One thing that has come up already is how The Last of Us has handled Abby in two different ways. One appearance-wise, the other story-wise.

What just happened? On Sunday, President Donald Trump revealed to reporters aboard Air Force One that he plans to announce a tariff rate on imported semiconductors within the coming week. Significantly, though, Trump also signaled potential flexibility for certain companies in the sector. According to Reuters, Trump told reporters during the flight that he wanted to uncomplicate the semiconductor industry because the US wants to make its chips and other products in the country. While he declined to specify whether products like smartphones might remain exempt from tariffs, he emphasized the need for adaptability. "You have to show a certain flexibility," Trump said. "Nobody should be so rigid." The president's comments come as his administration intensifies its focus on the semiconductor industry. Earlier in the day, Trump announced a national security trade investigation into semiconductors and the broader electronics supply chain. "We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations," Trump wrote on social media. The announcement follows Friday's decision by the White House to exclude certain technology products from steep reciprocal tariffs on Chinese imports, a move that briefly raised hopes within the tech industry that consumer goods like phones and laptops might avoid price hikes. However, comments from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Sunday clarified that critical electronics, including smartphones and computers, would soon face separate tariffs, in addition to those on semiconductors. Lutnick outlined the administration's plans for what he described as "a special focus-type of tariff" targeting electronics and pharmaceuticals, expected to take effect within one to two months. These new duties would be distinct from Trump's reciprocal tariffs, which last week raised levies on Chinese imports to 145 percent. "He's saying they're exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they're included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two," Lutnick explained during a television interview. He predicted that these measures would incentivize companies to relocate production to the United States. // Related Stories The escalating trade tensions have drawn a sharp response from Beijing. China retaliated by increasing its tariffs on US imports to 125 percent. In response to Washington's latest moves, China's Ministry of Commerce issued a statement on Sunday indicating it was assessing the impact of the exclusions for technology products announced late last week. "The bell on a tiger's neck can only be untied by the person who tied it," the ministry said, using a proverb that suggests resolution lies with those who initiated the conflict.

Love crossword puzzles but don’t have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That’s what The Mini is for! A bite-sized version of the New York Times’ well-known crossword puzzle, The Mini is a quick and easy way to test your crossword skills daily in a lot less time (the average puzzle takes most players just over a minute to solve). While The Mini is smaller and simpler than a normal crossword, it isn’t always easy. Tripping up on one clue can be the difference between a personal best completion time and an embarrassing solve attempt. Recommended Videos Just like our Wordle hints and Connections hints, we’re here to help with The Mini today if you’re stuck and need a little help. Related Below are the answers for the NYT Mini crossword today. New York Times Across Uneaten part of toast, often – CRUST Like stud muffins – HUNKY Prepare for use, as a marker – UNCAP Nick of “48 Hrs.” – NOLTE Strike zone’s lower boundary – KNEES Down Alternative to a chip, in the baking aisle – CHUNK Kind of sentence that keeps going and going, it should have been made into two sentences – RUNON Cousin’s dad – UNCLE Spin out on the ice, say – SKATE Uses a keyboard – TYPES Editors’ Recommendations

Intergalactic Computer Network An Ars Technica history of the Internet, part 1 In our new 3-part series, we remember the people and ideas that made the Internet. Jeremy Reimer – Apr 14, 2025 7:00 am | 5 Credit: Collage by Aurich Lawson Credit: Collage by Aurich Lawson Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more In a very real sense, the Internet, this marvelous worldwide digital communications network that you’re using right now, was created because one man was annoyed at having too many computer terminals in his office. The year was 1966. Robert Taylor was the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Information Processing Techniques Office. The agency was created in 1958 by President Eisenhower in response to the launch of Sputnik. So Taylor was in the Pentagon, a great place for acronyms like ARPA and IPTO. He had three massive terminals crammed into a room next to his office. Each one was connected to a different mainframe computer. They all worked slightly differently, and it was frustrating to remember multiple procedures to log in and retrieve information. Author’s re-creation of Bob Taylor’s office with three teletypes. Credit: Rama & Musée Bolo (Wikipedia/Creative Commons), steve lodefink (Wikipedia/Creative Commons), The Computer Museum @ System Source In those days, computers took up entire rooms, and users accessed them through teletype terminals—electric typewriters hooked up to either a serial cable or a modem and a phone line. ARPA was funding multiple research projects across the United States, but users of these different systems had no way to share their resources with each other. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a network that connected all these computers? The dream is given form Taylor’s predecessor, Joseph “J.C.R.” Licklider, had released a memo in 1963 that whimsically described an “Intergalactic Computer Network” that would allow users of different computers to collaborate and share information. The idea was mostly aspirational, and Licklider wasn’t able to turn it into a real project. But Taylor knew that he could. In a 1998 interview, Taylor explained: “In most government funding, there are committees that decide who gets what and who does what. In ARPA, that was not the way it worked. The person who was responsible for the office that was concerned with that particular technology—in my case, computer technology—was the person who made the decision about what to fund and what to do and what not to do. The decision to start the ARPANET was mine, with very little or no red tape.” Taylor marched into the office of his boss, Charles Herzfeld. He described how a network could save ARPA time and money by allowing different institutions to share resources. He suggested starting with a small network of four computers as a proof of concept. “Is it going to be hard to do?” Herzfeld asked. “Oh no. We already know how to do it,” Taylor replied. “Great idea,” Herzfeld said. “Get it going. You’ve got a million dollars more in your budget right now. Go.” Taylor wasn’t lying—at least, not completely. At the time, there were multiple people around the world thinking about computer networking. Paul Baran, working for RAND, published