In 2025, it’s very difficult not to see gambling advertised everywhere. It’s on billboards and sports broadcasts. It’s on podcasts and printed on the turnbuckle of AEW’s pay-per-view shows. And it’s on app stores, where you can find the FanDuel and DraftKings sportsbooks, alongside glitzy digital slot machines. These apps all have the highest age ratings possible on Apple’s App Store and Google Play. But earlier this year, a different kind of app nearly disappeared from the Play Store entirely.Luck Be A Landlord is a roguelite deckbuilder from solo developer Dan DiIorio. DiIorio got word from Google in January 2025 that Luck Be A Landlord was about to be pulled, globally, because DiIorio had not disclosed the game’s “gambling themes” in its rating.In Luck Be a Landlord, the player takes spins on a pixel art slot machine to earn coins to pay their ever-increasing rent — a nightmare gamification of our day-to-day grind to remain housed. On app stores, it’s a one-time purchase of $4.99, and it’s $9.99 on Steam. On the Play Store page, developer Dan DiIorio notes, “This game does not contain any real-world currency gambling or microtransactions.”And it doesn’t. But for Google, that didn’t matter. First, the game was removed from the storefront in a slew of countries that have strict gambling laws. Then, at the beginning of 2025, Google told Dilorio that Luck Be A Landlord would be pulled globally because of its rating discrepancy, as it “does not take into account references to gambling (including real or simulated gambling)”.DiIorio had gone through this song and dance before — previously, when the game was blocked, he would send back a message saying “hey, the game doesn’t have gambling,” and then Google would send back a screenshot of the game and assert that, in fact, it had.DiIorio didn’t agree, but this time they decided that the risk of Landlord getting taken down permanently was too great. They’re a solo developer, and Luck Be a Landlord had just had its highest 30-day revenue since release. So, they filled out the form confirming that Luck Be A Landlord has “gambling themes,” and are currently hoping that this will be the end of it.This is a situation that sucks for an indie dev to be in, and over email DiIorio told Polygon it was “very frustrating.”“I think it can negatively affect indie developers if they fall outside the norm, which indies often do,” they wrote. “It also makes me afraid to explore mechanics like this further. It stifles creativity, and that’s really upsetting.”In late 2024, the hit game Balatro was in a similar position. It had won numerous awards, and made $1,000,000 in its first week on mobile platforms. And then overnight, the PEGI ratings board declared that the game deserved an adult rating.The ESRB had already rated it E10+ in the US, noting it has gambling themes. And the game was already out in Europe, making its overnight ratings change a surprise. Publisher PlayStack said the rating was given because Balatro has “prominent gambling imagery and material that instructs about gambling.”Balatro is basically Luck Be A Landlord’s little cousin. Developer LocalThunk was inspired by watching streams of Luck Be A Landlord, and seeing the way DiIorio had implemented deck-building into his slot machine. And like Luck Be A Landlord, Balatro is a one-time purchase, with no microtransactions.But the PEGI board noted that because the game uses poker hands, the skills the player learns in Balatro could translate to real-world poker.In its write-up, GameSpot noted that the same thing happened to a game called Sunshine Shuffle. It was temporarily banned from the Nintendo eShop, and also from the entire country of South Korea. Unlike Balatro, Sunshine Shuffle actually is a poker game, except you’re playing Texas Hold ‘Em — again for no real money — with cute animals (who are bank robbers).It’s common sense that children shouldn’t be able to access apps that allow them to gamble. But none of these games contain actual gambling — or do they?Where do we draw the line? Is it gambling to play any game that is also played in casinos, like poker or blackjack? Is it gambling to play a game that evokes the aesthetics of a casino, like cards, chips, dice, or slot machines? Is it gambling to wager or earn fictional money?Gaming has always been a lightning rod for controversy. Sex, violence, misogyny, addiction — you name it, video games have been accused of perpetrating or encouraging it. But gambling is gaming’s original sin. And it’s the one we still can’t get a grip on.The original link between gambling and gamingGetty ImagesThe association between video games and gambling all goes back to pinball. Back in the ’30s and ’40s, politicians targeted pinball machines for promoting gambling. Early pinball machines were less skill-based (they didn’t have flippers), and some gave cash payouts, so the comparison wasn’t unfair. Famously, mob-hating New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned pinball in the city, and appeared in a newsreel dumping pinball and slot machines into the Long Island Sound. Pinball machines spent some time relegated to the back rooms of sex shops and dive bars. But after some lobbying, the laws relaxed.By the 1970s, pinball manufacturers were also making video games, and the machines were side-by-side in arcades. Arcade machines, like pinball, took small coin payments, repeatedly, for short rounds of play. The disreputable funk of pinball basically rubbed off onto video games.Ever since video games rocked onto the scene, concerned and sometimes uneducated parties have been asking if they’re dangerous. And in general, studies have shown that they’re not. The same can’t be said about gambling — the practice of putting real money down to bet on an outcome.It’s a golden age for gambling2025 in the USA is a great time for gambling, which has been really profitable for gambling companies — to the tune of $66.5 billion dollars of revenue in 2023.To put this number in perspective, the American Gaming Association, which is the casino industry’s trade group and has nothing to do with video games, reports that 2022’s gambling revenue was $60.5 billion. It went up $6 billion in a year.And this increase isn’t just because of sportsbooks, although sports betting is a huge part of it. Online casinos and brick-and-mortar casinos are both earning more, and as a lot of people have pointed out, gambling is being normalized to a pretty disturbing degree.Much like with alcohol, for a small percentage of people, gambling can tip from occasional leisure activity into addiction. The people who are most at risk are, by and large, already vulnerable: researchers at the Yale School of Medicine found that 96% of problem gamblers are also wrestling with other disorders, such as “substance use, impulse-control disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety disorders.”Even if you’re not in that group, there are still good reasons to be wary of gambling. People tend to underestimate their own vulnerability to things they know are dangerous for others. Someone else might bet beyond their means. But I would simply know when to stop.Maybe you do! But being blithely confident about it can make it hard to notice if you do develop a problem. Or if you already have one.Addiction changes the way your brain works. When you’re addicted to something, your participation in it becomes compulsive, at the expense of other interests and responsibilities. Someone might turn to their addiction to self-soothe when depressed or anxious. And speaking of those feelings, people who are depressed and anxious are already more vulnerable to addiction. Given the entire state of the world right now, this predisposition shines an ugly light on the numbers touted by the AGA. Is it good that the industry is reporting $6 billion in additional earnings, when the economy feels so frail, when the stock market is ping ponging through highs and lows daily, when daily expenses are rising? It doesn’t feel good. In 2024, the YouTuber Drew Gooden turned his critical eye to online gambling. One of the main points he makes in his excellent video is that gambling is more accessible than ever. It’s on all our phones, and betting companies are using decades of well-honed app design and behavioral studies to manipulate users to spend and spend.Meanwhile, advertising on podcasts, billboards, TV, radio, and websites – it’s literally everywhere — tells you that this is fun, and you don’t even need to know what you’re doing, and you’re probably one bet away from winning back those losses.Where does Luck Be a Landlord come into this?So, are there gambling themes in Luck Be A Landlord? The game’s slot machine is represented in simple pixel art. You pay one coin to use it, and among the more traditional slot machine symbols are silly ones like a snail that only pays out after 4 spins.When I started playing it, my primary emotion wasn’t necessarily elation at winning coins — it was stress and disbelief when, in the third round of the game, the landlord increased my rent by 100%. What the hell.I don’t doubt that getting better at it would produce dopamine thrills akin to gambling — or playing any video game. But it’s supposed to be difficult, because that’s the joke. If you beat the game you unlock more difficulty modes where, as you keep paying rent, your landlord gets furious, and starts throwing made-up rules at you: previously rare symbols will give you less of a payout, and the very mechanics of the slot machine change.It’s a manifestation of the golden rule of casinos, and all of capitalism writ large: the odds are stacked against you. The house always wins. There is luck involved, to be sure, but because Luck Be A Landlord is a deck-builder, knowing the different ways you can design your slot machine to maximize payouts is a skill! You have some influence over it, unlike a real slot machine. The synergies that I’ve seen high-level players create are completely nuts, and obviously based on a deep understanding of the strategies the game allows.IMAGE: TrampolineTales via PolygonBalatro and Luck Be a Landlord both distance themselves from casino gambling again in the way they treat money. In Landlord, the money you earn is gold coins, not any currency we recognize. And the payouts aren’t actually that big. By the end of the core game, the rent money you’re struggling and scraping to earn… is 777 coins. In the post-game endless mode, payouts can get massive. But the thing is, to get this far, you can’t rely on chance. You have to be very good at Luck Be a Landlord.And in Balatro, the numbers that get big are your points. The actual dollar payments in a round of Balatro are small. These aren’t games about earning wads and wads of cash. So, do these count as “gambling themes”?We’ll come back to that question later. First, I want to talk about a closer analog to what we colloquially consider gambling: loot boxes and gacha games.Random rewards: from Overwatch to the rise of gachaRecently, I did something that I haven’t done in a really long time: I thought about Overwatch. I used to play Overwatch with my friends, and I absolutely made a habit of dropping 20 bucks here or there for a bunch of seasonal loot boxes. This was never a problem behavior for me, but in hindsight, it does sting that over a couple of years, I dropped maybe $150 on cosmetics for a game that now I primarily associate with squandered potential.Loot boxes grew out of free-to-play mobile games, where they’re the primary method of monetization. In something like Overwatch, they functioned as a way to earn additional revenue in an ongoing game, once the player had already dropped 40 bucks to buy it.More often than not, loot boxes are a random selection of skins and other cosmetics, but games like Star Wars: Battlefront 2 were famously criticized for launching with loot crates that essentially made it pay-to-win – if you bought enough of them and got lucky.It’s not unprecedented to associate loot boxes with gambling. A 2021 study published in Addictive Behaviors showed that players who self-reported as problem gamblers also tended to spend more on loot boxes, and another study done in the UK found a similar correlation with young adults.While Overwatch certainly wasn’t the first game to feature cosmetic loot boxes or microtransactions, it’s a reference point for me, and it also got attention worldwide. In 2018, Overwatch was investigated by the Belgian Gaming Commission, which found it “in violation of gambling legislation” alongside FIFA 18 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Belgium’s response was to ban the sale of loot boxes without a gambling license. Having a paid random rewards mechanic in a game is a criminal offense there. But not really. A 2023 study showed that 82% of iPhone games sold on the App Store in Belgium still use random paid monetization, as do around 80% of games that are rated 12+. The ban wasn’t effectively enforced, if at all, and the study recommends that a blanket ban wouldn’t actually be a practical solution anyway.Overwatch was rated T for Teen by the ESRB, and 12 by PEGI. When it first came out, its loot boxes were divisive. Since the mechanic came from F2P mobile games, which are often seen as predatory, people balked at seeing it in a big action game from a multi-million dollar publisher.At the time, the rebuttal was, “Well, at least it’s just cosmetics.” Nobody needs to buy loot boxes to be good at Overwatch.A lot has changed since 2016. Now we have a deeper understanding of how these mechanics are designed to manipulate players, even if they don’t affect gameplay. But also, they’ve been normalized. While there will always be people expressing disappointment when a AAA game has a paid random loot mechanic, it is no longer shocking.And if anything, these mechanics have only become more prevalent, thanks to the growth of gacha games. Gacha is short for “gachapon,” the Japanese capsule machines where you pay to receive one of a selection of random toys. Getty ImagesIn gacha games, players pay — not necessarily real money, but we’ll get to that — for a chance to get something. Maybe it’s a character, or a special weapon, or some gear — it depends on the game. Whatever it is, within that context, it’s desirable — and unlike the cosmetics of Overwatch, gacha pulls often do impact the gameplay.For example, in Infinity Nikki, you can pull for clothing items in these limited-time events. You have a chance to get pieces of a five-star outfit. But you also might pull one of a set of four-star items, or a permanent three-star piece. Of course, if you want all ten pieces of the five-star outfit, you have to do multiple pulls, each costing a handful of limited resources that you can earn in-game or purchase with money.Gacha was a fixture of mobile gaming for a long time, but in recent years, we’ve seen it go AAA, and global. MiHoYo’s Genshin Impact did a lot of that work when it came out worldwide on consoles and PC alongside its mobile release. Genshin and its successors are massive AAA games of a scale that, for your Nintendos and Ubisofts, would necessitate selling a bajillion copies to be a success. And they’re free.Genshin is an action game, whose playstyle changes depending on what character you’re playing — characters you get from gacha pulls, of course. In Zenless Zone Zero, the characters you can pull have different combo patterns, do different kinds of damage, and just feel different to play. And whereas in an early mobile gacha game like Love Nikki Dress UP! Queen the world was rudimentary, its modern descendant Infinity Nikki is, like Genshin, Breath of the Wild-esque. It is a massive open world, with collectibles and physics puzzles, platforming challenges, and a surprisingly involved storyline. Genshin Impact was the subject of an interesting study where researchers asked young adults in Hong Kong to self-report on their gacha spending habits. They found that, like with gambling, players who are not feeling good tend to spend more. “Young adult gacha gamers experiencing greater stress and anxiety tend to spend more on gacha purchases, have more motives for gacha purchases, and participate in more gambling activities,” they wrote. “This group is at a particularly higher risk of becoming problem gamblers.”One thing that is important to note is that Genshin Impact came out in 2020. The study was self-reported, and it was done during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a time when people were experiencing a lot of stress, and also fewer options to relieve that stress. We were all stuck inside gaming.But the fact that stress can make people more likely to spend money on gacha shows that while the gacha model isn’t necessarily harmful to everyone, it is exploitative to everyone. Since I started writing this story, another self-reported study came out in Japan, where 18.8% of people in their 20s say they’ve spent money on gacha rather than on things like food or rent.Following Genshin Impact’s release, MiHoYo put out Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. All are shiny, big-budget games that are free to play, but dangle the lure of making just one purchase in front of the player. Maybe you could drop five bucks on a handful of in-game currency to get one more pull. Or maybe just this month you’ll get the second tier of rewards on the game’s equivalent of a Battle Pass. The game is free, after all — but haven’t you enjoyed at least ten dollars’ worth of gameplay? Image: HoyoverseI spent most of my December throwing myself into Infinity Nikki. I had been so stressed, and the game was so soothing. I logged in daily to fulfill my daily wishes and earn my XP, diamonds, Threads of Purity, and bling. I accumulated massive amounts of resources. I haven’t spent money on the game. I’m trying not to, and so far, it’s been pretty easy. I’ve been super happy with how much stuff I can get for free, and how much I can do! I actually feel really good about that — which is what I said to my boyfriend, and he replied, “Yeah, that’s the point. That’s how they get you.”And he’s right. Currently, Infinity Nikki players are embroiled in a war with developer Infold, after Infold introduced yet another currency type with deep ties to Nikki’s gacha system. Every one of these gacha games has its own tangled system of overlapping currencies. Some can only be used on gacha pulls. Some can only be used to upgrade items. Many of them can be purchased with human money.Image: InFold Games/Papergames via PolygonAll of this adds up. According to Sensor Towers’ data, Genshin Impact earned over 36 million dollars on mobile alone in a single month of 2024. I don’t know what Dan DiIorio’s peak monthly revenue for Luck Be A Landlord was, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that.A lot of the spending guardrails we see in games like these are actually the result of regulations in other territories, especially China, where gacha has been a big deal for a lot longer. For example, gacha games have a daily limit on loot boxes, with the number clearly displayed, and a system collectively called “pity,” where getting the banner item is guaranteed after a certain number of pulls. Lastly, developers have to be clear about what the odds are. When I log in to spend the Revelation Crystals I’ve spent weeks hoarding in my F2P Infinity Nikki experience, I know that I have a 1.5% chance of pulling a 5-star piece, and that the odds can go up to 6.06%, and that I am guaranteed to get one within 20 pulls, because of the pity system.So, these odds are awful. But it is not as merciless as sitting down at a Vegas slot machine, an experience best described as “oh… that’s it?”There’s not a huge philosophical difference between buying a pack of loot boxes in Overwatch, a pull in Genshin Impact, or even a booster of Pokémon cards. You put in money, you get back randomized stuff that may or may not be what you want. In the dictionary definition, it’s a gamble. But unlike the slot machine, it’s not like you’re trying to win money by doing it, unless you’re selling those Pokémon cards, which is a topic for another time.But since even a game where you don’t get anything, like Balatro or Luck Be A Landlord, can come under fire for promoting gambling to kids, it would seem appropriate for app stores and ratings boards to take a similarly hardline stance with gacha.Instead, all these games are rated T for Teen by the ESRB, and PEGI 12 in the EU.The ESRB ratings for these games note that they contain in-game purchases, including random items. Honkai: Star Rail’s rating specifically calls out a slot machine mechanic, where players spend tokens to win a prize. But other than calling out Honkai’s slot machine, app stores are not slapping Genshin or Nikki with an 18+ rating. Meanwhile, Balatro had a PEGI rating of 18 until a successful appeal in February 2025, and Luck Be a Landlord is still 17+ on Apple’s App Store.Nobody knows what they’re doingWhen I started researching this piece, I felt very strongly that it was absurd that Luck Be A Landlord and Balatro had age ratings this high.I still believe that the way both devs have been treated by ratings boards is bad. Threatening an indie dev with a significant loss of income by pulling their game is bad, not giving them a way to defend themself or help them understand why it’s happening is even worse. It’s an extension of the general way that too-big-to-fail companies like Google treat all their customers.DiIorio told me that while it felt like a human being had at least looked at Luck Be A Landlord to make the determination that it contained gambling themes, the emails he was getting were automatic, and he doesn’t have a contact at Google to ask why this happened or how he can avoid it in the future — an experience that will be familiar to anyone who has ever needed Google support. But what’s changed for me is that I’m not actually sure anymore that games that don’t have gambling should be completely let off the hook for evoking gambling.Exposing teens to simulated gambling without financial stakes could spark an interest in the real thing later on, according to a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. It’s the same reason you can’t mosey down to the drug store to buy candy cigarettes. Multiple studies were done that showed kids who ate candy cigarettes were more likely to take up smoking (of course, the candy is still available — just without the “cigarette” branding.)So while I still think rating something like Balatro 18+ is nuts, I also think that describing it appropriately might be reasonable. As a game, it’s completely divorced from literally any kind of play you would find in a casino — but I can see the concern that the thrill of flashy numbers and the shiny cards might encourage young players to try their hand at poker in a real casino, where a real house can take their money.Maybe what’s more important than doling out high age ratings is helping people think about how media can affect us. In the same way that, when I was 12 and obsessed with The Matrix, my parents gently made sure that I knew that none of the violence was real and you can’t actually cartwheel through a hail of bullets in real life. Thanks, mom and dad!But that’s an answer that’s a lot more abstract and difficult to implement than a big red 18+ banner. When it comes to gacha, I think we’re even less equipped to talk about these game mechanics, and I’m certain they’re not being age-rated appropriately. On the one hand, like I said earlier, gacha exploits the player’s desire for stuff that they are heavily manipulated to buy with real money. On the other hand, I think it’s worth acknowledging that there is a difference between gacha and casino gambling.Problem gamblers aren’t satisfied by winning — the thing they’re addicted to is playing, and the risk that comes with it. In gacha games, players do report satisfaction when they achieve the prize they set out to get. And yes, in the game’s next season, the developer will be dangling a shiny new prize in front of them with the goal of starting the cycle over. But I think it’s fair to make the distinction, while still being highly critical of the model.And right now, there is close to no incentive for app stores to crack down on gacha in any way. They get a cut of in-app purchases. Back in 2023, miHoYo tried a couple of times to set up payment systems that circumvented Apple’s 30% cut of in-app spending. Both times, it was thwarted by Apple, whose App Store generated $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2022.According to Apple itself, 90% of that money did not include any commission to Apple. Fortunately for Apple, ten percent of a trillion dollars is still one hundred billion dollars, which I would also like to have in my bank account. Apple has zero reason to curb spending on games that have been earning millions of dollars every month for years.And despite the popularity of Luck Be A Landlord and Balatro’s massive App Store success, these games will never be as lucrative. They’re one-time purchases, and they don’t have microtransactions. To add insult to injury, like most popular games, Luck Be A Landlord has a lot of clones. And from what I can tell, it doesn’t look like any of them have been made to indicate that their games contain the dreaded “gambling themes” that Google was so worried about in Landlord.In particular, a game called SpinCraft: Roguelike from Sneaky Panda Games raised $6 million in seed funding for “inventing the Luck-Puzzler genre,” which it introduced in 2022, while Luck Be A Landlord went into early access in 2021.It’s free-to-play, has ads and in-app purchases, looks like Fisher Price made a slot machine, and it’s rated E for everyone, with no mention of gambling imagery in its rating. I reached out to the developers to ask if they had also been contacted by the Play Store to disclose that their game has gambling themes, but I haven’t heard back.Borrowing mechanics in games is as old as time, and it’s something I in no way want to imply shouldn’t happen because copyright is the killer of invention — but I think we can all agree that the system is broken.There is no consistency in how games with random chance are treated. We still do not know how to talk about gambling, or gambling themes, and at the end of the day, the results of this are the same: the house always wins.See More:

If you’ve ever wondered whether the food on your plate could shape your brain’s future, the science is starting to say: yes, it might. While healthy eating has long been linked to better brain health, new research is getting more specific about which diets help, and when you should start following them.At this year’s annual Nutrition conference in Orlando, Florida, researchers presented findings that add weight to the growing link between diet and dementia. According to a news release, study author Song-Yi Park of the University of Hawaii at Manoa said, “Our study findings confirm that healthy dietary patterns in mid to late life and their improvement over time may prevent Alzheimer’s and related dementias. This suggests that it is never too late to adopt a healthy diet to prevent dementia.”The research focused on nearly 93,000 U.S. adults from the long-running Multiethnic Cohort Study. Participants were between 45 years and 75 years old when they entered the study in the 1990s. Over time, more than 21,000 developed Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias — but those who closely followed a specific eating plan, the MIND diet, were significantly less likely to be among them.Combining the Mediterranean Diet and DASH DietThe MIND diet (short for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) blends the best elements of two established eating plans: the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet.The Mediterranean diet is inspired by the traditional cuisines of countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain. It focuses on plant-based foods (fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains), healthy fats like olive oil, and moderate amounts of fish, poultry, and dairy, with red meat eaten sparingly. It’s been linked to a lower risk of heart disease and is also environmentally friendly.The DASH diet, originally designed to lower blood pressure, shares many similarities but puts extra emphasis on limiting sodium and increasing intake of nutrients like potassium, magnesium, and calcium. It includes low-fat dairy and lean protein sources and doesn’t rely on any hard-to-find foods.The MIND diet specifically promotes brain-healthy foods like leafy greens, berries, nuts, and olive oil, combining benefits of both approaches with a focus on protecting cognitive health.Read More: Is the Mediterranean Diet Healthy?The MIND Diet Over TimeAccording to Park and her team, people who scored highest in MIND diet adherence at the study’s start had a 9 percent lower risk of developing dementia. That number was even higher with around 13 percent for African American, Latino, and White participants. Looking at those who improved their adherence to the MIND diet over time, showed a 25 percent reduction in dementia risk compared to those whose dietary habits declined, which was consistent no matter the age or racial background.“We found that the protective relationship between a healthy diet and dementia was more pronounced among African Americans, Latinos, and Whites, while it was not as apparent among Asian Americans and showed a weaker trend in Native Hawaiians,” Park said in the press release. “A tailored approach may be needed when evaluating different subpopulations’ diet quality.”Interestingly, Asian Americans also tend to have lower dementia rates overall, which researchers believe could mean other cultural eating patterns might offer similar protection than the MIND diet for that group.The Best Time to Start Is NowOne of the most encouraging findings was that starting late still helped. Participants who began following the MIND diet more closely over a 10-year period, regardless of how old they were when they began, saw benefits. This suggests that even if you didn’t grow up eating brain-boosting foods, it’s not too late to change course.It’s worth noting that the study is observational, so, by itself, it can’t prove this specific diet causes better brain health. Study author Park notes that the next step is conducting interventional studies to verify these promising results.Still, the evidence is mounting. Whether you're 45 or 75, choosing greens over greasy snacks could make a real difference when it comes to aging with or without dementia.This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:National Institute of Aging. What Do We Know About Diet and Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease?Harvard Health Publishing. A practical guide to the Mediterranean dietNational Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Following the DASH Eating PlanHaving worked as a biomedical research assistant in labs across three countries, Jenny excels at translating complex scientific concepts – ranging from medical breakthroughs and pharmacological discoveries to the latest in nutrition – into engaging, accessible content. Her interests extend to topics such as human evolution, psychology, and quirky animal stories. When she’s not immersed in a popular science book, you’ll find her catching waves or cruising around Vancouver Island on her longboard.

On June 3, Yoshua Bengio, the world’s most-cited computer scientist, announced the launch of LawZero, a nonprofit that aims to create “safe by design” AI by pursuing a fundamentally different approach to major tech companies. Players like OpenAI and Google are investing heavily in AI agents—systems that not only answer queries and generate images, but can craft plans and take actions in the world. The goal of these companies is to create virtual employees that can do practically any job a human can, known in the tech industry as artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Executives like Google DeepMind’s CEO Demis Hassabis point to AGI’s potential to solve climate change or cure disease as a motivator for its development. Bengio, however, says we don't need agentic systems to reap AI's rewards—it's a false choice. He says there's a chance such a system could escape human control, with potentially irreversible consequences. “If we get an AI that gives us the cure for cancer, but also maybe another version of that AI goes rogue and generates wave after wave of bio-weapons that kill billions of people, then I don't think it's worth it," he says. In 2023, Bengio, along with others including OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman signed a statement declaring that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”Now, Bengio, through LawZero, aims to sidestep the existential perils by focusing on creating what he calls “Scientist AI”—a system trained to understand and make statistical predictions about the world, crucially, without the agency to take independent actions. As he puts it: We could use AI to advance scientific progress without rolling the dice on agentic AI systems.Why Bengio Says We Need A New Approach To AI The current approach to giving AI agency is “dangerous,” Bengio says. While most software operates through rigid if-then rules—if the user clicks here, do this—today's AI systems use deep learning. The technique, which Bengio helped pioneer, trains artificial networks modeled loosely on the brain to find patterns in vast amounts of data. But recognizing patterns is just the first step. To turn these systems into useful applications like chatbots, engineers employ a training process called reinforcement learning. The AI generates thousands of responses and receives feedback on each one: a virtual “carrot” for helpful answers and a virtual “stick” for responses that miss the mark. Through millions of these trial-and-feedback cycles, the system gradually learns to predict what responses are most likely to get a reward. “It’s more like growing a plant or animal,” Bengio says. “You don’t fully control what the animal is going to do. You provide it with the right conditions, and it grows and it becomes smarter. You can try to steer it in various directions.”The same basic approach is now being used to imbue AI with greater agency. Models are tasked with challenges with verifiable answers—like math puzzles or coding problems—and are then rewarded for taking the series of actions that yields the solution. This approach has seen AI shatter previous benchmarks in programming and scientific reasoning. For example, at the beginning of 2024, the best AI model scored only 2% on a standardized test for AI of sorts consisting of real world software engineering problems; by December, an impressive 71.7%. But with AI’s greater problem-solving ability comes the emergence of new deceptive skills, Bengio says. The last few months have borne witness to AI systems learning to mislead, cheat, and try to evade shutdown—even resorting to blackmail. These have almost exclusively been in carefully contrived experiments that almost beg the AI to misbehave—for example, by asking it to pursue its goal at all costs. Reports of such behavior in the real-world, though, have begun to surface. Popular AI coding startup Replit’s agent ignored explicit instruction not to edit a system file that could break the company’s software, in what CEO Amjad Masad described as an “Oh f***” moment,” on the Cognitive Revolution podcast in May. The company’s engineers intervened, cutting the agent’s access by moving the file to a secure digital sandbox, only for the AI agent to attempt to “socially engineer” the user to regain access.The quest to build human-level AI agents using techniques known to produce deceptive tendencies, Bengio says, is comparable to a car speeding down a narrow mountain road, with steep cliffs on either side, and thick fog obscuring the path ahead. “We need to set up the car with headlights and put some guardrails on the road,” he says.What is “Scientist AI”?LawZero’s focus is on developing “Scientist AI” which, as Bengio describes, would be fundamentally non-agentic, trustworthy, and focused on understanding and truthfulness, rather than pursuing its own goals or merely imitating human behavior. The aim is creating a powerful tool that, while lacking the same autonomy other models have, is capable of generating hypotheses and accelerating scientific progress to “help us solve challenges of humanity,” Bengio says.LawZero has raised nearly $30 million already from several philanthropic backers including from Schmidt Sciences and Open Philanthropy. “We want to raise more because we know that as we move forward, we'll need significant compute,” Bengio says. But even ten times that figure would pale in comparison to the roughly $200 billion spent last year by tech giants on aggressively pursuing AI. Bengio’s hope is that Scientist AI could help ensure the safety of highly autonomous systems developed by other players. “We can use those non-agentic AIs as guardrails that just need to predict whether the action of an agentic AI is dangerous," Bengio says. Technical interventions will only ever be one part of the solution, he adds, noting the need for regulations to ensure that safe practices are adopted.LawZero, named after science fiction author Isaac Asimov’s zeroth law of robotics—“a robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm”—is not the first nonprofit founded to chart a safer path for AI development. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 with the goal of “ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity,” and intended to serve a counterbalance to industry players guided by profit motives. Since opening a for-profit arm in 2019, the organization has become one of the most valuable private companies in the world, and has faced criticism, including from former staffers, who argue it has drifted from its founding ideals. "Well, the good news is we have the hindsight of maybe what not to do,” Bengio says, adding that he wants to avoid profit incentives and “bring governments into the governance of LawZero.”“I think everyone should ask themselves, ‘What can I do to make sure my children will have a future,’” Bengio says. In March, he stepped down as scientific director of Mila, the academic lab he co-founded in the early nineties, in an effort to reorient his work towards tackling AI risk more directly. “Because I'm a researcher, my answer is, ‘okay, I'm going to work on this scientific problem where maybe I can make a difference,’ but other people may have different answers."

Unlike the other big streamers, Tubi only has a handful of original shows, most of them imports (their original movie selection is much larger). That's not to say it's a wasteland for TV addicts: The streamer might actually have too many shows, a vast and sometimes wild catalog that spans decades. As the likes of Netflix and HBO Max have slimmed down their catalogues, Tubi is growing, offering a mix of established hits, underrated gems, and more obscure offerings. For the sheer breadth of material on offer, it has become the first place I look for anything outside the current zeitgeist—like the following 18 shows, an entirely non-comprehensive sampling of what Tubi has to offer, crossing genres and decades.Gossip Girl (2007 – 2012) Occasionally referred to as the greatest teen drama of all time (certainly this side of 90210), Gossip Girl was a buzzy ratings champ for the CW back in the day, with its juicy, often scandalous storylines that veered so often into intentional satire that it was hard to ever get mad at the ridiculousness of any of it. Set among a group of well-heeled students on Manhattan's Upper East Side, its characters find their private lives being chronicled by the title’s mysterious master of gossip—so think of it as a proto-Bridgerton. You can stream Gossip Girl here.Babylon 5 (1993 – 1998, five seasons) J. Michael Straczynski’s wildly ambitious sci-fi epic was way ahead of its time, with a planned (more or less) five season story arc set on the titular space station. Babylon 5 is a remote outpost that becomes the last best hope for peace in the face of conflicting human and alien agendas—even more so after an ancient threat is awakened. With increasingly complex storylines that expanded over its run, this was a stab at prestige TV before that was a thing, and it still holds up (dated CGI effects notwithstanding. You can stream Babylon 5 here.Empire (2015 – 2020) Hip hop mogul and Empire Entertainment CEO Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) is dying, having been diagnosed with ALS at a young age. He wasn't planning to have to hand off his company so early, but nevertheless finds himself preparing his three very different sons (Trai Byers, Jussie Smollett, and Bryshere Y. Gray) to take the keys to the kingdom—by pitting them against one other. Into this already Shakespearean setup steps Lucious' ex-wife Cookie (Taraji P. Henson), just released from prison and harboring her own plans for Lucious's empire. You can stream Empire here. Mr. Robot (2015 – 2019) Social anxiety disorder, clinical depression, and dissociative identity disorder make up the potent blend of neurodivergences challenging Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a genius senior cybersecurity engineer at Allsafe Cybersecurity. In season one, he's recruited by an anarchist who goes by the moniker Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) to encrypt all the financial data of a global mega-conglomerate, thereby erasing massive amounts of debt (hey, real-life hackers, maybe take some notes?). The show starts strong and gets better across its increasingly labyrinthian four seasons—utterly preposterous while also feeling realistic in its technical detail. You can stream Mr. Robot here. Boarders (2024 - , two seasons) This British import feels a bit like a latter-day Skins, with a talented cast of young stars-in-waiting (including leads Josh Tedeku and Jodie Campbell) and a scholastic setting. At the (fictional) prestigious boarding school St. Gilbert’s, five Black teens are newly attending, having earned scholarships, but their integration into the existing cliques is less than smooth. The blend of coming-of-age drama with a willingness to take the piss when it comes to the whole rich private school thing makes this Tubi original a good time. You can stream Boarders here.Big Mood (2024 – , renewed for a second season) Another UK import and Tubi original (at least stateside), Big Mood stars Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) and Lydia West (It's a Sin) as a couple of besties in East London, living their best millennial thirtysomething lives. Well, kind of: Maggie's dealing with bipolar disorder, and unclear on whether she wants to continue with her medication as she sets out to write a play, while Lydia is doing her very best running a tanking dive bar inherited from her father. It's both a cute dramedy and an impressively frank exploration of the challenges of living with mental illness. You can stream Big Mood here. Vicious (2013 – 2016, two seasons) The old-school sitcom formula has never been executed quite this bitchily, with the inspired pairing of Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi as Freddie Thornhill and Stuart Bixby, a couple of nearly 50 years who’ve developed a love-hate relationship. This cast, which includes Frances de la Tour and Game of Thrones’ Ian Rheon, is unbeatable, and the one-liners are hilariously nasty. You can stream Vicious here.The Haves and the Have Nots (2013 – 2021, eight seasons) Tyler Perry's old-school primetime soap was the show that practically built OWN; it was the then-new network's first scripted show, and an immediate breakout. It follows three families: The wealthy Harringtons and the Cryers are wealthy movers in Atlanta, Georgia, while the Young family is overseen by single mom Hanna, who's both a maid for the Cryers and confidante to the family matriarch. There's juicy tension galore between the three families, in no small part because of class differences, but also because they're all equally screwed. You can stream The Haves and the Have Nots here. Spartacus (2010 – 2013) Doing Ridley Scott’s Gladiator one better in terms of both narrative complexity and in hot shirtless gay arena action, Spartacus starts off as pure spectacle and grows into a juicy, high-gloss soap opera by series' end. Buoyed by performances from leads Andy Whitfield (who tragically passed away during the series' original run), Manu Bennett, John Hannah, and Lucy Lawless, it’s sword-and-sandals done right. A follow-up series is in development over at Starz, so it's a good time to catch up. You can stream Spartacus here. Broadchurch (2013 – 2017) Creator Chris Chibnall's dark crime drama didn't invent its particular sub-genre (whatever you call the one where two troubled homicide detectives butt heads in a gloomy town), but it did popularize it to the point that we've been inundated with countless imitators of wide-ranging quality. With the great pairing of Olivia Colman and David Tennant (joined by yet another Doctor Who Doctor, Jodie Whittaker), Broadchurch still stands alongside the best of its kind. You can stream Broadchurch here.Doctor Who (1963 – 1989, 26 seasons) Speaking of Doctor Who, even if you're current with the modern incarnation (if I can use "modern" for a show that started airing in 2005), you've got a lot of timey-wimey adventures to enjoy. Tubi has the entirity of the surviving 26-season original run, going all the way back to 1963 and the story of a mysterious old man living in a junkyard with his granddaughter. Seven doctors is enough to keep anyone busy for a while. Tubi has the show broken out by Doctor, but, if you want to start from the beginning you can stream The First Doctor here. Haven (2010 – 2015) Tubi is a haven for small gems like this, a five-season Stephen King adaptation originally produced by SyFy. Emily Rose stars as Audrey Parker, and FBI Special Agent sent to the small town of Haven, Maine on a routine case who gets drawn into “The Troubles," a series of harmful supernatural events that have recurred throughout the town’s history. A supernatural-case-of-the-week format gives way to a bigger mystery when Audrey comes to learn that this isn’t her first time in Haven, nor the first time she’s encountered the Troubles. You can stream Haven here.Scandal (2012 – 2018, seven seasons) Shonda Rhimes was already a powerhouse producer and screenwriter with several successful seasons of Grey's Anatomy under her belt when Scandal debuted, but its blend of political thrills and sexy, soapy drama is what solidified her brand, and her spot atop of the modern TV landscape. Kerry Washington stars as Olivia Pope, head of the DC-based crisis management firm Olivia Pope & Associates (OPA), who is the person to call when you've got a PR disaster to fix. If you want to get a sense of the stakes involved, consider that Tony Goldwyn costars as Fitzgerald Grant III, president of the United States, and also Olivia's lover. You can stream Scandal here. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 – 2003) With word that Sarah Michelle Gellar (and company?) are returning to the wreckage of Sunnydale for a Hulu reboot, it’s probably not a bad time to visit (or revisit, or re-revisit) this seven-season teen vampire hunter saga. While the pacing might feel a little slow, and the effects a little janky, its blend of high school (and then college) angst, kick-ass monster fights, and genuinely laugh-out-loud comedy holds up. You can stream Buffy here.Heartland (2007 – , 18 seasons) If there’s a stereotype that middle-American viewers won’t watch foreign fare, this show puts the lie to it—at least when it comes to imports from Alberta (tariff-free!). Based on a popular book series from Linda Chapman and Beth Chambers (writing under the name Lauren Brooke), the show follows the lives of a family of horse ranchers in western Canada, led by sisters Amy and Lou (Amber Marshall and Michelle Morgan). Tubi currently has only the first 15 seasons of the drama, which has recently been renewed for a 19th. That’s Law & Order-level longevity, people. You can stream Heartland here.Highlander (1992 – 1998, six seasons) An classic of '90s-era syndicated action/adventure, Highlander stars Adrian Paul as the title hero, taking over from Christopher Lambert in the film series. Duncan MacLeod is an immortal warrior living in the modern(-ish) day, hunted by others of his own kind, whose goal is singular: to chop off Duncan's head in order to steal his power. Episodes typically involve some sort of flashback to an earlier era in Duncan's life where we first encounter the threat he'll face in the modern day. There's at least one good sword fight in every episode, and I can't imagine what more you'd want out of a series. Bonus: It carries over the films' kick-ass Queen theme song. You can stream Highlander here. Z Nation (2014 - 2019) The Walking Dead made prestige television out of the zombie apocalypse, but this SyFy channel original is all about zombies as a campy, gory good time.  Things kick off with a soldier who’s been tasked with transporting a package across country. The package in question is actually a human being, the survivor of a zombie bite who might be able to help create a vaccine (take note, The Last of Us fans). This one comes from the schlock-masters at The Asylum, purveyors of infamous B-movies like Sharknado, which should tell you all you need to know about the tone. You can stream Z Nation here.Columbo (1968 – 2003, 16 seasons) Peter Falk's sublimely rumpled detective practically invented the style that Peacock's Poker Face has recently revived: a crime (usually a murder) is committed, the viewers know whodunnit, and Columbo has to solve it. Early on in any given episode, we get to watch the crime being committed, though we don't always know the motive. The challenge isn't to figure out the culprit, but to discover exactly how TV's greatest detective is going to solve the case. You can stream Columbo here.

Nvidia's RTX Remix is a remarkable tool that allows game modders to bring state-of-the-art path traced visuals to classic PC games. We've seen Portal RTX from Nvidia already, along with the development of a full-on remaster of Half-Life 2 - but I was excited to see a community of modders take on 2004's Painkiller, enhanced now to become Painkiller RTX. It's still a work-in-progress project as of version 0.1.6, but what I've seen so far is still highly impressive - and if you have the means, I recommend checking it out. The whole reason RTX Remix works with the original Painkiller is due to its custom rendering technology, known as the PainEngine. This 2004 release from People Can Fly Studios was built around Direct X 8.1, which gave it stellar visuals at the time, including bloom effects – specular lighting with limited bump mapping and full framebuffer distortion effects. Those visuals dazzled top-end GPU owners of the time, but like a great number of PC releases from that era, it had a DX7 fallback which culled the fancier shading effects and could even run on GPUs like the original GeForce. RTX Remix uses the fixed function DX7 path and replaces the core rendering with the path tracer - and that is how I have been playing the game these last few days, taking in the sights and sounds of Painkiller with a new lick of paint. It's an upgrade that has made me appreciate it all the more now in 2025 as it is quite a special game that history has mostly forgotten. To fully enjoy the modders' work on the path-traced upgrade to Painkiller, we highly recommend this video.Watch on YouTube Painkiller is primarily a singleplayer first-person shooter that bucked the trends of the time period. After Half-Life and Halo: Combat Evolved, many first person shooters trended towards a more grounded and storytelling-based design. The classic FPS franchises like Quake or Unreal had gone on to become wholly focused on multiplayer, or else transitioned to the storytelling route - like Doom 3, for example. Painkiller took all of those 'modern' trappings and threw them in the garbage. A narrative only exists in a loose sense with pre-rendered video that bookends the game’s chapters, acting only as a flimsy excuse to send the player to visually distinct levels that have no thematic linking beyond pointing you towards enemies that you should dispatch with a variety of weapons. The basic gameplay sounds familiar if you ever played Doom Eternal or Doom 2016. It is simple on paper, but thanks to the enemy and level variety and the brilliant weaponry, it does not get tiring. The game enhanced its traditional FPS gameplay with an extensive use of Havok physics – where a great deal of the game’s environmental objects could be broken up into tiny pieces with rigid body movement on all the little fragments, or environmental objects could be manipulated with ragdoll or rope physics. Sometimes it is there for purely visual entertainment but other times it has a gameplay purpose with destructible objects often containing valuable resources or being useful as a physics weapon against the game's enemies. So, what's the score with Painkiller RTX? Well, the original's baked lighting featured hardly any moving lights and no real-time perspective-correct shadows - so all of that is added as part and parcel of the path-traced visuals. The RTX renderer also takes advantage of ray-traced fog volumes, showing shadows in the fog in the areas where light is obscured. Another aspect you might notice is that the game’s various pickups have been now made to be light-emissive. In the original game, emissives textures are used to keep things full bright even in darkness, but they themselves emit no light. Since the path tracer fully supports emissive lighting from any arbitrary surface, they all now cast light, making them stand out even more in the environment. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. The original game extensively used physics objects, which tended to lead to a clash in lighting and shading for any moving objects, which were incongruous then with the static baked lighting. Turn on the path tracer and these moving objects are grounded into the environment with shadows of their own, while receiving and casting light themselves. Boss battles are transformed as those enemies are also fully grounded in the surrounding environments, perfectly integrated into the path-traced visuals - and even if the titanic enemies are off-screen, their shadows are not. The main difference in many scenes is just down to the new lighting - it's more physicalised now as dynamic objects are properly integrated, no longer floating or glowing strangely. One reason for this is due to lighting resolution. The original lighting was limited by trying to fit in 256MB of VRAM, competing for space with the game’s high resolution textures. Painkiller RTX's lighting and shadowing is achieved at a per-pixel level in the path tracer, which by necessity means that you tend to see more nuance, along with more bounce lighting as it is no longer erased away by bilinear filtering on chunky light map textures. Alongside more dynamism and detail, there are a few new effects too. Lit fog is heavily used now in many levels - perhaps at its best in the asylum level where the moonlight and rain are now illuminated, giving the level more ambience than it had before. There is also some occasional usage of glass lighting effects like the stain glass windows in the game now filtering light through them properly, colouring the light on the ground in the pattern of the individual mosaic patterns found on their surface. Half-Life 2 RTX - built on RTX Remix - recently received a demo release. It's the flagship project for the technology, but modders have delivered path traced versions of many modern games.Watch on YouTube New textures and materials interact with the path tracer in ways that transform the game. For some objects, I believe the modders used Quixel megascan assets to give the materials parallax along with a high resolution that is artistically similar to the original game. A stoney ground in the graveyard now actually looks stoney, thanks to a different texture: a rocky material with craggy bits and crevices that obscure light and cast micro shadows, for example. Ceramic tiles on the floor now show varying levels of depth and cracks that pick up a very dull level of reflectivity from the moon-lit sky. Some textures are also updated by running them through generative tools which interpret dark areas of the baked textures as recesses and lighter areas as raised edges and assigns them a heightmap. This automated process works quite well for textures whose baked features are easily interpreted, but for textures that had a lot of noise added into them to simulate detail, the automated process can be less successful. That is the main issue I would say with the RTX version so far: some of these automated textures have a few too many bumps in them, making them appear unnatural. But that is just the heightmap data as the added in material values to give the textures sheen tend to look universally impressive. The original game barely has any reflectivity, and now a number of select surfaces show reflections in full effect, like the marble floors at the end of the game's second level. For the most part though, the remix of textures from this mod is subtle, with many textures still being as diffuse as found in the original game: rocky and dirty areas in particular look much the same as before, just with more accurately rendered shadows and bounce lighting - but without the plasticy sheen you might typically find in a seventh generation game. Whether maxed on an RTX 5090 or running on optimised settings on an RTX 4060, the current work-in-progress version of Painkiller RTX can certainly challenge hardware. | Image credit: Digital Foundry Make no mistake though: path tracing doesn't come cheap and to play this game at decent frame-rates, you either need to invest in high performance hardware or else accept some compromises to settings. Being a user mod that's still in development, I imagine this could improve in later versions but at the moment, Painkiller RTX maxed out is very heavy - even heavier than Portal RTX. So if you want to play it on a lower-end GPU, I recommend my optimised settings for Portal RTX, which basically amounts to turning down the amount of possible light bounces to save on performance and skimping a bit in other areas. Even with that, an RTX 4060 was really struggling to run the game well. With frame generation on and DLSS set to 1080p balanced with the transformer model, 80fps to 90fps was the best I could achieve in the general combat zones, with the heaviest stages dipping into the 70s - and even into the 60s with frame generation. The mod is still work-in-progress, but even now, Painkiller RTX is still a lot of fun and it can look stunning if your hardware is up to it. But even if you can't run it, I do hope this piece and its accompanying video pique your interest in checking out Painkiller in some form. Even without the path-traced upgrade, this is a classic first-person shooter that's often overlooked and more than holds its own against some of the period's better known games.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 85, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry in advance that this week is a tiny bit politics-y, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about Sean Evans and music fraud and ayahuasca, playing with the new Obsidian Bases feature, obsessing over every Cliche” more times than I’m proud of, installing some Elgato Key Lights to improve my WFH camera look, digging the latest beta of Artifacts, and downloading every podcast I can find because I have 20 hours of driving to do this weekend.I also have for you a very funny new movie about tech CEOs, a new place to WhatsApp, a great new accessory for your phone, a helpful crypto politics explainer, and much more. Short week this week, but still lots going on. Let’s do it.(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / playing / watching / listening to / shopping for / doing with a Raspberry Pi this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here. And if you haven’t subscribed, you should! You’ll get every issue for free, a day early, in your inbox.)The DropMountainhead. I mean, is there a more me-coded pitch than “Succession vibes, but about tech bros?” It’s about a bunch of (pretty recognizable) billionaires who more or less run the world and are also more or less ruining it. You’ll either find this hilarious, way too close to home, or both. WhatsApp for iPad. I will never, ever understand why Meta hates building iPad apps. But it finally launched the most important one! The app itself is extremely fine and exactly what you’d think it would be, but whatever. It exists! DO INSTAGRAM NEXT.Post Games.Polygon, all about video games. It’s only a couple episodes deep, but so far I love the format: it’s really smart and extremely thoughtful, but it’s also very silly in spots. Big fan.The Popsockets Kick-Out Grip. I am a longtime, die-hard Popsockets user and evangelist, and the new model fixes my one gripe with the thing by working as both a landscape and portrait kickstand. $40 is highway robbery for a phone holder, but this is exactly the thing I wanted.“Dance with Sabrina.” A new, real-time competitive rhythm game inside of Fortnite, in which you try to do well enough to earn the right to actually help create the show itself. Super fun concept, though all these games are better with pads, guitars, or really anything but a normal controller.Lazy 2.0. Lazy is a stealthy but fascinating note-taking tool, and it does an unusually good job of integrating with files and apps. The new version is very AI-forward, basically bringing a personalized chatbot and all your notes to your whole computer. Neat!Elden Ring Nightreign. A multiplayer-heavy spinoff of the game that I cannot get my gamer friends to shut up about, even years after it came out. I’ve seen a few people call the game a bit small and repetitive, but next to Elden Ring I suppose most things are.The Tapo DL100 Smart Deadbolt Door Lock. A $70 door lock with, as far as I can tell, every feature I want in a smart lock: a keypad, physical keys, super long battery life, and lots of assistant integrations. It does look… huge? But it’s pretty bland-looking, which is a good thing.Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster. One of a few Titan-related documentaries coming this summer, meant to try and explain what led to the awful events of a couple years ago. I haven’t seen this one yet, but the reviews are solid — and the story seems even sadder and more infuriating than we thought.“The growing scandal of $TRUMP.” I love a good Zeke Faux take on crypto, whether it’s a book or a Search Engine episode. This interview with Ezra Klein is a great explainer of how the Trump family got so into crypto and how it’s being used to move money in deeply confusing and clearly corrupt ways. Cameron Faulkner isn’t technically new to The Verge, he’s just newly back at The Verge. In addition to being a commerce editor on our team, he also wrote one of the deepest dives into webcams you’ll ever find, plays a lot of games, has more thoughts about monitors than any reasonable person should, and is extremely my kind of person. Since he’s now so very back, I asked Cam to share his homescreen with us, as I always try to do with new people here. Here it is, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:The phone: Pixel 9 Pro.The wallpaper: It’s an “Emoji Workshop” creation, which is a feature that’s built into Android 14 and more recent updates. It mashes together emoji into the patterns and colors of your choosing. I picked this one because I like sushi, and I love melon / coral color tones.The apps: Google Keep, Settings, Clock, Phone, Chrome, Pocket Casts, Messages, Spotify.I haven’t downloaded a new app in ages. What’s shown on my homescreen has been there, unmoved, for longer than I can remember. I have digital light switches, a to-do list with the great (but paid) Stuff widget, a simple Google Fit widget to show me how much I moved today, and a couple Google Photos widgets of my lovely wife and son. I could probably function just fine if every app shuffled its location on my homescreen, except for the bottom row. That’s set in stone, never to be fiddled with.I also asked Cameron to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:Righteous Gemstones on HBO Max. It’s a much smarter comedy than I had assumed (but it’s still dumb in the best ways), and I’m delighted to have four seasons to catch up on. I’m really digging Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which achieves the feat of breakneck pacing (the game equivalent of a page-turner) and a style that rivals Persona 5, which is high praise. I have accrued well over a dozen Switch 2 accessories, and I’m excited to put them to the test once I get a console on launch day.CrowdsourcedHere’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now, as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.“The Devil’s Plan. This Netflix original South Korean reality show locks 14 contestants in a windowless living space that’s part mansion, part prison, part room escape, and challenges them to eliminate each other in a series of complicated tabletop games. (If this sounds familiar, it’s a spiritual successor to the beloved series The Genius from the mid-2010s.)” — Travis“If you’re a fan of Drive to Survive, I’m happy to report that the latest season of Netflix’s series on NASCAR is finally good, and a reasonable substitute for that show once you’ve finished it.” — Christopher“I switched to a Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel Watch 3 from an iPhone and Apple Watch about 6 months ago and found Open Bubbles, an open source alternative to BlueBubbles that does need a Mac but doesn’t need that Mac to remain on, You just need a one-time hardware identifier from it, then it gives you full iMessage, Find My, FaceTime, and iCloud shared albums on Android and Windows using an email address. So long as you can get your contacts to iMessage your email instead of your number, it works great.” — Tim“Playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the last time before Mario Kart World arrives next week and takes over my life!” — Ravi“With Pocket being killed off I’ve started using my RSS reader — which is Inoreader — instead as a suitable replacement. I only switched over to Pocket after Omnivore shut down.” — James“I just got a Boox Go 10.3 for my birthday and love it. The lack of front lighting is the biggest downfall. It is also only on Android 12 so I cannot load a corporate profile. It feels good to write on just, almost as good as my cheaper fountain pen and paper. It is helping me organize multiple notebooks and scraps of paper.” — Sean“Giving Tweek a bit of a go, and for a lightweight weekly planner it’s beautiful. I also currently use Motion for project management of personal tasks and when I was doing my Master’s. I really like the Gantt view to map out long term personal and study projects. (I also got a student discount for Motion, but it’s still expensive.)” — Astrid“Might I suggest Elle Griffin’s work at The Elysian? How she’s thinking through speculative futures and a cooperative media system is fascinating.” — Zach“GeForce Now on Steam Deck!” — SteveSigning offOne of the reasons I like making this newsletter with all of you is that it’s a weekly reminder that, hey, actually, there’s a lot of awesome people doing awesome stuff out there on the internet. I spend a lot of my time talking to people who say AI is going to change everything, and we’re all going to just AI ourselves into oblivion and be thrilled about it — a theory I increasingly think is both wrong and horrifying.And then this week I read a blog post from the great Dan Sinker, who called this moment “the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.” You should read the whole thing, but here’s a bit I really loved:“Using extraordinary amounts of resources, it has the ability to create something good enough, a squint-and-it-looks-right simulacrum of normality. If you don’t care, it’s miraculous. If you do, the illusion falls apart pretty quickly. The fact that the userbase for AI chatbots has exploded exponentially demonstrates that good enough is, in fact, good enough for most people. Because most people don’t care.”I don’t think this describes everything and everyone, and neither does Sinker, but I do think it’s more true than it should be. And I increasingly think our job, maybe our method of rebellion, is to be people who care, who have taste, who like and share and look for good things, who read and watch and look at those things on purpose instead of just staring slackjawed at whatever slop is placed between the ads they hope we won’t really notice. I think there are a lot of fascinating ways that AI can be useful, but we can’t let it train us to accept slop just because it’s there. Sorry, this got more existential than I anticipated. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’m going to try and point Installer even more at the stuff that matters, made by people who care. I hope you’ll hold me to that.See you next week!See More:

Insurance is a modern necessity—and it can often be a literal lifesaver. When any sort of disaster strikes, whether it’s to your property, your business, or your health, getting a payment on your claim can mean the difference between getting through the emergency in one piece and being buried under bills for years to come.While it might seem pretty straightforward, anyone who’s actually dealt with insurance companies knows that their least favorite thing to do in this world is pay out on claims. In fact, studies have found that 17% of claims made to HealthCare.gov insurers and 18% of claims made to private insurers are denied—with some insurance companies rejecting nearly 50% of all claims.In fact, some insurers employ several legal but underhanded tricks to avoid paying out on claims. Here are five common tricks insurance companies will use against you.Moving as slowly as possibleThe simplest trick an insurance company can play is to drag their feet on your claim—there’s a reason the phrase “deny and delay” has become linked to the insurance industry as a whole. This tactic works because your insurer knows you’re desperate for a settlement on your claim; that’s the whole point of insurance. The longer they make you wait, the more likely you’ll accept whatever they offer you, even if you know it’s much less than you’re entitled to.Delay tactics vary, but can include:Documentation overload. Insurance companies sometimes request huge amounts of (sometimes unnecessary) documentation that takes a lot of time to procure and organize.Personnel swaps. Insurers may change the adjuster and other employees on your case, with each new person requiring some time to review the claim and get up to speed.Claiming no response. Your insurer asked for something, and you provided it. Weeks later they claim they never received it, and ask that you submit it again.The best way to counter these tactics is meticulous record-keeping. If you feel that your insurer is asking for unnecessary documentation, ask them to explain why they need the documents—this sometimes makes document requests magically vanish. Send all written communications via certified mail and turn on read receipts for emails and other electronic communications.Love bombingInsurers are often extremely nice to you when you initially start dealing with them. They express sympathy, use the words “I’m sorry” in the context of your injuries or loss, and generally sound warm and friendly. That’s nice, and may even be genuine. But it’s also a tactic they use to delay or eventually find reasons to deny your claim.Studies have found that apologies can be weaponized, and that people will tolerate delays and settle for less if they think the other party is taking responsibility or expressing empathy. Being excessively nice to you can fool you into thinking you can rely on the insurer to handle things on your behalf. This lets the company delay as much as possible, stringing you along. Love bombing like this can also get you to say things you shouldn’t say—as we’ll see in the next entry.Twisting your wordsAnother reason an insurance adjuster or other employee might apologize to you? Because it can gently goad you into expressing regrets of your own which can then be used against you. Any expression of apology or regret could be interpreted as an admittance of fault. And establishing a friendly, sympathetic rapport with you could be a tactic to get you to say more than you should by speculating on causes or your responsibility in a claim.For example, while speaking with a friendly adjuster about a car accident you were involved with, you might tell them you wish you’d noticed the other car driving erratically—if you had, you might have avoided the accident. This might seem like a simple observation, but it could be twisted into an admittance that you weren’t paying attention—and thus your claim is denied.Insurers will also sometimes demand that you submit a recorded statement, often very quickly after the incident covered by the claim. They will sometimes state that this is best for you, as it will get the claim moving more quickly. But a rushed recorded statement can also lead to a denied claim—if you’re wrong or inaccurate about anything in your statement, this could be used as a basis for denial.To avoid the tactics listed above, follow a few simple rules for dealing with insurers:Lawyer up. Hiring a lawyer to help you deal with insurance claims might seem like overkill, but you should always have a lawyer with you when speaking with insurers. An experienced attorney can ensure you don’t say anything that could hurt your claim.Never record. You’re typically not required to submit recorded statements, so don’t do it. Insist that all communications be done in person or over the phone, with your attorney present.Be suspicious. If an adjuster or other representative of the insurance company is overly friendly, don’t fall for it. Their sympathy might be genuine, but it can still get you into trouble if you let your guard down.RushingIronically, an effective tactic to delay and deny claims is to rush things. You file your claim, and before you can get organized, hire a lawyer, and recover from whatever happened, the insurer is on the phone, offering a settlement. This is often combined with pressure—like sending you a letter stating that you have two weeks to accept the settlement offer, or the company will “close the file.”This is usually designed to reduce the payout—that easy, fast settlement is probably for a lot less than the amount you’re actually entitled to—and to force errors on your part. By rushing to pull together information, you’ll probably make mistakes that can then be used to deny the claim.You can defend against this in two simple ways:Slow down. Ignore pressure to respond immediately or by arbitrary deadlines. Take your time, gather information, and respond when you’re ready. An attorney can help by acting as a buffer between you and the company.Know the statute. If your insurer tells you it will close your claim file, let it happen. It’s a meaningless administrative action. Your state’s laws will have a defined Statute of Limitations on your claim—a period of time when you’re legally allowed to pursue the claim. As long as you’re within that time period, you can force the insurer to re-open the claim.LowballingIf your insurer doesn’t think it can totally deny your claim, it may offer you a lowball settlement. You shouldn’t accept an insurance company’s calculations as gospel. In fact, the most important piece of information you can have about the claims process is that you are allowed to hire your own insurance adjuster. A public insurance adjuster works for you, not the insurance company, and will often arrive at a much higher figure for your claim.Hiring your own adjuster also insulates you from internal delays, as you won’t have to wait on your insurer’s processes or play phone tag with their adjuster. In addition to an experienced lawyer, a public adjuster can also ensure that you have all the support and knowledge you need to navigate the often murky world of insurance claims.

A California-based company called Magrathea just turned on a new electrolyzer that can make magnesium metal from seawater. The technology has the potential to produce the material, which is used in vehicles and defense applications, with net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions. Magnesium is an incredibly light metal, and it’s used for parts in cars and planes, as well as in aluminum alloys like those in vehicles. The metal is also used in defense and industrial applications, including the production processes for steel and titanium. Today, China dominates production of magnesium, and the most common method generates a lot of the emissions that cause climate change. If Magrathea can scale up its process, it could help provide an alternative source of the metal and clean up industries that rely on it, including automotive manufacturing. The star of Magrathea’s process is an electrolyzer, a device that uses electricity to split a material into its constituent elements. Using an electrolyzer in magnesium production isn’t new, but Magrathea’s approach represents an update. “We really modernized it and brought it into the 21st century,” says Alex Grant, Magrathea’s cofounder and CEO. The whole process starts with salty water. There are small amounts of magnesium in seawater, as well as in salt lakes and groundwater. (In seawater, the concentration is about 1,300 parts per million, so magnesium makes up about 0.1% of seawater by weight.) If you take that seawater or brine and clean it up, concentrate it, and dry it out, you get a solid magnesium chloride salt. Magrathea takes that salt (which it currently buys from Cargill) and puts it into the electrolyzer. The device reaches temperatures of about 700 °C (almost 1,300 °F) and runs electricity through the molten salt to split the magnesium from the chlorine, forming magnesium metal. Typically, running an electrolyzer in this process would require a steady source of electricity. The temperature is generally kept just high enough to maintain the salt in a molten state. Allowing it to cool down too much would allow it to solidify, messing up the process and potentially damaging the equipment. Heating it up more than necessary would just waste energy.  Magrathea’s approach builds in flexibility. Basically, the company runs its electrolyzer about 100 °C higher than is necessary to keep the molten salt a liquid. It then uses the extra heat in inventive ways, including to dry out the magnesium salt that eventually goes into the reactor. This preparation can be done intermittently, so the company can take in electricity when it’s cheaper or when more renewables are available, cutting costs and emissions. In addition, the process will make a co-product, called magnesium oxide, that can be used to trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping to cancel out the remaining carbon pollution. The result could be a production process with net-zero emissions, according to an independent life cycle assessment completed in January. While it likely won’t reach this bar at first, the potential is there for a much more climate-friendly process than what’s used in the industry today, Grant says. Breaking into magnesium production won’t be simple, says Simon Jowitt, director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and of the Center for Research in Economic Geology at the University of Nevada, Reno. China produces roughly 95% of the global supply as of 2024, according to data from the US Geological Survey. This dominant position means companies there can flood the market with cheap metal, making it difficult for others to compete. “The economics of all this is uncertain,” Jowitt says. The US has some trade protections in place, including an anti-dumping duty, but newer players with alternative processes can still face obstacles. US Magnesium, a company based in Utah, was the only company making magnesium in the US in recent years, but it shut down production in 2022 after equipment failures and a history of environmental concerns.  Magrathea plans to start building a demonstration plant in Utah in late 2025 or early 2026, which will have a capacity of roughly 1,000 tons per year and should be running in 2027. In February the company announced that it signed an agreement with a major automaker, though it declined to share its name on the record. The automaker pre-purchased material from the demonstration plant and will incorporate it into existing products. After the demonstration plant is running, the next step would be to build a commercial plant with a larger capacity of around 50,000 tons annually.

Smart TVs, take note Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device Using the Apple TV app or an Apple account means giving Apple more data, though. Scharon Harding – Jun 1, 2025 7:35 am | 22 Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Every time I write an article about the escalating advertising and tracking on today's TVs, someone brings up Apple TV boxes. Among smart TVs, streaming sticks, and other streaming devices, Apple TVs are largely viewed as a safe haven. "Just disconnect your TV from the Internet and use an Apple TV box." That's the common guidance you'll hear from Ars readers for those seeking the joys of streaming without giving up too much privacy. Based on our research and the experts we've consulted, that advice is pretty solid, as Apple TVs offer significantly more privacy than other streaming hardware providers. But how private are Apple TV boxes, really? Apple TVs don't use automatic content recognition (ACR, a user-tracking technology leveraged by nearly all smart TVs and streaming devices), but could that change? And what about the software that Apple TV users do use—could those apps provide information about you to advertisers or Apple? In this article, we'll delve into what makes the Apple TV's privacy stand out and examine whether users should expect the limited ads and enhanced privacy to last forever. Apple TV boxes limit tracking out of the box One of the simplest ways Apple TVs ensure better privacy is through their setup process, during which you can disable Siri, location tracking, and sending analytics data to Apple. During setup, users also receive several opportunities to review Apple's data and privacy policies. Also off by default is the boxes' ability to send voice input data to Apple. Most other streaming devices require users to navigate through pages of settings to disable similar tracking capabilities, which most people are unlikely to do. Apple’s approach creates a line of defense against snooping, even for those unaware of how invasive smart devices can be. Apple TVs running tvOS 14.5 and later also make third-party app tracking more difficult by requiring such apps to request permission before they can track users. "If you choose Ask App Not to Track, the app developer can’t access the system advertising identifier (IDFA), which is often used to track," Apple says. "The app is also not permitted to track your activity using other information that identifies you or your device, like your email address." Users can access the Apple TV settings and disable the ability of third-party apps to ask permission for tracking. However, Apple could further enhance privacy by enabling this setting by default. The Apple TV also lets users control which apps can access the set-top box's Bluetooth functionality, photos, music, and HomeKit data (if applicable), and the remote's microphone. "Apple’s primary business model isn’t dependent on selling targeted ads, so it has somewhat less incentive to harvest and monetize incredible amounts of your data," said RJ Cross, director of the consumer privacy program at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). "I personally trust them more with my data than other tech companies." What if you share analytics data? If you allow your Apple TV to share analytics data with Apple or app developers, that data won't be personally identifiable, Apple says. Any collected personal data is "not logged at all, removed from reports before they’re sent to Apple, or protected by techniques, such as differential privacy," Apple says. Differential privacy, which injects noise into collected data, is one of the most common methods used for anonymizing data. In support documentation (PDF), Apple details its use of differential privacy: The first step we take is to privatize the information using local differential privacy on the user’s device. The purpose of privatization is to assure that Apple’s servers don't receive clear data. Device identifiers are removed from the data, and it is transmitted to Apple over an encrypted channel. The Apple analysis system ingests the differentially private contributions, dropping IP addresses and other metadata. The final stage is aggregation, where the privatized records are processed to compute the relevant statistics, and the aggregate statistics are then shared with relevant Apple teams. Both the ingestion and aggregation stages are performed in a restricted access environment so even the privatized data isn’t broadly accessible to Apple employees. What if you use an Apple account with your Apple TV? Another factor to consider is Apple's privacy policy regarding Apple accounts, formerly Apple IDs. Apple support documentation says you "need" an Apple account to use an Apple TV, but you can use the hardware without one. Still, it's common for people to log into Apple accounts on their Apple TV boxes because it makes it easier to link with other Apple products. Another reason someone might link an Apple TV box with an Apple account is to use the Apple TV app, a common way to stream on Apple TV boxes. So what type of data does Apple harvest from Apple accounts? According to its privacy policy, the company gathers usage data, such as "data about your activity on and use of" Apple offerings, including "app launches within our services...; browsing history; search history; [and] product interaction." Other types of data Apple may collect from Apple accounts include transaction information (Apple says this is "data about purchases of Apple products and services or transactions facilitated by Apple, including purchases on Apple platforms"), account information ("including email address, devices registered, account status, and age"), device information (including serial number and browser type), contact information (including physical address and phone number), and payment information (including bank details). None of that is surprising considering the type of data needed to make an Apple account work. Many Apple TV users can expect Apple to gather more data from their Apple account usage on other devices, such as iPhones or Macs. However, if you use the same Apple account across multiple devices, Apple recognizes that all the data it has collected from, for example, your iPhone activity, also applies to you as an Apple TV user. A potential workaround could be maintaining multiple Apple accounts. With an Apple account solely dedicated to your Apple TV box and Apple TV hardware and software tracking disabled as much as possible, Apple would have minimal data to ascribe to you as an Apple TV owner. You can also use your Apple TV box without an Apple account, but then you won't be able to use the Apple TV app, one of the device's key features. Data collection via the Apple TV app You can download third-party apps like Netflix and Hulu onto an Apple TV box, but most TV and movie watching on Apple TV boxes likely occurs via the Apple TV app. The app is necessary for watching content on the Apple TV+ streaming service, but it also drives usage by providing access to the libraries of many (but not all) popular streaming apps in one location. So understanding the Apple TV app’s privacy policy is critical to evaluating how private Apple TV activity truly is. As expected, some of the data the app gathers is necessary for the software to work. That includes, according to the app's privacy policy, "information about your purchases, downloads, activity in the Apple TV app, the content you watch, and where you watch it in the Apple TV app and in connected apps on any of your supported devices." That all makes sense for ensuring that the app remembers things like which episode of Severance you're on across devices. Apple collects other data, though, that isn't necessary for functionality. It says it gathers data on things like the "features you use (for example, Continue Watching or Library)," content pages you view, how you interact with notifications, and approximate location information (that Apple says doesn't identify users) to help improve the app. Additionally, Apple tracks the terms you search for within the app, per its policy: We use Apple TV search data to improve models that power Apple TV. For example, aggregate Apple TV search queries are used to fine-tune the Apple TV search model. This data usage is less intrusive than that of other streaming devices, which might track your activity and then sell that data to third-party advertisers. But some people may be hesitant about having any of their activities tracked to benefit a multi-trillion-dollar conglomerate. Data collected from the Apple TV app used for ads By default, the Apple TV app also tracks "what you watch, your purchases, subscriptions, downloads, browsing, and other activities in the Apple TV app" to make personalized content recommendations. Content recommendations aren't ads in the traditional sense but instead provide a way for Apple to push you toward products by analyzing data it has on you. You can disable the Apple TV app's personalized recommendations, but it's a little harder than you might expect since you can't do it through the app. Instead, you need to go to the Apple TV settings and then select Apps > TV > Use Play History > Off. The most privacy-conscious users may wish that personalized recommendations were off by default. Darío Maestro, senior legal fellow at the nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), noted to Ars that even though Apple TV users can opt out of personalized content recommendations, "many will not realize they can." Apple can also use data it gathers on you from the Apple TV app to serve traditional ads. If you allow your Apple TV box to track your location, the Apple TV app can also track your location. That data can "be used to serve geographically relevant ads," according to the Apple TV app privacy policy. Location tracking, however, is off by default on Apple TV boxes. Apple's tvOS doesn't have integrated ads. For comparison, some TV OSes, like Roku OS and LG's webOS, show ads on the OS's home screen and/or when showing screensavers. But data gathered from the Apple TV app can still help Apple's advertising efforts. This can happen if you allow personalized ads in other Apple apps serving targeted apps, such as Apple News, the App Store, or Stocks. In such cases, Apple may apply data gathered from the Apple TV app, "including information about the movies and TV shows you purchase from Apple, to serve ads in those apps that are more relevant to you," the Apple TV app privacy policy says. Apple also provides third-party advertisers and strategic partners with "non-personal data" gathered from the Apple TV app: We provide some non-personal data to our advertisers and strategic partners that work with Apple to provide our products and services, help Apple market to customers, and sell ads on Apple’s behalf to display on the App Store and Apple News and Stocks. Apple also shares non-personal data from the Apple TV with third parties, such as content owners, so they can pay royalties, gauge how much people are watching their shows or movies, "and improve their associated products and services," Apple says. Apple's policy notes: For example, we may share non-personal data about your transactions, viewing activity, and