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Good Morning. In a big undertaking that solves nothing, California's DMV is moving to blockchain and will issue 'NFT' titles for their vehicles.

In today's edition:

1. Credit Karma fined for misleading consumers

2. New York City is going Green

Today's reading time is short 2 minutes.

Tech

Credit Karma fined $3M for tricking users

Yeah those credit card approval chances in Credit-Karma's app are fake

What: Credit Karma was fined by FTC for allegedly giving consumers false pre-approval offers on credit cards. Almost one-third of the consumers who received pre-approved offers that had 90% likelihood of approvals, got denied.

Why it matters: Credit score has an outsized impact on a person's life - it decides if you get approved for a house, a car, a job, makes big difference in interest rates on loans and much more.

Credit Karma's dark pattern is especially bad since it misled people into believing they actually stood a 90% chance for a new credit-card. The denial would drop their credit score even further, likely worsening their already bad financial health. Somehow the Credit Karma executives thought it was worth it for extra dollars.

Bigger Picture: Intuit, the parent company of Credit Karma also owns Turbotax, famous for dark patterns to trick users to provide 'consent' to hand over private tax-filing information to Intuit.

FTC already has a case against Intuit for "Bait-and-switch" tactic - Bombard consumers with ads for 'free' tax filing services, then hit them with charges when it's time to file.

New York City is going Green

What: NYC announced major plans in effort to move away from fossil fuels.

Key points:

1. Electric taxis by 2030: All app based ride-hailing services including Uber and Lyft will be required to go 100% electric by 2030. The city will significantly expand the charging infrastructure for more than 100,000 cars.

2. Replace fossil fuels with Wind farms: NYC's biggest fossil fuel plant powering 20% of the city will be replaced by offshore wind power.

Zoom Out: California has similar ambitions to switch to electric by 2030, Uber and Lyft have separately announced similar plans. Sounds really nice, but burning fossil fuels to produce more electricity for electric cars kind of defeats the purpose. NYC's plan to switch to renewables is a step in the right direction.

Big Picture

BuzzFeed, website known for pushing out click-bait style articles, will now use OpenAI to generate more click-bait style 'enhanced' and 'personalized' content . The website also entered a partnership with Meta to push the content on Facebook. BuzzFeed's stock roared 150% after the news hit the market yesterday.

Southwest Airlines estimated a hit of $800 million after it cancelled around 16,700 flights during holiday season in December due to technical issues in middle of winter storm.

Quick Bites

1 Stripe, one of the most valuable private companies is exploring an exit in next 12 months.

2. NASA successfully validates a new 'Rotating Detonation' engine design.

3. Read: Wired's article on how Big Tech is bad at firing people.

4. Payback: US says it 'hacked the hackers', shutting down ransomware gang.