Angels are cool. There’s something about their combat prowess and sheer Paladin-energy that brings the heat to any table. They’re also one of the most popular decks to build for Commander, whether in mono-white, Boros, Selesnya, or even three-plus color variants. Here we share 10 of the more underplayed Angels that you should take a second look at… and why.

10 UNDERRATED ANGELS WE THINK ARE COOL

While Angels have many powerful entries, from Commanders like Aurelia and Giada, to Karmic Guide and Serra Paragon’s recursion value, there are plenty that don’t see nearly as much play. Older Angels have some niche and interesting abilities that can really turn the tide in the right deck. Here’s our list – be sure to let us know your underrated picks after reading. 

10. SERRA AVENGER

It’s safe to say that Serra Avenger is pretty iconic. From the Scott M. Fischer art to the time it enjoyed competitive Standard play, people have tried jamming it in their decks. It’s even seen some play in Legacy Death & Taxes in the past year.

We’re here to talk Commander though, and I’m here to tell you that it deserves to be in way more Giada decks than scraping 20%. This is a two mana play, meaning you have mana open to do other things. In any deck like Giada where you can buff your creatures, it’s a no-brainer to run Serra Avenger. This could be a two mana 8/8 with Flying and Vigilance, very easily. 

9. SIGARDIAN SAVIOR

Games of Commander can be quite quick these days. So, while the utility of something like Karmic Guide might be attractive to you in a Reanimator deck or a flicker deck, the fact it eventually leaves play due to Echo means it can be less impactful than you’d hope. 

If you’re in a low to the ground deck that wants to curve out, then it might be better to play Sigardian Savior. While she can’t be flickered like Karmic Guide, she can be a big tempo swing after a board wipe. Getting back two utility creatures with this is a good deal. A 3/3 flier is useful, and in a lot of low to the ground decks, she might be bigger than 3/3 due to buffs.

8. ANGEL OF GLORY’S RISE

Speaking of tempo plays, let’s go to Angel of Glory’s Rise. Whether you prefer the high-octane visceral action of Andrew Mar or the pastoral Romantic beauty of James Ryman’s original piece, this Angel is a huge tempo swing when you’re running humans. Sure, it’s played in Humans decks often, but I contend that even if you’re running 10-20 Humans as part of a Soldiers deck, for instance, that this is worth running.

And occasionally, you’ll manage to exile someone’s Zombies for massive value, which will be frickin’ hilarious. 

7. ANGEL OF INDEMNITY

A newcomer on the block, Angel of Indemnity is one more than the classic Karmic Guide, and trades in freedom to reanimate whatever you want for the ability to get back anything from a Panharmonicon to a Smothering Tithe out of your yard. 

Don’t underestimate a 5/5 Flying Lifelink either. That’s the statline of stabilizing, and you can claw back a game you were losing with this six mana play. The Encore is something I’ve not had the chance to use yet, and that’s in large part due to the fact that just casting this can help you win a game. If you do Encore? Well, that’s eight mana well spent.

6. WOJEK INVESTIGATOR

I am a huge fan of the 2/4 statline in 2024. It blocks like a champ, and it can attack like a champ too, able to survive first strike a good proportion of the time. The only thing that makes it better is making it Flying or Vigilant, and this Angel Detective has both. Wojek Investigator is a perfect statline for the early-to-midgame, and it brings with it some hand token generation and eventually card draw. 

Any white deck that wants to play its hand out to curve out should enjoy this one.

5. RESOLUTE ARCHANGEL

I’ll never forget the time that I played Resolute Archangel against a Purphoros, God of the Forge deck. I got put down to something like 6 life, untapped, and windmill slammed this card down. My opponent could have brined a tuna. A whole one, at that. 

Commander decks these days have no issue outputting a chunk of damage, and the ability to negate some of the damage should not be underestimated. If you’re playing reanimator, or you can ramp, this card gets even better – likewise when it can be used for synergy, in decks like Lathiel or Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim. 

Plus, the Winona Nelson prerelease promo is gorgeous. 

4. WINDSHAPER PLANETAR

Speaking of negating combat damage, how about negating being attacked? Windshaper Planetar is white’s version of Portal Manipulator/Portal Mage. It comes rocketing onto the battlefield in a Flash to reselect where attackers are headed. This is the perfect political card, and serves to help you get around a Ghostly Prison or Propaganda in a pinch, too!

3. BLINDING ANGEL

Speaking of negating being attacked, how about just negating someone’s entire combat step? Well, it seems like there’s a tendency on Angels to be able to do exactly that. Blinding Angel from way back in Nemesis has a combat damage trigger that can stop someone having a combat phase entirely. This is a little on the rude side, but given you need to connect with a five mana 2/4 for it to happen? It’s a lot fairer than Stonehorn Dignitary, that’s for sure.

2. ANGEL OF SUFFERING

Angel of Suffering is a card I… suffer, through, quite regularly. It’s something of a Kryptonite card for me, necessitating removal, as I love my combat decks. It goes to show that white isn’t the only color with great Angels, it’s just the color with the most. 

While this ostensibly reads as a reanimator/graveyard deck card, I just think its a solid fog effect in any black deck. Which is why it should see more play.

1. SIGARDA’S VANGUARD

The number one underplayed Angel today is one that I don’t actually recall playing against, ever. It can go in any deck, Angels or not, and is a great tool to manipulate combat. Like the Windshaper Planetar, Sigarda’s Vanguard can mess with an opponent's combat, but it can also buff your own combats, too.

As long as your creatures have different powers, Sigarda’s Vanguard can give any number of them double strike when you attack. She can also come in at Flash speed and do the same for anyone’s attackers, making her a potent way to disrupt combat. What a cool card!

END STEP

Angels are undoubtedly one of the coolest creature types in Magic. They have stellar art and can provide quite the beating. While Angel typal remains the most popular way to play them, they can fit into countless other decks as roleplayers. Consider some of these underappreciated picks, and let us know yours. 

The post 10 Spicy Angels You Should Play More in Commander appeared first on Card Kingdom Blog.

 

Subjected to weeks of public ridicule and internet harassment instigated by transphobic celebrities, Imane Khelif’s lawyer has announced that they’ve filed suit in France against X and those who bullied her.

  

by Alyssa Steinsiek

Now that she’s won gold at the Olympics in welterweight boxing, Algerian fighter Imane Khelif is turning her attention to a new battle: Taking on the many famous and rich loudmouths who thought it was a good idea to publicly defame her on social media for weeks.

That’s right, freshly minted Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif has filed a lawsuit against X, formerly known as Twitter (I admit, begrudgingly), alleging “acts of aggravated cyber harassment,” according to her legal representative in Paris, Nabil Boudi. The suit mentions some high profile names, but was filed so broadly against the social media platform to ensure that prosecution could pursue the many people who participated in Khelif’s internet harassment, including anonymous posters, according to Boudi.

Two of the most significant names mentioned in the suit are JK Rowling and Elon Musk. Last week we commented on Rowling’s participation in the witch hunt against Khelif, and how she repeatedly and incorrectly identified Khelif as transgender. Rowling’s most egregious post about Khelif on August 1st described her as “a male who’s [sic] knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered.”

Rowling was remarking upon Khelif’s fight with Italian Angela Carini, who gave up after taking a blow to the head forty-six seconds into the fight. She refused to shake Khelif’s hand after the bout, and initially remarked she had “never been hit so hard in [her] life,” and that quitting the match was necessary to “preserve [her] life.” Less than a day later, Carini recanted and expressed a desire to apologize to Khelif, accepting the IOC’s ruling on her opponent’s eligibility to fight.

Elon Musk, meanwhile, shared and supported a message from failed collegiate swimmer turned professional transphobe Riley Gaines implying that Imane Khelif was a man. We’ve penned far too many articles about Gaines’ bad behavior at Assigned Media, and as far as Musk is concerned… well, maybe he should keep quiet after lying quite loudly about his trans daughter, who revealed that Musk was an absentee father who, when he was present, relentlessly bullied her for her femininity.

The controversy surrounding Khelif, as well as Taiwanese fighter Lin Yu-ting, is part of a larger movement against the participation of transgender athletes in sports. In particular, the topic of transgender Olympians has been generating headlines for years now, even though you could count the number of trans Olympians to ever compete on one hand, and only one of them was pursuing medical transition and competing in a category opposite to their gender assigned at birth.

Unfortunately for Rowling, Musk, Donald Trump and other defamers, neither Khelif nor Yu-ting are transgender. They have never identified themselves as trans or intersex, and only the spurious claims of ousted former Olympics boxing governing body, the International Boxing Association, suggest otherwise. No material proof of either competitor’s chromosomal composition or testosterone levels have ever been presented for unbiased review, and the IBA was banished from the Olympics last year for a lack of “integrity and transparency.” Suffice to say, the IBA’s trustworthiness is suspect.

Like any journalism outlet worth their salt, Assigned Media is keenly aware of the risks associated with slander and libel. Though journalists can and frequently do provide their own opinions when reporting, making harmful and baseless accusations about strangers is, simply put, a big no no.

With that in mind, we wholeheartedly support Imane Khelif’s legal inquest against these losers, and hope she’s vindicated in a timely and spectacular fashion!

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Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!

 

Several countries have recently blocked Signal, leaving their residents without a trusted and safe place to communicate.

To help in this situation, Signal provides a built-in censorship circumvention feature and also includes support for a simple TLS proxy that can bypass these blocks in many circumstances and let people communicate privately.

Read more...

Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Field Service technology uses AI to single out workers and closely monitor their performance, a new report says. The report, released by Austrian research institute Cracked Labs, raises questions about the integration of Microsoft’s Copilot AI into its platform for worker surveillance. 

“The study shows that it is not only gig work firms or software from small, shady vendors that enable extensive worker monitoring and algorithmic management,” Wolfie Christl, a public-interest technology researcher and the author of the report, told 404 Media. “Microsoft software provides employers with similar functionality.”

The Dynamics 365 Field Service software is designed to help dispatchers manage a fleet of mobile workers, which Microsoft often refers to as “resources.” The system is usually used for services like machine maintenance, repair, cleaning, or home healthcare. Because of its optimization for managers, however, the report found that the software can have negative impacts on human workers in the field. 

The report says Microsoft uses AI to single out individual workers in its estimates of how long a particular task will take. 

“Microsoft’s work order scheduling system can predict travel times based on historical traffic information from Microsoft Bing,” the report states. “It also offers to predict future work durations based on past data. This system is ‘powered by artificial intelligence models’ and ‘learn[s] from historical booking completion times,’ according to the company.” 

The report includes a sample task time prediction created by Microsoft. A manager has allocated seven and a half hours for one task, but the AI-generated predicted duration for the task is eight hours and 50 minutes. Among the factors that influence the AI’s prediction is the fact that a worker named “Bob Kozak” will be performing the repair, which “increases duration by about 13m,” the prediction states. It does not specifically explain why Bob Kozak would result in a longer duration. For other work orders in the sample, the AI predicts that the assigned workers will decrease the duration. One prediction states that if “Eva Dawson” completes the task, the duration “decreases by about 51m.” 

This raises questions about whether these AI-generated predictions could be used by managers to determine a worker’s continued employment. 

“Dynamics 365 Field Service does not use AI to recommend individual workers for specific jobs based on previous performance,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. “Dynamics 365 Field Service was developed in accordance with our Responsible AI principles and data privacy statement. Customers are solely responsible for using Dynamics 365 Field Service in compliance with all applicable laws, including laws relating to accessing individual employee analytics and monitoring.” 

The company has also noted in a blog post about the technology that it is “intended to help dispatchers or admins enhance their team’s performance and improve customer satisfaction. This feature is not intended for use in making, and should not be used to make, decisions that affect the employment of an employee.”

“While disclosing the contributing factors and the confidence may increase the transparency and explainability of such a prediction, it is remarkable that the report singles out individual workers,” the report states. “A single prediction about Bob Kozak increasing the planned work duration for a particular work order does not necessarily represent a general pattern. Nevertheless, this functionality can be considered a form of performance monitoring.”

Problems with AI-based performance metrics are well-documented. One report based in the UK found that Amazon’s use of AI and robotics in its warehouses isolates workers and negatively impacts union organizing drives. A previous study by Cracked Labs detailed the issues with automated task allocation and algorithmic management in restaurant and retail settings. 

“Employers can micromanage workers down to granular tasks and put pressure on them,” Christl said. “Why doesn't Microsoft provide pre-built schedule optimization goals that take worker well-being into account by balancing productivity and stress during unexpected delays?”

The Dynamics 365 Field Service management system has also integrated Microsoft’s Copilot AI to help generate work orders based on customer requests. Copilot can also summarize ongoing work orders and update existing requests. The report notes that though Microsoft encourages dispatchers to review AI-generated work orders to ensure accuracy, the button to do this is far away from the “Save” button.

“It is unrealistic to expect that dispatchers spend much time reviewing the generated summaries or even regenerate them and review them again, especially as Microsoft advertises the product as a means to ‘streamline’ work and ‘speed time to resolution,’” the report states. 

“This is highly questionable and irresponsible,” Christl said. “Generative AI systems lack maturity and reliability. Who will be blamed if Copilot produces inaccurate information? Workers who didn't always review the generated information.”

The Microsoft spokesperson noted that field service workers must travel to different locations and service different products every day, and that the software was made to efficiently organize their work. “Dynamics 365 Field Service and its Copilot capabilities are designed to help field service workers schedule, plan and provide onsite maintenance and repairs in the right location, on time with the right information and workplace guides on their device to complete their jobs,” the spokesperson said.

The Dynamics 365 system also offers other performance metrics, both in aggregate and by individual worker, according to the report. 

“The [worker performance] report can display aggregate metrics across all workers, but can also be filtered by ‘bookable resource’, which suggests that all the metrics are also available for individual workers,” the report states. It continues to say that this suggests Microsoft provides detailed statistics for each person, including number of work orders, “broken promise” orders that were not completed on time, average work and travel time, average “idle” or break time, and customer satisfaction rate. 

These reports are available throughout the world, and everywhere in Europe with the notable exception of Germany. Christl hypothesized this was because Germany has strong workplace data protection laws. 

Though these reports make management easier for dispatchers, they could also lead to the same kind of dehumanizing emphasis on rate and performance metrics that has become so prevalent in gig work that the U.S. Navy made an ad about it.

The Department of Homeland Security bought a dog-like robot that it has modified with an “antenna array” that gives law enforcement the ability to overload people’s home networks in an attempt to disable any internet of things devices they have, according to the transcript of a speech given by a DHS official at a border security conference for cops obtained by 404 Media. The DHS has also built an “Internet of Things” house to train officers on how to raid homes that suspects may have “booby trapped” using smart home devices, the official said.

The robot, called “NEO,” is a modified version of the “Quadruped Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Q-UGV) sold to law enforcement by a company called Ghost Robotics. Benjamine Huffman, the director of DHS’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC), told police at the 2024 Border Security Expo in Texas that DHS is increasingly worried about criminals setting “booby traps” with internet of things and smart home devices, and that NEO allows DHS to remotely disable the home networks of a home or building law enforcement is raiding. The Border Security Expo is open only to law enforcement and defense contractors. A transcript of Huffman’s speech was obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Dave Maass using a Freedom of Information Act request and was shared with 404 Media.

“NEO can enter a potentially dangerous environment to provide video and audio feedback to the officers before entry and allow them to communicate with those in that environment,” Huffman said, according to the transcript. “NEO carries an onboard computer and antenna array that will allow officers the ability to create a ‘denial-of-service’ (DoS) event to disable ‘Internet of Things’ devices that could potentially cause harm while entry is made.” 

DoS attacks are a type of cyber attack where a website, server, or network is overloaded with traffic until it is knocked offline. Huffman did not provide any specifics about how a DoS attack like this would work. But he said DHS wanted to develop this capability after a 2021 incident in which a man suspected of child sexual abuse crimes in Florida used his doorbell camera to see that he was being raided by the FBI and began shooting at them, killing two FBI agents and injuring three others. 

Huffman said that DHS has built something it calls the “FLETC Smart House,” where cops are taught about how smart home devices “could potentially be used against them. They encounter examples of ‘booby traps’ and are shown the evidentiary value of collecting internet of things devices that may contain important evidence related to their case,” Huffman said. 

After the Florida incident, DHS “began researching how the ‘internet of things’ devices may be used to harm law enforcement officers and found numerous postings online showing how these devices can interact with the physical world to create potential ‘booby traps’ for law enforcement. These traps can be used to harm officers and/or destroy evidence,” Huffman said. 

“A suspect who has been searched and is under the control of officers can cause these actions to happen with a simple voice command which can start a chain of events to occur within a house, such as turning off lights, locking doors, activating the HVAC system to introduce chemicals into the environment and cause a fire or explosion to take place,” he added.

The robot is a modified version of Ghost Robotics’ Vision 60 Q-UGV, which the company says it has sold to “25+ National Security Customers” and which is marketed to both law enforcement and the military. “Our goal is to make our Q-UGVs an indispensable tool and continuously push the limits to improve its ability to walk, run, crawl, climb, and eventually swim in complex environments,” the company notes on its website. “Ultimately, our robot is made to keep our warfighters, workers, and K9s out of harm’s way.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated this was a "DDoS" robot, which stands for "distributed denial of service." The speech does not specify whether the denial of service would be "distributed," so we have changed it to the singular "DoS."