The Games section is one of the highlights of reading The New York Times, and Wordle has been one of the crowning successes for the team since acquiring it in 2022. Now, fans of the popular word game can create their own custom puzzles. The publication announced today that its All Access and Games subscribers have the option to make World challenges of their own to send to friends and family.
The custom puzzles must be four to seven letters long, and the creator can opt to include a clue. The puzzle will get a custom URL for sharing, and a subscription isn’t required for people to play an original Wordle challenge. Wordle creation is available on the Times’ mobile apps for both iOS and Android as well as in mobile web and desktop browsers. It’s a fun idea and a cute way for follow word nerds to entertain (and possibly torment) each other.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-new-york-times-is-letting-you-create-your-own-wordle-puzzles-185429249.html?src=rss
AI labs are paying skilled professionals hundreds of dollars per hour to train their models in specialized fields. Companies like Mercor, Surge AI, Scale AI and Turing recruit bankers, lawyers, engineers and doctors to improve the accuracy of AI systems in professional settings. Mercor advertises roles for medical secretaries, movie directors and private detectives at rates ranging from $20 to $185 per hour for contract work and up to $200,000 for full-time positions. Surge AI offers as much as $1,000 per hour for expertise from startup CEOs and venture capital partners. Mercor pays out over $1.5 million daily to professionals it hires for clients including OpenAI and Anthropic.
Some contractors are former employees of Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. Others moonlight in this work while keeping their regular jobs. Brendan Foody, Mercor’s 22-year-old CEO, acknowledged at a conference last week that trade secrets could potentially be compromised given the volume of work submitted. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on this week’s earnings call that some AI training gigs on its platform require PhDs.
Meta is making billions of dollars every year from ads marketing scams and illegal products on its platform, according to a new report from Reuters. The report details the staggering numbers behind scam ads on Meta’s platform, and raises fresh questions about why the company has failed to get the problem in check.
Last year, Meta estimated that scam ads could account for as much as 10 percent of its revenue, a total that would amount to about $16 billion, according to documents reported by Reuters. This includes ads for “fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned medical products.” In fact, scams on Meta’s platform are so far-reaching that researchers at the company estimated that its apps “were involved in a third of all successful scams in the U.S.”
The report also outlines how Meta has at times made it harder for its own teams to fight such ads, and how its own processes allow for repeat offenders to continue buying ads. It says that a “small advertiser” caught “promoting financial fraud” wouldn’t be blocked until they were flagged “at least eight times.” Meta has been even more lenient with “bigger spenders,” which have reportedly been permitted to “accrue more than 500 strikes” without being removed from the platform.
That may sound shockingly permissive, particularly compared to Meta’s standards for users on its platform, but the Reuters report highlights how high the stakes are for Meta. The report notes that just four ad campaigns removed by Meta this year accounted for $67 million in revenue for the company. The report says that internally, executives have grappled with how to bring scam ads under control without adversely affecting the company’s bottom line. At one point, managers were reportedly told not to “take actions that could cost Meta more than 0.15% of the company’s total revenue.”
In response to the report, Meta told Reuters that the estimated 10 percent of revenue from scam ads was “rough and overly-inclusive,” but didn’t share an alternative figure. “Over the past 18 months, we have reduced user reports of scam ads globally by 58 percent and, so far in 2025, we’ve removed more than 134 million pieces of scam ad content,” spokesperson Andy Stone said.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is-making-billions-of-dollars-from-scam-ads-on-facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-report-says-184128645.html?src=rss
The PlayStation Portal initially launched in late 2023 as a device singularly focused on letting players stream games from their PlayStation 5. Since then, Sony has rolled out several updates designed to make it a more capable handheld. The latest software update adds a much anticipated cloud streaming feature, user interface improvements
NotebookLM, the one AI tool from Google everyone loves, is about to become more useful for studying. Google has begun rolling out an update that allows people to use the app to create flashcards and personalized quizzes. When you use NotebookLM in this way, you’ll be able to set the difficulty of the material, as well as the number of questions or cards the app presents to you. It’s also possible to select the sources you want the software to pull from by navigating to the Studio tab, meaning you can focus on what matters to you.
