A mummy on display in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo that has been ascribed to Pharaoh Thutmose II, but some experts arent convinced its him. Photo: B.OKane/AlamyBy Aylin WoodwardMarch 6, 2025 11:00 am ETFor the first time in more than a century, since Howard Carter unearthed the final resting place of King Tut, Egyptologists have uncovered a decorated royal tomb in the Luxor area, west of the famous Valley of the Kings burial site.Pieces of pottery and other evidence found inside the sprawling underground tomb revealed that it belonged to Thutmose II, a young pharaoh who died an untimely death more than three millennia ago.Copyright 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

By Neil Shah | Photography by Eric Chakeen for WSJ. Magazine March 6, 2025 11:00 am ETThe marriage of Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires was one of musics great love storiesso it stunned fans when the Americana singer-songwriter filed for divorce in December 2023.Now Isbell is releasing his first album since the split.Copyright 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

get buzzy VW is testing its robotaxis in snowy, icy Norway A taxi service that only operates in good weather isn't a good taxi service. Jonathan M. Gitlin Mar 6, 2025 11:09 am | 7 Moia is operating some autonomous ID Buzzes in Oslo, although there are human safety drivers behind the wheel just in case. Credit: Moia Moia is operating some autonomous ID Buzzes in Oslo, although there are human safety drivers behind the wheel just in case. Credit: Moia Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThere's a reason that the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, were home to many autonomous vehicle programs: Driving on wide streets in great weather is easy mode for an AV. But a commercial robotaxi service that only works when the sun is shining is a commercial robotaxi service that will never recoup the billions it would cost to develop. That's why MoiaVolkswagen's AV divisionhas begun testing its autonomous ID Buzzes around the streets of Oslo, Norway, this winter.For a while, autonomous driving was the hottest thing in tech. That hype has certainly calmed down a lot over the last few years as reality began to bite. Developing an AV that can safely drive around unpredictable humans turned out to be pretty hard, with myriad edge cases needing to be solved differently for each new city.Startups have shut down, winnowing the field. Uber gave its AV program to Aurora, together with a rather fat investment check; Aurora these days is concentrating on autonomous trucking rather than robotaxis on busy city streets. VW, together with Ford, gave up on Argo AI. And General Motors killed off Cruise AV, seeing no way to make back the large pile of money it had already spent trying to make robotaxis work in San Francisco.Waymo is still making headwaylast week, I saw one of its I-Paces doing its thing (with a safety driver behind the wheel) here in Washington, DC, no less. Tesla claims it will start operating a commercial service in Austin, Texas, this year, which seems risible in light of that company's history of missed timelines and lax approach to public safety. And Moia is still gathering miles in Austin, as well as in Hamburg and Munich in Germany.And now Oslo."Users of mobility services expect a comfortable, reliable, and safe mode of transportregardless of the season and weather conditions. This remains especially true in the autonomous age," said Sascha Meyer, Moia's CEO. "To ensure that people worldwide can reliably experience our autonomous vehicles, we are making the technology winter-proof. The ability to drive safely under extreme weather conditions is a fundamental prerequisite for the long-term economic success of our offering in Europe and North America."Moia wants to deploy a commercial robotaxi service in Hamburg next year.Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 7 Comments

gut feeling Who gets ownership of useful genetic data? Digital sequence information alters how researchers look at the worlds genetic resources. Peter Andrey Smith, Undark Mar 6, 2025 10:38 am | 9 Credit: NurPhoto via Getty Credit: NurPhoto via Getty Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreCow D lived on a dairy farm in New Zealand. The animal looked like the typical black-and-white cow farmers raise for milk, except for one thing: Researchers had outfitted Cow D with an artificial fistulaa hole offering them a way to reach the microbes inhabiting the animals bathtub-size stomach. But its what happened next that offers a porthole into the global debate over the use of genetic data.In the spring of 2009, Samantha Noel, then a doctoral researcher at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, reached into Cow Ds rumen and plucked out a strain of Lachnospiraceae bacterium, later dubbed ND2006. Another team of geneticists sequenced the microbes complete set of genes, or genome, and uploaded the information, which was then shared with GenBank, a public database run by the US National Institutes of Health. If genes are the book of life, then this process was like adding a digital copy to an online library. In policy circles, these lines of code go by another name: digital sequence information, or DSI.Eventually, a section of the sequence found inside Cow D caught the attention of scientists on the other side of the world. The sequence contained a promising new genetic tool for modifying DNA, a CRISPR. Editas Medicine, a Massachusetts-based company focused on commercializing gene-editing technology for medical applications, used these data to build its platform and now holds the license on a portfolio of patentsall without ever interacting with the cow or its microbes directly. The company subsequently developed an experimental therapy, which involved injecting a modified CRISPR-associated molecule into patients eyeballs to treat a common form of inherited blindness. Editas billed the breakthrough as the first such treatment administered to people anywhere in the world. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, contain little mention of any sequence data and even less about its origins.These origins also arent mentioned in conjunction with other products, including a commercially synthesized enzyme identified as Lb ND2006, 5 milligrams of which sells for $8,695. When Undark first contacted Noel, now an associate professor in the Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark, she wrote back to say she had no idea: No one has ever contacted me about CRISPR before.CRISPR provides one example of how biotechnology comes about through efforts to understand biodiversity. The research also illustrates how computation has become fundamental to biology: Algorithms and search tools allow scientists to comb through digital databases, and that data is what powers artificial intelligence programs, like AlphaFold2, the Nobel-prize winning model that predicts protein structures. Its being used everywhere, said Margo Bagley, a former chemical engineer who is now an Asa Griggs Candler professor of law at Emory University School of Law. People just go to the databases.But these data still come from organisms, and these organisms come from somewhere. Add politics and policies to the equation, and questions around the use of DSI become a volatile mix. The question is not: Who owns life? The Biodiversity Convention, a UN treaty, resolved that, landing on the agreement that countries own genetic resources that are found within their borders. Rather, the question over DSI concerns the fine line between use and misuse: How should humanity share the worlds genetic data, keeping resources accessible while also ensuring a fair share from any profit? Some refer to the search for new and useful products in nature as bioprospecting. Others see a more parasitic framework and contend that profiting off biodiversity without paying back royalties is a form of theft, like stealing precious resources without paying the locals a dime. Theres even a pejorative term for