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Sure, we've seen millions poured into lobbying and other means of influence during every presidency, but the last two years set a whole new bar. Business leaders, including those from almost every Big Tech company, stepped over themselves to prove fealty to Donald Trump's second administration. It's easy to see why: Their kowtowing was meant to secure regulatory favors, gain tax and tariff advantages and avoid Trump's ire. Ultimately, it was all in the service of appeasing their shareholders. Why else would Apple CEO Tim Cook, someone who typically cultivates a progressive image, hand deliver a gold plaque to the President of the United States?
Before we leave 2025 behind, it's worth documenting the many ways tech companies and leaders debased themselves for political favor with the Trump administration.
Alphabet (Google)Google dropped diversity recruitment goals in February, following Trump's executive orders dismantling DEI programs in the federal government. Google also changed its AI principles to allow AI in weapons and surveillance, a move that is in line with the relaxed artificial intelligence regulation the Trump administration would later adopt for its
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 Apple today provided public beta testers with the first release of an upcoming macOS Tahoe 26.3 update for testing purposes. The public beta comes two days after Apple provided the beta to developers.
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.gif) Almost exactly a month after the debut of Gemini 3 Pro in November, Google has begun rolling out the more efficient Flash version of its latest AI model. According to the company, the new system offers similar "pro-grade" reasoning performance as its flagship model at a fraction of the cost, making it ideal for everyday use.
In benchmarks, the new system performed significantly better than Google's previous generation models, including Gemini 2.5 Pro. More notably, in Google's testing it managed to trade blows with GPT-5.2, the model OpenAI rushed out to counter Gemini 3 Pro.
A table comparing Gemini 3 Flash's performance across a variety of AI benchmarks. GoogleFor example, in the tough Humanity's Last Exam suite, Gemini 3 Flash scored less than a percentage point worse than GPT-5.2 when neither model had access to tools like web search. In a handful of other benchmarks, Google's more efficient system even managed to outperform OpenAI's latest. For instance, in MMMU-Pro, a benchmark designed to test a model's multimo
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The Magpies look to put their derby disappointment behind them as they host the Cottagers in this EFL cup clash.
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Don't let winter weather cause chaos. Here's how to inspect and prepare your home for the winter season.
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The new Conversation Focus feature tackles one of the most universal struggles: trying to hear someone in a crowded, noisy space.
The post Meta AI Glasses Get Spotify Integration and Voice Boost appeared first on eWEEK.
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OpenAI rebuilds ChatGPT Images to challenge Google's Nano Banana, bringing faster image generation, editing, and conversational iteration into one creative workflow.
The post Nano Banana Faces New Rival as OpenAI Rolls Out ChatGPT Images Overhaul appeared first on eWEEK.
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With a new year just around the corner, now is the perfect time to take stock of your finances. A budgeting app can help with that, and right now you can get 50 percent off your first year of a Monarch Money plan. All you need to do is enter the code MONARCHVIP at checkout and you'll pay $50 for the initial 12 months instead of the regular price of $100. Note that the offer only applies to new users.
Monarch Money was the runner-up in our guide to the best budgeting apps in 2025, and it was definitely a grower. Initially we found the experience of using the app to be needlessly complicated compared to some of its rivals, but get over that hurdle and it's impressively fully-featured. There are plenty of customization options, a helpful "goals" feature and a thorough month-in-review recap that beats out similar features from some of its competitors. We also like how you can grant account access to others.
Besides the steep learning curve, we also noted that the mobile app is less intuitive to use
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 Samsung kicked off a holiday sale last week, and this event has expanded recently with even more great deals on monitors, TVs, Galaxy smartphones, and home appliances. Many of these deals are the exact same all-time low prices we tracked during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
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MIT researchers built an AI robotic system that turns plain-language prompts into 3D designs and assembles objects with prefabricated parts and user feedback.
The post ‘Robot, Build It': MIT's New AI Lets You Build Real Objects Just by Describing Them appeared first on eWEEK.
