In brief: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has become Disney’s seventh billion-dollar earner of 2019 and the ninth overall film to cross the threshold for the year. With the milestone, The Rise of Skywalker becomes the fifth Star Wars film to join the billion-dollar club.

The third and final film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker launched on December 20 to much fanfare (and with the help of a massive marketing push ). The flick got off

Why it matters: The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is well-known for producing chips used by tech giants such as Apple and Qualcomm, but it also creates them for the US military. As such, the American government is pressuring the firm to make these components in the United States to ensure there is no interference from China.

As reported by the Nikkei Asian Review , TSMC makes chips that are used in American F-35 fighter jets. The tension between China and the US is still high despite

Why it matters: It's no secret that our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, largely occupied by hours spent sitting in front of a computer screen and commuting through traffic jams for work, pose several risks to our physical and mental health. The World Health Organization estimates over 1.4 billion adults are at risk from a lack of physical activity, which can lead to diseases like dementia and type 2 diabetes, obesity, weak pelvic and back muscles, as well as heart problems. To address this issue, British automaker,

Something to look forward to: Are you a Game of Thrones fan looking forward to a return to George R R Martin’s world? Sadly, it’s going to be a while. House of the Dragon, HBO’s prequel series, is unlikely to air until “sometime in 2022.”

In an interview with Deadline , HBO President of Programming Casey Bloys said that it was too early to specify anything other than a “best guess” 2022 launch date for the series

What just happened? In a bid to reduce notification spam, Google has quietly decided to do away with Play Store notifications that let users know when an app has been updated. From now on, they will only see a notification for an app update being installed, which will disappear automatically after the process is complete.

Despite the wealth of granular controls for managing notifications on our smartphones, the tiny bits of information and alerts can still get overwhelming sometimes, requiring plenty of unnecessary swipes from the user.

Google has taken another

In brief: Apple is on a spending spree for AI startups, and the latest is a Seattle-based startup that makes on-device machine learning tools that literally sip power and cost very little to manufacture.

Apple's latest acquisition is Xnor.ai, a Seattle-based startup that focuses on low-power machine learning tools. According to GeekWire, the deal is valued at around $200 million and includes an agreement to move Xnor.ai employees to Apple's office space in Seattle.

Why it matters: We’ve been hearing news of AMD eroding Intel’s CPU market share for a while, and now another report suggests that Team Red is catching up on its rival. According to the results of a survey, 41 percent of participants now use AMD’s processors.

The report comes from Jon Peddie Research, which partnered with Antikythera Intelligence and Research, and the Wccftech website. It surveyed visitors to the site, asking questions about graphics cards, CPUs, motherboards, and virtual reality.

What just happened? Audio company Bose has announced that it's closing all of its brick-and-mortar retail stores across several global markets over the coming months, due to an increasing number of consumers choosing to shop online instead of physically checking out or buying their products in shops.

Getting hands-on experience with a gadget in-store has its own charm, where the excitement only increases upon observing other neatly arranged products that are yours to try. However, it makes little business sense to keep the shops