Technology

Jack Dorsey, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Twitter, a man who stans bitcoin right on his Twitter bio, is attempting to sell his very first tweet as an NFT — a digital good that lives on the Ethereum blockchain. You’re probably familiar with the famous tweet, “just setting up my twttr”: Despite the fact that this tweet has been publicly available as a free digital item to look at whenever anybody wanted for nearly 15 years, Dorsey is now trying to sell it as an NFT, or “non-fungible token,” through a platform called Valuables. As you would rightly expect, bidding is already north of $80K. What does “buying” this tweet actually mean? “What you are purchasing is a digital certificate of the tweet, unique because it has been signed and verified by the creator,” according to Valuables’ ...

There’s nothing like an explosion of blockchain news to leave you thinking, “Um… what’s going on here?” That’s the feeling I’ve experienced while reading about Grimes getting millions of dollars for NFTs or about Nyan Cat being sold as one. And by the time we all thought we sort of knew what the deal was, the founder of Twitter put an autographed tweet up for sale as an NFT. You might be wondering: what is an NFT, anyhow? After literal hours of reading, I think I know. I also think I’m going to cry. Okay, let’s start with the basics. What is an NFT? What does NFT stand for? Non-fungible token. That doesn’t make it any clearer. Right, sorry. “Non-fungible” more or less means that it’s unique and can’t be replaced with something else. For example, a bitcoin is fungible — trade one for anothe...

Four exploits found in Microsoft’s Exchange Server software have reportedly led to over 30,000 US governmental and commercial organizations having their emails hacked, according to a report by KrebsOnSecurity. Wired is also reporting “tens of thousands of email servers” hacked. The exploits have been patched by Microsoft, but security experts talking to Krebs say that the detection and cleanup process will be a massive effort for the thousands of state and city governments, fire and police departments, school districts, financial institutions, and other organizations that were affected. According to Microsoft, the vulnerabilities allowed hackers to gain access to email accounts, and also gave them the ability to install malware that might let them back into those servers at a later time. K...

Ford is recalling dozens of the first Mustang Mach-E deliveries after it discovered loose bolts during the quality checks that are holding up shipments. “[S]ome vehicles may have subframe bolts that the supplier did not tighten to specification,” Ford wrote Friday afternoon. “While the issue in affected vehicles is not to Ford’s standards, the company is not aware of any accidents or injuries related to this condition.” Ford says 1,258 Mustang Mach-Es are affected in the US, as well as 90 in Canada, but that the overwhelming majority of those have not been shipped to customers yet. “Fewer than 75 customers who have already taken delivery” will have to bring their Mustang Mach-E in to get fixed, according to the company. Ford says it will start contacting these owners beginning on March 22n...

Last month, The Verge broke news of Mark Cuban and Falon Fatemi’s new app Fireside, which promises to deliver a “next-gen podcast platform,” and today, we can provide a better sense of the app’s functionality and interface. It’s currently in beta on iOS with a limited number of testers, most of whom appear to work in venture capital or as podcasters. However, their chats are visible to anyone, even non-users, through a browser, and from this desktop view, as well as screenshots of the app that The Verge has viewed, we can get a sense of what Fireside is trying to achieve. Broadly, the app is best described as a hybrid between Spotify’s Anchor software and Clubhouse. Although it prioritizes live conversation, like Clubhouse, it tries to make off-the-cuff conversations sound more professiona...

When my editor told me about Window’s built-in battery report, my first thought was: “How have I never heard of this before? Also, that sounds pretty useful!” So I looked at the guide he sent (from Laptop Magazine) and tried it out. It ended up being just as interesting as it sounded, so I figured I’d share, in case you also haven’t come across this handy built-in tool. Windows has been keeping track of how your laptop’s battery is doing since it was installed. The report, which you can run using just two command prompt commands, will show how many cycles you’ve used on your battery and how it’s been used in the past three days. It will also give you a picture of what Windows estimates your battery life should be versus what it actually is. So if you’re curious about your battery sta...

