Jeff Cain

• PvP players have ruined my Arc Raiders experience — and that’s a design issue, not a community one. • There is no proper PvE-only onboarding. New players are dropped straight into aggressive PvP with no space to learn. • Extraction shooters are cognitively heavy. Compressing learning into PvP encounters leads to frustration, not retention. • What is interesting: Embark is experimenting with matchmaking as a design tool, including soft-separating overly aggressive players. • This isn’t new. Call of Duty: Warzone once grouped cheaters instead of banning them outright. Same logic. • The real innovation isn’t content. It’s using matchmaking to shape onboarding and player behavior. • That lever will be pulled more often in live-service games.

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When most people hear "solid-state," they think storage. But in Santa Clara, xMEMS Labs just gave that term new resonance, literally. The company just raised $21M in Series D funding led by Boardman Bay Capital Management, with Cloudview Capital, CDIB-TEN Capital, Harbinger Ventures, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, and other strategic investors tuning in. This isn't another round of capital, it's an #amplifier for a company turning silicon into a new language of #sound and #cooling for the AI era. Founded in 2018 by Joseph Jiang and Jemm Liang, xMEMS spun out of piezoelectric R&D at TSMC and turned what was once wafer-level theory into commercial hardware. Joseph Jiang, a veteran of Knowles, Fortemedia, and InvenSense, leads with precision and swagger, while Jemm Liang, who built Ultrachip from the ground up, drives the engineering with surgical focus. Co-Founder & CLO Wei-Fu Hsu, the former MediaTek exec and IP expert, ensures xMEMS' innovation is as protected as it is disruptive. Their play? A monolithic MEMS platform that transforms voltage into vibration, silicon into sound. Unlike legacy coil speakers and fans, xMEMS tech doesn't move parts, it moves markets. Over 500K MEMS speakers shipped in 1H'24, backed by >250 global patents. The Cypress & Sycamore lines redefine what "small" can do: 1mm-thin, full-range, and capable of sub-bass response once thought impossible in earbuds. Their XMC-2400 µCooling chip, 1mm-thin, fan-on-a-chip, inaudible, moves 39cc/sec of air at just 30mW. That's not cooling, that's choreography at a molecular level. Dr. Chester Hwang, named CTO on Oct 15, 2025, joins to push that curve further. Alongside veterans Mike Housholder (VP Marketing & Biz Dev), Jim Wargnier (VP N.A. & EU Sales), James Lee (VP & Korea GM), Steven P. Bentley (VP Sales), and Martin Lim (VP MEMS Tech), xMEMS is scaling at semiconductor speed. They're already in BleeqUp's AI sports glasses and teamed with Dongguan Rayking Electronics for TWS modules. When OEMs talk "next-gen," they're talking xMEMS-level integration. For investors like Boardman Bay's Will Graves, this isn't just sound engineering, it's signal intelligence. With AI pushing devices thinner, faster, and hotter, xMEMS' piezoMEMS platform sits at the intersection of #acoustics and #thermals, where every millimeter matters. Backing them is a bet that the next wave of #sensorytech won't just compute, it'll feel alive. So what's next? Scaling production, expanding capacity, and embedding xMEMS' silicon pulse into everything from earbuds to AI #datacenters. In a world chasing speed, silence, and fidelity, xMEMS isn't following the beat, they're building the frequency the future will hum to. #Startups #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #SeriesD #AI #Sound #SoundEngineering #Semiconductors #Data #DataDriven #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring If software engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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The cure for fear is curiosity and education. 💡 We are on the beautiful Chaminade University of Honolulu campus for the Hawaii international Film Festival Conference to discuss Generative AI in filmmaking and what it means for Hawaiʻi. My takeaway: If your team hasn't spent time making a short film or commercial with these AI tools, you're operating on secondhand knowledge. Stop leading from uncertainty! Challenge: Get curious, get learning.

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Two years ago idPair was the first company selected by GuardDog, Underdog’s responsible gaming innovation fund, with the intent of utilizing their technology to create meaningful partnerships that advance safer play. This 50-state rollout is proof of concept of that intent and further establishes that collaboration on safety and protection is critical for our entire industry. Technology and companies that are willing to lead can both further and simplify player protection. Very proud to play a role in this critical program. https://lnkd.in/eQ8gUEgE

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Fans don’t just want highlights anymore. They want connection. This week, UC Davis Athletics announced a partnership with FanWord, an AI-powered platform designed to help athletes tell their stories and build deeper fan relationships. Around the same time, World Athletics launched World Athletics+, a new fan experience that brings track & field stories closer to everyday supporters. These aren’t random moves. They’re signals of what’s coming. Sports are shifting from performance alone to performance + connection. From talent being seen to being understood. From fans watching from a distance to fans feeling part of the journey. That’s exactly what we’re building toward at Thravos, a platform that gives athletes the tools to own their story, grow their community, and turn connection into real opportunity. Because the future of sports won’t be driven by algorithms or contracts alone. It’ll be driven by relationships that feel personal, real, and shared. Athletes want to be seen. Fans want to belong. Tech is finally catching up to that truth. How do you think technology can make athlete stories more human? #SportsTech #FanEngagement #AthleteEconomy #Innovation #FounderLife

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Can technologies like Computer Vision, AI and RFID be used to improve the customer experience at a retail location? Quick answer is "of course"! But the question is how can it be done efficiently enough (getting leverage from your labor expenses) to reduce customer transaction time whilst enhancing the customer experience. At a high level, retailers who take a multi-signal capture approach to inventory management will be able to unlock the benefits of reducing transaction times and customer checkout interventions. The bigger goal is to remove customer friction, and make it easier for customers to buy by also reducing the cognitive load from multiple decisions. and maybe there should be an exchange between retailer and customer for the additional benefit. Interesting article in #CampusIDnews: "In an interview with CampusIDNews, Al Padilla, Cal Poly Pomona’s Senior Manager for Retail IT, explained these frictionless systems. He says the AI-driven checkout solution from Mashgin allows students to enter a store, grab items, and leave without physically scanning products or handing over a card. At Pomona, these stations have slashed checkout times from 90-seconds or more to just 12.5 seconds. This has virtually eliminated lines, and without lines students are less likely to pass the stores if time is tight." Any solution explored will have to take sku density, count and complexity among other factors into account. The bigger question is: Can this serve as a gateway into bringing customers into a retailer's ecosystem in order to serve then better? That can be the exchange! What an exciting time to be in the retail business! 🙏🏿 Would love your thoughts in the comments... As well as from Neil Saunders and Chase Binnie! https://lnkd.in/g8Q6vvv3

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Guild Wars Reforged hasn't just been a fun update for a classic MMO with more than 20 years of play. It's been a hit. "Compared to the weeks leading up to Reforged’s launch, we saw an over 16000% increase in overall unit sales and a 5x increase in concurrent players." - Guild Wars Reforged game director Stephen Clarke-Willson Great game play never dies. The teams at ArenaNet and partner 2weeks made it clear they weren't "remastering" or "remaking" Guild Wars, but wanted to make it more accessible to players, especially newer ones who are used to Steam and like SteamDeck. "We're not going to change the basic gameplay. Guild Wars is unique in the way it mixes skills and skill-building." - Clarke-Willson Part of that accessibility was also offering a real value to players. $20 for newcomers. Free for existing Guild Wars players. "One of the goals for Reforged was to simplify the onboarding experience for new players and reducing the number of potential different starting products to purchase was important to us. At the same time, we wanted to reward existing, loyal players who may not have had all the campaigns by unlocking them for free as part of the migration from Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall to just Reforged. This also made it easier for players to freely join their friends in the core content from other campaigns once they unlock the ability to travel there with their existing characters without needing to purchase another campaign." - Guild Wars Reforged Producer Mike Zadorojny All in all, it's been very fun to see players respond to this update! Thanks to David Jagneaux for this excellent Q&A. (Full link in the comments.)

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