All posts tagged: effort

Launching your first AI project with a grain of RICE: Weighing reach, impact, confidence and effort to create your roadmap

Launching your first AI project with a grain of RICE: Weighing reach, impact, confidence and effort to create your roadmap

Published by skeptic

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Businesses know they can’t ignore AI, but when it comes to building with it, the real question isn’t, What can AI do — it’s, What can it do reliably? And more importantly: Where do you start? This article introduces a framework to help businesses prioritize AI opportunities. Inspired by project management frameworks like the RICE scoring model for prioritization, it balances business value, time-to-market, scalability and risk to help you pick your first AI project. Where AI is succeeding today AI isn’t writing novels or running businesses just yet, but where it succeeds is still valuable. It augments human effort, not replaces it.  In coding, AI tools improve task completion speed by 55% and boost code quality by 82%. Across industries, AI automates repetitive tasks — emails, reports, data analysis—freeing people to focus on higher-value work. This impact doesn’t come easy. All AI problems are data problems. Many businesses struggle to get AI working reliably because …

Ryan Reynolds Buys Back Maximum Effort Marketing Firm, Merges Studio

Ryan Reynolds Buys Back Maximum Effort Marketing Firm, Merges Studio

Published by skeptic

Ryan Reynolds and George Dewey’s Maximum Effort businesses have been reunited. The Maximum Effort film and TV studio is re-merging with the brand marketing company that was previously sold to the advertising platform MNTN in 2021, a source familiar with the transaction tells The Hollywood Reporter. The deal will see MNTN and Maximum Effort continue to work together via a services agreement, and Reynolds will continue to work as chief creative officer for MNTN. “4 years ago when Maximum Effort Marketing became a part of MNTN, we along with MNTN always contemplated a day when our marketing arm would rejoin Maximum Effort Productions as an independent entity,” a spokesperson for Maximum Effort says. “The original agreements were drafted specifically with this in mind because it’s important for us to maintain our creative freedom. So while we’re structurally going forward as separate entities, the reality is MNTN and Maximum Effort have grown together and will continue our amazing creative partnership. We will remain in lock step with Ryan Reynolds maintaining his role as Chief Creative Officer …

Erewhon Survives Introduces New Smoothie for Wildfire Relief Effort

Erewhon Survives Introduces New Smoothie for Wildfire Relief Effort

Published by skeptic

Erewhon has survived the wildfires — and is offering a new smoothie as part of the relief effort. Proceeds from the “LA Strong” smoothie, which contains biodynamic cacao and reishi mushrooms, will be donated to aid organizations helping the communities of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires. All 10 locations of the luxury health food chain, which over the past decade has become an aspirational symbol of L.A. living, have emerged from the disaster unscathed. That includes the Pasadena location, five miles from devastated Altadena, and, miraculously, the Pacific Palisades location, which opened in 2019 in the Palisades Village. The shopping complex withstood the firestorm because its owner, billionaire developer Rick Caruso, hired private firefighters from Arizona to protect it. “We’re especially grateful that the Palisades location pulled through, thanks to Caruso,” says Alec Antochi, Erewhon’s vp of brand marketing. “At the moment, we’re temporarily closed until power is restored and we can safely return to the village.” Antoci says the rest of the locations are fully operational and “most of our employees are safe,” …

Workers Say They Were Tricked and Threatened as Part of Elon Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Effort

Workers Say They Were Tricked and Threatened as Part of Elon Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Effort

Published by skeptic

The video from inside the van shows a bumpy ride, with a cage separating the mostly Black door knockers from their driver. The driver also told the group of door knockers that he was in pain and had difficulty driving: “I just had surgery, bro,” the U-Haul driver says in another recording obtained by WIRED. “Like half of my foot is cut off.” “I’m scared,” the door knocker who spoke to WIRED replies on the recording. “And all [the manager] is concerned about is how many motherfuckin’ doors the bitch got,” the driver responds. The canvassers were then dropped off roughly 40 minutes apart from each other, relying on the mobile app to log their interactions at front doors. In a contract agreement reviewed by WIRED, door knockers were given specific “performance guidelines” along with a mandate to “keep the GPS function of their personal device turned on during all working hours.” Each knock at the door must be done in 15 seconds or less, and the contractors “must remain on a property for at …

Ukraine Plans Privatization Push to Help Fund War Effort

Ukraine Plans Privatization Push to Help Fund War Effort

Published by Sam

Towering over Kyiv for six decades, Hotel Ukraine has witnessed some pivotal moments in Ukraine’s recent history. Crowds gathered on the square in front of the 14-story hotel to celebrate the fall of the Soviet Union. Popular uprisings on what was later called Independence Square toppled Ukrainian leaders. Today, blue and yellow flags cover lawns near the hotel, serving as a reminder of the many lives lost in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Now, Hotel Ukraine is up for auction as part of an effort to sell off some large state assets to help fund the military and bolster an economy battered by a grueling war that has drained the country’s coffers. The starting price for Hotel Ukraine is $25 million. Beginning this summer, the government will auction some 20 state-owned companies, including Hotel Ukraine, a vast shopping mall in Kyiv, and several mining and chemical companies. The privatization push has two main goals: to raise money for a state budget that is short $5 billion this year for military spending, and to strengthen …

Le Monde’s Olympian effort to attract more English-language subscribers

Le Monde’s Olympian effort to attract more English-language subscribers

Published by skeptic

Le Monde’s English language edition French newspaper brand Le Monde is hoping to make the most of the Paris Olympics and US election this year to sign up more English-language subscribers. Le Monde in English launched two years ago, translating around half of its daily French output into English to appeal to a broader range of potential subscribers outside its home market. It is hoped that the Le Monde in English strategy will help the French title reach its target of one million subscribers by the end of 2025. Currently Le Monde, which made an operating profit of €9.7m (£8.3m) in 2023, down slightly from €10m in 2022, has 610,000 subscribers, of which 540,000 are digital-only. Subscriptions make up almost 50% of revenues, with advertising on 23% and the rest coming from newsstand sales and other revenue streams. Thanks for subscribing. Close Arnaud Aubron, head of development at Le Monde, told Press Gazette that Le Monde in English now makes up 10% of all new subscribers to the overall brand. Content from our partners Le …

US House rejects effort to remove Speaker Johnson from office

US House rejects effort to remove Speaker Johnson from office

Published by skeptic

washington —  Hard-line Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stunned colleagues Wednesday by calling for a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson. Lawmakers quickly rejected it. Greene pressed ahead with her long-shot effort despite pushback from Republicans at the highest levels tired of the political chaos. One of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress, Greene stood on the House floor and read a long list of what she called transgressions that Johnson had committed as speaker. Colleagues booed in protest. It was the second time in a matter of months that Republicans have tried to oust their own speaker, an unheard-of level of party turmoil with a move rarely seen in U.S. history. Greene of Georgia criticized Johnson’s leadership as “pathetic, weak and unacceptable.” Republican lawmakers filtered toward Johnson, giving him pats on the back and grasping his shoulder to assure him of their support. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise quickly moved to table the effort — essentially stopping it from going forward. The motion to table was swiftly approved. The Georgia Republican had vowed she would …

US House Quickly Defeats Greene’s Effort to Oust Speaker Johnson

US House Quickly Defeats Greene’s Effort to Oust Speaker Johnson

Published by skeptic

By David Morgan and Makini Brice WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday swiftly and overwhelmingly defeated an effort by firebrand Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene to remove Speaker Mike Johnson, a fellow Republican, from his leadership role. Democrats joined Republicans in a 359-43 vote to protect Johnson’s speakership, in a bid to avoid a replay of the chaos that occurred in October when Republicans ousted his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. Greene’s move represented a rare Republican defiance of presidential candidate Donald Trump, who in a social media post following the House vote on Wednesday, said it was “not the time” for Republicans to try to push out their own speaker. Greene’s measure, known as a motion to vacate, showcased the disorder that has marked Republicans’ slim 217-213 House majority, particularly since it had been clear that the effort would fail given Democrats’ opposition. “I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort,” Johnson, 52, said following the vote. “Hopefully this is the end of the character assassination that has …

With “Hind’s Hall” Macklemore finally delivers an allyship effort that isn’t embarrassing

With “Hind’s Hall” Macklemore finally delivers an allyship effort that isn’t embarrassing

Published by skeptic

Macklemore is corny. People have been saying that for years. His corniness worked when “Thrift Shop,” his megahit with Ryan Lewis, put them on the global map in 2012.  It was less acceptable when the duo strutted off with Grammys for best new artist, and best rap song, best rap performance for “Thrift Shop,” along with beating Drake, Jay-Z, the artist formerly known as Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar to take home best rap album for “The Heist.” Even Macklemore knew better, while also suspecting that letting the world know he agreed with most hip-hop fans that Lamar should have won might be worth something. He was right. It earned a headline-generating diss from Drake in Rolling Stone and made him the modern poster child for Black music appropriation.  That image was not ameliorated in 2016 with the release of the nearly nine-minute “White Privilege II,” an unlistenable corn-cob stab in the auditory canal doubling as a rumination on the Movement for Black Lives. The thing about corniness, though, is that it is in some respects …

Rescue effort continues as death toll in Brazil floods climbs to 78

Rescue effort continues as death toll in Brazil floods climbs to 78

Published by skeptic

Aerial view showing houses destroyed by floods in Roca Sales, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, on May 5, 2024. GUSTAVO GHISLENI / AFP Authorities in southern Brazil scrambled Sunday, May 5, to rescue people from raging floods and mudslides in what has become the region’s largest ever climate catastrophe, with at least 78 dead and 115,000 forced from their homes. Entire cities were underwater, with thousands of people cut off from the world by the floodwater, brought by days of torrential rains. In Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, residents stood on rooftops hoping to be rescued as others in canoes or small boats navigated streets that have become rivers. After what one climatologist called “a disastrous cocktail” of climate change and the El Nino effect, more than 3,000 soldiers, firefighters and other rescuers were trying to reach residents, who were in many cases trapped without basic supplies such as running water or electricity. Civil defense officials said at least 105 people were missing in the latest of a string …