The world of work is being dominated by the transformative power of artificial intelligence. We see it reshaping processes, driving efficiencies, and promising new levels of productivity across every business. And while AI’s technical capabilities are undeniable, we must also recognize the enduring—and even amplified—importance of uniquely human skills, particularly our ability to connect with one another. In this age of algorithms, fostering genuine human connection is not a soft skill; it’s becoming a core driver of innovation and progress.  More than ever, employees want stronger relationships, a sense of connection, and to be seen and valued. In fact, according to McKinsey & Company research, the top reasons for quitting, as cited by former employees, were that they didn’t feel valued by their organizations (54%) or their managers (52%), or didn’t feel a sense of belonging at work (51%).  Moreover, extensive research has found that workplace loneliness is associated with lower job performance, reduced job satisfaction, poorer employee-boss relationships, and higher burnout.  It’s vital for organizations to understand how human connection can benefit their businesses.  AI and the human element  The promise of AI is vast, analyzing data in seconds and automating complex tasks. Yet, this very power presents a potential paradox. If we are not intentional, AI risks creating intellectual silos, limiting our exposure to diverse viewpoints, and stifling innovation. The human capacity to connect, to truly understand and appreciate different ways of thinking stemming from various life experiences and backgrounds, is essential to spark innovation and tackle shared problems.  The capacity and desire for connection is already causing a shift in AI usage. According to Harvard Business Review findings, the top usage of GenAI right now is for “therapy/companionship,” whereas just last year, it was for “generating ideas.”  The power of understanding: Insights on connection  Insightful research about connection is being done by academic researchers and nonprofit organizations like More in Common, a Workday Foundation grantee. Their two-year study, The Connection Opportunity, underscores a fundamental human truth: We are wired for connection. They found that 66% of Americans across all demographic groups feel they can learn something valuable from others who are different—and 70% of those surveyed also feel that responsibility. In a separate poll, they found that 82% of Americans either somewhat or strongly agree that “our success as a nation depends on our ability to work across differences” and a majority express an interest in better understanding one another.  When we are working toward a shared goal, there are core values and shared aspirations that bind us. By actively seeking out this common ground and fostering positive interactions, we can all bridge divides, both in our personal lives and within our organizations.   Feeling connection is not just good for our own wellbeing, it is also crucial for business outcomes. According to research, 94% of employees say that feeling connected to their colleagues makes them more productive at work, and over four times as likely to feel job satisfaction and half as likely to leave their jobs within the next year.   More in Common has identified key “connectors”—shared values and experiences that have the power to bring seemingly disparate groups together. These can range from a shared commitment to community well-being to ensuring participants feel confident they would have something in common with one another—like shared identities or interests.  This emphasis on shared values and the active pursuit of connection resonates deeply with the principles we strive for at Workday and underscores why supporting nonprofit organizations and funder collaboratives like More in Common, the U.S. Chamber of Connection, One America, New Pluralists, and many more, is so vital for business and society to thrive.  The elevated human: Skills for an AI-driven era  Workday’s recent global study, Elevating Human Potential: The AI Skills Revolution, delves into the evolving impact of AI on the workplace. Strikingly, our research found that while AI will undoubtedly transform how we work, it is simultaneously elevating the importance of uniquely human skills, like empathy, ethical decision making, conflict resolution, and relationship building.   Our findings also confirm that employees are feeling a need for increased human connection as AI adoption grows, with 82% employees recognizing a greater demand for it.  Lead with connection  These studies all underscore a vital leadership imperative. As we integrate AI deeper into our workflows, we should be deliberate in cultivating environments that prioritize genuine human connection and the development of these essential human skills.   This means creating intentional spaces—both physical and virtual—that encourage open dialogue, active listening, and the respectful exchange of diverse perspectives. Leaders should champion empathy and relationship-building skill development within their teams, actively working to promote thoughtful opportunities for human connection in our AI-driven environment.  Ultimately, the future of innovation and progress will be shaped by our ability to harness the power of AI in a way that amplifies our uniquely human capacities, especially our innate drive to connect with one another. By prioritizing human connection and cultivating these essential skills, we can ensure that AI empowers a more collaborative, innovative, and ultimately, more human-centered future of work.  Carrie Varoquiers is the chief philanthropy officer at Workday.  

