Autodesk has sued Google in San Francisco federal court, alleging the search giant infringed its “Flow” trademark by launching competing AI-powered software for movie, TV and video game production in May 2025.

Autodesk says it has used the Flow name since September 2022 and that Google assured it would not commercialize a product under the same name — then filed a trademark application in Tonga, where filings are not publicly accessible, before seeking U.S. protection.

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When I asked real people why they post their workouts online, I received well over a hundred replies, many of them filled with venting about body image issues and unattainable beauty standards. That’s didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that the majority of these responses came from men. 

Carefully measured chicken and rice, obsessive tracking of macros, the guilt when a workout is missed: On social media, these behaviors are framed in the language of performance and strength. The same rituals that would be clear indications of disordered behavior for women are redefined as “discipline” and “optimization” for men. How many men suffer in silence because eating disorders are coded as a women’s issue? How many cases go unrecognized when they’re framed as “clean eating” or “serious training”? When eating disorders and body dysmorphia get rebranded as “fitness goals,” a lot of men are left struggling in plain sight. 

Men can have eating disorders, too

Boys and men now make up about a third of those diagnosed with eating disorders, and that figure likely understates the crisis. In particular, muscle dysmorphia—sometimes called “bigorexia“—is characterized by excessive and compulsive exercise, a persistent belief that one is insufficiently muscular, and an obsession with muscle mass, size, and leanness. 

Unfortunately, much of fitness culture allows men to engage in disordered behaviors by wrapping them in performance language. “Bulking” and “shredding” cycles can mask seriously problematic eating patterns. Without giving certain men in my life an armchair diagnosis, I can confidently say I’ve seen the mental fallout when someone’s extreme caloric restriction becomes “cutting” or compulsive exercise becomes “staying on track.”

Unsurprisingly, social media amplifies these harmful messages. Mason Boudrye, who describes himself as “someone known to post gratuitous thirst traps,” shared with me the mental fallout of always trying to look a certain way. “Even if people don’t admit that the obsessive tracking and strict adherence to diet qualifies as disordered eating, I know it’s true for me,” he says. The social media of it all makes these feelings even more public and persistent. 

We all scroll through feeds of chemically enhanced physiques presented as natural and achievable. This naturally breeds more self-scrutiny, more comparison, more perceived inadequacy. Matthew Singer, a yoga teacher, says most “fitspo” (fitness inspiration) “is as helpful for fitness as previous winning lottery numbers are for winning millions. Fitspo cannot take into account genetics, job and family circumstances, health history, or any of the other countless factors that influence health outcomes.” Our bodies are treated like projects always in need of correction, devoid of much-needed context.

What’s most troubling to me is the way men don’t get to call out disordered behaviors by name. There is both a misconception around who eating disorders affect, and a deep reluctance among affected men to seek help for a problem they’ve been socialized to handle alone. Society has constructed a masculine ideal that equates vulnerability with weakness, making it nearly impossible for some men to admit they’re struggling with their relationship to food and their bodies.

Unattainable beauty standards stay unattainable

Botox injections in men may get called “Brotox,” but a cheeky nickname shouldn’t shroud the fact that unattainable beauty standards are leading men to take more extreme measures. Dr. Claudia Kim of New Look New Life Cosmetic Surgery says she’s seen a rise in men turning to beauty treatments: jawline contouring, under-eye correction, hair restoration, skin rejuvenation. “These approaches offer noticeable yet discreet results with little downtime,” says Kim, fitting neatly into lives that were never supposed to include these concerns.

What’s telling, Kim adds, is that her male patients are usually entering the aesthetic realm for the first time. In this sense, men are catching up to beauty regimens women have been undertaking for generations, and slowly learning what women have long understood: Namely, that appearance affects professional success, social capital, and romantic prospects—and the goalposts are always moving. At the same time, the masculine ideal demands stoic self-sufficiency, even as it requires costly and constant aesthetic labor. 

What does all this mean for the average person with an average budget? The treatments Kim describes—jawline contouring, hair restoration, aesthetic procedures—aren’t cheap. Nor are supplements, meal prep services, personal trainers, specialized equipment, and so on. Beauty standards increasingly require you to spend more money, meaning your appearance is yet another health arena where class determines outcomes. And if they can’t afford to look the way they feel pressured to look, men are uniquely left behind to suffer in silence.

As a woman, I’ve spent most of my life jealous of how men were allowed to age, or gain weight, or simply be in their bodies without constant intervention. Now I have a more sympathetic gaze, especially after hearing so many men admit they were never given the language to articulate aesthetic concerns without shame.

The bottom line

There’s a big difference between healthy self-care and the sense that your body is never good enough. Meticulously tracking every calorie, every rep, every perceived flaw—why should one woman’s obvious eating disorder be another man’s enviable achievement? 

Women have been battling body image issues and unattainable beauty standards since birth, but a lot of men were never taught how to fight this particular war. To me, the takeaway is that we all need to be on the same side. To fight this war, we need a more honest conversation about what we’re doing to men’s relationships with their bodies. Until we acknowledge that, all this talk of “cutting” and “discipline” will allow dangerous behaviors to keep hiding in plain sight.

Steven Spielberg directed two of the best alien films of all time: E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now he’s going back to those roots, as it were, with his latest blockbuster film, Disclosure Day. A full-length trailer aired during the Super Bowl LX broadcast last night.

Per the (deliberately vague) official premise: “If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? This summer, the truth belongs to seven billion people. We are coming close to… Disclosure Day.”

The trailer doesn’t tell us much more than the logline. It opens with a newscast announcing the pending public release of “government material long shrouded in secrecy.” We see a shot of a man standing in the middle of a crop circle that definitely wasn’t made by humans. A little girl encounters a seemingly sentient deer in her bedroom as a voiceover wonders whether there could be “others.” And what’s with putting electrodes on people’s temples so that their eyes change color? We’ll find out in June.

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On Monday, Discord announced its plan to begin rolling out mandatory age verification globally. Starting in March, new and existing accounts will start moving over to a “teen-by-default” setting, which will lock certain chats and features away until the account’s owner proves they’re an adult. Here’s what you’ll lose, how to get it back, and for good measure, what your other options are.

Discord will require age verification starting in March

In its announcement, Discord said the new age verification settings will start with a “phased global rollout” in March, so it may be some time until it hits you. However, once the changes make their way to your region, you’ll lose access to the following features until you verify your age:

• Age-restricted channels and servers: This is the most obvious one. Any channels that are set to adults only will now be off-limits to your account until you verify your age. In some cases, this could include whole servers, or depending on the server, certain app commands.

• Spicy content: Until you verify your age, Discord’s content filters will be active for you, and the app will blur any images it thinks are too sensitive or graphic.

• Message requests: Direct messages from people you don’t know will now go to a separate inbox.

• Speaking in Stages: Accounts that aren’t age-verified won’t be able to speak in Stage channels, which are livestreams where a few server members can broadcast to everyone on the server at once.

• Warnings on friend requests: This one adds something rather than taking it away. Until you verify your age, you’ll now see a warning prompt when getting a friend request from someone you don’t know.

How to verify your age in Discord

Discord has two ways to verify your age, though it will tell you if you need to go through the process. To the platform’s credit, it won’t suddenly strip away a bunch of features from you without explanation.

To start verifying your age on Discord, either click Get Started on a prompt the platform should send you once age verification hits your region, or navigate to User Settings > My Account > Age Group to see your age group and verify from there.

Now, you can either take a video selfie or scan a valid government ID. For video selfies, just select Take a selfie from the verification page, follow the on-screen instructions, and click Done to submit. For verifying through a government ID, select Use your ID, scan the provided QR code with your mobile device, take a clear photo of your ID on said device, and tap Done to submit.

Discord says that video selfies used for age verification are processed purely on-device, and that while photos of government IDs do go to “vendor partners” for verification, they are “deleted quickly—in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.”

Once you’ve submitted your video selfie or ID, the app will then begin the process of assigning you an “age group,” which you’ll be able to see under User Settings > My Account > Age Group. Discord says most users only need to verify once, but that you might need to provide a government ID in addition to a video selfie if the app can’t confidently determine your age from just a face scan. You’re also able to attempt re-verification at any time, but if the app determines that you’re under the 13-year-old minimum for using Discord, your account will be banned. (You can appeal this and attempt to re-instate your Discord account via an ID.)

According to Discord, the age verification process “typically takes just a few minutes,” and you’ll get a notification and DM once it’s completed.

Best Discord alternatives that don’t use age verification

As countries around the world add new laws for age verification online (Discord mentions the UK and Australia in particular), it seems like Discord is just throwing its hands up and deciding to play it as safe as possible by taking the feature global. The move mimics similar decisions from Google, ChatGPT, and Roblox, but even adult users might be uncomfortable with it, since they’ll need to show the company—and the company’s third-party processors—personal identifying information to comply with it.

If that leaves a bad taste in your mouth, there are a few Discord alternatives you can try that don’t yet require age verification, although they might not completely match the app’s feature set:

• Slack: Discord basically stole Slack’s entire flow, and that’s great news for anyone looking for a Discord alternative. About the only Discord feature missing here is persistent voice channels, although you can still talk to others over voice using huddles. Slack can be a strong Discord replacement or supplement to another Discord replacement, but if you’re a teen looking for a new home, be careful. Technically, users under 16 are banned from Slack, according to the app’s terms of service.

• TeamSpeak: TeamSpeak has been updated since the 2000s to match many of Discord’s features, including adding persistent chat channels. However, it’s still lagging behind on some features, like video chat. Additionally, only 32 users can be in a free TeamSpeak server at a time. This is what I used as a teen before moving onto other platforms.

• Mumble and Ventrilo: These are no-frills, voice-first clients that primarily focus on privacy and low latency connections, with Mumble even being open source. They aren’t as robust as Discord, but they could serve as a strong voice channel supplement to another Discord alternative, like Slack.

YouTube is launching YouTube TV Plans this week, after revealing the program back in December. These are genre-specific subscription packages that let users opt into a curated version of the service and save a few bucks in the process. Yeah. It’s pretty much cable, proving you can’t cut a cord if it’s made out of invisible radio waves.

There more than ten plans available and they are all cheaper than the typical asking price of $83 per month. There’s a Sports Plan that costs $65 per month and includes channels like FS1, NBC Sports Network and all of the ESPN networks. Subscribers will pay $72 per month to add some news channels like CNN and CSPAN to the sports package.

The Entertainment Plan costs $55 per month and includes networks like Bravo, Comedy Central, FX and the Food Network, among many others. There’s a beefier version of this that costs $70 per month and adds in family channels like the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, along with news channels.

Signing up for one of these plans still provides various perks of a standard YouTube TV subscription. These include unlimited DVR, multiview and the ability to add up to six members on one account. Of course, those with deep pockets can spring for some premium add-ons like HBO Max, 4K Plus and the NFL Sunday Ticket.

YouTube

Some plans are rolling out later in the week, but YouTube says it could take “several weeks” for every plan to become available. New customers receive a discount for the first three months, which is worth looking into.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/youtube-tv-launches-curated-subscription-packages-this-week-170710000.html?src=rss

Alphabet has lined up banks to sell a rare 100-year bond, stepping up a borrowing spree by Big Tech companies racing to fund their vast investments in AI this year. From a report: The so-called century bond will form part of a debut sterling issuance this week by Google’s parent company, according to people familiar with the matter. Alphabet was also selling $15bn of dollar bonds on Monday and lining up a Swiss franc bond sale, the people said.

Century bonds — long-term borrowing at its most extreme — are highly unusual, although a flurry were sold during the period of very low interest rates that followed the financial crisis, including by governments such as Austria and Argentina. The University of Oxford, EDF and the Wellcome Trust — the most recent in 2018 — are the only issuers to have previously tapped the sterling century market.

Such sales are even rarer in the tech sector, with most of the industry’s biggest groups issuing up to 40 years, although IBM sold a 100-year bond back in 1996. Big Tech companies and their suppliers are expected to invest almost $700bn in AI infrastructure this year and are increasingly turning to the debt markets to finance the giant data centre build-out. Michael Burry, writing on Substack: Alphabet looking to issue a 100-year bond. Last time this happened in tech was Motorola in 1997, which was the last year Motorola was considered a big deal.

At the start of 1997, Motorola was a top 25 market cap and top 25 revenue corporation in America. Never again. The Motorola corporate brand in 1997 was ranked #1 in the US, ahead of Microsoft. In 1998, Nokia overtook Motorola in cell phones, and after the iPhone it fell out of the consumer eye. Today Motorola is the 232nd largest market cap with only $11 billion in sales.

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If you tuned into Super Bowl LX on Sunday, you may have caught Ring’s big ad of the night: The company tried to tap into us dog owners’ collective fear of losing our pets, demonstrating how its new “Search Party” feature could reunite missing dogs with its owners. Ring probably thought audiences would love the feature, with existing users happy to know Search Party exists, and new customers looking to buy one of their doorbells to help find lost dogs in the neighborhood.

Of course, that’s not what happened at all. Rather than evoke heartwarming feelings, the ad scared the shit out of many of us who caught it. That’s due to how the feature itself works: Search Party uses AI to identify pets that run in its field of vision. But it’s not just your camera doing this: The feature pools together all of the Ring cameras that have Search Party enabled to look for your lost dog. In effect, it turns all these individual devices into a Ring network, or, perhaps in harsher terms, a surveillance state. It does so in pursuit of a noble goal, sure, but at what cost?

The reactions I saw online ranged from shock to anger. Some were surprised to learn that Ring cameras could even do this, seeing as you might assume your Ring doorbell is, well, yours. Others were furious, lashing out at anyone who thinks Search Party is a good idea, or that the feature isn’t the beginning of a very slippery slope. My favorite take was one comparing Search Party to Batman’s cellphone network surveillance system from The Dark Knight, which famously compromised morals and ethics in the name of catching the bad guy.

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According to Ring, Search Party is a perfectly safe and wholesome way to look for lost dogs in the area. The company’s FAQs explain that users can opt-out of the feature at any time, and only Ring doorbells in the area around the home that started the current Search Party will look for the dog. In addition, Ring says the feature works based on saved videos, so Ring doorbells without a subscription and a saved video history won’t be able to participate. (Though I’m not sure the fact that the feature works with saved videos assuages any fears on my end.)

I am not pro-missing dogs. But I am pro-privacy. At the risk of sounding alarmist, Search Party really does seem like a slippery slope. Today, the neighborhood is banding together to find Mrs. Smith’s missing goldendoodle; tomorrow, they’re looking for a “suspicious person.” Innocent until proven guilty, unless caught on your neighbor’s Ring camera.

Can law enforcement request Search Party data?

Here’s the big question regarding Search Party and its slippery slope: Can law enforcement—including local police, FBI, or ICE—request saved videos from Ring cameras participating in Search Party in order to track down people, not pets?

You won’t be surprised to learn that that wasn’t answered by Ring’s Super Bowl ad, nor is it part of the official Search Party FAQs. However, we do know that, as of October 2025, Ring partnered with both Flock Safety as well as Axon. Axon makes and sells equipment for law enforcement, like tasers and body cameras, while Flock Safety is a security company that offers services like license plate recognition and video surveillance. These partnerships allow law enforcement to post requests for Ring footage directly to the Ring app. Ring users in the vicinity of the request have the choice to either share that footage or ignore the petition. Flock Safety says that users who do choose to share footage remain private.

Of course, law enforcement isn’t always going to ask for volunteers. According to Ring’s law enforcement guidelines, the company will comply with “valid and binding search warrants.” That’s not surprising, of course. But the company does note an important distinction in what it will share: Ring will share “non-content” data in response to both subpoenas and warrants, including a user’s name, home address, email address, billing info, date they made the account, purchase history, and service usage data. The company says it will not share “content,” meaning the data you store in your account, like videos and recordings of service calls, for subpoenas, only warrants.

Ring also says it will tell you if it shares your data with law enforcement, unless it is barred from doing so, or it’s clear your Ring data breaks the law. This applies for both standard data requests, as well as “emergency” requests.

Based on its current language, it seems that Ring would give up the footage used in Search Party to law enforcement, assuming they present a valid warrant. The thing is, it’s not clear whether Search Party has any actual impact on that data: For example, imagine a dog runs in front of your Ring doorbell, and the footage is saved to your history. Now, a valid warrant comes through requesting your footage. Whether you have Search Party enabled or disabled, Ring may share that footage with law enforcement—the feature itself had no impact on whether your doorbell saved the footage. The difference would be whether law enforcement has access to the identification data within the footage: Can they see that Ring thinks that dog is, in fact, Mrs. Smith’s goldendoodle, or do they simply see a video of a fluffy pup running past your house? If so, that would be your slippery slope indeed: If law enforcement could obtain your footage with facial recognition data of the suspect they’re looking for, we’d be in particularly dangerous territory.

I’ve reached out to Ring for comment on this side of Search Party, and I hope to hear back to provide a fuller answer to this question.

How to opt-out of Search Party on your Ring cameras

If you’d rather not bother with the feature at all, Ring says it’s easy enough to turn off. To start, open the Ring app, tap the hamburger menu, then choose “Control Center.” Here, choose “Search Party,” then choose the “blue Pet icon” next to each of your cameras for “Search for Lost Pets.”

To be honest, if I had a Ring camera, I’d go one step further and delete my saved videos. Law enforcement can’t obtain what I don’t save. If you want to delete these clips from your Ring account, head to the hamburger menu in the app, tap “History,” choose the “pencil icon,” then tap “Delete All” to wipe your entire history.

Discord said today it’s rolling out age verification on its platform globally starting next month, when it will automatically set all users’ accounts to a “teen-appropriate” experience unless they demonstrate that they’re adults. From a report: Users who aren’t verified as adults will not be able to access age-restricted servers and channels, won’t be able to speak in Discord’s livestream-like “stage” channels, and will see content filters for any content Discord detects as graphic or sensitive. They will also get warning prompts for friend requests from potentially unfamiliar users, and DMs from unfamiliar users will be automatically filtered into a separate inbox.

[…] A government ID might still be required for age verification in its global rollout. According to Discord, to remove the new “teen-by-default” changes and limitations, “users can choose to use facial age estimation or submit a form of identification to [Discord’s] vendor partners, with more options coming in the future.” The first option uses AI to analyze a user’s video selfie, which Discord says never leaves the user’s device. If the age group estimate (teen or adult) from the selfie is incorrect, users can appeal it or verify with a photo of an identity document instead. That document will be verified by a third party vendor, but Discord says the images of those documents “are deleted quickly — in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.”

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Getting a little bit of extra juice into your phone before you leave your house in the morning could make the difference between the device still having power at the end of the day or not. But there are multiple factors that affect charging rate, and you might not be aware of all of them.

Run through the tips here, however, and you can be sure your phone is always charging up as quickly as possible.

Use a wired power source

To begin with, you’re going to get your phone charged a lot faster if you plug it directly into a power source rather than putting it on a wireless charger. Wireless charging offers a lot of convenience, and is gradually getting faster and faster as far as charging rates go, but wired charging is still a long way ahead.

Take the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, for example: You get a maximum charging rate of 45W with a wired connection, and 15W with a wireless connection over Qi2. That means the handset is going to take around three times longer to charge its battery via wireless charging. The figures for other handsets are similar.

Wireless charging: convenient but not that fast.
Credit: Google

Not only is wireless charging slower, it’s typically less efficient as well, with more of the power being supplied to the phone lost as heat (due to the way the electricity is converted to a magnetic field and back again). With a cable and a plug, charging is faster, and it’s healthier for your battery as well.

Wired is the way to go if at all possible, and what you plug your phone into makes a difference as well. Wall sockets are very good for charging rates, while anything else is less good—options like laptop USB ports, USB hubs, and sockets you might find on other gadgets such as monitors won’t supply as much power.

Use the right cable and charger

A lot of phones don’t come with a charger and cable in the box these days, but they will have a fast-charging standard and a max charging rate associated with them if you check the specs. You then need to find a charger that matches that charging rate, together with a cable that’s not going to slow anything down.

If you look at the iPhone chargers made by Apple and on sale from its store, there are 20W, 35W, and 60W options—and the latter is going to juice up your handset the fastest. You should also look out for a mention of USB Power Delivery (PD), though this is included on pretty much every charger you’ll find at this stage.

Not all charging blocks are created equal.
Credit: Apple

We’ve written in-depth before about USB-C cables and charging blocks, and these will again list a charging rate along with them (or at least they should). You need to make sure every link in the chain is delivering power at the maximum rate your phone can handle if you want to fully recharge as quickly as possible.

You can use cables and chargers you have lying around for laptops, tablets, and other gadgets with your phone safely enough—the handset will have built-in safety features to prevent it from drawing too much power—but for the best results you’ll generally want to stick with what comes in the box or the officially approved option.

Don’t use your phone while it’s charging

There are a few other tricks you can try if you want to max out charging speed. Think about the amount of power your smartphone is using while it’s actually being charged: If you’re constantly scrolling through social media feeds, watching videos, and playing games, then you’re using precious battery life while recharging.

If you can, put your phone down and leave it alone while it’s charging—you might want to turn off the always-on display to help things a little bit more. For even better results, put your phone into airplane or low power mode, or turn it off entirely while it’s charging (those notifications can wait).

Airplane mode can help charging speeds along.
Credit: Lifehacker

Watch your phone’s temperature

Due to battery chemistry and the safeguards built into modern handsets, charging speeds slow down if your phone gets too hot or too cold. Keep your phone away from sunny window ledges or freezing bathrooms while it’s being charged to maximize charging speed.

It’s a good idea to remove any case around your phone while you’re charging it, to reduce the chances of the battery temperature rising an extra notch, and it’s also worth checking the USB-C charging port on your phone to make sure it’s dust- and lint-free—even a slightly imperfect connection can affect charging speeds.

Monitor charging speed

However you’re charging your phone, both Android and iOS let you keep an eye on how fast the battery is being replenished. If you’ve got a Pixel or Galaxy phone, keep an eye on the charging message at the bottom of the lock screen: This tells you how quickly your phone is being charged, and how long it will be until you reach a full charge.

For most Android devices, you can get more information by opening up the Battery page in Settings, though the details you get here will differ among devices: You should see whether or not fast charging is enabled, and maybe an estimate for how long a full recharge will take, but you won’t typically get an actual wattage reading.

The charging notification on a Pixel.
Credit: Lifehacker

With iPhones, you can visit Battery in Settings to get information about how the battery recharge is going. While there’s not a whole lot of information here, you can get an estimate of how long a charge will take, and you will see a “slow charger” message if your iPhone can support a charging rate faster than that offered by the connected charger.

There are several Android apps that measure charging rate. Ampere is one of the best: It’s free, with extra features (such as widgets and notifications) available for a fee. Note that you need to multiply current x voltage then divide by 1,000 to get the wattage. There isn’t really anything comparable on iOS, unfortunately—what few apps there are appear to be out of date and/or unreliable.

Ferrari has published images of the interior of its forthcoming electric vehicle, which it designed with LoveFrom, the new firm of former Apple star Jony Ive and another legendary designer, Marc Newson. The Italian sports and racing car maker is taking a careful approach to revealing details about its first battery EV, signaling a depth of thought that goes well beyond simply swapping a V12, transmission, and fuel tank out for batteries and electric motors. Indeed, the interior of the new car—called the Ferrari Luce—bears little family resemblance to any recent Ferrari.

Instead, LoveFrom appears to have channeled Ferrari interiors from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, with a retro simplicity that combines clear round gauges with brushed aluminum. Forget the capacitive panels that so frustrated me in the Ferrari 296—here, there are physical buttons and rocker switches that seem free of the crash protection surrounds that Mini was forced to use.

The steering wheel now resembles the iconic “Nardi” wheel that has graced so many older Ferraris. But here, the horn buttons have been integrated into the spokes, and multifunction pods hang off the horizontal spokes, allowing Ferrari to keep its “hands on the wheel” approach to ergonomics. Made from entirely CNC-milled recycled aluminum, the Luce’s wheel weighs 400 g less than Ferrari’s usual steering wheel.

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