Diverse teams drive business success. Research shows they perform better, innovate faster, and adapt more effectively to market shifts. But how can organizations build truly diverse workplaces?
The answer starts at the foundation:recruitment and hiring, And Blind hiring is one of the most effective strategies?
In fact, financial services firm BGC Group ranks blind hiring as the top method for developing a diverse talent pipeline. This approach ensures candidates are assessed purely on their skills, qualifications, and potential—leading to stronger, more high-performing teams.
How Blind Hiring Works
At its core, blind hiring removes identifying details such as name, gender, age, and ethnicityfrom applications, preventing unconscious biases from influencing decisions. More advanced methods go further:
• Comprehensive skills assessments: At WAHVE, for example, we evaluate candidates based on job-relevant abilities rather than their educational background or past job titles.
• Blind interviews: Hiring managers assess candidates solely on their responses—without access to personal details—ensuring a fair, unbiased evaluation.
Why Blind Hiring Matters
By shifting the focus away from demographics and toward skills and experience, blind hiring naturally broadens the talent pool. It encourages applications from underrepresented groups, leading to more inclusive hiring practices and ultimately, a stronger workforce.
Another key advantage? A level playing field. Traditional hiring decisions are often influenced by factors unrelated to a candidate’s ability to perform. Blind hiring eliminates these biases, ensuring every applicant is judged on merit alone.
The Competitive Edge
In today’s interconnected and rapidly evolving market, companies that prioritize diversity gain a significant advantage—not just for their employees, but for their customers and communities. By reducing bias, blind hiring helps build diverse, high-performing teams—driving both innovation and success.
Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have become increasingly entrenched in our daily lives. However, a new study suggests that the American workforce seems largely uninterested in adopting AI en masse.
According to a Pew Research study released this week, around 80% of Americans don’t generally use AI at work, while those who do use AI seem unenthusiastic about its benefits. Moreover, fewer than one-third of those surveyed said they’re “excited” about using AI in future workplaces. Only 6% of workers say workplace AI use will lead to more job opportunities in the long run.
For this study, Pew surveyed 5,273 US adults — ranging from 18 to 65+ — who are employed either part-time or full-time and have one or more jobs but consider one of those to be their primary job. The participants were asked questions that explored “how workers see the use of AI in the workplace overall, as well as their own experience with AI in their jobs.”
The study explored how class, age, and education informed participants’ answers to questions concerning AI use and job opportunities. For example, when asked whether workers are more worried than hopeful about the future of AI use in the workplace, the respondents expressed that they are far more “worried” at 52% of respondents than “hopeful” or “excited” at 36% and 29%, respectively, according to Pew.
Knowledge workers in information and technology, banking, finance, accounting, real estate, and insurance are “among the most likely to say that the use of AI will lead to more job opportunities for them in the long run.”
Pew Research Center
Workers with lower and middle incomes are more likely than those with higher incomes to be pessimistic about AI use in the workplace and convey sentiments that AI will lead to fewer job opportunities for them. In contrast, upper-income workers are more likely to say workplace AI use won’t make much difference in their job opportunities.
Pew Research Center
While 51% of AI users surveyed have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to 39% of non-AI users within the non-AI users camp, “31% say at least some of their work can be done with AI.” Younger workers are also more likely to say they “feel overwhelmed” about how AI will be adopted in the workplace in the future.
Workers between 18 and 29 are most likely to use AI chatbots at work “at least a few times a month” to research, summarize, and edit content. However, few said these technologies “were very or extremely helpful” regarding increased productivity and higher-quality work.
Most workers (69%) do not use AI chatbots in their workplace. Among non-AI chatbot users, 36% said they have never used AI chatbots for work purposes because “there isn’t any use for them in their job.” Another 22% just said they’re not interested in using AI chatbots.
According to the Pew researchers, most workers — across all age and education groups — say that any workplace training they received was unrelated to AI use. Only a quarter (24%) said they received training pertaining to AI use.