The Belgian Court of Appeal ruled today that the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) currently used as the foundation for most online advertising is illegal in the EU. This decision upholds the findings of the Belgian Data Protection Authority from 2022 that the technology underpinning online ads violates several principles of the General Data Protection Regulations, an EU digital privacy law that took effect in 2018. Engadget's Daniel Cooper wrote a thorough explainer of the different systems that support the current online advertising ecosystem, which is valuable reading for anybody spending time online. The very simplified version is that advertisers participate in real-time bidding (RTB) to show their content online. Currently, those bids are based on information gathered from tracking individuals' activities online with cookies. The TCF was created by the Interactive Advertising Bureau as a way to standardize how websites ask users for permission to be tracked. The original 2022 decision determined that both the consent collected by the TCF and the data collected in the RTB process were illegal under the GDPR. "Today's court's decision shows that the consent system used by Google, Amazon, X, Microsoft, deceives hundreds of millions of Europeans," said Dr Johnny Ryan, director of Enforce at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, who has been leading the legal charge against the current approach to ad tech. "The tech industry has sought to hide its vast data breach behind sham consent popups. Tech companies turned the GDPR into a daily nuisance rather than a shield for people." The reaction from IAB Europe, which filed the appeal, seems to mostly be relief that it hasn't been found responsible for the data collected by TCF. "The Market Court has rejected the APD’s view that IAB Europe is a joint controller together with TCF participants for their own respective processing of personal data, for instance for the purpose of digital advertising," the organization's statement says. IAB Europe notes that it has already suggested changes to the TCF that better reflect the "limited controllership" and submitted them to the Belgian Data Protection Authority. The group faced fines and was ordered to rebuild its current ad-tech framework as a result of the original decision. We've also reached out to some of the major advertisers that use the RTB technology for comment on the ruling. While this does seem like a big win for privacy advocates and internet users in the EU, it's unclear exactly what the next steps will be for advertisers and for ad tech systems. Most likely, regulators will oversee changes the IAB Europe makes to the TCF, so consent pop-ups may not yet be a thing of the past.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/appeals-court-confirms-that-tracking-based-online-advertising-is-illegal-in-europe-223714124.html?src=rss

Last year, Italian games studio Two Little Mice struck a deal to have Swedish tabletop publisher Free League distribute the Ennie-winning game Outgunned, which lets gaming groups play out heist or action movies like Ocean’s Eleven and Mission: Impossible. As part of that deal, Free League just released the first book in Outgunned’s genre line, Outgunned Adventure, which focuses on pulp films like Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and Tomb Raider. The standalone book uses Outgunned’s Director’s Cut RPG system, which has players roll between two and nine six-sided dice and score successes based on how many land on the same face. As the name suggests, characters are meant to be outmatched by dastardly villains they need to face through shootouts and fast talking. Failure is common, but PCs can “fail with style” — for instance, getting lost while searching for something might mean the players find something they weren’t expecting. Being too noisy on an infiltration might just lead to an exciting fight with a dangerous enemy they hoped to avoid. The $51 core rulebook includes 10 new roles, like Scoundrel, Technician, and Captain. Those combine with action movie tropes to provide a wide range of character options. You’ll explore ancient temples, run from traps, and fight on top of trains, while searching for treasure and solving mysteries. GMs looking to start playing quickly can pick up the $21 Fall of Atlantis three-part campaign — Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire is another major influence on the game — and an Adventure Director Screen, which provides a quick rules reference. The print books come with PDF copies, fulfilled through DriveThruRPG.Like the base game, Outgunned Adventure was the product of a highly successful crowdfunding campaign, raising more than €480,000 last summer. Two Little Mice has also just kicked off a campaign for its next genre book, Outgunned Superheroes. It has already raised more than €224,000, and high pledge levels include other Outgunned products, including the Action Flicks setting books and the John Wick-inspired World of Killers.

Doom: The Dark Ages Limited Edition Xbox Wireless Controller $80 See at Best Buy See at Target See at Amazon See at Walmart See at GameStop Xbox and PC players who are getting ready to rip and tear into Doom: The Dark Ages this week can still grab the official Xbox Wireless Controller themed around the popular franchise. The Doom: The Dark Ages limited-edition controller just sold out at Amazon and Walmart for $74 on May 14, but Best Buy and Target still have units for full price ($80).Doom: The Dark Ages Xbox Controller Restocks (May 14):Continue Reading at GameSpot

Fintech startup Klarna is now recruiting humans after its AI customer service agents underperformed. The buy-now-pay-later company, which eliminated its marketing contracts in 2023 and customer service team in 2024, now plans an "Uber-type setup" with remote gig workers. This marks a stark reversal from CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski's 2024 claim that "AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do." Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg: "From a brand perspective, I just think it's so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want." He added that "cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor" leading to "lower quality." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The saying goes that 80% of data collected, stored and maintained by governments can be associated with geographical locations. Although never empirically proven, it illustrates the importance of location within data. Ever growing data volumes put constraints on systems that handle geospatial data. Common Big Data compute engines, originally designed to scale for textual data, need adaptation to work efficiently with geospatial data — think of geographical indexes, partitioning, and operators. Here, I present and illustrate how to utilize the Microsoft Fabric Spark compute engine, with the natively integrated ESRI GeoAnalytics engine# for geospatial big data processing and analytics. The optional GeoAnalytics capabilities within Fabric enable the processing and analytics of vector-type geospatial data, where vector-type geospatial data refers to points, lines, polygons. These capabilities include more than 150 spatial functions to create geometries, test, and select spatial relationships. As it extends Spark, the GeoAnalytics functions can be called when using Python, SQL, or Scala. These spatial operations apply automatically spatial indexing, making the Spark compute engine also efficient for this data. It can handle 10 extra common spatial data formats to load and save data spatial data, on top of the Spark natively supported data source formats. This blog post focuses on the scalable geospatial compute engines as has been introduced in my post about geospatial in the age of AI. Demonstration explained Here, I demonstrate some of these spatial capabilities by showing the data manipulation and analytics steps on a large dataset. By using several tiles covering point cloud data (a bunch of x, y, z values), an enormous dataset starts to form, while it still covers a relatively small area. The open Dutch AHN dataset, which is a national digital elevation and surface model, is currently in its fifth update cycle, and spans a period of nearly 30 years. Here, the data from the second, third, and forth acquisition is used, as these hold full national coverage (the fifth just not yet), while the first version did not include a point cloud release (only the derivative gridded version). Another Dutch open dataset, namely building data, the BAG, is used to illustrate spatial selection. The building dataset contains the footprint of the buildings as polygons. Currently, this dataset holds more than 11 million buildings. To test the spatial functions, I use only 4 AHN tiles per AHN version. Thus in this case, 12 tiles, each of 5 x 6.25 km. Totalling to more than 3.5 billion points within an area of 125 square kilometers. The chosen area covers the municipality of Loppersum, an area prone to land subsidence due to gas extraction. The steps to take include the selection of buildings within the area of Loppersum, selecting the x,y,z-points from the roofs of the buildings. Then, we bring the 3 datasets into one dataframe and do an extra analysis with it. A spatial regression to predict the expected height of a building based on its height history as well as the history of the buildings in its direct surroundings. Not necessarily the best analysis to perform on