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Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek made waves across the global AI community Tuesday with the quiet release of its most ambitious model yet — a 685-billion parameter system that challenges the dominance of American AI giants while reshaping the competitive landscape through open-source accessibility. The Hangzhou-based company, backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, uploaded DeepSeek V3.1 to Hugging Face without fanfare, a characteristically understated approach that belies the model’s potential impact. Within hours, early performance tests revealed benchmark scores that rival proprietary systems from OpenAI and Anthropic, while the model’s open-source license ensures global access unconstrained by geopolitical tensions. The release of DeepSeek V3.1 represents more than just another incremental improvement in AI capabilities. It signals a fundamental shift in how the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence systems might be developed, distributed, and controlled — with potentially profound implications for the ongoing technological competition between the United States and China. Within hours of its Hugging Face debut, DeepSeek V3.1 began climbing popularity rankings, drawing praise from researchers worldwide who downloaded and tested its capabilities. The model achieved a 71.6% score on the prestigious Aider coding benchmark, establishing itself as one of the top-performing models available and directly challenging the dominance of American AI giants. AI Scaling Hits Its Limits Power caps, rising token costs, and inference delays are reshaping enterprise AI. Join our exclusive salon to discover how top teams are: Turning energy into a strategic advantage Architecting efficient inference for real throughput gains Unlocking competitive ROI with sustainable AI systems Secure your spot to stay ahead: https://bit.ly/4mwGngO Deepseek V3.1 is already 4th trending on HF with a silent release without model card ??? The power of 80,000 followers on @huggingface (first org with 100k when?)! pic.twitter.com/OjeBfWQ7St — clem ? (@ClementDelangue) August 19, 2025 How DeepSeek V3.1 delivers breakthrough performance DeepSeek V3.1 delivers remarkable engineering achievements that redefine expectations for AI model performance. The system processes up to 128,000 tokens of context — roughly equivalent to a 400-page book — while maintaining response speeds that dwarf slower reasoning-based competitors. The model supports multiple precision formats, from standard BF16 to experimental FP8, allowing developers to optimize performance for their specific hardware constraints. The real breakthrough lies in what DeepSeek calls its “hybrid architecture.” Unlike previous attempts at combining different AI capabilities, which often resulted in systems that performed poorly at everything, V3.1 seamlessly integrates chat, reasoning, and coding functions into a single, coherent model. “Deepseek v3.1 scores 71.6% on aider – non-reasoning SOTA,” tweeted AI researcher Andrew Christianson, adding that it is “1% more than Claude Opus 4 while being 68 times cheaper.” The achievement places DeepSeek in rarified company, matching performance levels previously reserved for the most expensive proprietary systems. “1% more than Claude Opus 4 while being 68 times cheaper.” pic.twitter.com/vKb6wWwjXq — Andrew I. Christianson (@ai_christianson) August 19, 2025 Community analysis revealed sophisticated technical innovations hidden beneath the surface. Researcher “Rookie“, who is also a moderator of the subreddits r/DeepSeek & r/LocalLLaMA, claims they discovered four new special tokens embedded in the model’s architecture: search capabilities that allow real-time web integration and thinking tokens that enable internal reasoning processes. These additions suggest DeepSeek has solved fundamental challenges that have plagued other hybrid systems. The model’s efficiency proves equally impressive. At roughly $1.01 per complete coding task, DeepSeek V3.1 delivers results comparable to systems costing nearly $70 per equivalent workload. For enterprise users managing thousands of daily AI interactions, such cost differences translate into millions of dollars in potential savings. Strategic timing reveals calculated challenge to American AI dominance DeepSeek timed its release with surgical precision. The V3.1 launch comes just weeks after OpenAI unveiled GPT-5 and Anthropic launched Claude 4, both positioned as frontier models representing the cutting edge of artificial intelligence capability. By matching their performance while maintaining open source accessibility, DeepSeek directly challenges the fundamental business models underlying American AI leadership. The strategic implications extend far beyond technical specifications. While American companies maintain strict control over their most advanced systems, requiring expensive API access and imposing usage restrictions, DeepSeek makes comparable capabilities freely available for download, modification, and deployment anywhere in the world. This philosophical divide reflects broader differences in how the two superpowers approach technological development. American firms like OpenAI and Anthropic view their models as valuable intellectual property requiring protection and monetization. Chinese companies increasingly treat advanced AI as a public good that accelerates innovation through widespread access. “DeepSeek quietly removed the R1 tag. Now every entry point defaults to V3.1—128k context, unified responses, consistent style,” observed journalist Poe Zhao. “Looks less like multiple public models, more like a strategic consolidation. A Chinese answer to the fragmentation risk in the LLM race.” DeepSeek quietly removed the R1 tag. Now every entry point defaults to V3.1—128k context, unified responses, consistent style. Looks less like multiple public models, more like a strategic consolidation. A Chinese answer to the fragmentation risk in the LLM race. pic.twitter.com/hbS6NjaYAw — Poe Zhao (@poezhao0605) August 19, 2025 The consolidation