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The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is a fascinating idea: to bring the original game engine to the modern era, with strategic changes made to gameplay - but with the lion's share of the actual remastering handled by an Unreal Engine 5 wrapper. The concept is nothing new, of course. We've seen it work out beautifully in a game like Bluepoint's Shadow of the Colossus and we've seen it work less than optimally in something like the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Definitive Edition. Bethesda Game Studios' collaboration works in the context of delivering a fully modernised take on the classic original, but problems from the original game persist into the remaster, while performance overall has massive, highly distracting problems. You may be fine with that if you're OK with the 'jank' historically connected to BGS games, but we are not. From a video perspective, Digital Foundry has already delivered its first offering - a new episode of one of our favourite recurring series, the PC retro time capsule. Here, we played the beginnings of Oblivion Remastered using both 2025 and OG 2006 code. Today's RTX 5090 running the game maxed at 4K resolution is stacked up against the launch version of the original Oblivion running on a Pentium D paired with a Radeon X1800 XT. In a 52-minute episode, you get to appreciate the extent of the remastering work by seeing just how far gaming graphics have come in the last 19 years. The limited polygon budgets, basic effects and lighting struggle to produce some kind of approximation of a real world - which proves to be computationally challenging even on what was considered to be high-end hardware way back when. My playthrough on the original game falls short of John Linneman's experience on the remastered version by just about every measurable criteria. All of Unreal Engine 5's effects - Nanite virtual geometry, Lumen global illumination and virtual shadow maps are deployed, delivering a far more realistic, appealling world. With that said though, there does seem to be something 'off' about the lighting: the radical transformation here is perhaps that one step too far away from the remarkable ambience of the original. Performance is highly variable, stutter is commonplace, and looking at John's matching gameplay in the new version, I had my concerns. Looking to get a flavour of BGS/Virtuos remastering effort? Here's how Oblivion Remastered stacks up against the original game.Watch on YouTube Once I went hands-on with the new version, these concerns turned out to be well founded - there are severe problems here that must be addressed. When The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion launched in 2006, it challenged PC hardware with its big open world and shader model three graphics - but the game's performance characteristics have been largely forgotten today. Go back and play it on period-appropriate hardware and it's easy to see that Oblivion had its own stuttering problems. Walking around the game world induced big stutters each and every time a new world grid would load and deload in front and behind the player. History repeats itself with this week's brand-new remaster - and it's perhaps one of the worst-running games I've ever tested for Digital Foundry. Even if you're running the most powerful hardware around, the stuttering is egregious, dragging down the experience to the point where I really don't understand how this was considered good enough for release. And beyond the hitching, we are looking at one of the most bizarrely resource-intensive games I've ever tested - so even if you're OK with lurching stutter, you'll be turning down the settings just to keep the average frame-rate looking acceptable. Stuttering or hitching is typically a CPU-based problem, which can often be mitigated by ramping up visual quality, lowering frame-rate and attempting to minimise CPU-based stutter via buffering. In effect, you're masking CPU problems via FPS caps, using the excess processing time to increase visual fidelity instead. I tried that by using ultra high resolution with a frame-rate cap but not even the mighty Ryzen 7 9800X3D - the fastest gaming CPU money can buy - can master this game's stuttering problems. This is a core issue when a key part of the gameplay is found in wandering and meandering around the environments - I found no way to get smooth traversal, fundamentally impacting the experience. Oblivion Remastered on PC - it looks bad and it is bad. We're looking at the console versions right now and there are profound problems there too.Watch on YouTube Compounding the issue is that most people don't have a highly capable CPU, meaning that the stuttering is much, much worse on mainstream parts. A Ryzen 5 3600 sees already poor frame-times on the 9800X3D rise by 2x to 2.5x the duration, resulting in catastrophic performance. Granted, the Ryzen 5 3600 is old hat now, so many gamers may have migrated onto more capable mainstream parts - but even at a midway point between our two tested processors, you're looking at an awful experience. If you're looking for a higher average frame-rate, this is where we'd typically chime in with optimised settings - but the issue is that there's only one setting we could find that could make a difference. CPU performance improves by disabling hardware RT-based Lumen global illumination. By opting for the software alternative (as used on the consoles), performance can improve by around 35 percent on average. Technically, it's a nice improvement when CPU-limited, but it makes the game look worse in many areas. Water reflections are visibly poorer, while ambient shadowing and lighting is heavily downgraded - so there's no free lunch here. The bad news is that even with this mitigation in place, the amount of duration of the game's stuttering does not improve. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Lowering other settings reveals comparatively insignificant improvements with a massive loss of quality. Reducing everything to the bare minimum, CPU-limited performance only increases by around 10 percent on average, with only a very slight improvement to the stuttering problems and a gigantic downgrade to game visuals. Optimised settings suggest we can end up with a more optimal experience, but that's simply impossible with this game as it stands. I can't quite understand how CPU performance on this one is so dreadful and why settings adjustments help so little. At the lowest settings, the game is not attractive - and is arguably worse in some respects than the 2006 original. This is just bad. Now, there may well be a lot of Elder Scrolls fans out there that don't mind janky stutters and will want better GPU performance as the game also manages to be highly taxing on graphics hardware too. I do have some recommendations. First of all, stick with hardware Lumen, because the lighting it produces on vegetation is a lot better, to the point where software Lumen can look more like a screen-space effect. CPU-limited performance in Olivion Remastered reveals inconsistent performance no matter how good your processor is - with mainstream parts faring badly. | Image credit: Digital Foundry Next, drop the hardware lighting mode quality down to low. This setting lights reflections purely with the surface cache instead of hit lighting, so objects in reflections lose specularity and their ray-traced shadows - but they will run around 16 percent better than every other settings when reflections are in full view on-screen. It's worth it for mid-range GPUs, though low-end graphics cards should probably use software Lumen on high, despite the drawbacks. The rest of the settings operate in line with the standards set by UE5's out-of-the-box settings menu. Basically, the high setting runs a good deal better than the maxed-out epic preset with minimal quality loss for each element. Dropping down from epic to high improves performance by anything up to 38 percent in my testing with little (if any) loss to quality while using hardware Lumen, so this is definitely the way to go. And that was supposed to be the end of this piece - but just before publication, a new patch landed for the PC version of the game, meaning we had to check our data for changes. This presented more of a challenge than expected as on the Game Pass version used for testing, upscaling options disappeared. On as close to like-for-like testing that we could get, the same stuttering issues presented - so let's be clear here - until Bethesda and Virtuos address the foundational CPU-based problems in this port, there is no route to what we would class as acceptable performance for a modern PC game.

