Technology

Barry McCarthy, Peloton’s new CEO, weighs an app store and new subscription model as potential ways to kickstart the company’s stagnant sales, as stated in an interview with the New York Times’ DealBook. “It could be an open platform and part of the creator economy” McCarthy, who served as the former chief financial officer of Spotify and Netflix, says his vision for Peloton may include an app store open to third-party content. “Today, it’s a closed platform — but it could be an open platform and part of the creator economy,” McCarthy tells the NYT. “What other apps would you put on it? Could it be running an app store?” He also downplays the importance of hardware when it comes to Peloton’s fitness equipment. McCarthy suggests the most valuable experiences come from on-screen interaction ...

Epic Games is hiring its US-based contingent workers full-time and with benefits, Epic confirmed to The Verge. The Fortnite developer is extending the offer to quality assurance (QA) testers, as well as other “eligible” contract-based employees. The news first surfaced in an employee-facing memo obtained by The Verge. In the memo, the company writes it will “offer full-time at-will employment to eligible US-based contingent workers,” and that “many of those offers will be effective April 4th, 2022.” But it also notes that some workers won’t receive the offer, citing “there are a few exceptions in which it makes sense for both the worker and Epic to maintain contingent worker status.” “Most but not all” are quality assurance (QA) testers Epic spokesperson Elka Looks told The Verge that the ...

The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has responded to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s claims that the agency has subjected him and his electric car company to “endless, unfounded investigations,” first reported by the Wall Street Journal. In a letter to Judge Alison Nathan, the SEC refutes Musk’s allegations that it’s ignoring its commitment to distribute $40 million in fine money to Tesla shareholders, which Musk and Tesla had paid as part of a 2018 settlement. The SEC is still working on a plan to distribute $40 million to Tesla shareholders “Given the complexity of the distribution, it has taken time to develop the plan of allocation,” SEC official Steve Buchholz writes in the letter. “That process is nearing completion and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, the Distributions staff expe...

After more than two weeks of chaotic protest, this week, the Canadian government pushed back. On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the country’s Emergencies Act, enabling new financial restrictions on the protests and signaling harsh new penalties against anyone involved. For many Canadians, it’s an overdue end to a chaotic protest that has stifled trade and brought alarming weaponry into otherwise quiet communities. But right-wing supporters have a wildly different view of events: figures like Tucker Carlson have portrayed the convoy as a working-class rebellion, and Trudeau’s response has been treated as enacting martial law, leading Elon Musk to tweet (and then delete) a meme comparing Trudeau to Adolf Hitler. It’s a shocking split, arguably the single most importa...

I know Saturdays are usually for sleeping in, but I hope you don’t sleep on this round of deals. Drop has a very special sale on its exclusive collection of MT3 profile keycaps for Cherry-style mechanical keyboards. You can buy two base or ortholinear sets of keycaps and get them for the price of one when you use code MT3FREE until Sunday, February 20th. That may sound like a jumble of confusing jargon for the mechanical keyboard uninitiated, but that’s ok, because we’re here to help people learn as well as save. Drop’s signature MT3 keycaps have a deeply scalloped contour for your fingers to gently rest in as you type. They fit most Cherry MX keyboard switches — the most commonly used type out there — and they’re made of high quality ABS or PBT plastics. They’re designed by Matt3o, and co...

Vampire Survivors is an Early Access roguelike on Steam that has completely sunk its teeth into me. Each round starts simply: you have just one weapon to take on a few baddies. The weapon autofires, so you only have to worry about moving your character to avoid enemies and scoop up experience gems. But as you level up, get more weapons, and fight more monsters, your screen quickly becomes filled with a smorgasbord of magical weapons and fearsome enemies covering nearly every inch of the screen. Like so: Despite this apparent chaos, I promise you I felt fully in control.Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge The sensory barrage of colors and sounds can almost feel like being in an arcade or a casino — which is what Luca Galante, Vampire Survivors’ developer, was going for. Galante previously ...

Carbon capture tech that’s often sold as a solution for cutting greenhouse gas emissions from heavy industry — the most difficult sector to decarbonize — is still far off track from accomplishing that, according to a recent analysis by financial services firm ING. The pipeline of new carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, which aim to remove CO2 from power plants’ and industrial facilities’ emissions, is growing. But the majority of projects expected to come online this decade don’t tackle industrial pollution. Instead, the biggest growth is expected to be in carbon capture paired with fossil fuel power plants, similar to how the majority of the 40 million metric tons of CCS capacity the world has today is used in natural gas processing. The biggest growth is expected to be in carbon c...

The story of BitConnect doesn’t include any rapping Forbes bloggers slash money launderers or dubiously-obtained ape JPGs, but this “pyramid-on-Ponzi” case has spawned a court ruling (PDF, embedded below, via @stephendpalley) that should serve as a warning for influencers: they could be held liable for peddling shady crypto investments. In case you’ve forgotten this particular scam, BitConnect’s promoters told its victims that if they handed over their Bitcoin for a period of time, their crypto would be used by an automated trading bot that would return huge profits. None of that was true, and the operators instead paid off older investors with funds from the new ones, bringing in $10 million per week at its peak. All told, the scam took in more than $2 billion worth of investments. Solici...

Microsoft shocked the tech and gaming world on January 18th when it announced it would acquire Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal, by far the biggest ever in gaming. Activision Blizzard, one of the most storied developers on the planet, had been reeling for months from multiple scandals, including California’s lawsuit accusing the company of creating a culture of “constant sexual harassment,” an explosive Wall Street Journal report suggesting CEO Bobby Kotick was both aware of that harassment and sexually harassed employees himself, and labor protests from Call of Duty workers. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer, at the time the company’s Xbox chief, reportedly responded to the accusations from the WSJ article two days later in an email to Xbox staff, saying he was “disturbed and deeply tro...

Debuting only a week ago, Lost Ark has shot to the top of the Steam charts, amassing over 1 million concurrent players making it the most played game on Steam (based on number of concurrents) of all time. Developed by Smilegate RPG, Lost Ark is a Korean MMO that debuted there in 2018 before being localized in English and brought to the west via a partnership with Amazon Games. Though it’s only been around in the US and Europe for a short time, it has over 200,000 viewers on Twitch right now and has beaten games like Dota 2, CS:GO, and PUBG in all-time number of concurrent players on Steam. So what the hell is a Lost Ark anyway? I spent a week investigating this new gaming hotness, eager to see if it has what it takes to become my newest obsession or something I’m content to let others obse...

Banning cheaters doesn’t always work because they can usually make another account. So games like Call of Duty are increasingly looking for ways to make it less fun for people to exploit their games — and the latest idea gives honest players a cheat of their own. The new “Damage Shield” in Call of Duty Warzone’s new Ricochet anti-cheat software makes a cheater’s bullets bounce right off you, so you can close in while they hilariously flail around and then destroy them yourself. You can see YouTuber TimTheTatman show it off right here, roughly a minute and 13 seconds into this video: [embedded content] In a blog post announcing the feature, Activision says it only activates “when the server detects a cheater is tampering with the game in real-time,” and that there’s “no possibility for the ...