Apple has a history of eye-popping price tags, but the company is reaching new heights with a product that isn't even a gadget. After Apple Music unveiled a list of the 100 best albums of all time earlier this year, the streaming service is releasing a companion coffee table book. You can grab one of the 1,500 copies for a cool $450.
I find these endeavors to rank and quantify art hilarious, because music is subjective and personal by nature. But people do love to debate their own artistic opinions, so if that's your jam there's plenty to dig into with Apple Music's assessment. (And before you ask, the top spot was claimed by The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.) This particular countdown was assembled by "Apple Music’s team of experts alongside an exclusive group of artists including Maren Morris, Pharrell Williams, J Balvin, Charli XCX, Mark Hoppus, Honey Dijon and Nia Archives, as well as songwriters, producers and industry professionals," according to the book listing.
I'm sure this limited-run hardcover will be very beautiful, and maybe the liner notes analyzing each entry are deeply insightful. But I also wonder who would bother to buy it. If you are one of those 1,500 people who wants one, the book is due to start shipping in January.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/the-coffee-table-book-of-apple-musics-best-100-albums-will-set-you-back-450-193018825.html?src=rss
Amazon completely revamped its Kindle family in October when it debuted the entirely new Colorsoft ereader along with updated generations of the other three existing models: the standard Kindle, the Paperwhite and the Scribe E Ink tablet. The new Paperwhite has a slightly larger screen, a bigger battery and a more powerful processor that Amazon combined with E Ink tech to make page turns faster. This Paperwhite again comes in a Signature Edition, which adds wireless charging, an auto-adjusting front light and extra storage — all for $200, which is $10 more than the previous Signature Edition.
The standard Kindle also got a $10 price bump, leaving the same $90 gap between Amazon’s cheapest model and the Signature Edition. I tested both to see whether the price difference between the two is worth it. The higher-end model is certainly posh, but the base model handles ereader basics well. Is the deluxe treatment that much better?
Processor, capacity and other hardware features
The company is calling the Paperwhite (Signature and standard) the “fastest Kindle ever” thanks to a new dual-core processor and an oxide thin-film transistor layer that enables quicker switching of the text and graphics on the page. That layer is also more transparent than the previous tech, so the on-page clarity has increased as well.
As for storage, the Paperwhite Signature gets 32GB, double that of the regular Paperwhite, which is the same treatment as the prior generations for both. They have a couple additional backlights this time: ten standard LEDs and nine warm ones for a total of 19.
The screen is a little larger at seven inches, up from 6.8, and sports the same 300 ppi resolution. Despite a larger battery capacity (with an estimated 12 weeks of live instead of just ten), the device is a fraction of a millimeter thinner than last time, and weighs just two-tenths of a gram more. It has the same IPX8 rating, meaning it can handle full submersion, and the back is made from a metallic plastic with a rubberized texture that’s easy to grip (so you’re less likely to accidentally dunk it in water). The bezels help with grip too, as they’re just wide enough to accommodate a thumb without triggering a page turn.
The hardware upgrades are subtle, but they add up to a downright elegant way to read books. Pulling up menus, opening new titles and turning pages are all speedier than any ereader I’ve tried. And ghosting is basically non-existent. The roomy screen displays text that’s crisper than a January morning and the auto-adjusting front lights are like a warm lantern lighting your way.
If I take any issue with the design of the Signature, it’s the placement of the power button at the bottom edge. One of the simple joys in this life (for me anyway) is eating while reading. That means I hold a book or ereader on the table in front of my plate as I shovel stir fry into my mouth. Often, resting the Signature on the bottom edge accidentally presses the power button, shutting off my read mid-forkful. Notably, this doesn't happen with the standard Kindle, even though the button is in the same place, simply because the smaller ereader isn’t heavy enough to trigger the button-press. The Signature also has a rubber grommet around the edge of the flush-front screen, which I don’t hate, but I do find myself distractedly fidgeting with it when I read.
Touch controls and customization
I sat the Paperwhite Signature next to other ereaders in my testing collection and compared the page-turn speeds, menu load times and scrolling refresh rates. Though the differences weren’t significant, the Signature was definitely faster. (But the Kobo Libra Colour is still the fastest at waking up after a sleep of longer than a few minutes.)
The Signature’s touch response is impeccable. I’ve accepted the fact that most ereader screens occasionally need an extra tap before they do what I want. Whether that’s turning a page or pulling up a menu, my first gesture sometimes goes unnoticed. Not here; the screen immediately responds to every swipe and tap I make. Unfortunately, sometimes that tap is unintentional, and other times the screen doesn’t respond the way I want — but it always responds.
That leads me to a couple of disappointments in the Paperwhite’s interface. Those misinterpreted taps were almost always page turns. The area that skips back in your reading is a narrow sliver on the left-hand side. Some people may plow forward in a book with no backwards glances, but I often find myself at the top of a new page with the realization that I’d been thinking about toast or Cristin Milioti for most of the last page and have no idea what’s going on. Then, when I tap to go back, I’m often taken forward, which confuses me more. To be fair, swipes are generally accurate — but I’m a tapper not a swiper.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the area for a back tap were wider — but you can’t adjust that. In fact, you can’t adjust the way your taps and swipes work at all. The middle of the top of the page accesses the header menu and a swipe down from the top brings up the quick settings panel. There’s no switching those gestures or the zones to suit your preference.
It’s unfortunate because that’s something both Kobo and Boox devices can do. Those readers also give you finer adjustments for the margins, line spacing, font weight and more. The options the Kindle does provide for the look of your text are honestly fine, though. And the Kindle gets points for letting you create and save themes made up of different combinations of fonts and layouts. Kobo doesn’t allow this and Boox can’t do it in its native reader app.
Buying, borrowing and listening to books
Acquiring books you want to read is maybe one of the most important qualities in an ereader and Kindles have their strengths and weaknesses. These features aren’t unique to the Paperwhite, but it’s worth mentioning how Amazon’s book access compares to its competitors. The first thing to acknowledge is that the Amazon Kindle library is the largest, thanks to Amazon Exclusive books and self-published, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) titles. That said, if you mostly read titles from established publishers, you’ll find them on any reader.
Amazon’s devices are better for people who like to flit between reading and listening to a given book. Not only do you get a discount on an audiobook if you buy the ebook version, the Whispersync feature keeps track of where you are so you can swap between the formats and pick up the story at the right place. And if you’re active on Goodreads, a Kindle will also serve you better as the integration with (the Amazon-owned) site is baked-in.
What Kindles don’t support are ePubs with any digital rights management (DRM) other than its own. If you buy a book from a third party ebook store that uses Adobe DRM, you can’t read it on a Kindle — but you can on Kobo and Boox devices (with a few extra steps). Finally, you may want to consider how you’ll access books borrowed from your local library. Using either the Libby app on your phone or your local library’s website, you just need to choose the “send to Kindle” option for them to show up on your reader. It's worth noting that Kobo lets you search for and borrow library books from the device itself, and Boox devices let you do so from the Libby app directly.
How the Signature compares to the regular Paperwhite and base Kindle
The regular Paperwhite is $160 and the Signature Edition is $200. That’s a $40 increase that may make sense for some, but probably not for most people. The three add-ons (extra storage, wireless charging and auto-adjusting light) are handy, but won’t dramatically improve your reading experience. If you like having offline access to lots of audiobooks, the larger 32GB capacity might be worth it. But if you mostly read ebooks (and/or use your phone for audiobooks, which makes more sense to me), the 16GB-capacity should be more than enough for years of library expansion.
The auto-adjusting front light on the Signature Edition is responsive and calibrates the light to the environment pretty well. I still need to manually lower it in a fully dark room, so it’s not fully hands-off, plus it’s easy enough to adjust. The separate warm light (which you get with the regular Paperwhite) is the more critical feature anyway, as it makes reading into the wee hours of the night far more pleasant. The final Signature-only feature, wireless charging, is probably the least important — you only charge these things once every other month at the most. How you do so feels inconsequential.
