President Donald Trump on Thursday revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian Institution with an executive order that targets funding for programs that advance divisive narratives and improper ideology, the latest step in a broadside against culture he deems too liberal.Trump claimed there has been a concerted and widespread effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth, adding that it casts the founding principles of the United States in a negative light.The order he signed behind closed doors puts Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian Institutions Board of Regents, in charge of overseeing efforts to remove improper ideology from all areas of the institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.It marks the Republican presidents latest salvo against cultural pillars of society, such as universities and art, that he considers out of step with conservative sensibilities. Trump recently had himself installed as chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with the aim of overhauling programming, including the annual Kennedy Center Honors awards show. The administration also recently forced Columbia University to make a series of policy changes by threatening the Ivy League school with the loss of several hundred million dollars in federal funding.The executive order also hints at the return of statues and monuments of Confederate figures, many of which were taken down or replaced around the country after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is detested by Trump and other conservatives.The order also calls for improvements to Independence Hall in Philadelphia by July 4, 2026, in time for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.Trump singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 near the White House, the Womens History Museum, which is in development, and the American Art Museum for criticism.Museums in our Nations capital should be places where individuals go to learnnot to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history, he said.Linda St. Thomas, the Smithsonian Institutions chief spokesperson, said in an email late Thursday, We have no comment for now.Under Trumps order, Vance will also work with the White House budget office to make sure future funding for the Smithsonian Institution isnt spent on programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy. Trump also wants to ensure that the womens history museum celebrates women and not recognize men as women in any respect.It also requires the interior secretary to reinstate monuments, memorials, statues, and similar properties that have been removed or changed since January 1, 2020, to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.The Smithsonian Institution is the worlds largest museum, education, and research complex. It consists of 21 museums and the National Zoo. Eleven museums are located along the National Mall in Washington.The institution was established by Congress with money from James Smithson, a British scientist who left his estate to the United States to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.Darlene Superville, Associated Press

Flexispot produces a number of value chairs with a variety of designs, and the BS5 is one of their better looking options.

The brand has launched a whole new visual identity.

MacworldMonthly subscription fatigue is real especially when all you really want to do is open Word without worrying about another bill. For a limited time, you can score a lifetime license to Microsoft Office Home & Business 2021 for Mac for just $79.97. Thats it. One price. Yours forever.This deal gets you the full suite of essential MS Office apps for home or business Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Teams (basic) with no monthly fees, no renewal reminders, and no cloud drama. Whether youre drafting proposals, building presentations, wrangling spreadsheets, or just trying to survive the PTO meeting with a well-formatted flyer, these classic apps are the go-to tools that just work.Simply redeem your code, link it to your Microsoft account, and youre good to go on one Mac for life. Plus, this isnt some second-tier version its the full deal, made for modern Macs and updated to look and feel right at home on your device.Only available through March 30 at 11:59 p.m. PT, pick up MS Office Home & Business 2021 for Mac while its still just $79.97.Microsoft Office Home & Business for Mac 2021: Lifetime License $79.97Get It HereStackSocial prices subject to change.

Mar 29, 2025Ravie LakshmananThreat Intelligence / Mobile SecurityCybersecurity researchers have discovered a new Android banking malware called Crocodilus that's primarily designed to target users in Spain and Turkey."Crocodilus enters the scene not as a simple clone, but as a fully-fledged threat from the outset, equipped with modern techniques such as remote control, black screen overlays, and advanced data harvesting via accessibility logging," ThreatFabric said.As with other banking trojans of its kind, the malware is designed to facilitate device takeover (DTO) and ultimately conduct fraudulent transactions. An analysis of the source code and the debug messages reveals that the malware author is Turkish-speaking.The Crocodilus artifacts analyzed by the Dutch mobile security company masquerade as Google Chrome (package name: "quizzical.washbowl.calamity"), which acts as a dropper capable of bypassing Android 13+ restrictions. Once installed and launched, the app requests permission to Android's accessibility services, after which contact is established with a remote server to receive further instructions, the list of financial applications to be targeted, and the HTML overlays to be used to steal credentials.Crocodilus is also capable of targeting cryptocurrency wallets with an overlay that, instead of serving a fake login page to capture login information, shows an alert message urging victims to backup their seed phrases within 12, or else risk losing access to their wallets.This social engineering trick is nothing but a ploy on the part of the threat actors to guide the victims to navigate to their seed phrases, which are then harvested through the abuse of the accessibility services, thereby allowing them to gain full control of the wallets and drain the assets."It runs continuously, monitoring app launches and displaying overlays to intercept credentials," ThreatFabric said. "The malware monitors all accessibility events and captures all the elements displayed on the screen."This allows the malware to log all activities performed by the victims on the screen, as well as trigger a screen capture of the contents of the Google Authenticator application.Another feature of Crocodilus is its ability to conceal the malicious actions on the device by displaying a black screen overlay, as well as muting sounds, thereby ensuring that they remain unnoticed by the victims.Some of the important features supported by the malware are listed below -Launch specified applicationSelf-remove from the devicePost a push notificationSend SMS messages to all/select contactsRetrieve contact listsGet a list of installed applicationsGet SMS messagesRequest Device Admin privilegesEnable black overlayUpdate C2 server settingsEnable/disable soundEnable/disable keyloggingMake itself a default SMS manager"The emergence of the Crocodilus mobile banking Trojan marks a significant escalation in the sophistication and threat level posed by modern malware," ThreatFabric said."With its advanced Device-Takeover capabilities, remote control features, and the deployment of black overlay attacks from its earliest iterations, Crocodilus demonstrates a level of maturity uncommon in newly discovered threats."The development comes as Forcepoint disclosed details of a phishing campaign that has been found employing tax-themed lures to distribute the Grandoreiro banking trojan targeting Windows users in Mexico, Argentina, and Spain by means of an obfuscated Visual Basic script.Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.SHARE

