Using Apple's iOS 18 and the right carrier, iPhone owners can send Android users messages with high-res photos and videos, read receipts, audio clips, and more. Here's how.

Artificial Intelligence, once for data processing, now reshapes entertainment, education and social media.

Editor's take: Let's be brutally honest here. The first-generation Switch controllers were horrible. The Joy-Cons were not comfortable to use and suffered from severe joystick drift. At least the Pro controller was more comfortable to use, but it had drift issues, too. So it's weird that Nintendo is refusing to explain or directly address what it has done about the problem in its second-generation controllers. Nintendo has nixed hopes that Switch 2 Joy-Cons (Joy-Con 2) feature Hall-effect sensors. Rumors emerging around Christmas last year suggested that Joy-Con 2 would implement the Hall effect to deal with the joystick-drift problems plaguing the original units. However, according to a Nintendo Life interview with Senior Vice President of Product Development and Publishing Nate Bihldorff, Nintendo built the Joy-Con 2 "from the ground up," but inexplicably did not implement the Hall effect.Considering all the headaches resulting from joystick drift and how easily Nintendo could correct it with Hall-effect thumbsticks, it is incomprehensible that it didn't. That's not to say that the Joy-Con 2 will have the same issues the first-generation controllers had it takes a while for the problem to set in so we'll have to wait and see.However, Bihldorff didn't elaborate on what Nintendo did to mitigate this problem, which has sparked multiple lawsuits for the company, one of which the judge dismissed on a technicality. He just mentioned that they are not "Hall Effect" and then quickly diverted attention away from the question."Well, the Joy-Con 2's controllers have been designed from the ground up. They're not Hall Effect sticks, but they feel really good," the VP said before quickly trading roles with the interviewer by asking, "Did you experience both the Joy-Con and the Pro Controller?"He then explained that he likes the Pro Controller because it feels like a GameCube gamepad. So, while he answered the original question no, they don't employ the Hall effect he diverted the subject from the logical follow-up: "What have you done to eliminate drift?" It's a legitimate concern, and the lack of transparency on the subject speaks volumes amid what is already a very controversial pre-launch.However, Nintendo is still fighting lawsuits over the drift issue. So, it is equally likely that its legal team has instructed staff and other representatives to avoid discussing the issue until the dust settles. After all, saying, "We fixed the drift issues," is legally admitting that it was a problem in the first generation, which will not help Nintendo's defense. // Related StoriesThere has been much negative commentary regarding the price point for the console and its games. Critics have compared the $450 MSRP or more, depending on where you live to PlayStation and Xbox consoles, noting that the Switch 2 doesn't hold a candle from a price-per-compute standpoint.They are equally annoyed at the lack of transparency regarding the Switch 2's APU. Many have made hypothetical (and sarcastic) comparisons to the RTX 4090 because of Nvidia's dubious claims of 10 times the processing power over the original Switch.Judging new controllers before they have even reached the public's hands is premature without question, but it will surely come up on social media and forums. So, Bihldorff's dodging of the question is not a good look, and the situation will be 10 times worse if the thumbsticks end up with the same mechanical problems as the first-gen Joy-Con.

The popular HBO series The White Lotuswrapped up its third season on Sunday night. Where will the location be for The White Lotus season 4?After the episode aired, HBO ran a special inside-the-episode interview with creator Mike White. With season 4 already renewed, White hinted that the shows location might abandon the ocean for the first time in series history.Recommended VideosFor the fourth season, I want to get a little bit out of the crashing waves of rocks vernacular, but theres always more room for more murders at the White Lotus hotels, White said in the interview.RelatedThe White Lotus locations so far have been Hawaii (season 1), Italy (season 2), and Thailand (season 3).HBO EVP Francesca Orsi told Deadline in February that a European location was the leading candidate for season 4.While White might leave the ocean for the fourth season, dont expect him to brave the cold anytime soon. I feel confident well never do a season in the cold, White Lotus EP David Bernad told Bill Simmons when asked about doing a season revolving around skiing. Mikes not built for it. Hes a California guy. Hes not built for the cold. Never say never, but I would be surprised.The White Lotus season 3 finale garnered 6.2 million U.S. cross-platform viewers, per a Warner Bros. Discovery press release. This marked the third consecutive week of record-breaking viewership highs for the series. The season 3 finale outperformed the season 2 finale (4.1 million U.S. viewers) by 51%.Stream all episodes of The White Lotus on Max.Editors Recommendations

The actress talks about her characters conservative politics and bringing her partner, Sam Rockwell, with her to Thailand.

Not quite open source Metas surprise Llama 4 drop exposes the gap between AI ambition and reality Touted 10M token context proves elusive, while early performance tests disappoint experts. Benj Edwards Apr 7, 2025 3:54 pm | 3 Credit: Rocter via Getty Images Credit: Rocter via Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOn Saturday, Meta released its newest Llama 4 multimodal AI models in a surprise weekend move that caught some AI experts off guard. The announcement touted Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick as major advancements, with Meta claiming top performance in their categories and an enormous 10 million token context window for Scout. But so far the open-weights models have received an initial mixed-to-negative reception from the AI community, highlighting a familiar tension between AI marketing and user experience."The vibes around llama 4 so far are decidedly mid," said independent AI researcher Simon Willison in a short interview with Ars Technica. Willison often checks the community pulse around open source and open weights AI releases in particular.While Meta positions Llama 4 in competition with closed-model giants like OpenAI and Google, the company continues to use the term "open source" despite licensing restrictions that prevent truly open use. As we have noted in the past with previous Llama releases, "open weights" more accurately describes Meta's approach. Those who sign in and accept the license terms can download the two smaller Llama 4 models from Hugging Face or llama.com.The company describes the new Llama 4 models as "natively multimodal," built from the ground up to handle both text and images using a technique called "early fusion." Meta says this allows joint training on text, images, and video frames, giving the models a "broad visual understanding." This approach ostensibly puts Llama 4 in direct competition with existing multimodal models from OpenAI (such as GPT-4o) and Google (Gemini 2.5).The company trained the two new models with assistance from an even larger unreleased 'teacher' model named Llama 4 Behemoth (with 2 trillion total parameters), which is still in development. Parameters are the numerical values a model adjusts during training to learn patterns. Fewer parameters mean smaller, faster models that can run on phones or laptops, though creating high-performing compact models remains a major AI engineering challenge.Meta constructed the Llama 4 models using a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture, which is one way around the limitations of running huge AI models. Think of MoE like having a large team of specialized workers; instead of everyone working on every task, only the relevant specialists activate for a specific job.For example, Llama 4 Maverick features a 400 billion parameter size, but only 17 billion of those parameters are active at once across one of 128 experts. Likewise, Scout features 109 billion total parameters, but only 17 billion are active at once across one of 16 experts. This design can reduce the computation needed to run the model, since smaller portions of neural network weights are active simultaneously.Llamas reality check arrives quicklyCurrent AI models have a relatively limited short-term memory. In AI, a context window acts somewhat in that fashion, determining how much information it can process simultaneously. AI language models like Llama typically process that memory as chunks of data called tokens, which can be whole words or fragments of longer words. Large context windows allow AI models to process longer documents, larger code bases, and longer conversations.Despite Meta's promotion of Llama 4 Scout's 10 million token context window, developers have so far discovered that using even a fraction of that amount has proven challenging due to memory limitations. Simon Willison reported on his blog that third-party services providing access, like Groq and Fireworks, limited Scout's context to just 128,000 tokens. Another provider, Together AI, offered 328,000 tokens.Evidence suggests accessing larger contexts requires immense resources. Willison pointed to Meta's own example notebook ("build_with_llama_4"), which states that running a 1.4 million token context needs eight high-end NVIDIA H100 GPUs.Willison documented his own testing troubles. When he asked Llama 4 Scout via the OpenRouter service to summarize a long online discussion (around 20,000 tokens), the result wasn't useful. He described the output as "complete junk output," which devolved into repetitive loops.Meta claims that the larger of its two new Llama 4 models, Maverick, outperforms competitors like OpenAI's GPT-4o and Google's Gemini 2.0 on various technical benchmarks, which we usually note are not necessarily useful reflections of everyday user experience. So far, independent verification of the released model's performance claims remains limited.More interestingly, a version of Llama 4 is currently perched at No. 2 on the popular Chatbot Arena LLM vibemarking leaderboard. However, even this comes with a catch: Willison noted a distinction pointed out in Meta's own announcement: the high-ranking leaderboard entry referred to an "experimental chat version scoring ELO of 1417 on LMArena," different from the Maverick model made available for download.A potential technical dead-endThe Llama 4 release sparked discussion on social media about AI development trends, with reactions including mild disappointment over lackluster multimodal features, concerns that its mixture-of-experts architecture used too few activated parameters (only 17 billion), and criticisms that the release felt rushed or poorly managed internally. Some Reddit users also noted it compared unfavorably with innovative competitors such as DeepSeek and Qwen, particularly highlighting its underwhelming performance in coding tasks and software development benchmarks.On X, researcher Andriy Burkov, author of "The Hundred-Page Language Models Book," argued the underwhelming Llama 4launch reinforces skepticism about monolithic base models. He stated that recent "disappointing releases of both GPT-4.5 and Llama 4 have shown that if you don't train a model to reason with reinforcement learning, increasing its size no longer provides benefits."Burkov's mention of GPT-4.5 echoes that model's somewhat troubled launch; Ars Technica previously reported that GPT-4.5 faced mixed reviews, with its high cost and performance limitations suggesting a potential dead-end for simply scaling up traditional AI model architectures. This observation aligns with broader discussions in the AI field about the scaling limitations of training massive base models without incorporating newer techniques (such as simulated reasoning or training smaller, purpose-built models).Despite all of the current drawbacks with Meta's new model family, Willison is optimistic that future releases of Llama 4 will prove more useful. "My hope is that well see a whole family of Llama 4 models at varying sizes, following the pattern of Llama 3," he wrote on his blog. "Im particularly excited to see if they produce an improved ~3B model that runs on my phone."Benj EdwardsSenior AI ReporterBenj EdwardsSenior AI Reporter Benj Edwards is Ars Technica's Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site's dedicated AI beat in 2022. He's also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC. 3 Comments

