Update, 5/29/25: The Nintendo Switch 2 will launch soon on June 5. Pre-order advice currently remains the same, which is to say that you probably won't be able to pre-order the console before launch day anymore, since all retailers still list it as either "unavailable" or "coming soon." Now, it's all about launch-day logistics. A number of retailers, including Best Buy, plan to open some stores early on June 5 and have stock available for customers to purchase on site. If you didn't manage to get a pre-order in already, your best bet may be to go to a local Best Buy, Walmart, Target or GameStop on June 5 to see if you can walk out with a new console that day.  Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders are officially live at Nintendo's online store — but only if you've received an invite. As advertised, the My Nintendo Store began sending out Switch 2 pre-order invites on Thursday to those who previously registered their interest and meet the company's "priority criteria." If you've been chosen, congratulations! You have 72 hours from the time your email was sent to complete your purchase. If you previously signed up but haven't received a notice, well, we'll have to see when exactly it'll arrive. Nintendo has been accepting registrations since April 2, and it's sending invites to past Switch players and Switch Online subscribers before anyone else.  If you meet the priority requirements and signed up on the earlier side, you should (hopefully) get your invite before most others. If you signed up later, don't be surprised if it takes awhile for Nintendo to grace your inbox. The company warned last month that it may not be able to send all invites — or even deliver all orders that do get placed — before the Switch 2's June 5 release date. Beyond Nintendo, the song sadly remains the same. As of our latest check, the device remains fully sold out at Walmart, GameStop, Best Buy, Target and other retailers. This has mostly been the case in the US since the Switch 2 first went up for sale on April 24, and it remains unclear when it'll change. That said, we're keeping an eye out for any surprise restocks that pop up. If you're still hoping to get your hands on the device early, we've rounded up all the Switch 2 pre-order listings we could find for easy access and broken down what to know about buying the console.   How to pre-order the Nintendo Switch 2 at the My Nintendo Store As noted above, Nintendo is only selling the Switch 2 through an invite system, which began on April 2. While it seems unlikely you'll receive your console before launch day if you sign up with Nintendo now, we still recommend doing so in case stock remains low at other stores. Registration is free, and you'll receive your invite eventually, even if it takes some time. On that point, Nintendo says it is prioritizing invites "on a first-come, first-served basis" to registrants who meet the following criteria: You must have purchased a Switch Online membership as of April 2, 2025. If you've only ever been part of a family plan and weren't the paying account, that's a no-go. You must have been a paid Switch Online subscriber for at least 12 months as of April 2, 2025. You must have logged at least 50 hours of total Switch gameplay time as of April 2, 2025. You must have opted into sharing gameplay data with Nintendo as of April 2, 2025. You can confirm this in your account's privacy settings. You must be a Nintendo account holder who is at least 18 years old. If you fulfill those requirements, you'll be ahead in Nintendo's invite queue. If not, you'll have to wait until after the priority registrants receive their emails. Once they do, the remaining invites will go out on a first-come, first-served basis. Whenever you get your email, you'll have a 72-hour window to buy.  As with other stores, you have two models to pick from: the base Switch 2 console for $450, and a bundle with Mario Kart World for $500. Note that you can only purchase one console per invite. You'll also be able to pick up certain accessories when it's your time to shop.  Pre-order Nintendo Switch 2 Nintendo Pre-order Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle Nintendo We received our invite late Thursday evening after signing up about an hour after the registration window first opened. We've posted screenshots of what the official invite email and buying process looks like below. (A previous version of this guide linked to screenshots from Reddit and the gaming forum ResetEra, but one ResetEra user appears to have shared a fake invite, so we've removed that.) Broadly speaking, the experience is far less chaotic than it's been at other stores. Our confirmation email says that our console will ship by June 4. How to pre-order the Nintendo Switch 2 at other retailers Unfortunately, the Switch 2 remains sold out everywhere else as of this writing. To recap the situation: After a two-week delay, Nintendo finally kicked off Switch 2 pre-orders at third-party retailers in the US and Canada at midnight ET on April 24. A couple of (headache-inducing) hours later, stock at Walmart, Target and Best Buy had sold out. GameStop began taking pre-orders later that morning but quickly met the same fate. Some eagle-eyed buyers were reportedly able to pre-order through Walmart as late as April 26, but things have dried up since. Other membership-based retailers like Costco and Sam's Club have Switch 2 listings as well, but we haven't seen anything to suggest they will accept pre-orders. Newegg also has a Switch 2 page but hasn't provided an option to buy just yet. As for Amazon, we assume the Switch 2 will eventually be available there, but it's not today, and there's been no indication as to when that might change. (Even before the Switch 2 was unveiled, stock of the original Switch and first-party Switch games had been limited at Amazon US for several months.) If you're desperate to catch a restock, it's a good idea to create a free account with the retailers above and ensure all of your shipping and billing info is up to date with each. Downloading each store's mobile app and signing up for notifications may help too, though that could get annoying fairly quickly.  Pre-order Nintendo Switch 2 Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Pre-order Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* *As of 1:15pm ET on Friday, May 9, Amazon has not listed either Switch 2 console package for sale. We will update this article with direct links if they arrive; until then, we're linking to the site's Nintendo-focused hub. How to pre-order Switch 2 accessories and games Naturally, there are numerous accessories and games up for pre-order alongside the Switch 2 itself. While Nintendo hasn't changed the console's price since delaying its initial pre-order date, it has hiked the cost of several accessories due to "changes in market conditions" (read: tariffs). The new Switch 2 camera, for instance, now costs $55 instead of its original $50, while the Switch 2 Pro Controller leapt from $80 to $85. An extra set of Joy-Con 2 controllers is up to $95 from $90, and the official Joy-Con Charging Grip costs $40 instead of $35. Most (but not all) of Nintendo's official Switch 2 accessories are still up for grabs at one or two retailers at a minimum, but stock has become spottier since they first went up for sale. Upcoming Switch 2 games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, meanwhile, remain widely available. Mario Kart World for $80 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Donkey Kong Bananza for $70 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Additional Switch 2 games Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon Samsung microSD Express Card (256GB) for Nintendo Switch 2 for $60 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon Joy-Con 2 bundle for $95 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Switch 2 Pro Controller for $85 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Switch 2 Camera for $55 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Hori Nintendo Switch 2 Piranha Plant Camera for $60 Best Buy Target Amazon Joy-Con 2 Charging Grip for $40 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Joy-Con 2 Wheels (set of 2) for $25 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Switch 2 All-in-One Carrying Case for $85 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* Switch 2 Carrying Case and Screen Protector for $40 Nintendo Walmart GameStop Best Buy Target Amazon* *As of 1:15pm ET on Friday, May 9, Amazon has not listed any first-party Switch 2 accessories or games for sale. (Some third-party devices and games are listed, however.) We'll update this article with direct links if they arrive; until then, we're linking to the site's Nintendo-focused hub. More Switch 2 details The Nintendo Switch 2. Sam Rutherford for Engadget We knew from its initial teaser trailer that the Switch 2 would be bigger than its predecessor and take a new approach to its detachable Joy-Cons. The Joy-Con 2s, as they're called, now attach magnetically and include a C button, mouse controls and a built-in gyroscope for tilt control. The console itself is indeed larger, with a 7.9-inch LCD screen that supports a 1080p resolution, a variable refresh rate up to 120Hz and HDR10. The hardware also has a built-in mic to support a new feature called GameChat that'll let you communicate with friends in-game. (This is what that C button is for.) Nintendo says this service will be free to all Switch 2 users until March 31, 2026, at which point it'll require a Switch Online membership. When docked, you'll be able to play up to 4K on your TV. Nintendo says it's improved the consoles internal speakers as well. The updated dock has a built-in fan to keep the console cool and help maintain performance during long play sessions. Though we won't know exactly how much of a power