Tech

Google’s top trending searches for 2024 are out now and the top recipe is for Olympics chocolate muffins after Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen popularized the sweet treats. Other surprisingly popular searches include Baby Reindeer as the most searched for TV show and The New York Times’ Connections game beating Palworld and Helldivers 2 for the top gaming spot.

CosmOS 1.3 adds the ability to create contacts and connect to Bluetooth devices with your voice, which seems useful. Humane is also promising that the update will “unlock an extra hour of battery life.”

Verge alum Sam Sheffer posted a video showing off some of the new things you can do.

Not much has changed in this updated version of Rode’s wireless microphone system, but it does have a lot of great color options. They aren’t smaller like the Wireless Micro, but at least you can match it to the color of the shirt you clip it to.

After seeing this animated short to promote Monument Valley 3, I’d watch 10 others like it.

The company, Embodied, announced this week it had lost funding and will close up shop, reports Aftermath. That will brick Moxie, its cloud-connected $799 educational robot.

The company won’t offer refunds or warranty and repair services. That leaves caregivers with distraught kids and robots that shut down despite otherwise functioning hardware — a situation consumer protection groups have lobbied the FTC to go after.

YouTube is now testing multiplayer on two of its casual Playables games, Ludo Club (which is basically Sorry!) and Magic Tiles 3 (a music game).

More new Playables features are on the horizon: “We’re just getting started testing out new features for YouTube Playables with more to come in the future,” YouTube says.

Did Intel’s board “retire” him because he botched something, or did it rug pull before he could finish the job? Either way, Gelsinger is now praying for Intel’s employees and defending its all-important 18A silicon process on X. He agrees it’s “fake news” that yields are bad, and explains yields depend on chip size. (You can fit more tiny chips on a wafer than big ones!)

I always love seeing what famous people’s phones look like, and almost did a spit take at this clip of a Spanish politician’s Sonny Angel attachment.

Óscar Puente, minister of transport and sustainable mobility, is apparently a fan of the viral miniature cherub dolls that have amassed an almost cult-like following.

Henry Farrell, co-author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy, notices that LLMs do an awful lot of things done by middle management. What if the wrong people are worried that AI will take their jobs?

Though I like the idea of wirelessly connecting to a record player, I rarely use that function. If you do, let me know why!

The company has announced that “the first games playable with the LG Magic Remote” are Cut the Rope and Thief Puzzle. Both puzzle games are available now and “optimized for seamless play” with the motion-sensing remote.

Anbernic left out some important details when it announced its GBA-inspired RG34XX handheld emulator last week. But according to @RetroGameCorps and Retro Dodo, we now know it will go on sale starting at 5AM ET on December 16th and will be priced at $70 and discounted to $64 for the first three days. The original Nintendo GBA debuted at $99.99 in 2001.

Alongside the canceled Pixel Tablet 2, Google may have released an accompanying pen with a button to open a note-taking app, as reported by Android Authority. The pen would reportedly dock to Google’s rumored keyboard accessory.

A Reddit user discovered that Panic has quietly introduced a 10W AC adapter that matches the Playdate handheld’s bright yellow aesthetic. It’s available now for $5 and works with the USB-C to USB-A cable that’s included with the Playdate, but I would have gladly paid more for a USB-C port and a matching yellow USB-C to USB-C cable.