Disney has been cleared of copyright infringement in a lawsuit over the animated film Moana.The move came after a jury in Los Angeles ruled in favor of the entertainment giant, with the verdict delivered on Monday following a two-week trial in federal court.Buck Woodall, a screenwriter based in New Mexico, had filed the lawsuit in 2020, alleging Moana was based on his work, Bucky the Wave Warrior.An eight-member jury ruled unanimously Disney did not have access to Woodalls 2011 screenplay or earlier treatments.Moana 2DISNEYloading...After deliberating for less than three hours, jurors determined access had not been established, making it unnecessary to assess whether the two works were substantially similar.Woodallalleged both projects centered on teenagers who defy their parents to embark on perilous journeys to save a Polynesian island.He also cited other similarities, including celestial navigation, a tattooed demigod and surviving a storm at sea.According toWoodall, he pitched the project in 2004 to his sister-in-laws stepsister, who was then an assistant at a live-action production company on the Disney lot.The assistant later inquired whether Walt Disney Animation Studios would accept a submission but was informed that it would not.Disney argued Moana was independently developed years later and said no evidence linked Woodalls work to the filmmakers.The companys lawyers pointed to key differences between the two works with its legal team saying in a motion: Bucky is white; Moana is Oceanian. Bucky is from the mainland U.S.; Moana is indigenous to the fictional island of Motunui.Bucky lives in the modern day; Moana lives millennia in the past. Bucky is an ordinary teen; Moana is the future chief of her people. Bucky wants to learn to surf, while Moana wants to continue her peoples proud history as the greatest ocean voyagers the world has ever known.A judge ruled in November most of Woodalls claims were barred by the statute of limitations, as the film was released in 2016.But a claim against Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Disneys home video subsidiary, was allowed to proceed due to the DVD release in 2017.Following the verdict, Disneys lawyers declined to comment.Woodalls lawyer said he was "disappointed" and would consider his client's options. Woodall also filed a separate lawsuit in January this year, alleging Moana 2 infringes on his work, with the case remaining pending.Get our free mobile appGreat Disney+ Movies You Might Have MissedThese excellent films are all waiting to be discovered on Disney+.Filed Under: Disney, Moana, Moana 2Categories: Movie News

The Canadian robotruck startup Waabi says its super-realistic virtual simulation is now accurate enough to prove the safety of its driverless big rigs without having to run them for miles on real roads. The company uses a digital twin of its real-world robotruck, loaded up with real sensor data, and measures how the twins performance compares with that of real trucks on real roads. Waabi says they now match almost exactly. The company claims its approach is a better way to demonstrate safety than just racking up real-world miles, as many of its competitors do. It brings accountability to the industry, says Raquel Urtasun, Waabis firebrand founder and CEO (who is also a professor at the University of Toronto). There are no more excuses. After quitting Uber, where she led the ride-sharing firms driverless-car division, Urtasun founded Waabi in 2021 with a different vision for how autonomous vehicles should be made. The firm, which has partnerships with Uber Freight and Volvo, has been running real trucks on real roads in Texas since 2023, but it carries out the majority of its development inside a simulation called Waabi World. Waabi is now taking its sim-first approach to the next level, using Waabi World not only to train and test its driving models but to prove their real-world safety. For now, Waabis trucks drive with a human in the cab. But the company plans to go human-free later this year. To do that, it needs to demonstrate the safety of its system to regulators. These trucks are 80,000 pounds, says Urtasun. Theyre really massive robots. Urtasun argues that it is impossible to prove the safety of Waabis trucks just by driving on real roads. Unlike robotaxis, which often operate on busy streets, many of Waabis trucks drive for hundreds of miles on straight highways. That means they wont encounter enough dangerous situations by chance to vet the system fully, she says. But before using Waabi World to prove the safety of its real-world trucks, Waabi first has to prove that the behavior of its trucks inside the simulation matches their behavior in the real world under the exact same conditions. Virtual reality Inside Waabi World, the same driving model that controls Waabis real trucks gets hooked up to a virtual truck. Waabi World then feeds that model with simulated videoradar and lidar inputs mimicking the inputs that real trucks receive. The simulation can re-create a wide range of weather and lighting conditions. We have pedestrians, animals, all that stuff, says Urtasun. Objects that are rareyou know, like a mattress thats flying off the back of another truck. Whatever. Waabi World also simulates the properties of the truck itself, such as its momentum and acceleration, and its different gear shifts. And it simulates the trucks onboard computer, including the microsecond time lags between receiving and processing inputs from different sensors in different conditions. The time it takes to process the information and then come up with an outcome has a lot of impact on how safe your system is, says Urtasun. To show that Waabi Worlds simulation is accurate enough to capture the exact behavior of a real truck, Waabi then runs it as a kind of digital twin of the real world and measures how much they diverge. WAABI Heres how that works. Whenever its real trucks drive on a highway, Waabi records everythingvideo, radar, lidar, the state of the driving model itself, and so on. It can rewind that recording to a certain moment and clone the freeze-frame with all the various sensor data intact. It can then drop that freeze-frame into Waabi World and press Play. The scenario that plays out, in which the virtual truck drives along the same stretch of road as the real truck did, should match the real world almost exactly. Waabi then measures how far the simulation diverges from what actually happened in the real world. No simulator is capable of recreating the complex interactions of the real world for too long. So Waabi takes snippets of its timeline every 20 seconds or so. They then run many thousands of such snippets, exposing the system to many different scenarios, such as lane changes, hard braking, oncoming traffic and more. Waabi claims that Waabi