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here The next week’s Marvel Rivals update will be huge. It will bring balance changes, bug fixes, adjustments to the performance rating, and a couple of skin fixes. We expect it to come out on Thursday, May 1, although NetEase hasn’t revealed its release date yet. Fortunately, we have lots of details about what’s coming with it, and if you’re a fan of Thor and Doctor Strange, you have something to look forward to! The upcoming patch for Marvel Rivals will fix issues with Thor’s and Doctor Strange’s skins. While these skins look amazing, they have certain problems, and players even feel misled when buying Strange’s skin. The upcoming Marvel Rivals update will fix two skins Thor has several amazing skins in the game. His latest skin, Lord of Asgard, looks incredible and even has its own emote and MVP animation. Unfortunately, the fur cloak of the skin covers a big part of the screen, which is not ideal, especially in competitive modes. Fortunately, this problem will be fixed with the upcoming update. At the moment, we don’t know all the details, but NetEase will likely reduce the size of the cloak. The difference between a shop and an in-game version of Doctor Strange’s skin is massive. Image by VideoGamer Doctor Strange is another character who has a controversial skin in Marvel Rivals. Strange’s Madness of Universe skin is quite misleading, as it shows hands in the shop, yet they only appear during his ultimate ability. According to Miller Ross, a popular leaker, the hands will appear in the game starting with the next update. Doctor Strange mains have something else to look forward to, as the Vanguard will receive a buff with the next update. Not only will his skin look better, but his ultimate ability will charge faster, allowing him to dominate the battlefield once again. Marvel Rivals Platform(s): macOS, PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X Genre(s): Fighting, Shooter Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

“We didn’t want to keep anything from the existing little house, which had been completely cobbled together over the years by its previous owner,” Antoine Geiger and August Hijlkema, founding architects of Geiger & Hijlkema, say. It’s true: The new variety of spaces make the home’s 646 square feet seem twice as big. “We cleaned up the whole thing, right down to the staircases. Everything was reworked. We tried to think of the home as a place where time stands still. You enter this cul-de-sac, then push open a gate, and you find yourself in this marvelous garden. Suddenly Paris feels far away.” With a certain modesty to its form, but with a great richness in terms of the various volumes and the way that they are arranged, the pair created a succession of small spaces that compress and expand, where you cross light and half-light and you wind your way up three levels with two terraces and ceilings of various heights.The dining room floor of green terrazzo framed by stained oak matches the leg of a table and custom storage elements. A horizontal strip of distressed mirror enlarges the space like a window designed by Le Corbusier, a nod to the master by the architectural duo. On the sideboard, a Voyelle lamp by Joseph Melka (Rooom Service Gallery), a pair of 19th-century glass candlesticks (Galerie Delesalle Antiquités), a Christofle vase (Galerie Matthieu Richard), and a work by Pablo Picasso (Collection Privée). On the right, on the wide ledge at the top of the staircase, Atrio vases by White Dirt Studio (Rooom Service Gallery). A good place to start with this home tour is the large picture window that brings the garden indoors. The entrance and principal bedroom on the first floor take advantage of the calm of the courtyard, with the latter an intimate suite that feels like a bamboo box complemented by a bathroom with black Zellige tiles and a green onyx sink. The sink, which was made from scrap stone salvaged from a marble workshop, added a luxurious touch while staying within the tight budget. The centerpiece of the house is the staircase, a sculptural feature that widens slightly as it ascends, and whose second flight of steps features treads of galvanized steel gratings to let in light. On the first level, the living area opens onto a large stone terrace overlooking the garden, which has a railing covered in Virginia creeper.A mineral-green terrazzo floor creates the impression of the home being grounded in its location, while a mesh of solid oak slats gives rhythm to the space, introducing warmth and character. “If we start with light, simple, and luminous walls, the floors can be a means of introducing materiality and a real personality to the home.” The kitchen, at the top of the first staircase, leads to the dining room, which then opens onto the cathedral-ceiling living room in this sequence of interconnected spaces. Here, we understand the architects’ intention a repetition of the idea of compression and expansion in the home’s sequence of volumes. “The height of the ceiling, which is low in the kitchen, rises in the dining room and then becomes full height in the living room, allowing us to fit three different functions into a 237-square-foot space.”At the top of the staircase, the space opens onto the main living level with the kitchen, dining room, and living room, which is to the left in this photo. Around the table with its solid green steel base (Galerie Vauvart) are three MR10 chairs by Mies van der Rohe. The oil-stained oak sideboard is topped by a large, stainless-steel countertop that is complemented by the softly undulating curtains and a 1950s Arlus hanging lamp. In this sculptural space, materials play a delicate balancing act. The walls are whitewashed, as in Greece, giving the home its luminous vibrancy. Meanwhile, the kitchen is composed of wood, stainless steel, and aged mirror, while the furniture is metal, lacquer, and leather. The limewash paint is complemented by the bush-hammered concrete fireplace surround, a contrast that the duo describes “a happy accident.” The oxidized and distressed mirrors in the kitchen are combined with a more than 16-foot-long stainless-steel worktop that will stand the test of time. In the bathroom, traditional glazed tiles add their imperfections: “Right now, this very minimal project may seem a little polished, but it’s going to develop a patina. The parquet will suffer and the terrazzo will take on stains. We like knowing that the house will evolve. We shouldn’t seek the absolute perfection of an impossible-to-maintain interior; the spirit of a house is also about taking on the marks of time.”Let’s pause for a moment to consider the kitchen’s sideboard mirror, a horizontal strip at eye level that enlarges the space like a window designed by Le Corbusier. “It reflects the modernism in interior design that we are all exposed to as architects. We approach interior projects with architectural, landscape, and even urban-design principles in mind. Here, for example, we’ve traced the history of Paris’s Père-Lachaise district, how its urban layout came about, then we look at this courtyard and what businesses it would have housed in the 18th century. This enables us to think about what new visions we can introduce into these spaces, and to think of them cinematically in the sense of a story board, à la Alvaro Siza: the landing, the threshold, the view when you enter... we work with sequences, tableaux.”The old fireplace is clad in raw, bush-hammered concrete, as is the hearth, which provides an exciting contrast with the surrounding terrazzo set within an oak framework. Like a contemporary altarpiece, the chimney breast is clad with mirrored doors that open to create a projection screen. The upper cut-out frames a work by Hugo Suchet (Rooom Service Gallery). On either side of the fireplace, Baoulé chairs rest on stacks of art books. On the mantelpiece, a sculpture by Victor Guedy (L'œil de KO) and, in front, a free-standing ashtray by Mathieu Matégot (Galerie Matthieu Richard). Retracing the tour of the house, and this time with an eye on its furnishings, the entrance with its 1970s Arbre coat rack by Terence Conran gives the impression of an extension of the garden. Climbing the staircase, we come to the dining room, where chairs by Mies van der Rohe create a roundness that matches that of the staircase but contrasts with the orthogonal terrazzo floor set within oak frames. As we pass a spectacular round table, with its green steel base and large black lacquered wood top, our eye is caught by a Scandinavian sofa by Johannes Anderson from the 1960s, an FM33 armchair by Cees Braakman in black leather, and, on either side of the rough-hewn fireplace and its mirrored altarpiece, traditional Baoulé chairs sitting atop piles of art books. They add soul and a little lightness to the space. Everywhere, paintings, ceramics, and glass pieces add additional layers.In addition to their work as architects, Geiger and Hijlkema have set up their gallery, Rooom Service, under the artistic direction of Arthur Boyer, in order to promote synergies with the work of young artists and designers as well as the notion of ensembliers, an inclusive design concept that encompasses everything from huge urban design projects to the details of door handles. “A global vision and theoretical thinking lead to precision at all scales. We’re opposed to the segmentation of professions; our vocation, as an agency, is to think on all scales at once.” With this home, that mission was clearly accomplished by this talented duo.Behind the sofa by Johannes Andersen (Treaptyque), a staircase winds like a sculptural ribbon of plaster and steel grating to the study/guest room. On the wall, Midnight Swim by John Kelleher, 2024 (Rooom Service Gallery). The staircase is the backbone of the house, an axis with a sculptural dimension. The steps on the second flight are made of galvanized steel gratings to let in the light. Gratings bring lightness and transparency to the office/guest room. The hotel suite–style entrance opens onto the bedroom. The first floor, bathed in light thanks to picture windows, is tinted waxed concrete, the walls are warm plaster and, in the bedroom, wood paneling. Arbre coat rack by Terence Conran (Rooom Service Gallery). Materials such as this okoume paneling, which stops short of the ceiling, lend a 1940s feel. For this formwork wood, among the cheapest on the market, the architects took great care to call on the right millworker to find the right varnish with the exact right shade and sheen. Above a Berber candleholder (Collection Privée) and a sconce by Jacques Biny (DCW éditions). Above the second sconce by Jacques Biny (DCW Éditions), a work by Serge Poliakoff (Galerie Dina Vierny). In the bathroom, a strip of zellige tiles reflects the light, making them appear dark and luminous at once. The green onyx washbasin is carved from a scrap piece of stone salvaged from a marble workshop, a budget-friendly trick to make this project appear more expensive than it was. The cobbled courtyard planted with bamboo feels like a magical hidden corner of Paris. The first-floor plan of the house after renovation. A plan of the second floor, with the home’s living area, after the renovation. A plan of the third floor which includes an office/guest room.

