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When Amazon stopped letting us download copies of our Kindle books last month, I began looking for ways to preserve e-books and audiobooks that I've paid for. Buying from Amazon really limits those options thanks to DRM (Digital Rights Management), which is designed to prevent piracy, but ends up having far bigger consequences on digital goods like e-books. Eliminating DRM effectively removes Amazon's control over what you do with your e-books. If Amazon were to go DRM-free, you'd be able read Kindle e-books on any e-book reader or app that you like. Amazon wouldn't be able to easily track your reading habits and you'd be free to keep an offline backup of all of your purchased content. That's what makes the idea of bypassing DRM appealing to so many. Given the choice, I'd love to buy audiobooks on Audible and use apps such as Bound or Prologue to listen to them. I think these apps are superior audiobook players and are better at library management than Audible's apps. It'd also be a chance for me to escape Amazon's ability to track my listening habits. Sadly, those options don't exist today. What Amazon's terms of service allow you to doOnce you pay for an e-book on Amazon, it has been licensed, not sold to you, according to the company's terms of service. This gives the company a lot of leeway in deciding what you do with a purchased e-book. The terms of service explicitly forbid bypassing the DRM and reading it on devices or apps that Kindle doesn't officially support. This isn't just an Amazon problem. Janet Vertesi, a sociology professor at Princeton University, told me via email that buying a book through big tech doesn't grant you ownership of your copy. "You are not in charge of how you access or read that [e-book]. It is like the difference between Spotify playlists and having a home music library. You pay money to own the [e-book], but because Amazon owns everything about the delivery pipeline and the Kindle necessary to read the purchase, you don't get to exert any choice." Similarly, Audible classifies a sale as the purchase of a license, and goes on to say that you should download the audiobook immediately after purchasing, as the company cannot guarantee that content will be available to redownload in the future. To make matters worse, Amazon forbids you from bypassing DRM on the audiobook files. "The more we buy into these closed garden ecosystems, the fewer choices we have…they can and do use this power to subdue alternatives, eliminate competition, and maintain monopoly, among other things," Vertesi told me. She runs Opt Out Project, a blog dedicated to helping people find alternatives to products and services made by big tech firms. The legalities involved in bypassing DRMBypassing DRM is illegal in the US, thanks to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but it may be legal in other regions. The DMCA, among other things, makes it difficult to create a legal backup of the digital media you own. I reached out to Cory Doctorow, an author and vocal DRM critic, to learn more about this subject. In an email, he explained the complexities involved in understanding where the boundary lies here. "It isn't a copyright infringement to move a book from one device you own to another ([aka 'format shifting']). However, in 1998, the US Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which created a new kind of copyright—a copyright that protects DRM itself," Doctorow wrote. "Under Section 1201 of the DMCA, it's a felony (punishable by a [five]-year prison sentence and a [$500,000] fine) to give someone a "circumvention device" that defeats an "access control" for a copyrighted work. This law applies even if you don't violate copyright. "Say I tell you that you have my permission to move a book I wrote (and am thus the copyright holder for) from your Kindle to another device. If the Kindle book has DRM, you're still not allowed to move it. The fact that I am the copyright holder has no impact on whether Amazon—a company that didn't create or invest in my book—can prevent you from moving that book outside of its walled garden...In fact, if I supply you with a tool to remove DRM (like some versions of Calibre), then I commit a felony and Amazon can have me sent to prison for five years for giving you a tool to move my book from the Kindle app to a rival app like Kobo," he wrote. When you download a Kindle e-book, it's available in the AZW format, and audiobooks from Audible use the proprietary AAX format. If you download these to your computer, that is format shifting, but it may be illegal if you had to circumvent DRM to do it. Doctorow added, "that means that even though copyright law says you can format shift your books, music, videos, games, [etc.], DMCA 1201 (a "paracopyright law") makes this an imprisonable felony if you have to break DRM first." The tools that let you bypass DRM The Calibre app allows you to read and manage DRM-free e-books you've purchased. Credit: Pranay Parab Calibre offers a way to take your e-books out of digital walled gardens. It lets you download purchased books off your Kindle, convert those to any format you like, and to read them on any app or device. For Audible, that tool is Libation, a free and open-source app that backs up your audiobook library. I contacted Robert McRackan, the developer of Libation, to understand how the app works, and why it was developed. McRackan wrote, "…what apps like Libation do is a service to the community that I believe in. It's also in [direct] contradiction to Audible's terms of service…" Free tools like these continue to work only because the developers are able to dedicate time to keeping them up-to-date, and because Amazon hasn't decided to go after them. If that changes, it could be game over for these apps. I can't offer guidance on downloading these apps and using them to remove DRM for your e-books. But they do exist, and, as of this article, they appear to work. There's a world beyond Amazon for digital booksIf you're truly interested in owning your digital media, you should consider looking beyond Amazon for digital book purchases. There are many alternatives to the Kindle store and to Audible, and some of them offer DRM-free e-books and audiobooks. When I asked Vertesi and Doctorow about DRM-free storefronts for books, they pointed me to Bookshop.org (which has DRM-free options for e-books), Tor Books (which is entirely DRM-free) and Libro.fm (for DRM-free audiobooks). While Libro.fm is totally DRM-free and has a collection that's good enough to rival that of Audible, the picture outside of Amazon isn't always rosy. Doctorow wrote, "Even great [e-book] stores like Bookshop.org are pressured by the big publishers to put DRM on most of the books they sell." Similarly, Audible is known to push authors into signing deals that offer better royalties if they keep their audiobooks exclusive to the service. In case your favorite book is a part of such a deal, your only choice is either buy it through Audible, or try to purchase a DRM-free e-book and use text-to-speech tools to have an AI-generated voice read it to you. This is a hacky way to convert any book into an audiobook, and it doesn't come anywhere close to the skills of a great narrator, but it's a DRM-free option. If your favorite e-book is an Amazon exclusive, you can get it via your local library. Of course, you could always buy it physically: Paper is DRM-free, after all. However, without changing the DMCA, we can't expect to see real, lasting change in this space. Doctorow said as much to me: "What we really need to do is get rid of DMCA 1201, that law that makes it a crime to format shift your media...it's the same law that stops farmers from fixing their tractors, blocks independent mechanics from fixing your car, stops rivals from setting up alternative app stores for phones and games consoles...this law is a menace!" View the full article

Central bank also lifts inflation projection as chair Jay Powell warns of tariff impactView the full article

