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Home Depot’s viral 12-foot skeleton now talks

Skelly returns for 2026 with some new capabilities. | Image: Home Depot The Home Depot is once again upgrading its 12-foot-tall skeleton to help keep the viral piece of Halloween decor popular as spooky season creeps closer. Skelly is borrowing some of the tech introduced in the smaller 6.5-foot Ultra Skelly last year, including letting you speak through the skeleton's moving mouth using a mobile app. The new version of Skelly will be available online starting tomorrow for $379 and in Home Depot's stores later this summer, along with a new collection of Halloween characters. Skelly was last upgraded two years ago with eight different animations for its animated LCD eyes, but the new version bumps that to 20 dif … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/cnqRaMK
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The PS6 sure sounds like a handheld

The PlayStation Portal — not a new PS6. | Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge The video game industry is in turmoil. Microsoft and Sony are starting to pivot to their next consoles, but it's not looking great: Prices are soaring , Sony is killing the video game disc , and Microsoft is jettisoning studios ahead of the transition. What could entice people to pay? On the Xbox front, we genuinely can't say . But on June 5th, Sony dropped an unusual number of hints about the future of PlayStation in an investor "business meeting" Q&A . This Q&A arrived a month before Sony announced the end of PlayStation discs. But when I reread it with the death of discs in mind… it hits differently. Let's walk through it, shall we? Pa … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/ZQfF3Ku

EverQuest’s biggest fans are leading its revival

Lord Nagafen stares down a Froglok. | Image: Daybreak Game Company Live-service games and the companies that run them are in big trouble . Games and their developers are getting shut down and gutted , and publishers' huge promises are dubious . Meanwhile, EverQuest , one of the original live-service games, is thundering back more than 25 years later. EverQuest Legends is currently in preorder beta with an upcoming release date of July 28th. The original EverQuest was a foundational MMORPG from right around the time we started to define what a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game was. Legends is a reimagining of that MMORPG as it existed in 1999, when it was first released, before decades of expansions … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/VM3mAb6

Google’s Demis Hassabis says it’s time for a global AI watchdog — led by the US

Demis Hassabis, during a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. | Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images Demis Hassabis thinks the world needs an AI watchdog with the power to hit the brakes if frontier models become too dangerous. Writing in a blog post , the Google DeepMind CEO and cofounder said the US should lead the initiative, arguing that the country is the best place to set global standards "given its economic and technical standing." The organization, which could resemble existing regulators like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, would be made up of leading independent experts and representatives from open-source communities and would have the authority to evaluate frontier models before they are released and coordinate an … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/v38NFHV

Let’s build a children’s public internet

An increasing number of people seem to agree the internet is terrible for children - allegedly addictive, destructive to self-esteem, possibly a portal to predators. Over the past year, several countries have started requiring stringent age verification or outright bans for minors. At the end of June in the US, the House of Representatives passed the Kids Internet ​and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, the latest in a string of attempted online child safety regulations. A couple of days later, a Pew Research Center survey found over half of US respondents favored a ban on social media for anyone under 16. There's a growing sense that the digital wo … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/NDVBIdg

The 6 wildest claims in Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI

When Apple employees interviewed for jobs at OpenAI, the AI startup's hardware head allegedly asked them to show up with something unusual: components they were working on and unreleased product samples. That's according to a blockbuster lawsuit filed by Apple, which accuses OpenAI of stealing confidential documents , spying on hardware prototypes, and tricking one of its trusted partners into performing a proprietary product design technique. The lawsuit primarily revolves around the alleged actions of three people: Tang Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran who recently served as the vice president of the Apple Watch. In 2024, Tan left to work on … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/6Xa9zTc

The Asus ROG Flow Z13 gaming tablet with 64GB RAM is down to $2,100

Almost all gaming laptops have gone up in price over the past year. Curiously, the surprisingly fast Asus ROG Flow Z13 gaming laptop/tablet combo has not. It’s actually gotten quite a bit cheaper recently. Best Buy has the lowest price on the configuration that includes the AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 “Strix Halo” chipset, a whopping 64GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Originally $2,999.99, it’s down to $2,099.99. Amazon  has a version with half the RAM selling for $100 less, but the 64GB model is, obviously, a far better deal. Asus ROG Flow Z13 (2025) Asus’ latest gaming tablet opts for integrated graphics over a discrete GPU. That sounds like a downgrade, but its AMD Strix Halo APU gives it solid battery life and graphics performance on par with RTX 4060 laptops. Read our review . Where to Buy: $2299.99 $1999.99 at Amazon (AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 + 32GB) $2999.99 $2099.99 at Best Buy (AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 + 64GB) The Flow Z13 isn’t for those wh...