Growing up, you probably felt a little “fancy” when you wore a specific designer label. Polo pony or alligator, anyone? You likely got the same sense of fancy from certain foods you ate, whether they were special treats at home, or something you saw in another family’s house, or just spotted on TV and dreamed of eating.Marketing “Fancy”: “Pardon Me, Do You Have Any Grey Poupon?”Grey Poupon CommercialGrey Poupon Commercialloading...Food companies did a great job at positioning food that was not fancy, to say the least, but the labels made them look fancy. Maybe the commercial showed “high-class” folks enjoying the food, or in the case of Grey Poupon mustard, enjoying in the back of your limousine, which is kind of weird.READ MORE: 16 Totally Awesome ’80s Candies We Were Obsessed WithPerhaps the food took you to a different place where people were naturally more elegant, which was almost always somewhere in Europe. As a kid you thought that even fancy kids drank International Coffees after school while enjoying a nice baguette with Nutella. This all just made sense.General Mills International CoffeeGeneral Mills TV Advertisementloading...But let’s not forget: the one thing that made you feel most fancy had nothing to do with adventuring in Europe or enjoying forbidden foods in the back of your limo. It was more about being an adult. Whether that meant enjoying a nice grape juice in a wine glass or washing it all down with an after-dinner mint (they were always gross), prancing around like Mom, Dad, and your very well-traveled Uncle Pete at one of their parties was as fancy as one could get.If You Grew Up in the '70s and '80s, These Foods Were Super FancyFrom Babybels to Toblerone chocolate, take a nostalgic bite out of these 'fancy' childhood foods that made us feel way more elegant than we really were.Gallery Credit: Stephen LenzREAD MORE: The Best ’80s Happy Meal Toys’80s Foods We Wish They Still MadeIf you grew up in the 1980s, you surely have fond memories of these popular (now discontinued) snacks.Filed Under: Nostalgia, Pop CultureCategories: Galleries, Lists, Original Features

LawnStarter is a marketplace that makes outdoor home services easy for homeowners while helping small businesses succeed. We've raised $25 million in venture funding and are growing fast. Are you a driven software engineer interested in helping give millions of Americans the freedom to spend time on what truly matters?Working at LawnStarter offers you a chance to help solve the most important challenges in the home services space in an environment that's fun, collaborative, and innovative. We are looking for smart, creative individuals who are passionate about innovation and aren't afraid to show it.Title: Lead Software EngineerWhat you'll do:As a Lead Software Engineering at LawnStarter, you'll report to one of our Engineering Managers and be responsible for leading technical initiatives from inception to the hands of our users. You will be empowered to drive continuous improvement and constantly evaluate the return on investment on every decision we make when building our products. You'll be in a hands-on development and technical lead role collaborating with our cross functional teams to help continue building the leading LawnStarter platform. Your focus will be architecting solutions, writing quality code, leading other engineers by example and solving technical challenges that will continue improving the experience of our users. You will become a key contributor to the codebase willing to work in any area of the code when needed. This can include JavaScript, PHP, Terraform or other backend/operations languages or technologies.Our ability to deliver quality software to our customers in a timely, predictable manner will be directly attributable to your capacity to identify and address challenges faced by the initiatives you will be leading.  You'll also:Lead the development of LawnStarter platform ensuring that we're utilizing the best development techniques, architectural patterns, frameworks and libraries for those initiativesOwn and ensure the resolution of complex problems found in our systems and integrationsFind opportunities to broadcast knowledge and lessons learned across delivery teamsDelegate to teammates and work with them to ensure they're successfulIdentify technical debt buydown opportunities and work with the engineering management team and the product management team to prioritize these activitiesEnsure patterns are in place to provide thorough automated testing with tests at each level of the test pyramidCommunicate patterns and solutions through both thorough written documentation and technical presentationsRequirementsWhat we're looking for:We're looking for you if you're an experienced, full-stack engineer. More specifically, we're looking for:Someone with a fair amount of experience working on both server- and client-side web software. You should have familiarity with cloud development, why Test Driven Development (TDD) is critical while writing code, what makes an API RESTFul, what React is, what an XSS attack is, and how an MVC web framework works. That will probably mean you've been doing this stuff for a few years.Someone who understands fundamental computer science concepts. That doesn't necessarily mean you have a CS degree. But you should be able to describe how a pointer works, what Big O notation is and how to use it, when to use composition and when to use inheritance and the differences between an array and a linked list and a set.Someone with a firm grasp of SQL and databases in general (including non-relational databases). You should know how to do CRUD operations, what indexes are and why they matter, and the difference between a left join and an inner join for instance.All team members at LawnStater are expected to embody our core values which are: Be data-driven, Get shit done, People are critical, Challenge the status quo, Be scrappy, Build a great environment. What makes this role awesome1 - One Team, One HeartWe believe the most significant part of any work environment is the team. That's why we have spent a massive amount of time finding humble, hungry, and smart folks that you will get to work with every single day. That's a huge part of the reason LawnStarter received the best places to work in the 2018, 2019, 2020 awards from the Austin-American Statesman.2 - GrowthWe have a small, tight-knit engineering team willing to give responsibility to anyone that is hungry, humble, and smart. You'll have opportunities to own large portions of our technical direction for new features, and larger projects. You'll get to work with a team of passionate engineers who are eager to share our knowledge and experience, and also learn from yours.3 - High-Performance Distributed Team EnvironmentWe are a diverse and distributed team which are passionate about the empowerment to deliver daily value to our users. We have built our core business with great unit economics and efficiency. What does that mean? Well, that allows us the opportunity to solve new and exciting challenges building innovation leading the market segment we are in. Put simply, we have unique problems being solved in a fast-paced environment but are extremely stable and able to continue investing in the future. We are working to be the largest outdoor home services company in the world. You in?LawnStarter is an Equal Opportunity Employer and embraces diversity of every kind.BenefitsGreat Culture: One of the top places to work in Austin in 2018, 2019, and 2020, and in the US in 2021, we are all about the team. That's why we have spent a massive amount of time finding humble, passionate, and smart folks that you will get to work with every day.Work from the comfort of your own homeOpportunity for growth

AI tools are changing the nature of work for a lot of jobs. The results, and the opinions about the change, are mixed.

April 11, 20256 min readThe Science Fields and State Hit Hardest by Trump NIH Cuts, in 4 ChartsAn analysis reveals which fields of science and U.S. states are being hit hardest by National Institutes of Health grant terminationsScientists and others have been protesting the massive cuts to research at the U.S. National Institutes of Health being made by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Dominic GwinnMiddle East Images/AFP via Getty ImagesThe US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has terminated nearly 800 research projects at a breakneck pace, wiping out significant chunks of funding to entire scientific fields, finds a Nature analysis of the unprecedented cuts.The administration of US President Donald Trump began purging NIH-funded studies on topics that it deems problematic less than 50 days ago, continuously expanding its list to include research on topics ranging from COVID-19 to misinformation. Hundreds of the 30,000-plus scientists funded by the NIH yearly have been forced to halt their work after receiving notices that their research “no longer effectuates agency priorities”, and some have had to fire personnel or even shut down their laboratories.To understand the extent and breadth of these actions, which have so far clawed back more than US$2.3 billion allocated to US researchers, Nature tapped into a scientist-led effort to track these cuts (see ‘How Nature analysed NIH’s grant terminations’ in supplemental info). Our analysis reveals the project topics, NIH institutes and US states affected the most.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The cancellations of projects, despite scientists scoring them highly during review, “tears the long-standing fabric of the government’s contract to pursue medical research that seeks to better the healthspan and lifespan for all Americans”, says Francis Collins, a geneticist who led the NIH, based in Bethesda, Maryland, for 12 years under 3 US presidents, including Trump.The NIH and its parent organization, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) based in Washington DC, did not respond to Nature’s queries about the terminations or scientists’ concerns about them.Grant assessmentThe NIH is by far the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, with an annual budget of US$47 billion paying for more than 60,000 grants. This size means that the agency’s funding is irreplaceable for science, says Shirley Tilghman, a molecular biologist and former president of Princeton University in New Jersey.Nature; Source: Nature analysis of NIH Grant Terminations in 2025 databaseNature’s analysis shows that, looking at just the projects terminated so far, 17% are related to COVID-19, and 29% to HIV/AIDS (see ‘Terminated grant tally’) — although this represents less than 4% of all the grants awarded to each of those topics that the agency funded in 2024. One reason for the focus of these cuts is that the Trump administration has said that the COVID-19 pandemic is over and people in the United States have moved on from it. Another potential reason is that HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects sexual and gender minorities (LGBT+); Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office on 20 January, directing the US government to stop acknowledging the fact that a person’s gender can differ from their sex at birth.The scientific fields hit hardest by the NIH’s cuts are those related to the health of transgender people, and the broader LGBT+ community, where around half of grants have been cut compared with what the NIH funded in 2024 (see ‘Fields under fire’).Nature; Source: Nature analysis of NIH Grant Terminations in 2025 databaseThese actions deny “a small but real percentage of the population answers to critically important questions about their health”, Tilghman says. “You cannot eliminate a segment of the population by executive order, but you can harm them greatly.”The NIH institutes that fund a lot of research in these now-disfavoured topic areas — for instance, the US National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities — have been hammered by the cuts (see ‘US NIH institutes losing the most’). Five of six of the directors of the NIH’s institutes and centres affected the most by these grant cancellations were placed on administrative leave last week, amid a glut of lay-offs and restructuring at the HHS.Nature; Source: Nature analysis of NIH Grant Terminations in 2025 databaseGeographical impactsTrump and his Republican allies have said that they want to rein in ‘woke’ left-wing, elite universities. The grant terminations are now damaging the scientific enterprise at research institutions in both ‘red’ states that voted for Trump in 2024 and ‘blue’ states that didn’t (see ‘Grant cuts by state’). Washington state, a blue state in 2024, has been hit hardest by the grant terminations, relative to how much NIH funding it typically receives in a year, with North Carolina, a red state in 2024, being a close second.But the administration isn’t just cutting NIH grants at the wealthiest universities: many cuts are also happening at small state schools and historically Black colleges and universities, says Scott Delaney, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, who co-runs the database that Nature used for its analysis. To create the database, Delaney and his collaborator, Noam Ross, executive director of the data-science non-profit organization rOpenSci, based in Berkeley, California, have been asking scientists to submit information about their grant terminations and scraping from a list of cancelled projects that the HHS posts on its website weekly.Nature; Source: Nature analysis of NIH Grant Terminations in 2025 databaseBiomedical-research heavyweight states Massachusetts, California, Maryland and Texas have lost some of the largest absolute amounts of research funding, but because they receive so much from the NIH, the impact has been less than for other states. New York state is an exception — it registers in the top five states affected, according to Nature’s analysis, because it is home to Columbia University in New York City.Trump’s team has targeted research grants at Columbia, cancelling $400 million to the university because, the administration has said, it failed to protect Jewish students from harassment during campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza.Unlike at other universities that lost NIH grants tied to topics of concern for the administration, Columbia has had a much broader swath of grants cancelled. Nature searched all terminated NIH grants for keywords that officials at federal agencies have been directed to search for, including ‘diversity’, ‘barrier’ and ‘underserved’. The NIH terminated 89 grants at Columbia that contained fewer than 4 flagged words, compared with the institution that received the second-most terminations, Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which lost 3 grants in this category. This indicates that the administration was less focused on topics of concern and more focused on cutting a certain amount of funding at Columbia. For instance, one of the cut grants was titled, ‘Long-term exposure to arsenic, and the co-occurrence of uranium, in public and private drinking water‘, and investigated links between arsenic and chronic heart and kidney disease.Since terminating these grants, the Trump administration has threatened the same treatment at several other elite universities that together receive billions in research funding. Nature’s analysis of the database should quash any wishful thinking that, “I have this grant studying synapses in fruit flies, and so I’m safe”, Delaney says. “Not if you’re at a targeted institution.”Termination normalizedIn the past, the termination of grants has been exceedingly rare, reserved only for gross misconduct, poor performance or fraud, says a former senior employee at the NIH, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution. Even in those cases, institutions are often given the opportunity to remedy the situation, the former worker says.“Up until now, grant recipients have been able to assume that, as long as they do good work and don’t do anything stupid, they’ll have five years of funding,” they add. “Now, that’s gone.”This uncertainty, combined with the hostility toward institutions of higher education, is already having a deep chilling effect: more than 75% of respondents to an informal Nature poll of readers who are scientists said that they were considering leaving the United States.A coalition of 16 state attorney-generals, as well as a group of researchers and research-affiliated organizations, filed two legal challenges seeking to overturn grant cancellations and bar the NIH from continuing what one lawsuit calls a “reckless and illegal purge to stamp out NIH-funded research that addresses topics and populations that they disfavor”. The NIH did not respond to Nature’s queries about the lawsuits. The HHS said that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation.This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on April 10, 2025.

