We are in the midst of an unprecedented, intergenerational phone-game renaissance. Wordle has become a pillar of the New York Times brand, newspapers everywhere are resurrecting their crossword backpage, and Words With Friends has essentially transformed into a dating app. These games are designed to be approachably mainstream--every English speaker alive can deduce a five-letter word with six chances--but unfortunately, I am a man of unconventional taste. If I'm going to entertain a daily dose of potpourri, I need something weirder, more challenging, and better suited for the precise category of useless knowledge that occupies my brain. That's why the sports-trivia game Immaculate Grid has become a fixture of my morning routine.

How to Do It is Slate's sex advice column. Send it to Stoya and Rich here. My husband and I have an awesome, intelligent 14-year-old son who identifies as bisexual. We are totally accepting and supportive of him. He has had a few short-lived crushes on different genders, though he doesn't seem to be particularly interested in dating right now. His internet search histories are pretty benign--mostly video game stuff, and the occasional search for "hot girls" and "boobs."

Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here. Sarah Ferguson expressed her shock and grief as she mourned the death of her former personal assistant, Jenean Chapman, who was murdered in Texas this week. The 63-year-old Duchess of York paid tribute to Chapman in an Instagram post that she shared on Thursday. "I am shocked and saddened to learn that Jenean Chapman, who worked with me as my personal assistant many years ago, has been murdered in Dallas aged just 46. A suspect is in custody," Ferguson wrote.

When it comes to curating a dating profile, singletons may spend countless hours deciding which photographs show their best angles. But experts now suggest that attraction really is just about the animals you're shot with, as 76 per cent of daters would be tempted to swipe right if a feline featured. Dating app, FindingTheOne, polled 2,000 of its users on their preferences and pet peeves when it comes to furry friends online. While dogs are usually deemed a man's best friend, results show they're certainly not the best wingmen, as just 41 per cent of users were tempted to date a pup's parent. Meanwhile, a startling 62 per cent wouldn't mind falling for a snake or lizard owner - and 23 per cent even find them'sexy'.

The European Summer School on Artificial Intelligence (ESSAI) is a direct product of European AI research being increasingly coordinated and scaled up across projects, research organisations and countries. ESSAI's immediate predecessors are the Advanced Course on AI (ACAI), organised since 1985 under the auspices of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), and the TAILOR Summer School on Trustworthy AI organised since 2021 by the European ICT-48 Network of Excellence on Trustworthy AI through Integrating Learning, Optimisation and Reasoning. Last year, these two schools were already co-located in Barcelona with two parallel tracks as well as joint events.

A new model has revealed that a mega volcano eruption drove the dinosaurs to extinction -- not the infamous Chicxulub meteor that smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula over 66 million years ago. Scientists from Dartmouth University designed a simulation that used real-world geological data to crunch more than 300,000 possible scenarios. The system was prompted to explain the fossil records across the one million years before and after dinosaurs became extinct. The model revealed that climate change and toxic gases from the Deccan Traps' hundreds of thousands of years of emissions were the nail in the coffin for the extinct creatures. India's'Deccan Traps' mega-volcano, estimated to have pumped as much as 10.4 trillion tons of carbon dioxide and 9.3 trillion tons of sulfur dioxide into Earth's atmosphere during their nearly million years of eruptions.

"Father of the Video Game" Ralph Baer escaped Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany as a teen and served in the U.S. Army in WWII. After coming of age in tough times, he felt driven to bring "more fun and whimsy" into the world. Ralph Baer's childhood was stolen by the Nazis. The German-born Jew gained a semblance of revenge overseas, imagining a new way for children of all ages to play. Ralph Baer invented video games.

SoundThinking, the company behind the gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter, is quietly acquiring staff, patents, and customers of the firm that created the notorious predictive policing software PredPol, WIRED has learned. In an August earnings call, SoundThinking CEO Ralph Clark announced to investors that the company was negotiating an agreement to acquire parts of Geolitica--formerly called PredPol--and transition its customers to SoundThinking's own "patrol management" solution. "We have already hired their engineering team," Clark said during the call, a transcript of which is public. He added that the acquisition of patents and staff would "facilitate our application of AI and machine learning technology to public safety." SoundThinking's absorption of Geolitica marks its latest step in becoming the Google of crime fighting--a one-stop shop for policing tools.

OpenAI is bringing audio and image capabilities to ChatGPT. The platform, which has long been limited to written prompts, will be adding the new features over the next two weeks to paid versions of the app, OpenAI announced in a blog post on Monday. Everyone else will be receiving the features "soon after". Users can have voice conversations with the chatbot, bringing it closer to popular AI assistants such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. ChatGPT's new voice feature can also narrate bedtime stories, settle debates at the dinner table and speak out loud text input from users.

Nearly 1,500 US police departments operate drones but only about a dozen routinely dispatch them in response to 911 calls, according to ACLU research. Drone maker Skydio aims to see that change, with a new model launched last week called the X10. The goal, cofounder and CEO Adam Bry said during a launch event last week in San Francisco, is to "get drones everywhere they can be useful in public safety." The new drone is capable of flying at speeds of 45 miles per hour and is small enough to fit into the trunk of a police car. It has infrared sensors that can be used to track people and fly autonomously in the dark.