Technology

Coinbase is pulling back on its hiring efforts. In a memo posted to Coinbase’s site, chief people officer L.J. Brock announced that Coinbase is putting a pause on hiring new employees, as well as rescinding several job offers already accepted by prospective workers, citing “current market conditions and ongoing business prioritization efforts.” The shift comes as the cryptocurrency market continues to trend downwards, dragging the supposedly immovable stablecoins, which are pegged to a fiat currency or commodity, with it. Coinbase started to slow hiring in mid-May to make sure the company is “best positioned to succeed during and after the current downturn,” but this move halts hiring completely. Brock notes that the freeze will also affect backfills, or the employees hired to replace work...

Volume 3 of Love, Death and Robots covers a lot of ground: haunting alien landscapes, frighteningly realistic sea monsters, cute zombie apocalypses. But, even still, one episode in particular manages to stand out: “The Very Pulse of the Machine.” It’s a beautiful, lonely animated short about an astronaut named Martha (Mackenzie Davis) trapped on Io, a desolate moon of Jupiter, while possibly communing with the Moon as well — or maybe she’s just hallucinating. It’s based on a short story of the same name by Michael Swanwick and features an art style clearly inspired by the late French artist Jean “Moebius” Giraud. Following the new season’s premiere, I had the chance to talk to Emily Dean, who directed the episode, about how the visuals came about, the challenges of adapting the short story...

Three Chinese astronauts, or taikonauts, arrived at the Tianhe core module of the unfinished Tiangong space station on Sunday morning, where they’ll stay for six months to help finish its construction (via Space.com). The Shenzhou 14 spacecraft took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert on Saturday at 10:44PM ET (10:44AM local time) and docked with Tianhe at 5:42AM ET (5:42PM local time). The three-person crew includes Chen Dong, Cai Xuzhe, and Liu Yang, who originally made history as the first Chinese woman in space during the country’s Shenzhou 9 mission in 2012. While they’re in orbit, the crew is expected to conduct several spacewalks and prepare the station for the arrival of two additional lab modules, with the Wentian module set to launch next month and the...

After a long, long month of laptop releases, Computex 2022 is finally over. In some ways, it’s the Computex that wasn’t. The early part of this year was an exciting time to be a laptop reporter. Every company and its mother announced that big ideas were on the way. Wacky products abounded, from monitors to phones. LG Display (which supplied the 13.3-inch panel for Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold) showed off a 17-inch foldable OLED screen. We saw RGB, OLEDs, and haptics galore. Chipmakers promised architectural innovations and performance gains. We were told that these were all coming soon. At the end of May was Computex, the biggest laptop-specific show of the year. (Well, it really was all of May — since many global attendees couldn’t get to Taiwan, most companies just did their own thing and d...

Apple is poised to reveal a new MacBook Air at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on Monday, but even if it does, you may not be able to immediately buy one. According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, COVID-19 shutdowns at the Chinese plants that make MacBooks might mean a limited supply of new devices or a release date that’s further off. China’s zero-COVID policy has led to the temporary closure of factories that make Apple products, including Pegatron and Quanta. Although China has begun to relax some of the movement restrictions it initially reinstated in March, some neighborhoods in Shanghai still remain under lockdown. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects Apple to ship about six to seven million new MacBook Airs before the third quarter of this year if Quanta’s ...

Following a few months of gritty warfare — and a live event last night starring a giant mech — the latest season of Fortnite is surprisingly laid-back. In fact, season 3 of the game’s third chapter is called, simply, Vibin’. It brings with it some notable changes to the island, including new locations like an amusement park — complete with a rollercoaster — as well as a trippy-looking forest called Reality Falls that features magical saplings players can plant and grow for better loot. Here’s a closer look at how the western edge of Fortnite’s island looks now: Gameplay-wise, the season brings back a fan-favorite vehicle, the Baller (which looks a bit like a giant hamster ball). It has been tweaked slightly, though: it has more health, can float on water, and has a battery that will eventu...