a paper in 1964 describing how a distributed military networking system could be made resilient even if some nodes were destroyed in a nuclear attack. Over in the UK, Donald Davies independently came up with a similar concept (minus the nukes) and invented a term for the way these types of networks would communicate. He called it “packet switching.” On a regular phone network, after some circuit switching, a caller and answerer would be connected via a dedicated wire. They had exclusive use of that wire until the call was completed. Computers communicated in short bursts and didn’t require pauses the way humans did. So it would be a waste for two computers to tie up a whole line for extended periods. But how could many computers talk at the same time without their messages getting mixed up? Packet switching was the answer. Messages were divided into multiple snippets. The order and destination were included with each message packet. The network could then route the packets in any way that made sense. At the destination, all the appropriate packets were put into the correct order and reassembled. It was like moving a house across the country: It was more efficient to send all the parts in separate trucks, each taking their own route to avoid congestion. A simplified diagram of how packet switching works. Credit: Jeremy Reimer By the end of 1966, Taylor had hired a program director, Larry Roberts. Roberts sketched a diagram of a possible network on a napkin and met with his team to propose a design. One problem was that each computer on the network would need to use a big chunk of its resources to manage the packets. In a meeting, Wes Clark passed a note to Roberts saying, “You have the network inside-out.” Clark’s alternative plan was to ship a bunch of smaller computers to connect to each host. These dedicated machines would do all the hard work of creating, moving, and reassembling packets. With the design complete, Roberts sent out a request for proposals for constructing the ARPANET. All they had to do now was pick the winning bid, and the project could begin. BB&N and the IMPs IBM, Control Data Corporation, and AT&T were among the first to respond to the request. They all turned it down. Their reasons were the same: None of these giant companies believed the network could be built. IBM and CDC thought the dedicated computers would be too expensive, but AT&T flat-out said that packet switching wouldn’t work on its phone network. In late 1968, ARPA announced a winner for the bid: Bolt Beranek and Newman. It seemed like an odd choice. BB&N had started as a consulting firm that calculated acoustics for theaters. But the need for calculations led to the creation of a computing division, and its first manager had been none other than J.C.R. Licklider. In fact, some BB&N employees had been working on a plan to build a network even before the ARPA bid was sent out. Robert Kahn led the team that drafted BB&N’s proposal. Their plan was to create a network of “Interface Message Processors,” or IMPs, out of Honeywell 516 computers. They were ruggedized versions of the DDP-516 16-bit minicomputer. Each had 24 kilobytes of core memory and no mass storage other than a paper tape reader, and each cost $80,000 (about $700,000 today). In comparison, an IBM 360 mainframe cost between $7 million and $12 million at the time. An original IMP, the world’s first router. It was the size of a large refrigerator. Credit: Steve Jurvetson (CC BY 2.0) The 516’s rugged appearance appealed to BB&N, who didn’t want a bunch of university students tampering with its IMPs. The computer came with no operating system, but it didn’t really have enough RAM for one. The software to control the IMPs was written on bare metal using the 516’s assembly language. One of the developers was Will Crowther, who went on to create the first computer adventure game. One other hurdle remained before the IMPs could be put to use: The Honeywell design was missing certain components needed to handle input and output. BB&N employees were dismayed that the first 516, which they named IMP-0, didn’t have working versions of the hardware additions they had requested. It fell on Ben Barker, a brilliant undergrad student interning at BB&N, to manually fix the machine. Barker was the best choice, even though he had slight palsy in his hands. After several stressful 16-hour days wrapping and unwrapping wires, all the changes were complete and working. IMP-0 was ready. In the meantime, Steve Crocker at the University of California, Los Angeles, was working on a set of software specifications for the host computers. It wouldn’t matter if the IMPs were perfect at sending and receiving messages if the computers themselves didn’t know what to do with them. Because the host computers were part of important academic research, Crocker didn’t want to seem like he was a dictator telling people what to do with their machines. So he titled his draft a “Request for Comments,” or RFC. This one act of politeness forever changed the nature of computing. Every change since has been done as an RFC, and the culture of asking for comments pervades the tech industry even today. RFC No. 1 proposed two types of host software. The first was the simplest possible interface, in which a computer pretended to be a dumb terminal. This was dubbed a “terminal emulator,” and if you’ve ever done any administration on a server, you’ve probably used one. The second was a more complex protocol that could be used to transfer large files. This became FTP, which is still used today. A single IMP connected to one computer wasn’t much of a network. So it was very exciting in September 1969 when IMP-1 was delivered to BB&N and then shipped via air freight to UCLA. The first test of the ARPANET was done with simultaneous phone support. The plan was to type “LOGIN” to start a login sequence. This was the exchange: “Did you get the L?” “I got the L!” “Did you get the O?” “I got the O!” “Did you get the G?” “Oh no, the computer crashed!” It was an inauspicious beginning. The computer on the other end was helpfully filling in the “GIN” part of “LOGIN,” but the terminal emulator wasn’t expecting three characters at once and locked up. It was the first time that autocomplete had ruined someone’s day. The bug was fixed, and the test completed successfully. IMP-2, IMP-3, and IMP-4 were delivered to the Stanford Research Institute (where Doug Engelbart was keen to expand his vision of connecting people), UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Now that the four-node test network was complete, the team at BB&N could work with the researchers at each node to put the ARPANET through its paces. They deliberately created the first ever denial of service attack in January 1970, flooding the network with packets until it screeched to a halt. The original ARPANET, predecessor of the Internet. Circles are IMPs, and rectangles are computers. Credit: DARPA Surprisingly, many of the administrators of the early ARPANET nodes weren’t keen to join the network.  