Riley Gaines SHUTS Yale Review Tool DOWN in Back-and-Forth Over How Dumb Ketanji Brown Jackson REALLY Is

'Thoroughly Preposterous': Spot the Difference in NY Times' Spin on Trump vs. Biden Pardons

IO Interactive has introduced Jean-Claude Van Damme as the new elusive target in Hitman World of Assassins. The protagonist, Max Valliant, will use the Hollywood action legend’s likeness in a free season of The Splitter coming this month.

Xbox Game Pass members can now access six games as part of Xbox Free Play Days. For those unaware, Xbox Free Play Days are a window where gamers can try out the full version of select games free of charge before deciding if they want to purchase them. You will need an Xbox Game Pass subscription to access these free games.

The Trouble With Tribbles and...Preemptive Pardons

More features are coming to Android and Pixel phones starting today. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge New features are on the way for Android phones and Pixel devices thanks to Android 15’s first quarterly platform update. New features for all eligible Android phones include more descriptive video captions, a Gemini-powered update to the Lookout app, and a Spotify extension for Gemini. Pixel owners are getting a few additional updates, including deeper integration of the Pixel Screenshots app for Pixel 9 phones. The enhanced captions — or Expressive Captions as Google calls them — add descriptive phrases to try and capture non-spoken moments in dialogue; think [gasp] or [applause]. They’ll appear throughout the system wherever you can access video captions, including social media apps and video messages. Image: Google Descriptive Captions will capture more of what’s going on in the audio track. Another accessibility-minded update targets Lookout, an app that provides audio descriptions of photos and objects for people with low vision or blindness. Google is bringing its Gemini 1.5 model to the Image Q&A portion of the app to offer better descriptions of photos taken or opened with the app. It’s a continuation of an effort Google highlighted at I/O to bring more AI features to Lookout. On the AI front, Google is adding more extensions to Gemini Assistant. The Spotify extension allows you to play music from Spotify through Gemini. When Gemini Assistant debuted, it was missing basic features like this one — capabilities that the non-AI Assistant has been offering for the better part of a decade. This is one more step toward feature parity between Gemini and the standard Google Assistant. Gemini will also get access to the Utilities extension that’s been rolling out, allowing it to take more actions on your behalf, like making phone calls, sending emails, and changing phone settings. Other highlights of this update include the ability to create stickers with Emoji Kitchen inside Gboard, share photos with a QR code in Quick Share, and an improved scanning mode for receipts and the like in Google Drive. Pixel phones get a little more with the December feature drop, with several new features specifically for the Pixel 9 series. The call screening feature gets a potentially useful update with contextual reply suggestions. As the caller speaks to the assistant, you can tap on a response to answer questions without picking up the call. Image: Google Gboard will offer some suggested phrases based on things you add to Screenshots. The Pixel 9’s Screenshots app also gets a few updates. Now, when you use Circle to Search you’ll have an option to save that search in the Screenshots app, which feels like a logical place to keep tabs on your previous queries. You can also turn on a new feature to show suggested search phrases in Gboard based on things you save to Screenshots. And if you’ve added tickets or credit cards to Google Wallet with a screenshot, you’ll be able to save those in the Screenshots app, too. There are a handful of other features in the feature drop for previous-gen Pixel phones, including Identity Check, which will require additional authentication if the phone detects it’s in a new location and sensitive settings are being accessed. It all starts rolling out today for phones on Android 15 and Pixel 6 and newer phones.

Image: Mercedes-Benz Pope Francis will be riding in a new, all-electric popemobile after receiving a modified G-Class vehicle from Mercedes-Benz, the company announced Wednesday. It’s the first electric popemobile from the luxury German automaker, which has been manufacturing vehicles for the Vatican for the last 90 years. For half that time, the popemobile has been based on Mercedes’ G-Class wagon. And now, for the first time, it wil be operating without any pollution, powered by the company’s EV technology. “With the new Popemobile, Pope Francis is the first pope to be traveling in a fully electric Mercedes-Benz when making public appearances,” CEO Ola Kallenius, who personally delivered the vehicle to Pope Francis this week. “This is a special honor for our company, and I would like to thank His Holiness for his trust. With this Popemobile, we are also sending out a clear call for electromobility and decarbonisation.” “With this Popemobile, we are also sending out a clear call for electromobility and decarbonisation” The vehicle was modified to utilize four individual motors at each wheel for low-speed travel as the Pope greets visitors in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, for example. In the rear, the bench seat was replaced by an elevated, swiveling single seat, so the pope can face his followers from all sides. Two other seats were included behind the pope’s spot for additional passengers. This is the first all-electric popemobile, but it isn’t Pope Francis’ first experience with zero-emission transportation. The Vatican was gifted a Renault Kangoo electric van in 2012, but it wasn’t used for official transport. Pope Francis was driven around in a hydrogen-powered Toyota Mirai in Japan in 2019. And Mercedes-Benz has even made hybrid popemobiles for his holiness. The possibility of an electric popemobile has been floating around for years. The now-defunct EV startup Fisker even proposed building one after founder Henrik Fisker met briefly with Pope Francis in 2021. The company declared bankruptcy earlier this year.

Image: OpenAI OpenAI is creating a new, more expensive tier for its flagship chatbot ChatGPT, and is bringing its “reasoning” model series out of preview with an update. The company is releasing the full version of its o1 model, which was initially released as a limited preview in September (code-named ‘Strawberry’). The new model will be available for ChatGPT Plus and Team users today, while Enterprise and Edu users will have access to it starting next week. The company is also introducing ChatGPT Pro, a new $200 monthly subscription tier that includes unlimited access to OpenAI o1, GPT-4o, and Advanced Voice mode. It also includes a version of o1, exclusive to Pro users, that uses more compute to provide the best possible answer to the hardest problems. The company will continue to offer a Plus tier for $20 a month that includes early access to new features, access to all the company’s models (except the more powerful o1 version), and more. The Verge previously reported on the startup’s plans to kick off a “shipmas” period of new features, products, and demos for 12 days, with announcements that’ll include OpenAI’s long-awaited text-to-video AI tool Sora and a new model. The company said that compared to o1-preview, users can expect a faster, more powerful, and more accurate model that is better at coding and math. It can also provide “reasoning” responses to images. And OpenAI promises it’s been trained to be more concise, which should result in faster response times than o1-preview. OpenAI plans to add support for web browsing, file uploads, and more in ChatGPT — though there’s no timeline for these changes. It also announced a ChatGPT Pro Grant Program that awards 10 grants of ChatGPT Pro to medical researchers at leading institutions, with plans for additional grants across various disciplines.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, TurboSquid A fake presidential pardon explains why you can’t trust robots with the news. Read the full story at The Verge.

Apple introduced a new camera feature called Action Mode back when it released the iPhone 14 series. This was one of the selling points of this generation, which had several similarities to the previous iPhone 13 models. Here's how Apple described this feature: A new Action mode for incredibly smooth-looking video that adjusts to significant shakes, motion, and vibrations, even when video is being captured in the middle of the action. With the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 releases, Apple improved Action Mode by widening the aperture of the cameras. This allowed them to capture more light, which is important for making recordings clearer. While the iPhone's Action Mode feature is great for recording videos with a lot of motion, such as running or biking, Apple recently highlighted another way this functionality can be a game-changer for so many people. On Instagram, the company commissioned a video about Brazilian Rodrigo Mendes's story. He has been living with hand tremors from Parkinson's disease for 12 years. With Action Mode, he's able to capture his hiking trips without excessive shaking in the video. He explains: "Achieving a goal like this and in the end being able to capture an image on your own makes a big difference to me." What's interesting is that this video came right after a big interview that Apple's CEO Tim Cook gave to Wired. In that interview, Cook mentioned the importance of accessibility features in Apple products. "One of the common threads running through Apple over time is that we don't bolt on accessibility at the end of the design process," the CEO said. Apple's commitment to accessibility features is no stranger to its users. During the Olympics, the company promoted an ad of its products’ accessibility features. The company highlighted how the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch could help athletes and parathletes from the moment they wake up until they exercise or perform other activities throughout the day. Below, you can watch Apple's commissioned video on the iPhone's Action Mode feature, and how it improves Rodrigo's life. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DDIBEIIyVXS/?igsh=OTZ0NHBldXZhNXBs Don't Miss: Apple ad promotes accessibility features for parathletes ahead of Paralympic Games The post Here’s a revolutionary way iPhone users can use Apple’s Action Mode feature appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Cyber Monday iPad deals start at $199 in 2024 Early Black Friday deals: Nintendo Switch games, $249 Oura Ring 3, $25 Crock-Pot, $100 Beats Pill, more Cyber Week deals: $329 Apple Watch S10, $50 off Microsoft Office 2024, $374 PS5 Slim, Vitamix blenders, more Cyber Monday blowout: Free AirPods 4, $374 PlayStation 5, Apple sale, $297 Nectar mattress, $60 Keurig, more