The lack of effective and adequate AI training feeds into AI pessimism in the workplace, and this has much to do with company leaders’ lack of a clear vision regarding how AI can increase workplace productivity. “Employees are legitimately scared that the organization may justify laying them off by saying AI can do this job,” notes Hatim Rahman, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
College dropout Mae Borowski returns home to the crumbling former mining town of Possum Springs seeking to resume her aimless former life and reconnect with the friends she left behind. But things aren’t the same. Home seems different now and her friends have grown and changed. Leaves are falling and the wind is growing colder. Strange things are happening as the light fades. NIGHT IN THE WOODS is an adventure game focused on exploration, story, and character, featuring dozens of characters to meet and lots to do across a lush, vibrant world. After a successful Kickstarter it’s being made by Infinite Fall, a teamup of Alec Holowka (Aquaria), Scott Benson (Late Night Work Club), and Bethany Hockenberry. Paranormal Night Shift
Every feeling the characters here express feels so real, realer than any game I’ve ever played in my life. It’s the best book I have ever read, or movie I have ever watched. Sometimes it feels like looking at a slightly exaggerated, cartoonish version of my hometown. I sometimes feel lost, too. Sometimes I’m not sure if what I’m doing is right. And sometimes, I don’t know if I can handle life the way others seem to be able to… I just wish I could jump around on roofs and telephone wires, feed hungry rats, and play some terrible bass with my friends.
Features and System Requirements:
Play as Mae Borowski, a college dropout returning to her hometown, only to discover that things have changed in eerie and unexpected ways.
Engage in heartfelt and humorous conversations with a cast of unique, well-written characters, each with their own struggles and dreams.
Explore a beautifully hand-drawn world that captures the nostalgic feel of small-town life with stunning autumnal visuals and a moody soundtrack.
Screenshots
System Requirements
Minimum
OS *: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i5 Quad-Core
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Intel HD 4000
Storage: 8 GB available space
Support the game developers by purchasing the game on Steam
Installation Guide
Turn Off Your Antivirus Before Installing Any Game
1 :: Download Game 2 :: Extract Game 3 :: Launch The Game 4 :: Have Fun 🙂
Quality injection molding can only happen if you have accurate tooling (mold) to begin with. Although the design – of the mold – essentially follows the geometry of the product or its parts, fabricating the mold presents its own engineering challenges depending on complexity and materials, adding up to the total design cost.
Cad Crowd is one of the leading services in finding the best experts in tooling design, and we’ve collected all we know about its costs (depending on each project) into this one article.
You should know by now that, like all custom fabrication services, there’s no fixed engineering cost to build injection molds. The exact cost is always affected by a multitude of factors, including but not limited to size, details, complexity, materials, fabrication method, and the company you hire for the job. In general, a small mold for a simple part/design may cost anywhere from hundreds of dollars to a thousand, while an advanced build for intricate objects could cost you tens of thousands.
There are also all sorts of material options, such as stainless steel, aluminum, composites, and even plastic. Steel and aluminum are the most widely used options, as they’re known to have excellent heat distribution and dissipation properties, durability, and suitable hardness for detailed features (the ability to hold shape in high-precision corners). Hard steel is, by far, the most widely used material to build molds thanks to its ability to withstand large-volume production, whereas aluminum is both conductive and cost-effective. It’s worth mentioning that some types of modern hard aluminum (such as 2024 and 7075 alloys) are easily capable of producing 100,000 parts without any major maintenance. Some companies build hybrid molds made primarily of steel and aluminum inserts to get the best of both materials in one package.
A hard aluminum mold costs on average $3,000 for a custom yet basic electronic enclosure design or anything of similar complexity, whereas a machined steel type can go for $20,000 or more. A plastic mold, typically built using 3D-printed polymer, is the cheapest option at around $100 each.
Injection molding design services are not cheap. Apart from the engineers’ hourly rates, you also have to cover the cost of equipment usage, materials, and labor (fabricators). You don’t have to purchase an entire range of equipment just to build a couple of molds, but the fabricators can’t afford to let you use their machines (whether EDM, CNC machine, or 3D printer) for free. Well, technically, they’re using their own machines, but they do it on your behalf, so you take the bill at the end of the day.
Tooling/mold
Assuming the product parts have already been designed, it’d take around 2 – 4 weeks to build a simple mold and about 6 – 8 weeks to create a complex one. While a custom fabricator can probably take care of the design task for you, there’s nothing wrong with sending them an already-finished mold design, especially if you have the engineering team to do it in the first place. This is to reduce the turnaround time and, ultimately, cost. Furthermore, the engineers know what the final product should look like, so they’re more than qualified to design the mold for it as well. At the very least, send a CAD drawing or STL file to the fabricator to streamline the workflow.
Tooling is the main cost driver. Molds for injection molding are most commonly made using any of the following methods:
CNC machining: a high-precision subtractive fabrication technique and the obvious choice because most molds are made of metal, either steel or aluminum. A block of raw material is secured/mounted to a fixed position and then rotated against various cutting blades, drill bits, grinders, and so on. In some cases, depending on the mold design, the material sits still as the sharp instruments maneuver around it along at least two axes (X and Y). The more advanced machines can operate on several additional axes as well.
CNC machining can produce highly complex molds with intricate cavities and texturing details. The cost, excluding the materials, is around $80 per hour for a 3-axis machine and $200 per hour for the 5-axis type. CNC machines are industrial tools and should be operated by trained professionals only. The aforementioned cost already covers the labor.
EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining): in case the molds are too complex, even for a 5-axis CNC machine, EDM is the answer. As the name implies, the machine shapes or cuts through metal using powerful electrical sparks. Both the workpiece (material) and the tool have their electrodes, so they’ll generate electrical discharge when in proximity to each other. Every discharge slowly builds the workpiece into shape.
EDM is accurate to 1/10,000th of an inch (or about 10 times narrower than the average width of a human hair), and it hardly requires any post-processing. As long as you’re working on metals or any electrically conductive materials, EDM is one of the best tools for the job. A reputable EDM shop will charge you anywhere from $50 to $100 per hour.
3D printing: to say that you can 3D print a mold would be a bit of a stretch, but it’s not impossible. A 3D printer is, in essence, an additive rapid-prototyping tool that allows you to build just about every shape, simple or complex, using mainly plastic-based filaments with great accuracy. It’s most commonly used in the product development process to build early prototypes.
One thing to remember is that 3D-printed molds – since they’re made of plastic materials – won’t be suitable for large-volume production. If you intend to make a limited edition of a product in a very low production run, however, 3D printing starts to make sense. The cost for a 3D-printed mold would be around $200 or less for a simple design.
In terms of speed and budget, 3D printing services are the clear winner of the three. Once the STL (printable CAD file) is done, the fabrication process can start right away. Depending on the complexity, the printing process – using plastic filaments – should be done within a few hours. CNC machining and EDM take the throne for efficiency; they’re not as affordable as 3D printing, but they can shape hard metal that you can actually use for mass production.
A few more variables that are directly related to the cost of injection molding design include:
Part size: the mold has to accommodate the part to be molded. A larger mold requires more materials, so you need to consider the cost of steel, aluminum, or 3D printing filament. If you order two identically-designed molds, but they’re in different dimensions, the smaller mold will be cheaper than the larger one.
Part design: It goes without saying that the more intricate the mold design is, the more complex the engineering/fabrication process is. A mold design has two sides: the cosmetic (side A) forms the outer layer of the product, and Side B is where you’ll find the hidden support structures. Side A is often aesthetically-pleasing, whereas Side B might be (although not always) rougher, but it’s populated by all the essential parts. You can design the cosmetic side as polished or shiny as possible and texturize in any way you want, as long as the end result doesn’t affect features and functionality. Side B must be fabricated according to the specifications. The more complex they get, the more expensive the engineering and fabrication costs.
As if to reiterate, the intended production volume determines the fabrication method. Large-volume projects definitely called for hard steel or aluminum mold. This means you have to go with CNC machining or EDM; each is more expensive than 3D printing.
Design for manufacturing vs. 3D printed molds
When you plan for product development, you expect the engineering firm to do their job with a DFM (Design for Manufacturing) approach. DFM is an engineering practice in which a product is designed in such a way that it can be mass-produced in the most efficient way possible. Cost reduction is the main goal. Over the last decade, 3D printing has been touted as the revolutionary next-generation manufacturing method to build any imaginable product easily. This is probably true in small-volume production due to the accessibility of filaments and the decreasing price of desktop 3D printers.
Mass manufacturing is a different thing entirely. You’re talking about a product designed to be manufactured in the tens of thousands, if not more. Even the most sophisticated 3D printers today can’t handle such a load, at least not as quickly as the gold-old injection molding anyway. So long as your design is intended for mass-production, your engineering team probably won’t take “3D-printed molds” into account throughout the development process because it would be counter-productive.
Cad Crowd is here to help
Here at Cad Crowd, we connect you with experienced engineers and fabricators to help you design even the most complex products and intricate molds. Whether you intend to mass-manufacture the products or have a limited production run, we have everything covered at affordable cost.
MacKenzie Brown is the founder and CEO of Cad Crowd. With over 18 years of experience in launching and scaling platforms specializing in CAD services, product design, manufacturing, hardware, and software development, MacKenzie is a recognized authority in the engineering industry. Under his leadership, Cad Crowd serves esteemed clients like NASA, JPL, the U.S. Navy, and Fortune 500 companies, empowering innovators with access to high-quality design and engineering talent.
Game Freak held a Pokémon Presents livestream today and we finally got a . The new trailer for the follow-up to the reveals the massive Lumiose City, which first appeared in Pokémon X and Y all the way back in 2013. It’s a bustling metropolis filled with skyscrapers, and a far cry from the serene countryside of Arceus.
The trailer spotlighted the three starter Pokémon players will be able to choose from. They include the gen 2 starters Chikorita and Totodile and the gen 5 starter Tepig. We also got a better look at the gameplay elements, and they seem like something of a hybrid between the real-time capture mechanics of Arceus and the old-school turn-based gameplay of traditional Pokémon titles.
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Pokémon Legends: Z-A will also bring back Mega Evolutions, which turn regular pocket monsters into superpowered monstrosities with temporary stat boosts. This mechanic, just like Z-A’s location, was first introduced in Pokémon X and Y.
We have a bit longer to wait for this one. The game doesn’t come out until the end of the year. It’s also being released for the original Switch, despite the fact that the by that point. However, long-time readers may remember that the Switch 2 is backwards compatible, so it’ll run on both machines.
Game Freak also showed off a new game called Pokémon Champions, which is a cross-platform battle sim. Today’s Pokémon Presents livestream celebrated the 29th birthday of the franchise. Happy birthday, cute pets we force to live inside of tiny balls and fight to the death!
I am trying to create a dotnet template using dotnet new (for Visual Studio). It mostly works fine, apart from docker compose. I tried to include a docker compose project (.dcproj) just as everything else.
When using the dotnet new command, everything works fine, the solution file is generated correctly. But if i use the template within Visual Studio, the soltuion file gets changed – and the dcproj is just removed. I could not figure out any way to preserve the dcproj when working with visual studio – I also couldn’t find any other templates that are using docker compose in that way. Is this possible? Why is Visual Studio doing that?
Oura’s latest feature helps your ring recognize natural menstrual cycle changes for better, round-the-clock insights.
Your Readiness Score now factors in cycle-related shifts like heart rate, temperature, and HRV changes.
Oura is launching studies to dig deeper into women’s health and improve cycle tracking.
Oura today introduced a new feature for its smart rings designed to pick up on the natural changes that happen throughout a woman’s menstrual cycle. The goal is to give your ring a better read on your body around the clock.
Oura is making its Readiness Score even sharper by including menstrual cycle changes. With the “Readiness Score Algorithm Improvement” feature, Oura’s fan-favorite smart rings will account for things like higher heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate, and lower HRV during the luteal phase.
The company notes that 35% of users with cycles won’t see their Readiness Score dip during the luteal phase anymore, representing an 81% drop in cycle-related score changes.
Oura’s new cycle-tracking feature is part of its bigger push into women’s health, adding another tool to help you understand your body better.
In late 2024, Oura expanded its women’s health tracking with the Fertile Window feature in Cycle Insights, using your body’s data to pinpoint likely fertile days.
By blending Oura’s temperature tracking with heart rate, HRV, and breathing data, this feature zeroes in on your fertile days with more precision.
Alongside these updates, Oura is kicking off research initiatives to dig deeper into women’s health and find new ways to help users.
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Oura is teaming up with Scripps Research Digital Trials Center for a new pregnancy study. The aim is to analyze biometric data from the past three years to spot early warning signs for issues like postpartum depression and miscarriage. They’re recruiting 10,000 Oura Ring users who’ve been pregnant to make it happen.
Additionally, Oura and Stanford University School of Medicine are joining forces for the STIGMA (Study on Typically Ignored Groups of Menstruating Adults) study, focusing on underrepresented menstruating groups.
With up to 10,000 participants wearing Oura Rings, they’ll investigate how socioeconomic factors, reproductive disorders, and hormonal changes influence cycles. This research could help close gaps in menstrual health knowledge and address inequities, especially for women of color.
The Tobacco Road rivalry writes its next chapter when the No. 8 North Carolina Tar Heels (25-4) take on the No. 16 Duke Blue Devils (21-7). These two teams faced each other back in January, with Duke coming out on top in overtime. North Carolina holds a slight edge (56-53) over Duke in the all-time series.
2025 has been a good year for the Tar Heels. North Carolina is 12-2 in the new year and has won seven consecutive games. One of those wins came over NC State, who just knocked off Notre Dame. Meanwhile, the Duke Blue Devils have gotten sidetracked the past week, with two losses in three games. However, Duke heads into the North Carolina matchup having recently defeated Syracuse.
This rivalry is one of the best in the sport. Besides winning a national championship, winning the Tobacco Road matchup is probably the next best thing. Scroll below to see how to watch North Carolina versus Duke, including start time, channel, and streaming options. Check out our NCAA women’s basketball March to the Madness for more coverage.
