All focus was on TikTok in the last week, as the company prepared to and eventually did shut down its video-sharing app to adhere to a national security law explicitly aimed at the ByteDance-owned company. But the the U.S. action has resulted in a broader ripple effect. Marvel Snap players discovered on Saturday night that the card battle game had also gone dark, and had been removed from Apple and Google app stores at the same time as TikTok. The game remains offline, along with several other apps with connections to ByteDance.Second Dinner, the U.S.-based developer of Marvel Snap, said in a statement that it was a surprise that the game had gotten caught in the net of the TikTok shutdown. But since the game is published by Nuverse, a subsidiary of ByteDance, the app was held to the same complicated standards as TikTok. Second Dinner was quick to promise that Marvel Snap isnt going anywhere.Unfortunately, MARVEL SNAP is temporarily unavailable in U.S. app stores and is unavailable to play in the U.S.In a surprise to Second Dinner and our publisher Nuverse, MARVEL SNAP was affected by the takedown of TikTok late on Saturday, January 18th.MARVEL SNAP isnt going Second Dinner (@seconddinner) January 19, 2025The move also came as a surprise to Marvel Snap players, who had received no advance warning that the game would shut down in compliance with the new law. But at least they made some good posts about it.According to users who are also hitting a wall and unable to access or download games, the TikTok ban has affected other Nuverse titles like Land of Empires: Immortal, Land of Empires: Dice Hero, and Mission EVO. Games from the ByteDance-owned Moonton were also affected by the law, including Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Mobile Legends: Adventure, Watcher of Realms, and One Punch Man: The Strongest.

