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Senator Elizabeth Warren seemingly thinks Apple ought to be forced to operate iMessage as a public utility, free of charge. Or something? She doesn’t actually say what she thinks should happen. Is she suggesting Apple be forced to spin off “iMessage” as a separate company? If not, what is she advocating “breaking up”?

 ★ 

Senator Elizabeth Warren seemingly thinks Apple ought to be forced to operate iMessage as a public utility, free of charge. Or something? She doesn’t actually say what she thinks should happen. Is she suggesting Apple be forced to spin off “iMessage” as a separate company? If not, what is she advocating “breaking up”?

Read More 

Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, in a company-wide memo published at The Verge, under the clear subject “Serious consequences for disruptive behavior”:

Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not
tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all
employees must adhere to — including our Code of Conduct and
Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of
Conduct, and Workplace Concerns.

We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read
our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and
communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our
employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are
tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our
policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously,
and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take
action against disruptive behavior — up to and including
termination.

It says a lot about how adrift Google was that “We are a place of business” needed to be stated, but better late than never.

 ★ 

Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, in a company-wide memo published at The Verge, under the clear subject “Serious consequences for disruptive behavior”:

Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not
tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all
employees must adhere to — including our Code of Conduct and
Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of
Conduct, and Workplace Concerns.

We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read
our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and
communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our
employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are
tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our
policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously,
and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take
action against disruptive behavior — up to and including
termination.

It says a lot about how adrift Google was that “We are a place of business” needed to be stated, but better late than never.

Read More 

Alex Heath, reporting for The Verge:

ChatGPT kicked off the AI chatbot race. Meta is determined
to win it.

To that end: the Meta AI assistant, introduced last
September, is now being integrated into the search box of
Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger. It’s also going to
start appearing directly in the main Facebook feed. You can still
chat with it in the messaging inboxes of Meta’s apps. And for the
first time, it’s now accessible via a standalone website at
Meta.ai.

For Meta’s assistant to have any hope of being a real ChatGPT
competitor, the underlying model has to be just as good, if not
better. That’s why Meta is also announcing Llama 3, the next major
version of its foundational open-source model. Meta says that
Llama 3 outperforms competing models of its class on key
benchmarks and that it’s better across the board at tasks like
coding. Two smaller Llama 3 models are being released today, both
in the Meta AI assistant and to outside developers, while a much
larger, multimodal version is arriving in the coming months.

I keep circling back to the notion that OpenAI has no moat. ChatGPT is certainly the best-known LLM, and perhaps still the best, but I don’t think that’s any more of a long-term competitive advantage than some company in 1986 having “the best C compiler”. What’s needed are ways to bring LLMs to users. To give them purpose, in products. That’s what Meta is doing, by integrating their AI into all of their major products.

 ★ 

Alex Heath, reporting for The Verge:

ChatGPT kicked off the AI chatbot race. Meta is determined
to win it.

To that end: the Meta AI assistant, introduced last
September, is now being integrated into the search box of
Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger. It’s also going to
start appearing directly in the main Facebook feed. You can still
chat with it in the messaging inboxes of Meta’s apps. And for the
first time, it’s now accessible via a standalone website at
Meta.ai.

For Meta’s assistant to have any hope of being a real ChatGPT
competitor, the underlying model has to be just as good, if not
better. That’s why Meta is also announcing Llama 3, the next major
version of its foundational open-source model. Meta says that
Llama 3 outperforms competing models of its class on key
benchmarks and that it’s better across the board at tasks like
coding. Two smaller Llama 3 models are being released today, both
in the Meta AI assistant and to outside developers, while a much
larger, multimodal version is arriving in the coming months.

I keep circling back to the notion that OpenAI has no moat. ChatGPT is certainly the best-known LLM, and perhaps still the best, but I don’t think that’s any more of a long-term competitive advantage than some company in 1986 having “the best C compiler”. What’s needed are ways to bring LLMs to users. To give them purpose, in products. That’s what Meta is doing, by integrating their AI into all of their major products.

Read More 

Todd Spangler, reporting for Variety:

Netflix will no longer report subscriber numbers — which has been
a key metric for streaming services for years — beginning with
the first quarter of 2025.

The company made the announcement in releasing its first-quarter
2024 earnings Thursday. Netflix handily topped expectations
for subscribers net adds, gaining 9.33 million in the period, to
reach nearly 270 million globally. It also beat Wall Street
expectations on the top and bottom lines. […]

Despite the Q1 earnings beat, Netflix shares dropped more than
4.5% in after-hours trading Thursday, possibly as investors
reacted negatively to the news that the streamer will stop
reporting quarterly sub totals.

In its Q1 letter to shareholders, Netflix said that engagement — time spent with the service — is its “best proxy for customer
satisfaction.” As such, it will no longer report quarterly
membership numbers or average revenue per member (which it dubs
“ARM”), as of Q1 2025. Netflix said it will announce “major
subscriber milestones as we cross them” but will cease disclosing
quarterly subscriber numbers.

I don’t think investors should be alarmed. This is what companies do when their growth phase is over. Apple used to break down unit sales for its various devices and stopped long ago. Netflix is no longer an up-and-comer — they’re the established leader in streaming, and should be judged accordingly.

 ★ 

Todd Spangler, reporting for Variety:

Netflix will no longer report subscriber numbers — which has been
a key metric for streaming services for years — beginning with
the first quarter of 2025.

The company made the announcement in releasing its first-quarter
2024 earnings Thursday. Netflix handily topped expectations
for subscribers net adds, gaining 9.33 million in the period, to
reach nearly 270 million globally. It also beat Wall Street
expectations on the top and bottom lines. […]

Despite the Q1 earnings beat, Netflix shares dropped more than
4.5% in after-hours trading Thursday, possibly as investors
reacted negatively to the news that the streamer will stop
reporting quarterly sub totals.

In its Q1 letter to shareholders, Netflix said that engagement — time spent with the service — is its “best proxy for customer
satisfaction.” As such, it will no longer report quarterly
membership numbers or average revenue per member (which it dubs
“ARM”), as of Q1 2025. Netflix said it will announce “major
subscriber milestones as we cross them” but will cease disclosing
quarterly subscriber numbers.

I don’t think investors should be alarmed. This is what companies do when their growth phase is over. Apple used to break down unit sales for its various devices and stopped long ago. Netflix is no longer an up-and-comer — they’re the established leader in streaming, and should be judged accordingly.

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Jon Brodkin, reporting for Ars Technica:

The US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protection against
self-incrimination does not prohibit police officers from forcing
a suspect to unlock a phone with a thumbprint scan, a federal
appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling does not apply to all
cases in which biometrics are used to unlock an electronic device
but is a significant decision in an unsettled area of the law. […]

Payne’s Fifth Amendment claim “rests entirely on whether the use
of his thumb implicitly related certain facts to officers such
that he can avail himself of the privilege against
self-incrimination,” the ruling said. Judges rejected his claim,
holding “that the compelled use of Payne’s thumb to unlock his
phone (which he had already identified for the officers) required
no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a
blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking.”

“When Officer Coddington used Payne’s thumb to unlock his phone — which he could have accomplished even if Payne had been
unconscious — he did not intrude on the contents of Payne’s
mind,” the court also said.

Via Jamie Zawinski, whose advises never using Touch ID or Face ID. I strongly disagree with that advice. Almost everyone is far more secure using Face ID rather than relying on a passcode/passphrase alone. People who don’t use Face/Touch ID are surely tempted to use a short easily-entered passcode for convenience, and anyone who disables Face/Touch ID while using a nontrivial passphrase is encountering a huge inconvenience every single time they unlock their phone. There’s no good reason to yourself through that.

My advice is to internalize the shortcut to hard-lock an iPhone, which temporarily disables Face/Touch ID and requires the passcode to unlock: squeeze the side button and either of the volume buttons for a second or so. I wrote an entire article about this two years ago. Don’t just learn this shortcut, internalize it, so that you don’t have to think about it under duress. Just squeeze the side buttons until you feel the phone vibrate. Then it’s hard-locked. Do this whenever you go through security — be it at the airport, the ballpark, or anywhere. If you see a magnetometer, hard-lock your iPhone. If you get pulled over by a cop while driving, hard-lock your phone before you do anything else. (You can still launch the Camera app from the lock screen to record the encounter, if you wish, while the phone remains hard-locked.) Tell everyone you know how to hard-lock their iPhones.

(Also, this ruling is specific to the details of this particular case, and thus only addresses fingerprint authentication, not facial recognition. Those concerned with civil liberties should presume, though, that the same court would rule similarly regarding cops unlocking a device by waving it in front of the suspect’s face. But with “Require Attention for Face ID” — which is on by default — Face ID won’t work if you keep your eyes closed, and I don’t think a court would allow police to force your eyes open. The trick to worry about is the police handing you back your phone, under the pretense that you can use it to make a call or something, and then yanking it from your hands after you unlock it.)

 ★ 

Jon Brodkin, reporting for Ars Technica:

The US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protection against
self-incrimination does not prohibit police officers from forcing
a suspect to unlock a phone with a thumbprint scan, a federal
appeals court ruled yesterday. The ruling does not apply to all
cases in which biometrics are used to unlock an electronic device
but is a significant decision in an unsettled area of the law. […]

Payne’s Fifth Amendment claim “rests entirely on whether the use
of his thumb implicitly related certain facts to officers such
that he can avail himself of the privilege against
self-incrimination,” the ruling said. Judges rejected his claim,
holding “that the compelled use of Payne’s thumb to unlock his
phone (which he had already identified for the officers) required
no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a
blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking.”

“When Officer Coddington used Payne’s thumb to unlock his phone — which he could have accomplished even if Payne had been
unconscious — he did not intrude on the contents of Payne’s
mind,” the court also said.

Via Jamie Zawinski, whose advises never using Touch ID or Face ID. I strongly disagree with that advice. Almost everyone is far more secure using Face ID rather than relying on a passcode/passphrase alone. People who don’t use Face/Touch ID are surely tempted to use a short easily-entered passcode for convenience, and anyone who disables Face/Touch ID while using a nontrivial passphrase is encountering a huge inconvenience every single time they unlock their phone. There’s no good reason to yourself through that.

My advice is to internalize the shortcut to hard-lock an iPhone, which temporarily disables Face/Touch ID and requires the passcode to unlock: squeeze the side button and either of the volume buttons for a second or so. I wrote an entire article about this two years ago. Don’t just learn this shortcut, internalize it, so that you don’t have to think about it under duress. Just squeeze the side buttons until you feel the phone vibrate. Then it’s hard-locked. Do this whenever you go through security — be it at the airport, the ballpark, or anywhere. If you see a magnetometer, hard-lock your iPhone. If you get pulled over by a cop while driving, hard-lock your phone before you do anything else. (You can still launch the Camera app from the lock screen to record the encounter, if you wish, while the phone remains hard-locked.) Tell everyone you know how to hard-lock their iPhones.

(Also, this ruling is specific to the details of this particular case, and thus only addresses fingerprint authentication, not facial recognition. Those concerned with civil liberties should presume, though, that the same court would rule similarly regarding cops unlocking a device by waving it in front of the suspect’s face. But with “Require Attention for Face ID” — which is on by default — Face ID won’t work if you keep your eyes closed, and I don’t think a court would allow police to force your eyes open. The trick to worry about is the police handing you back your phone, under the pretense that you can use it to make a call or something, and then yanking it from your hands after you unlock it.)

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James Pero, writing at Inverse:

Nothing’s audio products — including the newly announced Ear and
Ear A — are bringing what the company calls an
“industry-first” integration with ChatGPT that allows users who
also own a Nothing Phone like the recently released Phone
2a to launch the chatbot with a pinch gesture on their
Nothing earbuds.

“By integrating ChatGPT with Nothing earbuds, including the new
Nothing Ear and Ear A, and with Nothing OS, we’ve taken our first
steps towards change, and there’s more to come,” said Nothing CEO,
Carl Pei, in a press release.

Looks like it’s time for the DOJ to file another lawsuit against Apple for offering tight integration between its phones and peripherals.

 ★ 

James Pero, writing at Inverse:

Nothing’s audio products — including the newly announced Ear and
Ear A — are bringing what the company calls an
“industry-first” integration with ChatGPT that allows users who
also own a Nothing Phone like the recently released Phone
2a to launch the chatbot with a pinch gesture on their
Nothing earbuds.

“By integrating ChatGPT with Nothing earbuds, including the new
Nothing Ear and Ear A, and with Nothing OS, we’ve taken our first
steps towards change, and there’s more to come,” said Nothing CEO,
Carl Pei, in a press release.

Looks like it’s time for the DOJ to file another lawsuit against Apple for offering tight integration between its phones and peripherals.

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If Meta caves and complies with this ruling by offering a free tier with significantly lower ARPU, that opens the door for regulators and legislative bodies around the globe to demand the same.

Eric Seufert, on Threads:

The EDPB — the EU’s legislature of privacy authorities — adopted
a draft opinion today determining that large online platforms
can’t offer a “pay or okay” model as a strict binary and must also
offer a third, free choice that doesn’t utilize personalized
advertising.

Given which way the wind’s been blowing in the EU, this is surprising, but make no mistake, this is a radical stance. From the EDPB’s draft ruling (PDF):

The offering of (only) a paid alternative to the service which
includes processing for behavioural advertising purposes should
not be the default way forward for controllers. When developing
the alternative to the version of the service with behavioural
advertising, large online platforms should consider providing data
subjects with an ‘equivalent alternative’ that does not entail the
payment of a fee. If controllers choose to charge a fee for access
to the ‘equivalent alternative’, controllers should consider also
offering a further alternative, free of charge, without
behavioural advertising, e.g. with a form of advertising involving
the processing of less (or no) personal data. This is a
particularly important factor in the assessment of certain
criteria for valid consent under the GDPR. In most cases, whether
a further alternative without behavioural advertising is offered
by the controller, free of charge, will have a substantial impact
on the assessment of the validity of consent, in particular with
regard to the detriment aspect.

With respect to the requirements of the GDPR for valid consent,
first of all, consent needs to be ‘freely given’. In order to
avoid detriment that would exclude freely given consent, any fee
imposed cannot be such as to effectively inhibit data subjects
from making a free choice. Furthemore, detriment may arise where
non-consenting data subjects do not pay a fee and thus face
exclusion from the service, especially in cases where the service
has a prominent role, or is decisive for participation in social
life or access to professional networks, even more so in the
presence of lock-in or network effects. As a result, detriment is
likely to occur when large online platforms use a ‘consent or pay’
model to obtain consent for the processing.

Seufert again:

In its opinion on Meta’s use of the Pay or Okay model, the EDPB
effectively says that any sufficiently valuable product must offer
a free version that doesn’t monetize via behavioral ads. That the
quality of being indispensable means consumers must have
unfettered access to it.

What makes this all the more outrageous is that many major publishers in the EU use this exact same “pay or OK” model to achieve GDPR compliance — and none offer a free alternative with non-targeted ads. And Spotify quite literally brags about its ad targeting. But Spotify is an EU company, so of course it wasn’t designated as a “gatekeeper” by the protection racketeers running the European Commission.

They’re not saying “pay or OK” is illegal. They’re saying it’s illegal only if you’re a big company from outside the EU with a very popular platform.

Meta’s only options for compliance with this ruling, as I see it:

Offer a new free tier with contextual, rather than targeted, ads. To achieve an ARPU equivalent to Meta’s paid and free-with-targeted-ads tiers, this new offering would likely have to inundate users with a veritable avalanche of annoying ads. This, I would wager, would be deemed “malicious compliance” and thus also illegal.

Offer a new free tier with contextual, rather than targeted, ads — but only show roughly the same frequency of ads as their lucrative free-with-targeted-ads tier. This is what the EDPB (and EC) are demanding, and seemingly think they can force Meta to do. Meta would almost certainly see ARPU plummet for all users who opt into this tier. Who knows if the revenue would even be sufficient to break even per such user?

Cease offering Facebook and Instagram in the EU. (WhatsApp doesn’t monetize through targeted ads, so isn’t germane to this ruling.) This is the option the EDPB and EC believe “unthinkable” for Meta to take, because the EU is, in their minds, an indispensable market.

I don’t see how Meta can risk the second choice. Meta could afford to see ARPU plummet solely within the EU, and at first thought, you might think some revenue per EU user is surely better than no revenue at all from the EU. But if Meta caves and complies with this ruling by offering a free tier with significantly lower ARPU, that opens the door for regulators and legislative bodies around the globe to demand the same. Then, poof goes Meta as an industry colossus.

I suspect the EU regulatory bodies have some surprises coming regarding how this is going to play out.

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Ben Sandofsky:

An ex-Apple designer who went on to startup success once told me,
“I wish I could give a workshop for Apple alumni jumping into
startups, to help them un-learn The Apple Way.” As someone who
strives to build products with the craft and quality of Apple, it
pains me to admit that The Apple Way can destroy a lot of
startups. Which brings us to Humane.

Great piece. And it brings to mind an observation I’m far from the first to make: There are far fewer startups founded by former Apple employees than one would expect, given Apple’s spectacular run over the past 25 years.

Nest is an obvious exception, but Tony Fadell had a very atypical career at Apple. He was brought in as a contractor in 2001 to help create the iPod, and stayed until 2008. He was more “the iPod guy” not “an Apple person”. And the original Nest thermostat couldn’t be more opposite from Humane’s AI Pin — the Nest did exactly what it promised, very well. Even the fact that it included a screen. Most importantly, Nest’s thermostat took aim at replacing existing dumb thermostats, which were terrible. Nest’s product really was something like 10× better than what it aimed to disrupt. The AI Pin took aim at the iPhone, which is insanely great.

 ★ 

Ben Sandofsky:

An ex-Apple designer who went on to startup success once told me,
“I wish I could give a workshop for Apple alumni jumping into
startups, to help them un-learn The Apple Way.” As someone who
strives to build products with the craft and quality of Apple, it
pains me to admit that The Apple Way can destroy a lot of
startups. Which brings us to Humane.

Great piece. And it brings to mind an observation I’m far from the first to make: There are far fewer startups founded by former Apple employees than one would expect, given Apple’s spectacular run over the past 25 years.

Nest is an obvious exception, but Tony Fadell had a very atypical career at Apple. He was brought in as a contractor in 2001 to help create the iPod, and stayed until 2008. He was more “the iPod guy” not “an Apple person”. And the original Nest thermostat couldn’t be more opposite from Humane’s AI Pin — the Nest did exactly what it promised, very well. Even the fact that it included a screen. Most importantly, Nest’s thermostat took aim at replacing existing dumb thermostats, which were terrible. Nest’s product really was something like 10× better than what it aimed to disrupt. The AI Pin took aim at the iPhone, which is insanely great.

Read More 

Speaking of sports gambling scandals, here’s Tim Arango and Michael S. Schmidt, reporting for The New York Times:

Ohtani has many other accounts, of course — he earns more money
from endorsements and business deals than he does from his
lucrative baseball salary. But it was this account, solely for
Ohtani’s baseball earnings, that Mizuhara would scheme to take
control of and then, as he fell deeper into a gambling addiction,
pilfer for years, according to prosecutors.

Mizuhara changed the settings of the account so alerts and
confirmations of transactions would go to him, not Ohtani. Drawing
on phone recordings obtained from the bank, prosecutors said
Mizuhara had also impersonated Ohtani to gain the bank’s approval
for certain large transactions. And whenever one of Ohtani’s other
advisers — his agent, tax preparer, bookkeeper or financial
adviser, all of whom were interviewed for the federal
investigation — inquired about the account, Mizuhara told them
that Ohtani preferred the account to remain private.

Between November 2021 and January this year, Mizuhara stole $16
million from the account to feed his “voracious appetite for
illegal sports betting,” according to E. Martin Estrada, the U.S.
attorney in Los Angeles.

Sounds like the plot from a Coen brothers movie. At every step where anyone tried to check with Ohtani on this bank account, they went through Mizuhara as a translator.

This being a baseball story, the criminal complaint was stuffed with numbers:

19,000 bets.
$142,256,769.74 total winning bets.
$182,935,206.58 total losing bets.

That’s 20-some bets per day, for years, for nearly $20,000 per wager on average. Just the frequency alone, setting aside the high stakes, is staggering.

It’s good to know, though, that Ohtani was oblivious to all of it.

 ★ 

Speaking of sports gambling scandals, here’s Tim Arango and Michael S. Schmidt, reporting for The New York Times:

Ohtani has many other accounts, of course — he earns more money
from endorsements and business deals than he does from his
lucrative baseball salary. But it was this account, solely for
Ohtani’s baseball earnings, that Mizuhara would scheme to take
control of and then, as he fell deeper into a gambling addiction,
pilfer for years, according to prosecutors.

Mizuhara changed the settings of the account so alerts and
confirmations of transactions would go to him, not Ohtani. Drawing
on phone recordings obtained from the bank, prosecutors said
Mizuhara had also impersonated Ohtani to gain the bank’s approval
for certain large transactions. And whenever one of Ohtani’s other
advisers — his agent, tax preparer, bookkeeper or financial
adviser, all of whom were interviewed for the federal
investigation — inquired about the account, Mizuhara told them
that Ohtani preferred the account to remain private.

Between November 2021 and January this year, Mizuhara stole $16
million from the account to feed his “voracious appetite for
illegal sports betting,” according to E. Martin Estrada, the U.S.
attorney in Los Angeles.

Sounds like the plot from a Coen brothers movie. At every step where anyone tried to check with Ohtani on this bank account, they went through Mizuhara as a translator.

This being a baseball story, the criminal complaint was stuffed with numbers:

19,000 bets.
$142,256,769.74 total winning bets.
$182,935,206.58 total losing bets.

That’s 20-some bets per day, for years, for nearly $20,000 per wager on average. Just the frequency alone, setting aside the high stakes, is staggering.

It’s good to know, though, that Ohtani was oblivious to all of it.

Read More 

Joe Vardon, reporting for The Athletic:

The league said that Porter, who spent part of his time in the NBA
and part of it in its developmental G League, privately told a
sports bettor he was hurt, removed himself from a game to control
prop bets on his own play, and placed his own wagers on NBA games.

He is the first active player or coach to be expelled from the NBA
for gambling since Jack Molinas in 1954.

According to the results of a league investigation, Porter, 24,
gave a confidential tip about his health to a person he knew to be
a sports bettor, prior to the Raptors’ game on March 20 against
the Sacramento Kings. A third individual, connected to both Porter
and the original recipient of Porter’s health information, placed
an $80,000 parlay bet to win $1.1 million, betting that Porter
would underperform against the Kings.

To make sure that the bet hit, the league found, Porter pulled
himself out of that game against the Kings after just three
minutes, claiming he was ill. The investigation also showed that
from January through March, while either playing for Toronto or
the Raptors’ G League affiliate, Porter placed at least 13 bets on
NBA games using an associate’s online betting account. While none
of those bets were on games in which Porter played, he did bet on
the Raptors to lose as part of a parlay bet. The wagers ranged in
size from $15 to $22,000, and totaled $54,000. He netted nearly
$22,000 in winnings on the wagers, the league said.

Porter is a bench player, but in the NBA bench players do well. Porter’s salary this season was $411,000, and he’s earned close to $3 million since he made the NBA four years ago. But how much do you want to bet he’s not the last player in a major sport to get caught up in a point-shaving scam like this?

 ★ 

Joe Vardon, reporting for The Athletic:

The league said that Porter, who spent part of his time in the NBA
and part of it in its developmental G League, privately told a
sports bettor he was hurt, removed himself from a game to control
prop bets on his own play, and placed his own wagers on NBA games.

He is the first active player or coach to be expelled from the NBA
for gambling since Jack Molinas in 1954.

According to the results of a league investigation, Porter, 24,
gave a confidential tip about his health to a person he knew to be
a sports bettor, prior to the Raptors’ game on March 20 against
the Sacramento Kings. A third individual, connected to both Porter
and the original recipient of Porter’s health information, placed
an $80,000 parlay bet to win $1.1 million, betting that Porter
would underperform against the Kings.

To make sure that the bet hit, the league found, Porter pulled
himself out of that game against the Kings after just three
minutes, claiming he was ill. The investigation also showed that
from January through March, while either playing for Toronto or
the Raptors’ G League affiliate, Porter placed at least 13 bets on
NBA games using an associate’s online betting account. While none
of those bets were on games in which Porter played, he did bet on
the Raptors to lose as part of a parlay bet. The wagers ranged in
size from $15 to $22,000, and totaled $54,000. He netted nearly
$22,000 in winnings on the wagers, the league said.

Porter is a bench player, but in the NBA bench players do well. Porter’s salary this season was $411,000, and he’s earned close to $3 million since he made the NBA four years ago. But how much do you want to bet he’s not the last player in a major sport to get caught up in a point-shaving scam like this?

Read More