Rachel Reeves, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, is set to raise the General Betting Duty from 15% to 30% in her Autumn Budget later this month. Amid this, a report by the country’s Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) has stated that European countries with a higher tax on... Read more

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles. Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a fun one. The purple category trusts that you know your pro teams, and... Read more

At WIRED, we recommend a bunch of Nomad accessories for a variety of gadgets, such as your smartphone, tablet, earbuds, and smartwatch. But it can get expensive—it’s the price you pay for luxury. If you’ve been holding out for a sale, you’re in luck. The company is currently offering... Read more

Baidu Inc., China's largest search engine company, released a new artificial intelligence model on Monday that its developers claim outperforms competitors from Google and OpenAI on several vision-related benchmarks despite using a fraction of the computing resources typically required for such systems. The model, dubbed ERNIE-4.5-VL-28B-A3B-Thinking, is the latest... Read more

Following three years of legal battles, a Thai court of appeals has upheld an extradition order against an alleged ‘Chinese gambling kingpin.’ According to the Bangkok Post, a 43-year-old Chinese man, named She Zhijiang, who also holds a Cambodian passport, was arrested back in August 2022 by Thai police.... Read more

In July, Square Enix unveiled the newest entry in its Octopath Traveler series of role-playing games in the publisher’s HD-2D retro pixel sprite style. This prequel, Octopath Traveler 0, adds features but in my short time with the game I feel it loses some of the charm of the... Read more

For the first time, the Nike x Hyperice Hyperboot is on sale. The recovery boots are $200 off—normally $899, now $699—through December 1. They’re also HSA/FSA eligible. Normally, I’d point you toward the Normatec 3 Legs; they cost the same and offer more leg coverage, but at this discounted... Read more

Researchers at Meta FAIR and the National University of Singapore have developed a new reinforcement learning framework for self-improving AI systems. Called Self-Play In Corpus Environments (SPICE), the framework pits two AI agents against each other, creating its own challenges and gradually improving without human supervision. While currently a... Read more

The Social Gaming Leadership Alliance (SGLA) has recategorized online sweepstakes games amid controversy around the gaming sector. A blog written by SGLA Managing Director Sean Ostrow has launched “Social Plus”, a new term for online sweepstakes games. The rebranding is a clear pushback to critiques of the sector coming... Read more

YouTube TV subscribers have missed another Monday Night Football game, with no sign at all of when ABC and other Disney channels might be restored to the service. All of the Disney-owned streaming channels, including ABC, ESPN, the ACC Network and the SEC Networks, were removed from YouTube TV on Oct.... Read more