Video: Using deep learning to combat cheating in Counter-Strike
In this GDC 2018 talk Valve’s John McDonald discusses how the company has utilized deep learning machine learning techniques to combat cheating in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
According to McDonald’s practical rundown, deep learning has proven to be very effective at identifying cheating behavior without any client-side instrumentation, making it robust against malicious attack by cheaters and cheat vendors.
He revealed how, by retraining regularly, the network continues to evolve, picking up new cheating behaviors within hours of their appearance. As a result of this approach, certain types of cheats have been reduced by a factor of one hundred.
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-26-2020, 05:30 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Microsoft Store announces new approach to retail
Microsoft to continue to support customers online, with retail team members working remotely and at Microsoft corporate locations
REDMOND, Wash. — June 26, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) (“Microsoft”) today announced a strategic change in its retail operations, including closing Microsoft Store physical locations. The company’s retail team members will continue to serve customers from Microsoft corporate facilities and remotely providing sales, training, and support. Microsoft will continue to invest in its digital storefronts on Microsoft.com, and stores in Xbox and Windows, reaching more than 1.2 billion people every month in 190 markets. The company will also reimagine spaces that serve all customers, including operating Microsoft Experience Centers in London, NYC, Sydney, and Redmond campus locations. The closing of Microsoft Store physical locations will result in a pre-tax charge of approximately $450M, or $0.05 per share, to be recorded in the current quarter ending June 30, 2020. The charge includes primarily asset write-offs and impairments.
“Our sales have grown online as our product portfolio has evolved to largely digital offerings, and our talented team has proven success serving customers beyond any physical location,” said Microsoft Corporate Vice President David Porter. “We are grateful to our Microsoft Store customers and we look forward to continuing to serve them online and with our retail sales team at Microsoft corporate locations.”
Since the Microsoft Store locations closed in late March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the retail team has helped small businesses and education customers digitally transform; virtually trained hundreds of thousands of enterprise and education customers on remote work and learning software; and helped customers with support calls. The team supported communities by hosting more than 14,000 online workshops and summer camps and more than 3,000 virtual graduations.
“We deliberately built teams with unique backgrounds and skills that could serve customers from anywhere. The evolution of our workforce ensured we could continue to serve customers of all sizes when they needed us most, working remotely these last months,” said Porter. “Speaking over 120 languages, their diversity reflects the many communities we serve. Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this talent pool is stronger than ever.”
The retail team members will serve consumers, small-business, education, and enterprise customers, while building a pipeline of talent with transferable skills.
“The Microsoft Store team has long been celebrated at Microsoft and embodies our culture,” said Microsoft Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan. “The team has a proven track record of attracting, motivating, and developing diverse talent. This infusion of talent is invaluable for Microsoft and creates opportunities for thousands of people.”
With significant growth through its digital storefronts, including Microsoft.com, and stores on Xbox and Windows, the company will continue to invest in digital innovation across software and hardware. New services include 1:1 video chat support, online tutorial videos, and virtual workshops with more digital solutions to come.
“It is a new day for how Microsoft Store team members will serve all customers,” said Porter. “We are energized about the opportunity to innovate in how we engage with all customers, maximize our talent for greatest impact, and most importantly help our valued customers achieve more.”
