• 0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·33 مشاهدة
  • How to trade in old electronics for Amazon gift cards (and why you shouldn't wait to do it)
    www.zdnet.com
    In time for Amazon's Spring Sale event, follow these steps to turn your unused gadgets and gizmos into gift cards.
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·34 مشاهدة
  • Valve Is Misleading Millions Of Steam Deck Users With Strange Rating
    www.forbes.com
    GTA V Enhanced screenshot courtesy of Rockstar Games.Jason EvangelhoThrough the decades, Valve has earned the respect of PC gamers by simply being transparent, fair, and doing right by its customers. But there are times when even the things you love arent above criticism, and Valves latest decision to mark GTA V Enhanced as Playable on Steam Deck is a baffling move that certainly warrants some of that criticism.As spotted by Gaming On Linux, Valve has assigned Rockstars upgraded version of Grand Theft Auto V (the previous version has been delisted) a Deck Verified rating of Playable.Heres the full definition of what constitutes a Playable game on Steam Deck, in Valves words: The game may require some manual tweaking by the user to play. E.g. requiring user to manually select a community controller config, needing to use the touchscreen to navigate a launcher, etc.Another popular game that is labeled Playable on Steam Deck is Marvel Rivals. That game earns the designation because it has some text that might be too small to read, and because you may need to occasionally call up the onscreen keyboard manually to type in text. Those are very minor inconveniences.GTA V on Steam Deck has a rather massive inconvenience: the entirety of GTA Online is unplayable. Late last year, Rockstar Games added BattlEye anti-cheat to the game, and decided against supporting Linux. (BattlEye is fully supported on Linux, and its up to the developers to implement it.)The Compatibility details for GTA V Enhanced on Steam Deck.Jason EvangelhoTo this day, Rockstars GTA Online FAQ says the following about Linux and Steam Deck: "Steam Deck does not support BattlEye for GTA Online. You will be able to play GTAV Story Mode but unable to play GTA Online [] (I take issue with Rockstars phrasing here, implying that Steam Deck does not support BattlEye, when in fact the developer is not supporting Steam Deck, but I digress.)The point is straightforward: Valve says GTA V Enhanced is compatible with Steam Deck, meaning that all gameplay is accessible. GTA Online, however, is undeniably huge part of this package, but its not playable. There are no workarounds. There are no tweaks. The only possible way for it to be playable is if Rockstar someday decides to support the console, and by extension Linux.So why is the game not labeled as Unsupported? I dont know. I believe this move is misleading to Valves massive community of gamers, and that this decision further erodes some of the trust Valve has earned. It definitely serves to further bolster the need to revamp Valves Deck Verified program.I reached out to Valve for a response prior to writing this article, but the PR team is at the Game Developers Conference this week and responses will likely be delayed. Ill post an update here as soon I hear back.In the meantime, please be aware that you cant actually enjoy GTA V Enhanced on Steam Deck, unless all youre interested in is the story mode.
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·34 مشاهدة
  • Marketing Leaders Are Chasing GenAI ROI, But Most Are Missing The Mark
    www.forbes.com
    While the news feeds of many chief marketing officers and chief revenue officers are dominated ... [+] byAI headlines, there's still a lot of confusion on how to get the best ROI from their GenAI efforts. (Photo by Jaque Silva/NurPhoto via Getty Images)NurPhoto via Getty ImagesMost marketing leaders have explore generative AI and personalization on their annual plans. Thats not mere conjecture, but an assertion rooted in evidence so much that AI has now become the latest buzzword in product marketing, as I wrote in this article.For context, a recent McKinsey survey revealed that the use of generative AI across organizations jumped from 55% in 2023 to 78% in 2024, with respondents most often report using the technology in the IT and marketing and sales functions.So, without a question, the news feeds of many chief marketing officers and chief revenue officers are dominated by AI headlines. Their inboxes are full of best practices and all or most of their vendors have integrated some form of productivity-boosting AI tools.Some of these tools are extremely helpful, while others seem to have taken inspiration from Microsofts Clippy, a well-intentioned but highly-obtrusive assistant from the 2000s that actively interfered with office work.The GenAI revolution holds both incredible promise and fear, but if you look back a few decades, you can see this pattern repeated in the desktop publishing, internet and mobile phone revolutions.Thirty years ago, when desktop publishing solutions first emerged, they took print production away from the professional designer and put tools into the hands of anyone with a PC. What resulted was a flooding of the market with fast, inexpensively produced, but amateurish content that often cheapened brand values.GenAI is no different. As Bill Anderson, global lead of revenue orchestration at Slalom, told me in an interview, the rapid emergence of GenAI now requires revenue growth and marketing leadership to take a step back and ask themselves not just what are the potential benefits of the technology, but also to take a sharp look at its costs and limits.This means starting with a careful strategic assessment before adding yet another platform to their existing tech stacks that takes a holistic look at the entire revenue pipeline.Holistic Revenue PipelinesMarketing tech providers have traditionally offered solutions that only support specific functions like content personalization, lead management, or customer analytics. At many organizations, whether small or large, the situation has created a confounding mess of disconnected systems, siloed data and ultimately a poor customer experience all of which negatively impact a companys revenue.Marketers built their pipeline from the perspective of the cloud software they were integrating. They forgot to look at the holistic revenue orchestration pipeline, creating a customer journey like a squirrel walking a picket fence. The platforms are optimized for their task, but the journey is difficult and uncomfortable.Even when theyre aware of the potential backlash that GenAI can produce, many chief revenue and marketing officers today dont fully grasp that success in the current business climate awash with tsunamis of data wont be achieved by simply adding an AI platform to their already bloated tech stacks, Anderson noted.Theres often a substantial, unrecognized cost involved in generating a mass amount of AI content; processing, storage and review fees often overlooked by brand managers. Press releases touting hundreds of thousands of images dont address the structural impact: humans still need to review the images and so companies have to hire third-party agencies to support the load.Simply adopting more and more AI tools in hopes that they will magically boost ROI is the fastest way to do less with more. As Jaspers 2025 State of AI in Marketing Report revealed, 56% of marketers are using AI in isolated, ad-hoc ways, and 51% cannot track ROI or see the true business impact of their AI investments.Instead, achieving the holy grail of an AI strategy that produces high-quality, brand-compliant marketing content on a massive scale, using key data points and performance indicators that support a positive customer experience, requires a fundamental rethinking by company leadership.So, before adding another AI-driven tool to an already bloated tech stack, marketing leaders must take a holistic view of the revenue pipeline and ask themselves if that AI tool will solve a real bottleneck, or just create a new one?Minimum Viable DataPerhaps counterintuitively, one of the biggest drivers of unnecessary costs associated with deploying GenAI into an organizations revenue chain results from an attempt to mine too much data with the system more than required to yield useful outputs.For Anderson, not only can an overambitious, data-greedy approach generate inaccurate conclusions about likely customer preferences and more, it inevitably results in excessive data storage and processing costs. Most large companies, for example, keep vast quantities of data stored across various departments, including previously abandoned pet projects, which are irrelevant and should be excluded from a new GenAI model.Based on my recent experience consulting with many CROs and CMOs at numerous Fortune 500 companies, I have observed that the most effective leaders recognize the importance of taking a more minimalist approach when deciding which data sources to tap with a GenAI model, he said.In this regard, Anderson offers a simple formula to keep in mind when planning and deploying a new GenAI solution into an organizations revenue chain: The minimum viable data required equals the most valuable data available, or MVD = MVD, for short. This simple formula describes the absolute minimum data points that your sales teams use to estimate if someone will buy or not.The MVD = MVD approach strips away all the cruft, historical sources and pet analytics to its core, allowing product owners and revenue marketers to focus on a few key points. Your most valuable data is the bare minimum an AI model needs to produce useful sales intelligence, like melting down gold to remove its impurities.Starting With StakeholdersEffectively applying the principle of MVD = MVD to GenAI entails leadership first bringing all the revenue chains stakeholders together in a planning-stage work group, with the goal of answering an initial question, What is the minimum viable data and therefore also the most valuable data for this proposed solution?By defining the minimum data needed to indicate a customers likelihood to buy, demand generation managers can develop a catalog of use-case experiments that define audiences, desired outcomes, and the data fields needed to support the experiment. This catalog helps refine the prompts and safe boundaries of generative output.In addition to tightly-defined experiments, marketers can also use image-to-text AI tools to generate keywords and metadata of an image. This can then be analyzed and leveraged to find hidden patterns that boost response rates.For example, Adobes Gen Studio may report that certain colors or lighting effects bring more clicks than others. Leveraging this automatic experimentation using metadata allows the marketer to combine disciplined experimentation with generative, AI-powered insights.So, rather than expect GenAI tools to create content to replace creatives, creatives are tightly defining the experiments and parameters for the GenAI tools to operate in. Using GenAI to perform the grunt work of generating hundreds of backgrounds for various-sized banners frees the creatives up to do more strategic work like creating behavior-based, personalized engagement programs.Road To SuccessInstead of pushing out that Explore GenAI task, marketing leaders need to plan for people first, starting now. What does success look like? By working backwards from success, CROs and CMOs alike can build a team of sales, creatives and marketing ops to define exactly what the GenAI tool will create. Now the CRO has an effective measurement framework in place before buying any new tools.
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·45 مشاهدة
  • AI Is Turbocharging Organized Crime, E.U. Police Agency Warns
    time.com
    THE HAGUE, Netherlands The European Union's law enforcement agency cautioned Tuesday that artificial intelligence is turbocharging organized crime that is eroding the foundations of societies across the 27-nation bloc as it becomes intertwined with state-sponsored destabilization campaigns.The grim warning came at the launch of the latest edition of a report on organized crime published every four years by Europol that is compiled using data from police across the EU and will help shape law enforcement policy in the bloc in coming years.AdvertisementAdvertisementCybercrime is evolving into a digital arms race targeting governments, businesses and individuals. AI-driven attacks are becoming more precise and devastating, said Europol's Executive Director Catherine De Bolle.Some attacks show a combination of motives of profit and destabilization, as they are increasingly state-aligned and ideologically motivated, she added.Read more: The AI Arms Race Is Changing EverythingThe report, the EU Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment 2025, said offenses ranging from drug trafficking to people smuggling, money laundering, cyber attacks and online scams undermine society and the rule of law by generating illicit proceeds, spreading violence, and normalizing corruption.The volume of child sexual abuse material available online has increased significantly because of AI, which makes it more difficult to analyze imagery and identify offenders, the report said.By creating highly realistic synthetic media, criminals are able to deceive victims, impersonate individuals and discredit or blackmail targets. The addition of AI-powered voice cloning and live video deepfakes amplifies the threat, enabling new forms of fraud, extortion, and identity theft," it said.States seeking geopolitical advantage are also using criminals as contractors, the report said, citing cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure and public institutions originating from Russia and countries in its sphere of influence.Hybrid and traditional cybercrime actors will increasingly be intertwined, with state-sponsored actors masking themselves as cybercriminals to conceal their origin and real disruption motives, it said.Polish Interior Ministry Undersecretary of State Maciej Duszczyk cited a recent cyberattack on a hospital as the latest example in his country.Unfortunately this hospital has to stop its activity for the hours because it was lost to a serious cyber-attack," boosted by AI, he said.AI and other technologies are a catalyst for crime, and drive criminal operations efficiency by amplifying their speed, reach, and sophistication, the report said.As the European Commission prepares to launch a new internal security policy, De Bolle said that nations in Europe need to tackle the threats urgently.We must embed security into everything we do, said European Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner. He added that the EU aims to provide enough funds in coming years to double Europol's staff.
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·44 مشاهدة
  • AMD board partner says Radeon RX 9070 GPU supply will stabilize after April
    www.techspot.com
    In brief: Consumers desperate to find a Radeon RX 9070 or RX 9070 XT at retailers at MSRP have been offered a potential timeline from a third-party manufacturer. Chinese AIB partner Yeston wrote that while the situation is currently "unstable," the supply will stabilize after April. Yeston's RX 9070 cards are currently only available in China, which is experiencing the same availability problems as the US.Yeston writes that it is restocking the cards every week, but asks customers who can't grab an RX 9070 XT not to be frustrated as the supply is unstable.It's likely that the stabilizing supply of RDNA 4 desktop cards Yeston mentions will be experienced globally, not just in China, and that it will happen in May.Last week, an AMD executive called demand for its RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT graphics cards "really unprecedented." Team Red had promised "wide availability" for its latest cards when they were announced, but that's not the phrase that comes to mind when looking for one at retailers such as Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy. // Related StoriesAMD had said that Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT cards running at default clocks and without factory overclocking would be available at their respective $549 and $599 MSRPs, but many retailers added up to $130 on top of these prices for some non-overclocked models.Interestingly, a claim posted to Board Channels the forums used by AMD, Nvidia, and Intel board partners earlier today claimed that AMD is using a two-tier system for its GPU allocation. The core partners, consisting of Asus, XFX, PowerColor, Sapphire, and Vastarmor, are said to have received thousands of units in each batch.The second-tier partners, a group that includes Yeston, are said to be allocated fewer GPUs. Even big names such as Acer, Gigabyte, and Asrock are considered non-core AMD partners, according to the post.VideoCardz notes that AIB partners in the first group tend to offer four to ten Radeon RX 9070-series cards, while those in the second tier have between two and six models.
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·44 مشاهدة
  • MIT engineers create artificial muscle that mimics real tissue
    www.techspot.com
    In context: Making robots more biologically compatible has been a challenge scientists have been tackling for years. Until now, they have primarily been able to create lab-grown muscle fibers that contract along only one plane. That works well for a robotic arm that bends at a single joint, but it falls short when it comes to more complex movements. In contrast, the human body's muscles are far more versatile thanks to fibers arranged in intricate, crisscrossing patterns. Now, MIT engineers have taken a major step toward developing robots that replace rigid gears with something much softer almost like real, living muscle tissue. In other words, they have found a way to grow artificial muscle that can flex in multiple directions.To achieve this, they devised a new stamping technique that 3D prints tiny grooves into a soft gel. The actual process is complex, but to simplify: when muscle cells are seeded onto the gel, they grow along these grooved patterns. As a proof of concept, the researchers even fabricated an artificial iris using this method.The iris is the ring of muscle that controls pupil dilation in the human eye. It consists of an inner set of concentric circular fibers and an outer layer of radiating fibers. The stamped gel replicated some of these patterns, resulting in a muscle-powered pupil that can dilate and contract, just like the real thing."We believe we've created the first skeletal muscle-powered robot that generates force in more than one direction," said Ritu Raman, a tissue engineer at MIT. "That was enabled by this new stamping approach."Of course, there were challenges to overcome. For one, the gel is extremely delicate. Raman explained that it's much softer than Jello and difficult to cast because it tears easily. Overcoming this required trial and error, but the results were well worth it. // Related StoriesThe stamping technique is highly versatile, allowing researchers to essentially "blueprint" any desired muscle architecture by simply programming the stamp's groove pattern. The stamps themselves can be produced using a standard tabletop 3D printer.This flexibility opens up a vast range of possibilities, potentially enabling researchers to replicate everything from the swirling contractions of heart muscles to the coiled movements of the digestive tract.Looking ahead, the team plans to experiment with different layouts and cell types beyond just skeletal muscle. Once robotic engineers begin integrating these programmable bio-tissues into designs, a new era of machines may emerge.Raman envisioned one interesting use case."Instead of using rigid actuators that are typical in underwater robots, if we can use soft biological robots, we can navigate and be much more energy-efficient, while also being completely biodegradable and sustainable," she said. "That's what we hope to build toward."
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·43 مشاهدة
  • Google says its using AI to respond to more of your ailment searches
    www.digitaltrends.com
    Over the last year, Google has been expanding its AI overviews in search results, offering responses compiled with generative AI rather than a list of links. The goal, as you would expect, is to make information directly accessible while helping you save time from clicking each link individually and deciding its merit for yourself. Now, Google seems confident these overviews can help you better with your medical queries too.At its annual health-centric event, The Check Up, Google announced a several ways in which its products will improve how you find information about health-related topics. More specifically, the company said it is now expanding AI overviews in search results to cover thousands more health topics, beyond the basic ones such as flu. These results are also being expanded to other languages besides English, including Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese, for queries made on mobile.GoogleIn addition, Google brings another feature titled What People Suggest, which compiles personal advice from forums and public platforms, such as Quora or Reddit, for medical searches. This will be limited to queries made on mobile and only available to users in the U.S. at the moment.Recommended VideosIt is vital to emphasize that Googles AI overviews, like any other generative AI product, are susceptible to incorrect responses called hallucinations and must not be used as the sole source of information.Please enable Javascript to view this contentBesides these improvements to Search, Google has also launched its Medical Records API as part of its Health Connect platform. This will allow medical records stored in a specific format to be shared across multiple health and fitness apps on your Android devices.While AI search results may not fully substitute sound medical advice, Google is expanding access to several lightweight AI models from its Gemma family of models. Google has trained these specific models to help researchers to aid in quicker drug discovery by offering existing knowledge on the effect of certain molecules.Additionally, Google is also piloting an AI tool called Capricorn that can assist doctors, more specifically pediatric oncologists, to offer personalized treatments to young cancer patients at a hospital in the Netherlands.Editors Recommendations
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·45 مشاهدة
  • You can now pre-order the new Pebble Watch, but its got a different name
    www.digitaltrends.com
    Table of ContentsTable of ContentsOrder today, but no guaranteesCore 2 Duo specs and Core Time 2 specsThe Pebble Watch has returned, thanks to new company Core Devices setup by Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky. After weeks of teasers the new rePebble store went live today, March 18, with two new smartwatches available to pre-order.Theres a new name for the watches, the first of which is the Core 2 Duo with a 1.26-inch black and white display, priced at $149.Recommended VideosMigicovsky says its basically an upgraded Pebble 2 with battery life being improved from seven days to a mighty 30 days. Considering many color screen smartwatches need a daily charge, the potential ability to go almost a month between topping up will likely appeal to those interested.Please enable Javascript to view this contentWe also added a speaker, linear actuator motor, compass and barometer, and improved the buttons Migicovsky says.The second watch is the Core Time 2 which features a 1.5-inch color display and costs $225. Again, Migicovsky says this is based on the Pebble Time 2. As Migicovsky explains additional features over the original Time 2 include, a speaker and touch screen, and boosted battery life. For Pebble fans, youll note the design is a little different. Thats because the top glass is flat rather than curved.The original Pebble Watch arrived on the wearable scene back in 2012 with an e-paper display and chunky design. It smashed its Kickstarter goal, but four years later the company was sold to Fitbit and production on its watches ended.The new Core 2 Duo is set to start shipping in July 2025, while the Core Time 2 wont start shipping until December 2025. However, theres no guarantee youll receive your order.As part of the ordering experiencing you need understand and knowledge a number of caveats;The ship date is an estimate. Delays may happenCore Devices may cancel and refund my order at any timeDuties and customs fees (tariffs) may be added laterI can cancel my pre-order and get a full refund any time before shipmentThe FAQs at the bottom of this pageThats because Eric is personally funding the project, so there will likely be various milestones which will need to be passed to get physical products into the hands of buyers.And if youre an iPhone owners, theres an additional disclaimer youll need to accept before placing your order.Core Devices / Digital TrendsCore 2 DuoCore Time 2Display1.26 B/W1.5 64-colourResolution144168 pixels, 176 DPI200228 pixels, 202 DPIInteraction4 buttons4 buttons + touchscreenFramePolycarbonateMetalSensors6-axis IMU, compass, barometer6-axis IMU, heart rateHealth featuresStep and sleep trackingHeart rate, step and sleep trackingBattery life30 days30 days (est.)Price$149$225Shipping startsJuly 2025December 2025Editors Recommendations
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·43 مشاهدة
  • The Israeli Startup That Just Inked the Largest Cybersecurity Deal Ever
    www.wsj.com
    A group of former Israeli military officers stand to make billions from Googles $32 billion purchase of their startup.
    0 التعليقات ·0 المشاركات ·43 مشاهدة