Technology

The Federal Trade Commission issued multimillion-dollar fines against three bot-powered ticket scalping operations. The FTC says these organizations bought over 150,000 event tickets over the past four years, nabbing them with automated tools that evaded online purchasing limits. After reselling these tickets for an estimated $26.1 million, they’ve been accused of breaking a 2016 anti-bot law — the first time this law has been applied. Regulators reached a proposed settlement with the ticket selling groups, including $31.6 million in fines. However, most of these fines were suspended because of an inability to pay. The three groups will pay a total of $3.7 million instead, and they’ll have to maintain records demonstrating their future compliance with the law. The settlement must still be ...

Google is redesigning how search results look on mobile, the company announced in a blog on Friday. “We wanted to take a step back to simplify a bit so people could find what they’re looking for faster and more easily,” Aileen Cheng, who led the redesign, said in the blog. The redesign will have larger and bolder text that’s intended to be easier to scan quickly, and you’ll see more of Google’s font in results. Search results will also take up more of the width of your screen, thanks in part to reduced shadows. Google also says the redesign will use color “more intentionally” to help highlight important information without being distracting. To get an idea of how the redesign differs from the current experience, compare this render of the redesign with a screenshot of the current search ex...

Amazon is trying to delay a union vote in Bessemer, Alabama, appealing a US labor board decision to allow 6,000 warehouse workers to vote by mail on unionization. The company is arguing for the election to be held in person, according to documents filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Thursday. Amazon’s argument is that mail-in voting decreases voter turnout. It says the NLRB looked at the wrong COVID-19 infection data when determining how to hold the vote, using the positivity rate in Jefferson County, where the warehouse is located, rather than the positivity rate at the warehouse itself. Workers in Bessemer are set to vote on whether to unionize with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union starting on February 8th. Ballots must be mailed in by March 29th, and th...

Image: CD Projekt Red If you’ve already nabbed a next-gen PlayStation or Xbox — or are willing to give developer CD Projekt the benefit of the doubt that it’ll eventually work on your current-gen machine — you can now pick up the standard disc edition of Cyberpunk 2077 for half-price at Amazon and Best Buy. It’s $30, instead of $60. To be clear, that’s the price for the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, which work on PS5 and Xbox Series X far, far better than they do on current-gen consoles. (There’s no PS5 or Xbox Series X-specific version of the game so far, but the disc will include a free upgrade.) Amazon also has the PC version for $40; compare to its normal price of $60. Sony actually took the unprecedented step of removing Cyberpunk 2077 from… Continue reading… You...

On Sunday, The New York Times published an article about the risks of sky-rocketing teenage device usage during quarantine — and as you might expect, they went straight for the guilty-parent touchstones. There are maudlin photos of a family ruined by gaming, and the quote “I’ve failed you as a father” comes in the second sentence. There are also curious comparisons to drug addiction (“There will be a period of epic withdrawal” after quarantine, one addiction expert warns) and vague claims about the impressionable nature of young brains. Before you rush to cut off junior’s Playstation Plus subscription, it’s worth putting things in perspective. We’re in the middle of a worldwide crisis, and the last ten months have been hard on everyone. We’ve seen historic jumps in depression and substance...

One year ago at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Alienware made waves with a modular gaming PC that worked like a Nintendo Switch, with a pair of gamepads flanking a powerful Windows 10 tablet. Sadly, Alienware’s UFO was just a concept, as was Lenovo’s take on the idea this year — but two companies are now taking up the torch with a pair of crowdfunded gadgets you might actually see in your lifetime. They look seriously legit. The 5.5-inch GPD Win 3 and the 7-inch Aya Neo aren’t going about it in quite the same way; while the Ava tries to closely match Nintendo’s console in shape, size, and with strictly gaming controls on board, the GPD sticks to its palmtop computer roots with a slide-up screen that reveals a tiny backlit keyboard. There’s also a fingerprint sensor, a microSD slot and an optional ...

Amid rising political tensions in the United States, Telegram founder Pavel Durov says his chat service has taken down hundreds of public calls for violence, in accordance with the platform’s terms of service. In a public Telegram post on Monday, Durov emphasized the service’s commitment to banning speech that actively incites violence. “Telegram welcomes peaceful debate and protest, but our Terms of Service explicitly prohibit distributing public calls to violence,” he wrote. “Сivil movements all over the world rely on Telegram in order to stand up for human rights without resorting to inflicting harm.” Notably, the post does not address Telegram’s encrypted chat feature, which protects conversations from outside access and thus is not subject to centralized moderation. Telegram has moder...

In 2016, a team of modders released a game they developed a game in their spare time to nigh-universal acclaim — a mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that they called Enderal, with its own 30+ hour quest with gobs of original dialogue and professional voice acting. “[It’s the most fun I’ve had in an Elder Scrolls game in years,” wrote our sister site Polygon. It’s the top-rated Skyrim mod of all time at ModDB, has nearly 500,000 downloads at NexusMods and its own Steam page filled with glowing reviews. Now, its developers are setting off to build a game of their own. On Sunday, the team at SureAI released its final patch for Enderal, explaining that they no longer had as much free time to keep up development — because they’re working on “a new, commercial project which will hopefully be a...

A capitol rioter may have stolen Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop with plans to sell it to the Russian government, according to an FBI affidavit filed on Sunday. The affidavit charges Riley June Williams with unlawful entry and impeding government functions, based on extensive video record placing her at the scene of the Capitol riot. But the affidavit also uncovers an apparent plan to steal Speaker Pelosi’s laptop and convey it to a contact in Russia, who would then make contact with the country’s government. Williams was identified by UK media over the weekend, and officers confirmed the identification with her driver’s license photo (on file with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation) and in an in-person interview with her parents. Notably, public videos show Williams directing rio...

ProPublica has published a new interactive resource of over 500 videos taken in Washington, DC on January 6th, the day of the Capitol riots, offering an unfiltered look at the day’s events. The videos were sourced from Parler, the social network popular with Trump’s supporters, whose database of over one million videos was archived before the service was taken offline. We’ve covered previous attempts to organize these videos into easy-to-view online resources, like this interactive map from Patr10tic. But what’s notable about ProPublica’s site is how easily you can scrub through a timeline of videos and sort by general location: Around DC, Near Capitol, and Inside Capitol. You can start by watching videos of crowds attending President Trump’s inflammatory speech at midday, before seeing ev...

I get it, there’s absolutely no part of you that wants to relive the terrible year we just lived through. But I implore you to make an exception for 2020 Game, a free web-based side scroller that offers a lighthearted take on last year’s events. It’s well-designed, creative, and — dare I say it — even laugh-out-loud funny in places, and well worth the 10 minutes or so it takes to complete. 2020 Game is the work of Max Garkavyy, who developed it alone over the course of six months. Each level takes the form of a major event or trend from last year, ranging from the early rush on toilet paper to the US presidential race. There’s even a brief TikTok dance interlude. The whole experience is complimented by some fantastic pixel-art graphics and great musical choices. Check out some more screens...

Lee Jae-yong — known as Jay Y. Lee in the West — the de facto leader and heir to the Samsung Group conglomerate, has been ordered back to prison for two years and six months on bribery charges, according to Bloomberg. The billionaire son of controversial Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee, who died in October, was first jailed in 2017 in a succession scandal that saw the removal of president Park Geun-hye. Lee served just one year of a five-year sentence before a retrial was ordered in 2019. Lee had been accused of offering horses and other bribes to a friend of the former president to win government support for his succession at Samsung. Park is serving a 20-year sentence on a variety of charges including bribery related to Samsung. In December, Lee offered a rare public apology for his role in...