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as:
intense competition in all of our markets that may lead to lower revenue or operating margins;
increasing focus on cloud-based services presenting execution and competitive risks;
significant investments in products and services that may not achieve expected returns;
acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances that may have an adverse effect on our business;
impairment of goodwill or amortizable intangible assets causing a significant charge to earnings;
cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities that could lead to reduced revenue, increased costs, liability claims, or harm to our reputation or competitive position;
disclosure and misuse of personal data that could cause liability and harm to our reputation;
the possibility that we may not be able to protect information stored in our products and services from use by others;
abuse of our advertising or social platforms that may harm our reputation or user engagement;
the development of the internet of things presenting security, privacy, and execution risks;
issues about the use of artificial intelligence in our offerings that may result in competitive harm, legal liability, or reputational harm;
excessive outages, data losses, and disruptions of our online services if we fail to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure;
quality or supply problems;
the possibility that we may fail to protect our source code;
legal changes, our evolving business model, piracy, and other factors may decrease the value of our intellectual property;
claims that Microsoft has infringed the intellectual property rights of others;
claims against us that may result in adverse outcomes in legal disputes;
government litigation and regulatory activity relating to competition rules that may limit how we design and market our products;
potential liability under trade protection, anti-corruption, and other laws resulting from our global operations;
laws and regulations relating to the handling of personal data that may impede the adoption of our services or result in increased costs, legal claims, fines, or reputational damage;
additional tax liabilities;
damage to our reputation or our brands that may harm our business and operating results;
exposure to increased economic and operational uncertainties from operating a global business, including the effects of foreign currency exchange;
uncertainties relating to our business with government customers;
adverse economic or market conditions that may harm our business;
catastrophic events or geo-political conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that may disrupt our business; and
the dependence of our business on our ability to attract and retain talented employees.
For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor.
The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com
For more information, financial analysts and investors only:
Michael Spencer, General Manager, Investor Relations, (425) 706-4400
Review: Pokémon Café Mix – Perfectly Pleasant Free-To-Play Puzzle Action
If you thought the only thing The Pokémon Company had in store for you this month was a new way to get frustrated while brushing your teeth, you’re sorely mistaken. Pokémon Café Mix is another free (well, free-to-play) title for Pokéfans to wet their whistle with, and this one’s an actual game rather than an app that forces you to ruthlessly scrub your wordhole until it gleams.
As soon as you hear the phrase ‘free-to-play puzzle game’ you’d be forgiven for immediately closing this tab, opening the window and screaming “noooooo” in your best James Earl Jones impression. Not so fast, though: this one’s been developed by Genius Sonority, who are no stranger to Pokémon puzzlers (such as Pokémon Battle Trozei and Pokémon Shuffle).
As the name suggests, Pokémon Café Mix puts you in charge of your own eatery. Starting with a fairly basic establishment, a skeleton staff (not literally) and an extremely limited menu, your job is to serve the Pokémon customers who visit by crafting a variety of dishes and beverages. Accompanying you on this ambitious business venture is Leah, a cheery bespectacled young lady who talks you through the basics and continues to help throughout.
Each time a Pokémon makes an order, it’s presented to you in the form of a puzzle stage that has to be cleared to successfully prepare the dish. These puzzles are packed with the faces of numerous Pokémon. The central mechanic revolves around using the touchscreen to choose one of these faces: you then have a limited time to drag it around the screen, touching as many other matching faces as you can to create a big chain. When you let go (or when the turn runs out), all the chained faces disappear.
Things are complicated a little with the addition of ‘gimmicks’, various food-based obstacles that get in your way and almost always have to be destroyed as part of a stage’s clear conditions. These start off fairly straightforward: sugar cubes and whipped cream swirls (the former is static, the latter moves around) can be cleared by matching a chain next to it three times, while tomatoes have to be guided into a basket to remove them. As you make your way through the initial 100 stages, though, more complex ones appear, such as the marshmallow jars that open and close after each turn and can only be cleared when they’re open.
There are 100 stages available at launch, and roughly every time you clear five of them (with a few exceptions) you unlock something. This is usually either a new dish, or a new addition to the cafe’s decor. The latter isn’t just cosmetic; they also bring new Pokémon to the cafe. Every time you clear a Pokémon’s order, you’ll earn a star. Collect enough for a specific Pokémon and it’ll be recruited as an employee at the cafe. Having a sizeable roster is useful, because there are different types of dish – sweets, small plates, drinks and so on – and each Pokémon specialises in one of these dishes, meaning their unique special moves are more suited to those particular puzzles.
If it’s starting to sound a little convoluted, it isn’t really; it’s actually fairly straightforward as far as free-to-play mobile games go. Speaking of which, you’re probably wondering how intrusive the free-to-play mechanics are. In terms of its ‘energy’ system, it isn’t quite as harsh as it is in some other mobile games, and acts more like a lives system than energy. Essentially, you have five hearts, and as long as you continue to clear stages they’ll never go down. Fail a stage, though, and you’ll lose a heart: each takes 30 minutes to replenish, so if you run out you’re talking two-and-a-half hours before you’ve got a full set again.
