The funding came from eight investing firms, including Pantera Capital, Castle Island Ventures and Franklin Templeton Blockchain Fund, as well as angel investors Zac Prince, CEO of BlockFi and Richard Ma, CEO of Quantstamp. Proceeds from the $15 million funding will go toward building the Arcade platform. Formed in 2020, Arcade is an NFT marketplace for lending that independently appraises, validates and curates NFT collections and that enables owners of highly valued NFTs to use them as collateral for loans....

Fourth-quarter revenue was $3.04 billion, an increase of 21% year-on-year. NXP’s Q4 GAAP diluted earnings per share came to $2.24. Analysts were expecting earnings of $2.99 per share on revenue of $3 billion. In a statement, CEO Kurt Sievers called 2021 an “excellent year” for NXP. “We experienced significant design win traction across the entire portfolio and especially within the areas of our strategic growth drivers,” he said. “The engagement and performance of our employees has been truly outstanding, we are extremely proud of their adaptability, dedication, and hard work in the face of adversity....

Founded in April by Greg Yardley and Jesse Rohland, the company today introduced its first product. Aimed at iPhone application developers, Pinch Analytics is a free hosted analytics service that lets iPhone developers track how their applications are used. Developers must integrate the software within their iPhone SDK application, once it is it will track handy statistics such as the number of unique, active users, the length of time your application is being used, and if enabled, the geographic location of your users....

Asus ZenFone 5Z (codename: Z01RD) was launched in the year February 2018. The phone came out of the box with Android 8.0 Oreo and later upgrade to Android 9.0 Pie. Recently this device has received the official TWRP recovery support. So, on this page, we will guide you to install the TWRP Recovery on Asus ZenFone 5Z. This guide contains both the written instruction and video tutorial to help you install it quickly....

Motorola Moto G5 Plus (codename: potter) was launched in the year February 2017. The phone came out of the box with Android 7.0 Nougat and later upgraded to Android 8.0 Oreo. Recently this device has received the official TWRP recovery support. So, on this page, we will guide you to install the TWRP Recovery on Moto G5 Plus. This guide contains both the written instruction and video tutorial to help you install it quickly....

More good news for Australians returning from overseas is that some travellers will save significant amounts of money. An official has confirmed that returning Aussies whose 14-day quarantine period finishes after November 1 can check out of the hotel on that day. That implies that fully vaccinated travellers returning on October 31 would only have to stay in a hotel for one day. A spokesman for the NSW government also confirmed that the travellers would only be charged for the days they were in hotel quarantine....

Earlier this week, concerns emerged on Skype official message boards about the Skype Mac app no longer functioning on OS X 10.5.8 Leopard (an operating system that launched the same year as the original iPhone), and a Skype representative on the forums apparently confirmed that Skype will no longer be supported on Macs running operating systems below OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. While Skype has not been downloadable nor functional for Leopard users the past few days, a Skype spokesperson tells us this morning that this will soon change: “We have a Skype version for Mac OS X 10....

Netflix plans to soon change its current review system from traditional 1-5 star ratings to instead only allow users to like or dislike a film or TV show, but is it the right move? The company’s reasoning is that the old 1-5 star ratings weren’t relevant to how popular content was necessarily, with users giving lower ratings to films they might deem of lesser quality (which is sort of the point of the star ratings) even if they are watching it more often than content they rate higher and watch less frequently:...

Developer Steve Troughton-Smith’s new universal app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, called Broadcasts, is out this week. The app is a new version of his app HCC Radio, which allows users to listen to radio stations on the go now across all three platforms. Troughton-Smith offered some detail on the development process in a blog post. Broadcasts was built from the ground up using Apple’s Catalyst platform — but unlike most Catalyst apps, it was designed first for the Mac, then brought to the iPad and iPhone....

This week, Apple will rollout an interesting new perk called “App Discovery” to its retail store employees. According to several sources who participated in quarterly meetings, in which the details were announced, Apple retail employees will have free access to a catalogue of popular paid App Store applications. It is possible that this is a holiday perk for employees that will not remain in place forever. For instance, if an Apple retail employee, starting this week, wants to download Fruit Ninja for their own iPhone, they will be able to use an Apple provided redemption code to get the application at no cost....

Still considered a pioneer in VR headset technology, the Oculus/Meta Quest was the first all-in-one headset that proved a VR experience was only limited by imagination. Without the need to be plugged into a computer and boasting the latest digital mapping technology, users’ environments are finally impediment-free. Now that it’s been released, people are asking themselves - is the Oculus Quest 2 worth buying? Given its affordability, the fact that it comes with a huge library of games (many of which are free) to choose from, and that you no longer need a Facebook account for the Oculus, people have been dubbing the Oculus Quest 2 (or the Meta Quest 2 as it’s now known) the best VR headset in the business....

The Loop reports that US Senator Al Franken, who took Locationgate public, posted a list of witnesses for the next week’s Congressional hearing on privacy issues and location data gathering practices by Google and Apple. On the list is Bud Tribble, Apple’s vice president of software technology. Jobs and Tribble go way back. He’s been with Jobs since they built the original Macintosh and could be considered his right-hand man....

Motorola Moto G9 Play (guamp) launched in the year 2020 with Android 10 out of the box and will soon get the official Android 11 update. In this tutorial, we will help you to flash the stock firmware on Motorola G9 Play XT2083-3. If you are someone who wants to restore the device back to factory firmware, then this guide is for you. By using this guide, you can fix certain software-related issues such as hard brick, soft brick, WiFi, or Bluetooth issue, fix lag or stutter or even you can downgrade the device anytime....

Today’s update to the Mountain Lion developer preview has introduced a bunch of new options for Facebook users. Specifically, Facebook will now support native OS X banner notifications, as seen in the screenshot above, for actions such as Wall posts and inbox messages. Facebook support in Notification Center has been previously announced, but this is the first time we’ve seen it active. Unfortunately, this build does not offer integration with Facebook Chat in the Messages app, although it is possible to setup Chat separately, so while you can get banner notifications about new messages, you won’t actually be able to reply to them without going through your web browser....

Apple is widely expected to migrate the iPad and MacBook Pro to new mini LED display technology over the next year. Ahead of that switchover, however, MSI has beat Apple to the punch with what it calls the “world’s first” mini LED laptop. As our sister site 9to5Toys has pointed out, MSI’s new Creator 17 packs a 17-inch mini LED display with a 4K resolution and peak brightness of over 1,000 nits....

This week, Netflix continues preparing its users for the Christmas season, balancing it with the help of a mystery film and the third season of a British drama. The streaming wars are heating up now that the (supposed) biggest threat in the world of streaming has officially launched: Disney+. Although the Mouse House is bringing a lot of content, mostly appealing to nostalgia, Netflix continues with its “weekly content” formula with both licensed and original content....

Some interesting news from Netflix this morning: They are spinning off their by mail group, which will also include video games and giving it a new name ‘Qwikster’. While the video below and the announcement blog post set a conciliatory tone for the way the recent changes (price hikes) happened, those changes are still in place and will continue going forward. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8Tn8n5CIPk] In fact, it sounds like Netflix is set to spin off its old mailing business in the future even though in-house Qwikster now sells game rentals as well as movies and TV shows....

One of the major security enhancements Apple has brought to its devices over the years is the Secure Enclave chip, which encrypts and protects all sensitive data stored on the devices. Last month, however, hackers claimed they found a permanent vulnerability in the Secure Enclave, which could put data from iPhone, iPad, and even Mac users at risk. What is Secure Enclave? The Secure Enclave is a security coprocessor included with almost every Apple device to provide an extra layer of security....

More news about a Batman video game could be coming soon, thanks to a new tweet from developer WB Montreal that is teasing an update. The Batman Arkham series, the most popular iteration of the property, launched in 2009 with the release of Arkham Asylum which was developed by Rocksteady Studios. In total there were four main Arkham titles and the only one that was not produced by Rocksteady was Arkham Origins....

A second iPhone 5S stock-tracking web app, this one available in all countries where the new handset is sold, has provided a few stats showing what people are searching for. 60 percent of people searching www.stock5S.com are looking for the gold model, with silver and space gray coming in at 20 percent each. The most highly-sought model is the 16GB gold model at 30 percent, followed by 32GB gold at 17 percent....