Alex Heath
Squid Game season 2 is Netflix’s most watched premiere ever.
The streamer says the new season broke all kinds of records, including garnering 68 million views in its first week, which made it the number-one show in 92 countries.
Tech Archive
Archives for December 2024
Elizabeth Lopatto
“From the means of production to a meme in production: It’s one kind of American dream.”
If the phrase “Hawk Tuah girl” means nothing to you, I urge you to continue in blissful ignorance. If “Hawk Tuah shitcoin scam” resonates, you’ll enjoy Katie Baker’s rundown of what, exactly, happened.
One Kind of American Dream: The Year in Hawk Tuah and Crypto Memecoin
[www.theringer.com]
Alex Heath
Meta gets the green light to turn on WhatsApp Pay for all of India.
The Indian government has lifted its cap that previously restricted the Venmo-like feature in WhatsApp to 100 million users.
As TechCrunch notes, Google and Walmart currently operate the vast majority of the digital payments market in the country. But that could be about to change; India is WhatsApp’s largest market with over 500 million users, and the messaging app is already heavily relied on there by small businesses.
Justine Calma
Almost all of Puerto Rico plunged into darkness on New Year’s Eve
Power outages affected close to 90 percent of customers in the US territory today, the Associated Press reports. Local energy company Luma says it’s investigating the cause and suspects a damaged underground power line. Getting the lights back on could take 24 to 48 hours. Blackouts have been a persistent problem for Puerto Rico’s struggling electricity grid since Hurricane Maria.
We take a look back at 20 of our favorite projects from 2024.
Verge Staff
Verge Staff
Wes Davis
Venezuela fines TikTok $10 million.
The country’s highest court found that TikTok failed to take “necessary and adequate measures” to stop the spread of viral challenges, which authorities blamed for the death of three adolescents who’d ingested toxic chemicals, reports Voice of America.
The court reportedly gave ByteDance eight days to pay the fine and ordered it to establish a Venezuelan office.
Venezuela fines TikTok $10 million over viral challenge deaths
[Voice of America (VOA News)]
Emma Roth
Global leaders are warming up to Elon Musk’s Starlink.
With Musk cozying up to President-elect Donald Trump, more countries, including South Africa, are considering loosening requirements to allow Starlink to operate, Bloomberg reports:
Until recently, many governments had explicit bans or other policies that kept Starlink from operating legally in their markets. In some cases like South Africa, rules requiring SpaceX to share equity with local partners got in the way...
Now many of the regulators and politicians who fought Starlink’s rise are removing those obstacles, cementing the company’s dominance and further extending Musk’s global influence.
Umar Shakir