Auto Industry Quality Improves, Japanese Don't Keep Pace

The Biden administration passed a bill earlier this year that requires TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to either divest or be banned in the country as early as Jan. 19. TikTok has once last chance in court to fight its impending ban.

While the electric car stagnates, heavy industries are fully embracing electric technologies as a way to save money and boost productivity. The Mammoet SK6,000 crane, the world’s strongest land-based crane, is now fully electric. According to the Dutch manufacturer, the new crane offers zero-emission capability and reduced noise pollution, plus it enhances project safety and cleanliness by utilizing grid power, batteries, or hydrogen generators—all while still being able to lift 3,000 tons (the equivalent of five fully loaded Airbus 380 passenger airplanes) up to 650 feet, just like its fossil fuel counterpart.

Surf weaves Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, RSS feeds, podcasts, and YouTube into something that wouldn’t have been possible until recently. Fourteen years ago, when the iPad was new and bursting with unfulfilled promise, an app called Flipboard debuted. Billing itself as a “social magazine,” it let you sign in with your Twitter and Facebook accounts and then browse your feeds in a beautifully designed environment that instantly became a showcase for Apple’s tablet.

Because of a late Thanksgiving holiday, the clock has been ticking since turkey weekend. Here’s a cheat sheet for last-minute holiday shoppers. If you are channeling your inner Santa, making lists and checking them twice to get presents to your loved ones this year, time is running out.

Apple, Meta, and SoftBank have all cozied up to Trump ahead of his second term. In a string of visits, dinners, calls, monetary pledges, and social media overtures, big tech chiefs—including Apple’s Tim Cook, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos—have joined a parade of business and world leaders in trying to improve their standing with President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office in January.“The first term, everybody was fighting me,” Trump said in remarks at Mar-a-Lago.

Bunker sales are on the rise around the world. When Bernard Jones Jr. and his wife, Doris, built their dream home, they didn’t hold back. A grotto swimming pool with a waterfall for hot summer days. A home theater for cozy winter nights. A fruit orchard to harvest in fall. And a vast underground bunker in case disaster strikes.“The world’s not becoming a safer place,” he said.