Thanks to a partnership between autonomous delivery robot developers Nuro and Domino’s, the pizza chain everyone knows and loves, you can now get your cheesy inches brought to your door by an emotionless battery-powered robotic serf. Well, I say “you,” but in reality it’s only for a very small group of people… in a very specific location… on very specific days, that will be able to take advantage of this futuristic delivery option....

Being held in Japan, arguably one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, it’s no surprise that they pulled out all the stops. Multi-lingual, AI robots are greeting visitors at the airport and AI-powered vehicles are delivering athletes and equipment to the stadium. Security systems are using facial recognition technology for entry to Olympics accommodation and venues for staff, athletes, media, and volunteers, as well as to monitor suspicious behaviour....

Plugged In is back and coming at ya like Cleopatra — if Cleopatra had a borderline problem with buying too much shit. Anyway, this edition is all about tablets. Woahh there, close your mouth and put down those gurns. Slowly. That’s it. Good. Somewhat overwrought intro aside, today I want to talk about tablets. And changing my mind. Last week I fell in love. Pull up a blanket, get a mug of tea, and let me tell you all about it....

How hard could it be to take notes? You might not have considered this question, but I think about it a lot. Note-taking hasn’t just helped me with my own work, but it also helps me understand my team. I don’t do this through my own notes though, but by understanding theirs. Over time I’ve learned that different people take different notes, and what works for you might not work for me....

It’s 2020 and games are looking better than ever. With hungry console makers beefing up their next-generation offerings, games can now take a truly monstrous amount of hardware power to run. So you with the two- or three-year-old laptop, or the desktop with the aging graphics card — what are you to do? Sure, you can lower your settings to potato quality, if you really must in order to play the game....

If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you already have a pair of AirPods. Yes, everything’s okay, no one here is going to judge you for spending a sizeable chunk of money on those sexy little earbuds. While the joy of the AirPods is their simplicity, there’s one element of them that isn’t immediately clear: how much charge these things have left. This can be a bit annoying if you want to know if they’re going to last you a journey without dying....

No market need Ran out of cash Not the right team (lack of diversity in skills and experience) Harry had Dumbledore, Luke had Yoda, and Daniel had Mr. Miyagi. While your startup may not be facing an imminent attack by death eaters, stormtroopers, or teenage ninjas, having the right mentor in your corner can seriously help when it comes to developing the right features, battling competitors, winning a crucial funding round, and learning new tricks along the way....

Performance reviews matter How you structure your performance review has a direct influence on your ability to get a potential salary raise. Generally speaking, companies will provide anywhere between a 1-10% annual raise depending on how well you’ve performed that particular year. That makes your review one very important hour. To put that into context: if you were to pick up an extra 3% salary increase on a median Dutch salary, you’re talking about an extra €1100 per year in direct gross income, increased employer contributions to your pension, and next year’s salary raise in percentages will equal a higher number in absolute euros....

It’s been a few weeks since Slack introduced its biggest redesign yet, but the new look is yet to reach all users. The company is going for a gradual rollout, which means you could wake up to the new interface any day now. I finally got the revamped look today, and so did my colleagues — but some of us were a little more surprised than others. “Ugh, this Slack interface is really bothering me,” one colleague exclaimed, commenting on the app’s atrociously bright purple bar....

Say, you’ve done the research and you’ve decided on signing up for a digital event, great! Now what? Having organized multiple digital events under the TNW brand (e.g. TNW Re:Brand, Sprint), a global C-suite event together with the Financial Times (The Global Boardroom), as well as produced events for thirds parties (governments, public companies), we’ve learned a lot about organizing these online experiences. It goes without saying that we’ve also attended dozens of online events and learned a lesson or two about how to attend a digital event....

PC gaming is swiftly becoming a fractured landscape, with multiple different game launchers and storefronts. The point of GOG’s Galaxy launcher is to get as many of them into one place as possible. Here’s how you can do that. GOG GALAXY 2.0 is now enhanced with @EpicGames official integration! Welcome on board ? pic.twitter.com/l8cRFnvKLu — GOG GALAXY 2.0 (@GOGGalaxy) July 20, 2020 As of this week, GOG has now made the Epic Games integration official, meaning you can now join your Epic and GOG libraries together along with many other gaming libraries available as community-built integrations....

COVID-19 changed everything, both in business and in our daily lives. For some, the change wasn’t all that dramatic: a slight pay cut perhaps, or the move to working from a home office. Others weren’t so fortunate. Since the start of the pandemic, the United States alone shed some 20.5 million jobs. It gets worse. According to the United Nations, nearly half of the global workforce is in danger of job loss due to COVID-19....

A 2015 survey of Fortune 1000 companies found that nearly two-thirds of employees were dissatisfied with performance reviews, didn’t think they were relevant to their jobs – or both. In a separate survey conducted in 2016, a quarter of men and nearly a fifth of women reported crying as a result of a bad review. The figures were even higher for younger workers. And that was during the much simpler pre-pandemic times, when pretty much all professional workers were in the office daily and could be assessed similarly....

If you find your MacBook acting strangely, and seemingly for no reason, resetting the SMC may help. There are a number of things that could signal an SMC issue, from screen resolution problems, to a PC that doesn’t seem to want to reboot. And while resetting the SMC isn’t a cure-all approach to diagnosing problems, it’s a great place to start. What is the SMC? SMC stands for system management controller, and it’s a chip on any Intel-based MacBook that acts as lynchpin for running smaller hardware processes, such as those needed to use keyboards, fans, and LED indicators....

But even when they’re dead wrong, what do you do? As a service-based business owner, I pride myself on delivering exceptional customer service, and I’ve learned how to create a strong client experience while also standing my ground. Here are my tips for how to walk that fine line as a service provider. 1. Don’t fall for an ambush In order to stand your ground, you need to be prepared....

But it’s 2020 and nothing goes as planned. If your vacation plans have changed — or been canceled — as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, you have my sympathy. This time of year typically sees many of us use an upcoming vacation as the prime motivator to stay engaged at work — so, what happens when that goes out of the window? Here’s how to stay focused and motivated at work if you’re not going anywhere this summer....

In fact, according to a survey by Upwork, 20% of current employees in the US — that’s 10 million people — are considering going freelance. The perks of working for yourself are obvious: you can choose your own hours (and clients), work from anywhere, and have unlimited freedom. But sometimes, the reality is a little bit different. Imposter syndrome, dry spells at work, shelling out for your own benefits, and juggling uncertain income streams can be daunting for some people....

This article was originally published by Built In. Complexity and uncertainty are not new to the workplace. Likewise, the tools for managing this environment may change, but the underlying conditions are as old as time. Our current challenges include an unstable economic situation, a surging pandemic, and an unpredictable government that offers more questions than answers. Despite the current chaos, the best company leaders and managers aren’t asking how to survive the contemporary state of affairs....

Five decades later and 50 miles downstate, over 12 hours this April and fuelled by Monster energy drinks in a spare bedroom in Princeton, New Jersey, Ji-Sung Kim wrote an algorithm to teach a computer to teach itself to play jazz. Kim, a 20-year-old Princeton sophomore, was in a rush – he had a quiz the next morning. The resulting neural network project, called deep jazz, trended on GitHub, generated a buzz of excitement and skepticism from the Hacker News commentariat, got 100,000 listens on SoundCloud, and was big in Japan....

This morning I spoke at an event for professional athletes. The subject was ‘innovation versus winning’ — and I was obviously invited to talk about innovation. Feeling a bit out of place as a person with only a passing interest in sports, I joked I wasn’t a professional athlete, but could still relate as an amateur bodybuilder. If you’ve seen what I look like, you know why I got big laughs on that joke....