It’s a brief snippet, but this new look at Star Trek: Prodigy gives us a lot nonetheless: a sweeping look at the series’ main vessel as it powers up for what appears to be the first time in a long time—and the moment that two of the series’ main characters, 17-year-old Dal (Brett Gray) and eight-year-old Rok-Tahk (…
It seems people on Twitter got tired of making fun of how the sandworms resemble a part of the human anatomy.
“I cannot stress enough how traumatic this event is for the community at large,” Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee said.
MasterCard has announced a big change that allows banks, merchants, and others on its network to offer cryptocurrency perks. The change underscores the rapidly growing mainstream appeal of crypto and the rollout of platforms that make digital currency easier for the average person to acquire. The new opportunity is made possible by a partnership between MasterCard and Bakkt, a platform … Continue reading
Amid reports that Facebook has misled shareholders about significant declines in teens and younger users, Mark Zuckerberg said the company was “retooling” in order to make “serving young adults” its top priority. To do that, the company plans to make “significant changes” to its Facebook and Instagram apps, and spend billions of dollars building out its vision for a “metaverse.”
Citing increased competition from TikTok and iMessage, Zuckerberg said the company would do more to win over “young adult” users between the ages of 18 to 29, even if it came at the expense of older users. Speaking during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, he said the company’s TikTok rival Reels would be “as important for our products as Stories.” “We also expect to make significant changes to Instagram and Facebook in the next year to further lean into video and make Reels a more central part of the experience,” Zuckerberg said.
On top of that, he said the company was “retooling” internally in order to make young people its “North Star.” He added the shift “will take years, not months.” The issue of younger users has been particularly fraught for the company. A whistleblower’s disclosures about Facebook’s internal research on teen mental health prompted a series of Congressional hearings about child safety, and a wave of headlines about how the photo sharing app may be harmful to some of its most vulnerable users. At the same time, other internal documents have indicated Facebook and Instagram have faced significant declines in engagement among teens and young adults for years.
Zuckerberg said another major priority for the company would be building its vision for a “metaverse.” He didn’t comment on reports that the company would change its name to reflect its new focus on augmented reality and virtual reality, but made clear the company has significant ambitions in the space. “Our goal is to help the metaverse reach a billion people,” he said. He added that a metaverse could enable “hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce.”
The company also said Monday that going forward it will report two sets of financials: one for its “family” of apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp; and one for its Reality Labs division that oversees its augmented and virtual reality work. In a statement, Facebook said its 2021 profit will be reduced by $10 billion due to its investment in Reality Labs, and that the company would only increase its AR and VR spending in the next “several years.”
Zuckerberg also addressed the ongoing revelations stemming from the “Facebook Papers,” a series of articles based on documents provided by former employee turned whistleblower Frances Haugen. The CEO referred to the work from a consortium of news organizations as “a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company.” The documents, which have been the basis of more than a dozen stories detailing Facebook’s botched efforts to fight hate speech and other harms, have also been provided to members of Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Any honest account should be clear that these issues aren’t primarily about social media,” Zuckerberg said. “That means that no matter what Facebook does, we’re never going to solve them on our own.”
Because nothing says Christmas 2021 like COVID, GIANTmicrobes is selling this four-pack of plush microbial COVID inspired Christmas Ornaments for $25. However, I think it goes without saying, I doubt COVID is actually on anybody’s Christmas list this year.
The four-pack includes COVID-19 with fuzzy Santa hat, an antibody in forest greens and candy cane, a white blood cell dressed as a snowman with top hat and carrot nose, and a COVID-19 vaccine with snowflakes and Christmas lights embroidery. That’s just really weird, especially for anybody who doesn’t have a microbe or disease-themed Christmas tree, which is everybody.
I only hope Santa doesn’t plan on dishing out COVID for people on his naughty list this year. That would be wrong. Even more wrong than the year he gave me tetanus. Big deal, so I set up a couple of booby traps, I was a child! Fine, it was last year. I just wanted a Playstation 5 so bad!
We all thought the news was too weird to be true and, apparently, it was. Back in early 2019, we found out that hot on the heels of James Wan’s DC film Aquaman making a big box office splash (get it?), Warner Bros. was developing a smaller-scale, horror spinoff based on the creatures who appeared during its underwater…
New research details a biological solution for producing rocket fuel on Mars, but significant hurdles need to be overcome to make this intriguing idea work.
The secret is out. Not that Y: The Last Man won’t be picked up for season two by FX on Hulu, though that’s true too. It’s that Yorick Brown is alive and his mom, the president, covered it up. Plus, the Daughters of the Amazon, who got a stellar origin story last week, have an idea he’s around too, though they don’t…
Two organizers of the Jan. 6 pro-Trump rallies say he repeatedly dangled the pardons in order to inspire their efforts.
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