You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereFortnites gameplay is always one for the players who like to create epic moments during their quest for Victory Royale. The looped island provides plenty of resources that help players dominate lobbies and remain the last man standing toward the endgame.To achieve that easily, players would sometimes hire an NPC in the game who would assist them by either pinging enemies around them or even providing them with resources such as ammo and health. However in the latest Remix season, NPCs have been made extinct and in their place, bosses are hireable only if you defeat them.So one Fortnite player did the obvious and got the boss to fight on their side until it turned into a brutal backstabbing moment for them that ultimately cost them the win.Fortnite player slams boss NPCs in Remix season making them lose gamesA Fortnite player named Reeves_Wilmoth shared the incident with a clip on the FortniteBR subreddit where they wrote, Ice Spice is not only the worst addition this season, but also a back stabbing no good bot that cost me a crowned Victory Royale.As a context they shared the video clip of themselves camping on top of a Zipline tower with the hired NPC boss when randomly the boss threw a Chiller Grenade right next to the player, causing them to slide down and get eliminated by fall damage.Fortnite player got thrown off by Ice Spice NPC boss they hired. Image by Reeves_Wilmoth.The player in frustration further said, Im pissed off at this bots mechanics. I enjoy the mythic rifle and the grappler she drops, but her boy had messed me up more than helped me by throwing down damn ice bombs that shoot me 20 feet in the wrong direction every time I shoot at someone, even costing me victory royales like I showed above. I had 8 elims and was top 3.The incident sparked an outrage in the Fortnite community as players shared similar instances on NPCs costing them to lose in crucial moments during gameplay. As a solution, one player suggested, Yea I dismiss her every match I win the Shark so shes no longer following me.Another player who faced a similar tragedy shared, She is the absolute worst. It took a whole team of us the other day to figure out how to make her stop throwing ice at us in the middle of nowhere with nobody else around. We tried dancing, we tried everything. It took mad long & we didnt even know what we did to get her to stop. Its best to never have her with you. She is the worst bot ever introduced to the game by far & will likely cost you the match.So the next time you defeat a boss in Fortnite Remix, make sure to dismiss them as a follower if you dont want them hindering your gameplay. To do so on PC, simply press your mouse wheel and click on Dismiss Follower under the Follower Comms wheel. On console, do the similar function by long pressing the left D-Pad. FortnitePlatform(s):Android, iOS, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action, Massively Multiplayer, Shooter9VideoGamerSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

I spent my life savings on a motion capture suit. Do I regret it? By Jamie on November 18, 2024 3D News With the rise of AI motion capture tools, should you still invest into hardware motion capture setups? Jamie Dunbar compares several solutions to let us know.Over the last few years AI motion capture tools have became the rage. In this video I put the most popular AI tools to the test and compare them to a Rokoko mocap suit.Can AI replace these expensive suits? And which tools do I recommend you use?

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ASIA IN BRIEF President Xi Jinping of China and President Joe Biden of the USA have pledged to continue working together to ensure AI does not harm humanity.The two met on Saturday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.In the Chinese and American accounts of their meeting, both leaders affirmed the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.The two leaders also made remarks about continuing work to ensure AI is used productively.The Chinese readout also included the following statement.There is no evidence that supports the irrational claim of the so-called cyberattacks from China.China itself is a target of international cyberattacks, and consistently opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks.- Simon SharwoodSamsung close to settling labor disputeSamsung Electronics appears to be close to settling a ten-month dispute with local unions.The agreement includes several key points: paid time off for union members to attend meetings, two million loyalty points for all employees that can be used to purchase company products, a 5.1 percent wage increase, and expanded long-term service leave.The agreement also promises unquantifiable items, like mutual respect and improved labor-management relations, and joint corporate social responsibility activities.But the proposed deal covers on 2023 and 2024 conditions for next year havent been agreed.LG reveals wearable and stretchy displayLG last week introduced a display panel that can stretch from 12 inches to 18 inches over 10,000 times.The 100 ppi full color RGB display is an upgrade from a 2022 prototype that only stretched two inches.The device is made of a silicon substrate thats similar to substances used in contact lenses.The screen was debuted at a demonstration at LG Science Park before being featured [VIDEO] at Seoul Fashion Week where LG hit the runway to show off clothes that change color and display moving images.Singtels profits plunge while battling disruptions, scamsAsian telecoms giant Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) last week reported a 42 percent drop in first-half net profit, which landed at S$1.23 billion ($920 million).The drop was attributed [PDF] to the exceptional gain of S$1.2 billion in the prior year after a merger.The telco also drew attention in its home last week when government ministers addressed an October 8 outage that saw, among other services, emergency hotlines disrupted.The root cause of the outage was attributed to a technical issue which affected the proper functioning of a network component in one of the two systems supporting Singtels fixed line voice service.Two systems, housed in different telephone exchanges, are configured to automatically handle the full load should one experience a malfunction. However, that did not happen and the services experienced a disruption.Minister of State for Home Affairs Sun Xueling suggested in parliament [VIDEO] that the government is now considering diversifying emergency hotline providers.Singtel also made headlines after reports of a woman scanning QR code to receive a free ice cream and finding she was billed $7.99 on her phone bill for allegedly subscribing to a mobile service even after immediately cancelling the subscription.The Register asked Singtel to confirm the incident and better understand the carriers approach to preventing QR code scams, but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.Despite the eventful week, the CEO reportedly found time to express optimism over an incoming Donald Trump presidency. Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon feels new opportunities could arise as businesses may be inspired to relocate operations or investments to Southeast Asia.Vietnam threatens Chinese e-commerce giants with banVietnams Ministry of Industry and Trade set a deadline of the end of November for Chinese online retailers Shein and Temu to register with the government, or face having their apps and domains blocked.Until the companies have complied with regulations, both platforms are required to cease advertising and marketing activities.The move comes amid concerns over the platforms' deep discounting practices, which have raised issues for local businesses, as well as fears about the sale of counterfeit products.The government is also considering ending a tax exemption on imported goods under $40. Vietnam's e-commerce market, now valued at $22 billion, is growing rapidly, but the government is focusing on regulating foreign platforms to ensure fair competition and consumer protection.Japan to postpone cybersecurity billThe Japanese government will likely delay the submission of a bill for an "active cyberdefense" system until next year.Local media reported that there is just not enough time to thoroughly consider the bill in the upcoming session of parliament as other issues have priority.Cyber attacks are an imminent threat. We will accelerate our efforts to formulate a bill to further enhance our response capabilities on the cyber security front so that we can submit it to the Diet as soon as possible, stated this years new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, in a press conference last Monday.APAC DealbookRecent alliances and deals spotted by The Register across the region last week include:The parent company of telecom company Reliance Jio, Reliance Industries, and Disney completed the transaction that will see the pair create a digital streaming joint venture for the Indian market.Malaysias TM Global, the wholesale business arm of Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM), is expanding its data centers in Cyberjaya and Johor. The expansion includes a second phase for the Klang Valley Data Centre (KVDC) and Iskandar Puteri Data Centre (IPDC), offering a combined capacity of 20MW.GoTo Group, Tencent Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud announced agreements to enhance cloud infrastructure and digital talent in Indonesia. Tencent Cloud will invest USD 500 million to build a third data center by 2030 in the country, Alibaba Cloud, which already operates three data centers, plans to double its training efforts to 800,000 individuals by 2033 and establish a university skills center. Both will be built around GoTo cloud service contracts.

Discover the Art of Filipe Pagliuso, a freelance character designer and illustrator whos produced numerous works for Magic The Gathering, amongst other clients.Filipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe PagliusoFilipe Pagliuso

Discover the Art of Julian Bauer, a freelance illustrator and designer based in Germany. His work includes, but is not limited to, matte painting for animated films, various music album artworks and designs, and game concepts and 2D assets. Julian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian BauerJulian Bauer

Good ColoursI'd forgotten how stylish the original GTA: San Andreas was until the latest Definitive Edition updateAh yes, this game had what the kids call 'aura' these days.Image credit: Rockstar Games Article by Fran Ruiz Contributor Published on Nov. 17, 2024 GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition's launch in 2021, three years ago, was infamously rough. From badly upscaled textures, to shoddy character models, to broken animations (and plenty more), the three games that defined modern open worlds were butchered. Now, Rockstar Games has wowed everyone by pulling off a complete 180.The November 12, 2024, update to the Definitive Edition collection across PC and consoles (with the old gen and Switch getting it a day later) doesn't just fix a lot of what was broken. It also brings back the classic lighting (now enabled by default) that tied the entire visual presentation together in the original console releases.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. I promptly jumped into GTA: San Andreas, the one installment I'd been meaning to quickly revisit for a while, to check what was new, and found myself quickly absorbed by its world for a couple of magical hours during which, as it was back in my high school days, I barely made any story progress. Just driving around and enjoying the refreshed vistas was a blast from the past.I've actually played a lot of San Andreas over the years, but mostly on PC through the original release from 2005. That version was always regarded as the most solid one (plus it nurtured a vibrant modding community), yet it always missed the vibrant color hues from the OG console versions, and thus felt far flatter visually, or at least more 'realistic' in a way that felt weird for anyone who'd played the 2004 release on PS2 (or later on Xbox). Image credit: Rockstar Games, VG247For some weird reason, despite all the ports and re-releases the classic GTA trilogy has enjoyed over the years, Rockstar has always managed not to deliver an 'ultimate' way to enjoy these games. The original console releases has a framerate which was rough and could only be 'fixed' through advanced emulation. The aforementioned PC port wasn't exactly the same, something and that also applied to GTA 3 and Vice City. Later ports in modern consoles always screwed something up, with the 360 one being the sole exception. And you know how the Definitive Edition originally went.Now, with original developer Grove Street Games removed from the collection's credits and Video Games Deluxe taking over, the Definitive Edition feels several steps closer to definitive. The vibes are restored, and even if you could argue the modern lighting looks better at times (especially at night), restoring the fog and giving each city its own unique weather and set of skies, alongside much-needed color grading, has truly made a world of difference. Image credit: Rockstar Games, VG247After so many years playing the PC version of San Andreas, I'd simply forgotten how great the true original release looked. Sometimes (far too often, I'm afraid), in the pursuit of a clearer image and realism with remasters and remakes, a good chunk of the original artistic vision is erased, and the Definitive Edition collection was a prime example of that. Even if it had felt okay-ish for a while now - as in not utterly broken - this giant rework and visual refresh is a reminder of everything that was lost.Los Santos simply 'pops' in a way that a brutish approach to more modern graphics couldn't achieve, and it was just a matter of getting the colors right and that moody fog back in the game. Perhaps younger players who never played the original releases will be turned off with the highly saturated look that San Andreas sported back in the day, but it's hard to back to a sauceless visual presentation after realizing the older GTAs were never meant to look clean or realistic. After this patch, looking at the upscaled textures and UE4-rendered models that still remain rusty as hell through the very de-saturated modern filter is hilarious, and I can't believe we've been stuck with these bangers looking like that for so long. Image credit: Rockstar Games, VG247Mind you, I'd already warmed up to at least Vice City Definitive in recent times, as that game and GTA 3 always felt far less post-processed, yet this patch also made me realize they were missing an extra 'otherworldly' spark. Now, the modern lighting also looks way too clean on them, with the lack of a misty horizon making their admittedly small maps feel even smaller. I don't want the full thing rendered on my screen at once, it was never meant to look like that!Other small but welcome improvements include walking around while aiming heavier weapons than pistols and submachine guns in GTA 3 and Vice City, which essentially makes many of their missions easier, but it's all in the service of making the right upgrades where needed, which should be the main driving force behind every remaster. Preserve the past while preparing the games for the future...without diluting their identities. Image credit: Rockstar Games, VG247I'd say this Definitive Edition is still a couple of smaller patches away from reaching perfection, and it's hard to predict whether Video Games Deluxe will stick to working on it for much longer, but it's suddenly become an easy recommendation for old and new players alike. As long as you overlook some leftover jank and a few plasticky, too UE-ish textures, this feels like the best, most painless way to experience these games two decades after their original launches.The most hilarious thing about this whole story is that we have to thank the recent Netflix port (yes, really) of the Definitive Edition for these updates to the console and PC releases, as most of the new improvements have been brought over from that version. Gaming is so freakin' weird right now, man.

Indian omni-channel nutrition startup HealthKart has raised $153 million in one of the countrys largest consumer startup transactions this year, valuing the business at about $500 million, according to a source familiar with the matter. The new investment was co-led by private equity firms ChrysCapital and Motilal Oswal, with Avendus Capital serving as financial advisor. A91 Partners and asset manager Neo Group also participated in the new investment. Some existing investors sold their shares to the new backers, according to people familiar with the matter. HealthKart counts Peak XV, Temasek, Sofina and wealth manager IIFL among its backers. Gurugram-based HealthKart reported revenue of $118.5 million for the year ending March 2024, cementing its position as Indias largest consumer nutrition platform. The startup sells protein supplements and health accessories.The 13-year-old startup, which spun out of online pharmacy startup 1MG, said it is also buying back shares worth $6.5 milion from employees. The startup was EBITDA profitable in the financial year ending March.The Indian sports nutrition market, currently underpenetrated, is expected to expand due to a rise in fitness awareness and the increasing importance of nutrition and protein, said Arpit Vinayak, VP at ChrysCapital, in a statement.This is a developing story. More to follow.

In BriefPosted:8:44 PM PST November 17, 2024Image Credits:Akio Kon / Bloomberg / Getty ImagesOyo founder seeks new investment at $3.8B valuationAn investment vehicle backed by Oyos founder, Ritesh Agarwal, has proposed to inject another $65.1 million into the Indian hospitality startup, according to notices to shareholders that were reviewed by TechCrunch.The investment, through Redsprig Innovation Partners, would value the SoftBank-backed company at $3.8 billion, according to terms shared in a notice to shareholders.While this represents a 38% premium to Oyos recent $2.3 billion valuation in June, the implied price tag remains significantly below the startups 2019 peak of $10 billion. Oyo has raised more than $3.4 billion in equity and debt since its inception, according to Tracxn.Redsprig invested about $100 million in the June funding round, in which Oyo raised $175 million.It remains unclear who else is backing Redsprig and whether Agarwal has settled the $2 billion loan he took in 2019 to repurchase Oyo shares from Peak XV and Lightspeed India.The hospitality group is preparing to file for the third time for an initial public offering within two months, according to a person familiar with the matter.Topics

Yuichiro Chino/Getty ImagesI have been a DigitalOcean customer for years. When I first encountered the company back in 2016, it provided a very easy-to-spin-up Linux server with a variety of distros as options. It differentiated itself from web hosting providers by offering infrastructure -- rather than software -- as a service. Dillon Erb, DigitalOcean VP Image: Dillon ErbMost web hosting providers give you a control panel to navigate the web hosting experience for your site. You have no control over the virtual machine. What DigitalOcean does is give you a virtual bare-metal server, letting you do whatever the heck you want. This appealed to me greatly. Also: I've tested a lot of AI tools for work. These 4 actually help me get more done every dayDigitalOcean was essentially Amazon Web Services (AWS) but with a much more understandable pricing structure. When I first started running servers on it, it was substantially more expensive than AWS for the kind of work I was doing. DigitalOcean has since expanded its service offerings to provide a wide variety of infrastructure capabilities, all in the cloud.Beyond bare-metal virtual Linux servers, I haven't used its additional capabilities, but I still appreciate the ability to quickly and easily spin up and down a Linux machine for any purpose, and at a very reasonable price. I do this to test out systems, run some low-traffic servers, and generally as a part of my extended infrastructure. With the big push into artificial intelligence (Al), it makes sense that DigitalOcean is beginning to provide infrastructure for Al operations as well. That's what we'll be exploring today with Dillon Erb, the company's vice president of AI advocacy and partnerships. Let's dig in. ZDNET: Could you provide a brief overview of your role at DigitalOcean?Dillon Erb:I was the co-founder and CEO of the first dedicated GPU cloud computing company called Paperspace. In July of 2023, Paperspace was acquired by DigitalOcean to bring AI tooling and GPU infrastructure to a whole new audience of hobbyists, developers, and businesses alike.Also: How to use AI for research the right way - responsibly and effectivelyCurrently I am the VP of AI Strategy where I am working on both exciting product offerings as well as key ecosystem partnerships to ensure that DigitalOcean can continue to be the go-to cloud for developers. ZDNET: What are the most exciting AI projects you are currently working on at DigitalOcean?DE: Expanding our GPU cloud to a much larger scale in support of rapid onboarding for a new generation of software developers creating the future of artificial intelligence. Deep integration of AI tooling across the full DigitalOcean Platform to enable a streamlined AI-native cloud computing platform. Bringing the full power of GPU compute and LLMs to our existing customer base to enable them to consistently deliver more value to their customers. ZDNET: What historical factors have contributed to the dominance of large enterprises in AI development?DE: The cost of GPUs is the most talked about reason for why AI has been difficult for smaller teams and developers to build competitive AI products. The cost of pretraining a large language model (LLM) can be astronomical, requiring thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of GPUs. Also: Sticker shock: Are enterprises growing disillusioned with AI?However, there has also been a tooling gap which has made it hard for developers to utilize GPUs even when they have access to them. At Paperspace, we built a full end-to-end platform for training and deploying AI models.Our focus on simplicity, developer experience, and cost transparency continues here at DigitalOcean where we are expanding our product offering substantially and building deep integrations with the entire DigitalOcean product suite. ZDNET: Can you discuss the challenges startups face when trying to enter the AI space?DE: Access to resources, talent and capital are common challenges startups face when entering into the AI arena. Also: Building complex gen AI models? This data platform wants to be your one-stop shopCurrently, AI developers spend too much of their time (up to 75%) with the "tooling" they need to build applications. Unless they have the technology to spend less time tooling, these companies won't be able to scale their AI applications. To add to technical challenges, nearly every AI startup is reliant on NVIDIA GPU compute to train and run their AI models, especially at scale. Developing a good relationship with hardware suppliers or cloud providers like Paperspace can help startups, but the cost of purchasing or renting these machines quickly becomes the largest expense any smaller company will run into. Additionally, there is currently a battle to hire and keep AI talent. We've seen recently how companies like OpenAI are trying to poach talent from other heavy hitters like Google, which makes the process for attracting talent at smaller companies much more difficult. ZDNET: What are some specific barriers that prevent smaller businesses from accessing advanced AI technologies?DE: Currently, GPU offerings, which are crucial for the development of AI/ML applications, are widely only affordable to large companies. While everyone has been trying to adopt AI offerings or make their current AI offerings more competitive, the demand for NVIDIA 100 GPUs has risen. Also: Organizations face mounting pressure to accelerate AI plans, despite lack of ROIThese data center GPUs have improved significantly with each subsequent, semi-annual release of a new GPU microarchitecture. These new GPUs are accelerators that significantly reduce training periods and model inference response times. In turn, they can run large-scale AI model training for any company that needs it. However, the cost of these GPU offerings can be out of reach for many, making it a barrier to entry for smaller players looking to leverage AI. Now that the initial waves of the Deep Learning revolution have kicked off, we are starting to see the increased capitalization and retention of technologies by successful ventures. The most notable of these is OpenAI, who has achieved their huge market share through the conversion of their GPT 3.5 model into the immensely successful ChatGPT API and web applications. Also: Employees are hiding their AI use from their managers. Here's whyAs more companies seek to emulate the success of companies like OpenAI, we may see more and more advanced technologies in Deep Learning not being released to the open-source community. This could affect startups if the gap between commercial and research model efficacy becomes insurmountable. As the technologies get better, it may only be possible to achieve state of the art results of certain models like LLMs with truly massive resource allocations. ZDNET: How does DigitalOcean aim to level the playing field for startups and smaller businesses in AI development?DE: Creating a level playing field in AI development is something that we, early on, recognized would be critical to the growth of the industry as a whole. While the top researchers in any field can justify large expenses, new startups seeking to capitalize on emerging technologies rarely have these luxuries. Also: Want a programming job in 2024? Learning any language helps, but only one is essentialIn AI, this effect feels even more apparent. Training a Deep Learning model is almost always extremely expensive. This is a result of the combined function of resource costs for the hardware itself, data collection, and employees. In order to ameliorate this issue facing the industry's newest players, we aim to achieve several goals for our users: Creating an easy-to-use environment, introducing an inherent replicability across our products, and providing access at as low costs as possible. By creating the simple interface, startups don't have to burn time or money training themselves on our platform. They simply need to plug in their code and go! This lends itself well to the replicability of work on DigitalOcean: it's easy to share and experiment with code across all our products. Together, these combine to assist with the final goal of reducing costs. At the end of the day, providing the most affordable experience with all of the functionality they require is the best way to meet startups needs. ZDNET: How important is it for AI development to be inclusive of smaller players, and what are the potential consequences if it is not?DE: The truth of the matter is that developing AI is incredibly resource-intensive. The steady, practically exponential rate of increase for size and complexity of Deep Learning datasets and models means that smaller players could be unable to attain the required capital to keep up with the bigger players like FAANG companies [Facebook/Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google/Alphabet]. Also: Gen AI as a software quality tool? Skepticism is fading as more organizations implement itFurthermore, the vast majority of NVIDIA GPUs are being sold to hyperscalers like AWS or Google Cloud Platform. This makes it much more difficult for smaller companies to get access to these machines at affordable pricing due to the realities of the GPU supply chain. Effectively, these practices reduce the number of diverse research projects that can potentially get funding, and startups may find themselves hindered from pursuing their work due to simple low machine availability. In the long run, this could cause stagnation or even introduce dangerous biases into the development of AI in the future. At DigitalOcean, we believe a rising tide raises all ships, and that by supporting independent developers, startups, and small startups, we support the industry as a whole. By providing affordable access with minimal overhead, our GPU Machines offer opportunities for greater democratization of AI development on the cloud. Through this, we aim to give smaller companies the opportunity to use the powerful machines they need to continue pushing the AI revolution forward. ZDNET: What are the main misconceptions about AI development for startups and small businesses?DE: The priority should always be split evenly on optimizing infrastructure as well as software development. At the end of the day, Deep Learning technologies are entirely reliant on the power of the machines on which they are trained or used for inference. Also: Why data is the Achilles Heel of AI (and every other business plan)It's common to meet people with fantastic ideas, but a misconception about how much work needs to be put into either of these areas. Startups can compensate for this with broad hiring practices to ensure that you do not end up stonewalled by the lack of development in a certain direction. ZDNET: How can smaller companies overcome the knowledge gap in AI technology and development?DE: Hiring young entrepreneurs and enthusiasts making open-source technology popular is a great way to stay up on the knowledge you need to succeed. Of course, hiring PhD level senior developers and machine learning engineers will always give the greatest boost, but the young entrepreneurs popularizing these technologies are scrappy operators on the bleeding edge. In the realms of popular technologies like Stable Diffusion and Llama LLM, we can see this in real time today. There are a plethora of different open source projects like ComfyUI or LangChain that are taking the world by storm. It's through the use of both senior level, experienced engineers and newer developers of these entrepreneurial minded, but open source projects that I think startups can guarantee their future. ZDNET: What advice would you give to entrepreneurs looking to integrate AI into their business models?DE: Consider open-source options first. There are so many new businesses out there that are essentially repackaging an existing, popular open-source resource, especially LLMs. That means it is relatively simple to implement for ourselves with a little practice. Any entrepreneur should learn the basic Python requirements needed to run basic LLMs, at the very least. Also: Businesses must reinvent themselves in the age of agentic AIZDNET: What future advancements in AI do you foresee that will particularly benefit startups and growing digital businesses?DE: The cost of LLMs (especially for inference) is declining rapidly. Furthermore, the tooling and ecosystem of open-source model development is expanding rapidly. Combined, these are making AI accessible to startups of all scales, regardless of budget. ZDNET: Any final thoughts or recommendations for startups looking to embark on their AI journey?DE: The emergence of LLMs like GPT signaled a major leap in AI capabilities. These models didn't just enhance existing applications; they opened doors to new possibilities, reshaping the landscape of AI development and its potential. The scientists have built something that the engineers now can run with. AI is having an "API" moment and this time the entire development process has been upended. There are still big open questions [like], "How does one deal with non-deterministic APIs? What types of programming languages should we use to talk to this new intelligence? Do we use behavior-driven development, test-driven development, or AI-driven development?" And more. Also: Open source fights back: 'We won't get patent-trolled again'The opportunity, however, is massive, and a whole new wave of category-defining startups will be created. What do you think? What do you think? Did Dillon's discussion give you any ideas about how to move forward with your AI projects? Let us know in the comments below. You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.Featured