--- In the dim corners of virtual spaces, where anonymity cloaks desires, a phenomenon unfolds nightly—VRChat porn. This intricate dance between role-play and community-driven NSFW content has birthed a realm pulsating with intensity and longing. Here, avatars come alive, each movement a brushstroke on the canvas of fantasy, where the boundaries of reality blur into obscurity. ## The Allure...

ActuGaming.net Juste après la sortie de son DLC, Lies of P dépasse les 3 millions d’exemplaires Sans doute l’une des meilleures alternatives aux jeux de From Software, Lies of P a […] L'article Juste après la sortie de son DLC, Lie

ActuGaming.net Déjà 1 million de personnes sur Rematch, le jeu de foot rassemble beaucoup de monde Rematch part d’une idée si bonne et pourtant si évidente après le succès de Rocket […] L'article Déjà 1 million de personnes sur Rematch,

At first it was dismissed as a crazy joke. Making the Enhanced Games a reality needed a Peter Thiel posse, a couple of retired swimmers, some MAGA money, and a whole lot of drugs.

C’est un carton ! Minecraft, le film, qui adapte au cinéma le célèbre jeu vidéo, a débarqué ce week-end dans le salles américaines. A la clé, le meilleur démarrage de l’année, avec des recettes estimées à 157 millions de dollars aux USA.

A bubble ring created by a humpback whale named Thorn. Image © Dan Knaub, The Video Company Humpback Whales Are Approaching People to Blow Rings. What Are They Trying to Say? June 13, 2025 NatureSocial Issues Grace Ebert After the “orca uprising” captivated anti-capitalists around the world in 2023, scientists are intrigued by another form of marine mammal communication. A study released this month by the SETI Institute and the University of California at Davis dives into a newly documented phenomenon of humpback whales blowing bubble rings while interacting with humans. In contrast to the orcas’ aggressive behavior, researchers say the humpbacks appear to be friendly, relaxed, and even curious. Bubbles aren’t new to these aquatic giants, which typically release various shapes when corraling prey and courting mates. This study follows 12 distinct incidents involving 11 whales producing 39 rings, most of which have approached boats near Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, Mo’orea, and the U.S. Atlantic coast on their own. The impact of this research reaches far beyond the oceans, though. Deciphering these non-verbal messages could aid in potential extraterrestrial communication, as they can help to “develop filters that aid in parsing cosmic signals for signs of extraterrestrial life,” a statement says. “Because of current limitations on technology, an important assumption of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrial intelligence and life will be interested in making contact and so target human receivers,” said Dr. Laurance Doyle, a SETI Institute scientist who co-wrote the paper. “This important assumption is certainly supported by the independent evolution of curious behavior in humpback whales.” (via PetaPixel) A composite image of at least one bubble ring from each interaction Previous articleNext article

By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Pixar. The character design of Glordon is based on a tardigrade, which is a microscopic water bear. Rather than look at the unknown as something to be feared, Pixar has decided to do some wish fulfillment with Elio, where a lonely adolescent astrophile gets abducted by aliens and is mistaken as the leader of Earth. Originally conceived and directed by Adrian Molina, the coming-of-age science fiction adventure was shepherded by Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian, who had previously worked together on Turning Red. “Space is often seen as dark, mysterious and scary, but there is also so much hope, wonder and curiosity,” notes Shi, director of Elio. “It’s like anything is ‘out there.’ Elio captures how a lot of us feel at different points of our lives, when we were kids like him, or even now wanting to be off of this current planet because it’s just too much. For Elio, it’s a rescue. I feel that there’s something so universal about that feeling of wanting to be taken away and taken care of. To know that you’re not alone and somebody chose you and picked you up.” The character design of Glordon is based on a tardigrade, which is a microscopic water bear. There is a stark contrast between how Earth and the alien world, known as the Communiverse, are portrayed. “The more we worked with the animators on Glordon and Helix, they began to realize that Domee and I respond positively when those [alien] characters are exaggerated, made cute, round and chubby,” states Sharafian, director of Elio. “That automatically started to differentiate the way the Earth and space feel.” A certain question had to be answered when designing the United Nations-inspired Communiverse. “It was coming from a place of this lonely kid who feels like no one wants him on Earth,” Shi explains. “What would be heaven and paradise for him? The Communiverse was built around that idea.” A sense of belonging is an important theme. “It’s also inspired by Adrian Molina’s backstory, and our backstories too, of going to animation college,” Sharafian remarks. “For the first time, we said, ‘This is where everybody like me is!’” Green is the thematic color for Elio. Visual effects are an important storytelling tool. “Especially, for our movie, which is about this boy going to this crazy incredible world of the Communiverse,” Shi observes. “It has to be dazzling and look spectacular on the big screen and feel like paradise. Elio is such a visual feast, and you do feel like, ‘I want to stay here no matter what. I can’t believe that this place even exists.’ Visual effects are a powerful tool to help you feel what the characters are feeling.” A wishlist became a reality for the directors. “Claudia Chung Sanii [Visual Effects Supervisor] gave Domee and me carte blanche for wish fulfillment for ourselves,” Sharafian remarks. “What do you want Elio’s outfit in space to look like? It was a difficult costume, but now when we watch the movie, we’re all so proud of it. Elio looks fabulous, and he’s so happy to be wearing that outfit. Who would want to take that off?” The Communiverse was meant to feel like a place that a child would love to visit and explore. Methodology rather than technology went through the biggest change for the production. “The Communiverse is super complex and has lots of moving pieces. But there’s not much CG can’t do anymore,” notes Claudia Chung Sanii. “Elemental did effects characters. We did long curly hair, dresses, capes, water and fire. What we hadn’t done before was be a part of that design process. How do we get lighting into layout? How do we see the shaders in animation in layout? The tools department was working on a software called Luna which does that. I went to the tools department and asked, ‘Can I play around with it?’ They were like, ‘Okay. But it’s not ready yet.’ Tools will basically be bringing RenderMan and an interactive lighting workflow to the pipeline across all of these DCCs. Because we light in Katana, you can’t get back upstream. The conceit that we were dipping our toe in on Elio was, ‘Whatever you do in lighting, anyone on the pipeline can see it.’” The influence of microscopic forms and macro photography grounded the Communiverse in natural phenomena. The variety in the Communiverse is a contrast to the regimented world on the military base. There were no departmental borders, in particular with cinematography. “We had our layout and lighting DPs start on the same day. Derek Williams wouldn’t shoot anything without Jordan Rempel, our lighting DP, seeing it,” Sanii states. “Jordan would drop in lighting and start doing key lighting as Derek’s team was laying out. It wasn’t like you had to hit the render button, wait for the render to come up and go, ‘Oh, my god, it’s dark! I didn’t know that it was nighttime.’” A new term was adopted. “Meredith Hom [Production Manager] and I pulled the entire crew and leadership into this mental concept that we called the ‘college project.’ For some of us, college was a time when we didn’t have titles and crafts. You begged, borrowed and stole to hit that deadline. So much of our world has become linear in our process that I wanted to break that down to, ‘No. We’re all working together. The scope of this film is too large for us to wait for each other to finish our piece. If this person is slammed, fine. Figure out a different idea to do it with what tools you have.’” Directors Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian are drawn to chubby, exaggerated and cute characters. Forgoing the word ‘no’ led to the technology breaking down. “I remember times when crowds [department] is dressing all of the aliens and because of forgetting to constrain it to the Communiverse, they all show up at the origin, and you’re going, ‘Why is there a whole party going on over there?’” Sanii laughs. “On Elio, it was always forward. There were no rules about locking things down or not installing over the weekend. It was always like, ‘Put it all in, and we’ll deal with it on Monday.’ There would be some funny stuff. We never QC’d something before walking it into the room. Everyone saw how the sausage was made. It was fun and not fun for Harley Jessup [Production Designer] because sometimes there would be a big thing in the middle screen, and he would say, ‘Is that finished?’ There was no way we could get through this film if we kept trying to fix the thing that broke.” An aerial image of Elio as he attempts to get abducted by aliens. Part of the design of the Coummuniverse was inspired by Chinese puzzle balls. A former visual effects art director at ILM, Harley Jessup found his previous experiences on projects like Innerspace to be helpful on Elio. “I liked that the directors wanted to build on the effects films from the 1980s and early 1990s,” reflects Jessup. “I was there and part of that. It was fun to look back. At the time, the techniques were all practical, matte paintings and miniatures, which are fun to work with, but without the safety net of CG. One thing Dennis Muren [VES] was keen on, was how people see things like the natural phenomenon you might see in a microscopic or macro photography form. We were using that. I was looking at the mothership of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which Dennis shot when he was a young artist. It was nice to be able to bring all of that history to this film.” Earth was impacted by a comment made by Pete Docter (CCO, Pixar). “He said, ‘The military base should feel like a parking lot,” Jessup reveals. “You should know why Elio wants to be anywhere else. And the Communiverse needs to be inviting. We built a lot of contrast into those two worlds. The brutalist architecture on the military base, with its hard edges and heavy horizontal forms close to the earth, needed to be harsh but beautiful in its own way, so we tried for that. The Communiverse would be in contrast and be all curves, translucent surfaces and stained-glass backlit effects. Things were wide open about what it could be because each of the aliens are from a different climate and gravity. There are some buildings that are actually upside down on it, and the whole thing is rotating inside like clockwork. It is hopefully an appealing, fun world. It’s not a dystopian outer space.” Exploring various facial expressions for Elio. A tough character to get right was Aunt Olga, who struggles to be the guardian of her nephew. Character designs of Elio and Glordon. which shows them interacting with each other. Architecture was devised to reflect the desired tone for scenes. “In the Grand Assembly Hall where each alien has a desk and booth, the booth is shaped like an eyelid that can close or open,” Jessup explains. “It increases the feeling that they’re evaluating and observing Elio and each of the candidates that have come to join the Communiverse.” A couple of iconic cinematic franchises were avoided for aesthetic reasons. “As much as I love Star Wars and Star Trek, we wanted to be different from those kinds of aliens that are often more humanoid.” Ooooo was the first alien to be designed. “We did Ooooo in collaboration with the effects team, which was small at that time. She was described as a liquid supercomputer. We actually used the wireframe that was turning up and asked, what if it ended up being this network of little lights that are moving around and can express how much she was thinking? Ooooo is Elio’s guide to the Communiverse; her body would deform, so she could become a big screen or reach out and pluck things. Ooooo has an ability like an amoeba to stretch.” Flexibility is important when figuring out shot design. “On Elio, we provided the layout department with a rudimentary version of our environments,” states David Luoh, Sets Supervisor. “It might be simple geometry. We’re not worried necessarily about shading, color and material yet. Things are roughly in place but also built in a way that is flexible. As they’re sorting out the camera and testing out staging, they can move elements of the set around. Maybe this architectural piece needs to be shifted or larger or smaller. There was a variation on what was typically expected of set deliveries of environments to our layout department. That bar was lowered to give the layout department something to work with sooner and also with more flexibility. From their work we get context as to how we partner with our art and design department to build and finalize those environments.” Regional biomes known as disks are part of the Communiverse. “There are aquatic, lush forest, snow and ice, and hot lava disks,” Luoh remarks. “The hot disk is grounded in the desert, volcanic rock and lava, while for the lush disk we looked at interesting plant life found in the world around us.” The Communiverse is a complex geometric form. “We wanted these natural arrangements of alien districts, and that was all happening on this twisting and curving terrain in a way that made traditional dressing approaches clunky. Oftentimes, you’re putting something on the ground or mounted, and the ground is always facing upward. But if you have to dress the wall or ceiling, it becomes a lot more difficult to manipulate and place on something with that dynamic and shape. You have stuff that casts light, is see-through and shifting over time. Ooooo is a living character that looks like electronic circuitry that is constantly moving, and we also have that element in the walls, floors and bubble transport that carry the characters around.” Sets were adjusted throughout the production. “We try to anticipate situations that might come up,” Luoh states. “What if we have a series of shots where you’re getting closer and closer to the Communiverse and you have to bridge the distance between your hero and set extension background? There is a partnership with story, but certainly with our layout camera staging department. As we see shots come out of their work, we know where we need to spend the time to figure out, are we going to see the distant hills in this way? We’re not going to build it until we know because it can be labor-intensive. There is a responsiveness to what we are starting to see as shots get made.” Combining the familiar into something unfamiliar was a process. “There was this curation of being inspired by existing alien sci-fi depictions, but also reaching back into biological phenomena or interesting material because we wanted to ground a lot of those visual elements and ideas in something that people could intuitively grasp on to, even if they were combined or arranged in a way that is surprising, strange and delightful.”

We are told to customize, expand, and provide more options, but that might be a silent killer for our conversion rate. Using behavioral psychology and modern product design, this piece explains why brands like Apple use fewer, smarter choices to convert better.Image generated using ChatgptJam-packed decisionsImagine standing in a supermarket aisle in front of the jam section. How do you decide which jam to buy? You could go for your usual jam, or maybe this is your first time buying jam. Either way, a choice has to be made. Or does it?You may have seen the vast number of choices, gotten overwhelmed, and walked away. The same scenario was reflected in the findings of a 2000 study by Iyengar and Lepper that explored how the number of choice options can affect decision-making.Iyengar and Lepper set up two scenarios; the first customers in a random supermarket being offered 24 jams for a free tasting. In another, they were offered only 6. One would expect that the first scenario would see more sales. After all, more variety means a happier customer. However:Image created using CanvaWhile 60% of customers stopped by for a tasting, only 3% ended up making a purchase.On the other hand, when faced with 6 options, 40% of customers stopped by, but 30% of this number ended up making a purchase.The implications of the study were evident. While one may think that more choices are better when faced with the same, decision-makers prefer fewer.This phenomenon is known as the Paradox of Choice. More choice leads to less satisfaction because one gets overwhelmed.This analysis paralysis results from humans being cognitive misers that is decisions that require deeper thinking feel exhausting and like they come at a cognitive cost. In such scenarios, we tend not to make a choice or choose a default option. Even after a decision has been made, in many cases, regret or the thought of whether you have made the ‘right’ choice can linger.A sticky situationHowever, a 2010 meta-analysis by Benjamin Scheibehenne was unable to replicate the findings. Scheibehenne questioned whether it was choice overload or information overload that was the issue. Other researchers have argued that it is the lack of meaningful choice that affects satisfaction. Additionally, Barry Schwartz, a renowned psychologist and the author of the book ‘The Paradox of Choice: Why Less Is More,’ also later suggested that the paradox of choice diminishes in the presence of a person’s knowledge of the options and if the choices have been presented well.Does that mean the paradox of choice was an overhyped notion? I conducted a mini-study to test this hypothesis.From shelves to spreadsheets: testing the jam jar theoryI created a simple scatterplot in R using a publicly available dataset from the Brazilian e-commerce site Olist. Olist is Brazil’s largest department store on marketplaces. After delivery, customers are asked to fill out a satisfaction survey with a rating or comment option. I analysed the relationship between the number of distinct products in a category (choices) and the average customer review (satisfaction).Scatterplot generated in R using the Olist datasetBased on the almost horizontal regression line on the plot above, it is evident that more choice does not lead to more satisfaction. Furthermore, categories with fewer than 200 products tend to have average review scores