They didn’t like the idea of anyone else being able to use resources on “their” computers. Taylor reminded them that their hardware and software projects were mostly ARPA-funded, so they couldn’t opt out. The next month, Stephen Carr, Stephen Crocker, and Vint Cerf released RFC No. 33. It described a Network Control Protocol (NCP) that standardized how the hosts would communicate with each other. After this was adopted, the network was off and running. J.C.R. Licklider, Bob Taylor, Larry Roberts, Steve Crocker, and Vint Cerf. Credit: US National Library of Medicine, WIRED, Computer Timeline, Steve Crocker, Vint Cerf The ARPANET grew significantly over the next few years. Important events included the first ever email between two different computers, sent by Roy Tomlinson in July 1972. Another groundbreaking demonstration involved a PDP-10 in Harvard simulating, in real-time, an aircraft landing on a carrier. The data was sent over the ARPANET to a MIT-based graphics terminal, and the wireframe graphical view was shipped back to a PDP-1 at Harvard and displayed on a screen. Although it was primitive and slow, it was technically the first gaming stream. A big moment came in October 1972 at the International Conference on Computer Communication. This was the first time the network had been demonstrated to the public. Interest in the ARPANET was growing, and people were excited. A group of AT&T executives noticed a brief crash and laughed, confident that they were correct in thinking that packet switching would never work. Overall, however, the demonstration was a resounding success. But the ARPANET was no longer the only network out there. The two keystrokes on a Model 33 Teletype that changed history. Credit: Marcin Wichary (CC BY 2.0) A network of networks The rest of the world had not been standing still. In Hawaii, Norman Abramson and Franklin Kuo created ALOHAnet, which connected computers on the islands using radio. It was the first public demonstration of a wireless packet switching network. In the UK, Donald Davies’ team developed the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) network. It seemed like a good idea to start connecting these networks together, but they all used different protocols, packet formats, and transmission rates. In 1972, the heads of several national networking projects created an International Networking Working Group. Cerf was chosen to lead it. The first attempt to bridge this gap was SATNET, also known as the Atlantic Packet Satellite Network. Using satellite links, it connected the US-based ARPANET with networks in the UK. Unfortunately, SATNET itself used its own set of protocols. In true tech fashion, an attempt to make a universal standard had created one more standard instead. Robert Kahn asked Vint Cerf to try and fix these problems once and for all. They came up with a new plan called the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP. The idea was to connect different networks through specialized computers, called “gateways,” that translated and forwarded packets. TCP was like an envelope for packets, making sure they got to the right destination on the correct network. Because some networks were not guaranteed to be reliable, when one computer successfully received a complete and undamaged message, it would send an acknowledgement (ACK) back to the sender. If the ACK wasn’t received in a certain amount of time, the message was retransmitted. In December 1974, Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine wrote a complete specification for TCP. Two years later, Cerf and Kahn, along with a dozen others, demonstrated the first three-network system. The demo connected packet radio, the ARPANET, and SATNET, all using TCP. Afterward, Cerf, Jon Postel, and Danny Cohen suggested a small but important change: They should take out all the routing information and put it into a new protocol, called the Internet Protocol (IP). All the remaining stuff, like breaking and reassembling messages, detecting errors, and retransmission, would stay in TCP. Thus, in 1978, the protocol officially became known as, and was forever thereafter, TCP/IP. A map of the Internet in 1977. White dots are IMPs, and rectangles are host computers. Jagged lines connect to other networks. Credit: The Computer History Museum If the story of creating the Internet was a movie, the release of TCP/IP would have been the triumphant conclusion. But things weren’t so simple. The world was changing, and the path ahead was murky at best. At the time, joining the ARPANET required leasing high-speed phone lines for $100,000 per year. This limited it to large universities, research companies, and defense contractors. The situation led the National Science Foundation (NSF) to propose a new network that would be cheaper to operate. Other educational networks arose at around the same time. While it made sense to connect these networks to the growing Internet, there was no guarantee that this would continue. And there were other, larger forces at work. By the end of the 1970s, computers had improved significantly. The invention of the microprocessor set the stage for smaller, cheaper computers that were just beginning to enter people’s homes. Bulky teletypes were being replaced with sleek, TV-like terminals. The first commercial online service, CompuServe, was released to the public in 1979. For just $5 per hour, you could connect to a private network, get weather and financial reports, and trade gossip with other users. At first, these systems were completely separate from the Internet. But they grew quickly. By 1987, CompuServe had 380,000 subscribers. A magazine ad for CompuServe from 1980. Credit: marbleriver Meanwhile, the adoption of TCP/IP was not guaranteed. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) group at the International Standardization Organization (ISO) decided that what the world needed was more acronyms—and also a new, global, standardized networking model. The OSI model was first drafted in 1980, but it wasn’t published until 1984. Nevertheless, many European governments, and even the US Department of Defense, planned to transition from TCP/IP to OSI. It seemed like this new standard was inevitable. The seven-layer OSI model. If you ever thought there were too many layers, you’re not alone. Credit: BlueCat Networks While the world waited for OSI, the Internet continued to grow and evolve. In 1981, the fourth version of the IP protocol, IPv4, was released. On January 1, 1983, the ARPANET itself fully transitioned to using TCP/IP. This date is sometimes referred to as the “birth of the Internet,” although from a user’s perspective, the network still functioned the same way it had for years. A map of the Internet from 1982. Ovals are networks, and rectangles are gateways. Hosts are not shown, but number in the hundreds. Note the appearance of modern-looking IPv4 addresses. Credit: Jon Postel In 1986, the NFSNET came online, running under TCP/IP and connected to the rest of the Internet. It also used a new standard, the Domain Name System (DNS). This system, still in use today, used easy-to-remember names to point to a machine’s individual IP address. Computer names were assigned “top-level” domains based on their purpose, so you could connect to “frodo.edu” at an educational institution, or “frodo.gov” at a governmental one. The NFSNET grew rapidly, dwarfing the ARPANET in size. In 1989, the original ARPANET was decommissioned. The IMPs, long since obsolete, were retired. However, all