We may earn a commission from links on this page.First, a confession: When my parents sent me off to brush my teeth at 7 or 8 years old, I would sometimes run the water in the sink, rub a dab of toothpaste on my front teeth, and stall long enough to make it seem like I had brushed. Only in a childs mind did it make sense to cheat at brushing with an elaborate ruse that took just as time and energy as actually brushing.My sneaky past primed me to see the signs of fake brushing in my own kids, but ramping up reminders and demonstrations after every dentist visit only had a short-term impact. I found a potential solution through an Instagram ad for Truthbrush. Truthbrush is a tracker you attach to your childs toothbrush to measure when, how long, and how thoroughly your child is brushing. Truthbrush Classic Tracker Hub Bundle $39.98 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $39.98 at Amazon Why you need to keep an eye on brushing routinesIn 2017, a UK study found that nearly half of kids lie about brushing their teeth. So it wasnt just me?Dentists recommend you assist with or monitor brushing until a child is at least 7 years old. After that, you might consider it a hands-off personal hygiene skill, but you can never really turn your back on the kids for too long, right?We know how important dental health ismy kids have never missed a dentist appointment or even had a cavity. But I also dont want them to get the idea that their lax brushing habits will never have negative consequences. Before Truthbrush, my extra monitoring and nagging didnt really make brushing more appealing. As soon as I thought they were building good habits, I relaxed my control, and they returned to their slack ways.What Truthbrush doesThe Truthbrush device loops securely around a manual or electric toothbrush handle. Like a Fitbit for oral care, it tracks brushing events, duration, and coverage. It maps your brushing strokes, highlights what youre doing right, and shows areas where you can improve.The Truthbrush app makes it easy to see your brushing stats, including frequency, duration, and coverage. You can set reminders, create goals, and earn rewards. So I wouldnt have to worry about my phone picking up the tracker signal, I got the optional Hub ($14.99), which connects to our home wifi.Using Truthbrush in practiceAt bedtime, I hug and kiss my kids, look directly into their little eyes, and say, Go upstairs, brush your teeth, and go to sleep. On a good night, my phone buzzes to let me know each kid brushed, for how long, and how well. We all rest peacefully with clean teeth. On a normal night, they each come down three to five more times to show me LEGOs or report an anxious thought, and I send them back with reassurances and a reminder that they still need to brush. On a bad night, I send them upstairs to bed, never get a brushing notification, and fall asleep without following up. Its not a perfect system.Now that we have been using Truthbrush for almost three months, though, the biggest change has been in my awareness. The kids are still not always brushing twice daily, but now I have data instead of uncertainty and suspicion.Using the data to motivate and improveI recently went over the Truthbrush data with my oldest, discussing how many times she skipped brushing, that her average brushing time was lower than ideal, etc.Does seeing this motivate you to try to improve your stats? I asked her.No, she said.Would going to the dentist and getting cavities motivate you? I asked. Scare tactics!No, she said with an eye roll.How can we use this information to motivate better brushing habits? I asked.Let me see [younger sisters] stats.Bingo! They may not be motivated by oral wellness or by impressing me, but they are motivated by competing with each other. I will definitely use this to my advantage.Truthbrush Pros and ConsProsThe data is priceless when you are not the type of parent to watch and analyze every brushing session.It's pretty easy to set up and create profiles in the app.You can tap into siblings gamer competitiveness to motivate them toward better brushing.ConsThe cost: It starts at $25 for one Classic tracker. You can spend more for a Pro tracker or for skins to make your tracker cuter. The classics battery is meant to last one year, so you will be repurchasing if your kids brushing isnt totally transformed by then. Theres no subscription fee for the app, though.I still have to follow through with reminders. The Truthbrush device is not their actual mom.I suspect that waggling the brush is recorded as a brushing event sometimes, based on alerts Ive gotten during cleaning or travel. But dont tell my kids that, or they will be running water and waving their brushes around to trick me.Based on my experience, I recommend Truthbrush for parents of kids who are past the age of needing you to brush for them, but still need a little surveillance to keep them focused and honest.