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The Amazon Spring Sale has given us a few great deals so far, but anyone looking for affordable earbuds is going to really appreciate this one. Right now, the Anker Soundcore Space A40 earbuds are down to $45 from $80 — a 44 percent discount. That's an incredible price for earbuds with active noise cancellation. 

The $45 deal on our favorite budget wireless earbuds is available for the Black and Blue models, while the White, Green and Purple options are slightly more expensive at $50. However, the latter two typically retail for $100, so they're actually half off with the current sale. 

As mentioned above, one of the great things about Anker's Soundcore Space A40 earbuds is that they offer ANC. Anker claims that using it can reduce potential noise by 98 percent. The earbuds also hold up to 10 hours of battery and up to 50 hours with the charging case. Plus, you can get up to four hours of extra juice with just 10 minutes in the case. The sound quality is also pretty decent, especially for the price. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/amazon-spring-sale-deals-include-our-favorite-budget-anker-earbuds-for-45-144520277.html?src=rss

Microsoft has launched two new "reasoning agents" for Copilot that were designed to analyze vast amounts of work data, including emails, meetings, chats and documents. The first tool called "Researcher" is based on OpenAI's deep research model combined with Copilot's advanced orchestration and deep search capabilities. Researcher was made for "complex, multi-step research" at work. It can take a user's internal work data along with additional information from the web, such as competitive data, emerging trends and the latest market analysis, to create market strategies and comprehensive quarterly reports, among other potential uses. Plus, it can pull data from Salesforce, ServiceNow and other external sources.

Meanwhile, the new "Analyst" tool was built to function like a skilled data scientist. It's based on OpenAI's o3-mini reasoning model and uses "chain-of-thought reasoning" to solve issues in multiple steps to provide answers that Microsoft says "mirror human analytical thinking." It can process raw data across multiple spreadsheets to, say, predict future revenue and expenses, forecast demand for a new product and visualize the purchasing patterns of customers. For the most complex data queries, it can run Python, and users will be able to view the code while it's running in real time. 

Both Researcher and Analyst will be rolling out to customers with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license starting in April as part of "Frontier." Customers enrolled to the new Frontier program will get access to Copilot technologies while they're still in development, starting with these two new tools. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/microsoft-introduces-deep-research-and-analysis-tools-for-copilot-143001894.html?src=rss

I don’t review a lot of $650 headphones. That’s because most audio companies sell their top-of-the-line gear around $300-$400. Noble Audio isn’t like most companies. The FoKus Rex5 earbuds, for example, cram in five separate drivers where much of the competition uses two at the most. Noble was also among the first to employ xMEMS drivers in wireless earbuds in a bid to improve bass performance.

Enter the FoKus Apollo, a $649 pair of active noise canceling (ANC) headphones with a detachable boom mic and up to 80 hours of battery life. The real star of the show is the driver setup, which Noble says is the first time this configuration appears in wireless headphones. The company is once again on a quest for the absolute best sound quality, but it may sacrifice a little too much along the way.

Sound quality is the main attraction

Noble Audio’s proposition is simple: the “world’s first” headphones that offer a hybrid speaker pairing of a 40mm dynamic driver with a 14.5mm planar magnetic driver. A dynamic driver is nothing new for a set of cans, but adding the latter makes the FoKus Apollo’s audio setup unique. For the uninitiated, planar magnetic drivers have a thin, flat diaphragm that typically offers a wider, more immersive soundstage and enhanced detail compared to dynamic drivers. Planar magnetic drivers are typically reserved for audiophile-grade headphones since they’re larger and more fragile.

With the FoKus Apollo, Noble capitalized on the best of both worlds for the stock tuning. You get the bass power of a dynamic driver with the clarity of a planar magnetic driver. Since planar magnetic units can’t move enough air for the robust bass that most of us crave, and as dynamic drivers are limited with mid- and high-range details, the company argues it has created the optimal solution.

From the first second of the first song, I could tell the FoKus Apollo was built differently. The addition of planar magnetic drivers offers the most bass-heavy genres an almost absurd amount of detail. Albums like Spiritbox’s Tsunami Sea that lack clarity on other headphones greatly benefit from the treble boost, serving up more nuance in the guitar riffs and texture in the kick drum blasts. The FoKus Apollo also excels with mellow styles, allowing you to hear every bit of sound coming from the acoustic guitars, banjo, bass and more on Julien Baker & TORRES’ “Sugar in the Tank.” Going from most over-ear headphones to the FoKus Apollo is like going from standard music streaming to vinyl. And I don’t think that’s hyperbole.

FoKus Apollo in-use: ANC, battery life and more Billy Steele for Engadget

A pair of $649 ANC headphones better damn well provide some decent noise cancellation, even if you’re primarily buying them for the audio performance. Noble opted for a hybrid ANC setup with three microphones on each side and a Qualcomm QCC3084 chip. That processor provides the necessary digital signal processing (DSP) and algorithms to reduce background distractions.

Like a lot of ANC headphones, the FoKus Apollo struggles with voices. That means any hopes of silencing a chatty colleague won’t pan out. However, the headphones do a solid job with constant noise sources — fans, appliances, noise machines, etc. — so they do offer some relief. The noise-blocking prowess isn’t as good as the likes of Bose, but I found ample room to focus during my test sessions. While the ANC here isn’t among the best, it’s perfectly serviceable in most environments.

Noble promises a whopping 60 hours of battery life with ANC enabled, with another 20 hours of use if you turn it off. I found that those figures hold true during my time with the FoKus Apollo. After 30 hours of music, podcasts and work calls with noise cancellation active, the headphones still had 57 percent battery remaining — tracking slightly better than the company’s stated numbers.

The Fokus Apollo comes with all the accessories you’d ever need right in the box. Noble includes a detachable boom mic, 3.5mm to 4.4mm adapter, two-prong airline adapter, USB-C cable and 3.5mm aux cable. The headphones can be used with either of those two cords, and the company recommends you do so when employing the microphone for optimal voice quality.

If you’re planning to use the Fokus Apollo for calls, you can expect mixed results. In quiet spaces with little echo, you’ll sound good enough for a professional presentation. When you move to a room with some natural reverb, the mics on these headphones pick that up a little too well. What’s more, they’re not great at blocking background sounds, as fans, white noise machines and raucous appliances were all clearly heard on the other end during my tests.

Design that matches the sound

The FoKus Apollo is really expensive, so Noble couldn’t just give us a set of headphones built mostly out of plastic and call it a day. Thankfully, the company chose a mix of anodized aluminum, premium protein leather and a soft Alcantara headband. The leather-wrapped memory foam ear pads are replaceable, which will extend the life of the headphones under heavy use. There’s also a nice textured cloth pattern on the outside of the ear cups and headband that provide both tactile and visual contrast.

Noble Audio provides physical controls on the FoKus Apollo, so you’ll never have to struggle with tap or touch gestures to make changes. On the right side, there’s a dedicated button for ANC modes (on, off and transparency) with a three-control array just below it. Here, the top and bottom buttons handle the volume and track adjustments while the center one is used for power, Bluetooth pairing, play/pause and to summon Google Assistant, Siri or some other virtual helper. On the left ear cup, a single slider allows you to mute all the microphones, even the boom when it’s attached, without reaching for your phone or keyboard.

