Gm. After a closely contested vote, the DJI Mavic Mini Drone beat out Airpods as the giveaway item of choice.

Once we officially hit 20,000 subs, we’ll launch the giveaway. Just over 2,000 subs to go.

Until then, share share share.

FRESH POWDER

We’re switching up this section again today.

Since lots of VCs are off chillin on the beach and not raising much fresh pow, we’re bringing you some info on companies that recently raised new rounds.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter exec spills the beans

With Game of Thrones returning to our lives this Sunday, it looks like Twitter’s former head of security Pieter Zatko got a little carried away with the whole “chaos is a ladder” thing. He went scorched earth on his former employer yesterday, accusing Twitter of a host of allegations ranging from negligent security practices to the number of bots on the platform.

Here’s what he had to say.

Twitter lacks basic security controls

Zatko alleges that half of the company’s 500,000 servers run on outdated software that makes them vulnerable to an “anomalously high rate” of security incidents. To make matters worse, about 5,000 Twitter employees had widespread access to the company’s internal software and sensitive data according to Zatko. Also, by his count, thousands of laptops contain complete copies of Twitter’s source code. Yikes.

Government conspiracy theories

In what was probably his most incendiary claim, Zatko argued that Twitter played a role in helping governments crack down on dissent. Specifically, Zatko called out the Indian government for forcing the social media platform to hire a government official and grant them access to “vast amounts of Twitter sensitive data.” Again, it’s hard to verify these claims as of now, but boy are they juicy.

The bots may actually be an issue

Thanks to Elon’s quest to buy the company, even the most casual Homescreen reader knows that Twitter is adamant that less than 5% of its monthly active users are bots. But Zatko says that Twitter’s method for measuring that figure is misleading and employees are incentivized to boost users rather than weed out spam accounts. We're not sure how many more layers Elon’s acquisition of Twitter can have, but Zatko’s whistleblowing just added another.

Bottom line: As of now, it’s unclear if Zatko’s report affects the legal standing of Musk’s pending deal to buy Twitter, but it’ll certainly help him in the court of public opinion.

SECURITY

Trust nothing

Not even your own eyes. Binance’s chief communications officer Patrick Hillmann is claiming that crypto scammers built an AI deepfake version of him to trick contacts into thinking they were speaking with him on live video calls.

In a blog posted to Binance, Hillmann laid out evidence that someone had used footage of news interviews and TV appearances to splice together a digital image of his face.

But is he the one faking it?

Some are dubious of his claims—the only hard evidence Hillmann put forth of the alleged fraud is a screenshot of a conversation he had with an anonymous person who insisted they were on a Zoom call with him. Not exactly video evidence.

• Plus, as The Verge writes, deepfake technology likely isn’t powerful enough to mimic an entire live video conversation...yet.

Bottom line: Whether Binance employees got deepfaked or not, the incident does offer a glimpse into the next era of cybersecurity. Employees are still falling for gift card scams over email, now they have to worry about fake video calls with their boss? It’s going to be an interesting future indeed.

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: Winter is coming for everyone but HBO Max. The premiere of House of the Dragon—a Game of Thrones prequel—shattered records on Sunday for the largest audience for the first episode of any new HBO original series. Nearly 10 million viewers assembled to watch the opening episode (which was actually pretty good according to the internet mob). The 10-episode series has huge shoes to fill, not only to live up to its predecessor, but to make new Warner Bros./Discovery CEO David Zaslav happy. He’s been on a cost-cutting spree since he's taken over pulling the plug on content that isn’t performing well including 200 episodes of Sesame Street.

Story we’re watching: Instagram is internally testing a new BeReal clone that offers users the ability to capture and share a photo in two minutes. The experimentation arrives as BeReal makes an epic surge to #1 in the app store. The move is nothing new for Instagram, whose reputation for “being real” often consists of copying features from popular networks like Snap and TikTok.

Rabbit hole: The top YC companies of all time by valuation (Y Combinator).

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Intel signed a $30 billion partnership with Brookfield to help finance its chip-factory expansion.

• Apple is planning on manufacturing its new iPhone in India in an effort to diversify its production hubs outside of China.

• Lyft is scaling back office space in NY, SF, Seattle, and Nashville after giving moving to a largely remote workforce back in March.

• Amazon submitted a bid to purchase Signify Health, a home health services provider, in a deal that could value the company at over $8 billion.

THREE LIES AND A HEADLINE

Three of the headlines below are faker than a DM from Elon on Twitter. But one is real. Can you spot the truth amongst the fakes?

A. "Generous Airbnb host offers guests copy of hidden camera footage to commemorate visit.”

B. “How ’90 Day Fiancé’ star Stephanie Matto ended up hospitalized after eating too many beans to sell farts.”

C. “Mark Zuckerberg worried his metaverse avatar doesn’t fully capture how inhuman he looks.”

D. “Sacklers ask friend for hookup to buy pharmaceutical company from.”

LAYOFFS TRACKER

Notable layoffs this week:

Xiaomi: 900 people (3%)

NSO: 100 people (14%)

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THREE HEADLINES ANSWER

It’s B. Respect the hustle though.