region, as well as aggregated user demographics[,] such as age group and gender (which may be inferred from information such as your name and salutation in your Apple Account), to Apple TV strategic partners, such as content owners, so that they can measure the performance of their creative work [and] meet royalty and accounting requirements. When reached for comment, an Apple spokesperson told Ars that Apple TV users can clear their play history from the app. All that said, the Apple TV app still shares far less data with third parties than other streaming apps. Netflix, for example, says it discloses some personal information to advertising companies "in order to select Advertisements shown on Netflix, to facilitate interaction with Advertisements, and to measure and improve effectiveness of Advertisements." Warner Bros. Discovery says it discloses information about Max viewers "with advertisers, ad agencies, ad networks and platforms, and other companies to provide advertising to you based on your interests." And Disney+ users have Nielsen tracking on by default. What if you use Siri? You can easily deactivate Siri when setting up an Apple TV. But those who opt to keep the voice assistant and the ability to control Apple TV with their voice take somewhat of a privacy hit. According to the privacy policy accessible in Apple TV boxes' settings, Apple boxes automatically send all Siri requests to Apple's servers. If you opt into using Siri data to "Improve Siri and Dictation," Apple will store your audio data. If you opt out, audio data won't be stored, but per the policy: In all cases, transcripts of your interactions will be sent to Apple to process your requests and may be stored by Apple. Apple TV boxes also send audio and transcriptions of dictation input to Apple servers for processing. Apple says it doesn't store the audio but may store transcriptions of the audio. If you opt to "Improve Siri and Dictation," Apple says your history of voice requests isn't tied to your Apple account or email. But Apple is vague about how long it may store data related to voice input performed with the Apple TV if you choose this option. The policy states: Your request history, which includes transcripts and any related request data, is associated with a random identifier for up to six months and is not tied to your Apple Account or email address. After six months, you request history is disassociated from the random identifier and may be retained for up to two years. Apple may use this data to develop and improve Siri, Dictation, Search, and limited other language processing functionality in Apple products ... Apple may also review a subset of the transcripts of your interactions and this ... may be kept beyond two years for the ongoing improvements of products and services. Apple promises not to use Siri and voice data to build marketing profiles or sell them to third parties, but it hasn't always adhered to that commitment. In January, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing Siri of recording private conversations and sharing them with third parties for targeted ads. In 2019, contractors reported hearing private conversations and recorded sex via Siri-gathered audio. Outside of Apple, we've seen voice request data used questionably, including in criminal trials and by corporate employees. Siri and dictation data also represent additional ways a person's Apple TV usage might be unexpectedly analyzed to fuel Apple's business. Automatic content recognition Apple TVs aren't preloaded with automatic content recognition (ACR), an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Ars, another plus for privacy advocates. But ACR is software, so Apple could technically add it to Apple TV boxes via a software update at some point. Sherman Li, the founder of Enswers, the company that first put ACR in Samsung TVs, confirmed to Ars that it's technically possible for Apple to add ACR to already-purchased Apple boxes. Years ago, Enswers retroactively added ACR to other types of streaming hardware, including Samsung and LG smart TVs. (Enswers was acquired by Gracenote, which Nielsen now owns.) In general, though, there are challenges to adding ACR to hardware that people already own, Li explained: Everyone believes, in theory, you can add ACR anywhere you want at any time because it's software, but because of the way [hardware is] architected... the interplay between the chipsets, like the SoCs, and the firmware is different in a lot of situations. Li pointed to numerous variables that could prevent ACR from being retroactively added to any type of streaming hardware, "including access to video frame buffers, audio streams, networking connectivity, security protocols, OSes, and app interface communication layers, especially at different levels of the stack in these devices, depending on the implementation." Due to the complexity of Apple TV boxes, Li suspects it would be difficult to add ACR to already-purchased Apple TVs. It would likely be simpler for Apple to release a new box with ACR if it ever decided to go down that route. If Apple were to add ACR to old or new Apple TV boxes, the devices would be far less private, and the move would be highly unpopular and eliminate one of the Apple TV's biggest draws. However, Apple reportedly has a growing interest in advertising to streaming subscribers. The Apple TV+ streaming service doesn't currently show commercials, but the company is rumored to be exploring a potential ad tier. The suspicions stem from a reported meeting between Apple and the United Kingdom's ratings body, Barb, to discuss how it might track ads on Apple TV+, according to a July report from The Telegraph. Since 2023, Apple has also hired several prominent names in advertising, including a former head of advertising at NBCUniversal and a new head of video ad sales. Further, Apple TV+ is one of the few streaming services to remain ad-free, and it's reported to be losing Apple $1 billion per year since its launch. One day soon, Apple may have much more reason to care about advertising in streaming and being able to track the activities of people who use its streaming offerings. That has implications for Apple TV box users. "The more Apple creeps into the targeted ads space, the less I’ll trust them to uphold their privacy promises. You can imagine Apple TV being a natural progression for selling ads," PIRG's Cross said. Somewhat ironically, Apple has marketed its approach to privacy as a positive for advertisers. "Apple’s commitment to privacy and personal relevancy builds trust amongst readers, driving a willingness to engage with content and ads alike," Apple's advertising guide for buying ads on Apple News and Stocks reads. The most private streaming gadget It remains technologically possible for Apple to introduce intrusive tracking or ads to Apple TV boxes, but for now, the streaming devices are more private than the vast majority of alternatives, save for dumb TVs (which are incredibly hard to find these days). And if Apple follows its own policies, much of the data it gathers should be kept in-house. However, those with strong privacy concerns should be aware that Apple does track certain tvOS activities, especially those that happen through Apple accounts, voice interaction, or the Apple TV app. And while most of Apple's streaming hardware and software settings prioritize privacy by default, some advocates believe there's room for improvement. For example, STOP's Maestro said: Unlike in the [European Union], where the upcoming Data Act will set clearer rules on transfers of data generated by smart devices, the US has no real legislation governing what happens with your data once it reaches Apple's servers. Users are left with little way to verify those privacy promises. Maestro suggested that Apple could address these concerns by making it easier for people to conduct security research on smart device software. "Allowing the development of alternative or modified software that can evaluate privacy settings could also increase user trust and better uphold Apple's public commitment to privacy," Maestro said. There are ways to limit the amount of data that advertisers can get from your Apple TV. But if you use the Apple TV app, Apple can use your activity to help make business decisions—and therefore money. As you might expect from a device that connects to the Internet and lets you stream shows and movies, Apple TV boxes aren't totally incapable of tracking you. But they're still the best recommendation for streaming users seeking hardware with more privacy and fewer ads. Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon Harding Senior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 22 Comments

In June, we hosted a webinar featuring experts from Arm, the Unity Accelerate Solutions team, and SYBO Games, the creator of Subway Surfers. The resulting roundtable focused on profiling tips and strategies for mobile games, the business implications of poor performance, and how SYBO shipped a hit mobile game with 3 billion downloads to date.Let’s dive into some of the follow-up questions we didn’t have time to cover during the webinar. You can also watch the full recording.We hear a lot about the Unity Profiler in relation to CPU profiling, but not as much about the Profile Analyzer (available as a Unity package). Are there any plans to improve it or integrate it into the core Profiler toolset?There are no immediate plans to integrate the Profile Analyzer into the core Editor, but this might change as our profiling tools evolve.Does Unity have any plans to add an option for the GPU Usage Profiler module to appear in percentages like it does in milliseconds?That’s a great idea, and while we can’t say yes or no at the time of this blog post, it’s a request that’s been shared with our R&D teams for possible future consideration.Do you have plans for tackling “Application Not Responding” (ANR) errors that are reported by the Google Play store and don’t contain any stack trace?Although we don’t have specific plans for tracking ANR without stack trace at the moment, we will consider it for the future roadmap.How can I share my feedback to help influence the future development of Unity’s profiling tools?You can keep track of upcoming features and share feedback via our product board and forums. We are also conducting a survey to learn more about our customers’ experience with the profiling tools. If you’ve used profiling tools before (either daily or just once) or are working on a project that requires optimization, we would love to get your input. The survey is designed to take no more than 5–10 minutes to complete.By participating, you’ll also have the chance to opt into a follow-up interview to share more feedback directly with the development team, including the opportunity to discuss potential prototypes of new features.Is there a good rule for determining what counts as a viable low-end device to target?A rule of thumb we hear from many Unity game developers is to target devices that are five years old at the time of your game’s release, as this helps to ensure the largest user base. But we also see teams reducing their release-date scope to devices that are only three years old if they’re aiming for higher graphical quality. A visually complex 3D application, for example, will have higher device requirements than a simple 2D application. This approach allows for a higher “min spec,” but reduces the size of the initial install base. It’s essentially a business decision: Will it cost more to develop for and support old devices than what your game will earn running on them?Sometimes the technical requirements of your game will dictate your minimum target specifications. So if your game uses up large amounts of texture memory even after optimization, but you absolutely cannot reduce quality or resolution, that probably rules out running on phones with insufficient memory. If your rendering solution requires compute shaders, that likely rules out devices with drivers that can’t support OpenGL ES 3.1, Metal, or Vulkan.It’s a good idea to look at market data for your priority target audience. For instance, mobile device specs can vary a lot between countries and regions. Remember to define some target “budgets” so that benchmarking goals for what’s acceptable are set prior to choosing low-end devices for testing.For live service games that will run for years, you’ll need to monitor their compatibility continuously and adapt over time based on both your actual user base and current devices on the market.Is it enough to test performance exclusively on low-end devices to ensure that the game will also run smoothly on high-end ones?It might be, if you have a uniform workload on all devices. However, you still need to consider variations across hardware from different vendors and/or driver versions.It’s common for graphically rich games to have tiers of graphical fidelity – the higher the visual tier, the more resources required on capable devices. This tier selection might be automatic, but increasingly, users themselves can control the choice via a graphical settings menu. For this style of development, you’ll need to test at least one “min spec” target device per feature/workload tier that your game supports.If your game detects the capabilities of the device it’s running on and adapts the graphics output as needed, it could perform differently on higher end devices. So be sure to test on a range of devices with the different quality levels you’ve programmed the title for.Note: In this section, we’ve specified whether the expert answering is from Arm or Unity.Do you have advice for detecting the power range of a device to support automatic quality settings, particularly for mobile?Arm: We typically see developers doing coarse capability binning based on CPU and GPU models, as well as the GPU shader core count. This is never perfect, but it’s “about right.” A lot of studios collect live analytics from deployed devices, so they can supplement the automated binning with device-specific opt-in/opt-out to work around point issues where the capability binning isn’t accurate enough.As related to the previous question, for graphically rich content, we see a trend in mobile toward settings menus where users can choose to turn effects on or off, thereby allowing them to make performance choices that suit their preferences.Unity: Device memory and screen resolution are also important factors for choosing quality settings. Regarding textures, developers should be aware that Render Textures used by effects or post-processing can become a problem on devices with high resolution screens, but without a lot of memory to match.Given the breadth of configurations available (CPU, GPU, SOC, memory, mobile, desktop, console, etc.), can you suggest a way to categorize devices to reduce the number of tiers you need to optimize for?Arm: The number of tiers your team optimizes for is really a game design and business decision, and should be based on how important pushing visual quality is to the value proposition of the game. For some genres it might not matter at all, but for others, users will have high expectations for the visual fidelity.Does the texture memory limit differ among models and brands of Android devices that have the same amount of total system memory?Arm: To a first-order approximation, we would expect the total amount of texture memory to be similar across vendors and hardware generations. There will be minor differences caused by memory layout and alignment restrictions, so it won’t be exactly the same.Is it CPU or GPU usage that contributes the most to overheating on mobile devices?Arm: It’s entirely content dependent. The CPU, GPU, or the DRAM can individually overheat a high-end device if pushed hard enough, even if you ignore the other two completely. The exact balance will vary based on