Pelican Press

A Week in the Life of Asocial Giraffe Preview – A Delightfully Awkward Puzzle Comedy – MonsterVine A Week in the Life of Asocial Giraffe Preview – A Delightfully Awkward Puzzle Comedy – MonsterVine “The L.A-based (CA, the US) indie games developer Quail Button today announce with great joy and excitement that their comedy point-and-click adventure game “A Week ian the Life of Asocial Giraffe”, is coming to PC voa Steam in 2025″ – Jonas Ek, TGG. Source link #Week #Life #Asocial #Giraffe #Preview #Delightfully #Awkward #Puzzle #Comedy #MonsterVine Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

how violence returned to a shattered South Sudan how violence returned to a shattered South Sudan Night had already fallen on Juba, the capital of South Sudan, at about 7pm on 24 March, when an orange glow lit up the sky. It didn’t take long before news spread that the government had carried out an airstrike. For weeks, clashes had taken place in remote parts of the country between the army of the president, Salva Kiir, and opposition forces, but never that close to the capital. The target – an opposition base in Wunaliet, 15km west of the city – was consumed in flames. Just hours before the airstrike, Nicholas Haysom, the head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (Unmiss), had warned that the political and security situation in the country had deteriorated. “We are left with no other conclusion but to assess that South Sudan is teetering on the edge of a relapse into civil war,” he told a press briefing. Tensions have been particularly high in the north-eastern state of Upper Nile. On 4 March, the White Army, a youth militia from the Nuer ethnic group loosely associated with the movement of the opposition leader and first vice-president, Riek Machar, overran a government army base in the town of Nasir, near the Ethiopian border. The base commander, general David Majur Dak, was killed three days later during an evacuation attempt by the UN, alongside a UN worker and dozens of soldiers. The government responded by arresting dozens of opposition figures in Juba, including the minister of petroleum, Puot Kang Chol. They were accused of being “in conflict with the law” by the government spokesperson Michael Makuei Lueth, who blamed them for inciting those in Nasir. An aerial bombardment campaign was also launched in Upper Nile, involving the “use of improvised air-dropped incendiary weapons [that] killed and horrifically burned dozens of people, including children, and destroyed civilian infrastructure”, according to Human Rights Watch. Interactive To counter rising instability, the South Sudanese government asked the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) for help, based on a pre-existing military cooperation agreement. But Machar denounced the UPDF deployment as a violation of the 2018 arms embargo and the peace treaty, which ended five years of fighting that killed about 400,000 people. On 23 March, he said in a letter to the UN that the Ugandan intervention may lead to the collapse of the agreement. It was the last time Machar communicated publicly. Three days later, he was placed under house arrest. Amnesty International has also decried the involvement of Ugandan soldiers and called on the UN security council to renew the arms embargo when it expires at the end of this month. The government has repeatedly emphasised its commitment to the peace process. But calls for an end to the violence and Machar’s release have been ignored, and the bombardment of opposition strongholds has continued in several parts of the country. A Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in the town of Old Fangak, a safe haven for thousands of flood-displaced Nuer people in northern Jonglei state, was bombed on 3 May. Seven died and many were wounded in an attack that MSF denounced as a “deliberate bombing” of the facility. *** Progress since the 2018 peace agreement has been slow. As part of the deal, and under pressure from the international community, Kiir agreed to share power with Machar, his longtime opponent. A unity government was formed in 2020, whose task was to unify the rival armed forces, reform the country and organise its first elections since independence in 2011. But an election initially envisioned for December 2022 has been postponed twice, and is now scheduled for December 2026. Seeing the peace process in tatters is particularly daunting for those who depend on it to rebuild their lives. John (not his real name), 55, lived in an overcrowded camp for internally displaced people (IDP) next to the Unmiss base on the outskirts of Juba for 11 years. Like tens of thousands of Nuer, he had run to the UN for protection at the beginning of the civil war in December 2013 (the camp was under UN peacekeepers’ protection until 2020). But in October last year, he left “because there are no humanitarian services and no food here”, and moved into a friend’s mud house in nearby Khor Ramla. There, he was trying to survive by working in agriculture and artisanal gold mining. When clashes erupted at several nearby military camps after 24 March, John says he became a target. “After the army bombed Wunaliet, they attacked the opposition at other training centres and dispersed the soldiers [loyal to Riek Machar]” he says. “Then they came for us, the Nuer staying in Khor Ramla, to take our shelters, and to kill us.” When the government soldiers started shooting, he escaped, barefoot, at night. More than a month later, injuries on his feet have still not healed. He says one of his colleagues was killed. John returned to the camp next to Unmiss on 28 March. According to humanitarian agencies, 4,000 people moved to IDP camps in March, “as a precaution while tensions and fears of intercommunal violence are high”. But he does not feel safe. Five young men have been shot dead near the camp since the Nasir crisis, according to multiple sources, but “the families do not want to open cases because they are afraid”, John says. The people of South Sudan cannot heal in an environment of unending violence and political uncertainty Jackline Nasiwa Several others have disappeared. John gives the names of a woman who went to collect firewood and never came back, and of a man who went to his usual place to make charcoal, but never returned. “We live in fear, we can’t go out for our subsistence, and we have no idea what will happen next,” he says. “What we need is protection from the peacekeepers until every chapter of the peace agreement is implemented.” Priyanka Chowdhury, a spokesperson for Unmiss, says: “We have strengthened our countrywide protection efforts, including intensifying patrols and engagement with community leaders at internal displacement sites.” She emphasises, however, that “the government of South Sudan is primarily responsible for protecting civilians”. Related: Young, old, refugees and returnees: thousands fleeing violence cross border into South Sudan On 7 March, when Kiir announced the death of Dak, the base commander in Nasir, he asked citizens “not to take the law into their hands” and repeated his promise: “I will never take this country back to war.” He also regretted that a “normal routine with the armed forces became politicised”, referring to the rotation of military personnel in Nasir, which had triggered local hostility. Questions have been raised over why the government didn’t deploy the Necessary Unified Forces (NUF), the national army envisioned by the peace agreement, to quell tensions in the north. The government blamed the arms embargo, saying the NUF could not be deployed to conflict areas without proper weapons. In the meantime, South Sudan’s tired and traumatised population is left wondering “who will bring peace”, says Jackline Nasiwa, executive director of the Centre for Inclusive Governance, Peace and Justice. “The people of South Sudan cannot heal in an environment of unending violence and political uncertainty,” Nasiwa told the UN security council on 16 April. Despite its flaws, she believes the 2018 peace agreement remains “the only viable option for the people of South Sudan to transition to democracy”, stressing that “the immediate needs on the ground are for civilian protection and unobstructed aid delivery”. *** On 8 April, students are waiting for the start of classes at a newly built secondary school next to Gorom refugee camp, 20km to the south-west of Juba. Mawichnyun Gatduong, 19, from the northern city of Bentiu, sits in the bright white classroom with a mix of students from nearby villages and Sudanese refugees staying in the camp. “We have all heard the gunshots, and we didn’t come to school for several days,” Gatduong says, referring to fighting around military camps south of Juba. “I’m so worried about the situation because we don’t know if they will end the war or not. “It can affect young people like us, because someone can catch you and force you to be a soldier,” he says, advising other youths “to be patient, stay in one place and not to move around apart from going to school”. His dream is to become a doctor. “It is the only thing I am struggling for.” Source link #violence #returned #shattered #South #Sudan Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Capcom Cracks Down on Modders, Reveals Anti-Cheat Patent for Monster Hunter Wilds Capcom Cracks Down on Modders, Reveals Anti-Cheat Patent for Monster Hunter Wilds MHHQ – Capcom has issued an anti-cheat patent aimed at detecting and stopping game data tampering during Monster Hunter Wilds multiplayer hunts. Source link #Capcom #Cracks #Modders #Reveals #AntiCheat #Patent #Monster #Hunter #Wilds Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

U.S., UAE agree on path for Emirates to buy top American AI chips, Trump says – CNBC U.S., UAE agree on path for Emirates to buy top American AI chips, Trump says – CNBC U.S., UAE agree on path for Emirates to buy top American AI chips, Trump says CNBCUAE and US agree on path for Abu Dhabi to buy most advanced AI chips, Trump says ReutersTrump’s AI deals in Gulf stir China fears back home AxiosTrump and Abu Dhabi ink partnership to build massive AI data center complex in UAE CNNDonald Trump live: US president signs $1.4 trillion AI deal with UAE Al Jazeera Source link #U.S #UAE #agree #path #Emirates #buy #top #American #chips #Trump #CNBC Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Comanchero bikie dumped at Rockingham Hospital with gunshot wounds and burns revealed as Leslie Grantham Comanchero bikie dumped at Rockingham Hospital with gunshot wounds and burns revealed as Leslie Grantham A senior Comanchero bikie who was shot, burnt and left for dead outside Rockingham Hospital is the gang’s one-time sergeant-at-arms Leslie ‘Lethal Les’ Grantham. WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES. Source link #Comanchero #bikie #dumped #Rockingham #Hospital #gunshot #wounds #burns #revealed #Leslie #Grantham Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Silicon Motion’s new SM2324 enables USB4 SSD control with up to 32TB supported Silicon Motion’s new SM2324 enables USB4 SSD control with up to 32TB supported Silicon Motion has introduced its new single-chip controller for external solid-state drives that is designed to enable relatively inexpensive SSDs with a 40 Gb/s USB4 interface. The SM2324 controller can be used to build compact, low-power drives with up to 32TB capacity that offer a read throughput up to 4,000 MB/s. Silicon Motion’s SM2324 is a single-chip SSD controller based on two Arm Cortex-R5 cores that has four NAND channels with 32 CE targets that support 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND devices with an up to 1,600 MT/s interface speed as well as a USB4 Gen3x2 (40 Gbps) host interface with Power Delivery 3.1. SMI claims that drives based on the SM2324 controller can achieve a sequential read performance of up to 4,000 MB/s and a sequential write performance of up to 3,809 MB/s (provided that there is enough cooling). The controller can address up to 32 TB of memory, which enables it to be used both for consumer and professional-grade external storage devices. Image 1 of 2 (Image credit: Silicon Motion) (Image credit: Silicon Motion) The SM2324 controller fully supports the company’s latest NANDXtend LDPC ECC technology with a codeword size of 4 kilobytes (4096 bytes) to ensure compatibility with existing and upcoming 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND memory. You may like On the security side, the controller also supports real-time full-drive encryption using AES 128/256-bit, complies with TCG Opal 2.0, and includes hardware SHA-384/256 and True Random Number Generator (TRNG). For high-assurance applications, the chip can also work with a fingerprint reader, though it is unclear which interface it uses to communicate with such a device. (Image credit: Silicon Motion) The SM2324 chip itself is made on TSMC’s 12 nm-class low-power process technology to ensure both power efficiency and cost efficiency. In terms of host compatibility, the SM2324 works with a broad range of platforms, including Windows XP and later, macOS 10.x and later, and Linux kernel 2.4 and above. It is also compatible with Apple ProRes recording and certified under Apple’s MFi program, making it suitable for use in professional media environments with iPhone Pro Max smartphones (considering the fact that some movies are now shot on Pro-level iPhones, it is legitimate to call iPhone-based flows ‘professional’). Silicon Motion’s SM2324 comes in a 9mm × 9mm FCCSP-C package with a built-in aluminum heat spreader and therefore can be integrated into storage devices of various form factors, including very compact drives. Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button. Source link #Silicon #Motions #SM2324 #enables #USB4 #SSD #control #32TB #supported Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Exclusive-US aid cuts leave food for millions mouldering in storage Exclusive-US aid cuts leave food for millions mouldering in storage By Jessica Donati, Emma Farge, Ammu Kannampilly and Jonathan Landay (Reuters) – Food rations that could supply 3.5 million people for a month are mouldering in warehouses around the world because of U.S. aid cuts and risk becoming unusable, according to five people familiar with the situation. The food stocks have been stuck inside four U.S. government warehouses since the Trump administration’s decision in January to cut global aid programmes, according to three people who previously worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development and two sources from other aid organisations. Some stocks that are due to expire as early as July are likely to be destroyed, either by incineration, using them as animal feed or disposing of them in other ways, two of the sources said. The warehouses, which are run by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), contain between 60,000 to 66,000 metric tonnes of food, sourced from American farmers and manufacturers, the five people said. An undated inventory list for the warehouses – which are located in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai and Houston – stated that they contained more than 66,000 tonnes of commodities, including high-energy biscuits, vegetable oil and fortified grains. Those supplies are valued at over $98 million, according to the document reviewed by Reuters, which was shared by an aid official and verified by a U.S. government source as up to date. That food could feed over a million people for three months, or the entire population of Gaza for a month and a half, according to a Reuters analysis using figures from the World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian agency. The U.N. body says that one tonne of food – typically including cereals, pulses and oil – can meet the daily need of approximately 1,660 people. The dismantling of USAID and cuts to humanitarian aid spending by President Donald Trump come as global hunger levels are rising due to conflict and climate change, which are driving more people toward famine, undoing decades of progress. According to the World Food Programme, 343 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity worldwide. Of those, 1.9 million people are gripped by catastrophic hunger and on the brink of famine. Most of them are in Gaza and Sudan, but also in pockets of South Sudan, Haiti and Mali. A spokesperson for the State Department, which oversees USAID, said in response to detailed questions about the food stocks that it was working to ensure the uninterrupted continuation of aid programs and their transfer by July as part of the USAID decommissioning process. “USAID is continuously consulting with partners on where to best distribute commodities at USAID prepositioning warehouses for use in emergency programs ahead of their expiration dates,” the spokesperson said. SOME FOOD LIKELY TO BE DESTROYED Although the Trump administration has issued waivers for some humanitarian programmes – including in Gaza and Sudan – the cancellation of contracts and freezing of funds needed to pay suppliers, shippers and contractors has left food stocks stuck in the four warehouses, the sources said. A proposal to hand the stocks to aid organizations that can distribute them is on hold, according to the U.S. source and two former USAID sources briefed on the proposal. The plan is awaiting approval from the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, the two former USAID sources said. The office is headed by Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old former operative of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, who is now overseeing the decommissioning of USAID. The Office of Foreign Assistance, DOGE and Lewin himself did not respond to requests for comment. Nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits stored at a USAID warehouse in Dubai are due to expire in July, according to a former USAID official and an aid official familiar with the inventories. The biscuits could feed at least 27,000 acutely malnourished children for a month, according to Reuters calculations. The biscuits are now likely to be destroyed or turned into animal feed, the former USAID official said, adding that in a typical year only around 20 tonnes of food might be disposed of in this way because of damage in transit or storage. Some of those stocks were previously intended for Gaza and famine-stricken Sudan, the former official said. The State Department spokesperson did not directly respond to questions on how much of the food aid in storage was close to expiry and whether this would be destroyed. USAID plans to fire almost all of its staff in two rounds on July 1 and Sept. 2, as it prepares to shut down, according to a notification submitted to Congress in March. The two former USAID sources said many of the critical staff needed to manage the warehouses or move the supplies will depart in July. CHILDREN DYING The United States is the world’s largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38% of all contributions recorded by the United Nations. It disbursed $61 billion in foreign assistance last year, just over half of it via USAID, according to government data. U.S. food aid includes ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) such as high-energy biscuits and Plumpy’Nut, a peanut-based paste. Navyn Salem, the founder of Edesia, a U.S.-based manufacturer of Plumpy’Nut, said termination of transportation contracts by USAID had created a massive backlog that had forced the firm to hire an additional warehouse to store its own production. The resulting stockpile of 5,000 tonnes, worth $13 million, could feed more than 484,000 children, she said. Salem said that email exchanges with Lewin have left her “hopeful” that a way will be found soon to get her product to the desperate children who need it. The UN children’s agency UNICEF warned in late March that RUTF stocks were running short in 17 countries due to funding cuts, potentially forcing 2.4 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition to go without these crucial supplies for the rest of the year. The four USAID warehouses contain the majority of the agency’s pre-positioned food stockpiles. In normal times, these could be rapidly deployed to places like Sudan, where 25 million people – half the country’s population – face acute hunger. Jeanette Bailey, director of nutrition at the International Rescue Committee, which receives much of its funding from the U.S., said it was scaling back its programmes following the cuts. She said the impact of global shortages of therapeutic foods due to the disruption to U.S. aid flows is difficult to measure, particularly in places where aid programmes no longer operate. “What we do know, though, is that if a child’s in an inpatient stabilization centre and they’re no longer able to access treatment, more than 60% of those children are at risk of dying very quickly,” she said. Action Against Hunger, a non-profit that relied on the United States for over 30% of its global budget, said last month the U.S. cuts had already led to the deaths of at least six children at its programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after it was forced to suspend admissions. CUTS CAUSING CHAOS The Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, which coordinates the U.S. government’s aid efforts overseas, was plunged into chaos by the Trump administration’s cutbacks, the five sources said. The bureau’s staff were among thousands of USAID employees put on administrative leave pending their terminations. While some staff were brought back to work until their severence dates, aid administration has not recovered. Three sources told Reuters that the contract to maintain USAID warehouses in the South African port city of Durban had been cancelled, raising questions about future aid distribution. Reuters was unable to confirm that independently. Two former USAID officials said that the Djibouti and Dubai facilities would be handed over to a team at the State Department which has yet to be formed. The State Department did not comment. A spokesperson for the WFP, which relies heavily on U.S. funding, declined to comment on the stranded food stocks. Asked if it was engaged in discussions to release them, the spokesperson said: “We greatly appreciate the support from all our donors, including the U.S., and we will continue to work with partners to advocate for the needs of the most vulnerable in urgent need of life-saving assistance”. (Reporting by Ammu Kannampilly in Nairobi, Jessica Donati in Dakar, Emma Farge in Geneva and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Writing by Ammu Kannampilly; Editing by Daniel Flynn) Source link #ExclusiveUS #aid #cuts #leave #food #millions #mouldering #storage Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘Thunderbolts’ Director Discusses Movie Ending and Changes Made During Testing ‘Thunderbolts’ Director Discusses Movie Ending and Changes Made During Testing Yeah, that was very exciting. I thought, “Well, if I get this movie, I’m the new director of ‘Avengers,’” and then it was made very clear to me that was not the case: “No, no, you’re making ‘Thunderbolts.’” But in its own way, that’s where these discussions about the asterisk came from. In my last pitch, I said, “Oh, we should do one Instagram post where we put an asterisk on the title and say, ‘Until we come up with something better,’ to kind of tease this idea.” They really ran with that, and we were thinking, “We’re going to introduce them as the New Avengers right at the end of the movie, and then in the credits sequence, it’s going to be a little weird if you just go back to ‘Thunderbolts.’” That started this idea of, “Could you actually switch the name out at the end?” The title switch leads to a montage of skeptical headlines about these people becoming the New Avengers. To be honest, that came from testing. When I was making the movie and listening to the score and imagining that moment, I assumed there’d be a cheer. When we actually tested it, it was more of an uncertain, halting applause and people didn’t know how to feel about it at first. That’s where the title sequence comes from: It felt like we needed to show the audience that we understood this isn’t necessarily obvious or even going to work but hopefully you come to embrace it, and that sequence could take you through that process. That makes it sound like the post-credits scenes aren’t necessarily set in stone when you begin. Yeah, it is fluid. Kevin was always really good at being responsive to how the material feels and feeling where to take the next steps with the franchise. I directed one of the post-credit scenes and not the other: I did the grocery one and then the second post-credit scene was filmed just a month ago in London as part of the production [of “Avengers: Doomsday,” due in 2026 from the directors Joe and Anthony Russo]. I was there, and we talked about what it needed to do for our characters, but Florence said it was like being dropped off at school by your parents as they wave goodbye. You included the Taskmaster character in all the posters, even though she’s killed moments into her only scene. In some trailers, she was even superimposed to appear as if she would be part of the team for the whole movie. Take me into those decisions. Source link #Thunderbolts #Director #Discusses #Movie #Testing Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘Thunderbolts’ Director Discusses Movie Ending and Changes Made During Testing ‘Thunderbolts’ Director Discusses Movie Ending and Changes Made During Testing Yeah, that was very exciting. I thought, “Well, if I get this movie, I’m the new director of ‘Avengers,’” and then it was made very clear to me that was not the case: “No, no, you’re making ‘Thunderbolts.’” But in its own way, that’s where these discussions about the asterisk came from. In my last pitch, I said, “Oh, we should do one Instagram post where we put an asterisk on the title and say, ‘Until we come up with something better,’ to kind of tease this idea.” They really ran with that, and we were thinking, “We’re going to introduce them as the New Avengers right at the end of the movie, and then in the credits sequence, it’s going to be a little weird if you just go back to ‘Thunderbolts.’” That started this idea of, “Could you actually switch the name out at the end?” The title switch leads to a montage of skeptical headlines about these people becoming the New Avengers. To be honest, that came from testing. When I was making the movie and listening to the score and imagining that moment, I assumed there’d be a cheer. When we actually tested it, it was more of an uncertain, halting applause and people didn’t know how to feel about it at first. That’s where the title sequence comes from: It felt like we needed to show the audience that we understood this isn’t necessarily obvious or even going to work but hopefully you come to embrace it, and that sequence could take you through that