As evidenced by 2025s Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS), it is with cautious optimism that I report a shift in how manufacturers and other material brands are now approaching the application of new technologies to their products for the sake of health and wellness. As with any advancement, companies tend to commodify features to capitalize on novelty, but it feels like things are finally turning a corner.Individual brands competing in this arena are figuring out what they do best, where they can improve, and to whom their products will appeal. Kitchen brands like LG and Monogram fashioned incredible and in some cases subversive user experiences to demonstrate new ways to use their appliances. Bathroom brands like Kallista, Kohler, and Laufen leveraged technology to enhance human connection with the elements. And activations from the likes of Emtek and Alkemis educated visitors on how deeply personal things like hardware and paint, respectively, can be. Continue reading to discover nuances of this years showcase and some lessons from the trade.Concept Kitchens Tease of Future IntegrationsArranged and orchestrated with great harmony, SKS (formerly Signature Kitchen Suite) showcased their technological prowess in a highly-evolved Island System Concept that seamlessly integrated cutting-edge cooking, ventilation, and refrigeration modalities. The induction cooktop blended into the countertops subtle finish when not in use. And the hidden downdraft ventilation, which employs SKSs proprietary air curtain technology, could be activated to reveal shelving for spices book-ended by refrigeration compartments within the island.Make Marble Your TouchstoneFrom bathroom fixtures to architectural details, Italian marble has always captivated audiences, but Rosso Levanto and the statuary White Carrara stole the show in a number of places across KBIS.Kallista introduced the Bezel Collection in partnership with Italian manufacturer CRISTINA Rubinetterie and creative industrial design team Busetti Garuti Redaelli. The design marks a noteworthy departure from tradition as the brands first soft square profile. Its form is intricately faceted in the likeness of gems with natural stone adornments assuming the place of traditional metal knobs. Whats more, it was displayed in a room laminated in deep burgundy and oxblood marble.Beyond the utility of access and egress, door knobs are responsible for first impressions before visitors move beyond the threshold. Emtek has tapped the same iconic red colorway for the sense of something substantial in the palm of your hand. Their SELECT Program has folded the very regal Rosso Levanto marble into their production alongside other more modest customization options including wood and terrazzo.Appliances Move to the BathroomLuxury appliance brand Monogram experimented with their technology by taking it beyond traditional applications and perceived uses for placement in new contexts throughout the home. The most outstanding and perhaps compelling vignette, admittedly to me, was their elevated bathing space.This room illustrated how a warming drawer traditionally used for things like heating plates, proofing dough, or keeping entrees at the ideal temperature prior to serving could be repurposed to warm towels or heat other warmable therapy products.Homeowners could complement this with a refrigeration drawer to preserve skin care products and cool depuffing under-eye tools.Dishwashing Tailored to Your NeedsCleanliness is next to godliness, and a hygienic kitchen is important for food safety. But what it means to maintain a tidy countertop and spotless dishes totally depends on your lifestyle. So brands are diversifying as they cater to different types of home chefs, entertainers, and sticklers when it comes to clean-up.SMEG, the wildly popular and instantly iconic Italian home appliance manufacturer, has been gearing up to tackle the super-sized needs that American kitchens demand. In particular, the brand has refined a new line of dishwashers with a top-of-the-line model that caters to every entertainers need: support clips on the dish rack to accommodate pots and pans, oversized bottles, and baking trays; a support rack for smaller items, such as espresso cups; a Flexi-Duo cutlery basket with movable trays; and their WinePro accessory for wine glassware with designated decanter support on the bottom rack.In a delightful contrast, the Chinese home appliance manufacturer FOTILE, has pioneered a dishwashing solution for tight urban spaces and tiny homes as well as some RVs and even select boats. Their 3-in1 In-Sink Dishwasher has a sleek, unassuming design with a surprisingly nimble capacity for place settings without sacrificing on wash quality. Its worth noting that the ergonomic countertop design is good for those who have limited mobility and may not be able to bend to use a traditional machine. Whats more, it can be used as a produce and seafood cleaner for additional food safety.Ventilation is KeyFOTILEs other wellness innovation on display was their FreshBake Electric Range. The brand prides itself on this concept of cooking cleaner and boasts an exclusive filtration system