• The TCL QM6K Trades Picture Punch for Refined Performance
    www.wired.com
    TCLs upgraded 6 Series skips the brightness blast for impressively balanced performance.
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  • Apple's rumored Home Hub said to be under employee-testing
    appleinsider.com
    Apple's long-rumored Home Hub peripheral is now rumored to be debuting in the second half of 2025, and is allegedly being taken home by select Apple employees for real-world testing.One concept for a future Apple Smart Home Hub.Various rumors have suggested that Apple will be making a big push into smart home accessories across the second half of 2025, including the existing Home Key feature for a future smart doorbell. Apple is also working with other manufacturers of smart home accessories to ensure HomeKit compatibility.A new report from Bloomberg reiterates earlier claims that Apple intends to tie the rise of HomeKit accessories into a smart Home Hub, now with a device code name: J490. Rumor Score: Possible Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
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  • Apple smart glasses still a distant possibility as Apple considers its wearables future
    appleinsider.com
    Apple is still working out how it can press forward with wearable devices, with it considering a possible switch away from bulky Apple Vision Pro headset instead creating the fabled Apple Glass by 2030.Optimistic renders of what Apple Glass could look likeThe wearable device ambitions of Apple are somewhat troubled, with the Apple Vision Pro considered a commercial flop in its first release. While it has other ways it can progress forward on the concept, it's still taking time to work out the best way forward.In Sunday's Bloomberg newsletter, Mark Gurman writes that Apple is at least looking into different form factors. After axing its project to create AR glasses as an external Mac display earlier in 2025, Apple is now thinking about standalone AR glasses once again. Rumor Score: Possible Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
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  • French charity raffle offers the chance to own a piece of Notre Dame Cathedral
    archinect.com
    France has begun selling damaged foundation stones recovered from Notre Dame Cathedral after the 2019 fire. The money raised will support the preservation of religious landmarks across France, says ARTnews. The Fondation du Patrimoine, which has identified 5,000 other religious structures across the country as being in need of repair, will be offering 50 stones engraved with silhouettes of its faade to lucky winners of the 40 ($43) draw. Winners will be announced at the sixth anniversary of the fire on April 15th. You can learn more about the contest's stipulations by visiting fondation-patrimoine.org.The cathedral reopened in December following an unprecedented five-year and $912 million reconstruction.
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  • Split Fiction Crosses 250,000 Concurrent Players on Steam
    gamingbolt.com
    Hazelight Studios Split Fiction started strong at launch, with over 197,000 concurrent players on Steam. However, it recently surpassed that, reaching 254,756 concurrent players at this time of writing per SteamDB.Its already more than tripled the peak concurrent count for It Takes Two, the developers last co-op smash hit, but thats not all. Split Fiction actually has the second-highest player count for an Electronic Arts-published game on Steam, beating the likes of EA Sports FC 25, Battlefield 5 and more, falling only behind Apex Legends. Considering the latter is free-to-play, thats pretty impressive.Neither Hazelight nor EA have confirmed sales numbers for the title, so stay tuned for updates in the coming days. Alongside PC, Split Fiction is available for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The story is about 12 to 14 hours long and the Friends Pass lets those who own the game invite a friend to play for free.Check out our review we gave it a seven out of ten, praising the gameplay and variety while criticizing the story-telling, characters and writing.
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  • Styx: Blades of Greed Features 3 Massive Playgrounds, New Abilities Like Mind Control
    gamingbolt.com
    Cyanide Studios thieving goblin Styx is back for more cutthroat heists in Styx: Blades of Greed. This time, he has his own crew, which serves as an origin story for the Black Hand from 2012s Of Orcs and Men, and a zeppelin to cruise around in. However, alongside Styxs old moves like cloning and invisibility, he also has mind control and time shift courtesy of Quartz.The gameplay is still vertically focused, with players able to grapple, glide and climb, but it also offers three massive playgrounds to explore. Cyanide also touts each mission as a puzzle with more than just one solution. Hopefully, this means additional replay value as players experiment to complete a heist.Regardless of your approach, the Inquisition will do everything to stop Styx and his crew from sneaking and stealing all the Quartz. Launching for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, Styx: Blades of Greed arrives this Fall. Stay tuned for more details, gameplay and updates before its release.
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  • Apples plans for a smart display suffer a Siri-related setback
    www.theverge.com
    The iPhone StandBy feature shows what an Apple smart display could look like.Late last week, Apple delayed its big Siri AI upgrade, and it seems that will take the companys rumored smart display with it. According to Bloombergs Mark Gurman in todays Power On newsletter, Apple has postponed the device because it at least partially relies on the delayed Siri capabilities.Its been rumored for months now that Apple was planning to release a device early this year that would serve as a smart home hub with a display, similar to devices that its main smart home competitors, Amazon and Google, have both offered for years. The device is expected to be the first Apple smart home hub with support for Apple Intelligence. Its also rumored to run on tvOS and support native Apple apps like Calendar, Notes, and, according to recent rumors, compatibility with Apples Messages app.Apple said last week that its upgraded smart assistant is taking longer than we thought, and will be released in the coming year, hinting that it may not be an iOS 18 feature as originally promised. The version of Apple Intelligence that we have now doesnt really offer any smart home features so Apple releasing a smart display thats wrapped up in the Siri AI upgrade wouldnt make much sense right now. Apples competitors, at first glance, seem to be forging ahead. Amazon, which has had its own struggles integrating AI into Alexa, has announced its finally doing just that with Alexa Plus, starting with its own robust Echo Show smart display lineup that most recently included the addition of the Echo Show 21. Google began its own similar rollout of Gemini in December, though only for some Nest speakers. But in both cases, theyre limited rollouts and not truly in the public sphere quite yet.
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  • Microsoft and Ubiquant Researchers Introduce Logic-RL: A Rule-based Reinforcement Learning Framework that Acquires R1-like Reasoning Patterns through Training on Logic Puzzles
    www.marktechpost.com
    Large language models (LLMs) have made significant strides in their post-training phase, like DeepSeek-R1, Kimi-K1.5, and OpenAI-o1, showing impressive reasoning capabilities. While DeepSeek-R1 provides open-source model weights, it withholds training code and dataset details, raising questions about scaling reasoning abilities to smaller models, optimal training data structures, and reliable replication methodologies. Traditional mathematics datasets like GSM8K and Omini-MATH present inconsistent difficulty levels with varying logical depths, complicating controlled experimentation. The need for targeted datasets with controllable complexity has become critical for isolating variables and studying the emergence of reasoning capabilities in LLMs.LLMs reasoning capabilities have been advanced through various techniques, with Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning playing a crucial role in breaking down complex problems into manageable steps. Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), initially successful in AlphaGo, has been adapted to guide model-based planning by balancing exploration and exploitation through tree-based search and random sampling. Further, Post-training strategies to enhance reasoning capabilities include additional fine-tuning or reinforcement learning (RL) on specialized datasets. Methods like Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), and REINFORCE++ are showing promise, forming a frontier for advancing model reasoning alongside test-time scaling methods.Researchers from Microsoft Research Asia, Ubiquant, and Independent have proposed Logic-RL, a rule-based RL framework that acquires reasoning patterns similar to DeepSeek-R1 through training on logic puzzles. It adopts the REINFORCE++ algorithm and reward designs from DeepSeek-R1 for post-training. As training progresses, the model naturally allocates more computational steps to reasoning, expanding from generating hundreds to thousands of tokens, which enables deeper exploration and refinement of thought processes. Using only 5K generated logic puzzles, their 7B model shows cross-domain generalization, improving by 125% on AIME and 38% on AMC against the base model. This suggests that RL-trained reasoning develops abstract problem-solving patterns rather than domain-specific matching.The researchers face challenges with Qwen2.5-Math-7Bs tendency to generate Python code blocks that conflict with formatting requirements. Testing both Qwen2.5-7B-Base and Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct reveals nearly identical training metrics during RL training, including validation accuracy, response length growth curves, and reward curves. The implementation shows dramatic improvements in reasoning capabilities, with output length increasing from an initial average of 500 tokens to approximately 2000 tokens after just 1000 RL training steps. This enables the emergence of more complex behaviors, such as reflection and exploration of alternative solutions, and these behaviors significantly enhance the models ability to handle complex tasks and are closely aligned with the results reported in DeepSeek-R1.The results demonstrate that while PPO achieves significant advantages in accuracy and reward, it was 138% slower than REINFORCE++ in training speed. REINFORCE++ shows superior stability, performance gains, and training efficiency compared to GRPO, outperforming it across nearly all metrics. GRPO exhibits the weakest performance among the three RL algorithms evaluated. The models Super OOD (out-of-distribution) generalization capability proves exceptionally strong, achieving an overall improvement of 125% on the AIME dataset and 38% on the AMC dataset. This synchronous improvement indicates that the RL process enhances both in-distribution performance and facilitates the emergence of robust, transferable reasoning strategies.This study shows the significant potential of Logic-RL in developing complex reasoning skills in language models through a rule-based RL framework. However, its important to acknowledge that the findings are based on a relatively small-scale logic dataset, which may limit their applicability. The