In iOS 18.3, Apple Intelligence is now turned on by default. Heres how to disable it.

MacworldWe now have our best look at what is supposed to be the iPhone SE 4, due for launch this spring. Notable leaker Majin Bu posted a short video on X showing the iPhone SE 4 from all angles, and a series of clear photographs showing the white and black models.MajinBuOfficial/XIf you have been following the rumors and expected the iPhone SE 4 to look like an iPhone 14 with a single rear camera, you wont be surprised by these photos at all. The video doesnt show much new either but appears to offer confirmation that the iPhone SE will have a notch rather than a Dynamic Island. While this is hardly a surprising look, and definitely not innovative, its exactly what we expect from an iPhone SE: modern processors in an older body with reduced camera capabilities.Notably, Apple still sells the iPhone 14 for $599 (U.S.), which makes one wonder what will happen once this launches. Why buy an iPhone 14 for more money when the presumably less-expensive iPhone SE 4 looks and feels the same has a faster processor and presumably costs less? We should know the answer soon enough, as Apple is expected to launch the new phone in March or April.For more, check out our roundup of all the latest iPhone SE 4 rumors and leaks.

MacworldAnytime you can get an iPad for $200 off, its a great deal, especially when it has the largest screen and best chip. Were talking about the 13-inch M4 iPad Pro, of course, the very best tablet Apple makes, which is down to its very best price of $1,099.It probably comes as no surprise that when we reviewed the new iPad Pro, we gave it a super rare five-star rating, appreciating the first-class display, stellar performance, great battery life, and incredibly thin design: The new iPad Pro is the best tablet you can currently get. Its performance and range of functions are first-class, while the new OLED display saves on weight and makes a flatter chassis possible, we wrote.The M4 chip on this tablet really makes it shine, allowing it to deliver a performance thats well above what we saw in previous iPad Pro models. The tablets AI-powered features also make the whole experience better, while the 16-core Neural Engine makes the iPad ready for any other functions Apple may want to bring in the future.If you want some accessories, the tablet works with the Apple Pencil Pro ($14 off) and the Magic Keyboard, which basically turns your tablet into a laptop. The 13-inch display is gorgeous, as well, and perfectly suitable for anything you have to watch and work on.Dont miss out on this $200 off deal for the M4 iPad Pro, and get a gorgeous tablet thats tons of fun for work and play.Buy now at Amazon

As if from nowhere, OpenAI competitorDeepSeek has somersaulted to the top of the iPhone App Store chart, overtaking ChatGPTs OpenAI. Its the latest in a growing line of generative AI (genAI) services and seems to offer some significant advantages, not least its relatively lower development and production costs. You can also ask it how many Rs the word strawberry contains andexpect an accurate response.Now on iPhonesReleased last week, the DeepSeek app raced to the top of Apples App Store charts in multiple countries, including the US. People using the app have noted that the genAI tool can match or beat other similar models in performance.It also does so at afraction of the development and deployment costs. Its also free to use on the web and on the iPhone. In other words, for the price of nothing, you get all the genAI utility you can expect from ChatGPT.What the industry saysNvidias senior research scientist, Jim Fan, calls DeepSeek the biggest dark horse in the open-source LLM field, praising the extent to which the developers have managed to deliver such power with such scant resources.We are living in a timeline where a non-US company is keeping the original mission of OpenAI alive truly open, frontier research that empowers all. It makes no sense. The most entertaining outcome is the most likely, hewrote on social media.Whats the market model?DeepSeek was introduced as open-source models the Chinese developer believes can compete with OpenAIs and Metas best systems. That means the models are available under an MIT license from the popularHugging Face platform, which itself means these models can be used commercially and without restrictions. Theoretically,even Apple could use it and many developers are already trying it on relatively modest hardware.The full package of DeepSeeks R1 models is available and costs almost 