Black Friday Sales Soar Because of AI

AI chatbots are one of the major reasons why Black Friday sales were so strong. This year’s weather was much colder than the previous and people were more inclined to be indoors to spend money in cyberspace rather in the stores.

The influence of AI is the real winner here and it shows this is what is going to help Artificial Intelligence gain a foothold in our homes. It’s not going to be physical AI at first like a M3GAN robot but one on the screen helping us make purchases.

Amazon Rufus is clear example of how powerful such a tool, AI is really. With the ability to type in your desires into a chatbot, dealing with incomplete search results is not on your mind. It is about creating a frictionless buying experience. The ability for Amazon Rufus to check prices and then it buy an item for you at the right price will help customers and businesses.

For businesses, it will be that the ability to manage a businesses’ supplies will be easier.

One will be able to get the supplies that one wants at the prices that they want in a timeframe which give them flexibility, giving their businesses more strength.

AI chatbots such as Spark on Walmart show that companies are also attempting to integrate it into the lives of consumers.

AI isn’t just about whether we can make photos or videos with it. What is more important to integrate into our daily lives and have been holistically react to our decisions that we make in meatspace.

This is an important approach which will keep the move towards AI system be sustainable.

How to stay safe shopping online this holiday season? Stay away from fake websites

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

Since I started shopping online, I have noticed that scams have been increasing more than before. There have been so many hackers attacking websites, stealing data, sending social engineering emails which trick you. There are so many threats to keep track of in this age; the average citizen has no clue as to what to focus their energy on to keep the money in their wallets.

The sliest trick: The Fake Website Email or Message

In the early days of the internet, most hackers tended to focus on the inexperience of the users. As users got more comfortable with using the internet, they became even more cunning, attempting to weaponize what they saw as their home in cyberspace.

The culture we have now in cyberspace is under attack from all sides. We have outages happening more often than even in the 1990s. These outages are occurring almost every month, affecting economies.

The hackers and scammers are damaging the economy to gain an advantage. You should be steely prepared for scams throughout the holiday season.

The most important scam you be aware of is this one: the fake website.

The fake website is very common scam that hackers use but it is probably one of the most insidious out there and I have even come close to falling for it, almost giving a hacker some of the money in my bank account here.

The main aspect you need to consider is to look at the address in the email or message sent to you here.

You must check the address carefully. If the address is saying that it is from the official site and has the “.com” in it, then it should be a legitimate email or message.

However, if the address looks really strange and not like an official address, you should not be clicking any links in the message. Generally speaking, the strangeness is that address has not form or structure in here.

You should also watch for the emails that aim to copy the style of the website. Some of the details are not authentic to the actual website.

Check your original website emails and then compare them to these emails. If they look sketchy, then they are.

With these steps, you will be able to stay safe this holiday season.

What Empire Earth has that Civilization VII still doesn’t have

Civilization VII right before Thanksgiving has only around 7.5 thousand players right now playing it on Steam.

I have already talked about how Civilization VII was a failure and the game is basically the dark ages of the Civilization franchise. The dark ages of course had brightness in it, such as in Charlemagne’s court. Civilization VII burned brightly at the beginning as so many games do and it fails to continue capturing people’s attention.

I watched with great interest at how Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Civilization VII would perform together as they were released close to one another.

They are different genres, but they are both historical games with have audiences that overlap.

It is a tale of two games. Both burn brightly upon release but they are not the same. Kingdom Come 2, in spite of there being a high skill ceiling for this game, managed to tell an interesting story in 15th Century Bohemia and give a narrative from many class perspectives.

Civilization VII simply seems like an entry in a franchise which is exhausted in energy.

The game should have been pc-centric not console centric as it seems that it was. The willingness to put the game in VR makes no sense for a series that has largely been on the PC. Its soul began on the PC, and the console versions were a necessary addition but the main part of the franchise’s energy.

Empire Earth has what a lot of what the gaming industry doesn’t have now. The energy and the soul which makes it special here.

The importance of a holistic integration of many gameplay and design elements into a video game is vital for keeping it going in the memories of gamers.