it: biopiracy.Regardless of these varying perspectives, one thing is clear: The existing legal framework was not designed for the digital age. And although international negotiators wrangled over DSI for many years, they reached a consensus that left its use in a gray zone. When you have a lack of legal certainty, then folks tend to try to avoid it, Bagley said. That's not necessarily good for society as a whole because there's still so much biodiversity that has not been analyzed that could hold the key to cures for diseases, et cetera. So we want to find a way to justly and fairly have access to that in a way that has low transaction costsa way that everyone benefits from.And so, despite the routine use of DSI, the parties involved in the international negotiations have yet to figure out a fair and equitable exchange. Technical details aside, another factor complicates everything: Underlying the contemporary debate is the contested history of colonial powers extracting materials, often in an exploitative manner. Where some see an altruistic search for scientific knowledge, others see a pattern of unbridled greed.Early antibioticsIn 1948, the Rev. William W. Conley set off on a mission in Indonesia, collecting specimens for the US drug company Eli Lilly and Co. Conley and his colleagues eventually mailed back a vial of soil, which contained the bacteria used to develop the antibiotic vancomycin. According to one account, the company donated $1,000 to the Christian and Missionary Alliance. (The drug generates just under $400 million annually.)Similarly, erythromycin, an antibiotic commonly smeared into the eyes of newborns in the US, comes with a contested backstory: The Philippines maintains that the drug came from samples collected in the country under false premises. Over the last century, other alleged examples of commercialization without consent emerged, too. W.R. Grace, a US chemical company, tried to patent biopesticides from neem trees traditionally used in India and Nepal; a dietary product sold by the British company Phytopharm and the multinational firm Unilever came from the hoodia plant, which had a history of use among the tribesmen of the Kalahari; captopril, a drug marketed by E.R Squibb & Sons (now known as Bristol Myers Squibb), came from the venom of a Brazilian viper.Until 1992, bioprospecting went largely unregulated. That year, the Biodiversity Convention convened in Rio de Janeiro, laying the groundwork for whats become known as the Nagoya Protocol for access and benefit-sharing. The protocol covers all plant, microbial, and animal material (excluding genetic material from humans). Its roughly analogous to a mining permit: Researchers obtain permission from the providers and agree to share the profit should they extract something of value. Notably, the US is the only United Nations member state not to have ratified the agreement.In 2002, as discussions for the protocol were still underway, negotiators created a set of non-binding benefit-sharing guidelines and tried to assist countries in setting up agreements. Nobody implemented them, said Bart Van Vooren, a Brussels attorney who specializes in life sciences. Then there was a push to negotiate the Nagoya Protocol, he added. Negotiators rarely said so bluntly, in his view, but the onerous agreements undermined the entire premise of benefit sharing. Because the compliance cost is so high, very few get permits, he said. Its very hard.More recently, advances in gene sequencing created a digital loophole. Instead of sending an emissary to scoop up soil in another country, researchers could just trawl through genetic information freely posted online, find what they wanted, and synthesize the genetic material in the labwithout needing a passport or a permit. Some believed that DSI fell under the Nagoya Protocol and that the definition of genetic resources included physical samples and digital representations. Others felt digital copies were intangible and therefore excluded. When negotiations resumed in 2016, discussions got off to a rocky start. One group of researchers wrote a letter claiming that if DSI were put into existing protocols, it would hamstring scientists. According to sources who attended the meetings, both sides would trade barbed insults; one representative reportedly compared the illicit sharing of genetic information to child sexual abuse images.In mid-2024, as the talks inched closer to an agreement, negotiators met in Montral. At the meeting, according to Michael Halewood at CGIAR, a global partnership researching food security, everybody involved in this process got educated and got a better understanding of what DSI is and how its used. With a clearer definition in place, negotiators floated the idea of a mandatory fund: Countries would make companies using DSI pay up. But the proposal did not go over well with everyone. After the meeting, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations issued a statement saying its members had serious concerns about the lack of clarity, which, the association said, would be detrimental to innovation.Then, in October of 2024, at a summit in Cal, Colombia, delegates agreed to establish a voluntary fund. Businesses that profit from biodiversity, such as pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, the agreement said, should contribute 1 percent of their profits (or 0.1 percent of their revenue) to the newly established Cal fund, which could raise an estimated $1 billion annually for conservation. Public institutions are exempt and contribute as-yet-undefined non-monetary benefits should they develop products using DSI.Where some saw an imperfect compromise, other attendees apparently left the talks in disgust. In published reports, for instance, Sajeewa Chamikara, an environmental activist in Sri Lanka, referred to the agreement as digital colonialism and legalized robbery.Biopiracy?Are these concerns about DSI mostly hypothetical? Some say yes; others say no. Textbook cases of physical biopiracy exist, but a clear case of digital biopiracy is harder to come by. As Halewood put it, Its not like you can just go and say, Oh, I found this golden gene sequence from the single genome that was put up online and become a biopirate, Halewood said. Its never that simple.Even the case of Cow D in New Zealand is not clear cut, and that was exactly the point. Experts that spoke to Undark had a range of perspectives, but many agreed it underscored the complexity and the importance of getting any such policy right.To some observers, CRISPR seemed like a perfect example, since these tools allow researchers to tinker with genetic sequences found all over the world. But the development of new CRISPR tools usually involves the comparison of many sequences and gene-cutting enzymes and synthetic modifications to the sequence. The resulting patents came about from many sources. Rather than stealing from one countrys well, the process drew from a collective pool.In 2024, the DSI Scientific Network, an informal group of scientists that formed to advise the CBD negotiations, wrote a case study on another example: the first vaccines against COVID-19. These shots came about because of the digital availability of copies of SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses that cause respiratory illnesses. Within days of researchers publishing the sequence data online, scientists from the pharmaceutical company Moderna made synthetic copies in the lab. The company eventually patented their resulting vaccines, although the patents drew from many sources, involving 176 genetic strains from a large range of countries. As the case study points out, No single sequence was vital to its work. As such, the authors suggest the use of DSI is a non-issue and further underscored the idea that use involved far more steps and material than a single copy of sequence. The study concludes there would be no obligations associated with the use of any one sequence from any one countryand likely negligible benefits.For her part, Bagley has argued that the use of digital sequence