Technology

After a tease last week, Fortnite’s highly anticipated collaboration with Naruto is finally here. Starting Tuesday, you’ll be able to play as characters from the hugely popular anime series Naruto: Shippuden in Epic Games’ hit battle royale. There will be four Naruto characters that are now available in the in-game item shop — Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno, and Kakashi Hatake — as well as a Naruto glider, two emotes, and two loading screens. But Fortnite isn’t just getting Naruto skins. A throwable paper bomb kunai is being added as a weapon to the game. You’ll be able to meet Kakashi Hatake as an NPC on the Fortnite island and get quests from him. And there will be an entire Naruto-themed Creative map you can explore based on the Hidden Leaf Village from the anime. You’ll s...

Google is adding a handful of new features to Google Maps in time for the holiday season, which collectively should make getting around a slightly less fraught experience. The new features were announced in a blog post today. A new “Area Busyness” feature provides information on how popular neighborhoods are rather than just specific destinations, while the app’s “Directory” tab is rolling out globally to give more info on the stores and amenities inside locations like malls and airports. Google Maps is also expanding its grocery pickup tracking feature to cover more stores across the US, and is attempting to make its restaurant reviews more detailed. The Directory tab gives information about stores and amenities inside large complexes like airports.Image: Google Area Busyness is an expans...

Faraday Future is launching an investigation into recent allegations of financial fraud at the startup, including claims from a recent short-seller report by J Capital. The EV startup’s board of directors has formed a “special committee of independent directors,” which has hired a law firm to perform the investigation. J Capital had accused Faraday Future of lying about the number of reservations it had collected for its ultra-expensive electric SUV, the FF91. It also accused Faraday Future’s founder Jia Yueting of unfairly benefitting from the startup’s recent public listing, which it accomplished after merging with a special purpose acquisition company. “Faraday Future seeks to do business in the most ethical and transparent way,” the company said in a press release. “As a new public com...

Recent rumors regarding the release of Apple‘s AirPods Pro 2 have surfaced. Industry insider Mark Gurman explained that Apple is set to launch the third generation of AirPods by the end of the year. This new model is expected to be an updated earbud that comes with a completely new case and shorter stems, looking aesthetically similar to the Pros. The second-generation AirPods Pro on the other hand is expected to be updated with motion sensor features to emphasize the fitness tracking feature. According to Mac Rumors, “The AirPods Pro coming next year will be the first change to that product since October 2019 and will include updated motion sensors with a focus on fitness tracking, the people said, asking not to be named because the plans are private.” While Apple originally planned to re...

Lately I have been reflecting on Alan Eisenman, Theranos investor and human cowboy boot. He’s wealthy, the kind of character Matthew McConaughey will play in about 15 years; on the stand, his hair was almost as white as his shirt, which was unbuttoned at the top. (No tie, of course.) He seemed like someone that would be fun to drink a whiskey with, as long as he got to do all the talking. In court, his sense of grievance was palpable: this man feels he has been done wrong. “I think there was business fraud,” Eisenman said. “I think I was lied to and taken advantage of.” “I think I was lied to and taken advantage of.” It is easy to laugh at these investors, who are committing a tremendous social sin: claiming a role (investor) they appear to be unqualified for (because of an inability to do...

Amazon has been ordered to pay a fine of $500,000 for hiding the number of COVID-19 cases at its California workplaces from employees. First reported by the Los Angeles Times, the company agreed to pay the fine and improve the way it tracks cases and notifies workers and local health agencies. Amazon must also inform its warehouse workers in California of the “exact number of new COVID-19 cases in their workplaces” when cases arise. This is the first fine related to California’s COVID “right to know” legislation California attorney general Rob Bonta said in a press release that the penalty comes after a complaint filed against Amazon alleged that the company didn’t properly notify warehouse workers and local health agencies about new COVID-19 cases “often leaving them in the dark and unabl...

A major Hollywood union has voted to ratify a pair of contracts to improve labor conditions for production workers — though narrowly — after previously voting to authorize a strike over stalled negotiations with major studios. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) announced today its members narrowly voted to ratify both the Basic Agreement and the Area Standards Agreement, three-year contracts that included provisions for things like meal times and breaks, increased base pay for the union’s lowest-paid members, and better terms for productions from streaming services. Both votes were extraordinarily close, and the vote around the Basic Agreement, in particular, is contentious. IATSE uses an electoral college-like voting system (delegates are assigned to IATSE’s ...

JPMorgan has sued Tesla, claiming that the electric car company owes the bank $162 million related to a 2014 stock warrant agreement. The dispute centers around adjustments the companies made to the agreement following Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 “[f]unding secured” tweet and the resulting fallout. The lawsuit was filed late Monday in the Southern District of New York. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and has disbanded its US press team. According to the suit, which was first reported by Reuters, JPMorgan purchased a number of warrants from Tesla in 2014 — back when the company was still trying to fund the construction of the original Gigafactory. Stock warrants give the buyer (JPMorgan, in this case) a right to purchase shares in a company (Tesla) at a set price ...

Bitcoin has just activated Taproot, the cryptocurrency‘s largest update in the past four years. For most users, Taproot will create better privacy and anonymity in transactions. Bitcoin has previously relied on the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, which obtains a unique signature based on your wallet key to identify who owns what. With the new upgrade, Bitcoin will be introducing a second form of signatures known as Schnorr signatures, which allow larger, multi-signature transactions to be unreadable, essentially creating the same amount of privacy for everyone regardless of trade size. Privacy aside, the biggest attraction of Taproot is its ability to open the doors for the introduction of smart contracts, or self-executing agreements, on the Bitcoin blockchain. The tech essent...

TikTokers have demonstrated that Disney’s text-to-speech TikTok voice, meant to sound like Rocket the Raccoon, would refuse to read words like “gay,” “lesbian,” or “queer” out loud. This decision seems to have been reverted — you can now get the voice to read out those words, but it’s unclear why it was happening. The change, however, is very recent — The Verge confirmed that the voice wouldn’t say the words, but it started to do so in a subsequent test minutes later on Monday afternoon. TikTok hasn’t commented on why this happened, but videos posted to highlight the issue still have the words blanked out. Rocket’s voice was introduced to TikTok’s text-to-speech feature as part of a Disney Plus Day promotion last week. Other voices, like C-3PO and Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, are also supp...

EV startup Canoo is moving its headquarters from California to Walmart’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas — though it didn’t announce any deal with the retail giant. Canoo said it will open a new manufacturing facility in Bentonville but didn’t say much about what will be done there or who will build it. The startup also said Monday that it is moving up its timeline for making its first electric vehicles to “before Q4 2022.” Canoo CEO Tony Aquila said it will use the Arkansas facility to make “vehicles for unique use cases” and accelerate its pre-production testing program. It still plans to build a factory outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, which it announced in June. Moving forward, Canoo said it will have parts of its R&D, software development, customer support, and finance teams in Oklahoma...