Free Republic

The PUBG Ally is the same asinine experience of playing co-op with a bot, except this one always talks back to you in complete sentences. Krafton also uses Nvidia’s tech to craft inZOI, a Sims-type life simulator that puts chatbots in characters’ heads. Despite the AI supposedly planning and making life choices for the in-game characters, it still looked like a dull version of The Sims, lacking most of the charm of those games. I see the vision; it’s just not there yet. ... However, the real star was a talking mannequin head sitting like a gargoyle on your home...

Police were involved in an unusual kind of chase on a motorway near Gothenburg on Saturday night. Their quarry was not escaped prisoners or speeding motorists, but rather two circus llamas. The camelids had escaped from Circus Maximum in Vallhamra, and made their way to the E20 motorway, the principal route between Stockholm and Gothenburg. Police tried to catch the creatures, but their efforts served more to alarm them, and they ran backwards and forwards across the motorway, Expressen reports. The chase continued for an hour before circus staff and police managed to catch the frightened llamas.

<p>NEW YORK (AP) -- Jeremy Chase admits to shaking down his enemies. His Web site advertises extortion, hits and prostitution for a hefty fee.</p> <p>Chase is a mob leader -- but only in the virtual world. He is one of hundreds of players who found the path of lawlessness and deviance too irresistible when "The Sims Online" challenged them to "Be Somebody ... else."</p>

Call it obsessive, compulsive, or just plain crazy. A growing number of Americans are becoming addicted to online gaming. Video games like EverQuest and the recently-released Sims Online are turning real lives upside down. The games allow you to take on an identity in a “virtual” world, and interact with thousands of strangers around the world doing the same thing. In a recent survey of 4000 EverQuest players, 62 percent said they considered themselves addicted. Some are calling it an “underground epidemic.” Hudson, Wisconsin native Shawn Woolley logged in, then logged out -- of life. "He quit taking phone calls,...