The CEO of Apple partner Foxconn has broken silence on President Trump's tariffs, and is predicting disruption and perhaps an expansion of US manufacturing by big tech in the coming years.A Foxconn facilityThe remarks by Foxconn CEO Young Liu during an earnings call were uncharacteristic for the executive. When asked about the impact of tariffs, the executive didn't dance around the matter."The issue of tariffs is something that is giving the CEOs of our customers a big headache now. Judging by the attitude and the approach we see the US government taking towards tariffs, it is very, very hard to predict how things will develop over the next year," Liu said. "So we can only concentrate on doing well what we can control." Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Times Square is lighting up this month with a new site-specific installation from multidisciplinary artist Brendan Fernandes. The Kenyan-born Fernandes, who is known for other light-based and musically-inspired activation/installation work, says the inspiration comes from his East African heritage and love for house music. This is an expansion of work that was originally shown as part of Chicago's ART on the MART program last fall.There will be a special dance party held tonight (March 14th) at 11:30 PM to kick off the installation, which runs until March 31st.

Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture has shared details of a fire-resistant design that contributes to the rebuilding effort following this winter's devastating Los Angeles Fires. Their Full Metal Jacket House's downloadable floor plan is being offered free-to-use for affected homeowners in the region and offers a high degree of protection.The concept was originally designed for an East Coast setting but can easily be adapted to fire-prone areas in drier climates with an eave-less metal roof and exterior walls made from entirely noncombustible natural stone cladding material.The Full Metal Jacket House. Image rendering courtesy Bonetti/KozerskiThe Full Metal Jacket House. Image rendering courtesy Bonetti/Kozerski"We were organizing our unbuilt projects, and we found this house project that we really liked; we thought that all the thinking that went into that design would be wasted buried deep in our archive, and it would be nice to donate it so someone could use it as a base to design a ...

Tom McKay, the voice actor behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 protagonist Henry, has said that he would be open to reprising the role for future games as well. Speaking to Dan Allen in an interview on YouTube, McKay also indicated that he might have some idea about where the franchise will be going in the future. Check out the interview below.When asked by Allen how he would feel if Henry werent the protagonist in the next game in the Kingdom Come: Deliverance franchise, McKay responds by saying that he would be open to all ideas.From an acting perspective it would be very similar actually, said McKay. Im open to all ideas. We do have a very good sense of whats happening next. Obviously I cant talk about any of that, but I think those decisions are not in our hands, and Im open to all ideas. I love this character, I love the world of this game.You never know, he continued. But Im happy to play this character for as long or as little as anybody wants me to. Of course, its ultimately decided by Warhorse. But really the fans kind of dictate a lot of this narrative in terms of what theyre into and what they think and all that stuff. And I think thats a really appropriate thing.McKay has previously been quite open about how much he has enjoyed working on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 as the voice of Henry. Back in February, he described the experience as an amazing and unusual acting challenge in an interview.You would kind of go down one channel of a decision and then come halfway back up and go down another one and then maybe all the way back up to the beginning and back down, said McKay at the time. And thats not an acting challenge that you ever would have in TV or film.Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S back in early February. The game has seen quite a bit of positive reception, including from our own review. Developer Warhorse had released a trailer a week after the games release highlighting all of the praise it had gotten.The game has also done quite well commercially. Warhorse revealed that it managed to sell 2 million copies of the game just a couple of weeks into release.In the meantime, Warhorse has continued supporting Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 with free updates. The most recent one, released earlier this week, brought with it fixes for more than 1,000 bugs, along with features to support modding, and even Barber Mode, which features the ability to customise Henrys hairstyle and facial hair.When it comes to more substantial additions to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, a slate of DLCs is under development. The first of these, Brushes With Death, will be coming to the game between April and June 2025. It will be followed by Legacy of the Forge in July September 2025, and Mysteria Eccleiae in October December 2025.

The PC Gaming Show, PC Gamers celebration of PC gaming, returns on June 8th. The showcase features over 50 titles, including exclusive announcements, developer interviews and world premieres. While the focus will be on the best and most interesting games, you can expect some hardware spotlights.Timings will be revealed closer to the showcases date, but you can look forward to teases for the appearing titles in the coming months. Though it isnt confirmed, its likely that Sean Day[9] Plott, Mica Burton and Frankie Ward could return as hosts. You can also probably expect its theme to connect to current technology trends (for better or worse).And while its far too early for details, The PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted is also returning later this year. The show also features new game announcements and trailers, though the main is outlining the publications Top 25 Most Wanted titles for the coming year. As always, stay tuned for more details and updates.

OpenAI's new API and Agents SDK consolidate a previously fragmented complex ecosystem into a unified, production-ready framework. For enterprise AI teams, the implications are potentially profound: Projects that previously demanded multiple frameworks, specialized vector databases, and complex orchestration logic can now be achieved through a single, standardized platform. But perhaps most revealing is OpenAIs implicit acknowledgment that solving AI agent reliability issues requires outside expertise. This shift comes amid growing evidence that external developers are finding innovative solutions to agent reliability something that the shocking Manus release also clearly demonstrated. This strategic concession represents a critical turning point: OpenAI recognizes that even with its vast resources, the path to truly reliable agents requires opening up to outside developers who can discover innovative solutions and workarounds that OpenAI's internal teams might miss.Read More

With no more money from VR platform holders to subsidize development, studios like People Can Fly are second-guessing their own time with it.Read More

Ashly Burch, the award-winning voice and performance actor behind Horizon Zero Dawns Aloy one of the most prominent characters on PlayStation today has some news and some very strong thoughts about the leaked Sony experiment that saw her character voiced and performed by AI technology instead of her or any other human being.The AI-powered version of Aloy. Image: SonyThe video, originally shared with The Verge by a tipster and later pulled off YouTube by a copyright enforcement company that counts Sony PlayStation as a client, was of an internal prototype not necessarily something thats in production for actual games, and Burch says that Horizon developer Guerilla proactively confirmed to her that it is not actively in development. Nor did it use her voice or facial data, Guerilla claimed. But Burch says having seen the demo, she is worried, and not just about her own career. I feel worried about this art form, she says. You can watch her video immediately below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Here is a full transcript:Hi. Lets talk about AI Aloy. I saw the tech demo earlier this week. Guerilla reached out to me to let me know that the demo didnt reflect anything that was actively in development. They didnt use any of my performance for the demo, so none of my facial or voice data. And Guerilla owns Aloy as a character.So all that said, I feel worried. And not worried about Guerilla specifically or Horizon or my performance or my career specifically, even. I feel worried about this art form. Game performance as an art form.We are currently on strike. SAG-AFTRA is on strike against video games because of AI. Because this technology exists, because we know that game companies want to use it, were asking for protections.So currently what were fighting for is that you have to get our consent before you make an AI version of us in any form. You have to compensate us fairly and you have to tell us how youre using this AI double.And I feel worried not because the technology exists. Not even because game companies want to use it. Because of course they do. They always want to use technological advancements.I just imagine a video like this coming out that does have someones performance attached to it. That does have someones voice or face or movement. And the possibility that if we lose this fight, that person would have no recourse.They wouldnt have any protections. Any way to fight back. And that possibility it makes me so sad. It hurts my heart. It scares me.I love this industry and this art form so much and I want there to be a new generation of actors. I want there to be so many more incredible game performances.I want to be able to continue.Its unusual for performers who have such a close relationship with game companies to speak out like this, but were also in an unusual moment: as she points out, video game actors are on strike right now, specifically because of AI, and the very idea that a company like Sony is explicitly building and demonstrating ways to potentially replace actors like Burch is exactly what the striking workers fear.In addition to starring in Horizon Zero Dawn, Burch has had minor roles in other Sony games including The Last of Us Part II and Spider-Man, but is otherwise best known for playing Chloe Price in the Life Is Strange games, Tiny Tina in Borderlands, and from the live-action D&D roleplaying series Critical Role and Apple TV Pluss Mythic Quest, where she also serves as a writer.See More:

It is hard to describe how utterly joyless and devoid of imaginative ideas The Electric State is. Netflixs latest feature codirected by Joe and Anthony Russo takes many visual cues from Simon Stlenhags much-lauded 2018 illustrated novel, but the films leaden performances and meandering story make it feel like a project borne out by a streamer that sees its subscribers as easily impressed dolts who hunger for slop. While you can kind of see where some of the money went, its exceedingly hard to understand why Netflix reportedly spent upward of $300 million to produce what often reads like an idealized, feature-length version of the AI-generated movies littering social media. With a budget that large and a cast so stacked, you would think that The Electric State might, at the very least, be able to deliver a handful of inspired set pieces and characters capable of leaving an impression. But all this clunker of a movie really has to offer is nostalgic vibes and groan-inducing product placement.Set in an alternate history where Walt Disneys invention of simple automatons eventually leads to a devastating war, The Electric State centers Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), a rebellious teen orphan desperate to escape her abusive home. Like most kids around her age, Michelles world was turned upside down during the brutal human / robot conflict that began with thinking machines demanding equal rights as sentient beings. But whereas most of her peers lost loved ones specifically because of the war, an ordinary car crash is what tears Michelles family apart and leads to her being adopted by loutish layabout Ted (Jason Alexander).With her parents and brilliant younger brother Christopher (Woody Norman) seemingly dead, Michelle doesnt feel like theres all that much to live for. Much like her chaotic adoptive home life, school feels like a prison to Michelle because of the way children are expected to learn everything using Neurocasters, bulky headsets that transport wearers into virtual realities. Though many people like Ted gleefully strap their Neurocasters on, the technology disgusts Michelle, in part because of how they were first created as tools to give humans an edge in the machine war.Given how people still live in fear of being attacked by the few surviving robots sequestered in the Exclusion Zone, Michelle cant fathom why other people are so game to tune the real world out. Michelle herself is constantly looking over her shoulder in case a bloodthirsty machine finds its way into her room. But when one of them actually does, shes charmed by the fact that it looks like one of her favorite cartoon characters. And shes shocked when it tells her (through canned catchphrases from the cartoon) that Christopher is actually alive.Though Michelles new robot friend looks very much like one of Stlenhags illustrations, its vocal impairment makes it read as a cutesy spin on the live-action Transformers take on Bumblebee. As it urges Michelle to follow it on a mission to find Christopher, you can almost hear the Russos and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely patting themselves on the back for creating a character who encapsulates everything about The Electric States war-torn world. Its a damaged thing that just wants to be seen as a person and given the chance to live its life in peace. Those details could have made for an interesting narrative if there were any more depth to them or if Brown could muster up even an ounce of chemistry with her CGI companion. But The Electric State is much more concerned with simply showing you as many of its broken machines as it possibly can.Outside of a multitude of cultural references meant to remind you that its set in the 90s, and shots of Neurocaster users lying passed out on the street like junkies, The Electric State never feels very interested in doing the kind of worldbuilding necessary to make movies like it work. Instead, it simply spells out that the inventor of the Neurocaster, Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), is a villain who wants Colonel Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito) to capture Michelles robot. And Bradburys chasing after the pair gives the film a way to show how littered The Electric States world is with the rusted frames of machines destroyed during the war.The movie becomes that much more of a slog once Michelle crosses paths with boring smuggler Keats (a profoundly charmless Chris Pratt) and his wisecracking robo-friend Herman (Anthony Mackie), who make a living selling things they scavenge from the Exclusion Zone. Unlike Browns Michelle, Pratt and Mackie actually do manage to come across as people who have lived through a sort of apocalypse and become much weirder due to their general isolation from the outside world. Their knowledge of the Exclusion Zone and access to vehicles makes them perfect to get Michelle and her robot to their destination. But the sheer number of jokes about Twinkies and Big Mouth Billy Bass (again, this is the 90s) that The Electric State has Keats spit out is enough to make you root for Bradbury.Image: NetflixPart of the problem is that The Electric State is never all that funny, though the movie certainly thinks it is as it starts to introduce some of its more unusual robot characters like mail-bot Penny Pal (Jenny Slate), spider-like fortune telling machine Perplexo (Hank Azaria), and their leader, Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson). You can almost imagine The Electric State working if it were more focused on the lives of the pariah machines all of whom are somewhat evocative of Sids horrific creations in Toy Story. But rather than tapping into those characters potential, the movie spends its last third rushing headlong into tiresome action sequences that fall far short of what you would expect from such an expensive project. Ultimately, The Electric State leaves you with the distinct sense that Netflix greenlit it assuming that the Russo bros. + IP + a bunch of well-known actors would = a movie people would reflexively want to watch. But that math simply doesnt add up, and this feels like an instance where youd be much better off just reading the book.The Electric State also stars Colman Domingo, Ke Huy Quan, Martin Klebba, Alan Tudyk, Susan Leslie, and Rob Gronkowski. The movie is now streaming on Netflix.See More:

Traditional language models rely on autoregressive approaches, which generate text sequentially, ensuring high-quality outputs at the expense of slow inference speeds. In contrast, diffusion models, initially developed for image and video generation, have gained attention in text generation due to their potential for parallelized generation and improved controllability. However, existing diffusion models struggle with fixed-length constraints and inefficiencies in likelihood modeling, limiting their effectiveness in generating flexible-length text.A major challenge in language modeling is balancing efficiency and quality. Autoregressive models capture long-range dependencies effectively but suffer from slow token-by-token generation. Diffusion models, while promising, require multiple inference steps and typically generate fixed-length outputs. This limitation prevents them from being practical for real-world applications where variable-length sequences are necessary. The research addresses this issue by proposing a method that combines the strengths of both autoregressive and diffusion models, ensuring efficient and high-quality text generation without compromising flexibility.Current methods primarily involve autoregressive models, which generate text one token at a time based on previously generated tokens. While these models achieve high fluency and coherence, they are inherently slow due to their sequential processing nature. Diffusion-based approaches have been explored as an alternative, offering parallel generation. However, existing diffusion models generate fixed-length sequences and lack efficient means of extending beyond predefined contexts. Despite their inefficiencies, the lack of scalability in diffusion models has led to continued reliance on autoregressive methods.Cornell Tech and Stanford University researchers introduced **Block Discrete Denoising Diffusion Language Models (BD3-LMs)** to overcome these limitations. This new class of models interpolates between autoregressive and diffusion models by employing a structured approach that supports variable-length generation while maintaining inference efficiency. BD3-LMs use key-value caching and parallel token sampling to reduce computational overhead. The model is designed with specialized training algorithms that minimize gradient variance through customized noise schedules, optimizing performance across diverse language modeling benchmarks.BD3-LMs operate by structuring text generation into blocks rather than individual tokens. Unlike traditional autoregressive models, which predict the next token sequentially, BD3-LMs generate a block of tokens simultaneously, significantly improving efficiency. A diffusion-based denoising process within each block ensures high-quality text generation while preserving coherence. The model architecture integrates transformers with a block-causal attention mechanism, allowing each block to condition on previously generated blocks. This approach enhances both contextual relevance and fluency. The training process includes a vectorized implementation that enables parallel computations, reducing training time and resource consumption. Researchers introduced data-driven noise schedules that stabilize training and improve gradient estimation to address the high variance issue in diffusion models.Performance evaluations of BD3-LMs demonstrate substantial improvements over existing discrete diffusion models. The model achieves state-of-the-art perplexity scores among diffusion-based language models while enabling the generation of arbitrary-length sequences. In experiments conducted on language modeling benchmarks, BD3-LMs reduce perplexity by up to 13% compared to previous diffusion models. On the LM1B dataset, BD3-LMs achieved a perplexity of 28.23 when using a block size of four, outperforming previous models such as MDLM, which had a perplexity of 31.78. On OpenWebText, BD3-LMs attained a perplexity of 20.73, significantly better than other discrete diffusion models. Further, BD3-LMs generated sequences up to 10 times longer than those produced by traditional diffusion methods, demonstrating superior scalability. The proposed model also reduced the number of function evaluations required for inference, achieving improved sample efficiency and generation speed.The introduction of BD3-LMs presents a significant advancement in language modeling by integrating autoregressive and diffusion-based methodologies. By addressing key challenges related to inference efficiency, likelihood estimation, and sequence flexibility, this research offers a practical and scalable solution for text generation. BD3-LMs improve training stability and computational efficiency, providing a framework that can be extended to future language modeling developments. The results highlight the effectiveness of BD3-LMs in bridging the gap between autoregressive and diffusion-based approaches, offering an optimized balance between quality and speed in text generation.Check outTwitterand dont forget to join our80k+ ML SubReddit. NikhilNikhil is an intern consultant at Marktechpost. He is pursuing an integrated dual degree in Materials at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Nikhil is an AI/ML enthusiast who is always researching applications in fields like biomaterials and biomedical science. 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