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Just this past weekend, social and gaming platform Roblox saw a peak of 30.6 million concurrently active players, the company announced Tuesday. One game in particularthe record-breaking viral gardening sim Grow a Gardendrew a peak of 21.6 million concurrent players. While previous blockbuster games from Fortnite to World of Warcraft primarily run on servers managed by their own developers and publishers, Roblox is distinctive in that its games and experiences are created by third-party developers. And those developers are free to update and tweak their game code at any timewith Roblox’s servers expected to manage the traffic load, even seamlessly updating the experience for players already logged in. “Most of us computer scientists were taught that you’d never publish your entire code in one go, and you do it when your traffic is low,” says Anupam Singh, senior vice president of engineering at Roblox. “In our case, it’s almost the opposite.” That’s because preannounced updates to big-name games naturally draw crowds of players, and no gamer wants to be stuck on an old version of the software in an era when screenshots rapidly circulate via group chat and social media. And since Roblox tries to avoid restricting how experienced creators run their games and when they can deploy them, game code, images, and other assets need to be sent quickly and simultaneously to Roblox’s content distribution network and edge servers as soon as they’re ready to go and certified to meet Roblox content standards. It’s one of several challenges that have led Roblox’s engineering team to develop a sophisticated system of capacity and resilience planning, rigorous testing, and on-call engineering staffing for weekends, when players flock to the platform in droves. The company has a network of 24 edge data centers around the world, handling much of the game experience. When players click a play button to launch a specific game, they’re connected to the most appropriate data center by an algorithm that can take into effect factors like which server their friends are playing on, their geographic location relative to the servers, and connection speed between the player’s device and each server. The system as a whole sometimes considers up to 4 billion combinations of players and servers per second, and the company has for years been optimizing the process with an ultimate goal of being able to handle 10 million players joining games in a period of just 10 seconds. After all, today’s internet users are no longer used to loading delays in launching new content, especially not the younger users who make up many of Roblox’s core audience. “We all remember the time when you just assumed that a little buffering is okay,” Singh says. “But there’s an entire generation of users who don’t think buffering happens on the internet.” Those edge servers, plus additional cloud computing capacity that can be spun up to meet weekend demand, are connected to a pair of core data centers that manage services like the Roblox website, content filtering and recommendation algorithms, as well as the game publishing system. The edge servers connect to those core servers via a global private network, with redundant bandwidth available in case it’s necessary. “I’ve learned in this job that cable being cut is a very regular occurrence,” Singh says. During those busy weekends, there’s a rotating schedule of on-call engineers ready to respond to any incidents. Even C-suite executives participate, Singh says, with on-call workers expected to have a Roblox-approved computer and a good internet connection during those shifts. When the unexpected occurs, an incident manager leads the response, able to command everyone (including executives); infrastructure like AI transcription is in place for any necessary calls. The company strives to avoid casting blame to get incidents resolved properly and quickly, with incident managers empowered to approve resources as necessary to get the job done. “The on-call has the ability to say, Okay, give them 2,000 more servers, if that’s what’s needed right now, Singh says. If a problem does pop up that limits capacity, the company has systems in place to gracefully scale services down, though it tries to avoid impacting players who are already engaged in a game, and won’t operate without some necessary features, like text content filtering. On Monday, engineers with responsibility for code relating to any weekend incidents meet to discuss what happened, and on Tuesday, the company begins capacity planning for the weekend ahead. It’s also when Roblox observes TACO Tuesday, an acronym for “test actual capacity on Tuesday,” meaning engineers run tests constraining the resources available to code to ensure it runs properly under high traffic. Starting this year, Roblox has also rolled out a “chaos-testing” system, which deliberately injects errors, capacity constraints, and process restarts into the system to make sure it functions under stress. Like Roblox game creators, engineers are also empowered to make updates to their code at any time, with hundreds of deployments possible during a weekday. And by Friday, the team is ready to roll out and test any needed extra cloud capacity based on demand projections for that weekend. Making weekly decisions about capacity is essential in a world where games can go viral in a short amount of time. “Every three or four weeks, there’s a new big hit, so we’ve changed our capacity planning to be weekly,” Singh says. “And honestly, we would love for it to go to almost daily, where if there’s a hit within a day, we should still be able to find capacity.”