as a workaround is not hypothetical. After the 2014 Ebola outbreak, Regeneron, a New York pharmaceutical company, developed a vaccine; researchers used a strain that had originally been isolated from a surviving patient in Guinea, the West African country, and was provided by the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine. The institute would have required a licensing agreement for the use of a physical copy of the Ebola virus but had uploaded its sequence to a public databaseessentially with no strings attached. Regeneron had no legal obligations to pay back the patient or the country of origin. (Moreover, Guinea had no relevant national laws of its own.) The company made hundreds of millions of dollars; Guinea got nothing.But the Ebola and COVID-19 examples involve pathogens, which some consider exempt from Nagoya, and such viruses fall under a separate regulatory regime. Similarly, the use of any one sequence can be complicated by multiple agreements made under the auspices of the UN, such as the High Seas Treaty, which pertains to biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, or the so-called Plant Treaty, which outlines the use of seeds from food crops. Legal observers describe these as lasagna layers of legislation, which pose problems for compliance. It's not that companies don't want to pay, Van Vooren, the Brussels attorney, said. But if you have a pathogen regime, you have a multilateral DSI regime, if you have a national Nagoya Protocol regime, if you have a high seas regime, if you have a plant treaty regime, you've just made a total mess because its one product can trigger five of them.Other fine-grained questions about the implementation of the new Cal fund remain. In an email, Amber Hartman Scholz, a microbiologist and head of the science policy department at the Leibniz Institute DSMZ and a volunteer member of the DSI Scientific Network, listed several: When will the first payments start? Who will take leadership? Governance and/or monitoring of the mechanism is mostly undecided. What counts as a non-monetary benefit? And how will we keep track of these?The consensus-building resulted in a resolution, but the agreement lacked clarity in the one respect that mattered most: Creating legal certainty about the use of DSI.Meanwhile, in Iceland... A Basecamp Research team member in Iceland. In 2019, Oliver Vince and his team collected samples on the ice, sequencing the DNA of previously undescribed microorganisms on portable devices. The trip laid the groundwork for Vince to co-found Basecamp. Credit: Basecamp Research A Basecamp Research team member in Iceland. In 2019, Oliver Vince and his team collected samples on the ice, sequencing the DNA of previously undescribed microorganisms on portable devices. The trip laid the groundwork for Vince to co-found Basecamp. Credit: Basecamp Research There may be another way. In 2019, Oliver Vince, a biomedical engineer in the UK, went to Iceland. His team pulled gear to a base camp at the northern edge of Vatnajkull, Europes largest ice cap mass. The researchers collected samples and sequenced the DNA of previously undescribed microorganisms on portable devices, off the grid.The trip laid the groundwork for Basecamp Research, which Vince co-founded in London and which has raised more than $85 million to date. The company aims to build the worlds largest genetic database. After all, if their researchers could collect data from a remote camp on ice to later upload to a vast database, then people could do the same from anywhere. Users can send genetic sequences to Basecamp, which uses AI models to crunch large sets of biological data; companies and other non-commercial users can leverage this data to design drugs, therapies, and more. If the companies make money, the country of origin of the original sequences receives royalties.According to Vince, the approach solves the practical and pragmatic issues around DSI by offering legal certainty. The other approach of using public databases, he said, mirrors the murkiness around the access to human cell lines. So in human genetics originally, it was a Wild West, right? he said. There were these big open public databases and everyone was just sort of, freely pulled from it, particularly commercial users. Then, obviously, loads of rules came in and now it's absolutely impossible to share data without permission, without consent, without paying back, with all those sorts of protocols around it, which makes sense. The DSI agreement in Cal, he said, showed the same was becoming true with biodiversity data.He also saw a lack of incentive for people to participate by uploading dataand more data was a requirement for the whole system to work well. What you find when you actually go out there and you talk to people all over the world is there are people who are both interested and capable of learning these techniques, he said, who want to study the biodiversity, who are motivated to do so, but for whom there isn't a purpose to do it. There isnt someone willing to support that.To that end, Basecamp Research has partners in 25 countries, including nonprofits and academic centers like the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. In exchange for sending data, the providers got data that could, among other potential applications, be used for biodiversity monitoring. Nobody objected to paying back, he said, now that there was a tight agreement in terms of traceability and legal clarity.Among the companys headline partnerships is the David Liu lab. Liu, director of the Merkin Institute for Transformative Technologies in Healthcare at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, co-founded Editas Medicine. The basis for one of Editas products, according to the published scientific literature, had first been identified in a public database, including the microbe found inside Cow D. (Liu did not respond to a request for comment.)The path to Editas discovery from Cow D wasn't just a simple, single step. Rather, it involved many incremental achievements, underscoring the difficulty of assigning value to a snippet of a genetic sequence, an organism, or a single researchers hand plunged into a steaming hot rumen. Moreover, as one DSI Scientific Network volunteer member, Andrew Hufton, described it, patents cover the use of DSI for a specific application. Unlike the physical world, where mining exhausts the resource, data mining in computational biology does not prevent someone else from coming along and using those same genetic sequences. When it came to the use of the CRISPR found in Cow Ds microbes, Hufton said, Editas patents did not prevent someone else from finding commercial applications in the same or very similar genetic sequences, which almost certainly exist elsewhere. When you patent scissors, he added, you arent stopping everyone else from using sharp edges.Seen this way, the cow-to-CRISPR pipeline appeared to be a perfect example of DSI. While Western scientists saw the collaborative use of data as a largely unremarkable altruistic search for scientific knowledge, others saw the potential for exploitation.The need for reparations, paying back for the wrongdoing of the past, had been made explicit during the recent international negotiations. The agreements made under the Biodiversity Convention aimed for true collaboration and attempted to build toward a common goal: The common good. But, so far, in Halewoods view, the implementation missed the mark. It just hasn't been allowed to work, he said. So we keep repackaging it, we keep running at it. Again, DSI created a wonderful opportunity to create something broad and flat that cut across the sectoral divides.The latest round of negotiations seemed poised to simplify DSI. And yet we seem to have maybe not quite got over the line again, Halewood added. Maybe companies will come forward and make payments, but we'll know in a couple of years.This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.Peter Andrey Smith, UndarkPeter Andrey Smith, Undark 9 Comments

