Jeff and Annie Strain, the owners of publisher Prytania Media, are suing NetEase over claims of "defamation, unfair trade practices and interference with business relations," Polygon reports. The new lawsuit runs counter to the couple's previous claim that leaks shared with Kotaku led to them shutting down their studios Crop Circle Games and Possibility Space, before Prytania Media itself closed.Per Polygon's reporting, the Strains claim that NetEase "spread false and defamatory statements that caused the demise of Prytania Media," and specifically, that the Chinese company suggested Prytania Media was engaged in financial fraud, scaring away other investors.Prytania Media shutdown Crop Circle Games without warning in March 2024, before closing Possibility Space a month later. Possibility Space was notable for the variety of talent it had working on its first AAA title, including former Waypoint editor-in-chief Austin Walker, Watch Dogs: Legiondesigner Liz England and Jane Ng, the lead environment artist on Firewatch. At the time, the Strains suggested that information shared with Kotaku about an in-development title called "Project Vonnegut" led to an unnamed investor backing away from offering further funding. If the new lawsuit is to be believed, that was not the case.The lawsuit is headed to federal court. For more color on what the Strains claim NetEase did, read Polygon's report. However things play out, it doesn't change the fact that a lot of people were laid off and Prytania Media did little to make things right. "Severance never materialized btw," Walker shared in a Bluesky thread going over the details of the lawsuit.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/jeff-strain-is-suing-investor-netease-claiming-internal-gossip-caused-his-game-company-to-shut-down-202342126.html?src=rss

The seventh season of Black Mirror is headed to Netflix on April 10, and based on its first trailer, happily returning to concepts and episodes that have come to define the series.You'll see plenty of the stars that were already announced to be in the new episodes in the trailer, like Paul Giamatti, Issa Rae and Peter Capaldi, along with clear evidence that Season 7 continues storylines showrunner Charlie Brooker has already promised to revisit namely the episode "USS Callister," about a group of startup employees trapped in a Star Trek-inspired simulation by their boss.There's some surprises too one of the six new episodes appears to return to the world of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, the interactive Black Mirror episode Netflix released in 2018, before abandoning interactive movies in 2024. If that doesn't pique your interest, rest assured, load-bearing Black Mirror concepts like "thinking of the human brain as a computer" definitely seem to be present, too.Brooker describes this season as "a little bit OG Black Mirror" and "back to basics in many ways," which could be reassuring, depending on your belief that he can recapture the novelty and meanness of the show's UK run. The series last aired on Netflix in 2023, with a set of episodes that were all over the place in terms of quality. Season 7 could be different, but we'll have to wait until Black Mirror returns on April 10 to find out for sure.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/black-mirror-is-playing-the-hits-in-its-season-7-trailer-193015633.html?src=rss

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Consider a self-employed entrepreneur who racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills after a visit to the emergency department due to lack of employer-sponsored health insurance. Or the entrepreneur whose business never got off the groundnot because they lacked skill or demand, but because the burden of complicated taxes or owing money they didnt expect made them walk away before they could even get started. This sentiment underscores how current policies can deter potential entrepreneurs from leaving traditional employment.Despite all of this, in recent years, solopreneurshipthe practice of running a business without a team or employeeshas grown drastically, alongside general entrepreneurship. The U.S. averaged 430,000 business applications per month in 2024. Thats 50% more than in 2019. And according to the Small Business Administration, the number of non-employer businesses has grown 84% since 1997. There are 28.5 million non-employer businesses in the U.S., representing roughly 82% of all small businesses in the country. This includes freelance writers, designers, consultants, e-commerce entrepreneurs, influencers, virtual assistants, and photographers.Despite having no employees, solopreneurs face many of the same challenges as small business owners: funding, healthcare, taxes, and compliance. Here are three policy areas and practices they can put into place to ensure their long-term success.1. Access to capitalSolopreneurs are more likely to use personal capital to start and sustain their business. Unlike larger companies that can attract investors, solopreneurs often struggle to secure significant external funding due to their smaller scale. And in many cases, they are simply unaware of the resources available to them. There are a few possible solutions to addressing this challenge.First, government can increase the support for and awareness of tax-deductible business loans, which allow solopreneurs to deduct interest on personal loans used for business expenses. This includes traditional business loans like SBA loans, equipment financing, and business lines of credit. It also includes personal loans and home equity loans used for business, such as a solopreneur taking out a $20,000 personal loan to buy equipment and cover marketing costs. If the annual interest paid on the loan is $2,000 and the entire loan is used for business, the full interest payment can be deducted from taxable income, reducing overall taxes owed.Another option is a phased reduction of the self-employment tax. One of the biggest financial burdens for new