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This article in Nature argues that it’s due to an overfishing of predators and warming sea temperatures.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
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This week Garmin's screenless Cirqa smart band received a firmware update that fixes one of its most obvious gaps: the lack of alerts from your phone. With Version 4.20, you can now set up your smart band to buzz your wrist for texts, calls, and other smart notifications from your phone. The addition is listed on Garmin's forums as "Support vibration for smart notifications/incoming calls." Reaction has been upbeat, too—users on the Garmin subreddit have been glad to see the feature arrive.
Amusingly, Garmin's own FAQ still states that the Cirqa does not vibrate for text messages, phone calls, or other smartphone notifications. Clearly that page is now out of date, so Garmin will want to correct it. Since Garmin doesn't yet have step-by-step instructions, I tested the text-message vibrations myself. Here's how you can set up your Cirqa smart band to vibrate for calls and texts, in addition to a number of other promising updates to check out.
To receive these alerts, your band must be running firmware 4.20 or later. Here is how to get everything configured.
Update the firmware. Open your Garmin Connect app and sync your Cirqa, so the app can check for and install version 4.20 or newer.
Grant the necessary phone permissions. In your phone's settings, make sure Garmin Connect has permission to access SMS, Contacts, and Phone.
Configure notifications in Garmin Connect. Back in Garmin Connect, tap the Menu (or More) tab. Select Garmin Devices, then choose your Cirqa Smart Band. Go to Notifications & Alerts (or Smart Notifications) and turn on text and call alerts.
Troubleshooting tip: If alerts aren't coming through, check that Do Not Disturb, Sleep Mode, and any aggressive Battery Saver settings are turned off on both your phone and the band.
For most a lot of Cirqa fans, the phone alerts are the headline, but the 4.20 update carries a solid list of other improvements and bug fixes:
Trail Run: Run/Walk detection is now available for Trail Run activities.
Timestamp fix: Resolved a problem where an activity's recorded time didn't match the time on your phone.
Distance calibration: You can now calibrate distance for Treadmill Run, Indoor Rowing, and Indoor Cycling before saving the activity on the device.
Duration alerts: Duration time alerts for speaking out now accumulate.
Stress alerts: Stress alerts are now blocked while Auto Activity Detection is recording.
Bedtime reminders: Fixed an issue where the bedtime approaching notification sometimes failed to trigger.
Live Activity: Heart rate now appears on the Live Activity screen before recording begins.
Pinned activity bug: Fixed an issue where the pinned activity reverted to Timed Activity after changing the phone's language.
Workout editing: Fixed a problem that prevented editing reps during a workout.
Stability: General system stability improvements.
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Garmin users are taking to the company's support forums with a common grievance: The newly introduced "OK Garmin" hands-free voice feature appears to be eating through battery life. The feature arrived through Garmin’s September software updates, bringing hands-free voice activation to the Fenix 8, Forerunner 570 and 970, Venu 4, and several other models. Here's how to make sure Garmin's new updates aren't slashing your watch's battery life.
Last month's updates for select watches also brought all-day fall detection, a set of new Quick Workouts and Garmin Run Coach plans, as well as that "OK Garmin" hands-free voice command feature. It's exactly what it sounds like: Instead of pressing a button, users can simply say “OK Garmin” to activate voice commands. However, it looks like "OK Garmin" in particular is what causes some watch's projected runtimes to drastically drop, allegedly by roughly 35% to 50% in some cases.
Garmin does acknowledge that enabling these settings shortens battery life, though it doesn't say by how much. The tradeoff makes sense, since the watch has to listen constantly for its wake phrase. Even so, giving up several days of runtime is a steep price for a feature that many people may seldom use. Luckily, the fix is simple: Turning off "OK Garmin" should restore your battery life estimates right away.
If your watch has been draining faster since the update, go to Settings > System > Voice and disable "OK Garmin." If needed, you can also switch off the Phone Assistant wake word from the same area. The good news is that turning this feature off won't even take voice commands away—you can still trigger them manually using the watch's physical controls.
Keep in mind that these numbers are battery estimates rather than independently tested, real-world runtimes. Some of the battery complaints that surfaced after the update may also stem from unrelated issues. Still, trading away as much as half your battery life just to avoid pressing a button is a difficult bargain to defend.
ChatGPT's capabilities continue to expand apace, and the latest feature is a fully capable slideshow creator. Announced a few weeks ago, ChatGPT Slides lets you create PowerPoint-style decks from inside your conversations, and it's now appearing for those on the Pro tier and above (meaning right now, you need to spend at least $100 a month to get it).
