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President Trump put an end to a policy that restricted federal agents from making immigration arrests at certain locations, including schools. It's already affecting school staff, kids and parents.

(Image credit: Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Amid ongoing fears over TikTok, Chinese generative AI platform DeepSeek says it’s sending heaps of US user data straight to its home country, potentially setting the stage for greater scrutiny.

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The Trump administration has said the raids will focus on criminals who are a public threat. But immigrant communities across the board are bracing, and changing their routines.

(Image credit: Mustafa Hussain for NPR)

The industries most represented among the group include marketing and PR, charities and nonprofits, and technology.

(Image credit: Ben Stansall)

The judge said it was "reasonable" the Justice Department interpreted Trump's Jan. 6 commutations to cover the defendants' prison sentences and wipe away their terms of supervised release.

(Image credit: Mandel Ngan)

Apple said the update patches a bug that might have been actively exploited.

• NPR claim to have intel on a new plan for Oracle to be part-buyers in TikTok
• The President is denying any knowledge, but Congressional staffers are less tight-lipped
• At press time, TikTok is still unavailable on Google and Apple's app stores due to imminent ban

Oracle could be next in line to take over ownership of embattled social media giant TikTok from ByteDance, if new reports are to be believed.

An NPR exclusive, fuelled by correspondence with “two people with direct knowledge of the talks”, claims that a murky deal involving the cloud storage titan is in the early stages; albeit complicated by President Trump’s own desires for the US itself to have a 50% equity stake in the company, and “a group of outside investors”, including Microsoft, also showing interest.

The new deliberations offer TikTok a stay of execution after it was supposed to have been banned in the US in the event of no plan for a sale to American buyers being in place (a process known as qualified divestiture), thanks to a law passed by Congress in April 2024.

Oracle TikTok deal?

Given the speculation, it’s no surprise President Trump reportedly refused to comment when asked about prospective talks supposedly held with Oracle chief Larry Ellison about the deal, meaning ultimately, we just don’t know all that much about the plan - yet.

One of NPR’s sources, however, did claim, at present, the deal would give the US direct oversight over TikTok as a platform, but that ByteDance ”wouldn’t completely go away”.

Though the original deadline for a sale to occur before a ban was January 19, 2025, the newly-sitting President signed an executive order that provided a 75-day extension - despite the contention of legal scholars.

Though TikTok service is still operational in the US as a result of the order, Google and Apple have both delisted it from their respective mobile app stores, most likely to toe the line of the law.

A Congressional staffer involved in the talks said that "a key part [of the new deal winning approval despite passing a deadline] is showing there is no operational relationship with ByteDance [...] there needs to be no backdoors where China can potentially gain access."

White House negotiators are reportedly under the impression that TikTok could well be worth $200 billion USD, so perhaps it’s no surprise that certain forces want to keep the deal alive.

Plus, Chinese opposition to TikTok’s sale is thought to have eased recently as thoughts turn to it being used as a bargaining chip to relieve trade tariffs; a stance that would appear to make a deal going through that much more likely.

Oracle, meanwhile, has its own well-established interests in a deal. In its annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024, it claimed a TikTok ban could hurt the cloud giant's business, as ByteDance is a customer and, in June 2022, moved its US user data to Oracle servers after initial concerns were raised about its data-handling practices in the territory.

This isn’t the first time tech giants such as Microsoft and Oracle have been named as part of prospective deals that would transfer TikTok to American ownership; in August 2020, both companies, plus such names as Walmart, Google and Twitter were named as part of a deal that could have turned the app into a creator-oriented ecommerce platform.

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• Leaks tease that the Meta Quest 4 and Pro 2 are in development
• Meta Quest Pro 2 has reportedly been canceled twice previously
• No release date or specs details right now

The third time might really be the charm, folks. Despite reports that two separate Meta Quest Pro 2 prototypes were canceled mid-development, Meta is reportedly having another crack at its high-end offering, according to insider sources – and less surprisingly, it’s apparently working on a Meta Quest 4, too.

This comes from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who, in his latest newsletter, cited insider sources familiar with Meta’s XR plans, with these insiders revealing that these two Quest headsets were in the works – alongside a few Meta smart glasses we’ve reported on previously such as one with a display that could land later this year.

While leaks should be taken with a pinch of salt (unofficial info can always change, especially with Meta, who we’ve seen cancel in-development projects previously), the Meta Quest 4 being in the works shouldn’t be much of a shocker. While the Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S aren’t quite matching the standout success of the wildly popular Meta Quest 2, they are still doing well for themselves – per the Meta Quest phone app’s Christmas day success and the Quest 3’s growing popularity in the Steam Hardware Survey (it’s up to 20.14% of all headsets used, behind only the Quest 2 at 34.21%).

(Image credit: Meta) Meta Quest Pro 2: back for round three

What’s more interesting, is that a Meta Quest Pro 2 could be on the way. Gurman doesn’t go into specifics but says that Meta is working on “a new high-end model that could eventually become a successor to the Quest Pro mixed-reality headset.” Not much else is known, but Gurman could be referring to a previously teased Meta prototype that was potentially set to replace the two canceled Quest Pro 2 prototypes we’d heard about: Puffin.

For context, back in July 2023, we reported that the Meta Quest Pro 2 had been canceled – or, more specifically, that the prototype many believed would develop into being the Quest Pro 2 (to use Meta’s semantic language) had been shelved. Things went quiet until 2024 when, in February, there was buzz that Meta and LG could partner on a high-end headset with OLED displays to rival the Apple Vision Pro. However, our initial excitement turned to disappointment fairly swiftly.

In May, there was talk that the LG partnership was off, followed by reports in August that the OLED Quest pro 2 Project – codenamed La Jolla – had kicked the bucket. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth again clarified that technically, the Quest Pro 2 wasn’t canceled, just a prototype, but it didn’t dispel the sense that the Quest Pro line was doomed.

That is until we heard about Puffin, a third prototype XR device, which Gurman could be referring to in his report. Puffin was leaked back in 2024 when we heard about the La Jolla cancellation, and it offers us a completely different concept for a headset – a lightweight (110g) glasses-looking device for VR and MR rather than AR like other specs.

Ar glasses, like Orion, are the future (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

What I like about the Puffin leak is it plays into Meta’s promise of what its Pro-line should be – a look at the future of XR.

While I love VR headsets, the clear industry trend is that glasses are the next stage of evolution for this field – even if, at first, they’ll be less capable to account for weight and size restrictions. Puffin, with a design that isn’t trying to be like regular glasses – and so could get away with design decisions like putting a battery puck in your pocket like the Apple Vision Pro or having a bulkier frame – could focus on function over fashion, and in-keeping with the Quest Pro’s promise show us where accessible XR tech could be in a few years by giving us a glimpse via a prosumer product that won’t be the cheapest.

We’ll obviously have to wait and see what Meta has up its sleeve, as it could be that Puffin and the Quest Pro 2 are distinct gadgets, but I seriously hope they aren’t. While I liked the original Quest Pro at launch, it didn’t get the software support it craved and ended up being too mundane of an upgrade – resulting in it being outclassed too quickly.

Puffin sounds like a far more engaging proposition with a unique design that could give the Quest Pro 2 the staying power it desperately needs.

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• This affordable mini PC has a unique feature I've never seen anywhere else
• The KN1 mini PC has one of the largest touchpads I've seen on a Mac or Windows device
• I am not convinced by its ergonomics though but at its price, I am happy to give it a go

Have you ever imagined a mini PC and thought, “What if it had a touchpad slapped on top?” Well, the Kidwants KN1 Touch Mini PC might be exactly what you’ve always wanted.

The KN1 Touch is a compact desktop PC equipped with a dual-core Intel Celeron N4000 processor which operates at speeds of up to 2.6 GHz and includes a 4 MB cache.

With an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 600, the KN1 supports 4K resolution (3840 x 2160) and a dual-monitor setup via HDMI. Interestingly, the literature claims to support VGA, but product images don't feature any such port.

Mini PC with built in touchpad

As for the connectivity that is present; beyond Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Ethernet connectivity, there are four USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

It's also equipped with 8 GB of LPDDR4 RAM (not quite enough in this day and age for a desktop in regular use, I would argue) and 128 GB of built-in eMMC storage, while supporting M.2 2280 SATA SSD expansion "up to 1 TB".

But the stand-out feature is the touchpad built into the chassis. Supporting left and right-click functionality, the touchpad permits single-finger navigation, two-finger scrolling, and three-finger gestures to switch between apps or minimize programs.

It's up to you whether this is revolutionary or just makes you yearn for a decidedly more portable business laptop, but in any case, the KN1 is currently available on Amazon US for $109.99; 15% off of the usual price.

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