That's no man eater.

Nailing cross-channel marketing for your app is crucial in today’s ecosystem. This isn’t just a speculation, it’s a hard fact: the average mobile marketer uses 5 or fewer media sources, but CPIs tend to be much higher for marketers using 6 or more media sources, according to a report by Singular and ironSource Aura.It’s time to start looking elsewhere for users. Something to consider is returning to old-school, tried-and-true strategies that have taken a backseat as the industry has advanced, such as web acquisition campaigns. There are two clicks in these campaigns - the first click directs users from an ad to a web landing page and the second click directs users from the web page to the app store. While the funnel to get to your app is longer, it’s actually an opportunity. Let’s dive into why and how you should be running web-to-app acquisition campaigns.3 benefits of web-to-app campaignsWeb acquisition campaigns became tried-and-true for a reason and many apps are beginning to take advantage of the strategy to reduce costs, get better visibility, and expand their reach.Reduce costsWhile the cost of app acquisition campaigns is increasing as the space becomes more saturated, web campaigns have been underutilized in recent years. This means many advertisers are finding that the cost of web campaigns are less than app store acquisitions. Much of these higher costs comes from high app store fees - Apple takes a 30% cut from large developers and a 15% cut from smaller developers. The web remains a relatively low-cost, accessible channel.Get better visibilityWith the ability to direct users to your owned mobile site before they click to download your app, you get better visibility into new users and where they came from - the app store is a black box where it’s nearly impossible to match the user who clicked an ad to the user who downloaded your app. On top of that, longer funnels give you more control and insight into each step users take to get to your app - allowing you to better optimize your campaigns. For example, you can try out different web landing pages to find the most effective way to increase users’ understanding of your app before they download it. This increases your likelihood of, first, motivating users to download your app, and second, encouraging them to stick around.Expand your reachInternet users worldwide spent 415.5 minutes a day online in 2021 according to Oberlo. App users spend at most 300 mins a day in apps according to TechCrunch. The internet is still more prevalent than apps because, let’s face it, the web predates the app store. Even more so, users have become especially savvy on the web, visiting the search bar to research a brand, fact check a friend, or dive deeper into a news headline. This means that by running web campaigns, you’re reaching a massive audience - nearly the entire world population.Andre Kempe, Founder and CEO of Admiral Media says, “marketers consider web acquisition important because they’re reaching a different type of audience that may convert to becoming an active app user, even though they were surfing on a news website… When you start advertising for the web, you reach an audience you haven’t reached before. This is definitely a growth opportunity." Listen to the full podcast.Web campaigns are a tried and true strategy, which is what makes them so effective in today’s ecosystem. Realizing that you should be considering this acquisition channel, let’s discuss how web onboarding can help you maximize success.Maximize success with web onboardingTypically, users complete onboarding directly on your app. Web onboarding, however, means letting users register, subscribe, and sometimes pay on the web, before heading to your app. This way, users are fully prepared to start using your app before even clicking download, ensuring they can engage at full capacity as soon as download is complete.When users onboard through the app, they may not immediately decide to engage but at least the app is still on their phones reminding them everyday of its value - they’re likely to open it again at some point in time. When a user onboards on the web and decides your app isn’t valuable, they’ll never end up actually downloading it - it’s gone and forgotten before it even started. That said, with web onboarding, the users who end up downloading your app will do so with high-intent to actively engage. Plus, you don’t have to pay for users that download without ever engaging. Whatever category your app is - fitness, food delivery, dating, reading, learning, etc. - you can use the web touchpoint to drive quality users to your app.Ensure the transition is seamlessFirst, ensure the web experience mimics the app experience enough that users don’t feel jipped when they actually start using your app. The transition from the web to the app should be seamless. If you’re offering users a taste of your app, the web touchpoint should look exactly like your app or, at least, include all of the same features. If the buttons to adjust settings are on the right side of the page during onboarding, they should be on the right side in the app as well. To ensure users stick around, you have to give them what they signed up for.Give users a sneak peakYou should also determine your main selling point and give users a sneak peak. For example, if you’re a reading app that allows users to adjust the settings of the page, you could give users premium access to the first chapter of a book allowing them to adjust font size or brightness. Readers will not want to leave the experience behind, encouraging them to set up their subscription and input their credit card information on the web before heading to the app to continue reading the book. The best part - when they open your app for the first time they’ll be able to jump right into the app experience.Learn more about how to improve your app’s onboarding experienceWeb-to-app campaigns should not be ignored in this competitive landscape - lower costs, more visibility, better optimization, and strong reach. Going even further to onboard users through the web, you’re improving the quality of the users entering your app for the first time.

