Bytes: What’s new in tech

Sony’s console triumph

The new PlayStation 5 is a “near-perfect console,” said Elise Favis in The Washington Post. While Microsoft’s Xbox Series X—also launching in time for the holidays—is touted as “the most powerful Xbox ever made,” Sony focused on “immersion.” Its breakthrough DualSense controller plus 3D audio takes you places “you can see, hear, and feel like never before.” That means sensing “the pitter-patter of raindrops falling onto an umbrella through the palms of your hands” and noticing “car horns sound louder as you swing closer to the street” as Spider-Man. Performance-wise, the PS5 is also “remarkable,” thanks to a “massive boost” to the hard drive that “could end loading screens for good.”

Billion-dollar haul from Bitcoin hacker

The Justice Department seized more than $1 billion in Bitcoin that a hacker had stolen from the Silk Road drug marketplace, said Paul Vigna in The Wall Street Journal. The hacker, identified only as Individual X, purportedly stole the 69,000 Bitcoins in 2012 and 2013 from Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who is currently serving a life sentence for money laundering and drug dealing. “When federal officials arrested him in October 2013, they seized about 175,000 Bitcoins but estimated that the website had generated commissions totaling more than 600,000.” The Justice Department said last week’s seizure “at least in part” answers the question of what happened to the remainder. The stolen Bitcoins “had been sitting in the hacker’s” digital wallet, “untouched for years.”

Privacy rules for California, Michigan

Voters approved ballot measures in California and Michigan that bolster internet privacy, said Sidney Fussell in Wired.com. California’s Prop 24 ratified the state’s Privacy Rights

Act, a successor to the state’s 2018 Consumer Privacy Act. That law allowed “Facebook, Google, and hordes of anonymous data brokers to avoid regulation” by claiming they “share” but don’t “sell” data. The new CPRA eliminates that distinction and “requires companies to disclose what they’re collecting and with whom they’re selling or sharing.” Michigan voters backed Prop 2, which requires law enforcement to “obtain search warrants before seizing a person’s electronic data or electronic communications.” The measure limits the use of Stingrays, devices that “pretend to be cell towers” to trick nearby phones into connecting with them.