How I escaped the pull of the pageUI.Image by theauthor.The best writing tool Ive discovered last year was to stop drafting on a page and use a canvas-based user interface (UI) instead. In this article, Ill share what motivated this change and reflect on the strategies that help me make the most ofit.As a professor and researcher in Human-Computer Interaction, my focus is on scientific writing. Still, I expect these takeaways to apply more broadly to any writing involving iteration and engagement with othersources.A year of drafting inspaceMy Miro recap below tells me Ive created about 1500 digital sticky notes. Why so many? Well, I started 2024 off by writing an essay on the fragmentation of writing with AI tools. When a reviewer later asked me to share my process, I ironically noted that I did not myself involve AI tools in drafting it but nevertheless embraced fragmentationvia sticky notes on a canvas. Writing off the page in that project, I have not returned to substantially drafting with a page-based UIsince.My Miro year in review2024.My Miro board for the essay even made it into the appendix of the paper, as shown below. I have since received requests and comments on this figure, which have inspired me to write this short reflection.The canvas I used to develop ideas and arguments and a review of related work for anessay.Non-linear drafting on acanvasHere are the key lessons Ive learned and the reasons I now prefer a canvas-based approach to drafting.Noteworthy beginningsSticky notes on the canvas look and feel tangibly like objects meant to be worked with. For me, they offer much better affordances for an early draft than bullet points on a page. They reify unordered thoughts, allowing me to directly manipulate them: I can move them aside, revisit some later, rearrange them, or connectthem.I beat the blank page with a canvas, one note at atime.Zoom-to-frameAs my draft evolves and grows, I can zoom in and focus on a specific aspect, blocking out the rest. Complementary, I can zoom out to recover the bigger picture. This flexibility allows me to frame and reframe my writing sessions by dynamically adjusting the viewport.Iterating inspaceOn a canvas, iteration is seamless. I can duplicate text objects to explore ideas and variations, keeping the original visible. Afterwards, I decide whether to delete it or retain it for comparison or future use. In contrast to this immediacy, copying a text file to v2 feels disconnected from drafting and the content drops out ofsight.The spatial arrangement of text iterations adds meaning, such as when layouting paragraphs vertically to show progression, while exploring alternatives horizontally.Mapping outmeaningMore broadly, a canvas offers the freedom to map meaning spatially. This area is related work, while that area gathers study findings. I can cross, connect, and redefine these regions as I go. In contrast, files and ordered page sections twist my drafting hand into unwanted linearisation and prematurely defined boundaries.Infinite marginsA canvas offers limitless space to engage with related work. I dont need to cram thoughts into page margins or comment bubbles in a PDF viewer. Instead, I can give a reference space by adding its abstract, text snippets, figures, and so on, via copy-paste and screenshots. Crucially, I can add my own thoughts throughout. By deconstructing and reorganising the presentation of related work, I construct an overview ready to hand, rather than scattering thoughts in margins across documentfiles.Constructing an overview of related work with screenshots, snippets, and annotations.Multimodal referencesOn a canvas, the representation of references can use images, text, even videos, more effectively than on a page view. I dont have to think about page layouts when adding figures from related work for context. I also dont have to worry about images moving on the page as I addtext.Related material and my text are not meant to be linearised at the draftingstage.Let me overlap things, draw onto them, add arrows and text on top and around images, and so on. The canvas supportsthis.Rewarding divergenceAs a side-effect of the above, I experience the result of interleaving drafting with research into external sources as much more rewarding on a canvas than in a text file. Perhaps this is because the multimodal representation better reflects the invested effort. Beyond its analytic nature, it becomes a constructive process in itself. At the end of the session, I see: Today, Ive built this overview of related work. Look at thatamazing!Mise enplaceThis ties together the ideas of mapping, focus, and integrating related work: I rarely write just to produce text but rather interleave reading and writing. On a canvas, I can draft (and think) in context and I can prepare this context material directly on my writing surface ahead of time. Besides related work and results from own data analyses, I particularly like to prepare and lay out argumentation structures in thisway.Gathering and connecting results and argumentation structure, then drafting next tothem.To conclude, Ive (re)discovered the benefits of a mix of Human-Computer Interaction concepts for my personal writing workflow, in particular at the drafting stage. These include zoom-and-pan UIs, focus and context, reification, direct manipulation, and various aspects of interaction design for sensemaking activities and building personal information spaces.Breaking silosThis is not about Miro specificallyor even just about writing. In a broader view, my use of Miro is a workaround for dealing with application silos. Applications today are not truly interconnected. Navigating between them forces me to interrupt drafting, track where information is stored, and shift my focus between apps to gather the required resources.While drafting a paper, instead of tracking information across apps, I want to focus on argumentation, related work, connections, data, meaning, and perspectives.Dropping everything into one canvas app via copy-paste is far from ideal but it bootstraps a seamless information space for writing and referencingand ultimately thinkingthat I can usetoday.ResourcesSome of the canvas screenshots above are taken from the Miro board for this paper. I also wrote about it here on Medium. Finally, here are some suggestions for reading more about the mentioned HCI concepts:Direct manipulationZoomable user interfacesReificationSensemakingPersonal information spacesThe UX of drafting in space was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Want to watch a movie with a friend on your Mac? Perhaps you're stuck on a long flight, or like me, your MacBook Air speakers went bust. Either way, you'll be happy to know that the Mac has a built-in feature that can merge multiple different sound outputsno third-party app needed. You can easily use two sets of Bluetooth headphones to listen to the same audio, without any noticeable audio drift or lag. First, connect both devices to BluetoothThe first step is to connect both devices to your Mac using Bluetooth. You can do this by going to Control Center > Bluetooth. Credit: Khamosh Pathak If your devices aren't yet paired, you won't see them there. In that case, go to System Settings > Bluetooth and pair the headphones to your Mac first.Merge two audio outputsTo start the process, open the Audio MIDI Setup app. You'll find this in Applications/Utilities in the Finder app. Or you can use Spotlight Search or Launchpad to find and open the app.Click the Plus button in the bottom-left corner of the window, and choose the Create Multi-Output Device option. Credit: Khamosh Pathak You'll see all the connected devices here. Choose the two devices that you want to use for media playback. You are free to choose one of the devices as the Primary Device at the top. Automatically, the app will enable the Drift Correction feature for the secondary device to make sure that audio is synced perfectly for both devices. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Next, double-click the Multi-Output Device name from the sidebar to rename it to something you'll easily remember. To test this out now, control-click this group and choose the Use This Device for Sound Output option. The audio output will instantly switch to the headphones pair. Credit: Khamosh Pathak But there is a better way to switch to the headphones pair, by using the Sound menu in Control Center.Click the Control Center icon in the menu bar, and click the Devices menu from the Sound option (you can drag the Sound menu to the menu bar for easier access). Credit: Khamosh Pathak Here, choose the newly created audio pair. If you're doing this for the first time, choose the Multi-Output Device option. It will now be updated with your custom group name, making it much easier to choose the output the next time around. Credit: Khamosh Pathak The next time you're ready to listen in the same configuration, remember to first connect the two devices individually from the Bluetooth menu, and then select them as a pair from the Sound menu (they won't be listed as a pair directly in the Bluetooth menu, for some reason).

