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If the thought of being hunted by something that can see your every move makes your skin crawl, you might want to steer clear of Eyes Never Wake. This viral horror game takes immersion to the next level, using your webcam to let a lurking monster track your movements in real time. To survive, players must physically move to avoid detection—ducking under desks, leaning out of sight, and staying perfectly still as the creature stalks the room. The game doesn’t stop at just watching. It listens, too. The game listens, too. With your mic always on, the AI-driven entity reacts to sound, forcing players to stay silent to avoid being found. “Every corner you turn is a chance for it to catch you. Listen closely, stay quiet, and be ready to hide your face at all costs,” the game warns. Currently available to wishlist on Steam, Eyes Never Wake has already drawn massive interest online. Its initial post on X racked up over 5.4 million views, with users calling it “next level” and “peak content for VTubers.” In my horror game, the monster SEES YOU THROUGH YOUR WEBCAM. Hide by physically ducking beneath your real-life desk while exploring a strange game not meant to be played. Steam link in comments!#horrorgames #horror #WishlistWednesday pic.twitter.com/JtPsLMnQg1 — Heder | Eyes Never Wake (@Hederlunden) March 12, 2025 And no, you can’t cheat the system. Covering your webcam won’t help—the game detects uniform objects and disables movement if the camera is blocked. “No, you can’t just cover the webcam,” the developer, Allan Hedlund, confirmed. “If you do, your character won’t be able to move.” That said, streamers who prefer to stay off-camera can opt to hide their face in-game while still using the webcam mechanics. It’s worth noting that, according to Hedlund, no footage or data is uploaded or stored. “Totally get that,” Hedlund responded on X to concerns. “The game simply uses OpenCV and OpenCV for Unity for face recognition with pre-trained models. Everything runs locally—nothing gets sent to any server. And you can always turn the mechanic off at any time.” While Eyes Never Wake doesn’t have a confirmed release date yet, it’s set to launch soon on Steam. View the full article

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has rehired more than 100 fire employees, but the union claims dozens of employees have not been reinstated in violation of a federal court order. View the full article

If your child has their own Android device, you no longer need to worry about loaning them your credit card or keeping cash on hand for purchases when you're not present. Kids can now use Google Wallet for tap-to-pay—with some parental oversight, of course, so they can't get into too much financial trouble without you knowing. Google teased this feature last fall and in February announced its inclusion in an anticipated update to Google Family Link. Google Wallet and tap-to-pay for kids is now live and available to families in the United State, United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, and Poland. How Google Wallet works for kidsKids can use tap to pay when checking out in stores that accept Google Pay or contactless payments. They must have a supervised Google Account and an NFC-enabled Android device (or a tethered Wear OS watch) with the Google Wallet app and screen lock enabled. Importantly, kids cannot use Google Wallet for online or in-app purchases or for Google services, such as Play and YouTube. While there are no additional spending controls, you'll get an email every time there's a successful transaction, so you can keep an eye on payments. Transaction history is also available in the Family Link app. Kids can also store passes, such as loyalty cards, gift cards, boarding passes, and event tickets, in Google Wallet. These can be added without parental approval, and you won't be notified if and when they are used. How to set your child up with tap-to-pay To add a payment card to your child's Google Wallet, open the Wallet app on their phone and tap Add to Wallet > New credit or debit card, then hit More > Next after reading the prompt. You'll need sign into your Google account, after which you can snap a photo of the card or enter the information manually. You'll also need to accept both Google's and the card issuer's terms to proceed, and you may be prompted to verify the payment method with a code sent via email or text or by calling or logging into your bank app. Parents can also remove cards from Google Wallet, either from a specific device or via Family Link. Open Family Link, select your child's account, and go to Controls > Wallet > Payment methods and transactions. Then select the card and tap Remove > Remove. You cannot remove other types of passes from your child's wallet unless you block access to passes entirely in your Family Link settings. Note that your child must be the cardholder or an authorized user for cards added to Google Wallet. View the full article

They are either being weak or hypocritical in the face of the current backlashView the full article

