Technology

Following a survey tweet asking Discord users whether they would be interested in a native crypto wallet, Discord CEO Jason Citron shared a screenshot on his Twitter page of what appears to be MetaMask and WalletConnect integration features. With a caption that reads “probably nothing,” it should be safe to assume Citron is most definitely up to something. The screenshot reveals an Ethereum icon under Discord’s existing Connections tab which currently includes integrations with Twitch, Reddit, Youtube, Steam, and more. When opened, links to Metamask and WalletConnect are displayed. Metamask is a popular cryptocurrency wallet that’s used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain, and WalletConnnect allows users to connect the Metamask mobile app to a desktop browser. Citron’s tweet is in res...

Ecobee now gives you the option to pair its smart home monitoring devices with a professional security service. With the company’s new Smart Security service, which replaces the Haven service it formerly offered, you can enable 24/7 professional monitoring (which is still in beta) for an additional $10 / month as a part of the Complete subscription plan. This price is half of what Ring now charges for its Pro plan that comes with a professional live monitoring service. Ecobee’s Smart Security service uses the RapidSOS emergency response platform to send crucial data to emergency responders. It relays your home’s entry and exit data to first responders, as well as any video and audio snippets captured by Ecobee devices. Ecobee is offering a $5 / month Standard plan and a $10 / month Complet...

Unity, which makes the popular Unity game development engine, announced an intent to acquire the tools, pipeline, technology, and some engineering staff from Weta Digital, which is perhaps best known for its work on the The Lord of the Rings movies. Weta Digital was co-founded by LOTR director Peter Jackson and has worked on huge entertainment franchises like Game of Thrones, The Planet of the Apes, and many Marvel movies. The deal is a major bid by Unity to bring powerful new tools to visual effects (VFX) teams, game developers, and other industries that rely on computer graphics. It’s also a big move to compete with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, which has been used by Industrial Light & Magic in The Mandalorian and by League of Legends developer Riot Games for mixed reality esports stag...

In the world of NFTs, CryptoPunks have continued to see an increase in value over time. The most recent CryptoPunk to receive a large bid is Punk 635. According to Larva Labs, the NFT was first claimed on June 23, 2017 by User 0xc352b5. As time years went by, multiple bids were announced. However, it was not until approximately two years later in 2019 that the CryptoPunk saw bids in the thousands. As cryptocurrency and NFTs began picking up steam, 2020 saw a large spike in bids for Punk 635. The trend for CryptoPunks caught the eyes of auctions houses suck as Christie’s and Sotheby’s which have respectively sold NFTs with a final value in the millions (USD). In mid-May 2020, Punk 635 saw a bid of 115 ETH, which is equivalent to $23,741 USD. For the latter half of 2020, the bidding was quit...

Virgin Galactic introduced a price hike to its commercial space flight tickets three months ago and since then, the company has sold 100 tickets. Originally priced at $250,000 per ticket, Richard Branson‘s company increased the cost to a whopping $450,000 back in August, but that didn’t seem to dissuade potential astronauts. According to reports, the company has now amassed roughly 700 customers, 100 of which all purchased tickets at the higher price. Among those that reserved seats is SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who managed to secure his position before the price increase. So far only customers who have paid a $1,000 USD deposit can purchase tickets, and Virgin Galactic hopes to reach 1,000 customers by the fourth quarter of 2022 before actually launching anyone into space. The company’s first ...

NASA is pushing back its target date for returning humans to the Moon, now eyeing a crewed lunar landing in 2025 instead of 2024 as originally planned. NASA blames the delay on recent lawsuits over contracts for the agency’s lunar lander, as well as changes to the scope of some of NASA’s programs and the COVID-19 pandemic. The space agency is eyeing a human lunar return with its flagship program, called Artemis. As part of the initiative, NASA hopes to land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon this decade while working to figure out sustainable ways to live and work on the lunar surface. Artemis relies on a complicated suite of vehicles, including the Space Launch System, or SLS, a massive new rocket NASA has been developing for the past decade that’s designed to send ...

Valve’s $400 Steam Deck gaming handheld runs Linux, but it can play Windows games too. Many of them, anyhow! Some of the biggest games on Steam use anti-cheat software that doesn’t play nice with the Proton compatibility layer which lets Windows games work. That’s changing this year, with both Epic’s Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) and BattlEye confirming to The Verge that support is on the way, and Epic says it takes “just a few clicks.” Valve says BattlEye support is as easy as an email. But will game developers let their games take advantage? Not necessarily! We reached out to every developer of every top EAC and BattlEye game on Steam. Initially, only four of them gave us a definite yes, but it seems we’ve got at least one more on the way. Here’s the current status of each. 7 Days to Die — No co...

Epic v. Apple judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers says Apple must comply with an order to let developers add links and buttons to external payment options, denying the company’s motion for a stay. “Apple’s motion is based on a selective reading of this Court’s findings and ignores all of the findings which supported the injunction,” her new order reads. Judge Gonzalez Rogers issued her order after a Tuesday hearing concerning the blockbuster antitrust lawsuit, which Fortnite publisher Epic Games filed in 2020 and which went to trial this year. During the hearing, Apple said it needed more time to rewrite its anti-steering policies — rules that bar app developers from linking to payment methods besides the iOS App Store. “This will be the first time Apple has ever allowed live links in an app for ...

Here’s the thing about prostate-specific antigen: you do not expect to find it in blood test results for most women, because most women don’t have prostates. So when Theranos’ former lab director, Kingshuk Das, found that Theranos’ devices kept reporting that women had detectable PSA levels, he assumed that meant there was something wrong with the devices. Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes had an “alternative explanation,” he said. It was that these women had a rare kind of breast cancer. That explanation “seemed implausible,” he testified today in US v. Elizabeth Holmes. Das was one of a parade of experts we’ve heard from in this trial, who it seems were hired primarily to be ignored. The central question of the trial, as framed by Holmes’ defense, was whether Holmes knew she was misleading p...

The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) has announced plans to establish “Metaverse Seoul,” a next-gen platform that includes a virtual city hall, tourism locations, social service centers and more. SMG is the first major city government to announce such a plan, with more cities sure to follow suit. The South Korean capital has invested ₩3.9 billion KRW (approximately $3.3 million USD) into the project as part of Mayor Oh Se-hoon’s “Seoul Vision 2030” plan that aims to establish Seoul as a “future emotional city.” Soon, Seoul’s citizens will be able to put on their VR headsets to meet with avatar officials for consultations, visit vividly reproduced landmarks, and attend mass-gathering events. The pilot program will begin at the bell-ringing ceremony at the end of the year, followed by the...

Twitch is set to launch a livestreaming incubator program to train musicians on its platform. According to a newsletter, The Collective program curates dozens of musicians into a collective invite-only group, where participants can get tech support from Twitch staff and industry collaborators such as Amazon Music, United Masters, DistroKid, and TuneCore. From growing their following and monetization to music-making strategies, workshops and direct support will be offered to nurture selected musicians. Several collective groups are expected to roll out over the next year. Tracy Chan, Twitch’s Vice President, Head of Music said in an interview, “We are looking for artists who are lean-forward on livestreaming, who really want to interact with their community,” Chan says. “The program itself ...

DJI has just released a new MAVIC drone that looks to take your aerial cinematography to the next level. The DJI Mavic 3 CINE is touted as the “most comprehensive improvement to the world’s most popular drone series in three years.” Improving on a number of aspects, the Mavic 3 CINE features a 4/3 CMOS Hasselblad camera and 28x hybrid zoom camera, 5.1K video recording at 50fps/4K at 120fps, omnidirectional obstacle sensors with a maximum 200-meter range, Apple ProRes 422 HQ encoding, 1TB SSD of onboard storage, and flight safety enhancements and new intelligent modes. “Creating the Mavic 3 was an arduous journey for our engineers who tackled complex technical problems to serve the goal that the Mavic series has always met – build professional-quality imaging and flight technology into a co...