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 For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with Astropad to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win an iPhone 17 and one of Astropad's Fresh Coat anti-reflective screen protectors to go along with it.
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The One Big Beautiful Bill brought several changes to personal income taxes. Learn what you need to know for the upcoming tax season.
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Remember back in September when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seemingly finalized some of the terms of a deal to spin off TikTok's US business? Three months later, that same deal is apparently one step closer to being official.
According to Bloomberg, TikTok CEO Shou Chew told employees that TikTok and ByteDance had signed off the agreement for control of TikTok's US business. It sounds like terms of the deal are roughly the same as what Trump announced earlier this year. A group of US investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX will control a majority of the new entity while ByteDance will keep a smaller stake in the venture.
According to Chew's memo, the deal is expected to close January 22, 2026. "Upon the closing, the US joint venture, built on the foundation of the current TikTok US Data Security (USDS) organization, will operate as an independent entity with authority over US data protection, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurance," he wrote according to Bloomberg. TikTok didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Notably, it's still not clear where Chinese officials stand on the deal. Trump said back in September that China was "fully on board," but subsequent meetings between the two sides have so far produced vague statements. In October, China's Commerce Ministry said it would "work with the U.S. to properly resolve i
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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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 The creators of the Hitman series have honed their style of- open-ended and spectacle-driven sandboxes across several games, and now they're taking their signature immersive gameplay to the world of James Bond. With 007 First Light, developer IO Interactive is crafting an origin story for the globetrotting British spy, showing how he undertook daring missions at the start of his career to eventually become the world's most infamous agent.
Before the reveal at The Game Awards of 007 First Light's newest villain, played by Lenny Kravitz, we had an early look at the latest bits of plot for James Bond's origin story as a superspy. We also spoke with cinematic and narrative director Martin Emborg about the main inspirations for the game, how Bond's origin taps into decades of lore, and why a good spy story is timeless.
"What I think is kind of baked into doing an origin story for a character like James Bond, is that everyone knows the character and who he's going to become," Emborg said. "But how does he become this character? I think that's an exciting challenge from a storytelling perspective."
IO Interactive's James Bond is young and inexperienced.IO InteractiveWhile some Bond films and novels have touched upon the early years of the iconic character, 007 First Light will be the first attempt at an actual, modernized origin story. As a twenty-something new MI6 recruit, this James Bond, portrayed by Patrick Gibson, is inexperienced and br
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We are in the thick of multiple sports seasons: the NBA finals are happening, and baseball and soccer are in full swing. For devoted fans, emotions can run pretty high during a game. Cognitive anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas has long been fascinated by that intensity — and how uniform it can be across fans. So, he and fellow researchers at the University of Connecticut decided to look into what exactly makes fans so deeply connected to their team and to fellow supporters. It turns out that connection may have less to do with actual gameplay and more to do with rituals. Their research was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Questions about sports science? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave at plus.npr.org/shortwave.
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