So if you save $40 by not going with the Signature model, does it make sense to save even more by going with the $110 standard Kindle? That’s harder to answer. The base Kindle has the same 300 ppi resolution, the same storage capacity, the same font and layout options and access to the same audio- and ebooks as the standard Paperwhite. But the Kindle’s screen is smaller, the device is not waterproof, the battery lasts half as long and there’s no warm light. Touch responsiveness isn’t quite as good and page turns are slightly slower (though the difference on both counts is minor).
Honestly, the lack of a warm light on the base Kindle is the only major drawback. It’s far more enjoyable to read the softer yellowish screens of either Paperwhite than the harsher blue of the base model. But I found myself getting used to it fairly quickly, and I probably noticed the difference most when switching back and forth between the two — something most people won’t do.
Wrap-up
In short, the Kindle Paperwhite and the new Paperwhite Signature offer a more premium reading experience. The flush front screen and soft-touch back feel more upscale. The larger screen feels like the difference between reading a mass market paperback and a trade paperback, which isn’t to say the standard Kindle feels cramped, it’s just smaller. I see the Paperwhite (especially the Signature model) appealing to people who want the most elevated reading experience — the crispest text, the least lag, the swankiest feel. And the regular Kindle is perfect for those who just want the most direct line to reading nearly any book they want.
It comes down to whether you think a heightened experience will make you read more. If so, then it’s probably worth the price jump in the long run. But if you’re just looking for a no-frills way to read books, go for the base Kindle. Even though it’s less high-end, it feels more durable and more portable. The smaller size can fit in a back pocket and you may be more apt to toss it in a cluttered bag — all of which may very well mean you read more, and, really, that’s the whole point of any ereader.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/kindle-paperwhite-signature-2024-review-a-luxurious-reading-experience-163036611.html?src=rss
One of fantasy and sci-fi’s all-time greats has passed away. Artist Greg Hildebrandt, known for his iconic work on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Marvel and Magic: The Gathering, died on Thursday at 85. He and his twin brother Tim, who died in 2006, were a powerhouse duo — the Brothers Hildebrandt — until they decided to pursue solo careers in 1981.
The duo was perhaps best known for their “Style B” poster (above) for the original Star Wars in 1977. Released in the UK (Tom Jung’s “Style A” was the original US poster), the art shows Luke Skywalker heroically hoisting his lightsaber high above his head like King Arthur wielded Excalibur. He’s flanked by a blaster-toting Princess Leia, with C-3PO and R2-D2 looking on from behind. Darth Vader’s imposing mask peers down on them in the background among a sea of stars, the Death Star and starfighters.
As for Luke and Leia’s noteworthy lack of resemblance to Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, neither the Brothers Hildebrandt nor Jung had access to the actors’ photos. So, they made do with generic hero images that could have been ripped from 1970s fantasy book covers. (Still rad, if not screen-accurate.) The Hildebrandt poster was used in the UK until January 1978, when it was replaced by Tom Chantrell’s “Style C” poster, which depicted the actual cast.
The brothers were also strongly associated with a series of The Lord of the Rings calendars. Decades before Peter Jackson brought the films to live action (and even before the 1978 animated version), their art — which drew on their influence from classic Disney films — was the most prominent visualization of Tolkien’s epic for many a 1970s fantasy reader.
Among Hildebrandt’s many other projects were comics for Marvel and DC, illustrations for Wizards of the Coast (Magic: The Gathering and Harry Potter), magazines Omni, Heavy Metal and Amazing Stories, album art for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Black Sabbath and a long list of book covers.
Hildebrandt also fought for freedom with his artistic gifts. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he contributed illustrations for Operation USA’s benefit anthology comic book series. Profits were donated to Ukrainian refugee relief efforts. Explaining his decision, he wrote, “Any project that I can lend my art to that will thwart Putin is a project I will join with all my heart, soul and mind.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/greg-hildebrandt-iconic-star-wars-and-lord-of-the-rings-artist-has-died-at-85-193026772.html?src=rss
Amazon, in what it described as a "difficult decision," is winding down Kindle Vella and shutting it down completely in February 2025. When the company launched the serialized story platform in 2021, it said Vella was a way for readers to discover new fictional stories and a new way for authors to earn from the Kindle Direct Publishing service. But it hasn't caught on as it had hoped, Amazon explains on its website, and it has decided to throw in the towel three years after Vella's debut.