Chaotic match-modifying shooter FragPunk gets new console release date after last month's delay Coming to Xbox Series X/S and PS5. Image credit: Bad Guitar News by Matt Wales News Reporter Published on April 11, 2025 FragPunk - the chaotic, neon-splurged hero shooter from NetEease - has sorted out the "unexpected technical challenges" it ran into earlier this year while trying to get the console version out the door. As such, it's finally coming to Xbox Series X/S and PS5 on 29th April. FragPunk's 5v5 (and free-to-play) shooting action ticks plenty of familiar genre boxes as its 12 distinct Lancer "heroes" hit the battlefield, but it's all made spicier thanks to its card-based modifier system - which sees teams pooling their earned chips at the start of a match to decide which of three possible options they want to inflict on everyone this turn. Choices are pulled form a pool of over 150 Shard Cards, meaning rules can be twisted in sometimes dramatic ways. You might decide to give everyone massive heads, for instance, or remove all guns from play. Or you might choose a card that lets allies lay eggs to restore health or that teleports enemies back to their spawn point after taking damage. FragPunk - console launch date trailer.Watch on YouTube It's got its fair share of issues, as Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell recently opined after playing FragPunk for a while, but its match-weirdening gimmick is a good one. "For someone who's always found this genre just a little too self-serious," Chris wrote, "this stuff is perfection... all the less desirable stuff from this genre, the toxicity and the almost excessive levels of tension, are quite easily defused when the thing people are shrieking about is called 'Mass Crab Walk'. In playing a highly moreish few hours of it this week, I've had a blast." FragPunk was originally supposed to launch for Xbox and PlayStation early last month, at the same time as PC version. However, NetEase opted for a last-minute console delay, blaming "unexpected technical challenges". Now, though, in a short message shared on social media, the company has confirmed a 29th April release for FragPunk on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, thanking players for their "continuing patience and unwavering support." It's also promising non-specific "gifts" to console players "as a token of our gratitude and to make up for the delay". These will be sent to all newly registered console game accounts and include time-limited event rewards from the start of Season 1 up to 29th April. "A detailed list of all above mentioned rewards and their distribution methods," it adds, "will be shared in a separate announcement before launch."

In a noticeably robust category, the absolute best outdoor lounge chairs distinguish themselves by how they physically support you as you sprawl out, while also embracing the curated vibe of your backyard or patio furniture. Refreshing your outdoor living space or furnishing a new one, though, can lead you down a whole rabbit hole of options.There’s no singular type of lounge chair, so know your specifications and square footage in advance. A chaise is ideal for sunbathing poolside, while an accent chair with a coordinating ottoman could be versatile enough to display on your porch or perch by an accompanying fire pit in your backyard. The foundations for this category are equally varied—popular designs make good use of powder-coated aluminum, acacia and teak, plus wicker—but our favorites are those that combine elegant features with hard-wearing fabrics. Read on for a curated selection of loungers that will ease you into warmer weather.Our Top Picks for the Best Outdoor Lounge Chairs:Best Lounge Chair Set: Castlery Maui Outdoor Lounge Chair Set, $1,229Best Coastal Lounge Chair: Serena & Lily Pacifica Lounge Chair, $2,198Best Modern Chaise Lounge: Article Laholm 78" Outdoor Chaise Lounge, $899Best Boho Lounge Chair: CHITA Boho Rattan Patio Chair, $330Best Low-Profile Lounge Chair: Neighbor Dweller Chair, $2,000Best Cushioned Chaise Lounge: Design Within Reach Terassi Chaise, $4,495CHITA Boho Patio Rattan ChairChita’s outdoor chair is designed with clean lines and coastal accents to keep your exterior living area tasteful, but modern. We like that the woven rope detail on each arm mimics the look of rattan, and how the neutral hues brighten up your patio, deck, or poolside lounge area.Article Laholm Outdoor Chaise LoungeArticle takes a modern, Scandinavian-style approach to furniture, and their neutral upholstery options (ivory or black) pairs well with sturdy acacia wood framework. We can also appreciate the four backrest positions in this recliner chair—just in case your next outdoor reading experience turns into an alfresco napping session.Castlery Maui Outdoor Lounge Chair SetThis two-piece lounge set is all you need to decorate a smaller balcony with a mixed media piece that’ll last for years. Castlery’s Maui lounge chair is crafted from acacia wood with similar woven arms as the Chita chair above. This one, however, works well with company. Purchase a set of two, a coordinating coffee or side table to round out the assembly.Neighbor Dweller ChairTeak wood takes the cake yet again with this supportive and comfy lounge chair that you can tack a matching ottoman onto. The deep cushioning makes it a plush resting spot for cozying up with a beach read. Plus, the low-profile design matches a laidback design scheme, especially on a wood-slatted deck or patio, but adds in some midcentury legs for a vintage throwback.Lulu and Georgia Gally Indoor / Outdoor ChaiseMonochrome colorscapes look even better in the great outdoors, and with a weather-resistant wicker seat like this one, you’ve got yourself a solid alternative to cushioned patio chaise lounges. Set up an umbrella and side table on a patio or poolside, then flank them with two of these chairs.Design Within Reach Terassi ChaiseDWR is home to splurge-worthy Eames office chairs for your interiors, but they also deserve more credit for their ample outdoor furniture supply. These luxurious chaise loungers come in nine Sunbrella fabric colorways, and the water-resistant teak frame will patina beautifully in your backyard. Line them up along a midcentury modern lap pool and prepare for a sunbathing scene right out of a Hockney painting.Crate & Barrel Ipanema Wicker Outdoor Lounge ChairThis funky interpretation on a standard lounge chair leans into elegant resin wicker curves inspired by palm-leaf baskets. The all-weather olefin cushion cover and rust-resistant aluminum frame are designed to endure the elements, meaning you’ve got yourself a long-haul addition to your outdoor oasis.Sundays Shoreline Outdoor Lounge ChairWe could wax poetic about outdoor furniture from Sundays any day of the week, or we could just present this lounge chair. The sleek metal frame takes a natural twist—literally—with woven hemp rope on the back and seat. A more casual, neutral-toned outdoor area would match this look perfectly, along with a canvas umbrella or other powder-coated accent piece.Folding Outdoor Lounge Chairs (Set of 2)For a more sleek, structural spin on hammocks, consider these foldable, stackable lounge chairs that are easy to transport within your backyard. Crafted from acacia wood and rope, they also help prop your back up, with a steep angle so your legs are elevated. Their weathered finish and nautical aesthetic make these naturally suited for a private deck or a backyard by the sea.Modway Encase Swing Outdoor Patio Lounge ChairLuckily, you don’t have to live on the Mediterranean coast to invest in a resort-worthy lounge chair. This hanging egg chair is primed for catching the breeze with its woven, nest-like shell, but also encloses you like a hug with its soft seating. Consider it for adding some intrigue and relaxation opportunities indoors or out, perhaps in an elevated terrace-turned-lounge area.Serena & Lily Pacifica Lounge ChairSerena & Lily’s coastal collections are characterized by natural, breathable materials and fabrics. One of the best examples of this is the Pacifica Lounge Chair, a swiveling seat perfect for posting up poolside (and the companion piece to the brand’s AD-reviewed Pacifica Sofa). “Thanks to the fade-resistant Perennial or Sunbrella cushion covers and powder-coated aluminum frame, these pool lounge chairs look just as good as they did upon delivery three years ago,” contributor Blake Solomon previously said of her couch.

The Social Security Administration will no longer be communicating with the media and the public through press releases and “dear colleague” letters, as it shifts its public communication exclusively to X, sources tell WIRED. The news comes amid major staffing cuts at the agency.“We are no longer planning to issue press releases or those dear colleague letters to inform the media and public about programmatic and service changes,” said SSA regional commissioner Linda Kerr-Davis in a meeting with managers earlier this week. “Instead, the agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public … so this will become our communication mechanism.”Previously, the agency used dear colleague letters to engage with advocacy groups and third-party organizations that help people access social security benefits. Recent letters covered everything from the agency’s new identity verification procedures to updates on the accuracy of SSA death records (“less than one-third of 1 percent are erroneously reported deaths that need to be corrected,” the agency wrote, in contrast to what Elon Musk claims).The letters and press releases were also a crucial communications tool for SSA employees, who used them to stay up on agency news. Since SSA staff cannot sign up for social media on government computers without submitting a special security request, the change could have negative consequences on the ability for employees to do their jobs.It could also impact people receiving social security benefits who rely on the letters for information about access benefits. “Do they really expect senior citizens will join this platform?” asked one current employee. “Most managers aren’t even on it. How isn’t this a conflict of interest?” Another staffer added: “This will ensure that the public does not get the information they need to stay up-to-date.”Linda Kerr-Davis also did not immediately respond to a request for comment by WIRED.“This reporting is misleading. The Social Security Administration is actively communicating with beneficiaries and stakeholders,” says Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson. "There has not been a reduction in workforce. Rather, to improve the delivery of services, staff are being reassigned from regional offices to front-line help – allocating finite resources where they are most needed. President Trump will continue to always protect Social Security.”Got a Tip?Do you know anything about these dinners and meetings? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at zoeschiffer.87.Elon Musk, who is leading the charge to radically reduce the size of the federal workforce on behalf of President Trump, bought X (then Twitter) in October 2022. The platform has for years battled the spread of misinformation. After he purchased the company, Musk fired contract content moderators and shifted content moderation efforts to a crowd-sourced fact-checking tool called Community Notes. In 2023, an EU official warned the platform was a major source of fake news, based on a commissioned study that reported “Twitter has the highest discoverability" of disinformation.The regional office workforce will soon be cut by roughly 87 percent, sources tell WIRED. Regional office staff manage IT support, policy questions, labor relations issues, reasonable accommodations guidance, and public relations. Since February, the SSA has cut 7,000 jobs, according to The Washington Post.

...including the Steam Deck.Switch 2 is bigger than its direct predecessor, but how does it compare to other handhelds available—both now and throughout history?That's a question you no longer need to ponder, as we've taken the liberty of comparing it to a wide range of devices, both from Nintendo and other companies.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Google held its Google Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas this week, where it announced dozens of new features, like its next generation AI processing chip, called Ironwood, and its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5 Flash. It also announced a long list of AI startups that have signed to use its cloud. Among them are some of the most watched startups in the world. As we previously reported, this list includes Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the startup founded by OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. It also includes: Anysphere, which makes the uber-popular AI-powered code editor Cursor. Google says Cursor is using Anthropic’s Claude models on Google Cloud. Cursor was recently valued at $10 billion, sources have told TechCrunch. Its biggest rival is probably GitHub CoPilot, so that would make Microsoft one of its top competitors. Hebbia uses AI to search large documents and answer questions, which has made it a hit in the legal industry. Andreessen Horowitz led, while Index Ventures, Google Ventures, and Peter Thiel participated in its $130 million Series B. It is using Google’s Gemini models, Google says. Magic is building frontier models to automate coding as well as research. Its choice of Google Cloud is likely somewhat obvious, given that its 2024 $320 million fundraising round included Alphabet’s CapitalG and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as investors. It’s tapping Google Cloud for GPUs, according to Google. Physical Intelligence is working on developing foundational software for robots and has a who’s-who roster of co-founders, including solo investor extraordinaire Lachy Groom. It raised $400 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation in November from backers including Sequoia, Jeff Bezos, Lux Capital, and Thrive Capital. A few of its founders have deep ties to Google, having previously worked at Google DeepMind, including Karol Hausman and Chelsea Finn.  Photoroom is one of the hottest AI startups in Paris, Europe’s center of AI. It offers AI photo editing and is using Google Cloud’s Veo 2 video generating model and its text-to-image model Imagen 3. Synthesia is building products that make highly realistic AI avatars and is using various Google models. It raised $180 million at a $2.1 billion round in January led by NEA but with GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) among the investors. All in all, Google Cloud is collecting an impressive list of startups to bolster its race against Microsoft Azure, and to some extent AWS, for AI workloads.  In addition, Google announced that it added Lightspeed to VC partners in addition to Sequoia and Y Combinator. Google Cloud grants portfolio companies from its partner investors access to its AI chips and models. Lightspeed’s AI portfolio companies can qualify for $150,000 in cloud credits, Google said. So it has plans to convince even more rising star startups to join its cloud. Here are the rest of the AI startups that Google showcased this week: Augment Code — AI software coding agent Autoscience — scientific research AI agents Big Sur AI — personalized recommendations for e-commerce Captions — talking video creator and video editor  Eon.io — autonomous enterprise backup and recovery fal is — text to image, and image to video  Spot AI — AI for security cameras  Story — blockchain for storing and licensing intellectual property StudyHall AI — coaches students on reading, writing, and exam prep Ubie — Japanese healthcare symptom analyzer  Udio — music creation  Ufonia — agent for clinical healthcare consultations with patients Wagestream — financial well-being platform built by charities Wondercraft — GenAI realistic audio content

What is usually hidden below the surface, erupts from the ground in Manhattan’s Garment District. Cold, white steel branches curve and splay in different directions, creating a tangled 22-foot installation. Steve Tobin’s New York Roots populates the Broadway plazas between 39th and 41st Street with seven sculptures that vary in height but all evoke the unseen networks that lie beneath the ground. The installation is a collaboration between the Garment District Alliance and New York City’s Department of Transportation Art Program. Pedestrians can weave in and out of the structures, inviting them to think about what connects us as human beings. The intertwined shapes and flowing forms create dramatic views and open spaces, offering new perspectives as people walk around and under them. Since 2010 the plaza in Midtown has featured artists including Chakaia Booker, who created a 35-foot-tall abstract sculpture made of repurposed rubber tires. New York Roots, is the latest installation, hosted by the Garment District Alliance, to touch down in the neighborhood. The installation New York Roots consists of seven sculptures made of steel, the tallest of which reaches 22 feet. (Alexandre Ayer) “New York Roots is a captivating addition to the Garment District that transforms our public plazas into spaces for reflection and serves as an important reminder to stay rooted in our communities,” said Barbara A. Blair, president of the Garment District Alliance. Officially named in 1919, the Garment District in Midtown Manhattan was once New York City’s epicenter of clothing manufacturing. Bolts of fabric and racks of clothing lined the streets to be sent all over the country. As it became cheaper to make clothes abroad, the factories that once supported the garment industry shut down, leading to the neighborhood’s decline. Tobin’s New York Roots recalls the history of the city, connecting the past and the future of the once vibrant neighborhood. Among his many significant installations, Tobin is recognized in New York City for Trinity Root. Dedicated in 2005, the 20-foot copper sculpture was one of the first monuments to commemorate 9/11. The sculpture was inspired by a sycamore tree that protected St. Paul’s Chapel at Trinity Church as Lower Manhattan around it was decimated by the attacks. New York Roots, and Tobin’s other works, aren’t just art– they act as guardians of space, encouraging people to pause, connect, and feel a sense of unity in their surroundings. New York Roots will be on view to the public through February 2026.