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 If you're several chapters into a novel and forgot who a character was, Amazon is hoping its new Kindle feature will jog your memory without ever having to put the e-reader down. This feature, called Ask this Book, was announced during Amazon's hardware event in September, but is finally available for US users on the Kindle iOS app.
According to Amazon, the feature can currently be found on thousands of English best-selling Kindle titles and "only reveals information up to your current reading position" for spoiler-free responses. To use it, you can highlight a passage in any book you've bought or borrowed and ask it questions about plot, characters or other crucial details, and the AI assistant will offer "immediate, contextual, spoiler-free information." You'll even be able to ask follow-up questions for more detail.
Amazon
While Ask this Book may be helpful to some Kindle readers, the feature touches on a major point of contention with authors and publishers. In response to
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 Satechi and MacRumors partnered up this week to offer our readers an exclusive 30 percent discount on select products for a limited time. This sale is available only on Satechi's website and is set to end on Monday, December 15, so this weekend is your last chance to take advantage of the deals.
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 Even though Nintendo made some serious upgrades with the Joy-Con 2, you still might end up ditching them for CRKD's Nitro Deck 2. After winning over Nintendo Switch owners with its first Nitro Deck, CRKD followed it up with an improved design that works for both the original Switch and the Switch 2.
To refine the original design, CRKD added several upgrades to the Nitro Deck 2 based on community feedback. The new-and-improved accessory features the company's CaptiStick Technology, which prevents stick drift and isn't affected by magnetic interference like other Hall effect joysticks. CRKD also offset the right thumbstick and contoured the outer shell for a more ergonomic feel. The Nitro Deck 2 is keeping the swappable stick top feature, but CRKD added the ability to swap out the D-Pad for even more customizability. At the back of the Nitro Deck 2, CRKD managed to squeeze in extra L2 and R2 shoulder buttons alongside the programmable back buttons, which were first seen with the predecessor.
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 Apple today released iOS 26.2, the second major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.2 comes a little over a month after iOS 26.1 launched. ?iOS 26?.2 is compatible with the ?iPhone? 11 series and later, as well as the second-generation ??iPhone?? SE.
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Google is rolling out new Gemini-assisted functionality to Search and its Translate app. It says its AI can now provide more natural and accurate text translations for phrases that have more "nuanced meanings." Translate will now take slang terms and colloquial expressions into consideration rather than provide sometimes unhelpful direct translations.
The latest update to its text translation feature is rolling out first in the US and India, translating between English and just under 20 other languages, including German, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. It works in the Translate app for iOS and Android and on the web.
Gemini's speech-to-speech translation feature has also been updated, so you can now hear real-time translations in your headphones, like with Apple's AirPods Pro 3. Google says the new functionality, which is now in beta in the Translate app for Android (iOS is coming next year) in the US, tries to "preserve the tone, emphasis and cadence of each speaker" so you better understand the direction of the conversation and who said what. It works with any headphones and supports more than 70 languages.
Finally, Google is adding more tools to its potentially Duolingo-rivaling AI-powered language learning tools, which it introduced to the Translate app in August. Like Duolingo, Translate can now track how many days in a row you've been attempting to learn a new language, so you can check your progress over time. Whether it will nag you as persistently as the Duolingo ow
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 Apple is working on a smart home hub that will rely heavily on the more capable version of Siri that's coming next year. We've heard quite a bit about the hub over the last two years, but a recent iOS 26 code leak provides additional insight into what we can expect and confirms rumored features.
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The big problem with privacy is that once you relinquish some of it, you never get it back. What makes it worse is when those who are supposed to protect your rights choose to undermine them. When they do so, they eat away at the thin protections we should all enjoy in the digital age.
US agencies' illegal use of smartphone data
These are some of the reasons to be so concerned to learn from a newly released US Department of Homeland Security report that multiple US government agencies illegally used smartphone location data, breaching privacy regulations as they did. To do this, they purchased smartphone location data, including Advertising Identifiers (AdIDs) from data brokers that had been harvested from a wide range of apps.
To read this article in full, please click here
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