Tuesday 28th May 2024
  • If 10% of the World Were Developers: GitHub's Mario Rodriguez

    The spring 2024 issue's special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.

    The spring 2024 issue's special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.

    When Mario Rodriguez emigrated from Cuba to the United States at age 14 with his parents — a university professor, and a teacher turned electrical engineer — they had already instilled in him the value of education and a love of learning. That passion has guided him throughout his career — as a program manager with Microsoft; then as part of GitHub, following Microsoft's 2018 acquisition of the developer platform; and as a cofounder of a charter school in North Carolina. Now, as senior vice president of product at GitHub, Mario oversees the team developing the GitHub Copilot AI-assisted software development tool.

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  • Microsoft Is Giving Windows a Memory and It Might Change Everything

    Microsoft has tried multiple times to make interacting with artificial intelligence an essential part of using Windows, but Recall, a new memory-focused feature it announced alongside its new Copilot+ PCs might be the first time it could actually stick.

    Recall leverages changes Microsoft made to Windows 11 to accommodate Arm chips, along with the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) inside those chips, to catalog, “understand” (as much as any AI can), and make searchable, everything that happens on your PC. Everything from your Discord chats to your browser tabs is findable with a search — even a vague one.

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  • Google's New AI Search Is Already Spewing Misinformation

    About 26 years ago Google set about revolutionizing the web by delivering helpful and accurate information to millions of users worldwide. Today, it’s planning on doing that all over again with the help of AI.

    I’m, of course, talking about Gemini and Google’s new AI search. Launched at I/O and recently rolled out to the public, Gemini has been upending your typical Google searches with AI overviews — boxes that appear at the top of the page and are intended to get you to your answer faster. Sounds useful in theory, but the results have been… less than ideal.

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  • The Gnarliest Thriller of the Year Nearly Reinvents a Classic Genre

    The slasher is a staple of western cinema. It’s been around for nearly 40 years, and produced a handful of iconic villains in Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. It’s also become a bit overplayed in the intervening years, forcing newcomers to think hard about what they actually want to say within — or withhold from — the genre.

    Enter In a Violent Nature, a low-budget slasher from writer-director Chris Nash. The film is a novelty on its choice of protagonist alone: rather than reinvent a cast of plucky heroes to root for, Nash turns our gaze to the killers we often root against. Ry Barrett cuts a mean figure as Johnny, an immortal, Jason-esque figure awoken from eternal slumber by a group of impetuous teens. Nash doesn’t waste much time setting the character apart from his predecessors, or from making his victims very interesting. With In a Violent Nature, story comes secondary to Johnny’s gnarly kills. And in some ways, that can be a relief. But in striving to subvert the tedious trappings of the slasher, In a Violent Nature falls prey to an all-new set of issues.

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  • 43 Years Ago, the Greatest Action Movie Ever Exposed a Creepy Psychological Phenomenon

    Next to Star Wars, perhaps no film series of the last 50 years has been as influential on genre cinema as Indiana Jones. If Star Wars set a path for science fiction and fantasy to follow, Indiana Jones gave a blueprint for adventure films. And while no one has to tell you where “No, I am your father” came from, you also probably don’t need to be told twice where “Why did it have to be snakes?” came from, either.

    Beyond iconic lines and daring scenes etched into our imagination, there are more subtly influential parts. Maybe that’s where you found out about the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail. And notably, the end of a couple of the Indiana Jones films — and some of the novels, and a couple video games — involves a mysterious area called Hangar 51. In a month where we’re celebrating the anniversaries of both Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, Inverse takes a look back at the one of the franchise’s most mysterious inventions — and the science behind it.

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  • What The Animal Kingdom's Most Playful Adults Teach Us About Development

    Wild chimpanzees don’t stop playing after they grow into adults — a finding that’s less curious than you might think.

    Wild chimpanzees have been studied for more than 60 years, but they continue to delight and surprise observers, as we found during the summer of 2017 in Kibale National Park in Uganda.

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  • 20 Years Ago, the Most Over the Top Sci-Fi Disaster Movie Redefined the Genre

    You can’t talk about the modern-day disaster flick without mentioning Roland Emmerich. The German director essentially remade the genre for the 21st century, solidifying the tropes audiences would applaud and deride in equal measure. Emmerich’s best films are defined by his absurdity, but there’s also something memorable about his work, even at his lowest points (read: Moonfall).

    Any disaster movie worth its salt will pull you in and refuse to let go, even as it pushes the very limits of logic. They may be falling out of favor, but Emmerich’s work was iconic for a time. His projects are impossible to look away from, and not just because he’s so keen on destroying national landmarks. The Day After Tomorrow, in particular, brought a fresh perspective to a much-derided genre.

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  • 'Honkai Star Rail' Went Full Disney -- and Then It Got Dark

    “Welcome to the land of dreams!” the nasally-voiced cartoon chirps. With a bright-eyed smile and a pep in his step, he serves as a retro-designed tour guide through a commercial wonderland of fast food, movies, and dreams.

    It’s not Disney World, but it is reminiscent of just that. Instead of Mickey Mouse, we have Clockie, a central character in the newest chapters of Hoyoverse’s Honkai Star Rail. Instead of Imagineers and Castmates, you have Dreamweavers in the service of the Family, a conglomeration that oversees the world with a neon-colored Iron Fist. Within Penacony, the game’s latest arc, the resemblance to Disney is there — and very much on purpose. Nicknamed the “Planet of Festivities,” the big city is a dreamscape layered on top of a dreamlike hotel where guests pay to enter pods and visit illusory worlds.

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  • Google's Chromebook Plus Laptops Are Now Even Cheaper and Have More AI

    Last fall, Google drew a line in the sand — no more sucky Chromebooks. At least, not with the beefier Chromebook Plus lineup of laptops running ChromeOS. By requiring a baseline of specs for the CPU, RAM, and storage, Chromebook Plus laptops were up to two times better than regular non-Plus Chromebooks, while starting at an affordable $399.

    Barely seven months later, Google is upping the ante with Chromebook Plus yet again. Devices from third-parties now start at an even lower $349, while keeping the same Intel Core i3 (or higher) or AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a 1080p IPS display, and a 1080p webcam.

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  • HBO's Twistiest Spy Thriller Turned Its Big Gimmick Into Its Wildest Twist

    From the moment The Sympathizer was announced, it was met with a combination of excitement and apprehension. The excitement came from the involvement of Park Chan-wook, the director of Korean thriller classics such as Oldboy, who seemed tailor-made to adapt such a sharp, darkly acidic story as Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer winner. But some of the apprehension, and a dash of that shared excitement, came from the casting of Robert Downey Jr. in not one, but four different roles.

    Throughout the HBO miniseries, Downey Jr. plays various white male characters who had some kind of important role in the life of the show’s protagonist, known only as the Captain (Hoa Xuande). First, he appears as Claude, a CIA agent who mentors the Captain. Then, he shows up as the slimy Professor Robert Hammer, the Captain's grad school professor. Next, he briefly appears as Ned Godwin, a congressman trying to appeal to the local Vietnamese American population; and finally, as Niko Damianos, an arrogant movie director making a film about Vietnam.

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