MacworldOn January 17, Severance, Apples most popular show not named Ted Lasso, will begin its long-awaited second season. And Apple is so excited to mark the occasion, it wants to make sure everyone is caught up on the first season.This weekend, Apple is making Apple TV+ free for everyone. That means you can watch as many shows and movies as you can handle in a 48-hour period, beginning at midnight on Saturday and continuing until 11:59 pm on Sunday.You can access Apple TV+ through the Apple TV app on all Apple devices, Roku, Google TV Streamer, and most smart TVs, including Samsung and LG.Apple has already received several Golden Globe nominations, including Best Drama for Slow Horses and Best Limited Series for Disclaimer. Other critically acclaimed shows airing in 2024 are Shrinking starring Harrison Ford and Presumed Innocent led by Jake Gyllenhaal.But of course, you cant watch everything. Here are our picks for what to check out in the allotted time:Severence: Apples delightfully strange and gripping drama is one of the best shows youll find on any platform. There are a total of nine episodes inthe first season, about an hour each. Total time: About 9 hoursShrinking: Shorter and lighter than Severence but just as entertaining, Shrinking centers on a therapist (Jason Segel) who becomes very involved in his patients lives. Hilarity and emotion ensue in this fast watch with just 10 half-hour episodes in the first season. Total time: About 5 hoursThe Morning Show: The show that started it all. Starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, the show is about, you guessed it, the trials and tribulations of a morning news show. There are three seasons, but check out the first, with 10 episodes at about an hour each, and youll be hooked. Total time: About 10 hoursFly Me to the Moon: Even if youre not a moon landing conspiracist, this brisk comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum will make you a believer. Total time: About 2 hours, 11 minutesTed Lasso: If you havent seen the show everyone was talking about in 2021, its still worth a watch. A heartwarming and hilarious fish-out-of-water tale, Ted Lasso is as good as everyone says it is. Season 1 is 10 half-hour episodes. Total time: About 6 hoursApple TV+ normally costs $9.99 a month with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers. Additionally, customers who purchase and activate a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or Mac get three months of Apple TV+ for free.For more information about all the trials on offer, read about how to get Apple TV+ for free.

MacworldAs we head into a new year, Apple has outlined some of its plans for its Fitness+ service. The new content will kick off on Monday, January 6, and includes the following new and updated workouts:Progressive strength training: A three-week program that starts with Progressive Overload (Week One), Time Under Tension (Week Two), and finally Dynamic Power (Week Three). Its designed to be repeated with higher weights as you build strength.Strength, Endurance, and Agility for Pickleball: For some reason, pickleball is the countrys fastest-growing sport. And this program, featuring professional pickleball champion Catherine Parenteau, is designed to up your game.Yoga Peak Poses: Similar to a one-on-one instructional session, with each highlighting a single peak pose.Introduction to Breath Meditation: Five different 10-minute meditations guiding you through different breath meditation techniques.New Time to Walk episodes: The Apple Watch Time to Walk feature gets eight new episodes, kicking off with Adam Scott on January 13 as a tie-in to the second season of Severance.Apple Fitness+ will also continue its rotating lineup of Artist Spotlight music tie-ins and special guest instructors, including choreographer Alex Wongs dance workout.Additionally, Apple has announced a collaboration with running, cycling, and hiking app Strava. Enhanced integration means that when you share a Fitness+ workout with Strava, youll see rich details about it in Strava and can share it with the Strava community. Existing Strava subscribers will be able to get three months of Fitness+ for free, and Strava athletes will appear as guest trainers on Fitness+ throughout the year.

In a bid to gain favor with the president-elect, Apple CEO Tim Cook has contributed $1 million of his personal finances to the inauguration fund.CEO Tim Cook is familiar with dealing with president-electPresident-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated on January 20, 2025, and tech giants want to ensure they are noticed. Companies and their CEOs have been making large contributions to the inauguration, and Apple is no different.However, instead of Apple itself contributing its own funds, its CEO Tim Cook is providing $1 million of his own money to the inauguration fund according to a report from Axios. Apple itself will not be providing funds. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Heres a useful tool for architects and planners as we enter the new year. The newly released National Zoning Atlas resource covers 30,000 U.S. municipal zoning codes and consolidates several different disciplines, representing the "most complex geocoded legal research project in the United States." The methodology for the atlas was first developed in 2020 by Cornell AAP professor Sara Bronin, who just announced her departure from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP).Authors from the nonprofit Land Use Atlas, Inc. state: "The National Zoning Atlas helps people better understand zoning, which in turn broadens participation in land use decisions, facilitates zoning reform, and narrows a wide information gap that currently favors land speculators, institutional investors, and homeowners over socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. It also enables comparisons across jurisdictions, illuminates regional and statewide trends, and strengthens planning for housing productio...

This gold ring features an engraving of Venus Victrix, or Venus the Victorious, a Romanized aspect of the goddess associated with imperial power and romantic conquests alike. Emmanuelle Collado / INRAPAround the second or third century C.E., a gold ring bearing the likeness of the Roman goddess Venus was lost on a road in what is now Brittany, France. The exact circumstances of the jewelrys creation and how it ended up at the crossroad are unknown, but the ring and a host of similarly ancient artifacts unearthed nearby provide tantalizing insights into the regions history.Researchers from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) excavated the 11-acre site ahead of planned development in the French commune of Pac. According to a statement, the archaeologists discovered evidence of settlements spanning the Late Bronze Age through the early medieval period, suggesting humans occupied the area for some 2,000 years. Sections of the ancient road being cleared Emmanuelle Ah Thon / INRAPA highlight of the finds is the ring, which survived in an exceptional state of preservation, the statement says. The gold band contains an engraved nicolo, or onyx agate cut to leave a thin layer of faint whitish blue over a thicker layer of black, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.The nicolo gem depicts Venus Victrix, or Venus the Victorious, a name for the Roman goddess that emphasizes her association with imperial power and romantic conquests alike. In the ancient era, Venus Victrix, who borrowed her ties to military might from Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of war and sexual love, was often shown in full armor. Roman generals were known to call on Venus Victrix before battle and offer devotion to her cult, wrote Katie White for ArtnetBy the turn of the 19th century, however, the epithet had taken on a different meaning. A marble statue of Pauline Bonaparte (sister to Napoleon Bonaparte) as Venus Victrix celebrates the goddess prowess in matters of the heart. Depicted reclining on a couch in the nude, Pauline holds an apple, alluding to the Greek myth in which Paris, a prince of Troy, awards a golden apple to Venus Greek counterpart, Aphrodite, choosing her over Hera and Athena as the fairest goddess of them all. According to legend, Paris decisionand Aphrodites promise to reward him with the love of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the worldsoon sparked the Trojan War. An early 19th-century statue of Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix Antonio Canova via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0The newly uncovered ring dates to Brittanys occupation by the Romans, which began with Julius Caesars conquest of the region in 56 B.C.E. During this period, a network of roads connected locals, who drove around in wheeled vehicles that left tracks still visible today. One such traveler likely lost their ring on the road, where it remained for nearly two millennia.As INRAP notes, the Brittany community reached its zenith between the seventh and eighth centuries C.E. Residents developed a robust infrastructure based on the division of land into plots with a set purpose, such as farming, housing, cooking and storage. Archaeologists discovered numerous traces of the medieval hamlet, including cooking pots, storage vases, millstones used to grind grain, and carbonized remnants of cereal grains and legumes.Another noteworthy find was a cache of a dozen coins from the Carolingian Empire, whose borders spanned much of western Europe during the early medieval era. Dated to the ninth and tenth centuries C.E., the coins were buried during a period of great upheaval, when the Vikings were conducting raids on Carolingian territory. Though the newly excavated site was abandoned around this same time, Live Sciences Owen Jarus writes that its not clear if [the settlers withdrawal] and the deposition of the coins is because of Viking raids. Cache of Carolingian denarii dated to the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. Coline Herbert / INRAPGet the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Ancient Civilizations, Ancient Rome, Archaeology, Coins, Cool Finds, France, Gold, Jewelry, Legend, Medieval Ages, Myth, Roman Empire, Warfare

Apple CEO Tim Cook is the next tech exec to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trumps inauguration committee, according to Axios. Cooks donation follows similar commitments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos through Amazon, and Meta as Big Tech companies and executives work to curry favor with the incoming administration.Cook famously built a personal relationship with Trump during his first term that other tech CEOs are looking to replicate. He was one of many to congratulate Trump after his Election Day victory, and Axios reports that Cook has met with Trump at Trump Tower and his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Elon Musk, who dropped in on Bezos December dinner with Trump, joined part of Cooks dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Axios says. The New York Times previously reported that Cook met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.Unnamed sources tell Axios that Cook, a proud Alabama native, believes the inauguration is a great American tradition, and is donating to the inauguration in the spirit of unity. Apple is not expected to donate to the inauguration. The company didnt immediately reply to a request for comment.

Samsung and Google are ready to push a new standard, Eclipsa Audio. This format will enable 3D audio experiences on certain YouTube videos later this year, with support available across Samsungs 2025 lineup of TVs and soundbars. Over the years, Samsung notably hasnt supported Dolby Vision HDR for dynamic HDR metadata, choosing instead to promote its preferred alternative, HDR10 Plus. Now, it seems ready to make a similar competitive push for open-source 3D audio support. Eclipsa Audio could eventually serve as a free alternative to Dolby Atmos, the dominant 3D audio format that hardware makers like Samsung pay to license for TVs and other equipment. Samsung says that similar to Atmos, this audio format supports adjusting audio data such as the location and intensity of sounds, along with spatial reflections to create a 3D experience. The two companies first announced a partnership to develop spatial audio technology in 2023, initially calling it Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF). At the time, Samsung spatial audio head WooHyun Nam said the format would provide a complete open-source framework for 3D audio, from creation to delivery and playback. The IAMF spec has also been adopted by the Alliance for Open Media, a group that has been pushing for royalty-free codec support since 2015 and counts companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix along with Samsung and Google among its members. If they also add support for this audio format, it could help it catch on, although its already taken years for their AV1 video codec to see more use.Samsung and Google are also creating a certification program with the Telecommunications Technology Associationto ensure consistent audio quality across devices using the format, which also sounds similar to the way companies like Dolby and THX manage the labeling for their specs. We expect to hear more about Eclipsa Audio in the coming days, as CES 2025 kicks off next week.

As promised, Ive got a special mailbag issue this week. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. Like last year, I picked a handful that hit some of the themes I plan to continue covering in 2025.On to your questionsIm really concerned / worried / curious about the near-term future. Between now and 10 years from now, I think it is very clear AI will be replacing many job functions. What are we all going to do?The leaders at the AI labs say that, yes, there will be job loss, but that doesnt mean catastrophe. The optimistic take is that humans are creative and will invent new jobs, like they always have when technology changes things. At the moment, theres also a macro belief among the CEOs driving a lot of the spending on infrastructure for AI that its impact will be deflationary and lead to GDP growth.Job displacement will still be painful, of course. Sam Altman and others believe that some form of universal basic income will be necessary to offset the economic impacts of AGI. Altman has his other startup, Tools for Humanity, already scanning eyeballs and distributing cryptocurrency. But I think its way too early to be seriously concerned. As Altman himself recently said, AGI is going to be declared soon and we probably wont notice.How much better is the reasoning on AI models, and is it actually something I should care about?I know people who have tried ChatGPTs o1 pro mode and notice a difference. But I havent seen anything mind-blowing from o1 or what Noam Shazeer at Google just put out, though perhaps I am a bit jaded by the last two years of AI hype. My advice would be to play with what you can access / afford and see for yourself.The expense of running these cutting-edge reasoning models is currently keeping them at bay for a lot of people. I expect access to widen significantly in 2025. Knowing how to prompt these different kinds of models effectively remains a struggle, and Id like to see more interface improvements in apps like ChatGPT to help teach people why they should use a reasoning model. An even better move would be to abstract away all these definitions and focus on what tools can do for people.What kind of outlook do you see for Snap in 2025 and beyond?Snaps biggest problem going into 2025 is the same problem it had going into 2024: its business isnt growing fast enough. The app itself is bigger than ever and growing quickly, but yearly revenue growth last quarter was less than Metas. Thats not a compelling pitch to Wall Street when you are already viewed as the underdog. Even with ads being placed in the Chat tab and the new Spotlight redesign slowly rolling out, the jury is out on if the business can rebound to the pace it needs to this year.A depressed stock price makes it harder to recruit and retain talent, which has become more of a problem for Snap in the last couple of years. I do think the vibe could shift quickly if TikTok does end up being banned in the US or severely hamstrung by a new ownership structure.I continue to be skeptical of Evan Spiegels commitment to hardware with Spectacles. As Ive written before, his foresight and ambition to build AR glasses is admirable. But Snap looks increasingly outgunned in hardware.What do you expect from Metas glasses in 2025?There have been a couple of reports recently saying that Meta is planning to ship a pair of smart glasses with a heads-up display this year. I first reported this was going to happen in February 2023. Hypernova, as the product is internally referred to at Meta, will have a viewfinder for interacting with things like Meta AI and notifications.In my write-up of the Orion prototype, I spent a lot of time on the neural wristband because its going to ship with Hypernova as a way to control them (while Orions commercial successor is still a couple years out at least). I expect this band to be the part of the glasses that surprises people the most. Using it for the first time feels like magic. As I reported in 2023, Meta is also planning a separate smartwatch as an optional upgrade with the neural capability and more features for health tracking, etc. Its going to be a very interesting year for Meta on the hardware front.Is TikTok going to actually be banned?No one Ive spoken with who is in a position to know thinks that China will let TikTok be fully divested from ByteDance. The algorithm definitely wont be sold, but as Ive explained before, that isnt as important a factor as it was the last time TikTok was facing a ban.At the same time, there is too much money and power at stake for TikTok to just disappear. President-elect Donald Trump wants to make a deal. The most likely outcome is a different version of the frankensteinian TikTok Global joint venture proposal that ByteDance agreed to back in 2020.I could see Oracle staying involved this second time given Larry Ellisons ongoing influence at Mar-a-Lago. ByteDance will most likely continue running TikTok day-to-day while divesting some of its ownership stake. The real wild card in all this, however, is Elon Musk, who has had serious TikTok envy since he bought XAre you more bullish or bearish on Google than you were a year ago?Honestly, bullish. Its going to be difficult to achieve Sundar Pichais 2025 mandate of making Gemini a serious rival to ChatGPT on the consumer side, but Google has a fountain of money, the technical talent, and unrivaled distribution.The companys challenge is more of a cultural one. The more you have, the more you have to protect. Its hard to get such a large, sprawling conglomerate to move fast and not care about the risk of backlash. Pichai seems well aware of this and the threats he faces, though.Even if Google has to end its Search default payments to Apple (which I predict will be the most likely outcome of the DOJ antitrust case), doing so probably hurt Apples bottom line more than Googles, as Eddy Cue himself argued last week.Then theres Waymo, which may end up paying for all of Googles other bets failures over the years and then some.What is a good book you recommend that falls in line with the things you report on?A curse of already reading so much for my job is that I rarely want to spend time on a book. The last book I read in full was The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova, which has nothing to do with tech but is super valuable if you are getting into poker. I enjoyed how her story of becoming a pro player is woven into explaining the technicalities of the game.Three work-related books I have in my Amazon wish list Im hoping to get to this year: Chip War, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, and The Wolves of K Street.

Bowflex isn't the only option when it comes to adjustable dumbbell sets. PowerBlock is another trusted brand at a much lower price point. To kick off the new year, Woot! (owned by Amazon) has discounted the PowerBlock EXP Stage 1 (5 to 50lb) adjustable dumbbell set to only $199.99, which is currently half the cost of a comparable set of Bowflex SelectTechs. For those who need more than 50 pounds of weight per dumbbell, PowerBlock also offers expansion kits that can increase the maximum weight to 70 pounds or 90 pounds. Both kits Stage 2 (50 to 70lb) and Stage 3 (70 to 90lb) are also on sale at Woot! for $89.99 each. Amazon Prime members get free shipping; everyone else will pay $6 for flat rate shipping. That's reasonable when you consider the fact that the package is going to weigh over 100 pounds.PowerBlock Adjustable Dumbbells (up to 90lbs per Dumbbell)Each dumbbell in the base PowerBlock EXP Stage 1 set is adjustable from 10 pounds all the way to 50 pounds. You can adjust the weight in 5-pound increments with just a turn of a dial, and the plates are all neatly contained and take up far less floor space than an entire rack of individual dumbbells. A stand isn't included; there's currently one on sale, but if you're on a budget, any sturdy stand or table will do. One great feature of these PowerBlocks is that once you're ready to move beyond 50 pounds, you don't have to go out and buy an entirely new set of adjustable dumbbells. The expansion kits allow you to seamlessly add even more weight to your existing PowerBlocks - all the way up to 90 pounds - at a very reasonable cost.The quality of these PowerBlock dumbbells are great. I've tried them myself and they are every bit as solid and well built as the Bowflex SelectTech. Just about every piece that matters is made out of metal, not plastic. The handles are rubber coated so your grip won't slip and the weight adjustment dial is smooth and intuitive. PowerBlock backs these dumbbells with a five-year warranty. If after five years you still haven't given up on your workout regimen, kudos to you.Free weights are a great choice for anyone who wants to work out at home but is limited on space. A pair of dumbbells is all the equipment you need to get access to a wide range of exercises that can target just about every muscle in your upper and lower body. Supplement your free weight exercises with cardio and other workouts that use your own body weight as resistance (like pushups, burpees, or squats) and you may never need to purchase more equipment.Why Should You Trust IGN's Deals Team?IGN's deals team has a combined 30+ years of experience finding the best discounts in gaming, tech, and just about every other category. We don't try to trick our readers into buying things they don't need at prices that aren't worth buying something at. Our ultimate goal is to surface the best possible deals from brands we trust and our editorial team has personal experience with. You can check out our deals standards here for more information on our process, or keep up with the latest deals we find on IGN's Deals account on Twitter.Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.

As we rang in the new year earlier this week, thousands of people seemed to be celebrating in an admittedly unusual way: by playing Valve's 2018 TCG Artifact.Then, as quickly as they started, the 12,000-ish individuals all stopped playing at once on January 3, leaving the game as empty as it had been at the end of 2024.Who were these people? No one seems to know. The Artifact community isn't reporting any sudden spikes in interest, and no one's really talking about the game on social media apart from marveling at the sudden jump in player numbers.So why, then, is SteamDB suggesting that a free-to-play card game that is, by all accounts, close to dead, seeing wild spikes in users over very specific two-day periods?PlayIGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!IGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!To start:...try asking a question that can be answered with a "Yes" or "No".000/250As spotted by Forbes, Artifact Classic's (the original, now free-to-play version of Artifact) player count suddenly spiked on December 31, jumping from a measly ~200 concurrent players up to the 5,000s, before spiking to a height of over 12,000. Artifact remained at around 11,000 concurrents through the second, before its playercount absolutely tanked back down to ~150 at midnight on January 3rd. What's strange is that something almost exactly like this happened earlier this month, too: on December 14, player counts shot up to around 14,000, hung out there for about two days, and dive bombed again into the hundreds on the 17th.So what's really going on here? The actual answer is that no one really knows. The most prevalent community theory seems to be that it's bots, though why someone would train bots to play Artifact isn't exactly clear. One person suggested someone was training an AI to play the game "for shits and giggles" which is perhaps as good an explanation as any. Another person suggested the spikes were due to scam bots increasing playtime in random games in order to make their Steam accounts look legitimate for other purposes.Every Hero in Artifact's Call to Arms Release SetAnother theory pointed out by multiple members of the Artifact subreddit is that the spike in players is due to pirates. Because certain video games require Steam authentication, in order to pirate those games, pirates will use the AppID/SDK of a different, free-to-play game to fool Steam into thinking they have a real copy. In this case, it's being suggested they're using Artifact. That said, this theory doesn't entirely hold up, due to the extremely sudden spikes and then drops in activity at very precise times.So the actual answer behind Artifact's mysterious player numbers remains a mystery for now. We did reach out to Valve for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication. What is clear at least is that despite the numbers, Artifact itself doesn't seem to be garnering any meaningful, real-world interest eight years after launch and four years after Valve effectively called it quits, even though the game itself was pretty fun at first. At least the bots, if they are indeed bots, in Artifact don't seem to be bothering legitimate players, unlike the on-and-off situation over in Team Fortress 2.Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.