Normal view
You canβt hit a wrong note when playing along with songs on Casioβs new keyboard
Casio announced a new addition to its Casiotone line of portable electronic keyboards with a feature that could help aspiring musicians master skills like rhythm and timing without the frustrations or discouragement of hitting the wrong note.
The Casiotone CT-FS1 is available now for $399.99 in a monochromatic black or white version where even the 61 touch-responsive keys are all the same color. It can run on AA batteries or a power adapter but at just under 10 pounds in weight it's definitely not the smallest of portable keyboards. There's built-in stereo speakers and Bluetooth connectivity if you're playing for others, as well as a physic β¦
-
The Verge
- This Election Day, remember which party ran against EVs and tethered us all to the gas pump
This Election Day, remember which party ran against EVs and tethered us all to the gas pump
It's the midterms! Here's a fun fact for you as you head to the polls: Gas prices today are the highest ever recorded for a US Election Day.
The national average for a gallon of gasoline is $4.12 and $6.28 for a gallon of diesel, according to GasBuddy. Meanwhile, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is maintained by the US Department of Energy as a safeguard during energy crises, is down to 282.2 million barrels of crude, the lowest level in 44 years.
Gas prices, along with other essential cost-of-living items, are certainly top of mind for many voters this election cycle. And perhaps many will also remember which political party ran o β¦
Mark Walter in Talks to Sell Cadillac F1 Stake to Red Sox, Liverpool Owners

Β© Vincent Thian/Associated Press
Afghan Woman Is Among Dozens to Be Deported to Afghanistan

Β© Siddiqullah Alizai/Associated Press
Opinion | Trump to Mideast: Youβre on Your Own

Β© Syrian Presidency/APA Images/ZUMA Press
Opinion | Elon Musk Will Turn Kids Into Capitalists

Β© Nir Elias/Reuters
Opinion | Elon Musk Will Turn Kids Into Capitalists

Β© Nir Elias/Reuters
Trump to Mideast: Youβre on Your Own

Β© Syrian Presidency/APA Images/ZUMA Press
Elon Musk Will Turn Kids Into Capitalists

Β© Nir Elias/Reuters
Lorry driver electrocuted after vehicle hit overhead power line
Appleβs latest watchOS beta includes its new always-on Audio Intelligence features
Starting today, Siri can tune into the Apple Watch's mic with Audio Intelligence features that are available in the new watchOS 27.3 developer beta rolling out now. The two new additions are Siri Recap, which uses "ambient listening" to generate summaries of your conversation, and Live Rewind, which generates text transcripts of the last 15 seconds of audio your watch's mic detected.
Apple is also releasing its redesigned Health app for testing today in the iOS 27.3 developer beta, and announced expanded language support in global English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turki β¦
NYT demands Brave shut down its paywall blocker and end deals with AI firms
The New York Times and other newspaper companies sued Brave Software yesterday, alleging that the browser maker illegally bypasses paywalls and sells stolen news content to AI companies.
"Brave is the supplier, dealer, and distributor of stolen copyrighted content for its own users and many of the most prominent GenAI companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere," the NYT alleged in a lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Citing third-party revenue estimates, the suit claimed that "Brave has made more than $100 million by copying and reselling publishersβ work without consent or permission," while "publishers have received nothing."
The lawsuit said, "AI companies pay Brave to provide them with real-time online content from the Brave search index," and use content from the Brave index "to train their own AI models" and "to respond to specific user queries."Β The NYT lawsuit points to Brave's website, which says the Brave Search API is "used by some of the biggest names in AI, including Cohere, Mistral, Perplexity, and You.com."


Β© Getty Images | SOPA Images
OpenAI says ChatGPT is catching up to Google in search
In many circles, "Ask Chat" has replaced "Google it," and that's reflected in a new announcement from OpenAI: the volume of search queries run through ChatGPT now equals 20 percent of the volume run through Google.
Adam Fry, OpenAI's consumer product lead for ChatGPT, made the announcement at a press event on Monday. He said the company defines a search as any time a user inputs a query that results in a web search, as opposed to tasks like defining a term or a simple how-to explanation. (Fry did not specify the source of the Google search volume number.)
Having one-fifth as many searches as Google is still a long way from overtaking it, b β¦
Reddit is adding more ads
Reddit is testing ads on another area of its platform: search. With this update, ads will appear within your search results "based on a range of factors, including contextual relevance to a search query," according to Reddit.
That means searching for "espresso station" could present you with ads for espresso, machines, beans, or mugs, while a search for a "home office setup" may yield ads for monitors, desks, or office chairs. Reddit currently shows ads across its feeds in a variety of formats, including images, videos, sponsored posts, and AMAs. It also shows ads within threads.
Reddit has announced a number of changes to its platform ove β¦
Buttons are back and storage is king when it comes to car interiors
As with interior design for houses, interior design for vehicles is also subject to fashion trends. And like any fashion trend, even the best ideas can become stale and played out with overuse. Some ideas werenβt the best, either, like demonstrably worse human-machine interfaces that add to driver distraction; yet, they still proliferated throughout the industry and across the cars offered for sale. But the good news is that the pushback seems to be working.
βWhen the trend of the Piano Black and the switchless interior was happening, it was during a time when designers and companies and engineers and everybody were thinking that, 'Hey, we can just get rid of all these switches on the interior. We can put it all in the software. It'll save money. It'll save us tooling up all these extra parts for unique cars and all this stuff and make the interior more like a software experience.' And it was done with those intentions,β said Hiren Patel, senior design manager at Nissan.
That resulted in cars with minimalist interiors that looked good in the dealership. But people drive their cars on roads; they donβt just sit inside them, parked inside a dealership. βSo lots of people were complaining about it and saying, 'Hey, it takes my eyes off the road to change the temperature or to adjust my seat or do whatever.' It's not as easy as doing something on your phone where it's just right at your fingertips and intuitive,β Patel said.


Β© Nissan
Google will let schools skip AI tools, but they have to give up search, too
While Google is trying to move beyond Chromebooks, the ubiquity of these devices has made the company's education products huge in schools. Now, Google says it will let educators choose whether to allow its AI tools in the classroom. However, blocking AI tools also means giving up search, leaving schools with a difficult decision.
Google's new overarching approach to AI in K-12 classrooms sounds good on the surface. After consulting educators, researchers, and lawmakers, Google has decided that schools using its education products will be opted out of AI tools by default. It will be up to administrators to manually enable them when these changes roll out in the coming months.
When you look at what Google considers to be an AI tool, the nature of the Faustian bargain becomes clear. The affected products are Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. There's no picking and choosingβyou either allow all the AI or none of it.


Β© Aurich Lawson
Another child dies of measles as CDC reportedly holds up health alert
A child in New York has died of measles, health officials in the state announced late Monday. It marks the first reported measles-associated death in New York in more than 30 years. It is the seventh measles-linked death reported in the US this year; all six of the other deaths were reported in Pennsylvania, which is experiencing a dramatic measles outbreak that has stricken over 1,430 people this year. Prior to the deaths, Pennsylvania hadn't seen a measles-related death in 35 years.
The boom in vaccine-preventable outbreaks, cases,Β and tragic deaths is being fueled by slipping vaccination rates nationwide as health misinformation and anti-vaccine sentiments have taken hold. One of the most prominent anti-vaccine activists in the US currently serves as the US health secretary; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent decades prior to taking office attacking vaccines and spreading misinformation. He and his anti-vaccine organization, Children's Health Defense, have been one of the most prolific sources of anti-vaccine content.
Since taking office, Kennedy has waged a multi-front war on vaccines that has included dismantling and obstructing federal vaccine recommendations; launching dubious studies to look for alleged, unspecified harms of vaccines; promoting alleged vaccine injuries; and continuing to spread misinformation about vaccines and vaccine-preventable illnesses.


Β© Getty | Povorozniuk Liudmyla
Israeli Claims of Iranian Chemical Weapons Divide U.S. Officials

Β© Emile Ducke for The New York Times
Google Curbs AI in School Accounts After Pushback

Β© Moriah Ratner/For The Wall Street Journal