World is 99.7% accurate. Urtasun explains what that means: Think about a truck driving on the highway at 30 meters per second, she says. When it advances 30 meters, we can predict where everything will be within 10 centimeters. Waabi plans to use its simulation to demonstrate the safety of its system when seeking the go-ahead from regulators to remove humans from its trucks this year. It is a very important part of the evidence, says Urtasun. Its not the only evidence. We have the traditional Bureau of Motor Vehicles stuff on top of thisall the standards of the industry. But we want to push those standards much higher. A 99.7% match in trajectory is a strong result, says Jamie Shotton, chief scientist at the driverless-car startup Wayve. But he notes that Waabi has not shared any details beyond the blog post announcing the work. Without technical details, its significance is unclear, he says. Shotton says that Wayve favors a mix of real-world and virtual-world testing. Our goal is not just to replicate past driving behavior but to create richer, more challenging test and training environments that push AV capabilities further, he says. This is where real-world testing continues to add crucial value, exposing the AV to spontaneous and complex interactions that simulation alone may not fully replicate." Even so, Urtasun believes that Waabis approach will be essential if the driverless-car industry is going to succeed at scale. This addresses one of the big holes that we have today, she says. This is a call to action in terms of, you knowshow me your number. Its time to be accountable across the entire industry.

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Two new measures show where AI models fail on fairness Whats new: A new pair of AI benchmarks could help developers reduce bias in AI models, potentially making them fairer and less likely to cause harm. The benchmarks evaluate AI systems based on their awareness of different scenarios and contexts. They could offer a more nuanced way to measure AIs bias and its understanding of the world.Why it matters: The researchers were inspired to look into the problem of bias after witnessing clumsy missteps in previous approaches, demonstrating how ignoring differences between groups may in fact make AI systems less fair. But while these new benchmarks could help teams better judge fairness in AI models, actually fixing them may require some other techniques altogether. Read the full story. Scott J Mulligan AGI is suddenly a dinner table topic The concept of artificial general intelligencean ultra-powerful AI system we dont have yetcan be thought of as a balloon, repeatedly inflated with hype during peaks of optimism (or fear) about its potential impact and then deflated as reality fails to meet expectations. Over the past week, lots of news went into inflating that AGI balloon, including the launch of a new, seemingly super-capable AI agent called Manus, created by a Chinese startup. Read our story to learn whats happened, and why it matters.James ODonnell This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The US has rebranded its immigration app with a self-deport functionIts a bid to encourage people living illegally to leave the country voluntarily. (AP News) + If they fail to self-report, undocumented migrants could face harsher consequences. (BBC)+ But immigrants should think very carefully before trusting the app. (The Guardian)+ The app was previously used to schedule asylum appointments. (MIT Technology Review)2 DOGE is scrabbling around for some wins The growing backlash against its clumsy cuts puts DOGEs top brass under pressure. (WP $)+ Biomedical research cuts would affect both elite and less-wealthy universities. (Undark)+ The agency is causing chaos within social securitys offices. (New Yorker $)+ The next phase? Handing over decisions to machines. (The Atlantic $)3 Donald Trump isnt a fan of the CHIPS Act Even though the law is designed to support chip manufacturing in the US. (NYT $)+ Heres what is at stake if he follows through on his threats to scrap it. (Bloomberg $)4 Elon Musk claims a cyber attack on X came from the Ukraine area But the billionaire, who is a fierce critic of Ukraine, hasnt provided any evidence. (FT $)+ The platform buckled temporarily under the unusually powerful attack. (Reuters)+ Cyber experts arent convinced, however. (AP News)5 AI-powered PlayStation characters are on the horizon Sony is testing out AI avatars that can hold conversations with players. (The Verge)+ How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play. (MIT Technology Review)6 DeepSeeks founder isnt fussed about making a quick buck Liang Wenfeng is turning down big investment offers in favor of retaining the freedom to make his own decisions. (WSJ $)+ Chinas tech optimism is at an all-time high. (Bloomberg $)+ How DeepSeek ripped up the AI playbookand why everyones going to follow its lead. (MIT Technology Review) 7 The rain is full of pollutants, including microplasticsAnd you thought acid rain was bad. (Vox) 8 An all-electric seaglider is being tested in Rhode IslandIt can switch seamlessly between floating and flying. (New Scientist $) + These aircraft could change how we fly. (MIT Technology Review)9 Tesla Cybertruck owners have formed an emotional support group One member is pushing for Cybertruck abuse to be treated as hate crimes. (Fast Company $)10 Theres only one good X account left Step forward Joyce Carol Oates. (The Guardian)Quote of the day There is no more asylum. US immigration officials tell a businessman seeking legitimate asylum that he cant enter the country just days after Donald Trump took office, the Washington Post reports. The big storyNext slide, please: A brief history of the corporate presentation August 2023 PowerPoint is everywhere. Its used in religious sermons; by schoolchildren preparing book reports; at funerals and weddings. In 2010, Microsoft announced that PowerPoint was installed on more than a billion computers worldwide. But before PowerPoint, 35-millimeter film slides were king. They were the only medium for the kinds of high-impact presentations given by CEOs and top brass at annual meetings for stockholders, employees, and salespeople. Known in the business as multi-image shows, these presentations required a small army of producers, photographers, and live production staff to pull off. Read this story to delve into the fascinating, flashy history of corporate presentations.Claire L. EvansWe can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.)+ Heres how to prevent yourself getting a crick in the neck during your next flight.+ I would love to go on all of these dreamy train journeys.+ This Singaporean chocolate cake is delightfully simple to make.+ Meet Jo Nemeth, the woman who lives entirely without money.

Role of council planning committees to be curtailed under legislation introduced by government todayBuilt environment leaders have warmly welcomed new legislation aiming to speed up planning decisions but called for more funding for councils.The Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will be introduced to Parliament this afternoon, will curtail the role of council planning committees and allow more schemes to be decided by planning officers.The legislation will also set out controls over the size of planning committees, mandate training for committee members and empower councils to set their own planning fees to invest in the over-stretched system.A spokesperson for Sadiq Khan said the Mayor of London shares the Governments ambitions for growth and determination to turbocharge the delivery of desperately needed affordable housing and sustainable infrastructure in London and across the UK.For 14 years, London was held back by the previous government, which didnt recognise that enabling more growth in London is vital for the nations prosperity. The mayor is now keen to work with ministers to ensure this Bill allows him to deliver the infrastructure and affordable homes the capital badly needs.But while RIBA president Muyiwa Oki described the bill as a welcome shot in the arm for the construction industry, he warned council planning authorities would need enough funding for the reforms to succeed.The measures aim to speed up the number of planning approvals by allowing planning officers to make more decisions on schemesTo ensure the much needed high quality housing and infrastructure, urgent action is required. However, to deliver the seismic changes proposed, local planning departments will need to be adequately resourced and supported with the right people, skills and design expertise they need, he said.Chartered Institute of Housing interim director of policy, communications and external affairs Rachel Williamson also welcomed the reforms but said the sector must be properly resourced and supported.We look forward to further announcements in the upcoming Spending Review and a long-term housing strategy that provides the certainty and investment needed to turn these commitments into reality, she said.And while the County Councils Network (CCN) praised the long overdue reintroduction of strategic planning to boost housebuilding but warned the changes would require a lot more local authority resourcing.It is imperative that county and unitary councils have the funding to assemble strategic planning teams and deliver evidence bases to make these new plans as effective as they could be, said CCN housing and planning spokesperson Richard Clewer.This should be considered in the upcoming Spending Review, where the funding a local authority receives could dictate how comprehensive its strategic plan is. Alongside funding, the government must also ensure councils have the workforce capacity needed.This is especially pertinent for large rural areas where recruitment and retention of planners is more of a challenge.Clewer also criticised the governments plans to reduce the role of council planning committees in making decisions on schemes.We are concerned about efforts to dilute and bypass the role of councillors on planning committees, particularly in rural areas where significant developments could only constitute a few dozen homes, he said.By only allowing councillors to debate and discuss only the proposals that the government defines as a large development, this will erode local peoples voice within the planning system.It will also take away the discretion that can be used by planning committees to resolve small applications that come down to very nuanced decisions.However, Matthew Evans, counsel at law firm Forsters, described the move as creative thinking and said more delegated decisions made by planning officers is a move in the right direction.Evans said the reforms, which also include cutting the role of statutory consultees, should reduce uncertainty in the system and enable schemes to progress to delivery more quickly, adding that insular boundary led thinking had restricted the delivery of vital infrastructure.And Pete Gladwell, group managing director of public investment at Legal & General also praised the Bill, calling it a significant and positive step in tackling delays in the planning system.To drive national economic growth, boost productivity, achieve positive environmental impact, and deliver genuinely affordable housing, the barriers hindering the delivery of homes and clean energy infrastructure in Britain must be removed, he said.Justin Young, chief executive of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), said the reforms will be crucial to tackle the bureaucracy that is standing in the way of new homes, buildings, and critical infrastructure.Investing in our built and natural environment now, will help us realise the homes and places that we need for the future, he added.RICS senior land and resource specialist Tony Mulhall said proposals to retain judicial reviews while limiting the scope for vexatious delays was a proportionate response.This together with an overall reduction in bureaucracy will prove crucial for getting more building projects off the ground, he said.

