alleges that the company had been monitoring its sellers and punishing them if they offered lower prices on other platforms, which the agency says is a violation of antitrust laws. The unredacted documents indicate that Amazon has increased prices by over $1 billion between 2016 to 2018 with the use of secret price gouging algorithms known as Project Nessie. It was also revealed that the "take rate" — aka the amount Amazon makes from sellers who use the Fulfillment By Amazon logistics program — increased from 27.6 percent in 2014 to 39.5 percent in 2018. It's unclear if that has changed in more recent years since those numbers remained redacted.

And Amazon isn't just ruining its sellers’ experience. The complaint also revealed Amazon's increased use of ads in search results. Several ad executives at the company acknowledged that these sponsored ads were often irrelevant to the initial search and caused “harm to consumers" and the overall experience on the site.

The FTC alleges that these policies were the brainchild of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and former chief executive, to increase the company's profit margins.

“Mr. Bezos directly ordered his advertising team to continue to increase the number of advertisements on Amazon by allowing more irrelevant advertisements, because the revenue generated by advertisements eclipsed the revenue lost by degrading consumers’ shopping experience,” the FTC complaint alleges.

It looks like Amazon is hellbent on keeping its spot as the biggest online retailer — even if that means hurting both sellers and customers. In September, the FTC filed a long-expected antitrust lawsuit against Amazon over its alleged use of illegal strategies to stay on top. Details of the suit were previously withheld from the public, but today a mostly unredacted version was released.

Amazon's undeniable dominance of the online retail space has helped small businesses to reach more consumers. However, over the years, it seems Amazon has become exploitative in its approach. The company continues to increase third-party seller fees, which are taking a toll on the smaller businesses and even causing bankruptcy for some. Amazon previously said these claims were baseless, but the documents revealed today show otherwise.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the internal documents cited in the original complaint showed that Amazon executives were well aware of the effects of the company's policies. In the documents, Amazon executives acknowledged that these policies, which included requiring Amazon sellers to have the lowest prices online or risk consequences, had a “punitive aspect.” One executive pointed out that many sellers “live in constant fear” of being penalized by Amazon for not following the ever-changing pricing policy.

The FTC alleges that the company had been monitoring its sellers and punishing them if they offered lower prices on other platforms, which the agency says is a violation of antitrust laws. The unreacted documents showed that Amazon has increased prices by over $1 billion between 2016 to 2018 with the use of secret algorithms known as “Project Nessie." It was also revealed that the "take rate," aka the amount Amazon makes from sellers who use the Fulfillment By Amazon logistics program,  increased from 27.6 percent in 2014 to 39.5 percent in 2018. It's unclear if that has changed in more recent years since those numbers remained redacted.

And Amazon isn't just ruining its sellers’ experience. The complaint also revealed Amazon's increased use of ads in search results. Several ad executives at the company acknowledged that these sponsored ads were often irrelevant to the initial search and caused “harm to consumers" and the overall experience on the site.

The FTC alleges that these policies were the brainchild of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and former chief executive, to increase the company's profit margins.

“Mr. Bezos directly ordered his advertising team to continue to increase the number of advertisements on Amazon by allowing more irrelevant advertisements, because the revenue generated by advertisements eclipsed the revenue lost by degrading consumers’ shopping experience,” the FTC complaint alleges.

NASA will soon start testing what is dubbed as the world’s first commercial spaceplane capable of orbital flight, which will eventually be used to resupply the International Space Station. The agency is set to take delivery of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser, which should provide an alternative to SpaceX spacecraft for trips to the ISS.

In the coming weeks, the spaceplane (which is currently at Sierra Space’s facility in Colorado) will make its way to a NASA test site in Ohio. The agency will put the vehicle, which has been named Tenacity, through its paces for between one and three months. According to Ars Technica, NASA will conduct vibration, acoustic and temperature tests to ensure Tenacity can survive the rigors of a rocket launch. NASA engineers, along with government and contractor teams, are running tests to make sure it's safe for Tenacity to approach the ISS.

All going well, Tenacity is scheduled to make its first trip to space in April on the second flight of United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. The rocket has yet to make its own first test flight, which is currently expected to happen in December. However, given how things tend to go with spaceflight, delays are always a possibility on both fronts.

The spaceplane has foldable wings, which allow it to fit inside the payload of the rocket. On its first mission, Tenacity is scheduled to stay at the ISS for 45 days. Afterward, it will return to Earth at the former space shuttle landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida rather than dropping into the ocean as many spacecraft tend to do. Sierra says the spacecraft is capable of landing at any compatible commercial runway.

“Plunging into the ocean is awful," Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice told Ars Technica. "Landing on a runway is really nice." The company claims Dream Chaser can bring cargo back to Earth at fewer than 1.5 Gs, which is important to help protect sensitive payloads. The spaceplane will be capable of taking up to 12,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS and bringing up to around 4,000 pounds of cargo back to terra firma. Sierra plans for its Dream Chaser fleet to eventually be capable of taking humans to low-Earth orbit too.

As things stand, SpaceX is the only company that operates fully certified spacecraft for NASA missions. Boeing also won a contract to develop a capsule for NASA back in 2014, but Starliner has yet to transport any astronauts.to the ISS. Sierra Nevada (from which Sierra Space was spun out in 2021) previously competed with those businesses for NASA commercial crew program contracts, but it lost out. However, after the company retooled Dream Chaser to focus on cargo operations for the time being, NASA chose Sierra to join its stable of cargo transportation providers in 2016.

Dream Chaser's first trip to the ISS has been a long time coming. It was originally planned for 2019 but the project was beset by delays. COVID-19 compounded those, as it constricted supply chains for key parts that Sierra Space needed before the company brought more of its construction work in house. The company is now aiming to have a second, human-rated version of Dream Chaser ready for the 2026 timeframe.

NASA has long been interested in using spaceplanes, dating back to the agency's early days, and it seems closer than ever to being able to use such vehicles. Virgin Galactic (which just carried out its fifth commercial flight on Thursday) uses spaceplanes for tourist and research flights, its vehicle is only capable of suborbital operations. With Dream Chaser, Sierra has loftier goals.

It looks like Meta may be pumping the brakes on one of its more aggressive, and unpopular, growth-hacking tactics for Threads. The company appears to be working on a new privacy setting so Threads users can opt-out of having their posts cross-posted to Facebook and Instagram feeds.

The unreleased feature was spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, who often uncovers early versions of social media features before they officially launch. Paluzzi shared screenshots of a new “suggesting posts on other apps” toggle in Threads’ privacy settings.

The feature comes barely a week after the company acknowledged that it was promoting users’ Threads posts in Facebook feeds in an effort to boost Threads. While Meta has used similar tactics to promote its other apps in the past, the move has been widely unpopular among Threads users, many of whom are not active on Facebook and see the promotions as an intrusive overreach. Meta said last week it was “listening to feedback” in response to user complaints about not being able to opt out.

Notably, it appears as if Meta still intends to automatically enable cross-posting as a default setting. “If your profile is public, your posts may be suggested on other apps so people can discover and follow you,” the opt-out screen states.

The back and forth over the feature comes as Meta has steadily ramped up its efforts to boost Threads growth. The Twitter clone has been growing again in recent weeks, and currently has about 100 million monthly users. Mark Zuckerberg recently said he sees a path for the app to become Meta’s next billion-user service. But in order to reach that many people, the company will need to lean hard on its other apps to attract new sign-ups.