monkey abuse The “online monkey torture video” arrests just keep coming Authorities continue the slow crackdown. Nate Anderson – Jun 14, 2025 7:00 am | 34 Credit: Getty Images Credit: Getty Images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Today's monkey torture videos are the products of a digitally connected world. People who enjoy watching baby animals probed, snipped, and mutilated in horrible ways often have difficulty finding local collaborators, but online communities like "million tears"—now thankfully shuttered—can help them forge connections. Once they do meet other like-minded souls, communication takes place through chat apps like Telegram and Signal, often using encryption. Money is pooled through various phone apps, then sent to videographers in countries where wages are low and monkeys are plentiful. (The cases I have seen usually involve Indonesia; read my feature from last year to learn more about how these groups work.) There, monkeys are tortured by a local subcontractor—sometimes a child—working to Western specs. Smartphone video of the torture is sent back to the commissioning sadists, who share it with more viewers using the same online communities in which they met. The unfortunate pattern was again on display this week in an indictment the US government unsealed against several more Americans said to have commissioned these videos. The accused used online handles like "Bitchy" and "DemonSwordSoulCrusher," and they hail from all over: Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. They relied on an Indonesian videographer to create the content, which was surprisingly affordable—it cost a mere $40 to commission video of a "burning hot screwdriver" being shoved into a baby monkey's orifice. After the money was transferred, the requested video was shot and shared through a "phone-based messaging program," but the Americans were deeply disappointed in its quality. Instead of full-on impalement, the videographer had heated a screwdriver on a burner and merely touched it against the monkey a few times. "So lame," one of the Americans allegedly complained to another. "Live and learn," was the response. So the group tried again. "Million tears" had been booted by its host, but the group reconstituted on another platform and renamed itself "the trail of trillion tears." They reached out to another Indonesian videographer and asked for a more graphic version of the same video. But this version, more sadistic than the last, still didn't satisfy. As one of the Americans allegedly said to another, "honey that's not what you asked for. Thats the village idiot version. But I'm talking with someone about getting a good vo [videographer] to do it." Arrests continue In 2021, someone leaked communications from the "million tears" group to animals rights organizations like Lady Freethinker and Action for Primates, which handed it over to authorities. Still, it took several years to arrest and prosecute the torture group's leaders. In 2024, one of these leaders—Ronald Bedra of Ohio—pled guilty to commissioning the videos and to mailing "a thumb drive containing 64 videos of monkey torture to a co-conspirator in Wisconsin." His mother, in a sentencing letter to the judge, said that her son must "have been undergoing some mental crisis when he decided to create the website." As a boy, he had loved all of the family pets, she said, even providing a funeral for a fish. Bedra was sentenced late last year to 54 months in prison. According to letters from family members, he has also lost his job, his wife, and his kids. In April 2025, two more alleged co-conspirators were indicted and subsequently arrested; their cases were unsealed only this week. Two other co-conspirators from this group still appear to be uncharged. In May 2025, 11 other Americans were indicted for their participation in monkey torture groups, though they appear to come from a different network. This group allegedly "paid a minor in Indonesia to commit the requested acts on camera." As for the Indonesian side of this equation, arrests have been happening there, too. Following complaints from animal rights groups, police in Indonesia have arrested multiple videographers over the last two years. Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate Anderson Deputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 34 Comments

Feno, the “smart electric toothbrush,” promised to take a two-minute toothbrushing routine and bring it down to 30 or even 20 seconds by swabbing each of my teeth at once. The Feno Smartbrush makes brushing faster, but in exchange it requires you to shove an entire mouthpiece in your piehole twice a day just to cut down on a total of three minutes of brushing time. If there is one thing to take away from this review, it’s that even if tech works, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than what we already have. The “toothbrush” has been at the side of my bathroom sink for more than three weeks. It has technically saved me time. I would even go as far as to say it may do the job of a regular toothbrush with less time to get there. Still, given the choice, I would rather reach for my non-motorized, dentist-recommended toothbrush—if only because I know it works. After consulting with the companies and non-affiliated dentists, I’m more bemused that the Feno exists at all. This is a device that costs $300 for the “Founder’s Edition” bundle. The company recently said it would increase the price to $400, blaming tariffs for the rising cost. As the time of this publishing, that new price hasn’t yet materialized. The box comes with three canisters of brand-specific Feno Foam toothpaste. After you run out, you’ll need to spend $30 to get an extra three canisters. Feno also recommends replacing the mouthpiece every three months, costing another $30. Feno Smartbrush It may brush all your teeth for quicker cleans, but its too much of an unknown to recommend. Pros Cons My dentist gave me my last manual toothbrush for free. A tube of toothpaste was $5. Despite the price, the company behind the smart toothbrush has one compelling pitch. If people were honest with themselves, most folks do not do the recommended amount of brushing. I fit into that camp for most of my life, until the point I went to my dentist and found I needed to have multiple caps on my molars, requiring I spend a hefty chunk of change for the privilege of having my teeth ground down to nubs. Since then, I’ve become very sensitive to the state of my pearly whites. I try to do the full two minutes of brushing and floss every day, but the Feno is supposed to help by shortening the brushing time and helpfully counting you down with an on-screen timer. My dentist was skeptical about the device’s claims, especially whether it was offering proper back-and-forth brushing technique. The American Dental Association has a Seal of Acceptance tested by the organization for products that are recommended by dentists. Neither Feno’s brush nor special toothpaste are on that list of products with the ADA seal. All I have to go on is Feno’s own claim that it’s doing what it needs to do to clean my teeth and remove plaque. For cleaning, the device makes use of pressure sensors alongside the mouthpiece’s 18,000 bristles, which Feno claims can hit 250 strokes per tooth in 20 seconds. It’s using a sweeping motion along the teeth, which dentists recommend when brushing, but there’s no published science to say the Feno is particularly better than other, similar devices. Feno told me the company has scientific research pertaining to how effective the device is, but it’s pending scientific review and won’t be available until some unknown date. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo Feno revels in Silicon Valley startups’ worst habits. Every time you turn it on, the smart toothbrush bombards you with a QR code to download an app for all its controls, rather than including those on-device. The Feno toothbrush can incite the same gag reflex you know if you’ve ever played a contact sport requiring a mouth guard. The device is big enough that you have to open wide to fit the whole thing in at once. Brushing with the Feno is not an entirely passive experience, either. Feno’s founder, Dr. Kenny Brown, told me his company recommends moving the brush side to side while the mouthpiece actuates. On its highest settings, the Feno rattled my jaw and made my entire head shake like a marionette piloted by a mad puppeteer. With those speeds, I could feel the mouthpiece rubbing the inner cheek raw. At normal speeds, the Feno was uncomfortable but still usable without any pain. Feno also advises some gums may bleed if you haven’t been doing proper brushing technique for too long, but I didn’t find the bristles were any more abrasive to my gums than a regular toothbrush. The device running on default settings for 30 seconds seems engineered for most mouths. The company claims its device works with regular toothpaste, but when I plastered some gel to the bristles and stuck it in my mouth, it resulted in a sludgy mess at the bottom of the mouthpiece that took far longer to clean than the typical quick rinse. The foam toothpaste doesn’t leave your mouth full of the typical minty taste of fluoride and baking soda you normally associate with the feel of a clean mouth. As a point in favor of the Feno, that minty-fresh taste in your mouth isn’t actually indicative of clean teeth, according to Dr. Edmond Hewlett, a professor at UCLA’s School of Dentistry and a consumer advisor for the American Dental Association. Brown told me the company plans for updated toothpaste that adds a lingering minty taste in the mouth, as apparently I wasn’t the only one who spoke up on that lack of “clean” feeling. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo Knowing my dentist appointments are near for even more fillings, the Feno would not only need to be good, but even better at cleaning my teeth than the typical electric brush. Even if I felt it may be hitting all my teeth, the device didn’t leave me feeling clean, not least because I had no control over it. Even if the Feno full-mouth toothbrush wasn’t uncomfortable, wasn’t expensive, didn’t require an app, and worked well with regular toothpaste, it would still be hard to make any claim it results in better cleaning than your regular $7 toothbrush you buy from any local pharmacist. Using the smart toothbrush, you can’t tell what’s happening to your teeth. You can’t tell if it’s hitting all the nooks and crannies. That’s going to be a concern when everybody’s set of teeth is different. The Feno is supposedly designed so that all its bristles hit all different kinds of teeth at the correct 45-degree angle to the gums, but what really matters is if it adds anything to your brushing routine. “The critical question of any device like this is if it’s better than a toothbrush,” Hewlett told me. “It’s clear that using a toothbrush properly is one of the most effective things a person can do themselves to preserve their teeth.”

The humanoid robots are fighting.   Image: Unitree Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. After decades of being tortured, shoved, kicked, burned, and bludgeoned, robots are finally getting their chance to fight back. Sort of.  This weekend, Chinese robotics maker Unitree says it will livestream the world’s first boxing match between two of its humanoid robots. The event, titled Unitree Iron Fist King: Awakening, will feature a face-off between two of Unitree’s 4.3-foot-tall G1 robots. The robots will reportedly be remotely controlled by human engineers, though they are also expected to demonstrate some autonomous, pre-programmed actions as well. Earlier this week, the two robots previewed some of their moves at an elementary school in Hangzhou, China. Video released by Unitree earlier this month shows the robots, boxing gloves strapped on, “training” with their human coaches. The petite robots throw a few hooks with their arms before being pushed to the ground. One quickly gets back up and, after briefly struggling to face the right direction, spins around and delivers a straight kick, 300-style. Unitree claims its robots use a motion-capture training system that helps them learn from past mistakes and improve over time. The training video also shows the two robots briefly sparring with each other. The clacking sound of steel fills the room as they exchange a flurry of punches. At one point, both simultaneously deliver knee kicks to each other’s groin area, sending the robot in blue gear tumbling to the ground. “The robot is actively learning even more here skills,” the company notes in a caption towards the end of the video.  Humans have a long history of forcing robots to fight  The human tendency to force robots to fight for our amusement isn’t entirely new. The show Battle Bots, which dates back to the late 1990s revolved around engineers creating and designing remote-controlled robots, often armed to the teeth with electric saws and flamethrowers, and forcing them to duke it out. Many, many robots were reduced to scrap metal over the show’s 12 seasons.  Since then, engineers around the world have been experimenting with new ways to teach bipedal, humanoid robots how to throw punches and land kicks without stumbling or falling. Sometimes these machines are remotely controlled by human operators. In other cases, semi-autonomous robots have learned to “mirror” physical movements observed in humans. More advanced autonomous robots, like those being developed by Boston Dynamics and Figure, can move around their environment and perform pre-programmed actions. Neither of those companies, it’s worth noting, have announced any plans to make their robots fight.  China is quickly becoming a center stage for public displays of humanoid robot athletic competition. Last month, more than 20 robotics companies entered their robots into a half-marathon race in Beijing, where they competed against each other and human runners. The results were underwhelming. Media reports from the event claimed many of the machines failed to make it past the starting line. Others veered off course, with one reportedly even crashing into a barrier. The first robot to cross the finish line—a machine designed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center—did so nearly an hour and forty minutes after the first human completed the race. Only six robots finished.

Cases News Noctua Has Competition: HAVN Performance Fans, BF360 Case, & Engineering DataMay 23, 2025Last Updated: 2025-05-23We take an early look at HAVN’s new BF360 case and the company’s new unique fans at Computex 2025The HighlightsFor its new products, HAVN has put a heavy emphasis on thermal performance and acousticsHAVN’s upcoming BF360 case brings in new fans in the 180mm, 140mm, and 120mm categoriesHAVN’s 180mm fan uses a 40mm thick frame and special shaping on the hub for what HAVN claims will improve pressure performance across the hub Visit our Patreon page to contribute a few dollars toward this website's operation (or consider a direct donation or buying something from our GN Store!) Additionally, when you purchase through links to retailers on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission.We visited HAVN’s lab in Taiwan during our Computex 2025 trip. We saw that they were experimenting with a 52mm thick fan for a case it was showing off. The company didn’t end up using that for its case and instead used a new fan design that we’ll discuss in this article.Editor's note: This was originally published on May 17, 2025 as a video. This content has been adapted to written format for this article and is unchanged from the original publication.CreditsHost, WritingSteve BurkeCamera, EditingVitalii MakhnovetsMike GaglioneWriting, Web EditingJimmy ThangDuring our visit, the company showed off its new BF360 case, which follows up their HS 420.  Taking a closer look at the company’s new fan design, you can see some careful shaping to the fan’s hub, which is supposed to help with guiding air flow. We’ll have to see how it performs in our testing, but the idea is taking a thicker fan approach and thickening it even more. The company ended up using a 40mm-thick fan, which should help with pressure.    The company also uses 2x180mm fans mounted to the front of the case.  While we were there, HAVN prepared some CFD simulations for the flow and some simulations for mechanical stresses, on the panel for example, which is pretty interesting.Taking a look at the BF360, the front panel pops out with a tug as it uses magnets to attach itself to the front of the case and has 3 plastic feet that help it snap in at the bottom. The interior of the case’s front panel has a removable fan tray. Its design is somewhat typical but refined from what we’ve seen. HAVN has done a lot of iterations on it. The top panel pulls off and its design is familiar to the HS 420 with its structural design. Once you remove the top panel, it exposes the case’s top fan/radiatory tray, which has rubber bumpers and a slide mechanism that lets you pull it out of the case, providing full access to the top of the chassis and should help with ease of installation. A lot of the steel on the case is either .8mm thick and there’s some that’s 1.0mm, which is thick by today’s standards. Taking a look at the backside of the case, we can see that it has marked cable management pathways, much like the HAVN HS 420 (read our review). This was kind of a nice thing for brand new system builders. Whereas the HS 420 used stickers, the BF360 incorporates it into the molding. Our understanding is that they may refine its design to try and get more light reflection so it’s easier to see. This is a nice attention to detail that adds to the ease of installation. HAVN learned from the HS 420 on the 3 and ½-inch drive support and improved its implementation. There are 2 bays on the back side of the case for those drives and they can be removed. HAVN also changed how it handles the grommets with the case. The string-like material in between is the same but there’s now a little rubber tab that helps to prevent it from popping out by accident once it’s filled with cables. The point here is that HAVN is trying to learn from what they’ve done with the HS 420 and to refine their designs. Taking a look at the BF360’s front panel, it’s supposed to look like stone, but is made of plastic as stone would be extremely heavy. Behind the front panel in the unit we saw are 2x180mm fans. HAVN has shoved a piece of steel at the top, which is supposed to prevent recirculation. This was a huge issue in old BitFenix cases, where due to the company’s design, it would recirculate hot air back into its fans. This design can improve performance in big ways.HAVN tells us that the best setup for the BF360 is to have the top front fan be intake and the top back fan be exhaust, providing you’re using 180mm fans on the top. This matches our testing for other cases in the past. We’ve also found that if you’re populated the top slots, doing intake in front of an air cooler works better because otherwise air gets in the front and would get stolen by an exhaust fan out of the top. The case we looked at had 4x180mm fans (2 in the front and 2 on top) and 1x140mm in the rear.   HAVN tried different types of power supply shroud designs. One had an angled scoop to bring in air from the front bottom 180mm fan. One design had what we’re calling a “toilet-bowl” design, but that ultimately didn’t go through. The next design we looked at featured a more cylindrical/conical design. We asked one of the company’s thermal engineers why that design didn’t work better as it looks like it would project air towards the GPU, which would be a hot spot, and the rep told us that going with a wider design ended up performing thermally better. HAVN provided us some numbers for that, which we’ll take a look at below, but we’ll eventually do our own testing if we can get an early sample. Taking a look at the first mock-up of the case, we can see some rails for the front fans. This design did not progress into the final. It uses a rail system and we’ve seen it in other cases. Corsair has implemented it and has a trademark for it which they call the “InfiniRail.”Looking at the second mock-up, the company moved to vertical rails coupled with horizontal slats. HAVN ended up ditching that design altogether and moved to a tray design, which is sort of moving to a tried-and-true approach. The company incorporated another change where they’ve stamped and folded the tooling. Then we took a look at a design that was closer to final, which has its full corner covered. HAVN showed us 3 different prototypes for the front panel of the case. The first one we looked at featured a wood panel design, which we’ve seen on a lot of cases lately. Wood has certain manufacturing challenges to consider. The white panel you see above is made of aluminum, which is very expensive.The last thing that HAVN is working on that they showed off are fans. There’s been a lot of fan development in the last few years. One of the big marketing phrases you hear a lot these days is LCP (liquid crystal polymer), which is something we talked a lot about at the last Computex. One of the benefits of LCP fans (which HAVN isn’t using here) is that you can get the blades way closer to the interior of the frame. The downside is that it’s incredibly expensive. We have an interview with Noctua’s Jakob Dellinger from 2 years ago that delves into how the company wanted to avoid using LCP for a long time but determined it was necessary to get the performance they wanted. HAVN isn’t using LCP but has designed a fan that has some “teeth” cut out on its blades, which is something we’ve seen before. The company has also shaped its fan hub to be able to scoop air in more. HAVN tells us that having the hub protrude out like a little mountain would offer the best performance but this presents clearance/compatibility issues, especially if you want to put a radiator up against it. Taking a look at the 180mm fan, there’s a 2.0mm distance from the blade to the frame of the fan. We asked if HAVN tried to get it closer and were provided with a lot of data. The company showed us 3 revisions. 1 had a 1.8mm spacing, another had 2.0mm of spacing, and the third had 2.2mm. What they ended up seeing for pressure in mmH2O, is that a 2.0mm spacing ran at 2.19. The 1.8mm fan ran at 2.23, which is an improvement. The CFM (cubic feet per minute) for both was nearly indistinguishable at around 165. The 2.2mm spacing, however, had a big drop off, which is a design they didn’t go with. It had a 2.21 mmH2O pressure, which is more or less within error of the others, but the 159.9 is where that drop off occurs in the CFM. Comparing the 1.8 vs the 2.0mm spacings, they are basically hitting diminishing returns. Seeing this information is nice. We imagine that the benefits here weren’t worth the yields and costs because getting the blades closer to the inner frame could lead to a bad yield during manufacturing or might have the blades expand and hit the frame as it ages with time. This is what happened with a lot of Enermax fans in the past.  Grab a GN15 Large Anti-Static Modmat to celebrate our 15th Anniversary and for a high-quality PC building work surface. The Modmat features useful PC building diagrams and is anti-static conductive. Purchases directly fund our work! (or consider a direct donation or a Patreon contribution!)Now we’re going to go over HAVN’s first-part numbers, but we plan to do our own performance review of the case and fans once they’re available. First-party data should be looked at with some reasonable care. Thermal comparisons should only be made against their own results here, not against ours, as the benches are different. The flat, typical shroud style was comparable to the rectangular type in result, with the rectangular type slightly better. We think this will see a larger impact in our testing, but we'd need the three types to know for sure. The important comparison is against the cylindrical type, where HAVN saw worse results by a measurable amount. Performance worsened by 1-2 degrees on the CPU and about 2 degrees on the GPU. That's a large GPU temperature increase.In their next test slide, HAVN tested various fan configurations with the flat shroud. The results were mostly as expected: CPU performance is hurt drastically by having only a bottom intake fan, to no surprise.More interestingly, the ramp type shroud makes comparisons in "B" with a fan level with the top of it and "A" with a fan sunken to the floor of the ramp. The sunken approach resulted in marginally worse CPU thermals in A as compared to B, with GPU thermals mostly unchanged.This slide shows CFD simulation and flow mapping for ramp angles at 120 and 135 degrees. HAVN has drawn a few highlights around areas of re-circulation or heat accumulation, particularly marked at "1" where the 120-degree ramp angle shows worse areas of heat build-up. HAVN tested this in 5-degree increments from 120 to 140, finding that 135 was a good balance when noise normalized.In the above image, they show the fan spacing again, with a 20mm height increase benefiting performance.HAVN didn't shy away from competitive comparisons. The company says its BF 360 with its final front panel, shown above in light blue, had competitive performance against the H6. They also suggest significant reductions in flow resistance (which is a good thing) versus the Lancool 3, with the HS 420 also making some appearances here.HAVN began studying its slot spacing and porosity of the ventilation slots in the panels next. The company found that a ratio of length divided by depth being ideally about equal to 6 was optimal for minimizing flow resistance, with the only downside being potential structural challenges. These charts show their flow performance with different slot sizes.As shown in this set of images, the point is that HAVN is really mocking up a ton of different styles of panels, from the shrouds to the slot spacing, to try and determine the thermal performance and optimize for it. This is a major progression for them. It’s a lot of work to do all of this, which is cool to see. Of course, we have to test the product to see how it came together, but the CFM performance of type 4, as they called it, was the best, but we're ultimately looking at tiny differences here. Still, all of those small differences across the case will add up in theory.This image was cool: After all of this thermal testing, HAVN next did mechanical stress simulation for torsional forces against the panel, which allowed them to dial-in the thickness and makeup of the plastics.That continued in this image, where the so-called "type 4" gets another highlight.HAVN highlighted "Design C" for having a 0.8mm metal thickness with the chosen hole sizing.By shaping the fan hub itself to guide flow, HAVN claims that it can better maintain pressure across the hub of the fan and along the inner wall of the blades. This is the area of worst performance in every fan, so optimizing here can also help minimize dead zones behind the hub. HAVN says that the molded flow guide in the hub benefited its noise significantly. The company claims its flow rate also improved significantly for the guided hub.The image above is really cool. Referencing whale-fin evolution, HAVN used tooth-like leading edges on the fan to improve its thermal performance. We've seen this plenty of times in the past, but it never seems to stick around and we're not sure why. In this simulation though, HAVN suggests that the air stream is more uniform along the wavy blade design.Using a 30% glass fiber composite, HAVN saw performance with the new design slightly improve in CFM but largely improve in static pressure, going from 2.21 to 2.40 mmH2O.There's a ton more that HAVN did. The P/Q chart above shows the mock-up performance, including the stall region centrally. We'll save all this discussion for the review, though.HAVN had about 41 pages of this technical presentation, which is actually greatly appreciated. A lot of what remains will be covered in our review, so we'll leave that for now.The bearings are also interesting to talk about. These are called FDBs (Fluid Dynamic Bearings), depending on how you want to define that. We looked at one that was designed for the company’s 180mm fan. It was a 15mm-tall FDB.  One of the things with fans, in terms of the support, is how the fan’s rod seats into the bearing. As we’re told, the longer the bearing is, the more it will help with the wobble of the blades. Internally looking at the 15mm-tall bearing for the 180mm fan, you can see 3 grooved channels. In our bearings-factory tour, we learned that the grooves are part of the mechanism that allows the fluid to circulate to keep that pressure even across the bearing. That’s supposed to be what's special here but we don’t test bearings individually, but the idea is that 3 channels are supposed to help with the stability of the fluids across the bearing. For the 120mm fans, HAVN is going for roughly a 12mm tall bearing. The company claims that most are between 9-11mm tall for 120mm fans. HAVN allowed us to look at the company’s thermal chamber. There are pros and cons to HAVN’s solution. The pro is that it’s supposed to help control the thermal environment as it circulates the air. The downside to the chamber is that we found it can influence the results, though it depends on the chamber. We found that for our testing specifically, having a larger, open-room environment works better. It is very environment-specific. The company also had a flow-rate tester, which is similar to ours, that can do PQ charts, which the company used to test its new fans. It has a throttle control and a laser tachometer, which provides a reading of the speed of the fan. On one side of the flow-rate tester, there are tubes for the counter blower, which our system also has. Their flow-rate tester also has an air compressor, which is used for actuating some of the nozzles inside the system. We also saw that their flow-rate tester also came with an inexpensive desktop OEM computer (in this case, a ThinkCentre PC running an i5-12400).HAVN also has an acoustic chamber, which has a pass-through on the outside coupled with a noise meter, which collects noise levels. One thing we liked seeing once we looked inside the chamber is that we saw a mechanical rigging for the fan, which allows it to be free flowing. They put their microphone in the corner, which we used to do when we had a chamber of a similar size. Putting the mic here allows you to maximize the distance of the chamber by going diagonal, providing maybe a half a meter of space. They also have a foam floor as well, which makes it closer to an anechoic chamber as opposed to something like our hemi-anechoic chamber. Grab a GN Tear-Down Toolkit to support our AD-FREE reviews and IN-DEPTH testing while also getting a high-quality, highly portable 10-piece toolkit that was custom designed for use with video cards for repasting and water block installation. Includes a portable roll bag, hook hangers for pegboards, a storage compartment, and instructional GPU disassembly cards.HAVN is targeting a launch around September for its new products at which point we aim to run our own benchmarks to see how it all performs.

