Over on Hackaday, Max.K has shared their design for a charger that can automatically load and eject rechargeable AAs. Using it is as easy as dumping dead batteries in the top, and grabbing fully charged ones from the bottom. The charger handles everything else, including rejecting AAs that aren’t rechargeable. If you want to build your own, you can find plans and schematics available on GitHub.
Firewalk Studios’ Concord may no longer be with us, but the game is still going to have another (short) moment in the sun when Amazon’s Secret Level anthology series premieres on December 10th.
A live-updating tracker using Bluesky’s API puts the site at over 14,980,000 users right now.
The site has been growing fast lately, possibly spurred most recently by the US presidential election.
The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern spent a full day only interacting with chatbots from Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft to test their companionship skills.
In her delightfully comical blog, Stern notes that all four are “convincing” at first, but it’s an act that can’t replace genuine human interaction:
“My big worry is that some people, especially lonely people, might not see the wall. All four bots stayed guarded on depression and other emotional issues, redirecting me to hotlines or encouraging human conversations.”
Google just announced several new family-oriented features for its kids’ tracker. Chief among them, families can now have group chats in the Ace app, and siblings can annoy — er, constructively chat with — each other via text or calls on the wrist. There are also new Family Quests and a new game called Solar Sword.
The plan, which is part of the retail giant’s push to get staff back into offices five days a week, will make it harder to get permission to work from home.
Here’s a snippet from Bloomberg’s report:
The company recently told employees with disabilities that it was implementing a more rigorous vetting process, both for new requests to work from home and applications to extend existing arrangements. Affected workers must submit to a “multilevel leader review” and could be required to return to the office for monthlong trials to determine if accommodations meet their needs.
Phil Spencer has been dropping hints about a portable Xbox for some time now. But in a new interview with Bloomberg, he cautioned that, while the company is working on prototypes, the release of an actual handheld is still a few years out.
The news outlet says it will no longer post on any official Guardian accounts:
This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.
[The Guardian]
According to subscription analytics provider Antenna, streaming customers are increasingly pausing subscriptions and returning to them within a year, rather than abandoning them entirely — likely coinciding with the release of seasonal hit shows or sports.
“I keep an eye on my streaming services because it’s death by a thousand paper cuts,” one consumer told The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t want to get killed with monthlies.”
The AI-powered search engine will begin with showing labeled ads formatted as “sponsored follow-up questions” that will appear next to answers in the US.
TechCrunch reports:
“Perplexity’s embrace of ads stands in contrast to OpenAI’s decision not to launch its AI-powered search tool, ChatGPT Search, with ads. But rival Google has similarly piloted ads in its AI search experience, AI Overviews — recently bringing ads to mobile in the U.S. for certain queries”
