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For a number of very obvious reasons, we dont want to roll back the clock to early 2020. No thank you. But if there was a feel-good lockdown story, it was the perfectly timed arrival of Animal Crossing: New Horizons , which allowed friends who could no longer meet up IRL to do so virtually on their carefully pruned islands. The game will almost certainly never be as popular as it was back then again, but Nintendo is hoping a good chunk of lapsed islanders will return for its latest DLC drop, whi

Verizon is offering a very small mea culpa after Wednesday's massive outage , which drew more than 1.5 million reports on Downdetector and lasted hours. The carrier posted on X that it will offer a $20 credit, but customers must redeem it in the myVerizon app. This credit isnt meant to make up for what happened. No credit really can, the company wrote. But its a way of acknowledging your time and showing that this matters to us. Incensed customers have largely replied with incredulity, both at t

As part of Wikipedia's 25th anniversary , parent company Wikimedia announced a slew of partnerships with AI-focused companies like Amazon, Meta, Perplexity, Microsoft and others. The deals are meant to alleviate some of the cost associated with AI chatbots accessing Wikipedia content in enormous volumes by giving the tech companies streamlined access. As noted by The Verge , the timeline on these deals is a little squirrely. The Wikipedia foundation says that several companies became enterprise

The indie RPG Sea of Stars is being released for mobile platforms on April 7. The iOS and Android versions are priced at just $10, which is a steal considering it cost $35 when it was first released for PC and consoles. Heck, it still costs that much on many platforms. This is a mobile release, so it's not an exact port. The interface has been revamped to allow for complete touch control. It's also compatible with controllers, which is always a good thing with smartphone ports. The Android versi

YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed is reporting that NVIDIA has effectively discontinued the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to the ongoing memory crunch. In its most recent video , the channel states ASUS explicitly told it the RTX 5070 Ti is currently facing a supply shortage. As a result, the company has placed the model into end of life status, and no longer plans to produce it. Hardware Unboxed also spoke to retailers in Australia, who told the channel the 5070 Ti is no longer available to p

If youre looking for something to entertain your kids for the next several months (and potentially longer), YouTube would like you to know that more than 100 classic episodes of Sesame Street are now streaming on the platform. The partnership between Sesame Street creator Sesame Workshop and YouTube was first announced last year and encompasses both old episodes as well as new content. Some of the themed compilations that have also been added to YouTube and YouTube Kids focus on specific educat

Mentra will soon start shipping its first smart glasses , the Mentra Live. At first glance, theres nothing obvious setting Mentras glasses apart from its more well-known competitors , but they come with their own dedicated app store, and employ an open-source OS with an SDK that developers have had access to since early 2025. Mentra says the MiniApp Store is the first app store of its nature for smart glasses, and it will be available to iOS and Android users through the Mentra app. It might be

During CES 2026, Samsung unveiled plenty of new TVs, monitors and other hardware. However, the company is also looking to expand further into video games and has announced a significant refresh to its Gaming Hub on smartphones. Engadget spoke with Samsungs Jong Woo, VP of Game Services, who explained that the update will offer more personalized, faster ways to play and place greater emphasis on up-and-coming titles. Now available on Galaxy devices, with further updates planned, the new hub wants

IO Interactive raised a few eyebrows last week when it announced the minimum and recommended PC specs for 007 First Light . To run the James Bond adventure at in 1080p at 60 fps, IOI initially said you'd need to have a rig with at least 32GB of RAM and a GPU with 12GB of VRAM. The studio has now revised those numbers and other elements of the specs after the community flagged some inconsistencies in an earlier version of the listing. The developer blamed an internal miscommunication which led to

Basketball fans can save on NBA League Pass right now, which lets you catch a bunch of out-of-market NBA games via streaming. The League Pass Premium subscription is on sale for $75, down from the usual $160, and League Pass Standard is marked down to $50 from $110. Considering we're almost halfway though the season, the discount makes sense and is a good deal for anyone who wants to keep a close eye on the rest of the games to be played this year. The Standard plan includes commercials and supp

