MLB has approved the use of robot umpires in the 2026 season. According to ESPN, the system will give teams two challenges per game for balls and strikes where hitters, pitchers, and catchers can request reviews. From the report: Hitters, pitchers and catchers will be the only ones allowed to trigger the system by tapping their head, and if a challenge is successful — the pitch will be shown on in-stadium videoboards — teams will retain it. While the vote in favor of the automated ball-strike challenge system was not unanimous — some of the four players on the 11-man committee voted no, according to sources — the vote was a fait accompli, with MLB owners all in favor and in possession of a six-seat majority on the committee.

The ABS system uses similar technology to the line-calling system in tennis, with 12 cameras in each ballpark tracking the ball with a margin of error around one-sixth of an inch. The ABS zone will be a two-dimensional plane in the middle of the plate that spans its full width (17 inches). The zone’s top will be 53.5% of a player’s height and the bottom 27%. Teams that run out of challenges over the first nine innings will be granted an extra challenge in the 10th inning, while those that still have unused challenges will simply carry them into extras. If a team runs out of challenges in the 10th, it will automatically receive another in the 11th — a rule that extends for any extra inning.

During the league’s spring training test this season, teams combined to average around four challenges per game and succeeded 52.2% of the time, according to the league. Catchers, whose value in framing pitches outside the zone to look like strikes could take a hit due to the new rule, were the most successful at a 56% overturn rate, while hitters were correct 50% of the time and pitchers 41%. MLB’s minor league testing, which started in 2021, led to Triple-A players in 2023 using ABS challenge three days a week and a full ABS system, with every pitch adjudicated by computer, the other three.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Director Andy Muschietti’s two-film adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel  IT racked up over $1 billion at the box office worldwide. Now Muschietti is back with a nine-episode prequel series for HBO, IT: Welcome to Derry, exploring the origins of Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgård), the ancient evil that terrorized the fictional town every 27 years. And now we have an official trailer a month before the prequel’s October debut.

(Some spoilers below for IT and IT: Chapter Two.)

As previously reported, set in 1989,  IT essentially adapted half of King’s original novel, telling the story of a group of misfit kids calling themselves “The Losers Club.” The kids discover their small town of Derry is home to an ancient, trans-dimensional evil that awakens every 27 years to prey mostly on children by taking the form of an evil clown named Pennywise. Bill (Jaeden Lieberher) loses his little brother, Georgie, to Pennywise, and the group decides to take on Pennywise and drive him into early hibernation, where he will hopefully starve. But Beverly (Sophia Lillis) has a vision warning that Pennywise will return on schedule in 27 years, and they must be ready to fight him anew.

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Google’s AI Mode is continuing its rapid global growth. Today, the company announced that this addition to Google Search is rolling out in Spanish. The new option is available in all countries that support AI Mode. The move will allow Spanish speakers around the world to engage with this AI chatbot in their language of choice when asking more complicated questions than a search engine can typically answer well.  

The proliferation of this AI enhancement to Google’s traditional search has happened at a break-neck pace. AI Mode was first introduced in March and then made available across the US in May. The first language expansion came earlier this month with the addition of AI Mode in Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Brazilian Portuguese.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-ai-mode-now-speaks-spanish-223346697.html?src=rss

Apple has delayed the release of its new series The Savant just three days before it was supposed to premiere on September 26, Deadline reports. The series follows an investigator, played by Jessica Chastain, who infiltrates a domestic extremist group in the US. Apple hasn’t provided a new release date for the show.

“After careful consideration, we have made the decision to postpone The Savant,” the company shared in a statement to Deadline. “We appreciate your understanding and look forward to releasing the series at a future date.” The timing of the sudden delay, and the lack of explanation for why the company is delaying the show, could be telling. Disney made a similar knee-jerk reaction in placing Jimmy Kimmel Live! on indefinite hiatus following a joke Kimmel made about the reaction to the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Given that The Savant likely focuses on preventing acts of political violence, it might make you wonder who Apple is worried its show will offend. But it’s also entirely possible that the company is trying to avoid people making any kind of association between its TV show and a very public assassination.

Apple generally avoids rocking the boat whenever possible, particularly when it could hurt its business interests. The Problem With Jon Stewart was reportedly cancelled when Jon Stewart wanted to cover topics Apple deemed controversial, like China and artificial intelligence. Apple does business in China, so it seems likely the company was skittish about airing anything that could be viewed as criticism, even if having difficult conversations was the premise of Stewart’s show. The decision to pull The Savant, even if despite reading like the company is worried about offending right-wing extremists, was likely made from a similar place of caution.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/apple-tv-indefinitely-delays-its-domestic-extremism-thriller-the-savant-223044979.html?src=rss

If an Iranian taxi driver waves away your payment, saying, “Be my guest this time,” accepting their offer would be a cultural disaster. They expect you to insist on paying—probably three times—before they’ll take your money. This dance of refusal and counter-refusal, called taarof, governs countless daily interactions in Persian culture. And AI models are terrible at it.

New research released earlier this month titled “We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof” shows that mainstream AI language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta fail to absorb these Persian social rituals, correctly navigating taarof situations only 34 to 42 percent of the time. Native Persian speakers, by contrast, get it right 82 percent of the time. This performance gap persists across large language models such as GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Haiku, Llama 3, DeepSeek V3, and Dorna, a Persian-tuned variant of Llama 3.

A study led by Nikta Gohari Sadr of Brock University, along with researchers from Emory University and other institutions, introduces “TAAROFBENCH,” the first benchmark for measuring how well AI systems reproduce this intricate cultural practice. The researchers’ findings show how recent AI models default to Western-style directness, completely missing the cultural cues that govern everyday interactions for millions of Persian speakers worldwide.

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YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, said it will reinstate creators previously banned for spreading COVID-19 misinformation and false election claims, citing free expression and shifting policy guidelines. The Hill reports: “Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” the company said in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse. The Company recognizes these creators are among those shaping today’s online consumption, landing ‘must-watch’ interviews, giving viewers the chance to hear directly from politicians, celebrities, business leaders, and more,” it added in the five-page correspondence.

Alphabet blamed the Biden administration for limiting political speech on the platform. “Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies,” the letter read. “While the Company continued to develop and enforce its policies independently, Biden Administration officials continued to press the Company to remove non-violative user-generated content,” it continued. Guidelines were changed after former President Biden took office and urged platforms to remove content that encouraged citizens to drink bleach to cure COVID-19, as President Trump suggested in 2020, or join insurrection efforts launched on Jan. 6, 2021, to overthrow his 2020 presidential win. But the company said the Biden administration’s decisions were “unacceptable” and “wrong,” while noting it would forgo future fact-checking mechanisms and instead allow users to add context notes to content.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While mired in controversy from all sides, the Walt Disney Company has unveiled price hikes for Disney+ and its other streaming services today.

As of October 21, Disney+ will cost up to 20 percent more, depending on the plan you have. Disney+ with ads is increasing from $10 to $12 per month, while the ad-free plan is going from $16 to $19 per month. The annual, ad-free plan will go from $160 to $190.

Acquisitions have enabled Disney to own multiple streaming services, so it’s not just Disney+ subscribers who will be impacted. Subscriptions for Hulu and ESPN Select will also increase, as will all Hulu + Live TV plans and bundles of Disney’s three subscription-based streaming services.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: While many vibe-coding startups have become unicorns, with valuations in the billions, one area where AI-assisted coding has not yet taken off is on mobile devices. Despite the numerous apps now available that offer vibe-coding tools on mobile platforms, none are gaining noticeable downloads, and few are generating any revenue at all. According to an analysis of global app store trends by the app intelligence provider Appfigures, only a small handful of mobile apps offering vibe-coding tools have seen any downloads, let alone generated revenue.

The largest of these is Instance: AI App Builder, which has seen only 16,000 downloads and $1,000 in consumer spending. The next largest app, Vibe Studio, has pulled in just 4,000 downloads but has made no money. This situation could still change, of course. The market is young, and vibe-coding apps continue to improve and work out the bugs. New apps in this space are arriving all the time, too. This year, a startup called Vibecode launched with $9.4 million in seed funding from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. The company’s service allows users to create mobile apps using AI within its own iOS app. Vibecode is so new, Appfigures doesn’t yet have data on it. For now, most people who want to toy around with vibe-coding technology are doing so on the desktop.

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Next year, baseball reasons will have one less reason to rage at the umpire. Major League Baseball announced today that it will introduce the Automated Ball Strike challenge system in the 2026 season for all spring training, championship season and postseason games. In other words, next year there will be a way for the players to attempt to overturn an umpire’s call about whether a pitch counts as a strike or a ball if they disagree with the initial decision. 

ABS uses a network of a dozen camera to record every pitch thrown. The umpire will still call the pitch a ball or strike as usual, but under the new system, the pitcher, catcher or batter can immediately challenge that decision. Coaching staff and other players cannot offer input on whether or not a challenge is initiated. If the cameras show any part of the ball touching the batter’s strike zone, the pitch will be counted as a strike. All teams will begin a game with two challenge opportunities, and only lose them if they challenge unsuccessfully. For games that go into extra innings, a team will get an additional challenge if it has none remaining at the start of the additional gameplay.  

Baseball has taken a gradual path to introducing this tech. ABS has been tested at the Triple-A level since 2022, and it finally got a chance in the majors during spring training and in the All-Star Game this year. Other sports have also been leveraging electronics to ensure that gameplay rules and scoring are consistent. Football/soccer has implemented a video assistant referee (VAR) system in several leagues, including FIFA and the UK’s Premier league. Tennis is also adopting electronic line calls at Wimbledon and other tournaments. Even the electronic systems are not infallible, but considering how much any high-level athletic endeavor can be won or lost by millimeters, having a backup for the human eye seems like a net positive.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/major-league-baseball-will-adopt-an-automated-challenge-system-in-2026-205023531.html?src=rss

Curious to see if those Forza Horizon 6 rumors are true? You may not have long to wait. Xbox’s presentation at the Tokyo Game Show 2025 is fast approaching. You can watch the event live right here on September 25 at 6AM ET.

Forza Horizon 6 is rumored to have a Japan setting, making this week’s event a logical venue for its announcement. That’s not the only thing to go on. Windows Central reported last month that it had seen official documentation suggesting the game would be announced at the Tokyo Game Show. An Xbox executive producer even posted earlier this month that it would be an event “you don’t want to miss.” (Am I sadistic for hoping he was hyping up something like a new Xbox dashboard feature?)

The Xbox brand could use some positive mojo. Last week, Microsoft announced that it would raise console prices for the second time in less than five months. The increase, which begins on October 3, was “due to changes in the macroeconomic environment.” (That sounds like a copywriter’s answer to “How do you say ‘tariffs’ without actually saying ‘tariffs?'”) It’s all the more reason the company would love to shift your focus to something fun.

You can stream Microsoft’s event below on September 25 at 6AM ET.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/how-to-watch-xboxs-tokyo-game-show-livestream-204657743.html?src=rss

With the launch of the ROG Xbox Ally only a few weeks away on October 16, the fantasy of a portable Xbox is about to be a lot more real. As a recent video from YouTuber James Channel shows, though, with a first-generation Xbox and the right components, you can make your own version of an Xbox handheld right now. Just don’t expect it to be pretty.

James’ “portable monstrosity” strips away the original Xbox’s large plastic casing and thick internal cables and preserves the bare essentials: a motherboard and the console’s disk drive, with a new flash drive and a display from an iPod video accessory. All those components are precariously mounted between the left and right halves of an Xbox controller, for a complete package that seems less easy to hold than ASUS’ current handheld PCs, but only marginally so. It’s a quick and dirty assembly with a surprising amount of super glue — a far cry from the polished Xbox 360 handheld created by YouTuber Millomaker — but it gets the job done.

You can already stream Xbox games to a multitude of screens, or play their PC versions on a growing number of handheld PCs. You don’t need to turn an original Xbox into a portable device, but considering Microsoft and ASUS have yet to announce pricing for their new handhelds, maybe keep this cheaper alternative in your back pocket.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/theres-more-than-one-way-to-make-an-xbox-handheld-201503415.html?src=rss