HealthFrom dampening inflammation to boosting mental health, the many types of dietary fibre have a surprisingly large impact throughout the body. Here's how to get your fill 7 April 2025 Lisa SheehanDeep inside your lower intestine is a 24/7 dinner party. The trillions of microorganisms that live in your colon are feasting on foodstuffs you ate but failed to digest. Their motives are selfish but they are still doing you a favour, tending to the health of your gut, brain, heart and immune system.Meanwhile, in the background, even-more-indigestible food is quietly drifting past. Even the microbes wont touch it, but it, too, has a positive effect on your health.The name of all this undigested food? Fibre. Perhaps the most unglamorous of nutrients, it has so many things going for it that it deserves to be lauded as a superfood. But while the health benefits of a fibre-rich diet have been recognised since the 1950s, only in recent years have we gotten a firmer handle on the full complexity of this diverse substance and how to maximise these positive effects.New research is uncovering the power of different types of fibre to dampen inflammation, improve our immune function and mental health and even act as natures Ozempic by dialing down our appetite. These studies are also revealing why the fibre often added to processed food wont do the same trick.Dietary fibreDietary fibre also known as roughage is defined as the portion of ingested food that cannot be broken down by our own digestive enzymes. You could be forgiven for thinking that all fibre is basically the same, just humdrum rough stuff that goes in at one end and ultimately comes out at the other. After

