Technology

New York State broke ground on Friday on its first offshore wind farm, kicking off a boom in similar projects aimed at transforming the state’s — and the nation’s — energy mix. The South Fork Wind project off the coast of Long Island is expected to be operational by the end of 2023. New York has the largest pipeline of offshore wind projects underway of any state in the nation, with five in active development. South Fork Wind is being billed as one of the first-ever commercial-scale offshore wind farms in North America. Once completed, it should be able to generate 130 megawatts (MW) of power — enough to power 70,000 homes in nearby East Hampton. That alone amounts to a major scaling up of offshore wind capacity in the US. The nation so far only has two operational wind farms along its coa...

Romance scammers made off with a total of $139 million in cryptocurrency last year, five times more than the amount stolen in 2020, according to a new report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Cryptocurrency payments made up the largest fraction of the $547 million lost to scammers in 2021, with victims losing $9,770 in crypto on average. Some scammers pretend to be “financial experts” who promise to invest their victims’ money Romance scammers (whom we could probably also call catfishers) often create fake social profiles using pictures taken from the internet, and then trick victims into sending them money, the FTC explains. They may claim to need money for some sort of financial crisis, but even more interestingly, some scammers pretend to be “financial experts” who promise to inv...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Meta over its use of facial recognition. The lawsuit, filed today in state district court, claims Meta’s Facebook photo tagging system violated the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier (CUBI) Act. It’s seeking financial damages and an end to any unauthorized use of Texans’ biometric data. The CUBI restrictions, which were passed in 2009, require obtaining informed consent before collecting biometric data like facial geometry. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook scanned user photos without asking for permission and downplayed the fact that its automated tagging system amounted to mass biometric data collection. It also echoes an earlier lawsuit’s claim that Instagram scans images for facial recognition, allegedly contradicting statements in i...

Cryptocurency companies aped in for yesterday’s Super Bowl LVI spotlight — spending millions from their marketing budget. The “Crypto Bowl” as fans are calling it, saw large trading platforms utilize one of the biggest media events of the year in an attempt to grab the attention of viewers at home, offering incentives to new and experienced users alike. At $7 million USD for every 30 seconds of advertisment air time, the spend is no joke and so only the biggest names came out to play. Names like Crypto.com, FTX, Coinbase, eToro, and even Bud Light got in on the action. Coinbase’s ad was pure genius. While it did leave some viewers confused, they elected to go lo-fi and referenced the old-school bouncing DVD logo screen saver. Rather than use a logo, they used a QR which gave new users $15 ...

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the UK tax authority, have seized 3 NFTs as part of a larger VAT fraud investigation that involved 250 alleged fake companies, BBC reported. Three people have already been arrested on suspicion of attempting to defraud HMRC of £1.4 million ($1.9 million USD). HMRC said that the suspects used “sophisticated methods” to hide their identities, such as false addresses and identities and pre-paid cell phones. In a first for UK law enforcement, authorities secured a court order and seized the suspects’ NFTs. The three NFTs have yet to be valued. Authorities also took cryptocurrency assets worth about £5,000 ($6,757 USD). Deputy director of economic crime Nick Sharp told BBC that the first-ever NFT seizure “serves as a warning to anyone who thinks they can use crypt...

Coinbase’s Super Bowl LVI commercial was so popular that it caused the company’s website to crash yesterday. The ad, which consisted solely of a QR code floating around the screen for 60 seconds, culminated with Coinbase URL and promotion for $15 USD in free Bitcoin. Customers simply had to sign up within the next two days to receive the complementary cryptocurrency. ICYMI ? Now that we have your attention we’d like to announce that we’re giving away $15 in BTC to anyone who joins Coinbase by 2/15. Click below for more info and RT to tell your friends! Sign up and see terms here → https://t.co/fKHisXZJJc pic.twitter.com/SDWUup2Ql5 — Coinbase (@coinbase) February 14, 2022 Right after airing, the URL received an influx of traffic, causing both the Coinbase website and app to go down. Users r...

Nvidia announced its RTX 3090 Ti with faster memory and better performance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January. After originally promising more information by the end of January, Nvidia has since remained silent about pricing or a release date for the RTX 3090 Ti. Now, the company is refusing to say what’s going on. “We don’t currently have more info to share on the RTX 3090 Ti, but we’ll be in touch when we do,” Nvidia spokesperson Jen Andersson recently told The Verge. Just days after Nvidia’s original announcement of the RTX 3090 Ti, TweakTown and VideoCardz reported that Nvidia had halted the production of the flagship GPU. The company had reportedly been planning to release the RTX 3090 Ti on January 27th, but BIOS and hardware issues have apparently led to delays....

The current generation of consoles, ushered in when the PS5 and Xbox Series X debuted in 2020, has been a messy one in many ways. The consoles themselves have been hard to find, and — with the ballooning costs of game development — few publishers have been willing to go all in with fully exclusive titles. So we’re left with games like Horizon Forbidden West, a tentpole release for Sony, which will launch simultaneously on the PS4 and PS5. Sometimes, this doesn’t turn out so well, like the disastrous cross-generation launch of Cyberpunk 2077. But that’s not the case here: the latest Horizon plays great no matter which PlayStation you own. To test this, I played through the first few hours of the game on both consoles; a launch version of the PS5 and a base PS4 model. In terms of pure visual...

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who flew to Earth orbit on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule last year, plans to fly with SpaceX again. Today, Isaacman announced that he’s purchased three additional upcoming flights with SpaceX, a series of missions called “Polaris” that would take him deeper into space on the company’s spacecraft. Isaacman, who made his fortune through his payment processing company Shift4 Payments, made headlines last year when he bankrolled an entire SpaceX Crew Dragon passenger mission in September, dubbed Inspiration4. He filled the three remaining seats on the vehicle with other civilian astronauts, including a childhood cancer survivor, an engineer, and a professor. The quartet all trained and eventually flew to orbit together on a three-day trip while raising money for ...

Snapchat is introducing a new way for creators on the app to earn money. The platform is testing mid-roll ads that appear in the Stories of a small group of US creators, with a wider rollout happening in the coming months. When an ad is placed within a Snap Star’s Story, Snapchat will share the revenue with the creators. The company says the revenue share is based on a formula that takes into account metrics like posting frequency and engagement. The feature is only available to Snap Stars, who are creators or public figures with large followings that have been verified on Snapchat, indicated by a gold star. In recent years, Snapchat has added various ways for creators to monetize their presence on the app. Snapchat users already see ads in between friends’ Stories and on the Discover sect...

I didn’t much care for Aloy, the main character of Horizon Forbidden West. I think she’s the least interesting person in the cast of characters who surround her, and her serious-yet-aloof nature doesn’t really endear her to me. And though the world Horizon presents is intriguing, the story constructed for it falls victim to some late-game twists that defy explanation. And yet, despite being less than enamored with the story and characters, the thing I primarily play video games for, I willingly and enthusiastically spent 64 hours across two weeks hunting, exploring, crafting, and fighting and would happily do so again. This review contains light spoilers. Horizon Forbidden West picks up six months after the end of Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy, faced with a new threat to the planet, leaves her f...

Keen-eyed observers might have spotted something a little off about the digital notepad used by Mok Shaiz’s majordomo in last week’s finale of The Book of Boba Fett. As pointed out by Mike Mika on Twitter, rather than the hi-tech instrument you might expect, the prop held by actor David Pasquesi appears to be a tabletop Coleco Bowlaltronic toy from the 1980s. Boba Fett thus continues Star Wars’ proud tradition of repurposing ordinary household objects as sci-fi gadgets in its galaxy far, far away. Perhaps the most famous example crops up in Episode V, when an extra can be seen in the background of Cloud City carrying what appears to be a household ice cream maker. This being Star Wars, the background character eventually received an entire backstory, while the prop itself has now been indu...