There was a time when we all had dedicated alarm clocks on our nightstands to wake us up in the morning. Now, I'd wager a smartphone does the job for most of us (whether we like it or not). The thing about alarms, though: They kind of need to work every time they're scheduled to go off. There's no acceptable percentage of failure, as, presumably, you're setting that alarm at a specific time for a good reason. You might have work, an interview, an appointment, any number of other important obligations, and not all of them are going to tolerate "my alarm didn't go off" as an excuse. So, alarms need to work, and right now, alarms set on a Google Pixel can't be trusted. Alarms aren't reliable on Pixel at the momentSomething screwy is going on with Pixel alarms, as evidenced by this Reddit thread on r/GooglePixel. One user shared that their alarm on their Pixel 9 did not go off that morning, which caused them to be late to work. This wasn't a one-off alarm, either (not that it would make the situation any better if it was); rather, this was the user's prescheduled Monday-through-Friday alarm that had been working for years, according to the poster. Scrolling through the thread, you'll find posts from other users experiencing similar alarm issues. Some actually received notifications from Android saying the alarm failed to sound, which is at least a bit helpful. (You don't have to spending the day wondering if it was your phone that messed up, or if you turned off the alarm in your sleep.) However, not all affected users were so lucky: Another user claims they have five alarms set each morning and none of them went off, with zero notification about a failure on Android's end. Curiously, one user says they woke up late, but their Pixel said there was an upcoming alarm for a time that was already in the past—as if the phone thought it was currently earlier than it actually was. It's possible this isn't just affecting Pixel phones, either. One commenter believes this is an issue with the alarms in Google's Clock app on Android 15, which the user experienced on their OnePlus device. All that said, Android Authority hasn't been able to replicate the issue on their end, so it's possible this isn't an issue affecting all Pixel phones or all Google Clock users. Still, there are enough reports to warrant some concern. Why is the alarm not working on Pixel?It's not clear what's causing this specific issue, but it's not the first time smartphones have had trouble with alarms. Last year, Google acknowledged a bug was deleting saved alarms on Android, causing a similar issue. You may have also experienced problems with Google Assistant being too quick to turn off an alarm too, or your Pixel Watch sounding the alarm too early—or, worse, too late. Before any Apple fans get too smug, the same complications are present over on iOS. Last year, Apple confirmed there were issues with its iPhone's alarms, as users reported their alarms weren't going off. Some even say issues are still occurring. The short answer is there's likely a bug that's causing Pixel or Google Clock to not sound the alarms you set. Google hasn't publicly commented on this issue as of this writing, but the Reddit poster did say Google Support has reached out to them. If this is a bug, hopefully Google patches it fast. How to get around a broken Pixel alarmWhile we wait for a potential fix from Google, it seems safe to say the Google Clock app isn't the best option at the moment for anyone who wants to be sure they'll wake up on time. Luckily, there are a surprising number of alarm clock apps out there for you to switch to if you don't trust Google's built-in solution. Give one a shot, at least until we get some more clarity from Google about the situation. Alternatively, you could rely on a different device entirely for your morning alarms. If you don't have a true alarm clock these days, you might have another piece of tech that isn't running Google Clock to rely on, like, say, a smart speaker. It's definitely a pain though, seeing as setting alarms are a basic feature you expect a smartphone to be able to handle. View the full article

Over 100,000 loans for first-time home buyers have been pooled and securitized in issuances this year, the guarantor of government-backed loans said. View the full article

Effective March 18, the department is retracting eligibility for non-citizens, it announced. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’re looking for tools to up your DIY game, you've probably noticed that they can be expensive. Buying new tools to expand a set or replace worn-out ones adds up quickly, but having the right tool for the project you’re working on can cut your work time in half and get you better results. DeWalt tools are on sale right now on Amazon for up to 57% off, so you can build out your toolkit without spending your whole DIY budget. Cordless tools setsIf you’re building out a new set of cordless tools, a combo set is a good way to get started. Sets will come with the chargers and batteries you need to run your tools, along with the tools themselves. These sets are on sale to make starting a cordless tool set cheaper. The DeWalt 20-volt drill and driver combo set is on sale for $124.00, 48% off its regular price. The set includes a 20-volt drill, a 20-volt, quarter-inch impact driver, two 1.5-amp batteries, a 20-volt charger, and a tool bag. This is a good starter kit for doing beginner DIY projects like hanging shelves or mounting a TV on the wall. The DeWalt 20-volt 9-tool set comes with a 20-volt drill, a 20-volt impact driver, a 6-½ inch circular saw, a reciprocating saw, a 4-½ inch angle grinder, an oscillating tool, a ⅜ inch right angle drill/driver, a work light, a Bluetooth speaker, two 20-volt, 2-amp-hour batteries, a 20-volt charger, and two tool bags. It’s on sale for $599.99, 37% off its regular price. This kit is a good foundation for a robust DIY tool set, but it only comes with two batteries, so if you plan to use multiple tools at a time, you might consider getting one or two more batteries and an extra charger so you can keep going while your spare batteries charge. DEWALT 20V MAX Cordless Drill Combo Kit, 2-Tool (DCK240C2) $124.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $239.00 Save $115.00 Get Deal Get Deal $124.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $239.00 Save $115.00 Tools only dealsIf you already have a DeWalt cordless tool set, you can still get a good deal on expanding your kit. Tool-only deals are great if you already have batteries and chargers and need a specific tool since you likely don’t need more batteries or chargers to use it. The DeWalt 20-volt, hand-held flashlight/work light is on sale for $35.84, 57% off its typical price. The flashlight is small, but you can also use the ring at the top to hang it and use it as a work light. The DeWalt 20-volt, 6 ½ inch circular saw is on sale for $99, 38% off its usual price. The saw comes with one fast-cut wood blade included, but no battery. The DeWalt 20-volt, 4 ½ inch angle grinder is on sale for $121.25, 45% off its typical price. It comes with a side handle, but no grinder wheel, so you’ll need to pick out an appropriate wheel or blade to use it. The DeWalt 20-volt reciprocating saw is on sale for $119.99, 50% off its regular price. It doesn’t come with blades or batteries, so you’ll need those to use your saw. The DeWalt 20-volt, 18GA narrow-crown stapler is on sale for $224.95, 47% off its usual price. This tool can drive staples without the need for a pneumatic air tank. The DeWalt self-leveling laser is on sale for $166.99, 37% off its typical price. It has a 100-foot throw and can be used for leveling decking, shelves, drywall, grading gravels, and plumbing posts. DEWALT Laser, 5-Beam (DW085K) $166.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $264.99 Save $98.00 Get Deal Get Deal $166.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $264.99 Save $98.00 Batteries and bitsIf you already have a DeWalt set and you need bits or to replace or expand your batteries, there are some good deals on these tools as well. Having the right bits and adapter can help you get your DIY projects finished without so many trips to the hardware store. The DeWalt 40-piece impact bit set is on sale for $24.53, $39% off its regular price. This set includes several driver tip types, a bit extender for hard-to-reach spots, and a quarter-inch adapter for sockets. A set of two DeWalt 20-volt, 5-amp-hour Powerstack batteries is on sale for $187.49, 46% off its regular price. These batteries are lighter and smaller than traditional lithium-ion batteries, so they can be helpful on longer jobs where you need to use your tools for several hours. View the full article

These mortgages held by low credit score borrowers, made up 90% of the rise in the number of loans 30 days or more late on payments, ICE Mortgage Tech said. View the full article

UK’s largest utility is facing a cash crunch weighed down by nearly £20bn in debtView the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The kitchen tends to be the heart of the home—it’s where we gather to share meals, nibble on snacks, and talk about our day. It’s also a pretty dangerous place. Aside from open flames, slippery floors, and flammable gas that is literally pumped into our homes, the innocuous little appliances that crowd our countertops can also represent real dangers. More than 150,000 people head to their local emergency room every year after an accident involving a household appliance of some sort. Small appliances might seem safe enough sitting on your kitchen counters, but they can be extremely dangerous if defective, misused, or placed in the wrong spot. Aside from the danger of hurting yourself, a misplaced countertop appliance can actually damage your home, as well. Here’s what you need to think about when you’re deciding where to place everything in your kitchen. General rules to keep in mindIf you want your kitchen to be as safe as possible, there are a few basic safety rules that apply to any countertop appliance: Keep stuff away from water. Don’t operate any electric appliances near sinks, pot-fillers, or any other sources of running water. This protects against electrical dangers and keeps the dangerous bacteria growing in your average sink from infiltrating your food. Plug into ground-fault circuit interrupters (GFCIs). All your kitchen appliances should be plugged into GFCIs. Before 2023 only appliances located near water sources were required to be plugged into GFCIs, but the National Electrical Code was changed to include any kitchen appliance. These special outlets are designed to cut off to prevent electric shock, and using them reduces the chances that your countertop appliance will hurt you or damage your home. Never use extension cords. Even if the cord is plugged into a GFCI outlet, it’s a bad idea. Many countertop appliances like air fryers or microwaves pull a lot of juice, and can melt most standard home-use extension cords, leading to serious fire danger. Keep away from the stove. You shouldn’t place any countertop appliance near (or, lord help us, on) your stove. The heat and open flames can melt power cords, increasing the risk of a fire or other accident. Keep away from the edge. If your countertop is crowded and something has to sit right on the outer edge, it’s time for a reorganization. Having any appliance right near the edge of the counter is just an invitation to disaster. While these rules apply to any appliance, there are specific placement considerations for several countertop appliances. Toasters and toaster ovensThe heating element in a toaster oven can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and some toaster ovens can heat up to 600 degrees under specific settings. That’s pretty hot, and while even the cheapest toaster has some built-in safety features, placement matters. Never place a toaster or toaster oven on anything flammable, like a towel. If you’re concerned about your countertop being damaged from the heat (though most toasters and toaster ovens are designed to be placed safely on standard countertop materials, even wood), you can place it on a nonflammable surface like a silicone mat or even a piece of stone tile. You should also never put anything on top of your toaster oven (or toaster). Yes, it’s taking up valuable counter space, but whatever you put on top could potentially be damaged from the heat, or even catch fire. Coffee makerYou might think that your humble coffee maker is pretty safe, but it might be doing long-term damage to your kitchen cabinets and walls because of one by-product of the coffee-making process: Steam. That hot, moist stuff drifts up and if it regularly interacts with your cabinets, it can cause a lot of damage, warping and staining wood and discoloring other materials. Since the most affected area will be under the cabinets, you can cause a lot of damage before it’s easily noticeable. Always place your coffee maker away from the upper cabinets when you use it, and make sure your kitchen always has robust ventilation, especially when using any heat- or moisture-producing appliances. Pressure cookersAside from being a time bomb if misused, pressure cookers pose the same steam threat as coffee makers: As they work, they emit steam, and continuous exposure to that steam can damage your cabinetry and walls. You can try aiming the pressure valve away from the cabinets, and you can buy steam diverters that redirect the steam. But your best bet is to operate the pressure cooker away from your cabinets. Air fryersAir fryers are very popular, and just like the other appliances on this list, they can damage your walls or cabinets with superheated fumes. Aside from the damage that steam can do, they can also scorch walls and cabinets if placed too close or with insufficient ventilation, so always place them with plenty of space around them. Air fryers also get pretty hot, so just like toaster ovens, you shouldn’t place them on top of towels or anything else that could conceivably catch fire. Slow cookersSlow cookers pose the same steam dangers as pressure cookers, but can be even more damaging because of the “slow” part. While occasional use of a pressure cooker or other steamy appliance probably won’t destroy a cabinet or stain a wall, occasional use of a slow cooker is more likely to because of the duration of operation. It’s best to place your slow cooker away from the walls and cabinets, and never place it on or near anything flammable. And because of the duration of use, you should place your slow cooker on a metal trivet or heat-resistant mat to protect the surface underneath. View the full article

Customers with few alternatives complain of ‘price gouging’ after flights cancelled View the full article

Sportswear group issues weaker than expected revenue forecast in latest setback to turnaround effortView the full article

Billionaire rails against vandalism of cars and protests at dealerships in the US and Europe View the full article

Your rights as the flight cancellations and disruption mountView the full article

Market manipulation in the cryptocurrency world is rampant—and fewer than 500 people are responsible for as much as $250 million a year in profits and over $3.2 trillion in artificial trading, according to a new study published on Cornell University’s preprint server arXiv. Honglin Fu and colleagues at University College London have developed a tool that can track the coordination of pump-and-dump schemes, where crypto coin holders artificially inflate the price of a cryptocurrency by touting fake recommendations and generating nonexistent hype, making ordinary people intrigued enough to buy into a cryptocurrency before the owners then pull their stake and crash the price. Telegram, a popular encrypted messaging platform widely used by cryptocurrency investors, has become a favored tool for coordinating these schemes. Perseus, the tool Fu and his colleagues developed, identified more than 400 so-called masterminds that helped seed fake hype for crypto coins through millions of Telegram messages. By eavesdropping on Telegram chats where pump-and-dump schemes are discussed, then training Perseus on what happens, the team were able to identify nearly 750,000 messages organizing such scams. “There is one kind of bad actor, we call a mastermind in the paper. They’re the main distributor, you can think of them as, of the pump-and-dump method,” says Fu. “Then they have followers: what they do is the mastermind will distribute messages to the others, and they’ll spread the message further to attract as many investors as possible.” The accomplices are crucial to carrying out the scam, Fu says, because they’re the ones that convince people at scale that a cryptocurrency is worth investing in. The ease with which the scammers are able to organize their activities and bank profits is a concern to Fu, who hopes that more awareness of the way the scams work, thanks to Perseus, will help raise awareness and push an impetus to action. “The crypto market is not really regulated, and it should be regulated to ensure that there are at least some safety measures for the public,” Fu says. “Right now, the crypto market has so many scams out there. It’s like a Wild West.” View the full article

At a time of political turmoil elsewhere, Britain should be offering stabilityView the full article

Your iPhone’s camera is smart—perhaps too smart. It’s smart enough to relight your selfies and remove distracting background objects from your photos. It’s the kind of reality-altering power that normally requires an Infinity Stone. It can also make it much harder to get photos that are accurate representations of the real world. Fortunately, there are alternatives. It’s worth noting that it’s difficult to get absolutely zero processing on any smartphone camera. There’s always some amount of interpretation of raw data in order to display it. What we want to minimize here is how much your phone makes decisions about the “right” way your photos should look—decisions like how saturated colors should be, what parts of the image should be in or out of focus, and how your subject should be lit. Sometimes it’s better to let your phone make these decisions for you, but if you want more control, these are the options that are best for you. Get more flexibility with Apple ProRAW Normally, when you take a photo, your phone compresses the image to save space and tosses data that’s not necessary to display it. But that data can be useful if you want to do your own photo editing. That’s where Apple ProRAW comes in. This format (which takes up more storage space) saves almost all of the data from your camera’s sensor when the photo was taken. This lets you adjust things like exposure, contrast, saturation, white balance, and other basic aspects of an image. There’s still some unavoidable image processing done to these photos, but ProRAW gives you a lot more flexibility to make changes than you normally would have. To enable ProRAW images, tap the RAW button while you’re using your camera to use it for the current session. If you’d rather permanently switch your default settings, go to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings and enable ProRAW & Resolution control. With this enabled, the camera will be in ProRAW mode unless you specifically disable it each time. Use ZeroCam, the anti-AI camera appZeroCam makes the pitch that less is more, especially when it comes to camera features. In fact it only has one: a shutter button. There’s no post-processing, no filters or effects, and the only optional toggle is which of your phone’s lenses to use. It literally can’t be easier—for better or worse. In my experience, images taken with ZeroCam in low-light settings had noticeably more noise, which is to be expected without a lot of post-processing. However, photos that were properly lit looked a bit more natural than with the stock camera app. The main downside to the ZeroCam app is the cost: A subscription will run you $2/month, or $13 if you pay for a year up front. You can get a free three-day trial (for the monthly plan, bumped up to a week if you opt for the annual plan), at which point you’ll probably know for sure whether it’s worth the expense to you. Use Halide for more control over AI-free photosUnlike ZeroCam, Halide Mark II provides extensive manual controls over your camera. You can precisely adjust focus, ISO, shutter speed, and white balance before capturing the image. Some of these controls are available in the default camera app, but Halide adds other useful tools like focus peaking and live histograms. Halide also has a dedicated Process Zero mode, which touts zero post-processing AI. This is as close as you can get to photos that are straight from the sensor with only the minimum processing required to create a viewable image. Like ZeroCam, this app isn’t free, although you can get a seven-day free trial to see if it serves your needs. After that, monthly subscriptions start at $10, or you can get a year for $20. If you know for certain you love the app and will be using it for a long time, a lifetime license will set you back $60. Try the Blackmagic Camera app for filterless videoBlackmagic makes the free video editing suite Davinci Resolve, as well as a line of cinema cameras that tie deeply into the software. More recently, the company has released an app for the iPhone that leverages its expertise for the camera you always have with you. The Blackmagic Camera app is primarily focused on video, but you can use it to grab stills from your clips as well. If you only want still photos, one of the other options on this list is probably better for you, but this app is perfect for videographers. It offers pro-level camera controls like ISO, shutter speed, and white balance, as well as features like an RGB histogram to see which parts of your image are clipping, and image stabilization to reduce the camera shake from holding it in your hand. View the full article