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is stepping down from the company after eight years on the job, according to reporting by Bloomberg. This follows last years disastrous app launch, in which a redesign was missing core features and was broken in nearly every major way.The company has tasked Tom Conrad to steer the ship as interim CEO. Conrad is a current member of the Sonos board, but was a co-founder of Pandora, VP at Snap and product chief at, wait for it, the short-lived video streaming platform Quibi. He also reportedly has a Sonos tattoo. The board has hired a firm to find a new long-term leader.I think well all agree that this year weve let far too many people down, Conrad wrote employees in a letter. Getting back to basics is necessary, but clearly not enough to unlock the future we all envision for Sonos. He also suggested that he wants the company to expand well beyond home speakers and related gear.As for Spence, hell be just fine. His payout package includes $7,500 per month until June, a cash severance of $1.9 million and his unvested shares in Sonos will vest. He was with Sonos for more than a decade.The decision to swap leadership comes after months of turmoil at the company. It rolled out a mobile app back in May that was absolutely rife with bugs and missing key features like alarms and sleep timers. Some customers even complained that entire speaker systems would no longer work after updating to the new app. It was a whole thing.Sonos tried to win back customer trust by extending the manufacturer warranty for home speaker products and creating an advisory board that would provide the company with "feedback and insights from a customer perspective to help shape and improve our software and products before they are launched.That didnt ease the financial burden faced by the company. The stock price has fallen by around 13 percent since the app launched. Sonos laid off over 100 people in August as it tried to fix the software and revenue fell 16 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended on September 28. Analysts project an additional 15 percent decline throughout the holiday period.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-falls-on-his-sword-after-horrible-app-launch-160704330.html?src=rss

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Step behind the curtain of visual storytelling with MotionPixel Studios latest VFX breakdown! Using Unreal Engine 5.4 and 5.5, this cinematic showcase combines cutting-edge technology with artistry to craft breathtaking visuals. Shot on RED Camera and ARRI Alexa Mini, the team skillfully integrated green screen footage, leveraging the power of Unreal Engine for realistic environments and dynamic lighting.In the post-production of After Effects, every frame is enhanced for the seamless blending of live action with virtual elements. This showreel showcases how VFX work can turn raw footage into amazing cinematic experiences, so sit tight and watch for the moments when magic comes to life through the before-and-after!The post Unreal Engine 5 VFX Cinematic by MotionPixel Studio appeared first on Vfxexpress.

Firefighters battling the deadly wildfires that raced through the Los Angeles area in January 2025 have been hampered by a limited supply of freshwater. So when the winds are calm enough, skilled pilots flying planes aptly named Super Scoopers are skimming off 1,500 gallons of seawater at a time and dumping it with high precision on the fires.Using seawater to fight fires can sound like a simple solutionthe Pacific Ocean has a seemingly endless supply of water. In emergencies like Southern California is facing, its often the only quick solution, though the operation can be risky amid ocean swells.But seawater also has downsides.Saltwater corrodes firefighting equipment and may harm ecosystems, especially those like the chaparral shrublands around Los Angeles that arent normally exposed to seawater. Gardeners know that small amounts of saltadded, say, as fertilizerdoes not harm plants, but excessive salts can stress and kill plants.While the consequences of adding seawater to ecosystems are not yet well understood, we can gain insights on what to expect by considering the effects of sea-level rise.A seawater experiment in a coastal forestAs an ecosystem ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, I lead a novel experiment called TEMPEST that was designed to understand how and why historically salt-free coastal forests react to their first exposures to salty water.Sea-level rise has increased by an average of about 8 inches globally over the past century, and that water has pushed salty water into U.S. forests, farms and neighborhoods that had previously known only freshwater. As the rate of sea-level rise accelerates, storms push seawater ever farther onto the dry land, eventually killing trees and creating ghost forests, a result of climate change that is widespread in the U.S. and globally.In our TEMPEST test plots, we pump salty water from the nearby Chesapeake Bay into tanks, then sprinkle it on the forest soil surface fast enough to saturate the soil for about 10 hours at a time. This simulates a surge of salty water during a big storm.Our coastal forest showed little effect from the first 10-hour exposure to salty water in June 2022 and grew normally for the rest of the year. We increased the exposure to 20 hours in June 2023, and the forest still appeared mostly unfazed, although the tulip poplar trees were drawing water from the soil more slowly, which may be an early warning signal.Things changed after a 30-hour exposure in June 2024. The leaves of tulip poplar in the forests started to brown in mid-August, several weeks earlier than normal. By mid-September the forest canopy was bare, as if winter had set in. These changes did not occur in a nearby plot that we treated the same way, but with freshwater rather than seawater.The initial resilience of our forest can be explained in part by the relatively low amount of salt in the water in this estuary, where water from freshwater rivers and a salty ocean mix. Rain that fell after the experiments in 2022 and 2023 washed salts out of the soil.But a major drought followed the 2024 experiment, so salts lingered in the soil