The case is white zirconium oxide ceramic with a Ceratanium bezel and back, rated to handle temperature swings from 100 to -100 degrees Celsius (212 to -238 Fahrenheit). Indeed, the whole piece has been shaken to 10 g’s at Vast’s Long Beach facility, exceeding forces astronauts experience during ascent, and came out the other side running just fine. Price is still up in the air.

TAG Heuer Monaco Evergraph (From $25,000)

Watch brands love finding ever more recherché areas to reinvent, and the precise “snick” of a chronograph’s stop/start/reset buttons is the latest micro-battlefield in which R&D teams are duking it out. Last year, Audemars Piguet took the feel of an iPhone button as the inspiration for its Royal Oak RD#5; now TAG Heuer has its own take on push-button ergonomics.

Normally, chronograph buttons involve a cluster of levers, springs, and cams that click into place with varying degrees of precision. TAG Heuer has thrown most of that out with the Calibre TH80-00, five years in development between its TAG Heuer LAB innovation department and movement maker Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier. It replaces the traditional architecture with two flexible bistable components—essentially shape-shifting parts that snap between positions—produced via high-precision LIGA fabrication, a micro-manufacturing technique that includes lithography, electroforming, and molding.

The result? Crisper actuation that, crucially, doesn’t degrade. According to TAG, the 10,000th press feels identical to the first. Paired with TAG’s incredibly high-tech TH-Carbonspring oscillator (magnetism-resistant, 5-Hz, 70-hour reserve, COSC-certified), it’s housed in a reworked 40-mm titanium Monaco with the crown back on the left where Steve McQueen’s 1969 original had it. You get two versions: brushed titanium with blue accents or black Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) with red. The dial is transparent acrylic, so you can watch the compliant mechanism do its thing.

Vacheron Constantin Overseas Dual Time Cardinal Points (Price on Request)

Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas line, among the most celebrated examples of Switzerland’s dominant “sports-luxe” genre, leans heavily into the sports side with a full-titanium, GMT-treatment across four references. Each dial is color-mapped to a compass point: white for north, brown for south, green for west, blue for east, contrasting with a bright orange, Rolex-style GMT hand for the time zone at home.

The lineage traces to a 2019 prototype built for explorer Cory Richards to wear up Everest—probably the most luxurious timepiece that has been to such places. The 41-mm case, integrated bracelet, and folding clasp are all in titanium with a matte anthracite finish on the bezel and crown. Inside is the in-house Calibre 5110 DT/3, a self-winding GMT with home-time am/pm indicator, local-time date pusher, and 60-hour reserve. Classic sports watch attributes, but here certified with the Geneva Hallmark, the highest official benchmark of fine watchmaking and hand-finishing.

from the can’t-pretend-rights-just-don’t-exist dept

More of the same for the Trump administration — one that seems incapable of achieving its goals without breaking the law or disregarding the Constitution.

Hundreds of judges handling thousands of cases have already told the administration it can’t do the things it thinks it can when it comes to satisfying its anti-migrant bloodlust/Stephen Miller’s 3,000-arrests-per-day quota (they’re the same thing!). And, outside of the Fifth Circuit, where the majority seems to believe Trump should get whatever he wants, this steady stream of judicial rejections continues.

Yet another class-action suit alleging the wholesale violation of Constitutional rights has resulted in a ruling siding with the Constitution. This case is one of several being handled by the ACLU. This particular one originates in Nevada, which at least keeps it out of the hands of the Fifth Circuit. (Unfortunately, the administration knows who’s buttering its bread, which is why detainees are often shipped immediately to detention centers in Texas and Louisiana.)

The administration has only a single argument to present in its defense of its unconstitutional mandatory detention activities. It involves selectively quoting two related (yet distinct!) immigration statutes and pretending that 1+1=whatever the fuck we say it does.

One of the most concise explanations of the administration’s deliberate misreading of these statutes was delivered by Judge Dale Ho of the Southern District of New York last year. The government wants to pretend people who encounter immigration agents while crossing the border are indistinct from migrants who have already been in this country for weeks, months, or years. They’re not the same thing, but the administration insists they are, despite having only convinced the Fifth Circuit that the laws don’t actually say the things they say.

Given that detention under § 1225(b)(2) is essentially mandatory and that detention under § 1226(a) is largely discretionary, it follows that whichever statute Mr. Lopez Benitez is subject to is potentially dispositive here. That is, if Mr. Lopez Benitez was detained as a noncitizen “seeking admission” to the country under § 1225(b)(2) (as Respondents argue), his detention would be mandatory. If, instead, he was detained as a noncitizen “already in the country” under § 1226(a), then his detention is discretionary and he would be, at a minimum, entitled to an appeal before an immigration judge.

To be sure, the line between when a person is “seeking admission” as opposed to being “already in the country” is not necessarily obvious. For instance, someone who has just crossed the border may technically be “in” the country but is still treated as “an alien seeking initial entry.” Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. at 114, 139 (holding that a noncitizen detained “within 25 yards of the border” is treated as if stopped at the border). But there is no dispute that the provisions at issue here are mutually exclusive—a noncitizen cannot be subject to both mandatory detention under 1225 and discretionary detention under § 1226, a point that Respondents conceded.

These are not the same thing. Section 1226 deals with people already in the country, who are given Constitutional protections. Section 1225 deals with people crossing the border who are met immediately by immigration agents, who don’t have access to the same due process rights.

As the court points out in this case, the language of the statutes makes it clear Section 1225 is “temporally and geographically limited to the border” by other language contained in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The government, however, wants to pretend it’s indistinct from Section 1226, which deals with people who are already in the country and have been there for a significant amount of time.

The only way the government can present its defense of indefinite detention of migrants without bond hearings is to twist the wording of both statutes. The Nevada court [PDF] isn’t going to let that happen. It calls out Trump’s DOJ for its cut-and-paste antics.

The government contends that the plain language of § 1225(b)(2) requires DHS to detain all noncitizens like Plaintiffs, who are present in the U.S. without admission or parole and subject to removal proceedings, regardless of how long they have been in the country or how far from the border they are apprehended. But this Court finds that the government reads § 1225(b)(2 (A) as a fragment of statutory text in isolation.

Context matters. The government knows this, which is why its arguments remove the parts of the law it wants to use from the context that indicates its actions are illegal.

The Court finds the government’s reading of the statutory text inapposite for severalreasons. First, the government distorts the statutory text, including terms of art specially defined by Congress. Second, the government isolates and abstracts the phrases it favors in § 1225(b)(2)(A) from their context within § 1225 and the statutory scheme, while rendering language it finds inconvenient within § 1225(b)(2)(A) both contrary to ordinary meaning and needless surplusage. Finally, the government’s interpretation unnecessarily renders provisions of § 1226(c) superfluous in all but the rarest cases, unjustifiably construes Congress’ addition of § 1226(c)(1)(E) through the 2025 Laken Riley Act to be utterly ineffectual, and creates unnecessary tension between the relevant provisions, §§ 1225 and 1226.

This is what it looks like when you know you can’t win on the merits. This is the government pretending the law says what it wants it to say and hoping to slip it past a judge and under the skirts of Lady Liberty.

Courts aren’t as dumb as the Trump administration hopes. Let’s look at the statutes, the court says, but the whole thing rather than just the things the government thinks might be usable.

The Court cannot accept such a fraught interpretation when a reading devoid of such conflict, which gives each statutory phrase and section independent meaning and force, is far more plausible.

What follows is a few dozen pages making everything summarized above granular and specific. And if Trump doesn’t like it, he can always ask the legislators he treats as extraneous to rewrite the law in his favor. Take it up with Congress if you don’t like the way the law is actually written, the court says without actually saying it:

[E]ven with regards to removal proceedings as opposed to custody determinations, Congress explicitly reflected its understanding of longstanding due process precedent that recognizes the more substantial due process rights of noncitizens already present and residing in the U.S. compared to the minimal rights of noncitizens seeking to enter.

Even a Congress loaded with MAGA bitchboys isn’t going to be able to erase Constitutional protections for migrants no one really seemed to have a problem with until white Christian nationalists took over the West Wing (on two non-consecutive occasions). The current Congress is merely an afterthought in service to Federalist Society theories of unitary executive power — something that surely won’t come back to haunt them when America decides it’s time to hand the reins to the opposition party.

And that’s not all of the bad news for Trump and his enablers. The due process thing is already a known issue and one that has resulted in hundreds of losses for the administration’s lawyers. This court also points out the Fourth Amendment implications of its actions. While this doesn’t necessarily create the sort of precedent that would shut down the DHS’s extremely creative interpretation of the Constitution, it will provide plenty of citation pull-quotes for litigants challenging ICE’s warrantless arrests and home entries.

[N]o administrative warrant requirements exist in the text of § 1225(b)(2)(A) or its implementing regulations. The government’s interpretation of that provision as geographically unlimited is thus in tension with the application of the Fourth Amendment within the country’s interior, which “requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force.”

I’m sure this quotation of Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Trump v. Illinois is deliberate. The guy behind “Kavanaugh stops” (TL;DR: looking foreign is probable cause when it comes to immigration enforcement) is being directly quoted to reject the government’s reliance on administrative warrants to bypass the Constitution. [Chef’s kiss gesture.]

Great stuff. But, as always, tempered by the realization that this administration will not stop doing illegal things just because a court has directly told them these actions are illegal. The old equation — asking forgiveness > asking permission — doesn’t really apply. This administration will do neither. It will simply DO until it becomes impossible to continue.

Don’t let that discourage you, though. Even if the co-equal branches don’t seem to be living up to the “checks and balances” hype, we’re a nation of millions spread across a considerable number of square miles. They can’t take us all at once.

Filed Under: 14th amendment, bigotry, dhs, due process, ice, mass deportation, nevada, trump administration

Companies: aclu

from the oh-no dept

With all that RFK Jr. has done, and failed to do, as the Secretary of HHS, he should be terribly busy cleaning up mess after mess. The measles outbreak that is going to cause America to lose its elimination status is still ongoing and on pace to quadruple last year’s case total, so he could work on that. He could be busy finding a CDC Director, a position left vacant well beyond the federally mandated limit of 210 days. Or a Surgeon General. Or he could be working to undo the harms and effects of the misinformation that he and Trump have been pumping into the media ecosystem.

But it seems that, despite reporting that the White House wants to rein him in so he doesn’t get the GOP murdered in the midterms, Kennedy has instead decided its time to make history as the first sitting cabinet secretary to host his very own podcast.

The show, titled “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,” will launch next week and feature Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine crusader who has reshaped the country’s health policy, in conversation with doctors, scientists and agency staff, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials told the AP ahead of the launch. In the teaser video, in a slick HHS-branded studio with ominous music playing in the background, Kennedy bills it as a new way to expose corruption and lies that have made Americans sick.

“We’re going to name the names of the forces that obstruct the paths to public health,” Kennedy says in the nearly 90-second clip.

We all know where this is going. Before entering into government, Kennedy hosted his own podcast previously. It covered such sane topics as:

1. Google and Mind Control
2. Vaccines During Pregnancy (featuring anti-vaxxer Lyn Redwood)
3. EMR, Cell Phones, & Cancer
4. IRS: Pro-Pharma Anti-Health
5. Censorship & Twitter Files with Matt Taibbi

So, you know, a conspiracy theory podcast, featuring all of Kennedy’s favorite topics. Anyone looking at this podcast as a source of information is clinically insane. This is just another megaphone through which to growl his anti-science, anti-medicine conspiratorial views. That he is making history in doing so when he has far better things he could be doing is simply the rotten cherry on top of this shit sundae.

Tyler Burger, HHS digital communications manager and the producer of the new podcast, said while Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary has a podcast, officials believe Kennedy’s will be the first to be hosted by a sitting cabinet secretary.

“We’re kind of bringing podcasting into the government as an official form and arm of our messaging,” Burger said. He said the set for the show was pieced together largely with items the agency already had, and has the capacity for a total of four people to sit in conversation together.

While I appreciate Kennedy for giving me what will surely be much, much more about which to write, there is danger in this. You can be sure that Kennedy will not be inviting dissenting viewpoints onto his show. Anyone coming across it, with the imprimatur of a sitting Secretary as its host, may fall victim to thinking that what is being presented is official federal policy, the viewpoints of real doctors and scientists, or… you know… sane.

It won’t be any of that. I sincerely hope someone in the White House catches wind of this and puts a stop to it. Sadly, I doubt that is forthcoming.

Filed Under: donald trump, podcast, rfk jr.

At CinemaCon in Las Vegas, amid plenty of insider film industry news, Sony announced that it’s making an animated film adaptation of Bloodborne, a cult classic horror action game from the makers of Dark Souls and Elden Ring. 

Sony didn’t reveal much about the animated film, keeping plot details under wraps and offering no information about its release date. It’ll will be produced by PlayStation Productions and Seán McLoughlin, better known to the world as the YouTuber JackSepticEye, though Sony didn’t elaborate on the extent of his involvement. McLoughlin has racked up millions of views for his videos playing Bloodborne and other games made by FromSoftware.

The only other hints about the Bloodborne film come from its other named producer, Lyrical Animation, the studio formed last November from adult animation firm Line Mileage. That production company had previously announced a Death Stranding feature film after its lead partners worked on animated series for adults, including Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft and Castlevania.

Bloodborne, released in 2015 on the PlayStation 4, is a gothic horror game that follows FromSoftware’s formula of high-difficulty action popularized by the Dark Souls series. In Bloodborne, players take on the role of a monster hunter who descends on the cursed city of Yharnum on the night when nightmares roam the streets. 

An instant classic upon release for its tough but rewarding gameplay, iconic bosses and mysterious lore, Bloodborne has built a cult following over the years. That legacy has been complicated by the fact that publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment has neither released the game on other platforms nor remastered it. Fans remain hopeful for an update to modern consoles and PC, especially since the original PS4 release was limited to a now-archaic (and inconsistent) 30 frames per second and HD (1080p) resolution.

When I interviewed FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki — creator of Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring — I asked which of the games he worked on was his favorite. He said the first Dark Souls and Bloodborne “left a very big impression on me.”

Sony Pictures and PlayStation Production also announced that the Helldivers film adaptation, directed by Justin Lin (The Fast and the Furious, Star Trek Beyond) and starring Jason Momoa, will be released on Nov. 10, 2027.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Word after “lily” or “launch”
Answer: PAD

4A clue: “That criticism makes total sense!”
Answer: FAIR

5A clue: Apology after a 1-/4-Down
Answer: SORRY

6A clue: Two in a double play
Answer: OUTS

7A clue: Sneaky
Answer: SLY

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: With 4-Down, spilling wine on the carpet or bringing uninvited guests
Answer: PARTY

2D clue: Puts on TV
Answer: AIRS

3D clue: Like summers in a Mediterranean climate
Answer: DRY

4D clue: See 1-Down
Answer: FOUL

5D clue: Castaway’s call for help
Answer: SOS

Huawei’s new extra-wide foldable phone was revealed on Monday, and it’s already drawing comparisons to the next big thing from Apple. Little is known about the Pura X Max, teased on China’s Weibo social network, but the internet is buzzing over its uncommon proportions, wide aspect ratio and similarities with the rumored iPhone Fold expected to arrive later this year. 

There are plenty of different ways to fold a phone, and tech companies have been experimenting with various configurations over the last few years. There are clamshell-style devices, like the Motorola Razr and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7, which fold like OG flip phones, shrinking down into a pocketable square. Then came taller, book-style phones that unfold to reveal larger, tablet-size displays. These days, you can even find trifold phones with two hinges. However you fold it, most foldables either start or end with the familiar candybar shape as their base.

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Huawei’s Pura X Max — the newly announced larger evolution of the Pura X foldable phone — is what I like to think of as a passport-style foldable. Rather than the tall rectangle aspect ratio that almost all modern phones take, it has shorter and extra-wide proportions when folded before opening up to reveal what appears to be an approximately iPad Mini-sized and proportioned internal display. This is a formula similar to what we’ve seen on the 2020 Microsoft Surface Duo, though the Duo made use of dual internal screens split by a visible hinge rather than a flexible, foldable display.

The proportions of the Pura X Max announcement have experts and enthusiasts drawing comparisons to the rumored iPhone Fold, which might end up being called the iPhone Ultra, that is expected to debut this fall alongside the new iPhone 18 models. Industry insiders, alleged dummy models and leaked CAD files point to Apple using a similarly wide passport-style shape with proportions in the ballpark of the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold. The iPhone Ultra is rumored to feature a 5.5-inch outer screen that unfolds into a 7.8-inch internal display and could be priced between $2,000 and $2,500. 

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Set to launch on April 20 in China, the Pura X Max is shown in Huawei’s teaser imagery sporting a triple-camera hump on its rear panel. However, the manufacturer hasn’t given any specs, pricing or even shown us what that inside folding display will look like. 

The timing of the announcement could be seen as a shot across Cupertino’s bow — Huawei beating the hotly anticipated Apple device to the punch — and perhaps that could end up being true in Huawei’s home market of China. However, Huawei doesn’t have a presence in the US, so buyers looking to broaden their foldable horizons will have to wait to see what Apple or Samsung has to show later this year.

In the company’s most recent video, Unitree’s H1 humanoid bot is seen speeding down a typical athletic track and passing a speed sensor at a scorching 10 m/s (22.3 mph), with an error margin of up to 10.1 m/s. His average speed was close to the 200-meter sprint record (23.3 mph) that Usain Bolt achieved in 2009.

The company’s employees insist that although the H1 is nearly identical to human proportions and build, it can compete with the best athletes in the world. How so? The H1 weighs a comparatively trim 62 kilograms and has a total thigh and calf length of 80 cm.

Unitree G1 Humanoid Robot（No Secondary Development）

• Sleek & Durable Design: Standing at 132cm tall and weighing only approx. 35kg, the G1 is constructed with aerospace-grade aluminum alloy and carbon…
• High Flexibility & Safe Movement: Boasting 23 joint degrees of freedom (6 per leg, 5 per arm), it offers an extensive range of motion. For safety, it…
• Smart Interaction & Connectivity: Powered by an 8-core high-performance CPU and equipped with a depth camera and 3D LiDAR. It supports Wi-Fi 6 and…

To be honest, the person recording from the side appeared to be working far harder than the robot, yet the H1 just powered through the short run without even requiring any cables or support to stay upright. However, it’s important to remember that even the initial iterations of this platform were already pushing the boundaries; in 2024, for example, it was still the fastest full-sized humanoid in existence, reaching a speed of 3.3 meters per second.

High torque motors that Unitree really designed in-house and a fairly ingenious gear arrangement make up the H1’s propulsion system. Each leg contains five independent joints to offer it some degree of movement flexibility, and each arm has an additional four joints for good measure. With a depth camera and a 3D LiDAR unit that allows it to instantly adjust its footing by getting a real-time reading of the ground beneath it, this device has it all. The entire device is powered by a quite good 0.863 kilowatt hours and a 15 ampere hour battery.

All of this follows other humanoid speed tests that have recently appeared everywhere. However, a few months ago, at last year’s Humanoid Games, another machine kind of stole the show when it won the 100-meter event with a respectable time of 21.5 seconds—quite amazing. A short while later, another Chinese team reached a max speed of 10 meters per second.

Unitree’s founder stated that he expects a humanoid to race around the 100-meter track in less than ten seconds in a year. However, they will need to continue refining the balance system, strengthening the joints, and enhancing the control software in order to achieve that breakthrough. It’s not bad that the most recent run provides you a decent picture of how far these systems have come even in a very short amount of time; every little adjustment helps the robot manage its leg swings a little bit quicker without face planting or tripping over.
[Source]