The author had her son after being unable to transfer her credits to another college. Courtesy of the author 2025-04-07T20:34:01Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? I was in my third year in college in 2007 and I was working to graduate without debt. The effect of the recession hit me overnight, with the prices of my rent and groceries going up.I moved and my degree was put on hold indefinitely. In 2007, I was in my third year of college at FIU in Miami, studying Environmental Science. I knew I wouldn't graduate with a high-paying job, so I didn't want to graduate with student loan debt. I worked two part-time office jobs and went to school full-time. I was paying for tuition out-of-pocket and was totally financially independent, which meant I was responsible for my own rent, utilities, groceries, and car expenses. Since I lived alone and didn't have a roommate, I had no one to split the expenses with.The effect of the recession seemed to happen overnight, with the cost of my rent, groceries, and gas rising from one day to the next. Since I had already been living month-to-month, the increased expenses led me to feel a massive amount of stress. I began to have episodes where I felt faint and experienced heart palpitations. I know now that I was experiencing panic attacks. I lived in Miami, where there was always somewhere to beI loved Miami. It had been my home my whole life, and all of my friends lived there, but even before the recession, I always felt like I would never get ahead. There was always a party to go to, a last-minute dinner invitation, or a concert I wanted to attend, so the minimal cash I had leftover after my bills got paid seemed to go out as quickly as it would come in. Even when I did my best to budget, something always came up, like needing to buy something to wear for an event or having to split the bill with friends at a restaurant.I began to think a lot about what my future would hold if I continued to live in Miami. Even after graduation, I couldn't see a lot changing as far as finances went. I'd likely be renting forever, unable to save up for a house. But what bothered me the most was the amount of pressure I felt. Since I could never save up any money, I worried about how quickly things could go wrong if I got sick even for just a week and couldn't go to work.I made a dramatic change in order to lower my expensesDuring this time, I had been visiting family that had moved a few hours north of Miami every couple of months. It was a dramatically different way of life in the small town they now lived in, with less traffic and less noise. I caught myself calculating how much less it would cost to live there and allowed myself to envision a different way of life.I ended up moving over the summer with my partner at the time and finding a house to rent together. Just the fact that we could afford a house for less than what I was paying for a one-bedroom apartment felt like things were looking up. We each got jobs that we enjoyed, didn't have to work as much, and were able to spend more time together. We were even able to afford more groceries and started to save up money again. That was the most important part of our plan because we eventually wanted to move out of state once we had saved up enough money to do so.It worked out well at first, but I eventually questioned my decisionsAt the time, it seemed like a temporary change, but it altered the course of my life forever. I was unable to transfer to the local college, so my degree was put on hold indefinitely. I went from feeling like I was finally moving in the right direction to feeling stuck again. Once a couple of years passed by, I began to miss home and wondered if I should have just stuck it out and found a way to sustain my life as it was. Why, for instance, hadn't I decided to get a roommate or simply take a semester off to destress and save up some money before returning?Please help BI improve our Business, Tech, and Innovation coverage by sharing a bit about your role it will help us tailor content that matters most to people like you. What is your job title? (1 of 2) Entry level positionProject managerManagementSenior managementExecutive managementStudentSelf-employedRetiredOther What products or services can you approve for purchase in your role? (2 of 2) Advertising / MarketingClient / Account ManagementCompany strategyHR / Training / Office supportManaging budgetsIT / Telecoms / TechRecruiting new employeesSalesSoftware developmentFinancialOtherNone of the above By providing this information, you agree that Business Insider may use this data to improve your site experience and for targeted advertising. By continuing you agree that you accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . Thanks for sharing insights about your role. Eventually, I had my son, which changed everything for me. I didn't want to leave the family I had close by, and once again, I knew I would never be able to afford the life I wanted to have with my son somewhere with a higher cost of living. I started doing my best to make the best of the situation, and I ended up never leaving the area.The recession resulted in more for me than simply higher pricesI still look back at the recession as a turning point in my life. Since I could already barely afford my life as it was when the higher prices hit, it led me to make dramatic changes I wouldn't have otherwise. While I'm certainly not unhappy with the way my life turned out, I know it would have been very different if the recession hadn't come at such a delicate financial time for me.Recommended video

Nintendo Switch 2 is not getting achievements but it wont say whyMichael BeckwithPublished April 7, 2025 6:20pm Nintendo must just not care for the idea (YouTube)A platform-wide achievement system has been ruled out for Nintendo Switch 2, but that doesnt mean they wont feature in individual games.Achievements in video games have been a thing for decades, with Microsoft making them something that every game on the Xbox 360 had to have. Sony quickly copied the idea on the PlayStation 3 but, predictably, Nintendo did not.Achievements, trophies, and other similar systems have persisted ever since but while theres been a handful of Nintendo games that feature achievements (Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii was one of the first) theyve never been present for every game on a console.When the Switch 1 launched, some were dismayed to see it lack any sort of achievement system for games. There was hope this would be rectified for the Switch 2, but Nintendo has already made it clear that wont be happening.In an interview with Polygon, Bill Trinen, Nintendo of Americas vice president of player and product experience, was asked if the Switch 2 will feature system-wide achievements.Not only did Trinen answer with a blunt No, he didnt give a reason as to why. Frustrating, but also typical for Nintendo. The implication is simply that they dont like them and/or they dont like using other peoples ideas (not they havent in the past).The omission of achievements might feel a bit surprising when the Switch 2 has caught up to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X in other areas. It can support 4K visuals, run certain games up to 120 frames per second, and comes with a traditional online chat feature.That said, Nintendo still isnt opposed to adding achievements to individual games. For example, early Mario Kart World footage shows that it has some kind of challenge checklist for when youre roaming around the open world.The Nintendo Switch 2 Editions of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and its sequel, Tears Of The Kingdom, will also have achievements in the form of medals for reaching certain milestones, though these wont be in the games themselves.More TrendingThe achievements are locked to an accompanying Zelda Notes service included with the Nintendo Switch Online app (which is set to be renamed the Nintendo Switch App in May). Other Zelda Notes features include navigation guidance and the ability to share items with other players.While this is bound to disappoint certain gamers, its the least of peoples concerns with the Switch 2. There are much stronger points of contention, such as the high price of games and the lack of proper physical versions for Switch 2 Edition games.Not to mention there are concerns the console itself will instantly increase in price thanks to new tariffs imposed by Donald Trump, which have already prompted Nintendo to delay when pre-orders open up in the US. Youll have to make do with games like Mario Kart World incorporating their own achievements (Nintendo)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