Instagram head Adam Mosseri took to Threads on Sunday with yet another announcement this weekend, the timing of which surely had nothing at all to do with TikTok and other ByteDance-owned apps (briefly) going dark: a new, free video-editing app called Edits is on the way. Instagram's Edits will cater to people who edit videos on their phone, and will offer a full suite of creative tools. That includes higher-quality recordings, shareable drafts, trending audio, insights about your Reels performance and an inspiration tab, on top of the usual editing tools.If all that reminds you of CapCut, TikToks sister app for video editing, youre not alone. In response to the immediate comparisons, Mosseri called Edits CapCut, but more for creators than casual video makers.Edits isnt available yet, but you can pre-order it on the App Store if youre an iOS user and Mosseri says an Android version is coming soon. While he puts the release sometime in February, the App Store page says March 13. And dont expect anything too polished when it arrives. The first version is going to be incomplete, so please be patient, but Im really excited to put this in all your hands, Mosseri said.The Edits app logoEdits/App StoreThe announcement came shortly after TikTok said its app was coming back online in the US, a mere 12 hours or so after it shut down. CapCut hasnt come back yet, but its expected to follow suit. Trump said on social media that he would announce an executive order after hes sworn in that would extend ByteDances time to sort out TikToks future.While Threads users have been calling Instagram out for the timing of the announcement, Mosseri said the app has been in development for months, and I think it'll end up pretty different than CapCut. On that note, he said, Edits will have a much broader range of creative tools and probably a smaller addressable audience. Think a place to track all your ideas instead of templates. Think AI video editing tools on a per clip or per video basis. Think new insights on why your videos are succeeding or struggling.One way it appears Edits may have a leg up on CapCut, at least, is the App Store page says videos wont have a watermark when theyre exported. While the free version of CapCut has long added the easily removable ending logo to videos at the time of export, it recently started adding a corner watermark too.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/instagram-is-rushing-out-a-new-video-editing-app-that-sure-sounds-a-lot-like-capcut-205054034.html?src=rss

SoftBank eyes Ampere Computing to strengthen its foothold and challenge AMD and Intel head-on.

2024 was a tough year for progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Not long after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, companies began making subtle changes to DEI policies and programs that catered to underrepresented workers, seemingly in response to escalating legal attacks and conservative backlash. Tech employers started downsizing DEI programs and shedding staff as part of layoffs. Some organizations tried to move away from the language of DEI and stopped using terms like equity.But last year, amid pressure from conservative activists like Robby Starbuck, many companiesincluding major employers like Walmart, McDonalds, and Fordtook more drastic measures, disbanding employee resource groups, nixing representation goals, and ending participation in an annual index that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees. In the last week, Big Tech has also made more aggressive cuts to diversity programs, with Meta eliminating its DEI team altogether. Some companies, like Costco, have stood their ground despite public pressure, while Walmart is now facing pushback from investors for its reversal on DEI. Still, theres no doubt corporate America is scaling back its commitment to DEIor at a minimum, rebranding the work to protect against legal liability. But if youre a leader who is truly invested in fostering a diverse workforce, you can still find ways to be a better advocate and ensure women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups advance in the workplace.Look at the dataSome employers have now eliminated representation goals for senior leadership, while others no longer consistently publish diversity reports. Even if thats the case at your company, there are other metrics that can help measure who is being promoted into or considered for those roles, according to DEI leader and workplace strategist Mita Mallick. You can also ask whether the company has evaluated how women and men are rated on performance reviews, or if there are any pay inequities that have gone unaddressed. Another important data point is the rate of attrition for women and other underrepresented workers, which can give you a sense of whether certain employees are leaving the company in higher numbers.Dig into employee engagement surveysIn the last year, a number of companies have opted out of surveys like the Human Rights Campaigns Corporate Equality Index, which many workers value as a sign that an employer is supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. But plenty of companies still rely on employee engagement surveys and other internal polling to get a pulse on their workforce. If youre trying to understand how certain workers are being affected by cuts to diversity programsand what you can do about it as a leaderthis could be a good place to start.If your company has scaled back initiatives that specifically supported women, you can get a sense of what the impact has been, Mallick says. Are women lacking sponsorship to help them advance their careers? Are they feeling stuck in their careers, being promised promotions that dont materialize? Are they receiving little to no feedback from their boss?Support employee resource groupsEmployee resource groups can be a crucial community for underrepresented workersso much so that some companies have started compensating leaders for their work. But this is yet another area where employers have been making some major cuts as they pull back on DEI, in some cases revamping these groups to focus solely on professional development or opening them up to all workers. In workplaces that have maintained these groups, however, theres room for leaders to better support themwhether through dollars or mentorship.We need more men to step up and serve as an executive sponsor for womens resource groups, Mallick writes. We need senior leaders to offer dollars from their own budgets to help sponsor events when DEI budgets are being slashed.

