Recommender systems have been widely applied for studying user preferences; however, they face significant challenges in accurately capturing user preferences, particularly in the context of neural graph collaborative filtering. While these systems use interaction histories between users and items through Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to mine latent information and capture high-order interactions, the quality of collected data poses a major obstacle. Moreover, malicious attacks that introduce fake interactions further deteriorate the recommendation quality. This challenge becomes acute in graph neural collaborative filtering, where the message-passing mechanism of GNNs amplifies the impact of these noisy interactions, leading to misaligned recommendations that fail to reflect users interests.Existing attempts to address these challenges mainly focus on two approaches: denoising recommender systems and time-aware recommender systems. Denoising methods utilize various strategies, such as identifying and down-weighting interactions between dissimilar users and items, pruning samples with larger losses during training, and using memory-based techniques to identify clean samples. Time-aware systems are extensively used in sequential recommendations but have limited application in collaborative filtering contexts. Most temporal approaches concentrate on incorporating timestamps into sequential models or constructing item-item graphs based on temporal order but fail to address the complex interplay between temporal patterns and noise in user interactions.Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign USA and Amazon USA have proposed DeBaTeR, a novel approach for denoising bipartite temporal graphs in recommender systems. The method introduces two distinct strategies: DeBaTeR-A and DeBaTeR-L. The first strategy, DeBaTeR-A, focuses on reweighting the adjacency matrix using a reliability score derived from time-aware user and item embeddings, implementing both soft and hard assignment mechanisms to handle noisy interactions. The second strategy, DeBaTeR-L, employs a weight generator that utilizes time-aware embeddings to identify and down-weight potentially noisy interactions in the loss function.A comprehensive evaluation framework is utilized to evaluate DeBaTeRs predictive performance and denoising capabilities with vanilla and artificially noisy datasets to ensure robust testing. For vanilla datasets, specific filtering criteria are applied to retain only high-quality interactions (ratings 4 for Yelp and 4.5 for Amazon Movies and TV) from users and items with substantial engagement (>50 reviews). The datasets are split using a 7:3 ratio for training and testing, with noisy variations created by introducing 20% random interactions into the training sets. The evaluation framework uses temporal aspects by using the earliest test set timestamp as the query time for each user, with results averaged across four experimental rounds.The experimental results for the question How does the proposed approach perform compared to state-of-the-art denoising and general neural graph collaborative filtering methods? demonstrate the superior performance of both DeBaTeR variants across multiple datasets and metrics. DeBaTeR-L achieves higher NDCG scores, making it more suitable for ranking tasks, while DeBaTeR-A shows better precision and recall metrics, indicating its effectiveness for retrieval tasks. Moreover, DeBaTeR-L demonstrates enhanced robustness when dealing with noisy datasets, outperforming DeBaTeR-A across more metrics compared to their performance on vanilla datasets. The relative improvements against seven baseline methods are significant, confirming the effectiveness of both proposed approaches.In this paper, researchers introduced DeBaTeR, an innovative approach to address noise in recommender systems through time-aware embedding generation. The methods dual strategies DeBaTeR-A for adjacency matrix reweighting and DeBaTeR-L for loss function reweighting provide flexible solutions for different recommendation scenarios. The frameworks success lies in its integration of temporal information with user/item embeddings, shown through extensive experimentation on real-world datasets. Future research directions point toward exploring additional time-aware neural graph collaborative filtering algorithms and expanding the denoising capabilities to include user profiles and item attributes.Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. If you like our work, you will love ournewsletter.. Dont Forget to join our55k+ ML SubReddit. Sajjad Ansari+ postsSajjad Ansari is a final year undergraduate from IIT Kharagpur. As a Tech enthusiast, he delves into the practical applications of AI with a focus on understanding the impact of AI technologies and their real-world implications. He aims to articulate complex AI concepts in a clear and accessible manner. LinkedIn event, 'One Platform, Multimodal Possibilities,' where Encord CEO Eric Landau and Head of Product Engineering, Justin Sharps will talk how they are reinventing data development process to help teams build game-changing multimodal AI models, fast

LatestMachine LearningHow To Learn Any Language Efficiently With AI? 0 like November 17, 2024Share this postLast Updated on November 18, 2024 by Editorial TeamAuthor(s): Nicolas MARTIN Originally published on Towards AI. Learning a language is often difficult and requires dozens of classes until reaching a reasonable level. Unfortunately, a lot of people in the world cannot afford to have quality classes. In addition, we can learn a language from books, but we dont have feedback about our pronunciation or actual level.What if AI is a great solution for learning any language efficiently and for free?This guide will teach us practical solutions to learn from chatbots in any language, using both textual and vocal features.AI-generated illustration (Grok)As I live in India, we will take the example of Tamil, one of the most difficult languages for Europeans and Americans to learn. The language I master the most is French. I will adapt this article to any language using the expressions [language_to_learn] for the language we want to learn and [my_language] for the primary language we already know. Note that you dont have to learn a language using English; you can use this guide based on any language you want.All the solutions are completely free and accessible with a smartphone, although a computer is recommended for reading long text and typing fast with any keyboard layout.1. Ask some questions about the language history and geography (5 min)A language never came out of the void; it always has a long story that is worth knowing to have a complete picture of its evolution and geography.This will help us connect the dots between the language and the people using it daily. A lack of general culture about a language can lead to misunderstanding and incomprehension between us and the people. We can be more specific by asking about the main differences in our culture, and the AI will answer more accurately.Therefore, we can first ask the question:In 300 words, explain the origin of [language_to_learn], its geographic limitations, and three critical things worth knowing about the [language_to_learn] culture today that differs from my [my_language] culture.The Tamil culture and its main differences with the French one (generated with ChatGPT)2. Make a learning plan for one month (5 min)Now that we have general knowledge about the language we want to learn, we can prepare a learning plan according to the main rules.Learning a language needs practice, and we can define the limits to have a realistic learning plan, such as the available time or if we want to know both writing and speaking. I recommend learning both, as writing and speaking create a strong connection with each other.To learn a language efficiently, discipline is vital, and learning 30 minutes every day, 6 times per week, is better than 3 classes of 2 hours per week because memorization works better daily.The smartphone version of ChatGPT is very useful as you can ask for the pronunciation of the words and get valuable tips. The free version is limited to 10 minutes, but it is enough for us to learn daily.How can I learn [language_to_learn] to reach a good basis in one month? Give a learning plan with the main steps, knowing that I have 30 minutes per day and I have some conversational tools with AI to check my pronunciation (with ChatGPT vocal) and my knowledge. Keep in mind I must learn to write and speak. Organize it in a table.The learning plan was obtained with Claude.ai (text) and transferred to the table with ChatGPT.As chatbot sessions are limited in request per page, I recommend keeping the learning plan structure and copying/pasting it every day on a new page to be able to handle questions and answers and maintain track of the conversation.Daily session structure and resources.Optional: Use tips and resources given by the ChatBot (see example above) if they are relevant to our learning habits.AI-generated picture of Nelson Mandela with one of his most famous quotes3. Follow your learning plan every day (30 min)The following steps are straightforward.Once you copy the learning plan in any chatbot, ask:Give the material for the Day [n] lesson.Tamil lesson 1 example with ChatGPTAbout the vocal chatbot on a smartphone (ex, ChatGPT), click on the bottom right button and first ask:What is the [content of the lesson n]? Check my pronunciation.Here is the vocal option in ChatGPT at the bottom right cornerHere is an example of Tamil. I should have asked in French, but I have done my best to do it in English for a better understanding.Keep in mind that the pronunciation function is very accurate in many languages. I have also tested the pronunciation in German, one of the languages I know the best, and the pronunciation advice was very accurate.In some cases, like in English, we can ask to learn a language with a specific accent so that we can choose the proper pronunciation we want.Here is a funny example of how ChatGPT can speak with specific English accents, including Japanese:https://x.com/minchoi/status/1857467047493480475?s=46&t=MxrSpRHarlH_X7ulzALqHwAbout the writing, we can take a picture of what we wrote and ask the chatbot whether it is well written or not.(click on + and Take Photo at the bottom left corner) Is this correctly written in [language_to_learn]?An example of vowel manual writing verification in Tamil.As you can see, the chatbot detected some mistakes in my writing style in some characters that I can correct to reiterate the process until the writing is fine.4. Know the major pronunciation difficulties from the beginningSome fundamental pronunciations are very different from one language to another, and it is essential to know them at an early learning stage.Give the 3 most difficult things in the [language_to_learn] pronunciation for someone who only speaks [my_language].Most challenging aspects of Tamil pronunciation for someone who speaks French5. Additional thoughtsThe best learning solution is to have a teacher. This guide is helpful for people who cant afford to have a teacher and want another efficient way to learn a language.A teacher is better because we have to go to classes and get direct feedback for our evaluation. Using AI grants us feedback but requires much more discipline to study every day, which is difficult overall when it is free (paying to learn something gives us more credit and commitment).Human interaction is still essential to learning a language. It is great to have AI tools to learn many things faster, but most of us are social beings with social needs. Discussing with people always plays an important role.Speaking about AI tools, hundreds of existing ones are worth testing. Here is a list from Theres An AI For That, including Lingolette or Jarggin.AI is evolving very fast, and learning solutions based on AI will probably get better and better. It also applies to translation AI tools where instant translation is already possible.ConclusionLearning a language is a tedious activity that requires patience, effort, and regularity. Even though a teacher is the best solution, not everyone can afford one and AI can be a good alternative. Indeed, more and more text and vocal AIs can organize a learning plan and evaluate our knowledge, including our pronunciation or writing style. Some might argue that learning a language is unnecessary, given the rapid advancements in AI, but isnt the ability to learn and speak languages essential to our humanity, just as chess remains beloved by human players despite AI surpassing human capabilities?Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming asponsor. Published via Towards AITowards AI - Medium Share this post

A U.S. senator has written an open letter to Valve boss Gabe Newell asking for more stringent moderation of Steam.Mark Warner, the United States senator from Virginia, demanded Valve crack down on what he called hateful accounts and rhetoric proliferating on Steam. IGN has asked Valve for comment.Warner alleged that Steam is home to tens of thousands of groups that share and amplify antisemitic, Nazi, sexuality or gender-based hate, and white supremacist content, and called on Valve to bring its content moderation standards in line with industry standards and crack down on the rampant proliferation of hate-based content.Valve boss Gabe Newell. Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images.Warners letter follows a report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that identified over one million unique user accounts and nearly 100,000 user-created groups that glorified antisemitic, Nazi, white supremacist, gender and sexuality-based hatred, and other extremist ideologies on Valves Steam platform.The ADL found Steam hosts almost 900,000 users with extremist or antisemitic profile pictures, 40,000 groups with names that included hateful words, and rampant use of text-based images, particularly of swastikas, resulting in over one million unique hate-images.My concern is elevated by the fact that Steam is the largest single online gaming digital distribution and social networking platform in the world with over 100 million unique user accounts and a userbase similar in scale to that of the traditional social media and social network platforms, Warner said.Steam is financially successful, with a dominant position in its sector, and makes Valve billions of dollars in annual revenue. Until now, Steam has largely not received its due attention as a de facto major social network where its users engage in many of the same activities expected of a social media platform.We have seen on other social networking platforms that lax enforcement of the letter of user conduct agreements, when coupled with a seeming reluctance by those companies to embrace the spirit (namely providing users with a safe, welcoming place to socialize) of those same agreements, leads to toxic social environments that elevate harassment and abuse. You should want your users (and prospective users) to not have to wonder if they or their children will be harassed, intimidated, ridiculed or otherwise face abuse.This isnt the first time Warner has taken on video game tech companies over their alleged failings. He also pressed Discord to take action against hosting violent predatory groups that coerce minors into self-harm and suicide. Indeed, Warner said Valve was warned about this very problem two years ago when it received a Senate letter identifying nearly identical activity on your platform, and yet two years later it appears that Valve has chosen to continue a hands off-type approach to content moderation that favors allowing some users to engage in sustained bouts of disturbing and violent rhetoric rather than ensure that all of its users can find a welcoming and safe environment across your platform.Warners letter asks Valve to answer a series of questions on Steam no later than December 13, 2024. The questions directly ask about Valves current practices used to enforce its terms of service, its definition of terms, and the number of allegations it received about potential conduct violations and the findings of each complaint.It remains to be seen whether Valve responds to Warners letter, which is the third sent by Congress to the company in the last three years. Warners letter threatens Valve with more intense scrutiny from the federal government if it fails to take meaningful action against hate content, but as The Verge points out, First Amendment protections prevent the government from punishing companies for hosting legal albeit hateful speech.Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images,Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Sony's $700 PlayStation 5 Pro gives games such as God of War: Ragnarok and Baldur's Gate 3 a big performance boost but it's also enduring teething problems, with players reporting issues in the likes of Silent Hill 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.The recently released remake of beloved survival horror game Silent Hill 2 perhaps has the most complaints, with Eurogamer having spotted a number of fans flagging that both developer Bloober Team and publisher Konami have yet to comment on graphical issues headlined by a shimmering or flickering effect."I immediately knew something was off without even seeing gameplay previously or even playing the game before this," said Unlocky-Soil-2456 on Reddit. "Thats how bad this is. I cant even bring myself to play it in this state because its so distracting."Every Game Enhanced for PS5 Pro So FarIGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!IGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!To start:...try asking a question that can be answered with a "Yes" or "No".000/250Several other games are affected by this similar shimmering issue too. "I love my PS5 Pro for the most part, most games look wonderful, but there seems to be an issue with some games," said Chaystic on ResetEra. "There's this weird shimmering, aliasing, whatever you wanna call it. One big example is Black Ops 6, I thought my Pro was faulty or something, but it turns out I'm not the only one who noticed it. I've seen several social media posts who reported the same."Fellow PS5 Pro owners in the comments pointed it out in Spider-Man 2, Stellar Blade, and Alan Wake 2 as well, while Digital Foundry discovered what it called "severe image quality problems" in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. "There are severe image quality concerns when elements like foliage interact with ray tracing," it said. "The end result is a strobing image quality downgrade that makes this Pro patch difficult to recommend."The PS5 Pro arrived November 7 as Sony's now standard mid-generation upgrade. More than 50 games received PS5 Pro specific patches upon its launch but, as this list includes Alan Wake 2 and Black Ops 6 among others receiving complaints, it's worth proceeding with caution.In our 7/10 review of the PS5 Pro, IGN said: "The PlayStation 5 Pro is an impressive console with noticeable boosts in performance and graphics for games that take advantage of its powerful hardware. But for $700, youll need to think twice about whether or not the upgrade is worth the price tag."Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

As it turns out, Christmas did not come early this past weekend at the box office, even with a nominal holiday action movie playing in theaters around the world. Indeed, the long troubled and forthcoming Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans two-hander, Red One, saw its Yuletide hopes dashed over the weekend when estimates came in pegging the Christmas spectacles opening at $34 million.While technically the number one movie in North America, that number is down considerably when even compared to plenty of Johnsons other family friendly high-concept films like Black Adam (which was considered a disappointment when it opened at $67 million in 2022) and the second Jumanji movie he made with Kevin Hart, Jumanji: The Next Level, which debuted at $59.3 million five years ago in 2019.Technically Red Ones opening is comparable to Johnson and Harts first fun Jumanji flick, Welcome to the Jungle, which opened to $36.1 million in 2017. But that was seven years of inflation ago, and Jungle had a reasonable price tag of $90 million. Conversely, official reports claim Red One cost an eye-watering $200 million, andThe WrapOn paper, Red One was clearly intended to be a continuation of Jumanjis charm, with director Jake Kasdan helming all three movies. Yet Red One became something else as well: an attempt by an ambitious streamer to create its own family-friendly action IP by spending on Red One like it was a superhero movie. Crucially, however, Amazon MGM originally intended for Red One to be exactly thata streaming movie. When production began on the film in 2022, the plan was to have Red One on their streaming service Prime Video in time for Christmas the following year. Production pauses, caused by negotiations being dragged out during the acting and writers strikes of last year, delayed the movie until now. And during the interim, Johnson said he got the idea that the movie needed to be on the big screen in IMAX after watching the success of Christopher Nolans Oppenheimer in the same format.Whatever cracks one might wish to make at the folly of comparing intended streaming content starring Johnson and Evans to a talky, R-rated epic for adults, one should note that ahead of Red One, even Johnsons superhero stumble still actually eked out a north of $50 million opening. So a more interesting way to consider Red Ones failures might be to note that it offers a decent glimpse behind the curtain at the actual popularity of big, pricey streaming movies when their actual appeal isnt obscured by numbers massaged by the tech industry.The state of moviemaking is indeed in a strange place where audiences more often than not elect to stay home than go to the cinema on any given weekend, and in that environment streaming services and their owners have the opportunity to remain opaque about what is being watched for how long and by how many people. For instance, another Johnson streaming movie that never got released into theaters, Netflixs similarly titled Red Notice, was trumpeted by its streamer as its most popular movie of all-time, with the film allegedly generating 231 million views since 2021.Yet the numbers of how many people finished the film or actually enjoyed it (or even gave it their undivided attention) are murkier. There is obviously a world of difference between turning on something that is free (or part of a subscription you already paid for) and leaving it on in the background while wrapping presents versus paying $10 to $20 a ticket to see the film with your family ahead of Thanksgiving. But isnt that also kind of the point? Streaming services continue to be championed as the future of media consumption, or even cinema, and yet their seemingly algorithm-designed content with a tested movie star like Johnson and audience-favorite like Evans cannot generate as much excitement as an original (and sublime) family film, The Wild Robot, which opened at about $36 million in September.There are of course other conventional lessons that seem gleanable from Red Ones struggles, beginning with its price tag. As of press time, it is not clear if Red Ones exorbitant budget is partially borne out from the streaming model of paying above-the-line talent expanded fees to offset the films never having the opportunity to earn backends for the talent in a traditional theatrical rolloutwhich is why Amazons adult drama Air cost a reported $90 million, even though the non-salaried portion of that production was probably a fraction of the totalor if this is just the case of another Rock movie costing north of $200 million.According to The Wrap, though, Johnson alone demanded a $50 million payday and then allegedly caused the budget to balloon further by being chronically late to set. Producer Hiram Garcia categorically denied this allegation.Read more Whatever the case might be, it seems ill-advised to spend anywhere in the neighborhood of a quarter-billion dollars on a Christmas movie. Weve written before about how the industry went from reliably producing a few generally recognized Christmas favorites every decade to there not being a banner year for holiday classics since 2003. A large reason for that is the holiday movie has been surrendered to streaming services, which often treat them as disposable shovel programmer content. Conversely, attempting to rework the plot of 48 Hrs. or Lethal Weapon into a family movie with expensive talking polar bears and fist-fighting Krampuses seems equally tone deaf.Many of the celebrated holiday movies of yore, including 2003s Elf and Love Actually, were medium-budgeted movies that relied on quality talent in front of and behind the camera delivering the ephemeral magic. In other words, the best Christmas movies didnt try to just buy their popularity with special effects, or just phone the magic in, a la every Netflix Christmas movie you might watch this holiday season and have forgotten by New Years.Red One conversely feels like every other streaming service blockbuster that you might watch but regret afterward. Granted, not all audiences feel the same. It should be noted the film earned a respectable A- CinemaScore over the weekend, which is better than Black Adams B+. However, lest anyone has delusions of a long holiday season attempt to recover, it should be noted the traditional studios already seem to have the family market cornered with Universals highly anticipated Wicked slated to make landfall next week and, ironically enough, the Johnson co-starring Moana 2 from Disney prepared to open the weekend afterward. Just in time for the holidays.

What is the most underrated James Bond movie? That is a question that might have as much to do with when you ask it as it does the films themselves. Take On Her Majestys Secret Service for example. Over years and decades, it was generally treated as the black sheep of the Eon Productions canon; the one that was rejected by audiences in 1969 because Sean Connery isnt there, and the one that would get slipped in very late at night on TBS marathons in the 90s because it starred the one-and-done George Lazenby.Yet today the films bittersweet tone and outright tragic endingwith Bond crying over the body of his wife on their wedding day while Louis Armstrongs All the Time in the World is turned into an instrumental weepylingers so strongly that Eon more or less remade its elegiac quality, right down to the Louis Armstrong number, in No Time to Die. The brief Timothy Dalton era of 007 movies has undergone similar reappraisal on the internet where fans appreciated his tough, no-nonsense gruffness when juxtaposed with Roger Moores silliness. And so it goes. The stock of Bond is always rising and falling.So, with all that in mind, if you asked me today in 2024 what is the most underrated Bond adventure I would say the one that just turned 25 years old earlier this month.It has indeed been a quarter-century since The World Is Not Enough, the third Bond movie starring Pierce Brosnan and the first co-written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (scribes whod have a hand in every James Bond movie since). Generally well received upon release, if not riotously celebrated, The World Is Not Enough was reviewed by critics and fans as a serviceable nother one. This time with Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist, which might have conjured more howls from Gen-X and elder Millennial audiences than the older critics who grew up used to Eon Productions casting standards.Still, as the years passed, TWINE stands largely forgotten by anyone except diehards. And to be fair, no one should (or could) mistake The World Is Not Enough as the gold standard of its series. Nonetheless, there is actually a fairly solid and oft-overlooked soul to this installment. Its the film where Brosnan felt most confident and in command of his version of 007; the one which brought a graceful end to the 90s and post-Cold War era of James Bond; and the movie that burrowed so deeply into Bond and Ms psychologies that Eon covertly remade it during the Daniel Craig era.There is a case to be made that it is time to recognize The World Is Not Enough as one of the more underappreciated Bond flicks.A Setup So Good Eon Did It TwiceWhen producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson broke the story of The World Is Not Enough with their writers, as well as director Michael Apted, the film was going to originally feature one of the subtler pre-title sequences, particularly in the Brosnan era where they were almost all over-the-top. We would be introduced to Bond mid-mission where he interrogates a corrupt banker in Bilbao, Spain and then his life is saved by a mysterious third party as he quietly escapes from the office. The subsequent chase sequence along the Thames River would have then been saved for the very next scene after the opening credits.Thank Her Majesty for the change, because instead of being a forgettable intro, TWINE features one of the best. It was also the longest ever up to that point with its 14-minute runtime (a record No Time to Die finally broke in 2021). Obviously, this allowed the opening to have more bang for its buck. The opening is now the action highlight of the movie given it culminates with Bond highjacking Qs tricked out speedboat and pursuing an assassin along Londons Thames. They even wind up, appropriately enough, atop Londons Millennium Dome, a tourist attraction so new and of the moment that it wouldnt even be open to the public during the movies release.By itself this is just a terrific table-setter, right down to Garbages grooving 90s alt-rock title song. However, it also introduced one of the most intriguing, and prescient, setups in a Bond film. Rather than just introduce us to 007 wrapping up another case, we see the literal fallout of that mission when the money Bond retrieved from the aforementioned bank is discovered to have a bomb hidden inside its paper: it is used to execute a terrorist attack on MI6 headquarters that leaves one of Ms closest friends dead, and British intelligenceincluding Bond as an unwitting and physically injured patsyhumiliated.Its a prelude to a mission of intensely personal stakes for the wounded Bond, his employer, and MI6 itself, and it rather unintentionally picks up on geopolitical anxieties that would erupt into a bitter, horrifying reality a few years later when massive terrorist attacks on the West became more than just the work of fiction. Perhaps that is one reason Eon more or less remade this exact same setup in one of the production companys best films, Skyfall. Right down to the terrorist being someone from the past life of Judi Denchs M, Skyfall feels like a redo of The World Is Not Enoughs themes, remixed for a post-9/11 world (and with the villain being a riff on GoldenEyes 006 to boot).Skyfall does it better overall, but the naivet of The World Is Not Enoughs simple sense of escapism makes it a bit more charming to return to, plus the shots of Bond getting to wreak havoc in 90s London without any of the gloom and doom of the Craig era remains an absolute blast.Brosnan and Dench at Their BestA movie marking a personal vendetta for both Bond and M has became common place during the Craig era, but it was a novelty in 1999. And in some regards, The World Is Not Enough remains one of the more unique renditions of this growing clich. Whereas Craigs Bond had a deep emotional attachment to Denchs M, with the suggestion of her having groomed him as a troubled, bordering on sociopathic youth like a mother would a child, Brosnans Bond enjoyed a relationship with Denchs M more approaching that of equals and colleagueswhich made how they played off each other in this film uniquely interesting.With exception to Ralph Fiennes Mallory in the last couple of Craig entries, the Brosnan era is the only time in the Bond oeuvre where 007 is the old seasoned hand with a foot in the past, and M is the face of the future. The irony of a misogynistic relic of the Cold War like Bond having a woman as his boss practically writes itself, hence how she addresses him with those exact words in GoldenEye. Yet from that frosty introduction Brosnans Bond has somewhere to grow with M as the two reach a grudging and, eventually, admiring respect.That element comes to fruition in The World Is Not Enough, a movie where instead of treating M as just a bean-counter, or as a mother in need of protecting, Bond comes to see her as a real person and confidant. He recognizes she is taking it personal that her school chum (and ex-lover?) from Oxford was killed due to their mutual negligence. But from that recognition the two develop an unspoken trust and camaraderie. They have a mutual interest in redemption.But then, much of the movie is a showcase for Brosnans Bond. In the 90s, he was celebrated as a bit of the platonic ideal between Connerys aggressive swagger and Moores dapper silliness. Brosnan walked the line. After Craig entirely reinvented the character as brooding bruiser who grew out of his blunt instrument youth, Brosnans goldilocks approach was dismissed, particularly by online fandom who typically prefer the seriousness of Craig, or for that matter Dalton. Yet perhaps because I grew up in the 90s, Ive always had affection for Brosnans lighter touch, which was often more nuanced than detractors would suggest. And that styling was never so bespoke as in TWINE. While GoldenEye easily remains the one great Brosnan Bond movie, as with most 007 actors he was still finding his interpretation of the character in the first outing.By the time TWINE came around, though, the actor and producers knew exactly who this version of Bond was. He still has the charm and humorousness of both Connery and Moore, but there is also a wearied sadness and melancholy there. He is not a brooder like Craig (and probably like how Brosnan would have preferred to see the character written), but this Bond has lived through the Cold War, betrayals, and long empty nights. The charisma feels like a defense mechanism, and perhaps his weapon of last resort.And we see what happens when those defenses are circumvented after he meets the next great love of his life, as well as one of the more under-appreciated baddies in the seriesRead more One of the Better VillainsMany internet pixels have been spilled about Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones. The former American model is spectacularly miscast as a nuclear scientist. Still, I would point out that not much more so than many of the other Bond movie casting choices in previous decades. Think of the Bond Girls who were later dubbed because of wooden line deliveriesor the ones who were introduced as fellow espionage professionals and then asked to just blankly run around in a bikini by the producers. The backlash to Richards casting says perhaps more about how audience expectations for womens leading roles had changed in the 40 or so years between Dr. No and TWINE while Eons had not.However, it should be noted that Christmas is not a lead in The World Is Not Enough. She is a character who sadly only exists so Bond has a love interest at the end of the film. And even in that pretext, she is at least written as competent in her expertise, even as the producers dubiously dress her up like 90s era Lara Croft for half the movie. Even so, she is tertiary to the central dynamic of the film: a romance between James and a woman named Elektra (Sophie Marceau).While On Her Majestys Secret Service has been reevaluated as a Bond classic, in 1999 it was still largely a black sheep. Which makes the choice to essentially subvert it bold. And the twist where the woman Bond falls in love with this time turns out to also be the real villain is bolder still.It is indeed one of the cleverer plot contours in the series when Bond and the audience discover at roughly the same time that the terrorist were introduced into believing is the mastermind villain, Robert Carlyles adequate Renard, is actually a patsy. He is a dupe as easily manipulated by Elektra King as as 007. She is the films surprise femme fatale who intentionally echoes Diana Riggs beloved Teresa di Vicenzo. For like Tracy, Elektra comes from a wealthy family (Bond always loves refined things, no?) but is damaged from that privileged lifestyle. Quite literally, as we learn she was tortured and maimed when she was kidnapped for an extended period by Renard.Initially, Bond and the audience is led to suspect that she was manipulated or seduced, much like the dubious and disputed pop culture image surrounding the Patty Hearst abduction. However, even that proves a red herring. As the film unfolds, we learn Elektra has manipulated Bond and M, as well as the viewers. In truth, Elektra seduces Bond by representing everything he loves, even as she also embodies everything he usually despises in a man: intensely privileged breeding, a sense of entitlement, and, finally, megalomania. She considers her familys oil holdings in Russia as her birthright, and will kill anyone who keeps her from it. Beginning with her father.As misjudged as casting Richards as Christmas Jones was (especially since rumors suggest Monica Bellucci was also in the running for the role), the film ultimately lives or dies based on the dynamic between Bond and Elektra, and casting an actress as adept as Marceau works wonders for the film. She and Brosnan kindle a sincere chemistry, just as the erudite French actress has enough playfulness to imbue Elektras later villainy with a fanged cruelty.It makes the actual climax of the film one of the best moments in Brosnans tenure. Thirty-seven years after Connerys Bond coldly assassinated Professor Dent in Dr. No, Brosnans 007 is forced to shoot Elektra King in cold blood. It feels uglier than how were used to seeing the Brosnan version of the character. Earlier in the movie, the character went so far as to acknowledge that cold-blooded murder is a filthy business. But doing it to a woman he loved for at least one night is a kind of self-abnegation. You can see it on Brosnans face as he holds the gun and begs for her to call off Renard and their scheme.You buy Elektras misplaced confidence when she smirks, You wouldnt kill me. Youd miss me. It sets up a typical Brosnan one-liner, though this one with venomous irony after he executes her: I never miss. But in the same breath, Denchs M arrives on the scene to witness a perverse tableau. Bond is visibly mourning the woman he murdered by brushing her hair. The moment is melodramatic but also faintly disturbing, including to M. It also gestures toward a quality of the character that would become dominant in the Craig era.Its also such a striking moment that it wreaks havoc on the rest of TWINEs finale, which has no more oxygen as Bond obligatorily kills Renard in a crashed submarine and saves Christmas.The End of an EraUltimately, The World Is Not Enough has a number of good moments like the Thames chase sequence or the death of Elektra King. The shootout between Bond and Renard in a nuclear missle silo is also 90s cheese, but of an entertaining flavor as Brosnan hops on chains designed to transport atomic weapons and uses them as a carnival ride while outrunning a fireball. There is also a touching sendoff to Desmond Llewelyn as Q and a surprisingly taut action sequence about navigating oil pipelines.But it is easy to admit the sum is lesser than the parts. There are a couple of action sequences that feel quite rote and strangely lacking for a Bond flick, such as the worst ski set-piece in the series and the aforementioned submarine fistfight. As good as Elektra is, the choice to keep Renard as the final heavy, presumably because he is a man, disservices the movie.Yet one cannot wonder if the film, and perhaps Brosnans whole tenure, might be better remembered if this had been the final entry of his run. While I am of the camp who thinks it is a shame that Brosnan didnt get a fifth film in the early 2000s to close out his era on a better note than Die Another Day, the flip side might have also been true. Brosnans interpretation of the character feels incredibly, inescapably rooted in the 90s. It is of that moment where the Cold War was over but the 20th century still had life left in it. During roughly that decade before terrorist attacks in 2001 changed the world for the worst, shortsighted optimists believed they were living at the end of history. They might have even argued the world had no more use for characters like James Bond.The three films Brosnan made between 1995 and 1999 absolutely tap into the anxieties of that moment, complete with TWINEs still timely narrative about Europeans willing to kill over getting oil out of Russia (or Tomorrow Never Dies satire of conservative media propaganda). In this context, TWINE acts as a bookend on elements introduced in GoldenEye. Robbie Coltrane as the best 007 contact in the series since Kerim Bey returns in the role of Valentin Zukovsky, a former KGB spymaster turned gangster. In GoldenEye, he wanted to permanently maim Bond for a Cold War injury Zukovsky sustained, but by the end of TWINE, he utilizes his last breath to save James life, confident Bond will avenge them both.The film also sees Denchs M and the audience finally recognize an implicit question she had for Bond in GoldenEye. Can you still be useful? The answer is yes, even if it rots away at another level of Bonds soul with one more dead lover in his arms.The World Is Not Enough is not top shelf Bond, but it might be at the top of the mid-tier pack. And just as it took about 20 years for even Daltons most uneven Bond film, Licence to Kill, to get its due, now seems apt for The World Is Not Enough to receive a couple of flowers of its own. If only for Elektras funeral.

Today DoorDash announced a variety of new features and improvements timed for the holiday season. One such change: a new integration with Apples Reminders app.Import Reminders lists into DoorDash, or copy/paste a listThe Reminders app is used in a variety of ways by different users, but one of the most common use cases is grocery lists. Apple has even added grocery-specific features in the last couple years.Now, as DoorDash tries to make a bigger push into being used not just for restaurant deliveries but also groceries, the company is rolling out a new Reminders integration.DoorDash is adding the ability to import a Reminders list to get a quicker start on your grocery order.You can choose which list to import, and each item on the list will trigger a search so you can find the exact products youre looking for from DoorDashs various partners.If you keep your grocery lists in Apple Notes or some other app instead, the same functionality is extended to lists you paste into the DoorDash app.All of this makes it quicker to get your shopping done within DoorDash.Do you plan to use this new Reminders integration? Let us know in the comments.Best iPhone accessoriesAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre 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. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

A new report today suggests that porch pirates thieves who steal packages left on doorsteps shortly after delivery have accessed tracking data from AT&T systems to follow iPhone deliveries.There has been a marked uptick in iPhones being stolen from doorsteps after being ordered from AT&T and delivered by Fedex, apparently with the help of real-time delivery updates CNET reports.A new rash of 2024 package thefts has uncovered a disturbing technique with thieves seizing private tracking data so they know exactly when packages are delivered, particularly iPhones. That allows these prescient porch pirates to jump in and steal the phones right when theyre delivered []Thieves are somehow getting tracking numbers or similar tracking information for iPhone deliveries, so they get real-time updates about when and where packages are delivered, allowing them to swoop in the moment the package status changes.AT&T is one of the few telecom companies that in many cases doesnt require signatures for high-value deliveries like iPhones. That allows thieves to steal packages when they are left unattended.Neither company has commented, and law enforcement is still investigating, but one theory is that the data is being accessed internally by rogue AT&T employees and then sold to thieves.The site recommends buying from companies and carriers who require a signature for high-value deliveries, as this should ensure packages are not left unattended on doorsteps.Photo byDan DennisonUnsplashAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre 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. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Suck it, Shakespeare.Dead PoetsScientists have found that readers have a lot of trouble telling apart AI-generated and human-written poetry even works by the likes of William Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson.Even more surprisingly, the researchers found that humans generally prefer the former over the latter, which could bode poorly for the role of human creativity in the age of generative AI.As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, University of Pittsburgh researchers Brian Porter and Edouard Machery conducted two experiments involving "non-expert poetry readers."They found that "participants performed below chance levels in identifying AI-generated poems. Notably, participants were more likely to judge AI-generated poems as human-authored than actual human-authored poems."AI-generated poems got higher scores from participants in qualities including rhythm and beauty, something that appeared to lead them astray in picking out which poem was the product of a language model and which was the creative output of a human artist.The team believes their difficulties may be due to the "simplicity of AI-generated poems" that "may be easier for non-experts to understand."In simple terms, AI-generated poetry is appealingly straightforward, and less convoluted, for the palate of the average Joe.Doing LinesIn their first experiment, participants were shown ten poems in a random order. Five were from renowned wordsmiths, including William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and T.S. Eliot. The other five were generated by OpenAI's already out-of-date GPT 3.5 large language model, which was tasked to imitate the style of the aforementioned poets.In a second experiment, participants were told to rate the poems based on 14 different characteristics including quality, emotion, rhythm, and ironically, perhaps originality. The participants were split into three groups who were then told that the poems were AI-generated, human-written, or given no information about their origin.Interestingly, the group told that the poems were AI-generated tended to give the poems a lower score than those who were told that the poems were human-written.And the third group, who received no information about the poems' origins, actually favored the AI-generated poems over the human-written ones."Contrary to what earlier studies reported, people now appear unable to reliably distinguish human-out-of-the-loop AI-generated poetry from human-authored poetry written by well-known poets," the two researchers concluded in their paper."In fact, the 'more human than human' phenomenon discovered in other domains of generative AI is also present in the domain of poetry: non-expert participants are more likely to judge an AI-generated poem to be human-authored than a poem that actually is human-authored," they wrote.More on generative AI: The Wall Street Journal Is Testing AI-Generated Summaries of Its ArticlesShare This Article

According to research from GitGuardian and CyberArk, 79% of IT decision-makers reported having experienced a secrets leak, up from 75% in the previous year's report. At the same time, the number of leaked credentials has never been higher, with over 12.7 million hardcoded credentials in public GitHub repositories alone. One of the more troubling aspects of this report is that over 90% of valid secrets found and reported remained valid for more than 5 days. According to the same research, on average, it takes organizations 27 days to remediate leaked credentials. Combine that with the fact that non-human identities outnumber human identities by at least 45:1, and it is easy to see why many organizations are realizing stopping secrets sprawl means finding a way to deal with this machine identity crisis. Unfortunately, the research also shows that many teams are confused about who owns the security of these identities. It is a perfect storm of risk. Why Does Rotation Take So LongSo, why are we taking so long to rotate credentials if we know they are one of the easiest attack paths for adversaries? One major contributing factor is a lack of clarity on how our credentials are permissioned. Permissions are what authorize what specific things one entity, such as a Kubernetes workload or a microservice, can successfully request from another service or data source. Let's remember what remediation of a secrets sprawl incident means: you need to safely replace a secret without breaking anything or granting new, too-wide permissions, which would potentially introduce more security risks to your company. If you already have full insight into the lifecycle of your non-human identities and their associated secrets, this is a fairly straightforward process of replacing them with new secrets with the same permissions. This can take considerable time if you don't already have that insight, as you need to hope the developer who originally created it is still there and has documented what was done. Let's look at why permissions management is especially challenging in environments dominated by NHIs, examine the challenges developers and security teams face in balancing access control and productivity, and discuss how a shared responsibility model might help.Who Really Owns Secrets Sprawl?Secrets sprawl generally refers to the proliferation of access keys, passwords, and other sensitive credentials across development environments, repositories, and services like Slack or Jira. GitGuardian's latest Voice of the Practitioners report highlights that 65% of respondents place the responsibility for remediation squarely on the IT security teams. At the same time, 44% of IT leaders reported developers are not following best practices for secrets management. Secrets sprawl and the underlying issues of over-permissioned long-lived credentials will continue to fall in this gap until we figure out how to better work together in a shared responsibility model.The Developer's Perspective On PermissionsDevelopers face enormous pressure to build and deploy features quickly. However, managing permissions carefully, with security best practices, can be labor-intensive. Each project or application often has its own unique access requirements, which take time to research and properly set, almost feeling like a full-time job on top of the work making and deploying their applications. Best practices for creating and managing permissions too commonly do not get applied evenly across teams, are seldom documented appropriately, or are forgotten altogether after the developer gets the application working. Compounding the issue, in too many cases, developers are simply granting too wide of permissions to these machine identities. One report found that only 2% of granted permissions are actually used. If we take a closer look at what they are up against, it is easy to see why.For instance, think about managing permissions within Amazon Web Services. AWS's Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies are known for their flexibility but are also complex and confusing to navigate. IAM supports various policy typesidentity-based, resource-based, and permission boundariesall of which require precise configurations. AWS also offers multiple access paths for credentials, including IAM roles and KMS (Key Management Service) grants, which each come with its own unique access configurations. Learning this system is no small feat.Another common example of a service where permissions can become difficult to manage is GitHub. API keys can grant permissions to repositories across various organizations, making it challenging to ensure appropriate access boundaries. A single key can unintentionally provide excessive access across environments when developers are members of multiple organizations. The pressure is on to get it right, while the clock is always ticking and the backlog keeps getting bigger. Why Security Teams Alone Can't Fix ThisIt may seem logical to assign security teams responsibility for monitoring and rotating secrets; after all, this is a security concern. The reality is that these teams often lack the granular project-level knowledge needed to make changes safely. Security teams don't always have the context to understand what specific permissions are essential for keeping applications running. For instance, a seemingly minor permission change could break a CI/CD pipeline, disrupt production, or even cause a company-wide cascading failure if the wrong service disappears.The dispersed nature of secrets management across teams and environments also increases the attack surface. With no one really in charge, it becomes much harder to maintain consistency in access controls and audit trails. This fragmentation often results in excessive or outdated credentials and their associated permissions remaining active for far too long, possibly forever. It can make it difficult to know who has legitimate or illegitimate access to which secrets at any given time.A Shared Responsibility Model For Faster RotationDevelopers and security teams could help address these issues by meeting in the middle and building a shared responsibility model. In such a model, developers are more responsible for consistently managing their permissions through proper tooling, such as CyberArk's Conjur Secrets Manager or Vault by HashiCorp, while also better documenting the permissions and scope of the necessary permissions at the project level. Security teams should be helping developers by working to automate secrets rotation, investing in the proper observability tooling to gain clarity into the state of secrets, and working with IT to eliminate long-lived credentials altogether. If developers clearly document which permissions are needed in their requirements, it could help security teams conduct faster and more precise audits and speed remediation. If security teams work to ensure that the easiest and fastest overall path toward implementing a new non-human identity secret is also the safest and most scalable route, then there are going to be far fewer incidents that require emergency rotation, and everyone wins. The goal for developers should be to ensure that the security team can rotate or update credentials in their applications with confidence, on their own, knowing they're not jeopardizing production.Key Questions to Address around PermissioningWhen thinking through what needs to be documented, here are a few specific data points to help this cross-team effort flow more smoothly: Who Created the Credential? - Many organizations find it difficult to track credential ownership, especially when a key is shared or rotated. This knowledge is essential to understanding who is responsible for rotating or revoking credentials.What Resources Does It Access? - API keys can often access a range of services, from databases to third-party integrations, making it essential to limit permissions to the absolute minimum necessary.What Permissions Does It Grant? - Permissions vary widely depending on roles, resource-based policies, and policy conditions. For instance, in Jenkins, a user with `Overall/Read` permission can view general information, while `Overall/Administer` grants full control over the system.How Do We Revoke or Rotate It? - The ease of revocation varies by platform, and in many cases, teams must manually track down keys and permissions across systems, complicating remediation and prolonging exposure to threats.Is the Credential Active? - Knowing whether a credential is still in use is critical. When NHIs use long-lived API keys, these credentials may remain active indefinitely unless managed properly, creating persistent access risks.Permissions Are Challenging, But We Can Manage Them Together As One TeamAccording to the GitGuardian report, while 75% of respondents expressed confidence in their secrets management capabilities, the reality is often much different. The average remediation time of 27 days reflects this gap between confidence and practice. It is time to rethink how we implement and communicate secrets and their permissions as an organization.While developers work diligently to balance security and functionality, the lack of streamlined permissions processes and uncentralized or unstandardized documentation paths only amplify the risks. Security teams alone can't resolve these issues effectively due to their limited insight into project-specific needs. They need to work hand-in-hand with developers every step of the way. GitGuardian is building the next generation of secrets security tooling, helping security and IT teams get a handle on secrets sprawl. Knowing what plaintext, long-lived credentials are exposed in your code and other environments is a needed first step to eliminating this threat. Start today with GitGuardian.Found this article interesting? This article is a contributed piece from one of our valued partners. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.