You ever wonder who the first person to put peanut butter and chocolate together was? Part of me feels like whoever it was must be loaded; I mean, you’ve combined two already great flavors into something that Reese’s would more or less build a whole brand on. And then part of me thinks it plays out like the hypothetical guy who invented the Chicken McNugget in The Wire. A pat on the back from a big shot, and then it’s back to the basement to figure out a way to make the fries taste better. I don’t know the answer; I hope it's the former. But every now and then, you come across an idea, a combination of things, that’s so good that you wonder how nobody’s ever done it before. And every time my squad and I sprinted back to our time-traveling dropship, stopping only to deal with the Time Reapers that stood in our way, I wondered how the hell nobody had ever said “Hey, what if we combined Overcooked and Gears of War?” pre-Pizza Bandit.Pizza Bandit’s setup is pretty simple. You’re Malik, a former bounty hunter with dreams of being a chef who is pulled back into the bounty game when he’s scammed out of his pizza shop and his former crew needs his help to get out of a jam. Pizza Bandit’s writing is pretty silly, but that’s part of the charm. I can’t get mad when Albert, the android that upgrades your weapons, tells me he doesn’t know how to apologize for what happened to my pizza shop because he’s just an android, or when my pilot waxes nostalgic about how he misses the fog, or when someone utters the odd nonsensical line. It’s too silly, and the whole setup is just there to, well… set up Pizza Bandit’s wackiness.PlaySee, you’re not just any bounty-hunting crew. You’re a time-traveling bounty hunting crew, and that means you’ll be going all over space and time to get the job done. Don’t ask me how any of this works. All I know is that pizza heals and bullets kill, and that the Time Reapers — nasty little buggers that seem to be invading every timeline — don’t want this pizza shop owner to make any dough. And that’s not gonna fly. Pizza Bandit’s writing is pretty silly, but that’s part of the charm.“What makes Pizza Bandit unique is that you’re not just shooting stuff. You’re also, well, kinda playing Overcooked. After squading up, my first mission saw my crewheading to the Restaurant from N owhere, a hidden outpost run by another bandit crew. Our job: fulfill the pizza orders for other bounty hunting teams, and send them off in time-traveling rocket pods. That meant putting together the right type of pizza, getting it to the oven, making sure we were getting their drink orders right, and adding some extra bullets for when things got spicy, cramming it all into a pod, and doing it on time while fighting off the Time Reapers, who really, really don’t like supporting small businesses.Pizza Bandit ScreenshotsAnd that’s where the other part of the Overcooked/Gears of War marriage comes into play. See, the Time Reapers mean business, and you’re not going to talk them out of some time reaping. That’s their whole bag. The only solution, fellow bandit, is incredible violence. I’ve played several builds of Pizza Bandit at this point, and let me tell you, your arsenal is up to the task. You start with your choice of assau lt rifle, minigun, and sniper rifle, but the fun really begins when you start unlocking your secondary weapons by completing jobs. They start simple: landmines, grenades, that sort of thing, but once you unlock the disco ball that attracts enemies and gets them dancing before it explodes? Whew, buddy. And the sentry turret? Perfection. You could slice and dice them Time Reapers with a katana, but have you ever considered using a pizza slicer as big as a man? It’ll change your life.And the Time Reapers will force you to use everything in your arsenal. You got your standard guys who will just run at you, but there are also Time Reapers that’ll crawl around on all fours, Terminator-looking ones that will leap at you, giant ones with hammers, guys who throw fireballs, the works. You gotta prioritize.Pizza Bandit is at its best when you’re with a good team, calling out orders. A good match should be shouts of “We need a pepperoni pie!” and “I’m on the Coke!” and “I’m down!” interspersed with lots and lots of gunfire. Simple choices, like when to call down your own, once-a-mission rocket pod full of pizza and supplies, and more complex ones, like where to put it, spice things up, too. And here’s the thing: so far, I’ve just talked about Restaurant from Nowhere, which is only the first level. Pizza Bandit isn’t a one-trick pony. One of my favorite levels has you taking over a sushi joint and making sure you have the right stuff on the delivery turntable for your customers. Sometimes that means running downstairs and grabbing a big ol’ tuna, taking that bad boy upstairs, and chopping him up before the Time Reapers whack you and you drop him. Other times that means frying an egg, or making a cucumber roll. You gotta stay ahead of the curve, because new customers are prioritized over old ones, and the Time Reapers aren’t gonna sit there and wait for you to plate your masterpiece.Sometimes, you’re not even cooking food at all. Another favorite level, Wizard’s Tomb, has you exploring a magically booby-trapped tomb in search of a sarcophagus. You’ll have to navigate the tomb’s traps, solve basic puzzles to reveal the way forward, and take out the arcane heart powering the whole enterprise before getting to the sarcophagus itself, which you’ll naturally transport with jetpacks before booking it back to your ship. It isn’t enough to get any given job done; you gotta get home, too. Just another day in the life of a pizza bandit.Pizza Bandit is always ludicrous, and its inspirations are obvious, but it’s never less than fun.