Leftovers can be challenging. Occasionally, you’ll have a meal so good that you actually look forward to scarfing it down cold the next day, but that's not always the case. I usually have bits and bobs of leftovers—things I didn't care for in the first place, or stray ingredients I can’t seem to get rid of. My curse however, is that I hate (hate!) tossing edible food. So over the years, I’ve gotten better at reworking leftovers, and you can too. Here are my favorite ways to repurpose leftovers into incredible new meals. Recipes for using leftoversI run into two types of leftovers: leftover meals and leftover single ingredients. Let’s start with leftover meals. This section is how I like to transform prior dinners or lunches—like sausage and peppers or chicken salad— to give them a new life. Leftovers as pizza toppings Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Do I have a borderline problem with eating personal pizzas? Who’s to say. But that continual experience has given me the confidence to say leftovers make for great pizza toppings. If pizzerias can put chopped chicken cutlets and penne on their pizza, so can you. Here’s how I like to pizza my leftovers. All you need is a ball of thawed pizza dough from the grocery store and a bit of cheese to act as your “glue.” Egg roll ‘emWhat do the stray container of leftover brisket, the green curry chicken from three days ago, and the sausage and peppers from Sunday have in common? They’d all be great with a crispy egg roll shell wrapped around them. Egg rolling your leftovers is extremely simple with a pack of premade wrappers that you can buy from the refrigerated aisle of your grocery store. Once you’ve secured your delicious leftovers in the center, deep fry or air fry them for a wonderful lunch or dinner. Stack leftovers into a lasagnaIt helps to think of leftover food as a component that needs a new vehicle to carry it, like pizza dough or an egg roll wrapper. Pasta noodles are a versatile main ingredient too. While you could toss your leftovers with spaghetti, turning it all into a stacked lasagna is more impressive, and personally I think it’s more appetizing. While I’m using Thanksgiving leftovers here, you certainly aren’t limited to that. Boil the pasta noodles and use them to sandwich each layer of leftovers, like thinly sliced meatloaf, creamed spinach, or vegan steamed dumplings. (It’s okay to layer carbs with carbs.) Make a delightful brunch casserole Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Casseroles are always a wondrous mish-mash of ingredients. What makes them sliceable is the addition of some sort of flavorful binder, like eggs or cheese. I added a few eggs, a torn up English muffin, and shredded cheddar to the leftovers of my seven-layer dip recipe and baked it for about 20 minutes at 350°F to make this absolutely scrumptious casserole. You can casserole anything from leftover waffles to rice and beans with this method. Risotto your leftoversI showed you how to fake risotto with leftover rice, but you can also throw your leftovers into risotto. Risotto is another one of those helpful carbs that act as a vehicle for your once-fresh food. Though this recipe is geared toward Thanksgiving leftovers, the concept stands for any leftover protein and veg. Make your risotto as usual and just after you ladle in the last bit of stock, drop in your chopped leftovers to warm up in the pot. Build a satisfying sandwichSandwiches are like old episodes of your favorite show—it’s your back-up when you don’t know what to watch (or eat, in this case). A leftovers sandwich is the solution when you can’t figure out what to do with that massive casserole from your cousin’s brunch party. Since leftovers can be irregularly shaped (as opposed to sliced deli meats), I suggest grabbing large slices of bread and potentially leaving them untoasted. Then the soft texture can hug and hold onto the fillings better. Here are some ways you can tweak a sandwich to make it even more delightful. Make the best oatmeal of your life Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann For the longest time, I thought I hated oatmeal. It turns out, I was just not adding enough fun stuff to it. Oats are bland, which makes them a terrible main event, but a great supporting act for other bolder ingredients. Your leftover dishes from the week are already cooked and full of flavor. Simply make a batch of savory oatmeal and nestle your chicken parmesan, Thai gaeng keow-wan curry, or vegetable korma into the bowl with it. Here's my recipe for spicy, savory oatmeal with herbs and kimchi. Recipes for common leftover ingredientsThis section is devoted to my most common leftover ingredients. These are things that maybe haven’t made it into a full meal yet—like raw celery or cooked leftover rice—but they’re living their last moments in my fridge. I’ll lean on these recipes to keep them from becoming trash. The many iterations of leftover rice Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann There was a year or two that I would order Chinese food take-out frequently, and end up with tubs of extra rice stacked up in my freezer. A day of reckoning would come once a month when I would have to figure something out, or I’d have no freezer space. So I have more than one way to use up leftover rice. This crispy rice cake, this fake risotto, and this comforting rice salad are all good to have in mind. The problem with celeryCelery is one of those ingredients that will haunt your crisper drawer for 100 years. I’m not even exaggerating, it actually grows more stalks while it's in there. Its only charm is how crunchy it is, so I wouldn’t recommend egg rolling it or putting it on pizza. My solution for unused stalks is to make this salad which relies on thin, diagonal slices to maintain crunch but reduce “stringiness.” The vinaigrette adds much needed flavor, the Thai chili wakes up your palate, and the hard boiled eggs create a more satiating dish. Leftover pie crustWhether it's store-bought pie crust sitting in your freezer or you never got around to using the other half of that double-crust pie dough recipe, there's no reason to let that flaky pastry go to waste. Use it to make a filling quiche and mix in any leftover vegetables you might have in the fridge. Avoiding eggs to save money? That's fine, use this recipe to make a lazy pot pie with your leftover crust and a can of creamy chicken soup. Extra hard boiled eggs Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Boiled eggs make a great on-the-run snack, so I’ll often cook up a bunch at the beginning of the week and keep them in the fridge. But some weeks will wrap up and I’ll have a few that I never got to. Unless I feel like crushing three or four cold eggs, so instead I’ll make a yam kai dao salad. Shallow frying the hard-cooked eggs give them an appealing crispy-chewy exterior and the lime and fish sauce dressing creates a flavor profile you’ll look forward to eating again with next week’s eggs. Cold plain pastaI find it infuriating that the “proper” serving of dry pasta is two ounces. I would like to eat a pound of it but alas, I have been shamed by society, so I’ll begrudgingly put the supposed extra in a container for the next day. With this clever trick, I now look forward to leftover pasta. This works for both plain boiled pasta or pasta that has a light coating of sauce. Add butter to a frying pan and tip the cold carbs into the melted butter. Stir and loosen the pasta as it warms up and then let it fry so it gets crispy and brown on the bottom. Serve it immediately to enjoy the new crunchy-soft texture of your stir-fry-revived pasta. That half-can of coconut milkKind of like the cup of puréed pumpkin I didn’t need for a recipe, I’ll occasionally end up with an unused portion of coconut milk in my fridge. I don’t particularly like it in my coffee, but that flavorful, fatty gift from nature cannot be wasted. Although you can freeze it, I decided the best way to use it up would be to capitalize on its inherent richness and make it into a luxurious coconut pudding for one. This simple recipe uses a cherry compote to top it off but you could substitute another fruit, jam, or go without and let the silky coconut speak for itself. View the full article

Buying a car is a hellish experience. Aside from the cost (nearly $50,000 for an average new car these days!) there’s the exhausting battle of wills you must engage in. No matter how well you prepare, walking into a dealership sometimes feels like walking into a battle, because everyone there is trying to take advantage of you—even if you know exactly what car you want. Unless you’re paying cash, the trickiest part of the car-buying experience isn’t dealing with the salesperson. It’s dealing with the finance people. The finance manager at your typical car dealership is often the highest-paid person there—and for good reason. They’re the ones who really work the angles to ensure the dealer gets as much money out of you as possible. They have a long list of subtle tricks they use to get you to sign a contract that might not be the best deal you could get—or even the deal you thought you were getting. Here are the tricks you should look out for after the salesperson hands you over to the finance people. Drawing your attention to the wrong numberCar salespeople are forever trying to do one basic thing when you’re financing a new car: Focus on the wrong number. The number they typically want you to pay attention to is the monthly payment. They’ll ask you what your budget is, then feel you out to see how high you can actually go, then work backward from there to come up with a deal that hits that monthly number but gets them the most profit over the long term. Common tricks include the infamous Four Square, where the salesperson jots down numbers, talks fast, crosses stuff out, and guides you to see that monthly payment and nothing else. Even if you defeat the Four Square and negotiate an out-the-door price on the car and a financing deal you can live with, that monthly number can still haunt you. One trick to watch out for is a monthly number that’s just slightly off what you expected—it’s close to what you negotiated, but not exactly right. That means it’s time to go through that contract with a fine-toothed comb, because something’s been altered. They may have added fees or something else into the total price, and when it’s amortized over several years the extra payment is small and they simply hope you won’t notice. Messing with the trade-in valueIf you’re trading in a vehicle as part of your transaction, the salesperson might proudly inform you that they’re going to value that trade-in at the same amount you owe on it. Which is great—as long as it’s true. What the finance guy might do is value the trade-in at a lower amount, then roll the extra money owed into the overall principle of the loan—and since they get incentives to write loans, the bigger the better (for them). This is probably illegal in your area, but that doesn’t stop them from making an “honest mistake” sometimes. Add-ons that increase the price unexpectedlyYou’ve negotiated your deal and you feel pretty good about the price you got for the car and the terms you’re getting for the financing. Then you sit down with the finance person and suddenly the price and payments are higher—because a long list of features and options you assumed were included in the price were not, actually, included. Now you have to choose between paying more for the car you thought you were getting, or starting the process over to get less car than you want. Interest rate markupsIf you finance your car purchase through the dealership, you should still look for financing elsewhere, if only to know what the available rates are. Because dealerships often mark up their interest rates to make the deal better for themselves. They call their lender and get a rate of, say, 6% for your car deal. But when they present the financing numbers the rate is 8% because the finance folks have marked up the rate—the dealer gets to keep that extra 2% charged on the loan. Always ask if the rate in the contract is the dealer’s “buy rate” or if they’re packed on some extra points without telling you. "Yo-yo-ing" This is a lot less fun than it sounds. It works like this: You negotiate the deal and buy the car. You take the car home. You love the car. Then a few days later the dealer calls and tells you that your financing was denied, so you have to come back in and re-negotiate the deal. Often, if you inspect the paperwork the finance people handed you, you’ll find fine print that states the sale isn’t final and that the dealer has the right to cancel the sale if they need to. They’re banking on a version of the sunk-costs fallacy to drive you to negotiate against yourself and pay more for the car. All you can do to defend against this is to get outside financing and read your paperwork carefully. Look for language that allows the dealer to cancel the sale—keywords like “conditional” or “not final” are often hints about this. If you see anything you’re not certain about, ask directly—and if you don’t like the answer, walk away. Bundling multiple negotiations into oneBuying a new car isn’t one simple transaction—you’re probably doing two or three separate things in parallel. You’re trading in a car—essentially negotiating a sale price for your old vehicle; you’re negotiating a price on a new vehicle; and you’re negotiating financing terms. What finance people at dealerships love to do is bundle those negotiations into one huge, messy deal. This way, if you push back on one aspect of the deal they can just make up for it in another. For example, let’s say you decide you’re not getting enough value for your trade-in and you push to get $500 more for it. The dealer reluctantly agrees—and adjusts your financing terms to claw back that $500. The more confusing and interconnected the bundle is, the harder it is for you to figure out if you’re getting what you actually want. The only real defense is to insist on separating these negotiations so you can see clearly what each one looks like. Adding "standard" things without askingSometimes you sit down with the finance folks and suddenly the price you negotiated is higher in the paperwork—because they’ve gone ahead and added “standard” stuff like gap insurance (covering the value of your car if you total the car and your insurance doesn’t cover the remaining debt on the loan) or extended warranties. They’ll often argue that the price you negotiated is still in effect—it’s the cost of the car, not the extra services. They’ll also often imply that these are required fees of some sort instead of add-ons. Gap insurance and warranties might be a good idea—but you should be aware of their costs before you’re presented with a contract. And dealers will sometimes add these in even if you already have your own insurance—which is almost certainly going to be a better deal for you overall. View the full article

There’s a lot of momentum around women’s sports right now, as ad spending doubled in 2024 and the largest dedicated female sports fund recently announced it has expanded from $150 million to $250 million. While these leaps and bounds are notable, more progress is needed to ensure this isn’t a fleeting moment—but rather the beginning of transformative change. Of course, more money always helps, too. “Women’s sports is skyrocketing and it’s because we are more visible, more than ever, right now,” Stef Strack, founder and CEO of Voice in Sport, said during a panel discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “Investors are looking at women’s sports as a growth opportunity, not a charity, and that is a really key moment.” Deals flow to professional volleyball And investors are putting a lot of money behind women’s sports. League One Volleyball (LOVB), a new professional women’s league with teams in six cities, raised $160 million through investors, according to Rosie Spaulding, the league’s president, which also has a youth-to-pro ecosystem with 60 youth clubs across 23 states. What’s more, to have a brand like Adidas partner with LOVB for a multimillion-dollar, multiyear deal is a sign of change, she said. “When we first started League One Volleyball, I thought women’s sports were on the rise back in 2020,” Spaulding said. “I think now we can all say that they’re on fire.” Another “really, really awesome” development is that professional athletes are able to build a brand and benefit from sponsorship deals from more brands that are interested in partnering with women in sports, added Logan Eggleston, who plays on the LOVB Austin team in the league’s inaugural season. She’s a partner with CELSIUS, maker of energy drinks, and that’s an added benefit to making a living playing the sport she loves. “I didn’t know that professional volleyball was a thing when I was younger,” Eggleston said. “To be able to show those young athletes what they can potentially be one day, and then also provide resources and mentorship for them, is so incredible.” A long way to go But all three panelists noted that more change is needed—from the level of investment to media attention to addressing pay inequity to policy changes (and enforcement) around Title IX to an improved focus on the athlete experience. “We’ve seen a ton of momentum, but right now we still have so much more progress to make,” Strack said. “There’s a lot of discrimination built into the current system, so we have to look fundamentally at everything in the ecosystem and think about, how do we reengineer it?” Strack rattled off various stats that show that more change is needed, including: only 10% of sports sponsorship dollars go to women athletes, no women landed in the top 100 list of highest-paid athletes, and that 93% of schools at the collegiate level aren’t complying with Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities. “We have to think about what do we do at the grassroots level, what do we do at the professional level, and then what do we do on the federal policy side to really change things for girls and women in sports,” Strack told the audience. Even more basic changes matter, Spaulding added, like giving women’s sports prime time slots or providing uniforms that actually fit women or fan gear that’s made for women. “Yes, there’s been more media, more investment through media, through private equity, through partnerships, et cetera,” she said. “But there’s a long way to go, and it’s all in the details.” Why fan support matters And buy-in from the fans is also important, Eggleston said. “They need to show up for women’s sports, they need to learn about the sports, educate themselves on the sports, get to know the athletes, the players that they’re getting to watch.” And while equal pay would be “amazing,” Eggleston said if more female athletes become household names like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have in women’s basketball, that also moves the needle—and particularly if young boys grow up with female athletes as their favorite players. “That would be so cool to see,” said Eggleston, who said she’s already experiencing the “perfect time” to be an athlete in women’s sports. “It’s so cool to be starting a league right now when the momentum is really, really just being driven forward. And I just can’t even imagine what’s going to be happening in the next five years.” View the full article

The speedy progress of AI development continues to dominate headlines, but the latest story to hit the news cycle is more bad press than good press: It turns out that Google's latest Gemini 2.0 Flash image editor is rather adept at automatically removing watermarks from images. Google pushed out the experimental native image generation capabilities a few days ago, promoting its capabilities in terms of combining images and text, editing images through conversational prompts, and improving its "world understanding" to give users AI-generated pictures that are more realistic overall. As TechCrunch reports, the newly upgraded tool was quickly put to one specific and rather nefarious use: Removing watermarks from proprietary images. You can find evidence of it on Reddit and X; while the watermark removal isn't perfect—the AI is only imagining the pixels that replace what's covered by the watermark, after all—it definitely leaves you with a usable image, one free of any copyright or authorship labels. It isn't exactly ironic that an AI tool should wind up being so capable at circumventing basic copyright protections. Gemini and other generative AI models have been trained on vast amounts of copyrighted text, images, and video, often without permission or recompense—something the AI companies are reluctant to talk about, unless it's to argue that this qualifies as fair use. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Though the idea of using an AI trained on scraped copyrighted works to steal an image someone else owns is galling, there are a few caveats worth mentioning. For a start, these new Gemini tools are only available to developers for the time being, and are still labeled as experimental—no doubt Google is going to make tweaks before general users get their hands on them. It's also worth noting that other shady watermark removal tools are already all over the web, even if none of them is not quite as smart as this and other advanced AI-powered versions would likely be. Still, it highlights the nefarious ways AI tools can be deployed, even as they're being relentlessly pushed out to businesses and consumers, and underlines the need for stringent guardrails. ChatGPT and Claude AI models are two that will refuse explicit requests to remove watermarks, and no doubt Google will add the same blocks to Gemini after all the negative coverage. The limits of AI image editingAs noted above, the watermark removal capabilities of Gemini can currently only be accessed through developer-facing tools, including AI Studio and the Gemini API. However, I also wanted to give it a go using the latest models available through the Gemini Advanced tools available to anyone paying $20 a month. I took screenshots of several copyrighted and watermarked images from Shutterstock (after first sifting through all the AI-generated results the site offered me), opened and resaved it in Photoshop (after dismissing all the pop-ups asking me to try Photoshop's latest AI tools), and then let Gemini get to work. Gemini gave me a pretty good approximation of the original image. Credit: Shutterstock / Gemini Most of the time, Gemini refused to get involved with watermark removal at all—telling me it wasn't capable of editing images, or explaining that it's "essential to respect copyright laws"—but it was happy to produce variations on the originals, watermark-free, and based on its training on copyrighted material. While these variations often weren't all that much like the originals, in one case it gave me a very close copy of a composite rocket ship photo, and in another it directed me to some watermark removal tools on the web—thanks, Gemini! Of course, you can also start from scratch and just describe a watermarked image you're hoping to emulate. ChatGPT didn't really understand the watermark removal assignment. Credit: Shutterstock / ChatGPT ChatGPT, meanwhile, did accept requests to remove watermarks, but then produced something completely different (and rather odd). Image editing is already available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, but as I've noted before, it's definitely not yet up to the level of a human Photoshop expert. The debate over copyright, fair use, and AI safety guardrails will continue, even as upgrade after upgrade makes these AI tools more advanced (even if they're not particularly useful). One issue the likes of Google and OpenAI may need to start worrying about is where they'll get fresh training data for their models, once they put all the flesh-and-blood creatives out of business. View the full article

The lender says its technology will supercharge scale, preventing a potential hiring and firing spree which doomed it after the recent refinance boom. View the full article

Quick: Send me a large file. Even today, decades after a famous comic about this exact problem, it's not necessarily simple. Messaging services don't allow truly huge files; neither do most email providers. You could stick the file in a cloud storage space, sure, but only if you're paying for enough storage space and not using that space for anything else at the moment. Isn't there some way to send a file directly, without using up any cloud space? There is. File.pizza is a web service that allows you to directly share a file from your computer with another device—no cloud storage or app needed. FilePizza isn't the only application like this. There's p2pfileshare.com and sharedrop.io, to name a couple. FilePizza stands out because of the simplicity—just share a file and copy the URL—and because it has a unique URL. The name of the application, while silly, has a crucial advantage: It's easy to remember. You can, on any computer, open a browser and type the url "file.pizza" to start sharing a file. Just drag the file onto the browser window, set a password if you want, then click Start. Credit: Justin Pot You now have a bunch of ways to share the file. There's a QR code, which is handy if you're trying to get a file onto a mobile device. There are also links you can copy and paste into a text. Credit: Justin Pot You might have noticed that I haven't blurred the QR code or the link above. There's a reason for that: These links only work as long as the computer is on and the browser window offering the file is open. Without a cloud service, it's on your device to share the file with whoever might download it. Close the tab, and the file is gone. That has downsides, obviously, but the upside is that you don't have to worry about the file being shared in the long term. This is a tool for one-time transfers. The person who opens the link will see the name of a file and a button to download it. When they click the button a direct connection is established. Credit: Justin Pot The speed of the download, obviously, is going to depend on your internet connection. If you've got a decent upload speed, though, this won't be an issue. And it works extremely well if you're on the same wifi network. Give it a shot the next time you need to send a file directly. View the full article

The number can be tailored to suit the occasionView the full article

Technology Transformation Services (TTS), a high-tech consulting group housed within the General Services Administration (GSA), is tasked with helping agencies modernize their internal systems and public-facing websites. In the past, the group has had the resources and personnel to create innovative new solutions: for example, building Login.gov, a single sign-on system for secure access to government services, along with Cloud.gov, the government’s cloud hosting environment. But now, with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the helm, the group faces a rapidly shrinking headcount and mandate, says a source within the GSA. Two DOGE operatives—GSA acting administrator Stephen Ehikian and TTS director Thomas Shedd—held a “demo day” last Friday where TTS technologists demonstrated the projects they’re working on to the larger organization, says a source within the GSA who spoke on a condition of anonymity. The source says Shedd has been evangelizing to TTS staffers that “shipping and delivery” of projects is the only focus of the group, echoing a common tech industry ethos. Shedd earlier commented that he believed the deep tech talent and government experience within TTS would be very useful in bringing new efficiency to the government. Shedd, who worked as a software engineer at Tesla for eight years before joining Musk’s DOGE, told staffers that he “needs wins” to demonstrate TTS’s value to DOGE leadership, the source says. Last week Shedd held an all-hands in which he read a statement saying that DOGE still intends to cut TTS staff by at least half. TTS staffers have been forced into an uneasy “waiting for the other shoe to drop” mode, according to the GSA source. “Blanket cuts across an organization rarely lead to increased efficiency,” says Kate Green, a former U.S. Digital Service engineer. “When you cut people in large groups, institutional knowledge is lost, those left have to rethink how they work, and there’s a significant loss in trust. This isn’t a recipe for quick wins.” Meanwhile, Shedd and Ehikian have kept TTS staffers busy continually submitting project status reports. But they are not setting new agendas or redirecting the efforts of TTS’s technologists. “The only agenda they really are driving is cutting costs for the most part,” the source says. “We haven’t received any clear guidance on what the goals of the organization are supposed to be after all the cuts—or even what they can be with so many cuts past the bone to the marrow,” the GSA source says. TTS’s scope will likely narrow to a handful of statutorily required projects, including Login.gov; FedRAMP, which standardizes cloud security for federal agencies, and Cloud.gov, a hosting environment for government digital services.. But the line between essential and nonessential projects has yet to be defined or explained, the source says. “The uncertainty around the products that will remain active is making it very difficult for organizations that depend on TTS products to be able to plan,” Green says. “For instance, state governments and other agencies that use login.gov are very concerned about how the product will evolve and they have data privacy concerns.” DOGE already completely eliminated one technology group under TTS, 18F, firing about 70 people including engineers, designers, and procurement specialists. The move was announced during the early morning hours of Saturday, March 1. (DOGE didn’t respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.) The federal government struggles to adopt more efficient technologies partly because of a risk-averse culture, and partly because of layers of policies and regulations that must be satisfied. A charitable interpretation is that DOGE has in mind a “destroy to create” approach to modernizing government systems. But, based on the group’s actions so far, and on the fact that its presidential mandate expires on July 4, 2026, it seems more likely that DOGE’s real agenda is just the “destroy” part. In other words Musk is trying to do the same thing to government that he did with his takeover of Twitter. “Maybe that’s fine in private industry where the tools that you’re working with are Twitter or Tesla and the impact to the public is not as great and lives are not lost,” says Itir Cole, a U.S. Digital Service staffer who recently left the government rather than becoming part of DOGE. “But when you do this for a federal program, if it fails at any point there could be lives lost.” View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I’m no stranger to the crisping prowess of the air fryer. (Here are some of my favorite models.) The powerful convection heating mechanism reheats leftovers, blisters veggies, and roasts meats quickly and with a sizzling finish reminiscent of an actual deep fryer—sans the vat of oil. But after using the Ninja Crispi—an air fryer that comes apart for easy storage—my interest in crispy crusts has changed to something totally unexpected: dips. Making dip in an air fryer is not normal. Dips have always been a stove top thing—you cook the ingredients in a pot or pan, then you pour it all into a casserole dish. Maybe at the end you move it to the oven for a broiled cheesy crust. But things have changed for me: Now I can make a heaping container of spicy buffalo chicken dip, broil it, serve it, and store the leftovers, all in the same vessel. Ninja Crispy Air Fryer $179.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Shop Now Shop Now $179.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Why dip works in the Ninja Crispi All this can be done because the Ninja Crispi is designed to come apart. The PowerPod (Ninja's name for the handheld convection engine) lifts on and off the cooking chamber. That container is made of clear tempered glass. It's pretty enough to be used as a serving dish, and small enough to fit in the fridge with your other containers. The Crispi cooking system comes with two containers (one large and one small), so you can still cook in one while you have something stored in the other. Plus, both containers come with lids. Here's my full Ninja Crispi review. Making dip in an air fryer might seem unhinged, but there are benefits to this style of cooking. It has the minimal clean-up of one-pot cooking, but it’s cooking from the top-down instead of the bottom-up. You cook ingredients directly in the air fryer container, stopping to lift off the Ninja Crispi PowerPod to stir when needed. When the necessary ingredients are cooked, simply mix in spices and the creamiest ingredients—sour cream, yogurt, or mayonnaise. Then top with cheese and put the PowerPod back on to melt it until browned and bubbly. Your air fryer has just become a quick, efficient broiler. No need to empty the dip into a new dish—simply serve it as-is. Here are my favorite dips to make in the Crispi right now. Buffalo Chicken Dip RecipeThis dip is quick to make and almost too easy to eat. The right buffalo sauce is key, so make sure you love the one you’re using. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Ingredients: 8 ounces butterflied chicken breast ¼ teaspoon salt Pinch MSG ½ cup plain Greek yogurt 2 ounces cream cheese 2 to 4 tablespoons buffalo hot sauce (I use Hot Ones buffalo hot sauce) ⅓ cup shredded cheddar, plus more for topping 1 to 3 sliced scallion, white ends and greens separated 1. Lay the thinly sliced chicken breast onto the grate of the Ninja Crispi, sprinkle with salt and MSG. Cook the chicken on bake mode for 10 minutes, or until cooked through but not too browned. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 2. Slide the grate out from under the chicken, and remove it. Shred the chicken with two forks directly in the Ninja Crispi container. 3. Add the yogurt, cream cheese, two tablespoons of buffalo sauce, cheddar, and the white and light green parts of the scallion. Cook it for another five minutes on bake mode. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 4. The cheeses and yogurt should be super soft. Mix everything together thoroughly and taste to see if you want more hot sauce. Spread the dip out flat and top the dip with a little more shredded cheese. Cook it for another three to five minutes on bake mode. Sprinkle the green scallion slices over the top and serve. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann French Onion Dip RecipeI never imagined being able to caramelize onions in an air fryer before, but it works in the Crispi. Don’t skip the MSG and Worcestershire sauce—they bring in the hearty umami boost that we all look for in French onion dip. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Ingredients: 2 medium onions (about 14 ounces), sliced 2 teaspoons neutral oil 1 tablespoon butter ¼ teaspoon salt 4 ounces full-fat sour cream 3 ounces plain Greek yogurt ¼ teaspoon onion powder 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce Pinch MSG 1. Spread out the onion slices into the small Ninja Crispi container. (Do not use the grate.) Drizzle the oil over the top along with the salt. Toss the onions a little to get them in contact with the oil, but you don’t have to be too precise about it. Break the butter up into chunks over the onions. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 2. Cook the onions for about 30 minutes on bake mode, stirring every three to five minutes. (Caramelizing onions takes time no matter how you do it.) Stir often. This step is important so the onions cook evenly. Some of the ends will still burn and that’s totally OK. It’s actually a good thing. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 3. Once the onions are softened and evenly browned, remove the PowerPod and let the caramelized onions cool for about 15 minutes. Stir in the sour cream, yogurt, onion powder, Worcestershire sauce, and MSG. Serve at room temperature or cover it with the Ninja Crispi lid and put it in the fridge until chilled. Extra-Meaty Seven-Layer Dip RecipeThis dip is great for a party. If you're a guest, stop at Step 5, pack up the container with the NinjaCrispi lid, and throw the PowerPod in the car. Plug in the Pod and broil the cheese just before serving. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Ingredients: 1 pound ground turkey (or other ground meat) ½ teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon salt 1 packet taco seasoning (or any another spice mix of choice) Sliced olives (I used jalepeño stuffed green olives) ½ can refried beans ½ cup sour cream (or plain greek yogurt) 2 to 3 tablespoons salsa Sliced green onions ½ cup shredded cheddar 1. I sprinkle the baking soda over the surface of the ground turkey and, with a gloved hand, mix it into the meat. This will help brown the meat and keep it tender. 2. Put the meat into the container of the Ninja Crispi without the grate. Note: In the picture I’m using the small container, but the dip almost didn’t fit by the end. I'm considering the large container for next time. On bake mode, cook the meat for 25 to 30 minutes, stirring and flipping the meat every five minutes or so. It'll look somewhat gross at first with the top browning and raw meat lurking underneath, just keep cooking it. The air fryer cooks from the top down, so flipping as you break up the meat morsels is the best way to cook it evenly. 3. When the meat looks mostly browned and nearly finished cooking through, stir in the salt and seasoning packet. Finish cooking the meat completely. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 4. Stir some olives into the meat. Then top the meat with more olives. Spread the refried beans over the top of the meat. Layer the sour cream on top of that, followed by a thin layer of salsa, green onions, and top it all with shredded cheddar. If using the small container, gently press the dip down so it’s below the rim of the dish. You don’t want the cheese to touch the PowerPod. 5. Cook the dip for another minute or two on the bake setting to melt the cheese, and serve with chips, crisp breads, or between two hamburger buns for a fancy sloppy joe. Why not? View the full article

Chair Jay Powell faces message challenge as central bank prepares to release new ‘dot plot’View the full article

A former COO at Marlin Mortgage claims the servicer transferred an MSR portfolio to a new subservicer not to benefit the investor, but for the gain of the company's CEO. View the full article

While Apple has offered password management solutions for years, it was only this past fall that the company finally rolled out a dedicated passwords app, appropriately named "Passwords." It's a bit basic, but it's built into the OS, and it gets the job done. (It's also free, which helps.) If you're fully into the Apple ecosystem, it's an easy way to create, store, and access the passwords of your numerous accounts. However, as it happens, Passwords has a critical security flaw that Apple only recently addressed. Here's the situation: Passwords has a security feature that helps you change an account's password directly within the Passwords app. This is particularly helpful if the app detects that one of your accounts' passwords has been compromised. You can tap on the account, choose "Change Password..." and open an in-app browser that will direct you to the account's website, where you can change your password. As convenient as this feature is, it contained a significant security risk. As discovered by security researchers with Mysk, whenever you tapped "Change Password..." on an account, Passwords would connect to the site using an unencrypted HTTP protocol, before redirecting to the encrypted HTTPS protocol. This encryption protects your connection between your device and the website you're visiting. Without it, an actor with privileged network access could take over the connection and redirect the link. Let's say the Passwords app warns you that your Yelp password has been compromised, and you need to change it. No problem: You tap your Yelp account in the app, then choose "Change Password..." However, a bad actor follows your activity, and before the real Yelp website can load, they redirect you to a fake Yelp site. Here, the fraudulent page encourages you to share your sensitive information, and since you think you're visiting the real Yelp site, perhaps you do. And just like that, you've been phished. As Mysk tells 9to5Mac, “We were surprised that Apple didn’t enforce HTTPS by default for such a sensitive app... Additionally, Apple should provide an option for security-conscious users to disable downloading icons completely. I don’t feel comfortable with my password manager constantly pinging each website I maintain a password for, even though the calls Passwords sends don’t contain any ID.” This problem isn't contained to the Passwords app, however. According to Mysk, this flaw has existed since Apple rolled out the ability to detect compromised passwords in iOS 14, all the way back in 2020: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. How to fix this 'Passwords' security flawApple quietly addressed this problem with the release of iOS 18.2. That update launched in December 2024, so changes are good you've updated your iPhone since then. However, if you haven't, you need to update to the latest version of iOS as soon as possible. (As of this article, that's iOS 18.3.2, which coincidentally contains another important security patch.) To update now, head to Settings > General > Software Update, then follow the on-screen instructions to download and install the update. View the full article

The land offensive comes after air strikes killed more than 400 people and shattered a two-month truceView the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Soundbars are the best way to take your home theater audio to the next level, especially if you complain about actors mumbling their lines. When it comes to high-end soundbars, there are a couple that beat out the competition, starting with the Sonos Arc (which is at its lowest price right now) for best overall sound—but the Samsung HW-Q900C is only marginally inferior to the Sonos, and you get a subwoofer as well for essentially the same price. The 7.1.2ch Samsung HW-Q900C soundbar and subwoofer combo are $565.68 (originally $1,399.00) right now, the lowest price it has ever been, according to price tracking tools. Samsung HW-Q900C Soundbar and Subwoofer $565.68 at Walmart $1,399.00 Save $833.32 Get Deal Get Deal $565.68 at Walmart $1,399.00 Save $833.32 The acoustics of the Samsung HW-Q900C won't reach the quality of the Sonos Arc, but it will get pretty close for significantly less money. It also includes more features and it's more adaptable. If you have multiple systems you want to hook up to your surround sound system, like gaming consoles or a Blu-Ray player, you'll make good use of the HDMI-switching feature to transition seamlessly between devices without the need to get down and dirty with the cables. The HW-Q900C is also highly adaptable, with four sound settings: standard, surround (gives a more soundstage presence), adaptive (adjusts on the fly based on what you're watching), and Game Pro (adjusts the volume for gaming). If you ever want to expand to a 9.1.4-channel system down the road, you'd just need to get the two rear satellite speakers, the SWA-9500S, and you'd have a top-of-the-line complete surround-sound system for under $900. However, if you have the money for it now, it's better to get the 11.1.4-channel HW-Q990C for $979 right away, which comes with better satellite speakers. Getting the same system set up from Sonos would run you much more money for not that much of an upgrade, but if money isn't an issue, then the Sonos surround system is the best you can get. View the full article

In previous articles, I’ve spoken about the dangers of sitting and the importance of using an ergonomic chair. at a glance: our top 5 picks for Office Chairs For Tall People Best Tall Office Chair: Herman Miller Aeron Ergonomic Chair - Size C Best Executive Chair: Serta Ergonomic Executive Motion Technology Chair Best Task Chair: Ergohuman High Back Swivel Chair With Headrest Best Drafting Chair: Harwick Evolve All Mesh Heavy Duty Drafting Chair Best Value Chair: Nouhaus Ergo3D Ergonomic Office Chair So what happens if you can’t find a comfortable chair because you’re a too tall? Actually this is quite a common problem for tall people. It’s an even bigger problem (no pun intended) for heavy people. So in this article, I will help you find the right ergonomic office chair that’s ideal for tall people. I will recommend the best chairs and also give you some advice about how to choose the right chair for you. Quick Comparison: Our Top 5 Picks for Office Chairs For Tall People IMAGEPRODUCT Best Tall Office ChairHerman Miller Aeron Ergonomic Chair - Size CFeatures 8Z pellicle technologyThe back of the chair is broken up into 8 distinct zonesThe backrest is built to support your spineView On Amazon → Best Executive ChairSerta Ergonomic Executive Motion Technology ChairThe chair features a unique back with motion technologyOffers lower back support that reclines with your bodyComfy padded headrestView On Amazon → Best Task ChairErgohuman High Back Swivel Chair With HeadrestHas multiple ergonomic featuresHas a durable polypropylene/chrome base and nylon castersMade from 97% recyclable materialsView On Amazon → Best Drafting ChairHarwick Evolve All Mesh Heavy Duty Drafting ChairIt has pneumatic seat height adjustability2-to-1 Syncro tilt and tension controlWaterfall set edge that eases the pressure on your legsView On Amazon → Best Value ChairNouhaus Ergo3D Ergonomic Office Chair135-degree tilt control4D adjustable lumbar supportUnique 5-point baseView On Amazon → View the full article

Staff told of redundancies in 12-minute call as firm retreats from British legal practice expansion plansView the full article

In 1957, Hollywood released The Deadly Mantis, a B-grade monster movie starring a praying mantis of nightmare proportions. Its premise: Melting Arctic ice has released a very hungry, million-year-old megabug, and scientists and the U.S. military will have to stop it. The rampaging insect menaces America’s Arctic military outposts, part of a critical line of national defense, before heading south and meeting its end in New York City. Yes, it’s over-the-top fiction, but the movie holds some truth about the U.S. military’s concerns then and now about the Arctic’s stability and its role in national security. A poster advertises The Deadly Mantis, a movie released in 1957, a time when Americans worried about a Russian invasion. The film used military footage to promote the nation’s radar defenses along the Distant Early Warning line in the Arctic. [Image: IMDB] In the late 1940s, Arctic temperatures were warming and the Cold War was heating up. The U.S. military had grown increasingly nervous about a Soviet invasion across the Arctic. It built bases and a line of radar stations. The movie used actual military footage of these polar outposts. But officials wondered: What if sodden snow and vanishing ice stalled American men and machines and weakened these northern defenses? In response to those concerns, the military created the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment, a research center dedicated to the science and engineering of all things frozen: glacier runways, the behavior of ice, the physics of snow and the climates of the past. It was the beginning of the military’s understanding that climate change couldn’t be ignored. Army engineers test the properties of snow on Greenland’s ice sheet in 1955, a critical determinant of mobility on the ice and one that changes rapidly with temperature and climate. [Photo: U.S. Army] As I was writing “When the Ice is Gone,” my recent book about Greenland, climate science and the U.S. military, I read government documents from the 1950s and 1960s showing how the Pentagon poured support into climate and cold-region research to boost the national defense. Initially, military planners recognized threats to their own ability to protect the nation. Over time, the U.S. military would come to see climate change as both a threat in itself and a threat multiplier for national security. Ice roads, ice cores and bases inside the ice sheet The military’s snow and ice engineering in the 1950s made it possible for convoys of tracked vehicles to routinely cross Greenland’s ice sheet, while planes landed and took off from ice and snow runways. In 1953, the Army even built a pair of secret surveillance sites inside the ice sheet, both equipped with Air Force radar units looking 24/7 for Soviet missiles and aircraft, but also with weather stations to understand the Arctic climate system. The public reveal of U.S. military bases somewhere—that remained classified—inside Greenland’s ice sheet, in the February 1955 edition of REAL. [Image: Paul Bierman collection] The Army drilled the world’s first deep ice core from a base it built within the Greenland ice sheet, Camp Century. Its goal: to understand how climate had changed in the past so they would know how it might change in the future. The military wasn’t shy about its climate change research successes. The Army’s chief ice scientist, Dr. Henri Bader, spoke on the Voice of America. He promoted ice coring as a way to investigate climates of the past, provide a new understanding of weather, and understand past climatic patterns to gauge and predict the one we are living in today – all strategically important. In the 1970s, painstaking laboratory work on the Camp Century ice core extracted minuscule amounts of ancient air trapped in tiny bubbles in the ice. Analyses of that gas revealed that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were lower for tens of thousands of years before the industrial revolution. After 1850, carbon dioxide levels crept up slowly at first and then rapidly accelerated. It was direct evidence that people’s actions, including burning coal and oil, were changing the composition of the atmosphere. Since 1850, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have spiked and global temperatures have warmed by more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 Celsius). The past 10 years have been the hottest since recordkeeping began, with 2024 now holding the record. Climate change is now affecting the entire Earth – but most especially the Arctic, which is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet. Since 1850, global average temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have risen together, reflecting human emissions of greenhouse gases. Red bars indicate warmer years; blue bars indicate colder years. [Image: NOAA] Seeing climate change as a threat multiplier For decades, military leaders have been discussing climate change as a threat and a threat multiplier that could worsen instability and mass migration in already fragile regions of the world. Climate change can fuel storms, wildfires and rising seas that threaten important military bases. It puts personnel at risk in rising heat and melts sea ice, creating new national security concerns in the Arctic. Climate change can also contribute to instability and conflict when water and food shortages trigger increasing competition for resources, internal and cross-border tensions, or mass migrations. The military understands that these threats can’t be ignored. As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told a conference in September 2024: “Climate resilience is force resilience.” A view of ships docked at the sprawling Naval Station Norfolk show how much of the region is within a few feet of sea level. [Photo: Petty Officer 2nd Class Christopher Stoltz/US Navy] Consider Naval Station Norfolk. It’s the largest military port facility in the world and sits just above sea level on Virginia’s Atlantic coast. Sea level there rose more than 1.5 feet in the last century, and it’s on track to rise that much again by 2050 as glaciers around the world melt and warming ocean water expands. High tides already cause delays in repair work, and major storms and their storm surges have damaged expensive equipment. The Navy has built sea walls and worked to restore coastal dunes and marshlands to protect its Virginia properties, but the risks continue to increase. Planning for the future, the Navy incorporates scientists’ projections of sea level rise and increasing hurricane strength to design more resilient facilities. By adapting to climate change, the U.S. Navy will avoid the fate of another famous marine power: the Norse, forced to abandon their flooded Greenland settlements when sea level there rose about 600 years ago. Norse ruins in Igaliku in southern Greenland, illustrated in the late 1800s while flooded at spring tide by sea level, which had risen since the settlement was abandoned around 1400. [Image: Steenstrup, K.J.V., and A. Kornerup. 1881. Expeditionen til Julianehaabs distrikt i 1876. MeddelelseromGrønland] Climate change is costly to ignore As the impacts of climate change grow in both frequency and magnitude, the costs of inaction are increasing. Most economists agree that it’s cheaper to act now than deal with the consequences. Yet, in the past 20 years, the political discourse around addressing the cause and effects of climate change has become increasingly politicized and partisan, stymieing effective action. In my view, the military’s approach to problem-solving and threat reduction provides a model for civil society to address climate change in two ways: reducing carbon emissions and adapting to inevitable climate change impacts. The U.S. military emits more planet warming carbon than Sweden and spent more than US$2 billion on energy in 2021. It accounts for more than 70% of energy used by the federal government. In that context, its embrace of alternative energy, including solar generation, microgrids and wind power, makes economic and environmental sense. The U.S. military is moving away from fossil fuels, not because of any political agenda, but because of the cost-savings, increased reliability and energy independence the alternatives provide. As sea ice melts and Arctic temperatures rise, the polar region has again become a strategic priority. Russia and China are expanding Arctic shipping routes and eyeing critical mineral deposits as they become accessible. The military knows climate change affects national security, which is why it continues to take steps to address the threats a changing climate presents. Paul Bierman is a fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment and professor of natural resources and environmental Science at the University of Vermont. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

This post is part of our Home Remedy Handbook, a tour of the landscape of home remedies from the iffy to the doctor-approved. Read more here. Thanks to a loophole in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, some of the “drugs” you can buy at pharmacies are actually nothing but magic water. I am, I promise, not exaggerating. I don’t mean supplements, which are legal because they are considered to be not drugs. And I don’t mean foods that make iffy or overblown health claims (nothing as boring as that). I mean that you can walk into a pharmacy and pay seven dollars of legal tender for a “natural” kids cold & cough remedy and walk away with a bottle of mostly water—or at least what is hopefully mostly water. That bottle may bear a Drug Facts label and a seemingly factual statement that it “temporarily relieves symptoms of common cold in children.” And it does not contain any medicine. That’s because it isn’t formulated with modern medications, nor with medicinal quantities of herbs that are believed to have healing properties. Homeopathic drugs are just water (with or without alcohol or sugar) that have been imbued with the magical vibrations of substances that, if used straight, would make your symptoms worse. My friends: Homeopathy is not only nonsense—it is some of the wildest nonsense you will read about today. What the hell is homeopathy, really?Let’s step back in our time machine to 1796. A German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, was disappointed with the state of medicine at the time. This was the age of bloodletting, when doctors responded to illnesses by trying to balance the body’s “humors.” The treatments of the time often did more harm than good, so Hahnemann wasn’t necessarily wrong for wanting to find other ways of doctoring. But his alternative didn’t work, either. Remember, this is well before anybody knew that germs could cause illness, or that operating rooms should be clean, or that vitamins existed, or what made herbal medicines work (when they did). Clinical trials, as we know them, were not a standard tool of science or medicine. So, one day, Hahnemann ate some cinchona bark. This is the tree bark from South America that is now recognized as one of the first modern pharmaceuticals. It’s where we get quinine, the “tonic” in tonic water. We now know that a chemical found in the bark can kill the parasite that causes malaria. In the understanding of the time, though, all anybody knew was that taking this bark would cure your recurring fever. Hahnemann did not have malaria. He reportedly took notes on the symptoms he experienced from mildly overdosing on cinchona, which included weakness, trembling, and fever, among others. These sounded to him like the symptoms of malaria itself, and this observation led him to the “law of similars” that forms the basis for homeopathic medicine. According to this so-called law, the way you treat an illness is to find a substance that causes the same symptoms of that illness in healthy people. So how is that not making the sick person’s illness worse? Well, the (incorrect) theory goes: You separate the substance from the healing properties of that substance. You put the healing properties into water. Then you have magic water. How homeopathy is supposed to workFirst, you find a substance that can produce the same symptoms as the condition you are trying to treat. For example, coffee can give you jitters and sleeplessness, so a homeopathic medicine made from coffee is supposed to be an appropriate treatment for a hyperactive child, or a person with insomnia. Onion makes your eyes water and your nose run, so onion extract is used in homeopathic remedies with the intention of stopping your eyes from watering and your nose from running. Onion is actually one of the ingredients you may find in homeopathic children’s cold medicines—“Allium cepa 6X HPUS” means that a preparation made from onions was diluted in water at a ratio of 1:10. Then a small amount of that preparation was diluted at a 1:10 ratio, and so on, a total of six times. The result, if I have done my math right, is an onion-to-water ratio of one to one million. To be clear, we are not just diluting the onion water. We are “succusing” the water, or shaking it in a particular way, to transfer the memory of the onion into the water. Homeopaths—who, yes, exist today—are convinced that water does indeed have memory, and to them, the only question remaining is how to convince real scientists that this must be true. Since the water remembers the onion, homeopaths don’t need to worry whether or not there is any onion in the finished cold medicine—although the preparation is statistically likely to include a good bit of it. The dilution is only 6X. Homeopaths consider this number of dilutions to make a weak or mild medicine; to get the extra-strength stuff, you would need to dilute it more. This is no secret. The American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists is happy to tell you that homeopathic preparations often contain none of their supposed active ingredient. In their FAQ, they answer the question “Can I take an overdose or too much of a homeopathic medicine?” by saying: "Because of the extremely small amount of highly diluted active ingredients, you need not worry about suffering an overdose by taking more homeopathic medicine than the recommended dosage. In dilutions above 8X or 4C, any toxic properties of the original substance have disappeared; the medicine is safe and sold over-the-counter (OTC)." And yes, that means “over-the-counter” as in something you can buy at your neighborhood pharmacy or your favorite big-box store. Look next to the regular cold medicines and pain relievers, and you’ll find homeopathic products from brands like Hyland’s and Boiron. Homeopathic "remedies" can be dangerousHomeopaths love to point out that the dilution keeps their products safe. But many homeopathic medicines are not diluted to extremes. We have already seen that there are products that are less diluted, like the 6X ingredients in our example. If that were something more toxic than onion, we might worry. And then there are products sold as “homeopathic” even though they contain a substantial amount of the active ingredient. I’ve seen arnica gel, for example, that is offered at a “1X” dilution. Sambucol sells elderberry products to treat colds where some are supplements (containing substantial amounts of elderberry) and others are homeopathic (containing little to no elderberry). You can tell the difference if you know how to read a Supplement Facts label versus a homeopathic Drug Facts label, but the fronts of the packages both seem to claim the same benefits. The law of similars would seem to dictate that these two products cannot possibly treat the same condition; in homeopathy world, if homeopathic elderberry cures a cold, then non-homeopathic elderberry would give you cold symptoms. But there is no FDA regulation requiring your marketing strategy to stick to a single theory of medicine. It really isn't fair for critics of homeopathy to say that these medicines are “just” water, since they are often not. And by the same token, it does not follow that homeopathic medicines are “safe” because they are diluted. In fact, products labeled as homeopathic have allegedly killed people. In 2016, the FDA investigated a brand of homeopathic teething tablets that was linked to the deaths of 10 infants and another 400 reports of adverse events like seizures. One of the ingredients was belladonna, or deadly nightshade. The FDA’s lab testing found that the tablets contained significant amounts of belladonna, often more than stated on the label, and warned people not to buy them. The company issued a recall in 2017, just like it had in 2010 when the same damn thing happened. Or to take another example, homeopathic nasal gels and nasal swabs contained enough zinc to cause people to permanently lose their sense of smell. The FDA issued warning letters, saying that even though the product is labeled as homeopathic, it does include zinc and the FDA is not aware of any trials showing zinc in the nose to be safe and effective. The dilution in that case was 2X, meaning the products had 0.1% zinc. How is any of this legal?Well, it’s sort of not. But the FDA also isn’t trying very hard to stop it. Homeopathic “drugs” got a carveout in the 1938 law that defined what, exactly, the FDA exists to regulate. Over the years, the FDA has struggled with the fact that drugs are defined as either drugs that work or remedies that were grandfathered in for being homeopathic. Homeopathic medicines aren’t tested with clinical trials. They rely on “provings,” in which the raw ingredients are given to healthy volunteers and their symptoms documented. According to homeopathic theory, no clinical trials are needed. And this isn’t just a loophole for over-the-counter drugs: There exist schools of homeopathy and private-practice homeopaths who will customize remedies to your particular temperament. (Remember, homeopathy is all about matching symptoms to symptoms; the cause of the illness, homeopaths will tell you, is irrelevant.) Over the years, the FDA has slowly come to terms with the fact that drugs are required to be safe and effective, and homeopathic drugs are not. I think my favorite moment—perhaps my favorite government document of all time—is when the Federal Trade Commission sent the FDA a spicy letter pointing out that it is, in fact, illegal for companies to lie about their products. The FDA finally decided in 2022 that they can, in fact, boot products off the market for being unsafe or ineffective. But instead of a blanket declaration that homeopathic products were thenceforth illegal, the agency stated that it would “focus its enforcement authorities” on products that seem to be particularly dangerous. Which means that a lot of this nonsense is still on store shelves and will stay there probably forever. How to avoid buying homeopathic products by accidentFirst of all, beware the stuff that seems too good to be true. For example, a lot of real medications that are appropriate for adults and older children aren’t OK for babies or toddlers. (Cough medicine, for example, is not for children under the age of four.) So homeopathy companies have pounced on this market because they know you want to buy some kind of cough medicine for your baby. And since most people don’t know what homeopathy is, you’ll probably look the box over and figure it must be legit. So here’s how to read the label: First, see if it’s a Drug Facts label or not. (Some of the products you’ll find in the drugstore are supplements, which may or may not be useful in some way. But supplements are not medicine.) Next, if it’s a Drug Facts label, look for these signs: Dilutions listed with a number and letter, like 6X or 20C The acronym HPUS next to an ingredient, which refers to the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States (a government-recognized giant database of bullshit) Ingredients with (usually) two-word Latin names, like “natrum muriaticum” (that one is sea salt) Some homeopathic products will include a disclaimer like “Claims based on traditional homeopathic practice, not accepted medical evidence.” A lot hides behind that Latin, by the way. Sometimes ingredients are plant extracts or chemical elements, and sometimes they are common items like onions or salt. In other cases, they are eye-of-newt caliber preparations, like the “Hepar Sulph Calc” in one cold medicine that is the inner layer of oyster shells, ground finely and cooked with sulfur. That’s a special recipe from Hahnemann himself. And to leave you with just one more “what the hell” moment for today, I’ll tell you about oscillococcinum, a homeopathic product you can commonly pick up at any neighborhood pharmacy. The ingredient is often listed as Anas barbariae, which is meant to refer to the Muscovy duck. (The Muscovy duck is now known by the scientific name Cairina moschata, so this isn’t even its scientific name, just a Latinized version of the common name.) Anyway, the reason this is sold to treat “flu-like symptoms” is because of a breathtakingly fantastical hypothesis, long disproven, about the cause of the flu. Today we know that influenza is caused by the influenza virus. But in 1920, viruses had yet to be discovered. Bacteria were known, though, so scientists were constantly looking through microscopes at blood and tissue samples from sick people, hoping to find the germ that would explain everything. As McGill University’s Office of Science and Society tells it: [Dr. Joseph] Roy naturally took a great interest in the flu and sought to solve its mysterious cause by examining the blood of victims under the microscope. He described seeing tiny microbes that darted or “oscillated” quickly back and forth. He named these “oscillococci” and claimed that they were also to be found in the blood of patients suffering from diseases as diverse as cancer, tuberculosis and gonorrhea. This “universal germ” as he called it, was responsible for many illnesses! If these oscillococci were causing the symptoms of disease, Roy concluded, then a homeopathic solution of the same should be curative. Yep, a vibrating microbe that causes all illness. Make a homeopathic preparation of that, and Bob’s your uncle! Now, how do you make a homeopathic preparation of that? Well, Roy thought he had found the same vibrating microbes in duck livers. (To this day, nobody knows what he actually saw. There are no vibrating microbes in duck livers—you can go look.) So you make a preparation from duck organs, dilute the heck out of it, infuse the resulting water into sugar pills, and sell those pills for $29.99 at Target. (A real price I just confirmed. God, I wish I were making this up.) You know what actually works for cases of flu that are mild enough to treat at home? Fluids. Rest. Maybe a little saline to flush out the mucus in your nose. You know: home remedies. View the full article

