May 23, 20257 min readWhat FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for HealthDespite the fact that vaccines against COVID have already undergone strict safety reviews and that people continue to die from the disease, Trump’s FDA is moving to reduce access to annual COVID boosters for healthy AmericansBy Stephanie Armour & KFF Health News aire images/Getty ImagesLarry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.Until now, that is.Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.The FDA will encourage new clinical trials on the widely used vaccines before approving them for children and healthy adults. The requirements could cost drugmakers tens of millions of dollars and are likely to leave boosters largely out of reach for hundreds of millions of Americans this fall.Under the new guidance, vaccines will be available for high-risk individuals and seniors. But the FDA will encourage drugmakers to commit to conducting post-marketing clinical trials in healthy adults when the agency approves covid vaccines for those populations.For the past five years, the shots have been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for everyone 6 months and older. They have been available each fall after being updated to reflect circulating strains of the virus, and the vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in clinical trials.Vinay Prasad, who leads the FDA’s division overseeing vaccines, cited “distrust of the American public” as he announced the new guidelines at a May 20 briefing.“We have launched down this multiyear campaign of booster after booster after booster,” he said, adding that “we do not have gold-standard science to support this for average-risk, low-risk Americans.”The details were outlined in a May 20 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, written by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. He and Prasad later followed up with the briefing, which appeared the same day on YouTube.The added limits on access aren’t the result of any recent data showing there are new health risks from the covid vaccines. Instead, they reflect a different regulatory stance from Kennedy, who has a history of anti-vaccine activism, and Makary, who has questioned the safety data on covid mRNA shots.Announcing a major regulatory change in a medical journal and YouTube video is a highly unusual approach that still leaves many questions about implementation unanswered. It remains unclear when the changes will go into effect or whether there will be any public comment period. The changes were announced by the administration before an FDA advisory committee meeting on May 22 to consider the 2026 covid vaccine formula.It’s a sharp reversal from the first Trump administration, which launched Operation Warp Speed — the effort that led to the development of the covid shots. Trump called the vaccines the “gold standard” and a “monumental national achievement.”Concerns About Higher TransmissionThe announcement is rattling some patient advocacy groups, doctors, nursing home leaders, and researchers who worry about the ramifications. They say higher-risk individuals will be more likely to get covid if people who aren’t at risk don’t get boosters that can help reduce transmission. And they say the FDA’s restrictions go too far, because they don’t provide exceptions for healthy individuals who work in high-risk settings, such as hospitals, who may want a covid booster for protection.The limits will also make it harder to get insurance coverage for the vaccines. And the FDA’s new stance could also increase vaccine hesitancy by undermining confidence in covid vaccines that have already been subject to rigorous safety review, said Kate Broderick, chief innovation officer at Maravai Life Sciences, which makes mRNA products for use in vaccine development.“For the public, it raises questions,” she said. “If someone has concerns, I’d like them to know that of all the vaccines, the ones with the most understood safety profile are probably covid-19 vaccines. There is an incredible body of data and over 10 billion doses given.”Some doctors and epidemiologists say it could leave healthy people especially vulnerable if more virulent strains of covid emerge and they can’t access covid shots.“It’s not based on science,” said Rob Davidson, an emergency room doctor in Michigan and executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, which works to expand health care access. “It’s what we were all worried would happen. It risks peoples’ lives.”Current federal regulators say there is no high-quality evidence showing that vaccinating healthy people, including health workers who are near or around immunocompromised people, provides an additional benefit.“It is possible, actually, that such approvals and strategies provide false reassurance and lead to increased harms,” Prasad said.The covid vaccines underwent clinical trials to assess safety, and they have been subject to ongoing surveillance and monitoring since they obtained emergency use authorization from the FDA amid the pandemic. Heart issues and allergic reactions can occur but are rare, according to the CDC.On a separate track, the FDA on May 21 posted letters sent in April to makers of the mRNA covid vaccines to add information about possible heart injury on warning labels, a move that one former agency official described as overkill. The action came after the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, held a hearing on alleged adverse events associated with covid vaccines.Limiting boosters to healthy people goes against guidance from some medical groups.“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and the best way to protect children,” Sean O’Leary, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in an email. “Young children under 5 continue to be at the highest risk, with that risk decreasing as they get older.”Unsupported Claims About mRNA VaccinesThe covid booster clampdown is supported by many adherents of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which casts suspicion on traditional medicine. Some opponents of covid mRNA vaccines say without evidence that the shots cause “turbo” cancer, are genetic bioweapons, and cause more heart damage than the covid virus.There is no evidence the shots lead to rapid and aggressive cancers. Cancer rates decreased an average of 1.7% per year for men and 1.3% for women from 2018 to 2022, according to the National Institutes of Health. The covid vaccines debuted in 2021.Federal regulators say narrowing who can get the boosters will align the U.S. with policies of European nations. But other countries have vastly different economic structures for health care and approaches to preventive care. Many European countries, for example, don’t recommend flu shots for the entire population. The U.S. does in part because of the financial drain attributed to lost productivity when people are sick.They also want more information. “I think there’s a void of data,” Makary told CBS News on April 29. “And I think rather than allow that void to be filled with opinions, I’d like to see some good data.”A massive five-year study on covid vaccine safety by the Global Vaccine Data Network, involving millions of people, was underway, with about a year left before completion. The Trump administration terminated funding for the project as part of cuts directed by the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, and work on the study has stopped for now.There are a multitude of studies, however, on the vaccines’ effectiveness in preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death.Limiting boosters for healthy people can be risky, some doctors say, because people don’t always know when they fall into higher-risk categories, such as individuals who are prediabetic or have high blood pressure. The covid vaccine restrictions could deter them from getting boosted, and they might experience worse complications from the virus as a result. For example, about 40% of people with hepatitis C are unaware of their condition, according to a study published in 2023.The number of people getting covid vaccines has already dropped significantly since the height of the crisis. More than half of the more than 258 million adults in the U.S. had gotten a covid vaccination as of May 2021, according to the CDC. In each of the past two seasons, less than 25% of Americans received boosters, CDC data shows.While deaths from the virus have dropped, covid remains a risk, especially when cases peak in December and January. Weekly covid deaths topped 2,580 as recently as January 2024, according to CDC data.Some high-risk individuals are worried that the new restrictions are just the first salvo in halting all access to mRNA shots. “The HHS motivation really is hidden, and it’s to dismiss all mRNA technology,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.Officials at the NIH have told scientists to remove references to mRNA in grant applications. HHS also announced plans in May to develop new vaccines without mRNA technology, which uses messenger RNA to instruct cells to make proteins that trigger an immune response.Rose Keller, 23, is concerned about future access to covid shots. She would be eligible under the current announcement — she has cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic condition that makes the mucus in her lungs thick and sticky, so covid could land her in the hospital. But she is concerned the Trump administration may go further and restrict access to the vaccines as part of a broader opposition to mRNA technology.“I’ve had every booster that’s available to me,” said Keller, a government employee in Augusta, Maine. “It’s a real worry if I don’t have the protection of a covid booster.”KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

A Microsoft employee has managed to circumvent a block instituted earlier this week that limited mentions of “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide” in email subject lines or in the body of a message. Nisreen Jaradat, a senior tech support engineer at Microsoft, emailed thousands of employees on May 23rd with the subject line: “You can’t get rid of us.”“As a Palestinian worker, I am fed up with the way our people have been treated by this company,” the note, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, reads. “I am sending this email as a message to Microsoft leaders: the cost of trying to silence all voices that dare to humanize Palestinians is far higher than simply listening to the concerns of your employees.”It’s not immediately clear how Jaradat got around the block. The email calls on Microsoft employees to sign a petition by the No Azure for Apartheid (NOAA) group, which urges Microsoft to end its contracts with the Israeli government. NOAA is behind several high-profile protest actions in recent weeks, and Jaradat, a member, also encourages colleagues to join the group in different capacities. Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw directed The Verge to a previous statement it shared when the block was initially reported, saying that mass emailing colleagues “about any topic not related to work is not appropriate,” and that the company has “taken measures to try and reduce those emails to those that have not opted in.”NOAA organizer Hossam Nasr called Microsoft’s decision to block words “particularly egregious.”“Microsoft keeps telling its workers to go through the appropriate channels, and yet time and time again, those who speak up in ‘appropriate channels’ from viva engage posts to HR tickets are silenced or ignored,” Nasr said in a statement. “What Microsoft is really telling us is: make it convenient for us to ignore you. Nisreen’s email summarizes it: they cannot get rid of us. We will continue protesting in all ways big and small until our demands are met.”Microsoft put this email block into place the same week as its Build developer conference, during which current and former Microsoft employees, as well as hundreds of others, have been protesting against the company’s contracts with the Israeli government. Microsoft employee Joe Lopez disrupted Build’s opening keynote on May 19th and then sent an email to thousands of Microsoft employees. The company fired him the same day.A Palestinian tech worker then disrupted Microsoft’s CoreAI head during his presentation at Build on May 20th. The next day, two former Microsoft employees disrupted a Build session, and a Microsoft executive inadvertently revealed internal messages regarding Walmart’s use of AI moments later. There were also protests outside the conference venue on multiple days this week.This week’s protests and emails come just days after Microsoft acknowledged its cloud and AI contracts with Israel, but it claimed that an internal and external review had found “no evidence” that its tools were used to “target or harm people” in Gaza.Read the full email below:Yesterday, Microsoft chose to utterly and completely discriminate against an entire nation, an entire people, and an entire community by blocking all employees from sending any outbound email containing the words “Palestine”, “Gaza”, “genocide”, or “apartheid”. Microsoft leaders justified this blatant censorship by saying it was to prevent you from receiving emails like the email that you are reading right now. Even though Microsoft SLT are aware that this “short term solution” is easily bypassable, as this email clearly proves, Microsoft still doubled down, insisted on not rolling back the policy, and decided to continue targeting and repressing their Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and allied workers. They refused to revoke this censorship tactic, despite its potential illegality, dozens of employees expressing how racist of a decision it was, and even leaders admitting they see how it can be perceived as discriminatory and targeted. This further proves how little Microsoft values Palestinian lives and Palestinian suffering.As a Palestinian worker, I am fed up with the way our people have been treated by this company. I am sending this email as a message to Microsoft leaders: the cost of trying to silence all voices that dare to humanize Palestinians is far higher than simply listening to the concerns of your employees. Had this useless and discriminatory policy been revoked, as I tried to request numerous times through so-called “proper channels”[1][2], I would not be sending you all this email.Despite claiming to have “heard concerns from our employees and the public regarding Microsoft technologies used by the Israeli military to target civilians or cause harm in the conflict in Gaza” in a statement riddled with lies, admissions, and absurd justifications, Microsoft has shown that they are utterly uninterested in hearing what we have to say.Microsoft claims that they “provide many avenues for all voices to be heard”. However, whenever we try to discuss anything substantial about divesting from genocide in the “approved channels”, workers are retaliated against, doxxed, or silenced. Microsoft has deleted relevant employee questions in AMAs with executives and shut down Viva Engage posts in dedicated channels for asking SLT questions. Managers have warned outspoken directs to stay quiet and have even openly retaliated against them. When my community tries to flag issues and concerns to HR/GER/WIT, we have been met with racist outcomes with double standards. Throughout all this, Microsoft has sent a clear message to their employees: There are no proper channels at Microsoft to express your concerns, disagreements, or even questions about how Microsoft is using your labor to kill Palestinian babies.Over this past week, Microsoft has shown their true face, brutalizing, detaining, firing, pepper spraying, threatening and insulting workers and former workers protesting at Microsoft Build. This email censorship is simply the latest example in a long list of recent extreme and outrageous escalations by Microsoft against my community. Enough is enough.It has become clear that Microsoft will not listen to us out of the goodness of their hearts.Microsoft will not change their stance just because it is the moral or even legal thing to do. Microsoft will only divest from genocide once it becomes more expensive for them to kill Palestinians than not. Right now, Microsoft makes a lot of money from genocide-profiteering, so we must make support for genocide even more expensive.The situation in Palestine is more urgent by the minute. More and more Palestinians are being killed of starvation under the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)‘s bombing campaign, invasion, and siege that has martyred an estimated 400,000 Palestinians. The IOF have kidnapped over 16,000 Palestinians and placed them in torture and rape camps. 1.93 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced, and over 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank.While a hostile work environment is difficult, it cannot compare to the horrors taking place in Palestine - horrors that we as Microsoft employees are complicit in. These futile attempts to silence our community, while painful at times, are evidence that the pressure we are applying is working. This is not the time for baby steps or gradual progress. Starving infants cannot wait any longer. We, as a company of over 200,000 employees, are providing the technological backbone for Israel’s genocidal war machine in Palestinian. We, as employees of this company, have a responsibility to end our employer’s complicity in this AI-assisted genocide! Now is the time to escalate against Microsoft and end this Microsoft-powered genocide!I am calling on every employee of conscience to:Sign No Azure for Apartheid’s petition calling for a termination of all Microsoft contracts with the Israeli military and government: https://noaa.cc/petitionStrongly consider whether you want to stay in the company and fight for change from within, or if you want to leave and stop contributing labor to genocide.If you choose to leave Microsoft to no longer be complicit in genocide, do not go quietly. The No Azure for Apartheid campaign is ready to help you make an impact on your way out for Palestine, and we will also do our best to provide you support before leaving. Reach out to us expressing your interest to leave here.If you choose to stay, continue to fight from the inside to end Microsoft’s, and your own, complicity in war crimes, join the No Azure for Apartheid campaign. If you are worried about being public with your affiliation, rest assured that as a worker-led grassroots movement, we have members with all levels of anonymity and risk level. Some of our members are publicly visible and will even publicly confront our war-criminal executives, such as Satya Nadella, Mustafa Suleyman, and Jay Parikh at major Microsoft events like the 50th Anniversary celebration and Microsoft Build. Other members choose to stay completely anonymous and still contribute to the critical work of the campaign. There is room for everyone: https://noaa.cc/joinWhile I do understand that as Microsoft employees, we cannot fully boycott Microsoft, most of us can focus on the priority targets set by the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which recently set Microsoft as a priority target. The main target of the boycott is Microsoft Gaming, especially X-Box. We can also encourage our friends and family to boycott Microsoft where possible.To Microsoft Senior Leadership team specifically:You cannot silence Palestine.You cannot silence Gaza.You cannot hide your involvement in genocide and apartheid.Fre e PalestineNisreen JaradatSee More:

Shopping has always been a battle. Companies work hard to convince you that their product is better, while also trying to ensure you pay the highest possible price for your purchase. That’s fair enough, and most of us are accustomed to researching everything we buy to make sure we’re not being ripped off.But modern technology has changed the game. Companies have been hoovering up information about us for years now, and that means they have a pretty good idea about our shopping habits—including what we’re willing to pay for specific products and services, something called Individualized Consumer Data (ICD). New tools like artificial intelligence are now making it very, very easy for companies to engage in what’s known as surveillance pricing.What is surveillance pricing?As its most basic, surveillance pricing is when companies put together a profile of you and your shopping habits, then adjust prices specifically for you. A basic example would be shopping for a television: Two people go to Amazon to look at the same television. One person sees a price of $499, while the other sees $599—for the exact same television, at the exact same moment. The discrepancy is due to their different spending habits and other information that Amazon has gathered about them—their ICD—that tells the company that one person would be willing to spend that extra $100, and the other wouldn’t.Companies create those profiles by scraping an incredibly large volume of information about you from a wide variety of sources. Internet cookies, your shopping history, your IP address (and the geographic and demographic information it provides), are just the basics—the profiling goes much deeper. Even behaviors like how far you scroll when searching for products or what you leave in your shopping cart and never buy contribute to a detailed picture of who you are as a consumer.You might be thinking that most of your personal and financial information is protected to some extent by privacy laws and policies, and you would be right. A lot of this stuff is anonymized. But the sheer amount of information that you leak when you go online—not just cookies and IP addresses, but the browser you use, the plugins you have installed, your time zone, screen size, devices, even system fonts on your computer—can be collected to create a detailed “fingerprint” of your online life. Combined with data gathered from loyalty apps and other sources, this means that an “anonymous” profile of you can be reliably created and identified. In other words, companies may not know that it’s you shopping for that TV, but they know that a unique consumer with specific habits is shopping for one, and thus they can tweak their pricing as needed very effectively.The signs to look out forWhat’s fun about surveillance pricing is how hard it is to tell it’s happening. After all, you surf to a site to buy something, you see a price, you assume that’s just the price that’s been calculated. How can you know that someone else will see a higher or lower price?It’s not easy. You can look for a few subtle signs and try a few experiments if you suspect you’re running into surveillance pricing:Changed prices. If you go back to a specific website regularly and notice that the price changes, it might be because you’re using a different device or because some other aspect of your online fingerprint has changed. Or it might be because your ICD tells the company that you always visit multiple times looking for a lower price.Inconsistent pricing. If you know someone who is shopping for the same item on the same platform and they’re getting different pricing, that’s a potential clue.Reactive advertising. Even if you haven’t noticed price changes, seeing ads that are narrowly targeted to you can be a sign that ICD is being collected and used on you. For example, if web searches or comments on your social media channels seem to inspire related ads, there’s a good chance that your online fingerprint is specific enough to be used for surveillance pricing.Defending against surveillance pricingSurveillance pricing is harmful to consumers because it means you wind up paying more for items simply because of where you live or other extraneous factors—it’s inherently unfair. Defending against it, however, can be challenging—there are basically four strategies you can employ against surveillance pricing, and none of them are magic bullets.Comparison shopThe simplest way to combat suspected surveillance pricing is to shop around for items at different stores—including physical locations, if possible—to get a clear idea of what the “normal” price should be. This can be time-consuming and not always effective, as different online platforms may all use similar surveillance techniques against you.Another aspect of this is to engage your friends and family who live in different areas and use different devices (Android phones versus iPhones, for example). A news station recently had several people from around the country check the prices of different products online, and found prices swung by several hundred dollars depending on location and other factors. If you can ask people who live in different areas to check prices, you can at least determine if you’re getting an okay deal, comparatively.Use a VPNOne of the most common pieces of advice whenever pricing issues come up is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to mask your location—you’ve probably seen this advice in conjunction with finding the lowest airline prices for trips. It seems to make sense: If retailers are charging more for people living in affluent zip codes, changing your reported location should defend against that.I tried this, using a VPN to change my IP address to locations in Mexico, the Netherlands, Japan, and different areas of the U.S., and actually saw no price changes whatsoever. One reason this might not work is because your IP address and associated location are just one piece of your online fingerprint, and companies can still track you when you mask it (your browser gives away a lot of information—you can see just how much at this site). Another reason this might not work as well as you expect is because companies can pretty easily tell that you’re using a VPN because the IP addresses they assign their users are used over and over again, often by several people at the same time. This creates patterns that allow companies to flag those IP addresses as VPNs.However, that doesn’t mean that using a VPN is pointless in the fight against surveillance pricing. If you routinely surf the net behind a VPN and combine that with other steps like incognito browsing, regularly clearing cookies from your browser, and deleting your internet history, you deny trackers a wealth of information about you, which can help cloak your identity, making it harder to create that online fingerprint.Avoid loyalty appsLoyalty apps that offer coupons and discounts to regular shoppers are, of course, data vacuums that make it very easy to create a profile about you and your shopping habits. For a few measly discounts, you’re basically giving companies everything they could possibly need to track and profile you—and they can (and do) sell that information to other retailers. If you want to make it harder for them to use surveillance pricing against you, giving up those little perks is probably necessary.Use different devicesThe final piece of advice for defeating surveillance pricing is the one thing that did actually make a difference when I tested it. I randomly searched Amazon for a 65-inch TV made by TCL. On my desktop browser, it was listed at $469.95. When I switched to my phone, it was suddenly $479.00. Less than $10 isn’t a huge difference, but changing devices was the only strategy that yielded any results at all for me, and indicates that checking prices on different devices is an effective strategy for ensuring you’re getting the best possible price despite what your profile might say about your shopping habits.Of course, all of this checking and device-swapping takes time and effort, so you have to consider whether the money you might save by getting around surveillance pricing is worth the time you put into it. Using a VPN with an incognito browser regularly is probably the best passive strategy you can employ to frustrate attempts to profile you without making it into a second job.Last year the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into surveillance pricing, which could lead to new rules and enforcement to end the practice, and several states have some kind of legislation to regulate or ban the practice in the works. But until those become reality, keep your eyes open.

I think we, as engineers and designers, have a lot to gain by stepping outside of our worlds. That’s why in previous pieces I’ve been drawn towards architecture, newspapers, and the occasional polymath. Today, we stumble blindly into the world of philosophy. Bear with me. I think there’s something to it. In 1974, the American philosopher Robert M. Pirsig published a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A flowing blend of autobiography, road trip diary, and philosophical musings, the book’s ‘chautauqua’ is an interplay between art, science, and self. Its outlook on life has stuck with me since I read it. The book often feels prescient, at times surreal to read given it’s now 50 years old. Pirsig’s reflections on arts vs. sciences, subjective vs. objective, and systems vs. people translate seamlessly to the digital age. There are lessons there that I think are useful when trying to navigate — and build — the web. Those lessons are what this piece is about. I feel obliged at this point to echo Pirsig and say that what follows should in no way be associated with the great body of factual information about Zen Buddhist practice. It’s not very factual in terms of web development, either. Buddha In The Machine Zen is written in stages. It sets a scene before making its central case. That backdrop is important, so I will mirror it here. The book opens with the start of a motorcycle road trip undertaken by Pirsig and his son. It’s a winding journey that takes them most of the way across the United States. Despite the trip being in part characterized as a flight from the machine, from the industrial ‘death force’, Pirsig takes great pains to emphasize that technology is not inherently bad or destructive. Treating it as such actually prevents us from finding ways in which machinery and nature can be harmonious. Granted, at its worst, the technological world does feel like a death force. In the book’s 1970s backdrop, it manifests as things like efficiency, profit, optimization, automation, growth — the kinds of words that, when we read them listed together, a part of our soul wants to curl up in the fetal position. In modern tech, those same forces apply. We might add things like engagement and tracking to them. Taken to the extreme, these forces contribute to the web feeling like a deeply inhuman place. Something cold, calculating, and relentless, yet without a fire in its belly. Impersonal, mechanical, inhuman. Faced with these forces, the impulse is often to recoil. To shut our laptops and wander into the woods. However, there is a big difference between clearing one’s head and burying it in the sand. Pirsig argues that “Flight from and hatred of technology is self-defeating.” To throw our hands up and step away from tech is to concede to the power of its more sinister forces. “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha — which is to demean oneself.”— Robert M. Pirsig Before we can concern ourselves with questions about what we might do, we must try our best to marshal how we might be. We take our heads and hearts with us wherever we go. If we characterize ourselves as powerless pawns, then that is what we will be. Where design and development are concerned, that means residing in the technology without losing our sense of self — or power. Technology is only as good or evil, as useful or as futile, as the people shaping it. Be it the internet or artificial intelligence, to direct blame or ire at the technology itself is to absolve ourselves of the responsibility to use it better. It is better not to demean oneself, I think. So, with the Godhead in mind, to business. Classical And Romantic A core concern of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the tension between the arts and sciences. The two worlds have a long, rich history of squabbling and dysfunction. There is often mutual distrust, suspicion, and even hostility. This, again, is self-defeating. Hatred of technology is a symptom of it. “A classical understanding sees the world primarily as the underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance.”— Robert M. Pirsig If we were to characterize the two as bickering siblings, familiar adjectives might start to appear: Classical Romantic Dull Frivolous Awkward Irrational Ugly Erratic Mechanical Untrustworthy Cold Fleeting Anyone in the world of web design and development will have come up against these kinds of standoffs. Tensions arise between testing and intuition, best practices and innovation, structure and fluidity. Is design about following rules or breaking them? Treating such questions as binary is a fallacy. In doing so, we place ourselves in adversarial positions, whatever we consider ourselves to be. The best work comes from these worlds working together — from recognising they are bound. Steve Jobs was a famous advocate of this. “Technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.”— Steve Jobs Whatever you may feel about Jobs himself, I think this sentiment is watertight. No one field holds all the keys. Leonardo da Vinci was a shining example of doing away with this needless siloing of worlds. He was a student of light, anatomy, art, architecture, everything and anything that interested him. And they complemented each other. Excellence is a question of harmony. Is a motorcycle a romantic or classical artifact? Is it a machine or a symbol? A series of parts or a whole? It’s all these things and more. To say otherwise does a disservice to the motorcycle and deprives us of its full beauty. Just by reframing the relationship in this way, the kinds of adjectives that come to mind naturally shift toward more harmonious territory. Classical Romantic Organized Vibrant Scaleable Evocative Reliable Playful Efficient Fun Replicable Expressive And, of course, when we try thinking this way, the distinction itself starts feeling fuzzier. There is so much that they share. Pirsig posits that the division between the subjective and objective is one of the great missteps of the Greeks, one that has been embraced wholeheartedly by the West in the millennia since. That doesn’t have to be the lens, though. Perhaps monism, not dualism, is the way. In a sense, technology marks the ultimate interplay between the arts and the sciences, the classical and the romantic. It is the human condition brought to you with ones and zeros. To separate those parts of it is to tear apart the thing itself. The same is true of the web. Is it romantic or classical? Art or science? Structured or anarchic? It is all those things and more. Engineering at its best is where all these apparent contradictions meet and become one. What is this place? Well, that brings us to a core concept of Pirsig’s book: Quality. Quality The central concern of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the ‘Metaphysics of Quality’. Pirsig argues that ‘Quality’ is where subjective and objective experience meet. Quality is at the knife edge of experience. “Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it. Every last bit of it.”— Robert M. Pirsig Pirsig's writings overlap a lot with Taoism and Eastern philosophy, to the extent that he likens Quality to the Tao. Quality is similarly undefinable, with Pirsig himself making a point of not defining it. Like the Tao, Plato’s Form of the Good, or the ‘good taste’ to which GitHub cofounder Scott Chacon recently attributed the platform’s success, it simply is. Despite its nebulous nature, Quality is something we recognise when we see it. Any given problem or question has an infinite number of potential solutions, but we are drawn to the best ones as water flows toward the sea. When in a hostile environment, we withdraw from it, responding to a lack of Quality around us. We are drawn to Quality, to the point at which subjective and objective, romantic and classical, meet. There is no map, there isn’t a bullet point list of instructions for finding it, but we know it when we’re there. A Quality Web So, what does all this look like in a web context? How can we recognize and pursue Quality for its own sake and resist the forces that pull us away from it? There are a lot of ways in which the web is not what we’d call a Quality environment. When we use social media sites with algorithms designed around provocation rather than communication, when we’re assailed with ads to such an extent that content feels (and often is) secondary, and when AI-generated slop replaces artisanal craft, something feels off. We feel the absence of Quality. Here are a few habits that I think work in the service of more Quality on the web. Seek To Understand How Things Work I’m more guilty than anyone of diving into projects without taking time to step back and assess what I’m actually dealing with. As you can probably guess from the title, a decent amount of time in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is spent with the author as he tinkers with his motorcycle. Keeping it tuned up and in good repair makes it work better, of course, but the practice has deeper, more understated value, too. It lends itself to understanding. To maintain a motorcycle, one must have some idea of how it works. To take an engine apart and put it back together, one must know what each piece does and how it connects. For Pirsig, this process becomes almost meditative, offering perspective and clarity. The same is true of code. Rushing to the quick fix, be it due to deadlines or lethargy, will, at best, lead to a shoddy result and, in all likelihood, make things worse. “Black boxes” are as much a choice not to learn as they are something innately mysterious or unknowable. One of the reasons the web feels so ominous at times is that we don’t know how it works. Why am I being recommended this? Why are ads about ivory backscratchers following me everywhere? The inner workings of web tracking or AI models may not always be available, but just about any concept can be understood in principle. So, in concrete terms: Read the documentation, for the love of god.Sometimes we don’t understand how things work because the manual’s bad; more often, it’s because we haven’t looked at it. Follow pipelines from their start to their finish.How does data get from point A to point Z? What functions does it pass through, and how do they work? Do health work.Changing the oil in a motorcycle and bumping project dependencies amount to the same thing: a caring and long-term outlook. Shiny new gizmos are cool, but old ones that still run like a dream are beautiful. Always be studying.We are all works in progress, and clinging on to the way things were won’t make the brave new world go away. Be open to things you don’t know, and try not to treat those areas with suspicion. Bound up with this is nurturing a love for what might easily be mischaracterized as the ‘boring’ bits. Motorcycles are for road trips, and code powers products and services, but understanding how they work and tending to their inner workings will bring greater benefits in the long run. Reframe The Questions Much of the time, our work is understandably organized in terms of goals. OKRs, metrics, milestones, and the like help keep things organized and stuff happening. We shouldn’t get too hung up on them, though. Looking at the things we do in terms of Quality helps us reframe the process. The highest Quality solution isn’t always the same as the solution that performed best in A/B tests. The Dark Side of the Moon doesn’t exist because of focus groups. The test screenings for Se7en were dreadful. Reducing any given task to a single metric — or even a handful of metrics — hamstrings the entire process. Rory Sutherland suggests much the same thing in Are We Too Impatient to Be Intelligent? when he talks about looking at things as open-ended questions rather than reducing them to binary metrics to be optimized. Instead of fixating on making trains faster, wouldn’t it be more useful to ask, How do we improve their Quality? Challenge metrics. Good ones — which is to say, Quality ones — can handle the scrutiny. The bad ones deserve to crumble. Either way, you’re doing the world a service. With any given action you take on a website — from button design to database choices — ask yourself, Does this improve the Quality of what I’m working on? Not the bottom line. Not the conversion rate. Not egos. The Quality. Quality pulls us away from dark patterns and towards the delightful. The will to Quality is itself a paradigm shift. Aspiring to Quality removes a lot of noise from what is often a deafening environment. It may make things that once seemed big appear small. Seek To Wed Art With Science (And Whatever Else Fits The Bill) None of the above is to say that rules, best practices, conventions, and the like don’t have their place or are antithetical to Quality. They aren’t. To think otherwise is to slip into the kind of dualities Pirsig rails against in Zen. In a lot of ways, the main underlying theme in my What X Can Teach Us About Web Design pieces over the years has been how connected seemingly disparate worlds are. Yes, Vitruvius’s 1st-century tenets about architecture are useful to web design. Yes, newspapers can teach us much about grid systems and organising content. And yes, a piece of philosophical fiction from the 1970s holds many lessons about how to meet the challenges of artificial intelligence. Do not close your work off from atypical companions. Stuck on a highly technical problem? Perhaps a piece of children’s literature will help you to make the complicated simple. Designing a new homepage for your website? Look at some architecture. The best outcomes are harmonies of seemingly disparate worlds. Cling to nothing and throw nothing away. Make Time For Doing Nothing Here’s the rub. Just as Quality itself cannot be defined, the way to attain it is also not reducible to a neat bullet point list. Neither waterfall, agile or any other management framework holds the keys. If we are serious about putting Buddha in the machine, then we must allow ourselves time and space to not do things. Distancing ourselves from the myriad distractions of modern life puts us in states where the drift toward Quality is almost inevitable. In the absence of distracting forces, that’s where we head. Get away from the screen.We all have those moments where the solution to a problem appears as if out of nowhere. We may be on a walk or doing chores, then pop! Work on side projects.I’m not naive. I know some work environments are hostile to anything that doesn’t look like relentless delivery. Pet projects are ideal spaces for you to breathe. They’re yours, and you don’t have to justify them to anyone. As I go into more detail in “An Ode to Side Project Time,” there is immense good in non-doing, in letting the water clear. There is so much urgency, so much of the time. Stepping away from that is vital not just for well-being, but actually leads to better quality work too. From time to time, let go of your sense of urgency. Spirit Of Play Despite appearances, the web remains a deeply human experiment. The very best and very worst of our souls spill out into this place. It only makes sense, therefore, to think of the web — and how we shape it — in spiritual terms. We can’t leave those questions at the door. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has a lot to offer the modern web. It’s not a manifesto or a way of life, but it articulates an outlook on technology, art, and the self that many of us recognise on a deep, fundamental level. For anyone even vaguely intrigued by what’s been written here, I suggest reading the book. It’s much better than this article. Be inspired. So much of the web is beautiful. The highest-rated Awwwards profiles are just a fraction of the amazing things being made every day. Allow yourself to be delighted. Aspire to be delightful. Find things you care about and make them the highest form of themselves you can. And always do so in a spirit of play. We can carry those sentiments to the web. Do away with artificial divides between arts and science and bring out the best in both. Nurture a taste for Quality and let it guide the things you design and engineer. Allow yourself space for the water to clear in defiance of the myriad forces that would have you do otherwise. The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in a social media feed or the inner machinations of cloud computing as at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha, which is to demean oneself. Other Resources Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig The Beauty of Everyday Things by Soetsu Yanagi Tao Te Ching “The Creative Act” by Rick Rubin “Robert Pirsig & His Metaphysics of Quality” by Anthony McWatt “Dark Patterns in UX: How to Identify and Avoid Unethical Design Practices” by Daria Zaytseva Further Reading on Smashing Magazine “Three Approaches To Amplify Your Design Projects,” Olivia De Alba “AI’s Transformative Impact On Web Design: Supercharging Productivity Across The Industry,” Paul Boag “How A Bottom-Up Design Approach Enhances Site Accessibility,” Eleanor Hecks “How Accessibility Standards Can Empower Better Chart Visual Design,” Kent Eisenhuth

This affordable TV will be an impressive spectacle in any home. Credit: Best Buy/Mashable Photo Composite Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Learn more about how we select deals. SAVE $4,000: As of May 23, get the 85-inch TCL X11K 4K UHD TV for $5,999.99 at Best Buy, down from its usual price of $9,999.99. That's a discount of 43%. Opens in a new window Credit: Best Buy TCL X11K 4K UHD TV $5,999.99 at Best Buy $9,999.99 Save $4,000 Whether you just want a bigger screen for the most popular room in your house or you want something you can brag about to your friends, an 85-inch TV is a fun splurge that anyone should be able to experience once. But the price can be prohibitive. However, if you're going to spend a big chunk of change, you'd might as well be able to save some cash on your big-ticket item when you make the choice to. In this case, you can score a huge 85-inch MiniLED TCL TV for a massive discount. As of May 23, get the 85-inch TCL X11K 4K UHD TV for $5,999.99 at Best Buy, down from its usual price of $9,999.99. That's $4,000 off and a discount of 43%. You May Also Like Aside from being absolutely huge, this TV is all about giving you excellent picture quality. It has 6500 nits of brightness and up to 14,112 dimming zones to give you a more realistic picture with deep contrast and bright, vivid colors. Its MiniLED features combine the great parts of both QLED and OLED tech for better pixel precision too, so you get a wide color gamut, higher peak brightness, and a TV that lasts longer than its brethren. All this, and it's accompanied by Bang & Olufsen sound with a slimmer profile than other TVs in its usual price range. It accomplishes its impressive picture and projecting audio with a super thin, delicate body that looks great mounted or standing on its own in your home, wherever you decide to put it. Mashable Deals Want more hand-picked deals from our shopping experts? Sign up for the Mashable Deals 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! Perhaps the most exciting part about the deal, however, is that you're saving thousands. If it's time to lock in and get an impressive new display, TCL has your back with this Best Buy discount. Brittany Vincent Brittany is fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games. Until her dying breath she'll be wielding a BFG made entirely of killer drive and ambition. Check out her work at PfhorTheWin.com. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!

Junior Level DesignerTechlandWrocław Województwo dolnośląskie pl1 hour agoApplyJob DescriptionAs a Junior Level Designer, you will be responsible for building and optimizing levels and actions in an open-world game under the guidance of experienced team members. Working together with other departments like art, code, design and more. You'll have the opportunity to create unique and memorable graphic environment levels.Your daily tasks:Assisting in creating, modifying and debugging game levels within a specified project,Close cooperation with a team of specialists from various fields - art, programming, design, audio, animation, etc.,Creating amazing environments for our players,Participating in game testing, checking levels for gameplay issues, bugs, and other problems.QualificationsPassion for creating gamesProactivity and initiative to solve problems without waiting for detailed instructionsFlexibility and adaptability to changeDetermination and persistence when facing obstacles.Eagerness to learn and develop your skillsVery good communication and collaboration skills,Fluent in EnglishEagerness to design and create a playable environment, engaging and understandable to the player, offering diverse gameplay,Basic skills in using Techland's DevTools,Continual development within our tools, techniques, and industry practicesNice to have:Basic knowledge of architecture,Artistic skills (drawing, painting, modeling, etc.).Experience with such technologies as Unity, Unreal, RedKit, Cryengine, RoadHog.Additional InformationWhat we offer:A dedicated Buddy who will support you in your daily tasks.A wide array of benefits: private medical care, life insurance, pro-health campaigns, gifts for different occasions.An outstanding work atmosphere in a highly-skilled team of professionals, with flexible working hours, no dress code, and full support of the dedicated HR Business Partner.Many opportunities for personal development: a dedicated development budget for each employee, extra two paid days for training and CSR, stable career paths, extensive internal and external training, and financing of English and Polish language classes.State-of-the-art offices filled with chillout zones, a fully equipped kitchen, a gym (Wrocław office), and a free car park (Warsaw limited amount of space).Company DescriptionTechland is one of the biggest video game companies in Poland, with over 30 years of experience in the gaming industry. From our studios in Wroclaw and Warsaw, we’ve built an international team of more than 500 talented professionals, all dedicated to pushing the boundaries of game development. We’re known for creating iconic franchises like Call of Juarez and the zombie genre-defining Dying Light, which has been played by over 45 million players worldwide. With a focus on open-world action, storytelling, and community engagement, we’re committed to delivering unforgettable experiences to our players.We’re constantly striving to improve, innovate, and take on new challenges. With ambitious plans for the future, we’re looking for passionate people to be part of this exciting journey.Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings. Apply

Macworld Let’s be honest: WWDC 2025 is unlikely to go down in history as one Apple’s greatest ever events, as I’ve warned in a separate article. The company shouldn’t really be forging ahead with new plans until it finishes mopping up the undelivered ones from last year, and the ongoing and unaddressed failures of Siri and Apple Intelligence will hang over the proceedings like a bad smell. But even the dullest Apple event can generally be relied upon to deliver a few gems… and after all, it’s WWDC, the second most important keynote of the year. Here are the seven things I can’t wait to see at WWDC 2025: 1. An iPhone AI feature I’ll actually use With apologies to Mac and Apple Watch owners, iOS is the main event at WWDC. This year’s update promises some major changes, including important accessibility features and an interface redesign, which is already inspiring both positive and negative feelings. But a far more important change will happen under the hood. Reports indicate iOS 19 will feature a new AI-powered battery preservation mode, which will analyze usage patterns to lower power draw at times or in applications where it won’t impact your experience, and thereby extend battery life at minimal cost. Plus, the Lock Screen will finally show how much time is left until your phone is fully charged. Forget Genmoji: this is how AI can actually make a difference in users’ lives. 2. Apple Intelligence where it belongs I’m a little tired of hearing about Apple Intelligence: its supposed triumphs (from Apple) and its many flaws (from everyone else). Sadly this year’s WWDC is sure to feature more of the same, and we’ll need to prepare ourselves for that. But there’s one aspect of Apple Intelligence I am excited to know more about, and that is its belated debut on the Apple Watch. Pundits predict that the watchOS 12 update will see Apple’s AI platform land on the Apple Watch, which I’ve long said is its natural home. The watch’s small screen means next-gen messaging and voice control would be transformative, rather than a nice option, while its position on the wrist makes it perfectly placed to be a virtual assistant. So far, the main barrier to the Apple Watch joining the AI party has been it comparative lack of processing power, and the new models coming in the fall are unlikely to change that. But according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, watchOS 12 will see the Apple Watch outsource the AI work to a nearby iPhone, which is a smart stopgap solution until the hardware catches up. 3. The Babel fish becomes a reality The tech industry has long been fascinated by the Babel fish, a fictional creature which, in the Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide novels, sits in a person’s ear and enables them to understand any language. If only the Babel fish were real. Well, it is—sort of—thanks to wireless earbuds with live translation software. Google has been offering this combination for years: the Pixel Buds (or indeed other earbuds paired with the Google Translate app) were capable of it back in 2017, albeit with plenty of drawbacks. But we’re excited to see Apple’s attempt, which is expected to launch later this year as part of iOS 19 and an AirPods firmware update. Whether this feature will be available in the first versions of iOS 19 is unclear, but we’d be very surprised if Apple doesn’t spill some of the details at WWDC this June. Foundry 4. The most powerful Mac ever made WWDC is known as a software event. But when Apple does decide to launch some hardware in June, it doesn’t mess around. It rolls out the big guns. The Mac Pro, the premium deluxe offering in Apple’s Mac line-up, was last updated two years ago: that was the M2 Ultra model, announced at WWDC 2023. It’s slower than the Mac Studio and not all that faster than the maxxed-out MacBook Pro, so the next model should feature an M4 Ultra chip or something higher we haven’t seen before, outclassing even the M4 Max MacBook Pro and Mac Studio models that currently sit at the top of the range. The Mac Pro is the model to deliver unrivalled power for the creative professional users whom Apple has occasionally neglected, so saving it for a grand WWDC entrance makes sense. The Mac Pro doesn’t get updated as often as other Apple products, and it’s possible we’ll have to wait until later in 2025. But if the M4 Ultra Mac Pro does turn up at WWDC, it’ll instantly be the star of the show. 5. The Mac’s new Vision Speaking of the Mac… Apple is certain to announce macOS 16 at WWDC 2025, and like iOS 19, it’s expected to feature a thoroughly redesigned interface. Sources suggest macOS will take its visual cues from Vision Pro, Apple’s groundbreaking mixed-reality headset, as the company looks to achieve more of a consistent UI across platforms. It will be fascinating to see how this fusion between Apple’s oldest and youngest product lines shakes out. Apple 6. News about new Siri Arguably the weakest element in Apple’s ecosystem, and certainly its highest-profile failure, is the lamentably inaccurate voice assistant Siri. An astonishing 14 years after it launched with the iPhone 4s, Siri shows no sign of getting any better, and sometimes seems to be getting worse. At last year’s WWDC, Apple promised to fix Siri by deploying the magic of Apple Intelligence. But the arrival of the new AI-powered Siri keeps getting delayed; it didn’t appear in March’s iOS 18.4 update as expected, or even in May’s iOS 18.5. Hopefully, Apple will have some news for us in June, because Siri really needs to get better at its job. And while we’re on the sore topic of Siri, we’d appreciate some (preferably realistic) announcements about the version of Siri after the new one: the “true modernized, conversational version” which is also known as LLM Siri. New Siri was supposed to be part of iOS 18, and LLM Siri part of iOS 19, but delays compound on delays and the whole thing keeps getting pushed back. I’m excited to see these improvements, Apple, but please let us know what’s going on. 7. Honesty And that leads me to the single thing I want most from WWDC25: pure, unfiltered honesty about the state of play at Cupertino. What’s been going wrong since last year? Why have so many projects been delayed? And is Apple Intelligence really as far behind other AI platforms as it seems to be? This might seem like a desperate long shot. The truth at a marketing event, what a fanciful notion! But Apple has some form here. When Apple Maps suffered disastrous teething pains, Apple admitted this and apologized. When creative pros were neglected, as I mentioned earlier, Apple admitted this and apologized. There is a chance, albeit a slim one, that we’ll get some sort of mea culpa at WWDC. Every company makes mistakes. Announcing Apple Intelligence long before it was ready, and then selling iPhone 16 handsets off the back of features that won’t have launched by the time the iPhone 17 comes out, was a big one, but it doesn’t have to ruin Apple’s reputation. The cure is honesty. Explain what went wrong and why. Then be completely transparent about the features that will actually be ready in time for the iPhone 17. Confidence will return–but not if the spin and bluster continue. That’s my wish list for WWDC 2025. Join us on June 9 to see how much Apple delivers, and to read our coverage of all the announcements.

Europe has created just 14 companies worth more than $10 billion over the past 50 years compared to 241 in the United States, underscoring the continent's struggle to compete in the global technology race despite having a larger population and similar education levels. The productivity gap has widened dramatically since the digital revolution began. European workers produced 95% of what their American counterparts made per hour in the late 1990s, but that figure has dropped to less than 80% today. Only four of the world's top 50 technology companies are European, and none of the top 10 quantum computing investors operate from Europe. Several high-profile European entrepreneurs have relocated to Silicon Valley, including Thomas Odenwald, who quit German AI startup Aleph Alpha after two months, citing slow decision-making and lack of stock options for employees. "If I look at how quickly things change in Silicon Valley...it's happening so fast that I don't think Europe can keep up with that speed," Odenwald said. The challenges extend beyond individual companies. European businesses spend 40% of their IT budgets on regulatory compliance, according to Amazon surveys, while complex labor laws create three-month notice periods and lengthy noncompete clauses. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Senior DevOps Software EngineerCD ProjektWarsaw Masovian Voivodeship pl49 seconds agoApplyJob DescriptionWe are looking for a Senior DevOps Software Engineer who will be responsible for developing and adapting our internal tools and systems both in The Witcher 4 and to support projects across the group. You will cover day to day tools development, supporting developer cooperation, observability, continuous integration and delivery, build storage and sharing, and many more.Daily ResponsibilitiesMaintenance and improvement of the CI/CD system (in-house technology).Maintenance and improvement of existing developer services and tools managed by the team.Optimizing pipelines & processes.Improving services and builds performance.Working closely with the development team to integrate new services and processes.Creating and maintaining documentation of the tools and services managed by the team.QualificationsProficient in C# backend development (ASP.NET Core, .NET 6+, primarily .NET 8).5+ years experience in software development in gaming.Experience in Entity Framework, LINQ.Proficient in Python programming.Knowledge of Postgres or other RDBMS.Experience using source control software (Perforce and git).Demonstrated commitment to taking ownership, setting goals, and driving initiatives independently.Proven track record of effective collaboration, supporting colleagues, and achieving shared goals.Ability to adjust to shifting priorities, handle ambiguity, and excel under pressure.Nice to have:Experience as a Manager or Lead.Knowledge of Unreal Engine.Continuous integration concepts, centralized CI, Perforce.Experience in containerization Docker, Kubernetes.Familiarity with AWS.Knowledge of Eleasticsearch/MongoDB is a plus.Knowledge of Active Directory, security concepts, authentication.Additional InformationWorking modeHybrid or full-time in-office in our Warsaw office.Relocation is required.Relocation supportRelocation package – flight ticket, company apartment for your first month, relocating your pet, shipping your belongings: it’s all covered.Relocation assistance — processing your legalization operations for you, assistance with finding residence, tax settlements - all you need to feel right at home is taken care of.Polish lessons for foreign employees — and for your spouse or partner, too.Paid Leave — from 20 to 26 days of holiday for every team member per year, paid sick leave, and paid maternity & paternity leave.Perks & Professional GrowthFlexible working hours — start your workday anytime between 8:00 and 10:00 AM.A welcome pack filled with goodies — to help you feel right at home once you join the team.Trainings, lectures and courses — internal workshops, external training for each employee, ‘Meet a star’ events, knowledge-sharing initiatives, online tutorials, and e-learning classes are all available. There’s always something to learn!Merch — gifts for newborn rebels and regular chances to nab some cool swag!Health & Well-beingPrivate medical healthcare — a selection of medical plans with dental care to choose from, which are also accessible for your partner and relatives.Psychological care — free mental health support and various well-being webinars.Multisport card — gain access to a wide number of sporting and fitness facilities across the city.Social Activities & Life in the OfficeDog-friendly office — dog owner? Bring your pooch with you and look after them while working! There’s always a furry friend or two to meet at the studio.Social events — we host regular gatherings at the studio where we can all unwind, play games, and just have some fun together.Healthy selections — organic fruit, snacks, muesli, organic honey, vegan milk, and speciality coffee are all at your disposal around the studio. Enjoy!Truly international working environment — a chance to meet and work with a diverse selection of people from all around the world.Head office in WarsawSustainable campus with an eco ethos — solar panels provide green energy, 2000 plants and an air-filtering system to help provide clean air, electric car charging points, flower meadows, and more green features in the works.An onsite, well-equipped gym with a climbing wall, daily Gym Assistant support and yoga and healthy spine classes.Car and bike parking spaces.A designated space for your bicycle, as well as bicycle repair equipment and showers available whenever you need them.No dress-code — we like to keep it casual.If you've observed any irregularities in our recruitment process please click here to report them.Company DescriptionTo create revolutionary, story-driven RPGs which go straight to the hearts of gamers — this is our mission. Want to dive deeper into our company’s culture? Explore our social media and check out our YouTube channel where we share behind-the-scenes insights and stories direct from our team members! Create Your Profile — Game companies can contact you with their relevant job openings. Apply

Noise Buds F1 true wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds were launched in India on Friday. The new earphones from the domestic tech brand come in four distinct colour options and are equipped with 11mm drivers. The Noise Buds F1 have an IPX5-rated build for dust and water resistance, and they offer Bluetooth 5.3 for connectivity. The earbuds have quad mics, and provide an environmental noise cancellation (ENC) feature for calls. Noise claims that its new affordable TWS earbuds can offer up to 50 hours of playback time from a single charge, along with the charging case.Noise Buds F1 PriceThe Noise Buds F1 earphones are priced at Rs. 999 in India. This is a special introductory price tag, and there is no word on the duration of the introductory period. The eaphones are available in Calm Beige, Carbon Black, Mint Green, and True Purple colour options. They are currently up for sale via Flipkart.Noise Buds F1 SpecificationsThe Noise Buds F1 have 11mm drivers and support EQ modes that let users customise their sound profile. They come with a quad mic system, which allow the earphones to offer ENC feature said to eliminate unwanted background sounds. For gaming, they provide a low-latency mode that is said to deliver real-time audio feedback.As for connectivity, the Noise Buds F1 have Bluetooth 5.3 and offer instant pairing with the last connected device through their HyperSync feature, which activates as soon as the case lid is opened. They come with an IPX5 rating for water and sweat resistance. The  Noise Buds F1 earbuds are advertised to offer a maximum 50 hours of total playtime on a single charge, including the case. With the company's Instacharge technology, the earbuds are claimed to offer 150 minutes of playback time with just a 10-minute charge.Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details. For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube. Further reading: Noise Buds F1, Noise Buds F1 Price in India, Noise Buds F1 Specifications, Noise Nithya P Nair Nithya P Nair is a journalist with more than five years of experience in digital journalism. She specialises in business and technology beats. A foodie at heart, Nithya loves exploring new places (read cuisines) and sneaking in Malayalam movie dialogues to spice up conversations. More