Morbius is back in theaters — despite no one even asking for it — and its unpopularity is only making itself more obvious. The film made just $85,000 on Friday after making a return to over 1,000 theaters, bringing its domestic cumulative to $73.6 million (via Forbes). Morbius was originally released on April 1st and wasn’t the most well-received. In The Verge’s review of the flick, our TV and film reporter, Charles Pulliam-Moore, says Morbius’ pacing, plot, and the performance of its lead actors feel “ill-conceived,” and “calls into question Sony’s grand project of building an entire cinematic universe on Spider-Man’s back.” Sony likely re-released the movie with the hope that renewed interest in the “it’s morbin’ time” meme would somehow trigger a second larger wave of people who would w...

New York’s State Assembly passed the Warehouse Worker Protection Act (WWPA) on Friday, a bill that would require Amazon and other companies to disclose production quotas to workers, as first reported by CNBC. If New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) signs it into law, it would also prevent employees from having to meet quotas that require them to skip lunch or bathroom breaks. Just like a similar bill passed in California last September, the WWPA states that employers will need to provide each warehouse worker with “a written description of each quota to which the employee is subject” when they’re hired (or within 30 days of the bill becoming law). It also bars employers from punishing workers for failing to meet quotas that weren’t disclosed, or that they had to skip breaks to meet. Governor...

Another alleged Google Pixel 7 prototype has surfaced, this time from a Reddit user who says they bought it on Facebook Marketplace. From appearances, it’s a Pixel 7 Pro, which Redditor AMC20_ says was listed as a Pixel 6 Pro without a box. It is not, in fact, a Pixel 6 Pro. Google’s phones have a long history of unusual leaks, but even by Pixel standards, this is a strange one. It’s also the second time a prototype Pixel 7 Pro has surfaced in the last week. In case you missed episode one of this saga, someone listed a Pixel 7 prototype on eBay. As Android expert Mishaal Rahman pointed out, the photos seem to have been taken with another prototype unit — a Pixel 7 Pro, which can be seen in the reflection on the phone’s glossy back panel. The person who purchased the 7 Pro prototype on Face...

Apple is reportedly teaming up with Hollywood directors to create video content for its upcoming augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR) headset, according to a report from The New York Times. Sources familiar with the matter told the Times that Jon Favreau is just one of the directors involved — he’s reportedly tasked with delivering a mixed reality experience based on Prehistoric Planet, the dinosaur-filled Apple TV Plus series he produced. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to immerse ourselves in a Jurassic Park-like landscape anytime soon. In line with an earlier report from Bloomberg, the NYT says Apple’s headset might not launch until 2023 due to issues with battery life and performance. That said, its development hasn’t come without a bit of turbulence — the NY...

A huge battle took place today in Fortnite’s most recent live event — which featured a gigantic mech, as well as some hints for what to expect from the game’s next season. If you missed the rollercoaster-like experience, you can check out what went down in the video above. Before the event kicked off properly, players were transported to what appeared to be a frosted-over space station, where they could kill time by using huge guns to clear away an array of asteroids that circled the station while listening to characters like Agent Jones and The Origin bicker over a loudspeaker. They were then given a mission: stop a powerful weapon that could wipe out all life on the island. It turns out, that space station actually housed a giant mech (one that looks oddly familiar), which made its way t...

Meta has added new editing tools and features to Facebook and Instagram Reels, making it easier for users to create, edit and schedule content on the platform. Among them, creators will now be able to edit and schedule Facebook Reels on desktop via Creator Studio, in addition to iOS and Android. Additionally, Meta is rolling out a new video clipping tool that will streamline the process of creating clips from published, long-form videos for the platform’s short-form content segment. For gamers, the social media giant has implemented new editing tools that let them generate Reels directly from their Live content, with the ability to clip up to 60 seconds from a live stream featuring dual views for both gameplay and creator cam. On Facebook, Meta now supports voiceovers for video narration o...