Новости за 14.02.2022

The offices will reopen on February 28th. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Microsoft plans to fully reopen its offices in Washington state, where it is headquartered, on February 28th. The company’s reopening plans shifted many times in 2021 before being delayed indefinitely in September, but now Microsoft is committing to a firm date.

Photo by Michele Doying / The Verge

BlockFi, a crypto finance institution, will pay $100 million in penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) and 32 US states after it settled charges relating to its interest program (via The Block). Regulators say that the company’s BlockFi Interest Accounts, which let users earn returns on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT, were unregistered securities and that BlockFi wasn’t properly registered as an investment company. Читать дальше...

Actors Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tôko Miura with the titular car | Cannes Film Festival

If you’re one of those people who wants to see all the Oscar potentials before the awards show, you’re in luck: Drive My Car, a limited release in theaters, comes to HBO Max on March 2nd, Deadline reports.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Meta over its use of facial recognition. The lawsuit, filed today in state district court, claims Meta’s Facebook photo tagging system violated the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier (CUBI) Act. It’s seeking financial damages and an end to any unauthorized use of Texans’ biometric data.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Romance scammers made off with a total of $139 million in cryptocurrency last year, five times more than the amount stolen in 2020, according to a new report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Cryptocurrency payments made up the largest fraction of the $547 million lost to scammers in 2021, with victims losing $9,770 in crypto on average.

Montauk Point, N.Y.: The Block Island wind farm, from Montauk Point, on Long Island, New York on April 16, 2021. | Photo by Mark Harrington/Newsday RM via Getty Images

New York State broke ground on Friday on its first offshore wind farm, kicking off a boom in similar projects aimed at transforming the state’s — and the nation’s — energy mix. The South Fork Wind project off the coast of Long Island is expected to be operational by the end of 2023.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Apple’s new proposals for dating apps in the Netherlands haven’t gone far enough to appease the country’s competition regulator, which has just announced that it’s fining the company another €5 million (around $5.6 million). It’s the fourth weekly fine levied against the company, bringing the total to €20 million (around $22.6 million), and these fines are set to continue weekly while the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) thinks Apple is failing to comply with its order. Читать дальше...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Snapchat is introducing a new way for creators on the app to earn money. The platform is testing mid-roll ads that appear in the Stories of a small group of US creators, with a wider rollout happening in the coming months.

Jared Isaacman (left) and the rest of the Polaris Dawn crew | Image: Polaris

Jared Isaacman, the billionaire who flew to Earth orbit on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule last year, plans to fly with SpaceX again. Today, Isaacman announced that he’s purchased three additional upcoming flights with SpaceX, a series of missions called “Polaris” that would take him deeper into space on the company’s spacecraft.

Horizon Forbidden West running on a PS4.

You don’t need a new console for Aloy’s latest adventure

Nvidia announced its RTX 3090 Ti with faster memory and better performance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in early January. After originally promising more information by the end of January, Nvidia has since remained silent about pricing or a release date for the RTX 3090 Ti. Now, the company is refusing to say what’s going on.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The UK’s tax department, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), says it’s the first authority in the country to seize an NFT, BBC News reports. The seizure was made as part of a £1.4 million (roughly $1.9 million) fraud case, in which three individuals have been arrested. The authority seized £5,000 worth of crypto assets (around $6,762) alongside three NFT artworks which have yet to be valued.

Mok Shaiz’s majordomo reads from an 80s tabletop bowling game. | Screenshot: The Book of Boba Fett

Keen-eyed observers might have spotted something a little off about the digital notepad used by Mok Shaiz’s majordomo in last week’s finale of The Book of Boba Fett. As pointed out by Mike Mika on Twitter, rather than the hi-tech instrument you might expect, the prop held by actor David Pasquesi appears to be a tabletop Coleco Bowlaltronic toy from the 1980s.

Where most open world games can offer a paralyzing amount of choices, Horizon Forbidden West doesn’t feel too overwhelming

It’s time to return to Middle Earth: the first trailer for Amazon’s incredibly ambitious The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has finally arrived during the Super Bowl LVI, giving a first good look at the upcoming prequel series.

Polestar made its Super Bowl debut with a Polestar 2 commercial that aimed to set the electric car newcomer apart from traditional car companies by taking a shot at the entire concept of flashy car commercials — and at Tesla and Volkswagen, specifically.

Coinbase just made its Super Bowl debut with a remarkable clever QR code ad that might have been too popular: the company’s “Less talk, more Bitcoin,” campaign appears to have temporarily knocked out its app following the ad airing during the broadcast

Marvel Studios

The Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness teaser that played at the very end of Spider-Man: No Way Home was an unexpected surprise that, for all its flashiness, didn’t say a thing about the movie’s plot or how Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) are meant to help Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) fix the existence of all things. The movie’s latest trailer does, though.

The dLight comes with built-in support for the Google Assistant. | Image by Google via Ben Gold

If you’re in the market for a Google Assistant-supported smart lamp, you’ll be sorely disappointed to know that Google created one, but it’s only for employees, as reported by 9to5Google. Google designer Ben Gold tweeted out an image of the lamp, cleverly called the dLight, noting it “will likely never be for sale outside of the company.”