Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the closer-look department: School districts across the United States were woefully unprepared for ChatGPT's impact on education, according to thousands of pages of public records obtained by 404 Media. Documents from early 2023, the publication reports, show a "total crapshoot" in responses, with some state education departments admitting they hadn't considered ChatGPT's implications while others hired pro-AI consultants to train educators.
In California, when principals sought guidance, state officials responded that "unfortunately, the topic of ChatGPT has not come up in our circles." One California official admitted, "I have never heard of ChatGPT prior to your email." Meanwhile, Louisiana's education department circulated presentations suggesting AI "is like giving a computer a brain" and warning that "going back to writing essays - only in class - can hurt struggling learners."
Some administrators accepted the technology enthusiastically, with one Idaho curriculum head calling ChatGPT "AMAZING" and comparing resistance to early reactions against spell-check.
Posted by from MMO Champion
Player Housing Press Event - Gameplay and Interviews
Several influencers attended a press event for Player Housing! We'll be recapping new information from the videos below, so check back later today.
Preach and Dratnos Interview
Preach and Dratnos had the chance to talk to Toby Ragaini - Lead Designer on WoW and Design Lead on Housing: Neighborhoods and Jay Hwang - Principal Artist and Design Lead on Housing: Decorations.
The team started playing with prototypes early on and using them informed what things that they needed to add or change. They also had played other games with housing such as Wildstar and FFXIV.
Neighborhoods are zone sized social spaces. Some new tech was added to make neighborhoods unique, expressed by the players that live there.
The team worked to accommodate all sorts of players with differing expectations of how their neighborhood would work.
The team wanted to start with the core fantasy for players and expand from there.
When new patches come out, the design team will look through the new assets and pick some to add to housing.
Garrisons were an isolating experience and the team is determined to not recreate that. Neighborhoods exist to bring people together. There will be reasons to leave, come back, and repeat the cycle.
It would be a disaster if players came in, decorated their house, and had no reason to come back to it.
Housing won't be standalone, it needs to synergize with the rest of the game.
The team talked about uprezing old 2004 assets, but decided against it, allowing players to lean in to the nostalgia if they want (Create a house with only Vanilla assets if you want!)
Player shouldn't be forced to go and run old content for rewards and the team is thinking about how that will work. For example, if you have already done a dungeon, maybe there will be a vendor outside that sells the item you would have earned from running the dungeon the first time.
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Posted by msmash from Slashdot
From the how-about-that department: Google has overtaken IBM to become the leader in generative AI-related patents and also leads in the emerging area of agentic AI, according to data from IFI Claims. Axios: In the patents-for-agents U.S. rankings, Google and Nvidia top the list, followed by IBM, Intel and Microsoft, according to an analysis released Thursday.
Globally, Google and Nvidia also led the agentic patents list, but three Chinese universities also make the top 10, highlighting China's place as the chief U.S. rival in the field. In global rankings for generative AI, Google was also the leader -- but six of the top 10 global spots were held by Chinese companies or universities. Microsoft was No. 3, with Nvidia and IBM also in the top 10.
The Epic Games Store is having a big sale. One might even call it “Mega.” In fact, that’s exactly what Epic is calling it. Yup, it’s another Epic Store Mega Sale, featuring a ton of deals on both old and new games across every genre.
Marvel Rivals is still the new hero-shooter hotness, but like most free-to-play live-service games, over its six months NetEase’s Overwatch-like has run into a fair bit of controversy. An entire subset of the playerbase went on strike, the team has added new microtransactions, and now it’s added an item that the…
The ad-supported tier of Netflix is going to get way worse, starting some time in 2026. That’s when the streaming giant is promising to implement AI-generated ads and pause ad formats in the middle of watching shows and movies, according to a new report by Media Play News. It’s a privilege for which users will be…
Princess Leia Didn't Show Up In Andor Because It Would Have Been A 'Distraction' 2025-05-15 09:25:01
Star Wars: Andor, one of the best shows of the year, wrapped up its second and final season earlier this week. And while the series featured some Easter eggs and familiar faces, it didn’t include any main cast characters from the Original Trilogy. However, there were talks at one time about possibly including Leia…
After canceling Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link, Square Enix has released some new screenshots of Kingdom Hearts IV to give fans proof of life. The company has been pretty quiet about the fourth entry in its Disney/Final Fantasy crossover RPG series since announcing it in 2022, and if you’ve got to give folks bad news and…
Coinbase Offers $20 Million Bounty To Catch Data Thieves After Extortion Attempt 2025-05-15 08:15:02
After teasing some news on its social channels earlier this week, Atlus has finally announced that a new Persona game is coming out. No, it’s not Persona 6, but rather Persona 5: The Phantom X, a spin-off that is finally making its way out of China and into other territories.
The Switch 2 is likely to be one of the biggest console launches ever, but it might be hard to find actual hands-on reviews of the device when it first comes out. That’s because Nintendo isn’t sending out early units to press and content creators, according to a new report by The Game Business. It’s a highly unusual…
Website Neal.fun is a constant source of innovative little web games, including 2023's superb satirical stab at the awfulness of setting passwords. The latest addition to the website is a superb use of Google’s Street View, as (currently) over a thousand people are on a road trip to Canada!
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