upgrade the Switch 2 is over to the first Switch until it's released, it looks to be fairly significant leap, given that it'll have ports of relatively demanding games like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077. Elsewhere, the Switch 2 has dual USB-C ports for charging, while the internal storage amount has jumped from 32GB to 256GB. That storage is still expandable, but the device will only work with newer (and more expensive) microSD Express cards. As seen in the recent 20.0.0 update for the original Switch, the upcoming console will also utilize Nintendo's new Virtual Game Card system for lending digital games across systems, as well as a GameShare feature that lets you share select titles locally with just one copy of a game. Tariffs and the Nintendo Switch 2 The Nintendo Switch 2's Joy-Con 2 controllers. Sam Rutherford for Engadget During its most recent Direct presentation at the start of April, Nintendo showed off more of the Switch 2 than it ever had before. That included the reveal of its original April 9 pre-order date, in addition to its $450 starting price. Shortly after, President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on China and other countries, prompting Nintendo to delay pre-orders in the US and Canada. In a reversal, President Trump later announced a 90-day pause on steep tariffs affecting 75 countries, but also announced that the tariff imposed on China will go up even further (right now, it sits at 145 percent). We now know that the original $450 price for the Switch 2 will remain the same in the US and Canada, but based on its official statement, it appears Nintendo is leaving the door open for potential future price increases. We also know that Nintendo started moving some of its Switch console manufacturing to Vietnam in 2019. The increased tariff for Vietnam was set to be 46 percent, but that's temporarily on hold in favor of a 10 percent tariff that’s in effect for the 90-day pause period. It has been speculated that Nintendo will boost production of Switch 2 consoles in Vietnam so it can stay on schedule, even if it sells the console at a loss in the short term. It appears the company will have to seriously ramp up production to keep up with Switch 2 demand: According to Nintendo, 2.2 million people entered the pre-order lottery in Japan alone, which is far more devices than it is expected to deliver in that region on launch day. In total, the company projects it will sell 15 million Switch 2 units through March 2026. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-switch-2-pre-order-updates-ahead-of-the-june-5-launch-date-140931884.html?src=rss

In “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future,” Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey examines our AI-obsessed moment through one of its key figures — Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Hagey begins with Altman’s Midwest childhood, then takes readers through his career at startup Loopt, accelerator Y Combinator, and now at OpenAI. She also sheds new light on the dramatic few days when Altman was fired, then quickly reinstated, as OpenAI’s CEO. Looking back at what OpenAI employees now call “the Blip,” Hagey said the failed attempt to oust Altman revealed that OpenAI’s complex structure — with a for-profit company controlled by a nonprofit board — is “not stable.” And with OpenAI largely backing down from plans to let the for-profit side take control, Hagey predicted that this “fundamentally unstable arrangement” will “continue to give investors pause.” Does that mean OpenAI could struggle to raise the funds it needs to keep going? Hagey replied that it could “absolutely” be an issue. “My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge,” she said. “But success is not guaranteed.” In addition, Hagey’s biography (also available as an audiobook on Spotify) examines Altman’s politics, which she described as “pretty traditionally progressive” — making it a bit surprising that he’s struck massive infrastructure deals with the backing of the Trump administration. “But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker,” Hagey said. “Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at.” Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW In an interview with TechCrunch, Hagey also discussed Altman’s response to the book, his trustworthiness, and the AI “hype universe.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  You open the book by acknowledging some of the reservations that Sam Altman had about the project —  this idea that we tend to focus too much on individuals rather than organizations or broad movements, and also that it’s way too early to assess the impact of OpenAI. Did you share those concerns? Well, I don’t really share them, because this was a biography. This project was to look at a person, not an organization. And I also think that Sam Altman has set himself up in a way where it does matter what kind of moral choices he has made and what his moral formation has been, because the broad project of AI is really a moral project. That is the basis of OpenAI’s existence. So I think these are fair questions to ask about a person, not just an organization. As far as whether it’s too soon, I mean, sure, it’s definitely [early to] assess the entire impact of AI. But it’s been an extraordinary story for OpenAI — just so far, it’s already changed the stock market, it has changed the entire narrative of business. I’m a business journalist. We do nothing but talk about AI, all day long, every day. So in that way, I don’t think it’s too early. And despite those reservations, Altman did cooperate with you. Can you say more about what your relationship with him was like during the process of researching the book? Well, he was definitely not happy when he was informed about the book’s existence. And there was a long period of negotiation, frankly. In the beginning, I figured I was going to write this book without his help — what we call, in the business, a write-around profile. I’ve done plenty of those over my career, and I figured this would just be one more. Over time, as I made more and more calls, he opened up a little bit. And [eventually,] he was generous to sit down with me several times for long interviews and share his thoughts with me. Has he responded to the finished book at all? No. He did tweet about the project, about his decision to participate with it, but he was very clear that he was never going to read it. It’s the same way that I don’t like to watch my TV appearances or podcasts that I’m on. In the book, he’s described as this emblematic Silicon Valley figure. What do you think are the key characteristics that make him representative of the Valley and the tech industry? In the beginning, I think it was that he was young. The Valley really glorifies youth, and he was 19 years old when he started his first startup. You see him going into these meetings with people twice his age, doing deals with telecom operators for his first startup, and no one could get over that this kid was so smart. The other is that he is a once-in-a-generation fundraising talent, and that’s really about being a storyteller. I don’t think it’s an accident that you have essentially a salesman and a fundraiser at the top of the most important AI company today, That ties into one of the questions that runs through the book — this question about Altman’s trustworthiness. Can you say more about the concerns people seem to have about that? To what extent is he a trustworthy figure?  Well, he’s a salesman, so he’s really excellent at getting in a room and convincing people that he can see the future and that he has something in common with them. He gets people to share his vision, which is a rare talent. There are people who’ve watched that happen a bunch of times, who think, “Okay, what he says does not always map to reality,” and have, over time, lost trust in him. This happened both at his first startup and very famously at OpenAI, as well as at Y Combinator. So it is a pattern, but I think it’s a typical critique of people who have the salesman skill set. So it’s not necessarily that he’s particularly untrustworthy, but it’s part-and-parcel of being a salesman leading these important companies. I mean, there also are management issues that are detailed in the book, where he is not great at dealing with conflict, so he’ll basically tell people what they want to hear. That causes a lot of sturm-und-drang in the management ranks, and it’s a pattern. Something like that happened at Loopt, where the executives asked the board to replace him as CEO. And you saw it happen at OpenAI as well. You’ve touched on Altman’s firing, which was also covered in a book excerpt that was published in the Wall Street Journal. One of the striking things to me, looking back at it, was just how complicated everything was — all the different factions within the company, all the people who seemed pro-Altman one day and then anti-Altman the next. When you pull back from the details, what do you think is the bigger significance of that incident? The very big picture is that the nonprofit governance structure is not stable. You can’t really take investment from the likes of Microsoft and a bunch of other investors and then give them absolutely no say whatsoever in the governance of the company. That’s what they have tried to do, but I think what we saw in that firing is how power actually works in the world. When you have stakeholders, even if there’s a piece of paper that says they have no rights, they still have power. And when it became clear that everyone in the company was going to go to Microsoft if they didn’t reinstate Sam Altman, they reinstated Sam Altman. In the book, you take the story up to maybe the end of 2024. There have been all these developments since then, which you’ve continued to report on, including this announcement that actually, they’re not fully converting to a for-profit. How do you think that’s going to affect OpenAI going forward?  