Technology

The U.S. Federal Reserve has now reassured investors that it won’t be banning cryptocurrencies — at least not anytime soon. Testifying before the House Committee on Financial Services, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell was asked if the central bank is considering following in the footsteps of China, which has recently implemented a ban on all crypto transactions, causing a market-wide crash on the same day. In response, Powell emphasized that there is currently “No intention to ban them,” although he continued on to make an argument for why certain stablecoins should be regulated. “But stablecoins are like money market funds,” Powell continued. “They’re like bank deposits, but they’re to some extent outside of the regulatory perimeter.  And it’s appropriate that they be regulated...

Three months after Scarlett Johansson sued Disney over its streaming release of Black Widow, arguing she stood to lose millions of dollars because her salary was based on the box office performance of the film, the suit has now been settled, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and The New York Times and others. Representatives for Johansson confirmed the settlement to The Verge as well. While the terms of the settlement don’t appear to be public, Deadline cites a source saying that the deal was in the “tens of millions.” Both parties have paid lip service to continuing to work together: Johansson told The Hollywood Reporter that she was “happy to have resolved our differences with Disney,” and “look[s] forward to continuing our collaboration in years to come.” Johansson will be i...

Five9 will remain independent — its deal to be acquired by Zoom is off. Though a press release from Five9 says it was “terminated by mutual agreement,” it’s also the case that Five9 shareholders rejected the $14.7 billion deal. Zoom originally announced the acquisition on July 18th. Five9 automates managing customer contacts for businesses, and the deal was supposed to bolster Zoom’s business offerings. Its major competitors are behemoths like Microsoft and Google, and the deal would have helped the smaller company expand. This was supposed to be an all-stock transaction, but unfortunately for Zoom, its stock price has lost more than a quarter of its value since they announced the acquisition. Usually, when a company is bought, shareholders receive a premium over their stock price; because...

iPhone assembler Foxconn is buying an automotive factory from struggling EV startup Lordstown Motors for around $230 million, the companies announced late Thursday. Foxconn says it has agreed to build Lordstown Motors’ electric pickup truck at the plant, which is where General Motors used to make the Chevrolet Cruze, and that the startup will remain a tenant there. Lordstown Motors will also “agree to provide Foxconn with certain rights with respect to future vehicle programs.” The deal gives the Taiwanese conglomerate its first automotive factory, and a significant new presence in the United States — one that the company will use as it tries to establish itself as a global electric vehicle automaker. Foxconn previously announced a massive LCD panel factory in Wisconsin but has failed to l...

Electronic Arts is promoting chief studios officer Laura Miele to chief operating officer, the company announced Thursday. The change is a big promotion for Miele, who already had significant leadership at the company overseeing 25 different studios. The new role will give Miele greater oversight over the company and arguably makes her the most powerful woman in gaming, an industry where there are few female executives, fewer in the C-suite, and where those C-suite execs are often in charge of HR or finance rather than the company’s products. Ubisoft did make Virginie Hass its chief studios operating officer last August, following scandals over a toxic culture including sexual harassment and misconduct that went as high as the C-suite ranks. Miele joined EA in 1996 and has served as chief ...

Facebook on Thursday announced that users will now be able to create group messages across both Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs. The new cross-app communication features will allow users to start group chats between their Instagram and Messenger contacts and customize their chat themes. Facebook is also introducing polls to cross-app chats and is launching group typing indicators so others can see who’s typing. Facebook first unveiled greater cross-app integration with Instagram last year. The company also launched more tools to optimize shared experiences among its users, including Watch Together, which allows people to stream content in tandem across the app. “Our goal is to help people feel connected even if they can’t be together,” said Sateesh Kumar Srinivasan, director of produc...

TikTok has unveiled its first-ever NFT collection, TikTok Top Moments, with contributions from some of the app’s biggest creators. Announced by the platform today, the six-piece NFT collection is inspired by trending videos created by Lil Nas X, Rudy Willingham, Bella Poarch, Curtis Roach, Brittany Broski, FNMeka, Jess Marciante and Gary Vaynerchuk. For the series, the TikTok creators partnered with NFT artists— including COIN ARTIST, x0r, RTFKT, Grimes and more — to recreate their content as limited edition NFTs artworks. TikTok creator and digital artist Rudy Willingham had already used Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” to make a viral stop motion video when the song first dropped. But for their first official collaboration, Willingham upped the ante and transformed cutout ima...

Microsoft announced a new version of the Surface Pro last week, along with the Surface Laptop Studio. The Surface Pro 8 feels very much like a logical evolution of Microsoft’s tablet / laptop. Some of the more notable improvements include a 120Hz display with slimmer bezels, Thunderbolt 4 support, as well as a reworked surface keyboard that includes a dedicated space to store and charge the new Surface Slim Pen 2. Meanwhile, the Surface Laptop Studio features a uniquely hinged screen and more powerful hardware. This is effectively a replacement for the Surface Book 3, with a three-point adjustable display that can lay flat for drawing or snap upright to deliver a more traditional laptop experience. This laptop comes equipped with an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti GPU and a four-core, 4.8GHz, 11th Gen ...

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus said Thursday it had notified 4.6 million customers that their personal information, including credit card numbers. may have been part of a May 2020 data breach. The Dallas-based company said in a news release that an “unauthorized third party obtained personal information associated with certain Neiman Marcus customers’ online accounts.” Neiman Marcus notified law enforcement, and is “working quickly to determine the nature and scope of the matter.” The company did not say who was responsible for the breach or how they were able to access its systems. The data access may have included names and contact information, credit card numbers, and expiration dates— but not the CVV numbers on the back of the cards— Neiman Marcus gift cards, usernames, passwords, and s...

One of the features Google offers exclusively through its Pixel Android phones is the Personal Safety app. Over the years, it’s added features like a safety check-in that automatically notifies your emergency contacts if you don’t respond as scheduled and the ability to automatically dial 911 if it detects you’ve been in a car accident. Now XDA-Developers and Android Police point out a new feature that can automatically record video if you activate the built-in Emergency SOS. We installed the update from Google Play on a Pixel device. It informs users that it can record continuously for up to 45 minutes once it’s activated, assuming your phone has enough storage. If there’s an internet connection, the video will get automatically backed up to your Google Account, where it will be stored fo...

Because no peace can be found in the age of man, TikTok has decided to partner with select creators, celebrities, and online entities like Lil Nas X, Bella Poarch, and Grimes to release a collection of non-fungible tokens. These TikTok Top Moments, as the company is calling them, are inspired by six “culturally significant” TikTok videos in the form of one-of-one NFTs. TikTok plans to auction them alongside a selection of limited edition NFTs it’ll sell weekly throughout October. The partnerships, creators, and new material being tokenized and put up for auction vary. Musician Lil Nas X is up first on October 6th with a collaboration with artist Rudy Willingham, while Grimes is collaborating with Brittany Broski (“Kombucha Girl”), and separately with Bella Poarch. TikTok’s full list of col...

Spotify on Thursday announced that podcast creators who produce their shows in Anchor, the streaming service’s creation software, will now be able to incorporate interactive polls and Q&As in their programs. Polls and Q&As will appear at the bottom of a podcast episode page on the Spotify mobile app on both iOS and Android, where users can respond to a given prompt while listening to a podcast. After submitting a response to a poll, listeners will immediately see how the rest of the participating audience voted in comparison to their own answer. Q&A responses, however, will be delivered privately to the podcast creator, who can then select specific responses to pin publicly alongside the listener’s Spotify username below their question. At this time, the feature is exclusively ...