process. That makes it sound like the post-credits scenes aren’t necessarily set in stone when you begin. Yeah, it is fluid. Kevin was always really good at being responsive to how the material feels and feeling where to take the next steps with the franchise. I directed one of the post-credit scenes and not the other: I did the grocery one and then the second post-credit scene was filmed just a month ago in London as part of the production [of “Avengers: Doomsday,” due in 2026 from the directors Joe and Anthony Russo]. I was there, and we talked about what it needed to do for our characters, but Florence said it was like being dropped off at school by your parents as they wave goodbye. You included the Taskmaster character in all the posters, even though she’s killed moments into her only scene. In some trailers, she was even superimposed to appear as if she would be part of the team for the whole movie. Take me into those decisions. Source link #Thunderbolts #Director #Discusses #Movie #Testing Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Fortnite is now offline on iOS as Apple blocks game, Epic Games says Fortnite is now offline on iOS as Apple blocks game, Epic Games says Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images Fortnite is now unavailable on iOS globally, Epic Games said Friday, after Apple blocked a bid to reinstate the popular game on the App Store in the U.S. “Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the US App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union,” the official account or Fortnite wrote in a post on social media platform X. “Now, sadly, Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it.” CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment. This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates. Source link #Fortnite #offline #iOS #Apple #blocks #game #Epic #Games Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Trump Wraps Up Middle East Tour Full of Lavish Receptions and Business Deals Trump Wraps Up Middle East Tour Full of Lavish Receptions and Business Deals President Trump met with business leaders in Abu Dhabi on Friday, the final day of a three-nation Middle East tour marked by pomp, opulent receptions and announcements of business deals with wealthy Gulf states. Mr. Trump was expected to visit an interfaith center in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, before leaving for the United States later on Friday, according to a schedule from the White House. Earlier this week, he visited Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the first major international visit of his second term. Here are some key developments from Mr. Trump’s trip: Syria meeting: Mr. Trump spoke with Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Shara, on Wednesday in an extraordinary meeting that reversed longstanding U.S. policies toward the country and Mr. Shara, a former militant who once led a branch of Al Qaeda. A day earlier, Mr. Trump announced that he would lift U.S. sanctions on Syria, which would offer a significant economic lifeline to a country devastated by years of civil war. Deals, deals, deals: The White House has said Mr. Trump’s visit resulted in deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars for U.S. companies, including a large order from Qatar for Boeing passenger jets. But details have been sparse and some of the agreements had already been in the works. Iran negotiations: Mr. Trump also suggested that there had been progress in nuclear talks with Iran. While insisting that the United States would not allow Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon, he said his administration was in “very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace.” War in Gaza: Mr. Trump did not visit America’s biggest regional ally, Israel, and largely sidestepped the conflict in Gaza even as Israeli strikes killed dozens of Palestinians across the territory. On Friday, he said he wanted to see the conflict resolved and made a rare acknowledgment of the civilian suffering there. “There’s a lot of people starving, a lot of bad things going on,” he said. Ukraine talks: Mr. Trump kept people guessing over whether he would travel to Turkey to bolster cease-fire talks involving Russia and Ukraine, but ultimately decided not to go. Russian and Ukrainian officials were in Istanbul for talks, along with top Trump administration officials, but President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was not attending and expectations for a breakthrough were low. Source link #Trump #Wraps #Middle #East #Tour #Full #Lavish #Receptions #Business #Deals Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Russia and Ukraine to Begin First Direct Peace Talks Since 2022 – The New York Times Russia and Ukraine to Begin First Direct Peace Talks Since 2022 – The New York Times Russia and Ukraine to Begin First Direct Peace Talks Since 2022 The New York TimesMay 15, 2025 – Zelensky to send Ukrainian team to Istanbul for Russia peace talks CNNTrump says Ukraine-Russia peace ‘not going to happen’ without Putin meet ABC NewsUkraine-Russia talks back on track but Rubio expects no breakthrough The Washington PostUkraine, Russia, Turkey to hold trilateral peace talks after midday, media reports The Kyiv Independent Source link #Russia #Ukraine #Direct #Peace #Talks #York #Times Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Darren Criss Does the Robot Darren Criss Does the Robot Darren Criss stood up, fast asleep, his head heavy. When he awoke, he reverse body rolled, slowly turned his head from side to side, then brushed his teeth, mechanically moving his toothbrush — left, right, left — like a cartoon character. But this was no cartoon come to life (that would be “Boop!,” playing a block away). This was a scene from the Broadway musical “Maybe Happy Ending” in which Criss and Helen J Shen play Oliver and Claire, android attendant robots called Helperbots. Playing a character onstage comes with its own process of world building. But playing a nonhuman character requires a different — or additional — calculation. Where is a robot’s center of gravity? As Claire, a Helperbot 5 with a defective battery (and heavy dose of sarcasm), Shen moves as a human would. As Oliver, a Helperbot 3, an earlier model, Criss moves stiffly, his reflexes stilted. He’s all elbows and knees and sharp lines. Her limbs move in bell curves. The challenge of playing an aging robot has been a field day for Criss, an opportunity to draw upon his formal training in physical theater. “In many ways I joke that Oliver is my excuse to overact for two hours,” Criss said, adding, “the joke being how beep boop bop are we going here without it feeling too, frankly, ridiculous.” As humans, signals are sent from our brains to blink, stretch or bend. But a Helperbot’s physicality was a blank canvas. Though “Maybe Happy Ending” doesn’t have an official choreographer, the director Michael Arden doubled as one. (The show earned 10 Tony Award nominations, including for best new musical, Arden’s direction and Criss’s performance.) Together, Criss, Shen and Arden created their robotic anatomy from the inside out. As they prepared for the Broadway production, Arden left Criss a voice note asking him to think about Oliver’s operating system. “Like, ‘Where does all the information come from?’ is where I kind of wanted to start,” Arden said. “And that’s kind of how we began,” he added, “thinking about the joints and the musculature and what was underneath the skin of this robot.” Criss and Shen also met over Zoom with Moni Yakim, a former movement teacher for actors at Juilliard. (Arden called him a “legend in mime, mask and movement.”) But much of the “beep boop” was borne from Criss’s education in commedia dell’arte, or Italian physical comedy. As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, he studied abroad for a semester at the performing arts school Accademia dell’Arte, in Arezzo, Italy. “I’ve never played any part where I could really put this specific interest and training to any apparent use,” he said. “So I went ham on trying to utilize that skill set that has just been sitting dormant.” That passion was on full display in an interview last month in which Criss geeked out over geishas (“this sort of code of conduct that is based in constantly signaling deference and subordination”); the Disney animator Glen Keane (“the king of animated facial nuance”); the medieval Italian comedic servant Arlecchino (“the kind of ne’er do well fool”) and European clown lineages; and the Kabuki character type Aragoto (“a very bombastic, over-expressive performance”). Together, this swirl creates what he called his particular “*********” for Oliver. As older models, both Oliver and Claire have been discarded — or “retired,” in the parlance of their manufacturer and former owners — and now live out their remaining days in tiny apartments on the outskirts of Seoul. Much of their movement is confined to small studio-like boxes. And, like all Helperbots, Oliver — whose hermetic tendencies were in part inspired by extreme recluses in Japan known as hikikomori — and Claire are seemingly physically identical to humans. At first. Oliver sits perfectly upright, his spine straight as a board. When he goes to pick something up, he hinges from his hips and bows forward. When Oliver walks, his chest puffs out slightly as his feet shuffle forward, or bends his knees at right angles in a kind of soft marching motion. But he also subtly expresses longing and disappointment, even self-consciousness. “I sort of have to translate, curate, aggregate, organize, maximize,” Criss said, and “offer something that is going to be accessible and effective.” When Oliver’s hands are not in use, Criss keeps his fists closed, slightly in front of his hip bones: a neutral resting position, deferential. “The secret here,” Criss said, grinning, “is doing this answers the age old question for performers, which is, ‘What should I do with my hands?’” Oliver’s disposition is rigid, but he has a childlike wonder and is eager to be of service. Claire’s is more fluid. She can twist a screwdriver. Her fingers are dexterous, her neck flexible. Helperbot 5s were designed to appear uncannily humanlike, but without the human tics. (A robot has no need, for example, to nervously pick her fingernails or tuck her hair behind her ear.) In an intimate scene in which the pair dance, Claire’s arm is bent, her fingers curled into a ballet hand. On top of her hand, Oliver lays his fist. In another, their charging magnets stick to each other as they kiss, Shen said. “It just becomes part of the given circumstances of how their bodies work,” she added. Moving with the magnets, the charger cords, the battery indication on their wrists, she said, “all of these are languages that we’re trying to introduce to help tell the story better, to make the audience understand how this robot could be breaking down.” In his review for The New York Times, Jesse Green wrote, “Under cover of sci-fi whimsy, it sneaks in a totally original human heartbreaker.” He called the performances “daring enough to tell the robot story yet not so extreme as to obscure the human one.” “The show is highly choreographed, actually,” said Arden, who wanted to ensure that Oliver and Claire weren’t anticipating their responses the way a human might, and that, like true robots, any movement was purely economical. “There’s a cleanness and a blankness to how they approached each moment,” he said, “which allowed them to truly listen to each other in such a beautiful way. And I think that’s what people are responding to.” That resonance might help explain the show’s remarkable turnaround from an underdog original musical to Tony-nominated hit with a growing fandom. Though delivered by robots, the messages — to savor what precious, fleeting time we have with one another, to move through the world with a sense of awe — couldn’t be more sentient. “Computers,” Criss said, “are a perfect analogy to the human experience.” Source link #Darren #Criss #Robot Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Senior bonus vs. eliminating Social Security benefit tax Senior bonus vs. eliminating Social Security benefit tax The U.S. Capitol is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 7, 2025. Nathan Howard | Reuters House Republicans’ “one, big, beautiful” tax bill includes a new temporary $4,000 deduction for older adults. The change, called a “bonus” in the legislation, is aimed at helping retirees keep more money in their pockets and provides an alternative to the idea of eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits, which President Donald Trump and other lawmakers have touted. The bill provides a “historic tax break” to seniors receiving Social Security, “fulfilling President Trump’s campaign promise to deliver much-needed tax relief to our seniors,” White House Assistant Press Secretary Elizabeth Huston said via email. The proposal calls for an additional $4,000 deduction to be available to adults ages 65 and over, whether they take the standard deduction or itemize their returns. The temporary provision would apply to tax years 2025 through 2028. The deduction would start to phase out for single filers with more than $75,000 in modified adjusted gross income, and for married couples who file jointly with more than $150,000. More from Personal Finance: House Republican bill calls for ******* child tax credit Medicaid work requirements kick hardworking people off health coverage: Senator House Republicans advance Trump’s tax bill — but ‘SALT’ deduction still undecided As a tax deduction, it would reduce the amount of seniors’ income that is subject to levies and therefore reduce the taxes they may owe. Notably, it is not as generous as a tax credit, which reduces income tax liability dollar for dollar. A median income retiree who brings in up to about $50,000 annually may see their taxes cut by a little less than $500 per year with this change, noted Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “It’s not nothing, but it’s also not life changing,” Gleckman said. New deduction vs. eliminating taxes on benefits The $4,000 senior “bonus” deduction would help lower-income people and would not help higher-income individuals who are above the phase outs, Gleckman said. In contrast, the proposal to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits would have been a “big windfall” for high-income taxpayers, he said. “If you feel like you need to provide an extra benefit to retirees, this is clearly a better way to do it than the original Social Security proposal that Trump had,” Gleckman said. Social Security benefits are taxed based on a unique tax rate applied to combined income — or the sum of adjusted gross income, nontaxable interest and half of Social Security benefits. Beneficiaries may have up to 85% of their benefits subject to taxes if they have more than $34,000 in combined income individually, or more than $44,000 if they are married and file jointly. Up to 50% of their benefits may be taxed if their combined income is between $25,000 and $34,000 for individual taxpayers, or between $32,000 and $44,000 for married couples. Beneficiaries with combined income below those thresholds may pay no tax on benefits. Therefore, a policy to eliminate taxes on benefits would not help them financially. The proposed $4,000 tax deduction for seniors may help some retirees who are on the hook to pay taxes on their Social Security benefit income offset those levies, according to Garrett Watson, director of policy analysis at the Tax Foundation. However, the impact of that change would vary by individual situation, he said. For some individuals who pay up to an 85% tax rate on their benefit income, “that $4,000 deduction can make a difference,” Watson said. ‘Bonus’ would be less costly to implement The Senate is prohibited from including changes to Social Security, including the proposal to eliminate taxes on benefits, in reconciliation bills like the tax package now up for consideration. Notably, the proposed $4,000 deduction for seniors would be less expensive. If that change were made permanent, it would cost around $200 billion over 10 years, Watson said. In contrast, eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits would cost more than $1 trillion over a decade, he said. “It’s actually probably less than 20% of the size of the tax cut that was initially pitched during the campaign,” Watson said. Moreover, the cost for the $4,000 deduction would come out of general revenue for income tax, which means it would not directly take money from Social Security’s trust funds, which already face a funding shortfall. Source link #Senior #bonus #eliminating #Social #Security #benefit #tax Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

6 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week 6 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week A beautiful tapestry of romance and relationships. ‘Love’ Set in Oslo, Dag Johan Haugerud’s gentle drama follows several characters with vastly different ideas about relationships. From our review: In some ways “Love” feels highly theoretical, each character demonstrating a different approach to finding ******* connection and romantic fulfillment. … Haugerud’s script is more or less free of judgment. If it veers a bit academic at times (how convenient that every character has a different perspective to share), it’s so beautiful that you want to just keep dwelling in its world. In theaters. Read the full review. Critic’s Pick Not-so-grim reaper. ‘Final Destinations: Bloodlines’ Directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, the latest entry in this horror franchise follows a family marked for death after the matriarch escapes a harrowing disaster thanks to a premonition. From our review: “Bloodlines” might be the most self-consciously silly installment in the series, poking fun at its own improbable scenarios with meta-humor and Looney Toons-style gags (the boatloads of mushy, digitally-rendered blood add to this caricature effect). … most important, the deaths are weird and surprising; and their lead-ups are expertly paced. There’s not much more a “Final Destination” fan could ask for. In theaters. Read the full review. Critic’s Pick A shimmering portrait of simmering anger. ‘Desert of Namibia’ This drama directed by Yoko Yamanaka centers on Kana (Yuumi Kawai), a young woman frustrated with her relationship and with her place in the world. From our review: What clinches the portrait is the sure-handed direction and Kana’s organic performance of a daunting character. Dramatically, Yamanaka finds unpredictable ways into and out of scenes, and she has an eye for the poignant details amid the angst, like neatly packed baggies of food in a refrigerator, and for underplaying other moments, like the breeziness of a doctor who diagnoses Kana over a video call. In theaters. Read the full review. Critic’s Pick Uncharted territory, masterfully navigated. ‘The Damned’ Union Army soldiers bond, battle and brave the elements in uncharted Montana territory. From our review: In keeping with the socially conscious sensibilities of its director, the Italian-born Roberto Minervini (whose previous work has sometimes probed the forgotten souls of rural Texas and urban Louisiana), “The Damned” is shaped as a wistful and laconic study of the minutiae of survival. Though billed as his first fiction film, it wobbles tantalizingly on a permeable line between narrative and documentary. In theaters. Read the full review. A romance that’s a bit too smooth. ‘The Kiss’ Adapted from a novel by Stefan Zweig, this ******* drama directed by Bille August follows a young man as he tries to woo a daughter of nobility who is partially paralyzed. From our review: The picture moves at a stately pace that one supposes was considered *******-appropriate but feels merely logy at times. August and his co-screenwriter, Greg Latter, juggle Zweig’s chronology a bit and try to compound his ironies. Then they take a whack at ameliorating those ironies in the movie’s coda, as if they themselves are taking pity on the viewer. As executed, it feels like waffling. In theaters. Read the full review. A monster of a metaphor. ‘Sister Midnight’ As she tries to settle into married life, Uma (Radhika Apte) develops a dissatisfaction that turns supernatural in this ****** comedy directed by Karan Kandhari. From our review: In his first feature, Kandhari makes use of morbid humor and expressive imagery, including stop-motion effects. He rarely relies on dialogue and favors a fuzzier plot, which leaves the story with a shapeless and sometimes confusing midsection. Eventually, a repetitive pattern sets in that can feel stifling. But if it’s troubling to us, just imagine how Uma feels. In theaters. Read the full review. Compiled by Kellina Moore. Source link #Movies #Critics #Talking #Week Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Trump Wraps Up Middle East Visit Dominated by Syria and Business Trump Wraps Up Middle East Visit Dominated by Syria and Business President Trump met with business leaders in Abu Dhabi on Friday, the final day of a three-nation Middle East tour marked by pomp, opulent receptions and announcements of business deals with wealthy Gulf states. Mr. Trump was expected to visit an interfaith center in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, before leaving for the United States later on Friday, according to a schedule from the White House. Earlier this week, he visited Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the first major international visit of his second term. Here are some key developments from Mr. Trump’s trip: Syria meeting: Mr. Trump spoke with Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Shara, on Wednesday in an extraordinary meeting that reversed longstanding U.S. policies toward the country and Mr. Shara, a former militant who once led a branch of Al Qaeda. A day earlier, Mr. Trump announced that he would lift U.S. sanctions on Syria, which would offer a significant economic lifeline to a country devastated by years of civil war. Deals, deals, deals: The White House has said Mr. Trump’s visit resulted in deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars for U.S. companies, including a large order from Qatar for Boeing passenger jets. But details have been sparse and some of the agreements had already been in the works. Iran negotiations: Mr. Trump also suggested that there had been progress in nuclear talks with Iran. While insisting that the United States would not allow Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon, he said his administration was in “very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace.” War in Gaza: Mr. Trump did not visit America’s biggest regional ally, Israel, and largely sidestepped the conflict in Gaza even as Israeli strikes killed dozens of Palestinians across the territory. On Friday, he said he wanted to see the conflict resolved and made a rare acknowledgment of the civilian suffering there. “There’s a lot of people starving, a lot of bad things going on,” he said. Ukraine talks: Mr. Trump kept people guessing over whether he would travel to Turkey to bolster cease-fire talks involving Russia and Ukraine, but ultimately decided not to go. Russian and Ukrainian officials were in Istanbul for talks, along with top Trump administration officials, but President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was not attending and expectations for a breakthrough were low. Source link #Trump #Wraps #Middle #East #Visit #Dominated #Syria #Business Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Theater to Stream: ‘Yellow Face,’ Joaquina Kalukango and More Theater to Stream: ‘Yellow Face,’ Joaquina Kalukango and More ‘Broadway’s Best’ Watch on PBS, online or on the PBS app. At this year’s Tony Awards ceremony, on June 8, the PBS series “Great Performances” will be honored for excellence in theater. Its spring slate alone should remind everybody why “Great Performances” has been a theater gateway for so many people. Already available is a 2024 recording of the London premiere of the Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt musical “Next to Normal,” starring Caissie Levy as a woman whose bipolar disorder has a ripple effect on her family. The New York Times’ review praised Michael Longhurst’s production for giving the show “a renewed sting.” Next, you can catch the Roundabout Theater Company’s recent revival of the acidic David Henry Hwang comedy “Yellow Face,” starring Daniel Dae Kim and Francis Jue — both nominated for Tonys this year. The glorious Bob Dylan jukebox musical “Girl From the North Country,” set in 1934 Duluth, Minn., arrives May 23. A week later, American audiences can discover last year’s London production of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate” — a very funny twist on “The Taming of the Shrew” — with Stephanie J. Block as the fiery diva Lilli Vanessi and Adrian Dunbar (yes, Superintendent Hastings from the procedural “Line of Duty”) as her egotistical ex-husband, Fred Graham. ‘The Other Place’ and ‘Vanya’ Rent them on National Theater at Home. The National Theater at Home’s catalog is a veritable treasure trove, and a recent addition well worth checking out is “The Other Place” from the writer-director Alexander Zeldin (“Love”). Loosely based on the Greek tragedy “Antigone,” it is not driven by a high-concept staging like Simon Stone’s “Yerma” or Robert Icke’s “Enemy of the People,” which are also drastic reworkings of classics. Rather, Zeldin slowly builds a stifling sense of impending doom until an ending that hits as hard as it is quiet. Emma D’Arcy (“House of the Dragon”) appears haunted by bottled-up pain as the disrupter at a family reunion, while Tobias Menzies portrays a seemingly even-tempered uncle. Compared with that tragedy, Andrew Scott’s solo interpretation of “Uncle Vanya” feels almost cheery. If you missed the critically acclaimed, very sold-out recent run of “Vanya” in New York, you can watch an excellent capture of the original London version here. Sam Yates’s production offers not just a modernized take on the Chekhov classic but, as Jesse Green wrote in The New York Times, “a new way of seeing into the heart of its beauty.” ‘Friends and Romans’ Stream it on Tubi. Reality and fiction clash in Christopher Kublan’s film, from 2014, that revolves around an amateur production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” Nick (Michael Rispoli) works delivering produce by truck, but what he really wants is to be an actor. A genial Italian American from Staten Island, he is stuck portraying wiseguys in mob movies and car commercials — then again, his go-to audition scene is from “The Godfather.” Lend him your ears on this: To show off his acting chops, Nick decides to stage “Julius Caesar” with the help of his friend Dennis (Paul Ben-Victor). For Brutus, they unwittingly cast an actual mobster (Anthony DeSando) with a passion