Chalk this one up under “The most clever (alleged) legal sidesteps this side of Tony Soprano.” On Wednesday, The Guardianpublished a report about a so-called “winking mechanism” regarding Israeli cloud computing contracts with Amazon and Google. The stipulation from 2021’s Project Nimbus is said to require the US companies to send coded messages to Israel. According to the report, whenever Google or Amazon secretly complies with an overseas legal request for Israeli data, they’re required to send money to Israel. The dollar amount indicates which country issued the request.
The coding system reportedly involves country dialing prefixes. For example, if Google or Amazon hand over Israeli data to the US (dialing code +1), they would send Israel 1,000 shekels. For Italy (code +39), they would send 3,900 shekels. (Out of morbid curiosity, I discovered that the highest dialing code is Uzbekistan’s +998.) There’s reportedly even a failsafe: If a gag order prevents the companies from using the standard signal, they can notify Israel by sending 100,000 shekels.
The Guardian says Microsoft, which bid for the Nimbus contract, lost out in part because it refused to accept some of Israel’s terms.
In a statement to Engadget, an Amazon spokesperson highlighted customer privacy. “We respect the privacy of our customers, and we do not discuss our relationship without their consent, or have visibility into their workloads,” they wrote.
The Amazon spokesperson denied that the company has any underhanded workarounds in place. “We have a rigorous global process for responding to lawful and binding orders for requests related to customer data,” they said. “[Amazon Web Services] carefully reviews each request to assess any non-disclosure obligations, and we maintain confidentiality in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. While AWS does not disclose customer information in response to government demands unless we’re absolutely required to do so, we recognize the legitimate needs of law enforcement agencies to investigate serious crimes. We do not have any processes in place to circumvent our confidentiality obligations on lawfully binding orders.”
Google also denied any wrongdoing. “The accusations in this reporting are false, and imply that we somehow were involved in illegal activity, which is absurd,” a company spokesperson said. “As is common in public sector agreements, an RFP does not reflect a final contract. The idea that we would evade our legal obligations to the US government as a US company, or in any other country, is categorically wrong.”
“We’ve been very clear about the Nimbus contract, what it’s directed to, and the Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy that govern it,” the Google spokesperson continued. “Nothing has changed. This appears to be yet another attempt to falsely imply otherwise.”
We also reached out to the Israeli government for a statement, and we’ll update this story if we hear back. The Guardian’s full report has much more detail on the alleged leak.
Update, October 29, 2025, 6:29 PM ET: This story has been updated to add a statement from a Google spokesperson.
Ron Stark, co-owner of Holsten’s, the Bloomfield N.J. ice cream parlor and restaurant where the final scene of “The Sopranos” TV series was filmed, sits on March 5, 2024, at a recreation of the booth where Tony Soprano may or may not have met his end. The day before, the original booth used in the show was was sold in an online auction for $82,600 to a buyer that wishes to remain anonymous. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)
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The ice cream parlor booth where Tony Soprano may or may not have been whacked has sold for more than $82,000.
As Tony would say, Madone!
An anonymous buyer bid $82,600 Monday night in an online auction for the piece of memorabilia that occupies an outsize role in the lore of the award-winning HBO series — particularly because it was where the New Jersey mob boss was sitting when the series ended by cutting to black, outraging many viewers and claiming a place in TV history.
Ron Stark, co-owner of Holsten’s, the northern New Jersey ice cream parlor, candy shop and restaurant where the scene was filmed, won’t say a word about who bought it, including whether it was a man or a woman. (That whole code of silence thing.)
Anyway, the story starts with some broken legs — on the tables of the restaurant that opened in 1939, that is. Suffice it to say, things were trending downward.
“Our dining room was in kind of bad shape,” Stark said. “It was getting to the point where we didn’t think it was safe anymore because of the legs breaking, and we didn’t want anybody to actually get hurt.”
Stark and his co-owner Chris Carley decided to auction off the booth and use the proceeds to pay for a renovation of the dining area.
Interest in the booth has remained high among fans of the show since the final scene aired in 2007. Tony Soprano, played by late actor James Gandolfini, orders a plate of onion rings and puts a coin in the jukebox to play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” as his wife Carmella and son A.J. join him in the booth, while daughter Meadow struggles with parallel parking outside.
A guy walks past the table and enters the men’s room (which, at the restaurant, is really the ladies room, but they switched the signs so it would show up in the shot.) A bell rings to signal the entrance of someone walking into the restaurant — and the screen cuts to black, in the infamous ending that had countless viewers fiddling with their TV sets, thinking something had gone wrong.
It was “Sopranos” creator David Chase’s master stroke, Stark said — although Stark had no idea during filming that the scene would end the series.
“You’re just stunned and you say, ‘OK, they ended it, but how did it really end?’” Stark said. “David Chase is a genius for setting up that ending. Let’s say hypothetically Tony got whacked; it was all over. It would not have had the recognition that it had. People are still talking about it. No one knows 100% for sure what really happened.”
During filming, Gandolfini hungrily eyed the onion rings on the table before him — but was not allowed to eat them until multiple takes had been completed.
“They’d say ‘Cut!’ and he would roam behind the grill, and he goes ‘You have anything to eat? I’m starving!’” Stark recalled. He cooked Gandolfini a hot dog with cheese and fried onions.
The actual booth where the scene was filmed was detached on Monday and replaced by a recreation the same day. On Tuesday, so many media outlets wanted to photograph Stark in the booth that customers had to sit elsewhere during the lunch rush. He would not say when the buyer plans to pick it up.
As word of the sale spread, regular customers were joined anew by “Sopranos” fans, including a guy wearing the same shirt Tony did in the final scene, smoking a cigar as he walked in and out of the joint.
When Gandolfini died in 2013, mourners left flowers at the booth. People still come in and make a bee-line for the men’s room, looking for the gun that may or may not have killed Tony.
“People actually go into the bathroom and take pictures of themselves in the bathroom,” Stark said. “They come for answers, they want to find out what happened.”
Shari Magill of nearby Nutley, a frequent customer, stopped by Tuesday for some food.
“Everybody comes here for the booth,” she said. “I hope people still come.”
In nearly every niche online community, there are two kinds of people: those who like the porn related to their obscure interests, and those who don’t.
Oshi No Ko Is An Early Anime Of The Year Contender
With headphones enthusiasts, particularly those who enjoy high-performance, Chinese-made, or “chi-fi,” in-ear monitors (IEMs), the war is less carnal, since the languid anime girls that decorate the box art are presented more as muses than obvious sexual fodder. But, still, it carries on.
Though IEM girls aren’t usually explicit, they are sexualized, or at least, romanticized, by the people that buy them. Headphone fans will occasionally refer to these cartoon girls—who are, typically, original art made exclusively for a particular IEM, not existing anime franchise characters modified for marketing—as “mascots.” But, more frequently, they talk about them in terms of “waifu,” the manga-devotee shorthand for “attractive, vaguely Asian woman.”
What, apparently, makes IEM girls “waifu” material is the fact that they look like children. They’re frequently willowy, with ethereal babyfaces or actual billowing schoolgirl uniforms, like in the case of Moondrop’s $360 Blessing 2 Dusk, a collaboration with popular headphones reviewer Crinacle. Sometimes they decorate only the IEM box, like the snowy-haired girl gazing from Tanchjim’s $40 OLA, and sometimes they seem intended to personify a product’s soul, like Moondrop’s infamous Instagram post of a girl with torn stockings covered in…um, yogurt?
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“Poured yogurt on the headphone,” says a translation of the now-deleted post, implying that the deeply blushing girl is actually a Moondrop headphone, one that is covered in yogurt.
Do they want people to fuck the headphones? The fans I talked to don’t seem to think it’s that deep.
Don’t overthink the anime girls
“I didn’t know [anime girls on IEM box art] was a ‘trend’ until I’d heard of [the company] Moondrop and how people in the West thought it was unusual,” headphones fan M tells me over Reddit chat. “I live in Asia, so anime artworks aren’t really that rare or unusual. I think it gives the products and brands a sense of personality.”
Or, if not a personality, then at least a bit of mild, memorable sex appeal you wouldn’t normally associate with tech, like how a beer buzz helps get you excited for sitting on your couch and eating Bugles.
“[IEM anime girls help] attract more consumers,” Jeremiah, another headphone admirer on Reddit, says. And “sometimes, it makes the IEM more recognizable. Like, if you see a ponytail girl with glasses, you instantly know this is the Blessing 2 Dusk.”
But even those who appreciate the IEM girls have their limits. “As someone who likes to watch anime, I do enjoy the trend if the box art is done tastefully,” u/nopunterino tells me. “But sometimes I think manufacturers can go too far.”
“I might [not even be able to order an] IEM I’m interested in in fear of my roommate or my relative opening my box and seeing a bunny girl in a not very appropriate position,” Jeremiah says.
Both referenced SeeAudio’s collaboration with audiophile reviewer Z Reviews, the $100 Rinko—which has two girls wearing bunny ears on the box, their mouths hanging open as they squish remarkably spherical breasts together in a hug—as an example of a brand taking their anime girls “too far.”
“And we can never forget the Moondrop ‘yogurt’ incident,” u/nopunterino says.
Most people I talked to were blasé about IEM girls (and they are indeed IEM girls—Chinese-made over-the-ear headphones are mass-appeal items, not nerd bait like IEMs, and their design is overwhelmingly clinical). But it’s clear that some audiophiles have a bigger allegiance to them than they’d like to admit, and they’re especially willing to defend companies that take it “too far.”
I need to analyze the anime girls
Perusing the several impassioned “why is this happening?” threads on r/headphones for a few minutes will lead you to evidence. Those confused by all the breasts and childlike mouths seem afraid their opinion is unpopular before even voicing it, wondering as gingerly as a deer ducks a hunter, “At the risk of being burned at the stake—what’s with the ‘waifu’ girls on so many products?” or, more recently and to the point, “What’s the deal with IEMs and anime girls?”
“Why? Where did this start?” u/brubby3179, who began the latter thread, pleaded with users. “I’ve never seen that with over ears.”
“I’m newer to the hi-fi headphones scene so I only started noticing it in early 2021 when I started watching reviews of headphones on YouTube,” u/brubby3179 tells me, around two weeks after his thread inspired nearly 200 comments of bickering—so much discord, that r/headphones moderators locked the comments. “Some interesting comments in that thread, and even more interesting is how vehemently some of those guys defend the box waifus.”
Aside from some vague theories about the crossovers between headphones enthusiasts, anime fans, and tech workers with cash to burn, no one could provide a concrete answer to “why” IEM anime girls were ubiquitous. Moondrop, the company most frequently cited as popularizing them, did not respond in time for publication, either.
But, despite being fuzzy on the “why,” defenders are certain that they’d like to keep the girls around.
“Looks like harmless fun to me,” one user said. “It doesn’t make me want the product, but it’s not intended to appeal to me. It seems odd to be asking about it.” Hm. IEM Tony Soprano doesn’t want people asking questions. Suspicious.
“Why the hate !!!?? Lemme have my waifu. I need the yogurt waifu!” another user wrote repeatedly, more frenzied each time. “I need yogurt waifu moondrop? Please make it happen I will buy 10 pieces. Lol.”
Lol. Personally, I like some IEM girls, including Moondrop’s box art for the $20 Chu, a stoic figure with ashen bangs and eyes clear like freshwater. These less lewd drawings feel like patron saints or zodiac signs for techies, providing a strangely mystical way to imagine your headphones. Personifying them gives them a heart, and, I think, that might encourage preservation and care, things that are nice for the environment, your wallet, and your satisfaction.
Even so, I wish beautiful IEM art wasn’t limited to girls, or more “waifus” to be literally objectified and thrown away. Though many fans suggest “Asian culture” makes their waifu different from down-home misogyny, sexual IEM art is much like the racy souvenirs you find rusting in gas stations across the U.S.
Like breast-shaped salt shakers or keychains from Florida, many of which feminist artist Portia Munson documents in her silently damning drawings, IEM girls encourage men to think about women as pocket-sized ornaments, just something to keep around the house.
“These objects initially seem like a humorous and slightly shocking anomaly, showing the commodification of women’s bodies in tchotchkes,” says Munson’s website, “but, accumulated together, the sheer amount speaks to deeper issues surrounding society’s view of women as accessories.”
I’d like to see IEM girls valued more clearly for what advocates say they are, their collectibility and artistry, by being a part of a more dynamic box art practice that expands to include anime men, or landscapes, or fantasy creatures, or literally anything else. I’m getting bored of feeling like women are being used to sell tech, but aren’t welcome to it.
NEW YORK—In the wake of recent moves to reduce the size of its library in order to save on residual payments, streaming service HBO Max announced Thursday it would move forward with a plan to destroy all evidence that The Sopranos ever existed. “Once we have finished burning the 35-millimeter film on which the series was shot and deleting all digitized footage, we will begin confiscating millions of DVD box sets, which will then be steamrolled into tiny pieces and dumped into the Hudson River,” said CEO Casey Bloys, who explained that HBO would begin enforcing a unique noncompete clause in cast members’ contracts that would prohibit Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Lorraine Bracco, and other Sopranos stars from ever again taking an acting role and inadvertently reminding viewers of the show’s existence. “We have already bulldozed the structures used for exterior shots of Tony Soprano’s home and Satriale’s Pork Store, and will soon proceed with demolitions of the Lincoln Tunnel and the entirety of the New Jersey Turnpike.” Bloys confirmed that HBO had also directed its general counsel to send cease and desist letters to every Italian restaurant in the world that has baked ziti on the menu.
