By AJ Dellinger Published February 14, 2025 | Comments (43) | Reddit mobile app displayed on a smartphone Ahmet Serdar Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images Some subreddits will require you to pay to see content. Reddit, a platform founded in part on the premise of openly and widely sharing information, is ready to put up some paywalls. In a video Ask Me Anything (AMA) session hosted by CEO Steve Huffman following the companys quarterly earnings report (which went poorly), the founder and exec said Reddit is actively testing ways to make some content require payment to access and plans to roll out a paid subreddit feature later this year. Huffman described the paid content model as a work in progress but mentioned it would be one of the new, key features that the company intends to introduce in 2025. It marks a continuation of Huffmans focus on requiring payment to access certain areas on Reddit. Last year, the CEO said the company was looking into building a new type of subreddit that would include exclusive content or private areas hidden behind a paywall. Reddit has been scraping up as many monetization efforts as possible since going public, as the company has sought to continue producing returns for its shareholdersuser experience be damned. A constant complaint of the Reddit userbase is the sheer number of ads they are exposed to, particularly on the platforms first-party mobile app. Its also notably entered licensing agreements with both Google and OpenAI, allowing the companies to use Reddit content to train AI models.And paid subreddits wouldnt necessarily be the first time that Reddit has gotten into the paid premium feature business. The company has sold a subscription called Reddit Gold since 2010, which offers users features including an ad-free scrolling experience. Having gold also grants access to the r/Lounge subreddit, which can only be seen by Gold subscribers. But Gold has never been a huge revenue generator for Reddit. There are a lot of complications that Reddit likely needs to think through for this paid subreddit experience, too. First and foremost is the simple fact that most of Reddits content is aggregation. The company has certainly invested in trying to get more original content on the platform, including the Reddit Contributor Program that pays users for contributions across the site based on how much karma they accrue. Then theres the fact that paid subreddits may require a different model for moderation, as youd imagine it would be difficult to ask volunteer moderators to watch over content that is generating money they wont get their hands on.Reddit might have some room to eat into Patreons model, allowing creators to put certain content behind paywalls. Lots of creators have their own subreddits already meant to facilitate community conversation in a way that comments on Patreon posts dont totally allow for. So perhaps theres some room for Reddit to sneak into that space.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By Thomas Maxwell Published February 7, 2025 By Matthew Gault Published February 6, 2025 By AJ Dellinger Published January 27, 2025 By Matthew Gault Published January 23, 2025 By AJ Dellinger Published January 22, 2025 By Thomas Maxwell Published January 15, 2025

Answers for today's NYT Mini Crossword are just ahead.New York TimesIn case you missed Fridays NYT Mini, you can find the answers here:Wondering what pictures might employ the flip camera button? Not sure what an admission of ineptitude might be? Dont worry, because I'm here to help you with the answers for today's The NYT Mini is a quick and dirty version of the newspaper's larger and long-running crossword. Most days, there are between three and five clues in each direction on a five by five grid, but the puzzles are sometimes larger, especially on Saturdays.Unlike its larger sibling, the NYT Mini crossword is free to play on the NYT Games app. However, youll need an NYT Games subscription to access previous puzzles in the archives.MORE FOR YOUTo help you avoid getting stuck and having to reveal missing letters, here are the NYT Mini Crossword answers for Saturday, February 15 (spoilers lie ahead, of course):NYT Mini Crossword Clues And AnswersNYT Mini Across Answers1 Across: Governing body of world soccer FIFA5 Across: "___ is a world within itself, with a language we all understand" (Stevie Wonder lyric) MUSIC6 Across: Opposite of rough GENTLE7 Across: Pictures that employ the "flip camera" button SELFIES8 Across: Away from the ocean INLAND9 Across: Earthenware pot CROCK10 Across: Clark ___ a.k.a. Superman KENTNYT Mini Down Answers1 Down: Cool bit of trivia FUN FACT2 Down: Admission of ineptitude I STINK3 Down: Smoothed, as fingernails FILED4 Down: AAAA, in a deck ACES5 Down: Pittsburghs Carnegie ___ University MELLON6 Down: Rom-com or thriller GENRE7 Down: "Totally awesome!" SICKCompleted New York Times Mini crossword for Saturday, February 15New York TimesIt took me 1:07 to complete today's NYT Mini.Im very happy with that time for a Saturday crossword! I got most of the answers on my first pass of the Across clues (FIFA, GENTLE, SELFIES, INLAND and KENT), which made things much easier on the Down side. I STINK was the only one I didnt get there, so by the time I got back to the Across clues, it was easy enough to fill in the blanks.Make sure to follow my blog for more coverage of the NYT Mini and other word games, as well as video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Also, follow me on Bluesky! Its fun there.

Uber filed suit against its food delivery rival DoorDash on Friday, seeking unspecified damages.Uber says DoorDash has cost Uber millions of dollars in revenue through anti-competitive practices.A DoorDash spokesperson told Business Insider that Uber's claims are meritless.Uber Technologies, Inc. on Friday filed suit against its food delivery rival, DoorDash, Inc., accusing DoorDash of anti-competitive business practices that Uber says inflate costs for both restaurants and customers.In the complaint, Uber alleges that DoorDash, the largest provider of restaurant delivery services in the United States, has "devised and is engaged in an unlawful scheme to stifle competition with Uber Eats," making it difficult and expensive for restaurants to partner with more than one delivery service and allowing the delivery giant to charge customers higher fees for "lower-quality service.""Restaurants simply cannot afford to stand up to DoorDash, and find themselves powerless to choose the service or services that are best for their businesses in the market for first-party delivery," the complaint, reviewed by Business Insider, reads. "Uber's restaurant-customersThe complaint says DoorDash's alleged anti-competitive behavior has cost Uber millions in terminated and potential revenue streams. The suit seeks unspecified damages and aims to force DoorDash to change its business practices."Uber's case has no merit," a DoorDash spokesperson told Business Insider. "Their claims are unfounded and based on their inability to offer merchants, consumers, or couriers a quality alternative."As of November, data firm Earnest Analytics reports that DoorDash controls 62.7% of the delivery market nationally, followed by UberEats, which holds 25%, and Grubhub with 6.2%. A 2024 report of mystery shopper data from Intouch Insight, which collected experiences from 300 delivery orders from the three main delivery platforms, found DoorDash leads in customer satisfaction, with the app offering more promotions, delivering to the right location, and delivering the correct food more often than its other major competitors.The report found that DoorDash also dramatically outperformed its competitors in delivery time, with an average wait of 26 minutes and 24 seconds. Grubhub's average delivery time was 35 minutes and 49 seconds, while Uber Eats was 38 minutes and 4 seconds, per Intouch Insight.While demand for third-party delivery services remains high DoorDash reported an 18% rise in orders year over year in its third quarter of 2024, with revenue growing 25% to $2.7 billion, BI previously reported criticism over the fees charged by the apps isn't new. Customers may be charged as much as twice the cost of their meal for ordering using a delivery app compared to menu prices, and some restaurant owners find the apps' fees cut into their margins too much to be sustainable, BI previously reported."We've increasingly heard complaints from restaurants that DoorDash's tactics are limiting that freedom and punishing them for seeking better options," Sarfraz Maredia, head of the Americas for delivery at Uber, said in a statement to Business Insider. "We hope this filing puts an end to those unfair practices so that restaurants can choose what's best for them without fear of penalty or retribution."

Suchir Balaji, an ex-OpenAI researcher who raised concerns about his employer, died in November.His parents have demanded a thorough investigation into his death.An autopsy report said authorities found a gun registered in Balaji's name.San Francisco authorities said a case involving the death of a former OpenAI researcher in November is "closed," citing, among other evidence, a self-inflicted gunshot wound from a pistol registered to the victim, documents shared with Business Insider show.Suchir Balaji, an ex-OpenAI employee who last year raised concerns about copyright issues regarding his former employer, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26. He was 26 years old.Local authorities at the time ruled Balaji's cause of death as an apparent suicide with no evidence of foul play.Balaji's mother, Poornima Ramarao, previously told BI that the family would seek a private autopsy. Attorneys representing Balaji's parents also filed a petition against the city and county of San Francisco in January, demanding the immediate release of public records related to their son's case.In a joint letter to the family attorneysIn the police's investigative findings, the letter said, a firearm was found underneath Balaji's leg."The pistol found at the scene was purchased and registered to Mr. Balaji in January 2024,"Gun residue particles were found on Balaji's right and left hand, the autopsy report reads. The report said Balaji sustained "a severe firearm injury.""There were no signs of unrelated injuries or bruising to Mr. Balaji," authorities wrote.Authorities said in the letter to the Balaji family's attorneys that they had seen the preliminary report from the independent autopsy the family sought and that the findings were "consistent" with the medical examiner's office's findings, including the entrance and trajectory of the bullet."The SFPD found no evidence or information to establish that Mr. Balaji died of means other than a suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head," the letter from SFPD and medical examiner's office said. "If you learn of any new information or evidence, please provide it to SFPD. SFPD considers this case closed and will only reopen the criminal investigation if there is a basis for a chargeable offense and the statute of limitations has not expired."Kevin Rooney, an attorney representing Balaji's parents, told BI the family had received the letter and the autopsy report. He did not have further comment.Balaji was an OpenAI researcher for four years, helping the AI startup gather data for its GPT-4 model. A former colleague told BI in an interview that Balaji was instrumental in developing ChatGPT's early predecessor."He was one of the true geniuses at OpenAI," Tarun Gogineni, a research scientist at OpenAI, said.In October, just a few months after Balaji left the company, The New York Times published an interview in which Balaji accused his former employer of violating copyright law.OpenAI is involved in several other legal battles concerning copyright violations. On November 18, Balaji was named in the Times' lawsuit as a custodian who could provide supporting legal documents for the case.An OpenAI spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.Balaji's mother, Ramarao, previously told BI she wasn't satisfied with the police investigation. To raise awareness about her son's case, she organized public vigils and made multiple media appearances.Ramarao wrote in a post on X on Friday afternoon that she wanted a "transparent investigation."A spokesperson for the medical examiner's office did not address Ramarao's social media post when responding to BI's request for comment. An SFPD spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

PS5 and Sony is now unstoppable and thats bad for everyone Readers FeatureGameCentralPublished February 15, 2025 1:30am Does Sony deserve its success? (Sony Interactive Entertainment)A reader and lifelong PlayStation fan is upset to hear that Sony has had such a successful financial year, despite releasing so few games.Ive been a PlayStation fan ever since there was such a thing. Ive owned a few different Nintendo machines, as my secondary consoles, but Ive always been PlayStation #1 in my thinking and Xbox has given me very little reason to regret that. Maybe I felt I was missing out a bit in the Xbox 360 era, but I was younger then and console warrior antics kept me on PlayStation 3 anyway.Nowadays, I like to think Im less zealous in my opinions and would happily get an Xbox if there was sufficient reason to do so, but I dont think Im being too partisan when I say there is not. What would have tempted me to pay hundreds for an Xbox One? Sunset Overdrive and Gears 5? Or is it surprising I wasnt opening my wallet for an Xbox Series X and the chance to play Halo Infinite and Starfield?These might be good games, but they are absolutely not system sellers. So, despite all Microsofts talk of losing the wrong generation and people being stuck in the PlayStation ecosystem the ultimate problem is, and always has been, that the Xbox does not have enough good exclusives.That problem is irrelevant now though. Xbox has gone third party and soon or later there will be no exclusives, because therell all be on PlayStation 5 as well. But as a PlayStation fan Im not going to gloat about that. (Apart from anything I still dont really care, because there still arent any Xbox published games I want, but that is also irrelevant to the point Im making.)Im not going to gloat about it because I believe that Microsofts fall is the explanation for why Sony has been acting so lazy the last two years. Despite a perfectly normal start to the generation (which was impressive in itself, given the pandemic) they suddenly put the brakes on and stopped announcing games and started going on about live service titles instead which they also didnt release in the numbers they said.We all know how the whole live service thing has worked out but so far that failure doesnt seem to have changed anything at Sony. They had a State of Play on Wednesday that lasted 50 minutes and there was only one new first party game in it. Which wont be out till 2026.Although that wasnt great news what bothered me most this week was that PlayStation 5 sales were up over Christmas, despite the fact that Sony didnt have any big exclusives and had basically done nothing to deserve it. There was no clever marketing, no new features it wasnt even a busy time for third party releases, in fact it was one of the worst that I can remember in a long time.So really, Sony did nothing to deserve that success. They made no effort and they released no games and yet they were more successful than the previous year when they had done more. So, what lesson do we think theyre going to learn from that?Its obvious to me why they did so well. If Xbox console sales are down, and the format is in trouble, then it seems obvious that a lot of people would be jumping ship to Sony. Especially as this is about the time in a generation when fans think about switching formats, to try out the exclusives, or getting a second console.Everything worked in Sonys favour and yet they really had nothing to do with their own success. The situation now is that they are really the only choice of console. Nobodys buying an Xbox Series X/S anymore and no matter how big the Nintendo Switch 2 is itll never be able to run enough third party games to be a primary console for most people.Sony isnt doing well because its innovating or putting out great games, or even just great marketing, its winning because its basically the only choice. And that is not good for anyone (including them, Id argue, not that theyll care at the moment).More TrendingThe market leader is now unstoppable and it got that way by doing as little as possible and just letting others make mistakes. Not exactly inspiring stuff, is it? Maybe theyll mess up with the PlayStation 6, or the Switch 2 will be bigger than I expect, but at the moment weve never been closer to a one format future and, as a PlayStation fan, Im not happy about it at all.By reader Trancer The only game in town? (Sony)The readers features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@metro.co.uk or use our Submit Stuff page and you wont need to send an email.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

With the release of Blumhouses and Atomic Monsters The Monkey, weve thinking about what other toys might be ripe for the haunting horror flick adaptation. From M3GAN to Chucky, theres certainly no dearth of killer doll movies out there already, but the match between Osgood Perkins and The Monkey gave Stephen King and giddy horror gore hounds something to laugh about this week with the filmmakers gallows humor driving a slick bloody good time. So what other toys deserve the horror treatment? Theres definitely a number of childhood toys to pair the genre with, and while some have specific IP that would never go for a horror films use,, theres plenty of creative ways around itAnnabelle, for another example in that killer doll genre, was inspired by stories of a real haunted Raggedy Ann doll. So heres five more toys that we think could make it work to frightful effect on the big. The Slime Cult Michaels Kids these days are big on slime. Its odd but from mass marketed slime products to DIY ones, the goop has em good. So what better way to take that trend and give a spooky underpinning? Its perfect for a Blob send up, or a slime cult that controls kids via ASMR videos. The Substances Coralie Fargeat has said she doesnt have plans for a sequel, but she would be the perfect candidate to direct a gross and fun parable for parents who let their kids get consumed by the slime in a similar vein. Furby Getty Images The excellent Mitchells vs The Machines already gave us a great bit with violent creepy Furbies, so why not a whole movie? Honestly someone like Taika Waititi should go ham on a Furby horror filmtheyre creepy and kooky so its right up his alley. Plus who didnt have a Furby that somehow lived for ages and wouldnt die? I shudder thinking about the random luggage filled with old toys I accidentally hit while rummaging for Christmas decor last year, which unleashed the Furby sounds going off from within randomly throughout the day and night. We couldnt figure out how to get the hideous bleating to stop so we donated it. Someone elses problem, it is what it is, but also? Killer premise for a movie. Tickle Me Elmo Joe Raedle (Getty Images) Okay, so obviously Sesame Street would never let Elmo be the center of a horror film. However, there was a really freaky true story of a kid who had one that alleged that it not only talked to him, but according to the Tampa Bay Times, also was found by his mother purportedly urging the child to kill in a sing-song voice. You wouldnt need the licenseyou could just make it a generic, perhaps even red and fuzzy, plush talking toy of a similar design and scope (tickle me Elmo might be iconic, but its far from the only toy of its kind). This could be adapted into a fuzzy puppet toy being possession film, with a ghost who can speak to its child through the voice box. Whod be game for a kids darkly whimsical and suspenseful ghost story? Were thinking I Saw the TV Glows Jane Schoenbrun.Cabbage Patch Kids Photo: Wallocha/ullstein bild (Getty Images) Itd be easy to riff on dolls like the Cabbage Patch Kids or American Girl, these idealized versions of perfect little girlsleaning a bit more cutesy than something like M3GAN, which played on similar tropes. Were thinking families in mourning have their kids consciousness uploaded into dolls to help them cope, but they go haywire. In the real life there were reports that the Snacktime Kids Edition of the Cabbage Patch dolls were chomping on kids, and their hair could get caught in the mechanism. Zoe Kravitz showed she could handle a thriller vibe in Blink Twiceitd be fun to see her try a take on the popular 90s dolls she may have grown up with. Huggy Wuggy Mob Entertainment This is a toy that kids clearly know is evil, but they still want it anyways. Thats already weird, but it only gets weirder, because these horrifyingly ugly-looking fuzzy monsters have spread like wildefire, and can be found all over, whether its the official version or in myriad knockoffs of various colors at swap meets and markets, plastered with that sharp, toothy smile. Although Huggy Wuggy started off as a character in the indie horror video game in Poppys Playtimealready set to get the film adaptation treatment from Legendarythe design is just too good to not include, or imagine a standalone idea for. Maybe one that goes meta and leans into the toys omnipresent, viral popularity in our own world, even among kids whove never heard of Poppys Playtime, let alone played it. Hypnotic and viral? Nope. Dont like that. We dont know whos been tapped for thePoppys Playtime movie yet, but as for our picks here? Trick r TreatsMichael Doughetry would be great.The Monkeyhits theaters next week on February 21some variation of all these toys above, meanwhile, are available on toy shelves everywhere should you dare. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, whats next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

Nature, Published online: 12 February 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00444-1Although still under construction, the sea-floor KM3NeT detector spotted a neutrino 20 times more powerful than any previously detected.

Nature, Published online: 12 February 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08436-3The altermagnetic order in CrSb films can be manipulated via crystal symmetry; the reconstructed altermagnetic order generates a room-temperature spontaneous anomalous Hall effect and designable switching modes as field-assisted and field-free modes.

Feb. 15, 2025: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend.

Made these years ago under the name ArcThePaladin its on Artstation, I miss 3D modelling so im just sharing me remminiscing on these, I'm a big adventure time fan, my first real tackle at UV mapping and procedural textures, god the node trees were all over the place on these. submitted by /u/Chaos_The_Slime [link] [comments]