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Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson) Back in April, we ran a series of useful and/or somewhat goofy prompts through Google's (then-new) PaLM-powered Bard chatbot and OpenAI's (slightly older) ChatGPT-4 to see which AI chatbot reigned supreme. At the time, we gave the edge to ChatGPT on five of seven trials, while noting that "it's still early days in the generative AI business." Now, the AI days are a bit less “early," and this week's launch of a new version of Bard powered by Google's new Gemini language model seemed like a good excuse to revisit that chatbot battle with the same set of carefully designed prompts.

Enlarge (credit: Google) Google Podcasts has been sitting on Google's death row for a few months now since the September announcement. Now, a new support article details Google's plans to kill the product, with a shutdown coming in April 2024. Google Podcasts (2016–2024) is Google's third attempt at a podcasting app after the Google Reader-powered Google Listen (2009–2012) and Google Play Music Podcasts (2016–2020).

Enlarge / It's a hefty plug, but it has to be so that an F-150 Lightning can send power back to the home through an 80-amp Ford Charge Station Pro. (credit: Ford) Modern EVs have some pretty huge batteries, but like their gas-powered counterparts, the main thing they do is sit in one place, unused.

Enlarge / Elon Musk at an AI event with Britain Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | WPA Pool ) Elon Musk yesterday appealed to the Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to terminate his settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Enlarge / Harvard University graduate student Yue Sun won a Milton Van Dyke Award for her video on the hydrodynamics of marbled paper. (credit: Y. Sun/Harvard University et al.) Marbled paper is an art form that dates back at least to the 17th century, when European travelers to the Middle East brought back samples and bound them into albums.

Enlarge / A large family can come with some unfortunate downsides (in addition to that weird cousin). (credit: Oliver Rossi) Analysis of genomic and behavioral data from the vast UK Biobank finally demonstrates that genes that promote reproductive behaviors come with the ultimate price. Aging stinks. You get marks on your skin, you’re slower, you forget stuff, and everything hurts.