Asus Zenfone 12 UltraEwan SpenceWhile some manufacturers offer phones with varying sizes, chipsets, and performance, Asus has a different approach. Two phones for two markets, both alike in more ways than one. The gaming-focused ROG Phone 9 Pro was released in November 2024. Its now joined by the consumer-focused Zenfone 12 Ultra. How successful is Asus' almost-twins strategy?The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra and the Asus ROG 9 ProIf you are looking for the ultimate performance in today's smartphones, it's hard to look beyond the various gaming smartphones. Typically tuned to deliver the highest performance using the least amount of power, fast refreshing displays and incredible touchscreen accuracy; and to do all this while keeping the handset as cool as possible, they represent peak mobile performance.Asus Zenfone 12 UltraEwan SpenceAsus' Republic of Gamers brand has offered gaming smartphones for many years now, the ROG Phone 9 Pro Phone is this year's offering. At the time, I wrote that some of the design choices moved the ROG Phone 9 Pro away from being a pure gaming phone and more towards something that could have a dual purpose and serve as a regular yet high-end flagship.Now, we have the other side of the coin. Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra is a your high-end flagship that will happily run the top-of-the-line Android games with little fuss. Two unique phones taking on the market as one.MORE FOR YOUThe Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra Hardware Feels FamiliarThe Aus Zenfone 12 Ultra and the ROG Phone 9 Pro share many of their specifications. The generous 16 GB of RAM carries over, as does 512 GB of storage. The gaming roots' demand for no-lag audio means that the rarely spotted 3.5 mm headphone jack can be found on the Zenfone and the ROG.Asus Zenfone 12 UltraEwan SpenceBoth come with Qualcomm's latest flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This is pretty much de rigeur for premium handsets, although the pairing with substantial memory and storage will help deliver the speed consumers want.It's not a complete 1 to 1 relationship - the Airtrigger shoulder buttons used by gamers are not present on the top edge of the ZenFone 12 Ultra. Neither is the second USB port used by the ROG 9 to support USB accessories when a first- or third-party controller is connected to the gaming phone.Both come with a fast refresh display, but the ROG gets a bit more capability with 185 Hz, while the Zenfone goes up to 144 Hz. Both phones come with the same core camera lenses; a 50-megapixel main camera, a 32-megapixel telephoto, and a 13-megapixel ultrawide. Battery-wise the Zenfone 12 Ultra is actually the smaller battery at 5,500 mAh compared to 5,800 mAh on the ROG. I suspect this is to keep the weight down on the Zenfone 12, given it is 7g lighter while being only fractionally wider.Asus Zenfone 12 UltraEwan SpenceWhile there are minor changes, they are more at the component level and can be tweaked nearer the end of the design process. Fundamentally, these two phones have so much in common that they look like the same base machine before customisation.Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra's Clean SoftwareThe difference comes in software, and that difference is mainly up to the end user.Unlike some manufacturers, Asus has chosen to allow extensive user interface customisation. It can be overwhelming at first dealing with all of the options and tweaks; you'll experiment with a setting, return to the home screen to see the impact, and return to the customisation dialog to get things just right. When you finish this UI loop, you have a phone set up for your tastes. Contrast that with iOS, where the iPhone will struggle to break free of Apple's way of interfacing with your phone.It won't come as a surprise that the app launcher that turns the ROG Phone into a gaming platform isn't here. Beyond that, Asus' minimal approach to software is on show, with just Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram pre-loaded onto the handset.Asus Zenfone 12 UltraEwan SpenceWhat has been added to the mix, and this won't come as a surprise to anyone watching any smartphone ecosystem, is AI. You have the tools you need to edit photos (including Magic Fill and Unblur), plus AI panning and Portrait Video to improve your captured video. You also have the text tools seen in other handsets, with article and document summaries sitting alongside transcription and translation on calls.Following in the footsteps of last years Zenfone 11 Ultra, Asus implementation of Android remains one of the cleanest implementations on the commercial market.Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra's Android FlawSamsungs Galaxy range of phones, Googles Pixel phones and Apples iPhones all come in varying sizes and price points. Asus has taken another direction where a common core is developed and subtle changes in the components and the software mark out differences between two extremes of the spectrum. On one side is gaming, and on the other side is day-to-day. Both phones can accomplish what the other one does, but both have their own speciality.By keeping the base, the two phones have little differentiation between them. It's not a huge jump to argue that they are essentially the same phone smartly targeted at different parts of a common market. And while it's apparent to those of us who have an intense eye on the smartphone market, I'm not so sure if "it's the same phone" will have a significant impact on the general consumers. Asus has a gaming phone and a regular phone, so which one interests you? Consumers get the choice, while Asus reaps the benefits of a "2 for 1" approach.The Zenfone 12 Ultra is a competent premium smartphone that hits all the right notes in terms of hardware, matching and in some cases exceeding the competition. Yet the biggest flaw is not how close it is to the ROG Phone 9 Pro. Nor is it the higher than average price. The biggest flaw is Asus' commitment to just two years of Android updates. When the competition is offering seven years, there's no sense of longevity for those who buy either of 2025's Asus handsets.Disclaimer: Asus provided an Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra for evaluaton purposes.

