- Helldivers 2 dev nerfed everyone’s favorite shotgun because it was ‘hands down the best sniper rifle’ in the game PC Gamer
- In a move Helldivers 2 soldiers call “uncalled for,” devs nerf shotgun key to the war effort as it was “hands down the best sniper rifle” in the game Gamesradar
- Hours After Liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 Players Spot Enormous Cloaked Ships Over Automaton Worlds IGN
- Helldivers 2’s latest patch adds blizzards and sandstorms, rebalances bunker and personnel missions Rock Paper Shotgun
- Helldivers 2 Bots Back From Malevelon Loss Stronger Than Ever Kotaku
Tag Archives: everyones
How to See the ‘Green Comet’ Everyone’s Talking About
Deep in the Stone Age, when Neanderthals still lived alongside Homo sapiens, our ancestors might have been agog at a green light in the night sky. Now, that light—C/2022 E3 (ZTF) (more familiarly, the Green Comet)—is back.
The Green Comet’s highly elliptical orbit means it will take a long time for it to swing past Earth again—about 50,000 years, to be specific. And that’s if it repeats its 50,000-year sojourn, which it may not.
Astronomers discovered the comet in March 2022 using the Samuel Oschin robotic telescope at the Zwicky Transient Facility. It passed perihelion (when it is closest to the Sun) on January 12.
Observers in the U.S. can see the comet now through early February, potentially with the naked eye if you’re in a dark viewing area, but your chances will be better using binoculars or a telescope. The best time to see the comet is in the predawn hours, according to NASA.
The comet will make its closest approach to our planet on February 2. The closest approach will take it about 0.29 AU (about 27 million miles) from Earth, according to EarthSky.
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Currently, the comet is toward the constellation Boötes and near Hercules, EarthSky reports. (If you’re having trouble finding the comet’s position, you can consult a handy interactive sky chart.) The comet’s location makes it difficult for observers in the Southern Hemisphere to see. From its current location in the night sky, its projected path charts it past Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper), with it passing by Camelopardis at the time of its closest approach.
Comets glow thanks to a combination of their chemical composition and sunlight. Comets that pass near the Sun are illuminated and warmed by its energy, causing molecules on their surface to evaporate and fluoresce. Comet heads glow green when they contain cyanogen or diatomic carbon, according to NASA.
The Green Comet may get as bright as magnitude 5 by the time it’s closest to Earth, according to EarthSky. The lower the number, the brighter the object. The full Moon’s apparent magnitude is about -11, and the faintest objects seen by the Hubble Space Telescope are about magnitude 30, according to Brittanica. The dimmest stars that our naked eye can see are about magnitude 6.
While the comet may reach a brightness of magnitude 5, it’ll probably be helpful to use a pair of binoculars or a telescope if you’re having difficulty spotting the object on a clear night.
The incoming space rock is not the only recent green comet; in 2018, the comet 46P/Wirtanen was bright enough for observers to see with the naked eye, and in 2021, the Comet Leonard glowed green as the ice-ball made its cosmic trajectory.
So keep your eyes up on the clear nights to come. If you see something with a faint green glow, it’s probably our newest cosmic visitor.
More: Mega Comet Arriving From the Oort Cloud Is 85 Miles Wide
A U of T epidemiologist on the myth of immunity debt and the real reason everyone’s getting sick
“I was appalled to see the prime minister making those comments”: A U of T epidemiologist on the myth of immunity debt and the real reason everyone’s getting sick
Colin Furness debunks the popular theory and explains how Covid-19 may be weakening our immune systems in the long run
If you have a kid at home, there’s a good chance they spent the last couple of months snotty, feverish, barfy or worse. Young people in particular have been pummelled by the tridemic of RSV, influenza and Covid-19—and you’ve probably heard that “immunity debt” is to blame. Even Justin Trudeau has parroted this popular theory that our immune systems have gotten weak after two years of coddling behind masks and under lockdowns. There’s just one problem: “It is totally, totally wrong,” says Colin Furness, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information who believes that Covid infections, not public health measures, are to blame for weakened immunity. Here, he explains why.
For weeks now, it has felt like the entire city is sniffling or worse. Is the tridemic something we could have predicted?
It’s predictable that we’d be seeing higher virus rates at this time of year, when we’re spending more time inside sharing air. But the severity of the illnesses has been unexpected. I wouldn’t say that what has happened over the past couple of months was predictable—the Covid we’re dealing with today is not the Covid of previous years. The virus has changed its game, which is what viruses do to be successful. They have to figure out how to fool people’s immune systems, which they can do by mutating, just as the new Kraken variant has. The flu and the common cold are both incredibly good at mutating, which is why they’re back year after year. And they can also reinfect people by figuring out how to hinder the immune system. This is what measles does, and it’s looking more and more like this is what’s happening with Covid: the virus is harming immune systems, which is why annual mainstays like RSV and influenza have been so much worse.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that their flu was way worse than their experience with Covid. But you’re saying Covid is to blame?
Exactly. I would bet that the people who had a really bad flu recently also had Covid in the past eight months or so. The same is true of young people and the amount of severe RSV we saw this season.
I thought our immune systems had just gotten weaker because we spent two years behind masks.
This idea of deferred immunity or “immunity debt” has become very popular. Even the prime minister was behind the podium last month saying that mask wearing and public health measures were to blame for all the sick children. I understand why the public may see this as plausible, because so many aspects of our bodies and minds do work that way. If you don’t exercise your muscles, you’re going to get weaker; if you don’t practise most skills, they’re going to get rusty. So we have this mental model in which the idea makes a lot of sense, but the problem is that our immune systems aren’t a muscle or a skill—it’s not a use it or lose it situation.
What kind of situation is it?
A metaphor that I have been using imagines our immune system as a photo collection. It takes a snapshot of every pathogen it encounters so that it can recognize the bad guy for next time. This is how our immune systems fight back. The photos don’t fade because they aren’t looked at for a few years; they just sit there until they are needed. When a virus mutates, it’s trying to disguise itself to evade detection. But, with Covid, the virus is also punching holes, fading or wearing out the photos—making them less and less useful as tools for identifying other viruses. Instead of immunity debt, we should be thinking about immunity theft.
On a scale from educated guess to proven scientific fact, where does your theory fall?
This isn’t my theory—American immunologist Anthony Leonardi has been the leading voice on the idea that Covid is suppressing immunity. He first introduced the premise over a year ago, and since then we’ve seen mounting evidence. That’s how science works: you have a theory and then you collect evidence that either supports or refutes it. And, in the case of immunity debt, the evidence just isn’t there. You’ve probably heard this theory of a “double cohort,” meaning two years’ worth of infants and toddlers who are now being exposed to RSV for the first time, but that already happened in fall 2021. And that theory doesn’t explain why children are getting so sick.
And immunity theft does?
That is what a lot of the evidence is pointing toward. Last year, I started following pediatric hospitalization rates in the US, which were extremely high because of the Omicron wave. I was worried that we would have a similar situation here in Canada, where our health care system really couldn’t handle the stress. I made a big stink about it, but in the end, I was happy to be wrong—or at least partly wrong. We did have record numbers of RSV in fall 2021 and winter 2022. This year, the overall infection rate was lower, but instead we had an alarming number of very sick children, which is why we had the overcrowded hospitals and children on ventilators. So what happened? What is the difference between this season and last season? The answer is that, last year, young people were, by and large, just starting to get Covid, whereas by the time RSV came this year, a large majority of young people had already been sick with Covid. And immunity theft may have evolved over the past year as well.
You mentioned evidence. Have there been studies to support what you’re saying?
There have been studies looking at the way Covid causes T-cell exhaustion. We now know that the virus can directly infect T cells (the guardian cells that spot infections and help defend the immune system), which we didn’t know before. There was also a study conducted by a group of pediatric specialists at several American hospitals where they looked at three groups of babies. The first group had RSV and Covid at the same time with very high viral loads, which sounds bad; the second group had RSV and Covid at the same time with low viral loads, which sounds less bad; the third group was babies who had RSV and had previously recovered from Covid. It was this last group that was by far the sickest—the ones that had to be ventilated. But it was a small study. You need more participants in order to get a consistent result. And of course it could be a giant coincidence, but it is frighteningly in keeping with this idea of immune system harm.
There are some experts who say that the threat of RSV is behind us and that the flu also seems to be winding down. Doesn’t that suggest things are getting better?
RSV season is like clockwork: it arrives late fall through December, so the fact that rates are coming down doesn’t tell us anything. And flu rates may be declining at this moment, but the flu is a very slippery customer. The virus changes every year, and the timing of the peak is always different. I think we need to watch what happens over the next few weeks: if we’ve got a population of immune-damaged babies and small children, the flu could get really ugly. And the other thing to look out for are fungal infections, which are no big deal with a healthy population, but if we’re dealing with a population with weakened immune systems, that could get really bad.
And, still, the prime minister and even Ontario’s chief medical officer of health are saying that masks are part of the problem. Does that just make you want to scream?
I was appalled to see the prime minister making those comments. And then, shortly after that, he was at a mall pressing his face up against a bunch of children—no mask. That’s the big problem with the false narrative of immunity debt: it’s encouraging people to do the exact opposite of what we need to be doing to keep everyone safe. You hear people saying that we should all just get out there and expose ourselves, but there could not be a worse strategy. I know it’s the same story and people are tired of it, but we should all still be trying not to get Covid. And, if you have had Covid, you want to be even more careful about avoiding other infections. I get it: people are tired and they just want to get back to the happy normality of 2019, which is very appealing. I want that too—I’m just not willing to step away from science to find comfort.
Jenna Bush Hager Caught Everyone’s Eye With Unforgettable Sexy Nighttime Outfit
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Jenna Bush Hager’s fashion game doesn’t go unnoticed on Today With Hoda and Jenna, but she’s now taking her impeccable style from daytime to nighttime TV.
In late November, she appeared on Andy Cohen‘s Watch What Happens Live with her co-host Hoda Kotb. As the three chatted about a variety of topics, fans couldn’t help but be mesmerized by Jenna’s wardrobe choice. Instead of the usually demure dresses folks see her in for Today‘s fourth hour, she chose to bring on the allure in a sexy black sleeveless body-con dress.
The dress not only mid-length, it also featured a halter-like neckline and subtle colorful stripes on the corset area. The Sisters First author accessorized the outfit with a pair of strapped heels, her frequently-seen gold necklaces and bracelets. Making sure to keep the focus on the frock, Jenna wore her blonde hair in classic beach waves and neutral makeup.
Jenna’s clearly not afraid to spice up her wardrobe these days, and it definitely seems to be working for her. She’s even been trying out new pieces while appearing on the NBC daytime talk show. In fact, she surprised audience members when she stepped out in a burgundy velvet suit as a subtle nod to 1970s fashion just a few weeks back.
Speaking with Good Housekeeping, she revealed that she puts together her ensembles. “I think clothes are fun,” she told us. “[Hoda and I] don’t have our own stylist, we do our own thing.”
Unfortunately, there isn’t information online about where she got her dress for the late night TV appearance. But luckily, we did some digging and found similar options that won’t break the bank. Take a look at them below while you wait to see what look Jenna pulls off next:
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Why Everyone’s Obsessed With ChatGPT, a Mindblowing AI Chatbot
There’s a new AI bot in town: ChatGPT. And you’d better take notice.
The tool, from a power player in artificial intelligence, lets you type questions using natural language that the chatbot answers in conversational, if somewhat stilted, language. The bot remembers the thread of your dialog, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses.
It’s a big deal. The tool seems pretty knowledgeable if not omniscient — it can be creative and its answers can sound downright authoritative. A few days after its launch, more than a million people are trying out ChatGPT.
But its creator, the for-profit research lab called OpenAI, warns that ChatGPT “may occasionally generate incorrect or misleading information,” so be careful. Here’s a look at why this ChatGPT is important and what’s going on with it.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can accomplish. You can ask it countless questions and often will get an answer that’s useful.
For example, you can ask it encyclopedia questions like, “Explaining Newton’s laws of motion.” You can tell it, “Write me a poem,” and when it does, say, “Now make it more exciting.” You ask it to write a computer program that’ll show you all the different ways you can arrange the letters of a word.
Here’s the catch: ChatGPT doesn’t exactly know anything, though. It’s an AI trained to recognize patterns in vast swaths of text harvested from the internet, then further trained with human assistance to deliver more useful better dialog. The answers you get may sound plausible and even authoritative, but they might well be entirely wrong, as OpenAI warns.
Chatbots have been of interest for years to companies looking for ways to help customers get what they need and to and AI researchers trying to tackle the Turing Test. That’s the famous “Imitation Game” that computer scientist Alan Turing proposed in 1950 as a way to gauge intelligence: Can a human judge conversing with a human and with a computer tell which is which?
What kinds of questions can you ask?
You can ask anything, though you might not get an answer. OpenAI suggests a few categories, like explaining physics, asking for birthday party ideas and getting programming help.
I asked it to write a poem, and it did, though I don’t think any literature experts would be impressed. I then asked it to make it more exciting, and lo, ChatGPT pumped it up with words like battlefield, adrenaline, thunder and adventure.
One wacky example shows how ChatGPT is willing to just go for it in domains where people would fear to tread: a command to write “a folk song about writing a rust program and fighting with lifetime errors.”
ChatGPT’s expertise is broad, and its ability to follow a conversation is notable. When I asked it for words that rhymed with “purple,” it offered a few suggestions, then when I followed up “How about with pink?” it didn’t miss a beat. (Also, there are a lot more good rhymes for “pink.”)
When I asked, “Is it easier to get a date by being sensitive or being tough?” GPT responded, in part, “Some people may find a sensitive person more attractive and appealing, while others may be drawn to a tough and assertive individual. In general, being genuine and authentic in your interactions with others is likely to be more effective in getting a date than trying to fit a certain mold or persona.”
You don’t have to look far to find accounts of the bot blowing people’s minds. Twitter is awash with users displaying the AI’s prowess at generating art prompts and writing code. Some have even proclaimed “Google is dead,” along with the college essay. We’ll talk more about that below.
Who built ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is the computer brainchild of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research company. Its mission is to develop a “safe and beneficial” artificial general intelligence system or to help others do so.
It’s made splashes before, first with GPT-3, which can generate text that can sound like a human wrote it, and then DALL-E, which creates what’s now called “generative art” based on text prompts you type in.
GPT-3, and the GPT 3.5 update on which ChatGPT is based, are examples of AI technology called large language models. They’re trained to create text based on what they’ve seen, and they can be trained automatically — typically with huge quantities of computer power over a period of weeks. For example, the training process can find a random paragraph of text, delete a few words, ask the AI to fill in the blanks, compare the result to the original and then reward the AI system for coming as close as possible. Repeating over and over can lead to a sophisticated ability to generate text.
Is ChatGPT free?
Yes, for now at least. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned on Sunday, “We will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering.” OpenAI charges for DALL-E art once you exceed a basic free level of usage.
What are the limits of ChatGPT?
As OpenAI emphasizes, ChatGPT can give you wrong answers. Sometimes, helpfully, it’ll specifically warn you of its own shortcomings. For example, when I asked it who wrote the phrase “the squirming facts exceed the squamous mind,” ChatGPT replied, “I’m sorry, but I am not able to browse the internet or access any external information beyond what I was trained on.” (The phrase is from Wallace Stevens’ 1942 poem Connoisseur of Chaos.)
ChatGPT was willing to take a stab at the meaning of that expression: “a situation in which the facts or information at hand are difficult to process or understand.” It sandwiched that interpretation between cautions that it’s hard to judge without more context and that it’s just one possible interpretation.
ChatGPT’s answers can look authoritative but be wrong.
The software developer site StackOverflow banned ChatGPT answers to programming questions. Administrators cautioned, “because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking or looking for correct answers.”
You can see for yourself how artful a BS artist ChatGPT can be by asking the same question multiple times. I asked whether Moore’s Law, which tracks the computer chip industry’s progress increasing the number of data-processing transistors, is running out of steam, I got two answers. One pointed optimistically to continued progress, while the other pointed more grimly to the slowdown and the belief “that Moore’s Law may be reaching its limits.”
Both ideas are common in the computer industry itself, so this ambiguous stance perhaps reflects what human experts believe.
With other questions that don’t have clear answers, ChatGPT often won’t be pinned down.
The fact that it offers an answer at all, though, is a notable development in computing. Computers are famously literal, refusing to work unless you follow exact syntax and interface requirements. Large language models are revealing a more human-friendly style of interaction, not to mention an ability to generate answers that are somewhere between copying and creativity.
What’s off limits?
ChatGPT is designed to weed out “inappropriate” requests, a behavior in line with OpenAI’s mission “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”
If you ask ChatGPT itself what’s off limits, it’ll tell you: any questions “that are discriminatory, offensive, or inappropriate. This includes questions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise discriminatory or hateful.” Asking it to engage in illegal activities is also a no-no.
Is this better than Google search?
Asking a computer a question and getting an answer is useful, and often ChatGPT delivers the goods.
Google often supplies you with its suggested answers to questions and with links to websites that it thinks will be relevant. Often ChatGPT’s answers far surpass what Google will suggest, so it’s easy to imagine GPT-3 is a rival.
But you should think twice before trusting ChatGPT. As with Google itself and other sources of information like Wikipedia, it’s best practice to verify information from original sources before relying on it.
Vetting the veracity of ChatGPT answers takes some work because it just gives you some raw text with no links or citations. But it can be useful and in some cases thought provoking. You may not see something directly like ChatGPT in Google search results, but Google has built large language models of its own and uses AI extensively already in search.
So ChatGPT is doubtless showing the way toward our tech future.
Raw recap & reactions (Oct. 24, 2022): Rhea Ripley is everyone’s daddy
We’re one week away from Crown Jewel, which is still a thing. What did Raw have in store for us? Read below the fold to find out. Oh, but first, read Claire’s blog because she’s dope and the blog is magic. Not Daddy Magic, but more like David Copperfield.
Let’s talk Raw!
You Know Her Name
Shoutout to the fan with the “Eddie is your real father” sign. I see you, sir, and salute your disrespect. The second MVP of Raw’s opening segment was Rhea Ripley. She owned everything the second the Judgment Day hit the ring. Whether it was the looks, her body language, or her side comments (emphatically backing up Dom’s comment about being built differently), she killed it. That continued during Finn Balor’s match with Karl Anderson. Even with this story about Finn feeling betrayed by the club that he started, Rhea steals the show. Even with a good match between Karl and Finn, Rhea is the star. Which happens when she power slams Luke Gallows. Not only did she power slam a man that large, but she talked her ish when he hit the ground.
Rhea’s kept the pain train going when she hit the ring and hit Anderson harder where the sun doesn’t shine when the ref turned his back. That painful blow was just enough for Finn to get the W.
I don’t like this story as much as the one with Rey Mysterio, and I do hope this detour is purely for Crown Royal Jewel reasons. But it’s still entertaining mostly because of everything Rhea does or doesn’t do.
Extracurriculars
For the Love of Mac and Cheese
Miz wrestled R-Truth based on a dispute about North Carolina macaroni and cheese. I can’t speak on their mac and cheese but my grandmother from South Carolina makes the absolute best macaroni and cheese. The Carolinas are close enough where I may side with Truth on this one.
But I digress. Miz initially hit the ring for some Dexter Lumis updates. Johnny Wrestling says Miz isn’t telling the truth about his beef with Dexter or what happened to Ciampa. Saying “truth” that many times in a WWE ring is like saying Candyman five times in a mirror. Except you get R-Truth and not Tony Todd. Hence the match over Carolina food.
I was not entertained even though I agree with Truth’s motivation. Hopefully we get some resolution to this Dexter/Miz thing next week.
Nikki No Longer a Superhero
Bayley on one side of the ring. Bianca Belair on the other side of the ring. No title on the line, no nothing on the line really. Sure, Damage CNTRL beat up Candice LeRae earlier but there was nothing on the line here for either woman, which feels like a miss after their last encounter. But it’s indicative of a show where a bunch of things happened that didn’t really add up to much. Bianca and Bayley are great wrestlers. Of course they put on a technically sound match. The problem is the lack of stakes. We did this already: Damage CNTRL beats up someone, Bianca comes to the rescue, a match ensues. At a certain point, this angle needs another gear.
Is Nikki Cross that gear?
Nikki, sans superhero gear, appeared in the third act. The ref tossed out Dakota & IYO. But before he got the chance to be extra exaggerated with his motions, Nikki jumped from the top rope and took out the ref along with Dakota & IYO. She turned her attention to Bianca, which allowed Bayley to get the W, and then beat up Bayley as well. Nikki stood tall as the show finished.
Seeing this version of Nikki on Raw is cool. Not sure that’s the big angle to end the show though. Especially this show, which was underwhelming at best.
Peace Up…
Seth Rollins fears Mustafa Ali. That’s the bottomline for anyone following this story. The United States champion interjected himself in a match between Ali and Austin Theory. He coached Theory from commentary, while Theory simply wanted a piece of Ali because he’s a bully who beats up on people who don’t have the glide path he does. So all of this fits pretty neatly together.
This was a good match though! Ali is a natural babyface and Theory makes good guys look great. Without Seth distracting the referee, Ali wins this match. But, yeah, that happened. So Theory goes home with the win, while Ali gets beat up after the match because Seth believes he’s not on his level. Desperate heel move that I love and I hope their match delivers on this promise.
But what’s going on with Theory? One week he’s not on Raw but shows up on NXT teasing a cash-in for the NXT championship. Then that doesn’t happen and he shows up on Raw. I’m confused and, as always, need someone to make it make sense.
ELIAS!
I’m a huge Elias fan. I admit that and feel no shame. So I’m thrilled whenever he picks up a W. After last week, I figured the United States championship was in his future. Maybe it is, but as of this week, he’s entering something with Riddle at his side. Possibly. Alpha Academy rudely interrupted Elias and Riddle, resulting in a match between Gable and Elias. The best moment of the match came when Gable went for a beautiful moonsault and caught an Elias knee lift right in his jaw. It was timed perfectly and a thing of beauty.
More importantly, Elias picked up the win. Otis attacked him after the match and Riddle ran down for the assist. Okay match with one really cool moment.
Guess What?
Omos beat up some jobbers…which is supposed to scare Braun Strowman? Okay, sure, Jan.
Wrestling…God?
Baron Corbin wrestled Johnny Gargano because the latter pissed off JBL. How? His mere existence and the fact he spent a decade in single A. Definitely a JBL thing to say and do so I’m not mad at that. But Corbin, at least in the ring, doesn’t scream “wrestling god.” In fact, he barely screams at all. Corbin is a bit boring as a wrestler. The most entertaining part of this match was Johnny Wrestling taking JBL’s hat and mocking the Texan.
Of course, he loss the match as a result of all that mocking since he let himself get way too distracted. But I just wasn’t digging the match as a whole. I love what JBL is doing but I don’t think he and Corbin are a good fit. JBL is a larger than life personality and Corbin barely has a personality.
Someone asked Baron if he’s a good and he said yes when he should’ve said no.
This was not a great show. In fact, it might be the worst Raw in a long time. The show had a spark when it started but quickly flamed out.
Grade: C-
That’s my grade and I’m sticking to it. Your turn.
Everyone’s asking me about the Galaxy Z Flip 4, and I can’t stop singing its praises
I’ve been using the Galaxy Z Flip 4, the latest in Samsung’s foldable flip phone series, for around two weeks as I write this. I wasn’t going to review the device as I wouldn’t get a unit on time here in India, but Samsung was still kind enough to send me one to try it out, and man, am I glad it did, because this phone is nearly perfect for a foldable series that’s only been on the market for three years.
I’ve prefered the Galaxy Z Flip line over the Galaxy Z Fold series since day one as I prefer a regular phone that folds instead of a phone that turns into a tablet. But it has limitations that have kept me from spending money on one (despite the surprisingly attractive price tag) and using any of our Galaxy Z Flip review units for more than a few weeks.
The Galaxy Z Flip 4 is just too damn good
The lack of a zoom camera is one of those limitations, and the other has been the considerably small battery and slow charging that we found on the first two Galaxy Z Flip models (or three models, if we count the Z Flip 5G separately). Well, the Z Flip 4 doesn’t have a zoom camera, either, but Samsung has thankfully addressed both battery life and battery charging speed, making it nearly perfect.
The Galaxy Z Flip 4 pretty much has it all you expect from a Samsung flagship, including surprisingly great battery life despite a battery capacity that’s still not all that high (I assume a major contribution here is from the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor). And the Z Flip 4 has got more and more folks interested in the lineup, including my boss Danny, who’s been team Galaxy Fold since the beginning.
In fact, I also got asked about it by my colleague and SamMobile co-founder Daniel, and I just couldn’t stop singing its praises. The Galaxy Z Flip 4 is really special, and it’s the first Samsung foldable that I’ve started recommending to anyone who asks if it’s worth it. Again, it’s not a phone for anyone who wants a full-featured flagship camera experience, but for anyone else, it’s excellent.
I do understand that there are still some things that need work. The plastic foldable screen continues to be a liability waiting to happen, but bendable glass for phones is still mostly a pipe dream so the plastic screen is something we will have to make do with for a few more years. Samsung also needs to work on making the crease on its foldable displays less prominent. I think the Z Flip 4’s crease is less prominent than the Z Flip 3’s, but that might just be a placebo effect as I don’t have a Z Flip 3 to compare them side by side.
All that said, if you want to know if you should get a Galaxy Z Flip 4, I’d say the answer is yes as long as you’re okay with not having a zoom camera on the rear. You could wait until next year to see what further improvements Samsung makes to the Galaxy Z Flip series, but if waiting isn’t your thing, just go out and buy this phone.
And if foldables aren’t your thing and you’re shopping in a similar price segment, there’s always the Galaxy S22 or Galaxy S22+ to fall back on, although I’d recommend only buying the Snapdragon variant. Or rather, have a little patience and wait to see what the Galaxy S23 series will bring to the table next year. We’re merely 4-5 months away from the Galaxy S23’s launch and you wouldn’t want to have buyer’s remorse just a few months later by opting for the S22 or S22+ right now (unless you get an excellent discount).
SamsungGalaxy Z Flip 4
Everyone’s a Landlord—Small-Time Investors Snap Up Out-of-State Properties
Jack Cronin found San Francisco-area homes too expensive or too far from the city center to buy when he lived there in 2020. The tech worker still wanted a piece of the hottest housing market of his lifetime, so he started looking farther afield.
Last year, the 28-year-old used a website called Roofstock, which provides listings and data for investors interested in rental properties, to buy a three-bedroom home outside Jackson, Miss., for $265,000. Mr. Cronin, who now lives in New York City, has never visited Jackson nor met the tenants in his home, lightly landscaped with bushes and crepe myrtle trees. It’s enough to know that a management company collects $2,300 a month in rent for him.
Why everyone’s wearing NASA-branded clothes
Once you start noticing them, it’s hard to stop.
There have been several trend pieces about the phenomenon in recent years. And NASA’s multimedia liaison, Bert Ulrich — who oversees the use of NASA logos in film, TV and on apparel — confirms the demand for NASA branded apparel is far from petering out, at least based on the number of logo deals he’s been approving. He’s been in his role for more than two decades, so he’s seen the trends ebb and flow. (Mostly flow)
Some of the latest sales boom can be traced back to a surprising place: American luxury fashion house Coach, which debuted a line of NASA-branded apparel in 2017, Ulrich told CNN Business.
Coach originally approached NASA to ask if it could use the “worm” logo, the retro design that the space agency used from 1975 through 1992. NASA, which had barred the use of the worm after it was retired in the 90s, changed its opinion on the matter, allowing Coach to use the logo, Ulrich said.
And the “worm” has since returned to official use and cemented its widespread adoration, at least among diehard space fans.
After the line of Coach apparel came out, things blew up.
“Before 2017, we did five or 10 [logo approvals] a week. It’s now come to the point that we get out on average 225 a week,” Ulrich said.
Last year, there were “over 11,000 requests,” he said — an all-time high.
Not all of those requests get approved, Ulrich added. But the reason there’s so much interest in slapping NASA logos on everything from Vans sneakers to trucker hats may have something to do with the fact that these companies don’t have to license the logo. It’s all free of charge, and NASA doesn’t make a dime off it.
It’s not typically how licensing deals work, but, because NASA is a government agency, much of its assets — including photos, logos and even technology designs — are in the public domain. If a company wants to print NASA logos on t-shirts or coffee mugs, it just has to send an email to NASA’s merchandising department, per the legal requirements. Usually, it lands in Ulrich’s inbox.
Ulrich’s job is just to ensure that the logo is used in a way that’s consistent with the space agency’s approved aesthetic guidelines. No using unapproved colors, for example. And, of course, NASA wants to make sure its brand isn’t used for any untoward purposes, such as in a way that suggests that NASA endorses a company or product. If a company misuses the logo, NASA’s legal office will often send a cease and desist letter, Ulrich said.
After Coach released its line of NASA apparel, high-end designers including Heron Preston and, more recently, Balenciaga, released their own lines. Pop singer Ariana Grande had a song and an entire merchandising line about NASA. There was also Adidas, Swatch, Vans and countless others within the past decade.
Through this lens, it’s possible to explain the phenomenon through what we’ll call the “Miranda Preistly effect.” Remember that scene in 2006’s “The Devil Wears Prada” in which Priestly, Meryl Streep’s character, verbally dresses down her young, fashion-inept intern? She explains that the blue sweater she’s wearing is actually “cerulean,” and it’s as much a product of fashion-obsessed industry tycoons as anything on the runway. Essentially, Priestly argued, designers and the fashion media curate the trends, and even the least fashion-interested consumers are influenced by those decisions.
But that’s only half the story, according to Jahn Hall, the creative director of Brooklyn-based design agency Consortium, which works on set design and styling for various brands.
Before Coach, kids were buying NASA t-shirts from vintage stores because they loved the nostalgic feel, the wistfulness of a piece of classic Americana, Hall said.
“You start with kids in cities like New York buying like, old Disney product or old NASA t-shirts, and then suddenly some like ‘cool hunter’ in the fashion industry, like at Urban Outfitters, sees it and suddenly goes, ‘We should turn some NASA-branded t-shirts around,'” Hall said. “It’s kind of a reverse engineering of trends.”
It was probably only after the “cool kids” started wearing NASA T-shirts on the streets that designer brands picked up on it and sold it back to them.
Hall, the Brooklyn-based creative director, said, in his mind, donning the NASA logo is far more about brandishing what the logo represents than declaring one’s love of outer space.
It represents “that sort of quintessential American optimism that we can do anything,” he said.
It’s politically unaffiliated, he added, and can be marketed to young liberals and rural conservatives alike, drumming up that same nostalgia.
“The folks who work for brands like Heron Preston and Balenciaga are as enamored by the fantasy of space travel as anyone else. Nobody is immune from that level of nostalgia so it makes sense that these brands would want to build that into their own collections,” he said.
It’s happened with other logos and franchises, he notes, like Balenciaga doing projects with “The Simpsons” or Coach with Mickey Mouse.
“These enduring symbols speak to everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status. Not everyone may connect with either Heron Preston or Target, but everyone gets the modern Americana of brands like NASA, Disney, Peanuts and The Simpsons,” he said. “Things like NASA sort of act like this magic equalizer.”