"Races" are now "species" in the beloved game Dungeons & Dragons, which recently marked its 50th anniversary, irking some loyal fans. "Some character traits have been divorced from biological identity; a mountain dwarf is no longer inherently brawny and durable, a high elf no longer intelligent and dexterous by definition," a report in The New York Times explains. "And Wizards of the Coast, the Dungeons & Dragons publisher owned by Hasbro, has endorsed a trend throughout role-playing games in which players are empowered to halt the proceedings if they ever feel uncomfortable." The company also now suggests that extended Dungeons & Dragons campaigns begin with sessions allowing players to lay out their expectations and which topics they wish to avoid, which could include sexual assault or drug use, the Times writes. "What they're trying to do here is put up a signal flare, to not only current players but potential future players, that this game is a safe, inclusive, thoughtful and sensitive approach to fantasy storytelling," said Ryan Lessard, a writer and frequent Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master, according to the report.

Large language models (LLM), based on generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), such as ChatGPT show high efficiency in the analysis of complex texts. These days, we can observe the emerging of many new smaller open source LLMs, e.g. Llama, Falcon, GPT4All, GPT-J, etc. Open source LLMs can be fine-tuned for specific custom problems and deployed on custom servers, e.g. in cloud computing services such as AWS, GCP. LLMs have some new features as compared to conventional language models based on transformers. One of them is zero-shot and few-shot learning, which consists in good performance of the model when we show it only few training examples or even no examples at all, but only the instructions describing what should be done. Another important feature is the reasoning when a model can generate new patterns and conclusions which are based on an input prompt and facts known by the model and which were not included into it directly during a training process. So, the model can generate analytical texts with unexpected but useful chains of thoughts. One of the approaches of using LLMs is based on retrieval augmented generation (RAG), which uses the results from other services e.g.

While we wait for Nerf to come to Oculus VR, Hasbro has unveiled a new game featuring its toy blasters. Nerf Legends is a first-person arena shooter with a sci-fi twist that sees players battling robots across 19 single player levels. Of course, the game is another way to sell real-life Nerf products to a generation of kids who have grown up playing Fortnite. As such, there are 15 blasters from the Mega, Ultra and Elite lines, with upgrades and skins, to choose from. To help your side win, you'll be able to use dart power-ups like magnetic push and pull, seeker and freeze on your opponents.

The arrival of The Mitchells vs. the Machines on Netflix feels like the detonation of a confetti bomb--it's a colorful, inventive, and all-around delightful movie. In fact, as my colleague Sam Adams wrote for Slate, it's the first great animated movie of 2021. Directed by Mike Rianda and co-directed by Jeff Rowe, the movie stars Abbi Jacobson as Katie, a girl about to head to college, and Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, and Rianda respectively as her father, mother, and younger brother Aaron, all of whom join her on a road trip in an attempt at a last hurrah before she flies the coop. That trip hits a bit of a road bump, however, when a robot uprising threatens the entire human race. One of the biggest--and funniest--set pieces of the film involves the Mitchell family having to fight a horde of Furby dolls.

The audio-animatronic toy craze of the mid-1980s is all but forgotten now. The servos have stilled, the batteries have died, and the robotic eyelids have frozen in a half-opened position that makes it look like Teddy Ruxpin has been hitting the sauce. But for a few years, America's children decided they wanted portable Chuck E. Cheese toys they could carry around with them, and the market obliged. Or, more accurately, the market decided America's children wanted portable Chuck E. Cheese toys, and America's children ended up with a lifelong fear of robotic bears. World of Wonder's Teddy Ruxpin was the most famous example, and the only one that's maintained any cultural currency, but he didn't arrive alone.

Over three decades Transformers has grown from a line of children's toys to a media franchise encompassing film, TV and gaming. Perhaps its most radical spin-off though is a comic that has used wit and humanity to reach a new, diverse fan base. Transformers started out as a boy's toy. The robot characters, which could be quickly reconfigured into guns and cars - tapped into the young male zeitgeist of 1984. Those children have grown into today's adult collectors.

We have more information about last week's Model X crash and a status update on Google's link shortening service. The NTSB is investigating.Tesla: Autopilot was engaged in fatal Model X crash After a fiery crash in Mountain View, CA killed the driver of a Tesla Model X, the company confirmed Friday night that its Autopilot feature was engaged at the time. It noted that the driver's hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver's brother told an ABC 7 News reporter that his brother had previously complained of Autopilot previously swerving the SUV towards that same divider. Epic Games just launched a contest for players to submit video of their smooth moves, with the best one making it into Fortnite.

Apple's technically impressive HomePod has literally been hacked into pieces, we get a taste of Qualcomm's potent smartphone chip (coming soon) and strap an editor into an Iron Man toy mask in the interests of Journalism with a capital'J'. You may not like the thought of paying Apple a pretty penny to fix the HomePod, but you might have to -- it definitely isn't meant for DIY repairs. An iFixit teardown has revealed a clever design that makes good use of a tiny space, but also nigh-on inaccessible. It appears you can pull the fabric mesh off with a drawstring, but almost everything else requires tearing things apart. Many elements are glued on (including the top and bottom), and there's one seam so thoroughly sealed that iFixit needed a hacksaw and ultrasonic cutter to get in.

Amazon's Echo has long let you play little voice-driven games. And at an event today, the company just released an oddball new accessory to go along with the just-announced new Echo speaker. It's called the Echo Button, and it's a tiny Bluetooth remote of sorts that lets you "buzz in" and add a deeper experience to these games. Amazon is positioning this as a simple little gadget intended as more of a "stocking stuffer" than anything else (it comes out this holiday season). If you've ever watched Jeopardy!, you know what we're talking about here -- the Echo can ask a question and you can then "buzz in" and answer before your teammates.

Its eyes, a complex configuration of cyan dots on a black, rounded screen of a face, sleepily open and it lets out a digitised approximation of a yawn. A compact device that looks like a blend of a forklift truck and PC monitor bred for maximum cuteness, the robot rolls blearily off its charging station on a pair of dinky treads before tilting its screen-face and noticing I'm there. Its eyes widen, then curve at the bottom as if making way for an unseen smile. "Daaaaan!" it announces with a happy jiggle, sounding not unlike Pixar Animation Studios' lovable robot creation, Wall-E. A message flashes up on my iPhone telling me that it, or rather he (being the gender that its manufacturer, Anki, has assigned Cozmo) wants to play a game. Cozmo's head droops, his eyes form into a pair of sadly reclining crescent moons and he sighs. But he quickly cheers up, giving a happy jiggle when I comply with his request for a fist bump and tap my knuckles against his eagerly raised arm.