95% less than OpenAI wants for its o1 models. Theresmore information available on Github, including an in-depth30-page technical report.How good is it?DeepSeek says its R1 model surpasses OpenAI o1 on the AIME, MATH-500, and SWE-bench Verified benchmarks.It contains 671 billion parameters, a massive number that means the model can perform very well.Of course, most on-device AI cant possibly handle that many parameters, so DeepSeek has made smaller versions of the same model available, the smallest of which should run on an old Mac.DeepSeek R1 is also built as a self-checking reasoning model, which helps it avoid some of the stupid mistakes other models make. While that reasoning means responses can be a little slower to arrive, they tend to be more reliable.Toward an open-source AIIt shows that open-source AI is catching up, and in the future well have a multiplicity of such models, rather than just the big commercial models,The AtlanticCEO Nicholas Thompson points out.One estimate suggests the models might have been trained on a budget as small as $6 million. In comparison, while Metas most recent Lama used an estimated 30.8 million GPU-hours to train, DeepSeek required just 2.8 million GPU-hours, according toAndrej Karpathy at EurekaLabs.In other words, rather than throwing money at a problem, the Chinese researchers are figuring out how to get more from less.It is impressive that DeepSeek seems to have succeeded in matching OpenAI and Metas AI at approximately 10% of the resources, cost, and parameters.DeepSeeks researchers said DeepSeek-V3 used Nvidias H800 chips for training. (Not everyone accepts the explanation. Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang expressed doubts about this claim, but still calls the introduction of DeepSeek earth-shattering.)To achieve this, the developers achieved significant technological breakthroughs, such as the capacity to predict consecutive words in a sequence, rather than just the next word. They also figured out to make the system answer questions more efficiently. This is explained well by Thompson.Good for everyone?China has figured out how to deliver powerful AI while using fewer resources and (perhaps most significantly on a planet equipped with finite resources) far less energy.Is this a bad thing for US interests? Almost certainly not. The fact that China achieved this on such limited resources should be a wake-up call to the US government and investor communities that its possible to deliver this technology at much lower costs.If there truly has been a breakthrough in the cost to train models from $ 100 million+ to this alleged $6 million number, this is actually very positive for productivity and AI end users, as cost is obviously much lower meaning lower cost of access, Jon Withaar, a senior portfolio manager at Pictet Asset Management,told Reuters.Thats a good thing, assuming AI is a good thing in the first place. But its a less good option for the big developers in the space. AI stocks are taking a battering today as investors evaluate the achievement. They want value for money, and if DeepSeek can get for $1 what other companies spend a sawbuck on, theyll want to invest in that.Ideological AIIt is worth mentioning one other limitation of the system. As it is a Chinese model, it isbenchmarked by the Chinese Internet regulator who ensures the genAI responses embody core socialist values.Whats interesting about that is the extent to which this shows how AI models from China, or from anywhere else can be built to bake in sets of values that may do more than just reflect their society. No wonder OpenAIwants the US government to invest in US AI.Getting more for lessIf it is indeed correct that DeepSeek has been able to achieve this degree of performance at such low costs using lower-specified tech, it suggests:That while cash is required to enable the tech, the biggest currency is creative innovation, which flourishes most in open environments.That the social and environmental costs in terms of energy, water, and technology we expect AI to require can be dramatically reduced.Its good business to do so.These reduced costs make AI more accessible to a wider number of developers.Some of the implications of this areexplained in more depth here. But if youre searching for an iPhone app that manages to capture the technology story while reflecting the evolving global geo-political tension and conversation around environment and industry, you can download it at the App Store today.You can follow me on social media! Join me onBlueSky, LinkedIn,Mastodon, andMeWe.