strategy suggests DeepSeek has learned from earlier mistakes, both its own and those of competitors. Previous hybrid models, including initial versions from Chinese rival Qwen, suffered from performance degradation when attempting to combine different capabilities. DeepSeek appears to have cracked that code. How open source strategy disrupts traditional AI economics DeepSeek’s approach fundamentally challenges assumptions about how frontier AI systems should be developed and distributed. Traditional venture capital-backed approaches require massive investments in computing infrastructure, research talent, and regulatory compliance — costs that must eventually be recouped through premium pricing. DeepSeek’s open source strategy turns this model upside down. By making advanced capabilities freely available, the company accelerates adoption while potentially undermining competitors’ ability to maintain high margins on similar capabilities. The approach mirrors earlier disruptions in software, where open source alternatives eventually displaced proprietary solutions across entire industries. Enterprise decision makers face both exciting opportunities and complex challenges. Organizations can now download, customize, and deploy frontier-level AI capabilities without ongoing licensing fees or usage restrictions. The model’s 700GB size requires substantial computational

The enterprise data catalog market has undergone dramatic shifts in the modern gen AI era. Traditional data catalogs served as static repositories where users searched for datasets and documentation. The market expanded to include data governance capabilities with many vendors branding the technology as data intelligence platforms. Early AI enhancements to data catalog implementations promised to revolutionize data access, but often delivered inconsistent results that enterprises couldn’t trust for critical decisions. Now, a new generation of metadata-aware AI agents promises to bridge this gap, maintaining business context across conversations and provide the accuracy levels enterprises demand.  AI Scaling Hits Its Limits Power caps, rising token costs, and inference delays are reshaping enterprise AI. Join our exclusive salon to discover how top teams are: Turning energy into a strategic advantage Architecting efficient inference for real throughput gains Unlocking competitive ROI with sustainable AI systems Secure your spot to stay ahead: https://bit.ly/4mwGngO Alation, which is one of the largest independent data intelligence platform vendors and claims 40% of the Fortune 100 as its customers, has been steadily expanding its AI capabilities as the need for data has changed. Today the company announced its latest set of AI capabilities with an enhanced data query capability it calls ‘Chat with Your Data’ that claims to improve answer accuracy by up to 30%. The transformation of the data catalog market reflects a fundamental shift in enterprise expectations. Organizations no longer want separate systems for data discovery, governance and analysis. They demand unified platforms that democratize data access while maintaining the precision required for business-critical decisions. “I think generative AI impacts the work of data management and also impacts the importance of data management and building applications,” Satyen Sangani, CEO and co-founder of Alation told VentureBeat. Traditional data catalogs operated on a destination model. Users navigated to the platform, searched for information and browsed through results. This approach worked when data teams served as intermediaries between business users and data systems. “Previously, Alation has been sold to primarily data management professionals,” Sangani said. “Increasingly, we’re finding CIOs, CTOs and CPOs who are building technology and who are trying to roll technology out, are leveraging Alation in order to be able to build agents and simultaneously make sure that those agents are appropriately governed and managed.” Simply put, business users wanted direct access to data without technical expertise or analyst intervention. Those types of users just want to get the data they need and the right answers without worrying about the complexity of the underlying data platforms, which is where AI makes a big difference. “I think the world has been turned upside down, and I think chat is really the new medium through which people will do this idea of self service data, where the catalog was the old medium,” Sangani said. Alation’s approach centers on what Sangani calls a “knowledge layer” of curated data products and comprehensive metadata. While Alation has had its own data catalog and governance capabilities that it has developed over the past decade, it recently acquired privately-held startup Numbers Station to help build out agentic AI capabilities for data. “What Numbers Station did is they basically built agents on top of structured data,” Sangani said. “What they realized as they were building these agents is that building these agents wasn’t so much an AI problem as it was a metadata and evaluation problem.” The Numbers Station technology is now a foundational part of Alation’s new chat capabilities. This integration allows users to query their data through chat, making data more accessible and queryable at scale. The technology focuses on ensuring that the right metadata is available, that the precision of agents can be evaluated, and that agents are given the correct instructions and tuning. Competitive positioning in the data intelligence market There is no shortage of competition in the traditional data catalog market. Large data platform vendors including Databricks and Snowflake each have their own technologies. Informatica, which is in the process of being acquired by Salesforce, is also active in the space as is Collibra and Atlan. In the midst of the competition, analyst firm Forrester positioned Alation as a leader in its Q3 2025 evaluation of data governance solutions. Alation differentiates by remaining compute-agnostic and focusing on the metadata and evaluation layer rather than building a vertically integrated stack. “We don’t see ourselves as a compute vendor,” Sangani noted. “We allow you to build these precision agents, we allow you to test them and evaluate them, and just as critically, we also allow you to do that agnostic of any underlying compute.” This approach addresses enterprise concerns about vendor lock-in while solving the precision problem that has limited AI adoption in structured data scenarios.  “We think that data management is no longer something that sits off to the side, but that’s really fundamentally merged with the construction of business processes, and that’s what we see as being exciting,” he said. How the AI-powered data catalog powers real world intelligence Euromonitor International demonstrates how modern data catalog and data intelligence technology transforms business operations. The market intelligence company is integrating Alation’s conversational data intelligence capabilities into its Passport platform, which serves over 2,500 organizations worldwide. The Euromonitor data stack includes a cloud-native data warehouse for structured data, which is fed by a variety of sources, including operational databases, third-party applications and internal systems through data integration and ETL tools. Business intelligence and analytics tools sit on top, allowing analysts to create the reports and dashboards available in Passport. The company’s  data science teams use cloud-based machine learning services for building predictive models and advanced analytics. Euromonitor engaged Alation to enhance its Passport AI capabilities by adding natural language insights on its statistical data. “This capability allows our customers to access insights quickly using natural language queries without having to configure complex filters,” Lamine Lahouasnia, Director of Gen AI at Euromonitor International told VentureBeat. “It allows our users to discover data and insights that may have been hidden in the

Whether you need a new MacBook for the upcoming semester or you’ve just been itching to upgrade from an older machine, now’s a good time to buy. Amazon has a sale on the latest M4 MacBook Air that knocks up to 20 percent off many configurations. The base model is where you’ll get the biggest discount. The 16GB RAM/256GB SSD laptop is down to $799 from $999, which is the lowest price we’ve seen. You can upgrade to 512GB SSD for $999, down from $1,199, another all-time low price, or 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for $1,199, down from $1,399. Then there’s the 15-inch MacBook Air M4, whose cheapest model is on sale for $999, dropping from $1,199. The 17 percent discount is the best deal we’ve seen since the pair debuted in March. As with the 13-inch model, the 16GB and 512GB SSD option is also a record-low price, dropping to $1,199 from $1,399. Then there’s the 24GB upgrade, which is $1,399, down from $1,599. We’re big fans of the MacBook Air M4, giving it a 92 in our review. Part of that comes from an already lower starting price for the MacBooks than their predecessors. The 2025 models also get a speed boost thanks to the M4 chip and are very thin with a 0.44-inch thickness. Neither the 13- or 15-inch will drag you down, weighing 2.7 pounds and 3.2 pounds, respectively. Plus, they both have excellent battery life, lasting over 18 hours while playing an HD video. The big differences in the 15-inch model mostly come down to size. The screen is obviously bigger, as is its trackpad. Other than that, it offers better speakers than its 13-inch sibling. Check out our coverage of the best Apple deals for more discounts, and follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice. Read More

Capcom’s Onimusha series has been on a long hiatus. Combining Resident Evil-style rendered backgrounds with more agile characters, adding in demons, magic and a feudal Japan setting, the series span multiple sequels — and consoles — til the fourth entry in 2006. Roughly two decades (and console eras) later, Capcom has returned to the series, even getting the definitive samurai actor, Tom Cruise Mifune Toshiro, to play the hero, the legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. At Gamescom, the company is now demoing an early slice of Way of the Sword, which covers most (but not all) of the game shown at SGF 2025 just a few months ago. It’s an interesting time to return to the samurai-meets-demonic-threat universe of Onimusha, following a sudden boom in games tapping into feudal Japan. Most recently, the latest Assassin’s Creed was set there, while, Sony’s upcoming Ghost of Yotei (not to mention its predecessor) both tap bushido and swordplay in historical Japan. While I played through the demo, I made a lot of mental comparisons to Sekiro – a game that’s now several years old and still unbeaten by me. Onimusha draws together similar themes of demon forces run amok, but has a more forgiving approach. Gameplay centers around blocks and parries, plus weak and strong attacks, all while pulling in orbs dropped by dying enemies that act as the game’s currency. (Health orbs are also dropped by certain foes.) Onimusha Way of the Sword hands-on (Capcom) The Oni gauntlet that absorbs these souls can also be used to see invisible demons and unlock areas that are spiritually blocked. It’ll also act like a sort-of demonic movie projector, showing what happened during the demon invasion in the area. Early enemies were predictably sluggish demon swordsmen and archers, getting me back up to speed with how Onimusha fights play out. Even if it predictably looks lightyears ahead of its predecessors, Way of the Sword doesn’t reinvent how you cut up these demon hordes. In comparison to other action games, guarding seems very forgiving. You can hold the guard button down, and it’ll block basic projectiles and melee attacks from all directions I spent some time leaning into exhausting stamina gauges, timing parries for one-hit Issen critical attack and batting away arrows back where they came from. Don’t get me wrong, it’s satisfying and fun, but I’m itching to see how the series will build on what’s pretty basic attack flow. Musashi had acccess to a dual-short sword special attack, Two Celestials, that barrages the enemy with attacks and tops up his health levels. This suggests more special attacks and magical flourishes should open up later in the game. The preview during SGF 2025 also showed ways to utilize the environment for defensive attacks, holding up wooden boards to block arrows, for instance, although that didn’t trigger during my playthrough. Onimusha Way of the Sword hands-on (Capcom) The highlight of the demo was a confrontation with Musashi’s rival, Ganryu Sasaki. He’s great villain fodder — and has also been somehow gifted his own Oni gauntlet. The duel was the only time I felt under threat during the demo, and even then, I didn’t die once. There’s enough of a health meter to test yourself against Sasaki’s lavish sword attacks and lunges. Once you wear down more powerful enemies, you can make a single, concentrated attack to either glean more orbs from them or hit for heavy-duty damage. The early taste of Way of the Sword is a fun, easy romp, so I’m curious to see how Capcom evolves the formula of Onimusha — and where the true challenges might lie. Onimusha: Way of the Sword is set to be released in 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC. Read More

Whether you’re working on the go, gaming away from your desk or just want a second screen to boost your productivity, a portable monitor can be a handy solution. These lightweight displays are perfect for adding more screen space to your setup without taking up much room — especially useful if you’re using a compact laptop or traveling often. Many of the best portable monitors now support USB Type-C connections for easy plug-and-play setups, and some even run entirely on USB power, so you don’t need to carry extra chargers. You’ll also find models with handy extras like built-in speakers, touchscreen support and wide compatibility with Windows laptops and tablets. Whether you’re after a laptop screen extender or a creative companion for photo editing on the go, there’s a portable monitor out there for you. Table of contents Best portable monitors for 2025 Things to consider before buying a portable monitor What to look for in a portable monitor Best portable monitors for 2025 Size: 17-inch | Display type: Portable touchscreen | Connector type: USB-C | Resolution: 4K | Brightness: 450 nits | Weight: 2.4lbs | Maximum refresh rate: 60 Hz Not only does the Espresso 17 Pro feature strong brightness (450 nits) and a super premium design, but what really elevates this second monitor are all of its accessories and companion apps. Espresso’s Stand Pro add-on feels downright bulletproof, while also providing a super strong magnetic attachment system so you don’t need to worry about kickstands or tripods. Meanwhile, for people who need extra juice while out and about, there’s a charging station with a huge 32,000 mAh battery. Alternatively, Espresso’s Jot software makes it easy to draw and markup docs with a stylus, which works great with the company’s screen protector and adds a more textured surface for better feedback while drawing. Its standout feature is plug-and-play touchscreen support when connected to a Mac, helping you unleash your creativity. Additionally, with 10-bit color accuracy, 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage and dual USB-C connections with power passthrough, this monitor is packed with features. It even includes HDR support for enhanced visual depth. The only downside is the price — starting at $799 — but after testing it, we think it’s worth it, offering better image quality than many computer monitors in the same size range. $800 at B&H Photo Size: 15-inch | Display type: Portable touchscreen | Connector type: USB-C | Resolution: 4K | Brightness: 550 nits | Weight: 1.76lbs | Maximum refresh rate: 60 Hz Read our full Espresso 15 Pro review With the 15 Pro, Espresso has made a smaller version of its flagship 4K portable monitor that’s not only more compact, it also has higher brightness than before. And as you’d expect, it supports all of its bigger sibling’s best features, including a sleek design, single-cord setup (with two built-in USB-C ports) and even the ability to add touchscreen support to Macs. Plus, there’s a wealth of accessories to choose from, making the 15 Pro an incredibly versatile, though somewhat pricey, choice for frequent travelers or anyone who just wants a nice portable monitor at home. $699 at Espresso Size: 15.6-inch | Display type: IPS | Connector type: USB-C | Resolution: 1080p | Brightness: 300 nits | Weight: 1.85lbs (with cover) | Maximum refresh rate: 60 Hz At just $200, Plugable’s 15.6-inch portable monitor delivers everything you need in a budget display and more. That’s because while it doesn’t have HDMI or DisplayPort, it features not one but three USB-C connections along with hub functionality thanks to two 10Gbps connections and 85-watt passthrough charging. And because the monitor itself has a low power draw, you probably won’t even need to use the included brick when connected to a laptop. While the panel doesn’t boast higher resolution specs, its contrast ratio and color accuracy are solid for the price. The one small drawback is that image quality goes down when viewed from acute angles, though that shouldn’t be a huge deal because, from head on, colors and sharpness are above average for the money. Finally, while we don’t expect a ton of freebies to come bundled with budget gadgets, Plugable does include a folding magnetic cover that doubles as a kickstand and a USB-C 3.2 cable, which is a nice touch. $240 at Amazon Size: 17.3-inch | Display type: IPS | Connector type: USB-C | Resolution: 1080p | Brightness: 300 nits | Weight: 3.88lbs (with stand) | Maximum refresh rate: 240 Hz Even though the ROG Strix XG17AHP has been on the market for a while, it’s got great specs including a 17.3-inch monitor with an anti-reflective coating and full HD resolution, a wealth of ports and a blazing fast 240Hz refresh rate (make it one of the best gaming monitor options in the portable space) — the latter of which is pretty much as high you can get from portable monitors today. I appreciate that its 7,800 mAh built-in battery makes it easy to set up for short sessions without worrying about a power source. This model also comes with a boatload of accessories including a travel bag, folding cover, a ton of cables and more. It also features a quick disconnect system for attaching its included tripod, which is great when using it at home or in more semi-permanent configurations. Though if you prefer to travel even lighter, there’s a slightly cheaper version that only comes with a kickstand instead of a tripod. $428 at Amazon Size: 14-inch | Display type: IPS | Connector type: USB-C | Resolution: 1440p | Brightness: 300 nits | Weight: 1.5lbs | Maximum refresh rate: 60 Hz For people who are constantly on the go, Lenovo’s M14t Gen2 Mobile Monitor makes it easy to bring a nice second display anywhere you want. Its 14-inch panel features a higher resolution 1440p display with a 100 percent sRGB color gamut and a 16:10 aspect ratio for a little extra vertical screen space. It also supports USB-C power pass-through (up to 65 watts)

Computing Accessories Why you can trust us Engadget has been testing and reviewing consumer tech since 2004. Our stories may include affiliate links; if you buy something through a link, we may earn a commission. Read more about how we evaluate products. The humble PC mouse is underestimated; these are the best we’ve tried for all kinds of users. James TrewFormer Editor-at-Large Updated Wed, August 20, 2025 at 7:01 AM UTC We may deliberate for days when buying a laptop or computer or spend hours lining up the most comfortable and stylish keyboard before aimlessly adding a utilitarian mouse to our basket. The impact of a good, feature-rich and — perhaps most importantly — ergonomic mouse can be huge. Not just to your productivity, but to the quality and comfort of your worklife overall. A good mouse has long offered some level of configuration and customization, but more modern options go beyond that with the ability to automate repetitive tasks or convoluted keypresses at the click of a button. Unsurprisingly, even mice haven’t escaped the wave of AI hype, with many flagship models bringing services like ChatGPT or Copilot to your fingertips. Beyond the fancy features, there’s still a lot to consider to find the best mouse for work, creativity or even play. Will the mouse fit your grip style or handedness? Do you prefer the convenience of Bluetooth or stability of a 2.4Ghz USB dongle? Can it connect to more than one device easily? Is the smoothness of the scroll wheel going to be a dealbreaker? Perhaps the companion software unlocks new functionality you never knew you needed? If you hadn’t considered all of those things, the good news is, we have (and more). Below are our picks for the best wireless productivity mice you can buy right now. Best wireless mice for 2025 There’s a reason the MX Master 3S is right up the top of our list. The ergonomic design almost feels like a hand rest that places three customizable buttons and a second scroll wheel within easy reach of your thumb. Every button is configurable via Logitech’s Options+ software, which is a treasure trove of productivity potential. Beyond standard customization options such as click-speed and scroll direction, you can assign all manner of shortcuts and create profiles for specific apps — so the buttons do different things depending on the app you’re using at the time. “Smart Actions” take things up a notch, allowing you to bring an app to the foreground, perform a series of keystrokes, automate text entry and even restart or shutdown your PC. We’re fully in the AI era, so of course there’s a way to summon ChatGPT here, too. Closing a Zoom meeting, muting your volume and summarizing your notes in a team email in one click? With the MX Master 3S you can. Logitech’s flagship mouse is also quite practical. The MX Master 3S offers 70 days of use between charges, which is plenty. Even if you’re caught short, a minute or two of charge time will get you through the rest of your working day. The sensor is highly responsive with an 8K DPI (Dots Per Inch) and the button clicks are quieter than a literal mouse. At 170g, it’s sturdy but hardly lightweight — in case that’s important to you. Multi-device connectivity isn’t rare, but with the MX Master 3S you can also seamlessly work between two PCs at the same time. It detects when you reach the edge of the screen on one before switching to the other — it’ll even let you copy and paste files between them as well. $110 at Amazon We were fans of the original Razer Pro Click, and the second model comes with several big improvements. Some are long overdue, like the switch from Micro USB to USB-C charging, while others like one-click access to AI tools feel like a step into the future. Simply highlight and copy some text and have ChatGPT or Windows CoPilot rephrase, summarize or create an email based on it. And those are just the default prompts; you can also add your own, making this mouse a productivity powerhouse beyond many programmable buttons and macro support (which it also has). Other reasons we like the Pro Click V2 include its relative light weight (110g), its stylish, ergonomic appearance and its ability to control up to five devices via multiple connectivity modes (2.4GHz, Bluetooth, USB). While not a productivity feature, the Pro Click V2’s RGB lighting adds a welcome dash of flair to an otherwise very practical, comfortable work tool. $100 at Amazon After making a name for itself with its affordable but feature-rich mechanical keyboards, it wasn’t long before Keychron applied the same formula to mice. The M7 absolutely nails the balance between quality, features and price. Weighing in at just 63g, it makes most flagship mice feel like a lump of coal and the soft matte finish is surprisingly luxurious. The ergonomic design is comfortable and all the buttons are easy to reach. There’s Bluetooth (no multi-device support though) and traditional 2.4GHz wireless connectivity, too. The 70 hours of battery life matches its rivals but all in a sleek, lightweight design that’s a joy to use. Unlike much of the competition that requires you install companion software, you configure the M7 via a web interface. While not as extensive as the likes of Logitech or Razer’s software, it’s simpler to use and with all the key options you’d expect such as mapping buttons to Windows/Mac features, macros and more. It’s worth noting, the macro button on the M7 is programmable when using the 2.4GHz connectivity, but the other buttons can be configured for use in Bluetooth mode also. $50 at Amazon If you’re looking for something a little more streamlined, a lightweight gaming mouse, such as the Pro X Superlight from Logitech’s G gaming series, is a great choice. Weighing in at 63g it feels like a feather compared to some of the more

The White House has joined TikTok, the social media app that President Trump wanted to ban during his first term. Its first post shows clips of Trump in various events with Kendrick Lamar’s track playing in the background. The New York Times notes that it references a popular video edit of Creed, a boxing movie starring Michael B. Jordan, on the app. In the TikTok post, Trump could be heard saying “I am your voice,” while the caption reads “America we are BACK! What’s up TikTok?” Trump’s administration believes TikTok helped him win over young voters in the 2024 Presidential election, with the account he used to campaign having over 15 million followers. “President Trump’s message dominated TikTok during his presidential campaign, and we’re excited to build upon those successes and communicate in a way no other administration has before,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. The president wasn’t always fond of the platform. He once vowed to ban the app in the US and signed an executive order to outlaw any transaction between the app and its China-based parent company ByteDance for national security reasons. TikTok’s “data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage,” the executive order read. After taking office earlier this year, however, Trump quickly put a pause on the law that was supposed to ban TikTok in the US. He even delayed the ban a couple more times to give ByteDance more time to sell its US business. Trump previously claimed that a “very wealthy” group is poised to buy TikTok, but the administration has yet to reveal the identities of the people in it. Read More

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How to make clean energy progress under Trump in the states—blue and red alike —Joshua A. Basseches is the David and Jane Flowerree Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Public Policy at Tulane University.The second Trump administration is proving to be more disastrous for the climate and the clean energy economy than many had feared. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed most of the clean energy incentives in former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, his EPA administrator has moved to revoke the endangerment finding, the legal basis for federal oversight of greenhouse gases. This has left many in the climate and clean energy communities wondering what do we do now? The answer, I would argue, is to return to state capitals—a policymaking venue that climate and renewable energy advocates already know well. Read the full story. This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s Heat Exchange guest opinion series, offering expert commentary on legal, political and regulatory issues related to climate change and clean energy. You can read the rest of the pieces here. Should AI flatter us, fix us, or just inform us? How do you want your AI to treat you?  It’s a serious question, and it’s one that Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, has clearly been chewing on since GPT-5’s bumpy launch at the start of the month.  He faces a trilemma. Should ChatGPT flatter us, at the risk of fueling delusions that can spiral out of hand? Or fix us, which requires us to believe AI can be a therapist despite the evidence to the contrary? Or should it inform us with cold, to-the-point responses that may leave users bored and less likely to stay engaged?  It’s safe to say the company has failed to pick a lane, and if these are indeed AI’s options, the rockiness of this latest update might be due to Altman believing ChatGPT can juggle all three. Read the full story. —James O’Donnell This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The Trump administration is in talks to take a 10% stake in Intel It’s the equivalent of around $10.5 billion—though the final stake could be even higher. (Bloomberg $)+ Intel’s chip manufacturing business has struggled to find customers lately. (NYT $)+ Meanwhile, Softbank has sunk $2 billion into the company. (The Register) 2 Texas’ measles outbreak has come to an endMaking 2025 the worst year for measles in the US for more than 30 years. (Wired $)+ Greater numbers of US teens are getting vaccinated. (Scientific American $)+ Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story. (MIT Technology Review) 3 The UK has dropped its demand for Apple to create a backdoorIt would have enabled unprecedented access to protected encrypted data. (9to5 Mac)+ British iPhone users lost their access to Apple’s data encryption services. (NYT $)+ Apple and US lawmakers have been fighting the request for months. (Reuters) 4 SpaceX may never pay any federal income taxDespite being the beneficiary of billions of dollars of federal contracts. (NYT $)+ It looks like China is winning the space race to the Moon. (Ars Technica) 5 AI is supercharging CEO impersonator scamsCriminals are targeting workers with privileged access to a firm’s inner operations. (WSJ $)+ Five ways criminals are using AI. (MIT Technology Review) 6 The underlying prompts for Grok’s AI have been exposedAnd they’re exactly as juvenile as you’d expect. (404 Media) 7 China’s CATL is planning a major EV battery swapping pushIt plans to serve 1 million cars each day by 2028. (FT $)+ The country is surging ahead in terms of driverless cars, too. (Rest of World)+ How 5-minute battery swaps could get more EVs on the road. (MIT Technology Review) 8 Consumer DNA testing can turn families’ lives upside downYou never know what you might find out. (New Yorker $)+ How a bankruptcy judge can stop a genetic privacy disaster. (MIT Technology Review) 9 This prize-winning author used ChatGPT to write her novelHow much of it, Rie Qudan can’t say, exactly. (The Guardian)+ AI can make you more creative—but it has limits. (MIT Technology Review)10 How to make more convincing AI hairVirtual Harrison Ford will be the first lucky recipient. (The Verge) Quote of the day “We were very much impressed. At the same time, we were afraid.” —Vandana Kharod, an 84-year old attendee of an AI for seniors class in Maryland, describes her reaction to being shown highly realistic AI-generated images to the Washington Post. One more thing Inside the quest to map the universe with mysterious bursts of radio energy When our universe was less than half as old as it is today, a burst of energy that could cook a sun’s worth of popcorn shot out from somewhere amid a compact group of galaxies. Some 8 billion years later, radio waves from that burst reached Earth and were captured by a sophisticated low-frequency radio telescope in the Australian outback. The signal, which arrived in June 2022, and lasted for under half a millisecond, is one of a growing class of mysterious radio signals called fast radio bursts. In the last 10 years, astronomers have picked up nearly 5,000 of them. This one was particularly special: nearly double the age of anything previously observed, and three and a half times more energetic. No one knows what causes fast radio bursts. They flash in a seemingly random and unpredictable pattern from all over the sky. But despite the mystery, these radio waves are starting to prove extraordinarily useful. Read the full story. —Anna Kramer We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line

On a Sunday morning in a Midwestern megachurch, worshippers step through sliding glass doors into a bustling lobby—unaware they’ve just passed through a gauntlet of biometric surveillance. High-speed cameras snap multiple face “probes” per second, isolating eyes, noses, and mouths before passing the results to a local neural network that distills these images into digital fingerprints. Before people find their seats, they are matched against an on-premises database—tagged with names, membership tiers, and watch-list flags—that’s stored behind the church’s firewall. Late one afternoon, a woman scrolls on her phone as she walks home from work. Unbeknownst to her, a complex algorithm has stitched together her social profiles, her private health records, and local veteran outreach lists. It flags her for past military service, chronic pain, opioid dependence, and high Christian belief, and then delivers an ad to her Facebook feed: “Struggling with pain? You’re not alone. Join us this Sunday.” These hypothetical scenes reflect real capabilities increasingly woven into places of worship nationwide, where spiritual care and surveillance converge in ways few congregants ever realize. Where Big Tech’s rationalist ethos and evangelical spirituality once mixed like oil and holy water, this unlikely amalgam has given birth to an infrastructure already reshaping the theology of trust—and redrawing the contours of community and pastoral power in modern spiritual life. An ecumenical tech ecosystem The emerging nerve center of this faith-tech nexus is in Boulder, Colorado, where the spiritual data and analytics firm Gloo has its headquarters. Gloo captures congregants across thousands of data points that make up a far richer portrait than any snapshot. From there, the company is constructing a digital infrastructure meant to bring churches into the age of algorithmic insight. The church is “a highly fragmented market that is one of the largest yet to fully adopt digital technology,” the company said in a statement by email. “While churches have a variety of goals to achieve their mission, they use Gloo to help them connect, engage with, and know their people on a deeper level.”  Gloo was founded in 2013 by Scott and Theresa Beck. From the late 1980s through the 2000s, Scott was turning Blockbuster into a 3,500-store chain, taking Boston Market public, and founding Einstein Bros. Bagels before going on to seed and guide startups like Ancestry.com and HomeAdvisor. Theresa, an artist, has built a reputation creating collaborative, eco-minded workshops across Colorado and beyond. Together, they have recast pastoral care as a problem of predictive analytics and sold thousands of churches on the idea that spiritual health can be managed like customer engagement. Think of Gloo as something like Salesforce but for churches: a behavioral analytics platform, powered by church-­generated insights, psychographic information, and third-party consumer data. The company prefers to refer to itself as “a technology platform for the faith ecosystem.” Either way, this information is integrated into its “State of Your Church” dashboard—an interface for the modern pulpit. The result is a kind of digital clairvoyance: a crystal ball for knowing whom to check on, whom to comfort, and when to act. Thousands of churches have been sold on the idea that spiritual health can be managed like customer engagement. Gloo ingests every one of the digital breadcrumbs a congregant leaves—how often you attend church, how much money you donate, which church groups you sign up for, which keywords you use in your online prayer requests—and then layers on third-party data (census demographics, consumer habits, even indicators for credit and health risks). Behind the scenes, it scores and segments people and groups—flagging who is most at risk of drifting, primed for donation appeals, or in need of pastoral care. On that basis, it auto-triggers tailored outreach via text, email, or in-app chat. All the results stream into the single dashboard, which lets pastors spot trends, test messaging, and forecast giving and attendance. Essentially, the system treats spiritual engagement like a marketing funnel. Since its launch in 2013, Gloo has steadily increased its footprint, and it has started to become the connective tissue for the country’s fragmented religious landscape. According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, the US is home to around 370,000 distinct congregations. As of early 2025, according to figures provided by the company, Gloo held contracts with more than 100,000 churches and ministry leaders. In 2024, the company secured a $110 million strategic investment, backed by “mission-aligned” investors ranging from a child-development NGO to a denominational finance group. That cemented its evolution from basic church services vendor to faith-tech juggernaut.  It started snapping up and investing in a constellation of ministry tools—everything from automated sermon distribution to real-time giving and attendance analytics, AI-driven chatbots, and leadership content libraries. By layering these capabilities onto its core platform, the company has created a one-stop shop for churches that combines back-office services with member-engagement apps and psychographic insights to fully realize that unified “faith ecosystem.”  And just this year, two major developments brought this strategy into sharper focus. In March 2025, Gloo announced that former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger—who has served as its chairman of the board since 2018—would assume an expanded role as executive chair and head of technology. Gelsinger, whom the company describes as “a great long-term investor and partner,” is a technologist whose fingerprints are on Intel’s and VMware’s biggest innovations. (It is worth noting that Intel shareholders have filed a lawsuit against Gelsinger and CFO David Zinsner seeking to claw back roughly $207 million in compensation to Gelsinger, alleging that between 2021 and 2023, he repeatedly misled investors about the health of Intel Foundry Services.) The same week Gloo announced Gelsinger’s new role, it unveiled a strategic investment in Barna Group, the Texas-based research firm whose four decades of surveying more than 2 million self-identified Christians underpin its annual reports on worship, beliefs, and cultural engagement. Barna’s proprietary database—covering every region, age cohort, and denomination—has made it the go-to insight engine for pastors, seminaries, and media tracking the pulse of American faith. “We’ve been acquiring about a company a month

When the US Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter hearing-aid software for Apple’s AirPods Pro in September 2024, with a device price point right around $200, I was excited. I have mild to medium hearing loss and tinnitus, and my everyday programmed hearing aids cost just over $2,000—a lower-cost option I chose after my audiologist wanted to put me in a $5,000 pair. Health insurance in the US does not generally cover the cost of hearing aids, and the vast majority of people who use them pay out of pocket for the devices along with any associated maintenance. Ninety percent of the hearing-aid market is concentrated in the hands of a few companies, so there’s little competitive pricing. The typical patient heads to an audiology clinic, takes a hearing test, gets an audiogram (a graph plotting decibel levels against frequencies to show how loud various sounds need to be for you to hear them), and then receives a recommendation—an interaction that can end up feeling like a high-pressure sales pitch.  Prices should be coming down: In October 2022, the FDA approved the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids without a prescription or audiology exam. These options start around $200, but they are about as different from prescription hearing aids as drugstore reading glasses are from prescription lenses.  Beginning with the AirPods Pro 2, Apple is offering something slightly different: regular earbuds (useful in all the usual ways) with many of the same features as OTC hearing aids. I’m thrilled that a major tech company has entered this field.  The most important features for mild hearing loss are programmability, Bluetooth functionality, and the ability to feed sound to both ears. These are features many hearing aids have, but they are less robust and reliable in some of the OTC options.  Apple software lets you take a hearing test through the AirPods Pro 2 with your cell phone; your phone then uses that data to program the devices.COURTESY OF APPLE The AirPods Pro “hearing health experience” lets you take a hearing test through the AirPods themselves with your cell phone; your phone then uses that data to program the hearing aids. No trip to the audiologist, no waiting room where a poster reminds you that hearing loss is associated with earlier cognitive decline, and no low moment afterward when you grapple with the cost. I desperately wanted the AirPods Pro 2 to be really good, but they’re simply okay. They provide an opportunity for those with mild hearing loss to see if some of the functions of a hearing aid might be useful, but there are some drawbacks. Prescription hearing aids help me with tinnitus; I found that after a day of wear, the AirPods exacerbated it. Functionality to manage tinnitus might be a feature that Apple could and would want to pursue in the future, as an estimated 10% to 15% of the adult population experiences it. The devices also plug your whole ear canal, which can be uncomfortable and even cause swimmer’s ear after hours of use. Some people may feel odd wearing such bulky devices all the time—though they could make you look more like someone signaling “Don’t talk to me, I’m listening to my music” than someone who needs hearing aids. Most of the other drawbacks are shared by other devices within their class of OTC hearing aids and even some prescription hearing aids: factors like poor sound quality, inadequate discernment between sounds, and difficulties with certain sound environments, like crowded rooms. Still, while the AirPods are not as good as my budget hearing aid that costs 10 times more, there’s incredible potential here. Ashley Shew is the author of Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023).  Read More