Technology

Ripple, its former CEO and founder Christian Larsen, and its current CEO Bradley Garlinghouse are being sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC says that they raised more than $1.3 billion through an unregistered securities offering. The suit claims that Ripple violated securities laws by selling XRP, which The Wall Street Journal calls “the third-largest cryptocurrency by market value,” over a seven-year period starting in 2013. According to the complaint, the “illegal securities offering” created an information asymmetry that let Larsen and Garlinghouse sell XRP to investors who only knew what Larsen and Garlinghouse chose to tell them. At the heart of the suit is a basic question about XRP: is it a security or a currency? According to the SEC’s suit, it’s a security, ...

The yearly Spotify Wrapped is a rather upbeat affair, which doesn’t doesn’t quite match everyone’s mood this year. For the more sullen among us, there’s another option: a bot from The Pudding that will judge us for our crimes of listening to terrible music. If you want to be judged, you open a page titled “How Bad is Your Spotify” and you log in with your Spotify account. (It might take a couple refreshes on the “Loading your music library” page.) This absolute jerk of an AI then drags you mercilessly while it pulls your playlists and top tracks. It asks you questions before it shows any results, in phrasing that gives the plain text the same aura as the girls who bullied me in middle school. Did you really listen to Clementine by Sarah Jaffe? (Yes) Like ironically? (No…) The final judgeme...

With roughly half a billion people reportedly playing it in November, Among Us has had the most monthly players for a mobile game ever, beating giants like Pokémon GO and Candy Crush Saga. According to Nielsen’s SuperData, the game is “by far the most popular game ever in terms of monthly players.” The success is even more remarkable because InnerSloth — the company that makes Among Us — only has four employees. That’s roughly 125 million players per person who works on the game. It’s proven to be so popular that the studio decided to cancel a sequel that was in the works and just put all its effort into improving the original. It even caught the attention of sitting congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who livestreamed herself playing it to try to encourage people to vote, with an audi...

Steam’s annual winter sale is live. If you’ve been meaning to buy some games, either for yourself or as a gift for upcoming holidays, now’s the time to take a look around. There are thousands of games up for sale in the Steam Store (and you can vote for the 2020 Steam Awards while you’re there). While you’re browsing, the Epic Games store is also in the midst of its holiday sale. In addition to discounts of up to 75 percent, the sale provides endless $10 coupons — that is, you can apply one to a purchase (on “eligible games” priced at $14.99 and up), apply another to your next purchase, and so on. And the store will be giving away games for free until December 31st. As of this writing, the current freebie is Metro: 2033 Redux (usually $19.99). Here are some of the best deals you can get fr...

Nickelback has created a parody version of its own song “Photograph” for a new Google Photos ad, and it’s a lot more entertaining than you might suspect. In the ad, Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger mercilessly makes fun of himself, fully leaning into the “Photograph” meme and its usefulness in explaining all sorts of graphs and in illustrating framed copies of other memes, as Kroeger instructs viewers to “look at them” in his unmistakable, raspy voice. The ad’s lyrics and photos touch on Kroeger’s “noodle hair” and his passion for photographing dessert. That it manages to both be a nice example of Google Photos’ features and a cute use of the old meme makes it worth a watch. “Photograph” is 15 years old, and the meme connected to it has been around for at least five, so seeing the ad is...

Verizon’s new nationwide 5G network is reportedly slower than its LTE network, to the point that users are apparently better off just disabling 5G entirely unless they’re near a mmWave network. The results come from testing done by PC Magazine’s Sascha Sagan, who points to Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, or DSS, as the culprit. The tech lets carriers run LTE and 5G networks side by side, which is useful if, like Verizon, you don’t yet have enough dedicated 5G spectrum. While the carrier has largely focused on its mmWave network until recently, it also has begun rolling out a mid-band nationwide 5G network, which promises to avoid mmWave’s range issues by using DSS. The only catch is that, with Verizon, it seems like this tech leads to worse performance in most cases for phones running in 5G mode...

