Browser extensions with more than 8 million installs are harvesting complete and extended conversations from users’ AI conversations and selling them for marketing purposes, according to data collected from the Google and Microsoft pages hosting them.

Security firm Koi discovered the eight extensions, which as of late Tuesday night remained available in both Google’s and Microsoft’s extension stores. Seven of them carry “Featured” badges, which are endorsements meant to signal that the companies have determined the extensions meet their quality standards. The free extensions provide functions such as VPN routing to safeguard online privacy and ad blocking for ad-free browsing. All provide assurances that user data remains anonymous and isn’t shared for purposes other than their described use.

Back in the summer, a new Apple Manufacturing Academy was announced, partnering with Michigan State University. The initiative provides free training and consultancy to American businesses to help them innovate their production processes.

Small businesses that received help from Apple engineers said that the company shared frank lessons about its “bendgate” experience …

The US has suffered its worst November since 1995 in terms of hardware sales, according to Circana’s Mat Piscatella.

In his monthly thread detailing sales figures and retail highlights, Piscatella confirms that a total of 1.6 million hardware units were sold across all platforms in the US during November. This is the lowest total since 1995, during which a total of 1.4 million units were sold.

To potentially explain this figure, Piscatella also notes that the average price paid for a new piece of hardware was ”an all-time November high of $439”, which is up 11% compared to a year ago.

HBO Max has released the official trailer for The Pitt’s second season, bringing back Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) for a fresh shift at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Unfortunately for him, it looks no less gruelling than the first one we saw.

Picking up 10 months on from the last season, The Pitt Season 2 takes place during a busy July 4 weekend in the emergency room. It’d be unsurprising to see some firework-related injuries, which tend to significantly increase around Independence Day. If that wasn’t stressful enough, it looks as though a cyber attack will take the emergency room’s computer systems offline during this shift, forcing the team to ”go analogue.” It seems like a perfect recipe for chaos in an already busy emergency department.

Apple has released the first public betas of iOS 26.3, iPadOS 26.3, macOS Tahoe 26.3, watchOS 26.3, and tvOS 26.3 for users to test. The release comes just a couple of days after Apple seeded the first developer betas of the new software.

This first beta of iOS 26.3 introduces a new built-in option that makes it easier for users to move from an iPhone to an Android device. It also includes a Notification Forwarding feature for wearables in the EU. No major new features have been spotted yet in the watchOS or tvOS betas.

A new study from the University of California at Los Angeles has found that more than 90 per cent of streaming shows are created by white people, with a decline in cultural diversity both behind and in front of the camera.

The latest edition of the Hollywood Diversity report, published yesterday (December 16), found that more than 91.7 per cent of the top 250 most-viewed current and library scripted series in 2024 were created by a white person, with 79 per cent of all show creators being white men. White actors were cast in 80 per cent of all roles, too – another increase.