Most of the traditional backpacking tents need some help to pitch or take considerable time if you are pitching it solo. This could spell trouble for backpackers who like to travel alone in territories unknown. If you are spending quite a chunk of your backcountry excursions erecting a tent, you are risking exposure to elements and wildlife. Not to mention the headache of the traditional tents weight. On the flip side, you lose out on comfort if you go for the lightweight options.Hitting the sweet spot between the two, the all-new Lunar Orbiter tent manages to merge comfort and convenience with a lightweight construction for solo campers. The ultra-light tent from Six Moon Designs forgoes traditional internal poles in favor of a wide exterior pole configuration that offers freestanding stability and fast pitching capability.Designer: Six Moon DesignsThe easy-pitch alternative of the Lunar Orbiter features a crisscross four-corner frame made of DAC Featherlite aluminum poles. The tent sets up quickly with hovering top sleeves, cross hub clips, and corner pockets. Its external pole design ensures that the walls are stretched outward, increasing the interior space.According to the outdoor gear company, the frame can withstand storm-worthy winds, rain, and snow, making Lunar Orbiter a perfect all-season companion in the backcountry. The tent has a hybrid single/double-wall design with plenty of mesh lining and a roll-back waterproof outer layer on the doors to provide ventilation and weather protection.Since it is designed for solo travelers, the tent offers 90 x 44 inches of sleeping area, enough for a grown man and his gear. The 48-inch high ceiling helps create an open feel inside the one-person tent. Additionally, there is a removable interior gear loft and two storage pockets, so you can keep your things safe and nearby without compromising valuable floor space. The dual vestibules further enhance its functionality.The only downside is that the tent weighs 2.8 lbs, which isnt the most lightweight option on the market, which comes well near or under 2 lbs. However, if you are fine ignoring a little extra weight, this could be a good addition to your outdoor gear. The Lunar Orbiter is currently retailing at $435 and is an option that very well overshadows your conventional tent.The post Lunar Orbiter Tent Offers Quick Setup and Freestanding Stability to Solo Backpackers first appeared on Yanko Design.

This versatile pan is an absolute must-have in my kitchen.

No one was injured. The building, which includes a district office of a Wisconsin congressman who has been a critic of TikTok, sustained moderate damage in the fire on Sunday.

Evidence continues to trickle in that hit Apple TV+ show "Ted Lasso" will return for a fourth season.'Ted Lasso' star Nick Mohammed has dropped a hint about the show's return.The latest hint comes from former cast member Nick Mohammed, who played assistant coach Nate Shelley on the hit show. Mohammed posted a video on X.com on January 16th to announce that some of the early dates on his forthcoming UK tour will be rearranged due to unnamed "filming."Mohammed was scheduled to kick off the tour for "Show Pony," a live "show that goes wrong" type comedy involving music and magic, in April. Rumor Score: Likely Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums