gm. gm. If it seems hard as hell to find good workers for your company right now, it’s not your fault. Turns out no one is really looking for a job. According to the Labor Department, US jobless claims fell to their lowest level since 1969. 

Curse you strong job market.

CYBERSECURITY

Lapsus$ leader unmasked

Yesterday, cybersecurity researchers were finally able to trace a string of recent attacks against prominent blue chip tech companies back to a 16-year-old living at his mother’s house near Oxford, England.

• The researchers believe the Oxford teen is the suspected ringleader of Lapsus$, the prominent hacking group that has claimed responsibility for the attacks. 

• According to a Bloomberg report, the researchers initially thought the activity they were observing was automated, but it turns out the teen was actually just so skilled and so fast that he passed for a bot.

Who is Lapsus$?

Known for its unabashed recruitment of company insiders and its prominent online presence, members have even gone as far as infiltrating company Zoom calls to heckle their targets. It also has a hit list that would make Anonymous blush.

• In the last week alone, Microsoft confirmed that Lapsus$ had stolen chunks of the source code for Cortana and Bing, while Okta, a user authentication company used by thousands of orgs around the world, confirmed Lapsus$ had breached an employee laptop for five days.  

• The group has also taken credit for hijacking 200GB worth of data from Samsung and for releasing Nvidia employee credentials to the internet.

Shortly after the release of Bloomberg’s report, UK police arrested seven people with alleged ties to the group, all of whom are between 16 and 21 years old. 

Zoom out: Are adolescent hackers the latest major threat to cybersecurity? Probably not, but it certainly makes for eye-popping headlines when teenagers infiltrate major tech companies or make over a hundred grand by hijacking Twitter accounts. This isn’t a new trend, either: high-profile attacks by teens go back all the way to 1994, when a 16-year-old gained access to US "missile systems." Kids will be kids, right?

BIG TECH

Smartphones as a Service 

Out with SaaS and in with HaaS. Apple is tripling down on subscriptions, and will soon let you lease an iPhone like you can lease a car (probs for the same price too). 

The deets: Many cell carriers offer payment plans that split the cost of a new phone over a year or two, but Apple’s new program would charge users a flat monthly fee throughout their time with a device.

Apple’s subscription ambitions

Apple offers a range of subscription-based services, but this would be its first foray into hardware subscriptions. With its flagship phones going for more than a grand, Apple hopes that a subscription model will help alleviate sticker shock.

• Apple is reportedly considering bundling its hardware subscriptions with its Apple One and AppleCare plans.

• Insiders claim that the service could launch as early as the end of 2022.

Zoom out: Apple isn’t the only company looking to offer alternative models of hardware ownership. Peloton is piloting a program that bundles a bike lease with a subscription to its streaming service, and services like Google Stadia allow users to eschew physical hardware entirely and stream their games from the cloud.

QUICK HITS

Seed round

Stat: Is there gender bias in VC? Of course there is, and DocSend has the receipts. According to a report it published yesterday that analyzes how much time VCs spend looking at specific slides of founder decks, all-female teams are perceived much differently than all-male teams. Investors spent 130% more time scrutinizing the team pages of all-female founding teams than on all-male teams. But for the product section, where teams outline the actual thing they are building, the trends were reversed: VCs spent 105% more time looking at the product sections of all-male decks than all-female decks. 

Startup: Gated, a 10-month old startup, is solving email overload by forcing unknown senders to donate to a nonprofit chosen by the email recipient before they can get into their inbox. (More here) 

Rabbit hole: A programmer and a copyright attorney decided to generate all the possible songs with the basic 8 major notes, then listed the results for free under the creative commons licenses to stop copyright claims on melodies. (Roy van Rijn Blog)

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Twitter is finally rolling out the option for users to search for specific messages in their DMs. Parag, we thank you. 

• Krafton, the studio behind PUBG series, is collabing with Solana Labs to develop games on the Solana blockchain.

• Uber reached a deal yesterday to list New York City taxis on its app. All that is old is new again. 

• Meta is partnering with an e-commerce firm to bring 3D ads to Facebook and Instagram.

TRIVIA

How good are you at perceiving things? We’ll give you a certain subgroup, and you have to guess the percentage of US adults that fall into that subgroup. 

• Have a college degree?

• Have a household income of $1 million+?

• Have flown on a plane? 

• Have a $25k+ household income? 

• Are left-handed? 

FUNDRAISING FRIDAY

TIDBITS

📝 An especially good explanation of the upcoming ETH merge. 

🥩 This dude really hates salads. 

📜 Packy shared this piece on Twitter about the two foundational pillars of business: spreadsheets and storytelling.

SHARE HOMESCREEN

Last week we gained 10 subs from people sharing. Let's try to double that this weekend. 

TRIVIA ANSWER

Have a college degree: 33% 

Have a household income of over $1 million: >1%

Have flown on a plane: 88% 

Have a $25k+ household income: 82% 

Are left-handed: 11% 

How’d you do? It’s okay if you bombed, so did everyone else in this study conducted by polling agency YouGov.