Month: January 2022

Image Credit: Marvel

Two of the biggest stars of Spider-Man: No Way Home originally made their first appearances in the film in completely different circumstances. In an interview with Variety, No Way Home writers Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna stated that the original draft of the script included both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s respective Spider-Men right after Aunt May, Marisa Tomei’s deaths. 

“They’re brought in by a Marvel character who says, ‘Here’s the rescue and they’ll help you get through this,'” McKenna said, although he didn’t specify which character machine.

Those introductions didn’t change until No Way Home was doing well in production, which began in the Fall of 2020 when Sommers and McKenna realized they needed something better in terms of history. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe came under a lot of pressure. “We changed history a lot,” said McKenna. “We’d been in production for two months. And now we had to make another hit in the third act, which we hadn’t done.” I had time for it because we were doing act one and act two.

The authors finally rewrote the sequence during Christmas 2020, which led to the scene  now in the final cut of the film: Garfield and Maguire first meet Jacob Batalon’s Ned and Zendaya’s MJ, after which Ned accidentally opens a portal to the two alternative Peters is looking for his friend (Tom Holland). 

The two spider-men can still be seen after  Aunt May’s death, but now in a different context. “It was a ray of hope in the dark,” said McKenna. 

“It was  a gift, especially at this point in the writing process, to write for these two characters. It was the darkest part of the year, the darkest part of the production, the darkest part of the story unfolding, and it was like Oh, Tobey and Andrew.

In a separate interview, Sommers described Aunt May’s death  as the critical “Uncle Ben” moment for Holland’s Peter Parker, whose trauma cemented the relationship between the  three Spider-Men in the film. 

They are finally crystallizing out for these three guys who are the same, who are brothers, “he said. And that they are cosmicly united by something and that sharing those words  seemed  the best.

Source: Tech Crunch

An urgent warning is  issued for iPad and iPhone users due to looming privacy and security concerns. 

Apple developer Kosta Eleftheriou announced that the App Store is home to a number of illegal movie streaming services. 

Movie trailers and photo filters to fool users. The app encourages users to enter codes or share the app to unlock more functions. There are also premium subscription tiers in apps that run through Apple Pay, of which Apple gets a 15-30 percent cut. 

Eleftheriou said the apps have been available on the App Store for months, although negative reviews indicate they are illegal.

Ads for the apps were promoted using social media influencers with “millions” of followers to promote them, Eleftheriou says. 

“Although Apple doesn’t control its app store, these apps have had over 2 million downloads and are now generating ~ 16,000 / day, or about $ 6 million a year,” said Eleftheriou. 

Legal documents in the ongoing “Eric Vs Apple” process, Eric Friedman, director of the company’s Risk and Fraud Engineering Algorithms  [FEAR] department, called the App Store security,  knife to the point, “Friedman said the App Store review process is” more like the pretty lady who greets you at the Hawaiian airport than the drug dog.

Eleftheriou has also sued Apple in court, claiming the company copied its Apple Watch app, FlickType. However, the discoveries on the App Store have made iPhone and iPad users more vigilant about their devices.

Source: Tech Crunch

Google Tasks doesn’t get a lot of attention, and it’s not hard to see why. It has very few features and Google Keep can do all it can. However, the tasks can get a little more useful. The new version of the tasks sidebar in a blog post and some useful additions. 

The Tasks sidebar is available in products such as Gmail and Docs. The new interface, discovered by 9to5Google (above), does not reinvent the wheel. a single item list, you can view all of your lists  at the same time. 

To make it easier for you to focus, the updated sidebar has an option to collapse any list you don’t need by looking down at your face. 

Adding tasks and creating lists also adds a little more meaning: they’re eye-catching buttons at the top of each list and at the bottom of the control panel, respectively. For reference,  see the current Task UI below.

One last new function can be seen in the screenshot: Favorites. At the top of the sidebar you will see two tabs. 

There’s one for all of your lists and a second  for the items you’ve marked as favorites. There is no favorite feature in the current version of Tasks, so we can only speculate  how it will work. 

We’ll have to wait to find out. We don’t see the new tasks live anywhere and Google hasn’t officially announced them yet. I’ll keep an ear to the ground

Source: Tech Crunch

Because of this, Hugo Weaving hasn’t repeated his iconic role as Agent Smith in The Matrix Resurrections. After nearly 20 years, the Matrix franchise finally returned in 2021, with co-creator Lana Wachowski  at the helm.

While the resulting film  polarized both critics and fans, the backlash is certainly not as harsh as  The Matrix Revolutions, so it may in itself be a Trinity victory, or despite its apparent death, at the end of the revolution. In addition to Neo and Trinity, several other notable characters  from previous Matrix films returned for The Matrix Resurrections, played mostly  by their original actors.

Most notably, Jada Pinkett Smith was the older version of Niobe, the current leader of Io, the human city of the Matrix, who replaced Zion after Neo apparently ended the war between humans and machines.

There are new actors like Morpheus (with Yahya AbdulMateen II replacing Laurence Fishburne) and Agent Smith (with Jonathan Groff replacing Weaving).

Indeed, this is the second time Weaving has not played a major role in a hugely successful franchise, as he refused to return as Red Skull in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame after taking on the role in Captain America: The first Avenger had . 

This case turned out to be pretty bitter as Weaving didn’t like his experience  with Marvel, luckily that wasn’t the case that he didn’t appear on The Matrix Resurrections.

Instead, the absence of weaving boils down to a Hollywood staple: scheduling conflicts. In 2020, when it was time to shoot The Matrix Resurrections, director and co-writer Lana Wachowski was keen to see him  return as Agent Smith.

After a moment’s hesitation, Weaving agreed to do just that.

The two parties entered into negotiations to try to get the Matrix Resurrections schedule up and running so  Weaving could complete both projects, but Weaving said Wachowski was reluctant to meet the deadlines Weaving requested.

Weaving doesn’t seem to hold up against Wachowski on a personal level, but it’s certainly disappointing that it went that way. While Mindhunter’s Groff does an excellent job of trying to mimic aspects of Weaving’s Agent Smith performance,  his Duke Smith is watched. Keanu Reeves’ Neo just doesn’t resonate as much as a similar comeback fight between  Smith and Weavings Neo.

However, The Matrix Resurrections is setting up a possible Matrix 5, so maybe the original  version of Smith’s Weaving could return for it. Smith’s nature as a rogue program within the Matrix makes any  future change in his appearance easy to explain.

Source: Tech Crunch

Moving houses means potentially figuring out new internet connections.Getty Image

It’s tough to assume home existence with out the net, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic. Now a regulation going into impact in Washington kingdom is acknowledging that.

 Starting withinside the new year, home dealers in Washington may be required to percentage their net issuer on signed disclosure bureaucracy that encompass facts approximately plumbing, insulation and structural defects.

“Does the belongings presently have net carrier?” the disclosure shape will now ask, together with a area to mention who the issuer is.

The regulation would not require dealers to element get right of entry to speeds, pleasant or opportunity providers. The new disclosure is the contemporary in an array of efforts with the aid of using lawmakers throughout the U.S to reply to our growing reliance on domestic net connectivity for work, training and entertainment.

That net connection has emerge as even extra important all through the COVID-19 pandemic, which has upended the lives of billions of humans, forcing quarantines and lockdowns as humans alter to a brand new regular of each day existence.

Even earlier than the pandemic compelled us to emerge as even extra reliant at the net than we already were, hundreds of thousands of Americans lived in houses that hadn’t but been hooked up.

The Federal Communications Commission estimates that extra than 14 million Americans lack get right of entry to to baseline broadband speeds, even as the net carrier tracker BroadbandNow pegs the wide variety at toward forty two million.

Much of the broadband divide is in extra rural components of the u . s ., however it additionally disproportionately hits traditionally low-earnings and numerous communities.

Even before the pandemic forced us to rely on the Internet even more  than before, millions of Americans were living in unconnected households.

The Federal Communications Commission estimates that more than 14 million Americans do not have access to benchmark broadband. Speeds, while Internet service tracker BroadbandNow estimates the number at around 42 million.

Much of the broadband gap exists in more rural parts of the country, but it also affects disproportionately low-income and heterogeneous communities.

The US government has pledged $ 65 billion to expand broadband access under its $ 1.2 trillion bill on infrastructure investment and employment.

When buying a home, internet connections were generally not treated with the same care as water, electricity, or HVAC systems. While the new Washington state rule doesn’t require detailed internet connection details, it does make connections a potential ground for termination of a sales contract. within three days of receipt of the disclosure documents, unless you have waived your right to participate.

Source: Tech Crunch

A sign hangs from a branch of Banco Santander in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010.Simon Dawson | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Thousands of people received a surprise gift on Christmas Day this year when European bank Santander accidentally deposited £ 130 million (US $ 176 million) in 75,000 transactions. their salaries doubled while the vendors got more than they expected.

Bank accounts operated by competing banks. “We regret that due to a technical problem, some payments from our corporate customers were incorrectly duplicated in the accounts of the recipients,” a Santander spokesman told CNBC.

“As a result, none of our customers have ever been out of their pockets and we will be working hard with many banks across the UK in the coming days to restore duplicate transactions. According to reports, the incident could have dampened the mood of some payrolls on Christmas Day and December 26th.

“It ruined my vacation time thinking I accidentally paid  hundreds of thousands. I thought I did something wrong, “a payroll manager reportedly told the BBC.

Just me and that I would get in trouble at work. The payroll manager added that Santander had not disclosed how companies should explain the second payment to employees, nor provided any information on the reimbursement, according to the report.

He said the fund recovery process  is an industrial process known as the “bank troubleshooting process”.

He added that he has started working with other banks in accordance with the procedure and that these banks will try to collect accidental payments from their clients’ accounts and that they also have the option of withdrawing funds directly from people’s accounts.

Source: Tech Crunch