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E-Commerce
Back in March, to mark International Womens Day, LOreal launched a short film called The Final Copy of Ilon Specht, a 18-minute profile of the advertising copywriter who coined the brands iconic tagline, Because Im Worth It. For the past 50 years, its been the global beauty giants own version of Just Do It. But this is far from the usual self-congratulatory brand hype video. Directed by Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot, the film spotlights the fights Specht had to win in order for her vision to come to life in 1971. Close to 80 years old during filming, Specht didnt pull any punches. She paints a picture of what advertising in that era looked like, both outwardly in the world, and internally as a business. In the ’70s, most of the advertising for womens products were from the perspective of men, or in service to men. This will make you pretty . . . for your man. This will clean the house better . . . for your husband and children. In the film, she describes male colleagues who were always arguing with her and taking credit when something worked. She recalled how during pitch and idea meetings for LOreal Preference hair color, male colleagues had suggested an idea that cast the woman as an object, rather than the subject. I was feeling angry. Im not interested in writing anything about looking good for men. Fuck em, says an elderly, and terminally ill, Specht in the film, before looking straight down the camera to the male camera operator. And fuck you, too. The film won the Grand Prix for the film category at the Cannes Lions of Creativity last week, and is currently streaming on TED, AMC+, and Prime Video. McCann global CEO Daryl Lee credits his colleague Charlotte Franceries, president of McCann Paris and the agencys lead on the LOreal business. The fact that we made this true story about one woman is because Charlotte said to me, we are all benefiting as McCann and as L’Oreal Paris from the power of one woman’s truth and no one knows her name, says Lee. What could have been The original ad for LOreal Preference hair color that first used the line, Because Im Worth It is a single shot of a woman walking towards the camera, explaining why she likes it, and how it makes her feel. @lorealparis Our original Preference ad from 1973. You know the line but do you know the story of the woman behind our iconic tagline? #LorealParis #iamworthit#OnRegardeQuoi #thefinalcopyofilonspecht son original – LOréal Paris – LOréal Paris In the doc, we find out that spot almost never happened. In fact, Specht went behind her bosses’ back to create the ad after her agency produced and the brand approved a spot with almost the exact same script, except it was a man speaking the words on behalf of his wife, walking silently beside him. Its clear that 50 years later it still made Specht angry. Angry enough to not want to talk about advertising or that campaign ever again. But director Ben Proudfoot convinced her to participate. To get Proudfoot involved, producer Brendan Gaul says the key was to give the director 100% creative control. Our intention was to create a film from the beginning, not a piece of advertising that looked like a film, says Gaul. And the distinction there actually is in the creative control. The distinction is also in how the film rolled out. Not as part of an ad campaign, but on the film festival circuit. After premiering at Tribeca X in June 2024, it earned Best Short Documentary at HollyShorts Film Festival, Best Short Documentary and the Best Atlantic Filmmaker Award at Lunenburg Film Festival, Best Documentary Short at the Chelsea Film Festival, and Best Short Film at Hot Springs Documentary Festival. Relevant past and present Franceries says that the entire doc process began as an exercise for LOreal to interrogate the relevance of its longtime tagline. That after 50 years or so, perhaps it was losing a bit of its meaning to people. We needed to keep it but had to give it a much stronger meaning, says Franceries. And the documentary is the most efficient piece of content weve done to convince people about the true meaning. Since its release, the film has attracted more than two billion impressions, and increased brand consideration for LOreal by 70% among viewers. Its a story of the past that does not sugarcoat the role both LOreal and McCann played as corporations and as work environments to contribute to the culture Specht was reacting against. Lee says thats important because it shows how relevant it is to constantly be checking for blindspots, both as a person and a company. And in an environment where more and more corporations are receding away from DEI commitments, the message of the film is as important as it was 50 years ago. The blind spot is always going to be inclusion,” says Lee. Business is now speed, seamlessness and scale, and you have to keep checking yourself to say, Okay, we could do this faster, but someone is not speaking up, or someone is not participating, and they could be the person who unlocks the truth here.’ Specht died in April 2024 at the age of 81. She never saw the finished film. Thankfully, her voice still lives on. “I’m not interested in advertising, I don’t give a shit, she says in the film. Its about humans; its not about advertising. It’s about caring for people because . . . we’re all worth it, or no one is worth it.
