Scammers Are Already Capitalizing on Confusion Over Tariffs

If you’re like most people, you probably didn’t think a whole lot about tariffs before this year. And if you’re like most people, you’ve probably spent this year thinking a lot about tariffs—specifically, how they’re going to impact your life. Whether it’s worry over higher prices and empty store shelves or more generalized economic anxiety, these certainly are exciting times. And, like clockwork, we can add one more thing to worry about in relation to tariffs: Scams.

Pivoting off the chaos and uncertainty everyone is experiencing around the on-again, off-again tariffs and their constantly shifting parameters, scammers have quickly assembled a few new attacks on your bank account. They count on the fact that most of us aren’t economists or experienced with import/export law, so it can be easy to frighten or intimidate us into forking over money, especially because the one thing most of us know about tariffs is that they’re going to cost us money. Here are the tariff scams you need to be on alert for—and how to spot them.

Fake government emails

One new scam attempts to leverage people’s unfamiliarity with tariffs by posing as government agencies seeking tariff payments directly from consumers. Several hundred websites have been created since the beginning of the year, many with deceptive names including terms like “U.S. Customs” or “Tariffs” in hopes of convincing you they’re legitimate organs of the government. The scammers then send out emails from those official-looking domains claiming that you owe a tariff payment for something you bought recently, or that you owe a general tariff payment.

Sometimes the scammer’s goal is to get you to make a payment, but often it’s just to collect your information via an official-looking form.

How to spot it: First, always keep in mind that consumers don’t pay tariffs directly—if the costs are passed on to you, it’s through higher prices. Any request for a direct tariff payment is almost certainly a scam. Any official government website will have a “.gov” extension, so you should be suspicious of any “.com” or “.net” sites claiming to be associated with the government. You can also use what’s known as a WHOIS lookup to see when a web domain was registered. Any site created within the last few months should be considered extremely suspicious.

Fake messages about mail and packages

Another way scammers will try to leverage tariff confusion against you is by pretending to be a major shipping company like FedEx or UPS. They’ll send you an email claiming that you have a package being held because a tariff is owed, and direct you to a scam sight to pay to have the package released. This is a twist on an old scam, but uncertainty over who owes tariffs gives it a fresh sheen of legitimacy.

How to spot it: Simply reminding yourself that you should never pay a tariff directly is key—any request from a shipping company or the United States Post Office for a tariff-related fee is a scam, full stop. If you actually have packages coming and you’re at all uncertain of their status, always verify details separately by going to the shipper’s main website and entering tracking information there, or contacting their customer service.

Factory shopping

If you’re a consumer on a budget—and who isn’t these days—you might be excited to stumble on a social media post or email purporting to sell you stuff directly from factories in China or other countries without a tariff. They claim that the stuff is the same as name-brand clothing or other items, just without the branding, making them cheaper to offset any tariff-driven price increases. These sites are often pushed by so-called influencers on platforms like TikTok, who gush about avoiding tariff fees.

Of course, once you receive your items—assuming you actually do—they’re almost certainly counterfeit and probably pretty crappy in terms of quality. And you won’t have the benefit of the brand’s customer service to fall back on, either.

How to spot it: Anyone claiming they can circumvent tariffs is probably lying to you, and the old rule about things being too good to be true (i.e., they probably aren’t) always applies. If you see a post or video purporting to show a foreign factory selling items directly to consumers, it’s almost certainly a scam.

Fake tariff relief payments

All this talk of skyrocketing prices has made everyone understandably nervous about paying their bills. This has led to a version of a scam that’s been popular ever since the pandemic stimulus checks went out: Fake relief payments.

Advertisements are showing up on social media claiming that there are various “tariff relief” payments going out, offering anywhere from $750 to $5,600. These are supposedly government programs to help us all survive the new reality of tariffs, and in the wake of previous government bailouts and stimulus payments they can seem plausible at first glance. Of course, if you click on any of these ads you’ll find yourself at a phishing site demanding every bit of sensitive information the scammers can think of.

How to spot it: Since these usually pop up in the form of paid ads on platforms like Facebook, they will usually be marked as “sponsored” in some way—if you see an indication that it’s a paid ad, ignore it. If the government were to send out some sort of tariff-related stimulus, it wouldn’t require you to fill out forms—like previous stimulus payments, it would rely on the reams of data it already has on you thanks to the IRS. And a tariff stimulus would be in the news. A lot. If you’re tempted to believe something like this, look for headlines on legitimate news sites—if you don’t see any, assume it’s a scam.

Investment scams

Scammers are always trying to play off two things: Fear and greed. While there have always been investment scams involving fake accounts or dubious cryptocurrencies, the newest versions of these scams play on everyone’s fear of economic turmoil, claiming that a new investment product—typically in the cryptocurrency sphere—offers a risk-free safe haven from tariff chaos. While economies and national currencies might falter as trade wars escalate, the pitch goes, this nifty new version of money is unaffected by tariffs or other traditional economic factors and offers steady returns. Naturally, if you actually contact these sites and make an investment, your money simply vanishes, or you’re pulled into a Pig Butchering scam complete with a fake website showing you incredible returns on your investment that you will never actually be able to withdraw.

How to spot it: The most obvious sign of a scam investment is an unrealistic rate of return. Any investment that “guarantees” no risk of loss and a huge profit in a short time is almost always a scam. If it involves a cryptocurrency you’ve never heard of, you should definitely be suspicious. An increasingly common sign of a tariff-related crypto scam is a fake “endorsement” from a political figure—a scam targeting nervous Canadian investors, for example, used fake testimonials from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other officials to fool people. Government officials typically don’t endorse investments, and you should absolutely fact-check any you see without relying on links provided by the site itself.

Eight Steps to Organize and Pay Off Your Debt

The average total consumer household debt last year was $105,056—a 13% increase over the past five years, according to the most recent data. When it comes to researching strategies and tips for paying off your balances, it’s easy to get lost down a rabbit hole. And that rabbit hole can distract you from the real work of getting organized and tackling your debt.

Taking the first steps toward a clear plan and system in place—even just reading this article—can help you feel more in control and start to make some progress toward being debt-free. If you’re worried and feeling overwhelmed by debt, here are initial steps to take so you can get organized and make some real progress.

Know what you owe

Before you can tackle your debt, you need a complete picture of what you’re facing. Here are the first actionable steps you can take:

  • Gather all statements for every debt you have (credit cards, student loans, medical bills, personal loans).

  • Create a master list with the creditor name, balance, interest rate, minimum payment, and due date for each debt.

  • Check your credit reports to ensure you haven’t missed any debts.

  • Keep this information in one accessible place—a spreadsheet, notebook, or budgeting app.

List out your interest rates

In order to prioritize your debts, list them out by interest rates. If you can’t rattle off yours, it’s time to log into your accounts or check your latest statement to pinpoint your interest rate for each and every balance you carry. Doing this now can help you strategize to get that debt paid off faster.

Choose a payoff method

Once you know your interest rates, you can strategize your payoff plan with either the snowball method or the avalanche method.

The avalanche method prioritizes high-interest debt first, helping you pay less interest in the long run by knocking out debts with higher interest rates as soon as possible. The main benefit of the debt avalanche is that it saves you the most money in the long run by targeting the most expensive debt first. This can be especially helpful if you have one or two debts with significantly higher interest rates than the others. Knocking those out first can make a big dent in the total amount you owe.

The snowball method, on the other hand, focuses on paying off your debts in order of smallest balance to largest. The idea is that getting “wins” by paying off smaller debts quickly can provide much-needed motivation to keep going. The main benefit of the debt snowball is the psychological boost you get from crossing debts off your list one by one. This can be incredibly powerful, especially if you have a lot of smaller debts that feel overwhelming. Paying them off in quick succession can give you the momentum to keep tackling the larger debts.

Never miss a payment

Even if you only make the minimum payment on your balances to start, make sure you pay each and every bill on time, every time. Missing that due date could result in both a late fee and a penalty APR, meaning you could pay up to 30% interest for a while instead of your normal interest rate. Dealing with that penalty interest rate could set your payoff plans back in a major way.

To make it easier to avoid payment disasters, set up automatic payments. You can always make additional payments when you’re able to pay more than the minimum, or adjust the amount for your monthly payments. And if your debt is in a balance transfer promotional period (more on that in the next slide), you’ll want to make sure you can pay off your entire balance during that zero-interest period.

