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ZDNET’s key takeaways The Blackview Tab 90 WiFi (2025) is on sale now for $110 on Amazon. It punches above its price point in terms of hardware. Expanded memory does need to be pushed to the max to get the best performance. Blackview, a brand primarily recognized for its rugged smartphones, has also ventured into the tablet market, offering devices that strike an impressive balance between performance and affordability.  Also: The best portable power stations you…

Screenshot by Lance Whitney/ZDNET X’s new Grok 3 AI-powered chatbot is now free for anyone to use. Launched earlier this week, the latest flavor of Grok initially required a paid subscription, but that restriction has now been lifted, according to a new post from xAI, the AI company created by Elon Musk. Beyond the usual AI chat features, Grok 3 offers a DeepSearch mode. Similar to the Deep Research option from ChatGPT Pro, Gemini Advanced, and Perplexity AI,…

In a new report, the Royal Academy of Engineering called upon the government to ensure tech companies accurately report how much energy and water their data centers are using and reducing the use of drinking water for cooling. Without such action, warns one of the report’s authors, Professor Tom Rodden, “we face a real risk that our development, deployment and use of AI could do irreparable damage to the environment.” The situation is a little…

Matthew Busch for The Washington Post via Getty Images Some people think tens of millions of dead people are collecting Social Security checks. That’s not true. What’s really going on is people don’t understand its old, underlying technology.  The saga of 150-year-old Social Security recipients is a tale that intertwines aging technology, government systems, and modern misunderstandings by the youthful Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) IT people. At the heart of this story lies COBOL, a…

ZDNET One of the world’s biggest airlines is making it a little easier to track down your lost luggage. Last fall, Apple introduced “Share Item Location,” a feature that lets you share the location of an AirTag or Find My accessory with someone else. Apple partnered with a number of airlines, including Air Canada, British Airways, Delta Air Lines, Lufthansa, and United, to incorporate this feature into official customer service protocols. Also: Finally, Bluetooth trackers for…

ZDNET’s key takeaways The Withings Scanwatch Nova is available for pre-order now, starting at $599. It’s an elegant smartwatch with a one-month battery, water resistance up to 10ATM, and various health-tracking metrics. A $10/month subscription is required for some advanced metrics, and the watch is only available in one 42mm diameter. Healthy heart monitoring starts with gathering your metrics, but making sense out of all the numbers is a whole different challenge. For the past…

ZDNET If you’re tired of seeing misinformation online, here’s your chance to be part of the fight against it. Also: How to delete Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram Last month, Meta announced that it was ditching its third-party fact checkers in favor of X-style community notes on its social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Meta will officially roll out the feature in a few months, but you can join the waitlist now to be among the…

ZDNET Those of you who use Google Gemini for free can now take advantage of a feature formerly limited to paid subscribers. On Thursday, the Google Gemini account on X announced that the document upload capability is now available to all Gemini users. How it works Using this option, free users can upload a variety of file types to Gemini for analysis. These include PDFs, text files, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Google Docs files….

Just how water-resistant is that box filled with electricity? Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET I remember a time when you wouldn’t dare let water anywhere near a smartphone or power bank, as it would almost certainly mean disaster. Today, however, most smartphones are designed to be water- and dust-resistant to some extent, and even gadgets like power banks and portable power stations are following suit. Also: The best portable power stations you can buy But how can you determine…