teamwork makes the dream work Ants vs. humans: Solving the piano-mover puzzle "People stand out for individual cognitive abilities while ants excel in cooperation." Jennifer Ouellette Jan 7, 2025 2:20 pm | 34 Ants maneuvering a T-shaped load across a maze Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science Ants maneuvering a T-shaped load across a maze Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn more Who is better at maneuvering a large load through a maze, ants or humans? The piano-mover puzzle involves trying to transport an oddly shaped load across a constricted environment with various obstructions. It's one of several variations on classic computational motion-planning problems, a key element in numerous robotics applications. But what would happen if you pitted human beings against ants in a competition to solve the piano-mover puzzle?According to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, humans have superior cognitive abilities and, hence, would be expected to outperform the ants. However, depriving people of verbal or nonverbal communication can level the playing field, with ants performing better in some trials. And while ants improved their cognitive performance when acting collectively as a group, the same did not hold true for humans.Co-author Ofer Feinerman of the Weizmann Institute of Science and colleagues saw an opportunity to use the piano-mover puzzle to shed light on group decision-making, as well as the question of whether it is better to cooperate as a group or maintain individuality. "It allows us to compare problem-solving skills and performances across group sizes and down to a single individual and also enables a comparison of collective problem-solving across species," the authors wrote.They decided to compare the performances of ants and humans because both species are social and can cooperate while transporting loads larger than themselves. In essence, "people stand out for individual cognitive abilities while ants excel in cooperation," the authors wrote.Feinerman et al. used crazy ants (Paratrechina longicornis) for their experiments, along with the human volunteers. They designed a physical version of the piano-movers puzzle involving a large t-shaped load that had to be maneuvered across a rectangular area divided into three chambers, connected via narrow slits. The load started in the first chamber on the left, and the ant and human subjects had to figure out how to transport it through the second chamber and into the third.This version of the puzzle intentionally posed challenges for both humans and ants and was designed to maintain a similar ratio of body size to load size. "People are challenged by the precise length assessments, mental rotations, and symmetry comprehension that are required to distinguish between viable moves and dead-ends," the authors wrote. As for the ants, "Their pheromone based communication takes neither load size versus door size nor load rotations into account, and thus deems a major part of their collective navigation strategy useless." The ants were manipulated into trying to solve the puzzle by making the t-shaped load resemble food.Collective cognition Humans maneuvering a T-shaped load across a maze. Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science The experiment was run multiple times with different variations: a single ant, a group of about seven ants, and a larger group of around 80 ants; and a single person, a group of six to nine people, and a larger group of 26 people. Humans were instructed to hold the load only by handles that were carefully placed to mimic how the object would be held by ants, and the handles had sensors for measuring the pulling force applied by each person. In some of the runs, humans were not allowed to communicate verbally or with gestures, and in some trials, they even wore masks and sunglasses to avoid nonverbal communication. Each trial run was videotaped for analysis.It should come as no surprise that humans had the edge as individuals, given their superior cognitive abilities; as communicating groups, they also easily beat the ants at finding the optimal solution. And large groups of ants performed much better than individual ants. However, the picture changed when humans were limited in their ability to communicate; large groups of ants often actually performed better than humans in several runs, thanks to their emergent collective memory that helped them avoid repeated mistakes and maintain a particular direction of motion.Humans, when told not to communicate, tended to "pull toward the lowest common denominator, the greedy option, as would a newly attached ant," the authors wrote. "Once the load starts moving, people in restricted communication groups simply align their pull with its motion. This abandonment of their individual cognitive abilities is reminiscent of the collective ant behavior." Communicating human groups, by contrast, were able to discuss and collectively decide on their next move.An ant colony is actually a family, said Feinerman. All the ants in the nest are sisters, and they have common interests. Its a tightly knit society in which cooperation greatly outweighs competition. Thats why an ant colony is sometimes referred to as a super-organism, sort of a living body composed of multiple cells that cooperate with one another. Our findings validate this vision. Weve shown that ants acting as a group are smarter, that for them the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In contrast, forming groups did not expand the cognitive abilities of humans. The famous wisdom of the crowd thats become so popular in the age of social networks didnt come to the fore in our experiments.PNAS, 2024. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2414274121 (About DOIs).Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 34 Comments

Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, making it the third-largest gaming company.Activision Blizzard had some 10,000 employees as of 2022, but Microsoft has enacted mass layoffs.Here's the history of the company behind iconic games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.Activision Blizzard is one of the most well known publishers in the video game industry.Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, the company is best recognized for its popular franchises, including Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush Saga.Activision Blizzard made major international headlines following complaints about working conditions and its Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition in 2023. The all-cash deal saw shareholders of Activision receive a buyout of $95 per share. Following the purchase, Microsoft reported revenue from its Xbox division increased 61% by January 2024.Here's everything to know about the creation of Activision Blizzard, its successes, and the many controversies that have dogged the company over the years.The merger that created Activision BlizzardActivision Blizzard was formed in 2008 through the merger of Activision and Vivdeni Games. The Activision name dates back to 1979 when the previous company became the first independent, third-party console video game developer. The "Blizzard" portion of the company's name comes from Vivendi Games' subsidiary, Blizzard Entertainment.Following the merger, most of Vivendi Games' subsidiaries were shuttered, except for Blizzard Entertainment. Their games were either discontinued, published by other studios, or retrained and published by Activision Blizzard.In 2010, the studio Bungie entered into a 10-year, $500 million publishing deal with Activision Blizzard with the main goal of turning the "Destiny" franchise into a major franchise. The deal ended a year early in 2019, and Bungie split from Activision Blizzard on what appeared to be amicable terms that allowed Bungie to retain the publishing rights for the "Destiny" franchise.In 2022, the state of California filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, alleging widespread harassment of female employees and a "pervasive frat boy" culture. More than 1,000 Activision Blizzard employees signed a petition calling for CEO Bobby Kotick to resign. Even PlayStation head Jim Ryan and Xbox head Phil Spencer criticized Activision when reports emerged that Kotick personally intervened to save the job of a senior staff member the company's human resources department wanted to fire over sexual harassment allegations. Amid a major lawsuit against Activision Blizzard, over 1,000 employees called for CEO Bobby Kotick's resignation. Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair The Microsoft acquisitionWhen Microsoft declared its intent to buy Activision Blizzard, it said Activision was key to providing the "building blocks for the metaverse." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella later said in an investor conference call that the company sees the metaverse as "a collection of communities and individual identities anchored in strong content franchises accessible on every device."In an effort to assuage regulator concerns, Microsoft and Sony struck a binding 10-year deal in the summer of 2023 to keep the Call of Duty franchise available on PlayStation consoles. Microsoft vice chair Brad Smith declared that the company "remains focused on ensuring that Call of Duty remains available on more platforms and for more consumers than ever before."The lawsuit brought by the state of California was settled for $54 million in 2023, and the settlement found the sexual harassment claims unfounded and cleared Kotick of any wrongdoing. Initially, it was reported that following the closure of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Kotick would stay on as CEO of the soon-to-be subsidiary. However, he ultimately ended up leaving the company upon the deal's completion.Microsoft's acquisition faced legal challenges from the FTC and European regulators but was ultimately allowed to proceed, making Microsoft the third-largest video game company and bolstering the company's Xbox division, providing access to Activision Blizzard's extensive catalog of games and franchises.As part of the deal, Activision's estimated 10,000 employees joined Microsoft under its Xbox division. Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard is its third purchase of a video game developer, following its previous acquisitions of Mojang, the maker of Minecraft, in 2014 for $2.5 billion, and ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, in 2021 for $7.5 billion.Layoffs in the post-pandemic landscape Activision Blizzard and the rest of the gaming sector has struggled to adjust to the post-pandemic landscape with plummeting sales and shrinking player bases. Daniel Boczarski/WireImage via Getty Images Despite Microsoft's market cap hitting a record-high $3 trillion in January 2024, the company laid off 1,900 workers across Activision, Xbox, and holding company ZeniMax. Activision Blizzard was reportedly the most affected by the layoffs, despite Microsoft earnings calls showing that Activision Blizzard generated billions of dollars in revenue throughout 2024.These Microsoft layoffs came after after the company enacted 10,000 job cuts in January 2022 and a further 1,000 that July. In September 2024, Microsoft laid off another 650 employees from its Xbox division, with the job cuts predominantly across its corporate and support roles.These job cuts come as the tech and gaming industries face significant challenges: plummeting sales, shrinking player bases, and rising competition. Companies across the sector are adjusting to the post-pandemic landscape, where the explosive growth in gaming seen during the lockdowns has returned to more pre-pandemic levels.

