Technology

If you’re like me and still recovering from the emotional devastation of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, take heart; it’s time for a Newfound Adventure. Patch 6.1 Newfound Adventure is the first major content patch for Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker. In a Live Letter developer presentation, game director Naoki Yoshida revealed details about the patch, including new mounts, new hairstyles, new PvP battles and, of course, a new story. Newfound Adventure picks up where Endwalker left off. Your friends, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, have scattered across Eorzea doing their own thing now that they’ve prevented the end of all life in the galaxy. Events conspire to reunite the gang for some good old-fashioned low-stakes adventuring. While I’m excited by the prospect of my Warrior of Light returning...

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who previously served as an executive at the company, received a payday totaling $212.7 million USD in total compensation last year, according to the New York Post. Per a proxy filing disclosed earlier today, Jassy’s compensation package is almost entirely made up of stock in the company. Only $175,000 USD of the payday was derived from Jassy’s salary as CEO, while he received $211.9 million USD in stock when he was promoted last July. Amazon said that the stock will vest from 2023 to 2031 and will “represent most of Mr. Jassy’s compensation for the coming years.” If Jassy leaves Amazon before that period, he may not receive that entire stock amount. “Faced with the first CEO succession in the Company’s history, the Leadership Development and Compensation Commit...

A Facebook bug has reportedly been channeling misinformation to a majority of users’ News Feeds for months. According to new reports, an issue with the social media platform’s ranking algorithm has led to a “surge of misinformation” being featured, leading to “as much as half of all News Feed views.” The algorithm normally down-ranks misinformation that has been debunked, but instead, views rose “up to 30 percent” last fall, and other posts that were also meant to be demoted weren’t being caught by the algorithm. “During the bug period, Facebook’s systems failed to properly demote nudity, violence, and even Russian state media the social network recently pledged to stop recommending in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine,” according to The Verge. Most notably, the “massive r...

Modern smartwatches have a wide array of heart-rate monitoring features. That includes passive all-day monitoring as well as spot checks for specific metrics. Some will even alert you if your heart rate suddenly spikes when it shouldn’t. The most advanced devices also have FDA-cleared electrocardiograms that may help detect atrial fibrillation. These are impressive features considering that, just a decade ago, smartwatches were basically pedometers. In practice, heart rate monitoring can be a helpful tool for people hoping to understand more about their bodies or measure their fitness progress over time. For instance, some athletes prefer to train in heart rate zones — which is hard to do unless you can check it in real time. There have also been several stories of people who say their sma...

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg unveiled stricter fuel economy standards today that he said would save Americans money at the pump, as well as help reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change. “When these standards take effect, Americans buying a new vehicle will spend less on gas than they would have if we hadn’t taken this step,” Buttigieg said at a Friday news conference in Washington, DC. “We estimate that today’s rule will prevent 5.5 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide from going into our atmosphere between now and 2050.” By 2026, the average new vehicle in the US will get 49 miles of travel per gallon of gasoline (mpg) under the revised Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, Buttigieg said. The new standards will increase fuel efficiency by 8 percent annually for mo...

We’re kicking off April Fools’ Day with a deal that’s dead serious. For today only, Best Buy is knocking $100 off the price of the unlocked Samsung Galaxy S22. The 128GB and 256GB models of the S22 are currently discounted to $699.99 and $749.99, respectively. Just note that this discount only applies to the standard model of the S22, not the S22 Plus or Ultra. You don’t have to activate this phone when you purchase it either, just make sure to select “activate later” before adding it to your cart. This is the first discount we’ve seen on the latest model of Samsung’s smartphone since its release, making this a prime opportunity to upgrade. The S22 features an impressive array of specs, including a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, a 50MP main rear camera that reviewer Allison Johnson says deliv...

In the past few years, the phrase “HIPAA violation” has been thrown around a lot, often incorrectly. People have cited the law, which protects patient health information, as a reason they can’t be asked if they’re vaccinated or get a doctor’s note for an employer. But asking someone if they’re vaccinated isn’t actually a HIPAA violation. That’s a fine and not-illegal thing for one non-doctor to ask another non-doctor. What is a HIPAA violation is what U. Phillip Igbinadolor, a dentist in North Carolina, did in September 2015, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. After a patient left an anonymous, negative Google review, he logged on and responded with his own post on the Google page, saying that the patient missed scheduled appointments. “Does he deserve any rating as ...

Twitter is trying out a new feature that allows multiple users to co-author a tweet. While the feature, entitled Collaborations, isn’t yet publicly available, a version was first spotted in the app’s code by mobile developer Alessandro Paluzzi, according to TechCrunch. In December, Paluzzi saw that Twitter was working on Collaborations. He later spotted a mobile button for the feature on the tweet composer screen, as well as a demo of how the co-authors’ profile photos would appear on tweets. Twitter now seems to have taken its development of Collaborations a step further. A screenshot shared by Paluzzi shows that users can invite other accounts to collaborate with them on a tweet. Once they accept, the tweet will be published and they’ll be indicated as a co-author and the tweet will also...

Dell’s new stylus, the Premier Rechargeable Active Pen, has a neat trick up its sleeve that makes it easier to find when misplaced. It features built-in finding technology provided by Tile, which means you can use the object-tracing company’s app to make the stylus buzz and flash its LED lights to help you find it when it’s nearby. If you lose it further afield, Tile says its app will be able to show its last known location, and use its network to track it down. The stylus is Tile’s latest foray into building its tracking technology into third-party devices. It’s been working with Intel for a couple of years to help track lost laptops, and says Tile’s tracking network can now help find compatible HP, MSI, and Fujitsu PCs. Its tracking tech can also be found in headphones from Sennheiser an...

Heart Machine, developers of the acclaimed, stylish, and difficult 2D action RPG Hyper Light Drifter, have announced a new game set in the same universe: Hyper Light Breaker. Available via Steam Early Access some time in Spring 2023, Hyper Light Breaker is a 3D title with single player and co-op modes. As per the game’s Steam page, players will: Enter the Overgrowth, a new land in the world of Hyper Light. Play alone or with friends to explore massive biomes, defeat brutal monsters, create new builds, survive the mysterious Crowns and overthrow the almighty Abyss King in this action rogue-lite adventure from the creators of Hyper Light Drifter. An announcement trailer only shows a few glimpses of pre-alpha gameplay after an animated fight scene that matches the balletic action style of the...

The live-action Halo show on Paramount Plus is already onto its second episode this week, but the first one is now available for free on YouTube. As long as you’re in the US, you can access the first episode of Halo on YouTube. The Halo show is nothing like the games, and Verge video games reporter Ash Parrish, a self-confessed Halo lore hobbyist, says it “offers a far more compelling look at the Master Chief than anything the games have done so far.” Halo stars Pablo Schreiber of American Gods as Master Chief, Natascha McElhone of Californication as Dr. Halsey, and Jen Taylor, the voice actress for Cortana in the Halo games, as Master Chief’s AI assistant. The show has already been renewed for a second season, and debuted on Paramount Plus on March 24th. [embedded content] This isn’t the ...