Refinance rates were mixed, but one key rate climbed higher.

A few important mortgage rates ticked up. Here's what experts say is next for the housing market this year.

If your iPhone or iPad is running short of free storage, you may think twice about enablingApple Intelligence. When the first features were made available in iOS 18.1, Apple said the Apple Intelligence features needed at least 4GB of space. Now with iOS 18.2, that requirement has jumped to 7GB. What's going on?Since much of the processing for features such as text summaries, Image Playground,Image Wand, writing tools andGenmojihappen on-device, iOS needs to store AI libraries locally and uses some storage for caches and other temporary files. That makes things tighter if you were already running up against the edges of your device's storage.See also:How to reclaim iCloud storage.It could also be that you're simply not interested, which would put you into the majority. A newsurvey by SellCellindicates that 73% of Apple users think AI adds little to no value to the phone experience, while CNET found that25% of smartphone owners are not interested at all.If Apple Intelligence holds no appeal for you, or if you'd rather wait until the tech matures a bit more, it's easy to turn it off entirely or selectively disable some of the features.I'm not an AI crank -- I appreciate features such as notification summaries and the Clean Up tool in the Photos app. And yet, Apple Intelligence is also a work in progress, an evolving set of features that Apple is heavily hyping while gradually developing. I wouldn't hold it against you if you wanted to not be distracted or feel like you're doing Apple's testing for them (that's what the developer and public betas are for).Remember that Apple Intelligence works only on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro or M-series Macs and iPads (plus the newest iPad mini). And if you've alreadyupdated to iOS 18.2, you need toadd yourself to the queuefor access to the new features.Here's what you need to know about disabling it. Watch this: Does Apple Think We're Stupid? Apple Intelligence Ads Say Yes 06:15 How to turn off Apple Intelligence entirely (iPhone, iPad and Mac)OpenSettings(iPhone or iPad) orSystem Settings(Mac) and chooseApple Intelligence & Siri. Then turn off theApple Intelligenceoption. Confirm your choice in the dialog that appears by tappingTurn Off Apple Intelligence. Turn off Apple Intelligence entirely with one switch. Screenshot by Jeff Carlson/CNETHere's what you lose:Writing toolsNotification summariesVisual Intelligence (on iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro)Genmoji (on iPhone and iPad; it's not available yet on Mac)Image Playground -- the app remains, but you can't create new imagesChatGPT support for SiriImage Wand in the Notes app(Curiously, the Clean Up tool in Photos sticks around even when Apple Intelligence is turned off, perhaps because the first time you use it the app downloads resources for it.)How to turn off individual Apple Intelligence featuresMaybe you're finding some Apple Intelligence features helpful while others are annoying (or just highlyamusing). You can turn off specific features in the settings for apps to which they apply.For example, to disable text summaries in Messages notifications, go toSettings > Apps > Messagesand switch off theSummarize Messagesoption. Turn off Messages summaries while still using other Apple Intelligence features. Screenshot by Jeff Carlson/CNETSome features are not as app-specific. Writing Tools, which use Apple Intelligence to proof or rewrite text, appear as an option when you select text, regardless of the app. To turn that off, you need to disable Apple Intelligence system-wide.Also note that nearly every app includes an Apple Intelligence & Siri option in Settings, with a Learn from this Appoption (turned on by default). That applies just to whether Apple Intelligence and Siri can monitor how you use it to make suggestions; it doesn't affect any particular Apple Intelligence features.How to view the amount of storage Apple Intelligence is usingIf you're concerned about the storage requirements of Apple Intelligence, you can find out how much the system is using by going toSettings > General > iPhone (or iPad) Storage > iOS (or iPadOS). See how much space Apple Intelligence is using in Settings. Screenshot by Jeff Carlson/CNETUnfortunately, from my testing it does not appear that turning off Apple Intelligence reclaims that storage space: After doing so and restarting my devices, theApple Intelligenceitem and amount are unchanged.For more on iOS 18.2, seehow the Mail app in iOS 18.2 sorts messages into categories andif you haven't upgraded already, make a good backup first. 11 Essential Accessories Your iPhone Wants for the Holidays See all photos

Network test registration for Elden Ring co-op spin-off Nightreign starts in just a few hours timeChop to it.Image credit: FromSoft News by Victoria Kennedy News Reporter Published on Jan. 10, 2025 You will very soon be able to register to take part in the network test for Elden Ring's upcoming co-op spin-off, Nightreign.Those who are keen to participate in the test can register from this afternoon at 2pm UK time.The test itself is scheduled for 14th to 17th February, and will run in three hour blocks. On the 14th (so, Valentine's Day, and really, what is more romantic than Elden Ring?), the session will run between 11am and 2pm UK time. On the 15th, there will be two sessions. The first will run from 3am until 6am, the second will run between 7pm and 10pm. The session on the 16th will run between 11am and 2pm once again, and the final session on 17th will run from 3am until 6am.ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN REVEAL GAMEPLAY TRAILER. Watch on YouTubeNightreign's test will be available across PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, although the developer notes the full game will also be available to those on PC via Steam, as well as Xbox One and PS4 consoles."The network test is a preliminary verification test in which the selected testers play a portion of the game prior to the full game launch," reads the information page for Nightreign's network test (where I also presume a link for registration will also be made available). "Various technical verifications of online systems will be examined by conducting large-scale network load tests." Image credit: FromSoftPlayers who take to Elden Ring: Nightreign on its release will have to "outlast a three day-and-night cycle, making split decisions about combat and exploration across changing maps to become strong enough to take down terrifying bosses at the end of each day".Towards the end of last year, FromSoftware boss Hidetaki Miyazaki stated Elden Ring 2 isn't in development. However, this standalone spin-off is still expanding upon the franchise, and not too long after Elden Ring received its widely praised expansion Shadow of the Erdtree.

Square Enix shares new policy to protect employees from fan harassmentAnd will "take action as necessary".Image credit: Square Enix News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on Jan. 10, 2025 Square Enix has shared a new Group Customer Harassment Policy to protect its workers from toxic fan behaviour.The policy states there are instances where "certain customers take actions... that constitute 'customer harassment'" of employees, be that through violence, defamation, intimidation or other means."Such actions do not only prevent our employees and partners from engaging in their work with a sense of security but also causes disruptions to other customers," the policy reads. "Square Enix will not tolerate harassment and will take action as necessary."Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Destined for RebirthWatch on YouTubeAlongside a definition of what it deems to be harassment, the company said it reserves the right to cease providing support services or products, and to protect employees through legal action or criminal proceedings.The policy does not specify examples of this harassment, though it's clearly been put in place as the result of such behaviour.In particular, the Final Fantasy 7 fandom is notorious for divided opinions on Aerith and Tifa and their relationships with Cloud."I say this with love: FF7 shippers need to touch noses," said Aerith voice actor Briana White back in December. "We're all the same family in loving these characters so relax."To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Last January, Cloud voice actor Cody Christian said shippers "ruin great story development" with overt sexualisation.Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida has addressed abuse against the game's developers on multiple occasions.Back in January 2022, Yoshida addressed abuse aimed at developers. "I mean, I can take it, even though it doesn't make it less bad, but staff members will feel really down after getting those words when they gave their absolute best into trying to create something where everyone can enjoy, and this may end up making them no longer create things that are fun from there on," he said.Then last year, following the release of latest expansion Dawntrail, he commented on transphobic abuse sent to Wuk Lamat voice actor Sena Bryer."I'm afraid one of our staff members received very negative comments and it almost felt like a personal attack, which breaks my heart, because she worked really hard and these criticisms were not constructive at all," said Yoshida. "It doesn't do anything except make the staff lose motivation, and in the end that could potentially damage the quality of our game and take away from what makes this game so interesting. So if there are any sort of criticisms, bring it to me, because I'm the one approving this material. I wanted to reiterate that, please refrain from personal attacks against our staff."While Square Enix should be commended for protecting its staff, it's sad that fan behaviour makes such a policy necessary.

AMD's new AI-based FSR 4 upscaler impresses in hands-on testing at CES 2025 on RX 9070-series hardwareThis "research project" fixes long-standing FSR issues.Image credit: Digital Foundry Feature by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry Published on Jan. 10, 2025 Despite ostensibly launching its new RDNA 4 graphics cards and FSR 4 AI-based upscaler at CES 2025, there was much more information released to journalists in pre-briefings than in AMD's 45-minute CES 2025 keynote. Thankfully, Digital Foundry's Alex and Oliver got to see both in an AMD suite on the show floor, with a machine learning upscaling "research project" on an RX 9070-series GPU that is almost certainly FSR 4. The game of choice was Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, one of our go-to titles for comparing upscaling technologies thanks to its support for nearly all of them. That gave us a great opportunity to see how FSR 4 is shaping up ahead of its launch with the new GPUs later this quarter - and we've got to say, we're impressed. The advantage here is that FSR is moving from being an hand-tuned analytic upscaler to one that takes advantage of ML or machine learning (one of the many technologies under the 'AI' umbrella). We saw a similar evolution from Nvidia between the original DLSS upscaler and DLSS 2, and that brought about a huge improvement to image quality - so is it the same for FSR 4? In a word, yes. In side-by-side comparisons between two PCs running Rift Apart in 4K performance mode, one with FSR 3.1 and one with FSR 4, the new ML-based technique looks to solve many of the previous versions' biggest issues. Want to see FSR 4 in action? Even limited to handheld footage, the differences here are noticeable - and that's exciting. Watch on YouTubeMost notably, image quality seemed noticeably improved on the "research project" PC across a variety of scenes. The fine texture of the red carpet in the game's opening level is a hard one to reproduce, for example, with FSR 3.1 compressing a fair amount of detail and producing a moir pattern, but FSR 4 managing to better preserve the individual fibres. Similarly, the use of SSAO produces some artefacting on FSR 3.1, with occlusion appearing and disappearing from frame to frame, whereas this appeared to have been fixed on FSR 4. The image also looked fairly sharp, without the soft look that characterises some upscalers running in a similarly challenging 1080p to 4K mode. The fast-moving confetti particles that accompany Ratchet and Clank's first-level parade is another traditional trouble spot, but again FSR 4 exhibited little of the ghosting or trails we've seen in various versions of FSR. An even more obvious improvement comes with the movement of the bystanders in the stadium seating, with their claps and cheers causing disocclusion fizzle in FSR 3.1 - that looks to be fixed in FSR 4. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Of course, we recently discussed the Amethyst partnership between AMD and Sony, which describes a joint effort by the companies to develop new AI-based technologies, so could it be possible for this upscaler to be a derivative of what Sony produced for the PlayStation 5 Pro? In short, it doesn't seem likely - we didn't see any of the fundamental stability issues (eg fizzle in fine detail) evident across all implementations of PSSR, and Ratchet and Clank on PS5 Pro looks noticeably different to the game on the "research project" PC. While what we saw at CES was impressive, it's important to underscore that this is not the finished article. We haven't been able to grab direct capture, we had no access to settings, and it's clear that this is an in-development version of FSR 4 being run on unreleased hardware with pre-launch drivers. Regardless though, what we did see was impressive, and we look forward to taking a closer look at the new tech when AMD is ready to show it off properly.

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 hereDead By Daylight has released its first collaboration of 2025 with the world renowned Junji Ito. The crossover is fantastic as it includes a bunch of great skins based on many of the works belonging to the famous manga artist. However, while the skins are great, it has also resulted in DBD being accused of a super f***ed up scam, with players critical of the response from BeHaviour Interactive. While the Junji Ito collection is the first crossover of the new year, there are many more on the way. Fresh leaks have revealed an imminent Resident Evil-themed 2v8 mode, meanwhile, leaks also suggest the killer set to arrive in March is from Tokyo Ghoul. We are also confirmed to be getting a collaboration with Five Nights At Freddys in spring, and leaks have possibly unearthed the FNAF killer, survivor, and new map details. It should be another great year of crossovers for Dead By Daylight, but right now we are dealing with some fallout from the Junji Ito collection. In large, the skin collection has been praised to the heavens, but some controversy has arisen along with accusations of BeHaviour scamming players. Dead By Daylight accused of scamming players with Junji Ito skin collectionFollowing the release of the Dead By Daylight Junji Ito skin collection on January 7th, Reddit user, Yasha_Who, has accused BeHaviour Interactive of scamming them. The OP states that, on the Epic Games store, they purchased 6,000 gold cells, and used these cells to buy the Artist and Kate Denson Junji Ito skins. However, after purchasing the Kate Denson attire, they received a purchase error, and was notified to contact support if the game had taken any currency. After closing the error message, the OP claims they lost the skins despite spending the Auric Cells. They contacted BeHaviour about the situation, and informed the support team they either want the skins back or a refund of the gold cells. Upon contacting BeHaviour, the OP was informed that the Junji Ito skins are unavailable in their region, and BeHaviour cannot make a refund as the skins are technically in their inventory, although they cant be used because they are region-locked. Lastly, the OP claims BeHaviour has scammed them out of money as there was no way of knowing the skins were region-locked as there was no notification and the skins were just available to buy with zero disclaimers. There is concern that the OP is not the only one who will suffer from this scam, and it has put the OP off buying any more content from the games store. The replies overwhelmingly side with the victim. One of the top replies says, They allow you to buy content not available in your region and then wont refund you for purchasing that blocked content? Thats super f***ed up. Other comments blasted BeHaviours response, one with comment saying The way they [BeHaviour] handled those messages is so rude and condescending. Since publishing the Reddit post originally, Yasha_Who is waiting to see if the regional restrictions for the skins will be fixed in the next patch. Hopefully the issue is resolved whether through breaking down the regional blockage or simply giving back the Auric Cells. Check out the embedded Reddit post below to see all of the screenshots evidencing the OPs story: For more Dead By Daylight content, check out ourranking of the top 10 DLC expansions to buyalong with a ranking of thebest killer perksandbest survivor perks.Dead by DaylightPlatform(s):Google Stadia, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series XGenre(s):Action, Survival Horror7VideoGamerRelated TopicsDead by Daylight Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

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 hereWhile Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred brought a brand-new class in the form of the extremely popular Spiritborn, players are already hungry for more. Despite a mediocre story and some annoying multiplayer-only endgame, VoH was a decent step forward for Blizzards ARPG.With no release date in sight, theres not much known about what the second major expansion for Diablo 4 could be, but there may be hints in Forgotten artwork for the game. After all, every expansion should bring a new class as well, but what will it be?Diablo 4 Holy-themed classAs explained by Diablo YouTuber Osterberg, early keyart for Diablo 4 released by Blizzard showed off a new class that has never been seen. The artwork in question was revealed at Blizzcon 2023 and shows a Holy Knight with a javelin and shield fighting alongside other classes that are actually in the game.With Blizzard previously revealing that they spent two years developing Spiritborn before its release, its clear that the games next class has also been in active development for a while. In fact, it may even be in this artwork.Could this be D4s next big class?However, there is a possibility that the proposed Holy-themed class was an idea left on the cutting room floor for Diablo 4. After all, Spiritborn was not shown in early art and released alongside Vessel of Hatred. Furthermore, with the sheer demand for D4 to finally add the classic Paladin class, this Holy-themed class could be scrapped.Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see a brand-new class for Blizzards RPG. While the old classics are always fun, theres always a desire for something unique. After all, with the massive success of Path of Exile 2, Diablo does need something to fight back with.Whatever the case, Diablo 4 is still in a strong place, despite some mixed messaging from above. With executives fighting fans of the series classic gameplay as modern gamers tastes change, D4 is still a fun game, although it does have issues.Diablo 4Platform(s):PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action, Action RPG, RPGSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

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 hereDestiny 2 has a lot of plans for 2025. Right now Revenant Act 3 has just begun, and soon Bungie will introduce a new dungeon. There will also be the typical, annual returning events, including Halloweens Festival of the Lost later this year. While Halloween is still very, very far away, Bungie is getting ready to work on its cosmetics, and players must now vote quickly to get some amazing Destiny 2 skins based on horror icons. Fans can check out the 2025 roadmap to see all of the plans Bungie has revealed so far. Revenant Act 3 has been disappointing as some feel Bungie lied about the Slayers Fang exotic shotgun, and the finale has also failed to lift the player count from its continuing plummet. However, there is more to anticipate this January as Bungie are soon introducing several big buffs and nerfs, and then we have the developers annual Game2Give charity fundraiser. Were all hopeful the next 12-months will be a good year for Bungie, and, while fans are very pessimistic, the good news is that this years Festival of Lost skins at least look amazing. They are based on icons of the horror genre, and players can now vote between slashers and spectres. Destiny 2 players can now vote for Festival of Lost 2025 skins Per Bungies TWID blog post on January 9th, Destiny 2 players can now vote for skins they want for the Festival of Lost 2025. The skins that win will be available during Festival of Lost later this year. The extra good news is that the skins that lose will be still released, but at an unspecified point-in-time before FoL 2026. Its a difficult choice as fans must vote between either slashers or spectres for each class. The slashers include the iconic Ghostface and Jason from Friday the 13th, meanwhile, the spooky spectres include the Babadook and Slenderman. Voting is only open for a week, so make sure to cast your vote before January 16th. To vote, proceed to Bungies survey, and choose between spectre and slasher for each of the individual classes: Warlock, Titan, and Hunter. Titan is the most difficult choice as its between the Babadook and Jason, but Ghostface seems a safe bet for Hunter, with Slenderman also a safe bet for Warlock. However, all of the skins look fantastic, and its up to you to decide which you want. Image credit: BungieImage credit: BungieFor more Destiny 2, check out our guide to thebest Legendary weaponsalong with thebest weapons for PvP.Destiny 2Platform(s):Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Web, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action, Adventure, First Person, Massively Multiplayer, Shooter8VideoGamerRelated TopicsDestiny 2 Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

Every week, hundreds of artists share their work on the Blender Artists forum. I'm putting some of the best work in the spotlight in a weekly post here on BlenderNation.Source