The Cecil's official gameplay trailer gives gamers a look at some of the puzzle-solving and first-person action mechanics. The Cecil is being developed by Genie Interactive Games and can be wishlisted now on Steam.

# Introducing **Star2D Evolution** **Star2D Evolution** is an advanced game engine meticulously crafted for Android devices, leveraging the robust [libGDX framework](https://libgdx.com/). It empowers developers to create immersive 2D games with unparalleled ease and efficiency. ## Key Features - **Visual Scripting System**: Design intricate game logic without writing a single line of code, making game development accessible to everyone. - **Multi-Language

Strava and Chipotle have launched a marketing partnership that involves three different ways to potentially win free food. Two of those ways involve getting outside and running, walking, or using your wheelchair (sorry, no bikes) on Chipotle-branded Strava segments. Heres whats involved, and which parts of the challenge give you the best chance at free food.The easiest way to get a free meal: Sign up for textsThe first thing you should do, if you want to make the most of this promotion, is to sign up for the No Quitters Day text listsorry, motivational text message community. Go here to sign up, anytime through Jan. 9.On Jan. 10, youll get a text with instructions to claim one of 50,000 free lifestyle bowls. A lifestyle bowl is, basically, a burrito bowl. They come in varieties like the Plant Powered Bowl (with sofritas) and the High Protein Bowl (with double chicken).(Why Jan. 10? Strava has previously identified the second Friday in January as the day people tend to give up on their resolutions; thus, Quitters Day.)The way to get the most free food: Live in one of these 25 cities, and run a lotStrava is setting up segments for the competition in 25 specific cities. A segment is a stretch of road that has an associated leaderboard in the Strava app. If you track an activity (with your phone or a smartwatch), and that activity includes a named segment, youll get credit for running that segment. If you run in a popular park, youve probably run tons of segments without realizing it.Anyway, to compete in this challenge, youll want to find one of the official challenge segments, and run it as often as you can. Whoever runs that segment the most times in January of this year will earn Local Legend status (this is also a standard feature of segments in Strava), and at the end of the month, the Local Legend will be awarded Chipotle Rewards credits that are good for one entre per week for a year. An entre can be a burrito, bowl, order of three tacos, quesadilla, or salad. It does not include kids meals, 3-point meals, or single tacos.The full rules for the city challenge are here, including links to the segments so you can see where they are. The segments tend to be short, around 0.1 or 0.2 miles. They are in 25 different cities, 23 of them in the U.S. and one each in Paris and London. In the U.S., Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and Washington, D.C. are among the lucky cities.One more way to win: Live in (or visit) the city that gets the most milesFor this last way to win food, you dont have to do anythingbut the city that gets the most miles on its Chipotle segment will see its local Chipotle locations run a buy-one-get-one-free offer at some unspecified future date. You dont need to be a runner or have a Strava account; just keep an eye out for the promotion.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.Dont panic, you've haven't woken up back in 2020, at the heights of pandemic-era bread-making craze. Believe it or not, you can bake sourdough bread at home without existential dread hanging over your head. Quite the opposite, in fact: Once you get the hang of it, sourdough bread baking is fun and rewarding, and regardless of what the homemade-bread-haters say, it actually does taste better than the store-bought stuff. Maybe you notice I didn't say it is easy.Unfortunately, there are a lot of variables for something made of so few ingredients, especially when youre starting completely from scratch. This guide can help you troubleshoot what is potentially the hardest part of sourdough bread making: the natural yeast starter. Whether youre taking your first crack at it, or youve already made a few too-dense loaves and you cant understand what went wrong, let me help you.The biggest challenge making sourdough breadThere is an even more extensive world beyond sourdough in bread making, including types of flours, yeasts, and preferments. Even though making a starter seems like the first hurdle, it's the trickiest one of all.Unlike with manufactured yeast, a natural yeast starter takes time to become active. Active yeast means lots of gas bubbles, and these bubbles are what makes your bread tall and spongy. The fermentation period is where your yeast strengthens in gas production and develops that delicious tangy flavor. Oh, and you have to figure out how to catch your own invisible yeast. You can see why the biggest challenge with a sourdough bread is getting it started.Sometimes, the only answer is patience. But other times something has just gone wrong. Here are the cues I look for when making a starter, and possible answers to problems you may encounter when doing the same.Making a strong sourdough starterWild sourdough starter is made from flour, water, and wild-caught yeast. What is wild yeast exactly? Yeast that refuses to be tamed\. It turns out, just like bacteria exist on everything, there are also yeast spores floating around everywhere. You just have to catch some in a mishmash of water and flour. On paper, this is pretty simpleI have a recipe that seems easy enough.A kitchen scale will be indispensable for bread making, so I highly recommend buying one. (You can find them for under $15.) Ozeri Pronto Digital Multifunction Kitchen and Food Scale $14.17 at Amazon $14.95 Save $0.78 Shop Now Shop Now $14.17 at Amazon $14.95 Save $0.78 Easy Sourdough Starter RecipeIngredients:4 ounces cold water2 ounces high gluten bread flour2 ounces organic rye flour (I use Bobs Red Mill stone ground dark rye) to teaspoon raw honey1. Add equal parts (by weight) room temperature water and whole wheat or rye flour to a wide bowl. Optionally, you can sub in a portion of high gluten white bread flour (as I do in this recipeIll explain the process in the troubleshooting section below.) I also mix in a half teaspoon or so of raw honey. This is optional, but its the way I was taught. (It keeps working, so I keep doing it.) Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann 2. Mix everything together until there are no dry spots left. Your wild yeast bait is set. Leave the bowl uncovered in your kitchen for an hour or two. Its okay if it dries on the edges a little. The wild yeast floating in the air will be attracted to your whole wheat or rye gloop and get stuck there.3. After the yeast catching time has passed, mix the paste again and transfer the starter to a jar or tall cup and cover it with plastic wrap or a lid. Dont make the lid completely airtight. (If everything goes well, the yeast will start to produce gas, and you want to give it a way out.) Use a piece of masking tape (I like to write the date and time on it), or a rubber band around the container to mark the height of the paste so you can see the growth later, or take pictures of it so you can refer back to them. Leave the starter alone to sit at room temperature for 72 hours. The starter paste is stiff and only reaches the middle of the tape. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann Signs your sourdough starter is starting off rightThis is the annoying partor fascinating part, depending on your personality. The wild yeast is invisible and you wont be able to tell if you caught enough for about 48 hours, but there are signs you can look for that tell you things are going to plan.After 24 hours: The paste will look like its relaxed into the container, and not as stiff as before. The jar will look slightly more full, but you wont see much growth or many (if any) bubbles.After 48 hours: The starter should have lots of small bubbles and look a little foamy on the top layer. It will have grown in size about 50% to 100%. After 48 hours I can see many small bubbles developing and the surface has risen to the top of the tape. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann After 64 to 72 hours: The starter should be fully active, frothy, and about triple its starting size. It should look alive and smell sour. It's rather unpleasant, but that's a good sign. After 64 hours, my starter is frothy and ready to use or feed. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann What to do if your starter didnt startIf you dont see any of these signs after 48 hoursbesides maybe a funky smell and a developing layer of slimy liquidand your flour and water paste has not become bubbly at all within 72 hours, then you didnt catch enough wild yeast. Discard this paste and start again. Use the tips below to ensure you catch enough wild yeast on the next attempt.Problem: My starter never made any bubbles.Use the right ingredients. Dont skip on the whole wheat or rye wheat flour. They have more nutrients that benefit yeast growth, so it pays off to use one of them. All purpose flour, even bread flour, but especially bleached flours, all get stripped of some nutritious components. Dont worry, you can switch your starter over to a white flour when you feed it, so dont assume you have to make rye or whole wheat bread loaves based on your starter. This doesnt mean white flour cant work for a sourdough starter, but if youre having trouble, using other flours might increase your yeast development.Try adding honey, if you skipped it. It doesnt take much, but raw, organic honey can be just the thing to boost yeast development. It has its own neighborhood of microorganisms and can give wild yeast something to snack on.Capture natural yeast with a grape or onion peel. There are other sources of wild yeast than the stuff floating in the air. Yeast coats the outside of a lot of different produce, and grapes and onions are sure to have it. After you mix your water, flour, and honey together, tuck an unwashed grape or a strip of onion paper (the dry outer layers of any onion) into the paste. Cover it completely and let it sit like this for the first 24 hours, then remove the grape or onion and discard it. Continue to age the starter for another 48 hours and look for signs of life as outlined above.Use a bowl to catch yeast. It might only be a small change you need. In the directions above, I say to mix the starter paste in a wide bowl and leave it at room temperature to catch the yeast. Make sure youre not skipping this step and putting the paste directly into a jar or other container with tall sides and a small mouth, which will make it harder to catch yeast. Unless your kitchen is particularly gusty, you might be blocking off air flow. The wide bowl allows for plenty of the wild yeast in the air to flow over the paste and get stuck.Problem: My starter made bubbles but hardly grew.Substitute a portion of white high-gluten bread flour. In my recipe above, I substitute two ounces of rye flour for high-gluten flour to make a stronger gluten network. Rye and whole wheat flours are sometimes stone ground, so theres a chance that the texture is too coarse to trap the air bubbles your yeast is making.If youre using only rye flour or a coarse whole wheat, you might see air bubbles foaming up but not really rising much. This means your starter is alive, but theres no net to trap the bubbles. If this is the case, when you next feed your starter, use high gluten flour. Thoroughly mix the preferment to develop the gluten network and age the starter for another 24 hours. You should see a big difference in height.If youre making a starter from scratch, use my recipe above, which replaces half of the total flour measurement with high gluten flour, leaving the other half as rye or whole wheat.How to feed a sourdough starterOnce youve got a strong bubbling starter, you can use it all right away, or you can age it. Im sure youve heard of folks talk of keeping their starter alive for years or decades, sometimes longer. The key to keeping the starter, or mother, alive for long periods of time is to feed it every day so it doesnt die. I used half of my sourdough start and fed the other half. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann The right ratio to feed your sourdough "mother"To feed the starter, it's common to work with a 1:1:1 ratio. Youll need to mix in its total weight in additional flour and water. This means if your starter weighs 10 ounces, youll add 10 ounces of water and 10 ounces of high-gluten flour, for a total of 20 ounces of food. Then youll have 30 ounces total of starter.You can see how this amount would quickly get out of hand if you just kept building your starter like this for three days. Most folks opt to feed half and discard the other half, so the amount stays under control as the flavor deepens. However, if youre planning on making eight sourdough boules next week, youll need a large amount of starter, so you might feed it more leading up to the big bake. The steps to feed a sourdough starter1. Use your kitchen scale so you know how much weight you need to add. Measure out as much starter as you need into a mixing bowl. The other half of the starter gets discarded. Throw it away, or make something with it right away. (More on that in a moment.)2. Add equal parts of water and high gluten flour to the mixing bowl. Again, if youre using eight ounces of starter, add equal parts water and flourso eight ounces each for a total of 16 ouncesto the bowl. Mix it thoroughly so no dry patches remain.3. Put it back in the jar and cover it. Leave it at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours before using it or feeding it again, or put it in the fridge to keep it longer before its next feeding.Using your sourdough starterInstead of discarding half your starter, you can use it to make something. As long as its at the height of its bubble production (its potency fades if it needs to be fed again), it can be used in a bread recipe, pancake recipe, biscuits, crepes, crumpets, or crackersanything you can dream up.When youre ready to use the starter for real, whether its the waste portion or the entire amount, you want to time it for peak potency. That will be approximately 12 hours after the last feeding but can vary due to numerous conditions, so keep an eye on it to see how your starter acts. After caring for your starter for a couple days, youll begin to understand when that window opens and closes. Its at the height of its growth before deflating, actively making the most bubbles before wearing out. Youll get the best performance from your starter during this time.If youre still intimidated by a 100% sourdough starter bread recipe, remember that it can be used as a flavor enhancer for recipes with quick-acting yeast too. Search for recipes that include both starter and commercial yeast for speed, like this one from King Arthur Baking.If theres anything you should take away from this troubleshooting guide, its that there are a lot of variables in nursing a sourdough starter, and its okay if yours doesnt come out right the first time. Be patient, dont give up, and dont forget to feed your mother.