These rival apps can help you get your fix of short-form videos.

What we've been playing - Unicorns, metaphors, and the bony remains of a giant beastA few of the things that have us hooked this week.Image credit: Eurogamer / Atlus Feature by Robert Purchese Associate Editor Published on March 29, 2025 29th MarchHello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we've been playing. This week, Bertie finally tries Metaphor: ReFantazio and enjoys it, with some reservations; Tom Orry settles into adventuring in Avowed; and Ed finds time to connect with his Unicorn Overlord.What have you been playing?Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.Unicorn Overlord, SwitchUnicorn Overlord.Watch on YouTubeWhenever I go abroad, especially on flights, I like to treat myself to a new game for the journey. Usually that's a Switch game and, for my flights last week to GDC in San Francisco, I started Unicorn Overlord to while away the hours between dodgy airplane food and failing to sleep.And what a treat it is! Developed by Vanillaware and published by Atlus, it's a neat little strategy RPG with a wealth of depth. Its narrative is a typical story of recovering a fallen kingdom from the grasp of an evil empire, all told via some colourful (and somewhat suggestive) anime characters. Battles, meanwhile, mostly take care of themselves after some prior organisation and a bit of prodding. To me, it feels like a mix of Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy 12's gambit system - two games I love.To explain further, your characters can be divided into squads arranged on a small grid, which are then directed across battles. The placement of characters is particularly important - you want your shielding tanks at the front and your mages at the back, for instance - and depending on their equipment they'll unleash a string of attacks and buffs in a set order you can tweak. Then, when these squads meet others on the top-down battlefield, the view switches to a side-on spectacle of magic and animations that plays out automatically. Defeat enemies to earn points you can spend on special abilities; place characters together to deepen relationships; customise your characters with new weapons and accessories. It's all here, with seemingly plenty of depth. And while, in the first few hours at least, it may not be the most original of experiences, it's exactly the sort of game world to get completely immersed in and watch cute characters hash it out, even while bleary-eyed and desperately trying to ignore the snores and baby cries of those around you. Now I'm back, I'm excited to play more from the comfort of my sofa instead.-EdMetaphor: ReFantazio, PS5It's a metaphor. But that actually happened.Watch on YouTubeI'm intrigued by this idea that menus in games have become a kind of artform for Atlus, and that, because it has found success focusing on them - through the Persona series and now Metaphor: ReFantazio - it will probably push them in its games forever more. But how much can it push them before they become too much - before they intrude too much on the game itself?I ask because for me, Metaphor: ReFantazio is on the cusp. Don't get me wrong, I love a sense of style. I love the lavish cutscenes - I've taken scores of screenshots already and I'm only a few hours in - and I love the design of the menus. Why make them grey and functional when you can extend the immersion of the game to them?But there's a point for me at which the overt styling starts to intrude too much. There's a sense in Metaphor that every moment has to be delivered with flair and that simply presenting action without adornment might become too boring or staid - a sense that Atlus might even be a little embarrassed of what the default moment-to-moment action looks like. So it dresses it up. It dresses everything up. And this leads to a rapid slideshow of perspective shifts as we jump between pre-rendered cutscenes, in-engine cutscenes, talking-head dialogues and various other things. There's so much energy nothing ever seems to stay still for long.I get it: that's the vibe, that's the style, and I much would rather a game have one. But there's a point at which all this jumping around and overstyling starts to make my head hurt. There's also a point at which I just want to play the actual game. And I hope it either calms down a bit, or that my reaction to it stabilises, because there's clearly a lot about Metaphor to like.-BertieAvowed, Xbox Series XZoe shares some top tips for getting into Avowed.Watch on YouTubeI've stopped messing about with settings and alternative ways to play Avowed, now, which means I am back playing the game properly - not that I don't frequently grumble to myself about how much nicer the world would look if it didn't turn into a jumbled mess every time I moved the camera. Look, get over it, I'm over it, just play the game!Right, I love it in fantasy games when you walk into a vast area and the designers have done something super cool with the environment. This happened to me in Avowed earlier in the week on the way to talk to a Watcher about something (neat little Witcher nod in this quest, too). I walked to a cliff edge and the world stretched out before me, but seemingly embedded into the cliffface on the opposite side of a gorge was the bony remains of a giant beast. That kind of stuff looks awesome and also serves to help give the world some history. What is this beast? Are they still around? How did it end up there?Anyway, I definitely haven't got out my 5m network cable to hook my TV directly to the router in order to get Geforce Now running like I know it can, just to play Avowed with the pristine visuals it deserves. Absolutely not, so there's no chance this will end badly for me.-Tom O

Converting an Image to a 3D Mesh in Blender By Jan van den Hemel on March 29, 2025 Videotutorials Jan van den Hemel writes:40-minute about an Image to 3D model workflow using the (much improved!) Trace Image to Grease Pencil feature in Blender. This is great for creating a base mesh that you can then use for either boolean, sub-d or sculpting workflows (it's up to you!).

Norways State Investment Fund Should Dump TeslaIts vast sovereign wealth fund owns nearly 36 million Tesla shares. Better get out while the getting is good.by Ryan Cooper March 28, 20255:15 AMRSSPrintNorways central bank, Norges Bank, manages the Norwegian krone and the countrys foreign exchange reserves. It also runs the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, the Government Pension Fund of Norway. The international part of that fund, the Government Pension Fund-Global (GPFG) owns about 1.5 percent of all public companies around the world, on average. (The fund is so enormous because Norway wisely chose to invest its oil revenue rather than spending it, to avoid deindustrializing itself and making its economy dependent on the gyrating price of oil.)GPFGs holdings include 35.7 million shares of Tesla, or about 1.1 percent of the company. Norges Bank should sell off that stake immediately, both on the financial merits and to fit with the funds own ethical rules around investment.Let me begin with the business case against Tesla. As I wrote back in January, before Trump took office, the long-term prospects for the company looked dim, despite its sky-high stock price. Elon Musks association with Donald Trump was obliterating Teslas reputation among its core customer base of affluent liberals, while conservatives tend to hate EVs on principle. Teslas poorly constructed product lineup is aging, and its only new vehicle since 2019, the Cybertruck, has been a flop. Meanwhile, competition is ramping up both domestically from Hyundai and GM, and especially internationally, where BYD and other Chinese companies have caught almost every incumbent automaker, including Tesla, with their pants down.Since January, things have gotten much worse. Musks reputation has gotten dramatically more toxic, above all thanks to his throwing a Sieg heil! salute at a Trump inauguration rally and his illegal cuts to federal spending through DOGE. Musks antics have created the kind of headlines and protestsincluding a few instances of vandalismthat any rational company would desperately avoid. Sales are falling sharply in all but one of Teslas top national markets, from 34 percent in the Netherlands to 71 percent in Germany, the biggest car market in Europe. In China, the companys second-largest market, sales are down 49 percent. (The U.K. is so far the lone exception, though I bet not for long.)Indeed, in Norway itselfwhich used to be Teslas eighth-biggest market because almost all cars sold there are EVs nowTesla went from the biggest seller by far in 2024 to, as of March, third place behind Toyota, which has just one distinctly underwhelming EV for sale.The only thing keeping Teslas stock price up is the retail investor cult of personality around Muskbut this is deflating too.As a result, Teslas price has fallen by about 40 percent since I wrote that piece, erasing about $520 billion in market capitalization. But even this is a preposterous overvaluation. It is still worth $888 billion at time of writing, making it the ninth-most valuable company in the world. That puts it at a price-to-earnings ratio of about 136, or roughly 14 times that of Toyota, which sold six times as many cars and earned seven times as much profit last year. Tesla is worth more than TSMC, which made about $35 billion in profits last year, as compared to Teslas $7.1 billion.Musk has promised that autonomous robotaxis and robots are the future of Tesla, but not only has he been promising and failing to deliver this technology for nearly a decade now, his most recent promises are ridiculous on their face. Last year, he claimed his Optimus robots alonehopefully not just some guy in a suitwill turn Tesla into a $25 trillion company. The man is a charlatan.Incidentally, there are companies that actually have figured out driverless taxis, like Waymo, and all indications are that at best it is a low-margin business, because the cars require so much expensive technology, as well as significant human oversight in case of glitches.The only thing keeping Teslas stock price up is the retail investor cult of personality around Muskbut this is deflating too. As John Herrman writes at New York, prominent YouTubers who were previously very friendly to Tesla have started avoiding or criticizing the company. The MAGA-adjacent channel Whistlin Diesel went mega-viral with a