TechTarget and Informa Techs Digital Business Combine.TechTarget and InformaTechTarget and Informa Techs Digital Business Combine.Together, we power an unparalleled network of 220+ online properties covering 10,000+ granular topics, serving an audience of 50+ million professionals with original, objective content from trusted sources. We help you gain critical insights and make more informed decisions across your business priorities.Signs Your Organization's Culture Is Hurting Your CybersecuritySigns Your Organization's Culture Is Hurting Your CybersecurityHigh turnover, burnout, and blame-heavy environments do more than hurt morale. They also weaken security and put the organization at risk.Dark Reading, Staff & ContributorsMarch 6, 20251 Min ReadBrain light via Alamy StockThese days, the word "toxic" gets thrown around a lot in many contexts, but when used to describe organizational culture, it poses an actual threat. When employees are constantly overworked, undervalued, or forced to operate in high-stress, blame-heavy environments, mistakes are inevitable. Fatigue leads to oversight, disengagement breeds carelessness, and a lack of psychological safety prevents people from speaking up about vulnerabilities or potential risks. In an industry where even the smallest errors can have massive consequences, this kind of dysfunction can be dangerous.Rob Lee, chief of research and head of faculty at SANS Institute, says a toxic cybersecurity culture manifests when professionals feel undervalued, unsupported, or actively undermined. The warning signs are often evident long before they take a toll. High turnover, for example, is a flashing red light."When skilled professionals keep leaving, it's usually because they're burned out or their concerns are ignored," he says.Another major indicator is how organizations treat training and development. Many companies claim to support ongoing education, but when budgets for training are cut, the message is clear: Growth and expertise aren't priorities. Lee says that some businesses also make the critical mistake of investing in security tools while neglecting the people who operate them.Read the Full Article on Dark ReadingAbout the AuthorDark ReadingStaff & ContributorsDark Reading: Connecting The Information Security CommunityLong one of the most widely-read cybersecurity news sites on the Web, Dark Reading is also the most trusted online community for security professionals. Our community members include thought-leading security researchers, CISOs, and technology specialists, along with thousands of other security professionals.See more from Dark ReadingWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like

Josie FordFeedback is New Scientists popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com A sensitive topicFeedback reads a lot of academic articles, and we are often distressed by their titles, which can be not so much meandering and unclear as digressive and circumlocutory. The only things worse are the ones that preface the academese with an allegedly humorous pop culture reference.However, sometimes we run across research whose title is brisk and to the point. We are fond of the 2000 structural biology paper The ribosome is a ribozyme, which is an absolute model of efficiency (assuming you know what the two nouns mean). And then there is a February paper on bioRxiv brought to our attention by New Scientist contributor Chris Simms, titled The coarse mental map of the breast is anchored on the nipple.AdvertisementThat may, perhaps, need a bit of context. Some parts of the human body are more sensitive to touch than others. The face especially the lips and the tips of our fingers are highly sensitive, while our backs are much less so.This is one of those classic experiments you can do at home. Get a chopstick or some other blunt tool and gently poke a willing partner. You will find that they can tell if you move the location of successive pokes, even by mere millimetres, if you poke them on the lips or fingertips. But if you poke them on the back, they will be terrible at determining whether you moved it. This is because your back has fewer touch-sensitive nerves there.The authors of this new preprint spotted a gap in the literature. While tactile acuity has been extensively studied on the limbs and face, acuity on the torso has received far less experimental attention with the breast being largely ignored, they write.Lets not drag out the suspense. It turns out breasts have very low tactile acuity, even worse than backs. Apparently, touches needed to be between 3 and 4 times as far apart on the breast than on the hand to yield equivalent location discrimination performance.Feedback isnt sure if this is quite what Caroline Criado Perez had in mind when she wrote Invisible Women, documenting the myriad ways women have been excluded from scientific research. But, as a piece of basic information, it seems like it might have its uses.Feedbacks main takeaway is that we would like to have been a fly on the wall for the recruitment process. You want to do what to my what with what?An even longer wordBack in early November 2024, Feedback was running a bit short of material due to a brief hiatus (long since over) in global idiocy, so we padded the column with a torrent of increasingly long words or, as we said at the time, we engaged in sesquipedalianism.Except it turns out we did it wrong. Francis Wenban-Smith wrote in to point out our mistake: you were 2 letters short in your attempt to pad out your column with floccinaucinihipilification. The correct word is: floccinaucinihilipilification.If you cant see the difference between those two blizzards of letters and we wouldnt blame you, because we evidently couldnt the second has an extra li just before the pili. Feedback would like to assure readers we have been given a stern talking-to.In the process of confirming that we had indeed misspelled floccinaucinihilipilification, Feedback entered the two versions into a popular search engine. The correct version brought up a dictionary entry as the highlighted response. The incorrect version brought up our article (how embarrassing), above which was an AI summary of the fake word. Here are the opening lines:Floccinaucinihipilification is a long word that means to regard something as worthless or trivial. It was the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1982. Floccinaucinihipilification is a 29-letter word with 12 syllables. It contains nine is but no es.Readers who can count to 29, unlike the AI, will notice that all those claims about the number of letters and syllables are wrong, bar the one about the letter e. Feedback is proud to have contributed, in our own small way, to the ongoing pollution of the information ecosystem.Unsafe datingLike so much else in life, dating is becoming micro-targeted. You can still use huge apps like Tinder, but there is also a growing proliferation of ever-more-niche dating sites.Perhaps the nichest of all is Unjected, aimed at those not vaccinated against covid-19. Or, to be more precise: While we do not support vaccination of any kind, Unjected is specifically tailored for Covid-19 unvaccinated or any mRNA based injection.As technology analyst Benedict Evans put it on Threads: Someone built a whole company around the Darwin Awards.Feedback has a lot of questions about Unjected, the most pressing of which is: how does the company decide who can join? Perhaps this is so basic it doesnt need saying, but you cant prove a negative.Scouring the sites FAQs, we found the answer: Since the beginning, Unjected has believed the healthiest realtionships [sic] have a foundation of trust, and we have operated on an honor system. However, for our members who want the most safety and security in choosing their future partner, we recommend our Unjected Verified upgrade. Unjected verified members attest to their unvaccination by affidavit. Love, like SARS-CoV-2, is in the air.Got a story for Feedback?You can send stories to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This weeks and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website.