The lack of advanced features Billy Steele for Engadget

The FoKus Apollo is really only focused on the basics, so it doesn’t offer any of today’s advanced features. Heck, there aren’t even tools that have been on other sets for years — like wear detection. Although you’ll get support for Sony’s LDAC codec along with AAC, aptX, aptX HD and SBC, there’s no mention of Dolby Atmos or any form of spatial audio. You don’t find any discussion of adaptive audio or adaptive ANC that makes automatic adjustments to both overall sound and noise cancellation either.

Look, I’m well aware the premise here is pristine sound quality above all else. But at $649, which is $100 more than the AirPods Max by the way, I expect some degree of convenience that allows me to keep these headphones on for most of the day. Automatic pausing or wear detection should be standard at this price and it would be nice to have some additional sound/ANC options. I’m not picky about whether those are the automatic, adaptive type, or whether they’re settings I have to toggle on in the app. Just, please, give me something more than EQ adjustments when your sound out of the box is already incredible.

The competition

Once you hit $500 and above, you’ve surpassed what most companies charge for their flagship-level wireless headphones. You’re also in a price range where I’ve only reviewed a handful of models. If money is no object, the $699 Px8 from Bowers & Wilkins delivers excellent sound quality in a design that might be preferable to some folks (there’s at least multiple color options). Its ANC performance isn’t earth shattering either, and one of my biggest gripes with the company’s products is the lack of advanced features like the FoKus Apollo.

There’s also the AirPods Max and Dyson On-Trac, but neither of those are easy to recommend. Apple’s over-ear headphones have barely been updated since they arrived in 2020, except for an upgrade to USB-C and the upcoming addition of lossless audio. Dyson’s headphones have long battery life and a unique design, but they didn’t impress me sound-wise, have average ANC performance and lack the modern features I expect for $500.

I also need to mention Master & Dynamic’s MW75 in the over-$500 discussion. If you’re after high-end looks, no other company consistently nails its trademark aesthetic like M&D. True to its lineage, the company pairs leather and metal on these headphones, along with tempered glass panels on the outside of the earcups. I’ve always enjoyed the balance of M&D’s stock tuning and the ANC performance is solid. You won’t get any advanced features here either, but like the Px8, there are multiple color options if you’re after something other than Noble’s black and silver paint scheme.

Wrap-up

I have no doubts there are a lot of people that will thoroughly enjoy the FoKus Apollo. If you crave the absolute best sound quality on the market, these headphones are the best I’ve tested in that regard. For me, to pay $649 I expect more in terms of features. The first item would be better ANC performance, but I don’t feel like spatial audio support and wear detection are too much to ask. Even without any of that, you do get a novel driver setup that produces some ridiculously detailed sound across diverse genres.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/noble-audio-fokus-apollo-review-the-high-price-of-pristine-audio-141521043.html?src=rss

No Man’s Sky already lets players dig deep into the terrain of its near-infinite universe of planets, but now there will actually be cool stuff to find. Hello Games just announced general availability of a new update called Relics that brings a bit of Indiana Jones to everyone’s favorite space exploration sim.

The update lets players "feel like true paleontologists" as they dig up the “skeletal remains of alien creatures.” When bones are discovered, folks can piece them together to match their own design aspirations. The game will also allow players to create museums and share collections with other players.

Hello Games

Hello Games boasts that there is a "truly huge variety of procedural prehistoric bones, in all shapes and sizes." There’s a rarity system in place, with the most uncommon finds holding a "huge value." If digging gets a bit tiresome, the developer has placed a fossil specialist at space stations that can be bartered with.

However, digging up bones comes with a major risk, as "things have been buried for a reason." Some of the rarest items are guarded by dangerous creatures like Stone Ghosts, the colossal Stone Golem and something called a Titan Worm. Fun times.

This is just the latest gameplay update for No Man’s Sky. Recent updates have added new planets and stars, freighter combat and black holes. Relics is available for PCs, consoles and VR.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/no-mans-sky-now-lets-players-dig-up-planets-to-look-for-ancient-alien-skeletons-140002442.html?src=rss

The last few years have seen an ongoing debate over what rights AI companies have to utilize copyrighted material. The latest development tips the scales in favor of use: A judge has rejected Universal Music Group, ABKCO and other music publishers' preliminary bid to block Anthropic from using their lyrics to train its AI assistant Claude, Reuters reports. 

US District Judge Eumi Lee ruled that UMG and co had submitted too broad a request and failed to demonstrate that Anthropic's use of the lyrics caused the companies "irreparable harm." Lee stated, "Publishers are essentially asking the Court to define the contours of a licensing market for AI training where the threshold question of fair use remains unsettled."

The case dates back to 2023, when UMG joined some of its fellow music publishers in suing Anthropic for copyright infringement. They claimed that Anthropic used and distributed copyrighted material, including at least 500 songs. "Anthropic’s copyright infringement is not innovation; in layman’s terms, it’s theft," UMG stated at the time. 

The two sides came to a partial agreement in January of this year. Anthropic confirmed it would maintain current guardrails for reproducing, displaying or distributing copyrighted material. It also agreed to "expeditiously" respond to the music producers' copyright concerns with a written statement outlining how it plans to or why it won't do so in an individual case. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-might-get-to-use-universal-music-groups-lyrics-after-all-133020685.html?src=rss

When it debuted in 2022, Apple’s 10th-generation iPad sat in something of a no-man’s land, bringing a long-overdue design revamp at an inflated price. A year and a half later, Apple gave the slate a $100 price cut and immediately turned it into a much more enticing value. Now, the company has quietly released a follow-up. Dubbed the iPad (A16), the new tablet is a far less dramatic update, one with welcome performance improvements that otherwise refuses to rock the boat. It even lacks the Apple Intelligence features Apple has endlessly promoted over the past year.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Compared to the iPad Air, iPad Pro and iPad mini, this might be the easiest Apple tablet to grok — it’s the cheapest, it only comes in one size and it’s clearly designed for the core iPad Things. That doesn’t make it a slam dunk, though.

What hasn’t changed

Almost everything about the latest iPad is identical to the previous entry-level iPad from 2022, which brought many of the iPad Air’s features down to a lower price. The design is unchanged, with the same dimensions, weight, bezels, display and aluminum finish as before. Apple now lists the screen as being 11 inches instead of 10.9 inches, but it’s merely rounding up for marketing purposes — the size is no different.

There are still competent 12-megapixel cameras on the front and back, with the selfie cam conveniently located along the device’s long edge for FaceTime calls. The same reliable Touch ID fingerprint sensor is built into the power button in lieu of Face ID. Two speakers, one on either end, sit behind a (misleading) quartet of grilles, while a lone USB-C port continues to max out at basic USB 2.0 transfer speeds. There’s no difference in accessory support either, and the whole thing is available in the same bold colors: blue, pink, yellow or silver.

Battery life, meanwhile, still checks in at around 10 hours per charge, give or take a few depending on how you push it. I got 11 hours and 19 minutes out of the slate after playing a 1080p movie on loop at roughly 70 percent brightness and volume (and with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabled). Gaming and media editing will naturally sap it faster.

Most of this is still perfectly fine for a $349 tablet. The last iPad was a light and comfortable slab, with a substantial aluminum finish and flat sides that made it feel modern. This one is no different. And iPadOS is still a level above Android and Windows tablets when it comes to app and game support, long-term updates and features optimized for large displays. But if the 10th-gen iPad was a “tick” update, the iPad (A16) is clearly a “tock.”

That said, there are some important changes, namely a faster chip, more memory and higher storage options, plus a few minor tweaks like Smart HDR 4 processing for photos and support for Bluetooth 5.3 instead of Bluetooth 5.2. It’s a spec bump through and through, with most of those tweaks being for the better, although I do think that some of the things that haven’t been touched could really use an update next time.

A faster chip and more RAM

As the name implies, the latest iPad’s headline upgrade is its A16 chip. This is a slightly weaker version of the A16 Bionic found in 2022’s iPhone 14 Pro and the regular iPhone 15 from 2023. Compared to that SoC, this A16 has five CPU cores instead of six and four GPU cores instead of five.

But in practice, it’s still more than fast enough for the vast majority of things people do with iPads: browsing the web, streaming video, reading ebooks, viewing and editing photos, playing most games and the like. I tested this iPad against my personal 13-inch iPad Air M2 for much of this review, and the two consistently booted up and loaded popular apps at virtually the same speed. The few times the Air M2 was quicker, the difference wasn’t long enough to be significant.

Geekbench 6 results back this up: The iPad (A16) earned a single-core CPU score of 2,582, while the iPad Air M2 was only marginally better at 2,632. This is a roughly 20 percent jump from the 10th-gen iPad, though the most recent iPad Air M3 still measures about 16-18 percent faster. But for media consumption and common work tasks, it won’t feel slow anytime soon.

These performance gains are helped by the 6GB of RAM, which is 2GB more than the last model and twice as much as the 9th-gen iPad from 2021. While this is still 2GB short of the iPad Air and lower-spec iPad Pros, getting more memory for the same price is always a good thing: It lets the tablet hang onto apps and Safari tabs longer before it has to start refreshing things for new tasks. It will only improve the chances of the device holding up four or five years down the road, too.

Where the iPad (A16) lags behind its higher-end siblings is multi-core and graphics performance. In Geekbench 6, the tablet’s multi-core CPU score was about 40 percent below the iPad Air M2 (6,185 vs. 10,006), while its GPU score was about 55 percent worse (19,448 vs. 42,920). Other graphics benchmarks were largely the same: It scored about 60 percent lower than the Air M2 in 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme test (with an average of 15.2 fps vs. 37.6 fps) and anywhere between 45 to 55 percent worse on GFXBench’s Aztec Ruins benchmark, depending on the resolution. Of course, the difference will be a little greater with the newer iPad Air M3.

This sounds more dramatic on paper than it does in real life. Many everyday iPad workloads won’t tax the chip’s multi-core abilities all that hard, and the scores above are still a good 15 to 30 percent higher than the last entry-level iPad. I could still play Call of Duty Mobile at its highest settings (120 fps mode aside) without any hitches. Diablo Immortal warned that maxing out its settings would put the device under “high” load — with the Air M2, it only goes up to “medium” load — but I still got through the opening areas totally fine. (It does seem to drain the battery a bit faster, though.) You can still edit RAW photos in Lightroom or create music in GarageBand without major frustration.

The iPad (A16) on top of a 13-inch iPad Air.

Still, the Air is better if you ever want to push things further. This is easiest to see in the newest and most taxing iPadOS games. With Infinity Nikki, for instance, playing at ultra or high settings on the new iPad brought a constant bit of choppiness and some slowdowns during more involved animations. It also warmed up the device’s back and drained the battery faster. The game was still totally playable at medium settings, but there’s less need to knock it down on the iPad Air M2, where it looked sharper and ran smoother at high settings. Likewise, the Air will be noticeably quicker to export higher-res videos in apps like Adobe Premiere Rush.

Arguably, the main benefit of the iPad Air’s M-series chip and extra RAM has less to do with today than it does the future. Features like Apple Intelligence and the Stage Manager multitasking mode aren’t available here, nor are some especially demanding games. Those aren’t essential right now — though omitting Stage Manager does make the device more cumbersome to use with an external display — but there’ll always be some risk that the next great iPadOS feature or power-hungry game won’t work (or work as well) with this entry-level model.

More storage — hallelujah

The best improvement with the iPad (A16) is also the simplest: It now starts with 128GB of storage, which is twice as much as the last model. There’s also a new 512GB option for $649. There isn’t much to say about this besides “good.” It’s a common-sense upgrade that makes the tablet a much safer long-term investment than its predecessor, especially when there’s no hope of Apple ever letting us upgrade storage manually.

A fine display, but it’s time to improve

In his iPad Air M3 review, my colleague Nathan Ingraham argued that it’s time for Apple to update the Air’s display with a higher refresh rate or a mini LED panel, as the OLED tech exclusive to the iPad Pros represents a major upgrade on its own. Since the iPad (A16)’s screen is no different than the last one, I want to make a follow-up case for the entry-level model, albeit on a smaller scale.

It's much easier to see in person than through photos, but if you look at the bottom corner of the display, near the bezel, you can see the air gap between the iPad's LCD panel and front glass.

Out of context, the IPS display here is still totally adequate. It’s comfortably sized, it’s sharp enough, it’s not a massive smudge magnet and it doesn’t have any serious color accuracy issues. A tablet is nothing if not a big display, and most of the people Apple is targeting with this one will still enjoy watching and reading stuff on it. I can also live with the 60Hz refresh rate — that’s the minimum in 2025, but it’s a harsher limitation on a $599 (or $799) tablet like the iPad Air than a $349 device.

The other restrictions are more annoying. This screen still isn’t laminated, most notably, which means there’s a visible air gap between the LCD panel and the glass above. This helps the screen’s repairability but makes it look cheaper and feel more distant when you interact with the glass. This is particularly discernible with the Apple Pencil: Writing out notes on the iPad Air is both quieter and more natural. Those who’ve never used a higher-end iPad probably won’t care, but once you notice the difference, you can’t unsee it.

The display also lacks an anti-reflective coating, so it’s worse at fending off glare. It’s certainly not unusable outdoors, but you’ll see your reflection much more clearly on the iPad (A16) than you will on the iPad Air M2 in sunlight. You’re much more likely to have to angle its display to make things out. Unlike the iPad Air and iPad Pro, the base iPad isn’t tuned for the wider P3 color space either. While the difference in color reproduction between the iPad Air and iPad (A16) is nowhere near as dramatic as the one between the Air and the iPad Pro, colors on the Air can still look slightly bolder and less washed-out when you put the two side-by-side.

I appreciate that Apple wants to keep its “good, better, best” hierarchy intact, but at this point the iPad Pro’s display is so far ahead of the rest of the lineup that there’s room to even things out. If the next Air can upgrade to 120Hz, as Nathan suggests, then the next entry-level iPad should at least have a laminated display with better glare protection. Those aren’t premium features anymore.

The USB-C Pencil can attach magnetically but lacks wireless charging and pressure sensitivity, so it's not a great choice for more involved work. Continued weirdness with accessories

Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard support is another ongoing pain point. Like its predecessor, the iPad (A16) isn’t compatible with the Pencil Pro (Apple’s best stylus) or the older, second-gen Pencil. That means the only stylus you can buy with pressure sensitivity — a key feature for digital artists that lets you make darker marks by pressing down harder — is the original Pencil, which is nearly a decade old (!), isn’t as comfortable as the newer models and can’t attach to the tablet magnetically. It also requires a USB-C cable and a USB-C to Lightning adapter to charge. All of this is bad.

You can still get the $79 USB-C Pencil, which is nicer to hold and can attach to the iPad’s side magnetically but isn’t pressure-sensitive and still requires a separate cable to pair and charge. Really, though, most people who want an iPad for drawing should start with the iPad Air. I’ve never been a big fan of this iPad’s Magic Keyboard Folio either, as its Surface-style kickstand is hard to keep stable on your lap and it lacks backlit keys. That’s tough given its exorbitantly high price of $249.

Not built for Apple Intelligence, but that’s OK (for now)

As noted above, the iPad (A16) isn’t compatible with Apple Intelligence, which is Apple’s catch-all term for the suite of generative AI features it’s gradually rolled out since late last year. In fact, it’s the only major device Apple has released without the AI tools since they became available.

Right now, though, you won’t miss much without them. Sure, the “Clean Up” feature that lets you scrub unwanted objects from photos is nice. Some of the writing-assistance tools are fine if you’re completely out of gas, and being able to access ChatGPT through Siri is convenient. But just as many of the tricks are either half-cooked or, let’s say, less than essential. A promised Siri revamp has been significantly delayed. If anything, many people will appreciate that their tablet won’t push AI onto them with every update. There’s always a chance Apple Intelligence becomes more useful down the road, and buying the iPad (A16) means locking yourself out of that potential future. But it’s not there yet, and Apple is reportedly well aware of that, so we can’t call it a major omission today.

Wrap-up

The iPad (A16) isn’t a massive leap forward from the last entry-level iPad, and some of its display and accessory quirks are getting long in the tooth. We still recommend stepping up to the iPad Air if you can swing it: It’s faster and more futureproof, with small but meaningful upgrades to the screen, better accessory support and speakers that sound less compressed. It’s also worth the upgrade if you want to use your iPad as a pseudo laptop replacement without spending top dollar. If you see a great deal on refurbished iPad Air M2, that’s a good buy as well.

But for $250 less than the latest Air, the iPad (A16) does well to meet most iPad users where they live. It’s largely well-built and plenty quick for reading, watching and playing things, with solid battery life and an eternally easy-to-use OS. If you’re upgrading from a 9th-gen iPad or older, buying for a kid or just looking for a competent slate you won’t use for hours every day, it should be plenty of tablet for your needs. It’s not the most delightful iPad, but it’s good enough for the masses.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/ipad-2025-with-a16-review-no-apple-intelligence-no-problem-132641539.html?src=rss

As he drives around the Port of Baltimore, Mark Schmidt points out giant cranes used to unload cargo from ships.

“The cranes are the coolest part, I think,” said Schmidt.

Schmidt is president of Ports America Chesapeake, which runs Baltimore’s container ship terminal. He actually started his career at the port over 30 years ago repairing container ship cranes, and he still enjoys the challenge of moving cargo around.

“It’s a puzzle, and it’s sophisticated and very high speed and tech-y,” he said.

Those cranes are a prominent part of the Port of Baltimore, much of which was inaccessible for over 10 weeks after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge exactly one year ago. The bridge fell after it was hit by a container ship, the Dali. With the collapse of the bridge, six construction workers died, a major piece of infrastructure was destroyed, and the shipping channel to the port of Baltimore was blocked for more than 10 weeks. The more than 300-year-old port is known for being a hub for cargo such as cars, construction and farming equipment, and coal.

At Ports America Chesapeake, Schmidt said the company moved 35% fewer containers in 2024 compared to the year before. This affected revenue significantly. 

However, it could have been a lot worse. Early estimates of how long it would take to clear the shipping channel ranged from six months to a year. Instead, it took 74 days.

“It could have been two or three times as bad as what we encountered,” said Schmidt. “It really, really came back quickly.”

Ship traffic at the port of Baltimore is back to about 90% of where it was prior to the bridge collapse, according to Richard Scher of the Maryland Port Administration. 

At Trans American’s warehouse near the Port of Baltimore, a worker lashes a box of cargo to a flat metal rack before it goes on a ship. (Stephanie Hughes/Marketplace)

That’s being felt at storage facilities around the port. At Trans American Trucking and Warehouse’s Baltimore location near the port, workers lashed a giant wooden box of cargo to a flat metal rack before it was moved to a ship.  Last spring, they were doing a lot less of this work, said warehouse supervisor Timothy Summers.

“We barely had any trucks coming in, barely had any containers,” said Summers. “I thought with business slowing down, they might start laying people off, but good thing they didn’t.” 

One of Trans American’s owners, Craig McGraw, said things are pretty much back to normal now. He had been worried about losing customers in the long term. 

“The concern with us was that they were going to leave, go to another port and then not come back. But once they realized that it wasn’t going to be the six months, it was going to be shorter — Baltimore is a great port, so they decided to stay with it from the looks of it,” said McGraw.

Mark Schmidt, president of Ports America Chesapeake, stands outside its office at the Port of Baltimore. (Stephanie Hughes/Marketplace)

Baltimore is known for its expertise in handling cars and other big rolling machinery. It’s also the farthest inland port on the East Coast, which means items shipped here have less distance to cover on land.

Tinglong Dai, who studies operations management at Johns Hopkins, said there’s another factor that helped in the recovery: Some companies likely moved up shipments in anticipation of a longshoremen’s strike and tariffs. 

“There was a lot of rush, a lot of activity,” said Dai. 

Overall, the port handled about 46 million tons of cargo last year — the second-best year on record. Dai said whether that pace continues will depend a lot on economic factors outside of the port’s control.

That includes both tariffs and how much consumers still want to buy all the things shipped in those containers.

Block has laid off 931 workers, which make up around eight percent of its entire staff, according to TechCrunch and The Guardian. The publications have viewed an email, wherein the financial technology company's co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, has discussed the latest organizational changes. Dorsey said that Block is eliminating roles based on three areas, starting with strategy. The company is letting 391 people go, because it's reducing "teams that are off strategy." It's also parting ways with 460 workers who scored a "below" rating or are trending towards a "below" rating in its internal performance tracking metrics.

Finally, Block is laying off 80 managers, as well as moving 193 to individual contributor roles, to flatten the organization and remove layers of middle management between workers and the high-level bosses they'd now have to report to. In his email, Dorsey denied that the layoffs were made to hit any specific financial target and headcount goal, or because the company was replacing workers with artificial intelligence. He said that it was all about strategy and because flattening its org will allow it to "move faster and with less abstraction." The CEO admitted, however, that everyone in Block has equity in the company and that the reorganization "will help [it] focus and execute better to do just that." Block's stock prices have plummeted by around 30 percent this year. 

Dorsey explained that the company is laying off nearly 1,000 workers all at once instead of over time, because it's behind in its actions. "We need to move to help us meet and stay ahead of the transformational moment our industry is in," he wrote. In addition to the layoffs, Block is also closing 748 previously open jobs and is only leaving key leadership and critical roles, along with those that have already progressed to offer stage, open. Block, which owns Square and Cash App, also underwent a reorganization in early 2024. It laid off nearly 1,000 people back then, as well, to make the company leaner and to limit its headcount to around 12,000 workers. As TechCrunch notes, Block had around 11,300 workers around the world by December 2024, which means its headcount is now far below the original goal it set for itself in 2023. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/block-reportedly-lays-off-almost-1000-employees-130056952.html?src=rss

A day without a company announcing some new way AI can supposedly make our lives better is rare. Today it's Amazon, which has announced a new AI-powered feature called "Interests." It lets you enter personalized shopping prompts based on your, well, interests and price limits — and it arrives just in time for Amazon's Spring Sale. 

Interests can handle prompts with everyday language, like "Brewing tools and gadgets for coffee lovers" or "Natural makeup products for summer glow from top brands." The AI-powered feature will then look through Amazon's store to see current offerings and send you notifications about any deals, new products or restocks that are relevant to your prompt. Shopping on Amazon can sometimes feel like a never-ending pit of decent enough options, so hopefully this feature provides a more tailored selection. 

Amazon has only released Interests to a small group of customers in the US and only through the app or mobile website. You can check if it's available to you by looking under the "Me" tab in the Amazon shopping app. Otherwise, Amazon plans to roll out Interests to all of its US users in the coming months. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/amazon-has-a-new-ai-powered-tool-for-shopping-125314016.html?src=rss

There’s a good chance learning a new language is one of your New Year’s resolutions, unless you’re hoping Google Translate will be enough for your next international adventure. Either way, you’ll need a reliable method to guide you through speaking and understanding the foreign language of your choosing. Fortunately, we're no longer confined to flashcards and textbooks as you can learn using your phone from the comfort of your couch.

Many of the best language learning apps today offer a multi-tier approach, with AI-powered conversations, extensive vocab libraries and even podcasts you can listen to to help you master your target language. Whether you're just starting because you're just trying to understand what Bad Bunny means when he says "un verano en Nueva Yol," or you want to brush up on your Korean before that planned vacation, there’s a language learning app to suit your needs.

Best language learning apps for 2025

Others language learning apps we tested Memrise

Memrise has a library of more than 200 languages to learn. From Spanish to isiXhosa, Memrise can teach you all the basics and dive into more regional differences. As a Spanish learner, I could choose to learn from Spain or Mexico and I enjoyed that Memrise didn’t just teach me a more generalized version of the language. While Memrise could be great for polyglots, its hefty $60 monthly fee was too steep and prevented it from gleaning one of our top slots.

Pimsleur

Dr. Pimsleur believed speaking and listening were key to learning a new language. This app allows you to take its audio lessons offline, even going as far as integrating into Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. As a commuter, I appreciated having a lesson or two stored away for my journey to the office. However, I wanted more ways to practice reading and writing. With other apps offering podcasts for listening along and other forms of teaching, Pimsleur didn’t offer enough to make our list.

Rosetta Stone

Gone are the large, yellow disc sets of yesteryear; now Rosetta Stone lives squarely in the digital age with its app. Using the same visual learning tools as the old-school Rosetta Stone, the app shows you pictures and terms to get you to understand what things mean. Users can repeat after voice recordings and match phrases to the images to learn slowly. Rosetta Stone could be great for beginners, but in order to get access to all 25 languages and a lifetime subscription, you’d have to dish out $400. There are cheaper apps on this list that provide comparable experiences.

HelloTalk

Similar to Discord, HelloTalk provides voice and chat rooms to talk to folks from different countries. Its users can learn regional terms and talk about cultural differences. With a paid subscription, you can practice with a tutor or their AI chatbot. If you’re looking to learn a new language outside of your inner circle, HelloTalk can be a great fit. I enjoyed connecting with others on the app, but, as always when meeting strangers online, beware — some users treat it like a dating app. Fortunately, there are apps on this list that offer a similar AI learning approach without that added concern.

How we test language learning apps

As an intermediate Spanish learner, I was looking for an app that best catered to my needs, but I know everyone learns differently. So for each app, I assessed based on several factors. Can beginners use this to gain confidence? Will advanced speakers feel challenged? Are there enough opportunities to test reading and writing skills? How many ways can you learn vocabulary words? For those who want to have more conversations, what opportunities did each app provide to speak in that language? Bonus points if an app helped you learn a bit of the culture surrounding that language.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/best-language-learning-app-120001600.html?src=rss

A whole lot more federal workers are looking for new jobs these days. The job site Indeed reports it saw a 50% spike in applications from current and former federal employees in February, particularly those who work at agencies that have been targeted by Elon Musk’s staff-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Federal jobs used to be considered stable. Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, said it’s common for civil servants to stick around for a long time. 

“If you go to any government agency and you talk to the career staff there, many will say that they’ve been working in the agency for 40 years, 20 years, 30 years. Turnover is very low in the federal government,” said Pollak. 

And it’s unusual to see lots of federal employees applying for new jobs outside the government. But it’s happening now. 

Pollak said ZipRecruiter data backs up what Indeed found. 

“Federal workers are looking for new jobs. And this is not just the workers who have been cut. … It is a much wider group than that. Many other workers in the federal government are worried that they could be on the chopping block next,” said Pollak. 

And many are trying to get out before they’re forced out.

But Andrew Stettner at the Century Foundation said it’s a tough time to be looking for a new job. 

“Hiring has really slowed down. We’re seeing college graduates have a more difficult time finding work, we’re seeing the time on unemployment starting to grow. So people are going into that job market,” said Stettner. 

Which may have trouble absorbing them. Especially in parts of the country that lose a lot of federal jobs all at once, like D.C. 

“And also in other parts of the country where there’s large concentrations of government workers, like Colorado, Hawaii, Alaska,” said Stettner. “We’ve seen the economists in those areas say we do not have enough open jobs that match the skills and talent of people that are being laid off.” 

One side effect of the Trump administration’s tariffs on imported goods will be a stronger dollar, which will make U.S. exports more expensive and less competitive abroad. Thing is, those tariffs — along with the administration’s approach to foreign policy — may be starting to have another negative effect on the economy: getting foreign investors to think twice about investing in the U.S.

One of the biggest effects of tariffs is that they make an economy more isolated. Teresa Fort, a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, said trade barriers cut out foreign competitors, so American companies can take their market share.

“Workers and capital are going to move towards sectors that are probably not what the U.S. is best at doing,” Fort said.

In that case, Fort said that companies’ output would slow down. The lack of competition could make them complacent — even lazy.

“It might take more U.S. workers to make the same things we were making before,” Fort said. “That’s reduced productivity. And that’s going to translate into higher prices and less domestic consumption.”

In other words, slower economic growth. And that would make U.S. companies a less attractive target for investors.

Over the last few weeks, bond markets have been anticipating less growth thanks to the president’s tariffs.

In the short run, investors have been fleeing to safety, per Winnie Cisar, head of strategy at CreditSights.

“When you have people who are expecting slower growth, or even an economic contraction, they will move into asset classes that are viewed as less risky overall, like U.S. treasuries and also the U.S. dollar,” she said.

But Cisar said the president’s tariffs — and all of the uncertainty associated with them — are causing many investors to question even that strategy. Now, she said some are asking themselves whether they want to invest in the United States at all.

“Whether the administration is willing to go far enough to drive kind of a sour sentiment and actual selling of U.S. treasuries is very much an open question,” Cisar said.

Slower economic growth can make U.S. government bonds riskier. Teresa Fort at Dartmouth said if the economy stalls, U.S. debt will grow as a share of GDP, to a point where it starts to become unsustainable.

“And then, that is going to start giving the U.S. stronger and stronger incentives to want to default,” Fort said.

About a third of U.S. government bonds are held by foreign investors, many of them in countries the Trump administration is beefing with.

“Canadians are completely furious about Trump’s remarks that Canada should be a 51st state, and you’ve got these very, very big pension funds in Canada that control a lot of flows into the U.S.,” said Sebastian Mallaby, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And they are subject to political pressure within Canada.”

Meanwhile, President Trump’s decision to distance the U.S. from the European Alliance has caused the German government to ramp up its spending, especially on defense. All of a sudden, Mallaby said the European economy is looking relatively strong.

“This is the first time in as long as most people can remember that global portfolio allocators are saying ‘Hey, this could be the moment to switch your money out of American financial assets, into Europe,’” he said.

If foreign investors start doing that, the effects will ripple throughout the U.S. economy, said Barry Eichengreen, an economics professor at UC Berkeley. For instance, if demand for government bonds starts to fall, the government will have to pay more interest to try to win investors back.

“So that will push up interest rates and borrowing costs across the board,” Eichengreen said.

And Eichengreen said a U.S. economy with less foreign investment is a smaller economy — which would mean less spending and lower incomes for Americans.

The star of the show is this 12-foot-long, four-foot-wide cylinder that’s getting lowered into the water. After half an hour, it reaches the bottom and goes to work.

“You have a bulk of fluid that passes through the membrane,” said Mark Golay, engineering director with OceanWell, who helped make this machine. “And then it’s pumped back up here to the panel.”

Like a lot of desalination systems, this one shoves salt water through a filter, and spits out fresh water on the other side. Unlike those other systems, this one is designed to work 1,500 feet beneath the surface, where water passes through the membrane on its own because of the immense water pressure. OceanWell said compared to other membrane-based systems that take water from close to the surface, its technology uses 30 to 40% less energy to produce fresh water.

Right now it’s getting tested in a reservoir about 40 miles from Downtown Los Angeles. It’s cheaper to try it out here, because the cylinder is installed right offshore and not too deep. But Golay said compared to deep sea water, fresh water is actually more difficult to process.

“That’s because there’s more stuff in this water that we have to filter out,” Golay said.

The company is based in California, which bounces in and out of drought every few years. Southern California primarily relies on the Colorado River, local groundwater and a network of reservoirs to quench the region’s thirst. But the river and the groundwater are shrinking from overuse, and the reservoirs have run low as the climate gets warmer and drier.

The machine getting tested is much smaller, with a diameter of about four feet. OceanWell estimates a commercial-sized machine would be 25 feet wide. (Courtesy OceanWell)

OceanWell has raised $11 million, which is enough to test this machine and build the next one that’ll actually go in the ocean. The biggest investor is Kubota, the agricultural machine company. There are also two dozen California water authorities that have signed on to be part of a working group.

They’re excited because OceanWell is the only company in the U.S. testing a solution like this. And when the drought gets bad enough, the water restrictions can be severe.

“We were disproportionately impacted by the drought like three four years ago … because we are 100% dependent on imported water,” said Mike McNutt with the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which is part of the working group, and runs this reservoir. “And because of that, we promised our communities that we would look for other alternative water resources.”

Last time there was a drought, McNutt’s customers had to operate on a quarter of the water they normally get. Now the district wants to be first in line if this tech becomes available, in case of another severe shortage.

“If we have a local water source, like what this can be,” McNutt said, “You could, in fact, have physical water molecules available to combat any emergency.”

The water in this reservoir doesn’t meet safe drinking water standards, but the machine filters out bacteria and chemicals. OceanWell CEO Robert Bergstrom drinks the filtered water. (Caleigh Wells/Marketplace)

Using the ocean as a drinking water source is not a new idea. Desalination with membranes has been around for decades.

“We have a mousetrap that works pretty well, actually. And in order to beat that, you have to have a hell of a mousetrap,” said environmental engineering professor David Jassby at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Jassby said desalination has come a long way, but there’s one problem it hasn’t solved yet: its price can’t compete with alternatives.

“Desalinated seawater at a well-run plant costs about 48 cents a ton,” Jassby said. “Groundwater is, depends, but maybe less than 20 cents a ton. River water can be even cheaper.”

OceanWell claims its method is less expensive than regular desalination, because it uses so much less energy, and energy is the single greatest expense. The company’s next step is to test its system in the ocean, which it plans to do by the end of next year.

Consumer confidence data for March gives us a look at how people are thinking about the labor market. Views of current conditions didn’t move much between February and March. But when The Conference Board, the nonprofit think tank that puts out the survey, asked people about their job prospects six months down the road, that’s when they started to get anxious. 

If you look at the hard jobs data, you’ll see steady hiring and relatively low unemployment. But if you ask regular people, its a different sentiment.

“Consumers are not particularly excited about the state of the labor market,” said Yelena Shulyatyeva, an economist with The Conference Board. She said this is the fourth month in a row of eroding confidence, with 28% of survey respondents now expecting fewer jobs to be available in six months. 

Economist Allison Shrivastava with the hiring site Indeed said workers have plenty to be anxious about “any time there is uncertainty among policies.”

And even President Donald Trump has said his policies are causing a “period of transition” in the economy. 

“It’s going to make people feel as though they don’t have a good hold on what the future brings,” said Shrivastava.

But the truth is, nobody really knows where the labor market is heading. Not the experts, and certainly not everyday consumers. 

So why do we bother asking them? 

“There’s one strand of thinking that says that actually you should kind of ignore this” and wait for signs of actual softening, said Preston Mui with the research group Employ America.

If workers are feeling insecure about their job prospects, “people are probably going to be less willing to ask for raises from their current employer,” said Mui. “When they go look for jobs, they’re probably willing to take worse jobs than they otherwise would.”

And in that way our expectations of the job market can start to shape reality.

We got another — honestly — lousy sign for the consumer economy Tuesday.

March’s consumer confidence index from The Conference Board fell again, for the fourth straight month. And it fell more than economists expected.

The expectations index dropped even more sharply. Like the name says, it measures consumers’ economic hopes and fears for the future. It’s now at its lowest point in 12 years and sitting well below the threshold that signals a recession is coming, according to The Conference Board.

Inflation expectations were up, expectations for future employment and income were down and confidence in future personal finances was down to its lowest level since 2022.

We’ve been here before, and pretty recently. 

When inflation ramped up in 2022, consumer sentiment tanked. But, said Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, “we did see strong consumer spending despite below-historical-average consumer sentiment.” 

But, there are some differences for consumers now. Lots of uncertainty — around tariffs, government layoffs, interest rates. And now we have a slowing economy.

“It’s an open question whether these fears of economic uncertainty really change behavior, or whether this is a repeat where people said one thing and did another,” said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank.  

But Adams said there is reason to think it’ll be different this time. Now, consumers are worrying about their employment and income. 

“Fears of job losses are more likely to translate into cutbacks in spending than fears of high prices,” said Adams.  

So far in 2025, consumers haven’t dramatically pulled back. 

But, Sofia Baig at polling firm Morning Consult said she’s seeing “little warning signs — I wouldn’t say flashing red yet, but spending numbers in January were quite a bit muted.”

Baig said lower-income consumers are doing worse and spending less.

Upper-income consumers have mostly ignored inflation and kept on spending, said Marshal Cohen at market-research firm Circana. But now, “your 401(k) and the stock market having a seesaw reaction. That gets that upper-end consumer nervous, and they pull back a little bit,” said Cohen. 

Overall, Cohen sees American consumers becoming more hesitant, asking themselves why they need to rush out and buy something now, when they can just wait a while. 

As the Trump administration implements economic policies like tariffs and cuts at the IRS, fears of a recession have gone up. Earlier this month on Fox News, President Trump was asked if he was expecting a recession this year and said, “there is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big.” Other administration officials, like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have echoed this sentiment. Bessent said the economy may need a “detox period.”

The economy is not in a recession right now, but the administration is signaling a slowdown might be coming. So “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University, about what a recession might look like and how that would impact the American people. Blyth has written several books, including “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea,” and he is co-author of the upcoming “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers.” The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: Let’s set the stage for one second here. President Trump and his advisors have said in almost this many words, if there’s a recession, so be it. We’re shooting and we’re playing the long game here. We’re going to do a little short term pain for a little long term gain. Do you buy that?

Mark Blyth: I buy that there’s going to be short term pain, and it’s probably not going to be that short term. If they’re going where I think they’re going, this is a once-in-a-generation shift in how we run the global economy.

Ryssdal: Global economy, so it’s not just here?

Blyth: No, it’s the whole thing. Here’s how to think about it. For the past 40 years, the United States has basically been sending digital dollars called Treasury bills to the rest of the world to pay for all its imports. Imagine this, in 1975 the three biggest employers here were ExxonMobil, General Motors and Ford. 2025, the biggest employers are, in reverse order, Home Depot, Amazon Logistics and Walmart. In other words, we don’t make anything anymore. And eventually, all those digital dollars we’ve been sending out, somebody’s going to want something real for them. And we stopped making real stuff a long time ago. So whether it was Biden with the IRA, with green re-industrialization, or Trump with tariffs and trying to double down on a carbon model, it’s a bigger thing than just what’s going on for local pain and a little bit of Social Security here.

Ryssdal: Yeah, but look, I’m not going to be a Biden apologist, but he admitted he was playing the long game. We did a whole series about this, where he said it was going to take decades. Trump is now trying to do it in like an hour and a half.

Blyth: Yeah, I know. And lots of things will break, and it’s really difficult to execute this type of turn. But they do seem to be serious about, this is the direction of travel. America is no longer just writing IOUs to the rest of the world. Everyone else needs to rebalance. And that’s the one advantage the U.S. has. It can cause the pain to go elsewhere.

Ryssdal: Let’s talk about the pain domestically for a second. To be completely clear, we are not in a recession. A recession is not happening right now, but indicators are not great. If there is a recession in this country, it has typically been the federal government that has come in and supported people as we make our way through it. Based on what you see with this administration now, what do you anticipate happens if the economy goes south?

Blyth: There will be far less attempt to cushion the effects. Because this is going to be compounded by DOGE’s cuts. This is going to be compounded by the desire to do this alongside massive tax cuts. There’s simply no way to put on the fiscal brakes to stop that recession really hurting if you go down that track.

Ryssdal: This is a stupid question, but then what happens?

Blyth: That’s the $64,000 question, Kai. Nobody has said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great idea, why don’t we take stuff that’s been working reasonably well for the rest of the world and for us for the past 30 years, and let’s just trash it all in a two year period and rebuild the 19th century balance of power with us behind McKinley tariffs?’ If that’s what’s going on, it’s a really, really big challenge.

Ryssdal: Put on the political side of your political economy hat here. Do you suppose there’s a degree of economic pain that would make the politics of this untenable for the Trump administration?

Blyth: If you go after Social Security. Roosevelt thought that no one would ever touch it because it’s a contributory program. If they go after Social Security, that’s a really, really tough one. If they go after Medicaid to really fund these tax cuts, while at the same time firing people in the IRS who are tax collectors, then that’s a really hard sell to the public that you’re doing this for the greater reordering of the world to benefit the United States.

Ryssdal: Of course, that all plays into the austerity that Elon Musk and his minions have said that they want and that the President of the United States is going along with, right? They want to cut, cut, cut.

Blyth: And austerity means recession. I mean, they’re basically synonyms. You can’t have one without the other, so it’s kind of baked into the cake directionally.

Ryssdal: So as I sit here internally debating whether to ask you this question or not, I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you think they’re lying to us?

Blyth: I think there’s a real danger that what I could be doing, and a lot of other people are doing, are basically looking for designs within disorder. This could simply be sane-washing the way that the Trump administration is essentially just going for a grift, whether it’s on taxes, whether it’s hollowing out the state, we don’t know. But let’s assume for a second that the United States government isn’t just a giant grift machine, and this is the play. We got to think it through as to what’s going to be coming ahead, and also how we’re going to deal with the fallout from it.

Ryssdal: Let’s talk about that fallout for a second. The last big recession we had in this economy was 2008, 2009, the scarring of which, as we’ve talked about on this program, and economists and experts such as yourself know, the scarring from that lasted a decade or more. If, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but if this is worse than the Great Recession, what does that mean for the scarring for the next 10 to 20 years in this economy?

Blyth: What it means is it’s really hard to get back to where you were at the start. That was the lesson of the Great Recession. Because people’s skills atrophy, because people get afraid to invest. No one invests, in a recession, and then when no one invests, the investment collapses, the recession gets worse. It’s really hard to dig yourself out of this. And if you’re not going to do it with any type of state action to counterbalance it, if you’re going to basically say, bring it on, because we want to break things and purge the system, then there’s kind of two ways of looking at this. The world can be divided into people who think the economy can get into trouble, and if the state doesn’t step in to stop it, it’s one way traffic all the way down. And then there’s people who think, no, absolutely not. Let’s break things. And then when we do, there’ll be a huge amount of growth afterwards. We’re making a bet, one way or the other, that that’s going to be what’s happening.

Gaming journalism stalwart Game Informer has risen from the ashes. More than thirty years after its debut issue back in August 1991, the media outlet was officially shut down by parent company GameStop in August 2024. Since then, the rights to Game Informer were acquired by Gunzilla Games and, in an all-to-rare win for today's media world, the entire team that worked for Game Informer at the time of its closure will return to their jobs.

Editor-in-Chief Matt Miller posted the details about how the outlet was saved from the brink and noted that Gunzilla Games will be a hands-off boss. "The new owners insisted on the idea of Game Informer remaining an independent editorial outlet," he wrote. "They felt just as strongly as our team did that the only path forward was with an editorial group that made 100 percent of the decisions around what we cover and how we do so, without any influence from them or anyone else."

“We are proud to welcome the talented voices behind Game Informer in the Gunzilla Games family, and join their fight to preserve the heart of video game journalism in what has been a tumultuous time for the industry," Gunzilla CEO and Co-Founder Vlad Korolov said.

The website and its back catalog of content have been republished online. Game Informer's staff have also published reviews of more than two dozen games that came out during the site's hiatus and belatedly compiled their requisite best games of 2024 list. The print magazine is also expected to resume activity, and Miller said more details will be forthcoming about subscription and membership options.

Gunzilla Games, which counts Hollywood director Neill Blomkamp among its leadership, made a battle royale shooter called Off the Grid and also developed the GUNZ blockchain platform.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/game-informer-is-back-and-so-is-its-entire-team-210748358.html?src=rss

Walmart is further expanding its reach in the beauty market. The big-box retailer announced another round of Walmart Start, its program that launches smaller beauty brands at the store. It’s also investing more in premium beauty products. Meanwhile, in recent earnings results, Ulta Beauty has reported it’s lost some market share, and Sephora is giving its stores a makeover.

You might not associate Walmart, a store whose tagline is “every day low prices,” with fancy face creams. But Joseph Nunes, a marketing professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, said they’re considered affordable luxuries. 

“Those are the products that are sort of within everybody’s budget and they’re quite prone to buy when they’re in the shopping mood,” said Nunes.

And Nunes said, over the years, people have become less picky about where they buy their lotions and potions. 

“There are a lot of categories where the retail experience is less important,” he said.

That’s partly because stores like Ulta and Sephora have done away with the glass-case experience found at department stores.

“So you’re already in the space where you’re open to buying it at a retailer” versus directly from a brand rep at a counter, said Amarachi Chukwuma, a beauty consultant at market intelligence agency Mintel. 

Meanwhile, for Walmart, beauty is likely a safe bet. David Swartz at Morningstar said the category has bigger margins than, say, apparel. It also has an increasingly bigger reach, thanks to social media. Sales in the prestige beauty market grew by 7% last year. 

“For the most part, it’s an industry that’s constantly cranking out new products and also new brands,” Swartz said.

That’s because consumers tend to be willing to experiment, and beauty products require regular restocking. Many have come to see them as a necessity. 

“A lot of women and girls see it as part of their wellness routine,” he said.

Which means you’re more likely to buy it, even when you’re watching your wallet.

As it turns out, including a reporter in your national security leader group chat about military strikes isn't the only way to compromise sensitive information on Signal. NPR reported on Tuesday that, days after the Trump administration's preposterous and dangerous national security fumble, the Pentagon issued a warning against using the messaging app due to a phishing vulnerability.

"A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal messenger application," a department-wide email obtained by NPR reads. "Russian professional hacking groups are employing [Signal's] 'linked devices' features to spy on encrypted conversations." The publication says the memo states that Russian hacking groups are "targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest."

A Signal spokesperson told NPR that the memo wasn't about Signal's security but about phishing attacks on the platform. So, if you're using the app, be especially mindful of attempts to trick you into linking devices to your account. Or simply communicate through different channels.

The Pentagon directive follows a scandal that, at least in previous eras, would have ended the careers of a long list of high-profile officials. (In this one… who knows?) The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported on Monday that a group of Trump administration national security officials inadvertently included him in a Signal group chat discussing military strikes in Yemen.

Andrew Harnik via Getty Images

The conversation included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, among others. They — with Goldberg essentially CC'd — discussed the timing, targets and weapons involved in bombing Houthi sites in Yemen.

A 2023 Department of Defense memo prohibited using mobile apps for even "controlled unclassified information." NPR notes that military planning is many degrees more sensitive than that. And that doesn't even cover accidentally including a journalist in the conversation.

The entire Atlantic article is worth a read, but a few gems from the chat include Hegseth's writing, "I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC." And, "Nobody knows who the Houthis are — which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded."

Adding to the "It would be hilarious if it weren't so dangerous" nature of the fiasco, Hegseth went on camera to deny the chat's authenticity after the White House confirmed it.

Although the fallout is still taking shape, here's an early taste. Watch below as retired US Navy captain and current US Senator Mark Kelly grills Gabbard and Ratcliffe on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/the-pentagon-warns-government-officials-that-signal-is-being-targeted-by-russian-hackers-203436757.html?src=rss

We hear Signal is in the news. As longtime fans of the app, and secure messaging more broadly, we feel like it's our duty at Engadget to ensure you know how to use the software properly.   

Download Signal

Signal is available on Android and iOS, as well as nearly every desktop operating system, including Windows and macOS. You can download the app by clicking one of the links provided above, or typing in "Signal Messenger" in your device's app store. Once you've installed the app, proceed to set up an account using your phone number or an alias.  

Note: If you want to install Signal on a workplace phone or computer, be sure to obtain approval from your employer; some organizations, such as the US government, either actively discourage or downright disallow use of the app. 

Create a new group

Wonderful, you've downloaded Signal! Now, to create a group chat, follow these steps: 

1. Tap the compose icon at the top of the interface. 

2. Select New Group.

3. Add participants by selecting their name from your contact list, or inputting their username or phone number. 

4. Give your group a name (and a profile picture if you want). 

5. If the contents are especially sensitive, you may wish to enable Disappearing Messages and select an expiration time.   

As you're in the process of adding new participants to a group, be sure to verify you're adding the right people. 

Some useful tips

I would also suggest making use of Signal's Permissions feature to limit who can invite people to your chat.     

1. Open your group chat and tap the group name to view the chat settings. 

2. Scroll down and select Permissions.

3. Under "Add Members," tap Only Admins.    

One of the ways someone can join your group chat is through a group link or QR Code. For additional security, you can set it so that admins must approve group link invites before the invitee can join. 

1. Open your group chat and tap the group name to view the chat settings.

2. Scroll down and select Group Link. 

3. Switch the toggle to on.  

Maybe you know exactly who you can trust, but the guy down the hall might not!

If you tend to get mixed up on names easily, Signal allows you to assign nicknames to users. After all, no one wants a case of mistaken identity.

1. Open your group chat and tap the group name to view the chat settings.

2. Under "Members," select the name of the individual you want to assign a nickname to. 

3. Type in a name. You can also add a note, say describing the person's profession, in case you need additional context.  

Nicknames are only visible to you, so don't be embarrassed to use them.  

How to remove someone from your group chat

Look, even the best of us can make mistakes. Thankfully, Signal makes it easy to remove someone from a conversation thread.  

1. Open your group chat and tap the group name to view the chat settings.

2. Under "Members," select the name of the individual you want to remove. 

3. Tap Remove From Group. 

How to delete messages in a Signal group chat

So you somehow got through all of the above steps, added someone you shouldn't have and sent information that a relative stranger likely shouldn't have seen. Lets be honest, you're an edge case. But there's still hope if you caught your mistakes early.  

1. Tap and hold the message on mobile (or hover the message bubble on desktop),

2. Select Delete.

3. Select Delete for Everyone.

Now there's less chance of, for instance, a record of your civil and perhaps even criminal mishaps being shared to a notable reporter in a form potentially open to legal discovery. 

Ultimately, no matter how secure the messaging platform, if what you need to talk about is very, very sensitive, it's probably best to just "get everyone in a room together."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/how-to-add-someone-to-a-signal-group-chat-201430756.html?src=rss