Our Picks Best ball launcher ChuckIt View details $10 at Amazon View details Best interactive dog toy Outward Hound Dog Tornado Puzzle View details $19 at Amazon View details Best plush toy Wild Knots Bears Durable Dog Toy View details $15 at Chewy View details For the aggressive chewer Kong Extreme Dog Toy View details $15 at Chewy View details Best soft toy Fluff and Tuff Ball View details $14 at Amazon View details Best for mental stimulation Outward Hound Dog Hide N' Slide Puzzle View details $24 at Chewy View details Best fetch toy Aerobie Dogobie Disc View details $17 at Amazon View details Table of Contents With the seemingly endless amount of dog toys available on the internet, it can be difficult to find one that your dog will like. From teething puppies to large dogs, we found the dog toys that will survive rough play while ensuring safety, and we put them to the test with our very own pups.To help parents of pooches, we surveyed current and former CNET staffers who own doggies and compiled a list of the pups' all-time favorite toys. Finding durable toys that can handle endless chewing sessions and spirited play isn't easy, but these selections have proved their worth. The Chuckit is the most popular plaything on the list.Since every dog has unique quirks and preferences, we've included a diverse set of toys. Whether your four-legged friend is a large chewer, a small tugger or anything in between, you're sure to find the perfect toy to keep them busy. Check out our top picks for the best dog toys -- they'll have your pups wagging their tails in delight.Read more: Best Dog Food Delivery for 2024 Best dog toys To be honest, we get a lot of mileage out of gross old tennis balls that Molly finds in the gutter, but the ChuckIt Ultra Balls do much better at withstanding her efforts to rip them to shreds. They also are slobberproof, don't pick up as much mud in the first place and are easy to wash. The only downside is they tend to disappear at dog parks.--Stephen ShanklandIf you have an active dog who likes to chase balls (like my Lab), then the ChuckIt is a must have for your games of fetch. You never have to bend down to pick up or touch a slobbery ball. This piece of inexpensive molded plastic picks up the ball for you and allows you to "throw" it over and over again with a flick of your wrist. --Connie GuglielmoMy pup will play fetch until the cows come home, so this launcher makes it much easier to tolerate long sessions. Not only is it great for those of us with below average throwing skills, but it also means less bending down to grab the ball. Every time I reach for the Chuckit Launcher, my puppy is beyond excited! --Lexy Savvides $19 at Amazon When you have a dog that demands near-constant attention, you'll do anything to keep them busy for a few minutes. I use this puzzle toy for just that. There are three swiveling trays where you can conceal treats, making your dog work for their reward. My pup has to use his snout to spin the trays to reveal the compartments, and I have to hope it keeps his brain sharp because he has to problem-solve to get all of the treats. I have the level two (intermediate) version and I would buy it again in a heartbeat. --Sarah Mitroff $15 at Chewy This toy is durable and covers all of the things that can keep a dog entertained forever. Inside is a rope and a few squeakers to gain and keep their attention, and it usually ends up being the toy my dog cuddles with. --Theodore Liggians

Our Picks Best free resume builder Resume.com View details See at Resume.com View details Best option for your first resume Resume Genius View details See at Resume Genius View details Easiest resume builder to use Indeed Resume Builder View details See at Indeed View details Most affordable paid resume builder CV Engineer View details See at CV Engineer View details Best free iOS resume builder Resume Star 2: Pro CV Designer View details See at Resume Star 2: Pro CV Designer View details Best free Android resume writing service Intelligent CV Resume Builder App View details See at Intelligent CV View details Best range of professional tools VisualCV View details See at VisualCV View details A premium option for a tailored resume Resume Spice View details See at ResumeSpice View details A 60-day interview guarantee ResumeWriters.com View details See at ResumeWriters.com View details A fast pass through HR screening software ZipJob View details See at Zipjob View details An executive resume solution Find My Profession View details See at Find My Profession View details Table of Contents We've written resumes before, but that doesn't mean we're prepared or that we like writing them. Resumes have a way of expanding as you progress throughout your career. Even worse, when you do have the time to sit down and write a new one, excited to go into more detail about your career, your mind goes completely blank. It doesn't help that expectations of what to put on your resume can differ depending on what you're looking for as a career. From choosing the proper format to making your skills and experience stand out, each choice must be carefully considered. And since most of us aren't trained in HR, it's challenging to know what to select for your resume, and what to leave behind.There's also one other hurdle: the rise of AI. The current job market is already unforgiving, and with you having to meet the standards of AI, it's better to look to resume writing services to give yourself an edge and craft something tailored to your industry. More importantly, it'll land you that all important interview.We have researched many resume services to find the best ones for different needs. We focused on the number of customizable templates, the level of support offered, how easy the site is to use, the strength of the privacy policy and pricing. No matter your industry, writing skills or budget, there is a service that can help you create a quality resume without frustration.What's the best resume builder website?The best resume template and builder should give you plenty of options to make your resume just the way you want it. Resume.com is great for this, as it has lots