It’s going to make it harder for them to raise money, because they basically had to do an about-face. I know that the new structure going forward of the public benefit corporation is not exactly the same as the current structure of the for-profit — it is a little bit more investor friendly, it does clarify some of those things. But overall, what you have is a nonprofit board that controls a for-profit company, and that fundamentally unstable arrangement is what led to the so-called Blip. And I think you would continue to give investors pause, going forward, if they are going to have so little control over their investment. Obviously, OpenAI is still such a capital intensive business. If they have challenges raising more money, is that an existential question for the company? It absolutely could be. My research into Sam suggests that he might well be up to that challenge. But success is not guaranteed. Like you said, there’s a dual perspective in the book that’s partly about who Sam is, and partly about what that says about where AI is going from here. How did that research into his particular story shape the way you now look at these broader debates about AI and society? I went down a rabbit hole in the beginning of the book, [looking] into Sam’s father, Jerry Altman, in part because I thought it was striking how he’d been written out of basically every other thing that had ever been written about Sam Altman. What I found in this research was a very idealistic man who was, from youth, very interested in these public-private partnerships and the power of the government to set policy. He ended up having an impact on the way that affordable housing is still financed to this day. And when I traced Sam’s development, I saw that he has long believed that the government should really be the one that is funding and guiding AI research. In the early days of OpenAI, they went and tried to get the government to invest, as he’s publicly said, and it didn’t work out. But he looks back to these great mid-20th century labs like Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, which are private, but there was a ton of government money running through and supporting that ecosystem. And he says, “That’s the right way to do it.” Now I am watching daily as it seems like the United States is summoning the forces of state capitalism to get behind Sam Altman’s project to build these data centers, both in the United States and now there was just one last week announced in Abu Dhabi. This is a vision he has had for a very, very long time. My sense of the vision, as he presented it earlier, was one where, on the one hand, the government is funding these things and building this infrastructure, and on the other hand, the government is also regulating and guiding AI development for safety purposes. And it now seems like the path being pursued is one where they’re backing away from the safety side and doubling down on the government investment side. Absolutely. Isn’t it fascinating?  You talk about Sam as a political figure, as someone who’s had political ambitions at different times, but also somebody who has what are in many ways traditionally liberal political views while being friends with folks like — at least early on — Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. And he’s done a very good job of navigating the Trump administration. What do you think his politics are right now? I’m not sure his actual politics have changed, they are pretty traditionally progressive politics. Not completely — he’s been critical about things like cancel culture, but in general, he thinks the government is there to take tax revenue and solve problems. His success in the Trump administration has been fascinating because he has been able to find their one area of overlap, which is the desire to build a lot of data centers, and just double down on that and not talk about any other stuff. But this is one area where, in some ways, I feel like Sam Altman has been born for this moment, because he is a deal maker and Trump is a deal maker. Trump respects nothing so much as a big deal with a big price tag on it, and that is what Sam Altman is really great at. You open and close the book not just with Sam’s father, but with his family as a whole. What else is worth highlighting in terms of how his upbringing and family shapes who he is now? Well, you see both the idealism from his father and also the incredible ambition from his mother, who was a doctor, and had four kids and worked as a dermatologist. I think both of these things work together to shape him. They also had a more troubled marriage than I realized going into the book. So I do think that there’s some anxiety there that Sam himself is very upfront about, that he was a pretty anxious person for much of his life, until he did some meditation and had some experiences. And there’s his current family — he just had a baby and got married not too long ago. As a young gay man, growing up in the Midwest, he had to overcome some challenges, and I think those challenges both forged him in high school as a brave person who could stand up and take on a room as a public speaker, but also shaped his optimistic view of the world. Because, on that issue, I paint the scene of his wedding: That’s an unimaginable thing from the early ‘90s, or from the ‘80s when he was born. He’s watched society develop and progress in very tangible ways, and I do think that that has helped solidify his faith in progress. Something that I’ve found writing about AI is that the different visions being presented by people in the field can be so diametrically opposed. You have these wildly utopian visions, but also these warnings that AI could end the world. It gets so hyperbolic that it feels like people are not living in the same reality. Was that a challenge for you in writing the book? Well, I see those two visions — which feel very far apart — actually being part of the same vision, which is that AI is super important, and it’s going to completely transform everything. No one ever talks about the true opposite of that, which is, “Maybe this is going to be a cool enterprise tool, another way to waste time on the internet, and not quite change everything as much as everyone thinks.” So I see the doomers and the boomers feeding off each other and being part of the same sort of hype universe. As a journalist and as a biographer, you don’t necessarily come down on one side or the other — but actually, can you say where you come down on that? Well, I will say that I find myself using it a lot more recently, because it’s gotten a lot better. In the early stages, when I was researching the book, I was definitely a lot more skeptical of its transformative economic power. I’m less skeptical now, because I just use it a lot more.

Data broker LexisNexis Risk Solutions (LNRS) has just disclosed a data breach that occurred at the end of last year, and while it doesn't affect as many individuals as other recent high profile incidents—such as the DISA hack that included 3.3 million people's information—it underscores the ever-present concerns with companies collecting (and profiting off of) user data. As TechCrunch reports, LexisNexis Risk Solutions uses consumers' personal and financial information to help corporations conduct risk assessments on prospective customers and detect fraudulent transactions. For example, LexisNexis sold data on vehicle driving habits collected by car manufacturers to insurance companies to set premiums, while law enforcement agencies pull data from LexisNexis about suspects. (LexisNexis Risk Solutions is a subsidiary of the same corporation that owns data analytics and research firm LexisNexis.)The LexisNexis hack compromised data collected on 364,333 individuals, and there's a potential class action lawsuit brewing over the incident. Here's what you need to know. What happened with LexisNexis?According to the company's filing with the Maine attorney general's office, a data breach took place on December 25, 2024 but wasn't discovered until May 14, 2025. A third-party platform used by LexisNexis was hacked, compromising information that may include the following: NamePhone numberMailing addressEmail addressSocial Security numberDriver's license numberDate of birthIn a letter to affected individuals, LexisNexis states that no financial or credit card information was included in the breach, nor has any data been obviously misused (so far). Few additional details about the incident have been disclosed, other than that none of the company's own networks or systems were hacked. What consumers need to doLexisNexis sent a notice dated May 24 to consumers whose data may have been compromised, so if you receive a letter from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, don't throw it out. The company is offering 24 months of identity protection and credit monitoring services through Experian IdentityWorks, and you must enroll online by August 31, 2025 using the activation code provided in your notice. Affected individuals can also indicate their interest in joining a class action lawsuit against LexisNexis through Oklahoma-based firm Abington Cole + Ellery. If you want to volunteer to be considered as a class representative, fill out the online form with your name, contact information, and connection to the breach.Finally, even if you don't plan to join the class action suit, you should keep an eye out for signs of identity theft. Check your credit report—which you can request for free on a weekly basis—and monitor your accounts for any unauthorized activity. You can also freeze your credit, place a fraud alert, and take other steps to secure your Social Security number so no one can open accounts or take out debt in your name.

Insurance is a modern necessity—and it can often be a literal lifesaver. When any sort of disaster strikes, whether it’s to your property, your business, or your health, getting a payment on your claim can mean the difference between getting through the emergency in one piece and being buried under bills for years to come.While it might seem pretty straightforward, anyone who’s actually dealt with insurance companies knows that their least favorite thing to do in this world is pay out on claims. In fact, studies have found that 17% of claims made to HealthCare.gov insurers and 18% of claims made to private insurers are denied—with some insurance companies rejecting nearly 50% of all claims.In fact, some insurers employ several legal but underhanded tricks to avoid paying out on claims. Here are five common tricks insurance companies will use against you.Moving as slowly as possibleThe simplest trick an insurance company can play is to drag their feet on your claim—there’s a reason the phrase “deny and delay” has become linked to the insurance industry as a whole. This tactic works because your insurer knows you’re desperate for a settlement on your claim; that’s the whole point of insurance. The longer they make you wait, the more likely you’ll accept whatever they offer you, even if you know it’s much less than you’re entitled to.Delay tactics vary, but can include:Documentation overload. Insurance companies sometimes request huge amounts of (sometimes unnecessary) documentation that takes a lot of time to procure and organize.Personnel swaps. Insurers may change the adjuster and other employees on your case, with each new person requiring some time to review the claim and get up to speed.Claiming no response. Your insurer asked for something, and you provided it. Weeks later they claim they never received it, and ask that you submit it again.The best way to counter these tactics is meticulous record-keeping. If you feel that your insurer is asking for unnecessary documentation, ask them to explain why they need the documents—this sometimes makes document requests magically vanish. Send all written communications via certified mail and turn on read receipts for emails and other electronic communications.Love bombingInsurers are often extremely nice to you when you initially start dealing with them. They express sympathy, use the words “I’m sorry” in the context of your injuries or loss, and generally sound warm and friendly. That’s nice, and may even be genuine. But it’s also a tactic they use to delay or eventually find reasons to deny your claim.Studies have found that apologies can be weaponized, and that people will tolerate delays and settle for less if they think the other party is taking responsibility or expressing empathy. Being excessively nice to you can fool you into thinking you can rely on the insurer to handle things on your behalf. This lets the company delay as much as possible, stringing you along. Love bombing like this can also get you to say things you shouldn’t say—as we’ll see in the next entry.Twisting your wordsAnother reason an insurance adjuster or other employee might apologize to you? Because it can gently goad you into expressing regrets of your own which can then be used against you. Any expression of apology or regret could be interpreted as an admittance of fault. And establishing a friendly, sympathetic rapport with you could be a tactic to get you to say more than you should by speculating on causes or your responsibility in a claim.For example, while speaking with a friendly adjuster about a car accident you were involved with, you might tell them you wish you’d noticed the other car driving erratically—if you had, you might have avoided the accident. This might seem like a simple observation, but it could be twisted into an admittance that you weren’t paying attention—and thus your claim is denied.Insurers will also sometimes demand that you submit a recorded statement, often very quickly after the incident covered by the claim. They will sometimes state that this is best for you, as it will get the claim moving more quickly. But a rushed recorded statement can also lead to a denied claim—if you’re wrong or inaccurate about anything in your statement, this could be used as a basis for denial.To avoid the tactics listed above, follow a few simple rules for dealing with insurers:Lawyer up. Hiring a lawyer to help you deal with insurance claims might seem like overkill, but you should always have a lawyer with you when speaking with insurers. An experienced attorney can ensure you don’t say anything that could hurt your claim.Never record. You’re typically not required to submit recorded statements, so don’t do it. Insist that all communications be done in person or over the phone, with your attorney present.Be suspicious. If an adjuster or other representative of the insurance company is overly friendly, don’t fall for it. Their sympathy might be genuine, but it can still get you into trouble if you let your guard down.RushingIronically, an effective tactic to delay and deny claims is to rush things. You file your claim, and before you can get organized, hire a lawyer, and recover from whatever happened, the insurer is on the phone, offering a settlement. This is often combined with pressure—like sending you a letter stating that you have two weeks to accept the settlement offer, or the company will “close the file.”This is usually designed to reduce the payout—that easy, fast settlement is probably for a lot less than the amount you’re actually entitled to—and to force errors on your part. By rushing to pull together information, you’ll probably make mistakes that can then be used to deny the claim.You can defend against this in two simple ways:Slow down. Ignore pressure to respond immediately or by arbitrary deadlines. Take your time, gather information, and respond when you’re ready. An attorney can help by acting as a buffer between you and the company.Know the statute. If your insurer tells you it will close your claim file, let it happen. It’s a meaningless administrative action. Your state’s laws will have a defined Statute of Limitations on your claim—a period of time when you’re legally allowed to pursue the claim. As long as you’re within that time period, you can force the insurer to re-open the claim.LowballingIf your insurer doesn’t think it can totally deny your claim, it may offer you a lowball settlement. You shouldn’t accept an insurance company’s calculations as gospel. In fact, the most important piece of information you can have about the claims process is that you are allowed to hire your own insurance adjuster. A public insurance adjuster works for you, not the insurance company, and will often arrive at a much higher figure for your claim.Hiring your own adjuster also insulates you from internal delays, as you won’t have to wait on your insurer’s processes or play phone tag with their adjuster. In addition to an experienced lawyer, a public adjuster can also ensure that you have all the support and knowledge you need to navigate the often murky world of insurance claims.

Brett Ryder / Getty Because we live our lives entirely in our own heads, understanding the contents of someone else’s — and how radically their experience might differ from our own — is hard. New research, though, is revealing just how diverse the human imagination can be. Take the concept of a “mind’s eye”. You might take being able to conjure up mental images in your imagination as a given. But research from myself and others has shown that 1 to 4 per cent of the population have aphantasia, meaning they lack wakeful visual imagery – ask them to “see” a hippo floating down a river on a pink lilo, and nothing happens. (Most people with aphantasia experience visual imagery in their dreams, however.) This article is part of a special series exploring the radical potential of the human imagination. Read more here. Living with aphantasia Aphantasia is often associated with a “thinner” than usual memory for personal past or autobiographical events, and sometimes with autism and difficulties with face recognition. People with aphantasia are more likely than those with exceptionally vivid imagery to work in STEM areas. They often report that close relatives are also aphantasic, hinting at a genetic basis. Aphantasia may be protective in some ways, possibly offering some defence against medical conditions involving imagery, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Fully understanding the brain signatures of aphantasia is a work in progress, but five papers published this year and last have begun to help us untangle what is going on. One brain-imaging study, for example, has shown how the regions associated with visual imagery do fire in those with aphantasia, but…

In June, we hosted a webinar featuring experts from Arm, the Unity Accelerate Solutions team, and SYBO Games, the creator of Subway Surfers. The resulting roundtable focused on profiling tips and strategies for mobile games, the business implications of poor performance, and how SYBO shipped a hit mobile game with 3 billion downloads to date.Let’s dive into some of the follow-up questions we didn’t have time to cover during the webinar. You can also watch the full recording.We hear a lot about the Unity Profiler in relation to CPU profiling, but not as much about the Profile Analyzer (available as a Unity package). Are there any plans to improve it or integrate it into the core Profiler toolset?There are no immediate plans to integrate the Profile Analyzer into the core Editor, but this might change as our profiling tools evolve.Does Unity have any plans to add an option for the GPU Usage Profiler module to appear in percentages like it does in milliseconds?That’s a great idea, and while we can’t say yes or no at the time of this blog post, it’s a request that’s been shared with our R&D teams for possible future consideration.Do you have plans for tackling “Application Not Responding” (ANR) errors that are reported by the Google Play store and don’t contain any stack trace?Although we don’t have specific plans for tracking ANR without stack trace at the moment, we will consider it for the future roadmap.How can I share my feedback to help influence the future development of Unity’s profiling tools?You can keep track of upcoming features and share feedback via our product board and forums. We are also conducting a survey to learn more about our customers’ experience with the profiling tools. If you’ve used profiling tools before (either daily or just once) or are working on a project that requires