After a widely hyped and successful Kickstarter campaign , Valerions 4K VisionMaster Max laser projector has finally arrived. Its the companys new flagship model in the VisionMaster series, offering better image quality and more convenience than its other models. However, its quite expensive and has some stiff competition from Ankers Nebula X1 and XGIMIs Horizon 20 Max. I was eager to see how it compared to those models and if it delivers on Valerions promise of pure cinema. It does offer better

President Trump has signed a proclamation imposing a 25 percent tariff on certain advanced computing chips, the White House has announced. As The New York Times notes, the administration previously threatened much bigger and broader tariffs for chips. Trump even said that he was going to impose a 100 percent tariff on companies unless they invest on semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. The new tariff will only affect advanced chips imported into the US and are meant to be re-exporte

Spotify is raising the prices for its premium subscriptions by $1 to $2 across the board, starting this February. Those are similar figures to the companys last price hike in 2024. Subscribers across the US, Estonia and Latvia will soon receive an email, notifying them that theyll be paying a larger amount for their February bill. The streaming service said its raising its prices occasionally to reflect the value that Spotify delivers, to continue offering the best possible experience and to ben

E Ink tablets can provide the best of both worlds, giving you a similar tactile response to writing with pen and paper while also conveniently holding all of your digital files. reMarkable has a new year sale going on right now on its E Ink tablets, where you can save between $70 and $90 on a bundle, depending on the configuration you choose. For example, you can get the reMarkable 2 tablet with the Marker and Book Folio for $449, instead of the usual $568. The company also sells a newer stylus

Apple keeps most of its product pricing on a tight leash, but we do see the company's AirTags go on sale pretty frequently. Another cost cut has come around for this item just in time for the holidays. Amazon is currently selling a four-pack of AirTags for $65. At a third off the regular cost, that price is pretty close to the record low discount of $63 we've seen for these Bluetooth trackers. AirTags can be useful for people who travel frequently, helping you to keep track of essentials like yo

After reaching a proposed settlement last year, the FTC has banned General Motors from sharing specific consumer data with third parties, TechCrunch reported. The finalized order wraps up one of the more egregious cases of a corporation collecting its customers' data and then using it against them. Two years ago, the New York Times report released a report detailing how GM's OnStar Smart Driver program collected and sold detailed geolocation and driving behavior data to third parties, including

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying the Crew-11 astronauts has splashed down into the ocean after they left the ISS a month earlier than planned due a medical issue. Its the first time NASA cut a mission short due to a medical concern . The agency didnt name the crew member and their condition but stated that they were stable and that it wasnt a case of medical evacuation. NASA merely decided to end the mission early out of an abundance of caution, because the ISS didnt have the tools for a pr

You dont need to spend a fortune to stay on top of your health goals while tracking your fitness. These days, even cheap fitness trackers come packed with features that help you monitor your heart rate, track your steps and even analyze your sleep stages. Many budget options now include GPS tracking for those outdoor runs, real-time heart rate tracking to keep you in the right zone during workouts and, thankfully, most work with both iPhone and Android devices. Some even go beyond basic metrics,

Verizons network is experiencing technical issues that are impacting calls and wireless data. Verizon customers on X have reported seeing SOS rather than the traditional network bars on their smartphones, and even the network providers own status page struggled to load, likely due to the number of customers trying to access it. Based on the experience of Verizon users on Engadgets staff, the services that are impacted appear to be calls and wireless data. Text messages continue to be delivered n

X says it is changing its policies around Groks image-editing abilities following a multi-week outcry over the chatbot repeatedly being accused of generating sexualized images of children and nonconsensual nudity. In an update shared from the @Safety account on X, the company said it has implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis.. xAI is also moving all of Groks image-generating features

