The Challenge of Designing General-Purpose Vision Encoders As AI systems grow increasingly multimodal, the role of visual perception models becomes more complex. Vision encoders are expected not only to recognize objects and scenes, but also to support tasks like captioning, question answering, fine-grained recognition, document parsing, and spatial reasoning across both images and videos. Existing models typically rely on diverse pretraining objectives—contrastive learning for retrieval, captioning for language tasks, and self-supervised methods for spatial understanding. This fragmentation complicates scalability and model deployment, and introduces trade-offs in performance across tasks. What remains a key challenge is the design of a unified vision encoder that can match or exceed task-specific methods, operate robustly in open-world scenarios, and scale efficiently across modalities. Meta AI introduces Perception Encoder (PE), a vision model family trained using a single contrastive vision-language objective and refined with alignment techniques tailored for downstream tasks. PE departs from the traditional multi-objective pretraining paradigm. Instead, it demonstrates that with a carefully tuned training recipe and appropriate alignment methods, contrastive learning alone can yield highly generalizable visual representations. The Perception Encoder operates across three scales—PEcoreB, PEcoreL, and PEcoreG—with the largest (G-scale) model containing 2B parameters. These models are designed to function as general-purpose encoders for both image and video inputs, offering strong performance in classification, retrieval, and multimodal reasoning. Training Approach and Architecture The pretraining of PE follows a two-stage process. The first stage involves robust contrastive learning on a large-scale curated image-text dataset (5.4B pairs), where several architectural and training enhancements improve both accuracy and robustness. These include progressive resolution scaling, large batch sizes (up to 131K), use of the LAMB optimizer, 2D RoPE positional encoding, tuned augmentations, and masked regularization. The second stage introduces video understanding by leveraging a video data engine that synthesizes high-quality video-text pairs. This pipeline incorporates captions from the Perception Language Model (PLM), frame-level descriptions, and metadata, which are then summarized using Llama 3.3. These synthetic annotations allow the same image encoder to be fine-tuned for video tasks via frame averaging. Despite using a single contrastive objective, PE features general-purpose representations distributed across intermediate layers. To access these, Meta introduces two alignment strategies: Language alignment for tasks such as visual question answering and captioning. Spatial alignment for detection, tracking, and depth estimation, using self-distillation and spatial correspondence distillation via SAM2. Empirical Performance Across Modalities PE demonstrates strong zero-shot generalization across a wide range of vision benchmarks. On image classification, PEcoreG matches or exceeds proprietary models trained on large private datasets such as JFT-3B. It achieves: 86.6% on ImageNet-val, 92.6% on ImageNet-Adversarial, 88.2% on the full ObjectNet set, Competitive results on fine-grained datasets including iNaturalist, Food101, and Oxford Flowers. In video tasks, PE achieves state-of-the-art performance on zero-shot classification and retrieval benchmarks, outperforming InternVideo2 and SigLIP2-g-opt, while being trained on just 22M synthetic video-caption pairs. The use of simple average pooling across frames—rather than temporal attention—demonstrates that architectural simplicity, when paired with well-aligned training data, can still yield high-quality video representations. An ablation study shows that each component of the video data engine contributes meaningfully to performance. Improvements of +3.9% in classification and +11.1% in retrieval over image-only baselines highlight the utility of synthetic video data, even at modest scale. Conclusion Perception Encoder provides a technically compelling demonstration that a single contrastive objective, if implemented with care and paired with thoughtful alignment strategies, is sufficient to build general-purpose vision encoders. PE not only matches specialized models in their respective domains but does so with a unified and scalable approach. The release of PE, along with its codebase and the PE Video Dataset, offers the research community a reproducible and efficient foundation for building multimodal AI systems. As visual reasoning tasks grow in complexity and scope, PE provides a path forward toward more integrated and robust visual understanding. Check out the Paper, Model, Code and Dataset. Also, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our Telegram Channel and LinkedIn Group. Don’t Forget to join our 90k+ ML SubReddit. Asif RazzaqWebsite |  + postsBioAsif Razzaq is the CEO of Marktechpost Media Inc.. As a visionary entrepreneur and engineer, Asif is committed to harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence for social good. His most recent endeavor is the launch of an Artificial Intelligence Media Platform, Marktechpost, which stands out for its in-depth coverage of machine learning and deep learning news that is both technically sound and easily understandable by a wide audience. The platform boasts of over 2 million monthly views, illustrating its popularity among audiences.Asif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/IBM Releases Granite 3.3 8B: A New Speech-to-Text (STT) Model that Excels in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Automatic Speech Translation (AST)Asif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/A Hands-On Tutorial: Build a Modular LLM Evaluation Pipeline with Google Generative AI and LangChainAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Researchers from AWS and Intuit Propose a Zero Trust Security Framework to Protect the Model Context Protocol (MCP) from Tool Poisoning and Unauthorized AccessAsif Razzaqhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/6flvq/Model Performance Begins with Data: Researchers from Ai2 Release DataDecide—A Benchmark Suite to Understand Pretraining Data Impact Across 30K LLM Checkpoints

Marvel is suiting up for another Swimsuit Special comic book release, and it looks like NetEase Games’ Marvel Rivals will join in on the summer fun with some of its own swimsuit skins.Details on what could eventually result in the arrival of long-awaited Marvel Rivals swimsuit cosmetics were shared in a recent post on the Marvel website. It promises that Marvel will return to the fan-favorite series come July 9 with Marvel Swimsuit Special: Friends, Foes, and Rivals #1. The story will give Earth’s Mightiest Heroes a much-needed break from the stresses of saving the world, but more importantly, the comic book giant teases that the run will include a sneak peek at designs for Marvel Rivals.Marvel Swimsuit Special art. Image courtesy of Marvel.“Roxxon Comics is at it again when they release their own UNAUTHORIZED SWIMSUIT SPECIAL,” a description for the Marvel Swimsuit Special says. “Wasp is on the case and seizes the opportunity for Marvel’s heroes to do their OWN swimwear fashion shoot all over the world! But fear not, True Believers, we know what you’re REALLY here for! This super-sized special features splash page after splash page of gorgeous art, but with a story so you can pretend you’re ‘reading it for the articles…’”Unfortunately, Marvel doesn’t share much about when these summer designs will launch or which characters will be included in the collection. It’s also important to note that today’s post doesn’t outright confirm that these skins will specifically be part of a swimsuit set, but considering the special’s subject matter, it would make sense to at least see some summer cosmetics included. We’ll learn more about the Marvel Swimsuit Special in the months ahead, so let’s hope future news comes with more information about how it ties into Marvel Rivals.Marvel Rivals launched in December and quickly became a popular distraction for multiplayer fans across PC and consoles. Its competitive nature and vast character pool have had players scheming up new ways to rise through the ranks, but while many focus on improving their performance, others are far more concerned with NetEase’s plans for post-launch support. One idea that has attracted the attention of armies of fans is the hope they may one day see a Marvel Rivals swimsuit collection come to the game, and now, we know that their prayers will likely soon be answered.     Regarding launch timing, there are a few clues we can look at when guessing when swimsuits may be included. We know that Marvel Rivals Season 2 brought Emma Frost and the Hellfire Gala to the hero shooter experience just last week. With the season set to end in about three months, we can guess that the new outfits should launch with Season 3 sometime around July or August. It’s a window that makes sense based on both NetEase’s previously promised schedule while letting fans soak up the sun just before summer comes to an end.Also launching alongside Season 3 is NetEase’s new post-launch plans. Instead of three-month seasons, Marvel Rivals fans can look forward to snappier seasons that last only about two months. That means at least one new playable hero will be included every month for the foreseeable future. For more on Marvel Rivals, you can read up on the April Fools' Day emote that let Venom twerk. You can also click here to learn more about how NetEase made an infamous Moon Knight meme canon. Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

This article contains spoilers for Daredevil: Born Again. The season finale of Daredevil: Born Again features that most time-honored of comic book tropes, in which two heroes disagree but ultimately team up. However, because the “heroes” are Matt Murdock a.k.a. Daredevil (Charlie Cox) and Frank Castle a.k.a. the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), even the team-up is pretty messy. The scene climaxes with Daredevil and Punisher cutting their argument short when a grenade lands in the room, sending them both flying from the building and atop a car on the street below. As the two get up and brush themselves off, Daredevil gets in one last shot. “You’re an asshole, Frank.” “Yeah, I know,” Frank responds. The collaboration is a fun, vibrant moment, and not just because of the visceral action that has become Daredevil‘s trademark. Cox and Bernthal have genuine chemistry, making their banter feel like something out of an ’80s buddy cop movie. However, the pleasure of their interactions undercuts the serious philosophical differences between them and their dangerous connection, something that’s been explored in much greater details in the pages of Marvel Comics. Frank Castle Goes to Hell “I kill only those who deserve to die, Jackal! And Spider-Man deserves to die!” Those words introduced the Punisher to the world, in the pages of 1973’s Amazing Spider-Man #129. Written by Gerry Conway and penciled by Ross Andru, the issue follows the Punisher as he hunts Spider-Man, duped by the evil scientist known as the Jackal. Although presented as an extremist in the style of revenge thrillers from the era, such as Dirty Harry and Death Wish, the issue also portrayed the Punisher as a sympathetic if misguided man. That inherent sympathy, along with an evocative costume designed by John Romita Sr., made the Punisher a breakout hit. So much a hit, in fact, that Punisher got his first solo stories just two years later, in the pages of the mature-readers magazines Marvel Preview and Marvel Super Action. While Punisher regularly crossed paths with Marvel heroes, he didn’t meet the Man Without Fear until 1982’s Daredevil #183. Part of Frank Miller‘s legendary run on the book, Daredevil #183 saw the two lock horns when Daredevil prevented Punisher from killing a drug addict. That first conflict contains the seeds for all of the heroes’ confrontations that follow. Frank dismisses Matt’s methods as too weak for the criminal element. Matt insists that heroes don’t need to be so brutal (while also hurling a baton at Punisher’s face). Miller pairs the confrontation with a timer in the form of the drug additct’s stopping heart, portrayed on the page as a heart rate monitor, driving Matt to swear that he won’t let the Punisher take another life. Matt’s actions result in Frank getting arrested, setting off a grudge that continues to this day. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The Devil’s Choice Easily the most striking conflict between Daredevil and Punisher occurs in 2000’s Punisher #3, written by Garth Ennis and penciled by Steve Dillon. After Matt successfully defends brutal gangster Dino Gnucci against a mishandled arrest, Frank waits on a rooftop ready to execute him. That’s when Matt arrives, in Daredevil gear, and begins his usual argument. “I know these speeches of yours by heart,” Frank sneers, starting a fight that end when he uses ultrasonics to knock Matt unconscious. When he awakes, Matt finds himself chained to a post, only able to move his finger, which rests on a pistol pointed at Frank. “One bullet. One shot,” explains Frank. “One chance to stop me killing Dino Gnucci.” The moment gets adapted for the third episode of the Netflix series, with some changes. Here, Matt uses the gun to shoot the chains holding him, getting a chance to save Frank’s victim. He’s not successful on that end, but Frank’s actions draw the attention of a nearby street gang. The episode ends with a highlight of the Netflix series, with a bloody Daredevil fighting through waves of baddies in a hallway, firmly establishing him as a hero. Because it’s written by Garth Ennis, the cynic behind The Boys and Preacher, no heroism appears in the comic book version. The sequence plays across four tightly composed pages, with Matt’s face almost melting in his desperation, which Dillon contrasts to Frank’s stoic expression. Finally convinced that his pleas will go unanswered, Matt whispers, “God forgive me,” and pulls the trigger. There’s a click followed by a bang. The former comes from Matt’s gun. The latter comes from Franks. “No firing pin,” explains Frank. “You can leave the killing up to me.” Some have read this sequence as a take down against Daredevil, which is fair — he looks pathetic at the end and Ennis makes no secret of his hatred of superheroes. However, it doesn’t make Frank look better either. “The thought of Dino Gnucci living one more minute is enough to drive me insane,” Frank explains in the middle of their debate, underscoring the theme of Ennis’s work on the Punisher: Frank Castle is a broken, deranged man, but Daredevil’s goodness is a useless sham. Hope in Hell The season finale of Daredevil: Born Again litigates the debate again, even after Frank accepts Karen Page’s pleas and rescues Matt from an onslaught of Fisk’s killer cops. When Daredevil shields one of the cops from Frank’s shot, insisting that the man isn’t worth the cost of the kill, Frank shoots another attacker and asks, “What about him? Is he worth it?” It’s a bleak and funny joke, but not to Matt. It isn’t just that Matt abhors Frank’s disregard for life. It’s also that Born Again has been presenting Matt’s backslide into vigilantism as something tragic. When he loses faith in the law and dons the Daredevil costume once again, Matt becomes like Frank, an idea that haunts him. It will be interesting to see how Born Again‘s second season and the upcoming The Punisher MCU series will develop the character’s differing philosophies. Until then, we have Marvel Comics to remind us the depth of Daredevil and Punisher’s differences… and their similarities. Daredevil: Born Again season one is now streaming on Disney+.

There’s a lot of excitement around iOS 19 due to the major redesign it will bring, but the update is also expected to introduce a new paid service that’s sure to be included in Apple One. Here’s what’s coming. Apple Health+ will feature AI coach, food logging, and more Tim Cook has claimed on multiple occasions that long-term, Apple’s biggest contribution to the world will be in health. Apple Watch has led to numerous lives being saved thanks to its health features, and its Activity rings motivate healthy habits. But perhaps more significant toward Cook’s belief is what’s coming next. Per Mark Gurman, there’s an upgraded Health app coming in iOS 19—likely with iOS 19.4 next spring. This app revamp is centered around a long-in-the-works new service that those inside the company are calling ‘Apple Health+.’ Here are some key details Gurman highlights: AI ‘doctor’: “The service would be powered by a new AI agent that would replicate — at least to some extent — a real doctor.” Personalized suggestions: “Health app will continue to collect data from your devices…and then the AI coach will use that information to offer tailor-made recommendations about ways to improve health.” Food logging: “Food tracking will be a particularly big part of the revamped app.” Educational videos: “Apple is also looking to bring in outside doctors, including experts in sleep, nutrition, physical therapy, mental health and cardiology, to create videos.” This video feature sounds like it could be a significant part of the service. Gurman writes in further detail: That content would serve as explainers to users about certain conditions and how to make lifestyle improvements. For instance, if the Health app receives data about poor heart-rate trends, a video explaining the risks of heart disease could appear. Apple is opening up a facility near Oakland, California, that will let the physicians shoot their video content for the app. It’s also seeking to find a major doctor personality to serve as a host of sorts for the new service Going big with new Apple One service in iOS 19 Apple has left the core services bundled in Apple One unchanged since 2019. But it sounds like it plans to take things in an exciting direction with Health+ in iOS 19. The current Health app is useful in various ways, but it’s always felt like Apple was leaving too much ground uncovered. Collecting data is useful, but Apple Health+ could actually help users benefit from that data in meaningful ways. If the execution is done well, Apple Health+ might very well end up being the most impactful paid service Apple offers. Are you interested in Apple Health+? Would it make an Apple One subscription more enticing to you? Let us know in the comments. Best iPhone accessories Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed.  FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Musk's SpaceX facilities might be taking some flak from protestors lately, but it's nothing compared to the mass mobilization of demonstrations that have given his Tesla dealerships a black eye.That could change with his latest concept: a bid to build Donald Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defense system, for which the billionaire's SpaceX has emerged as a frontrunner, according to Reuters.Musk's company is leading a coalition of tech corporations in the bidding, including the surveillance platform Palantir and the drone builder Anduril. The current plan is to pitch the Pentagon on a "subscription-based" missile service, where the US pays for access to armaments owned by the tech companies instead of actually owning — and ultimately controlling — the system.Under Musk's vision, the three companies would pool their talents to launch between 400 to 1,000 satellites to circle the globe, likely surveilling foreign ballistic installationsReuters sources say a fleet of 200 attack satellites — themselves armed with either missiles or anti-missile lasers — would bring missiles down once detected.The Pentagon contracting out military operations is nothing new, though as Reuters notes, this deal would be a massive boost for Musk — a Silicon Valley company has never owned a Pentagon's armament of this size outright.It's a major departure for the Pentagon as well. One source suggested that Musk's commercial involvement is bought by his role in DOGE, noting that "there's an attitude that the national security and defense community has to be sensitive and deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government."Though we have the richest man in the world to thank for missiles-on-demand pitch, the bizarre push for missile spending is the brainchild of Trump.In an otherwise lackluster executive order from January 27, the president warned that enemy missile attacks are the "most catastrophic threat facing the United States," parroting an ancient talking point held by everyone from Ronald Reagan to the Heritage Foundation.Disregard the fact that an enemy missile has never been launched against US soil, and the US' own history of indiscriminate missile strikes on foreign lands. As of January, the US owns 1,419 strategic warheads — second only to Russia, which has 1,549.Meanwhile, remember that this is the same guy who brought us the Cybertruck, a luxury vehicle held together by glue. And his non-defense spacecraft have a nasty habit of falling out the sky."It remains to be seen whether SpaceX and these tech companies will be able to pull any of this off," as a source familiar with the discussion told Reuters.Hell, bombs away.More on military contractors: NASA Caught Purchasing Controversial AI Surveillance SoftwareShare This Article

Apr 18, 2025Ravie LakshmananFinancial Fraud / Cybercrime Cybersecurity researchers are warning of a "widespread and ongoing" SMS phishing campaign that's been targeting toll road users in the United States for financial theft since mid-October 2024. "The toll road smishing attacks are being carried out by multiple financially motivated threat actors using the smishing kit developed by 'Wang Duo Yu,'" Cisco Talos researchers Azim Khodjibaev, Chetan Raghuprasad, and Joey Chen assessed with moderate confidence. The phishing campaigns, per the company, impersonate U.S. electronic toll collection systems like E-ZPass, sending SMS messages and Apple iMessages to individuals across Washington, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, and Kansas about an unpaid toll and clicking on a fake link sent in the chat. It's worth noting some aspects of the toll phishing campaign were previously highlighted by security journalist Brian Krebs in January 2025, with the activity traced back to a China-based SMS phishing service called Lighthouse that's advertised on Telegram. While Apple iMessage automatically disables links in messages received from unknown senders, the smishing texts urge recipients to respond with "Y" in order to activate the link – a tactic observed in phishing kits like Darcula and Xiū gǒu. Should the victim click on the link and visit the domain, they are prompted to solve a fake image-based CAPTCHA challenge, after which they are redirected to a fake E-ZPass page (e.g., "ezp-va[.lcom" or "e-zpass[.]com-etcjr[.]xin") where they are asked to enter their name and ZIP code to access the bill. Targets are then asked to proceed further to make the payment on another fraudulent page, at which point all the entered personal and financial information is siphoned to the threat actors. Talos noted that multiple threat actors are operating the toll road smishing campaigns by likely making use of a phishing kit developed by Wang Duo Yu, and that it has observed similar smishing kits being used by another Chinese organized cybercrime group known as the Smishing Triad. Interestingly, Wang Duo Yu is also alleged to be the creator of the phishing kits used by Smishing Triad, per security researcher Grant Smith. "The creator is a current computer science student in China who is using the skills he's learning to make a pretty penny on the side," Smith revealed in an extensive analysis in August 2024. Smishing Triad is known for conducting large-scale smishing attacks targeting postal services in at least 121 countries, using failed package delivery lures to coax message recipients into clicking on bogus links that request their personal and financial information under the guise of a supposed service fee for redelivery. Furthermore, threat actors using these kits have attempted to enroll victims' card details into a mobile wallet, allowing them to further cash out their funds at scale using a technique known as Ghost Tap. The phishing kits have also been found to be backdoored in that the captured credit/debit card information is also exfiltrated to the creators, a technique known as double theft. "Wang Duo Yu has crafted and designed specific smishing kits and has been selling access to these kits on their Telegram channels," Talos said. "The kits are available with different infrastructure options, priced at US $50 each for a full-feature development, $30 each for proxy development (when the customer has a personal domain and server), $20 each for version updates, and $20 for all other miscellaneous support." As of March 2025, the e-crime group is believed to have focused their efforts on a new Lighthouse phishing kit that's geared towards harvesting credentials from banks and financial organizations in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, according to Silent Push. The threat actors also claim to have "300+ front desk staff worldwide" to support various aspects of the fraud and cash-out schemes associated with the phishing kit. "Smishing Triad is also selling its phishing kits to other maliciously aligned threat actors via Telegram and likely other channels," the company said. "These sales make it difficult to attribute the kits to any one subgroup, so the sites are currently all attributed here under the Smishing Triad umbrella." In a report published last month, PRODAFT revealed that Lighthouse shares tactical overlaps with phishing kits such as Lucid and Darcula, and that it operates independently of the XinXin group, the cybercrime group behind the Lucid kit. The Swiss cybersecurity company is tracking Wang Duo Yu (aka Lao Wang) as LARVA-241. "An analysis of attacks conducted using the Lucid and Darcula panels revealed that Lighthouse (Lao Wang / Wang Duo Yu) shares significant similarities with the XinXin group in terms of targeting, landing pages, and domain creation patterns," PRODAFT noted. Cybersecurity company Resecurity, which was the first to document Smishing Triad in 2023 and has also been tracking the scam toll campaigns, said the smishing syndicate has used over 60,000 domain names, making it challenging for Apple and Google to block the fraudulent activity in an effective manner. "Using underground bulk SMS services enables cybercriminals to scale their operations, targeting millions of users simultaneously," Resecurity said. "These services allow attackers to efficiently send thousands or millions of fraudulent IM messages, targeting users individually or groups of users based on specific demographics across various regions." 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Ben Affleck hated his “horrendous” Batsuit.The 52-year-old actor played Batman in 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as well as Justice League the following year and he reprised the role in 2023 film The Flash, and Affleck admits he loathed putting on the Caped Crusader's famous costume because it was “incredibly hot” and left him “pouring” with sweat.In a GQ video interview, Affleck explained: “I hated the Batsuits. The Batsuits are horrendous to wear. They’re incredibly hot, for one thing. They don’t breathe. They’re made to look the way they want ’em to look, and there’s no thought put into the human being.”He added: “You just start sweating. Now I’m already — I sweat, you know what I mean? I get hot. And so in that thing, you would just be pouring water because it’s got the cowl over it. Like, there’s one thing to wear the suit, but once you cover your head, I guess that’s where all your heat kind of escapes and you feel it.”He insisted even the stunt workers struggled when they put on the costume and they risked suffering heat stroke, saying: “Even the most highly-trained, much more fit stunt guys, the parkour guys, the action guys ... they could do that for about like 45, 50 minutes and then they’re like gonna get heat stroke. So you had to come out of it.”READ MORE: 20 Forgotten Movie SequelsAffleck went on to explain the costume made filming difficult because he felt constantly exhausted and the sweat kept causing problems.He said: “That was really the thing was that it just made it difficult to make the movie because it was so hot ... also [it] does not make you feel very heroic because you’re instantly exhausted and really sweaty and kinda trying to hide like, the sweat pouring down your face.”“Like, ‘No, we can go again, I’m fine, I’m good.’ And then there’ll be like - eye black is like, running.”Affleck concluded by suggesting other Batman actors, including Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson, were “just better at dealing with” with the sweaty suit, but he found the costume to be “the least fun part” of playing the superhero.It comes after the movie star admitted he won't be taking on any more superhero roles in the future because he's "lost interest".He told GQ magazine: "There are a number of reasons why that [playing Batman] was a really excruciating experience. And they don’t all have to do with the simple dynamic of, say, being in a superhero movie or whatever ... I am not interested in going down that particular genre again, not because of that bad experience, but just: I’ve lost interest in what was of interest about it to me.”Get our free mobile app25 Actors Who Turned Down Huge Movie RolesSome of the most famous actors in history turned down the chance to play cinema’s most iconic roles.Filed Under: Batman, Ben Affleck, DC Comics, Justice League, Zack SnyderCategories: Movie News, Superheroes

Dignotion is looking for a CRM Sales Manager experienced in B2B sales cycle environment. Your main KPI will be achieving acquisition and revenue objectives. In this role you will be researching accounts, identify champions within organizations, generate interest (inbound & outbound) and keep our CRM database updated with Accurate customer information. You are also expected to update a log of activities in the CRM, as well as scheduling and tracking future activities. Requirements Our ideal candidates have these skills: 0-2 years Sales experience in the media, advertising or technology industriesExcellent verbal and written communications skills (both internally and externally)Working independently, able to prioritize & manage your time effectivelyA good listener who can understands client needsExcellent verbal & written communication skillsSelf-StarterHave interest in technology & digital marketing Big Plus: Experience working with Zoho CRMExperienced working in an agency environmentDemonstrable client relationships in NYCYou managed discovery meetings and delivered scoping of works (SOW's) to potential clients.BenefitsFlexible working scheduleWork from home optionVery lean management structureA great environment to kick-start your sales career!Apply NowLet's start your dream job Apply now Meet JobCopilot: Your Personal AI Job HunterAutomatically Apply to Remote Customer Support JobsJust set your preferences and Job Copilot will do the rest-finding, filtering, and applying while you focus on what matters. Activate JobCopilot

Americans don’t agree on much these days. Yet even at a time when consensus reality seems to be on the verge of collapse, there remains at least one quintessentially modern value we can all still get behind: creativity.  We teach it, measure it, envy it, cultivate it, and endlessly worry about its death. And why wouldn’t we? Most of us are taught from a young age that creativity is the key to everything from finding personal fulfillment to achieving career success to solving the world’s thorniest problems. Over the years, we’ve built creative industries, creative spaces, and creative cities and populated them with an entire class of people known simply as “creatives.” We read thousands of books and articles each year that teach us how to unleash, unlock, foster, boost, and hack our own personal creativity. Then we read even more to learn how to manage and protect this precious resource.  Given how much we obsess over it, the concept of creativity can feel like something that has always existed, a thing philosophers and artists have pondered and debated throughout the ages. While it’s a reasonable assumption, it’s one that turns out to be very wrong. As Samuel Franklin explains in his recent book, The Cult of Creativity, the first known written use of creativity didn’t actually occur until 1875, “making it an infant as far as words go.” What’s more, he writes, before about 1950, “there were approximately zero articles, books, essays, treatises, odes, classes, encyclopedia entries, or anything of the sort dealing explicitly with the subject of ‘creativity.’” This raises some obvious questions. How exactly did we go from never talking about creativity to always talking about it? What, if anything, distinguishes creativity from other, older words, like ingenuity, cleverness, imagination, and artistry? Maybe most important: How did everyone from kindergarten teachers to mayors, CEOs, designers, engineers, activists, and starving artists come to believe that creativity isn’t just good—personally, socially, economically—but the answer to all life’s problems? Thankfully, Franklin offers some potential answers in his book. A historian and design researcher at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, he argues that the concept of creativity as we now know it emerged during the post–World War II era in America as a kind of cultural salve—a way to ease the tensions and anxieties caused by increasing conformity, bureaucracy, and suburbanization. “Typically defined as a kind of trait or process vaguely associated with artists and geniuses but theoretically possessed by anyone and applicable to any field, [creativity] provided a way to unleash individualism within order,” he writes, “and revive the spirit of the lone inventor within the maze of the modern corporation.” Brainstorming, a new method for encouraging creative thinking, swept corporate America in the 1950s. A response to pressure for new products and new ways of marketing them, as well as a panic over conformity, it inspired passionate debate about whether true creativity should be an individual affair or could be systematized for corporate use.INSTITUTE OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY/THE MONACELLI PRESS I spoke to Franklin about why we continue to be so fascinated by creativity, how Silicon Valley became the supposed epicenter of it, and what role, if any, technologies like AI might have in reshaping our relationship with it.  I’m curious what your personal relationship to creativity was growing up. What made you want to write a book about it? Like a lot of kids, I grew up thinking that creativity was this inherently good thing. For me—and I imagine for a lot of other people who, like me, weren’t particularly athletic or good at math and science—being creative meant you at least had some future in this world, even if it wasn’t clear what that future would entail. By the time I got into college and beyond, the conventional wisdom among the TED Talk register of thinkers—people like Daniel Pink and Richard Florida—was that creativity was actually the most important trait to have for the future. Basically, the creative people were going to inherit the Earth, and society desperately needed them if we were going to solve all of these compounding problems in the world.  On the one hand, as someone who liked to think of himself as creative, it was hard not to be flattered by this. On the other hand, it all seemed overhyped to me. What was being sold as the triumph of the creative class wasn’t actually resulting in a more inclusive or creative world order. What’s more, some of the values embedded in what I call the cult of creativity seemed increasingly problematic—specifically, the focus on self-­realization, doing what you love, and following your passion. Don’t get me wrong—it’s a beautiful vision, and I saw it work out for some people. But I also started to feel like it was just a cover for what was, economically speaking, a pretty bad turn of events for many people.   Staff members at the University of California’s Institute of Personality Assessment and Research simulate a situational procedure involving group interaction, called the Bingo Test. Researchers of the 1950s hoped to learn how factors in people’s lives and environments shaped their creative aptitude.INSTITUTE OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY/THE MONACELLI PRESS Nowadays, it’s quite common to bash the “follow your passion,” “hustle culture” idea. But back when I started this project, the whole move-fast-and-break-things, disrupter, innovation-economy stuff was very much unquestioned. In a way, the idea for the book came from recognizing that creativity was playing this really interesting role in connecting two worlds: this world of innovation and entrepreneurship and this more soulful, bohemian side of our culture. I wanted to better understand the history of that relationship. When did you start thinking about creativity as a kind of cult—one that we’re all a part of?  Similar to something like the “cult of domesticity,” it was a way of describing a historical moment in which an idea or value system achieves a kind of broad, uncritical acceptance. I was finding that everyone was selling stuff based on the idea that it boosted your creativity, whether it was a new office layout, a new kind of urban design, or the “Try these five simple tricks” type of thing.  You start to realize that nobody is bothering to ask, “Hey, uh, why do we all need to be creative again? What even is this thing, creativity?” It had become this unimpeachable value that no one, regardless of what side of the political spectrum they fell on, would even think to question. That, to me, was really unusual, and I think it signaled that something interesting was happening. Your book highlights midcentury efforts by psychologists to turn creativity into a quantifiable mental trait and the “creative person” into an identifiable type. How did that play out?  The short answer is: not very well. To study anything, you of course need to agree on what it is you’re looking at. Ultimately, I think these groups of psychologists were frustrated in their attempts to come up with scientific criteria that defined a creative person. One technique was to go find people who were already eminent in fields that were deemed creative—writers like Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, architects like Louis Kahn and Eero Saarinen—and just give them a battery of cognitive and psychoanalytic tests and then write up the results. This was mostly done by an outfit called the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) at Berkeley. Frank Barron and Don MacKinnon were the two biggest researchers in that group. Another way psychologists went about it was to say, all right, that’s not going to be practical for coming up with a good scientific standard. We need numbers, and lots and lots of people to certify these creative criteria. This group of psychologists theorized that something called “divergent thinking” was a major component of creative accomplishment. You’ve heard of the brick test, where you’re asked to come up with many creative uses for a brick in a given amount of time? They basically gave a version of that test to Army officers, schoolchildren, rank-and-file engineers at General Electric, all kinds of people. It’s tests like those that ultimately became stand-ins for what it means to be “creative.” Are they still used?  When you see a headline about AI making people more creative, or actually being more creative than humans, the tests they are basing that assertion on are almost always some version of a divergent thinking test. It’s highly problematic for a number of reasons. Chief among them is the fact that these tests have never been shown to have predictive value—that’s to say, a third grader, a 21-year-old, or a 35-year-old who does really well on divergent thinking tests doesn’t seem to have any greater likelihood of being successful in creative pursuits. The whole point of developing these tests in the first place was to both identify and predict creative people. None of them have been shown to do that.  Reading your book, I was struck by how vague and, at times, contradictory the concept of “creativity” was from the beginning. You characterize that as “a feature, not a bug.” How so? Ask any creativity expert today what they mean by “creativity,” and they’ll tell you it’s the ability to generate something new and useful. That something could be an idea, a product, an academic paper—whatever. But the focus on novelty has remained an aspect of creativity from the beginning. It’s also what distinguishes it from other similar words, like imagination or cleverness. But you’re right: Creativity is a flexible enough concept to be used in all sorts of ways and to mean all sorts of things, many of them contradictory. I think I write in the book that the term may not be precise, but that it’s vague in precise and meaningful ways. It can be both playful and practical, artsy and technological, exceptional and pedestrian. That was and remains a big part of its appeal.  The question of “Can machines be ‘truly creative’?” is not that interesting, but the questions of “Can they be wise, honest, caring?” are more important if we’re going to be welcoming [AI] into our lives as advisors and assistants. Is that emphasis on novelty and utility a part of why Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as the new nexus for creativity? Absolutely. The two criteria go together. In techno-solutionist, hypercapitalist milieus like Silicon Valley, novelty isn’t any good if it’s not useful (or at least marketable), and utility isn’t any good (or marketable) unless it’s also novel. That’s why they’re often dismissive of boring-but-important things like craft, infrastructure, maintenance, and incremental improvement, and why they support art—which is traditionally defined by its resistance to utility—only insofar as it’s useful as inspiration for practical technologies. At the same time, Silicon Valley loves to wrap itself in “creativity” because of all the artsy and individualist connotations. It has very self-consciously tried to distance itself from the image of the buttoned-down engineer working for a large R&D lab of a brick-and-mortar manufacturing corporation and instead raise up the idea of a rebellious counterculture type tinkering in a garage making weightless products and experiences. That, I think, has saved it from a lot of public scrutiny. Up until recently, we’ve tended to think of creativity as a human trait, maybe with a few exceptions from the rest of the animal world. Is AI changing that? When people started defining creativity in the ’50s, the threat of computers automating white-collar work was already underway. They were basically saying, okay, rational and analytical thinking is no longer ours alone. What can we do that the computers can never do? And the assumption was that humans alone could be “truly creative.” For a long time, computers didn’t do much to really press the issue on what that actually meant. Now they’re pressing the issue. Can they do art and poetry? Yes. Can they generate novel products that also make sense or work? Sure. I think that’s by design. The kinds of LLMs that Silicon Valley companies have put forward are meant to appear “creative” in those conventional senses. Now, whether or not their products are meaningful or wise in a deeper sense, that’s another question. If we’re talking about art, I happen to think embodiment is an important element. Nerve endings, hormones, social instincts, morality, intellectual honesty—those are not things essential to “creativity” necessarily, but they are essential to putting things out into the world that are good, and maybe even beautiful in a certain antiquated sense. That’s why I think the question of “Can machines be ‘truly creative’?” is not that interesting, but the questions of “Can they be wise, honest, caring?” are more important if we’re going to be welcoming them into our lives as advisors and assistants.  This interview is based on two conversations and has been edited and condensed for clarity. Bryan Gardiner is a writer based in Oakland, California.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" MVRDV and Zecc Architecten have won a competition for the transformation of the St. Francis of Assisi Church in Heerlen into a public swimming pool. The transformation, known as Holy Water, preserves the historic features of this national monument while giving the abandoned church a new, social purpose. The 1,270-square-metre conversion of a church will feature a public pool with accompanying facilities.EntranceThe area that was originally the church's nave is made more adaptable by a movable swimming pool floor, which enables it to accommodate a range of activities beyond swimming. Additionally, the floor allows for the creation of a thin layer of water that fills the entire room, giving guests the impression that they are walking on water.The St. Francis of Assisi Church in Heerlen, in the southern Netherlands, was constructed more than a century ago. In 2023, it ceased to hold services, giving the municipality the chance to find a new use for the structure. In addition to providing a solution for the growing number of visitors to Heerlen's existing pools, a new pool in this national monument will revitalize the abandoned structure with its recognizable silhouette in the heart of the city. The church's makeover is part of a broader expansion in the city center that also includes the refurbishment of the Royal-Rivoli movie theater and the opening of a Roman museum.Pool and choir viewThe main entrance is designated by a lighted circular canopy in the design, which serves as both a modern feature that unites the old and the new and a nod to the church's history. Once inside, guests can make their way along the aisles to the back of the church, where they can find the catering area and changing rooms. These passageways are divided from the main pool area by glass walls.Carefully removing the current floor will provide space for the swimming pool. By repurposing the church pews, they will be incorporated into the glass walls that divide the pool, offering swimmers seats on one side and bar tables for onlookers on the other. A lifeguard is seated in the antique pulpit, which has been given a new purpose.Restaurant view from poolBecause the bottom of the pool can be raised and lowered, swimmers of all ages and skill levels can engage in a variety of activities. In its most extreme position, the floor can be lifted all the way, concealing the pool below and restoring a level floor so that social and cultural activities can take place there as well. Additionally, a shallow layer of water might cover the entire pool area. With the correct illumination, visitors will be able to "walk on water" inside the church as the interior is reflected in this little pool."The vacancy rate of churches is increasing, so we need to come up with new, creative ideas for what we can do with these buildings," said Winy Maas, founding partner of MVRDV. "Why not give these churches a social function again, as they used to have? A public swimming pool is ideally suited for this. Imagine: swimming the backstroke with a view of a church vault and stained-glass windows.""By covering the entire pool area with a small layer of water, you can also create a beautiful visual effect, allowing the church to return to its original form and appear even larger and more impressive through the reflection," Maas added.Restaurant colonnadeBoth the moveable pool floor and the pool's surroundings will be adorned with a brand-new mosaic floor. This will make reference to the church's current stained-glass windows, colors, and materials. In response to the numerous murals that Heerlen has to offer, the design for this floor will be created in partnership with regional artists. The four rows of lights above the pool serve as lane markers for the swimmers and are modeled after the ancient church lamps seen in old photos.The ability to adequately and sustainably heat the pool area while shielding the historic materials from the pool's dampness was a special architectural problem. Raised floor for eventsTo address this, the pool's glass walls provide a compartmentalizing effect that safeguards the artwork and stained glass. In order to prevent excessive heat loss and preserve the interior view of the ancient brickwork, the church's roof will be insulated from the outside.The current roof covering will be replaced following insulation. For improved acoustics, sound-absorbing panels will be installed on the wooden roof, which will remain in place. Air management units in the basement have been subtly integrated with the technical installations. This strategy maintains the church's original features as much as possible while guaranteeing a cozy and energy-efficient interior environment.Mirror churchMVRDV, Zecc Architecten, IMd Raadgevende Ingenieurs, Nelissen Ingenieursbureau, and the construction economics firm SkaaL collaborated to produce the design for Holy Water. It is anticipated that the first dive will occur at the end of 2027.SectionSectionRecently, MVRDV won a competition to design a new structure in Zhubei, Taiwan. The project integrates a market and food hall with cultural spaces. In addition, the firm completed a new visitor and experience centre with a stack of rotated volumes offering expansive views at the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Moreover, the firm unveiled design for a shopping mall made up of a stack of colorful boxes in Chengdu, China. Project factsProject Name: Holy Water Location: Heerlen, Netherlands Year: 2025Client: Gemeente HeerlenArchitect: MVRDV, Zecc ArchitectenFounding Partner in charge: Winy MaasDirector: Gideon MaaslandDesign Team: Gijs Rikken, Magda Porcoțeanu, Justin Vermeulen Copyright: MVRDV Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs, Nathalie de VriesDesign Team (Zecc Architecten): Bart Kellerhuis, Roy van Maarseveen, Thijmen HilhorstStructural engineer: IMDCost calculation: SkaalBuilding physics: Nelissen IngenieursbureauAll images & drawings  © MVRDV and Zecc Architecten.> via MVRDV