Billionaire businessman, investor, former shark, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban knows a bit about running a company and leading employees. The serial entrepreneur has founded and invested in successful businesses from food brands to tech startups and pretty much everything in between. Cuban often shares his insights about sweat equity and staying involved in running one’s own business. Here are three of the most actionable pearls of leadership wisdom from Mark Cuban—and how you can put these quotes into action in your own leadership. 1. Embrace Sweat Equity “Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is.” Put simply, “sweat equity” is the value you create through your own hard work. This might be the unpaid work you put into researching your competitor’s products, perfecting your public-speaking skills, getting to know your customers, or recruiting the best employees for your company. Your time and your effort don’t cost you anything, and pouring both into your work can make all the difference. As a leader, you should also encourage your employees to contribute their sweat equity. This doesn’t mean forcing unpaid overtime, of course. According to Cuban, the key to leadership is knowing your employees and finding out how their goals and the business’s goals align. Maybe you have an employee who wants to get into videography and your company’s marketing could benefit from some custom videos. Perhaps someone wants to move into management in the future, and there’s a cross-functional project they could manage. Mark Cuban isn’t the only successful leader who embraces the idea of sweat equity. Other business leaders who have spoken on the value of hard work are: Warren Buffett, CEO and chairperson of Berkshire Hathaway (aka the “Oracle of Omaha”) Dan Graham, cofounder and CEO of BuildASign.com Justin Gray, founder and CEO of five successful companies 2. Be the Expert in Your Field “Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world.” There are countless ways to boost your knowledge through effort rather than financial investment, making learning one of the most valuable ways to build sweat equity. The more you know about your business and industry, the more you, as a leader, will be ready for any problem or decision that comes your way. “What I’ve learned is that if you really want to be successful at something, you’ll find that you put the time in,” Cuban said at the 2017 Inc. 5000 Conference. “You won’t just ask somebody if it’s a good idea, you’ll go figure out if it’s a good idea.” You can work continuous learning into your life by: Keeping a running list of any new ideas or concepts you come across so you know which topics you want to learn Breaking new topics down into subtopics that you can learn in small bursts when you have the time Scheduling regular learning time—whether it’s a scheduled course, a set hour a day, or a few hours each weekend Continuous learning is also an important practice for staying ahead of industry trends. You could: Follow others in your industry on social media and pay attention to new topics Attend industry events and network regularly Use frequent customer and employee surveys Invite your employees to share new trends they come across 3. Lead with Passion and Purpose “Love what you do or don’t do it.” If you’re truly passionate about your work, putting in the sweat equity will be a lot easier. If you’re bored every time you read about a new development in your field—it’s not the field for you, and it’s going to be hard to put in the work you need to really thrive. Think about your values. What truly drives you? Are you living out those values in your work? For example, if you value helping others, are you consistently soliciting customer and employee feedback and acting on it? If you value recognition, are you going after awards in your field? Not everyone will be as excited about your passions as you are, of course, but passionate leaders can inspire employees. Speak openly with your employees about your vision and you’re more likely to get their buy-in. Check in with those you lead to find out where their passions lie and see how they align with your goals. “Leadership is having a vision,” Cuban said on The Draymond Green Show. “What’s my goal? Part two is getting to know the people who are working with me, and what their goals are. And then the real definition of leadership is making those two merge.” Conclusion: The Cuban Formula for Success Cuban’s advice can be boiled down to three key principles: Hard work Constant learning Passion Living out these principles will not only make you more effective at your job, but inspire your employees to do the same—as long as you give them the tools and support they need. View the full article

Government demands to access encrypted data via back doors will leave it vulnerable to hacks, breaches and theft View the full article

Converting a .pdf to a .docx and back again may seem like a quick and easy thing you can do online for free—but that doesn't mean it's safe. A new notice from the FBI Denver Field Office warns that some online document converters are also loading malware onto unsuspecting users' computers, giving bad actors access to your device and your data. The tools may also scrape files submitted for conversion for sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, birthdates, email addresses, passwords or tokens to bypass multi-factor authentication, banking information, and cryptocurrency seed phrases and wallet addresses. How to spot malicious file convertersThis scheme may be easy to miss, as the malicious file converters will do what they advertise, such as converting a .docx to a .pdf or joining multiple files into one. However, the file you download may contain hidden ransomware, adware, or riskware that exposes your computer to attackers. You may also be prompted to download a conversion tool (that is actually malware) to your device or install a malicious browser extension. According to a Malwarebytes Labs report on the scam, the following domains have been found to contain malware: Imageconvertors[.]com (Phishing) convertitoremp3[.]it (Riskware) convertisseurs-pdf[.]com (Riskware) convertscloud[.]com (Phishing) convertix-api[.]xyz (Trojan) convertallfiles[.]com (Adware) freejpgtopdfconverter[.]com (Riskware) primeconvertapp[.]com (Riskware) 9convert[.]com (Riskware) Convertpro[.]org (Riskware) While these are known scams, that doesn't mean there aren't other free, malware-containing file converters out there waiting to infect your device. The best thing you can do is avoid these tools entirely and utilize trusted software instead. But if you suspect you've been exposed, start by taking basic steps to secure your identity, including changing passwords using a clean, trusted device, and running an anti-malware program to catch any threats. How to convert files safelyWhen you need to quickly convert from one document type to another, you may be tempted to google "free file converter" and click on whatever comes up—but don't. Instead, start with the software or applications you have that can open the file, and check if you can export or save it in a different format (look under File > Export or File > Save As). Microsoft Office and many PDF editors have this functionality, or you can use Adobe's free tools to convert to and from a PDF, as well as a handful of other document converters available for free. Remember that when you convert files, you may lose some formatting in the process. 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. Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound A1 (2nd Gen) is a speaker that packs a serious punch for its size. Normally priced at $299.99, it’s down to $139.99 on Woot for the next 13 days or until stock runs out—and if you have Amazon Prime, shipping is free. Non-Prime members will have to pay $6, but either way, it’s only available to the contiguous U.S. (no shipping to Alaska, Hawaii, or PO boxes). Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound A1 (2nd Gen) $139.99 at Woot $299.99 Save $160.00 Get Deal Get Deal $139.99 at Woot $299.99 Save $160.00 PCMag gave this Bluetooth speaker an Editor’s Choice award when it launched in 2020, and it’s still a strong contender today. At just 1.2 pounds, the Beosound A1 is not exactly light for its size, though it comes with a leather lanyard for easy carrying. With an IP67 rating that can handle dust, sand, and submersion, it's ready to accompany you on outdoor adventures. Setup is handled through the Bang & Olufsen app, which also enables its built-in Alexa—though you’ll need to link accounts first. It's Bluetooth 5.1-compatible with support for AAC and AptX Adaptive codecs, though it doesn’t have LDAC support for high-res listening. The battery life of the Beosound A1 is rated at 18 hours, but that’ll depend on your volume settings. This little speaker gets loud, driven by a 3.5-inch woofer and a 0.4-inch tweeter, both powered by dedicated 30-watt Class D amps. The result is a deep bass (enough to shake a table but without the speaker itself moving around) that stays full even at moderate to high volumes. It’s a bass-heavy tuning, which makes sense given its size—though at max volume, the DSP kicks in to prevent distortion, thinning out the sound slightly, notes the PCMag review. Its frequency range of 55Hz-20kHz means you’ll get solid lows and clear highs, but don’t expect a perfectly balanced studio monitor sound. The app’s EQ adjustment isn’t the most intuitive, using a circular chart instead of sliders, but it offers some control over tuning. If you’re looking for something newer with the latest Bluetooth tech (and one that's a little more budget-friendly), the Beats Pill is currently $99.99 (down from $149.95) and might be worth considering instead. View the full article

Rising insurance costs are leading providers and condo associations to consider changes to policies that would make some loans ineligible for GSE sale. View the full article