Editor's note: This is your Sunday cartoon in lieu of the usual Bobblehead thread. The Sunday show lineup is here, if you're interested.
Get a cup of coffee and share your thoughts below.
Research published Wednesday details how a handful of U.S. states that are "subservient to the trust industry" are helping oligarchs and money launderers from around the globe evade taxes and hide their wealth within the nation's borders.
Titled Billionaire Enabler States: How U.S. States Captured by the Trust Industry Help the World's Wealthy Hide Their Fortunes, the new report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) estimates that the United States is host to $5.6 trillion in trust and estate assets belonging to super-wealthy elites, both foreign and domestic.
"The concept of the 'offshore' tax haven has very much washed ashore," says the report, which exposes how 13 U.S. states "shield the fortunes of the world's richest people."
According to a summary of the report:
We have so many seditionist nut jobs out there, it's hard to keep track! Via The Takedown:
"Maggie Assan is the current Democratic senator in New Hampshire," Cliff Schecter said.
"Very good senator, excellent. There was a primary against her and one of her opponents a man by the name of Don Balduc. He's a genuinely scary individual because a lot of former military, former CIA, former FBI have actually come out in really sort of an inspiring way on the side of democracy since Donald Trump came to power and the Republican party became insane and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Bobert and these folks kind of outsized voices calling for autocracy and overthrowing elections -- but yeah, Bulldog actually has a secretive plan to overthrow our democracy and to try to do it legally and I'm gonna tell you about it.
"He's a former Special Forces general. The uniform gives them some heft - he stuck to the big lie all throughout the election, when Roe vs. Wade when he was overturned he said we should, quote, 'rejoice.' And you know in general, just sort of a right wing nut on every issue. But the scary one and the one that sort of the far-right fringe of Republicans have been talking about amongst themselves and at conferences for years.
Telegram has cut the monthly subscription fee for its premium tier by more than half in India, just months after introducing the offering as it attempts to aggressively cash in on a large user base in one of its biggest markets.
In a message to users in India on Saturday, Telegram said it was making the subscription available in the country at a discount. The monthly subscription now costs customers 179 Indian rupees ($2.2), down from 469 Indian rupees ($5.74) earlier. The app’s monthly subscription, called Telegram Premium, costs between $4.99 to $6 in every other market.
Users who have not received the message are also seeing the new price in the settings section of the app, they said and TechCrunch independently verified.
India is one of the largest markets for Telegram. The instant messaging app has amassed over 120 million monthly active users in the country, according to analytics firm data.ai. (An industry executive shared the figures with TechCrunch.) That figure makes the app the second most popular in its category in the country, only second to WhatsApp, which has courted over half a billion users in the South Asian market.
Telegram, which claims to have amassed over 700 million monthly active users globally, introduced the optional subscription offering in June this year in a move it hopes will improve its finances and continuing to support a free tier. Premium customers gain access to a wide-range of additional features such as the ability to follow up to 1,000 channels, send larger files (4GB) and faster download speeds.
The Dubai-headquartered firm joins a list of global tech firms that offer their services for lower cost in India. Apple’s music app charges $1.2 for the individual monthly plan in the country, whereas Netflix’s offerings starts at as low as $1.83 in the country.
Telegram cuts subscription fee by more than half in India by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch
In August, I did a post titled, 'Eric Trump Appears To Tell A Sir Story, And No One Believes It,' and Trump-backed wackadoodle candidate Tudor Dixon just did the same thing, and no one believes her. MAGA candidates just aren't very original.
Former President Donald Trump inundated us with so many 'sir stories' while in office that someone even created a searchable database to keep track.
My favorite of Trump's sir stories:
"Sir, President Obama took our heart away, took our life away.' I'll never forget it. A man, strong guy, had tears in his eyes. He said, "You gave us back our life," Trump said.
Not to be outdone, the Republican Michigan gubernatorial candidate said on 'Real America's Voice (I have no idea what that is), "People on a regular basis come up to me and just burst into tears and say, 'please, help us!'"
And just like with Little Eric, no one believes her.
Hi all! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly sum up some of the most read TechCrunch stories from the past seven days. The goal? Even when you’re swamped, a quick skim of WiR on Saturday morning should give you a pretty good understanding of what happened in tech this week.
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Meta plans hiring freeze, NASA shoots an asteroid, and Elon’s texts about Twitter are made public by Greg Kumparak originally published on TechCrunch
When ByteDance bought the Chinese VR headset maker Pico a year ago, the message it sent was clear: it was betting that the immersive device would be where future generations spend most of their time consuming digital content. It’s a marriage reminiscent of Meta’s acquisition of Oculus back in 2014, except the world is now in a different place with technological advances that make VR headsets cheaper, less laggy, and more comfortable to wear.
The TikTok parent has long aimed to compete in a market dominated by Oculus’s VR devices for consumers. When Meta launched Quest 2 in 2020, ByteDance worked on a confidential internal project to develop AR glasses, The Information reported. Pico’s product launch this week is a further indication of its ambition to challenge Quest, which has enjoyed roughly two-thirds of the global AR and VR market for the past two years.
The Pico 4, which starts at €429 (around $420 thanks to a strong dollar) for 128GB and ships to Europe, Japan, and South Korea aside from China, has received applause in the VR community. It weighs only 295 grams without the straps and can function as a standalone device but also be tethered to PCs for more advanced VR experiences. It uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 processor as Quest 2 does.
“It’s inexpensive and good quality, with specs that can match Quest 2,” says Gavin Newton-Tanzer, host of mixed reality conference AWE Asia.
“Was impressed with the weight, comfort, LCD display, pancake lenses, color AR passthrough, and controllers. All it needs now are serious triple-A VR exclusives to distinguish itself from Meta to get gamers interested,” writes a VR content creator.
Merely “matching” Quest 2 specs doesn’t sound good enough given the latter came out two years ago and became an instant hit. Pico not only has a lot of catch-up to do on the technological front but also in terms of content and branding.
“Oculus’s content ecosystem is more established, providing a better understanding of what consumers want,” says Newton-Tanzer. Popular rhythm game Beat Saber, for instance, had generated $100 million in revenue on Oculus Quest by October 2021.
Pico is facing a chicken-or-egg problem, the XR expert suggests. Its user base across product lines isn’t currently large enough that top-tier creators would be devoted to making games, videos, and other VR content exclusively for its platform. It reportedly sold 500,000 units last year, half of its target. In contrast, Quest 2 shipped 10 million units in the space of October 2020 and November 2021. But without premium content, Pico will have a hard time attracting users in a meaningful way.
The good news is Pico has established a strong foothold in China and doesn’t face much competition in the home market. Oculus doesn’t have an official presence in China, meaning users have to go through the hassle of ordering an overseas version, getting the Oculus app from a foreign app store, and accessing its global app ecosystem through a virtual private network as Meta’s servers are blocked in China.
The technological bifurcation could allow Pico time to test and learn in the home market before launching into the West at full steam. Expansion in the U.S. is already set in motion as ByteDance began building a team for Pico on the West Coast, according to Protocol, with a focus to attract talent in content, marketing, and R&D.
ByteDance’s Pico debuts its Quest rival, but challenges remain by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch
