Jenna Ortega will return as Wednesday Addams in Netflix's Wednesday Season 2. Although the new season hasn't premiered yet, talks are underway about Season 3, but Ortega just gave a disappointing update about it.

George R.R. Martin may not be at Nicholas Sparks' level when it comes to adaptations, but he's getting up there. When asked about a film translation of his novel Fevre Dream, theGame of Thrones author claims he is ready for it and that he has been ready for years.

Work email overload is causing significant stress for American workers, with many feeling pressured to respond quickly to irrelevant work emails, even outside of office hours.

Looking for NYT Strands answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, including the spangram.

India Apple Arts Studios has officially unveiled Animation Shopee, a revolutionary platform designed for game developers, filmmakers, and VFX artists seeking high-quality motion capture animations.As a leading motion capture studio in India, Apple Arts Studios has worked on AAA games, films, and commercials. Now, with Animation Shopee, the company is making its extensive motion capture expertise available to the wider industry.A New Era for Motion Capture AssetsAnimation Shopee offers a comprehensive library of motion capture animations, including: Cinematic sequences Combat moves and gameplay animations Realistic facial performancesAll assets are ready-to-use and compatible with Unreal Engine, Unity, Maya, and Blender, allowing seamless integration into any production pipeline.Why Choose Animation Shopee? High-Quality Motion Capture All animations are captured using OptiTrack Prime X22 cameras, ensuring precision, fluidity, and realism. Time-Saving & Cost-Effective Pre-built animation packs accelerate production without compromising quality. Optimized for Games & Films Suitable for cinematics, character locomotion, facial expressions, and real-time animation workflows. Free & Premium Animations Available Includes free assets, with premium packs currently at 50% off using coupon code Anim50.Seamlessly Integrated with Apple Arts StudiosAnimation Shopee is now integrated into Apple Arts Studios website, offering easy access to both custom motion capture services and pre-built animation assets.Explore Animation Shopee Today! Visit Animation Shopee: www.animationshopee.com Learn More About Motion Capture Services: www.appleartsstudios.comWith Animation Shopee, Apple Arts Studios is bringing professional motion capture to every creator. Stay tuned for new animation packs and updates! The post Apple Arts Studios Officially Launches Animation Shopee The Ultimate Motion Capture Animation Library appeared first on Vfxexpress.

Apples new MacBook Air laptops, which the company unveiled alongside a new iPad Air and a disappointing 11th-generation iPad earlier this month, are now on sale. They feature the M4 chip and some additional upgrades that remote workers and desk jockeys, in particular, may appreciate.Ive been playing around with the new 15-inch M4 MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage. Here are my thoughts on it, along with the very similar 13-inch model. The MacBook Air goes M4Lets address the laptops M4 chip upgrade first, since it features heavily into Apples marketing.Theres no denying that the M4 chip, which comes in two varieties in the new MacBook Air lineup (an 8core or 10-core GPUthe more the better for graphics-intensive apps), is the fastest chip ever in a MacBook Air. Apple brags that the M4 delivers 23x faster performance in some cases versus the fastest Intel chip ever included in older Intel-based MacBook Airs. The company also boasts that the M4 is also up to two times faster than the M1 chip.But theres a reason that Apple is comparing the M4 to chips that are five years old or older. While the M4 is indeed technically faster than the M2 and M3 chips found in the companys 2023 and 2024 MacBook Airs, youre not going to see much of a difference in speed. Indeed, in normal, everyday tasks, including web browsing, photo editing, and word processing, Ive yet to see any notable speed improvement between my M3 MacBook Air and the M4 MacBook Air review unit I received.In other words, the inclusion of the M4 is nice, but most users wont see many real-world benefits over the M2 or M3. That being said, the M4 MacBook Air does feature some genuinely notable upgrades that a select group of users will find invaluable.Desk View makes showing physical objects on video calls more convenient.[Photo: Apple]Upgrades for remote workers and desk jockeysWhile many aspects of the M4 MacBook Air are nothing more than spec bumps (a slightly faster processor and base RAM upgrades), the laptop series did receive two notable upgrades in 2025, which remote workers and desk jockeys, in particular, will appreciate.First, Apple has ditched the 1080p FaceTime camera found in the M3 MacBook Air for a 12MP Center Stage camera. Center Stage is the name Apple gives to its most advanced webcams. Center Stage uses AI to track your movements in the frame to always keep you in the center of the shot. This is a huge boon when youre on video calls, especially if you are up and about moving around with, say, a whiteboard behind you.Another feature of the Center Stage camera is called Desk View. This is a mode that allows the MacBooks webcam to display what is lying on the desk in front of it. This top-down view makes it easy for those on a call with you to see an object clearly. For example, if youre a clothing designer videoconferencing with a client, you can lay out fabric samples before you, and your client will be able to get a great overhead view of them all.Second, the M4 MacBook Air includes a big display-related upgrade that people who like using multiple monitors will appreciate. The M4 MacBook Air can now power two external displays with resolutions of up to 6K in addition to the laptops screen. The M3 MacBook Air had been able to support two displaysbut only if the laptops lid was closed. This means the M4 MacBook Air allows you to have a three-display setup on your desk if you want it.Sky, uh . . . blue?The M4 MacBook Air series has gotten a color shake-up. Apple has finally done away with the decade-old Space Grey color option (it looked like metallic ash). In its place, the company unveiled a new Sky Blue color option, which was the color of the review unit I received.The thing is, the color doesnt look that blue. As a matter of fact, when I took the MacBook Air out of its box, I thought there had been a mix-up, and they accidentally sent me the silver color. If youre hoping for a blue laptop, you should definitely check out the color in person before buying it because you may be disappointed with how light the shade of blue looks.Improved display support is nice, but the lack of USB ports on the right side of the MacBook Air is frustrating. [Photo: Apple]The downsidesWhile the M4 MacBook Airs are great machines, I was let down by a few of Apples choices. First, Id hoped that Apple would finally address its frustrating USB-C port placement on this years model. Recent MacBook Airs (the 2025 model included) have 2 USB-C ports. Thats enough for most people. But the annoying thing is that both ports sit on the laptops left side.Im not sure why Apple doesnt just move one of the USB-C ports to the right side of the laptop so that users can plug their accessories in from either end. Doing so would allow users to spread their accessories more evenly across their desktop, leading to a more comfortable workspace.Second, on the 2024 M4 MacBook Pro series, Apple allowed users to upgrade the display from glossy to a nano texture, giving it a more matte-like look. As I wrote late last year, the nano texture display is a sight to behold, and if Apple had added that option to the 2025 M4 MacBook Air, Id seriously have considered upgrading from my M3 MacBook Air this year. But they have decided not to give users that choiceand thats disappointing.Who should get the M4 MacBook Air?Despite being merely a collection of minor spec bumps in many respects, the M4 MacBook Air is still the perfect laptop for most consumers. It is incredibly thin, light, and powerful. Its also got one additional element that I havent mentioned yet, which makes the computer more compelling than ever.Apple has reduced the price of the new MacBook Airs by $100 from last years models. This was unexpected (especially with Trumps tariffs threatening to see the prices Americans pay for electronics rise in the coming months). Now, the 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $999, and the 15-inch starts at $1199. If you want to lock in these attractive lower prices, you might want to purchase the new MacBook Air sooner rather than later in case those threatened tariffs do force Apple and others to raise prices in the months ahead.The M4 chip is powerful enough to run artificial intelligence tasks such as Apple Intelligence and even LLMs like DeepSeek and others locally, meaning that this laptop likely has the power to get you through the next three or four years of a rapidly changing AI landscape. My advice, however, is to upgrade the new MacBook Air to at least 24GB of memory when you buy it (the MacBook Air series now starts with 16GB). More RAM will make compute-intensive tasks, like AI, run faster.While users with M2 or M3 MacBook Airs could probably hold off on upgrading for a few more years, if you have a Windows PC or an M1 MacBook, the M4 MacBook Air makes for a compelling upgradeand its a no-brainer if you still have an old Intel-based MacBook.

Throughout history, when pioneers set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands, they carried with them only the essentials: tools, seeds and clothing. Anything else would have to come from their new environment.So they built shelter from local timber, rocks and sod; foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet; and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they needed to survive.Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for example, the Vikings did when they reached Greenland and Newfoundland. Not only will the astronauts have limited supplies and the need to live off the land; they wont even be able to breathe the air.Instead of axes and plows, however, todays space pioneers will bring 3D printers. As an engineer and professor who is developing technologies to extend the human presence beyond Earth, I focus my work and research on these remarkable machines.3D printers will make the tools, structures and habitats space pioneers need to survive in a hostile alien environment. They will enable long-term human presence on the Moon and Mars.NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore holds a 3D-printed wrench made aboard the International Space Station. [Photo: NASA]From hammers to habitatsOn Earth, 3D printing can fabricate, layer by layer, thousands of things, from replacement hips to hammers to homes. These devices take raw materials, such as plastic, concrete or metal, and deposit it on a computerized programmed path to build a part. Its often called additive manufacturing, because you keep adding material to make the part, rather than removing material, as is done in conventional machining.Already, 3D printing in space is underway. On the International Space Station, astronauts use 3D printers to make tools and spare parts, such as ratchet wrenches, clamps and brackets. Depending on the part, printing time can take from around 30 minutes to several hours.For now, the print materials are mostly hauled up from Earth. But NASA has also begun recycling some of those materials, such as waste plastic, to make new parts with the Refabricator, an advanced 3D printer installed in 2019.Manufacturing in spaceYou may be wondering why space explorers cant simply bring everything they need with them. After all, thats how the International Space Station was built decades ago by hauling tons of prefabricated components from Earth.But thats impractical for building habitats on other worlds. Launching materials into space is incredibly expensive. Right now, every pound launched aboard a rocket just to get to low Earth orbit costs thousands of dollars. To get materials to the Moon, NASA estimates the initial cost at around US$500,000 per pound.Still, manufacturing things in space is a challenge. In the microgravity of space, or the reduced gravity of the Moon or Mars, materials behave differently than they do on Earth. Decrease or remove gravity, and materials cool and recrystallize differently. The Moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth; Mars, about two-fifths. Engineers and scientists are working now to adapt 3D printers to function in these conditions.Using otherworldly soilOn alien worlds, rather than plastic or metal, 3D printers will use the natural resources found in these environments. But finding the right raw materials is not easy. Habitats on the Moon and Mars must protect astronauts from the lack of air, extreme temperatures, micrometeorite impacts and radiation.Regolith, the fine, dusty, sandlike particles that cover both the lunar and Martian surfaces, could be a primary ingredient to make these dwellings. Think of the regolith on both worlds as alien dirt unlike Earth soil, it contains few nutrients, and as far as we know, no living organisms. But it might be a good raw material for 3D printing.My colleagues began researching this possibility by first examining how regular cement behaves in space. I am now joining them to develop techniques for turning regolith into a printable material and to eventually test these on the Moon.But obtaining otherworldly regolith is a problem. The regolith samples returned from the Moon during the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 70s are precious, difficult if not impossible to access for research purposes. So scientists are using regolith simulants to test ideas. Actual regolith may react quite differently than our simulants. We just dont know.Whats more, the regolith on the Moon is very different from whats found on Mars. Martian regolith contains iron oxide thats what gives it a reddish color but Moon regolith is mostly silicates; its much finer and more angular. Researchers will need to learn how to use both types in a 3D printer. Applications on EarthNASAs Moon-to-Mars Planetary Autonomous Construction Technology program, also known as MMPACT, is advancing the technology needed to print these habitats on alien worlds.Among the approaches scientists are now exploring: a regolith-based concrete made in part from surface ice; melting the regolith at high temperatures, and then using molds to form it while its a liquid; and sintering, which means heating the regolith with concentrated sunlight, lasers or microwaves to fuse particles together without the need for binders.Along those lines, my colleagues and I developed a Martian concrete we call MarsCrete, a material we used to 3D-print a small test structure for NASA in 2017.Then, in May 2019, using another type of special concrete, we 3D-printed a one-third scale prototype Mars habitat that could support everything astronauts would need for long-term survival, including living, sleeping, research and food-production modules.That prototype showcased the potential, and the challenges, of building housing on the red planet. But many of these technologies will benefit people on Earth too.In the same way astronauts will make sustainable products from natural resources, homebuilders could make concretes from binders and aggregates found locally, and maybe even from recycled construction debris. Engineers are already adapting the techniques that could print Martian habitats to address housing shortages here at home. Indeed, 3D-printed homes are already on the market.Meanwhile, the move continues toward establishing a human presence outside the Earth. Artemis III, now scheduled for liftoff in 2027, will be the first human Moon landing since 1972. A NASA trip to Mars could happen as early as 2035.But wherever people go, and whenever they get there, Im certain that 3D printers will be one of the primary tools to let human beings live off alien land.Sven Biln, Professor of Engineering Design, Electrical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering, Penn StateThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

If you own an Echo smart speaker, it will soon lose a key privacy feature and be replaced with cloud processing of all voice commands.Amazon will soon disable users' ability to process voice requests on-device.Users of Amazon's Echo smart speaker will soon receive an email from the company detailing changes to the device's voice request processing. Beginning March 28, everything users say to Echo's Alexa engine will be sent to Amazon.The move will disable local processing of voice requests in favor of a new Alexa+ feature called Amazon Voice ID, notes Ars Technica. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

As we inch closer to the end of Severances second season, there are still a lot of open questions. But its also become clear that the show isnt in a rush to answer them. Whereas many mystery box shows race to their conclusions, speeding through plot points so quickly that it can be hard to keep up, Severance has spent the latter part of this season meandering through flashbacks and spending some quality time with its characters. Its a slower pace than other prestige streaming shows, but these episodes have helped show just how fascinating a place Severances bizarre world is. Theyve also helped set the show up for the finale and answers to come.Spoilers ahead for Severance, up to season 2, episode 9.It all started with the seventh episode, which shifted the focus from the Macrodata Refinement crew to center on Gemma (Dichen Lachman) and the nightmarish procedures and tests she was put through to become the calm and collected Ms. Casey. That was followed by a trip down memory lane for Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who went back to her hometown, an isolated fishing village that was also previously home to a Lumon Industries ether plant. The story sped up slightly this week, with personal vignettes that covered just about every main cast member.RelatedThese episodes have provided some welcome backstory and worldbuilding. Gemmas trials and torture showed the depths Lumon is willing to sink to in order to make the severance procedure work. We already knew things were bad, but this was another level. Cobels freezing trip gave some insight into Lumons more humble beginnings, which included some equally questionable morals (involving, apparently, child labor fueled by drug use), along with a good reason as to why she is so bitter and angry. And the latest episode, The After Hours, showed the impact of Lumon and the severance procedure from multiple perspectives.For a show that has so much lurking beneath the surface, even these small glimpses into the machinery of Lumon feel notable and illuminating. It may be a terrifying place, but I want to spend time in this world, searching out details and soaking in the oppressive atmosphere which is why the at-times plodding pace didnt bother me so much.Image: AppleBut theres also clearly an element of strategy here. All the time spent away from Lumons basement office was used to make it obvious where most of the key figures in this story are right now. Thats most apparent in The After Hours, which is basically a primer for whatever is about to go down in the finale. We have Mark (Adam Scott) meeting up with Cobel to hatch a plan to potentially rescue Gemma, instead of finishing his mysterious and important work at Lumon. This is all happening while Mark tries to sort through the split memories merging together in his head.Meanwhile, his exasperated manager Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) is showing some backbone against his own oppressive manager, Dylan (Zach Cherry) is threatening to quit while dealing with a unique form of infidelity, Irving (John Turturro) is leaving town and dealing with an equally unique form of heartbreak, child manager Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) has apparently graduated and is being transferred to another facility, and Hellys innie (Britt Lower) is about to meet her outies dad. (Helly also introduces viewers to perhaps the most bizarre and unsettling way to eat a hardboiled egg.)Its a tricky balancing act, but Severance has managed to spend a handful of episodes slowly expanding its world and exploring multiple characters, while also steadily pushing itself toward a finale that will almost definitely answer some of those lingering questions. Most notably, that includes Mark finally finding Gemma, the mysterious dark hallway and elevator, and just what the hell the Cold Harbor file is. (The final episode is, in fact, called Cold Harbor.) More questions will undoubtedly arise soon after the Severance team loves a cliffhanger, after all but thats just more opportunities to hang out in the Lumon basement.See More:

One of the most memorable moments in the entire Assassins Creed series happens near the start of Assassins Creed 3, when Haytham Kenway has finished rounding up his band of assassins in the New World. Or at least, the player is led to believe theyre assassins. Haytham, after all, uses a hidden blade, is just as charismatic as previous series protagonist Ezio Auditore, and has up until this point in the campaign played the part of a hero, busting Native Americans out of prison and beating up cocky British redcoats. Only when he utters the familiar phrase, May the Father of Understanding guide us, does it become clear we have actually been following our sworn enemies, the Templars. To me, this surprising setup represents the fullest realization of Assassins Creeds potential. The first game in the series introduced an intriguing concept find, get to know, and kill your targets but fell short in the story department, with both protagonist Altar and his victims being utterly bereft of personality. Assassins Creed 2 took a step in the right direction by replacing Altar with the more iconic Ezio, but failed to apply the same treatment to his adversaries, with the big bad of its spinoff Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, Cesare Borgia, coming across as particularly underdeveloped. Only in Assassins Creed 3, set during the American Revolution, did the developers at Ubisoft devote as much time to fleshing out the hunted as they did the hunter. It lent the game an organic flow from set-up to payoff and, as a result, achieved a delicate balance between gameplay and narrative that as yet hasnt been replicated since.The underappreciated AC3 features the series' best balance of gameplay and story. | Image credit: UbisoftWhile the current RPG era of the series has largely been well received by players and critics, a wealth of articles, YouTube videos, and forum posts agree that Assassins Creed is in decline, and has been for some time. What exactly is responsible for this downfall, however, is subject to debate. Some point to the increasingly unrealistic premises of the modern games, which have you face off against gods like Anubis and Fenrir. Others take issue with Ubisofts implementation of a varied spectrum of romance options or, in the hotly-disputed case of Assassins Creed Shadows, replacing its hitherto fictional protagonists with a real-world historical figure, an African samurai called Yasuke. My personal nostalgia for the Xbox 360/PS3-era games notwithstanding, Id argue its none of these. Instead, such decline is a result of the series gradual abandonment of character-driven storytelling, which has by now gotten buried deep inside its sprawling sandbox.Over the years, Assassins Creed has padded its original action-adventure formula with a slew of RPG and live service-ish elements, from dialogue trees and XP-based levelling systems to loot boxes, microtransaction DLC, and gear customization. But the bigger the new installments have become, the emptier they have started to feel, and not just with regard to the countless climb-this-tower, find-that-object side-missions, but also their basic storytelling. While a game like Assassins Creed Odyssey technically has more content than Assassins Creed 2, much of it feels wooden and underbaked.Although allowing you to choose what your character says or does should theoretically make the overall experience more immersive, in practice Ive found it often has the opposite effect: as scripts get longer and longer to account for multiple possible scenarios, they feel like they lack the same level of polish as a game with a more limited range of interaction. The focused, screenplay-like scripts of the series action-adventure era allowed for sharply defined characters that were not pulled thin by a game structure that demands its protagonist be compassionate or brutal on the whim of the player. Thus, while a game like Assassins Creed Odyssey technically has more content than Assassins Creed 2, much of it feels wooden and underbaked. This unfortunately breaks the immersion; it's too often very obvious that you are interacting with computer generated characters rather than complex historical figures. This is in stark contrast to the franchises Xbox 360/PS3 era, which in my humble opinion has produced some of the finest writing in all of gaming, from Ezios fiery Do not follow me, or anyone else! speech after besting Savonarola, to the tragicomic soliloquy Haytham delivers when he is at long last killed by his son, Connor: Don't think I have any intention of caressing your cheek and saying I was wrong. I will not weep and wonder what might have been. I'm sure you understand. Still, I'm proud of you in a way. You have shown great conviction. Strength. Courage. All noble qualities. I should have killed you long ago.Haytham Kenway is one of Assassin's Creed's most richly-realized villains. | Image credit: UbisoftThe writing has suffered in other ways over the years, too. Where the modern games tend to stick to the easily digestible dichotomy of Assassins = good and Templars = bad, the earlier games went to great lengths to show that the line between the two orders isnt as clear-cut as it initially appears. In Assassins Creed 3, each defeated Templar uses their last breath to make Connor and, by extension, the player question their own beliefs. William Johnson, a negotiator, says the Templars could have stopped the Native American genocide. Thomas Hickey, a hedonist, calls the Assassins mission unrealistic and promises Connor that hell never feel fulfilled. Benjamin Church, who betrays Haytham, declares its all a matter of perspective, and that the British from their point of view see themselves as the victims, not the aggressors. Haytham, for his part, tries to shake Connors faith in George Washington, claiming the country hell create will be no less despotic than the monarchy from which the Americans sought to liberate themselves an assertion which rings all the more true when we discover that the command to burn down Connors village wasnt given by Haythams henchman Charles Lee, as previously thought, but Washington. By the end of the game, the player has more questions than answers and the story is stronger for it. Looking back on the franchises long history, there is a reason why one track from the Jesper Kyd-composed Assassins Creed 2 score, Ezios Family, resonated with players to the point of becoming the series official theme. The PS3 games, particularly Assassins Creed 2 and Assassins Creed 3, were at their core character-driven experiences; the melancholic guitar strings of Ezios Family werent meant to evoke the games Renaissance setting so much as Ezios personal trauma of losing his family. As much as I admire the expansive worldbuilding and graphical fidelity of the current generation of Assassins Creed games, my hope is that this out-of-control franchise will someday scale itself down, and once again deliver the kind of focused, tailor-made stories that made me fall in love with it in the first place. Sadly, in a landscape dominated by sprawling sandboxes and single-player games with live service-style ambitions, I fear thats just not good business anymore. Tim Brinkhof is a freelance writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at NYU, he has gone on to write for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.