With today’s update, Google is also promising significant improvements to the app’s ability to chat on mobile. Thanks to its latest Gemini models, the company says NotebookLM now has a four times larger context window than before and six times longer conversation memory. Overall, chat quality should be about 50 percent better too. If you want to give NotebookLM a try for yourself, download it from the App Store or Google Play.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/notebooklm-can-now-test-your-knowledge-with-flashcards-and-quizzes-183351007.html?src=rss
Amazon just introduced an AI tool that will automatically translate books into other languages. The appropriately-named Kindle Translate is being advertised as a resource for authors that self publish on the platform.
The company says the tool can translate entire books between English and Spanish and German to English. Amazon promises that more languages are coming down the pike. It’s available right now in a beta form to select authors enrolled in the Kindle Direct Publishing platform. There’s a broader rollout planned for a later date.
Books that use this service will have a clear Kindle Translate label, which might serve as a warning to consumers. Translating a book isn’t a matter of just swapping out words. There’s a whole lot of nuance and intent behind those words and it’s unclear if the algorithm will be able to handle all of that. Major literary works often take years to get a decent translation out the door. Just ask Americans who often have to wait eons to gobble up the latest book by someone like Haruki Murakami.
This is a modern AI tool, so it’s worth considering potential hallucinations. Nothing ruins a read more than a nonsensical chapter that was completely made up by a bot. Amazon does say that “all translations are automatically evaluated for accuracy before publication.” Authors can preview the content before publishing it, but they are unlikely to know the language it’s being translated into. We’ll have to see how this all shakes out.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/amazon-is-testing-an-ai-tool-that-automatically-translates-books-into-other-languages-183056809.html?src=rss
American manufacturing’s postwar boom from the 1940s through the 1970s resulted from conditions that cannot be recreated, a story on WSJ argues. Global competitors had been destroyed by war. Energy was cheap. Unions could demand concessions without fearing job losses to foreign rivals.
Strikes were frequent in steel, auto, trucking, rubber and coal mining. That relentless pressure from an organized working class raised real wages and created fringe benefits including health insurance and retirement pay. Government support for unions kept executive salaries at just a few times median income. Stock buybacks were illegal or frowned upon. President Eisenhower declared at the 1956 dedication of the AFL-CIO national headquarters that “Labor is the United States.”
The system began unraveling by the mid-1960s. The Vietnam War drained federal coffers. Inflation accelerated as government deficits exploded. Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971, unleashing currency volatility. The 1973 OPEC oil embargo quadrupled energy prices. Foreign competition returned from Japan, Korea and West Germany. American companies carried mounting legacy costs like pensions that discouraged investment in upgrades and research.
Milton Friedman declared in a 1970 New York Times essay that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993 and championed the World Trade Organization in 1995. Bethlehem Steel employed around 150,000 people in the mid-1950s. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2001. Its former hometown plant in Bethlehem, Pa., is now a casino.
Merged yesterday to the mainline Linux 6.18 development kernel were the latest round of x86 platform driver fixes. Mostly some small fixes but standing out is electronic privacy screen hotkey support for some Dell laptops…
Elements Divided, the Avatar-inspired multiplayer action game, is leaving Early Access today on Quest.
Developed by Loco Motion Devs and published by Fast Travel Games (Mannequin), Elements Divided is a PvP brawler for up to eight people that allows battle-hungry players the opportunity to wield the powers of fire, water, earth, and air. After debuting in April this year, the multiplayer action game was already in full release on Steam, and it’s now leaving Early Access on Quest.
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During our hands-on with the Early Access build, we believed that Elements Divided is a great addition to the VR brawler genre, going on to say, “The matches are fast enough to just hop in for some quick rounds whenever else you have spare time, and frenetic enough that you’ll work up a bit of a sweat doing so.”
Today’s update also introduces sub-elements to combat. Loco Motion Devs is currently working on further free content updates that include more sub-elements, four new maps, and cosmetics, as well as a specific Winter Map update. While there aren’t any dates specified for these additions, Fast Travel Games confirmed they will arrive between ‘now and until January 2026.’
Elements Divided is available on Quest and Steam for $9.99, the former of which offers a free 30-minute trial.
Devolver Digital had a lovely little surprise up its sleeve this fine Thursday. The publisher released an animated short for Ball x Pit, the roguelite mashup sensation that’s put a serious dent in the productivity levels of several of the Engadget crew. The funny four-minute clip, which comedy animation house Mashed created, clears up some key questions about the game.
To set things up, Ball x Pit is set after a cataclysmic event wipes out the city of Ballbylon. A pit is all that really remains, and hunters descend into it to find treasure and resources to build New Ballbylon. In the pit, you fire an array of balls (a bit like in Breakout) to destroy enemies that move incessantly toward you (like in Space Invaders). There are bosses and characters with special abilities and powerups you can merge and evolve to devastating effect. There’s a base-building side to the game too that sees you bouncing the hunters around New Ballbylon to obtain resources and build structures. It’s a very good video game.
The short features two residents of the town joking about some of these hunters during a celebration called Hero Day. The pair ribs the base character, The Warrior, for being a bit basic. When it comes to the second hero — the Itchy Finger — we find out just how the heroes fire the balls. Heads up: it’s a little gross.
One of the things I wished Ball x Pit had more of is lore, and I love that we get some of that here. This is a fun short that makes some lighthearted jabs at the game while describing some of its features and oh no I’m probably going to sucked back in to playing it again — even before developer Kenny Sun adds some extra stuff to it at some point.
Ball x Pit is out now on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. It’s available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/a-ball-x-pit-animated-short-answers-some-key-questions-about-our-roguelite-obsession-180528272.html?src=rss
Little Critters does many things right. It minds the little details. The game is frenetic, accessible, and fun. And it just works, in the way Steve Jobs famously described the magic of early iPhone devices. But better than a casual iPhone time-killer for the subway… this “tower defense” game brings the tower home.
What if the tower in “tower defense” is your living room?
In 2025, tower defense games often use more established formulas than wider innovations.
Little Critters’ core innovation is its point of view: you’re not an omniscient invisible presence up above; you’re on the ground next to the tower. Enemies don’t attack from just 360 degrees – you’ll need to prepare fully spherical defense coverage as hordes crawl from below and swoop from up high.
It deftly leverages VR tech and industry best practices. The slingshot is a delight: aim via the relative position of your two controllers, pull & release via the grip button, then pile on the chaos of the horde. You’ve got a weapon that’s exactly as accurate as necessary – more accurate (or less!) and mowing down critters simply wouldn’t be as fun. Spatial audio works perfectly to cue me to turn around to my blind spot and catch up on the spawn point I’ve been neglecting; no HUD needed.
Mostly it’s just a thrill to watch these monsters emerge from the wall and hop on my couch before jumping down to the floor. (Of course… moments before I splatter them!)
Perfect Little Details
Your robo-companion doesn’t just dance when you start a wave…
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… they do the wave.
Even staring straight at it, you might not make the connection, or you might shrug it off as a cheesy pun. As a critic, the signal here is quite loud: Developer Purple Yonder could put anything here, or nothing, and it chose to put something perfect. This inconsequential but briefly visible detail telegraphs the countless other truly invisible details where the team applied critical decision-making and taste.
When collecting slimeballs, the in-game currency, nearly every toss to your bank is a swish as long as there’s nothing physically obstructing your path.
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This detail is likewise subtle, but there’s real gameplay impact: In later levels, as the difficulty ramps up, you’ll need to buff up your defense forces mid-wave. Few things would be as frustrating as losing a run because your slimeball missed the hoop. Or losing because you need to periodically abandon your tower to literally dunk the slimeball because soft tosses from any greater distance are too unreliable.
One final little detail that’s even more abstract: Little Critters doesn’t really have a main menu or “home” landing scene. Many games drop you at a menu where you can select between “start” and “options,” or might bog you down with the preamble. Little Critters is remarkable in how hastily it gets you to your first wave of foes.
These details add up: This is the kind of game you could drop a Quest first-timer into, offering the kind of title that a more experienced gamer will likely relish too.
Scaling the Tower
Your weapons level up as you progress. While I wish I could choose where to apply my upgrades, Little Critters choosing for me encourages me to overcome waves using the whole weapons suite instead of winnowing down to (and more rapidly growing bored with) my early favorites.
I have mixed feelings about weapon effectiveness and combos: wall weapons seem best to place near the horde’s spawn points, but wherever you place them gets rendered useless as soon as said spawn points relocate. To boot, from the natural limitations of mixed reality gaming, wall weapons can be the most frustrating to reattach to a new area in a hurry.
For the floor weapons, it’s hard to tell whether, say, the bubble gun or the pie launcher provides more effective ground defense; perhaps they work best in tandem. The bubble gun slows them down and your pie launcher knocks them out, or perhaps the difference is mostly aesthetic.
