Asia Kate Dillon (Billions) and Golshifteh Farahani (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) have joined the voice cast of the upcoming animated sci-fi series gen:LOCK, the Austin-based media company Rooster Teeth announced Wednesday.
The series concerns a diverse team of young pilots recruited to control the next generation of giant, weaponized robot bodies known as mecha. Dillon will voice Valentina “Val” Romanyszyn, a former Ukrainian covert agent who thought they were done fighting, while Farahani will voice Yasamin “Yaz” Madrani, a talented and confident recruit from Iran who finds her calling in the gen:LOCK program but won’t open up easily about her past. Previously announced gen:LOCK cast members include Michael B. Jordan, Dakota Fanning, Maisie Williams, and David Tennant.
“It’s been such a privilege to work alongside these amazing talents,” gen:LOCK writer and director Gray G. Haddock said in a statement. “There’s so much we want to do with these characters, and exploring together to find just the right approach has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I’ve bonded so much with Valentina and Yaz, and what Asia and Golshifteh have brought to the parts. I can’t wait for everyone to meet these characters.”
The WiFi Alliance wants to rebrand WiFi in a way that’s certainly less wordy, but still requires a techy-translation unless you’re a WiFi devotee.
A consortium of companies that bring consumers wireless internet, the WiFi Alliance, announced new naming standards for different kinds of networks on Wednesday.
Previously, networks that could connect over different sorts of connections were called things like WiFi 802.11ac or WiFi 802.11ax. Those alphanumeric codes referred to the frequency, speed, and other particularities of the network. Now, the alliance wants to denote the capabilities of different networks by simply calling them WiFi 4, WiFi 5, or WiFi 6.
Simple? Yes! Meaningful? Sort of. 4, 5, and 6 can pretty much be translated to good, better, and best. So if you know that “translation,” then it should be easier for consumers to make informed decisions about the WiFi networks they’re connecting to. For example, a WiFi network can have multiple frequencies, but the highest frequency can’t support every device at once. With 4, 5, and 6, a household can allocate the 5 or 6 network to the most WiFi-needy device, and the 4 to the least.
That’s helpful, and is also a good guide if you’re buying products that connect to WiFi, like routers or cellphones; products will likely come marked with “WiFi 6” certifications. But the numbers, though simplified from their alphanumeric codes, are still stand-ins for relatively simple concepts like “high, medium, and low” or “good, better, best.”
So good effort WiFi Alliance. Now let’s take that common sense one step further.
Kate Hudson and partner Danny Fujikawa are officially in the baby game, announcing the birth of their daughter on Instagram Wednesday – Rani Rose Hudson Fujikawa.
Rani Rose was born Oct. 2, Hudson, 39, declared in a post captioned simply, “She’s here.”
“Everyone is doing well and happy as can be. Our family thanks you for all the love and blessings that have been sent our way and we send ours right back,” she wrote.
The “Almost Famous” actress, who had just posted a picture Monday with mother Goldie Hawn, showing off her baby bump, also explained the poignant origin of her daughter’s name.
“We have decided to name our daughter Rani (pronounced Ronnie) after her grandfather, Ron Fujikawa. Ron was the most special man who we all miss dearly. To name her after him is an honor,” Hudson said in the Instagram announcement post.
She has two other kids, son Ryder, 14, with ex-husband and Black Crows singer Chris Robinson, and son Bingham, 6, with ex-fiance Matthew Bellamy, the lead singer of Muse.
Time and legal options are running out for a Kansas couple desperately trying to keep their adopted daughter from being deported back to South Korea on a legal technicality involving adoption and immigration law.
Hyebin Schreiber was brought to the U.S. by her would-be adoptive parents in 2012 when she was 15. In Kansas, the cutoff date to complete legal adoption is 18. Hyebin was 17 when the adoption became final in December 2014.
The family didn’t realize, however, that under federal rules she had to be adopted by the age of 16 to be granted citizenship. The family’s delay was understandable – Hyebin’s dad, Lt. Col. Patrick Schreiber, spent much of 2013 and 2014 serving in Afghanistan.
Still, a federal judge ruled last week that the law is clear and that Hyebin, a senior biochemistry student at Kansas University, must leave the country upon graduation.
Efforts to remedy the teen’s case with an emergency “private bill” in Congress failed to draw the support of the Kansas congressional delegation, Rekha Sharma-Crawford, a lawyer for Schreiber’s family, told USA TODAY.
“The attitude of the lawmakers was that even if they filed a private bill it would not pass given the current climate,” Sharma-Crawford said.
Lee Modesitt, spokesman for Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., said their office recently tried without success to win approval of a private bill for another client of Sharma-Crawford who was facing immediate deportation. The struggles on behalf of chemistry teacher Syed Jamal provide a cautionary tale.
Jamal first arrived in the U.S. more than 30 years ago on a student visa, continued working in the system and believed he was following a path to citizenship. But he overstayed a voluntary departure notice and in January was taken into custody in front of his home while taking his daughter to school.
He was being flown back to Bangladesh in February when he won a temporary reprieve. He deboarded in Hawaii and returned to Kansas while his case dragged on. In August, an immigration appeals board granted Jamal’s request to have his case heard by an immigration judge, so he remains in the U.S. for now.
Jenkins visited with Jamal’s family and lobbied for his cause. But the private bill stalled in Congress, showing the difficulty of using legislation to overcome an individual immigration issue, Modesitt said.
“In the case of the Schreibers, the congresswoman would support legislation that addresses the underlying adoption issue,” Modesitt said.
The Schreibers reached out to Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who has introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at closing a loophole that has prevented internationally adopted children, who are now adults, from receiving U.S. citizenship. But the bill applies to people who were 18 and over in February 2001, and a Blunt spokesman said only that the bill doesn’t apply to the Schreiber case.
Schreiber’s parents met in South Korea in 1995. They were married in Texas five years later before settling in Lansing, Kansas. Hyebin Schreiber was the daughter of Mrs. Schreiber’s brother, who could not provide a stable home in Korea for his daughter, Sharma-Crawford said.
If Hyebin goes back, it won’t be alone, her parents say.
“Of all the immigration cases our firm takes on, this one makes me the angriest,” Sharma-Crawford said. “But, so help him God, Lt. Col. Patrick Schreiber and his wife, Soo Jin Ye, are prepared to leave the U.S. with their daughter if Immigration and Customs Enforcement deports her to South Korea.”
Christian Louboutin’s trademark red-bottomed shoes have become iconic. Beyoncé wore a custom pair of boots for her Coachella performance, and Cardi B slipped on a pair of “bloody shoes” for her “Bodak Yellow” music video.
But why do these heels cost hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars?
Besides production costs and the use of pricey materials, Louboutins are the ultimate status symbol.
Following is a transcript of the video.
Narrator: What makes these shoes worth almost $800? Christian Louboutin is the mastermind behind these iconic red-bottomed shoes. It’s safe to say his footwear has stepped into the mainstream. Celebrities all over the world wear them.
“You know the ones with the high heels and the red bottoms?”
Song lyrics:“These expensive. / These is red bottoms. /These is bloody shoes.”
Narrator: Louboutin even had the red bottoms trademarked. The signature Louboutin pumps start at $695, the most expensive pair nearly $6,000. So how did this craze start?
Christian Louboutin had the idea for red soles in 1993. An employee was painting her nails red. Louboutin snagged the bottle and painted the soles of a prototype shoe. Just like that, the red soles were born.
So, what makes these shoes worth the cost?
In 2013, when The New York Times asked Louboutin why his shoes were so expensive, he blamed production costs. Louboutin said, “It’s expensive to make shoes in Europe.”
From 2008 to 2013, he said his company’s production costs had doubled as the euro strengthened against the dollar, and competition increased for quality materials from factories in Asia.
David Mesquita, the co-owner of Leather Spa, says craftsmanship also plays a part in the shoes’ high price tag. His company works directly with Louboutin to repair its shoes, repainting and replacing the red soles.
David Mesquita: I mean, there’s a lot of things that go into the design of a shoe and the making of a shoe. Most important, I think is, who’s designing it, who’s manufacturing it, and also what materials they’re using to make the shoes.
Whether you’re talking about feathers, rhinestones, or exotic materials, there’s so much attention to detail that they put into their manufacturing and designing of their shoes. Narrator: For instance, these $3,595 Louboutins are embellished with Swarovski Crystals. And these raccoon-fur boots cost $1,995.
When it all comes down to it, people are paying for the status symbol.
Narrator: Producer Spencer Alben bought a pair of Louboutins for her wedding.
Spencer Alben: It makes me sound so stuck up, but I love the red soles because it’s such, like, a fashion-icon symbol. There’s something about them that when you see them in a picture, you instantly know what those are. So it’s like a status symbol I guess, which makes me sound terrible.
They were over $1,000, which, when I say that now, is insane for one pair of shoes that you’re probably never going to wear again. It’s like something that everyone knows, so the second you see the red bottoms, it’s like, I know what those are, I know what those cost.
And it’s so superficial that we care about that, but it really is something that is universal.
You see that and you instantly know what those are, and it’s something special. So I think, something as silly as the color of the sole on the shoe, makes them so special, because it’s universally identifiable.
Narrator: Would you drop $1,000 for red-bottomed shoes?
Break out your giant pink Polo shirts (today is Wednesday) and locate the nearest projection room above the auditorium, because it’s Oct. 3, better known as Mean Girls Day, and Aaron Samuels has more to offer than just word vomit-inducing good looks this year.
To celebrate his favorite holiday, Jonathan Bennett, who played Cady Heron’s (Lindsay Lohan) dreamy love interest in Tina Fey’s iconic 2004 comedy, teamed up with Food Network Star chef Nikki Martin to publish The Burn Cookbook.
With Martin’s cooking acumen and Bennett’s Mean Girls expertise (he’s also hosted Food Network’s Cake Wars since 2015), the parody on Regina George’s (Rachel McAdams) infamous Burn Book touts itself as “an unofficial, unauthorized cookbook for Mean Girls fans” full of “real recipes to feed your inner plastic.”
Is all this talk of man candy making you hungry? Here’s everything you need to know about The Burn Cookbook.
Lacey Chabert, aka Gretchen Weiners, wrote the foreword. Chabert reminisces on her time on the Mean Girls set in Toronto, where she launched her career and made lifelong friends, including Bennett. Her heartfelt praise of Bennett’s kindness and passion for adventure makes it just as sweet as the dessert recipes in the book.
Bennett dedicated the book to his parents (and everyone who has been personally victimized by Regina George). In the introduction, he explains that food connects him to his mother, Ruthanne, who died in 2012. According to the brief essay, Bennett’s mom brought homemade meals to his rehearsals and movie shoots in support of her son’s acting career. Several of the recipes in The Burn Cookbook come from Ruthanne’s handwritten instructions for her best meals.
The Burn Cookbook has eight chapters — and each is named after iconic MeanGirls lines. From “Regina’s All-Carb Diet” to “Get In, Losers, It’s Desserts,” every chapter’s title plays on one of the film’s most beloved quotes. Even more, the names of all the individual recipes are puns. (Each one is spot on).
“We worked backward to make the recipes,” Bennett told PEOPLE. “We came up with the puns and funny names first then created recipes around them.”
The “She Asked Me How to Spell Orange Chicken,” the “Cake Made of Rainbows and Smiles,” and the “Just Stab Caesar Salad” are sure to make fans of the movie laugh between bites.
Bennett and Martin know this is a cookbook for beginners, and they’re here to help novices get started. Before the recipes begin, the authors include a chapter titled “Own Your Kitchen,” where they list a few must-have items every cook should keep in the kitchen. Most of the items are pretty simple, like a good knife and a nonstick pan, and some are there only for emergencies (Martin considers a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit crucial kitchen components).
Every page is designed with the classic Burn Book in mind. One thing that made the film’s Burn Book so memorable was its beat-up, punk rock, scrapbook look, and its real-life culinary counterpart took note: pages torn out of notebooks, doodles, handwritten strikethroughs and revisions, and notecards taped down at the corners appear throughout the cookbook for that old-school yearbook vibe. And, of course, everything black, white, and pink to emulate the Plastics’ signature palette.
Each chapter ends with a (non-food) treat. Cook your way through each section — or just flip to the end while you wait for your masterpieces to cook — and you’ll find even more nostalgic Mean Girls games, like a “Which Plastic Are You?” quiz, “Mean Girls MASH,” and a drinking game to accompany you and your friends’ thousandth viewing of the film, as well as recipes for DIY beauty products and spots to add photos of your friends above North Shore High School superlatives.
The Burn Cookbook includes obscure “Fetch Facts.” Think you know everything about Mean Girls? Think again: Bennett left tidbits throughout the book for a behind-the-scenes look at how the early 2000s hit came together. Some of them are so surprising that you might be left feeling like Cady’s mom when she found the fertility vase of the Ndebele tribe under the sink.
Rakuten’s Kobo has, for years, been launching e-readers that offer just a little more than Amazon’s Kindle devices.
The company’s latest e-reader, Kobo Forma, follows a similar formula. Its design is similar to the Kindle Oasis, but Forma matches it on most features and offers a bigger screen (8 vs. 7 inches) and resistance to drops, bends and twists.
Even though the last version of Oasis has been out nearly a year, the Forma is directly comparable to it in so many ways that the best way to describe it is to note the similarities (and the differences) between the two devices.
First, the design. It’s obvious that Kobo took cues from the Oasis, as both devices have a handle on one side (instead of the traditional book-like look). Both devices can be used vertically and horizontally. And, on both the Forma and the Oasis, the handle hosts page turn buttons.
But take a look at the specs, and you’ll see that the Forma offers a bit more in many department. Just like the Oasis, it has 8/32GB of memory, and is waterproof to IPX8 specifications. But it has a larger, 8-inch touchscreen, and it’s also resistant to drops (from up to 2 meter of heights) and other forms of abuse.
Note that the Forma is marginally heavier than the Oasis (197 vs 194 grams) and, at 160×177.7×8.5mm, a bit larger.
Some other important tidbits: Kobo boasts up to 6 weeks of battery life for the Forma. Its screen has a 300 ppi resolution, is visible in direct sunlight, and has built-in lighting that can be adjusted for an optimal reading experience in all conditions. But the Oasis has those exact same features as well.
Software-wise, Kobo Forma supports pretty much every format out there, except Kindle’s AZW. Note that, unlike the Oasis, Forma doesn’t support audiobooks.
And while Amazon’s e-readers come with the retail giant’s vast library of titles, Kobo isn’t bad in this department either, with access to over 6 million titles.
Kobo Forma starts at $279.99 in the U.S. (279.99 euros in the EU and 239.99 pounds in the UK), which is a bit more than what Amazon’s asking for the Oasis right now ($249.99). The device will become available for pre-order on Oct. 16; it will arrive in U.S. stores on Oct. 23. The 32GB variant will be available in Japan on Oct. 23, and will be introduced to other markets at a later date.
New York tax regulators are looking into allegations against the Trump family that suggest a tax fraud scheme involving Donald Trump’s parents in the 1990s and early 2000s. USA TODAY
ALBANY – New York’s taxing authority has a wide amount of leeway to audit President Donald Trump and his family for potential tax fraud detailed this week by The New York Times — and could levy hefty civil penalties if necessary.
State law limits the amount of time prosecutors have to bring criminal charges in most tax fraud cases to three or six years after filing their income taxes, similar to federal law.
But a civil case would not face the same limitations.
In an investigation published Tuesday, The Times detailed numerous schemes and methods late New York City real-estate developer Fred Trump used to pass on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gifts to his children — including Donald Trump — without paying much in taxes.
The conduct detailed by The Times, which the paper and tax experts suggested was fraudulent, occurred in prior decades, meaning the criminal statute of limitations has almost certainly expired. Fred Trump died in 1999.
What could be pursued?
New York could seek civil penalties if it can prove the Trumps actively avoided paying their full tax bill.
State law provides three exceptions where the statute of limitations does not apply to civil tax penalties: When someone failed to report a return at all, failed to notify the state of changes made to their federal return by the IRS or filed a false or fraudulent return with intent to evade tax.
If state tax auditors were to determine that the Trumps committed fraud, they could go after them for back taxes, interest and penalties.
“The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation,” spokesman James Gazzale said in a statement.
While The Times had access to more than 100,000 pages of documents including Fred Trump’s tax returns, the state Tax Department would be able to review records and returns that Times reporters likely weren’t privy to, said Danshera Cords, a tax-law professor at Albany Law School.
“The amount of documentation that they would have simply from the returns that have been filed may be much more significant,” Cords said.
“If The New York Times was able to find such sufficient documents, there would be tax returns that have been filed.”
The Failing New York Times did something I have never seen done before. They used the concept of “time value of money” in doing a very old, boring and often told hit piece on me. Added up, this means that 97% of their stories on me are bad. Never recovered from bad election call!
In a tweet Wednesday, Trump accused The Times of publishing a “hit piece.”
His press secretary, Sarah Sanders, issued a statement Tuesday saying all of the Trump family’s tax methods were approved by attorneys.
“Fred Trump has been gone for nearly twenty years and it’s sad to witness this misleading attack against the Trump family by the failing New York Times,” Sanders said. “Many decades ago the IRS reviewed and signed off on these transactions.”
What happens next?
The state would be able to pursue civil penalties against either Trump or the family’s companies, Cords said.
“We all make mistakes, but when you do more than a mistake and you commit fraud or evasion, you don’t get to just say, ‘Oops,’” she said.
“We’re held to a much higher standard on that, and there isn’t a statute of limitations.”
How far back the state could reasonably go is uncertain.
The Times’ story detailed conduct that went back decades, most notably the creation of a shell company in 1992.
The company, known as All County Building Supply & Maintenance, acted as a purchaser for Fred Trump’s real estate empire.
But All County billed Fred Trump’s companies at a significant markup, which essentially acted as a way for Fred Trump to pass through millions of dollars to his kids without being taxed, according to The Times.
The further back the conduct goes, it may be hard to conduct interviews — particularly when Fred Trump has been deceased for 19 years — or obtain records.
“As a matter of proof, the further back it goes, the more difficult it becomes,” Cords said.
“But as a legal matter, you can go back in time and establish fraud and collect civil penalties and collect the taxes that are owed. And it sounds like not an insignificant sum.”
Other experts, though, were not so sure that the state would be able to easily reopen the tax cases.
The state would have already signed off on the tax arrangements for decades, said Syracuse University tax-law professor John Petosa.
“I don’t think there was anything new being presented here that wasn’t already known at the time,” Petosa said.
“So I don’t know how you go back and say, ‘Well, we looked at it then, and we thought it was OK, but now because The Times wrote an article, we have to reopen these.’ I don’t know that is a basis.”
Tangles with Trump
New York’s state government, meanwhile, has been aggressive against the Trump administration and the president’s charity.
Underwood also sued Trump and the Trump Foundation earlier this year, alleging a wide array of law-breaking at the charity, including allowing Trump’s 2016 campaign to dictate which veterans groups received contributions from a fundraiser held by the then-presidential candidate in lieu of a primary debate.
That lawsuit spurred an ongoing investigation of the charity and its tax practices by the state Tax Department, which is part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration.
Cuomo has made his various clashes with Trump’s administration a major part of his re-election campaign. A Democrat, Cuomo is seeking a third term in November.
“We elected Donald Trump, not technically, but he is the president of the United States and we have seen the consequences of that election,” Cuomo said Monday at a campaign rally on Long Island.
“And you know what? We don’t like them. You know what? We are repulsed by them.”
A new analysis of NHTSA data finds the safest and deadliest days on the roads. USA TODAY
U.S. crash deaths fell slightly in 2017 but still reflected the second-deadliest year on the road in the last decade.
The number of people killed in traffic crashes in 2017 was 37,133, down 1.8 percent from the year before, according to figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figures released Wednesday.
But the nation’s pedestrian safety crisis continued as 5,977 pedestrians were killed, according to NHTSA. While that total declined 1.7 percent from 2016, it was the second-highest number reported by NHTSA in the previous 27 years. It was topped only by 2016’s 6,080 pedestrian deaths, a figure that was recently revised up from 5,987.
NHTSA officials said they were encouraged to see overall crash fatalities decline slightly, but they said it’s not cause for celebration.
Heidi King, deputy administrator for NHTSA, said “there is no single reason for the overall decline.”
She flagged concerning factors that could be contributing to the elevated level of danger on American roads, including increases in drugged driving and distracted driving.
While NHTSA officially classified only 8.5 percent of 2017 deaths as “distraction-affected,” King said the true number is probably higher.
How much higher? King said it’s difficult to quantify since drivers are hesitant to reveal they were distracted. But she said state and local law-enforcement authorities report that drivers are increasingly looking away from the road to use their devices.
For the first half of 2018, NHTSA estimated that fatalities declined 3.1 percent compared with the first half of 2017. About 17,120 people were killed on the road in the first half of this year, according to preliminary data. Actual figures will be released sometime in 2019.
In 2017, total miles traveled increased slightly. As a result, the number of deaths per 100 million miles traveled fell 2.5 percent to 1.16.
But that still reflected the worst rate since 2008, when 37,423 people were killed for a rate of 1.26 per 100 million miles traveled.
Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.
What do you do when your user base is reaching a saturation point and your competition is proliferating by the day?
If you’re Uber, you take the steering wheel and get creative with your ad targeting.
The complicated ad tech landscape is not for everyone, but Uber has transitioned from an agency-led media buying model to taking greater control of its campaigns over the past few years.
“Three years ago, we were still working primarily with agencies, taking our budgets and giving them to external partners to run mainly acquisition campaigns on our behalf,” Bennett Rosenblatt, Uber’s programmatic display lead said at an Advertising Week panel on Tuesday with programmatic firm MediaMath.
“That has changed dramatically.”
Uber has taken charge of its media-buying
The brand is now running most functions, including strategy and optimization in-house. Uber has an internal trading team, and has also started to invest in a dedicated ad tech team to build sophisticated algorithms for media-buying.
“In many ways, it’s been a transition from caring just about acquisition and giving everything to external partners to run everything on our behalf to now running acquisition, re-engagement, and re-marketing, and doing it with our hands on keyboard in the house,” said Rosenblatt.
It has also expanded its global footprint. While Uber’s programmatic team was initially based out of its headquarters in San Francisco, the company has now set up dedicated teams in “mega-regions” such as Amsterdam, Mexico City, and Singapore.
But it still leans onto its partners when required
That’s not to say that Uber doesn’t rely on its partners at all. When it was setting up international teams dedicated to programmatic, for instance, it leaned on MediaMath to inform the brand on what was working and what wasn’t.
Similarly, as the company focuses on sharpening its brand identity and promise after a cascade of corporate disasters in 2017, it has also started to rely on the agency AKQA for its branding campaigns.
“We haven’t been great in branding and creating an amazing brand and that image externally, historically we’ve been a performance-first organization,” said Rosenblatt.
It has started to go beyond just trying to land new customers
With its riders in the US hitting a saturation point, Uber’s marketing objectives have evolved from being primarily acquisition-oriented to focusing on re-engagement, said Rosenblatt.
As a result, the company has started tracking more closely whether its ad campaigns actually caused the consumer to convert.
“Our total addressable market has now shrunk to the point that we can’t run campaigns super efficiently,” he said. “And to be honest, running static banners, hitting users with 20 or 30 ads a week, is just not incremental for us.”
“What really matters is when someone gets their butt in a seat and takes that first trip,” he said.
Uber has also adopted a customer-first approach, and started personalizing ads
The company has also become increasingly customer-first in its approach, trying to serve ads at the right time, at the right place to the right user with a personalized message that’s going to resonate with them.
One way that it’s done that, for example, is by building dynamic feeds with its ad server Celtra that allows it to surface interactive ads to customers. A low frequency rider in the middle of levels in the game Candy Crush, may for instance, get a look-book for the top five restaurants among Uber riders in their area that he or she can swipe through.
“Imagine if we can serve that to someone that loves going to restaurants, or someone that we know loves traveling,” said Rosenblatt. “That’s a really great experience. Good marketing for me isn’t running a static banner on someone’s phone.”
The brand is wading into mobile — but with caution
Almost the entirety of Uber’s advertising for its riders happens in-app, becuase it is tough for the brand to track individual customers across the web using their mobile data
The brand is trying to find a way around the problem by using a connected-ID solution by MediaMath. That means it can more efficiently parse through mobile inventory, doubling the supply available to it.
“Mobile’s a really tough game right now, and we’re trying to shift mobile to being fully programmatic,” he said.