Flexed biceps icon. Hand gesture emoji illustrationgettySam Sulek is lifting weights, lifting spirits and lifting trophies. The YouTuber has won his debut bodybuilding show, securing the 2025 NPC Open Legends title in the Classic Physique class.Suleks triumph marks the first time he stepped on stage something many in the YouTube bodybuilding community have been passionately discussing and anticipating for years.The win grants him an entry in the 2025 Arnold Amateur Classic event, which Sulek has already set his sights on, according to an Instagram story.On his journey to the NPC Open Legends crown, Sulek documented his strenuous training sessions, strict diet and draining cut in a series of daily vlogs his fans have come to know as the winter shredathon.Sam Sulek And YouTubes Bodybuilding EcosystemSulek has firmly established himself as a staple in YouTubes fitness and bodybuilding creator economy.The bodybuilder is a mythical-like creature in this corner of YouTube, attracting commentary from fellow creators like Jeff Nippard, MorePlatesMoreDates, Renaissance Periodization and even Joe Rogan. Hes also inspired thousands of memes across Reddit, Instagram and TikTok.Since launching his channel in 2016, Sulek has amassed an audience of nearly 4 million subscribers on the platform, clocking over 252 million views in the process.YouTube has a big bodybuilding ecosystem, with now-retired six-time Mr. Olympia champion Chris Bumstead boasting a following of over 4.1 million subscribers on the platform.MORE FOR YOUWhile Bumstead leveraged his success on the podium to build a viewership, Sulek is a different breed of bodybuilder.Hell probably disagree with this description, but Ive always seen him as someone who started as a YouTuber and grew into a bodybuilder.Now hes a certified bodybuilding champion. Freaky stuff, Sam. Good luck at the Arnold Classic YouTube is proud of you.

(To receive weekly emails of conversations with the worlds top CEOs and decisionmakers, click here.)Matt Garman took the helm at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of the U.S. tech giant, in June, but he joined the business around 19 years ago as an intern. He went on to become AWSs first product manager and helped to build and launch many of its core services, before eventually becoming the CEO last year.Like many other tech companies, AWS, which is Amazons most profitable unit, is betting big on AI. In April 2023, the company launched Amazon Bedrock, which gives cloud customers access to foundation models built by AI companies including Anthropic and Mistral. At its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas in December, the AWS made a series of announcements, including a new generation of foundation AI models, called Nova. It also said that its building one of the worlds most powerful AI supercomputers with Anthropic, which it has a strategic partnership with, using a giant cluster of AWSs Trainium 2 training chips. TIME spoke with Garman a few days after the re:Invent conference, about his AI ambitions, how hes thinking about ensuring the technology is safe, and how the company is balancing its energy needs with its emissions targets.This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.When you took over at AWS in June, there was a perception that Amazon had fallen behind somewhat in the AI race. What have your strategic priorities been for the business over the past few months?We've had a long history of doing AI inside of AWS, and in fact, most of the most popular AI services that folks use, like SageMaker, for the last decade have all been built on AWS. With generative AI we started to really lean in, and particularly when ChatGPT came out, I think everybody was excited about that, and it sparked everyone's imagination. We [had] been working on generative AI, actually, for a little while before that. And our belief at the time, and it still remains now, was that that AI was going to be a transformational technology for every single industry and workflow and user experience that's out there. And because of who our customer base is, our strategy was always to build a robust, secure, performance featureful platform that people could really integrate into their actual businesses. And so we didn't rush really quickly to throw a chatbot up on our website. We really wanted to help people build a platform that could deeply integrate into their data, that would protect their data. That's their IP, and it's super important for them, so [we] had security front of mind, and gave you choice across a whole bunch of models, gave you capabilities across a whole bunch of things, and really helped you build into your application and figure out how you could actually get inference and really leverage this technology on an ongoing basis as a key part of what you do in your enterprise. And so that's what we've been building for the last couple of years. In the last year we started to see people realize that that is what they wanted to [do] and as companies started moving from launching a hundred proof of concepts to really wanting to move to production. They realized that the platform is what they needed. They had to be able to leverage their data. They wanted to customize models. They wanted to use a bunch of different models. They wanted to have guardrails. They needed to integrate with their own enterprise data sources, a lot of which lived on AWS, and so their applications were AWS. We took that long-term view of: get the right build, the right platform, with the right security controls and the right capabilities, so that enterprises could build for the long term, as opposed to [trying to] get something out quickly. And so we're willing to accept the perception that people thought we were behind, because we had the conviction that we were building the right thing. And I think our customers largely agree.You're offering $1 billion worth in cloud credits, in addition to millions previously, for startups. Do you see that opening up opportunities for closer tie-ups at an earlier stage with the next Anthropic or OpenAI?Yeah, we've long invested in startups. It's one of the core customer bases that AWS has built our business on. We view startups as important to the success of AWS. They give us a lot of great insight. They love using cutting-edge technologies. They give us feedback on how we can improve our products. And frankly, they're the enterprises of tomorrow, so we want them to start building on AWS. And so from the very earliest days of AWS, startups have been critically important to us, and that's just doubling down on our commitment to them to help them get going. We recognize that as a startup, getting some help early on, before you get your business going, can make a huge difference. That's one of the things that we think helps us build that positive flywheel with that customer base. So we're super excited about continuing to work deeply with startups, and that commitment is part of that.You're also building one of the largest AI supercomputers in the world, with the Trainium 2 chips. Is building the hardware and infrastructure for AI development at the center of your AI strategy?Its a core part of it, for sure. We have this idea that across all of our AWS businesses, that choice is incredibly important for our customers. We want them to be able to choose from the very best technology, whether it comes from us or from third parties. Customers can pick the absolute best product for their application and for their use case and for what they're looking for from a cost performance trade-off. And so, on the AI side, we want to provide that same amount of choice. Building Tranium 2, which is our our second generation of high-performance AI chip, we think that's going to provide choice. Nvidia is an incredibly important partner of ours. Today, the vast majority of AI workloads run on Nvidia technology, and we expect that to continue for a very long time. They make great products, and the team executes really well. And we're really excited about the choice that Trainium 2 brings. Cost is one of the things that a lot of people worry about when they think about some of these AI workloads, and we think that Trainium 