Technology

Coinbase is now urging the United States government to establish a cryptocurrency regulator in order to keep the country from falling behind other governments across the globe. In a new policy proposal released yesterday, the crypto exchange platform pointed out that governmental oversight over the digital assets market was necessary. Building upon a similar and recent proposal from one of its investors Andreeson Horowitz, the company said that the creation of a new agency focusing specifically on cryptocurrencies would be ideal as rearranging current financial regulators would not work as they mainly focused on traditional markets. “We started where a lot of people start, which is taking the existing multiplicity of regulators and trying to figure out what minimal surgery you could do to ...

Boeing’s former chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner, was indicted on two counts of fraud and four counts of wire fraud for his role in the Boeing 737 Max debacle. He’s accused of withholding information from FAA evaluators about software on the Boeing 737 Max that was at the heart of two crashes that killed 346 people, That software, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), interpreted the plane as stalling when it wasn’t — causing crashes. Rushed development of the 737 Max required larger, heavier engines that could make it susceptible to stalling in certain takeoff situations. To prevent that from happening, Boeing set up MCAS to automatically pitch the nose down. When the system activated erroneously, pilots were unprepared — MCAS was not present on a previous version...

Block Party, the anti-harassment service that specializes in making Twitter more tolerable to use, is out of beta and available now. Block Party automates the time-consuming process of moderating your Twitter feed, filtering out content from people you don’t want to see for later review and, starting today, blocking accounts that retweet or like a bad tweet of your choice with blocklists. Block Party’s services are available in three different tiers. Free Basic accounts can use Block Party’s moderate filters to catch @mentions and place them in a “Lockout Folder” for later review. Premium accounts, which start at $12 per month, include stricter filters, block lists, a helper view to allow friends or family to review troubling tweets, bulk actions to block or mute multiple accounts in your ...

Apple has hired a former HomePod engineer, Afrooz Family, to head up the team developing HomePod software, according to Bloomberg, which could signal a renewed effort from Apple to make the HomePod more competitive. The company released HomePod software version 15 in September, bringing some welcome features like the ability to use one or a pair of HomePod Mini speakers as the default with an Apple TV 4K. But Apple’s smart speaker line faces stiff competition, particularly from Amazon’s and Google’s speakers that are equipped with their smart assistants. Family left Apple in 2016, where he was a senior audio engineer, to co-found audio company Syng with ex-Apple designer Christopher Stringer. (A Financial Times article about Syng described Family as the company’s “secret weapon.”) Syng’s c...

Clubhouse has a tremendous amount of competition from big companies that want to own the live audio space, but it may be getting out ahead in one specific way. The company’s launching a new Music Mode that could make it a better place to play — and listen — to live music, ahead of Amazon’s reported entry into that space, and as Twitter has begun rolling out “ticketed spaces” where musicians could host shows as well. Spotify has its own live audio app, too. If you’re a musician on Clubhouse, or you love listening to live music on the app, the new Music Mode “optimizes Clubhouse to broadcast your music with high quality and great stereo sound,” according to the company’s blog post. Clubhouse doesn’t say what it means by high quality, but it does also mention that you can now hook up professi...

Deathloop is an incredible game but also one with its fair share of nasty issues, particularly on PC — where some have experienced seriously stuttery performance and a nasty crash just as you’re supposed to crash the game’s penultimate party. Now, it appears Arkane Studios is coming fast and furious with the fixes and a little something extra as well. A new 11GB update can add extra immersion to PC by letting you hear Julianna’s radio transmissions through a connected PS5 controller. Plus there’s brand-new support for Nvidia DLSS, letting you potentially eke out a substantial amount of extra performance if you’re willing to exchange your native resolution for a slickly AI-upscaled version. (The game supported AMD’s rival FSR from the get-go.) The patch (which is 5GB on PS5) also includes “...

There’s a new electric vehicle startup breaking cover in California, making bold claims and teasing pie-in-the-sky ideas while remaining guarded about its founder and origin story. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a story that’s been playing out on repeat the last half-decade. This time, it’s a company called IndiEV, which emerged from stealth mode Thursday with a small prototype electric car called the Indi One that it says will start at just $45,000 — a car it boldly says will launch at the end of 2022. Parts of the script are the same: IndiEV wants to power the Indi One with a scalable lithium-ion battery pack (that can be adapted to fit more affordable or expensive models or future vehicles); It wants to take advantage of the extra room afforded by the simpler architecture of...

Missouri Governor Mike Parson is threatening legal action against a reporter and newspaper that found and responsibly disclosed a security vulnerability that left teacher and educational staffs’ social security numbers exposed and easily accessible. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that it notified the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) that one of its tools was returning HTML pages that contained employee SSNs, potentially putting the information of over 100,000 employees at risk. Despite the fact that the outlet waited until the tool was taken down by the state to publish its story, the reporter has been called a “hacker” by Governor Parson, who says he’ll be getting the county prosecutor and investigators involved. According to the Post-Dispatch, the too...

Spotify has been a music streaming option on the PS5 since it launched in November, giving you the option to listen to your favorite music when playing games. Soon, though, the console might get support for another service: Apple Music. The first clue came earlier this week when a Reddit user posted a picture of Apple Music appearing in the PS5’s music menu. The option apparently showed up after they made a new account and tried to link it with Spotify. It seems the app didn’t work, though — the Reddit user also shared a photo of a message that said, “This app is playable only on PS4,” which Eurogamer says is a standard error message when an app isn’t available. A Reddit user’s photo of Apple Music on PS5.image: u/HOLYWARS1990 Eurogamer said it was also able to see the Apple Music option w...

As part of an update to its bullying and harassment policies, Facebook on Wednesday announced it would begin removing “severe sexualizing content” directed toward public figures. In line with the update, the company said that it would take down all profiles, pages, groups and events that sexualize public figures, while also removing all derogatory, sexualized photoshopped images and drawings. Additionally, Facebook will delete negative physical descriptions that are posted on or tagging a public figure’s account as well as “degrading content depicting individuals in the process of bodily functions,” according to Antigone Davis, Facebook’s Global Head of Safety. “Public figures — whether they’re politicians, journalists, celebrities or creators — use Facebook and Instagram to engage directl...

First, there were triangles; then there were squares. Next came hexagons, and now, say hello to lines. No, this isn’t your sixth grader’s geometry homework. It’s the latest addition to smart lighting maker Nanoleaf’s ever-growing catalog of modular LED light panels. The new Nanoleaf Lines are ultra-lightweight, color-changing lights in a bar shape. Backlit, they connect at 60-degree angles to create geometric designs of your choosing, and with dual-color zones, the Lines ($199.99) can add a visual feast to any wall or ceiling. As with Nanoleaf’s Shapes, Canvas, and Elements wall panels, Lines can be installed using pre-affixed, double-sided tape, making it an easy setup — although you’ll want to plan your design before committing. Powered by a large plug with a 14.7 foot cable, each ...

Traffic is hell, but what if the cars clogging up the roadways are all robots? That’s what some residents on one quiet street in San Francisco have discovered, with a seemingly endless parade of autonomous vehicles from Waymo driving down a dead-end street in the city’s residential Richmond district, turning around, and driving away. “There are some days where it can be up to 50,” resident Jennifer King told KPIX 5 in this hilarious scene report. “It’s literally every five minutes. And we’re all working from home, so this is what we hear.” “There are some days where it can be up to 50” Residents are confused as to why the Waymo vehicles — Jaguar I-Pace SUVs with rooftop sensors and high-tech compute systems inside — keep coming, one after the other, sometimes two or three at a time. They a...