optimization, we would love to get your input. The survey is designed to take no more than 5–10 minutes to complete.By participating, you’ll also have the chance to opt into a follow-up interview to share more feedback directly with the development team, including the opportunity to discuss potential prototypes of new features.Is there a good rule for determining what counts as a viable low-end device to target?A rule of thumb we hear from many Unity game developers is to target devices that are five years old at the time of your game’s release, as this helps to ensure the largest user base. But we also see teams reducing their release-date scope to devices that are only three years old if they’re aiming for higher graphical quality. A visually complex 3D application, for example, will have higher device requirements than a simple 2D application. This approach allows for a higher “min spec,” but reduces the size of the initial install base. It’s essentially a business decision: Will it cost more to develop for and support old devices than what your game will earn running on them?Sometimes the technical requirements of your game will dictate your minimum target specifications. So if your game uses up large amounts of texture memory even after optimization, but you absolutely cannot reduce quality or resolution, that probably rules out running on phones with insufficient memory. If your rendering solution requires compute shaders, that likely rules out devices with drivers that can’t support OpenGL ES 3.1, Metal, or Vulkan.It’s a good idea to look at market data for your priority target audience. For instance, mobile device specs can vary a lot between countries and regions. Remember to define some target “budgets” so that benchmarking goals for what’s acceptable are set prior to choosing low-end devices for testing.For live service games that will run for years, you’ll need to monitor their compatibility continuously and adapt over time based on both your actual user base and current devices on the market.Is it enough to test performance exclusively on low-end devices to ensure that the game will also run smoothly on high-end ones?It might be, if you have a uniform workload on all devices. However, you still need to consider variations across hardware from different vendors and/or driver versions.It’s common for graphically rich games to have tiers of graphical fidelity – the higher the visual tier, the more resources required on capable devices. This tier selection might be automatic, but increasingly, users themselves can control the choice via a graphical settings menu. For this style of development, you’ll need to test at least one “min spec” target device per feature/workload tier that your game supports.If your game detects the capabilities of the device it’s running on and adapts the graphics output as needed, it could perform differently on higher end devices. So be sure to test on a range of devices with the different quality levels you’ve programmed the title for.Note: In this section, we’ve specified whether the expert answering is from Arm or Unity.Do you have advice for detecting the power range of a device to support automatic quality settings, particularly for mobile?Arm: We typically see developers doing coarse capability binning based on CPU and GPU models, as well as the GPU shader core count. This is never perfect, but it’s “about right.” A lot of studios collect live analytics from deployed devices, so they can supplement the automated binning with device-specific opt-in/opt-out to work around point issues where the capability binning isn’t accurate enough.As related to the previous question, for graphically rich content, we see a trend in mobile toward settings menus where users can choose to turn effects on or off, thereby allowing them to make performance choices that suit their preferences.Unity: Device memory and screen resolution are also important factors for choosing quality settings. Regarding textures, developers should be aware that Render Textures used by effects or post-processing can become a problem on devices with high resolution screens, but without a lot of memory to match.Given the breadth of configurations available (CPU, GPU, SOC, memory, mobile, desktop, console, etc.), can you suggest a way to categorize devices to reduce the number of tiers you need to optimize for?Arm: The number of tiers your team optimizes for is really a game design and business decision, and should be based on how important pushing visual quality is to the value proposition of the game. For some genres it might not matter at all, but for others, users will have high expectations for the visual fidelity.Does the texture memory limit differ among models and brands of Android devices that have the same amount of total system memory?Arm: To a first-order approximation, we would expect the total amount of texture memory to be similar across vendors and hardware generations. There will be minor differences caused by memory layout and alignment restrictions, so it won’t be exactly the same.Is it CPU or GPU usage that contributes the most to overheating on mobile devices?Arm: It’s entirely content dependent. The CPU, GPU, or the DRAM can individually overheat a high-end device if pushed hard enough, even if you ignore the other two completely. The exact balance will vary based on the workload you are running.What tips can you give for profiling on devices that have thermal throttling? What margin would you target to avoid thermal throttling (i.e., targeting 20 ms instead of 33 ms)?Arm: Optimizing for frame time can be misleading on Android because devices will constantly adjust frequency to optimize energy usage, making frame time an incomplete measure by itself. Preferably, monitor CPU and GPU cycles per frame, as well as GPU memory bandwidth per frame, to get some value that is independent of frequency. The cycle target you need will depend on each device’s chip design, so you’ll need to experiment.Any optimization helps when it comes to managing power consumption, even if it doesn’t directly improve frame rate. For example, reducing CPU cycles will reduce thermal load even if the CPU isn’t the critical path for your game.Beyond that, optimizing memory bandwidth is one of the biggest savings you can make. Accessing DRAM is orders of magnitude more expensive than accessing local data on-chip, so watch your triangle budget and keep data types in memory as small as possible.Unity: To limit the impact of CPU clock frequency on the performance metrics, we recommend trying to run at a consistent temperature. There are a couple of approaches for doing this:Run warm: Run the device for a while so that it reaches a stable warm state before profiling.Run cool: Leave the device to cool for a while before profiling. This strategy can eliminate confusion and inconsistency in profiling sessions by taking captures that are unlikely to be thermally throttled. However, such captures will always represent the best case performance a user will see rather than what they might actually see after long play sessions. This strategy can also delay the time between profiling runs due to the need to wait for the cooling period first.With some hardware, you can fix the clock frequency for more stable performance metrics. However, this is not representative of most devices your users will be using, and will not report accurate real-world performance. Basically, it’s a handy technique if you are using a continuous integration setup to check for performance changes in your codebase over time.Any thoughts on Vulkan vs OpenGL ES 3 on Android? Vulkan is generally slower performance-wise. At the same time, many devices lack support for various features on ES3.Arm: Recent drivers and engine builds have vastly improved the quality of the Vulkan implementations available; so for an equivalent workload, there shouldn’t be a performance gap between OpenGL ES and Vulkan (if there is, please let us know). The switch to Vulkan is picking up speed and we expect to see more people choosing Vulkan by default over the next year or two. If you have counterexamples of areas where Vulkan isn’t performing well, please get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you.What tools can we use to monitor memory bandwidth (RAM <-> VRAM)?Arm: The Streamline Profiler in Arm Mobile Studio can measure bandwidth between Mali GPUs and the external DRAM (or system cache).Should you split graphical assets by device tiers or device resolution?Arm: You can get the best result by retuning assets, but it’s expensive to do. Start by reducing resolution and frame rate, or disabling some optional post-processing effects.What is the best way to record performance metric statistics from our development build?Arm: You can use the Performance Advisor tool in Arm Mobile Studio to automatically capture and export performance metrics from the Mali GPUs, although this comes with a caveat: The generation of JSON reports requires a Professional Edition license.Unity: The Unity Profiler can be used to view common rendering metrics, such as vertex and triangle counts in the Rendering module. Plus you can include custom packages, such as System Metrics Mali, in your project to add low-level Mali GPU metrics to the Unity Profiler.What are your recommendations for profiling shader code?You need a GPU Profiler to do this. The one you choose depends on your target platform. For example, on iOS devices, Xcode’s GPU Profiler includes the Shader Profiler, which breaks down shader performance on a line-by-line basis.Arm Mobile Studio supports Mali Offline Compiler, a static analysis tool for shader code and compute kernels. This tool provides some overall performance estimates and recommendations for the Arm Mali GPU family.When profiling, the general rule is to test your game or app on the target device(s). With the industry moving toward more types of chipsets (Apple M1, Arm, x86 by Intel, AMD, etc.), how can developers profile and pinpoint issues on the many different hardware configurations in a reasonable amount of time?The proliferation of chipsets is primarily a concern on desktop platforms. There are a limited number of hardware architectures to test for console games. On mobile, there’s Apple’s A Series for iOS devices and a range of Arm and Qualcomm architectures for Android – but selecting a manageable list of representative mobile devices is pretty straightforward.On desktop it’s trickier because there’s a wide range of available chipsets and architectures, and buying Macs and PCs for testing can be expensive. Our best advice is to do what you can. No studio has infinite time and money for testing. We generally wouldn’t expect any huge surprises when comparing performance between an Intel x86 CPU and a similarly specced AMD processor, for instance. As long as the game performs comfortably on your minimum spec machine, you should be reasonably confident about other machines. It’s also worth considering using analytics, such as Unity Analytics, to record frame rates, system specs, and player options’ settings to identify hotspots or problematic configurations.We’re seeing more studios move to using at least some level of automated testing for regular on-device profiling, with summary stats published where the whole team can keep an eye on performance across the range of target devices. With well-designed test scenes, this can usually be made into a mechanical process that’s suited for automation, so you don’t need an experienced technical artist or QA tester running builds through the process manually.Do you ever see performance issues on high-end devices that don’t occur on the low-end ones?It’s uncommon, but we have seen it. Often the issue lies in how the project is configured, such as with the use of fancy shaders and high-res textures on high-end devices, which can put extra pressure on the GPU or memory. Sometimes a high-end mobile device or console will use a high-res phone screen or 4K TV output as a selling point but not necessarily have enough GPU power or memory to live up to that promise without further optimization.If you make use of the current versions of the C# Job System, verify whether there’s a job scheduling overhead that scales with the number of worker threads, which in turn, scales with the number of CPU cores. This can result in code that runs more slowly on a 64+ core Threadripper™ than on a modest 4-core or 8-core CPU. This issue will be addressed in future versions of Unity, but in the meantime, try limiting the number of job worker threads by setting JobsUtility.JobWorkerCount.What are some pointers for setting a good frame budget?Most of the time when we talk about frame budgets, we’re talking about the overall time budget for the frame. You calculate 1000/target frames per second (fps) to get your frame budget: 33.33 ms for 30 fps, 16.66 ms for 60 fps, 8.33 ms for 120 Hz, etc. Reduce that number by around 35% if you’re on mobile to give the chips a chance to cool down between each frame. Dividing the budget up to get specific sub-budgets for different features and/or systems is probably overkill except for projects with very specific, predictable systems, or those that make heavy use of Time Slicing.Generally, profiling is the process of finding the biggest bottlenecks – and therefore, the biggest potential performance gains. So rather than saying, “Physics is taking 1.2 ms when the budget only allows for 1 ms,” you might look at a frame and say, “Rendering is taking 6 ms, making it the biggest main thread CPU cost in the frame. How can we reduce that?”It seems like profiling early and often is still not common knowledge. What are your thoughts on why this might be the case?Building, releasing, promoting, and managing a game is difficult work on multiple fronts. So there will always be numerous priorities vying for a developer’s attention, and profiling can fall by the wayside. They know it’s something they should do, but perhaps they’re unfamiliar with the tools and don’t feel like they have time to learn. Or, they don’t know how to fit profiling into their workflows because they’re pushed toward completing features rather than performance optimization.Just as with bugs and technical debt, performance issues are cheaper and less risky to address early on, rather than later in a project’s development cycle. Our focus is on helping to demystify profiling tools and techniques for those developers who are unfamiliar with them. That’s what the profiling e-book and its related blog post and webinar aim to support.Is there a way to exclude certain methods from instrumentation or include only specific methods when using Deep Profiling in the Unity Profiler? When using a lot of async/await tasks, we create large stack traces, but how can we avoid slowing down both the client and the Profiler when Deep Profiling?You can enable Allocation call stacks to see the full call stacks that lead to managed allocations (shown as magenta in the Unity CPU Profiler Timeline view). Additionally, you can – and should! – manually instrument long-running methods and processes by sprinkling ProfilerMarkers throughout your code. There’s currently no way to automatically enable Deep Profiling or disable profiling entirely in specific parts of your application. But manually adding ProfilerMarkers and enabling Allocation call stacks when required can help you dig down into problem areas without having to resort to Deep Profiling.As of Unity 2022.2, you can also use our IgnoredByDeepProfilerAttribute to prevent the Unity Profiler from capturing method calls. Just add the IgnoredByDeepProfiler attribute to classes, structures, and methods.Where can I find more information on Deep Profiling in Unity?Deep Profiling is covered in our Profiler documentation. Then there’s the most in-depth, single resource for profiling information, the Ultimate Guide to profiling Unity games e-book, which links to relevant documentation and other resources throughout.Is it correct that Deep Profiling is only useful for the Allocations Profiler and that it skews results so much that it’s not useful for finding hitches in the game?Deep Profiling can be used to find the specific causes of managed allocations, although Allocation call stacks can do the same thing with less overhead, overall. At the same time, Deep Profiling can be helpful for quickly investigating why one specific ProfilerMarker seems to be taking so long, as it’s more convenient to enable than to add numerous ProfilerMarkers to your scripts and rebuild your game. But yes, it does skew performance quite heavily and so shouldn’t be enabled for general profiling.Is VSync worth setting to every VBlank? My mobile game runs at a very low fps when it’s disabled.Mobile devices force VSync to be enabled at a driver/hardware level, so disabling it in Unity’s Quality settings shouldn’t make any difference on those platforms. We haven’t heard of a case where disabling VSync negatively affects performance. Try taking a profile capture with VSync enabled, along with another capture of the same scene but with VSync disabled. Then compare the captures using Profile Analyzer to try to understand why the performance is so different.How can you determine if the main thread is waiting for the GPU and not the other way around?This is covered in the Ultimate Guide to profiling Unity games. You can also get more information in the blog post, Detecting performance bottlenecks with Unity Frame Timing Manager.Generally speaking, the telltale sign is that the main thread waits for the Render thread while the Render thread waits for the GPU. The specific marker names will differ depending on your target platform and graphics API, but you should look out for markers with names such as “PresentFrame” or “WaitForPresent.”Is there a solid process for finding memory leaks in profiling?Use the Memory Profiler to compare memory snapshots and check for leaks. For example, you can take a snapshot in your main menu, enter your game and then quit, go back to the main menu, and take a second snapshot. Comparing these two will tell you whether any objects/allocations from the game are still hanging around in memory.Does it make sense to optimize and rewrite part of the code for the DOTS system, for mobile devices including VR/AR? Do you use this system in your projects?A number of game projects now make use of parts of the Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS). Native Containers, the C# Job System, Mathematics, and the Burst compilerare all fully supported packages that you can use right away to write optimal, parallelized, high-performance C# (HPC#) code to improve your project’s CPU performance.A smaller number of projects are also using Entities and associated packages, such as the Hybrid Renderer, Unity Physics, and NetCode. However, at this time, the packages listed are experimental, and using them involves accepting a degree of technical risk. This risk derives from an API that is still evolving, missing or incomplete features, as well as the engineering learning curve required to understand Data-Oriented Design (DOD) to get the most out of Unity’s Entity Component System (ECS). Unity engineer Steve McGreal wrote a guide on DOTS best practices, which includes some DOD fundamentals and tips for improving ECS performance.How do you go about setting limits on SetPass calls or shader complexity? Can you even set limits beforehand?Rendering is a complex process and there is no practical way to set a hard limit on the maximum number of SetPass calls or a metric for shader complexity. Even on a fixed hardware platform, such as a single console, the limits will depend on what kind of scene you want to render, and what other work is happening on the CPU and GPU during a frame.That’s why the rule on when to profile is “early and often.” Teams tend to create a “vertical slice” demo early on during production – usually a short burst of gameplay developed to the level of visual fidelity intended for the final game. This is your first opportunity to profile rendering and figure out what optimizations and limits might be needed. The profiling process should be repeated every time a new area or other major piece of visual content is added.Here are additional resources for learning about performance optimization:BlogsOptimize your mobile game performance: Expert tips on graphics and assetsOptimize your mobile game performance: Expert tips on physics, UI, and audio settingsOptimize your mobile game performance: Expert tips on profiling, memory, and code architecture from Unity’s top engineersExpert tips on optimizing your game graphics for consolesProfiling in Unity 2021 LTS: What, when, and howHow-to pagesProfiling and debugging toolsHow to profile memory in UnityBest practices for profiling game performanceE-booksOptimize your console and PC game performanceOptimize your mobile game performanceUltimate guide to profiling Unity gamesLearn tutorialsProfiling CPU performance in Android builds with Android StudioProfiling applications – Made with UnityEven more advanced technical content is coming soon – but in the meantime, please feel free to suggest topics for us to cover on the forum and check out the full roundtable webinar recording.

