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 Apple and Samsung produced nearly the same number of smartphones in 2025, tying for the top position in global smartphone production, according to a new report from TrendForce.
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 Starting today, the seven new Apple products that were announced last week are available at Apple Stores and beginning to arrive to customers.
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Fortnite's original Save the World game mode will be free to play beginning on April 16. This is not the battle royale mode that went on to take over the world, but rather a PvE co-op campaign that focuses on crafting and survival. It currently costs $9 but that ends soon.
As a matter of fact, Epic Games will stop selling the paid version of the content tonight, March 11, at 8PM ET. If you have $9 burning a hole in your pocket to spend on something that'll be free next month, go for it. Current players will still be able to access the content, so there are no worries there.
Once the free version goes live, pre-existing players will get a bunch of perks as a thank you of sorts. This includes vouchers for V-bucks, gold bars and end-game resources that are used to boost player and item levels.
Save the World will still be a great way to gather V-bucks, for those worried the freemium shift will change things. Epic says players will earn this currency "through Daily Quests, Mission Alerts, Storm Shield Defense Missions and existing Challenges."
Pre-registration for the free mode
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Anthropic has launched a new research initiative called Anthropic Institute and has revealed that its Public Policy team is opening its first office in Washington, DC this spring. The company has made the announcement just a couple of days after it sued the US government to challenge the supply chain risk designation it received from the Defense Department. As Axios notes, Anthropic is tripling its Public Policy team at a time when AI companies are establishing a presence in Washington, so that they can influence future policies around artificial intelligence. In Anthropic's case, it might have to find a way to be re-accepted by the US government first after President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using its technology.
Sarah Heck, who joined the company as Head of External Affairs, will take over from co-founder Jack Clark as Head of Policy. Meanwhile, Clark has taken the role as Head of Public Benefit and will lead the Anthropic Institute. The company explains that the institute's role is to "tell the world" what it learns about the challenges that arise as AI firms develop more advanced AI systems. Examples include how powerful AI technologies will reshape jobs and economies and what kinds of threats they'll magnify or introduce.
The institute will bring together and expand Anthropic's current research teams: The Frontier R
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NEW RESOURCES Spotted on Reddit: Edible Plant Database. From the front page: "Explore 25,759 edible plant species from around the world — with edible uses, medicinal properties, cultivation details, and nutrition data. […]
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Save your body from falling into fatigue and stiffness with one of the best standing desks.
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'Be careful who you wish for,' reads the tagline of the new film from Curry Barker, out May 15.
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Bring one of the best desks of 2026 into your work, gaming or hobby space.
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 TikTok and Apple today announced that Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen to full-length songs on Apple Music without leaving the TikTok app.
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Checker Plus for Gmail (Chrome, Firefox, and Edge) allows you to see notifications and read, listen to, or delete emails. Checker Plus works without opening Gmail and supports the management of multiple accounts. This extension/add-on is a great way to continue browsing without having to bring up Gmail to manage your emails. [License: Freeware | Requires:
11|10|8|7|Linux|macOS | Size: Size Varies ]
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Knowing the pricing tricks VPNs often use can help you avoid an unpleasant surprise at checkout or renewal.
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TikTok will soon let you stream full songs in its app via a new integration with Apple Music. The company's new Play Full Song feature makes it possible to link your Apple Music account toTikTok, and play any song that strikes your fancy directly in the app while you're scrolling.
Starting a song is as simple as tapping a button in the Sound Details page or your For You page. Assuming you pay for Apple Music, TikTok will then open up a streamlined version of Apple's music player, which you can use to listen to the song, save it for later or add it to a playlist.
TikTok says that Play Full Song is built using Apple's MusicKit APIs, which let developers surface elements of the Apple Music streaming service in their apps. TikTok has previously offered integration with multiple music streaming services through a feature it calls Add to Music App, which made it possible to save songs you heard on TikTok to your streaming library. What's particularly interesting about this new integration is that because it's using Apple's APIs, songs streamed with Play Full Song count as normal streams for the artists in Apple Music, so they don't lose out on any money.
Alongside the new feature, TikTok and Apple are also introducing a way for fans to listen to music live with their favorite artists. TikTok's Listening Party feature creates a live "shared environment" where people can listen to music and interact with artists directly, in what effectively sounds like an audio-only livestream. TikTok livestreams are a whole ecosystem in their own right, and Listening Party seems like a way to leverage some of the same technology for a more cont
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Microsoft first debuted its full screen Xbox experience for Windows in the ROG Ally Xbox handheld, in a bid to compete with Steam's nearly 15-year-old Big Picture Mode. That Xbox interface eventually made its way to other Windows 11 gaming portables last year. Today at GDC, Microsoft revealed that its big screen Xbox UI is headed to all Windows 11 devices (including laptops and desktops) in April. Oh yah, and it's now simply called "Xbox Mode."
Xbox Mode will only be available in select markets at first, and Microsoft describes it as bringing "a controller-optimized experience to your Windows 11 device, letting players browse their library, launch games, use Game Bar and switch between apps." You know, just like Steam Big Picture mode. Microsoft didn't have much else to share about optimizations in Xbox Mode, but when it debuted the feature for Windows 11 Insiders last fall, the company noted that its task switcher will let people quickly move between games, as well as their apps.
Microsoft revealed at GDC today that it plans to start sending Project Helix
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NEW RESOURCES EBSCO: EBSCO Information Services Launches Global Indigenous Studies Database. "The extensive collection in Indigenous Studies Source contains 138 full-text journals and magazines. It also features seminal books, tribal newspapers and […]
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The Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 FE are a great pairing for anyone with a Galaxy phone.
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March 10, lovingly known as Mar10 Day, is a chance to celebrate Nintendo's most enduring hero. And his brother (whatever he's called).
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NEW RESOURCES What I'm Reading: For the first time, we now know how many Black-owned bookstores exist in the U.S.. "[National Association of Black Bookstores] also launched its National Black-Owned Bookstore Directory, […]
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Amazon's website appears to be stabilizing after experiencing technical issues that kept users from logging in and prevented prices from displaying correctly. DownDetector reported a spike of outage reports around 2PM ET, but as of 5:56PM ET, user complaints have fallen significantly.
The Amazon.com homepage currently loads, and Engadgets staff have been able to load product pages and view prices without any problems. During the peak of the site's issues, neither were loading consistently, and clicking through in some cases showed an error page with text that says "Sorry, something went wrong on our end." Users also reported being unable to log into their accounts.
"We're sorry that some customers may be experiencing issues while shopping," Amazon said in a statement to Engadget. "We appreciate customers' patience as we work to resolve the issue." The company shared a similar sentiment with customers on X, confirming that it's aware there's a problem and acknowledging that its working on a fix. Amazon has yet to confirm whether the issue is fully resolved.
As a cloud provider through its Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, Amazon has experienced its fair share of outages, including one in October 2025 that took out services like Snapchat and Amazon's own Alexa voice assistant for hours. The company's website experiencing issues without a larger AWS outage seems a bit more unusua
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Amazon's website appears to be experiencing technical issues that are keeping users from logging in and preventing prices from displaying correctly. DownDetector reported a spike of outage reports around 2PM ET, and the issues seem to have grown from there.
While Amazon.com seems to be able to display the company's homepage, prices and product information aren't loading, and clicking through to product pages in some cases shows an error page, with text that says "Sorry, something went wrong on our end." Users have also reported being unable to log into their accounts.
"We're sorry that some customers may be experiencing issues while shopping," Amazon said in a statement to Engadget. "We appreciate customers' patience as we work to resolve the issue."
The company shared a similar sentiment with customers on X, confirming that it's aware customers are experiencing problems and acknowledging that its working on a fix. As a cloud provider through its Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, Amazon has experienced its fair share of outages, including one in October 2025 that took out services like Snapchat and Amazon's own Alexa voice assistant for hours. The company's website experiencing issues without a larger AWS outage seems a bit more unusual, and might suggest the problem lies outside of its cloud infrastructure.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadg
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