OnePlus will finally be making a smartwatch in 2021, CEO Pete Lau has announced on Twitter, marking the first foray into wearable devices for the smartphone company. There’s not many details yet on the upcoming device, including what smartwatch OS it’ll run, a price, or even a firm release date — Lau only notes that it’ll be “released early next year.” The idea of a OnePlus smartwatch isn’t a new one; the company had reportedly designed a Wear OS (then still called Android Wear) smartwatch a few years ago. OnePlus ultimately nixed that product, though” “We had completed the design but we still decided to scrap it,” Lau said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “We have to be focused.” Many of you said you wanted a watch, and as you might have heard over the weekend—we’re mak...

If you’ve ever wondered how profanity actually became profane, Nicolas Cage is here to help you out. The actor is no stranger to swearing, but in Netflix’s upcoming show History of Swear Words he’ll be doing it in a more educational way. Though, if the trailer’s indicative of what the show is going to be like, it’ll still be very entertaining. It opens with Cage standing up and just screaming “fuck,” likely a reference to him doing pretty much the exact same thing in Deadfall. It only gets better from there, explaining that apparently the word is an acronym (standing for Fornication Under Consent of the King), and delving into how swear words are understood by the people using and hearing them. The show will include celebrity interviews and, of course, a lot of swearing As someone who’s al...

Remember this time last year, when everyday didn’t bring with it a new horror and people just wanted to talk about The Witcher? Well, now a new video from Netflix is trying to bring back some of that energy, piecing together lyrics from the show’s breakout song, “Toss a Coin to your Witcher,” all sung in different languages. In the video, the song jumps between languages, starting with English before leading into Polish, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and more. It’s incredibly charming, with all the different Jaskiers coming together to remind various townspeople and locals to toss a coin to their Witcher. It’s the holiday season; not tipping at least 20 percent, especially in areas with heavy snowfall and grotesque monsters that demand a Witcher to slay them, is simply unacceptable...

GameStop reportedly sent a memo to employees telling them to accept returns of Cyberpunk 2077, even in the event the physical game box has already been opened, according to Kotaku and Vice reporter Patrick Klepek. GameStop’s return policy typically doesn’t let you return opened games, but GameStop seems to be making an exception for Cyberpunk 2077 after its buggy launch. You can return PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of game within 30 days of purchase to get a refund, reports Kotaku. GameStop didn’t reply to a request for comment, but employees at GameStops in Chicago and Houston confirmed to The Verge by phone that their stores were accepting returns of the game. Other retailers have also offered refunds of Cyberpunk 2077. Best Buy accepted physical returns of the game until December ...

There’s been an avalanche of new electric vehicles announced in the past year and a half, ranging from the luxurious to the practical to the garish. So you’d be forgiven if you forgot about the Volvo XC40 Recharge, a great compact SUV with a terrible name. I won’t judge Volvo too harshly for its name choice. The Swedish automaker wanted to convey the simple message that this was a familiar vehicle with a new powertrain. And “XC40 Recharge” certainly gets that point across. That said, it’s an uninspiring name for what is arguably a fantastic EV. an uninspiring name for what is arguably a fantastic EV I got a chance to drive Volvo’s first all-electric vehicle around northwestern New Jersey for around two hours on a recent Friday. The roads were freshly plowed, the sky was a cloudless blue, a...

A group of high profile tech companies including Microsoft, Google, Cisco, and VMWare have filed an amicus brief in support of Facebook’s legal action against NSO Group, Microsoft has announced. Facebook-owned WhatsApp sued the spyware vendor last year, alleging that its software was used to hack 1,400 devices via a vulnerability in the messaging service. Other companies listed on the filing include the Internet Association, and Microsoft subsidiaries GitHub and LinkedIn. In response to Facebook’s lawsuit last year, NSO Group has argued it should benefit from “sovereign immunity,” Reuters reports, because it sells its tools to foreign governments. However, in July a judge denied its request to dismiss the lawsuit. Now NSO Group is appealing to overturn the ruling, and it’s this appeal atte...