Gigabyte’s Aero line of laptops is intended for media pros, those who need production power in a relatively portable package. Or at least they were intended for that. The new Aero X16 model that debuted at Computex 2025 hopes to thread the needle between creators and gamers, both of whom need extra oomph in their laptops. This new design goes with a popular AMD CPU plus Nvidia GPU combo, topping out with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and a GeForce RTX 5070 with 85 watts of TGP, and it can be disabled with a MUX switch if you need more battery life than sheer pixel-pushing power. All of that hardware is shoved into a 16-inch chassis that’s under 17mm thick and 4.2 pounds light, an impressively sleek design. There’s a plethora of ports, though only one is USB-C (4.0). You get three USB-A ports, full-sized HDMI and Thunderbolt, and an old-fashioned barrel charger if you need to recharge faster than USB allows. The juicy bits for me are under the hood, where you have two M.2 slots for storage, two user-accessible SO-DIMMs for RAM, and a 76.1-watt-hour battery. But it’s not all good news. PCWorld’s Adam saw it in person and wasn’t impressed with the 2560×1600 IPS screen with 165Hz of refresh. That’s pretty good in gamer terms, but creators might not be satisfied. Adam says that even with a Pantone verification and 100 percent of SRGB coverage, it’s lacking full Adobe RGB color space. It’s an upgrade option Adam would like to see in the future. Gigabyte is also refreshing its A16 and A16 Pro gaming laptops. The A16 is making do with older CPUs from AMD and Intel and an RTX 5070 card with a max TGP of 80 watts. Step up to the Pro version and you get access to a newer Intel Core 7 250H and an RTX 5080 screaming at 115 watts. The Aero X16 is launching in June or July while the A16 should arrive in October. The beefier A16 Pro will be here in August. We have no idea what they’ll cost… which might as well be the official slogan of Computex 2025. For more on the latest laptops, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube. Check out our weekly podcast The Full Nerd while you’re at it.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.I used to regularly read more than 125 books a year, each meticulously logged on my Goodreads profile. I read during my commute and to wind down at night. I always had a paperback in my bag or an audiobook in my ears.Then I got a smartphone. Then I got on Twitter. Then the 2016 presidential election happened. Then there was a pandemic, and for a while I stopped commuting altogether.With every year, it seemed like there were more things to spiral about online, and less hours in the day to relax with a novel or read some stimulating non-fiction. Suddenly I found it hard to meet my much more modest reading goals, which dropped to 75, then 50, then 30 books a year. In 2023 and 2024, I set my sights on finishing just 20 books (including graphic novels and stuff I read aloud to my kids). I still had to cram at the end of the year to manage even that comparatively sluggish pace.But things are different in 2025. It's May, and I've already met my 20-book reading goal (which I'll soon be increasing), and I owe it all to my Boox Palma 2, a phone-shaped e-reader I can easily carry with me wherever I go. Boox Palma 2 E-Reader $299.99 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $299.99 at Amazon A device so good it has a cult followingAs I noted in my review of the Boox Palma—the now discontinued, nearly identical predecessor to the Palma 2—it's one of the most lovable electronic devices I have ever owned. It's a near perfect marriage of form (the easy-on-the-eyes e-ink screen popularized by Amazon's Kindle, a compact size) and function—with an open Android operating system and access to the Google Play store, you can use it to run reading apps from a variety of retailers, listen to audiobooks with Bluetooth headphones, or get a little work done on productivity apps like Gmail and Google Docs. At a time when increasing numbers of people are opting to make the switch to a "dumb phone" to escape the pull of their screen addictions, the Palma occupies a rather unique spot in the market: While it can do a great deal more than your standard Kindle, it still feels clunky and slow in comparison to your smartphone, but in the best way. It doesn't have a cellular connection, so if you aren't on wifi, you'll be unable to use the internet or update your social feeds. The black and white display means using it is soothing instead of stimulating, while still scratching that "gotta pull out my device" itch. Its quirky qualities have garnered it a cult following of sorts (ironically, adherents gather to discuss the device on Reddit and TikTok, two places to avoid if you want to get any reading done).The perfect form factorLeaving aside all the things social media and app developers do to make their products addictive, I struggle with regulating my phone use for the sole reason that my phone is always with me. It's how I keep in touch with my spouse and kids and it has effectively replaced my wallet, therefore it must be in my pocket at all times and hey, I might as well pull it out at every idle moment to check my notifications. Yes, I could carry a book or a standard-sized e-reader to look at instead, but that requires carrying a bag of some kind (or large pockets), and it's hard to beat the convenience of something you can shove into any pair of jeans.Well, the Palma 2 can be shoved into any pair of jeans. It has basically the identical form factor as most smartphones, and can even occupy the same pocket as my iPhone 14. This means that when I'm standing in line at the post office, or waiting for the train, or trying to maintain my balance on the train and with only one hand free, I can effortlessly pull out my e-reader instead of my phone and absorb a few pages rather than frantically trying to refresh my Bluesky feed at subway stops.Slow and kinda clunky (in a good way)If the Palma 2 can access the Google Play store, what's to keep you from loading it up with all of the apps that already make your smartphone so addictive? Nothing! Go for it—stick Bluesky on there. Add Facebook and Instagram if you've yet to flee Meta's ecosystem. You can even load up video-based apps like YouTube and Netflix and time-wasting games like Subway Surfers.If you do, though, you'll quickly find that none of them are that enjoyable to use. Though Boox readers' e-ink displays employ variable refresh rate tech that makes them infinitely faster than early generation Kindles (where you could pause for a heartbeat between pressing a key on the virtual keyboard and actually seeing the text appear on the screen), even in the fastest modes they are only a fraction as responsive as a phone or tablet's LED screen. So while you certainly can use your Palma 2 to scroll social media or watch a few TikToks, you won't particularly want to, because it's kind of bad at them, but in a way I love: The device is optimized for reading text or comics (particularly black and white manga), and it presents that material so well, and so conveniently, that I want to carry it around with me everywhere so I can read on it all the time.So far, it's going well: As I said, I've already hit my 20-book reading goal for the year. In the meantime, if you're looking for books you can binge to get you out of a doomscrolling funk, I recommend the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. After picking up the first one in February, I blew through the seven thus-released books (ranging in length from 400 to 800 pages) in about six weeks. And yes, I read every word of them on my Palma 2.

Michelle Williams says she wants her kids to grow up seeing their mother work. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Turner 2025-05-20T04:36:35Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Michelle Williams knows how challenging it is to be a working mother. She says balancing her career and motherhood is like figuring out "which master you're going to serve." "Because the truth is, if work is going well, somebody else is taking care of the kids," she said. Michelle Williams knows balancing her acting career with being a mom is tough.During a Monday appearance on the "Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard" podcast, Williams, 44, shared how she juggles life as a mother of four while keeping her acting career on track."Kids are such great life checkers. They force you to put your best self in front of them," she told podcast host Dax Shepard. "You can't abdicate your life and your work and your own desires, but you do have to put them in check and figure out which master you're going to serve."The "Brokeback Mountain" star welcomed her first child, Matilda, in 2005 with her then-boyfriend, the late actor Heath Ledger. In 2020, she married director Thomas Kail, with whom she shares three children.For her, being a working mom is about striking a careful balance — never letting her kids or her career go "unattended for too long.""Because the truth is, if work is going well, somebody else is taking care of the kids. And if you're in a high point with your kids, the work is shoved to the side," Williams said."You can't be equally good at them at the exact same time, and you have to allow for that give and take, but then also replenish the other things. If you have a big period of being at home, you need to go back to what you've left unattended and put some light over there," she continued.Williams says she also wants her kids to grow up seeing their mom work, which makes it hard to step away from her career for too long. However, the pull of being a mother is hard to resist."My best day with my children is better than my best day at work. I am more thrilled with that high than I am with a work high," she said.This isn't Williams's first time speaking about being a working mom."So you have to figure it out because we have to stay in the workforce, even though it often feels like it's untenable. My heart obviously belongs to my children; they tug at it the most. But I really want to be able to have both," she told Entertainment Weekly in a January 2023 interview.Other female Hollywood stars have also spoken up about balancing their personal and professional lives.Naomi Watts, 56, said she tried freezing her eggs when she was in her early 30s to focus on her career."Because I came into it late — at least with my launching — I was told to work, work, work because it'll all be dried up at 40," Watts told Katie Couric in a January interview.Cameron Diaz, who took a decadelong hiatus from Hollywood, said she spent those 10 years "trying to stay alive just like every other mother."During Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit 2024, she elaborated on her decision to stop acting."It really comes to: What are you passionate about? For me, it was to build my family," Diaz said.A representative for Williams did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours. Recommended video

For most of my life, I’ve relied on a paper map when I go outdoors. Then, in March, I joined my friend Rusty on the Appalachian Trail for two weeks. He told me to download FarOut.FarOut was my introduction to the world of app-based navigation. It’s focused on thru-hikers, and has useful details, including comments that tell you whether a specific water source is flowing, and if so, how well. It took me a minute to get the hang of it — I was hiking southbound, and it defaults to northbound — but once I did, I was impressed.FarOut works like a guidebook. But the kind of backpacking I ordinarily do is on more offbeat trails in the local national forests — not the wilderness highways FarOut specializes in. So for my first solo trip, to the Ventana Wilderness area of the Los Padres National Forest, I thought I’d try out some of the other navigation apps, as part of an absolutely transparent ploy to get my job to let me fuck off outdoors more often; there are a lot of hikes I want to do. I suspect many of our readers are connoisseurs of the great indoors, but I also know you love gadgets, and let me tell you something: so do backpackers. You would not believe the conversations I have had with absolute strangers about gear.I do work at the phones website. We kind of specialize in having feelings about appsNow, I’m not going to top Outdoor Gear Lab — I love their reviews, and have found them reliable guides when it comes to big purchases* — but I do work at the phones website. We kind of specialize in having feelings about apps.I considered several options. I quickly discarded onX Backcountry when I discovered on one of my trial hikes how quickly it drained my phone battery. I also used CalTopo to prepare for the hike, but because it’s a fairly complex platform with a steep learning curve, I don’t think I’ve spent enough time with it to give it a proper review.I figured I might as well keep it simple. I already knew Google Maps wouldn’t cut it; the acquisitions Google has made over the years suggest that the company’s more interested in cars than pedestrians. Looking at the Health and Fitness category on the Apple App Store, I noticed AllTrails ranked #10, so trying the popular app seemed natural. The other app I saw frequently mentioned on hiking subreddits — besides CalTopo — was Gaia GPS. So I figured I’d start with those two.There are a few other apps in the space I didn’t consider. The most notable are Avenza and Goat Maps. I’ve found Avenza limited, but it seems the feature set has been updated since the last time I played with it. Goat Maps is new to me, but it’s from the same team that created Gaia GPS before it was sold to Outside. (More about that in a minute.)Route planningBecause this was my first solo hike, I was not interested in doing anything especially difficult. I’ve been to the Ventana Wilderness before, and am familiar with the Pine Ridge Trail, which I viewed as the backbone of my trip. One of the things AllTrails has going for it is suggested routes — for this area, 41 possible hikes.I had originally contemplated doing an overnight at China Camp before heading down the Pine Ridge Trail to Sykes Camp as an out-and-back, but after hiking with Rusty, I decided I could be more ambitious. I considered a few routes before settling on what AllTrails calls the Big Sur Sykes Hot Springs Extended Loop. That was partly because I’d checked in with the Big Sur Trail Map, a volunteer information repository hosted by Jack Glendening for trail conditions, and discovered a few trails I might have otherwise wanted to use were overgrown.Once I started mapping my route, I noticed some troubleAllTrails has user comments, which can be useful. One user told me to prepare for ticks and poison oak. Another suggested a stop at Timber Top for a meal or snack as it was beautiful, even if it was a detour, so I worked that into my agenda.In order to get a sense of what I’d be doing, I used tools to create my routes, with different lines for each day. CalTopo, AllTrails, and Gaia all have “snap to route” tools that let you automatically follow a trail the map knows about, which makes creating a route easier. But once I started mapping my route, I noticed some trouble. AllTrails said this was a 32.8-mile hike. I had trouble getting Gaia to acknowledge the fire road that would be part of my route with its auto-route tool set; also, the app insisted I was hiking 40 miles. Both the AllTrails and Gaia “snap to route” tools were easier to use than CalTopo, and it came up with a totally different mileage count than either: a 35-mile hike.Here’s the AllTrails route I planned. It was the easiest tool to use for routing by farHere’s CalTopo’s route-planning; you can see I’m considering doing the route in three days, rather than four.This is the Gaia GPS route plan. As you can see, it’s a mess, and because it was hard to edit, it was difficult to correct the mess.Similarly, looking at elevation gain, AllTrails told me to expect 9,160 feet, CalTopo told me to expect 8901 feet, and Gaia, for some reason, was insisting on 19,000 feet. I gotta say, 19,000 feet did not seem like it was in the vicinity of right. Looking at the map I created on Gaia, I think that’s because the “snap to route” tool had given me some weird detours.Well, what’s a couple miles and a few hundred feet of elevation between friends? I decided the smartest move would be to plan a four-day hike with three overnight stops: Sykes Camp, Rainbow Camp, and Outlaw Camp. I figured having more stops meant I could more easily absorb some unexpected miles if I had to.AllTrails’ route-building tool was easiest to use, and the easiest to edit if I made a mistake. While I appreciated Gaia’s similarly easy snap-to-trail function, it was a profound pain in the ass to edit after I’d made a route. And CalTopo was the most finicky for route-building of the bunch, requiring painstaking clicking. But it also had the best feature set, in terms of lines, colors, and editing. It also had more base layers and overlays showing, among other things, where to expect cellphone service.CalTopo and Gaia let you build and edit maps on a phone, but I primarily used my laptop because a big screen is better for planning routes, and a mouse is a more precise tool than my finger. Tinkering with Gaia on my phone, I found route creation buggy. AllTrails doesn’t seem to offer route creation on the iPhone at all. This didn’t matter much for me, but if you’re creating routes on the fly in the backcountry, you’re out of luck with AllTrails, and Gaia may suddenly quit working.Why use apps at all?I harbor a deep and profound pro-paper bias. A notebook is the best organizational tool available to you. I own hundreds of paper books because they don’t have DRM and they can’t be altered post-publication, or removed from my devices. I like paper maps a great deal, and have used them as my main navigation tool for my entire hiking career.Paper maps have downsides. They don’t respond well to water, for instance. Wear and tear can render them unusable. They may be out of date. And, of course, there are no crowdsourced comments telling you about trail conditions before your hike.The obvious benefit of the navigation apps is the reassuring little blue dotThe obvious benefit of the navigation apps is the reassuring little blue dot that tells you exactly where you are on the trail, without requiring nearly as much work. You can pull out your phone and see how much farther you need to go before arriving at a landmark. And most of us have our phones on our hikes because they’re the most convenient way to take photos. Gaia and AllTrails offer downloadable maps as part of a premium service — for a subscription fee, of course. That’s either $59.90 for Gaia or $89.99 for Gaia’s Outside Plus, which includes access to Outside’s assorted publications. The AllTrails Plus subscription I tested was $35.99 a year; after I went on my hike, it announced AllTrails Peak, which costs $79.99 a year and includes AI tools for route planning. (Given what I know about LLMs, I personally would not trust an AI to plan any hiking route, but I suppose your mileage may vary.) CalTopo, which offers its own set of subscription plans at $20, $50, and $100 a year, shows weather data and information about how much sunlight any part of its map gets at any hour of the day.There are a couple downsides to these apps. They drain the phone battery, which necessitates carrying a portable charger, which means more weight. If the phone doesn’t work — because, say, you dropped it — the app won’t work either. And there are, of course, the privacy issues.I don’t want people to know where I am at all timesMy location is sensitive information; I don’t want people to know where I am at all times. AllTrails defaults to sharing your data publicly, so anyone on Earth can look up your hikes. While you can change this setting, defaults matter. “Public trail activities and community reviews are a big part of the AllTrails experience,” spokesperson Mia DeSimone in an email. I was also prompted to review my hike afterwards — part of the crowdsourced data that makes AllTrails work, I suppose.AllTrails also shares your data. Some of that is unobjectionable — payment providers, for instance — but some of it, like sharing data with marketing partners, raised my eyebrows. “AllTrails does not process sensitive personal data, including precise geolocation, for purposes other than actual use of the AllTrails platform,” DeSimone said.I can’t speak to the pluses and minuses of AllTrails Peak, which I haven’t experimented with. But after my hike, AllTrails also discontinued its “Advanced Conditions” feature that showed weather along a prospective route, what to expect from the ground (wet? icy?), and mosquito activity. AllTrails Peak users will get access to “Trail Conditions,” which DeSimone says is “significantly more robust and precise than Advanced Conditions.” Some AllTrails users seem unhappy about the new pricing tier.I got this AllTrails pop-up after my hike. Reader, I did not review it.Gaia similarly defaults to public sharing, because of “a social component designed to help users connect, share experiences, and discover trails,” said Devin Lehman, general manager of Gaia GPS, in an emailed statement. “Public sharing of hikes is the default setting to encourage this community engagement.” Gaia also shares some data, including location data, with unnamed “service providers,” but Lehman said this is done “under strict data protection agreements” and is used to “support and power specific features and functionalities.”Last year, Gaia began requiring sign-ins, catching a few people who were on multi-day trips by surprise. “To ensure minimal disruption, we implemented a ‘snooze’ option allowing users to defer login for up to 28 days if prompted during an active trip,” Lehman wrote. “Users entirely offline (airplane mode or zero cell service) would not see the prompt at all. However, we understand some users in areas with intermittent service did encounter unexpected prompts. We’ve taken user feedback seriously and continue refining our app experience to better support uninterrupted outdoor adventures.”Its parent company, Outside, also jacked up the cost of subscriptions, and on April 14th this year, it removed access to the National Geographic Trails Illustrated maps. “While we understand some subscribers valued the National Geographic Trails Illustrated maps, these maps offered limited regional coverage and lacked the global scope and dynamic functionality our growing user base needs,” Lehman wrote. He says Gaia “substantially expanded” its offerings in the last few years, and the price increase reflects “the ongoing investment required to maintain and continuously improve Gaia GPS.”Be that as it may, I’ve got several friends who are disgruntled Gaia subscribers looking around for another option. And I personally do not have faith in Outside’s management of Gaia, or its other properties, in the long run.On the trailRun away with me! Elizabeth LopattoBecause I was uncertain about my mileage, I decided to track myself several ways: AllTrails, Gaia, and my Apple Watch Series 6. The Apple Watch isn’t really an ideal fitness tracker for outdoors enthusiasts — it’s flimsy and its battery drains too fast; even the Ultra 2 only gives you 72 hours in low power mode. What it does have going for it is that I already own it, and there are other pieces of gear that were more important to upgrade after my experience on the AT. The Big Four in pack weight are your tent, sleeping bag or quilt, sleeping pad, and pack itself. Updating my tent and quilt, both expensive, also meant I lost about 5 pounds of weight from my pack immediately. Since this wasn’t a long hike and I was already carrying a battery, the Apple Watch’s propensity to drain quickly, even with both low power mode and theater mode on, didn’t seem too terrible.I set out from the trailhead Monday morning, and turned on tracking for AllTrails, Gaia, and my Apple Watch. As with all tracking, there are opportunities for user error — I am of course capable of forgetting to turn this stuff on, or pausing it and then never unpausing it. I mention this because there was user error: I paused the AllTrails tracker and then never unpaused it, so as far as it’s concerned, I hiked 3.7 miles that first day.See? I really did walk some number of miles. Perhaps 11, who knows!I was more successful with my watch and Gaia. I started my watch late — looking at the map, I seem to have missed at least a mile before I started it; it recorded 9 miles of walking. I did start Gaia at the beginning of my hike, and it recorded I hiked 11.6 miles. Both watch and app recorded about 2,400 feet of ascent, a little less than what CalTopo told me to expect (2,600 feet of elevation gain) and significantly less than what AllTrails told me to expect (3,000 feet).I arrived at Sykes Camp, alongside the Big Sur River, a little after 4PM, and set up my tent. It was close enough to dinnertime that I decided to eat. As I was hunched over the stove, a woman walked by, so I said hello. She was looking for the hot spring, and continued walking upriver. About 45 minutes later, she returned. She hadn’t found it.The hot spring wasn’t listed on the AllTrails map, the CalTopo map, or either of my paper maps. But it was on Gaia, and after dinner, I found the hot spring, a half-mile hike on a somewhat overgrown path downriver, and soaked blissfully for about half an hour. I’d post a selfie, but this is the internet, and I know better than to post feet for free.If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. Elizabeth LopattoThe next morning I packed up and headed off to Rainbow Camp around 8:45AM. This, I knew, would be an up-and-down day of ridgeline hiking; AllTrails had a helpful elevation map telling me roughly what to expect. Unlike Sykes, Rainbow Camp was likely to be a place I’d be alone. Most of the people I’d spoken to the day before were doing an out-and-back, with Sykes as their only stop. But this ridgeline hike was spotted with wildflowers.I’d planned for this to be a fairly short day, only about 7 miles. I pulled into Rainbow Camp around 2PM and was underwhelmed — it was buggy and not especially scenic. So after eating lunch and refreshing my water supply, I decided to push on to Cold Spring Camp. The AllTrails map suggested it would only be 5 miles more. It was uphill, though, about 2,000 more feet of climbing. Even if I dragged along at 1 mile an hour, I’d still arrive before sunset.I’d thought about camping at Cold Spring before I set off, and had shied away from it both because of the climb and my uncertainty about the actual mileage of my hike. But I was feeling good, and I’d used my Garmin InReach Mini to check in about my change of plans, so I shoved off.According to my trackers recording my actual route — Gaia and AllTrails — it was more like 6 miles, not 5. Gaia tracked 4,884 feet of climb over a total distance of 13.6 miles; AllTrails suggested I’d climbed 5,213 feet over 14.6 miles. (Did I miss a mile somewhere on Gaia? I don’t see a gap in the recording, so I’m not sure how to account for the difference.) My Apple Watch said I’d gone 11.5 miles, also with 4,884 feet of climb — but its battery died before I made camp. I set up camp at Cold Spring, and watched the sun go down over the ocean as I ate dinner.The extra mileage meant I could plausibly make it home the following day. Sure, there were several camps available if I was too tired to do the rest of the hike, but depending on which tracker I used as my source of truth, I had somewhere between 11 and 13 miles left, a fairly easy day of hiking, particularly since it would all be downhill. The third day opened with ridgeline views; I was above a thick ceiling of clouds hiding the ocean. There were, of course, more wildflowers. When I turned off the dirt road onto Terrace Creek Trail, I met a day hiker going the other direction, who warned me about ticks on the grassy descent toward a redwood grove. (Maybe because he went through just before me, or maybe because of the permethrin I’d used on my clothes, I didn’t see any.) I made it back to the parking lot a little after 4PM. I’d had some user error with my Apple Watch — forgetting to start it again after breakfast at Timber Top, so there was an hour and a half gap in its data — and it recorded 11 miles. AllTrails crapped out at some point between when I set off from Cold Spring and breakfast, so it didn’t record my entire hike. Still, it got 11.63 miles. Gaia also had a gap in its recording (something wrong with my phone?) and put me at 12.7 miles.I thought the hike would settle how long the route was. It did, in a way — certainly the hike was longer than the 32.8 miles AllTrails had promised. If we take Gaia’s tracking, which was the most complete of the bunch, as the source of truth, I’d hiked 38 miles, 39 if I added the hike to the hot spring. Conclusion… of some sortWhile I had my paper maps (and compass) with me, the point was to test the apps, and they worked well enough that I didn’t have to refer to my “real” maps at all. But I also didn’t come away with a single clear winner, whether AllTrails or Gaia was best. AllTrails offered better route-planning features, while Gaia was more reliable on the trail. Both had worrisome inaccuracies in their data, which meant in practical terms that I lugged around another day of food in extra weight because I wasn’t totally sure how far I’d be climbing or walking. That’s consequential — food and water are usually the heaviest things a hiker carries.I certainly wouldn’t recommend relying on either of these, particularly without a backup map, and I’m not sold on how they handle my privacy. AllTrails seems to be aimed at people who are more casual hikers than I am. I don’t think Outside has been a good steward of Gaia (or of Outside Magazine). I also hesitate to recommend pricey subscriptions to these apps, given the issues I had with them. In fact, as I was writing this, I realized the most useful app in planning the trip was the one I hadn’t downloaded maps from: CalTopo.I haven’t tested CalTopo in the backcountry yet, so consider this a cliffhanger. Please feel free to pop over to the comments to demand I be allowed to go backpacking for work sooner rather than later, so you can hear more about my map-related misadventures. I’ve been eyeing the Tahoe Rim Trail for later this summer, and if I’m testing gear, it doesn’t count as vacation time, right? Right? Outdoor Gear Lab’s top bra recommendation’s largest size is a C cup, and the reviews are written primarily for teeny tatas. That’s an astounding editorial failure. Not only do athletes of big titty experience have a harder time finding bras at all, we are more likely to experience boob pain — which is a major reason women quit sports. Breast tissue is dead weight, so bra structure is crucial. A bra that’s stretchy enough to fit over your head won’t keep the girls in place during high-impact exercise. Some other rules of thumb: racerbacks press on your traps; thin straps cut into your shoulders; a thick, tight band is a must for weight distribution. A low-cut bra means an astonishing amount of cleavage, but a high neckline will make your gazongas look even bigger, so pick your poison, I guess. (Also, a high-cut bra worn for a long time will incubate a real banner crop of cleavage zits and, in some cases, chafing.) For running, I like Enell’s High Impact Bra — it’s the only one I’ve tried that’s kept my rack from bouncing. (It’s also recommended by Swole Woman Casey Johnston.) I’m still on the lookout for the best backpacking bra; the Enell one is too binding for all-day wear.See More:

Table of Contents Table of Contents The best selling Atari 2600 game: Pac-Man – 8 million The best selling NES game: Super Mario Bros. – 40 million* The best selling Sega Genesis game: Sonic the Hedgehog – 15 million* The best selling Game Boy game: Pokémon Red & Blue – 31 million The best selling SNES game: Super Mario World – 20.6 million* The best selling PS1 game: Gran Turismo – 10.85 million The best selling N64 game: Super Mario 64 – 11.91 million* The best selling Dreamcast game: Sonic Adventure – 2.5 million The best selling GBA game: Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire – 16.22 million The best selling PS2 game: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – 17.33 The best selling Xbox game: Halo 2 – 8.46 million The best selling GameCube game: Super Smash Bros. Melee – 7.41 million The best selling DS game: New Super Mario Bros. – 30.80 million The best selling Xbox 360 game: Kinect Adventures! – 24 million The best selling PS3 game: GTA 5 – 29.52 million The best selling Wii game: Wii Sports – 82.90 million* The best selling Wii U game: Mario Kart 8 – 8.46 million* The best selling PS4 game: Marvel’s Spider-Man – 22.68 million The best selling Xbox One game: PUBG: Battlegrounds – 9 million The best selling Switch game: Mario Kart 8: Deluxe – 68.29 million The best selling Xbox Series X/S game: ???? The best selling PS5 game: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2: 11 million Looking back at the entire video game console timeline lets us get a clear picture of how the industry has evolved. It is fun to rank the best consoles of all time and look at things like the best Nintendo launch games to remember what we were playing when we first got our hands on those new systems. Those kinds of subjective lists are fun, but there are some equally interesting objective things to explore as well. Game sales don’t necessarily represent the best games of all time, but do show what was most popular at the time for one reason or another. There’s typically a disconnect between what sells the best and what is the highest rated, which is fun to see. This isn’t the kind of thing most people know off the top of their head, so we dug through all the financial reports for as far back as we could to find the best selling games on every video game console. Note: We are only covering the major home and handheld consoles and leaving out the more niche systems that few people owned or remember. We are also only able to account for officially released sales data. It is possible some of these numbers have changed or are in the wrong order, but as of 2025, it is as up-to-date as possible based on the latest official data. Recommended Videos Giovanni Colantonio / Digital Trends The early consoles were mainly a way to play the best arcade games at home, so it makes sense that Pac-Man would be the top seller for the Atari 2600. What is a little surprising, though, is just how many copies this game sold in the end. Despite how niche video games were in the early 80s, Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 sold over 8 million copies. Space Invaders comes in at a distant second place with just over 6 million with Donkey Kong rounding out the top three with a little over 4 million. Related Nintendo We have to put a small asterisk on this entry because, despite being one of the best Mario games and certainly would’ve sold millions on its own, Super Mario Bros. was a pack-in game with the NES. That game was probably why most people bought the console, but we will never know for sure how many copies the game would have sold if it hadn’t been included with the system. However, bundle or not, the sales figure of over 40 million copies is nothing to sneeze at. Even Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros. 3, which were also included in bundles, only sold 28 million and 18 million copies, respectively. If you don’t count bundles, the top selling NES game would then fall to Tetris with 8 million copies sold. Sega Just like Nintendo’s main mascot topped the charts for the NES, Sega’s own Sonic was easily the best selling Genesis game with 15 million sales. However, we have to put the same asterisk on Sonic as we did with Mario because it, too, was bundled with the console. If we look at second place, it is none other than Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with around 7.5 million copies. These are great numbers, but really goes to show just how dominant Nintendo was at the time over Sega. Adobe Stock / Digital Trends What else could be the best selling Game Boy game than the franchise that took over the world and hasn’t let go? The monster-catching games rocketed the franchise into the stratosphere and gave the handheld a second life almost 10 years after it first game out. Some might think it is a little unfair to bundle the sale of both games together, but that’s how Nintendo has always done it. Besides, the second best selling game is Tetris, but that was a pack-in game, and third place is Pokémon Gold and Silver with 23.7 million, so you have to go pretty far down the list to not have any kind of asterisk. Nintendo Act surprised, but another Mario game is at the top of the list. Again, we have to put a disclaimer on this game’s huge sales milestone for being part of a bundle with the console. Just like with the NES, though, Super Mario World is one of the best SNES games made and would likely have sold about as well regardless. If you want to find the next best selling game that isn’t a bundle, we have to go all the way to ninth place, where we get Street Fighter II Turbo at 4.1 million copies sold. Sony This was a very close race between first, second, and third place, but the first entry in Sony’s own racing game franchise squeaks out the win at 10.85 million copies. Besides just being a great game, Gran Turismo was, and still is, always a graphical showpiece for Sony consoles that draws a huge crowd just to show off what the system can do. Nipping at its heels in second place is Final Fantasy 7 at 10.02 million, followed by Gran Turismo 2 at 9.37 million. Taylor Frint/Digital Trends Graphic / Nintendo Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but a Mario game was the best selling game on a Nintendo system. Shocking, we know, but this is yet again a pack-in situation. In fact, first through fourth place all have that asterisk attached, including Mario Kart 64, GoldenEye 007, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Fifth place, however, is Super Smash Bros. with no asterisk at a respectable 5.55 million. While there were tons of great N64 games, this console didn’t sell as well as Nintendo’s others so these are still great numbers considering the install base. Sega It almost isn’t worth it to include the Dreamcast on this list, but we wanted to acknowledge its loyal fans and that it did have some great games. Sadly, not even Sonic could save this system and its premier 3D adventure only managed to sell 2.5 million copies. Soulcalibur was second best with >1.3 million, and Shenmue took third with 1.2 million. Just like Mario will keep showing up at the top of home console sales, Pokémon remains the king of the handheld market. Ruby and Sapphire make perfect sense, but second place belongs to Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, remakes of the first generation games with 12 million copies sold. It’s a little surprising how few copies the best PS2 games sold considering it itself is the best selling console. Don’t get us wrong, Grand Theft Auto: San AndreasGran Turismo 3: A-Spec gets the silver medal with 14.89 million, and GTA: Vice City holds bronze with 14.2 million. Micorosft Microsoft’s first console attempt went way better than expected, and that was largely due to launching with a Halo game. The sequel, Halo 2, was one of the most heavily marketed games at the time and revolutionized online play, allowing it to put the original Halo in second place at 6 million. The drop off to third place is huge, with Fable selling a still impressive 3 million copies. Nintendo Sadly, Nintendo’s grip on the console market continued to slip with the GameCube, but Super Smash Bros. Melee played a big part in keeping the system relevant at parties and in competitive scenes. It is also the first system where Mario was shoved to third place, though only technically, since Mario Kart: Double Dash is second with 6.88 million, and then Mario Sunshine comes in with 5.91 million. Photo by Dids from Pexels / Nintendo Meanwhile, the handheld side of things continues to print money and, in a rare twist, sees Mario on top and Pokémon way down at number five. 30.80 million are numbers Nintendo hand’t seen since the original Game Boy, followed by Nintendogs next with 23.96 million and Mario Kart DS only just losing out with 23.60 million. Xbox Be honest, did you see this one coming? You probably would have guessed Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Skyrim, or one of the other common best Xbox 360 games would be the best seller, but no, 24 million people purchased Kinect Adventures! That sounds even crazier when you see that it sold more than GTA VMinecraft at 22 million. Photo by Nikita Kostrykin on Unsplash This probably looks more like what you were expecting. GTA 5 absolutely crushes all other PS3 games in terms of sales by a huge margin, as one would think. Even Gran Turismo 5 in second place only sold 11.95 million copies, and Uncharted 3 in third at ~9 million. Despite its rough launch, the PS3 did end the generation with a lot of big sellers, but nothing compared to GTA. Nintendo loves to bundle games with its hardware, and no example is more famous than the Wii and Wii Sports. This pack-in game was the only game a huge number of people ever got for the system, which explains its astronomical sales. Mario Kart Wii, which was also a bundle, is second at 37/38 million, and Wii Sports Resort at third with 33.14 million. The first non-bundled game is fifth place’s Wii Play at 28.02 million, which still blows away most other consoles’ best sellers. Nintendo This would be a tough one to talk about if Nintendo didn’t manage one of the greatest turnarounds in video game history right after. 8.46 million copies for a Mario Kart game is abysmal, and this was also a bundle game. In fact, the top nine Wii U games were all part of a bundle at one time or another. The first game you can say sold the most without an asterisk is Mario Party 10 at just 2.27 million copies. Of course, many of these games would end up selling way better when ported to a future system. Sony This is the generation PlayStation really blasted ahead of the competition. Marvel’s Spider-Man was the perfect storm of a massive IP and a perfect development team to hit 22.68 million sales, but it wasn’t a complete blowout. God of War was almost the winner with 21.02 million sales, and GTA 5 somehow managed to sell almost as many copies on the PS4 as PS3 with 20 million. We don’t need to remind anyone how dismal the Xbox One generation was, but seeing PUBG: Battlegrounds as the top seller says it all. No offense to that game, but it selling more than Black Ops III at 7.37 million copies and COD: WWII at 6.23 million shows how small the audience was on this system. Nintendo If you didn’t think the platform could make a big difference, here’s your proof. Despite being an upgraded port of the Wii U game, Mario Kart 8: Deluxe sold more copies on the Switch than the total number of Wii U consoles. And these numbers don’t get any less crazy when you look at Animal Crossing: New Horizons selling 47.82 million, or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate selling 36.81 million. In fact, you have to go to the 22 best selling game on the Switch before sales drop below 10 million. Xbox Microsoft Sadly, there is no official data available for what the best selling Xbox Series X/S game is. Microsoft has stopped reporting a lot of its sales data for hardware and software units in favor of players and engagement, making it impossible to know for sure how many copies of games have actually sold. Sony We’re still in the midst of the PS5 generation, so these numbers are likely to shift, but there’s no doubt that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is the clear game to beat with 11 million copies. Second place is a surprise hit: Black Myth: Wukong selling 5 million copies, and then an old familiar franchise taking third place in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, selling 3.97 million copies to date. We’ll keep an eye on this list as things evolve and more sales data comes out.

TikTok hasn't shoved generative AI features into every corner of its app the way Meta has with Instagram, but the company has still experimented with the tech in some interesting — if slightly unsettling — ways. Now, TikTok is introducing a new AI-powered feature that feels even more meme-worthy. It's called AI Alive and it allows users to create short, stylized video clips from a static image. Right now, the feature only exists for TikTok's Stories feature, so it's meant for more ephemeral sharing than what you might typically post on the app. You start with a still image Stories post (accessed from the app's inbox) and choose the new "AI Alive" option, which prompts you to "make this photo come alive." TikTok will surface suggested prompts, but you can also come up with your own. You can see the feature in action in the video below. In all three cases, I started with an image of my cat standing on a railing and used prompts suggested by TikTok. The first was "bring this to life as an anime," the second was for him to walk "carefully" along the railing and the last was "style this like a retro game." As you can see in the clip, the results were somewhat mixed. The anime-esque effect came out a bit creepy and erased my cat's tabby stripes, though I suppose it more or less aligned with the prompt. The second animation also looks a bit odd: there are numerous AI artifacts and my cat's tail and paws look unnatural. The final "retro game" style clip, though, is downright baffling. Why did TikTok's AI decide that my cat should hold up two comically huge wine glasses? Nothing about it evokes any video game I've ever played. Still, like many generative AI features, it's a fun novelty and I can see TikTok users having a lot of fun coming up with their own, probably bizarre, creations.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-just-added-an-ai-powered-image-to-video-feature-and-it-did-some-weird-things-to-my-cat-184630740.html?src=rss