Ray Blanco:

Amazon To Buy Globalstar for $11.57B in Bid to Flesh Out Its Satellite Biz

Amazon is moving in on the orbital mobile connectivity market that’s currently dominated by Elon Musk’s Starlink. The company said today it had agreed to buy satellite company Globalstar, known for powering Apple’s “Emergency SOS” feature, for $11.57 billion in cash.

The $90-per-share deal will net Amazon all of Globalstar’s satellite operations, infrastructure, and mobile satellite services spectrum licenses, enabling the larger company to flesh out its young satellite business, Amazon Leo, with direct-to-device services ahead of its launch later this year.

The announcement comes just days after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy touted Amazon Leo’s roster of customers, which includes Delta Airlines, AT&T, and NASA. The company on Monday also showed off a new satellite internet antenna meant for commercial jets that promises high-speed internet during flights.

The business is slated to launch with more than 3,200 satellites in low-Earth orbit, though it has faced delays and has so far launched only about 200 satellites. 

In comparison, the much larger Starlink currently operates more than 10,000 satellites, with which it offers internet services in about 150 countries to retail users as well as businesses, including the maritime and aviation industries.

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Davis Wilson:

Satoshi Nakamoto… Found

The founder of Bitcoin was allegedly just revealed. After nearly two decades of speculation, a new investigation claims to have uncovered the true identity behind Bitcoin’s mysterious creator, who goes by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.

The name being circulated is Adam Back – a quiet British cryptographer who’s been around since the earliest days of digital money. In the late 1990s, Back created something called Hashcash to stop spam emails by making them costly. Bitcoin works similarly to Hashcash.

Back was also part of a group known as the cypherpunks – programmers and cryptographers in the 1990s and early 2000s who believed the internet needed built-in privacy. We know Satoshi came from this group.

None of this proves Back is Satoshi. And that’s the frustrating part. As detailed in the investigation, even after analyzing years of emails, forum posts, and technical work, the conclusion is still based on patterns – not proof. Back has denied it multiple times.

Either way, Bitcoin was never built to depend on its creator. There’s no central authority making decisions. So while the identity of its creator might be one of the greatest mysteries in modern history, at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. Bitcoin lives on.

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James Altucher:

ACLU Leads 75 Groups Demanding Meta Drop Face Recognition From Ray-Ban Glasses

The ACLU and 75 other organizations sent an open letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding the company abandon plans to equip its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses with facial recognition technology, calling the feature an "unacceptable threat to privacy and liberty."

Rather than seeking guardrails or design tweaks, ACLU is calling for an outright cancellation of the project. Their letter to Zuckerberg asserts that the hazards posed by facial recognition built into everyday eyewear are not the kind that can be addressed through "product design changes, opt-out mechanisms, or incremental safeguards."

Wired reports that the feature, called "Name Tag" within the company, would work through the AI assistant in Meta's smart glasses. It would let users get information about people they meet. There are two possible versions: one would only recognize existing contacts on Meta's platforms, while the other could identify anyone with a public account on services like Instagram.

"The American people have not consented to this massive invasion of privacy," said Kade Crockford, director of technology and justice programs at the ACLU of Massachusetts, in a statement. "Stalkers and scammers would have a field day with this technology. Federal agents could use it to harass and intimidate their critics."

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