Technology

Celsius – one of the largest cryptocurrency lenders — has locked up all of its customers’ assets after this week’s market crash. On top of both Bitcoin and Ethereum taking a sharp dive, Celsius’ CEL coin also took a huge tumble, going from $0.65 USD last Friday to yesterday’s low of $0.18 USD. Celsius’s official statement reads: “Due to extreme market conditions, today we are announcing that Celsius is pausing all withdrawals, swap, and transfers between accounts. We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations.” Fortune has the total amount of assets tied up in Celsius somewhere in the $12 billion USD range. All eyes now on the #Celsius MakerDAO vault. Thanks to numerous top-ups, the liquidation price has been moved down ...

It’s hard to keep up with all the interesting, important, or just plain fun things you come across on the web. You may come across something you just don’t have time to read right now or want to save because it will come in handy later. But, as most of us have discovered, creating a bookmark on a browser for each article and site that we want to read later can result in a huge bookmarky mess. Years ago, I started getting the better of this issue by signing into Pocket, a popular and long-standing app that allows you to save a bookmarked article to a separate server and then retrieve it to read at your leisure using either a computer or a mobile device. Pocket has been around since 2007. Originally called Read It Later, it started life as a Firefox browser extension, eventually became its o...

Some customers who recently ordered speakers from Sonos’ website received more than what they ordered, which normally wouldn’t be something to complain about — but Sonos charged extra for the devices sent in error and wants them back. While Sonos is providing users with a refund for the additional charges, some are still disappointed they weren’t offered a discount for the inconvenience of dealing with a problem they didn’t cause. Two separate users told The Verge they placed an order for a single Sonos Move and received three. Another user said they’ve been charged over $2,000 after ordering one Move speaker and receiving a total of seven. They say Sonos has given them a timeframe of up to 10 business days until they get their refund. There are also plenty of other reports in a thread on ...

Capcom has finally shared details on a new expansion for last year’s excellent Resident Evil Village, including a story campaign, more content for the Mercenaries mode, and a third-person mode. The expansion, called the Winters’ Expansion, will be available on October 28th, the company announced at its Capcom Showcase on Monday. The new story campaign, Shadows of Rose, stars Rose, the daughter of Village protagonist Ethan Winters. “Rosemary Winters, Ethan’s beloved daughter, has grown up and is now struggling with terrifying powers,” Capcom’s Tsuyoshi Kanda wrote in a post on the PlayStation blog. “In search of a way to break free from her curse, Rose enters the consciousness of the Megamycete. Rose’s journey takes her to a mysterious realm where memories of the past return to create a war...

One Punch Man is getting a live-action film adaptation through Sony Pictures that will bring our beloved bald-headed hero, Saitama, and his mechanical sidekick Genos, to life on the big screen, according to a report from Deadline. The production team sounds solid, with Fast & Furious director Justin Lin on deck, along with scriptwriters Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner, who previously worked on Venom and Jumanji: The Next Level. Arad Productions, a studio that has credits in Spider-Man: Homecoming and the live-action Ghost in the Shell will serve as the producers. The One Punch Man adaption could go into production by the end of this year, Deadline reports. Anime fans have been burned by live-action adaptions in the past There still aren’t any details on who will actually star in the f...

Google is shutting down Talk (also known as GChat) for good — its instant-messaging service you probably haven’t used much since 2007 (via Android Police). Although Google migrated Talk users over to Google Hangouts in 2017 — another one of its now-sidelined messaging platforms — it was still accessible by third-party XMPP clients like Pidgin and Gajim. But Google will cut these last lines of life support on June 16th — three days from now. In a message on Talk’s support page, Google says it’s “winding down Google Talk” and will no longer support third-party apps, citing its initial announcement in 2017. Users who try to sign into GChat after the 16th will see a sign-in error. If you still want to use Pidgin through Google services, Pidgin recommends using this plugin for Google Chat inste...

While we still don’t know all the nitty-gritty details about Samsung’s next-gen smartwatches, recent FCC filings hint that you can expect at least one big update: faster charging. FCC filings don’t reveal too much in terms of features, but they are a good indicator that a product is getting close to launch. The filings were first spotted by 9to5Google and indicate there’ll be three models dubbed the SM-R900, the SM-R910, and the SM-R920. They also confirm basic connectivity specs, like the fact that the watches will support Bluetooth, 2.4 and 5Ghz Wi-Fi, and contactless payments. But as far as the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 lineup goes, the most eye-catching thing is that the watches can charge at 10W speeds. For context, the Galaxy Watch 4 only supports half that. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 m...

The next time a Google Calendar invitation lands in your inbox, you may notice that it looks a little different. Google announced on Monday that it is making updates to the emails it sends out for calendar events, tweaking them to look more modern and to surface important information quickly. Google says if an organizer updates an event, the new design will also show you the old information. For example, if an event changes from 1PM to 2PM, you’ll see the 1PM start time crossed out below the new information to give you a better idea of what exactly is happening to your schedule. Google will also tell you what’s changed about an event right up at the top, so you can immediately know what to look for.

The June 2022 edition of Valve’s Steam Next Fest kicked off Monday, and during the weeklong event, you’ll be able to check out hundreds of free demos, according to the company. There are seriously a lot of demos — as if there weren’t already a ton of games to play right now — but fortunately, Valve has a few tools to help you sort through what’s available. On the Next Fest page, you can look at different genre pages, and the company also highlights popular upcoming games, most wishlisted upcoming games, and games ranked by daily active demo players. One topping the charts that I have my eye on is Metal: Hellsinger, which is apparently a “rhythm FPS” that’s “brimming with diabolical enemies, powerful weapons, and metal music.” That sounds awesome?? In addition, Valve will feature livestream...

Years ago, John Oliver galvanized his Last Week Tonight viewers to join in the fight for net neutrality — instigating a flood of comments that broke down the Federal Communications Commission’s website in 2014. Last night, he turned his attention to a pair of upcoming tech antitrust bills. During his Sunday night show, Oliver explained the ways large tech companies rule the internet. From Apple and Google taking huge cuts from app store sales to Amazon’s stranglehold on the online sellers’ market, Oliver outlined how the power these companies hold could stifle innovation and how lawmakers could shake up the industry. “The problem with letting a few companies control whole sectors of our economy is that it limits what is possible by startups,” Oliver said. “An innovative app or website or s...

Bitcoin’s value has nosedived enough to curb the cryptocurrency’s enormous energy use — and associated greenhouse gas emissions — but only if prices stay low. The price of a single Bitcoin plummeted below $24,000 today, about half of what it was worth in March. While it’s been steadily losing value for months, the sudden tumble in value over the past 24 hours brings the price below a key threshold when it comes to Bitcoin’s impact on the environment. Since Bitcoin’s price peaked at around $69,000 in November, the network’s annual electricity consumption has been estimated to be between roughly 180 and 200 terawatt-hours (TWh). That’s about the same amount of electricity used by all the data centers in the world every year. Higher prices generally incentivize more mining Higher prices gener...