between 4.0 and 4.3. Whereas, categories with more than 1,000 products do not have a higher average satisfaction score, with some even falling below 4.0. This suggests that more choices do not equal more satisfaction and could also reduce satisfaction levels.These findings support the Paradox of Choice, and the dataset helps bring theory into real-world commerce. A curation of lesser, well-presented, and differentiated options could lead to more customer satisfaction.Image created using CanvaFurthermore, the plot could help suggest a more nuanced perspective; people want more choices, as this gives them autonomy. However, beyond a certain point, excessive choice overwhelms rather than empowers, leaving people dissatisfied. Many product strategies reflect this insight: the goal is to inspire confident decision-making rather than limiting freedom. A powerful example of this shift in thinking comes from Apple’s history.Simple tastes, sweeter decisionsImage source: Apple InsiderIt was 1997, and Steve Jobs had just made his return to Apple. The company at the time offered 40 different products; however, its sales were declining. Jobs made one question the company’s mantra,“What are the four products we should be building?”The following year, Apple saw itself return to profitability after introducing the iMac G3. While its success can be attributed to the introduction of a new product line and increased efficiency, one cannot deny that the reduction in the product line simplified the decision-making process for its consumers.To this day, Apple continues to implement this strategy by having a few SKUs and confident defaults.Apple does not just sell premium products; it sells a premium decision-making experience by reducing friction in decision-making for the consumer.Furthermore, a 2015 study based on analyzing scenarios where fewer choice options led to increased sales found the following mitigating factors in buying choices:Time Pressure: Easier and quicker choices led to more sales.Complexity of options: The easier it was to understand what a product was, the better the outcome.Clarity of Preference: How easy it was to compare alternatives and the clarity of one’s preferences.Motivation to Optimize: Whether the consumer wanted to put in the effort to find the ‘best’ option.Picking the right spreadWhile the extent of the validity of the Paradox of Choice is up for debate, its impact cannot be denied. It is still a helpful model that can be used to drive sales and boost customer satisfaction. So, how can one use it as a part of your business’s strategy?Remember, what people want isn’t 50 good choices. They want one confident, easy-to-understand decision that they think they will not regret.Here are some common mistakes that confuse consumers and how you can apply the Jam Jar strategy to curate choices instead:Image is created using CanvaToo many choices lead to decision fatigue.Offering many SKU options usually causes customers to get overwhelmed. Instead, try curating 2–3 strong options that will cover the majority of their needs.2. Being dependent on the users to use filters and specificationsWhen users have to compare specifications themselves, they usually end up doing nothing. Instead, it is better to replace filters with clear labels like “Best for beginners” or “Best for oily skin.”3. Leaving users to make comparisons by themselvesToo many options can make users overwhelmed. Instead, offer default options to show what you recommend. This instills within them a sense of confidence when making the final decision.4. More transparency does not always mean more trustInformation overload never leads to conversions. Instead, create a thoughtful flow that guides the users to the right choices.5. Users do not aim for optimizationAssuming that users will weigh every detail before making a decision is not rooted in reality. In most cases, they will go with their gut. Instead, highlight emotional outcomes, benefits, and uses instead of numbers.6. Not onboarding users is a critical mistakeHoping that users will easily navigate a sea of products without guidance is unrealistic. Instead, use onboarding tools like starter kits, quizzes, or bundles that act as starting points.7. Variety for the sake of varietyUsers crave clarity more than they crave variety. Instead, focus on simplicity when it comes to differentiation.And lastly, remember that while the paradox of choice is a helpful tool in your business strategy arsenal, more choice is not inherently bad. It is the lack of structure in the decision-making process that is the problem. Clear framing will always make decision-making a seamless experience for both your consumers and your business.How jam jars explain Apple’s success was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.