He created Grand Theft Auto. Dan Houser was one of the masterminds behind revolutionary video game series Grand Theft Auto. Now, after leaving Rockstar Games and launching his own company, he's released a debut novel about a very different type of game. A Better Paradise is a dystopian vision of the near future in which an AI-led computer game goes rogue. Set in a polarised world, it finds Mark Tyburn attempting to create a virtual haven for people to find sanctuary and reconnect within themselves against an all-consuming social media hellscape.

Dear Prudence is Slate's advice column. I was browsing a men-seeking-men dating app when I came across the profile of my neighbor, "Gary." He described himself as "single and looking for fun." I happen to know that Gary is married with two kids under 3 years old. The thing is, I don't know his wife "Bethany" that well; we've only ever waved to one another in the neighborhood and briefly engaged in small talk when we run into each other.

In the present paper we develop a distributed method to reconnect a multi-robot team after connectivity failures, caused by unpredictable environment changes, i.e. appearance of new obstacles. After the changes, the team is divided into different groups of robots. The groups have a limited communication range and only a partial information in their field of view about the current scenario. Their objective is to form a chain from a static base station to a goal location. In the proposed distributed replanning approach, the robots predict new plans for the other groups from the new observed information by each robot in the changed scenario, to restore the connectivity with a base station and reach the initial joint objective. If a solution exists, the method achieves the reconnection of all the groups in a unique chain. The proposed method is compared with other two cases: 1) when all the agents have full information of the environment, and 2) when some robots must move to reach other waiting robots for reconnection. Numerical simulations are provided to evaluate the proposed approach in the presence of unpredictable scenario changes.

A deep-dive exploring over 23,000 profiles in Tinder's dating pool has identified the most common, self-reported interests of those looking for love on the mobile app. Men looking for that first spark of connection with a special lady may want to reconnect with their softer side: leisure interests like reading (6 percent of profiles) and casual activities like walking (9 percent), topped the list for women. The most commonly listed interests for men tended to be on the more high-intensity side, like sports (16 percent), working out (12 percent) and hiking (5 percent). Tinder's'swipe-based' dating app let's users post five of their interests on their profile -- and the researchers pulled this'interest' data from 13,941 women's and 9,229 men's Tinder profiles for the new study. Fortunately, more than a few of these interests were common to both men and women, leaving plenty of room for a more organic connection, based real interests.

While Barbenheimer was undoubtedly the biggest movie story of 2023, the year in film was one jam-packed with dozens of truly great movies--not all of which managed to generate the nonstop headlines or mainstream traction that an iconic doll and the "father of the atomic bomb" did. It was a stellar year for first-time directors as well, as evidenced by films like Emily, The Unknown Country, and A Thousand and One. If you've seen Barbie, Oppenheimer, and many of the year's higher-profile movies, here are 15 that you maybe haven't seen that are definitely worth your time. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism.

ODSC East 2022 is less than a month away, and this event is shaping up to start off the year on a high note. Coming April 19th-21st in Boston or virtually, ODSC East will feature over 260 speakers and more than 300 hours of content, showcasing the breadth and depth of trending data science topics, tools, and frameworks that help data scientists get ahead. From these sessions to the AI Expo Hall and more, here are a few reasons to attend ODSC East 2022. An in-person Bronze Pass gives you access to over 60 ODSC talks that include deep learning, machine learning, responsible AI, NLP, and MLOps. Overconfidence in machine learning: do our models know what they don't know?

Samsung's Neo QLED QN90A takes the company's already outstanding QLED color and brightness and, thanks to far more granular mini-LED backlighting, enhances it with far better blacks. The overall result is truly impressive, although Samsung still has some work to do on its zone dimming techniques. The 54.6-inch (55-inch class) version of the QN90A I tested currently retails for around $1,700 and features a 4K UHD (3840 x 2160), 120Hz, 10-bit display. Said display implements quantum dots for accurate, saturated color, and mini-LEDs for refined backlighting. Mini-LEDs, as you might guess, are far smaller than traditional backlight LEDs.

Imagine a world where babies are stored in life-support jars, humans are stalked by oily ghosts, and the American president is played by Lindsay Wagner, the helter-skelter-haired star of 1970s cult TV show The Bionic Woman. This is the dystopian milieu of Death Stranding, which will hit shops soon, just in time for the hectic Christmas period. In this epic video game, by far the most controversial of 2019, players must traverse a future America to reconnect its "chiral network" (a posh internet), while dodging mysterious BTs (beached things). For reasons unknown, the living and dead coexist, with the protagonist able to connect to the "other side" via a "jar baby" in an artificial womb. One recent demo focused on such gimmicks as urinating to create mushrooms.

AI's use in medicine could soon extend to one of the medical world's toughest challenges: helping the paralyzed regain movement. Intel and Brown University have started work on a DARPA-backed Intelligent Spine Interface project that would use AI to restore movement and bladder control for those with serious spinal cord injuries. The two-year effort will have scientists capture motor and sensory signals from the spinal cord, while surgeons will implant electrodes on both ends of an injury to create an "intelligent bypass." From there, neural networks running on Intel tools will (hopefully) learn how to communicate motor commands through the bypass and restore functions lost to severed nerves. The initial interface will use external computing hardware to interpret spine signals.

Through your generous and timely donations we will be able to gather the appropriate funds to cover all production costs as we shoot the live-action components of the PoC (Proof of Concept), shot in Virtual Reality, the voice-over that will accompany these scenes, and completion and post-production (VFX, stitching, sound design, and the like), funds that will allow us to present a fully cohesive and compelling narrative Proof of Concept for The FORGING. The FORGING experience will serve as a cost-effective, fully-engaging, fully-immersive, hyper-real Virtual Reality experience and therapeutic tool that greatly assists in the rehabilitation of our HEROES returning home from the battlefield; be those battlefields abroad, or those closer to home in our local communities. The FORGING will assist those WARRIORS and HEROES who may be dealing with symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress, live a happier, purpose-driven, more connected and fulfilling life-experience. Inspired and driven by a shared and extremely vital mission; the ultimate intention of The FORGING experience is to distract the brain and body's corresponding nervous systems from trauma, chaos, pain, crisis, and negative memories (collectively known as Post Traumatic Stress Injury – PTSI), shifting the neurology of these emotions, stress events and triggers so that our Nation's HEORES can reconnect to their community (and more importantly, their communities learning how to reconnect with them) feeling a vast improvement and more consistent and mindful connection to their innate resilience, coherence, self-awareness, freedom, and fulfillment. "The FORGING" offers a well-constructed, mindfully-heart-based tool to help heal the scars left by Post Traumatic Stress.