video showing how in a bad towing situation, the entire back portion of the Cybertrucks shoddy cast aluminum frame will snap right off. (Every Cybertruck in the country has been recalled because the panels keep peeling away.) Mark Rober, whose channel has 66 million subscribers, did the same with a video showing his Teslas Autopilot crashing directly into a Wile E. Coyotestyle painted wall.At a minimum, it is highly likely that Teslas valuation will eventually fall to something like a normal car company, to maybe $75 billion. It may well fall into a death spiral of collapsing sales and investment and go bankrupt entirely. All this is obviousits why company executives and board members have been selling their shares by the hundreds of thousands, while buying precisely zero. The rats are deserting the ship. Norges Bank would be wise to unload its Tesla stake before reality fully sinks in among the Musk fan base.Second: the moral case against Tesla. Norges Bank is not a passive investor. On the contrary, as Matt Bruenig points out at the Peoples Policy Project, the fund is actively managed, it attempts to participate in every shareholder vote, and there are some moral priorities in its investment strategy. As its website says, We aim to promote long-term value creation at the companies and minimise negative effects on the environment and society. Thats why some companies are blacklisted from the fund, according to criteria outlined back in 2014. Tobacco companies, manufacturers of certain kinds of gruesome weapons, and coal companies are ruled out. So might a company that contributes to or is responsible for serious or systematic human rights violations or other particularly serious violations of fundamental ethical norms.Until recently, Tesla made up the majority of Musks wealth, and he used that wealth to buy the American presidency and seize direct control of the federal budget with his DOGE organization. He and his goon squad of fascist cyber criminals have wreaked havoc across the federal budget, and nowhere worse than the foreign aid budget. USAID has been devastated, funding to PEPFAR (which provides HIV drugs to poorer nations) has been frozen, and a vaccine program was recently terminated.If these cuts hold, millions of people will die. Experts told The New York Times that one year of cutting off HIV/AIDS treatment will kill about 1.65 million people; food aid, 550,000 people; vaccine funding, 500,000 children; tuberculosis funding, 310,000 people; and malaria funding, 290,000. Thats a total of 3.3 million per year. The funding freeze to PEPFAR alone has already killed an estimated 27,000 adults and 2,800 children. Its shaping up to be the worst crime of the 21st century so far, and may rival the death tolls of Hitler and Stalin.Any Tesla shareholder is implicated in Musks crimes against humanity, and more implicated the more shares they possess.Furthermore, Musk is also leading a charge to destroy European democracy. He has meddled in German politics to boost the extreme far-right AfD party, and in British politics in an attempt to oust the Labour Party government. As Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stre said back in January, I find it worrying that a man with enormous access to social media and large financial resources is so directly involved in the internal affairs of other countries.Indeed, in February Musk personally attacked Norges Bank Investment Management CEO Nicolai Tangen for having the temerity to vote against Musks outrageous $55 billion pay package, calling him a dangerous politician. Norway has an election in September this year, and it would be entirely in keeping with Musks previous behavior to attempt to boost the far-right Progress Party in retaliation for Norges Bank exercising its legal rights as a Tesla shareholder.So, Mr. Tangen: Dump those Tesla shares, and if you need somewhere to sock away the cash, I suggest Rheinmetall.Back to Search ResultsRyan CooperRyan Cooper is the Prospects managing editor, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week.Read more by Ryan CooperMarch 28, 20255:15 AMIf you enjoyed this article, please consider The American Prospect has delivered independent reporting that exposes corporate power, investigates political corruption, and analyzes threats to our democracy. Unlike many media outlets, were not owned by billionaires or corporationswere powered by readers like you.Todays independent journalism faces unprecedented challenges. Your support makes our reporting possible and keeps our work free and accessible to all. Whether its $5 or $50, every contribution helps sustain our nonprofit newsroom.Join our community of supporters and make a donation todayto help keep independent journalism thriving.