the workload you are running.What tips can you give for profiling on devices that have thermal throttling? What margin would you target to avoid thermal throttling (i.e., targeting 20 ms instead of 33 ms)?Arm: Optimizing for frame time can be misleading on Android because devices will constantly adjust frequency to optimize energy usage, making frame time an incomplete measure by itself. Preferably, monitor CPU and GPU cycles per frame, as well as GPU memory bandwidth per frame, to get some value that is independent of frequency. The cycle target you need will depend on each device’s chip design, so you’ll need to experiment.Any optimization helps when it comes to managing power consumption, even if it doesn’t directly improve frame rate. For example, reducing CPU cycles will reduce thermal load even if the CPU isn’t the critical path for your game.Beyond that, optimizing memory bandwidth is one of the biggest savings you can make. Accessing DRAM is orders of magnitude more expensive than accessing local data on-chip, so watch your triangle budget and keep data types in memory as small as possible.Unity: To limit the impact of CPU clock frequency on the performance metrics, we recommend trying to run at a consistent temperature. There are a couple of approaches for doing this:Run warm: Run the device for a while so that it reaches a stable warm state before profiling.Run cool: Leave the device to cool for a while before profiling. This strategy can eliminate confusion and inconsistency in profiling sessions by taking captures that are unlikely to be thermally throttled. However, such captures will always represent the best case performance a user will see rather than what they might actually see after long play sessions. This strategy can also delay the time between profiling runs due to the need to wait for the cooling period first.With some hardware, you can fix the clock frequency for more stable performance metrics. However, this is not representative of most devices your users will be using, and will not report accurate real-world performance. Basically, it’s a handy technique if you are using a continuous integration setup to check for performance changes in your codebase over time.Any thoughts on Vulkan vs OpenGL ES 3 on Android? Vulkan is generally slower performance-wise. At the same time, many devices lack support for various features on ES3.Arm: Recent drivers and engine builds have vastly improved the quality of the Vulkan implementations available; so for an equivalent workload, there shouldn’t be a performance gap between OpenGL ES and Vulkan (if there is, please let us know). The switch to Vulkan is picking up speed and we expect to see more people choosing Vulkan by default over the next year or two. If you have counterexamples of areas where Vulkan isn’t performing well, please get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you.What tools can we use to monitor memory bandwidth (RAM <-> VRAM)?Arm: The Streamline Profiler in Arm Mobile Studio can measure bandwidth between Mali GPUs and the external DRAM (or system cache).Should you split graphical assets by device tiers or device resolution?Arm: You can get the best result by retuning assets, but it’s expensive to do. Start by reducing resolution and frame rate, or disabling some optional post-processing effects.What is the best way to record performance metric statistics from our development build?Arm: You can use the Performance Advisor tool in Arm Mobile Studio to automatically capture and export performance metrics from the Mali GPUs, although this comes with a caveat: The generation of JSON reports requires a Professional Edition license.Unity: The Unity Profiler can be used to view common rendering metrics, such as vertex and triangle counts in the Rendering module. Plus you can include custom packages, such as System Metrics Mali, in your project to add low-level Mali GPU metrics to the Unity Profiler.What are your recommendations for profiling shader code?You need a GPU Profiler to do this. The one you choose depends on your target platform. For example, on iOS devices, Xcode’s GPU Profiler includes the Shader Profiler, which breaks down shader performance on a line-by-line basis.Arm Mobile Studio supports Mali Offline Compiler, a static analysis tool for shader code and compute kernels. This tool provides some overall performance estimates and recommendations for the Arm Mali GPU family.When profiling, the general rule is to test your game or app on the target device(s). With the industry moving toward more types of chipsets (Apple M1, Arm, x86 by Intel, AMD, etc.), how can developers profile and pinpoint issues on the many different hardware configurations in a reasonable amount of time?The proliferation of chipsets is primarily a concern on desktop platforms. There are a limited number of hardware architectures to test for console games. On mobile, there’s Apple’s A Series for iOS devices and a range of Arm and Qualcomm architectures for Android – but selecting a manageable list of representative mobile devices is pretty straightforward.On desktop it’s trickier because there’s a wide range of available chipsets and architectures, and buying Macs and PCs for testing can be expensive. Our best advice is to do what you can. No studio has infinite time and money for testing. We generally wouldn’t expect any huge surprises when comparing performance between an Intel x86 CPU and a similarly specced AMD processor, for instance. As long as the game performs comfortably on your minimum spec machine, you should be reasonably confident about other machines. It’s also worth considering using analytics, such as Unity Analytics, to record frame rates, system specs, and player options’ settings to identify hotspots or problematic configurations.We’re seeing more studios move to using at least some level of automated testing for regular on-device profiling, with summary stats published where the whole team can keep an eye on performance across the range of target devices. With well-designed test scenes, this can usually be made into a mechanical process that’s suited for automation, so you don’t need an experienced technical artist or QA tester running builds through the process manually.Do you ever see performance issues on high-end devices that don’t occur on the low-end ones?It’s uncommon, but we have seen it. Often the issue lies in how the project is configured, such as with the use of fancy shaders and high-res textures on high-end devices, which can put extra pressure on the GPU or memory. Sometimes a high-end mobile device or console will use a high-res phone screen or 4K TV output as a selling point but not necessarily have enough GPU power or memory to live up to that promise without further optimization.If you make use of the current versions of the C# Job System, verify whether there’s a job scheduling overhead that scales with the number of worker threads, which in turn, scales with the number of CPU cores. This can result in code that runs more slowly on a 64+ core Threadripper™ than on a modest 4-core or 8-core CPU. This issue will be addressed in future versions of Unity, but in the meantime, try limiting the number of job worker threads by setting JobsUtility.JobWorkerCount.What are some pointers for setting a good frame budget?Most of the time when we talk about frame budgets, we’re talking about the overall time budget for the frame. You calculate 1000/target frames per second (fps) to get your frame budget: 33.33 ms for 30 fps, 16.66 ms for 60 fps, 8.33 ms for 120 Hz, etc. Reduce that number by around 35% if you’re on mobile to give the chips a chance to cool down between each frame. Dividing the budget up to get specific sub-budgets for different features and/or systems is probably overkill except for projects with very specific, predictable systems, or those that make heavy use of Time Slicing.Generally, profiling is the process of finding the biggest bottlenecks – and therefore, the biggest potential performance gains. So rather than saying, “Physics is taking 1.2 ms when the budget only allows for 1 ms,” you might look at a frame and say, “Rendering is taking 6 ms, making it the biggest main thread CPU cost in the frame. How can we reduce that?”It seems like profiling early and often is still not common knowledge. What are your thoughts on why this might be the case?Building, releasing, promoting, and managing a game is difficult work on multiple fronts. So there will always be numerous priorities vying for a developer’s attention, and profiling can fall by the wayside. They know it’s something they should do, but perhaps they’re unfamiliar with the tools and don’t feel like they have time to learn. Or, they don’t know how to fit profiling into their workflows because they’re pushed toward completing features rather than performance optimization.Just as with bugs and technical debt, performance issues are cheaper and less risky to address early on, rather than later in a project’s development cycle. Our focus is on helping to demystify profiling tools and techniques for those developers who are unfamiliar with them. That’s what the profiling e-book and its related blog post and webinar aim to support.Is there a way to exclude certain methods from instrumentation or include only specific methods when using Deep Profiling in the Unity Profiler? When using a lot of async/await tasks, we create large stack traces, but how can we avoid slowing down both the client and the Profiler when Deep Profiling?You can enable Allocation call stacks to see the full call stacks that lead to managed allocations (shown as magenta in the Unity CPU Profiler Timeline view). Additionally, you can – and should! – manually instrument long-running methods and processes by sprinkling ProfilerMarkers throughout your code. There’s currently no way to automatically enable Deep Profiling or disable profiling entirely in specific parts of your application. But manually adding ProfilerMarkers and enabling Allocation call stacks when required can help you dig down into problem areas without having to resort to Deep Profiling.As of Unity 2022.2, you can also use our IgnoredByDeepProfilerAttribute to prevent the Unity Profiler from capturing method calls. Just add the IgnoredByDeepProfiler attribute to classes, structures, and methods.Where can I find more information on Deep Profiling in Unity?Deep Profiling is covered in our Profiler documentation. Then there’s the most in-depth, single resource for profiling information, the Ultimate Guide to profiling Unity games e-book, which links to relevant documentation and other resources throughout.Is it correct that Deep Profiling is only useful for the Allocations Profiler and that it skews results so much that it’s not useful for finding hitches in the game?Deep Profiling can be used to find the specific causes of managed allocations, although Allocation call stacks can do the same thing with less overhead, overall. At the same time, Deep Profiling can be helpful for quickly investigating why one specific ProfilerMarker seems to be taking so long, as it’s more convenient to enable than to add numerous ProfilerMarkers to your scripts and rebuild your game. But yes, it does skew performance quite heavily and so shouldn’t be enabled for general profiling.Is VSync worth setting to every VBlank? My mobile game runs at a very low fps when it’s disabled.Mobile devices force VSync to be enabled at a driver/hardware level, so disabling it in Unity’s Quality settings shouldn’t make any difference on those platforms. We haven’t heard of a case where disabling VSync negatively affects performance. Try taking a profile capture with VSync enabled, along with another capture of the same scene but with VSync disabled. Then compare the captures using Profile Analyzer to try to understand why the performance is so different.How can you determine if the main thread is waiting for the GPU and not the other way around?This is covered in the Ultimate Guide to profiling Unity games. You can also get more information in the blog post, Detecting performance bottlenecks with Unity Frame Timing Manager.Generally speaking, the telltale sign is that the main thread waits for the Render thread while the Render thread waits for the GPU. The specific marker names will differ depending on your target platform and graphics API, but you should look out for markers with names such as “PresentFrame” or “WaitForPresent.”Is there a solid process for finding memory leaks in profiling?Use the Memory Profiler to compare memory snapshots and check for leaks. For example, you can take a snapshot in your main menu, enter your game and then quit, go back to the main menu, and take a second snapshot. Comparing these two will tell you whether any objects/allocations from the game are still hanging around in memory.Does it make sense to optimize and rewrite part of the code for the DOTS system, for mobile devices including VR/AR? Do you use this system in your projects?A number of game projects now make use of parts of the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS). Native Containers, the C# Job System, Mathematics, and the Burst compilerare all fully supported packages that you can use right away to write optimal, parallelized, high-performance C# (HPC#) code to improve your project’s CPU performance.A smaller number of projects are also using Entities and associated packages, such as the Hybrid Renderer, Unity Physics, and NetCode. However, at this time, the packages listed are experimental, and using them involves accepting a degree of technical risk. This risk derives from an API that is still evolving, missing or incomplete features, as well as the engineering learning curve required to understand Data-Oriented Design (DOD) to get the most out of Unity’s Entity Component System (ECS). Unity engineer Steve McGreal wrote a guide on DOTS best practices, which includes some DOD fundamentals and tips for improving ECS performance.How do you go about setting limits on SetPass calls or shader complexity? Can you even set limits beforehand?Rendering is a complex process and there is no practical way to set a hard limit on the maximum number of SetPass calls or a metric for shader complexity. Even on a fixed hardware platform, such as a single console, the limits will depend on what kind of scene you want to render, and what other work is happening on the CPU and GPU during a frame.That’s why the rule on when to profile is “early and often.” Teams tend to create a “vertical slice” demo early on during production – usually a short burst of gameplay developed to the level of visual fidelity intended for the final game. This is your first opportunity to profile rendering and figure out what optimizations and limits might be needed. The profiling process should be repeated every time a new area or other major piece of visual content is added.Here are additional resources for learning about performance optimization:BlogsOptimize your mobile game performance: Expert tips on graphics and assetsOptimize your mobile game performance: Expert tips on physics, UI, and audio settingsOptimize your mobile game performance: Expert tips on profiling, memory, and code architecture from Unity’s top engineersExpert tips on optimizing your game graphics for consolesProfiling in Unity 2021 LTS: What, when, and howHow-to pagesProfiling and debugging toolsHow to profile memory in UnityBest practices for profiling game performanceE-booksOptimize your console and PC game performanceOptimize your mobile game performanceUltimate guide to profiling Unity gamesLearn tutorialsProfiling CPU performance in Android builds with Android StudioProfiling applications – Made with UnityEven more advanced technical content is coming soon – but in the meantime, please feel free to suggest topics for us to cover on the forum and check out the full roundtable webinar recording.