A few years ago, I was convinced I was about to die. And while (spoiler alert) I didn't, my severe health anxiety and ability to always assume the worst has persisted. But the increase of health tracking smart devices and new ways that AI tries to make sense of our body's data has led me to make an important decision. For my own peace of mind, AI needs to stay far away from my personal health. After Samsung's January Unpacked event, I'm more convinced of this than ever. I'll explain.Sometime around 2016, I had severe migraines that persisted for a couple of weeks. My anxiety steeply increased during this period due to the attendant worry, and when I eventually called the UK's NHS helpline and explained my various symptoms, they told me I needed to go to the nearest hospital and be seen within 2 hours. "Walk there with someone," I distinctly remember them telling me, "It'll be quicker than getting an ambulance to you." This story is part of Samsung Event, CNET's collection of news, tips and advice around Samsung's most popular products. This call confirmed my worst fears -- that death was imminent.As it turned out, my fears of an early demise were unfounded. The cause was actually severe muscle strain from having hung multiple heavy cameras around my neck for an entire day while photographing a friend's wedding. But the helpline agent was simply working on the limited data I'd provided, and as a result, they'd -- probably rightly -- taken a "better safe than sorry" approach and urged me to seek immediate medical attention, just in case I really was at risk. Samsung's health tracking provides a lot of data, which may or may not be helpful for you. John Kim/CNETI've spent most of my adult life struggling with health anxiety, and episodes such as this have taught me a lot about my ability to jump to the absolute worst conclusions despite there being no real evidence to support them. A ringing in my ears? Must be a brain tumor. A twinge in my stomach? Well, better get my affairs in order.I've learned to live with this over the years, and while I still have my ups and downs, I know better about what triggers things for me. For one, I learned never to Google my symptoms. Because no matter what my symptom was, cancer was always one of the possibilities a search would throw up. Medical sites -- including the NHS's own website -- provided no comfort and usually only resulted in mind-shattering panic attacks.Sadly, I've found I have a similar response with many health-tracking tools. I liked my Apple Watch at first, and its ability to read my heart rate during workouts was helpful. Then I found I was checking it increasingly more often throughout the day. Then the doubt crept in: "Why is my heart rate high when I'm just sitting down? Is that normal? I'll try again in 5 minutes." When, inevitably, it wasn't different (or it was worse), panic would naturally ensue. I've used Apple Watches multiple times, but I find the heart rate tracking more stressful than helpful. Vanessa Hand Orellana/CNETWhether tracking heart rate, blood oxygen levels or even sleep scores, I'd obsess over what a "normal" range should be and any time my data fell outside of that range, I'd immediately assume it meant I was about to keel over right there and then. The more data these devices provided, the more things I felt I had to worry about. I've learned to keep my worries at bay and have continued to use smartwatches, without them being much of a problem for my mental health (I have to actively not use any heart-related functions like ECGs), but AI-based health tools scare me.During its January Unpacked keynote, Samsung talked about how its new Galaxy AI tools -- and Google's Gemini AI -- will supposedly help us in our daily lives. Samsung Health's algorithms will track your heart rate as it fluctuates throughout the day, notifying you of changes. It will offer personalized insights from your diet and exercise to help with cardiovascular health and you can even ask the AI agent questions related to your health.To many it may sound like a great holistic view of your health, but not to me. To me it sounds like more data being collected and waved in front of me, forcing me to acknowledge it and creating an endless feedback loop of obsession, worry and, inevitably, panic. But it's the AI questions that are the biggest red flag for me. AI tools by their nature have to make "best guess" answers based usually on information publicly available online. Asking AI a question is really just a quick way of running a Google search, and as I've found, Googling health queries does not end well for me. Samsung showed off various ways AI will be used within its health app during the Unpacked keynote. SamsungMuch like the NHS phone operator who inadvertently caused me to panic about dying, an AI-based health assistant will be able to provide answers based only on the limited information it has about me. Asking a question about my heart health could bring up a variety of information, just as looking on a health website would about why I have a headache. But much like how a headache can technically be a symptom of cancer, it's also much more likely to be a muscular twinge. Or I haven't drank enough water. Or I need to look away from my screen for a bit. Or I shouldn't have stayed up until 2 a.m. playing Yakuza: Infinite Wealth. Or a hundred other reasons, all of which are far more likely than the one I've already decided is definitely the culprit.But will an AI give me the context I need to not worry and obsess? Or will it just provide me with all the potentials as a way of trying to give a full understanding but instead feeding that "what if" worry? And, like how Google's AI Overviews told people to eat glue on pizza, will an AI health tool simply scour the internet and provide me with a hash of an answer, with inaccurate inferences that could tip my anxiety into full panic attack territory?Or perhaps, much like the kind doctor at the hospital that day who smiled gently at the sobbing man sitting opposite who'd already drafted a goodbye note to his family on his phone in the waiting room, an AI tool might be able to see that data and simply say, "You're fine, Andy, stop worrying and go to sleep."Maybe one day that'll be the case. Maybe health tracking tools and AI insights will be able to offer me a much-needed dose of logic and reassurance to counter my anxiety, rather than being the cause of it. But until then, it's not a risk I'm willing to take.

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March 11, 20255 min readThe Secret to Understanding Animal Consciousness May Be JoyAnimal emotionsincluding joymay be key markers of conscious beingsBy Jacek Krywko edited by Sarah Lewin FrasierThis chihuahua may be having a joyful experience. Stuart Lark/Getty ImagesRats laugh, bees roll balls for fun, turtles dance when they anticipate feeding, and dogs wiggle their tails when theyre excited. Research into animal emotions and experience has been on the rise since the late 20th century, and scientists are beginning to use these findings to help understand an age-old question: Do nonhuman animals have consciousness?Consciousness is often defined as having subjective experiences. We are focusing on this particular kind of phenomenal consciousnessthat it feels like something to be you, says Jeff Sebo, a philosopher and director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, both at New York University. If you can have subjective feelings, either sensory experiences like perception or affective experiences like pleasure or pain, that is what we call consciousness.Sebo, along with philosophers Kristin Andrews and Jonathan Birch, initiated the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness. Released in April 2024, it has been signed by more than 500 scientists and researchers worldwide. The same trio recently co-authored an essay in Science arguing that when animals perform behaviors similar to those that are explained by conscious experience in humans, such as joy, suffering and other emotions, that can begin to suggest animals conscious experience, too.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Scientific American talked with Sebo about what the potential markers of consciousness are, whether we should assume a species is conscious unless proven otherwise and how scientists might study consciousness through markers of animal joy.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]How can looking for markers of joy or pain help us determine if animals are conscious?Consciousness is such a difficult topic to study. It confronts us with the hard problem of explaining why any physical system, including our own brain, should be conscious, as well as the problem of other mindsthe problem that the only mind I can directly access is my own. That makes it hard for me to know for sure what, if anything, it feels like to be anyone else, even other humans. So instead of attempting to solve the hard problem of consciousness or the problem of other minds, we identify behavioral and anatomical markers that are consistent with a range of leading scientific theories of consciousness. And then we search for those markers in animals.You would start by using introspection to distinguish between conscious and unconscious experience in humans. We can look inward and tell when we are experiencing conscious pain versus having an unconscious nociceptive response. We then look for observable behavioral or anatomical markers or indicators that are associated with conscious processing in humans, and we can then look for broadly analogous behavioral or anatomical markers or indicators in animals.Obviously, they are not going to be proof of consciousness. They are not going to establish certainty about consciousness, but we can treat them as evidence. And when we find a lot of markers or indicators together in an animal, that can take up the probability that consciousness is present.So the final step would be to estimate at least a rough probability of consciousness based on how many behavioral and anatomical markers we find in that animal. Establishing high, medium, even low probability of consciousness can be a helpful step toward making informed decisions about how to study that animal or how to interact with it.How should we deal with this lack of certainty? Should we assume that an animal is conscious until proven otherwise or that it is not until we find enough consciousness markers?Typically, scientists assume that consciousness is absent unless evidence demonstrates it is present. But if such a vast number and wide range of animals now have at least a realistic possibility of consciousness based on existing evidence, then it does raise the question whether we should [instead] have a neutral starting point or proceed on the assumption that consciousness is present unless a lot of evidence indicates it is absent.My colleague Kristin Andrews, who wrote the Science essay with me and Jonathan Birch, has argued that we in fact should flip the default assumption to the presence of consciousness in animals. That we should presume animals are conscious and then research the dimensions of that consciousness.[She argues that] this assumption is good not only ethically, because it represents a kind of precautionary stance toward our interactions with animals, but also scientifically, because it leads to better and more rigorous hypotheses about the nature of consciousness and the dimensions of consciousness that we can then research.You suggest animal consciousness research is overly reliant on pain markersintentionally inflicting pain to see how animals respond to it. Does presuming consciousness complicate this practice?We use pain markers to assess the probability that particular animals can consciously experience negative states like pain and suffering. You can ask basic questions like: Do they nurse their own wounds? Do they respond to analgesics or antidepressants in the same ways that humans do? Do they make behavioral trade-offs between the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of other valuable goals like finding a new shell or finding food? And to the extent that they do behave that way, we can become more confident that they can experience pain and suffering. This gives us information about how we might change our interactions with them in ethics and policy.But if animals have a realistic chance of being conscious, there should be ethical safeguards on how pain markers are used. We can look at past studies [investigating] the presence or absence of pain markers. We can also conduct observational field research and use observations of animals experiencing pain and nursing their wounds in the wild without intentionally inflicting pain. We can still use pain markers if we collect them ethically.The advantage of using pain markers is that they are easy to observe. How do you study joy?There are at least some markers of joy that appear to be quite widespread across animals. One is vocalizations that resemble laughter. Quite a few species will vocalize in a way that indicates joyful experience. Rodents can vocalize ultrahigh-frequency sounds in response to play or tickling in a way that resembles laughter.Another example is optimism. You can perform studies that give animals the opportunity to pursue the unknown. If they pursue it more readily then that suggests an optimistic outlook. If they pursue it less readily, then that suggests a pessimistic outlook. Optimism is generally associated with positive experience, positive affect.Then there is play. We see play behavior in a lot of different animals. It does not have an obvious direct evolutionary advantage, but it seems to be an expression of joy. We find that not only in other mammals, like dogs, but even in insects. There is research involving bees rolling a ball around for no other reason than the sort of positive experience associated with it.And there are other joy markers that are going to be more species-specific, like facial expressions or tail-wagging. Finally, there are some other markers, too, such as the presence of oxytocin or dopamine or serotonin in the brain.Combined with markers of pain and perception, markers of joy can give us better understanding of consciousness. If animals have a realistic chance of being conscious, then we have both ethical and scientific reasons to look beyond pain.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D review: 16 cores plus top-tier gaming performanceThe do-everything CPU from AMD.Image credit: Digital Foundry Review by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry Published on March 11, 2025 Page 1 of 7 Next page The story of the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D is refreshingly straightforward: it is as fast as the excellent Ryzen 7 9800X3D in games, more or less, but has double the cores, so it's significantly better in content creation scenarios like 3D modelling or video transcoding where all available threads are used. If you want a single CPU that can do it all, this is the one to get - though it costs a hefty 659 in the UK and $699 in the US. Like the 9800X3D that arrived late in 2024, the 9950X3D has a much larger L3 cache compared to a standard Ryzen 9000 processor, located underneath the CCD rather than above it as we saw on previous Ryzen X3D designs. That means we get that game-changing performance advantage without the hit to temperatures and clock speeds that previously characterised X3D processors versus their vanilla counterparts; the best of both worlds. To properly get to grips with the level of performance on offer, we've run the 9950X3D through our full gamut of 11 game benchmarks at 1080p, 1440p and 4K, including some of the most demanding single-player (Dragon's Dogma, Starfield, Cyberpunk) and multiplayer (CS2, F1 24) releases. Image credit: AMDBefore we get into all that though, it's worth taking a closer look at the specs here to get an idea of the sort of performance we can expect in content creation workloads. In short, the 9950X3D is extremely promising for content creation, as it has the same rated boost and base clockspeeds and TDP versus the 9950X, with a straight doubling of L3 cache. That ought to mean that it should roughly match the 9950X in standard workloads or even pull beyond it, even if that 3D V-Cache consumes a bit of extra power and produces a bit of extra heat. That's quite a departure from even the Ryzen 7000 X3D chips, where reduced clockspeeds and higher temperatures resulted in a small net performance regression in all-core workloads. It's also worth noting that this is the most expensive Ryzen processor ever, with its $699 price point coming in more than $100 above the 9950X and the 7950X3D. The graphics card market has seen an epidemic of models selling far above MSRP, but hopefully we won't see a similar trend for CPUs which don't use the "board partner" model. CPU designBoostBaseL3 cacheTDPPriceRyzen 9 9950X3DZen 5 16C/32T5.7GHz4.3GHz128MB170WRyzen 9 9950XZen 5 16C/32T5.7GHz4.3GHz64MB170W555/$584Ryzen 9 9900X3DZen 5 12C/24T5.5GHz4.4GHz128MB120WTBA/$599Ryzen 9 9900XZen 5 12C/24T5.6GHz4.4GHz64MB120W383/$383Ryzen 7 9800X3DZen 5 8C/16T5.2GHz4.7GHz96MB120W449/$479Ryzen 7 9700XZen 5 8C/16T5.5GHz3.8GHz32MB65W309/$324Ryzen 5 9600XZen 5 6C/12T5.4GHz3.9GHz32MB65W229/$249Ryzen 9 7950X3DZen 4 16C/32T5.7GHz4.2GHz128MB120W550/$595Ryzen 9 7950XZen 4 16C/32T5.7GHz4.5GHz64MB170W429/$487Ryzen 9 7900X3DZen 4 12C/24T5.6GHz4.4GHz128MB120W443/$569Ryzen 9 7900XZen 4 12C/24T5.6GHz4.7GHz64MB170W323/$395Ryzen 7 7800X3DZen 4 8C/16T5.0GHz4.2GHz96MB120W398/$476Ryzen 7 7700XZen 