If you're on the free ChatGPT plan or the $20-a-month Plus tier, you can still get ChatGPT to generate downloadable PowerPoint files from the content of your conversations. However, they'll be more basic than those made in the full version of ChatGPT Slides, and there are no collaboration or native edit options.
ChatGPT Slides is part of OpenAI's push to give users a complete office suite inside the ChatGPT apps. Pages (the word processor) is already available for Pro tiers and above, while a spreadsheet app is on the way—the idea being that you will soon be able to get all your work done without any help from Google or Microsoft.
While Chatgpt Slides is only available on pricey plans right now, it's likely to come to lower subscription tiers in the future. But for now, how does the tool compare to what's available in the free and Plus tiers, not to mention what you can do with Gemini inside Google Slides? I've taken a detailed look.
When it comes to testing out AI tools, it helps to focus on something you're already knowledgeable about so you can spot any mistakes. To test this, I decided to see what ChatGPT could hoover up from the web about the new iPhone Duo. If you're on the free or Plus plans, you can start a conversation, then ask for a slideshow or PowerPoint about it.
Plus accounts also have access to a specific Presentations add-on, available via the + (plus) menu in the prompt box, though I get the impression this feature is in a state of flux since ChatGPT Slides arrived. In any case, you can begin asking about the iPhone Duo specs and early online reactions, and then say "build me a slideshow on the key features and reviews so far".
What I got back on the $20 Plus account was a fairly competent slideshow on Apple's foldable, with accurate information as far as I could see, and a simple series of layouts. It looked like something you might whip up from a template if you were in a rush and didn't have time to properly align all the bullet points or be very selective about which details you included and which you left out. One neat touch is that ChatGPT was able to drop in an official photo of the iPhone Duo at the start of the slideshow, but I had to specifically ask for one.
You can go back and make specific edits to the slideshow, but you have to describe them in the general prompt box—you can't select individual slide elements and make more precise changes. Still, if all you want to do is occasionally convert your ChatGPT conversations into a rough and ready slideshow, there's no real need to upgrade from the free or Plus accounts for now.
Switching to a Pro account, I gave a similar task to ChatGPT Slides hoping for something more comprehensive. To begin with, Slides gets its own dedicated area in the app, so you can start up a blank presentation from scratch—there are some basic image and text features, but the idea is to use prompts to build your slide deck. It's like a really basic Google Slides, with a prompt box.
Creating a slideshow this way feels rather tedious: Typing out what you want to say and then waiting for ChatGPT to do it isn't as intuitive as just throwing in some graphics and text yourself, as you might do in PowerPoint. It also seems to be a bit buggy, at least during the time I spent testing it, with some requests not properly completing.
Starting a standard conversation with ChatGPT and then turning all the information into a deck is much more useful from my perspective. My iPhone Duo slideshow was longer, laid out better, and more informative than the one I created on the Plus plan—there were even charts of battery life and official photos this time.
However, whether I used the free, Plus, or Pro tools, my presentations didn't come across as particularly well thought through. They don't really flow smoothly, either across individual slides or the slideshow as a whole—it feels very much like an algorithm, rather than a person, has decided what information to include and where on the slides to stick it.
Whether you create presentations in chats or through the ChatGPT Slides space, you're able to click on individual elements and do some basic manual resizing and repositioning. You can also request edits via prompts: "Drop in an image of a cat", "make this pop more", "center all of this information", or whatever it is.
ChatGPT Slides does offer collaborative tools, which I wasn't able to test, and I can see that being useful for teams heavily invested in ChatGPT's ecosystem. I can also imagine ChatGPT Slides coming in handy when you've got a lot of information you need to quickly dump into a slideshow that looks vaguely presentable.
In general though, I think I'd much rather stick to the traditional way of making slideshows for now. These old methods are more precise and more manageable, and give you full control over what's shown and where—even if they do take a bit longer. What's more, modern-day presentation tools come with so many templates and other layout aids that it's not difficult to put together something that's easy on the eyes while including all of the information you think is most critical.
Google is, of course, also all the way in on AI (and then some), and if you pay for Google AI Pro ($19.99 a month) or above, you can have Gemini pop up right inside Google Slides to give you some assistance with your presentation-making. To compare the tools, I gave it the same task as I did ChatGPT, asking for a slide deck on the new iPhone Duo.
Gemini actually asked some questions along the way: about wht visual style to use, the audience to aim the slideshow at, and the details to highlight. Though it's always possible to put this sort of information manually into a prompt, this would be a helpful additional to ChatGPT Slides.
What Gemini and Google Slides produced was impressive in terms of the layout and overall vibe of the presentation: It felt much more like a human being had put together the slide deck compared to what ChatGPT had produced, in terms of the information chosen, the way the slides were laid out, and the color picks.
However, Google's result had its faults too: The presentation got the facts on the maximum brightness of the iPhone Duo screen wrong, and produced an "iPhone Duo" graphic that looked like two iPhones from around 2021 stuck together. ChatGPT Slides at least managed to pull official imagery from the Apple website.
You can't attach individual edit prompts to specific parts of your presentation in Google Slides as you can in ChatGPT Slides—you have to mention them in the general prompt box. That said, Google Slides is obviously a much more mature and established slideshow tool compared to the OpenAI equivalent, in terms of its features and layout options (it has been around for a decade, after all).
Given that extra software structure and the lower cost of entry, Gemini and Google Slides is the better option for AI-assisted slideshow making at the moment—though I wouldn't bet against OpenAI catching up. For now, ChatGPT Slides is something that's good to have available if you're already paying a lot for ChatGPT every month, but not a feature that makes it worth your while to swap your AI allegiance.
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Zone 2 training is still having a moment—even if no one can agree on what it actually means. Legend has it that your easy, conversational-pace cardio—aka your Zone 2 heart rate—is the secret to unlocking everything from a bigger aerobic engine, to faster race times, and even to a longer life.
Whether Zone 2 deserves quite this much hype is debatable, but still, there are plenty of good reasons to master heart rate training more broadly. To train by heart rate, you aim to keep your heart rate in the "zone" that gives you your desired workout. Even if you believe every word of the Zone 2 gospel, it's completely pointless if your watch has the wrong idea of what your Zone 2 is. If you train with a Garmin watch, here’s how—and why—you should reset your heart rate zones now (and periodically).
When you first set up your Garmin, it asked for your age, weight, and a few other details. From there it generated heart rate zones, often using a default formula based on a maximum heart rate estimated from your age (typically some version of 220 minus your age). But these formulas are often wrong, since they give a single number for everybody at the same age, while real maximum heart rates vary from person to person.
Plus, there isn’t one universally agreed-upon heart rate zone system. So if your watch assumed a max of 180 and yours is actually 195, every zone it gave you is shifted. Your "Zone 2" might really, for you, be Zone 1 (AKA a pace so easy it barely feels like a workout). Or your "Zone 2" might actually be a moderate-to-hard effort that's digging you into a hole, while you think you're taking it easy. At every step of the way, there’s a different formula and definition that determines what heart rate zone shows up on your watchface.
To complicate things further, Garmin gives multiple options to set up your zones:
Percent of max heart rate. This is the simplest approach. You enter (or let the watch estimate) your max, and each zone is a slice of that number. It's only as good as your max heart rate figure, which, as noted above, is often a guess.
Percent of heart rate reserve (HRR). This method factors in both your max and your resting heart rate, so zones are based on the range your heart works across rather than just the top of it. It tends to produce more personalized zones, but it means your resting heart rate needs to be current, too.
Percent of lactate threshold heart rate (LTHR). Here, your zones are anchored to the effort level where your body starts producing lactate faster than it can clear it, a point that's closely tied to how you actually perform. Many coaches consider this the most meaningful anchor, because it reflects your real physiology rather than a formula.
That third option raises its own question: Where does your lactate threshold number come from?
In the past, getting a lactate threshold estimate from a Garmin meant wearing a compatible chest strap and doing a guided test, which involved a structured, hard run on your part. On newer models, however, that's no longer the case. Garmin has been rolling out an updated lactate threshold detection that works from the wrist's optical heart rate sensor, with no chest strap and no dedicated test. Instead, the watch estimates your threshold automatically from regular outdoor runs. This feature is typically on by default and generally requires a baseline VO2 max estimate and a run or trail run recorded with heart rate. If you'd rather not leave it up to the algorithm, you can turn auto-detection off and enter your own lactate threshold heart rate manually in the heart rate zone settings. Which watches have this varies by model, so check your specific device.
Even if you set your zones carefully once, they don't stay accurate forever. Several things change over time:
Your fitness changes. As you get fitter, your resting heart rate often drops, and your lactate threshold heart rate can shift. Zones based on where you were a year or two ago may not reflect where you are now.
You age. Your maximum heart rate tends to decline gradually over the years.
You change sports. Running, cycling, and swimming each have different heart rate behavior, and Garmin lets you set sport-specific zones for exactly this reason. If you've never touched them, you may be using running-based numbers on the bike, or vice versa.
You switched watches or imported old data. Zones can carry over from a previous device or a profile you set up years ago.
Your resting heart rate has changed. An outdated resting number could be throwing things off.
None of these have dramatic consequences, but if you’re focused on heart rate training, it’s worth trying to be as accurate and up-to-date as possible. If your zones are set too high, you may not be getting the aerobic stimulus you think you are. You'll also underestimate how hard your harder sessions really are, and your training load and recovery metrics can end up skewed.
On the flip side, if your zones are set too low, your "easy" runs could actually become the classic trap of training in the gray zone: too hard to recover from well, too easy to drive big gains. And because Garmin's training status, recovery time, and load features lean on your heart rate data, bad zones can quietly nudge those numbers off as well.
The good news is that fixing all this should take less than 10 minutes. First, decide whether you want zones based on max heart rate, heart rate reserve, or lactate threshold. There’s a good chance you can trust the lactate threshold your watch gives you, or you can find your actual max heart rate.
The informal way is to just notice what number you see on your watch when you can no longer speak comfortably; the more formal way is this treadmill test. You can also look through your recent hard efforts, like races, hill repeats, or all-out intervals, and see the highest sustained heart rate you've recorded. If you want a more deliberate test, a coach or a structured max-effort protocol can help, but only attempt hard testing if you're healthy and your doctor is comfortable with it. Also keep in mind that reading from a wrist-based sensor can also spike unreliably, so a chest strap gives more trustworthy numbers when accuracy matters.
Next, check your recent average resting heart rate in Garmin Connect and make sure the number your zones are using is current.
In your watch's user profile or in Garmin Connect, find the heart rate zone settings. From there you can adjust your max, change how zones are calculated, and set different zones for different sports.
Finally, put these new zones to the test. Go for an easy run or ride at what your watch calls Zone 2. Can you hold a conversation, breathing comfortably in full sentences? Does it feel sustainable for a long time? If it feels either laughably easy or surprisingly taxing, your zones probably need another look.
Maybe Zone 2 is the cornerstone of your training, or maybe you think it's completely overrated. Either way, the principle is the same: You should be able to train by feel, and your watch can only help you do that if the numbers behind it are right.
Garmin gives you more ways to set your zones than most brands do. Spend 10 minutes figuring out which method your zones are using, confirming the number behind it is current, and updating it in your settings. It’ll make every easy run, hard interval, and recovery metric on your wrist more useful.
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The original A Different World was a groundbreaking sitcom in its era, spending six seasons highlighting Black academic drive among a cast of characters so indelible that we're now checking in on them decades later. Spearheaded by Queen Sugar's Felicia Pride, the update has been a critical and ratings hit for Netflix, earning the rarest prize of all in streaming television: a quick second season renewal. While you're waiting for season two, here are some other smart coming-of-age shows that blend heart and humor with realistic drama.
An easy pairing with A Different World, this show follows Black-ish's Zoey Johnson (Yara Shahidi) as she leaves home to attend a (fictional) California liberal arts college (the last couple of post-graduation seasons shift the focus to her brother Andre, played by Marcus Scribner). The emphasis is on driven young people who are capable of making big mistakes on the path to adulthood. A true comedy-drama, Grown-ish feels real(-ish) in a way that few other college shows have managed. Stream Grown-ish on Hulu.
Adapted from and expanding upon the 2014 movie, this show takes us to a (fictional) Ivy League school for a comedy-drama that tackles campus life and politics from a rather different perspective than that of Rooster. Logan Browning leads the ensemble cast as Sam White, who kind of inadvertently starts the titular radio show following a racially charged incident on campus. Far from the racial screed that some bad-faith YouTubers seem to find it, it's never shy about confronting the complicated and occasionally silly contradictions of campus activism, with each episode approaching life at Winchester University from a different character's perspective. Stream Dear White People on Netflix.
Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) is an endlessly naïve scholarship student; Bela (Amrit Kaur) is an aspiring comedy writer on the make for the hottest guys; Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) is an overachieving athlete and senator’s daughter; and Leighton (Reneé Rapp) is a closeted sorority girl. They're all randomly assigned to room together as freshmen at the fictional Essex College in Vermont. Created by Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble, this comedy-drama isn't nearly as salacious as its title suggests. There's sex for sure, but mostly it's a funny, queer-friendly show that's a little less about one overarching romance than it is about growing up, and the value of female friendship. Stream The Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO Max.
Even though we're backing up a couple of years to follow teens in their high school years, this British import's setting is a decent match, finding its students living away from home and family for the first time in their lives. At the fictional prestigious boarding school St. Gilbert’s, five Black teens are newly attending on scholarships, but their integration into the existing cliques is less than smooth—especially given that they're there largely as a PR stunt. Boarders blends teen romance, coming-of-age drama, and a delightful willingness to take the piss when it comes to the whole "rich private school" thing. Stream Boarders on Tubi.
