The company behind the UK's newest video game console is not concerned with the latest state-of-the-art graphics or hardware. Instead, David Lee, chief executive of US technology firm Nex, says its cube-shaped machine, the Nex Playground, is designed to get children moving. The relatively little-known device surprised the games industry when research firm Circana revealed it was the third best-selling console in the US over Black Friday 2025, outselling the Xbox Series S and X. While motion-controlled gaming is nothing new - Nintendo's Wii launched in 2006 - concerns around children's passive screen time remain a hot topic for many parents and politicians. Ahead of the UK launch I spoke to parents who already own the console in the US, and tried the machine myself to find out how it works - and if it can really get families feeling fitter.

Early playgrounds were more about fitness than fun--and children didn't enter the equation for decades. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Playgrounds have never been just fun and games. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. You can learn a lot about a society from the way they raise children.

We don't know if AI-powered toys are safe, but they're here anyway Toys powered by AI show a worrying lack of emotional understanding. Mya, aged 3, and her mother Vicky playing with an AI toy called Gabbo during an observation at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Education Even the most cutting-edge AI models are prone to presenting fabrication as fact, dispensing dangerous information and failing to grasp social cues. Despite this, toys equipped with AI that can chat with children are a burgeoning industry. Some scientists are warning that the devices could be risky and require strict regulation. In the latest study, researchers even observed a 5-year-old telling such a toy "I love you", to which it replied: "As a friendly reminder, please ensure interactions adhere to the guidelines provided. Let me know how you would like to proceed."

This $249 AI console has the best elements of the Kinect. Just be prepared for ongoing subscription fees. It's the year 2026 and the hottest game in my living room is . No, I'm not in the midst of an ill-advised retro mobile gaming kick. Instead, my family and I have been jumping around and slicing flying fruit in our living room using the Nex Playground .

Recent research has demonstrated the effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and more specifically, Large Language Models (LLMs), in supporting network configuration synthesis and automating network diagnosis tasks, among others. In this preliminary work, we restrict our focus to the application of AI agents to network troubleshooting and elaborate on the need for a standardized, reproducible, and open benchmarking platform, where to build and evaluate AI agents with low operational effort.

This enterprise proved so amusing that the pair, in collaboration with composer Dave Soldier, repeated the experiment with popular music, releasing the "most wanted" and "least wanted" songs together on a CD with a cover photo of all three men wearing white lab coats and pointing at a calculator. Sadly, the pair stopped short of what I view as the greatest challenge: producing novels that reflect what Americans like and dislike in fiction. Now, at last, with People's Choice Literature, by the writer/artist/composer Tom Comitta, a new "scientist" has taken up the task. People's Choice Literature offers its readers two novels for the price of one. The first is a thriller whose heroine tries to prevent her boss, a new age–y tech mogul, from launching a quantum computing network that will bring about a total surveillance state.

With over 650 million registered players, Fortnite is without a doubt one of the most popular video games in the world. Now, experts have warned that some children are spending so much time playing the game that they're developing'Fortnite accents'. The Fortnite accent is typically high-pitched and fast-faced, according to the experts at Preply. It also often features an upward inflection at the end of each sentence, almost as if everything is being said in the tone of a question. 'Because of the game's young player base, it mimics the sound of an overly excited or frustrated child's voice,' Preply explained.