I truly thought this would be the year the world would see its first stair-climbing robot vacuum cleaner: While the Dreame X50 Ultra, announced today at CES, is being written about that way, it turns out that it can only climb "stairs" if the steps in question are under two inches tall. Rather, the Dreame X50 is a threshold-climbing robot, which might be less exciting, but is still useful.The X50 has a lot of new tech under the hood. This robot has 20,000Pa suction: For context, while suction power numbers have exploded this year, many robot vacuums that I think do an exceptional job, do so with less than 12,000Pa. Theres a limit to how much suction can actually help, and at least one executive has admitted to me that this number rises primarily because consumers generally choose the vacuum with the highest Pa. Still, more suction certainly couldnt hurt.As is happening with many other robots, the X50 is beginning to transition away from LiDAR exclusively by adding cameras into the mix. LiDAR uses light to measure space in front of the robot, but it does so with less precision than cameras do, and LiDAR requires the familiar round button on top of more robot vacuums. In the case of the X50, the LiDAR tower is still present, but can retract when needed, to go under low spaces like your couch. At that point, the robot relies solely on RGB cameras with advanced AI power. Companies are leveraging AI to identify objects so the robot knows to avoid them.Featurewise, all robots this year are hyper-focused on detangling brushes. This makes sense, since the rollers and brushes often become tangled not only with hair, but random strings, rug threads, and detritus on the ground. This means you have to pick the robot up, detangle it, and pull out the rollers. Dreame has an extending arm for their brush and two rollers, and while that isnt particularly new, the rollers can spin in reverse, which should help with detangling. Dreame has received TV certification for 100% detangling.But lets talk about the exciting part: The Dreame X50 Ultra has legs under the vacuum that can lift the front of the vacuum up over obstacles as much as two inches high. This may not seem like a lot, but the product team has managed to continually improve that height, so it seems reasonable to hope that stairs are coming someday soon. So what does two inches get you? It can climb over power cords, a small shoe, or a rolled-up rug edge.Most importantly, it can climb over one heck of a thresholdthat transition between rooms or floor typesso it can access parts of the house it couldn't have reached on its own before.The Dreame X50 Ultra will retail for $1,699, and will be available for pre-order Jan. 7, in advanced of a Valentine's Day release.

Smart speakers have become the ultimate multitaskers for your home, combining great sound with the convenience of voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri. Whether youre streaming your favorite playlists, checking the weather, controlling your smart home devices or setting reminders hands free, a good smart speaker can make your day-to-day life a whole lot easier and more fun, too.And theres a smart speaker for everyone. If youre an audiophile, some models prioritize high-quality sound that can fill a room. If youre on a budget, there are plenty of affordable options that still pack in tons of features. And if youre deep into the smart home ecosystem, finding a speaker that seamlessly connects to your devices will be a game-changer. Weve picked out the best smart speakers for every need, whether youre after booming bass, a sleek design or advanced voice assistant capabilities. Picking an assistant The first thing most people should do is decide what voice assistant they want to use. Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa are both well-supported options that are continually evolving, with new features added at a steady clip. A few years ago, Alexa worked with more smart home products, but at this point, basically any smart device worth buying works with both. Google vs. Alexa It's mostly a matter of personal preference. If youre already entrenched in the Google ecosystem and own an Android phone, it makes sense to stick with that. And if you have multiple Google-based smart devices in your home, you can use Google Home to easily control and navigate your devices. But while Alexa isnt quite as good at answering general knowledge questions, it syncs just fine with things like calendars from your Google account. And it works with perhaps the widest variety of smart home products as well. If youve never used Alexa or Google Assistant, you can download their apps on your iOS or Android phone and spend some time testing them out before buying a speaker. There are downsides to having a smart home device thats always listening for a wake word, as giving more personal information to Amazon, Apple and Google can be a questionable decision. That said, all these companies have made it easier to manage how your data is used you can opt out of humans reviewing some of your voice queries, and it's also less complicated to manage and erase your history with various digital assistants, too. Sonos vs. Apple If you buy a Sonos device with a microphone, you can also use the company's own voice assistant, voiced by Giancarlo Esposito. It's focused purely on music control, so you won't use it to do things like send messages or ask the weather forecast. But as a music assistant, Sonos Voice Control is generally quite fast and reliable. As for Apple, you wont be surprised to learn the HomePod and HomePod mini are the only Siri-compatible speakers on the market. Its rumored that Apple will potentially release a new range of smart displays, like its HomePod with a touchscreen, sometime soon. Apple's Siri has a reputation for not being as smart as Alexa or Google Assistant, but its totally capable of handling common voice queries like answering questions, controlling smart home products, sending messages, making calls and streaming music via AirPlay. Technically, Siri and Apples HomeKit technology doesnt work with as many smart home devices as the competition, but its not hard to find compatible gear. And Apple has most definitely improved Siris functionality over the last couple years, with handy features like and Intercom tool and routines that take advantage of the built-in temperature sensor in the HomePod and HomePod Mini. Best smart speakers for 2025 This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/best-smart-speakers-151515264.html?src=rss

Release windows for everything from the iPhone SE 4 to the iPhone 17 Air have now leaked.

Two key data storage trends to expect in 2025.

Corporate America has a transparency problem. According to the Deloitte Insights 2024 Global Human Capital Trends, 86% of leaders surveyed say that the more transparent the organization is, the greater the workforce trust. Yet the vast majority of those same leaders are doing little to foster transparency or trust within their organizations by using silencing mechanisms like forced arbitration and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) to prevent their workers from revealing workplace toxicity from the moment they sign onboarding paperwork.Though you may not know it, these silencing mechanisms are buried deep in your workplace contracts or other dense paperwork. Sometimes, they are sent to you by your employer in an email with an innocuous subject line that you open, unaware that by doing so you have agreed to give up your right to sue or even to discuss what happened to you in the event you face a toxic workplace experience, such as racial, age, or gender discrimination. Sometimes, they are offered to you in exchange for a promotion or severance or settlement.You may not realize that you signed away your right to a jury trial or to even talk about a bad workplace experience with anyone, including coworkers, family members, or even a clergy member or therapist, until it is too late to do anything about it.Regardless of the reason, 82% of all American workers are bound by forced arbitration, which means that they must resolve any dispute with their employer in a secret chamber where an arbitratortypically an older, white man who has had no experience being discriminated against himselfhas the power to decide whether you have a claim and how much you should be compensated for it.Most lawyers, knowing that arbitrators typically side with the employer, are reluctant even to represent you, regardless of the merits of your case. There are no appeals and the arbitrators decision is final. Unlike a trial by jury, arbitration takes place in secret and your ability to call witnesses is severely limited. To say that the deck is stacked against an employee bringing an arbitration claim is an understatement.Arbitration is not the only tool for companies to silence their workers. More than one-third of all workers are bound by NDAs, which means that they cannot warn anyone, including their colleagues, about a predator in their midst. In this way, organizations protect themselves from bad publicity and public lawsuits, at the expense of the transparency they tell researchers is so critical to building trust in the workplace.Our organization, Lift Our Voices, has worked hard to give workers back their power by passing two bipartisan landmark laws in recent years that ban forced arbitration and pre-dispute NDAs for survivors of and witnesses to sexual misconduct. But much more work remains to be done, not only on the legislative front to expand these laws to cover all toxic workplace issues but also to educate workers about whether their companies are among those that are using silencing mechanisms to cover up unethical and illegal behavior.Next month, we are launching the LOV Where You Work Index, which will score companies in the Russell 3000 on their use of NDAs and forced arbitration. This new index will give employees and job seekers a comprehensive resource to better understand employers workplace practices around silencing mechanisms, empowering them to make informed decisions about where they work. At the same time, employers across the nation will have the opportunity to lead the way on transparency by joining LOV to create visibility around their current workplace policies.We are clear-eyed about what is happening in corporate America today. Companies are moving away from inclusive practices, with some major employers refusing to fill out questionnaires from storied civil rights organizations about the composition of their workforce or no longer agreeing to give priority to suppliers that reflect the full fabric of America. That is, of course, their right as private companies. But at a time of full employment, it is also the right of Americans to work at companies that dont just talk the talk about transparency, but also walk the walk.To be fair, forced arbitration clauses and NDAs have become such boilerplate languages in corporate contracts that many organizations do not even realize that they are included in the paperwork they hand out to employees. Often, leaders do not even realize that by silencing women and people of color, who are much more prone to being bound by these silencing mechanisms, they are pushing out the very kinds of workers they want to retain. We hope that our Index will raise awareness of these clauses and provide an incentive for companies to change these policies.There are countless indexes that tout companies as Best Places to Work for women, people of color, members of LGBTQ+ communities, and other traditionally disenfranchised groups. But if employees are silenced from their first day on the job, how can they really tell surveyors the truth about their workplace environments? The Index will be the first of its kind to delve into the fundamental problem in the workplace from which all others stemthe ability for workers to be transparent about the kinds of conditions they encounter on the job.The Index will allow workers to easily search for any given company listed on the Russell 3000 and know within moments whether that company is serious about workplace transparency. The ones already doing the right thingrefusing to silence workers through forced arbitration and NDAswill have no hesitation in filling out this survey and signaling that they are, indeed, working hard to earn their employees trust. We hope that even employers who do use these practices will fill out our survey, so that their employees and contractors know what they are facing when choosing to work for them.At the very least, our Index will make abundantly clear which companies are serious about improving workplace transparency and earning their employees trust. When Americans love where they work, their productivity increases, which is good for everyone. The LOV Where You Work Index aims to do just that by ensuring that every employee feels welcome and safe on the job.

Behind the scenes, companies and governments are feeding a trove of data about international travelers into opaque AI tools that aim to predict whos safeand whos a threat.