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Photo by Spencer Platt / Getty Images For years, automakers have been fussing over the sounds emitted by their electric vehicles, trying to tune them in a way that both presents as futuristic while also not alienating to people who are used to the rev of a four-cylinder engine.They seem to have settled on a series of sounds that could best be described as somewhere in between a whir and a hum. Others would say it sounds like a flying saucer - and not always in a good way. But according to a new survey, most people may prefer something else entirely.Others would say it sounds like a flying saucer - and not always in a good wayThe online survey of 400 adults in the US found the top-rated sound was a non-tonal" sound more closely resembling a gas-powered car than any of... Continue reading...

Image: Amazon Amazon is on track to fully remove plastic air pillows from its delivery packaging in North America. On Thursday, the company announced that it has replaced 95 percent of plastic air pillows with paper filler, and it plans to stop using plastic air packaging by the end of this year.This change will eliminate almost 15 billion plastic air pillows annually, according to Amazon. Unlike the old packaging, paper filler is made with 100 percent recycled content, which should allow customers to easily recycle the material at home. Amazon says the paper filler offers the same, if not better, protection."Despite switching from single-use plastic delivery bags in Europe and India as well as using made-to-fit paper packaging in Australia and... Continue reading...

This is how I feel when I don't get a deal. | Image: Bandai Namco Dear Tarnished, it's time to travel back to the Lands Between - but you don't have to pay full price.Elden Ring's long-awaited Shadow of the Erdtree DLC officially launches tomorrow, June 21st, and both returning and new players can save on either the expansion or a cost-effective bundle with the base game. Fanatical is selling the PC (Steam) version of Shadow of the Erdtree for $35.19 (about $5 off) as well as a digital bundle with the base game for $70.39 (about $9 off / $30 cheaper than buying them separately at full price). Purchasing either option through Fanatical nets you an emailed code to redeem on Steam.These prices are slightly better than similar discounts out there from fellow third-party retailers like CDKeys and Eneba,... Continue reading...

Image: Instagram Instagram is introducing a way to livestream to a smaller, more private audience.Beginning today, Instagram users will be able to host Live broadcasts only available to their curated list of Close Friends. Up to three other accounts can join the Live broadcast and stream with the original user. The feature rolls out globally.Until this point, beginning a Live broadcast meant that anyone could tune in and watch it if your account was public, and all followers could watch the stream if you had a private account. Live videos are a popular feature for influencers and celebrities chatting with followers or fan accounts streaming live footage from concerts - in other words, content that's more geared toward wide audiences and for public... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge We've got a special episode of Decoder today - I was traveling last week, so Verge deputy editor Alex Heath and our new senior AI reporter Kylie Robison are filling in for me, with a very different kind of episode about AI.We talk a lot about AI in a broad sense on Decoder - it comes up in basically every single interview I do these days - and then we also dive deep into very specific problems that AI is causing with things like copyright law, misinformation, and other various policy challenges.But we don't spend a ton of time on the day-to-day happenings of the AI industry itself. And that's for good reason: it's been moving so rapidly and changing so often that it's nearly impossible for the average person to keep up. Making sense... Continue reading...

Four matrix tweeters and four force-balanced woofers" on the Lenovo Tab Plus deliver 26W of sound. | Image: Lenovo Tablets aren't known for their room-shaking bass, but Lenovo's new 11.5-inch Tab Plus is going all in. It features 26W of sound produced by four tweeters and four woofers split across each side of the tablet (when used in landscape mode). To fully take advantage of the Tab Plus' sound capabilities, Lenovo has included the option to wirelessly connect other devices to the tablet and use it as a Bluetooth speaker.Powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 octa-core processor paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of storage that's expandable with a microSD card, the Tab Plus definitely isn't a powerhouse productivity tool. Lenovo is positioning it as a media consumption device first and foremost, which is further reflected in a front and rear... Continue reading...

GPT-4o, Gemini 1.5, and now Claude 3.5 Sonnet. | Image: Anthropic The AI arms race continues apace: Anthropic is launching its newest model, called Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which it says can equal or better OpenAI's GPT-4o or Google's Gemini across a wide variety of tasks. The new model is already available to Claude users on the web and on iOS, and Anthropic is making it available to developers as well.Claude 3.5 Sonnet will ultimately be the middle model in the lineup - Anthropic uses the name Haiku for its smallest model, Sonnet for the mainstream middle option, and Opus for its highest-end model. (The names are weird, but every AI company seems to be naming things in their own special weird ways, so we'll let it slide.) But the company says 3.5 Sonnet outperforms 3 Opus, and its benchmarks show it does... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has agreed to pay $15 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit from the California Civil Rights Department. The lawsuit stemmed from a three-year investigation that found that Snap allegedly failed to ensure that women were paid or promoted equally."The allegations span Snap's period of rapid growth from 2015 to 2022, when the California-based company increased its headcount from 250 to more than 5,000. During this time, California's civil rights agency claims Snap paid women less and offered them fewer promotions when compared to male employees.Additionally, the lawsuit claims that women at the company were routinely subjected to unwelcome sexual advances and other harassing... Continue reading...

Image: Snapchat Snapchat offered an early look at its upcoming on-device AI model capable of transforming a user's surroundings with augmented reality (AR). The new model will eventually let creators turn a text prompt into a custom lens - potentially opening the door for some wild looks to try on and send to friends.You can see how this might look in the GIF below, which shows a person's clothing and background transforming in real-time based on the prompt 50s sci-fi film." Users will start seeing lenses using this new model in the coming months, while creators can start making lenses with the model by the end of this year, according to TechCrunch. GIF: Snapchat Additionally, Snapchat is rolling out a suite of new AI tools that... Continue reading...

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you've been putting off your next Windows update, now's the time to install it. Last week, Microsoft patched a pretty nasty vulnerability in Windows 11 and 10 that could put your PC at risk when connected to a public Wi-Fi network, as spotted earlier by The Register.The vulnerability (CVE-2024-30078) could let hackers deploy a malicious packet to devices connected to the same Wi-Fi networks in places like airports, coffee shops, hotels, or even workplaces. From there, hackers can remotely run commands and gain access to a system - all without any user interaction or authentication. Microsoft rolled out the patch as part of its monthly security update on June 11th.Microsoft has labeled the vulnerability as important," which is the... Continue reading...

Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California on Oct. 25, 2022. | Laura Dickinson/San Luis Obsipo Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Congress has passed a bill aimed at giving nuclear energy a boost in the US. The Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act is now waiting for President Joe Biden's signature to become law. The Senate passed the bill on Tuesday, after the House of Representatives passed a similar bill in February.The bill is supposed to speed up development of next-generation nuclear reactors and position the US to lead the international market, while also helping aging reactors stay online. Nuclear energy is still a divisive solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, but it has gained bipartisan support in recent years.Nuclear energy is still a divisive solution for reducing... Continue reading...

You can even stack multiple codes if you want to get ready for the forthcoming onslaught of day-one releases. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Unless you're flush with cash and time is only conceptual in your world, it may be tough to finance and find the time to enjoy all of the games announced during Microsoft's recent Xbox Showcase. An Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription can help, though, as it'll provide day-one access to many of the titles currently in development.Thankfully, CDKeys is now selling one-month subscription codes for $10.19 (about $7 off) and three-month codes for $27.99 (about $23 off), the latter of which is a better deal. CDKeys is a trusted merchant here at The Verge, so don't feel deterred if you're unfamiliar with the name. The online retailer specializes in selling heavily discounted key codes for gaming products, whether you're looking to save on... Continue reading...

