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All four chatbots I quizzed agreed on who will play in the big game -- and which team will win it.
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Welcome to our latest roundup of what's going on in the indie game space. It's been a very busy week of fun game releases (next week will be too!), so let's get into some of them after a quick reflection on gaming while traveling.
I love my Steam Deck. I really truly do. It's a fantastic machine. And yet when I brought it with me on a five-week trip over the holidays, I used it for barely an hour the entire time. That doesn't really justify the space and weight it takes up in my bag. The same holds true for my Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation Portal.
I'll be leaving them all at home next time. I'll take a small controller (probably OhSnap's MCON) so I can play the odd game on my laptop or phone. I'll bring my Playdate as well. I adore that little yellow console, and I haven't spent nearly enough time using it. I have a lot of neat-looking indie games to catch up on there (Diora looks particularly interesting). I'm more likely to play something on a flight if it's on a device I can pull out from my pocket. I just wish Panic had put a backlight in the Playdate.
New releases
Massive Monster and publisher Devolver Digital gave
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AirPods Pro 3 have returned to an all-time-low price. You can pick them up for $200 right now, which is $50 off and the best discount we've seen since the earbuds came out at the end of last year.
We gave these AirPods a score of 90 out of 100 in our review and we consider them the best wireless earbuds for iPhone users. The third generation model is a substantial update to an already impressive product, bringing new features like live translation to the table.
The AirPods Pro 3 also offer heart-rate tracking, allowing them to stream live data to Apple Fitness and other third-party workout apps. This lets you track your fitness and close activity rings similarly to when using an Apple Watch.
Apple also improved the sound quality of this generation thanks in large part to a redesigned acoustic architecture that improves how air is delivered into the ear canal. Additionally, the company changed the angle of the drivers to help more sound get where it needs to go instead of bouncing off the sides of your ear. We felt the jump in audio quality from the last generation to this one was substantial.
The ANC on the AirPods Pro 3 has also been improved. Apple claims this model filters out twice as much noise as the AirPods Pro 2 and four times as much as the original AirPods Pro. We found the noise cancellation to be top-notch.
Live Translation is as neat as it sounds, leveraging the AirPods' noise cancell
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After adding Personal Intelligence to Gemini as an opt-in experience, Google has announced that it's also integrating the feature into AI Mode in Search. What Personal Intelligence does is pull information from your Google apps to tailor its responses based on your history and interests. For Search, in particular, you can allow Personal Intelligence to look for information in your Gmail accounts and Google Photos libraries.
If you use AI Mode to shop for clothes with the new feature enabled, for instance, Google could recommend items or models from a brand you previously purchased from. If it sees plane tickets or other reservations in Gmail, Google could also recommend specific items based on your destination and the season if you're clothes shopping for that trip.
Personal Intelligence is powered by Google's Gemini 3 AI model. The company says it doesn't train its models using information from your Gmail inbox or Google Photos library, but it does use your prompts and AI Mode's responses. Google also warned that sometimes, the feature's recommendations could feel inaccurate because it could not fully comprehend the context or could make incorrect connections between separate topics.
At the moment, Personal Intelligence is an experimental feature that's rolling out in Labs starting today. Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the US, who use the service in English, will automatically have access to it and be able to connect AI M
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In a chaotic world, one thing you can count on is your own common-sense steps toward better cybersecurity. Most of the holiday deals are over by now, but plenty of services are still offering excellent prices. With access to a virtual private network (VPN), you can stream TV shows and events from all over the world, protect your information from hackers and thwart online trackers.
We strongly recommend using a VPN, but you might get stuck with a substandard app if you jump on the very first deal you see. You might also mistakenly end up paying more than you want to, as even otherwise respectable VPNs sometimes frame their prices in misleading ways, with advertised deals not always as available as they seem to be.
Even so, there are some great bargains on the table. Many of the best VPNs — including our top pick, Proton VPN — are still running deals that save you anywhere from 70 to 87 percent on annual subscriptions. Most of these discounts only apply if you sign up for a year or more, but if you divide the cost by the months of subscription, it's much cheaper over time.
Best VPN deals
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SEMrush and Ahrefs are among the most popular tools in the SEO industry. Both companies have been in business for years and have thousands of customers per month.
If you're a professional SEO or trying to do digital marketing on your own, at some point you'll likely consider using a tool to help with your efforts. Ahrefs and SEMrush are two names that will likely appear on your shortlist.
In this guide, I'm going to help you learn more about these SEO tools and how to choose the one that's best for your purposes.
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