DJI Phantom 3

Who Is Back On Twitter

Embark on a Quest with Who Is Back On Twitter

Step into a world where the focus is keenly set on Who Is Back On Twitter. Within the confines of this article, a tapestry of references to Who Is Back On Twitter awaits your exploration. If your pursuit involves unraveling the depths of Who Is Back On Twitter, you've arrived at the perfect destination.

Our narrative unfolds with a wealth of insights surrounding Who Is Back On Twitter. This is not just a standard article; it's a curated journey into the facets and intricacies of Who Is Back On Twitter. Whether you're thirsting for comprehensive knowledge or just a glimpse into the universe of Who Is Back On Twitter, this promises to be an enriching experience.

The spotlight is firmly on Who Is Back On Twitter, and as you navigate through the text on these digital pages, you'll discover an extensive array of information centered around Who Is Back On Twitter. This is more than mere information; it's an invitation to immerse yourself in the enthralling world of Who Is Back On Twitter.

So, if you're eager to satisfy your curiosity about Who Is Back On Twitter, your journey commences here. Let's embark together on a captivating odyssey through the myriad dimensions of Who Is Back On Twitter.

Showing posts sorted by date for query Who Is Back On Twitter. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Who Is Back On Twitter. Sort by relevance Show all posts

23 Great IPhone Games You Can Download Right Now


Good games to download on iphone good iphone games free good games on iphone downloadable games for iphone iphone free games downloads top games for iphone great games for iphone great games for ios 23 great rides 23 great winchester street london ec2p 2ax
23 great iPhone games you can download right now


23 great iPhone games you can download right now

PlayStation and Xbox consoles are harder to buy than ever right now, but who needs 'em? After all, you carry a gaming machine in your pocket with you everywhere you go. The iOS ecosystem is home to a dizzying array of fantastic games you can play, many of which are optimized for your iPhone. In fact, there are so many games out there that cutting through them all can be overwhelming. What should you skip and what should you play?

This is a list of 23 titles that are worth your time. There's a hugely diverse range of games to play on your iPhone or iPad (check out a list of games that work particularly well on iPad here), which means there's something for everyone. There are games that give you deep roleplaying experiences and there are games to pick up and play for two minutes at a time -- plus everything in between. 

Florence

Price: $3

screen-shot-2018-02-14-at-10-33-34-am.png
Annapurna Interactive

Florence is a game so nice that it's been ported to other platforms -- namely Windows, MacOS and the Switch. That's something you can say about few other games that were designed for iOS. It's a game that follows 25-year-old Florence Yeoh as she falls in love with a cellist named Krish. The gameplay takes the form as minigames that progress the story and all up it'll take about 40 minutes to finish. But it's a 40 minutes you won't soon forget.

Call of Duty Mobile

Price: Free

maxresdefault
Activision Blizzard

The latest Call of Duty to hit consoles is the World War 2-era Vanguard, but you don't need to shell out $60 to play Call of Duty. The free-to-play mobile title is obviously not as technically breathtaking as its console brethren, but it gets a lot out of your mobile's hardware. More importantly, it plays surprisingly well. It features popular maps from previous Call of Duty games, and has a control scheme that makes playing on your phone much less awkward than you'd expect. 

Tetris Beat

Price: Apple Arcade subscription ($5 a month)

tetris-beat-apple-arcade
Apple

You already know if you'll like Tetris Beat or not because it is, among other things, Tetris. As you can tell by the name, this take on the classic puzzle game integrates music, with three modes all designed around playing Tetris in tune with a beat. Tetris Beat is a fantastic addition to any home screen because it's easy to pick up and play -- and doesn't require you to return each and every day if you don't feel like it. 

Slayaway Camp

Price: $3

ss-290c02d808b7de13bb1c8253f06d7f453340b1f2-1920x1080
Blue Wizard Digital LP

In Slayaway Camp, you play the villain in a series of slasher movies and you need to hit all the teen counselors at a summer camp. The graphics are voxel-based, which keeps the gore-fest entertainingly cartoony and every detail has been lovingly thought about -- from the "rewind" option when you fall to the scattered bones you leave in your wake. Some levels have limits or special features (such as fires) to help you dispatch your victims (and provide hazards that you need to avoid yourself) and you can even earn coins to unlock special kills. For such a bloodthirsty premise, it's an utter joy.

PUBG

Price: Free

PUBG Mobile

You can't go very far in gaming without finding a battle royale right now and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, better known as PUBG, was the game that kicked off the trend. It's since been eclipsed in popularity by Fortnite -- which is notoriously unavailable on iOS and Android -- but remains a reliably good time. One hundred people are dropped into an area, the last one standing is the winner. Enjoy your chicken dinner!

Fantasian

Price: Apple Arcade subscription ($5 a month)

fantasian-1

After three long years, Fantasian is finally on the way.

Apple

Fantasian hit Apple Arcade with a huge amount of hype, thanks in large part to it being written by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Released over two parts -- the first in April, the second in August -- this is a fully featured JRPG. It'll take you over 40 hours to finish, during which time you'll slay many a beast and see several beautifully crafted environments. Really, the art style is something special: The team created over 100 dioramas and scanned them to create pre-rendered backgrounds. It's worth downloading just to look at, if nothing else. 

Clusterduck

Price: Free

87ad19cf545481cec47adaf1db425348-768x432
PikPok

Between this, Untitled Goose Game and The Falconeer, our avian friends are really enjoying some time in the sun. Clusterduck is a weird game: It's all about hatching duck eggs. The more eggs are hatched, the more mutations occur, the more chaos ensues. It's quirky, silly fun. 

Hyper Light Drifter

Price: $5

capture
Heart Machine

There's one thing you'll ask yourself as you play through Hyper Light Drifter: What the hell is going on? It's a game that seems to take pleasure in giving you almost nothing to work with, in forcing you to figure everything out on your own. That means story and gameplay too. But those who manage to hang in there will be rewarded with a beautifully atmospheric adventure, one animated by pixelated '80s anime art style. 

