html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" A lot of Cyber Monday deals can give you a feeling of restriction. And by this, I mean there isnt a lot of room for the freedom to choose andbuild and tinker like there are at other times. This is what youll get, and youll like it! the world seems to say. And thats true of Cyber Monday Microsoft Surface deals, too (including the youll like it part, they are pretty great deals and you will like them, go check them out!). But, if you go through Microsoft you can now get a Surface Pro 11 bundle with the works (including the critical keyboard and even a stylus pen) and get up to $466 in savings. Its one of the best ways to get the full Microsoft Surface Pro 11 experience out there. But how should you build your bundle? And is maxing out the savings really the best choice? Tap the button below to get started and well walk you through the five-step process in no time.Microsofts store lays this out as a five-step custom order, and theres no reason for us to do any differently:Step 1 is easy, its what youre here for, the well-reviewed Microsoft Surface Pro 11 that has some serious advantages over the new iPad Pro. Its only $880 now, down from $1,200, giving you a starting savings of $320. Tap Add to bundle and move on.RelatedStep 2 is the second easiest step and youll know exactly how to handle it. The detachable Surface Pro Keyboard makes the Surface Pro 11 more of a laptop, and helps differentiate it from Cyber Monday tablet deals. Add it to the bundle (its required) by tapping Add to bundle. Your new final price will be $1,000, a savings of $340 on the usual $1,340.Step 3 is the first optional step. You can get Microsoft 365, a cloud software suite, for 15 months at the 12 month price point. Even as a professional writer, I know I wont use this, but if you need Microsoft Word or Excel or the like for you job, this is a good buy. It even comes with 1TB of cloud storage per person using it.Step 4 lets you add Microsoft Complete protection to your Surface Pro. This is a sort of warranty and service agreement that even covers things like drops and spills. Warranties, service guaranties, and how much you value them are highly personal. And youll want to ask yourself how clumsy you are and how long you want a product before you can truly evaluate its worth. In any event you can now get four years of Microsoft Complete for $200, instead of the usual $300, bringing your total savings up to $440.Step 5 is themost confusing step. Here, you add your pen and (possibly) other accessories to your bundle. Our recommendation here is to get the Surface Slim Pen which is actually the Surface Slim Pen 2, which we consider one of the best tablet styluses, but is not labelled as such. With this deal, which saves you $26, the convenient Surface Slim Pen 2 is only $4 more than the regular Surface Pen. However, whatever you do, do not get the Surface Pen Tips that appear on the same page. Instead, tap the > where youll find the Surface Slim Pen Tips. In this area you might also find the Surface Dock 2 to be useful, as it allows you to use the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 like a desktop with full dual monitor support. Its $260, though, so youre unlikely to want it if you already have a desktop setup.So, is it worth gettingevery deal available in the bundle and saving $466? Probably not, but you can still build something excellent at this time. My hypothetical bundle, which skipped the extra warranty time and Microsoft 365 but got the Surface Slim Pen and bonus tips, came out to be $1,129, which is $366 lower than the usual $1,495. Thats still highly competitive with any of the savings you get in other Cyber Monday Microsoft Surface deals, however, and I was completely in control. If youre interested in building your own offer, and havent been following along, go ahead and push the button below to get started.Editors Recommendations

The U.S. has restricted the export of memory chips used in AI applications, but a delayed announcement gave Chinese companies a chance to stock up.

