Het bericht HP Pavilion Plus 16″ review: het scherm springt er bovenuit verscheen eerst op DutchCowboys.
Google has once again lost in its bid to overturn a 2017 antitrust decision by the European Commission. The bloc found its shopping comparison service had broken competition rules — hitting Alphabet, Google’s parent, with an at-the-time record-breaking €2.42 billion penalty (around $2.7 billion at current exchange rates) and ordering changes to how it operates […]
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After weeks of teasing, Huawei has officially launched the world’s first dual-hinged, triple-screen foldable phone and it’s just as expensive as we feared. In China, prices for the Mate XT Ultimate Design start at 19,999 yuan (about $2,809) for the 256GB storage model — that’s roughly $300 more than a brand-new 16-inch MacBook Pro.
All models are equipped with 16GB of RAM, and two additional storage variants are available that cost 21,999 yuan (about $3,089) for 512GB and 23,999 yuan (about $3,370) for 1TB. Chinese retailer Vmall reported 3.7 million preorders before pricing was announced.
The Mate XT features an inverse dual-hinge design that folds in a “Z” shape, allowing it to be used in a variety of formats. The OLED display measures...
In medical TV dramas, losing consciousness is something that happens suddenly and dramatically. We can all tell… the body is still there, but the mind is gone, at least for now.
Unfortunately, this happens in real life. At work. In our personal lives. For a few minutes or even a decade or more.
We stop noticing. We fail to appreciate. Most of all, we stop making decisions.
Sheepwalking.
You probably don’t need a medical intervention. Instead, we simply have to find the guts to wake up.
Choice brings responsibility, and responsibility is often accompanied by fear.
That’s okay. You can’t run a marathon without getting tired, and you can’t do important work when you’re asleep.
PS thanks to everyone who responded to yesterday’s post. We sold way more than half of the limited-edition boxes in less than a day. I apologize that international ordering didn’t work in the morning, but the problem is now fixed. Thanks for your patience.
This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get it in your inbox first, sign up here.
Video game development has long been plagued by fear of the “crunch”—essentially, being forced to work overtime on a game to meet a deadline. In the early days of video games, the crunch was often viewed as a rite of passage: In the last days before release, an obsessed group of scrappy developers would work late into the night to perfect their dream game.
However, nowadays the crunch is less likely to be glamorized than to be seen as a form of exploitation that risks causing mental illness and burnout. Part of the issue is that crunch time used to be just before a game launched, but now whole game development periods are “crunchy.” With games getting more expensive, companies are incentivized to make even more short-term profits by squeezing developers.
But what if AI could help to alleviate game-development hell? It may already be happening. According to a recent poll by a16z, 87% of studios are using generative AI tools like Midjourney to create in-game environments. Others are using it for game testing or looking for bugs, while Ubisoft is experimenting with using AI to create different basic dialogue options.
And even more help is coming. A tool developed by the team at Roblox aims to allow developers to make 3D environments and scenes in an instant with nothing but text prompts. Typically, creating an environment may take a week for a small game or much longer for a studio project, depending on how complex the designs are. But Roblox aims to let developers almost instantly bring their personal vision to life.
For example, let’s say you wanted your game to be set in a spaceship with the interior design of a Buddhist temple. You’d just put that into a prompt—“Create a spaceship …”—and BAM! Your one-of-a-kind environment would be generated immediately.
The technology behind this can be used for any 3D environment, not just Roblox. My article here goes into more depth, but essentially, if ChatGPT’s tokens are words, the Roblox system’s tokens are 3D cubes that form a larger scene, allowing the 3D generation equivalent of what ChatGPT can do for text. This means the model could potentially be used to generate a whole city in the Grand Theft Auto universe. That said, the demo I saw from Roblox was far smaller, generating only a racetrack. So more realistically, I imagine it would be used to build one aspect of a city in Grand Theft Auto, like a stadium—at least for now.
Roblox claims you’re also able to modify a scene with prompts. So let’s say you get bored of the Buddhist temple aesthetic. You can prompt the model again—“Make the spaceship interior a forest”—and within an instant, all the Buddhist statues will turn to trees.
A lot of these types of things can already be done manually, of course, but it can take a lot of time. Ideally, this kind of technology will allow 3D artists to offload some of the tedium of their job to an AI. (Though some of them may argue that building the environment is creatively fulfilling—maybe even one of their favorite parts of their job. Having an AI spawn an environment in an instant may take away some of the joy of slowly discovering an environment as you build it.)
Personally, I’m fairly skeptical of AI in video games. As a former developer myself, I cringe a little bit when I hear about AI being used to write dialogue for characters. I worry about terribly stilted results and the possibility that writers will lose their jobs. In the same vein, I worry about putting 3D artists out of work and ending up with 3D environments that look off, or obviously generated by AI without care or thought.
It’s clear that the big AI wave is crashing upon us. And whether it leads to better work-life balance for game developers is going to be determined by how these systems are implemented. Will developers have a tool to reduce tedium and eliminate repetitive tasks, or will they have fewer colleagues, and new colleagues who insist on using words like “delves” and “showcasing” in every other sentence?
AI is already being used in games for eliminating inappropriate language
This new Roblox development comes after the company introduced AI to analyze in-game voice chat in real time last fall. Other games, like Call of Duty, have implemented similar systems. If the AI determines that a player is using foul language, it will issue a warning, and then a ban if restricted words keep coming.
Why this matters: As we’ve written previously, content moderation with AI has proved to be tricky. It seems like an obvious way to make good use of the technology’s ability to look at masses of information and make quick assessments, but AI still has a hard time with nuance and cultural contexts. That hasn’t stopped it from being implemented in video games, which have been and will continue to be one of the testing grounds for the latest innovations in AI. My colleague Niall explains in his recent piece how it could make virtual worlds more immersive and flexible.
What this futuristic Olympics video says about the state of generative AI
Filmmaker Josh Kahn used AI to create a short video that imagines what an Olympics in LA might look like in the year 3028, which he shared exclusively with MIT Technology Review. The short demonstrates AI’s immense power for video creation, but it also highlights some of the issues with using the technology for that purpose.
(MIT Technology Review)
A Dutch regulator has slapped Clearview AI with a $33 million fine
Years ago, Clearview AI scraped images of people from the internet without their permission. Now Dutch authorities are suing the company, claiming that Clearview’s database is illegal because it violates individuals’ right to privacy. Clearview hasn’t paid past fines and doesn’t plan to pay this one, claiming that Dutch authorities have no jurisdiction over the company since it doesn’t have a business in the Netherlands. The Dutch are considering holding the directors of Clearview personally financially liable.
(The Verge)
How OpenAI is changing
OpenAI continues to evolve; recent moves include adding the former director of the US National Security Agency to its board and considering plans to restructure the company to be more attractive for investors. Additionally, there are talks over a new investment into OpenAI that would value it at over $100 billion. It sure feels like a long time since OpenAI could credibly claim to just be a research lab.
(The New York Times)
NaNoWriMo says condemning AI Is “classist and ableist”
The organizers of the “write a book in a month” challenge have got themselves into hot water recently, with a big backlash against their decision to support the use of AI for writers. They’ve countered the haters by claiming that opposing the use of AI in writing is both classist and ableist, as some people require extra assistance and accommodation from AI tools.
(404 media)
Meta has leaked an image of the supposed Quest 3S via an update to its PC software, showing off what is likely the upcoming cheaper alternative to Quest 3.
As first spotted by Reddit user ‘Gary_the_mememachine‘, the image of can be found in the files of Meta Quest Link client for PC.
At the time of this writing, Meta hasn’t removed the image from its latest software update. Provided your client is updated, you can find it yourself by following this pathway:
C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-dash\dash\data\js\assets\src\apps\dash\asset_files\experience-panels
The headset, like many in the ‘experience-panels’ folder, is referred to by its codename, which is labeled as ‘Panther’. The codename was first spotted by serial dataminer Luna when digging through the v65 UX files in the Quest software.
All signs currently point to an imminent launch of Quest 3S, as a new Meta headset was recently certified by the FCC, which is now just a few weeks before Meta Connect 2024, taking place September 25th – 26th.
There, we hope to get confirmation of a few rumors floating around currently, including whether it packs in the same Fresnel lenses and display as Quest 2, if it has the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset as the Quest 3, and whether it will really hit the rumored $299 price point.
We’re also hoping to learn more about when Meta will release HorizonOS to third-party OEMs, which includes XR devices from hardware partners ASUS, Lenovo, and Xbox.
