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After a long hiatus from Civilization 7 following my original review – after which I wasn't exactly in love with it – I decided to give it another go with the big 1.4 Test of Time update, and more specifically the 1.4.1 patch that came out in late June 2026. Firaxis has made pretty big changes across the board, including some much-needed quality-of-life improvements here. But I don't know if I agree with the overall philosophy of making it more like older, existing Civ games.

In May, Take-Two' Strauss Zelnick told Game File that Civilization 7 had been a "bridge too far" for existing fans of the series. That's definitely the guiding star the Test of Time update was based on. And man, from my perspective, that was completely the wrong message to take from the negative feedback to Civ 7's launch. There's a quote I keep coming back to from No Man's Sky developer Sean Murray that goes, "Players are normally almost always right about problems … [but] they're almost never right about the solutions." I think Firaxis has put too much faith in the solutions certain vocal portions of the player base were calling for.

What I said about Civilization 7

With Civilization 7, the desire to streamline and simplify this legendary 4X series feels like it has gone a bit too far, particularly when it comes to the interface. It’s frustratingly inadequate at providing me with the information I need to play well, or even understand what's going on sometimes. Even so, it does have improved warfare and diplomacy, a bit of added narrative flair, as well as mostly gorgeous graphics and sound, so it can still give me reasons to keep clicking one more turn late into the night. There’s good reason to believe that with Firaxis’s usual pace of patches and expansions it can refine its new ideas and become everything it ought to be, and while what’s here right now is at least still a fun time, it’s also a bigger step backward for the series than we’re accustomed to when a new age dawns. - Leana Hafer, February 3, 2025

Score: 7

Read the full Civilization 7 review .

I'm a fan of civ switching. It's very contentious, and I get that. And it hasn't gone away or anything. You can still switch civilizations every age if you want to. You can set the AI to change civilizations every age. I don't even hate the way "timeless" civs have been implemented, necessarily – which let you play the same civ through all three ages like in previous games. There are unique policy cards for each one even when they're not in their native "apex" age. And I especially love the Syncretism feature that lets you borrow unique units or improvements from a civ you're aware of that’s in its apex age.

I played one campaign as Iceland through all three ages, and in the modern age I picked up American Marines as a unique unit through Syncretism, which felt very appropriate. You know, we used to be vikings, so of course we'd be good at amphibious warfare. I don't hate that it's an option. It's more the principle of the thing. I don't feel like Civ 7 puts its best foot forward when it backs off of some of its most interesting ideas.

Bittersweet Victory

Where this really turns out to be a bummer is in the victory conditions, with each one having been converted into a really simplistic race for points that may or may not include some vestigial nods to the age-specific objectives from 1.0. A lot of those objectives were a total mess. I'm not denying that at all. But rather than getting refined, they've been replaced with something far less interesting.

Tourism is back, but it doesn't work anything like it did in Civ 6. It's just the name for cultural victory points, and it hasn't done anything to break up the wonder spam meta. There's also Domination for military, GDP for economic, and Innovation for science, and they're functionally almost identical. The science victory has a small, interesting wrinkle that you need to build and defend a launch pad.

But all of the victories now work by requiring you to get your score in one of the four categories to a certain threshold above the civ in second place, which starts a five turn countdown before ending the game. 1.0 mechanics like factories and treasure fleets now simply give you GDP points, which also looks at things like how much gold your cities are producing and how many trade routes you have. Domination mostly comes from owning conquered cities. Innovation comes from special projects and the tech tree.

The victory threshold shrinks over time from 5x in Antiquity to, at the lowest I've seen, 1.5x about 60% of the way through the Modern Age. This means you can end the campaign quite early if no one else is really competing with you for the same victory objective. And while that can be a welcome way to wrap things up instead of playing out 50 more turns of a foregone conclusion, it also feels like an admission that they just couldn't make the late game fun, so they might as well give you a way to skip it.

The 1.4 patch notes talk about the fact that you can now focus on one victory condition from the very beginning like it's a huge improvement, but I actually liked the ability to change up my strategy between ages, too. And there's no longer any reward for doing that. My Icelandic Empire was the terror of the seas during the Exploration Age, as they should be, and I just ended up continuing my momentum into a Domination victory in the Modern Age even though it might have been more interesting to settle down and go for Tourism with all my bonuses to natural wonders. It was too late to change my mind, really.

Sneaky-pedia

The quality-of-life changes are significant, at least. The interface and tooltips have been greatly expanded with ways to quickly access more information. You can pin tooltips using… the K key? Okay. Weird choice, but you can rebind it at least. The Civlopedia is still missing plenty of features I'd want, like clickable hyperlinks that take you to a relevant article. But it's a lot easier to locate relevant details or dig deeper for more information on how a specific figure is calculated.

Game setup options have been expanded as well, and are a bit better explained. They're still not quite as robust as older Civ games. But certain map types come with additional variables you can tweak like sea level. Archipelago actually looks like an archipelago, though I still think it's a bit too land dense on the high sea level setting. There's a bunch of custom difficulty modifiers as well, if you don't mind the AI getting free money but don't want their units to get arbitrary combat bonuses, which is nice. You can even set whether they stick with their starting civilization or pick a new one every age.

The Test of Time update didn't suddenly make this my go-to Civ.

So where am I at with Civ 7 after all these updates? Does it finally have the juice? Well, I started a new campaign while I was writing this that I plan to keep playing just for fun, so like I said in my initial review, it's not lacking in that “just one more turn” quality the series is known for. It's a huge relief to have an interface that doesn't hide important details from me. But here's the thing: I would still rather be playing Civ 5 or Civ 6. Civ 7 still isn’t able to compete with their years of patches and expansions, especially since it has backtracked on some of its more daring ideas, which makes it feel even more like a stripped-down Civ 6.

The Test of Time update didn't suddenly make this my go-to Civ. I think it's going to take at least a big expansion or two to find out if it ever crosses that line. And while I disagree with the design philosophy that has guided a lot of its changes since launch – victory conditions in particular feel like a step back – there are at least meaningful improvements I can point to as well.

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SAN FRANCISCO — AI giant Anthropic has already become a dominant player in technology and a household name for everyday users of artificial intelligence. Can it make drugs too?

On Tuesday, the company announced it is going to try. Though it’s unclear whether Anthropic intends to bring drug candidates to commercialization, multiple executives emphasized how important it is for Anthropic to get hands-on experience trying to use its own products to solve real scientific problems.

Eric Kauderer-Abrams, the company’s head of life sciences, said Anthropic has been asking itself what it should be doing besides training models and building products. During an event here to launch the company’s newest application, Claude Science , he said Anthropic had come up with one answer.

Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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In a TikTok video that has racked up 1.4 million likes , men are handed scissors and a sheet of paper and asked to cut out a Christmas tree while describing their favorite memory with their partner. The men start telling a story, but most trail off as they concentrate on the cutting. In another clip, a woman calmly juggles four different chores while her husband struggles to put on socks and hold a conversation simultaneously.

These videos are designed to make you laugh. But they also reflect and reinforce the idea that women are better multitaskers than men. Studies putting this stereotype to the test have yielded very mixed results. Yet the idea that there is a gender difference in the ability to multitask remains lodged in the public mind. Researchers think there are various reasons why the stereotype persists.

Multitasking under the microscope

Science is clear on one thing: multitasking is incredibly difficult. The human brain has evolved to single-task. “We can do things at the same time when they are highly automatized, but other than that, humans in general struggle,” said Marco Hirnstein , professor in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Bergen, Norway. (I was relieved to hear that as I struggled to listen, take notes, and think of my next question all at once during our Zoom call.)

But when it comes to whether women are better multitaskers than men, scientists don’t seem to agree. Early studies seemed to back the stereotype. In 2013 , researchers in the U.K. found that everyone slowed down when multitasking — but men slowed down significantly more. Two years later, a Russian team reported that men used more parts of their brains to multitask and still took longer, suggesting that multitasking requires more effort in men.

Then the picture got complicated. A 2017 study concluded that men and women multitask equally well, even if their brains may go about it differently. In 2018 , when volunteers were given a realistic multitasking challenge — preparing a room for a meeting while fielding distractions — there was no difference between men and women on every measure the researchers tracked: accuracy, time, distance walked, remembering to do the right thing at the right moment, and dealing with distractions. A 2019 study found that multitasking led to a similar loss of speed and accuracy for both men and women.

Then a 2021 study flipped the script entirely, finding that men handled multitasking better than women, which the researchers chalked up to faster mental processing speed in men.

“The findings are incredibly inconsistent,” said Hirnstein . “I would say it’s probably even more inconsistent than you normally get in psychological research.”

Making sense of the research

Tilo Strobach , a professor in general psychology at MSH Medical School Hamburg, Germany, suspects that the mixed findings are due to differences in study design. “My feeling is that this mix is because of the different types of multitasking situations that were used across the studies,” he said.

Multitasking means doing two or more things simultaneously or in rapid succession. So talking while driving counts, but so does cooking, as it involves a quick sequence of steps. Different studies use different multitasking setups, with some task combinations overlapping in time and others being more sequential, explained Strobach. This variation in setups, he argues, helps explain why the findings are so mixed.

Gender differences in specific tasks also play a role. Hirnstein’s own research has shown that women tend to be better at finding and remembering words than men . Men are better at imagining what a complex 3D cube would look like if you were to rotate it . If you choose tasks for a multitasking experiment that already favor men or women, “then you’re probably just going to find the same difference that you observe in the single task,” Hirnstein said.

A good example of this is a 2013 study that found men were better at multitasking than women. The researchers traced this difference in multitasking outcomes to men’s superior spatial ability. Interestingly, when women were in the menstrual phase of their cycle — a time when women’s spatial skills are at their highest — the multitasking gap disappeared.

A self-fulfilling prophecy or a kernel of truth?

Strobach is certain that “there’s no difference between men and women at all” when it comes to multitasking ability.

But the stereotype can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, he said. If men expect to do worse than women, that expectation can sap their motivation and effort, increase their anxiety, and drag down their performance — making the stereotype look true even when no real difference in multitasking ability exists.

Hirnstein takes a slightly different view. He agrees that stereotypes affect performance, but believes that performance informs stereotypes too. People watch how others perform and generalize from that. The resulting stereotype is exaggerated and overly generalized, he said, “but there is this kernel of truth.”

Currently, “we don’t have proof that there is a sex difference in multitasking because the data is not consistent enough,” Hirnstein said. But he suspects there is one: “If you measure it right, you probably will find something.”

A specific behavior might drive the stereotype

André and Diana Szameitat, a husband-and-wife research team at Brunel University of London, have offered a different explanation for why the stereotype persists. André Szameitat is deputy director of the university’s Centre for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience; Diana Szameitat is an honorary lecturer in its psychology department.

In a study published earlier this year in Psychological Research , the Szameitats asked 41 men and 37 women to juggle five tasks at once in a setup that closely resembled real life. At one table, participants followed a recipe with pretend ingredients. When a kitchen timer rang, they broke off and dashed to a second table for two quick tasks — a phone-number search and a visual search — then returned to cooking. All the while, they watched a slideshow of words, jotting down any on a red background, a task that mimics the act of keeping an eye on a toddler. And every 20 seconds, a speaker played a recorded question they had to answer aloud, such as: “Would you rather lose all your money and valuables, or every photo you’ve ever taken, and why?”

Across the cooking, searching, and monitoring tasks, men and women performed equally well. However, a difference emerged in the talking task. Men failed to answer the questions more than twice as often as women.

When a group of neutral observers, unaware of what the researchers were testing, watched short films of the participants at work, they rated the female multitaskers as being more in control of the task, performing better, and being less stressed than the male multitaskers. Their judgment was highly influenced by the participants’ performance on the conversation task.

André Szameitat said the study showed two things. First, men and women differ in how well they multitask when one of the tasks is talking. Second, other people see this difference and use it to judge how well someone multitasks. “We suggest that this pattern can explain why the stereotype that women are better at multitasking than men may have developed,” he said. But he warned that the results only show a correlation for now, and more work is needed to prove that men’s reticence while multitasking is what drives the stereotype.

For now, it remains unclear whether men strategically drop the conversation to focus, or because they are unable to keep talking while doing something mentally demanding. “It could be a conscious decision,” Hirnstein said. “It could also be that they had so much going on at the same time that something had to give, and the first thing to go was this verbal task.”

If a male partner starts ignoring you mid-conversation while he’s busy with something else (just like the men in those TikTok videos), “one shouldn’t get angry,” Szameitat said. The study suggests this is a common pattern, not rudeness.

But there are settings where a man’s reduced talkativeness could be a serious issue. “There are highly critical situations where communication is essential, for example between pilot and co-pilot or control tower,” Szameitat said. Yet it is not yet known whether the findings would carry over into a high-stress event such as an aviation emergency, or whether the difference might disappear under that kind of pressure. This is a question for future research, Szameitat said. “Because these are early findings, it is important not to overstretch such implications and avoid headlines like ‘Men can’t fly planes’ or alike.”

This article The “women are better multitaskers” stereotype is messier than you think is featured on Big Think .

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Rudi Garcia railed against criticism of his side, who face Senegal in the last 32 with a spring in their step after the 5-1 hammering of New Zealand

Belgium had just beaten New Zealand 5-1 to secure top spot in Group G and, at least in theory, an easier last-32 draw, but Rudi Garcia was evidently irked. In response to the first question in a curt post-match press conference, he adjusted the microphone to ensure his point was heard.

“I really didn’t appreciate them being called has beens ,” he said alluding to an article in La Libre, a French-language Belgian newspaper, that compared Kevin De Bruyne with a washed-up Hollywood actor after a flat display against Iran in their previous match in Los Angeles.

Continue reading...

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Toyota and Joby Aviation are forming a new manufacturing joint venture.

It’s focused on building an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

The model is designed to be an air taxi that can haul up to four passengers.

Toyota has been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Joby Aviation since 2020, so it comes as little surprise the companies have announced a “strategic manufacturing alliance.” The agreement will see the two firms establish a joint venture known as the Joby Toyota Aero Manufacturing Preparation Company.

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While the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, the joint venture will be based in California and Toyota will own a controlling 51% stake in the new company. The ultimate goal is to combine Joby’s “pioneering work in electric aviation with Toyota’s globally recognized expertise in production systems and operational excellence.”

More: Toyota Investing $500 Million More In Air Taxi Startup

The companies didn’t delve into specifics, but said the joint venture will initially be focused on laying the groundwork for commercial production. They’ll also strive for “manufacturing excellence, with particular emphasis on further improving productivity, quality, and cost.” More importantly, the joint venture will increase Joby’s production capacity and enable them to better meet the anticipated demand for their electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft .

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Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda remarked, “Since our founding, we’ve been guided by the philosophy of providing mobility for all. We see air mobility as a natural extension of that philosophy – from the ground into the sky – and as a way to bring new value to people’s lives and to society. It’s really meaningful for us to take on this challenge together with Joby, a partner that shares the same vision. We believe this strengthened relationship is an important step forward in realizing the future mobility society.”

As a refresher, Joby is focused on creating air taxis and aims to have a “seamless, end-to-end experience that connects ground transportation and air travel in a single journey” thanks to partnerships with companies such as Delta and Uber .

Their six rotor aircraft can carry four passengers and a pilot, and hit speeds of up to 200 mph (322 km/h). The model also has four batteries, rotating propellers, and multiple redundancies to enhance safety.

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Shawn Layden, the former President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment of America, has explained why PlayStation's PC strategy made sense.

When speaking with the YouTube channel PSI , Layden was asked about the value of exclusives. The former executive explained that it makes sense to have games that you can only get on PlayStation, but it also makes sense to make them available to other audiences later. Layden noted that the expansion into PC was not to make money, but to grow their IPs beyond those that are already embedded in the PlayStation ecosystem.

Particularly, that importance grew when PlayStation began making plans to adapt its IPs into films and TV shows, as it meant that they needed to expand their reach.

"The PC thing, in my mind at the time, was not to make money, frankly," said Layden. "It was, 'How do I get my intellectual property in front of people who wouldn't normally see it? How do I get the world of Horizon to be seen by people who aren't in the PlayStation world?' Not necessarily because they're going to buy a PlayStation, I wasn't that crazy. But as we take our [IP] across other media, whether it's into film, television, comic books, or whatever... you need to have as many eyeballs that are aware of this character [and] this story.

"Just concentrating on the PlayStation population and only telling them these stories, and then try to bring it off that platform into other media, that's going to be a hell of a jump."

Layden went on to note that those who were buying these games on PC likely weren't going to buy a PS5 regardless, as the time between the console version and the PC port meant that anyone who really wanted the game would've bought a console for it.

"If someone's waiting 18 months for something to come on PC, we didn't lose a sale to them. They weren't going to buy the hardware anyway." Layden said.

The news comes following reports that PlayStation is abandoning PC as a platform for its narrative-driven single-player games. That means Marvel's Wolverine, Intergalactic, and God of War Laufey will not come to PC in the future. Instead, the company plans to use the platform for live-service titles, and that's about it. There's no case-by-case play here.

PlayStation reportedly felt that the PC versions of its games were inconsistent and weren't driving enough revenue, making them somewhat redundant for the brand going forward. Although the PC releases weren't topping any sales charts, they were indeed reaching people that otherwise may not have played these games, like Layden said. However, in a time where companies are looking to cut costs wherever they can, it may not have been an expense that PlayStation could continue to spare.

Cade Onder is a freelancer for IGN's news team. He covers all things entertainment, including gaming, film, and more. You can find him on Twitter @Cade_Onder.