That's deep Researchers finally identify the oceans mystery mollusk It's a nudibranch, but so distantly related that it gets its own phylogenetic family. Elizabeth Rayne Dec 2, 2024 3:32 pm | 15 Credit: MBARI Credit: MBARI Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreSome of the most bizarre lifeforms on Earth lurk in the deeper realms of the ocean. There was so little known about one of these creatures that it took 20 years just to figure out what exactly it was. Things only got weirder from there.The organisms distinctive, glowing presence was observed by multiple deep-sea missions between 2000 to 2021 but was simply referred to as mystery mollusk. A team of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) researchers has now reviewed extensive footage of past mystery mollusk sightings and used MBARIs remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to observe it and collect samples. Theyve given it a name and have finally confirmed that it is a nudibranchthe first and only nudibranch known to live at such depths.Bathydevius caudactylus, as this nudibranch is now called, lives 1,0004,000 meters (3,30013,100 feet) deep in the oceans bathypelagic or midnight zone. It moves like a jellyfish, eats like a Venus flytrap, and is bioluminescent, and its genes are distinct enough for it to be classified asthe first member of a new phylogenetic family.Anatomy, diet, behavior, bioluminescence, and habitat distinguish this surprising nudibranch from all previously described species, and genetic evidence supports its placement in a new family, the MBARI research team said in a study recently published in Deep Sea Research.Is that a?Nudibranchs are gastropods, which literally translates to stomach foot since the foot they crawl around on when not swimming is right below their guts. They are part of a larger group that includes terrestrial and aquatic snails and slugs. B. caudactylus, however, seems to get around more like a jellyfish than a sea slug. It mostly swims using an oral hood that opens and closes to propel itself backward through the water in a manner similar to many jellyfish.The hood of B. caudactylus can also act something like a Venus flytrap. While it is not a hinged structure like the leaves of the plant, it is used to trap prey. Typically small crustaceans, the prey are then pushed to the mouth at the back of the hood. The mystery mollusk. The nudibranch also seems to have a unique way of avoiding becoming food itself. Projections at the end of its tail, known as dactyls, can detach if needed, much like the tails of some lizard species. The MBARI team thinks that these dactyls are possibly a lure meant to trick predators while the nudibranch swims away. They later regenerate.B. caudactylus is gelatinous and transparent, with a smooth heart, textured digestive gland, and whitish brain that can easily be seen from the outside. On its head are two antenna-like chemosensory organs known as rhinophores, which probably help it sense prey. A cylindrical foot helps with locomotion on the ocean floor. Like many other bioluminescent organisms in the deep sea, it glows blue, since red light does not transmit far at those depths.Almost alienSo how is B. caudactylus related to other nudibranchs? The researchers sequenced three of its genes and compared them to sequences from two prominent groups of nudibranchs (the dorids and cladobranchs) to find out. While the sequences of each B. caudactylus version of the gene had differences with those of the other groups, they still had enough in common for the mystery mollusk to be classified as a nudibranch.The three genes supported that Bathydevius is a divergent genus of Nudibranchia, the MBARI team said in the same study. [It is a] sister to the rest of cladobranch and dorid nudibranchs [and a] sister to [the genus] Bathydoris.Even with its genetic relationship to other nudibranchs, there are many areas where B. caudactylus deviates. It is not the only nudibranch with a hood that traps prey, and also not the only species to prey on crustaceans, which is rare for nudibranchs, which usually feed on cnidarians like jellyfish. It also lacks a radula, the tongue-like structure most nudibranchs eat with. Melibae leonina shares all these characteristics but it is genetically distant. The researchers think that the similarities between the two species are a result of convergent evolution, when genetically unrelated organisms develop similar characteristics.Bioluminescence is also uncommon in nudibranchs. B. caudactylus is only the third known bioluminescent nudibranch and seventh known bioluminescent gastropod. Again, its only distantly related to the other species.The deep ocean is the closest thing to an alien environment, yet its right on our own planet. Much of it either remains unexplored or is still not well understood. This could mean that there are still many undiscovered species hiding in the darkness. Protecting their ecosystems could give us a chance to find more forms of life just as strange and fascinating as a glowing sea slug.Deep Sea Research, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr.2024.104414Elizabeth Rayne Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared on SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Grunge, Den of Geek, and Forbidden Futures. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she is either shapeshifting, drawing, or cosplaying as a character nobody has ever heard of. Follow her on Threads and Instagram @quothravenrayne. 15 Comments

Rage clicks People will share misinformation that sparks moral outrage People can tell it's not true, but if they're outraged by it, they'll share anyway. Jacek Krywko Dec 2, 2024 3:18 pm | 21 Credit: Ricardo Mendoza Garbayo Credit: Ricardo Mendoza Garbayo Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreRob Bauer, the chair of a NATO military committee, reportedly said, It is more competent not to wait, but to hit launchers in Russia in case Russia attacks us. We must strike first. These comments, supposedly made in 2024, were later interpreted as suggesting NATO should attempt a preemptive strike against Russia, an idea that lots of peoplefound outrageously dangerous.But lots of people also missed a thing about the quote: Bauer has never said it. It was made up. Despite that, the purported statement got nearly 250,000 views on X and was mindlessly spread further by the likes of Alex Jones.Why do stories like this get so many views and shares? The vast majority of misinformation studies assume people want to be accurate, but certain things distract them, says William J. Brady, a researcher at Northwestern University. Maybe its the social media environment. Maybe theyre not understanding the news, or the sources are confusing them. But what we found is that when content evokes outrage, people are consistently sharing it without even clicking into the article. Brady co-authored a study