In the latest in what seems to be a string of challenges the company has to grapple with, Robinhood's crypto division has been slapped with a $30 million fine by the New York State Department of Financial Services. It's the first crypto-focused enforcement action by the regulator, which has issued the multimillion dollar penalty against Robinhood for what it says are violations against the state's anti-money laundering and cybersecurity regulations. In its announcement, the Financial Services Department said it found significant deficiencies in the company's compliance programs following a supervisory examination.

Apparently, there weren't enough people working in Robinhood's money laundering compliance program. The company also failed to transition from a manual monitoring system, which is no longer sufficient now that it's much larger than when it started. In addition, the department found that policies within Robinhood's cybersecurity program aren't in full compliance with official cybersecurity and virtual currency regulations. 

The New York regulator also mentioned that Robinhood improperly certified compliance with the Department's Transaction Monitoring Regulation and Cybersecurity Regulation. Since it wasn't fully compliant with the state's cybersecurity rules, Robinhood violated the law by claiming compliance. Finally, the regulator said Robinhood failed to adhere to consumer protection requirements by not maintaining a separate phone number (and displaying it on its website) specifically for consumer complaints. 

Superintendent of Financial Services, Adrienne A. Harris, said in a statement:

"As its business grew, Robinhood Crypto failed to invest the proper resources and attention to develop and maintain a culture of compliance—a failure that resulted in significant violations of the Department’s anti-money laundering and cybersecurity regulations. All virtual currency companies licensed in New York State are subject to the same anti-money laundering, consumer protection, and cybersecurity regulations as traditional financial services companies. DFS will continue to investigate and take action when any licensee violates the law or the Department’s regulations, which are critical to protecting consumers and ensuring the safety and soundness of the institutions."

Aside from having to pay $30 million, Robinhood must retain an independent consultant who will evaluate if it has taken the appropriate actions to address its violations and deficiencies under the settlement.

Robinhood also recently announced that it's laying off 23 percent of its workforce due to record inflation and the cryptocurrency crash. It's the company's second round of job cuts this year and will affect employees across divisions. That revelation came after Robinhood published its earnings for the second quarter of 2022, wherein it posted a net loss of $295 million and announced a decrease of 1.9 million in monthly active users. 

For the second time this year, Robinhood is cutting its headcount. On Tuesday, the company announced it would lay off 23 percent of its workforce. According to CEO Vlad Tenev, the cuts will affect every part of Robinhood’s business but will primarily target the company’s “operations, marketing and program management functions.”

Tenev blamed a deteriorating macro environment for the decision, pointing to record inflation and the cryptocurrency crash as the primary drivers of the company’s recent woes. Additionally, he acknowledged the company overhired last year on the assumption retail investors would continue trading stocks and crypto assets at the rate they had during the early stages of the pandemic. Prior to April when Robinhood laid off nine percent of its workforce, the company had a headcount of approximately 3,800. “As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory – this is on me,” he said.

On Tuesday, Robinhood also announced its Q2 results one day ahead of schedule. The company reported a net loss of $295 million after revenue fell by 44 percent year-on-year to $318 million. 

In his letter to employees, Tenev said Robinhood would transition to an organizational model where general managers would oversee broad parts of the company’s business. “This change will flatten hierarchies, reduce cross-functional dependencies, and remove redundant roles and positions,” he claimed. Tenev added that Robinhood would notify affected employees via Slack and email. They can stay with the company until October 1st, 2022.

Cryptocurrency hacks are all too common, but they've rarely been quite so anarchic as the latest example. As The Vergenotes, Nomad has confirmed that its cryptocurrency bridge (a service that lets you swap tokens between blockchains) was the victim of an August 1st "incident" where a slew of hackers stole nearly $200 million in funds. As Paradigm researcher Samczsun explained, the intruders took advantage of a misconfiguration that let any reasonably knowledgeable user authorize their own withdrawals. The result was a "chaotic" hack where people could swap their crypto address into a known-good transaction to steal digital money.

In an update, Nomad said it's "working around the clock" to resolve the problem with help from law enforcement and blockchain intelligence firms. It hopes to both pinpoint involved accounts and recover funds. A16z's security team suggested that well-intentioned white hat hackers would return crypto they took "preemptively," but there's no word on identifying thieves.

Bridges like these are major targets for hackers thanks to both their high asset volume and the potential for exploits in their sophisticated code. An attacker swiped roughly $625 million from the Ronin blockchain underpinning Axie Infinity in March, and an exploit in the Wormhole bridge led to a $325 million hack in February. While the Nomad breach isn't quite as financially damaging, it illustrates just how vulnerable bridges can be.

Back at the 2020 edition of The Game Awards, we learned about We Are OFK, a new project from Hyper Light Drifter co-designer Teddy Dief and their collaborators at Team OFK. It was supposed to debut in spring 2021 but, as has been the way of things for the last few years, it was delayed. Now, We Are OFK finally has a release date. Or, more accurately, release dates, since it's an episodic series. The first two episodes will hit Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PS5, Steam and Epic Games Store on August 18th. The remaining three episodes will arrive on a weekly basis.

We Are OFK follows a virtual four-piece indie band called, strangely enough, OFK. It's billed as an interactive musical biopic that OFK is making about its own origins. As Dief wrote on the PlayStation Blog, "What would it look like to create virtual musicians who watch performances of [pop stars] on their laptops in bed, and know they’re probably never going to play a stadium concert? We wanted to tell that story — how hard it is to make music, to write even one song, to record another video to post online and hope someone leaves a nice comment."

The game costs $20. Along with each episode, OFK and Sony Music Masterworks will release a new single. A vinyl package of the singles will be available from iam8bit for $32. A limited-edition physical version of We Are OFK is available to pre-order for PS5 and Switch too. You can also pre-save the group's first EP.

One of Twitter’s most anticipated features — the edit button — is still in development. But thanks to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, we have an idea of how edits to embedded tweets on a website will carry over. If a tweet gets edited after it is embedded on a website (say, in a news article), the embedded tweet will still display the old text, but include a link to the newer version. Edited embedded tweets will display the text “There’s a new version of this Tweet," offering users an option to click and read the new text. Such a design seems to offer more transparency than simply displaying the new text up front, and may calm fears that giving users free rein to edit tweets will make it easier for bad actors to thrive.

But what if users decided to embed a tweet that has already been edited? Instead of displaying the original text, the embedded tweet will display the new text (in other words, it’ll read exactly the same as how you found it). But below the edited tweet, there will be a timestamp and the text “Last edited."

It’s only been a few months since Twitter confirmed that an edit button is actually in development, so it could be a while until users see the feature in action. Keep in mind that Twitter plans on testing the feature on its premium Twitter Blue subscribers first, before rolling it out to the rest of the public. Given that Twitter recently increased the Blue subscription fee by two dollars, it may be worth just waiting.

Chevy offered rebates to Bolt EV owners who bought their cars just before a 2023 model price drop, but that discount comes with a large catch. Jalopnik and Autoblog note the rebate application requires that drivers "forever waive and release" their right to sue GM or LG over the Bolt's reported battery defect. You'd have to be content with the savings even if the car did serious damage, in other words. GM confirmed the agreement language with Engadget.

GM first recalled the Bolt in November 2020 after reports of battery fires between 2017 and 2019. The automaker tried addressing the issue with a software update in April 2021, but two subsequent fires and a second recall led the NHTSA to warn against parking indoors. That prompted a July 2021 recall where GM replaced the battery packs. The brand eventually recalled all manufactured Bolts, pledged an additional $1 billion for battery replacements and offered an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty on substitute batteries.

The company has since used financial incentives to regain trust. It slashed the price of the Bolt EV and Bolt EUV between $5,900 and $6,300, and offered comparable rebates to people who bought 2020, 2021 and 2022 models this year. The exact rebate amounts depend on the model year and trim level.

As Jalopnik explained, this isn't the first time GM has used legal agreements to protect its reputation. Cadillac Lyriq buyers were offered a $5,500 discount if they agreed not to talk about problems with the electric SUV, and purchasers of high-end cars like the Hummer EV void their warranties if they flip their vehicles within a year. However, this latest move could easily be the most concerning — the rebate amounts to a legal settlement rather than a kind offer.

Microsoft quietly announced the launch of Outlook Lite for Android, a streamlined version of the company's email service designed to use less battery and storage space than the default Outlook app without sacrificing features or performance.

Specifically, Microsoft says that Outlook Lite has all the main features of the Outlook experience neatly packed into a 5MB app that's optimized for speed, even on lower-end Android devices. The company says the app was designed to run fast on devices with as little as 1GB of RAM, use less battery impact than the full app and offer good performance on older 2G and 3G networks.

That lower data, storage and battery impact is, of course, the point. And Microsoft isn't alone: pared down, lightweight apps serve a huge market of users with budget devices on older networks. That's why Google offers Android Go, a pared down version of the mobile OS designed specifically for lower-end phones, and why Meta has put so much effort into building small, but feature-rich versions of its Instagram and Facebook apps. You can find lightweight apps for Twitter, Tiktok and even Tinder. 

Like most lightweight apps, this one has its caveats. Microsoft's new mail app doesn't cut any major features to earn its 'lite' moniker, but it won't work with as many email providers as the primary Outlook app. At present, Outlook Lite is only compatible with Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live, MSN, Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Exchange Online accounts. Likewise, the app is also only available in select countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela — though Microsoft says it may add support for more locations in the future.

It's a day of the week ending in the letter "y," which inevitably means there's news of anothermessysaga in the cryptocurrency world. The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged 11 people who allegedly set up and promoted Forsage, which it said was a crypto Ponzi scheme that pulled in over $300 million from retail investors.

The agency asserts that Forsage enabled millions of people to engage in transactions through smart contracts on the Ethereum, Tron, and Binance blockchains. It alleged that Forsage had essentially been operating as a pyramid scheme for over two years, wherein the main way for investors to make money was by luring other people into the scheme. “Fraudsters cannot circumvent the federal securities laws by focusing their schemes on smart contracts and blockchains," Carolyn Welshhans, acting chief of the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, said in a statement.

"Forsage is a textbook pyramid and Ponzi scheme," the SEC's complaint reads. "It did not sell or purport to sell any actual, consumable product to bona fide retail customers during the relevant time period and had no apparent source of revenue other than funds received from investors."

Four of those charged are Forsage's founders, who were last known to be living in Russia, the Republic of Georgia and Indonesia. The SEC also charged three promoters based in the US, who the founders allegedly recruited to endorse Forsage on its website and social media. Several members of a group called Crypto Crusaders, a group that promoted the scheme, were charged with violating the registration and anti-fraud provisions of federal securities laws as well. Two defendants have agreed to settle the charges without admitting or denying the allegations.

As CNBC notes, Forsage's founders launched the platform in January 2020. Regulators in the Philippines and Montana tried to shut it down with cease-and-desist actions. The SEC alleged that the defendants continued to promote Forsage while denying claims made against the platform in YouTube videos.

NASA’s Artemis 1 test flight dummy will have company on its flight to the Moon. On Tuesday, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that Shaun the Sheep will join the unmanned mission when it hopefully takes off later this year. With the announcement, Aardman’s beloved character will technically become the first ESA astronaut to participate in the Artemis program.

“This is an exciting time for Shaun and for us at ESA,” ESA Director for Human and Robotic Exploration David Parker said. “We’re woolly very happy that he’s been selected for the mission and we understand that, although it might be a small step for a human, it’s a giant leap for lambkind.”

Following a successful fueling test of its next-generation SLS rocket, NASA said Artemis 1 could launch as early as August 23rd. The mission will send the agency’s Orion spacecraft – as well as Shaun and Commander Moonikin Campos – on a trip beyond the moon. If all goes according to plan, the capsule should return to Earth after spending 39 to 42 days in space. “The spacecraft will perform a flyby of the Moon, using lunar gravity to gain speed and propel itself 70 000 km beyond the Moon, almost half a million km from Earth – farther than any human, or sheep, has ever traveled,” the ESA said.

Aardman didn’t say as much, but Shaun will likely serve as the mission’s zero-g indicator. Ever since Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin took a small doll with him on the first-ever human spaceflight, it’s become a tradition for space crews to bring a plush toy on missions. Even some unmanned flights have taken part in the practice. In May, for instance, Boeing’s Starliner capsule brought Jebediah Kerman from Kerbal Space Program to the International Space Station.

NASA and its partners on the James Webb Space Telescope have shared more spectacular images from the observatory. This time around, they provided a fresh look at the Cartwheel Galaxy, which Hubble and other telescopes previously observed. NASA said JWST has been able to reveal new details about both star formation and the black hole at the center of the galaxy, which is around 500 million light years from Earth.

Using infrared light detection, JWST was able to peer through the dust that obscured the Cartwheel Galaxy from view when other telescopes observed it. The above image is a composite from JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The JWST website has higher-resolution versions.

Data from NIRCam, which is the JWST's primary imager, is colored in blue, orange, and yellow, while MIRI's data is in red. NASA says the blue dots that appear in the red swirls of dust are individual stars or pockets of star formation. "NIRCam also reveals the difference between the smooth distribution or shape of the older star populations and dense dust in the core compared to the clumpy shapes associated with the younger star populations outside of it," the agency noted.

MIRI, meanwhile, was able to unearth more details about the galaxy's dust. It detected regions that are rich in hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds, along with silicate dust, which is similar to a lot of the dust present on Earth. Those regions form several spiraling spokes that led to the naming of the Cartwheel Galaxy. Hubble was previously able to image the spokes, but they're much clearer in the JWST observations. NASA also provided a MIRI-only image of the galaxy:

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI and Webb ERO Production Team

The Cartwheel Galaxy formed following a collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller one. It has two rings, a bright inner ring and a colorful outer one. The outer ring has been expanding from the center of the collision for around 440 million years.

The interior ring contains "a tremendous amount of hot dust," NASA said. The brightest areas host gigantic young star clusters. The outer ring, meanwhile, features star formation and supernovas. When it expands and hits surrounding gas, star formation occurs.

NASA, the European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute last month revealed the first stunning full-color images from JWST. They included one that showed the "Cosmic Cliffs" of the Carina Nebula and a peek at stars in the early stages of formation. The telescope has also caught sight of Earendel, the most distant star that we know of in the universe. While it's still very early days for the JWST's science operations, it's already helping scientists develop a deeper understanding of the cosmos — as well as providing some incredible images for the rest of us to admire.