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E-Commerce
A Republican-sponsored proposal before Congress to mandate the sale of federal public lands received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states.A budget proposal from Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee would mandate the sale of more than 3,125 square miles (8,093 square kilometers) of federal lands to state or other entities. It was included recently in a draft provision of the GOP’s sweeping tax cut package.At a summit Monday of Western state governors, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the approach is problematic in New Mexico because of the close relationship residents have with those public lands.“I’m open” to the idea, said Lujan Grisham, a second-term Democratic governor and former congresswoman. “Except here.”“Our public lands, we have a very strong relationship with the openness, and they belong to all of us,” said Lujan Grisham, who was announcing written recommendations Monday on affordable housing strategies from the Western Governors’ Association. “And selling that to the private sector without a process, without putting New Mexicans first, is, for at least for me as a governor, going to be problematic.”Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum was among the leaders from several federal agencies who attended the meeting that runs through Tuesday. He has touted the many potential uses for public lands that include recreation, logging and oil and gas production, saying it could boost local economies.Several hundred protesters in downtown Santa Fe denounced efforts that might privatize federal public lands, chanting “not for sale” and carrying signs reading “This land belongs to you and me” and “keep our public land free for future generations.”Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon voiced qualified support for plans to tap federal land for development.“On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,” he said at a news conference outside the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. “There may be value there.”Lee has said federal land sales under his proposal would target “isolated parcels” that could be used for housing or infrastructure, and would not include national parks, national monuments or wilderness.Land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after its lawmakers objected.In some states, such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth. Morgan Lee, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
New analysis has found mobile phone users are being pinged with as many as 50 news alerts daily. Unsurprisingly, many are experiencing alert fatigue. The use of news alerts on phones has grown over the past decade. Weekly use in the U.S. has risen from 6% to 23% since 2014 and from 3% to 18% in the U.K., according to a report published this month by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The New York Times pushes out 10 news alerts per day on average, while BBC News averages 8.3 per day, according to a research tool used to monitor news alerts. Elsewhere, The Jerusalem Post and CNN Indonesia were among the top culprits, typically sending up to 50 alerts each day. Some news aggregator apps send even more. The use of apps such as Apple News and Google on mobile devices means some users receive multiple alerts about the same story. Overwhelmed by the constant updates, 43% of people who no longer get news alerts say they have actively disabled them as a result of the barrage of notifications. It is a tightrope that publishers have been walking, Nic Newman, the lead author of the report, told The Guardian. If they send too many, people uninstall the app, which is obviously a disaster. The classic problem is publishers know they shouldnt send too many individually. But collectively, there are always going to be some bad actors who are spoiling the party. Some users have switched off altogether. I turned off all my news apps and sites after Trump was elected, one U.S. respondent told the researchers. I have switched off notifications again because its emotionally distressing, explained another. Almost 80% of respondents noted that they currently do not receive any news alerts on their phone. Part of it is to do with news avoidance, according to Newman. Keeping up with the news can feel like a full-time job. Juggling work and other responsibilities, most people simply do not have the time or emotional capacity to stay up-to-date with every news story published throughout the day. It doesnt mean to say theyre not interested in news, Newman told The Guardian. They just dont want news all the time, 24 hours a day, coming at you like an express train. Right now, a bullet train is probably more accurate.
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E-Commerce
The startup Warp is best known for its modern, AI-empowered take on the terminalthe decades-old, text-based interface that’s invisible to most in a world of touchscreens and mice, but still beloved by programmers and system administrators. The terminal is probably most familiar to the public from movies and TV shows, where its stark black background and arcane command-line language have come to symbolize hacker prowess. Warp added features that make the terminal and its often-cryptic commands less intimidating and easier to use, such as AI-enhanced autocomplete and suggestions, along with a collaborative system called Warp Drive that lets coworkers share frequently used commands and best practices. Now, Warp is betting that a similar kind of interface will help developers command artificial intelligence, in a world where code is increasingly generated and deployed by typing prompts to AI rather than writing it directly. [Image: Courtesy of Warp] “We’re moving from a world where developers traditionally have done most of their work by hand to one where they’re doing their work by prompt with agents,” says Zach Lloyd, Warp’s founder and CEO. Traditionally, developers have worked in an integrated development environment (IDE), which combines tools for navigating files, specialized text editing tabs for writing code, and easy access to tools that compile human-readable code into something computers can run. They’ve also often used terminal software like Warpsor more basic versionsto deploy code to servers, start automated processes, and troubleshoot errors. Zack Lloyd [Photo: Courtesy of Warp] But today, coders increasingly perform these tasks by issuing prompts to AI agents, which can generate code, execute commands to deploy it, and even diagnose problems on their own. “Our thesis is that to support this new workflow, what is needed is a workbench that really is neither the IDE or the terminal,” Lloyd says. Thats why Warp is launching what it calls an agentic development environmenta new class of tool that emphasizes terminal-style panes or tabs for typing prompts to AI agents, along with controls to help supervise the AIs operations. These controls regulate when AI agents need human approval to make changes to code or restrict them from executing certain commandssuch as deleting fileswithout explicit permission. Power users can open multiple tabs to interact with various agents, powered by AI from labs like Anthropic and OpenAI, and can monitor and guide them as they worksimilar to how developers have always invoked command-line tools from the terminal. AI agents can also execute terminal commands themselves under user supervision, useful for everything from managing cloud computing servers to debugging error messages. An enhanced version of Warp Drive even allows users to share information with AI agents as well as with human coworkers. [Image: Courtesy of Warp] “We’ve made this investment even before LLMs of, how do you centralize the team’s knowledge,” says Lloyd. “And that’s super valuable for an agent to access as well.” Since AI is still far from infallible, users can easily edit AI-generated code changescalled diffs (short for differences, in developer jargon)before approving them, or re-prompt the AI to correct errors. Individual Warp users can choose whether to operate entirely via prompts, or to open more traditional panes to edit code line by line, review AI changes, or use the classic Warp terminal. [Image: Courtesy of Warp] Lloyd says that integrating all of these features into a single AI-centric environment gives Warp an edge over other AI development tools like Cursor and Windsurf, which focus primarily on writing code. And by building a complete development environmentincluding coding and terminal toolsWarp has an advantage over Anthropic’s Claude Code, which operates from within a terminal, he says. “We are one layer outside of that, so we can be the whole agentic development environment, which means that we can do things in terms of the user experience that they just simply can’t do,” Lloyd says. “We can have diffs editable, we can do system notifications, we can have a UX for managing agents across all your panes and tabs.” Warp, which already has more than 500,000 users, plans to keep pricing the same as it rolls out these new features, with plans starting at $15 and $40 per month, alongside a limited free version and custom pricing for enterprise editions. Lloyd says revenue is growin fastbetween 5% and 15% per week during 2025and hes optimistic that trend will continue as developers look for tools to efficiently steer and collaborate with AI coding agents. “It just is cool that that interface that we built for doing this with commands works extremely well for agents,” he says.
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E-Commerce
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