Videos

🧀 Gouda grief, not again: Google had to edit one of its Super Bowl ads after its AI butchered a fact about Gouda. In the original video, Gemini said Gouda made up 50% to 60% of the world’s cheese consumption. Spoiler: It doesn’t. The fixed version calls it “one of the most popular cheeses in the world.” Another reminder AI loves to make crap up or, as the AI companies say, “hallucinate.”

This is incredible: Google’s new AI feature lets people control Chromebooks using only head and mouth movements. It’ll allow folks with motor impairments to move a cursor, select options and write type emails via text-to-speech. See it in action. So cool.

An IT director from Toronto called corporate life quits after doctors told him his son had an ultra-rare neurodegenerative disease with no cure. They said his boy would be paralyzed from the waist down by 10 and quadriplegic by 20. Dad liquidated his savings and teamed up with researchers working on a promising gene therapy. Years later, his son received the treatment and can now stand up.

On Prince Edward Island, Canada Laura Kelly’s doorbell cam caught the exact moment a meteorite fell. In a big first, the cam also caught the sound it made on impact. It happened last July, but scientists just dropped their findings. Huh, sounds different than I expected.

They’ll weaponize this: A Chinese company has created a robotic dog that can sprint 100 meters in under 10 seconds. The design is inspired by Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who, in 1665, discovered pendulum clocks mounted on the same beam synchronized their swings through energy transfer. And get this — the doggo has custom shoes modeled after a black panther for maximum grip and stability.

🎹 Listen: To the last living student of pianist Sergei Rachmaninov, declared a virtuoso at age 5. Ruth Slenczynski surprised musical critics by playing Beethoven — specifically, a minuet in G major.

What would you do for $5 million? Contestants on Amazon’s “Beast Games” are taking on giant beer pong, racing in potato sacks, and playing hide and seek with Navy SEALs. YouTuber MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, spent $15 million building “Beast City” in Toronto, where 493 folks are competing for the grand prize. After five episodes, it’s Amazon’s second-most-popular streaming show ever, with 50 million viewers.

The Nintendo Switch has sold over 146 million units since its 2017 debut, second only to the Nintendo DS. A new trailer shows the first console morphing into the fancy Nintendo Switch 2. The screen is bigger and the Joy-Cons snap magnetically instead of sliding. There’s no release date yet, so you have time to begin saving.

👨‍🚒 DIY firefighting: A 60-year-old man saved his home from the Palisades fire with some special equipment he’d purchased in advance. He soaked his house with water pumps, sprinklers and a hydrogel retardant he mixed in his backyard hot tub. Sadly, the homes surrounding him weren’t as lucky. Here’s the video showing how he did it.