The designer of the new title sequence for season two of Apple TV+ hit "Severance," has detailed the many clues and hints in the sequence even though he doesn't know what they mean either.Still from the new "Severance" title sequence image credit: AppleSomewhere around the middle of the 2000s, the television drama title sequence was dead. Just compare Aaron Sorkin's "The West Wing" with its 1999 soaring theme and sequence, to the stark title card of Sorkin's 2006 "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."The idea was that a sequence lasting up to 60 seconds is a whole minute's advertising lost. Hour-long dramas have already shrunk from around 55 minutes to around 45 over the decades, every second possible taken out for an advert, so title sequences were an obvious target. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Apple has rolled out tvOS 18.3, and as expected, it's another standard minor update focused on quality-of-life upgrades.Apple TV 4KUnlike Apple's other operating systems, tvOS doesn't tend to get many feature updates between major releases. Most of the updates to tvOS focus on improving stability and addressing any bugs that have popped up.However, tvOS 18.2 did see the introduction of new Snoopy-themed screensavers. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

The Gensler-designed 350-acre New Home Office campus for Walmart has been unveiled in Bentonville, Arkansas, marking the realization of the retail giants transformative "vision" that first began in 2019.One of twelve mass timber office buildings. Image courtesy WalmartIn total, the project includes 12 mass timber office buildings (two of which have now opened) that represent the largest application of the material to date in the United States according to a press release. To these LEED Platinum-certified buildings are added a 360,000-square-foot wellness/fitness center, an on-site childcare facility, an amphitheater, a food hall, a welcome center, and a 200,000-square-foot auditorium and conference space. Multiple street-level retail opportunities are included in the design as well.Walton Family Whole Health and Fitness center. Image courtesy WalmartSam Walton Hall. Image courtesy WalmartSurrounding the built components is a rich "Big Nature" landscaped tapestry of outdoor spac...

Given Obsidian Entertainments pedigree and its reputation as one of the top RPG developers in the industry, its no surprise that theres always plenty of anticipation surrounding whatever it is that the studio has cooking up next.Avowedis next in line for the ever-so-busy Obsidian, and as a first-person fantasy action RPG, it has obviously drawn a lot of comparisons withSkyrim-but exactly how similar to BGS 2011 classic is Obsidians upcoming game going to be? Based on all that weve seen of it so far,Avowedlooks like its going to have a few things in common withSkyrim, but at the same time, its also setting itself apart in other key ways. Here, thats exactly what well be talking about.FANTASY SETTINGLets get things started with the most obvious and surface-level similarity between the two games- that both are modern AAA first-person RPGs in a fantasy setting.Avowedis taking players back to Eora, which is the world of thePillars of Eternityseries, though its going to be set primarily in the Living Lands, a previously unexplored part of the setting. Since its very first cinematic teaser all those years ago,Avowedhas echoedSkyrimwith its high fantasy setting in some very obvious ways, and that, of course, continues to be the case.Look a little deeper, however, and the differences begin to showAVOWED IS NOT A MASSIVE OPEN WORLDThough Obsidian originally set out to make its own version ofSkyrim i.e. a massive open world fantasy RPG the studio ultimately ended up deciding to scale down instead. Now,Avowedis going to be more in line withThe Outer Worlds-a smaller, more condensed experience. Of course, those who wish to engage in a good bit of exploration will still get plenty of opportunities to do that, but you shouldnt go in expecting a sweeping, gargantuan epic similar toSkyrim.DIFFERENT EXPLORATION LOOPGiven the fact thatAvowedsworld is going to adopt a different structure from that ofSkyrim,naturally, thatll mean the exploration loop is also going to take on a different form. Of course, how much players will want to engage with the optional content will be entirely their decision, something thats true of both games, but from a tighter structure to levels feeling more designed and handcrafted compared to the vast expanses ofSkyrimsworld, traversingAvowedsmaps will have a different flow. Making use of companions abilities and interacting with different things in the environment will also be important. Oh, and speaking of companionsAVOWED IS SEEMINGLY PLACING MORE EMPHASIS ON COMPANIONSObsidian and BGS RPGs have both traditionally been known for their companion characters, but of course, they go about that in very different ways.Skyrim,for instance, did have its own cast of recruitable companion characters, but these are entirely ancillary and completely missable parts of the game who can have little to no integration with the story, depending on how you play.Avowed,on the other hand, will be more similar to Obsidians past games, with the companion characters forming a core cast that will have a crucial role to play in the main story from beginning to end.AVOWED IS LOOKING MORE STORY-FOCUSEDAvowedsgreater focus on its cast of companion characters can attributed largely to the fact that the game is going to put more emphasis on its main story and storytelling, period.Skyrim,like all BGS RPGs, is more of a massive open world sandbox where players are free to do as they see fit. A byproduct of that, of course, is that the games main story ends up feeling relatively weaker, and by no means does it remain the main focus. Obsidian, on the other hand, has always been known for crafting narrative-focused experiences, and it looks likeAvowedwill continue that trend, with its main story very much being the primary driver of the experience.FACTIONSHeres an RPG trope thats never going to die, because why the hell should it? Populating their worlds with different factions with engaging histories, cultures, conflicts, and stories is something RPG developers have done for as long as the genre has been around.Skyrimsworld is filled with a variety of different groups and their own dedicated questlines, in true BGS fashion. The upcomingAvowed,too, will see players encountering a number of different factions as they explore the Living Lands. Then again, Obsidians greater focus on player choice will make Avowedsimplementation of factions stand out, by the look of things.CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCE MECHANICSThis is an area where BGS RPGs have never made too much of a mark, the same being true ofSkyrimas well. Make no mistake,the open world epic certainly put little to no limitations in allowing players to do whatever they wanted to do, and however they wanted to do. But thoughSkyrimalways lets you make whatever choices you want, its not often that you ever actually feel the weight of any of those decisions, no matter how monumental. Successfully seeing the questlines of two rival factions in direct competition with each other through to completion shouldnt be possible, and yetSkyrim(like other BGS RPGs) lets you do that.Avowed,however, is going to be the sort of game where the choices that you make have consequences, in true Obsidian fashion, which means you can expect the story and the world to react more strongly to your actions and decisions.QUEST STRUCTURESpeaking of player choice,Avowedwill seemingly allow for plenty of it in terms of the actual moment-to-moment gameplay as well- which, of course, is an area whereSkyrimand other RPGs made by its studiodoexcel. For instance, speaking to GamesRadar, Obsidians Berto Ritger explained that nearly every quest in the game had been designed so that players would be able to begin and tackle them in a variety of ways.Skyrimsimmersive sim-esque gameplay sandbox, which lets players go about tackling objectives however they please, is one of its biggest strengths; we dont expectAvowedto be on that same level (its going for something else, after all), but clearly, its quest structure seems to be taking a few cues from the BGS design playbook.FIRST/THIRD PERSON OPTIONSHeres another way thatAvowedis going to overlap with theSkyrimexperience, and its another obvious on. LikeSkyrim,Avowedis primarily a first-person experience, and that plain and simple fact has led to countless inevitable comparisons (like this one). Also similar toSkyrim,meanwhile,Avowedis also confirmed to feature a third-person option. How well the gameplay experience will translate to that camera perspective remains to be seen-Skyrimin third-person is something of an abomination, so heres hopingAvoweddoesnt havethatin common with it.COMBAT DIFFERENCESIn spite of the similarities in their camera options,Avoweds combat still seems to be setting itself apart fromSkyrimin some unique ways. Experimenting with different kinds of spells and weapons and creating unique combos like freezing an enemy with an ice spell before using a sledgehammer to shatter them into pieces is going to be a key part of the combat in Avowed,which promises to lend the combat an interesting moment-to-moment pacing. Other mechanics such as seamless weapon switching as well as the inclusion of firearms could also spice up combat in interesting ways.AVOWED WILL BE MUCH SHORTERSkyrimis obviously an absolute giant of a game, with a main story of 30 hours but a play time that could easily extend well into the tripe digits, courtesy of its oceans of optional content.Avowed,on the other hand, is being designed as a way more contained and compact experience. Obsidian has said its going to be roughly the same in its and length asThe Outer Worlds,which means were looking at a game thatll be anywhere between 15 and 40 hours long, depending on how much of its side content you engage with.

