‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ trailer: Tony Stark and Michael Keaton’s Vulture school Peter Parker

The official trailer for this summer’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming” has landed, and as we saw in last year’s “Captain America: Civil War,” 

Tom Holland’s frisky Peter Parker is being mentored with an iron-firm hand by Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. And the central theme of this nearly three-minute sneak peek, naturally, is the growing pains involved in a boy becoming a Spider-Man.

This Peter Parker is so eager to join the Marvel big boys in Stark Tower that he even watches Avengers videos on his laptop (we glimpse him watching an old-school “Captain America’s Fitness Challenge”).

“Can’t you be just a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?” Stark replies when Peter eagerly asks how he can become an Avenger. Stark also advises: “Just stay close to the ground” in Queens before trying to save the world. (Never mind that Stark himself drafted Peter into a huge Avengers melee in Europe in “Captain America: Civil War.”)

But then Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes — a.k.a. the Vulture — drops in to declare: “The rich and the powerful, like Stark, they don’t care about us!”

The Vulture is using his robotic winged suit to terrorize New York, with Bokeem Woodbine’s Herman Schultz/Shocker by his side. Spider-Man soon tries to stop him, as the Vulture aims to slice a ferry in half. Many would have been hurt if Iron Man hadn’t flown in to save the day.

Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in the new “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” (image from Sony trailer)

“Forget the flying monster guy,” the paternalistic Stark tells Peter about Vulture. “There are people who handle this sort of thing.”

“I was just trying to be like you,” Peter replies, looking up.

“If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it!” snaps Tony of the Stark Industries-designed costume.

And with that, the dramatic dynamic is set into motion.

(Meanwhile, there are still no clues as to whether Zendaya’s “Michelle” is actually future Spidey flame Mary Jane Watson — but then again, a big surprise like that is unlikely to be revealed in a trailer.)

“Spider-Man: Homecoming” is Marvel Studios’s first attempt to mend Sony’s once-irresistible character, who lost some box-office luster with Andrew Garfield’s second outing. Now, the fate of the franchise rests with 20-year-old Tom Holland.

“Spider-Man: Homecoming” arrives July 7.

Spider-Man (Tom Holland) in the new “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” (image from Sony trailer)

More Ways to Share with the Facebook Camera

We want to make it fast, fun and easy for people to share creative photos and videos with whomever they choose, for however long they choose — and the more we share with each other, the more open and connected our community can be. 

Today we’re starting to roll out a new camera with effects and two additional ways to share the photos and videos you take.

Camera Effects: Let Your Camera Do the Talking
Starting this week on iOS and Android, you can tap on the camera icon on the top left corner of the Facebook app or swipe right from News Feed to try out the new in-app camera. The Facebook camera is packed with dozens of effects like masks, frames and interactive filters that you can apply to your photos and videos. Reactive effects let you interact with dynamic objects — like falling snow — and style effects apply an artistic filter to your video in real time, letting you turn your everyday selfie into a Picasso-style work of art.

We’re also partnering with brands to create masks for upcoming movies Alien: Covenant, Despicable Me 3, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Power Rangers, Smurfs: The Lost Village and Wonder Woman.

Masks for Alien: Covenant (left), Despicable Me 3 (middle) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (right)

Masks for Power Rangers (middle), Smurfs: The Lost Village (left) and Wonder Woman (right)

Additionally, we’re including guest art from visual artists like Douglas Coupland and Hattie Stewart. We’ll regularly refresh the creative effects in the camera to give you fun new effects to explore.

Stories: Show Friends What You’re Up To 
The Instagram community has shown us that it can be fun to share things that disappear after a day, so in the main Facebook app we’re also introducing Facebook Stories, which lets you share multiple photos and videos as part of a visual collection atop News Feed. Your friends can view photos or videos from your story for 24 hours, and stories won’t appear on your Timeline or in News Feed unless you post them there, too.

To add to your story, tap on the “Your Story” icon in the Stories bar at the top of News Feed.Direct: Easily Share With Exactly Who You Want
In addition to sharing to your Story, we know you may want to share your photos and videos with specific friends. We’ve also added Direct, an option that’s designed for sharing individual photos and videos with specific friends for a limited time.

When you send a photo or video via Direct, your friends will be able to view it once and replay it or write a reply. Once the conversation on the photo or video ends, the content is no longer visible in Direct.Over the coming months, we plan to introduce new ways for the Facebook community to create their own frames and effects that can be used on any photo or video created with the new Facebook camera. Our goal is for the camera to be a home to hundreds of dynamic and fun effects that give you new ways to connect with friends, family, and your community.

We hope that with the new Facebook camera, Stories and Direct, it will be easier than ever to see the world through each other’s eyes, and we can’t wait to see the photos and videos you create. In the meantime, here’s one of my own in my tropical island disguise, hiding from work with my cat Ebi.

18 Deeply Confused People Who’ve Clearly Forgot How Life Works

We’ve all had one of those days where all you seem capable of is screwing up. For most of us at work, that means a typo in an e-mail, or a spilled drink, or a wrong order, or any of the little accidents that usually happen as a result of a momentary lapse in concentration. At home, a mistake can result in some real stupidity, like when you brush your teeth with skin cream instead of toothpaste, or pour orange juice into your breakfast cereal, as I have done many times before.

It used to be that these acts of idiocy would be forgotten almost instantly, but the ubiquity of the internet means that it’s easier than ever to capture and share pictures of people who, for whatever reason, have done something really stupid. Maybe they’ve been doing some simple act wrong their whole life, or maybe they’ve really messed up the planning and design of something – it doesn’t matter. Their failure is now ours to enjoy.

1. This t-shirt’s slogan is awful

2. What a view!

3. This makes my blood boil

4. Some real professional advice 

5. A good way to get arrested

6. This would make for an uncomfortable bathroom encounter

We have even more pants-on-head stupidity waiting for you over one page two, including a particularly pointless padlock, someone who really doesn’t get what bicycle stands are there for and a chair that literally no-one would ever want to sit on.

7. Someone doesn’t really understand what an acronym is

8. Someone else has missed the point of a padlock

9. What the hell?

10. The best sandwich ever made

11. Not the comfiest chair

12. Probably the laziest image I’ve seen all week

You think that was bad? We’ve saved the best/worst for last. Shoot over to page three for a good laugh at some of the most embarrassing examples ever, including a calendar that doesn’t make a lick of sense, a menu that’ll make you roll your eyes, and what might well be the worst shaving technique ever. 

13. Somebody really wanted a three-day-weekend

14. So much for fire safety regulations

15. Whoever made this menu needs to learn how to pour a drink

16. This person really doesn’t get shaving

17. They just didn’t care

18. Hosing your car… in the rain

Pretty ridiculous right? To be honest, whenever it comes to people messing up and just getting it wrong, you can guarantee that there will be plenty of examples. So many in fact that we’ve got a whole other article just to accommodate them all. Don’t believe me? Then check out these 17 people who failed better than anyone had failed before.

Introducing Message Reactions and Mentions for Messenger

Messenger is a great way to communicate with just one person or with a group of people. Today, we’re introducing two new features that improve group conversations to make them more fun and useful.

Message Reactions
Message Reactions are the ability to react to an individual message with a specific emotion, quickly showing acknowledgement or expressing how you feel in a lightweight way. For example, if someone messages a photo of their cute pet, you could respond with the love reaction. Or, if someone is trying to coordinate dinner plans, you could easily respond with a yes or no reaction to indicate your preferences.

To add a reaction, press and hold any message, and then tap to make your selection from the love, smile, wow, sad, angry, yes and no emojis.

You’ll be able to see how people have reacted to a message in the lower corner of the message. There, you’ll see the reactions people selected alongside a number indicating how many people reacted to the message. Tapping on the emojis will show you which members of your conversation reacted which way.

When someone reacts to a message you sent, you’ll see a small animation when you’re looking at the conversation.

And, if you don’t have Messenger open, you’ll receive a notification that lets you know who reacted to your message and how.

Messenger Reactions use Messenger emojis. Messenger Reactions work in one on one conversations as well as group conversations and can be used to comment on any message — text, stickers, videos, GIFs and even other emoji.

Mentions
Mentions is a way to directly notify someone when they’ve been mentioned in a conversation. To mention someone, type the “@” symbol or start typing the first few letters of the name or nickname of the person you want to notify and select them from the list.

When the message is sent, it will appear with highlighted text for the others in the group to see.

When a person is mentioned, instead of simply seeing that someone responded in the conversation, he or she will receive a new kind of notification that lets them know they were called out specifically. That way, it’s easy to jump right back in to the conversation to answer someone’s question or to provide a response.

Everyone in the conversation can see the call out in the conversation, and everyone gets a notification just like before, but only the specified person in the group conversation gets a notification that they have been mentioned. You can choose to turn off these notifications at any time.

Reactions and Mentions will also be available for Work Chat in Workplace, our global communications platform for organizations to collaborate better. Both features will begin rolling out today and will be available globally in the coming days.

To learn more about Reactions and Mentions, be sure to visit the Help Center, here and here.

Bill Gates Is The Richest Man In The World For The Fourth Year Running

Billionaire, philanthropist and inventor of the world’s most popular operating system Bill Gates has been named the richest man in the world – again. 

This is the fourth time Bill’s been recognised for the size of his wallet and he’s currently worth an estimated $86 billion that puts him way ahead of his closest competition, Warren Buffet, who’s only worth a ‘laughable’ $75.6 billion.

Just for fun I worked how many years I’d have to work to earn what Bill’s worth. It would take me 4,095,238 years of writing articles about the Kardashian’s newest selfies to earn what Bill’s worth – that’s a lot of selfies to go through.

Getty

Anyway, Americans basically dominated the top ten as usual with the Spanish business tycoon who owns the Zara fashion label, Amancio Ortega and Carlos Slim, who has his fingers in a fair few pies, coming in fourth and sixth respectively.

Forbes also had great news for people like the rest of us – those who think that a thousand pounds is a lot of money – the number of billionaires has increased by 13 per cent meaning there are 233 new billionaires on the block.

Trump when he heard the news - Getty

Their combined income also rose to a sickening $7.67 trillion which means that if these guys clubbed together they could literally buy and sell countries.

Meanwhile President Trump whose wealth is reportedly ‘yuuuuuge’ has clearly taken a hit since his reality TV show marketing ploy accidentally resulted in him becoming the leader of the free world coming in at 544th.

Facebook brings Snapchat-like Stories feature

This post originally suggested Facebook Stories was rolling out globally, but Facebook tells us it’s simply expanded its test to include more countries. We’ve update the post to reflect this information.

Facebook has brought an imitation of Snapchat’s Stories to Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, but it’s also gearing up to bring it to the biggest platform of them all: Facebook itself.

The feature has been testing in Ireland since at least January, but Facebook is expanding the test to include more countries, including Chile, Vietnam, and Greece.

View image on Twitter

 Follow

wiss is now 21 🌙 @hollandstarks

FACEBOOK HAS STORIES NOW????? TF NOOO

12:54 PM - 15 Mar 2017

 
•  2828 Retweets
 
•  2222 likes

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Neil Enore @neilenore

The next Snapchat killer? Facebook has started implementing stories on their app. IG stories took most of the users of Snapchat.

9:30 AM - 15 Mar 2017 · Makati City, National Capital Region

 
•  55 Retweets
 
•  77 likes

View image on Twitter

 Follow

pranay gupta @pgavenger

Facebook borrowing 'stories' & 'direct messaging' from instagram

3:42 PM - 15 Mar 2017

 
•  Retweets
 
•  likes

Stories have been a huge hit on Instagram, with 150 million people already using it back in January, so it’ll be interesting to see if Facebook proper can replicate that success. It should at least make more sense than WhatsApp; Facebook is the place I go to to see what my friends are up to, so Stories should feel somewhat at home.

That said, if you’re a heavy social media user, managing all these Stories clones has got to get tiring. I use Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram regularly, but I definitely don’t want to waste time uploading images for a story to each of those platforms.

It originally appeared Facebook might be rolling out the feature globally, but it turns out it’s simply expanding the test to more countries. Still, at this point it appears it’s only a matter of time until it hits Facebook users around the world.