Toby Schmitz was the youngest attendee at Macstock X, so his perspective on how the conference and the accompanying Ecamm Creator Camp gave him the confidence and practical guidance to begin his own YouTube channel, podcast, and livestream. He reflects on learning from a wide variety of sessions, the influence of his family of creators, […]

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This time, the Road to Macstock takes us to Katie Fawkes, Director of Marketing and Doc Rock, Director of Strategic Partnerships for Ecamm, who talk about both their Creator Camp the day before Macstock, as well as their session during Macstock. They discuss how the hands-on event will help users of all experience levels build confidence with video production. They also cover Ecamm’s broader role beyond live streaming, practical uses for creators and businesses, the value of experimenting with gear, and why Macstock's welcoming community makes it a special gathering.

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The common belief throughout the marketing and advertising world is that generative AI can produce striking visuals, but it struggles to match the performance and brand discipline of skilled human designers. New research published in the journal Marketing Science challenges that assumption, finding that a carefully designed AI system can outperform visuals created by humans, and it can outperform designs created by another AI model that was optimized solely on the basis of aesthetics.

What happens when companies on digital labor platforms no longer decide for themselves how much to pay their workers, but leave this to learning algorithms? Researchers at TU Darmstadt, Bielefeld University and the Université Côte d'Azur have demonstrated in computer simulations that, where only a few firms compete with one another, such artificial intelligence (AI) systems can "learn" to set wages at a very low level without communicating with one another or having been programmed to collude.

In a new paper, researchers explain how EU battery regulations can help lay the groundwork for a widely shared evidentiary system for global sustainability governance.

Une équipe scientifique vient de dévoiler MatrAIx, une infrastructure open source capable de simuler 8,3 milliards d’individualités virtuelles. Cette modélisation est essentiellement tournée vers le business, car le jumeau numérique de la population mondiale promet de révolutionner le test de...

Consumers are increasingly choosing products from companies that demonstrate genuine environmental responsibility. While many studies have linked environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance with stronger financial results, exactly how environmental responsibility translates into higher profits has remained unclear. A new study suggests that sustainability improves corporate financial performance indirectly by increasing sales.

Millions of investors using the Robinhood app tend to favor simpler, easy-to-understand stocks, according to new research from Washington State University—and those stocks outperformed more complex firms during the study period.

Overall, star employees tend to create value in different ways as their careers progress. Early on, they create outsized value through their individual performance. Experienced stars, meanwhile, contribute by helping colleagues succeed, sharing expertise and developing future stars.

Earlier this summer, Amazon customers began noticing that emails related to their online orders looked sparse: Order confirmation emails didn't name specific items anymore, and instead listed only item categories.

"Your Beauty item is confirmed!" an email about my retainer cleaning tablets read. Shoppers have posted other iterations of the redacted emails as well: "Ordered: 1 Hardware item," "Your Drugstore, Shoes, and other items are here!" and "1 Nutrition & Wellness, 1 Wireless Accessories," for example. The emails have clip art-style illustrations of general product categories, and a shopper has to exit their email and go to Amazon to …

Read the full story at The Verge.

You know the feeling. Your account is suspended, your refund request is refused, or you're still being charged for a canceled subscription.

Joby Aviation announced it was acquiring Dayton, Ohio-based defense firm Resonant Sciences in a $500 million deal, in a bid by the electric aircraft company to expand further into the military industrial complex.

Joby says it expects to finance the deal with $450 million in cash and $50 million in equity. After the deal closes, which is expected in early 2027, Resonant will continue its existing work as Joby's dedicated defense division, the company said. The commercial division will remain focused on air taxis, the first of which are expected to launch later this year.

The deal is the latest example of the fledgling electric aviation in …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Researchers devised a way to extract “reasoning traces” from Claude, GPT, and Gemini. What they found, they say, indicates that some Chinese AI may be trained on leading US models.

Researchers devised a way to extract “reasoning traces” from Claude, GPT, and Gemini. What they found, they say, indicates that some Chinese AI may be trained on leading US models.

Recently, a man I was rock climbing with told me about how he'd used AI to make a motivational poster for himself, which he'd hung on his bedroom wall: a bear, walking a slackline over a canyon, holding a sign that said, "Do cool shit." I made what I hoped was a polite noise. What reaction was this man looking for? He probably hoped someone, maybe me, would say it was cool or inspiring. It seemed I was not the first person he'd told about this poster. "You know, it's funny," he said to me. "No one ever says anything about it."

I have been thinking about this now for several days. There's a sort of turducken of things that I find off-puttin …

Read the full story at The Verge.

As food insecurity persists across high-income countries, charitable organizations and food banks are playing an increasingly important role in helping households access food. A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Sheba Medical Center examines the scale and structure of one such system and raises questions about how philanthropic food aid should fit within national food security policy.

A new study by University of Mannheim researchers Gunther Glenk, Philip Holler and Stefan Reichelstein examines how the assessment of carbon emissions affects incentives for producing electrolytic hydrogen. They found that even stringent accounting rules generally provide sufficient investment incentives. However, they do not necessarily guarantee low-carbon hydrogen. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

In the last decade, scientists have shown that fusion energy can work as a physical process. Next question: Can it work economically? A study co-authored by MIT professors Dennis Whyte and Andrew W. Lo proposes a framework for understanding what's needed to make fusion energy commercially viable in the marketplace. The method considers the physical inputs needed to sustain controlled fusion energy production, as well as the cost of building power plants that can compete in energy markets.

Michael Kan:

US satellite internet provider Hughesnet has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after running low on cash and losing subscribers to Starlink.

Hughes Network Systems filed in a US bankruptcy court on Sunday, but the company notes it’ll continue serving its satellite internet customers during the restructuring period.

I used Hughesnet before DSL was available. The company was really annoying to deal with, and the dish was finicky, but the service was much better than using a dial-up modem.

Previously:

• Globalstar Takeover
• Starlink Mini
• US Broadband, OS, and Browser Stats

Do you manage your own investments, buying and selling stocks and obsessively checking the earnings reports of the companies in which you invest?