this data to come to actual predictions* but it suits merely the purpose of demonstrating the spatial processing capabilities of Fabric’s ESRI GeoAnalytics. All the below code snippets are also available as notebooks on github. Step 1: Read data Spatial data can come in many different data formats; we conform to the geoparquet data format for further processing. The BAG building data, both the footprints as well as the accompanied municipality boundaries, come in geoparquet format already. The point cloud AHN data, version 2, 3 and 4, however, comes as LAZ file formats — a compressed industry standard format for point clouds. I have not found a Spark library to read LAZ (please leave a message in case there is one), and created a txt file, separately, with the LAStools+ first. # ESRI - FABRIC reference: https://developers.arcgis.com/geoanalytics-fabric/ # Import the required modules import geoanalytics_fabric from geoanalytics_fabric.sql import functions as ST from geoanalytics_fabric import extensions # Read ahn file from OneLake # AHN lidar data source: https://viewer.ahn.nl/ ahn_csv_path = "Files/AHN lidar/AHN4_csv" lidar_df = spark.read.options(delimiter=" ").csv(ahn_csv_path) lidar_df = lidar_df.selectExpr("_c0 as X", "_c1 as Y", "_c2 Z") lidar_df.printSchema() lidar_df.show(5) lidar_df.count() The above code snippet& provides the below results: Now, with the spatial functions make_point and srid the x,y,z columns are transformed to a point geometry and set it to the specific Dutch coordinate system (SRID = 28992), see the below code snippet&: # Create point geometry from x,y,z columns and set the spatial refrence system lidar_df = lidar_df.select(ST.make_point(x="X", y="Y", z="Z").alias("rd_point")) lidar_df = lidar_df.withColumn("srid", ST.srid("rd_point")) lidar_df = lidar_df.select(ST.srid("rd_point", 28992).alias("rd_point"))\ .withColumn("srid", ST.srid("rd_point")) lidar_df.printSchema() lidar_df.show(5) Building and municipality data can be read with the extended spark.read function for geoparquet, see the code snippet&: # Read building polygon data path_building = "Files/BAG NL/BAG_pand_202504.parquet" df_buildings = spark.read.format("geoparquet").load(path_building) # Read woonplaats data (=municipality) path_woonplaats = "Files/BAG NL/BAG_woonplaats_202504.parquet" df_woonplaats = spark.read.format("geoparquet").load(path_woonplaats) # Filter the DataFrame where the "woonplaats" column contains the string "Loppersum" df_loppersum = df_woonplaats.filter(col("woonplaats").contains("Loppersum")) Step 2: Make selections In the accompanying notebooks, I read and write to geoparquet. To make sure the right data is read correctly as dataframes, see the following code snippet: # Read building polygon data path_building = "Files/BAG NL/BAG_pand_202504.parquet" df_buildings = spark.read.format("geoparquet").load(path_building) # Read woonplaats data (=municipality) path_woonplaats = "Files/BAG NL/BAG_woonplaats_202504.parquet" df_woonplaats = spark.read.format("geoparquet").load(path_woonplaats) # Filter the DataFrame where the "woonplaats" column contains the string "Loppersum" df_loppersum = df_woonplaats.filter(col("woonplaats").contains("Loppersum")) With all data in dataframes it becomes a simple step to do spatial selections. The following code snippet& shows how to select the buildings within the boundaries of the Loppersum municipality, and separately makes a selection of buildings that existed throughout the period (point cloud AHN-2 data was acquired in 2009 in this region). This resulted in 1196 buildings, out of the 2492 buildings currently. # Clip the BAG buildings to the gemeente Loppersum boundary df_buildings_roi = Clip().run(input_dataframe=df_buildings, clip_dataframe=df_loppersum) # select only buildings older then AHN data (AHN2 (Groningen) = 2009) # and with a status in use (Pand in gebruik) df_buildings_roi_select = df_buildings_roi.where((df_buildings_roi.bouwjaar<2009) & (df_buildings_roi.status=='Pand in gebruik')) The three AHN versions used (2,3 and 4), further named as T1, T2 and T3 respectively, are then clipped based on the selected building data. The AggregatePoints function can be utilized to calculate, in this case from the height (z-values) some statistics, like the mean per roof, the standard deviation and the number of z-values it is based upon; see the code snippet: # Select and aggregrate lidar points from buildings within ROI df_ahn2_result = AggregatePoints() \ .setPolygons(df_buildings_roi_select) \ .addSummaryField(summary_field="T1_z", statistic="Mean", alias="T1_z_mean") \ .addSummaryField(summary_field="T1_z", statistic="stddev", alias="T1_z_stddev") \ .run(df_ahn2) df_ahn3_result = AggregatePoints() \ .setPolygons(df_buildings_roi_select) \ .addSummaryField(summary_field="T2_z", statistic="Mean", alias="T2_z_mean") \ .addSummaryField(summary_field="T2_z", statistic="stddev", alias="T2_z_stddev") \ .run(df_ahn3) df_ahn4_result = AggregatePoints() \ .setPolygons(df_buildings_roi_select) \ .addSummaryField(summary_field="T3_z", statistic="Mean", alias="T3_z_mean") \ .addSummaryField(summary_field="T3_z", statistic="stddev", alias="T3_z_stddev") \ .run(df_ahn4) Step 3: Aggregate and Regress As the GeoAnalytics function Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) can only work on point data, from the building polygons their centroid is extracted with the centroid function. The 3 dataframes are joined to one, see also the notebook, and it is ready to perform the GWR function. In this instance, it predicts the height for T3 (AHN4) based on local regression functions. # Import the required modules from geoanalytics_fabric.tools import GWR # Run the GWR tool to predict AHN4 (T3) height values for buildings at Loppersum resultGWR = GWR() \ .setExplanatoryVariables("T1_z_mean", "T2_z_mean") \ .setDependentVariable(dependent_variable="T3_z_mean") \ .setLocalWeightingScheme(local_weighting_scheme="Bisquare") \ .setNumNeighbors(number_of_neighbors=10) \ .runIncludeDiagnostics(dataframe=df_buildingsT123_points) The model diagnostics can be consulted for the predicted z value, in this case, the following results were generated. Note, again, that these results cannot be used for real world applications as the data and methodology might not best fit the purpose of subsidence modelling — it merely shows here Fabric GeoAnalytics functionality. R20.994AdjR20.981AICc1509Sigma20.046EDoF378 Step 4: Visualize results With the spatial function plot, results can be visualized as maps within the notebook — to be used only with the Python API in Spark. First, a visualization of all buildings within the municipality of Loppersum. # visualize Loppersum buildings df_buildings.st.plot(basemap="light", geometry="geometry", edgecolor="black", alpha=0.5) Here is a visualization of the height difference between T3 (AHN4) and T3 predicted (T3 predicted minus T3). # Vizualize difference of predicted height and actual measured height Loppersum area and buildings axes = df_loppersum.st.plot(basemap="light", edgecolor="black", figsize=(7, 7), alpha=0) axes.set(xlim=(244800, 246500), ylim=(594000, 595500)) df_buildings.st.plot(ax=axes, basemap="light", alpha=0.5, edgecolor="black") #, color='xkcd:sea blue' df_with_difference.st.plot(ax=axes, basemap="light", cmap_values="subsidence_mm_per_yr", cmap="coolwarm_r", vmin=-10, vmax=10, geometry="geometry") Summary This blog post discusses the significance of geographical data. It highlights the challenges posed by increasing data volumes on Geospatial data systems and suggests that traditional big data engines must adapt to handle geospatial data efficiently. Here, an example is presented on how to use the Microsoft Fabric Spark compute engine and its integration with the ESRI GeoAnalytics engine for effective geospatial big data processing and analytics. Opinions here are mine. Footnotes # in preview * for modelling the land subsidence with much higher accuracy and temporal frequency other approaches and data can be utilized, such as with satellite InSAR methodology (see also Bodemdalingskaart) + Lastools is used here separately, it would be fun to test the usage of Fabric User data functions (preview), or to utilize an Azure Function for this purpose. & code snippets here are set up for readability, not necessarily for efficiency. Multiple data processing steps could be chained. References GitHub repo with notebooks: delange/Fabric_GeoAnalytics Microsoft Fabric: Microsoft Fabric documentation – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn ESRI GeoAnalytics for Fabric: Overview | ArcGIS GeoAnalytics for Microsoft Fabric | ArcGIS Developers AHN: Home | AHN BAG: Over BAG – Basisregistratie Adressen en Gebouwen – Kadaster.nl zakelijk Lastools: LAStools: converting, filtering, viewing, processing, and compressing LIDAR data in LAS and LAZ format Surface and Object Motion Map: Bodemdalingskaart – The post The Geospatial Capabilities of Microsoft Fabric and ESRI GeoAnalytics, Demonstrated appeared first on Towards Data Science.

AI is a critical competitive advantage — and it’s time to find out how your company stacks up. The annual VentureBeat AI survey is back. The survey is brought to you by ActiveFence, a leader in expert-driven gen AI safety and security solutions, and returns alongside Transform 2025 in SF this June 24 and 25. It’s designed to asses…Read More

After reviewing almost 500 projects, we’re excited to share the winners of the 2023 Unity for Humanity Grant. All of the social impact creators receiving funding this year are using real-time 3D to drive change in truly innovative ways.Projects were judged based on vision, impact, inclusion, and viability. Winners will receive a bespoke grant from a pool of $500,000 USD, plus mentorship and technical support to help bring their projects to life. If you have a project you’d like to submit in the future, sign up to the Social Impact mailing list for updates about when next year’s grant will open.What’s the project?X-Ray Fashion is a VR documentary by Denmark-based XR studio MANND that uses immersive storytelling to educate audiences about issues within the fashion industry. The project combines virtual reality with corresponding physical elements (for example, when walking through water in the documentary, you walk through shallow water in the real world) to create a truly sensory experience that takes viewers through the various stages of a typical garment’s production process, from the sweat shop all the way to the catwalk.What’s the purpose?The fashion industry is the second-largest polluter in the world. It accounts for 10% of all global carbon emissions, and a huge 60% of textiles are thrown away within one year of being made. On top of that, a single pair of denim jeans requires 10,000 liters of water to make.The creators of X-Ray Fashion recognize that our habit of constantly changing our wardrobes and disposing of clothes we no longer like is having a big impact. Their goal is to use this immersive experience to change consumer behavior by helping viewers understand the impact that their wardrobes have on the environment and people working in the industry. Ultimately, the project encourages lifestyle changes such as buying second-hand garments, taking better care of what we already own, and minimizing our overall fashion consumption.What’s the project?Trying to put how you’re feeling into words when experiencing complex emotions and mental health issues can often be difficult. Sarah Ticho encountered this challenge when trying to describe her grief and mental state to a doctor during a time when she needed help. The experience led her to collaborate with experience designer Niki Smit to develop SoulPaint, a VR project in which participants create artwork on an avatar that expresses their inner world using color, shapes, movement, and imagery.What’s the purpose?According to Harvard Medical School, miscommunication is at the heart of most medical errors. SoulPaint is a unique experience that aims to transform the way we communicate our emotions with others, remove the stigma around mental health, and trigger impactful conversations by creating a shared exhibition experience in public spaces worldwide. It will also ultimately provide a tool that allows patients to improve communication with health care professionals.What’s the project?Quantum’s Pursuit is a game by Limbitless Solutions that lets children with bionic limbs play the limb-different grandchildren of Dr. Quantum, a tech genius and wizard who has developed renewable energy. Dr. Quantum has been kidnapped by evil Galacdorks trying to steal his invention, and it’s the player’s goal to journey through the levels, defeat the boss, and save Dr. Quantum.The game allows hospitals to teach children how to use their new bionic limbs in a fun, engaging, and stress-free way, while also gaining insight into the needs of each child based on their muscle strength – information that is usually difficult to ascertain.What’s the purpose?Limbitless Solutions provides free bionic arms, training, and even covers travel costs for patients and their families. This incredible project can vastly improve the quality of life of children with limb differences and ease the transition to a bionic limb during an otherwise difficult time.What’s the project?Using VR, Follow the Investigation: Inside the ICC shows International Criminal Court (ICC) cases at various stages of the judicial process. The experience provides valuable insight into how the ICC system works to bring those responsible for crimes against humanity – including war crimes and genocide – to justice.Viewers witness testimonies from survivors of past ICC cases, visit field investigation sites, process evidence in ICC forensic labs, and sit in on courtroom proceedings drawn from a variety of infamous global cases.What’s the purpose?This project serves as a somber reminder of and education about the work of the ICC and the process of seeking justice, helping to raise awareness of atrocities and the experiences of survivors to ensure continued global support for their recovery and the work of the ICC. The project also offers an impactful way for victims of horrific crimes to better understand the legal processes that relate to their own cases.What’s the project?In World Reborn, the world’s first activism adventure game, your goal is to save the world after a cataclysmic event fractures it into multiple realities. The mobile game uses AR to combine actions in the real world with choices in the virtual world, encouraging players to make a difference in both. Real-world actions that help you progress through the game include donating money, picking up trash, completing breathing exercises, and more.What’s the purpose?90% of the 72 million teenagers in the U.S. play video games. Having grown up with an awareness of pressing global issues – including climate change, mental health, and racial injustice – they want to make a difference, but often feel powerless to do so. The founders of Wicked Saints, creators of World Reborn, worked for the world’s largest peacebuilding organization and trained young movement leaders all over the world. They saw how many lives were transformed using an approach called Common Ground Activism – attacking the problem, not the person. Now, they’re building World Reborn to empower young people with CGA skills and drive change through incremental steps in the real world. Join their Discord community to get special access and be part of building the game.What’s the project?“What would the children of the future think about the mistakes of our past?” is the question that Team Gramps sought to answer with A Week at Belisamas Lake. This narrative-based mobile fishing game follows young Lotus and their grandmother Pearl as they recover 21st-century trash from a local lake in a future where humanity has overcome the climate crisis – and profoundly changed in the process. Using gyroscopic controls, you fish for items, inspect them, and listen as Pearl sheds light on relics of the past.What’s the purpose?Through a wholesome, optimistic narrative, A Week at Belisamas Lake shines a light on the possibility of a future society in a post-climate change world. Weaving together intergenerational relationships and items of the present day, the story examines just how drastically things might change if we don’t take action now, and how meaningful climate action will ultimately change us.Trigger warning: griefWhat’s the project?Drawing on the 17-year life cycle and symbolism of the Brood X cicadas, this virtual reality experience follows a mother’s journey to find meaning after the loss of her son. Using personal audio files, music, and images, the player is taken on a journey through the mother’s narrative, interacting with the experiences of passing time and grief.What’s the purpose?Year of the Cicadas is a mother’s reflection on the power of finding meaning in the most tragic of stories, and how that meaning transforms over time. The goal of this experience is to provide a window into the life-long journey of meaning-making after child loss for those who may know or work with bereaved parents and family members.Trigger warning: sexual assault, child abuseWhat’s the project?This mobile game is designed for parents who suspect their child may be the victim of sexual abuse or who want to talk to their children about topics like consent. Patito uses minigames to show a young character realizing he is a victim, providing a sensitive approach to educating children and parents on these difficult topics.What’s the purpose?According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), over 4.5 million children are victims of sexual abuse every year in Mexico. Pink Bear Games have created Patito to raise awareness of this issue and help give parents an effective way to communicate about sexual abuse and consent with their children. Their goal is to provide the app for free in an effort to help prevent future cases.Congratulations to all of this year’s winners – we can’t wait to share more of their projects with you. If you’re a social impact creator, join the Unity for Humanity Community Discord to meet like-minded creators.

Menu Home News Hardware Gaming Mobile Finance Deals Reviews How To Wccftech Mobile Apple Vision Pro Price Guessed Incorrectly Multiple Times On ‘The Price Is Right’ Show For The 256GB Version, Despite The Headset Garnering Massive Attention Worldwide Omar Sohail • May 15, 2025 at 12:48am EDT The astronomical number of eyeballs on the Apple Vision Pro during the WWDC 2024 keynote highlighted the product’s uniqueness, while also introducing a price tag that would make interested parties gulp upon hearing the figure, but it appears that some are not aware of how much the device costs. On ‘The Price Is Right’ show, the 256GB model was showcased for four contestants, and while the mixed reality headset generated heaps of attention around several regions, it appears that there might be a few who have little clue about how ludicrously expensive the headset really is. Out of the four contestants who tried guessing the Apple Vision Pro’s price, none of them managed to come close to the actual figure On Threads, Justin Ryan posted a video that was spotted by AppleInsider, where the host asks four contestants how much they think the 256GB model of the Apple Vision Pro costs. Given that the firm has a trillion-dollar status and the majority of individuals would be familiar with the pricing, it is interesting that none of the four people came even remotely close to the head-mounted wearable’s $3,499 figure, indicating that regular buyers expected it to be significantly more affordable than it already is. The objective of The Price Is Right is to guess the product’s price without going overboard. The closest that one of the contestants came to the Apple Vision Pro was $1,270, and even then, it was not half of the device’s $3,499 retail price in the U.S. for the 256GB model. Then again, Apple CEO Tim Cook previously stated that the AR headset was never something that was targeted to the masses, but aimed at those who wanted to experience tomorrow’s technology today. It appears that there are few affluent technology enthusiasts around because the Apple Vision Pro did not even garner 500,000 shipped units, highlighting that an affordable alternative could be a potential solution to help the California-based giant ramp up shipments worldwide. As for the remaining three contestants, one mentioned a price of $750, with the second one guessing a figure of $1,000, and the last one believing that the Apple Vision Pro costs $1,001. News Source: justinryan.io Deal of the Day Subscribe to get an everyday digest of the latest technology news in your inbox Follow us on Topics Sections Company Some posts on wccftech.com may contain affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com © 2025 WCCF TECH INC. 700 - 401 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada