School reopens june 2019

Later this month, clothing from the fashion marketplace Depop will be available in an expansion pack for The Sims 4 called High School Years ( via Polygon ). Depop describes itself as a “circular” and “community-powered” online resale site and app that allows users to buy and sell vintage clothing items, mostly at discounted rates. The expansion pack will feature Sims characters experiencing “the rollercoaster of puberty,” complete with events like prom, school pranks, and the ability to cut class. Teenage Sims now have a chance to become a fashion “Simfluencer” and earn Simoleons, the game’s in-app currency, using an app like Depop called Trendi. The Simfluencer will be able to purchase their items from an in-game thrift store named Thriftea and curate their own outfits to set trends. The clothes featured in the game will be designed by real-life Depop sellers like Lapoze McTribouy ( @judaku ), Sha’an d’Anthes ( @furrylittlepeach ), and Selena Williams ( … [Read more...] about The Sims 4 High School Years expansion adds a Depop-created ‘virtual thrift store’

Something to look forward to: Skyrim's famous mod scene is still thriving after over a decade. This week, a mod bringing online co-op to the game will emerge from closed beta after years of development and significant setbacks. Players can now complete quests together with almost all gameplay features synced. The mod team behind Skyrim Together Reborn has set the project's full release for Friday, July 8 (noon EST). The online co-op mod allows for groups of two-to-eight players, synching quest completion, experience points, NPCs, items, difficulty, and other features. Players can also manually enable PvP, but the modders don't recommend it, as that wasn't their main design goal. The Skyrim Together team has been developing a co-op mode for Bethesda's single player mega-hit since 2016, completely scrapping it and beginning a rewrite in 2019. The team warns that the full release will be quite buggy since it bolts online multiplayer onto a complex single player RPG, but … [Read more...] about Skyrim online co-op mod reaches full release this week

After years of mounting pressure, TikTok provided US lawmakers with more details into how it limits Chinese access to American data in a new letter dated Thursday. In a letter addressed to nine of the app’s most prominent Republican critics, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew detailed how the company planned to separate American user data from ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company. Chew also explained TikTok’s plan to house American user data on Oracle servers, a plan first reported by BuzzFeed News last month. “We’re proud to be able to serve a global community of more than a billion people who use TikTok to creatively express themselves and be entertained,” Chew wrote in the letter first reported by The New York Times . “We know we are among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint, and we aim to remove any doubt about the security of U.S. user data.” The Verge independently confirmed the letter’s authenticity on Friday. Soon after BuzzFeed News … [Read more...] about TikTok assures Republicans it’s working to protect US data security

The remnants of Sprint’s network have been put out to pasture . As of yesterday, Sprint’s LTE network has been retired by its new owner, T-Mobile. That’s along with Sprint’s 3G CDMA network, which was shut down earlier this year, and what remained of T-Mobile’s own 3G network, which enters retirement today. T-Mobile spokesperson Justin Paulsen confirmed to The Verge that the network shutdowns are now underway. It may come as a surprise that any part of Sprint’s network was still operational so recently. In April 2020, T-Mobile officially took ownership of the company , including all of its spectrum and network towers, which would ultimately be repurposed for 5G. Sprint’s 3G CDMA network was the first to go when T-Mobile started to shut down Sprint’s systems in March. It had originally planned to sunset the network at the end of 2021, but after a heated debate over anti-competitive behavior during which Dish chairman Charlie Ergen called T-Mobile a Grinch , the date was … [Read more...] about Sprint’s network has been officially retired

The US government seems to be worked up about cryptocurrency scams. On Thursday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Justice all released news that they were taking some form of action against people accused of carrying out multimillion or billion-dollar schemes. One of the cases involves knock-off apes, one is the “largest fraudulent scheme involving Bitcoin charged in any CFTC case,” and one involves someone nicknamed “the Cryptoqueen.” The wave of enforcement is happening against a backdrop of plummeting crypto prices . Let’s start with the CFTC — the regulator has filed an action against a company called Mirror Trading International (MTI), which was run by a South African man named Cornelius Johannes Steynberg. The commission says MTI pitched potential investors by saying it had a bot that invested a pool of Bitcoin into opportunities individual investors may not have access to. Allegedly, people ended up … [Read more...] about The government’s going after alleged crypto scammers as market crashes

The European Commission has vowed to create a new emergency plan for member states to be able to reduce or remove Russian energy products, including pushing for more renewable sources of energy. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the Commission was working on a draft of an emergency plan to help European Union countries deal with the fallout of limited Russian energy imports as the EU looks to limit the amount of Russian oil, coal and gas being bought. We are preparing emergency plans for Europe,” von der Leyen stated and added, “Energy prices are high. People — rightly so — expect us to do something about it,” Greek newspaper Ekathimerini reports .  “We need a good, common plan that the energy flows, or the gas flows, where it is needed most,” she added. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi were headed to Israel Monday as the EU seeks to wean itself off Russian fossil fuel imports. … [Read more...] about EU To Create Emergency Plan For Russian Energy Cut Off