They were Samsung phones with gold stickers on them. The former CEO of the company that marketed the sketchy-looking Escobar Fold 1 and Escobar Fold 2 phones — which you may remember from a 2020 video from Marques Brownlee — has pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering, according to the US Department of Justice.In a plea agreement, United States attorneys detail how Olof Kyros Gustafsson and Escobar, Inc. took orders for the phones and other products branded with the likeness of the drug lord Pablo Escobar, seeded products with tech reviewers and social media influencers to “in order to attempt to increase demand,” did not deliver the products to customers, and transferred and laundered customer money to “use the funds for their own personal use.” In Brownlee’s video, he unboxed an Escobar Fold 2 phone shipped to him and found that it was just a Samsung Galaxy Fold — a phone that cost nearly $2,000, far more than the $400 Escobar Inc. was selling it for — with a gold sticker on it.Escobar Inc. also sold a $500 “Escobar Flamethrower” that was “modeled after” The Boring Company’s Not-A-Flamethrower, the $500 “Escobar Gold 11 Pro Phone” that was “marketed as a refurbished Apple iPhone 11 Pro,” and Escobar Cash that was “marketed as the world’s first ‘physical cryptocurrency,’” according to the plea agreement.Instead of sending products to paying customers, Gustafsson mailed them a “‘Certificate of Ownership,’ a book, or other Escobar Inc. promotional materials” to create a mailing record, the DOJ says in its press release. Then, when a customer tried to get a refund for something that wasn’t delivered, “Gustafsson fraudulently referred the payment processor to the proof of mailing for the Certificate of Ownership or other material as proof that the product itself was shipped and that the customer had received it so the refund requests would be denied.”A judge has scheduled a sentencing hearing for December 5th, where Gustafsson faces up to 20 years in federal prison for the fraud-related counts and up to 10 for the money laundering-related counts. Gustafsson must also pay as much as $1.3 million in restitution.

The PlayStation Summer Sale is officially live, running through mid-August, although some deals might expire sooner. This massive sale is taking after the Steam Summer Sale, offering discounts across hundreds of PlayStation games. You can get small discounts on 2025 releases or deep cuts on older games. You can prepare for upcoming PS5 exclusives by picking up the previous game in the series, or just grab a title you missed out on previously. While there are hundreds of discounts to check out, we've narrowed it down to six reccomendations, including heavy discounts on some of the biggest names in gaming, and maybe a game or two you aren't familiar with.

How do you feel about Windows 11? There's a very good chance that people will respond to that question in a variety of ways. Some people have come to love the new operating system, while others still look back at past operating systems and wish Windows 11 could draw inspiration from them.

I've always been interested in the world of amateur radio. It's like a secret world where people talk to one another using technology that only a few people have. While I've always wanted to give it a shot, I have no idea where to start.

The Switch 2 has been a hit among fans, and game developers have been trying to work out how to squeeze their games onto the system. We've already seen the appearance of game key cards, which are a physical medium that still requires downloading the game before you play. We've even seen people cancel their Doom preorders because the Switch 2 cartridge didn't contain the actual game.

For the past several months, Home Assistant has been my go-to platform to automate my smart home. This robust software provided me with local voice control, extensive customization options, and privacy controls. Despite packing everything, I missed the straightforward voice control in Home Assistant. I integrated an M5Stack ATOM Echo smart speaker after failing to make Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod work with Home Assistant.

The Starlink Mini satellite dish is now even better thanks to the $119 LinkPower 1 power bank from PeakDo. The battery locks securely to the back of SpaceX's smallest terminal and provides over 4.5 hours of uninterrupted Internet connectivity. The LinkPower's battery can also charge simultaneously over USB-C from your car, solar generator, or solar panel for indefinite Internet use. Then the tidy little package can be slipped into a backpack or tote for your next adventure.Starlink is a life-changing Internet service that connects people and villages too remote for towers and cables to reach. My own Starlink Mini has been critical in helpi …Read the full story at The Verge.

Nextcloud is a go-to platform for many people who want to host their own cloud storage. It covers nearly everything, from file syncing and sharing to collaborative tools, including calendars, contacts, and document editing. But if you’ve used it for a while, especially on modest hardware, you’ve probably run into some of its more frustrating limits. File previews can be slow to load, remote storage integrations may not always behave as expected, and the web interface can sometimes lag, even for basic tasks like folder navigation.

There are many cloud-based services that operate powerful language models, but like anything on the cloud, two immediate problems arise: data collection and consistent access. I've always loved experimenting with self-hosted LLMs, and the tech has advanced hugely since it first became possible to run completely free and powerful models on a consumer-grade graphics card. Of course, what you can actually run differs greatly based on your specs, but the truth is that there's a lot out there.

You can never have enough storage, which is why when a portable SSD goes on sale, it's always the right time to pick one up. This Team Group model delivers tons of storage space at 2TB, offers a rugged design, and delivers great read and write performance as well.

There are a lot of things to update on a PC. You need the newest graphics drivers, a recent BIOS upgrade, and Windows Update to catch everything else, and that's just for routine PC maintenance. So, it's not exactly surprising that the firmware for your SSD falls by the wayside.

Hours after Microsoft revealed hacking groups affiliated with the Chinese government have been exploiting a flaw in its SharePoint software, Bloomberg News reports that the National Nuclear Security Administration has also been breached in the attacks.A single source tells Bloomberg that the department, which provides the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines, was caught up in the zero-day vulnerability that has hit more than 50 organizations in recent days. The exploit affects on-premises versions of SharePoint, but not the SharePoint Online service that Microsoft operates as part of its Microsoft 365 cloud service.While the nuclear weapons agency has reportedly been affected by the SharePoint exploit, no sensitive or classified information has leaked according to Bloomberg. That might be because the US Department of Energy uses Microsoft 365 cloud systems for a lot of its SharePoint work. “The department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems,” says a Department of Energy spokesperson in a statement to Bloomberg. “A very small number of systems were impacted. All impacted systems are being restored.”Microsoft has now patched all versions of SharePoint that are impacted by the zero-day exploit. The flaw allowed hackers to remotely access SharePoint servers and steal data, passwords, and even move across connected services. The exploit appears to have originated from a combination of two bugs that were presented at the Pwn2Own hacking contest in May.