2 can help lower the cost for a lot of customers. And so we're really excited about that, both for AI companies who are looking to train these massive clusters, [for example] Anthropic is going to be training their next generation, industry-leading model on Trainium 2We're building a giant cluster, it's five times the size of their last clusterbut then the broad swath of folks that are doing inference or using Bedrock or making smaller clusters, I think there's a good opportunity for customers to lower costs with Trainium.Those clusters were 30% to 40% cheaper in comparison to Nvidia GPU clusters. What technical innovations are enabling these cost savings?Number one is that the team has done a fantastic job and produced a really good chip that performs really well. And so from an absolute basis, it gives better performance for some workloads. It's very workload dependent, but even Apple [says] in early testing, they see up to 50% price performance benefit. That's massive, if you can really get 30%, 40%, even 50% gains. And some of that is pricing, where we focused on building a chip that we think we can really materially lower the cost to produce for customers. But also then increasing performancethe team has built some innovations, where we see bottlenecks in AI training and inference, that we've built into the chips to improve particular function performance, etc. There are probably hundreds of thousands of things that go into delivering that type of performance, but we're quite excited about it and we're invested long term in the Trainium line.The company recently announced the Nova foundation model. Is that aimed at competing directly with the likes of GPT-4 and Gemini?Yes. We think it's important to have choice in the realm of these foundational models. Is it a direct competitor? We do think that we can deliver differentiated capabilities and performance. I think that this is such a big opportunity, and has such a material opportunity to change so many different workloads. These really large foundational modelsI think there'll be half a dozen to a dozen of them, probably less than 10. And I think they'll each be good at different things. [With] our Nova models, we focused on: how do we deliver a really low latency [and] great price performance? They're actually quite good at doing RAG [Retrieval-Augmented Generation] and agentic workflows. There's some other models that are better at other things today too. We'll keep pushing on it. I think there's room for a number of them, but we're very excited about the models and the customer reception has been really good.How does your partnership with Anthropic fit into this strategy?I think they have one of the strongest AI teams in the world. They have the leading model in the world right now. I think most people consider Sonnet to be the top model for reasoning and for coding and for a lot of other things as well. We get a lot of great feedback from customers on them. So we love that partnership, and we learn a lot from them too, as they build their models on top of Trainium, so there's a nice flywheel benefit where we get to learn from them, building on top of us. Our customers get to take advantage of leveraging their models inside of Bedrock, and we can grow the business together.How are you thinking about ensuring safety and responsibility in the development of AI?It's super important. And it goes up and down the stack. One of the reasons why customers are excited about models from us, in addition to them being very performant, is that we care a ton about safety. And so there's a couple of things. One is, you have to start from the beginning when you're building the models, you think about, how do you have as many controls in there as possible? How do you have safe development to the models? And then I think you need belt and suspenders in this space, because you can, of course, make models say things that you can then say oh, look what they said. Practically speaking our customers are trying to integrate these into their applications. And different from being able to produce a recipe for a bomb or something, which we definitely want to have security controls around, safety and control models actually extends specific to very use cases. If you're building an insurance application, you don't want your application to give out healthcare advice, whereas, if you're building healthcare one, you may. So we give a lot of controls to the customers so that they can build guardrails around the responses for models to really help guide how they want models to answer those questions. We launched a number of enhancements at re:Invent including what we call automated reasoning checks, which actually can give you a mathematical proof for if we can be 100% sure that an answer coming back is correct, based on the corpus of data that you have fed into the model. Eliminating hallucinations for a subset of answers is also super important. What's unsafe in the context of a customer's application can vary pretty widely, and so we try to give some really good controls for customers to be able to define that, because it's going to depend on the use cases. Energy requirements are a huge challenge for this business. Amazon is committed to a net zero emissions target by 2040 and you reported some progress there. How are you planning to continue reducing emissions while investing in large-scale infrastructure for AI?Number one is you just have to have that long term view as to how we ensure that the world has enough carbon-zero power. We've been the single biggest purchaser of renewable energy deals, new energy deals to the grid, so commissioning new solarsolar farms, or wind farms, etc. We've been the biggest corporate purchaser each of the last five years, and will continue to do that. Even on that path, that may not be fast enough, and so we've actually started investing in nuclear. I do think that that's an important component. It'll be part of that portfolio. It can be both large scale nuclear plants as well as, we've invested in and we're very bullish about small modular reactor technology, which is probably six or seven years out from really being in mass production. But we're optimistic that that can be another solve as part of that portfolio as well. On the path to carbon zero across the whole business, there's a lot of invention that's still going to need to happen. And I wont sit here and tell you we know all of the answers of how you're going to have carbon-zero shipping across oceans and airplanes for the retail side of it. And there's a whole bunch of challenges that the world has to go after, but that's part of why we made that commitment. We're putting together plans with with milestones along the way, because it's an incredibly important target for us. There's a lot of work to do but we're committed to doing it.And as part of that nuclear piece, you're supporting the development of these nuclear energy projects. What are you doing to ensure that the projects are safe in the communities where they're deployed?Look, I actually think one of the worst things for the environment was the mistakes the nuclear industry made back in the 50s, because it made everyone feel like technology wasn't that safe, which it may not have been way back then, but, it's been 70 years, and technology has evolved, and it is actually an incredibly safe, secure technology now. And so a lot of these things are actually fully self-contained and there is no risk of big meltdown or those kind of events that happened before. It's a super safe technology that has been well-tested and has been in production across the world safely for multiple decades now. There's still some fear, I think, from people, but, actually, increasingly, many geographies are realizing it's a quite safe technology.What do you want to see in terms of policy from the new presidential administration?We consider the U.S. government to be one of our most important customers that we support up and down the board and will continue to do so. So we're very excited, and we know many of those folks and are excited to continue to work on that mission together, because we do view it as a mission. It's both a good business for