Authorities are quickly cracking down on the Lapsus$ hacking group that allegedly compromised Microsoft and Okta. BBC Newsreports City of London Police have arrested seven people aged 16 to 21 over connections to Lapsus$. The police didn't name the older people facing charges, but said they'd been released "under investigation."

More details appear to have surfaced around one of the leaders. A 16-year-old Oxford boy known as "Breachbase" or "White" has supposedly made the equivalent of $14 million in Bitcoin up to this point, and was apparently outed after business partners doxxed him following a dispute. Researchers have been following him for almost a year, Bloombergadded. The teen made multiple mistakes that helped researches trail his activity across online accounts.

Lapsus$ claimed to have obtained 37GB in Microsoft source code for projects like Bing, Cortana and mobile apps. They also tried to compromise Okta's customer support in January and posted images they said showed the company's internal systems. Microsoft acknowledged that the hackers had limited access to its network, while Okta indicated there was no hostile action beyond the January incident.

The arrests won't necessarily put a stop to Lapsus$ when the group is believed to call South America its home. They may chill the organization's activity and rapidly growing buzz, though. Lapsus$ has quickly garnered attention due to major targets like Microsoft, and its Telegram channel now has 47,000 members — the busts won't exactly encourage copycat attacks.

Just before the weekend, cosmonauts Denis Matveyev, Oleg Artemyev and Sergey Korsakov arrived at the International Space Station in bright yellow and blue jumpsuits. Being the first Russians to arrive at the International Space Station since the war in Ukraine began, it seemed like, well, a choice. Russia’s Roscosmos space agency dismissed the connection saying in a Telegram post spotted by Space.com: “Sometimes yellow is just yellow.” Roscosmos went on to claim the three were wearing the colors of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, their shared alma mater, which has a crest with blue and yellow details.

Roscosmos TV

The cosmonauts didn’t say too much about their choice of uniform during a press conference. "It became our turn to pick a color," said Artemyev. “We had accumulated a lot of yellow material, so we needed to use it. That's why we had to wear yellow." Does this mean they crafted their own jumpsuits?

Then again, with the three men still in space, they couldn’t be further away from immediate repercussions from their government.

— Mat Smith

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The 'Overwatch 2' PvP beta starts on April 26th

Doomfist will change roles from damage hero to tank.

The Overwatch 2 PvP PC beta lands on April 26th. Block out that weekend because as well as 5-on-5 battles — the Overwatch PvP was 6-on-6 — the beta also comes with four fresh maps and some reimagined characters, both in aesthetics and play style.

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French police charge seven in Netflix ‘Lupin’ set heist

‘Lupin’ is literally about a master thief.

On February 25th, some 20 masked thieves broke on to the set of the production of popular Netflix show Lupin while it was filming in a Parisian suburb. They stole approximately $330,000 worth of equipment. As a distraction, perpetrators set off mortar-style fireworks during the heist. Now, French authorities have charged seven individuals allegedly involved in the robbery. Lupin isn’t the only Netflix project to fall victim to a robbery this year. Just one day before the thefts in Paris, thieves made off with more than $200,000 worth of antique props after breaking into vehicles used for the production of The Crown.

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Epic will donate two weeks of 'Fortnite' proceeds to Ukraine charities

Microsoft is pitching in, too.

Epic

Starting today through April 3rd, Epic Games will donate all of its Fortnite proceeds to humanitarian organizations providing on-the-ground relief to Ukrainians affected by the invasion of their country. Direct Relief, UNICEF, UN’s Refugee Agency and Food Programme are all involved.

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Engadget Podcast: Samsung’s Galaxy A53 5G and the Mac Studio

Samsung may have just won the battle for mid-range phones.

This week’s podcast centers on Samsung’s big mid-range phone show. Devindra Hardawar and Senior Writer Sam Rutherford discuss the new Galaxy A53 5G and A33. The Galaxy A53 has a 120Hz screen, four cameras and 5G support for $450. Can the iPhone SE stand up to those kinds of specs?

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Starting today through to April 3rd, Epic Games will donate all of its Fortnite proceeds to humanitarian organizations providing on-the-ground relief to Ukrainians affected by the invasion of their country. Players can support the action by making in-game purchases involving real-world money.

That means should you buy V-Bucks, select cosmetic packs and other items, whatever money Epic would usually get will instead go to organizations like Direct Relief and UNICEF that are providing emergency aid, shelter and other forms of support to Ukrainians right now. Epic will also donate proceeds from gift card purchases, provided they’re redeemed during the two-week period.