that neutralizes over 90% of harmful gases released when in use. In addition to syncing with external ventilation, it purifies the air within the oven as you cook to break down grease, odors, and VOCs.Bathtubs Make Bold MovesConnoisseurs of time in the tub would argue that a hot bath is best taken in a cast iron vessel I dont disagree. But what if youre looking for something beyond a traditional hot soak? Perhaps your lifestyle and budget allow you to invest in other types of hydrotherapies at home.Premium Swiss bathroom manufacturer Laufen launched their freestanding VAL Luminex Bathtub with integrated LED technology for a bathing experience that now includes a colorful play of light in motion. But the innovation begins with the material itself, debuting a new translucent version of Sentec, a mineral casting material. In terms of functionality, the lighting mechanism features 9 ambient settings, each with 3 lighting scenarios, that can be selected via remote control.Ice Bath by Kohler, in partnership with Dr. Jonathan Leary, founder of Remedy Place social wellness clubs, is an exquisite fusion of moody, minimalist design with self-care at home. If you can, consider ditching the makeshift at-home contraptions and invest in something packed with a competitive amount of wellness tech including a water-management system with UV sanitization and a guided user experience complete with visual cues.Paint That Pulls Pigments From The EarthArchitectural paint is the greatest contributor of microplastics in the ocean with some 1.9 million tons of the substance meandering through our waterways annually, outweighing all other plastic waste streams. Alkemis is the worlds first wellness paint with an inimitable recipe consisting of a clear quartz base, artist-quality crystalline pigments, and earthen raw materials. In addition, the company boasts cradle-to-cradle certification.The duo behind the hues have advanced the paint-making trade from its perceived dependence on synthetics to all-natural formulation, and were invited to participate in the Disruptor Series of TED-style talks for show attendees.Knurling Is on Another LevelIndustrial spaces have some iconic, eye-catching attributes like glass block, steel panels, and exposed structural joinery oftentimes complemented by door and drawer pulls detailed with knurling. But until now, this aesthetic has felt rather one-note. Emtek designer Will Zhang has broadened the trades creative capacity to specify knurled hardware with fresh scales, densities, and runs across the hardware surface.Thumb through KBIS archives here.Photography provided by Design Milk Staff.

Last week, President Trump spoke for an hour and 40 minutes before a joint session of Congress to announce, among other things, that America was back. The nation's backness is too subjective to fact check, but other statements Trump made during the speech are less vibe-centriclike the claim that the U.S. has wasted millions of dollars on transgender mouse research. "Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified," Trump said at the address, before reeling off a laundry list of things the U.S. has supposedly paid for, such as "diversity, equity, and inclusion scholarships in Burma" and "free housing and cars for illegal aliens." He capped off the list with a particularly attention-grabbing line item: According to Trump, the U.S. has spent "$8 million on making mice transgender." "This is real," he added. But is it?Donald Trump says a lot of things, but transgender mouse research isn't a throwaway line. It's important enough to the administration's governing philosophy that prominent Republicans have spread clips decrying "transgender animal studies" on social media, the White House has released a statement on the issue, and this weekend, in an interview with Fox News Maria Bartiromo, Trump said, "Transgender surgery on micehundreds ofI mean the money theyre spending on all of this stuff. The whole things a scam.I have a feeling we're going to be hearing a lot about transgender mice over the next few years, so I thought I'd take a look at Trump's claim and get to the bottom of transgender mouse science.Did Donald Trump mix up "transgenic" with "transgender?"Soon after Trump's speech, many people online claimed that Trump had mixed up the word "transgenic" ("an organism or cell whose genome has been altered by the introduction of one or more foreign DNA sequences from another species by artificial means") and the word "transgender," ("a person whose gender identity does not correspond with the sex registered for them at birth"). Transgenic mice are commonly used in medical research. By altering their DNA, scientists can create a mouse with the specific biologic or biochemical features they'd like to study. As far as we know, mice don't have any concept of their own identities, so they can't technically be transgender. Trump doesn't seem to have been mixing up the words, though. He didn't mean "transgenic." He meant "transgender," as this White House press release clearly states.Did the National Institutes of Health really spend $8 million making mice transgender?Taken at its most basic level, Trump's assertion