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For those who truly miss their trips to the video store and can’t quite live off people’s incredible home DIY versions on TikTok, Netflix has created a little throwback for you.

The streaming service is opening three promotional pop-up video stores in England to mark the release of Fear Street Part 1: 1994, the first installment of Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street trilogy, based on R.L. Stine’s beloved horror books.

Set to open in in London, Brighton, and Newcastle, the appropriately named Shadyside Videos will be available for the public to peruse on Friday, July 2, between midday and 8 p.m., and over the weekend between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m.

And yes, there’s “blood” on the floor right there.

The stores will then reopen the same opening hours for the second and third installments of the trilogy — July 9 and 10 for Fear Street Part 2: 1978, and July 16 and 17 for Fear Street Part 3: 1666.

Inside, you’ll find a photo booth “with a twist” (whatever that means, I’m…afraid?). Visitors can also enjoy giveaways of Fear Street merch, including a T-shirt collaboration with streetwear brand Aries. In the Newcastle store, they’ll be giving away “blood-splattered” chocolate bars made by local outfit The Chocolate Smiths. Plus, local artists Alice Bloomfield, Pippa Toole, and Cori Henderson have created retro poster artworks for the London, Brighton, and Newcastle stores respectively.

Now, importantly, these video stores opened by a streaming giant — whose very existence and our irreversibly changed ways of viewing movies means we’ll probably never go back to a video store format ever again — don’t actually have any movies you can rent.

Instead, these are pop-up promotional stores meant to immerse you in the world of the films. It’s fun! They look cool! It’s been a while since I’ve been to anything pop-up or anything resembling a Blockbuster, let me have this!

Free membership! Totally awesome.
Credit: JEFF SPICER / GETTY IMAGES / NETFLIX

You’ll find the Shadyside Videos pop-ups in London (149-150 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6HU), Brighton (65 East Street, BN1 1HQ), and Newcastle (6-8 Northumberland Street, NE1 7DE).

Fear Street Part 1: 1994 premieres on Netflix July 2. Fear Street Part 2: 1978 premieres on Netflix July 9. Fear Street Part 3: 1666 premieres on Netflix July 16.

SAVE $40: Typically $229, the white variant of the 42mm Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS) is on sale at Walmart for just $189 as of July 1 (a 17% savings).

Most of Apple’s 2017 releases have since made their merry way to the great Genius Bar in the sky — see: the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, the expensive iMac Pro, and that god-awful Siri Remote for the original Apple TV 4K. (Good riddance, TBQH.)

Not the Apple Watch Series 3, though. The Mashable’s Choice Award-winning smartwatch (which turns 4 in September) has stuck around as the company’s most affordable wearable, having outlived both the Series 4 and 5 with continued support for new versions of watchOS.

And get this: In all these years, one Series 3 variant has never been as cheap as it is currently.

As of July 1, the white, 42mm Apple Watch Series 3 with just GPS (no cellular connectivity) is on sale at Walmart for only $189 — that’s 17% off its $229 MSRP and its biggest discount ever. (We saw it going for the same price on Amazon, FYI, but it was on backorder until the end of August at the time of writing; Walmart can get it to you as soon as this weekend if you place your order ASAP.)

A great pick for anyone who doesn’t feel like messing around with tons of convoluted fitness metrics and sensors, the Series 3 comes with all the essentials, including a sleek Retina display, a built-in heart rate sensor, a barometric altimeter, and a wireless W2 chip. (The latter makes for quick pairing and efficient power consumption — one charge will get you up to 18 hours of battery life.) It’s also water-resistant up to 50 meters, so you don’t have to worry about ruining it at the pool or beach this summer.

Of course, anyone who’s in the market for a smartwatch right now could always hold out for the redesigned Apple Watch Series 7, which is supposed to arrive later this year — but don’t expect this best-ever Series 3 deal to hang around ’til then.

Explore related content:

• The best fitness trackers for every level of skill (and motivation)

• 11 of the best fitness trackers for monitoring heart rate

• Best workout apps for exercising at home

TikTok may be known for its young, viral dance craze-loving user base…but you still have to at least pretend to be 13 years or older to use it.

On Wednesday, TikTok, the viral video app that blew up in popularity during the pandemic, released its first transparency report of 2021. The report covers the first 3 months of the year.

While TikTok has released these reports before, which detail how the company deals with various forms of policy-breaking content, there was a “first” this time around.

“For the first time, we’re publishing the number of suspected underage accounts removed as we work to keep the full TikTok experience a place for people 13 and over,” TikTok says in the report.

And the number of accounts removed here is certainly eye-opening.

Of the 11,149,514 (yes, that’s more than 11 million) accounts removed for breaking the service’s community guidelines or terms of service, a whopping 7,263,952 of them were “suspected underage accounts.”

And “suspected” should be stressed. There’s no way to know exactly how many users under the age of 13 were actually using the service…or still are. These are accounts where users willingly entered their birthdate, identifying themselves as 12 years old or younger when signing up for the service.

That number may be high but, according to TikTok, it makes up less than 1 percent of all registered users. The company also highlighted how users under the age of 12 can sign up for a special curated version of the platform oriented to their age group — a service called TikTok for Younger Users.

While users 13 and over are allowed on the TikTok platform, the company did roll out special settings for those under the age of 18 earlier this year. The default account setting for users between 13 and 15 is set to private, and there are restrictions on who can download their videos and engage with their content. There are similar settings restrictions for users between the ages of 16 and 17 as well.

TikTok users who think they’ve found a perfect workaround by lying about their age may not be in the clear either. While TikTok hasn’t addressed this yet, other social media platforms have before. For example, a few years ago Twitter suspended many users who were legally allowed on the platform at the time, but had put a false birth date when they were underage and set up their account.

The name “air fryer,” frankly, is a misnomer. A brilliant marketing tactic, but a misnomer, nonetheless. An air fryer doesn’t fry. Not really.

You’ve heard of air fryers. Hell, how could you not know about them at this point? If you’re on TikTok you’d need an air fryer to make nearly every other recipe produced in the last year.

But when you hear air fryer, you might, naturally, think of, well…deep fried foods. Onion rings, mozz sticks, wings, and the like. That’s the power of marketing. And if there’s anything Americans love, it’s taking something decadent and wonderful, then watering it down so it can be consumed in large quantities. As Michael in TV’s The Good Place once said of frozen yogurt vs. ice cream: “There’s something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so you can have more of it.”

That is the ostensible promise of an air fryer: OK, so it won’t be fried, but it’ll be close and good. Throw some frozen chicken tenders in this sucker and bam, you’ve got a slightly healthier version of the real deal.

But if that’s how you’re using your air fryer, frankly you’re using it all wrong.

The air fryer is the perfect tool for roasting vegetables. It is particularly sent from heaven for weeknight meals. Frankly, I hardly even use my traditional oven for roasting veggies anymore — and most dinners I make involve roasted vegetables.

An air fryer is, in all intents and purposes, a convection oven. It circulates hot air in and around your food to cook it fast at high temperatures. That is, well, exactly how you’d roast vegetables in a perfect world.

Brussels sprouts, carrots, onion, sweet potatoes, broccoli, freaking whatever, here’s my method for air frying veggies:

• Cut the veggie into your desired size and shape

• Douse the hell out of the air fryer basket with cooking spray

• Dump the food in the basket

• Spray the hell out of the food (you could use oil here, too, if you desire)

• Season the veggies however you like (just make sure you include salt)

• Blast the air fryer at its top heat

• Shake the basket around to mix the veggies after about ten minutes

• The vegetables are done when they’re crispy on the edges but tender inside. You should see a little char. This usually takes around 20-ish minutes.

• Eat

Follow this method and you will be rewarded with crisp, salty, beautiful, slightly charred vegetables every time. A process that would take 45 minutes and gluttonous amounts of oil in the oven takes the air fryer half the time and no oil, should you desire to cut it.

OK, so now a confession. I am an idiot: I could not, for the life of me, find photos of my lovely air-fried vegetables. And that is because — like I said — it is a perfect weeknight food, when you’re just rushing to get something finished post-work. I don’t stop to take photos when I just want to relax and eat.

You’ve just got to trust me. It’s almost impossible to mess up. And here, gaze upon beautiful veggies air-fried by others.

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Now of course you can use the air fryer for other things. It does do a damn fine job of cooking frozen foods. It makes a good chicken wing — though as a wing expert I contend deep frying remains tastier. You can use it for anything you’d bake or roast. I’ve air fried salmon, chicken, and whatever else I’ve needed to cook easily and quickly with little mess.

But I’d argue veggies are the only food I’d rather cook in the air fryer than any other method. If an air fryer was a one-function tool — if it only roasted vegetables — I’d still want it. You could use a convection oven to net similar results, but, typically speaking, a good convection oven is going to cost you more money, cook fewer vegetables, and be tougher to clean. My Instant Pot brand air fryer costs just $99 and has a large, nonstick basket that takes a couple of minutes to wash, at most.

So just hear me out, if you don’t love you air fryer, maybe ditch the frozen foods — or don’t, whatever — but definitely mix in some roasted veggies. You won’t regret it.

Google’s answer to combatting COVID vaccine misinformation has been to display resources from health authorities like the CDC in information boxes on search result pages.

But the coronavirus — and COVID-related scams and fake news— have blown through international borders and language barriers.

How is Google supposed to serve up that same quality of information when people are using search terms in foreign languages that the algorithm might not recognize?

Enter: MUM. No, not someone’s British mother. It’s Google’s new AI tool, called Multitask Unified Model, that the company says will help the search engine answer complicated queries by (among other things) pulling information from sources in “75+” languages.

First announced at the company’s I/O developer conference in May, Google shared Tuesday that it has put MUM into action for its first job: Surfacing information about the coronavirus vaccine.

MUM has some information to share.
Credit: Google

Google says its analysis shows that there are more than 800 variations of names for the coronavirus vaccine — like “Coronavaccin Pfizer” and “CoVaccine” — in different languages. Identifying the names, and assigning information boxes to them, is a process it says would have normally taken “weeks.” However, MUM was able to do it in “seconds.” Google validated that MUM’s analysis of search terms was accurate, and the technology is being used for searches now.

“This first application of MUM helped us get critical information to users around the world in a timely manner,” Google’s blog post on the topic reads.

Google displays information from the CDC or the World Health Organization in its boxes. Google says it will also display information from “local health authorities, depending on where you’re searching from.”

Disseminating vaccine information is a fairly small-scale example of some potentially big changes under the Google Search hood. MUM needs fewer data inputs to generate answers, so Google Search will theoretically be able to adapt to new trends and information more quickly.

On the user end, MUM will be able to take context from pages in multiple languages to suggest more relevant search results in the user’s language. Google gives the example of someone visiting Mt. Fuji. It might use information from Japanese websites to provide a traveler better results in English.

That’s not all MUM can do. Google explains it will eventually let people ask Google Search increasingly complicated questions. It can also process questions in multimedia formats; for example, it could answer a question, posed by voice, about the contents of an image. You can read a more detailed explanation of how MUM works here. And don’t be surprised if you see more from MUM, soon.

Where Volvo’s going, it’s all electric.

The Swedish car company showed off its electric concept car at a live tech event streamed from Gothenburg, Sweden on Wednesday. The Recharge concept will be the design foundation for future Volvo EVs.

Volvo has already pledged to only produce electric vehicles by 2030. Until then, Volvo has five plug-in hybrid versions and there’s already the Volvo XC40 and forthcoming C40 Recharge, which look like electrified versions of Volvo’s combustion-engine SUVs.

But now electric Volvos will have a completely new look to distinguish them from past traditional gas models.

As seen in the concept photos, the new look even has a roofline LiDAR sensor from Luminar for autonomous driving features. The sensor box on the roof emits light rays to measure distance so the car can “see” what’s around it, like cars, pedestrians, or cyclists.

Glass roof complete with LiDAR.
Credit: volvo

The main feature of the Recharge concept is a flat floor, under which will sit the electric battery. The first EV to be manufactured from the concept design will be an SUV with more space inside, a new glass roof, and a “shield” instead of a grille on the front.

Backside bliss.
Credit: volvo

Come on in.

Credit: Volvo

An inside look at the concept.

Credit: volvo

The seats have been repositioned because of the bigger inside space and flat floor, with a 15-inch touchscreen as the focal point of the interior. As part of Wednesday’s tech event, Volvo also announced its own operating system called VolvoCars.OS to control the screen. There’s even a plan to collect real-time data from actual driving to improve its AI-based automatic driving system. These features should make Volvos feel more like a Tesla.

According to Volvo, the Recharge concept car is intended to have a “Scandinavian living room feeling.”

That’s the electric future.

Stan Schroeder contributed to this report.

When Loki died at the end of Thor, it seemed like a plausible end to his character. It was not. His second sacrifice in Thor: The Dark World was a more obvious fake-out. The third time, when Thanos choked him out in Avengers: Infinity War, seemed to stick, but it only took until Avengers: Endgame to reveal the variant Loki loophole that led to the god of mischief starring in his own TV show. This is all to say that when Loki the TV series killed Loki for the fourth time by pruning his variant from the sacred timeline, you’d have to have some serious pattern recognition deficiencies if you thought he was really gone.

Episode 4 of Loki took a page from Thor‘s book and brought Loki back in a mid credit scene, but this one did a lot more than reveal that the Loki variant was still alive — it changed the game for what the Time Variance Authority is actually up to when they prune variants and might have opened the door to an entirely new corner of the multiverse.

To begin with, that glowing stick thingy that allegedly prunes variants from all timelines is clearly not doing that. Instead of disappearing Loki (and Mobius, one must assume) from all time, the mid-credit scene showed our Loki variant waking up in a never-before-seen dimension that requires a more careful second look to make sense. In addition to showing four more Loki variants (we’ll get to those in a minute), fans pointed out on Twitter that the background of this strange land appears to show a destroyed Avengers Tower.

Tweet may have been deleted

Avengers Tower was never destroyed in the sacred timeline, but it may have been destroyed if Loki’s 2012 invasion of New York had succeeded. If this place is where variant Lokis go when they’re pruned, it may be that this place is a combination of pruned timelines as well — the timelines where Loki actually won.

In the brief moments Episode 4 lets us glimpse this potentially pruned Loki-land, perhaps the Lokiverse, four new characters show up to greet our variant Loki. There’s a tall Black Loki with a Mjolnir-looking hammer of his own, an older Loki wearing the comic book character’s original costume, a kid Loki, and a small alligator wearing Loki’s horns. Let’s break those new characters down.

Boastful Loki

The credits for episode 4 name this guy Boastful Loki and reveal that he is played by Game of Thrones and Pirates of the Caribbean actor DeObia Oparei. Boastful Loki has no precedent in the comics, but his hammer is pretty cool and may indicate that he’s a “worthy” Loki variant with a hammer of his own.

Classic Loki

Richard E. Grant himself plays Classic Loki, an obvious throwback to Loki’s original costume complete with underwear over his tights and enormous curved horns. This isn’t the first time the MCU has played with their characters’ classic costumes — remember when Wanda dressed up in the original Scarlet Witch getup for Halloween in WandaVision?

Kid Loki

Would everyone please update their Young Avengers in the Disney+ MCU tallies accordingly? Kid Loki is in the house. This little whippersnapper is a fan favorite version of Loki from the comic books, where Loki was reborn into the body of a child. He still had Loki’s tricky personality but was determined not to become the villain his older self was, which led to him idolizing Thor and becoming a Young Avenger for a while. If this kid sticks around, he’s going to be a huge deal.

Reptile Loki

It’s an alligator, not a crocodile. If you care about that sort of thing.

We don’t know exactly where the mid-credit scene from episode 4 of Loki takes place, or what the part the other variant Lokis will play in the show’s final two episodes, but if the pattern from WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier holds up, a mid-credit scene marks the point where Disney+ Marvel shows start getting real about what’s going on. Whatever that is, it’s sure to be a mischievous good time.

Loki is streaming on Disney+.

Twitter’s making it rain NFTs.

On Wednesday, the social media giant announced its intention to give away 140 non-fungible tokens hosted on the Rarible marketplace. Unlike Reddit, which just last week listed its own NFTs for sale, Twitter decided not to charge for these digital trading cards — perhaps in an unspoken acknowledgment that the longterm NFT value proposition is, at best, unclear.

With the help of Rarible, Twitter minted 20 NFTs (i.e., created ERC-721 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain describing corresponding pieces of art) for each of the seven different pieces of digital art, sporting titles like “Furry Twitter,” “Vitamin T,” and “Reply Guy.”

Notably, those lucky enough to be gifted one of these things — the prerequisite for which (from all outside appearances) involves simply tweeting at Twitter or tweeting about the giveaway and the company DMing you directions on how to claim the NFT — don’t actually own the art or any rights to it. That’s because NFTs often don’t actually contain any art. Instead, they typically point to or describe something that exists in the world somewhere else.

That appears to be the case here, too.

In its NFT terms of service (which is listed on the InterPlanetary File System), Twitter lays out exactly what it’s giving away.

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“The Artwork and Brand are neither stored nor embedded in the NFT, but are accessible through the NFT,” explains the TOS. “Although the NFT itself is owned by the recipient of the NFT, the Artwork and Brand associated with the NFT is licensed and not transferred or sold to such recipient.”

When asked about this, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed as much. The spokesperson also added that the NFT recipient doesn’t own the rights to the artwork itself, or any Twitter IP.

This latter point isn’t surprising, and is similar to buying a print of a famous piece of art. You can hang the poster in your dorm room, but you can’t reproduce it and sell copies. Except with Twitter’s NFTs, you don’t even own the poster (to continue the analogy), but rather a digital token describing the contents of the poster and where it’s being kept.

Tweet may have been deleted

Importantly, while Twitter is not selling this batch of 140 NFTs, that doesn’t mean it won’t sell NFTs in the future. When asked about any plans to do so at a later point in time, the spokesperson replied only that the company had nothing to share.

Bloomberg reports that a Twitter spokesperson told the publication it had no NFT plans other than this campaign.

The motivation behind this NFT drop, according to the Twitter spokesperson, was simply to highlight the existing discussion of NFTs on the platform and make it easier for Twitter users to get in on the NFT fun.

The spokesperson did confirm, though, that the recipients (aka new owners) can sell the NFTs on the Rarible marketplace if they choose to do so. Which makes sense, as the Twitter NFT TOS is written in such a way as to cover “a subsequent transfer or purchase.”

Tweet may have been deleted

It’s worth noting that some NFTs are structured in such a way, dubbed the “royalty system,” so that every future sale kicks back a percentage of that sale, in perpetuity, to the NFT’s creator.

We asked Twitter if this current batch of NFTs is set up in a similar way, and the spokesperson replied that recipients can sell them or keep them, and Twitter won’t take a cut.

As of the time of this writing, Twitter has given away at least a few of the NFTs, and one such example is still listed as “Not for sale.” The new owner of the “Furry Twitter” NFT may just be holding onto it for a while before he re-lists it for sale, however.

Still not for sale.
Credit: screenshot / rarible

With this initial batch of 140, it appears that Twitter is testing the water to see what, if anything, Twitter-minted NFTs are worth.

SEE ALSO: So you spent millions on an NFT. Here’s what you actually bought.

The great thing about being in a possible bubble is that the rest of us won’t have to wait long to find out — one way, or another.

Fun fact: Alexa can speak in a variety of languages and accents that you have access to on your Alexa app.

You can change Alexa’s voice settings just for kicks, sure. But the voice settings also come in handy if you have a family member or friend who speaks another language and needs to be able to use the Alexa system. Whether for practicality or just for fun, here’s how to change Alexa’s voice settings:

1. Open the Alexa app.

2. Tap “More” (the three lines icon).

3. Select “Settings.”

4. Select your “Device Settings.”

5. You’ll see all of your Alexa devices on the next screen. Select the device you want to change.

6. Select “Language.”

7. You can then select the language and/or accent you want Alexa to speak in. Pick your preference, and tap “OK.”

The new setting may take a few minutes to implement, but Alexa will then speak in the language/accent you selected. Amazon Help is also there for all of your Alexa needs.

If you’re my best friend, I’m happy to FaceTime you from my most unflattering angle. In fact, I insist on it. But if I’m meeting someone for the first time via video chat, then I’m looking for the best lighting and probably staring at my own little square more than whoever’s on the other end.

With iOS 15, the iPhone’s latest software update (currently available in beta), we all get one more FaceTime trick to feed our egos and look our best: Portrait Mode.

OK, yes, technically Portrait Mode only changes your background and not your actual face. But something about that smoothed-out scene behind you makes everyone look a little better. Think about how good your Portrait Mode photos look!

Whether you’re going on a first date via FaceTime or making a more professional video call, turning on Portrait Mode in FaceTime is worth it and super simple.

Choose your video-chatting partner

On iOS 15, you FaceTime call someone the same ways you always have: Pull up their contact card, find their contact info via iMessage, or go straight into the FaceTime app. There is one slight change: Now when you pull up your texts with someone, the FaceTime icon will display to the right of their name, making FaceTime calls even easier.

Tap on your video feed during calls

Bigger picture of me! Amazing for my already huge ego.
Credit: screenshot: apple

A small window of your video feed should appear in the lower righthand corner as it usually does on FaceTime, although the iOS 15 version seems a bit bigger than the previous version.

Oh, look. It only gets bigger.
Credit: screenshot: apple

When you tap on it, it should get even bigger and display four icons in each corner: Portrait Mode, minimize, effects, and camera view.

Turn on Portrait Mode

Bada bing, bada boom. Bring on the blur.
Credit: screenshot: apple

Tap on the icon in the upper left corner of your video feed, and presto! Your background should immediately blur, effectively hiding any garish details and making your gorgeous face the center of attention.

Related Video: 5 game-changing iPhone hacks for 2021