How to watch North Carolina vs. Duke
Kara Lawson Media Availability (Feb. 25, 2025) | Duke Women’s Basketball
The rivalry game between North Carolina and Duke begins at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, February 27, 2025. Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium will be rocking on Thursday night. Watch the game on ESPN or stream on WatchESPN. Make sure to log in with a TV provider.
If you need an alternative to cable, sign up for , one of the best live streaming TV services. Sling has no annual contracts and a customizable channel lineup.
To watch the game on ESPN, sign up for Orange at $45 per month. The Blue plan is $51 per month, while a combined Orange and Blue is $66 per month. The first month of Sling TV is 50% off for new customers.
How to watch North Carolina vs. Duke from abroad with a VPN
Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends
If you’re looking for an extra layer of protection, use a VPN while browsing the internet. VPN will help block your online activity from hackers, especially when using a foreign or public connection. By using a VPN, you can use your connection and feel safe. One of the best VPNs is NordVPN. If you’re unsatisfied with NordVPN, request a 30-day money-back guarantee.
When your data is just too precious for this world, look to the moon for a safe space to store it. Yep, that big rock with very little atmosphere, pock-holed by craters, and a perpetual ‘bad side’. This is where Lonestar, a data center company, is eyeing up for hosting its next super-safe storage service. This isn’t just another wild idea, either. The company just teamed up with Phison and SpaceX to launched a payload on a Falcon 9 rocket that’s somewhere between Florida and the lunar surface as you read this.
The ‘Freedom Mission’ is intended to prove the technical know-how and capability to actually put some sort of storage on the moon. The reason? Well, there’s a lot of business jargon involved, but Phison says it’s something to do with providing an “additional layer of fortitude against natural disasters and unpredictable impacts to crucial data.” Though, if you ask me, the idea of the Earth being wiped out and only a hard drive full of client shipping data being all that’s left of humankind feels like proof enough that we ‘had it coming’.
The SSD in question is one of Phison’s Pascari enterprise-grade options, which has been tested to ensure it can withstand the slightly bumpy ride as it is launched faster than the speed of sound at the big rock in the sky. It’s expected to reach the surface by March 4-6—in one piece, ideally.
“Phison worked closely beside Lonestar to provide a Pascari enterprise-grade storage solution pressure-tested to withstand cosmic radiation, harsh temperature variation, vibrations and disturbances from lunar launches and landings,” the company says.
It’s a great bit of advertisement for Phison. Its competitors can say ‘Hey, we’ve built an SSD that can withstand a drop of 5 metres’ and in response it can say, ‘Our SSD has been to the bloody moon’, or probably something a bit more professional than that.
The SSD contains a “number of storage and edge processing customers” but no one is mentioned by name. We know what was on the previous Lonestar mission to the moon, though, and it shouldn’t be that surprising to you.
(Image credit: Lonestar)
This isn’t the first mission to prove data centers on moon is a go-er. Lonestar has previously launched the Independence Mission, which blasted the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights to the moon for a bit of a laugh. They did manage to transmit and receive data from this mission though, which is a pretty big step in the right direction.
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Lonestar’s goal is to offer “space-based data services” and includes (more jargon incoming) Recovery and Resiliency as a Service (RaaS) premium data backup services on the moon, which I have to admit is the most boring sounding reason to go to space I’ve ever heard. This was not what I thought the age of commercial space transportation would entail, but I should’ve known better after they filled the Earth’s orbit with what’s basically a fancy Wi-Fi extender.
I jest, this is very cool and very impressive. What’s even cooler is that the data center within the payload for the Freedom Mission is 3D-printed and designed to “reflect the silhouettes of NASA Astronauts Charlie Duke (Apollo Moonwalker) and Nicole Stott (Space Station Space Walker) in tribute to the Artemis campaign”. This little flourish is great—it shows there’s still plenty of romance and awe in corporate space missions, after all.
All of which attaches to Intuitive Machine’s NOVA C Lunar Lander, which is what it’s attached to in the image a bit further up.
Oh, and while the future of this mission hangs in the balance until March 4, the day when it’s supposed lands on the moon, Lonestar says it’s already sold all of the capacity for the next mission. No room for my Devil May Cry fanfiction then? Darn.
You can watch the rocket containing this mission blasting off from this SpaceX live stream below.
Watch live: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches IM-2 Moon mission from Kennedy Space Center – YouTube
You know what else was on this rocket? A payload from Nokia set to demonstrate 4G connectivity on the moon.
Yeah, it sounds like that might be the most boring space mission yet, but as it turns out it’s a pretty neat solution for the lunar surface. Altogether, pretty cool stuff.