generalizability of these results to large-scale real-world mathematical or coding scenarios remains an open question that requires further investigation. Future research should focus on extending this approach to more diverse and complex datasets to thoroughly validate its effectiveness and robustness across different domains and problem types. By maintaining this work as an open research project, the researchers aim to benefit the broader scientific community.Check outthe Paper.All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,feel free to follow us onTwitterand dont forget to join our80k+ ML SubReddit. Sajjad AnsariSajjad Ansari is a final year undergraduate from IIT Kharagpur. As a Tech enthusiast, he delves into the practical applications of AI with a focus on understanding the impact of AI technologies and their real-world implications. He aims to articulate complex AI concepts in a clear and accessible manner.Sajjad Ansarihttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/sajjadansari/Qilin: A Multimodal Dataset with APP-level User Sessions To Advance Search and Recommendation SystemsSajjad Ansarihttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/sajjadansari/AxoNN: Advancing Large Language Model Training through Four-Dimensional Hybrid Parallel ComputingSajjad Ansarihttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/sajjadansari/LightThinker: Dynamic Compression of Intermediate Thoughts for More Efficient LLM ReasoningSajjad Ansarihttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/sajjadansari/Meet AI Co-Scientist: A Multi-Agent System Powered by Gemini 2.0 for Accelerating Scientific Discovery Parlant: Build Reliable AI Customer Facing Agents with LLMs (Promoted)
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  • UK Deals: I'm Catching Discounted Pokmon TCG Stellar Crown and Paldea Evolved Blisters Today
    www.ign.com
    As of March 9, Pokmon TCG: Scarlet & Violet Stellar Crown and Paldea Evolved three-pack blisters are still floating below retail at Amazon for around 12 each. Thats not going to last. Everyones too busy chasing Prismatic Evolutions, Surging Sparks, and the upcoming Journey Together sets, which means these two are slipping under the radar.The Pokmon Company is already shifting print focus to newer releases, so picking up packs below RRP will soon be a thing of the past. If youre looking to grab some of the best Illustration Rares and competitive Trainer cards in the game below retail price, this is the best time to start collecting.Pokmon TCG: Scarlet & VioletStellar Crown 3-Pack Blister - LatiasPokmon TCG: Scarlet & VioletStellar Crown 3-Pack Blister - LatiaStellar Crown is criminally overlooked. With Terapagos ex as the face of the set youd think it would be getting more love. For now its still under the Pokradar, but that wont last. The Special Illustration Rare Terapagos ex is already pushing 75, and its only going up.Id love to pull Illustration Rare Squirtle or Bulbasaur, both of which are well over 60 now. They match the Obsidian Flames Charmander promo, which I was smart enough to grab with the Pokmon Center stamp early. Now I just need the other two to complete the trio. If you think Charmander is the best of the three, youre wrong, but I respect your opinion.Stellar Crown also has some seriously good competitive cards. Galvantula ex and Hydrapple ex are creeping up in value, and Galvantulas Special Illustration Rare is already over 25. If players figure out a way to consistently pull off its Item lock strategy, we could see that price spike even higher. Pokmon TCG: Scarlet & VioletPaldea Evolved Triple Pack (Tinkatink) Pokmon TCG: Scarlet & VioletPaldea Evolved Triple Pack (Tinkatink)Ive been stacking Paldea Evolved singles for months, and I still dont have the Magikarp. Youd think a card featuring one of the most useless Pokmon of all time wouldnt cost over 200, yet here we are. The Shinji Kanda artwork turned it into one of the most desirable cards of the entire Scarlet & Violet era. If youve got one sitting in a binder, youre sitting on gold.Then theres Iono (Special Illustration Rare), currently over 65, which is ridiculous for a Trainer card until you realize how broken it is. It can reset your opponents hand at any point in the game, making it a staple in almost every competitive deck. Im running the regular Ultra Rare, but Id trade my bulk collection to swap it out for the full art (Who wouldn't?).Paldea Evolved is stacked with underrated cards, but Chien-Pao ex (Special Illustration Rare) deserves more attention. Its sitting around 25, but give it time. Its a monster in Standard format, and the artwork is stunning. If you love Pokmon with serious main character energy, this is one of the best picks in the set.Paldea Evolved and Stellar Crown Pull RatesThe pull rates in Paldea Evolved are surprisingly fair, especially for Special Illustration Rares and Hyper Rares. No ridiculous imbalances mean a solid chance at pulling valuable cards compared to other sets where chase cards are way harder to find. The longer these sets stay in circulation, the more likely it is that cheap packs disappear entirely.Stellar Crowns pull rates are about what youd expect from a 2024 Pokmon set. The "hit" rate isn't any higher than other releases, but what makes this set interesting is its smaller card pool compared to Twilight Masquerade. With only 33 Secret Rares in the entire set, compared to 56 in Temporal Forces and 59 in Twilight Masquerade, the odds of pulling a specific chase card are much better. Special Illustration Rare Terapagos ex for example is almost twice as easy to pull here as Greninja ex was in Twilight Masquerade. It also means Illustration Rares and Hyper Rares are a little more within reach since there are fewer of them competing for your pack slots.For now Amazon still has stock at around 12 per blister pack. Thats a steal for sets with some of the best modern Pokmon cards, and its only a matter of time before they become just as hard to find as past special sets. If youre even thinking about grabbing some, this is your chance before prices start creeping up beyond 4 a booster.Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of "Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior". Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
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