The post Official Quest 3S Image Leaks Ahead of Anticipated Meta Connect Unveiling appeared first on Road to VR.
Ready or not, across the country, a new crop of kindergarteners has entered the K-12 school system.
Their teachers will spend these early weeks determining where the 5- and 6-year-olds are developmentally, what academic, social and emotional skills they bring, and what support they need to set them up for a successful school year.
That job has become more difficult in recent years, according to numerous surveys, research studies and EdSurge interviews, as the last few classes of kindergarteners have shown up lacking some of the basic skills and competencies that educators and school leaders had previously come to expect. These include following instructions, sharing, listening and participating during lessons, using writing utensils and craft materials, and toilet training.
Many people, both within the field of education and among the general public, are quick to blame the pandemic for these challenges. Although today’s kindergarteners were infants when the pandemic started, fewer of them participated in early learning experiences, such as preschool, and most had limited social interactions during a critical developmental period. Yet the explanation is likely far more complicated; several people, in interviews, pointed to the ubiquity of smartphones and screen time as at least part of the shift.
As a new school year begins, EdSurge asked education leaders and child development experts about the skills that are most important for a child to have when they start school.
There are five core developmental domains, says Van-Kim Bui Lin, a senior research scientist focused on early childhood development at Child Trends, a national nonprofit research center focused on child well-being.
One is physical development, including gross motor skills, which allow kids to run, hop and skip, as well as fine motor skills, which help children hold a pencil or use scissors.
Another is cognitive development, such as reasoning and problem-solving. Then there’s language development, which includes the ability to comprehend and communicate verbally, and eventually read and write. Another is social-emotional development; this includes active listening, interacting with adults and peers, sharing and holding attention.
Finally, there is a child’s approach to learning, including what motivates them and how they learn best.
“A child needs that whole set of development to really be successful,” Lin explains.
The most critical skills for starting kindergarten, many people say, are social-emotional. This is the area of development where many teachers report seeing the steepest decline.
Many students in the Phoenix-Talent School District in southern Oregon, which experienced a devastating wildfire in the fall of 2020, compounding the effects of the pandemic, have been showing up to kindergarten without the skills needed to follow directions, share toys and materials with their classmates, and stick to a schedule.
I’m not interested in getting them ready for one year of school. I’m interested in getting them a foundation for life.
It’s the “routines and procedures,” says Tiffanie Lambert, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for Phoenix-Talent, “that has been the biggest impediment we’ve seen since the pandemic and fire.”
Lambert has also noticed that children of all ages — not just kindergarteners, but especially kindergarteners — have shorter attention spans. “And we don’t expect a kindergartener to come in and sit through an hour lesson,” she adds.
Social-emotional skills, such as self-control and listening, allow children to show up to kindergarten ready to engage and learn. These skills are the bedrock.
Is a child able to sit and listen during story time? That’s a good barometer, says Susan Petersen, director of education at Lodi Unified School District in northern California. “That would be ideal,” she notes.
Can a child interact with other children appropriately, taking turns and including others? “Those basic social skills would be nice as well,” Petersen adds.
Emotion regulation and perseverance are also big, adds Lin of Child Trends. If a child is struggling to use scissors, do they have the ability to overcome their frustration and keep at it? Can they tolerate it when another child uses the toy they were playing with?
If a child can work well with others, share, recognize their emotions and control their impulses, “the rest will come,” says Rachel Robertson, chief academic officer at Bright Horizons, which runs more than 600 early care and education centers in the U.S.
Fine motor skills, which relate to moving small muscles in the hands and wrists that allow individuals to engage in many functional skills like cutting, using a glue stick, opening a lunch box and turning pages in a book, are important but seem to be lacking among kindergarteners.
Pencil grasp — the way a person holds a pencil or other writing tool — has been an issue, even among students older than kindergarten, says Lambert of the Phoenix-Talent School District.
“It’s been my mission, looking at every kid’s pencil grip,” she says.
If kids don’t have that motor skill down, Lambert adds, their hands get fatigued, their letter formation is off, and it’s hard for them to complete work.
Lisa Eckert, director of early learning at the Pequea Valley School District in southeastern Pennsylvania, has had parents share that their child is entering kindergarten knowing all of their letters and numbers. Yet, because they learned it on a device, like an iPad, “they can’t pick up a pencil and write anything. Or they don’t know how to use scissors and cut a piece of paper,” Eckert shares.
ABCs and 1-2-3s may seem like a baseline for kindergarten readiness. Yet educator after educator notes that they’re really just nice-to-haves.
“It’d be amazing if they could come in writing their name, recognizing letters and sounds of the alphabet,” says Lambert. “We don’t always expect that. But being able to come in, interact, understand their emotions, regulate, participate in a class and group — that helps us.”
Letters and numbers, reading and writing, those are the skills that kindergarten is designed to teach a child. It’s much more preferable that a child have some basic social-emotional skills than be able to read on the first day of kindergarten.
“I’m not interested in getting them ready for one year of school,” explains Robertson of Bright Horizons. “I’m interested in getting them a foundation for life.”
In the Education Week State of Teaching survey, which asked preK-3 teachers about how certain tasks and skills had changed from five years ago, 44 percent said that “potty training/using the bathroom without assistance” was “much more challenging” or “more challenging” today.
School district leaders confirmed this experience. Increasingly, they’re seeing students start kindergarten without the ability to use the bathroom on their own.
Kindergarten teachers simply don’t have the time to help each child in the bathroom, Lin of Child Trends notes.
“It makes a big difference in the day,” adds Eckert of Pequea Valley School District. “If [teachers] are focusing on helping kids in the bathroom, they're losing an hour in the day.”
As U.S. public schools face alarmingly high rates of chronic absenteeism — defined as a student missing 10 percent or more days in a school year — it’s worth noting that showing up is essential for a child’s success in kindergarten.
“Students don’t learn if they’re not at school,” Lambert says. “Families think, ‘It’s just kindergarten. It’s OK if they miss a day.’ But kindergarten is so important. … Even missing a day is critical.”
© Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock
SpaceX is getting ready to set out on its historic Polaris Dawn mission, which will send four astronauts into orbit aboard its Crew Dragon capsule. The five-day journey through the Van Allen radiation belts will include the first spacewalk done by private astronauts.
If you’re curious about the mission, here’s what you should know about today’s launch targeting currently targeting 5:23AM ET.
Watch live as Falcon 9 launches the @PolarisProgram’s Polaris Dawn crew on a multi-day mission orbiting Earth https://t.co/u1KqQx5AFr
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 10, 2024
First announced in 2022, Polaris Dawn is a mission funded by billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman. In addition to Isaacman, three...
Van den Berg kreeg als senator vooral bekendheid toen hij de indruk wekte dat de gaswinning uit het Groninger Gasveld mogelijk zou blijven doorgaan. Dit gebeurde nadat de Tweede Kamer met een grote meerderheid had besloten om dit pijnlijke hoofdstuk voor Groningen eindelijk te sluiten. Toen het wetsvoorstel voorlag in de Eerste Kamer, wilde Van den Berg alsnog een extra vragenronde over het ‘L-woord’, namelijk leveringszekerheid. Daarnaast wilde hij op een wet over leveringszekerheid wachten, die nog behandeld moest worden in de Tweede Kamer.
In Groningen, waar Van den Berg hoogleraar is, ligt die kwestie gevoelig: het ‘L-woord’ is door VVD’ers zoals Henk Kamp jarenlang gebruikt als excuus om de gaswinning tegen beter weten in voort te zetten. De verantwoordelijke staatssecretaris Vijlbrief zag dit nieuwe uitstel van Van den Berg als reden om met aftreden te dreigen. Uiteindelijk moest de VVD-senator met een uitvoerig mea culpa komen.
Van den Berg begon in juni 2024 als voorzitter van UNL en gaf destijds aan zijn nieuwe rol te kunnen combineren met zijn werk in de Eerste Kamer. Al snel erkende hij echter dat dit een lastige opgave is, vooral in het licht van de bezuinigingsplannen van het kabinet voor het hoger onderwijs. Toch verklaarde hij in verschillende nieuwsmedia dat hij nog maar moest zien of deze bezuinigingen, die volgend jaar al zouden ingaan, daadwerkelijk zullen worden ingevoerd.
Als senator zou dit hem niettemin in een lastig parket brengen, aangezien hij nog dit jaar zou moeten instemmen met de eerste tranche aan bezuinigingen, waarop er nog vele zullen volgen – bijvoorbeeld rondom de langstudeerboete. Deze weg naar Canossa onder de knoet van de VVD hoeft hij nu niet meer te bewandelen; hij kan nu vrijelijk oppositie voeren tegen de bezuinigingen van dit kabinet.
Zelf zegt Van den Berg dat hij dit besluit niet lichtvaardig heeft genomen. “De reden om op dit moment te stoppen als senator is dat mij is gebleken dat deze rol moeilijk te combineren is met mijn hoofdfunctie als voorzitter van Universiteiten van Nederland. De afgelopen periode heb ik geprobeerd deze functies naast elkaar te vervullen. In de praktijk blijkt dit lastiger dan vooraf voorzien. De tijd en toewijding die mijn hoofdfunctie de komende periode zal vragen, staan het gelijktijdig uitoefenen van het Kamerlidmaatschap in de weg”, schrijf hij.
Andere bestuurders hebben het Eerste Kamerlidmaatschap en een bestuursfunctie in het onderwijs de afgelopen jaren echter wél weten te combineren. Zo was Paul Rosenmöller fractievoorzitter van GroenLinks in de Senaat en tevens voorzitter van de VO-raad, de koepel van vo-scholen. Thom de Graaf was fractievoorzitter van D66 in de Eerste Kamer en voorzitter van de Vereniging Hogescholen, Annelien Bredenoord was tot voor kort rector van de EUR en tevens senator voor D66, en ook Henk Pijlman combineerde zijn Eerste Kamerlidmaatschap met het voorzitterschap van de Hanzehogeschool.Van den Berg is dus de eerste bestuurder in het hoger onderwijs die aangeeft dat deze taken in de praktijk eigenlijk niet te combineren zijn.
Het is overigens niet de eerste keer dat een senator door de onderwijspolitiek in een lastig parket werd gebracht. Thom de Graaf moest bijvoorbeeld een verdeelde Vereniging Hogescholen vertegenwoordigen tijdens de invoering van het leenstelsel. Een deel van de hogescholen vreesde dat de invoering van het leenstelsel de toegankelijkheid van het hoger beroepsonderwijs zou aantasten. Toch moest De Graaf als D66-senator instemmen met het leenstelsel, omdat zijn partij toenmalig OCW-minister Jet Bussemaker aan een meerderheid had geholpen in zowel de Eerste als de Tweede Kamer.
De situatie rondom de huidige bezuinigingen is echter heel anders: vanuit het hoger onderwijs is er massief verzet tegen de voorgenomen bezuinigingen. Als Van den Berg zijn Kamerlidmaatschap nu niet had opgegeven, zou hij op zeer korte termijn het kabinetsbeleid van VVD-minister van Financiën Eelco Heijnen en fractievoorzitter Dilan Yesilgöz, die het huidige coalitieakkoord hebben opgesteld, moeten verdedigen. Dit zou hem in een onmogelijke positie hebben gebracht als voorzitter van de UNL.
De enige VVD’er in de Eerste Kamer met een bestuurlijke functie in het hoger onderwijs is momenteel Jan Anthonie Bruijn, die niet alleen voorzitter is van de Eerste Kamer, maar ook van de Raad van Toezicht van de Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. Naast de voorzittershamer zal hij als VVD-fractielied dus ook de politieke sloophamer moeten hanteren die hij in handen krijgt gedrukt door het VVD-duo Heijnen en Yesilgöz.
The post UNL-voorzitter geeft wringend Eerste Kamerlidmaatschap op first appeared on ScienceGuide.
Het bericht UNL-voorzitter geeft wringend Eerste Kamerlidmaatschap op verscheen eerst op ScienceGuide.
Het bericht AI-tool personaliseert je workouts slimmer verscheen eerst op DutchCowboys.
Het bericht iOS 18 komt eraan: dit is wat Apple allemaal vernieuwd verscheen eerst op DutchCowboys.
A love of food — and, well, cheese — has landed German fermentation startup Formo‘s co-founder Roman Plewka and its team a hefty $61 million Series B round to keep scaling production of their climate-friendly, animal-free cheese. The Berlin-based startup’s first products use a base of Koji protein, a type of fungal microorganism that’s been […]
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Swiggy is considering boosting the fresh issue component of its IPO by $150 million, targeting a total of $1.4 billion.
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