for theater, while their Cassius is an undercover federal agent (Charlie Semine), who outs himself as a non-Italian when he mispronounces soppressata in his takeout order. “Friends and Romans” both revels in and sends up the complicated relationship between identity traits and stereotypes. It’s not entirely clear where the movie stands on those issues, but a warm affection for the characters — and for theater — does shine through. Good news for cabaret fans around the world: 54 Below, the cozy Manhattan boîte located underneath Studio 54, streams some of its shows — but only live and without on-demand availability afterward, so the concerts are by appointment only. This month’s slate includes some promising outings. On May 19, you can check out a show featuring 10 performers who are making their Broadway debut this season, including Tatianna Córdoba (who plays the young lead, Ana, in the musical “Real Women Have Curves”) and Angelica Hale (a runner-up on “America’s Got Talent” now appearing in “Boop! The Musical”). Joaquina Kalukango was long known by New Yorkers as an excellent, versatile actress, both in musicals (“The Color Purple”) and plays (“Slave Play”), but her performance of “Let It Burn” from “Paradise Square” at the 2022 Tony Awards ceremony introduced her to throngs of new fans. On May 24, they can watch Kalukango’s cabaret act live, no matter where they are. Then come back on June 7, which is when Tracie Thoms — who played Joanne in the movie adaptation of “Rent” — steps up for a concert intermingling pop, R&B, a sprinkling of musical-theater songs and a dash of banter. Source link #Theater #Stream #Yellow #Face #Joaquina #Kalukango Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Who remains on WEWS Channel 5 weather team in Cleveland after Mark Johnson’s firing? Who remains on WEWS Channel 5 weather team in Cleveland after Mark Johnson’s firing? After news broke that longtime Chief Meteorologist Mark Johnson is “no longer employed” at WEWS, the Cleveland news station will now be looking to fill that position. But who is on the Channel 5 weather team now? Here’s a look at the meteorologists who remain on staff. Good Morning Cleveland meteorologist, Trent Magill Trent Magill joined WEWS in 2011 and once again in 2019. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri in atmospheric science with a math minor. He says his role model is Johnson, according to his staff profile. He is currently on the GMC show that airs from 4:30 a.m. to 7 a.m. Evening and weekend meteorologist Katie McGraw Katie McGraw joined WEWS in 2021. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University in meteorology with minors in math and communications. She is on the GMC weekend shift and News 5 at noon show. She earned a certified broadcast meteorologist seal from the American Meteorological Society. Nightside and weekend meteorologist Phil Sakal Phil Sakal is fairly new to WEWS, joining in 2022. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Ohio University in meteorology/geography. He says Johnson, Magill and McGraw are his role models on his staff profile. He covers the evening/nightside shifts at WEWS. News director Jodie Heisner says the station is currently accepting internal and external applications for an evening meteorologist to fill Johnson’s position. Why is Mark Johnson no longer at WEWS? A brief announcement on May 9 did not include a reason for the separation or the nature of Johnson’s departure, but included a statement from WEWS Vice President and General Manager Steve Weinstein: “We want our audiences to know that News 5 and its parent company, Scripps, take protecting our audiences’ trust very seriously by requiring our employees to adhere to the highest ethical standards. We cannot provide further details, as this is a personnel matter.” The announcement said the station’s “commitment to being the weather team Northeast Ohio turns to for safety and accuracy remains steadfast.” Johnson joined Channel 5 in November 1993, according to a page on the station’s website that has since been taken down. This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: After Mark Johnson firing, who’s on WEWS Channel 5 weather team? Source link #remains #WEWS #Channel #weather #team #Cleveland #Mark #Johnsons #firing Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Switch 2 Specs Reveal Docked VRR Is Not Supported At Launch Switch 2 Specs Reveal Docked VRR Is Not Supported At Launch The final pre-launch specs for the Switch 2 have been revealed, and one ongoing mystery has been answered–the Switch 2 will not support variable refresh rate in docked mode, at least not at launch. Digital Foundry has released a final look at the Switch 2’s tech specs, including more details on the console’s custom Nvidia processor, and the resources developers will be able to use when making software for the Switch 2. The tech breakdown also confirmed that the Switch 2 will only support VRR in handheld mode, and not while docked. The question of VRR has been a bit of a mystery for the Switch 2–the console was initially announced as having VRR support in docked mode, as long as it was being used with a VRR-compatible display. The references to VRR were later removed from the Nintendo website, as spotted by Digital Foundry, leaving it unclear whether the console would support VRR. Variable refresh rate is a standard that was introduced with HDMI 2.1, allowing devices to match the refresh rate of supported displays to prevent stuttering or tearing issues with fluctuating frame rates. VRR has been supported on Xbox for a while now, while PS5 added VRR support over a year after it was released. Seeing as the Switch 2 was initially announced with docked VRR support, it seems likely that the console will see the feature added at some point–but it won’t be present when the Switch 2 launches on June 5. Source link #Switch #Specs #Reveal #Docked #VRR #Supported #Launch Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

YouTube Announces Gemini-Powered ‘Peak Points’ to Pinpoint Optimal Ad Moments in a Video YouTube Announces Gemini-Powered ‘Peak Points’ to Pinpoint Optimal Ad Moments in a Video YouTube unveiled a new artificial intelligence (AI) feature for its advertisers on Wednesday. The new feature, dubbed Peak Points, was showcased at the company’s Brandcast event held in New York. The Google-owned video streaming giant said that the feature will use Gemini to determine the moment in a video where viewers are most engaged. This moment will then be picked as an ad slot to maximise the reach of the advertisement. Notably, the feature is currently said to be available as a pilot programme. YouTube Unveils Peak Points to Find the Best Ad Slot in a Video In a blog post, YouTube detailed the new advertiser-focused feature. Ads are one of the most important revenue streams for the video streaming company. Not only does it bring revenue to the company, but it also helps monetise videos, and a percentage of total ad revenue from the video is shared with the creators. In the past, the company has placed ads at the beginning of the videos, added unskippable ads, and even gone after those who use ad-blockers to avoid seeing ads. According to a report, YouTube is also working on showing ads that appear when a video is paused. All of these measures are likely to ensure that more people watch ads. The fundamentals behind the newly unveiled Peak Points feature are also along the same vein. YouTube said that it will leverage Gemini to analyse videos and find out the moments when viewers are most engaged. These could be a climactic moment in the video, or a moment right before something special occurs. In a demo video showcasing the feature, Gemini was able to pinpoint an ad window right before a person proposes to his girlfriend. According to a CNBC report, Gemini finds out these moments by analysing the video frame-by-frame and going through the transcript of the video. The company did not specify if user behaviour (pausing a video at a specific spot, or rewinding the video multiple times) was also collected and analysed for this feature. While the feature is likely to improve the reach of advertisements, it can also lead to frustration among viewers as ads will be played right before a key moment in a video, breaking the immersion. The feature is reportedly in its pilot phase and will be rolled out in different regions throughout the year. Source link #YouTube #Announces #GeminiPowered #Peak #Points #Pinpoint #Optimal #Moments #Video Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Nine Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything Nine Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything Science seldom works in straight lines. Sometimes it’s “applied” to solve specific problems: Let’s put people on the moon; we need a Covid vaccine. Much of the time it’s “basic,” aimed at understanding, say, cell division or the physics of cloud formation, with the hope that — somehow, someday — the knowledge will prove useful. Basic science is applied science that hasn’t been applied yet. That’s the premise on which the United States, since World War II, has invested heavily in science. The government spends $200 billion annually on research and development, knowing that payoffs might be decades away; that figure would drop sharply under President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget. “Basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress,” Vannevar Bush, who laid out the postwar schema for government research support, wrote in a 1945 report to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Look no further than Google, which got its start in 1994 with a $4 million federal grant to help build digital libraries; the company is now a $2 trillion verb. Here are nine more life-altering advances that government investment made possible. GPS The first commercial GPS unit, a $3,000 brick for hikers and boaters, was made in 1988. The technology is now so ubiquitous — in cars, planes, phones, smartwatch running apps — that its existence can seem almost preordained. In fact its path was long, indirect and paved with federal money. Start in 1957: Two researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory realized that they could pinpoint the whereabouts of Sputnik, Russia’s new orbiting satellite, from the changing frequency of its radio signal as it moved. Now reverse that logic: If a fixed receiver on Earth can locate a moving satellite, then a satellite with known coordinates should be able to find a “lost” receiver on Earth, its location unknown. That idea, in 1958, became Transit, a navigational system for tracking nuclear subs, developed by Johns Hopkins and the Defense Department. Then came the Navstar Global Positioning System, starting in 1978, for wider military use; in 1983, commercial airlines were authorized to use it, too. All of this required newer satellites; atomic clocks for better accuracy; rockets to launch everything into orbit; research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Naval Research Laboratory; and government contracts to companies like Rockwell International, General Dynamics and Boeing. Now it’s just called GPS. Diabetes and Obesity Drugs Today, millions of Americans take Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro or one of the other new blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss drugs. Thank Uncle Sam — and a slow, venomous lizard that can survive on just a few meals a year. In 1980, Dr. Jean-Pierre Raufman, a researcher studying insect and reptile venoms at the National Institutes of Health, discovered that venom from the ***** monster had a pronounced effect on the pancreas, prompting it to release a digestive enzyme. This piqued the interest of Dr. John Eng, an endocrinologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx, who worked with Dr. Raufman to isolate and identify a novel compound, exendin-4, in the lizard’s venom. A synthetic version of the compound, which stimulates insulin production and slows stomach emptying, was approved for the treatment of diabetes in 2005. It was the first drug in the now booming class of medications known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, which are being studied for their potential to treat a wide range of conditions, including kidney disease, Alzheimer’s and alcohol use disorder. Quantum Dots If you’re reading this on a screen, you’re looking at quantum dots, billions of them. Quantum dots are tiny crystals of semiconductor stuff, 10 nanometers (billionths of a meter) or smaller in size, and they have become a mainstay of consumer electronics. Being nano, they are subject to the weird laws of quantum mechanics and absorb and emit light more efficiently than other materials. Their colors are vibrant, great for TVs, smartphones and computer monitors. They fluoresce to identify ******* cells. They’re in clear windows that double as solar panels. In military sensors, they detect microwave radiation. First baked in 1980, quantum dots have been refined and made mass-producible with funding from NIST, the U.S. Army Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies and other agencies. In 2023, three scientists, including an M.I.T. physicist supported by Army grants, won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and development of quantum dots. Sign Language Dictionary When William Stokoe, an English literature professor, arrived at Gallaudet College in 1955, many schools required deaf students to lip-read and speak aloud instead of using sign language, which was dismissed as a crude or lesser form of communication. But to Dr. Stokoe, who was not deaf himself, his students’ signing appeared to be dynamic and complex. In the years that followed, he used grants from the National Science Foundation to conduct in-depth studies of the linguistic structure of sign language and create the first dictionary of American Sign Language, in collaboration with two colleagues at what is now Gallaudet University. Dr. Stokoe’s research laid the groundwork for A.S.L. to be recognized as a full-fledged language. CAPTCHA Are you a robot? Probably not. We know this — “we” being any website you visit that asks you that question — thanks to a security technology called CAPTCHA, a digital puzzle that weeds out nonhuman bots that might be trying to disrupt a billing system or other valuable database. CAPTCHA, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, was invented in 2000 by humans, notably Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist whose research at Carnegie Mellon University (he’s now at M.I.T.) was supported by N.S.F. grants. Humans are better than computers at deciphering letters and words; early CAPTCHAs displayed an image of distorted text, which the viewer had to type correctly to proceed. (In 2007, Dr. Ahn worked with The New York Times to digitize a century of archives.) Since then it’s been an algorithm race, with ever more sophisticated CAPTCHAs facing ever more sophisticated CAPTCHA-solving bots. Dr. Ahn founded a company called reCAPTCHA and sold it to Google in 2009. In 2011, with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon, he started the language-translation company Duolingo, which is now worth upward of $30 billion. Life Without Screwworm Heard of the screwworm? Also probably not, at least if you’re American; the United States was declared officially screwworm-free in 1966, after a concerted federal effort to study and eradicate the agricultural scourge. The New World screwworm is the larval form, or maggot, of the New World blowfly, Cochliomyia hominivorax, which resembles a housefly in size and charmlessness. A parasite, it burrows into and feeds on live flesh. For decades it plagued cattle and other livestock, costing the agricultural industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year. (It also cost the occasional human life, gruesomely — hominivorax means “man-eater.”) Fortunately, the female blowfly mates just once in her 30 days of life. In 1950, scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture realized that if they could create, breed and release sterile males, they could fool the females into mating the population out of existence. Two decades and $750 million later, Sterile Insect Technique worked. The technique has since been adapted and used abroad against other agricultural and disease-carrying insects. Bladeless LASIK Surgery An almost terrible laboratory mistake spurred advancements in LASIK surgery, an operation that hundreds of thousands of Americans undergo each year to reshape their corneas and correct their vision. In 1993, Detao Du, a graduate student at the University of Michigan Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, briefly removed his safety glasses while working with the lab’s femtosecond laser, and a stray pulse of laser light hit his eye. A femtosecond laser emits powerful pulses of light that last a mere one-quadrillionth of a second; it hits more like an ultraprecise jackhammer than, say, a knife blade. The accident didn’t cause major vision problems, but Dr. Ron Kurtz, who examined the grad student’s eye, was impressed by the laser’s clean work. In the years that followed, Dr. Kurtz collaborated with Gérard Mourou and his colleagues at the optical science center, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, to turn the laser into an ophthalmological tool. Their work led to bladeless LASIK surgery, which uses a femtosecond laser, instead of a blade, to carve into a patient’s eye. Infant Massage The neonatal intensive care unit can be a cold and isolating place, where premature babies are kept in incubators and lifesaving care can sometimes entail endless poking and prodding. In recent decades, however, many NICUs have begun providing and promoting more comforting forms of touch, including infant massage — an innovation that grew out of a chance observation in a university rat lab. In the 1970s, Dr. Saul Schanberg and his colleagues at Duke University found that when rat pups were deprived of their mothers’ touch, it dampened the activity of an enzyme that was crucial to the rodents’ growth and development. When the researchers, who were funded by the N.I.H., used a wet paintbrush to stroke the rat pups — simulating the way a mother rat licks her offspring — these growth markers returned to normal. Dr. Schanberg began collaborating with Tiffany Field, a psychologist at the University of Miami who had been studying tactile stimulation and infant development. Together, and with additional N.I.H. funding, they demonstrated that premature infants who received regular ********* and massage gained weight faster and were released from the hospital sooner than those who did not. The Dustbuster During the Apollo years, NASA wanted man to not only walk on the moon but also return with samples. The quest for the perfect moon drill would ultimately yield a product that became a fixture in American homes — and helped residents keep those homes neat and tidy. To collect soil samples from underneath the Moon’s surface, NASA needed to arm its astronauts with a compact, lightweight, cordless drill. So the agency enlisted ****** & Decker to help develop the Apollo Lunar Surface Drill. “In the course of the development, ****** & Decker used a specially developed computer program to optimize the design of the drill’s motor and insure minimal power consumption,” the space agency wrote in its 1981 issue of Spinoff, a publication devoted to products and innovations that benefited from NASA research and funding. The company’s work on the moon drill paved the way for the development of a suite of cordless consumer products, including the Dustbuster, a hand-held vacuum cleaner that came to define a whole new category of cleaning products. Source link #Federally #Funded #Scientific #Breakthroughs #Changed Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

******** companies like Alibaba see more consumption, helped by AI ads ******** companies like Alibaba see more consumption, helped by AI ads Downtown Beijing on May 2, 2025. Greg Baker | Afp | Getty Images BEIJING — Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com reported earnings this week that not only reflected improving ******** consumer spending, but also the growing benefits of artificial intelligence in advertising. E-commerce giant Alibaba said late Thursday its Taobao and Tmall group sales rose by 9% year on year to 101.37 billion yuan ($13.97 billion) for the three months ended March 31. That’s above the 97.94 billion yuan predicted by a FactSet analyst poll, and the quarterly growth figure was well above the 3% segment increase for the 12-month ******* ending March 31. “The e-commerce and ad revenues were positive surprises as there were expectations tariffs would affect consumer behavior,” Kai Wang, Asia equity market strategist at Morningstar, said in an email regarding the three companies’ earnings results. It’s important to note the earnings releases cover only the ******* before U.S.-China tensions escalated in April with new tariffs of more than 100% on products from both countries — an effective trade embargo. The two countries issued a rare joint statement Monday announcing a 90-day reduction in most of the recently added tariffs. The U.S.-China trade dispute since April has negatively affected consumption to some extent, given the increased uncertainty for small and medium-sized businesses, Charlie Chen, managing director and head of Asia research at China Renaissance Securities, said Friday. He expects that as trade tensions ease, consumption will rise. But despite lackluster consumption overall, sales of certain electronics and home appliances have done well since last year thanks to China’s trade-in subsidies for supporting such consumer spending. JD.com on Tuesday said its sales of for that category surged by 17% from a year ago. Overall, the e-commerce company reported a 16.3% increase in revenue from its retail business to 263.85 billion yuan in the three months ended March 31. That was better than the 226.84 billion yuan in retail segment sales predicted by a FactSet poll. On Wednesday, Tencent said its “fintech and business services” segment, a proxy for consumer-related business transactions, reported a 5% year-on-year revenue increase to 54.9 billion yuan in the first quarter. While Nomura analysts said that segment revenue growth was in line with estimates, they pointed out in a note that “Tencent ads was a big outperformer in the ******** ads industry despite the challenging macro environment.” Tencent’s marketing services revenue surged by 20% to 31.9 billion yuan, helped by “robust advertiser demand” for short videos and other content inside its WeChat social media app. Tencent noted “ongoing AI upgrades” to its advertising platform. AI is boosting ads AI is helping Tencent lift its click-through rates — a measure of success for online ads — to nearly 3%, company management said on an earnings call Wednesday, according to a FactSet transcript. That’s up sharply from a 0.1% click-through rate for banner ads historically, and around 1% for feed ads, the company said. Combined monthly average users for WeChat, known as Weixin in China, topped 1.4 billion in the first quarter for the first time. The app offers one of two major mobile payment systems used in mainland China. Many coffee shops and online retailers also use mini-apps in WeChat for customers to place orders. Tencent said Thursday that its e-commerce operations had grown so large it was now a new unit within WeChat. “AI ads improve efficiency and algorithm, which should translate into better targeting towards consumers even if macro conditions are not optimal,” Morningstar’s Wang said. “It is still a bit early to quantify how much incremental benefit AI ads bring compared to non-AI ads, but we have seen some monetization from AI-driven ads.” JD said its marketing revenues climbed by 15.7% to 22.32 billion yuan for the quarter, also partly attributing that rise to AI tools. On an earnings call Tuesday, JD management said its advertising research and development team is using large language models to improve ad conversion rates and accelerate ad revenue growth. The company added it is implementing AI tools that enable merchants to “execute complex ad campaigns” with a simple command. Weekly analysis and insights from Asia’s largest economy in your inbox Subscribe now Advertisers have long sought ways to target ads at the consumers most likely to make a purchase. On Wednesday, YouTube announced that advertisers can use Google’s Gemini AI model to target ads to viewers when they are most engaged with a video. Alibaba noted that marketing revenue, which it calls “customer management,” grew 12% year on year to nearly $10 billion thanks in part to increased use of the company’s AI tool for boosting merchants’ marketing efficiency, Quanzhantui. Uncertain outlook However, Alibaba’s overall profit was only about half of what analysts had predicted, sending shares down by nearly 7.6% in subsequent the U.S. trading session. China is set to release retail sales data for April on Monday. Analysts polled by Reuters predict a 5.5% year-on-year increase in retail sales for April, down slightly from 5.9% growth in March. A Morgan Stanley survey from April 8 to 11, conducted immediately after the escalation in U.S.