Monster Hunter has always been one of Capcoms biggest money-making franchises. Ever since its debut over two decades ago, the action RPG franchise has enjoyed a meteoric rise in success and popularity, and though initially much of that was limited to a Japanese audience, with the seminalMonster Hunter World,the series turned into a worldwide sensation. Indeed, the 2018 title enjoys a stellar reputation, while also being the biggest ever commercial success in the entire history of Capcom, whileMonster Hunter Rise,which released in its aftermath, has also seen widespread success, both critical and commercial.Now, the series is ready to step forward into the limelight once again. Its next mainline entry,Monster Hunter Wilds,has been in the works for years, and ever since it was first showcased over a year ago, excitement surrounding it has continued to grow. Based on the reputation of the franchise alone, its easy to see how the game is likely going to be one of the biggest and most successful releases of the year (unless Capcom screws up in unexpected ways)- but looking beyond that and at the game itself, theres a bucketload of improvements and changes to be excited about.TheMonster Hunterformula is obviously an incredibly addictive one. Its been that way ever since the series inception, and has only improved with time, with improvements and refinements brought about the technological leap forward that wasMonster Hunter Worldbringing it to entirely new heights. The upcomingWilds, however, doesnt seem to be content with not fixing what aint broke. In the months leading up to its release, Capcom has spoken of a number of tweaks and changes, major and minor, that are promising to build on the series beloved formula in key ways.Take, for instance, the fact thatMonster Hunter Wildsis taking multiple steps to make the experience feel much more seamless. Travelling between your hub village and the games multiple open world maps will be entirely seamless, for starters. Meanwhile, the quest board in the central village will also no longer be the only way to pick up a new quest. Simply finding your quest target in the world will dynamically begin the mission. And once that mission is done, youll no longer have to return to the village either, with the campsites that you establish throughout the maps serving as places where you can replenish your supplies.Then there are the changes being made to the monsters themselves, who, of course, are always the highlights of anyMonster Hunterexperience. Specifically, Capcom says it is continuing to make improvements to the monsters AI. That means they will behave more realistically than ever before, and that the game will feature ecosystems that will be way more complex and reactive, with the constant push-and-pull of different species of herbivores and carnivores and the environments surrounding them creating an ever-shifting and dynamic world for players to navigate.Other major features are also promising to heighten that sense of dynamism and immersion. For instance,Monster Hunter Wildswill be putting a much greater emphasis on weather and extreme weather events, as was made perfectly clear by the games sandstorm-filled announcement trailer itself. That weather, of course, will not only affect your surroundings and how you move around, but also the behaviour of the monsters populating that area (something that will happen courtesy of the games new dynamic day/night system as well).Thats far from the extent of similarly promising improvements being made to theMonster Hunterformula withWilds, and based on everything shown so far, the end result may very well be yet another ingenious evolution for the beloved franchise. Of course, its worth acknowledging that the games beta did raise concerns about its technical condition, and whether itd be able to carry the weight of its ambitions at launch. Capcom has, however, assured that key improvements are being made to the game based on that very feedback, so the hope is that the company will have made enough polishing passes by launch.And of course, when Monster Hunter Wildsdoes launch not long from now, if it is as good as it is looking like its going to be, there should be little doubt in anyones mind that its going to be a major hit for Capcom. The series always tends to enjoy widespread acclaim and high scores, especially in recent years, and youd expect that to be the case once again. On the commercial side of things, meanwhile, its very, very likely that things will be just as good, if not even more so. As mentioned previously,Monster Hunter Worldis the bestselling Capcom game of all time with over 27 million units sold.Monster Hunter Rise,meanwhile, sits in second place, with 16 million sales. Their expansions,IceborneandSunbreak, have sold 14 million and close to 9 million units respectively.All of which is to say thatMonster Hunter,ever a big seller, has become even more of a guaranteed money maker for Capcom in recent years, and its very likely that the company will be expecting similarly rapturous success from its upcoming next instalment. In a year that is purportedly going to see the release ofGrand Theft Auto 6, and in all likelihood, a newMario Kartgame, it might be premature to say thatMonster Hunter Wildswill end the calendar as 2025s biggest seller. But even if it doesnt grab that crown, there should be absolutely no doubt in anyones mind that it will absolutely be one of the years biggest sellers.In fact, whenWildsopen beta went live in November, we saw ample evidence of just how much hunger there is out there for a newMonster Hunterexperience, with the beta seeing a peak of over 463,000 concurrent Steam players. The beta, of course, was free, but its easy to imagine just how massive of an audience the full game is going to attract across all platforms when it launches at the tail end of February. On top of that, if it eventually also ends up releasing for the Nintendo Switch 2 like leaks have claimed in the past, its going to rake in even more sales, and add yet more to its player numbers.Capcom has done a fantastic job of nurturing and expanding theMonster Hunterfranchise over the course of two decades, and withWorldseven years ago, the publisher firmly established the series as a juggernaut of the industry. Excellent post-launch support and the endlessly replayable nature of the game itself has kept players coming back to the 2018 classic in droves even now, years on from its release, and of course,Monster Hunter Risehas also contributed to the series growth. Now, however, with a newMonster Huntergame on the horizon, the excitement within the fanbase is palpable, and its easy to see why. After all, the major steps forward that the series has taken in series years have all proven thoroughly successful. IfWildsshould keep that trend going, were likely going to be in for yet another jewel in Capcoms dazzling crown.Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

The head of Bathynomus vaderi, a newly described species of giant isopod found in Southeast Asian waters Nguyen Thanh SonMove aside, lobstera newly described giant isopod from Vietnam is now a seafood delicacy, and it has a cool name to go along with this status: Bathynomus vaderi, in homage to Darth Vader. A team of scientists named the crustacean for the dark depths of the ocean it inhabits, as well as its head, which shares a similar shape with the Star Wars characters iconic helmet. The enormous critter was described in a study published in the journal ZooKeys this month.I am the biggest Star Wars fan in the team, as its my vintage. The first movie was in 1977, in my youth, and it was cool, study co-author Peter Ng, a carcinologist, or crustacean researcher, at the National University of Singapore, tells New Scientists James Woodford. But we all agree that the face of Bathynomus looks so much like Darth Vader that it just had to be named after the Sith Lord.Though the species is newly described by the scientific community, locals in Vietnam previously called it (and other similar creatures) b bin, Vietnamese for sea bugs. Bathynomus, however, are not even close to being bug-sized. The genus Bathynomus refers to a group of giant isopodsodd-looking crustaceans with seven pairs of legsthat can grow approximately one foot long.Instead of running away at the sight of these behemoths, people in Vietnam have recently begun enjoying sea bugs as a seafood delicacy, since about 2017, per the paper. The crustaceans are caught from deep waters via trawling, then transported alive in ice boxes to restaurants for sale. Once treated as accidental bycatch when fishing, the animalsdriven in part by media exposureare now considered by some to rival the culinary fineness of lobster, according to a statement.In 2022, the researchers acquired four giant isopods from fishmongers in the Vietnamese city of Quy Nhn. Through comparisons to other isopods and analysis of DNA, they realized they were dealing with a species that had never been officially described. Study co-author Conni Sidabalok examinesBathynomus vaderiat Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, Singapore. Rene OngAs if Bathynomus werent big enough in general, Bathynomus vaderi are specifically supergiant isopods that can reach 12.8 inches in length and weigh more than 2.2 pounds. Unlike other supergiants, however, a segment of Bathynomus vaderis back section narrows and curves backward in a unique way.Currently, the species is only known to live near the Spratly Islands, but the researchers suggest it probably also inhabits other regions of the South China Sea.Some experts, however, are raising conservation concerns for these enormous crustaceans: Bathynomus notoriously produce a small number of eggs, which makes them vulnerable to threats such as overfishing, study co-author Conni Sidabalok, a researcher with the National Research and Innovation Agency in Indonesia, tells CNNs Julianna Bragg.These (creatures) dont grow very fast, and if they become a very unusual and sought-after item, we may eat them out of existence, says Lanna Cheng, a marine biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, to CNN.The scale of harvesting is a matter for concern. Its a challenge for all deep-sea species we fish, Sidabalok tells New Scientist. We know so little about their biology, so we need more studies to evaluate how best to conserve and manage this resource.The researchers hope their study serves as a call to further investigate deep-sea biodiversity in the face of encroaching human activities like industrial fishing and offshore drilling. According to the statement, that a species as large as this could have stayed hidden for so long reminds us just how much work we still need to do to find out what lives in Southeast Asian waters.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Animals, Cooking, Food, Oceans, Weird Animals