Another modern take on a beloved '80s/'90s sitcom, this one's a bit different, serving as a total reimagining with no narrative connection to the original. And while A Different World is a comedy with dramatic heft, this one's more of a straight drama. It’s jarring for fans of the beloved original to tune in to find a serious show with the same premise as the Will Smith original—one that often leans into heavy realism. Jabari Banks plays, er, Will Smith, a 16-year-old from West Philadelphia who moves in with his auntie and uncle in Bel-Air following a gun charge and a run-in with a Philly drug lord. Banks is charismatic and believable, bringing a ton of personality to a show that occasionally veers down dark alleys. Stream Bel-Air on Peacock.
Comedian Benito Skinner plays himself, kinda, in this buzzy comedy that sees a former high school jock facing his freshman year in college while desperately trying to convince himself and everyone else that he's as straight as they come (relatable, except for the jock part). Much of the appeal is in its deft blending of tones: It's both a frequently raunchy college comedy and a sweet coming-of-age story about accepting yourself without worrying about what everyone else thinks. The cast includes Adam DiMarco (The White Lotus) and Rish Shah (Ms. Marvel), and, though it's more a story of one young man's coming of age, there's a strong ensemble backing him up. Stream Overcompensating on Prime Video.
The heart of All American (for most of its run) is Spencer James (Daniel Ezra), based on real-life NFL linebacker Spencer Paysinger. A star player for his high school team in Crenshaw, he's recruited by the coach (Taye Diggs) of a team in Beverly Hills to come and play for them, forcing Spencer to navigate two very different worlds while trying to build a life and potential career. Stream All American on Netflix.
Following a family tragedy, the already awkward 15-year-old Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) has a pretty terrible freshman year of high school, and decides that she’s going to turn things around the following year, hoping that a nearly academic study of sex will get her the boyfriend(s) her raging hormones have begun to demand. It works, to a point—but getting a surprise yes to sex from her crush leads her to question what she’s really ready for. More about burgeoning sexuality than sex specifically, this Mindy Kaling-produced series is both honest and charming. Stream Never Have I Ever on Netflix.
For realism in a show about the college experience, you could do a lot worse than this docuseries following several students at Gallaudet University, a school for deaf and hard-of-hearing young adults. In one sense, it's a specific setting where perspectives on deafness vary wildly, even in Gallaudet's self-contained world (aside from being a show about academically driven and horny college students, this is also a great primer for hearing people about some of the issues). But even for all of that, the challenges in building a life and future away from home are pretty universally relatable. Stream Deaf U on Netflix.
There's a reason A Different World has returned in 2026, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that there was nothing else on TV quite like it back in the late '80s and early '90s. For all of its sitcom sensibilities, the show tried hard (especially after multi-hyphenate creator Debbie Allen arrived to rework things after its first season) to paint a realistic picture of college life and an HBCU. Of the few shows on TV with largely Black casts, almost none would go so far as to highlight achievement and excellence; A Different World managed to do so while building a cast of characters so memorable that we're more than willing to catch up with them nearly forty years later. Stream A Different World on Netflix.
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Anker released the noise-cancelling Soundcore Space One headphones a few years ago, and while they were a more budget-friendly alternative to premium models from Bose and Sony, their performance and fit still fell short in several areas. The brand’s updated Soundcore Space 2 headphones are a major upgrade across the board: They’re comfier, have better ANC, and are currently 18% off at $106.49 (originally $129.99), a rare price cut for a still-new release from a popular brand.
Battery life is one of the Soundcore Space 2’s most attractive features: They last up to 50 hours with ANC on and 70 hours with ANC off, and a five-minute charge gives you up to four extra hours. The noise cancellation is strong for the price, blocking out lower-frequency sounds well. Comfort is also a major upgrade from its sparser predecessor, with roomier, more plush memory foam earcups and a padded headband. They’re also travel-friendly, as the earcups rotate and fold.
The Soundcore app allows you to customize EQ and sound presets, giving you added flexibility if you don’t like the default tuning. Instead of touch-sensitive panels, these headphones use conventional buttons, which help prevent accidental commands while adjusting the earcups and are easy to operate. Along with supporting Bluetooth 6.1, they also have a wired-cable option, which isn’t always the case with modern wireless headphones. That said, they don’t support USB-C audio.
If you want over-ear noise-canceling headphones that perform well but don’t have $200 to shell out for a more expensive model, the Anker Soundcore Space 2 headphones are a comfortable, effective, and long-lasting alternative that hover around $100 at the current discounted price.