Rolling Sky 2

Price: Free

switch-rollingsky2-1200x675
Cheetah Technology

Published in 2019, Rolling Sky 2 is a throwback to mobile games developed a decade ago. It's a runner game, meaning the character on screen is forever running forward and it's your job to guide them past dangerous obstacles and traps. The mechanics are simply -- simply move your finger from side to side -- but the onscreen flourishes are not. Rolling Sky 2 integrates music and a beautiful art style to make this simple experience a satisfying one too. 

Out There

Price: $1

landingdrilling.png
Mi-Cos Studio

Out There is a game about survival and strategy, carefully managing your resources as you travel the stars. It's also a tale of ultimate, lonely isolation. It tells the tale of an astronaut who wakes from cryosleep to find that he's no longer in orbit around Jovian moon Ganymede -- in fact, he's not even in the solar system. He has no idea where he is and has only unreliable alien technology as a guide home. You have to carefully manoeuvre through dangerous situations and manage resources as you navigate the stars -- because when your astronaut dies, it's game over. And all the while, you have no way of knowing if what you seek is truly the way home.

Mini Motorways

Price: Apple Arcade subscription ($5 a month)

Dinosaur Polo Club Twitter

Finally, a game for all the kids who dreamed of growing up to be a traffic engineer. Mini Motorways is a strategy puzzle game that's all about building the best road layout for growing cities. If building houses that connect houses to buildings doesn't sound like your idea of fun, Mini Motorways' charming visuals and score will absolutely win you over. 

Her Story

Price: $4

capsule-616x353-1
Sam Barlow

Her Story is a game about a video search engine. Well, that and a murder. A woman's husband was killed and she's a suspect. Your job is to sift through video footage of police interviewing said woman. You do this by typing words into a search engine and watching the videos that pop up -- which will give you more clues and in turn lead to more searches. Basic gameplay, but incredibly creative storytelling: Her Story was won many accolades, including being named GameSpot's Game of the Month in June of 2015.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

Price: Free

animal-crossing-pocket-camp-title
Nintendo

Animal Crossing was always big, but last year's New Horizons boosted the franchise into a new stratosphere of popularity. If you've wanted to play Animal Crossing but don't have a Switch, note that Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is still very much viable, despite being released in 2017. It's a smaller scale experience than New Horizons, as you'll be building a campsite rather than an entire island, but it's full of the same charm that's made Animal Crossing a titan.

Alto's Odyssey

Price: $5

01-altosodyssey-0
Snowman

Alto's Odyssey is a followup game to Alto's Adventure. Both are very similar: They're endless runners, except instead of running it's downhill boarding. Odyssey takes place in the desert, so you're sandboarding, while Adventure has Alto snowboarding. Most importantly, both have a striking, mesmorizing visual style. This is a great game to download for easy pick-up-and-play sessions.

Helix Jump

Price: Free

capture
Voodoo

Helix Jump by Voodoo is a tactile puzzle game that's incredibly deceptive in its simplicity. The goal is to bounce a ball down a labyrinth by falling strategically through the cracks on each level without falling on a red zone. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast. With the fun frustration that came with tap and drag games like Flappy Bird and many others since, Helix Jump will have you screaming at the screen, then coming back for "just one more." The haptic response when the ball bounces is also a nice touch.

Oxenfree

Price: Free

ss-72abbfd384f1825b6d68ed8977b373b78dfbc30f-1920x1080
Night School Studio

A group of friends hanging out on a beach take a turn for the worse when the teens accidentally open a ghostly rift. Soon the group is fighting for survival, struggling through time loops and doubting if everyone is truly who they say they are. Oxenfree calls itself a "supernatural teen thriller," but deftly avoids tropes and cliches, providing characters with depth and a fascinating, eerie plot. It's a quick game you could play in one sitting, but there's multiple endings so you can always go back.

A Normally Lost Phone

capsule-616x353-2
Plug In Digital

Price: $2

Like many games on this list, A Normally Lost Phone is all about narrative. Moreso than other entries here though, this really is a case of "the less you know the better". There are two things you need to know: first, that it's a game about discovering a phone and piecing together information about its owner. Second, it's absolutely worth a download.

What Remains of Edith Finch

Price: $5

Gamespot

What Remains of Edith Finch rules. Through a series of minigames, it recounts the history of the Finch family and the alleged curse that led to its downfall. It'll take you about two hours to beat What Remains of Edith Finch and the game takes you on a remarkable emotional journey during that time. Sadness, laughter, horror and hope; you'll feel it all. 

Framed

643x0w
Loveshack

Price: $4

Words can't do Framed justice: It really is one of the more unusual concepts we have seen in some time. The entire game takes place without words, as it's laid out as a completely wordless noir comic, with our protagonists avoiding being spotted by law while double-crossing each other. Gameplay is not action-based, but context-based. You have to examine each page, shifting the panels around to make sure that events occur in the order that sees our hero escape clean, getting the jump on police or sneaking past. Although it may sound good, that's nothing compared to how satisfying it is to experience.

And if you dig it, a sequel, Framed 2, was released in 2017.

League of Legends: Wild Rift

wr-cb1-announcementarticle-banner-1920x1080.png
Riot Games

Price: Free

There's not much to say about League of Legends: Wild Rift outside of the fact that it's a modified version of the insanely popular League of Legends PC game. Do you like League of Legends? Have you ever wanted to try it? If the answer to either question is a yes, Wild Rift is for you. 

Hearthstone

Price: Free

hearthstone-header
Activision Blizzard

Hearthstone is a spinoff of the Warcraft franchise, a card game building on the lore of Blizzard's wildly popular MMO series. It's unusual for a mobile game in that it's become an esports staple, with the player count reaching 100 million in 2018. Yes, it's a bit overwhelming to start Hearthstone in 2021, but Blizzard has updates planned up through 2023, so it's worth the time investment. 

Monument Valley 2

Price: $5

monument-valley-2-2000x1270-1
ustwo games

Monument Valley was a smash hit when it came out in 2014, combining clever puzzles with simple-but-striking visuals. Its sequel, 2017's Monument Valley 2, adds to it with even more visual flair and, perhaps more significantly, a more pronounced story. Monument Valley is about solving puzzles and it's also a game about mothers and daughters, and the ties between on generation and the next. 

Pokemon Go

Price: Free

Niantic

OK, I know what you're thinking. You already know about Pokemon Go -- like approximately everyone on planet Earth, you probably gave it a go in 2016. But Pokemon Go was far more than a temporary phenom, and in fact had its most profitable year in 2020. Developer Niantic has drastically improved the game over the years, adding new Pokemon, integrated Pokemon battles with human and AI trainers, community events, raids and more. Give Go another chance.


Source

https://muaturunh.omdo.my.id/

.

Twitter Shareholders To Vote In September On Musk Deal: What You Need To Know


Twitter shareholders to vote in german twitter shareholders to vote in japanese what happens to twitter shareholders today what happens to twitter shareholders top twitter shareholders current twitter shareholders list of twitter shareholders
Twitter Shareholders to Vote in September on Musk Deal: What You Need to Know


Twitter Shareholders to Vote in September on Musk Deal: What You Need to Know

Twitter shareholders are expected to vote in September on billionaire Elon Musk's $44 billion proposal to buy the influential social network after he tried to back out of the deal.

Twitter scheduled a meeting for shareholders to vote on the proposal on Sept. 13 at 10 a.m. PT, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday. The company's board of directors is urging shareholders to approve the deal.

"We are committed to closing the merger on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk. Your vote at the special meeting is critical to our ability to complete the merger," the filing stated. Under the deal, shareholders will receive $54.20 in cash for every share of Twitter's stock they own. 

Twitter and Musk are currently embroiled in a legal battle because the billionaire said in July he no longer wanted to buy Twitter and take the company private. Musk's attempt to back out of acquiring the social media site has raised concerns about Twitter's future. 

Musk has said the deal can't move forward until he gets proof that fewer than 5% of Twitter's 229 million daily users in the first quarter were fake or spam-focused, an important metric for understanding Twitter's ads business. But Twitter alleges in a lawsuit against Musk that the billionaire is trying to pull out of the deal because his personal wealth has fallen so the acquisition has become more expensive for him. 

Here's what you need to know about the ongoing saga between Musk and Twitter:

Why is Musk trying to end the deal?

Musk, who leads Tesla and Space X, appears to have concerns about the future of Twitter's business, even though he said at a TED2022 conference that he didn't care about the "economics" of buying Twitter.

A letter sent by Musk's lawyer claims Twitter violated parts of its agreement with Musk, and it outlines information the company allegedly failed to provide the billionaire, including about the social network's calculations of daily users. Twitter makes most of its money from ad sales, so the number of people who can see ads is an important metric for the company.

"This information is fundamental to Twitter's business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement because it is needed to ensure Twitter's satisfaction of the conditions to closing, to facilitate Mr. Musk's financing and financial planning for the transaction, and to engage in transition planning for the business," the letter said.

Since Musk reached an agreement with Twitter, the company's stock price has fallen and there are fears about a potential recession. Twitter has fired key executives, frozen hiring and laid off about 30% of its talent acquisition team. 

Twitter isn't buying Musk's explanation and alleges in the lawsuit his information requests were designed to "designed to try to tank the deal."

Why did Musk want to buy Twitter in the first place?

Musk is an avid user of the service but also one of its loudest critics.

Musk tweeted a poll to his followers in March that asked whether users believed Twitter was protecting free speech. He said the poll results, in which roughly 70% of 2 million respondents answered "no," would be "very important." 

"Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?" Musk said in a follow-up tweet. Then he made an offer to buy Twitter, noting that he believed Twitter needed to be private to accomplish his goal.

The guarantee of free speech in the US Constitution's First Amendment applies to the government censoring speech but not to companies such as Twitter, which have their own rules about what isn't allowed on their sites.

Musk referenced free speech again when Twitter announced the deal in April. He also said he wanted to enhance Twitter with new features and promised he would make the service's algorithms open source, defeat spam bots and authenticate all humans.

"Twitter has tremendous potential," Musk wrote. "I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."

Progressives have criticized social media companies for failing to crack down on harmful content such as hate speech and harassment. Conservatives claim their speech is being censored. (Twitter has long denied allegations it censors conservatives.) 

On April 19, Musk tweeted that he thinks social media policies "are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy." He's also said he would reverse the ban on former US President Donald Trump who was booted from the platform after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots because of concerns about inciting violence. Trump has said he doesn't plan to return to Twitter even if the company lifts the ban.

What has Twitter's response been?

Twitter says closing the deal is in the best interest of shareholders.

Initially, it seemed like Twitter was going to turn down the offer but the board started to take it more seriously when Musk offered details about how he would finance the deal. The company had adopted a defensive strategy known as the "poison pill" that would make it tougher for Musk to add to his stake in the company. The tactic allowed Twitter to accept a competing offer, if one emerged.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted on April 15 that "as a public company, twitter has always been 'for sale.' that's the real issue." Twitter has dealt with leadership changes, layoffs and activist investors as a public company. After Twitter announced the deal, Dorsey said he didn't believe that anyone should own or run Twitter but taking it back from Wall Street is the "correct first step."

"Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust," Dorsey tweeted. "I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness."

A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission also shed more light on how the deal came together. Musk spoke to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in March about the future of social media and decentralizing social media so users get more control over their data and what content they see.

Musk's effort to acquire Twitter has been a bumpy one. Musk rejected a seat on Twitter's board before offering to take the company private. Musk also had a conversation with Dorsey in early April in which Dorsey said he thought Twitter, a publicly traded company, would be better off as a private company, the filing shows.

How did Musk plan to pay for Twitter?

Even for Musk, who's worth about $220 billion, buying Twitter requires some financial juggling.

In an initial SEC filing on April 20, Musk said he had personally committed about $21 billion in equity financing. He also secured about $25.5 billion in debt financing through Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions. 

Since then, Musk has raised capital by selling $8.5 billion in Tesla shares, presumably for the deal, and lined up $7.1 billion from outside investors. According to a May 4 filing, those investors include Sequoia Capital and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. (Ellison sits on Tesla's board of directors.) Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud also agreed to pledge his stake of roughly 35 million shares to the deal.

On May 24, Musk pledged more equity to the deal. He's now willing to put $33.5 billion toward the acquisition.

What happens next?

Twitter shareholders are scheduled vote on the deal at a special meeting in September. Meanwhile, Twitter is asking the Delaware Court of Chancery to enforce its agreement with Musk. A trial is expected to happen over five days in October. Killing the deal could cost Musk $1 billion because of a termination fee that's part of the agreement, according to an SEC filing on April 25.


Source

https://sumpahh.omdo.my.id/

.

Surviving Off Crypto When Cash Fails


Surviving Off Crypto When Cash Fails


Surviving Off Crypto When Cash Fails

This story is part of War in Ukraine, CNET's coverage of events there and of the wider effects on the world.

Artyom Fedosov was confused when his cab driver announced his credit card had been declined. Luckily, the 27-year-old Ukrainian photographer had a backup card. But when he offered it, that one strangely didn't work either. In a last-ditch effort, Fedosov went to an ATM to try to withdraw money from his debit account. The machine rejected him too.

"That's how I found out," Fedosov told me in a recent interview via Zoom, "I'd lost access to my savings."

This "terrifying" moment was in late February, days after Russia's invasion into Ukraine. Fedosov wasn't in his home city of Kiev, but rather in Kazakhstan. It was supposed to be a weeklong stay at the end of a photography trip to the Middle East, but Russia's invasion meant Fedosov could no longer go home.

Since his ill-fated taxi ride, Fedosov been living off cryptocurrency. He found a bitcoin ATM in Kazakhstan, which allowed him to exchange fragments of the cryptocurrency for Kazakhstani tenge. He has since opened a bank account in Kazakhstan, funded exclusively by selling cryptocurrency, and moved to Germany. To bolster his funds, Fedosov is also selling photographs as NFTs -- people buy them in ether, which he converts to cash -- and he expects that will fund a few more months' worth of expenses.

Fedosov is one of approximately 5.5 million Ukrainians who own cryptocurrency. His ability to live off bitcoin and ether is music to the ears of cryptocurrency proponents. They point out that situations like Fedosov's, when the financial system stutters or fails, are the precise reason bitcoin was created. Using a cryptocurrency wallet -- as opposed to going through an intermediary exchange like Binance -- holders can access their cryptocurrency with nothing more than an internet connection and a 12-word seed phrase.

fmm-muxxwakocfx

Fedosov opened a bank account in Kazakhstan, which he funded by selling his cryptocurrency. 

Artyom Fedosov/Twitter

Millions of Ukrainians and Russians lost full access to their money in the days following the invasion. Hoping to access ATMs, queues of people snaked around city blocks in both countries. Banks quickly placed restrictions on cash withdrawals. This was particularly acute in eastern Ukraine, where much of the fighting is taking place. The central bank of Donetsk, a region of 2 million people which has declared itself autonomous from Ukraine, limited citizens to withdrawals of just $130 a day. There are anecdotal reports of people in the east being completely unable to withdraw their savings or access their credit. 

"It was crazy," said Fedosov. "In the beginning, the rules would change several times a day."

Thankfully, banks' worst fears have so far been unrealized. Most Ukrainians, including ones abroad like Fedosov, have regained at least limited access to their funds. Yet the situation is still fraught. The central banks of both Russia and Ukraine have placed restrictions on foreign currency withdrawals. Ukraine's biggest commercial bank, PrivatBank, issued a plea on Twitter, asking for armored trucks with which to transport cash to ATMs. In the days following war's outbreak, Russians fearing what sanctions would do to the ruble chose to plow money into bitcoin. (The ruble is down around 30% to the dollar since the invasion.) 

"Bitcoin is kind of the perfect war asset, unfortunately," said Sam Callahan, an analyst at Swan Bitcoin. "You have wealth stored in your head with 12 words, it's a lot different than even gold or art, hung up in the banks or in vaults. People can cross the border with nothing that can be confiscated, and with 12 words in their head have their wealth."

Callahan's statement would be contentious in traditional finance circles. Critics say that cryptocurrencies are too volatile to act as hedges against inflation, much less the collapse of a monetary system. But after two years of dizzying price movements, it's a reminder that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were designed to be more than speculative assets. 

Already, cryptocurrency has had an outsized role in the war. The Ukrainian government has managed to raise over $60 million for the resistance effort merely by posting its bitcoin and ether wallet addresses on Twitter. Millions more have been raised for local charities and NGOs. Not all crypto prospects are positive, though. Some are concerned that Russian oligarchs will use cryptocurrency to evade the historic sanctions the West has placed on Russia. Just like global charities are likely to emulate Ukraine's crypto fundraising, Fedosov worries that repressive regimes in Iran and Syria would follow Russia's example if the country could evade Western sanctions using bitcoin and ether.

Callahan says this is unlikely. The combined market cap of bitcoin and ether is around a trillion, too little for a country as large as Russia to meaningfully circumvent sanctions. Some oligarchs may be able to move some funds around, though Callahan argues it would be difficult to convert large quantities of money from cryptocurrency to fiat without alerting blockchain analysis firms. Still, he concedes that bitcoin can be used by those with nefarious intent. 

fmnpy3oxoamrm4y

Fedosov has been selling his photography as NFTs, which he says has given him funds to live "for an extra few months."

Artyom Fedosov

"It's an open-source network, it's going to be used by enemies, it's going to be used by friends," he said. "It'll be used by drug traffickers, but it'll also be used for charities. A knife can be used by a surgeon, it can also be used by a murderer."

Fedosov's story is a fortuitous one. He has about $5,000 in ether, he says, because just three months before the invasion he decided to convert money to ether in order to begin trading NFTs -- nonfungible tokens, which are recorded on a blockchain . He only has bitcoin because, back in 2017, Fedosov worked for a Dutch company and said it was easier and quicker to be paid his salary in bitcoin. In the years since moving to a new job, the leftover fraction of a bitcoin in his wallet increased in value from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. 

Back then, Fedosov thought bitcoin was a novel alternative to traditional money. Now he thinks it may be just as reliable -- and is thankful he didn't happen to spend his last chunk of bitcoin all those years ago.  When asked how he had crypto to fall back on, he simply replied: "It's pure luck, actually."


Source

Tags:

NFTs Explained: Why People Spend Millions Of Dollars On JPEGs


NFTs explained: Why people spend millions of dollars on JPEGs


NFTs explained: Why people spend millions of dollars on JPEGs

Take a quick look at the image to the right. What, if anything, could convince you that image is worth $9 million?

NFT of a person smoking and wearing glasses
Richerd/OpenSea

What you're looking at is an NFT, one of the first ever created. It's part of the CryptoPunks collection, a set of 10,000 NFTs released in 2017, a time when much of the world was still finding out what bitcoin is.

Most likely you've already rolled your eyes, either at the $9 million figure or at the very idea of NFTs themselves. The response to nonfungible tokens hasn't changed much since March when they first started exploding. The public at large has reflexively dismissed them as environmentally harmful scams. The bigger the sale, the more brazen the injustice. 

Which brings us back to the above pixelated chap. Its owner is Richerd, an affable Canadian software developer. He started building cryptocurrency software around 2013, but eventually tired of it. After discovering NFTs earlier this year, Richerd bought CryptoPunk #6046 on March 31 for $86,000 in what he said was the biggest purchase he'd ever made in his life.

Richerd, who has over 80,000 followers on Twitter, last month claimed that his CryptoPunk was priceless to him and wasn't for sale no matter the price. The very next day his determination was tested when an offer came through for 2,500 ether, or $9.5 million. It was made not because Richerd's CryptoPunk is worth that amount -- similar NFTs now go for about $400,000 -- but rather because his bluff was very publicly being called. It was a challenge, but it was still a legitimate offer. If Richerd clicked "accept", 2,500 ether would have flowed into his wallet.

Richerd rejected the offer. 

"Well, obviously, the day before I said 'I'm not selling it for any price,' so if I sell it for that price, I'd be going against my integrity," Richerd told me over a Zoom call. "On top of that, I've used this CryptoPunk as my profile pic, as my brand. Everyone knows that's me."

Not too long ago, Richerd's explanation would have sounded insane to me. How divorced from reality would someone need to be to offer eight figures on a picture that looks like a Fiverr job? How scandalously misguided would a person need to be to rebuff that offer? After I spent a few months researching and following NFTs, however, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. In fact, it makes a whole lot of sense.

bored-apes-better

There are 10,000 NFTs in the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Here are three examples. The middle one is owned by Jimmy Fallon.

Yuga Labs

Bitcoin millionaires

Here is one quick fact that explains why NFTs are bought for the equivalent of a CEO's salary: Bitcoin is estimated to have made over 100,000 millionaires. It's no surprise that NFTs became a phenomenon in March. That's when bitcoin hit $60,000, up over 500% from just six months prior. 

When you see a headline or a tweet about some preposterous sum being spent on an NFT, it's easy to become bewildered over how absurd that purchase would be for you. What's easy to forget is that very expensive things are almost exclusively bought by very rich people -- and very rich people spend a lot on status symbols. 

Take Bored Ape Yacht Club, for example. It's a collection of 10,000 ape NFTs, all with different traits that make some rarer than others. Rare ones have sold over for over a million bucks, but common variants go for around $200,000. (At the time of launch back in April, BAYC developers sold the NFTs for $190 each.) BAYC, owned by the likes of Steph Curry and Jimmy Fallon, is what you'd call a "profile pic collection." The main purpose of the images is to be used as your display photo on Discord, where most NFT business goes down, or on Twitter, Instagram or wherever else. 

To recap: $200,000 minimum for a profile picture. 

In isolation, that's insane. But place it on a spectrum of how wealthy people spend money, and it becomes less staggering. You can right click and save a JPEG, so why spend money on it? Well, you can buy a nice house in a safe neighborhood almost anywhere in the world for $1 million, yet celebrities regularly snap up $20 million mansions. You can find a fashionable dress for under $500, yet brands like Chanel build their business on selling ones for 20 times that amount.

Graph showing the rising value of bitcoin

Up to 100,000 people became millionaires when that green line shot skyward. 

coinmarketcap.com

We accept that rich folks buy extravagant items offline. Is it so inconceivable they would buy extravagant things online, too?

"In the real world, how do people flex their wealth?" said Alex Gedevani, an analyst at cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital. "It can be buying cars or watches. How scalable is that versus if I buy a CryptoPunk and use it as my profile picture?"

