From: The Verge - Tuesday Jun 18, 2019 07:00 pm
Command Line newsletter

I'm fairly skeptical of cryptocurrency in general, so you have to understand that I am losing it over Facebook's announcement of Libra, its take on cryptocurrency. Libra is being developed by Facebook, but it'll ultimately be controlled by a number of organizations, including VC firms, tech giants, and credit card companies.

One tagline on Libra's website reads: "Reinvent money. Transform the global economy. So people everywhere can live better lives."

Those first two are immense and scary goals! And I'm not sure why any consumer should trust massive companies with no accountability to them to do a good job of it. Surely, their goal here is not truly to help us all "live better lives." They want to make money, and controlling a major currency — should Libra find that level of success — would be an immeasurable boon.

-Jake

TODAY ON THE VERGE

+ Facebook announces Libra, its cryptocurrency

+ Facebook is also launching Calibra, a subsidiary company

---> Calibra will launch a digital wallet and figure out ways to make money off the new currency

+ European regulators are already worried about Libra

+ If you work in an office, you're probably already aware that Google Calendar had a widespread outage this morning

The "queen of shitty robots" transformed a Tesla Model 3 into a pickup truck

+ LEGALIZE IT* (*scooters)

+ Roli basically made Guitar Hero, but for learning to play piano. It's a little pricey, but very neat.

+ There's a lot going on here, but at least take away that there's a TikTok collective called "Strawberry Milk Gang"

+ The amount of work Google has had to put in to make RCS happen is legitimately bewildering. It's not even that good of a replacement for SMS. There are read receipts! Cool, great! How about encryption next time? Why are carriers so adverse to just deploying this?

+ Pretty pictures of frozen soap bubbles

+ Review: Panasonic Lumix S1 — the mirrorless heavyweight

John Wick Hex is a very cool John Wick strategy game

+ Verizon's fourth 5G phone arrives Thursday

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