Consolidate your debt or transfer your balance

If you’re having a hard time paying more than the minimum on your debts, consider taking steps to reduce your interest rates. There are two main ways you can do this if you don’t feel like calling every one of your creditors to haggle:

Consolidate: Debt consolidation makes sense if you can save money over the long term by securing a better interest rate, or if streamlining will be what allows you to make payments on time. And remember, consolidated debt is still debt that needs to be paid off as quickly as possible.

Transfer: Check with your credit card issuer for zero-interest balance transfer offers, which allow you to transfer in your balance from another source of debt to your current account. Zero-interest offer periods can last anywhere between nine and 18 months.

Forget about earning rewards

Rewards earnings setups and signup bonuses have a special way of getting people to spend more than they bargained for. If you’re in debt, now isn’t the time to try to optimize your credit card use to earn maximum rewards. This is especially important if you have cards that charge annual fees.

If you have some rewards cards in your wallet, convert your balance to statement credit to help put a dent in your balance.

Ask for help if you get stuck

If you’re having a hard time paying your minimum debt payments because of a financial hardship like a job loss, you can ask your creditor if it has a customer assistance program. You may be able to defer your payments for a few months while you get back on track.

You can also get a second opinion on your debt payoff plan, whether your monthly budget is in dire straits or you’re just feeling stuck. Credit counseling organizations are typically non-profit groups that provide a range of money management services and educational resources to consumers. Their counselors are certified professionals who can give you expert, unbiased guidance on how to handle your specific financial situation. All the money you pay goes directly toward your debts, but there may be costs to use such a program. There’s often a setup fee of up to $75 and an ongoing monthly fee of between $25 and $75.

Prepare for setbacks

Life happens—stay organized even when challenges arise. Know which bills could be temporarily reduced if finances get tight, and have contact information ready for creditors if you need to request hardship accommodations. Review and adjust your plan quarterly to stay realistic and on track.

Getting organized isn’t a one-time event but an ongoing process that supports your financial goals. With these systems in place, you’ll build momentum to pay off your debt once and for all.

The 2025 ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ Winner

This is the winning music video of the 2025 Dance Your Ph.D. Competition, a contest in which doctoral candidates describe their research in song and dance. The winner was Dr. Sulo Roukka of the University of Helsinki, who performed his dissertation ‘Insights into oral chemesthetic perception: A focus on food-related behavior.’ Sounds like a summer top 20 banger for sure. It actually is pretty catchy, and I will be singing ‘Hot! Hot! Hot!’ all night, or until my girlfriend smothers me. And not between her breasts like I want to go either, probably with my sweat pillow.

Keep going for Dr. Roukka’s video (which won the chemistry division, and the grand prize) as well as the winners of the biology, physics, and social sciences divisions in case you can’t get enough science.

Zoox issues software recall for all robotaxis following Las Vegas collision

Zoox, the Amazon-owned robotaxi company, announced a voluntary software recall for its vehicles. The company had paused its driverless vehicle operations for a review following an incident last month where a Zoox car and a passenger car collided in Las Vegas. According to the report filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the crash did not cause any injuries. CNBC reports that Zoox has resumed usual operations following the software update.

“After analysis and rigorous testing, Zoox identified the root cause,” the company said in a blog post today. “We issued a software update that was implemented across all Zoox vehicles. All Zoox vehicles on the road today, including our purpose-built robotaxi and test fleet, have the updated software.”

Last year, the NHTSA investigated issues with Toyota Highlander cars equipped with Zoox’s automated driving system exhibiting unexpected braking. Car models retrofitted with the Zoox system recently began testing and mapping in Los Angeles.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/zoox-issues-software-recall-for-all-robotaxis-following-las-vegas-collision-195501061.html?src=rss

Trump admin picks COVID critic to be top FDA vaccine regulator

Oncologist Vinay Prasad, a divisive critic of COVID-19 responses, will be the next top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, agency Commissioner Martin Makary announced on social media Tuesday.

Prasad will head the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which is in charge of approving and regulating vaccines and other biologics products, such as gene therapies and blood products.

“Dr. Prasad brings the kind of scientific rigor, independence, and transparency we need at CBER—a significant step forward,” Makary wrote on social media.

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Valve Releases Updated Proton 10.0 Beta For Testing

Last week Valve introduced Proton 10.0 beta as the newest version of their Wine-derived software for Steam Play that enables countless Windows games to run well for Linux gamers on the desktop and with the extremely popular Steam Deck. Out today is another Proton 10.0 beta update with some additional bug and regression fixes over what was shipped last week…

OpenAI’s new for-profit plan leaves many unanswered questions

OpenAI has abandoned its controversial restructuring plan. In a dramatic reversal, the company said Monday it would no longer try to separate control of its for-profit arm from the non-profit board that currently oversees operations. “We made the decision for the nonprofit to retain control of OpenAI after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California,” said Bret Taylor, the chairman of OpenAI.

OpenAI had originally argued its existing structure would not allow its nonprofit to “easily do more than control the for-profit.” It also said it needed more money, a mere two months after securing $6.6 billion in new investment. “We once again need to raise more capital than we’d imagined,” the company wrote in December. “Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness.”

OpenAI’s previous plan called for the nonprofit to cede absolute control of the for-profit, in return for whatever degree of control came with the amount of stock it was granted through the reorganization process.

This was the controversial part of OpenAI’s plan, with many, including former employees, labor and nonprofit groups and even Elon Musk, voicing opposition to the proposal. Now, the company says its nonprofit will retain control and become a “big shareholder in the PBC.”

“How is the nonprofit going to maintain control? How will that purpose be advanced?” asks Jill Horwitz, a visiting professor of law at Northwestern University. “We know from the press that OpenAI plans to appoint all the board members of the operating entity. Will that happen forever? Who will they be? Will it be self-perpetuating? Will the for-profit investors have a say in who those board members are?”

Put another way, OpenAI hasn’t said the exact structure that it intends to implement. According to Professor Michael Dorff, executive director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA, the company could adopt one of a few different options.

“If you had one class of stock, one vote per share, they would elect a board. You could just give the nonprofit the majority of the shares, and then they would then elect a majority of the board. They would therefore be in charge, at least for a while,” he says.

“More stable governance arrangements could be done by having dual class shares, where the nonprofit would have a class of stock and they would be the only owners of that class of the stock that is either super voting shares, again, giving it a majority, or even better, you can define a class of stock and say it has the right to elect a majority of the board.”

In short, the company hasn’t said how it plans to ensure its nonprofit maintains control. The nonprofit may have a “big” stake to start, but there are a few different ways that stake could be diluted. Even if you set aside the idea of an IPO for now, the company could still issue new shares or carry out a stock split. In those scenarios, if OpenAI’s non-profit doesn’t own special shares, its control of the company would be weakened.

According to Bloomberg, Microsoft has yet to sign off on OpenAI’s proposal. The company has invested nearly $14 billion into OpenAI. Under the terms of its October funding round, OpenAI had two years to transform itself into a for-profit business. If it failed to do so, the $6.6 billion it secured would turn into debt. We don’t know for sure, but the question of control is likely front and center in the negotiations between Microsoft and OpenAI, with the company’s financial future at stake. Complicating matters is that whatever arrangement the two come to, it needs to be rubber stamped by the state attorneys general of California and Delaware.

“We look forward to advancing the details of this plan in continued conversation with [the state AGs], Microsoft, and our newly appointed nonprofit commissioners,” Altman wrote in his letter.

Parts of OpenAI’s previous plan remain unchanged. As before, the company will reorganize its for-profit subsidiary into a public benefit corporation. In doing so, OpenAI still plans to eliminate the current capped profit structure that limits investor returns to 100x, with excess profits reserved for the nonprofit. OpenAI has yet to record a profit; as of last year, the company recorded around $5 billion in losses.

“This is not a sale, but a change of structure to something simpler,” wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a letter to employees shared by the company. “Instead of our current complex capped-profit structure—which made sense when it looked like there might be one dominant AGI effort but doesn’t in a world of many great AGI companies—we are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-new-for-profit-plan-leaves-many-unanswered-questions-193942365.html?src=rss

How to Blend (and Heat) Soup in the Vitamix Ascent X5

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There are a lot of fantastic settings to use on the Vitamix Ascent X5, but one of my favorites is the soup setting (the nut butter function is a close second). If you didn’t already know, it’s not just for blending already cooked soup. You can actually cook with the blender. It might take a moment to wrap your head around the idea, but personally, I had to see for myself to become fully convinced. Here’s how to do it. 

How can a blender cook soup?

It turns out, if you have an engine powerful enough, you can create enough friction with the blender’s blades to heat up a few pints of liquid ingredients until it’s well into cooking temperature (140°F to 190°F) and fully billowing steam. While you’re not cooking with fire, you do have a heat source, and the ingredients get chopped into such minuscule pieces that they take only a moment to cook once they reach the correct temperature. 

Not all blenders are equipped to pull this off. I’ve heard harrowing experiences of soup flying out of blender containers, or blades wearing out at high speeds, but all Vitamix blenders are equipped to run at speed 10 (the highest speed) for over seven minutes straight. And that’s exactly what you need to get your soup up to cooking temperature. 

If you have been wanting a Vitamix but haven’t wanted to shell out the money, check out the company’s surprisingly good Mother’s Day sale. For more information on the Vitamix Ascent X5, read my full review here, or check out the more affordable Explorian model E310.

How to use the soup function on the Vitamix Ascent X5

Making soup directly in the Vitamix is dead simple. The only thing you have to be aware of is you can’t make adjustments on the fly. You have to wait for the blender to complete its seven to eight minute soup cycle before you taste it and adjust for seasoning and consistency. 

1. Load up the blender

Load the blender container with your ingredients. I’ve made tomato soup, broccoli soup, and potato soup in the Vitamix, and I’ve tried recipes that use completely raw ingredients, all cooked ingredients, and ones with a mixture of pre-cooked and raw. Keep in mind that the blender will essentially poach your ingredients, so you can add flavor by pre-cooking some items. Roast tomatoes before adding them, char broccoli, or sear some onions before tossing them into the blender. In my tomato soup today, I roasted the tomatoes and included the charred skin, but I left the onion and garlic raw. On another day, I might do the opposite.

Besides the main bulk of your soup, remember to add enough liquid. It seems logical but you’d be surprised how quickly fibrous vegetables can make the soup mixture too thick to blend well. Keep a measuring cup with broth nearby so you can drizzle some in through the opening on the lid if necessary. (More on adjusting consistency in a moment.)

2. Navigate the presets

Fit the container onto the base, turn on the Vitamix, and press the menu button on the left. It looks like three horizontal lines. Once you’re here, twist the round dial to find a picture that looks like a soup bowl emitting steam with a little spoon underneath.

The navigation screen on the base of a Vitamix blender.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Make sure the lid is on tight, then press the start button on the right side. The Vitamix will start on a low speed and ramp up to speed 10 (the highest and loudest speed) within the first 30 seconds or so. Your work here is done.

The Vitamix will run through the soup setting in a little more than seven minutes. When I went to take the temperature of my tomato soup today, a thick plume of steam escaped when I pried off the lid. The soup read 179°F near the walls of the container and up to 186°F closer to the blades.

A thermometer inserted in a blender container reads 186 degrees Fahrenheit.

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Adjusting the consistency

After your soup is cooked, you may be interested in adjusting how thick or thin it is. It’s way easier to thin out a soup rather than thicken it after it’s finished. With that in mind, try to add a touch less liquid than the recipe instructs before you begin cooking, and then you can always stir water or broth into the mixture afterward. 

If your soup is too thin, you could blend in aquafaba, a spoonful of canned cannellini beans, or even a couple spoonfuls of leftover mashed potatoes. Run the blender again on high speed but only until smooth; there’s no need to do a full soup cycle again unless you’re adding a raw ingredient. 

CEO Departures Hit Record Levels

Chief executives are exiting their posts at an unprecedented rate as economic volatility and emerging challenges reshape corporate leadership decisions, according to data from executive tracking firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Public-company CEO departures reached 373 last year, jumping 24% from 2023 levels. Among U.S. businesses with at least 25 employees, 2,221 chief executives left their positions in 2024, the highest number since Challenger began monitoring departures in 2002.

Corporate leaders are citing AI, tariffs, recession fears and scrutiny of diversity initiatives as key stressors driving the exodus. “It’s a very difficult time to lead,” said Blake Irving, former GoDaddy CEO. “Given all the weird gyrations going on in the economy and with our new administration, it’s really hard for even great leaders to find a true north.” The trend extends beyond the C-suite, with managers 1.7 times more likely to report high workplace stress than rank-and-file employees, according to a recent McLean & Co. survey of over 200,000 workers.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What An Apple Vision Pro Developer Learned Hiking 70 Miles Outdoors In Headset

Last week I spoke by phone and then transferred the call to headset where I went face to face with the developer of CubicLayer.

Contacting me initially via Bluesky, and asking to be identified by his first name Sean, the developer lists themselves as Industrial Volumetrics on the Apple App Store. In headset, the dev showed me inside the file system on his Mac where I watched intriguing videos, including one showing a virtual fishing pole near the physical ocean, another with a wrist-based virtual compass, and a time lapse of a hike up a mountain wearing the Vision Pro.

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I also showed the developer my own videos captured in Central Park testing out CubicLayer. I had tried it out over the previous weekend starting on a park bench and quickly found myself testing the resilience of Apple’s environmental sensing by walking around the park. I uttered a wow when the headset properly occluded a tree in my near field in front of a voxel creation by the bench farther away.

Pinching in the open air creates voxels and I quickly sketched my name behind a tree in public: “Ian was here.”

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As my testing progressed, I found myself baffled by certain design choices while simultaneously impressed by the presentation of the underlying spatial scanning data gathered by the headset. I found myself continuing to use the app after I got home. The developer took notes of my criticism during our discussion and we talked about the value of potential features for the future, like Shareplay.

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Multitasking Support In visionOS Is More Than Recommended And Less Than Required

Despite this app being bare bones, CubicLayer is already more useful and compelling than the vast majority of apps available on the App Store, simply by fact of it being usable as a flat panel, a volume, and a fully immersive app. If you want to understand how visionOS intends to integrate into your life more deeply than iOS, start paying attention to the idea that you can have an unlimited number volumes and panels wherever you want, but you can only actually visit one virtual world at a time.

The panel interface is just the main menu, but at any time you can go into fully immersive mode and take away the distractions to build into boundless space. It is my sincere belief that apps lacking all or most of these modes will be crowded out on visionOS by those that do.

CubicLayer bears some similarity to Figmin XR, for example, except that’s a bit of an insult to how polished and powerful Figmin is as a toolset. There’s a voxel editor inside both Figmin and CubicLayer, but CubicLayer supports the visionOS volume mode as an option when Figmin does not. That means, in a very fundamental way, you don’t have to go “inside” CubicLayer to make things in the same way Figmin requires. You can make something with voxels while watching a movie or playing a flat game using CubicLayer as a volume no matter if you’re in full VR or looking at your physical environment in passthrough.

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Most notably, CubicLayer includes a mode which draws from the GPS of a paired iPhone to anchor virtual creations on a specific spot in the physical world. The app currently claims to gather no personal information whatsoever, but creating a personal voxel layer mapped on top of physical locations all around the world seems technically feasible here with a bit more progress. What happens when people can share maps of their creations with others? Imagine an app like Waze, which helps drivers avoid speeding tickets on the highway, but with invisible-to-the-naked-eye voxel signposts everywhere sketched by hand.

Next Steps In Apple Vision

So what exactly did this developer learn from hiking more than 70 miles in Apple Vision Pro?

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First, the dev now understands how Vision Pro’s spatial mapping works at an intuitive level few other people understand by watching Apple’s APIs hand off the data between systems in front of his eyes. Now, his app is helping other people gain this understanding, too. I learned a lot about Apple Vision Pro just by looking at his videos and using this app.

The dev also wanted optical see-through the entire time they were hiking, which is the display technology being pursued in the Orion prototype at Meta. It’s a common desire among consumers and Mark Zuckerberg himself spent many billions of dollars trying to develop that idea. The problem is that for use cases like building a full-size castle made of voxels, no known technology can believably visualize that entire object for you anywhere you are using mixed reality, except for a wide field of view VR headset with passthrough AR like the Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest 3.

You can find CubicLayer on the Apple App Store.

This Amazon Soundbar and Subwoofer Combo Is Nearly $100 Off

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Amazon’s new soundbar came out this year, and it’s tailored for people looking for an easy setup that is both user-friendly and affordable. Right now, the 3.1 channel Fire TV Soundbar Plus with Subwoofer combo is $289.99 (originally $374.99), the lowest price it has ever been, according to price-tracking tools.