On the most recent episode of her YouTube show, the rightwing commentator Brett Cooper joined the rest of the world in jeering Katy Perry, Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez’s brief flight to space.“These women were completely dependent on men who built this spacecraft,” she said with a cheeky smirk. “Frankly, we all are, because men built civilization. They built the homes that we live in, they built the studio that I am recording in … the spaceships that all of these rich celebrities are flying around in.” The difference between Cooper and feminists, she says, “is I choose to acknowledge that and celebrate it and be grateful”.The Blue Origin flight was prime fodder for Cooper, a bubbly, fast-talking 23-year-old with silky espresso brown curls and colorful Pinterest-friendly prints on the wall behind her. She posts biweekly videos commenting on hot-button social and cultural issues. Thumbnails on YouTube depict her – eyebrows raised quizzically, mouth agape in faux surprise – alongside titles like SNOW WHITE EPIC FAIL and CAPTAIN AMERICA HATES AMERICA? in yellow all caps. These cultural flashpoints serve as her evidence that young women are finally “waking up” to the lies feminism has apparently told them.Brett Cooper has gained over 1.5m subscribers on her YouTube channel, through which she uploads right-leaning commentary on pop culture topics. Photograph: Brett CooperThere is a sizable audience for Cooper’s brand of disarming anti-feminist content. She had the second-fastest growing political YouTube channel in the first quarter of 2025 with over 900,000 new subscribers, according to data analyzed by researcher Kyle Tharp. Her Spotify audience is about 60% female, a spokesperson told Semafor.Analyses of the 2024 election widely heralded the “manosphere” – the coalition of bro podcasters and YouTubers popular with male audiences – as key to delivering Donald Trump’s victory. According to an AP poll, 56% of men under age 30 went for Trump compared with 41% four years prior. By meeting young men where they were at, Trump and his surrogates were able to reach voters who are typically among the least politically engaged segments of society.Now, there are the beginnings of an organized effort to create a similar alternative rightwing media ecosystem targeting young female US audiences – one of the few demographics that has, until now, leaned substantially Democratic.This new “womanosphere” includes Cooper’s channel as well as lifestyle magazines like the Conservateur and Evie, Candace Owens’s Club Candace, Alex Clark’s Maha (“Make America Healthy Again”) talkshow Culture Apothecary, conservative Christian influencer Allie Beth Stuckey’s Relatable,tradwives” posting homemaking content on Instagram, the edgelord It Girls of Red Scare, and “femcel” influencers positioning themselves as the female answer to Tate.While the women behind these outlets all have different styles and tactics, they are mostly aligned in their desire to return to a gender-essentialist worldview: women as submissive homemakers, men as strong providers.Like the manosphere influencers, these outlets are animated by a grievance against “wokeness” and the belief that conservatives are the real oppressed minority. They claim that the liberal media and Hollywood are promoting feminist propaganda, and so they must fight back.Though they present themselves as independent thinkers, their ideology lines up neatly with the Trump administration’s quest to dismantle reproductive rights, roll back protections for LGBTQ+ people, and advance an anti-science agenda that puts the health of millions of Americans at risk.You want to go back and sit in a cubicle when you could have this, like, beautiful amazing child that you’ve created with the love of your life?It’s not only rightwingers who have gripes with contemporary feminism. Many on the left have been critical of shallow “girlboss feminism” (the bipartisan backlash to the embarrassing Blue Origin flight being a case in point), noting that impossible expectations are placed on women in a crassly capitalist society that offers little support for working mothers. According to a 2023 survey run by the non-profit Catalyst, four in 10 women said they felt they would need to change jobs in order to manage childcare demands, and the US is still the only rich country in the world without a national paid parental leave policy. Yet for this new womanosphere, the response is not advancing policies like paid family leave or affordable childcare, but to return to an idealized, illusory past where being a wife and mother was viewed as a woman’s sole purpose.Young women are particularly vulnerable to these appeals. Like their peers in the manosphere, these commentators are capitalizing on a real crisis of loneliness and economic precarity facing gen Z. “Social media has truly given gen Z a warped sense of reality,” said Cooper, who has described dating apps as “treacherous” and a “barren” landscape.The alternative vision these influencers are proposing is scarily retrograde and would strip women of their freedom and economic independence. “You want to go back and sit in a cubicle when you could have this, like, beautiful amazing child that you’ve created with the love of your life?” Cooper asked rhetorically on a recent podcast appearance.Instead of trying to have it all, women, she said, need to change their priorities because “if you aren’t going to the gym, if you aren’t taking care of yourself, if you don’t like children, if you only care about your career, and you hate the patriarchy” then a desirable man is “not going to go for you”.The type of woman these commentators valorize is thin, straight, fertile, traditionally feminine, conventionally attractive to men and white – though they try to avoid overt racism, instead opting for sentiments like, “as a minority woman, I’m here to say that you’ll be happier and more fulfilled if you aren’t consumed by thinking about your race.” Anyone who falls outside of this narrow mold is subject to relentless mocking and disparagement. Though they have different tactics and tones, like their cohorts in the manosphere, they play with the idea that calling women fat or ugly is fun and transgressive – framing it as part of a virtuous quest to rid society of woke, feminist ideals.Female members of the crowd dance as they wait for Donald Trump to begin speaking at a campaign rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on 23 September 2024. Photograph: Rebecca Droke/APYoung women have been hailed as the saving grace of the Democratic party, the force that will deliver us from all those angry young men spending all their time listening to podcasts, but that’s not a given. While young women still went blue in 2024, Joe Biden’s 35-point lead in 2020 dwindled to a 24-point lead for Kamala Harris. Other demographics, like Black and Latino men, broke with historical trends to shift to the right this election. Emily Amick, an influencer and political analyst who has been observing the trend on her Substack, said that people might underestimate the womanosphere’s impact at their peril. “What we saw in the 2024 presidential election was that the manosphere had a lot more impact than a lot of people expected,” Amick said. “I believe that the conservative movement is running the same play with women, and in 2028 we are going to see a massive impact of the messaging machines they have been building.”A ‘conservative Cosmo’Flipping through the homepage of Evie magazine – which launched online in 2019 and is now in print – you might mistake it for a regular glossy women’s magazine. There are pieces about the best nail color for fall and what to ask your stylist if you want Sabrina Carpenter’s hair.The cover of Evie’s 2024 print issue featured Hannah Neeleman, a homesteading influencer who lives in Utah with her husband and eight children. Her posts showcasing a ‘traditional’ lifestyle have garnered her 10m Instagram followers. Photograph: Evie magazineBut read deeper and you’ll notice that the Cosmo-esque sex tips about the art of oral sex and mastering cowgirl come with a disclaimer that they are “intended for married women” only. You’ll see headlines like Want Your Husband To Get You Pregnant? Cook Him These 10 Dishes and What Do JD Vance’s Blue Eyes And Sydney Sweeney’s Curves Have in Common? America Misses Classic Beauty And Wants It Back.These pieces are written in a chatty, knowing tone designed to make it seem like everything they are saying is common sense, while dispatching their enemies with high school-bully cruelty. A recent piece called Why I Love Being A Hot Mom oscillated between glib declarations like “skinny sex is the best sex” and diatribes from the author about how she despises “mediocre motherhood” and the “lack of self-control, unattractiveness, and state of disease” that results from embracing body positivity. (Disagree with her? You’re probably a “sorry, sad, chronically online gutter goblin”.)In the past two decades, mainstream women’s outlets have made attempts to emphasize overall wellbeing instead of outer beauty and valorizing thinness above all. Evie sees this as wokeness run amok. They want to bring back your mother’s – or your grandmother’s – women’s magazine, in which it was OK to celebrate a certain body type over others. “When we encounter a heavily tattooed, blue-haired, obese, gender-neutral individual with a bull-ring, that person is communicating to us that they actively disregard the standards for normality that the majority of people agree on,” read a 2021 piece titled Objective Feminine Beauty Is Not A Relic Of The Patriarchy.Evie was started by married couple Brittany and Gabriel Hugoboom as a sort of “conservative Cosmo”. As Brittany Hugoboom told the New York Times in a March profile, their goal was to build a “one-stop shop for femininity” that runs counter to the “casual sex, careerism or ideological activism” she attributes to feminism.Introducing TOXIC BREAKUP, the world's first 3-in-1 Birth Control Detox.— 28 (@28wellness) Developed by holistic doctors and leading hormone experts to detoxify, replenish, and restore balance to your hormones after getting off birth control.Women everywhere are breaking up with their birth… pic.twitter.com/VGjSjTcpDrFebruary 29, 2024In addition to Evie, the Hugobooms run a menstrual cycle wellness app backed by Peter Thiel that encourages fertility planning through cycle-tracking. Along with ads for the app in their print issue, their content frequently extolls the dangers of the pill and IUDs. “Our reproductive organs are made for just that – creating new life – not warding off sperm and altering our insides to make conception close to impossible,” read a recent Evie piece. Though some young women may recoil when conservative men like JD Vance and Elon Musk opine on birthrates and fertility, outlets like Evie are able to repackage a similar message in a more approachable way.Maggie Bullock, a women’s magazine veteran who co-writes the Spread, a newsletter about the industry, said she saw outlets like Evie as trying to be something of a “gateway drug” into more extreme conservative ideologies. “Like, we’re nice and we’re pretty and we’re not that radical, don’t worry, we’re just telling you the truth,” she said. “It feels like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”A lot of people are moving toward the conservative movement because we’re realizing that our grandparents had these very beautiful values Jessica Marie Baumgartner, a 41-year-old former Evie freelancer and self-identified “conservative pagan” mother of five based outside St Louis, Missouri, said that though she had written for other rightwing outlets before Evie, she was attracted to “being able to write specifically about women’s issues” like breastfeeding, home birth and home schooling. She was turned off by what she saw as an “obsession with sex” in mainstream women’s magazines. “They started writing articles about younger and younger sex, with younger and younger underage minors. And that was when I was just like, ew, what’s happening here?”Baumgartner, like many of Evie’s writers, looks nostalgically to the past as a solution for society’s ills. “I think a lot of people are moving toward the conservative movement because we’re realizing that our grandparents had these very beautiful values that gave us a lot to look forward to,” she said. “We’re all working multiple jobs. We’re all so tired, we’re barely able to keep up with our kids. We barely know our neighbors. Everybody is so stretched thin because our values have shifted away from what really matters.”Evie’s reach shouldn’t be overstated – it has 210,000 followers on Instagram, compared with Cosmopolitan’s 4m, and has only put out three print issues in four years – but they’re increasingly finding new ways to garner attention. The cover of Evie’s 2024 print issue featured Ballerina Farm influencer Hannah Neeleman – whose posts about homesteading and home schooling her eight kids on their Utah farm have garnered her 10 million Instagram followers – milking a cow in a bonnet and white peasant dress.While quitting one’s corporate job to bake pies, milk cows and raise beautiful babies while wearing flowing nap-dresses may look like an appealing form of escapism, Bullock said this lifestyle propaganda was serving a much more sweeping and nefarious conservative agenda.‘A real parasocial relationship’From Phyllis Schlafly in the 1970s, who helped mobilize young Christian women against the Equal Rights Amendment, to Ann Coulter and Moms for Liberty, women have long played a role in spreading conservative propaganda. But what sets these new voices apart is that they don’t all market themselves as political commentators. In this sense, they are cribbing from the success of the manosphere, which won new Maga converts in part because most of its leading figures weren’t explicitly partisan. Multi-hours-long podcast episodes and Twitch streams from the likes of Rogan, the Nelk Boys or Theo Von are typically much more weighted to cover sports, gambling, drugs and dating than they are to talk about which bill is passing in the Senate.The leading voices of the womanosphere are using a similar strategy. As Brittany Hugoboom put it in an op–ed for the rightwing outlet Quillette: “Conservatives will never win if they imagine themselves as combatants atop defensive battlements, hurling abuse on the mass media. We need to involve ourselves in the creation of pop culture.”But while Maga has piggybacked on the manosphere’s existing popularity in fields like wrestling and comedy, many of the loudest voices in the womanosphere have already been political media operatives. Cooper, Candace Owens, Allie Beth Stuckey and Alex Clark all have longstanding ties to conservative media outlets like the Blaze and the Daily Wire as well as the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, which was instrumental in turning out the vote for Trump.Over the past few years, Turning Point has poured millions into cultivating an alternative rightwing media space. After the election, the group told the New York Times that they had incubated about 350 rightwing influencers. “We made long-term investments in creators and in influential voices that we believe will be the opinion shapers of tomorrow,” executive director Charlie Kirk told the outlet.“Influencers are not advertisements. They are in the bathroom with you, they are holding your hand when you break up with your boyfriend, they are helping you make dinner for your kids. You have a real parasocial relationship,” said Amick.Phyllis Schlafly, the national chair of Stop ERA, leads members rallying against the Equal Rights Amendment in 1978. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann ArchiveTake Candace Owens. Over the past five years, Owens has become a polarizing figure even on the right. In addition to vitriolic criticism of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, Owens’s controversial claims that, for example, the Jewish mystical practice Kabbalah is a “pedophile-centric religion” have drawn condemnation from Jewish advocacy groups.But her new site Club Candace, looks, at first glance, like a completely different venture. With a pleasing orchid purple color scheme, a cutesy cursive logo and slick interface, the Club Candace website marks Owens’s attempt to brand herself as a more mainstream women’s lifestyle influencer, offering a book club and fitness app specifically targeted at new mothers.Like Cooper, Owens has figured out how to ride the coattails of the algorithm by choosing subjects that will shoot to the top of people’s social media feeds. She has become one of the leading commentators on the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni scandal. On a recent YouTube video, which has garnered more than 2.5m views, she riffed: “Ryan Reynolds obviously has to be deported back to Canada,” saying this was the rare issue in which the left and right can “come together”. With a scrappy muckraking style that includes digging up documents and hunting down first-person sources – she recently shared a message she claims she received from Reynolds’s childhood teacher – Owens’s content is perfectly targeted to the era of the obsessive TikTok sleuth. Yet her defense of Baldoni is of a piece with her longtime quest to take down the #MeToo movement, which she has derided as “a witch-hunt on men”.Candace Owens speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on 25 February 2022. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty ImagesViewers who initially tuned in for Owens’s dissection of Lively’s lawsuits will soon find themselves mired in conspiracy theories that the French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife is trans – “I would stake my entire professional career” on the fact Brigitte Macron “was born a man”, Owens has said – and claims that Chrissy Teigen’s pro-choice advocacy is an attempt to “glamorize child sacrifice”.Likewise, people who come to Club Candace looking for another book club like Oprah’s or Reese Witherspoon’s will find themselves exposed to texts like The Assault on Truth, a controversial book attacking Sigmund Freud (which Owens has cited to claim: “Sigmund Freud was a homosexual man whose best friend was a pedophile”). Yet her rebrand seems to be working. As EJ Dickson wrote in the Cut, this segue into celebrity content has found her a much broader audience of listeners that cuts across the political spectrum, with her views quadrupling since this time last year. She’s hot on Cooper’s heels as the fourth-fastest-growing political YouTube channel.Wellness influencers go MahaAlex Clark is a 32-year-old influencer who used to host the podcast POPlitics, from which she garnered a loyal fanbase of “cuteservatives” who came to her for conservative takes on pop culture topics like: Who’s the Bigger Crybaby: Colin Kaepernick or Prince Harry?But during the pandemic Clark became obsessed with wellness, and last year, she launched her new series, Culture Apothecary. Now, half a million subscribers tune in twice a week to see Clark – perched on a fuzzy pink armchair in a cozy olive green and gold-accented living room – interview guests on the harms of artificial food dyes and how to raise your kids to “love biblically” amid ads for brands like Cowboy Colostrum.The coalition drawn to fringe wellness ideas is multifaceted: from the “crunchy” moms frightened of toxic chemicals they believe are in our food and pharmaceuticals, to the chronic illness sufferers frustrated with a medical system they feel has let them down. Yet the savvy voices of the womanosphere have responded by weaponizing genuine anxieties – which have complex roots and few easy answers – and serving up far-right propaganda on a platter. “It’s sneaky,” Clark told the Washington Post. “I want to be seen as: Alex Clark, cool girl, loves health and wellness, happens to be conservative. I’m not trying to beat people over the head with that. I don’t think that’s persuasive.”IT’S HERE 🥳💚🌿🌱: Elated to announce ‘Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark’, where each guest provides their own remedy to heal a sick culture- physically, emotionally/relationally, and spiritually...TWICE A WEEK! Same show new name. An apothecary was the original place in the… pic.twitter.com/1wKcjWioUV— Alex Clark (@yoalexrapz) September 9, 2024Mikayla Hantula, 25, from Fresno, California, said she felt a lot of judgment from her doctors for her opposition to hormonal birth control and her skepticism around vaccines (the latter led her pediatrician to refuse to give her care). Listening to Clark’s podcast, however, she found what she wanted to hear. “Wanting to do things naturally, they kind of look at you like you’re wackadoodle,” she said. “The difference is someone like Alex is willing to bring someone on that’s willing to say: ‘Here are all the harms in birth control that we’re seeing. Why are we not talking about this?’”The titles of Clark’s videos take a harmless just-asking-questions tone that invites people to click and see for themselves. Yet far from providing options for women, Clark allows her guests to peddle scientifically dubious claims in service of a Christian conservative worldview. An episode called To Vax or Not to Vax: Educating Parents on the Options features an interview with the outspoken anti-vaccine doctor Bob Sears, who has been disciplined by California’s state medical board for wrongly exempting a two-year-old patient from vaccinations. It also doesn’t take long for Aaron Kheriaty, the Catholic thinktank fellow interviewed on Is IVF a Huge Ethical Mistake, to tell listeners that there is no such thing as an ethical way to perform IVF. (“While it may be uncomfortable or inconvenient to hear the things that you’ve said today in this interview, the facts are on your side,” agreed Clark, nodding solemnly.)Clark’s crusades against topics such as birth control – that it “accelerates ageing”, “induces abortion”, causes cancer and fertility issues – make more sense in light of the Trump administration’s pro-natalist policy agenda, which organizations like Turning Point USA and Project 2025 have spent years crafting.“It’s all tied together with the goal of shaming women who have sex and who might get pregnant, and ensuring that they really are forced into the idea of this nuclear family because it preserves current power structures,” said Dr Jennifer Lincoln, an OB-GYN in Portland, Oregon. “They come at it from this Maha angle of ‘we have to protect women,’ and then they legislate away people’s choices to use these medicines that are literally life-saving for so many people.”They are feeling pretty good about how far they’ve come. In a recent interview with Lara Trump on her Fox News show, Cooper said that it was “incredibly cool” for young people to be conservative now. As she put it: “I think Democrats have their work cut out for them.”

Zero dawn.Can you believe we're now less than 40 days away from the launch of the Switch 2? Gosh, it feels like yesterday we were sat peering at blurry photos of the motherboard, and now here we are. In the meantime, we have some games to play, but let's first recap some of the most interesting stories from this week.First up, it appears that the concerning note regarding cloud saves on certain Switch 2 games has now been removed, which is comforting. We also got confirmation that the upcoming wireless GameCube controller will likely work with games outside of the Nintendo Classics app, but given the difference in button layout, there may be some understandable limitations.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Perhaps no one in the world has made such catastrophic tech flubs this year as U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The saga started when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he had been mistakenly added to an unauthorized Signal group chat by U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, where numerous high-ranking government officials discussed detailed plans for attacking the Houthis in Yemen, including the times and places where such attacks would occur. To be fair, we’ve all made some embarrassing tech mistakes. But for most people, that means accidentally liking an ex’s Instagram post from five years ago — not sharing top-secret government military plans on a commercial messaging app with unauthorized recipients. This mishandling of massively sensitive information was already troublesome enough, but this week, The New York Times reported that Hegseth shared information about the attacks on Yemen in another Signal chat, which included his lawyer, his wife, and his brother, who had no reason to receive such sensitive information; Hegseth’s wife doesn’t even work for the Pentagon. These security failures are particularly egregious — how do you manage to accidentally loop in a journalist on your military plans? But this is far from the first time that contemporary technology has landed global governments in tricky situations — and we’re not just talking Watergate. Stationed in the military? Don’t use Strava The fitness tracking/social media app Strava can be a privacy nightmare, even for your average athlete. The app allows people to share their exercise logs — often runs, hikes, or bike rides — on a public account with their friends, who can like and comment on their morning jogs in the park. But Strava accounts are public by default, meaning that if you aren’t savvy enough to check your privacy settings, you will inadvertently broadcast to the world exactly where you work out. Strava defaults to hiding the first and last 200 meters of a run as a means of obscuring where someone lives, since people are likely to begin and end runs near their home. For anyone on the internet, it’s still risky to broadcast a 200-mile radius of where you live, but it’s even more dangerous if you’re a member of the military at a secret base, for instance. In 2018, Strava unveiled a global heat map, showing where in the world public users have logged activities. This doesn’t really matter if you’re looking at a map of New York City, but in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, few people use Strava aside from foreigners, so one can assume that hot spots of activity may occur at or around military bases. To make matters worse, users could look at certain running routes on Strava to see the public profiles of the users who logged activities there. So, it would be possible for a bad actor to find a list of U.S. soldiers stationed at a certain base in Iraq, for example. Joe Biden’s not-so-secret Venmo Venmo is a peer-to-peer payments app, yet for some reason, it defaults to publicly sharing your transactions. So, by simply opening my Venmo app — which synced my Facebook friends to my account at some point, probably over 10 years ago — I can see that two girls I went to high school with got dinner together last night. Good for them. The information we share on Venmo can be pretty boring and benign, but dedicated fans of reality shows like “Love Is Blind” will search for contestants’ accounts to predict who from the show is still dating (if the couple sends each other rent money, then yes, they probably live together). So, if you can find reality stars on Venmo, why not search for the president? In 2021, some BuzzFeed News reporters decided to search for Joe Biden’s Venmo. Within 10 minutes, they found his account. From Biden’s account, the reporters could easily find other members of the Biden family and his administration and map out their broader social circles. Even if a user makes their account on Venmo private, their friends list will remain public. When BuzzFeed News contacted the White House, Biden’s profile was wiped clean, but the White House didn’t provide a comment. So, yes, reporters did indeed locate the Venmo accounts of Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz, and other government officials, too. Some things never change. Encrypted messaging can’t protect you from cameras You can take all of the precautions you want to protect your messages, but nothing can save you from the looming possibility of human error. Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia, led a movement in 2017 to attain independence from Spain and become its own country. But the Spanish government blocked this attempt and ousted Puigdemont from leadership. When the Spanish government issued a warrant for the arrest of Puigdemont and his allies, they fled to Belgium. A few months later, the Spanish media attended an event in Belgium where Puigdemont was expected to speak — he sent in a video of a speech instead, but as the clip was playing, a Spanish broadcaster noticed that a former Catalan health minister, Toni Comín, was texting with his screen fully visible. The camera operator zoomed in on Comín’s phone, exposing texts from Puigdemont, where he had resigned himself to defeat in his attempts to bring about Catalan independence. Puigdemont later tweeted that he was expressing himself in a moment of doubt but that he didn’t intend to back down. No matter what steps you take to encrypt your private messages, you might want to look over your shoulder before reading sensitive information in public — especially when you’re texting with a self-exiled former president.

Żorro Housing | © Adam Then In the evolving landscape of post-socialist urban Poland, where prefabricated housing blocks remain stark reminders of utilitarianism, Żorro stands out not through flamboyance but through precise architectural recalibration. Designed by Franta Group, the recently completed residential building transforms a conventional typology into a spatial prototype that allows for living well, affordably, and in context. Zorro Housing Technical Information Architects1-9: Franta Group Location: ul. Handlowa, Żory, Poland Area: 5,720 m2 | 61,570 Sq. Ft. Completion Year: 2023 Photographs: © Adam Then Żorro was inspired by the basic principle of creating architecture, which is to improve the existing functional, aesthetic, and spatial standards found in a given place and context for future residents. – Franta Group Architects Zorro Housing Photographs © Adam Then © Adam Then © Adam Then © Adam Then © Adam Then © Adam Then © Adam Then © Adam Then © Adam Then Żorro Housing Urban Context Żorro emerges from a critical engagement with its immediate environment: a neighborhood characterized by standardized prefabricated housing stock. Rather than rejecting this built fabric, Franta Group builds upon it, morphing the typical “housing block” into something both familiar and radically improved. This gesture is not about iconography or spectacle, despite the name suggesting otherwise. Instead, Żorro operates on the principle of quiet intervention subtly yet decisively, offering a model of residential architecture that redefines quality from within the constraints of form, regulation, and cost. The project proposes an alternate future for cities like Żory, often overlooked in architectural discourse, by embracing their limitations as fertile ground for innovation. Spatial Strategy: Rethinking the Domestic Envelope At the core of Żorro’s architectural innovation is its treatment of outdoor space. The project dispenses with the token balcony, a standard fixture in Polish apartment buildings, and replaces it with expansive terraces that function as full-fledged extensions of the home. These “summer living rooms” and “summer gardens” are not ancillary amenities but foundational to the architectural experience, increasing each unit’s usable area by 30–50%. This reconceptualization of the threshold between inside and outside marks a shift in how we define domestic boundaries. These terraces, proportioned like rooms, accommodate a spectrum of seasonal uses from private retreats to communal gardens—transforming the act of dwelling into one that is outward-looking, environmentally attuned, and spatially generous. Materiality, Form, and Environmental Calibration The building’s stark black façade is more than an aesthetic statement; it is an active component in the project’s environmental logic. Through the deliberate proportioning of overhangs and terrace depths, the design moderates solar gain throughout the seasons. In the summer, when solar angles are high, the façade remains shaded during peak hours, which reduces overheating. In winter, the lower sun penetrates deep into the terraces, contributing to passive heat gain—an intelligent, low-tech solution to climatic responsiveness. Material choices further underscore the design’s ethos. By omitting expensive cladding and decorative finishes, resources were reallocated toward spatial quality and environmental performance. The resulting aesthetic, pared down, robust, and precise, supports an architecture that is not about surface but substance. With construction costs averaging 6,800–7,500 PLN/m² (approximately € 1,600–€ 1,760), Żorro positions itself within the realm of affordable housing. Yet its architectural ambition challenges the normative expectations for this typology. It demonstrates that spatial generosity, environmental responsiveness, and dignified design are not the exclusive territory of metropolitan projects or elite clients. Zorro Housing Plans Site Plan | © Franta Group Floor Plan | © Franta Group Floor Plan | © Franta Group Section | © Franta Group Elevation | © Franta Group Zorro Housing Image Gallery About Franta Group Franta Group is a Polish architectural studio known for its socially engaged and context-sensitive designs, with a particular focus on affordable housing and urban regeneration. Led by architect Tomasz Franta, the firm blends pragmatic spatial strategies with environmental responsiveness to create buildings that challenge conventional typologies while remaining accessible and grounded in local realities. Credits and Additional Notes Client: Blockhouse Number of Apartments: 51 Number of Overground Storeys: 9 Number of Underground Storeys: 1 Building Height: 27.77 m Building Dimensions (External Outline): 21.07 m x 29 m Usable Area: 4,688.48 m² Building Area: 610.16 m² Building Volume: 12,137.55 m³

Published April 26, 2025 10:00am EDT close Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson speaks on passwords The CyberGuy shows you how to strengthen your passwords on your Google account. The RockYou2024 leak, which exposed almost 10 billion passwords in July of last year, might seem like old news, but its impact is still felt today.  It's considered the largest password compilation ever released. With such a vast collection of breached credentials circulating, the risk of credential stuffing, identity theft and unauthorized access to online accounts and systems remains high. For anyone still reusing passwords, the dangers are real — and growing. That's why password security has never been more critical, and the big question remains, how secure is my password?Join The FREE CyberGuy Report: Get my expert tech tips, critical security alerts and exclusive deals — plus instant access to my  Username and password on tablet  (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)Why does password strength matter?Think of weak passwords as an open door for hackers. Recent reports show that many common passwords can be cracked in literally seconds. Simple or reused passwords are especially vulnerable to automated attacks, and once one account is breached, others are often quickly compromised.If a company you’re signed up with experiences a data breach and your login info is leaked, attackers can try that same password on other platforms, potentially unlocking a lot more than just one account.Strong passwords act as your first line of defense. They’re long, complex and unique, making it significantly harder for attackers to guess or force their way in. When every account has its own strong password, even if one gets leaked, the rest stay safe.Think of it this way. A weak password is like using the same key for your house, car and office and leaving it under the doormat. A strong password? It’s like a unique, high-security key for every door in your digital life. Illustration of username and password  (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)What are the top 5 passwords to avoid?The most commonly used and insecure passwords are:12345612345678912345678passwordQwerty123These passwords are extremely easy to guess and should be avoided at all costs. Illustration of password login on laptop  (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)Password strength test: 7-point self-evaluation checklistHow secure is your password, really? It’s time to put it to the test. Grab a pen (or just keep a mental tally) and score yourself based on this 7-point password strength test. Each "yes" earns you a point.1. Is your password at least 12 characters long?Length is your first line of defense. Short passwords — think six or eight characters — can be cracked in minutes by modern hacking tools. At 12 characters or more, you’re making it exponentially harder for attacks to succeed.2. Does it include a mix of upper and lowercase letters?Mixing uppercase and lowercase letters strengthens your password by increasing complexity. For example, instead of using something like "t8g5k9w2," use "T8g5K9w2" — same characters, just more variety. Mix it up.3. Does it include numbers?Adding numbers makes your password harder to crack. Instead of sticking to just letters — like "Trkplmsh" — try something like "Tr8k5Plm2sh." Randomly placed numbers increase complexity and make your password much more secure.WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?4. Does it include special characters?Symbols like !, @, #, and $ add another layer of security. For example, a password like "T8g5K9w2" becomes even stronger as "T8g5#K9w2!." Special characters increase complexity and help defend against attacks.5. Is it unique (not reused across accounts)?Reusing passwords is like handing hackers a master key. If one account gets breached, and you’ve reused that password elsewhere, you’re toast. One password, one purpose. No exceptions.6. Does it avoid personal info like your birthdate?Your name, birthday or "Fluffy1990" (your dog’s name and birth year) might feel clever, but they’re goldmines for attackers who can scrape social media or breached data. Keep it impersonal and unpredictable.7. Have you changed it in the last 90 days?Even good passwords can go stale. It’s a smart move to update them every 90 days, or sooner if a site you use has a security issue. Illustration of password login on laptop  (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)How did you score? Now, let’s take a look at your score:0-2 points: Uh-oh. Your passwords are waving a welcome flag to hackers. Time for a serious upgrade.3-4 points: Not terrible, but you’re still vulnerable. Patch those weak spots pronto.5-6 points: Solid effort! You’re close to fortress-level security — tweak a bit more.7 points: Nailed it. Your password is strong and secure — just remember to keep it updated.This quick password strength test isn’t just a quiz, it’s a good reminder. Even one weak spot could be all it takes for someone to break in. In a world full of data leaks, a strong, unique password is one of the easiest ways to protect yourself. So, what’s your score? Think it’s time to level up?What should I do if my password strength is low?If your score didn’t quite hit that seven out of seven mark, no worries. The good news? You’ve already taken the first step by identifying the weak spots. Now, you’ve got two options:GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HEREBuild a better password yourselfTo keep your passwords secure, use ones that are at least 12 characters long with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. Avoid using personal information or common patterns. Always use a different password for each account, and enable two-factor authentication whenever it's available. While you can build a strong password on your own, let’s be real, it’s not always easy. Coming up with something that’s at least 12 characters long, includes uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, special symbols and isn’t based on anything personal? That’s a tall order. And even if you do manage to craft the perfect one, you’ve still got to remember it, especially if you’re using a different strong password for every account (which you absolutely should be).Let a password generator do the heavy liftingThis is the easier, faster and frankly smarter route. A password generator creates long, complex, completely random passwords for you — no guesswork or mental gymnastics required. These tools are designed to pump out passwords that check all the boxes, making them far harder to crack. If you want an easy and secure option, many password managers include built-in password generators that follow best practices for maximum strength. Either way, the key takeaway is this: Don’t settle for weak or recycled passwords. Whether you go DIY or use a tool, upgrading your password strength is one of the simplest ways to protect yourself online. Illustration of online banking login on laptop  (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)What is the best password manager?Password security can seem like a tough thing to maintain manually. The good news is that password managers take the hassle out of it by generating, storing and autofilling strong, unique passwords for you.We recommend a password manager that is secure, user-friendly and includes features like a password health tool, data breach monitoring and a built-in password generator to help you create strong, unique passwords. Essentially, they are a digital safe designed to encrypt and store your login credentials, passkeys, credit card details, personal information and even sensitive files. It remembers everything for you, organizes your credentials neatly and fills in login forms with a single click. When you sign up for a new site, it autosaves the password with no effort required.The best part? A password manager puts an end to password reuse. Instead of leaning on that tired old "Fluffy1990" for every account, it generates strong, unique passwords tailored to each site, boosting security for both your personal and professional life. So, with a password manager, you’ll no longer have to ask yourself, how secure is my password?Get more details about my best expert-reviewed Password Managers of 2025 here.Kurt's key takeawaysWith data breaches becoming increasingly common, it's clear that password security isn't a "set it and forget it" task. It's an ongoing process. By prioritizing strong passwords and using tools to help you manage them effectively, you can significantly reduce your risk and enjoy greater peace of mind online.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPDo you feel that the companies you interact with online are doing enough to protect your data and passwords? What more could they be doing? Let us know by writing us atCyberguy.com/ContactFor more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/NewsletterAsk Kurt a question or let us know what stories you'd like us to coverFollow Kurt on his social channelsAnswers to the most asked CyberGuy questions:New from Kurt:Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com.  All rights reserved.   Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on "FOX & Friends." Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

ZDNET's key takeaways MSI's new Raider 18 HX is on sale now, starting at $3,139.This is, without a doubt, the most powerful laptop I've tested in 2025, due to its Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU and GeForce RTX 5080 GPU.As you can imagine, it is quite expensive and rather heavy. more buying choices 2025 has been a big year for mega nerds like me with the launch of Nvidia's RTX 50-series graphics cards. These cards have had a big impact on gaming, and I've been dying to try one out. Recently I got that opportunity with MSI's new Raider 18 HX AI, a gaming laptop that is a behemoth in every sense. Also: The best laptop cooling pads you can buyThere are not enough words in the English language to adequately describe the Raider 18's impressive performance, but I'm going to try my best. My review unit housed an Intel Core Ultra 9-285HX processor, 64GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 laptop graphics card. The result? Every game I tested ran phenomenally well. Let's take a closer look.  details View at B&H Photo Video Unmatched powerI ran several AAA games as part of testing, and saw right off the bat how well a job the hardware does at supporting these titles. When everything runs this effortlessly, you're immediately pulled into the center of the action."Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth" spoiled me with high-impact fights in ultra-detailed locales with magic effects flying everywhere. "Monster Hunter Wilds" ran mostly great. It's still a little unoptimized, but out of those few problematic moments, it delivered immersive battles with giant beasts. And "Marvel Rivals" looked like something straight out of a comic book. Cesar Cadenas/ZDNETI can't give all the praise to the hardware, though. The Raider 18 HX boasts a 4K, mini-LED display running at a 120Hz refresh rate. On the high-resolution screen, enemies practically leaped out at me, and environments looked shockingly realistic. I would confidently say that the MSI Raider 18 HX serves well as a desktop replacement. Below is a list highlighting the laptop's best results across three mainstream benchmark tests.Geekbench 6PCMark 10Cinebench R23Cinebench 202421,9569,72336,4102,143Its Geekbench 6 score puts the Raider 18 at second place on the developer's Processor Benchmarks chart, falling just behind the AMD EPYC 9654P. The laptop also far outpaces the current top average score on Cinebench R23, which is held by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX at 30,054.These numbers also reveal that MSI's machine can double as a powerful content creation desktop. Be aware that these results were achieved without fine-tuning the device's output, however. It's not firing on all cylinders, and already the laptop is performing phenomenally. With this in mind, I wondered if I could squeeze out an even better performance. Following instructions given by an MSI rep, I tweaked the output via the MSI Center app and got the following numbers: Geekbench 6PCMark 10Cinebench R23Cinebench 202421,8748,43340,2902,271Processing output didn't change much, although there was a significant improvement with the two image rendering benchmarks - Cinebench R23 and Cinebench 2024. To put these numbers into perspective, the 2025 Mac Studio had a top score of 2,099 on Cinebench 2024 during my time with it. This laptop out performed even that. Herein lies one of the first major considerations: a machine like the Raider 18 can run incredibly hot. To combat overheating, MSI equipped its computer with a robust cooling system dubbed Cooler Booster 5. It consists of two large fans and seven copper pipes working in tandem to push the heat out through the six vents (there are two on either side and two on the back).The cooling system is quite effective at keeping internal temperatures low. Games ran smoothly without incident, and I could place my hand on the keyboard, only feeling a modicum of heat. However, the downside is that the fans are very loud. Cesar Cadenas/ZDNETLooking at the photographs, I'm sure you've noticed that the Raider 18 is a huge machine. It measures 5.91 x 12.09 x 1.26 inches closed and weighs nearly eight pounds. This is not a travel-friendly laptop, and it certainly doesn't help that the power adapter is almost the size of a literal brick. The box it comes in has a handle for easier carrying, but you'll still be traveling around with 10 pounds of tech with the adapter included.Also: I tested Lenovo's new Windows handheld PC - now I'm wondering if I need any other device for travelBelow the 4K display is a Steelseries RGB keyboard. Despite coming from a notable brand, the keys didn't feel as high-end as I would've liked. Don't get me wrong: the keyboard is fine. Travel distance is good, keys are evenly spaced out, and there's even a full-size number pad. However, this keyboard feels like something you would encounter on a work laptop, not a premium gaming machine like the Raider 18.I feel the same way about the trackpad. It's decent and responsive, but rather small, considering the size of the huge wrist rest. Cesar Cadenas/ZDNETThrough the SteelSeries GG app, you can activate one of several lighting patterns or create your own RGB profile. The software also allows users to create macros and gives access to a mini-game where you can practice your FPS (first-person shooter) aiming.Also: This Wi-Fi 7 router solved my big internet headache - and it's fairly affordableEven though the MSI Raider 18 is large, it doesn't have a whole lot of ports available. Much of the space is taken up by the six heat vents. The ports it houses include:Two Thunderbolt 5Three USB-A Gen 2HDMI 2.12.5 Gbps Ethernet inputand a headphone jackI should also mention that the MSI Raider 18 goes through its battery fast. Under its Extreme Performance mode, the laptop just shy of three hours. The Eco-Friendly mode isn't much of an improvement, as the device lasts just four and a half hours on a single charge. Charge times are slow, too, taking 30 minutes just to reach 30%. For that reason, this is a laptop that you'll want to keep plugged in for serious gaming sessions. ZDNET's buying adviceAccording to MSI, prices for the Raider 18 HX start at $3,319. My review unit's configuration is available at B&H Photo Video for $4,499. As expensive as it may be, it's absolutely worth it. This laptop will provide you with years of excellent performance and a top-notch user experience, even superior to many desktops.  What are the tariffs in the US? The recent US tariffs on imports from countries like China, Vietnam, and India aim to boost domestic manufacturing but are likely to drive up prices on consumer electronics. Products like smartphones, laptops, and TVs may become more expensive as companies rethink global supply chains and weigh the cost of shifting production.Laptops and PCs are also hit hard by the new U.S. tariffs, with import duties potentially increasing prices by up to 35%. Many major brands still rely on Chinese and Vietnamese factories for assembly, meaning consumers could soon pay significantly more for everything from budget Chromebooks to high-end gaming rigs. These tariffs may accelerate efforts to move production to regions like Mexico or India, but shoppers can expect higher costs and fewer discounts in the short term. Show more Featured reviews