Netflix is continuing to double down on podcasts, with the streaming service's announcement that it has hired talent to host two original shows for its platform. The first show stars NFL Hall of Famer-turned-analyst Michael Irvin and the second is a talk show for former Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson. The White House with Michael Irvin premieres January 19. The abode in the title refers to a building near the Dallas Cowboys facilities rather than the seat of US presidential power,

Elon Musk isn't the only party at fault for Grok's nonconsensual intimate deepfakes of real people, including children . What about Apple and Google? The two (frequently virtue-signaling) companies have inexplicably allowed Grok and X to remain in their app stores even as Musk's chatbot reportedly continues to produce the material. On Wednesday, a coalition of women's and progressive advocacy groups called on Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai to uphold their own rules and remove the apps. The open let

Amazon's upcoming God of War live-action TV adaptation has cast Ryan Hurst as its Kratos. Sony announced the casting today on X with a brief post and an image of both Hurst and Kratos in full scowl mode. Hurst is already sporting a very Kratos-style beard, so he's already got the right vibe going for him. He has past credits on familiar shows such as Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead . The upcoming Amazon series also isn't his first rodeo acting in this universe; Hurst voiced Thor in the vide

In a chaotic world, one thing you can count on is your own common-sense steps toward better cybersecurity . January is a great time to grab a subscription for yourself or a loved one, as a few holiday sales are (inexplicably) still happening. With access to a virtual private network (VPN) , you can stream TV shows and events from all over the world, protect your information from hackers and thwart online trackers. We strongly recommend using a VPN , but you might get stuck with a substandard app

The App Store is a home for many kinds of apps (including, inexplicably , one that lets users undress strangers without their consent ). But hey, it also has games! And soon the store's Apple Arcade service will include one more: the not-so-highly rated Civilization VII . Apple announced on Wednesday that Sid Meier's Civilization VII will arrive almost exactly a year after launch . The game is already available for Apple devices, but its arrival on Apple Arcade will be a first. Civilization VII

California authorities have launched an investigation into xAI following weeks of reports that the chatbot was generating sexualized images of children. xAI appears to be facilitating the large-scale production of deepfake nonconsensual intimate images that are being used to harass women and girls across the internet, including via the social media platform X, California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office said in a statement . The statement cited a report that more than half of the 20,000 image

ExpressVPN is back on sale again, and its two-year plans are up to 78 percent off right now. You can get the Advanced tier for $101 for 28 months. This is marked down from the $392 that this time frame normally costs. On a per-month basis, it works out to roughly $3.59 for the promo period. Weve consistently liked ExpressVPN because its fast, easy to use and widely available across a large global server network. In fact, it's our current pick for best premium VPN . One of the biggest drawbacks h

Verizons network appears to be having technical issues that are impacting calls and wireless data. Verizon customers on X have reported seeing SOS rather than the traditional network bars on their smartphones, and even the network providers own status page is struggling to load during the outage. Based on the experience of Verizon users on Engadgets staff, the services that are impacted appear to be calls and wireless data. Text messages continue to be delivered normally, at least for some users

Sony just announced January's Game Catalog additions for PS Plus subscribers and it's a fantastic lineup. All of these titles will be ready to play on January 20. First up, there's Resident Evil Village . This is a direct sequel to 2017s Resident Evil 7: Biohazard . It's a full game with plenty of jump scares and an engrossing narrative. It's set in a spooky village, thus the name, and a nearby castle. This shouldn't disappoint fans of the franchise and will be available for both PS4 and PS5. Li

Generative AI, we are repeatedly told, is a transformative and complicated technology. So complicated that its own creators are unable to explain why it acts the way it does, and so transformative that we'd be fools to stand in the way of progress. Even when progress resembles a machine for undressing strangers without their consent on an unprecedented scale , as has been the case of late with Elon Musk's Grok chatbot. UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer seems to have so fully bought into the grand l

Look, virtual private networks are great I wouldn't have made a list of the best VPNs if I didn't recommend using them. But being able to control your own technology is also important. A VPN can provide protection and peace of mind when used properly , but you may not want it active on your phone all the time. For example: Are your Google search results suddenly in German? Thats one example of what can happen if you leave your virtual location set to Berlin or Vienna. Or maybe a VPN you install

Have a hankering for some audiobooks? Audible is holding one heck of a sale right now, giving users three months of access for $3 . That's a dollar per month. This is something of a winter tradition for the Amazon-owned platform and the promotion ends on January 21. An Audible subscription grants one audiobook per month to keep. This can be selected from a massive catalog of new releases and bestsellers. The collection here has just about everything. However, it's easy to plow through a single b

The first-generation Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones are on sale right now for $280, marked down from $430. That 35 percent savings is an even steeper discount than we saw last year Black Friday. In our review of the first-generation Ultras, we gave them a score of 86 out of 100, noting their best-in-class active noise cancellation (ANC) and comfort. Bose improved its stock tuning for these headphones, which we could immediately tell sounded warmer and clearer. Bose has typically lagged behin

For a number of very obvious reasons, we dont want to roll back the clock to early 2020. No thank you. But if there was a feel-good lockdown story, it was the perfectly timed arrival of Animal Crossing: New Horizons , which allowed friends who could no longer meet up IRL to do so virtually on their carefully pruned islands. The game will almost certainly never be as popular as it was back then again, but Nintendo is hoping a good chunk of lapsed islanders will return for its latest DLC drop, whi

The holiday season may be behind us, but that doesn't mean you can't still find good deals on some of our favorite tech. Take the Apple Mac mini M4 , which is on sale for $100 off. The 17 percent discount gives you 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD for $499, which is only about $20 more than its Black Friday sale price. Its beefier models are also on sale: opting for 512GB of SSD will cost you $689, down from $799, while also upping your RAM to 24GB is available for $890, dropping from $999. We gave

Gemini is adding a feature thats designed to feel more tailored to individual users. Once enabled, Personal Intelligence can pull context from across your Google ecosystem, including Gmail, Google Photos, Search and YouTube History, to gain specific insight that will shape its answers and recommendations. Personal Intelligence is available starting today in the US for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. The feature is opt-in only and is off by default. Google Google says users will have the abi

YouTube is rolling out some additional parental controls, including a way to set time limits for viewing Shorts on teen accounts. In the near future, parents and guardians will be able to set the Shorts timer to zero on supervised accounts. This is an industry-first feature that puts parents firmly in control of the amount of short-form content their kids watch, Jennifer Flannery O'Connor, YouTube's vice president of product management, wrote in a blog post . Along with that, take-a-break and be

You can easily spruce up your nightstand or desk by decluttering a bit, replacing some of those annoying charging cables with a good wireless charging setup. One of our favorites that can handle three devices at once is the UGREEN MagFlow Qi2 3-in-1 Charger Station 25W . Normally $140, it's on sale right now for $95; that's 32 percent off and only about $5 more than its record-low price. This is our top pick for a 3-in-1 charging pad thanks to its versatility. The UGREEN can work equally well as

Were almost exactly halfway through January, but Nintendo has clearly taken a better-late-than-never approach to its 2025 year in review feature, which finally went live this week for Switch and Switch 2 users. All you need to do is head here and sign into your Nintendo account to see your 2025 breakdown. Like most annual gaming wrap-ups, Nintendo's shows how many games you played over the calendar year, as well as your total playtime. It also shows you your most-played titles for each month, yo

If you want a wireless charger for your iPhone and prefer to stick with Apple, Amazon has a sale that may pique your interest. The retailer is selling the one meter Apple Magsafe charger for $30 , saving you $10 off the regular price, while also selling the two meter model for $40 ($10 off). If you have an iPhone 16, iPhone 17 or iPhone Air, this cable can charge your device at 25W as long as it's connected to a 30W power adapter on the other end. While you'll need a more recent iPhone to get th

Just a week after announcing the latest version of its image-upscaling tech at CES, NVIDIA is rolling out DLSS 4.5. The company released a beta version of the update last week. Starting today, all NVIDIA app users with a GeForce RTX GPU will be able to upgrade to the full release of DLSS 4.5. NVIDIA says DLSS 4.5 Super Resolution (to give its full name) delivers sharper visuals and improved temporal stability. The 2nd Generation Super Resolution Transformer reduces ghosting and improves anti-ali

A new year is the perfect time to get your spending in order, and if you're not trying to build your own spreadsheet, budgeting apps are one of the best ways to do it. To save yourself some money in the process, you can pick up a year-long subscription to Monarch Money , one of Engadget's favorite budgeting apps , for just $50 if you use code NEWYEAR2026 at checkout and you're a new subscriber. That's a 50 percent discount on the service's normal $100 price. Monarch Money makes for a capable and

Weve all heard of couch surfing, but Fender and Samsung have made it their 2026 mission to make couch shredding a thing. Samsung TV users will soon be able to take guitar lessons from the comfort of their living rooms, with the first TV edition of the Fender Play app set to arrive in the first half of this year. Debuted at CES , players can choose from video-based lessons for both electric and acoustic guitar, as well as bass and for all the wannabe Jake Shimabukuros or George Formbys (one for

Bandcamp has addressed the AI slop problem vexing musicians and their fans of late. The company is banning any music or audio on its platform that is wholly or in substantial part made by generative AI, according to its blog . It also clarified that the use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited by policies already in place. Any music suspected to be AI generated may be removed by the Bandcamp team and the company is giving users reporting tools to flag such co

AirTags already have a decently long battery life, but you will end up needing to replace the coin cell every two years or so. If you don't even want to be bothered with that, Elevation Lab made just the accessory for you: its AirTag battery case that can power the tracker for up to 10 years is on sale for 30 percent off. You can pick one up for only $16, and it's available in two- and four-packs as well at a discount. The TimeCapsule case uses two AA batteries to offer up to 14 times the lifesp

The peak time for deals on streaming services the holiday shopping season has come and gone, but Disney is back with a fresh offer for the new year. New and eligible returning subscribers can get one month of the ad-supported Disney+ Hulu bundle for just $10. That's $3 off the usual monthly rate for the bundle, and more than 58 percent off if you consider the prices for each service individually (Disney+ at $12 per month and, separately, Hulu also at $12 per month). We'd be remiss if we didn't

Matthew McConaughey filed trademark applications to prevent his likeness from being used by AI companies without permission, and the US Patent and Trademark Office has approved eight so far. According to the Wall Street Journal , the trademarks were for video and audio clips featuring the actor staring, smiling and talking. One was for a video of him standing on a porch, while another was for an audio recording of him saying alright, alright, alright, his signature catchphrase from the movie Daz

Tesla will stop selling its $8,000 Full Self-Driving (FSD) option and make it strictly a monthly subscription service after February 14, CEO Elon Musk announced on his X platform . Musk didn't reveal the price or why he's making the switch, though FSD is already available by subscription for $99 per month or $999 per year. The shift could be advantageous for buyers, particularly if they decide to dump their new Tesla or trade it in . It will also allow prospective owners to hedge their bets, as

The UK government has backtracked on a plan to require all workers to have a digital ID following a backlash. It will no longer be mandatory to register with the digital ID program to prove one has the right to work in the country, as the BBC reports. The government announced the now-scrapped digital ID requirement in September. You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said at the time. It's as simple as that. The governmen

Having fewer ports makes laptops and tablets lighter and more affordable but that also cuts down on your connectivity options. If youve got a MacBook Air, a slim Chromebook or a tablet youd like to get more utility out of, a USB-C hub can help. Using just a single port on your device, these multiport adapters will let you hook up screens, tap into Ethernet cables, connect mice and keyboards, and transfer data to drives and memory cards. Most also give you a way to power your device through the