At the moment, four relief organizations are taking part in the effort. Outside of the two mentioned above, the UN’s Refugee Agency and Food Programme are also involved. Epic said more organizations would join in “the coming weeks.”

What’s more, Microsoft is taking part in the initiative. The company has agreed to contribute net proceeds from sales of all Fortnite content made through the Microsoft Store until April 3rd. Epic notes it will attempt to send any relief funds it generates over the next two weeks as quickly as it can. To that end, the company won’t wait to get the money from its platform and payment partners. Instead, it will send the funds as it logs transactions.

Epic is the latest video game company to offer its support to the people of Ukraine in this way. Riot Games recently ran a player fundraiser where it said it would donate proceeds from the sale of in-game passes and its latest League of Legends skins. As of March 9th, the studio said players had raised more than $2 million. Gaming marketplaces like Itch.io and Humble Bundle have also tried to help, offering bundles with all the proceeds going to relief organizations supporting those affected by the conflict.

French authorities have charged seven individuals allegedly involved in last month’s Lupin robbery, according to the BBC. On February 25th, some 20 masked thieves broke onto the set of the popular Netflix production while it was filming in a Parisian suburb and stole approximately $330,000 worth of equipment. The perpetrators set off mortar-style fireworks to carry out the heist, but thankfully none of the cast and crew on set at the time, including star Omar Sy, were injured.

Police charged the seven individuals with armed robbery as part of an organized gang. French authorities are holding three of the accused in custody and the other four under judicial supervision. The youngest of the group is 13 years old. Police said they recovered some of the equipment stolen during the heist and are still searching for everyone involved in the incident. Lupin isn’t the only Netflix project to fall victim to a robbery this year. Just one day before, thieves made off with more than $200,000 worth of antique props after breaking into vehicles used for the production of The Crown.

A new lawsuit against Google accuses the company of fostering a "racially biased corporate culture" that offers Black employees lower pay and fewer opportunities to advance than their white counterparts, reports Reuters. Filed on Friday with a federal court in San Jose, California, the complaint alleges the company subjected former diversity recruiter April Curley and other current and former Black employees to a hostile work environment.

In 2014, Google hired Curley to design a program to connect the company with Black colleges. Shortly afterward, she claims she was subjected to denigrating comments from her managers, who allegedly stereotyped her as an "angry" black woman while passing her over for promotions.

"While Google claims that they were looking to increase diversity, they were actually undervaluing, underpaying and mistreating their Black employees," Curley's lawyer told Reuters. The complaint notes Black people make up only 4.4 percent of employees at Google and approximately 3 percent of its leadership.

We've reached out to Google for comment.

Curley is not the first person to accuse Google of fostering a work environment hostile to Black employees and other people of color. In the aftermath of Timnit Gebru's controversial exit from the company, Alex Hanna, a former employee with the tech giant's Ethical AI research group, said she decided to leave Google after becoming tired of its structural deficiencies. "In a word, tech has a whiteness problem," Hanna wrote on Medium at the time. "Google is not just a tech organization. Google is a white tech organization."

A second Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York will vote on whether to form a union, reported CNBC. The outcome of the vote, scheduled to begin on April 25th and last until May 2nd, will decide whether employees at the LDJ5 facility join the Amazon Labor Union, an independent, worker-led movement formed last year in Staten Island. Roughly a mile away, another Staten Island Amazon warehouse (known as JFK8) is set to hold its own union election next week.

Both elections are the latest development in a battle with Amazon on one side, unions and Amazon warehouse workers on the other side, and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) serving as the referee. NLRB ordered a re-run of a union election held at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama after determining that the tech giant illegally interfered in the vote. Votes for that election are scheduled to be counted on March 28th. 

Earlier this week, NLRB sued Amazon over the termination of Gerald Bryson, an employee of the JFK8 facility, who the agency believes was fired in retaliation for his activism. According to a tweet by ALU, Bryson’s employment at Amazon appears to have been reinstated after a federal judge complied with NLRB’s request to issue an injunction.

Staten Island workers have accused Amazon of union-busting and actively targeting workers involved in the union. Last month the NYPD arrested three labor organizers at the JFK8 facility — including ALU president Chris Smalls — after an Amazon manager complained that they were trespassing, reported The Daily Beast.

Amazon is facing a lawsuit filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is seeking the reinstatement of an employee it believes was filed in retaliation. Gerald Bryson, who worked at the e-commerce giant's JFK8 facility on Staten Island, was fired in the early days of the pandemic after he helped lead protests over safety concerns involving the company's COVID-19 protocols. 

Bryson fired an unfair labor practice suit back in 2020, but the case has been stuck in the agency's administrative court process. Now, according to The New York Times, the NLRB is asking a federal judge to make immediate changes before the facility holds a union election by the end of March and considering Bryson's involvement in organizing. 

Amazon denied that Bryson's firing was retaliatory back in 2020, explaining that he was fired for violating its policy against vulgar and harassing language. The company said Bryson bullied and intimidated a female associate "in a racially and sexually charged way" in a confrontation during the protest. However, a video recording cited by the NLRB in a recent filing (PDF) shows that while Bryson did indeed use foul language during the confrontation, the female employee also used foul language and a racial slur against him. Bryson, a Black man who helped lead the protest, was fired, while the white female employee who told him to stop protesting and go home, got a first warning.

The NLRB has accused Amazon of applying its policies against him in retaliation for the role he played in the protest. It argued that if the judge doesn't reinstate Bryson, workers "will inevitably conclude that the board cannot effectively protect their rights." NLRB director Kathy Drew King said in a statement:

"No matter how large the employer, it is important for workers to know their rights — particularly during a union election — and that the N.L.R.B. will vociferously defend them."

The JFK8 facility will hold a union vote in person between March 25th and March 30th. It's been a long journey just to get there, with the Amazon Labor Union failing to gather enough signatures to proceed with an election the first time around. The group reached union vote threshold in its second attempt, and although Amazon was skeptical that there were a "sufficient number of legitimate signatures," the election will take place as the NLRB had decided.

In addition to seeking Bryson's reinstatement, the NLRB also wants Amazon to post notices of workers' rights at the facility and to read those rights out loud at mandatory employee meetings.

In November, former PlayStation IT security analyst Emma Majo filed a lawsuit against Sony, claiming the company discriminated against women at an institutional level. Majo alleged she was fired because she spoke up about gender bias at the studio, noting she was terminated shortly after submitting a signed statement to management detailing sexism she experienced there. 

Majo later filed the paperwork to turn her case into a class-action lawsuit, and just last month Sony attempted to have the whole thing thrown out, claiming her allegations were too vague to stand up to legal scrutiny. Plus, Sony's lawyers said, no other women were stepping forward with similar claims.

Today, eight additional women joined the lawsuit against Sony. The new plaintiffs are current and former employees, and only one of them has chosen to remain anonymous. One plaintiff, Marie Harrington, worked at Sony for 17 years and eventually became a senior director of program management and chief of staff to senior VP of engineering George Cacciopo.

"When I left Sony, I told the SVP and the Director of HR Rachel Ghadban in the Rancho Bernardo office that the reason I was leaving was systemic sexism against females," Harrington said in a court statement. "The Director of HR simply said, 'I understand.' She did not ask for any more information. I had spoken with the Director of HR many times before about sexism against females."

Harrington claimed women were overlooked for promotions, and said that during annual review sessions, Sony Interactive Entertainment engineering leaders rarely discussed female employees as potential "high performers." She said that in their April 2019 session, only four of the 70 employees under review were women, and while all of the men in this group were marked as high performers, just two of the women were. 

"Further, when two of the females were discussed, managers spent time discussing the fact that they have families," Harrington's statement reads. "Family status was never discussed for any males."

The remaining women shared similar stories in their statements, with the common theme being a lack of opportunity for female employees to advance and systemic favoritism toward male employees. The plaintiffs claimed male leaders at Sony made derogatory comments including, "you just need to marry rich," and, "I find that in general, women can’t take criticism.” 

One plaintiff alleged that while on a work trip to E3, her superior tricked her into having drinks with him at the hotel bar, hit on her even after she declined, and told other male employees that "he was going to try to 'hit that.'" Another plaintiff shared a story about a gender equality meeting at Sony that had a five-person panel, all of them men.

The lawsuit against Sony comes at a time of reckoning for many major video game studios, including Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and Riot Games. Activision Blizzard is facing a lawsuit and multiple investigations into claims of institutional sexism, sexual harassment and gender discrimination, while Ubisoft has long faced similar allegations from former and current employees. Riot Games paid $100 million in December to settle a class-action lawsuit over workplace sexual harassment and discrimination.