Nacon enters the direct drive sim racing game - and hands-on impressions are positive On the back of securing the WRC license. Blog by Reece Bithrey Contributor Published on May 31, 2025 Nacon, new custodians of the WRC series, has gotten into the sim racing game with a new direct drive racing wheel and accessories under RevoSim branding it announced last year. The wheel base, rim, load cell brake and accelerator form the RS Pure bundle, which looks to compete with the likes of the Fanatec Gran Turismo DD Pro, Moza R9 V3 and Thrustmaster T598 at a upper-mid price point of £699. We went hands-on with the bundle at a recent press event in Paris and found it had some merit, though the direct drive (DD) space has become increasingly competitive over the years with the likes of Logitech and Turtle Beach joining the fray over the last couple of years. As well as the obligatory starter bundle of wheel rim, wheel base and pedals, there are a number of accessories, including a hybrid shifter that supports both sequential and h-pattern options, a clutch pedal add-on and a load cell handbrake for navigating tighter turns. The wheel base itself has 9Nm of torque, which is a touch more than the Turtle Beach VelocityOne Race's 7.2Nm, although slightly behind the Logitech Pro Racing Wheel's 11nm of force. In addition, the rim itself is on a quick release, so it can easily be swapped out with the other options in the range - though third-party rims aren't supported as is sometimes the case. Here is a closer look at the pedal set. The pedal set is in steel and brushed aluminium for a solid construction, coming equipped with a 100kg load cell sensor for precise input. You can also choose how heavy, or light, you wish the brake to be with colour-coded elastomers supplied with the kit. I tested out the RS in a few different configurations at the Paris event, starting with a desk setup and a round rally-style rim in WRC Generations. That outing revealed some small issues with the pedals' ability to grip onto carpet, as I found they had a tendency to slide under harsh braking as I clung onto dear life at the mercy of a Group B Peugeot 205 T16. The force feedback was strong and informative, picking out the nuances of a rally stage with its hidden dips and crests, while pedal inputs were strong, although there was perhaps a little too much weight to the force feedback for my liking. I felt unable to flick the car into corners on a Monte Carlo rally stage as I wished to, although if the feedback wasn't necessarily set to be so high, this would have come easier. For the most part, though, I enjoyed my time with it, and the unit felt responsive with accurate feedback and a pleasant feel in-hand. I also used the bundle in a sim-racing cockpit, this time in F1 24 taking a few laps around spa. The heavier load cell brake pedal typical of F1 racing took some getting used to, requiring a lot more force to push the brake down all the way than I anticipated. However, I can certainly see the appeal of having such a heavy feel, so you can dial in advanced techniques such as trail braking. My lap times around Spa weren't necessarily the best on the day, but I could still feel the edges of kerbs and the car's movement to a good degree. There isn't a more Formula-style rim available just yet, but I hope that Nacon plans to add it for folks who want to go full-on with the immersion. It can make a bit of difference. And this is the main basis of the 'starter kit' as it were. General build quality from my initial impressions also seems excellent for the price point Nacon is targeting, with an all-metal wheel base alongside a metal wheel and plush synthetic leather rim. The main rims also have a good selection of buttons, and you can even control presets, force feedback and input mapping in an associated smartphone app. Compatibility is purely for Windows at the moment, although I heard rumblings at the event that Nacon was talking to Xbox and PlayStation for console compatibility. Nothing seems to have come from that yet, so I wouldn't bank on it being available any time soon - and it may come via new hardware rather than a software update. For what's on offer here, the £699 price tag for the complete bundle including rim, base and pedals is reasonably compelling - though we'll wait for our full review to deliver a final verdict on a wider range of racing scenarios, software support and the wider ecosystem.

Chances are, you've heard of the term "large language models," or LLMs, when people are talking about generative AI. But they aren't quite synonymous with the brand-name chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI and Anthropic's Claude.These AI chatbots can produce impressive results, but they don't actually understand the meaning of words the way we do. Instead, they're the interface we use to interact with large language models. These underlying technologies are trained to recognize how words are used and which words frequently appear together, so they can predict future words, sentences or paragraphs. Understanding how LLMs work is key to understanding how AI works. And as AI becomes increasingly common in our daily online experiences, that's something you ought to know.This is everything you need to know about LLMs and what they have to do with AI.What is a language model?You can think of a language model as a soothsayer for words."A language model is something that tries to predict what language looks like that humans produce," said Mark Riedl, professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and associate director of the Georgia Tech Machine Learning Center. "What makes something a language model is whether it can predict future words given previous words."This is the basis of autocomplete functionality when you're texting, as well as of AI chatbots.What is a large language model?A large language model contains vast amounts of words from a wide array of sources. These models are measured in what is known as "parameters."So, what's a parameter?Well, LLMs use neural networks, which are machine learning models that take an input and perform mathematical calculations to produce an output. The number of variables in these computations are parameters. A large language model can have 1 billion parameters or more."We know that they're large when they produce a full paragraph of coherent fluid text," Riedl said.How do large language models learn?LLMs learn via a core AI process called deep learning."It's a lot like when you teach a child -- you show a lot of examples," said Jason Alan Snyder, global CTO of ad agency Momentum Worldwide.In other words, you feed the LLM a library of content (what's known as training data) such as books, articles, code and social media posts to help it understand how words are used in different contexts, and even the more subtle nuances of language. The data collection and training practices of AI companies are the subject of some controversy and some lawsuits. Publishers like The New York Times, artists and other content catalog owners are alleging tech companies have used their copyrighted material without the necessary permissions.(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed on Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)AI models digest far more than a person could ever read in their lifetime -- something on the order of trillions of tokens. Tokens help AI models break down and process text. You can think of an AI model as a reader who needs help. The model breaks down a sentence into smaller pieces, or tokens -- which are equivalent to four characters in English, or about three-quarters of a word -- so it can understand each piece and then the overall meaning.From there, the LLM can analyze how words connect and determine which words often appear together."It's like building this giant map of word relationships," Snyder said. "And then it starts to be able to do this really fun, cool thing, and it predicts what the next word is … and it compares the prediction to the actual word in the data and adjusts the internal map based on its accuracy."This prediction and adjustment happens billions of times, so the LLM is constantly refining its understanding of language and getting better at identifying patterns and predicting future words. It can even learn concepts and facts from the data to answer questions, generate creative text formats and translate languages. But they don't understand the meaning of words like we do -- all they know are the statistical relationships.LLMs also learn to improve their responses through reinforcement learning from human feedback."You get a judgment or a preference from humans on which response was better given the input that it was given," said Maarten Sap, assistant professor at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. "And then you can teach the model to improve its responses." LLMs are good at handling some tasks but not others.

