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Different AI labs have different priorities. OpenAI has traditionally focused on consumer users, for instance, while its rival Anthropic tends to target enterprises. Elon Musk’s xAI, we discovered recently, has been placing particular emphasis on video-game walkthroughs. On Friday, Business Insider’s Grace Kay published a detailed and far-reaching report about xAI, the AI startup recently acquired by SpaceX, with particular emphasis on how Musk is making life difficult for employees. But this particular anecdote stood out: In one instance last year, a model release was delayed for several days because Musk was dissatisfied with how the chatbot answered detailed questions…

The Google Pixel 10a was announced earlier this week – can it shake up the European mid-range market or is it walking into a fight that it is ill prepared for? Sibling rivalry may be the biggest problem for the young 10a. The Google Pixel 10a is mostly the same as the 9a. It uses the same 6.3” 1080p+ display (slightly brighter) now with Gorilla Glass 7i (replacing GG3), runs on the same Tensor G4 chipset and has the same 48+13MP camera. The battery capacity is the same too, 5,100mAh, though Google increased the wired (from 23W to 30W) and…

Before heading on a trip to Tahoe last weekend, GM offered me the use of the company’s 9,000-pound monument to excess – the new 2026 electric Escalade IQL (starting at $130,405) – for a week to test-drive. Before you continue, note that I’m not a professional car reviewer. TechCrunch has excellent transportation writers; I am not one of them. I do, however, drive an electric car. I was immediately game. I’d first glimpsed one last summer at a car show, where some regional car dealers had stationed themselves at the end of a long field dotted with exquisite vintage automobiles.…

About a year ago, poll results for the Pixel 9a showed that the hardware was pretty good, but people had an issue with the price. Well, we have been seeing 9a deals for months so that issue is essentially solved. Now we turn our attention to the new Google Pixel 10a, which launches at the same price as the 9a – $500/£500/€550/₹50,000 for an 8/128GB unit, available March 6. And that isn’t the only thing that is the same on the 10a. Let’s quickly go over the upgrades. The new 10a has a more durable Gorilla Glass 7i (up from…

Going online in 2026 means subjecting yourself to a relentless bombardment of generative AI tools. How about a few AI agents to get you started? Do you want to use this chatbot sidebar? Would you like every search query to be answered with an AI summary? While there’s no off switch to avoid this smorgasbord of AI tools entirely, there is one keyboard trick you can use to dodge Google’s AI Overviews for a brief respite.If you don’t want to see an AI-generated summarization of webpage links when you use Google Search, you can type “–ai” at the end of…

People in the European Union are now allowed to access alternative app stores thanks to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a regulation designed to foster increased competition in the app ecosystem. Like Apple’s App Store, alternative app marketplaces on allow for easy access to a wider world of apps on Apple devices, but instead of the apps going through Apple’s App Review process, the apps on these third-party marketplaces have to go through a notarization process to ensure they meet some “baseline platform integrity standards,” Apple says — like being malware-free. However, each store can review and approve apps according…

Introduction After reviewing the Redmi Note 15 5G, it is now time to examine its close sibling from the Poco family – the Poco M8 5G. If you don’t mind the lack of an ultrawide and a slightly lower-resolution main camera, then the Poco M8 is basically the same device for less money. Hence, many of the observations are going to be identical. The Poco M8 is a budget device, but a pretty well-equipped one. Xiaomi doesn’t change its familiar formula in any major way. Why rock the boat when sales are good? Xiaomi Poco M8 specs at a glance:…

Even without a background in accounting, anyone who has ever glanced at a 10-K or 10-Q can tell that preparing financial statements is a complex, tedious process. While legacy platforms like Workiva and Donnelley Financial Solutions aim to streamline financial reporting, longtime accountants Mary Antony (pictured right) and Kelsey Gootnick (pictured center) found themselves exhausted by various manual hurdles within these tools (co-founder and CTO Jared Tibshraeny is pictured left). The duo met seven years ago at Flexport, where Gootnick served as the company’s controller and Antony served as assistant controller. They stayed in touch even after Antony moved to…

At the start of December, Google reported that Android 16 adoption was low. However, our tech-savvy audience is ahead of the curve and most of the people who voted in last week’s poll have version 16 running on their phone. For some (7%), it’s because they bought a new phone recently and it came with Android 16 out of the box. The majority of voters (55%), however, received version 16 as an update. Around a third of voters are still on an older version – either because they are still waiting (some brands take longer than others) or because support…

Apple this week released the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 26.4, which introduces several new features, including an AI-powered playlist-generation feature in Apple Music, support for video content in the Podcasts app, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for RCS messages, and more.  The update is currently available in pubic beta, with the public release expected sometime in March or April.  Apple Music’s AI playlist One of the most noticeable improvements arrives in Apple Music — iOS 26.4 introduces a new AI-powered “Playlist Playground” feature that leverages Apple Intelligence. The feature allows users to generate a custom 25-song playlist from…