solopreneurs is the self-employment tax, which is 15.3% (covering Social Security and Medicare) on net earnings. The government could implement a phased reduction of self-employment taxes for new solopreneurs, gradually lowering the self-employment tax burden for individuals just starting their own business. This approach could provide financial relief and additional capital during the crucial early stages of business growth. It also gives solopreneurs time to establish consistent earnings before facing full tax liability.2. Healthcare and social safety net securityHealthcare, retirement savings, parental leavethese are all benefits currently tied to a persons job. This has been described as job lock as it suppresses entrepreneurship, innovation, and ultimately economic growth. Despite this, we are still seeing a massive rise in solopreneurship meaning there is a large segment of the workforce that has to navigate these critical social safety net programs on their own.The first solution is to reform the current health reimbursement arrangement (HRA), including an individual coverage HRA (ICHRA) and a qualified small employer HRA (QSEHRA). While they were designed as a flexible way for small businesses to help employees access health insurance, the system has major flawsone is that they are not currently available for self-employed individuals. These individuals struggle to deduct healthcare costs because they lack employer-sponsored insurance. HRA reform could allow them to use pre-tax dollars for health expenses, reducing their taxable income. HRA reform could be a game-changer for solopreneurs and S-corps, making healthcare more accessible, affordable, and tax efficient.Another potential solution is to exempt health insurance premiums and retirement savings contributions from self-employment tax calculations. Right now, solopreneurs pay self-employment tax on all earnings, including money used for health insurance and retirement. Creating this exemption would lower the overall tax burdens on these individuals without reducing the benefits.3. Compliance and tax supportRunning a business as a solopreneur is extremely rewarding when it comes to flexibility, being your own boss, and doing what you love. But it also comes with its own set of compliance and tax challenges. And while there are some tax advantages to working for yourself that are not available to those who work for others, it can get complex.Business owners need to be aware of different tax deadlines, eligible deductions, and how to efficiently structure their finances to benefit from lower tax rates. This will always be important, but there are proposals making their way through Washington to make it easier on solopreneurs.Right now, anyone who works for themselves faces the burden of directly paying their estimated taxes on a quarterly basis and managing a lot of the calculations on their own. There are also long-term economic security implications of not remitting payroll taxes, which reduces the Social Security benefit, plus Medicare, to a certain extent. Because of this, many self-employed workerssolopreneurs, freelancers, etc.would prefer to have taxes withheld from their earnings instead. This would reduce the risk of calculation errors and help them avoid penalties.Businesses that pay self-employed individuals for their work could withhold the taxes by adding their withholding to the taxes they already pay for their employees. This would allow solopreneurs to better manage their cash flow and alleviate the frustration of having to estimate withholdings, save for future tax payments, and navigate those payments four times a year.The rise in solopreneurship and self-employment isnt just a trend; its a fundamental shift in how people choose to work these days. Supporting entrepreneurs in their business endeavors and reducing complexities for them would encourage more small business creation, which ultimately strengthens and lifts the overall economy.Tomer London is cofounder and chief product officer of Gusto.The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.

The AI industry is growing up fast. New model releases are now a regular event and premium AI features are quickly overtaken by free or freemium alternatives.Exhibit A: OpenAI unveiled its Deep Research tool, which can write reports on complex topics in minutes, as part of its $200-a-month Pro package, but rival Perplexity gives non-subscribers some access to its Deep Research assistant free of charge. (Yes, Google Geminis agentic research assistant is also called Deep Research.)With fewer fundamental breakthroughs, the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI are slugging it out over incremental improvements in search and reasoning performance. As AI pricing falls and performance gaps close, the focus has shifted from novelty applications to finding real business value.Its a new era for AIAgentic AI is the game-changer. Gartner forecasts that 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI by 2028, a drastic increase from less than 1% in 2024. Some 15% of day-to-day work decisions could be made autonomously by AI agents, hiking business productivity and freeing up workers for more strategic tasks.Its probably no surprise, then, that OpenAIwhich famously took 4.5 years to launch ChatGPT without any idea of who our customer was going to be, according to CEO Sam Altmanis releasing its first-ever product roadmap. Nothing says maturing market like a product roadmap.As Finn Murphy, a founder and venture capitalist, posted on X from the AI Action Summit in Paris, where the EU said it would mobilize 200 billion for AI investment: It really feels like the era of interesting technical breakthroughs being announced is over and the era of policy, partnerships, and money announcements is here.Security mattersGrowing up brings responsibilities, of course, especially at the enterprise level. Among the 1,803 C-suite executives surveyed for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) AI Radar, published in January, 76% recognized that their AI cybersecurity measures need further improvement. If anything, that number should be closer to 100%.Execs ranked data privacy and security as the top AI risk. Regulatory challenges and compliance also featured strongly. Their fears are not unfounded: AI applications open up a new attack surface for threat actors and security researchers have already succeeded in breaking all of the world-class AI models to some extent.Still, it took the shock arrival of Chinas DeepSeek to properly push AI security into the mainstream. It is notable that consumers and corporates have concerns about a Chinese entity having their data but seem content that U.S. and Europe-based entitieswhich impose almost identical terms and conditionswill keep it secure. Security must be a key consideration for all AI models, not just those built (or hosted) outside the US.History shows us that bad actors are often the earliest adopters of new technology, from wire fraud to phone, text and email phishing scams. In an agentic world, where AI agents have been given access to critical business information and in-house applications, the blast radius from any attack may be exponential.Think like an attackerIts often said that the best defense is to think like an attacker. Today, that means using Agentic Warfare to comprehensively test AI-driven systems for vulnerabilities long before they see the light of day. Automated red-teaming is the new standard in testing AI with speed, complexity, and scale.At every step, security has to sit alongside performance in choosing AI, rather than coming as an afterthought when something goes wrong. As much as cost, security-to-performance will be a key metric in model and app selection; this is a one-way-door decision for safe and successful AI implementations.Interestingly, the BCG survey reports that the intuitive, friendly feel of GenAI masks the discipline, commitment, and hard work required to introduce AI in the workplace. It is hard work but the rewards should be significant.Just as software led to era-defining leaps in innovation and productivity, agentic AI promises great advances in all sectorsas long as security is baked in from the beginning.Donnchadh Casey is CEO of CalypsoAI.The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.

Car makers and technologists would have us dream of a future where cars safely drove themselves while we sit back and relax, but given the progress in this field, that truly remains just a dream for now. The reality is that our safety and that of our family and friends still remain firmly in our human hands, and we definitely need all the help we can get to ensure not only safe travels but, in worst-case scenarios, clear evidence of an incident.Thankfully we dont have to wait for a distant future because the latest innovation in automotive technology has arrived with the 70mai Dash Cam 4K Omni. Featuring groundbreaking 360-degree rotation capability and dual-channel recording, this sophisticated device combines a 4K front camera with a 1080p rear camera, providing comprehensive coverage that captures every angle of your journey with exceptional clarity.Designer: 70maiClick Here to Buy Now: $273.1 $329.99 ($56.89 off, only if you add free CPI Filter to cart from here + Use coupon code 4KOMNIYD to avail the discount). Buy from website here. Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours.The 70mai Dash Cam 4K Omni builds on the solid foundations of its predecessor to deliver a 360-degree view of your surroundings, whether in transit or parked. In front, you have a 4K Sony STARVIS 2 camera while a 1080p STARVIS 2 HDR camera has your back covered. Both sensors already provide crisp and clear visuals, but the Dash Cam 4K Omni takes it even further with advanced features that bring safety, security, and even fun to your vehicle.The MaiColor Vivid+ Solution transforms ordinary footage into stunning visual content, employing selective image processing to enhance brightness and detail. This smart technology also compensates for windshield color and transparency, reducing reflections to produce footage that truly reflects what you see on the road. With smooth 60 fps recording at 4K resolution, every moment of your drive is preserved with cinematic quality.The night also holds no secrets thanks to a tandem of advanced 70mai technologies. Night Owl Vision technology tackles low-light challenges head-on, minimizing noise and controlling glare to capture crucial details like license plates with remarkable precision. Working alongside this feature, the industry-first 70mai Lumi Vision pushes the boundaries further by maintaining clear visibility even in near-darkness conditions while parking.Safety takes center stage with the inclusion of Super-Sensing ADAS, which provides crucial alerts for lane departures, potential forward collisions, and pedestrian detection. The systems intelligence extends to practical features like built-in GPS and battery voltage monitoring, while a robust supercapacitor system ensures reliable operation even in extreme temperatures.With the 70mai Dash Cam 4K Omni, it almost feels like you have a self-driving assistant already. The integration of AI Motion Detection 2.0, powered by sophisticated algorithms and dual Hall Effect Sensors, ensures precise tracking and documentation of any incidents. The systems capabilities are further enhanced with 4G functionality (requiring hardware kit UP05 in North America or UP04 in Europe), providing seamless connectivity for advanced parking surveillance features.When an accident does happen, Buffered Emergency Recording captures the crucial 10 seconds leading to the incident and an additional 20 seconds after. The systems dual-channel collision detection works in tandem with time-lapse recording to provide comprehensive documentation of any events that occur around your vehicle, giving you complete peace of mind whether youre behind the wheel or away from your car.Your vehicle remains protected even when youre away, thanks to the comprehensive 24-hour smart parking surveillance system. The dash cam instantly alerts your phone if it detects a collision while parked, and you can check on your car anytime through live streaming via the companion app. Finding your vehicle in crowded areas becomes effortless with real-time location updates and navigation support.The user experience reaches new heights with high-speed Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, enabling quick video transfers and smooth operation. The system now supports voice control in multiple languages, including Japanese and Italian, while the playful MaiX AI Mate adds a personal touch with emoji interactions. With storage capacity supporting up to 512GB, you can record extended trips without worrying about running out of space.The 70mai Dash Cam 4K Omni represents the perfect fusion of advanced technology and practical functionality, offering drivers a reliable guardian who watches over their vehicle around the clock. With its cutting-edge features and intelligent design, this dash cam delivers the protection and peace of mind that modern drivers demand, while maintaining an intuitive and engaging user experience that makes every journey more secure and enjoyable.Click Here to Buy Now: $273.1 $329.99 ($56.89 off, only if you add free CPI Filter to cart from here + Use coupon code 4KOMNIYD to avail the discount). Buy from website here. Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours.The post Ultimate Vehicle Security: How the 70mai Dash Cam 4K Omni Protects Your Car 24/7 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Unveiled at the Paris Fashion Week (and with good reason), the Bag table lamp from sustainable lighting design studio Gantri is a quirky yet gorgeous light that blurs the line between decor and couture. The lamp quite literally looks like a handbag that you can carry around, putting a spin on handheld lamps and lanterns by being a little more, well, eye-catching.Weve come to associate handheld lamps with being either torch or lantern-shaped, but the Bag lamp is different. It takes direct cues from fashion design, creating a handbag-shaped form that glows to fill your room with ambient light. In true Gantri style, the entire bag is 3D printed out of the companys signature plant-based polymer, with its cloudy translucency that diffuses the inner LED brilliantly, creating a light that isnt just functional, its a statement-piece too.Designer: TOMBOGO for GantriThe lamp is 12 wide and 10.5 tall, making it perfect for both interior as well as portable use. The handle allows you to carry the Bag from room to room, placing it on tabletop surfaces (or pretty much anywhere) for instant diffused mood lighting. The designers logo on the bags front adds a touch of whimsy, punctuating the surface while almost serving as branding for some avant-garde fashion label.A beacon of creativity, its blend of futuristic fashion and sustainable innovation reminds you to push boundaries and challenge the ordinary every day. Offering more than mere illumination, it serves as a source of constant inspiration, igniting your imagination to embrace the unexpected and boldly chase your dreams, says the team at Gantri, which worked with designer TOMBOGO to bring the Bag lamp to life.On the inside, youve got two E12 LED bulbs that bring this lamp to life. Most of Gantris lamps are wired, although this one particularly lends itself to wireless use. Theres no mention of an internal battery, which leads me to believe that the Bag lamp can only be used when plugged into an outlet.This lamp is one of many in Gantris collection. The California-based lighting brand has been steadily disrupting the industry with its unique, design-driven lamps that are all 3D printed using sustainable materials. This innovative approach to design and manufacturing has given Gantri its distinct design language, allowing its lights to stand out against a sea of otherwise predictable designs.The post Gantris Gorgeous Handbag-shaped 3D Printed Lamp Gives A New Meaning To Traveling Light first appeared on Yanko Design.

Dodge Construction Networks Dodge Momentum Index (DMI) grew 0.7% in February to 225.6 from the revised January reading of 223.9. Over the month, commercial planning increased by 3.3%, while institutional planning dropped 4.6%.Planning momentum moderated in February, after a few months of stronger growth, said associate director of forecasting at Dodge Construction Network, Sarah Martin. Data centers continue to prop up growth in the overall index. Without them, the DMI would have decreased 2% this month. Increased uncertainty around material prices and fiscal policies may begin to weigh on planning decisions, but for the time being, planning activity is largely continuing to move forward.Related on Archinect: Architecture billings remain in the red, leading to job losses across the industryIn the commercial sector, data centers, traditional office buildings, and retail planning led the gains in February. On the other hand, weaker education planning brought down the institution...

Konamis Silent Hill f doesnt have a release date yet, but its confirmed for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC (via Steam, the Microsoft Store and Epic Games Store). Its PC specifications are also available, revealing the minimum and recommended requirements. Youll need 50 GB of installation space with an SSD recommended and Windows 11 mandatory.On the minimum end, an Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600, 16 GB RAM, and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 5700 is required. This allows for playing at 720p/30 FPS on Performance settings. The recommended requirements include a Core i7-9700 or Ryzen 5 5500, 16 GB RAM, and an RTX 2080 or Radeon RX 6800XT.These can deliver 60 FPS at Performance settings and 30 FPS in Quality settings at 1080p (though DLSS allows for 4K). The exact configuration and graphical options of both settings are unknown. Stay tuned for more details and updates.