then. The trees longer exposure to salty soils after our 2024 experiment may have exceeded their ability to tolerate these conditions.Seawater being dumped on the Southern California fires is full-strength, salty ocean water. And conditions there have been very dry, particularly compared with our East Coast forest plot.Changes evident in the groundOur research group is still trying to understand all the factors that limit the forests tolerance to salty water, and how our results apply to other ecosystems such as those in the Los Angeles area.Tree leaves turning from green to brown well before fall was a surprise, but there were other surprises hidden in the soil below our feet.Rainwater percolating through the soil is normally clear, but about a month after the first and only 10-hour exposure to salty water in 2022, the soil water turned brown and stayed that way for two years. The brown color comes from carbon-based compounds leached from dead plant material. Its a process similar to making tea.Our lab experiments suggest that salt was causing clay and other particles to disperse and move about in the soil. Such changes in soil chemistry and structure can persist for many years.Sea-level rise is increasing coastal exposureWhile ocean water can help fight fires, there are reasons fire officials prefer freshwater sourcesprovided freshwater is available.U.S. coastlines, meanwhile, are facing more extensive and frequent saltwater exposure as rising global temperatures accelerate sea-level rise that drowns forests, fields, and farms, with unknown risks for coastal landscapes.Patrick Megonigal is an associate director of research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center at the Smithsonian Institution.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

German studio Batek Architekten has designed the T7.2 dental clinic in Berlinusing saturated colours and tactile materials to give the space an "inviting, artful atmosphere".The dental prophylaxis practice in west Berlin is an extension of the T7 clinic that Batek Architekten designed in 2017.The T7.2 dental clinic has a green acrylic box at its centre"As with the first dental practice, the concept aligns with the client's brief to craft an interior design that evokes the atmosphere of an art gallery," Batek Architekten founder Patrick Batek told Dezeen."The bright, minimalist space functions as both a practical setting for daily medical operations and a showcase for the client's carefully chosen pieces, adding a distinctive and personal touch to the practice."The space was designed with a gallery-like feelAt the centre of the 200-square-metre interior, a green acrylic glass cube that reaches from the floor to the ceiling holds spaces for the clinic's personnel.Batek chose to add the colourful cube to the otherwise mostly white space to create a striking contrast that also nods to the design of the original clinic.Walnut wood was used for the doors"Strategically positioned, it becomes the centrepiece of the practice, with the functional rooms thoughtfully arranged around it," he said."With its material choice and comparatively darker, bold colour, it adds an accent similar to the yellow reception area from the previous design while enclosing spaces designated exclusively for staff use."Treatment room are arranged around the green box"Green was selected as a counterpart to the distinctive yellow from the first practice, aligning with the corporate design," he added. "This choice allows both colours to coexist harmoniously while maintaining a clear distinction between them."Surrounding the green box are waiting areas and treatment rooms, which have doors made from walnut wood and "cathedral glass".Read: Batek Architekten renovates historic cinema in pastel and earth-coloured huesThese materials were chosen to contrast against the minimalist materials used in the rest of the clinic."The floors, walls and ceilings are designed in bright, clean white to meet the practical demands of the space," Batek said. "It is important that the surfaces comply with hygiene regulations and are easy to clean."Batek Architekten chose a desk made of foamed aluminium for the T7.2 receptionThe reception area also features touches that were added to underline the gallery feel, including a pale sage-green partition wall and a desk with a decorative grey pattern."The partition wall, crafted from glass-fibre-reinforced plastic, and the reception counter, made of foamed aluminium, stand out as artistic elements within the interior due to their unusual materiality, thus aligning with the overall design," Batek said.A pink bathroom adds another touch of colourAlso adding a touch of colour to the space are the bathroom and sanitary spaces, which were "completely immersed" in a pastel-pink hue.Furniture in organic materials including leather and wood adds a warm feel and matches the walnut wood door frames of the function rooms.The T7.2 dental clinic has an "inviting" atmosphereBatek's aim was for visitors to feel like they are going to an art gallery, rather than their dentist."Visitors should feel as if they are in a gallery, which is just as homely as a private apartment," he concluded. "The carefully chosen furniture, artwork, and fixtures should reinforce this inviting, artful atmosphere."Other dental clinics recently featured on Dezeen include a Montreal clinic with a residential vibe and an Amsterdam clinic with colour-block interiors.The photography is by Daniel Schfer.The post Batek Architekten arranges gallery-like dental clinic around acrylic glass cube appeared first on Dezeen.

The Tesla Cybertruck has always been a magnet for both innovation and intrigue, but the latest third-party modification takes its futuristic aura to another levela $10,000 solar panel wrap that adds more range. While Tesla itself teased the idea of a solar-powered Cybertruck, this bold move by California-based Sunflare Solar gives the concept a tangible form. But the question lingers: is this ambitious wrap the leap forward it claims to be, or just an expensive novelty?To understand the appeal, lets revisit Teslas early flirtations with solar integration. Back in 2017, Elon Musk floated the idea of equipping the Model 3 with solar cells, though the technology then was deemed impractical. Fast forward a few years, and solar cell efficiency has improved significantly, with Tesla channeling its expertise into products like solar roof tiles. Musk reignited excitement in 2019 by announcing the Cybertruck would feature a solar roof capable of adding up to 15 miles of range daily. However, this feature never materialized (like a lot of Musks promises), leaving enthusiasts to wonder what could have been. Enter Sunflare Solar, which decided to fill that gap with its own cutting-edge solution.Designer: Sunflare SolarShowcased at CES 2025, Sunflare Solars flexible panels adhere seamlessly to the Cybertrucks flat, angular surfaces, generating up to 1.5 kW of power. This translates into roughly the same 15-mile daily range Musk once envisioned for Teslas solar roof. The package includes a 5 kW battery inverter to channel that energy back into the truck, theoretically making off-grid adventures a bit more self-sustaining. On paper, the concept is undeniably coola rugged electric vehicle gaining autonomy with renewable energy. But lets peel back the shiny layer and assess the trade-offs.One of the Cybertrucks hallmark features is its stainless steel exterior, celebrated for its durability and carefree resistance to scratches. The solar wrap, while innovative, swaps this resilience for fragility. Solar panels, even flexible ones, arent impervious to the rigors of outdoor wear and tear. Off-road trips, harsh weather, and everyday debris could all pose risks to these expensive cells, raising doubts about their long-term viability. Practicality becomes a sticking point when you consider the original ethos of the Cybertruck: an indestructible utility vehicle.Moreover, the inherent limitations of car-mounted solar panels cant be ignored. Despite advancements, the energy yield from panels covering a vehicles surface area remains modest. The 15 miles of extra range might be enticing for niche scenarios, like remote camping or commuting in sunny regions, but its far from game-changing. For most drivers, the added utility may not justify the hefty price tagespecially when home-based solar systems provide a far more efficient alternative.And yet, theres an undeniable allure to the concept. The visual impact of a Cybertruck cloaked in solar cells is enough to turn heads, and the idea of harnessing the suns power on the go taps into our collective fascination with sustainability and innovation. After all, its a lot better than a gold Cybertruck or one with Trumps face painted on it.This leaves us in a familiar place with Tesla and its ecosystem: balancing groundbreaking ideas with real-world usability. The Cybertruck itself is no stranger to polarizing opinions, and this solar wrap continues that tradition. Whether its a fleeting trend or a glimpse into the future, one thing is clearit keeps the Cybertruck in the spotlight, sparking discussions that blend tech, design, and sustainability.For now, the $10,000 question looms: is this the dawn of a new era for solar-powered vehicles, or just a shiny experiment destined for a niche audience? Time, and miles, will tell.The post Tesla Cybertruck with a Solar Panel Wrap Gives it an Extra 15 Miles of Range first appeared on Yanko Design.

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Huione Guarantee, a gray market researchers believe is central to the online scam ecosystem, now includes a messaging app, stablecoin, and crypto exchangewhile facilitating $24 billion in transactions.

Nintendo has made a remarkable turnaround with the Switch where third-party support is concerned, and reports continue to insist that the companys upcoming next-gen console is going to continue down that path. Allegedly, thats set to encompass not only a large number of Ubisoft titles, but also a major upcoming Konami release that many have been looking forward to for some time.Known leaker NateTheHate recently claimed in his podcast that Konami is working on a Nintendo Switch 2 version of its upcoming remake,Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.The leaker stated that he was unsure of whether the game would see a day and date on the Switch 2 alongside other platforms- as youd imagine, that would depend entirely on when the game releases.And whenwillit release? Konami hasnt said much on that front, but recently seemed to suggest that the game officially in development for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC will release sometime this year.As for the Nintendo Switch 2, its claimed that the console will be officially unveiled at long last later this week, so stay tuned for more details.