Playable Worlds on making a living galaxy with UnityRaph Koster talks about how the Playable Worlds team tackles the massive technical challenges of building a living world on a massive scale in Stars Reach.https://adapt.one/editorial/link/222/Playable+Worlds+on+making+a+living+galaxy+with+Unity/

Thecacera pennigera, also known as the winged thecacera, is a species of sea slug in the family Polyceridae. It has a cosmopolitan distribution, being found in temperate waters on either side of the North Atlantic Ocean, in the Mediterranean Sea, around South and West Africa, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Pakistan and more recently in Australia and New Zealand. There is a significant difference in colouring between Atlantic populations and Pacific specimens, however. Thecacera pennigera has a typical adult length between 15 millimetres (0.6in) and 30 millimetres (1.2in), featuring a short, wide head with two lateral flaps and two sheathed olfactory organs called rhinophores. The body is wedge shaped, being wide at the front and ending in a slender foot with a lateral keel on either side. The general colour of the body is translucent white and the upper side is covered with orange splotches and small black spots. Like other sea slugs, T. pennigera is a hermaphrodite with internal fertilisation and a mating mechanism whereby pairs of animals exchange packets of sperm. This T. pennigera was photographed in the Mar Piccolo of Taranto, Italy.Photograph credit: Roberto StrafellaRecently featured: Double Asteroid Redirection TestFinding in the TempleWait for Me, DaddyArchiveMore featured pictures

November 25: Evacuation Day in New York City (1783)Stanisaw II Augustus, 17641759 The second of two strong earthquakes struck the Levant and destroyed all the villages in the Beqaa Valley.1795 Stanisaw II Augustus (pictured), the last king of Poland, was forced to abdicate after the Third Partition of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth.1901 Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4 premiered in Munich.1952 Korean War: After 42 days of fighting, the Battle of Triangle Hill ended as American and South Korean units abandoned their attempt to capture the "Iron Triangle".1981 A group of Conservative members of Parliament wrote a letter outlining their opposition to the economic policy of Margaret Thatcher, leading to speculation over a split from the party.Henrietta Maria of France (b.1609)Hermann Kolbe (d.1884)Charles Kennedy (b.1959)Nick Drake (d.1974)More anniversaries: November 24November 25November 26ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout

Top G Andrew Tate penetrated by LGBT hackers

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn MoreIn our first installment, we outlined key strategies for leveraging AI agents to improve enterprise efficiency. I explained how, unlike standalone AI models, agents iteratively refine tasks using context and tools to enhance outcomes such as code generation. I also discussed how multi-agent systems foster communication across departments, creating a unified user experience and driving productivity, resilience and faster upgrades.Success in building these systems hinges on mapping roles and workflows, as well as establishing safeguards such as human oversight and error checks to ensure safe operation. Lets dive into these critical elements.Safeguards and autonomyAgents imply autonomy, so various safeguards must be built into an agent within a multi-agent system to reduce errors, waste, legal exposure or harm when agents are operating autonomously. Applying all of these safeguards to all agents may be overkill and pose a resource challenge, but I highly recommend considering every agent in the system and consciously deciding which of these safeguards they would need. An agent should not be allowed to operate autonomously if any one of these conditions is met.Explicitly defined human intervention conditionsTriggering any one of a set of predefined rules determines the conditions under which a human needs to confirm some agent behavior. These rules should be defined on a case-by-case basis and can be declared in the agents system prompt or in more critical use-cases, be enforced using deterministic code external to the agent. One such rule, in the case of a purchasing agent, would be: All purchasing should first be verified and confirmed by a human. Call your check_with_human function and do not proceed until it returns a value.Safeguard agentsA safeguard agent can be paired with an agent with the role of checking for risky, unethical or noncompliant behavior. The agent can be forced to always check all or certain elements of its behavior against a safeguard agent, and not proceed unless the safeguard agent returns a go-ahead.UncertaintyOur lab recently published a paper on a technique that can provide a measure of uncertainty for what a large language model (LLM) generates. Given the propensity for LLMs to confabulate (commonly known as hallucinations), giving a preference to a certain output can make an agent much more reliable. Here, too, there is a cost to be paid. Assessing uncertainty requires us to generate multiple outputs for the same request so that we can rank-order them based on certainty and choose the behavior that has the least uncertainty. That can make the system slow and increase costs, so it should be considered for more critical agents within the system.Disengage buttonThere may be times when we need to stop all autonomous agent-based processes. This could be because we need consistency, or weve detected behavior in the system that needs to stop while we figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. For more critical workflows and processes, it is important that this disengagement does not result in all processes stopping or becoming fully manual, so it is recommended that a deterministic fallback mode of operation be provisioned.Agent-generated work ordersNot all agents within an agent network need to be fully integrated into apps and APIs. This might take a while and takes a few iterations to get right. My recommendation is to add a generic placeholder tool to agents (typically leaf nodes in the network) that would simply issue a report or a work-order, containing suggested actions to be taken manually on behalf of the agent. This is a great way to bootstrap and operationalize your agent network in an agile manner.TestingWith LLM-based agents, we are gaining robustness at the cost of consistency. Also, given the opaque nature of LLMs, we are dealing with black-box nodes in a workflow. This means that we need a different testing regime for agent-based systems than that used in traditional software. The good news, however, is that we are used to testing such systems, as we have been operating human-driven organizations and workflows since the dawn of industrialization.While the examples I showed above have a single-entry point, all agents in a multi-agent system have an LLM as their brains, and so they can act as the entry point for the system. We should use divide and conquer, and first test subsets of the system by starting from various nodes within the hierarchy.We can also employ generative AI to come up with test cases that we can run against the network to analyze its behavior and push it to reveal its weaknesses.Finally, Im a big advocate for sandboxing. Such systems should be launched at a smaller scale within a controlled and safe environment first, before gradually being rolled out to replace existing workflows.Fine-tuningA common misconception with gen AI is that it gets better the more you use it. This is obviously wrong. LLMs are pre-trained. Having said this, they can be fine-tuned to bias their behavior in various ways. Once a multi-agent system has been devised, we may choose to improve its behavior by taking the logs from each agent and labeling our preferences to build a fine-tuning corpus.PitfallsMulti-agent systems can fall into a tailspin, which means that occasionally a query might never terminate, with agents perpetually talking to each other. This requires some form of timeout mechanism. For example, we can check the history of communications for the same query, and if it is growing too large or we detect repetitious behavior, we can terminate the flow and start over.Another problem that can occur is a phenomenon I will call overloading: Expecting too much of a single agent. The current state-of-the-art for LLMs does not allow us to hand agents long and detailed instructions and expect them to follow them all, all the time. Also, did I mention these systems can be inconsistent?A mitigation for these situations is what I call granularization: Breaking agents up into multiple connected agents. This reduces the load on each agent and makes the agents more consistent in their behavior and less likely to fall into a tailspin. (An interesting area of research that our lab is undertaking is in automating the process of granularization.)Another common problem in the way multi-agent systems are designed is the tendency to define a coordinator agent that calls different agents to complete a task. This introduces a single point of failure that can result in a rather complex set of roles and responsibilities. My suggestion in these cases is to consider the workflow as a pipeline, with one agent completing part of the work, then handing it off to the next.Multi-agent systems also have the tendency to pass the context down the chain to other agents. This can overload those other agents, can confuse them, and is often unnecessary. I suggest allowing agents to keep their own context and resetting context when we know we are dealing with a new request (sort of like how sessions work for websites).Finally, it is important to note that theres a relatively high bar for the capabilities of the LLM used as the brain of agents. Smaller LLMs may need a lot of prompt engineering or fine-tuning to fulfill requests. The good news is that there are already several commercial and open-source agents, albeit relatively large ones, that pass the bar.This means that cost and speed need to be an important consideration when building a multi-agent system at scale. Also, expectations should be set that these systems, while faster than humans, will not be as fast as the software systems we are used to.Babak Hodjat is CTO for AI at Cognizant. DataDecisionMakersWelcome to the VentureBeat community!DataDecisionMakers is where experts, including the technical people doing data work, can share data-related insights and innovation.If you want to read about cutting-edge ideas and up-to-date information, best practices, and the future of data and data tech, join us at DataDecisionMakers.You might even considercontributing an articleof your own!Read More From DataDecisionMakers

In a three-part video series with generative AI developer and expert Sam Witteveen, I explore what Microsoft's announcements about AI agents mean for enterprises, why Microsoft is pulling ahead as a leader in agentic AI, and how these tools may transform the way companies handle workflows.Read More

Full Throttle | Why I LoveMade From Strings' Christopher Mathes reflects on LucasArts' worldbuilding talents and how this informed game designImage credit: Full Throttle Remastered by Double Fine Feature by Christopher Mathes Contributor Published on Nov. 22, 2024 Why I Love is a series of guest editorials on GamesIndustry.biz intended to showcase the ways in which game developers appreciate each other's work. This entry was contributed by Christopher Mathes, the developer behind 'Agatha Christie in space' point-and-click murder mystery Murder On Space Station 52, which is now available on Steam.Growing up in the early '90s, we weren't a PC kind of family. We had an old DOS machine with its tiny monitor that sat neglected most of the time. With no older sibling or relative to show me the ways of DOS, my knowledge of the system was cursory at best. The only game system we owned at the time was a Super Nintendo. So I often spent time in the PC game aisle at the local store, coveting all the large glossy boxes and the shiny CD treasures inside.Then one day, that all changed. In place of the old DOS machine was a flashy new Windows PC, which included a CD-ROM drive. I booted up the pristine machine, which took no small amount of time, and began clicking away. I soon grew tired of Minesweeper and Solitaire and longed for something more.A few days passed before I was able to make it to the store and that same aisle of tall glossy boxes. The only thing in my inventory was a few hard-earned dollars and a youthful enthusiasm. While some of the more mature-looking titles were enticing to my young eyes. I knew the box art and labels warning of the violence within them would scare my mother away from the purchase. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, a piece of cover art caught my attention. A goggle and leather-clad man jumping his motorcycle away from an explosion roaring behind him. The words 'Full Throttle' emblazoned the cover.So I combined my hard-earned cash, youthful enthusiasm, and glossy game box and brought home my first CD-ROM game. I placed the disc carefully into the disc tray and watched it slowly slide into the guts of the PC. I should tell you I had no idea what adventure games were or really what to expect, but my young mind was ready for anything.A brilliant burst of colors and pixels filled the monitor. Full-screen animations play out like the opening of a movie. CD-quality music blasts through the speakers. The brilliant voice work of Mark Hamill, Roy Conard, and many others brings all the characters to life. By the time I punched my way out of that first dumpster, I was hooked.Ben Throttle stands out as a unique protagonist in gaming, even to this day. His combination of dry wit and brute force gives Ben an effortless 'coolness' that is hard to quantify. Using that brute strength also allows for the solving of puzzles in ways unique to Ben. The door's locked... well just kick it in."We should design our problems and, more importantly, their solutions, around our characters. This can open up whole new avenues of thought"There is a good lesson to learn here. We should design our problems and, more importantly, their solutions, around our characters. This can open up whole new avenues of thought as you begin to think like your protagonist and not as yourself. This is a lesson well learned and applied in my game, Murder On Space Station 52. Edward Locke, the main protagonist, is a mechanical engineer, giving him unique insights and informing the way he goes about solving puzzles. In Edward's case, his attention to detail and mind for machinery win out the day.'Clever design' is a good way to describe Full Throttle. It's not a game that inundates you with a deluge of items and red herrings. Its sleeker interface and chapter-like structure feel polished and thoughtfully created. A great example of this is the junkyard door puzzle.Before entering the junkyard, you find a chain attached to a garage-style door. When you pull on the said chain, the door opens, but you must let go of the chain to walk to the door. Once you release the chain, the door slams shut before you can reach it. Traditional wisdom would say find a way to keep the door open. The solution, on the other hand, is to use a padlock you find elsewhere in the chapter to lock the door shut and then climb the chain over the wall to enter the junkyard. This clever design satisfyingly subverts player expectations while also using Ben's unique brute strength to scale the wall.Murder On Space Station 52 follows a similar design logic to Full Throttle embracing a chapter-based structure. The story and puzzles are designed in layered tiers within each chapter. Ideally, the puzzles evolve over time adding complexity without an overload of items. Image credit: Full Throttle by LucasArtsLets talk about Full Throttle's motorcycle combat section... okay, so its not the best part of the game. That being said, it was a novel idea to use the Rebel Assault engine and a nice change of pace, if not a frustrating one (although you could argue once you realize the game essentially has a rock, paper, scissors-like system for fighting the different gangs, it does become much easier). That said, it does lead to one of my favorite puzzles in the game.One of the gangs you fight along the way is the Cavefish. A cult-like gang of underground dwellers with impaired vision from all their time beneath the earth. Because of their impairment, they navigate using unique goggles that highlight the reflectors in the middle of the road. Ben eventually finds himself in the Cavefish tunnel on a hunt for a ramp to jump a nearby gorge. After you find the ramp, you soon realize the Cavefish will stop you from leaving. The solution to this problem is to push the ramp backward, popping off and removing the reflectors from the road. As the gang members approach a now reflector-less curve, they end up launching themselves off the road and into a rocky cave wall.What I find interesting about this puzzle is that it only really works in the universe of Full Throttle. In any other world, removing the reflectors would make little to no difference. So they took time to set up worldbuilding/lore to deliver a unique puzzle later in the story."[Some] puzzles only really work in the universe of Full Throttle. [The developers] took time to set up worldbuilding/lore to deliver [something] unique"Speaking of worldbuilding, the setting of Full Throttle is a memorable one. There is an almost Mad Max wasteland-type vibe to the game. But with so many unique characters and places to visit the game still feels very alive at the same time. Best of all, it doesn't really concern itself with explaining it.The mystery of the place was a big draw for me. I was always excited to discover new locations and the denizens that occupy them. I spent a significant amount of time building out the world for my own game, even designing unique logos and in-world brands for things such as coffee companies and terrible local garage bands. I believe no other medium is as adept at exploring worlds as video games.It took many months to finish Full Throttle as I was pre-internet at that time. But It's a ride that has always stuck with me. I believe I can say without being hyperbolic that Full Throttle changed my perception of what a game could be.While I was already a pretty dedicated gamer at that point, I had not realized the medium's potential for telling stories. And telling those stories in a way that neither movies, TV, nor novels could. It's a real possibility that I would not be a game developer today had I not picked up that glossy box with the words 'Full Throttle' on the cover.Developers interested in contributing their own Why I Love column are encouraged to reach out to us at news@gamesindustry.biz.

This week, I went to a theater to watch a showing of the black-and-white version of Johnny Mnemonic, starring Keanu Reeves. Old-heads like me may recall it as a bad mid-90s cyberpunk film (written by William Gibson!) about a data courier whose brain is the storage medium, but who had to have his childhood memories erased to make space for the work. I hadnt seen it since I was a kid, and you know what? Its still not a good movie. But if you ignore the plot holes, mostly awful acting, and terrible pacing, its at least very cool to look at. Also, I had totally forgotten about Ice Ts turn as J-Bone, leader of the Lo-Tek underground. It was fun enough, but it was weird to hear the theater audience erupt with applause at the end, though, knowing how it was received almost three decades ago.At least some of the movies below, from the last weeks worth of trailers, are bound to be better.A Minecraft MovieJack Blacks Steve gets a backstory in the latest Minecraft trailer. The trailer shows young Steve (you can tell hes young because his beard is brown at first) mining his way into the blocky game world, where he discovers he can build anything he imagines, as long as its made with blocks. Plus we get a look at Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, and Sebastian Eugene Hansen, who all find themselves dropped into this world with a now-much-older Steve (who now has a gray beard to show the passage of time).You can catch A Minecraft Movie in theaters on April 4th. Then you can follow it up with a Minecraft theme park in 2026 or so. ElioThe new teaser trailer from Pixars Elio lets us know the film is still alive and well. The movie comes from Coco screenwriter Adrian Molina, who co-directs alongside Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian. It features the voice of Yonas Kibreab as Elio, a child who gets abducted by aliens and pretends to be Earths leader. If Coco is any indication, I expect Ill be openly sobbing at the end. Its out on June 13th.Alien: EarthThe FX spinoff Alien: Earth is on its way in summer 2025, when it promises to finally* show us what it might be like to see xenomorphs on our planet. Theres little revealed here apart from the release timeframe and that, as The Verges Andrew Webster remarks, the aliens are still very shiny.*Unless you count the Aliens vs. Predator films.Star Wars Outlaws: Wild CardStar Wars Outlaws is getting its first DLC in the form of Wild Card, a storyline that brings Lando Calrissian into the game. If you havent been playing the game lately, maybe hopping into a space battle with Hans old buddy will draw you back in. Wild Card is available now for $14.99.How to Train Your DragonOh hey, look, a live-action version of an animated movie. How to Train Your Dragon will go head-to-head with Elio when its released on June 13th.

