Technology

An amateur NFT creator in Indonesian has just defied all logic with his school project. Ghozali Ghozalo uploaded a set of 933 selfies he took from 2017 – 2021 onto to NFT platform OpenSea where they were offered to the public for roughly $3 USD an image. With the help of celebrity chef Arnold Poernomo, some adventurous degen NFT hunters, and a collective that just wanted to help Ghozali Ghozalo out, the floor price shot up to 0.9 ETH (~$3,000 USD) per NFT before retracing. This NFT came out of nowhere and currently has a total traded volume of over $1 million USD. Since the explosion in Ghozali Everyday, Ghozalo has become a local hero appearing on multiple news outlets in Indonesia. Ghozali happened…the year of Gozali @Ghozali_Ghozalu pic.twitter.com/HKOw7FZddj — Arnold Poernomo (@ArnoldP...

Marvel’s Eternals from director Chloé Zhao was a film of many firsts for the studio, but it would be a bit inaccurate to say that it featured the MCU’s first sex scene, as a lot of people seem to think it did. Daredevil and the rest of the Netflix / Marvel gang spent seasons getting it in over in their neck of the cinematic universe, and those shows very much laid some groundwork for Eternals’ much-tamer take on superpowered sex. Eternals’ sex scene might not technically be Marvel’s first, or particularly “fun” to watch, but it’s one of the movie’s more clever ways of stating the obvious about how its story is going to end. This essay contains spoilers for Marvel’s Eternals. Throughout Eternals, an emotionally-inert foray into the cosmic origins of Marvel’s cinematic universe, there are mu...

“Baby Shark” became the most-viewed YouTube video of all time in November 2020, and just over a year later, it has achieved another huge milestone: it has become the first YouTube video to surpass 10 billion views. “Baby Shark” is a cultural touchstone at this point. I remember singing it at summer camps as a kid growing up, and given the record-breaking popularity of the music video (which was created by the entertainment company Pinkfong), it seems I’m not the only person who will never forget this song. (I’ve been idly tapping my foot to the beat in my head the entire time I’ve been writing this post.) But the song’s impact doesn’t stop with the earworm hit. There’s also a Baby Shark show on Nickelodeon, a Baby Shark movie, and yes, as you may have feared, Baby Shark NFTs. If you’re cur...

Did you struggle with Wordle today? I sure as hell did, racking up my second ever failure since I started playing the game at the beginning of the year. I was annoyed at myself more than the puzzle and eased that frustration by sharing my results on Twitter. As I did, I realized why the game’s auto-generated grids of emoji are so brilliant. It’s not just that they’re social (though that certainly helps), nor is it that they’re intriguing (there’s no link to the game and no explanation for the uninitiated as to what the emoji mean). No, it’s because each grid tells a story with wonderful concision. With just 30 squares and three colors, Wordle’s emoji results convey narratives of luck, frustration, perseverance, and failure; each grid a miniature story, like a landscape painted in a matchbo...

Democrats and Republicans are getting behind a new bill, introduced Thursday, that would force tech companies to simplify the language in their terms of service agreements, making it easier for consumers to understand. The Terms-of-service Labeling, Design and Readability Act – or TLDR for short – would require websites to provide a “summary statement” for users before they opt in to a terms of service agreement. The statement would summarize the legal jargon into something more easily understood by the average user, along with disclosing any recent data breaches (from the three years) and the types of sensitive data the site may collect. The summary would also explain “whether a consumer can delete their data, and if so, provide instructions on how.” “For far too long, blanket terms of se...

Leica has unveiled its new M11 model, confirming rumors about the launch including the recent arrival of first-look images and specification details. The M11 mixes traditional rangefinder photography with up-to-date camera technology, allowing photographers a maximum amount of flexibility when using it. Stand-out features include a triple resolution sensor, expanded ISO range, dual memory, extended battery life and a more streamlined menu system. The model also builds on the traditional look of a Leica M, adding a new focus on efficiency and ergonomics to its design, with a new layout surrounding the 2.3 million pixel touch screen. Other specifications include a sensivity range of ISO 65 to 50,000, a Maestro III processor for fluid and responsive operation, potential shutter speed of up to...

Chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which supplies silicon for Apple, Qualcomm, and other tech giants, plans to spend as much as $44 billion to increase its manufacturing capacity in 2022, Reuters reports. In its latest earnings release, the Taiwanese firm said it expects capital spending to be between $40 and $44 billion in 2022, up from a previous record of $30 billion in 2021. It’s not an entirely unexpected increase, given the company’s previously announced plan to spend $100 billion on expanding its manufacturing capacity through 2023. But the record sum suggests it doesn’t expect demand for chips to slow down anytime soon, despite some analyst warnings of potentials slowdowns in areas like smartphones, the Financial Times notes. TSMC’s reasoning is th...

There’s a category in the smartphone market that has emerged over the past few years that I’ll call “value flagships.” Buying one feels a little like getting away with something — nearly all the features of a high-end device with a significantly lower price. Phones like the iPhone SE, Pixel A-series, and Samsung’s Galaxy S20 FE are classics of the genre, combining the right features for the right price at the right time. With its second entry in the category — the Galaxy S21 FE — Samsung is just a little off the mark on all the elements that would have made this a great value flagship. The S21 FE arrives very late in the S21 family’s product cycle, taking some of the shine off of the “this year’s flagship for less” appeal. It also offers just about everything you get from the standard S21,...

Tesla has never been fantastic at meeting deadlines, so it’s not too surprising that the company’s ambitious electric pickup — the Cybertruck — is running a little late. Recently, reference to a 2022 production schedule was scrubbed from its website. The Cybertruck was originally announced in 2019, with Tesla promising that the vehicle would be rolling off production lines in late 2021. Then, in August that year, full production was delayed to some time in 2022. Now, that deadline seems to have been waived, too. As first spotted by Edmunds, the order page on Tesla’s Cybertruck site previously told buyers: “You will be able to complete your configuration as production nears in 2022.” Now, it just says: “You will be able to complete your configuration as production nears,” with archives of t...

Back in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, people who wanted to get together while staying safe from infection discovered that they could meet with friends, families, and co-workers via videoconferencing software. Maybe because many of them were already using Zoom at work for videoconferencing, that app almost immediately became the flavor of the day. There were a few hiccups along the way — possibly because Zoom was meant to be primarily a business app. At first, while Zoom included some methods that could be used to safeguard meetings, those features could be hard to find, especially if you hadn’t used the app before. Meetings began to be interrupted by unwanted intruders who would purposely cause disruptions, often in extremely nasty ways (a problem that was soon named “Zoombombin...

Research from the Bank of America now suggests that Solana could become the “Visa of the digital asset ecosystem.” In a research note from the institution to its clients after hosting the Solana Foundation’s member Lily Liu, the bank said that the Solana blockchain could very well become an equivalent of Visa for the world of cryptocurrency and NFTs thanks to its focus on scalability, ease of use and low transaction fees. “Solana prioritizes scalability, but a relatively less decentralized and secure blockchain has trade-offs, illustrated by several network performance issues since inception,” Bank of America analyst Alkesh Shah wrote in the note. “Ethereum prioritizes decentralization and security, but at the expense of scalability, which has led to periods of network congestion and trans...