the ARPANET hosts were successfully migrated to other Internet networks. Like a Ship of Theseus, the ARPANET lived on even after every component of it was replaced. The exponential growth of the ARPANET/Internet during its first two decades. Credit: Jeremy Reimer Still, the experts and pundits predicted that all of these systems would eventually have to transfer over to the OSI model. The people who had built the Internet were not impressed. In 1987, writing RFC No. 1,000, Crocker said, “If we had only consulted the ancient mystics, we would have seen immediately that seven layers were required.” The Internet pioneers felt they had spent many years refining and improving a working system. But now, OSI had arrived with a bunch of complicated standards and expected everyone to adopt their new design. Vint Cerf had a more pragmatic outlook. In 1982, he left ARPA for a new job at MCI, where he helped build the first commercial email system (MCI Mail) that was connected to the Internet. While at MCI, he contacted researchers at IBM, Digital, and Hewlett-Packard and convinced them to experiment with TCP/IP. Leadership at these companies still officially supported OSI, however. The debate raged on through the latter half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Tired of the endless arguments, Cerf contacted the head of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and asked him to write a blue ribbon report comparing OSI and TCP/IP. Meanwhile, while planning a successor to IPv4, the Internet Advisory Board (IAB) was looking at the OSI Connectionless Network Protocol and its 128-bit addressing for inspiration. In an interview with Ars, Vint Cerf explained what happened next. “It was deliberately misunderstood by firebrands in the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] that we are traitors by adopting OSI,” he said. “They raised a gigantic hoo-hah. The IAB was deposed, and the authority in the system flipped. IAB used to be the decision makers, but the fight flips it, and IETF becomes the standard maker.” To calm everybody down, Cerf performed a striptease at a meeting of the IETF in 1992. He revealed a T-shirt that said “IP ON EVERYTHING.” At the same meeting, David Clark summarized the feelings of the IETF by saying, “We reject kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.” Vint Cerf strips down to the bare essentials. Credit: Boardwatch and Light Reading The fate of the Internet The split design of TCP/IP, which was a small technical choice at the time, had long-lasting political implications. In 2001, David Clark and Marjory Blumenthal wrote a paper that looked back on the Protocol War. They noted that the Internet’s complex functions were performed at the endpoints, while the network itself ran only the IP part and was concerned simply with moving data from place to place. These “end-to-end principles” formed the basis of “… the ‘Internet Philosophy’: freedom of action, user empowerment, end-user responsibility for actions undertaken, and lack of controls ‘in’ the Net that limit or regulate what users can do,” they said. In other words, the battle between TCP/IP and OSI wasn’t just about two competing sets of acronyms. On the one hand, you had a small group of computer scientists who had spent many years building a relatively open network and wanted to see it continue under their own benevolent guidance. On the other hand, you had a huge collective of powerful organizations that believed they should be in charge of the future of the Internet—and maybe the behavior of everyone on it. But this impossible argument and the ultimate fate of the Internet was about to be decided, and not by governments, committees, or even the IETF. The world was changed forever by the actions of one man. He was a mild-mannered computer scientist, born in England and working for a physics research institute in Switzerland. That’s the story covered in the next article in our series. Jeremy Reimer Senior Niche Technology Historian Jeremy Reimer Senior Niche Technology Historian I'm a writer and web developer. I specialize in the obscure and beautiful, like the Amiga and newLISP. 5 Comments

TechTarget and Informa Tech’s Digital Business Combine.TechTarget and InformaTechTarget and Informa Tech’s Digital Business Combine.Together, we power an unparalleled network of 220+ online properties covering 10,000+ granular topics, serving an audience of 50+ million professionals with original, objective content from trusted sources. We help you gain critical insights and make more informed decisions across your business priorities.What Top 3 Principles Define Your Role as a CIO and a CTO?What Top 3 Principles Define Your Role as a CIO and a CTO?The CIO of IBM and the CIO of NMI discuss some foundational elements that help them navigate the shifting demands of providing leadership on tech.Joao-Pierre S. Ruth, Senior EditorApril 14, 2025The duties of C-suite tech leadership at enterprises are changing rapidly of late. AI shook up strategies at many companies and can lead to new demands on CIOs, CTOs, and others responsible for technology plans and use.The core principles that guide CIOs and CTOs can be essential for navigating such times, especially when organizations look to them for direction.In this episode, Matt Lyteson, CIO of IBM, and Phillip Goericke, CTO of NMI, share some key principles that define their respective roles at their organizations. They also discuss where they picked up some of the lessons that shaped those principles, how their jobs have changed since they got their starts, and whom they look to for inspiration as leaders -- as well as what they wish they knew when they got started. Listen to the full episode here.About the AuthorJoao-Pierre S. RuthSenior EditorJoao-Pierre S. Ruth covers tech policy, including ethics, privacy, legislation, and risk; fintech; code strategy; and cloud & edge computing for InformationWeek. He has been a journalist for more than 25 years, reporting on business and technology first in New Jersey, then covering the New York tech startup community, and later as a freelancer for such outlets as TheStreet, Investopedia, and Street Fight.See more from Joao-Pierre S. RuthWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data —Steven Renderos is the executive director of Media Justice Tech buzzwords are clanging through the halls of Washington, DC. The Trump administration has promised to “leverage blockchain technology” to reorganize the US Agency for International Development, and Elon Musk’s DOGE has already unleashed an internal chatbot to automate agency tasks—with bigger plans on the horizon to take over for laid-off employees. The executive order that created DOGE in the first place claims the agency intends to “modernize Federal technology and software.” But jamming hyped-up tech into government workflows isn’t a formula for efficiency. Successful, safe civic tech requires a human-centered approach that understands and respects the needs of citizens.Unfortunately, this administration laid off all the federal workers with the know-how for that. And if this administration doesn’t change its approach soon, American citizens are going to suffer far more than they probably realize. Read the full story. Meet the researchers testing the “Armageddon” approach to asteroid defense One day, in the near or far future, an asteroid about the length of a football stadium will find itself on a collision course with Earth. If we are lucky, it will land in the middle of the vast ocean, creating a good-size but innocuous tsunami, or in an uninhabited patch of desert. But if it has a city in its crosshairs, one of the worst natural disasters in modern times will unfold. Homes dozens of miles away will fold like cardboard. Millions of people could die. Fortunately for all 8 billion of us, planetary defense—the science of preventing asteroid impacts—is a highly active field of research. We already know that at least one method works: ramming the rock with an uncrewed spacecraft to push it away from Earth.But there are circumstances in which giving an asteroid a physical shove might not be enough to protect the planet. If that’s the case, we could need another method, one that is notoriously difficult to test in real life: a nuclear explosion. Read the full story.—Robin George Andrews This story is from the next edition of our print magazine, which is all about creativity. Subscribe now to read it and get a copy of the magazine when it lands! The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Consumer tech products may be subject to steep tariffs after all The Trump administration says that while smartphones and other gadgets are exempt from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, they will be included in forthcoming semiconductor tariffs. (FT $)+ Trump has promised to investigate the semiconductor sector. (The Guardian)+ The White House’s tariff chaos is showing no signs of slowing. (Reuters) 2 Meta is preparing for its day in court The landmark monopoly trial follows an investigation that took close to six years. (NYT $)+ The trial's ruling could force Mark Zuckerberg to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. (Politico)+ But the US government is facing an uphill battle. (Wired $)3 Lauren Sánchez is heading into spaceThe pilot, who is also Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, will travel to the edge of outer space today. (CNN) + The all-female mission is expected to take around 11 minutes. (BBC)4 Chinese sellers aren’t worried about the USA’s tariffs  Even though they’re anticipating that the US won’t buy everyday goods any more. (WSJ $)+ The tariffs are hitting ordinary Americans pretty hard. (The Guardian)+ Meanwhile, Apple has increased its iPhone production in India by almost 60%. (Bloomberg $)5 Here’s what could happen to your 23andMe DNA data Now the company has gone bankrupt, a sale could be imminent. (Insider $)+ How to… delete your 23andMe data. (MIT Technology Review) 6 The hacking groups you need to know aboutFrom crypto thieves to sabotage specialists. (Wired $) + Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming. (MIT Technology Review)7 Netflix is testing out a new AI search functionPowered by OpenAI’s technology. (Bloomberg $) + It’s currently available for select users in Australia and New Zealand. (Engadget)8 San Francisco residents are turning Waymos into community bulletin boardsThey’re leaving handwritten notes seeking new hires and dates inside the robotaxis. (WP $) + How Wayve’s driverless cars will meet one of their biggest challenges yet. (MIT Technology Review)9 Who is hacking California’s crosswalks? Crossings are playing AI recordings mocking Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. (The Verge) 10 Instagram is the hottest place to shop for kids’ clothes 👕 Enterprising moms are on the hunt for bargains. (The Verge)+ The best part of Facebook these days is Facebook Marketplace. (The Atlantic $) Quote of the day “The mass confusion created by this constant news flow out of the White House is dizzying for the industry and investors and creating massive uncertainty and chaos for companies trying to plan their supply chain, inventory, and demand.”’ —Dan Ives, a senior analyst for Wedbush, sums up the latest twists and turns in the Trump administration’s tariff plans, the Washington Post reports. The big story Africa fights rising hunger by looking to foods of the past After falling steadily for decades, the prevalence of global hunger is now on the rise—nowhere more so than in sub-Saharan Africa.Conflicts, economic fallout from the covid-19 pandemic, and extreme weather events linked to climate change have pushed the share of the population considered undernourished from 18% in 2015 to 23% in 2023. Africa’s indigenous crops are often more nutritious and better suited to the hot and dry conditions that are becoming more prevalent, yet many have been neglected by science, which means they tend to be more vulnerable to diseases and pests and yield well below their theoretical potential. Now the question is whether researchers, governments, and farmers can work together in a way that gets these crops onto plates and provides Africans from all walks of life with the energy and nutrition that they need to thrive, whatever climate change throws their way. Read the full story. —Jonathan W. Rosen We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.)+ The Minecraft movie sounds like absolute chaos (in a good way)+ Huge congratulations are in order for Rory McIlroy, the first European to win golf’s Grand Slam.+ Mark my words, nothing good can come from a British version of SNL.+ Enjoy these gorgeous otter pups taking their very first swim with their patient mom 🦦

Last year, I flew with Delta Air Lines across four continents on 66 flights.During that time, I traveled in all four of Delta's cabin categories, ranging from an economy seat on a 15-hour flight from Africa to lie-flat seats in Delta One from Europe to the US. As a frequent traveler, I typically book with Delta to maximize reward points and maintain my Platinum Medallion loyalty status. I usually choose the most affordable fares and often put my credit-card points toward my flights.Occasionally, I receive complimentary upgrades with my status, but I'll also splurge on a premium seat if the price is right. However, the cost of a premium seat doesn't always align with my expectations. There are a few reasons I'd choose the affordability and practicality of economy seats over the high price tag of premium class any day. I upgraded to Delta One on a return flight from Germany but wasn't completely sold. Delta One was very nice, but I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be. Allie Hubers Last spring, I flew to Germany to reunite with my husband after his military deployment. We splurged on an upgrade to the most premium class available for our flight home, spending an extra $699 each for Delta One.The lie-flat seat was a luxury on our 10-hour flight, and the service was fantastic, but our plane seemed a bit outdated and worn. From the clunky entertainment system to the lack of privacy between seats, I felt our nearly-20-year-old aircraft showed its age.We got elevated meals, amenity kits, and complimentary alcohol, but I expected more features or perks considering a Delta One upgrade often costs thousands of dollars.Although our experience fell short of my expectations, I still think the upgrade was worth paying for to celebrate such a special occasion.In the future, I would only justify the cost of Delta One if I knew I'd be on a newer plane with more state-of-the-art amenities. After all, some newer Delta One classes have suites with doors. On one upgrade to Delta's Premium Select class, I got stuck in a middle seat. Delta offers Premium Select seats as a more affordable way to enhance a flight. Allie Hubers When returning from Europe last winter, my husband and I upgraded to Premium Select seats for $209 each on our nine-hour flight.Premium Select upgrades are primarily offered on long-haul flights and come with early boarding (although my status already gets me into the same boarding group that this would). We enjoyed the added legroom and additional recline of our seats, which made them noticeably more comfortable. The upgraded dining, larger entertainment screens, and in-flight amenity kits also elevated the experience.However, we upgraded at the last minute, so our seat options were limited. Unfortunately, I ended up sandwiched in the middle seat next to a stranger. In hindsight, I wish I'd saved the money and kept my window seat in economy.Being crammed in a middle seat for nine hours took away from the premium experience. Next time, I'd try to upgrade earlier so I could choose a better seat.Overall, Premium Select strikes a solid balance between affordability and comfort with its thoughtful amenities and extra space. However, it's not always available on Delta flights, and I'd likely skip it if I couldn't get a spot next to a window. I've traveled many times in Delta's Comfort Plus — but the extra legroom isn't always worth the added cost for me. Delta's Comfort Plus provided more legroom, but I'd say exit rows are similar and more affordable. Allie Hubers A step above economy, Delta's Comfort Plus provides slightly more legroom and priority boarding. For domestic itineraries, this class also receives alcoholic drinks and a better selection of snacks.With my status, I've received many complimentary upgrades to Comfort Plus.Last fall, I flew in Comfort Plus from Seoul to Atlanta after one such free upgrade. As a tall woman, the extra legroom was an added bonus, especially on a 13-hour flight. However, I've found you can get about the same amount of legroom in an economy exit row for a more affordable price.I'm happy to accept a free upgrade to Comfort Plus, but I wouldn't pay extra for these seats, which I've seen cost $100 or more than economy. And, on international routes, Comfort Plus receives many of the same in-flight amenities as the rest of the main cabin. That said, Comfort Plus does get reserved overhead bin space, which is always nice on a fully booked flight. Plus, going on cheaper flights means I can take more of them. I'd be open to flying in upgraded seats if I can get them for a decent price or if there's a special occasion. Allie Hubers Overall, I'd rather book a cheaper flight so I can spend money elsewhere on my trip. A flight is just one of the many costs of a vacation. I also need to pay for accommodations, additional transportation, meals, and activities.By booking affordable economy flights, I have more money to travel more often — and that's always my goal. Plus, I can almost always secure my beloved window seat if I book my trip far enough in advance.However, I'm definitely still open to enjoying the occasional upgrade if the price, plane, and time feel right.

Mikaela Shafer values spending time with her friends, and if that means booking a flea market day three months in advance, she considers it a small price to pay.For a while, Shafer, 38, and her friends found themselves in the throes of schedule coordination hell. One person would attempt to make plans on a particular day, but another couldn’t make it. Somebody else would offer a new date, but that one was no good either. They’d go back and forth a few more times until the group inevitably gave up, no plans on the horizon. Shafer wanted to see her friends, of course, but her grueling schedule as a small business owner, copywriter for a nonprofit, artist, and mother made it difficult to find the time.For her professional obligations, Shafer used the scheduling tool Calendly, which allows clients to directly book time on her calendar without the “When are you free?” discussion. Why couldn’t she do the same with her friends? So she made a second Calendly specifically for hangouts, linked to her respective work and personal calendars so she doesn’t double-book. She even modified the appointment page to include suggested hang activities, such as grabbing coffee or thrifting. When she’s in need of face time with a particular friend, or group of friends, Shafer sends them the link. Sometimes they’ll claim time on her calendar without her needing to ask. All they have to do is pick a date and a time. “My friends usually book things out a couple weeks in advance because they’re also really busy,” Shafer says. “We were trying to plan a vacation, and they booked the vacation time based on my calendar app — all the way in January.”Between the demands of work, family, and solo activities, Americans increasingly feel strapped for time. Many people live and die by their calendars, hardly finding a moment to breathe amid all the meetings, the commuting, the workouts, the playdates, the appointments, the scrolling, the self-care. Finding a few unclaimed hours for socializing can feel like a luxury, one that might need to be planned weeks or even months in advance. Like Shafer, these super-schedulers coordinate time with friends far into the future, either out of necessity or preference. For the friends on the other side, seeing a confidante once a quarter can feel like a slight, but for super-schedulers, it’s not personal; it’s time management.‘I don’t have time’The most common reason people tend to make appointments with friends months in advance is perhaps the most obvious: Everyone’s too busy. “That’s probably the No. 1 thing that clients cite to me as a barrier to spending time with friends,” says friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson, author of Fighting for Our Friendships: The Science and Art of Conflict and Connection in Women’s Relationships, “I don’t have time.” While it can seem like there aren’t enough hours in a day, Americans have just as much free time as they did two decades ago: According to the American Time Use Survey, most Americans spent around five hours a day engaging in leisure activities in 2023 — the same amount as in 2003.What people choose to prioritize during that free time is another story. In 2023, Americans were largely kept occupied by watching television — nearly three hours’ worth, up just slightly from 2.5 hours in 2003. Americans are also spending more of their waking hours in solitude: Just 34 minutes of their precious free time was spent socializing, down from over 45 minutes a day two decades prior. Time spent with friends peaks at age 18 and slowly dwindles throughout a person’s 20s — and remains low for the rest of their lives. As people enter adulthood, their social lives and obligations gradually change. Work, of course, accounts for a considerable chunk of the day. Add in a romantic partner — one study found that entering into a relationship costs you two friends — and children, and your attention is fairly well spent. Whatever hours remain are inevitably overscheduled with little room for spontaneity or spur-of-the-moment plans. When most activities, especially fun ones, are carefully coordinated and tightly arranged, they feel more like work than leisure, research shows. None of this is necessarily lost on anyone. People aren’t satisfied with how often they see their friends and wish they could spend more time together. But without action, plans languish in the group chat. Stephen Antonini and his friends are at that age where almost every weekend is booked — with weddings, bachelor and bachelorette parties, trips back home, entertaining out-of-town guests — making planning a getaway nearly futile. In order to make their yearly trips happen, the 10-person group starts scheduling several months in advance. Antonini, a 25-year-old content creator, sends a few date options to the group chat and each person will “like” the message with the weekend they prefer. Advanced coordination is necessary for a crew of their size, Antonini says, taking into consideration each person’s varying jobs and vacation time. He wishes they could hang out as a unit more often, but he still sees most of his friends individually or in small group settings on a weekly basis. “There’s always one or two key people in that friend group that are out of town, or they already had pre-plans,” Antonini says. “It is good to have that plan of getting the whole group together and going to a different place because then you know that everyone’s going to be there. It’s going to be the weekend for the whole group to catch up and have a great time.”The allure of busyness — and the necessity of time spent aloneWhile some take packed schedules as a necessary evil, others consider them a point of pride. Extreme busyness can be used as a status symbol or an excuse for why a friend can’t commit to plans. When work, family and self-care take priority, there can be little room for friendship. “It’s hard when you are proud of being busy,” Bayard Jackson says, since you might find it more difficult to slow down and make time for friendship. “Which some might see as frivolous in comparison to professional goals or the status of being busy,” Bayard Jackson notes.For years, Scott Steinhardt would drop everything for his friends, heading to the neighborhood bar at a moment’s notice to console one going through a breakup. When he realized his efforts weren’t reciprocated, his priorities shifted toward his career and romantic relationship. Now, the 38-year-old dedicates over 80 hours a week to his communications job and only has time to spend with one friend a week, usually on a Friday or Saturday. “It’s a different person each week,” Steinhardt says, which means months go by before specific friends circulate to the top of the roster again. One pal recently remarked about how he and Steinhardt only get together when they plan a month in advance — not to complain about the arrangement, Steinhardt says, but as a means of clarifying the bounds of their relationship. When he’s not working, Steinhart is recharging his social batteries or hanging out with his wife. “I value time by myself greatly,” he says. “The moment I was honest with myself about that is when I was happier.”Incorporating ample rest time into an overstuffed social schedule can prevent the most extroverted from burning themselves out, too. Shannon, a 31-year-old couples therapy intern in Philadelphia whose last name is being withheld so she can speak freely about her friendships, has a fairly regular weekly cadence with friends. Without it, her life would feel too hectic, she says. Mondays and Tuesdays are devoted to her internship; after class on Wednesdays, she hosts a virtual anime-watch night with long-distance friends; she’ll grab happy hour with one particular friend on Thursdays; Fridays and Saturdays are packed with brunches, drinks, dinners, concerts, hikes, movies. Sunday, finally, is for rest. All of these plans must be coordinated in advance, usually two to three weeks, Shannon says. When a friend recently asked if she was up for a same-day hang on a work night, she declined. “I need to give myself those boundaries; otherwise it gets out of hand,” Shannon says. “It’s the ADHD. I have to live by the calendar or else my life becomes very chaotic.” Most of Shannon’s friends understand her preference for super-scheduling, but her partner finds it baffling. “He asks me,” Shannon says, “why do we need to plan this so far ahead? Why can’t we just do this random thing tonight?” Making time for friendsCan you even call someone a friend if you only see them a couple of times a year? Mismatched expectations for how often friends should hang out can make maintaining a relationship with a super-scheduler particularly fraught. You might begin to question whether a far-out plan is a sign a friend doesn’t want to see you at all. But the opposite could also be true. “Another person could argue that the fact that I’m doing the mental labor to figure out when we can get together is evidence of me trying to make it happen and trying to prioritize you,” Bayard Jackson says. Rather than attempt to cram more social obligations onto an already packed calendar, what may be effective is redefining what you consider a hangout. Happy hours and weekend trips aren’t the only occasions adults can hang out. Running errands, sitting on the sidelines of a Little League game, working out: These less exciting moments count, too. And every so often, when an hour or so seems to materialize out of nowhere, embrace spontaneity. On a recent Friday afternoon, Mikaela Shafer, the multi-hyphenate mom who uses Calendly to schedule friend hangs, had a few spare minutes in her day. So she decided to pop by a friend’s work to say hello. “It’s a good reminder for myself to take time out of my day to do nice things or to intentionally make time to see them,” she says.The gesture wasn’t entirely unplanned, though. She scheduled it three days in advance.See More:

Out of all the episodes in the excellent seventh season of Black Mirror, it’s Plaything that sticks out to me and I suspect to anyone else who played video games in the 1990s. It’s the story of socially awkward freelance games journalist, Cameron Walker, who steals the code to a new virtual pet sim named Thronglets from the developer he’s meant to be interviewing. When he gets the game home, he realises the cute, intelligent little critters he’s caring for on the screen have a darker ambition than simply to perform for his amusement – cue nightmarish exploration of AI and our complicity in its rise.The episode is interesting to me because … well, I was a socially awkward games journalist in the mid-1990s. But more importantly, so was Charlie Brooker. He began his writing career penning satirical features and blistering reviews for PC Zone magazine, one of the two permanently warring PC mags of the era (I shared an office with the other, PC Gamer). In Plaything, it’s PC Zone that Cameron Walker writes for, and there are several scenes taking place in its office, which in the programme is depicted as a reasonably grownup office space with tidy computer workstations and huge windows. I do not think the production design team got this vision from Brooker.“Zone had far less of the corporate workplace feel than the episode showed, and much more of a kids in the basement, youth club-cum-nightclub vibe to it,” says Paul Presley, who worked on PC Zone at the time. “It was a handful of messy, cluttered desks stuck in a windowless basement office round the back of Oxford Street (later Tottenham Court Road). We’d have killed for floor-to-ceiling windows! Editorial, art and production were all on top of each other, music blasting from the office stereo, usually furnished by the neighbouring Metal Hammer magazine. Desks were personal spaces, overflowing with paper, mags, trinkets, swag and tons and tons of CDs.”In the sake of journalistic thoroughness, I also contacted another PC Zone alumnus Richie Shoemaker for his recollections. “Although there were windows along one side, they were below street level and smeared with London grime,” he says. “The sills were piled high with dusty magazines, broken joysticks and likely-empty game boxes. It was perpetual night for the best part of eight years down there.”Kids in the basement … the office of PC Zone magazine in the mid-1990s Photograph: Richie ShoemakerThe episode was more accurate on the games themselves – the first scene in the office shows Cam playing Doom, when the editor comes over, shows him the front cover of the latest issue of the mag with System Shock on the cover, then asks Cameron if he’s finished his review of Bullfrog’s classic adventure game Magic Carpet. “[Plaything] is good on the timelines,” says Shoemaker. “Playing Doom in the office was of course standard – although when I joined the team Quake was the lunchtime and afterwork deathmatch of choice. The Magic Carpet review did appear in the issue after System Shock (which was actually Charlie’s first cover review), but it got 96%, not 93% and was written by launch editor Paul Lakin – who went on to work at the Foreign Office.” He also reckons the episode’s grizzled old editor might have been inspired by then deputy editor, Chris Anderson, who according to Shoemaker was “quite a vampiric character who seemed to exist on a diet of cigarettes and Ultima Online.”Most fascinating to me though is the inspirational origin of the Thronglets virtual pet game. Most reviewers have been referencing Tamagotchi, the keychain pet toy that took the world by storm int the late 90s. Brooker himself has referenced it in an interview. However, a much more likely candidate was the 1996 title Creatures, in which players cared for generations of cuddly-looking critters. Although it looked like a cutesy pet game it was in fact a highly sophisticated artificial life experiment, created by the distinctly sci-fi-sounding CyberLife Technology. Players needed to try to establish breeding populations of the creatures – called norns – but your control over them was limited as they were coded with advanced neural networks and had functioning internal bodily systems regulating their behaviours and physical abilities. CyberLife made a big deal of the complexity and experimental nature of the game: the box came with a warning sticker stating “Digital DNA Enclosed” and the blurb on the back cautioned players that they would be unleashing the world’s first artificial life-science experiment – which is exactly what Plaything is about.Less cutesy than it looked … Creatures. Photograph: CyberLife TechnologiesCreatures creator Steve Grand bears similarities to the Plaything (and Bandersnatch) coder Colin Ritman. He was a programmer who got tired of conventional games and wanted to try something extremely new. He went on to write a book about Creatures and its development, Creation: Life and How to Make It, and later became an internationally renowned roboticist, famously developing a robot orangutan. Surely the most Black Mirror career trajectory ever. In 2011, he started work on a spiritual follow-up to Creatures named Grandroids, which like Thronglets was about developing a race of intelligent AI aliens – Grand launched a Kickstarter for it in 2016. The project has yet to surface although Grand has a new website for it under the name Phantasia. All very intriguing.This is one of the things I love about Black Mirror, and indeed the use of technology and video games in conventional drama: this is an arcane world full of eccentric people no one outside the industry has heard of, yet the toys they make have massive ramifications. Personally, I wanted to see a lot more of the PC Zone as imagined by the programme, but I understand that the sinister Thronglets were the real focus. Maybe one day there will be a full Silicon Valley-style drama series about the games industry in the 1990s – it was a hell of a time. For now, it’s interesting to see the world both Brooker and I inhabited being used as the venue for dystopian fiction – even if they really did get it completely wrong about those windows.

One Monster Hunter Wilds fan opted to 'Shake It Off', creating an impressively detailed Taylor Swift character in-game for their hunting adventures – check it outTech11:46, 14 Apr 2025Updated 11:48, 14 Apr 2025Monster Hunter Wilds is one of the year's biggest games, and it's only getting bigger having only just received the first part of an ambitious post-launch roadmap with its Title Update 1.The game hit huge player numbers on launch day, despite some performance issues on PC, and fans have been flocking to create their own hunters in-game.‌Article continues belowWe've seen some wild and whacky creations, but one fan has gone above and beyond to give the game's monster roster some 'Bad Blood', creating an impressively tuned Taylor Swift model with which to explore the Forbidden Lands.Check it out below.‌Posting on the Taylor Swift subreddit, one user said: "My husband is playing as Taylor in the newest Monster Hunter game. I think the character turned out perfect!"The huts/bases are also themed after different eras and the stickers are based on different song lyrics. I think she turned out super cute!"I only helped with curly hair Rep Taylor and the Fortnight look, the rest was all him!"‌Monster Hunter's inclusion of Palicos, adorable, anthropomorphized cats that accompany your Hunter on quests, means that even the main character's companion is themed after Taylor's cat, Olivia Benson.Monster Hunter Wilds has been a huge success for publisher Capcom(Image: Capcom)‌Fans loved it, commenting "he cooked" and "just amazing", while one shared a digital recreation from Baldur's Gate 3 that's also styled after the iconic singer.One said "I have no idea what that is but it's ridiculous and I love it and thanks to your husband for making it and thank you for sharing," suggesting that's at least one person commenting that hasn't picked up Monster Hunter Wilds.The download code for downloading Taylor to your game is FD9MB8KL4MS9 if you want to add her to your own game, and we've already seen impressive creations of TV stars, Hollywood actors, and much more as the community flexes its creative muscles.Article continues belowIn fact, I almost feel boring for just having a relatively generic Hunter in the game now.As for Taylor's preferred weapon choice, we're betting it's something that allows for quick feet and nimble dodging. After all, she is... ahem... Swift.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.‌‌‌