us, but it's also an ability to help our country move faster, to control costs, to be more agile. And I think it's super important, as you think about where the world is going, for our government to have access to the latest technologies. I do think AI and technology is increasingly becoming an incredibly important part of our national defense, probably as much so as guns and other things like that, and so we take that super seriously, and we're excited to work with the administration. I'm optimistic that President Trump and his administration can help us loosen some of the restrictions on helping build data centers faster. I'm hopeful that they can help us cut through some of that bureaucratic red tape and move faster. I think that'll be important, particularly as we want to maintain the AI lead for the U.S. ahead of China and others.What have you learned about leadership over the course of your career?We're fortunate at Amazon to be able to attract some of the most talented, most driven leaders and employees in the world, and I've been fortunate enough to get to work with some of those folks [and] to try to clear barriers for them so that they can go deliver outstanding results for our customers. I think if we have a smart team that is really focused on solving customer problems versus growing their own scope of responsibility or internal goals, [and] if you can get those teams focused on that and get barriers out of their way and remove obstacles, then we can deliver a lot. And so that's largely my job. I view myself as not the expert in any one particular thing. Every one of my team is usually better at whatever we're trying to do than I am. And my job is to let them go do their job as much as possible, and occasionally connect dots for them on where there's other parts of the company or other parts of the organization or other customer input that they may not have, that they can integrate and incorporate.You've worked closely with Andy Jassy, is there anything in particular that youve learned from watching him as a leader?I've learned a ton. He's a he's an exceptional leader. Andy is very good at having very high standards and having high expectations for the teams, and high standards for what we deliver for customers. He had a lot of the vision, together with some of the core folks who were starting AWS, of some important tenets of how we think about the business, of focusing on security and operational excellence and really focusing on how we go deliver for customers.What are your priorities for 2025?Our first priority always is to maintain outstanding security and operational excellence. We want to help customers get ready for that AI transformation that's going to happen. Part of that, though, is also helping get all of their applications in a place that they can take advantage of AI. So it's a hugely important priority for us to help customers continue on that migration to the cloud, because if their data is stuck on premise and legacy data stores and other things, they won't be able to take advantage of AI. So helping people modernize their data and analytics stacks to get that into the cloud and get their data links into a cloud and organized in a way that they can really start to take advantage of AI, is that is a big priority for us. And then it's just, how do we help scale the AI capabilities, bring the cost down for customers, while [we] keep adding the value. And for 2025, our goal is for customers to move AI workloads really into production that deliver great ROI for their businesses. And that crosses making sure all their data is in the right place, and make sure they have the right compute platforms. We think Trainium is going to be an important part of that. The last bit is helping add some applications on top. We think that we can add [the] extra benefit of helping employees and others get that effectiveness. Some of that is moving contact centers to the cloud. Some of that is helping get conversational assistants and AI assistants in the hands of employees, and so Amazon Q is a big part of that for us. And then it's also just empowering our broad partner ecosystem to go fast and help customers evolve as well.

Key TakeawaysGoogle is developing an AI model to estimate users ages based on their activity such as search history, video categories, and account age.This is done to prevent underage access to restricted content. Incorrectly flagged users must provide an ID or a selfie for verification.Features like SafeSearch enforcement, restricted ads, and parental controls aim to create a safer online experience for minors.Google will first launch these features in the U.S. before expanding globally.After Meta, Google announced that it would begin testing an age estimation model to determine the correct age of users with the help of AI and machine learning-powered mechanisms.The intention behind launching such a model is to provide a more age-appropriate experience across all Google platforms, including YouTube.Currently, its very easy to set up a profile with an incorrect age and get access to age-restricted content. This is concerning as many young kids use YouTube and other Google platforms regularly.The timing of this move aligns with the increasing pressure from lawmakers to make the internet a safer place for kids. This new update will place a number of restrictions on users under the age of 18. The changes could include blocking sensitive ad content and enabling the SafeSearch filter.A new Google Messages feature is also expected to be out soon thatll send sensitive content warnings to users. Users below 18 will need to get their parents consent in order to turn off this functionality. If executed properly, this feature could significantly help put systems in place for sensitive content restrictions.One more interesting feature called School Time for Android Phones and tablets will allow parents to block device access during their school hours.That isnt all though, more updates are in progress as we speak, thatll help parents monitor the online activity of kids.With increasing dependence on tech in schools, its difficult to trace what kids are actually doing on their devices when unmonitored. These features are being built to make surveillance easier and make sure that tech is being used to further education only.How the AI Model Will Work?Googles AI model will track information about the account like the things theyre searching for, the categories of videos they watch, and how old their account is. Their activity will serve as data points to ascertain whether their proclaimed age is correct or not.If you get flagged as a minor incorrectly, youll be asked to share a government-issued ID card as evidence before you can proceed. In some cases, even a selfie might be required.Google says it is still finding more ways of age verification that can help increase the correctness of this procedure while making it easier for users to get through the process.Before Google, Meta introduced a similar method last year for age verification and has been operating in markets like Europe since then.Google has said that this feature shall first be rolled out in the United States later this year and eventually be expanded to more countries.Add Techreport to Your Google News Feed Get the latest updates, trends, and insights delivered straight to your fingertips. Subscribe now! Subscribe now Alpa is a tech writer and editor with a wealth of experience in alternative finance, fintech, cryptocurrency, app security software, and the medical industry. Shes passionate about breaking down complex topics and sharing informative content that provides value. View all articles by Alpa Somaiya Our editorial processThe Tech Reporteditorial policyis centered on providing helpful, accurate content that offers real value to our readers. We only work with experienced writers who have specific knowledge in the topics they cover, including latest developments in technology, online privacy, cryptocurrencies, software, and more. Our editorial policy ensures that each topic is researched and curated by our in-house editors. We maintain rigorous journalistic standards, and every article is 100% written byreal authors.

