Meta's first ad for the Horizon meta-universe looks like a perfect dystopia world.

The New York Times in 2022 is not just a newspaper with a history and a famous brand. It is a rich and wealthy media empire. And the purchase of Wordle is further proof of that.

In recent years, the publication has focused on the purchase of non-core assets. The goal was simple: to diversify the outlet's income as much as possible. And the plan works. Games, audio stories, and a special cooking section, which became the backbone of the NYT's nonnews segment, have grown into a business that now brings the media $22 million per quarter. That's seven times more than it was five years ago.

And yesterday the NYT officially passed the 10 million paid subscriptions mark. Impressive.

Gucci Releases $980 Case for $549 AirPods Max! That's all.
Will you buy it?

Thursday is a brand new dating app. Tinder and the like have driven users into an endless wheel of choice: users look at profiles instead of chatting or dating. And, of course, they pay money for it.

Thursday only works on Thursdays. That means people only have 24 hours to text and arrange a date. At exactly midnight on Friday, the correspondence turns into a pumpkin.

For now, Thursday works only in London and New York. But the app already has more than 110,000 installations - not bad for two cities.

18 years ago, Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook from his dorm room, revolutionizing online communication forever.

Today, it's Meta. And the company isn't having the best of times: a record drop in stock, an exodus of users, and a crisis of ideas. Zuckerberg's only hope is the meta universe.

Zuckerberg's empire is in trouble: Meta stock is down 25%, or about $200 billion, all as Facebook reported its first-ever decline in unique users.

Zuckerberg himself lost $27 billion and dropped out of the top ten richest people in the world. Bloomberg writes that this is one of the biggest capital declines in just one day.

In Warsaw, pretty creative Dying Light 2 ads appeared.

- An artist drew a huge banner on the wall of a building in the center;
- during the day it shows the main character, it's nothing special;
- but at night a zombie appears next to him.

It's interesting that this reflects one of the game's mechanics: zombies become more active at night.

It took eight years for the designers of Google Chrome to announce a grand change to the logo today.

They took away the shadows, and now may rest for another eight years.

There was harassment again. And again, in the meta-universe.

Nina Jane Patel, a mother of three, logged into the game Horizon Venues. In just a minute she was surrounded by three realistic male avatars and began to rub up against her, making obscene gestures and appropriate hints. And they touched her avatar.

It was too realistic for a woman - now she suffers from anxiety and worries about the safety of women on the Internet.

Actually, Horizon Venues was supposed to have a "security bubble," but it didn't work.

Boston Dynamics' Spot robots are superstars in the world of high-tech. And what are stars without advertising contracts?

Bridgestone tire commercials:

"Check your tires. Save a life ."

A worn-out tread is like a straight line on a life-support machine screen .

"Smoking dulls your senses of taste and smell."

Pretty original anti-smoking public service announcement.

The BBC has prepared and rolled out an incredibly beautiful promo for the Olympics in Beijing. You won't believe but the reel features almost no graphics and the scenes are made on locations created by 3D-printing.

Stockholm Design Lab made a sardine tin for IKEA 🐟

Nothing flashy in the design, a laconic package with a noteworthy feature - the flap for opening the can is integrated into the overall design, which immediately makes the package thoughtful to the smallest detail.

The billboard of the Italian brand Bottega Veneta is placed on the Great Wall of China. It is timed to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

On the screen appears the name of the brand and the inscription, which in Chinese means "Happy New Year!

Lawmakers Press Amazon on Sales of Chemical Used in Suicides

The pleas to Amazon were explicit. A food preservative sold by the online retailer and other e-commerce sites was being used as a poison to die by suicide.

The New York Times has identified 10 people who have committed suicide using this chemical compound. Most absurdly, Amazon's recommendation algorithms suggest that those who bought this product also buy other products that will help them commit suicide. That is literally: did you buy the soap? And here's the rope for you.

Even after a bunch of complaints, Amazon has not responded in any way. Now members of the U.S. Congress have taken up the case. They have requested a report asking for all the details of how the company responded to the complaints and why it has not yet removed the dangerous products. It's a shame that officials didn't take up the case until after the outcry.

Zuckerberg has shifted his holding company's focus to the Metaworld, and he's doing well. As of January 2022, the number of virtual reality headsets connected to Steam VR exceeded 3.4 million, and the month-on-month growth rate is 29%. That's not a bad, promising market - you can't really get numbers like that with social media anymore.

At the Beijing Olympics, an entire robotic restaurant was built for the athletes. The cooking is done by an automated system.

Alas, the robostaurant does not work without a person - he's on the bar.

Amazon spends the most on advertising 💸

Amazon has become the largest advertiser in history. Last year, the company spent a record $16.7 billion. But the main dough they spend not on bloggers, but on more familiar and old channels: search engine ads, context and TV spots.

Moreover, Amazon makes a lot of money on advertising, too. According to the report, in 2021, it earned 31 billion dollars.