Ars Technica shares some anecdotes from Steve Jobs in Exile, a new book released last month:
[Author Geoffrey] Cain reminds us, in stunning detail, that Jobs’ “exile” era at NeXT was not only critical to his evolution as a man and an entrepreneur, but that it mattered for the rest of us, too. The technological innovations that came out of NeXT — notably, the NeXTSTEP OS — continue to live on in what we now call both macOS and iOS. As Cain puts it, “NeXTSTEP was Steve’s attempt to make Unix taste sweet….”
[W]hile many tech nerds know that Tim Berners-Lee created the first World Wide Web server on a NeXT machine while working in Switzerland in 1990, few know that NeXT employees were wary of bringing the news to Jobs. Why? They feared his wrath “and that he would dismiss [the web] as ‘shit.’” (In another timeline, NeXT might itself have capitalized on this world-changing innovation….)
Perhaps one of the wildest anecdotes that Cain uncovered was how one voicemail changed computer history forever. In 1996, when Apple was solidly in its mediocre Performa era — and considering buying BeOS as the basis for its new operating system — a mid-level NeXT product manager asked aloud, “Why don’t we just frickin’ call Apple?” (NeXT was also struggling during this period.) And so someone did. As Cain writes:
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Garrett left the group of managers, walked back to his office, and took a risk. He picked up his designer phone and called the head of software at Apple. He left what he described as “one of my more inspired sales pitches” on the man’s voicemail, explaining why Apple should be looking at NeXT instead of Be… In any other universe, Garrett’s call might have gotten him fired. But in this timeline, it worked out. And thanks to him, Steve [Jobs] was about to enter Apple’s airspace once again.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader destinyland for sharing the article.
Whenever the topic of fusion power comes up, someone will say it’s only 10 years away from commercialization in an excited tone, and someone older or more cynical will point out that it’s been 10 years away since Eisenhower was president. So it’s with a certain-sized crystal of sodium chloride that we share the news here that the US-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems is applying to feed 400MWe into the grid there by the early 2030s.
The early 2030s is, notably, less than ten years from now.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems isn’t a bunch of nobodies out to suck up venture capital; they’re a talented group of researchers from MIT’s well-known plasma laboratory out to suck up lots of venture capital and hopefully build reactors along the way. So far, the second part is going better than the first: they’ve raised a couple billion dollars, which has let them make great strides in building their SPARC reactor– like crafting the big magnet we told you about in 2021. As that article describes, SPARC is the precursor to the later, larger ARC reactor they hope to hook to the grid in slightly under a decade. Alas, SPARC remains under construction as of this writing. ARC is evidently in the final planning stages, with a physical location determined and grid-tie applied for at the “Fall Line Fusion Power Station” in Virginia.
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CFS’s reactors are of the Tokamak type that has been favoured at universities since the 1970s. From China to Europe’s ITER who are also planning to produce power before another decade passes— though not, notably, into a power grid. While promising, Tokamaks aren’t the only game in town, either– steampunk startup General Fusion started making plasma last year, though while if it works it has some big advantages, that one is probably the traditional “ten years away” still.
What do you think? Will fusion power be in the grid before humans make it back to the moon? Add the flying-car potential of eVTOL and we might finally get close to the future we were promised.
The subsidy will support participation in 57 microcredential courses offered by IUA universities this year, spanning areas of national importance.
The Irish Universities Association (IUA) has welcomed the announcement made by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, confirming the 2026 Micro-credential Learner Fee Subsidy.
Designed to support lifelong learning and create opportunities for students, the subsidy will support participation in 57 microcredential courses offered by IUA universities in 2026, spanning areas of national importance such as digital transformation, artificial intelligence, sustainability, leadership, innovation, healthcare, engineering and business development.
Commenting on the announcement, IUA’s director general Paul Johnston said: “The reintroduction of the Micro-credential Learner Fee Subsidy is very welcome. It represents an important investment in lifelong learning, workforce development and Ireland’s future competitiveness.
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“By reducing the cost of participation in these courses by workers and their employers, the subsidy makes university learning more accessible to individuals while also helping their companies, particularly SMEs with limited training budgets, to invest in the skills of their workforce.”
According to the group, microcredentials and skill learning supports are critical to the wider educational ecosystem as, in 2025 when the previous subsidy was withdrawn, registrations for microcredential courses fell by almost 40pc across five universities.
Additionally, universities faced growing pressure on course viability, with some programmes in areas of national skills priority unable to proceed due to insufficient enrolments. These courses were primarily in areas such as climate and sustainability, housing and construction, engineering, digital capability, innovation and leadership.
The IUA stated that a consistent, multi-annual subsidy would provide universities with the confidence to plan ahead, repeat successful courses, invest in new provision and respond more effectively to emerging skills needs. It would also support targets set down by the European Union to achieve a 60pc adult participation rate in learning by 2030.
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“There is currently no certainty beyond this year,” said Johnston. “We would therefore call on the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and the Higher Education Authority to place the subsidy on a stable, multi-annual footing.
“A longer-term commitment would provide certainty for learners considering an investment in their own development, for employers seeking to build workforce capability and for universities seeking to sustain and grow high-quality flexible learning provision. Most importantly, it would send a clear signal that lifelong learning is becoming a permanent and valued feature of Ireland’s education and skills system.”
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Details for a potential deal haven’t been finalized yet.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
OpenAI could be the latest tech company that the US government takes a stake in. As first reported by NOTUS, “senior US officials” have had discussions with AI companies about potentially acquiring stakes in their firms.CNBC confirmed the talks and its source said that the talks between the Trump administration and OpenAI’s Sam Altman dated back to 2025 when the CEO first proposed the idea.
The discussions have led to a potential agreement that could see OpenAI voluntarily offer some equity to the US government, which would help the company achieve something similar to its proposed “Public Wealth Fund.” OpenAI first suggested this fund in an industrial policy outline published in April, which would “provide every citizen with a stake in AI-driven economic growth.” However, no official terms have been settled yet for this potential deal so it’s still unknown how much of an equity stake the Trump administration would take. Previously, the US government secured a 10 percent stake in Intel with a nearly $9 billion investment.
According to CNBC, the talks are still ongoing as Altman recently met with Washington policymakers to talk about AI regulation. Earlier this week, the Trump administration signed an executive order that would provide the US government with oversight on AI models before they’re released to the public. While there may have been some pressure from tech companies, OpenAI responded by saying it would comply with the order and let government regulators review its latest models before the public gets access.
We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Dreame AirStyle Era: two-minute review
The Dreame AirStyle Era is an eight-in-one multi-styler that works as a dryer and creates smooth, curly, bouncy, or straightened styles from a single device.
On paper, it looks like one for TechRadar’s best hair styler roundup, and it’s the follow-up to the seven-in-one AirStyle Pro, addressing some of that model’s most obvious gaps. Namely, adding a diffuser for the first time, and replacing the Pro’s flyaway attachment with a U-shaped straightening nozzle.
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The auto-wrap curl barrels remain the headline act. The 360-degree airflow draws hair in automatically and produces bouncy, natural-looking curls without the need to manually wind sections around a barrel.
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For fine to medium hair, the results are impressive, and at $349.99 / £349 / AU$699 the Era undercuts the Dyson Airwrap by $250 / £130 / AU$150 while producing comparable curl results as an Airwrap alternative. The smoothing brushes perform well too, and the diffuser is a welcome addition for anyone with naturally curly or wavy hair.
The Dreame AirStyle Era styling system includes interchangeable attachments for drying, smoothing, curling and volumizing (Image credit: Future)
The issues are harder to ignore, though. The maximum temperature of 176F / 80C — unchanged from the AirStyle Pro — will be a limiting factor for anyone with thicker or longer hair. You could rope in one of the best hair dryers for that first stage, but that rather defeats the point of an all-in-one tool. The straightening nozzle is also more fiddly than expected, not to mention time consuming.
None of these are dealbreakers on their own, but together they add up to a tool that falls slightly short of its potential. The Era is still the most complete multi-styler Dreame has produced, and the most attractive multi-styler I’ve tested, and at this price it’s a worthy Airwrap dupe, but it needs to be better than it is in a few key areas to make a truly compelling case.
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That’s the two-minute version; read on for my full Dreame AirStyle Era review.
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Dreame AirStyle Era review: price & availability
List price: $349.99 / £349 / AU$699
Available: US, Australia and UK
Launched: May 2026
The Dreame AirStyle Era costs $349.99 / £349 / AU$699 and is available directly from Dreame and Amazon in the US, Dreame in the UK, and from Dreame Australia as well as from several third-party retailers.
It sits closer in price to the $279.99 Shark FlexStyle in the US (which costs AU$499 in Australia), but is more akin in terms of features and attachments to the $599.99 / AU$849 Dyson Airwrap. It’s the follow-up to Dreame’s seven-in-one AirStyle Pro, which had a higher list price of $399.99 in the US but was rarely sold at that, while the latter’s list price is lower in Australia at AU$599.
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(There are also other, cheaper Dyson Airwrap dupes, but few come with the auto-wrap curl barrels of these four stylers.)
In comparison to its predecessor, the AirStyle Era swaps the Flyaway Attachment of the Pro for a U-shaped straightening nozzle and adds a diffuser for the first time, addressing one of the glaring gaps in the original’s feature set.
It’s also had a meaningful upgrade under the hood — the NTC temperature sensor now checks 1,000 times per second compared to 300 on the AirStyle Pro, which in practice means more consistent heat distribution and less risk of spikes that could cause damage.
Fast dryer, straightening nozzle, diffuser nozzle, 32mm auto-wrap barrels (L+R), hard smoothing brush, soft smoothing brush, round volumizing brush
The UK listing features different specifications than the US page – 28°C/55°C/80°C for temperatures and 50m/s, 57m/s, 65m/s for wind speeds. We tested the US model so use the US figures throughout.
Dreame AirStyle Era review: design
Pink and bronze colorway with pebbled leather-texture grip
Eight attachments covering drying, curling, straightening, smoothing and diffusing
Twist-on mechanism same as the AirStyle Pro but more secure
Comes with a storage box and bag
The Dreame AirStyle Era follows the same basic design as its predecessor (and all other multi-stylers for that matter) – a tube-shaped dryer onto which you twist different styling heads.
It comes in a single pink colorway, not too dissimilar to the pink Dyson Airwrap i.d, with bronze accents at either end, and a soft pebbled leather-texture grip running the length of the handle.
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It feels and looks solid and luxurious, and at 0.64lbs without the cord, it’s light enough that your arm doesn’t start aching even when working through a full set of curls.
The controls consist of two buttons with LEDs that let you cycle through the two heat settings. and three wind speeds. The cool shot is built into the top of the on/off slider rather than given its own dedicated button, and you enable and disable it by sliding up once for on, and sliding up again for off.
The AirStyle Era’s textured handle feels solid and luxurious and features dedicated controls for airflow, temperature and power settings (Image credit: Future)
These controls sit at a natural thumb position on the handle and toe a delicate line between being easy to control mid-style and difficult to press accidentally. This is much rarer on stylers than it should be.
At the base of the handle is a removable dual intake filter— an inner stainless steel mesh that keeps fine hair and particles out of the motor, and an outer mesh that prevents tangling.
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A small cleaning brush is included for maintenance, and the filter is straightforward to remove and reattach. Attached to this filter is the cord that runs to 9.2ft / 2.8m with a 360-degree anti-tangle swivel at the handle end.
Each of the eight attachments twist on using the same mechanism as the AirStyle Pro, but unlike the heads on the older model, the Era’s attachments securely lock into place because they’re also magnetic. This was a major complaint in our AirStyle Pro review and I’m glad it’s been resolved.
In terms of the attachments, the line-up is as follows:
Fast dryer: A concentrated nozzle for quick drying
Straightening nozzle: U-shaped head with dual airflow channels that direct air downward to smooth and straighten without heating plates
Diffuser: Bowl diffuser with prongs for dry curls without disrupting them
32mm auto-wrap barrels (x2): One for left curls, one for right; 360-degree airflow draws hair in to create curls without manually winding sections
Soft smoothing brush: Spherical teeth designed for fine, fragile, or chemically treated hair
Hard smoothing brush: Conical teeth for coarser, thicker, or heavily product-styled hair
Round volumizing brush: Wider tooth spacing to reduce tangling, with perforations to diffuse airflow and create lift at the roots
A close-up look at the AirStyle Era’s branding, filter and styling tools (Image credit: Future)
The two additions — the straightening nozzle and diffuser — address the most obvious gaps in the original AirStyle Pro’s feature set.
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If you wanted smooth, straight hair or defined natural curls from the Pro, you needed separate tools entirely. The Era fixes that, and the result is a kit that not only covers the full range of everyday styling needs, but it makes it the only styler that can truly rival the Dyson Airwrap in terms of scope and scale.
Elsewhere, everything ships in a leather-textured storage box that keeps the attachments organized and easy to find, plus you get a travel bag if you need something more portable.
Design score: 4.5 out of 5
Dreame AirStyle Era review: performance
Fast dryer attachment works well on fine to medium hair; may struggle with thicker, longer hair
Auto-wrap curling barrels produce good results but swapping between directions is fiddly
Straightening nozzle is less effective than the flyaway attachment it replaces
I started, as Dreame recommends, by removing most of the water in my hair with the fast dryer attachment. Like all multi-stylers of this type, you need to get hair to around 80% dry before switching to any of the styling attachments for best results, and the fast dryer handled that first stage well enough on my fine, shoulder-length hair.
It’s not the hottest of stylers though, and anyone with thicker or longer hair may find themselves reaching for a standalone dryer to get there faster. This was a complaint with the original Pro and hasn’t been fixed, it seems.
Dreame AirStyle Era soft smoothing brush (left), hard smoothing brush (center) and round volumizing brush (right) attachments (Image credit: Future)
The auto-wrap curling barrels are where the Era earns its keep. The 360-degree airflow draws hair in and wraps it around the barrel automatically, producing bouncy, defined curls without the need to manually wind sections. The results hold well, and the curls have a natural quality that can be hard to achieve with traditional tongs. The catch is that if you want the curls to go in different directions, you need to physically swap between the left and right attachment. This isn’t just tricky, because the attached barrel is hot, but it interrupts your rhythm. The Dyson Airwrap handles this on a single, multi-directional barrel, and once you’ve used that system it’s hard not to notice the difference here.
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The straightening nozzle is the most interesting new addition on paper — a U-shaped head that uses dual airflow channels to smooth and straighten without heating plates. It’s more intuitive than the flyaway attachment it replaced, while producing a very similar finish, but I found it more fiddly than I’d hoped. You can only smooth small sections at a time and this takes a while, which feels like a step backwards for anyone who relied on the flyaway attachment for quick touch-ups and frizz control.
The diffuser attachment is a new addition to the AirStyle Era compared to the previous AirStyle Pro and it’s great at enhancing natural curls and waves while reducing frizz (Image credit: Future)
The diffuser does what it should. For naturally curly or wavy hair, it distributes airflow evenly without disturbing the curl pattern, and the results are noticeably better than using the fast dryer attachment on the same hair type. It’s not doing anything the category hasn’t seen before, but its absence from the AirStyle Pro was a gap, and it’s good to have it here.
The fast dryer attachment quickly removes moisture before styling; it’s great for fine-to-medium hair but people with thicker and/or longer hair might get frustrated with the device’s temperatures (Image credit: Future)
Finally, the brushes. The soft and hard smoothing brushes both perform well. The soft brush is gentle on fine or fragile hair, with the airflow automatically redirecting downward when attached to leave your hair feeling smooth. The hard brush handles coarser or more tangled hair well, and separates knots without pulling.
In testing, my favorite brush is the round volumizing brush. It’s great for lifting roots and adding shape at the ends and it can even create loose curls.
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In terms of noise levels, Dreame claims it produces 76dB, and in testing I recorded 79dB on the highest speed setting. That’s slightly louder than the spec sheet suggests although not unreasonable for a tool of this type and it’s quiet enough to hear music or have a conversation.
The straightening nozzle (pictured) has replaced the flyaway attachment from the previous Pro model and helps smooth hair (Image credit: Future)
Performance score: 4 out of 5
Should you buy the Dreame AirStyle Era?
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Attribute
Notes
Rating
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Value
Competitively priced against the Dyson Airwrap and broader than the Shark FlexStyle in terms of attachments, though the performance doesn’t always match the promise.
3.5 / 5
Design
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Comfortable, well-balanced, and good-looking with an improved twist-on attachment mechanism.
4.5 / 5
Performance
Strong curling and volumizing results, but the straightening nozzle disappoints and temperature limits will be a factor for thicker hair types.
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4 / 5
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
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Dreame AirStyle Era: also consider
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Header Cell – Column 0
Dreame AirStyle Era (reviewed)
Dreame Airstyle Pro
Dyson Airwrap i.d.
Shark FlexStyle
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Weight (styler only, no cord):
0.64lbs / 0.29kg
0.6lbs / 0.3kg
1.4lbs / 0.6kg XXCHECK
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1.5 lbs / 0.7kg
Styler dimensions (L x W):
10.2 x 1.8in / 26 x 4.5cm
10.2 x 1.8in / 26 x 4.5cm
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10.7 x 1.9in / 27.2 x 4.8cm
11.3 x 1.7in / 28.7 x 4.4cm
Cord:
9.2ft / 2.8m
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9.2ft / 2.8m
8.5 ft / 2.7m
8ft / 2.4m
Temperatures:
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2 + cool shot
2 + cool shot
2 + cool shot
3 + cool shot
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Speeds:
3
3
3
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3
Wattage:
1,300W
1,300W
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1,300W
1,400W (US), 1,600W (UK)
List price:
$349.99 / £349
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$399.99 / £299 / AU$599
$599.99 / £479.99 / AU$849
$279.99 / £269.99 / AU$499.99
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How I tested the Dreame Airstyle Era
I used the AirStyle Era as my main styling tool for a week. During this time I used it to dry my hair, and tested all the different attachments, paying particular attention to the auto-wrap curlers.
I compared the styling results to what I managed to achieve with other similar stylers I’ve tested – including the Dyson Airwrap i.d. and Shark FlexStyle. I also assessed how easy the styler was to use and the effectiveness of its design and features.
Cloudflare said agentic traffic has surpassed human traffic for the first time in internet history.
Cloudflare has acquired Voidzero, the company behind the open source JavaScript tooling ecosystem Vite, for an undisclosed amount, at a time when working with AI coding agents is becoming the new norm.
Acquiring Voidzero will help Cloudflare expand AI-generated code analysis, it said, by unifying the Vite build tool, Vitest test runner, Rust-based Rolldown bundler and Oxc toolchain, natively, into its ecosystem.
“The best engineers I know are shipping more code than ever and writing less of it by hand. AI is doing more of the typing, so everything around it has to keep up,” said Matthew Prince, the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare.
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The company said that merging Cloudflare’s global edge network and developer platform with the “modern web’s industry-standard toolchain” will allow the company to create a “frictionless” deployment stack from local code to the global network.
“Our mission at Voidzero has always been to eliminate the fragmentation and performance bottlenecks of the modern web stack,” said Evan You, the founder and CEO of Voidzero.
“Joining forces allows us to keep the Vite ecosystem neutral, open and vendor-agnostic, while giving us the resources and global infrastructure to supercharge the developer experience for millions of engineers worldwide.” The two companies have been collaborating since 2024.
The Voidzero team, including You, will join Cloudflare following the acquisition, but will continue to lead Vite and its other tools.
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Alongside the acquisition, Cloudflare is also committing $1m to a Vite ecosystem fund to support independent maintainers and contributors, administered by Vite’s core team.
The Cloudflare Vite plugin alone has reached nearly 14m weekly downloads – or more than 10pc of Vite’s entire weekly volume – while AI usage at the company has grown by 600pc in a matter of months, according to Cloudflare.
The acquisition comes just a month after Cloudflare laid off 20pc of its workers, amounting to more than 1,100 employees, in preference for a slimmer, more AI-powered workforce.
The IT service provider, which claims to interface with around 20pc of the web, recently reported that agentic bots make up more than 57pc of internet traffic, with humans now only accounting less than 43pc.
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“That happened faster than I predicted”, said Prince in a post on X. “Thought it would be end of 2027, then early 2027, but agentic traffic [is] growing so fast that bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the internet’s history.”
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Taiwanese PC hardware and peripherals manufacturer Thermaltake showcased its Dockpower PSUs at Computex 2026 in Taiwan this week, describing them as the “next generation of PSU architecture.” Read Entire Article Source link
Wakura Onsen has introduced a new attraction that mixes traditional hot spring relaxation with some familiar Pokemon characters. This brand-new Pokemon Footbath is located in Yuttari Park on the Noto Peninsula, specifically in Nanao City, and was just opened just a stone’s throw away from the Nanao Bay beach.
We can thank Nanao City and the Pokemon With You Foundation for this amazing new place, which was created when local lawmakers and foundation representatives collaborated to come up with something that would catch tourists’ interest while also assisting the town in recovery. If you check behind the scenes, you’ll see that hot spring water from the Wakura source is channeled into a 15-meter basin. Then there’s the strange spout that resembles the hugely popular water-type Pokemon Gyarados, one of several other Pokémon statues and decorations scattered throughout the region. Pikachu, Vaporeon, Psyduck, Quaxly, Poliwag, and Politoed all appear. Many of the Pokémon were picked because they are water-types and so suitable for an outdoor footbath.
EPIC POKÉMON MODEL BUILDING KIT – Relive your thrilling training journey with this LEGO Pokémon Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise (72153) building…
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People can simply show up and remove their shoes and socks before resting down with their feet in the warm water, as the statues are all very inviting without being too intrusive. Some people simply hang out for a while, enjoying the views of the ocean and the overall peaceful atmosphere. You can visit every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., but bad weather may occasionally force the facility to close on short notice. The best part is that it’s absolutely free, and you can park nearby as needed. Oh, and they give you a small towel to dry your feet before re-lacing your shoes. There are also several fantastically themed manhole covers depicting the same Pokémon throughout the region, so fans should keep an eye out.
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Getting there from a major city may take some planning, but it is still rather simple. For example, you can take a train from Osaka and mix in some limited express and shinkansen trains before catching a bus to the park. This footbath is essentially a great way to help locals while also offering tourists with some fun and enjoyment, allowing people to experience the Wakura Onsen water for themselves in a family-friendly setting that is excellent for those of you die-hard franchise fans. [Source]
Apple’s next major Mac software update may mark the beginning of the end for Intel-powered Macs while also pushing deeper into AI-powered experiences. New rumors surrounding macOS 27 suggest Apple is preparing significant changes ranging from smarter Siri capabilities to refinements for its controversial “Liquid Glass” design language.
According to reports, macOS 27 could become the first version of macOS to substantially reduce or fully end support for Intel-based Macs, completing a transition Apple began in 2020 with the launch of its first Apple Silicon chips. While Apple has steadily shifted focus toward M-series processors over the past several years, macOS 27 may represent the clearest sign yet that the company is ready to leave Intel hardware behind. Although this is not new news – Apple was already looking to phase out Intel-powered Macs when it rolled out macOS Tahoe last year.
The timing would align with Apple’s typical software support cycle. Intel Macs have already started missing out on some Apple Intelligence features introduced during the AI push across iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Ending support entirely would allow Apple to focus more aggressively on AI, machine learning, and hardware-specific optimizations designed around Apple Silicon.
Apple appears ready to fully embrace its AI-first Mac future
One of the biggest rumored changes involves Siri. Reports suggest Apple is continuing work on a significantly smarter version of the assistant capable of handling more natural conversations, contextual awareness, and deeper app integration. While Apple’s AI rollout has faced criticism for moving more slowly than rivals like Google and OpenAI, macOS 27 could become an important part of the company’s broader Apple Intelligence strategy.
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The update may also refine Apple’s newer “Liquid Glass” visual style, which reportedly focuses on translucent layers, reflective interface elements, and smoother animations across macOS. Early reactions to the design direction have been mixed, with some users praising the futuristic appearance while others argue it prioritizes aesthetics over clarity and usability.
MacBookUnsplash
Apple is also expected to continue integrating AI-powered productivity tools throughout macOS. Features involving summarization, writing assistance, smarter search, and proactive recommendations could become more deeply embedded into the operating system as Apple tries to make AI feel native to the Mac experience instead of functioning as a separate tool.
For users still relying on Intel Macs, however, the rumored support changes may become the biggest story. Millions of Intel-based MacBooks and desktops remain in active use, especially in businesses, schools, and creative industries. If Apple significantly cuts compatibility, many users could face difficult upgrade decisions sooner than expected.
macOS 27 may reveal Apple’s long-term strategy for the Mac
The rumored update reflects a broader shift happening across Apple’s ecosystem. The company increasingly designs software around its own custom chips, allowing tighter integration between hardware and software features. Apple Silicon Macs already deliver major advantages in battery life, performance efficiency, and AI processing compared to older Intel systems.
MacBookUnsplash
Ending Intel support would also simplify development for Apple and third-party app makers by reducing the number of architectures they need to support. However, it risks frustrating long-time Mac users whose devices may still feel perfectly functional despite losing future software support.
Apple is expected to officially unveil macOS 27 during WWDC 2026, where the company will likely detail its next-generation AI strategy across Macs, iPhones, and iPads. Until then, many of the reported features remain speculative, but the rumors strongly suggest Apple is preparing one of the most significant transitions in Mac history since the move away from Intel first began.
Those receiving aid in the famine-threatened, war-torn territory told support will remain
Humanitarian organization World Food Programme (WFP) says one of its systems was breached, and around 600,000 Gazan households receiving aid had their details improperly accessed.
Its announcement, made via Telegram on May 31, confirmed there was “a security incident” in the self-registration application used by Gazans to register for aid and applicants’ names, ID numbers, phone numbers, and location information were among the data types accessed.
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“We understand this may be concerning, and we want to assure you that protecting your data and privacy is our top priority,” the WFP said. “The program is treating this situation with the utmost seriousness and priority.”
The organization said it temporarily suspended the registration platform to urgently apply the necessary security improvements.
Its most recent update on the situation came on June 2, when it said the platform was still down, but added that aid recipients did not need to do anything, while their support would continue to be delivered uninterrupted.
“The WFP wants to assure all those registered via the link that food assistance, cash assistance, nutritional supplementation, and all other WFP programs are continuing as usual,” it said.
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“If you are already registered on the Self-Registration Application (SRA), your registration remains valid. There is no need to update, delete, or re-register your information at this time.”
WFP told The New Humanitarian, which first reported the story, that the attack was detected on May 14, and confirmed the scale to be in the region of 600,000 households.
The news organization also claimed, citing a whistleblower’s account of matters, that an anonymous “independent expert” contacted WFP’s Palestine team, alerting it to vulnerabilities in the SRA two days before the organization detected the breach.
The Register contacted WFP’s Rome headquarters for more details, but it did not immediately respond.
This represents around 77 percent of the country’s population, and an estimated 80 percent of the population is unemployed, unable to earn the money required to pay for a nutritionally sound diet.
WFP delivers wheat flour, high-energy biscuits, and fortified snacks to families, community kitchens, and bakeries in its effort to push back famine, as well as facilitating cash transfers.
The organization is also helping individuals get back into paid work, maintains roads, and says that when conditions allow, it will stay in the region and help local people rebuild communities, markets, and other food systems. ®
Performance-wise, there’s no pedal-assist or throttle lag, as I’ve experienced on some cheaper ebikes. I thought this would feel unnervingly fast, but the sturdy frame and wide tires are incredibly stable. I felt totally comfortable going fast (for an ebike). I avoided taking corners and tight turns at full speed because the bike is so heavy, but otherwise, I felt self-assured during testing.
With a 505-pound on-bike weight limit, the Nomad 2 has a higher load capacity than other ebikes I’ve tested, particularly folding models. Velotric also advertises a 1,000-pound towing capacity. That number registers impressively high to me, but I haven’t tested the claim. Even so, I’m skeptical of how long the battery would last while towing 1,000 pounds of cargo.
The battery range is pretty standard for a full-size ebike, though impressive for a model of this heft. Velotric advertises a 65-mile range for pedal-assist and 45 miles for throttle, and I appreciate that both ranges are listed. That said, I’ve maxed out at around 37 miles on the throttle and at around 47 miles with pedal assist. To be fair, I’m often riding on hills and bumpy surfaces, which also drains the battery faster. I also enjoy the IPX7 waterproof battery housing, as I’m liable to get caught out in the rain during the shoulder seasons of southwest Montana, where I live. My Rad Powerbike can’t handle rain with its partially enclosed battery, so I’m more likely to take the Velotric out if the weather is iffy.
An Off-Road Delight
Photograph: Maggie Slepian
I tested this bike for commuting purposes on the paved roads of my very suburban town. I also used it off-road on bike paths, gravel, rutted dirt, and in open fields. It worked well in all scenarios. The massive 4-inch Kenda tires, which came perfectly inflated, do a wonderful job absorbing impact while rolling easily over obstacles. I encountered some ruts and ridges that I thought would yield a painful thud, but the bike handled them smoothly.
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