The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now. 
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.

Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well.  I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for. 
Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website

Unity has the latest version of its engine for developing games and interactive experiences. Unity 6 has new workflows for creating online multiplayer games and more tools for projects intended for mobile platforms, including mobile web support for Android and iOS browsers. The engine promises improved performance, particularly in graphics rendering, and adds several features for creating more realistic environments via global lighting and other VFX. And it wouldn’t be a tech announcement without some AI component; the company has also released the latest version of its Sentis neural network inference library for using AI models within the Unity engine.

The company took a real hit to its public perception when it attempted to revise its last September. The proposed payment model would charge devs a fee whenever a player downloaded their creation. The move led to outcry among game developers, particularly the indie scene. After a and a , the company most of the changes it had announced. This September, the controversial fee was entirely.

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence powerhouse behind ChatGPT, has taken another step in its quest for ubiquity by releasing a Windows desktop application for its popular AI chatbot. The move, announced Thursday, follows the earlier launch of a macOS client and marks a significant push by OpenAI to embed its technology more deeply into users’ daily workflows.

The new Windows app, currently available in preview to ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise, Team, and Edu subscribers, allows users to access the AI assistant via a keyboard shortcut (Alt + Space) from anywhere on their PC. This seamless integration aims to boost productivity by making AI assistance readily available without the need to switch to a web browser.

OpenAI’s desktop strategy: More than just convenience

OpenAI’s strategy of platform expansion goes beyond mere convenience. By creating native applications for major operating systems, the company is positioning ChatGPT as an indispensable tool in both personal and professional environments. This move serves multiple purposes: it increases user engagement, facilitates more extensive data collection for model improvement, and creates a sticky ecosystem that could be challenging for competitors to displace.

The desktop app approach also reveals OpenAI’s ambition to become the de facto AI assistant for knowledge workers. By integrating ChatGPT more deeply into users’ workflows, OpenAI is not just improving accessibility but potentially reshaping how people interact with computers and process information.

Enterprise ambitions: ChatGPT as the new office suite?

The Windows release comes at a critical juncture for OpenAI, as the company faces increasing competition in the AI space and scrutiny over its rapid growth and influential position. Recent reports suggest that OpenAI is exploring partnerships beyond its well-known Microsoft alliance, including discussions with Oracle for AI data center infrastructure and pitches to the U.S. military and national security establishment.

OpenAI’s aggressive expansion into desktop environments signals a potential shift in the enterprise software landscape. The company appears to be positioning ChatGPT as a fundamental productivity tool for businesses, potentially disrupting traditional enterprise software providers. This move, coupled with the recent partnership expansion with Bain & Company to sell ChatGPT to businesses, suggests OpenAI is not content with being merely an AI research lab but is actively pursuing a dominant position in the commercial AI sector.

The implications of this strategy are huge. If successful, ChatGPT could become the new “operating system” for knowledge work, fundamentally changing how businesses operate and potentially displacing or absorbing functions currently served by separate software suites.

Balancing Act: Innovation, ethics, and commercialization

However, OpenAI’s rapid growth and increasing influence have not been without controversy. The company’s AI models have faced scrutiny over potential biases and the societal implications of widespread AI deployment. Additionally, OpenAI’s dual status as a capped-profit company with significant commercial interests has raised questions about its governance and long-term objectives.

As OpenAI continues to expand its reach, the company faces a delicate balancing act. It must navigate the tensions between its stated mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits humanity and its increasingly commercial focus. The Windows app release, while a seemingly straightforward product expansion, represents another step in OpenAI’s complex journey of shaping the future of AI in both consumer and enterprise contexts.

The success of this desktop strategy could cement OpenAI’s position as the leading AI company, but it also increases the urgency of addressing ethical concerns and potential monopolistic practices. As ChatGPT becomes more deeply integrated into daily work and life, the stakes for getting AI right — in terms of safety, fairness, and societal impact — have never been higher.

Byju Raveendran, the founder of the embattled edtech group Byju’s, acknowledged on Thursday afternoon that he made mistakes, mistimed the market, overestimated growth potential and that his startup, once valued at $22 billion, is now effectively worth “zero.”

Speaking to a group of journalists, Raveendran said the company’s aggressive acquisition of more than two dozen startups to expand into new markets proved fatal when financing dried up in 2022. Byju’s was planning to go public in early 2022 with several investment bankers giving the firm valuation as high as $50 billion, TechCrunch reported earlier.

He alleged that many of his more than 100 investors had urged him to pursue aggressive expansion into as many as 40 markets. But, he added, those very investors got cold feet when global markets tumbled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sending the venture capital market into a downward spiral.

Raveendran said many of his investors “ran away,” and the departure of three key backers – Prosus Ventures, Peak XV, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – from the company’s board last year made it impossible for the startup to raise additional funds.

Representatives of the aforementioned three firms as well as auditor Deloitte left the startup’s board last year, citing governance issues.

Byju’s has since entered insolvency proceedings, and Raveendran, who no longer controls the company, said: “It’s worth zero. What valuation are you talking about? It’s worth zero.”

Byju’s, once India’s most valuable startup, counts BlackRock, UBS, Lightspeed, QIA, Bond, Silver Lake, Sofina, Verlinvest, Tencent, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Owl Ventures, and World Bank’s IFC among its backers. It has raised more than $5 billion to date.

Raveendran said he remains hopeful that his startup will make a comeback. “I have nothing to lose. I came from a small village. I invested everything I had into the startup.”

Activision says it has “disabled a workaround to a detection system” in Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone that led to legitimate players getting banned by the Ricochet anti-cheat system. The company says the problem “impacted a small number of legitimate player accounts,” and all accounts affected were restored.

However, zebleer, who runs the Phantom Overlay store selling cheats, claims the problem is much bigger than Activision’s post makes it seem. In a detailed post on X, they write that when Ricochet scanned the memory of a player’s computer to find known cheat software, one of the signatures it scanned for was a plaintext string reading:

54 72 69 67 67 65 72 20 42 6f 74 (Trigger Bot)

As a result, zebleer says that “for quite some time,” it has been possible to get someone permanently banned simply by sending them a friend request with the phrase or posting a message like “Nice Trigger Bot dude!” in the game’s chat since it would then show up in their memory and get scanned by Ricochet.

Despite Activision saying a “small number” of legit accounts were affected, zebleer claims that “several thousand random COD players were banned by this exploit” before anyone started targeting big streamers.

Zebleer points to BobbyPoff, a Call of Duty streamer, as one of the people banned due to the person using the exploit since October 3rd before his account was suddenly unbanned yesterday. Like other players and streamers caught up in the bans, there had been intense speculation and discussion over whether or not BobbyPoff was a cheater, even as he maintained his innocence and some people posted jokey videos.

The Call of Duty Updates account says that the Ricochet team will share a blog post tomorrow, though the account didn’t specify if the post will discuss this exploit.

Activision didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

For those managing software development teams, balancing the need for cybersecurity with the pressure to deliver projects on time is no small task. There’s often a perception that security tasks will slow down the development process, introducing potential bottlenecks to release times. In fact, our recent research found that 61% of developers are concerned about security getting in the way of their workflow.

As with any project one of the most important aspects is aligning everyone towards the same goal which is, ultimately, safe and reliable applications. This means making the right choices when it comes to security so that their time is focussed on developing rather than fixing problems. After all, it’s far less disruptive and costly to deal with any software issues (including security ones) early on in the life cycle, rather than to have to rework an application, or pull it entirely to make fixes, once it’s running.