Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington this weekend — a show of force in the capital that just happens to take place on the president’s birthday — smacks of authoritarian Dear Leader-style politics (even though Trump actually got the idea after attending the 2017 Bastille Day parade in Paris).Yet as disconcerting as the imagery of tanks rolling down Constitution Avenue will be, it’s not even close to Trump’s most insidious assault on the US military’s historic and democratically essential nonpartisan ethos.In fact, it’s not even the most worrying thing he’s done this week.On Tuesday, the president gave a speech at Fort Bragg, an Army base home to Special Operations Command. While presidential speeches to soldiers are not uncommon — rows of uniformed troops make a great backdrop for a foreign policy speech — they generally avoid overt partisan attacks and campaign-style rhetoric. The soldiers, for their part, are expected to be studiously neutral, laughing at jokes and such, but remaining fully impassive during any policy conversation.That’s not what happened at Fort Bragg. Trump’s speech was a partisan tirade that targeted “radical left” opponents ranging from Joe Biden to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. He celebrated his deployment of Marines to Los Angeles, proposed jailing people for burning the American flag, and called on soldiers to be “aggressive” toward the protesters they encountered.The soldiers, for their part, cheered Trump and booed his enemies — as they were seemingly expected to. Reporters at Military.com, a military news service, uncovered internal communications from 82nd Airborne leadership suggesting that the crowd was screened for their political opinions.“If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don’t want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,” one note read.To call this unusual is an understatement. I spoke with four different experts on civil-military relations, two of whom teach at the Naval War College, about the speech and its implications. To a person, they said it was a step towards politicizing the military with no real precedent in modern American history.“That is, I think, a really big red flag because it means the military’s professional ethic is breaking down internally,” says Risa Brooks, a professor at Marquette University. “Its capacity to maintain that firewall against civilian politicization may be faltering.”This may sound alarmist — like an overreading of a one-off incident — but it’s part of a bigger pattern. The totality of Trump administration policies, ranging from the parade in Washington to the LA troop deployment to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s firing of high-ranking women and officers of color, suggests a concerted effort to erode the military’s professional ethos and turn it into an institution subservient to the Trump administration’s whims. This is a signal policy aim of would-be dictators, who wish to head off the risk of a coup and ensure the armed forces’ political reliability if they are needed to repress dissent in a crisis.Steve Saideman, a professor at Carleton University, put together a list of eight different signs that a military is being politicized in this fashion. The Trump administration has exhibited six out of the eight.“The biggest theme is that we are seeing a number of checks on the executive fail at the same time — and that’s what’s making individual events seem more alarming than they might otherwise,” says Jessica Blankshain, a professor at the Naval War College (speaking not for the military but in a personal capacity).That Trump is trying to politicize the military does not mean he has succeeded. There are several signs, including Trump’s handpicked chair of the Joint Chiefs repudiating the president’s claims of a migrant invasion during congressional testimony, that the US military is resisting Trump’s politicization.But the events in Fort Bragg and Washington suggest that we are in the midst of a quiet crisis in civil-military relations in the United States — one whose implications for American democracy’s future could well be profound.The Trump crisis in civil-military relations, explainedA military is, by sheer fact of its existence, a threat to any civilian government. If you have an institution that controls the overwhelming bulk of weaponry in a society, it always has the physical capacity to seize control of the government at gunpoint. A key question for any government is how to convince the armed forces that they cannot or should not take power for themselves.Democracies typically do this through a process called “professionalization.” Soldiers are rigorously taught to think of themselves as a class of public servants, people trained to perform a specific job within defined parameters. Their ultimate loyalty is not to their generals or even individual presidents, but rather to the people and the constitutional order.Samuel Huntington, the late Harvard political scientist, is the canonical theorist of a professional military. In his book The Soldier and the State, he described optimal professionalization as a system of “objective control”: one in which the military retains autonomy in how they fight and plan for wars while deferring to politicians on whether and why to fight in the first place. In effect, they stay out of the politicians’ affairs while the politicians stay out of theirs.The idea of such a system is to emphasize to the military that they are professionals: Their responsibility isn’t deciding when to use force, but only to conduct operations as effectively as possible once ordered to engage in them. There is thus a strict firewall between military affairs, on the one hand, and policy-political affairs on the other.Typically, the chief worry is that the military breaches this bargain: that, for example, a general starts speaking out against elected officials’ policies in ways that undermine civilian control. This is not a hypothetical fear in the United States, with the most famous such example being Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s insubordination during the Korean War. Thankfully, not even MacArthur attempted the worst-case version of military overstep — a coup.But in backsliding democracies like the modern United States, where the chief executive is attempting an anti-democratic power grab, the military poses a very different kind of threat to democracy — in fact, something akin to the exact opposite of the typical scenario.In such cases, the issue isn’t the military inserting itself into politics but rather the civilians dragging them into it in ways that upset the democratic political order. The worst-case scenario is that the military acts on presidential directives to use force against domestic dissenters, destroying democracy not by ignoring civilian orders, but by following them.There are two ways to arrive at such a worst-case scenario, both of which are in evidence in the early days of Trump 2.0.First is politicization: an intentional attack on the constraints against partisan activity inside the professional ranks.Many of Pete Hegseth’s major moves as secretary of defense fit this bill, including his decisions to fire nonwhite and female generals seen as politically unreliable and his effort to undermine the independence of the military’s lawyers. The breaches in protocol at Fort Bragg are both consequences and causes of politicization: They could only happen in an environment of loosened constraint, and they might encourage more overt political action if gone unpunished.The second pathway to breakdown is the weaponization of professionalism against itself. Here, Trump exploits the military’s deference to politicians by ordering it to engage in undemocratic (and even questionably legal) activities. In practice, this looks a lot like the LA deployments, and, more specifically, the lack of any visible military pushback. While the military readily agreeing to deployments is normally a good sign — that civilian control is holding — these aren’t normal times. And this isn’t a normal deployment, but rather one that comes uncomfortably close to the military being ordered to assist in repressing overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against executive abuses of power.