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Why? When you ask AI to write stories, you've probably noticed they are frequently incredibly similar. Claude, for example, likes lighthouses and cartographers. This is mode collapse – the AI defaulting to the safest, most average patterns in its training data. Every story becomes a slight variation of the same template.
In a lot of ways, kids in America are safer than ever. But apparently, golf carts didn’t get the memo. New research this week finds that pediatric golf cart injuries are on the rise. Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia conducted the study, which analyzed golf cart injuries that sent children and young adults to the emergency room. They found that these injuries had increased in recent years, with almost half involving children under the age of 12. More needs to be done to bea
The Instacart logo is seen on a smartphone and on a PC screen. Simo, who helped take the grocery delivery company public in 2023 and guided it through a massive growth period during the Covid-19 pandemic, will step down from her position later this month as she joins OpenAI as its new head of applications. "We delivered another strong quarter, reinforcing the essential role we play in helping families save time, money, and effort putting food on the table," wrote outgoing CEO Fidji Simo in a s
is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Delta Air Lines is explaining more about its AI-assisted dynamic pricing model after coming under scrutiny for recent comments about the pricing. In November, Delta president Glen Hauenstein said at an investor day that “we will have a price that’s available on that flight, on that time,
“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.” That’s a direct quote from Ford CEO Jim Farley from earlier this month. And he is not the only executive ringing the alarm. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas recently told The Verge that he expects AI to be able to replace recruiters and executive assistants in the next six months. The warnings are plenty, and the timeline the executives give is relatively short. But the reality may be even more i
Hacking attacks—many using ransomware—now hit US cities every few days. They are expensive to mitigate and extremely disruptive. Abilene, Texas, for instance, had 477 GB of data stolen this spring. The city refused to pay the requested ransom and instead decided to replace every server, desktop, laptop, desk telephone, and storage device. This has required a "temporary return to pen-and-paper systems" while the entire city network is rebuilt, but at least Abilene was insured against such an atta
Hacking attacks—many using ransomware—now hit US cities every few days. They are expensive to mitigate and extremely disruptive. Abilene, Texas, for instance, had 477 GB of data stolen this spring. The city refused to pay the requested ransom and instead decided to replace every server, desktop, laptop, desk telephone, and storage device. This has required a "temporary return to pen-and-paper systems" while the entire city network is rebuilt, but at least Abilene was insured against such an atta
The streets of Tromaville, New Jersey are calling once again as the video game adaptation of the off-the-wall cartoon series Toxic Crusaders gets a release date. Seen in an official trailer from Retroware that was shown off during San Diego Comic-Con and shared online by IGN, the Toxic Crusaders game is releasing on December 4 on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Steam. As a true callback to the quirky cartoon from the '90s, the video game is designed as a side-scrolling beat 'em up, all p
More than you wanted to know about how Game Boy cartridges work By Allison Parrish I set out a while ago to make a Game Boy cartridge from scratch. This is not a novel goal; bootleg Game Boy cartridges have existed almost as long as the Game Boy itself has, and there are many third-party cartridges now available for purchase, or that have copyleft designs. But I wanted to know how Game Boy cartridges work. I was also excited to use the PIO functionality of the RP2040 microcontroller. Now, aft
Autonomous robotics startup Cartken, known for its four-wheeled robots that deliver food on college campuses and through Tokyo’s bustling streets, has found a new area of focus: industrials. Cartken co-founder and CEO Christian Bersch told TechCrunch that applying its delivery robots to industrial settings was always in the back of his mind as they built the startup. When companies started reaching out about using their robots in factories and labs, Cartken took a closer look. “What we found i
Dean Leitersdorf introduces himself over Zoom, then types a prompt that makes me feel like I’ve just taken psychedelic mushrooms: “wild west, cosmic, Roman Empire, golden, underwater.” He feeds the words into an artificial intelligence model developed by his startup, Decart, which manipulates live video in real time. “I have no idea what’s going to happen," Leitersdorf says with a laugh, shortly before transforming into a bizarre, gold-tinged, subaquatic version of Julius Caesar in a poncho. L
In 2018, a hacker hired by the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel run by the infamous kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán spied on the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City with the goal of identifying “people of interest” for the cartel to target and kill, according to a new U.S. government watchdog report. On Friday, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General revealed the incident as part of a published report auditing the FBI’s efforts to counter surveillance with the goal of protecting “its e
I first learned about Pura from a friend whose house always smelled like a high-end boutique under every circumstance. Cooking project, water leak … no matter what was going on in her house at the time, I only ever smelled berries. I have two cats and a multi-sports-playing tween—I knew I needed this. Now, about 17 months into my Pura journey, I have some thoughts. While most of my time has been with the now discontinued Pura 3, I have also since used the Pura 4 and new large-room Pura Plus, al
by Daniël Mantione Daniël contributed the commented disassembly of the FC3 freezer functionality to the reverse engineering effort at github.com/mist64/final_cartridge. Thanks to Eric Schlaepfer for his input on 6502 timing. Freezer cartridge theory One key reason why the Commodore 64 was so successful in the 80s was that it was able to do things it wasn’t designed for. Freezer cartridges, which allowed stopping any running program or game, applying cheat codes and resuming, or saving the com
I first learned about Pura from a friend whose house always smelled like a high-end boutique under every circumstance. Cooking project, water leak … no matter what was going on in her house at the time, I only ever smelled berries. I have two cats and a multi-sports-playing tween—I knew I needed this. Now, about 14 months into my Pura journey, I have some thoughts. While most of my time has been with the now discontinued Pura 3, I have also since used the Pura 4 and new large-room Pura Plus, al
With less than 0.04 inches of rainfall each year, cities in Chile’s barren Atacama Desert—one of the driest places in the world—collect their water from ancient underground water sources. Now, researchers have identified another simple method that could help address water scarcity. An international team of researchers in Chile has tested the viability of a water-collection method that could be straight out of Dune: fog harvesting. The technology also brings Star Wars to mind, namely the moistur