Technology

The annual Perseid meteor shower, which is considered “the best meteor shower of the year,” according to NASA, will begin lighting up the night sky on Wednesday, July 14. Though the Perseids will be active through August 24, the show will peak in mid-August, specifically on August 11, 12 and 13, when up to 100 meteors will become visible per hour. The celestial phenomenon, which is appropriately named after the constellation of Perseus, where its stream of shooting stars appear to originate, will still be visible beginning this week. The meteor shower is a product of Earth’s atmosphere interacting with space debris from a comet named 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which was discovered in 1862 by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle. 109P/Swift-Tutte, which last visited the inner solar system in 1992, ta...

Facebook plans to pay out $1 billion to creators over the next year and a half as part of an effort to court content makers to its many services. The money will be awarded to creators who use Facebook products in different ways: on Facebook, creators can get a cash bonus for running ads on their videos or reaching certain tipping milestones during livestreams; on Instagram, creators can get paid for enabling ads on their IGTV videos, getting tipped in livestreams, or creating popular videos on Reels. The money is available to creators on an invitation-only basis for now, and new options for making money will be announced later. Facebook indicated it would expand availability to more creators later in the year, launching a “dedicated place for bonuses within the Instagram app this summer an...

Say goodbye to Fleets, the row of fullscreen tweets at the top of the Twitter timeline that expire after 24 hours. The ephemeral tweet format is shutting down due to low usage after launching widely just eight months ago. Starting on August 3rd, users will instead just see active Spaces — Twitter’s live audio chat rooms — at the top of their timelines. And the composer for traditional tweets will be updated with more camera editing features from Fleets, like text-formatting and GIF stickers over photos. Twitter’s decision to axe Fleets is not just an admission that the feature didn’t work, but that the company still hasn’t figured out how to get people tweeting more. For years, Twitter has struggled to get new users to post regularly and not just consume other people’s tweets. Fleets was i...

Loki did something remarkable: it made me forget about the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. The entire conceit of the MCU is that every story, whether it’s a blockbuster movie or a streaming television show, is in service to the greater narrative arc. You’re not just watching what’s happening to the characters on-screen, but also hints of what comes next. Loki doesn’t get away from that entirely, particularly with its conclusion that sets up the universe’s next big villain. But like the variants who inhabit Loki’s world outside of time, the six-episode first season carves out its own timeline — a few of them, in fact — making it perhaps the most standalone part of the MCU to date. You can enjoy it as part of the all-encompassing cinematic univers...

Stay up to date with the trickster god Contributors: Verge Staff Disney Plus is quickly becoming an integral part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Through shows like WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the streaming service has been able to tell longer-form stories outside of the blockbuster superhero movies. The latest such show is Loki, which sees Tom Hiddleston reprise his role as the trickster god in a time-traveling sci-fi whodunnit. Here you’ll find the latest news about the show as well as analyses, cast interviews, and even the occasional gadget review. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn...

Apple is bringing its educational “Today at Apple” classes to YouTube, the company announced Wednesday. The first episode will show you how to draw yourself as a Peanuts character in the company’s Pages app. The session features two people who work on the Apple TV Plus show The Snoopy Show — showrunner Mark Evestaff and storyboard artist Krista Porter — and it’s hosted by an Apple Store employee named Anthony. I’ve watched the nearly 10-minute episode, and it’s a pretty easy guide to follow about turning yourself into a Peanuts cartoon. Unsurprisingly, it’s packed with Apple technologies; Anthony and Porter draw on iPads using Apple Pencils, and they’re collaborating in the same Pages document. “Today at Apple” first launched in 2017 Apple first announced the “Today at Apple” program in 20...

Netflix is launching two new tools this week that should help make finding age-appropriate content a little easier to discover within the kids version of its streaming service. Today, Netflix is introducing a new Top 10 row for age-restricted profiles, borrowing one of the most useful tools for discovery from the adult version of the service. Netflix’s existing top 10 tool works by surfacing the most popular titles on the service, often new and original titles, which can make finding something to stream a lot less of a headache. Launching in 93 countries, the row will be updated daily and will feature both shows and movies with the regional equivalent of a PG and below rating. Additionally, titles that make the cut will display a “Top 10” badge across Netflix when they’ve made the cut. The...

As time goes on, mobile devices have grown ever more powerful in their function: what were once simple communication devices or multimedia players have turned into tiny pocket-sized supercomputers that are jam-packed with features. And nothing exemplifies this trend more than the TVA TemPad, which packs in temporal tracking and manipulation abilities that give the most ordinary of owners powers that surpass even the mightiest of heroes. Spoilers for Loki’s first season ahead Unlike most modern devices, the TemPad aims for an almost retro-futuristic design. Despite featuring dual displays on both the exterior and interior of the device, the TemPad itself is clad in a warm wood and brass finish that’s reminiscent of a simpler time. Broadly speaking, the TemPad harkens back to a pre-iPhone er...

Cities around the world are running a fever. City-dwellers suffer through more sweltering temperatures in the summertime than people who live in greener areas nearby. It’s a dangerous consequence of living in what scientists call an “urban heat island.” What’s worse is that the urban heat island effect makes some neighborhoods within a city, usually those with more low-income residents and people of color, even hotter than others. The problem is that cities were built in a way that traps heat. Satellites can see this phenomenon from space. Scientists working with NASA have used satellite data to map changes in surface temperatures from suburbs to cities, and from affluent neighborhoods to communities that have received less investment over time. Taking cities’ temperatures and finding ways...

Google is now facing a €500 Million EUR fine from French authorities over alleged anti-competitive practices. According to the BBC, French regulators found that Google had failed to negotiate “in good faith” with various news organizations in the country after it previously ordered the tech giant to agree on deals with outlets when showing extracts of their articles in search results. Back in 2019, France became the first country in the European Union to sign the Digital Copyright Directive into force, which required companies such as Google to compensate publishers and news agencies when using their articles. In response at the time, Google refused to feature content from French publishers unless they agreed to allow it to do so free of charge, leading to an outcry from news organiza...

Apple’s flagship 2021 iPhones will come in the same sizes as last year’s models, but with a smaller display notch, according to a new report from Bloomberg. This mirrors previous predictions from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. According to Bloomberg, this year’s phones will be an iterative upgrade over the iPhone 12 series, and will include incremental improvements to their processors, cameras, and displays when they’re announced in September. Bloomberg reports that “at least one” of the four new devices will include an LTPO (low-temperature polycrystalline oxide) display. It’s a technology Apple has previously used with its smartwatches to dynamically adjust their screen refresh rates to conserve battery. That lines up with a previous prediction from Ming-Chi Kuo, who said that both Pro iPhones co...

On Wednesday, Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) released a discussion draft of legislation that proposes sweeping reform to marijuana policy in the US. The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act would decriminalize marijuana federally, expunge federal non-violent cannabis convictions (and encourage states to do the same), and create “new grant programs to fund nonprofits that provide services to those adversely impacted by the War on Drugs.” In the introduction to the 30-page draft legislation, the senators note that adult use of cannabis is already legal in 18 states, Washington D.C., the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam. Medicinal marijuana is even more widespread, legal in 37 states, Puerto Rico, D.C., Guam, and the US Virgin Islands. ”a dynamic...