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 Apple is offering U.S. customers who purchase and redeem an Apple Gift Card three months of free access to Apple Arcade. Holiday gift card purchases made before January 6, 2026 are eligible for the ?Apple Arcade? trial, as long as the card is redeemed by January 13, 2026.
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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 just got a fairly bizarre expansion inspired by the Netflix show Stranger Things. If you've ever wanted to fly over a fictional Indiana town in the 1980s, this is the update for you.
That's right. The game now lets folks fly over Hawkins, Indiana and check out more than 40 iconic locations from the series, including Starcourt Mall, the junkyard, the government lab and, of course, the upside down.
?? Recreation of Hawkins with more than 40 iconic locations
?? Five exhilarating missions
Full details: https://t.co/JyB4LkMSzO pic.twitter.com/XsmGzt52Mb
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) December 9, 2025
Inexplicably, this isn't just a joyride. There's an actual game here, with five helicopter-based missions that have players arranging supply drops, rescuing characters and chasing bad guys. Murray Bauman, portrayed by Brett Gelman, is on hand to assign missions and engage in banter.
This is a free update and it's available right now, so get out there and blast that one Kate Bush song over and over (and over.) As for Stranger Things, the second part of season five drops on December 25, followed by the series finale on
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 Pebble just announced the Index 01, a smart ring for recording thoughts. It's a little ring with a built-in microphone and that's about it. The Index 01 is almost anti-tech in its simplicity. There's no needless AI component shoehorned in, aside from speech-to-text. It's a ring with a microphone that you whisper ideas into and I want one.
Here's how it works. You get an idea while walking down the street, so you quietly whisper it into the ring. The ring sends the idea to a notes app or saves it for later review. Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky calls this an "external memory" for the brain, but I call it a nice way to avoid having to dig the phone out of a pocket or bag just to utter something like "pizza, but for cats."
The ring doesn't record unless a button is pushed, so it won't be listening in on private conversations, and it doesn't require a paid subscription of any kind. It's on the smaller side, about the size of a wedding band, and is water-resistant.
The battery also lasts for "years" and never needs to be charged. The ring is designed to be worn at all times, so users develop the muscle memory of holding down the little button when they have something to share. See what I mean? I want one, and I've quite literally never worn a ring in my life.
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The Southern District of Texas announced the seizure of more than $50 million in NVIDIA GPUs bound for China in violation of US export laws. Authorities arrested two businessmen, one of them the owner of a Houston company, accused of smuggling the chips used to train and run AI models.
"Operation Gatekeeper has exposed a sophisticated smuggling network that threatens our Nation's security by funneling cutting-edge AI technology to those who would use it against American interests," said US Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei. The investigation had been ongoing since at least last year and centers on the illicit export or attempted export of at least $160 million worth of NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPUs. The H200 chips are the very same that the Trump administration announced a revenue-sharing agreement for today, allowing NVIDIA to sell them to "approved customers" in China.
The smuggling operation used a combination of falsified paperwork, purposefully misclassified goods, straw purchasers and even removing the NVIDIA labels on GPUs to ship them to both mainland China and Hong Kong. The conspirators face between 10 and 20 years in prison if convicted.
The H200 chips in question are more powerful than the H20 chip specifically designed to comply with US export restrictions. Production of the H20, however, was reportedly halted shortly after the Trump administration struck a
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Fairphone's Fairbuds XL are what modularity is all about.
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 Apple has announced the availability of Tap to Pay on iPhone in Hong Kong, allowing independent sellers, small merchants, and large retailers in the region to use ?iPhones? as a payment terminal.
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Welcome to the surveillance pricing era.
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You can add the Switch 2 to the (long) list of platforms where you can play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The bad news: It costs $60 to play the 2011 game optimized for Nintendo's 2025 hardware. The good news: It costs less (or nothing) if you own one of the versions for the original Switch.
The (digital-only) Switch 2 port is the Anniversary Edition of Skyrim, released in 2021. That includes the base game and three expansions (Dawnguard, Dragonborn and Hearthfire). You'll also find hundreds of Creation Club items, like quests, weapons, armor, spells and dungeons. The Anniversary Edition's Zelda crossover content (Master Sword, Hylian Shield and Champion's Tunic) is also there. So, at least there's plenty of content.
The game also offers technical upgrades for the Switch 2 hardware. It has enhanced resolution, DLSS anti-aliasing, faster load times and general performance optimizations. There's also mouse support, motion controls and Amiibo support. The trailer below gives you an idea of what to expect.
In an
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 Apple Arcade will be adding four new games on Thursday, January 8, including True Skate , Cozy Caravan, Sago Mini Jinja's Garden, and Potion Punch 2 .
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There's no reason you should have to spend time vacuuming your home.
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 Google is developing two pairs of smart glasses with artificial intelligence that will launch in 2026, the company said today. The first set of glasses have AI integration and are designed for screen-free assistance with built-in speakers, microphones, and cameras for speaking to Google Gemini.
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 Australia's new social media law goes into effect on December 10, 2025, and ahead of that date, Apple is sharing information on developer tools that are designed to help social media apps adhere to the law.
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Katsuhiro Harada is departing Bandai Namco at the end of 2025. He announced the news both with a farewell note shared on X and, in possibly the coolest exit ever, with an hour-long DJ mix. Harada's 30-year career has most closely been involved with Tekken and he's a familiar face in the fighting game community.
He began as a voice actor in the original Tekken game and continued to do so even as he became a director for the series. He has worked on other Bandai Namco titles as a producer, both in and out of the fighting genre. "Each project was full of new discoveries and learning, and every one of them became an irreplaceable experience for me," Harada wrote on X. "To everyone who has supported me, to communities around the world, and to all the colleagues who have walked alongside me for so many years, I offer my deepest gratitude."
He closed by saying that over his career, he never DJed at a tournament event. So to mark his departure, Harada posted a full
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 Apple Wallet car key support is coming to Rivian's second-generation R1S and R1T electric vehicles with a 2025.46 software update later this month, according to the company's software chief Wassym Bensaid. He did not provide a specific date.
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The debut game from Liquid Swords will arrive in early 2026, it was announced at today's PC Gaming Show. Samson: A Tyndalston Story is billed as "a consequence-heavy noir action game" by its developer, and focuses on the eponymous Samson McCray, a man who's got himself into serious debt in a city that doesn't seem particularly forgiving.
The debut trailer doesn't give too much away in terms of story, but I'm getting gritty Max Payne-y vibes. Combat looks crunchy and visceral, and it sounds like Liquid Swords is going for an oppressive atmosphere. "Samson is built on a simple, brutal truth: every day costs you," writes the studio in a press release. "Debt grows with interest, and time works against you. Each job burns a limited pool of Action Points and every decision shifts how the city treats you—there are no do-overs. You move forward because standing still makes everything worse."
Liquid Swords has been teasing its first game for a while. The studio has some serious pedigree, being founded in 2020 by Christofer Sundberg, who created the Just Cause franchise when he was at Avalanche Studios. Developers who previously worked on Mad Max and the Battlefield series have also joined Sundberg at Liquid Swords, and the studio says it drew on its collective experience in combat systems, systemic design, animation and action-oriented storytelling to create Samson.
Just Cause was an open-world series, but it sounds like Samson will be a more focused experience, possibly reflected by its $25 price tag. At the beginning of t
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