The 3.1 channel model comes with a soundbar that is a fully self-contained system, meaning it can be a stand-alone soundbar with enough bass to get by. The soundbar itself is regularly $250 (but it’s $189.99 right now), so for $40 more, you get the external subwoofer, which gives you a more movie theater-like experience with that thumping bass you can feel. The subwoofer is wireless, as far as its connection to the soundbar, so you can place it anywhere in your living room. You only need to wire it to a power outlet, and it will automatically pair with your soundbar. If you want the full 5.1 channel system with the rear speaker, you’ll have to cash out $414.99 (originally $489.99)—in my opinion, the upgrade is not worth the price.

The soundbar can be wall mounted and comes with a wall-mounting kit, which is nice since the soundbar is pretty bulky at 24 inches long. The combo comes with an HDMI cord, which is what you want to use to take advantage of the Dolby Atmos and DTS:X audio support. This also lets you use your TV remote to control the volume of the soundbar.

The soundbar doesn’t have wifi or a companion app, which is where Amazon cut costs. But if those things don’t matter to you, you’d be saving a good chunk of money compared to getting other costlier soundbars that do. You can still control most settings with the remote.

[$] Improving FUSE writeback performance

In a combined filesystem and memory-management session at
the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory
Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF), Joanne Koong led a discussion on
improving the writeback performance for the Filesystem in
Userspace
(FUSE) layer. Writeback is how data that is written to the
filesystem is actually flushed to the disk; it is the process of writing
dirty pages from the page cache to storage. The current FUSE
implementation allocates unmovable memory, then copies the dirty data to it
before initiating writeback, which is slow; Koong wanted to change that
behavior. Since the session, she has posted a
patch set
that has been applied
by FUSE maintainer Miklos Szeredi.

Trump admin announces plans to shut down the Energy Star program

The Trump administration has announced plans to eliminate the Energy Star program, as originally reported by The Washington Post. This announcement occurred during an all-hands meeting of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Atmospheric Protection, in which the department was shuttered. 

As for Energy Star, this program started all the way back in 1992 under the first Bush administration. This is the department that’s responsible for the iconic yellow stickers on home appliances. The long-standing public-private partnership certifies energy efficient appliances and helps consumers find tax credits for these fixtures.

Data indicates that the program has helped Americans save more than $500 billion in energy costs in the past 33 years. The organization states that the average American saves about $450 per year on energy bills by choosing appliances that have been Energy Star-certified.

The EPA hasn’t said when this would go into effect and when consumers would stop seeing Energy Star certifications on home appliances. It’s technically illegal for a presidential administration to end this program without Congress, but the same goes for many of Trump’s pronouncements and executive orders.

“Eliminating the Energy Star program would directly contradict this administration’s promise to reduce household energy costs,” Paula Glover, president of the nonprofit coalition Alliance to Save Energy, told CNN. “For just $32 million a year, Energy Star helps American families save over $40 billion in annual energy costs. That’s a return of $350 for every federal dollar invested.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trump-admin-announces-plans-to-shut-down-the-energy-star-program-184846271.html?src=rss

FAA green-lights Starship launches every other week from Starbase

Although we are still waiting for SpaceX to signal when it will fly the Starship rocket again, the company got some good news from the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday.

After a lengthy review, the federal agency agreed to allow SpaceX to substantially increase the number of annual launches from its Starbase launch site in South Texas. Previously, the company was limited to five launches, but now it will be able to conduct up to 25 Starship launches and landings during a calendar year.

“The FAA has determined that modifying SpaceX’s vehicle operator license supporting the increased launch and landing cadence of the Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment,” states the document, known as a Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact. This finding was signed by Daniel P. Murray, executive director of the FAA’s Office of Operational Safety.

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AI Law Firm Offering $2.7 Legal Letters Wins ‘Landmark’ Approval

English regulators have approved a new law firm that uses AI instead of lawyers to offer services for as little as $2.67, as the technology continues to disrupt industries from finance to accounting. From a report: Garfield AI, which was founded by a former London litigator and a quantum physicist, is an online tool that allows businesses and individuals such as tradespeople to chase debts owed to them at a substantially lower cost than the average lawyer’s fees. Its AI assistant guides claimants through the small claims court process, including creating “polite chaser” letters for $2.67 and filing documents such as claim forms for $67, and can also produce arguments for claimants to use at trial.

AI models are increasingly encroaching on legally sensitive tasks in high-paying sectors such as law and finance, potentially undercutting fees in high-volume work. Garfield received approval from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the legal regulator for England and Wales, in March, in a move the latter hailed as a “landmark moment” for the industry.


Read more of this story at Slashdot.