of customization features that work for just about anyone looking for a job. You can upload and tweak an existing resume, choose a template from their collection or let it guide you in creating one from scratch. Plus, Resume.com offers helpful tips throughout the process to make sure you include and optimize everything you need. Once you're happy with how it looks, you can download your resume for free in several formats.Depending on where you are in the job application process, you might find that you need more than just a template. Professional writing services can hook you up with experienced writers and coaches who can help you create and polish your resume, LinkedIn profile, cover letter and more. These services provide personalized coaching and extra features, but they can be a bit pricier. We've gathered a variety of options to fit different budgets and needs. Since your resume usually includes your contact info and some personal details, weve also shared what each services privacy policy looks like.Best resume templates and builders of 2025 A well-constructed resume can help you stand out during a job search. Nitchakul Sangpetch/Eye Em/Getty Images Photo Gallery 1/1 See at Resume.com Pros Can create new resume or customize templates Many free features, guidance while writing Integrated with Indeed job search site Cons Difficulty unsubscribing from paid services See at Resume.com Resume.com is a free resume writer offering dozens of templates for creating your resume or cover letter, as well as job boards and career advice. You have the option to upload and edit an existing resume, create a new one or customize one of the sample resumes offered on the site. It's intuitive and easy to use, and it creates a professional-looking final product.When starting from scratch, you'll go section by section, entering your education, employment history, hobbies and interests, professional skills, languages and references. Resume.com provides question prompts and tips for guidance, as well as career-specific examples you can add if you're struggling to find the right words. You can also choose to forgo any of these sections, rearrange sections and add custom ones depending on what you need. As you update and save each section, you can see how it will appear on the page on your resume preview to the right. You can also change the template, font style and size, or spacing at any time and see it update in real-time in the preview.Once you're done, you can download your new resume (in PDF, DocX, RTF or TXT format), create a custom URL or print it out. You also have the option to upload it to Indeed, a job search site that partners with Resume.com. The account you make will work with both Indeed and Resume.com. On the privacy side, the site does collect user information. If you want to delete your account, simply click your profile icon and then Account. Clicking Close My Account deletes your account and your data. If you didn't make an account, you can still choose Delete Guest Data. You can also request your data, and the company will send you an email with what it has collected.

IdeasThe Walmart EffectNew research suggests that the company makes the communities it operates in poorereven taking into account its famous low prices.By Rog KarmaIllustration by Carl GodfreyDecember 24, 2024 Listen1.0x0:0010:42Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (Noa) using AI narration. Listen to more stories on the Noa app.This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.No corporation looms as large over the American economy as Walmart. It is both the countrys biggest private employer, known for low pay, and its biggest retailer, known for low prices. In that sense, its dominance represents the triumph of an idea that has guided much of American policy making over the past half century: that cheap consumer prices are the paramount metric of economic health, more important even than low unemployment and high wages. Indeed, Walmarts many defenders argue that the company is a boon to poor and middle-class families, who save thousands of dollars every year shopping there.Two new research papers challenge that view. Using creative new methods, they find that the costs Walmart imposes in the form of not only lower earnings but also higher unemployment in the wider community outweigh the savings it provides for shoppers. On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all. Sometimes consumer prices are an incomplete, even misleading, signal of economic well-being.In the 1990s and early 2000s, before tech giants came to dominate the discourse about corporate power, Walmart was a hot political topic. Documentaries and books proliferated with such titles as Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and How Walmart Is Destroying America (And the World). The publicity got so bad that Walmart created a war room in 2005 dedicated to improving its image.When the cavalry came, it came from the elite economics profession. In 2005, Jason Furman, who would go on to chair Barack Obamas Council of Economic Advisers, published a paper titled Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story. In it, he argued that although Walmart pays its workers relatively low wages, the magnitude of any potential harm is small in comparison with how much it saved them at the grocery store. This became the prevailing view among many economists and policy makers over the next two decades.Fully assessing the impact of an entity as dominant as Walmart, however, is a complicated task. The cost savings for consumers are simple to calculate but dont capture the companys total effect on a community. The arrival of a Walmart ripples through a local economy, causing consumers to change their shopping habits, workers to switch jobs, competitors to shift their strategies, and suppliers to alter their output.Annie Lowrey: How the low minimum wage helps big companiesThe two new working papers use novel methods to isolate Walmarts economic impactand what they find does not look like a progressive success story after all. The first, posted in September by the social scientists Lukas Lehner and Zachary Parolin and the economists Clemente Pignatti and Rafael Pintro Schmitt, draws on a uniquely detailed dataset that tracks a wide range of outcomes for more than 18,000 individuals across the U.S. going back to 1968. These rich data allowed Parolin and his co-authors to create the economics equivalent of a clinical trial for medicine: They matched up two demographically comparable groups of individuals within the dataset and observed what happened when one of those groups was exposed to the treatment (the opening of the Walmart) and the other was not.Their conclusion: In the 10 years after a Walmart Supercenter opened in a given community, the average household in that community experienced a 6 percent decline in yearly incomeequivalent to about $5,000 a year in 2024 dollarscompared with households that didnt have a Walmart open near them. Low-income, young, and less-educated workers suffered the largest losses.In theory, however, those people could still be better off if the money that they saved by shopping at Walmart was greater than the hit to their incomes. According to a 2005 study commissioned by Walmart itself, for example, the store saves households an average of $3,100 a year in 2024 dollars. Many economists think that estimate is generous (which isnt surprising, given who funded the study), but even if it were accurate, Parolin and his co-authors find that the savings would be dwarfed by the lost income. They calculate that poverty increases by about 8 percent in places where a Walmart opens relative to places without one even when factoring in the most optimistic cost-savings scenarios.But their analysis has a potential weakness: It cant account for the possibility that Walmarts are not evenly distributed. The company might, for whatever reason, choose communities according to some hard-to-detect set of factors, such as deindustrialization or de-unionization, that predispose those places to growing poverty in the first place. Thats where the second working paper, posted last December, comes in. In it, the economist Justin Wiltshire compares the economic trajectory of counties where a Walmart did open with counties where Walmart tried to open but failed because of local resistance. In other words, if Walmart is selecting locations based on certain hidden characteristics, these counties all should have them. Still, Wiltshire arrives at similar results: Workers in counties where a Walmart opened experienced a greater decline in earnings than they made up for with cost savings, leaving them worse off overall. Even more interesting, he finds that the losses werent limited to workers in the retail industry; they affected basically every sector from manufacturing to agriculture.Whats going on here? Why would Walmart have such a broadly negative effect on income and wealth? The theory is complex, and goes like this: When Walmart comes to town, it uses its low prices to undercut competitors and become the dominant player in a given area, forcing local mom-and-pop grocers and regional chains to slash their costs or go out of business altogether. As a result, the local farmers, bakers, and manufacturers that once sold their goods to those now-vanished retailers are gradually replaced by Walmarts array of national and international suppliers. (By some estimates, the company has historically sourced 60 to 80 percent of its goods from China alone.) As a result, Wiltshire finds, five years after Walmart enters a given county, total employment falls by about 3 percent, with most of the decline concentrated in goods-producing establishments.From the December 2011 issue: How Walmart is changing ChinaOnce Walmart has become the major employer in town, it ends up with what economists call monopsony power over workers. Just as monopoly describes a company that can afford to charge exorbitant prices because it lacks any real competition, monopsony describes a company that can afford to pay low wages because workers have so few alternatives. This helps explain why Walmart has consistently paid lower wages than its competitors, such as Target and Costco, as well as regional grocers such as Safeway. So much about Walmart contradicts the perfectly competitive market model we teach in Econ 101, Wiltshire told me. Its hard to think of a clearer example of an employer using its power over workers to suppress wages.Walmarts size also gives it power over the producers who supply it with goods. As Stacy Mitchell, a coexecutive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, recently wrote in The Atlantic, Walmart is well known for squeezing its suppliers, who have little choice but to comply for fear of losing their largest customer. Selling to Walmart at such low prices can force local suppliers to lay off workers and pay lower wages to those who remain. They also naturally try to make up for the shortfall by charging their other customers higher prices, setting off a vicious cycle that allows Walmart to entrench its dominance even further.The most direct upshot of the new research is that Walmart isnt the bargain for American communities that it appears to be. (When I reached out to Furman about the new research, he said he wasnt sure what to make of it and suggested I talk with labor economists.) More broadly, the findings call into question the legal and conceptual shift that allowed Walmart and other behemoths to get so huge in the first place. In the late 1970s, antitrust regulators and courts adopted the so-called consumer-welfare standard, which held that the proper benchmark of whether a company had gotten too big or whether a merger would undermine competition was if it would raise consumer prices or reduce sellers output. In other words, the purpose of competition law was redefined as the most stuff possible, as cheaply as possible. But as the new Walmart research suggests, that formula does not always guarantee the maximum welfare for the American consumer.The outgoing Biden administration, with its focus on reviving antitrust, recognized this. Its most recent enforcement guidelines, for example, direct the government to take into account a mergers effect on workers, not just consumers, and the antitrust agencies have included such claims in multiple lawsuits. The question is whether the incoming Trump administration, which has sent mixed messages on corporate consolidation, will follow the same path.Recent history shows the political danger in threatening low consumer prices. The publics reaction to the inflation of the past few years suggests that many Americans would rather be slightly poorer but have price stability than be richer but with more inflation. That will tempt policy makers to prioritize low prices above all else and embrace the companies that offer them. But if Walmarts example reveals anything, it is that, in the long term, low prices can have costs of their own.Support for this project was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Around the world, public healthcare systems have struggled to reset post-pandemic, and in particular, the increasingly aged populations in Western countries are putting pressure on services, not least in the UK where NHS in crisis is a regular headline in the media. As a result, private companies, many powered with technology, see a gap in the market. Its with this background thatCera, a proprietary software platform and in-home healthcare provider in the UK, has raised a $150 million in a mixture of debt and equity. The company said the majority of this is debt, but declined to give a split and also demured on its valuation.The round was led by funds affiliated with BDT & MSD Partners and Schroders Capital in order to scale Ceras platform. The company says this is highly AI-driven, with proprietary modelling based on its own data, although it admits to using soma aspects of both Googles Gemini AI platform as well as Microsofts version of ChatGPT.In 2022 Cera raised $320 million (260 million) in an equity and debt financing round, split roughly 50/50.According to CrunchBase it has 14 investors. Recognizable equity investors to date include Earlymarket, Guinness Ventures, DigitalHealth. London Accelerator, and long-time U.K. investor Robin Klein.A spokesperson for Cera added that although this has yet to be reflected in publicly-filed accounts, the company was EBITA-positive in 2023 and became free-cashflow positive in 2024, and is increasingly a self-sustaining business, hence why it could raise this debt round. In an interview with TechCrunch, Dr Ben Maruthappu MBE, Founder & CEO of Cera, said: We are getting to profitability, plus we have very significant stale how were using our technology and AI, and weve expanded into more services in the home.Cera carers use its app to plan their work and log patient symptoms. Using its AI modeling, Cera is then able to take that unstructured data (for example patient had a fall in the night etc) and use it to predict the potential for patients to become subject to a greater risk of illness or injury. The company claims this has resulted in hospitalization reductions of up to 70%, a 20% reduction in patient falls, and hospital discharges that are up to five times faster, it said in a statement.The company has raised more than $407 million to date in a mix of equity and debt.Competitors in the U.K. include Home Instead and Bluebird Care, which use non-proprietary apps to direct their staff. In the US, the closest comparisons to Cera include Signify Health and CVS Health, both of which were acquired by Nasdaq-listed CVS Health. Another is Honor, which has raised $625 million to date.Maruthappu said: Were taking pressure off the NHS and supporting it having more capacity to look after other patients. Weve also expanded into other service lines such as nursing services, physiotherapy, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, and providing mental health services in the home as well. So were a much more comprehensive health care at home provider.He also said the AI-driven aspect of the business was based on the data it collects: The other key advantage is what were doing with technology, more specifically AI Were logging information about patients from those visits on our app thats given us now one of the largest home health care data sets in the world, definitely the largest in Europe, and weve been able to analyze that data set in lots of different ways to build algorithms, algorithms that relate if Someones going to have a fall before they do.We can predict over 80% of falls a week before they happen. Thats statistically significant So we actually reduce falls by over 20% because of our AI algorithm We can also predict around 83% of hospitalizations again a week before they happen reducing hospitalizations by up to 70%, he said. In a statement, Rob Platek, partner and global head of credit at BDT & MSD, said: Cera has achieved strong growth through a demonstrated ability to leverage technology to deliver exceptional care. We believe Cera is well positioned to further scale its business.Cera says it is the U.K.s largest non-NHS healthcare provider, covering about covering about 30 million people with 10,000 carers and nurses and working with with over 150 local governments and two-thirds of NHS Integrated Care Systems.It also claims an independent analysis conducted by U.K. consultancy Faculty found Ceras AI-led home healthcare model saves the U.K. healthcare system 1 million a day.Cera is obviously keen to avoid the tarnish of healthcare startups such as Babylon Health, admittedly a very different business, which went bankrupt and was sold for parts after attempting to do healthcare via a mere chatbot. Topics

Into the big blue Bezos on eve of New Glenn launch: If something goes wrong, well pick ourselves up "There are some things that can only be tested in flight." Eric Berger Jan 12, 2025 7:30 pm | 0 Blue Origin's rocket is seen at the launch pad on the day after Christmas. Credit: Blue Origin Blue Origin's rocket is seen at the launch pad on the day after Christmas. Credit: Blue Origin Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreUnderstandably, the main building of Blue Origin's sprawling campus in Florida buzzed with activity on Sunday evening as the final hours ticked down toward the company's historic, first orbital launch. The time had come to celebrate a moment long awaited.On one side of the large foyer, a multi-story print of the New Glenn rocket lit up on its launch pad hung from the wall. The striking image had been taken a day after Christmas, and put up in the lobby two days earlier. On the other side a massive replica of the company's "Mk. 1" lunar lander towered over caterers bustling through.My escort and I took the elevators to the upper floor, where a walkway overlooks the factory where Blue Origin builds the first and second stages of its New Glenn rocket. There I met the chief executive of the company, Dave Limp, as well as the person responsible for all of this activity.A few words with Jeff Bezos"It's pretty exciting, isn't it?" Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, said by way of greeting.Clad in a black polo shirt, emblazoned with the Blue Origin logo, Bezos appeared both affable and anxious on the eve of what is the biggest moment yet for this rocket company.I asked what his expectations were for the launch of New Glenn, which has a three-hour window that opens at 1 am ET (06:00 UTC) on Monday, January 13. The launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base lay several miles away from the factory where we conducted the interview."We would certainly like to achieve orbit, and get the Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit," Bezos said. "Landing the booster would be gravy on top of that. It's kind of insane to try and land the booster. A more sane approach would probably be to try to land it into ocean. But we're gonna go for it."Blue Origin has built a considerable amount of infrastructure on a drone ship, Jacklyn, that will be waiting offshore for the rocket to land upon. Was Bezos not concerned about putting that hardware at risk? A view inside the New Glenn rocket factory in Florida. Credit: Blue Origin A view inside the New Glenn rocket factory in Florida. Credit: Blue Origin "I'm worried about everything," he admitted. However, the rocket has been programmed to divert from the ship if the avionics on board the vehicle sense that anything is off-nominal.And there is, of course, a pretty good chance of that happening."We've done a lot of work, we've done a lot of testing, but there are some things that can only be tested in flight," Bezos said. "And you can't be overconfident in these things. You have to real. The reality is, there are a lot of things that go wrong, and you have to accept that, if something goes wrong, we'll pick ourselves up and get busy for the second flight."As for that flight, the company has a second booster stage deep in development. It could be seen on the factory floor below Sunday, and should be ready later this spring, Limp said. There are about seven upper stages in the flow as the company works to optimize the factory for production.A pivotal moment for spaceflightBezos founded Blue Origin a little more than 24 years ago, and the company has moved slowly compared to some of its competitors, most notably SpaceX. However, when Blue Origin has built products, they've been of high quality. Bezos himself flew on the first human mission of the New Shepard spacecraft in 2021, a day he described as the 'best' in his life. Of all the people who have ever flown into space, he noted that 7 percent have now done so on a Blue Origin vehicle. And the company's BE-4 rocket engine has performed exceptionally well in flight. But an orbital mission, such a touchstone for launch companies, has eluded Bezos until now."It's kind of hard to beat going to space yourself," Bezos said of his own flight. "That really was very meaningful for a whole bunch of reasons. But this is, you know, the culmination of a lot of hard work by a lot of people. And it's a really big deal. You know, you don't get very many first flights, yeah, and here we go."New Glenn is coming online at a pivotal moment in spaceflight. The incoming Trump administration is looking to shakeup NASA, and wants to work with companies that can deliver results. If New Glenn works, and can fly regularly, it could play an important role in a lunar exploration program. However, the company Blue Origin seeks to compete with, SpaceX, may have a lobbying edge as that company's founder, Elon Musk, has played a pivotal role in setting up the Trump White House.So is Bezos concerned that his rival, Musk, has a cozy relationship with Donald Trump?"He's been very clear that, you know, he's not doing this for personal gain," Bezos said. "He is going to do it for the public interest. And I take him at face value."Bezos understands that the best thing that Blue Origin can do now for itself, and the country's space exploration plans, is to deliver the goods. With luck, that will start early on Monday morning.Eric BergerSenior Space EditorEric BergerSenior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 0 Comments

Andrew Taylor, 70, left the US to retire in Malaysia a decade ago.He now lives in a 2-bedroom condo in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, that costs about $620 a month."I probably would not be retired if I were still in the US," Taylor said.At 60, Andrew Taylor retired and left the US to move to Malaysia.Taylor, who used to do administrative work, started thinking about retirement when he was in his mid-fifties. However, the high cost of living in the US made it feel like a pipe dream."I realized that I was probably not going to be able to stay in the United States, or I was going to have to work until I was 80," Taylor, now 70, told Business Insider. Andrew Taylor moved to Malaysia from the US a decade ago. Andrew Taylor. He started considering retiring abroad, and it was through his then-partner who lived in Penang that he first learned about the Malaysia My Second Home, or MM2H, visa program. The MM2H program was introduced by the government in 2002 to attract foreigners to retire and live in Malaysia.The conditions for the visa have been tightened over the years.Based on the most recent rule changes announced in 2024, there are now three different categories: Platinum, Gold, and Silver. Depending on the category of visa they apply for, applicants are required to have minimum bank deposits of between $150,000 and $1 million and also buy property in Malaysia. The validity of the visa ranges from 5 years to 20 years.Having visited multiple times before, the idea of living in Malaysia appealed to him. He said he saw the visa program as something that could help him retire much earlier.In late 2014, he applied and was approved a few months later. In 2015, Andrew packed up his bags and moved from Washington, D.C. where he had lived for 40 years to start the next chapter of his life.Creating a dream apartment in the cityIt's been 10 years since Taylor arrived in Malaysia. He spent seven years in Penang, a state in northwest Malaysia, before moving to Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, three years ago. He spent seven years in Penang before he moved to Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, three years ago. Andrew Taylor. He's been in his current rental a two-bedroom condo for about five months.Taylor said that his previous unit was on two floors, and he had to climb 20 steps to reach the bedroom. "I'm 70 and the stairs are irritating to me now, so I want it to be all on one floor," he said.Taylor says he took just one weekend to find his apartment, which was about two miles outside the city center. The view of the city immediately caught his attention."I'm on the 22nd floor, and I can see the Twin Towers. I can see all the major towers in KL, and it's just a beautiful view. I think if I'm going to be in KL, that's what I wanted," Taylor said. The view from the windows of his apartment immediately caught his attention. Andrew Taylor. His rent costs 2,800 Malaysian ringgit, or $620, each month. It's a two-year lease with an option for a third year. Unlike his previous apartments, he opted for an unfurnished unit this time."I really never liked the furniture in the apartments that I was renting," he said, adding that he has always been interested in interior design. Most of his furniture is sourced locally."It's sort of eclectic," he said, describing his apartment. "I have oriental carpets and things like that, but with modern furniture."His apartment block is part of a five-building condo development, which offers amenities like a pool and a gym. Rent costs 2,800 Malaysian ringgit, or about $620, each month. Andrew Taylor. This is Taylor's fifth apartment in Malaysia, and he says he plans to continue renting and riding around the city on his Vespa for the foreseeable future.Lessons learned along the way have contributed to his decision. The first place he moved into after arriving in Malaysia was on the 35th floor of a building in Penang."The landlord said, 'Oh, they'll never build in front of it.' Well, yes, they built right in front of it immediately," he said. "If you buy a place, it's just harder to move on." The apartment has two bedrooms. Andrew Taylor. Americans are retiring abroadTaylor isn't alone in his decision to retire abroad.Analyses in the past year have estimated that a single person would need to earn $96,000 a year to live comfortably in many major US cities. It comes as no surprise that more and more Americans are being priced out of the US.There's also a retirement crisis sweeping across the nation, with more people over 65 still punching the clock because they can't afford to retire.An AARP survey of 8,368 people conducted in January 2024 found that 1 in 5 Americans 50 and over reported having no retirement savings. Over half of them also said they do not think they'll have enough money to keep them afloat in retirement.It's a sentiment that Taylor shares. "I probably would not be retired if I were still in the US," he said. The pool at Taylor's condo in Kuala Lumpur. Andrew Taylor. In contrast, the MM2H visa has made Malaysia an attractive destination for expats.As of January 2024, there were 56,066 active MM2H pass holders in the country, Malaysia's Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Tiong King Sin said during a parliament session, per local paper The Star. Chinese nationals form about 44% of pass holders, followed by those from South Korea and Japan. There were 1,340 pass holders from the US. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent by BI.'Pretty similar' lifestyles in both countriesWhile Taylor's lifestyle in Malaysia is "pretty similar" to the one he had back in the States, the lower cost of living here means that his money can go further each month."I would say I used to try to keep my budget to $2,000. Now it's a little bit more than that. I would say $2,500 is what I live on now," Taylor said, adding that he doesn't think he could live on the same amount back in the US.He has a basic health insurance policy that costs 340 Malaysian ringgit each month."There are other much better policies, but I went with the cheap option," Taylor said. He says it only covers hospitalization and related costs.He's also satisfied with Malaysia's healthcare facilities."And you don't have to wait long for an appointment or wait long at your appointment," he added.Cost of living aside, Taylor says he also feels safer in Malaysia."I've never felt safer anywhere. Where I lived in my last place outside D.C., sometimes I would hear gunshots from outside my window, and that just is so foreign here. There's nothing like that," he said. "I've never ever felt any uncomfortable feeling when I'm out, even alone walking around."These days, Taylor spends his time filming YouTube videos about what it's like to live in Malaysia.However, he says that such a drastic move might not be for everyone especially for those who have children, grandchildren, or even aged parents. It only worked for him because he had loose family connections.Looking back, Taylor says he's learned not to be afraid of living outside his comfort zone."My family thought I would last about six months, and then I would come back. 10 years later, and I'm still here, and I have no intention of ever going back to the US," he said.Have you recently relocated to a new country and found your dream home? If you have a story to share, contact this reporter at agoh@businessinsider.com.

Shruti Dhumak navigated maternity leave amid Google's AI industry shift and layoffs.She split her leave to maintain visibility and manage family support from India.Dhumak focused on self-improvement and open communication to regain her work efficiency.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shruti Dhumak, a cloud customer engineer in Google's Boston office who gave birth in February 2023. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her employment history.Before I had my son, I always doubted how I was going to manage being this overly ambitious person with motherhood.I've been with Google for about four years. I had my first child in February 2022 and split up my maternity leave in three phases to make the most of temporary support I had when my family visited.Between Google's policy of six months of maternity leave, one month of prepartum leave, and one month of paid time off, I had a total of eight months of time away from work. I knew I was fortunate to have this time off because it is rare in the US, but going on leave and the anxiety of being replaced while I was away was one of the hardest things I have dealt with.I'm a customer engineer, and a large part of my role revolves around managing relationships with our cloud clients. If someone takes over for me, the customers end up being closer to that representative and I risk losing my accounts to someone else.I was also paranoid that my absence or my performance below my peak, once I returned, would make me more susceptible to a layoff. Two weeks before my delivery, Google announced its biggest, 12,000-people layoff. As someone on an H1-B visa, a layoff would mean I would have to find another job in a matter of weeks or risk having to move back to India with a newborn.When I came back to work, I was not a hundred percent myself not as a person and not as an employee. I was not a hundred percent efficient. I've had my moments where I broke down and lost my train of thought during a call.Despite my efforts, some other senior people were preferred by the business partners for some responsibilities. To add to it, Google was entering the artificial intelligence industry. Being away monthsBut I was able to turn my performance around. In 2024, I got awards for my performance, and it's just the opposite of how last year went.There were four things I did to make the transition easier on myself:1. Split up my leaveGoogle offers employees the flexibility to take their maternity leave for up to a year after the baby is born. I broke up my leave into three stages, which allowed me to come back to work periodically to ensure I was visible and my work was not forgotten.I took my first break a month before the baby was born. I returned in my third month after the delivery and went back on leave in the months of September, November, December and January. It was designed based on who was there to help me with the child throughout the year first my parents and then my in-laws.2. Highlight my workNobody is going to talk about me until I do, which is something I have struggled with in my previous companies.I made sure to speak up when things weren't going right and made sure to collect evidence of my efforts and achievements.I took advantage of the help I had and spent evenings and weekends taking exams and completing certifications to upskill myself and show others that I was coming up to speed.3. Have open, honest conversationsWhat helped me through the year was my manager. She saw what was happening when I missed things because I've been a good performer all these years.I shared everything with her openly during one-on-ones, which helped because she understood my challenges. She also helped me maintain visibility with upper management, because Google is strict with grades and the ratings you get.It made a world of a difference to have a female manager and a work culture where men could empathize, too. My job involves a lot of talking and explaining, and I suffered from shortness of breath during my third trimester. My male counterparts recognized this and asked me to take breaks and go off-camera, which helped me work until the day I left for leave.I also built my network and spoke to women who are managers in other teams in the company. Women who have been outperformers shared their experiences crying secretly after they became parents, and nobody said they had it all sorted out. Now, I share my journey with others.4. Taking it one day at a timeDuring the wave of tech layoffs in 2022, I had at least three close friends who were laid off from Google, Microsoft, and Meta, which lingered on my mind and made me paranoid about my own situation.The stress and postpartum depression is not behind me, but I decided to take it one day at a time.I decided to be laser-focused and do things as they come up. There have been times I feel like delaying a reply but do it anyway, because I know it could lead to more tasks that I can add to my annual review.Do you work in Big Tech and have a tip or story to share? Please reach out at shubhangigoel@businessinsider.com.

Wendy Altschuler has traveled around the world with her husband and three sons.Her kids agree that Japan has been their favorite destination.Sumo wrestling was the highlight of their trip.My kids have been fortunate to enjoy the benefits of my main work perk as a longtime travel writer: accumulating airline miles. Of all of the places we've traveled around the world including Peru, Greece, Dominican Republic, Thailand, India, Singapore, UAE, and Aruba Japan remains the absolute favorite for all three of my boys.During our summertime trip to Japan, we explored incense-heavy shrines, wandered through gardens bursting with hydrangeas, marveled at castles, indulged in street food, met wild monkeys, and sauntered through a bamboo forest. The kids made it clear that Japan lights up all five of your senses no matter what age you are.We all enjoyed finding a beach full of smooth pottery pieces, remnants from a long-ago shipwreck; and watching a crazy robot show in Tokyo with swirling lights and loud music while eating dinner.But the highlight of their trip was learning about sumo wrestling.The whole family tried sumo wrestlingIn Nara, near Kyoto and Osaka, we encountered sacred deer that bowed when we fed them crackers. It was near there, at the foot of Mt. Nijo in Katsuragi City, where I had another quest for my boys to learn about Japan's oldest sport: Sumo wrestling.Katsuragi is the origin of sumo, Japan's national sport with 1,500 years of history. At Kehayaza Sumo Museum, we took our shoes off and sat in a box seat on top of cushions to watch. We were the sole spectators at the event that aims to educate visitors on the art of sumo. Rather than attend a Grand Sumo Tournament, which can be difficult to visit with only six tournaments held each year, the museum is much more open, affordable, and accessible for families on a year-round basis.There was beautiful singing, a display of flags, and rice throwing to purify the elevated ring, which was made of clay and covered in rough sand. Two massive rikishi, or sumo wrestlers, entered the circular ring, the dohyo, wearing only a mawashi, or loin cloth. We observed as the two athletes lifted and stomped each leg, slapped their stomachs, and prepared for the match. Sumo wrestlers in a ring at the Kehayaza Sumo Museum in Katsuragi City, Japan. Wendy Altschuler They learned about Japanese cultureSumo originated as a ritual dance to entertain the gods at shrine festivals. Nowadays,professional sumohas six divisions. Wrestlers move up the ranks depending on their skill, and their pay increases as they progress and evolve. The Grand Champion, or Yokozuna, is an exclusive title that can earn the wrestler 2.8 million yen, or $18,000 per month, pertheSouth China Morning Post.Tickets for standard seats to the tournaments start at around 2,500 yen and go up to around 20,000 yen for ringside seats. Box seats, which accommodate four people, can cost up to 60,000 yen per box. A benefit of visiting the museum is that entrance is free for visitors with foreign passports. The author's husband and three sons battled it out in the sumo ring. Wendy Altschuler We all stepped into the ringWith eyes wide, my boys were dialed in as the straight-faced men collided while endeavoring to push each other to the ground or out of the ring to win the match. We were told that in sumo, often, the opponents aren't the same size or weight, like in American boxing, which allows spectators to root for an underdog.After the match, my husband was asked if he wanted to try. He cautiously stepped into the ring with the largest of the two wrestlers and went through the entire ritual tossing the rice in the air, bowing, clapping, crouching down with his fists on the ground, mirroring the correct footwork, and facing his opponent. I went next. Then each of my boys got a chance to test their mettle.While a referee dressed in a long red and gold robe, black pointed hat, white belt, and holding a small paper fan officiated, my boys followed the ceremonial tasks and squared off with their skilled challenger. I'll never forget how the athlete, who seemed so imposing when he was brawling with his opponent, morphed into a playful fellow when my kids each entered the ring. The author's youngest son was picked up by the sumo wrestler. Wendy Altschuler When the near-naked wrestler picked up my firstborn son, who was 12 at the time, and swung him around by his mawashi, I roared with laughter. I still smile when I think about how high-pitched the wrestler's giggle was, completely contrasting his size and power.My youngest pressed firmly into his challenger's belly, not moving him an inch, and then, par for the course, he became airborne, just like his older brother. My middle son took a different strategy: he stood on his tippy toes and went for the shoulders, attempting to drive his adversary off balance. The final match was unfair: all three boys were against their dad. After the match, we thanked the sumo wrestlers for the immersive education. Later, at home, I organized a postcard writing project in which short travel stories were mailed to isolated seniors. My youngest wrote about getting in the ring with a 400-pound sumo wrestler in Japan: "I was only 8, I obviously lost."

Kopihub Restaurant / Does studioSave this picture! ShootativeRestaurantNai Mueang, ThailandArchitects: Does studioYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2024 PhotographsPhotographs:Shootative Lead Architects: Doesstudio More SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. Interior Design Project: Kopi Hub, Korat - This interior design project for Kopi Hub, Korat, is inspired by the concept of "Mud-Mai" (Thai silk weaving), a cultural hallmark of Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand. The design harmonizes the main building with the interior spaces, which are divided into three distinct zones:Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Zone 1: Reception and Seating Area - This zone is arranged within a circular space, allowing customers to enjoy the surrounding garden views. A large red backdrop, designed with a modern reinterpretation of the Mud-Mai pattern, incorporates red silk threads that represent the signature color of the Kopi Hub brand. The centerpiece of this area is a large infinity-shaped chandelier, symbolizing the fluidity and elegance of silk weaving.Save this picture!Save this picture!Zone 2: Seating Area and Open Void - This area features an open void with a vertical garden and a koi fish pond in the center, creating a refreshing ambiance. Customers seated here can enjoy views of the gardens on both sides. Additionally, a playful detail of "Si Sawat Cats" (a local symbol of Korat) is incorporated into a large painted mural, adding a touch of local identity.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Zone 3: Semi-Outdoor Seating and Patongko booth - Designed to immerse customers in the outdoor garden atmosphere, this zone features seating arranged along the curved lines of the building and garden. Partitions, inspired by the Mud-Mai pattern, serve both as decorative elements and functional dividers, including for the VIP room. This Kopi Hub branch is envisioned as a unique breakfast destination that offers customers a refreshing and culturally enriched dining experience.Save this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessProject locationAddress:Nai Mueang, ThailandLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this officeDoes studioOfficePublished on January 13, 2025Cite: "Kopihub Restaurant / Does studio" 12 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1025565/kopihub-restaurant-does-studio&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Without the repercussions of real life, being placed into the shoes of a bad guy in a video game can be a great way to go wild and let off some steam. Playing the virtuous hero who saves the day game after game can get stale pretty quickly, after all, so it's always interesting when a game lets the player take control of the villain instead.