Technology

A new book by the name of The Cult of We written by Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell details a range of shocking revelations about WeWork and its former CEO Adam Neumann, including his $2 billion USD payout and his desire to become the Prime Minister of Israel. According to the new book, Neumann made roughly $2.1 billion USD since the founding of WeWork, and made $500 million USD by selling part of his shares during every funding round the company received. His exit package alone when he was ousted amounted to more than $1 billion USD and was subsequently renegotiated upwards. Money aside, the former CEO also displayed erratic behavior. The Cult of We reveals that during the early days of the company, Neumann often fantasized about becoming the P...

Tokyo summers are notoriously hot and humid, with temperatures soaring to highs of 35 Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and average humidity levels ranging from 50 to 80 percent. For Tokyo’s 1964 Summer Olympics, the games were pushed to October to avoid the city’s midsummer heat. As this year’s Olympics remain scheduled for July and August, many precautionary measures have been taken. To combat the risk of heat-related illness, Alibaba, a TOP Partner of the Olympic Games, has developed an ear-worn device that keeps track of the body temperatures and heart rates of Olympic onsite staff in Tokyo. Multiple Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) meters are also set up at 14 outdoor competition venues to monitor heat, humidity, and sunlight levels. The collective data is aggregated in the cloud and p...

As Netflix’s streaming rivals like Prime Video and HBO Max’s WarnerMedia focus on consolidation and studio acquisitions, Netflix is instead prioritizing its own service and investment in games over snapping up any available studio IP. It’s a refreshing shift away from buying distressed movie studios or long-forgotten catalogs. But will it work? Netflix spelled out its streaming strategy in its second quarter letter to its shareholders. Citing recent mergers between WarnerMedia and Discovery and the last decade of acquisitions and mergers between major media properties — for example, with Disney and Fox or Viacom and CBS — the company said it doesn’t “believe this consolidation has affected our growth much, if at all.” (If I’m a streaming service right now, surely that one has to sting.) Mo...

Athletes love a good wellness trend. Anything that promises to boost performance or give the slightest edge to anyone competing at the highest level of their sport is going to find the ears of elite athletes and Olympians — even (or especially) if it looks like a torture device. In 2016, the fad was cupping: a technique that used suction cups as pain relief, leaving athletes like Michael Phelps looking like they’d just fought off a giant octopus. This year, its blood flow restriction, The New York Times reported. Some swimmers and runners are applying tourniquet-like bands to their arms and legs in the hopes that it’ll boost their training. The strategy was first developed in 1966 by Japanese powerlifter Yoshiaki Sato, but it’s only just caught on with high-profile athletes in the past few...

Quavo, one of the Migos members, is teaming up with NBA Top Shot to offer an NBA Finals playoff legendary pack. Quavo’s Quest includes Top Shot moments from players he knows best from the league, including Trae Young, LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry. Fans can complete the quest by collecting every Moment from these players within the allotted time period. Once completed, fans will have a chance to line up for an exclusive pack drop that will include a digital experience performed by Quavo’s virtual Genies avatar in the metaverse, including content from the latest Migos album, Culture III.  The pack releases on July 29 and the Quavo Quest needs to be completed by July 30 to gain access to the Quavo digital experience. In related news, take a look ...

Amnesty International — part of the group that helped break the news of journalists and heads of state being targeted by NSO’s government-grade spyware, Pegasus — has released a tool to check if your phone has been affected. Alongside the tool is a great set of instructions, which should help you through the somewhat technical checking process. Using the tool involves backing up your phone to a separate computer and running a check on that backup. Read on if you’ve been side-eyeing your phone since the news broke and are looking for guidance on using Amnesty’s tool. The first thing to note is the tool is command line or terminal based, so it will take either some amount of technical skill or a bit of patience to run. We try to cover a lot of what you need to know to get up and running here...

Cloud computing giant Salesforce has completed its acquisition of Slack, a $27.7 billion dollar deal that adds the messaging app to its suite of enterprise software without immediately changing Slack’s functionality, branding, or leadership. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement that “Together we’ll define the future of enterprise software, creating the digital HQ that enables every organization to deliver customer and employee success from anywhere.” While Slack hasn’t quite killed email, it has attracted notice from giants like Microsoft, the company that Slack co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield called “unhealthily preoccupied with killing us” in a conversation with The Verge last year. “In a different universe where Slack is incredibly successful over the next two years an...

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut will let you pet even more animals than you could in the original version of the game, developer Sucker Punch revealed Wednesday. When Ghost of Tsushima first launched, you could only pet foxes, and a few months after release, Sucker Punch added the ability to pet dogs, but in the new Iki Island expansion that’s part of Director’s Cut, we now know that you’ll be able to pet cats, deer, and monkeys. All the animals look absolutely adorable and very deserving of pets. Here’s one of the cats: Jin can find animal sanctuaries across Iki Island where he can play soothing melodies with his flute to tame various animals. Once they’ve been calmed, Jin can return to pet them as often as you’d like. Cats are just one example. pic.twitter.com/SZmnbi0yLK — Ghost of Tsus...

Update July 21st, 8:11PM ET: After we first published this story, Amazon provided the following statement confirming it is looking into two customer service reports related to 3090 failures due to New World: We have two customer service reports on this that we are following up on, and some reports of high GPU usage from forums, which is consistent with a graphically rich game. We do provide user select-able settings to reduce graphics, which correspondingly reduces GPU load, if the player desires. The original story is below. The closed beta for Amazon Games’ new MMO New World has been marred by reports that the game has bricked some players’ Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics cards. In a statement shared Wednesday, Amazon says that it has seen “no indication of widespread issues with 3090s,” but wi...

Oculus is rolling out its v31 software update to Quest and Quest 2 headsets starting today, and it’s filled with some nice quality-of-life improvements. The big one is it’ll be easier to invite friends and recent teammates who aren’t friends to play a game or experience an app together. When you’re in game or in app, pressing the Oculus button will pull up the universal menu as usual, but soon, more apps will show a new “Invite to App” button next to the “Resume” and “Quit” buttons. If friends accept your invite, you’ll be able to see them in the menu. This feature will roll out soon in games like Beat Saber, Blaston, Demeo, Echo VR, ForeVR Bowl, Hyper Dash, PokerStars VR, and Topgolf with Pro Putt. If you don’t want to corral the group within VR, an upcoming update to the Oculus app on iO...