Latest news with #1999
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Top eye doctor reveals the hard truths nobody tells you about laser eye surgery... and the people who should NEVER consider it
Laser eye surgery was hailed as a medical miracle when it was approved in 1999 - offering crystal-clear vision without the hassle of glasses or contacts. But as chilling patient accounts and worrying statistics surface, doctors are warning that the procedure isn't for everyone - and in some rare cases, it can prove deadly.
News.com.au
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Tony Hawk reveals what he really thinks about his own game
When the first Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game hit the shelves in 1999, skateboarding was starting to flourish after being considered a niche, unpopular hobby for years. However, the video game (released on all the major consoles of the time including Nintendo 64, Dreamcast and Nokia N-Gage phones) changed the way broader society engaged with skateboarding. Now, on the cusp of releasing a remake of two of the games, Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater 3 + 4, Hawk has sat down exclusively with to talk about video games, skating, and what he's up to these days. '[The video games] changed my life, certainly my recognition factor,' he said. 'My name is now synonymous with a game. When some people say Tony Hawk, they don't mean me as a person at all. 'I would say that happens more often than not now. It also changed the landscape of skating. It changed the popularity of skating. 'It got a whole new generation into the sport. And then, eventually, it actually changed how people skate because people that were first starting out were playing the game thinking all these combinations were based in real life, when we were putting them in because they were fantastical. 'Now, when you see the skaters of this generation who are competing in the Olympics and the X Games, they're doing these tricks that were only possible in video games 20 years ago.' The game itself was made by video game studio Neversoft, fresh off its successful third-person shooter game Apocalypse. One little known fact about the development of the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater is that it's built on the same engine as Apocalypse, and so the first prototype of the game Hawk was shown featured the likeness of Bruce Willis as the player character. It came about after several other game publishers had released skateboarding games with varying success. Sadly, Bruce Willis was never included in the finished game. According to legendary skateboarder Rodney Mullen (dubbed 'the Godfather of freestyle skating', and inventor of many of skateboarding's most iconic tricks), the success of the game and subsequent growth of skateboarding is down to who Hawk is as a person. 'Tony is the perfect ambassadorm' Mullen beamed. 'He is that gifted, he is that core [of skating]. And he's able to navigate the outside world in a way a lot of us couldn't if we tried, I certainly couldn't.' However, it turns out that real life skating skills don't translate to the digital world. When asked if he was any good at the game, Mullen said 'I'm terrible, I don't even play it. It's easier to skate.' The same goes for musician Lupe Fiasco, whose iconic skateboarding song Kick, Push is featured in the new release, and who performed at the recent THPS Festival launch party in Los Angeles. While he enjoys playing the game, when asked if he was any good at it he said 'No. I absolutely am not.' However, Bam Margera, a professional skateboarder best known for starring in the MTV reality shows Jackass and Viva La Bam, is an avid gamer, who loves the game to the same extremes he pursues everything he's passionate about. 'I was so addicted to this game that I was missing flights over it and I had to put it away,' he said. 'I missed seven flights in a row because of it. So, that just shows how addictive this game is. It's very versatile. 'You can play it forever. And everyone, young and old, has played this game. That's why it's so rad that they're making a new one with all kinds of new features in it.' One thing that was very notable in our interview was just how down to earth and normal Tony Hawk is. It would be easy to get a massive ego when you've reached that level of fame and skill, and yet he was laid back and completely without the attitude that sometimes comes with fame at a young age. He is still the most recognisable skateboarder of all time, and likely the only skateboarder most people could name, yet his hilarious interactions with people who half recognise him, but not really have gone viral to the point of becoming a meme. Despite this trend first going viral in 2018, Hawk says it still happens a lot, but with a twist. 'Nowadays, I still get a lot of the same interactions of mistaken identity,' he revealed. 'In fact, just in New York last week at a coffee shop, 'Hey, did anyone tell you you look like Tony Hawk?' 'But the funny part about it now is sometimes I can't tell if they're joking or not because now it's become a sort of meme of its own and so when people say it, I'm taken aback. 'Like, wait, are we doing the joke or do you really? But this guy was not doing the joke. 'That's the thing about it that drives my daughter crazy, because I don't say I am unless they ask, because I feel like it's pretentious to be like, well, actually, that's me.' Skateboarding is having somewhat of a renaissance at the moment, with more and more kids (and millennials) taking up skateboarding. Part of this is because everything that was cool in the early 2000s is now back in style. But according to Hawk, there's more to it than that. 'It's because it's easily accessible and also skateboarding is prolific now,' he explained. 'There are skate parks in most cities. It's part of people's consciousness. 'So, almost any kid that is of an impressionable age is probably being exposed to skateboarding somewhere, somehow, and is probably interested in trying it.' The early games were occasionally criticised for not including many female skaters as playable characters, something Hawk is trying to remedy now. 