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Razer brought a bunch of new gaming hardware and accessories to show off at CES 2025 this week, including two big additions to its gaming chair lineup. The first of these gaming chair announcements is the Project Arielle Fan System, a bladeless fan add-on for Razer's Fujin and Fujin Pro mesh gaming chairs.The Project Arielle fan attaches to the Fujin and Fujin Pro backrests and, according to Razer's press release, can reduce the perceived temperature by between 2 to 5 degrees Celsius (roughly 3.5 to 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit) with fan noise "as soft as a whisper." It also features energy-efficient heaters that can deliver warm air up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), making it helpful in any environment. Temperature and fan speeds are controlled via a touch panel on the side of the seat, and it can be easily attached or removed from the chair thanks to a quick-release connection.Razer's Project AriellePricing and release date information has not been revealed, though Razer is demoing Project Arielle in person at its CES 2025 booth, so we expect the fan add-on to launch in the near future. In the meantime, the Razer Fujin Pro is available now, starting at $1,050 at Razer's online store. The standard Razer Fujin gaming chair is available for a 25% discount at Amazon, which drops the price from $650 to $500. Both models feature similar mesh materials and chair dimensions, but the standard Fujin lacks a few of the features of the Fujin Pro, including a headrest. Luckily, there's an optional headrest add-on for the Fujin available for $130 at Best Buy.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Nvidia revealed its next generation of graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 50-series, at CES this week. There are four new GPUs in the lineup: the Geforce RTX 5090, 5080, 5070, and 5070 Ti.The flagship card, the RTX 5090, is priced at $2,000, and Nvidia claims it's twice as powerful as the RTX 4090 but requires a 1,000-watt power supply--a huge leap from the RTX 4090's 450W baseline power draw. Despite its power demands, the RTX 5090 is more compact than its predecessor, fitting into smaller PC builds.The slimmer size and higher performance are true of all the cards in the lineup, with Nvidia claiming the $1,000 RTX 5080 to be twice as fast as the RTX 4080. The budget-priced $550 RTX 5070 offers performance comparable to the RTX 4090, at nearly a third of the price. The 5070 Ti, meanwhile, sits between the 5070 and 5080 in terms of price ($750) and performance.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Moreso than other games, open-world titles need to have an incredible amount of detail added to their setting. Every aspect of a setting's geography, culture, and unique elements - if it's in the playable area - needs to be thought of and considered. This kind of attention to detail - if done properly - can make for some truly impressive and immersive titles.

After what has felt like endless delays and false starts for the Masters of the Universe movie, it looks like the first live-action film in with these characters since 1987. And while quite a bit of the more minute details for this movie are still under wraps, it looks like the man who will play He-Man/Prince Adam, Nicholas Galitzine has shed a little light on the tone of the story.

A lot of RPGs are infamous for the immense depth and breadth of lore they contain. The genre is known for containing much denser games than other categories, and much of that is due to the complex and intricate storylines they weave. Fantasy RPGs, in particular, have a lot of lore to build since they're set in fantastical worlds with their own set of rules, societies, and magical systems unlike anything in the real world.

The gods are dying. More specifically, theyre being killed. The world is on the other side of the cataclysmic Great Divine War, losing its magic as it waits for a prophesied savior. But thats not this story. This is the story before that. The story of Ever and Rake, two Godkillers lost in their own grief as they try to find answers in a world that offers none until they find each other.This is the story of Godkiller: Balance. First premiering in August 2024, Godkiller: Balance is a prestige drama actual play podcast that explores how we cope with grief, often to our own detriment. The limited series features a pantheon of guest performers to play the gods themselves, including Brennan Lee Mulligan, Matt Mercer, Aabria Iyengar, Anjali Bhimani, Luis Carazo, and Christian Navarro. While these big names bring some of the most emotionally resonant performances of their actual play career to the table, the heart of the series lies with its three core cast members: Gina Susanna as Ever, Jannes Wessels as Rake, and Em Carlson as everyone else.Over the course of 20 episodes, audiences listen to the parallel journeys of the tender-hearted, obsessively driven Ever and the cynically numb Rake. Ever, searching for a cure to the disease that took her father-figure, and Rake, obediently following the violent whims of his divine mother, find mirror images of themselves in one another as they discover that chasing redemption can either save us or destroy us.A cast member of BlackwaterDNDs main campaign, Wessels portrayal of Rakes tortured submission evokes Theon Greyjoys Reek from Game of Thrones. Susanna, an up-and-coming performer in the actual play space, offers a nuanced range of hope and despair in her performance as Ever, cycling from tender, gentle love to bottomless despair with a level of craftsmanship that allows her to hold her own alongside titans of the actual play medium.Facilitating the series is BlackwaterDND cast member Carlson, who wields faer experience as a mental health professional as both a shield and a sword, creating space for some of the most emotionally powerful role-playing Ive encountered as an actual play critic. Carlsons editing and sound design, though subtle, supports the cast by balancing gameplay with performance while leaving room for the heartbreaking silences in between.This series is not for everyone, though. Godkiller, a holypunk dark fantasy game designed by Connie Chang of Transplanar renown, is not a high-paced, action-packed comedy vehicle. The series takes its time developing these arcs, reveling in the weight of the world it has built though you will be rewarded if you slow down enough to hold that weight with it. It doesnt shy away from navigating the reality of its chosen theme, weaving emotional abuse, substance use, and derealization into its narrative web (with corresponding content warnings before each episode).Though Balance is technically a prequel to BlackwaterDNDs previous series Godkiller: Oblivion, the series doesnt require any previous knowledge of the world though viewers of BlackwaterDNDs main campaign will find easter eggs from the shared universe. As of this writing, 10 of the 20 installment limited series have premiered, meaning there is plenty of time to catch up as the series moves into its second act.Episodes of Godkiller: Balance premiere biweekly on BlackwaterDND, or wherever podcasts are found.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a big shift in the company's approach to moderation and speech. Meta will be suspending its fact-checking program and will move to an X-style Community Notes model on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.In a video, Zuckerberg said that Meta has "built a lot of complex systems to moderate content" in recent years. ""But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes," he said. "Even if they accidentally censor one percent of posts, that's millions of people." He went on to say that we're now at the point where there have been "too many mistakes and too much censorship."To that end, he said, "we're gonna get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms." That's going to start with a switch to "Community Notes, similar to X, starting in the US."The company plans to phase in Community Notes in the US over the next few months and iterate on them over this year, all the while removing its fact checkers and ending the demotion of fact-checked content. Meta will also make certain content warning labels less prominent.Meta's new Chief Global Affairs Officer and Nick Clegg's replacement Joel Kaplan wrote in a blog post that the company has seen the Community Notes "approach work on X where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see."Meta says it will be up to contributing users to write Community Notes and to decide which ones are applied to posts on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. "Just like they do on X, Community Notes will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings," Kaplan wrote. "We intend to be transparent about how different viewpoints inform the Notes displayed in our apps, and are working on the right way to share this information."The Community Notes model hasn't entirely been without issue for X, however. Studies have shown that Community Notes have failed to prevent misinformation from spreading there. Elon Musk has championed the Community Notes approach but some have been applied to his own posts to correct falsehoods that he has posted. After one such incident, Musk accused "state actors" of manipulating the system. YouTube has also tested a Community Notes model.ASSOCIATED PRESSMeanwhile, Zuckerberg had some other announcements to make, including a simplification of certain content policies and ditching "a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse. What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it's gone too far. I wanna make sure that people can share their experiences and their beliefs on our platforms."When asked to provide more details about these policy changes, Meta directed Engadget to Kaplan's blog post.In addition, the filters that Meta had used to search for any policy violations across its platforms will be focused on "illegal and high-severity violations." These include terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams. For other, less-severe types of policy violations, Meta will rely more on users making manual reports, but the bar for removing content will be higher."Were going to tune our systems to require a much higher degree of confidence before a piece of content is taken down," Kaplan wrote. In some cases, that will mean multiple reviewers looking at a certain piece of content before reaching a decision on whether to take it down. Along with that, Meta is "working on ways to make recovering accounts more straightforward and testing facial recognition technology, and weve started using AI large language models (LLMs) to provide a second opinion on some content before we take enforcement actions."Last but not least, Meta says it's taking a more personalized approach to political content across its platforms after attempting to make its platforms politically agnostic for the past few years. So, if you want to see more political stuff in your Facebook, Instagram and Threads feeds, you'll have the choice to do so.As with donating to Donald Trump's inauguration fund, replacing longtime policy chief Nick Clegg with a former George W. Bush aide and appointing Trump's buddy (and UFC CEO) Dana White to its board, it's very difficult to see these moves as anything other than Meta currying favor with the incoming administration.Many Republicans have long railed against social media platforms, accusing them of censoring conservative voices. Meta itself blocked Trump from using his accounts on his platforms for years after he stoked the flames of the attempted coup of January 6, 2021. "His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world," Zuckerberg said at the time. "We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great." Meta removed its restrictions on Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts last year.Zuckerberg explicitly said that Trump's election win is part of the reasoning behind Meta's policy shift, calling it "a cultural tipping point" on free speech. He said that the company will work with Trump to push back against other governments, such as the Chinese government and some in Latin America, that are "pushing to censor more."He claimed that "Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there." Zuckerberg also took shots at the outgoing administration (over an alleged push for censorship) and third-party fact checkers, who he claimed were "too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they created."These are all significant changes for Meta's platforms. On one hand, allowing more types of speech could increase engagement without having to rely on, say, garbage AI bots. But the company may end up driving away many folks who don't want to deal with the type of speech that could become more prevalent on Instagram, Facebook and Threads now that Meta is taking the shackles off."Now we have an opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it," Zuckerberg said. While he noted that "it'll take time to get this right and these are complex systems that are never gonna be perfect," and that the company will still need to work hard to remove illegal content, "the bottom line is that after years of having our content moderation work focused primarily on removing content, it is time to focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our systems and getting back to our roots about giving people voice."Update January 7, 2:58PM ET: Noting that Meta responded to our request for comment.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is-ditching-third-party-fact-checkers-on-facebook-instagram-142330246.html?src=rss