As for the inevitable microtransactions, the game has a shop where you can buy golden acorns; these are a multi-purpose currency used to buy power-ups, replenish your lives, give you extra turns when you fail a stage and the like. You don’t have to buy them; you’re given some as a reward every time you beat a level and there are a series of achievement-style challenges that pay out acorns if you clear them. Obviously, though, dropping some hard cash – bundles range from £0.99/$0.99 to £49.99/$49.99 – will let you spend acorns on the power-up assists and heart refills that will get you through the 100 levels quicker.
Once you manage this you unlock Master Cafe mode, where you get to build up your friendships with the Pokémon you’ve collected by taking on a series of harder puzzles and collecting more stars. The stars you get in this mode are then converted into Master Points, which… actually, we don’t know what they do yet. In a fortnight’s time (and every fortnight after that) some extra normal stages will be added, the Master Cafe mode will reset and you’ll bank your Master Points, at which point we’ll hopefully find out what they’re used for.
There’s another slightly concerning thing to note when it comes to the microtransactions: there’s an introductory deal where you can buy a ‘Special Pikachu Pack’ for £3.99/$3.99. This gives you a few thousand golden acorns, a couple of power-ups and a unique ‘Sweets Pikachu’, who’s dressed in a little blue ice cream shop outfit. The standard Pikachu is a login bonus after five days of play, but it appears that Sweets Pikachu may have different moves or be better suited to a different type of dish. If this ends up being the case (we won’t know until the game is five days old and standard Pikachu is unlocked), that instantly sets a worrying precedent of putting exclusive variant characters behind a paywall, forcing you to cough up the real cash if you want a complete set of Pokémon.
Mechanics aside, this is a generally pleasantly little game. The art style is lovely: the Pokémon designs are ruddy charming (especially when you recruit them and they get their uniforms) and the dishes you prepare are clever; the Fluffy Eevee Pancakes and Cheesy Rowley Pizza look particularly appetising. The main exception, though, is the pasta dish, which is apparently designed to look like a Yamper but it appears to be lying face down, as if it’s inviting you to tuck into its backside. We think we’ll just skip straight to dessert, thanks.
It’s worth noting, in case you weren’t already aware, that Pokémon Café Mix can only be played in handheld mode, as it requires the use of the touchscreen. If you’re the kind of person who only plays on the big-screen TV, you might begrudge having to actually remove your Switch from the dock.
Conclusion
A decent start. The microtransactions aren’t massively intrusive, the energy system isn’t too debilitating and the stages aren’t Candy Crush Saga-style efforts where it’ll take you 70 goes to get lucky enough to eventually clear them. These are all qualified by the word “yet”, though, and that’s the thing to bear in mind as this game evolves on a fortnightly basis. It’s yet to be established whether this is the sort of mobile game that lulls you in with a false sense of security and then, later down the line, hits you with ridiculously difficult stages that will almost certainly need power-ups to clear (we see you, Dr. Mario World). For now, though, we’re happy.
Keen – One Girl Army Brings Turn-Based Puzzle Adventure To Switch Next Week
If you love nothing more than dungeons and puzzle-adventure gameplay, you might want to keep an eye out for Keen – One Girl Army.
The game launched today on Steam and is coming to Switch next week, bringing “expansive” dungeons filled with enemies and puzzles along for the ride. You’ll come up against ghosts, zombies, and killer robots, slicing them up with your blade and unlocking abilities and gadgets like regeneration, explosives, and a telekinetic shield along the way.
In Keen – One Girl Army, Kim, a descendant of a long line of female warriors, must thwart an evil corporation’s expansion plans threatening not just her island village, but the entire world at large. Armed with the family weapon and strength from training sessions with Gramma, she will traverse many cute yet creepy locales en route to beat down the bad guys.
You’ll be able to play this one on Switch from 2nd July.
Liking what you see? Think you’ll give it a go? Tell us in the usual place.
Jurassic World 3 Brings Back Dodgson With A New Actor, Report Says
Jurassic World: Dominion is seemingly bringing back the character Lewis Dodgson from the original Jurassic Park. Collider reports that Dodgson is coming back, and he'll be played by character actor Campbell Scott.
Cameron Thor played Dodgson in the original movie. Dodgson is being recast following Thor's conviction of a sex crime.
Dodgson--who is an executive at InGen rival BioSyn--appeared in just one scene in the original Jurassic Park, where he met up with Wayne Knight's Dennis Nedry to give him a Barbasol can with a fake bottom where Nedry could hide the dinosaur embryos he stole. Nedry successfully steals the embryos but is killed by a dinosaur when he's attempting to deliver them, leaving the Barbasol can in the mud.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-26-2020, 10:57 AM - Forum: Python
- No Replies
The Most Pythonic Way to Check if Two Unordered Lists Are Identical
To check if two unordered lists x and y are identical, compare the converted sets with set(x) == set(y). However, this loses all information about duplicated elements. To consider duplicates, compare the sorted lists with sorted(x) == sorted(y). Due to the efficient merge-sort-like implementation of the sorted() function, this is quite fast for almost-sorted lists.
Problem: Given are two lists x and y. You want to return True if both lists contain the same elements, and otherwise False. A variant of this problem is to ignore duplicates (which makes this problem far simpler).
Examples:
x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
y = [1, 2, 3]
# compare(x, y) --> False x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
y = [1, 2, 3, 5, 4]
# compare(x, y) --> True x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
y = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
# compare(x, y) --> True
Let’s discuss the most Pythonic ways of solving this problem. Here’s a quick interactive code overview:
Exercise: Glance over all methods and run the code. What questions come to mind? Do you understand each method?
Read on to learn about each method in detail!
Method 1: Set Conversion
This method assumes that you ignore duplicates. So, the lists [1, 1, 1] and [1] are considered to be identical:
Converting the list to a set has linear runtime complexity. Comparing two sets for equality also has linear runtime complexity (due to the constant runtime complexity of set membership). So, overall, the runtime complexity of this method is linear in the number of elements in the larger list.
However, a set doesn’t contain any information about the number of times each element is represented. To consider this information, you’ll need a multiset data structure.
Method 2: Multiset with Collections Counter
In Python, there are some multiset packages that are capable of considering the number of times each element is represented in the original list. One of them is the collections.Counter class.
This method is also efficient and it hides implementation details which leads to a higher degree of decoupling in your Python application. However, you may not like that it requires to import another dependency.
Method 3: Sorting
Sorting a list in Python uses a highly efficient algorithm based on mergesort. This means that if the list is “almost” sorted, the sorting routine is very fast. Only in the absolute worst case, the computational complexity is O(n log n) to sort a list.
As soon as both lists are sorted, you can go on and use the element-wise comparison operator x==y to check identity of two ordered listsx and y.
Thanks for reading this article! If you want to learn something new every day, join my free Python email series for continuous improvement in Python and computer science.
To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?
Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!
Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?
Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe & XCOM 2 Collection Crackerjack Deals
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Day 4: A few select Paradox Deals
Awesome Summer days await you with the IndieGala Scratchy Summer Sale. Get huge discounts on your favorite games + a Scratch Card with a secret Steam game in it!
Hello, welcome to another year to one of the two most popular events on Steam, the Summer Sale! We have people on discord and the steam group alike who happen to be new to Steam and haven't experienced a Summer Sale event before. I'l be posting a summary of what the Summer Sale is, and everything that it contains.
Steam's servers are known to be crippling alcoholic drivers and it is a tradition that they will always spectacularly crash on day 1. So expect heavy traffic, long loading times and unresponsive pages, but you're probably already experiencing that. Things usually calm down a few hours later, at most on the next day. Surprisingly the servers are working a bit better this time around.
Introduction
Much like Ireland's Great Potato Famine of 1845-1849, a mass starvation will ensue to people's wallets once the blight of discounts will start infecting them throughout the event. Every year Steam has a couple of discount events, however the most notable ones are the Summer Sale and the Winter Sale.
Despite being Steam's biggest discount events of the year, many 3rd party sites can occasionally have even better discounts. Sites such as:
And many more. There are of course grey market sites such as G2A and Kinguin, which can have games incredibly cheap, but keys are not always guaranteed to work due to the exploitative nature of the market and the occasional fraudulent purchases associated with it.
To check the discount history of a game, visit https://isthereanydeal.com/ and search any game of your interest and check their history of discounts, many happening on various sites outside of steam.
Augmented Steam[chrome.google.com] is a Google Chrome extension (also on Firefox[addons.mozilla.org]) that includes many useful information to the steam store, including the display of price history on any game that you visit their respective store page:
With that in mind, you will inevitably encounter "The steam sale isn't what it used to be", "Pretty underwhelming sale tbh" type of comments, and they are right to a degree. Steam used to have Flash Sales that lasted 24 hours most of the time, having discounted games be discounted even further. Very easy to miss if you had the wrong timezone. That was back in 2016 or so, however since then Valve has removed Flash Sales, and every Summer/Winter Sale these past years have remained with fixed discounts throughout the entire event, never changing its price. They are still the two best events of the year to grab cheap games.
If you spend 30€, you will receive a 5€ discount. This will only happen on your first 30€ purchase during this sale. Only available for personal purchases, you will not receive the 5€ discount on gift purchases.
Summer Sale Trading Cards
Commence your army of tens/hundreds (or more) of farming bot accounts and let's all shamelessly exploit the system once again for some free money or to level up our accounts, cause the Summer Sale have reintroduced their event exclusive trading cards. They were removed in 2019's Summer Sale, however it seems they have added them back this year. Any Mysterious Cards you have accumulated these past days, have all been transformed into Summer Sale cards.
There are 10 Summer Cards that you need for a badge:
You can get 1 of them per day by using the Explore feature and earning 1 for each time you finish a discovery queue https://store.steampowered.com/explore where it used to be 3 per day, however due to exploitative reasons of farming, Valve reduced them to 1 card per day. You also get a free sticker every day on top of the cards.
You can also get these cards by:
Trading with friends.
Drops from purchasing on the Steam Store. (Approximately 1 card every $10 spent on the Store)
Crafting badges from other games. 1 badge crafted will give you 1 summer sale card.
There will be many 1:1 card exchange bots throughout this sale, trade any duplicate you have with them, or with your friends.
Points
This event has a point based system on your purchases on steam. Some of you might've already started with a number of points. They are given by the times you have purchased games since the Lunar sale.
Here is the store on what you can buy with your points. Things include like backgrounds, chat emoticons, animated stickers, animated profiles, golden profiles and such https://store.steampowered.com/points/shop
As a rough estimate, you get 100 points for every 1$ you spend on the Steam Store. Keep in mind, all items bought from the shop are untradable and unmarketable.
Additionally, you can go on any reviews, mods or other content people made, and award them. You spend 300 points giving them an award, and they get 100 points for being awarded.
If you give them an award, you get a badge and 10 xp per award, meaning 300 points = 10xp. The person getting awarded also gets 10xp and another badge for BEING awarded by people. I can already sense the alt account exploitation.
So basically: Awarding people gets you 10xp per 300 points you spend to award. Being awarded gets you 10xp and you earn 100 points.
NOTE: You might NOT get 10x per award every time. If you get to a certain high level, it might eventually reduce the XP you get per award. Still need to confirm it.
You can also spend 1,000 points directly on another badge here and leveling it up for every 1,000 additional points you spend https://store.steampowered.com/points/shop/c/steambadge giving you 100xp every time you level it up.
So there are a total of 4 badges as far as i know. 1 badge for accumulating 10 cards to craft it, 1 badge to buy it for 1k points on the store, and 2 badges for awarding and being awarded respectively.
The event started today on June 25th and it will end on July 9th. The point shop will last the entire year, not just the summer sale.
Summary
That was quite the wall of text, so let's summarize the most important points for people who don't want to read as much:
Crafting badges grants you a summer sale card. You can get 1 free card and 1 free sticker per day on the exploration queue
Accumulate 10 summer sale cards for 1 badge. The Summer Sale badge itself also gives a summer sale card upon crafting it alongside a free sticker. Currently not everyone got their cards dropped. Day 1 is always filled with bugs, so best to wait it out.
A shop where you can spend your points, which will last throughout the year and the items will be permanent without an expiration date (excluding the golden profile, which only lasts for 30 days)
You can spend another 1,000 points for a badge, giving you 100xp. Spending 1,000 again will level it up, giving you another 100xp.
100 points can be earned for every 1$ you spend, you might already have some points from past purchases. You can spend 300 of those points by awarding people's contents, such as reviews, workshop mods, screenshots and such, earning you a badge[i.imgur.com] upon giving the first award, with 10xp for every award you give. People who receive awards get a different badge[i.imgur.com] and 10xp, alongside 100 points. You might not get the same 10xp as you level it up to high amounts, and it might reduce the amount of XP you get per award.
If you spend 30$ (in one single purchase), you get a 5$ discount. Can only be done once, and it won't stack if you spend more.
All prices will remain the same throughout the entire sale.
Be sure to consult 3rd party stores for steam keys, as Steam itself might not always have the cheapest prices.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-26-2020, 10:56 AM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
New to Microsoft 365: Improve collaboration, work fluidly across apps
This month, as communities around the world move from “remote everything” to a more hybrid model of work and life, I’m excited to let you know that many capabilities from past announcements are reaching public preview or general availability. We can’t wait to get these, as well as some new updates, into your hands as we swiftly release new tools to further enable remote and hybrid work.
A couple of highlights: We’re releasing some much-requested features in Microsoft Teams for our education community. These include expanding the Teams grid view to 7×7 (more on that below). Also, Microsoft Graph Connectors are now available to help you connect disparate systems and make content more accessible. Some of your favorite app improvements are also now available on more platforms—including Presenter Coach on Android and Polls in Outlook for all devices. And finally, new privacy settings in Edge and Microsoft Search provide IT with the flexibility to help you meet compliance requirements without impacting productivity.
Expand your view of participants and more with Microsoft Teams
See more faces and break out in groups during meetings—This month, we announced new features for Microsoft Teams to help you create a more engaging, connected, and collaborative meeting experience. Coming to preview soon, we are expanding the Teams grid view to 7×7, which will accommodate up to 49 participants at once on a single screen. And coming this fall, Breakout Rooms will allow meeting organizers to split meeting participants into small groups to enable ideation, brainstorming, learning, and discussions.
Create recurrent surveys in Teams—We’ve heard from many of our customers that they’d like an easier way to manage routine surveys in their Teams channels—including sending “pulse surveys” to employees on a regular basis. We’ve listened to this feedback and today we’re releasing new workflows for common scenarios like employee sentiment, employee issues and challenges, and employee health status. These new workflows include templates and the ability for users to choose frequency and set reminders for each Teams channel, making these surveys easy to get started and manage going forward. To get started, click Create a workflow to automatically collect response in the Forms tab and select Scenarios.
Keep the focus on you during video meetings—This month, we released new custom background effects in Teams, one of our most requested features. Now, you can customize your background by uploading one of your own images or choosing one from the collections of backgrounds available online. This feature is available to all users.
Keep up with your work and personal life in one place—In March, we announced several new features coming to Teams to help you connect, stay organized, and collaborate with family and friends. Managing responsibilities across work and life can be challenging, with many of us relying on multiple apps and standalone tools to stay on top of it all. You can now create groups to plan trips with friends, connect in group chats or video calls, collaborate over shared to-do lists, coordinate schedules, and more—all in one place. We’re excited to announce these features are now rolling out to Microsoft Teams mobile app users in preview.
Microsoft Teams
The power to organize and connect with family and friends, all in one app.
New updates to Microsoft 365 make it easier than ever to find the information you’re looking for.
Make more data searchable with connectors—Microsoft Search indexes all your Microsoft 365 data to make it searchable for users. With Microsoft Graph connectors, your organization can index third-party data hosted on-premises or in public and private clouds, so they appear in your Microsoft Search results. We’re delighted to announce that customers in Targeted Release can now begin deploying Microsoft Graph connectors. To get started, select the Connectors tab on your Microsoft 365 admin center > Settings > Microsoft Search page (must be an admin and signing in from your tenant).
Find answers with natural language queries across apps—It’s no secret that asking simple, everyday language questions is easier than adapting your query to the “language” spoken by a given app, search engine, or other user-interface. We’ve been hard at work innovating in natural language across Microsoft 365 apps and services. We’re excited to share several new experiences that demonstrate our progress. In Microsoft Word, you can ask questions related to the document and get answers based on the contents of the document. In Outlook, short responses are suggested based on the context of the message. Next, Excel users can now perform an analysis by asking plain language questions. Finally, SharePoint users can now see an “At a glance” summary of a document’s content. All are now generally available.
Create and share content more easily
This month we announced new features across your favorite Microsoft 365 apps.
Hone your public speaking skills with PowerPoint Presenter Coach for Android Mobile—Last fall, we announced Presenter Coach in PowerPoint for the web. Today, we are excited to announce that it’s now generally available on your Android device—in both the PowerPoint app and in the new Office mobile app. Presenter Coach uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide on-screen guidance on your pacing, use of inclusive language or profanity, and use of filler words and culturally insensitive phrases. To get started, simply open any presentation in your PowerPoint stand-alone app or Office Mobile app, tap on the more options menu (three dots), tap rehearse with coach, and tap start rehearsing when ready.
Additionally, PowerPoint Live for PowerPoint for the web is now generally available. This new feature helps presenters deliver a more personalized presentation experience to each audience member, enabling viewers to connect from their device and move through slides at their own pace, provide instant feedback with live reactions, and enable live subtitles in their preferred language.
Experience the redesigned Yammer and other new capabilities—The new Yammer experience, built on our Fluid UI, is now in public preview. We’ve also added several new “All Company” community experiences based on customer feedback during private preview. Now, admins can change the name and cover photo to reflect their organization’s branding. And to help keep the group focused on corporate communications, you can now restrict who can post, to prevent users from adding unrelated posts. Finally, you can host live events and announce questions, polls, and praise with notifications to the entire “All Company” community—making it easier to share corporate updates, safety news, and other critical messages. Microsoft 365 Global Admins can configure access to the new Yammer preview through the Yammer admin portal by enabling the preview toggle.
Easily create polls, collect votes, and view results within an email—Polls are a way to quickly get a consensus from groups, but managing add-ons or including links to outside platforms can reduce response rates and effectiveness. Fortunately, Outlook users will soon be able to create a poll within Outlook without the need to find and install an add-in. Outlook on the web and Mac users will see this feature generally available this month, with Outlook for the Windows desktop app coming next month.
Create Visio diagrams in Excel with ease—This month, we’re announcing three new features to enhance the Visio Data Visualizer add-in experience. First, you can now access category-specific templates for basic and cross-functional flowcharts, plus organization charts directly in Excel. Next, single sign-on (SSO) integration allows users already signed into Excel to avoid a secondary sign-on to access the add-in. Finally, we added localization support that allows users to create diagrams in all of the languages already supported by Visio. These features will be enabled by the end of June.
Build database diagrams more easily and save diagrams as images in Visio for the web—This month, we’re announcing two new capabilities in Visio for the web. First, you can now design your database diagrams in Visio for the web. And to help get started more easily, we’ve provided a few starter diagrams to represent different scenarios for both Crow’s foot and Chen’s notation. To get started, visit visio.office.com, select the preferred diagram template, and start modeling your systems or databases.
Also, we’ve added the ability to save diagrams as an image file in Visio for the web. The Download as Image feature enables users to save time and easily customize the export of their Visio diagrams as image files for easy sharing with everyone—including those without a Visio license or subscription.
Stay secure and manage privacy
We’re committed to making Microsoft 365 a secure, end-to-end productivity solution. To meet that, we continuously add new built-in capabilities that help you improve your security posture, deliver more control over privacy, and automate routine tasks. This month, we’ve added new capabilities to help IT admins more effectively secure their organizations against malicious documents and manage privacy settings in Edge and the Microsoft Graph.
Verify documents are safe before they’re opened—Although opening documents in Protected View helps minimize risk from documents originating outside the organization, users often exit this protected sandbox to save time. We’re excited to announce that Safe Documents, which automatically checks against known risks and threat profiles before allowing documents to open, is now generally available. This built-in feature helps secure your organization against malicious content while delivering a more seamless, productive experience for end users. Safe Documents is now available worldwide to all customers with Microsoft 365 E5 and E5 Security.
Manage the types of data that sync for Edge users—Sync capabilities in Microsoft Edge allow users to sign in and get quick access to their personal data when using multiple devices or shared devices. However, some organizations might need to limit syncing of specific data—such as passwords—to meet compliance or company policy requirements. A new policy in Microsoft Edge allows IT professionals to precisely manage the types of data that sync for users—such as favorites, settings, addresses, extensions, and more. Check out our documentation on how to implement a policy to exclude data during sync.
Fine-tune your privacy settings for the Microsoft Graph—As the amount of data being generated in Microsoft 365 continues to grow, we’re continuing to invest in privacy controls that put you in control of your data. We’re pleased to announce a set of robust new privacy settings that provide the ability to configure the generation and visibility of Graph-derived insights, between users and other items in the Graph (such as documents or sites). These new settings will enable organizations to disable item insights for all users or just a subset of users. These new privacy capabilities will be available to everyone this summer.
Manage Microsoft 365 Groups more efficiently—We’ve released several updates to help streamline the management of Microsoft 365 Groups. First, we have enhanced the team creation experience with an updated user interface and improved error messages. Group information, including the Group ID, name, alias, and description, can now be exported as a .csv file using filtered properties or search results. Also, email addresses for a Microsoft 365 Group can now be edited, enabling group names to continue to evolve as needs change. Finally, you can now restore a deleted group directly from the Deleted Groups page. Visit the Microsoft 365 admin center to check out the new Groups management capabilities.
Also new this month
Forms for Excel is now generally available, making it simple and easy to collect info from users in the same organization. New features include metrics such as response time, responder name, images, videos, themes, and branching logic.
We also introduced Money in Excel, a dynamic, smart template and add-in for Excel that allows you to securely connect your bank, credit card, investment, and loan accounts to Excel and automatically import your transaction and account information into an Excel spreadsheet.
FastTrack has updated and improved the guides in the Microsoft 365 admin center to help customers save time on their configuration and deployment tasks. We’ve also released a new Remote Work Setup guide to help reduce the strain on your VPN infrastructure and optionally set up remote access for desktops and apps. Check out the new setup guidance page to get started.
All of the features and releases above reflect our commitment to building tools and experiences that enable our customers to be productive and secure while working and learning from anywhere. We will continue to listen and work towards releasing new experiences that meet your needs as situations continue to evolve.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 06-26-2020, 10:54 AM - Forum: Lounge
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NBA 2K20 Adds Upcoming Rookies Prior To 2020 NBA Draft
NBA 2K20 is getting players from the NBA 2020 draft class far earlier than normal. Players from the 2020 draft, like LaMelo Ball and Onyeka Okongwu, are coming to the MyTeam mode as part of the Next collection of card packs and boxes.
Normally, NBA rookies wouldn't be available until the next game in the series is released after the draft, which in this case would be NBA 2K21. The NBA 2020 draft is currently scheduled to take place on October 16 after being delayed from June due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
NBA 2K20's New 2020-21 Rookies
LaMelo Ball
James Wiseman
Anthony Edwards
R.J. Hampton
Cole Anthony
Onyeka Okongwu
The collection is available through July 3 and players can earn a Galaxy Opal Zion Williamson card for completing the collection. Williamson was the number one draft pick in 2019. NBA 2K also announced that it would be announcing three NBA 2K21 cover athletes on TikTok next week.