'I always wanted the game to represent real life skateboarding. So at the time of the first game, yes, there was a great imbalance of gender and race,' he said. 'I thought it was important to include everyone, but that was kind of a representation of the ratios at the time. 'I'm just thankful that now, I mean, skateboarding is the most inclusive sport. 'If you go to a skate park right now there's people of all ages, all races, all genders, all skill levels, all backgrounds, and they all are enjoying it equally and encouraging each other. 'There's just no other activity or sport like that. It's beautiful.' The inclusion in the Olympics has likely drawn more awareness of the sport amongst younger generations, but Hawk is adamant that the Olympics needed skateboarding more than skateboarding needed them. 'I thought that the Olympics needed our cool factor more than we needed their validation,' he said. 'I stand by that. The fact that it's now in has been great for international recognition of skateboarding and international growth and having skateboarding in more unlikely places. So that's cool. But yeah.' As for what Hawk is up to these days. It's a pretty varied list. He recently became a grandfather after his son Riley Hawk and his wife Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of iconic Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and Hole singer Courtney Love, welcomed their son Ronin in September 2024. 'I'm a grandpa, so I'm doing a lot of that,' he said. 'In fact, I was doing that this morning before I left for this. Still skating as much as I can, but advocating for skate parks through our foundation and surprisingly doing a lot of speaking engagements.' Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 is in stores 11 July 2025. Alice Clarke is a freelancer writer who travelled to Los Angeles as a guest of Activision.
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Resurrection review – fascinating phantasmagoria is wild riddle about new China and an old universe
Bi Gan's new movie in Cannes is bold and ambitious, visually amazing, trippy and woozy in its embrace of hallucination and the heightened meaning of the unreal and the dreamlike. His last film Long Day's Journey Into Night from 2018 was an extraordinary and almost extraterrestrial experience in the cinema which challenged the audience to examine what they thought about time and memory; this doesn't have quite that power, being effectively a portmanteau movie, some of whose sections are better than others – though it climaxes with some gasp-inducing images and tracking shots and all the constituent parts contribute to the film's aggregate effect. Resurrection is, perhaps, a long night's journey to the enlightenment of daybreak; it finishes at a club called the Sunrise. It is also an episodic journey through Chinese history, finishing at that historic moment which continues to fascinate Chinese film-makers whose movies are a way of collectively processing their feelings about it: New Year's Eve 1999, the new century in which China was to bullishly embrace the new capitalism while cleaving to the political conformism of the old ways. We are in a kind of alt-reality universe where humans have discovered they can live indefinitely if they do not dream, an activity which burns up humans like a lit candle. Bi Gan leaves it up to us to ponder what that implies for overpopulation. But there is one outlier, one dissident, a man who does dream – he is a sacred monster called the Fantasmer (Jackson Yee) and the paradox is that the Fantasmer's ecstatic perception of illusions and dreams allows him to reincarnate and resurrect in an exotic variety of lowlife existences at different historic times in the last century – and a woman enters his life. Is it the woman perceiving these events, or is the Fantasmer doing it? At the beginning of the century, and occupying a kind of antique silent-movie world, he is a white-faced figure like the vampire Nosferatu being tended to by a mysterious woman (played by longtime Hou Hsiao-shen performer Shu Qi). During the second world war he is involved in a violent imbroglio in a mirror shop – shades of Welles's The Lady From Shanghai perhaps – involving a theremin. We flashforward 20 years and our time-travelling itinerant Fantasmer is in a remote and wintry temple where he breaks a Buddha statue and encounters a Spirit of Bitterness. Some decades later, he is a crooked card-sharp who inveigles a little girl into a scam he's got going against a local gangster and finally we are at the brink of the new century in which the Fantasmer meets another mobster Mr Luo – his vampiric destiny, and the movie's own visuals, ascend to a new plane. It is a deeply mysterious film whose enigma extends to the title – is what is happening 'resurrection' in any clear transformative sense? Or is it just a continuous flickering shape-shifting: the Fantasmer just a pulsating star on the far-reaches of the universe, that might in a few hundred thousand years explode or collapse in on itself? Asking or answering these questions may not be the film's point and its riddling quality, combined with its spectacular visual effects, may leave some audiences agnostic – and I myself wasn't sure about the silent-movie type effects. Yet it's a work of real artistry. Resurrection premiered at the Cannes film festival
The Verge
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
May 22, 2025 at 2:29 PM EDT
'Recurring Screens.' In poet Nora Claire Miller's short, moving essay, she draws a line from the very first screensaver (SCRNSAVE, 1983) to the tesseract in A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle, 1962) to her family's flight during the Holocaust (Austria, 1938). I particularly loved this bit about taking apart her grandmother's iMac: I took the Strawberry apart thirty-nine times. (I kept count.) I didn't really know what I was doing. I cut my hands open on the logic board more than once. There's still dried blood on the hard drive. But despite my best efforts at modernization, the Strawberry has refused to accept any of my updates. It only wants to exist in 1999, to connect to an old internet that hardly exists anymore. These days it mostly runs screen savers. Warp is still my favorite.
Telegraph
20-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
What is a stocks & shares Isa?
A stocks and shares Isa is a valuable tool in an investor's belt. A tax-efficient and flexible way to gain access to the stock market, these accounts have continued to increase in popularity since being launched in 1999. Nearly four million stocks and shares Isas are paid into each tax year, and savers contribute more than £25bn a year. Whatever your investment experience or wealth, a stocks and shares Isa can be the ideal place to grow your savings without needing to worry about paying capital gains tax or dividend tax on your returns. In this article, Telegraph Money explains: What is a stocks and shares Isa? Benefits of a stocks and shares Isa Choosing the best stocks and shares Isa How to open a stocks and shares Isa How to transfer a stocks and shares Isa Stocks and shares Isa FAQs What is a stocks and shares Isa? A stocks and shares Isa is an account that can hold a range of investment products. These could be: Unit trusts Investment trusts Exchange-traded funds Individual stocks and shares Corporate and government bonds Open Ended Investment Companies (OEICs) Essentially, you open the Isa, add money to it and make investments, which over time will hopefully grow with compounding interest and increase your balance. Many banks offer them, as do a host of investment platforms. You might decide to get one that's managed for you, or you can do it yourself. There are three other types of Isas for adults: Cash Isas. These work in a similar way to savings accounts; your money is saved as cash and you'll earn interest on what you save. Innovative finance Isas, which offer 'peer-to-peer' investing. Lifetime Isas, which help you save for your first home or retirement. Each type of Isa comes with its own features, benefits and drawbacks, so it's important to spend time deciding which is the right one for you. The one thing they all have in common is that investment returns or cash interest are all tax-free. Benefits of a stocks and shares Isa This kind of Isa comes with some important benefits. Any money you make is tax-free. Like other Isas, they're often known as 'tax wrappers', because they protect your cash from charges such as dividend, capital gains and income tax. Freedom of choice. What you do with the money in your Isa is up to you. Most providers offer a range of funds, investment trusts or individual shares, as well as ready-made portfolios that do the heavy lifting for you. However, you can just choose your own if you decide to. Flexibility. Once you make an investment, you might make money from dividends on shareholder payouts, or from selling it for more than you paid for it – realising a capital gain. You don't have to invest your whole fund at once either and you might receive interest on the money that sits in your account. However, investment comes with risk, so you can lose money as well as make it. The rate of return also varies significantly because people invest different amounts in different opportunities. This makes it difficult to quantify how much you can make, but the graph below gives an idea of how much stocks and shares Isas have made on average in recent years. Rachel Springall, of said: 'A stocks and shares Isa would traditionally be chosen by investors who are prepared to invest for better returns over the longer term on the basis that performance might fluctuate over shorter timescales. This makes it an essential habit to regularly check the performance of their pot. 'Past fund performance is never guaranteed to be reflected in future returns, so it's crucial investors are comfortable with their attitude to risk. The most suitable Isa for any saver will depend on their own circumstances, but they can always seek advice if they are unsure on what to do with their cash.' How do stocks and shares Isas work? A stocks and shares Isa works in a similar way to a general investment account. There are three main ways to operate your Isa: Self-manage. You use your Isa to buy and sell your own investments, choosing from the ones your provider offers. As long as you have cleared funds, you can do this at any time, and most people manage their accounts online. There's usually a charge for each trade, but some platforms offer free trades. Ready-made. You might decide to pick a portfolio that your provider has put together. In this case, all you need to decide is how much to invest and the level of risk you're comfortable with. Managed by an expert. You can also pick a managed Isa, where you're asked questions about your financial goals and appetite for risk. The decisions are then made for you, though the fees for this are generally higher. You can only deposit up to £20,000 per tax year. You can either deposit the whole amount into one Isa account, or split it among several Isas. When it comes to withdrawals, these are unlimited and you make them whenever you like. However, you must withdraw the money as cash, so if you don't have enough available, you'll need to sell investments (at the current market price) until you do. A withdrawal does not necessarily count against your yearly allowance. It all depends whether your Isa is 'flexible', which your provider should be able to tell you. If it is, you can take out cash and put it back in without reducing your yearly allowance. For example, say you put £10,000 into an Isa then took out £3,000, your remaining allowance would be £13,000. This is the £10,000 you had left of your £20,000 allowance, plus the £3,000 you took out. If it's not flexible, then your allowance would now only be £10,000. Choosing the best stocks and shares Isa This is an important decision and requires careful thought. As with any investment, it's important to spend some time shopping around and choosing the right stocks and shares Isa for you. Considerations will include: Price Service Product features The range of investment options available These will vary significantly, so take your time in choosing and consult a financial adviser if you think you need to. Tom Selby, of investment platform AJ Bell, said: 'Picking a value-for-money provider is crucial to making the most out of your Isa investments. 