OK, I know you just read that headline, but let me admit first off that I don’t actually think Elden Ring is that hard — not if you take it slow and steady, which the game’s design not only allows but encourages. At every step of the way in Elden Ring, you can decide exactly how you want to play it. It’s very customizable and it rewards patience. Elden Ring Nightreign is the complete opposite, and that’s why I don’t think it’s for me. And it might not be for most other FromSoftware game fans, either, which is pretty shocking.It wouldn’t be a FromSoftware game launch without at least a few debates about difficulty and certain players hurling “git gud” at each other like it was ever even remotely cool to say that and not just performatively tryhard at best and antisocial at worst. I try to exist instead in the sector of the FromSoftware fandom that is prosocial rather than antisocial — think Let Me Solo Her, for example, or even consider the real-life story that inspired longtime FromSoftware game director Hidetaka Miyazaki to design Demon’s Souls’ multiplayer elements with prosocial thinking in mind (via an old 2010 Eurogamer interview):“The origin of that idea is actually due to a personal experience where a car suddenly stopped on a hillside after some heavy snow and started to slip,” says Miyazaki. “The car following me also got stuck, and then the one behind it spontaneously bumped into it and started pushing it up the hill... That’s it! That’s how everyone can get home! Then it was my turn and everyone started pushing my car up the hill, and I managed to get home safely.”“But I couldn’t stop the car to say thanks to the people who gave me a shove. I’d have just got stuck again if I’d stopped. On the way back home I wondered whether the last person in the line had made it home, and thought that I would probably never meet the people who had helped me. I thought that maybe if we’d met in another place we’d become friends, or maybe we’d just fight...””You could probably call it a connection of mutual assistance between transient people. Oddly, that incident will probably linger in my heart for a long time.”The multiplayer experiences that I’ve had in Dark Souls and Elden Ring definitely do linger in my heart. I’ve also absolutely loved the moments in FromSoftware games in which I’ve personally conquered a difficult section all by myself. But I look back with equal appreciation on the times when I summoned a complete stranger to help me with something — “a connection of mutual assistance between transient people,” as Miyazaki put it. It is how these games are meant to be played, not as brutal solo journeys but as shared experiences.Here’s a screenshot I took of my Elden Ring character at the beginning of the game, before I knew I was going to spend 360 hours playing it Image: FromSoftware via PolygonThis brings us back to Elden Ring Nightreign, a game not directed by Miyazaki but by Junya Ishizaki. The difference in its multiplayer ethos is stark. This is a game designed with three-player squads in mind; it’s currently very punishing for solo players (although an upcoming patch aims to fix some of that), and the designers are still working on a duos mode. Because it’s three-player by default, I assumed that the game would be designed around teamwork and would actively reward prosocial behaviors, like base Elden Ring. I would argue that it’s not, and that’s why it’s very hard to have a good time in the game — especially if you’re playing with complete strangers.Problem number one: There’s no in-game communication system besides pinging certain locations on the map. Lack of chat options is a FromSoftware classic, and in most of these games, you don’t really need communication to understand what to do. Usually, you’re just summoned to help with a boss battle, and after it’s over, you’re done and you go back to your game. But in Nightreign, it’s three-player for the entire game, obviously, and it’s a match-based game, not a hundreds-of-hours RPG. Matches last 45 minutes and every second counts, which means you and your teammates need to be extremely organized throughout. The lack of communication hurts. But that’s not the only problem. Far from it.Problem number two: The ring of fire. This game is a combination of Elden Ring’s open world areas (which encourage slow, methodical exploration) and a Fortnite-esque ring of fire that closes in on you constantly (which means you absolutely shouldn’t be doing any slow, methodical exploration). There’s also a Diablo-esque loot system, but you better read those loot descriptions fast, because the fire is coming for you. There are randomized boss fights all over the map, but oops, you might not be able to complete them in time to collect runes from them, because that fire is closing in. There are also special upgrades that you can only get if you defeat these mid-game bosses all over the map, but you might barely even have time to read those descriptions of the special abilities and select one in time for… you guessed it… the fire rushing towards you.This second problem becomes even more stressful when you have two other people on your team alongside you. This game has not one but two different sprint buttons in it — a regular sprint, and a super-fast sprint that uses up stamina faster. That’s because, of course, you need to be running from that fire. But that means your teammates, and you, need to constantly be doing the equivalent of screaming “move, move, move” like a drill sergeant in an army movie. You will be unwittingly getting annoyed at your teammate who is spending too damn long looking at loot on the ground or at an upgrade tree. The fire is coming! Hurry the fuck up! Again, this is not a game design choice that rewards prosocial behaviors and instead makes you feel dragged down by the two teammates that you also desperately need to survive the bosses in this game. Even the “revive” process involves you inflicting damage on your teammate to bring them back to life (rather than a revive button or item), which is darkly hilarious, because you might also grow to desire hitting them due to how annoyed you might feel that they died during a super difficult fight. Which brings us to the third and final problem.Image: FromSoftwareThird problem: The randomization of the bosses and of the items. The thing about base Elden Ring is that you can figure out a boss and how it works (is it weak to fire? Holy damage? And so on) and then patiently build up a character who can deal with that problem. You can memorize that boss’ attack patterns. You can find a save point nearest to that boss and run it back over and over again until you get past it. These are all of the wonderful and rewarding parts of playing FromSoftware video games; these are also the moments when you might do all of those preparations and then think, “Actually, I want to also summon a complete stranger to help me with this boss because it’s still too freaking hard.” And then you can do that, too. None of that is the case in Nightreign, because everything is completely fucking random.The bosses, except for the very last boss in each area, are random. The loot is random. Do you have the right loot to fight the boss you’re facing right this second? You may very well not. Do your teammates have it? You might not even know; you don’t have a way to communicate with them, after all. Is the boss in this area way overleveled for you and your team? It won’t be obvious until you start hitting it, and once you do that, good luck escaping. And if your team does a complete wipe and everyone dies to that boss together, you don’t get to run back together from the nearest save point, having seen its attack patterns, ready to try again with teamwork in mind. Nope, instead you get to start all over again, except now with new randomized bosses and new randomized loot.In other games with randomized loot, like Diablo, or other roguelikes with random elements like Hades, the game is designed with down time in mind. When you’ve completed a fight in Diablo or Hades, you have infinite time to stand around and make decisions. There is no encroaching circle of fire forcing you to read item descriptions and ability trees quickly. There’s a reason for that; the decision-making is the most fun part of a game with randomized elements. Why would Nightreign take that away?All of these aspects of the game do feel less bad if you’re playing with two good friends on voice chat. But even in that scenario, the game is still really punishing, and again, not in a way that other FromSoftware games are punishing. It’s punishing because you need to spend the entire game running, looking at randomized loot as fast as you possibly can before making a snap (possibly bad) decision, running more, desperately encouraging your teammates to keep on running to keep up, warning your teammates about the encroaching flames about to kill them, and did I mention running? Is this a fun way to spend your weekly gamer night with two other adults who just worked a full-time job all day and maybe just wanted to have a nice time playing a video game together?Image: FromSoftware/Bandai NamcoI’ve had a review code for Nightreign for a while now, so I already was worried about these problems before the game launched, but now that it’s launched and I’m seeing early mixed reviews on Steam, I’m ready to commiserate and validate: Yes, this game really doesn’t feel like Elden Ring, and even after some of this stuff gets patched, it’s still fundamentally super different. And that’s not only because it’s multiplayer, but because the multiplayer just doesn’t feel like other multiplayer FromSoftware experiences. It feels like it’s designed not only for people who have two best friends with whom they play competitive games on a regular basis, but also specifically for people who live for thrills and speed — not the methodical, calculated experiences of other FromSoftware games.For all of those reasons, I’m really not sure how this is going to go for FromSoftware over time. Is this game going to eventually encourage some prosocial behaviors amongst players, against all odds? Will people slowly learn the best ways to get through different areas? Will there be a “meta” for working together that emerges over time?It seems possible, and since it’s only been one day, it’s way too early to tell. Various social norms will emerge in the player community, and hopefully they won’t be toxic ones. But I can tell from having already played the game that this is going to be an uphill climb for FromSoftware fans. It’s a very different game — and its specific form of difficulty is going to be a whole new variety for those fans to get used to. And like me, they might just decide they don’t really care for it.See More: