Technology

MediaTek has just announced its latest flagship processor: the Dimensity 9000, the company’s most powerful chip ever that looks like it should be able to go head to head with the best chips that more popular competitors like Qualcomm and Samsung offer. Where previous top-tier Dimensity chips (like last year’s Dimensity 1000) were still less powerful than contemporaries like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 or Samsung’s Exynos 2100, the new Dimensity 9000 is coming out of the gate to make a case for 2022 Android flagships. The new Dimensity 9000 is the first mobile chip to be built on TSMC’s 4nm process, in addition to using Arm’s new v9 architecture. It’s also the first announcement CPU to use Arm’s new core designs: a single Cortex-X2 performance core clocked at 3.05GHz, three Cortex-A710 cores ...

Police in Hamilton, Ontario in Canada arrested a teenager in connection to a $46 million CAD ($36 million USD) cryptocurrency heist — the largest cryptocurrency theft by a single individual ever reported. Hamilton Police joined forces with the FBI and the United States Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force in March 2020. The investigation centered around a U.S.-based victim who had a large amount of cryptocurrency stolen from them. Police say the individual had been targeted by a SIM swap attack, a type of fraud that involves a scammer manipulating mobile phone networks to assume the phone number of someone else and bypass any two-factor authentication processes tied to the victim’s phone. As a result of this attack, the victim had about $46 million CAD ($36 million USD) stolen. Poli...

Microsoft‘s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, told employees that he is “evaluating all aspects” of its relationship with Activision Blizzard in the wake of a major sexual misconduct scandal. In an email to staff seen by Bloomberg on Thursday, Spencer said he and other leaders were “disturbed and deeply troubled by the horrific events and actions” that transpired at Activision Blizzard, one of the largest video game publishers in the world. Allegations first surfaced in July after California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard over its culture of “constant sexual harassment” and “frat boy” culture. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard‘s longtime CEO, knew about ...

LG first said in January that Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service was headed to some of its TVs, and now, it’s finally here — though as a beta. LG is rolling out the beta this week for “select 2021 LG 4K OLED, QNED Mini LED, and NanoCell TV models in 80 markets,” according to a press release. GeForce Now lets you play PC games you own on other devices via the cloud, and this new webOS app will make it easier to use the service on a bigger screen. That said, games will be capped at 60fps and 1080p resolution — you won’t be able to play GeForce Now games in 4K via the webOS app. (That feature is currently exclusive to Nvidia’s Shield TV set-top box.) Every GeForce Now tier is supported, Nvidia tells The Verge, including the new tier that lets you play games on its dedicated RTX 3080 po...

A quickly assembled group of crypto enthusiasts who crowdfunded an astonishing $47 million in funds to bid for a rare copy of the US Constitution lost out to a bidder with deeper pockets. The group, ConstitutionDAO, said in an update on Discord that they did not win the auction at Sotheby’s tonight, which sold for a total of $43.2 million. The DAO’s organizers believed they would not have enough money to “insure, store, and transport the document” if they had made a higher bid. The group assembled over the past week, mostly, it seems, because it seemed like a bunch of randos on the internet buying an important historical document would be a funny thing to do. Somehow, they managed to get enough interest to raise a huge sum in Ether. The organizers say they will refund all contributors, min...

In what may be one of the better pieces of performance art this year, Australian Geoffrey Huntley has created a website that promises to let you torrent an entire blockchain’s worth of NFTs. It’s called, appropriately, The NFT Bay, and it’s an almost exact replica of the famous pirating site (with an added cheeky DMCA takedown link). As a site, it seems to do what it says on the tin, but as a statement it could spark an interesting discussion around what it means if you claim ownership over something on the internet. Pretty much every link on the site (except for the one that’s a Rick Roll) will eventually lead you to the description page, which would look right at home on the real Pirate Bay (according to my friend, who is definitely not me because I’ve never pirated anything). At the bot...

Today we heard Elizabeth Holmes speak in court — through recordings made for a Fortune article by Roger Parloff. In those recordings, Holmes claims that Theranos worked with the military, was currently working with pharmaceutical companies, that the company could do more than a thousand tests on its proprietary machines, and that the results were “at the highest level of quality.” None of this was true. Parloff has about 10 hours of taped conversations with Holmes Lying to reporters is not illegal, but it’s generally a bad idea since we tend to record our conversations. We’ve heard a lot about Parloff’s article in US v Elizabeth Holmes, because it was frequently sent to prospective investors as part of the materials Holmes supplied about the company. Parloff has about 10 hours of taped con...

Facebook parent company Meta said it is testing new ways for users to customize the content they see in their News Feeds. The company said in a blog post Thursday that the test, available to a “small percentage” of users to start, would allow people to adjust their preferences to increase or reduce the amount of content they see from specific friends, family, groups, and pages they’re connected with on the platform. Facebook has tweaked the way the News Feed presents content numerous times in the past several years and seems to keep rethinking what content should be prioritized and why. In 2015, it said it was changing News Feeds to favor content from close friends over that from brands and publishers. In 2016, Facebook said again it would adjust its algorithm so posts from friends would g...

A year into the computer chip shortage that’s heavily affecting vehicle production, Ford announced a collaboration with chipmaker GlobalFoundries Inc., as The Wall Street Journal first reported. Ford’s press release about the non-binding agreement is light on specifics but mentions plans “to advance semiconductor manufacturing and technology development within the United States.” Without committing to building any plants, the two companies say they will “explore expanded semiconductor manufacturing opportunities to support the automotive industry.” Speaking during an event later in the day, GM CEO Mark Reuss said his company is working to co-develop new chips with many semiconductor partners like Qualcomm, TSMC, and others. Ford’s VP of vehicle embedded software and controls, Chuck Gray, t...

ExxonMobil’s spending spree during yesterday’s lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico was significant, experts say, because the company might use the area for something other than oil and gas extraction. Experts outside the company speculate that ExxonMobil wants to use Gulf waters for a novel purpose: sequestering captured carbon dioxide. The Biden administration auctioned off vast tracts of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas companies yesterday in one of the largest federal lease sales in recent years. The sale drew sharp criticism from environmental groups, which say that allowing new oil and gas development is incompatible with America meeting its climate goals. But it’s possible that Exxon — the biggest bidder in yesterday’s sale — isn’t planning on extracting new fossil fuels at all. The co...

A group of state attorneys general has announced an investigation into “the techniques utilized by Meta to increase the frequency and duration of engagement” of children and teens on Instagram and the negative effects that may cause (via The Wall Street Journal). The group, which includes officials from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, and Vermont, accuses the company of doing this despite reports that its own research showed its platform could have a negative effect on young people. The research in question was exposed in a report from the Wall Street Journal, which said the company’s own documents show “Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls.” It was later discussed in a Senate hearing, where Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said th...