X (formerly Twitter) now has a “basic” tier for Verified Organizations, which gets you a gold checkmark badge (and a few other benefits) for $200 per month instead of $1,000 per month for “full access.”
While X claims this new tier is “designed for smaller businesses,” the more affordable plan is perhaps an admission that not enough businesses are paying for the more expensive plan.
After a debut in the Hawkeye Disney Plus series a couple of years ago, the Echo show starring Alaqua Cox starts January 9th. Other than serving as another link to the Netflix shows with appearances from Vincent D’Onofrio (Kingpin) and Charlie Cox (Daredevil), it’s appearing on both Hulu and Disney Plus, even as those experiences overlap.
And it’s the first Spotlight-branded Marvel show, which means:
...in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity...our audience doesn’t need to have seen other Marvel series to understand what’s happening in Maya’s story.
It seems like Bitcoin ETFs may be a new trend for the financiers among us:
The companies getting involved here are, in many cases, household names (and not just for people who have their own pet theories about what happened to Satoshi Nakamoto). Industry giants BlackRock and Fidelity are among those positioned to make the first offerings, which could trade on exchanges like NASDAQ. Expectations around the new ETFs have led to a boom not just of bitcoin’s price but also boosted other digital currencies, including ones that were all but left for dead after their close association with convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
[Intelligencer]
Two planes collided on a runway in Japan. Only 11 people were injured on the larger plane— and hundreds managed to evacuate safely. How? Good engineering, and a good flight crew. On the smaller plane, five people died.
Near-misses have been on the rise in the US. Let’s hope this crash inspires some changes to our systems.
[Intelligencer]
Car enthusiasts recently spotted a facelifted Taycan in testing, and here’s some confirmation. While we’ll have to wait for more details on what’s new for the Taycan in 2024, Porsche said test driver Lars Kern has apparently set a time of 7:07.55 around the 12.9-mile course (in a car with a roll cage and racing seats, on an empty track).
That’s faster than Porsche’s invented record in 2019, Kern’s best in the current Taycan, and the Tesla Model S Plaid Track Pack’s time last summer.
Passwordless logins with passkeys, tied to biometrics or other security options like hardware keys, seem ready to secure our logins. Google is already prompting users to add passkeys to their online security (here’s some helpful info on getting it set up), along with Apple, while password managers, including 1Password, are inching toward supporting a zero-password lifestyle.