My only lament is that I’ve unlocked the second “realm” available, which brings with it a new cohort of baddies… but the “realm” itself is still my living room. That’s more than a word choice nit: Games gain depth by transporting you to new locales; Mythic Realms does it well enough, but this is difficult for any game operating on the MR pretense of being in your own room.
In hindsight, if I’m really motivated to seek a new “realm,” I could physically relocate from my living room to my kitchen, where I’d navigate the fridge and countertop instead of the couch and coffee table.
While a more sophisticated game might offer stat bars and DPS calculations, what makes Little Critters a rush is dialing that part of your brain down and pelting numerous ogres with pies or tomatoes. It’s a worthy addition to your library following Purple Yonder’s work on Little Cities, and it’s out now on Quest 3/3S.
Purple Yonder, the studio behind VR city simulator Little Cities (2022), today released a mixed reality action-strategy game for Quest 3 and 3S that challenges you to fortify your real-world home against waves of dastardly little critters.
Called Little Critters, the game pits you against a legion of invaders, arming you with a host of virtual traps that you can attach to your walls, ceilings, floors and furniture.
The pint-sized army can crawl, swoop and attack from every direction, increasing in difficulty as you move through each wave. Level progression also means new critter types with unique attack patterns to defend against, but also new traps, upgrades and weapons to defend your home—all of which adapts to any size or shape of room.
Image courtesy Purple Yonder
“Innovative scene tracking maps the player’s surroundings, turning their actual room into a core component of the game,” the studio says, describing the tech behind Little Critters. “Depth occlusion allows critters to run under tables and behind furniture. With hand tracking, players can slap, squash, throw and poke the critters.”
In addition to hand-tracking, studio further notes that Touch Plus controllers are also supported.
You can find Little Critters today over on the Horizon Store, priced at $20/£15/€18. Purple Yonder notes that Little Critters will get regular updates, including new language localizations and additional content designed to keep the gameplay fresh and engaging.
Little Critters was created by the same team behind casual city simulator Little Cities, which started out in life as a VR-only experience, published by VR veteran studio nDreams. Since its launch in 2022, Purple Yonder has released a number of updates to Little Cities, including a Quest 3 update as well as a hand-tracking update.
Then, in late 2024, Purple Yonder brought a mixed reality version of Little Critters to Apple Vision Pro, accessible through Apple Arcade, the games subscription service.
American inspections of foreign food facilities—which produce everything from crawfish to cookies for the US market—have plummeted to historic lows this year, a ProPublica analysis of federal data shows, even as inspections reveal alarming conditions at some manufacturers.
About two dozen current and former Food and Drug Administration officials blame the pullback on deep staffing cuts under the Trump administration. The stark reduction marks a dramatic shift in oversight at a time when the United States has never been more dependent on foreign food, which accounts for the vast majority of the nation’s seafood and more than half its fresh fruit.
The stakes are high: Foreign products have been increasingly linked to outbreaks of foodborne illness. In recent years, FDA investigators have uncovered disturbing lapses in facilities producing food bound for American supermarkets. In Indonesia, cookie factory workers hauled dough in soiled buckets. In China, seafood processors slid crawfish along cracked, stained conveyor belts. Investigators have reported crawling insects, dripping pipes and fake testing data purporting to show food products were pathogen free.
A startup founded by former Anker employees plans to launch a hybrid RV next year. Evotrex “exists to transform how people experience the outdoors,” according to CEO Alex Xiao. On Thursday, the California-based company announced that it had secured $16 million in Pre-A funding. Among its backers are Anker’s founders (not Anker itself).
The RV trailer is designed to last for days far off the grid. To achieve that, its battery is supplemented by a gas engine. “Live rangelessly and focus on the adventure ahead instead of where to find the next charger,” its website reads. Another line: “Relax off-grid without ever needing to leave your base camp.” You get the picture: The idea is that the gas motor lets you venture farther from civilization for longer.
Evotrex’s founders toldTechCrunch that the battery will power the RV’s cabin, electronics and electric motor. The gas motor is there to recharge the battery and extend its range. They claim that the gas engine is more eco-friendly than others. They say it’s quieter and more efficient, and that the RV trailer can use the motor’s excess heat to warm the cabin.
Inside of the Evotrex RV cabin. Rendering.
Evotrex
Evotrex is hardly alone in keeping gas engines around. EV sales have slowed, and the industry has responded in turn. According to Pew Research, 45 percent of Americans are likely to consider a hybrid vehicle. Only 33 percent said the same for an EV. So, we see automakers responding by delaying EVs or cutting production. This week, Honda’s CEO said the Trump administration has put US EV growth back by “five years or so.” (Meanwhile, the UN warned this week that the world is falling well short of crucial climate targets.)
Evotrex will fully reveal the RV trailer at CES 2026. The company will open reservations on January 6, and it plans to ship the first models by the end of next year. Apart from Anker’s founders, investors include Unity Ventures, Kylinhall Partners, Vision Plus Capital and Xstar Capital. You can learn more at the company’s website.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/former-anker-employees-launch-new-startup-to-build-a-hybrid-rv-trailer-175423273.html?src=rss
One of Russia’s most important projects over the last 15 years has been the construction of the Vostochny spaceport as the country seeks to fly its rockets from native soil and modernize its launch operations.
However, the initiative has been a fiasco from the start. After construction began in 2011, the project was beset by hunger strikes, claims of unpaid workers, and the theft of $126 million. Additionally, a man driving a diamond-encrusted Mercedes was arrested after embezzling $75,000. Five years ago, there was another purge of top officials after another round of corruption.
Through it all, there has been some progress. In 2016, a Soyuz-2 rocket launched from the first pad, “1S.” And eight years later, a second pad, “1A,” opened with a successful Angara rocket launch. Eventually, the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, would like to operate seven launch pads at the Vostochny in the far eastern area of Russia, so development work continues.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, is asking Automatic.CSS — a company that provides a CSS framework for WordPress page builders — to change its name amid public spats between Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg and Automatic.CSS creator Kevin Geary. Automattic has two T’s as a nod to Matt.
“As you know, our client owns and operates a wide range of software brands and services, including the very popular web building and hosting platform WordPress.com,” Jim Davis, an intellectual property attorney representing Automattic, wrote in a letter dated Oct. 30.
“Automattic is also well-known for its longtime and extensive contributions to the WordPress system. Our client owns many trademark registrations for its Automattic mark covering those types of services and software,” Davis continued. “As we hope you can appreciate, our client is concerned about your use of a nearly identical name and trademark to provide closely related WordPress services. Automattic and Automatic differ by only one letter, are phonetically identical, and are marketed to many of the same people. This all enhances the potential for consumer confusion and dilution of our client’s Automattic mark.”
This is a fairly large set, with 3,600 pieces and all kinds of knick-knacks pulled from the show. It ships with nine minifigures, including Captain Picard, Guinan and Worf. Riker even comes with a trombone and Data accompanies his beloved cat, Spot. Every main character is here, even Wesley Crusher. Ensign Ro Laren makes an appearance, for those who want to recreate the crackling tension between her and Picard.
The ship itself is represented in all of its glory. The saucer section is detachable and there’s a shuttle bay door that opens. Inside, there are two cute little shuttlepods. All told, the model measures around 10.5 inches tall, 23.5 inches long and 18.5 inches wide. It comes with a stand so it’ll look great on that Trek-themed mantle.
The set will be available for preorder soon, but we don’t have an actual date on that. It costs $400. Now that we finally have an official Lego Enterprise, where is the Lego Voyager and Lego Deep Space Nine? Get on that.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/legos-star-trek-uss-enterprise-set-arrives-on-black-friday-173414532.html?src=rss
Star Trek fans who have long envied the Star Wars franchise’s collaboration with Lego are finally getting something to celebrate: Lego is introducing a version of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, specifically the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Because we don’t live in the post-money utopian society of the 24th century, the kit will cost you, and unfortunately, it’s priced well into the for-superfans-only zone. The 3,600-piece starship and collection of minifigs will run you $400 when the set officially leaves spacedock on November 28.
Though the Enterprise-D is far from our favorite Enterprise, it does make sense as a starting point for the Lego Group. The Next Generation‘s seven-year run in the late ’80s and early ’90s represents a creative and cultural peak for the franchise, and a 2010s-era remaster that painstakingly re-scanned and upgraded all of the original footage and effects for high-definition TVs has kept the old episodes looking fresher than other ’90s Trek shows like Deep Space Nine and Voyager.