“It’s really been pretty uncommon to use the military for law enforcement,” says David Burbach, another Naval War College professor (also speaking personally). “This is really bringing the military into frontline law enforcement when. … these are really not huge disturbances.”This, then, is the crisis: an incremental and slow-rolling effort by the Trump administration to erode the norms and procedures designed to prevent the military from being used as a tool of domestic repression. Is it time to panic?Among the experts I spoke with, there was consensus that the military’s professional and nonpartisan ethos was weakening. This isn’t just because of Trump, but his terms — the first to a degree, and now the second acutely — are major stressors.Yet there was no consensus on just how much military nonpartisanship has eroded — that is, how close we are to a moment when the US military might be willing to follow obviously authoritarian orders.For all its faults, the US military’s professional ethos is a really important part of its identity and self-conception. While few soldiers may actually read Sam Huntington or similar scholars, the general idea that they serve the people and the republic is a bedrock principle among the ranks. There is a reason why the United States has never, in over 250 years of governance, experienced a military coup — or even come particularly close to one.In theory, this ethos should also galvanize resistance to Trump’s efforts at politicization. Soldiers are not unthinking automatons: While they are trained to follow commands, they are explicitly obligated to refuse illegal orders, even coming from the president. The more aggressive Trump’s efforts to use the military as a tool of repression gets, the more likely there is to be resistance.Or, at least theoretically.The truth is that we don’t really know how the US military will respond to a situation like this. Like so many of Trump’s second-term policies, their efforts to bend the military to their will are unprecedented — actions with no real parallel in the modern history of the American military. Experts can only make informed guesses, based on their sense of US military culture as well as comparisons to historical and foreign cases.For this reason, there are probably only two things we can say with confidence.First, what we’ve seen so far is not yet sufficient evidence to declare that the military is in Trump’s thrall. The signs of decay are too limited to ground any conclusions that the longstanding professional norm is entirely gone.“We have seen a few things that are potentially alarming about erosion of the military’s non-partisan norm. But not in a way that’s definitive at this point,” Blankshain says.Second, the stressors on this tradition are going to keep piling on. Trump’s record makes it exceptionally clear that he wants the military to serve him personally — and that he, and Hegseth, will keep working to make it so. This means we really are in the midst of a quiet crisis, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.“The fact that he’s getting the troops to cheer for booing Democratic leaders at a time when there’s actually [a deployment to] a blue city and a blue state…he is ordering the troops to take a side,” Saideman says. “There may not be a coherent plan behind this. But there are a lot of things going on that are all in the same direction.”See More: Politics

Nier: Automata creators deny characters "were problematic overseas" and blame mistranslated subtitle for censorship rumours Nier miss. Image credit: Square Enix News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on June 14, 2025 Nier: Automata producer Yosuke Saito and director Yoko Taro have denied that any of their character designs were restricted for Western audiences. As spotted by Automaton, the developers were compelled to comment after a mistranslated Japanese-to-English subtitle intimated Nier: Automata had been subjected to censorship from Square Enix to meet global standards. GODDESS OF VICTORY: NIKKE | Producers' Creative Dialogue Special Livestream.Watch on YouTube In the interview above (skip to 28:12 for the segment concerned), Sony executive Yoshida Shuhei asked the developers about their design process. "Our concept is always to do something that's 'not like anything else'. What I mean is, if Nier: Replicant had a boy as the main character, Nier: Automata would have a girl protagonist. If Western sci-fi is filled with Marine-like soldiers, we might go in the opposite direction and use Gothic Lolita outfits, for example," Taro said. "We tend to take the contrarian route." "There are, of course, certain things that are ethically or morally inappropriate – even if they're just aspects of a character," Saito added, according to the subtitles. "We try to draw a line by establishing rules about what’s acceptable and what’s not. "While certain things might be acceptable in Japan, they could become problematic in certain overseas regions, and even characters could become problematic as well. These are the kind of situation[s] we usually try to avoid creating. As a result, there are actually countries where we couldn't officially release Nier: Automata." This immediately caused consternation with fans but as Automaton points out, this "could be a little tricky to translate, even for an advanced Japanese speaker". When asked directly about the claim, Taro denied it, saying on X/Twitter: "I've never heard of such a thing happening". Saito simply said he thought the things he'd mentioned had been mistranslated, and would clarify this in a future livestream. In the same interview, former PlayStation exec Shuhei Yoshida called Nier: Automata the "game that changed everything", as it was responsible for reviving the Japanese games industry on its release. In a recent interview, Yoshida discussed how during the PS3 era, sales of Japanese games had declined, and increasingly studios there were chasing "overseas tastes". That changed with NieR: Automata in 2017, released for the PS4. "I think Yoko Taro created it without paying any mind at all to making it sell overseas, but it was a tremendous success," Yoshida said.

amara Member Nov 23, 2021 5,532 “If we don’t make new IPs, we’ll die,” Nippon Ichi Software believes mid-size developers need to do what the big guns can’t - AUTOMATON WEST Nippon Ichi Software’s new CEO Kenzo Saruhashi and Yomawari series creator Yu Mizokami talk about the company’s policy when it comes to making new IPs. automaton-media.com Disgaea series developer Nippon Ichi Software (NIS) held a live program in March during which it announced six new titles slated for launch in 2025 and 2026. Except for Fuuraiki 5 – the latest entry in the Fuuraiki travel game series – all of the announced projects were brand-new IPs, which NIS fans were happy to see. In a recent interview with Famitsu, Nippon Ichi Software's new CEO Kenzo Saruhashi and Yomawari series creator Yu Mizokami talked about the company's policy when it comes to making new IPs amidst the rising costs of development and risk of failure. From a business perspective, Saruhashi notes, making a sequel is the easier option for game companies, as you can predict sales and profit margins more reliably. "But in our case, we're more driven by whether our fans want a sequel or. If there's demand for, we'll make it." On the other hand, making new IPs seems like a non-negotiable for NIS, as Saruhashi comments, "On the flip side, if we were to stop taking on new challenges, we would be like a fish out of water – I think we'd die." Although it may sound dramatic, there is a sound strategy behind this – Saruhashi explains that with NIS being a mid-size company, its survival depends on daring to do the things big companies can't risk trying. This approach has worked for them too, as projects like Yomawari (which director Mizokami describes as "a big risk") found their audiences and turned out successful. That said, NIS isn't managing to miraculously avoid the issue of rising development costs – in the face of financial constraints, the company is limiting budgets for its more experimental titles and relying on its devs to come up with creative workarounds. Interestingly, Mizokami comments that even if she were suddenly given a multi-million budget to work with, she'd "probably get bored halfway through," preferring the thrill of problem-solving that comes with working on a tight budget. In contrast to triple-A game development, Saruhashi and Mizokami refer to NIS's approach as "speedrun/real-time attck-style game development." Click to expand... Click to shrink...   RGB Member Nov 13, 2017 814 On the one hand, I applaud the sentiment. But on the other. I just want a good Disgaea from them if they can build upon the rocky start moving to 3D.   Desma "This guy are sick" Member Oct 27, 2017 6,779 Niikawa used to talk like that, so the company's in good hands at least. Just wonder what happened to their localizations. They completely stopped last year except PB2.  t26 Avenger Oct 27, 2017 5,380 Will the new CEO consider localizing their VNs?   robotnikus Member Oct 24, 2023 693 t26 said: Will the new CEO consider localizing their VNs? Click to expand... Click to shrink... Hope so.   Theswweet RPG Site Verified Oct 25, 2017 7,293 California Desma said: Niikawa used to talk like that, so the company's in good hands at least. Just wonder what happened to their localizations. They completely stopped last year except PB2. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Last I heard NISA's localization teams are now focused around their Falcom releases for the most part.  Desma "This guy are sick" Member Oct 27, 2017 6,779 Theswweet said: Last I heard NISA's localization teams are now focused around their Falcom releases for the most part. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yeah, no doubt they put everybody on Trails to catch up   Theswweet RPG Site Verified Oct 25, 2017 7,293 California Desma said: Yeah, no doubt they put everybody on Trails to catch up Click to expand... Click to shrink... I mean, I know no less than 4 people who worked at Geofront that are currently salaried NISA employees, if I recall correctly.  Shard Shinjuku Member Oct 25, 2017 31,607 Tampa There is a certain irony here given NIS needs to rely on Disgaea to survive.   Last edited: Today at 12:58 AM Pyro God help us the mods are making weekend threads Member Jul 30, 2018 18,913 United States It is a shame that most new ideas have come from small indies to mid-tier games for... a long ass time now. Over a decade? Even with new IPs made in the PS4 generation, I struggle to think of many that are breaking new ground or just original to the point of feeling that way (e.g. Death Stranding).   Ckoerner Member Aug 7, 2019 979 RGB said: On the one hand, I applaud the sentiment. But on the other. I just want a good Disgaea from them if they can build upon the rocky start moving to 3D. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Seven was good. Worth playing IMHO.   CladInShadows Member May 2, 2024 301 I really hope they make another Labyrinth game   RGB Member Nov 13, 2017 814 Ckoerner said: Seven was good. Worth playing IMHO. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Definitely better than six, but it's not the most positive thing that I can't remember if I even finished the story. Ultimately even if I thought it was potentially cool on paper the automation stuff wasn't for me, especially in the post game. In six, at least, maybe it works better in seven? For reference my personal high bar for post game would be five or four depending on the day you asked.  Liam Allen-Miller Member Nov 2, 2017 8,023 Shibuya It's frustrating that NIS has legit taken so many stabs at new IPs but hardly anything has landed at all.   Chev Member Mar 1, 2021 848 Shard Shinjuku said: There is a certain irony here given NIS needs to rely on Disgaea to survive. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yeah, but they do try new IPs all the time too.   Strings Member Oct 27, 2017 34,620 Liam Allen-Miller said: It's frustrating that NIS has legit taken so many stabs at new IPs but hardly anything has landed at all. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Iunno, it's hard to be positive about the games even if they're new IP. Bar Stella Abyss, Monster Menu, Poison Control, etc are all just kinda ass.   Liam Allen-Miller Member Nov 2, 2017 8,023 Shibuya Strings said: Iunno, it's hard to be positive about the games even if they're new IP. Bar Stella Abyss, Monster Menu, Poison Control, etc are all just kinda ass. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Certainly! My frustration is on both sides of the equation (consumers letting down the great stuff, the poorer stuff letting down themselves). Like they actually go to the effort to make lots of new stuff and for one reason or another very few make it. :(   Rum&coke Member May 19, 2025 97 Is Labyrinth of Refrain the last good new IP NIS made?   hyjonx Member Nov 27, 2022 328 they (NISA) didnt even localize stella abyss i thought it looked decent everything else yeah just kind of mediocre 

Time must fly when you're having fun. Or at least when you're defending Super Earth from a huge Illuminate invasio. Helldivers 2's latest major order is the "final phase" of the battle for the divers' home planet that's been raging since the Heart of Democracy update dropped on May 20. I must admit, I thought the Galactic War twist that's brought the biggest number of Helldivers back to the game of any update it's gotten so far would last a bit longer than three MOs. Then again, this is Helldivers 2 - the war ain't anywhere close to over while there are still troops on the march and enemies to surf on. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. First of all, the last major order, which expired earlier today, was a proper heartbreaker. After casually killing 2.5 billion Illuminate in the first stage of Super Earth's defense, players weren't quite able to successfully extract from missions against the Illuminate 20 million times. They got damn close, though. So, with that, while the divers have worn the Illuminate fleet's strength down to an estimated "24% of its original operating power", only four of Super Earth's seven Mega Cities are left standing. Yep, two more have joined the brilliantly-named Eagleopolis as smouldering wrecks. Cue Arrowhead's latest order, which declares the third phase of Super Earth's defense to be the final one. "High Command anticipates an all-out assault to take the final four Mega Cities," the studio wrote, "The Illuminate have spent a century preparing for this invasion; they will hold back nothing. What has come before was the preamble; this is the endgame...The Helldivers have their orders: HOLD Super Earth." To see this content please enable targeting cookies. In order to do that, players'll need to dig in on Super Earth against the squids, while also scrapping 200 million Automatons so they can bring the Democracy Space Station back online to aid that first bit. As of writing, nearly 98 million bots have already been bashed in since the order debuted this morning. Folks are seemingly going all out, no doubt buoyed by the fact today's little Helldivers 2 patch - 01.003.003 - made a very popular change to the Reinforced Epaulettes passive that comes with the armour sets from the recently deployed Masters of Ceremony Warbond. As well as making your limbs less likely to snap like twigs, you'll now be able to reload your primary weapon 30% faster and do 50% more melee damage when rocking the Parade Commander and Honorary Guard sets. Cue celebrations on Reddit. Are you planning on jumping in to help out with this final phase of Super Earth saving? Let us know below!

Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut, coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 alongside the console’s launch on June 5, will feature a host of new content. In a new video, voice actors from the game Takaya Kuroda (Kazuma Kiryu), Hidenari Ugaki (Goro Majima), Kazuhiro Nakaya (Akira Nishikiyama), and Hitoshi Ozawa (Daisaku Kuze) spoke about how the extra cutscenes in the Director’s Cut feel “refreshing” and bring “closure” to a few of the characters, according to Automaton Media. Ugaki, speaking about some of the new scenes, spoke about how the new cutscenes portrayed to him “how dearly Majima holds Makoto and how much he wants to protect her.” For context, a lot of Majima’s story throughout Yakuza 0 revolves around him trying to figure out why Makoto is in danger from the various yakuza families. Ugaki said that the new cutscenes from the Director’s Cut go further in exploring the relationship between Majima and Makoto. Ozawa similarly spoke about how the new scenes added to the game further explore the relationship between Kiryu and Kuze. “There are things Yakuza 0 mentioned but didn’t delve into very deeply – Kuze’s new lines gave me a sense of Oh, so that’s how things are between them,” he said. Kuze acts as an antagonist force for Kiryu throughout much of this storyline, which largely revolves around Kiryu trying to figure out the importance behind a vacant plot of land in Kamurocho. The new scenes in Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut also likely offer a better transition from the title’s end to the start of the next game in the timeline – Yakuza/Yakuza Kiwami. Whereas the story in Yakuza 0 primarily takes place in 1988, the next game in the timeline fast forwards to 1995, before then starting its story in earnest in the year 2005. Since Yakuza 0 is a prequel, it also gives us a lot more characterisation for several members of the game’s cast, including protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, as well as others like Akira Nishikiyama and Goro Majima. Alongside additions to the story through new cutscenes, Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut will also feature a new multiplayer mode dubbed Red Light Raid. The new mode allows players to take on waves of enemies after picking their character of choice from a vast roster that covers essentially the entirety of Yakuza 0. New trailers for Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut were released earlier this month, showcasing the new english voice acting – featuring Yong Yea as Kiryu and Matthew Mercer as Majima – as well as giving us a look at the main opening theme for the game. Check them out. Yakuza 0 was originally released back in 2015, and focuses on telling us two main stories: how Kiryu became known as the Dragon of Dojima, and how Majima because known as the Mad Dog of Shimano. Both stories also intersect at various points, with both Kiryu and Majima trying to figure out the secrets behind seemingly-mundane things, like a vacant plot of land and a blind girl. The most recent game in the franchise was Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

In The Electric State, based on a graphic novel by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, after a robot uprising in an alternative version of the 1990s, an orphaned teenager goes on a quest across the American West, with a cartoon-inspired robot, a smuggler, and his sidekick, to find her long-lost brother. Adapting this sci-fi adventure for Netflix were Joe and Anthony Russo; their film stars Millie Bobbie Brown, Chris Pratt, Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito and a cast of CG automatons voiced by the likes of Woody Harrelson, Alan Tudyk, Hank Azaria, and Anthony Mackie.  Overseeing the visual effects, which surpassed what the Russos had to deal with during their halcyon MCU days, was Matthew Buttler, who turned to the venerable Digital Domain. As the main vendor, the studio was responsible for producing 61 character builds, 480 assets, and over 850 shots. “It was one of the biggest projects that I’ve done in terms of sheer volumes of assets, shots and characters,” states Joel Behrens, VFX Supervisor, Digital Domain.  “Our wonderful asset team did the 61 characters we were responsible for and had to ingest another 46 characters from other facilities.  We didn’t do any major changes. It was pushing our pipeline to the limits it could handle, especially with other shows going on. We took up a lot of disk space and had the ability to expand and contract the Renderfarm with cloud machines as well.” In researching for the show, Digital Domain visited Boston Dynamics to better understand the technological advancements in robotics, and what structures, motions, and interactions were logical and physically plausible.  “There is a certain amount of fake engineering that goes into some of these things,” notes Behrens.  “We’re not actually building these robots to legitimately function in the real world but have to be visibly believable that they can actually pull some of this stuff off.”  The starting point is always the reference material provided by the client.  “Is there a voice that I need to match to?” notes Liz Bernard, Animation Supervisor, Digital Domain.  “Is there any physical body reference either from motion reference actors in the plate or motion capture? We had a big mix of that on the show.  Some of our characters couldn’t be mocapped at all while others could but we had to modify the performance considerably.  We were also looking at the anatomy of each one of these robots to see what their physical capabilities are.  Can they run or jump?  Because that’s always going to tie tightly with the personality.  Your body in some ways is your personality.  We’re trying to figure out how do we put the actor’s voice on top of all these physical limitations in a way that feels cohesive.  It doesn’t happen overnight.”  The character design of Cosmo was retained from the graphic novel despite not being feasible to engineer in reality.  “His feet are huge,” laughs Bernard.  “We had to figure out how to get him to walk in a way that felt normal and put the joints in the right spots.” Emoting was mainly achieved through physicality.  “He does have these audio clips from the Kid Cosmo cartoon that he can use to help express himself verbally, but most of it is pantomime,” observes Bernard.  “There is this great scene between Cosmo and Michelle that occurs right after she crashes the car, and Cosmo is still trying to convince her who he is and why she should go off on this great search for her brother across the country.   We were trying to get some tough nuanced acting into these shots with a subtle head tilt or a little bit of a slump in the shoulders.”  A green light was inserted into the eyes.  “Matthew Butler likes robotic stuff and anything that we could do to make Cosmo feel more grounded in reality was helpful,” observes Behrens.  “We also wanted to prevent anyone from panicking and giving Cosmo a more animated face or allowing him to speak dialogue. We started off with a constant light at the beginning and then added this twinkle and glimmer in his eye during certain moments. We liked that and ended up putting it in more places throughout the film. Everybody says that the eyes are the windows to the soul so giving Cosmo something rather than a dark black painted spot on his face assisted in connecting with that character.”  Coming in four different sizes that fit inside one another - like a Russian doll - is Herman. Digital Domain looked after the eight-inch, four-foot and 20-foot versions while ILM was responsible for the 60-foot Herman that appears in the final battle.   “They were scaled up to a certain extent but consider that the joints on the 20-foot version of Herman versus the four-foot version need to be more robust and beefier because they’re carrying so much more weight,” remarks Bernard.  “We were focusing on making sure that the impact of each step rippled through the body in a way that made it clear how heavy a 20-foot robot carrying a van across a desert would be.  The smaller one can be nimbler and lighter on its feet.  There were similar physical limitations, but that weight was the big deal.”  Incorporated into the face of Herman is a retro-futuristic screen in the style of the 1980s and early 1990s CRT panels. “It has these RGB pixels that live under a thick plate of glass like your old television set,” explains Behrens.  “You have this beautiful reflective dome that goes over top of these cathode-ray-looking pixels that allowed us to treat it as a modern-day LED with the ability to animate his expressions, or if we wanted to, put symbols up. You could pixelized any graphical element and put it on Herman’s face.  We wanted to add a nonlinear decay into the pixels so when he changed expressions or a shape altered drastically you would have a slow quadratic decay of the pixels fading off as he switched expressions. That contributed a nice touch.” One member of the robot cast is an iconic Planters mascot.  “Everybody knows who Mr. Peanut is and what he looks like, at least in North America,” observes Behrens.  “We had to go through a lot of design iterations of how his face should animate. It was determined that as a slightly older model of robot he didn’t have a lot of dexterity in his face. We were modelling him after Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz Pizza animatronics, so it was like a latex shell over the top of a mechanical under structure that drove his limited expressions. It allowed him to open and close his mouth and do some slight contractions at the corners, leaving most of the acting to his eyes, which did not have as many restrictions. The eyes had the ability to move quickly, and dart and blink like a human.”  The eyebrows were mounted tracks that ran up and down a vertical slot on the front of the face.  “We could move the eyebrows up and down, and tilt them, but couldn’t do anything else,” states Bernard.  “It was trying to find a visual language that would get the acting across with Woody Harrelson’s amazing performance backing it up.  Then a lot of pantomime to go with that.”  Mr. Peanut moves in a jerky rather than smooth manner.  “Here is a funny little detail,” reveals Bernard.  “If you think about a peanut shell, he doesn’t have a chest or hips that can move independently.  We realized early on that in order to get him to walk without teeter-tottering everywhere, we were going to have to cut his butt off, reattach it and add a swivel control on the bottom.  We always kept that peanut silhouette intact; however, he could swivel his hips enough to walk forward without looking silly!”  Other notable robots are Pop Fly and Perplexo; the former is modelled on baseball player, the latter on a magician.  “We decided that Pop Fly would be the clunkiest of all robots because he was meant to be the elder statesman,” states Behrens.  “Pop Fly was partially falling apart, like his eye would drift, the mouth would hang open and sometimes he’d pass out for a second and wake back up.  Pop Fly was the scavenger hunter of the group who has seen stuff in the battles of the wasteland. We came up with a fun pitching mechanism so he could actually shoot the balls out of his mouth and of course, there was his trusty baseball bat that he could bat things with.” An interesting task was figuring out how to rig his model.  “We realized that there needed to be a lot of restrictions in his joints to make him look realistic based on how he was modelled in the first place,” notes Bernard.  “Pop Fly couldn’t rotate his head in every direction; he could turn it from side to side for the most part.  Pop Fly was on this weird structure with the four wheels on a scissor lift situation which meant that he always had to lean forward to get going and when stopping, would rock backwards.  It was fun to add all that detail in for him.”  Serving as Perplexo’s upper body is a theatrical box that he pops in and out of.  “Perplexo did not have a whole lot going on with his face,” remarks Bernard.  “It was a simple mechanical structure to his jaw, eyes, and eyelids; that meant we could push the performance with pantomime and crazy big gestures with the arms.”               A major adversary in the film is The Marshall, portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito, who remotely controls a drone that projects the face of operator onto a video screen.  “We started with a much smaller screen and had a cowboy motif for awhile, but then they decided to have a unifying design for the drones that are operated by humans versus the robots,” remarks Behrens.  “Since the artist Simon Stålenhag had done an interesting, cool design with the virtual reality helmets with that long duckbill that the humans wear in the real world, the decision was made to mimic that head style of the drones to match the drone operators. Then you could put a screen on the front; that’s how you see Ted [Jason Alexander] or The Marshall or the commando operators. It worked out quite nicely.”   There was not much differentiation in the movement of the drones.  “The drones were meant to be in the vein of Stormtroopers, a horde of them being operated by people sitting in a comfortable room in Seattle,” observes Bernard. “So, they didn’t get as much effort and love as we put into the rest of the robots which had their own personalities. But for The Marshall, we have great mocap to start from Adam Croasdell. He played it a little bit cowboy, which was how Giancarlo Esposito was portraying the character as well, like a Western sheriff style vibe. You could hear that in the voice.  Listening to Giancarlo’s vocal performance gives you a lot of clues of what you should do when you’re moving that character around.  We put all of that together in the performance of The Marshall.”   Many environments had to either be created or augmented, such as the haunted amusement park known as Happyland. “The majority of the exterior of Happyland was a beautiful set that Dennis Gassner and his crew built in a parking lot of a waterslide park in Atlanta,” states Behrens.  “We would go there at night and freeze our butts off shooting for a good two and a half weeks in the cold Atlanta winter.  Most of our environmental work was doing distance extensions for that and adding atmospherics and fog.  We made all the scavenger robots that inhabit Happyland, which are cannibalistic robotics that upgrade and hot rod themselves from random parts taken from the robots that they kill.  Once we get into the haunted house and fall into the basement, that’s where Dr. Amherst has his lab, which was modelled off a 1930s Frankenstein set, with Tesla coils, beakers, and lab equipment.  That was initially a set build we did onstage in Atlanta. But when we got into additional photography, they wanted to do this whole choreographed fight with The Marshall and Mr. Peanut. Because they didn’t know what actions we would need, we ended up building that entire lower level in CG.”   At one point, all the exiled robots gather at the Mall within the Exclusion Zone.  “We were responsible for building a number of the background characters along with Storm Studios and ILM,” remarks Behrens.  “As for the mall, we didn’t have to do much to the environment.  There were some small things here and there that had to be modified.  We took over an abandoned mall in Atlanta and the art department dressed over half of it.” The background characters were not treated haphazardly. “We assigned two or three characters to each animator,” explains Bernard.  “I asked them to make a backstory and figure out who this guy is, what does he care about, and who is his mama?!  Put that into the performance so that each one feels unique and different because they have their own personalities.  There is a big central theme in the movie where the robots are almost more human than most of the humans you meet.  It was important to us that we put that humanity into their performances. As far as the Mall and choreography, Matthew, Joel and I knew that was going to be a huge challenge because this is not traditional crowd work where you can animate cycles and give it to a crowds department and say, ‘Have a bunch of people walking around.’  All these characters are different; they have to move differently and do their own thing.  We did a first pass on the big reveal in the Mall where you swing around and see the atrium where everybody is doing their thing.  We essentially took each character and moved them around like a chess piece to figure out if we had enough characters, if the color balanced nicely across all of them, and if it was okay for us to duplicate a couple of them.  We started to show that early to Matthew and Jeffrey Ford [Editor, Executive Producer], and the directors to get buyoff on the density of the crowd.”    Considered one of the film’s signature sequences is the walk across the Exclusion Zone, where 20-foot Herman is carrying a Volkswagen van containing Michelle, Cosmo and Keats on his shoulder.  “We did a little bit of everything,” notes Behrens.  “We had plate-based shots because a splinter unit went out to Moab, Utah and shot a bunch of beautiful vistas for us.  For environments, there were shots where we had to do projections of plate material onto 3D geometry that we built. We had some DMPs that went into deep background. We also had to build out some actual legitimate 3D terrain for foreground and midground because a lot of the shots that had interaction with our hero characters rocking and back forth were shot on a bluescreen stage with a VW van on a large gimbal rig.  Then Liz had the fun job of trying to tie that into a giant robot walking with them.  We had to do some obvious tweaking to some of those motions. The establishing shots, where they are walking through this giant dead robot skeleton from who knows where, several of those were 100 percent CG. Once they get to the Mall, we had a big digital mall and a canyon area that had to look like they were once populated.”  Modifications were kept subtle.  “There were a couple of shots where we needed to move the plate VW van around a little bit,” states Bernard.  “You can’t do a lot without it starting to fall apart and lose perspective.”  “The biggest challenge was the scale and sheer number of characters needed that played a large role interacting with our human actors and creating a believable world for them to live in,” reflects Behrens.  “The sequence that I had the most fun with was the mine sequence with Herman and Keats, as far as their banter back and forth. Some of our most expansive work was the Mall and the walk across the Exclusion Zone.  Those had the most stunning visuals.”  Bernard agrees with her colleague.  “I’m going to sound like a broken record.  For me, it was the scale and the sheer number of characters that we had to deal with and keeping them feeling that they were all different, but from the same universe.  Having the animators working towards that same goal was a big challenge.  We had quite a large team on this one.  And I do love that mine sequence.  There is such good banter between Keats and Herman, especially early on in that sequence.  It has so much great action to it.  We got to drop a giant claw on top of The Marshall that he had to fight his way out of.  That was a hard shot.  And of course, the Mall is stunning.  You can see all the care that went into creating that environment and all those characters.  It’s beautiful.”      Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.

Over the past few weeks, a once-obscure manga has been making headlines in Japan and overseas. In “The Future I Saw” (Watashi ga Mita Mirai), author Ryo Tatsuki claims that Japan will be hit by a massive natural disaster in July 2025. This prediction has been cited as a reason some holiday-makers are abandoning their summer plans to travel to Japan, and has exploded across Japanese social media platforms. Why are some people apparently believing Tatsuki’s predictions? And how has an upcoming Japanese horror movie become mixed up in this panic?Ryo Tatsuki’s manga “The Future I Saw” was first published in 1999. It features Tatsuki as a character and is based on the dream diaries she has been keeping since 1985. The cover of the 1999 edition shows Tatsuki’s character with a hand up to one eye, the postcards above her head referencing various “visions” she claims to have seen. One of them reads “March 2011: A Great Disaster.” After the devastating Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami which hit Japan in March 2011, Tatsuki’s manga was rediscovered, with the resulting attention causing copies of the out-of-print book to command high prices on auction sites.People pray as they take part in a minute's silence to remember the victims on the 14th anniversary of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images.In 2021, a newer version of Tatsuki’s manga was published, “The Future I Saw: Complete Edition.” In this printing, Tatsuki added another premonition: that in July 2025 an even bigger natural disaster will occur. According to her, a tsunami triple the size of the March 2011 one will hit Japan. With Tatsuki’s previous prediction about March 2011 being “right,” information about her July 2025 forewarning quickly spread across social media in Japan.As reported by other media outlets, it seems that Tatsuki’s July 2025 prediction may have also caused some superstitious people to avoid travelling to Japan this summer. However the scale of this drop in numbers is unclear and seems to be most prominent in Hong Kong, where the manga is available in translation. According to the Sankei Shimbun and CNN, Hong Kong based fortune-teller and TV personality Master Seven has added to Tatsuki’s prediction, claiming that Japan’s earthquake risk will be higher between June and August this year.Japan’s domestic TV reporting on this has centred on Hong Kong-based airlines’ responses to these premonitions. As reported by ANN News and other TV stations earlier this month, Hong Kong Airlines has cancelled its three weekly flights to the Japanese city of Sendai, which was greatly impacted by the March 2011 earthquake. Likewise, Greater Bay Airlines is reducing its direct flights from Hong Kong to the Japanese cities of Sendai and Tokushima between May and October, citing a sudden decline in demand for travel to Japan. Proposed reasons for this include the July disaster predictions and growing economic uncertainty. In a press conference at the end of April, Yoshihiro Murai, the governor of Miyagi Prefecture (where Sendai is located) commented on the “unscientific foundations” of the disaster predictions spreading on social media and urged holiday-makers to ignore them.Naturally, this increased mainstream media coverage of “The Future I Saw” and its alleged impact on tourism has brought the manga into the spotlight again. On May 23, it was reported that the Complete Edition has sold over 1 million copies. This increased interest also coincides with an upcoming movie called “July 5 2025, 4:18 AM," which starts screening in Japanese theaters on June 27. Strange things start happening to the main character in the movie, who has her birthday on July 5, and the film uses the July 2025 earthquake prediction from “The Future I Saw” as inspiration. All this media coverage of the manga and its disaster prediction are likely helping draw attention to the film.However, some of the Japanese social media discourse and video content created about Tatsuki’s premonition misreport that the movie title refers to the date that the disaster is predicted to happen, and blend scientific information about earthquakes with alarmist warnings. This caused the publisher Asuka Shinsha to issue a clarifying statement: “We would like to emphasize once again that the author (Tatsuki) did not refer to the specific date and time mentioned in the movie title. We would appreciate it if people could take care not to be misled by fragmented information in the press and on social media etc.”From earthquakes and tsunamis to floods and landslides, natural disasters frequently occur in Japan. Although it may be unscientific, Tatsuki’s premonition and its coverage taps into a bigger, science-backed fear. According to seismologists, there’s a 70-80% chance that a Nankai Trough megaquake will hit Japan in the next 30 years (sources: Asahi News, Kobe University). This has also been back in the Japanese news again this year, as the government published revisions to its projected death toll for such a quake at the end of March 2025. A Nankai Trough megaquake could hit a huge area of Japan, impacting many major cities and resulting in around 300,000 fatalities. It also has the potential to generate huge tsunamis, hence why fear-stirring posts and content combine Tatsuki’s premonition with scientific estimates about worst-case scenario Nankai Trough quakes. However, it is currently not possible to accurately predict the exact date and location of a major earthquake and tsunami ahead of time- and the Japan Meteorological Agency refers to such predictions as “hoaxes” on its homepage. It seems that with Japan being such a natural disaster-prone country, Tatsuki may have gotten lucky with her March 2011 premonition matching up.Over the past few weeks, many Japanese-speaking commenters on X have been critical of the media coverage and panic surrounding Tatsuki’s prediction. “It’s stupid to believe in disaster predictions from a manga. The Nankai Trough quake could happen today or tomorrow.” said one user. Tatsuki herself has responded to the attention, saying that while she is pleased if interest in her manga has increased peoples’ disaster preparedness, she urges people not to be “overly influenced” by her premonition and to “act appropriately based on expert opinions” (Mainichi Shimbun).Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images.Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.The only thing I didn’t love about the Mammotion Luba robot lawn mower I tested last summer was its size. It’s a hulking four-wheel-drive robot and I live in the city, where we don’t have huge lawns. Enter the Luba Mini, a halved version of the Luba meant for smaller lawns (and tighter budgets). In fact, if you paid attention this spring, miniaturized versions of some of my favorite technology were everywhere. These mini-me versions seem to be driven, according to the companies themselves, by two market needs. While smart home tech is incredible in terms of functionality and independence, it often comes at a steep cost. But it’s not just price driving the shrinking of our tech; many companies realized was that many folks wanted the automation even when they didn’t have an acre of lawn to mow or a wall of windows to clean. Here’s how a few of my favorite pieces of technology have shrunk themselves to become more accessible and affordable.Mini lawn mowers Yuka full size on the left and mini on the right Credit: Amanda Blum Mammotion released mini models of both the Luba (AWD) and Yuka (2WD) robot mowers, and I’ve been testing them for the last month. In terms of size, they’re perfect for most suburban and urban lawns under ¼ acre and have almost the same functionality as the larger models. That's the point, according to Senior Product Manager David Cheng, who told me, "We weren’t just shrinking our existing models—we were filling a real gap in the market for homeowners seeking smart, perimeter wire-free lawn care that fits smaller outdoor spaces."Mammotion’s mowers require an RTK tower, which is a highly accurate GPS method that allows for triangulation between the mower, the tower and satellites. Using your phone as a remote control, you walk the robot around the perimeter of your lawn to set up zones, and create pathways between zones so the robot can navigate on its own. The minis have a new benefit, which is the ability for them to map spaces on their own, without you walking them around. If your yard has clear borders, I found it worked as well as mapping the area on your own.   The larger Yuka comes with a hopper for grass clippings, which you can teach to dump the clippings anywhere you like—the mini doesn’t have that option. Still, I didn’t find the hopper very usable on the large version, so no loss there.  I did find the minis had trouble, regardless of which version of mapping you used, getting to some edges of the yard. If there were overhanging shrubs casting a long shadow, the AI would interpret that as a no-go zone, avoiding it altogether. Still, that was the only degradation of features I found between the models. The mini has another benefit: It’s a lot less conspicuous parked at the dock, given the size. While you can install a 4g chip in your robot and set up notifications in case someone grabs it and goes, you just know where someone has absconded with it to.  The models use the same app, and the minis mowed as well as the original models. At a dramatically lower price point, this gives you an excuse to invest in a robot mower if the thing holding you back was how large or expensive they are. Mammotion Luba full size robot mower at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now at Amazon Mammotion Luba Mini robot lawn mower $1,999.00 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $1,999.00 at Amazon Mammotion Yuka mini robot lawn mower $999.00 at Amazon $1,098.00 Save $99.00 Shop Now Shop Now $999.00 at Amazon $1,098.00 Save $99.00 Mammotion Yuka 2000 robot lawn mower $2,448.00 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $2,448.00 at Amazon SEE 1 MORE   Smaller smart grills The original Brisk It Origin Credit: Amanda Blum Last summer I tested all the smart grills on the market, and my favorite was the Brisk It Origin. Through the fall, winter, and this spring, I have used it extensively because it turns smoking (a merciless task that involves a lot of overnight grill babysitting) into a flawless, hands-off experience. You tell the grill what you want to make, and AI kicks in to tell the grill how to make it, and it will notify you when it's time to flip things over or add a baste; when it's done, the grill turns itself off.You can, of course, edit the smoking program, create one on the fly, or just use the smoker manually as a grill. I went from someone who never rarely smoked on the grill to someone who does so once a week. On my recommendation, a BBQ devotee up the block added a Brisk It to their three-smoker lineup and revealed to me that it has become their favorite. Still, the original Brisk It clocks in just under $600 so I was excited to test the Zelos, a smaller, less expensive Brisk It with all the functionality of the Origin, albeit with less real estate. My experience isn't that unique, according to Christopher Huang, CEO at Brisk It. "Over 70% of U.S. adults say they want to cook more at home, but cite time and effort as their biggest barriers...and while more than half of home cooks express interest in smart kitchen tech, only 15% actually use it regularly." the mini has about 80% of the space of the original, seen here. I fit a whole rack of ribs plus a tray of chicken, but couldn't fit two racks of ribs. Credit: Amanda Blum Even as a highly enthusiastic home cook willing to put in the time, I cannot deny how much utility I get out of smart home automation in the kitchen. A smart grill is out of this world, since the notifications and temperature reporting of the grill and food means I don't have to stand over the grill. Brisk It even helps control the stall that barbecued meats often experience. Last month, I set up the Zelos (a thirty-minute affair) and invited neighbors over. I was worried about the smaller grill space (the Origin has 580 inches of grill space to the Zelos' 450 inches). While I could fit more racks of ribs on the Origin, the Zelos accommodated a full rack, plus a whole tray of chicken thighs, and I used the upper rack to smoke an array of vegetables. It didn't escape my attention that because the smaller grill uses less fuel (both are powered by pellets, although the control unit requires electricity), I'd be more likely to use it more often. Again, the app experience is the same on both models, and is highly functional and, dare I say, pretty fun. The AI the program uses is great for finding new recipes, a function I find underwhelming in practice on other products. At a reduced price, the Zelos makes an awfully appealing Father's Day gift, since it will also free up Dad from watching the grill all day. Brisk It Origin 940 Smart Smoker and Grill $849.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $849.99 at Amazon Brisk It Origin 580 Smart Smoker and Grill $549.99 at Amazon $599.99 Save $50.00 Shop Now Shop Now $549.99 at Amazon $599.99 Save $50.00 Brisk It Zelos Smart Smoker and Grill $449.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $449.99 at Amazon SEE 0 MORE A smaller window-washing robot In full disclosure, the only reason I haven't tested a Winbot, the window washing robot, is that I simply don't have the window real estate. The Winbot is about 13 inches square, and works by suctioning itself to your window and then putting it through a four-step wash process. I know people with Winbots, and if you have large square or rectangular windows, particularly those where some portion of the window is out of reach, it seems worthwhile. If you've got arched windows, though, the Winbot struggles with shapes that don't match the design of the robot itself, which has 90-degree angles. The Winbot also isn't for curved glass. These may seem like a lot of limitations, but I spent the winter in Arizona looking at a lot of glass patio doors, patio rooms, and walls of dusty windows and thought, "Ah...this is what the Winbot is for." Except now, there's a Winbot Mini, with an 8.5-inch square footprint. At that size, almost all my windows are fair game, so I'm excited to try it out. That was the point, according to Michelle Jones, U.S. spokesperson for ECOVACS, who said, "We saw an opportunity to bring the power of our larger window-cleaning robots to homeowners in the U.S. who have smaller or segmented window panes and don’t need a fixed cleaning station."But Ecovacs also points to a more specific problem that a lot of smart tech products suffer from, in my opinion: By the time the company has worked out the tech, the solution is often overly complicated. Ecovacs recognized that, as well, and simplified the offering in the Winbot Mini. The Mini ditches the rubber bumpers of the larger model, but that means better edge-to-edge cleaning. The mini also gains more portability by not having a heavy station like the full size model. What the mini lost seems like a worthwhile tradeoff for the price: The large Winbot has twice as many cleaning programs and more safety features (12 to the Mini's 9), but in both cases, what the Mini has seems sufficient. Priced around $250, the WinBot Mini feels like a luxurious piece of tech within reach for most folks. [add to list https://www.amazon.com/ECOVACS-WINBOT-Window-Cleaning-Robot/dp/B0DR8W696Y] Ecovacs Winbot W2 Pro Omni $499.99 at Amazon $599.99 Save $100.00 Shop Now Shop Now $499.99 at Amazon $599.99 Save $100.00 Ecovacs Winbot Mini $199.99 at Amazon Learn More Learn More $199.99 at Amazon SEE -1 MORE The Shelfy Lite the original Shelfy Credit: Amanda Blum For the last six months, I've had a Shelfy installed in my fridge. A small, charegable device, the Shelfy uses a catalyst on a ceramic filter, activated by LED lights in the device to mimic chlorophyll photosynthesis. To simplify, it purifies the air in your fridge to remove ethylene gas that ripens vegetables, and it removes odors and prevents cross contamination.I can confirm that it works to make your fridge smell better, and while I can't confirm the additional twelve days of freshness in vegetables that Shelfy claims, it has definitely added some shelf life to my fruits and vegetables.In particular, I notice the change in fruit. I buy strawberries and blueberries with some regularity year round, so I know traditionally how long they'd last before starting to form mold (two to four days). As long as I have Shelfy charged, I can get a full week out of strawberries and ten days out of blueberries. That's a huge difference that creates savings in my food budget. The CEO of Shelfy, Paolo Ganis, put a number to the savings, explaining that "the average family throws away approximately $1,996 worth of food each year—money that could easily be saved with better food preservation." Vitesy Smart Refrigerator Device | Extends Food Freshness $149.99 at Walmart Learn More Learn More $149.99 at Walmart Shelfy isn't large or particularly expensive (it's just under $150) but Vitesy has just introduced a Kickstarter for the Shelfy Lite, which will only be $66 (the project is already funded). "Through a number of user surveys, we consistently heard that people loved the idea behind Shelfy but wanted a version that was more accessible: smaller, more affordable," Ganis said.The Lite adds multiple modes to the device, one for the general fridge, one for the crisper drawer and a power mode for when someone buys a particularly stinky cheese. The Lite improves on the battery charging and performance over the original model, and comes in some additional accent colors, if you care about that sort of thing. The Lite is only marginally smaller than the original Shelfy, but at less than half the price, that seems immaterial.What I've enjoyed about the Shelfy is that there are no filters to replace; you simply wash and wet the ceramic filter when you recharge the device every few weeks. If you don't recharge it, there are no annoying beeps or notifications—it's been a quiet helper.A smart home hub for lessSometimes even I forget there are smart home hubs outside of Samsung, Amazon, Apple, and Google. But Homey, a hub that keeps all your connections local, has gained traction over the last few years since its introduction. Homey has a specific focus on automation through its "Flow" platform, which is a version of routines or automatons in any other platform. Homey fans claim Flow has far more flexibility, and although I've never found Alexa or Google Home difficult, Homey is noted for its appeal to beginner smart home fans. Still, at just under $400, the Homey Pro hub was an expensive way to dive into smart home tech, compared to other platforms. Jasper Foppele, head of marketing at Homey, was transparent about their strategy, explaining that their usage data and feedback made clear they had to rethink their offering. Instead of trying to offer everything (the Homey Pro supports 60 apps), the Homey product team chose the core technology they saw being used in the U.S. market (Matter, Thread, Zigbee) and winnowed the app coverage to the most common 25. "This approach allowed us to significantly reduce cost and complexity," Foppele said, "a privacy-first, locally running smart home hub priced at $199."The Homey Pro Mini still prioritizes local first connection, including backups, but it has an option for cloud backup. The Mini is on pre-order and will ship sometime this month.