Elon Musks war on fraud and abuse has impacted the Social Security Administrations ability to distribute payments, according to a new report. In particular, frequent outages of the agencys website in recent weeks have been linked to its expansion of fraud checks earlier in the claims process. From the Washington Post: The network crashes appear to be caused by an expansion initiated by the Trump team of an existing contract with a credit-reporting agency that tracks names, addresses and other personal information to verify customers identities. The enhanced fraud checks are now done earlier in the claims process and have resulted in a boost to the volume of customers who must pass the checks. But the technology staff did not test the software against a high volume of users to see if the servers could handle the rush, current and former officials said. Connectivity issues and bugs with the expanded system have caused the portal that manages log-ins and authentication for many Social Security applications to go down, officials said. It has been widely reported that the Social Security Administration is struggling in the wake of widespread cuts directed by President Trump and Musks DOGE government efficiency team. Fewer employees are available to provide phone support, which many older individuals prefer, and Musk has repeatedly alleged widespread fraud in the claims process. In one instance, he stated during a Wisconsin rally that 40% of calls to the agency are fraudulent, a claim that has not been supported by evidence. The new software-based checks are reportedly supposed to root out this supposed fraud, but DOGE has also directed the SSA to cut its IT staff and, pushing more individuals to the website, it has been unable to handle the increased load. Outages of government websites are nothing new, and some on social media have commented that the SSA website experienced regular outages before the new administration began making changes. But in the same way you cannot cut the legs off a table and expect it to function, these service issues were predictable. Musk surely feels emboldened by his takeover of Twitter, though, in which he laid off the majority of staff and managed to keep the service functioning (although it is riddled with problems and arguably has not changed materially since the acquisition). Distribution of payments necessary for living into retirement is of course more important than the uptime of a social network, though. The Post cited one such instance of a retiree struggling to get access to her new benefits: In Upland, California, 72-year-old Kathy Stecher began trying to apply for retirement benefits more than a week ago. One of her first steps was to visit the Social Security website to book a required appointment at her local field office, because she believed she had to authenticate her identity in person first. But over several days stretching from last month through Wednesday, the website wouldnt let Stecher schedule a visit. The site displayed a small bar reading, Make an appointment, she said, but whenever she clicked on it, nothing happened. When she finally reached someone on the phone, the websites booking tool wasnt working, she said. The employee sighed and told her that similar problems have become routine, forcing customers to wait on hold for hours. So much was changing so fast at the agency, the employee said. Retirees and others rely on Social Security payments for basic survival, and President Trump has repeatedly insisted he would not make changes to the program, which would be deeply unpopular. But perhaps deliberately crippling the agency is the point. The program could be rendered ineffective and outsourced to private industry, as conservatives have long wanted to do. Under President Bushs administration, there was a proposal to privatize Social Security that could have required individuals to convert their 401(k) holdings into annuities (payments made in intervals for the rest of ones life), thereby making their retirement payments influenced by the markets. Following the past couple of days, it is not hard to see why that is a bad idea. But people like Musk and Trump are rich beyond belief and do not have to worry about such working-class issues. Perhaps the greatest irony is that the ongoing trade war started by President Trump is expected to hurt his base, working-class Americans, the most. Apparently, it is unfair that the United States has to buy rare earth metals from other countries because they are not naturally found domestically.The White House, for its part, has continued to reiterate that nothing is changing at the Social Security Administration. A spokesperson said in a recent statement, With a resounding mandate from the American people, President Trump is moving quickly to fulfill his promise of making the federal government more efficient. He has promised to protect Social Security, and every recipient will continue to receive their benefits.