Investors, as well as consumers, need regulators with teeth to ensure fair competition and rulesView the full article

While I’ve known about the aquafaba (chickpea brining liquid) hack for a while, I’ve always thought of it more for folks with food allergies. Why would I, a happy egg eater, ever need to use it to replace eggs? Well, here we are. Egg prices don’t seem to be coming down anytime soon, and if you’re as reliant on the ovum as I am, you may be looking for ways to cut costs. While I’ll still be splurging on the real thing for perfect, jar-scrambled eggs, I’ll be using aquafaba for these other egg-related recipes. Chickpea liquid gets its magical binding properties from the starches that leach out of the bean and into the brine. When cooked, the water evaporates and you’re left with the starches, salt, and traces of other ingredients bound together in a sticky sort of web. I boiled some straight-up chickpea liquid in a pan to see. When the water evaporates, chickpea liquid leaves behind a net of starches and other ingredients. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Is it an egg? Decidedly not. While a thin sheet of cooked, slightly browned starch doesn’t look so impressive, it actually shows us what this simple liquid is capable of. Do note, however, that salt varies considerably in cans of chickpea liquid. When using it in baking, taste the aquafaba, and if it’s very salty, reduce the salt in the recipe by a quarter-teaspoon per two “eggs” in the recipe. Use aquafaba in battersBinding is a big part of why eggs go in cookie dough and cake batters, and luckily aquafaba can function in this way. What aquafaba doesn’t do naturally that eggs do, is puff. Even if you don’t whip an egg, it has some body to it after it cooks. Chickpea liquid doesn’t naturally have the same consistency, but this challenge is not impossible to overcome. Aquafaba whips up pretty easily and manages to hold that aeration. (More on that in a moment) For batters where you don’t need to see much puff in your baked goods, like brownies, you can pour aquafaba straight into the batter. For one whole large egg, use three tablespoons of aquafaba. For one egg white, use two tablespoons of aquafaba. For batters and doughs where you’d like to see a little lift, whip the amount of aquafaba you’re using in a small bowl. Just whip it until its soft and foamy; stiff peaks aren’t necessary for this use. Then mix it into the dough as usual during the egg step. This bit of aeration will give your cookies a mounded shape and the average cake batter a smidge of lift. While it might be an annoying extra five to 10 minutes of your time, it’s worth it. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Use aquafaba for meringueTypical meringue consists of only two major ingredients: egg whites and sugar. And frankly, it’s only meringue because the egg whites do all the heavy lifting. And yet, aquafaba can make it happen. Again, I’ve never been heavily reliant on this bean syrup, but it’s never let me down when I whip it up. Egg or otherwise, no meringue lasts very long unless you stabilize it in some manner. Always whip aquafaba with a small amount of cream of tartar to give you more time to work with the whipped meringue. For every cup of aquafaba, use a half-teaspoon of cream of tartar to help stabilize the structure. Whip the two together until the mixture becomes foamy on top, about three to five minutes, then add the sugar and whip it until the mixture has stiff peaks. Use this meringue to make meringue cookies, pavlovas, or fold it into other batters for maximum lift. Use aquafaba for egg washEgg wash is one of the most understated baking techniques. Adding an egg wash can help seal together pies and pastries so they don’t explode, and it can add color and shine to the exterior of breads and countless other treats. While sour cream makes a good exterior egg wash, it doesn’t do much for binding. Aquafaba is here to help though. Simply brush the liquid onto the pastry or bread how you would normally do with eggs and get on with the recipe. You won’t taste any off flavors, but you might get a tickle of salt. View the full article

The Federal Reserve governor voted against the decision to slow the pace of balance sheet reduction earlier this week, preferring to allow the current pace of reduction. View the full article

General Atlantic, Susquehanna, KKR and Coatue discuss acquiring more stakes in viral app’s US operations alongside OracleView the full article

You might not think about it, but you're probably pretty used to how Gmail's search function works. You type in your query, wait a moment, then scroll through the results, looking for the email in question. These results are always in chronological order, with the most recent results appearing at the top. After years of searching this way, you're likely subconsciously expecting this order, scrolling backwards in time to find the result you have in mind. I imagine it's going to be a bit confusing the next time you search for something in Gmail, and the results are not sorted by recency. That's because Google is changing the way it returns Gmail results for users: Google announced in a blog post Thursday that the company is rolling out a new AI-powered search feature for Gmail on both mobile and the web. (It's 2025: Of course the new feature is powered by AI.) The idea is to use artificial intelligence to return more relevant search results, rather than show results in chronological order. The AI still takes recency into account when returning results, but also considers emails you've clicked most, as well as contacts with whom you are in frequent communication. In theory, the changes should be helpful: In an ideal world, the email you wanted to see would show up right at the top of the list with every search, so the closer Gmail can get to finding specific emails you want, the better. Of course, with every new change comes friction. There's a muscle memory to search: You're used to seeing your emails arrive chronologically, so it might be a bit off-putting to skip over one result only to find a more recent one appear after it. There's also the "AI" of it all: Will artificial intelligence aid in our search for relevant emails, or will it hallucinate, and turn this into another AI Overviews fiasco? Gmail's new AI search could actually be usefulWhile I'm a generative-AI skeptic, I have to be honest: This change might actually be helpful. In particular, I found the new search experience worked well with queries for messages that were definitely not recent. When searching for "graduation," for example, sorting by "Most recent" delivered a series of results from the past few days, and seeing as my latest graduation was many years ago, these were pretty useless. In fact, I had to scroll through a ridiculous number of newsletters and promotions before I even saw any personal emails—whether they were relevant to my search or not. On the flip side, switching to the new "Most relevant" showed me mostly personal emails. Perhaps they weren't always about graduations, and instead included results containing variations on the word "graduation" ("graduated," "graduating," etc.) but aside from the odd promoted message or two, virtual all of the immediate returns were direct messages from friends and family. The same was true with a search for "reservation." The traditional sorting method returned a bunch of nonsense from hotel rewards accounts, cooking blogs, restaurant newsletters, even a number of Samsung emails. (Apparently I can reserve a $100 credit to get up to $1,100 in total savings when pre-ordering a Bespoke AI product. No thanks.) While it's a relief that I didn't miss out on that Samsung offer, the new AI-powered search returned personal results that actually made sense from my query: The top result was a recent dinner reservation made through Google, appropriately, while subsequent results included flight reservations and other restaurant bookings. Even the first hotel result to pop up was for a previous stay I had, not a newsletter. How to disable Gmail's new AI searchThat's not to say this is going to be for everyone. If you have a specific email you're looking for—especially if it came in recently—I could see the old ways of doing things working better for you here. Luckily, Google didn't take away the ability to search by recency—it just made the new search the default, which I can only imagine is going to cause some confusion. It's an easy change to miss, but once you know what to look for, you'll be set. The next time you search on Gmail, take a look just above the top search result, towards the left. You'll see "Most relevant" with a little drop down arrow next to it. Tap this menu, then, on the new "Sort by" pop-up, choose "Most recent." View the full article

US president posted Sun news story that referred to a supposed ‘secret offer’ King Charles is due to extendView the full article

Severance is a set design wonderland. From a massive mirrored corporate monolith in New Jersey to a classical train station in upstate New York, the show’s distinctive visual language—which has captivated audiences and critics alike—relies on actual places that have been carefully chosen to mess with your head. These aren’t just random pretty buildings. They’re psychological weapons that connect the dots in the same way the writers weave the tapestry of the tale. Severance follows a group of humans that go through a procedure to separate their (outie) real lives from their (innie) corporate bees working for a mysterious industrial conglomerate call Lumon, effectively turning four people (Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan) into eight, each with distinct personalities and circumstances. In the same way, the show divides its architecture, confronting an inner corporate hellscape to an outside world that, in its own way, is also its own hellscape. In its second season, Severance has expanded way beyond the creepy white corridors in the “severed” underground floor of Lumon Industries’s of the first season. The show ventures into a more diverse architectural playground that deepens its exploration of corporate control and our fractured modern psyche. The show’s filming locations now span from New Jersey to upstate New York to Newfoundland, each chosen not just because they look cool on camera, but because of the subliminal messages their architectural features convey. [Image: Apple TV+] The Lumon headquarters The most iconic location in Severance is Lumon Industries’s headquarters—a massive, imposing structure that looms over the landscape like some corporate Death Star. In reality, this architectural marvel is the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex (now known as Bell Works) in New Jersey, a building whose real-world significance perfectly aligns with its fictional role. [Image: Apple TV+] “All those companies in the ’50s and ’60s, they had so much style, they had the most beautiful spaces, and they were proud of what they were doing,” explains Jeremy Hindle, Severance’s production designer, in an interview with Variety. “These corporate spaces are designed to dominate you and make sure that you know the rules.” No kidding. That’s exactly what makes Severance so viscerally disturbing—and so visually compelling. The architecture isn’t just pretty. It’s predatory. [Photo: Lee Beaumont/Flickr] Designed by renowned architect Eero Saarinen in 1958 and completed in the early 1960s, the Bell Labs complex stands as one of the most significant examples of mid-century corporate modernism in America. Its vast mirrored glass façade earned it the nickname “The World’s Largest Mirror” in architectural circles—a fitting metaphor for a show about reflection and duality. The building spans 2 million square feet with a central open-atrium scheme extending a quarter-mile. ca. 1987 [Photo: Gerard Garcia/Getty Images] When Saarinen designed the complex for Bell Telephone/AT&T researchers, it was conceived as a utopian workplace meant to foster community and collaboration. The central atrium was designed to encourage chance encounters between researchers from different departments—a physical manifestation of the cross-pollination of ideas, a concept that has been reproduced in many other corporate buildings, like Pixar’s and, most recently, Lego’s new HQs. Bell Works, ca. 2022. [Photo: Curlyrnd/Wiki Commons] Yet in Severance, this same architecture becomes oppressive and isolating. The cinematography transforms Saarinen’s idealistic vision into something cold and menacing—a very literal visual metaphor of how corporate utopias often become dystopias in practice. As architectural historian Jon Gertner told Curbed, Bell Labs was an “idea factory” but, in Severance, it became a factory for something far more sinister: the manufacturing of compliant workers through the literal division of consciousness. In Season 2, aerial shots reveal the building’s distinctive shape, which from above resembles a giant goat’s eye—a visual connection to the show’s recurring goat imagery and themes of surveillance. The water tower stands as a sentinel, further emphasizing the company’s technological dominance over the landscape and its employees’ lives. It’s like the Eye of Sauron, but for corporate America. [Image: Apple TV+] While Bell Works provides the exterior shots, the labyrinthine white hallways of Lumon’s severed floor were constructed at York Studios in the Bronx. These stark, minimalist corridors—with their fluorescent lighting, white walls, and complete absence of windows—create a timeless, placeless quality that reinforces the severed employees’ disconnection from the outside world. Season 2’s opening sequence features Mark running through these disorienting corridors, a scene that required weeks of planning and several days to shoot using a high-speed robotic camera called the Bolt. The design deliberately disorients viewers, making it impossible to create a coherent mental map of the space—mirroring the fragmented consciousness of the severed workers themselves. It’s architectural gaslighting at its finest. [Image: Apple TV+] This season we also got to see the surreal Mammalian’s Nurturable Room, where they have the goats. The production team built an enclosed tent on Brooklyn’s Marine Park Golf Course, with Industrial Light & Magic rendering the walls and ceiling in CGI. This hybrid of physical and digital architecture creates a dreamlike space that exists somewhere between reality and fantasy—much like the severed state itself. The blending of real and virtual elements mirrors the show’s exploration of how memory and perception shape our experience of space. The Great Doors factory Season 2 introduces another corporate space: the Great Doors factory. It’s the opposite of Lumon HQs, but no less oppressive. This is where Dylan—one of the four protagonists—looks for a new job after being fired from Lumon. He gets interviewed but not hired because he had the severance procedure to split his brain’s consciousness. Fun fact: Severance’s creator Dan Erickson was actually working in a door factory when he came up with the idea for the TV series. [Image: Apple TV+] The real location is the Red Owl Collective in the Midtown Arts District, in Kingston, a city in upstate New York. This 10,000-square-foot antique, vintage, and design emporium provides a richly textured industrial backdrop that contrasts with Lumon’s sterile environment while still conveying themes of labor and production. [Image: Google Maps] What makes these corporate spaces so effective in Severance is how they embody what architect Rem Koolhaas has called “junkspace”—environments designed not for human comfort but for corporate efficiency, where workers become interchangeable parts in a machine. The architecture doesn’t just house the corporation; it is the corporation made physical—a concrete and glass manifestation of power structures that shape human behavior and identity. [Image: Apple TV+] Brick and mortar split personalities If Lumon’s corporate architecture represents power and control, the residential spaces in Severance show more intimate themes of identity and memory. Mark’s and Irving’s apartments, filmed at the Village Gate Townhouses in Nyack, NY, and in the Waterfront at the Strand in Kingston, NY, respectively, are also featured in this season. Both represent each of their outie’s mental states: barren despair for Mark, and dark despair for Irving. Season 2 expands the show’s exploration of domestic architecture to visually reinforce the psychological state of characters caught between their innie and outie existences, introducing Dylan’s residence. In the real world, his familiar middle-class residence is at Kings Landing Condominium on Oxford Lane in Middletown, New Jersey. What’s fascinating about this location is the vision we get from above in one of the episodes. Some see a uterus, others Lumon’s logo upside down. I see both, perhaps an allegory to one of the show’s underlying themes: human reproduction. [Image: Apple TV+] The other side of this coin is the Eagan’s family residence, the owners of Lumon. It’s a massive glass structure visible in aerial shots near the Lumon headquarters, controlling it from afar. Home of the Helly E(gan)—the outie of innie Helly R—is truly a dream home. The modernist house embodies a cruel irony: the transparency that the Eagans deny their workers, they enjoy for themselves. They can see out while keeping others from seeing in. The architectural juxtaposition between the workers’ homes and the Eagan residence visually reinforces the show’s themes of class division and power imbalance. [Image: Apple TV+] If you are fascinated by this home and want to know where it is, you are not alone. I spent a few hours researching this one and it doesn’t seem to exist in the real world. Like other sets in the show, it appears to have been built as a set and enhanced with digital effects. In the architectural apartheid of Severance, buildings always tell us who has power and who doesn’t. The Eagans live in a house where they can see everything, while their employees live in spaces where they can only see what the company allows them to see. [Image: Apple TV+] Public spaces between worlds Season 2 of Severance ventures beyond the corporate and domestic realms to explore a variety of public spaces that serve as transitional zones between different states of being. These liminal spaces—train stations, parks, gateways—seem to physically embody the show’s central concern with boundaries and thresholds, particularly the boundary between severed and unsevered consciousness. One of Season 2’s most architecturally significant new locations is Utica’s Union Station, featured in Episode 9, titled “The After Hours.” Built in 1914 and designed by Allen Stem and Alfred Fellheimer—the same architects behind Grand Central Terminal—this classical train station with its impressive marble pillars provides the backdrop for an emotionally charged scene between Burt and Irving. It’s a beautiful space, grand architecture that speaks to an era of transition and movement, making it the perfect setting for a pivotal moment for the characters that resonates with the idea of splitting lives like the severing process does. The classical architecture creates a sense of permanence and history that contrasts with the transient nature of the characters’ meeting. The production spent approximately $2 million filming at this location for just two days in May 2023, adding fake snow to maintain the wintry Season 2 aesthetic. This transformation of a historical space into a fictional moment is a good example of how Severance uses real architecture as raw material for its psychological landscape. The location also had another less obvious connotation. When the scene ends, Irving takes the 2400RR line, a historical scenic line in the Adirondack Railroad, which begins in Oneida County and ends in the Genesee Counties. “If you know anything about cults, those two places should certainly ring several bells,” points out one redditor in the Severance subreddit. “Mormonism was founded in the Genesee Counties. […] The Oneida Community was a strange highly Puritanical yet also ‘free love’ (deviant sex encouraging, quasi-communist Christian sect that was founded in Oneida County in the latter half of the 20th century.” This clearly connects with Lumon Industries’s nature, which has an extremely dark background featuring a mythical origin story, a god-like founder, strange sex and corporate rituals, blind obedience, and child abuse, among other niceties. Some of Season 2’s most striking settings were filmed at Minnewaska State Park Preserve in New York’s Shawangunk Mountains. Used for both the Dieter Eagan National Forest in Episode 4 and the haunting Woe’s Hollow scenes, these locations leverage natural architecture—dramatic cliff views and frozen landscapes—to create environments that feel simultaneously beautiful and threatening. The Mohonk Testimonial Gateway in New Paltz, NY, returns in Season 2 as the entrance to the Damona Birthing Retreat. Built in 1908 as the formal entrance to the Mohonk Mountain House resort, this historical gatehouse creates a literal threshold between worlds—a perfect architectural metaphor for the show’s exploration of divided consciousness. In Episode 9, this gateway serves as the access point to Cabin 5, reinforcing its role as a transitional space between different states of being. Downtown Beacon continues to serve as the fictional town of Kier in Season 2, with the Beacon Building on Main Street functioning as the Hall of Records. The repurposing of this real small-town architecture creates a setting that feels simultaneously familiar and slightly off-kilter—a visual strategy that reinforces the show’s themes of distorted reality. [Image: Apple TV+] Other transitional spaces include a set prop phone booth constructed in front of a closed car repair shop near Kingston’s Wurts Street Bridge, and the shed featured in Season 2, Episode 3 “Who Is Alive?” positioned below Kingston’s Rondout Train Trestle. These constructed elements within existing architectural contexts show how the production designs spaces that connect the severed and unsevered worlds. Season 2 also ventures beyond New York state to the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador for the Salt’s Neck sequences. These locations portray a run-down, former factory town wounded by the closure of a Lumon production plant. The remote, snowy landscapes contribute to the show’s atmosphere of isolation while the abandoned industrial architecture serves as a warning about the consequences of corporate abandonment—a ghost town that represents the ultimate symbol of Lumon’s disposable view of human labor. Which brings me to the ultimate point: Severance itself, its physical worlds, embodies the ultimate innie-outie dichotomy. A show that is both depressing with glimmers of hope, but ultimately depressing again. Every episode, I wonder if our protagonists would triumph against this techno-capitalists sect (I’m sorry, but I get Apple vibes all over, and I’m guessing its executives are not into the joke) or disappear into the oblivion of forgetfulness in the innies’ world and the carcass of mortal decay in the outies’ world. The answer will probably be both. View the full article