“There are more, of course: in one, you’ll defend a cabin with Dr. Emmert Brownewhile he invents the time travel device that makes your whole business profitable. Winning it all means keeping him warm, satiating his hunger with rabbit or venison, and stopping all those nasty Time Reaperswho are trying to stop time travel from happening. You’d think that the Time Reapers would understand time paradoxes, but I guess not. Can’t reap time if there’s no time to reap, y’all. Or maybe you’ll break into an enormous safe with a laser drill, like you’re roleplaying the opening scene of Michael Mann’s Thief with a drill that’s constantly exploding. That seems safe, right? But hey, apparently there’s a magical cookbook in that vault whose recipes can alter reality, and we’re being paid to get it, exploding drill or not. A Pizza Bandit always gets the job done. And there’s always time to do your best Breaking Bad impersonation and help a couple of guys cook some “magic powder” and hide it inside some chicken. Oh, and you have to kill and cook the chickens. Only fresh, never frozen, baby. Pizza Bandit is always ludicrous, and its inspirations are obvious, but it’s never less than fun.Between missions, it’s back to Pizza Bandit, where you can acquire and upgrade your weapons, decorate Pizza Bandit itself, use the ingredients you find during missions to bake and share a pie for some stat boosts on your next run, or get some spiffy new duds for your bounty hunter. The milk carton backpack is a classic choice, if I do say so myself, but I’m still saving up for one of the cat ones. The things we do for fashion, am I right? Then it’s right back to it. A bandit’s work is never done.Sometimes, you don’t know you want something until you get it. I didn’t know I wanted Pizza Bandit until the first time I played it at PAX two years ago. It was one of those games that generated a lot of word of mouth, but it’s one of those concepts that doesn’t seem like it’ll work until you get a controller in your hands and everything makes sense. I don’t know why we’ve never gotten something like Pizza Bandit before, but once I played it, I knew I wanted more. Pizza heals, bullets kill, and Pizza Bandit rocks. If Jofsoft can stick the landing, we’re in for a tasty slice of New York pie. #pizza #bandit #combines #gears #war

Doom: The Dark Ages just launched on May 15. But it's already received "difficulty" balance changes "that have made the demons of Hell even more dangerous than ever," writes Windows Central: According to DOOM's official website Slayer's Club, these balance adjustments are focused on making the game harder, as players have been leaving feedback saying it felt too easy even on Nightmare Mode. As a result, enemies now hit harder, health and armor item pick-ups drop less often, and certain enemies punish you more severely for mistiming the parry mechanic. It reached three million players in just five days, which was seven times faster than 2020's Doom: Eternal," reports Wccftech, more than two million of those three million launch players were playing on Xbox, while only 500K were playing on PS5.") "id Software proves it can still reinvent the wheel," according to one reviewer, "shaking up numerous aspects of gameplay, exchanging elaborate platforming for brutal on-the-ground action, as well as the ability to soar on a dragon's back or stomp around in a giant mech." And the New York Times says the game "effectively reinvents the hellish shooter with a revamped movement system and deepened lore" in the medieval goth-themed game... Double jumping and dashing are ditched and replaced with an emphasis on raw power and slow, strategic melee combat. Doom Slayer's arsenal features a brand-new tool, the powerful Shield Saw, which Id Software made a point to showcase across its "Stand and Fight" trailers and advertisements. Used for absorbing damage at the expense of speed, the saw also allows players to bash enemies from afar and close the gap on chasms too wide to jump across. While previous titles allowed players to quickly worm their way through bullet hell, The Dark Ages expects you to meet foes head on. "If you were an F-22 fighter jet in Doom Eternal, this time around we wanted you to feel like an Abrams tank," Hugo Martin, the game's creative director, has told journalists. And Doom Slayer's beefy durability and unstoppable nature does make the gameplay a refreshing experience. The badassery is somehow ratcheted to new heights with the inclusion of a fully controllable mech, which has only a handful of attacks at its disposal, and actual dragons. Flight in a Doom game is entirely surprising and fluid, and the dragons feel relatively easy to maneuver through tight spots. They can also engage in combat more deliberately with the use of dodges and mounted