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is suing AT&T for providing nonpublic information to 20 different analyst firms so they would lower revenue estimates ahead of earnings, according to a press release. That let AT&T “beat” expectations for the quarter when the information-sharing took place, turning what could have been some nasty headlines in the financial press into a win instead. According to the SEC’s complaint (PDF), AT&T learned in March 2016 that its quarterly results would fall short of estimates due in part to “a steeper-than-expected decline in smartphone sales.” As you might recall, we used to live in a world where carriers like AT&T subsidized part of the cost of your smartphone, but by then AT&T had passed that cost along to the customer — whic...

The Verge lives on news, and Jay Peters is one of the news writers who keeps it going — searching out the latest info about what’s going on in technology, entertainment, and culture, and writing it up for the site. As with the rest of us, Jay has been doing most of his work from home over the last year — here’s how he manages it. Tell me a little about yourself. What is your background, and what do you do at The Verge? I’m a news writer here at The Verge, and I’m fortunate to get to cover all sorts of things in tech, gaming, entertainment, and more. On any given day, I might write about things like the iPhone 13, Pokémon gadgets, Marvel movie titles, Fortnite skins, or even the Monopoly Longest Game Ever edition. I had a bit of a roundabout path to this job. Out of college, I worked in tec...

Paramount Plus is maybe one of the best streaming services for people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who are looking to get nostalgic about the television of their youth. Outside of that, Paramount Plus is a bit of a head-scratcher. There certainly seems to be a bunch to choose from, but with missing seasons, incomplete film collections, and no immediate “must watch” TV or movie options, the question is still why would anyone sign up for this right now? The good thing is that Paramount Plus’ positives are hard to deny, but most of those positives fall on the TV side. As someone in their late 20s who grew up on a hearty breakfast of Nickelodeon shows, MTV reality series, and crime procedurals, Paramount Plus has everything I would have wanted a decade ago. Last night, I watched a bit of All Tha...

In Hades, the legendary Greek hero who killed the Minotaur, Theseus, is a pain in the ass. He’s a bossfight, a blowhard who treats each encounter like an overproduced wrestling match. Zagreus, the cool, collected prince of the Underworld, may have good reason to want to leave, but in Theseus’ eyes, he’ll never amount to more than hellspawn. This dynamic helped highlight just what made Zagreus, Hades’ protagonist, a fan-favorite. But in early versions of the game, Theseus’ role was reversed. Theseus is hero material in legend only, a sentiment that developer Supergiant Games eventually came to share. During a recent talk on Clubhouse, Supergiant co-founder Amir Rao said that early concepts for Hades starred Theseus. It was creative director Greg Kasavin who flipped the Hades pitch into the ...

I don’t usually work with any music — it often distracts me — but recently, when I’ve needed a little music on in the background, I’ve become obsessed with lo-fi remixes of video game music on YouTube. I’ve already gone on record that I sometimes listen to video game music while working because a) I’m a huge nerd, and b) a lot of video game music is already designed to be pleasant background noise that can loop endlessly without becoming annoying. It wouldn’t be all that much fun spending hours upon hours in the worlds of Pokémon if the music was always in-your-face and distracting, after all. (I will give Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire’s hilariously prominent horns a pass here.) It makes sense, then, that the infinitely listenable quality of video game music, much of which has become seared to...

Tim Wu — the Columbia law professor who coined the term “net neutrality” — is joining the Biden administration, where he’ll be working on technology and competition policy at the National Economic Council. Happy to say I’m joining the Biden White House to work on Technology and Competition Policy at the National Economic Council. Putting this twitter feed on hold for now — so long! — Tim Wu (@superwuster) March 5, 2021 Wu is a prominent voice online, as one of the most well-known advocates for a free and open internet. He’s spent years arguing for the concept of net neutrality — the idea that the internet should be free of throttling or control from the government or companies that provide it. He’s also been a prominent voice in recent years on the subject of antitrust regulati...