California Governor Gavin Newsom attends an event with fellow governors in the East Room of the White House on February 23, 2024 in Washington, DC. | Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images California Governor Gavin Newsom has pledged to get smartphones out of schools."I look forward to working with the Legislature to restrict the use of smartphones during the school day. When children and teens are in school, they should be focused on their studies - not their screens," he said in a statement on Tuesday.Newsom plans to work with the California legislature to pass those restrictions by August, Politico first reported. That would put California in line with other states that already have strict limits on smartphone use in schools. The move could also be particularly meaningful in California, the nation's most populous state and home to Silicon Valley.They should be focused on their studies - not their screens."M... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Qualcomm's shareholders have managed to achieve something that Apple and government regulators across the globe tried to and failed to do: get Qualcomm to pay up over its aggressive licensing practices.In a court filing on Tuesday, Qualcomm said it would agree to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit brought by shareholders, who claim that the company misled them about how its business practices worked and artificially inflated its stock price as a result. The settlement was earlier reported by Reuters.Shareholders took issue with Qualcomm's failure to fully disclose how it handled patent licensing. At the time, the company refused to license standard essential patents to certain competitors and in some cases made buying its chips a... Continue reading...

Image: The Verge The European Union is getting closer to passing new rules that would mandate the bulk scanning of digital messages - including encrypted ones. On Thursday, EU governments will adopt a position on the proposed legislation, which is aimed at detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The vote will determine whether the proposal has enough support to move forward in the EU's law-making process.The law, first introduced in 2022, would implement an upload moderation" system that scans all your digital messages, including shared images, videos, and links. Each service required to install this vetted" monitoring technology must also ask permission to scan your messages. If you don't agree, you won't be able to share images or URLs.As if... Continue reading...

The Verge Pornhub plans to block access to its website in Indiana and Kentucky in response to age verification laws designed to prevent children from accessing adult websites. The website has now cut off access in at least half a dozen states in protest of similar age verification laws that have quickly spread across conservative-leaning US states.Indiana will lose access on June 27th, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, and Kentucky will lose access on July 10th, according to Kentucky Public Radio.Pornhub says it's blocking access to its website over privacy concerns around the new laws. The laws generally require adults to upload some form of government ID to prove they're 18 or older. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized... Continue reading...

Astro Bot. | Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment An adorable platformer, mythological tower defense, RPG / puzzle hybrid, and open-world Star Wars. Continue reading...

Illustration: The Verge AT&T is pushing prices up for customers who have stayed on old, retired unlimited" data plans.In August, customers can expect to see their bills rise by up to $20 for plans with multiple lines. This is the total monthly increase, not per line increase," the company says on its website. Customers with just a single line of service will see their charges go up $10 each month.AT&T says it's offering customers more high-speed data and hotspot data in return for the price hike. That's supposed to allow people to keep their old plans that have been grand-fathered in, but with some added perks.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge AMD is looking into a potential cyberattack. A threat actor that goes by the alias IntelBroker" is selling data that it claims was obtained from an AMD.com breach this month, BleepingComputer reports, and the company confirmed in a statement that it's looking into the purported theft. IntelBroker claims that the data for sale includes future products, employee databases, and customer databases.We are aware of a cybercriminal organization claiming to be in possession of stolen AMD data," AMD said in the statement given to BleepingComputer, PCMag, and Bloomberg. We are working closely with law enforcement officials and a third-party hosting partner to investigate the claim and the significance of the data."AMD didn't immediately reply... Continue reading...

One remote to rule them all (but in the darkness, you probably still can't find them). | Photo: Cantata Universal remotes might be on a comeback tour if devices like Cantata's Haptique RS90 and RS90X actually materialize and are as good as advertised. The connected remote purports to double as a comprehensive smart home controller, but it's merely a Kickstarter hopeful for now. Serial remoters (remotees?) have pledged more than $300,00, with less than $10,000 needed to fully fund the project as of writing, and there's currently an estimated ship date of August 2024.What separates this from the sparse competition is that it's hub-free. You won't need a separate box plugged in to the TV or IR repeaters to make this work. It comes with a charging dock and has a relatively roomy 3.2-inch color touchscreen for the Android-based OS. The... Continue reading...

Cath Virginia / The Verge Less than two weeks after Nvidia jumped Apple in terms of its overall valuation, the GPU maker has now passed Microsoft to stand as the world's most valuable company based on the chips it makes that are key to powering a boom in generative AI technology.At the close of trading on Tuesday, its share price stood at $135.58, up $4.60 from the previous day and pushing its market cap to $3.335 trillion. That's more than Microsoft ($3.32 trillion), Apple ($3.29 trillion), and Google ($2.17 trillion). Nvidia's shares split 10-for-1 after June 7th, lowering the overall share price, but the spike in the company's value has been jarring. Its share price has gone up 160 percent in 2024, and the company only passed the $2 trillion mark in February.... Continue reading...

Chomsky often was critical of the media. | Photo by Heuler Andrey / AFP via Getty Images Everyone dies eventually, and famed linguist Noam Chomsky will be no different - but at the time of this writing, he is alive. And, sadly, his wife is explaining to people that reports of his death are false," according to The Associated Press.Chomsky, 95, has been hospitalized in Brazil as he recovers from a stroke he had last year, the AP reported earlier this month. He's having difficulty speaking, and the right side of his body is affected." He is being tended to by various specialists. This is not in dispute.Two publications, Jacobin and The New Statesman, published what appeared to be obituaries. (The New Statesman took its post down; Jacobin changed its headline from We Remember Noam Chomsky" to Let's Celebrate Noam Chomsky,... Continue reading...

Union organizer Chris Smalls speaks following the April 1st, 2022, vote for the unionization of the Amazon Staten Island warehouse in New York. | Photo by ANDREA RENAULT / AFP via Getty Images Amazon Labor Union (ALU) members voted to affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in a move they hope will bring new life to a yearslong struggle to secure union contracts for Amazon warehouse workers.Amazon has tried to block various efforts to unionize across different branches of the company since at least 2000, but the movement to unionize warehouse workers only gained steam in the past few years. The Teamsters, founded in 1903, is one of the biggest labor unions in the US.Employees at the Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, became the first Amazon workers to vote to unionize in 2022. They still don't have a contract, as the union struggles to get Amazon to the bargaining table. Union members at JFK8 approved... Continue reading...

Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker. | Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images Earlier today, Fisker finally did what has seemed inevitable these past few turbulent months: declared bankruptcy.Like other companies in the electric vehicle industry, we have faced various market and macroeconomic headwinds that have impacted our ability to operate efficiently," the company said in a statement. After evaluating all options for our business, we determined that proceeding with a sale of our assets under Chapter 11 is the most viable path forward for the company."For anyone paying close attention, this isn't that surprising. Fisker has been sounding the warning about its dwindling cash stockpile for months. It did all the things you're supposed to do to rein in costs. It laid off over 15 percent of its workforce, s... Continue reading...

One step closer to a final release in the fall. | Image: The Verge / Android It's beta software season, baby. Google is releasing Android 15's third beta today, taking it one step closer to its final release. With this update, it reaches platform stability, meaning that APIs are finalized and developers can start testing their apps with this near-final version. Not much appears to have changed since the last beta dropped, but that doesn't mean there aren't a few interesting tidbits to still uncover.In a blog post announcing the new beta, Google highlights one significant change to the passkey UI. Now, using a passkey with biometric authentication happens in one step rather than two - the Google Password Manager prompt to use a passkey has been combined with the biometric input screen. There are also new fallback... Continue reading...

The Sphero Bolt Plus' new full-color screen can help kids troubleshoot their code. | Image: Sphero Sphero has updated its RC Bolt robotic ball with a higher-resolution LCD screen, providing improved visual feedback that promises to make the new Bolt Plus a better STEM tool for teaching kids the fundamentals of programming.Originally making a name for itself with a simple remote control ball that could be steered using a smartphone, Sphero eventually found massive success by leveraging its technology to create a miniature version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens' BB-8 droid, which was the must-have toy during the 2015 holiday season.Three years and several products later, Sphero ended its partnership with Disney in order to focus its efforts on the educational market and products like the original Bolt robot, which shipped with... Continue reading...

Image: TikTok TikTok recently launched a new Instagram-like photo-sharing app called Whee, as spotted by Android Police and APKMirror founder Artem Russakovskii.TikTok is explicitly positioning Whee as an app for sharing photos with only your closest friends. Capture and share real-life photos that only your friends can see, allowing you to be your most authentic self," according to Whee's Google Play description. Whee is the best place for close friends to share life moments."Screenshots of the app listing feature things like a photo viewfinder, a list of friends to message, and a feed - and many of the photo captions highlight how the features are for connecting with friends.It seems that TikTok is still testing the waters with this new app.... Continue reading...

Butterflies AI. So far, generative AI has been mostly confined to chatbots like ChatGPT. Startups like Character.AI and Replika are seeing early traction by making chatbots more like companions. But what happens when you dump a bunch of AI characters into something that looks like Instagram and let them talk to each other?That's the idea behind Butterflies, one of the most provocative - and, at times, unsettling - takes on social media that I've seen in quite a while. After a private beta period with tens of thousands of users, the app is now available for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. There's no short-term pressure on Butterflies to make money; the six-month-old startup just raised $4.8 million from tech investors Coatue, SV... Continue reading...

New Zealand's Marcus Daniell (TOP) and Michael Venus compete against USA's Austin Krajicek and Tennys Sandgren during their Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games men's doubles tennis match for the bronze medal at the Ariake Tennis Park in Tokyo on July 30th, 2021. | Photo by Vincenzo Pinto / AFP via Getty Images Athletes are raising concerns about how extreme heat might affect the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, according to a new report. They're worried that soaring temperatures pose serious health risks to competitors and spectators, not to mention their performance suffering.Average temperatures during the months when the Summer Olympics are typically held have risen by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since the last time the Games were held in Paris in 1924, according to the report. Every fraction of a degree of difference can have an impact, considering even a 0.5 degree Celsius rise in core body temperature can increase a person's heartbeat up to 10 beats per minute. In a worst-case scenario, that can lead to heat... Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge For the past couple of weeks, Adobe has faced intense backlash over changes to its terms of service agreement - and now, it's trying to patch things up. On Tuesday, Adobe announced a tweaked version of its terms of service agreement that makes it clear the company will not train AI on user content stored locally or in the cloud.The section defining Adobe's access to user content now includes several distinct categories, including one dedicated to generative AI. Adobe's updated terms explicitly state that its software will not use your Local or Cloud Content to train generative AI." But there's one exception: if your work is submitted to the Adobe Stock marketplace, the company can use it to train Adobe Firefly.These additions to the... Continue reading...

An artist's concept of what the Netflix House retail destinations could look like. | Image: Netflix Today, Netflix revealed more details about its upcoming permanent retail destinations that were first announced eight months ago, including where the first two Netflix House venues will open in 2025: Dallas, Texas, and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania - a city located 15 miles outside of Philadelphia.The initial Netflix House locations will open in two of the most popular shopping centers in America," according to Netflix, the Galleria Dallas and the King of Prussia Mall, and will take over the sites of former department stores, providing each venue with over 100,000 square feet of space.The decision to open the first locations in shopping centers should resonate with Stranger Things fans, given season 3 of the series prominently... Continue reading...

The current promo means you won't have to pay extra for local storage. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge 'Tis the season of travel, and if you want to beef up your home security ahead of your vacation, today might be a good time to do so. Right now, you can pick up a Blink Video Doorbell with a Sync Module 2 at Best Buy, The Home Depot, and Kohl's for just $41.99 ($28 off), which is one of the lowest prices we've seen on the entry-level smart home bundle.If you're looking for a budget-friendly video doorbell, the battery-powered Blink Video Doorbell is one of our favorite models. The 1080p doorbell delivers all the basics, including support for motion detection, two-way video, and night vision. What's most notable about this deal, though, is that the bundle includes Blink's Sync Module 2, which is an optional $49.99 add-on that allows for... Continue reading...

Image: Nintendo After years of playing second fiddle to Link in her own franchise, Princess Zelda is finally getting a video game of her own this fall.During today's Direct presentation, Nintendo revealed The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the franchise's first game to follow as Princess Zelda herself embarks on an adventure to save the world from destruction. After Ganon bests Link in battle, Zelda is left to her own devices to battle hordes of monsters that descend upon the game's take on Hyrule (which seems heavily inspired by 2019's Link's Awakening remake).According to series producer Eiji Aonuma, Zelda will navigate and fight through the world somewhat differently in Echoes of Wisdom as she wields a magical staff known as the Tri Rod with... Continue reading...

Image: Nintendo Nintendo finally shared gameplay footage of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond during Tuesday's Nintendo Direct. The brief video was classic Metroid Prime, featuring intense first-person gunfighting and scanning stuff in the environment. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait a little while until we can play it for ourselves, as the company gave a vague 2025 release window for the title.We've been waiting a very long time for any scraps of information about the next entry in the beloved Metroid Prime series. The game was first revealed on June 13th, 2017, with just a logo, and when Nintendo announced that it was rebooting the title in January 2019, its video didn't contain any footage of the game itself. When it said it was restarting development,... Continue reading...

There are clear tradeoffs - like a charging case with no extra battery juice - but the price and Beats' cultural cachet are likely enough to guarantee success for the Solo Buds. Continue reading...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge No Switch 2, no problem. Continue reading...

Illustration: Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos: Getty Images Google DeepMind has taken the wraps off of a new AI tool for generating video soundtracks. In addition to using a text prompt to generate audio, DeepMind's tool also takes into account the contents of the video.By combining the two, DeepMind says users can use the tool to create scenes with a drama score, realistic sound effects or dialogue that matches the characters and tone of a video." You can see some of the examples posted on DeepMind's website - and they sound pretty good.For a video of a car driving through a cyberpunk-esque cityscape, Google used the prompt cars skidding, car engine throttling, angelic electronic music" to generate audio. You can see how the sounds of skidding match up with the car's movement. Another e... Continue reading...

Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge Elon Musk got paid. A lot. Now comes the interesting part: Musk has to make Tesla so big, so successful, and so valuable that the tens of billions he's getting seem cheap by comparison. You might think selling cars is the way to get there, but you might be wrong about that. Musk and, by extension, Tesla seem far more interested in some much bigger, more ambitious, and decidedly more complicated ideas.On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge's Andrew Hawkins joins to discuss all the things Tesla is working on - and why it increasingly feels like cars are at the bottom of that list. We talk about the Optimus robots, the Tesla Network, the whole AWS for AI" thing, and what the next three mystery vehicles might be. Finally, we look at... Continue reading...

Blink's new Moments feature should make it easier to see relevant clips at a glance. | Image: Blink Budget smart security camera company Blink is adding a neat trick to its app: Blink Moments automatically stitches together relevant clips from multiple cameras into a single video. The idea is to make it easier to see what's been going on around your home and also to share it with friends and family - or the police - depending on what you captured.Moments, which has been in beta testing, started rolling out on June 4th and will be available to all Blink users with multiple cameras in the next few weeks, according to the company. Besides multiple cameras, it requires a Blink Subscription Plus Plan ($10 a month or $100 a year) but doesn't require Blink's Sync Module hub.According to Blink, Moments are generated when two or more cameras... Continue reading...

The Xreal Beam Pro looks like a smartphone - but it's not. | Image: Xreal Xreal has made a name for itself with some surprisingly nice-looking augmented reality glasses, which put a display in front of your eyes so you can do things like watch TV or play games on a giant screen projected just for you. But unlike, say, Apple's Vision Pro or Meta's Quest 3, Xreal has no built-in software or content. It's just a screen in your glasses. This is good in that you can plug in lots of other devices, but it does restrict the sort of things those glasses can do.The new Beam Pro is Xreal's latest attempt to bridge that gap. It's a handheld device with the rough dimensions of a smartphone, but Xreal thinks of it as more of a companion to your glasses. It runs a customized version of Android 14 - Xreal calls it NebulaOS -... Continue reading...