cannons... One of my favorite additions is the skullcrusher pulverizer. Equal parts heinous nutcracker and demonic woodchipper, the gun lodges skulls into a grinder and sends shards of bones flying at enemies. The animation is both goofy and satisfying. Another special Times article notes that Doom's fans "resurrect the original game over and over again on progressively stranger pieces of hardware: a Mazda Miata, a NordicTrack treadmill, a French pharmacy sign." But what many hard-core tech hobbyists want to know is whether you can play it on a pregnancy test. The answer: positively yes. And for the first time, even New York Times readers can play Doom within The Times's site... None of this happened by accident, of course. Ports were not incidental to Doom's development. They were a core consideration. "Doom was developed in a really unique way that lent a high degree of portability to its code base," said John Romero, who programmed the game with John Carmack.Id had developed Wolfenstein 3D, the Nazi-killing predecessor to Doom, on PCs. To build Doom, Carmack and Romero used NeXT, the hardware and software company founded by Steve Jobs after his ouster from Apple in 1985. NeXT computers were powerful, selling for about apiece in today's dollars. And any game designed on that system would require porting to the more humdrum PCs encountered by consumers at computer labs or office jobs. This turned out to be advantageous because Carmack had a special aptitude for ports. All of Id's founders met as colleagues at Softdisk, which had hired Carmack because of his ability to spin off multiple versions of a single game. The group decided to strike out on its own after Carmack created a near-perfect replica of the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3 — Nintendo's best-selling platformer — on a PC. It was a wonder of software engineering that compensated for limited processing power with clever workarounds. "This is the thing that everyone has," Romero said of PCs. "The fact that we could figure out how to make it become a game console was world changing...." Romero founded a series of game studios after leaving Id in 1996 and is working on a new first-person shooter, the genre he and Carmack practically invented. He has no illusions about how it may stack up. "I absolutely accept that Doom is the best game I'll ever make that has that kind of a reach," he said. "At some point you make the best thing." Thirty years on, people are still making it. And in related news, PC Gamer reports... As part of a new "FPS Fridays" series on Twitch, legendary shooter designer John Romero streamed New Blood's 2018 hit, Dusk, one of the first and most influential indie "boomer shooters" in the genre's recent revitalization. The short of it? Romero seems to have had a blast. of this story at Slashdot. #new #039doom #dark #ages039 #already

On the right bank of the Naviglio Grande, a canal that runs through Italy’s Lombardy region some 20 miles from Milan, the landscape alternates between industrial warehouses and cultivated fields. Along the historic waterway system which dates from the 12th century, there are a series of patrician residences, pleasure villas, and elegant rural farmhouses that still stand, along with what remains of their parks and gardens, side-by-side with more recent houses.The entrance gate of Villa Clari-Monzini, the oldest and largest of the villas on the right bank of the Naviglio canal, to which it was once connected via a tree-lined avenue that continued on the opposite side of the waterway to the nearby Piazza del Teatro. Arriving in Cassinetta di Lugagnano after traveling along the Naviglio bike path, one finds one of the richest towns in the region in terms of its architectural legacy. When the Barlaam family made that same journey, they couldn’t help but notice the Villa Clari-Monzini: “It was in very bad condition, but it was still beautiful and shortly thereafter it was renovated and divided into apartments. We decided to move there, to the main floor of the villa, far from the stress and hassles of the big city,” says Riccardo, Simone’s father. The younger Barlaam is a Paralympic swimming champion who won four gold medals between the recent games in Tokyo and Paris.Cosmos coffee table by Jeffrey Bernett. Logo lamp, a Chinese checkers board by Joe, and Lawrence ottoman. Simone Barlaam leans against a handcrafted crystal table in the living room of his home. Clothes by Armani. “I grew up here, among the frescoed walls and coffered ceilings of the large ballroom that has become our living room, and ever since I was a child I’ve always felt this house was welcoming. When we lived in Milan I might have dared to scribble on the walls—I was a creative kid—but here I was never tempted to do so,” says Simone, who returns here on weekends to recharge.In the living room, LC4 chaise longue by Le Corbusier, handcrafted crystal table, Plywood chairs by Charles and Ray Eames. Taraxacum 88 chandelier by Achille Castiglioni. “When the world shuts down, I find some quiet time to draw. It’s something I do for myself, which makes me feel similar to how I do when I’m in the water.”—Simone BarlaamLate at night, Barlaam invents his alternative heroes inspired by the art he is surrounded by and the Italian comic books by his side during childhood, from Diabolik to Zerocalcare. “When the world shuts down, I find some quiet time to draw. It’s something I do for myself, which makes me feel similar to how I do when I’m in the water when I’m training. It’s an isolation that makes me focus on my body, on lightness, on harmony; I always feel a bit awkward on dry land but in the water I become agile and graceful,” Barlaam says.Dozens and dozens of sheets of paper can be found in the family’s home, essential material for this self-taught drawing talent. Illustrations from the Italian children’s story “Road to Cortina” can also be found in the flat. “In high school I reproduced one of the frescoes in the villa. I recreated it in color, although I usually prefer to work in black and white.” It’s part of his effort to engage an ever-growing audience, and to recount his journey to the 2026 Winter Olympics.Snow, the family’s Samoyed. The kitchen is by Binova, with Corian countertop. Venetian terrazzo floor. In one of the rooms, a reclaimed wood door. Rondò armchair. Beside the fireplace, double Parentesi lamp by Achille Castiglioni and Pio Manzù. Outside, evening descends over the Lombardy countryside and the beautiful back garden. The floors inside of the 17th-century villa are now a light, uniform Venetian terrazzo that highlights the thresholds of doors with a slightly darker hue.The doors themselves were recovered from the middle of fields where they had been discarded, covered with several layers of varnish. They have now been cleaned and left unfinished, beyond a light wax treatment, giving them their original appearance. #inside #italian #swimmer #simone #barlaams

Aligning design leadership with business goals is the motion we needed from the startThe Mysterious Life Of UX Designers is a good example how others don’t really understand the value of what we do because we don’t connect to business goals. We should have been connecting to business needs from the start.For way too long we’ve been running user experience teams like they’re some kind of magical creative unicorns that should somehow be immune to business realities.That’s complete nonsense.Our teams need to deliver value, not just pretty pictures or endless research projects with a lot of hand waving. We should be thinking about our teams like a CEO thinks about their business — with clear goals, measurements, and accountability for results.I’ve seen organizations where design was treated as a cost center rather than a strategic advantage, and this happens because we haven’t been willing to demonstrate our value in terms executives actually care about — outcomes and the bottom line.The best UX leaders run their teams like strategic businesses within the larger organization, with a focus on delivering measurable outcomes.A lot of the concepts below are not new — hence the links to resources — we have just chosen to ignore them. We need to leverage what’s proven to work so we can forward as a construct.It’s time we grew up and started treating user experience like the business function it truly is — Here’s how we can get there.Map to Business OutcomesNothing matters more than tying UX work to business outcomes. If you can’t explain how your design improves conversion, reduces support costs, or drives retention, you’re just drawing pretty pictures.Too many user experience teams waste time on work that doesn’t move important metrics. They design in a vacuum, divorced from what actually matters to the business. This is career suicide in today’s environment where every team needs to justify their existence.When approaching any project, your first question should be: “What business outcome will this improve?” If you don’t have a clear answer, stop everything until you do.The best design leaders start every presentation with a problem in business terms first, then explain how to addresses it. This approach changes how executives perceive your value.Remember that executives don’t care about your amazing journey map — they care about results.Leverage Research to Manage RiskResearch isn’t just about making users happy, it’s about managing business risk. Every design decision represents potential risk, and good research helps mitigate that risk before you commit significant resources to a direction.When you frame research as risk management, executives suddenly get a lot more interested. Nobody wants to launch a product that fails spectacularly in the market.On a panel, I was asked how do I innovate, and I said something along the lines of I don’t believe in innovation, I believe in managing risk. It’s about making the right small bets until you need to make a big bet that’s informed.Evaluative research shows us where the landmines are before we step on them. It’s like having insurance for your product development process.I’ve worked with companies that saved millions by catching major usability and strategic direction issues before launch through simple testing. That’s not a design win — that’s a business win that came through smart risk management.A lot of this is how you frame your research within business terms — don’t say “users didn’t like it.” Say “we identified a risk that could potentially impact our projected revenue by 15% if we launch as planned.”Agile processes are time-boxed way of measuring value and having mileposts along the way. The word “Sprint” creates a sense of urgency, by design.Time Box Projects To Demonstrate ValueI’m a huge believer in time boxing design work, putting names and dates to drive ownership. Nothing focuses the mind quite like a declared deadline and limited resources.This isn’t about rushing — it’s about being realistic about the diminishing economic returns that come with endless refinement.Time is money. By establishing measurement points, we show stakeholders they are getting value for what they are paying for.Parkinson’s Law, which was published in a 1955 issue of The Economist, states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” and I’ve seen this play out countless times in design projects. Give a resource three weeks, and they’ll deliver in three weeks. Give them three months, and they’ll take three months and the solution might not be substantially better.Good user experience leaders understand when to call a design “good enough” and move on, especially in today’s environment. I’ve found that setting aggressive but achievable time boxes forces teams to focus on solving the core problems rather than endless refinement of edge cases.The real reason there was a drive towards agile processes was this — it’s one big time box exercise. It’s a way of driving measurable value.The real world moves fast, and a pretty good solution shipped today usually beats a perfect solution shipped six months from now. The word “Sprint” creates a sense of urgency, by design.As much as we don’t like to admit this, we aren’t inventing fire. We should design into what we have until there’s a clear decision to do something radically different for business reasons.Design into Your Existing Application, Not Around ItOne of the most expensive mistakes I see UX teams make is constantly trying to reinvent the wheel. Every new feature becomes an excuse to redesign everything from scratch, creating massive development costs and confusing users who have to relearn your interface.Jakob’s Law reminds us that users spend most of their time using other products, so they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know, including your own.When you design within and in addition to existing patterns, you’re leveraging the learning users already have, reducing cognitive load and development costs simultaneously.I worked with a team that kept pushing for radical redesigns of their enterprise application that would have cost a lot of money, but what actually moved their metrics was incremental improvements that maintained consistency with what users already understood.Redesigns are expensive and unless they are proven to be dramatically better, they hurt engagement which is money poured down the drain. One of the best examples is Microsoft’s Metro Design Langugage — transformative but too different for users to accept.The best UX teams I know understand the difference between innovation that matters and innovation for its own sake. your revolutionary thinking for where it truly adds value.Atomic design is a mental model that creates a shared language designers can align on. That saves money and time in any environment.Create Design Systems as a Shared LanguageDesign systems aren’t just about making things look consistent — they’re about creating massive business efficiency and a shared language that aligns organizations.When every designer reinvents buttons, forms, and navigation patterns from scratch and gives them names that are non-sensical, you’re burning money that could be spent solving actual user problems.As Nathan Curtis wisely put it, “A design system isn’t a project. It’s a product serving products.”When you treat your design system as a product, you’re investing in something that pays dividends across your entire portfolio. It’s the difference between buying assets and renting them over and over again. The organizations that get the most value from their UX teams are those that establish and maintain robust design systems.These systems dramatically reduce design and development time, create consistency for users, and allow teams to focus on solving unique problems rather than redesigning form fields for the hundredth time.The business case is clear — design systems aren’t a luxury, they’re a competitive necessity that scales teams.The problem with the double diamond isn’t the labels, but the size of the diamonds themselves — sometimes the problem is clearly evident, and the solution just has to be worked through.Process with Intent, Not for Process’ SakeA lot of UX processes are just religious dogma that people follow without understanding why. I don’t want a process; I want results.That’s why I call them frameworks, not processes — frameworks can be adapted based on the specific challenge you’re facing. Processes sound like you have to follow every step.For example, the concerns I have with the double diamond or design thinking isn’t the labels, but the size of the steps themselves — sometimes the problem is clearly evident, and the solution just has to be worked through. Your approach should be tailored to the problem you are facing.All design approaches are non-linear and we should act accordingly.I’ve seen teams waste weeks on journey maps that never influenced a single design