2025-03-06T16:37:28Z Read in app Adidas is officially out of Yeezy stock two years after ending its partnership with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. Theo Wargo/Getty Images for adidas This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Adidas sells out of Yeezy stock, closing the book on one of its most successful partnerships.The partnership ended in 2022 after Ye's antisemitic comments.Adidas saw a 12% sales increase in 2024, despite a 2% drop in North America.The lengthy saga of Adidas and Yeezy is coming to a close.The sports giant reported its 2024 earnings on Wednesday, where Adidas CEO Bjrn GuldenYeezy inventory in February 2024.The company reached its goal in the fourth quarter of 2024, generating around 650 million euros in revenue from Yeezy sales, it reported. The Yeezy brand began in 2015 as a collaboration with Kanye West, known as Ye, but the partnership turned sour and ended in 2022 after a series of antisemitic rants by Ye.Although Adidas saw a 12% increase in currency-adjusted sales for 2024, its North America region was hit with a 2% decrease in revenue "entirely due to significantly lower sales of Yeezy products," the company reported.Last year, Ye blasted the German brand in a string of Instagram posts accusing it of selling "fake" Yeezys and not paying him for its sales.Adidas condemned Ye's "unacceptable, hateful, and dangerous" comments in 2022. A legal battle ensued, and Adidas said in October that it reached an out-of-court settlement with the rapper.In the aftermath of severing a lucrative relationship, Adidas expected a short-term negative impact on its sales. Gulden took over as CEO in 2023, and Adidas regained its momentum, reporting a 10% increase in currency-neutral revenues across the group in Q3 2024."Although we are not yet where we want to be long-term, it was a very successful year that confirmed the strength of the adidas brand," Gulden said in a Wednesday press release.Meanwhile, Ye remains at the center of controversy. Earlier this year, described himself as a Nazi in a series of posts to X. In February, he appeared in an ad during Super Bowl LIX directing viewers to a website selling only a shirt with a Swastika.

2025-03-06T16:30:01Z Read in app I've enjoyed staying in treehouses on vacation, but I probably wouldn't do it again. Courtenay Rudzinski This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? I stayed in 2 different treehouses during my Washington trip, and the stays reminded me of camping.Most treehouse accommodations can be difficult to get in and out of with luggage.Treehouses often have less-than-ideal bathroom situations, and stays come with nature-related risks.When I decided to road trip through Washington state, staying in a treehouse was high on my list of priorities.The Pacific Northwest is known for its lush scenery and treetop rentals, and I planned to take full advantage of the stellar views.I booked two very different treehouse Airbnbs: one in Mukilteo that looked out over Puget Sound and a remote two-story house in the woods near Olympia.Both stays felt oddly similar to camping. Although I was technically indoors, way up high in a tree, I felt immersed in nature and had limited modern conveniences.My first treehouse was in the backyard of a stunning, million-dollar house in a beautiful neighborhood that looked out over the water.I booked one night at a bargain price of around $100 and slept with the shades wide open to take in the amazing water views. It was small the bed was pushed against a wall with barely any room to walk, but worth the drive (it was an hour off my route).The other treetop villa was a splurge that had been featured in travel blogs. It required a two-night booking (which was a bit more time in a tree than I wanted) and didn't have WiFi, but it had multiple decks and was surrounded by forest.After having stayed in two different treehouse rentals, though, I feel that they're better in theory than reality for three reasons.It can be difficult to lug belongings up and down the stairs Many treehouses have stairs or ladders. Courtenay Rudzinski Although some extra-fancy treehouses have elevators, I'd argue most will require a bit of a workout to enjoy.My waterside cabin had very steep stairs, and I was traveling alone with a heavy suitcase, a small cooler, and a backpack. I didn't want to leave my belongings or devices in the car, so everything came up with me, requiring multiple trips.At the other treehouse, there were three staircases up to the bedroom loft. It was quite a workout for a short stay.Bathroom options in a treehouse are often less than idealUsing the bathroom in a treehouse can require thought and planning. However, I don't want to think so hard on vacation when I just need to pee.In many cases, treehouse accommodations have toilets designed for campers or bathrooms that must be accessed by leaving the treehouse.In Mukilteo, the bathroom was downstairs, attached to the main house, and it required a key. To me, this felt like a lot to remember when I woke up in the middle of the night after drinking too much water.At the larger treehouse, the facility was in the tree but had an RV toilet with a flush pedal. It didn't feel very luxurious, and, to be honest, I struggled to fully understand how to operate it.Given how tricky it can be to install plumbing up a tree, I'd suggest checking the listing before you book and making sure you're OK with whatever the bathroom situation may be. You're at the mercy of weather and wildlife I've experienced some incredible views from treehouses. Courtenay Rudzinski Treehouses often come with unmatched views, but the wildlife immersion may have drawbacks.Although it might feel nice and cozy in a treehouse during a rain or snowstorm, it can become treacherous if you need to leave and the steps are icy or slippery.Plus, in a treehouse, you're more exposed to the elements, drafts, rain leaks, and wind than you would be at a hotel.During my stay at the treetop villa, the owner told me that if the wind started blowing, the house would creak and sway. If it got really bad, he warned, I'd need to evacuate, possibly in the middle of the night.This was a bit more than I'd bargained for, and I ended up leaving a night early.A treehouse stay also means keeping an eye out for nearby wildlife owls and bears are prevalent in Washington state and possums, raccoons, and mice can climb.Overall, I'm glad I stayed in treehouses but I wouldn't do it againMy trip to Washington was great, and I have no regrets.Thankfully, I had no animal run-ins, and the weather was beautiful during both of my stays. Sleeping in the air was kind of fun and peaceful, and I was as close to nature as I'll possibly ever get.Treehouse stays are cool to try at least once, but I can't say I'd want to regularly incorporate them into my travels. The cons don't quite outweigh the pros for me.

For millennials everywhere, two of the most glamorous and terrifying fashionistas of the 2000s were the hosts of TLCs What Not to Wear, Stacy London and Clinton Kelly. Londons Cruella streak of white hair, Kellys herringbone suits the polish! The fabulousness! The way they would cackle over a hapless victims mom jeans and dated 80s perm before literally throwing their whole wardrobe in the garbage well, the meanest eighth-grader you know would have to work hard to be that scary.What was most compelling of all about London and Kelly, though, was the idea that they could actually tell you what not to wear: that there were real, rigid rules to fashion, and you could learn them, if you paid close enough attention. You could learn to wear what was appropriate for your age, your profession, your physique; to draw attention away from the largest part of your body and toward the smallest; to put together a sensible blazer with a business casual wrap dress, no matter the occasion. What Not to Wear ended in 2013 after 10 years on the air, and Kelly and London have both since distanced themselves from the brand. Last summer, however, they announced that they would be reuniting to host a new show on Amazon Prime, one far removed from the peak of 2000s body shaming: Wear Whatever the F You Want.The world has changed a lot since the run of What Not to Wear, and, thankfully, so have we. These days, we have zero interest in telling people what to do, based on societys norms because there are no more norms! they said in a press release. Its time to celebrate individual style, not prescribe it.Somehow, the ethos London and Kelly were trying to broadcast for their new show has become the prevailing attitude in the style advice world now. Celebrating individual style, rather than prescribing it, is the new imperative. The phrase that people or at least the thousands of influencers who have supplanted fashions usual gatekeepers over the last 20 years usually use is finding your personal style, and they seed it liberally in the titles of TikToks and YouTube videos and Instagram reels. As in: Outfits I wore before I found my personal style, Ted talk on personal style, How to find your personal style.It felt as inaccessible as the idea that I could theoretically make a mid-career pivot to acting and win an Oscar.I first started seeing the phrase everywhere around 2021, just as we were emerging from pandemic lockdowns, and it felt like stumbling across a mystical and arcane concept: that my personal style existed somewhere out there, independent of my conscious mind, and all I had to do was get in touch with the tools I needed to find it. Fashion-wise, I am what the kids would call a normie. I am rarely sloppy, but I frequently feel that my clothes could look better. Imagining that I could have a sense of my own style so precise and specific that I could describe it with words, could know at a glance if an article of clothing belonged to it well, it felt as inaccessible as the idea that I could theoretically make a mid-career pivot to acting and win an Oscar. Sure, its technically physically possible, but what are the odds?Nonetheless, I was intrigued. The discussion about finding your personal style comes with such intriguing promises. The TikTok influencers and YouTube vloggers say discovering yours will save you from falling victim to trends and the accusations of basicness that come with them. It will save you from wasting your money on clothes that you dont like, or from contributing to the mountains of lightly used textiles that clog landfills. Its an idea that I find profoundly seductive and, because it is so seductive, I also find myself profoundly suspicious of it.When did we all get so obsessed with personal style, anyway?At the outset of this decade, as fast fashion and TikTok converged, the trend cycle started to move very fast indeed. An abbreviated list of the styles that have risen and fallen and perhaps risen again in the last few years: pleated skirts, mini skirts, midi skirts; cardigans, ladyjackets, puffer jackets, trench coats; prairie dresses, maxi dresses, shift dresses; high-waisted pants, low-rise jeans, barrel cuts, boot cuts, flared trousers; tucked-in sweaters, crop tops, bralettes; lug-soled loafers, knee-high boots, platform shoes, gladiator sandals, etc., etc. Part of the reason the idea of finding your personal style gained such currency is that it presents an antidote to this impossibly frenetic cycle. It bubbled up first for me on TikTok and social media, says Rachel Tashjian, fashion critic for the Washington Post. People would say, Okay, Im getting really fed up with all of these micro trends. The reaction to that is to say, Dont follow these trends, but instead find your personal style.One of those making the argument that its both more personally fulfilling and sustainable to get off the trend treadmill is Alyssa Beltempo, a slow fashion stylist and YouTube content creator. When you know what you love, its a lot harder to be swayed by whats new and whats trending, Beltempo says. What she means is that when you have a sense of taste divorced from the trend of the hour, you will be less tempted to buy a $20 polyester ruched milkmaid dress from Shein the next time cottagecore fashion blows up on TikTok, wear it once, and then throw it out. Body-positive stylist Dacy Gillespie, who runs the popular fashion substack Unflattering, theorizes that the movement toward body positivity itself has played a role in the social shift that has people reexamining what they want from their clothes. If were able to put on our clothes without demanding they make us look as thin as possible, Gillespie argues, many new possibilities open up before us. I see that a lot of people are thinking more about self-expression versus whats flattering or what we should wear, Beltempo says. Both worlds do still exist, but theres definitely been a shift.Or maybe theres a more pragmatic explanation for the big shift in how we talk about clothes: the rise of stretchy fabrics like Lycra and Spandex.Its almost as dramatic as when they got rid of corsets. David Kibbe, personal stylist behind Kibbe image identitiesIn the old days, the silhouette was structured outside the body, says David Kibbe, the personal stylist behind the hugely internet-famous phenomenon of Kibbe image identities. A silhouette usually came from Paris, and it would change about once a decade hence the iconic 40s shoulder pads and 50s nipped-in waists. Then came the 80s, when new technology began to make it possible for fabric to stretch around the natural form of the body, rather than build new shapes on top of it. Today, nearly all clothes are made from lightweight and stretchy fabric, and the silhouette is no longer swapped out once a decade by Parisian designers. Instead, its the product of the way an individual piece of clothing drapes around an individual body. That changes everything, Kibbe says. Its almost as dramatic as when they got rid of corsets. Now, says Tashjian, fashion designers who used to issue edicts on what people should wear are beginning to talk about their work as being in service to the creative vision of the consumer.I was really shocked to hear designers backstage talking about, Its really not about what Im creating. Its about giving these things to women, and they can put them together in interesting ways, Tashjian says. Were used to thinking of designers as dictators.Changes in fabric technology made it possible for consumers to think about clothes in new ways, focusing on their own desires instead of the choices of a designer. Social media made it possible to talk about those thoughts in large groups. A growing progressive ethos of environmentalism and body positivity made it ever-more attractive to cultivate your own style. Now, its all that seems to matter when it