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There are way too many online services and subscriptions to keep track of these days, but the flip side is there's a tool for just about everything. Time is just about up to get a physical gift shipped in time for the holidays, so below we've pulled together some of our favorite digital gifts and subscriptions, including time-tested video, music and gaming services as well as tools to clear your mental space and learn new skills. There are also a few subscriptions that provide ongoing, IRL deliveries, if you think your giftee will appreciate the nostalgic charm of a physical object.
Best digital gifts and subscription gifts
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 Apple is in talks with suppliers to manage iPhone chip assembly and packaging in India for the first time, reports The Economic Times.
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The latest iPhone update also upgrades the music, podcast and news apps, and gives you more Liquid Glass options.
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If you haven't yet upgraded to Apple's AirPods Pro 3, you can pick up the company's latest model at a discount through a deal on Amazon right now. The AirPods Pro 3, which came out in September, are currently down to $210. That's $40 off and only $10 more than the record-low price we saw last week. The Pro 3s have been fluctuating in price since Black Friday, with the lowest they've been being $199 for a brief period. With the new AirPods Pro, Apple made some big improvements, including better battery life and sound quality, and introduced useful new features, such as Live Translation.
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 OpenAI added several new features to its flagship ChatGPT product today, introducing Apple Music support and upgraded image generation capabilities.
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 All of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 models are equipped with a Camera Control button that provides quick access to the Camera app and camera settings, but not everyone is a fan of it. Fortunately, though, Apple apparently plans to improve it.
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 Apple and Amazon are facing a new UK opt-out class action seeking more than £900 million ($1.2 billion) over claims that the companies struck an unlawful deal that pushed independent Apple and Beats sellers off Amazon and kept prices higher for consumers.
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 In line with previous rumors, The Information today reported that Apple is planning to release a special 20th-anniversary iPhone less than two years from now.
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Netflix has inked a deal with iHeartMedia to begin showing video podcasts, so the content will never, ever run out. The partnership covers new episodes from more than 15 popular podcasts, including The Breakfast Club, Dear Chelsea, My Favorite Murder and others. Customers will have access to video podcast episodes in early 2026.
In addition to new footage, the partnership includes a select library of archival episodes from each show. It's worth noting that YouTube already platforms video versions of many popular podcasts, including stuff like The Breakfast Club.
This follows a similar deal from earlier this year in which Netflix announced plans to stream video podcast episodes from Spotify. That partnership covers stuff like The Bill Simmons Podcast and The Zach Lowe Show, among others.
Many people use podcasts for background noise and soon Netflix will be a major player in that market, such as it is. Disney also recently started prioritizing those "barely paying attention" eyeballs, as it inked its own deal to air The Rich Eisen Show on weekdays.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainme
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Apple's iOS 26.1 update delivers major security fixes, performance boosts and enhanced privacy controls for your iPhone. Discover why updating now protects your data.
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The 8-core, 16-thread 7800X3D was the sweet spot for gaming performance and price a couple of years ago, though it's been superseded by the Zen 5-based 9800X3D (which can be installed in the same AM5 motherboards). That said, the newer chip is $460 from various retailers right now and only about 5 percent faster in higher-end games.
That makes this deal on the older 7800X3D a no-brainer. Put that extra budget towards your GPU or a bigger SSD and your upcoming PC build will be a lot more capable. Oh, and remember that the X3D processors don't come with coolers—as AMD assumes you'll want something a little beefier—so make sure to include one in your PCPartPicker list.
Grab the Ryzen 7 7800X3D for $319.99 on Amazon while you still can. There's no indication of how long this particular deal will last, but Walmart is also selling it on sale, which you can snag if the Amazon deal runs out. (In fact, depending on where you are in relation to the nearest distribution center, you could get the
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Sometimes you can notice the signs of a failing SSD. For instance, the once-quick transfer speed slows to crawl, there are frequent program or system crashes, or file system access errors or SMART errors occur. If you notice these things, especially in combination, there's a good chance your SSD is on its way out. In that case, it's time to prepare for the worst and do the following:
Back up critical files
It goes without saying that the first thing you'll want to do if you think your SSD is on the blink is to back up your critical data. Backups should be done regularly anyway, but even if you're doing that, you'll still want to make a new backup of your critical files at this point to have them ready to go should your SSD suddenly die.
See our roundups of the best Windows backup software and
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 Read full story for latest details.
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