on how misinformation exploits outrage to spread online. When we get outraged, the study suggests, we simply care way less if whats got us outraged is even real.Tracking the outrageThe rapid spread of misinformation on social media has generally been explained by something you might call an error theorythe idea that people share misinformation by mistake. Based on that, most solutions to the misinformation issue relied on prompting users to focus on accuracy and think carefully about whether they really wanted to share stories from dubious sources. Those prompts, however, havent worked very well. To get to the root of the problem, Bradys team analyzed data that tracked over 1 million links on Facebook and nearly 45,000 posts on Twitter from different periods ranging from 2017 to 2021.Parsing through the Twitter data, the team used a machine-learning model to predict which posts would cause outrage. It was trained on 26,000 tweets posted around 2018 and 2019. We got raters from across the political spectrum, we taught them what we meant by outrage, and got them to label the data we later used to train our model, Brady says.The purpose of the model was to predict whether a message was an expression of moral outrage, an emotional state defined in the study as a mixture of anger and disgust triggered by perceived moral transgressions. After training, the AI was effective. It performed as good as humans, Brady claims. Facebook data was a bit more tricky because the team did not have access to comments; all they had to work with were reactions. The reaction the team chose as a proxy for outrage was anger. Once the data was sorted into outrageous and not outrageous categories, Brady and his colleagues went on to determining whether the content was trustworthy news or misinformation.We took what is now the most widely used approach in the science of misinformation, which is a domain classification approach, Brady says. The process boiled down to compiling a list of domains with very high and very low trustworthiness based on work done by fact-checking organizations. This way, for example, The Chicago Sun Times ended up classified as trustworthy; Breitbart, not so much. One of the issues there is that you could have a source that produces misinformation which one time produced a true story. We accepted that. We went with statistics and general rules, Brady acknowledged. His team confirmed that sources classified in the study as misinformation produced news that was fact-checked as false six to eight times more often than reliable domains, which Bradys team thought was good enough to work with.Finally, the researchers started analyzing the data to answer questions like whether misinformation sources evoke more outrage, whether outrageous news was shared more often than non-outrageous news, and finally, what reasons people had for sharing outrageous content. And thats when the idealized picture of honest, truthful citizens who shared misinformation just because they were too distracted to recognize it started to crack.Going with the flowThe Facebook and Twitter data analyzed by Bradys team revealed that misinformation evoked more outrage than trustworthy news. At the same time, people were way more likely to share outrageous content, regardless of whether it was misinformation or not. Putting those two trends together led the team to conclude outrage primarily boosted the spread of fake news, since reliable sources usually produced less outrageous content.What we know about human psychology is that our attention is drawn to things rooted in deep biases shaped by evolutionary history, Brady says. Those things are emotional content, surprising content, and especially, content that is related to the domain of morality. Moral outrage is expressed in response to perceived violations of moral norms. This is our way of signaling to others that the violation has occurred and that we should punish the violators. This is done to establish cooperation in the group, Brady explains.This is why outrageous content has an advantage in the social media attention economy. It stands out, and standing out is a precursor to sharing. But there are other reasons we share outrageous content. It serves very particular social functions, Brady says. Its a cheap way to signal group affiliation or commitment.Cheap, however, didnt mean completely free. The team found that the penalty for sharing misinformation, outrageous or not, was loss of reputationspewing nonsense doesnt make you look good, after all. The question was whether people really shared fake news because they failed to identify it as such, or if they just considered signaling their affiliation was more important.Flawed human natureBradys team designed two behavioral experiments where 1,475 people were presented with a selection of fact-checked news stories curated to contain outrageous and not outrageous content; they were also given reliable news and misinformation. In both experiments, the participants were asked to rate how outrageous the headlines were.The second task was different, though. In the first experiment, people were simply asked to rate how likely they were to share a headline, while in the second they were asked to determine if the headline was true or not.It turned out that most people could discern between true and fake news. Yet they were willing to share outrageous news regardless of whether it was true or nota result that was in line with previous findings from Facebook and Twitter data. Many participants were perfectly OK with sharing outrageous headlines, even though they were fully aware those headlines were misinformation.Brady pointed to an example from the recent campaign, when a reporter pushed J.D. Vance about false claims regarding immigrants eating pets. When the reporter pushed him, he implied that yes, it was fabrication, but it was outrageous and spoke to the issues his constituents were mad about, Brady says. These experiments show that this kind of dishonesty is not exclusive to politicians running for officepeople do this on social media all the time.The urge for signaling a moral stance quite often takes precedence over truth, but misinformation is not exclusively due to flaws in human nature. One thing this study was not focused on was the impact of social media algorithms, Brady notes. Those algorithms usually boost content that generates engagement, and we tend to engage more with outrageous content. This, in turn, incentivizes people to make their content more outrageous to get this algorithmic boost.Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/science.adl2829Jacek KrywkoAssociate WriterJacek KrywkoAssociate Writer Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry. 21 Comments

Nature, Published online: 02 December 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-03927-9Ioannis Binietoglou makes sure that the latest technology reaches areas that need it.

Nature, Published online: 27 November 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08271-6Studies on proteinprotein interactions using proteins containing d- or l-amino acids show that stereoselectivity of binding varies with the degree of disorder within the complex.

New survey data from Evercore suggests Netflix has room to raise prices.The percentage of subscribers who said they'd cancel in response to a price hike is well down.Almost half indicated more live content like the Paul-Tyson fight could keep them from canceling.Netflix's subscriber gains from its password-sharing crackdown could be waning, and some on Wall Street think it'll raise prices soon to keep its growth going.New survey data from Evercore ISI just added fuel to the theory. Its quarterly survey of Netflix subscribers, published December 1, showed that Netflix is in a strong position based on market penetration, satisfaction, and likelihood of canceling. Citibank analysts also recently wrote that Netflix could raise US prices by 12% in 2025.In Evercore's survey, price sensitivity among Netflix subscribers was lower than it had been in four years, which should make it easier for the streamer to push through price increases. When asked how they'd respond to a $1 a month price hike, 26% of 1,300 US respondents said they'd be highly likely to cancel, down from 45% who said so in August.Consumers often overstate their willingness to cancel services in response to price increases, so those absolute numbers should be taken with a big grain of salt. Netflix has consistently had a lower cancellation rate than the other major streamers, even as it's raised prices over the years, according to the data firm Antenna. When it came to penetration, Netflix continued to dominate, with 58% saying they watched the service in the past 12 months, up 1% from the previous quarter and ahead of Amazon's Prime Video (54%) and Disney's Hulu (44%).A third factor, satisfaction, was the highest it had been since the third quarter of 2020, with 63% of those surveyed by Evercore saying they were "extremely/very satisfied" with the service.In addition to a hit-filled third quarter ("The Perfect Couple," "Monsters: The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story," and more), Netflix has benefited from buzzy live events like the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight. Netflix's lower-priced ad tier has also increasingly kept people from canceling while giving the streamer cover to raise prices on its pricier, ad-free tiers. Live Christmas NFL games this month and WWE "Raw" starting in 2025 will likely drive more momentum, with 47% of those surveyed saying they would be more likely to keep Netflix if more live content were added.Netflix has been raising prices roughly once a year, though unevenly among its various tiers. It's been over a year since the last increase, in October 2023, when Netflix raised the price of its Premium plan by $3 to $22.99 a month and upped the cost of its now-defunct Basic plan. The last time Netflix raised prices on its Standard ad-free plan was January 2022, when it raised it by $1.50 to $15.49.When asked about price increases on Netflix's third-quarter earnings call in October, co-CEO Greg Peters said he saw a "tremendous amount of potential" if Netflix kept improving its TV and film offerings and expanded into new areas like live events. The company recently raised prices in Europe and Japan and said the results met expectations."Our approach towards pricing, it's been remarkably consistent over many, many years," Peters said on the call. "And our core theory is we've got to work really, really hard to make sure that we are delivering more value to members every quarter and then we sort of assess, based on how that's going, metrics like engagement, like acquisition, retention, did we do a good job there? How do we actually deliver on that promise of more value? And when we do, then we occasionally ask members to pay a bit more so we can invest that forward and keep that whole process going."

Evan Duby had been a real-estate broker for just a few years when he decided to try an unusual method of selling a home. Five buyers were offering to pay similar amounts for one of his listings, a one-bedroom co-op unit in a leafy Brooklyn neighborhood with an asking price of $485,000. Rather than instructing the house hunters to submit their best offers and cross their fingers as is customary in the US Duby, with his client's permission, convened an auction. The buyers gathered on a conference call, where they signaled their willingness to pay as Duby raised the price in $5,000 increments. The home sold for $505,000."I don't know what possessed me," Duby tells me. "I was just sort of trying to see, is there a better way to do this?"Trying to buy a house can feel like playing a game of poker in which one player holds all the cards. When the seller's agent tells you they're weighing another bid, or even 30 other bids, there's no way to tell if their claim is bluster or fact. When you lose, you may not know whether another $10,000 would have sealed the deal or if your insistence on an inspection tanked your chance. The nagging uncertainty isn't limited to buyers. Even in a hot market, a seller may leave the closing table unfulfilled. Did their request for "highest and best" offers actually yield the highest and best? It's hard to say.It doesn't have to be this way. In Australia, about a third of homes sell via auctions that wrap up in a matter of minutes. Sellers get to see exactly how far buyers are willing to go to nab their dream home; buyers gain a clear picture of what it takes to win in the market. The openness and simplicity stand in sharp contrast to America's system, in which buyers write blind offers and then pray theirs meets the mark.In the US, open auctions are usually reserved for swanky mansions or, more often, distressed properties facing foreclosure or extensive repairs. Mention an auction and people are likely to ask what's wrong with the house, or how lavishly expensive it is or, simply, why? Real-estate agents haven't been too keen on making the process more transparent: Conventional wisdom says that asking buyers to submit their best and final offers will elicit the highest price. A FOMO-filled buyer, the thinking goes, may unknowingly blow the competition out of the water and deliver a windfall for the seller.Despite all that, the idea of open auctions is more tantalizing than ever. Buyers and sellers are exhausted from years of opaque bidding wars even these days, with the market substantially cooler than it was a couple of years ago, a lack of inventory means homes may still draw multiple offers. The real-estate industry is notoriously resistant to change, but recent class-action lawsuits have rewritten the rules about how buyers pay their agents and opened the door for more overhauls down the line.Capitalizing on this feeling, a small cadre of companies are trying to bring versions of the Australian model to the States. They face an uphill battle. Duby, who recently started GoEx, a venture-capital firm focused on real-estate tech, is squarely in the ripe-for-change camp, but even he'll admit it's hard to shift the status quo. For roughly a decade after that first auction, he continued to broker deals the conventional way for American sellers, Aussie-style auctions were a tough sell. But just because they haven't caught on in the States doesn't mean they're destined to remain a pipe dream. Duby imagines a not-so-distant future in which prequalified buyers bid for homes online as if they were picking up a rare watch on eBay."I don't see why we don't do that," Duby tells me. "I don't see how that doesn't help."The man could be mistaken for a pastor: crisp gray suit, arms stretched toward the heavens, a crowd gathered before him. But he's here to sell real estate, not religion."Reflect on this absolutely fantastic opportunity in front of you," he booms in a distinctly Aussie drawl. "Not me the house!"With that, the auction begins. The property at stake is a quaint one-story home surrounded by a white picket fence in a suburb of Melbourne. The bidding starts at 1.26 million Australian dollars, but the price climbs as the auctioneer needles buyers to dig deeper: "You know you want to!" In the end, it sells for more than 1.5 million Australian dollars, or about $980,000. The whole thing takes less than half an hour.I watched all this unfold on TikTok, where the account @AuctionReporters maintains a steady stream of these strangely addictive dispatches from Australia's real-estate market. Every now and then a video like this will go viral among Americans who balk at the ritual. An open auction is so vastly different from the secretive practice here in the States that it can break our brains in a reply to a similar video on X, someone posted, "this is real???"Real-estate auctions are a time-honored tradition in Australia, dating back more than 200 years to its days as a British colony. Their popularity varies based on location and the strength of the market: In boom times for home sales, more sellers turn to the gavel a study by Kenneth Lusht, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, found that in some pockets of Melbourne, auctions accounted for as much as 80% of home sales during periods of particularly strong demand. A later study of sales from 2011 to 2019 in the states of New South Wales and Victoria, home to more than half of the country's population, found that 30% to 40% of listings went to