It started, like so many overwrought home optimization projects, during the pandemic. My wife and I, like many people stuck inside, were ordering takeout more frequently. We wanted to support local restaurants, reduce the dish load, and live a little. It became clear early on that app-based delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats were not the best way to support local businesses. If a restaurant had its own ordering…

It’s been a wild year in tech thanks to the intersection between humans and artificial intelligence. 2024 brought a parade of AI oddities, mishaps, and wacky moments that inspired odd behavior from both machines and man. From AI-generated rat genitals to search engines telling people to eat rocks, this year proved that AI has been having a weird impact on the world. Why the weirdness? If we had to guess,…

For $2,100, you could buy over a dozen upper-quality mechanical keyboards. Alternatively, you could buy just one mechanical keyboard kit. Costing the same as a desktop computer, The Icebreaker keyboard commands one of the highest price tags you’ll see for a keyboard, and that’s more due to its appearance than its capabilities. The Icebreaker, spotted by Tom’s Hardware, became available for preorder on Thursday. The prohibitively priced peripheral is the…

Health care company Ascension lost sensitive data for nearly 5.6 million individuals in a cyberattack that was attributed to a notorious ransomware gang, according to documents filed with the attorney general of Maine. Ascension owns 140 hospitals and scores of assisted living facilities. In May, the organization was hit with an attack that caused mass disruptions as staff was forced to move to manual processes that caused errors, delayed or…

Amazon confirmed today in an email to Prime members that it will begin showing ads alongside its streaming Prime Video content starting January 29, 2024. The price will remain the same, but subscribers who don’t wish to see any ads will have to pay an additional $2.99 per month on top of their monthly or yearly Amazon Prime subscription. The change was first reported back in September. “Starting January 29,…

Last month, EA published an update formalizing its policy that mods for The Sims 4 “cannot be sold, licensed, or rented for a fee.” But the publisher tells Ars that there is still one important exception that should ensure many Sims modders can continue to make significant income from their game-expanding creations. EA’s new modding policy, first published July 21, is pretty direct in saying that Sims 4 mods “must…

Charlotte, a green sea turtle, was hit by a boat back in 2008. This left it with an affliction colloquially referred to as the “bubble butt,” a kind of floating syndrome that makes it impossible for a turtle to dive. Most sea turtles suffering from issues like this simply die at sea, since the condition leaves them stranded at the surface where they can’t forage, sleep, and avoid predators like…

Over the past 12 business days, OpenAI has announced a new product or demoed an AI feature every weekday, calling the PR event “12 days of OpenAI.” We’ve covered some of the major announcements, but we thought a look at each announcement might be useful for people seeking a comprehensive look at each day’s developments. The timing and rapid pace of these announcements—particularly in light of Google’s competing releases—illustrates the…

On Friday, during Day 12 of its “12 days of OpenAI,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced its latest AI “reasoning” models, o3 and o3-mini, which build upon the o1 models launched earlier this year. The company is not releasing them yet but will make these models available for public safety testing and research access today. The models use what OpenAI calls “private chain of thought,” where the model pauses to…

Earlier this month, startup Embodied announced that it is going out of business and taking its Moxie robot with it. The $800 robots, aimed at providing emotional support for kids ages 5 to 10, would soon be bricked, the company said, because they can’t perform their core features without the cloud. Following customer backlash, Embodied is trying to create a way for the robots to live an open sourced second…