decision. I’ve watched designers conduct extensive user research when the key insights were obvious after the third interview. Blindly following processes without understanding their purpose is just busy work masquerading as UX.Sometimes you need to skip steps. Sometimes you need to adapt the framework to fit your constraints. The best UX leaders know when to follow the book and when to throw it out the window. Your job isn’t to follow a perfect process — it’s to deliver business value in the most efficient way possible.If your process is getting in the way of outcomes, you have the wrong process.Use and Improve Existing Mental Models —Especially in the Time of AIAs we rush headlong into the AI revolution, we don’t need to reinvent how humans interact with technology.Conversational design leverages mental models people already have— they know how to ask questions and have discussions, and have done so for years with existing applications with Natural Language Processing as an example.These mental models are why chatbots and conversational interfaces feel intuitive despite being relatively new.The most successful AI implementations I’ve seen build on familiar interaction patterns rather than forcing users to learn entirely new ways of working. They understand that users already have well-established mental models about how to get things done and teaching new ones is challenging.Smart teams leverage existing models instead of creating cognitive friction because learning new ones cost money and time. That’s good design.This is about being pragmatic, not lazy. When you tap into existing mental models, you reduce the learning curve for your users, which means faster adoption and less resistance to change. You’re making your AI features feel like a natural extension of what users already know rather than an alien imposition.In any gold rush, the winners won’t be those with the most advanced algorithms, but those who make the technology feel most natural and accessible.Craft Costs Money; Use It WiselyLet’s get real about craft — every pixel you perfect costs the company money. Those extra hours spent on subtle animations, perfect typography, and delightful interactions represent real investment that needs to justify itself in business outcomes.This doesn’t mean we abandon craft, it means we need to be strategic about where we invest.The login screen users see once a month probably doesn’t deserve the same level of craft as the core workflow they use every day.I’ve worked with designers who fought for weeks to perfect details that users never noticed, while ignoring fundamental usability issues that were costing the company customers. The best designers I know have a keen sense of where craft translates to business value and where it’s just self-indulgence.Good UX leaders understand how to allocate their craft budget where it matters most to impact the bottom line. They pick their battles carefully and invest their craft where it delivers the most impact for users and for the business.Running UX Like a BusinessAt the end of the day, running your UX team like a business means taking accountability for results, not just activities. It means speaking the language of the organization and showing how design drives business outcomes. It means being strategic about where you invest your limited resources for maximum impact.The most successful UX leaders I’ve worked with don’t hide behind buzzwords or mystify their process — They’re clear about the value they deliver, ruthless about prioritization, and focused on metrics that matter to the business.They understand that UX isn’t a special snowflake that exists outside normal business considerations — it’s a critical business function that needs to demonstrate ROI.If you want your team to get the respect, budget, and influence it deserves, start running it like the CEO of a business, not like the head of an art department.The days of UX getting a pass on business accountability are over, and that’s actually a good thing for all of us.Running UX as a businesswas originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. #running #business #like #should #have

Amazon recently unveiled a new warehouse robot that can “feel,” according to the company.  Called the Vulcan robot, the two-armed beast is already working in Amazon fulfillment centers in Spokane, WA, and Hamburg, Germany, where it’s handled more than half a million orders. The Vulcan’s sense of touch comes from force-sensitive grippers and sensors on its joints, which provide data to its AI about the edges, contours, and resistance of the items it picks up, moves, and places in a new location. With this faculty, Vulcan can grip a soft bag of candy gently, but a heavy coffee table book more firmly without crushing the candy or dropping the book.  One way to look at the benefit of a robot that can detect what it’s gripping is that it provides flexibility, enabling a wider range of products to be handled. According to Amazon, Vulcan can handle about 75% of the million or so products in a typical Amazon warehouse. Aaron Parness and his roughly 250-person robotics team created the Vulcan robot. The company revealed it to the world on May 7 at its “Delivering the Future” event in Dortmund, Germany.  Mixed feelings about tactile robots Vulcan is the first Amazon robot with what the company calls a “genuine sense of touch,” thanks to force feedback sensors and AI-powered software that lets it “feel” items, not just see them.  If you’re familiar with my views on anthropomorphicizationof robots and AI, you might guess what I’m about to say. Amazon says its Vulcan robot can feel. This isn’t true.  When a robot like Vulcan “feels” something, it uses sensors that measure force, pressure, and sometimes texture or shape, turning these signals into data that AI can interpret. Vulcan’s sensors are built into its gripper and joints, so when it touches or grasps an object, it detects how much force it’s applying and the contours it’s encountering. Machine learning algorithms then help Vulcan decide how to adjust its grip or movement based on this feedback. By contrast, a person feels with a network of millions of nerve endings in the skin, especially in the fingertips. These nerves send detailed, real-time information to the brain about pressure, temperature, texture, pain, and even the direction of force. The human sense of touch is deeply connected to memory, emotion, judgment, and consciousness. Robots like Vulcan can now match or even exceed humans in detecting pressure or identifying textures, but their “feeling” is purely mechanical and digital. They don’t experience sensation or emotion, and they only know what their sensors can measure and their software can interpret. Humans, on the other hand, feel in a way that’s physical, emotional, and conscious. With that caveat out of the way, it has to be said that Vulcan is pretty amazing.  Giving warehouse workers a hand Parness says Vulcan’s sense of touch is a breakthrough because it brings “physical intelligence” to robots, and that’s the categorical breakthrough here. The main advance robots will undergo over the next decade or two will involve sensors increasingly being able to detect and adapt to real conditions in the real world and being trained in virtual physical AI environments.  Despite the advanced state of Vulcan’s technology, its main job is actually limited:  to pick products from bulk storage and pack them into movable shelves, a task that used to require human dexterity.  Vulcan is neither a humanoid robot nor is its hand modeled after human hands. I’ve weighed in before about how modeling factory robots after human body parts makes no sense.  Vulcan’s “hand” combines a conveyor belt gripper with a spatula-like tool, both of which are fitted with sensors that constantly measure pressure and torque. A ruler-like tool attached between the paddles acts as a spatial guide, nudging existing items in storage bins to create space for the new items it is laying into place.  The robot’s AI, trained on thousands of hours of physical interaction data, calculates the right amount of force for each object in real time. Vulcan can work up to 20 hours a day without ever taking a coffee break or using the bathroom, moving at speeds comparable to a human worker, but always behind a safety fence in case it suddenly goes bananas like that Chinese robot in the TikTok video people have been talking about and misinterpreting.  The Vulcan robot has real limitations. For example, it’s too weak to lift anything heavier than 8 pounds and can only move products from one place to another. If the robot encounters an unfamiliar item or something that exceeds its 8-pound weight limit, it flags a human worker for help. Grasping the importance of tactile robots Vulcan isn’t the only robot with a sense of touch. RoboTact and RoboTouch sensors, developed over decades and now used in everything from humanoid robots to service bots, give machines the ability to sense contact, pressure, and even the shape of objects, allowing for delicate and precise handling.  Sanctuary AI enhanced its Phoenix robot with tactile sensors that let it handle complex, touch-driven jobs. Their technology means Phoenix can detect things like slippage or excessive force, even when it can’t see what it’s doing.  Meta created its Digit 360 sensor, a fingertip-shaped device that can register forces as tiny as one millinewton and pick up details down to seven microns. The sensor is still in the lab, but Meta’s partnership with GelSight and Wonik Robotics is helping to eventually bring these sensors into real-world use.  Eventually, robots with a sense of touch will revolutionize robotics and enable them to perform a wide range of tasks that robots currently cannot do, like picking strawberries, performing surgery, and defusing bombs. But for now, Amazon is using some of the most advanced tactile robots on the planet to help ship bathrobes, books, and batteries to customers. #amazon #invents #another #robot #this

At Salone del Mobile in 2023, Armani Casa presented something new. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they re-created their classics. The brand introduced three different techniques that transformed their furniture into new works of art, both bold in color and material, and subtly naturalistic in aesthetic.In a statement, Mr. Armani said the collection's Venus console and Virgola bookcase shelves "feature a new type of hand-painted and lacquered glass." And at a Tuesday night event, partygoers saw the new techniques live and in-person at the brand’s Madison Avenue Flagship in New York. Indeed, Armani noted that the objects are "reminiscent of the uniqueness and beauty of high-end jewelry, made with a craftsmanship that is only possible in Italy." Treatment One: Orsini GlassLorenzo BaroncelliA demonstration of the Orsini Method.The Orsini Method involves artisans painting pieces of glass, creating a series of marbled bands. The brand noted, “This finish is obtained by hand painting the back of a tempered extra-clear glass with a special paint mixing different pastel tones, using a large soft brush.”The colors were inspired by the blue green walls in the Neoclassical Palazzo Orsini in Rome. Though the method is innovative, the painterly process and the use of temperas and pastels still make it feel completely classical.Items re-imagined from the Armani Casa collection with the Orsini Method include: Venus 2024 and Virgola 2024.Treatment Two: Shell Mosaic Lorenzo BaroncelliA demonstrationIn this mother-of-pearl mosaic, experts remove the outer layer of an oyster shell to find a the shiny whites, grays, and blues beneath. The Shell Mosaic, with this high end construction, reflects the ties between Armani's Casa collections and his clothing lines. Said Mr. Armani, “The strongest link between Armani/Casa and my fashion collections is the need to be functional and comfortable without sacrificing luxurious materials and a strong sense of style.” The Shell Mosaic is available in the following pieces from the Armani CASA Collection: Antoinette 2023, Camilla 2023, Sofia 2023, and Vega 2024.Treatment Three: Midollino Courtesy ArmaniThe Midollino Technique on the Riesling Bar Cabinet.Wicker will never go out of style, and Armani Casa’s iteration on the traditional form is reflective of the expertise and craftsmanship constant across the brand's fashion and furniture.The Midollino technique features a carefully woven, but thick and high quality grain. It happens to be the same method also used for a number of Armani handbags, capturing the relationship between the past and present reflective across the collection. Items from the Armani Casa Collection featuring the Midollino Technique Include: Melrose 2023, Riesling 2022, and Sharon 2023.Dorothy ScarboroughDorothy Scarboroughis the assistant to the Editor in Chief of Town & Country and Elle Decor.  #armani #casa #reinvents #classic #designs

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Since the very beginning, Fortnite has kept players engaged by releasing new features with each Chapter and Season, altering the battle royale experience. Epic Games continuously reinvents the game, from new weaponry and map updates to vehicles like the Quadcrasher in Chapter 1 Season 6 and creative systems like Creative Mode. Pet Back Blings dominated Chapter 1 in its early days. Introduced in Season 6, these animated companions, such as Bonesy the dog and Camo the chameleon, reacted to player activities ranging from gliding off the Battle Bus to celebrating Victory Royales. However, new releases declined after 2021 due to high production costs and little use. But despite that, fans have long wished for their return, recalling their unique animations and social petting function. An intriguing leak has aroused excitement that hints pets may return as “Companions” in Chapter 6 Season 3. Fortnite leak suggests Pets are coming back very soon According to trusted Fortnite leakers such as Loolo_WRLD, Companions, codenamed “Mimosa,” will travel alongside players on the map as dynamic in-game entities, rather than just accessories. The leaked Companions try to fill the gaping hole left by Pets with improved features. They will take up a designated locker spot, be visible to party members, and allow full-body previews. Players can supposedly name their Companions, which adds a personal touch and allows for customisation such as skins and motions. Pets are returning to Fortnite as companions. Image by VideoGamer. According to djlorenzouasset, returning petswill receive updated animations, as well as new ones such as Superman’s Krypto from a DC collab in 2025. There’s a lot of speculation concerning gameplay integration. Unlike back blings, Companions may accompany players dynamically, maybe reacting to combat or exploration. While Epic Games has not confirmed the leaks, the timeframe is consistent with Chapter 6, Season 3’s superhero theme, which follows the Star Wars-centric finale on June 7, 2025. If true, Companions could surpass the appeal of original pets by combining nostalgia and innovation. Fortnite Platform: Android, iOS, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X Genre: Action, Massively Multiplayer, Shooter 9 VideoGamer Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share #fortnite #finally #adding #feature #players

World Labs just released an AI system to generate 3D worlds from a single image 🖼️ 🏰 ⚙️ Their goal is to provide better controls and consistency, with a system that - estimates 3D geometry - fills in unseen parts of the scene - invents new content so you can turn around - generalizes to a wide variety of scene types and artistic styles. 🕹️ The output 3D scenes can be rendered in real-time in the browser with full camera control. Space is liquid 💦 #genai #worldbuilding #ai3d #ai #gaming