that we are spending money on "making mice transgender" is false. None of the studies later identified by his administration as wasteful were undertaken with the goal of making mice transgender as Trump suggests, and many people seem to believe.Instead, these studies were aimed at approximating gender-affirming hormone therapies in mice so that we'd have a better idea of how these therapies affect things like HIV vaccine efficiency and breast cancer risk in humans. Are we doing transgender surgery on mice?Trump may not be mixing up transgenic and transgender, but he is wrong when he talks about the U.S. spending money on "transgender surgery on mice." We don't do that. Doctors have been successfully performing gender-affirming surgeries on humans for over 100 years, so there's no need for mice. None of the studies listed on the White House's press release include performing surgeries on mice either. Instead, they all involved injecting animal models with testosterone or estrogen in order to approximate hormone therapies often given as part of gender-affirming care. Had Trump said the U.S. "wasted" $8 million researching the effects of the hormone treatments often given as part of gender-affirming care, it would have been more honest. Why the focus on mice?If the Trump administration legitimately believes scientific research that involves "transgender mice" is wasteful on its face, they have a ton of cutting to do. Controlling the hormone levels of laboratory animal models is common in endocrinology, in studies of everything from menopause, to osteoporosis, to male pattern baldnessbut only studies focused on transgender healthcare were included on Trump's list.

Saving your passwords in your browserlike Chrome or Firefoxprovides an easy way to access logins when you need them on websites, and having a safe place to keep strong, unique passwords is better than, well, not. However, browser password managers aren't necessarily the most secure nor the most convenient for filling password or payment fields in apps, nor do they come with features included with third-party password management tools, like encrypted storage or dark web monitoring.If you're transitioning away from your browser's password manager or simply want to remove credentials you no longer use, here's how to delete saved passwords in the most popular browsers. How to delete saved passwords from ChromeChrome allows you to remove saved passwords one by one or mass delete all data stored in Google Password Manager. To delete individual logins, open your settings via the three vertical dots in the upper right corner of the browser window. Select Passwords and Autofill > Google Password Manager. (You can also go through Chrome > Settings > Autofill and passwords > Google Password Manager.) Click the arrow on the credential you want to remove to open the record and select the Delete button. To delete everything at once, select Settings from the Google Password Manager left-hand menu and hit the Delete data button next to Delete all Google Password Manager data followed by Delete on the pop-up message to confirm. (This feature was recently identified by Android Authority as coming soon but seemed to be available already at the time of writing.) Chrome on mobile doesn't have a mass delete button yet, but you can remove individual passwords or select multiple passwords at once. In the Chrome app, hit the three horizontal dots in the bottom nav bar and open Password Manager. Click Edit to select the passwords you want to remove, and click Delete. To turn off password saving, toggle off Offer to save passwords and passkeys in your Google Password Manager settings. How to delete saved passwords from FirefoxTo manage and delete saved passwords on Firefox, tap the three vertical lines to open the menu panel and click Passwords. Select an entry and click Remove to delete it, or click the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner and click Remove All Passwords. On mobile, you can individually delete within the login record or select multiple credentials to delete at once by tapping Edit on the main password list. To disable password saving and management in Firefox, go to Firefox > Preferences/Settings > Privacy & Security and go to the Passwords section. Uncheck Ask to save passwords (or Save Passwords toggle on mobile). How to delete saved passwords from SafariThe process for removing saved passwords from Safari will depend on whether you have macOS Sequoia with the new Apple Passwords app. If you do, passwords can be deleted in the app by selecting the login and going to Edit > Delete either in the record or from the main menu bar. Or select all using Command + click and drag and drop to the Deleted folder. You can view deleted items for 30 days before they are permanently removed. In the mobile app, you can select one or more passwords and hit Delete. Note that Passwords now functions more like a third-party password manager than other browsers. Otherwise, for macOS Sonoma and earlier, go to Safari > Settings > Passwords, sign in with your password or Touch ID, select the website you want to delete the password for, and click Delete Password or Delete Passkey. You can also turn off password saving in the Passwords app under Passwords > Settings > Save passwords. Select Do Not Ask When Signing In from the drop-down menu. How to delete saved passwords from EdgeTo delete saved passwords in Microsoft Edge, go to Settings and more > Settings > Privacy, search, and services. Under Clear browsing data, tap Choose what to clear > Passwords > Clear now. If you want to turn password saving off, instead of selecting Privacy, search, and services, go to Profiles > Passwords > Settings and toggle off Offer to save passwords. How to delete saved passwords from OperaOpera allows you to delete saved passwords individually or in bulk. Open Settings, tap Advanced in the left navigation bar, and click Privacy & Security. To remove all passwords, click Clear browsing data > Advanced, select the Passwords and other sign-in data box, and click Clear data. To delete passwords one by one instead, go to Autofill > Passwords, click the three-dot menu, and hit Remove. To turn off password saving, toggle Offer to save passwords off at the top of this same screen.

Sony has used AI to imbue a PlayStation character with the ability to converse with a player, The Verge reports. A source shared a since-deleted video with the publication featuring an AI-powered version of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West. Engadget viewed the video before it was pulled.In the demo, Aloy can hold a conversation with voice prompts during gameplay, and respond to questions with a synthesized voice and facial movements. It starts with a delay from Aloy, after being asked how they are, followed by the character stating they are "managing alright, just dealing with a sore throat," a weird aside. The technology appears to work both within a controlled demo as well as the entire Horizon Forbidden West game. During gameplay, Aloy answers queries about where they are and what the time is, though Aloy states it's afternoon and hot, rather than a specific time. After the game, Aloy returns to interview mode and gives an overview of what just happened.The creepy bit, at least to me, came when Aloy is prompted to say goodbye to the audience and thank everyone. The character does, but the robotic voice creates an eerie vibe.Sony used a few different models to create this prototype, including GPT-4 and Llama 3 for powering decision making and conversation, along with OpenAI's Whisper allows for speech-to-text. In the demo, Sony reportedly said it is using its own Emotional Voice Synthesis (EVS) system and Mockingbird technology for speech generation and audio to face animation, two technologies that the company hasn't talked about much yet publicly.NVIDIA and Microsoft have been working on similar technology. The former has used ACE, its suite of technology for enlivening game characters with AI, to create AI-powered conversations for NPCs. Engadgets senior editor, Devindra Hardawar, was far from impressed, stating in January, that seeing several NVIDIA ACE demos back-to-back made me genuinely sick to my stomach.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/sony-demos-an-ai-powered-playstation-character-133052902.html?src=rss

Lena Raine, who composed most of the music for the beloved indie game Celeste, has released a concept album for Earthblade. Extremely OK Games announced in 2022 that it was developing Earthblade as its next project after Celeste, but it ultimately cancelled the project in January this year. Raine wrote in the description of EARTHBLADE ~ Across the Bounds of Fate that she cobbled together "every bit of music [she'd] written for the game to the point of its cancellation in order to tell [her] own version of it." While there's no game to dictate the tracks' sequence for the album, Raine said she arranged them "into the emotional arc of their progression, much like [she] would for any soundtrack release."The composer cited older animation and film as inspiration for the album, such as the synths and live strings in Joe Hisaishis score for Nausica of the Valley of the Wind, as well as Yoko Kanno's use of saxophones and percussives for Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. In addition to Celeste, Raine also wrote music for the soundtracks of Minecraft and Guild Wars 2.Earthblade was supposed to be a 2D exploration-action game, wherein you play as Nvoa, an "enigmatic child of Fate" who's returning to Earth. "Noel and Ibegan to reflect on how the game has felt for us to work on day-to-day, and realized that it has been a struggle for a long time," studio director Maddy Thorson said when Extremely OK cancelled the game. Programmer Noel Berry and Thorson parted ways with Extremely OK co-founder Pedro Medeiros last year, but Thorson said in her announcement of Earthblade's cancellation that Medeiros and the team for his new project "aren't the enemy."You can now purchase the album for $7 from Bandcamp.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/lena-raine-released-a-soundtrack-for-celeste-studios-cancelled-follow-up-game-earthblade-120029888.html?src=rss

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredders Revenge hits mobile next month.

This new health protocol combines smartwatch data with blood tests.

Legal technology company Trust & Will said Tuesday that it has raised $25 million in a Series C funding round led by Moderne Ventures.

Google has made it much easier to find the answers we seek without navigating to various websites, but that has made it much harder to do business for media companies and other creators. And this new era of artificial intelligence-powered search will reshape the future of the internet, according to Matthew Prince, cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare.Cloudflare has a unique vantage point because it counts content creators and artificial intelligence companies among the more than 20% of the internet that sits behind its network. Driven by a mission to build a better internet, the San Francisco-based company is invested in finding a solution that works for all players involved.The search-driven business model of the internet isnt going to be the business model of the internet going forward, Prince said Sunday during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. And to the extent that we can help figure that business model out, I think it is existential for us as a business, but its actually existential for the internet itself to figure out a new business model.After ChatGPT was released to the public in late 2022, Prince recalled how publishers and content creators began to increasingly identify AI companies as their biggest villain. And because the current dynamic of AI systems crawling these websites for information doesnt provide any incentive for original content creators to churn out new content, thats a problem for everyoneincluding Cloudflare.If people arent creating original content, thats the gasoline that fuels these engines, so you need to have that original content, Prince said.Prince proposed a three-step possible solution. First, its important to create scarcity so creators dont give away content for free; then if creators have the tools to identify when AI systems are crawling their websites, theyll have control over which of those systems can access this information; and finally, the process should be monetized with a rate card in which content creators dictate how much it costs to crawl their pages.Evolution of a better internetThat Cloudflare is now thinking about the information ecosystem online is indicative of how much the internet has evolved since the companys founding in 2009. Even the name was a nod to the major internet issues of that time: creating a firewall in the cloud.Whereas an encrypted internet was once the table stakes, Prince said, the standard has now become post-quantum resistant encryption. And looking ahead, Cloudflares mission to help build a better internet could mean protecting customers against Chinese hackers or making sure theyre fairly compensated for the content they create, he added.And he has an even more ambitious goal to make sure that information online continues to be available to all who need it.My utopian vision of the future is that we get to a place where humans get content for free and bots have to pay a lot for it, Prince said. I can afford to sign up for a bunch of paywalls, but I really do worry about the kid in Rwanda whos brilliant, but today has much less access even though theres just as much information out there.

Organizations talk about wanting innovation, but most arent willing to create the right conditions for it. We celebrate disruptors, bold thinkers, and game-changing ideasbut the way most organizations actually run makes creativity nearly impossible. Leaders ask, How do we encourage creativity? But the real question is: How do we keep it alive in a world that values efficiency over exploration?Efficiency kills creativity, but not how you thinkMost discussions around creativity killers focus on rigid hierarchies, tight deadlines, and risk-averse cultures. While these are barriers, the deeper, more insidious problem is the cult of efficiency. Organizations optimize for productivity, predictability, and speedoften at the expense of curiosity and imagination. Creativity, by its very nature, is inefficient. It requires space for ambiguity, exploration, and even failure. Yet, in many workplaces, the pressure to deliver immediate results leaves no room for the wandering that leads to breakthrough ideas.I have seen this firsthand in my work as a leadership advisor. In my early career in finance and strategy, I was conditioned to optimize every process for efficiency. However, I also saw that some of the most groundbreaking solutions came not from speed but from leaders and teams who embraced deep exploration. When I transitioned to coaching executives, I noticed a pattern: Those who created intentional space for creative thinkingwhether through unstructured brainstorming, cross-disciplinary conversations, or reflectionwere the ones who consistently led innovation. Yet, too often, creativity was treated as an afterthought, which happened only in scheduled innovation sessions rather than an ongoing practice.Toyota revolutionized manufacturing with Lean principles, but their greatest innovationthe hybrid carwasnt the result of efficiency. It was born from experimentation and long-term thinking. Similarly, Steve Jobss most groundbreaking ideas didnt emerge from staring at spreadsheets but from deep, unstructured contemplationsomething many leaders today would dismiss as unproductive. The paradox is clear: efficiency is necessary for execution, but it is the enemy of exploration. When efficiency becomes the dominant priority, creativity suffocates.Creativity thrives under purposeful inefficiencyTo sustain creativity, leaders must resist the impulse to manage it like a process and instead design for it like an ecosystem. Creativity flourishes in environments where friction existsnot in the form of bureaucratic red tape but in the form of intellectual collisions, differing perspectives, and permission to explore the unknown. This is what I call deliberate inefficiencyan approach where slowing down actually accelerates long-term innovation. Organizations that optimize solely for speed often end up producing predictable, incremental solutions rather than true breakthroughs.Throughout my career, I have worked with executives who struggled to break out of the cycle of busyness. One executive I coached, a brilliant strategist at a global biotech company, was feeling stagnant. His days were packed with back-to-back meetings, leaving no time for the deep thinking required for innovation. We worked together to redesign his schedule, blocking time for curiosity-driven exploration and structured white space for creative thinking. Within months, his team started generating novel ideas that reshaped their approach to R&D. What changed wasnt their ability to be creativeit was their permission to be creative.The leaders who truly champion creativity do not see themselves as managers of ideas but as orchestrators of creative conditions. They assume three essential roles: the Curator, the Gardener, and the Alchemist.The Curator gathers diverse perspectives and fosters creative collisions, much like Pixars Braintrust, where raw, unpolished ideas are challenged in an environment of candid yet constructive feedback. The Gardener protects ideas when they are still fragile, allowing them to take root before they are subjected to scrutiny. Great ideas are often killed too early simply because they dont look fully formed. The Alchemist combines seemingly unrelated elements to create unexpected breakthroughsthink of how Apple blended technology and design to reinvent entire industries. When leaders embrace these roles, they shift from controlling output to facilitating creative breakthroughs.How to design for creativityCreativity cant be sustained through one-off initiatives like brainstorming sessions or innovation sprints. The most creative organizations embed creativity into their structural DNA. They dont wait for inspiration to strike; they engineer the conditions where it can thrive consistently.I have helped organizations shift from ad-hoc creative efforts to more structured creativity ecosystems. One company I worked with struggled with stagnation because they relied too much on periodic brainstorming sessions. We introduced mechanisms that embedded creativity into their daily workflowsthings like interdisciplinary collaboration spaces, regular storytelling forums where employees could share unconventional ideas, and scheduled curiosity breaks where teams could step away from execution to reflect and explore. The impact was profound: teams started developing ideas that had been dormant for years, and the organization saw a measurable increase in both engagement and breakthrough thinking.The best creative cultures recognize that innovation isnt about having more ideas; its about creating the right conditions for meaningful ideas to emerge. This requires shifting from a culture of efficiency-driven execution to one that prioritizes exploration. It means rewarding curiosity, not just executionencouraging questions, not just answers. It means fostering a culture where failure is viewed as a necessary part of the learning process, not a career-ending mistake. And it requires carving out white space for deep work and reflection, because creativity does not happen in relentless busynessit happens in the pauses between intense periods of focus.The leaders who will thrive in the future wont just be efficiency expertstheyll be the ones who know how to protect and nurture creativity. They will recognize that innovation isnt about simply having more ideas but about fostering the right conditions for meaningful ideas to emerge. This means prioritizing exploration as much as execution, rewarding curiosity as much as results, and carving out space for deep thinking amid the daily grind. The most innovative organizations wont wait for creativity to strike; theyll build the ecosystems that allow it to flourish.