Apple CEO Tim Cook managed to forge a personal relationship with Donald Trump during his first Presidential term that other tech firms struggled to replicate. Now, others are trying to follow his template, says a Wall Street Journal report today.Cook used direct appeals to influence Trumps 2017 tax policy and to get him to dial back his 2019 tariffs in ways that benefitted Apple. In exchange, Trump got to look good; as the Journal points out, Cook didnt correct Trump when claimed responsibility for Apple opening an Austin manufacturing plant that had already been around for years and wasnt even owned by Apple.Part of Cooks strategy was keeping things simple, according to the Journal:Instead of sending government relations executives or lobbyists, Cook would appeal to Trump directly through phone calls and meals, said people familiar with the interactions.Cook then developed a meeting strategy with Trump where he would bring one data point to home in on a single issue in a meeting, the people said. That approach helped keep the meetings from spiraling in too many directions.Cook partly built the relationship by zeroing in on areas of mutual interest between Apple and Trumps agenda, writes the Journal. Plenty hope to follow Cooks playbook, the outlet adds. RelatedWSJ points to leaders of Boeing and FedEx who have both tried talking with Trump directly. Others have reportedly considered getting through to him by communicating through the Department of Government Efficiency that Trump rewarded Elon Musk with leading after he aggressively backed Trumps campaign. Some of the biggest tech leaders seem keen on taking the flattery route. Trump has claimed that Google CEO Sundar Pichai reached out to tell him about his trending Google searches and that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had called him a lot to pledge his support and praise his reaction to an attempt to assassinate him.

Speech recognition technology has made significant progress, with advancements in AI improving accessibility and accuracy. However, it still faces challenges, particularly in understanding spoken entities like names, places, and specific terminology. The issue is not only about converting speech to text accurately but also about extracting meaningful context in real-time. Current systems often require separate tools for transcription and entity recognition, leading to delays, inefficiencies, and inconsistencies. Additionally, privacy concerns regarding the handling of sensitive information during speech transcription present significant challenges for industries dealing with confidential data.aiOla has released Whisper-NER: an open-source AI model that allows joint speech transcription and entity recognition. This model combines speech-to-text transcription with Named Entity Recognition (NER) to deliver a solution that can recognize important entities while transcribing spoken content. This integration allows for a more immediate understanding of context, making it suitable for industries requiring accurate and privacy-conscious transcription services, such as healthcare, customer service, and legal domains. Whisper-NER effectively combines transcription accuracy with the ability to identify and manage sensitive information.Technical DetailsWhisper-NER is based on the Whisper architecture developed by OpenAI, which is enhanced to perform real-time entity recognition while transcribing. By leveraging transformers, Whisper-NER can recognize entities like names, dates, locations, and specialized terminology directly from the audio input. The model is designed to work in real-time, which is valuable for applications that need instant transcription and comprehension, such as live customer support. Additionally, Whisper-NER incorporates privacy measures to obscure sensitive data, thereby enhancing user trust. The open-source nature of Whisper-NER also makes it accessible to developers and researchers, encouraging further innovation and customization.The importance of Whisper-NER lies in its capability to deliver both accuracy and privacy. In tests, the model has shown a reduction in error rates compared to separate transcription and entity recognition models. According to aiOla, Whisper-NER provides a nearly 20% improvement in entity recognition accuracy and offers automatic redaction capabilities for sensitive data in real-time. This feature is particularly relevant for sectors like healthcare, where patient privacy must be protected, or for business settings, where confidential client information is discussed. The combination of transcription and entity recognition reduces the need for multiple steps in the workflow, providing a more streamlined and efficient process. It addresses a gap in speech recognition by enabling real-time comprehension without compromising security.ConclusionaiOlas Whisper-NER represents an important step forward for speech recognition technology. By integrating transcription and entity recognition into one model, aiOla addresses the inefficiencies of current systems and provides a practical solution to privacy concerns. Its open-source availability means that the model is not only a tool but also a platform for future innovation, allowing others to build upon its capabilities. Whisper-NERs contributions to enhancing transcription accuracy, protecting sensitive data, and improving workflow efficiencies make it a notable advancement in AI-powered speech solutions. For industries seeking an effective, accurate, and privacy-conscious solution, Whisper-NER sets a solid standard.Check out the Paper, Model on Hugging Face, and GitHub Page. 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. Aswin Ak+ postsAswin AK is a consulting intern at MarkTechPost. He is pursuing his Dual Degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is passionate about data science and machine learning, bringing a strong academic background and hands-on experience in solving real-life cross-domain challenges. Read this AI Research Report from Kili Technology on 'Evaluation of Large Language Model Vulnerabilities: A Comparative Analysis of Red Teaming Techniques'