auction during that period.Auctions are risky, to be sure. Homeowners publicly disclose the terms and privately set a reserve price, or the minimum amount they'd accept if the bidding doesn't reach that figure, the house doesn't sell. A study published in 2022 described such a house as carrying a "stench of failure" and found that it was more likely to sell at a discount later. An auction is basically impossible to stop once it's in motion, and sellers may not always be pleased with the results. But in times of healthy demand for homes, auctions can deliver benefits for sellers looking to ride out the frenzy. The study on the risks of auctions also found significant upsides: Successful sales tended to achieve prices that were 1.2% higherIt's hard to imagine regular homes in the US trading hands this way. But a handful of companies have proposed a middle ground between the public spectacle of Australia's auctions and America's behind-closed-doors strategy. Final Offer, in Massachusetts, is one online marketplace that mediates auction-ish sales. A real-estate agent can list their seller's property on the platform, specify their asking price and their terms, and input a "final offer price" and specific terms of sale, or the amount a buyer can agree to pay in order to stop the bidding and win outright (similar to eBay's "Buy It Now" feature for auctioned items). When a buyer makes a qualifying offer, the clock starts ticking: The seller can choose to reveal the price and terms of any offer in contention, and interested buyers can try to exceed the bids before the window closes.You're giving buyers information they've never had before.Here's a real example: Late this summer, the owner of 5818 Ipswich Road, a two-bedroom home built in 1951 in Bethesda, Maryland, listed it on Final Offer for $650,000. Buyer 1 submitted an offer of $658,125, and the seller agreed to take it if no better offers came in over the next three days. Other buyers soon entered the picture: Buyer 2 bid $661,500. Buyer 1 responded by going $3,000 higher. Over the next two days, Buyers 3, 4, and 5 threw their hats in the ring, and the price climbed above $800,000. At the eleventh hour, Buyer 6 emerged with a bid of $810,573. Then came the kicker: Buyer 1 made the "final offer" of $850,000, ending the bidding process. The entire saga is available for anyone to see on Final Offer's website.In real estate, it turns out, a little transparency goes a long way. "You're giving buyers information they've never had before about what the seller really wants," says Tim Quirk, who cofounded Final Offer and serves as its chief strategy officer. In a typical sale, spurned buyers rarely walk away knowing what would have won maybe with that knowledge they would have been willing to up their price or adjust their terms, perhaps waiving an inspection and agreeing to buy the home as is. And sellers, even when they take a deal, never quite know if someone might have gone even higher if they knew what they were up against. "What ultimately ends up happening is you get remorse on both sides of the table," Quirk tells me.Final Offer is still small Quirk said that a little more than 1,000 homes had sold on the platform in the two years since it started. Sellers on the site don't have to disclose the prices and terms of offers that come in and can opt to let buyers see only that other offers have been made. But Quirk tells me more than 80% of sellers choose to make the bids public.SparkOffer, which last year was acquired by Auction.com, is another platform that aims to give buyers a sense of their competition. The site shows buyers how many offers they're competing with and is beta testing a new feature that assigns each bid a score based on its price and proposed terms; when other bids come in, buyers get to see how their score stacks up. They don't know the exact details, but they'll at least have a sense of where they stand and what it might take to climb the ranks. Sellers get to outsource the messy back-and-forth of negotiations to a platform that prods buyers to sweeten their offers while preserving the possibility that a buyer may unwittingly overbid.Neither Quirk nor Mike Russo, the founder of SparkOffer, thinks of his platform as an auction exactly. For one, home sales aren't just about price. When a buyer makes an offer, they can propose contingencies, or conditions that need to be met in order for the sale to close. They might request an inspection and ask the seller to make repairs if something comes up. They could retain the right to back out of the deal if an appraiser values the home lower than expected. The buyer could also ask for concessions, or some money back from the seller to cover stuff like closing costs. At the height of the pandemic-era homebuying frenzy, some desperate buyers threw caution to the wind and waived these contingencies they were simply tired of losing. Bottom line, not all buyers are equal in the eyes of a seller.To reach widespread acceptance in the US, an auction-esque model would have to let sellers choose the terms that work best for them. Most important, new marketplaces would have to convince American sellers and their agents to turn away from tradition. That kind of cultural shift is a tall order. "I don't think the American consumer is ready for auctions yet," says Rob Hahn, the CEO of Decentre Labs, a company he started in 2022 to bring online real-estate auctions to the masses. In real estate, it turns out, a little transparency goes a long way.But it's unclear who really benefits from the system we have. Buyers rarely get feedback that could help them make stronger offers in the future. Maybe as a seller you'll get lucky and a buyer with blinders will overpay for your house but that approach is shortsighted, since most sellers have to turn around and purchase another home. The biggest beneficiaries, Duby tells me, may just be real-estate agents: When buyers and sellers are shuffled through this murky process, they'll look for a professional guide.Australia isn't a perfect analog for the US. The country doesn't have a system of local databases where most homes are listed as we do in the States with the multiple listing services which makes it tougher for buyers to find homes. And while most sellers are represented by agents, most buyers are not. But still, hardly anyone is proposing we copy and paste this Australian tradition. The country's real-estate market does tell us, however, that another way is possible.American consumers may not be ready for auctions yet, Hahn told me. "But it doesn't mean that it's not going to happen at some point."James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

EA FC players think the new Winter Champions Season Pass reward card might be the best free player the series has ever offered - Here's how to get the Liverpool star

Video game recreating Hamas October 7 attack banned as terrorist propagandaMichael BeckwithPublished December 2, 2024 3:07pmUpdated December 2, 2024 3:08pm The delisted title is still available in the US (Nidal Njim Games)The developer behind a now banned Israel/Palestine shooter has defended it as being no different to the Call Of Duty games.Valve has removed controversial video games from its Steam platform before, such as one that let you play as a school shooter and another where you control a rapist, but this is the first time the UKs counter-terrorism unit has got involved.Thats whats happened with Fursan Al-Aqsa: The Knights Of The Al-Aqsa Mosque, although neither Steam nor the Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) have given an exact reason for the removal.The games developer, however, claims this was a politically motivated decision and that the game is accused of being terrorist propaganda.What is Fursan Al-Aqsa: The Knights Of The Al-Aqsa Mosque?Created by Nidal Nijm, a Brazilian-Palestinian developer, Fursan Al-Aqsa: The Knights Of The Al-Aqsa Mosque has been available to play since April 2022 and, at a first glance, seems like a typical military shooter.Describing itself as the Palestinian Max Payne on steroids, the game explicitly depicts the conflict between Israel and Palestine. As such, you play as a Palestinian student who joins a resistance movement to get revenge after he was tortured by Israeli soldiers and an Israeli airstrike killed his family.While the game is no longer available here in the UK, its still available for purchase in the US. Its Steam listing mentions that its goal is to show the Israel/Palestine conflict from a Palestinian perspective, breaking the clich of portraying Muslim and Arabs as terrorists, bandits, villains and the Americans/Israelis as the good guys and heroes of history.The description is also keen to stress that it doesnt promote terrorism or antisemitism, adding This is a message of protest against the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian lands. The game is also unavailable in Germany and Australia but only because the developer cant afford to pay for age ratings (Nidal Njim Games)Why was Fursan Al-Aqsa: The Knights Of The Al-Aqsa Mosque removed from Steam?According to 404 Media, who spoke with developer Nijm, Fursan Al-Aqsa: The Knights Of The Al-Aqsa Mosque was removed from Steam on October 22. This was before the game saw an update in November that allows players to recreate aspects of the October 7 attack by Hamas, but apparently CTIRU stepped in before it was announced.In an email sent to Nijm, which he only recently shared with 404 Media, Valve informed him it had been contacted by the CTIRU in order to delist his game. When pressed on why exactly this was done, all it said was As with any authority for a region the oversees [sic] and governs what content can be made available, we have to comply with their requests.More Trending404 Media did approach the CTIRU directly for an explanation, but it only answered with, we do not comment on specific content or any communication we may have with specific platforms or providers.Nijm states that, in his opinion, the games removal was due to political reasons and that it was deemed terrorist propaganda. Nijm argues his game is no different to the likes of Call Of Duty, drawing a specific comparison to the latest release, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6, which is set during the Gulf War.On their flawed logic, the most recent Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 should be banned as well, says Nijm, pointing out how Black Ops 6s campaign involves you playing as an American soldier and killing swathes of Iraqi enemies, What I can say is that we see clearly the double standards.Nijm holds no animosity towards Valve, saying he understands why it had to remove his game and that hes still grateful it allowed him to publish his game on Steam in the first place. The game had previously been available for two years (Nidal Njim Games)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralExclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy