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Retirees worried about inflation, cost of living are invited to sail on the Odyssey cruise

A luxury cruiseliner is now offering retirees the chance to live on its ships and travel the world for a flat sum – and it may be more economical than keeping a home.


Villa Vie Residences's new Endless Horizons program requires a one-time payment of $299,999 for single-occupancy. For a double-occupancy cabin, the price increases to $499,999.

Passengers will sail on the Villa Vie Odyssey ship, which embarks on a seven-continent adventure on May 30. The ship is currently docked in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

In a press release, the company explained that the "lifetime access" deal caters to individuals who "envision their retirement years as a time for exploration and personal growth."

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If I could get my hands on 300k I might go for something like this

The brains of modern humans are around 13% smaller than those of Homo sapiens who lived 100,000 years ago. Is it because of the changing climate, or some of the skills we've picked up?

Traditionally our "big brain" is thought to be what sets our species apart from other animals. Our capacity for thought and innovation allowed us to create the first art, invent the wheel, and even land on the Moon.

Certainly, when compared with other animals of a similar size, our brains are gigantic. The human brain has nearly quadrupled in size in the six million years since our species last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees. However, studies show this trend toward larger brains has reversed in Homo sapiens. In our species, average brain sizes have shrunk over the course of the last 100,000 years.

For example in a recent 2023 study, Ian Tattersall, a paleoanthropologist and curator emeritus with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, tracked the braincase volumes of ancient hominins through time. He started with the oldest known species, and ended with modern humans.

He found that rapid brain expansion occurred independently in different species of hominins, and at different times across Asia, Europe and Africa. Species whose brains grew over time include Australopithecus afarensis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis.

Schools in England will be banned from teaching sex education to children under nine, in new government guidance expected to be published on Thursday.

The BBC has not seen the new guidelines but a government source said they also included plans to ban any children being taught about gender identity.

Head teachers have said there is no evidence of a widespread problem with age-inappropriate materials.

One union has said the review is "politically motivated".

The statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) - which schools must follow by law - is currently under review.

The government believes clearer guidance will provide support for teachers and reassurance for parents, and will set out which topics should be taught to pupils at what age.

A pair of university students say they found and reported earlier this year a security flaw allowing anyone to avoid paying for laundry provided by over a million internet-connected laundry machines in residences and college campuses around the world.

Months later, the vulnerability remains open after CSC ServiceWorks repeatedly ignored requests to fix the flaw.

UC Santa Cruz students Alexander Sherbrooke and Iakov Taranenko told TechCrunch that the vulnerability they discovered allows anyone to remotely send commands to laundry machines run by CSC and operate laundry cycles for free.

Sherbrooke said he was sitting on the floor of his basement laundry room in the early hours one January morning with his laptop in hand and “suddenly having an ‘oh s—’ moment.” From his laptop, Sherbrooke ran a script of code with instructions telling the machine in front of him to start a cycle despite having $0 in his laundry account. The machine immediately woke up with a loud beep and flashed “PUSH START” on its display, indicating the machine was ready to wash a free load of laundry.

In another case, the students added an ostensible balance of several million dollars into one of their laundry accounts, which reflected in their CSC Go mobile app as though it were an entirely normal amount of money for a student to spend on laundry.

Almost two centuries after California's gold rush, the United States is on the brink of a lithium rush. As demand for the material skyrockets, government geologists are rushing to figure out where the precious element is hiding.

In September 2023, scientists funded by a mining company reported finding what could be the largest deposit of lithium in an ancient US supervolcano. Now public researchers on the other side of the country have uncovered another untapped reservoir – one that could cover nearly half the nation's lithium demands.

It's hiding in wastewater from Pennsylvania's gas fracking industry.

Lithium is arguably the most important element in the nation's renewable energy transition – the material of choice for electric vehicle batteries. And yet, there is but one large-scale lithium mine in the US, meaning for the moment the country has to import what it needs.

Google Search now has an option to search the "web," which is not the default anymore.

Google I/O has come and gone, and with it came an almost exclusive focus on AI. Part of the show was an announcement for Google Search that was so huge it was almost hard to believe: the AI-powered "Search Generative Experience (SGE)" that the company had been trialing for months is rolling out to everyone in the US. The feature, renamed "AI Overview," is here now, and it feels like the biggest change to Google Search ever. The top of many results (especially questions) are now dominated by an AI box that scrapes the web and gives you a sometimes-correct summary without needing to click on a single result.

AI Overview is a bit different from the SGE trials that were happening. First is that AI Overview is a lot faster than SGE. For some popular queries, it seems like Google is caching the AI answer, which should help with the high cost of running generative AI. For queries with cached overviews, you'll see the AI box load instantly, right along with the initial search results pop-in. SGE responses would come in word by word, like they are being typed by a person. When you aren't getting a cached result, you'll see a blank AI overview box that loads with the search page, which will say "searching" while it loads for a second or two. Other times, Google will try loading an AI Overview and fail, with the message "An AI overview is not available for this search." (As if anyone asked.)

Preventive neurologist Dr Richard Isaacson stared at the numbers on the fax in astonishment. Blood biomarkers of telltale signs of early Alzheimer’s disease in the brain of his patient, 55-year-old entrepreneur Simon Nicholls, had all but disappeared in a mere 14 months.

“I had to catch my breath. It was a complete shock: The blood tests on his brain had normalized,” said Isaacson, director of research at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Boca Raton, Florida.

Was this stunning result the work of some new miracle drug designed to combat dementia? Not at all. This is a story of old-fashioned grit and determination.

“Simon was on a mission, as if the Grim Reaper was peering over his shoulder. He was going to kick ass and take names,” Isaacson said.

Nicholls reduced his risk of developing Alzheimer’s via lifestyle changes recommended by Isaacson, including diet, exercise, reducing stress and optimizing sleep, along with a few strategically chosen supplements and medications prescribed by his cardiologist.

NEW YORK (AP) — Your wallet may soon be getting thinner.

Visa on Wednesday announced major changes to how credit and debit cards will operate in the U.S. in the coming months and years.

The new features could mean Americans will be carrying fewer physical cards in their wallets, and will make the 16-digit credit or debit card number printed on every card increasingly irrelevant.

They will be some of the biggest changes to how payments operate in the U.S. since the U.S. rolled out chip-embedded cards several years ago. They also come as Americans have many more options to pay for purchases beyond “credit or debit," including buy now, pay later companies, peer-to-peer payment options, paying directly with a bank, or digital payment systems like Apple Pay.

“I think (with these features) we’re getting past the point where consumers may never need to manually enter an account number ever again,” said Mark Nelsen, Visa’s global head of consumer payments, in an interview.

The biggest change coming for Americans will be the ability for banks to issue one physical payment card that will be connected to multiple bank accounts. That means no more carrying, for example, a Bank of America or Chase debit card as well as their respective credit cards in a physical wallet. Americans will be able to set criteria with their bank — such as having all purchases below $100 or with a certain merchant applied to the debit card, while other purchases go on the credit card.

The feature, already being used in Asia, will be available this summer. Buy now, pay later company Affirm is the first of Visa's customers to roll out the feature in the U.S.



YESSSSSSSSSSS! Finally, new updates to our credit cards!

Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has opened a new student-taught class which delves into the game design of the Fire Emblem series. Yes, Fire Emblem. At university. And there we were thinking that 'Film Studies' sounded cool.

'Fire Emblem Design and Analysis' will be getting underway at Carnegie Mellon in the Fall semester of this year and promises to help students "gain a deeper understanding of the game design, mechanics and writing of the Fire Emblem series". To do this, the class will be examining such topics as the evolution of game mechanics (durability and the weapon triangle both get a shoutout), unit archetypes and series lore before being graded via in-class quizzes and projects.

In the course summary (brought to our attention on Twitter by @lucky_lunatrick), our eyes couldn't help but be drawn to such brilliant-sounding chapter names as 'Chapter Design, Fog of War,' 'The Armoury: Classes, Skills, Weapons, Economics and Merlinus-Maxxing' and 'Transition to Writing: Plotlines and War Crimes'. We'd be tempted to assume that this has the most chilled-out homework going — unless you're playing with permadeath on, in which case, good luck to ya.

To be clear, this is a student-led course which is taught alongside the university's degrees rather than being a part of them. That said, according to the CMU website, student courses do count towards final degrees, so while you wouldn't be able to major in Fire Emblem studies, the marks could help boost your grade — think of it as a support unit, then.

Louisiana will become the first state to require that public universities and K-12 schools display the Ten Commandments in every classroom after the Senate voted overwhelmingly to push forward new legislation Thursday.

Following a short debate, lawmakers voted 30-8 to approve House Bill 71. All "no" votes were Democrats, though a few Democrats voted in favor of the proposal.

“The purpose is not solely religious,” Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, told the Senate. Rather, it is the Ten Commandments' "historical significance, which is simply one of many documents that display the history of our country and foundation of our legal system.”

Authored by Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton, HB 71 has been the center of controversy in recent months amid concerns the proposal violates the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing a religion.

Sen. Royce Duplessis, D-New Orleans, who identified himself as a practicing Catholic, was the only lawmaker to speak in opposition of the legislation Thursday.

There is now a new addition to the magnetic family: thanks to experiments at the Swiss Light Source SLS, researchers have proved the existence of altermagnetism. The experimental discovery of this new branch of magnetism is reported in Nature and signifies new fundamental physics, with major implications for spintronics.

Magnetism is a lot more than just things that stick to the fridge. This understanding came with the discovery of antiferromagnets nearly a century ago. Since then, the family of magnetic materials has been divided into two fundamental phases: the ferromagnetic branch known for several millennia and the antiferromagnetic branch.

The experimental proof of a third branch of magnetism, termed altermagnetism, was made at the Swiss Light Source SLS, by an international collaboration led by the Czech Academy of Sciences together with Paul Scherrer Institute PSI.

The fundamental magnetic phases are defined by the specific spontaneous arrangements of magnetic moments—or electron spins—and of atoms that carry the moments in crystals.

Ferromagnets are the type of magnets that stick to the fridge: here spins point in the same direction, giving macroscopic magnetism. In antiferromagnetic materials, spins point in alternating directions, with the result that the materials possess no macroscopic net magnetization—and thus don’t stick to the fridge. Although other types of magnetism, such as diamagnetism and paramagnetism have been categorized, these describe specific responses to externally applied magnetic fields rather than spontaneous magnetic orderings in materials.

A former diversity manager at Facebook and Nike

was sentenced to five years and three months in prison for stealing more than $5 million from those companies that had been earmarked for DEI initiatives, federal prosecutors said.

Georgia resident Barbara Furlow-Smiles, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud in the case in December, stole more than $4.9 million from Facebook “utilizing a scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fake invoices, and cash kickbacks,” Atlanta U.S. Attorney Ryan Buchanan said in a statement.

“After being terminated from Facebook, she brazenly continued the fraud as a DEI leader at Nike, where she stole another six-figure sum from their diversity program,” Buchanan said.

Furlow-Smiles, 38, used the money she stole “to fund a luxury lifestyle in California, Georgia and Oregon,” according to Buchanan’s office, which had asked a judge to sentence her to 6½ years.

She was a lead strategist and global head of employee resource groups and diversity engagement at Facebook, the subsidiary of Meta. She was not Facebook’s top executive for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Prosecutors said that while at Facebook she linked PayPal, Venmo and Cash App accounts to her Facebook credit cards and then used those accounts to pay her friends, relatives, and others for purported goods and services for the company that were never delivered.

(CNN) - World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler was arrested and charged with felony assault Friday morning outside the PGA Championship in Louisville, Kentucky, after allegedly injuring a police officer while trying to drive past the scene of a fatal crash.

Scheffler was charged with felony second-degree assault on a police officer, along with lesser charges of third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding signals from officers directing traffic, according to Jefferson County court records.

He was then released from jail and returned to the Valhalla Golf Course for the second round of the tournament. Shortly after 10 a.m., he struck his first tee shot of the day, earning a round of applause from the crowd, and birdied the first hole.

BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) (Copyright © 2024 MetroDesk Media, LLC) — If you’ve seen former New York City Mayor and one time Donald Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani, you may want call authorities in Arizona. Giuliani has seemingly vanished after his indictment in Arizona for election interference. He owns a condo in Palm Beach County.

Authorities say they’ve been trying to serve Giuliani with the indictment for several weeks, but have yet to find him. He is required to appear in court, in Arizona, within the next several days. An arrest warrant could be issued if he does not appear.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, according to the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser, owns a condo at 315 South Lake Drive in West Palm Beach. It was purchased in February of 2010 for $1.4M. He was apparently last seen in that area before disappearing.

If you see Rudy Giuliani, the Arizona Attorney General’s office can be reached at 602-542-5025. There’s also a tip submission area on their website which is AZAG.gov.

The esteemed pathologist's experimental therapy is based on his own pioneering research on melanoma.

Prof Scolyer's subtype of glioblastoma is so aggressive most patients survive less than a year.

But on Tuesday the 57-year-old announced his latest MRI scan had again showed no recurrence of the tumour.

"To be honest, I was more nervous than I have been for any previous scan," he told the BBC.

"I'm just thrilled and delighted... couldn't be happier."

Prof Scolyer is one of the country's most respected medical minds, and was this year named Australian of the Year alongside his colleague and friend Georgina Long, in recognition of their life-changing work on melanoma.

As co-directors of the Melanoma Institute Australia, over the past decade the pair's research on immunotherapy, which uses the body's immune system to attack cancer cells, has dramatically improved outcomes for advanced melanoma patients globally. Half are now essentially cured, up from less than 10%.

It's that research that Prof Long, alongside a team of doctors, is using to treat Prof Scolyer - in the hope of finding a cure for his cancer too.

In a surprising move, the Winamp team has announced that they intend to open-source their Windows app on September 24, 2024.

And, this will happen under a different, FreeLlama name. The other applications, for Android and iOS, will continue to be proprietary.

During the announcement, the CEO of Winamp, Alexandre Saboundjian, stated that:

This is a decision that will delight millions of users around the world. Our focus will be on new mobile players and other platforms. We will be releasing a new mobile player at the beginning of July. Still, we don't want to forget the tens of millions of users who use the software on Windows and will benefit from thousands of developers' experience and creativity.

Click to expand...

Alexandre also added that Winamp will continue to be the owner of the software and will have the final say on any innovations made in the official version.

Reddit is re-introducing a revised version of the awards system it phased out last year after acknowledging the golden upvote system had “missed the mark.”

“We tried something new, it wasn’t great (you called it),” Reddit said in its announcement post on Wednesday. “So we’re (re)launching awards, not-so-new but definitely improved. Rollout starts today on reddit.com and Reddit’s iOS and Android apps.”

Most of the previous award system mechanisms will remain the same, according to Reddit, with a few tweaks — such as an award button placed under eligible posts, an updated UI to minimize clutter, and an awards leaderboard that displays the top gold and awards earned for a comment or post. New safety features have been introduced to keep awards off sensitive or NSFW subreddits, and allow users to report when awards are being misused. The platform has also created new awards and updated some of the old award designs.

And then there’s coins — the tokens Reddit users previously needed to purchase with real money to buy awards. Reddit acknowledges it “did not adequately communicate” to users why coins were being phased out. As such, the platform is compensating users who had their coin balance removed with a “number of exclusive awards” that they can give out for free.

“Grand Theft Auto 6″ has been slated for a fall 2025 release by Rockstar Games.

The news was announced Thursday when Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive reported its fourth-quarter and full fiscal year 2024 earnings, revealing the company posted a $2.9 billion loss for the Jan. 1-March 31 period.

Take-Two’s most recent guidance for the quarter had been a loss between $170-$153 million. The company says the fiscal Q4 loss of $2.9 billion included a $2.18 billion goodwill charge, a $304.3 million hit for acquisition-related expenses, and restructuring costs of $93.3 million.

Take-Two is not prepared to get more specific than “fall 2025” for the “GTA VI” release date, with CEO Strauss Zelnick saying, “I think we’re going to leave it there for now,” in an interview with Variety ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings call at 4:30 p.m. ET Thursday. “That [announcement] will come from Rockstar and be consistent with the way they are marketing the title,” Zelnick said.

The trailer for the eagerly-anticipated “Grand Theft Auto 6” smashed viewership records on YouTube when it was released in December, indicating the extreme demand for the title after more than a decade since the release of “GTA V.”

Tony McFarr, a stunt performer best known for doubling Chris Pratt in a number of films, including “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” and “Jurassic World,” has died of undetermined causes, TheWrap has learned. He died on May 13 at his home outside Orlando, Fla. He was 47.

His mother told TMZ on Thursday that his death was “unexpected and shocking.” A toxicology report from the Orange County Medical Examiner is still pending.

McFarr had been in the stunt business since the early 2010s, working on series like “Bones” and “Teen Wolf” and in movies like “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and “Rock of Ages.” In 2015, he worked as the stunt double for Pratt on the first “Jurassic World” movie, eventually doubling him in both “Passengers” in 2016 and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” in 2017, while still performing stunts in movies like “The Accountant,” “Logan Lucky” and “Captain America: Civil War.” The last time he doubled for Pratt was in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” in 2018.

Since last working with Pratt, McFarr had worked on feature films like “Tag” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” along with television series like “Creepshow” and “MacGyver.” His last feature credit was 2021’s “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” in 2021.

State’s department of fish and wildlife says the brown pelicans are showing signs of malnutrition, but that the cause is still unclear

Hundreds of starving and stranded brown pelicans have turned up along the California coast in recent weeks in what wildlife advocates have described as a “crisis”.

In Newport Beach in southern California, lifeguards came upon two dozen sick pelicans on a pier last week. The Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, the non-profit caring for the animals, said they had treated more than 100 other birds who were anemic, dehydrated and extremely underweight.

“They are starving to death and if we don’t get them into care, they will die,” said Debbie McGuire, the center’s executive director. “It really is a crisis.”

Bird Rescue, a non-profit that operates wildlife centers in northern and southern California, reported taking in more than 235 sick pelicans in the past three weeks. At least 40% of the pelicans have significant injuries after becoming entangled in fishing line and hooks, the non-profit said.