Tag: opening
Bluesky has added almost a million users one day after opening to the public
Bluesky, the open source Twitter alternative, has seen a surge in new users just one day after opening its platform up to the public. The service has gained more than 850,000 users bringing its total sign-ups to just over 4 million.
The service had been in an invitation-only beta for about a year and had grown to just over 3 million users when it officially opened to the public. It currently has close to 4.1 million sign-ups, according to an online tracker. “Things are rolling over here,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber wrote in a post on X.
The surge in new users suggests that there is still ample curiosity about the Jack Dorsey-backed platform that began as an internal project at Twitter in 2019. It also indicated that Meta hasn’t entirely cornered the market for a text-based Twitter alternative. The company’s Threads app has grown to 130 million monthly users, Meta announced last week.
Graber has said that Bluesky intended to grow at a slower pace so that it could build it the platform, and the underlying protocol, without the added pressure sudden surges in growth can cause. Some of those concerns were borne out over the last day as the spike in activity led to some technical issues on the site, including problems with the app’s custom feeds and a brief outage overnight. The outage was resolved within a couple hours, according to the company.
Much of Bluesky’s future success will hinge on whether it can maintain new growth and keep the interest of all its new users. Threads also saw an initial spike in new users, only for it to drop-off before eventually rebounding.
Though Bluesky may look a bit like Threads or X, it’s a fundamentally different kind of platform and part of the growing movement for decentralized social media. Its open-source protocol functions like a “permanently open” API, according to Graber, and the site already has dozens of developers building their own experiences. Bluesky also offers more customization features for users, with features like custom algorithms and the ability to choose your own content moderation settings.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/bluesky-has-added-almost-a-million-users-one-day-after-opening-to-the-public-004854186.html?src=rss
A ‘Malibu Barbie Cafe’ is opening in Chicago and New York this week – with ‘70s decor and cocktails
A BARBIE café is hitting New York and Chicago, complete with all the ’70s décor, cocktails, and nostalgia.
New photos offer a preview of the cafes ahead of their grand opening, when people are expected to rush to the pop-up shops so they can dine like life-size Barbie dolls.
A Malibu Barbie Café is opening in New York this week with ’70s décor and cocktails[/caption]
The pop-up shops, inspired by the upcoming Barbie movie, took much planning and time to come to fruition[/caption]
Julie Freeland, Mattel’s senior director of global location-based entertainment, explained that the pop-up shops were inspired by the movie, but took the help of many hands on deck.
“Bucket Listers and Mattel have been collaborating on the Cafe’s design for the past several months, with the build out of the cafe including its custom vignettes taking around several weeks to complete,” she said.
Staying true to the spirit of the Malibu Barbie, the team aspired for a menu that would earn the icon’s approval.
“The Malibu Barbie Cafe allows guests to experience the ultimate form of Barbie inspired dining,” she said.
“With nods to the nostalgia of Malibu Barbie throughout, every detail of the space and the menu will give guests a glimpse into what Barbie herself would dine on.
“Expect a beachy retro vibe throughout and a variety of dishes that are familiar, yet with updated and unexpected elements.”
Embracing the spirit of summer, the menu is thus designed with Barbie in mind.
“It’s fresh, fun, and delicious. [There’s] something for everyone,” said Freeland.
“Expect items like the Beach Burger, Pacific Paradise Rainbow Pancakes, The Golden Coast CALI-flower Bowl, and the West Coast Wave Salad to become instant fan favorites.”
Additional menu items include sofa floats and even ice cream sundaes.
While the cafe doesn’t contain any Easter eggs from the movie, it is a definite must-see for fans of the franchise.
“We are so pleased to have this story told by Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, especially at a time when Barbie has never been more relevant than she is today, connecting to society across all cultural touch points as the world has fun with Barbie fashion and lifestyle,” said Freeland.
The New York café opens on Wednesday and will welcome diners seven days a week through September 15 while the Chicago location will debut on June 7.
Reservations for the New York location can be made here or for Chicago here.
Fans rushed to the café to dine like real-life dolls[/caption]
GRIM REAPER: Opening Death’s Door
An anonymous man called into the ‘Joe from the Carolinas’ podcast to describe something strange that he saw in a photograph back around 2000 while serving on the US/Mexico border.
“I used to never believe in anything really. I was just a regular guy, who joined the military, drank a lot of beer, and didn’t think about stuff like this. I was in this area…I was stationed close to the country…I speak Spanish. I’m actually originally from Spain. I came to the States as a kid, went to high school here, etc. Anyway, so I was stationed by the border and, of course, since I speak Spanish, I would go to Mexico all the time and ended up meeting this girl whom I’m married to now, 16 years now. When she was my girlfriend, like I said, I didn’t believe any of this stuff, any paranormal stuff at all. But my father-in-law who, at the time, was just my girlfriend’s dad, he was still teaching. He taught drafting or something like that, in a college. He’s into the paranormal, UFOs, and stuff. I guess he got me into it.
He asked me if I believed in death and I said, ‘Well, we’re all gonna die’ and he said, ‘No, the actual Grim Reaper. Do you believe in the Grim Reaper?’ I said, ‘No’ and I thought he was crazy when he asked me that, but he goes, ‘What would you think if I showed you a picture of Death, the Grim Reaper, would you believe in it?’ and I said, ‘Uh, I guess. I didn’t know what to make of it. I thought it was, I felt like I was on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this family is crazy or something. And my wife who was at the time, my girlfriend, was just sitting next to me and, you know, smiling, like she didn’t say anything. Like what the hell is going on here? My mother-in-law popped out of the kitchen. She said, ‘Are you talking about the picture of death?’ and I’m like, okay, this is getting weird. I am in a foreign country with, you know, people I barely know. I was kind of freaking out and he goes ‘Would you like to see a picture of it?’ and I said, ‘Uh, yeah, I guess.’ So he got up and started walking towards the back room, a study he has, and I’m thinking the whole time he’s gonna turn around and tell me, I just scaring you, you know, you’re going out with my daughter. I’m looking at my girlfriend and I’m thinking, like, should I get out of here, you know, these people are crazy but I just was too nervous to do anything.
Well, you know, had to sit there and he came back and he had these pictures. They were about the size of a postcard, maybe a little bit bigger. He flipped them over so I couldn’t see him and he put them on this little coffee table. I remembered like it was yesterday. He flipped them over so I couldn’t see them. He goes, ‘Before I show you these pictures, I want to explain to you what happened’ and he goes, ‘What happened was’ and I know the story very well now because I’ve been married to my wife but he, you know, he was like, he worked in drafting, and he had a really good friend who had a camera shop here in Mexico. He called him at his work, he was teaching, and he goes, ‘Hey, I need you to come and see something.’ Actually, the principal of the school told my father-in-law, I need you to come, somebody’s calling for you.’ And he’s like, ‘What’s going on? Is everything good?’ ‘I need you to come right now. I need you to look at the picture. What’s going on? Just come!’ So he went to the camera shop and he said that he had a guy come in and said. ‘This is a picture of my brother on his deathbed the night he died and it was,’ he said ‘Much like a picture from the 40s, maybe 50s and it’s a picture of, like, if you were side a room and you’re looking inside the room and you look to the left corner in the back, it’s a bed with the guy laying on it, with his eyes closed. You can see a big wooden beam in this big old Mexican house, and there was like a little table of flowers because the guy was sick, obviously, probably from family members. But anyways, and he said that this guy brought the picture in and he goes, ‘I want you to restore this picture for me.’ It was a like a little passport-sized picture, really small, black and white, and it has, you know how a picture if you’d bend it, it’s a white crease. So he was saying I want you to see if you can do a new picture, the same size, but without so many creases in it. The guy said, ‘Okay, no problem. I can fix it up.’
He scanned the picture and he blew it up and he said that when he blew it up, you could see at the foot of the bed, the Grim Reaper was waiting for this guy, and I was telling him, ‘What are you serious?’ He goes, yeah, and he goes on. And I go, ‘What did you guys do?’ He says, ‘Well, my friend called me because he thought he was going crazy or he thought he was seeing things. There’s the Grim Reaper.’ The guy restored the picture, called the guy back and gave him the original picture, and gave him the restored one but of course, that’s a small size so you can’t see anything really. And he just gave the guys his pictures and sent him on his way and they kept the pictures, one in black and white and one where they like put some kind of dye in it so it’s kind of like a brownish, light brown color, so you could see it better. They made copies of it for him. The camera guy owner and my father. My father I think had like two or three pictures and the guy never knew.
I said, ‘Well, can I see it?’ and I swear to you, he flipped the photos over and I saw what I’m telling you, the guy laying on a bed and everything and at the foot of the bed there’s a freaking thing floating because there’s no legs or anything. There’s no connection to the ground but there’s a robe, there’s a skull head, a little skull head and you look down where the hands are and you see skeletal fingers, ten fingers, holding a stick, and at the top of the stick, there’s that sickle. I swear to God. I know it sounds crazy but I swear on my life this is for real. And it spooked me. It spooked me to the core. I looked at it for maybe two or three seconds which is, two or three seconds is a pretty long time. I just looked away and I couldn’t sleep for… I couldn’t sleep for days. I kept waking up thinking I was going to see death in my bed and I was stationed on a base in the barracks. I was all by myself in my room and I remember my friends were asking me at work, you know, what’s wrong with you? I haven’t been able to sleep and I told them the story I’m telling you. Of course, they didn’t believe me. Young military guys, ‘Oh, you’re full of crap.’ I said, ‘Come on over to Mexico’ because we’re stationed maybe not even an hour away from the border.
So I had a couple of my friends come and they saw it and one of my friends, when he saw it, he kind of moaned and to this day we still talk about it. I have never seen that picture again. (the host asks him to describe the entity in the image) Well, like I said, I mean, I know you probably don’t want to hear the whole thing about the guy laying down and everything but, literally, at his feet, at the foot of his bed, you look down and there’s the floor. So there’s no connection to the ground, and all of a sudden, about, maybe, halfway up to the foot of the bed from the ground, the apparition starts forming. There are no legs or anything. It’s just a robe. Then there’s no distinguishable beginning of the robe. Like the end of the cloth, I don’t know how to explain it, like comes into being, little by little, fades into being, and, like I said, it’s a robe, a dark robe. I remember the skull head. There are those skeletal white fingers. Imagine a black-and-white picture and then, almost like an x-ray, can you see this skull, like almost like a cartoon or a caricature of what we’ve been raised to think a cartoon skull looks like or a death skull. Just empty eye sockets, empty nose sockets, the teeth, you know, and… just a skull. And then it’s got a hood over it. Not over the face, of course, but over where the head is its hair. You see perfectly, a stick, or a piece of wood or something. One hand is lower than the other and it’s holding the stick – the stick goes all the way up past his head and then they’ve got that sickle. I thought I was going mad.”
Transcribed Source: ‘Joe from the Carolinas’ from the episode ‘The Truth is Out There – Or Is It? Live Call-Ins’
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Wix is opening up its services to boost websites everywhere
The Lamplighters League’s opening mission confirms it’s a hot GOTY contender
Ever since it was announced two short months ago, The Lamplighters League has quickly become one of the most exciting turn-based strategy games of the year. You may remember I got to see it in action at GDC last month, albeit with developers Harebrained Schemes firmly in the control seat. Happily, I’ve now been able to play its opening tutorial mission for myself in my own time, and yep, it’s looking pretty special, folks.
Paul O’Grady set to star in film posthumously to mark Eurovision opening
Guardians of the Galaxy 3’s opening weekend box office can’t fully reverse Marvel’s slide
But at least it beat Quantumania
Half-Life 2 still has a perfect opening, and we can prove it
It’s redundant now to declare Half-Life 2 one of the best PC games of all time. It’s like saying, “The Godfather; good movie, right?” Two decades on from Half-Life 2‘s initial release, this remains as true as it ever was.
Replay it in 2023 – the year in which the FPS game itself is set – and you’ll be treated to countless iconic, hair-raising moments and set pieces each underlined by the stunning technical achievement of Source engine, freshly unveiled alongside Half-Life 2. Beyond the groundbreaking advancements, visuals, and gameplay is the story, itself expertly crafted as if created by some master of dystopian science fiction.
Amid all this, it’s all too easy to forget that Half-Life 2’s opening chapter, Point Insertion, was – and is still – perfect. And you don’t just need to take our word for it: we have the evidence.
MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Whatever happened to Half-Life 3?, Best old games, Best FPS games
Boy, the Silo Opening Credits Sure Feel Familiar
As a fan of Hugh Howey’s books, I am quite excited to watch Apple TV+’s live-action adaptation of the hit sci-fi series Silo, about the remnants of humanity who have been living in an underground bunker for so long they’ve forgotten why they’re there. But Apple has just revealed the opening credits for the adaptation,…