-China tensions, found that consumer confidence fell to a 2.5-year low, and 44% of respondents were concerned about job losses — the highest since 2020 when the survey began. Only 23% of consumers expect to spend more in the next quarter, the survey found, an 8 percentage point drop from the prior quarter. Lackluster domestic demand persisted in April, with a 0.1% year-on-year drop in the consumer price index for the month — the third-straight month of decline. However, when excluding food and energy prices, the so-called core CPI rose by 0.5%, the same pace as in March. Since the real estate market has yet to recover, and exports are restricted by geopolitics, Chen expects ******** policymakers to focus on boosting consumption in order to achieve the year’s growth target of around 5%. He expects related stimulus policies to include boosting spending on food and beverage, caregiving, travel, sports, and durable goods not yet included in the trade-in subsidies program. June 18 marks the next major promotional season for shopping in China. “I think we’re going to get a pretty good 618. Now obviously, we’re not dealing with 30% year-on-year growth anymore like we were in the first 10 years” of the shopping festival, Jacob Cooke, co-founder and CEO of WPIC Marketing + Technologies, told CNBC earlier this week. The company helps foreign brands — such as Vitamix and IS Clinical — sell online in China and other parts of Asia. He predicts 618 sales growth will rise by “very low double-digits.” Source link #******** #companies #Alibaba #consumption #helped #ads Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

‘From idea to product’: How Figma is redesigning workflows with its new line-up ‘From idea to product’: How Figma is redesigning workflows with its new line-up Figma launches new design and dev tools AI powers the suite Focused on giving teams ability to go from idea to product faster Last week in San Francisco, design and development platform Figma unveiled four new tools aimed at giving users the full end-to-end package. Figma Make, Figma Sites, Figma Draw, and Figma Buzz offers teams the ability to ideate and create everything from vector images to full-blown websites. And, as you’d expect, it’s all AI-powered for faster iteration. At Config London, I got a more in-depth peek into exactly what these tools are capable of – and how they fit into Figma’s plans to create a platform that lets users go from idea to product launch without pause. You may like Create and launch at speed One of the biggest issues facing businesses today is team siloing – where one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing (or, at least, has a different way of doing the same thing). With that in mind, Figma has released four new tools alongside its beloved Figma Design and FigJam that almost entirely remove that problem. Yuhki Yamashita, Figma’s Chief Product Officer, explained the thinking behind the new line-up, saying, “How do we help you do everything, going from an idea to a final product? And all the things that you will see in the future, too, will be anchored in this, in this framework of helping people go through this journey faster, explore more ideas, and make that process as efficient as possible.” Figma CPO Yuhki Yamashita on stage during Config London (Image credit: Figma // Future) Figma Make is an overarching tool for content ideation. Here, you can start from scratch or copy and paste existing designs from Figma Design, and collaborate on these with the rest of the team (Figma calls this a “multiplayer” tool). You can then port over into other apps like Figma Sites to tailor the design to suit the product. Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! What’s interesting here is the concept of throwing away designs. Effectively, what Figma wants is to make it easy to rapidly ideate, that if something doesn’t work, you can throw it out and start afresh. During the press briefing, Yamashita said: “Our thought experiment was, how can we make it so easy for you to go from the idea into your head to something that is actually you can put in front of users and validate really quickly. And if it doesn’t work, that’s great. You can then move on to the next idea, or you can keep iterating from there.” Figma Sites is an AI-powered website builder for all-in-one design, prototyping, and publishing. One of the chief purposes behind this is saving time – a space where developers can work on templates, responsive design, custom interactions, and transitions and motion effects. Using grids, and with a little help from AI, designing responsive sites looks and feels easy (assuming you know what you’re doing, that is). During Config London, I was treated to a brief, playful example – taking static words and prompting the AI to come up with three different ways to add some design sparkle, for example, repelling each word as the cursor hovers over it. However, as Yamashita later noted, there are more practical uses here such as connecting an API to the back-end. There’s also the promise of future updates, with Yamashita saying, “we wanted to make sure that we could support scaled use cases, too. For example, a marketing site with tons of content, or maybe a blog. And with these kinds of content, it’s much easier if we have a CMS, so that a non-designer can come in and comfortably edit that content in a way that’s familiar to them. And this is something that’s coming soon.” (Image credit: Figma) Figma Draw is, in a sense, Figma’s AI-powered answer to Adobe Illustrator. But it goes a little deeper than that, with the company keen to help designers make content that doesn’t have a generic look and feel, while letting them freely express themselves and elevate their craft. I saw a few examples of what the Figma community has already created during the event, some in hand-drawn stylings, others photorealistic images – and it’s fair to say, they’re certainly impressive. Yamashita explained, “We add things like texture and noise to make it feel much more organic, while still being a vector.” Figma Buzz tackles the social media marketing side – once a product is launched, Buzz is a tool for promoting it online. But more importantly, it’s a way to help those on the team who can’t or don’t use Figma Design to create content that matches brand guidelines. Built for designers and marketing teams, Yamashita called this “the purpose-built tool for on-brand asset creation” for dynamic and custom assets at scale. He and his team asked themselves “how could it feel as simple as filling out a form, so that you can actually create some dynamic content?” Figma Buzz is the answer to that. Helpfully, the tool also connects to Figma Design, serving up all the features designers use, without “complicating the experience” for non-designers. I saw this one in action on stage and came away impressed. In a matter of seconds (ok, maybe ten or so seconds), a single post was automatically localized 80 different ways, switching language, image, and national flag for the correct territories – all without removing that on-brand element. Figma Buzz demonstration in action, creating social media assets in real-time (Image credit: Figma // Future) You can check out Figma’s latest tools right now by clicking here and navigating to the Products section. To watch the full Config London keynote speech with Yamashita and Figma CEO Dylan Field, it’s on YouTube here. You might also like Source link #idea #product #Figma #redesigning #workflows #lineup Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Silicon Valley’s Elusive Fantasy of a Computer as Smart as You Silicon Valley’s Elusive Fantasy of a Computer as Smart as You Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, recently told President Trump during a private phone call that it would arrive before the end of his administration. Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, OpenAI’s primary rival, repeatedly told podcasters it could happen even sooner. The tech billionaire Elon Musk has said it could be here before the end of the year. Like many other voices across Silicon Valley and beyond, these executives predict that the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., is imminent. Since the early 2000s, when a group of fringe researchers slapped the term on the cover of a book that described the autonomous computer systems they hoped to build one day, A.G.I. has served as shorthand for a future technology that achieves human-level intelligence. There is no settled definition of A.G.I., just an entrancing idea: an artificial intelligence that can match the many powers of the human mind. Mr. Altman, Mr. Amodei and Mr. Musk have long chased this goal, as have executives and researchers at companies like Google and Microsoft. And thanks, in part, to their fervent pursuit of this ambitious idea, they have produced technologies that are changing the way hundreds of millions of people research, make art and program computers. These technologies are now poised to transform entire professions. But since the arrival of chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and the rapid improvement of these strange and powerful systems over the last two years, many technologists have grown increasingly bold in predicting how soon A.G.I. will arrive. Some are even saying that once they deliver A.G.I., a more powerful creation called “superintelligence” will follow. As these eternally confident voices predict the near future, their speculations are getting ahead of reality. And though their companies are pushing the technology forward at a remarkable rate, an army of more sober voices are quick to dispel any claim that machines will soon match human intellect. “The technology we’re building today is not sufficient to get there,” said Nick Frosst, a founder of the A.I. start-up Cohere who previously worked as a researcher at Google and studied under the most revered A.I. researcher of the last 50 years. “What we are building now are things that take in words and predict the next most likely word, or they take in pixels and predict the next most likely pixel. That’s very different from what you and I do.” In a recent survey of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a 40-year-old academic society that includes some of the most respected researchers in the field, more than three-quarters of respondents said the methods used to build today’s technology were unlikely to lead to A.G.I. Opinions differ in part because scientists cannot even agree on a way of defining human intelligence, arguing endlessly over the merits and flaws of I.Q. tests and other benchmarks. Comparing our own brains to machines is even more subjective. This means that identifying A.G.I. is essentially a matter of opinion. (Last year, as part of a high-profile lawsuit, Mr. Musk’s attorneys said it was already here because OpenAI, one of Mr. Musk’s chief rivals, has signed a contract with its main funder saying it will not sell products based on A.G.I. technology.) And scientists have no hard evidence that today’s technologies are capable of performing even some of the simpler things the brain can do, like recognizing irony or feeling empathy. Claims of A.G.I.’s imminent arrival are based on statistical extrapolations — and wishful thinking. According to various benchmark tests, today’s technologies are improving at a consistent rate in some notable areas, like math and computer programming. But these tests describe only a small part of what people can do. Humans know how to deal with a chaotic and constantly changing world. Machines struggle to master the unexpected — the challenges, both small and large, that do not look like what has happened in the past. Humans can dream up ideas that the world has never seen. Machines typically repeat or enhance what they have seen before. That is why Mr. Frosst and other skeptics say pushing machines to human-level intelligence will require at least one big idea that the world’s technologists have not yet dreamed up. There is no way of knowing how long that will take. “A system that’s better than humans in one way will not necessarily be better in other ways,” the Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker said. “There’s just no such thing as an automatic, omniscient, omnipotent solver of every problem, including ones we haven’t even thought of yet. There’s a temptation to engage in a kind of magical thinking. But these systems are not miracles. They are very impressive gadgets.” ‘A.I. Can Get There’ Chatbots like ChatGPT are driven by what scientists call neural networks, mathematical systems that can identify patterns in text, images and sounds. By pinpointing patterns in vast troves of Wikipedia articles, news stories and chat logs, for instance, these systems can learn to generate humanlike text on their own, like poems and computer programs. That means these systems are progressing much faster than computer technologies of the past. In previous decades, software engineers built applications one line of code at time, a tiny-step-by-tiny-step process that could never produce something as powerful as ChatGPT. Because neural networks can learn from data, they can reach new heights and reach them quickly. After seeing the improvement of these systems over the last decade, some technologists believe the progress will continue at much the same rate — to A.G.I. and beyond. “There are all these trends where all of the limitations are going away,” said Jared Kaplan, the chief science officer at Anthropic. “A.I. intelligence is quite different from human intelligence. Humans learn much more easily to do new tasks. They don’t need to practice as much as A.I. needs to. But eventually, with more practice, A.I. can get there.” Among A.I. researchers, Dr. Kaplan is known for publishing a groundbreaking academic paper that described what are now called “the Scaling Laws.” These laws essentially said: The more data an A.I. system analyzed, the better it would perform. Just as a student learns more by reading more books, an A.I. system finds more patterns in the text and learns to more accurately mimic the way people put words together. In recent months, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic used up just about all of the English text on the internet, which meant they needed a new way of improving their chatbots. So they are leaning more heavily on a technique that scientists call reinforcement learning. Through this process, which can extend over weeks or months, a system can learn behavior through trial and error. By working through thousands of math problems, for instance, it can learn which techniques tend to lead to the right answer and which do not. Thanks to this technique, researchers like Mr. Kaplan believe that the Scaling Laws (or something like them) will continue. As the technology continues to learn through trial and error across myriad fields, researchers say, it will follow the path of AlphaGo, a machine built in 2016 by a team of Google researchers. Through reinforcement learning, AlphaGo learned to master the game of Go, a complex ******** board game that is compared to chess, by playing millions of games