4 8C/16T5.4GHz4.5GHz32MB105W264/$269Ryzen 5 7600XZen 4 6C/12T5.3GHz4.7GHz32MB105W189/$207Ryzen 5 7600Zen 4 6C/12T5.1GHz3.8GHz32MB65W167/$198 A very clean and not at all dusty test rig, featuring a Ryzen 9000 processor, RTX 4090 Founders Edition, ASRock Taichi X670E and the Alphacool Aurora Eisbaer 240mm AiO. | Image credit: Digital FoundryAll testing was performed on Windows 24H2 with the latest chipset drivers (7.01.07.634) and BIOS updates installed (3.20 on our ASRock X670E Taichi). We're using Nvidia's slightly older 565.90 graphic drivers installed in order to maintain continuity with past results, as our test suite doesn't include any games that require newer drivers. Resizable BAR and core isolation were enabled on each system. Our current CPU test platform is based around the Nvidia GeForce Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition graphics card and Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 CL30 RAM. Each CPU is accompanied by a 1000W+ power supply from Corsair or NZXT, a high-end 240mm or 360mm AiO and a suitable premium motherboard: the ASRock X670E Taichi for AMD Ryzen 7000 and 9000, the MSI Z890 Meg Ace for Intel Core Ultra 200S, the Gigabyte Aorus Z790 Master for 12th and 14th-gen Intel Core and the Asus ROG Crosshair 8 Hero for AMD Ryzen 5000 - with Trident Z Royal DDR4-3600 CL16 as DDR5 RAM is not supported on this platform. Storage duties are handled by a range of PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 SSDs, including the WD SN5000 4TB NVMe SSD for our AMD Ryzen 9000 system. Now, let's move onto the content creation benchmarks to get a better sense of how the 9950X3D builds on its predecessors. After all, for pure gaming purposes the 9800X3D is likely to be completely sufficient, so if you've chosen the 9950X3D you'll hopefully be using that extra cores for something like video production or 3D modelling. Cinebench2024 (1T)2024 (MT)R20 (1T)R20 (MT)Ryzen 5 3600X775784853654Ryzen 7 5800X3D959155465746Ryzen 9 5900X9811716108393Ryzen 5 7600X1148457445814Ryzen 7 7700X11811277587609Ryzen 7 7800X3D11210746886988Ryzen 9 7900X116160577611196Ryzen 9 7950X121200478414272Ryzen 5 9600X1329358506358Ryzen 7 9700X13011728627851Ryzen 9 9800X3D13413428238938Ryzen 9 9900X135178487912617Ryzen 9 9950X138223788115845Ryzen 9 9950X3D139234388116343Core i5 14600K12014007779420Core i7 14700K127198781813614Core i9 14900K133210787515297Ultra 5 245K12814358419864Ultra 9 285K144238689516055Starting with our Cinebench test results, including the popular R20 and more recent 2024 release, the 9950X3D actually shows better results than the 9950X by a small margin - it's around five percent faster in CB 2024 multi-core and three percent faster in CB R20's multi-core test. Amazingly, that means it now holds the overall record in R20, coming just ahead of the Core Ultra 285K, while coming just behind the same processor in Cinebench 2024. Versus the previous generation 7950X, there's also a nice lead - around 15 percent in single-core and 17 percent in multi-core for CB 2024. The differentials in Cinebench R20 are slightly narrower, with a 12 percent single-core lead and 15 percent multi-core advantage. HandbrakeH264 (fps)HEVC (fps)Ryzen 5 3600X26.6610.80Ryzen 7 5800X3D42.0018.71Ryzen 9 5900X57.5923.83Ryzen 5 7600X41.2918.31Ryzen 7 7700X53.2723.65Ryzen 7 7800X3D49.6321.54Ryzen 9 7900X78.3532.59Ryzen 9 7950X98.5841.68Ryzen 5 9600X42.5119.77Ryzen 7 9700X (191W max)51.8023.79Ryzen 7 9800X3D (259W max)59.5927.44Ryzen 9 9900X82.9635.33Ryzen 9 9950X (363W max)105.4345.35Ryzen 9 9950X3D (403W max)109.2446.40Intel Core i5 14600K59.4225.39Intel Core i7 14700K80.2631.07Intel Core i9 14900K (476W max)85.0635.08Intel Ultra 5 245K (286W max)61.0526.88Intel Ultra 9 285K (362W max)97.1738.44While Cinebench is meant to reflect a 3D modelling and animation task in Cinema 4D, our Cinebench test reflects a real use case for us: transcoding a Patreon video file into H.264 and H.265 (HEVC). Here, we measured the 9950X3D sucking down a healthy 403W at full tilt, but again eclipsing the 9950X by a decent 3.6 percent margin in the h.264 encode and 2.3 percent in the HEVC encode. It's important to note that the 403W figure is a momentary power draw near the start of the test, with 300W-355W being a more typical figure for the bulk of the run. This is around 11 percent faster than the 7950X, for context, and a similar margin ahead of the Intel Core Ultra 285K. We do plan to retest the 245K and 285K soon to see if Intel's promised performance upgrades have finally arrived, though reports from other outlets don't paint a particularly rosy picture. Now let's get into the turkey and Yorkshire puddings of our testing, the gaming benchmarks. We have 11 games in all, plus a look at power usage. AMD Ryzen 7 9950X3D analysisPage 1 of 7 Next page

More Disco Elysium alumni join former staff at Longdue working on spiritual successorKickstarter launches soon.Image credit: Longdue News by Ed Nightingale Deputy News Editor Published on March 11, 2025 Longdue, a new studio formed by former Disco Elysium staff, has revealed a teaser trailer for its new project and announced the inclusion of key Disco Elysium alumni.The new "psychogeographic RPG", called Hopetown, will launch a Kickstarter campaign on 17th March where more details will be revealed.Until then, below is the first teaser trailer, which includes character artwork and an intriguing voiceover hinting at the psychological consequences of the story.Hopetown - Kickstarter Video PreviewWatch on YouTubeLenval Brown, who voiced the narrator in Disco Elysium, will return for Hopetown and voice a key character."It feels good to be back - to step into something new," said Brown. "There's nothing like bringing a world to life, shaping a story that's been waiting to be spoken into existence."What's more, Martin Luiga - founding member of the ZA/UM Cultural Association who was involved in writing Disco Elysium - has also joined the team at Longdue."I am pleased to share my experiences with Longdue to help them craft the narrative and systems for Hopetown, playing to the strengths that the narrative RPG genre has achieved thus far and attempting to innovate upon them to tell a rich story based in equal parts on what has been, what is and what could be," said Luiga. "I am confident that the team can deliver a worthy addition to the canon of Western RPGs. I call upon the fans of the RPG and adventure genre to back the Hopetown Kickstarter to help us make the game."Longdue's staff also includes Piotr Sobolewski from the Disco Elysium team, though as Polygon reported earlier this month his ties to the game are loose - in the game's credits Sobolewski is listed as providing "additional development" from outsourcing studio The Knights of Unity.The inclusion of Brown and Luiga therefore strengthens the ties with ZA/UM's project. It was first announced back in October last year, with further details on its mechanics provided back in January this year.However, it coexists with multiple other projects from former Disco Elysium staff, with each announcement seemingly not-so-coincidentally arriving at the same time (notably, the games were first revealed on the fifth anniversary of Disco Elysium).ZA/UM, the original Disco Elysium studio, has today announced its next game, called C4, which blends dice-rolling gameplay with psychedelic sci-fi and espionage thriller elements. However, many original members of staff who worked on Disco Elysium have since left the studio.Then there's the new UK-based studio Dark Math Games creating XXX Nightshift, formed of a "breakaway group from the original development team of Disco Elysium", which was announced in October.Shortly after that announcement, Summer Eternal revealed itself as a new studio from Argo Tuulik, who co-created Disco Elysium's worldbuilding.Disco Elysium writer and designer Robert Kurvitz has also established a new studio called Red Info with artist Aleksander Rostov.A report in November detailed the messy drama behind the multiple Disco Elysium spiritual successors in development - it followed multiple lawsuits that are now said to be resolved.In the wake of this drama, though, multiple studios are now creating new projects vying to be the foremost successor to Disco Elysium - an isometric political RPG that was lauded on its release in 2019.

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereThe release date for Assassins Creed Shadows is imminent. It is another installment in the beloved never-ending series, and it should be fantastic as it is again spearheaded by Ubisoft Quebec, who were behind the magnificent Odyssey. With its release quickly approaching, Ubisoft has fixed the console specifications for Assassins Creed Shadows on PS5 and Xbox after accidentally posting some inaccuracies.Assassins Creed Shadows console specs for PS5 and XboxOn the official Assassins Creed subreddit, community developer, White24Room, has shared the correct console specifications for Shadows on PS5 and Xbox. This clarification is necessary because Ubisoft accidentally posted some inaccuracies regarding the PS5 Pro Ray Tracing modes.The two clarifications from Ubisoft are as follows:Performance and Balanced modes offer Raytraced Global Illumination (STANDARD).Fidelity mode offers Raytraced Global Illumination and Reflections (EXTENDED).Below are the full console specifications for both PS5 and Xbox:PS5:Performance mode:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 60FPSRay-tracing usage: SelectiveBalanced mode:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 40FPSRay-tracing usage: StandardFidelity:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 30FPSRay-tracing usage: StandardPS5 Pro:Performance mode:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 60FPSRay-tracing usage: StandardBalanced mode:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 40FPSRay-tracing usage: StandardFidelity:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 30FPSRay-tracing usage: ExtendedXbox Series S:Fidelity:Resolution: 1620P upscaledTarget performance: 30FPSRay-tracing usage: SelectiveXbox Series X:Performance mode:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 60FPSRay-tracing usage: SelectiveBalanced mode:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 40FPSRay-tracing usage: StandardFidelity:Resolution: 2160P upscaledTarget performance: 30FPSRay-tracing usage: StandardBelow is the explanation for each ray-tracing usage:Selective:Ray-tracing used to compute global illumination for diffuse lighting in the Hideout portion of the game.Standard:Ray-tracing used to compute global illumination for diffuse lighting throughout the game world.Extended:Ray-tracing used to compute global illumination for diffuse lighting and reflective surfaces throughout the game world.Image credit: UbisoftAssassins Creed Shadows is set to come out on March 20th, and we have a pre-order bonus guide to help you decide which edition to buy.Assassins Creed ShadowsPlatform(s):PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action AdventureRelated TopicsAssassin's Creed Shadows Subscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share