comes to clothes. The warring philosophies of styleWhen I first started paying attention to the idea of personal style, it was toward the end of the Covid lockdowns. I wasnt entirely sure how I wanted to dress, but when I looked at my old closet full of prim business casual dresses I thought: Not this. I wanted to know what looked good on my body. I wanted to not care if I looked thin. I wanted to feel fresh and modern. I wanted to not get bogged down in trends. I wanted lots of clothes that were new and exciting. I wanted to not spend my money on fast fashion. I wanted to answer to no one, and I wanted someone to explain clearly to me how everyone was dressing these days so that I would know what the benchmark was.Like many people who like clothes, rules, and esoteric theory, I found what felt like a possible answer to my impossible problem with Kibbe styling, invented by Kibbe and immortalized by his first book Metamorphosis in 1987. Over the past 10 years, the Kibbe system has become the organizing principle for a thriving internet subculture with subreddits and Facebook groups and TikTok videos to no ones surprise as much as Kibbe himself, who says he found out about his fan base when one of his clients told him he should search his name on Facebook. Now, its popular enough that Kibbe has released an updated and revised take on his system, David Kibbes Power of Style.Kibbes system has a quasi-mystical allure partially because its so befuddling to figure out; its a little like diving deep into astrology. It contains ten image archetypes, and you sort yourself into them based on the way fabric drapes around your body. If it falls in straight, vertical folds, you are Dramatic; if it skims over you in lush, round curves, you are Romantic; if you fall somewhere in between, theres a different type out there for you. Each type, in turn, gets recommended a different style vibe based on Old Hollywood archetypes. Regal Dramatics are supposed to look best in structured tailoring, like Lauren Bacall, whereas dreamy Romantics are supposed to look best in soft-edged, flowing clothes, like Marilyn Monroe. Kibbe also sorts his clients into color seasons to figure out which colors look best on them warm vs. cool, soft vs. bright. By the time his process is finished, the theory goes, you know exactly what shapes and colors flatter you, and you can ignore everything that doesnt. In a marketplace thrown into hyperdrive by fast fashion, thats an attractive idea.RelatedHow Kibbe body types became an internet obsessionPersonal style is hard to find, says Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic at the New York Times. Being conscious of it opens up a whole bunch of questions that you then have to ask yourself about how youre presenting yourself and why youre presenting yourself that way and how you feel every morning. That takes time, and then you can start getting neurotic about whether youre doing it wrong. So offering guidelines like seasons and shapes and all that is a way to kind of take some of the neurosis or the insecurity out of it. I am naturally skeptical of body typing systems, but I liked that Kibbe doesnt seem to particularly care about making anyone look skinny. He talks a lot about honoring the unique attributes of each type, about making broad shoulders look broader and tall frames look taller. Kibbes system has a quasi-mystical allure partially because its so befuddling to figure out; its a little like diving deep into astrology.After I found out about the system, I spent months squinting neurotically at peoples shoulders, trying to teach myself to see the attribute Kibbe describes as width. Eventually, after looking back and forth enough times between my own shoulders and Carole Lombards, I determined that I was a Soft Natural, the same group in which Kibbe has hilariously placed such disparate figures as Jennifer Lopez, Helen Mirren, and Kamala Harris.Finding my Kibbe type was a profoundly gratifying exercise, not least because a lot of the clothes he recommended for Soft Naturals were trending at the time. If my bias-cut slip dresses and slouchy cropped cardigans were sending a message, the message said that I was young, lived in a city, and knew what looked good on me. Yet at the same time, I felt ambivalent about the idea of fixating on specific parts of my body, even if it was just to figure out the best ways to show them off, and on the idea of making my clothes flattering, which after all is still most often code for making yourself look as skinny as possible. There probably existed, I felt, some way of engaging with style that was more intellectual, purely about what you are drawn to aesthetically so the real deprogramming could begin. The body positive and body neutral parts of the internet seemed like a good place to start. When I work with clients, we spend one entire hour just talking about their relationship to clothes over the course of their lives, starting with when they were young and when they got messages about what they should wear, says Gillespie, the body positive stylist. Its often body related. You could make a whole career out of teaching people to drop all the racist, misogynistic baggage were all carrying around with our clothes. Even people in supposedly ideal bodies will probably remember being told that there were certain clothes that wouldnt work on them. But our culture has a particularly specific slew of rules for fat people: telling them not to wear horizontal stripes that could make them look wider, or bright colors that make them stand out, or tight clothes that cling to their flesh. One of Gillespies goals is to help her clients learn to tune that advice out, and then figure out how to make their aesthetic dreams practical, to translate it into something that works for them in the society that we live in.Gillespie points me to the example of the conventional advice for a pear-shaped person wear fitted clothes on top that cinch the waist, and something looser and flowier on the bottom. If you just think of that silhouette in your mind, thats such a girly feminine silhouette. What if thats not your vibe? Gillespie asks. What if you love an oversized androgynous look or something? To me thats a really good explanation of how dressing to flatter your body could completely derail you from listening to what you actually want to wear.Its for this reason that Gillespie is inherently suspicious of stylists like Kibbe. Kibbe, meanwhile, sees no point in counting the shape of your body out of the equation when youre getting dressed, any more than he would count out the weight of the fabric. Everything comes down to self love and ultimately self acceptance, Kibbe told me. I absolutely think you should love what you wear. Thats really important. Still, he adds, if you want to make that androgynous silhouette that you love work on your body, you have to understand the rules of how fabric interacts with your actual, physical shape. Effect relies on technique, and without it, then that fantasy stays in your head. So I believe in integration, the inner and the outer.Theres a third school of thought here, however, that doesnt just think about style as a form of art and expression, but as a form of cultural communication. Clothes come with context, and we rely on them to tell strangers things about us. Derek Guy, a menswear blogger and social media power user, argues that having good style means understanding the cultural rules of clothing as though it is a grammar. For Guy, using systems like Kibbes to guide your dress choices can mean making nonsense out of your clothes cultural grammar, especially in the rigidly codified world of menswear. (I dont know anything about womenswear, he says as a caveat.) Take, for instance, the practice of men wearing gray or navy suits to the office if they work in traditional fields like law and finance. Thats because of the legacy of British cultural practices: gray and navy were worn in the office in London to do business, and brown and olive were worn in the country for sport, Guy says.This practice clashes with the seasonal color system Kibbe and other color analysts use, under which gray and navy are cool-toned colors that only people with cool-toned skin should wear. I myself am a warm autumn, which means I would need to seek out olive or brown businesswear which, according to Guy, may not convey the seriousness of business. (Truly news we can use in digital media, where people regularly take meetings in their sweatpants.)To me, all these ideas of dressing for your skin tone and body type are essentially trying to make what is cultural language seem like some type of pseudo-scientific endeavor, when its really culture that drives how we dress, Guy says. Skinny jeans and the trend paradox Even after all that deep diving into style systems, even being careful to ignore the microtrends and TikTok core of the week, I couldnt get away from the sense that every time I got dressed, I was still being pushed and buffeted by something outside of myself. I found a pair of skinny jeans from 2016 in the back of a drawer and could not stop staring at them, at how wrong they looked to me, how fundamentally incorrect. I could not believe I had ever worn anything so tight, so constricting around the ankles.Yet I had worn such jeans on an almost daily basis for almost a decade and thought nothing of it. Why did they look so wrong now? Had I gotten so in touch with my own aesthetic preferences that I now realized I had never really liked them? Did they clash with the lines of my Soft Natural body? Were they speaking a cultural language I wasnt interested in? Or was it simply that even after all that work, my sense of style was still under the control of the great cultural tide of trends?Guys take is that if you understand the cultural language of your pants, you can still pull off skinny jeans just fine. He points to the model and stylist Wisdom Kaye, who has been posting videos of himself rocking the now-reviled skinny jean to social media.If you look at the outfits that hes creating, what do they all rely on in terms of social language? Well, they all are relying on this rocknroll aesthetic, Guy says. So if your aesthetic inspiration is 1970s and 80s rock n roll guys, youre obviously not going to wear really wide leg pants, because thats not the look. Youre going to wear skinny jeans. Side zip boots, flannels, black leather jackets. Thats the look that was created through social history and will continue to be cool, because thats the look of the Ramones, of Sid Vicious. The way that it goes bad is when guys start to wear skinny chinos with an office shirt.In contrast, Kibbe argues for paying attention to trends to a certain extent, and then interpreting them in a way that works for your image identity. There should never be a subservience of style to trend or to fashion, he says. You should use those things in service of your star. Then he added in slightly enigmatic tones, A rosebud is very beautiful, but it is most beautiful of all when its in bloom. Gillespie, meanwhile, suggests looking at the problem of skinny jeans through the practical lens of your own life. I will always try and encourage people to think about, if youre feeling pressured to give your skinny jeans up: Why do you like them? she says. Do they serve a special function for you? For whatever reason, do you like having fabric close to your legs? Do you bike to work? Then I want you to consider all those things, and then reject the idea that says that skinny jeans look wrong, because youre making that decision for yourself.On the other hand, is there anything more banal than not feeling like an individual in 2025? The vloggers and Substackers who talk about personal style all the time are full of this complaint. Its like it should be in a science fiction novel, says Tashjian of the plethora of essays on this subject. How is it that Im reading over and over again, in some instances word for word, Its so hard to be an individual these days. And then you scroll a little bit: Its getting increasingly difficult to be an individual these days.To be completely yourself: That is the fantasy of finding your style. To exist within the whole bizarre structure of fashion all those billionaires deciding what you should wear, all those marketers deciding how you should feel about your one human body, all those materials that will lie next to your skin for some days and then rot forever in a landfill, all those people who will see you every day and make their assumptions about you based on how you look and to feel that youve got some agency while youre in there. But the endless grind of capitalism has a way of turning all criticisms about our overconsumption into a new way of selling you things. If one of the weaknesses of our current fashion marketplace is that its hawking you trendy plastic clothes you would not otherwise want and will soon have to discard, and the way out is to get in touch with your own aesthetic desires well, there are ways to monetize that journey, too.I dont know if we can ever find our individuality through our clothes. I did learn that I dont really like crew necks, though. 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Missing your DS and wishing Nintendo would get weird again? A recently published patent might mean the Switch 2 is about to make you very happy indeed, with a clever phone attachmentTech14:00, 06 Mar 2025Ready for Nintendo to offer some surprising add-ons again?Nintendo's new Switch 2 console is getting a full unveiling on April 2, but some have worried that the company may have lost its more playful side.After the Wii U generation, Nintendo's first Switch catapulted the company back to the top of the mountain, mixing a handheld and home console. Now, some are disappointed the company isn't taking more risks but there's still plenty we don't know, including the console's launch lineup, pricing, and release date.If you've been keeping your DS in reserve, though, you're likely to be interested in a new patent that's been filed which suggests the company could release an attachment for your phone.This is the Switch 2, but there's still plenty we don't know about it yetAs spotted by Game Rant, a patent has suggested that the Switch 2 could offer an optional phone holder attachment that would, at least in theory, mean you could use dual screens like the popular DS and 3DS.The report points out that Nintendo has previously patented other devices with multiple screens, but those haven't come to fruition, at least not yet. It's also worth remembering that Nintendo, as with any big company, is likely to patent ideas that don't make it to full release as a way of covering their bases.If it is to be believed, though, it's not just a second screen that could be attached. The patent also includes the option to attach to soft materials, suggesting part of the Switch 2 could be clipped to your clothing.Joy-Con will be magnetic nowThe original Nintendo Switch certainly mixed things up from time to time. For one, the Joy-Con were a fantastic idea (stick drift aside), allowing for motion controls and more traditional options, as well as local co-op with one pair.Then there's Labo and Labo VR, which used cardboard accessories to turn the Switch into a piano and much more, while Ring Fit Adventure turned both into sensors for a workout-focused RPG.Article continues belowWe've already heard suggestions that the Joy-Con for the Switch 2 will double as mice, which was seemingly confirmed by a patent reveal, too.What will the company surprise us with this time? We'll know more in less than a month.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.