Technology

In January 2019, Kosta Eleftheriou had every reason to believe Apple was about to make a deal, his lawsuit alleges. Apple’s head of keyboards loved his FlickType keyboard app for the Apple Watch, gushing over how few mistakes it made. “Apple should buy this from you,” the man exclaimed, saying it “could be a key feature for the watch.” He demoed it for the Apple Watch team on January 24th, where a senior engineer allegedly gushed too. That evening, Eleftheriou received a message from Apple, but not the one he expected. In the course of one afternoon, the company had seemingly decided that Apple Watch keyboards were against the rules. “Specifically, the app is a keyboard for Apple Watch. For this reason, your app will be removed from sale on the App Store at this time,” Apple wrote. This Tu...

OpenSea is wasting no time in trying to rectify the insider trading situation that landed them in hot waters. Recently, the head of product of the NFT marketplace platform, Nate Chastain, was accused of exploiting information to make a profit. In response to these allegations, OpenSea has now asked for and accepted the resignation of Chastain. He was reportedly caught with a secret Ethereum wallet for the purpose of making front-page NFT release purchases before they were made known to the public. The company appears to take the claims seriously as they have also enlisted a third party to review the unethical behaviour and to recommend any changes to combat this for the future. OpenSea has promised its users that they are looking into new policies that would bar the use of confidentia...

SpaceX on Thursday released a stunning video of Earth that it captured from atop its Dragon spacecraft that was recently launched into orbit. The video shared to Twitter shows the view from the spacecraft’s cupola, or dome-like structure, at the head of its vessel. Earth’s rotation and vast oceans were visible to the team of four space tourists currently orbiting Earth as part of the Inspiration4 mission. View from Dragon’s cupola pic.twitter.com/Z2qwKZR2lK — SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 16, 2021 The company’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft left NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday night, carrying a crew of civilians, including mission commander Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments; medical officer Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude C...

AMC Entertainment Holdings CEO Adam Aron tweeted on Thursday that the movie theatre chain will soon begin accepting various forms of cryptocurrency as payment. Aron first discussed the chain’s commitment to cryptocurrency during an earnings call last month, saying that it would “accept Bitcoin as payment for movie tickets and concessions” by the end of the year. “We are also in the preliminary stage of now exploring how else AMC can participate in this new burgeoning cryptocurrency universe and we’re quite intrigued by potentially lucrative business opportunities for AMC if we intelligently pursue further serious involvement with cryptocurrency,” he said at the time. On Thursday, Aron expanded the types of digital coins that theatres would be able to accept, saying that it would include Et...

Things looked bad for Locast before, and they just got even worse. A judge this week permanently prohibited streamer Locast from continuing operations of its business, a decision that follows a yearslong legal standoff between major broadcasters and the scrappy streaming provider. A permanent injunction order signed by Judge Louis L. Stanton this week stated that Locast founder David Goodfriend and his nonprofit Sports Fans Coalition NY, which operates the Locast service, “are permanently restrained and enjoined from operating” the free TV streaming service. The injunction follows a series of rapid-succession developments that have led to Locast’s apparent demise, after the big four broadcasters suing the company — ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC — secured a legal victory in early September in thei...

Cameo is adding a new live calls feature into its app. Cameo is perhaps most well-known for letting you pay for pre-recorded video messages from celebrities, but the new feature, called Cameo Calls, will let you have short video conversations that are designed to be like meet-and-greets. (The app even sets up a photo op at the end of the call.) The Cameo Calls page has a full list of whose available for conversations and how much it costs for a certain amount of their time. Cameo says that calls can last up to 15 minutes and that the average price for a call is $31. When I looked, I saw that most people offer two or three minutes per call, and prices ranged dramatically. (The highest fee I saw was $225 for a 10-minute call with Vanessa Marcil, an actress who was on the show General Hospita...

Guillermo Del Toro’s next film Nightmare Alley is a bit of departure for the director. The new teaser trailer released by Searchlight Pictures on Thursday sees the Oscar award-winning filmmaker trading in his fascination with the supernatural for an R-rated noir set in and around a carnival. Nightmare Alley stars Bradley Cooper as Stanton Carlisle, a nightclub mind reader who becomes tangled up with Cate Blanchett as Dr. Lilith Ritter, a psychiatrist out to debunk him as a fraud. The teaser trailer itself manages to be plenty tense without Del Toro’s usual monsters, featuring carnival sideshows, Willem Dafoe as some kind of ringleader, Blanchett as an obvious femme fatale, and what looks like a live electrocution. You can see for yourself in the teaser above. Del Toro’s very deliberately a...

Apple’s newly redesigned iPad Mini was one of the most exciting announcements at its iPhone 13 event on Tuesday, but in the aftermath a limitation has been identified: As spotted by Jason Snell from Six Colors, the new iPad Mini doesn’t support mmWave 5G. There’s also a hint that its new A15 Bionic processor might be downclocked in comparison to the version that appears in the iPhone 13 line (via MacRumors). Support for 5G on the cellular version of the iPad Mini was one of Apple’s major highlights, but looking at Apple’s tech specs, while it supports low- and mid-band 5G, it doesn’t offer mmWave. Apple first started playing into the 5G hype machine with the launch of the iPhone 12, and continues to tout the faster download and upload speeds the tech can offer in 2021. You can see the cell...

OpenSea head of product Nate Chastain, who was recently accused of a form of NFT insider trading, appears to no longer be working for the company. His Twitter bio now includes the phrase “Past: @opensea.” OpenSea has not publicly named the employee involved in the incident, but CEO Devin Finzer says the NFT trading platform asked for and received their resignation. Yesterday, Finzer put up a blog post saying an employee used knowledge gained from working at the company to purchase NFTs that were about to be posted to the popular trading site’s homepage (and would thus likely go up in value). While an investigation is apparently still ongoing, OpenSea does say that it’s implemented clearer rules to prevent employees from doing this kind of thing in the future. We have a strong responsibilit...

Dame Helen Mirren is a wizard, reader. Or a witch. Or maybe a concerned Muggle? The details don’t really matter; either way, the Oscar award-winning actress is hosting a new Harry Potter quiz show later this year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the film series. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament of Houses will be simultaneously broadcast on Cartoon Network and TBS, with plans to eventually stream on HBO Max as well, WarnerMedia announced Wednesday. The four-part special “will unveil Wizarding World fans willing to put their Harry Potter knowledge to the test for the ultimate honor to be named House Cup champion,” according to WarnerMedia. Mirren will shepherd the latest expansion of the Harry Potter franchise and lend “some British grandeur” to the proceedings, adds Tom Ascheim, Warner...

It’s been over two years since Samsung first announced that its Galaxy Watch would be able to measure people’s blood pressure. The feature is available in a number of countries, including South Korea, but not in the United States — the company is still awaiting Food and Drug Administration clearance. In the meantime, other smartwatch companies have started experimenting with blood pressure tech in a bid for monitors on their devices. Fitbit announced a study trialing a blood pressure monitor in April, and Apple is reportedly working on its own version, as well. Adding a blood pressure monitor to smartwatches could arguably be more important for users’ cardiovascular health than the heart rate and rhythm monitors they have now, says says Ann Marie Navar, a cardiologist at the University of ...

Home Assistant, the powerful-yet-prickly smart home automation platform, is finally moving toward the mainstream. Nabu Casa, the company behind the free, open-source software, has launched Home Assistant Amber, its first ready-to-use hub that can run Home Assistant software out of the box. Unlike with prior methods of using Home Assistant, there’s minimal programming required and no need to build your own computer when you have the Amber. Debuting on the creators’ crowdfunding platform Crowd Supply this week, the $149 box is designed for both beginners and experienced HA fans. Shipping is targeted for June 2022, provided the $140,000 funding goal is met (it’s about a third of the way there as of publish). Home Assistant Amber is designed to be user-upgradable, helping future-proof it in th...