Technology

Universal’s Nope from director Jordan Peele is one of the rare modern movies with this much hype around it to make it this close to its release date without the public knowing basically anything about it. Building up that sort of suspense is a huge gamble on the studio’s part that could go either way, but Nope’s first trailer certainly creates the impression that Peele’s gone and done it again — “it” here meaning “dreamed up something terrible and turned it into a work of art we’re all going to become obsessed with.” Nope’s first trailer introduces Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer’s two cattle ranching characters who spend their days working with horses on farms while dreaming of making it big as professional horse handlers for film productions. Just when it seems as if the pair might be on ...

According to reports, a CryptoPunks NFT has been sold for a record-breaking 8,000 ETH (approximately $23.7 million USD). Verified by the CryptoPunks Bot Twitter, the sale of CryptoPunk #5822 serves as the biggest CryptoPunks NFT purchase in history. The NFT was purchased by Deepak Thapliyal, the CEO of Chain, who goes by the name of Deepak.eth on the Ethereum blockchain. The staggering 8,000 ETH transaction smashes the previous record sale of the “COVID Alien” CryptoPunk #7523 at Sotheby’s “Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale” back in June, 2021. Deepak also took to Twitter to tease and announce his record-breaking purchase. Punk 5822 bought for 8,000 ETH ($23,702,160.16 USD) by 0x69c488 from 0x7eb28b. https://t.co/n9OIDRY3WB #cryptopunks #ethereum pic.twitter.com/tFSy3bRX6n — CryptoPunks...

Meta has debuted its Quest 2 Super Bowl ad ahead of the big game, and it’s hard to get a grasp on how exactly it’s supposed to promote the metaverse (via Wall Street Journal). It evokes a strange mix of nostalgia — and the slight fear — associated with a childhood spent around unsettling animatronics, all while simultaneously giving off Five Nights at Freddy’s and Black Mirror vibes. The commercial opens in a Chuck E. Cheese-esque environment — so cleverly called Questy’s — with a fuzzy animatronic dog, a pink six-armed creature, and two penguins performing Simple Mind’s “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” on stage at the arcade. Soon after, a moving crew drags the lifeless bodies of the animatronic band out of the building as the location shuts down for good. The animatronic dog lays helplessly...

If you’re using Zoom on a Mac, now’s the time to make sure it’s updated to version 5.9.3. Zoom has acknowledged a bug that appears to cause the microphone on Macs running macOS Monterey to stay on even after leaving a meeting, first reported by The Register (via 9to5Mac). The bug causes the mic indicator light on macOS Monterey to appear when Zoom isn’t in use.Screenshot: Dan Seifert Users have been complaining about the issue since December, as documented in a post on Zoom’s community forum. Several users noticed that the orange recording indicator light in the Control Center appears when Zoom isn’t being used — the indicator light is a privacy feature introduced in Monterey that warns you when an application is using your microphone. This obviously raised some privacy concerns, given Zoo...

Lost Ark has comfortably passed 1 million concurrent players after just 24 hours, becoming the second most played game in Steam history by concurrent counts. The Diablo-like MMO launched yesterday in the West, after Amazon Games collaborated with Smilegate RPG to localize and translate Lost Ark and make it available in English. It has now passed concurrent records for both Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2, which regularly dominate the top of Steam’s most-played games. Lost Ark is so popular right now that it has experienced server issues and there’s a queue just to start playing. SteamDB lists concurrent players of Lost Ark at 1,311,842, passing CS:GO’s record of 1,308,963 players and Dota 2’s of 1,295,114. It’s not clear exactly how many of those players are actually actively p...

The first embroidery stitch María Méndez Rodríguez learned at the age of 7 was the chain stitch. It’s the same one that, years later, she would teach to her seven children. At 42, Méndez has mastered advanced stitches like the closed buttonhole and rococo. She’s now diving back into the drawing process, trying to evolve from the traditional motifs of flowers and leaves she embroiders on blouses to better reflect the flora in her community. Like many of the Tzeltales women in the community of Aguacatenango, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, Méndez spends hours every week embroidering a single blouse. Back pain, finger pain, and eyestrain are common. Despite the long hours and creative details that their designs entail, the creations of Méndez and other artists in the community often...

MoviePass is set to return this summer after being swooped up and resuscitated by its original co-founder Stacy Spikes. During a launch presentation on Thursday, Spikes took the stage in New York to hype the relaunch of his embattled movie ticket subscription service. There was plenty of fanfare and, somewhat bizarrely, references to Web3 technology. But one thing that Spikes didn’t mention on stage was MoviePass’ metaverse aims. “Some of the players in the metaverse right now are a little game-y, when I feel like you want to just watch the movie,” Spikes tells The Verge. “You don’t need fake popcorn; you don’t need tomatoes; you don’t need other things that are in there. And that’s where we’re looking at it, and it’s something we’re taking seriously that we feel we will have a presence in...

Netflix is gearing up to create a documentary series about the couple who allegedly laundered $4.5 billion worth of stolen Bitcoin (via Variety). This comes just days after Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were arrested in connection with the crimes — and not long after many of us (regrettably) became aware of Morgan’s rapping alter-ego, Razzlekhan, aka the “Crocodile of Wall Street.” The couple allegedly attempted to launder the stolen funds by buying gold and NFTs The docuseries will be directed by Chris Smith, the executive producer behind the bizarre hit Tiger King and director of FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. Nick Bilton, whose portfolio includes a documentary about the Theranos scandal, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, will serve as executive produce...

Fortnite fans have solved an Epic Games puzzle to reveal an Uncharted crossover coming to the game on February 17th. Tom Holland will star in Fortnite for a second time, thanks to a new skin in his portrayal as Nathan Drake in the upcoming Uncharted movie that hits theaters on February 18th. The original Nathan Drake character and Chloe Frazier will also be available in both movie and video game forms inside Fortnite. Epic Games started teasing the collaboration late on Friday with a treasure hunt website, days after leakers spotted code inside Fortnite that pointed towards an “Uncharted treasure map.” Players had to solve a 14-character password, with some creators getting clues along the way. The password, sicparvismagna, was solved in a matter of minutes, leading to the Uncharted Fortni...

It’s Saturday, and hopefully that means you get a chance for some R-and-R-and-D: rest, relaxation, and deals. We’ve pooled together some great tech deals to help with those first two parts. When it comes to relaxing, what puts your mind at-ease more than some twitch-response PC games? If that describes you, you might like this deal on LG’s Ultragear 27-inch QHD monitor with 2560 x 1440 resolution and 144Hz refresh rate. It’s $279.99 ($100 off) at Amazon. That is the lowest price to date for this IPS panel with a one millisecond response time. That combination of a high refresh rate and low response time, along with Nvidia G-Sync compatibility for combating screen tearing makes it ideal for fast-action games like first-person shooters and fighting games. And, since it doesn’t go too hard on...