Following the recent retirement of former COO Jeff Williams, AI chief John Giannandrea stepping down, and the departure of head of design Alan Dye for Meta, Apple announced Thursday that environmental and policy lead Lisa Jackson is retiring and that Jennifer Newstead will replace Kate Adams as the company’s general counsel after Adams retires “late next year.”Jackson, technically “vice president for Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives,” will retire in “late January 2026,” Apple says. Newstead, who is currently Meta’s chief legal officer, will take over Apple’s general counsel role on March 1st, 2026, from Adams, who has been Apple’s general counsel since 2017.With Jackson’s retirement and Newstead coming on board, Apple is also making some organizational shifts and shifting some responsibilities to Williams’ COO replacement, Sabih Khan. As described by Apple:The Government Affairs organization will transition to Adams, who will oversee the team until her retirement late next year, after which it will be led by Newstead. Newstead’s title will become senior vice president, General Counsel and Government Affairs, reflecting the combining of the two organizations. The Environment and Social Initiatives teams will report to Apple chief operating officer Sabih Khan.Before joining Apple in 2013, Jackson led the EPA for part of President Obama’s time in office. Apple promoted Jackson to be policy lead in 2015. Adams came to Apple in 2017 after 14 years at Honeywell, according to Apple’s website.

The European Union has launched a formal investigation into Meta over antitrust concerns with AI restrictions in WhatsApp. The probe aims to “prevent any possible irreparable harm to competition in the AI space” according to the EU, and follows Meta announcing changes to WhatsApp’s terms for businesses in October that will prohibit companies from using the platform’s API to distribute third-party AI chatbots.“As a result of the new policy, competing AI providers may be blocked from reaching their customers through WhatsApp,” says the European Commission’s announcement. “On the other hand, Meta’s own AI service ‘Meta AI’ would remain accessible to users on the platform.”The updated WhatsApp policy went into effect on October 15 for AI providers that don’t already have services on the platform, and will apply to existing AI providers on WhatsApp starting January 15th, 2026. OpenAI and Microsoft responded to the policy changes earlier this year by announcing that ChatGPT and Copilot would be removed from the platform.The investigation will assess whether Meta violated the EU laws that “prohibit the abuse of a dominant position” to make it harder for smaller providers to compete with its own services. There is no deadline for the investigation. If Meta is ruled to have breached the bloc’s antitrust rules, it may face fines up to 10 percent of the company’s global annual revenue, working out at $16.45 billion (per Meta’s 2024 earnings).“AI markets are booming in Europe and beyond,” European competition commissioner Teresa Ribera said in the announcement. “We must ensure European citizens and businesses can benefit fully from this technological revolution and act to prevent dominant digital incumbents from abusing their power to crowd out innovative competitors.”

I'll admit it; I adore boomer shooters. I've recently been clocking in hours on Captain Wayne: Vacation Desperation, and there's something about throwing the realistic, cinematic FPS games in the bin and blasting enemies for hours on end that feels refreshing. So, when I caught wind that the new Starship Troopers game would go a similar route, I knew I had to keep my eyes on it. Such is the case of Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War, which aims to bring some retro goodness to Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

If you've been following the smart home space lately, you've probably noticed that the protocol wars are... complicated. You've got Zigbee devices that need a coordinator, Thread devices that need a border router, Wi-Fi devices that clog up your network, and now Matter is supposed to tie it all together. It's a mess, and picking the right protocol for your DIY projects can feel like choosing sides in a battle you don't fully understand. Enter the ESP32-C6, a $5-ish microcontroller that says "why not all of them?"

Picture moving into a new place and finally deciding that you're going to set up Wi-Fi correctly this time, so you have coverage all the way from your driveway to the backyard, with minimal dead zones even in the second-floor study. Reddit, popular media, and even XDA Forums will immediately point you to a mesh router system that promises extended coverage without the hassles of multiple internet connections, ISP router problems, and all that nuisance. A sleek set of white pucks from Google or Eero promises to blanket your home in high-speed internet, and yes, the dead zones disappear. However, one speed test from that guest bedroom in a corner would confirm you're barely scraping 150Mbps on a gigabit connection.

So you've already checked out your Spotify Wrapped, and you've realised you've listened to that one song way more times than you thought you had. But what did the past year look like for yourself, your gaming static, and all those Discord servers you're a part of? Well, now you can check out your Discord Checkpoint and see what you got up to, for better or for worse.

Many people still think the RAM speed that's mentioned on the box is what they get when they finish building their PC and boot it for the first time. After all, when you install a kit that proudly advertises 6400MT/s, it's only natural to expect your system to recognize and use that frequency automatically. But the moment you open Task Manager or head into the BIOS and notice a much lower number, the confusion sets in. It almost feels like you've got a faulty RAM kit or your motherboard isn't detecting it correctly.

If you haven't heard already, Zorin OS 18 celebrated one million downloads in the space of a month, with 78% of those downloads coming from Windows machines. That's a cool 780,000 downloads originating from a Windows machine, and it was a cool insight as to how people in Microsoft's ecosystem are beginning to poke a toe into the open-world side of things.

Google is a company that has an app for almost everything, pretty much like Microsoft. It offers the same suite of office apps as Sheets, Docs, Slides, and more. Google Drive takes the place of OneDrive, Google Cloud is an Azure alternative, and Gemini easily beats Copilot on the AI front. Google has always been an all-in-one company, but for the longest time, it didn’t have an IDE. I was always surprised that the search giant never built anything to go up against VS Code or newer forks like Cursor. Turns out they finally did, with something called Antigravity. Google describes it as “an agentic development platform, evolving the IDE into the agent-first era”. I tested these big claims, and it turns out they actually hold up.

If you're into SBCs, you have probably pushed your Raspberry Pi to the limit with countless DIY projects. A Raspberry Pi is a powerful microprocessor that can replace entire appliances and become the core of your smart home. An Arduino microcontroller, on the other hand, might not be as powerful, but it's perfectly suited to simpler yet equally helpful projects. An inexpensive Arduino board can actually solve tons of real home problems, from bolstering your home security and watering your plants to feeding your pets. You just need to be comfortable with a bit of coding and breadboarding, and the world is your oyster.

Every now and then, the gaming industry coughs up a relic from a bygone era. Something that instantly drags you back to the wild west days of PC gaming, when discovery felt organic, and passion alone could get a project noticed.

We're clearly fans of home labs at XDA, but getting started can be a daunting task, especially if you've never set one up before. But with a little guidance, the process can be fairly smooth, allowing you to discover a new world of connected devices and services. While you can use a PC or laptop you already have, there are always cheap device options that can be used to run your home lab.