Obviously, status symbols aren't specific to the rich. All of us indulge in some way or another, be it buying a $20,000 new car when a $7,000 used vehicle will do, or buying a $30 T-shirt when Walmart sells basics for under $5. What most status symbols have in common is that they have a specific audience in mind. The banker sporting his Rolex and the chief executive stepping into her Bentley don't care that I think either of those purchases is excessive. They have a small but powerful group of people they're trying to influence. So, too, with NFTs. 

In the case of Richerd, he runs his own business, Manifold, where he helps show digital artists like Beeple how they can use blockchain technology to make art that could only exist as NFTs. Being a part of the most sought-after NFT collection helps in those circles. And when he says his brand is built on his Punk, he's not exaggerating -- a group of investors even named their organization after him.

"Anybody who owns a CryptoPunk believes certain things," Richerd explained. "Either you've been in the community for a long time so you believe in what these are, or you've paid a lot of money to get in, which shows conviction.

"I want to show my conviction. This is one of those projects that makes you put your money where your mouth is." 

A bit of trouble

NFTs are polarizing. There's a small group of people who believe in the underlying technology (tokens that prove ownership of a digital good), but there are many more who regard it as a hoax. Just as the second group struggles to see any value in NFTs, the first group can sometimes be defensive about the technology's imperfections.

And make no doubt about it, there are a lot of issues with NFTs. 

First is the confounding inaccessibility. There's a reason software developers tend to do well in crypto and NFT trading: Setting up blockchain wallets and other required digital apparatus is difficult. Even just buying and selling can be perilous. Send money to the wrong wallet address by accident, and it's gone forever.

Then there are the fees. Imagine you're interested in dipping your toes into nonfungible waters and you have $1,000 you're willing to lose. If you're minting a new NFT during a public sale you'll usually spend between $120 and $400. Not too bad -- until you factor in the transaction fees. Most NFTs are built on the ethereum blockchain, which is notoriously inefficient. The more people using ethereum, be it through trading altcoins or buying NFTs, the higher the fees. At a good time you'll spend about $100 per transaction, though double or triple that amount is common. Suddenly that $1,000 doesn't go very far. 

This is especially troublesome for NFTs, which are infamous for causing "gas wars." It's possible for 100,000 people to buy shiba inu coins at once, since there are a quadrillion in circulation. But when 10,000 people try to buy an NFT, it results in a massive spike in transaction costs as some users outbid each other to speed up their purchase. It may only last a minute or two, but a lot of damage can be done in that time. People spending over $10,000 on a transaction fee isn't rare. People losing $1,000 on a failed transaction isn't, either.

failed-txn.png

This is what it looks like when someone spends $4,000 on a failed transaction. It's rare, but not rare enough. 

Etherscan screenshot by Daniel Van Boom

Ethereum's inefficiency also contributes to the other major criticism of NFTs, the massive amount of energy they consume. Note that this is something of a semantic issue: NFTs aren't bad for the environment as much as ethereum is. Other networks, like Solana, use a fraction of the power. Ethereum developers are expected to implement an upgrade next year that will make mining it consume 1% the energy it currently does. At this moment though, while no one can say precisely how much energy ethereum consumes, we know it's a lot. (Bitcoin, despite getting all the headlines, is even less efficient than ethereum, which is why almost nothing is built on its blockchain.)

And finally, there's the fact that most people trading NFTs are doing so to make a profit. Scams are everywhere, and prices are volatile. Most of the people who create, buy and sell NFTs are ignorant or uninterested in the technology. If there is a technological leap taking place, it's likely to be obscured by the dizzying price movements.

"I'd call it a bubble," Gedvani said, "because the amount of speculators that are entering the market is outpacing genuine creators." 

But a bubble can pop and leave something better in its wake. Think of Pets.com. It had a peak valuation of $290 million in February 2000 but by November of that year, as the infamous dot-com bubble began to burst, it had already closed shop. It's used as a cautionary tale for speculative trading in bubbles. But the impulse to invest in Pets.com evidently ended up being justifiable. That particular venture was misguided, but the e-commerce trend it was flicking at was legitimate. Seven-figure pixel art may not be forever, but proof of digital ownership, which is what NFTs are really about, may be. 

A big 2022

Where NFTs will end up is anyone's guess -- and anyone who claims to know is probably trying to sell you something. What we do know is that the amount of people buying NFTs is almost definitely about to grow.

It's estimated that around 250,000 people trade NFTs each month on OpenSea, the biggest NFT marketplace. In the short term, CoinBase will soon open its own NFT marketplace, for which 2 million users are on the waiting list. Robinhood has similar plans.

More importantly, giant companies that already make money outside of the crypto space want in. Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go, has just announced a game in which players can earn bitcoin. Twitter and the company formerly known as Facebook plan to integrate NFTs into their platforms, and Epic Games says it's open to doing so too. Envision a world where instead of buying skins in Fortnite, you buy an NFT for those skins that you own -- meaning you can trade it for outfits and weapons in other games, or sell it once you're done with it. (Epic said it won't integrate such a mechanic into Fortnite, but that may not stop competitors.) 

Richerd reckons the flood of people soon to enter the NFT marketplace will create a broader diversity of digital products sold for different audiences. Your neighbor might not want to spend $200 -- much less $200,000 -- on a profile picture, but maybe they'll be willing to spend $10 on a one-of-a-kind skin, or on a product in Facebook's Metaverse. But though the space may change, he remains confident that CryptoPunk #6046 is safe for a while yet. 

"Even if every NFT falls," he said, "CryptoPunks will be the last one."


Source

Tags:

My Solution To Lost AirPods: Apple Needs To Add AirTags' U1 Chip


My Solution to Lost AirPods: Apple Needs to Add AirTags' U1 Chip


My Solution to Lost AirPods: Apple Needs to Add AirTags' U1 Chip

The points of praise for Apple's AirPods and AirPods Pro are easy to find: simple pairing with Apple devices, solid battery life, lightweight case, good mic performance for calls. Even the design, once ridiculed, has aged well and no longer looks out of place. 