Table of ContentsTable of ContentsIs Captain America: Brave New World streaming?When will Captain America: Brave New World be available to stream?Prior to this weekend, the last time a Captain America movie was in theaters was 2016s Captain America: Civil War. And that was practically an Avengers movie. Captain America: Brave New World essentially resets the franchise with Anthony Mackies Sam Wilson firmly in place as the new Captain America. While the stakes are high, the former Falcon doesnt have an all-star cast of heroes to back him up this time.Regardless, the box-office projections for Brave New World are promising, with estimates suggesting that the film could bring in $90 million or more across the long Presidents Day weekend. But as for the question that brought you here, its time to let you in on the answer.Recommended VideosMarvel Studios / Marvel StudiosNo. There was only one Marvel Studios movie that opened day-and-date with its Disney+ debut, and that was a debacle. Disney tried that experiment with Black Widow in 2021, just as the country was starting to emerge from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. On Black Widows opening weekend, Disney execs may have thought the simultaneous streaming/theatrical model was a success since it had $80.4 million in North America on top of the premium upcharge Disney+ subscribers paid to watch it at home.RelatedUnfortunately, the second weekend told a different story as Black Widows North American theatrical numbers crashed 67% to $25.8 million. It was widely seen as being hurt by the simultaneous release and Scarlett Johansson actually sued Disney while alleging that the studio prevented her from getting large bonuses that would have been paid out if Black Widow had hit certain box office benchmarks. The suit was eventually settled out of court and Johansson was rumored to have gotten $40 million out of that.All of that is exactly why no other Marvel Studios film including Brave New World has ever gone day-and-date with streaming again. Even when Marvel movies fail at the box office, like The Marvels, its still more lucrative to give the films an exclusive run in theaters.Marvel Studios / Marvel StudiosDisney has moved away from its attempts to dramatically shorten the window of time before a film can jump to steaming after a theatrical release. However, theres no set time for a movie to make the leap to Disney+. The most-recent MCU film prior to Brave New World was Deadpool & Wolverine, which took just under three and-a-half months to go to Disney+.That said, Deadpool & Wolverines box-office success may have played a part in slowing down its streaming premiere. If Brave New World is also a hit, then its theatrical life will likely be extended to a similar length as Deadpool & Wolverine. The numbers out of week No. 1 are solid, but this films real test begins in week 2 when we see how much business it will shed.Captain America: Brave New World is now playing in theaters.Editors Recommendations

AMDs upcoming Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT graphics cards are officially set to hit the market on March 6, according to certain retail listings. The new GPUs, based on AMDs RDNA 4 architecture, will launch just a few weeks after Nvidias RTX 5070 Ti and possibly before the RTX 5070, setting the stage for a heated mid-range GPU battle.As per Toms Hardware, screenshots of RX 9070 and 9070 XT models from XFX listed on Amazon were shared by hardware leaker momomo_us having a price range from $649 to $849. One of these listing notably mentions, This item will be released on March 6, 2025.Recommended VideosThese cards are expected to deliver performance improvements over their predecessors, with the RX 9070 XT reportedly featuring 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, positioning it as a high-capacity alternative to Nvidias offerings. While official specifications remain unconfirmed, leaks suggest that AMD is focusing on efficiency and raw VRAM capacity rather than competing directly with Nvidias AI-accelerated features like DLSS 3 and ray tracing advancements.Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming Ahead of the launch, AMD has announced a special event on February 28, where the company is expected to provide official details on the RX 9070 series and possibly other upcoming GPUs. This announcement comes as Nvidia gears up to launch the RTX 5070 Ti, making AMDs timing a direct challenge to its competitor. The event is likely to include final specs, performance comparisons, and AMDs marketing push against Nvidias latest offerings.The wait is almost over. Join us on February 28 at 8 AM EST for the reveal of the next-gen @AMD Radeon RX 9000 Series. Get ready to make it yours when it hits shelves in early March. RSVP by subscribing to the AMD YouTube channel: https://t.co/4rkVxeoDIa David McAfee (@McAfeeDavid_AMD) February 13, 2025With the launch of the RX 9070 series, AMD aims to strengthen its presence in the high-end 1440p and entry-level 4K gaming markets. The company is expected to leverage its historically strong price-to-performance ratio to appeal to gamers looking for an alternative to Nvidias 50-series lineup. While Nvidias RTX 5070-series is anticipated to dominate in AI-driven applications, AMDs bet on high VRAM capacity could appeal to content creators and users who prioritize memory over proprietary upscaling technologies.This launch also follows AMDs strategic shift in its GPU lineup, as the company has reportedly scaled back on high-end RDNA 4 models in favor of focusing on the mid-to-upper segment of the market. As the February 28 event approaches, more details on the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XTs performance and feature set are expected to emerge, giving buyers a clearer picture of how they stack up against Nvidias latest offerings.Editors Recommendations

In the summer of 2024, a robotic mission landed for the first time on the far side of the Moon. The Chinese Change-6 lander planted a flag, dug up more than four pounds of rock and soil, and brought it back homean accomplishment widely lauded as a technological tour de force.That mission, and the 2020 Change-5 robotic mission before it, are the first to return lunar rocks to Earth since the 1970s. Together they are building on what scientists learned from Apollo-era missions, helping to unravel mysteries about how the Moon was formed and why it looks the way it does today, and providing clues about our solar systems history.But big puzzles remain, such as why the far side of the Moonthe half that always faces away from Earthis so radically different from the near side. And what is behind the surprising finding that lunar volcanoes may have been active much more recently than previously thought? The more we look at the Moon, the more weve discoveredand the more we realize how little we know, says Clive R. Neal, a geologist at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in lunar exploration. Chinas 2024 Change-6 robotic lander mission brought more than four pounds of rocks from the far side of the Moon back to Earth. Credit: CNSA / CAS With NASA planning to send astronauts back to the Moons surface in 2027 for the first time since 1972, geologists are excited about what rocks they might find there and the scientific secrets those samples could revealalong with what resources could be mined for a future Moon base, or for renewable energy back home on Earth.Origin storyThe samples brought home from the Moon in the 1970s by the Apollo missions and the Soviet Unions Luna missions cleared up quite a lot about the Moons history. Because the lunar samples shared strong similarities with Earth rocks, this added weight to the idea that the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized object called Theia collided with the proto-Earth roughly 4.5 billion years ago.Debris from the impact was thrown into orbit around Earth and eventually coalesced into the Moon. In its early days, the Moon was entirely molten. As the magma ocean cooled over hundreds of millions of years, the Moon formed a crust and a mantle below. Giant pools of lava filled impact craters and settled into the lunar lowlands, or maria (Latin for seas), while highlands and volcanic domes loomed above them. Eventually, the volcanism died out.Without plate tectonics or weather, the only things left to alter the Moons cold, dead surface were meteorites. A lot of the Apollo-era samples were found to have formed from the heat and pressure of impacts around 3.9 billion years ago, suggesting that they were the result of a short period of intense pummeling by space rocks called the Late Heavy Bombardment.But research since the 1970s has refined or changed this picture. Higher-resolution orbital images have revealed plenty of large impact craters that seem far older than 3.9 billion years, for example. And meteorites found on Earth, thought to have been ejected from various areas of the Moon during big impacts, have been found to span a huge range of ages.All this work together suggests that the asteroid bombardment didnt happen in one dramatic spike but rather over an extended period lasting from perhaps 4.2 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. In this scenario, the Apollo samples dated to 3.9 billion years likely all came from just one huge impact that spewed rock over a very wide area that happened to include the Apollo-era landing sites.The Moon: Dead or aliveGreater mysteries surround volcanism on the Moon. The canonical thing I learned in school was that the Moon had been geologically dead for billions of years, says Samuel Lawrence, a planetary scientist at NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston.The long-held theory was that a small body like the Moon should have lost its heat to space relatively quicklyand a frigid, extinguished Moon shouldnt have widespread volcanic activity. Apollo-era samples suggested that most of this volcanism stopped 3 billion years ago or earlier, supporting the theory. But research over the past two decades has overturned that view. This geologic map of the Moon released in 2022 by China is the most detailed global map yet published and includes information gleaned from the 2020 Change-5 mission. Credit: J. JI ET AL / THE 1:2,500,000-SCALE GEOLOGIC MAP OF THE GLOBAL MOON 2022. In 2014, Lawrence and colleagues posited that some patches of irregular terrain in the middle of the dark plains, or mare, spotted by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter were the result of volcanism that kept going until less than 100 million years ago. That is totally, totally surprising, says cosmochemist Qing-Zhu Yin of the University of California, Davis.The latest sample-return missions added more concrete evidence for recent volcanism. In 2020, the Change-5 robotic mission landed in Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms) a spot picked in part because it looked geologically young given how few craters had accumulated there. Sure enough, the volcanic rocks brought home by that mission were found to be 2 billion years old, the youngest ever retrieved from the Moon. That was big news, says planetary geoscientist Jim Head of Brown University, who worked on NASAs Apollo missions.On top of this, when researchers trawled through thousands of glass beads found in the Change-5 soil samples, most of which are thought to have been created by impacts, they identified three that were volcanicand only 120 million years old. This finding was published just last year and still needs to be verified, but if such recent dates hold up, they suggest that the Moon might still be capable of producing deep magma even today, Yin says.All this indicates that the Moon might not have cooled as fast as everyone thought it did. Its also possible that some of the younger volcanism could have been powered by radioactive elements underground, which can generate enough heat to form magma and are known to be prevalent in certain patches of the Moon. This could explain the 120-million-year-old volcanic glass beads, for example. But not all the early volcanism can be explained this way: The Change-5 volcanic rocks, along with some 2.8-billion-year-old volcanic rock brought back from the far side by Change-6, came from source rocks not enriched with these elements.It throws up more questions than it answers, Neal says. Its job security for people like me we now have new questions to address.Lunar exploration aheadUntangling these mysteries is challenging with so much of the Moon unexplored: While about 850 pounds of Moon rock and soil have now been brought back to Earth, it has all been from just a handful of sites.Change-6 expanded this picture by bringing back the first samples from the Moons far side, taken from the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the satellites largest, deepest and oldest impact crater. Researchers are keen to use these samples to start determining why the far side is so dramatically different from the near side. The questions that remain unanswered are why the far side has a thicker crust and is nearly devoid of mare from ancient lava oceans when compared with the near side.NASAs Artemis III mission, planned for 2027 (though that could change), aims to break more new ground by landing astronauts near the Moons south polein a spot that is more representative of the Moons typical geology than the Apollo sitesand bring home a bonanza of 150 to 180 pounds of samples.This site should provide fresh geological insights, along with more information about lunar water. In 2018, scientists analyzing orbital mapping data confirmed that there is water ice at the polesbut in what form no one yet knows. Is it frost on the surface? Is it discrete patches underneath the surface? Is it absorbed onto mineral grains? Is it baked into the regolith like cement? says NASAs Juliane Gross, who is helping to develop the plans for lunar sample collection and curation for the Artemis science team. We dont know.What the Artemis astronauts find could inform ongoing projects spearheaded by China and the United States to establish permanent bases on the Moon, which could benefit from the south poles water. Thats stuff you can breathe, thats stuff you can drink, its rocket fuel, Lawrence says.Lunar quarryIn addition to water ice, other potentially mineable resources on the Moon have garnered attention, particularly helium-3. This stable isotope of helium is far more plentiful on the Moon than on Earth and could be an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion (if physicists can get that process to work). Commercial enterprises seeking to mine the Moon have popped up, including Seattle-based Interlune, which plans to bring helium-3 back to Earth in the 2030s, followed by other resources such as rare earth elements needed for technologies like batteries. But when lunar mining will be a realityconsidering the logistics, the economics and the legal concernsis an open question, Lawrence says.While some people find the idea of mining the pristine Moon distasteful, there could be side benefits for mining on Earth, Neal says. With polar temperatures around -230 C (-380 F), lunar mining would have to be done without fluids. Developing the technologies needed for fluid-free mining could mitigate environmental concerns about wastewater and tailing fluids from mining on Earth. Just think how you could revolutionize mining on this planet, he says.But first, researchers need to simply find out more about the Moon, its history, its geology and the possibility of extracting resourcesand that requires up-close exploration, which is sure to bring more surprises. Once youre on the ground, youre like, oh whats this? Gross says. Shes hoping the astronauts can bring home a large haul. The more they return, the more we can do.This article originally appeared inKnowable Magazine, a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all.Sign up forKnowable Magazines newsletter.Knowable Magazine Knowable Magazine explores the real-world significance of scholarly work through a journalistic lens. 0 Comments

Stepping back from baking empowered my son to take charge in the kitchen and learn responsibility.He's discovered a love of creating baked goods, and our family gets to enjoy them.He's also become more self-sufficient, and it's a win for everyone.When my 11-year-old announced his school's upcoming bake sale, I braced for a request I wasn't prepared for baking. "You know I don't enjoy baking," I reminded him, expecting disappointment.But instead of pushing back, he had a plan: "I don't need you to bake," he said. He knew his older brother, 14, would handle it. "I just need you to help with managing the cash at the counter."At that moment, I realized something powerful by stepping back, I had unintentionally pushed my son toward self-sufficiency.Letting my eldest take the lead has been a lesson for both of usAll my life, I saw cooking as a basic survival skill, not a passion, unlike my grandpa, mom, and sister who all loved to spend time in the kitchen cooking. I can manage boiling, sauting, roasting, and deep-frying, I never explored baking; it was an intimidating mystery. But my two children, drawn to the cakes and pizzas they loved, took matters into their own hands.When we moved from India to Canada four years ago, my eldest started small ready-to-bake cookie mixes from the grocery store. But soon, he was watching YouTube tutorials, baking from scratch, tweaking recipes, and even experimenting with his own versions. His most recent creation was a brownie loaded with chocolate chips, chewy candies, M&Ms, and Oreos making it almost intolerably sweet. But hey, they're kids; don't they all love to overdo it on sugar?He's made mistakes rock-hard cookies, overly salty cakes but each failure became a learning moment. Each time something went wrong, he retraced his steps to identify what needed to change. He hasn't mastered icing yet and still uses store-bought options, but he's determined to figure it out. His short-term goal? Learn the right temperature to ice a cake and eventually create his own frosting flavors, inspired by the "Is It Cake?" show.His love of baking has shifted our family's food traditionsIndian festivals are deeply tied to food, with special dishes prepared for each celebration many of them sweets. My son has now taken charge of making the festive desserts, though his versions often come in cake form. He adds his own twist by decorating them with the festival's name in icing.What's even more surprising is how this shift is changing our family dynamics for the better. My younger son, who was once the biggest escapist when it came to chores, has slowly started helping. Seeing his older brother take responsibility has motivated him to pitch in whether it's setting the table, cleaning up, or assisting in the kitchen. Without realizing it, our home is becoming more balanced, with everyone contributing in their own way.I never imagined that my reluctance to bake would lead him down this path. But it became even more evident how much he had grown when, during a brutal migraine episode that confined me to a dark, silent room, he stepped up. With my partner busy cleaning the house, my son took full responsibility for lunch.He prepared a meal with a salad, perfectly roasted potato wedges (his younger brother's favorite), and taquitos filled with spiced tofu. I was overwhelmed with gratitude. On a day when I couldn't function, he took charge proving not only his skills in the kitchen but his thoughtfulness and sense of responsibility.Watching him step into this role has been humbling and inspiring. It's a reminder that children often rise to challenges when given the space to do so. Sometimes, the best way to teach is to step aside and let them figure things out on their own. This experience has reshaped my parenting approach I now see that letting go a little can empower them to grow in ways I never expected.And while I still have no desire to bake, I'm more than happy to enjoy the results of his newfound passion.

2025-02-16T12:26:01Z Read in app There ar plenty of places to explore in Ireland outside Dublin. Eibhlis Gale-Coleman This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? My family is from Ireland, and I've been visiting the country for decades.Dublin is great, but there's so much more to explore, like Galway and Cork.Nature lovers need to check out Newcastle, and Dingle is just plain fun.I'm of Irish descent (as my name might give away), and I've visited so many times that I know the country like the back of my hand.My dad's family comes from County Offaly, right in the boggy heart of the Emerald Isle, and reconnecting with scattered relatives there was often our go-to family vacation. I've accrued decades of Irish travel tales and tips for both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.Here are five places in Ireland outside Dublin that I think everyone should visit. It's hard not to fall in love with Galway.The Long Walk is one of the most famous views in Galway. Luca Fabbian/Shutterstock No surprises here Galway is a well-known tourist rival to Ireland's capital city. However, the seafront town feels less metropolitan than Dublin.Music, art, language, and hospitality boom in Galway, from the cobbled streets of its historic Latin Quarter to the bustling crowds on Shop Street.Its buildings are lined with colorful art, and the endangered Irish language is spoken openly.I love that the language is everywhere, from street signs to the trad music in the pubs. The coffee shop Plms even offers customers discounted drinks if they order in Irish.Moreover, Galway is the gateway to the iconic Wild Atlantic Way, a 1,600-mile scenic route that runs along the country's perimeter.While you're in town, I recommend detouring to the nearby Aran Islands and plotting a road trip through Connemara National Park. Some of my fondest memories are peering out at the Twelve Bens mountain range from the back of my dad's pick-up and horseback riding across beaches with The Point Trekking Centre.Cork is close to many beautiful attractions.I love the vibes in Cork. Nam Chau Ngo/Shutterstock It seems like Cork is up-and-coming on the tourist scene after bagging a spot on National Geographic's list of the best places to travel in 2025.It'll be interesting to see what extra excitement the new tourism investments bring to Ireland's second-largest city.Although Dublin has more historical attractions the gravity of spots like the Kilmainham Gaol and the General Post Office is hard to match I like Cork for its day trip potential. It's a great starting city to book if you want to do a lot of exploring during your stay.The town provides easy access to colorful Kinsale or Cobh, the Titanic's final port of call. There's also a local bus that goes straight to Blarney Castle, where brave souls can hang upside down to kiss the Blarney Stone.Dingle is like something out of a movie.Dingle is a beautiful part of southwest Ireland. D Anderson/Shutterstock The western port town of Dingle built its reputation on the tale of a lone dolphin called Fungie if that isn't a charming enough reason to visit, I don't know what is.There's a statue of Fungie by the harbor, and the town still runs dolphin-watching tours even though the famed mammal hasn't been spotted since 2020.I love the town's close-knit coastal vibe, and it's worth cruising Slea Head Drive around the broader Dingle Peninsula to see stunning spots like Inch Beach.If you have time to visit Northern Ireland, go to Belfast.There's an amazing Titanic museum in Belfast. elxeneize/Shutterstock Dublin and Belfast are both capitals of their respective parts of Ireland, but it's worth noting their historical differences. Dublin's political attractions revolve heavily around the Easter Rising of 1916, whereas Belfast's tells the story of The Troubles, an intense sectarian conflict lasting from the 1960s to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.I have a soft spot for Belfast after living in its eastern suburb of Dundonald.It may seem like an obvious choice for anyone wanting to visit Northern Ireland instead of the Republic. However, it has a lot to offer, from the Titanic Experience and Stormont to the atmospheric St George's Market.It's worth booking at least a few days in the northern city, and a black-taxi tour of the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods is an absolute must. You can also easily take a day trip to see the impressive Giant's Causeway Nature Preserve.Newcastle is my favorite place to hike up north.I loved hiking in the Mourne Mountains. Eibhlis Gale-Coleman For hikers and nature lovers, Newcastle tops metropolitan Dublin any day.The coastal town sits directly under Slieve Donard, Northern Ireland's tallest mountain. A path to the summit starts in the town's main car park.Newcastle itself has a bit of a cheesy seaside aesthetic, but I love it.Its location within the 12 peaks of the Mourne Mountains could provide visitors with weeks of hiking trails. There's also the neighboring Tollymore Forest Park, where multiple scenes of "Game of Thrones" were shot.I'd recommend visiting distilleries to sample poitn, a traditional moonshine that was illegally distributed for hundreds of years. It certainly comes in handy after all that hiking.

One of the first casualties of the second Trump administration has been the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The agency, which funds and operates humanitarian aid programs all across the world, has quickly become a target for Republicans. Over the past four weeks, the White House has been pursuing a plan to reduce USAIDs workforce from over 10,000 people to just about 290. The effort has gone so far that, in Washington, DC, signs for the agency have either been covered in black tape or removed entirely.There are plenty of reasons why the Trump administration and Elon Musks so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) might be so fixated on USAID specifically. It could be part of their effort to dramatically reduce federal spending, using USAID as a trial run before dismantling other government agencies. Or it could be that Trump and his allies see little value in foreign aid. But if this really was a case of saving taxpayer money, as they claim, it doesnt make much sense; in the last fiscal year, USAID spent less than 1 percent of the federal budget. But the Trump administrations assault on USAID does tell us something broader about Republicans view on government spending specifically, what they might consider to be wasteful spending: programs that help the poor. And the way they have justified the dismantling of USAID by categorizing it as rife with fraud and mismanagement may give us a glimpse into how they will approach domestic welfare programs. A statement from the White House earlier this month lamented that USAID has, apparently, been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous and, in many cases, malicious pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats. It doesnt matter that the billions of dollars that USAID spends have supported life-saving food distribution and STD-prevention programs. And it doesnt matter that USAIDs famine warning system helps organizations around the world determine where to deploy humanitarian relief. What matters to Trump and his allies are the stories some of which, it should be noted, arent even true that support their argument that basic humanitarian assistance programs are riddled with waste and abuse.Effectively shutting down USAID will have major consequences for millions of people abroad, and it should also serve as a warning for people who care about antipoverty programs here at home. When programs like food stamps or Medicaid are on the chopping block, chances are Republicans are going to turn to the same argument: These programs are wasteful, so why should we fund them?USAID today. Medicaid tomorrow?Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump promised not to cut programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but the red flags were hard to miss. There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, he told CNBC in March of last year. And thats exactly how Trump and his allies are framing their potential attacks on Medicaid now. (Unlike USAID, Medicaid is nearly 10 percent of the federal budget, making it a more appealing target for the Trump administration if theyre looking to drastically cut spending.) He recently told reporters that hell love and cherish Medicaid, but added one caveat: Were not going to do anything with that, he said, unless we can find some abuse or waste.Sure enough, when Trump nominated Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), he said that Oz would cut waste and fraud within our countrys most expensive government agency. And earlier this month, Musks DOGE aides started working at CMS, where, according to the Wall Street Journal, theyve gained access to critical payment and contracting systems. The DOGE aides have been tasked with finding fraud.To be sure, Medicaid and Medicare, like any government program, are by no means perfect and do experience fraud and mismanagement. But the Trump administration is greatly exaggerating how much money they will save by tackling fraud in these programs. At this point, I am 100% certain that the magnitude of the fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, etc) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam youve ever heard by FAR, Musk tweeted last week. Its not even close.That claim, however, isnt rooted in reality, unless Musk knows something we dont and isnt sharing it. One number that the government often cites when evaluating these programs efficiency is the improper payment rate, which represents payments that dont meet CMS requirements for various reasons, including insufficient documentation, overpaying, or underpaying. In 2024, Medicaids improper payment rate was roughly 5 percent. While some of that might be a result of fraud, abuse, or mismanagement, the vast majority of it is a result of insufficient documentation, according to a CMS report. The problem is that if Republicans are truly concerned with wasteful spending, they wouldnt focus their efforts on restricting welfare access by imposing measures like work requirements, which have been proven to be ineffective. When Georgia imposed its work requirements on Medicaid, for example, its administrative costs ballooned, with the majority of its Medicaid spending going toward implementing its work reporting requirements.Republican efforts to scale back Medicaid and other welfare programs have never been about stopping fraud or abuse. Theyve always been about shrinking the social safety net, in part to help fund tax cuts for people who dont need them. And with Musks plan to cut some $2 trillion in government spending, its clear the road to getting even remotely close to that figure goes through entitlement cuts. Like the attack on USAID, Republicans will say theyre simply targeting fraud and abuse, but their definition of wasteful spending will likely have less to do with actual waste or corruption and more to do with money that goes toward helping the poor.This story was featured in the Within Our Means newsletter. Sign up here.See More: