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Meta no longer allows teenagers to receive direct messages from anyone they’re not following on Instagram, or friends with on Facebook, according to a company blog post on Thursday. The policy update aims to create a safer environment for minors on the platform, one week after Meta’s internal documents revealed that…

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Big tech’s big dreams of a corporate metaverse filled with virtual reality workplaces aren’t quite dead yet, at least according to Microsoft. The Redmond, Washington tech giant finally unveiled its 3D Mesh integration for Microsoft Teams, offering a new wave of generic-looking, legless avatars for making work meetings…

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Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s vampire movie is close to finding a home. Robert McCamon’s post-apocalyptic novelSwan Song is being turned into a TV series. Dune Part 2 gets the mandatory floating heads poster. Plus, what’s to come as La Brea enters the endgame. Spoilers now!

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Veering away from her comedy comfort zone, Julia Louis-Dreyfus tackles death, loss, and grief in A24's Tuesday — with a deeply moving new trailer out today.

The feature debut from writer/director Daina O. Pusić, Tuesday sees the Veep/Seinfeld star as Zora, whose teen daughter Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is dying from a terminal illness. A close pair, they're doing the best they can to process it all

The resurgence of film photography has shown me that casual photographers are looking for a different experience and a different photographic look from what our phones or traditional mirrorless cameras are offering. And no company can provide as different a camera experience as Hasselblad.

Yesterday

Britain’s aviation regulator is investigating “vertiport” designs as part of plans to bring flying taxis to the UK. The new consultation will lay the foundations for vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said on Wednesday. To fly them between land and sky, the CAA wants to install vertical airports — aka vertiports — at existing aerodromes.  By adapting

After initially releasing the feature years back, Google is reviving the Art Selfie feature with generative AI.

• Over 12 million Americans spent more than half their income on rent and utilities in 2022, a Harvard study says.
• The study, by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, found a sharp rise in people spending large portions of their pay on rent.
• The researchers cited "rapidly rising rents during the pandemic" and a shortage of affordable units.

An

• The US has expanded its military presence in the Middle East since Hamas' terror attacks in October.
• But this has cost about $1.6 billion, two US officials told Politico.
• It can't pay the bill right now without extra funding from Congress, the sources said.

The US military

In 2022, Blizzard announced that it was making a survival game, which would’ve marked its first new property since Overwatch debuted in 2016. Now, as part of a recent round of layoffs at Microsoft, the game has been canceled.

This morning, Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees in its gaming divisions. The cuts primarily hit staff at Activision

The Quest 3 Touch controllers last longer than the Quest Pro's, but not as long as the Quest 2 controllers. Here's what you need to know.

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Hello! Introducing the worst new trend of 2024: People requesting individual checks for the food they ate at group dinners.

In today's big story, we're looking at Microsoft notching another big win by briefly reaching a $3 trillion valuation.

What's on deck:

• Markets: Your