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New versions of Apple's ubiquitous tracking pucks are set to hit stores this week. Here's what Apple changed and all you need to know about how they work.
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A recent investigation by an online advocacy organization called the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) found that the Apple App Store and Google Play Store are rife with so-called "nudify" apps. These are AI applications that create nonconsensual and sexualized images, which is a clear violation of both companies' store policies.
All told, the investigation found 55 of this type of app in the Google Play Store and 47 in the Apple App Store. Both platforms also still offer access to xAI's Grok, which is likely the most famous nonconsensual deepfake maker in the world.
"Apple and Google are supposed to be vetting the apps in their stores. But they've been offering dozens of apps that can be used to show people with minimal or no clothing—making them ripe for abuse," said Michelle Kuppersmith, an executive director at the nonprofit that runs TTP.
The apps identified by the report have been collectively downloaded over 700 million times and generated more than $117 million in revenue. Google and Apple get a cut of this money.
— Tech Transparency Project (@TTP_updates) January 27, 2026
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Amazon is rethinking its grocery business, and as part of that, it will shut down all of its remaining Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores. The company will convert some locations into Whole Foods Market stores.
"While we've seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven't yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion," the company wrote in a blog post. Amazon added that it would help workers at Go and Fresh stores to find positions elsewhere within the company.
For now, Amazon is focusing its grocery efforts on Fresh deliveries, Amazon Now (a 30-minutes-or-less delivery option it recently introduced to compete with DoorDash and Instacart) and Whole Foods. It plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years.
Amazon also says it will introduce new types of physical locations in the coming years. One concept it's considering is a "supercenter" that would offer a broad selection of goods from Amazon, including household items, groceries and "general merchandise." I dunno, that just sounds like a supermarket to me.
Meanwhile, the checkout-less Just Walk Out tech that the company implemented in Go and Fresh stores is still in use at third-party locations, including hosp
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New Star Wars sets also will work with the Smart Play brick system coming in March.
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There are some new features are part of this series, but are they really worth your money?
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The French government is saying au revoir to Microsoft Teams and Zoom as it embraces a home-grown alternative. By next year, civil servants across all departments will have switched to French videoconference platform Visio, as EuroNews reports.
As with Teams and Zoom, Visio has an AI-powered transcription tool. Visio runs on a French company's cloud infrastructure as well. The platform has around 40,000 users and it's been in testing for the last year. The government expects the switch to help reduce costs by as much as €1 million ($1.2 million) each year for every 100,000 users.
The decision to ditch Microsoft Teams and Zoom is part of a broader effort to rely less on foreign software services — particularly US ones. Under the Suite Numérique project, France also plans to jettison the likes of Gmail and Slack for government use.
"The aim is to end the use of non-European solutions and guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool," David Amiel, minister for the civil service and state reform, said. "This strategy highlights France's commitment to digital sovereignty amid rising geopolitical tensions and fears of foreign surveillance or ser
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TikTok has reached a settlement in a closely-watched lawsuit over social media addiction, narrowly avoiding a trial that's scheduled to begin jury selection Tuesday. Terms of the deal, which was reported by The New York Times, weren't disclosed.
TikTok's settlement comes about one week after Snap reached a settlement in the same case. The trial is expected to move forward in Los Angeles with Meta and YouTube as the only defendants. Mark Lanier, a lawyer for the plaintiff, said in a statement to NYT that they were "pleased" with the settlement and that it was "a good resolution." TikTok didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The trial stems from a 2023 lawsuit brought by a California woman known in court documents as "K.G.M." She sued Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube and alleged that their platforms were addictive and had harmed her as a child. The judge in the case previously ordered the companies' executives, including Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, to testify. YouTube's top exec, Neal Mohan, is also likely to testify, according to The New York Times.
The lawsuit is the first among several high-profile cases against social media companies to go to trial this year. Meta is expected to head to court in New Mexico in early February in a case brought by the state's attorney general, who
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There are not one, not two, but five new Lego Smart Play sets within the Lego Star Wars collection available for preorder now.
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The settlement means TikTok will avoid a trial where plaintiffs had planned to argue that social media platforms are inherently defective and subject to personal injury liability.
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These are the products I actually use and recommend for active individuals.
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Space heaters can keep you warm during the chilly season, but using them improperly can lead to big problems.
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NEW RESOURCES Intent Press: Operational Command "South" opened a virtual museum. "The virtual museum is dedicated to the units that are now part of the operational command ‘South'. Currently, the museum has […]
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Pornhub will stop offering full access to new users in the UK on February 2, its parent company Aylo said Tuesday, citing the nation's Online Safety Act and its age-verification requirements. The company said users who already verified their ages before the cutoff will still be able to access the adult site through existing accounts.
The move follows the Online Safety Act's Protection of Children Codes, which took effect last summer and require adult sites to use "highly effective" methods of age verification. Aylo claims the system is backfiring and shifting both adults and minors to noncompliant porn sites that don't verify age or moderate content according to Politico. Aylo's lawyers argued that only device-based age verification methods sufficiently protect user data.
Alexzandra Kekesi, VP of Brand and Community at Aylo, said "anyone who has not gone through that process prior to February 2 will no longer be able to access [the sites] and they're going to be met with a wall," according to
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Silence from top executives who once criticized President Donald Trump has sparked frustration as senior Silicon Valley figures speak out against his immigration policy.
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Four chatbots agree on which team will win. I also got predictions on the coin toss, the halftime show, the most expensive ads, the national anthem and viewership numbers.
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 The second-generation AirTag is available to order now in the U.S. and dozens of other countries, but it is launching later in some other countries.
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Only users who have already registered and completed age verification will be able to access the world's largest porn site.
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I rated the Anker Soundcore Boom 2 a little more highly, but the newer Boom 3I sounds great and works while floating in water. It's down to its lowest ever price right now.
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 Between the new Macs, iPhones and rumored AI gadgets, Apple surprised us with an upgraded, second-generation AirTag. It has Apple's latest Ultra Wideband chip — the same one used in the iPhone 17 lineup and the Apple Watch Ultra 3. It also uses Precision Finding to reach items up to 50 percent further away than the previous AirTag model. This feature will now work with any Apple Watch Series 9, Ultra 2 or newer.
TMAAppleApple says the new tag is 50 percent louder and features a "distinctive new chime." So you can show off that you've got the new kind of AirTag. Sadly, there's still no keyring hole, so you might want to invest in a holder… with a keyring. There are cheaper options than Apple's leather version, fortunately. I personally like Elevation Lab's
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Landmark trials beginning this week will test a new legal strategy claiming that Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube caused personal injury through addictive products.
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Users of Meta's social platforms can no longer share links to ICE List, a website listing what it claims are the names of thousands of DHS employees.
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OpenAI is releasing a new app called Prism today, and it hopes it does for science what coding agents like Claude Code and its own Codex platform have done for programming.
Prism builds on Crixet, a cloud-based LaTeX platform the company is announcing it acquired today. For the uninitiated, LaTeX is a typesetting system for formatting scientific documents and journals. Nearly the entire scientific community relies on LaTeX, but it can make some tasks, such as drawing diagrams through TikZ commands, time-consuming to do. Beyond that, LaTeX is just one of the software tools a scientist might turn to when preparing to publish their research.
That's where Prism comes into the picture. Like Crixet before it, the app offers robust LaTeX editing and a built-in AI assistant. Where previously it was Crixet's own Chirp agent, now it's GPT-5.2 Thinking. OpenAI's model can help with more than just formatting journals — in a press demo, an OpenAI employee used it to find and incorporate scientific literature that was relevant to the paper they were working on, with GPT-5.2 automating the process of writing the bibliography.
"None of this absolves the scientist of the responsibility to verify that their references are correct, but it can certainly speed up the process," said Kevin Weil, vice president of science for OpenAI, when asked during the demo the possibility of ChatGPT generating fake citations.
"We're conscious that, as AI becomes more capable, there are concerns around volume, quality and trust in the scientific community," he later added. "Our view is that the right response is not to keep
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The company says it's testing paywalled premium sharing and AI features.
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 DRAM shortages are set to impact smartphone manufacturers like Apple in 2026, but the company is going to try to keep iPhone 18 prices steady despite having to pay more for components, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
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At least 37 attorneys general for US states and territories are taking action against xAI after Grok generated a flood of nonconsensual sexual images of women and minors.
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Research from the ride-hail aggregator Obi finds Waymo is starting to edge up on Uber and Lyft in San Francisco. Tesla, which operates a ride-hail service with human drivers, is winning the price wars.
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The best electric toothbrush checks all the boxes and leaves my teeth squeaky clean.
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 Apple today provided public beta testers with the third release of an upcoming macOS Tahoe 26.3 update for testing purposes. The public beta comes a day after Apple provided the third beta to developers.
