Technology

Last month, an anonymous crypto buyer called “rhincodon” purchased a rare Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT from Sotheby’s newly-launched Metaverse digital art platform for a record $3.4 million USD. Bored Ape Yacht Club #8817, one of 10,000 unique cartoon apes on the Ethereum blockchain, wears a propeller hat, a turtleneck and holds a party horn in its mouth. Notably, the Ape has gold fur — a super rare trait found in less than 1% of Bored Apes that makes it a valuable digital collectible. #AuctionUpdate #BAYC #8817 sells for a RECORD $3,408,000 USD! This is the first time it has been made available since it was minted. Less than 1% of all Bored Apes have the gold fur trait. From the collection of @j1mmyeth #NativelyDigital pic.twitter.com/HfFTpEOIUh — Sotheby’s Metaverse (@Sothebysverse) Oct...

Double-check your inbox and your spam folder because Microsoft might have left something in there for you. Earlier this week, a few people noticed gift cards for the Microsoft Store suddenly appearing via email, and the company has confirmed it sent out 50,000 of the codes to US customers. Per a Microsoft spokesperson: To help spread holiday cheer, Microsoft Store has surprised a total of 50,000 U.S. customers with virtual gift cards via email. 25,000 customers will receive a $100 Microsoft Gift Card while 25,000 others will receive a $10 Microsoft Gift Card ahead of this holiday season. These randomly selected recipients can redeem their gift card on Microsoft Store through December 31, 2021 and spend it within 90 days of redemption. If you weren’t randomly selected, then you’re in good c...

Apple’s fall software updates, iOS 15 and macOS Monterey, are officially out in the world for everyone. But Apple’s latest software has arrived with more of a whimper than a bang; the two updates aren’t so much bad as they are boring. Which has me wondering: why is Apple still clinging to its annual release schedule at all? There are two problems that Apple’s annual cadence causes. The first, as is the case this year, is that iOS and macOS are increasingly mature operating systems with fewer issues to fix or missing features to add. Which, in turn, means that there are fewer opportunities for sweeping upgrades like there were in the early days when the iPhone getting copy and paste support was headline news. Short of Apple changing its mind about how its operating systems and the rules tha...

The global chip shortage has had a massive effect on the entire technology industry for more than a year, but a wave of gaming hardware news over the past week and change has shown that things aren’t going to get better anytime soon. Gaming companies big and small are going to be feeling the sting well into next year, and it’s not just Sony and Microsoft’s next-gen consoles that could be hard to get a hold of. Nintendo was arguably the first to kick off the waterfall of news, revising its Nintendo Switch sales forecast for the fiscal year down by 1.5 million on November 4th “due to the effects of the global semiconductor shortage,” according to the company. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa elaborated further in a Q&A, saying that “there has not been a major improvement in the situa...

Cash-strapped EV startup Lordstown Motors is delaying the launch of its electric pickup truck, the Endurance, one day after announcing the sale of its Ohio factory to iPhone assembler Foxconn. Lordstown Motors said Thursday that it now plans to ship the Endurance in the third quarter of 2022, not the second as previously targeted, because of supply chain shortages. It announced a third-quarter loss of $96 million and said it will finish the year with just $150 million to $180 million in cash — including a $100 million payment from Foxconn toward the purchase of the factory. Lordstown Motors is also still building pre-production versions of the truck at the Ohio factory despite saying as recently as August that it would be making production-level trucks in September. In addition, the startu...

HTC is adding a few big updates to its Vive Focus 3 virtual reality headset, aiming to make it better for big, free-roaming multiplayer VR games. The Vive Focus 3 — a $1,300 non-consumer-focused wireless headset — is adding a new feature called Location Based Entertainment, or LBE Mode. LBE Mode greatly expands the headset’s tracking distance to 33 by 30 meters. Meanwhile, an additional feature called Map Sharing lets multiple headsets share the same virtual world in the same location. Together, these features mean the Focus 3 can more easily support the group VR sessions you’d find at an immersive free-roam arcade space like Zero Latency or The Void. HTC has also added a few other options. There’s a mode that immediately calibrates the headset when a new user puts it on instead of requiri...

Pioneer DJ has introduced its all-new XDJ-RX3 DJ system. The refreshed all-in-one XDJ model builds on the previous RX2 model to deliver new and enhanced features brought over from Pioneer’s club-standard CDJ’s, offering an ideal setup for home use, mobile performances, or small venues/bars. The XDJ-RX3 notably features improved Color On Jog Wheels in which the weight can now be adjusted via a Feeling Adjust control. Track information is displayed on the LCD screen in the center of each wheel, and the RX3 wheels are tuned to be more responsive than previous models. The system’s new high-resolution 10.1-inch touch-screen is the largest screen ever from Pioneer DJ for an all-in-one system and inherits CDJ-3000’s intuitive playlist navigation while adding a new Playlist Bank which allows artis...

Universal Music Group, one of the biggest music companies in the world, has announced the formation of a new supergroup called KINGSHIP, whose members are four Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. The project was created by 10:22PM founder Celine Joshua in collaboration with Jimmy McNeils, a leading NFT collector, who provided the Apes for the group. 10:22PM is Universal Music Group’s next-gen metaverse label. In a statement, Universal Music Group said 10:22PM will “guide the group in developing and releasing new music, NFTs, community-based products, activations and experiences in the metaverse, and kick off a new generation of artist, fan and community engagement.” “Creating KINGSHIP has been incredibly fun and imaginative,” Joshua said. “I started 10:22PM to push the boundaries of innovation...

Nearly nine months ago, Nvidia said it would launch its most affordable RTX 3000 graphics card yet — the $329 RTX 3060. Good luck actually finding one at that price, right? That’s why I subtitled my review “$329 with an asterisk sign.” And sure enough, they were nigh-impossible to find on launch day for Nvidia’s sticker price. But that same day, February 25th, I signed up for EVGA’s graphics card waiting queue on a whim. And after waiting in that queue for so long that I completely forgot I ever signed up, I got a surprise. On Monday, I received an email from EVGA letting me know I could actually purchase that $329 card for $329. So I did. Yesterday afternoon, a brand-new RTX 3060 arrived for $379.41 after tax and shipping. That’s a card that’s generally selling for north of $700 on eBay. ...

We’ve known for a little while that Valve is giving developers a huge five-hour tour of its upcoming Steam Deck gaming handheld on Friday, November 12th starting at 1PM ET. Now, we’re learning you can come watch even if you’re not a developer — Valve is telling press that “anyone can watch the event.” The five-hour virtual conference will include discussions of the hardware; games that will appear “on Deck”; how the Linux handheld can play Windows games via a Proton compatibility layer; a deep dive on the AMD APU that powers it by AMD itself; and of course tips for Steam developers on how to make those things work in their favor. It’s free to watch The initial announcement made it seem like you had to be a Steamworks developer “to participate,” but the company’s clarifying today that only ...

Publications like 9to5Mac and Macworld have reported some odd behavior when trying to use Apple’s Magic Keyboard with Touch ID to authenticate for Apple Pay — specifically, that it won’t work if you’re trying to do it with a MacBook that has its display closed, as it would be while running it in “clamshell mode” hooked up to an external monitor. Obviously, when the MacBook’s lid is closed, you can’t use the built-in Touch ID sensor, so it’s easy to see how this limitation was put in place. But in a world where Apple sells an external keyboard with the sensor (starting at an eye-watering $150), the limitation is so awkward that it feels like a bug. That’s especially true given that the keyboard’s Touch ID functionality only works with Apple Silicon-powered Macs and comes with all but the ba...