One thing that's really bad, though, is how hard it is to find these small white buds or their pocketable case when they are inevitably lost. 

As someone who has been an AirPods and AirPods Pro user for years, I can't count how many times I've misplaced my buds. I'm not a particularly forgetful person and would like to think I do a fine job keeping track of my devices, in general. 

AirPods, however, are just a different animal, as I experienced yet again on Thursday morning. I completely forgot where I left them, so I opened the Find My app on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, thinking I could ping them. 

Mistake No. 1: Apple's Find My App is great for finding missing iPhones, iPads, Macs or AirTags. It can be horrendous for finding AirPods.

The app showed that they were in my apartment, which was certainly reassuring as it meant I didn't lose them while walking to play basketball at a nearby gym the night before. (Apple does have a "notify when left behind" feature that's nice, but not applicable to my situation.) At times, though, that is the only bit of useful information the app provides. 

Tapping "play a sound" did nothing as AirPods in the case can't always play audio — and it can be incredibly hard to hear when they do. Apple has a "Find Nearby" option for AirPods, but that can be similarly worthless for finding encased buds since the connection to other devices isn't consistently active. 

Apple AirPods and an iPhone open to the Notify When Left Behind screen

You can get an alert when you leave the AirPods behind, which is helpful if you left them somewhere away from home.

Stephen Beacham/CNET

If one bud is lost, this actually can be useful as it uses Bluetooth, so it can help guide you in the right direction and the sound played from the AirPods is noticeably louder. In this instance, however, not so much. Unlike with the iPhone, iPad, AirTags, Apple Watches or the Mac, Apple's Find My app also doesn't show a battery life indicator for AirPods... so you have no idea how much charge remains before even those hints disappear

I spent over an hour and a half turning my apartment inside out trying to find them. I searched through boxes, checked every pocket, looked inside the couch cushions, lifted said couch and emptied out my laundry bag. Nothing. 

After giving up all hope and stepping away from searching to do some work, they miraculously reappeared under the couch as I was putting the room back together. 

Read more:  10 AirPods Pro Tricks You Should Be Taking Advantage of Every Day

While my latest episode had a happy ending, looking through Twitter I see I am far from alone in losing Apple's earbuds. A cursory search for "lost AirPods" finds countless examples of others sharing similar frustrations. 

A pair of AirTags

AirTags to the rescue. 

Apple

As rumors persist that Apple has a new version of AirPods Pro in the works for late 2022, I have a simple request: Apple, please put a U1 chip inside them so we can find the damn things more easily. 

Found in its AirTags, the U1 chip uses a technology known as ultra wideband (UWB) that allows for what Apple has called "precision finding." This is how AirTags not only let you know if something is nearby but also show an arrow pointing you in the right direction and show how many feet away the AirTag is if you have a compatible iPhone (an iPhone 11 or later, excluding the iPhone SE 3). 

As my colleague Stephen Shankland has noted, UWB can calculate locations to "within less than a half inch by measuring how long it takes super-short radio pulses to travel between devices."

iPhone screen showing an arrow pointing to an AirTag

Imagine this level of precision for finding AirPods. 

Sarah Tew/CNET

As anyone who has ever misplaced AirPods could likely attest, this would be a world of improvement better than Apple's current system for finding AirPods. Throw in the ability to work on the company's Find My network, and lost AirPods left behind in a park or on a bus might no longer be gone forever. 

Yes, I know there are some third-party cases that allow you to attach an AirTag to your AirPods, but it's time to go a step further. Add this chip into the AirPods charging case and finding missing headphones will become so much easier. If Apple can somehow squeeze a version of this technology into the actual buds, all the better, but at the very least start with putting one in the case. 

When Apple first introduced the U1 chip with the iPhone 11, it teased that the technology was "going to lead to amazing new capabilities." This may not qualify as new, but putting the chip into AirPods would certainly, to me at least, be amazing. 


Source

Tags:

'Stranger Things' Fans Spot Alteration To Old Nancy And Jonathan Scene


'Stranger Things' Fans Spot Alteration to Old Nancy and Jonathan Scene


'Stranger Things' Fans Spot Alteration to Old Nancy and Jonathan Scene

Stranger Things season 4 has been gripping our attention since it arrived on Netflix in May, attention that has now turned back to earlier seasons. Creators the Duffer brothers discussed re-editing scenes from older episodes, mainly involving touching up VFX. Fans took to TikTok and Twitter to note one of the changes they believed had been made.

One such scene involves Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) and her new boyfriend, Steve Harrington (Joe Keery), in the second episode of the first season, titled The Weirdo on Maple Street. Steve, a jock-type, convinces Nancy to join him at a house party, where they sleep together for the first time.

Out in the woods, Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) snaps pictures of the party guests, including Nancy when she removes her clothes. Fans on TikTok and Twitter thought they'd picked up on a slight tweak to this scene -- Jonathan no longer shown taking a picture of Nancy when she undresses.

However, the Stranger Things writing team has since addressed the rumors on Twitter. "PSA: no scenes from previous seasons have ever been cut or re-edited. And they never will be," the tweet reads.

Jonathan still possesses a picture of the moment, revealed in the next episode, titled Holly, Jolly. Steve and his bully pals discover the photos from the party, calling Jonathan a "creep" and a pervert. "He was probably gonna save this one for later," says Carol Perkins (who was dating Tommy Hagen), referring to the photo of Nancy undressing.

The Duffer brothers have had other opportunities to make tweaks, including the date of Will's (Noah Schnapp) birthday. In season 2, episode 8, Will's mother Joyce (Winona Ryder) says his birthday is March 22. In season 4, episode 2, a timestamp on a video camera recording reads March 22, but no one celebrates Will's big day.