Sony has not yet responded to the latest movement in the class-action lawsuit, though it denies Majo's claims of gender discrimination. The company has requested the lawsuit be dismissed, and that will be decided in a hearing in April.

Activision Blizzard is dealing with particularly serious fallout from the sexual misconduct allegations surrounding the company. The Washington Post has learned Activision Blizzard is facing a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of Kerri Moynihan, a woman who died by suicide in April 2017 during a company retreat. The family alleges sexual harassment at the game developer played a "significant factor" in her death.

Moynihan's death was referenced in a California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) lawsuit over Activision Blizzard's reported "frat boy" culture, albeit without mentioning her name. Male colleagues reportedly shared an explicit photo of Moynihan at the holiday party preceding her death, according to that lawsuit, and referred to a male supervisor who supposedly brought sex toys to the retreat.

The family lawsuit alleges Moynihan's boss, Greg Restituito, lied to Anaheim police and otherwise tried to hide evidence of a sexual relationship with the victim. He made "unusual inquiries" with employees present with Moynihan the night before her demise, according to a police report cited in the suit. Restituito left Activision Blizzard in May 2017, the month after Moynihan's death.

Activision Blizzard was reportedly uncooperative with police at the time. It refused to hand over the company laptops of either Moynihan or Restituito, and also declined access to Restituito's phone.

The family's lawyers shared a copy of the lawsuit with The Post, but otherwise haven't commented on the lawsuit. Anaheim police and Restituito have so far been silent. An Activision Blizzard spokesperson said the company was "deeply saddened" by Moynihan's death and would respond to the complaint through legal channels, but said it had "no further comment" out of respect.

Activision Blizzard has taken numerous actions in response to the misconduct scandal. It removed 37 employees between July 2021 and January 2022, and disciplined another 44. Blizzard leader Mike Ybarra has also vowed to restore trust by reforming company culture. The Moynihan lawsuit underscores the apparent toxicity at Activision Blizzard in previous years, however, and adds to the pressures on the company (and its buyer Microsoft) from the SEC and others to fix its workplace practices.

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Crisis Text Line can be reached by texting HOME to 741741 (US), 686868 (Canada), or 85258 (UK). Wikipedia maintains a list of crisis lines for people outside of those countries.

Elon Musk says Tesla will do nothing to stop United Auto Workers (UAW) from holding a union vote at the company's Fremont, California factory. In a tweet, the company chief said Tesla's real challenge in the Bay Area is negative unemployment, so it treats and compensates its "(awesome) people well" or they'd just leave otherwise. 

Musk posted the tweet in response to Kiss co-lead singer Gene Simmons who sided with the executive when he called out the President for not mentioning Tesla in his State of the Union Address. The President only praised Ford and General Motors for investing billions of dollars in their efforts to release electric vehicles, thereby generating thousands of jobs in the process. As Bloomberg notes, Biden is a labor union supporter and often snubs Tesla, which has a non-unionized workforce, in his speeches and interviews.

In a follow-up tweet, Musk claimed that Tesla factory workers have the highest compensation in the auto industry, posting an interview of GM CEO Mary Barra as his source. In the interview, news anchor and journalist Andrew Sorkin said Tesla's non-unionized workers were earning more than their unionized counterparts. Barra said she'd have to see more information, since one must also take benefits and not just wages into account, but that what Sorkin said wasn't the case last time she checked. 

The UAW has been working to unionize Tesla for years, and Musk has criticized those efforts from the start. When a Fremont production worker claimed poor working conditions and low pay in 2017, Musk reportedly sent out a letter to employees with a point-by-point takedown while also slamming UAW. He said the union's true allegiance is to the "giant car companies, where the money they take from employees in dues is vastly more than they could ever make from Tesla."  

In the same year, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against the automaker after investigating complaints of unfair labor practices. According to the NLRB, workers said Tesla "coerces and intimidates" them with a confidentiality agreement that prevents them from discussing unionization. In 2018, the NLRB found that the company violated labor laws when it fired union activist Richard Ortiz and ordered it to compensate him for loss of earnings and benefits. 

The labor board also ordered Musk to delete a tweet that might sound like a threat to employees. In the tweet, Musk similarly invited efforts to unionize. "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so [tomorrow] if they wanted," he wrote. However, he also said: "But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" NLRB chair Wilma Liebman explained at the time that to an employee, that may sound like they'll no longer have stock options if they vote to unionize. As Electrek notes, Tesla offers its stock compensation program to most of its employees, and the company's rising stock prices makes it a very valuable benefit.