'While the cheapest provider might not necessarily be the right one for you, keeping your costs as low as possible is critical to maximising your long-term investment returns.' Here are some illustrative rates from major providers for deposits of less than £100,000. How to open a stocks and shares Isa Once you've picked the Isa you want, there are various steps to actually opening it. Begin an application. Some providers will allow you to do this by phone, by post or in person, but most people opt to do it online. You're likely to be asked for name, address, date of birth, mobile number and National Insurance number. Consider your eligibility. You can open a stocks and shares Isa for yourself if you're 18 and resident in the UK. If you're a member of the armed forces, a Crown servant or their spouse or civil partner and live abroad, you should still be eligible, although they can't be held as joint accounts. Decide how to fund your account. You can usually do this by debit card as a one-off payment or make regular contributions via direct debit. You'll need to provide these details when you apply, but you can always change your mind later. Consider some investments. After you've opened and funded your Isa, you can start making decisions on where to invest. Danny Cox, of investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'Once your money is in your Isa, investing is very straightforward. A few clicks through your online account and the deal is placed. If you are unsure where to invest, ready-made investment funds are a simple way to get started.' Mr Selby added: 'Setting up an Isa online is easy and should only take you a few minutes. 'Of course, setting up the Isa is only part of the story. You also need to pick a balanced portfolio of investments that's aligned to your appetite for risk and investing goals. If you aren't sure where to start, lots of providers offer ready-made investments targeted at different risk appetites.' Managing your stocks and shares Isa If you've opted to manage your own fund, it's important to monitor its performance to see if it's making progress towards your financial objectives. You'll usually be able to do this online. You'll be charged a fee by your provider for managing your Isa, which is often a percentage of your whole fund, so this can be an important consideration as it grows. Most providers charge a fee for each trade or investment you make, too. Even if your Isa is partly or fully managed, it's still important to check that it's making the progress you need. You can switch your Isa to a different provider if you see another deal you think will deliver more for you. As long as you're outside any fixed term, this will usually be free, but check before you commit. Mr Selby said: 'It is good practice to regularly review both your portfolio and your provider, ideally once a year if you can. You should also do this if your circumstances or investment goals shift. 'This reviewing process won't necessarily result in a shift in provider or approach, however. Only if you feel you are no longer getting value for money from your current provider, or a rival becomes better value, should you need to consider changing.' Risks and considerations Although it's certainly possible to make a good return, there are risks to stocks and shares Isas: Volatility. The value of your investments can go down at any time. You can lose some, or even all, of your money. Cashflow. Investments in stocks and shares Isas are generally not designed to be short term. If you're likely to need the money back quickly, this might not be the right product for you. Panic. It's generally wise to invest for a few years and avoid knee-jerk reactions if there's a downturn. Remember – there is risk attached to stocks and shares Isas, but investments need time. They can recover from a downturn to make a profit. Mr Selby said: 'Keeping track of your portfolio is sensible, but it's important not to get sucked into overtrading or panicking if you experience a short period of investment underperformance. 'Provided you are comfortable with the risks you are taking, and your goals and time horizon haven't shifted, sitting tight is usually the most sensible thing to do. If you overtrade your investments, you risk paying a bucket load of charges and seeing your portfolio drift away from your original intentions. 'One good way to get into the investing habit and smooth out your returns is to set up regular investing, say on a monthly basis, so it's aligned with when you get paid.' Stocks and shares can be complex, and it's important to make sure you have enough time, information and expertise to make decisions. If you're inexperienced but still want to make investments yourself, you might want to take regulated financial advice. How to transfer a stocks and shares Isa Your provider has to allow you to transfer your Isa out, although there's no obligation for any provider to allow a transfer in. You can make the transfer in a few easy steps: Do some research and choose the right Isa for you and your circumstances. Contact your Isa provider. Fill out an Isa transfer form. Wait around 30 calendar days for the transfer to complete. If it takes longer, contact your initial provider. However, there are some crucial things to remember when transferring. If you want to switch to a different provider, you'll need to use your provider's Isa transfer process. If you close it, withdraw the money and put it into another Isa yourself, then this will count towards your £20,000 annual Isa allowance and reduce it. If you use the transfer process, it won't. You can transfer money from a cash Isa to a stocks and shares Isa, or vice versa if you'd like to. You can choose how much you transfer – so you don't have to transfer it all. Fractional shares within your Isa can't be transferred like this. The only way to change providers for these is by selling them and using the money to reinvest once your Isa moves. Any gains will still be free from capital gains tax though, as they will be coming from an Isa. Sarah Coles, of Hargreaves Lansdown, said there were a variety of reasons to consider transferring. She said: 'Think about what's most important to you, and whether your current provider offers it. Do they have the range of investments and tax wrappers that you need – especially if you want everything under one roof? 'Think about the functionality you'll need. Do you want to, for example, be able to manage money for your whole family through linked accounts, and is it offered by your provider? 'Most people want a great online service and someone on the end of the phone if they need them. Some will also want a provider who can offer financial advice if they need it. Consider what you want, and whether your provider is offering it. Check out the research and support that's available online too, and whether you have access to everything you need. 'It's also important to check that your provider doesn't charge large exit fees, which can make transferring a very expensive business.' How long should you keep your money invested in a stocks & shares Isa? This depends on your overall investing goal, but typically, the longer you keep your money invested, the greater the returns. Thanks to the snowball effect of compound interest, your investment can keep growing year on year without any extra effort from you. Most experts recommend waiting for at least three to five years before withdrawing from your Isa, so your investments can weather fluctuations in the market. Many use stocks and shares to boost their retirement funds in the distant future. There are around 4,000 'Isa millionaires' in the UK, who have built up a tax-free seven-figure sum. If you started saving today and the Isa limit remained at £20,000, it would take you 25 years to become an Isa millionaire, assuming an average annual return of 5pc. While longevity tends to be the best option, it isn't always that simple. Make sure to keep track of how your stocks and shares portfolio is performing, and weigh up when you'd like to take out your money. Global shifts, such as the recent US trade war, can send the value of your portfolio plummeting, and it can take time for your investments to recover. Stocks and shares Isa FAQs What happens if I die? When you die, the money in your Isa will go to your beneficiaries. However, they generally form part of your estate, meaning inheritance tax could be due if you're particularly well off. If your spouse or civil partner dies, there's a tax-saving mechanism that means you can inherit their savings tax-free – but they'll need to follow the rules, and these can be complex. What if my provider goes bust? Some or all of your money will be safe as long as your provider is protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). If it is, up to £85,000 of your money will be reimbursed if that provider goes out of business – but you can't call on it to replace money lost as a result of poor investment performance. There is no limit to how many Isas you can have and as long as they're with providers protected by the FSCS, each one will be protected up to the £85,000 limit. However, anything over this threshold is not protected and it £85,000 is per provider, not per account. If you have more than this, you might want to consider spreading your money across different providers and banking institutions, rather than having all your eggs in one basket. How much should I put into my Isa? This depends on your circumstances, but the one rule that's the same for everyone is making sure you only deposit up to £20,000 across all Isas in the same tax year. As a general rule of thumb, experts suggest you have three to six months' worth of outgoings in 'rainy day' savings. After that, you can begin to invest in the stock market through an Isa. However, everyone's financial circumstances are different. You can always withdraw money from the account, but if you don't have enough cash in there, you might have to sell some of your investments. This risks not leaving them enough time to grow and you could miss out on your fund increasing, or even have to sell at a loss.