Matt Duffer suggested changing Will's birthday to May 22, "because 'May' can fit in Winona's mouth." He continued, "So that would be us George Lucas-ing the situation." Star Wars creator George Lucas frequently altered his movies after their release. Mostly, this involved improving special effects.

At time of writing, however, Joyce still says March 22 in the season 2 scene.


Source

Tags:

Twitter Could Cut Back On Hate Speech With Suspension Warnings, Study Says


Twitter could cut back on hate speech with suspension warnings, study says


Twitter could cut back on hate speech with suspension warnings, study says

Since Twitter launched in 2006, it's become a giant networking event, bar hangout, meme-generator and casual conversation hub stuffed into one. But for every 280-word-long timely news update and witty remark, you'll find a violent, hateful post.

Among the crew of experts strategizing to disarm the dark side of Twitter, a team from New York University ran an experiment to test whether warning accounts that hate speech will result in suspension is a functional technique. Turns out, it could be pretty effective.

After studying over 4,300 Twitter users and 600,000 tweets, the scientists found warning accounts of such consequences "can significantly reduce their hateful language for one week." That dip was even more apparent when warnings were phrased politely.

Hopefully the team's paper, published Monday in the journal Perspectives on Politics, will help address the racist, vicious and abusive content that pollutes social media. 

"Debates over the effectiveness of social media account suspensions and bans on abusive users abound, but we know little about the impact of either warning a user of suspending an account or of outright suspensions in order to reduce hate speech," Mustafa Mikdat Yildirim, an NYU doctoral candidate and the lead author of the paper, said in a statement. 

"Even though the impact of warnings is temporary, the research nonetheless provides a potential path forward for platforms seeking to reduce the use of hateful language by users."

These warnings, Mikdat Yildirim observed, don't even have to come from Twitter itself. The ratio of tweets containing hateful speech per user lowered by between 10% and 20% even when the warning originated from a standard Twitter account with just 100 followers -- an "account" made by the team for experimental purposes.

"We suspect, as well, that these are conservative estimates, in the sense that increasing the number of followers that our account had could lead to even higher effects...to say nothing of what an official warning from Twitter would do," they write in the paper.

At this point you might be wondering: Why bother "warning" hate speech endorsers when we can just rid Twitter of them? Intuitively, an immediate suspension should achieve the same, if not stronger, effect.

Why not just ban hate speech ASAP?

While online hate speech has existed for decades, it's ramped up in recent years, particularly toward minorities. Physical violence as a result of such negativity has seen a spike as well. That includes tragedies like mass shootings and lynchings.

But there's evidence to show unannounced account removal may not be the way to combat the matter.

As an example, the paper points out former President Donald Trump's notorious and erroneous tweets following the 2020 United States presidential election. They consisted of election misinformation like calling the results fraudulent and praise for rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His account was promptly suspended.

Twitter said the suspension was "due to the risk of further incitement of violence," but the problem was Trump later attempted to access other ways of posting online, such as tweeting through the official @Potus account. "Even when bans reduce unwanted deviant behavior within one platform, they might fail in reducing the overall deviant behavior within the online sphere," the paper says. 

Twitter suspended President Donald Trump's Twitter account on Jan. 8, 2021.

Twitter suspended President Donald Trump's Twitter account on Jan. 8, 2021. 

Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

In contrast to quick bans or suspensions, Mikdat Yildirim and fellow researchers say warnings of account suspension could curb the issue long term because users will try to protect their account instead of moving somewhere else as a last resort.

Experimental evidence for warning signals

There were a few steps to the team's experiment. First, they created six Twitter accounts with names like @basic_person_12, @hate_suspension and @warner_on_hate. 

Then, they downloaded 600,000 tweets on July 21, 2020 that were posted the week prior to identify accounts likely to be suspended during the course of the study. This period saw an uptick in hate speech against Asian and Black communities, the researchers say, due to COVID-19 backlash and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Sifting through those tweets, the team picked out any that used hate language as per a dictionary outlined by a researcher in 2017 and isolated those created after January 1, 2020. They reasoned that newer accounts are more likely to be suspended -- over 50 of those accounts did, in fact, get suspended. 

Anticipating those suspensions, the researchers gathered 27 of those accounts' follower lists beforehand. After a bit more filtering, the researchers ended up with 4,327 Twitterers to study. "We limited our participant population to people who had previously used hateful language on Twitter and followed someone who actually had just been suspended," they clarify in the paper. 

Next, the team sent warnings of different politeness levels -- the politest of which they believe created an air of "legitimacy" -- from each account to the candidates divided into six groups. One control group didn't receive a message.

Legitimacy, they believe, was important because "to effectively convey a warning message to its target, the message needs to make the target aware of the consequences of their behavior and also make them believe that these consequences will be administered," they write.

Ultimately, the method led to a reduction in the ratio of hateful posts by 10% for blunt warnings, such as "If you continue to use hate speech, you might lose your posts, friends and followers, and not get your account back" and by 15% to 20% with more respectful warnings, which included sentiments like "I understand that you have every right to express yourself but please keep in mind that using hate speech can get you suspended." 

But it's not that simple

Even so, the research team notes that "we stop short, however, of unambiguously recommending that Twitter simply implement the system we tested without further study because of two important caveats."

Foremost, they say a message from a large corporation like Twitter could create backlash in a way the study's smaller accounts did not. Secondly, Twitter wouldn't have the benefit of ambiguity in suspension messages. They can't really say "you might" lose your account. Thus, they'd need a blanket rule. 

And with any blanket rule, there could be wrongfully accused users. 

"It would be important to weigh the incremental harm that such a warning program could bring to an incorrectly suspended user," the team writes. 

Although the main impact of the team's warnings dematerialized about a month later and there are a couple of avenues yet to be explored, they still urge this technique could be a tenable option to mitigate violent, racist and abusive speech that continues to imperil the Twitter community.


Source

Tags:

Search This Blog

Menu Halaman Statis

close