Elizabeth Warren's Reason Pete Hegseth 'Must Not Be SecDef' Accidentally KOs Biden (and Austin)

2024 has been an interesting year for platformers, as Nintendo hasn't had a horse in the race for once, despite being known as the king of the genre.

One of the greatest things about video games is that they allow players to essentially do whatever they want with no consequences. Things that would be impossible to accomplish in the real world, either due to fiction or finances or some other barrier, are now completely feasible.

The end of the year is a time to reflect on an individual's personal and professional decisions.

Thursday Morning Minute

Photo: Stormy Pyeatte for The Verge The artist behind The Verge’s ‘Friend or Faux?’ feature explains the practical effects behind its design. Read the full story at The Verge.

Illustration: The Verge OpenAI is partnering with Future, the publisher behind Tom’s Guide, PC Gamer, TechRadar, Marie Claire, and many other websites and magazines. The deal will give ChatGPT users access to news and lifestyle content from Future’s more than 200 media brands, while also displaying “attribution and links to the full original articles.” This adds to the string of content licensing agreements OpenAI has made in recent months. In addition to The Verge’s parent company Vox Media, OpenAI has also struck deals with The Wall Street Journal owner News Corp, People publisher Dotdash Meredith, Politico parent Axel Springer, the Financial Times, and The Atlantic. However, some publishers, like The New York Times, The Intercept, and a group of Canadian outlets including the CBC, have sued OpenAI over allegations of copyright infringement. OpenAI says its deal with Future builds on the company’s “existing deployment of OpenAI’s technology,” as it has already launched AI chatbots within Tom’s Hardware and Who What Wear. Future also plans to use OpenAI’s tech for sales, marketing, and editorial purposes. “This partnership enables us to enhance the ChatGPT experience by providing more access to engaging, up to date, and reliable information from a range of specialist sources,” OpenAI chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said in the announcement. “Our goal is to help publishers and content creators both benefit from advanced AI technology and expand their reach.”

Symptom Radar flags when you have no signs, minor signs, or major signs of respiratory illness. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge At the height of the covid-19 pandemic, many wearable companies rushed to see if their devices could detect early signs of the disease. Now, four years later, Oura is officially launching a feature that can flag when you may be coming down with a respiratory illness. Technically, Symptom Radar isn’t diagnostic in nature — though its development does have roots in Oura’s illness prediction research during the pandemic. It can’t tell you if you’re catching a cold or the flu versus covid-19. Instead, it’s more of an “illness warning light” that flags when your body is showing early signs that something’s up. “What we saw through all of the research and science that we’ve done is that your physiology actually starts changing a day or two before you start feeling symptoms,” Shyamal Patel, Oura’s head of science, tells The Verge. From there, the idea is to take precautionary measures. Image: Oura Symptom Radar is moving out of beta. Essentially, Symptom Radar works by evaluating metrics like resting heart rate, heart rate variability, temperature trends, and breathing rate to detect significant changes from your long-term baselines. When users sync their data in the morning, they’ll be notified if no signs, minor signs, or major signs of strain related to respiratory symptoms have been identified. In the case of minor or major signs, the Oura app will encourage users to turn on Rest Mode and take steps to prioritize rest. Symptom Radar was actually introduced as a beta feature in April through Oura’s recently launched Labs program for experimental features. Patel says that’s been a valuable part of developing the feature for prime time. On the one hand, the Oura team was able to develop a new algorithm based on a much bigger data set. Even so, Patel acknowledged that the algorithm isn’t 100 percent accurate and that false positives and negatives were possible; Oura didn’t provide specific accuracy data. Beta users also noted that they actually wanted to be notified when symptoms weren’t detected. Given that, Patel says the official version of Symptom Radar will now include a historical graph so that people can see how their health is trending over time. “It will also be interesting to see how [people] recover from [illnesses]. That’s where I see some interesting things that we could kind of evolve towards,” Patel says. He notes that aside from flagging illness, Symptom Radar could be a useful tool in helping people identify what factors help in recovering from illnesses faster. Symptom Radar will be available to all Oura Ring Gen 3 and Oura Ring 4 users by Monday, December 9th.

Image: Rivian Rivian’s latest EV charging station is the first to be open to other companies’ vehicles. The new station located in California’s Joshua Tree National Park will be the companies’ first that’s available to non-Rivian electric vehicles. The station features a new design, including larger displays with a tap-to-pay option, that can accommodate any car brands’ EVs. Currently, the Rivian Adventure Network, which comprises 560 chargers at 92 sites across the country, are exclusive to owners of the company’s R1T and R1S vehicles. This was a similar approach to Tesla, which initially built its own Supercharger network so it could offer exclusive charging to its own customers. But with billions of dollars in federal funding at stake, automakers are now reassessing this exclusivity. One of the requirements for receiving federal funding for EV charging installation is that chargers need to be available to all EVs, not just a single brand. Rivian Adventure Network comprises 560 chargers at 92 sites across the country Tesla began opening its network to non-Tesla EVs in 2023. Soon after, it open-sourced its charging plug, renaming it the North American Charging Standard (NACS), and began making a series of deals with the rest of the auto industry (including Rivian) to use it for their EVs. Rivian’s EV chargers use the standard CCS connector for DC fast charging. But the stations are still exclusive to Rivian vehicles thanks to proprietary software. With today’s announcement, the company is beginning the process of unwinding that exclusivity. Rivian has also said that it would adopt Tesla’s NACS charging standard. Current Rivian customers can buy an adapter if they want to use the Supercharger network. In 2026, Rivian said it will begin producing vehicles with a native NACS port. Rivian spokesperson Evan Barbour said that the company’s future EV charging sites will also be open to non-Rivian EVs. Rivian plans to open additional charging sites in Texas, Colorado, Illinois, Montana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New York before the end of 2024. Meanwhile, current stations will be retrofitted with software updates to accommodate other brands, as well as hardware updates to add NACS charging plugs. In the meantime, the Joshua Tree location and others will be available to Tesla owners with NACS-to-CCS adapters. EV ownership is currently a tangle of competing standards, subpar software experiences, and dueling payment apps. And while some customers admit that the EV charging experience is slowly improving, this next phase of adapters and formerly proprietary chargers going universal has really only just begun.

Google announced its latest AI features coming to mobile with updates for Pixel devices and Android phones in general. The company is expanding AI features through its operating system and Gemini platform. Android devices get five new Google AI features, including: New Gemini extensions: You can access more apps and services from Gemini on Android with new extensions, including Utilities, Spotify, Messaging, Calling, and updates to Maps Expressive Captions: The AI-powered experience captures the intensity of emotion of words and sounds in captions. It's built directly into Android's operating system,m and it can be used in live and social content Gemini in Lockout: Image Q&A in Lookout now uses Gemini to provide more accurate, detailed image descriptions Emoji combo: Similar to Genmoji, remix your favorite emoji into sticker combos and share them with friends using the Emoji Kitchen Gboard keyboard Share with QR Code: Share your favorite photos, videos, and more using a QR Code Image source: Google In addition to these features, Google is also adding exclusive AI functions for Pixel phones, including: Gemini Saved Info: With the new saved info feature, you can ask Gemini to remember your interests and preferences so it can provide more helpful and relevant responses tailored to your goals and needs Updates to Pixel Screenshots: You can save things when you use Circle to Search with just a tap, so you can always find them later. You can also add stickers or credit cards you've screenshotted to your wallet. Google is also adding other improvements to Google Pixel, including the ability to shoot Ultra HDR Photos on Instagram for Google Pixel 9 users, Dual-Screen functionality in Portrait Mode for Google Pixel Fold and 9 Pro Fold devices, Clear Voice Mode in Recorder, and more. These are all part of Google's latest Feature Drop, which is how Google chose to wrap up 2024. It couldn't be more apropos, considering how focused Google has been on AI this year. Don't Miss: Google Gemini AI now remembers things about you just like ChatGPT, but only if you pay The post Google announces 7 new AI features for Pixel phones and other Androids appeared first on BGR. Today's Top Deals Cyber Monday iPad deals start at $199 in 2024 T-Mobile’s latest holiday offer: Get an iPhone 16 Pro on us Best Apple deals for December 2024 ECOVACS has the biggest robot vacuum sale of Black Friday and Cyber Monday