Over the past year, crypto companies like FTX, Coinbase and Crypto.com have shelled out tens of millions of dollars to attract new customers. "Fortune favors the brave," Matt Damon famously said in a Crypto.com TV spot as he tried to induce Americans to open their digital wallets. Now a core metric of how successful they were has been returned, and experts say it's an eye-opening one: not successful at all. From a report: The number of people who invested in crypto has not expanded since last September before the push began, according to a new study led by Pew Research Center. The results, released Tuesday, build off an initial survey in September. Back then, Pew researchers asked 10,371 Americans if they have "ever invested in, traded, or used a cryptocurrency." Some 16 percent said they had. Last month, the nonprofit asked another sample group -- slightly smaller, at 6,034 Americans -- the same question. The number hadn't grown, with the same 16 percent saying they had at some point invested or traded in the alternate currency. The results suggest that, despite numerous splashy campaigns by crypto interests, the great majority of Americans remain immune to their sales pitches. "It's pretty striking that for all the spectacular commotion around crypto in the last year, the number of people who invest or trade in crypto didn't budge," said Lee Rainie, Pew Research Center's director of internet and technology research, who spearheaded the study. "Attempts to bring in new buyers to the market didn't seem to move the needle at all."

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Thursday Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant was cut off from the country's electricity grid, causing "widespread power outages across southern Ukraine," according to the New York Times. Friday afternoon it was reconnected to Ukraine's national power grid, the Times adds — "but its time offline renewed concerns about the safe operation of the plant..." The Guardian notes it's the first such disconnection in nearly 40 years. Three other power lines connecting the reactors to the grid "had already been taken out during the war," though when the fourth and final line went out, "the plant still received supplies of electricity from one remaining backup line connected to the nearby conventional power plant." (Though two other lines to that power plant were already also down.) "Disconnecting the plant from the grid is dangerous because it raises the risk of catastrophic failure of the electricity-run cooling systems for its reactors and spent fuel rods.... If all external connections go down, it must rely on diesel-fuelled generators for power. If they break down, engineers only have 90 minutes to stave off dangerous overheating." (Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy pointed out that during the break in power, back-up diesel generators did indeed immediately kick in to ensure continuous power supply, according to Reuters.) But is Russia executing a larger strategy here? Earlier, Russian engineers informed plant workers that the nuclear plant would be switched to Russia's power network in the event of an emergency, according to the head of Ukraine's atomic energy company. Speaking to the Guardian, he adds that the plant's workers were told that "The precondition for this plan was heavy damage of all lines which connect Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the Ukrainian system" — and he worries that Russia is now attempting to create those preconditions. He's not the only one thinking that. Voice of America interviewed a nuclear engineer at the plant who claims that Russian troops have several times "bombed places that cannot affect the safe operation of the power plant. I think that the Russians are trying to discredit the armed forces of Ukraine for the purpose of propaganda.... At the same time, the Russians deliberately damaged the high-voltage power lines that connect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with the Ukrainian power system.... [T]he Russians want to arrange a small accident and stop Zaporizhzhia for a short time, then supply us with electricity from Crimea and automatically switch the nuclear power plant to the Russian energy system." He also claims to have seen Russian military equipment stored in the plant. For example, "Different types of Russian artillery and missile installations are located both inside the territory of the nuclear power plant and around it, on the perimeter, near the Kakhovka Reservoir." The last power line connecting the reactors to the grid was disconnected by fires "caused by shelling," the Guardian reported. The New York Times reports on the aftermath: Ukrainian engineers were able to restore damaged external power lines after repeated shelling on Thursday, ensuring the facility was able to meet its own power needs and continue to operate safely, according to Ukrainian and international officials, but efforts to reconnect it to the grid took longer. With fires raging around the plant, new shelling in and around the facility on a near daily basis and an exhausted and stressed team of Ukrainian engineers tasked with keeping the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant running safely, however, calls for international intervention grew louder. Negotiations with Ukraine and Russia to allow safety experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit and inspect the plant appeared to be making progress, as U.N. officials indicated they expected an agreement soon. "We are in active consultations for an imminent I.A.E.A. mission," a spokesman for the agency said. The stakes are high. "Nowhere in the history of this world has a nuclear power plant become a part of a combat zone, so this really has to stop immediately," Bonnie Denise Jenkins, the State Department's under secretary for arms control and international security, told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. Russian actions, she said, "have created a serious risk of a nuclear incident — a dangerous radiation release — that could threaten not only the people and environment of Ukraine, but also affect neighboring countries and the entire international community." Here's the opinion of that nuclear engineer at the Ukrainian nuclear plant (interviewed by Voice of America). "The expectation is that after the [International Atomic Energy] agency's conclusion, international pressure on Moscow will intensify, and Russia will be required to withdraw heavy weapons and troops from the nuclear power plant. "I think this is unrealistic. The Russians will not leave here by their own will. Without a war, it is impossible."

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Crop of expensive fantasy adaptations from Amazon and HBO Max served up at subsidised prices. Financial Times: Since 2016, the veteran US television executive John Landgraf has been predicting the arrival of "peak TV" -- the moment when the number of new scripted shows reaches an all-time high. The streaming boom has proved him wrong every time but he gamely made the prediction again this month, telling guests at the Television Critics Association press tour that 2022 would mark "the peak of the peak TV era." Landgraf, chair of Disney's FX network, conceded that he could be wrong this time too. But there is little doubt that this autumn will present audiences with a flood of some of the most expensive television ever produced. On September 2, Amazon Prime will release its adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, with an estimated budget of $465mn for the first season -- almost enough to make Top Gun: Maverick three times over. HBO Max's House of the Dragon -- the prequel to Game of Thrones -- is reported to have cost $200mn for the season's 10 episodes. At Disney Plus, Star Wars: Andor will lead a large slate of new programmes that include a Pinocchio remake, She Hulk, and a spin-off of the Cars franchise. These shows are being served up to consumers at subsidised prices by streaming platforms making record losses. The only profitable exception is Netflix, but the industry pioneer's market value has plunged almost $200bn over the past year because of slowing subscriber growth. Its share price is languishing at a four-year low. The forthcoming crop of new programming was given the green light during a headier time, when Wall Street cheered as streaming services committed lavish sums to compete. But faith in the streaming business model -- and investor tolerance for profligate spending -- has waned as Netflix's once-blistering subscription growth has gone into reverse. [...] On top of that, there are growing concerns that inflation will bite into discretionary spending, including on streaming services. "Everyone [in Hollywood] is throwing big dollars after big things," said Niels Juul, who was an executive producer of Martin Scorsese's Netflix film The Irishman. "But [subscribers] are inundated now to the point where they are looking at their monthly bills and saying, 'Something's got to go -- I've got $140 worth of subscriptions here!'" Even so, Tom Harrington at Enders Analysis said consumers were still getting a better deal than the streaming companies themselves. "People get through $100mn of TV in a day and say: 'what's next?' From a consumer point of view that is great. But for a video operator, it's clearly unsustainable."

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Microsoft has confirmed to Sky News that criminals are posting counterfeit packages designed to appear like Office products in order to defraud people. From the report: One such package seen by Sky News is manufactured to a convincing standard and contains an engraved USB drive, alongside a product key. But the USB does not install Microsoft Office when plugged in to a computer. Instead, it contains malicious software which encourages the victim to call a fake support line and hand over access to their PC to a remote attacker. Microsoft launched an internal investigation into the suspect package after being contacted by Sky News. The company spokesperson confirmed that the USB and the packaging were counterfeit and that they had seen a pattern of such products being used to scam victims before. They added that while Microsoft had seen this type of fraud, it is very infrequent. More often when fraudulent products are sold they tend to be product keys sent to customers via email, with a link to a site for downloading the malicious software.

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A small study on the therapeutic effects of using psychedelics to treat alcohol use disorder found that just two doses of psilocybin magic mushrooms paired with psychotherapy led to an 83 percent decline in heavy drinking among the participants. Those given a placebo reduced their alcohol intake by 51 percent. From a report: By the end of the eight-month trial, nearly half of those who received psilocybin had stopped drinking entirely compared with about a quarter of those given the placebo, according to the researchers. The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry, is the latest in a cascade of new research exploring the benefits of mind-altering compounds to treat a range of mental health problems, from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder to the existential dread experienced by the terminally ill. Although most psychedelics remain illegal under federal law, the Food and Drug Administration is weighing potential therapeutic uses for compounds like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA, the drug better known as Ecstasy. Dr. Michael Bogenschutz, director at NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine and the study's lead investigator, said the findings offered hope for the nearly 15 million Americans who struggle with excessive drinking -- roughly 5 percent of all adults. Excessive alcohol use kills an estimated 140,000 people each year.

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China is using two massive drones to seed rainclouds in Sichuan province to try to end a devastating drought that has choked power output and disrupted supply chains of global giants like Apple and Tesla. From a report: The China Meteorological Administration launched drones in northern and southeastern Sichuan on Thursday morning, and the aircraft will eventually cover an area of 6,000 square kilometers in operations lasting through Monday, state-owned CCTV reported. Seeding works by dropping an ice-forming agent like silver iodide into a cloud that already contains ample moisture. Rain droplets gather around the agent, gaining weight until they begin to fall. China has a long history of using the technology to water crop fields, cool blistering cities and make sure skies are clear for events like the Olympics.

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The hackers that breached Twilio earlier this month also compromised more than 130 other organizations during their hacking spree that netted the credentials of close to 10,000 employees. TechCrunch: Twilio's recent network intrusion allowed the hackers to access the data of 125 Twilio customers and companies -- including end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal -- after tricking employees into handing over their corporate login credentials and two-factor codes from SMS phishing messages that purported to come from Twilio's IT department. At the time, TechCrunch learned of phishing pages impersonating other companies, including a U.S. internet company, an IT outsourcing company and a customer service provider, but the scale of the campaign remained unclear. Now, cybersecurity company Group-IB says the attack on Twilio was part of a wider campaign by the hacking group it's calling "0ktapus," a reference to how the hackers predominantly target organizations that use Okta as a single sign-on provider. Group-IB, which launched an investigation after one of its customers was targeted by a linked phishing attack, said in findings shared with TechCrunch that the vast majority of the targeted companies are headquartered in the U.S. or have U.S.-based staff. The attackers have stolen at least 9,931 user credentials since March, according to Group-IB's findings, with more than half containing captured multi-factor authentication codes used to access a company's network.

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After offering them for over a decade, Heroku announced this week that it will eliminate all of its free services -- pushing users to paid plans. From a report: Starting November 28, the Salesforce-owned cloud platform as a service will stop providing free product plans and shut down free data services and soon (on October 26) will begin deleting inactive accounts and associated storage for accounts that have been inactive for over a year. In a blog post, Bob Wise, Heroku general manager and Salesforce EVP, blamed "abuse" on the demise of the free services, which span the free plans for Heroku Dynos and Heroku Postgres as well as the free plan for Heroku Data for Redis. [...] Wise went on to note that Heroku will be announcing a student program at Salesforce's upcoming Dreamforce conference in September, but the details remain a mystery at this point. For the uninitiated, Heroku allows programmers to build, run and scale apps across programming languages including Java, PHP, Scala and Go. Salesforce acquired the company for $212 million in 2010 and subsequently introduced support for Node.js and Clojure and Heroku for Facebook, a package to simplify the process of deploying Facebook apps on Heroku infrastructure. Heroku claims on its website that it's been used to develop 13 million apps to date.

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Mark Zuckerberg says waking up every day as chief executive of Meta is like getting punched in the stomach. From a report: "You wake up in the morning, look at my phone, you get like a million messages, right, of stuff that come in. It's usually not good," Mr. Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan in an episode on his show that aired Thursday. "It's almost like every day you wake up and you're, like, punched in the stomach," Mr. Zuckerberg said. "Now I need to, like, go reset myself and be able to kind of be productive and not be stressed about this." After processing the information he's given, he said he spends an hour or two doing physical activity such as surfing or mixed martial arts.

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Justice Department lawyers are in the early stages of drafting a potential antitrust complaint against Apple, Politico reported Friday, citing a person with direct knowledge of the matter -- a sign that a long-running investigation may be nearing a decision point and a suit could be coming soon. From the report: Various groups of prosecutors inside DOJ are assembling the pieces for a potential lawsuit, the individual said, adding that the department's antitrust division hopes to file suit by the end of the year. Still, the Justice Department has made no decisions whether or when to sue Apple, the world's most valuable public company, cautioned that person and one other familiar with the probe -- and it's still possible no case will be filed. Both were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential investigation.

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Academic journals will have to provide immediate access to papers that are publicly funded, providing a big win for advocates of open research and ending a policy that had allowed publishers to keep publications behind a paywall for a year, according to a White House directive. The New York Times: In laying out the new policy, which is set to be fully in place by the start of 2026, the Office of Science and Technology Policy said that the guidance had the potential to save lives and benefit the public on several key priorities -- from cancer breakthroughs to clean-energy technology. "The American people fund tens of billions of dollars of cutting-edge research annually," Dr. Alondra Nelson, the head of the office, said in a statement. "There should be no delay or barrier between the American public and the returns on their investments in research." Advocates for open-research access, like Greg Tananbaum, the director of the Open Research Funders Group, called the guidance "transformational" for researchers and the broader public alike. He said it built off a 2013 memorandum that was also important in expanding the public's access to research but fell short in some areas. The 2013 guidance applied to federal agencies with research and development expenditures of $100 million or more, about 20 of the largest agencies like the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The guidance announced on Thursday covers nearly all federal bodies, a major expansion that includes about 400 or more entities, several experts said. The directive also requires that publications be made available in machine-readable formats to ensure use and reuse, a component that open-access advocates hailed as a game-changer for accessibility.

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The company behind the bright green marijuana-themed trucks that crowd Manhattan's tourist districts is now paying the price for repeatedly breaking the law. They haven't been fined for selling anything illicit, but for being top contributors to one of the city's other infamous scourges: illegal parking. From a report: The New York City department of finance confirmed to the Guardian that Weed World Candies had paid $200,000 in parking fines to get back several vehicles that had been towed in June by the city's sheriff's office. But while Weed World is apparently getting on the right side of the law, its payments only equal a fraction of the $534.5m the city is owed in unpaid parking fines, according to the agency, as serial offenders skirt the rules in one of the world's most maddening places to get around. In Midtown Manhattan, where competition for parking is cutthroat in a grid of cramped and chaotic roadways, trucks habitually stop in bike lanes, forcing cyclists into busy traffic; cars double-park as drivers sprint into bodegas to buy their increasingly expensive bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches. Police often turn a blind eye, amid allegations that they illegally park their personal cars and harassed a cyclist who reported them.

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The vaccine manufacturer Moderna sued Pfizer and BioNTech on Friday, claiming that its rivals' Covid-19 shot violates its patents protecting its groundbreaking technology. NPR reports: The lawsuit alleges the two companies used certain key features of technology Moderna developed to make their COVID-19 vaccine. It argues that Pfizer and BioNtech's vaccine infringes patents Moderna filed between 2010 and 2016 for its messenger RNA or mRNA technology. All three companies' COVID-19 vaccines used mRNA technology which is a new way to make vaccines. In the past, vaccines were generally made using parts of a virus, or inactivated virus, to stimulate an immune response. With mRNA technology, the vaccine uses messenger RNA created in a lab to send genetic instructions that teach our cells to make a protein or part of a protein that triggers an immune response. In October 2020, Moderna pledged not to enforce its COVID-19 related patents while the pandemic was ongoing, according to a statement from the company. In March this year, it said it will stick to its commitment not to enforce its COVID-19 related patents in low and middle-income countries, but expects rival companies like Pfizer to respect its intellectual property.

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Twitter founder and former chief executive Jack Dorsey says he regrets the social media platform became a company. From a report: "The biggest issue and my biggest regret is that it became a company," Dorsey tweeted in response to a question about whether Twitter turned out the way he had envisioned. Dorsey stands to receive $978 million if the agreement for billionaire Elon Musk to buy Twitter is completed. When asked about what structure he wished Twitter would operate under, Dorsey said that it should be "a protocol" and that Twitter should not be owned by a state or another company. If it were a protocol, Twitter would operate much like email, which is not controlled by one centralized entity, and people using different email providers are able to communicate with one another.

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