In the summer of 2023, I wrote about a shocking scandal at Harvard Business School: Star professor Francesca Gino had been accused of falsifying data in four of her published papers, with whispers there was falsification in others, too. A series of posts on Data Colada, a blog that focuses on research integrity, documented Gino’s apparent brazen data manipulation, which involved clearly changing study data to better support her hypotheses. This was a major accusation against a researcher at the top of her field, but Gino’s denials were unconvincing. She didn’t have a good explanation for what had gone wrong, asserting that maybe a research assistant had done it, even though she was the only author listed across all four of the falsified studies. Harvard put her on unpaid administrative leave and barred her from campus.The cherry on top? Gino’s main academic area of study was honesty in business.As I wrote at the time, my read of the evidence was that Gino had most likely committed fraud. That impression was only reinforced by her subsequent lawsuit against Harvard and the Data Colada authors. Gino complained that she’d been defamed and that Harvard hadn’t followed the right investigation process, but she didn’t offer any convincing explanation of how she’d ended up putting her name to paper after paper with fake data.This week, almost two years after the news first broke, the process has reached its resolution: Gino was stripped of tenure, the first time Harvard has essentially fired a tenured professor in at least 80 years. (Her defamation lawsuit against the bloggers who found the data manipulation was dismissed last year.)What we do right and wrong when it comes to scientific fraudHarvard is in the news right now for its war with the Trump administration, which has sent a series of escalating demands to the university, canceled billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts, and is now blocking the university from enrolling international students, all in an apparent attempt to force the university to conform to MAGA’s ideological demands. Stripping a celebrity professor of tenure might not seem like the best look at a moment when Harvard is in an existential struggle for its right to exist as an independent academic institution. But the Gino situation, which long predates the conflict with Trump, shouldn’t be interpreted solely through the lens of that fight. Scientific fraud is a real problem, one that is chillingly common across academia. But far from putting the university in a bad light, Harvard’s handling of the Gino case has actually been unusually good, even though it still underscores just how much further academia has to go to ensure scientific fraud becomes rare and is reliably caught and punished.There are two parts to fraud response: catching it and punishing it. Academia clearly isn’t very good at the first part. The peer-review process that all meaningful research undergoes tends to start from the default assumption that data in a reviewed paper is real, and instead focuses on whether the paper represents a meaningful advance and is correctly positioned with respect to other research. Almost no reviewer is going back to check to see if what is described in a paper actually happened.Fraud, therefore, is often caught only when other researchers actively try to replicate a result or take a close look at the data. Science watchdogs who find these fraud cases tell me that we need a strong expectation that data be made public — which makes it much harder to fake — as well as a scientific culture that embraces replications. (Given the premiums journals put on novelty in research and the supreme importance of publishing for academic careers, there’s been little motivation for scientists to pursue replication.). It is these watchdogs, not anyone at Harvard or in the peer-review process, who caught the discrepancies that ultimately sunk Gino.Crime and no punishmentEven when fraud is caught, academia too often fails to properly punish it. When third-party investigators bring a concern to the attention of a university, it’s been unusual for the responsible party to actually face consequences. One of Gino’s co-authors on one of the retracted papers was Dan Ariely, a star professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He, too, has been credibly accused of falsifying data: For example, he published one study that he claimed took place at UCLA with the assistance of researcher Aimee Drolet Rossi. But UCLA says the study didn’t happen there, and Rossi says she did not participate in it. In a past case, he claimed on a podcast to have gotten data from the insurance company Delta Dental, which the company says it did not collect. In another case, an investigation by Duke reportedly found that data from a paper he co-authored with Gino had been falsified, but that there was no evidence Ariely had used fake data knowingly.Frankly, I don’t buy this. Maybe an unlucky professor might once end up using data that was faked without their knowledge. But if it happens again, I’m not willing to credit bad luck, and at some point, a professor who keeps “accidentally” using falsified or nonexistent data should be out of a job even if we can’t prove it was no accident. But Ariely, who has maintained his innocence, is still at Duke. Or take Olivier Voinnet, a plant biologist who had multiple papers conclusively demonstrated to contain image manipulation. He was found guilty of misconduct and suspended for two years. It’s hard to imagine a higher scientific sin than faking and manipulating data. If you can’t lose your job for that, the message to young scientists is inevitably that fraud isn’t really that serious. What it means to take fraud seriouslyGino’s loss of tenure, which is one of a few recent cases where misconduct has had major career consequences, might be a sign that the tides are changing. In 2023, around when the Gino scandal broke, Stanford’s then-president Marc Tessier-Lavigne stepped down after 12 papers he authored were found to contain manipulated data. A few weeks ago, MIT announced a data falsification scandal with a terse announcement that the university no longer had confidence in a widely distributed paper “by a former second-year PhD student.” It’s reasonable to assume the student was expelled from the program.I hope that these high-profile cases are a sign we are moving in the right direction on scientific fraud because its persistence is enormously damaging to science. Other researchers waste time and energy following false lines of research substantiated by fake data; in medicine, falsification can outright kill people. But even more than that, research fraud damages the reputation of science at exactly the moment when it is most under attack.We should tighten standards to make fraud much harder to commit in the first place, and when it is identified, the consequences should be immediate and serious. Let’s hope Harvard sets a trend.A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. 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On TikTok, soup is getting a rebrand. It’s now water-based cooking to you. “Pov you started water-based cooking and now your skin is clear, your stomach is thriving and you recover from illness overnight,” one TikTok post reads. Others claim the method is making them age backward. But a quick scroll through the comments has many pointing out the obvious: “Bro invented soup,” one commenter wrote. Another added, “As an Asian, what’s new?” The post made its way to Bluesky, where one user joked: “I need to start jumping on these phony trends. Get a water-based cookbook self-published by tomorrow. Hit TikTok running.” They added, “Send me soup recipes. Let’s all get rich”—to which one user replied, “I have one that involves chicken and noodles,” or as they called it: “chicken noodle water-based meal.” While this cooking method predates TikTok by at least 50,000 years, it has been recently popularized on TikTok and Instagram by scientist and registered dietitian Michelle Davenport, PhD, whose work focuses on slowing the deleterious effects of aging. She argues that cooking mostly with broth and water can help slow aging by reducing the amount of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), the compounds that attach to our DNA and cells. These are formed when food is cooked at high, dry temperatures and contribute to various health issues. On Davenport’s Instagram page, which has over 250,000 followers, you’ll find recipes for dishes like water eggs and breakfast soup. (“Dr. Michelle Davenport the woman you are,” the caption of the original TikTok post reads.) “Water-based cooking—like steaming or simmering—is a simple way to get more out of your food,” dietitian Kouka Webb, MS, RD, CDN, told Fast Company. “It helps preserve delicate nutrients that are often lost with high-heat methods, and it cuts back on the need for heavy oils. As a dietitian, I’ve seen how small shifts like this can support things like blood sugar balance, better digestion, and even lower inflammation over time.” But while the health benefits of water-based cooking are plenty, clearly not everyone is here for the TikTokification of recipes and cooking methods that have existed for generations. And on TikTok, food trends come and go quicker than you can say, “lemony miso gochujang brown butter gnocchi.” Last year, there was the “dense bean salad” trend—which is exactly what it sounds like: a bean salad. There was also the “tadpole water” trend (just add chia seeds to a glass of water). And, of course, who could forget the classic “girl dinner”? May I interest you in a delicious bowl of alphabet soup?

The US is less than 250 years old, but some of its most important archaeological sites are older than the Viking seafarers, the Roman Empire, and the pyramids.Many help tell the story of how the first humans came to North America. It's still a mystery exactly how and when people arrived, though it's widely believed they crossed the Bering Strait at least 15,000 years ago."As we get further back in time, as we get populations that are smaller and smaller, finding these places and interpreting them becomes increasingly difficult," archaeologist Kenneth Feder told Business Insider. He's the author of "Ancient America: Fifty Archaeological Sites to See for Yourself."Some sites, like White Sands and Cooper's Ferry, have skeptics about the accuracy of their age. Still, they contribute to our understanding of some of the earliest Americans.Others are more recent and highlight the different cultures that were spreading around the country, with complex buildings and illuminating pictographs.Many of these places are open to the public, so you can see the US' ancient history for yourself. White Sands National Park, New Mexico Footprints at White Sands. National Park Service Prehistoric camels, mammoths, and giant sloths once roamed what's now New Mexico, when it was greener and damper.As the climate warmed around 11,000 years ago, the water of Lake Otero receded, revealing footprints of humans who lived among these extinct animals. Some even seemed to be following a sloth, offering a rare glimpse into ancient hunters' behavior.Recent research puts some of these fossilized footprints at between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. If the dates are accurate, the prints would predate other archaeological sites in the US, raising intriguing questions about who these people were and how they arrived in the Southwestern state."Where are they coming from?" Feder said. "They're not parachute dropping in New Mexico. They must have come from somewhere else, which means there are even older sites." Archaeologists simply haven't found them yet.While visitors can soak in the sight of the eponymous white sands, the footprints are currently off-limits. Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania The archeological dig at the Meadowcroft National Historic Site in 2013. AP Photo/Keith Srakocic In the 1970s, archaeologist James M. Adovasio sparked a controversy when he and his colleagues suggested stone tools and other artifacts found in southwestern Pennsylvania belonged to humans who had lived in the area 16,000 years ago.For decades, scientists had been finding evidence of human habitation that all seemed to be around 12,000 to 13,000 years old, belonging to the Clovis culture. They were long believed to have been the first to cross the Bering land bridge. Humans who arrived in North America before this group are often referred to as pre-Clovis.At the time, skeptics said that the radiocarbon dating evidence was flawed, AP News reported in 2016. In the years since, more sites that appear older than 13,000 years have been found across the US.Feder said Adovasio meticulously excavated the site, but there's still no clear consensus about the age of the oldest artifacts. Still, he said, "that site is absolutely a major, important, significant site." It helped archaeologists realize humans started arriving on the continent before the Clovis people.The dig itself is on display at the Heinz History Center, allowing visitors to see an excavation in person. Cooper's Ferry, Idaho Excavators at Cooper's Ferry in 2013. Loren Davis/Oregon State University One site that's added intriguing evidence to the pre-Clovis theory is located in western Idaho. Humans living there left stone tools and charred bones in a hearth between 14,000 and 16,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon dating. Other researchers put the dates closer to 11,500 years ago.These stemmed tools are different from the Clovis fluted projectiles, researchers wrote in a 2019 Science Advances paper.Some scientists think humans may have been traveling along the West Coast at this time, when huge ice sheets covered Alaska and Canada. "People using boats, using canoes could hop along that coast and end up in North America long before those glacial ice bodies decoupled," Feder said.Cooper's Ferry is located on traditional Nez Perce land, which the Bureau of Land Management holds in public ownership. Page-Ladson, Florida Divers search in the sediment at the Page-Ladson site. Texas A&M University via Getty Images In the early 1980s, former Navy SEAL Buddy Page alerted paleontologists and archaeologists to a sinkhole nicknamed "Booger Hole" in the Aucilla River. There, the researchers found mammoth and mastodon bones and stone tools.They also discovered a mastodon tusk with what appeared to be cut marks believed to be made by a tool. Other scientists have returned to the site more recently, bringing up more bones and tools. They used radiocarbon dating, which established the site as pre-Clovis."The stone tools and faunal remains at the site show that at 14,550 years ago, people knew how to find game, fresh water and material for making tools," Michael Waters, one of the researchers, said in a statement in 2016. "These people were well-adapted to this environment."Since the site is both underwater and on private property, it's not open to visitors. Paisley Caves, Oregon One of the Paisley Caves near Paisley, Oregon. AP Photo/Jeff Barnard Scientists study coprolites, or fossilized poop, to learn about the diets of long-dead animals. Mineralized waste can also reveal much more. In 2020, archaeologist Dennis Jenkins published a paper on coprolites from an Oregon cave that were over 14,000 years old.Radiocarbon dating gave the trace fossils' age, and genetic tests suggested they belonged to humans. Further analysis of coprolites added additional evidence that a group had been on the West Coast 1,000 years before the Clovis people arrived.Located in southcentral Oregon, the caves appear to be a piece of the puzzle indicating how humans spread throughout the continent thousands of years ago.The federal Bureau of Land Management owns the land where the caves are found, and they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Swan Point, Alaska Excavators working at the Swan Point site in June 2016. Charles Holmes/University of Alaska, Fairbanks Whenever people arrived in the Americas, they crossed from Siberia into Beringia, an area of land and sea between Russia and Canada and Alaska. Now it's covered in water, but there was once a land bridge connecting them.The site in Alaska with the oldest evidence of human habitation is Swan Point, in the state's eastern-central region. In addition to tools and hearths dating back 14,000 years, mammoth bones have been found there.Researchers think this area was a kind of seasonal hunting camp. As mammoths returned during certain times of the years, humans would track them and kill them, providing plentiful food for the hunter-gatherers.While Alaska may have a wealth of archaeological evidence of early Americans, it's also a difficult place to excavate. "Your digging season is very narrow, and it's expensive," Feder said. Some require a helicopter to reach, for example. Blackwater Draw, New Mexico A palaeontologist excavating a mammoth in Portales, New Mexico, circa 1960. Dick Kent/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images In 1929, 19-year-old James Ridgley Whiteman found mammoth bones along with fluted projectile points near Clovis, New Mexico. The Clovis people who made these tools were named for this site.Researchers studying the site began to realize the artifacts found at the site belonged to different cultures. Clovis points are typically larger than Folsom flutes, which were first found at another archaeological site in New Mexico.For decades after Whiteman's discovery, experts thought the Clovis people were the first to cross the Bering land bridge from Asia around 13,000 years ago. Estimates for humans' arrival is now thought to be at least 15,000 years ago.Eastern New Mexico University's Blackwater Draw Museum grants access to the archaeological site between April and October. Upper Sun River, Alaska Excavations at the Upward Sun River, Alaska. Ben Potter/University of Alaska, Fairbanks One reason the dates of human occupation in North America is so contentious is that very few ancient remains have been found. Among the oldest is a child from Upward Sun River, or Xaasaa Na', in Central Alaska.Archaeologists found the bones of the child in 2013. Local indigenous groups refer to her as Xach'itee'aanenh t'eede gay, or Sunrise Girl-Child. Genetic testing revealed the 11,300-year-old infant belonged to a previously unknown Native American population, the Ancient Beringians.Based on the child's genetic information, researchers learned that she was related to modern Native Americans but not directly. Their common ancestors started becoming genetically isolated 25,000 years ago before dividing into two groups after a few thousand years: the Ancient Berignians and the ancestors of modern Native Americans.According to this research, it's possible humans reached Alaska roughly 20,000 years ago. Poverty Point National Monument, Louisiana Poverty Point in Louisiana. National Park Service Stretching over 80 feet long and 5 feet tall, the rows of curved mounds of Poverty Point are a marvel when viewed from above. Over 3,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers constructed them out of tons of soil. Scientists aren't sure exactly why people built them, whether they were ceremonial or a display of status.The artifacts various groups left behind indicate the site was used off and on for hundreds of years and was a meeting point for trading. People brought tools and rocks from as far as 800 miles away. Remains of deer, fish, frogs, alligators, nuts, grapes, and other food have given archaeologists insights into their diets and daily lives.You can see the World Heritage Site for yourself year-round. Horseshoe Canyon, Utah The Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon. Neal Herbert/National Park Service Though remote, the multicolored walls of Horseshoe Canyon have long attracted visitors. Some of its artifacts date back to between 9,000 and 7,000 BCE, but its pictographs are more recent. Some tests date certain sections to around 2,000 to 900 years ago.The four galleries contain life-sized images of anthropomorphic figures and animals in what's known as the Barrier Canyon style. Much of this art is found in Utah, produced by the Desert Archaic culture.The pictographs may have spiritual and practical significance but also help capture a time when groups were meeting and mixing, according to the Natural History Museum of Utah.It's a difficult trek to get to the pictographs (and the NPS warns it can be dangerously hot in summer) but are amazing to view in person, Feder said. "These are creative geniuses," he said of the artists. Canyon de Chelly, Arizona The Antelope House at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Michael Denson/National Park Service Situated in the Navajo Nation, Canyon de Chelly has gorgeous desert views and thousands of years of human history. Centuries ago, Ancestral Pueblo and Hopi groups planted crops, created pictographs, and built cliff dwellings.Over 900 years ago, Puebloan people constructed the White House, named for the hue of its clay. Its upper floors sit on a sandstone cliff, with a sheer drop outside the windows.Navajo people, also known as Diné, still live in Canyon de Chelly. Diné journalist Alastair Lee Bitsóí recently wrote about visiting some of the sacred and taboo areas. They include Tsé Yaa Kin, where archaeologists found human remains.In the 1860s, the US government forced 8,000 Navajo to relocate to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The deadly journey is known as the "Long Walk." Eventually, they were able to return, though their homes and crops were destroyed.A hike to the White House is the only one open to the public without a Navajo guide or NPS ranger. Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado Visitors line up at Mesa Verde National Park. Shutterstock/Don Mammoser In the early 1900s, two women formed the Colorado Cliff Dwelling Association, hoping to preserve the ruins in the state's southwestern region. A few years later, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill designating Mesa Verde as the first national park meant to "preserve the works of man."Mesa Verde National Park holds hundreds of dwellings, including the sprawling Cliff Palace. It has over 100 rooms and nearly two dozen kivas, or ceremonial spaces.Using dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, archaeologists learned when Ancestral Pueblo people built some of these structures and that they migrated out of the area by the 1300s.Feder said it's his favorite archaeological site he's visited. "You don't want to leave because you can't believe it's real," he said.Tourists can view many of these dwellings from the road, but some are also accessible after a bit of a hike. Some require extra tickets and can get crowded, Feder said. Cahokia, Illinois A mound at Cahokia in Illinois. Matt Gush/Shutterstock Cahokia has been called one of North America's first cities. Not far from present-day St. Louis, an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people lived in dense settlements roughly 1,000 years ago. Important buildings sat atop large mounds, which the Mississippians built by hand, The Guardian reported.At the time, it was thriving with hunters, farmers, and artisans. "It's an agricultural civilization," Feder said. "It's a place where raw materials from a thousand miles away are coming in." Researchers have also found mass graves, potentially from human sacrifices.The inhabitants built circles of posts, which one archaeologist later referred to as "woodhenges," as a kind of calendar. At the solstices, the sun would rise or set aligned with different mounds.After a few hundred years, Cahokia's population declined and disappeared by 1350. Its largest mound remains, and some aspects have been reconstructed.While Cahokia is typically open to the public, parts are currently closed for renovations. Montezuma Castle, Arizona Montezuma Castle, a cliff dwelling, in Arizona. MyLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Perched on a limestone cliff in Camp Verde, Arizona, this site is an apartment, not a castle, and is unrelated to the Aztec ruler Montezuma.The Sinagua people engineered the five-story, 20-room building around 1100. It curves to follow the natural line of the cliff, which would have been more difficult than simply making a straight building, Feder said."These people were architects," he said. "They had a sense of beauty."The inhabitants were also practical, figuring out irrigation systems and construction techniques, like thick walls and shady spots, to help them survive the hot, dry climate.Feder said the dwelling is fairly accessible, with a short walk along a trail to view it, though visitors can't go inside the building itself.

It seems like a triumph for a cryptocurrency industry that has long sought mainstream acceptance: Top investors in one of President Donald Trump’s crypto projects invited to dine with him at his luxury golf club in Northern Virginia on the heels of the Senate advancing key pro-crypto legislation and while bitcoin prices soar.But Thursday night’s dinner for the 220 biggest investors in the $TRUMP meme coin has raised uncomfortable questions about potentially shadowy buyers using the anonymity of the internet to buy access to the president.While Democrats charge that Trump is using the power of the presidency to boost profits for his family business, even some pro-Trump crypto enthusiasts worry that the president’s push into meme coins isn’t helping their efforts to establish the credibility, stability and legitimacy they had thought his administration would bring to their businesses.After feeling unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, the industry has quickly become a dominant political force, donating huge sums to help Trump and crypto-friendly lawmakers. But that’s also served to tether the industry—sometimes uncomfortably—to a president who is using crypto as a platform to make money for his brand in unprecedented ways.“It’s distasteful and an unnecessary distraction,” said Nic Carter, a Trump supporter and partner at the crypto investment firm Castle Island Ventures, who said the president is “hugging us to death” with his private crypto businesses. “We would much rather that he passes common-sense legislation and leave it at that.” Concerns about Trump’s crypto ventures predate Inauguration Day At the swanky Crypto Ball held down the street from the White House three days before he took office on Jan. 20, Trump announced the creation of the meme coin $TRUMP as a way for his supporters to “have fun.”Meme coins are the crypto sector’s black sheep. They are often created as a joke, with no real utility and prone to extremely wild price swings that tend to enrich a small group of insiders at the expense of less sophisticated investors.The president’s meme coin is different, however, and has a clear utility: access to Trump. The top 25 investors of $TRUMP are set to attend a private reception with the president Thursday, with the top four getting $100,000 crypto-themed and Trump-branded watches.Trump’s meme coin saw an initial spike in value, followed by a steep drop. The price saw a significant increase after the dinner contest was announced. Its creators, which include an entity controlled by the Trump Organization, have made hundreds of millions of dollars by collecting fees on trades.First lady Melania Trump has her own meme coin, and Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr.—who are running the Trump Organization while their father is president—announced they are partnering with an existing firm to create a crypto mining company.The Trump family also holds about a 60% stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project that provides yet another avenue where investors are buying in and enriching the president’s relatives. World Liberty has launched its own stablecoin, USD1. The project got a boost recently when World Liberty announced an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates would be using $2 billion worth of USD1 to purchase a stake in Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.A rapidly growing form of crypto, stablecoins have values pegged to fixed assets like the U.S. dollar. Issuers profit by collecting the interest on the Treasury bonds and other assets used to back the stablecoins.Crypto is now one of the most significant sources of the Trump family’s wealth.“He’s becoming a salesman-in-chief,” said James Thurber, an American University professor emeritus who has long studied and taught about corruption around the world. “It allows for foreign influence easily. It allows for crypto lobbying going on at this dinner, and other ways. It allows for huge conflicts of interest.” How Trump changed his mind on crypto “I’m a big crypto fan,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One during last week’s trip to the Middle East. “I’ve been that from the beginning, right from the campaign.”That wasn’t always true. During his first term, Trump posted in July 2019 that cryptocurrencies were “not money” and had value that was “highly volatile and based on thin air.”“Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade,” he added then. Even after leaving office in 2021, Trump told Fox Business Network that bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, “seems like a scam.”Trump began to shift during a crypto event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in May 2024, receiving assurances that industry backers would spend lavishly to get him reelected. Another major milestone came last June, when Trump attended a high-dollar fundraiser at the San Francisco home of David Sacks.He further warmed to the industry weeks later, when Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with bitcoin miners. The following month, he addressed a major crypto conference in Nashville, promising to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the planet.”Those close to Trump, including his sons and billionaire Elon Musk, helped further push his embrace of the industry. Sacks is now the Trump administration’s crypto czar, and many Cabinet members—including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—have long been enthusiastic crypto boosters.“I don’t have faith in the dollar,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a 2023 interview. “I’m bullish on bitcoin.” Trump + crypto: A political marriage of convenience Many top crypto backers were naturally wary of traditional politics, but gravitated toward Trump last year. They bristled at Democratic President Joe Biden ‘s Securities and Exchange Commission aggressively bringing civil suits against several major crypto companies.Since Trump took office, many such cases have been dropped or paused, including one alleging that Justin Sun, a China-born crypto entrepreneur, and his company engaged in market manipulation and paid celebrities for undisclosed promotions.Sun, who once paid $6.2 million for a piece of art involving a banana taped to a wall, and then ate the banana, helped the Trumps start World Liberty Financial with an early $75 million investment.Sun has disclosed on social media that he is the biggest holder of $TRUMP meme coins and is attending Thursday’s dinner.“I’m excited to connect with everyone, talk crypto, and discuss the future of our industry,” Sun said. Are Trump family profits hurting other crypto investors? Trump has signed executive orders promoting the industry, including calls to create a government bitcoin reserve. In March, Trump convened the first cryptocurrency summit at the White House.But some of the industry’s biggest names, often brash and outspoken, have kept mostly mum on Trump’s meme coins and other projects.“It’s not my place to really comment on President Trump’s activity,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said at a recent public event.Meanwhile, a top legislative priority for crypto-backers, a bill clarifying how digital assets are to be regulated, has advanced in the Senate. But some Democrats have tried to stall other pro-crypto legislation over the president’s personal dealings.“Never in American history has a sitting president so blatantly violated the ethics laws,” Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts said during a contentious House hearing earlier this month.The White House referred questions about dinner attendees to the Trump Organization, which didn’t provide a list of who is coming.“The President is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement.In addition to Sun, however, some attendees have publicized qualifying for the dinner. Another will be Sheldon Xia, the founder of a cryptocurrency exchange called BitMart that’s registered in the Cayman Islands.“Proud to support President Trump’s pro-crypto vision.” Xia wrote in both English and Chinese on social media.Thurber, the expert on government and ethics, said Trump’s “personal attention to crypto at this dinner helps the crypto industry.”“But also it’s risky,” he said, “because they could all lose a lot of money.” —Will Weissert and Alan Suderman, Associated Press

Credit: Image: Mashable composite; Getty Images / izusek When I was a child, computers were a fixture in my home, from the giant Atari on which I learned my ABCs, to the Commodore Amiga that my dad used for his videography business, to the PC towers that facilitated my first forays onto the internet. But tech was still a niche hobby back then. Even in college in the late 1990s and early 2000s, many of my friends got by just fine without computers. For people in college now—namely, my students—things are decidedly different. Gadgets are everywhere, and are increasingly designed to insert themselves into every aspect of our consciousness, colonizing every spare moment of our time and attention. Gen Z and Gen Alpha have never known a world without mini-computers within arm’s reach. They learned to relate to the world through gadgets, to turn to them for everything from entertainment to education to escape. And when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted their lives, it took away even more of their access to the offline world, making tech feel paradoxically both like a lifeline and a prison.It's easy to call young people “screenagers” and blame them for being glued to their devices. But I know better. My students feel conflicted; they know they’re hooked, and they worry for their younger siblings who seem even more in the grip of all-consuming tech. You May Also Like Several years ago, it occurred to me that I could do something to help. I began requiring students to put away all devices, including laptops and tablets, in my classes. It was an experiment both for them and for me: What happens when we remove the barrier tech has put between us and other people, between us and our own thoughts? What does that teach us about how to handle the explosion of hype around generative AI?How I went from gadget geek to tech skepticMy own journey with tech predates our always-on devices, way back to that old Atari. I had always been a little obsessed with gadgets, and when I bought my first iPhone in 2008, it was almost a religious experience.My wife and I were living in New York City, and my entire family drove down from Boston to witness my initiation. Like pilgrims, we journeyed together to the flagship Apple Store on Fifth Avenue. We all stood in reverence at the foot of the spiral staircase, beneath the illuminated glass cube, as I was welcomed into the cult of Apple.From then on, almost without fail, I’ve upgraded my phone annually, a September ritual as cyclical for me as going back to school. And it wasn't just the iPhone; I had the first or second iteration of the iPad, AirPods, and the Apple Watch, too. Back then it felt like Steve Jobs might announce something that would reshape the world every time he stepped on stage.But in the 2010s, something started to change. Underwhelming new tech releases grew increasingly common, and the constant hype around them began to feel empty and manipulative. As both a college professor and a parent, I began to see the benefits of our always-connected devices becoming overshadowed by the negatives. The young people in my life are obsessed with their gadgets, legitimately afraid they’ll be disconnected from society if they aren’t extremely online, and they hate it. Many worry as much as their parents do about their phone use.  Mashable Trend Report: Coming Soon! Decode what’s viral, what’s next, and what it all means. Sign up for Mashable’s weekly Trend Report newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! So, even before the hype that greeted the AI revolution of the last few years, I’d begun to look a lot more skeptically at claims that tech was changing our lives, and that more apps, devices, or wearables were automatically better.What happens when we turn off the tech?One day, near the end of the spring semester in 2019, I looked out at my class to see rows of students focused intently… on their laptop screens. They presumably had their devices out to take notes, but I wasn’t lecturing. I was trying to lead them into a discussion. This moment for me is trapped in time: It was the moment I decided I had to take drastic measures to recapture my students’ attention.The following fall, my syllabus included a new section, which has remained in place since. I call it my in-class technology use policy and it begins, “This class is a laptop/mobile phone/tablet/headphone/AirPods-free zone. Bring a notebook and pens to each class.” I explain my reasoning and, like a good academic, cite my sources. I provide exceptions for emergencies, explaining that if a student has to take an urgent call, they can quietly slip out of the classroom to do so without judgment or penalty. That first fall, I was nervous. Would they go along with it? Would my classes, previously well-loved, suddenly struggle to fill? To my great relief there was no significant pushback, no mass exodus. Going tech-free is still a shock, to be sure.I begin most classes by distributing an article to read—often a recently-published opinion piece—printed on paper. I encourage students to read it with pen in hand, marking it up as they go. As they read quietly, I look around the room at a group of so-called screenagers concentrating, without a device in sight. When they finish reading, they open their notebooks and write a response, by hand. In those first few weeks, I often see students massaging their palms, sore from lack of practice. After they write for five minutes or so, I open a discussion on what we just read and, distraction-free, the students engage. In those discussions, I love that my students are actually paying attention to one another when they speak. Not everyone of course; some look sleepy and bored, but even that is better than distracted. I call this productive boredom: Without a phone or laptop to divert them, there is little left to do other than sit with their thoughts. What a gift. I ask them, “When was the last time your only task was to think?”Lessons for the AI invasionThis experiment with a device-free classroom has also shaped my response to the AI revolution (I sometimes think of it more as an AI invasion)I’m not a luddite: I continue to be as curious about new technologies as ever. As soon as it came out, I peppered ChatGPT with questions to see if it could imitate my writing style. (It kind of can!) And I know there’s no going back; whether we like it or not, AI will be a significant presence in our lives, and I see it as my job to teach students how to use it responsibly. In my long journey with tech, I’ve learned that we can incorporate devices into our work without surrendering to marketing hype and manufactured FOMO. As a writing professor, my job is to convince students that, as William Zinsser wrote, “writing is thinking on paper.” The process of writing — not the final product — is what sharpens our logical reasoning and self-expression. For students who don’t use AI in smart ways, the result is essays that are all product, no process — and no process means no real learning. In my classes, students glimpse a time before they were born, when fewer distractions inhibited learning, when sitting with one’s thoughts—and, yes, being bored—could be productive and creative. I’m reminded, too, of why I love teaching, for the magic that happens when 20 people sit together in a room attending to one another and talking about ideas. When we leave the classroom, we’ll go back to our devices, and even to our new AI tools. But hopefully the time away from them reminds us we have the power to keep tech in its place—and gives us a taste of what only human minds can do. Jonathan D. Fitzgerald Mashable Perspectives Contributor Jonathan D. Fitzgerald ("Fitz") is a Mashable Perspectives contributor, as well as an associate professor of English and the coordinator of the professional writing concentration at Salem State University. He is the author of How the News Feels: The Empathic Power of Literary Journalists. His articles and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Fitz holds a Ph.D. in English from Northeastern University. For more information, visit https://jonathandfitzgerald.com.

Rome wasn’t built in a day (Ubisoft) The fan favourite city-building series takes a welcome step back in time to second century Rome, as Anno 117 puts you in control of ancient Britain. Ubisoft’s Anno series, of historical city building sims, has quietly become one of the games industry’s hardiest perennials. Since 1998, it has mostly occupied a time period between the 15th and 19th centuries, albeit with two excursions into the future. Now, with Anno 117 (the eighth mainline instalment of the franchise), it is poised to take a large step back in time, to when the Roman Empire was in full swing and enjoying a period of extended peace. This is important because, as Anno players will be aware, the series is all about building, not fighting. We were given the chance to spend roughly three hours playing the new game, via Ubisoft’s streaming service on PC. Coming from the frenetic action of Doom: The Dark Ages, it felt like an oasis of tranquillity, with its considered gameplay requiring lots of thought and plenty of planning, along with a certain amount of waiting around for essential materials to be manufactured. As with all previous Anno games, it is very much a game for builders rather than destroyers. Given the technological sophistication of the Roman Empire – particularly by the time it had reached the second century AD – it’s surprising that the Anno franchise hadn’t previously explored the time period, but it’s obvious from the start that it’s a good fit. In the full game you’ll be given a choice between two areas of the Roman Empire, in which to establish your colony: Latium (an uncharted Mediterranean area which looks to be off the coast of Italy) or Albion – that is, what is now known as Britain. Much as we would have liked to have amazed the backwards natives by building a shiny Roman city on British shores, the constraints of the preview dictated that we would instead build in Latium. As such, our ship pitched up at a pristine, procedurally generated Mediterranean island, complete with a beach which could be developed into a port, flat land for farming, plenty of forests, a prominent river, and some mountains which could be mined. The first task – since we were taking on the position of governor of the new city – was to build a governor’s villa to accompany the trading post that had already been built on the beach. Once that was done, the from-scratch city-building started in earnest. Raw materials are obviously key, so a woodcutting operation was needed in the nearest forest, which has to be connected up to the trading post by road. As ever in a city-building game, close control over the network of roads is essential. Anno 117’s road-building system is exemplary – intelligent enough to let you curve roads to your satisfaction and snap them easily to form the connections they need to make. With a woodcutter and a sawmill constructed, and wood therefore in plentiful supply, we could then start building a number of homes for the workers who form the lifeblood of the city. Build those homes and you’re able to establish a workforce. In its early stages, Anno 117’s tutorial makes its objectives clear: you need to build 10 houses to establish that workforce. Unfulfilled criteria are clearly marked with little warning flags; Anno 117, mercifully, isn’t one of those strategy games which seems happy to leave you confused. After completing the tutorial, we were never at a loss as to what to do and the tutorial itself felt logical rather than manufactured. With our first residential area constructed and hooked up via a road network, we could start turning our attention to the needs of our burgeoning populace. Food, obviously, was required, so we built a fishery and established a wheat farm, along with a bakery and a porridge kitchen. We then began to have little interactions, as governor, with our inhabitants. We unlocked the ability to build a market and a tavern in the residential quarter, which bring helpful area effects. Pleasingly, what was now transforming from a village into a town began to exhibit some bustle, with carts of timber moving around and residents going about their daily work and heading to the tavern afterwards. Ancient Albion on the fringes of the Empire (Ubisoft) Our next task was to attract some more sophisticated, educated residents, by fulfilling a number of criteria in order to upgrade the basic housing. This brought considerations like fashion into the mix, by establishing a hemp farm and setting up a cloth-spinner. More sophisticated building materials such as tiles were also required, so we built a charcoal kiln and, on one of the river slots highlighted in the game’s geography, cleared a clay heap As that extended the city limits somewhat, it was necessary to build another warehouse. And we had to keep an eye on the mix of our population, between the basic Liberti and the more sophisticated Plebeians, by building more houses and upgrading some of them. Now that our town was really starting to take shape a level of exploration and interaction with other nearby enclaves came into play, with governors of nearby provinces appearing – giving us opportunities to indulge in diplomacy. Other residents then started asking to be ferried around the world map in the starting ship, which had previously remained moored as we established the basic structure of our town. More Trending During the tutorial period, we had concentrated on establishing a basic settlement rather than engaging in trade, so had been forced at one point to accept a loan from our superior in Rome. As the game progresses, trading becomes an increasingly important mechanism in the push to build a more sophisticated city. At this point you are given the ability to not only establish trade routes but also set religious criteria, by picking a preferred god to worship from the Roman pantheon. Even three hours in, we were quite happy with the progress we had made towards imposing a decent level of civilisation upon previously uninhabited territory. Those initial three hours with Anno 117: Pax Romana proved very satisfying and enjoyable. Although the series predates the phrase cosy game, it’s definitely that, while also being reminiscent of even older franchises like The Settlers (now also owned by Ubisoft). For a city builder, Anno 117 fells pretty exemplary in terms of its interface, which is clear and logical. It looks great and, with the local interactions and the trade route engine, offers more gameplay variety than most similar games. At the moment, it hasn’t been given a specific release date, but Ubisoft has said that it will come out this year on both consoles and PC. Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PCPublisher: UbisoftDeveloper: Ubisoft MainzRelease Date: 2025 Ocean trading is an important gameplay element (Ubisoft) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. 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Paris’s 16th arrondissement is home to myriad landmarks with ties to fashion, art, and design—Musée Marmottan Monet, Frank Gehry’s Fondation Louis Vuitton, and Maison de Balzac, to name but a few. A 17th-century mansion, the former headquarters of fashion label Yves Saint Laurent, is also there. The fashion house was based  in the historic neighborhood between 1974 and 2002. In 2017, Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris opened there, together with its Moroccan counterpart, Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech. Both venues host retrospectives and temporary exhibits. Now, Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris is being renovated by Selldorf Architects and Studio La Boétie, a Paris office. The project is a collaboration with Fondation Pierre Bergé—the philanthropic wing of Pierre Bergé, the French industrialist who cofounded Yves Saint Laurent. “The architectural project will double the public exhibition space, open unprecedented access to iconic areas such as Pierre Bergé’s office and enhance the visitor experience for their growing audience,” Selldorf Architects shared. The museum is home to the couturier’s former studio. (Arroser/Wikimedia Commons /CC0 1.0) Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris is sited at 5 Avenue Marceau and contains more than 2,000 works, and the couturier’s former studio. It’s a Musée de France, or one of the country’s main state museums. The venue predates the French Revolution, like much of the 16th arrondissement’s urban fabric. Thomas Gobert, King Louis XIV’s primary builder–planner, completed the building at 5 Avenue Marceau in 1685. Saint Laurent creative director Hedi Slimane oversaw its renovation prior to the museum’s 2017 opening. It’s since hosted Saint Laurent Couture fashion campaigns. The forthcoming renovation will deliver a new Documentation and Research Center that will preserve Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s archives. The news comes not long after other major milestone museum projects for Selldorf Architects, including the Frick’s reopening in New York, and the Sainsbury Wing’s renovation in London. “While preserving the existing architecture of the building, formerly the home of the couture house, the project aims to double the surface area accessible to the public while allowing access to iconic spaces—such as Pierre Bergé’s office—and improving the experience of an increasing visitor base,” Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris said in a statement. “The project will also optimize the conservation conditions of the museum’s collection, thanks to the permanent relocation of part of its reserves to an off-site location.” Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris will temporarily close for the renovation starting this month. It’s slated to reopen in fall 2027.