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Looking for earbuds that keep you connected to your surroundings while still delivering great sound? These are my current top picks for true-wireless earbuds with an open design.
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 Samsung's 2025 was filled with new foldables, an ultra-thin new form factor and the launch of Google's XR platform. After making some announcements at CES 2026, the company is expected to host its first Galaxy Unpacked of the year in February to introduce the Galaxy S26 lineup.
Engadget will be covering Galaxy Unpacked live, and we'll most likely have hands-on coverage of Samsung's new smartphones soon after they're announced. While we wait for an official invite, here's everything we expect Samsung will introduce at the first Galaxy Unpacked event of 2026.
Galaxy S26, S26 and S26 UltraSamsung Galax
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Garmin Venu 4 Review: It's the best-looking sports watch I've tested, with all the fitness metrics you need to level up your training, for a price.
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 Samsung aims to produce around 1 million units of its upcoming "Wide Fold" device, in an attempt to directly rival Apple's rumored foldable iPhone expected later this year.
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Jessica Jones joins Marvel's Devil of Hell's Kitchen in this new installment.
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Welcome back to Hell's Kitchen when 'Daredevil: Born Again' returns to Disney in less than two months.
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 Forget strips, gels, and pastes. Your next tooth-whitening and repairing substance might well be a new powder developed by Shanghai researchers. You'll want to use it with an electric toothbrush though, because that's what makes it spark.
Continue Reading
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The European body is the latest entity to condemn the chatbot's proliferation of AI-generated erotic images of women and girls.
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The partnership aims to construct more than 5 gigawatts of AI factories by 2030.
The post Nvidia Makes $2B CoreWeave Investment for AI Factories Buildout appeared first on eWEEK.
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 Meta plans to test premium subscriptions across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, the company has told TechCrunch.
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Court filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles.
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 TikTok last week finalized a deal to hand over its U.S. operations to a majority American-owned venture, and things aren't exactly running smoothly for the new U.S. company so far.
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 Having spent most of my early shirt-pressing days using an iron before graduating to an automatic clamshell-style heat press, the HTVRONT Auto Heat Press 2 really does make life easier. While I haven't used the original HTVRONT Auto Heat Press, the Auto 2 has several more features, like adjustable pressure, a wider heat range,
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The new AirTags have just been announced, making this a perfect time to grab a four-pack of the original AirTags while they're $70.
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NEW RESOURCES EIN Presswire: As National Handwriting Day Approaches, New Data Resource Challenges Classroom Myth (PRESS RELEASE). "The interactive resource, published by Handwriting Success, provides the first comprehensive, state-by-state overview of handwriting […]
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TikTok users said their videos about federal immigration enforcement were being suppressed days after a deal to spin off the U.S. business to new investors was finalized.
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I'm not a bat. I want my Apple Watch to show me where my AirTag second-generation trackers are, not make me listen for chirps throughout the house.
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Executives, investors and engineers are speaking out against the Trump administration after the killings of Alex Pretti and another protester in moves reminiscent of Silicon Valley a decade ago.
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Microsoft unveils Maia 200, a custom AI chip designed to power Copilot and Azure, challenging Amazon and Google in the hyperscaler silicon race.
The post Microsoft Introduces Maia 200, Its Most Powerful AI Chip Yet appeared first on eWEEK.
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Best of all? This updated version of this popular Apple accessory will be available at the same price as its predecessor.
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Google is embedding AI into Search, Gmail, Maps, and Gemini to simplify how people browse, create, and work online.
The post 7 Google AI Features That Make the Internet Easier to Use appeared first on eWEEK.
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NEW RESOURCES CBC: ‘First of its kind' database for Yukon salmon looks at chinook and chum more extensively. "The organization's latest assessment of Yukon salmon conservation units, outlined in their Pacific Salmon […]
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The settlement means Snap will avoid a trial where plaintiffs had planned to argue that social media platforms are inherently defective and subject to personal injury liability.
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Will's test PC is running an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, so it's just about the best hardware you can reasonably expect in the current PC gaming landscape. What we're looking for isn't necessarily high frame rates but smoothness. So what we don't want to see is big spikes in the frame rendering time, which normally oscillate between 5 and 12 milliseconds. And most of the standard campaign gameplay doesn't really have any of it, though some of the showpiece scripted sections (such as the beach landing) can hit it hard with effects like smoke.
Some Battlefield veterans might be a lot more concerned with multiplayer performance, where W
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