Wednesday, 24 August 2022

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Good morning!

Dennis here,

Accelerate TV has joined the streaming war, seeking to compete with bigger, well-known brands like Netflix, Amazon Prime and ShowMax that have for years themselves struggled to build sustainable subscription businesses.

With Accelerate Plus, the company said that it wants to build a "catalyst for highlighting and promoting an undiluted African narrative." Its strategy for growth is cheaper bouquets starting at 100 naira to 500 naira.

Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.

Summary of the news

Coinbase CEO said the company is planning to make more cuts on cost
Accelerate TV has launched a streaming app, Accelerate Plus
A Binance executive said that scammers made a deepfake of him
An ex-Twitter executive has alleged reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies by top executives at the company

Coinbase to make more cuts

As crypto exchange Coinbase faces industry challenges and economic headwinds, the company is taking a close look at where it can cut costs, CEO Brian Armstrong told CNBC’s Kate Rooney.

CNBC reports that Coinbase shares have lost more than 70% of their value this year as the company has grappled with a “crypto winter” tied to the plummeting of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Armstrong said the downturn is not unusual, as Coinbase has been through four down cycles in the 10 years since he started the company.

Coinbase is facing inflationary pressures and a potential recession, but Armstrong said the macro environment is reminiscent of what the company has dealt with in the past.

“We have this saying internally, I like to repeat a lot, which is you know, it’s never as good as it seems, it’s never as bad as it seems,” he said. “I think one of the reasons Coinbase has been so successful in the last 10 years is we just we try not to get focused on short-term ups and downs.”

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Accelerate TV joins streaming wars

The Nigerian digital entertainment company Accelerate TV has joined the list of companies streaming African content to the world.

TechCabal reports that the company has launched the Accelerate Plus app, a content streaming platform in all 54 African countries and some European and American countries where African content is in demand.

The app is the latest innovation of the 6-year-old digital media company established to tell authentic and diverse stories that reflect African societies. Since 2018, Accelerate TV has powered a strong community of movie creators, specialising in the short films category and training industry players who have won Africa-wide awards.

“Accelerate Plus is more than a platform for African content for us. It serves as a catalyst for highlighting and promoting an undiluted African narrative in the face of global misconceptions. For this purpose, we have taken deliberate steps to curate authentic and exciting content for Africa by Africans, as well as to create a portal for the rest of the world to access premium African content from anywhere in the world,” Accelerate’s CEO, Colette Otusheso, said in a post.

Binance executive claims scammers made a deepfake of him

Patrick Hillmann, chief communications officer at the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, claims scammers made a deepfake of him to trick contacts into taking meetings, The Verge reports.

Writing in a blog post titled “Scammers Created an AI Hologram of Me to Scam Unsuspecting Projects,” Hillmann claims that a “sophisticated hacking team” used video footage of interviews and TV appearances to create the fake. Says Hillmann: “Other than the 15 pounds that I gained during COVID being noticeably absent, this deep fake was refined enough to fool several highly intelligent crypto community members.”

The only direct evidence Hillmann offers for the claim is a screenshot of a conversation with an anonymous individual who claims to have had a Zoom call with Hillmann. Hillmann denies it, and his interlocutor responds: “they impersonated your hologram.”

Reckless & negligent cybersecurity policies at Twitter

Twitter has major security problems that pose a threat to its own users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy, according to an explosive whistleblower disclosure obtained exclusively by CNN.

The disclosure, sent last month to Congress and federal agencies, paints a picture of a chaotic and reckless environment at a mismanaged company that allows too many of its staff access to the platform's central controls and most sensitive information without adequate oversight.

It also alleges that some of the company's senior-most executives have been trying to cover up Twitter's serious vulnerabilities and that one or more current employees may be working for a foreign intelligence service.

The whistleblower, who has agreed to be publicly identified, is Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, who was previously the company's head of security, reporting directly to the CEO.

Zatko further alleges that Twitter's leadership has misled its own board and government regulators about its security vulnerabilities, including some that could allegedly open the door to foreign spying or manipulation, hacking and disinformation campaigns.