Technology

The US Treasury Department announced on Friday that it’s sanctioning Blender.io, essentially cutting the Bitcoin mixer off from the US financial system (legally speaking, anyway). The department alleges that the service, which lets people obfuscate the record usually kept by the blockchain, was used by North Korea to “support its malicious cyber activities and money-laundering of stolen virtual currency.” According to the Treasury’s press release, Blender.io was used by the Lazarus hacking group to launder $20.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency it allegedly stole from the crypto-based game Axie Infinity. The entire proceeds of the hack, which the Treasury linked to Lazarus and North Korea in April, were estimated to be worth around $625 million at the time, though a few million dollars ...

Snap’s new flying camera, the $230 Pixy drone, went on sale last week — but the earliest buyers were told they’d have to wait three months to actually get the gadget. We’re now thinking that the company didn’t make enough, because Snap has extended the Pixy’s shipping time to four whole months, according to the drone’s website. Does this mean the Pixy is selling well? It’s possible, but it seems more likely that Snap didn’t make that many to begin with. In the past, Snap lost almost $40 million when it made too many pairs of its Spectacles, but Snap CEO Evan Spiegel suggested to The Verge before Pixy’s launch that Snap underestimated how many Pixys it needed and made too few this time around. “Honestly, in hindsight, we probably should have made more,” Spiegel told us. As a result, people ...

Amazon has reportedly fired several senior managers that were part of “operations and leadership” at JFK8, the facility in Staten Island, New York that recently voted to unionize. According to the The New York Times, Amazon told the managers it was going through an “organizational change,” but some of their co-workers see it as a punishment for the union’s win. The Times writes that “more than half a dozen” managers were fired, and that many of them had been tasked with responding to unionization efforts. What that means is frustratingly vague — it could mean that the managers were tasked with keeping the union from winning, and that they were fired for failing to do so. But it could also mean that the managers had helped the union in some way, and are being fired for that (though that wou...

Microsoft’s new Outlook email client for Windows, the so-called “One Outlook” project the company has been working on for some time, appears to be almost ready for prime time. Some users have been able to download the new app, as first spotted by Windows Central, though it seems to only function for work and educational accounts right now. Those who can get in are finding… well, it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect. We’ve long heard that the future of Microsoft’s mail clients would look a lot like the Outlook web app, and indeed, the new app appears to be just that. It’s much lighter and simpler than previous versions of Outlook for Windows and much more powerful than the built-in Mail app it is also slated to eventually replace. The app is fully hosted online, too, as Microsof...

AMD has now previewed its upcoming Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 series CPUs for high-end gaming laptops, dubbed the “Dragon” range. Designed to power “extreme gaming laptops,” the new Dragon range from AMD will feature a TDP of more than 55 watts, aimed at laptops that are heftier in design and measure thicker than 20mm in thickness. While they’ll be more power-efficient than other competing models, reports also suggest that it’s designed to be used while the laptop itself is plugged in. As you’d expect, the series will feature PCIe 5 architecture and be used in tandem with DDR5 RAM. Aside from the Dragon series, AMD is also expected to launch its “Phoenix” range of APUs that primarily focus on thinner and lighter laptops which sit under 20mm thick. The TDP for those will range from 35 to 45 watts and...

In November 2020, Microsoft gaming CEO Phil Spencer revealed you’d likely be able to stream Xbox games to your TV “in the next 12 months.” And, in June 2021, the company confirmed it would soon offer both a smart TV app and an Xbox streaming stick to make it happen. But it’s been 11 months since “soon” and 17 months since Spencer suggested it’d be 12 months. And, now, both VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb and The Verge’s own Tom Warren are reporting that the wait isn’t over. Grubb now says we can expect the Xbox puck “in the next 12 months,” which I will remind you is the same exact phrase Spencer uttered 17 months ago, alongside the words, “I don’t think anything is going to stop us from doing that.” (I will also remind you that Microsoft already developed a similar product last decade but cancel...

It felt like a sneaky hack because, for years, you could buy a Kindle book on the Amazon app on an Android device when you couldn’t do the exact same thing on an iOS one. But that unique relationship has ended, as first noted by Ars Technica. When attempting to purchase ebooks on the Amazon app on Android, you’re now directed to a new screen explaining why the purchasing option is gone. If you happen to update the app, you’ll see a similar note as to what you see on an iOS device that says purchasing digital products on the app is unavailable. Amazon pulled digital book buying support from iOS devices back in 2011. The goal was to avoid the “tax” Apple’s App Store inflicts on digital goods. Comixology, the comic book app, lost the ability in 2014 not long after Amazon acquired it. It was, ...

A preventable infection by a porcine virus might have contributed to the death of the first patient to have a heart transplant with a pig organ, MIT Technology Review reported this week. David Bennett Sr, who had severe heart disease, received a genetically modified pig heart in early January of this year — a major milestone in animal-to-human transplants, or xenotransplantation. He died in March. Initially, the hospital where the procedure was performed said that the cause of death was unknown. But last month, Bennett’s transplant surgeon said in a webinar that the heart was infected with porcine cytomegalovirus, a virus that doesn’t infect human cells but can damage the organ. Virus-free hearts transplanted into baboons survived much longer than virus-infected hearts, according to a Germ...

A district judge in California has dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter, saying the former president’s 2021 ban from the platform appears entirely legal. The order, handed down today, gives Trump and a group of other banned users until May 27th to file an amended complaint. But while it leaves the door open for an appeal, the order is highly critical of the lawsuit’s claims — suggesting any amended version will face an uphill battle. In particular, the order dismisses Trump’s claims that Twitter violated the First Amendment and rejects a claim that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is unconstitutional. “Plaintiffs are not starting from a position of strength,” Judge James Donato notes in the first paragraph of his analysis. For Trump and his fellow Twitter exiles, i...

NVIDIA has been fined $5.5 million USD by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on charges that it failed to disclose how much of its revenue came from cryptomining to investors. In 2018, NVIDIA reported profits of $9.714 billion USD, over half of which it attributed to gaming. The SEC’s order claims that the company failed to disclose cryptomining as a significant contributor to its revenue. Per the order, the SEC alleges that during two quarters in the 2018 fiscal year, NVIDIA “had information indicating that cryptomining was a significant factor in the year-over-year growth in revenue from the sale of GPUs (graphics processing units) that NVIDIA designed and marketed for gaming.” In an accompanying press release, the SEC called NVIDIA’s omission of the information “misleading.” “T...

Fertility and cycle tracking apps are widely used and can be useful tools that help people monitor their health. But reports regularly show that, like other health apps, they fall short when it comes to protecting user privacy. That shortfall is particularly concerning for users in the US after a leaked Supreme Court opinion indicated that the court intends to overturn Roe v. Wade — eliminating the right to an abortion in the United States and allowing states to criminalize the safe and lifesaving medical procedure. Information stored in cycle-tracking apps isn’t covered by the medical privacy law HIPAA, so companies have broad leeway with how they use it — and who they share it with. They often share information with data brokers, advertisers, and other third parties that are difficult to...

Sennheiser’s new Momentum True Wireless 3s are the company’s latest flagship earbuds. With a more refined style, improved active noise cancellation, new features, and top-notch sound quality, Sennheiser has delivered a worthy competitor to the Apple AirPods Pro, Sony’s WF-1000XM4, and Bose’s QuietComfort Earbuds. Perhaps the most welcome thing about the latest Sennheiser buds is that they’re less expensive than the previous model: the Momentum True Wireless 2s launched at $299, but the company is releasing these at $249.95. That’s still premium pricing, but Sennheiser is now on par with Apple’s AirPod Pros and comes in cheaper than both Sony and Bose’s flagships. With tech products increasingly creeping up in price every year, it’s nice to see one go in the opposite direction for a change ...