Technology

The 2021 League of Legends World Championship (aka Worlds) kicks off tomorrow, October 5th, marking the beginning of a month-long tournament where 22 of the best League of Legends teams will face off to take home the Summoner’s Cup. While Worlds is one of the biggest esports competitions on the planet, League of Legends isn’t exactly the easiest game to start watching. This time of year is one of the best times to jump in, though, as you get to see the best teams at their peak. If you want to learn more about the game — or are a longtime fan who just wants to know more about Worlds before it starts — we’ve put together this primer for you. What is Worlds? Worlds is the concluding tournament in the League of Legends esports year. Teams from around the globe have qualified for the event afte...

Amazon is launching a new gifting feature today that will allow subscribers to its Prime service to send gifts to others using only an email address or phone number — no address required. Gift-givers have to be Amazon Prime members, the program is limited to the continental US, and it can only be used on mobile devices for the time being. And even though Amazon has built in some safeguards— the gift-giver never gets access to the recipient’s mailing address— this sounds like a bad idea that is ripe for abuse by scammers, stalkers, and those who take pleasure in the online harassment of others. Here’s how the new feature works: Gift-giver wants to surprise recipient with a present but doesn’t know recipient’s mailing address. Gift-giver does, however, have either recipient’s email address o...

One month ago, we laid out a list of eight obvious things Apple could do to prove it puts App Store users ahead of profits. Today I learned the company acted on at least one of these ideas: Apple will now let you directly report a scammy app from its listing in the App Store with a new-and-improved version of its “Report a Problem” button. As Richard Mazkewich and scam hunter Kosta Eleftheriou point out on Twitter, the button has not only returned to individual app listings for the first time in years, it now includes a dedicated “Report a scam or fraud” option in the drop-down menu. Until iOS 15, the only way you could find this button was to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Apps or Games tab in the App Store, get kicked out to a website where you’d need to re-sign in. Then yo...

Gaming gear specialist Corsair has revealed its first monitor, offering a dazzling ultra-slim display and top-of-the-line specs. The 20mm thick 32-inch 1440P IPS panel boasts a silky-smooth refresh rate of 165 Hz and 1 millisecond response time. Support for AMD FreeSync and NVIDIA G-Sync prevents dreaded screen tearing while 100% Adobe RGB provides vibrant color accuracy, and HDR400 delivers bright and vibrant images. Corsair’s iCue Nexus allows users to toggle presets and modify a host of settings to their liking while Elgato Stream Deck integration allows for one-click access into frequented apps. The aluminum stand is furnished with a RapidRoute channel for cable management, a sliding adjustable panel, and a built-in multi-mount point to support Digital SLR cameras, lights, and more. Fo...

September has been a tough month for cryptocurrency investors due to the volatility of the market. According to Yahoo Finance, the past year saw Ethereum‘s value increased by 830%, making it the second-highest by market value. However, Ether has also faced a monthly decrease, even declining to its second-largest level since June with a recent 16% drop. Bitcoin, which is considered the pioneer in crypto fell around 7% during September. Besides the uncertainty that September has reflected, Ethereum’s slow network speed and high transaction fees remain an issue in the crypto ecosystems. Investors are looking at other alternatives including Cardano and Solana. Solana has seen almost a 4,800% growth since September 2020 and has cheaper and faster prices and quicker usages than ETH. Solana is pi...

So we had the big heel turn that’s been hinted at all season, plus some big moments for two of the show’s couples, which made Ted Lasso’s penultimate episode of season two very stressful to watch (for me, at least). I have no idea how they will wrap it all up in the finale; I think we’re headed for a cliffhanger on at least one front. There’s too much good on streaming right now, it’s really a nice problem to have. Here’s this week’s trailers roundup: [embedded content] Eternals A brand-new trailer for Marvel’s Eternals has some of the action sequences we’ve seen in prior teaser/trailers, plus, a first look at Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, along with his husband and son, apparently the first queer couple in the MCU to appear on the big screen (h/t Gizmodo for that detail). To recap: The Et...

The whistleblower behind the leak of an enormous cache of Facebook documents to the Wall Street Journal, Frances Haugen, went public on 60 Minutes on Sunday, revealing more of the inner workings the most powerful social media platform in the world. Revealing her identity on national television, Haugen described a company so committed to product optimization that it embraced algorithms that amplify hate speech. “It’s paying for its profits with our safety,” Haugen told 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley. According to a since deleted LinkedIn profile Haugen was a product manager at Facebook assigned to the Civic Integretity group. She chose to leave the company in 2021 after the dissolving of the group. She said she didn’t “trust that they’re willing to invest what actually needs to be invested to...

Photos from a fly-by of Mercury, the least-explored planet in our solar system, show ithas a crater-riddled surface that resembles Earth’s Moon. The photos came from BepiColombo, a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that launched from Europe’s Spaceport in 2018. The mission has two linked orbiting spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The mission is planned to reach Mercury’s orbit in late 2025. BepiColombo aims to gather more information about Mercury and its composition, and how it evolved so close to our Sun. Temperatures on Mercury can exceed 350 degrees Celsius, or about 660 degrees Fahrenheit. ESA explains where the craters came from and what the surface of the planet is b...

Ford and General Motors told a federal judge they’re planning to settle a trademark battle over the term “Cruise” to describe hands-free driving. Attorneys for the automakers said they’re working out the terms of the settlement and asked the court for a conditional dismissal. The two sides will report back within 60 days if they’re unable to come to an agreement. Ford announced BlueCruise as the name for its hands-free driver assist feature in April. The legal skirmish began in July, when GM filed a trademark infringement lawsuit claiming that the name BlueCruise was too close to its autonomous vehicle subsidiary Cruise, as well as Super Cruise, the name of the hands-free driving tech GM introduced in 2017. GM said in its complaint that the two the companies had been involved in “protracte...

Saturday Night Live returned this weekend and the show wasted no time taking aim at the weird billionaire space tourism race that unfolded over the past few months. Guest host Owen Wilson played former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a sketch about a fictional new show called Star Trek: Ego Quest, about “the voyages of the SS New Shepard and its crew of random weirdos,” whose mission is “to just sort of fly around space goofing off in a ship that looks like a penis,” according to the voiceover. You’ll recall the real Bezos traveled to the edge of space in Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in July, along with a crew that included his brother Mark (played in the sketch by Wilson’s brother Luke), 82-year-old pilot and space legend Wally Funk, and Dutch high school student Oliver Daemen. But Richard B...

Solana Monkey Business (SMB) has recently sold an NFT for a record $2 million USD, equivalent to 13027 SOL. The NFT in question, Solana Monkey #1355 is now the most expensive Solana-based NFT. The Block Crypto reported that itw was only three weeks ago that the first Solana-based NFT sold for over $1 million USD, further providing proof that the Ethereum blockchain may be losing its dominance in the cryptocurrency world. Solana Monkey #1355 is seen as the most rare NFT amongst the SolMonkey and features a monkey in a skeleton body wearing a bejeweled crown. According to Solanalysis, Solana’s monkeys now go for an average of 456 SOL. With the new feat, Solana’s pixelated monkeys are now amongst the top five in the PFP power rankings, joining the likes of Bored Ape Yacht Club, Ehtereum’s Coo...