Authors can only publish stories on Vella until December 4, which is also the last day readers can purchase tokens. While readers will no longer be able to purchase tokens after that, they can continue using those tokens to unlock episodes until the program closes in February. The good news for those who've been following specific authors or stories on Vella is that they won't lose their access to whatever episodes they've already unlocked even after the platform shuts down. They can always read the stories they've purchased in their library in the Kindle app for iOS and Android, though they can no longer open them on the web. Any token they don't use by February will be refunded.
Responses to Vella have been pretty lukewarm since it became available. Some authors liked the fact that they could use it to earn money from unfinished stories, while some readers said they'd prefer getting a whole book instead of paying for installments. Personally, as someone who follows a lot of indie authors, I only know of one who publishes on Vella and very, very few readers who actually use it. Amazon tried drumming up interest earlier this year by making the first ten episodes of a story, instead of just three, available to readers for free. The company has also tried keeping authors on the platform by giving away bonuses, but its strategies probably didn't work enough to make it consider keeping Vella around longer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/amazon-is-shutting-down-its-kindle-vella-serialized-story-platform-in-february-2025-120030125.html?src=rss
New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-this-weekend-jeff-vandermeer-returns-to-area-x-160004379.html?src=rss
New releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-this-weekend-jeff-vandermeer-returns-to-area-x-160004379.html?src=rss
If you're a word and game lover like me, then prepare to join me in excitement — and, eventual frustration — as there's a new daily word puzzle of sorts. New York-based art collective MSCHF has introduced an AOL-style chatroom called Redact-A-Chat that censors a word each time someone uses it. Josh Wardle, creator of Wordle, recently worked at MSCHF there for a few years.
So, how does it work? There's a main chatroom where you can write anything, but if a word gets repeated, then it's covered with a blue blurry line and unavailable for the rest of the day. I got to try it out early, and it seems duplicated words in sentences also lead to the second mention being blurred out. All words become fair game again at midnight. Announcements about newly censored words and when the time starts again come from three one-eyed safety pins reminiscent of the Microsoft Word safety pin.
In a statement, MSCHF said Redact-A-Chat "forces creative communication. You must constantly keep ahead of the censor in order to continue your conversation. On the other hand, you can be that a**hole who starts working their way through the dictionary to deprive everyone else of language."
If you're unsure about participating in the main room, you can start a chat just for your friends. You just click the create a chat room button, give it a name and it will appear. You can then invite other people to the group with a unique code.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/redact-a-chat-is-an-old-style-chatroom-that-censors-words-after-one-use-180014370.html?src=rss
Artificial intelligence makers have faced a mountain of criticism for borrowing from the work of others to train its models. Now the world’s largest publishing house is taking steps to ensure its authors don’t have their work plagiarized in the name of progress.
The Bookseller reports that Penguin Random House Publishing changed the copyright page at the front of its books to address using any of its titles as a source for AI training. Now the wording states: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.”
The new wording also protects against data absorption by noting the publisher “expressly reserves [the titles] from the text and data mining exception.” This part of the amended text comes from a recent European Parliament directive regarding text and data mining exceptions and ownership.
Penguin Random House is the latest publishing company to take action against encroaching AI models. Earlier this week, The New York Timesissued a cease and desist letter to the AI startup Perplexity to spot using its articles and stories to help its AI model create answers for users.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/penguin-random-house-amends-its-copyright-rules-to-protect-authors-from-ai-210436839.html?src=rss
Seventeen years is an odd anniversary to call out. But at an event launching four new Kindles, Amazon’s head of devices and services Panos Panay reminded a group of media that “Kindle is 17 years in the making, almost to the day.” Panay added that the device is currently seeing its highest sales numbers, and that 20.8 billion pages are read each month on a Kindle. But people aren’t just reading on Kindles. Since the introduction of the Kindle Scribe in 2022, there has been even more development in e-paper writing tablets, with a notable recent product in the reMarkable Paper Pro. While that $580 device supports a color writing experience, Amazon’s Kindle Scribe still only works in black and white. But it might offer enough by way of software updates to make up for its monochrome manner.
Plus, being able to write on what’s already a popular ereader makes that book-like experience even more realistic, and the Kindle Scribe represents what Panay called the “fastest growing category” of Kindles. You could almost call it a 2-in-1, since it’s an ereader and writing tablet at once. “I have a lot of passion around 2-in-1s,” Panay said at his presentation, and he used that term repeatedly to describe the Kindle Scribe. I haven’t thought about it that way, but I was less worried about semantics and more about how the Kindle Scribe and its new features felt at a hand-on session yesterday.
I’m the sort of person that needs to physically write out something while I plan a project. Whether it’s lofty goals to get my life together or draft up a strategy for covering certain software releases at work, my hands grasp at the air for an imaginary pen and paper. For that reason, the Kindle Scribe and other writing tablets call out to me. I reviewed the original Kindle Scribe almost two years ago and since then Amazon has slowly expanded the feature set and made the device more useful.
With the original Scribe, Amazon got a lot of the basics right. The latency and smoothness of the writing experience were close to feeling like pen and paper, and the device felt sturdy and slick. The new Scribe felt very similar in that sense, with little noticeable difference in the way the stylus interacted with the screen, and I didn’t encounter any jarring lag in the brief time I had with it.
Where the Scribe left me wanting more was software, and that’s also the area Amazon appears to have focused on this year. Don’t get me wrong — it’s not like the company didn’t tweak the hardware. There are some refinements like new white borders, a smaller grip, different color options and an updated stylus with a soft-tip top that feels more like a conventional eraser.
But inside the device lie the more intriguing changes. Most significant in my opinion is the new Active Canvas. It directly addresses one of my biggest complaints in my review, which is that the writing experience within books and publications was a little wonky.
To quote myself, this was what I said in 2022: “You can also take down notes when you’re reading an e-book. But it’s not like you can scribble directly onto the words of your e-books. You can use the floating toolbox to create a sticky note, then draw within a designated rectangle. When you close the sticky note, a small symbol appears over the word it was attached to, but otherwise, your scribbles are hidden. No annotating in the margins here.”
All of that has changed with the new Kindle Scribe. When you’re in an e-book, you can now just start writing on the page, and a box will appear, containing your scribbles. You no longer need to first find the floating toolbox and select the sticky note tool. Just write. It’s so much simpler, and in the Kindle Scribe I played with it worked almost instantly. Not only is the box embedded within the text, with the book’s words rearranging and flowing to accommodate it, but you can also resize the rectangle to take up however much space you like. The rest of the page will reflow to make room as necessary. I was particularly impressed by how quickly this happened on the demo unit — it was more responsive than switching between notebooks on my existing Scribe.
Plus, the box containing your note will stay in place instead of being hidden and replaced by a small symbol. It’s clear that Amazon’s earlier implementation was a rudimentary workaround to allow people to write on fixed format media, whereas the new approach is more deeply integrated and thought out.
And unlike what I said two years ago, you can now annotate in a new collapsible margin. Tapping the top right corner brings up options to pull up the column, and you can choose from having it take up about a quarter of the width or spread out to about three quarters. Content in the margin will be scrollable, so you theoretically won’t run out of space.
Now, this isn’t a perfect replica of annotating on a real textbook, but it might be better since you won’t have to scrawl all around the borders or write upside down just to squeeze in your thoughts. I’m not sure yet, as I really need to spend more time with it to know, but I like that Amazon clearly has taken in feedback and thought about how to add these requested features.
The company also added the ability to use the Pen and directly highlight or underline within those books, and pretty much any Kindle title will support most of these features. They’d have to be content that allows for font resizing, to start, so things like PDFs, which are fixed, won’t work with the Active Canvas. Word documents are compatible as well.
I spend more time writing in blank notebooks than in actual books, and for those scenarios, Amazon is using generative AI in two new tools: Summarization and Refined Writing. The former is pretty straightforward. If you’ve handwritten 10 pages worth of brainstorming meeting notes, the system can scan all of it and collate just the highlights. You can have this be added as a page to the existing notebook as a summary, or save it as a separate document on its own.
Refined Writing, meanwhile, is like Apple’s Handwriting Assist on iPadOS 18 but on a larger scale. While Apple’s software feels like it’s about nipping and tucking stray words that are out of alignment, Amazon’s takes your entire handwritten page and converts it into text in a script-like font. This works best if you tend to write in a single column with clear indentations and paragraphs. I tend to draw random boxes all over the place for breakout thoughts, and the system will not perfectly replicate that. For example, a two-column shopping list I quickly drafted on a demo Scribe was merged into one, and the checkboxes I drew were interpreted as capital letter Ds that were inserted at the start of every bullet.
It might not seem immediately useful, but if you’re the sort of person that’s shy about their handwriting, this could save you some shame. More importantly, it can make you writing more legible in case you need to share, say, your screenplay treatment with a production partner. Or if your scrawled shopping list just isn’t making sense to your partner. I also like that even after you’ve converted your notes into text, you can still erase them using the top of the pen and make edits. You’ll have to run Refined Writing again to regenerate a neatly formatted page. Oh, and I appreciate the flexibility you get here. You’ll have a few fonts and sizes to choose from, and can select the pages you want to reformat or have the entire book done up altogether.
None of the notebook features are destructive, meaning you’ll usually be able to retain your original written content and save the generated material as addendums. The AI work is done in the cloud, with your data being encrypted throughout the process. The Kindle Scribe also displays an animated page showing it’s busy with the generative AI task, which in my experience so far took at least 10 seconds. It might be different on the original Kindle Scribe, which will also be getting these software features either later this year or, in the case of the expandable margins, in early 2025 when it arrives on the new Kindle Scribe.
In its 17 years, the Kindle has done a lot to disrupt physical books, and since the introduction of the Scribe, it’s been poised to do the same for notebooks. As someone who’s relished being able to carry around the equivalent of a thousand books in a super thin device, the idea of replacing a bunch of notebooks with a Scribe is immensely intriguing. Amazon does find itself up against some stiff competition from reMarkable and Boox, but it has its sheer size and the power of its Kindle library in its favor. The Kindle Scribe will be available in December for a starting price of $400, and I hope to have a review unit in soon enough to see if I love or hate the new annotation and AI features.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/kindle-scribe-hands-on-you-can-scribble-on-your-books-130043335.html?src=rss
Hearst has become the latest major US publisher to sign an agreement to license its content to ChatGPT creator OpenAI. As part of a partnership announced on Tuesday, content from more than 60 Hearst-owned publications will appear in ChatGPT and other OpenAI products. Some of the publisher’s more notable properties include Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Elle. It also owns newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle. When Hearst content appears in ChatGPT, the software will provide citations and direct links.
The organizations did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement. Unlike the partnership OpenAI signed with Dotdash Meredith in May, its deal with Hearst doesn’t appear to include a plan for the two firms to collaborate on ad tech.
“As generative AI matures, it’s critical that journalism created by professional journalists be at the heart of all AI products,” said Jeff Johnson, president of Hearst’s Newspapers unit. “This agreement allows the trustworthy and curated content created by Hearst Newspapers’ award-winning journalists to be part of OpenAI’s products like ChatGPT — creating more timely and relevant results.”
The announcement comes less than a week after news broke that OpenAI had recently raised a record-breaking $6.6 billion in new venture capital funding. Since the start of 2024, OpenAI has signed licensing agreements with The Financial Times and Condé Nast, the owner of publications like Vogue, The New Yorker and Wired. At the same time, not every publisher has been so keen to work with the AI giant. At the end of last year, The New York Times sued OpenAI, with Alden Global Capital publications like The Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, later launching a suit of their own.
Update, October 8, 6:50PM ET: This article was updated after publishing to clarify that Alden Global Capital publications are suing OpenAI, rather than Alden Global itself.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-partners-with-cosmopolitan-and-elle-publisher-hearst-180517248.html?src=rss