against itself. That spring, it beat one of the world’s best players, stunning the A.I. community and the world. Most researchers had assumed that A.I. needed another 10 years to achieve such a feat. AlphaGo played in ways no human ever had, teaching the top players new strategic approaches to this ancient game. For some, the belief is that systems like ChatGPT will take the same leap, reaching A.G.I. and then superintelligence. But games like AlphaGo follow a small, limited set of rules. The real world is bounded only by the laws of physics. Modeling the entirety of the real world is well beyond today’s machines, so how can anyone be sure that A.G.I. — let alone superintelligence — is just around the corner? The Gap Between Humans and Machines It is indisputable that today’s machines have already eclipsed the human brain in some ways, but that has been true for a long time. A calculator can do basic math faster than a human. Chatbots like ChatGPT can write faster, and as they write, they can instantly draw on more texts than any human brain could ever read or remember. These systems are exceeding human performance on some tests involving high-level math and coding. But people cannot be reduced to these benchmarks. “There are many kinds of intelligence out there in the natural world,” said Josh Tenenbaum, a professor of computational cognitive science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One obvious difference is that human intelligence is tied to the physical world. It extends beyond words and numbers and sounds and images into the realm of tables and chairs and stoves and frying pans and buildings and cars and whatever else we encounter with each passing day. Part of intelligence is knowing when to flip a pancake sitting on the griddle. Some companies are already training humanoid robots in much the same way that others are training chatbots. But this is more difficult and more time consuming than building ChatGPT, requiring extensive training in physical labs, warehouses and homes. Robotic research is years behind chatbot research. The gap between human and machine is even wider. In both the physical and the digital realms, machines still struggle to match the parts of human intelligence that are harder to define. The new way of building chatbots, reinforcement learning, is working well in areas like math and computer programming, where companies can clearly define the good behavior and the bad. Math problems have undeniable answers. Computer programs must compile and run. But the technique doesn’t work as well with creative writing, philosophy or ethics. Mr. Altman recently wrote on X that OpenAI had trained a new system that was “good at creative writing.” It was the first time, he added, that “I have been really struck by something written by A.I.” Writing is what these systems do best. But “creative writing” is hard to measure. It takes different forms in different situations and exhibits characteristics that are not easy to explain, much less quantify: sincerity, humor, honesty. As these systems are deployed into the world, humans tell them what to do and guide them through moments of novelty, change and uncertainty. “A.I. needs us: living beings, producing constantly, feeding the machine,” said Matteo Pasquinelli, a professor of the philosophy of science at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. “It needs the originality of our ideas and our lives.” A Thrilling Fantasy For people both inside the tech industry and out, claims of imminent A.G.I. can be thrilling. Humans have dreamed of creating an artificial intelligence going back to the myth of the Golem, which appeared as early as the 12th century. This is the fantasy that drives works like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Now that many of us are using computer systems that can write and even talk like we do, it is only natural for us to assume that intelligent machines are almost here. It is what we have anticipated for centuries. When a group of academics founded the A.I. field in the late 1950s, they were sure it wouldn’t take very long to build computers that recreated the brain. Some argued that a machine would beat the world chess champion and discover its own mathematical theorem within a decade. But none of that happened on that time frame. Some of it still hasn’t. Many of the people building today’s technology see themselves as fulfilling a kind of technological destiny, pushing toward an inevitable scientific moment, like the creation of fire or the atomic bomb. But they cannot point to a scientific reason that it will happen soon. That is why many other scientists say no one will reach A.G.I. without a new idea — something beyond the powerful neural networks that merely find patterns in data. That new idea could arrive tomorrow. But even then, the industry would need years to develop it. Yann LeCun, the chief A.I. scientist at Meta, has dreamed of building what we now call A.G.I. since he saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” in 70-millimeter Cinerama at a Paris movie theater when he was 9 years old. And he was among the three pioneers who won the 2018 Turing Award — considered the Nobel Prize of computing — for their early work on neural networks. But he does not believe that A.G.I. is near. At Meta, his research lab is looking beyond the neural networks that have entranced the tech industry. Mr. LeCun and his colleagues are searching for the missing idea. “A lot is riding on figuring out whether the next generation architecture will deliver human-level A.I. within the next 10 years,” he said. “It may not. At this point, we can’t tell.” Source link #Silicon #Valleys #Elusive #Fantasy #Computer #Smart Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

What Has All This Restaurant Food Done to My Gut? What Has All This Restaurant Food Done to My Gut? There came a point just a few months ago when I felt I was on the brink of gastrointestinal ruin. As an interim restaurant critic for The New York Times, I had eaten dinner at a restaurant every night for three straight weeks. I felt fine. Yet I’d wake in the middle of the night thinking about all the sugar I’d just ingested, or the steak I’d polished off, distressed over what all this eating was doing to my body — and specifically, what it was doing to my gut. I am obsessed with gut health. I grew up in a family that talked openly about digestion. My father couldn’t live without his daily ********* of milk and psyllium husks. We believed that gut health was key to our overall well-being. The American public has come to a similar conclusion. Supermarket shelves are lined with prebiotic sodas, probiotic supplements and fiber-rich cookies and bars. Influencers discuss their irritable bowel syndrome openly on TikTok. And today there are services that can analyze a stool sample and tell you what kind of bacteria populate your gut. So I embarked on a two-month experiment on that microbiome to chart the effects of all of those restaurant meals on my gastrointestinal health. The results surprised me. I also learned that when it comes to the gut, few things are ******-and-white. I enlisted the help of two Stanford University scientists who run one of the leading microbiome laboratories in the United States: Justin Sonnenburg, a professor of microbiology and immunology, and his wife, Erica Sonnenburg, a senior research scientist in microbiology and immunology. With the Sonnenburgs’ guidance, I chose Zoe, a personalized nutrition app, to do the testing, because it’s popular and comprehensive. (For $294, you get testing kits for your gut health, blood sugar and blood ****.) The Sonnenburgs divided the experiment into three stages: one in which I ate out for every meal and drank alcohol freely, a second in which I ate only at home and didn’t drink, and a third in which I mixed dining out, eating at home and drinking. Each phase lasted two weeks — the longest stretch I could manage given my job, and the shortest in which the Sonnenburgs thought they would detect changes. After each one, I sent a stool sample to Zoe, which then sent data on my gut composition to the Sonnenburgs. My meals during the two weeks of dining indulgence varied wildly — I visited Lanzhou beef noodle soup shops, ate lamb stew at a French bistro, sampled chile cheese toast at a North Indian restaurant and spent all night eating in a diner. My at-home stint conveniently aligned with a stay at my parents’ house, where the meals looked like those I grew up with: khichdi, dal and okra sabzi for dinner, leftovers for lunch and oats for breakfast. Before the third phase — a mix of home and restaurant meals — the Sonnenburgs gave me guidelines to follow, based on their studies of foods that yield healthier guts: Eat less meat and more plants. Fermented foods like yogurt and kimchi are a must, they said. They didn’t have conclusive thoughts on alcohol consumption, but they advised me that when drinking, to do it in moderation. It was the kind of advice you’d expect to hear from any nutritionist. I thought I’d feel drastically different during each phase, as my diet was changing so much. I didn’t. (This should have been my first clue about the results.) To interpret the data, the Sonnenburgs focused on two types of bacteria whose presence microbiologists consider to be consistent with a healthy gut and that made up a large proportion of my microbiome: Bifidobacterium longum and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. Bifidobacterium followed the pattern they expected: most abundant when I was eating at home, slightly less so when I mixed eating at home with eating out, and least abundant when I was exclusively eating out. My levels of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, though, didn’t change meaningfully, which aligned with a broader observation: The ratios of all bacteria in my gut stayed relatively consistent throughout the three phases — a sign that I have a stable microbiome. The Sonnenburgs attributed that finding in part to how I grew up — eating mostly Indian vegetarian food — as studies have shown that people with plant-based diets have healthier guts. “How you have eaten for the majority of your life has a huge impact on the species that are there,” said Dr. Erica Sonnenburg. “If you were to tell me you grew up with a McDonald’s diet,” she added, “I would be floored looking at your microbiome.” I was feeling encouraged — smug, even. And then I got an email from Zoe. “Overall, scores are poor,” began the analysis from Dr. Tim Spector, an epidemiologist who co-founded Zoe. For each phase of the experiment, my gut microbiome diversity scored well below what Zoe considers to be optimal. In judging gut health, Zoe takes a different approach from the Stanford scientists. Based on its own studies, it tests for 100 microbes it associates with positive and negative health outcomes — 50 of each. Of those 100, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is included (as a positive marker) but not Bifidobacterium longum. Zoe concluded that I had far more negative than positive microbes, and reported that this makeup didn’t change much over the three periods. “It means you are feeding your bad bugs” when eating foods like bread and sugary desserts, Dr. Spector said. “You want to be feeding your good bugs to weed out the bad ones” by adding fermented foods and fiber-rich ingredients like nuts and seeds. But the lack of change was possibly a good sign, he said. “You are getting lots of diversity in your diet, whether home cooking or restaurant eating,” which meant that even with all those bad microbes, my gut was resilient to temporary shifts in diet, he said. Dr. Justin Sonnenburg was somewhat dubious about the Zoe results. He said several bacteria species the company tracks in its analysis have not been well studied, he said, and tend not to be abundant in the gut microbiome. (In response, Zoe said its research “is grounded in the world’s largest in-depth nutrition and gut microbiome database.”) The Sonnenburgs also cautioned that the company is trying to sell customers on an app and supplements, so it has a vested interest in telling customers there’s room for improvement. (At the end of a phone call, Dr. Spector encouraged me to purchase Zoe’s prebiotic mix and offered a sample.) The Stanford scientists even had caveats to their own analysis: I was just one subject, studied over a relatively short *******, so I should take the results with a grain of salt. Guts are like snowflakes. “Everyone’s microbiome is so unique,” Dr. Erica Sonnenburg said. “The bacteria causing you problems may not cause the same problems in me because I have this other five bacteria.” My microbiome is probably not in immediate danger. But I came away with a few strategies for being more gut-conscious as a frequent restaurant-goer. First, make the most of your at-home meals by incorporating plenty of plants and fiber. When eating out, try to order a balanced meal with a diverse array of ingredients. Approach gut-testing services with skepticism. A healthy diet in the long-term can help you handle short-term disruptions. And above all, trust your gut. “We get emails all the time that say, ‘This is my microbiome report, what do you think?’” Dr. Erica Sonnenburg said. “And the first thing I ask is: How are you feeling?” “If you feel fine, that is what is most important.” Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. Source link #Restaurant #Food #Gut Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]